This Week on the Web (March 24 – March 30)
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COMMENTARY
Permission to celebrate Jamestown?
Mona Charen, Jewish World Review
By all means, let's be honest about American history and admit that American Indians were often mistreated (broken treaties, displacement, murder). The Trail of Tears deserved its name. But the description of Powhatan culture as "advanced" is ridiculous. When the two cultures met, one was hundreds of years more advanced than the other. If the Powhatans had been further along, they would have prevailed. They certainly didn't lack the will.
One of the early setbacks (1622) for the British Jamestown settlers was a fierce Indian attack that killed 400 men, women and children. And though the exhibit does mention this elsewhere, it is worth remembering what should be too obvious to require restatement — that precolonial America was no idyll. Indian tribes were in more or less constant warfare with one another — just like humans in the rest of the world.
Some black leaders have objected to celebrating Jamestown's founding because it led to black slavery. It is perhaps worth recalling that Captain John Smith, a figure who gets less attention at the new Jamestown observance than Powhatan rulers Wahunsonacock and Opechancanough and African Queen Njinga, was once a slave himself. Fighting in Transylvania in 1602, he was captured by the Turks and enslaved. Through scheming and murder, Smith was able to escape back to England in 1605 and departed for Virginia soon after. His firm hand permitted the tiny outpost to survive. He memorably explained to the settlers that "He who does not work will not eat." And, as every schoolchild used to know, he believed that Pocahontas saved his life when her father captured him.
Black slavery was actually still several decades in the future when Jamestown was founded. And while neither Virginia's nor America's history can be unchained from the taint of slavery, can't we be mature about this? Keith Richburg, foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, was stationed in Africa in the early 1990s. What he saw there — rampant corruption, casual cruelty on the streets of Nairobi, civil war in Somalia and genocide in Rwanda — made him express gratitude that his ancestors had been dragged to the New World, the horrors of slavery notwithstanding.
There is every reason to celebrate the 400th birthday of America — for warts and all — there never has been a better country for all its citizens.
Legalize 'Price-Fixing'
The Ayn Rand Institute (via Principles in Practice)
On March 26 the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., where the justices will decide whether antitrust law forbids a manufacturer from setting a minimum retail price for its products. In the past, judges have ruled that this is "price-fixing," and therefore must be prohibited. Critics of this precedent, including the Bush administration, claim that it is "outdated" and "cannot withstand modern economic analysis."
"An overturning of this particular anti-price-fixing precedent would be a welcome development," said Alex Epstein, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. "But the Court should go further and repudiate any prohibition against so-called price-fixing.
"Prohibitions against 'price-fixing' are defended by alleging that if multiple companies agree to sell some product at the same price, they will be able to gouge consumers by making that price exorbitant.
"But this is nonsense. So long as the government stays out of the market, no group of companies can force a customer to pay more for a product than it is worth—nor can a group of companies that arbitrarily jack up their prices prevent worthy competitors from winning over their customers.
Inconsistency Has No Appeal
Amit Ghate, Thrutch
As much as I sympathize with anyone trying to stand up to the rabid Islamists, in watching the videos of these "moderate" muslims, I was struck by how hopeless their position truly is. That is, they accept all the claims of the fundamentalist muslims, but then ask that one not take the ideas too seriously. Or to look at it another way, the fundamentalists can better be classified as "consistent" muslims, while the "moderates" are more accurately described as "inconsistent" muslims.
Who is going to be swayed by a call to inconsistency?
The only hope any opposition has of challenging the fundamentalist is to disavow his ideas at their root and then offer different (better) ones. Trying to have it both ways (we believe the teachings and the method but don't want to go to "extremes") has no logical or emotional appeal and so can't win. Of course the fundamentalists don't even see this -- as they are beyond any type of reasoning -- so, predictably, they've responded with death threats.
Finally an ally in the struggle against establishment Islam
Jeff Jacoby, Jewish World Review
Over the years, CAIR and other Islamist groups have gotten much mileage out of such strong-arm tactics — typically while posing as moderate defenders of civil rights. But there is good news: Some Americans are pushing back. And even better news: Some of the push-back is coming from Muslims who forcefully reject the Islamist project.
[…]
I is hard to overstate how important the Zuhdi Jassers are in the free world's struggle against radical Islam. We call it the "war on terrorism," but terrorism is only a means to an end, namely, bringing the entire world under sharia — Islamic law. Not all Islamists are jihadi terrorists, but all Islamists *do* want sharia to reign supreme. When the chairman of CAIR, Omar Ahmad, addressed an audience of California Muslims in 1998, he asserted that Islam is in America not to be equal to other faiths but to become dominant, and that the Koran should be the highest authority in America, according to a paper that covered his speech. "Everything we need to know is in the Koran," he told his audience. "We don't need to look somewhere else." (Ahmad now denies having said this, but the paper stands by its story.)
By contrast, Muslim reformers like Jasser explicitly reject political supremacy for Islam and the Koran. "As a devout Muslim," he told me last week, "I can testify that a Muslim can truly love the faith of Islam, yet believe deeply not only in the separation of mosque and state but in the pre eminence of Americanism over Islamism." When he was commissioned as an officer in the US Navy, Jasser took an oath to defend the Constitution "against all enemies, foreign and domestic," and he sees no enemy more hostile to the Constitution today than the ideology of radical Islam. CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda and Al Azhar, Shi'ite ayatollahs and Wahhabist sheiks — whatever their differences in tactics and style, they are as one in seeking universal compliance with sharia.
