Is this a Protest or a Debate?

Instead of reporting on conservative protests, the press is debating these ideological enemies.

“Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic”
--Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.”
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“Nature cares nothing for logic, our human logic: she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crushed under its wheel”
-- Ivan Turgenev

Reductio Ad Absurdum: Who gets there faster, Big Government Advocates or TEA Partiers?

The press is good at taking something an ordinary American says at a TEA party and deconstructing it down to absurdity, often going after syntactical errors or poorly constructed arguments. "See?" They say, "These people don't even know what they're protesting!"

The cognoscenti say "This lady receives social security and medicare and she's protesting big government! What a hypocrite!" This statement is itself illogical and dishonest: Protesting a system you participate in by legal coercion is hardly hypocritical, but anyway... They find one little loose thread and pick at it until they unravel the fabric.

This is a valid line of attack in logical argumentation, but these reporters are still being dishonest. Their role is not to debate newsmakers, but report the news. They attack a logical error or mangled syntax to discredit the messenger and, by implication, her message. All good and fair, but this obscures the larger truth, and I think they do it on purpose.

The Meta-Narrative: You may have discredited this particular example, but the larger truth still remains

The left makes the same cry I am now making when they find recourse in the "meta-narrative." e.g. "Maybe the latest racist attack was a hoax, but racism still exists!"

Or, "OK, so that family Newsweek claimed was driven to bankruptcy by health care costs is not really broke. They own expensive real estate. But medical costs really do bankrupt some families!"

The press eats this propaganda up and spreads it like manure, where a thousand liberal fantasies bloom. No argumentation, no logic examinations, just channeling the emotion.

Things like racism and health care problems are real, but hard to put a quantitative finger on. Bad things happen, and as Dr Sowell points out, in a nation of over a quarter billion people, improbable events are commonplace. The press can be relied upon to point out every obscure event that buttresses the liberal cry that, "something must be done about this crisis!"

We don't need no stinking meta-truths!
The present conservative and libertarian concerns are valid: We really are in debt, our government really has invaded every corner of our lives, and people really don't trust institutions anymore. These are measurable, objective facts. We don't need meta-truths: The real thing is on display!

* Unemployment at 10% and rising, while the "stimulus" removes capital from the marketplace, leaving businesses unable to expand and hire more people.

* Government taking our money from the US Treasury and giving it to politically-connected banks and businesses

* Government apparatchiks telling us how to sneeze, how to wash our hands, and a gaggle of nattering nannies scolding us about compassion and racism

* A government insinuating itself deeper and deeper into our lives with endless tangles of red tape

* Government spending money it does not have, and encouraging citizens to do the same, putting us in hock to China

Politicians, liberal agitators, and their enablers in the press launch a farrago of rhetoric and argumentation to defend it all, but common sense people who know nothing of formal logic and debate do know that our nation cannot survive if this continues.

The jig is up.

Killer Compassion

By providing an immigration safety valve, the US is doing more harm than good

HBO will debut a film by investigative director Rebecca Cammisa that documents the dangerous journey illegal immigrants make to get to the US from points south.

"Which Way Home" follows Kevin, Fito and several other children as they make the journey north, risking being robbed, raped, beaten or killed by criminals preying on the vulnerable migrants, or being killed or maimed if they fall off the train.

"For migrants who are trying to get through Mexico to get to the United States the situation is incredibly dehumanizing," Cammisa told Reuters in an interview. "(At a detention center) a young boy came through and just collapsed in front of us."

"He was completely and utterly devastated," she said. "He had been traveling with his brother and his sister. All three of them were trying to get to the United States. His sister was gang-raped and his brother was shot to death in front of him."

Given their track record, we should always be suspicious of liberal victim stories (Tawana Brawley, Rigoberta Menchu, just to name a few). But anyway, taking her at her word, we see that Mexico is where all the cruel abuse happens, not the US.

"I'm hoping that people will see this film and it will maybe deepen their understanding, help create a more compassionate view," Cammisa said. "I'm hoping that this film can be used as a tool pushing positive immigration reform."

"People are coming, people are desperate, they want a better life," Cammisa said. "There has to be a practical sensible approach to understanding that people need to work here, we need workers here, make it legal and humane."

