This Week on the Web (May 12 – May 18)

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COMMENTARY

Study of Troops’ Mental Health, Ethics Indicts Bush’s Selfless War
Elan Journo, The Ayn Rand Institute (via Principles in Practice)

A recently disclosed Pentagon study on the impact of the Iraq war on U.S. combat troops suggests that many are stressed and hold views at odds with official ethics standards. Critics view this as evidence that more must be done to ensure troops comply with those standards. But in fact the study provides evidence for a searing indictment of Washington’s immoral battlefield policies—policies that entail the sacrifice of American troops for the sake of the enemy.

The study reports, for example, that less than half of the soldiers and Marines surveyed would report a team member for unethical behavior. It also finds that “soldiers that have high levels of anger, experienced high levels of combat or screened positive for a mental health problem were nearly twice as likely to mistreat non-combatants” as those feeling less anger and screening negative for a mental health problem.

Although many military personnel may support the Iraq war, and although war is inherently distressing, Washington’s immoral policies necessitate putting our troops in an impossible situation. The reported attitudes of combat troops in Iraq can be understood as the natural reaction of individuals thrust into that situation.

U.S. troops were sent, not to defend America against whatever threat Hussein’s hostile regime posed to us, as a first step toward defeating our enemies in the region; but instead the troops were sent (as Bush explained) to “sacrifice for the liberty of strangers,” putting the lives of Iraqis above their own.

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Rebuilding Ground Zero
Steve Malanga, Opinion Journal

But if Mr. Silverstein thought his quick work--which for several years represented the only signs of progress around the site--was going to earn him congratulations, he was mistaken. Soon after 7 World Trade opened, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg criticized him for not leasing it more quickly, claiming that the developer was asking prices that were too high. Government officials publicly pressured him to complete a deal with a Chinese developer who was to be the tower's first tenant, and then excoriated him when he cancelled the deal after the prospective tenant failed to provide adequate details on its financing.

But since then Mr. Silverstein has managed to lease 1.1 million square feet of 7 World Trade to blue-chip tenants like Moody's, at rents that are 50% higher than what officials were urging him to accept. "I simply did not listen to all the naysayers because I was spending my money, not theirs, and fortunately I had no government involvement in 7 World Trade, which gave me the opportunity to do what I do best," he says.

While construction proceeded on 7 World Trade, Mr. Silverstein got bogged down in the battle over how to redevelop the rest of the site. The agency charged with leading the redevelopment was torn by conflicting visions and tried to shoehorn as much as possible into their plan--a museum, a memorial to the dead, a home for a major New York cultural institution, residential development and office space. Critics urged cutting back the office space to make room for these varied uses. In the midst of his re-election campaign, Mayor Bloomberg even declared that the market couldn't support new skyscrapers anyway. He advocated instead building housing where the towers once stood, calling to mind a glum prediction about Manhattan by a character in Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead": "The age of the skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project." The New York Daily News responded to the mayor's imprecations with the headline: "Butt Out, Larry."

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The Next WTC...If There Is One
Michael Hurd, DrHurd.com

Steve Malanga, writing in The Wall Street Journal Opinion page 5/12-13/07:

"The terrorists attacked the twin towers because they embodied the values of our democratic free-market economic system. The memorial that will rise on Ground Zero will make no reference to those values, nor seek to celebrate our way of life. Rather the memorial, in the way of postmodern monuments, will merely ask us to ponder the absence of those who died."

How true--and how sad. The aftermath of the World Trade Center is a metaphor for our times. It will be rebuilt with private money, but only on terms the government finds acceptable. This is how most of our "free market" economic system operates today--at the behest of the government, but with private dollars. (Keep in mind: Even tax dollars started out as private dollars. Someone created the wealth.) And government officials have accepted the "postmodern" philosophy of today's intellectuals. That philosophy holds, on the surface, that there are no values or principles and, therefore, the new World Trade Center (why even name it that?) can stand for nothing except as a memorial to those who died. In truth, it's free markets, capitalism and, on a deeper level, man's productive enjoyment of life on earth that these intellectuals despise, which is why, in their eyes, the next World Trade Center must stand for nothing aside from a gravesite. It remains to be seen if it will stand at all. If it does, and if the World Trade Center rises again, then the real values behind its name may well override the cynical attempts of our politicians and professors to pretend those values never existed.

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The Genesis of Thought Crime
Ed Cline, The Rule of Reason

The first and most crucial thing to grasp about what can be deemed a “hate crime” is that it is, essentially, a political crime. If this country were still ruled by objective law; if Congress fulfilled its proper role as a protector of individual rights; and if the Supreme Court acted to uphold the legitimate individual rights-based philosophy of the Constitution; then pressure and special interest groups would have no chance of having laws enacted that favored them at the expense of others. In short, they would have no political power to instigate the passage of fiat legislation. The only crime that could legitimately be called “political” would be treason, that is, actions taken to aid and/or comfort the enemies of the United States. But every piece of “public policy” legislation in this country, from Social Security, to Medicare, to banking laws, to disability laws, to anti-discrimination, racial and gender quota laws – the list is long and growing longer – is a consequence of political pull and a measure of the corruptive influence of collectivism.
[…]

What will stop the blurring of distinctions between disparagement, defamation, slander and libel? What federal, state or local judge will uphold the conceptual lines between them at the risk of being politically incorrect and inviting the wrath of the liberal left and pressure groups? Well, nothing and no one. Rational jurisprudence is unraveling apace with freedom of speech. Fox Television’s “24” toned down its anti-jihadist plots at the behest of CAIR. No major American newspaper or public figure came to the defense of the Danish cartoonists. And Dr. John Lewis last month was subjected to actions of intimidating thugs at George Mason University for daring to criticize Islamists. Do not forget that other courageous individuals, such as Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and other critics of Islam, can appear at universities and other public forms only after the most stringent security measures have been taken. All this occurred while H.R. 1592 incubated in the House. But Muslims would not be the only beneficiaries of H.R. 1592. What rankles conservatives more than its potential to further abridge the First Amendment is that it singles out for special protection homosexuals, the “trans-gendered,” and “cross-dressers,” all “sinners” by conservative moral criteria. Do not expect conservatives to defend the First Amendment with any important, fundamental arguments. For example, the possibility that H.R. 1592 would have any connection to the abridgement of the First Amendment is nowhere mentioned in George Will’s column. He skirts the issue – “Hate-crime laws…mandate enhanced punishments for crimes committed because of thoughts that government especially disapproves.” In fact, Christian activists no more like seeing God’s or Christ’s name besmirched or hearing it taken in vain than do Muslims Allah’s or Mohammad’s. It is a certainty that they, too, will avail themselves of the power of H.R. 1592, if it becomes law, to punish or gag anyone who dares offend their religious feelings or sensibilities, as well.


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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



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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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