Principles in Practice: The Blog of the Objective Standard

Principles in Practice: July 2006

Monday, July 31, 2006

Hezbollah Murders 56 Lebanese, Including 34 Children

Posted by Craig Biddle at 10:21 AM

When the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 200,000 people, those people were murdered by imperial Japan. Likewise, when Israel bombs a Hezbollah-infested village in Lebanon, killing 56 people, those people are murdered by Hezbollah. In circumstances such as these, there is a difference between the killer and the murderer. The murderer is the aggressor—the agent who initiates force and thus necessitates retaliatory force on the part of the victim. The victim, in retaliating, may kill people in the process, but all such deaths are the responsibility of the aggressor.

He who necessitates the use of retaliatory force is morally responsible for the consequences of that force. So says the law of causality.

Let's keep our concepts in order—and the blame where it belongs.

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Friday, July 28, 2006

Oil Companies Should Not Apologize for Their Record Profits

Posted by ARI Media at 8:56 AM

Dear Editor:

American oil companies should be proud of the record profits they earn through honest and productive work.

Oil companies are in business to make as big a profit as they are able to—and they have an obligation to their shareholders to do exactly that. A company's right to the pursuit of profit—like an individual's right to the pursuit of happiness—is essential to America's freedom, greatness and prosperity.

Just as there can never be an "excessive" or "obscene" amount of personal happiness, there can never be an "excessive" or "obscene"amount of profits.

David Holcberg

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Thursday, July 27, 2006

Big Thanks to Big Pharma

Posted by ARI Media at 9:39 PM

IRVINE, CA—In response to today's announcement of a major advancement in Bird Flu vaccines, Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute said, "Individuals worldwide can feel safer—all thanks to GlaxoSmithKline, one of the hated pharmaceutical companies. Critics condemn companies like GSK for their profit-seeking—ignoring the fact that Big Pharma only makes profits by saving and improving our lives. We at the Ayn Rand Institute would like to give our heartfelt thanks to GlaxoSmithKline and the other heroes of the pharmaceutical industry."

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Iran's 'Lucky Break'

Posted by Alan Germani at 1:57 PM

In "Hezbollah lets Iran buy time for nukes," Arizona State University professor Orde Kittrie provides an overview of Iran's nuclear program, recounting the regime's goals and discussing the "lucky break" it got toward achieving those goals when Hezbollah recently attacked Israel from Lebanon.

The big winner thus far in the clash between Hezbollah and Israel is Iran. Through attacks by its proxy, Hezbollah, Iran is deftly succeeding in distracting the world from the rapidly progressing Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Iran's success brings it one step closer to one of its ultimate goals. That goal is America's destruction. As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has starkly put it: "God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States. . . . This goal is attainable, and surely can be achieved."

Why does Iran want to destroy the United States?

Because the United States is the foremost purveyor of Western culture. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, wants to root out Western culture because it is contrary to Islam and in his view directs "everyone toward materialism while money, gluttony and carnal desires are made the greatest aspiration." As Khamenei put it in an interview in May 2004: "The source of all human torment and suffering is the 'liberal democracy' promoted by the West."

Kittrie goes on to provide a sobering summary of Iran's recent nuclear achievements and spells out its connection to Hezbollah, suggesting that the recent Hezbollah offensive against Israel was coordinated to divert attention from the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Whether this last is true or not, the effect is the same: The world is now focusing on the "plight" of the terrorist-harboring Lebanese while ignoring the destruction and death that will befall the West if we allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.

We would not be in this dire situation were it not for the corrupt altruistic ideas that guide our foreign affairs (including "Just War Theory"). Only by embracing a rational, self-interested foreign policy—which would entail mercilessly crushing the Iranian regime—will Americans be able to live without the threat of a nuclear strike hanging over our heads.

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Monday, July 24, 2006

Disproportionate?

Posted by ARI Media at 10:35 PM

Dear Editor:

World leaders are trying to halt Israel's war of self-defense in Lebanon by denouncing it as "disproportional."

But Israel has the right to defend itself and to take all the necessary actions to ensure that those who threaten its people are neutralized. Clearly, Israel is still under threat. Even after ten days of bombing Hezbollah's positions in Lebanon, most of the group's leadership, membership and supporting population are still at large.

If world leaders had a shred of decency, they would be supporting—not denouncing—Israel's response to the terrorists that threaten it.

