The Objective Standard Blog

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Have a Selfish Randsday!

Posted by Craig Biddle at 4:19 am

American philosopher Ayn Rand was born on February 2, 1905, and her long-time associate Harry Binswanger has designated her birthday a new holiday: “Randsday.” I love this idea.

Rand, author of The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, and several other revolutionary books, was, from the standard of the value of man’s life, the most important philosopher of the 20^th century.

Rand advocated what she called rational egoism: the idea that one should always act in a rationally self-interested manner, always pursue one’s life-serving values by means of one’s best judgment, always consider the long-range consequences of one’s actions, and never commit a sacrifice (“the surrender a greater value for the sake of a lesser one”). To enact this principle, she held, is to be moral; hence the virtue of selfishness.

Rand saw this idea both as the key to personal happiness and as the moral foundation of a free society. And she was right. If you want to live your life fully and achieve the greatest happiness possible, you must act in a rationally self-interested manner as a matter of unwavering principle. You must choose life-serving goals, activities, and relationships, and you must pursue them rationally and ambitiously throughout your days and years. To do otherwise is to live less fully, less happily than you are able to live.

Likewise, if you want to live in a society where you are free to act consistently as you see fit, you must advocate a social system in which individual rights are fully recognized and protected. You must uphold the inalienable right of each individual to act on his own judgment for his own sake—whether in regard to his career, business, recreation, romance, or any other value—so long as he does not violate the same rights of others. The proper purpose of a government, Rand emphasized, is to protect rights and thus enable individuals to live their lives in accordance with their judgment.

This is the essence of Rand’s philosophy: Go by reason, pursue your life-serving values, respect the rights of others to do the same, and advocate a social system that makes all of this possible. And this is why Randsday is a worthy holiday. It celebrates the birthday of the philosopher who codified the virtue of selfishness and made the moral argument for a rights-respecting society.

How to celebrate Randsday? As Binswanger puts it: “You do something not done on any other holiday: you give yourself a present.” The idea is to treat yourself to something that you really want and will greatly enjoy but that you ordinarily would not buy for yourself now: that MacBook Pro or that beautiful dress you’ve been eying, that snowboard you know will improve your turns, reservations at that picturesque hotel in the Caymans, tickets to that Broadway show, a Lexus, a puppy—whatever you’ll love and can non-sacrificially afford. Buy it for Randsday and enjoy it.

What will it be?

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Related

Posted in: Ayn Rand and Objectivism

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Interview with Alex Epstein, Founder of Center for Industrial Progress

Posted by Joshua Lipana at 12:41 pm

Alex_Epstein Alex Epstein is the founder and director of the Center for Industrial Progress and a principal at Master Resource, a free market energy blog. I recently had the privilege of speaking with him about his work, industrial progress, his “occupation” of “Occupy Wall Street,” and his plans for the future. —JL

Joshua Lipana: What is your background, and why did you start the Center for Industrial Progress?

Alex Epstein: I’ve always been interested in science in the broadest sense of the word: gaining a systematic, logical understanding of the world. As a kid, math and science were my favorite subjects, and I developed the conviction that all problems are solvable with scientific thinking. In high school, I was exposed to more and more controversy about political issues, and I decided that I would learn what the logical position on these was. When people told me that these issues were all subjective, I rejected that because I thought that all problems had an objective solution. So I started looking for thinkers in the humanities who focused on facts and logic—Thomas Sowell was a particular favorite of mine. As I read various books on politics, economics, and philosophy, my interest in the physical sciences gave way to a much stronger interest in the humanities, or, as I prefer to call it, the science of human action.

While I have been influenced by many thinkers, nothing compared to what I learned from reading Ayn Rand. I was completely blown away by Atlas Shrugged, which was the first work of hers that I read. I felt like she looked at the world with x-ray vision, and could understand the fundamental causes of problems—and solutions—when everyone else could just see symptoms. I’ve been studying her works intensely since I was 18, and the more I read the more I realize how profound and precise her insights are.

In college I studied a combination of philosophy and computer science. After coming out of college I knew I wanted two things; I wanted to be an intellectual for a living, but I did not want to go to grad school or work at a University. So I became a freelance writer right out of college and after a little over two years I accepted an offer from the Ayn Rand Institute to write full-time, applying philosophy to business issues. That was a great opportunity for me, since I got to do the kind of work I was interested with lots of intellectual support.

Somewhere about mid-way through my work at the Institute I got obsessed with the issue of energy. I studied the history of energy, particularly of oil, and I was struck by a) how much the entire economy depends on energy and b) how much energy production and policy depends on the right philosophy, particularly the right philosophy of industry and environment.

So much of what’s gone wrong in energy in the last 40 years is due to the idea that it’s somehow wrong or tainted for man to transform nature on a large scale. And so much of what has gone right in American industrial history is that this country used to have a philosophy that embraced the transformation of nature through energy and industry—that is, embraced industrial progress. The more I read and talked to experts in the field, the more I saw an opportunity to use my knowledge of philosophy, and in particular Ayn Rand’s philosophy, to change the way people think about energy, industry, and environment.

It was heartening and a little surprising to me how open people in energy policy have been to the idea of examining the philosophical issues in the field—or, as Dr. Robert Bradley calls it, “the debate behind the debate.” Another thing I’ve been heartened by is that people respond very positively to my enthusiasm for energy, which is definitely an outgrowth of my philosophy. I feel more excited about new developments in energy—say, the shale gas revolution—than I do about the latest iPhone. And I really love my iPhone.

The energy industry is producing the most amazing products and it should never be on the defensive about what it is doing. Producing oil, producing coal, producing gas, these are fundamentally things that have doubled the human life expectancy and we should be over the moon about what they have done for our lives.

The more I engaged with intellectuals in energy policy, and the more I engaged with the public on energy issues, the more I became convinced that this was an issue that would benefit from a dedicated, laser-focused think-tank. So I decided to start one. My number one conviction with the think-tank was that its essential focus had to be positive—it needed to offer a positive ideal that people can embrace in place of environmentalism. Thus, the Center for Industrial Progress was born.

My second conviction about CIP was that it should, as much as possible, mirror the practices of a competitive business. As a result, a major priority of mine has been researching best practices for making an impact. I spend a lot of time talking to CEOs, think-tank leaders, media leaders, etc about what works and what doesn’t. And as the Director of CIP, I try to measure the impact of everything we do, so we can get the best results possible.

JL: What are some of the highlights in industrial progress over the last 200 years?

AE: First of all, let’s be clear on what industrial progress is. Industrial progress is the progressive transformation of nature through energy, industry, and technology. It encompasses drilling for oil or creating an iPod. Its most prominent impact is to reshape the world around us to something that’s completely unrecognizable from what it used to be.

Unfortunately, our educational system teaches people that “the environment” is this separate, intrinsically valuable thing that human beings ruin through industry. We’re taught that minimizing environmental impact is the ideal. In fact, the environment we should be concerned about is the human environment, and we should think in terms of how we can maximize our positive impact on the human environment. By default, nature is an extremely hostile place to live, which is why average human life expectancy throughout history is thirty.