A more compassionate view? I already have one. I first looked Latin American poverty in the eye over 20 years ago, so I'm one step ahead of Cammisa. Besides, she takes a simplistic view.

Say we give amnesty to everyone here, every single illegal alien. OK. Now what about the millions of souls still outside our borders who want in? How do we show compassion for them? Do we let them in too? Now, what do we do about the devastated villages and regions peopled only with those too old or too weak to make the journey. What of these poor souls?

This can't be the answer. The answers are found in places like Panama and Costa Rica, where government corruption is minimal and commerce flourishes. Unemployment is relatively low, as is the cost of living, and people would rather stay where they're at.

Yes, we should have compassion for our fellow human beings, but it must be true compassion. It is easy to give a bum five dollars and call it compassion, but we're killing him if he uses that fiver to buy hooch or crack.

The wrong kind of help only makes things worse. Are things really so bad in the darkest corners of Guatemala? Is staying in your poor village really worse than getting gang raped in a Mexican boxcar, watching your brother get shot and killed, or dying in the Sonora Desert? Many say it's not poverty, but inequality, and I can believe that.

There is dysfunction south of our border, and we contribute to it with our greed for cheap labor and addiction to white powder
From our own craven dysfunction we pay politically correct lip service to these dysfunctional "cultures" in places like Africa and Latin America while enabling the kleptocrats who hold them hostage. This is not compassion, it's an international outrage. We rob these poor countries of their best and brightest, providing a safety valve for the ruling elites.

It's time to stop viewing unbridled immigration as a panacea. The solution is to bring prosperity to these impoverished areas. If stubborn, selfish oligarchy blocks progress, then ship guns and bombs so the people can start their first and most important self-help project.

OK, that's a little tongue-in-cheek, and it's been tried already with little success. Some serious Hispanic thinkers on the left have been calling for a moratorium on immigration, pointing out that the safety valve only benefits the oligarchy, alleviating it of its social responsibilities:

For the last fifty years, the so-called "safety valve" has not alleviated Mexico's growing pains as it transitions into a first world economy; it has merely delayed the development of the institutions that must address the lack of opportunities for the lower classes and the social disparities between ethnic Hispanics and indigenous Indians and dark-skinned mestizos. [...]

To achieve a realistic economic solution for the undocumented population in the United States, the pro-immigration side ought to consider a compromise whereby a moratorium period on immigration should be enacted. (MexiData - Villarreal)

True compassion does not create dependency, separate families and hollow out villages. Rather, it gives fellow human beings the wherewithal to care for themselves within their own societies and cultures.

Reuters
MexiData - Villarreal

Peace and Freedom through Anarchy

What is freedom? What is libertarianism? Can anarchy bring peace?

I find libertarianism attractive in the abstract, but sometimes jarring in the cold glare of reality. It doesn't help that I recently read that it grew out of anarchism, but it does make sense that the logical end of libertarianism is anarchism.

Libertarianism makes striking sense in that simplistic "if everybody minded their own business we'd all get along" kind of way. But what really impresses me about this ideology is its logical coherence.

Stephen Kinsella has written an interesting piece reducing all individual rights down to property rights and then showing how this is the key to peace and happiness.

As Murray Rothbard explained, individual rights are property rights.[2] And justice is just giving someone his due, which depends on what his rights are.[3]

The nonaggression principle is also dependent on property rights, since what aggression is depends on what our (property) rights are. If you hit me, it is aggression because I have a property right in my body. If I take from you the apple you possess, this is trespass — aggression — only because you own the apple. One cannot identify an act of aggression without implicitly assigning a corresponding property right to the victim.

I find this idea intriguing because it bolsters the case against an overweening government as well as against invasions and wars of aggression. I am against the former but have participated in the latter. I love things that rip your mind in two different directions.

If a state pays for you and decides for you, it owns you, and your rights disappear because you become de facto property of the state. That applies to citizens as well as invaded countries. And notice that motivation of the aggressor state does not matter. It could have the best of intentions, but you are still violated.

Anyway, I recommend you go read Mr. Kinsella's article. It's good food for thought.

