This Week on the Web (November 25 – December 1)

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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."


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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.



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"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.



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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.



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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.



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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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