The Rational Egoist

I am a major fan of many of the Star Trek series, especially Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager. What I really enjoy about these series is how they illustrate the efficacy of man’s mind. In the Star Trek Universe, the human race has developed the means to travel vast distances in space, where their primary mission is to “seek out new life” and to “boldy go where no man has gone before.” During their adventures, they meet and interact with thousands of different civilizations and encounter a number of problems which, in every episode, work to solve. The key to the majority of these episodes is the intelligence and reason used to come up with solutions to some very complicated problems which almost always have a very scientific nature.

Also, the Star Trek Universe displays an extremely optomistic future, where reason and intelligence reign supreme, and which the quality of life for human beings, as well as many other species, is quite high.

There are some negatives about the series though, but I do not think they make too much of an impact. One such negative is what’s called The Prime Directive which states that no starship captain may interfere with another culture. However, I find it promising that most of the starship captains of these series violated that stupid directive constantly, especially Captain Janeway of the Star Trek: Voyager series. Another negative about the series is the sometimes evident logic vs. emotion dichotomy which can be seen in the species, the Vulcans. The Vulcans repress their emotions because they believe in logic above all. This false dichotomy has been present in almost all of the series at some point, but it was present the most in the original Star Trek series, (which I do not really like), in which the character of Spock embodied this false dichotomy.

Also, most of the Star Trek movies have left much to be desired. I specifically do not enjoy most of the movies with the original crew in it. My favorite Star Trek movie by far is Star Trek: First Contact, in which the Borg (which I will comment on shortly) attempt to assimilate Earth by traveling back in time.

These negatives however are not usually present all that often.

As to the Borg, I believe that they are one of the best enemies in fiction that I have ever seen. The Borg are a collection of thousands of different species which have been assimilated into one collective consciousness. The Borg advocate the “perfection” of the unified whole, the collective, the group, and they continue to assimilate more and more species in the attempt to reach that perfect unified whole. The Borg believe in the elimination of the individual into a collective, and they are brutally ruthless in doing so. They assimilate hundreds of entire worlds and become stronger and stronger. They are extremely powerful, as in a two-parter episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where one Borg cube (a ship) destroyed about 40 Federation ships (the Federation is a large group of peaceful worlds that combine their exploration and defense capabilities, and at the heart of the Federation is the human race). The Borg originated in the Star Trek: Next Generation series and have had a lot of encounters with Star Trek captains ever since.

The main reason why I think the Borg represent such a good enemy is because they represent the three major evil philosophies in mankind’s history: mysticism, collectivism, and altruism.

For all these reasons and many more, I love the Star Trek Universe (despite the few occasinal flaws). You can find repeats of Star Trek: The Next Generation on TNN, and you can find repeats of Star Trek: Voyager in syndication (it is on UPN Saturday night at 7 around here).

The Star Trek Universe illustrates the efficacy of man’s mind, the supremacy of reason and science, and the potential of man’s greatness. A great story indeed.

Lately there has been talk from President Bush and other conservatives such as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist about introducing legislation to federally restrict the institution of marriage to hetereosexuals.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – President Bush indicated Wednesday he opposes extending marriage rights to homosexuals, saying he believes marriage “is between a man and a woman.”

Bush said it is “important for society to welcome each individual,” but administration lawyers are looking for some way to legally limit marriage to heterosexuals.

“I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, and I think we ought to codify that one way or another,” Bush told reporters at a White House news conference. “And we’ve got lawyers looking at the best way to do that.”

This is blatant discrimination and a violation of individual rights. Every individal, by their nature as a human being, have the right to their own life, which means, they have the right to take whatever actions they deem necessary to the benefit of their own life, just as long as they do not violate this right of others in the process.

It is more than just “important for society to welcome each individual.” Rather, it is the obligation of a proper government to recognize the individual rights of EVERY human being, whether they be gay, black, atheist, or a member of any “unfavorable group” to a given politician. President Bush is attempting to inject his personal morality, based on the religion of Christianity, into law, which will force all individuals to follow this morality themselves. Such forcing of one’s personal morality into law is the equivalent of putting a gun (the power of the government) up to a gay person’s head and forbiding them to use their mind to come to their own conclusion about what course of action is best for the gay person and their lover (in this case, regarding whether or not it is most beneficial to get married.)

There is only one thing that the government has the right to punish people for, and that is violating the individual rights of others. Being gay, or wanting to be married if you’re gay, is not a violation of anyone else’s rights. In the case of President Bush, it is in violation of his personal morality, but this does not make it right to pass it into law.

I am a heterosexual, and I am not particularly favored to homosexuality. However, this opinion of mine is absolutely irrelevant when it comes to whether or not gays be should be allowed to be gay, or be allowed to be married. The personal opinions or morality of political officials DO NOT determine the rights of individuals. Nor does the personal opinions or morality of American citizens determine the rights of individuals. Even if a majority of people in this country felt the same way as President Bush, these gay people still have their right to be gay and right to be married.

One might ask me, you do not have a favorable opinion towards homosexuals, why would you support their ability to be married? Why not allow the government to direct legislation towards these people? The answer is, I regard the right to life as inalienable, and it is extremely important for the protection of my own rights that EVERYONE’S rights are recognized as inalienable as well. As soon as the government is allowed to restrict some people’s individual rights, it is only a matter of time before my rights are infringed upon as well, as long as the premise that it is ok for the government to do so is not challenged.

This is what it means to have the inalienable right to life. It means that no other individual or group of individuals, no matter how large or powerful, has the right to deny you your right to life, to deny you the ability to choose whatever course of action you deem to be beneficial to your life as long as it does not violate that right of others to do so as well.

I staunchly oppose any legislation designed at excluding gay people from being allowed to wed and I hope that there are enough decent people in Washington who agree.

Many Palestinians are brutal terrorists hell-bent on the destruction of Israel and The United States of America.
This slideshow, courtesy of Little Green Footballs, demonstrates how these sick people teach their children to hate Western values and to love violence, terrorism, and death.

This slideshow is truly sad, but I recommend viewing it in order to understand the true nature of these Palestinian terrorists.

Think about these pictures when you hear about the “legitimate aspirations of a Palestinian state.”

I highly suggest reading The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff.

In this book, Leonard Peikoff demonstrates the “ominous parallels” between the philosophy in pre-Hitler Germany which allowed Hitler to rise to power and the dominant philosophical trends of America today. The following is an excerpt from the book:

The mind cannot know truth, said the new philosophy. The mind dare not know itself, said the new psychology. The mind cannot understand nature, said the new physics. The mind cannot reach God, said the new theology. The mind is unspiritual and unfeeling, said the new literature. The mind stifles self-expression, said the new education. The mind is banal, said the new art.
The mind is dead, said the new culture. It cannot know reality, it cannot grasp the good, it does not move man.
Man, said the new vision, is guilty, disoriented, futile. He is a being frozen by terror, a cipher, a monster, a filthy little psychopath. The appropriate response to such a being, said
the vision’s spreaders, is pity or revulsion or an ironic yawn.

This is part of the fundamental philosophical trends which permeated pre-Hitler Germany and allowed Hitler to obtain power. Many of these very same philosophical trends are now present in dominant American philosophy and the world of academia in America.

I highly suggest reading this book. However, before reading this book, I suggest reading at leastThe Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Philosophy: Who Needs It, The Virtue of Selfishness, and Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, in order to fully understand and appreciate The Ominous Parallels.

As I indicated in my previous post, President Bush is advocating a course of action which will ultimately lead to the death of Israel. Unfortunately, there are more severe consequences to this course of action than the mere death of Israel. By advocating that Israel negotiate with terrorists, President Bush is severely threatening the security of The United States.

I’d like to emphasize some points from my previous post which will also serve the purposes of this one.

There are only three responses to the initiation of force (or the threat of the initiation of force): to ignore it, to appease those who are initiating the force, or to retaliate against those who are initiating the force in the attempt to eliminate the force.

Let’s take a look at a child throwing a temper-tantrum. Ignore the child, and the child continues to throw the temper-tantrum for an extended period of time until the child feels like stopping, at which time, much damage has been done. Appease the child, and the child learns that throwing a temper-tantrum can get them rewards from their parents. Punish the child, and the child learns that throwing a temper-tantrum is not the proper way to get what one wants.

This is a proper analogy to what happens when a nation either ignores, appeases, or retaliates against, the initiation of force from another nation. If a nation ignores the initiation of force, there is nothing to stop the initiators from completely destroying the nation. If a nation attempts to appease or negotiate with the initiators of force, it is possible that the violence may stop in the short-term, but what message will this send in the long-term? It will tell the initiators of force that initiating force is a successful policy to engage in if they want to achieve their goals. This only emboldens these initiators of force to engage in future acts of force, because there is nothing stopping them. When they initiate force, they will not be punished, but rather rewarded with certain things offered up by the nation being attacked in exchange for the end of the intiation of force. If a nation retaliates against those who initiate force against them, it will end the initiation of force in the short-term, and in the long-term, it will send the message to those who initiate force that that policy is not beneficial towards achieving their own goals, and will only be met with severe punishment.

Prior to Sept. 11, since the beginning of the Islamic Fundamentalism terrorist movement, the United States either ignored Islamic terrorism or appeased it.

In 1979 theocratic Iran—which has spearheaded the “Islamic Revolution"—stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 54 Americans hostage for over a year. In 1983 the Syrian- and Iranian-backed group Hezbollah bombed a U.S. marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 servicemen while they slept; the explosives came from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. In 1998 al-Qaeda blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 individuals. In 2000 al-Qaeda bombed the USS Cole in Yemen, killing 17 sailors.
So we already knew that al-Qaeda was actively engaged in attacking Americans. We even had evidence that agents connected to al-Qaeda had been responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. And we knew in 1996 that bin Laden had made an overt declaration of war against the “Satan” America.
But how did America react? Did our government adopt a principled approach and identify the fact that we were faced with a deadly threat from an ideological foe? Did we launch systematic counterattacks to wipe out such enemy organizations as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Fatah? Did we seek to eliminate enemy states like Iran? No—our responses were short-sighted and self-contradictory.
For instance, we initially expelled Iranian diplomats—but later sought an appeasing rapprochement with that ayatollah-led government. We intermittently cut off trade with Iran—but secretly negotiated weapons-for-hostages deals. When Israel had the courage to enter Lebanon in 1982 to destroy the PLO, we refused to uncompromisingly support our ally and instead brokered the killers’ release. And with respect to al-Qaeda, we dropped a perfunctory bomb or two on one of its suspected camps, while our compliant diplomats waited for al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks to fade from the headlines.

Sept. 11 was the result of this policy of ignoring and appeasing these terrorists who initiated force against us. By not responding to and eliminating the threat of Islamic terrorism, we emboldened the terrorists to engage in more and more severe attacks against us, and to continue their efforts free of any sort of punishment. By appeasing terrorists in certain cases, such as the taking of American hostages in Tehran, we sent the message to terrorists that attacking us through terrorism will get them rewards and very little punishment, if any.

