June — 2010 — VOICES for REASON

Organizers of a gay pride festival in Minneapolis are required by law to allow in an evangelist who wants to hand out Bibles, discuss theological issues, and conduct opinion polls, according to a recent ruling by a federal judge.

Why on earth did this become a legal issue? Why did it fall to a federal judge to decide who would be allowed to attend such a gathering, and what they could do there?

It’s because the festival was to be held on public property, city-owned land known as Loring Park. “As a festival attendee in a public forum, [evangelist Brian] Johnson is entitled to speak and hand out literature, quintessential activities protected by the First Amendment, so long as he remains undisruptive,” wrote Judge John Tunheim.

Conflicts such as these are built into the very concept of public property. After all, there is no rational standard by which one person can be deemed part of “the public” and another person excluded from “the public.” Therefore, Johnson can argue that he has a right to attend—just as the festival’s organizers can argue that their event will be spoiled by Johnson’s presence. Who’s right? Both of them, and neither of them. It’s an insoluble conflict, so long as governments continue to own and operate parks such as Loring Park in Minneapolis.

There is, however, a solution: private property. In a private setting, the festival’s organizers would be free to exclude wet blankets like Johnson the evangelist. Johnson, for his part, would be perfectly free to speechify about gay sex from his church’s pulpit or on any private property whose owner would allow it.

Consider that more than one-third of land in America is owned by governments, and millions of citizens have conflicting views on how that land should be used. That’s a prescription for endless civil war among pressure groups. The only prospect for peace lies in making public property private.

Image: WikiMedia Commons

My colleague Dr. Keith Lockitch recently spoke at the Fourth International Conference on Climate Change, held in Chicago, IL. The title of his talk was “The Roots of Climate Alarmism.” To view the video, follow this link, then scroll down to find the title slide for Keith’s talk.

In honor of the news that Eliot Spitzer–the disgraced, power-lusting former governor of New York–will be coming to prime time TV, I thought I’d make note of a column he penned earlier this month. Invoking Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Spitzer writes:

The question confronting the United States today is whether the notion of sacrifice–personal and collective–still has enough traction in our society to enable us to overcome the range of problems we face.

He goes on to name some of the sacrifices he thinks will solve these problems:

• “[S]lightly higher marginal tax rates for the top 5 percent…in order to fund the necessary investment in social infrastructure”
• “[A] carbon tax”
• “[A] somewhat more rigorous regulatory structure”

There’s a reason that Spitzer couches his program in the terminology of “sacrifice.” If he simply said the government should solve our problems by taking more of our wealth and our freedom, he wouldn’t win many converts. “Sacrifice” adds a moral dimension to Spitzer’s call for government intervention. The purpose is to morally disarm anyone who wants to safeguard his wealth or his freedom by saying, “You, you’re just being selfish.”

It’s no accident that dictators throughout history have justified their demands for power by appealing to the duty to sacrifice: freedom is selfish. It is the freedom to do what you want with your wealth and your life, rather than what society, Eliot Spitzer, or Barack Obama wants you to do. As Ayn Rand noted nearly 70 years ago in her novel The Fountainhead:

[J]ust listen to any prophet and if you hear him speak of sacrifice–run. Run faster than from a plague. It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. But if ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that’s it’s your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself–that will be the man who’s not after your soul.

Spitzer speaks of sacrifices. The Founding Fathers spoke of the individual’s right to pursue his own happiness. The Founders sought to create a free society. What, then, is Spitzer after?

Image: flickr

Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s Rolling Stone interview has created a scandal–but the real scandal we should be talking about is his Afghanistan strategy and how it needlessly imperils American lives.

Under his widely acclaimed counterinsurgency strategy, McChrystal “shifted the risks from Afghan civilians to Western combatants,” reports the NYT.  Translation: the rules place the lives and welfare of Afghans —  emphatically including the Islamist warriors we’re supposed to be fighting — ahead of American lives. Consider:

Before the rules were tightened, one Army major who had commanded an infantry company said, “firefights in Afghanistan had a half-life.” By this he meant that skirmishes often were brief, lasting roughly a half-hour. The Taliban would ambush patrols and typically break contact and slip away as patrol leaders organized and escalated Western firepower in response.

Now, with fire support often restricted, or even idled, Taliban fighters seem noticeably less worried about an American response, many soldiers and Marines say. Firefights often drag on, sometimes lasting hours, and costing lives. The United States’ material advantages are not robustly applied; troops are engaged in rifle-on-rifle fights on their enemy’s turf. [emphasis added]

I’ve argued in Winning the Unwinnable War and in talks around the country that this policy is self-crippling and morally perverse. And the policy is still in full-effect, as the experiences of soldiers on the ground can attest to.