David Holcberg

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Lebanon's Government Has No Legitimacy

Posted by ARI Media at 10:33 PM

Dear Editor:

President Bush is urging Israel to preserve the fragile government of Lebanon, which was recently chosen in democratic elections supported by Bush himself. But Israel should do exactly the opposite.

Hezbollah, the Iran-sponsored Islamic terror group now under attack by Israel in Lebanon, is part of the Lebanese government. Twenty-three of Hezbollah's members were elected to parliament, and two of its members were given cabinet positions.

A government that tolerates the operations of a terror group within its country, that does nothing to stop it from launching rockets on its neighbor's cities, and that further allows its presence in the parliament and cabinet, has no legitimacy at all.

If the Lebanese are ever to have a legitimate government and lasting peace with Israel, they will have to show that they, like Israel, will not tolerate Hezbollah any longer.

David Holcberg

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Saturday, July 22, 2006

'It's About Authority' by Erich Veyhl

Posted by TOS Admin at 7:59 PM

Craig Biddle's recent TOS article "Religion vs. Free Speech" emphasizes how the religious duty of unconditional obedience to God's will would make freedom of speech impossible, allowing people only to "speak the truth" as revealed by God. Having just finished reading Biddle's article, I had to laugh when I came across an article now being promoted by the religious right, "The Tragedy of the Religious Left," by Chuck Colson. Colson analyzes a recent conference organized by "religious progressives" to discuss "taking back religion from the conservative Christians."

Both sides (unintentionally) underscore Biddle's article and illustrate the anti-reason false alternative between religious intrinsicism on the right and the subjective collectivism of the "progressive" New Left as it attempts to repackage and cash in on its own religious dogma.

Religious rightist Colson quotes the New York Times as reporting, "Turnout at the Spiritual Activism Conference was high, but if the gathering is any indication, the biggest barrier for liberals may be their regard for pluralism: for letting people say what they want, how they want to, and for trying to include everyone's priorities rather than choosing two or three issues that could inspire a movement."

Colson, subtitling his article "Worshiping the Goddess of Tolerance," said, "The Times hit it right on the nose," and informs us, "You see, that's the crux of the liberals' problem. This conflict is not about political or social divisions. It's about authority—specifically, whether or not Christians are willing to acknowledge that the Bible is our authority." He disdainfully quoted a "religious progressive" conference participant: "I don't want to play the game of 'the Bible says this or that,' or that we get validation from something other than ourselves." Colson added, "the Bible has to be the ultimate authority. Otherwise we end up worshiping the goddess of tolerance and believing that tolerance takes precedence over truth."

Meanwhile, while the "religious progressives" of the New Left may not like Biblical authority and claim to support free speech—except of course for the speech of their opponents under their central political strategy of campaign finance reform—they have retained their own agenda of authoritarian sacrifices and complain that the religious right hasn't gone far enough. As usual, it's a battle over whose interpretation of authority will be imposed.

The Washington Times reported that the conference's "spiritual covenant" says, [Congress] should gear all its legislation, tax policies, budgets, and social programs towards being 'loving and caring for others' and 'supports a national health plan, suggests members of Congress 'spend part of one day a week feeding hungry people at a shelter or other ... hands-on service activity,' the public funding of all state and national elections and many other innovations."

The Times reported that the conference "aims to equip liberals to operate in a political arena where religion has played a more prominent role since 2000, says Rabbi Michael Lerner, founder of the Jewish magazine Tikkun and a chief conference organizer... Part of the conference's intent is to form 'spiritual caucuses' inside all political parties by the 2008 elections. These caucuses would work to bring elements of the 'covenant' onto party platforms."

The conference web site says "We will bring the Spiritual Covenant for America (based in part on the conversations that took place at the July 2005 conference and developed into a platform in Rabbi Lerner's The Left Hand of God) to the attention of the U.S. Congress and the liberal and progressive forces headquartered in D.C."

In other words, this is a political battle over which side can impose its sacrifices through appeals to religious dogma in the next election for political power. As Biddle quoted Ayn Rand from her article "Faith and Force": "And that is the state to which [faith] reduces mankind—a state where, in case of disagreement, men have no recourse except to physical violence."

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Thursday, July 20, 2006

Bush's Opposition to Embryonic Stem Cell Research Is Anti-Life

Posted by ARI Media at 4:33 PM

Dear Editor:

President Bush's veto of a bill to remove restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research is immoral. Being the first veto of Bush's presidency, it shows once again his commitment to impose his religious agenda on all Americans.