When Sept. 11 occurred, it was evident that this policy of ignoring and appeasing terrorism had completely failed, and only a policy of ruthlessly going after all the threats to our country would achive peace and prevent any future terrorist attacks. President Bush gave lip service to this in his initial remarks after the Sept. 11 attacks. Also, he went after the main home of the Al-Qaeda organization and the dictatorship that was supporting them, the Taliban. After a pitiful campaign against them, in which we allowed thousands of Taliban and Al-Qaeda members to escape and a complete failure to capture Osama Bin Laden, President Bush promised that we would continue to eliminate all terrorist threats.

Since Sept. 11, our government, under the leadership of President Bush, has done a terrible job of eliminating the terrorist threats against our country. And now it appears as though the “war” on terrorism is becoming the “negotiation” with terrorism. This can be seen with President Bush’s policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead of eliminating the terrorist organizations which carry out attacks on Israeli civilians, Israel should, according to President Bush, negotiate with the terrorists, essentially, appease them by giving up some of their land to the terrorists. This is equal to giving Al-Qaeda some of what it wants, dead American citizens.

It now sadly appears that we are returning, after a pitiful short period of retaliation against terrorist threats, to appeasing and ignoring terrorist actions. Instead of identifying and then eliminating the terrorist threats and the governments which support them around the world, the U.S. government has now begun the process of negotiating with these threats to our country and the threats to our allies. The evidence of this is clear with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the North Korean situation, and our policy on Iran. We have told the Israeli government that we do not support their own “war on terror” but that they should rather give in to the terrorists’ demands. The North Koreans are threatening the United States with nuclear weapons, and instead of eliminating the source of this threat, we are now attempting to appease the North Koreans with food deals, monetary aid, and even a non-aggression pact, all of which will allow North Korea to remain a dictatorship and to continue to produce nuclear weapons. Most importantly, President Bush believes that the Iranian regime can be overthrown by “peaceful means,” as he indicated this morning in his press conference. This is the equivalent of stating during World War II that Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime can be overthrown by peaceful means. While the size of the threat of Iran is greatly smaller than Hitler’s Nazi Germany was, the Iranian regime represents the heart of the Islamic fundamentalist movement, and the heart of Islamic terrorism.

Sadly, it appears as though President Bush believes that Islamic terrorism can be defeated by appeasing them. He belives that Islamic terrorism can be defeated in the Palestinian territories by appeasing them, it can be defeated in Iran by appeasing them, in Saudi Arabia by appeasing them, in Pakistan by appeasing them, etc.

What is going to be the eventual result of this policy of appeasement and ignoring terrorist threats? The strengthening of the Islamic terrorist movement, their belief that initiating force against us will yield positive results, and future terrorist attacks against us.

By negotiating with the Palestinian terrorists, as opposed to ruthlessly eliminating them, Israel is putting itself on the course to committing suicide.

There are only two kinds of force: the initiation of force (which means an entity beginning the force) and the retaliatory use of force against those who initiate force. Every human being, by their very nature, constantly chooses between two or more alternatives in action through the use of their own mind. The initiation of force entails the physical compulsion by one individual or group of individuals meant to force another individual or group of individuals from being able to make a choice between two or more alternatives in some aspect or all aspects of their life. The initiators of force attempt to forbid an individual from making a choice by dictating to that individual what action they must take in some given area. For example, an individual may be trying to decide between spending their money for themself or giving it to someone else. The initiation of force would entail an individual or a group of individuals forcing this individual to either spend their money for themself or give it to someone else, against the free will of that individual. So, the important point here is that the initiation of force physically forces another individual or group of individuals from being able to fully use their mind to make choices.

The retaliatory use of force is the response to those who initiate the use of force. This entails doing whatever is necessary in order to stop those who have initiated force.

In most wars or “conflicts,” one nation initiates force against the other. There are only three responses to the initiation of force (or the threat of the initiation of force): to ignore it, to appease those who are initiating the force, or to retaliate against those who are initiating the force, in the attempt to eliminate the force.

Let’s take a look at a child throwing a temper-tantrum. Ignore the child, and the child continues to throw the temper-tantrum for an extended period of time until the child feels like stopping, at which time, much damage has been done. Appease the child, and the child learns that throwing a temper-tantrum can get them rewards from their parents. Punish the child, and the child learns that throwing a temper-tantrum is not the proper way to get what one wants.

This is a proper analogy to what happens when a nation either ignores, appeases, or retaliates against, the initiation of force from another nation. If a nation ignores the initiation of force, there is nothing to stop the initiators from completely destroying the nation. If a nation attempts to appease or negotiate with the initiators of force, it is possible that the violence may stop in the short-term, but what message will this send in the long-term? It will tell the initiators of force that initiating force is a successful policy to engage in if they want to achieve their goals. This only emboldens these initiators of force to engage in future acts of force, because there is nothing stopping them. When they initiate force, they will not be punished, but rather rewarded with certain things offered up by the nation being attacked in exchange for the end of the intiation of force. If a nation retaliates against those who initiate force against them, it will end the initiation of force in the short-term, and in the long-term, it will send the message to those who initiate force that that policy is not beneficial towards achieving their own goals, and will only be met with severe punishment.

This being said, it is right for a nation, under the initiation of force from another group of people, to retaliate in order to eliminate the threat and to send the message that the initiation of force will not achieve the goals of any nation. The message that is sent by retaliating against the initiators of force is absolutely critical to maintaining peace for one’s nation in the future. By retaliating against all those nations which initiate force against it, it sends the message that there is nothing to gain, and a lot to lose, from initiating force against them. Retaliation thereby not only eliminates the current threat, but greatly helps to prevent future initiations of force that other nations may think to engage in.

Israel, in its history, has understood that the retaliation against those who initiate force is the best way to achieve long-term peace. Time and time again they have responded to the Palestinian terrorist attacks against them, not by attempting to negotiate with the terrorists, not by ignoring the terrorists, but by attempting to eliminate the threat and send the message that the terrorist attacks will achieve nothing. However, in recent times, there has been pressure from many outside nations, especially the United States, to appease the terrorists that are attacking them by negotiating a “peace deal” with them. And now, buckling under the pressure of international opinion, they have begun the process of doing so. What will this accomplish? It is possible that in the short-term, such a deal with the Palestinians will decrease the amount of violence against Israeli citizens. However, in the long-term, it will send the message to the Palestinians that terrorizing Israeli’s is a successful policy for achieving whatever they want. Kill some Israeli civilians and the Israelis will give us more concessions.

The possibility that appeasing initiators of force will reduce attacks in the short-term is only a possibility. In the case of Israel, I do not believe it is. In fact, I believe firmly that the retaliation against the Palestinians is the best course of action for achieving peace. In support of this position, I offer the following article, War for Peace by Robert Tracinski

In March, 108 civilians were murdered and more than 500 injured in terrorist attacks on Israel. Another 22 soldiers and three policemen, by my count, were also killed. It was the climax of Yasser Arafat’s uprising and the bloodiest month of terrorism in Israel’s history.
The terrorist attacks came almost daily, targeting Israelis going about their normal business. On March 2, 10 Israelis were killed—including two infants in strollers—when a terrorist from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade blew himself up outside a bar mitzvah. On March 5, three people were killed and 30 injured when an officer in the Palestinian naval police opened fire on a seafood restaurant and nightclub in Tel Aviv. On March 9, two people were killed in a sniper attack near the boardwalk in the resort town of Netanya.
That same day, 11 more Israelis were killed by a Hamas suicide bomber at a sidewalk cafe in Jerusalem. On March 20, seven people died when Islamic Jihad blew up a bus on its route from Tel Aviv to Nazareth. On March 26, international observers from Turkey and Switzerland were shot and killed in an ambush by Palestinian gunmen. This is just a sampling of the terror campaign that reached its peak with the Passover Massacre. If the U.N. wants to investigate massacres, they should start with this orgy of killing.
On March 29, when Israel began its invasion of the West Bank, French President Jacques Chirac sniffed, “Everyone knows there cannot be a military solution to the conflict in the Middle East.” I’m sure that’s what his predecessor said, six decades ago, about Germany.
The facts have proved him wrong.
About 30 Israeli soldiers were killed in Operation Defensive Shield—not many more than in the preceding month. But the number of civilian deaths has dropped dramatically. In the past four weeks, there have been only three significant terrorist attacks. On April 10, a Hamas bomber blew up a bus, killing eight off-duty soldiers and policemen. On April 12, a zealot from Islamic Jihad shot an Israeli border policeman and a Palestinian worker at a border crossing. Later that same day, a bomber at a bus stop killed four Israelis and two foreign workers from China.
In the past two weeks, from April 13 to April 26, only two Israelis have been killed. One was a soldier, the other a member of the border police. Not a single civilian has been killed. The barrage of murder has been stopped, for now.
Through war, Ariel Sharon has achieved what he could not even get as a show of good faith from Palestinian negotiators: seven days of quiet. He bought this respite the only way anyone can ever buy peace from terrorism: by killing the terrorists, seizing their stocks of explosives, taking away their guns and imprisoning (or at least “isolating") their leaders.

The alleged goal of the Palestinian terrorist groups is the complete destruction of Israel. The deal being brokered now between the Israelis and the Palestinians is essentially this: the Israelis will give the Palestinians land in exchange for the Palestinians promising that they will not attack the Israelis. But why stop there? After this deal is completed (if it is completed), why don’t the Palestinians continue their terror attacks against Israel and get more land, and then more land? It appears that the Palestinians have every intention to do so. And why not? There is nothing stopping them, as long as Israel refuses to retaliate against them.

Israel: recognize your right to defend yourself against terrorists who initiate force against you, and recognize that the complete elimination of all the Palestinian terrorist groups, and all of the Middle Eastern terrorist groups is the only way to achieve long-term peace for your country. Recognize that the decision to negotiate with terrorists is the decision to committ suicide.
America: recognize that Israel has the right to defend itself against initiators of force, allow the Israeli army to march through any country which initiates force against them, and recognize the complete hypocrisy of advocating the destruction of all terrorist groups attacking America but at the same time advocating that Israel negotiate with the terrrorists attacking them.

I hold that the only way to achieve peace in the Israeli-Palestinian situation is for the Israelis to respond to the initation of force (the terrorist acts against them) by ruthlessly eliminating all of the terrorist organizations of the Palestinians and refusing to negotiate with terrorists.

I’d like to offer you some links and articles in support of this position.

First, I’d like to offer The Ayn Rand Institute’s website dedicated to the moral defense of Israel

Ayn Rand Institute’s In Moral Defense of Israel Web page was created to explain why Israel has a moral right to exist and to defend itself against attack, and why the United States should unequivocally support Israel.