In terms of key developments, there are many, but the overall one is just how amazing energy and industry has made our lives. Once you understand that, you can appreciate certain key developments. In energy production, there is the coal-powered steam engine and what that did to human life, and the oil-powered internal combustion engine and what that did to human life, and then the ability to turn energy into electricity, and what that did to human life. All of these made possible the agricultural revolution, the rise of the automobile, the rise of the computer—all revolutions that required massive amounts of cheap, plentiful, and reliable energy.

JL: What are the primary obstacles to industrial progress?

AE: There are two key obstacles to industrial progress: one is a lack of a positive and the other is a negative, in large part made possible by the lack of the positive.

The lack of a positive is the lack of a clearly fleshed-out pro-industrial philosophy that embraces the progressive transformation of nature through energy and technology. Such a philosophy, among other things, would define the proper political policies under which that transformation should take place—namely policies based on individual rights—and it would morally embrace industrialization.

Without the right industrial philosophy, people don’t value industrial progress sufficiently, and don’t know what policies will nourish that value.

Being clear on the positive is indispensable. For instance in oil, you can see throughout history that it is really important that property rights should be based on the principle that the creator of the value in the resource should own it. In a course I gave in 2008, the Triumph and Tragedy of the Oil Industry, I explained how the wrong philosophy of rights has undercut the oil industry from the beginning.

In electricity, you need the right view of competition, otherwise you end up with today’s government monopolized grid.

Unless we have a clear idea of what policy should be, positively, and why, the positive isn’t going to happen, and when the wrong view has a lot of advocates with very clear policy ideas, they’re going to take over. And that’s what happened to the anti-industrial movement, which at various stages has been called the conservation movement and the environmentalist movement. There’s a lot of good literature from Ayn Rand, ARI, and TOS about this movement so I won’t elaborate too much here, but basically making policy based on the idea that untouched nature is intrinsically valuable and that nature should be protected from man leads to the very common phenomenon, which I wrote about in the Industrial Manifesto: Every company who wants to do anything industrial—anything involving any transformation of nature—is met with an endless labyrinth of obstacles.

Again, a huge part of the solution is offering a positive alternative, including in policy, which is why a big focus of ours at CIP will be to roll out energy policy prescriptions.

JL: You recently debated Ryan Rittenhouse of Greenpeace. Where can people see the video of that? And how would you evaluate the debate?

AE: The debate is in post-production and going to be released soon, and I’d rather let people draw their own conclusions about it. I’ll only say that I think the debate shows a clear contrast between the two views. I think Ryan does a good job of representing the serious environmentalist view and I do my best to represent my own view. I hope it comes off very clearly that there is a real choice to be made in terms of what approach we should embrace so I encourage people to watch the debate. There’s a version on the Internet now of the debate but it’s not complete, and the version that’s about to come out is a lot better in quality.

JL: You also recently, as you put it, “Occupied the Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators with your colleague Dr. Eric Dennis, and spoke with some environmentalists there [see video here]. What was the takeaway from this event?

AE: I encourage people to watch it. There is a lot to say about Occupy Wall Street. I think, in general, the whole premise of defining a movement as being against the most successful people in society is incredibly corrupt. It’s not that everyone in “the 1%” is deserving—we don’t have a fully free market by a long shot, we have a mixed-economy and there are plenty of undeserving people in the 1%. But the way you deal with that is by going against the people in Washington making the country a mixed economy. Go after the people who gave bailouts, don’t go against the whole of Wall Street, when most of these people did not even receive bailouts.

It was revealing when Eric, a Wall Street executive himself, talked to a guy who said the 1% don’t produce anything. Eric brought up the most obvious example of why that is not true, which is Steve Jobs, the guy didn’t hesitate to say “to hell with Steve Jobs,” “Steve Jobs didn’t produce anything”—and this was probably the most intellectual guy we met that day. That really captures the essence of what it means to attack the 1% for being the 1%.

And in the realm of energy, the same way they attack the successful as such in the broader economy, they attack anything that’s prominent in this field. They attack fracking—an amazing technology—and they have no idea what fracking is, yet they hate fracking. They heard some story about why it’s bad, and that’s enough for them to advocate a ban.

The alternatives they give for the current sources of energy are usually non-existent; one girl talked about a perpetual battery that Duracell had a patent on. The common thing is they attack an actual value in favor of some non-existent utopia, and in reality their non-existent utopia would just be carnage. They have no idea how a solar panel even works, but they have no hesitation with saying we should destroy coal plants, natural gas, oil, nuclear, for whatever made up utopia they favor. They think “someone will figure it out, I mean someone figured it out so far” which shows their education. This goes back to the whole transformation of nature issue—they don’t regard that as an achievement that had certain preconditions, and that has certain requirements to maintain and improve. It’s a given that we have iPhones and plenty of food whenever we need it, the only issue is attacking “bad things” and getting rid of them, not realizing that the “bad things” they attack are the core foundation of what they’re taking for granted.

JL: Not everybody embraces environmentalism as religiously as those OWS protesters. How do you convince the less committed environmentalists to question their beliefs and check their premises?

AE: The mission of the Center for Industrial Progress is to promote industrial progress as a new ideal for our culture, and the reason I put it that way is because I want it to be a fundamentally positive thing, advocating the positive value of industrialization and certain positive policies that America needs to adopt, rather than just being against environmentalism. Obviously I’m against environmentalism, but I try to emphasize that this is because it stops the good things from happening. That’s how I position myself and the organization and that’s how I try to deal with it with people. I show them that the fuels environmentalists oppose are crucial, and yet they want to ban them. And if you look at the full context, it’s not because of economics, it’s not because of science, what is it? You have some basic discomfort with man transforming nature, well that’s an issue you really need to think about and I’ll argue you need to change your position on. So people will see their premises and why it matters and why it needs to be changed as they come up in practical issues.

JL: What are your future plans for CIP, and how can people support your efforts?

AE: As I mentioned, CIP has a very clear goal of getting Americans to embrace industrial progress as a cultural ideal, and we’re committed to finding and implementing the best way to do that through all of our works.

Our business model for doing this is a hybrid of customer-driven and donor-driven.

I’ll start with customer-driven. It’s very important for us to find ways monetize our activities whenever possible. For instance, there is a significant market for public speaking out there, and there’s no reason why really good speeches on industrial progress—properly positioned—can’t succeed in that market, and if we can’t succeed in that market that means we’re doing something wrong and we need to learn and get better.

In case it doesn’t go without saying, CIP will only accept money to promote its own ideas—to accept money to promote someone else’s agenda would defeat our whole reason for existing.

The second aspect of our business model is donor-driven. Our ultimate goal with the organization is to maximize impact. And there are many high-impact things we can do that don’t get a financial return but do get a cultural return.

