No Tribute for Layton

Since his death yesterday the press and social media sites have been positively swamped with tributes to Jack Layton. So many times I have read in the last two days words to the effect that "although I don't support his politics, I respect his vision/passion/determination/tenacity...", etc.

I won't and can't say that.

Think about it, the act of being tenacious or determined or passionate is not a virtue in and of itself. It is the idea behind the drive that matters more. Would you praise Stalin or Mao for their passion? No, because their ideas were horrible perversions.

I can't even praise Layton's love of Canada, because his socialist vision of Canada would have been an aberration of individualism, a detriment to freedom and would have meant a devolution into nanny statism and a profound increase in the kind of progressive socialism that is an anathema to anyone who loves their personal freedom.

Does cancer suck? Sure, I lost a good friend to Cancer earlier this year. Is it sad when someone dies of a disease? Of course, but just as I wouldn't praise a con man for doggedly trying to deprive me of my money, I won't praise someone who's ideals and principles would mean the sure and steady destruction of my freedoms if they only had a chance.

Epiphany

Yesterday was my birthday, and it went by almost unnoticed.  Not on the part of those around me, many wished me all the best, but rather on my part. 

You see, I have taken to not celebrating my birthday.  Seeing it as being a “little thing” I have largely ignored it for years, after all a birthday is just another day, you aren’t really a year older, just a day.  I didn’t give it much thought at all. I went to work, didn’t mention it, came home and had a normal unremarkable day.

Then it hit me, spurred by a comment made by my Sister-in-Law who, when I remarked that I had received no birthday gifts and had no plan to celebrate at all, commented that she “hated that”, meaning the trivialization of such celebrations.  At the time I didn’t think much of it, but this morning I realized just what I was doing. 

The Strikers Oath states in its first sentence “I swear by my life, and my love of it”, well this apathy toward my own birthday was not showing my life (Me) the ‘love’ it/I deserve.  Too easily we reduce our lives to indistinguishable days, each following in bored procession one after the other.  This is the antithesis of the Objectivist philosophy.  Objectivism teaches us that we should celebrate our lives, that it is the end of all our means and that it is worth and worthy of any and all tributes we can heap upon it.

Having had this sudden realization I began to see the other ways I had been trivializing my own existence.  I had let others that I value, specifically my wife view her birthday in the same fashion.  Thus I was robbing myself of an opportunity to express with complete selfish satisfaction how much I value her.

Hell the day itself does not need to be important at all.  The mere act of living my life in my own way, however small, is worthy of complete mindfulness, a conscious joyful acknowledgement of life, my life and my living of it.

My birthday has come and gone, but its passing, as unremarked as it was, has left me with this thought… Today, and every day is the first day of the rest of your life.  Live it, consciously, actively, viscerally, fully.

The Canadian Farce of Rights and Freedoms #2

Rights and Freedoms Permissions in Canada.

If you are a classically liberal thinker like myself you probably believe in the notion of unalienable rights, which is to say Rights as a precondition to living ones life as a man; To me and those like me rights are an intrinsic necessity to living as opposed to merely existing in this world.

Well, the talking heads that wrote and lawyered the Charter don't believe in Rights like that. As a matter of fact I don't think they believe in Rights at all, only the power of the state.

The second sentence of the Charter is called "Rights and Freedoms in Canada" now that is a tall order, or at least you would think it would be a hard thing to cram into a single solitary sentence but the sentence really has nothing to do with Rights and freedoms and everything to do with who will allow you, and when you will be allowed to have rights and freedoms.

It states in full; "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."

This is the first of many caveats in the Charter, and like all the others it is strategically placed to nullify any statement that could give the impression that Rights and Freedoms are a part of human nature as opposed to a permission granted to men at the whim of the state/government/some random constitutional lawyer.

Read that sentence. If you do so without mincing words you will immediately recognize its intent. Were you to simplify the sentence , boiling it down to its absolute meaning it would read... The Government has decided exactly what permissions you have to act and live your life and it will also decide when you will be permitted to do so.

In other words... your rights are what we say they are when we say they are.

So much for the "Guarantee of Rights and Freedoms".

The Canadian Farce of Rights and Freedoms

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a document that chains the people of Canada to a contradiction riddled and unapologetically statist perversion of the concepts of individual freedom and liberty.

"Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:"

This is the first line of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

So, in a document that claims to innumerate and codify the rights and freedoms of the people of Canada the first sentence contains a statement which, if examined rationally and without compromise, would lead to such a host of contradictions that the whole thing ought to have been thrown out of any 1st year law class.

Principle is defined in part as; a fundamental, primary, or general law or truth from which others are derived:

If it is true that Canada recognizes the Supremacy of God then which God?

No, there is no scope here to quibble and claim as many progressively minded people do that the statement is a generalization regarding the spiritual nature of any and all belief in a supernatural deity or notion, because to claim that is to allow a multitude of contradictions.

Remember the word "principles"? Well religions in Canada - which are the earthy manifestation of "God" - who according to our charter is "supreme" - don't recognize or even allow the same principles to be exercised. While some sects of the Christian religion recognize in principle (and action) the right of two men or two women to marry, the Catholic God most certainly does not; and that is one of the more benign contradictions of the notion of "principle" that this fallacious statement incurs.

Who's principle wins?

What sort of principle (fundamental, primary, or general law or truth) if any is upheld?

If you claim that the sentence is merely a recognition of spirituality what principles do we hold as true and which ones are the ones our nation is actually founded upon?

If we as a society get to pick and choose which "principles" we allow our nameless, faceless, secular Deity-thing to actually count as our founding principles why do we bother even trying to shroud the first sentence of this aberration of Rights in a spiritual cloak in the first place?

As for the remainder of the sentence, I have no complaint with the principle of "the rule of Law". That is not to say that I don't have issue with the things that we have been saddled with as "Law" but I'll get into those points as I delve further into this despicable document.

Destroyer.

I haven't been writing much lately, and although the new job has something to do with that I'm beginning to recognize the other main contributing factor, and that is what I'm focusing on today.

Basically I'm feeling politically disenfranchised, which is to say that the harder I look at society, the accepted system of morality and state of government the more it upsets, disgusts and alienates me.

As much as I believe that a properly constrained government is achievable, I am more sure each and every day that such a thing can not be created within or upon the current framework of any western democratic state. The Keynesian economic morass, corrupt political principles, moral bankruptcy and culture of entitlement both within these governments and within the general population makes the dream of building a laissez faire "purse" out of this "sows ear" a practical impossibility.

The whole mess needs to be destroyed, wholly and utterly destroyed. But more than the real and actual act of destruction is required, it must all be tied explicitly to the flawed premises that predicate the need for destruction.

In economics the boom and bust of our Keynesian economies must be explicitly tied to the idiocy of fiat currency and deficit spending, while at the same time the strength and self-correcting nature of a free market must be championed. The lunacy of handing economic control to elected but clueless officials or government bureaucrats should be writ large in the blood and sweat of the failures of that system. The businessman should take his rightful spot as the champion of the economic world and the politician and the bureaucrat should be relegated to purely political issues.

In politics we must kill the idea that government is an institution responsible for providing anything except a framework within which our individual rights (life, liberty and property) are protected from the initiation of force. It can not accomplish that goal by promising to serve any but the interest of the singular individual. No man, no group and no interest, however seemingly noble can ever be championed over the individual. There can be no law upholding the "rights" of women, or gays or consumers or blacks, or the poor, as each and every one of these demographic groups is explicitly consumed by the term "individual" and to rule in the favour of a single group is to destroy the rights of every individual outside of that group.

Our morality needs to be tied to this world, to our lives and to our purpose. This world is where we need our morality and what we need our morality for is living, not some absurd promise of an afterlife, or as some cosmic balancing act. Once that simple principle is recognized it is quite easy to see that the moral object of our lives is in the living, and that living with joy, and purpose is the good. All moral acts are those that serve us individually in the true achievement of our own happiness and our own goals and our own purpose.

Morality is not a floating abstraction that can be summarized in a few simplistic edicts. We exist as thinking rational individuals and as a result our morality must be based on the situations we find ourselves in. To declare "thou shall not kill" as a moral imperative, is an abuse of thought that demands that every moral man submit and become subservient to any immoral brute.

Perhaps the cornerstone of all of this is the need to recognize that the mere act of mortal existence, which is to say, drawing a breath as a human being entitles us to nothing. Even the unalienable rights of life, liberty and property must be secured somehow. Nature does not grant the right to live, only the ability to seek to live, nature will not give us liberty, only the ability to create liberty and nature will not bestow upon us property of any sort, only the will to create it in our own name for our own use.

