That's it.

I'm going to save the planet.

I'm going to train my dog to eat environmentalists...

They Have No Right(s)

It ought to be called "The Canadian Charter of Desires and Permissions" because Rights and Freedoms don't enter into the equation...

"The court acknowledges that the law violates the rights of parents and children. The court acknowledges that if the law is read as written any attempts to achieve the same result as the offending law will violate those same rights. The court says, we won’t read the law that way next time if you change the wording to something nicer. "

read the whole thing

No, Really? Seriously?!?

*

"She criticized the media's portrait of Mexico as nothing more than a society of illegal migration, drugs and violence, and she said her fellow citizens found it amazing that Mexican asylum seekers in Canada were claiming their government couldn't protect them from the drug wars and corrupt and abusive security forces."

I know that as a politician she is required to paint a somewhat skewed picture of her nation but seriously, Mexico is currently embroiled in an all out Drug war with more than 8,463 dead and counting. Hell, the war even has its own Wiki page.

*

"In five minutes, without shooting a bullet, a 20-man armed commando unit burst into a prison in the Mexican state of Zacatecas and freed 53 prisoners – all of them connected with the Gulf Cartel. The lightning speed of the operation and the crisp Federal Police uniforms worn by the gunmen was the work of the Zetas, the Gulf Cartel’s armed wing."

With all due respect to Senator Rosario Green Macias, her humiliation is a direct result of her own country's inability to stem both the flow of drugs and the flow of people away from the violence and the drugs.

Senator, don't look at Canada and claim that relations will get better with a new Prime Minister, look to Mexico and fix the problems there.

Watch This

There's a lot of noise about the PM not watching Canadian news...

Three points.
1. Do people honestly believe that anything that the PM needs to know isn't briefed to him by people a lot more in the know than the Canadian press?
2. Perhaps the Canadian media should be examining just how poorly they deliver their product when it's not even watched by the leader of the country.
3. With Canadian news as partisan as it is (on both sides) do you really blame the PM for wanting a somewhat removed perspective on it?

Right for all the Wrong reasons

Bob Hepburn is right for all the wrong reasons.

Everything "Lord" Moran said about Canadians seems to me to be pretty close to the mark. We tend to overly praise even just the competent members of our society, and should someone reach critical acclaim outside of Canada, well Lord Moran's quip about the Order of Canada is not far from the mark.

Similarly Mr Hepburn is not wrong in asserting that it is high time that Canada cut the umbilical and ended the sham of constitutional monarchy. The Queen and her representative, the Governor General are a waste of time and money. We do not need a royal marionette or even the puppeteer herself to give the actions of our government and its elected officials sanction.

What do you suppose would be the response by Canada and Canadians if the GG on the recommendation of the Queen, or the Queen herself decided to refuse to sign some piece of legislation into law?

If you guessed the end of the monarchy in Canada you would be right.

This begs the question that if the Queen/GG would never contemplate disallowing a Canadian law or a proclamation from Canada's parliament what use are they anyway?

Was Lord Moran being a pompous arrogant wind-bag when he wrote that letter all those years ago? Most likely, but Mr. Hepburn's pulverized feelings aside, the Stars writer hasn't done a very good job of proving the Brit wrong when his article stands on the premise of digging for hurt feelings from a 25 year old letter.

The Nature of Governments

We’ve heard it all before… “Government is a necessary evil.” Well, that is a lie, and a dangerous lie at that.

By implication the statement seems to say that if we dumb humans could only get it right we could exist in a society free of government. This is the anarchist dream, but even they recognize the need for the protection of rights, for national and personal security. However, their solution is not governmental but private. They say that a society let a man hire a company to protect his rights that he could be safe, that he would be protected.

Of course that all falls disastrously apart when Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith each having hired different security forces both maintain their rights have been violated and each attempts to have the other arrested for the transgression. Protection Company “A” plus Protection Company “B” minus the stability of a single government equals bloodbath.

Alternatively such anarchy panders to the far too human tendency toward the principal that might makes right and gangs, private armies and warlords turn the anarchist utopia into a Hobbesian life, cruel, brutish and short.

On the other side of the coin is the belief that Government, (still as a necessary evil) is what makes a society, that it is an end in itself, that it is more important than any one man. The socialist and communist while promising that someday the state will “whither away” still believe in it indeed they make it the causus beli of their society.

In following the false notion of collective rights, they come to believe that in order to provide what is “good” to “all” it is necessary to destroy the concept and meaning of the individual. “You” as an entity do not exist. You are a cog in the wheel, insignificant when measured against the needs of others. What others? The others. What need? Their need. Who is the “all” that they are working so hard for? Why it’s anyone but you, the individual.

