This Week on the Web (December 2 – December 8)


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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


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Editorial Cartoon of the Week:


Then & Now
Cox and Forkum



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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.


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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.


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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.

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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


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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


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Other links

The Ayn Rand Institute

The Objective Standard

Capitalism Magazine

4Commonsense.net

OpinionJournal.com

Junk Science

Activism Humor

The Intellectual Activist



Web Logs

Principles in Practice– Principled commentary on cultural matters and current events from “The Objective Standard”

Cox and Forkum – Political cartoons and commentary

Noodle Food

The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid – Donald Luskin

Dollars and Crosses – CapitalismMagazine.com

Rule of Reason – The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism

4CommonSense

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