Yale's Preemptive Surrender

Michael C. Moynihan | August 13, 2009, 5:31pm

This is pathetic. From The New York Times:

So Yale University and Yale University Press (YUP) consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous: The book, “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” should not include the 12 Danish drawings that originally appeared in September 2005. What’s more, they suggested that the Yale press also refrain from publishing any other illustrations of the prophet that were to be included, specifically, a drawing for a children’s book; an Ottoman print; and a sketch by the 19th-century artist Gustave Doré of Muhammad being tormented in Hell, an episode from Dante’s “Inferno” that has been depicted by Botticelli, Blake, Rodin and Dalí.

YUP director John Donatich admitted that he was caving to threats of violence that he presumes will follow:

He noted that he had been involved in publishing other controversial books — like “The King Never Smiles” by Paul M. Handley, a recent unauthorized biography of Thailand’s current monarch — and “I’ve never blinked.” But, he said, “when it came between that and blood on my hands, there was no question.”

Reza Aslan, a religion scholar and the author of “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam,” is a fan of the book but decided to withdraw his supportive blurb that was to appear in the book after Yale University Press dropped the pictures. The book is “a definitive account of the entire controversy,” he said, “but to not include the actual cartoons is to me, frankly, idiotic.”

Good for Aslan. What makes this really enraging is that Yale is one of the best academic presses out there, having published, for instance, the Annals of Communism Series, a diverse group of books that mined the (briefly opened) archives of the Soviet Union and effectively rewrote the history of the Spanish Civil War and the myth of a Leninist revolution betrayed by Stalinism. Unlike many academic publishers, there is no ideological conformity at YUP and former editorial director Jonathan Brent went out of his way, it would seem, to get a range of interesting perspectives outside of the typical race-class-gender triumvirate.

I interviewed Jyllands-Posten culture editor and Mohammad cartoon publisher Flemming Rose back in 2007.

Medical Mosh Pits

Understanding the clashes at the health care "town halls"

Jesse Walker | August 13, 2009

Clashes keep breaking out at the "town hall" meetings devoted to discussing health care reform. Usually the excitement amounts to some angry questions and heckling, but sometimes there's more. Six people were arrested at a demonstration outside a meeting in St. Louis. Violence erupted at a town hall in Tampa after opponents of ObamaCare were locked out of the building. A North Carolina congressman cancelled a meeting after receiving a death threat; the pro-market group FreedomWorks, which was involved in some of the protests, fielded a death threat of its own. Supporters of the president's health care reforms, who used to tout the support he'd received from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, are now accusing the very same companies of riling up "mob violence" to stop the plan.

As the charges and countercharges fly, here are three maxims to keep in mind:

1. It isn't Astroturf after the grassroots show up. When the San Francisco Chronicle asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi what she thought of the protests, she replied: "I think they're Astroturf." In other words, there isn't real grassroots dissatisfaction with the direction health care reform is taking. There's just a facsimile of discontent, a show ginned up by cynical political operatives.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations, a London-based body of PR professionals, defines Astroturfing as "the practice of falsely creating the impression of independent, popular support by means of orchestrated and disguised public relations activity"; the examples it offers include "posting comments on others' blogs or on message boards" and "submitting supposedly amateur videos to YouTube." The equivalent action at the "town hall" meetings would be if someone claimed to be something she's not. That has happened: Early in August, a woman asking a pointed question at Wisconsin meeting identified herself as "just a mom from a few blocks away" who was "not affiliated with any political party." She turned out to have a long history of Republican activism.
READ MORE

FREEDOM WATCH 1 OF 6

Freedom Watch 2 of 6

FREEDOM WATCH 3 OF 6

FREEDOM WATCH 4 OF 6

FREEDOM WATCH 6 OF 6

FREEDOM WATCH 5 OF 6

SAFRA Stinks

by Neal McCluskey
his article appeared in Forbes on August 10, 2009.