The world as it is, as we have made it (thus far) is one hundred and eighty degrees out of phase with reason, nature and the facts of reality. Our current societies (all of them) are a perversion of misguided morality, incorrect economic theory, corrupt politics and undeserved rewards. It all needs to be destroyed. It must be destroyed, before it can be replaced with;

• a moral code based on mans life and the living of it,
  
• an economic system based on and working in coordination with markets and market forces,
  
• politics based on and in service to individual rights and only individual rights and,
• the rational and selfish rejection of entitlement in favour of self-reliance and productive effort in all aspects of our individual lives, whatever our ability.
  

A Tale of Two Moralities

A Judge in Ontario recently struck down the laws concerning keeping a Bawdy house, and communication for the purpose of prostitution. Predictably the religious and other moral busy-bodies have come out in opposition to the ruling and are promising an appeal.

With the voices raised in "moral" opposition to the ruling calling for the reinstatement of the old laws, this article is calling for us to leave morality out of the prostitution debate... and that is wrong.

Prostitution is a degrading, dangerous and often demeaning profession. I can’t for the life of me think of one single reason why any person who has the least bit of intelligence, self respect or personal integrity would want to be a prostitute. In my opinion, the person who seeks sex for hire is a lonely, miserable creature seeking to ameliorate some personal psychological defect, and the person supplying it is most likely equally as damaged.

But that moral judgment on the physical and psychological act of prostitution is an issue separate from the meta-ethical assessment of prostitution as a profession. By meta-ethical in this instance I mean how we support or defend our ethical judgments.

Ayn Rand said “Morality ends where a gun begins”. Not only does this mean that one can not be commanded to act “morally” (as one would in normal circumstances) when confronted with the choice of life or death through force but also, and more importantly, that the initiation of force is itself immoral.

For me the question of meta-ethics rests on one thing the initiation of force (or fraud). It is the initiation of force against a human being that is immoral. So meta-ethically speaking something which does not initiate force is not immoral. Since prostitution, (the exchange of money for sex) as defined does not involve the initiation of force it is not immoral meta-ethically, and for this reason morality must remain a part of our current debate about prostitution.

While anyone and everyone has the right to pronounce moral judgments on the nature of the world’s oldest profession these are personal judgments only, and can not be ripped out of our minds to be used as an ideal which we then impose upon all people. This is true no matter how many (or few) of us may believe in that ideal.

The only meta-ethical reason for the prohibition of prostitution or any other act is the initiation of force against another human being. As defined, prostitution is a contractual agreement and is fundamentally no different than the purchase of any other tradesman’s labour and skill.

What we need with regard to this issue (and morality in general) is not to forget about it, but to discover it, and to differentiate between its personal and meta-ethical applications in our lives and in our governance.

Dr. Alice Mengele

I find it unfathomable that this article is categorized under "Best Doctors".

Here is a woman who is basically bragging about having "rehabilitated" a cold blooded killer. A man who would kill anyone for the right amount of cash. Who shows no remorse and thinks of his murders as "another day at the office".

What'smore, reading the comments section I'm flabbergasted that the only thing that bothers the commentators on the page (presumably other doctors) is that the article claims that a psychologist prescribed meds...

This article doesn't showcase ethical action but moral apathy. It's not that this "doctor" doesn't recognize that her patient is an evil cold blooded murderer it's that her position as a Doctor has given her a free pass at having to judge the moral from the immoral. What an abject failure this woman is as a rational human being.

I will go farther. She is evil. Pure unmitigated evil. She is right up there with the guards at Dachau and Auschwitz claiming ignorance and innocence because they didn't actually drop the gas pellets into the chambers, or stuff bodies into the ovens.

"Best Doctor" eh? Well done Dr. Alice Mengele.

Not Neutral... Ambivalent. Not Compassionate... Evil

I will never donate another penny to the Red Cross.

The Red Cross' treatment of the Taliban in Afghanistan exemplifies the predominant philosophy of our age writ large. The Red Cross is exhibiting its altruistic roots, it is supporting people who would see it and every other vestige of "western society" completely destroyed. How wonderfully selfless.

