The Objective Standard Blog

Archive for July 2006

Monday, July 31, 2006

Hezbollah Murders 56 Lebanese, Including 34 Children

Posted by Craig Biddle at 10:21 am

Destroyed balustrade in bombed Beirut houseWhen the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 200,000 people, those people were murdered by imperial Japan. Likewise, when Israel bombs a Hezbollah-infested village in Lebanon, killing 56 people, those people are murdered by Hezbollah. In circumstances such as these, there is a difference between the killer and the murderer. The murderer is the aggressor—the agent who initiates force and thus necessitates retaliatory force on the part of the victim. The victim, in retaliating, may kill people in the process, but all such deaths are the responsibility of the aggressor.

He who necessitates the use of retaliatory force is morally responsible for the consequences of that force. So says the law of causality.

Let’s keep our concepts in order—and the blame where it belongs.

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Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Destroyed_balustrade_in_bombed_Beirut_house_July_20_2006.jpg

Posted in: Foreign Policy and War, Philosophy

Friday, July 28, 2006

Oil Companies Should Not Apologize for Their Record Profits

Posted by TOS Admin at 8:56 am

Dear Editor:

American oil companies should be proud of the record profits they earn through honest and productive work.

Oil companies are in business to make as big a profit as they are able to—and they have an obligation to their shareholders to do exactly that. A company’s right to the pursuit of profit—like an individual’s right to the pursuit of happiness—is essential to America’s freedom, greatness and prosperity.

Just as there can never be an “excessive” or “obscene” amount of personal happiness, there can never be an “excessive” or “obscene”amount of profits.

David Holcberg

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

Posted in: Business and Economics, Individual Rights and Law

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Big Thanks to Big Pharma

Posted by TOS Admin at 9:39 pm

IRVINE, CA—In response to today’s announcement of a major advancement in Bird Flu vaccines, Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute said, “Individuals worldwide can feel safer—all thanks to GlaxoSmithKline, one of the hated pharmaceutical companies. Critics condemn companies like GSK for their profit-seeking—ignoring the fact that Big Pharma only makes profits by saving and improving our lives. We at the Ayn Rand Institute would like to give our heartfelt thanks to GlaxoSmithKline and the other heroes of the pharmaceutical industry.”

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

Posted in: Healthcare, Science and Technology

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Iran’s ‘Lucky Break’

Posted by Alan Germani at 1:57 pm

In “Hezbollah lets Iran buy time for nukes,” Arizona State University professor Orde Kittrie provides an overview of Iran’s nuclear program, recounting the regime’s goals and discussing the “lucky break” it got toward achieving those goals when Hezbollah recently attacked Israel from Lebanon.

The big winner thus far in the clash between Hezbollah and Israel is Iran. Through attacks by its proxy, Hezbollah, Iran is deftly succeeding in distracting the world from the rapidly progressing Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Iran’s success brings it one step closer to one of its ultimate goals. That goal is America’s destruction. As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has starkly put it: “God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States. . . . This goal is attainable, and surely can be achieved.”

Why does Iran want to destroy the United States?

Because the United States is the foremost purveyor of Western culture. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, wants to root out Western culture because it is contrary to Islam and in his view directs “everyone toward materialism while money, gluttony and carnal desires are made the greatest aspiration.” As Khamenei put it in an interview in May 2004: “The source of all human torment and suffering is the ‘liberal democracy’ promoted by the West.”

Kittrie goes on to provide a sobering summary of Iran’s recent nuclear achievements and spells out its connection to Hezbollah, suggesting that the recent Hezbollah offensive against Israel was coordinated to divert attention from the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Whether this last is true or not, the effect is the same: The world is now focusing on the “plight” of the terrorist-harboring Lebanese while ignoring the destruction and death that will befall the West if we allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.

