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:

• Vindicating Capitalism: The Real History of the Standard Oil Company
• Energy at the Speed of Thought: The Original Alternative Energy Market

Image of New York City: Wikipedia Commons

“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:

• Ayn Rand’s Theory of Rights: The Moral Foundation of a Free Society
• Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand’s Morality of Egoism
• Economics in Atlas Shrugged

Image of Patrick Henry: Wikipedia Commons

Image of Ayn Rand: Wikipedia Commons

What:

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.

But these problems have already been solved, have they not? What is the mystery? Malaria? Established solution: DDT; Polio? Established solution: Jonas Salk’s vaccine; Government schools? Established solution: Private , profit-making schools (i.e., capitalism).

Why are these known solutions not adopted worldwide? Because socialists and environmentalists oppose them. Yet while the Gates Foundation seeks “solutions,” it supports these opponents of the existing solutions.

Related:

• Book Review: The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce
• The Educational Bonanza in Privatizing Government Schools

Image: Wikipedia Commons

While Arab leaders warn that an international stalemate on Palestinian statehood threatens regional stability, it should be pointed out that some among them lay a foundation for such instability by, among other things, teaching students it is their obligation to commit violence against the religious “other.”

The prime example is Saudi Arabia’s national curriculum. Despite assurances in the State Department human rights report that the Saudi government has in the past year introduced “revised and newly written textbooks across the curriculum for most school grades,” these texts continue to promote violence against apostates and “infidels” of all stripes. Militant jihad is justified to “spread Islam” and exalted as “a profitable trade,” which “saves from painful punishment”. . . .

Top U.S. Treasury counterterrorism officials have called the Wahhabi teachings of these textbooks “kindling for Bin Laden’s match,” and warned that, without education reform, “we will forever be faced with the challenge of disrupting the next group of terrorist facilitators and supporters.”

Shea goes on to offer several harrowing excerpts from these textbooks. The situation, however, is much worse that she reports.

The murderous Saudi savages are not merely teaching Saudi children to become murderous Saudi savages; they are also paying other Islamists to murder Americans, and importing undiluted Islam into the United States. As I document in “The Iranian and Saudi Regimes Must Go,”

the Islamist regime in Saudi Arabia is funding American-slaughtering terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, building mosques and “cultural centers” across America, and flooding these Islamist outposts not only with hundreds of millions of dollars for “operating expenses” but also with a steady stream of materials calling for all Muslims “to be dissociated from the infidels . . . to hate them for their religion . . . to always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law” and, ultimately, “to abolish all traces of such primitive life (jahiliyya) and to reinforce the understanding and application of the eternal and universal Islamic deen [religion] until it becomes the ruling power throughout the world.” The Saudi-sponsored materials further specify that those who “accept any religion other than Islam, like Judaism or Christianity, which are not acceptable,” have “denied the Koran” and thus “should be killed.”

None of this is news, at least not to the U.S. government. The Saudis’ anti-infidel efforts have been tracked, documented, and reported for years. As the Rand Corporation concluded in a briefing to a top Pentagon advisory board in 2002, “The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader.”

When will a sufficient number of Americans demand that the U.S. government act in accordance with its knowledge about the Saudis and take out the murderous regime? With apologies to Golda Meir: when a sufficient number of Americans love their children more than they hate being branded “intolerant.”

Related:

• 9/11 Ten Years Later: The Fruits of the Philosophy of Self-Abnegation
• The Iranian and Saudi Regimes Must Go
• The Ground Zero Mosque, the Spread of Islam, and How America Should Deal with Such Efforts

Bachmann is right. The Department of Education is unconstitutional and should be eliminated. That would be one substantial step toward getting government out of education, an area in which the government has no moral right to intervene. The government’s sole legitimate purpose is to protect individual rights, not to provide services other than those necessary for that purpose (e.g. police service).

(This is not an endorsement of Michelle Bachmann.)

Related:

• The Educational Bonanza in Privatizing Government Schools
• Toward a Free Market in Education: School Vouchers or Tax Credits?

