Our Piltdown Man

I'm taking a break from tending my fully functional cold fusion reactor -- email me privately and I'll send you plans to build your own (only $29.95!) -- to link to a very good article by Robert Tracinski. Others have done a good job of examining the Climategate scandal, but Tracinski's article goes further and deeper than most by tying many threads together and then clearly stating the political and economic consequences of the giant global warmist scam:

For more than a decade, we've been told that there is a scientific "consensus" that humans are causing global warming, that "the debate is over" and all "legitimate" scientists acknowledge the truth of global warming. Now we know what this "consensus" really means. What it means is: the fix is in.

This is an enormous case of organized scientific fraud, but it is not just scientific fraud. It is also a criminal act. Suborned by billions of taxpayer dollars devoted to climate research, dozens of prominent scientists have established a criminal racket in which they seek government money. . .which they then use to falsify data and defraud the taxpayers. It's the most insidious kind of fraud: a fraud in which the culprits are lauded as public heroes. Judging from this cache of e-mails, they even manage to tell themselves that their manipulation of the data is intended to protect a bigger truth and prevent it from being "confused" by inconvenient facts and uncontrolled criticism.

The damage here goes far beyond the loss of a few billions of taxpayer dollars on bogus scientific research. The real cost of this fraud is the trillions of dollars of wealth that will be destroyed if a fraudulent theory is used to justify legislation that starves the global economy of its cheapest and most abundant sources of energy.

This is the scandal of the century. It needs to be thoroughly investigated-and the culprits need to be brought to justice.

Read the whole thing.

Imagine if Piltdown Man had become "settled science" and government thusly directed massive funding of chimp and orangutan research at the expense of human studies in the mistaken thought that it would lead to better medicine. Leaving aside the fact that there should be a separation of government and science, it took more than 40 years for the Piltdown fraud to be exposed. Billions of dollars could have been wasted in that time, and millions of lives lost because of scientific finds left unfound.

It's a strained analogy, I know. But it's difficult to find anything to compare to the massive scale of global warmism and all it comprises. Although I just had the thought that perhaps global warmists aspire to emulate the Catholic church and the Christian cosmology of Galileo's time.

Hand Waving

I unfortunately don't have time to get into detail about the recent hacking of global warming alarmists' emails and subsequent posting of them for all the world to see. Luckily, Peter Cresswell at Not PC has collected a number of links worth checking out.

He also has this to say:

That’s really the crux of it right there. The world is not warming. They don’t know why. And it doesn’t fit any of their models.

Which means the “consensus” is a bust, the “science is settled” meme is a bust – and The Team themselves know that.

All the rest is hand waving.

He also quotes Andrew Bolt saying, "Most of the media reporting is easing into this Great Global Warming Conspiracy story sideways, but the tide is slowly turning . . . " I certainly hope he's right, and that I'll have reason to blog about this issue again and again because it has blown up into a media firestorm. If it does, it will be about damn time that the MSM pays attention.

I'm not going to hold my breath, though. If nothing else, people's ever-increasing ability to evade reality is one thing that continues to amaze me.

Chimney Update

To satisfy those who were waiting with bated breath to find out how the chimney project worked out, I'm happy to report that it's done and it seems to be water tight.

It's not gorgeous, but the chimney was pretty rough to start with. All in all, I'd say it was a successful project, though the next Nor'easter that comes through will be the real test.