We would not be in this dire situation were it not for the corrupt altruistic ideas that guide our foreign affairs (including “Just War Theory“). Only by embracing a rational, self-interested foreign policy—which would entail mercilessly crushing the Iranian regime—will Americans be able to live without the threat of a nuclear strike hanging over our heads.

Posted in: Foreign Policy and War

Monday, July 24, 2006

Disproportionate?

Posted by TOS Admin at 10:35 pm

Dear Editor:

World leaders are trying to halt Israel’s war of self-defense in Lebanon by denouncing it as “disproportional.”

But Israel has the right to defend itself and to take all the necessary actions to ensure that those who threaten its people are neutralized. Clearly, Israel is still under threat. Even after ten days of bombing Hezbollah’s positions in Lebanon, most of the group’s leadership, membership and supporting population are still at large.

If world leaders had a shred of decency, they would be supporting—not denouncing—Israel’s response to the terrorists that threaten it.

David Holcberg

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

Posted in: Foreign Policy and War

Monday, July 24, 2006

Lebanon’s Government Has No Legitimacy

Posted by TOS Admin at 10:33 pm

Dear Editor:

President Bush is urging Israel to preserve the fragile government of Lebanon, which was recently chosen in democratic elections supported by Bush himself. But Israel should do exactly the opposite.

Hezbollah, the Iran-sponsored Islamic terror group now under attack by Israel in Lebanon, is part of the Lebanese government. Twenty-three of Hezbollah’s members were elected to parliament, and two of its members were given cabinet positions.

A government that tolerates the operations of a terror group within its country, that does nothing to stop it from launching rockets on its neighbor’s cities, and that further allows its presence in the parliament and cabinet, has no legitimacy at all.

If the Lebanese are ever to have a legitimate government and lasting peace with Israel, they will have to show that they, like Israel, will not tolerate Hezbollah any longer.

David Holcberg

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

Posted in: Foreign Policy and War

Saturday, July 22, 2006

‘It’s About Authority’ by Erich Veyhl

Posted by TOS Admin at 7:59 pm

Craig Biddle’s recent TOS article “Religion vs. Free Speech” emphasizes how the religious duty of unconditional obedience to God’s will would make freedom of speech impossible, allowing people only to “speak the truth” as revealed by God. Having just finished reading Biddle’s article, I had to laugh when I came across an article now being promoted by the religious right, “The Tragedy of the Religious Left,” by Chuck Colson. Colson analyzes a recent conference organized by “religious progressives” to discuss “taking back religion from the conservative Christians.”

Both sides (unintentionally) underscore Biddle’s article and illustrate the anti-reason false alternative between religious intrinsicism on the right and the subjective collectivism of the “progressive” New Left as it attempts to repackage and cash in on its own religious dogma.

Religious rightist Colson quotes the New York Times as reporting, “Turnout at the Spiritual Activism Conference was high, but if the gathering is any indication, the biggest barrier for liberals may be their regard for pluralism: for letting people say what they want, how they want to, and for trying to include everyone’s priorities rather than choosing two or three issues that could inspire a movement.”

Colson, subtitling his article “Worshiping the Goddess of Tolerance,” said, “The Times hit it right on the nose,” and informs us, “You see, that’s the crux of the liberals’ problem. This conflict is not about political or social divisions. It’s about authority—specifically, whether or not Christians are willing to acknowledge that the Bible is our authority.” He disdainfully quoted a “religious progressive” conference participant: “I don’t want to play the game of ‘the Bible says this or that,’ or that we get validation from something other than ourselves.” Colson added, “the Bible has to be the ultimate authority. Otherwise we end up worshiping the goddess of tolerance and believing that tolerance takes precedence over truth.”

Meanwhile, while the “religious progressives” of the New Left may not like Biblical authority and claim to support free speech—except of course for the speech of their opponents under their central political strategy of campaign finance reform—they have retained their own agenda of authoritarian sacrifices and complain that the religious right hasn’t gone far enough. As usual, it’s a battle over whose interpretation of authority will be imposed.