Image: Wikipedia Commons

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”.

How do government policies push tuition prices higher and higher?

First, students are able to bear the expense with the help of the government. If the government did not provide student loans backed by government guarantees, then those students would have less purchasing power and the traditional non-profits would be forced to lower tuition rates in order to continue operating. For example, this situation is similar to homebuyers obtaining a mortgage. When they can get financing, they can afford a more expensive home than they could if they had to pay for it themselves. This is evident because when financing is in short supply, the prices of homes go down. The following link is an interview of a former student by Peter Schiff, who points out that the reason why college costs are so high is because students are able to borrow a lot of money while the government cosigns on the loans.

Second, because students are able to borrow and bridge the gap with student loans, the traditional non-profit colleges and universities can put all their efforts into attracting the best student demographic, which improves their reputations. This means better dorms, smaller classes, etc., which translates into higher costs.

Third, there is something called the 90/10 rule which only applies to for-profit schools. This rule requires the for-profit schools to derive at least 10 percent of revenues from sources other than Title IV funds. This means that at least 10 percent of tuition has to be financed by students through private loans, credit cards, or savings. For-profit schools take this rule very seriously because if they break it, they will lose their eligibility for Title IV funds, which means they are pretty much out of business. How does this rule increase tuition costs? The government sets the rules about how much a student can receive in Pell grants and Stafford loans for various programs, and schools cannot control how much students choose to borrow. Let’s assume that a for-profit school is willing to charge only $7,000 for a $10,000 program because it either wants to increase its competitiveness or through efficient expense control, is able pass on savings to students. In this case, the school would fail the 90/10 rule because more than 100 percent of tuition ($7,000) would be financed by Title IV funds ($10,000). So what does the school do instead? Even though it is able to charge less, it is forced to increase the tuition for this program to $11,111 just to stay compliant with 90/10 rule.

Tuition cost = $11,111

Title IV covers $10,000 which is 90 percent of $11,111

Student pays $1,111 which is 10 percent of $11,111

Then, the following year, the government increases limits on Pell grants and Stafford loans to help students cope with tuition increases. The for-profits are forced to raise tuition again, and the cycle continues.

So much for the claim that for-profit colleges are responsible for skyrocketing tuition.

Here’s an excerpt in which Skonieczny addresses the oft-repeated but arithmetically false claim that for-profit colleges constitute a massive burden on taxpayers because “profits are privatized and risks are socialized.”

According to critics, the problem arises when a student attends a for-profit school, pays high tuition, takes on a large amount of student debt and then cannot find employment. In this case, he or she defaults on the student loan, and the government along with the taxpayers lose because they provided the funding. At the same time, they also say that students cannot walk away from student loans like they can walk away from a mortgaged house. I am confused, if the student is stuck with the student loan for life, how can the government and taxpayer be on the hook? Don’t these statements contradict each other? Who is on the hook – the government, the taxpayer or the student? [Steven] Eisman [one of the short-sellers who apparently colluded with officials at the DoE to sink the stock of the for-profit college sector] answers it himself in his presentation, “because of fees associated with default, the government collects approximately $1.20 on every $1.00 lent.” So if the government collects $1.20 on every $1.00 lent, how does this cost taxpayers money? It doesn’t and the critics know it, but it sounds better if the government, the taxpayer, and the student are on the hook while the companies make millions.

Not only do the for-profits not cost the government money, they actually make the government money. After all expenses are subtracted from revenues, these companies pay corporate income tax on the profits that they generate. Then, the shareholders pay taxes on dividends and capital gains. It is the non-profits that cost the government money because, unlike for-profits, they are subsidized by the government and pay no taxes on the bottom line.

Like I said, the whole article is well worth reading.

