Friday, February 19, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
The Presidential Commission on Birth, Death, and the Meaning of Life
Obama's new bioethics czar just wants us all to get along.
So how might the new Bioethics Commission operate? Fortunately, we have some idea because its new chair, Amy Gutmann, outlined her views on how bioethics commissions should be run in an article, “Deliberating About Bioethics” in the Hastings Center Report back in 1997. Most of the 13 member panel hasn't been appointed yet, but Gutmann is well-known for her scholarly work on deliberative democracy, which she defines “as a form of government in which free and equal citizens (and their representatives), justify decisions in process in which they give one another reasons that are mutually acceptable and generally accessible, with the aim of reaching conclusions that are binding in the present on all citizens but open to challenge in the future.”In her article (co-authored with political philosopher Dennis Thompson), Gutmann distinguishes deliberative democracy from proceduralism and constitutionalism. In proceduralism, once basic rules of the game have been hammered out, moral disagreements are resolved through political bargaining or by moving them out of politics into the private sphere. Constitutionalism tries to avoid moral disagreement by creating a sphere of protected rights that are shielded from ordinary politics.
Gun Refresher Course
An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.
A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.
Colt Peacemaker: The original point and click interface.
Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.
If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?
If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.
Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.
If you don't know your rights, you don't have any.
Those who trade liberty for security have neither.
The United States Constitution © 1791. All Rights Reserved.
What part of "shall not be infringed" do you not understand.
The Second Amendment is in place in case they ignore the others.
64,999,987 firearm owners killed no one yesterday.
Guns only have two enemies: Rust and Politicians.
Know guns, Know peace and safety. No guns, no peace nor safety.
You don't shoot to kill; You shoot to stay alive.
911 – government sponsored Dial a Prayer.
Assault is a behavior, not a device.
Criminals love gun control – it makes their jobs safer.
If Guns cause Crime, then Matches cause Arson.
Only a government that is afraid of it's citizens tries to control them.
You have only the rights you are willing to fight for.
Enforce the "gun control laws" in place, don't make more.
When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves.
The American Revolution would never have happened with Gun Control.
"....a government by the people, for the people....."
This originally appeared on Armed Citizens.
Copyright © 2010 Armed Citizens
Monday, February 15, 2010
The Schools Are Doing a Wonderful Job!
Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.
~ Mark Twain
I sometimes grow weary listening to people complaining that the government schools are doing a terrible job. I have many objections to this horrid system, but I must give it credit for accomplishing its actual – but unstated – purpose, namely, to dumb-down the minds of people so as to make them unquestioning and obedient vassals of the established order. There is nothing so disruptive to the status quo as a society of self-directed, independent-minded people both capable of and insistent on informed, analytical thought. It has been the purpose of government schools to assure that such conditions do not arise; to continue to produce a society of capable workers but who, nonetheless, have passive and contented minds.
The contrast between systems of learning that focus on helping students become epistemologically independent and competent, and the government schools, is often difficult to make other than by anecdotal examples. When I was in the eighth-grade in a government school, we were required to study Latin. That revelation, standing by itself, conveys little to a listener. Only occasionally am I able to find some past curricular evidence with which to compare modern school offerings.
Thanks to the Internet, however, I have rediscovered an interesting item that helps make my point. It is an eighth grade exam that students in Salina, Kansas, were required to pass in order to advance to high school (i.e., the ninth grade). The exam was given in 1895, and consists of the following subject areas and questions.
Europe Doesn't Matter
Europe thought that it had answered Henry Kissinger's derisive question: what is the phone number for Europe? But the recently approved Lisbon Treaty has only increased confusion as to who speaks for the continent. As a result, President Obama recently announced that he will not attend the upcoming U.S.-European Union summit.
If it stands united, Europe could become one of the world's three or four great powers, along with the U.S., China, and perhaps India. The European Union's GDP and population both exceed those of America.
Many European leaders are desperate to turn Europe into a Weltmacht. For that purpose they concocted the Lisbon Treaty, a complex agreement which created new continent-wide offices, enhanced the authority of the European Parliament, and reduced the power of national governments. Although consolidating power in Brussels and creating a quasi-president and foreign minister are not the same as establishing the United States of Europe, the process was promoted as yielding a more coherent and unified Europe.
Irish Senator Deirdre de Burca explained: "If I had to name just one compelling reason to support the Lisbon Treaty, however, it is because the treaty will enhance the capacity of the EU to become a more effective actor at an international level." Wilfried Martens, a leading Member of the European Parliament, argued that "the EU must be united and able to speak with one voice on the world stage."
Leading Europeans were particularly frustrated that the continent has little geopolitical heft. French President Nicolas Sarkozy contended that "Europe cannot be a dwarf in terms of defense and a giant in economic."
Similarly, opined Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform:
On many of the world's big security problems, the EU is close to irrelevant. Talk to Russian, Chinese or Indian policy-makers about the EU, and they are often withering. They view it as a trade bloc that had pretensions to power but has failed to realize them because it is divided and badly organized.