Contrary to the claims of Bush and others who oppose embryonic stem cell research, embryos destroyed in the process of extracting stem cells are not human beings. These embryos are smaller than a grain of sand, and consist of, at most, a few hundred undifferentiated cells. They have no body or body parts. They do not see, hear, feel, or think. While these early embryos have the potential to become human beings—they are not actual human beings.

To restrict the freedom of scientists to use clusters of cells to do such research on the basis of religious dogma is to violate their rights—as well as the rights of all who would contribute to, invest in, or benefit from this research.

Embryonic stem cell research has the potential to revolutionize medicine and save millions of lives—and it should proceed unimpeded.

David Holcberg and Alex Epstein

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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The U.S.-Israeli Suicide Pact by Elan Journo

Posted by ARI Media at 8:57 AM

The Iran-Hamas-Hezbollah axis is fully responsible for initiating the war on Israel, but the Islamists' aggression is the logical product of U.S.-Israeli policy. The longstanding commitment of Israel and America to "diplomatic engagement" with Palestinians and Islamists—a euphemism for appeasement—is suicidal.

For decades America has urged Israel to placate and surrender to our common enemy. The U.S.-endorsed "Road Map to Peace," like the "Peace Process" and sundry initiatives before it, rationalized Palestinian terrorism as the result of a legitimate grievance. If only the Palestinians' wish for a civilized, peaceful state were fulfilled—Washington deluded itself into believing—terrorism would end. And fulfilling this wish requires not smashing their terrorist infrastructure, but showering them with land and loot.

But the majority of Palestinians actually seek the destruction of Israel, and the slaughter of its people. Because they embrace this vicious goal, hordes of Palestinians idolized arch terrorist Yasser Arafat for waging a terrorist war to wipe out Israel and establish a nationalist dictatorship. They abetted Arafat's terrorism and celebrated his atrocities. They served as cheerleaders or recruits for terrorist groups—and when they had the chance, they embraced the even more militant religious zealots of Hamas. It is no surprise that, according to a recent poll, 77 percent of Palestinians support their government's kidnapping of an Israeli soldier and that 60 percent support the continued rocket fire from Gaza into Israel.

But even as Palestinians mounted more attacks, Washington pressed Israel for more concessions—and bolstered the terrorist-sponsoring Palestinian Authority with millions of dollars in aid. The U.S. forbade Israel from laying a finger on Arafat, and extended this tender solicitude to Hamas leaders. Washington actually whitewashed the blood-stained Arafat and his crony Abbas as peace-loving statesmen and invited them to the White House. And when Hezbollah now fires rockets at major cities in northern Israel, President Bush demands that Israel show "restraint."

Depressingly, Israel has continually relented to American pressure to appease our common enemy. It has prostrated itself before the Palestinians, with flamboyantly self-sacrificial offers of land-for-peace; it has withdrawn from southern Lebanon, ceding ground necessary to its self-defense; it has withdrawn from Gaza, leaving its southern cities at the mercy of rocket fire from the Hamas-run territory.

Such U.S.-endorsed appeasement by Israel, across decades, has enabled Hezbollah and Hamas to mount their current attacks. Yet America remains undeterred in its commitment to appeasement.

The U.S. is now trying to woo Iran with endless offers of economic "incentives," if only Iran promises to stop chasing nuclear weapons. Evading Iran's lust to "wipe Israel off the map," evading its funding of Hezbollah and Hamas, evading its avowed enmity to America, evading its decades of fomenting and orchestrating a proxy terror war against American civilians—evading all of this, Washington deludes itself into believing that paying Iran off will, somehow, wipe out its hostility.

Inevitably, this encourages Iran to continue its aggressive support for terrorists and its fervent quest for nuclear weapons. Merely by prolonging the negotiations endlessly, Iran gains time to acquire a weapon to wield against its neighbors, to provide to Hamas and Hezbollah or to other proxies to use against the United States. And were Iran eventually to accept some deal, American aid would merely be sustaining Iran's regime—and, inexorably, a covert nuclear program.

We are teaching the Islamic totalitarians in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran that their goal of destroying us is legitimate; that aggression is practical; that the more aggressive they are, the more we will surrender. U.S.-Israeli policy has demonstrated that we lack the intellectual self-confidence to name, let alone condemn, our enemies—and that we lack the will to deal with threats mercilessly. It vindicates the Islamists' premise that their religious worldview can bring a scientific, technologically advanced West to its knees.