Leaky Roof - The Tale of an Unexpected Project

Nothing rockets a project to the top of the home repair priority list like a leaky roof. A recent severe rainstorm showed that the quick-fix tar patch I applied to the chimney/roof junction two years ago during a similar rainstorm had finally given out. Luckily the chimney is in the unfinished part of the third floor (attic) so nothing was damaged. Rather than patch it again I checked the weather (clear until Friday) and decided to do it right and reflash the whole chimney. FYI, the flashing of a chimney, when done properly, has two parts: step flashing and counter flashing. Together, they keep water where it should be: flowing quickly down the roof and into the gutter. Here are some diagrams to help explain the system: These diagrams show the ideal system. What, you may ask, was I dealing with? Well, my house is over 120 years old, and let's assume that the last time the chimney was properly flashed (usually done when a new roof is put on) was 60 years ago. At some point it started leaking and homeowners added tar to stop it. Tar breaks down in UV light and then cracks. Water gets in the cracks and leaks through. Based on the tar buildup outside and the water stains on the rafters and chimney inside the attic, I'm guessing previous homeowners did the every two year quick-fix through the last half-century. I don't have a photo of my chimney before I started working, but here is an example that looks similar, though not as bad as mine (courtesy of a very helpful site). Note that here you can see some of the counter flashing, but mine was totally covered in tar.On Sunday, I hacked off nearly 80 lbs of old tar, by my highly scientific guesstimate. The upper face of the chimney is only a few inches from the roofline, so there is a small valley there that collects debris, snow, and water. Instead of building what is known as a chimney cricket (basically a mini roof), previous owners simply loaded the valley up with tar so that it was nearly flush with the roof peak. And of course, it was full of deep cracks. On Monday, I took a half day from work and tuckpointed all the deteriorating mortar joints that I exposed after ripping off the old flashing. This was an unexpected problem I had to deal with, though not surprising. After so much water and so much time, much of the mortar was basically dust. I'm surprised the chimney hadn't collapsed. So this bump in the project was urgently necessary to keep the thing from crumbling as I worked on it. Tuesday, I was up on the roof at 8am, installing a small cricket that I had built the night before, and then I used the masonry blade on my circular saw to grind out the old lead counter flashing that I hadn't been able to remove with a hammer and chisel. I used aluminum for all the step flashing. It's very durable for the cost, and relatively easy to work with. For the counter flashing, I'll use lead. The first step was to fabricate the base or apron flashing (see photo) and then proceed from there up the sides of the chimney, weaving the step flashing and the new shingles (I had to rip up a bunch of shingles because of the tar).By the end of the day I had completed the step flashing, including fabricating an aluminum cover/apron for the cricket at the roofline, and finished all the shingling. Oh, and I was lucky that the previous owners had left a couple packets of matching shingles so I didn't need to try to match new ones to my roof. Here is what the job looked like near the end of the afternoon as the sun was getting low on the horizon.The channels cut in the joints will be filled in tomorrow morning when I embed the lead counter flashing with portland cement mortar. I'm using lead here instead of aluminum because 1) I need the flexibility of lead on the cricket because of some exposed seams in the base flashing, and 2) because aluminum corrodes when embedded in portland cement. Also, when the roof needs to be redone in 5 or 10 years, I'll be able to just bend up the lead to put in new shingles and step flashing. I'm not done, but the end is in sight, and I should easily be able to finish the job tomorrow morning. Yes, I know. Famous last words. ------------------- Update: Everything worked out as planned -- see my follow-up post -- and through multiple rain storms and high winds, the attic has remained dry as a bone.

Unambiguously No

The Bottom Line
The earth’s climate (in contrast to the climate in current climate GCMs [General Circulation Models]) is dominated by a strong net negative feedback. . . . such warming as may arise from increasing greenhouse gases will be indistinguishable from the fluctuations in climate that occur naturally from processes internal to the climate system itself. [bold added]

This comes from Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, explaining how climate models and the IPCC's assumptions compare to actual observational data of sea surface temperatures and actual heat radiated into space.

Climate models are all based on the IPCC-accepted assumption that there is a positive feedback loop such that with increased temperature, greenhouse gases like water vapor will respond by blocking even more heat from escaping. By this logic, adding other greenhouse gases like CO₂ will only make it worse.

According to Lindzen and studies he cites, not only is this positive feedback not confirmed by observational data of heat radiation into space, the opposite is true.

