Elan Journo — VOICES for REASON

In their latest Forbes.com column, Don Watkins and Yaron Brook look at Washington’s longstanding policy of encouraging homeownership — and argue that it is un-American. They write:

For nearly a century it has been the policy of the U.S. government to increase American homeownership. Its efforts include (but aren’t limited to) bouts of easy money from the Fed, the mortgage-interest deduction, the exclusion of capital gains on primary residence sales, direct and indirect subsidies from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and artificial liquidity pumped into the mortgage market via government sponsored entities Fannie and Freddie.

Policymakers assure us that the next generation of government housing programs will be “carefully designed” (bring on the next five-year plan, Comrade!). But the real question is why the government should be doing anything to promote homeownership.

Read the whole thing.

image: sxc.hu/alexkalina

In the Wall Street Journal, my colleague Alex Epstein argues that overreaction to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill left the country dangerously vulnerable. The piece begins:

Which former president does Barack Obama most resemble? When it comes to handling oil spills, the answer is Richard Nixon. Like our current president, Nixon too presided over a major offshore oil blowout—the three million gallon Santa Barbara spill of 1969. And, like Mr. Obama, Nixon responded by whipping up anti-oil sentiment and passing a sweeping moratorium on drilling.

This parallel is important to keep in mind, because Nixon’s reaction helped cause the worst energy crisis in American history.

Read the whole thing.

Dispelling misconceptions about the Arab/Israeli conflict is a focus of Efraim Karsh’s writings, and in his oped in today’s NYT, he brings to a wider audience key facts about the character of self-professed Arab champions of the Palestinian cause. He lays out a historical case that Arab states — who routinely jockey to be seen as advancing Palestinian goals — have in reality exploited that cause for their own power-seeking ends.

Agreeing with the thrust of Karsh’s article, I’d add this point: even if these backers had been genuine in their motivations and truly sought to serve the cause, that too would be deplorable. From my reading of the issue, the Palestinian movement has at its root an antipathy to Western political values, such individual freedom, and it has pioneered in the vile tactic of terrorism. Regimes that back that movement, for whatever reason, are complicit in its aggression.

(I explore the Palestinian movement and its goals in a course on the Arab-Israeli conflict. In chapter seven of Winning the Unwinnable War, I touch on a prevailing dynamic in Mideast politics that sheds light on what motivates contemporary backers of the Palestinians (e.g., Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia).)

Investor’s Business Daily has published an essay from ARI’s executive director Yaron Brook on  Atlas Shrugged. The piece begins:

In the years leading up to 2008—09′s financial meltdown, government control over mortgages, interest rates and America’s banking system was at an all-time high.

And yet when crisis struck, free enterprise took the blame.

The cure, therefore, was to give government even wider powers. Washington can now bail out any company, fire CEOs, override contracts and print billions of dollars to “stimulate” the economy — all in the name of the public interest. The result? Our deficits and debt continue to mount, and there’s a real possibility of a future like Greece’s.

This is the state of our world today. It’s remarkably similar to the state of the world in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” a mystery story about a future America whose economy is disintegrating and whose government is accumulating power faster than anyone thought possible. This parallel is a big reason a record 500,000 people bought “Atlas Shrugged” last year.

So what can we learn from a book that foresaw in 1957 what few believed possible in 2007? We can learn a lesson the heroes of the novel learn: the cause of the government’s greater, destructive control of business. And we can learn how to oppose it.

Read the whole thing.

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.

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

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.

The U.N. is about to pass another round of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. Is it despite the three earlier rounds of U.N. sanctions that Iran has geared up to produce even more nuclear material — or because of them?

Past sanctions were puny to begin with, then eviscerated by friends of Tehran at the U.N. (Predictably, the regime has sidestepped existing sanctions.) But even if credibly effective sanctions could be imposed — which at the U.N. is fantastical — Iran’s decades of pro-jihadist aggression demand a far more assertive response. Tehran is a belligerent theocracy stained with American blood. Ending the mounting threat from Iran requires a resolute, confident policy on our part, but by pursuing mousy “sanctions” and extending Tehran countless second chances, we’ve appeased the regime.

No wonder Iran’s leaders (credibly) brag of realizing their nuclear goals. Our weakness in the face of this malignant regime empowers it.

Agência BrasilWikiCommons

Since Israel forcibly intercepted ships heading to Gaza with “humanitarian” aid, the choir of condemnation has shrieked in unison — from the UK, and most of the European continent, across the Atlantic to the bowels of the U.N. But putting aside questions on the laws governing international waters, was Israel morally right to prevent the ships from reaching Gaza? Yes–I’d argue it was fully within its rights to enforce the naval blockade on Gaza.

To judge Israel’s actions, it is crucial to recognize the broader context: the Gaza strip is under the control of Hamas, a totalitarian Islamist group, that is at war with Israel. Allowing arms, money, and other forms of aid to enter Hamas-controlled Gaza means allowing a sworn enemy to be sustained and strengthened to fight on. And a state facing that situation is entitled to thwart attempts to aid its enemy.

P.S. A word on the blockade itself. My view is that Israel is entitled to seal Gaza off from the world. Is that the most efficient means of thwarting, let alone minimizing, the threat from Hamas? I doubt it — in part because exceptions are often made for so-called humanitarian supplies. Should Israel act assertively to remove the Islamist group from power and dismantle its infrastructure in the Palestinian territories? That’s a point I’ve argued in other places.

Fortunately, the three tanks of propane and two jugs of gasoline in the back of the Nissan Pathfinder failed to blow up. It remains to be seen who is behind the Times Square bomb plot; the arrest of a suspect — a Pakistani native — may bring more details to light. But looking at the evidence left behind in the truck and contemplating the bombmaker’s mindset, one expert remarked: “I can tell you that [the bomber(s)] thought it was the atomic bomb.” The bomber(s) “have more desire than ability.”

A desire for destruction of human life on a large scale definitely fits the m.o. of Islamic totalitarianism, the ideological movement behind the 9/11 attacks (among others). It figures, then, that one Taliban outfit in Pakistan has leapt to claim responsibility for the attempted car-bombing in Times Square. The claim may prove to be mere propaganda to win a perverse cachet within the movement, but if it is unfounded, it nevertheless underscores their wish to bring their holy war (back) to our shores.

image: flickr