October — 2009 — VOICES for REASON

The House recently voted to expand federal “hate crimes” to include those committed because of the victim’s sexual orientation. The New York State legislature succinctly stated the case for these laws in its Hate Crimes Act of 2000: “Crimes motivated by invidious hatred toward particular groups not only harm individual victims but send a powerful message of intolerance and discrimination to all members of the group to which the victim belongs.” Thus, if someone commits a crime motivated by an idea the government deems “hateful,” he faces special penalties.

Despite the denials of “hate crime” law supporters, this criminalizes certain ideas. If the government can punish a criminal more harshly based on the “message of intolerance and discrimination” he sends through his crime, then the inevitable conclusion is that sending a “message of intolerance and discrimination” is a crime. Most Western countries have made that explicit: even Canada punishes “hate messages.” Read the rest of this entry »

Two of the victims of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme are suing the Securities and Exchange Commission for ‘negligence.’

While it’s not clear whether their case will go anywhere, it’s undeniable that the SEC failed miserably in the Madoff case. Many private citizens tried to help the agency do its job; a 29-point, 17-page report on Madoff, entitled “The World’s Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud” was submitted to the SEC by accountant Harry Markopolos several times. According to the lawsuit, the SEC received eight complaints about a Madoff Ponzi scheme.

So what should be done to minimize the chances of this kind of failure in the future? The typical response is that the SEC needs more money and wider powers to catch the next big securities fraud. But the SEC’s own statistics show that its budget more than doubled between 2001 and 2008—and Markopolos’s testimony on his attempts to get the SEC to see the light on Madoff illustrates that the failure had nothing to do with lack of money.

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Environmentalists claim, with ever-increasing hysteria, that our consumption of carbon-based energy in pursuit of prosperity and economic growth is altering the earth’s climate. Human survival, they insist, requires the immediate abandonment of fossil fuels, which provide more than 80 percent of the world’s energy, in favor of carbon-free sources.

Yet, at the same time, environmentalist groups have vehemently opposed, as unacceptable intrusions on nature, projects involving every alternative form of energy ever proposed to replace fossil fuels—including such supposedly green ventures as wind farms and solar power plants. Here’s the latest example:

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There’s no question that war is always tough on the soldiers who fight it. But in Afghanistan (and Iraq), Washington has made things doubly worse for U.S. troops: it has imposed on them policies and rules of engagement that (I’ve argued) are inimical to our security — and to the lives of our troops. What underlies these rules is the notion that our forces are morally obliged to place the lives and well-being of Afghans ahead of their own — in the name of so called “compassion” — rather than fighting all-out. The results are heart-rending.

Under current policy in Afghanistan, our forces are required to endear themselves to the local population by providing so-called humanitarian aid. How does that affect our soldiers?

[The Times of London reports:] The soldiers are angry that colleagues are losing their lives while trying to help a population that will not help them. “You give them all the humanitarian assistance that they want and they’re still going to lie to you. They’ll tell you there’s no Taleban anywhere in the area and as soon as you roll away, ten feet from their house, you get shot at again,” said Specialist Eric Petty, from Georgia.

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At Brown University, the faculty voted earlier this year to ditch Columbus Day in favor of “Fall Weekend.” In years past, Berkeley, California made a similar move to “Indigenous Peoples Day,” and South Dakota now marks “Native American Day.” Even where the Columbus name has been kept, virtually all enthusiasm for celebrating the holiday has disappeared.

Why does an embarrassed, guilty silence descend on the nation each Columbus Day? Because people don’t know how to celebrate the blossoming of Western civilization over the past five centuries without seeming to rejoice in the misery of American Indians. Modern historians have distorted the facts, finding fault with Columbus, America, and Western civilization for evils and tragedies that they did not create—while extolling mysticism and tribalism, which actually are the causes of history’s darkest chapters.

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Would you stake $11,000 on your ability to read the mind of a faceless bureaucrat? Well, you’re going to have to come December 1, if you decide to blog about books or other products.