So where does this leave us? Well, to be honest, metaphysically it leaves us way, way back before government and politics and society ever enter into the picture, but that is a subject for another day so let me just make a “simple” assertions here.

The previous two extremes attempted, or claimed to protect mans rights. What essential right is it that the Anarchist and the Socialist seek to protect? Mans right to life.

Life is the right from which all other rights spring, be they true rights like liberty and property or false printing press rights like the right to healthcare or to a job.

Can one sell a right, or hire it out? Certainly not.

Who has a life worthy of the term right? Society, a nation, some group, government or gang? No.

Only an individual can possess rights and no individual can ever hold his rights higher than the rights of another. And it is that principle that brings us to the nature, purpose and necessity of government.

Government is necessary to protect the rights of individuals, to ensure that their rights are held on par with all other individuals. No mans position, strength, wealth, need or wants can ever place his rights above the rights of another man. That assurance is the sole function of government, it is not evil, it is just and proper and rational.

How a government approaches the defence of individual rights defines its nature. The anarchist disallows government as the arbiter of disputes and consequently the protector of rights, so rights are destroyed.

The socialist perverts the concept of rights and applies it to some nameless, faceless undefined collective making slaves of all.

The welfare statist attempts to make rights out of needs consequentially following the socialists path to hell.

And finally religionists of whatever political persuasion subverts mans right to live his own life for the commandments of some supernatural fairy tale and the promise of something better when he is dead..

So the next time you hear someone say that government is a necessary evil ask him to name which evil he prefers more, slavery, servitude or death.

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

Getting away from it all; why we really need to find Galt's Gulch

The real problem is we are constrained. No matter where you go, you will always be in the reach of others, most of who are determined to make sure you pay your fair share of their entitlements. The siren call of living off the means of others continues to be the number one enemy of freedom, and indeed, there is little that can be done, since it is a rational choice for an individual to attempt to shift their burdens onto someone else.  It is also rational to attempt to dominate others by force if you wish to take their wealth for yourself; Socialism and Warlords are really just different facets of the same thing.

Personal "Galt's Gulches" are quite possible, and I have blogged on this subject in the past. A virtual "New Atlantis" based on Internet connectivity may also be possible, especially if the medium of exchange is something mutually agreed upon by the members (trading useful information and barter may not be as efficient as cash, but is certainly less accessible to the agents of the State).

No, the solution must involve escaping entirely from the clutches of the State, but also in leaving a beacon for like-minded people to follow. In the present day and age, we have a destination: space.

Since the 1980’s, a large and growing body of science and literature has been devoted to the problems of settling in the environment of outer space. Much of this is actually recycled, amazingly, thinkers like Konstantin Tsiolkovsky were writing on the subject as early as 1903. Most of the ideas have simply been refined with the addition of a century of scientific and technological development. Today we are on the threshold of actually achieving inexpensive spaceflight. Private companies like “Virgin Galactic” have working prototypes of commercial spacecraft that can bring people to the edge of space, and developments like IEC Fusion (being developed by EMC2 Energy) will bring cheap energy which can be harnessed for propulsion beyond Earth Orbit.

So, what's the problem? A society with access to cheap energy (which can be generated in theory by low cost devices that determined individuals or small companies can produce) would seem to be the definition of an Earthly paradise. The real problem is that while the powers of the individual could be increased, the power of the State could increase overwhelmingly. As well, vast increases in available luxury and wealth would be used to bribe the "sheeple" and keep them quiet in the face of an ever increasing "soft tyranny". 

New horizons are needed to draw the best out of people, and inspire those who by accident or design are unable to follow. The end of the middle ages in Europe came not when the New World was discovered (for the nth time) but when it was publicized: (Via Instapundit)

HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY: Many in the West will demonstrate their fierce originality and intellectual independence today by condemning Christopher Columbus using the same shopworn cliches they used last year. For those of a different bent, I recommend Samuel Eliot Morison’s Admiral of the Ocean Sea : A Life of Christopher Columbus, which takes a somewhat different position. Here’s an excerpt:

At the end of 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. . . .

Yet, even as the chroniclers of Nuremberg were correcting their proofs from Koberger’s press, a Spanish caravel named Nina scudded before a winter gale into Lisbon with news of a discovery that was to give old Europe another chance. In a few years we find the mental picture completely changed. Strong monarchs are stamping out privy conspiracy and rebellion; the Church, purged and chastened by the Protestant Reformation, puts her house in order; new ideas flare up throughout Italy, France, Germany and the northern nations; faith in God revives and the human spirit is renewed. The change is complete and startling: “A new envisagement of the world has begun, and men are no longer sighing after the imaginary golden age that lay in the distant past, but speculating as to the golden age that might possibly lie in the oncoming future.”