Israel and those who attack it are not moral equals. Israel is a free, Westernized country, which recognizes the individual rights of its citizens (such as their right to liberty and freedom of speech). It uses military force only in self-defense, in order to protect itself.

Those attacking Israel, by contrast, are terrorist organizations, theocracies, dictatorships and would-be dictators. They do not recognize the individual rights of their own subjects, much less those of the citizens of Israel. They initiate force indiscriminately in order to retain and expand their power. In contrast to the state of Israel, such organizations and regimes have no moral right to exist.

Fundamentally, Israel is the target of these organizations and regimes precisely because of its virtues: it is an oasis of freedom and prosperity in a desert of tyranny and stagnation. If Israel is destroyed, the enemies of freedom attacking it will be able to turn their full attention to the United States. The United States must not let this happen.

In America’s war against terrorism, it is imperative that America distinguish friend from foe, good from evil, the opponents of terrorism from the perpetrators. In the name of justice and self-preservation, therefore, America should uncompromisingly encourage and support Israel in the common fight against the enemies of freedom.

On this page you can find numerous articles concerning Israel’s moral right to exist, Israel’s moral right to self-defense against the Palestinians, the identification of Palestinians as terrorists, how President Bush’s peace plan will fail, the nature of pacifism, etc.

Pacifism necessarily invites escalating acts of war against anyone who practices it.

Bush’s Vision For Peace: Prelude To War

Israel Has A Moral Right To Its Life

War for Peace

Allowing Israel to Destroy the PLO Helps Defend the U.S.

I highly recommend not only all of the articles I’ve mentioned here, but all of the articles on the ARI medialink webpage

The parents of the Oberlin High School District in Oberlin, Ohio are angered that a white man may be teaching Black History.

This is utterly ridiculous. The attitude of these parents indicates the clear racism which is still apparent in our society today. The fundamental idea behind the attitudes of the parents is the faulty premise that one’s race determines one’s character, personality, principles, and intelligence. The objection of these parents, in my opinion, is primarily fueled by the idea that this white man is not qualified to teach black history because of the fact that he is white.

This excerpt from the end of the article is appalling.

“When you talk about slavery, students need to understand it is not our fault,” she said. “Our ancestors did nothing wrong to be enslaved.

“How do you work through that when the person teaching it is the same type of person who did the enslaving?”

I can not believe that such utter racism still passes for decency. The last sentence specifically implies that a white man is somehow partly responsible for the wrong choices of not only his direct ancestors, but every single person who has shared his skin color since the history of time.

Racism is the theory that a person’s character, personality, principles, intelligence, and other such traits are determined not by the free choices of every individual but rather they are automatically determined by one’s race. Racism denotes such a theory when applied to a member of any race, not just the member of the African-American race (even though, historically, they were the victims of racism very often).

Therefore, it is pure racism to claim that a white man is not qualified to teach a class merely because of the fact that he is white. A teacher’s qualifications have to do with their teaching ability, intelligence, knowledge of the subject being taught, etc., but NOT their race. Claiming that a teacher’s race is a good qualification for their being a good teacher is assuming that their intelliegence, teaching ability, and knowledge of the subject being taught are due to their race, and not their freely chosen values and principles. That is pure racism, and should be clearly condemned.

I condemn the opinions of these parents.

President Bush has set a plan in motion to “reform” Amtrak.

WASHINGTON - A new Bush administration proposal for Amtrak’s future could end the government-subsidized railroad’s monopoly on intercity passenger rail travel, a congressional supporter says.

This is not enough Mr. Bush. You need to completely eliminate all government intervention into the economy. However, this is no easy task, and not something that can be done overnight. Continue to reduce the role of government in the private lives of American citizens, and the business pursuits they choose to engage in, but do not rest until the government has been completely removed from the economy.

This story makes me sick to my stomach.

LONDON (AFP) - Human induced global climate change is a weapon of mass destruction at least as dangerous as nuclear, chemical or biological arms, a leading British climate scientist warned.
He said the United States, in an “epic” abandonment of leadership, was largely responsible for the threat.
“Like terrorism, this weapon knows no boundaries,” Houghton said. “It can strike anywhere, in any form – a heatwave in one place, a drought or a flood or a storm surge in another”
……
“Once this killer heatwave began to abate, 1,500 people lay dead – half the number killed outright in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre,” Houghton said.

To equate global warming with terrorism is morally reprehensible and absolutely disgusting. Terrorism is the result of fanatical ideologies which resort to the initiation of force (namely, fear, and terror) in order to try to force a certain ideology on others. Terrorism is the result of the CHOICES of reprehensible human beings. Global warming (to whatever extent it exists) is an unfortnuate consequence of man’s improving his own existence through industry, technology, and progress. But global warming, and other such potential harmful environmental problems (if they do exist) are not inherent consequences of industry, technology, and progress, as many environmentalists claim. Any such problems (if they do exist) can be solved by the very things which it is alleged have caused them: technology, industry, and progress. These solutions to environmental problems (if they do exist) can only come about when the essential requirement of man’s existence and the use of his mind is fulfilled: freedom. Only a system of freedom, in which the government recognizes the right of every human being to use their own mind however they want, will produce the results necessary to eliminate any potential environmental threats to mankind. This system of freedom, is laissez-faire capitalism.

But the environmentalists do not advocate what is required for human beings to be able to create new technology, industry, and achieve continual progress; laissez-faire capitalism. Instead, many environmentalists advocate that human beings “return to nature,” by drastically reducing the amount of energy, industry, and technology used and change in their economies (to either a mixed economy or some form of socialism). This essentially means trading most or all of the increases in quality of life that we, The United States, have experienced in the past 100 years. It also means a profound violation of the inalienable rights of human beings to their own life.

The equation of global warming, caused by the United States according to this scientist, with the thousands of deaths caused by terrorists is sick. What this scientist is attacking is not environmental problems which pose a grave risk to human beings but rather the progress, the quality of life, and the achievement of The United States. This scientist is attacking everything which makes America great, and all of the causes for America’s achievement of greatness in the past 100 years.

Disgusting.

I continue to hold that the foreign policy of the United States Government is dangerous to the security of the citizens of the United States, and is failing the purpose of the military branch of a proper government: to protect the individual rights of its citizens. I have written about this subject on 7/24, 7/18, 7/17, 7/11, 7/9, 7/7, 7/4, 6/29, and 6/28.

In this post, I’d like to offer two excellent articles recently written by members of the Ayn Rand Institute in support of my position.

Don’t Blame Our Intelligence Agencies–Blame Our Unprincipled Foreign Policy

September 11 was not the first time America was attacked by Islamic fundamentalists engaged in “holy war” against us. In 1979 theocratic Iran—which has spearheaded the “Islamic Revolution"—stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 54 Americans hostage for over a year. In 1983 the Syrian- and Iranian-backed group Hezbollah bombed a U.S. marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 servicemen while they slept; the explosives came from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. In 1998 al-Qaeda blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 individuals. In 2000 al-Qaeda bombed the USS Cole in Yemen, killing 17 sailors.
……..
But how did America react? Did our government adopt a principled approach and identify the fact that we were faced with a deadly threat from an ideological foe? Did we launch systematic counterattacks to wipe out such enemy organizations as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Fatah? Did we seek to eliminate enemy states like Iran? No—our responses were short-sighted and self-contradictory.
…….
Unfortunately, little has changed since September 11. Our politicians’ actions remain hopelessly unprincipled. Despite the Bush administration’s rhetoric about ending states that sponsor terrorism, President Bush has left the most dangerous of these—Iran—untouched. The attack on Iraq, though justifiable, was hardly a priority in our war against militant Islam and the countries (principally Saudi Arabia and Iran) that promote it. Moreover, when Bush does strike at militant Islam, he does so only haltingly. Morally unsure of his right to protect American lives by wiping out the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, Bush feared in Afghanistan world disapproval over civilian casualties. Consequently, he reined in the military forces (as he also did in Iraq) and allowed numerous Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters to escape. And Bush continues to allow their comrades-in-arms in the Mideast to go unharmed. He pretends that the Palestinians and Islamic militants attacking Israel—and who have attacked Americans in the past and will try again in the future—are, somehow, different from the killers in Afghanistan and deserving of a “peace” plan.

Foreign Policy and Self-Interest

America was founded on the recognition of each individual’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This means that the government may not treat the citizen as a serf–as someone who exists to serve the needs of others. Rather, each citizen is a free, sovereign entity, entitled to live his own life for his own sake. No matter how loudly some people may wail about their need for your services, you are your own master. That is the meaning of your inalienable rights.
Those rights are contradicted by a foreign policy that makes Americans sacrifice themselves for the sake of others, such as the Liberians.
When the government of a free country performs its proper functions, it uses force only to protect its citizens’ freedom. When the lives or property of Americans are at risk from some aggressor-state, our government uses force in retaliation, to keep its citizens free–free to pursue the goals and values that advance their lives.
This is what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We need a principled foreign policy based on the idea that the purpose of the U.S. Government is to protect the individual rights of its citizens, which not only promises to do so, but actually acts in accordance with what is in the best interest of the citizens of the United States.

After reading this article, I am predicting that the third Harry Potter movie will be horrible.

The first two Harry Potter films, “The Sorcerer’s Stone” and “The Chamber of Secrets,” both directed by the family-friendly Columbus, were earnestly mainstream affairs. Some critics shrugged, but each film grossed nearly $1 billion worldwide. Now, with the series’ two lightest chapters out of the way, the stage is set for an adventurer like Cuaron, who got an Oscar nomination last year for the teen-sex romp “Y Tu Mama Tambien.” By now, every fan of the franchise has torn through the thunderous new book, “The Order of the Phoenix,” at least once, meaning the onus of keeping the insatiable Potter machine humming is about to shift back to Hollywood. Chronicling the erotic adventures of two Mexican teens might not seem like a job qualification for a Harry Potter movie, but hey, give Warner Brothers credit for showing some chutzpah.
…..
set designer Stuart Craig labored to avoid a “pretty, chocolate-box” village, creating a main street that swerves zanily. Honeydukes, the candy store, is floor-to-ceiling psychedelia, with tangles of licorice and—a Cuaron touch—Mexican skulls made of sugar.
…..
Cuaron also reimagined the role of Professor Dumbledore after Richard Harris’s death. British actor Michael Gambon now plays the Hogwarts headmaster as an elegant old hippie [Emphasis added]. Cuaron’s outspokenness is also new to the franchise. Does the evil wizard Voldemort still remind him of George W. Bush, as he said recently? “In combination with Saddam,” he says. “They both have selfish interests and are very much in love with power. Also, a disregard for the environment. A love for manipulating people. [Emphasis added] I read books four and five, and Fudge”—Rowling’s slippery Minister of Magic—”is similar to Tony Blair. He’s the ultimate politician. He’s in denial about many things. And everything is for the sake of his own persona, his own power.

