This Week on the Web (December 23 – December 29)
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Quote of the Week:
“There's nothing so arrogant as a person preaching the virtue of humility.”
- Michael Hurd
*************************************************
NEWS
Small businesses brace for minimum wage hike
MSNBC.com
Economists and politicians may disagree about the economic impact of a looming increase in the U.S. minimum wage, but Ohio restaurateur Dean Gregory already knows how much it will cost him.
“We've already figured out it's going to cost us between $125,000 and $150,000 a year. I'll have to raise my prices, definitely,” Gregory said.
[…]
While Schneider didn't bother to fight the proposed wage increase — he said he knew popular opinion was against him — he thinks the public may regret its generosity.
“I don't think consumers quite understand that at some point they're going to have to pay for the increased cost of goods,” Schneider said, pointing out that the poorest Americans — which the wage increase was supposed to help — will feel the pinch of rising prices the most.
*******************************
COMMENTARY
Moral Values Without Religion
Peter Schwartz, Capitalism Magazine
Does morality depend upon religion? Most people believe it does, which is a major reason behind the appeal of the religious right. People believe that without faith in a supernatural authority, we can have no moral values--no moral absolutes, no black-and-white distinctions, no firm demarcation between good and evil--in life or in politics. This is the assumption underlying Justice Antonin Scalia's assertion that "government derives its authority from God," since only religious faith can supposedly provide moral constraints on human action.
And what draws people to this bizarre premise--the premise that there is no rational basis for refraining from murder, rape or anarchism? The left's persistent assault on moral values.
[…]
The real alternative to the leftist claptrap is a morality of reason. Such a morality begins with the individual's life as the primary value and identifies the further values that are demonstrably required to sustain that life. It observes that man's nature demands that we live not by random urges or by animal instincts, but by the faculty that distinguishes us from animals and on which our existence fundamentally depends: rationality.
********************************************
Health Care is Not a Right
Leonard Peikoff, Capitalism Magazine
Most people who oppose socialized medicine do so on the grounds that it is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical; i.e., it is a noble idea -- which just somehow does not work. I do not agree that socialized medicine is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical. Of course, it is impractical -- it does not work -- but I hold that it is impractical because it is immoral. This is not a case of noble in theory but a failure in practice; it is a case of vicious in theory and therefore a disaster in practice. So I'm going to leave it to other speakers to concentrate on the practical flaws in the Clinton health plan. I want to focus on the moral issue at stake. So long as people believe that socialized medicine is a noble plan, there is no way to fight it. You cannot stop a noble plan -- not if it really is noble. The only way you can defeat it is to unmask it -- to show that it is the very opposite of noble. Then at least you have a fighting chance.
What is morality in this context? The American concept of it is officially stated in the Declaration of Independence. It upholds man's unalienable, individual rights. The term "rights," note, is a moral (not just a political) term; it tells us that a certain course of behavior is right, sanctioned, proper, a prerogative to be respected by others, not interfered with -- and that anyone who violates a man's rights is: wrong, morally wrong, unsanctioned, evil.
*******************************************************
The Unlearned Lesson of Enron--5 Years Later
Alex Epstein, Capitalism Magazine
Enron was brought down by irrational business decisions, not fraud.
Five years ago this month, Enron Corporation--number 7 on the Fortune 500--filed for bankruptcy, culminating a collapse that shocked America.
It is commonly believed that Enron fell because its leaders, eager to make money, schemed to bilk investors. The ethical lesson, it is said, is that we must teach (or force) a businessman to curb his selfish, profit-seeking "impulses" before they turn criminal.
But all this is wrong.
Enron was not brought down by fraud; while the company committed fraud, its fraud was primarily an attempt to cover up tens of billions of dollars already lost--not embezzled--in irrational business decisions. Most of its executives believed that Enron was a basically productive company that could be righted. This is why Chairman Ken Lay did not flee to the Caymans with riches, but stayed through the end.
**************************************
The Wages of Growth: To lift worker incomes, cut the corporate tax rate
Opinion Journal
The latest reports on wages and income have been rolling in, and with them we can discount one more canard about the current economic expansion--namely, that wages are stagnant and workers are doing far more poorly than they did in that second Age of Pericles known as the 1990s.
Over the past year, the real average wage for non-supervisory employees has risen 2.8%. That equates to about a $1,200 increase in purchasing power for the typical household this year. Last year, real median household income was also up 1.1% after inflation. This rise in take-home pay helps to explain how Americans have had the disposable income this Christmas shopping season to pay $600 for PlayStation 3 computer games and $150 for the Kid-Tough Digital Camera for three-year-olds.
It is true that income and wages are still about 2% below the peak they hit in 2000 before the dot-com bust and recession. But a new Treasury Department analysis finds that, measuring from the start of the peak of each expansion, wages so far in this decade's cycle are running ahead of the recovery pace during the 1990s. Thus the "stagnant wages" story can join the "jobless recovery," the "outsourcing" crisis and the runaway budget deficit as other tales of woe that have all turned out to be evanescent.
********************************************************************************************
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
**********************************************************************************************************
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who may be interested (or they can sign up by sending an email with “Week on the Web” in the subject line to rsmurphy@hotmail.com).
Send links to articles that you feel would be a good addition to this newsletter to rsmurphy@hotmail.com.
To receive this newsletter in Microsoft Word format, please reply to this email and include “Week on the Web - MS Word” on the subject line.
If you wish to unsubscribe, please reply to this email and include “Week on the Web - unsubscribe” on the subject line.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Friday, December 22, 2006
This Week on the Web (December 16 – December 22)
********************************************************************************************
COMMENTARY
Christmas Should be More Commercial
Leonard Peikoff, Capitalism Magazine
Christmas in America is an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist productivity, and the enjoyment of life. Yet all of these are castigated as "materialistic"; the real meaning of the holiday, we are told, is assorted Nativity tales and altruist injunctions (e.g., love thy neighbor) that no one takes seriously.
In fact, Christmas as we celebrate it today is a 19th-century American invention. The freedom and prosperity of post-Civil War America created the happiest nation in history. The result was the desire to celebrate, to revel in the goods and pleasures of life on earth. Christmas (which was not a federal holiday until 1870) became the leading American outlet for this feeling.
[…]
Of course, the Puritans denounced Santa as the Anti-Christ, because he pushed Jesus to the background. Furthermore, Santa implicitly rejected the whole Christian ethics. He did not denounce the rich and demand that they give everything to the poor; on the contrary, he gave gifts to rich and poor children alike. Nor is Santa a champion of Christian mercy or unconditional love. On the contrary, he is for justice -- Santa gives only to good children, not to bad ones.
All the best customs of Christmas, from carols to trees to spectacular decorations, have their root in pagan ideas and practices. These customs were greatly amplified by American culture, as the product of reason, science, business, worldliness, and egoism, i.e., the pursuit of happiness.
America's tragedy is that its intellectual leaders have typically tried to replace happiness with guilt by insisting that the spiritual meaning of Christmas is religion and self-sacrifice for Tiny Tim or his equivalent. But the spiritual must start with recognizing reality. Life requires reason, selfishness, capitalism; that is what Christmas should celebrate -- and really, underneath all the pretense, that is what it does celebrate. It is time to take the Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly egoistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration.
******************************************************************************
Don't Say Grace. Say Justice.
Craig Biddle, Principles in Practice
The religious tradition of saying grace before meals becomes especially popular around the holidays, when we all are reminded of how fortunate we are to have an abundance of life-sustaining goods and services at our disposal. But there is a grave injustice involved in this tradition. It is the injustice of thanking an alleged “God” for the productive accomplishments of actual men.
Where do the ideas, principles, constitutions, governments, and laws that protect our rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness come from? What is the source of the meals, medicines, homes, automobiles, and fighter jets that keep us alive and enable us to flourish? Who is responsible for our freedom, prosperity, and well-being?
Is freedom a gift from God? It is not. Freedom, the absence of physical coercion, is a political condition resulting from the rational, principled thought and action of men—men such as Aristotle, John Locke, the Founding Fathers, and American soldiers.
******************************************************************************
Abundant energy supplies off-limits
Ben Lieberman, Washington Times
Good news: The more we look for oil and natural gas in the United States, the more we find. That might even be great news -- if so much of the energy wasn't out of reach. According to a new Interior Department report, there are substantial onshore energy deposits on federal lands. A companion study of offshore energy reserves released earlier this year reached the same conclusion.