For example, we are starting up a program to train people, especially young people and people with industry experience, to become effective advocates of industrial progress. I’ve been finding a lot of talent over the last few months, and I think there will be a huge payoff in training them and having them do original articles for our blog, “Industrial Progress Report.” But doing it right takes a lot of my time, and my partner Dr. Eric Dennis’s time, and the time of other teachers we’ll bring in, and that’s where donors are invaluable.

Another example of this is that I blog about energy and philosophy at MasterResource, the leading free-market energy blog. The head of MasterResource, Dr. Robert Bradley (CEO of the Institute for Energy Research) appointed me as one of the few Principal bloggers there, which is a great opportunity to impact the energy debate—if I can devote sufficient time to it. Again, donors are invaluable here.

In all our activities, customer-driven or donor-driven, the unifying thing is making a high impact, so we continually measure and optimize for results. That’s the bottom line and I think that mentality is going to make a lot of exciting things possible going forward.

For more information on contributing to CIP, financially or otherwise, go to www.industrialprogress.net and click on “Donate.” And if anyone has any specific questions about CIP, feel free to email me at alex@alexepstein.com.

JL: Thank you very much for your time, Alex.

AE: My pleasure.

Related:

Image of New York City: Wikipedia Commons

Posted in: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Business and Economics, Education, Environmentalism, History, Individual Rights and Law, Philosophy, Science and Technology

Sunday, October 23, 2011

When Ayn Rand Meets Patrick Henry

Posted by Craig Biddle at 5:49 am

Patrick_Henry_and_Ayn_Rand From tea partyers to conservatives to “liberals” to flea partyers—everyone has an opinion about what people and governments have a right to.

“People have a right to keep what they earn”—“The government has a right to spread the wealth around”—“Women have a right to abortion”—“No they don’t”—“People have a right to an education, a job, a home, and health care”—“The government has a right to regulate corporate greed”—“The government has no right to interfere in the economy”—“The 99 percent has a right to the wealth of the 1 percent”—and so on. In some form or another, we hear such opinions daily.

But are anyone’s opinions on such matters more than mere opinions? Can anyone name the source and nature of rights and prove that his views are true?

Some say that rights are gifts from God. Others rightly reply: Prove it. Some claim that rights are grants from government. Others note that this contradicts the very idea of rights. Some claim that rights are matters of “natural law.” Others aptly ask: How so? What natural law? Natural law emanating from God? Wouldn’t that be “supernatural law”?

Although everyone has an opinion about rights, almost no one can prove that his opinion is correct. For advocates of liberty, this is a big problem. If we can’t identify the objective source and nature of rights, we can’t defend freedom; we can’t reverse the statist trend that is destroying our world; we will lose our liberty.

Fortunately, Ayn Rand discovered the objective source and nature of rights, and anyone who wants to understand these vital truths can—in the course of about half an hour.

In my article Ayn Rand’s Theory of Rights: The Moral Foundation of a Free Society, I examine the traditional theories of rights—God-given, government-granted, and “natural” rights—and show why none of these theories holds water. I then present Rand’s theory, showing step by step how it is derived from perceptual reality, why it is demonstrably true, and how it grounds the propriety of freedom in observable fact.

Rand’s ideas are radical. They go to philosophical roots and challenge the Judeo-Christian worldview to its core. But true advocates of liberty are not averse to radical ideas. True advocates of liberty know that America was founded on radical ideas. True advocates of liberty are willing to examine arguments in support of freedom and to embrace even the most radical ideas when such ideas are grounded in evidence and logic.

From Sarbanes-Oxley to Obamacare to Dodd-Frank to TSA molestations to countless coercive “stimulus” plans, we are losing our liberty. What will our political situation be in five, ten, fifteen years? Will we be free, semi-free, mostly controlled, or essentially enslaved?

It depends on what we are willing to do today.

Are we willing to consider radical ideas and evidence in support of them—even if they challenge the status quo? Are we willing to share with others the truths we discover—even if doing so makes us look radical? Or are we afraid of evidence that might contradict traditional views, afraid that knowing too much unpopular truth might entail too much mental and social fatigue.

“For my part,” said Patrick Henry, “whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth.” When enough people approach Rand’s ideas with Henry’s courage, liberty will live again.

Related:

Image of Patrick Henry: Wikipedia Commons

Image of Ayn Rand: Wikipedia Commons

Posted in: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Business and Economics, Education, Individual Rights and Law, Philosophy, Religion

Friday, September 30, 2011

Ayn Rand’s Theory of Rights at Students for Liberty Conference

Posted by TOS Admin at 1:41 pm

What: A lecture by Craig Biddle, editor of The Objective Standard and author of Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It

Where: Students for Liberty Dallas Regional Conference, University of North Texas

When: Saturday, November 12, 2011

Admission: FREE and open to the public (but space is limited, so register early)

Description: What are rights? Where do they come from? How do we know it? And what does this imply? Ayn Rand’s answers to these questions form the indispensible foundation of a fully free, fully civilized society. In this talk, Craig Biddle elucidates Rand’s theory of rights, examining its essential principles, showing why it is true, and differentiating it from traditional theories, including “God-given” rights, “government-granted” rights, and “natural” rights. Attendees will expand or fortify their understanding of the source, nature, and meaning of rights, thus enhancing their ability to engage in intellectual activism toward pure, laissez-faire capitalism.

Posted in: Announcements, Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Education, Events, Individual Rights and Law

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

The Fall Issue of TOS

Posted by TOS Admin at 6:52 pm

The print edition of the Fall issue is at press and will be mailed shortly; the online, e-book, and audio versions will be accessible to subscribers beginning September 20, 25, and 30 respectively. We’ve made John David Lewis’s article “9/11 Ten Years Later: The Fruits of the Philosophy of Self-Abnegation” available early and for free.

The contents of the Fall issue are:

ARTICLES

9/11 Ten Years Later: The Fruits of the Philosophy of Self-Abnegation
by John David Lewis

Ayn Rand’s Theory of Rights: The Moral Foundation of a Free Society
by Craig Biddle

A Critique of Representative Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity”
by Joshua Lipana

An Interview with John R. Bolton on the Proper Role of Government

An Interview with Governor Gary Johnson on What he Would Do as President

The Mastermind behind SEAL Team Six and the End of Osama Bin Laden
by Daniel Wahl

An Interview with Sculptor Sandra J. Shaw

FILM REVIEWS

Captain America: The First Avenger, directed by Joe Johnston
Reviewed by C. A. Wolski

Lifting King Kong, directed by Park Geon-yong
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

BOOK REVIEWS

A Time to Betray: The Astonishing Double Life of a CIA Agent Inside the Revolutionary Guards of Iran by Reza Kahlili
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

Nomad by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Reviewed by Joseph Kellard

The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe by Peter Godwin
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce by Deirdre N. McCloskey
Reviewed by Richard M. Salsman

Gauntlet: Five Friends, 20,000 Enemy Troops, and the Secret That Could Have Changed the Course of the Cold War by Barbara Masin
Reviewed by John Cerasuolo

Crashing Through: The Extraordinary True Story of the Man Who Dared to See by Robert Kurson
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First by Jonah Keri
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business: A Memoir by Dick Van Dyke
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

DEPARTMENTS

From the Editor

Letters and Replies

If you’ve not yet subscribed to TOS, you can do so online or by calling 800-423-6151. The journal also makes a great gift for active-minded friends and relatives. Subscriptions start at just $29 and are available in print, online, e-book, and audio editions.

