Friday, April 13, 2007

This Week on the Web (April 7 – April 13)

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Quote of the Week:

Hypocrisy is caused by the failure to think for oneself, and the resulting desire to say or think what you THINK others want you to say or think. Hypocrisy cannot develop if you possess self-esteem. If you possess self-esteem, you are too confident in your own thoughts, and you like yourself too much, to retreat into the laziness of phoniness. It's interesting how many things commonly recognized as vices, such as hypocrisy, actually result from too little self-respect and too little self-esteem--yet "selfishness" is considered the greatest vice of all. I don't understand this contradiction. How can allegiance to yourself be so bad, if allegiance to yourself is the only way to avoid things everyone agrees are bad?

- Michael Hurd

COMMENTARY

Neither Liberals nor Conservatives Support Our Troops

Alex Epstein, Capitalism Magazine

Supporters and opponents of President Bush's Iraq War are clashing in a furious debate over who truly supports our troops. The President's critics say they are supporting our troops by setting a timetable to bring them home from an "unnecessary" war. Supporters of the Iraq war say they support our troops by supporting their "vital" mission in Iraq.

In fact, neither liberals nor conservatives truly support the brave men and women who risk their lives to defend America. For both, "support our troops" is a cheap, undeserved claim to patriotism--one that obscures their unwillingness to do what is truly necessary to protect America and its soldiers.

Granted, almost everyone wants to give our troops the resources they need to do their jobs: the best weapons, armor, provisions, and training available--as well as praise, gratitude, and encouragement. But for our government to truly support our troops, it must do far more than help them do their jobs; it must give them the right jobs to do--the jobs that will effectively defend America while minimizing the risk to their lives. Our government must place soldiers' lives at risk only when American freedom is threatened, and during war it must give them the objectives and tactics that will defeat the enemy as quickly as possible.

Water Torture

Rand Simberg, TCS Daily

The government is telling me when I can water my lawn and wash my car.

I'm used to the government telling me that I shouldn't hold up liquor stores, or kill people because they looked at me the wrong way, or that I have to pay taxes, or which side of the road to drive on, or even how deep to bury my irrigation system. I can live with those things. But this notion that I can only water my lawn at certain times seems like a whole new encroachment on my liberty.

Then again, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. Rather than defending liberties, which was what I was taught that the purpose of government was, it seems that modern government has decided that its role is instead to circumscribe them as much as possible.

[…]

What about the poor people, who will have to purchase a cheaper brand of pet food for granny if their bill to water their lawns goes up?

Well, ignoring the fact that poor people have deeper concerns than how green their lawn is, the solution to this is to provide a "lifeline" of cheap water to allow basic needs -- toilet flushing, drinking, dishwashing, bathing -- and then jacking up the price considerably for gallons beyond those required to meet those needs. So everyone can afford the basics, rich and poor, and those who want to grow rice in their backyard will pay through the nose. They can do it, but they will pay for it, not the rest of us.

Phony Science and Public Policy

Walter Williams, Townhall.com

The public has become increasingly aware that the science behind manmade global warming is a fraud. But maybe Americans like bogus science in pursuit of certain public policy objectives. Let's look at it.

Many Americans find tobacco smoke to be a nuisance. Some find the odor offensive, and others have allergies or asthma that can be aggravated by smoking in their presence. There's little question that tobacco smoke causes these kinds of nuisances, but how successful would anti-smokers have been in a court of law, or public opinion, in achieving the kind of success they've achieved based on tobacco smoke being a nuisance?

A serious public health threat had to be manufactured, and in 1993 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stepped in to the rescue with their bogus environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) study that says secondhand tobacco smoke is a class A carcinogenic.

Fuzzy Climate Math

George Will, Washington Post

In a campaign without peacetime precedent, the media-entertainment-environmental complex is warning about global warming. Never, other than during the two world wars, has there been such a concerted effort by opinion-forming institutions to indoctrinate Americans, 83 percent of whom now call global warming a " serious problem." Indoctrination is supposed to be a predicate for action commensurate with professions of seriousness.

For example, Democrats could demand that the president send the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate so they can embrace it. In 1997, the Senate voted95 to 0 in opposition to any agreement that would, like the protocol, require significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in America and some other developed nations but that would involve no "specific scheduled commitments" for 129 "developing" countries, including the second-, fourth-, 10th-, 11th-, 13th- and 15th-largest economies (China, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico and Indonesia). Forty-two of the senators serving in 1997 are gone. Let's find out if the new senators disagree with the 1997 vote.

Do they also disagree with Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist"? He says: Compliance with Kyoto would reduce global warming by an amount too small to measure. But the cost of compliance just to the United States would be higher than the cost of providing the entire world with clean drinking water and sanitation, which would prevent 2 million deaths (from diseases such as infant diarrhea) a year and prevent half a billion people from becoming seriously ill each year.


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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 PracticePrincipled commentary on cultural matters and current events from “The Objective Standard”

Cox and ForkumPolitical 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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