Related:

• The Government’s Assault on Private-Sector Colleges and Universities
• The Educational Bonanza in Privatizing Government Schools

ARTICLES

ObamaCare v. the Constitution
by Paul J. Beard II

The Iranian and Saudi Regimes Must Go
by Craig Biddle

Interview with Reza Kahlili, an Ex-CIA Spy Embedded in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards

Interview with Historian John David Lewis about U.S. Foreign Policy and the Middle East

The Government’s Assault on Private-Sector Colleges and Universities
by Craig Biddle

Interview with Andy Kessler about the Virtue of Eating People

FILM REVIEWS

Iranium, directed by Alex Traiman
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

Temple Grandin, directed by Mick Jackson
Reviewed by C. A. Wolski

BOOK REVIEWS

Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad, by John Bolton

Reviewed by Gideon Reich

The Infidel: Chapter One, by Bosch Fawstin
Reviewed by Joshua Lipana

Why ObamaCare is Wrong For America: How the New Health Care Law Drives Up Costs, Puts Government in Charge of Your Decisions, and Threatens Your Constitutional Rights, by Grace-Marie Turner, James C.

Capretta, Thomas P. Miller, and Robert E. Moffit
Reviewed by Jared M. Rhoads

Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada’s Oil Sands, by Ezra Levant
Reviewed by Andrew Brannan

Anti-intellectualism in American Life, by Richard Hofstadter, and The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby
Reviewed by Burgess Laughlin

His Dark Materials Trilogy, by Philip Pullman
Reviewed by C. A. Wolski

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, by Joshua Foer
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, by Ben Macintyre
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 graduation gift. Subscriptions start at just $29 and are available in print, online, e-book, and audio editions.

Enjoy!

1. The Budget Showdown

The top story of the week is that Republicans in Congress—having been elected in large part on their promise to cut this year’s federal spending by $100 billion—and having then retreated to $61 billion—finally retreated all the way down to $38 billion, which amounts to a 1 percent reduction in spending for the year. What matters here, however, is less the numbers than the compromise—which, throughout the week, was praised by some as a virtue and condemned by others as a vice. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Tea Party remained uncompromising:

A national tea party leader warned Republican leaders . . . that if they “fold” on the budget talks, they risk losing the trust of tea party voters.

“If [House Speaker John Boehner] agrees to less than $61 billion in cuts, then the GOP will have broken their campaign promise,” said Debbie Dooley, a national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, an umbrella group for the movement.

“If they fold on this, then they will fold on the debt ceiling and they will fold on budget 2012. Why should we trust them further to keep their promises?” said Ms. Dooley, a 52-year-old from Duluth, Ga., where she works in information technology.

Unfortunately, the WSJ itself—showing that its editors have no idea of the nature or consequences of compromise—called for compromise, claiming that “Republicans will have more credibility over fights that really matter if they show they’re willing to compromise now.” Would that the nation’s top business journal understood that compromising on principle thwarts one’s credibility (not to mention one’s integrity, and, in this case, individual rights and the economy).

Fortunately, others—including Dick Morris and Peter Schiff—understand the evil of this compromise. Morris made an impassioned plea for Americans to urge Republicans to hold their ground. If you want “to restore the United States of America to a free-enterprise, capitalist system,” says Morris, “be in touch with your Republican congressman, and send him a message: no retreat, no surrender, no compromise.” Morris’s short video is worth watching.

In the wake of the Republicans’ eventual capitulation, Peter Schiff explains that “politics has prevailed over principle.”

Both sides are now claiming victory, that this new compromise demonstrates the resolve of our leaders to make the necessary cuts so that America can live within its means and finally tackle our out-of-control deficit spending. The reality is, this compromise proves the exact opposite: that there is no will on Capitol Hill to do anything about the deficit, that nobody is willing to make any of the cuts necessary to reign in the excesses in Washington.

Schiff’s video is worth watching as well.