Please forward this post to anyone who might appreciate the journal or Dr. Lewis’s article.

Posted in: Announcements, Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Business and Economics, Foreign Policy and War, History, Individual Rights and Law, Philosophy, Presidential Candidates, The Arts

Saturday, August 27, 2011

The Undercurrent: Spreading Ayn Rand’s Ideas on College Campuses

Posted by TOS Admin at 1:55 pm

Dear Potential Supporter,

In his lecture at this summer’s Objectivist conference, Yaron Brook, President of the Ayn Rand Institute, reflected on the first 50 years of the Objectivist movement. During that session, Dr. Brook stated that if we are to succeed in changing the culture, “we need more than an Institute: we need a movement.”

We at The Undercurrent wholeheartedly agree, and we think a key part of the Objectivist movement needs to be a student movement. For the upcoming academic year, we’re planning a number of programs designed to spark an Objectivist student movement on college campuses. To make these programs possible, we’re asking for your support.

Foremost among our 2011-2012 programs is an event called “Capitalism Awareness Week.” This week-long event will consist of a series of lectures and discussions at different college campuses across the country. Each lecture will be broadcast live via the Internet so students elsewhere may participate.

This event follows in the footsteps of last Spring’s virtual campus lecture, “Ideas Matter: Ayn Rand’s Message to Today’s World”, which was broadcast to 20 other campuses live and attained a student audience of just over 600. (If you haven’t seen it, that lecture is available to view here: http://bit.ly/aynrandideas.)

For this and other programs, we’re seeking to raise $40,000 for the upcoming academic year. I hope you can help us as we fight to change the culture.

For more information on our plans for the year, I invite you to browse through our donor package. And if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Best Regards,

Jared Seehafer
Publisher
The Undercurrent
jared@the-undercurrent.com

To make a one-time donation:

To make a recurring donation, visit our donation page and follow the instructions for “Recurring Monthly Payments”.

Posted in: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Education

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Ayn Rand’s Theory of Rights: The Moral Foundation of a Free Society

Posted by TOS Admin at 1:15 am

What: A lecture by Craig Biddle, editor of The Objective Standard and author of Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It

Where: Medford Oregon, at the Rogue Valley Country Club, 2660 Hillcrest Rd.

When: September 3, cocktails & hors d’oeuvres 5:00-7:00pm, lecture with Q&A 7:00-9:00pm

Admission: $35

Description: What are rights? Where do they come from? How do we know it? And what does this imply? Ayn Rand’s answers to these questions form the indispensible foundation of a fully free, fully civilized society. In this talk, Craig Biddle elucidates Rand’s theory of rights, examining its essential principles, showing why it is true, and differentiating it from traditional theories, including “man-made” rights, “God-given” rights, and “natural” rights. Attendees will expand or fortify their understanding of the source, nature, and meaning of rights, thus enhancing their ability to engage in intellectual activism toward pure, laissez-faire capitalism.

Register online

Posted in: Announcements, Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Events, Individual Rights and Law

Monday, May 9, 2011

TOS’s Week in Review for May 9, 2011

Posted by Craig Biddle at 7:57 pm

Noteworthy news and opinion items from the week ending May 8, 2011

Note: Due to a scheduling conflict, the publication day of WiR has been changed from Sunday to Monday.

One Islamist Fed to Sharks, a Few Islamist Regimes to Go
The Keystone-Cops Administration
Navy SEALs: Gods among Men
The Virtue of Torturing Islamic Terrorists—and the Evil of Punishing Those Who Do
Schools Find Ayn Rand Can’t Be Shrugged as Donors Build Courses

1. One Islamist Fed to Sharks, a Few Islamist Regimes to Go

Last week, SEAL Team Six shot Osama Bin Laden and fed him to sharks. (The obscene Muslim burial ceremony aside, this is what happened. I’ll take it.) This beautiful mission was expertly executed by some of the most able and admirable men on the planet (see item 3 below), and Americans deserve to celebrate.

But we must also realize that killing Bin Laden is merely a fraction of what needs to be done—and done right. Other major requirements include, as Gerald F. Seib points out in the Wall Street Journal, “getting Pakistan right, getting the Arab spring right and containing Iran.” (We need to do more than “contain” Iran; we need to end the regime or encourage Iranians to do so [see below]. But at least Seib has Iran on the list.)

The Regime in Pakistan
If it wasn’t clear before, it certainly is clear now: The regime in Pakistan—to whom the United States gives $3 billion annually—is a full-fledged enemy of the United States. As many writers, pundits, and even politicians have pointed out this week, it is inconceivable that Pakistani authorities didn’t know that Bin Laden was hiding out in Abbottabad for five years in a heavily fortified luxury compound with 15-foot barb-wire-topped walls and no phone or internet service a few blocks from a major military academy.

The United States morally must declare Pakistan an enemy state and proceed to deal with it accordingly. Of course, this administration won’t do so, but Americans can and should demand such a policy from candidates seeking the White House in 2012.

What is feasible now—even under this administration—is the cessation of financial aid to Pakistan, and Americans should demand that we stop all funding immediately. To contact your Representatives, click here.

The Arab Spring
The most important state involved in the Arab Spring is Syria, whose Assad regime is a key ally of Iran and a major enemy of both Israel and America. This week, Assad’s regime arrested hundreds of anti-regime protesters—on top of the more than 600 it has murdered and some 8,000 it has arrested (or “disappeared”) in the seven weeks since the protests began.

ABC News reports:

Syrian security forces have reportedly stormed a Damascus suburb, arresting more than 300 people suspected of involvement in the recent pro-democracy protests.

Witnesses say security service agents backed by soldiers began sweeping through the Damascus suburb of Saqba before dawn with a long list of names of people they planned to arrest.

Those arrested were reportedly rounded up, boarded onto buses and driven away. . . .

But despite the government’s intensifying crackdown, protesters are vowing to stage more mass protests today against president Bashar al Assad, even at risk of being shot. . . .

The protesters are refusing to be intimidated by the army’s use of force to keep them off the streets. . . .

Read the whole article here.

How has the Obama administration reacted to the murderous efforts of this evil regime to remain in power? Secretary of state Hillary Clinton issued the following statement: “The United States has announced targeted sanctions against key individuals and entities that have engaged in grave abuses in Syria. . . . we have to show the Syrian government that there are consequences for this brutal crackdown that has been imposed on the Syrian people.” Clinton did not mention the evil of dictatorships, the morality of freedom, Syria’s threat to Israel and America, Syria’s alliance with Iran, or the righteousness of those who strive to overthrow tyrants and replace them with rights-respecting governments. Apparently such identifications are too much to expect today from the State Department in the country founded by the likes of Jefferson, Madison, and Adams.