Here is an easily appreciated example of positive and negative feedback. In your car, the gas and brake pedals act as negative feedbacks to reduce speed when you are going too fast and increase it when you are going too slow. If someone were to reverse the position of the pedals without informing you, then they would act as positive feedbacks: increasing your speed when you are going too fast, and slowing you down when you are going too slow.

Alarming climate predictions depend critically on the fact that models have large positive feedbacks. The crucial question is whether nature actually behaves this way? The answer, as we have just seen, is unambiguously no. [bold added]

Am I a climate scientist? No. But I certainly appreciate an analysis of evidence, rather than an appeal to suspect computer models and the "settled" consensus of politically-motivated authorities.

Also, the logic of the following statement Lindzen made in a recent presentation is unassailable:

Why do we need to deconstruct global warming? Simply because it has been an issue that has been routinely treated with misinformation and sophistry abetted by constant repetition, institutional endorsements, and widespread ignorance even (perhaps especially) among the educated. Because of the increasingly dangerous and expensive approaches being promoted to deal with this alleged problem, it is, I think, important to understand what is being said as well as to understand how climate actually works.

[HT: HBL]

Human Ingenuity: The Real Renewable Resource

A recent advertising campaign by the natural gas industry lobby, America's Natural Gas Alliance, states (paraphrasing), "we have a 100 year supply of natural gas and it's growing all the time," and that "we can't revitalize our economy by buying overseas oil," and that "natural gas is twice as clean as coal," and is thus much "greener."

As different sectors of the energy industry try to compete in today's hyper-regulated non-market, this pandering to both environmentalism and mercantilism ("energy independence" is the new "buy American!") is becoming a common strategy. It's an unfortunate, pragmatic, but also understandable reaction to a market that gets less free with every session of Congress and every presidential term.

The crushing weight of governmental regulation isn't the only thing industry is reacting against. As the government dedicates millions of redistributed dollars to "renewable" energy and "green jobs", thus denying legitimate, voluntary investment in the best available opportunities, it's not surprising to see real businesses respond to the distorted market by trying to offer options that try to take advantage of the situation. Producers still need to respond to demand in order to survive and profit, even if government distorts the demand beyond all reason.

An industry that raised the standard of living in not just the United States but in the whole world by a nearly immeasurable margin -- the petroleum industry -- has been demonized by the environmental lobby for decades, and attacked on all sides by government regulation and "reinvestment." And instead of developing a vibrant "green economy," such interference has only inflated energy prices, stifled real innovation, and wasted billions of dollars. Recall that Jimmy Carter tried to birth the solar power industry and its continued failure even during supportive later administrations cannot be dismissed as a partisan issue, or one which simply needs more taxpayer money thrown at it. Decades of government support for renewable energy has gotten us nowhere. [As a side note, if you happen to disagree and think that the oil industry is only an exploiter of the poor and of the environment, may I suggest some required reading?]

Assuming for the moment that we really do need "energy independence" and "green energy," and considering that government involvement has not solved these "problems," what are the alternatives? There just so happens to be a socio-economic system that has been proven throughout history to be perfect for handling just such quandaries.

Capitalism unleashes the political and economic possibilities of the best within humanity. All of the creative, positive, progressive aspects of human activity are fostered -- not oppressed -- by the socio-political framework of capitalism, which means the system that fully and consistently protects individual rights in all areas of human interaction, leaving men free to produce, to solve problems, and to make enormous sums of money in the process. Nearly every modern convenience and life-sustaining technology that we take for granted today is ultimately the product of men who were free, at least in part, to use their minds, to innovate, and to produce.

On the other hand, nearly every seemingly unsolvable socio-economic problem we face today can be traced to government interference. In the energy sphere, government distorts the market by restricting free inquiry and pushing an environmentalist agenda. Using redistributed dollars, government actively promotes one type of solution while regulating others out of existence. Individual rights and the freedom of supply and demand are ignored as irrelevant, while government directs private industry toward supposed socially- and environmentally-friendly goals that continually fail to deliver real return on investment (even the pseudo-investment of "public" dollars). Solar cells, windmills, etc., are subsidized again and again, despite the fact that the market is never there, and the desired innovation never comes.