Something called the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) zipped through the House Committee on Education and Labor recently.

Odds are you haven't heard much about it, maybe because of the deafening health care clamor, but it would do something pretty big, ending the 44-year-old Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program--which uses federal bucks to back tens of billions of dollars of student loans from private lenders--and replacing it with lending straight from Uncle Sam. In other words, it would destroy what little chance there was of student loans being constrained at all by economic realities.

"First, we saw a drive toward complete government takeover of our nation's health care system," lamented ranking Education and Labor Committee member Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., during deliberation over the bill. "Now, we see government seizing control of student lending, forcing the private sector out and welcoming in a mountain of public debt."

Contrary to what Kline suggests, guaranteed lending is about as close to a free market as a biplane is to the Starship Enterprise. Under FFEL, Washington guarantees lenders--including Fannie's cousin, Sallie--a profit on student loans, reimbursing them almost completely on defaults and paying big subsidies. Making matters worse, legislation was enacted last year that lets the feds more or less directly finance FFEL loans if lenders can't access sufficient funds through private capital markets. READ MORE

The Right Can Do Better Than Romney

by Gene Healy
This article appeared in the DC Examiner on August 11, 2009.

In recent months, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has hit the speaking circuit like a man who is determined to be president and knows he needs to get an early start.

Last week brought news that Romney had secured a major publisher for his forthcoming book, "No Apology: The Case for America's Greatness," in which Romney stands bravely against all those who insist that the United States is a mediocre country that's done more harm than good.

Even before the recent Palin and Sanford flameouts, Romney looked like the Right's favorite son for 2012. He'd garnered National Review's 2008 endorsement as a "full-spectrum conservative," and won the Conservative Political Action Conference's February 2009 straw poll handily.

With his square jaw and flawless salt-and-pepper hair, Romney certainly looks presidential: Like a character actor playing the president in a superhero movie -- or, less charitably, like a creature genetically engineered and grown in a vat for the sole purpose of securing the nation's highest office.

There's more to the presidency than looking the part, however. Conservatives ought to take a good look at the Romney record and ask themselves whether a man of such flexible convictions is the best they can do. READ MORE

Great American Quotes

"Virtually all reasonable laws are obeyed, not because they are the law, but because reasonable people would do that anyway. If you obey a law simply because it is the law, that's a pretty likely sign that it shouldn't be a law. "

Unknown

GET SOME: How To Fix America's Health Insurance Crisis

Wisdom from Thomas Jefferson

"If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we would soon want for bread. "

Thomas Jefferson

Libertarian Quote of the Day

"Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire. "

Ludwig Mises

IMMIGRATION: THE BECKHAM FACTOR

MICHAEL SHERMER ON THE MODERN HISTORY OF SKEPTICISM

WashTimes: When it comes to quashing dissent, look for the union label

posted by Donny Ferguson on Aug 10, 2009

Today's Washington Times editorial covers a recent trend troubling Libertarians -- elected Democrats employing union violence to stamp down dissent at town hall meetings. Click here to read the editorial, or if you live in the metro D.C. area, pick up a copy of The Washington Times. Libertarians oppose the initiation of force to achieve political or social goals.

The Times board writes:

EDITORIAL: Look for the union label

The 'persuasion of power' is employed to squash dissent

Politics is getting increasingly violent as Democrats desperately try to salvage their health care bill.

Rep. Brian Baird, Washington Democrat, said last week that public protest against the government health care plan "is close to Brown Shirt tactics." For Mr. Baird to characterize his constituents as Nazi storm troops is distasteful, to say the least. Yet it is fully in line with the tone set by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who misleadingly decried protesters "carrying swastikas." Closer examination revealed that in every case, the symbol was being used as a warning against the arrogance of power of which Mrs. Pelosi has become emblematic.

