This Week on the Web (April 21 – April 27)

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Picture of the Week:

The Latest in "Green Transportation"

Vital Signs Blog

Ford Motor Company, fast losing ground to its competitors, has moved aggressively into the area of "green transportation" with its 2008 hay-powered Ranchero IV. The company admits that consumers used to traditional automotive transportation will have to make some adjustments in storage, upkeep, and convenience. And they also acknowledge that the time to get where you're going may be just a bit extended.

Nevertheless, with the desperate need to reduce CO2 emissions before the polar ice caps melt and wash civilization away altogether, Ford is confident that the Ranchero IV will become a big-seller. In particular, Ford is looking for big sales numbers from Democrat politicians, Church of England prelates and the leadership of the National Association of Evangelicals.

COMMENTARY

John Lewis's Talk at GMU

Alan Germani, Principles in Practice

Last night, TOS contributor Dr. John Lewis delivered his speech “‘No Substitute for Victory’: The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism” to a packed auditorium at George Mason University. Despite a coordinated effort by GMU’s Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to disrupt the event, Dr. Lewis argued logically and persuasively that military measures along the lines of those employed by the United States against Japan in World War II are necessary to end the spread of political Islam. Political Islam seeks to enforce tenets of the Koran through police brutality—to eliminate the dissemination of Judaism, Christianity, secularism, and all other conflicting viewpoints—to destroy “sinful,” this-worldly Western culture—to keep homosexuals firmly in the closet—to keep women ignorant, unseen, and subservient to their husbands, fathers, and brothers—to subjugate all to the will of Allah. Such a political-religious movement, Dr. Lewis showed, is contrary to freedom and the requirements of human life and should therefore be quashed.

Members and supporters of SDS were, of course, unmoved by Lewis’s logic. Rather than listen to his arguments and challenge him with intelligent questions, these advocates of democracy stood with their backs turned to Dr. Lewis from the moment he began to speak and remained thus for the duration of the talk—fortifying their visual display with interruptive banter and childish snickering that made it difficult for others in the audience to stay focused on the content of the speech. Through their actions last night, members of SDS showed that they support the agenda of political Islam and that they—true to their brainless thuggery—are either unconcerned with or oblivious to the fact that, under an Islamic regime, protests such as theirs would be met with gunfire.

Given the widespread confusion concerning the concept “democracy”—used by some to mean liberty, by others to mean the right to vote, and by very few to mean mob rule (its actual meaning)—members of SDS should consider renaming their organization in order to accurately reflect that which they advocate. My suggestion? Students for Totalitarian Dictatorship (STD). Such mentalities are part and parcel of an ideological disease that, through actions like those taken last night, works studiously to infect the culture with Sharia Law—attacking the right to free speech and every other right on which human life depends. It is unfortunate that these pustules will also be saved from the Islamists if their American host ever heeds Dr. Lewis’s excellent advice.

Read more about the event here.

Then and Now

Gus van Horn

A century later, despite the fact that our vastly higher general level of prosperity and numerous technological advances could make the rebuilding and fortification of New Orleans against future storms easier in some respects than that of Galveston, the recovery of the Crescent City moves at a snail's pace while nearly three times the entire pre-hurricane population of 1900 Galveston will remain on the dole at the time by which a more enterprising citizenry had managed to build a seawall a century earlier.

Once again, we have a glaring example of the fact that the welfare state does not bring about what most Americans know as prosperity. And yet, the man-made welfare state is accepted as an unquestionable, unalterable, metaphysical fact. Why? Because no one will ask why it is that they are asked to help their fellow man above and beyond imminent peril, and into perpetuity. Because of the widespread ethics of altruism, which provides the welfare state with its moral justification.

Such is the power of the philosophical ideas that motivate the members of a society: In one century, Americans on a sandbar raised their own homes and built a seawall to fend off a major hurricane; by the next, the citizens of a once-great city fled it, never to return or help in its reconstruction, to live in perpetual lassitude as parasites on a nation of suckers who could not raise more than a feeble objection to the fact that it was being taken advantage of.

Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates

Christopher Hitchens, Townhall.com

One of the historians of the Barbary conflict, Frank Lambert, argues that the imperative of free trade drove America much more than did any quarrel with Islam or “tyranny,” let alone “terrorism.” He resists any comparison with today’s tormenting confrontations. “The Barbary Wars were primarily about trade, not theology,” he writes. “Rather than being holy wars, they were an extension of America’s War of Independence.”