2. Paul Ryan’s Long-term Budget “Cuts”

In the midst of all this short-term budget compromising, Rep. Paul Ryan offered his long-term budget plan. Excerpt:

Our budget, which we call The Path to Prosperity, is very different. For starters, it cuts $6.2 trillion in spending from the president’s budget over the next 10 years, reduces the debt as a percentage of the economy, and puts the nation on a path to actually pay off our national debt. Our proposal brings federal spending to below 20% of gross domestic product (GDP), consistent with the postwar average, and reduces deficits by $4.4 trillion…

Here are its major components:

• Reducing spending: This budget proposes to bring spending on domestic government agencies to below 2008 levels, and it freezes this category of spending for five years. The savings proposals are numerous, and include reforming agricultural subsidies, shrinking the federal work force through a sensible attrition policy, and accepting Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s plan to target inefficiencies at the Pentagon.

• Welfare reform: This budget will build upon the historic welfare reforms of the late 1990s by converting the federal share of Medicaid spending into a block grant that lets states create a range of options and gives Medicaid patients access to better care. It proposes similar reforms to the food-stamp program, ending the flawed incentive structure that rewards states for adding to the rolls. Finally, this budget recognizes that the best welfare program is one that ends with a job—it consolidates dozens of duplicative job-training programs into more accessible, accountable career scholarships that will better serve people looking for work…

Read the whole thing here.

Many on the right, including Jed Graham and Karl Rove, have touted Ryan’s plan as a winner. As Graham puts it:

Calling for a fundamental restructuring of Medicare and Medicaid, Ryan’s plan cuts $6.2 trillion in spending relative to President Obama’s budget over the coming decade, including $179 billion in fiscal 2012.

With Republican presidential contenders heaping praise upon Ryan, his proposal may best represent the different vision of government that the GOP will offer voters in 2012 — one with lower taxes, much lower spending, less debt and a narrower safety net. . . .

Ryan’s cuts to spending in the coming decade include: The entire $1.4 trillion on ObamaCare health expansion; $735 billion on Medicaid spending, $923 billion on nonsecurity discretionary; $1.8 trillion on other mandatory programs; $389 billion on Medicare and $965 billion on interest.

Unfortunately, however, Ryan’s proposal does not actually amount to cuts in spending; nor does it include any means of eliminating entitlement programs—such as Medicare and Social Security—the altruistic black holes that increasingly suck up American’s hard-earned money and throttle the U.S. economy. As Karl Rove explains (unfortunately while praising Ryan’s proposal):

Mr. Ryan would have the government spend $40 trillion over the next 10 years, $6.2 trillion less than Mr. Obama’s budget plan of $46 trillion. This is an overall reduction in what the government plans to spend, not a cut from what it is spending today.

Under Mr. Ryan’s proposal, for example, health-care spending would still rise for both Medicaid, which serves the poor, and Medicare, which serves seniors. The $275 billion spent on Medicaid this year would grow to $305 billion in 2021 while the $563 billion spent on Medicare this year would grow to $953 billion in 2021. Nor would anyone 55 years or older be affected by any Medicare reforms.

Mr. Ryan and his colleagues want to act now to keep entitlement programs solvent. They want to keep Americans from experiencing the pain of the ­crisis that will come when the public debt has doubled by 2012 (from the level when Mr. Obama came into office) and nearly ­tripled by 2021, as it would under the president’s plan. Already mandatory spending, the part of the budget that’s automatic and not subject to approval each year by Congress, eats up all available revenue this year. Medicare goes broke in 2029, and Social Security is bankrupt in 2037. . . .

Read the whole piece here. Observe that while acknowledging that Ryan’s plan does not cut spending but in fact increases spending, Rove nevertheless praises the plan. For a brief discussion of why today’s Republicans do not and cannot oppose the welfare state, see The Republicans’ Opportunity to Restore America . . . and Their Obstacle. For a deeper discussion of the principles at play, see The Creed of Sacrifice vs. The Land of Liberty.

3. The Absurdity of Blaming a Florida Pastor for an Islamist Slaughtering Spree in Afghanistan

Daniel Pipes chronicles the obscene responses of politicians who have blamed a recent wave of Islam-motivated murders in Afghanistan on everything but the nature of Islamic law and the barbarians who enforce it. The piece begins:

When Pastor Terry Jones, 59, announced an intent to burn a Koran on the anniversary of 9/11 in 2010, the U.S. government, fearing attacks on American troops abroad, put intense pressure on him to desist and eventually he called off his plans.