To protect the lives of our citizens, America and Israel must stop evading the nature of the enemy's cause: our complete destruction. We must stop appeasing our common enemy—and embrace self-defense as a matter of intransigent principle. To put an end to the current rocket attacks from Lebanon and Gaza, America should urge Israel to annihilate the annihilators: Hamas and Hezbollah. And to thwart Iran's nuclear ambition, America must use as much military force as is necessary to dispose of that catastrophic threat and the regime responsible for it.

Elan Journo is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Wednesday, July 19, 2006

There is No Need for an Endless Global Conflict

Posted by ARI Media at 5:17 PM

Dear Editor:

Islamic totalitarians have explicitly stated their goal: to forcibly impose Islamic law around the world. To succeed, they will continue to attack those parts of the world that oppose their "divine mission." The United States, Israel, Canada, England, India, and any other country that places the least bit of value on freedom and progress, will continue to be targets.

The freer nations need to recognize the real nature of this enemy: an ideology that demands complete submission to Allah, either voluntarily or at the point of a knife. Do you wait for the knife to slit your throat or do you fight back and defend yourself?

The combined military strength of the freer countries is more than enough to eliminate decisively and definitively the assorted collection of murderous terrorists and the governments that support them financially or ideologically. There is no need for an endless global conflict. What there is a need for is a recognition that those of us living in freer countries have the right to take any necessary actions to defend ourselves—and that our lives are at stake.

Debi Ghate
Vice President, Academic Programs

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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The Indispensable Condition of Peace by Onkar Ghate

Posted by ARI Media at 5:13 PM

As Israeli soldiers reenter Gaza and bomb Lebanon, and Israeli citizens seek shelter from Hezbollah's missiles, the world despairingly wonders whether peace between Israel and its neighbors can ever take root. It can—but only if America reverses course. 

To achieve peace in the Middle East, as in any region, there is a necessary principle that every party must learn: the initiation of force is evil. And the indispensable means of teaching it is to ensure that the initiating side is defeated and punished. Decisive retaliatory force must be wielded against the aggressor. So long as one side has reason to think it will benefit from initiating force against its neighbors, war must result. Yet this is precisely what America's immoral foreign policy gives the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Hezbollah reason to think.

Israel is a free country, which recognizes the rights of its citizens, whatever their race or religion, and which prospers through business and trade. It has no use for war and no interest in conquest. But for years, Arafat and the Palestinian authorities, with the aid of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and other states, sought not to learn the conditions of freedom, but to annihilate the only free nation in their midst: Israel. Did the United States demand that the Palestinian leadership be destroyed?

No. Clinton invited Arafat to dine at the White House and Bush declared that peace requires Israel to give in to its aggressor's insistence on a state.

Worse still, as part of the "two state solution" announced in 2002, Bush demanded that Israel withdraw to its pre-1967 borders. In 1967 Israel captured the Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza Strip after yet another attempt by Arab nations to annihilate it. To give back any of this land—as Israel has done in the face of international pressure—teaches the Arabs that they can launch wars against Israel with impunity. If they at first do not succeed militarily, they need only continue issuing threats against Israel and arming more suicide-bombers—and eventually the land they lost in a war they initiated will be returned to them. They can then start the process anew, as they have since Israel withdrew from Lebanon and Gaza.

In order to move toward his "two state solution," Bush championed elections in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon, which predictably brought Hamas and Hezbollah into government. Terrorism, Bush is thus teaching the killers, is the means to political power.

The reason peace eludes the Middle East is therefore not difficult to discern. The lesson President Bush is conveying to the Arabs and Islamists—that the initiation of force is practical—is a continuation of the lesson America's foreign policy has been teaching them for decades. The Egyptians seized the Suez canal from the French and British in 1956—and we demanded that the Europeans not retaliate. Israel had the Palestinian terrorists surrounded in Lebanon in 1982—and we brokered their release. Many Arabs idolized a terrorist for hijacking airliners and murdering civilians—and we poured money into his regime, hailed him for winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, and demanded that Israel enter into a protracted "peace process" that consisted of concession after concession. What possible conclusion could the Arab world draw but that the initiation of force is practical? So long as they have grounds to believe that, war is inescapable.