But both reports found much of this energy is either explicitly off-limits or hampered by regulatory constraints that effectively make it so. At least part of the solution to high oil and natural gas prices lies right under our feet, but Congress has failed to change the laws and regulations that keep this domestic energy locked up.
Federal lands are critical because most of America's onshore energy is in the West and Alaska, where more than half the land is under federal control.
[…]
In addition to spreading overblown warnings about the environmental impact of drilling, many anti-energy activists and politicians insist America's untapped oil and gas reserves are merely a "drop in the bucket" and therefore not worth the bother. But the Interior Department reports put the lie to this claim.
When Congress takes up this issue again, it shouldn't ignore the significant amount of energy we have right here in the United States. It's time to make this energy available to the American people.
******************************************************************************
The Real Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming: Skeptics Have Valid Arguments
Tom DeWeese, Capitalism Magazine
Imagine living in a world where no one is allowed to think or act independently--only state-approved human responses are acceptable. To break the rule and engage in forbidden thought would result in terrible retribution, perhaps leading literally to ones destruction.
That’s the kind of world apparently desired by the global warming Chicken Littles. It seems they are prepared to do anything to achieve it. Case in point is an outrageous letter to ExxonMobil Chairman Rex Tillerson on October 27, 2006. The letter was sent by two United States Senators, Olympia Snowe (R-MA), and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV).
The letter derides Exxon for helping to fund global warming “deniers,” (a term the global warming crowd is using more and more these days to try to draw a parallel with those who deny the Holocaust).
[…]
The last time human kind was strapped into such a mental straight jacket was during the Inquisition of the Dark Ages. The period was called the Dark Ages because it was an era of ignorance, superstition and social chaos and repression. Anyone caught questioning the doctrine or power of the church was labeled a heretic and found his or her way to the rack or into the middle of a fire while tied to a stake. The church, of course, was practicing its own brand of globally acceptable truth.
Today, the new heretics to the religion of global warming are those who question whether scientific facts support the dire warnings that are screaming from the newspaper headlines and from environmental groups’ press releases.
******************************************************************************
Islam and Greens Go Postal
Edward Cline, Rule of Reason
CAIR, as I discussed in that commentary, has been busy with legal activism in the spirit of the ACLU. As though to underscore my Patrick Henry remarks, on December 19th the Muslim "civil liberties" organization has demanded that Republican representative Virgil Goode of Virginia apologize to "members of the Muslim community in his district" for "anti-Muslim" remarks in a private letter to the head of the local Sierra Club. (See CAIR's website under "news releases.")
Goode wrote, in reaction to the expressed wish of newly elected Muslim representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota to be sworn into office on a Koran:
"I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran."
That is Virgil Goode's position, and he may say what he pleases. He is probably one of those who believe that America was founded on Christian principles, and that any elected official, in any level of government, should be sworn into office with a hand on a Bible. In practice, it may as well be a chunk of the Blarney Stone. I don't believe any elected or appointed official over the last century has ever strictly "upheld the Constitution." If any had, would we be saddled with a wealth-consuming, rights-violating welfare state that is drifting towards out-and-out statism?
Ideally, if some document is required to ritually sanctify an oath of office, elected officials and justices should be sworn in on a copy of the Ten Amendments, not on a tract containing the Ten Commandments or the ravings of any creed's "prophet."
******************************************************************************
George W. Bush's Time Machine
Michael Hurd, DrHurd.com
President Bush's decision to expand the number of troops in Iraq is more than an acknowledgement that the U.S. is losing the war. It's a statement that the U.S. will rely on conventional military forces in fighting the war against terrorism. Bush has framed the entire rationale for sending additional troops in the context of fighting a long-term war against terrorism. Well, of course we're going to fight a long-term war against terrorism. But does this mean that we're going to send endless numbers of particular troops to one particular country, without considering troops elsewhere -- and without considering other forms of military intervention aside from conventional warfare?
How ironic -- and how mortally dangerous -- that while rogue, religiously fanatical and medieval regimes, such as Iran, acquire nuclear weapons, that the U.S. steps into a pre-World War II time machine, operating on the assumption that ground troops are the only defense we have against terrorism.
******************************************************************************
If Only Understood – Payday Loans
Ryan Kruger and Mike Catalano, Townhall.com
Recent outcry for a ban on payday lenders made me wonder how many of those pointing fingers ever tried to open one of the doors they want to kick down. Have they listened to a customer describe what is on the other side? Payday lenders live behind our eyes and just outside our understanding. The tasteful accusation at fancy dinner parties is that they prey on the low income worker, trapping him into unsavory interest rates. The hosts need to ask the caterer or nanny used that same evening, for their opinions.
[…]
The most damaging claim, and consequently the most believed and quoted (as above), is that payday lenders charge an annual percentage yield (APY) of 390%. I have yet to read about the simple truth on the other side of that math. There is typically a $15 fee on a $100 loan to be paid back within two weeks. The APY’s calculation, however, assumes it is not paid back over any two weeks, until an annual (26 two-week periods x $15 per period = $390) percentage rate soars to 390%. Using that same math would reveal an average bank’s NSF’s APR is over 700%, and the average credit card late fee’s APR is over 850%.
What’s not quite as outrageous is the quiet fact that payday customers can and will pay their loans back which makes this APR calculation completely meaningless. But don’t take my word for it and you can even ignore the facts. Instead, just try to pay 390% and see what happens. Most payday lenders won’t allow it - or anything even close. Lenders and state laws typically limit rollovers to 4 weeks, and many allow none at all.
Capitalists solve more problems than Congress every day because they are paid to listen to what their customers need, not elected by telling them what they want. Customers are the best regulators, capable of exacting the harshest penalties because they vote with their feet.
********************************************************************************************
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
**********************************************************************************************************
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who may be interested (or they can sign up by sending an email with “Week on the Web” in the subject line to rsmurphy@hotmail.com).
Send links to articles that you feel would be a good addition to this newsletter to rsmurphy@hotmail.com.
To receive this newsletter in Microsoft Word format, please reply to this email and include “Week on the Web - MS Word” on the subject line.
If you wish to unsubscribe, please reply to this email and include “Week on the Web - unsubscribe” on the subject line.
********************************************************************************************
COMMENTARY
Christmas Should be More Commercial
Leonard Peikoff, Capitalism Magazine
Christmas in America is an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist productivity, and the enjoyment of life. Yet all of these are castigated as "materialistic"; the real meaning of the holiday, we are told, is assorted Nativity tales and altruist injunctions (e.g., love thy neighbor) that no one takes seriously.
In fact, Christmas as we celebrate it today is a 19th-century American invention. The freedom and prosperity of post-Civil War America created the happiest nation in history. The result was the desire to celebrate, to revel in the goods and pleasures of life on earth. Christmas (which was not a federal holiday until 1870) became the leading American outlet for this feeling.
[…]
Of course, the Puritans denounced Santa as the Anti-Christ, because he pushed Jesus to the background. Furthermore, Santa implicitly rejected the whole Christian ethics. He did not denounce the rich and demand that they give everything to the poor; on the contrary, he gave gifts to rich and poor children alike. Nor is Santa a champion of Christian mercy or unconditional love. On the contrary, he is for justice -- Santa gives only to good children, not to bad ones.
All the best customs of Christmas, from carols to trees to spectacular decorations, have their root in pagan ideas and practices. These customs were greatly amplified by American culture, as the product of reason, science, business, worldliness, and egoism, i.e., the pursuit of happiness.
America's tragedy is that its intellectual leaders have typically tried to replace happiness with guilt by insisting that the spiritual meaning of Christmas is religion and self-sacrifice for Tiny Tim or his equivalent. But the spiritual must start with recognizing reality. Life requires reason, selfishness, capitalism; that is what Christmas should celebrate -- and really, underneath all the pretense, that is what it does celebrate. It is time to take the Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly egoistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration.
******************************************************************************
Don't Say Grace. Say Justice.
Craig Biddle, Principles in Practice
The religious tradition of saying grace before meals becomes especially popular around the holidays, when we all are reminded of how fortunate we are to have an abundance of life-sustaining goods and services at our disposal. But there is a grave injustice involved in this tradition. It is the injustice of thanking an alleged “God” for the productive accomplishments of actual men.
