Gus Van Horn blog

A Friday Hodgepodge 1. In "Analyzing the Hamas Sympathizers," Peter Schwartz explains how altruism -- the idea that we owe relief to the needy regardless of why they are needy -- fuels the unjust and puzzling sympathy for Hamas we are seeing today. Schwartz ends his piece with a quote from someone who has been undeterred by Palestinian barbarism from Day 1:A New York Times article quotes an Atlanta schoolteacher's Facebook message, shortly after October 7, in which she explains her unqualified backing of the Palestinians against Israel: "The actual history of this situation is NOT COMPLICATED. I will ALWAYS stand beside those with less power. Less wealth, less access and resources and choices. Regardless of the extreme acts of a few militants who were done watching their people slowly die." This is the consistent implementation of the "tyranny of need." But there is no reason to accept another's need as a moral claim against you. The only valid moral imperative here is the imperative of justice -- the justice of supporting the innocent and condemning the guilty. And the only way to prevent suffering by the innocent is for Israel to do whatever is necessary to destroy Hamas and for Gaza (and the rest of the Palestinians) to be ruled by a government that recognizes the rights of its own citizens and of its neighbors. [link in original]Incidentally, tyranny of need Schwartz describes, explains many other aspects of the decades-old conflict between Israel and the "Palestinians," as well as other unjust policies that people accept because they confuse altruism with benevolence. 2. At Thinking Directions, Jean Moroney argues that, while it may be tempting (or even sometimes helpful) to call failure by another name, it is much more powerful to acknowledge it and put it into a broader perspective:At one point, Jean Moroney suggests finding humor in failure. One might find this image helpful in remembering to do that. (Image by Mick Haupt, via Unsplash, license.)ometimes, thinking of a failure as a setback is counterproductive. If you review the setback and see no new information revealed, you are likely to conclude "the plan should have worked!" or "I just didn't try hard enough!" Then you will be tempted to just try the same approach, unchanged. They say insanity is trying the same thing again and again and expecting a different result. This is the moment when you really need the word "failure." Your plan FAILED! This is REAL! This is new information! Your plan is a plan that leads to FAILURE! Fully accepting this fact, including the implication that your plan has a fatal flaw in it, is critical to your eventual success. You need to see that you must have made a mistake somewhere. That's what gets you to step back and look for where you made a mistake.Notice that last sentence: The goal, or some part of it, or something very like it is probably still salvageable. Moroney later explores when a failure is significant, and suggests an approach to goal-setting that can inoculate against some of the more unpleasant conclusions and emotions that many people wrongly associate with failure. 3. At How to Be Profitable and Moral, Jaana Woiceshyn calls for an end to the anti-freedom "equity" agenda:Canada is a clear illustration. Under the current government since 2015 economic freedom has declined. Investment has been fleeing the country, weakening the dollar, and increasing inflation. Consequently, productivity and economic growth have stagnated and job growth has stalled, keeping wages low and prices high. Not only investments but skilled workers are leaving Canada, most of them for the United Sates, where salaries are much higher (46% higher in the technology sector, according to a recent survey) and taxes lower. Those departing increasingly include recent immigrants disillusioned by the high cost of living, limited job opportunities, and comparatively low salaries. [links omitted]The fact that people are (currently) fleeing Canada for the United States does not, of course, mean that the same folly will work here. 4. At Value for Value, Harry Binswanger asks questions about a few "Unnoticed Contradictions," among them:We constantly hear that man can know nothing for certain, that truth is relative to the individual, that observations are "theory-laden" so cannot claim to be objective, that no scientific claim can be proved true, that we can say only it hasn't been refuted by the data so far. At the same time and from the same people, we hear that catastrophic climate change is beyond doubt, that those who question it are "deniers" who should be kicked out of any position of consequence. How does the same mind hold, "Nothing is certain" and "Climate catastrophe is certain"?The obviousness of such questions, along with the fact that most will probably not have seen them raised anywhere else should alarm anyone. -- CAVLink to Original

Over at Astral Codex Ten, whose author is a mental health professional, is a very interesting description of the unintended consequences of a seemingly benign government regulation. Let's first consider the intent:Image by joandcindy, via Wikimedia Commons, license.Sometimes places ban or restrict animals. For example, an apartment building might not allow dogs. Or an airline might charge you money to transport your cat. But the law requires them to allow service animals, for example guide dogs for the blind. A newer law also requires some of these places to allow emotional support animals, ie animals that help people with mental health problems like depression or anxiety. So for example, if you're depressed, but having your dog nearby makes you feel better, then a landlord has to let you keep your dog in the apartment. Or if you're anxious, but petting your cat calms you down, then an airline has to take your cat free of charge. Clinically and scientifically, this is great. Many studies show that pets help people with mental health problems. Depressed people really do benefit from a dog who loves them. Anxious people really do feel calmer when they hold a cute kitten. So far, so good. Who would want to deprive an anxious or depressed person of such an unintrusive and simple aid as having a pet around while they navigate their lives en route to recovery? I will not beat up the author for failing to ask the following question: What is the best way to help people who actually need emotional support animals? He simply goes with the flow on this one: Like practically everyone else these days, he assumes that the government should decide who gets an emotional support animal. Period. In every single circumstance it might come up. The American regulatory state has been omnipresent for so long that very few people can even imagine any other way to tackle a problem like this. For most people, the only tool to solve a problem where the needs and desires of different people conflict is to enact a new government regulation. When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. The hammer here looks reasonable enough: To get your pet into places that might no want it there, all you need is a letter to the effect that you need an emotional support animal from a mental health professional. But who wields the hammer? Or: What sort of unintended consequences follow?But the process runs into the same failure mode as Adderall prescriptions: it combines an insistence on gatekeepers with a total lack of interest over whether they actually gatekeep. The end result is a gatekeeping cargo cult, where you have to go through the (expensive, exhausting) motions of asking someone's permission, without the process really filtering out good from bad applicants. And the end result of that is a disguised class system, where anyone rich and savvy enough to engage with the gatekeeping process gets extra rights, but anyone too poor or naive to access it has to play by the normal, punishingly-restrictive rules. I have no solution to this, I just feel like I incur a little spiritual damage every time I approve somebody's ADHD snake or autism iguana or anorexia pangolin or whatever. [bold added, link omitted]The problem is named in plain sight within a sample letter from a mill that people who want to carry pets around everywhere can use to get a letter:[NAME OF TENANT] is my patient, and has been under my care since [DATE]. I am intimately familiar with his/her history and with the functional limitations imposed by his/her disability. He/She meets the definition of disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Housing Act, and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.The three laws named at the end violate the property rights and right to contract of landlords, employers, and businessmen who may not wish to deal with pets brought onto their property by random members of the general public. That is their first sin, and why they shouldn't be on the books in the first place. A side effect of these laws is that they greatly increase the number of "service animals" people might wish to bring with them to the point that there is a cottage industry of people willing to help people get away with whatever they want -- people with legitimate needs for service animals and people with good reasons not to have pets on their property alike be damned. Now, we are far from a time when such laws can get repealed, but let's indulge the fantasy and consider how we might solve the problem of, say, a business that wants to accommodate customers who really do need a service animal. Make them, if the owner produces a magical scrap of paper isn't the answer. Businesses would be free to employ any of the following means from the below non-exhaustive list:Personal judgement by a proprietor on a case-by-case basis;Consulting a mental health professional of its own choosing whenever the matter comes up;Accepting a certificate from an authority of its own choosing as to the safety and suitability of the animal.Just as there are non-governmental standards bodies for engineers, or for dog breeders, there can be for service animal certification. These private-enterprise solutions work because they protect the ability of the people who use them to make a living in a free market. That is, they align self-interest with quality through the metric of honest profit -- which is surely how, over thousands of years, people have worked out which breeds of dog are best suited to help the blind, and how to train them. In other words, rather than a cottage industry of con men, we'd have a legitimate industry of people helping make (actual) service animals work well for as many people as possible. A private certification system would work, because businesses would be free to work with those who don't, say, foist snakes on their customers (as happens now) -- or even simply refuse to do business with people who bring animals to their place of business. The kind of charlatans who operate now would go out of business, and there would be a proper incentive for psychologists whose patients want a letter to give an honest appraisal or a real referral. As it is now, on top of the widespread violations of rights we have now, observe that some of the people who need these animals can't have them, and some who just want to bring an animal with them everywhere they go get to do this. -- CAVLink to Original