Christopher Columbus belonged to an age that was past, yet he became the sign and symbol of this new age of hope, glory and accomplishment. His medieval faith impelled him to a modern solution: Expansion.

A community of people who are fully engaged in bringing new worlds to life will certainly develop a much different view of life and society than indolent masses who are being kept like fattened sheep in a pen. Where every hand at the wheel is important, the habits of hard work, thrift and planning become paramount, much like frontier society during the colonization of North America between the 1500’s and the closing of the frontier in the 1870’s. Even today, much of the difference between cultural conservatives and liberals can be traced to the environment: conservatives tend to live in small towns and rural environments, while liberals tend to live in cities. Far less surplus wealth exists in the countryside to feed populations of moochers, and those who do live that lifestyle often do so at the expense of family and friends who agree to provide support.

There are fewer extremes of wealth as well in such environments, allowing people to deal with each other as equals, rather than as masters and servants. While ideas like an “elect” might never die out, the ability to constantly expand to new environments and harvest new resources will provide an endless counterbalance:

Morison’s book is superb, and I recommend it highly as an antidote to the simplistic anti-occidental prejudice of today — which, as Jim Bennett has noted, has roots that might surprise its proponents:

This is primarily an effect of the Calvinist Puritan roots of American progressivism. Just as Calvinists believed in the centrality of the depravity of man, with the exception of a minuscule contingent of the Elect of God, their secularized descendants believe in the depravity and cursedness of Western civilization, with their own enlightened selves in the role of the Elect.

Boo Fricken Hoo...

Yeah, how dare we demonize an ideology that is responsible for nothing less than the systematic slaughter of 30 to 50 million people in one single country, not to mention all the rest of the purges carried out in its name in the last 92 years.

*Sorry for the redundancy in the Tags on this post...

For What?

His Obamaness, lord of hope and change, the One has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of...

Well I don't know what it is in recognition of. Nominations were closed only 11 days after he took office. Eleven days is barely enough time to evaluate a newly purchased car much less a newly established president. I've had direct supervisors that it took me longer to assess.

The Nobel Peace prize has just achieved Cracker-Jack Box status

And on that note, Mr. Nobel must be rolling over in his grave.

*As one friend put it. The Prize has been awarded to three other sitting presidents but this is the first time it has been awarded just for sitting.

Yet another one liner... "Atlas Shrugged isn't coming true The Onion is." (H/T Ryan)

Proper Product Testing

"The windscreen is heated, but not bulletproof..."

Taught to Think

I'm wondering how many of the people who visit here were taught how to think in school?

H/T Dr. Hurd

Pittsburg Police Create Riot At G20

WTF?

I'm Right... You're Wrong."

It seems it is unusual these days to hold onto any belief as rigid as that statement and doing so can lead to one being labelled rigid, inflexible, dogmatic… and my personal favourite, extreme.

But let me clarify something here. When I speak of right and wrong in this manner I am not commenting on a societal norm, or a personal choice. I am not trying to apply my personal prejudice to a situation and write off my bias, feelings or upbringing as falling within or defining what is right or wrong.

In order for such a statement to be made (and to be worthy of consideration) the person making it must have reduced the question of right and wrong to its base. Axiomatic to that question is the principal of initiation of force.

The question of the application of force is a moral one. Ayn Rand said “Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.” The issue and the question don’t get any clearer than that.

So where does that lead us? Well, to certainty.

Here is an example…

Circumcision is wrong.

It is wrong not on religious grounds or feelings or even the necessity of the act itself but because it is procedure performed on infants who are neither mature enough to decide nor are they given the opportunity to decide whether to have the operation performed. It is wrong because of the force.

“But…” the argument begins “it is right in certain cultures.”

Really? Would it be “right” to hack off an infant’s left hand if that somehow had evolved as a cultural norm? How about a forefinger at the age of 6 months. Maybe just the ceremonial removal of all a baby’s fingernails?

Would it be right for a man to keep slaves if that was claimed as a historical or cultural norm? How about cannibalism or any of a host of other barbaric practices?

No.

Circumcision is wrong. It is just as wrong as its less acceptable (in western culture) cousin, female genital circumcision (mutilation). And it is wrong for exactly the same reason… The application of force against children or babies that are too young and/or not permitted to decide what happens to their bodies on their own.

Right and wrong are simple concepts, easily divisible, easily discernible. Applied with the proper principal it is quite simple and quite correct to say…

"I'm right, you're wrong."