Where do the ideas, principles, constitutions, governments, and laws that protect our rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness come from? What is the source of the meals, medicines, homes, automobiles, and fighter jets that keep us alive and enable us to flourish? Who is responsible for our freedom, prosperity, and well-being?
Is freedom a gift from God? It is not. Freedom, the absence of physical coercion, is a political condition resulting from the rational, principled thought and action of men—men such as Aristotle, John Locke, the Founding Fathers, and American soldiers.
******************************************************************************
Abundant energy supplies off-limits
Ben Lieberman, Washington Times
Good news: The more we look for oil and natural gas in the United States, the more we find. That might even be great news -- if so much of the energy wasn't out of reach. According to a new Interior Department report, there are substantial onshore energy deposits on federal lands. A companion study of offshore energy reserves released earlier this year reached the same conclusion.
But both reports found much of this energy is either explicitly off-limits or hampered by regulatory constraints that effectively make it so. At least part of the solution to high oil and natural gas prices lies right under our feet, but Congress has failed to change the laws and regulations that keep this domestic energy locked up.
Federal lands are critical because most of America's onshore energy is in the West and Alaska, where more than half the land is under federal control.
[…]
In addition to spreading overblown warnings about the environmental impact of drilling, many anti-energy activists and politicians insist America's untapped oil and gas reserves are merely a "drop in the bucket" and therefore not worth the bother. But the Interior Department reports put the lie to this claim.
When Congress takes up this issue again, it shouldn't ignore the significant amount of energy we have right here in the United States. It's time to make this energy available to the American people.
******************************************************************************
The Real Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming: Skeptics Have Valid Arguments
Tom DeWeese, Capitalism Magazine
Imagine living in a world where no one is allowed to think or act independently--only state-approved human responses are acceptable. To break the rule and engage in forbidden thought would result in terrible retribution, perhaps leading literally to ones destruction.
That’s the kind of world apparently desired by the global warming Chicken Littles. It seems they are prepared to do anything to achieve it. Case in point is an outrageous letter to ExxonMobil Chairman Rex Tillerson on October 27, 2006. The letter was sent by two United States Senators, Olympia Snowe (R-MA), and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV).
The letter derides Exxon for helping to fund global warming “deniers,” (a term the global warming crowd is using more and more these days to try to draw a parallel with those who deny the Holocaust).
[…]
The last time human kind was strapped into such a mental straight jacket was during the Inquisition of the Dark Ages. The period was called the Dark Ages because it was an era of ignorance, superstition and social chaos and repression. Anyone caught questioning the doctrine or power of the church was labeled a heretic and found his or her way to the rack or into the middle of a fire while tied to a stake. The church, of course, was practicing its own brand of globally acceptable truth.
Today, the new heretics to the religion of global warming are those who question whether scientific facts support the dire warnings that are screaming from the newspaper headlines and from environmental groups’ press releases.
******************************************************************************
Islam and Greens Go Postal
Edward Cline, Rule of Reason
CAIR, as I discussed in that commentary, has been busy with legal activism in the spirit of the ACLU. As though to underscore my Patrick Henry remarks, on December 19th the Muslim "civil liberties" organization has demanded that Republican representative Virgil Goode of Virginia apologize to "members of the Muslim community in his district" for "anti-Muslim" remarks in a private letter to the head of the local Sierra Club. (See CAIR's website under "news releases.")
Goode wrote, in reaction to the expressed wish of newly elected Muslim representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota to be sworn into office on a Koran:
"I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran."
That is Virgil Goode's position, and he may say what he pleases. He is probably one of those who believe that America was founded on Christian principles, and that any elected official, in any level of government, should be sworn into office with a hand on a Bible. In practice, it may as well be a chunk of the Blarney Stone. I don't believe any elected or appointed official over the last century has ever strictly "upheld the Constitution." If any had, would we be saddled with a wealth-consuming, rights-violating welfare state that is drifting towards out-and-out statism?
Ideally, if some document is required to ritually sanctify an oath of office, elected officials and justices should be sworn in on a copy of the Ten Amendments, not on a tract containing the Ten Commandments or the ravings of any creed's "prophet."
******************************************************************************
George W. Bush's Time Machine
Michael Hurd, DrHurd.com
President Bush's decision to expand the number of troops in Iraq is more than an acknowledgement that the U.S. is losing the war. It's a statement that the U.S. will rely on conventional military forces in fighting the war against terrorism. Bush has framed the entire rationale for sending additional troops in the context of fighting a long-term war against terrorism. Well, of course we're going to fight a long-term war against terrorism. But does this mean that we're going to send endless numbers of particular troops to one particular country, without considering troops elsewhere -- and without considering other forms of military intervention aside from conventional warfare?
How ironic -- and how mortally dangerous -- that while rogue, religiously fanatical and medieval regimes, such as Iran, acquire nuclear weapons, that the U.S. steps into a pre-World War II time machine, operating on the assumption that ground troops are the only defense we have against terrorism.
******************************************************************************
If Only Understood – Payday Loans
Ryan Kruger and Mike Catalano, Townhall.com
Recent outcry for a ban on payday lenders made me wonder how many of those pointing fingers ever tried to open one of the doors they want to kick down. Have they listened to a customer describe what is on the other side? Payday lenders live behind our eyes and just outside our understanding. The tasteful accusation at fancy dinner parties is that they prey on the low income worker, trapping him into unsavory interest rates. The hosts need to ask the caterer or nanny used that same evening, for their opinions.
[…]
The most damaging claim, and consequently the most believed and quoted (as above), is that payday lenders charge an annual percentage yield (APY) of 390%. I have yet to read about the simple truth on the other side of that math. There is typically a $15 fee on a $100 loan to be paid back within two weeks. The APY’s calculation, however, assumes it is not paid back over any two weeks, until an annual (26 two-week periods x $15 per period = $390) percentage rate soars to 390%. Using that same math would reveal an average bank’s NSF’s APR is over 700%, and the average credit card late fee’s APR is over 850%.
What’s not quite as outrageous is the quiet fact that payday customers can and will pay their loans back which makes this APR calculation completely meaningless. But don’t take my word for it and you can even ignore the facts. Instead, just try to pay 390% and see what happens. Most payday lenders won’t allow it - or anything even close. Lenders and state laws typically limit rollovers to 4 weeks, and many allow none at all.
Capitalists solve more problems than Congress every day because they are paid to listen to what their customers need, not elected by telling them what they want. Customers are the best regulators, capable of exacting the harshest penalties because they vote with their feet.
********************************************************************************************
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
**********************************************************************************************************
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who may be interested (or they can sign up by sending an email with “Week on the Web” in the subject line to rsmurphy@hotmail.com).
Send links to articles that you feel would be a good addition to this newsletter to rsmurphy@hotmail.com.
To receive this newsletter in Microsoft Word format, please reply to this email and include “Week on the Web - MS Word” on the subject line.
If you wish to unsubscribe, please reply to this email and include “Week on the Web - unsubscribe” on the subject line.
Friday, December 15, 2006
This Week on the Web (December 9 – December 15)
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Editorial Cartoon of the Week:
Saudi Zakat
Cox and Forkum
*****************************************************
COMMENTARY
Senators' Letter Is a Violation of ExxonMobil's Freedom of Speech
ARI Media
On October 27 Sens. Rockefeller (D., W.Va.) and Snowe (R., Maine) sent a letter to ExxonMobil's CEO requesting that ExxonMobil end its financial assistance and support of groups and individuals who reject global warming claims, and urging it to "publicly acknowledge both the reality of climate change and the role of humans in causing or exacerbating it."
"This letter constitutes an outrageous violation of ExxonMobil's right to free speech," said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "Whether or not one believes there is a threat of catastrophic global warming, the government has no right to tell ExxonMobil what ideas it should advocate or fund.
"Free speech means the freedom to promote any idea one wishes without the danger of suppression or punitive action by the government. When two United States senators declare that a company has 'manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years,' that is clearly a thinly veiled threat, and any sensible organization must regard it as such.
"Observe that the senators do not offer a single fact intended to convince ExxonMobil of the truth of their position. Their message is not 'agree with us because,' but 'agree with us or else.' That is a message appropriate to a dictator, not to the representatives of a free nation.