And who made that so easy? Monday, I noted the artificial-looking nature of the anti-"Zionist" protests that have been going on across college campuses, but had to admit I was in no position to speak about funding. Fortunately, Francis Menton of The Manhattan Contrarian has taken a deeper look at who might be providing financial and other support for these criminal mobs. I like how the post starts by clearly stating why it is worth taking such a look:The protests certainly give an appearance of being well-organized and equally well funded. For example, large numbers of identical newly-ordered tents seem to spring up on almost no notice. Did hundreds of young people on shoestring budgets just happen on their own initiative to place orders from the same website at the same time and all pay with their own money? That seems implausible. But if there is professional organization, who are the organizers? And who is paying them? You would think that this is an issue where the public would have a huge interest in knowing the answer -- particularly if the answer should turn out to be that the main sponsors of the protests are also big funders of one of the major political parties. But this is a subject where the sponsors have a strong interest in concealing their role as much as possible, and where uncovering and exposing that role takes some significant effort.The post is about a six-minute read, clocking in at about 1,850 words, but it does a good job looking at the findings (or, in one case, coverings-up) of several journalistic outlets, ranging from left of center to right. Menton, a conservative, is even-handed, giving credit to one leftist outlet, while calling out another on this issue. Notably, he compares two accounts of the involvement of one Manolo de los Santos, whom I'd feel comfortable calling a professional agitator. He starts with an account from the conservative Tablet:"When we finally deal that final blow to destroy Israel, when the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism in our lifetime," De Los Santos said in January in front of a cheering crowd in a now-viral video. His remarks were so vicious that South Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) denounced the speech as "Nazi rhetoric," and called for Goldman Sachs, whose philanthropy arm used to direct funds to TPF, to cut ties with the organization.And then he provides the following, from how the New York Times covers "the same events:"A New York Times review of police records and interviews with dozens of people involved in the protest at Columbia found that a small handful of the nearly three dozen arrestees who lacked ties to the university had also participated in other protests around the country. One man who was taken into custody inside Hamilton Hall, the occupied campus building, had been charged with rioting and wearing a disguise to evade the police during a demonstration in California nearly a decade earlier. But the examination also revealed that far more of the unaffiliated protesters had no such histories. Rather, they said, they arrived at Columbia in response to word of mouth or social media posts to join the demonstration out of some combination of solidarity and curiosity.Menton goes further to describe the efforts of the Times to paint the non-university-affiliated protesters as just plain folks who got wind of events and decided to join in. Some of that stuff -- "when he learned the police were moving in and, grabbing a metal dog bowl and a spoon to bang against it, rushed to the students' aid" -- would be funny if what the protesters were advocating weren't so obscene. While it is important to be aware of such goings-on, there is a bigger context to consider, as well: These contributions to a blatant attack on Western civiliation (with Israel and the Jews as a proxy) are chump change compared to the longstanding idological assault against it -- largely paid for by tax money and government student loan programs -- from much of academia. For that story, I refer you to the video embedded above, of Leonard Peikoff's 1983 Ford Hall Forum talk, "Assault from the Ivory Tower: The Professors' War Against America." From its opening:Intellectuals around the world generally take a certain pride, whether deserved or not, in their own countries' achievements and traditions. When they lash out at some group, it is not their nation, but some villain allegedly threatening it, such as the rich, the Jews, or the West. This pattern is true of Canada, from which I originally came, and it is true to my knowledge of England, France, Germany, Russia, China. But it is not true of America. One of the most striking things I observed when I first came here was the disapproval, the resentment, even the hatred of America, of the country as such and of most things American, which is displayed by American intellectuals; it is especially evident among professors in the humanities and social sciences, whom I came to know the best.Were it not for the anti-American, anti-Western ideas propagated by the universities and accepted by so many people today, pikers like De Los Santos would be penniless, isolated cranks at best. Instead, there are plenty of people who feel that he is worth funding or listening to. -- CAVLink to Original

I have long praised a happy result of the free market: It discourages racism. Two memorable examples I have brought up here include commercial desegregation in Houston (when segregation was called "bad for business") and the universal reach of the Sears catalog across the South. Both of these show capitalism blunting the force of segregation, or helping end it outright. Notably, thanks to a recent John Stossel article, we can now add a historic example of capitalism actively resisting Jim Crow due to the power of self-interest:Image by Unknown Photographer, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain."It's often forgotten that owners of buses, railways, streetcars in the American South didn't really segregate systematically until the late 19th century," says [economist Johan] Norberg [, author of Capitalist Manifesto]. "It was probably not because they were less racist than others in the South, but they were capitalists. They wanted money, they wanted clients, and they didn't want to engage in some sort of costly and brutal policing business in segregating buses." Even when segregation was mandated, some streetcar companies refused to comply. For several years after Jim Crow laws passed, black customers sat wherever they wanted. Norberg adds, "Those owners of public transport, they fought those discriminatory laws because they imposed a terrible cost….They tried to bypass them secretly and fight them in courts. They were often fined. Some were threatened with imprisonment." The streetcar company in Mobile, Alabama, only obeyed Jim Crow laws after their conductors began to get arrested and fined. [bold added]Notice that capitalism, the system that respects individual rights, strongly penalizes racism, because it is antithetical to a person's actual self-interest: It took the active abuse of government, in the form of fines and imprisonment, to fully implement the costly folly of treating customers badly, or forfeiting them altogether. I have not myself read Norberg's book, but on this evidence, it appears to be worth consideration by any serious advocate of capitalism or racial equality. -- CAVLink to Original

Over the weekend, I heard a podcaster speculating on reports that someone was paying people to stage pro-Hamas "protests," i.e., tresspass, squat on, and vandalize college campuses, while threatening Jews or counter-protesters. Given the overall looniness of this day and age, any headlines to that effect would remind me of Poe's Law:Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article.Only now, one often needs to replace the emoji with a reputable source and creationist with conspiracy theorist, while remembering that there are some bat-#$%& crazy things going on out there because nobody is calling out the nuts, bigots, or war-mongers for what they are even as they accuse civiilized people of exactly those things. Reputable news outlets are indeed reporting strong evidence of as much. From NBC News at the first link:New York City officials said that a significant number of people arrested this week at campus demonstrations were not affiliated with the schools. Nearly 30% of the people arrested at Columbia were unaffiliated with the university and 60% of the arrests at City College involved people who weren't affiliated with that school, the mayor said. And The Wall Street Journal, in a report titled "Activist [sic] Groups Trained Students for Months Before Campus Protests" adds:Image by jakerome, via Wikimedia Commons, license.In March, there was a "Resistance 101" training scheduled at Columbia with guest speakers including longtime activists with Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based group that celebrated the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. The administration twice barred the event, citing some of the organizers' known support of terrorism and promotion of violence. Columbia students hosted the event virtually nonetheless, which prompted Columbia President Minouche Shafik to suspend several of them. ... Polat said student organizers at Columbia learned the discipline and planning needed to pull off an effective protest movement not only from their work with veteran demonstrators and outside groups, but from participating in Black Lives Matter marches or student labor organizing. Some tools they learned were practical, such as how to raise money via student fundraisers and donations from friends and supporters to buy tents for encampments.The links came from a post at the conservative Hot Air blog which asserts that these sources confirm not just that non-affiliated people are protesting, but that they are funded by George Soros. While the latter wouldn't surprise me, I see no proof of that particular allegation. (That said, I do not know nor have looked into whether Soros is a major funder of some of the groups giving aid and comfort to these non-student, non-faculty thugs.) -- CAV P.S. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, astroturfing is (or was) a smear that leftists used to dismiss any kind of campaign of protests or rallies they didn't like, on the grounds that they allegedly didn't have as much organic support from the public as they seem to. It's funny how that word hasn't come up yet, although, to be fair, many college students and faculty do support Hamas, thanks to the ideas that saturate college campuses: "Elite colleges are now reaping the consequences of promoting a pedagogy that trashed the postwar ideal of the liberal university." (HT: Yaron Brook)Link to Original