Ghosts of Liberals Past

This has me wishing that the end of this repackaged, uninspiring, sophomoric, oh-so-70's exercise in Trudeausocialism, turned policy nightmare would be Ludwig von Mises kicking Ignatieff's ass all the way back to Harvard.

Aside from that daydream... this article also exposes that revisionism is alive and well in the Liberal camp.

When this economic downturn started PM Harper attempted to stick to his conservative roots and to not play Keynesian Russian Roulette with taxpayer funded bullets. However, Jack Layton almost screaming in the House of Commons that "something had to be done for the workers", accompanied by much Liberal gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts demanding that "something be done for the economy" was enough to ignite the PM's pragmatic (and wholly political) survival instinct... Hence the hole being dug by politicians today, to be filled with taxpayer money tomorrow.

Truth be known that I agree with Mr. Ignatieff, the deficit is too high and the Conservatives are spending all too wildly. But Iggy's assumption that his own spending plan will not create such a deficit, and further that the money he is planning on spending will actually (miraculously) shrink the deficit is the kind of mental gymnastics that leads one to think that he can have his cake and eat it too.

Kelly McParland at the National Post takes the time to kick Ignatieff for both Ludwig and I...

How can they be hard-hearted tightwads and loose-spending wastrels at the same time? They're pouring money into the economy, which is bad. The Liberals would spend more, which is good. Interventionist government is good. But interventionist government by Tories is bad. We have to reduce protectionism. But anyone tries to buy a Canadian company and we'll drag them in front of a review board.

I don't get this Ignatieff guy. I can't figure out what he believes. Because I don't think he knows.

Read the whole thing.

Cleaning out my Philosophical Closet.

I have just gone through my bookmarks and deleted a quite popular conservative blog that I have followed for a number of years. as a matter of fact I think this was the first blog I ever began following and reading regularly. No, I'm not going to tell you which blog, this post isn't about that.

I deleted it because I finally saw (or acknowledged) it was racist. Now I'm not talking white supremacist, KKK/Black Panther, Neo-Nazi racist but the more insidious brand of racism, the kind that gets thrown into a conversation and is rarely called a spade as it were.

Its perpetrated by that sensible sounding guy that claims "I'm not talking about culture and I'm not racist." immediately after making a statement about "us letting other types of people into your country" and complaining that "they brought over their religion" and how now "it is all one big mess, because we were to nice and let them come into our country. Now they want everything and anything." While simultaneously blanking out the fact that that very desire (to live as one wishes), is what led people to populate North America in the first place.

It's the person that uses statistics, pointing out that "3.2 per cent of Spain's population was foreign-born in 1998. In 2007 it was 13.4 per cent. Europe's Muslim population has more than doubled in the past 30 years and will have doubled again by 2015. In Brussels, the top seven baby boys' names recently were Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza." and drawing a correlation between that fact and some nebulous apocalyptic future if the trend continues.

Incidentally these kinds of statistics pop up quite a bit in the media, reported as floating abstractions which offer nothing of substance to the point being made, and are rarely if ever connected, as they should be, to the vilest form of collectivism there is.

Now I'm no ostrich. I'm not burying my head in the sand and claiming that all cultures deserve the same respect. There is no reason to respect the systemic sexism or the religious violence advocated by some extreme forms of Islam because that is someone's "culture" any more that there is a valid claim that cannibalism should be accepted because the practice was connected to tribal custom in the Amazonian jungle.

On the whole race and culture denote nothing, it is an indication of nothing about the individual as an individual. You can no more decide the beliefs of a man based on his race or culture any more than you can determine the flavour of a wine from the shape and colour of the bottle.

Hippocrates Shrugged

In Obama's America, health care manages you...

45 percent of American physicians “would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement”

In the event that this 45% of doctors follow through, that would leave the rest not in a profession but in virtual slavery.

EDIT
An excellent post from F.I.R.M. (Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine) to add fuel to your intellectual fire.

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.

Ignatieff Begins With I

...and he is the I in team.

Metaphysical Value-Judgments

So much of what I post here is tinged with anger, incredulity and despair that I must seem to be a bitter sort, but that just isn't so.

Never the less its useful, cathartic and refreshing to show other sides of your self, even to yourself every now and then. So with that in mind I'd like to introduce you to one of my favorite artists Jack Vettriano.

Now I'm no art critic, but like the man says... I know what I like. For me the art deco coolness of Mr. Vettriano's work speaks of a time of limitless possibilities. It is simple, clean, not overly ornate and unabashedly sensual, sexual and occasionally erotic.

In Thoughts of You - Jack Vettriano