If we truly seek peace, we must reverse this perverse lesson. We must proclaim the objective conditions of peace. This means declaring to Arab nations that Israel, as a free country, has a moral right to exist, that the Arabs and Palestinians are the initiators of the conflict and that aggression on their part is evil and will not be tolerated. And it means encouraging Israel not to negotiate and compromise with its current assailants, but to destroy them.

Only when the initiators of force learn that their actions lead not to world sympathy and political power, but to their own deaths, will peace be possible in the Middle East.

Dr. Onkar Ghate is a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Freedom vs. Unlimited Majority Rule by Peter Schwartz

Posted by ARI Media at 5:30 PM

Hezbollah, which has been waging war on Israel, and America, for years, is the immediate cause of the current fighting in the Middle East. The broader cause, though, is the United States government.

When Washington declared that freedom could be advanced by elections in which Hezbollah participated, and by which it became part of Lebanon's government, we granted that terrorist entity something it could never achieve on its own: moral legitimacy.

We gave legitimacy to Hezbollah—just as we did to such enemies as Hamas in the Palestinian Authority and the budding theocrats in Iraq and Afghanistan. These people all came to power through democratic elections promoted by the U.S. But a murderer does not gain legitimacy by getting elected to the ruling clique of his criminal gang—nor does anyone gain it by becoming an elected official of an anti-freedom state.

The premise behind the Bush administration's policy is the hopeless view that tyranny is reversed by the holding of elections—a premise stemming from the widespread confusion between freedom and democracy.

The typical American realizes that there ought to be limits on what government may do. He understands that each of us has rights which no law may breach, regardless of how much public support it happens to attract. An advocate of democracy, however, holds the opposite view.

The essence of democracy is unlimited majority rule. It is the notion that the government should not be constrained, as long as its behavior is sanctioned by majority vote. It is the notion that the very function of government is to implement the "will of the people." It is the notion espoused whenever we tell the Lebanese, the Iraqis, the Palestinians and the Afghanis that the legitimacy of a new government flows from its being democratically approved.

And it is the notion that was categorically repudiated by the founding of the United States.

America's defining characteristic is freedom. Freedom exists when there are limitations on government, imposed by the principle of individual rights. America was established as a republic, under which the state is restricted to protecting our rights. This is not a system of "democracy." Thus, you are free to criticize your neighbors, your society, your government—no matter how many people wish to pass a law censoring you. You are free to own your property—no matter how large a mob wants to take it from you. The rights of the individual are inalienable. But if "popular will" were the standard, the individual would have no rights—only temporary privileges, granted or withdrawn according to the mass mood of the moment. The tyranny of the majority, as the Founders understood, is just as evil as the tyranny of an absolute monarch.

Yes, we have the ability to vote, but that is not the yardstick by which freedom is measured. After all, even dictatorships hold official elections. It is only the existence of liberty that justifies, and gives meaning to, the ballot box. In a genuinely free country, voting pertains only to the means of safeguarding individual rights. There can be no moral "right" to vote to destroy rights.

Unfortunately, like President Bush, most Americans use the antithetical concepts of "freedom" and "democracy" interchangeably. Sometimes our government upholds the primacy of individual rights and regards one's life, liberty and property as inviolable. More often, however, it negates rights by upholding the primacy of the majority's wishes—from confiscating an individual's property because the majority wants it for "public use," to preventing a terminally ill individual from ending his painful life because a majority finds suicide unacceptable.

Today, our foreign policy endorses this latter position. We declare that our overriding goal in the Mideast is that people vote—regardless of whether they value freedom. But then, if a religious majority imposes its theology on Iraq, or if Palestinian suicide-bombers execute their popular mandate by blowing up Israeli schoolchildren, on what basis can we object, since democracy—"the will of the people"—is being faithfully served? As a spokesman for Hamas, following its electoral victory, correctly noted: "I thank the United States that they have given us this weapon of democracy. . . . It's not possible for the U.S. . . . to turn its back on an elected democracy." All these enemies of America—Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiites—abhor freedom, while adopting the procedure of democratic voting.

If we are going to try to replace tyrannies, we must stop confusing democracy with freedom. We must make clear that the principle we support is not the unlimited rule of the majority, but the inalienable rights of the individual. Empowering killers who happen to be democratically elected does not advance the cause of freedom—it destroys it.