Ayn Rand once said that "Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent." and she was right.

That answer to the Red Cross' implicit philosophy draws some fire from "compassionate humanists" though...

"The Red Cross is just being neutral" they say just like in WW2 when they dealt with German POW's in Prison camps.

That is a good point and I hadn't thought of it before but their assistance to the Taliban now is no different than their assistance to Nazi's in WW2.

I see now that the Red Cross is not immoral for doing this but rather that it is amoral. It is designed as an organization to be unable to distinguish between right and wrong, good from evil. Which in my book puts it directly alongside the evil it is unable to recognize.

"But the Red Cross is just like Switzerland..." they cry "Neutral!"

But they miss a very important distinction between the Swiss neutrality and the Red Cross'.

The Swiss neither help nor hinder any side. They keep their hands to themselves in all matters. This isn't amoral, they have decided that it is in their self-interest as a nation to stay out of it all altogether.

The Red Cross is not neutral it is ambivalent. It doesn't care who it helps. It makes every one of the good guys fighting for the moral and right reasons, the exact same as every misogynistic, racist, ignorant, socially backward, religious fanatic and bugger Taliban on the battlefield.

In short, the Red Cross equates MMV winners, guys like Tpr Shane Dolmovic and our leaders, like General Hillier with the scum-bags who throw acid on schoolgirls and stone women to death for the crime of adultery when they have actually been raped.

There is a moral choice facing the Red Cross, it is as clear as white and black, and they are evil for failing to make that choice.

Then comes the next philosophical head fake...

"The Taliban were raised to believe what they do, their society is structured that way, their religion has taught them that they are right. So who are we to say what is moral? "

To answer a question of morality I would ask what is the purpose of existence and what position among all the positions of all religions, ideologies and cultures best upholds that purpose?

For me the purpose of existence is life, my life and my living of it. In other words living in a rationally self-interested way.

Now this does not mean living as a range of the moment hedonist. Tiger Woods was not operating in his self-interest when he was out whoring around, as evidenced by how much those actions have cost him personally and professionally.

Nor is it a blank cheque to treat people as sub-human, as disposable and worthless. After all it does not further my life to live in a society where I would need to treat every other person as a danger rather than a possible source of value to enhance and enrich my life.

It also doesn't benefit me to treat this life like a shadow of something more "beyond the grave". Reality and the facts of it all point to this being the only existence we are going to get. Dismissing reality is the first cardinal sin against living a good, long, successful and happy life.

It also means that altruistic sacrifice (the relinquishment of a greater benefit for a lesser one) is contrary to living in this life.*

* A note here, our soldiers do not sacrifice themselves for a lesser value. They have either made a conscious decision that what they are fighting for is worth the possibility of death or they have weighed the risks and believe themselves to be skilled enough to survive where others will not. Neither of these is sacrifice.

So to get back to the deciding of what is moral or not; using these few points and many others that it would take too long to list I can, and you can, determine what is moral and what isn't, and we should.

More than that I believe that this world would be much better off if people would use the standard of their own lives to determine their morality instead of accepting someone else's definition, ideology or superstition.

Like Rand said. "The moral principle to adopt is Judge and be prepared to be Judged."

Actions can not be separated from their results, no matter if you claim compassion, humanity or neutrality as your excuse. No matter if you are an individual or a multi-national organization.

I have judged the Red Cross by their actions and I find them to be immoral, and evil.

*H/T Chris

Become an Anti-Fascist (for real)

The Ann Coulter event that was shut down by a legion of Brownshirts at the University of Ottawa on the 23 of March, 2010 at the veiled instigation of the University's Vice-President Academic and Provost.

As Mark Styen so eloquently puts it:

"Alliances between the state’s ideological commissars and street mobs are a familiar feature of certain kinds of societies, and I suppose Canada will soon get used to its membership of this unlovely club."

Do we really want to become part of this unlovely club? should we sit still while Fraud and Force become the ruling imperatives of this society? We are already pretty far along this path already, do we want to finish with our children inheriting a Fascist society?

Fight Fraud by shining the light on government accounting at every level. All parties and politicians are guilty to a greater or lesser extent, basing deficit reduction on rosy predictions of GDP growth is as fraudulent as labelling crony capitalism as "economic stimulus". Putting items off the budget or obscuring public audits and scrutiny are equally bad. Individuals can explore and expose government fraud and waste, we need legions of bloggers to do so at the Municipal, Provincial and Federal level.