Nevertheless, we need to get Syria right—and this requires morally supporting whatever anti-regime and pro-freedom activists exist there. If the Obama administration won’t do it, Americans had better make clear that any candidates who want our support in 2012 must promise to do it.

The Regime in Iran
Fortunately, America’s number one enemy, the regime in Iran, continues to experience major internal conflicts—which now include allegations of sorcery! As the BBC reports, the conflict between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is heating up and creating greater instability by the day.

Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has enjoyed taking on and defying the West. But he is now playing potentially a much more risky game.

Mr Ahmadinejad finds himself up against his own country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The two men are currently engaged in an unusually public stand-off.

Their argument began on 17 April, when Mr Ahmadinejad decided to fire his Intelligence Minister, Heydar Moslehi. A simple decision, say the president’s supporters, since the constitution gives him the right to dismiss ministers.

But, several hours later Ayatollah Khamenei decided to overrule the president and ordered the reinstatement of Mr Moslehi.

The Supreme Leader’s supporters quote Article 110 of the constitution, which says that the leader is responsible for the “supervision over the proper execution of the general policies”.

But Mr Ahmadinejad did not like being overruled. Reports say that he decided to stay away from government meetings for 11 days. . . .

Mr Ahmadinejad did agree to start attending cabinet meetings again. But the status of the fired or reinstated minister, Heydar Moslehi, is not immediately clear.

Reports from Tehran say that Ayatollah Khamenei has now told Mr Ahmadinejad either to accept the reinstatement of his intelligence minister or step down as president.

The argument between the two men is about much more than the status of a single cabinet minister. Essentially, it is a fight for the control of the future direction of the Islamic Republic. . . .

Read the BBC piece here. For a discussion of the charges of sorcery, see this article in the Guardian.

This conflict is a beautiful thing, as any disarray within the regime drains time, energy, and resources that it could otherwise use to suppress those Iranians working to replace the regime with a (semi-) rights-respecting government. This would be an excellent time for the Obama administration to offer these rebels a few words of moral support. That, of course, is not going to happen. But, once again, Americans can and should demand that anyone seeking the presidency in 2012 embrace a foreign policy that includes explicit moral support for pro-freedom movements—especially the one in Iran.

2. The Keystone-Cops Administration

Although the Navy SEALs pulled off their mission with great precision and competence, the Obama administration proceeded to make a perfect ass of itself following the assassination of Bin Laden. As Jim Treacher writes, the administration’s antics resembled a victory lap in clown car. Excerpt:

First Bin Laden had a gun; then he didn’t. He hid behind one of his wives, who was killed; wait, no, scratch that, she’s alive and wasn’t his wife. Maybe? Now Leon Panetta says he and President Obama didn’t actually see the whole thing go down, after the White House made a point of releasing that instantly iconic picture of the whole gang watching it go down. . . .

If you’re not exactly sure what happened, why give details you might have to retract? How in the world do you screw up a win this big? . . .

And now the Obama administration is showing decisive leadership on the issue of dithering. “Gee, should we show the pictures of Bin Laden with his Navy SEAL makeover? Won’t that make people mad?” The Abu Ghraib pics were in the public interest; visual evidence of the death of the mastermind of 9/11 isn’t. Keeping us from seeing flag-draped coffins was bad; keeping us from seeing a blood-drenched mass-murderer is good. Now they’ve finally decided not to release the pictures, after Panetta already said they would. I’m sure that’s Obama’s final decision unless he changes his mind. . . .

Read the whole tragically hysterical piece here.

3. Navy SEALs: Gods among Men

Whereas the Obama administration’s repeated blunders made them look like Keystone Cops, the Navy SEALs’ awe-inspiring assassination of Bin Laden shows that they come about as close as anyone can to being gods. Unlike the false gods of religious scripture, however, the SEALs are admirable because they earn their power and glory, defend freedom and civilization, and aim to kill only bad guys. Eric Greitens, a SEAL himself, provides an indication of who these larger-than-life men are. Excerpt:

The men who conducted the assault on bin Laden’s compound are part of a proud tradition of service that traces its roots back to the Underwater Demolition Teams that cleared the beaches at Normandy. The SEAL teams themselves were born on Jan. 1, 1962, when President John F. Kennedy commissioned a new force of elite commandos that could operate from the sea, air and land (hence the acronym, SEALs). Though SEALs remain the nation’s elite maritime special operations force, part of what Kennedy wanted and needed from them—and what the nation still asks of SEALs—is that they be a flexible force, capable of operating in any environment.

To be able to undertake such missions, SEALs undergo intense training and practice. As some of my SEAL instructors would say, “The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in war.” . . .

The rigors that SEALs go through begin on the day they walk into Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training in Coronado, Calif., universally recognized as the hardest military training in the world. BUD/S lasts a grueling six months. The classes include large contingents of high-school and college track and football stars, national-champion swimmers, and top-ranked wrestlers and boxers, but only 10% to 20% of the men who begin BUD/S usually manage to finish. About 250 graduate from training every year.

Though often physical in nature, the tests of SEAL training are also designed to push men to their mental and emotional limits. “Drown-proofing” is one of the most famous of these ordeals. I remember it well from my own training in 2001. Standing with five other men next to the ledge of the combat training tank, I put my hands behind my back while my swim buddy tied them together.

“How’s that?”

“Feels good.”

He tugged at the knot to check it a final time. A knot that came undone meant automatic failure. The five of us exchanged glances and then, with our hands and feet firmly bound, jumped into the pool for a 50-meter swim. SEAL candidates are also tested with two-mile ocean swims, four-mile timed runs in soft sand, and runs through the mountains wearing 40-pound rucksacks.

The pinnacle of SEAL training is known as Hell Week, a period of continuous tests and drills during which most classes sleep only a total of two to five hours. . . .

My Hell Week began in the middle of the night. Sleeping in a large tent with my men, I woke to the sound of a Mark-43 Squad Automatic Weapon. The Mark-43 has a cyclic rate of fire of 550 rounds per minute. It is the primary “heavy” gun carried by SEALs on patrol. A blank round is not nearly as loud as a live one, but when the gun is rocking just feet away from your ears in an enclosed tent, it still sounds painfully loud.

We soon started surf torture. We ran into the ocean until we were chest deep in water, formed a line, and linked arms as the cold waves ran through us. Soon we began to shiver. Instructors on bullhorns spoke evenly, “Gentlemen, quit now, and you can avoid the rush later. You are only at the beginning of a very long week. It just gets colder. It just gets harder.”

“Let’s go. Out of the water!” We ran out through waist-deep water, and as we hit the beach a whistle blew: whistle drills. One blast of the whistle and we dropped to the sand. Two blasts and we began to crawl to the sound of the whistle. We crawled through the sand, still shaking from the cold, until our bodies had warmed just past the edge of hypothermia. Then, “Back in the ocean! Hit the surf!” . . .

Read the whole article here. To learn how and why SEAL Team Six (the particular unit that killed Bin Laden) was formed, watch this brief video with Richard Marcinko, the “proud pappa” of this divine division.