True, but most Europeans are far less concerned than their leaders about the continent's global influence. Polls indicated that in at least half of the EU member states a majority would reject Lisbon if given the chance. Only by denying a vote to everyone other than the Irish—whose constitution required a referendum—was the Eurocratic elite able to force the treaty into effect.
A Blizzard of Global-Warming Hype
It had to happen. In the midst of the record snowfall in the East, some mainstream media outlet had to try to link this season's unusual weather events to global warming.
Time was the first news organization to take the plunge. It published such an article on February 10 — and that very day, Washington, D.C., broke its 1899 seasonal snow record of 54.5 inches with its third official blizzard of the winter. Today, the New York Times joined the party.
Like 2010, winter 1899 was characterized by multiple heavy snowstorms, especially in February. Sometimes the jet stream locks into a position where it is capable of creating such a string. As has been painfully obvious, this is one of those years.
Before 1942, D.C.'s official snow totals were taken downtown. The record since the measurement started being recorded at Reagan National Airport, set in 1996, has been eclipsed by ten inches this year.
The big January 1996 storm put down 17.1 inches at Reagan. The January 22, 1996, Newsweek cover featured a man disappearing in a whiteout with the headline "Blizzards, Floods, and Hurricanes: Blame Global Warming." The cover story, written by the voluble science populist Sharon Begley, claimed that global warming allows more moisture into the air so that snowstorms can become bigger. Her go-to scientist was NASA's James Hansen — who more recently became famous for calling coal drags to your local power plant "death trains" and advocating war-crime trials for the executives who daily force you to put gasoline in your car. (So clearly we should expect no hyperbole from that camp.)
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Sam Adams on a Sunday Afternoon
"We cannot make events. Our business is wisely to improve them."
Friday, February 12, 2010
Palin Exposes the Tea Partiers' True Colors
Why trading liberty for security is not consistent with a limited government philosophy.
The tea party movement started as a welcome protest against the alarming growth of federal spending and federal control. It had a strong anti-statist flavor, or seemed to. But judging from the applause for Sarah Palin at its convention, the movement's suspicion of government power is exceeded only by its worship of government power.
Her keynote address at last week's gathering in Nashville may have been the curtain raiser on a 2012 presidential campaign. "I think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country," she told Fox News when asked about that option.
I'm glad it was she and not I who first used the word "absurd" in relation to a possible Palin bid for the White House. Because if her speech made anything clear, it's that the shallow, ill-informed, truth-twisting demagogue seen in the 2008 presidential campaign is all she is and all she wants to be.
When it comes to economic affairs, the tea partiers agree that—as Palin put it—"the government that governs least, governs best." When it comes to war and national security, however, her audience apparently thinks there is no such thing as too much government.
The conventioneers applauded when Palin denounced Obama for his approach to the war on terrorists. Why? Because he lets himself be too confined by the annoying limits imposed by the Constitution. "To win that war, we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law," she declares.
Is her point that Obama is allergic to the use of military power or can't bear to fulfill his responsibility as head of the armed forces? That would come as a surprise to Iraqis, who have seen Obama stick to President Bush's timetable for withdrawal.
Hurtling Down the Road to Serfdom
Do we want a culture of takers or makers?
Hayek meant that governments can't plan economies without planning people's lives. After all, an economy is just individuals engaging in exchanges. The scientific-sounding language of President Obama's economic planning hides the fact that people must shelve their own plans in favor of government's single plan.
At the beginning of The Road to Serfdom, Hayek acknowledges that mere material wealth is not all that's at stake when the government controls our lives: "The most important change ... is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people."
The NRA Muscles into McDonald v. Chicago
“Gun nuts” battle “Constitution nuts” at the Supreme Court
Brian DohertyMcDonald v. Chicago, the Supreme Court case that will settle whether or not the Second Amendment applies to states and localities, is gearing up to radically challenge Court precedent when it comes to defending rights against state infringement.
Alan Gura, lawyer for the Chicago plaintiffs whose right to effectively defend their lives in their own homes has been abridged by the city's ban on handgun possession, previously won 2008's D.C. v. Heller, the case establishing that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess weapons against federal encroachment. Gura is responsible, then, for the rehabilitation and revival of one constitutional amendment already. In McDonald, rather than merely extending the Second’s reach, he is aiming to rehabilitate and revive the 14th Amendment as well.
However, the Supreme Court’s decision in late January to grant 10 of Gura’s 30 minutes of oral argument time to the National Rifle Association (NRA) seems likely to hurt chances that the Court will take the more dramatic route laid before them. The NRA isn't a plaintiff in McDonald (though they were parties in an earlier version heard by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which combined separate challenges to Chicago’s gun bans), and the organization's intent is to emphasize the more limited and traditional method of incorporating the Second Amendment against the states via the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Southern Europe's Fiscal Crisis
by Gary North
The euro is the focus of attention these days. This is because of a fiscal crisis in Greece, and looming crises in Portugal and Spain. Italy could follow.