Fight Force by doing everything possible to deny funding to Universities which promote Brownshirt behaviour like shutting down free speech or promoting "Israel anti-apartheid week". No money to fundraisers or endowments. Withdraw from these institutions so they don't get your tuition fees. Refuse to hire graduates from these Universities and let the applicant know why.

Ayn Rand laid it out for all of us:

"It is the greatest moral crisis in history, and the last"

Which side of History do you want to be on?

Freedom is a self help project

Christmas

From the Ayn Rand Lexicon...

[In answer to the question of whether it is appropriate for an atheist to celebrate Christmas:]

Yes, of course. A national holiday, in this country, cannot have an exclusively religious meaning. The secular meaning of the Christmas holiday is wider than the tenets of any particular religion: it is good will toward men—a frame of mind which is not the exclusive property (though it is supposed to be part, but is a largely unobserved part) of the Christian religion.

The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way. One says: “Merry Christmas”—not “Weep and Repent.” And the good will is expressed in a material, earthly form—by giving presents to one’s friends, or by sending them cards in token of remembrance . . . .

The best aspect of Christmas is the aspect usually decried by the mystics: the fact that Christmas has been commercialized. The gift-buying . . . stimulates an enormous outpouring of ingenuity in the creation of products devoted to a single purpose: to give men pleasure. And the street decorations put up by department stores and other institutions—the Christmas trees, the winking lights, the glittering colors—provide the city with a spectacular display, which only “commercial greed” could afford to give us. One would have to be terribly depressed to resist the wonderful gaiety of that spectacle.

The Objectivist Calendar, Dec. 1976.

Merry Christmas one and all!

The Charitable State.

Invariably when arguing for complete laissez-faire policies and the dismantling of the welfare state the question that the statist asks is...

"What are we to do with the people who can't fend for themselves as well as others and who need assistance in order to survive in society?"

The Objectivist response is that the individual can do whatever he wishes to do, but that he can not claim the right to force others. That he can not take his personal penchant for charity and with the loaded gun of government force others to be charitable.

There are two man-centric ideologies at work here, represented by the welfare state, and the charitable state.

The welfare state is ruled by conflicting premises.

On one hand is the claim that we men are caring creatures and that we are not "wired" or "evolved" in such a way to act as self-centered, egoists and individualists. The claim is that each and every one of us needs the community, the collective and as a result men overwhelmingly realize that the collective is greater than the sum of its parts. This reasoning is used to indicate that men should help one another, that we ought to be charitable, altruistic toward our fellow men.

The other (and contradictory) premise, which leads the welfare state to use its ill gotten force is that men are nasty, selfish, ignorant brutes who would never stop to help their fellow men and therefore must be forced to support all sorts of initiatives and progams to alleviate the suffering and hardship of those less fortunate.

Yes, the claim is that we are simultaneously "hard wired" to be altruistic and yet need to be forced to think of anyone but ourselves. This is a contradiction of epic proportions.

The Objectivist stance on the less fortunate is simple. Let each and every individual choose whether he is going to be charitable or not, depending on his preference and his ideals, his values and his own situation. There is no need to force charity.

Without government forcing the charitable to pay for every politician's pet project or well connected pressure group's personal agenda the amount of disposable income available for charity would be immense.

The benefits to the contributors would similarly be valuable to them. "Contribute to a home for the homeless? Sure! It might reduce crime, it would certainly make the city look better. Donate to the family down the street in their time of need, but of course..."

Funny isn't it that it is the selfish egoist's that are certain that individual, honest, uncoerced charity can function as required, and that the altruistic, collectivist humanists see the need to point a gun at your head and demand your money for their life.

Anti-contextual

"Every day... I can greedily, rightfully, seize every ticking moment, and never give one of them back."




"I don't live to live through anyone, ever."

On the surface these commercials are great. There is no equivocation, the sense of life is individualistic and unapologetic. They are classy and they appeal to the kind of strength of character that accepts such ideals... On the surface.

But context is important and in this case the context includes the fact that this company just received one of the most massive bailouts in history. That this is the second such bailout for this company in the last 30 years.