But it is certainly a fact that there is only so much petroleum on the Earth, and at some point, someday, it could run out. What this should say to a free people is that there is a potential market there for someone ingenious enough to capture it, when the time is right. Is so-called renewable energy the place to look? Who knows? But it certainly isn't the government who knows.

Let us look at renewable resources themselves for a minute. Admittedly, wind is wind, and sun is sun; these things are "renewable" in that they will continue to be available in essentially their current forms until the Earth ceases to exist. But nothing about this means that they will necessarily be economically useful right now, or will benefit human life in the same way that petroleum has. They certainly may, someday, but only on their own timeline, as determined by the individual efforts of creative men, the needs they face, and the values they want to gain.

Was sunlight a useful energy source a few million years ago in the same way we think of energy now? Obviously not. What about wind? This is even more absurd. Wind was more of an enemy -- feeding wildfires while killing cooking fires, chilling bodies, blowing away seeds and arrows -- than it was a useful resource, though it was as plentiful then as it is now. The sun and the wind thus share something fundamental with any other resource. Imagine early Homo sapiens stumbling into a pit filled with a black, viscous, smelly liquid. What good was it to him?

Oil, just like sun and wind, is simply an obstacle until and unless the human mind reshapes it to its own purposes. Obviously, the human mind, reason, and ingenuity are the only things that can transform inanimate matter into life-sustaining values.

Human ingenuity, not wind, not sun, is the only truly renewable resource. Without it, nothing in nature would be transformed to further human life. Your car, your clothes, your food -- none of these things are naturally occurring. If all we can do is take what we get, then we are but hunter-gatherers without tools or any remnants of cognition to help us along. But because humans are rational animals, we can identify the materials in our environment and mold them to suit us.

Be it stones or soft metals or iron or oil or electricity or fusion -- or the sun -- the human mind is the inexhaustible resource that makes all others possible. It is time for the government to recognize this alternative energy source, and to unleash it fully upon the world by getting the hell out of our way.

Charting Socialism

Via Not-PC, I bring you a fascinating chart of the evolution of socialist strategies from Marx to the postmoderns. This image comes from the book Explaining Postmodernism by Stephen Hicks (note: I have not read the book yet, though it looks quite interesting.)

(click to enlarge)

If this topic was not so deadly serious, and the failures listed above not coincident with (or responsible for) the deaths of millions of people and the enslavement of many more, it would almost be humorous. I'm reminded of Bart Simpson standing in front of a hot stove, repeatedly touching it and saying "Ouch!" Just when you think it can't go on any longer and that the nature of reality will finally dawn on him, he does it again. And again.

Although there are question marks after environmentalism, multiculturalism, and postmodernism, as we're right in the middle of the world-wide application of these strategies by the politicians and academics, both the historical progression of the socialist ideology and the anti-life nature of the philosophy itself make it obvious that it's only a matter of time before we'll be able to stamp "FAILURE" on each one. The crucial question of our time, however, is whether we can get to that point without the millions of deaths that have come with all the other "noble experiments," and whether we can keep the future offshoots of these deadly ideas from putting down roots.

The Negation of Freedom

We do not have two political parties in this country, America. We have one party; called the Big Government Party. The Republican wing likes deficits, war, and assaults on civil liberties. The Democratic wing likes wealth transfer, taxes, and assaults on commercial liberties. Both parties like power; and neither is interested in your freedoms. Think about it. Government is the negation of freedom. Freedom is your power and ability to follow your own free will and your own conscience. The government wants you to follow the will of some faceless bureaucrat.

. . . Congress recognizes no limits on its power. It doesn't care about the Constitution, it doesn't care about your inalienable rights, it doesn't care about the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights, it doesn't even read the laws it writes.