Let us not call this view reductionist. Jefferson would perhaps have been just as eager to send a squadron to put down any Christian piracy that was restraining commerce. But one cannot get around what Jefferson heard when he went with John Adams to wait upon Tripoli’s ambassador to London in March 1785. When they inquired by what right the Barbary states preyed upon American shipping, enslaving both crews and passengers, America’s two foremost envoys were informed that “it was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.” (It is worth noting that the United States played no part in the Crusades, or in the Catholic reconquista of Andalusia.)

Ambassador Abd Al-Rahman did not fail to mention the size of his own commission, if America chose to pay the protection money demanded as an alternative to piracy. So here was an early instance of the “heads I win, tails you lose” dilemma, in which the United States is faced with corrupt regimes, on the one hand, and Islamic militants, on the other—or indeed a collusion between them.

It seems likely that Jefferson decided from that moment on that he would make war upon the Barbary kingdoms as soon as he commanded American forces. His two least favorite institutions—enthroned monarchy and state-sponsored religion—were embodied in one target, and it may even be that his famous ambivalences about slavery were resolved somewhat when he saw it practiced by the Muslims.

How About Economic Progress Day?

John Stossel, Townhall.com

Watching the media coverage, you'd think that the earth was in imminent danger -- that human life itself was on the verge of extinction. Technology is fingered as the perp.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

John Semmens of Arizona's Laissez Faire Institute points out that Earth Day misses an important point. In the April issue of The Freeman magazine, Semmens says the environmental movement overlooks how hospitable the earth has become -- thanks to technology. "The environmental alarmists have it backwards. If anything imperils the earth it is ignorant obstruction of science and progress. ... That technology provides the best option for serving human wants and conserving the environment should be evident in the progress made in environmental improvement in the United States. Virtually every measure shows that pollution is headed downward and that nature is making a comeback." (Carbon dioxide excepted, if it is really a pollutant.)

[…]

The precautionary principle, popular in Europe, is the idea that no new thing should be permitted until it has been proved harmless. Sounds good, except as Ron Bailey of Reason writes, it basically means, "Don't ever do anything for the first time."

Tax winners and losers

Bruce Bartlett, Townhall.com

According to the CBO, those in the top quintile paid 85.3 percent of all such taxes in 2004. In 1979, the first year of the CBO study, this group paid only 64.9 percent.

Inclusion of payroll taxes in the calculation doesn’t change the picture that much because the top quintile of households paid 44.2 percent of all payroll taxes in 2004. Overall, this group paid 67.1 percent of all federal taxes—well above their share of reported income, which was 53.5 percent.

Of course, we have a progressive tax system and the wealthy are expected to pay more than their proportional share of taxes. The CBO data confirm that our federal tax system is indeed very progressive. Looking at all federal taxes, including payroll taxes, those in the lowest quintile paid 4.5 percent of their income to the federal government in 2004, the second quintile paid 10 percent, the third paid 13.9 percent, the fourth paid 17.2 percent, and the top quintile paid 25.1 percent.

The tax cuts enacted by Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have lowered the top tax rate quite a bit—it has fallen from 70 percent in 1979 to 35 percent today. Moreover, Reagan also raised the payroll tax rate by three percentage points. Knowing only this, one would assume that the wealthy are paying much less than they were in 1979 and the poor are paying much more. In fact, every income class has seen a decline in its effective federal tax rate (taxes as a share of income), including payroll taxes.

[…]

A new study by the Tax Foundation attempts to calculate the benefits of government spending by income quintile in the same way taxes are calculated. It shows that government spending is also steeply progressive, with those with low incomes receiving far more than those at the top.

According to the study, those in the bottom quintile received 33.8 percent of all federal spending in 2004, the second quintile received 21.8 percent, the third quintile received 16 percent, the fourth quintile received 13.4 percent, and the top quintile received just 15 percent.

The reason for this is that many of the federal government’s largest programs are geared specifically to aid those with low incomes. In the case of Social Security, the benefit formula gives those in the bottom quintile twice as much in benefits at retirement as they paid in taxes during their working lives, according to another CBO study. Those in the top quintile only get back half the taxes they paid. Consequently, the overall Social Security program, looking at both taxes and benefits, is steeply progressive—a point that is almost always ignored by those who complain about the burden of the payroll tax on the poor.

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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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