Here in America," says Jasser, "Muslims, Christians, and Jews can practice their faith freely and without fear. Precisely because the Constitution forbids any state religion, all religions live together in harmony. I wish the Muslim world would show such tolerance! As an American, I cherish that liberty. The Islamists would take it away." In the global conflict between Muslim theocracy and secular democracy, Jasser has no trouble choosing sides. "I venerate the Koran, but I want to live under the Constitution," he says. "Under Islamism, the Koran would be the Constitution."
On 9/11, many Americans woke up to the fact that a deadly enemy is arrayed against us and that effective counterterrorism is critical to our national security. But even more critical is the need to delegitimize the Islamist message that resonates with so many Muslims. To permanently end the "war on terrorism," we must defeat the ideology that motivates the terrorists. We have no allies more valuable in that cause than Muslim reformers like Zuhdi Jasser, in whose passion for pluralism and liberty lies the hope of an Islamic Enlightenment.
In Defense of Income Inequality
Peter Schwartz, The Ayn Rand Institute (via Principles in Practice)
Income inequality used to be a rabble-rousing issue of the left. Now it is being raised by mainstream figures, from the head of the Federal Reserve to President Bush, who are apologetically trying to offer solutions. But what is the actual problem they wish to solve? Certainly, it is not a growth in poverty. To the contrary, between 1979 and 2006—the period during which income inequality has supposedly become more acute—real wages for the median worker rose 11.5%. Even workers in the lowest tenth percentile had an increase of 4%.
No, the alleged problem is not that some are becoming poor—but that others are too rich. The complaint is that while the bottom tier enjoyed a 4% rise in income, the top tier enjoyed a 34% increase. The complaint is that over the past 25 years, the share of income of the top fifth of households climbed from 42% to 50%, while that of the bottom fifth fell from 7% to 5%.
But this development represents an injustice only if we use a perverse standard of evaluation. It is unjust only if we measure someone's economic status not by what he has, but by what others have—i.e., only if he benefits not by making more money, but by making his neighbor have less.
This is the standard of egalitarianism—the standard that demands a uniformity of income, regardless of anyone's ability or effort. It is the standard of envy, whereby a problem exists whenever some have more, of anything, than others. And the egalitarian's solution is to eliminate all such inequalities.
Egalitarianism is the antithesis of the valid tenet of political equality, under which we have equal rights.
Who Pays America's Tax Burden, and Who Gets the Most Government Spending?
The Tax Foundation
While many studies answer the question of who pays taxes in America, the question of who gets the most government spending is often overlooked. Just as some Americans bear a larger portion of the nation's tax burden than others, some Americans also receive a larger share of the nation's government spending.
This report summarizes the key findings of a comprehensive 2007 Tax Foundation study of federal, state and local taxes and government spending. The results show that when we consider the distribution of government spending as well as taxes, it provides a dramatically altered view of how U.S. fiscal policy affects Americans at different income levels than is apparent from the distribution of tax burdens alone.
Overall, we find that America's lowest-earning one-fifth of households received roughly $8.21 in government spending for each dollar of taxes paid in 2004. Households with middle-incomes received $1.30 per tax dollar, and America's highest-earning households received $0.41. Government spending targeted at the lowest-earning 60 percent of U.S. households is larger than what they paid in federal, state and local taxes. In 2004, between $1.03 trillion and $1.53 trillion was redistributed downward from the two highest income quintiles to the three lowest income quintiles through government taxes and spending policy.
These findings suggest tax distributions alone do not tell Americans how much the nation's fiscal system is helping or hurting low-income households. To answer that, we must look beyond tax burdens to government spending as well. Lawmakers who ignore the distribution of government spending risk making policy judgments based on an incorrect set of facts about the United States fiscal system.
Alex Epstein, The Ayn Rand Institute (via Principles in Practice)
In response to recent rises in gas prices, we are once again hearing calls for the government to "do something" to force prices lower. But no matter what the price of gasoline is, such calls are wrong. All market fluctuations in the price of gasoline, up or down, are a good thing—and none of the government's business.
When customers' demand for gasoline increases relative to the supply, the sellers of gasoline raise their prices. As the producers and owners of gasoline, this is their right—and we should be glad that they exercise it. Not only do price increases encourage future production, but without such price increases, we would very quickly see shortages as customer demand for cheap gasoline far outstripped the available supply.
[…]
There is no moral or economic justification for any politician or consumer to declare market prices "too high," and to use the government to coerce lower prices. To do so violates both the rights of gasoline producers and their productive customers to set voluntary prices—and, in doing so, causes destructive shortages. When shortages exist, how much gasoline one is able to get depends not on one's willingness to pay a mutually agreeable price, but on one's political pull to secure rations, or on whether one has time on one's hands to wait in endless lines (as in the 1970s).
There is only one sense in which we are entitled to tell the government to "do something" about gasoline prices: insofar as these prices are made artificially high by the government's many regulations on oil and gasoline production.
[…]
The government is right to take action if an oil company provably threatens or harms a person's property. But to impose huge costs on oil companies and their customers in the name of preserving untouched nature is unconscionable.
What should the government do about gasoline prices? Get its hands out of the market—and keep them off.
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Other links
The Ayn Rand Institute
The Objective Standard
Capitalism Magazine
4Commonsense.net
OpinionJournal.com
Junk Science
Activism Humor
The Intellectual Activist
Web Logs
Principles in Practice– Principled commentary on cultural matters and current events from “The Objective Standard”
Cox and Forkum – Political cartoons and commentary
Noodle Food
The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid – Donald Luskin
Dollars and Crosses – CapitalismMagazine.com
Rule of Reason – The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism
4CommonSense
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