America, this is not an academic issue. If this health care bill becomes law, life as you have known it, freedom as you have exercised it, privacy as you have enjoyed it, will cease to be.

When Congress takes away our freedoms, they will be gone forever. What will you do to prevent this from happening? [bold added]

—Judge Andrew Napolitano, writing about the Congressional vote on Obamacare, and what such a massive usurpation of individual rights will mean.

Our government should be the protector of freedom and individual rights, but Napolitano is dead on with his call; it is now a predator instead.

[HT: Myrhaf at The New Clarion]

Pelosidactyl

Continuing my walk down memory lane (see previous post), I was reminded of some Photoshoppery I made in November 2006, right before Nancy Pelosi was nominated as Speaker of the House.

A recent post by Billy Beck about Pelosi sparked my memory, and here is what he had to say about her, with which I concur completely:

The truth simply is not in the boundless and deep black of her soul and she cannot be approached with recourse to reality.

I once heard it put that if we could hear insects think, it would most likely sound relentlessly mechanical; something like an old-time mechanical cash-register cycling endlessly, without the occasional diversion of the bell. I cannot hear the noises in her head and wouldn't want to in any case, but she really is that inhuman.

She has always made me think of a screeching harpy, and something in a 2006 photo of her struck me as particularly reptilian (go figure). And so I present to you, dear reader, the results of the inspiration that hit me almost exactly three years ago: the dreaded Pelosidactyl!

The Months Seem Like Years

Just 15 short months ago America was gearing up for a potentially watershed presidential election, and I was blogging furiously about the problems with both candidates. This morning I happened to check my site traffic and noticed that someone had Googled the phrase "iconic hipster t shirt" and clicked through to a post from that pre-election time, Obama's Cult of Personality... in Pictures.

In it, I wrote about the burgeoning trend of pseudo-vintage apparel and iconography that Obama supporters were starting to wear; a trend that would later reach its zenith in Shepard Fairey's "Hope."

I often forget what I've written and when I stumble upon it later, it's like reading it for the first time, which is an interesting disconnect. In this context, I reached the end of the post and was struck by my concluding paragraph:

I think that, assuming Obama wins, if America ever wakes up and looks back at his failed presidency and the mix of mass hysteria and corrupt philosophy that swept this demagogue into office, this photograph could be one of the iconic images of the times that helps to explain what went wrong.

It seems so very long ago that Obama's presidency was just a possibility. It's been a hell of a year, so far. The photo I was referring to was analyzed brilliantly by Ed Cline (quoted in the post) and looks shockingly like Raphael's "The Transfiguation."

Since I now have an excuse to post it again, here is my modification of the photo, "The Transfiguration of Obama."

The Wrong Questions

Can bomb attacks and hit squads against real or presumed terrorists bring about progress in the Middle East? Is it true that Arabs and Israelis only understand the language of violence, as many in Tel Aviv are now saying? Did the operation against the Al Kibar complex, which violated international law, bring the Syrian president to his senses, or did it merely encourage him to harden his position?

When faced with brutal enemies on all sides who are all working together to build nuclear bombs for the purpose of wiping it from the earth, should Israel be concerned with "progress in the Middle East" and the self-sacrificial dictates of international law? Or does it have more important things to worry about?

Salon.com is running what appears to be a mostly objective account of a secret Israeli attack on the hidden Al Kibar nuclear facility in Syria in 2007. It reads like a spy novel or an episode of NCIS, and the details are fascinating. Long story short, Mossad did the intelligence work and was "more than convinced that the site posed an existential threat to Israel and that there was evidence of intense cooperation between Syria and North Korea." They sent jets over in the dead of night and blew the hell out of it.

As one would expect from even the best of today's journalists, this report is as interesting for its moral subtext as it is for the journalistic details. Note the quote above where the writers draw the wrong conclusions about the Israeli action. They're operating from the altruistic, UN, internationalist standpoint, and are dismissive of a rational, self-interested motivation for foreign policy and military action.