Mises - Stephan Kinsella

Depression Has Already Started

Winston Churchill was cursed with depression his whole adult life. He called it the Black Dog. How did he lead such an active, successful life without lithium?

WASHINGTON, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Use of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005, probably because of a mix of factors, researchers reported on Monday.

The news report goes on to blame increased stress, unemployment, the usual suspects.

Maybe it's a lack of purpose or a sense that life has no meaning. Maybe we're too self-focused; too much belly button examination is not healthy. I notice that the happiest, most well adjusted people are not self-referential. Maybe the depressed think life should be perfect. There's a pill for everything, why not for happiness?

Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live. -- Nicolas de Chamfort

If too much introspection doesn't do you in, your fellow man is waiting to do the deed.

John Sodini was a lonely guy who couldn't get a date, so he shot up a woman's aerobic class. Maybe our sex-sodden society pushed him over the edge.

Once again, Chamfort comes to mind:

There are two things that one must get used to or one will find life unendurable: the damages of time and injustices of men.

Facing both at once is too much to bear for some people.

Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It's a palliative. The remedy is death.

CBS News - Sodini
Reuters - Antidepressants

Saving Private Hitler

How would you like to be the medic who saved Hitler's life?

What a burden for a man named Johan Jambor, who was a WW I medic and treated a wounded Private Hitler. He died aged 94 in 1985, but had told his secret to priest Franciszek Pawlar, who kept a note of their conversation. Johan’s friend Blassius Hanczuch confirmed the priest’s account of how the medic saved Hitler’s life. He said:

In 1916 they had their hardest fight in the Battle of the Somme. For several hours, Johan and his friends picked up injured soldiers. He remembers Hitler. They called him the ‘Screamer’. He was very noisy. Hitler was screaming ‘help, help’. His abdomen and legs were all in blood. Hitler was injured in the abdomen and lost one testicle. His first question to the doctor was: ‘Will I be able to have children?’.” Blassius said that when the Nazis swept to power Johan began to suffer nightmares and blame himself for saving Hitler.

You can go read the entire account in The Sun, a British Newspaper. The article focuses on Der Fuhrer's testicular deficiency, but I found the account of the medic who saved a future genocidal madman to be much more interesting. Oh, the cruel twists of history...

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1945960.ece

Brother Al's Unscientific Medicine Show

Global Warming fanatics strike me as being credulous and naive in their wild stampede to "consensus." They are also very unscientific. Continuing disagreement among respected scientists is prima facie evidence that the science is not "settled."

Yes, conservative blowhards like me can be just as bad in the opposite direction; overly skeptical, poo pooing it all without even examining the scientific evidence. But the global warming skeptics who really matter are the scientists who have studied the subject. After all, how much does the average citizen really know about all of this? We must rely on the words of others who actually measure, study and observe these global phenomena.

Skeptical scientists do not dismiss global warming so easily, and that is what makes them credible. Unlike Al Gore and his followers, the debate is still open for them; they foreclose no option. Consensus is not a scientific concept.

Most will admit that there is evidence of a warming trend, as far as the data goes. So what? The earth's temperature has never been static. There is evidence of wide variances of temperature over the past thousands of years. The earth's atmosphere is a complex and dynamic thing.

WHAT IS THE CORRECT TEMPERATURE OF THE EARTH?
The earth doesn't have a temperature--think about it. It has millions of simultaneous temperatures in millions of ecosystems or climates, each with their own weather patterns and internal dynamics. Question: Why is the same latitude warmer on the West Coast of the US than on the east coast?

Even if we thought we could control it, a random volcano or sunspot event could overwhelm our efforts. Mount Pinatubo put more pollution into the earth's atmosphere than man has in his entire history on earth. Think about that: Trillions spent, creating horrible opportunity costs, and its all for naught with one belch of a volcano or a sudden spike in sunspot activity.

MISTAKES HAPPEN
Our ability to accurately measure temperatures in all the meaningful places (all things being equal, cities are hotter than the countryside), at the meaningful times is imperfect and imprecise. Measurement anomalies and statistical errors can ripple throughout entire data sets.