4. The Virtue of Torturing Islamic Terrorists—and the Evil of Punishing Those Who Do

In “The Waterboarding Trail to bin Laden,” former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey connects the intelligence that made the assassination of Bin Laden possible with the torture that made the intelligence possible. The article begins:

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden said that as late as 2006 fully half of the government’s knowledge about the structure and activities of al Qaeda came from harsh interrogations.

Osama bin Laden was killed by Americans, based on intelligence developed by Americans. That should bring great satisfaction to our citizens and elicit praise for our intelligence community. Seized along with bin Laden’s corpse was a trove of documents and electronic devices that should yield intelligence that could help us capture or kill other terrorists and further degrade the capabilities of those who remain at large.

But policies put in place by the very administration that presided over this splendid success promise fewer such successes in the future. Those policies make it unlikely that we’ll be able to get information from those whose identities are disclosed by the material seized from bin Laden. The administration also hounds our intelligence gatherers in ways that can only demoralize them.

Consider how the intelligence that led to bin Laden came to hand. It began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a torrent of information—including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden.

That regimen of harsh interrogation was used on KSM after another detainee, Abu Zubaydeh, was subjected to the same techniques. When he broke, he said that he and other members of al Qaeda were obligated to resist only until they could no longer do so, at which point it became permissible for them to yield. “Do this for all the brothers,” he advised his interrogators.

Abu Zubaydeh was coerced into disclosing information that led to the capture of Ramzi bin al Shibh, another of the planners of 9/11. Bin al Shibh disclosed information that, when combined with what was learned from Abu Zubaydeh, helped lead to the capture of KSM and other senior terrorists and the disruption of follow-on plots aimed at both Europe and the United States.

Another of those gathered up later in this harvest, Abu Faraj al-Libi, also was subjected to certain of these harsh techniques and disclosed further details about bin Laden’s couriers that helped in last weekend’s achievement. . . .

Read Mukasey’s whole article here.

Although the CIA’s torturing of captured Islamist terrorists (who, by being terrorists, have fully forfeited their rights) clearly enabled the U.S. military to gather the necessary intelligence to find and kill Bin Laden, the current Attorney General, Eric Holder, nevertheless persists in his efforts to punish CIA agents for torturing the terrorists. As Daniel Henninger reports:

That’s right, the Americans whose interrogation of al Qaeda operatives may have put in motion the death of this mass murderer may themselves face prosecution by the country they were trying to protect. . . .

In August 2009, Attorney General Holder announced that he was extending the mandate of Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham into the CIA’s so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” of terrorist detainees. Former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey had appointed Mr. Durham in 2008 as a special prosecutor to look into the CIA’s destruction of videotapes made during interrogations of two al Qaeda operatives. That investigation ended without charges last November.

Mr. Holder decided to push the Durham investigation into a second phase. “I have concluded,” he said “that the information known to me warrants opening a preliminary review into whether federal laws were violated in connection with the interrogation of specific detainees at overseas locations.” . . .

If Mr. Holder has evidence of an egregious crime, he should step forward and announce it. If not, he should use this moment to put an end to the Durham investigation. Mr. Durham is not an independent counsel, whose hallowed status makes attorneys general loath to interfere. He is a special prosecutor, appointed by the attorney general and under his authority.

On June 18 last year, Mr. Holder said in a Washington speech that Mr. Durham was “close to the end of the time that he needs and will be making recommendations to me.” But nothing has happened. Asked this week about the status of this investigation, a Justice Department spokesman for Mr. Durham, whose office is in Connecticut, said the project is “still ongoing.” . . .

Read Henninger’s whole piece here.

Where does President Obama stand on this matter? Might he suggest to Holder that, given the factually heroic nature of the actions for which the CIA interrogators are being investigated, perhaps the investigation is a tad misplaced? Hardly. As Real Clear Politics reports, Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles Burlingame (pilot of the plane that Islamists crashed into the Pentagon), met with President Obama on May 5, 2011 and asked him to make such a suggestion to Holder. Ms. Burlingame explains what happened next:

5. Schools Find Ayn Rand Can’t Be Shrugged as Donors Build Courses

To end the Review on a brighter note, here’s to the continued success of John Allison and the BB&T Charitable Foundation in bringing Ayn Rand’s ideas to college students across the United States. A long article in Bloomberg about how major donors are influencing curricula in various universities is bookended by discussions of Allison and BB&T. The article begins:

John Allison, former chairman of bank holding company BB&T Corp. (BBT), admires author Ayn Rand so much that he devised a strategy to spread her laissez-faire principles on U.S. campuses. Allison, working through the BB&T Charitable Foundation, gives schools grants of as much as $2 million if they agree to create a course on capitalism and make Rand’s masterwork, “Atlas Shrugged,” required reading.

Allison’s crusade to counter what he considers the anti- capitalist orthodoxy at universities has produced results — and controversy. Some 60 schools, including at least four campuses of the University of North Carolina, began teaching Rand’s book after getting the foundation money. Faculty at several schools that have accepted Allison’s terms are protesting, saying donors shouldn’t have the power to set the curriculum to pursue their political agendas, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its June issue.

“We have sought out professors who wanted to teach these ideas,” says Allison, now a professor at Wake Forest University’s business school in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. “It’s really a battle of ideas. If the ideas that made America great aren’t heard, then their influence will be destroyed.”

Allison, 62, is one of a number of wealthy philanthropists who are making bold demands on schools as a condition of giving, says Jack Siegel, a lawyer whose Chicago-based Charity Governance Consulting LLC works with colleges and nonprofit groups.

Seeking to leave their imprint on everything from the direction of scientific research to the performance of sports teams, these benefactors are stirring conflicts when their causes don’t fit with the priorities of administrators and faculty. . . .

The piece ends with this: “As private donors gain more power on campuses, it’s just the kind of shift away from state control that Rand would applaud.” Yes, it is.

Cheers to John Allison and BB&T!

* * *

I hope you enjoyed this edition of TOS’s Week in Review. Feel free to forward the link to others who might enjoy it as well. —CB

Joshua Lipana and Daniel Wahl contributed to this WiR.

(TOS does not necessarily agree with the content of articles to which we link.)

Posted in: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Business and Economics, Foreign Policy and War, Week in Review

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Altruism vs. America: Ayn Rand Solves the Problem

Posted by Craig Biddle at 9:25 pm

Here’s a video of the talk I recently gave at UW-Madison and U Minnesota. As is usually the case when I speak on college campuses, the active-minded students and their excellent questions left me optimistic about the future. Enjoy!

Posted in: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Events, Individual Rights and Law, Philosophy

Sunday, April 17, 2011

TOS’s Week in Review for April 17, 2011

Posted by TOS Admin at 11:51 pm

Noteworthy news and opinion items from the week ending April 17, 2011

1. Atlas Shrugged Opens in Theaters Across America

A movie version of Ayn Rand’s masterpiece Atlas Shrugged opened in more than 300 theatres last Friday and is receiving a great deal of attention, positive and negative. Sales of the novel have spiked; articles about the book and Ayn Rand are springing up everywhere; and even the leftist, state-sponsored NPR has found it necessary to acknowledge the significance of the event:

Every once in a while, a movie comes along that captures a slice of the zeitgeist. Could Atlas Shrugged: Part 1—due to be released on April 15—be that kind of film?