While describing the nighttime air raid on the nuclear facility, they say,

as is always the case with these strikes, the bombs were far more destructive than necessary. For the Israelis, it made little difference whether a few guards were killed or a larger number of people.

The snide judgment here is obvious, even though by their own account, the facility was in the middle of nowhere, and was a military installation. Of course they want to wipe the damn thing from the map, and take as many people associated with it as possible. "[T]he site posed an existential threat to Israel." Case closed.

Still, the report has a lot of amazing detail, much of it without the editorializing. It describes intelligence operations and successful, TV-show-like assassinations--likely carried out by Mossad--of dangerous terrorists and high-level military operatives. It also discusses the unfortunate situation of Iran, and how much more difficult it will be to destroy its bomb-making facilities.

It's definitely worth a read, so check it out.

War in Art

The mention of "Soviet art" conjures striking communist propaganda, but as Billy Beck notes in reference to a gallery of Soviet-era paintings of WWII,

Russians--Not Soviets
That's what I see in this collection of "Soviet War Paintings". . . .

Without knowing some of the artists at work in that collection and accounting for their berths in the savage reality of Soviet politics, I see little obvious propaganda in these paintings. I'm no expert but I know what I like and some of the technique runs a bit more toward Impressionism than I ordinarily enjoy, although I must say that the themes are admirably exploited. [bold added]

I agree completely with that assessment, and I thank Billy for that identification. I hope I would have made the same one without his help. As he said, the style of many, if not most, of those paintings is too Impressionistic, and many of the themes are too naturalistic for me, but taken as a whole they are a gripping account of a terrible time. The scenes of soldiers returning home could easily have been American paintings.

One painting in particular struck me, and I stared at it for some time. It's the last in the 1943 group. Click here and scroll down slowly though the paintings depicting that year, until you get to "The Last Letter" by Nemenskiy. The mother and wife sits at the end of the bench, off-center in the painting as if to highlight her desolation, staring blankly, sadly, seeing nothing. The letter, obviously detailing some horrible news -- likely the death of her husband in battle -- is crumpled in her hand, forgotten. Her young son knows what the letter contains without her having to say a word, and he clutches her tightly from behind. Both mother and son are inside their sparse cottage, but are wearing heavy coats and boots against the chill, as heating fuel is scarce and expensive. This is the personal cost of war.

Some paintings evoked the battlefield paintings of earlier centuries. Note how this painting has similarities to so many of the historical paintings shown here.

Another striking thing I noticed in these paintings was how strange it seemed to see tanks and fighter planes in paintings that look so much like the historical paintings of cavalry battles in the Thirty Years War (stylistic differences notwithstanding). This made me question why seeing paintings of tanks should be any different, and of course, it isn't.

After looking at all of the paintings in the gallery, I went searching for a similar gallery of American WWII paintings, and found this. The gallery is a pain to navigate, and I wish it had thumbnails at least, but I highly recommend poking through it. It's from a PBS documentary of U.S. combat artists, described thusly:

During World War II more than 100 U.S. servicemen and civilians served as 'combat artists'. They depicted the war as they experienced it with their paintbrushes and pens. Their stories have never been told, and for fifty years their artwork, consisting of more than 12,000 pieces has been largely forgotten -- until now.

I don't know how these official combat artists compare to the artists compiled in the Soviet gallery, but the American art seems more journalistic to me. Still, very interesting.

Thanks to Billy for sparking this historical, cultural, and artistic vista-widening.

Charity in a Free Society

From an uncharacteristically consistent, fundamentally pro-individual rights standpoint, two authors discuss charity at the American Thinker. (I say uncharacteristically because the publication often succumbs to the classic conservative problem of ceding the premises of the left and then bickering about where the deck chairs should go.)