"Defenders of free speech must stand up against this vicious attempt to intimidate ExxonMobil into embracing the global warming cause, and declare that the government has no business telling Americans what they should think or say."
*****************************************************
In Praise of Chain Stores
Virginia Postrel, The Atlantic
The idea that America was once filled with wildly varied business establishments is largely a myth. Big cities could, and still can, support more retail niches than small towns. And in a less competitive national market, there was certainly more variation in business efficiency—in prices, service, and merchandise quality. But the range of retailing ideas in any given town was rarely that great. One deli or diner or lunch counter or cafeteria was pretty much like every other one. A hardware store was a hardware store, a pharmacy a pharmacy. Before it became a ubiquitous part of urban life, Starbucks was, in most American cities, a radically new idea.
[…]
The contempt for chains represents a brand-obsessed view of place, as if store names were all that mattered to a city’s character. For many critics, the name on the store really is all that matters. The planning consultant Robert Gibbs works with cities that want to revive their downtowns, and he also helps developers find space for retailers. To his frustration, he finds that many cities actually turn away national chains, preferring a moribund downtown that seems authentically local. But, he says, the same local activists who oppose chains “want specialty retail that sells exactly what the chains sell—the same price, the same fit, the same qualities, the same sizes, the same brands, even.” You can show people pictures of a Pottery Barn with nothing but the name changed, he says, and they’ll love the store. So downtown stores stay empty, or sell low-value tourist items like candles and kites, while the chains open on the edge of town. In the name of urbanism, officials and activists in cities like Ann Arbor and Fort Collins, Colorado, are driving business to the suburbs. “If people like shopping at the Banana Republic or the Gap, if that’s your market—or Payless Shoes—why not?” says an exasperated Gibbs. “Why not sell the goods and services people want?”
*****************************************************
Our Saudi Foes
Edward Cline, Rule of Reason
Enough about the Iranian bogeyman, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad! He is our certifiable enemy. Let's shift our focus for a moment to our venal ally in the "war on terror," Saudi Arabia, his chief rival in the conquest or destruction of the U.S.Ahmadinejad, addressing a conference in Tehran a year ago, proclaimed that "those who doubt, to those who ask is it possible, or those who do not believe, I say accomplishment of a world without America and Israel is both possible and feasible." The Saudis agree with half that statement; for them, the eradication of Israel is a mutual goal, but it would rather convert the U.S. into an Islamic nation, instead of destroy it.
*****************************************************
Oh, brother
Jeff Jacoby, Jewish World Review
Is it a good idea to avoid food made with trans fats? That depends on what you consider good. Trans fats are said to raise the risk of heart disease by increasing levels of LDL ("bad") cholesterol. They also contribute to the appealing taste of many baked and fried foods, and provide an economical alternative to saturated fats. As with most things in life, trans fats carry both risks and benefits. Do the possible long-term health concerns outweigh the short-term pleasures? That's a question of values — one that scientists and regulators aren't competent to answer.
Different people have different priorities. They make different choices about the fats in their diet, just as they make different choices about whether to drive a Toyota, drink their coffee black, or get a tattoo. In a free society, men and women decide such things for themselves. In New York, men and women are now a little less free. And since a loss of liberty anywhere is a threat to liberty everywhere, the rest of us are now a little less free as well.
But the slow erosion of freedom doesn't trouble the lifestyle bullies.
***************************************************
Is It Wrong To Be Wasteful?
Michael Hurd, DrHurd.com
"It's wrong to be wasteful." You hear it all the time, especially during the holiday season when feelings of guilt seem to rise.
Is it true?
Let's be objective and intellectually honest about it. "Wasteful," in this context, means to discard something even though it has potential use. It means to dispose of your property in the way that you see fit. To claim that this is morally wrong is to imply that it does harm to others to throw something out -- as opposed to, say, giving it away or even allowing it to gather dust in your attic. Such a view of morality rests upon a "zero sum" premise. The zero sum premise means that by denying something to someone else, you harm them. It's the premise behind what old-style Catholic nuns used to tell school children: "Don't throw that sandwich away. There are starving children in Russia!" Well, so what? The children in Russia who are starving are in no way affected by you eating that sandwich. It's nothing more than neurotic, unearned guilt.
The same applies, more generally, to the statement, "It's wrong to be wasteful." Disposing of what's yours instead of keeping it does no harm to anyone, but it does bring some relief to yourself. If you want to give it away, that's fine. I wouldn't call it a moral duty, but it's perfectly fine. What's never fine is to feel guilty for the predicament of another, a predicament that in no way was caused by you.
********************************************************************************************
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
***************************************************************************************
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who may be interested (or they can sign up by sending an email with “Week on the Web” in the subject line to rsmurphy@hotmail.com).
Send links to articles that you feel would be a good addition to this newsletter to rsmurphy@hotmail.com.
To receive this newsletter in Microsoft Word format, please reply to this email and include “Week on the Web - MS Word” on the subject line.
If you wish to unsubscribe, please reply to this email and include “Week on the Web - unsubscribe” on the subject line.
*****************************************************
Editorial Cartoon of the Week:
Saudi Zakat
Cox and Forkum
*****************************************************
COMMENTARY
Senators' Letter Is a Violation of ExxonMobil's Freedom of Speech
ARI Media
On October 27 Sens. Rockefeller (D., W.Va.) and Snowe (R., Maine) sent a letter to ExxonMobil's CEO requesting that ExxonMobil end its financial assistance and support of groups and individuals who reject global warming claims, and urging it to "publicly acknowledge both the reality of climate change and the role of humans in causing or exacerbating it."
"This letter constitutes an outrageous violation of ExxonMobil's right to free speech," said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "Whether or not one believes there is a threat of catastrophic global warming, the government has no right to tell ExxonMobil what ideas it should advocate or fund.
"Free speech means the freedom to promote any idea one wishes without the danger of suppression or punitive action by the government. When two United States senators declare that a company has 'manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years,' that is clearly a thinly veiled threat, and any sensible organization must regard it as such.
"Observe that the senators do not offer a single fact intended to convince ExxonMobil of the truth of their position. Their message is not 'agree with us because,' but 'agree with us or else.' That is a message appropriate to a dictator, not to the representatives of a free nation.
"Defenders of free speech must stand up against this vicious attempt to intimidate ExxonMobil into embracing the global warming cause, and declare that the government has no business telling Americans what they should think or say."
*****************************************************
In Praise of Chain Stores
Virginia Postrel, The Atlantic
The idea that America was once filled with wildly varied business establishments is largely a myth. Big cities could, and still can, support more retail niches than small towns. And in a less competitive national market, there was certainly more variation in business efficiency—in prices, service, and merchandise quality. But the range of retailing ideas in any given town was rarely that great. One deli or diner or lunch counter or cafeteria was pretty much like every other one. A hardware store was a hardware store, a pharmacy a pharmacy. Before it became a ubiquitous part of urban life, Starbucks was, in most American cities, a radically new idea.
[…]
The contempt for chains represents a brand-obsessed view of place, as if store names were all that mattered to a city’s character. For many critics, the name on the store really is all that matters. The planning consultant Robert Gibbs works with cities that want to revive their downtowns, and he also helps developers find space for retailers. To his frustration, he finds that many cities actually turn away national chains, preferring a moribund downtown that seems authentically local. But, he says, the same local activists who oppose chains “want specialty retail that sells exactly what the chains sell—the same price, the same fit, the same qualities, the same sizes, the same brands, even.” You can show people pictures of a Pottery Barn with nothing but the name changed, he says, and they’ll love the store. So downtown stores stay empty, or sell low-value tourist items like candles and kites, while the chains open on the edge of town. In the name of urbanism, officials and activists in cities like Ann Arbor and Fort Collins, Colorado, are driving business to the suburbs. “If people like shopping at the Banana Republic or the Gap, if that’s your market—or Payless Shoes—why not?” says an exasperated Gibbs. “Why not sell the goods and services people want?”