I sincerely hope that I am wrong, becuase I thoroughly enjoyed the first two films. What angers me the most at this news is the “reimagination” of Professor Dumbledore as an “elegant old hippie.” I really hope that the personal views of this idiot (the director) do not harm the story further than indiciated in this article. Regarding my prediction that this third movie of the Harry Potter series will be horrible, I sincerely hope that I am wrong.

Lance Armstrong, cyclist, recently won his fifth straight Tour De France.

PARIS –– Sipping champagne to celebrate, Lance Armstrong won his hardest but sweetest Tour de France title Sunday — a record-tying fifth straight victory that places him alongside the greatest cyclists ever.

The 31-year-old cancer survivor and Spanish great Miguel Indurain are now the only two riders to win the sport’s most grueling and prestigious race five times in a row — a record Armstrong plans to break next year.
…..
The indefatigable Armstrong overcame illness, crashes, dehydration, team and equipment problems and uncharacteristic bad days during the 23-day, 2,125-mile clockwise slog around France to win by his smallest margin — 61 seconds over five-time runner-up Jan Ullrich of Germany.

Congrats on the victory!

We went to war with Iraq, we removed a dictator from power and removed one out of many threats to the United States (and as a secondary consequence, freed the Iraqi people). In my opinion, Saddam Hussein was not an imminent threat to the security of the United States, but rather a potential threat.

All dictatorships, by their very nature, pose a threat to the security of the free nations of the world. As I indicated in my July 11th post, North Korea must be stopped:

Every dictatorship, by its very nature, must survive by looting others. The government of a dictatorship does not have the means to produce anything, so it must take money from its citizens in order to fund its operations. This entails the initiation of force against the citizens under this dictatorship. The force involves making citizens physically unable to reap the full benefits of their own labor, which as a result, causes the individual to be unable to fully use their mind to the extent that they are physically forced. An individual is unable to use their mind when they are forced because of the very nature of the human mind. The human mind is volitional, which means, one must choose to think or not to think. A human being can not choose between two or more alternatives when they are forced to act on one of those alternatives.

Freedom is an essential requirement of an individual’s survival, and therefore the survival of a society as well. To the extent that a society is not free, that society will suffer the consequences of not being able to survive. For an indvidual, not being able to use his own mind means that he will be unable to produce the conditions required by his nature as a human being in order to survive. Because of this fact, in a dictatorship, where there is little or no freedom, the conditions of the dictatorship will increasingly worsen.

The only way for a dictatorship to survive is to loot from either its own citizens or the citizens of other countries. One of the prime methods of doing so, besides appealing to altruism, is threatening the use of force and essentially extorting money, supplies, and sanction, from free nations. The only way for a dictatorship to be able to do so however is by amassing enough military power to be able to make their threat of force credible. The standard way of doing so in the past was to amass a large military and engage in a war with a large number of soldiers. However, these days are past. Now, instead of attempting to amass such a large military (which is no easy task), a dictatorship can develop weapons of mass destruction which are much more persuasive as a credible threat, especially nuclear weapons. Once a dictatorship has obtained these weapons of mass destruction, they can threaten the use of these weapons and offer, in exchange, the promise that they will not use the weapons just so long as certain free countries (such as the U.S.) continue to provide them with money, supplies, and the promise that they will not oppose their regime. (see the current situation with the U.S. and North Korea for evidence of this)

This means that dictators, with weapons of mass destruction, will be able to maintain their power by extorting funds from free nations through the threat of force, free nations will ignore the threat and suffer the consequences (many deaths), or free nations will attempt to eliminate the threat (which would result in many deaths of soldiers and an increased number of soldier deaths due to the possibility of weapons of mass destruction being used.)

It is not a question of if dictators will threaten the use of weapons of mass destruction but rather of when. The when is determined by many factors such as size of the country, length of time the dictatorship has been in power, resources the country possesses which can be looted by the dictatorship, etc. However, at some point in the life of a dictatorship, they must find an additional source for their looting besides the people, otherwise this source would be sucked dry. If they do not get this looting source from the veil of altruism, they will inevitably turn towards getting what they need through forcing other citizens outside their country. Evidence of this can be seen across time. It is no coincidence that the biggest dictatorships in our world’s history all attempted to amass the largest armies and military power in the world.

Does this mean that World War III is inevitable, in which the outcome will be decided by chemical, biological, or even nuclear war? No, it does not have to be that way. We have the power NOW to eliminate those regimes which are attempting to amass large military power through weapons of mass destruction. We have the power NOW to prevent World War III. In order to do so, we must stop funding dictatorships, ALL dictatorships. This is done in two ways. First, we stop providing dictatorships with aid either for the government itself or for its citizens. As sad as the situation of citizens under a dictatorship may be, giving them aid allows the dictatorship to concentrate on building its weapons rather than feeding its people. If no aid were to be given to the citizens of a dictatorship, either more money would have to be spent on feeding the people (which means less money on weapons) or the people would revolt against the dictatorship if they were starving. Second, we must not allow any dictatorship to achieve a weapons of mass destruction program, especially, nuclear weapons. This means eliminating the weapons program of specific countries BEFORE they get any weapons of mass destruction.

This is exactly what we did with the recent war with Iraq. We removed a potential threat and the potential ability for Saddam Hussein to extort money, power, and sanction from the countries of the world. Whether or not Saddam Hussein had a fully developed weapons program or a budding one is irrelevant. What is relevant was that he was attemping ANY weapons program at all, and this is incontrovertible, as seen over the past 12 years. All of this talk now about exaggerating the case for war and Bush and Blair lying to the world, is utter nonsense. I do not believe that anyone in the Bush administration perceived Iraq to be an “imminent threat.” And I do not believe that Iraq was an imminent threat. But shouldn’t that be a great thing? There are so few countries that pose an “imminent threat” to U.S. security, and now, instead of looking only for “imminent threats” we can eliminate all threats before they balloon into imminent threats.

Does this mean that we should attack all of the dictatorships in the world? No, absolutely not. All that is needed to end the vast majority of the dictatorships in our world is for the free nations to stop funding them. Most dictatorships, without the support of world aid under the veil of altruism would collapse within a matter of years. In those few situations where the country of the dictatorship has a vast resource to loot, such as the Middle East and the oil resources, the United States should use force where it is necessary to protect the interests of the United States by preventing the ability for dictators to extort money from us, which is exactly what we did in Iraq.

Today we hear numerous times that our government wants the rest of the world to enjoy “democracy” as the United States does, and that the system of democracy is the best there is. This representation of the American system of government as “democracy” is inaccurate, and democracy is not an ideal system at all. In fact, a democracy is merely another form of dictatorship.

In the system of democracy, the dictates of a certain majority determine what is right and what is wrong for the government to do. So, the purpose of the government in a democracy is to do anything that the majority (the people) wants them to do. If the majority decided that an individual in their society was “undesirable,” they could vote to have that individual executed, or imprisoned, or punished in some other way. An example of such a society was that of Ancient Greece, where the majority of Greece citizens voted to execute Socrates (considered to be the first major philosophical figure) because he advocated “unpopular” views. Or, the people could vote to enslave a section of society, or slaughter a group of society, any horrible thing they wanted to do as a “majority.”

Therefore, in a democracy, a human being does not have inalienable rights but rather is “provided” with their rights according to the majority, which can be revoked at any time whenever the majority dictates it. This means that, in such a society, you would only have your freedom by permission. You would only have “permission” to live and to pursue your happiness as long as a majority of people will it. Such a democracy is merely another form of dictatorship because there is absolutely no protection of the biggest minority in a society, the individual.

What makes the American system of government distinctly free is the fact that this country is founded on the profound notion that every human being regardless of race, sex, religion, etc., has certain inalienable rights: the right to life, and all of its deriviatives, the right to property, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (While this notion was not completely recognized by the American government at our foundation, this profound notion was still the philosophical cause for the formation of our government).

This means that the American system of government can not be referred to as a democracy, but rather a constitutional republic. In a constitutional republic, there is an exact constitution which determines the powers of government and how such a government recognizes the inalienable rights of its citizens.

However, in America today, our system of government has become a combination between the dictatorship of a democracy and a free constitutional republic. According to the founding of this country, every individual has the right to their own life, which means, the right to be free from the initiation of force from others and that every individual has the right to take whatever actions they deem necessary by their own independent judgment to be beneficial to their own life as long as they do not violate the rights of others in the process. Today however, while most people still retain the protection of their rights, if people get a large enough group together and pressure their elected representatives, many times they “persuade” their elected representives to push for new laws which violate the rights of some individuals for the benefit of some group. For example, enough poor people get together to form a large enough majority, and then persuade their representatives to violate the rights of certain rich individuals by forcibly taking their money and giving it to the poor people (income taxes). In this example, a certain majority gets together and decides that they want to force certain “undesirables in society” (the rich) to do whatever the majority wills (they will that the rich do not really “need” all that money, so there is no problem in stealing portions of it from them).

The blatant violation of individual rights is not merely limited to the issue of income taxes. There are numerous other issues (and many more pending by more and more groups) which violate and threaten to violate the rights of individuals. These groups believe that a certain end is desirable and thereby attempt to amass a large enough majority in order to force the rest of the country to achieve that end by “persuading” their elected representatives to pass new laws doing so.

In America today, both “the right” and “the left” have accepted the premise that it is right for the government to force individuals to pursue certain ends regardless of whether or not those individuals choose to do so. The only difference between “the right” and “the left” is about in what ways the government should force individuals and violate their rights. The right typically believes that the government should leave individuals free in most economic affairs but should heavily legislate morality (religion, sexuality, abortion, etc.) The left typically believes that the government should leave individuals free in morality but should heavily legislate economic affairs.

The essential characteristic of a dictatorship is a certain group forcing all of its citizens to achieve ends regardless of whether or not the citizens choose to do so or not. Which group is doing the forcing determines what kind of dictatorship it is, but it still remains a dictatorship nonetheless. Therefore, a democracy IS a dictatorship, because in a democracy, the actions of individuals are not determined by the choices of the individuals themselves but rather a certain group, in this case, a majority.

The premise that the government should force individuals to achieve certain ends is the premise of only one kind of society…dictatorship. Fortunately, America has not accepted this premise fully…yet. However, as long as this premise in our society goes unchecked, a dictatorship will ultimately be the result.

Reports are coming out that we have killed Saddam Hussein’s two sons: Uday and Qusay Hussein! This is a great victory for the United States in our campaign against Iraq, and it should signal the beginning of the end of attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq. Also, the death of these two murderous savages is a great victory for justice and good.