In the way that Rebel Without a Cause in the 1950s or Wall Street in the 1980s spoke to a certain time and displacement in American history, will the Hollywood depiction of Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel serve as some sort of easy-to-read cultural thermometer? Will the film flop or will it become the movie manifesto of America’s nascent Tea Party?

The folks at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif., certainly believe there are similarities between the rise of the Tea Party and Rand’s philosophy of pro-capitalism and rational self-interest—expressed through Atlas Shrugged and its protagonist John Galt.

As Yaron Brook, the institute’s executive director, puts it: “People are responding with alarm at parallels between Atlas Shrugged and the rampant growth of government power today.” . . .

Maybe this is the right moment for the right movie for the right.

Interest in Rand and her philosophy is on the upswing. Since the 2008 presidential election, according to Brook, the novel Atlas Shrugged has sold more than 1 million copies, far more than in any similar period in the book’s 54-year history.

And now comes the film, for those who have been waiting for the movie. They have had to wait a long time. For various reasons, wrestling the 1,000-plus pages of Atlas Shrugged onto the silver screen has taken more than 50 years. . . .

Read the whole NPR piece here.

Meanwhile, private, pro-freedom organizations, such as Freedomworks, are seizing the day and pointing out some of the many parallels between events in Atlas and those in today’s news. Freedomworks has created an effective montage of scenes from both the movie and current events. (Note that if you didn’t know the faces, you wouldn’t know the difference.)

For a brief discussion of the novel’s continuing significance, see Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and the World Today An Interview with Yaron Brook. For a concise history of the efforts to adapt Atlas to the screen, see Atlas Shrugged’s Long Journey to the Silver Screen. And for an illuminating chapter-by-chapter analysis of the novel, visit Diana Hsieh’s Explore Atlas Shrugged website.

2. President Obama’s “Eat the Rich” Speech

The only good things to be said about Obama’s speech last Wednesday are that (a) he was clear about his and the left’s principles, and (b) the delivery of this speech two days before the release of the Atlas movie was fortuitous, as the speech could have come straight out of Rand’s novel. As John Podhoretz explains:

What makes America great, Obama explicitly said, is the size of its government.

The great threat of the Ryan plan, he says, is that it will reduce the size of government’s “commitments”—i.e., the way it redistributes money by giving it to those it deems deserving and in need. And, by reducing it, the Ryan plan will bring American greatness to an end.

“We are a better country because of these commitments,” he said. “I’ll go further: We would not be a great country without those commitments.” . . .

Obama watchers of both left and right have been trying to make sense of him and what he believes. I think yesterday he showed us the very core of his conviction—that America is to be morally judged solely on the basis of the services its government delivers. . . .

Read the whole thing here. And for an indication of why, despite the evil nature of Obama’s ideas, the clarity of his principles here is a good thing, see Obama’s Atomic Bomb: The Ideological Clarity of the Democratic Agenda.

3. The “People’s Budget” (for the Demise of America)

While Obama prepared his speech, the Congressional Progressive Caucus—a group of 76 House Democrats including Barney Frank, John Conyers, George Miller, Charles Rangel, Rosa DeLauro, Jerrold Nadler, and Louise Slaughter—outlined a “People’s Budget” (yet another item straight out of Atlas). The goal of this budget, apparently, is to outstrip Obama’s plans to eat the rich—and neuter the military. The Washington Examiner reports that according to caucus co-chairmen Reps. Raul Grijalva and Keith Ellison,” this budget

would eliminate the deficit in just 10 years . . . while expanding, not cutting, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. “This budget saves the American people from the recklessness of the Republican majority,” Grijalva and Ellison write in a letter to Rep. Chris Van Hollen, senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

How can such fiscal miracles be accomplished? By tax increases that would make even some top Democrats gasp. Perhaps the most extraordinary is the caucus plan to raise the Social Security tax to cover nearly all of a taxpayer’s income. Right now, the tax is imposed on the first $106,000 of earnings. For people who make more than that, the caucus would tax a full 90 percent of income—no matter how high it goes. The caucus would raise the Social Security tax that employers pay as well.

The caucus would create three new individual tax brackets for the highest incomes, topping out at 47 percent. It would also raise the capital gains tax, the estate tax and corporate taxes. It would create something called a “financial crisis responsibility fee” and a “financial speculation tax.” And of course it would repeal the Bush tax cuts.

As if anyone needed reminding, the “People’s Budget” is proof that the liberal idea of budget balancing is tax, tax, tax. If you’re looking for spending cuts, you’ll find just one really big one: national defense. The liberals would end “overseas contingency operations”—the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—starting in 2013. They would save more money by “reducing strategic capabilities, conventional forces, procurement, and research & development programs.” In other words, they would gut the United States’ ability to defend itself, today and long into the future. . . .

Read the Examiner piece here, and the “People’s Budget” here.

4. The Homer Simpson Approach to Social Security

While Democrats and Republicans alike dance around Social Security—prohibited by their shared morality of altruism from touching this massive wealth transfer—who better to turn to than Homer Simpson for a lesson in irresponsibility and evasion? Paul Hsieh provides a series of apt analogies. The article begins:

In a classic episode of The Simpsons, a hungry Homer Simpson runs out of donuts and breaks into his emergency stash. But when he opens the box, it’s empty except for a note that reads: “Dear Homer, IOU one emergency donut. Signed, Homer.” Homer curses his earlier self: “Bastard! He’s always one step ahead.”

It’s easy to laugh at Homer Simpson’s folly, but America is doing the same thing with Social Security financing, and the end result won’t be amusing.

In a recent Washington Post column, Charles Krauthammer described the federal government’s accounting shell game behind the fictional “Social Security trust fund.” He notes—and Obama administration officials acknowledge—that the federal government has already spent the Social Security surpluses of the last decades, replacing the borrowed money with so-called “special issue” bonds. But according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), these “special issue” bonds “do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits.” Instead, they are mere promises to repay the borrowed money, just as Homer Simpson’s IOU is a mere promise to someday replace the borrowed donut. These “special issue” bonds are thus no more tangible assets than Homer Simpson’s IOU is edible.

To make matters worse, now that the Baby Boomers have started retiring, Social Security will no longer run surpluses but rather ever-increasing deficits, rising from $40 billion in 2011 to over $100 billion in 2021. As Investor’s Business Daily notes, these Social Security deficits will drain precious capital from the private sector that could have been used for productive investments—making the value of the “trust fund” less than zero

But more fundamentally, not only is Social Security economically bankrupt, it is also morally bankrupt. Contrary to popular belief, Social Security is not a savings plan where people deposit their money during their working years then withdraw it once they retire. Rather, as Robert Samuelson recently described, it is a “pay as you go” scheme. Current workers are taxed to pay current retirees. When these workers retire, they’ll then receive money taken forcibly from future workers. Hence, Social Security is no different than any other Ponzi scheme, except that Americans are compelled to join whether they wish to or not. . . .