*****************************************************
Our Saudi Foes
Edward Cline, Rule of Reason
Enough about the Iranian bogeyman, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad! He is our certifiable enemy. Let's shift our focus for a moment to our venal ally in the "war on terror," Saudi Arabia, his chief rival in the conquest or destruction of the U.S.Ahmadinejad, addressing a conference in Tehran a year ago, proclaimed that "those who doubt, to those who ask is it possible, or those who do not believe, I say accomplishment of a world without America and Israel is both possible and feasible." The Saudis agree with half that statement; for them, the eradication of Israel is a mutual goal, but it would rather convert the U.S. into an Islamic nation, instead of destroy it.
*****************************************************
Oh, brother
Jeff Jacoby, Jewish World Review
Is it a good idea to avoid food made with trans fats? That depends on what you consider good. Trans fats are said to raise the risk of heart disease by increasing levels of LDL ("bad") cholesterol. They also contribute to the appealing taste of many baked and fried foods, and provide an economical alternative to saturated fats. As with most things in life, trans fats carry both risks and benefits. Do the possible long-term health concerns outweigh the short-term pleasures? That's a question of values — one that scientists and regulators aren't competent to answer.
Different people have different priorities. They make different choices about the fats in their diet, just as they make different choices about whether to drive a Toyota, drink their coffee black, or get a tattoo. In a free society, men and women decide such things for themselves. In New York, men and women are now a little less free. And since a loss of liberty anywhere is a threat to liberty everywhere, the rest of us are now a little less free as well.
But the slow erosion of freedom doesn't trouble the lifestyle bullies.
***************************************************
Is It Wrong To Be Wasteful?
Michael Hurd, DrHurd.com
"It's wrong to be wasteful." You hear it all the time, especially during the holiday season when feelings of guilt seem to rise.
Is it true?
Let's be objective and intellectually honest about it. "Wasteful," in this context, means to discard something even though it has potential use. It means to dispose of your property in the way that you see fit. To claim that this is morally wrong is to imply that it does harm to others to throw something out -- as opposed to, say, giving it away or even allowing it to gather dust in your attic. Such a view of morality rests upon a "zero sum" premise. The zero sum premise means that by denying something to someone else, you harm them. It's the premise behind what old-style Catholic nuns used to tell school children: "Don't throw that sandwich away. There are starving children in Russia!" Well, so what? The children in Russia who are starving are in no way affected by you eating that sandwich. It's nothing more than neurotic, unearned guilt.
The same applies, more generally, to the statement, "It's wrong to be wasteful." Disposing of what's yours instead of keeping it does no harm to anyone, but it does bring some relief to yourself. If you want to give it away, that's fine. I wouldn't call it a moral duty, but it's perfectly fine. What's never fine is to feel guilty for the predicament of another, a predicament that in no way was caused by you.
********************************************************************************************
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
***************************************************************************************
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who may be interested (or they can sign up by sending an email with “Week on the Web” in the subject line to rsmurphy@hotmail.com).
Send links to articles that you feel would be a good addition to this newsletter to rsmurphy@hotmail.com.
To receive this newsletter in Microsoft Word format, please reply to this email and include “Week on the Web - MS Word” on the subject line.
If you wish to unsubscribe, please reply to this email and include “Week on the Web - unsubscribe” on the subject line.
Friday, December 08, 2006
This Week on the Web (December 2 – December 8)
********************************************************************************************
Quote of the Week:
The root of the moral views shared by leftists and Conservatives remains the conviction that the mind is incapable of grasping moral principles—and that we must rely on the authority of feelings, whether from the immediate consensus (vox populi) or from claims to divine sanction (vox dei). The clash between the leftists and the Conservatives is a clash of feelings. Neither side appeals to the mind; each wishes to impose its views by force.
- John Lewis
****************************************************
Editorial Cartoon of the Week:
Then & Now
Cox and Forkum
**************************************************
NEWS
'US won't order preemptive Iran strike'
Jerusalem Post
Predicting Iran will obtain nuclear weapons by the end of the decade, the defense establishment's new and updated assessment for 2007 does not foresee the United States undertaking a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear installations, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The chances of an American strike are deemed "low," according to assessments by the security establishment. Israel also believes that international diplomatic efforts to stop Iran will fail, security sources said.
[…]
The assumption in the defense establishment is that even if sanctions were imposed on Iran today, they would not be effective in deterring the regime from continuing with its nuclear plans. The Democratic takeover of the US Senate and Congress has also led to the prediction that President George W. Bush will not be able to order a military strike.
****************************************************************************
COMMENTARY
“No Substitute for Victory”: The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism
John Lewis, The Objective Standard
Sixty years after the U.S. ended two generations of aggressive Japanese warfare, Japan remains free, productive, and friendly to America. The Japanese have not abandoned their traditions—nor has anyone asked them to do so—but they no longer use them to kill and enslave others. Rather than seek our destruction, Japan has become a staunch political ally, a robust free-market competitor, and an invaluable economic producer. Rather than build bombs and fighter planes with which to attack us, the Japanese build cars and computers that contribute immensely to our own high standard of living.
In perfect contrast, the second option—the pragmatic, altruistic, limited-military response—has been the basic approach of the Bush Administration to the attacks of September 11, 2001. What are the results?
Afghanistan continues to be strafed by holy warriors trained in Pakistan—a nuclear-armed dictatorship that we have placed off-limits to our own forces. Iraq’s insurgency continues, with Shiite militias, no longer restrained either by Saddam Hussein or by us, growing to fill the political vacuum. Iran is emboldened, its fundamentalist leadership ever more vocal, its program of nuclear development open and expanding. Saudi Arabia—our alleged ally—funds religious schools that teach hatred of the West and train an endless stream of jihadists. We pay two-billion dollars a year in tribute to Egypt, so that they will refrain from attacking Israel. Sudan engages in genocide under theocratic rule, while Somalia, Nigeria, and other countries are following suit, their tribal clerics doling out Islamic law under trees. Syria—a second-generation thugocracy on the verge of collapse a few years ago—has been resurrected and emboldened. Hezbollah has taken over Southern Lebanon. The Gaza is a new terror enclave under the democratically elected terror-cult Hamas. The Muslim Brotherhood is winning elections in Egypt. Other anti-Western militant groups are winning elections and subverting Western values from Spain to Indonesia. Across the world—including Canada, England, and the U.S.—Muslim cells plot more attacks and plan political takeovers, all the while hiding behind constitutional protections that they have sworn to destroy. Anyone daring to renounce or criticize Islam may have to live forever underground, in fear of murder sanctioned by religious decree.
********************************************************
New York City Bans Science
Steven Milloy, FoxNews.com
The New York City Board of Health this week banned the use of trans fats by restaurants. The decision is directly traceable back to the “research” of Harvard University’s Alberto Ascherio and Walter Willett, the promoters-in-chief of trans fats hysteria.
Now that the Board has deemed their dubious trans fats research suitable for dictating public policy, New Yorkers ought to hope that Ascherio and Willett don’t press the Board to implement some of their other published research that is similar in "quality" to their trans fats work.
New Yorkers could, for example, see restaurants banned from serving potatoes, peas, peanuts, beans, lentils, orange juice and grapefruit juice. Ascherio-Willett reported an increase in the risk of heart disease among consumers of these foods in the Annals of Internal Medicine (June 2001). Although none of those slight correlations were statistically meaningful -- and, in all probability, were simply meaningless chance occurrences -- a similar shortcoming didn’t seem to matter to the Board when it came to their trans fats research.
[…]
Come to think of it, why is the Board’s trans fats ban limited to restaurants? What about grocery stores and convenience shops? If trans fats are so bad, why should you be able to purchase food in a store that is too dangerous to be served in a restaurant?
*******************************************************************
Open Letter to Republicans
John Lewis, Principles in Practice
What Republicans once stood for, despite many compromises and errors, was preserving and extending American freedom. But where in recent history have you upheld this value? Have you, for instance, defended America's freedom against foreign enemies? The "Forward Strategy of Freedom" uses our soldiers to dig toilets for foreigners, claims success when a hostile government is elected, and promises years of American casualties. The result has been permanent airport checkpoints at home and armed guards on our borders. Whatever happened to the idea of driving to victory over avowed enemies?
Have you preserved freedom at home? Did you demand spending reductions along with your excellent tax cuts, or rather settle for deficits in the hundreds of billions of dollars? Who doubled the size of the Department of Education, which some of us once hoped that Reagan would eliminate, and which is now pursuing a de facto federal takeover of the schools? Who enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley persecutions of businessmen? Who projected government power vigorously into bedrooms and marriage contracts? Who showered government money onto churches as replacements for the local welfare office?