Recently, I decided I needed a good fried rice recipe. As usual, I found some promising-looking recipes to go through, with the view of combining the best parts of each for something all my own and very good. Perusing the eight I found while out for a walk, this one at Gimme Some Oven really stood out, because it discussed several of the finer points and why each was important, rather than going off on some tangent as is often the case with online recipes. NOT the author making fried rice. (Image cropped from photo by Kelly Cookson, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)I annotated: This is your starting point. Has generally applicable advice that answers the seafood or not question save possibly crawfish. Broadly: Use cold, cooked rice. Fry with BUTTER, as they do in Japanese steak houses. Use vegetables. Use toasted sesame seed oil and, if using seafood, oyster sauce. Use HIGH HEAT to brown (vice steam) the rice. The author elaborates on the use of butter as follows:Yes, butter. I have made many a batch of fried rice using various oils, and I'm now convinced there's a reason why Japanese steak houses use that big slab of butter when they're making fried rice. It just tastes so much better, and also makes everything brown up perfectly...Until I'd encountered this recipe, I did not know that there was such a thing as toasted sesame oil, and labels at the store don't help: You're looking for a dark condiment, and can consult the ingredients list on the label if in doubt: My "sesame oil" is dark and lists toasted sesame oil as its first ingredient. (I also learned in the process of writing this up that it should be refrigerated after opening.) The below recipe is as close to a straight rip-off as it gets for me, although my very late addition of the peas to preserve some crispness is my own touch. This turned out so well that mid-week, after a Sunday batch, my son asked me to make it again. Fortunately, the novelty seems finally to have worn off, and as much as I am pleased with the results, I can look forward to making other things again! So far, I have made this with shrimp and chicken, and using the oyster sauce both times. I don't see myself skipping the oyster sauce any time soon. *** Stir-Fried Rice Preparation Time is about an hour. Ingredients rice, 1 cup uncooked or 3 cups cooked meat or seafood, 12-16 oz. eggs, 2-3 butter, 1 stick julienned carrots, 2 cups onion green onions, 3 snow peas, 6 oz. frozen green peas, 1 cup minced garlic, 1 tbsp meat or seafood, 12-16 oz soy sauce, to taste oyster sauce, 1 tsp sesame oil, 1 tsp salt, to taste pepper, to taste Directions Day 1 1. If necessary, cook and refrigerate the rice. 2. If desired, prepare and refrigerate the meat or seafood. Day 2 1. Mise en place: eggs, butter, rice, meat or seafood, vegetables, garlic, peas, soy sauce, oyster sauce, and sesame oil. 2. Dice onion, chop green onion, grate carrots (if necessary), and place in large bowl with any other vegetables and garlic. (Set green peas aside separately.) 3. If necessary, cook meat or seafood and set aside in medium bowl. 4. Scramble and cook eggs in butter. Set aside in small bowl. 5. Saute vegetables and garlic in butter until onions are translucent. Rinse bowl and return cooked vegetables to bowl. 6. At high heat, saute rice in butter until slightly brown. 7. Lower heat. Add vegetables, eggs, and meat/seafood. 8. Add sesame oil, salt, pepper, soy sauce, and oyster sauce. Cook, stirring frequently for a few minutes. 9. Remove from heat and stir in frozen peas. Notes 1. The recipe doesn't really call for a stick of butter, but you want one so you can be as free with it as you need to be. Enjoy! -- CAVLink to Original

Image by Patrick Tomasso, via Unsplash, license.Miss Manners tersely addresses a reader's question about a polite way to respond to the point-of-sale panhandling that has become so common today. Notably, the reader is being subjected to donation requests on every visit to a grocer he visits almost daily! The reader is completely correct on etiquette grounds that this practice is rude due to the "implication that one is being miserly" and because "Some people who would like to give generously are simply not in a position to do so, and shouldn't feel embarrassed." Miss Manners's response jibes with this, as well as the fact that the store apparently also doesn't even notice regular donations:Does this not seem to you like an inordinate amount of time to spend worrying about something to which the sales staff, the store manager and the other customers are not paying the slightest attention?Ouch! On etiquette grounds, both are spot-on, but the elephant in the room neither mentions is: Why would not making a donation appear 'miserly?' And, more to the point: Why do the charities concerned feel the need to constantly hector busy people not quite on their guard -- in order to chisel a few pennies from them every time they turn around. The short answer is: altruism -- the idea that sacrifice to others is a moral ideal, and that we owe our time and money to those who happen to have less. It would be suicidal to follow this code consistently, but it is so widespread that almost everyone equates it with the idea of morality, treating such actually virtuous activities as production and trade as if they are outside the scope of morality. In practice, this means that on a psychological level, most people end up trying to buy their reputations or even their feeling of virtue, guiltily making one donation or doing "good deed" at a time along the margins. And they feel up to the task of defending their time and money only on big matters, when it would obviously be detrimental to their well-being to make a given donation or commitment. (And even then, many still feel the need to be able to explain their reasons to other people, as if their own wishes or well-being aren't a good-enough reason.) To top it all off, since morality is a subject fraught with guilt and regarded as outside the realm of reason, most people have neither the desire to think about it, nor imagine that they can, anyway. This is what is so morally objectionable about the practice Miss Manners discusses: Pocket change isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but giving up is held up as a moral ideal. In the moment, almost anyone who hasn't given the subject much thought will feel some combination of guilt, social pressure, and weariness (It's only eighty-three cents...), and cave in. It is this sleazy reliance on unearned guilt that makes POS panhandling not just rude, but reprehensible. This strikes me as the exact opposite of morality, and of the benevolence that should motivate charitable giving, and reminds me of the following quote by philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand:It is altruism that has corrupted and perverted human benevolence by regarding the giver as an object of immolation, and the receiver as a helplessly miserable object of pity who holds a mortgage on the lives of others -- a doctrine which is extremely offensive to both parties, leaving men no choice but the roles of sacrificial victim or moral cannibal. A man of self-esteem can neither offer help nor accept it, on such terms.Any charity worthy of donations should appeal to actual generosity and goodwill, and make the best positive case for itself to those most inclined and able to help it. For a charity to do the opposite -- as so many do today -- makes it suspect in my eyes. Having made a negative case against this practice, let me also make a positive one: By refusing to donate at cash registers, you are making a small stand for your right to your own life and everything you have achieved, big or small. The best way to do this is with a polite, guilt-free, and firm, No thanks! every time you are asked. (This shows consideration for the cashier, who may have to ask as a condition for employment.) You are not only withholding an undeserved moral sanction and financial windfall to a group of people who are thoughtless at best, you might actually also help others who see this do the same with your example. A nice extra of that last is it potentially helps others in a truly benevolent and non-self-sacrificial way. -- CAVLink to Original

Earlier in the primary season Trumpists encouraged or aided Green crusader/anti-vax conspiracy nut RFK, Jr. -- first as a primary challenger to Joe Biden and then as an independent candidate for the Presidency. They did the latter because they saw him as doing more damage to Biden's prospects than to Trump's. I disputed that idea months ago, in part due to the kind of voter that finds appealing the likes of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump -- and historically, George Wallace and RFK, Sr. This morning, I ran across a piece at UnHerd that comments on what it calls "the growing RFK Jr. coalition." It comes from a far-left perspective -- given away by its assertion that the Kennedy's relatively sane position on Israel is a liability. Most interesting are its quotes from disenchanted Trump supporters:Steve, a musician, tells me that over the past three elections, he has moved from Bernie Sanders (until the DNC "rigged" the selection) in 2016 to Trump in 2020 to RFK Jr in 2024. "Kennedy talks about issues that the other two candidates totally ignore," he says. "This is Kennedy against the uni-party -- something I thought Trump did until he became President."Uh-oh. As a conservative said of Steve Bannon's earlier promotion of RFK, Jr., "Blame Bannon. His monster got out of the cage." Here's another one of those voters, as well as a Trump supporter who doesn't quite fit that mold:Anti-vax nuts have been popping up in conservative circles longer than lots of us would care to think. This photo comes from a Tea Party protest. (Image by Fibonacci Blue, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)Suzanne, another Bernie-Trump-RFK supporter, admires Kennedy for his commitment to prising the US out of "foreign misadventures". "He's not an America First-type like Trump," she says. "His positions are much more considered -- he doesn't want to withdraw us from the world, but merely thinks that we should not be funding all these wars abroad." Along with various other people I speak to there, Suzanne has particular ire for the man she voted for in 2016. "Trump talked a big game, but the debt blew up under him and he was the one that implemented all the Covid shutdowns ... I'll never forgive him for that." While RFK's views on Covid are well-documented, ranging from the credible to the crankish, it would be misleading to characterise all his supporters as militant anti-vaxxers. Many would rather emphasise the importance of medical freedom in general. "I was vaccinated but I was against the shutdowns and mandates," John Myers tells me. "But this isn't just a Covid thing -- it's about the right to choose what's best for you and not have the government tell me what to do."To borrow from the UnHerd piece, the reasons former Trump voters might defect to RFK, Jr. range from the credible to the crankish, but I think it is a real possibility that a second candidate positioning himself as outside the establishment is more dangerous to the other such candidate among voters most unhappy about that establishment. -- CAVLink to Original

About a year ago, Florida enacted a draconian anti-immigration measure that, as I put it, "conscript many otherwise productive Floridians for border patrol duty." Predictably, this is now damaging its economy:About a year ago, Florida Governor and then presidential candidate Ron DeSantis passed one of the toughest crackdowns on immigration in the country. SB1718 punishes employers who use undocumented labor and forbids undocumented people from having a driver's license. Many local Florida businesses say the new law has led to workers leaving the state, hurting their bottom line. "A lot of people are scared," says [fruit farmer Fidel] Sanchez. "A lot of people went north and never came back."The article notes that this artificially-induced labor shortage is not just increasing produce prices: It's poised to damage the state's economy to the tune of $12.6 billion in added costs. The NPR piece correctly advocates immigration reform, but I have noted before that this should also include citizenship reform, as, in the long run, abolition of the welfare state. As I said of that last, years ago:Were the educational and medical sectors privately run, we would not attract or encourage freeloaders, and non-citizens who used these facilities would be paying customers. Who could complain about that?Conservatives like Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are eroding America's proud and prosperous history as a destination for hard-working and enterprising people from around the world. Instead, they could be making it easier for people to get here and stay here, and for those of us already here to keep our own money, while also benefiting from the chance to trade with the world's best workers and customers. -- CAV P.S. On the subject of immigration reform, I highly recommend the talk embedded below. Link to Original