What is the problem? Greece is running a huge deficit in the range of 12.7% of its Gross Domestic Product. The investment world regards a deficit of this magnitude as unsustainable. There are rumors of default.
Spain is running a deficit of 11.4% of its GDP. This is considered a threat to the nation's financial structure. There are rumors of default.
The United States government is expected to run a deficit of $1.6 trillion in an economy with about $14 trillion GDP. This means the deficit will be about 11.4% of GDP. Of course, this is seen by American economists as all right. After all, the United States is not Spain. Treasury Secretary Geithner assured the viewers on ABC News on Sunday, February 8, that there is no possibility that the rating on U.S. Treasury debt will ever fall below AAA. "That will never happen in this country." Unfortunately, he neglected to say whether it could happen in other countries, whose credit-rating agencies are not regulated by the United States government.
The euro is officially issued by the European Central Bank. This central bank acts on behalf of all 16 European nations that are part of the European Monetary Union. Non-members are Great Britain and Switzerland.
This system is now an aspect of the European Union, which has been in existence since December 1, 2009, when the Lisbon Treaty went into effect. Yet the legislatures of each of the member states of the EMU have independent fiscal policies. They do not control monetary policy, but they control taxes and spending.
Always before, monetary affairs have been conducted by central banks that represent central governments. The euro is an experiment in a central bank that officially operates on behalf of 16 nations.
FRIEDMAN ON THE EURO
In 2005, Milton Friedman commented on the problem facing the euro and Western Europe.
The euro is going to be a big source of problems, not a source of help. The euro has no precedent. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a monetary union, putting out a fiat currency, composed of independent states.There have been unions based on gold or silver, but not on fiat money – money tempted to inflate – put out by politically independent entities. (New Perspectives, Spring 2005).
His admission that there have been unions based on gold was significant. He did not pursue this, because he rejected the gold standard. He made his reputation as a monetary theorist for his opposition to a gold standard. He was a faithful disciple of the American theorist who was most adamantly opposed to the gold standard, Irving Fisher. Friedman's monetary theories were an extension of Fisher's.
What Has 'The Union' Ever Done for Colorado?
The main argument trotted out by defenders of giant, super-armed governments is that such states offer vital protection to the peoples they claim to protect. Thus, according to this argument, the gigantic war machine stationed in Washington D.C. (or, more accurately, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba, Japan, etc.) stands as an indispensable bulwark against imminent foreign invasion that keeps the individual people living under its umbrella safe from attack from, inter alia, the German Kaiser, the Japanese, the Germans again, the Soviets, the "terrorists," Iraq, Iran, etc.
Now, it may be excusable for the egotistical governing class in Washington D.C. to indulge themselves with this twaddle, but for Coloradoans there is no excuse. Indeed, it only takes a few minuets of historical reminiscence to realize that this is not only false with regard to the state of Colorado, but the very reverse of the truth. Instead of protecting Coloradoans from vague foreign threats, the federal government of the United States has, from the birth of Colorado to the present, actually made Coloradoans the targets of foreign aggression. In other words, while the federal government has been piously claiming to protect Coloradoans since the mid-19th century, it has actually done nothing but put them in grave danger.
The history of the federal government’s wonton endangerment of Coloradoans’ lives begins with the War Between the States. (Actually, if we are to be thorough, the federal government’s disregard for Coloradoans’ lives begins with the Mexican American War, when the U.S. government assumed responsibility for the "protection" of the people then living in Colorado from Mexico. In subsequent years, the "protection" afforded to the indigenous Coloradoans turned out to be virtually synonymous with "ethnic cleansing" and "extermination." But I digress). When Lincoln decided to invade and lay waste the South in order to "preserve the Union," Colorado was not yet a state. But, the population was steadily growing, thanks to the discovery of gold, and especially silver, in the Rocky Mountains in 1859.
Five Decades of Failure Are Enough
With trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, policymakers need to scour the federal budget for departments to cut and eliminate. They should start with ones that are not just wasteful, but actively damaging to the economy. Top of the list would be the $60 billion Department of Housing and Urban Development.
HUD's negative impact on the economy is far larger than its multibillion-dollar budget.
HUD's policies played a key role in causing the housing boom and bust and then the recession in its wake. Weak lending standards on HUD-insured mortgage loans helped fuel risky non-prime lending. HUD also put pressure on banks and the failed housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make risky loans to underqualified borrowers. Thanks to those policies, Fannie and Freddie went bankrupt and already have received $112 billion in taxpayer bailouts.
Steady increases in home-buying subsidies in recent decades were motivated by political attempts to curry favor with special interests such as the Realtor and homebuilder lobbies. Politicians justify the subsidies on their claimed civic virtues. But, as we've seen in the wake of the housing bubble's bursting, there's nothing virtuous about putting people into homes they can't afford. READ MORE @ CATO