The Washington Times reported that the conference’s “spiritual covenant” says, [Congress] should gear all its legislation, tax policies, budgets, and social programs towards being ‘loving and caring for others’ and ’supports a national health plan, suggests members of Congress ’spend part of one day a week feeding hungry people at a shelter or other … hands-on service activity,’ the public funding of all state and national elections and many other innovations.”

The Times reported that the conference “aims to equip liberals to operate in a political arena where religion has played a more prominent role since 2000, says Rabbi Michael Lerner, founder of the Jewish magazine Tikkun and a chief conference organizer… Part of the conference’s intent is to form ’spiritual caucuses’ inside all political parties by the 2008 elections. These caucuses would work to bring elements of the ‘covenant’ onto party platforms.”

The conference web site says “We will bring the Spiritual Covenant for America (based in part on the conversations that took place at the July 2005 conference and developed into a platform in Rabbi Lerner’s The Left Hand of God) to the attention of the U.S. Congress and the liberal and progressive forces headquartered in D.C.”

In other words, this is a political battle over which side can impose its sacrifices through appeals to religious dogma in the next election for political power. As Biddle quoted Ayn Rand from her article “Faith and Force”: “And that is the state to which [faith] reduces mankind—a state where, in case of disagreement, men have no recourse except to physical violence.”

Posted in: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Individual Rights and Law, Religion

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Bush’s Opposition to Embryonic Stem Cell Research Is Anti-Life

Posted by TOS Admin at 4:33 pm

Dear Editor:

President Bush’s veto of a bill to remove restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research is immoral. Being the first veto of Bush’s presidency, it shows once again his commitment to impose his religious agenda on all Americans.

Contrary to the claims of Bush and others who oppose embryonic stem cell research, embryos destroyed in the process of extracting stem cells are not human beings. These embryos are smaller than a grain of sand, and consist of, at most, a few hundred undifferentiated cells. They have no body or body parts. They do not see, hear, feel, or think. While these early embryos have the potential to become human beings—they are not actual human beings.

To restrict the freedom of scientists to use clusters of cells to do such research on the basis of religious dogma is to violate their rights—as well as the rights of all who would contribute to, invest in, or benefit from this research.

Embryonic stem cell research has the potential to revolutionize medicine and save millions of lives—and it should proceed unimpeded.

David Holcberg and Alex Epstein

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

Posted in: Individual Rights and Law, Religion, Science and Technology

Thursday, July 20, 2006

The U.S.-Israeli Suicide Pact by Elan Journo

Posted by TOS Admin at 8:57 am

The Iran-Hamas-Hezbollah axis is fully responsible for initiating the war on Israel, but the Islamists’ aggression is the logical product of U.S.-Israeli policy. The longstanding commitment of Israel and America to “diplomatic engagement” with Palestinians and Islamists—a euphemism for appeasement—is suicidal.

For decades America has urged Israel to placate and surrender to our common enemy. The U.S.-endorsed “Road Map to Peace,” like the “Peace Process” and sundry initiatives before it, rationalized Palestinian terrorism as the result of a legitimate grievance. If only the Palestinians’ wish for a civilized, peaceful state were fulfilled—Washington deluded itself into believing—terrorism would end. And fulfilling this wish requires not smashing their terrorist infrastructure, but showering them with land and loot.

But the majority of Palestinians actually seek the destruction of Israel, and the slaughter of its people. Because they embrace this vicious goal, hordes of Palestinians idolized arch terrorist Yasser Arafat for waging a terrorist war to wipe out Israel and establish a nationalist dictatorship. They abetted Arafat’s terrorism and celebrated his atrocities. They served as cheerleaders or recruits for terrorist groups—and when they had the chance, they embraced the even more militant religious zealots of Hamas. It is no surprise that, according to a recent poll, 77 percent of Palestinians support their government’s kidnapping of an Israeli soldier and that 60 percent support the continued rocket fire from Gaza into Israel.