The Federal Trade Commission has issued new guidelines that force bloggers who receive cash or “in-kind” payments to review a book or product to disclose that fact. What does that mean in practice? That’s a good question. Read the rest of this entry »

“Let’s Take Back Columbus Day” is the theme of talks that I’m giving on several college campuses this month. (The official holiday is October 12, the 517th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America.) I spoke at New York University on October 5, and the following events are planned for next week:

• October 12: University of Virginia, Charlottesville – 7 p.m.
• October 13: University of Maryland – College Park, 6:30 p.m.
• October 15: University of Texas – Austin, 8 p.m.

At these events, I give prepared remarks for less than an hour and then spend at least that much time fielding questions. I’m really looking forward to hearing from students and addressing their concerns. It’s not often they are presented with a clear alternative to the multiculturalism and America-hatred so prevalent on college campuses, and it’s always rewarding when I can clear up confusion. For more details, consult the campus events calendar at the Ayn Rand Center’s website.

Meanwhile, here’s the lecture description:

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Today the war in Afghanistan reaches its eight-year mark. To put that into perspective, by now a child born on the day the war began would probably be starting his third year of elementary school. Or to put it in a wider context, only the American Revolution (which lasted about 8 years 4 months) and the Vietnam War (8 years 6 months) lasted longer. U.S. involvement in World War II was over in just under four years. The NYT has a chart that illustrates these data in graphic terms. The Afghanistan debacle is on track to drag on longer than any of these. (I disagree with the compilers of this chart that the Iraq war is actually over; the recent bombings around that country suggest otherwise.)

Recall what many people agreed should be our (minimum) objective in Afghanistan eight years ago: the rooting out of the Taliban and its Islamist allies. Today a common view holds that we must resign ourselves to a world in which the Islamist menace remains a fixture of our lives — a threat we might mitigate, but never eliminate. Witness the suggestions by mainstream luminaries in foreign policy that we negotiate some sort of settlement with the Taliban, paying them to put down their arms, at least while we keep doling out cash.

That is not the punchline to a grim joke; it is what some consider to be our best option. The fact that this is taken seriously is a measure of how Americans have been demoralized by the failure of Washington to accomplish even the limited objective of eliminating the Taliban-Al Qaeda forces (to say nothing of dealing with the graver threat from Iran).

image: Flickr/tollaksen

The official publication date for my book, Winning the Unwinnable War, is October 28, but you can learn more about it right now by visiting the book’s just-launched website: WinningTheUnwinnableWar.com. It currently features an excerpt from the book and an interview with the contributors (Alex Epstein, Yaron Brook, and me) published in the latest issue of The Objective Standard. You can also find audio and video from several media interviews that I’ve taken part in recently. We’ll be adding more material in the days and months to come.  You can receive updates — via Twitter, Facebook, RSS and email — by signing up at the site.

The site offers links to several online booksellers that are taking pre-orders for the book.

A big source of the problems currently plaguing our health care system is the fact that most of us—as consumers of medical services—are completely cut off from any concern with (and often from knowledge of) their prices. All we ask, typically, is: “Is it covered?” As I discussed in part 1 and part 2, government intervention has led to a system where 95 percent of the insured population in America—some 240 million people—have comprehensive health insurance provided by a third party (either their employer or the government).

With insurance covering all kinds of medical services and the premiums paid by someone else, Americans have little financial incentive to curtail doctors’ visits for minor ailments, to question whether a test is worth its cost, or to seek out cost-effective care. Before we buy virtually anything else, we ask ourselves whether it is worth its price and whether there might be a better deal elsewhere. When we go to the doctor, we don’t even see the price until it shows up on the invoice—with all but a small co-pay or deductible (relative to the total bill) paid by the insurer. History has shown that this system increases demand for health care, encourages wasteful consumption and ultimately increases costs for third-party insurers.

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