Peter Schwartz is a Distinguished Fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, California. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Monday, July 17, 2006

God's Word Cast in Plastic

Posted by Alan Germani at 4:42 PM

If you want a good laugh—at the expense of a bad book—check out the work of Brendan Powell Smith at www.thebricktestament.com. Smith explains the project and its beginnings in the introduction to his first book, The Brick Testament: Stories from the Book of Genesis:

There I was enjoying a leisurely lunch one evening at the local Taco Bell when suddenly my bean burrito burst into flames and I heard the unmistakable voice of God. "Brendan," it said, "from this day forth you will illustrate for me my most holy of books, The Bible, completely in LEGO®."

"Surely there is someone more qualified than I for this task," I humbly replied. "For I am but a simple man with no special talent for building with plastic bricks."

"Who are you to question the will of God?" the angered voice boomed back. "Was it not I who created the world from nothing and whose hands control the destiny of mankind?

"But I'm an atheist," I protested.

"Then you are especially unqualified to question me!" came the response. "Now get to work!"

Smith has indeed gotten to work. Since his religious experience at Taco Bell, he has published three books and built an extensive website, using hundreds of photographs of cleverly arranged LEGO® bricks and characters to depict—and parody—biblical tales and teachings. In each Brick Testament installment, a straight, unembellished translation of the Bible lets the irrationality of the book speak for itself, while Smith's ingenious LEGO® depictions serve to visually concretize the absurdity and evil that fill its pages.

This is expertly executed humor: While Smith's project illustrates the havoc that religious beliefs wreak on human life and happiness, his treatment appropriately mocks religion, showing it to be what it fundamentally is: metaphysically impotent and utterly laughable.

The three Brick Testament books—Stories from the Book of Genesis, The Ten Commandments, and The Story of Christmas—make great gifts or coffee-table décor and can be purchased here. The vast website contains dozens of additional Bible stories and can consume hours of your time in what seem to be minutes. For a sampling of the hilarious world of The Brick Testament, see two of my favorite sections, The Teachings of Jesus: On Love and The Law: False Prophets.

Note: Due to the nature of the Bible, The Brick Testament contains images of violence and sexual acts.

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World Leaders Encourage Hezbollah and Hamas

Posted by ARI Media at 9:39 AM

Irvine, CA—"The worldwide condemnation of Israel's retaliation against Lebanon is morally obscene," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "The calls effectively demand that the innocent victim be sacrificed to the aggressor."

"Instead of excoriating Hezbollah and helping Israel to annihilate it, President Bush and other leaders urged that the victim, Israel, not cause 'excessive' damage to the aggressor—and begged that no harm come to Lebanon's terrorist-supporting government. Were Israel to follow such calls, it would have to leave in place the terrorist leadership and infrastructure that works to abduct, blow up and slaughter Israelis.

"The obscene premise governing so many of the West's leaders is the belief that we have no moral right to defend ourselves against the forces of Islamist barbarism.

"All of this can serve only to encourage Islamic totalitarian groups to intensify their war on Israel—and the West."

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Sunday, July 16, 2006

Net Neutrality vs. Internet Freedom by Alex Epstein

Posted by ARI Media at 2:27 PM

America's leading Internet service providers (ISPs) have spent many years and billions upgrading their transcontinental networks, which constitute the backbone of the Internet. Now they are eager to profit by offering new, compelling services. One plan is to give certain websites high priority on their data, so as to guarantee "quality of service"—the speed, frequency, and reliability with which data is delivered. This would enable content providers to offer high-quality live TV and videoconferencing or advanced remote medical monitoring, without the delays and unreliability that plague the Internet today. Unfortunately, data prioritization is fiercely opposed by advocates of "Net Neutrality," who claim paradoxically that freedom and innovation demand that companies not be free to make this innovation.

Net neutrality is the idea that ISPs should not be able to favor some types of data over others; their networks must be "neutral" among all the data they carry. Net-neutrality supporters claim that if ISPs are free to give preferential treatment to certain websites' data, they might drastically slow down un-favored or less-wealthy websites, diminishing their ability to offer content and make innovations. A prominent net-neutrality coalition cautions: "If you are an aspiring entrepreneur, you may be impeded from providing the 'next big thing' on the Internet."

But such scenarios are nonsensical. For any of the nation's competing ISPs to offer customers slow, patchy, let alone nonexistent access to the websites they seek to visit, would be commercial suicide. As for innovation, websites are free to continue using standard, non-prioritized Internet service. The fact that this would be slower than premium service does not mean that it would be slow, just as UPS's decision to offer overnight delivery did not lead them to suddenly degrade their Ground shipping. Premium Internet services would enable, not stifle, innovation, by giving websites creative options they did not have before.