For those of you who do not know me, I consider myself to be a student of Objectivism. But what exactly is Objectivism? Objectivism is an integrated view of existence, a philosophical system, which defines their view on everything in philosophy ranging from metaphysics (the study of existence) to aesthetics (the study of art/).

Ayn Rand named her philosophy “Objectivism” and described it as a philosophy for living on earth. Objectivism is an integrated system of thought that defines the abstract principles by which a man must think and act if he is to live the life proper to man. Ayn Rand first portrayed her philosophy in the form of the heroes of her best-selling novels, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957). She later expressed her philosophy in nonfiction form.

Ayn Rand was once asked if she could present the essence of Objectivism while standing on one foot. Her answer was:

Metaphysics: Objective Reality
Epistemology: Reason
Ethics: Self-interest
Politics: Capitalism

She then translated those terms into familiar language:

“Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.”
“You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.”
“Man is an end in himself.”
“Give me liberty or give me death.”
The basic principles of Objectivism can be summarized as follows:

Metaphysics

“Reality, the external world, exists independent of man’s consciousness, independent of any observer’s knowledge, beliefs, feelings, desires or fears. This means that A is A, that facts are facts, that things are what they are — and that the task of man’s consciousness is to perceive reality, not to create or invent it.” Thus Objectivism rejects any belief in the supernatural — and any claim that individuals or groups create their own reality.
Epistemology

“Man’s reason is fully competent to know the facts of reality. Reason, the conceptual faculty, is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses. Reason is man’s only means of acquiring knowledge.” Thus Objectivism rejects mysticism (any acceptance of faith or feeling as a means of knowledge), and it rejects skepticism (the claim that certainty or knowledge is impossible).
Human Nature

Man is a rational being. Reason, as man’s only means of knowledge, is his basic means of survival. But the exercise of reason depends on each individual’s choice. “Man is a being of volitional consciousness.” “That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call ‘free will’ is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom. This is the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and character.”Thus Objectivism rejects any form of determinism, the belief that man is a victim of forces beyond his control (such as God, fate, upbringing, genes, or economic conditions).
Ethics

“Reason is man’s only proper judge of values and his only proper guide to action. The proper standard of ethics is: man’s survival qua man — i.e., that which is required by man’s nature for his survival as a rational being (not his momentary physical survival as a mindless brute). Rationality is man’s basic virtue, and his three fundamental values are: reason, purpose, self-esteem. Man — every man — is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.” Thus Objectivism rejects any form of altruism — the claim that morality consists in living for others or for society.
Politics

“The basic social principle of the Objectivist ethics is that no man has the right to seek values from others by means of physical force — i.e., no man or group has the right to initiate the use of physical force against others. Men have the right to use force only in self-defense and only against those who initiate its use. Men must deal with one another as traders, giving value for value, by free, mutual consent to mutual benefit. The only social system that bars physical force from human relationships is laissez-faire capitalism. Capitalism is a system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which the only function of the government is to protect individual rights, i.e., to protect men from those who initiate the use of physical force.” Thus Objectivism rejects any form of collectivism, such as fascism or socialism. It also rejects the current “mixed economy” notion that the government should regulate the economy and redistribute wealth.
Esthetics

“Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments.” The purpose of art is to concretize the artist’s fundamental view of existence. Ayn Rand described her own approach to art as “Romantic Realism”: “I am a Romantic in the sense that I present men as they ought to be. I am Realistic in the sense that I place them here and now and on this earth.” The goal of Ayn Rand’s novels is not didactic but artistic: the projection of an ideal man: “My purpose, first cause and prime mover is the portrayal of Howard Roark or John Galt or Hank Rearden or Francisco d’Anconia as an end in himself — not as a means to any further end.”

Note: In my opinion, in order to properly refer to oneself as an Objectivist, one must know the entire philosophy and agree with the entire philosophy as well. Objectivism is the philosophy formulated by Ayn Rand, not whatever aspects of Objectivism one accepts minus that which one disagrees with. Therefore, since I do not yet know the entire philosophy, I can not yet agree with the entire philosophy (one can not agree with what one does not know), so I refer to myself as a student of Objectivism.

Check out Peter Schwartz’s latest op-ed on the foreign policy of the United States.

Those who claim that the United States has a moral obligation to send troops on a “humanitarian” mission to Liberia have it exactly backward: our government has a moral obligation not to send its forces into areas that pose no threats to America’s well-being. It is America’s self-interest that should be the standard for all foreign-policy decisions–and not just because such a standard is practical, but because it is moral.
America was founded on the recognition of each individual’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This means that the government may not treat the citizen as a serf–as someone who exists to serve the needs of others. Rather, each citizen is a free, sovereign entity, entitled to live his own life for his own sake. No matter how loudly some people may wail about their need for your services, you are your own master. That is the meaning of your inalienable rights.
Those rights are contradicted by a foreign policy that makes Americans sacrifice themselves for the sake of others, such as the Liberians..

A very good op-ed piece from Peter Schwartz, it is highly worth the read.

I do not believe that we are currently being tough enough in Iraq, and I do not believe that merely sending more troops over there is going to do the job.

What do we need in order to stabilize Iraq, make it safer for American troops and Iraqi citizens, stop the attacks against American troops, and find Saddam Hussein and his sons? A better philosophy. First of all, we need to be a lot tougher in Iraq: we need to hunt down and eliminate those who wage war against the troops in Iraq. I believe that our troops in Iraq have been doing so to some extent, however, our government is too worried about being perceived as invaders instead of liberators, and too worried about civilian casualties. The major problem with our past two military campaigns, in my opinion, is that we have been way too soft on our enemies. As soon as the Taliban and Saddam Hussein’s regime were officially out of power, we essentially treated every combatant in Afghanistan and Iraq as an equal Afghan or Iraqi citizen, rather than classify them as a threat or not a threat. Instead of coming down hard on issues such as rounding up weapons, eliminating opposition groups, etc., we essentially let many of the opposing armies retain their freedom, as well as their capability to strike American troops. Additionally, the infrastructure of Iraq and Afghanistan remain virtually entact and free from control. As a result, the ability for small opposition groups to strike American troops has been greatly increased. This however, is not the major problem.

The major problem with our reconstruction of Iraq is the complete lack of a comprehensive philosophy to guide its reconstruction and stabilizaton. Our government has given lip service to such ideas as freedom, liberty, democracy, individual rights, etc., but I believe that the true definitions of these words have long since been lost in the minds of the individuals who make up our government. What is sorely needed in order to properly reconstruct Iraq (as well as this country) is the discovery of what these words actually mean and to actually implement them.

In order for Iraq to become a truly propserous country, the concept of individual rights must be recognized. Every human being, by their very nature, has one fundamental right, from which all others are the result: the right to their own life. This means that every human being has the right to take whatever actions they deem necessary for benefitting their own life, just as long as they do not violate that right of any other individual or group of individuals. The recognition of individual rights on the part of the government does not mean that the government provides its citizens with the right to their own life, but rather that they recognize that every single human being has that inalienable right. As a result of this, the only proper function of a government is to protect the individual’s right to their own life.

But this right to life is not a self-evident truth, it rests completely on a solid theory of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, something which only a comprehensive, objective philosophy can provide. Today this is virtually forgotten and ignored by the politicians who control our government and those in the rest of the world as well. In modern politics, the trend in determining the justness of a given government is not if it properly recognizes individual rights but rather if it was chosen by a majority of the people that the given government governs. This is completely wrong. Something is not correct merely because a majority of people say it is correct, this is a simple fact of reality. 2+2 does not equal 5 because a majority of people or a dictator says it does. 2+2 equals 4 because of the facts of reality which exist independently of any individual’s consciousness, that is to say, existence has primacy over consciousness. A wish from an individual does not make something true in reality, and neither does a wish from a group of individuals make something true in reality either.

U.S. Government, and governments of the world: the only way to truly achieve peace in our world is through the discovery of the proper philosophy. Philosophy is not some parlor game that intellectuals like to play in their ivory towers which has absolutely no effect on reality. Philosophy is an inescapable need of human existence, due to the fact that a human being is a being of volitional consciousness (free will). A philosophy is an integrated view of existence, it is the ultimate guide in a human being’s life as to which of many alternatives they should choose in all of their actions. This being said, philosophy is the prime mover in an individual’s life and therefore in society as well. An individual’s philosophy determines whether or not they enjoy success or not in their life. A world’s philosophy determines the success it achieves, whether or not peace is achieved, whether or not the human race prospers or not, etc.

This sounds like quite a task to be achieved, that is, the determination of the best philosophy for human beings. But alas, the job has already been done, that philosophy has already been discovered, and that philosophy is Objectivism.

Two Democrats propose jail time for those who swap music and movie files on peer-to-peer netwroks such as Kazaa.

Face it folks, swapping mp3’s and movie files IS stealing, if those files are unlicensed by the artist, meaning, if the artist did not consent to the distribution of his property in that given medium. Put yourself in the position of the artist in this situation. Imagine spending years of your life painstakingly developing a given talent (such as singing, performing an instrument, creating a movie, etc.), only to be told that you have no right to trade that talent with others as performed in a given medium. Imagine being told that you have no right to be compensated for all of your effort. Imagine, having your art being physically taken from you and distributed to anyone who wants it, without your consent.

When did theft stop being punished by the law in America? Apparently, in America, theft is not theft when it is done by a large group of people. A robber steals the purse of an old woman in a dark alley, it is called theft; millions of teenagers steal the property of an artist, it is called “swapping.” A burgular comes into the home of a rich family and steals their prized possessions, it is called theft; politicians steal the earned money of a large number of rich individuals, it is called “redistribution of wealth.” It is said by some of these groups that they have a “right” to what they are stealing because of the fact that they are a group, whereas those individuals who steal do not have such a right because they are an individual.

As Ayn Rand’s famous words demonstrate,

A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action–which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life…The concept of a “right” pertains only to action–specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive–of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligatons on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.

A group, contrary to much of modern philosophy, is not a living entity but rather the culmination of a group of individual entities. Therefore, there are no “rights” of a group separate from the rights of individuals. In the words of Ayn Rand, “Any group or ‘collective,’ large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the ‘rights’ of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary, individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking.”

Thus, no group of individuals has the right to violate the rights of individuals merely because they are a group. No group has the right to proclaim that they have the right to violate the rights of individuals merely because of their existence as a group of individuals. Therefore, those who engage in unlicensed file swapping on peer-to-peer networks have no right to steal the property of artists and swap it, politicians have no right to steal money from the rich individuals of America, nor does any single group have the right to engage in the violation of any individual’s rights.

The swapping of Mp3’s IS a violation of the individual rights of the artists whose property is stolen. By downloading their music and using it for your own purposes, you deny the ability for the artist to choose the method by which a voluntary trade is enacted for their property. Instead, by downloading their music, you steal their property and give them nothing in return. By engaging in this action, you profoundly violate the artist’s right to their own life, to take the actions necessary to support, further and enjoy one’s life, and to be free from physical compulsion.