Fiscally, you have accepted without question a God-given imperative to distribute other people's money by force—not as a compromise with the Democrats, but with a commitment to outdo them.
*****************************************************************************
Global Warming Gag Order: Senators to Exxon: Shut up, and pay up
Opinion Journal
Washington has no shortage of bullies, but even we can't quite believe an October 27 letter that Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe sent to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Its message: Start toeing the Senators' line on climate change, or else.
We reprint the full text of the letter here, so readers can see for themselves. But its essential point is that the two Senators believe global warming is a fact, and therefore all debate about the issue must stop and ExxonMobil should "end its dangerous support of the [global warming] 'deniers.' " Not only that, the company "should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history." And in extra penance for being "one of the world's largest carbon emitters," Exxon should spend that money on "global remediation efforts."
The Senators aren't dumb enough to risk an ethics inquiry by threatening specific consequences if Mr. Tillerson declines this offer he can't refuse. But in case the CEO doesn't understand his company's jeopardy, they add that "ExxonMobil and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years." (Our emphasis.) The Senators also graciously copied the Exxon board on their missive.
This is amazing stuff. On the one hand, the Senators say that everyone agrees on the facts and consequences of climate change. But at the same time they are so afraid of debate that they want Exxon to stop financing a doughty band of dissenters who can barely get their name in the paper.
**************************************************************************
Chessboard Endgame: Obsessed with Iraq, we've lost sight of the rest of the world
Garry Kasparov, Opinion Journal
For the past few years, the dictators and terrorists have been gaining ground, and with good reason. The deepening catastrophe in Iraq has distracted the world's sole superpower from its true goals, and weakened the U.S. politically as well as militarily. With new congressional leadership threatening to make the same mistake--failing to see Iraq as only one piece of a greater puzzle--it is time to return to the basics of strategic planning.
Thirty years as a chess player ingrained in me the importance of never losing sight of the big picture. Paying too much attention to one area of the chessboard can quickly lead to the collapse of your entire position. America and its allies are so focused on Iraq they are ceding territory all over the map. Even the vague goals of President Bush's ambiguous war on terror have been pushed aside by the crisis in Baghdad.
The U.S. must refocus and recognize the failure of its post-9/11 foreign policy. Pre-emptive strikes and deposing dictators may or may not have been a good plan, but at least it was a plan. However, if you attack Iraq, the potential to go after Iran and Syria must also be on the table. Instead, the U.S. finds itself supervising a civil war while helplessly making concessions elsewhere.
***************************************************************************
Quotable:
The proper state of man is not that of a beggar, demanding handouts by coercion and moral blackmail. The proper state of man is that of a thinking being—a being free to act on his own judgment for his own sake—free to produce and to trade for what he needs—free to achieve his full intellectual and physical potential—free, that is, from coercion by others.
- John Lewis
**************
In testimony before President Nixon's commission on eliminating the draft, General William Westmoreland said he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. Mr. Friedman interrupted, "General, would you rather command an army of slaves?" Gen. Westmoreland replied, "I don't like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves." Mr. Friedman then retorted, "I don't like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries. If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general; we are served by mercenary physicians, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher."
- Walter Williams
********************************************************************************************
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
**********************************************************************************************************
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who may be interested (or they can sign up by sending an email with “Week on the Web” in the subject line to rsmurphy@hotmail.com).
Send links to articles that you feel would be a good addition to this newsletter to rsmurphy@hotmail.com.
To receive this newsletter in Microsoft Word format, please reply to this email and include “Week on the Web - MS Word” on the subject line.
If you wish to unsubscribe, please reply to this email and include “Week on the Web - unsubscribe” on the subject line.
********************************************************************************************
Quote of the Week:
The root of the moral views shared by leftists and Conservatives remains the conviction that the mind is incapable of grasping moral principles—and that we must rely on the authority of feelings, whether from the immediate consensus (vox populi) or from claims to divine sanction (vox dei). The clash between the leftists and the Conservatives is a clash of feelings. Neither side appeals to the mind; each wishes to impose its views by force.
- John Lewis
****************************************************
Editorial Cartoon of the Week:
Then & Now
Cox and Forkum
**************************************************
NEWS
'US won't order preemptive Iran strike'
Jerusalem Post
Predicting Iran will obtain nuclear weapons by the end of the decade, the defense establishment's new and updated assessment for 2007 does not foresee the United States undertaking a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear installations, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The chances of an American strike are deemed "low," according to assessments by the security establishment. Israel also believes that international diplomatic efforts to stop Iran will fail, security sources said.
[…]
The assumption in the defense establishment is that even if sanctions were imposed on Iran today, they would not be effective in deterring the regime from continuing with its nuclear plans. The Democratic takeover of the US Senate and Congress has also led to the prediction that President George W. Bush will not be able to order a military strike.
****************************************************************************
COMMENTARY
“No Substitute for Victory”: The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism
John Lewis, The Objective Standard
Sixty years after the U.S. ended two generations of aggressive Japanese warfare, Japan remains free, productive, and friendly to America. The Japanese have not abandoned their traditions—nor has anyone asked them to do so—but they no longer use them to kill and enslave others. Rather than seek our destruction, Japan has become a staunch political ally, a robust free-market competitor, and an invaluable economic producer. Rather than build bombs and fighter planes with which to attack us, the Japanese build cars and computers that contribute immensely to our own high standard of living.
In perfect contrast, the second option—the pragmatic, altruistic, limited-military response—has been the basic approach of the Bush Administration to the attacks of September 11, 2001. What are the results?
Afghanistan continues to be strafed by holy warriors trained in Pakistan—a nuclear-armed dictatorship that we have placed off-limits to our own forces. Iraq’s insurgency continues, with Shiite militias, no longer restrained either by Saddam Hussein or by us, growing to fill the political vacuum. Iran is emboldened, its fundamentalist leadership ever more vocal, its program of nuclear development open and expanding. Saudi Arabia—our alleged ally—funds religious schools that teach hatred of the West and train an endless stream of jihadists. We pay two-billion dollars a year in tribute to Egypt, so that they will refrain from attacking Israel. Sudan engages in genocide under theocratic rule, while Somalia, Nigeria, and other countries are following suit, their tribal clerics doling out Islamic law under trees. Syria—a second-generation thugocracy on the verge of collapse a few years ago—has been resurrected and emboldened. Hezbollah has taken over Southern Lebanon. The Gaza is a new terror enclave under the democratically elected terror-cult Hamas. The Muslim Brotherhood is winning elections in Egypt. Other anti-Western militant groups are winning elections and subverting Western values from Spain to Indonesia. Across the world—including Canada, England, and the U.S.—Muslim cells plot more attacks and plan political takeovers, all the while hiding behind constitutional protections that they have sworn to destroy. Anyone daring to renounce or criticize Islam may have to live forever underground, in fear of murder sanctioned by religious decree.
********************************************************
New York City Bans Science
Steven Milloy, FoxNews.com
The New York City Board of Health this week banned the use of trans fats by restaurants. The decision is directly traceable back to the “research” of Harvard University’s Alberto Ascherio and Walter Willett, the promoters-in-chief of trans fats hysteria.
Now that the Board has deemed their dubious trans fats research suitable for dictating public policy, New Yorkers ought to hope that Ascherio and Willett don’t press the Board to implement some of their other published research that is similar in "quality" to their trans fats work.
New Yorkers could, for example, see restaurants banned from serving potatoes, peas, peanuts, beans, lentils, orange juice and grapefruit juice. Ascherio-Willett reported an increase in the risk of heart disease among consumers of these foods in the Annals of Internal Medicine (June 2001). Although none of those slight correlations were statistically meaningful -- and, in all probability, were simply meaningless chance occurrences -- a similar shortcoming didn’t seem to matter to the Board when it came to their trans fats research.
[…]
Come to think of it, why is the Board’s trans fats ban limited to restaurants? What about grocery stores and convenience shops? If trans fats are so bad, why should you be able to purchase food in a store that is too dangerous to be served in a restaurant?