Several infantrymen have also said that the rules are so restrictive that pilots are often not allowed to attack fixed targets — say, a building or tree line from which troops are taking fire — unless they can personally see the insurgents doing the firing.

This has lead to situations many soldiers describe as absurd, including decisions by patrol leaders to have fellow soldiers move briefly out into the open to draw fire once aircraft arrive, so the pilots might be cleared to participate in the fight. [emphasis added]

All of which confers an inestimable tactical advantage on Taliban fighters — “making it easier for them to hide to fight, to meet and to store their weapons or assemble their makeshift bombs.” Meanwhile, U.S. troops — with justified indignation — speak of “‘being handcuffed,’ of not being trusted by their bosses and of being asked to battle a canny and vicious insurgency ‘in a fair fight.’” How many more must return home in coffins, because they were purposely hamstrung in combat?

By all means, question McChrystal’s judgment in making derisive comments about his boss, the Commander in Chief. But isn’t it past time to question the propriety of an Afghan strategy that both endorse?

image: wiki commons

Most states have tax-funded film commissions that subsidize or grant tax credits to movie production companies, provided they agree to film scenes within the state’s borders. According to this article in The New York Times, some of these state agencies are getting nervous about the kind of films they are being asked to fund.

The Michigan film commissioner recently rejected a funding request from producers of a horror movie replete with “realistic cannibalism.” In Texas, a film company was told it need not apply for financing of a picture about the FBI’s Waco raid because of inaccuracies in the script. And in Florida, the legislature recently flirted with a proposal to deny tax credits to films that exhibit “nontraditional family values.”

There’s much to challenge in the notion of allowing states to lure in film production; for a start, look at how such programs violate the rights of taxpayers. These programs take money from ordinary taxpayers (a violation of their property rights) and use it to fund movies those taxpayers may well find abhorrent (a violation of their free speech rights).

The solution is not to dictate content according to some pseudo-standard such as “family values.” Rather, the solution is to end all government funding of film production. A state government’s job is to protect its citizens against criminals, not to attract moviemakers. Private individuals and companies wishing to attract film projects to their localities are free to offer whatever incentives (such as discounts on lodging, or attractive settings for filming) that they deem likely to benefit themselves.

Hollywood is quite capable of finding investors to fully finance its ventures. Producers who cannot attract private financing have no right to draw from the public treasury—whether their films depict cannibals eating human flesh, or Bible-toting families gathered for a Sunday picnic.

[Update: Thanks to Steve Simpson at the Institute for Justice for linking here. Welcome, readers of Congress Shall Make No Law, IJ's free speech blog.]

Image: WikiMedia Commons

My colleague Alex Epstein has published a new commentary at Forbes.com, “Three Myths About Oil.” Noting that the average American consumes three gallons of oil a day, Alex observes that nevertheless,

… oil’s detractors call it an addiction, downplaying its enormous benefits as fleeting pleasures that will necessarily bring long-term pain and destruction. An oil-based economy will inevitably collapse, they say, because oil is finite and will run out, because foreign oil causes terrorism, because oil, as a fossil fuel, will bring about climate catastrophe. Let’s examine these myths about oil.

Read the whole thing.

When the Supreme Court ruled that the government has to respect the right of corporations to engage in political speech, opponents of corporate speech (Obama included) put their weight behind the DISCLOSE Act. The Act reads like a grab-bag of policies united only by their intention: to place as many burdens as possible on groups that want to exercise their First Amendment rights.

DISCLOSE has been winding its way through Congress, but it faced strong opposition by the National Rifle Association (one of the groups subject to the proposed law). That is, until the House Democrats agreed to carve out an exception to the bill which–wouldn’t you know it–exempts the NRA from the Act’s speech-squelching measures. The exception was narrowly tailored so that only the NRA and a handful of other organizations (such as AARP) qualify. In return for this special favor, the NRA has agreed not to actively oppose the bill.

The lesson from Washington: free speech is no longer something you preserve by asserting your inalienable Constitutional rights–it’s something you preserve by throwing around your political clout.

At a time when hostility against the oil industry is at a high, while politicians and editorial-office heroes call for “ending our addiction to oil,” it’s important to reflect on why oil is so valuable—so “addictive,” in the terminology of our time.

A couple months ago, I blogged that “Most of us think of oil simply as the stuff that puts gasoline in our car. But oil, thanks to the ingenuity of the oil industry, does so much more. For one, it’s the building block for thousands of petroleum products—everything from Blu-Ray discs to asphalt to stitches to lipstick. And it provides the safest, most powerful, most convenient fuel, not only for automobiles but for the freighters, jets, trucks, and industrial machinery that power our global economy. Oil makes every aspect of our lives better.”