A human being, in order to survive, and live their life to the fullest, must use their own mind constantly, which means, they must constantly choose between two or more alternatives in action. A simple example of this would be choosing to eat food that is beneficial to one’s own life or poison. By being physically forced to perform a given action, a human being is completely unable to choose between two or more alternatives because the alternative which they must perform is dictated to them through force. In accordance with the above example, physically forcing an individual to eat poison means denying that individual the ability to choose between food and poison, which means, denying that individual the ability to choose to live.

In the same token, stealing the property of an individual denies them the ability to use their own mind, to choose actions which will benefit their own life. Identify the violation of individual rights for what it is, whether it is done by an individual or a group of individuals. The mere fact that it is a group of individuals rather than a single individual violating individual rights does not make it right.

I’d like to recommend to all of you some amazing music that I have recently come across. As some of you may know, my primary interest in music lies with classical music, and the work of John Williams, the composer. I have recently acquired 6 CDs which I believe to be quite good: Classical Thunder Vol. I, II, and III, John Williams Greatest Hits 1969-1999, Summon the Heroes: John Williams, and 25 Thunderous Classics. Tracks include Wagner: Ride of the Valkyries, Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition: The Great Gate at Kiev, Copland: Fanfare for the Common Man, Bizet: Carmen Suite No. 1: Les toreadors, the conclusion to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, Saint-Saens: Samson et Dalila: Air et Danse bacchanale, Tchaikovsky: Marche Slave, Star Wars Main Title, E.T. Flying Theme, Olympic Fanfare and Theme, Empire of the Sun: Cadillac of the Skies, Saving Private Ryan: Hymn to the Fallen, Superman Theme, Summon the Heroes, and so many more.

I started listening to these CDs last night, which is when I got them, and I have been hooked ever since. John Williams is an absolutely amazing composer. I can not describe with words the experience which is listening to his music. The vast majority of his music paints a world of amazing heroism, happiness, and exalted joy. Even in movies that are absolutely terrible (such as Jurassic Park), his music leaves me with the feeling of the world being an amazing place, with human possibility for greatness as limitless.

Art is a re-creation of reality, it is the result of what an artist believes to be metaphysically important. A piece of art is the concretization of a view of existence. Since existence is so very vast, and the medium through which it is being expressed is so small (a piece of art), choosing what one contains in that art is a pain-staking process of determining what is the most important to man’s existence. Important does not necessarily mean good or bad, but rather, what is metaphysically important to man’s life. Art that displays only the evil demonstrates that the evil is what is important in man’s existence, that it is the normal, and rarely overcome. Art that displays the good and the evil recognizes that both exist in man’s life, but not that they both have to exist in equal amounts and that the good can triumph over the evil. Art that displays only the good in man’s life says that life is a wonderful and joyous experience and it is the good which is metaphysically important, rather than man being doomed to evil or man having to constantly struggle to beat a powerful evil.

Art provides an amazing function for man’s consciousness, in that it allows him to guide his subconscious and everyday decisions by the perceptual concrete of a work of art. If one tried to philosophically examine every single action of one’s life, one would not be able to function properly. One would not be able to sit down and examine every subconscious action to philosophical clarity. Art however, allows a human being’s consciousness to retain a perceptual concrete of what the proper course of action is, what is important in man’s existence, what is the good, what is the evil, etc. Art, therefore, serves as an amazing tool of man’s consciousness, and consequently, an excellent tool of survival. The purpose of art therefore, when one holds human life to be the standard of value, is to integrate an entire philosophy into a whole, an image, such as that of Howard Roark. Art does this not in order to “explain” but rather to concretize an entire view of life into a perceptual concrete for the purpose of man’s life.

A piece of art work which displays only the evil, or the tragic, is saying that that is what is important to man’s existence; which is what the majority of a man’s existence is comprised. A piece of art work which displays only the evil, or the tragic, does not give one a perceptual concrete from which to guide one’s actions, but rather an image of horror to flee from, which translates into the good not being an actual good, but rather the escape from evil, which is the norm in human existence.

A piece of art work which displays the good overcoming the evil, or the good alone, is saying that the good is what is important to man’s existence; that the normal condition of human life is the good. Such art provides that crtical tool for man’s consciousness in guiding his action and living his life successfully: the perceptual concrete of what the good is comprised. In terms of music, the world of John Williams provides this beautifully.

A document links Saddam Hussein to Osama Bin Laden.

President Bush has alleged that this connection exists, now there is proof.

This is by no mean what “morally justifies” the action against Iraq (see my July 7th post, War With Iraq: Justified?), but rather it is a piece of evidence which supports that it was in our self-interest to take action against Iraq.

Check out this story from a North Korean defector.

“Many North Koreans believe that the United States is their savior and the only nation that can liberate North Korea,” he said. The flood of hate-America propaganda from North Korea represents only the relatively small number of people around Kim Jong-Il, he said.

“We cannot expect to bring down the regime of Kim Jong-il by internal means,” Park said. “A pre-emptive U.S. strike against selected targets inside North Korea will succeed,” he said.

“U.S. strikes against North Korean targets would force Kim Jong-il to seek asylum in China. Kim is a coward. If attacked, he will flee. The North Korean army would not fight after the regime collapsed,” he said.

We need to take out the nuclear capability of North Korea immediately, before they have the full nuclear capability to blackmail the United States for foreign aid.

Every dictatorship, by its very nature, must survive by looting others. The government of a dictatorship does not have the means to produce anything, so it must take money from its citizens in order to fund its operations. This entails the initiation of force against the citizens under this dictatorship. The force involves making citizens physically unable to reap the full benefits of their own labor, which as a result, causes the individual to be unable to fully use their mind to the extent that they are physically forced. An individual is unable to use their mind when they are forced because of the very nature of the human mind. The human mind is volitional, which means, one must choose to think or not to think. A human being can not choose between two or more alternatives when they are forced to act on one of those alternatives.

Freedom is an essential requirement of an individual’s survival, and therefore the survival of a society as well. To the extent that a society is not free, that society will suffer the consequences of not being able to survive. For an indvidual, not being able to use his own mind means that he will be unable to produce the conditions required by his nature as a human being in order to survive. Because of this fact, in a dictatorship, where there is little or no freedom, the conditions of the dictatorship will increasingly worsen; first, with the government sucking the life out of its citizens until there is little left; second, the looting of another group of individuals in order to survive, and continuing to do so until either the government is destroyed by an outside power or there are no more groups left to loot, which would result in the destruction of the dictatorship as well.

Every dictatorship today attempts to survive through two means: conquest of other nations, or mooching aid under the veil of altruism from powerful countries. Centuries ago, there were numerous dictatorships who survived by the means of the first, conquest of other nations. In modern society, war is heavily frowned upon and may bring immediate sanction from many others in the world. Now, most dictatorships turn to the second method. They appeal to the alleged “duty” of the freest nations of the world (which are also the most successful) to pour money into their dictatorship. One reason why some claim that the successful nations of the world have this is duty is because of the false idea that wealth is fixed, and when one country gains wealth, it is taking wealth away from others. Thus, the economically successful nations have a “duty” to “give back” what they have expropriated from third world countries.

As a result of this alleged duty on the part of the successful nations, these dictatorships have found a new source to loot from. Now, these dictatorships play on the “guilt” of the economically successful nations and are therefore able to survive as a parasite for a long period of time. This is readily apparent with the situation with North Korea. North Korea however doesn’t only live off of the second method of mooching, but the first as well. The people of North Korea are starving, which is a regular condition of a dictatorship. In response to this, nations such as the U.S. provide aid to North Korea so that the people of North Korea will not starve to death, which on the face of it, seems like a very humane and benevolent thing to do. However, this action of giving food aid to North Korea allows the dictatorship to continue its existence. Instead of having to be concerned with feeding its starving population and deal with rising desent because of it, North Korea can pour a lot of money into its military. If North Korea (and all other dictatorships like it) can amass a large military force, or a large amount of power through nuclear weapons, they can extort more money from the economically successful nations of the world. This is exactly what is happening with the U.S. and North Korea today, and in the past 50 years.

Jimmy Carter, the alleged genius of peace, brokered such a deal with the North Koreans many years ago. In exchange for “promising” not to continue to amass a large military and nuclear weapons program, Carter delivered aid to the country (he also made similar “deals” with many other dictatorships). The same happened again in 1994 with Bill Clinton. It was discovered that the North Koreans were reconstituting their nuclear weapons program and other such programs designed to gain power. In response to this, Clinton brokered a very similar “deal” with the North Koreans, allowing them to continue to stay in power.

Now, the same situation is happening again. We have discovered that the North Koreans are very close to achieving a full nuclear weapons program, and they are threatening to attack South Korea, Japan, and the U.S., unless we continue to give them aid. Currently we are engaged in “multilateral discussions” with the North Koreans. This simply means that we are discussing new means by which the North Koreans will extort money from us. It amounts to the United States saying: there is no need for you to develop a nuclear weapons program in order to extort money from us, we will give you money without any such threat, we will allow you to continue to murder and torture your people, free of charge.

The foreign policy of the United States is an unspeakable evil. All across the world, we deliver aid to similar dictatorships in similar situations. Many believe that our giving aid to the people of brutal dictatorships is a wonderful, benevolent thing. But, it is not. Giving aid to the people under dictatorships is a sanction of those very dictatorships. It allows those dictatorships to maintain power and continue to kill its people. What is more beneficial to these people, temporary aid which will result in the furtherance of the dictatorship or taking action to rid the country of dictatorship? By not giving aid to the citizens or the government of a dictatorship, we remove the main source of power from which these brutal dicatorships survive. Now, it is not the “duty” of the U.S. to rid the world of dictatorships. However, it is certainly not right for the U.S. to be supporting them either.

The North Korean situation is just one in many where the United States is directly aiding brutal dictatorships. We put Saddam Hussein into power, we put the Taliban into power, we support the terrorist group the Palestinian Authority, and we support, and have put into power, countless others.

What should we do to change this policy? The immediate rebuttal of all of our previous foreign policy actions regarding the sanction of dictatorships, and the full condemnation of every single dictatorship in the world. This entails removing all aid from every single dictatorship, and taking action against those dictatorships in which it is in our self-interest to do so, such as Iran, North Korea, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and others.

Our response to extortion should not be appeasement, but rather elimination of the threat. Therefore, we should immediately eliminate the North Korean threat by removing all aid to their country, and striking their nuclear weapons capability, which, as a secondary consequence, will free millions of people from brutal dictatorship.

This is a God damn shame.

Today, July 9th, marks the day of the scheduled attack on the theocratic regime of Iran.

As Daniel Pipes demonstrates, the regime of Iran has been waging war on America since 1979.