Jones, however, did not cancel the ceremonial judgment of the Islamic scripture – he only delayed it by six months. On March 20, in a six-hour ceremony called “International Judge the Koran Day,” Jones convened a mock-judicial process in Florida that deemed the book “guilty of crimes against humanity,” then set a copy on fire.

The event was intentionally ignored in the United States, in the hopes of limiting its impact, but little stays secret in the Internet age. Within two days, news of the conflagration had reached Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the country’s presidents roundly denounced Jones, bringing his action to wide notice. On April 1, infuriated Afghans lashed out, killing twelve in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif; the next day, suicide bombers dressed in women’s clothing attacked a coalition base in Kabul and street mobs in Kandahar again killed twelve. . . .

Who is morally to blame for these deaths, Jones or the Islamists who seek to apply the laws of Islam in their entirety and as severely as possible? . . .

Read the whole thing here. For a discussion of the inherent conflict between religion and freedom of speech, see Religion vs. Free Speech.

4. Beheading Ourselves Over Islam

Just when you think Obama’s foreign policy can’t get any worse, the administration launches an effort to curb Islam-motivated terrorism by . . . spreading the religion of Islam. An Investor’s Business Daily editorial begins:

What can the U.S. do to quell the violent spasms of Islam? Promote Islam, naturally. At least that’s the thinking of this administration. It’s now official foreign policy.

President Obama’s top Muslim envoy has been overseas encouraging devotion to Islam, including in terror hot spots like Afghanistan. In fact, Rashad Hussain, U.S. special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, just returned from Afghanistan, where he told locals the antidote to Islamic violence “is Islam itself.”

“I am of the opinion that one of the strongest tools that you can use to counter radicalization and violent extremism is Islam itself, because Islam rejects violent extremism,” Hussain said during a speech in Kabul.

Afghans responded to his message by slaughtering a dozen innocent United Nations workers in the name of Islam.

Stirred by mosque sermons, a mob of thousands overran a U.N. compound in northern Afghanistan following Friday prayers. They sawed off the heads of two guards before killing the others, including Norwegian and Swedish nationals, inside. It was Afghanistan’s deadliest attack on U.N. personnel. . . .

Read the editorial here. It’s too rich for comment.

5. Bank Runs of the Early 1930s and FDR’s Ban on Gold

In light of the continuing increase in the price of gold, Richard Salsman provides a brief history lesson about the economic importance of using sound money and respecting property rights thereto. The article begins:

The gold price reached a record of $1464/ounce this week, fittingly on the 78th year anniversary of FDR’s ban on private gold ownership in 1933. Gold has increased by 30% over the past year, 145% in the past five years and 465% in the past decade; by contrast, the S&P 500 today is only 12% higher vs. a decade ago.

Although FDR’s Executive Order #6102 eventually expired, other measures were enacted to perpetuate the government’s ban on private gold holding. The prohibition wasn’t lifted until early 1975, in a bill signed by President Gerald Ford, but by then President Richard Nixon had jettisoned the Bretton Woods gold-exchange standard (in August 1971).

Thereafter the U.S. dollar “floated,” which in truth meant that over the long-term it only sunk in value versus gold. Thus a four-decade ban on private gold ownership (1933-1974) has been followed by a four-decade “ban” on any gold-based dollar (1971-2011), and thus fiat-paper dollars not unlike those issued to inflationary excess during the Revolutionary War (the “continental”) and the Civil War (the “greenback”).

In retrospect it seems astounding — and brazenly unconstitutional — that in 1933 a U.S. president could wield such power and by a mere pen stroke criminalize the private ownership of any asset, let alone an asset so crucial to one’s life and the nation’s economic prosperity as sound money. The U.S. dollar had been on the classical gold-coin standard for decades until World War I, when (in 1917) Washington compelled the commercial banks (for “patriotic reasons”) to transfer their clients’ vault gold to the Fed, in turn for mere gold “certificates.” This was a crucial step in politically distancing Americans from their long-valued money. . . .