*******************************************************************
Open Letter to Republicans
John Lewis, Principles in Practice
What Republicans once stood for, despite many compromises and errors, was preserving and extending American freedom. But where in recent history have you upheld this value? Have you, for instance, defended America's freedom against foreign enemies? The "Forward Strategy of Freedom" uses our soldiers to dig toilets for foreigners, claims success when a hostile government is elected, and promises years of American casualties. The result has been permanent airport checkpoints at home and armed guards on our borders. Whatever happened to the idea of driving to victory over avowed enemies?
Have you preserved freedom at home? Did you demand spending reductions along with your excellent tax cuts, or rather settle for deficits in the hundreds of billions of dollars? Who doubled the size of the Department of Education, which some of us once hoped that Reagan would eliminate, and which is now pursuing a de facto federal takeover of the schools? Who enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley persecutions of businessmen? Who projected government power vigorously into bedrooms and marriage contracts? Who showered government money onto churches as replacements for the local welfare office?
Fiscally, you have accepted without question a God-given imperative to distribute other people's money by force—not as a compromise with the Democrats, but with a commitment to outdo them.
*****************************************************************************
Global Warming Gag Order: Senators to Exxon: Shut up, and pay up
Opinion Journal
Washington has no shortage of bullies, but even we can't quite believe an October 27 letter that Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe sent to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Its message: Start toeing the Senators' line on climate change, or else.
We reprint the full text of the letter here, so readers can see for themselves. But its essential point is that the two Senators believe global warming is a fact, and therefore all debate about the issue must stop and ExxonMobil should "end its dangerous support of the [global warming] 'deniers.' " Not only that, the company "should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history." And in extra penance for being "one of the world's largest carbon emitters," Exxon should spend that money on "global remediation efforts."
The Senators aren't dumb enough to risk an ethics inquiry by threatening specific consequences if Mr. Tillerson declines this offer he can't refuse. But in case the CEO doesn't understand his company's jeopardy, they add that "ExxonMobil and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years." (Our emphasis.) The Senators also graciously copied the Exxon board on their missive.
This is amazing stuff. On the one hand, the Senators say that everyone agrees on the facts and consequences of climate change. But at the same time they are so afraid of debate that they want Exxon to stop financing a doughty band of dissenters who can barely get their name in the paper.
**************************************************************************
Chessboard Endgame: Obsessed with Iraq, we've lost sight of the rest of the world
Garry Kasparov, Opinion Journal
For the past few years, the dictators and terrorists have been gaining ground, and with good reason. The deepening catastrophe in Iraq has distracted the world's sole superpower from its true goals, and weakened the U.S. politically as well as militarily. With new congressional leadership threatening to make the same mistake--failing to see Iraq as only one piece of a greater puzzle--it is time to return to the basics of strategic planning.
Thirty years as a chess player ingrained in me the importance of never losing sight of the big picture. Paying too much attention to one area of the chessboard can quickly lead to the collapse of your entire position. America and its allies are so focused on Iraq they are ceding territory all over the map. Even the vague goals of President Bush's ambiguous war on terror have been pushed aside by the crisis in Baghdad.
The U.S. must refocus and recognize the failure of its post-9/11 foreign policy. Pre-emptive strikes and deposing dictators may or may not have been a good plan, but at least it was a plan. However, if you attack Iraq, the potential to go after Iran and Syria must also be on the table. Instead, the U.S. finds itself supervising a civil war while helplessly making concessions elsewhere.
***************************************************************************
Quotable:
The proper state of man is not that of a beggar, demanding handouts by coercion and moral blackmail. The proper state of man is that of a thinking being—a being free to act on his own judgment for his own sake—free to produce and to trade for what he needs—free to achieve his full intellectual and physical potential—free, that is, from coercion by others.
- John Lewis
**************
In testimony before President Nixon's commission on eliminating the draft, General William Westmoreland said he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. Mr. Friedman interrupted, "General, would you rather command an army of slaves?" Gen. Westmoreland replied, "I don't like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves." Mr. Friedman then retorted, "I don't like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries. If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general; we are served by mercenary physicians, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher."
- Walter Williams
********************************************************************************************
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
**********************************************************************************************************
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who may be interested (or they can sign up by sending an email with “Week on the Web” in the subject line to rsmurphy@hotmail.com).
Send links to articles that you feel would be a good addition to this newsletter to rsmurphy@hotmail.com.
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If you wish to unsubscribe, please reply to this email and include “Week on the Web - unsubscribe” on the subject line.
Friday, December 01, 2006
This Week on the Web (November 25 – December 1)
********************************************************************************************
COMMENTARY
America Alone: Europe is Finished Predicts Mark Steyn
Daniel Pipes, Capitalism Magazine
America Alone deals at length with what Mr. Steyn calls "the larger forces at play in the developed world that have left Europe too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia." Europe's successor population is already in place and "the only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be." He interprets the Madrid and London bombings, as well as the murder of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam, as opening shots in Europe's civil war and states, "Europe is the colony now."
The title America Alone refers to Mr. Steyn's expectation that the United States – with its "relatively healthy demographic profile" – will emerge as the lonely survivor of this crucible. "Europe is dying and America isn't." Therefore, "the Continent is up for grabs in a way that America isn't." Mr. Steyn's target audience is primarily American: watch out, he is saying, or the same will happen to you.
Pared to its essentials, he counsels two things: First, avoid the "bloated European welfare systems," declare them no less than a national security threat, shrink the state, and emphasize the virtues of self-reliance and individual innovation. Second, avoid "imperial understretch," don't "hunker down in Fortress America" but destroy the ideology of radical Islam, help reform Islam, and expand Western civilization to new places. Only if Americans "can summon the will to shape at least part of the emerging world" will they have enough company to soldier on. Failing that, expect a "new Dark Ages … a planet on which much of the map is re-primitivized."
***********
Democrat victory, Conservative gain?
Bruce Bartlett, Townhall.com
Leading up to the election, many conservatives were wailing about how the world was going to come to an end if Democrats won. Well, the world is still here, and we are even starting to see some good news for conservative policies from the Democratic takeover.
[…]
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who is in line to chair the Committee on Financial Services, said it was time to reopen the misguided Sarbanes-Oxley legislation that was enacted in the wake of the Enron scandal. While doing nothing to prevent another Enron -- it wouldn't have prohibited a single thing that got the company in trouble -- it has imposed a heavy compliance burden on American companies, which is handicapping their international competitiveness.
This is something the Republicans should have done, but couldn't because a co-author of the bill, Rep. Michael Oxley, R-Ohio, is chairman of the committee with jurisdiction and refuses to concede his error. So nothing happened. Hence, Frank's elevation to the chairmanship opens the possibility of a reform that probably wouldn't have occurred had Republicans remained in control.
Finally, we are hearing Democrats in Congress acknowledge that they must produce legislation if they hope to retain their majority in 2008. This means that they will have to bargain with a Republican White House unless they expect all their bills to fall victim to vetoes. The result could be Democratic support for conservative initiatives that Democrats would otherwise oppose. They will have to give if they hope to get for themselves.
********************************
"No Capacity"
Michael Hurd, DrHurd.com
MSNBC: You don’t think Bush will attack Iran in the end? Biden: I don’t think so … The reason being, we have no capacity to do that. Even with airstrikes, now that you’ve energized the Iranian population, what do you do then? (Senator Joe Biden, Democrat, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the new Congress)
This is what I mean when I claim that the U.S. foreign policy is going to move from bungling incompetence to outright pacifism. To suggest that the U.S. has no capacity to even so much as bomb an Iranian nuclear weapons facility -- and to imply that we cannot do so, at least in part, because it might make the Iranians mad -- is incomprehensible. Yet Senator Biden is merely articulating the at least implicit view of Republicans, under Bush, as well as newly elected Democrats.
Earth to Biden (and Bush): The purpose of a nation's foreign policy is to keep a nation safe.
******************************************
How Profits Launch From Platforms
Om Malik, Opinion Journal
A couple of years ago, in the days before YouTube, a short video clip spread like wildfire on the Internet. It showed the fourth richest man on the planet, Steve Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, doing a crazy jig onstage at a conference, screaming "developers, developers, developers." Truer words have never been spoken--or repeated. Without "developers," Microsoft would not possess its desktop monopoly or billions of dollars in profits.