Iran, not Iraq or Afghanistan, is the heart of the Islamic Fundamentalist movement, and the heart of Islamic terror waged against America.

Not to mention that the people of Iran are screaming for the overthrow of the theocratic regime to be replaced by a system of freedom.

What has the U.S. Government done about this? Virtually nothing. There are no known plans to fund such an action by the Iranian people against its government, and there are no known plans concerning military support either. The United States government has the perfect opportunity to eliminate the heart of Islamic terrorism and they are doing nothing! Instead, we are planning on sending troops to Liberia, in order to play peacekeeper between a bunch of savages murdering each other, which has absolutely nothing to do with America’s security.

What could possibly be causing our government to take such an absurd course? The lack of moral certainty. When we were attacked on 9-11, on the day of the attacks, and the many days after, our President stood morally firm in the rightness of eliminating terrorism wherever it exists. Our government stood morally firm on the idea that the United States has the right to attack any nation who harbors any terrorists whatsoever. Our first action in that moral stance was our attack on Afghanistan. We attacked and eliminated the terrorist regime of the Taliban a month after the terrorist attacks, without consulting any group authority.

But what happened after our victory in Afghanistan? Our government completely lost its moral certainty. Instead of standing up and declaring that the United States has the right to eliminate any terrorist state, they went to the United Nations to beg for approval in eliminating the terrorist regime of Saddam Hussein. After 9 months of begging, we finally decided to “go it alone.” But even then, the official party line was that we were not really going it alone, but rather we were going with the “coalition of the willing.” After the regime of Hussein was disposed of, things got even worse. Even when we were begging the U.N., we were still somewhat dedicated to killing terrorists. Now, in the wake of the Second Gulf War, we are now openly negotiating with terrorists (the Palestinians).

How could we have possibly gone from having the moral certainty of acting alone, to having to beg some group authority, to negotiating with our enemy? In World War II, would the United States have attacked one of Germany’s satellites, then begged the rest of the world to keep doing so, and then started to negotiate with Germany? Absolutely not!

There are numerous reasons why this course of action has occurred. The first, is the failure of the U.S. government to name its enemy: Islamic Fundamentalism. This is a deep-seeted and powerful movement in the vast majority of Arab countries. Instead, we hear the official party line that “Islam is a peaceful religion” and these terrorists are just a few isolated people, rather than an ideology.

The second, is the lack of moral certainty. What has caused this? Decades of bad philosophy. Across modern philosophy today we hear that there are no absolutes, so there can be no moral certainty. Everything is relative, it is said, no morality is better than another. In translation, this means that a person who likes to rape and murder and torture children is no worse than an American citizen. Since there are no absolutes, no individual has the ability to determine moral judgment. In the same token, according to modern philosophy, no one single nation has the ability to determine what is right and what is wrong. Only a consensus of many nations has the ability to determine right from wrong. From this, we see the constant whining from many nations about U.S. unilateralism and how in order to morally justify our actions it must be approved by a consensus (The United Nations, NATO, EU, etc.).

To fully demonstrate how moral certainty can be reached by an individual would take a long time, however, one very simple point can demonstrate the error in the bad philosophy explained above. Take the statement “there are no absolutes.” This statement itself is an absolute statement, declaring, that there are no absolutes. It is a self-defeating statement. If there are no absolutes, how do we know that there are no absolutes? Additionally, there is a fundamental flaw in the idea that a consensus is able to reach moral certainty. If, according to modern philosophy, there is no way for an individual to determine moral judgment, this means that there is no way for any group to arrive at correct moral judgment either. A group is not a living entity, but rather the culmination of a number of individuals. There is no United Nations or United States apart from the individuals that make up those groups.

What should the United States do to fix all of these complete absurdities? The U.S. government should remember the lesson it learned on the day of Sept. 11, 2001: that there are many individuals and many groups in the world who would like to see either the U.S. destroyed, or suffer a loss of its greatness; and the United States has the right to find these people and eliminate their threat. The U.S. has the moral right to act in self-defense, by eliminating every single state that harbors and/or supports terrorism.

United States government: Take this opportunity to re-assert our right to eliminate terrorist states. Take this opportunity to identify our enemy as the Islamic Fundamentalist movement, and realize where this ideology lays: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Syria, etc. Take this opportunity to eliminate the heart, the lifeblood of the Islamic Fundamentalist movement: Iran. And take this opportunity, as a secondary consequence of acting in our own self-interest, to free millions from brutal theocratic terrorism.

Bush’s Regulatory Crackdown on Business Has Harmed the Economy.

In a major speech on July 9, 2002, in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals, President Bush announced a series of regulatory initiatives to “expose and root out corruption” in American business. Stressing that “the vast majority of businessmen and women are honest,” and that reforms “should demand integrity, without stifling innovation and economic growth,” Bush said that his proposals “should be welcomed by every honest company in America.”
……
Businessmen are, in the words of Jack Welch, “hunkering down"; they are investing less money in new technologies, new manufacturing plants, research and development; they are reluctant to enter mergers, to formulate new strategies, *to take risks*–and our economy is suffering as a result.
The cause of the business stagnation is that Bush has done the opposite of what he promised: his administration has persecuted the honest, productive businessmen who drive the economy.
……..
The essence of the new environment is that now, more than ever, businessmen *cannot know what is legal or illegal until after the fact*. They have no means of knowing in advance whether their accounting methods will get them thrown in jail, whether they will be bankrupted by a class-action lawsuit for “defrauding shareholders” if their new product does not sell as well as expected, or whether a strategic merger that takes years of planning will be thwarted by some ambitious bureaucrat. The result is that honest businessmen have been paralyzed when it comes to steering their companies.

Michael Powell, head of the FCC, displays the radical hatred of capitalism and progress typical of the FCC.

Technology is changing so quickly that there is no guarantee the nation’s telecommunications giants will still be in business 15 years from now, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said yesterday.
“I personally don’t think anybody is safe. I don’t believe any company currently in communications is so well-structured and tied down that they are guaranteed to be here 15 years from now,” Michael K. Powell told editors and reporters at The Washington Times.

Should there be a guarantee Mr. Powell that these companies stay in business? Should the government put a gun to the head of competition in order to ensure that other companies are “so well-structured and tied down that they are guaranteed to be here 15 years from now?”

This I find absurd:

Since taking over the FCC, Mr. Powell has become known as a fierce believer in the power of free markets. But he said yesterday he is “still a huge believer that markets do fail. And there is anticompetitive behavior. I have a basic maxim about that, which is … when you find people cheating, hit them really hard.”
He also said he is wary of media companies becoming too big.
“It’s really breathtaking. I mean, I’m almost to the view that one day there’s going to be serious questions about whether one institution can have such a wide and deep portfolio without some rethinking of how these functions are handled and to what extent and by whom. I don’t think that day’s here, but I do think it will happen, and it will happen faster than people think,” Mr. Powell said.

As history has demonstrated, it is these so-called defenders of capitalism that are really destroying it.

Ever since talk began about going to war with Iraq, there has been a lot of debate and controversy over many issues such as: (1)whether or not the U.S. has the right to invade Iraq, and (2)whether or not the U.S. should invade Iraq. Now I am going to answer these questions very simply, and put to rest all of the nonsense that has gone on for a very long time now.

(1)"A ‘right’ is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining action and self-generated action–which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life…The concept of a ‘right’ pertains only to action–specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. [Bold emphasis added] Ayn Rand

“The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force.” Ayn Rand

Every human being has the fundamental right to their own life, regardless of whether a government recognizes it or not, and the proper purpose of a government is to protect that fundamental right. Therefore, a proper government (one which completely recognizes individual rights) has the “right” to dispose of any government which is improper (one which does not completely recognize individual rights). Since however, in our world today, no society completely recognizes individual rights, those governments which recognize individual rights more have the right to dispose of those who recognize individual rights less. Therefore, the U.S. government, being the freest in the world (recognizes individual rights the most), has the “right” to dispose of every single government in the world which is less free (recognizes individual rights less). HOWEVER, this sure as hell does not mean that the U.S. should dispose of every government in the world which is less free, it merely means that it has the right to.

This means, that the U.S. had the right to dispose of the government of Iraq regardless of it being an “imminent threat” or having one single weapon of mass destruction. The U.S. had the right to dispose of the Iraqi dictatorship by the very fact that it was a dictatorship.

(2)As I just alluded to, there is a major distinction between what a government has the right to do in terms of waging war and what it should do in terms of waging war.
“Dictatorship nations are outlaws. Any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany and, today, has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba, or any other slave pen. Whether a free nation chooses to do so or not is a matter of its own self-interest, not of respect for the non-existent ‘right’ of gang rulers. It is not a free nation’s duty to liberate other nations at the price of self-sacrifice, but a free nation has the right to do it, when and if it so chooses.”

So, I have established that the U.S. had the right to invade, but should have we invaded? Was it in our self-interest to do so? This is where the existence of a weapons of mass-destruction program, whether or not Iraq was an imminent threat to the U.S., whether or not it had ties to terrorism, etc., come in. These things do not have any bearing on whether or not the U.S. had the “right” to invade, but rather they have bearing on whether or not the U.S. should have invaded, meaning, whether or not it was in our self-interest to do so.

I believe that in this area, it was within our self-interest to invade Iraq. By destroying the dictatorship of Iraq, we destroyed the capability for Saddam Hussein to make weapons of mass destruction which could destroy us or our allies, and we destroyed the capability of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and Hamas from possibly gaining weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein. As a secondary consequence (which should have never been alluded to as the primary motivation), we liberated countless numbers of Iraqis from a brutal dictator.

Was Iraq an imminent threat to the U.S.? No, not really.
Did Iraq have a massive weapons program? No, and the U.S. never made this as the case for war. The desire to build a massive weapons program, and taking steps to do so, was the cause for alarm, not the existence of a massive program.
Did Iraq have direct ties with terrorist groups? We know for sure that Saddam Hussein supported numerous Palestinian terrorist groups such as Hamas, by offering rewards of $25,000 to families of suicide bombers. Besides that, the only publicly known evidence of ties with groups such as Al-Qaeda is one Al-Qaeda member receiving medical care in Baghdad and the fact that the U.S. is a common enemy of both Hussein and Bin Laden.

I do not believe that our government made a major case for Iraq being an imminent threat to U.S. security and any real need to dispose of the dictatorship as soon as possible. But I don’t think that mattered at all, in fact, I think it’s a good sign. In today’s world, there are no more evil superpower dictatorships with the capability of destroying the United States. The increasing military power of the United States and the decreasing amount of evil dictatorships and evil groups is a very good thing. Instead of dealing with a massive country like Soviet Russia as our enemy, we are dealing with a bunch of crazies with bombs strapped to their chest. This means that we shouldn’t be looking for “imminent threats” but rather threats of any kind, evil of any kind and eliminating them.