Historical records are spotty and anecdotal (Europe's year without summer, the little ice age, size of tree rings, ice core samples). Even when we think we've got it nailed, there are mistakes:

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies—known as GISS—was forced to admit it committed an egregious error when it publicly claimed October 2008 was the warmest October in history.

It turns out October 2008 was nowhere near a record. Global temperature measurements of the Earth’s lower atmosphere by NASA satellite instruments show it was fairly typical compared to temperatures over the past 30 years and significantly cooler than average temperatures over the past seven years. (Source: Heartland Institute)

In 2007, NASA's GISS website issued a report correcting historical data measurements. This resulted in revising US temperatures downward slightly. Sensitive to the political hay that would be made of this, they attached this note to the end of the report:

Contrary to some statements flying around the internet, there is no effect on the rankings of global temperature. Also our prior analysis had 1934 as the warmest year in the U.S. (see the 2001 paper above), and it continues to be the warmest year, both before and after the correction to post 2000 temperatures. However, as we note in that paper, the 1934 and 1998 temperature are practically the same, the difference being much smaller than the uncertainty.

NASA Astronaut Phil Chapman, who also happens to be a geophysicist and an astronautical engineer, informs us that by the measurements of the four authoritative agencies that measure such things, 2007 was the coolest year since 1930. This is not his conclusion. It is the conclusion of the data provided by these agencies:

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

He goes on to talk about observed variances in solar activity which, surprise!, affect our climate. Imagine that, the sun has something to do with how warm the earth gets. Note he doesn't shove this evidence in our faces, shouting "Aha!" and declaring the debate over. So here we are, with each side invoking their chosen scientists while impugning the character and professional credentials of those on the other side. This fails to satisfy.

SCIENTIFIC "CONSENSUS" IS A BOGUS CONCEPT
Dr.Richard Lindzen, MIT Climatologist, addresses the fact that CO2 levels have increased, and further accedes this may be due to human activity, but it is also possible this could be caused by the climate itself. Regardless, the relevant question to him is, what is the relevance?

The scientific question of relevance is what do we expect such an increase to do? The answer, most assuredly, is not to be arrived at by a poll of scientists--especially of scientists who do not work on this question. The issue of consensus is, in this respect, extremely malign, especially when the consensus is merely claimed though not established. However, the whole idea of consensus is problematic.

With respect to science, the assumption behind consensus is that science is a source of authority and that authority increases with the number of scientists. Of course, science is not primarily a source of authority. Rather, it is a particularly effective approach to inquiry and analysis. Skepticism is essential to science; consensus is foreign. When in 1988 Newsweek announced that all scientists agreed about global warming, this should have been a red flag of warning. Among other things, global warming is such a multifaceted issue that agreement on all or many aspects would be unreasonable.

With respect to science, consensus is often simply a sop to scientific illiteracy. After all, if what you are told is alleged to be supported by all scientists, then why do you have to bother to understand it? You can simply go back to treating it as a matter of religious belief, and you never have to defend this belief except to claim that you are supported by all scientists except for a handful of corrupted heretics.

He goes on to explain that all of these imprecise data points require interpolation and extrapolation to fill in the blanks and predict future trends, and that's where the controversy comes in. It is unfortunate, but science often bends to the will of those providing funding.

Good Science vs. Junk Science

Good science, unlike religion, eschews anathematizing the heterodox. Science is about inquiry, testing of ideas, and sharpening one's ideas upon the whetstone of reality. Consensus short-circuits scientific progress. Look at all of the information that the scientific community accepts as established fact: Size and distances of the planets, all manner of natural phenomena here on earth.

The UN had nothing to do with establishing consensus on these currently accepted facts. Once a preponderance of evidence accrued, they generally became accepted. And any scientist worth anything knows that any of these facts could change based upon new information.

Scientists agree on the laws of thermodynamics, and no international body was called in to mediate agreement and gain consensus. Scientists have not reached similar agreement on the earth's environment. This is prima facie evidence that, all apologies to Al Gore, the science is not settled and the debate is not over. To believe otherwise is to be quite illiberal and most unscientific.

Australian - Phil Chapman
Heartland Institute - NASA Mistake
GISS - NASA 2007 Errors
Heartland Institute - Lindzen

Live or Die Trying

How are you supposed to feel when someone in your neighborhood dies who you weren't particularly close to?