In that post, I illustrated how oil was vital in making possible something as basic as an affordable, healthy breakfast. The other day, I witnessed firsthand how vital oil is in making possible a safe, effective hospital. Sitting in on a highly advanced surgical procedure, I was struck by the skill of the surgeons, the stunning advances in medical technology (almost all of which involve petroleum components), and—what I want to talk about today—everyone’s commitment to maximize safety by keeping the environment as hygienic as possible by using oil-based products at every turn.

One of the virtues of petroleum products, including plastics, is that they are incredibly resistant to bacteria, moisture, germs. Another is that they can very easily be made impermeable, protecting whatever you want from whatever you don’t want to contaminate it. They can also be made incredibly cheaply, which allows for disposable products that are never used by more than one patient.

All of this was at work in the operating room. Just about all the furniture—the chairs, the cabinets, the drawers, were made of or coated by petroleum to keep them sanitary. The patient was lying on the bed, connected to durable, flexible plastic (oil) tubes that safely delivered food, coming from a sealed plastic (oil) bag that securely stored it. Another oil tube was designed to vacuum excess fluids. There were disposable foam (oil) cradles to prop up the patient’s arms or legs if necessary—made of oil to be disposable. The disposable, sterile gloves were either latex or synthetic—i.e., made of oil. Ditto for the disposable surgical masks and head-coverings. The doctors frequently needed to throw biological material away—which, thankfully they could do sanitarily with plastic (oil) trash-bags that could be taken away leaving no trace of their hazardous contents. Imagine if these products would have been made of wood, cloth, or metal. Can you imagine the corrosion, the bacteria-traps, the health risks? Infection used to be a highly common and deadly product of surgery—and lack of petroleum products was a big reason why.

Thanks both to the medical profession and petroleum products, you can have every expectation of your next trip to the hospital being a safe one.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

New York magazine’s Steve Fishman just penned a fascinating account of Bernie Madoff’s life behind bars. What I find most fascinating, however, is the reaction from a number of quarters to the effect that Madoff is “thriving behind bars” and living like a “rock star.”

What actually emerges from the article is the exact opposite conclusion: that Madoff was frightened and unhappy before he was caught, and that his life in prison is empty and pathetic.

Take Madoff’s life before he was arrested. According to Fishman:

For Bernie Madoff, living a lie had once been a full-time job, which carried with it a constant, nagging anxiety. “It was a nightmare for me,” he told investigators, using the word over and over, as if he were the real victim. “I wish they caught me six years ago, eight years ago,” he said in a little-noticed interview with them.

And what does life look like for Madoff, now that he’s been caught? As Fishman shows, Madoff lives separated from his family, surrounded by murderers and sex offenders, sweeping floors for fourteen cents and hour, and doing what he can not to fall victim to prison violence. Some rock star.

What comes across from Fishman’s article is that Madoff’s existential life now matches his inner life. A man whose inner life had been a nightmare is now trapped in a literal nightmare.

Madoff is often taken as the preeminent example of selfishness. But what the facts show is not a man who was concerned with his own interests, but rather someone totally uninterested in thinking about what kind of choices would genuinely promote his life. By trying to live like a criminal, rather than as a productive individual, Madoff guaranteed himself a meaningless, joyless, self-destructive  existence. There’s nothing selfish about that.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Another day, another major news story about Ben Bernanke’s economic prognostications. I find these stories bizarre on two levels. One, they never mention Bernanke’s obvious incentive to paint an overly-rosy picture of the economy’s future given that he wields more power over it than any other person. And two, they never give convincing evidence that Bernanke is a credible forecaster.

It’s taken for granted that Bernanke is an economic genius–a claim backed by everything but his actual track record as an economic forecaster. We hear of his distinguished academic career, the admiration in which he is held by the profession, even a near-perfect SAT score in high school. While these would be relevant if Bernanke were applying for more column-inches in Who’s Who, or a job at The Princeton Review, neither Bernanke’s academic popularity nor his IQ tell us whether his predictions hold water.

In this regard, his track record of predictions, by contrast, proves a lot:

• March 2007: “the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime markets seems likely to be contained.”
• February 2008: “I don’t anticipate any serious problems of that sort among the large internationally active banks that make up a very substantial part of our banking system.”
• July 2008: Fannie and Freddie “…will make it through the storm,” are “in no danger of failing,” and “adequately capitalized.”

Why not write news stories about the prognostications of economists who actually predicted the financial crisis?

Image: Wikimedia Commons