The specter of ISPs offering glacial access to certain websites is a smokescreen, designed to obscure the net-neutrality movement's goal: preventing anyone from having superior, unequal access to customers. In the minds of net-neutrality advocates, the Internet is a collectively owned entity, to which all websites have an equal claim and are entitled "equal access." As the title of a leading net-neutrality group proclaims: "It's our Net."

But it isn't.

The Internet is not a collectivist commune; it is a free, voluntary, and private association of individuals and corporations harmoniously pursuing their individual goals. (While it began as a government-funded project, the Internet's ultra-advanced state today is the achievement of private network builders, hardware companies, content providers, and customers.) Because the Internet is based on voluntary association, no one can properly compel others for their ad space, bandwidth, publicity—or data prioritization. Those who create these values have the right to use and profit from them as they see fit. Google has no more right to demand that Verizon be "neutral" with its network than Verizon has a right to demand that Google be "neutral" with its coveted advertising space.

The only thing equal about the participants on the Internet is that all have equal freedom to deal with others voluntarily. This means they are equally free to compete for the bandwidth, dollars, and talents of others—but not entitled to an unearned, equal portion of them.

It is the freedom of participants on the Internet to offer and profit from whatever products, services, or content they choose that has made it such a phenomenal source of content and innovation. Net neutrality would deny ISPs that freedom. It would deny their right to engage in creative, innovative, and profitable activity with those networks—in the name of those who demand their bandwidth, but are unable or unwilling to earn it in a free market.

The widespread support for net neutrality among successful Internet companies—including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, eBay, and Amazon—is short-sighted and contemptible. These companies, which have benefited greatly from the unimpeded freedom of the Internet, are now trying to deny the same freedom to innovative ISPs and ambitious competitors under the egalitarian banner of "equal access." This is an invitation for any clever moocher to demand "equal access" to their hard-earned resources; indeed, Google is already being sued because its proprietary search engine allegedly gives "unfair" rankings to certain companies.

The Internet is one of the great bastions of freedom and innovation in our civilization. Let us keep it that way by rejecting "net neutrality."

Alex Epstein is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Keep Our 'Addiction' to Oil, End Our Allergy to Self-Assertion by Alex Epstein

Posted by ARI Media at 2:21 PM

Politicians and commentators from both parties are decrying our "addiction to oil." They exhort us to embrace costly programs to reduce our consumption of oil as quickly as possible. The primary rationale for this is national security. Our oil consumption is dangerous because, in the words of a New York Times editorial, "Oil profits that flow to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries finance . . . terrorist acts." With the same justification, President Bush has called for cutting "more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025 . . . and mak[ing] our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."

But Americans are not "addicted" to oil. "Addiction" implies an intense desire for something harmful. But we do not desire oil irrationally; we consume it because it is a wonderful, life-sustaining product. Oil is unmatched as an efficient, safe source of portable energy. It enables us to affordably ride, drive, or fly anywhere we wish, and fuels a transportation industry that enables us to trade anything with anyone from anywhere around the world. We are not addicted to oil any more than we are addicted to the myriad values it makes possible, like fresh food, imported electronics, going to work, or visiting loved ones.

The problem we face today is not our love of oil, but oil-rich dictatorships like Iran and Saudi Arabia—who use ill-gotten profits to spread totalitarian Islamic ideology around the world and terrorize us with their minions. The solution is not to punish ourselves by renouncing oil—but to punish our enemies until they renounce their aggression.

As the most powerful nation on earth, the United States has many options at its disposal.

One means of ending the Iranian and Saudi threat would be to issue an ultimatum to these regimes: cease all anti-American aggression immediately, or be destroyed. Many, witnessing the Iraqi quagmire, might scoff at this option. But such a course is eminently practical if America's unsurpassed military forces are committed to the task, not of "rebuilding" or "liberating" these states, but of making their inhabitants fear threatening America ever again.

Another means of addressing the threat would be to remove Middle Eastern oil fields from Iranian and Saudi control, put them in the hands of private companies, and then employ surveillance and troops to secure that oil supply. Contrary to popular assumption, Middle Eastern dictatorships have no right to their nationalized oil fields, which should be private property—the property of individuals who work to find and extract the oil.