Read the whole piece here.

5. RomneyCare Turns Five: Mitt’s Reputation is in the Toilet, and Kennedy Democrats “Have Had Enough”

On the anniversary of the passing of the nightmare known as RomneyCare, Michael Graham provides a reminder of how this Republican creation has worked out for everyone. The article begins:

As governor, Mitt Romney accomplished a feat that most Republicans would have thought impossible. With the single stroke of a pen he convinced the liberal population of Massachusetts that they, too, hate government-run health care.

As a health care plan, Romneycare is an unmitigated fiasco. It has caused costs to skyrocket, insurance premiums to soar and nonprofit providers like Blue Cross to suffer hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

But as a political policy, Romneycare is nearly unparalleled in Republican history. It has destroyed one front-runner’s presidential hopes (Romney’s) and helped undermine an entire presidency. For, as Barack Obama’s supporters keep reminding us, Romneycare was the precursor to Obamacare.

And what has Obamacare accomplished? It knocked Nancy Pelosi out of the speaker’s chair and helped drive the president’s approval rating to new lows. Dick Cheney couldn’t have come up with a sneakier scheme to destroy Democrats. . . .

Read the whole thing here. For more on RomeyCare and its federal kin, see Mandatory Health Insurance: Wrong for Massachusetts, Wrong for America.

Although RomenCare has been an utter disaster—and although almost everyone acknowledges this fact—American politicians will continue hatching, pushing, and passing such catastrophic laws until Americans repudiate the morality of self-sacrifice and embrace the morality of self-interest. This is where the battle lies, and Americans who wish to return America to a rights-respecting republic must engage this matter explicitly on moral grounds. For an indication of the moral argument for a free market in health care, see Moral Health Care vs. “Universal Health Care”.

6. A Devastating Tale of One Man’s Immigration Ordeal

Here’s a window from Newsweek into the rights-violating boondoggle that is U.S. immigration policy. This story is especially heartbreaking as it focuses not on statistics or groups but on the plight of an actual, individual man trying to live his life and achieve his goals—and being stopped by a system that couldn’t care less about such trivial matters as the life and goals of an individual. Excerpt:

Lakshminarayana Ganti, 33, who has been denied a U.S. visa, checks his visa status online daily. . . Ganti reached out to me in the spring of 2009, long after he had exhausted every other option. Sixteen months earlier he had been a young man on the rise, living in a waterfront Boston apartment, driving a new BMW, and working long hours for a startup bond-trading firm. By the time he contacted me, he was sleeping in the spare bedroom of his sister’s house in a New Delhi suburb, trying to fill his time with cricket and odd consulting jobs. . . .

He had found my name through a Facebook group set up by young Indian and Chinese scientists and engineers who had built their lives in America only to find themselves involuntarily exiled in their home countries. I had joined the Facebook group in connection with research into visa delays in the aftermath of 9/11.

Hi Ted, he wrote. My case has been pending since Dec 18 ’07…Nope thats not a typing error…For a few months I was ok with the delay, and in my mind justified it as—greater good—national security/safety procedures…but 15+ months of background checks…on someone who has a clean record? Impossible to rationalise…Regards, Ganti. . . .

Ganti [had been] hired by Sharpridge in December 2006 to help build the proprietary mathematical models at the core of the company’s business. He [had been] able to start under a program known as Optional Practical Training, which allows foreign students to work in the U.S. for a short time following graduation. “It was really tough to find the skills that we needed,” says Grant, the CEO. “This is the world of financial rocket science. We needed somebody who understood that stuff. It’s hard to find people, even out of graduate schools, who really have the skills.” Importantly, Grant says, Ganti “had that fire in his belly. He really wanted to be with a small startup.”

To remain at Sharpridge after his training period was over, Ganti needed a work visa known as an H-1B. Created by Congress in 1990, the H-1B is the primary visa for skilled foreign workers who lack family ties in America. Securing an H-1B, which is valid only for three years, requires a job offer, with wages and benefits comparable to what skilled Americans would get. Ganti’s application was submitted on April 1, 2007, the day the quota opened. On that day alone, American companies filed more than 150,000 applications for 85,000 slots, and a lottery was drawn. Ganti was in luck, and in July 2007 the government awarded him an H-1B.

While that would allow him to live and work in America, coming back would still require a stamp in his passport and an interview with a State Department official at an embassy or consulate overseas. With his new work visa in hand, however, Ganti assumed it was safe to return home for the first time in three years. After visiting his family in December 2007, he went to the American Consulate in Chennai for permission to return to the U.S. The visa officer reviewed his application and told Ganti that he had no problem issuing a visa, Ganti later told Sharpridge’s lawyers. There was just one hitch. . . .

Read the whole tragedy here. For a discussion of what U.S. immigration policy should be, see Immigration and Individual Rights.

7. Iran’s Nuclear Progress and Obama’s Unwavering Insistence on . . . Negotiations

While the Obama administration and both houses of Congress pretend to solve domestic problems, the regime in Iran continues its efforts to build nuclear weapons—and makes significant progress. An editorial in the Washington Post explains:

Iran has been busy expanding its nuclear capacity. In recent days officials announced that tests of a new generation of centrifuges for enriching uranium had been successful, and that a Russian-built nuclear reactor would begin operations early next month.

The progress on centrifuges is significant because Iran until now has relied on slow and inefficient centrifuges, many of which appear to have been damaged by software sabotage. The more advanced machines, The Post’s Joby Warrick reported, could work at least six times faster. Iran has already enriched more than 3,600 kilograms of uranium to a low level, enough for two nuclear bombs with further processing. The faster centrifuges mean that were Iran to embark on a “break-out” strategy—a race to complete a bomb—it could do so far more quickly, if it manages to install a significant number of the new machines.

Several months ago, administration officials were speaking confidently of an Iran that, pinched by sanctions and hamstrung by problems in its nuclear work, seemed ready to begin talks. Now the talks are off, the economic pressure is easing and the nuclear work once again could be gaining momentum. Yet the administration seems to have no clear alternative to its long-standing strategy of waiting for the regime to negotiate.

The better course, which we among others have urged since the opposition Green Movement was born nearly two years ago, is to bet on a renewed popular uprising in Iran. President Obama recently made a gesture in that direction with a video address to Iranians that denounced government repression and said young Iranians had the “power to forge a country that is responsive to your aspirations.” But there is much more the administration could do, such as finding ways to support Iranian unions and student movements, stepping up broadcasting and accelerating funding for technology that can undermine Internet censorship. Passivity is a dangerous option; while the world watches the Middle East, Iran’s drive for a bomb relentlessly continues.

Read the whole editorial here. For an indication of what America can and should do with respect to the Iranian threat and the promising Green Movement, see A “Teal Movement” in Iran Could Be the End of the Regime: The U.S. Should Encourage It.