Over the weekend, I learned from science advocate Kevin Folta's X feed that Greenpeace has won a battle in its long-running crusade against golden rice. Folta points to an article about this crime against humanity in Reason magazine:Golden rice could help prevent childhood blindness, illness, and death, but Greenpeace has campaigned to ban it for a quarter of a century. (Image by the International Rice Research Institute, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)Greenpeace and other anti-biotech activist groups have logged a win in a crusade that could ultimately blind and kill thousands of children annually. How? By persuading the Court of Appeals of the Philippines to issue a scientifically ignorant and morally hideous decision to ban the planting of vitamin A-enriched golden rice. The objective result will be more children blinded and killed by vitamin A deficiency. The World Health Organization estimates that 250,000-500,000 children who are vitamin A-deficient become blind every year, and half of them die within 12 months of losing their sight. In addition, children with immune systems weakened by vitamin A deficiency have an increased risk of illness and death from infectious diseases. The court also banned the planting of an eggplant variety that has been biotech-enhanced to resist insect pests. The same variety approved by Bangladeshi regulators has reduced pesticide usage and improved farmers' yields by more than 50 percent. [links omitted, bold added]In a 2007 blog post titled "What Ever Happened to 'Golden Rice'?," one can easily learn that this revolutionary invention was being lauded in 2000, and yet, seven years later, optimists thought it would take another six years or so before it would hit the market. Indeed, it wasn't until 2021 that regulators approved planting it in the Philippines! And now? Less than three years later, that approval has been revoked. Folta notes, "A 'crime against humanity' is defined as a deliberate act, typically as part of a systematic campaign, that causes human suffering or death on a large scale." This campaign -- of about a quarter century now! -- by Greenpeace certainly fits that description. Rather than celebrating the silver anniversary of a great invention, we are seeing the disgusting spectacle of Greenpeace successfully keeping it from helping poor children for almost that entire amount of time. -- CAVLink to Original

A Friday Hodgepodge 1. Our first notebook comes from Nat Bennett, from whom I got the following quote, which is today's Quote of the Day in my planner:There's a very specific reputation I want to have on a team: "Nat helps me solve my problems. Nat get things I care about done."At the link above, he describes how he goes about acquiring such a desirable reputation in a post called, "Why You Need a WTF Notebook." The notebook of which he speaks helps him keep track of problems he notices upon joining a team, which he simply collects as he becomes acclimated and better able to figure out which ones are addressable and worth trying to solve. Whether you have ever been overwhelmed by such things as a new team member, or observed someone tripping over themselves trying to Change the World on Day 1, you will likely appreciate this patient and deliberative approach. Image by Tim Collins, via Unsplash, license.2. Bennett's post naturally jogged my memory about other notebooks I've learned about in the past. One of these, the Spark File, is something I still use to track writing ideas. I say I use it, but am considering burning it down and starting over, to exaggerate a little bit. For example, I long ago fell out of the habit of consulting the whole thing monthly, and frankly don't see how that's practical, at least in its current incarnation. It's just a text file, so it isn't eating my hard drive or anything like that. My current thinking has been to keep the whole thing, but review how I'm using it and start over by taking the time to review it in toto and trim it down to what is actually viable, and link from it to the unedited original. I'll kick this off with a quick re-reading of the above post. 3. Another notebook Bennett caused me to remember was Barbara Sher's Autonomy Notebook, which she describes in part within I Could Do Anything If Only I Knew What It Was, specifically in her section on getting the wrong job:Autonomy means you're in business for yourself, no matter who you're working for. Always remember, if you have a slave mentality you'll be defeated every time -- even if you're the favorite slave. You always have to be your own boss, no matter who you're working for, no matter how happy they are with your work. That doesn't mean you don't do what the boss wants. It means you do what they want for yourself because you want to learn it well. And you do more. More? Yes, I mean that absolutely. If you're a gifted runner and you have a good coach, you listen to that coach with respect. Not because he's the boss, but because you are. Think about it. If you're a gifted runner you aren't trying to get an A in gym. You want to be really good. After all, the coach won't win any medals. You will.I tried this once and may try it again. In any event, I'm glad I looked this up again, because the above quote about the slave mentality -- which our culture encourages in many ways -- is gold. 4. In the process of composing this post, I was saddened to learn that Barbara Sher died at the age of 84 in mid 2020. I think the following, from a tribute written by one of her sons, does her much more justice than does the obituary in that open-air sewer of conventional "wisdom," the New York Times:She decided to stop allowing the people who came to see her for counseling to dwell in the rooms of their past -- the going trend -- and instead to focus on realizing their wishes. (She used our last money to take out a full-page ad in the New York Times in the late 1970s that read, "Realizing your dreams can be more therapeutic than analyzing them." The giant photo of herself in the ad was beautiful and powerful. Mom was neither self-absorbed nor vain, rather fully engaged in every moment, especially when it came to Danny and me.I especially love that quote, which her death has made into a memento mori for this person, who has to guard against such a tendency. -- CAV Link to Original

Occasionally, I run into advice I wish I'd encountered years before, and a Forbes piece titled "5 Ways To Work Effectively With Someone You Really Don't Like" would certainly fit that description. Interestingly for this one, wishing I'd encountered the advice and whether I would have profited much from it at the time are two different matters. For example, as the first person from my lower middle class family to attend college, there was a lot I didn't know about regarding professional norms because, on top of being very introverted, I simply hadn't been exposed very much to those norms: And so it was that when I skipped out on an office appointment with my statistics professor, I had no idea at the moment what he meant when he later sternly told me That's unprofessional! The piece reminds me in several ways of how frustrated I became because of a difficult person way back in my first real job after college. In retrospect, the guy was something of a jerk, but I can also see that I was quite difficult for him to work with, too. So, while I'm not quite ready to forgive that guy, I think it's fair that some of my difficulty with him arose from his own poor handling of his difficulty with me. In any event, the following passage from Item 3, seek learning, provoked that bit of reflection:Image by TheStandingDesk, via SOURCE, license.Another effective way to work with someone you find difficult is to seek to learn from the interactions. Each time you're challenged, reflect on how you could have done better and explore how you might grow your own skills -- in listening, empathy or tolerance. Also reflect on why the person triggers you. Sometimes there is a similarity to your own areas for development -- and what annoys you about them can help highlight ways you can grow. For example, their lack of follow through may drive you crazy, but you realize that you can work on your own responsiveness as well. In addition, consider how you might learn from the way the other person is showing up. If they interrupt you or devalue you, use these behaviors to reinforce the importance of how you positively interact as an alternative. If they take credit for your work, remind yourself of how you want to consistently value other's contributions. Sometimes, learning what not to do is as powerful as seeing what works better.Good stuff, and I'm glad I found it at a time I am better able to take advantage of it. The other four sections are demonstrate respect, maintain perspective, be empathetic, and let go. Life is too short to allow difficult people to ruin your day. Tracy Bower shows how you can greatly reduce this hazard and and turn it into a source of ideas for making yourself stronger all at once. -- CAVLink to Original

Via the Harry Binswanger Letter, I learned of a fantastic editorial from the British press regarding the situation in Iran and what the West ought to do. In "Iran Is About to Start a Nuclear World War -- and the West Is Determined to Lose," Allister Heath makes the following statement, which would have been obvious decades ago, but is controversial today:I agree that the West should take care of Iran's military while the Iranians deal with this guy and his buddies. (Image modified from image at Wikimedia Commons, license.)If Joe Biden were a serious president, he would announce that the mullahs in Tehran have crossed a red line, that they are an existential menace to civilised nations. He would declare that enough is enough, that no country can shoot hundreds of drones and missiles at one of its neighbours with impunity, that no government can go on funding terrorism, rape, torture and murder on an industrial scale. He would understand the need to deter other rogue states through a show of strength. He would state that the Iranian regime must be treated like the global pariah that it has become, that all of its proxies must be destroyed, and that, above all, it will never be allowed to get anywhere near nuclear weapons. He would put together a coalition, including as many of Iran's Arab neighbours as possible. He would impose extreme sanctions. He would allow Israel to finish off Hamas. He would help hit Hezbollah. Heath contrasts this with the actual policy of evasion and appeasement the West is continuing instead, which he demonstrates is a serious danger by placing this conflict within its broader context of warmongering by the authoritarian regimes in Russia, China, and North Korea: "[T]he Islamic Republic is the weakest link, the least difficult one to deal with today, if we had the sense to act." I highly recommend reading this rare jewel of clarity and urgent call to action, and publicizing it by whatever means one has. -- CAVLink to Original