But even as Palestinians mounted more attacks, Washington pressed Israel for more concessions—and bolstered the terrorist-sponsoring Palestinian Authority with millions of dollars in aid. The U.S. forbade Israel from laying a finger on Arafat, and extended this tender solicitude to Hamas leaders. Washington actually whitewashed the blood-stained Arafat and his crony Abbas as peace-loving statesmen and invited them to the White House. And when Hezbollah now fires rockets at major cities in northern Israel, President Bush demands that Israel show “restraint.”

Depressingly, Israel has continually relented to American pressure to appease our common enemy. It has prostrated itself before the Palestinians, with flamboyantly self-sacrificial offers of land-for-peace; it has withdrawn from southern Lebanon, ceding ground necessary to its self-defense; it has withdrawn from Gaza, leaving its southern cities at the mercy of rocket fire from the Hamas-run territory.

Such U.S.-endorsed appeasement by Israel, across decades, has enabled Hezbollah and Hamas to mount their current attacks. Yet America remains undeterred in its commitment to appeasement.

The U.S. is now trying to woo Iran with endless offers of economic “incentives,” if only Iran promises to stop chasing nuclear weapons. Evading Iran’s lust to “wipe Israel off the map,” evading its funding of Hezbollah and Hamas, evading its avowed enmity to America, evading its decades of fomenting and orchestrating a proxy terror war against American civilians—evading all of this, Washington deludes itself into believing that paying Iran off will, somehow, wipe out its hostility.

Inevitably, this encourages Iran to continue its aggressive support for terrorists and its fervent quest for nuclear weapons. Merely by prolonging the negotiations endlessly, Iran gains time to acquire a weapon to wield against its neighbors, to provide to Hamas and Hezbollah or to other proxies to use against the United States. And were Iran eventually to accept some deal, American aid would merely be sustaining Iran’s regime—and, inexorably, a covert nuclear program.

We are teaching the Islamic totalitarians in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran that their goal of destroying us is legitimate; that aggression is practical; that the more aggressive they are, the more we will surrender. U.S.-Israeli policy has demonstrated that we lack the intellectual self-confidence to name, let alone condemn, our enemies—and that we lack the will to deal with threats mercilessly. It vindicates the Islamists’ premise that their religious worldview can bring a scientific, technologically advanced West to its knees.

To protect the lives of our citizens, America and Israel must stop evading the nature of the enemy’s cause: our complete destruction. We must stop appeasing our common enemy—and embrace self-defense as a matter of intransigent principle. To put an end to the current rocket attacks from Lebanon and Gaza, America should urge Israel to annihilate the annihilators: Hamas and Hezbollah. And to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambition, America must use as much military force as is necessary to dispose of that catastrophic threat and the regime responsible for it.

Elan Journo is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

Posted in: Foreign Policy and War

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

There is No Need for an Endless Global Conflict

Posted by TOS Admin at 5:17 pm

Dear Editor:

Islamic totalitarians have explicitly stated their goal: to forcibly impose Islamic law around the world. To succeed, they will continue to attack those parts of the world that oppose their “divine mission.” The United States, Israel, Canada, England, India, and any other country that places the least bit of value on freedom and progress, will continue to be targets.

The freer nations need to recognize the real nature of this enemy: an ideology that demands complete submission to Allah, either voluntarily or at the point of a knife. Do you wait for the knife to slit your throat or do you fight back and defend yourself?

The combined military strength of the freer countries is more than enough to eliminate decisively and definitively the assorted collection of murderous terrorists and the governments that support them financially or ideologically. There is no need for an endless global conflict. What there is a need for is a recognition that those of us living in freer countries have the right to take any necessary actions to defend ourselves—and that our lives are at stake.

Debi Ghate
Vice President, Academic Programs

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

Posted in: Foreign Policy and War