This Week on the Web (December 30 – January 5)


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NEWS

Warrantless mail searches may be allowed
MSNBC.com

A statement attached to postal legislation by President Bush last month may have opened the way for the government to open mail without a warrant.

The White House denies any change in policy, but civil libertarians are alarmed, saying the government has never publicly claimed that power before.


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COMMENTARY


Universal Guinea Pigs
Michael Hurd, DrHurd.com

According to a Wall Street Journal story on 12/30/06, the new Democratic Congress plans to propose universal health care for children. They consider it a start on the road to universal, socialized coverage for all Americans. Republicans and The Wall Street Journal are wondering how you can possibly oppose health care for children, while still remaining politically relevant?

Here are some arguments they could make:

Will government health coverage do for children what the postal monopoly did for U.S. mail? If so, why does the post office operate in the red, with mediocre service at best, while competing private companies (UPS, FedEx) make billions in profits, provide thousands with good jobs, and offer ten times the quality of service?

Is health care for children to become the equivalent of the postal service, while health care for everyone else will become the equivalent of FedEx or UPS?

Why should children be forced into government coverage, while adults still have choices, tax credits and the like -- and even seniors have some choices through private companies that contract with Medicare, and so forth?

Why is there some private sector (meaning: freedom of choice) for adults and seniors, while there's to be none for children? Why are children to be the guinea pigs for a socialized system that government officials are unwilling to impose on adults first? Children can't object to this treatment, while adults can...So why go after innocent children? What's wrong with political leaders who seek to do such a thing?

And what about the doctors? Are doctors allowed to treat children outside the context of government? Will they be allowed to accept private health insurance for children, or even fee-for-service negotiated by parent and child? Or will such private contracts between doctors and patient-parents be considered "blackmail," under the law, as Hillary Clinton proposed explicitly in her infamous 1994 plan?

Not to worry, you opponents of "universal care" for all under a government monopoly...the arguments against such a policy are easy to make. What's crucial is that you make them.

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How The West Could Lose
Daniel Pipes, Capitalism MagazineAfter defeating fascists and communists, can the West now defeat the Islamists?On the face of it, its military preponderance makes victory seem inevitable. Even if Tehran acquires a nuclear weapon, Islamists have nothing like the military machine the Axis deployed in World War II, nor the Soviet Union during the cold war. What do the Islamists have to compare with the Wehrmacht or the Red Army? The SS or Spetznaz? The Gestapo or the KGB? Or, for that matter, to Auschwitz or the gulag?Yet, more than a few analysts, including myself, worry that it's not so simple. Islamists (defined as persons who demand to live by the sacred law of Islam, the Sharia) might in fact do better than the earlier totalitarians. They could even win. That's because, however strong the Western hardware, its software contains some potentially fatal bugs. Three of them – pacifism, self-hatred, complacency – deserve attention.


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Rules more important than personalities
Walter Williams, Jewish World Review

Not that many complimentary things are said about politicians. When a problem arises, people say, "Government ought to do something." They seem to have forgotten that it's the politicians who are running the government. Many think things can be changed by electing different politicians, but I ask: Given the incentives politicians face, why should we expect one politician to differ significantly from another? We should focus less on personalities and more on rules. [...]How is it that players with conflicting interests and reasons for winning can play a game, agree with the outcome and walk away as good sports? It's a minor miracle of sorts. That "miracle" is that it is far easier to reach agreement about the game's rules than the game's outcome. The rules are known and durable, and the referee's only job is their evenhanded enforcement. Even football teams with losing records would find their long-run interests lie in known, durable and evenhandedly applied rules. They can more adequately devise a winning strategy because predictability is enhanced.
Suppose the game rules were flexible and referees played a role in determining the game's outcome. In other words, imagine the referees were more interested in what they saw as justice than enforcement of neutral rules. What might one predict about team behavior? Instead of trying to raise team productivity, owners would allocate resources to influence-peddling in the form of lobbying or bribing the referees.

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Big Developers Get Pinched
Jacob Laskin, TCS Daily

When the Supreme Court handed down its verdict in Kelo v. City of New London in June of 2005, few imagined the development industry in the role of victim.

On the contrary, most opponents of the decision supposed, not unreasonably, that construction companies and building firms would be the likeliest beneficiaries of municipalities' disputed right to seize private property under the "public use" clause of the Fifth Amendment: Who else would be contracted to develop their dubiously gotten gains?

But a little-noticed case from New Jersey suggests that the battle lines in the political war over eminent domain are more ambiguous than critics have heretofore assumed.

In 2002, the development company MiPro won approval from the zoning commission of Mount Laurel Township, a residential community of 41,000 in Southern New Jersey, to develop a 16-acre parcel of land for 23 single-family homes. The deal aptly underscored Mount Laurel's motto: "A Home for Businesses and Families."

Then the township had a change of heart. Reasoning that a new residential development would mean urban sprawl, and all its attendant complications, the city sought to buy the land from the developer. MiPro, as was its right, declined the offer.

And there the trouble began. Rather than accept the refusal, the town moved to condemn the entire property. It justified the decision with reference to the "public use" clause and its powers of eminent domain. In fact, though, the town's plan was to set the land aside as open space; its sole "public" purpose in acquiring the land was to block further development.

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The Imperative of Lecturing
Lisa VanDamme, Principles in Practice

Every class in elementary and junior high school should be in a lecture format. The teacher must be an authority on the subject, he must grasp its basic purpose, he must carefully define the knowledge to be conveyed by reference to that purpose, and he must present that knowledge in a hierarchical, integrated, and engaging form.

When I teach a literature class, I go in to each class armed with an understanding of the value of studying literature, and the knowledge that this value is derived primarily from an appreciation of the novel's plot, an understanding of the basic nature of the characters, and a clear grasp of the novel's theme.

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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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