During a walk, I was trying to listen to the Yaron Brook Show, but was having a hard time between the constant wind and the volume being low on that episode. I could make out bits and pieces, but was mostly frustrated. Fortunately, one of the bits I could make out was a rather topical recommendation: Listen to Leonard Peikoff's Ford Hall Forum lecture (embedded below), "A Philosopher Looks at the O. J. Verdict." Correctly hoping it would be loud enough to hear over the wind, I took him up on the idea. I had just started grad school during this trial, and I recall some very strange conversations among my acquaintances about what I had thought was a pretty cut-and-dried case. Yes, one is innocent before the law unless proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but the evidence of guilt looked pretty overwhelming to me. Peikoff was of a similar mind regarding guilt, which I expected, but he quickly had part of me wishing I had listened to his lecture long ago: It was clear I'd be getting much more than confirmation from this one. But part of me is glad that I -- who'd gotten sick and tired of hearing about the trial at the time -- didn't listen to the lecture before yesterday. Somewhat ironically, the wish and the relief both spring from the same source, which is that Peikoff discusses why there were such sharp differences on whether the verdict was correct or not, primarily between blacks and whites, but also between conservatives and leftists. Blacks and leftists tended to agree with the verdict, whites and conservatives not. Listening to the lecture sooner would have helped me understand this puzzling difference much better, as the notes at the Ayn Rand Institute might indicate:Peikoff looks at the issues raised by the trial and media response -- including reasonable doubt, conspiracy theories, racism, planted gloves and arguments from emotion -- and finds the process deficient from a philosophical point of view. Peikoff pays special attention to the standards by which evidence in a trial should be weighed, and he discusses the difference between arbitrary claims and evidence-based possibilities. Based on his examination of the motives and attitudes of both jurors and attorneys, as well as the controversial techniques used by the defense, led by attorney Johnnie Cochran, Peikoff describes the trial as "a very ugly and frightening turning point" and "an event that forever embodies the essence of an era." [bold added]Peikoff both discusses the long (but hastening) process by which American academics implemented bad philosophical ideas imported from Germany starting in the 1800s, and forms generalizations from examples about how the participants in the trial were thinking. The former gradually undermined Americans' confidence in their founding ideals and indeed in their own minds and is culminating in today's racialist-tribalist mess. The latter illustrates how emotionalism and magical thinking take over once people generally internalize antt-reason premises, such as anything is possible. Peikoff's exploration of how the defense undermined the prosecution is when I was glad I was hearing this lecture for the first time. The defense countered the straightforward prosecution with fantastic and conspiracy theory-like arguments, only loosely interpreting the evidence when they had anything to do with the evidence at all. And the jury -- primed with the ideas and manner of thinking induced by the culture's saturation with German philosophy -- fell for this approach hook, line, and sinker. This they did partly because they didn't know how to think, and partly because they wanted to believe the defense narrative, which fit neatly into the larger racist narrative that the intellectual establishment had already been spinning for quite some time. I not only found myself stunned at how well this explained the verdict and the reactions to it -- good and bad, and on either side -- but I also had a hair-raising moment of realization: The jurors remind me of today's hyperpartisans in how they approach the crucial issues of the day. The following list (omitting gloves and adding scare quotes) comes from the excerpt: "reasonable" doubt, conspiracy theories, racism, and arguments from emotion. This is a nearly comprehensive list of what passes for political argument from the far left and the alt-right these days, and note what's missing: evidence, reason, and persuasion. (A Trump supporter I know occasionally pushes some blatantly nutty book or other, but can't be arsed to read a short editorial from another perspective -- just like a leftist I used to work with who I had to tell to quit spamming my work email with leftist political screeds.) The Simpson jury was no anomaly: It was a group of people ahead of its time, in terms of America's philosophical dis-integration and consequent de-minding. And now, a plurality or majority of the American electorate processes evidence and arguments in the same way that jury did. Very ugly and frightening indeed. -- CAVLink to Original

Since he became speaker based solely on his loyalty to Trump -- a man who would throw his own mother under the bus on a whim -- I had an extremely low estimate of Speaker Mike Johnson. After he ignored such luminaries as Marjorie Taylor Greene to pass a military aid package, that estimate is slightly higher: He would seem possessed of enough low cunning or even common sense to know when and how to work with political opponents to achieve a goal. Writing at UnHerd, Fred Bauer outlines the ways the other Trump loyalists (who are now calling for Johnson's head) screwed themselves by preemptively writing off any and all cooperation with the Democrats:Probably a RINO, according to Marjorie Taylor Greene. (Image by United States Congress, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)... Because of the centrality of Ukraine for the Biden White House's foreign policy, Democrats might well have eventually accepted a legislative package that paired border control measures with Ukraine-Israel funding. Republicans could have passed a broader national security grand bargain in the House and then dared the Democratic-controlled Senate not to act. The precedent would have been the 2023 debt-ceiling standoff, in which House Republicans passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling and forced the White House and Senate Democrats to the negotiating table. Instead, recalcitrant populists in the House performed judo against themselves. Rather than leveraging the border to get Ukraine funding, they used performative opposition to Ukraine funding to block action on the border. Speaker Johnson put the matter bluntly the other day: "If I put Ukraine in any package, it can't also be with the border because I lose Republican votes on that rule." [bold added]Just as Bauer accurately describes how the populist kook wing of the GOP got nothing by demanding everything, I believe he pretty accurately foretells the future when he considers the deep reflection this should cause among them, but won't:... For some populists, this complete sacrifice of legislative leverage may be a policy disappointment but a messaging opportunity. Perhaps the most prized ornament among many Republicans on Capitol Hill is a badge of angry defeat -- won during the shutdowns and failed "Obamacare" repeals of the past. This debacle is another chance to rage against the "uniparty", fret about the betrayal by the Republican "establishment", and sneer at "America Last" foreign policy. [bold added]The likes of Greene are so blinded by rage at the left that they cannot see how stupid they are behaving or entertain the idea of achieving part of what they want, under the current political makeup of the legislative and judicial branches. I am no fan of Joe Biden, but this is a textbook example of how not to win against a political opponent, and I can't think of a political faction I'd want doing this more. The silver lining here is that Johnson has shown that there is room for a halfway sane legislative agenda to get passed in a closely-divided House: There will be enough center-left and center-right votes to pass measures that aren't too nutty for every member of either party to block, and that the authoritarian wings of each party can be marginalized. One cheer for Mike Johnson. -- CAVLink to Original

A Friday Hodgepodge Whenever possible, I list three wins at the end of each day. Here are a few from a recent review of my planner. *** 1. As our family waited in the terminal ahead of an hours-long couple of flights from the West Coast to home, my son cast an uncomfortable and concerned glance at his parents. "I feel nauseous," he said a little weakly. Grabbing a bag from the lunch Mrs. Van Horn had just brought over, I thrust it into his hands. "Keep this with you in case you can't make it to a bathroom in time," I said. His older sister complained that she didn't want to sit next to him on the plane. "April Fool's," my son replied. He got all of us good by catching us completely off-guard and with an impeccable delivery. Well-played, my son! 2. Although I sometimes do wish my son were more interested in sports or outdoor activities, I don't share the moral panic many other parents do about his screen time -- which strikes me as a mashup of the reading, television, and gaming I did as a lad. Yes, reading, in the sense that he learns things and often follows up. Having learned about The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, he mentioned it to us as probably a good family movie, so that's what we did one Sunday evening. I hadn't read the book or seen the movie, so it was new to me, and I enjoyed it more than I had expected to. From the corner of my eye, I spotted these turtles while crossing a pedestrian bridge last week. (Image by the author. Feel free to copy/reuse.)3. After the move from Florida, I still miss seeing the wide variety of birds along with the occasional alligator I'd see when when I took walks there. That said, the more compact town we live in means that my walks can have other advantages, like including stops at coffee shops, in addition to being more scenic overall. As it turns out, my walks are not devoid of wildlife. The ponds and waterways here teem with turtles, as you can see from this picture I took from a pedestrian bridge. Oh, and I run into the odd crow now and then. If I start encountering those with any regularity, I might try my hand at befriending them. 4. Ahead of a trip last month, I looked ahead in my tickler file for the days I would be away and discovered something I had slipped into a Friday folder to file away during my weekly review: My car registration receipt. I'd tried getting my car inspected earlier in the week, but was told I'd need my registration receipt and was turned away. Since Florida doesn't require inspections, I was five or six years out of practice: Thinking I'd probably not need that scrap of paper, I stashed it in the tickler file and forgotten about it. Indeed, at the inspection station, I thought I might need to go back to the DMV and ask for the document, which would mean another hour or two of wasted time. Finding this was a big relief, because I knew I could very quickly get the inspection done now, and not have to waste time or risk getting a ticket. Chalk one up for having a (usually boring) clerical routine in place. -- CAVLink to Original