Two Fridays in my neighborhood, two deaths. Directly across the street an elderly woman. The next house over a troubled young man who blew his brains out in front of his best friend. I'm not superstitious, but they say these things come in threes...

I couldn't cry for Mrs H. She scared me. Not in a "boo" way but in that "She can see into the depths of my soul" kind of way. She had a hard life, with a severe Norwegian upbringing on the cold northern plains. I don't know much more. There was an ugly marriage, alcoholism involved, that left her a dry, severe woman with an icy cold stare who nonetheless never lost her firm Lutheran faith in God.

She was a good woman, but she just couldn't contain the bitterness life had filled her up with. She was smart, and would strike like a snake at ignorance when she spied it, then regret her lack of charity afterward. She refused to let her mom go to a nursing home, taking care of her until her death at 101 years old. My wife was there when Mrs' H's mom died. They called me over to move her. She was already stiff.

I always admired Mrs. H for such devotion to her mother. Her stern sense of duty reminded me of my mom. Have you ever known one of those people who will do anything for anyone, always there when you need a hand? Not the cheery ones, but the ones who do it out of a grim determination to fulfill some Kantian, or maybe Christian duty. That was Mrs. H, and that's my mom. Anywhere someone is dying, sad, or suffering, she is there, carrying out her duty. God didn't say anything about having to smile.

Anyway, by the time we moved into the neighborhood, Mrs. H had already run off everyone who tried to befriend her. She was aging and needed help, but repelled all who attempted to come to her aid. My wife was too stubborn to be run off so easy, and that's how they became such great friends.

My wife didn't cry until the funeral. I was at work, but I had warned my kids that it would hit her there. My son, almost a man, held her and comforted her, my neighbors reported to me when I got home that evening. That boy may actually make something of himself someday.

I didn't know the young man who went out sideways last night. I remember last winter when he tore the back bumper off his truck trying to pull a tree stump out. I was in the garage building some shelves when it happened. Made a hell of a crash, followed by a serious string of cuss words.

It was a typical Friday night. I had beer in hand, guitar strapped to my back, the grill going on the back deck, music playing, interrupted occasionally by me playing and singing as the mood struck me. We just replaced the carpet with hardwood, and the acoustics are just awesome. My good friend Tito was over to share some beers and bbq, and my older daughter had one of her friends over.

Then a neighbor called to tell us there were men with machine guns outside our house. I think the cops often overreact in situations like this. A Tactical Assault Unit is a hammer in search of a nail sometimes, especially in a small city that doesn't see a lot of violence. So there were cop cars, ambulances, fire trucks, all because a young man was holding a gun threatening no one but himself. He followed through. The last car to arrive was the coroner's.

Today we had our annual neighborhood potluck. The Vietnam vets swapped stories, the older folks looked even older. J down the street needed me to help her navigate her electric wheel chair up and over the curbs. She's young but has been stricken by MS.

I used to fight a lot. I loved mixed martial arts, but too many little aches and pains accumulated and I decided to call it quits. I want to ease gracefully into old age. I enjoyed it for the exercise, but many of my fellow fighters had other reasons. More than one mentioned that getting hit in the face made him feel alive. I never understood that. I don't need a bloody nose to know I exist.

So what does it all mean? I couldn't cry for a fellow human being. The night of the suicide, Tito left, and my wife went over to take care of Mrs. H's house and the cat that still lives there. I prowled the living room, doing my best Stone Temple Pilots/Pearl Jam/Neil Young acoustic set. I offered it up for the soul of a young man who had just left this earth. I didn't know what else to do.

You see someone shot dead in a riot in South America, someone is there and now they're not. You ride 500 miles with a flag draped coffin. We live our lives while someone next door may be suffering out theirs. All I know is that my accumulated years had build a wall, a bulwark, against assaults upon my emotions.

Then I watched my kindergardener strip naked to the world on the back deck, put on her bathing suit, and prance gleefully among the sprinklers. Such unbridled joy, unencumbered by the cares of the world. I cried as I scrubbed crayon drawings off the deck railing and pondered the number three.