This Week on the Web (November 11 – November 17)

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Quote of the Week:

For Rousseau and his intellectual descendents, compassion—the desire to relieve the pain and suffering of others—is a pre- or sub- rational sentiment that serves man as an automatic, immediate, and infallible moral guide. It is a strictly perceptual-level phenomenon of seeing and feeling the pain and suffering of others, of being overwhelmed by a catastrophic sense of shame and guilt, and of then reacting on one’s range-of-the-moment feelings. According to this sentimental ideology, needs-as-claims are the fundamental human reality; “intuitions” or “feelings” are the way to know, evaluate, and judge such facts; and compassion is the virtue of feeling and acting accordingly.

- C. Bradley Thompson ("The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism")





Editorial Cartoon of the Week:
Flashback
Cox and Forkum




COMMENTARY

White guilt doesn't help blacks
John Stossel, Townhall.com

A white author, Tim Wise, gets applause from students on American campuses for talking about "white privilege." Wise's message is in huge demand -- he does 80 speaking engagements a year. When we taped an appearance at Skidmore College, students of all races praised him as "eloquent," "phenomenal," and "so on point."

But among some black intellectuals a new perspective has emerged, one that puts racism and "white privilege" low on the list of problems plaguing black Americans. Shelby Steele's latest book, "WhiteGuilt", argues that whites do blacks no favors wringing their hands about white privilege.

Whites' preoccupation with guilt and compensation such as affirmative action is actually a subtle form of racism, Steele says. "One of the things that is clear about white privilege, and so many of the arguments for diversity that pretend to be compensatory, is that they advantage whites. They make the argument that whites can solve [black people's] problems. ... The problem with that is ... you reinforce white supremacy all over again. And black dependency."

Steele says that when blacks make racism their central focus, they mire themselves in destructive victimization -- and sabotage their own chances for advancement.

"White privilege is a disingenuous idea," he says. In fact, now "there is "minority privilege."
[…]

"If I'm a black high school student today, there are white American institutions, universities, hovering over me to offer me opportunities. Almost every institution has a diversity committee. Every country club now has a diversity committee. I've been asked to join so many clubs, I can't tell you. There is a hunger in this society to do right racially, to not be racist. ... And I feel rather privileged by it. I don't have to even look for opportunities, in many cases, they come right to me," he adds.

But there is still racism in America. At ABC News I've aired hidden-camera video that showed salesclerks spying on black customers, cab drivers passing blacks to pick up whites, landlords lying to blacks about vacancies, and employers favoring white-sounding names. So don't whites owe blacks compensation for that and for past injustices?

Steele answers, "You owe us a fair society. There's not much you can do beyond that. There isn't anything you can do to lift my life up. I have to do that."


The minimum wage is viewed as an economic free lunch. It isn't
Opinion Journal

Raising the minimum wage has been a hardy perennial of the left for decades now. What is striking is the degree to which is has come to be seen as an economic free lunch. Even some reputedly unbiased economists have started to tout the view that raising the minimum wage has no discernible effect on job creation.

But if this were true, they'd be calling for a $10, $20 or even $50-an-hour minimum wage. They're not, and neither is Nancy Pelosi. That's because the law of demand is one of the most dependable precepts of economics. It says that when the price of something goes up, demand for it goes down. An employee's wages are the price the employer pays for his services, so raising their wages means forcing employers to pay more for workers. The price goes up and there is downward pressure on demand for workers. Other things being equal, jobs are lost.


Promises, Promises
Robert J. Samuelson, Newsweek

Although Democrats didn't promise much—they benefited heavily from unhappiness with the war in Iraq—they still succumbed to exaggeration. Their sound bites ran ahead of plausible solutions. Consider three familiar themes. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy; inaction on the minimum wage; and Republican opposition to negotiating Medicare drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies. All are of a piece. The Republicans are lackeys for the wealthy business class; they don't care much about the poor.

But what can the Democrats do? Let's see.


Sometimes Accomplishment is a BAD Thing
Michael Hurd, DrHurd.com

Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, who likely will become the new Senate majority leader next year, said: "We want to be a part of a Congress that accomplishes something."

Watch out!

Let's take a look at what the Democrats in Congress hope to "accomplish":

Raising the minimum wage--translation: outlaw jobs that pay below a certain amount per hour;

Withdrawal of troops from Iraq--translation: end all military action of any kind, both present and future, in Iraq or anywhere else; substitute all military action in the future with the "U.N. process" which means: absolutely nothing, with the aid and help of our enemies.

Helping middle class families with college tuition--translation: subsidize tuition even more than it already is, thereby causing schools to raise their prices even more;

Helping middle class families with health care--translation: regulate and subsidize medical care even more, thereby causing medical services and health insurance to become even more costly than they already are.



Just visiting
Ed Feulner, Townhall.com

At least two detainees at the holding facility here skipped lunch today because they’re on a hunger strike. Which is a pity for them -- the food was delicious.

By contrast, the steady stream of news about “Gitmo” tends to leave one with a bad taste.

On the day I toured the facility, lawyers for 100 detainees were in court insisting their clients have a right to be heard in American civilian courts. And a recent McClatchy newspaper story claimed that “reports of mistreatment and torture have dogged the facility since it opened,” and added, “critics … have described an island gulag of desolation and despair.”

What missing from the criticism is any sense of perspective. For one thing, the most outspoken critics of American policy haven’t bothered to visit Guantanamo. If they did, they’d see that the U.S. military is using the facility to hold roughly 400 enemy combatants. And despite all the criticism, Gitmo’s the most transparent facility ever used to house prisoners of war.


How much does politics count?
Walter Williams, Townhall.com

Blacks and Hispanics, especially blacks, are the most politically loyal people in the nation. It's often preached and taken as gospel that the only way black people can progress is through racial politics and government programs, but how true is that? Let's look at it.

In 1940, poverty among black families was 87 percent and fell to 47 percent by 1960. Would someone tell me what anti-poverty program or civil-rights legislation accounted for this economic advance that exceeded any other 20-year interval? A significant chunk of that progress occurred through migration from rural areas in the South to big Northern cities. Between 1960 and 1980, black poverty fell roughly 17 percent and fell one percent during the '70s. Might this have been a continuation of a trend starting much earlier, or was it a miracle of the civil-rights movement or President Johnson's War on Poverty?




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Other links

The Ayn Rand Institute OpinionJournal.com

The Objective Standard The Intellectual Activist

Capitalism Magazine Junk Science

4Commonsense.net Activism Humor



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

The Intellectual Activist – selections and headlines from TIA Daily-- pro-individualist news and analysis

Rule of Reason – The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism

Contemporary History

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