Still another option might be a comprehensive, all-out embargo by the United States and its allies to starve the leader of the enemy, Iran, until the regime crumbles and the Islamic totalitarians lose their will to fight.

Which policy is best is for military strategists to determine—but our politicians and intellectuals refuse to consider any of these options. Instead, they decry our "addiction to oil," condemn us for not all wanting to drive Priuses, and urge, as penance, that we cut ourselves from the world oil market. Can anyone honestly believe that such asceticism will protect us from attack—given that Saudi Arabia and Iran both actively sponsored terrorism when oil was $10 a barrel?

Why do our leaders eagerly embrace impractical policies that punish Americans, while eschewing practical options that would punish our enemies? Because the practical policies would involve "going to war for oil," "America imposing its will on the rest of the world," upsetting the "international community," and all of today's other foreign policy taboos—i.e., they are branded immoral because they involve American self-assertion.

Our leaders do not believe that America has a moral right to assert itself in self-defense. This is why we engage in self-effacing, appeasing "diplomacy" with easily defeated enemies like Iran and Saudi Arabia. And this is why, when we actually do go to war (after such diplomacy fails), we pull our punches and declare our purpose to be lavishing the good life on hostile foreign peoples. Now, after over 2,500 American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars put in service of mob rule in Iraq, we are told to give up the lifeblood of our civilization rather than wage real war against our enemies. Could anything be more encouraging to our enemies than the knowledge that America will make Americans, not them, pay for their aggression?

This senseless sacrifice must stop. It is past time to adopt a foreign policy of self-assertion and self-interest—i.e., a truly moral policy.

Alex Epstein is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Reason Delivers Again

Posted by Craig Biddle at 12:56 PM

Here are two welcome reports from Medical News Today:

Blood Test Predicts Detects Lung Cancer Years Before CT Scan

16 Jul 2006

A new blood test is able to correctly predict non-small-cell lung cancer in patients years before any CT scan can detect it, say researchers from the University of Kentucky, USA. The test identifies human immune response to tumors.

Non-small-cell lung cancer patients have a 40% chance of living for five years or more after diagnosis. 50% of patients die within the first year. It is the most common lung cancer.

If further studies confirm its reliability, this will become the first blood test to predict cancer since the PSA (prostate specific antigen) test.

You can read about this research in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology.

Lung cancer kills more people around the world than any other cancer. 10 million new lung cancer diagnoses are made each year. Over three quarters of all lung-cancer patients are/were long-term regular smokers.

At the moment the most common way of diagnosing lung-cancer is with a CT Scan (computed tomography). However, CT scans are not completely accurate and patients often have to have a piece of the lump in their lung extracted for further tests - they have to have a biopsy. Biopsies for lung cancer can be painful. It is common for the biopsy test to find there was no cancer at all.

The biggest problem with lung cancer survival is that many patients are diagnosed when the cancer is well advanced.

This new blood test has an accuracy rate of at least 90% among people who have lung cancer and an extremely low false positive rate, say the researchers. In other words, unlike CT scans, this blood test does not commonly indicate lung cancer when it is not there.

In this study the researchers used blood samples from lung cancer patients years before they had been diagnosed. The test was surprisingly accurate in predicting lung cancer.

According to Dr. Zhong, lead researcher, and team, lung cancer can be present three to five years before reaching the conventional size limits of radiographic detection.

As with most cancers, the earlier it can be detected, the easier it is to cure the patient.

[and]

Brain-computer Link Allows A Paralyzed Patient To Perform Basic Tasks

16 Jul 2006  

A multi-institutional team of researchers has found that people with long-standing, severe paralysis can generate signals in the area of the brain responsible for voluntary movement and these signals can be detected, recorded, routed out of the brain to a computer and converted into actions -- enabling a paralyzed patient to perform basic tasks.

In the 13 July 2006 issue of Nature, the researchers presented the first published results from the initial participants in a clinical trial of the BrainGate Neural Interface System, a "neuromotor prosthesis" developed by Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, Inc., of Foxborough, Mass.

The first patient, Matthew Nagle, a 25-year-old Massachusetts man with a severe spinal cord injury, has been paralyzed from the neck down since 2001. After having the BrainGate sensor implanted on the surface of his brain at Rhode Island Hospital in June 2004, he learned to control a computer cursor simply by thinking about moving it…. [Read the rest.]

As always, it is worth noting that all such advances are products not of faith, nor of feelings, but of reason: man’s