Jerry Liu offers the following advice, which fellow role-playing gamers will find easy to translate into real-life terms and quite memorable: Use your potions and scrolls. He opens with a familiar scenario:I find that when I play RPG games, I often hoard single-use items like potions and scrolls, saving them for some future critical moment. I finish games like Skyrim with a backpack full of unspent resources, reserved for a crisis that never actually arrives. What's the point, then, of all these items?The answer to his last question arrives from an experiment that it's probably fair to say went better than he expected:Recently I played Baldur's Gate 3 and I decided to try something new: I would actually gasp use my items as needed, as they were intended, without undue reservation. Not only was it actually fun to use my fireball scrolls and blow stuff up, but I also discovered new layers and hidden quests. For instance, using a 'Speak with the Dead' scroll on a certain suspicious corpse unveiled a questline I would have otherwise missed.Liu elaborates on his lesson, in the rest of his short, thought-provoking post. One insight worth remembering is that many things are actually not single-use -- although they can expire! Liu's backpack full of unused potions and scrolls reminds me of a related insight I had over years: Having a lot of something can, under certain conditions, be the functional equivalent of not having it at all. The germ of this one arose back in my card-playing undergraduate days, when I noticed that, depending on how one played long in a suit, one could opt to stay in a lead or basically sit out the rest of a hand. My huge supply of, say, diamonds, might mean noone could lead me into diamonds (or take them) because they were all in my hand. That ring is in there somewhere, but good luck finding it! (Image by Arthur Rackham, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)This isn't always helpful: Decades later, after a series of interstate moves that included young children in tow and no purging for several years, I remember looking for something in a garage full of disorganized stuff and unopened boxes. I can't recall what I was looking for at the time, but even though I knew we had multiple instances of it, I had to buy another because everything was lost in the disorganized dragon's hoard that our garage housed instead of our cars. Leading up to our last move, I attacked that hoard over a period of three months. We donated dozens of boxes of things to Goodwill, and lots of that stuff was brand new, or as good as new. Until I did that, it was as if we didn't have a garage -- or most of the things that were being stored in it! The clearing-out caused moving preparations to take longer than I would have liked, but I did not want to have the same situation on the other end. I wanted to enjoy this house! That was time well-spent, but looking back to Liu's advice again, it is clear that, had I not had to deal with this mess, I could have used a big chunk of time for much more interesting things. -- CAVLink to Original

Over at Reason, John Stossel notes that "The Labor Department just imposed 300 pages of new regulations to reclassify many individual contractors as payroll employees." Great. I guess that's why our tax preparer had all sorts of questions about gig work for us this year. Naturally, news media uncritically parrot the administration's alleged justifications for the changes, despite the fact that, as Stossel reminds us, this terrible idea has already been tried and failed in California:Four years ago, unions got then-Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D -- San Diego) to push through a new law that reclassified gig workers. They were told they'd get higher wages, overtime, and other benefits. Clueless media liked that. Vox called the law "a victory for workers everywhere." Ha! A few months later, Vox media laid off hundreds of freelancers. "They expected that all these companies were going to reclassify independent contractors as employees," freelance musician Ari Herstand told me. "In reality, they're just letting them go!" Herstand was dismayed to learn that when he wants other musicians to join him, he could no longer just write them a check. "I have to put that drummer on payroll, W2 him, get workers' comp insurance, unemployment insurance, payroll taxes!" he complains. "I have to hire a payroll company." [links omitted]Stossel also notes correctly that (a) some professions managed to get exemptions in California, and (b) Biden wants to make that law nationwide and without exemptions. Never mind that it was so unpopular that even Californians partially clawed it back at the ballot box. It's too bad that the best we can hope for in the next election is divided government. The Democrats would ram this down our throats if left unchecked. The cash value of Trump "owning the libs" through easily-overturned means is zero. Case in point: Keystone XL never got built. (Image by Office of the President of the United States, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)And the Republicans? I seriously doubt that the current iteration of the Republican Party will do anything positive to protect gig work, much less roll back the regulatory state that makes moves like this possible: They'll be too busy infighting, or pursuing a theocratic and xenophobic agenda to worry about such unfashionable things as a free economy. Maybe -- if he wins and he feels like it, and as he did for some things during his term -- Trump will roll back the new regulations, as if the Democrats will never come back into power again. Spoiler alert: When they do, a future Democrat can reintroduce these regulations or worse. (For an example from the world of Executive Orders, see also: The Keystone XL Pipeline.) And that last, Trump supporters, is what is known as "owning" the libs without defeating them. -- CAVLink to Original

Some time back, I tweeted a Value for Value post by Peter Schwartz which explains how our culture's dominant ethical code, altruism, justifies supporting Hamas over Israel, despite the demands of justice to do exactly the opposite. Schwartz says in part:Certainly, a growing anti-Semitism is at work. But the more fundamental explanation is the one provided by a schoolteacher in Atlanta, as reported in the Nov. 5 NY Times ("Across the Echo Chamber, a Quiet Conversation About War and Race"). She posted the following message on Facebook, defending her unequivocal backing of the Palestinians against Israel: "The actual history of this situation is NOT COMPLICATED. I will ALWAYS stand beside those with less power. Less wealth, less access and resources and choices. Regardless of the extreme acts of a few militants who were done watching their people slowly die." She is stating the essence of a moral code that is accepted by virtually everyone today: the code of altruism. According to that code, need is the ultimate standard of morality. If others are in need, nothing else matters -- you have a duty to satisfy their needs.Now that Iran, a nation nearly ten times more populous than Israel, has more directly waged war against Israel, it would be interesting to quiz the above schoolteacher about which side she is on. I would not expect her allegiance to have shifted, despite the fact that Israel had enough help repelling that attack that it is a fair question whether it could have done so alone. Absent the ability to ask directly, we can get the answer by consulting a recent Brendan O'Neill article article at Sp!ked. It is titled "How Woke Leftists Became Cheerleaders for Iran," and I think the below is crucial to understanding why we're seeing mass "demonstrations" by people claiming to be in favor of this warmongering regime's "right" to "self-defense:"The left would say, Don't believe your lying eyes or mind about this evil man. (Image via Wikimedia Commons, license.)The Western left's blaming of Israel for everything, and its implicit absolution of Iran, is grimly revealing. These people seem to view Israel as the only true actor in the Middle East, and everyone else as mere respondents to Israel's actions. Israel is the author of the Middle East's fate, while the rest of them -- Hamas, the Houthis, even Iran -- are mere bit-part players with the misfortune to be caught up in Israel's vast and terrifying web. This is identitarianism, not anti-imperialism. A new generation of radicals educated into the regressive ideology that says 'white' people are powerful and 'brown' people are oppressed can only understand the Middle East in these terms, too. The end result is that they demonise Israel and infantilise Iran. The Jewish State comes to be seen as uniquely malevolent while Iran is treated as a kind of wide-eyed child who cannot help but lash out at its 'Zionist' oppressor. Israel is damned as a criminal state, while Iran's crimes against humanity are downplayed, even memory-holed. This is where wokeness leads, then: to sympathy for one of the most backward and repressive states on Earth on the deranged basis that its criminal strikes against Israel represent a blow against the arrogant West itself... [bold added]The whole idea that all of Israel is Caucasian or that the Islamic world is entirely brown-skinned is nearly as ridiculous as assuming that race determines character or as using white as code for oppressor and brown for needy or oppressed. If anyone needs disabusing of the notion that the left stands for racial equality or individual rights, what we're seeing unfold -- the use of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to excuse racially slurring Israelis as white (which is a racial slur coming from the left these days) en route to enabling their extermination -- should concern anyone with a grain of rationality or a sense of justice. By casting the alleged neediness of Palestine and Iran -- and Israel's well-earned strength -- as racial attributes, the left has excused making the mindless siding with terrorists in the name of altruism permanent. They're coming for the Jews now, and they will come for the rest of West as soon as is convenient. We're all "colonialists" now, according to the left, anyway. -- CAVLink to Original