Those developers are the little platoons of software programmers and product-inventors who turn operating systems (like Microsoft's Windows), Internet browsers (Firefox), game devices (PlayStation) and much else into something more than themselves--into "platforms" upon which a whole economic ecosystem rests. It is impossible to imagine Dell Computer's success, or that of Intuit Corp. or even Electronic Arts (the videogame company) without the platform that Windows constructed with the help, so to speak, of Microsoft. Windows is but one example of many software engines that have propelled mega-billion-dollar industries and created wealth beyond compare. Just as the internal combustion engine led to the formation of the modern automobile industry and ended up driving so much else in the economy (think only of steel and gasoline), invisible engines are now powering the vast postindustrial economies in which we live and work.
**************************************************
New Book ECO-FREAKS Reveals Destructive Environmental Agenda
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring advice actually killed birds? Trees cause more air pollution than cars? In a new book, ECO-FREAKS, author John Berlau shatters long-standing environmental myths with true, startling revelations.
“Environmentalists have long admitted to using fear to arouse public action,” writes Berlau, who is a policy director at the Washington, D.C.-based Competitive Enterprise Institute. In ECO-FREAKS, Berlau exposes the often tragic consequences of modern environmentalism. From the banning of DDT to the collapse of the levees in New Orleans, environmentalists have used an idyllic image of “nature” to pursue a radical, anti-human agenda.
In ECO-FREAKS, the author shows how environmentalism has put us all in danger: The banning of DDT has made more people sick; the banning of asbestos has allowed more buildings to catch fire; and exaggerations about global warming jeopardize automobile safety. Environmentalists also played a role in the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina by blocking the federal government’s plans to build giant floodgates on Lake Pontchartrain. Berlau urges policymakers to abandon such destructive policies and embrace a practical conservation ethic, one that would better protect public health and wildlife.
********************************************************************************************
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
**********************************************************************************************************
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who may be interested (or they can sign up by sending an email with “Week on the Web” in the subject line to rsmurphy@hotmail.com).
Send links to articles that you feel would be a good addition to this newsletter to rsmurphy@hotmail.com.
To receive this newsletter in Microsoft Word format, please reply to this email and include “Week on the Web - MS Word” on the subject line.
If you wish to unsubscribe, please reply to this email and include “Week on the Web - unsubscribe” on the subject line.
********************************************************************************************
COMMENTARY
America Alone: Europe is Finished Predicts Mark Steyn
Daniel Pipes, Capitalism Magazine
America Alone deals at length with what Mr. Steyn calls "the larger forces at play in the developed world that have left Europe too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia." Europe's successor population is already in place and "the only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be." He interprets the Madrid and London bombings, as well as the murder of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam, as opening shots in Europe's civil war and states, "Europe is the colony now."
The title America Alone refers to Mr. Steyn's expectation that the United States – with its "relatively healthy demographic profile" – will emerge as the lonely survivor of this crucible. "Europe is dying and America isn't." Therefore, "the Continent is up for grabs in a way that America isn't." Mr. Steyn's target audience is primarily American: watch out, he is saying, or the same will happen to you.
Pared to its essentials, he counsels two things: First, avoid the "bloated European welfare systems," declare them no less than a national security threat, shrink the state, and emphasize the virtues of self-reliance and individual innovation. Second, avoid "imperial understretch," don't "hunker down in Fortress America" but destroy the ideology of radical Islam, help reform Islam, and expand Western civilization to new places. Only if Americans "can summon the will to shape at least part of the emerging world" will they have enough company to soldier on. Failing that, expect a "new Dark Ages … a planet on which much of the map is re-primitivized."
***********
Democrat victory, Conservative gain?
Bruce Bartlett, Townhall.com
Leading up to the election, many conservatives were wailing about how the world was going to come to an end if Democrats won. Well, the world is still here, and we are even starting to see some good news for conservative policies from the Democratic takeover.
[…]
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who is in line to chair the Committee on Financial Services, said it was time to reopen the misguided Sarbanes-Oxley legislation that was enacted in the wake of the Enron scandal. While doing nothing to prevent another Enron -- it wouldn't have prohibited a single thing that got the company in trouble -- it has imposed a heavy compliance burden on American companies, which is handicapping their international competitiveness.
This is something the Republicans should have done, but couldn't because a co-author of the bill, Rep. Michael Oxley, R-Ohio, is chairman of the committee with jurisdiction and refuses to concede his error. So nothing happened. Hence, Frank's elevation to the chairmanship opens the possibility of a reform that probably wouldn't have occurred had Republicans remained in control.
Finally, we are hearing Democrats in Congress acknowledge that they must produce legislation if they hope to retain their majority in 2008. This means that they will have to bargain with a Republican White House unless they expect all their bills to fall victim to vetoes. The result could be Democratic support for conservative initiatives that Democrats would otherwise oppose. They will have to give if they hope to get for themselves.
********************************
"No Capacity"
Michael Hurd, DrHurd.com
MSNBC: You don’t think Bush will attack Iran in the end? Biden: I don’t think so … The reason being, we have no capacity to do that. Even with airstrikes, now that you’ve energized the Iranian population, what do you do then? (Senator Joe Biden, Democrat, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the new Congress)
This is what I mean when I claim that the U.S. foreign policy is going to move from bungling incompetence to outright pacifism. To suggest that the U.S. has no capacity to even so much as bomb an Iranian nuclear weapons facility -- and to imply that we cannot do so, at least in part, because it might make the Iranians mad -- is incomprehensible. Yet Senator Biden is merely articulating the at least implicit view of Republicans, under Bush, as well as newly elected Democrats.
Earth to Biden (and Bush): The purpose of a nation's foreign policy is to keep a nation safe.
******************************************
How Profits Launch From Platforms
Om Malik, Opinion Journal
A couple of years ago, in the days before YouTube, a short video clip spread like wildfire on the Internet. It showed the fourth richest man on the planet, Steve Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, doing a crazy jig onstage at a conference, screaming "developers, developers, developers." Truer words have never been spoken--or repeated. Without "developers," Microsoft would not possess its desktop monopoly or billions of dollars in profits.
Those developers are the little platoons of software programmers and product-inventors who turn operating systems (like Microsoft's Windows), Internet browsers (Firefox), game devices (PlayStation) and much else into something more than themselves--into "platforms" upon which a whole economic ecosystem rests. It is impossible to imagine Dell Computer's success, or that of Intuit Corp. or even Electronic Arts (the videogame company) without the platform that Windows constructed with the help, so to speak, of Microsoft. Windows is but one example of many software engines that have propelled mega-billion-dollar industries and created wealth beyond compare. Just as the internal combustion engine led to the formation of the modern automobile industry and ended up driving so much else in the economy (think only of steel and gasoline), invisible engines are now powering the vast postindustrial economies in which we live and work.
**************************************************
New Book ECO-FREAKS Reveals Destructive Environmental Agenda
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring advice actually killed birds? Trees cause more air pollution than cars? In a new book, ECO-FREAKS, author John Berlau shatters long-standing environmental myths with true, startling revelations.
“Environmentalists have long admitted to using fear to arouse public action,” writes Berlau, who is a policy director at the Washington, D.C.-based Competitive Enterprise Institute. In ECO-FREAKS, Berlau exposes the often tragic consequences of modern environmentalism. From the banning of DDT to the collapse of the levees in New Orleans, environmentalists have used an idyllic image of “nature” to pursue a radical, anti-human agenda.
In ECO-FREAKS, the author shows how environmentalism has put us all in danger: The banning of DDT has made more people sick; the banning of asbestos has allowed more buildings to catch fire; and exaggerations about global warming jeopardize automobile safety. Environmentalists also played a role in the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina by blocking the federal government’s plans to build giant floodgates on Lake Pontchartrain. Berlau urges policymakers to abandon such destructive policies and embrace a practical conservation ethic, one that would better protect public health and wildlife.
********************************************************************************************
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
**********************************************************************************************************
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who may be interested (or they can sign up by sending an email with “Week on the Web” in the subject line to rsmurphy@hotmail.com).
Send links to articles that you feel would be a good addition to this newsletter to rsmurphy@hotmail.com.
To receive this newsletter in Microsoft Word format, please reply to this email and include “Week on the Web - MS Word” on the subject line.
If you wish to unsubscribe, please reply to this email and include “Week on the Web - unsubscribe” on the subject line.
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