Read the whole thing here.

6. A Win for Advocates of Free Market Education and Tax Credit Programs

This week brought some good news for freedom in education. As the Institute for Justice reports:

The U.S. Supreme Court today reversed the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, a legal challenge aimed at halting Arizona’s highly successful and popular private school scholarship tax credit program.  Today’s landmark decision declared that the plaintiffs in the case lack standing to bring the challenge in the first instance because the program is funded by private contributions, not government funds.

“Today’s decision marks the fifth time in recent years that the Supreme Court has rebuffed efforts by school choice opponents to use the courts to halt programs that empower families to choose a private school education if that is where their child’s needs will best be served,” said Tim Keller, executive director of the Institute for Justice Arizona Chapter.  “It is now crystal clear that only those individuals who have a direct stake in the outcome of a case have standing to challenge a school choice program in federal court.”. . .

“When Arizona taxpayers choose to contribute to [School Tuition Organizations], they spend their own money, not money the State has collected from respondents or from other taxpayers,” wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, for the 5-4 majority.  “While the State, at the outset, affords the opportunity to create and contribute to [a School Tuition Organization], the tax credit system is implemented by private action and with no state intervention.  Objecting taxpayers know that their fellow citizens, not the State, decide to contribute and in fact make the contribution.”

“Like contributions that lead to charitable tax deductions, contributions yielding [School Tuition Organization] tax credits are not owed to the State and, in fact, pass directly from taxpayers to private organizations.  Respondents’ contrary position assumes that income should be treated as if it were government property even if it has not come into the tax collector’s hands.  That premise finds no basis in standing jurisprudence,” continued Kennedy.

Read the whole thing here. For more on this ruling, see High court recognizes the distinction between credits and subsidies and Supreme School Choice.

Observe that the Court’s ruling in this case “declared that the plaintiffs in the case lack standing to bring the challenge in the first instance because the program is funded by private contributions, not government funds.” As Justice Kennedy put it: “Contributions result from the decisions of private taxpayers regarding their own funds,” thus “Objecting taxpayers know that their fellow citizens, not the state, decide to contribute and in fact make the contribution.” A tax credit, Kennedy elaborated, “is not tantamount to a religious tax or tithe.” To say otherwise “assumes that income should be treated as if it were government property even if it has not come into the tax collector’s hands.” This is a feature of tax credit programs—not of school voucher programs—a distinction that all advocates of school choice would do well to recognize and respect. For a discussion of the nature and importance of this distinction, see Toward a Free Market in Education: School Vouchers or Tax Credits?

7. Richard Branson and Google to Map Ocean Floor

We’ll close with this wonderful story showing the kind of achievement possible to men of the mind when and to the extent that they are free to act on their judgment and pursue their goals. Enjoy!

Apparently, for billionaire adventurer Richard Branson, space is no longer the final frontier. Today, he announced his next ambitious project: Virgin Oceanic, which will see the mogul pilot a special ‘flying’ solo submarine to the deepest part of each of the planet’s five oceans—including the bottom of the Mariana Trench, 36,201ft down, a depth no human has yet reached.

Backed by an impressive team of scientists and explorers, Branson aims to “collate data and catalogue life forms that will never have been seen before by human eyes and are unknown to science”, according to a blog post he wrote to coincide with the launch. The Virgin Oceanic submarine he’ll pilot uses ‘flying wings’ to propel it downward, mirroring the way dolphins and rays swim.

Branson also hopes to improve our collective knowledge of the ocean floor: he’s partnering with Google, who will stream his dives on Google Maps. Images and video from the voyages will be added to Google Earth’s interactive map of the world, providing what Virgin calls “previously unachievable detail and documentation of one of the most unexplored areas of Earth.” . . .

Read the whole thing here.

We 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.

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