Therefore, the U.S. not only had the right to invade Iraq, but I believe that we should have as well.

This is an amazing article.

Independence Day must henceforth be the primary day to demand a return to America’s original, fundamental principles. Within such an individual rights- respecting nation I have a rational self-interest in voluntarily financing the military, the police, and courts that uphold objective laws, with their purposes being to protect my rights from foreign and domestic initiators of physical force and from defrauders and violators of contracts. Government services such as roads, libraries, parks, post offices, for example, must all become privately owned and subject to the laws of supply and demand, i.e., laissez faire capitalism. Thereafter, I will voluntarily pay for services I need and be free from the government coercion that forces me to finance those that are useless to me. All Americans will be free of any legal duty to finance what others value and be free to voluntarily trade with (or give their property to) whomever and/or whatever they value.

Every individual’s life, liberty and property belong to themselves; no one has a moral claim on them. Our government must reestablish this philosophy. America is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

Today, we celebrate our Independence Day. Today, we celebrate our freedom, our greatness, our moral superiority. Today is the day where Americans unite and celebrate the fact that we are the freest, and therefore the best country in the entire world.

227 years ago our Founding Fathers proudly declared that every human being has the right to exist for their own sake, has the right to their own life. 227 years ago they declared that the purpose of a government is not to rule men but to protect them, to protect their fundamental right to their own life. They explicitly rejected the form of government which had ruled mankind for the centuries before them, statism. They rejected the notion that a human being exists for the sake of others and it is the purpose of the state to force them to sacrifice themself for others. However, even then, they did not get it exactly right. They allowed the government to force its citizens to sacrifice themselves in certain areas, such as slavery, states’ rights, and other statist elements of government. Despite this error however, the principle still remained as widely accepted: a human being has the right to their own life.

As we celebrate our Independence Day we must ask ourselves, have we stayed in line with these principles of our Founding Fathers? Does every human being in America have the unbreached right to their own life?

Absolutely not. The individual rights of American citizens, while the freest in the world, are being attacked on all sides. Either one has the right to their own life, to be free of physical compulsion, and free to use their own mind; or they do not. In America today, this fact is blatantly ignored. At the founding of our country, our Founding Fathers overwhelmingly declared that a human being exists for his own sake and that the purpose of a government is to protect that right to exist. But now, the idea that it is right for the government to use physical compusion against its citizens in order to serve others is widely accepted by virtually every politician and citizen of this country. The debate now is not whether or not American citizens should be made to be slaves, but rather, to what extent they should be forced to serve others.

America is an amazing country, but it will not be for long if this premise is not attacked and destroyed. On this Independence Day we must rise up and remember the fundamental principles of this country. The fundamental principle of this country is not the freedom to vote, or the freedom to speech. They are very important freedoms, but they are not the fundamental ones. No, our fundamental principle has been vastly forgotten and rejected…that every human being, by his nature as a human being, is an end in himself, has the right to life for his own sake, has the right to their own life, has the right to be free from physical compulsion, has the right to the use of their own mind.

The U.S. prepares potential military options for the country of Liberia. In the past few days, it has been reported that President Bush is thinking about deploying a limited number of troops to the African country of Liberia as the head of an international peacekeeping mission in the civil-war-beaten country.

I hold that it is morally obscene to endanger the life of one single American soldier in order to “assist” any country in which we have absolutely no self-interest in doing so.

Every human being, by their very nature as a human being, has one fundamental right: the right to their own life. This means, they have the right to use their own mind and be free from physical compulsion, as long as they respect that right of everyone else. The purpose of a proper government, is to protect this fundamental right (not to provide it). Three institutions, and three institutions alone, perform this function:
1. the military: to protect individuals from foreign countries who initiate the use of force against them
2. the police: to protect individuals from criminals who initiate the use of force against them
3. the objective court system: to protect contractual agreements between two or more individuals and to prosecute those who initiate the use of force
Any other institution of government would violate an individual’s fundamental right to his own life.

Therefore, determining whether or not we should put American soldiers at risk ultimately comes down to the question, does it serve the purpose of protecting American citizens from foreign countries who either initiate or threaten the use of force against them?

Is the government of Liberia any threat to the United States? From the relevant evidence so far, absolutely not. My conclusion therefore, is that it is completely wrong for our government to threaten the life of one single American soldier by sending them to Liberia.

Is it ever morally justifiable to assist another country militarily? Yes, but only when the given country (or a rebel aspect of the given country) completely recognizes individual rights and the idea that the only proper interaction between individuals (and thus nations as well) is that of voluntary trade. Liberia, along with many other African nations, represent the backward tribal savages of centuries past. They are riddled with dictators, murderers, and terrorists. We have absolutely no self-interest in militarily aiding any of them.

Many people (including our government on many occasions) say that it is right to send American soldiers to places such as Liberia, Somalia, Bosnia, Serbia, etc., in order to prevent mass death and genocide. I maintain two very important principles on this issue:
1. no amount of U.S. troops will change the backwards ideologies of these countries that are causing mass death and genocide
2. it is completely wrong for the life of one single American soldier to be threatened in combat for the purpose of sacrficing themselves to others

President Bush: do not send troops to Liberia, or any country like it. Pull our troops out of countries in which their presence there has absolutely no relevance to the purpose of our military: to protect the fundamental right of every American citizen: the right to their own life.

Independence: The Forgotten Meaning of America by Michael Berliner

The FCC has recently set new rules regarding media regulation.

The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday issued controversial new rules that would allow media companies to grow larger, regulations that probably will go into effect in August but could be challenged in court.

The rules – allowing television networks to buy more local television stations and permit a company to own a newspaper, television station and several radio outlets in a market – will go into effect 30 days after being published in the Federal Register, which can take up to three weeks.

The Republican-controlled FCC voted 3-2 to ease the ownership limits one month ago. Media companies had pushed the agency to loosen the regulations even further while consumer and political groups sought to tighten the rules….

Under the new rules, a television network will be able to own local television stations that collectively reach up to 45 percent of the U.S. television audience, up from 35 percent.

Both Viacom Inc., owner of the CBS and UPN networks, and News Corp., which runs the Fox network, own television stations that collectively reach roughly 39 percent of the national audience.

Also under the new rules, companies will be allowed to own up to three television stations in the largest markets and two stations in all but the smallest markets. But no entity can own more than one of the top four rated stations in a market.

In markets where there are at least nine television stations, companies will be able to own any combination of newspapers, television stations and radio outlets. No cross ownership will be permitted where there are at most three television stations.

In markets where there are four to eight television stations, limited cross-ownership would be allowed under the new rules. The FCC left intact its regulations that limit how many radio stations a company can own in a market but tightened the definition of what makes up a market.

One might be tempted to say that this is a victory for capitalism and for individual rights. However, I maintain that this is a bitter defeat for capitalism and individual rights, on the grounds that the premise that the government has the right to initiate the use of force against its citizens is unchallenged. Our politicians currently believe that it is wrong to fully initiate the use of force against its citizens (statism) but it is also wrong to never do so (capitalism). Thus, the government believes it has the right to initiate the use of force against it citizens in some areas, the question is just in which ones and to what extent. Because of this, our society has regressed to a large number of pressure-groups fighting for political favors from the government, fighting to have the government initiate the use of force on the group’s alleged enemy or enemies. Worst of all, the government believes it has the right to force an individual to not have the right to their own life in “some situations": to not be free from physical compulsion, and to not be free to trust the conclusions of their own independent judgment.

I completely condemn the idea that the government has any right whatsoever to force another individual to not have the freedom of trusting their own mind.

Help make this country what was almost and can be, a free society based on the recognition of individual rights: the right of every individual to their own life.

Regular cannabis users ‘at greater risk of mental illness’

President Bush states his personal beliefs on marriage.

The current debate over whether or not gay marriages should be legal provides major insight into one of the biggest problems in modern politics today: the complete failure to recognize individual rights.

As Ayn Rand demonstrated in The Virtue of Selfishness, “A ‘right’ is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action–which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.) The concept of a ‘right’ pertains only to action–specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical complusion, coercion, or interference by other men. Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive–of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.”

As a result of this right, an individual has the right to choose whatever morality they want (by having the ability to use their own judgment) just so long as they do not violate the rights of others (i.e. force others to follow the morality that they themselves choose). In our modern society however, this right is widely ignored. The latest example of this can be seen with the current debate as to whether or not gay people should be allowed to be married. According to the principles of a free society, these gay people have the full right to choose to be gay and to choose to engage in various relations with whomever they choose regardless of what percentage of the society thinks such actions are immoral. In a free society, an individual’s right to his own life can not be voted away by any group, whether it be a group of citizens or an act of Congress. However in our society, we see many individuals’ rights being voted away constantly, which includes calls from prominent politicians such as Bill Frist, to pass a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage.

This is a clear attack on the individual rights of EACH AND EVERY citizen of the United States. Taking away the individual rights of some citizens necessarily leads to the taking away of the individual rights of all citizens, unless the premises by which these decisions are made are checked. Taking away an individual’s right to his own life is an either/or situation. Either an individual has the right to his own life: to be free from physical compulsion and be free to rely on one’s own independent judgment; or they do not. But most importantly, an attack on the individual rights of any citizen is an attack on the human mind. It prohibits a human being from fully exercising their own judgment, by prohibiting the full use of that which is required for one’s survival. As Ayn Rand said, “The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A–and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man’s rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.”

Politicians such as Bill Frist want to take away the individual’s right to choose to be gay or not, to choose to be married with a gay person or not, to use one’s own mind. He wants to impose his own personal morality (that homosexuality is evil) and FORCE others to accept this. Whether or not I believe homosexuality to be evil or not is irrelevant.

I hold that every individual has the right to choose their own principles, values, and character, regardless of whether or not a majority of people agree; just as long as that individual does not violate the rights of others to do the same. A man has the right to choose to be gay and a woman has the right to choose to be gay, just as a businessman has the right to choose to do business with those who choose to voluntarily trade with him, just as an individual has the right to be Catholic, Jewish, or Atheist, etc., just as an individual has the right to choose to become a teacher, a lawyer, a doctor, a businessman, etc.

There is and never will be any justification for forcing another individual or group of individuals from using their own independent judgment, even if what they conclude is not favorable by a majority of people.

I condemn Bill Frist, and all other politicians like him. I condemn all politicians who attempt (and who have succeded) in taking away the right of every individual to use their own independent judgment to reach their own conclusions.

Strong words from President Bush, deviating from his now common pandering to terrorist groups.

“There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there,” Bush told reporters at the White House. “My answer is bring them on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation.”

Yes, and we have the force necessary to deal with the Palestinians, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and all of the other backward nations of the world vying for the destruction of our ideals and our country. Use it!

This story is an amazing look at the potential amount of power that the United States of America will have in the future.