I don't think that these rather Objectivist appeals to individualism are an accident either. Atlas Shrugged is poised to have its best selling year to date, Tea Parties protesting the largest expansion of the welfare state in the US since the "New Deal" were held across the country.

The company is most definitely trying to appeal to that backlash, and it is just as fervently hoping that you and I and all the rest of the people out there don't notice their hypocrisy. They are counting on their audience being as anti-contextual as they are.

"Shhhhhhhhhhhh," they say... "forget the bailout... Forget the fact that your choices made us unable to survive on our own so we told the government to force you to support us. Forget that this already happened in 1979, forget that to us the ideas in these commercials are just a crass advertising ploy"... Yes, forget all that...

But then maybe that is the point, and part and parcel of their problem. As long as this company, and others like it remain anti-contextual themselves, as long as individualism, self reliance and rational self interest are only marketing gimmicks to them, then they are doomed to be moochers, looters, scavengers and thugs, taking the money they are not worthy of earning by force and denying us our freedom and choice through the barrel of a government gun.

Ironic isn't it

One of the charges made against the Objectivist, and Objectivism by both the socialists and the religious conservative right is that the philosophy is elitist.

This assumption is made through superficial readings of Ayn Rands books, where no deeper meaning is never sought out, and the mind is sequestered from the possibility of contamination by contradictory principals. In reading Atlas Shrugged they ignore the characters like Eddy Willers, Sheryl Gallant, the young brakeman. In The Fountainhead "Mike" the construction worker is forgotten. So because of their selective understanding, intellectual dishonesty and evasion they label Objectivism elitist. But is it?

Objectivism holds that anyone can strive for perfection in anything they do. That every man has it within his own being and his own reasons for being to be happy on his own terms, to be successful on his own terms, to be his own ideal.

The socialist on the other hand believes that some men will never amount to anything unless those who are better off (smarter, richer, healthier) give him, or more rightly force others to give him that which he could surely never achieve on his own.

The right wing fundamentalist believes that some men need to be shown the error of their ways, even that they must be forced toward "the good" (as defined in their scripture) through laws and prohibitions so that they might be able to reach the lofty heights of heaven.

Which one of these philosophies was the one labelled as elitist?

Yup, Objectivism, the philosophy of man and the only one of the three that says anyone can achieve, anyone can be moral and anyone can be happy by being the best he can be, by living his life for himself.

Ironic isn't it. The socialists and the right wing mystics tell you you're not good enough to achieve "it" on your own, but it is Objectivism, that tells you, you can and are, that gets labelled as being elitist

Genes Of Evil...

''The American relatives have agreed not to have children to extinguish the saga of Hitler and stop living in fear, but have promised to publish a book before they die,'' said Mulders.

This is the sort of nonsense regurgitated by people who believe that your genetic code is the be all and end all of you, the individual. This is the ugly ignorant hand of determinism reaching out from beyond the grave to destroy what could be, or could have been vital productive lives of people who have themselves never done wrong.

Its a psychological, physiological and existential impossibility that being related to one of the most evil men in history means that you will somehow by the miracle of genetics pass that "sin" on to an offspring.

An equivalent lunacy would be to say that existing relatives of the Donner Party should never be allowed to cook at the campsite.

What if Milton Friedman was addressing America's schoolchildren?

Although a President making an address to schoolchildren should not seem controversial, President Barack Obama has managed to arouse a great deal of resistance and opposition to his planned address.

The controversy isn't so much about the remarks of the address (which, being pitched to children, is relatively mild and uncontroversial in of itself), but the larger context of how the administration operates in general and the crude and ill conceived "learning package" that was planned to go with the speech, a package for America's schoolchildren which has all the hallmarks of indoctrination.

Perhaps it would be better if schoolchildren everywhere were to hear from notables like Milton Friedman. I pulled this gem from "Dr Helen":

I would rather think that the words of Milton Friedman from his book Capitalism and Freedom make more sense:

"The paternalistic 'what your country can do for you' implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man's belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny. The organismic, 'what you can do for your country' implies that government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors, and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served.

Now there is a lesson we can all get behind

Don’t Call It Moral.