Over the weekend and from its own territory, Iran launched a barrage of hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel, using Israel's attack on its "embassy" in Syria as an excuse. I recommend Yaron Brook's real-time reporting and commentary (embedded here). I was out running errands when I began listening. Any time I checked, I found him to be well ahead of other outlets both in terms of timeliness and quality of information. The whole thing was barely a blip in mainstream media, and even sites like the Drudge Report were somewhat late. At one point, Brook noted the issue with the most military significance at present: Iran doesn't have the nuclear capability it has been trying to develop. This attack could have been far worse, and harder to deal with if that had not been the case. And after this weekend there is no doubt that this scenario must be averted, in the minimal form of the destruction of Iran's nuclear weapons facilities. Ideally, the West also does whatever it can to topple the murderous, theocratic regime behind the attack and decades of terrorism and proxy conflicts. See also "End States That Sponsor Terrorism," by Leonard Peikoff. As became apparent during the podcast, the need to end Iran's nuclear capability is a point many in Israel seem to grasp, as the following, quote of former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett, tweeted by Open Source Intel would indicate:Some points regarding the overnight Iranian missile attack on Israel:Contrary to what pundits are saying, this wasn't designed merely as "bells and whistles" with no damage. When you shoot 350 flying objects timed to hit Israel at the same moment, when you use three fundamentally different weapon types -- cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and UAVs, you're looking to penetrate Israel's defenses and kill Israelis.The US administration is telling us: "This is a victory, you've already won by thwarting the missiles. No need for any further action." No, it's NOT a victory. Yes, it's a remarkable success of Israel's air defense systems, but it's not a victory. When a bully tries to hit you 350 times and only succeeds seven time, you've NOT won. You don't win wars just by intercepting your enemy's hits, nor do you deter it. Your enemy will just try harder with more and better weapons and methods next time. How DO you deter? By exacting a deeply painful price.It's incorrect to say "nobody got hurt". There's a 7 year-old Israeli-Arab girl called Amina Elhasuny fighting for her life. That's who coward Khamenei hit. The Islamic Republic of Iran made a big mistake. For the past 30 years it's been wreaking havoc on the region -- through its proxies. A terror-octopus whose head is Tehran, and its tentacles are in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Gaza. How convenient. The Mullahs send others to conduct horrendous terror attacks, and die for them. Other people's blood. Israel's strategic mistake for the past 30 years was to play along this strategy. We always fought the Octopus' arms, but hardly exacted a price from its Iranian head. This should change now: Hezbollah or Hamas shoots a rocket at Israel? Tehran pays a price. The enemy is the Iranian REGIME, not the wonderful Iranian people. The Iranian regime reminds me of the Soviet regime in 1985: corrupt to the core, old, incompetent, despised by its own people, and destined to collapse. The sooner the better. The West can accelerate the regime's inevitable collapse with a set of soft and clever actions, short of military force. Remember, USSR collapsed without any need for a direct American attack. Let's do this. Israel is fighting everybody's war. In Gaza, Lebanon and Tehran. We're considered "the small satan" by radical Islam. America is the big one. I'll be clear: if these crazy fanatic Islamic terrorists get away with murder by hiding among civilians, this method will be adopted by terrorists worldwide. We're not asking anyone to fight for us. We'll do the job. But we do expect our allies to have our back, especially when it's tough -- and now it's tough. Be on the right side and help us defeat these horrible and savage regimes.That army of useful idiots -- the ninnies who are worrying about "escalation" -- are ignoring what happened on October 7 and over this weekend: Iran has already escalated unprovoked twice, and is going to escalate again, anyway. Its threats of doing worse if Israel retaliates are superflous and should be ignored, because these theocrats plan atrocities, genocide, and tyranny regardless of what we do. This is war. We should fight it on our own terms. This attack on Israel is a proxy attack on the West by dogs that smell fear. Let's snuff out these animals while they are still weak. -- CAVLink to Original

A Friday Hodgepodge 1. According to New ideal, the Ayn Rand Institute is promoting a booklet titled Finding Morality and Happiness Without God, and quotes author Onkar Ghate:The basic reason religion remains such an esteemed aspect of American society is that it is considered important, even indispensable, to morality. The strongest form this idea takes is that morality depends on religion -- that without God, the distinction between good and evil loses meaning, and anything goes.Mentioning happiness in the title should intrigue the more active-minded: Thanks to religion, most people associate fear and guilt with morality, and are reluctant if not afraid to think about this life-and-death topic. We can blame the all-encompassing cultural stranglehold of religion for the fact that, while the true purpose of morality should be a huge sales advantage for Objectivism in the marketplace of ideas, it will cause suspicion for most. I think the exeception I noted above will more than offset the current disadvantage, since those who will be intrigued will inlcude some future intellectuals. 2. At How to Be Profitable and Moral, Jaana Woiceshyn advocates the free market as the solution the medical care crisis caused by Canada's government-run system. She outlines what this might look like in part:The very small percentage of people who could not afford to pay for health care or insurance would depend on private charity, and the quality of care would be protected, not only through competition and rights-protecting laws, but by private third-party licensing/certification. Healthcare professionals (doctors, nurses, and others) benefit from private health care because competition among providers would enable them to negotiate fair compensation and working conditions, which in turn would attract more professionals to health care and eliminate staff shortages and burnout. The private healthcare providers (hospitals, clinics, professional practices) and medical insurance companies benefit by profiting from the quality and competitive pricing of their services.It is worth noting why Woiceshyn goes into such detail: The lack of truly private systems worldwide makes "envisioning how such a system would work ... difficult." 3. At Thinking Directions, Jean Moroney addresses an interesting question that I'd put as What is the difference between a habit and an internal (psychological or mental) context?Image by Ping Lee, via Unsplash, license.Thanks to the influence of behaviorism, the term "habit" is commonly used to subsume a wide range of repeatable or regular behavior, regardless of the cause of such behavior. The problem with this is that different repeatable, regular behavior can have fundamentally different causes. Psychological concepts need to be defined in terms of fundamentals, i.e., by means of root causes, not superficial similarities. For this reason, I limit the term "habit" to automatized perceptual motor skills, i.e., physical actions that happen automatically in response to awareness of a particular kind of environment, unless you intervene to stop them.This is an important distinction: bad habits and unhelpful contexts make desirable self-directed action harder, but because they have different causes, combating or replacing them requires different approaches, which Moroney discusses throughout. 4. At Value for Value, Harry Binswanger considers the common claim that the United States is a "representative democracy." The most interesting part of the piece to me was the following:[Confusion on this issue is] because one needs to use the right method of concept formation. The right method allows one to validate one's concepts, rather than merely picking one term from those available.Picking one term from those available is ubiquitous today, and explains lots of what is wrong with the current political discourse. And that means not just that practically everyone falls into it on at least some issues, but it can be easy for those who don't to forget or be unaware that that is what often happens. This can affect how best to argue for a good position. The rest of the piece is highly instructive, both for its demonstration of the correct method of approaching the question and for its answer. -- CAVLink to Original

This morning, I read about two disasters, one natural and one man-made, that happened yesterday in Louisiana. Debris lines show the extent of the flooding. The faint uppermost line is less than a foot below doorstep level. (Image by the author, copying permitted.)The former took the form of a nasty storm that not only spawned a tornado that touched down northeast of New Orleans, but also dumped over half a foot of rain within a couple of hours. Fortunately for us, our neighborhood got just the rain. We have a very effective drainage system here, but we're on flat land and the rate of rainfall caused enough street flooding to stall out a car that had been driving through. Also, we found ourselves less than a foot away from having water in the house. The water was gone two hours later, but I have been warned: I was concerned only about the possibility of wind and hail, and was paying attention for tornado warnings. Flooding is a real possibility I've never really had to think about before, other than for insurance purposes. Now that I see how easily that can occur, I have to give flooding serious thought during hurricane season. As my mother said after I sent some pictures and video around to the family: Welcome to Louisiana. The other disaster -- man-made, much more dangerous in the long term, and slower-moving -- comes in the form of theocracy creeping closer at a faster pace in the red part of America these days. Louisiana has moved a step closer to mandating display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, in clear violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution:Louisiana is one step closer to becoming the first state to require that public schools display the Ten Commandments in every classroom under a bill approved Wednesday by the state's House of Representatives. Following a lengthy debate, lawmakers voted 82-19 in favor of House Bill 71. The bill's author, Rep. Dodie Horton, R-Haughton, said the legislation honors the country's religious origins. "The Ten Commandments are the basis of all laws in Louisiana, and given all the junk our children are exposed to in classrooms today, it's imperative that we put the Ten Commandments back in a prominent position," she said.Dodie Horton's name and degree of ignorance sound like an April Fool's joke -- or a minor villain in an Ayn Rand novel. But this is the eleventh and I was reading the news. Setting those observations aside, even if we grant her fallacious assertion about the basis of American law, has she no historical knowledge whatsoever of the consequences of having government enforce religious teachings -- which are, by nature not debatable? Even the most religious of the Founders knew that religious power leads to religious persecution, and that it would be foolish to assume that followers of one's own religion would be the ones in power if that were permitted to occur. There are many other problems with state sponsorship of religion, but this one, obvious to practically anyone who cares to exert a modicum of mental effort, should alarm anyone tempted to cheer about this foolish and thoroughly anti-American development. Those who would force us to follow what they imagine will be their religion do not know or care about the consequences of their actions, much less about America. -- CAVLink to Original