Andrew Foy and Brenton Stransky show their hand with their choice of title: Charity and Sacrifice in a Free Society. "Sacrifice" is the grain of salt we must take in their article, because it shows they still don't fully get that their entire argument rests on rational egoism and individualism, and that sacrifice is antithetical to that rather than being a virtue.

But if we get past that, they do an admirable job of nailing the key political issues and putting some vitally important ideas out there for their conservative brethren. After quoting Ayn Rand from "Collectivised Ethics" in The Virtue of Selfishness, they say:

The Founding Founders established a Republic under a written Constitution with the clear intent of protecting individual freedom. However, the role of our government has been grossly perverted over the last century to the point where politicians now violate individual rights routinely and without batting an eye. Most violations occur under the banner of providing for the public good, and they call upon the virtues of charity and sacrifice to garner support. Fortunately, charity and sacrifice in a free society are individual and personal undertakings. As a rule, they cannot be subject to coercion if liberty is to be maintained. The current President and various members of both political parties do not abide by this rule, and as such, they are positioning themselves as tyrants. Servitude will be the price we pay unless we stand up today and boldly defend our rights. It is time to educate the broader public on the proper role of charity and sacrifice in a free society.

Again, the confusion of including "sacrifice" in their formulation is unfortunate, but the overall point is good. And they're correct that "charity and sacrifice in a free society are individual and personal undertakings." It's just that they seem to equate charity and sacrifice, holding both as virtues, while not considering that charity can and should be a benevolently egoistic undertaking, and that sacrifice is the opposite of such benevolence.

The unfortunate confusion of their political argument is heightened when they later quote Rand again, from VoS, who of course grounds the political in the ethical:

If a man speculates on what "society" should do for the poor, he accepts thereby the collectivist premise that men's lives belong to society and that he, as a member of society, has the right to dispose of them...that psychological confession reveals the enormity of the extent to which altruism erodes men's capacity to grasp the concept of rights or the value of an individual life. [bold added]

Perhaps the authors have missed that the "charity=sacrifice=virtue" equation relies on the altruism Rand condemns, and that such concepts are antithetical to the individual rights they seem to hold so dear. (My guess is that this stems from the background of Christianity, but it's just a guess as I'm unfamiliar with the authors.)

Still, because they otherwise grasp the important points, it simply provides a good educational opportunity to point out the contradictions in their premises so they can work toward a more fully integrated and consistent philosophy of individual rights. They are making arguments on the political end of the ethics-rights-politics continuum, and they grant that charity/sacrifice can't be forced by government, so now we can ask them to follow the trail of logic back down the philosophical hierarchy and to question their ethics. They're so close. . . .

. . .Ayn Rand considered government the biggest threat to individual rights. "It holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. When unlimited and unrestricted by individual rights, a government is men's deadliest enemy." It matters not whether its intentions are charitable.

If the authors and their readers can understand that much, one would hope they could see that it isn't just government-forced sacrifice that is wrong, but that altruism itself, in any form, is the mortal enemy of the individual rights they fight for.

[HT: HBL]

"This fire rates more than one alarm..."

Gus Van Horn discusses government corruption scandals, and hits on the much more fundamental issue of it all -- one that people must keep in mind when parsing such stories from the media:

"I find that concerns about corruption too frequently and easily distract from the real problem, which is that too many Americans regard theft as legitimate when performed by government officials in the name of central planning."

That's the crux of it. The moral rot of altruism-fueled central planning just attracts the rotters. Yes, Rod Blagojevich is certainly a criminal, but don't waste your time on him. Direct your efforts at that which makes things like him possible: government thievery by welfare statism.

Go check out the whole post.

Venn Jesus

I'm not sure to whom this should be attributed as I can't find the originator of the image, but this Venn diagram perfectly follows the theme of my last few days considering my last post, Halloween, and the baptism I went to yesterday (no kidding).



[HT: @JustinKetterer via Twitter]