Democratic talking points characterize the spontaneous grass-roots opposition to the planned government takeover of the health care system as being organized by a shadowy cabal of lobbyists and insurance companies. However, the real storm troops are being deployed openly by organized labor in an attempt to squelch dissent.

On Aug. 6, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney sent marching orders to his members to confront concerned citizens at town-hall forums. In St. Louis, members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) reportedly attacked and beat Kenneth Gladney, who was passing out yellow flags outside a forum held by Rep. Russ Carnahan, Missouri Democrat. SEIU President Andy Stern has summed up his philosophy as, "We prefer to use the power of persuasion, but if that doesn't work, we use the persuasion of power." We expect to see his grim-faced "purple shirts" using intimidation at other events during the congressional recess.

This effort is fully consistent with the general contempt that the Democratic majority has shown for those who oppose its radical agenda. The promised era of bipartisanship is long gone. The government's new slogan is "sit down and shut up." In an appearance in McLean last week, President Obama advised opponents of his plan to "get out of the way" and said he didn't want them "to do a lot of talking." The Obama White House made history when it set up an e-mail snitch line for people to report on the "fishy" ideas of their fellow citizens.

The Democrats would do better to try to understand the root causes of this unprecedented spontaneous outpouring of public concern and frustration than to resort to intimidation tactics. There are many serious questions about the growth of government and the planned takeover of health care that need to be answered, not beaten down. Deploying thugs will only lead to violence, which serves no one's interest. If the people are shouting, it is because the politicians have stopped listening.

Taxpayers vs. Tax-Eaters

by Jim Panyard

Playing off the sloganeers of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 Presidential re-election campaign, it’s safe to say, “It’s Mourning in America.”

Even The Gipper would admit it.

As of June 2009, 155 million people were laboring in the shrinking private sector of the American Empire with a per capita income of $39,751 and a per household income of $50,740.

In addition to supporting themselves and their dependents on those earnings, they were also supporting:

22.5 million government employees at the federal, state and local levels. The average pay of those on the federal government payroll is $75,419 this year, according to Econwatch. The story is much the same at the state and local levels. In Pennsylvania, for example, the average state employee has a pay package of about $68,000 per year, while the state’s household income is $48,576. (As an aside, there are only about 20 million jobs in the nation’s manufacturing and construction sectors, combined.)

• 3.9 million welfare recipients
• 46.5 million Social Security recipients, a number projected to rise to about 72 million in the next 20 years.
• 14.7 million Americans drawing unemployment benefits, with that number expected to rise consistently in the foreseeable future.

The productive sector workers are also paying for everything the Leviathan State does, such as wars, roads,Imperial adventures, private stadiums, bailouts, counterfeiting, ad infinitum. They also pick up the soaring tabs for 47 million Medicaid and 42 million Medicare recipients.

If this isn’t rampant socialism, it will do until the real thing arrives.

How can 155 million productive workers support themselves, nearly 100 million nonproductive others and a seemingly endless list of government endeavors (most of which could be done more economically and more effectively by the private sector)?

Answer: They can’t. Or, as they say in the computer business, “Game Over.”

America’s ongoing and growing financial bankruptcy is matched by its moral bankruptcy with 50 million “legal” abortions and counting; illegitimacy becoming the societal norm and celebrations of sodomy across the nation.

Theologian and author R.J. Rushdoony noted, correctly, that a nation’s religion is reflected in its culture.

What about hope? As my Dad used to say, “S(p)it in one hand and hope in the other. See which one fills up fastest.”

READ MORE

Libertarian Quote of the Day

"People who create things nowadays can expect to be prosecuted by highly moralistic people who are incapable of creating anything. There is no way to measure the chilling effect on innovation that results from the threats of taxation, regulation and prosecution against anything that succeeds. We'll never know how many ideas our government has aborted in the name protecting us. "

Joseph Sobran May 13, 1998 (commenting on US vs Microsoft)

Michael Ostrolenk on transpartisanism, surveillance, and health care