Over at The Bulwark is an instructive article titled "From Intellectual Dark Web to Crank Central" that follows the inevitable downward arc of a group of dissident intellectuals whose only unifying characteristic was that they had been ostracized from or chose not to participate in the leftist intellectual establishment. The article credits Bari Weiss's 2018 reservations about the group with being "prescient." Cathy Young quotes Weiss: "Could the intellectual wildness that made this alliance of heretics worth paying attention to become its undoing?" This is so prescient that it is practically a rhetorical question: As with atheism or any other mere rejection of an orthodoxy, being against something leaves wide open what one stands for. There is nothing inherently wrong with stating opposition to an orthodoxy. Sometimes, all one has the time or energy or public visibility to do is to make it known that one does not support some horrible idea or trend. But since this leaves open the question of why one opposes something, doing so as part of a group makes it look like one might agree with what other members of the group do believe. Doing so beyond a very specific issue is a big mistake, as the better members of this group learned over time:Sam Harris found himself having to distance himself from anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists. (Image by Cmichel67, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)Not all of the IDW-associated figures featured in Weiss's article have veered crankward. American Enterprise Institute senior fellow emeritus Christina Hoff Sommers remains eminently sensible (and an anti-Trump centrist). Two others, Sam Harris and Claire Lehmann, have openly broken with and criticized the IDW. Harris -- a philosopher, neuroscientist, prominent atheist, and author -- said in November 2020 that he was disassociating himself from the IDW label over other IDW figures' embrace of Trump's election-fraud claims and other conspiracy theories, noting that some of them were "sounding fairly bonkers." Harris has made even sharper criticisms since then, especially over the anti-vaccine rhetoric. Lehmann, who founded the online magazine Quillette as a hub for heterodoxy in 2015 and was featured as the "voice" of the IDW in Politico in late 2018, first clashed with some fellow Dark Webbers over her willingness to publish articles, including one by me, criticizing certain aspects of the IDW -- such as a tendency toward its own brand of groupthink and tribalism -- as well as some of its members, such as Dave Rubin. (It turned out Lehmann meant it when she told Politico she didn't want Quillette to be an echo chamber.) More recently, Lehmann has talked about the IDW's fracturing over COVID-19, conspiracy theories, the war in Ukraine, and other issues. [bold added, links removed]The piece reads like an up-to-date What Not to Do companion to Ayn Rand's 1972 Essay, "What Can One Do?", in which she cautioned against forming alliances with people whose stand on an issue might cause them to pass as fellow travelers, but who really aren't allies:... Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to "do something." By "ideological" (in this context), I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually, contradictory) political goals. (E.g., the Conservative Party, which subordinates reason to faith, and substitutes theocracy for capitalism; or the "libertarian" hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism.) To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principles for the sake of some superficial political action which is bound to fail. It means that you help the defeat of your ideas and the victory of your enemies. (For a discussion of the reasons, see "The Anatomy of Compromise" in my book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.) The only groups one may properly join today are ad hoc committees, i.e., groups organized to achieve a single, specific, clearly defined goal, on which men of differing views can agree. In such cases, no one may attempt to ascribe his views to the entire membership, or to use the group to serve some hidden ideological purpose (and this has to be watched very, very vigilantly). [bold and link on "compromise" added]When discussing compromise, Rand warned:The three rules listed below are by no means exhaustive; they are merely the first leads to the understanding of a vast subject. In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins. In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins. When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side. The essay illustrates this in spades, and on multiple levels, from Sam Harris's having to distance himself from anti-vaxxers to individuals being tempted, often successfully, to sell out to keep the large audiences of kooks they ended up with by associating with this group. Young calls this last "audience capture." It is not enough to oppose an evil like "wokeness." One must do so for the right reasons, articulate those reasons, and offer a positive alternative. Joining forces with anyone who does not also do those things will ultimately backfire. -- CAVLink to Original

Donald Trump, whose Supreme Court appointments eventually overturned Roe vs. Wade, has stuck his finger into the wind and decided his best chance at a second term lies with pretending that abortion isn't really a big issue. The right, which only cares about (a) banning abortion and (b) whether Trump can win (in that order), is mostly in a bubble, taking him "seriously but not literally:" They sense that Trump will say whatever is most likely to get him elected and will roll with whatever progress the fundies can make on banning abortion. He doesn't really care about the issue beyond how it affects his election chances, and they're fighting a long game. The left -- who would rather indulge magical thinking than, say, making abortion actually legal or prosecuting insurrectionists on time -- is already writing his political obituary and and even fantasizing that Florida will "turn blue" during the next election. This isn't to say that a Trump victory is inevitable or that abortion won't cost him Florida, but one must read any political commentary these days with an eye on separating the wishes of the author from reality. I mildly exaggerated on my first commentary link. The Newsweek piece, by Democrat cheerleader David Faris, does in fact attempt a more-or-less cool-headed analysis of how Trump's latest flip-flop on abortion might play out. I think Faris gets it half-right:Image by pjedrzejczyk, via Pixabay, license.You must therefore wonder how this group of high-propensity voters that is absolutely critical to any Republican victory this November is going to take this news. My guess is "not well." While some Republicans might be satisfied with the end of Roe and abortion bans or impossible restrictions in 21 states, the most religious white evangelicals want total victory. And Trump just told them they won't get it. Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, issued a statement almost immediately after Trump's video dropped saying that she was "deeply disappointed," although still committed to defeating President Joe Biden. While we shouldn't expect his position to cause dramatic change in his white evangelical support, even a few points could be determinative it what looks like it is going to be an extremely close election. The other problem here for Trump is that, unlike him, people who care about restoring reproductive rights are not stupid. He did not say whether he would sign an abortion ban if it crossed his desk, a tightrope he will not be able to walk all the way to November without being pressed for a firm up-or-down answer. In private, he has previously said that he would sign a 16-week national abortion ban. And throwing up his hands and saying "let the states decide" still leaves tens of millions of furious women living in states where abortion has been completely banned -- including Electoral College battleground states like North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia and Florida -- or partially banned, like Wisconsin. [bold added]Faris is dead wrong about the evangelical vote: First of all, anti-abortionists have been working for decades to make abortion illegal and know that their gains are safe at worst with Trump in charge. Second, this part of the electorate is firmly within the Orange Echo Chamber. See take seriously but not literally above. And consider its support of Trump despite his serial philandering, sleaziness, and criminality. This is more of the same, and they will overlook it, too. With these people, Trump could get away with murder, as he once boasted. Faris is, however, correct about those of us facing -- or who have daughters facing -- an adulthood in which an accident or a crime might condemn them to the dangers of an unplanned pregnancy and the decision to (a) assume the lifelong responsibility of parenthood at a time not of their choosing or (b) forfeit that responsibility in the hope that a random stranger will properly care for their newborn child. The second piece is also more cool-headed than I let on. Its assessment of Florida is as follows:Tuesday's twin rulings on abortion from the Florida Supreme Court -- one letting a deeply restrictive, DeSantis-backed anti-abortion law go into effect, the other permitting an abortion-access initiative, Amendment 4, on the November ballot -- have upended political certainties in the Sunshine State. Last week, no one was talking about Florida as a swing state; now, with abortion at center stage, it's not beyond the bounds of the possible that, with an overwhelming majority of Floridians -- including a majority of Republicans -- in favor of reestablishing abortion rights protections, the Democrats will be able to use this issue to drive a wave of supporters to the polls in November. ... Yet such is the state of disarray in the Florida Democratic Party that, even with the huge assist the Supreme Court has given them by turning abortion into the central issue of the upcoming vote in Florida, it remains a long shot for President Joe Biden to mount a successful challenge for the state's Electoral College votes. [bold added]The piece then looks at the situation in other states where both parties are competitive and abortion has become a ballot-box issue. Regarding Florida, I think Trump can lose non-Evangelical Republicans on this issue, unless they buy his shtick about being non-committal on the issue or somehow don't pay any more attention to abortion than they have had to in the past. And I agree with Faris that he might not have to lose that many voters for it to matter -- since Democrats now have good reason -- Biden himself sure isn't one -- to show up and vote. My take is that abortion will hurt Trump, but perhaps not enough to keep him out of office; and that it will definitely hurt his party down-ballot. -- CAVLink to Original

John Stossel has a column that correctly calls out Joe Biden and Donald Trump as both being wrong about free trade, which both parties smear as "globalization" when it's convenient. The piece briefly debunks five common myths, and I was glad to see Imports take jobs from Americans addressed as Myth No. 2:This is the evil face of world-wide central planning, not of world-wide free trade. (Image by World Economic Forum, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)I say to [the Cato Institute's Scott] Lincicome, "Some people do lose jobs." "True," he replies, "We lose about 5 million jobs every month." But trade isn't the main reason. "Jobs are lost due to ... changing consumer tastes and from innovation. We make more stuff with fewer workers. That's productivity." Productivity increases are good. Trade and productivity improvements are reasons why the number of Americans who do have jobs has risen. "We're at historically high manufacturing job openings," says Lincicome, "Manufacturers in the United States say they can't find enough workers."The piece avoids putting off readers with detailed descriptions of the economic laws that make free trade a good thing, opting for more colloquial descriptions. For example, the Law of Comparative Advantage, which explains how free trade permits a sort of international division of labor, isn't stated explicitly. Instead the piece relies on an analogy of our national "trade deficit" to the "deficit" we all have, as individuals, with our grocery stores. There are, of course multiple ways the smear "globalization" could be addressed. For example, central planning via "free trade agreements" is not actually the same thing as free trade. And international agreements that damage the economy, such as the Paris Climate Accords, often get lumped together with misconceptions about free trade when populists attack "globalization." Those go beyond the scope of the piece, but that's fine: There is an incredible amount of ignorance about basic economics out there: One has to start somewhere... -- CAV Link to Original