The Scottish Judge who released Terrorist bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi the killer of 270 people over Lockerbie Scotland said in an interview with CNN that;

“Equally, we have values that we seek to live by, even if those who perpetrate crimes against us have not respected us or shown any compassion. Here is a dying man. He didn't show compassion to the victims, American or Scottish. That does not mean that we should lower ourselves, debase ourselves, or abandon our values.

He was justly convicted, but we're allowing him some mercy to return home to die.”

This statement by the judge implies the application of a moral standard, but morals are defined as; of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong;

The last part is central to my point. Under Christian religious morality one should always find it in their heart to forgive a transgressor, no matter what it is that they have done wrong. This is the central tenant of Christian “morality”.

The problem is that it isn’t moral; it is specifically and implicitly amoral. It discards all concept of right and wrong and replaces it with the vilest abdication of thought imaginable. Christianity tries to make the devout follower indifferent to questions of right or wrong and wholly dependent and subservient to some mystical whim which is itself contradicted in Christian religious writings (including anecdotal evidence of god’s actions).

So here is your choice. You can believe in the Christian morality and try to walk your religious tightrope which lists a multitude of things as evil but also states that you should forgive any transgression no matter how vile, or you can apply the morality encapsulated in the sentence “In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.”

Quickly… Choose. Choose to compromise on any and all moral decisions, to abandon any principal based on the whim of a deity who himself fails to apply what he teaches, or you can take the hard line, the resolute stance to believe in right and wrong regardless of circumstance, immovable by whim, immutable by the mystic babbling of an invisible unknowable and completely inconsistent god.

It Really Is That Simple...

H/T Kelly

Still seeking "Galt's gulch"

Right now, I am still thinking about how a "virtual" Galt's Gulch would work, since we are living in an era that does resemble the collapse of American free enterprise in Atlas Shrugged. While it is very nice to stand and declare your beliefs, most readers can see there is an ever increasing trend towards State intervention in everything, and State oppression is pretty close at hand (if not there already, see the CHRC or the American Congress openly considering a bill of attender against AIG executives...).

Being able to disappear from the view of State censors or other Brownshirt thugs will be a real survival mechanism for anyone who wants to keep liberty alive in these conditions. I am also not so confident that civilization can be rebuilt on Classical Liberal principles as easily as making the sign of the dollar in the air; I am thinking in the worst case we actually need to consider a sort of Irish Monastery project  (although this could also just be natural paranoia peeking through).

Sadly, a physical Galt's Gulch is probably not practical or feasible in the here and now (at least not if we like hot and cold running water), and attempts to stake out a physical space in the oceans or deserts is probably doomed to failure in the face of State competition (and the reason we have "States" is because they were the best form of organization for creating and controlling military power ever devised). Unless someone comes up with inexpensive access to space so communities can be established on the Moon, asteroids and moons of the gas giant planets far away from current State competition, then we are stuck with the virtual world.

I am still heartened by ideas that the Libertarian Revolution is actually a social rather than political movement, and Objectivism is certainly part of this movement. The T.E.A. party movement shows there is a groundswell of opinion against the current political and social situation, but no one has managed to capture it just yet, and of course there is always the danger that the T.E.A. party could either devolve into irrelevance or be captured by "the man on the white horse".

Of course, hunkering down in a real or virtual bunker against the impending Apocalypse is pretty defeatist. As Jerry Pournelle reminds readers of his blog "Chaos Manor"; Despair is a Sin. We need to move outwards in all kinds of unexpected directions, small furry mammals in the Jurassic political park. 

-Using virtual tools to create and operate in an underground economy

-Going Ragnar Danneskjöld and applying for government grants equal to the taxes you have paid

- Boycotting companies and media that actively promote or support statist views and policy (GM anyone?)

- Supporting political candidates of the Freedom Party or Libertarian Party (a small "c" conservative party if there are no representatives of the first two parties available).

- Working at the municipal level against statist policies

- Becoming energy self sufficient and getting off the grid. Minimizing the use of other centralized services as much as possible or practical is also encouraged.

As you can see, there are lots of possible options, and not every one is possible for every person. You will have to decide which ones work for you, and then execute the plan. The individual actions of thousands or millions of people will have a huge impact, and you can vote with your dollars and your actions every single day.

Freedom is a self help project!

I

I is the most profound word in any language. In English that one letter calls forth all the axiomatic concepts.

I is a statement of identity, a claim to consciousness and considering those two, it is an acknowledgment of existence.