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May 1, 2003: Men and women in every culture need liberty like they need food and water and air. Everywhere that freedom arrives, humanity rejoices and everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear. The advance of freedom is the surest strategy to undermine the appeal of terror in the world. Where freedom takes hold, hatred gives way to hope. When freedom takes hold, men and women turn to the peaceful pursuit of a better life. American values and American interests lead in the same direction: We stand for human liberty. Our commitment to liberty is America’s tradition - declared at our founding; affirmed in Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms; asserted in the Truman Doctrine and in Ronald Reagan’s challenge to an evil empire. – President Bush January 4, 2006: Coast Guard Repatriates 126 Cuban Migrants

People are clearly terrified of death. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” (New International Version, Red Letter Edition) I guess I can sorta see why this verse is so commonly quoted by Christians who are evangelizing—it is, after all, always best to appeal to your mark’s fear and greed—but on close inspection it really proves as empty as any snow job you can name. “For God so loved the world…” A loving God? The unmitigated level of sheer evil in the world belies this claim, but one doesn’t even have to look past the almost endless Biblical examples of God’s despicable behavior to conclude that, whatever God’s feelings toward the world, “love” doesn’t seem to count among them. “…that he gave his one and only Son…” Oh, look! Here’s a Biblical example right here! God loved the world so much, but really, He couldn’t be bothered, so he sent his son to do his dirty work? Come on! You expect me to believe that the best God could do, given that he loved the world so much was to send his “son,” in human form, to Earth to wander around, give speeches, and arrogantly tell people, over and over again, “Believe that I’m the Son of God or you’re going to burn in Hell!”? Yeah, so he supposedly cured the sick and made some alcohol, but given the Biblical account, even that wasn’t too terribly convincing, as not even all the witnesses were swayed to believe his claims of divinity. God supposedly really really really loved the world, so couldn’t he have done better than torturing and killing his own kid to “save” the world? I mean, if he wants us to be all worshipful and stuff… If he loves us so much, why not just “save” us all in the first place, and dispense with all the bother (and just who is it that God is “saving” us from, by the way, if not Him)? And what about that “sacrificing” thing, anyway? So Jesus “died” for us, to cleanse “us” of “our” original sins, and this was supposed to be God’s big “sacrifice” that makes Him all magnanimous and whatnot? What convolution of mind allows anyone to actually believe such an absurdity? Jesus was one third of the triune God, right? So in what sense did he really die? In what sense was this a “sacrifice” at all? The only answer I can come up with is, “It wasn’t,” so the entire edifice of Christian doctrine evaporates. It’s amazing what straws people will clutch at attempting to avoid facing that final curtain.

This story, which came to my attention via the No God Zone, has me incensed. When you first read it, you get the impression that the adamantly anti-gay Pastor offered money for homosexual sex (the word “soliciting” along with the word “prostitute”, seen in some versions of the story, conveys exactly that, to me). While you might agree with me that such an act is entirely harmless, it is clearly illegal, so the arrest of the Pastor comes as no surprise (and in spite of the ultimate injustice of such laws, in the case of this particular Pastor, I can’t help but exclaim a rousing rendition of Nelson’s “Ha-ha!” - especially if he’s even half as out of his mind as this wacko). However, as the No God Zone points out, no such offering of money took place. So, while the Pastor may be - nay, is - a hypocritical asshole, he apparently was arrested and had his car stolen (a.k.a., “civil forfeiture”) for simply asking another guy if he wanted to have sex. The real assholes in this story are the cops, who, it seems, just wanted to harass gays out for a good time in Tulsa, while padding their department budget. ...

Earlier this year I was an almost obsessive reader of Antiwar.com. For a time, I was also a financial contributor. Now, it wasn’t in the hundreds or thousands of dollars or anything, but it was a decent monthly pledge. Soon after seeing Justin Raimondo’s pathetic and embarassing showing in this video, though, I started to become annoyed with the frequently shrill tone of his columns—not to mention their excessive linkage (in a seemingly infinite regress through his own prior columns!), and their often bizarre focus—and although I mostly agree with him about Glenn Reynolds, I just can’t see what his problem* is with Tom Palmer. Palmer is no pacifist, certainly, but he’s also no war-monger, and his libertarian credentials seem beyond question (although he really does seem to have raised the ire of at least one other paleolib—see also here. All I can say is “bizarre!”). Once I saw Justin’s comments (and possible sock-puppetry as “Clement”) on this post at Tom Palmer’s blog, though, I decided, with a heavy heart, that I had to end my financial support of Antiwar.com. I took my Antiwar.com bumper sticker off my car, and I haven’t been visiting Antiwar.com much lately. However, I did go back recently, and saw this photo in the blog. It shows Eric Garris standing with the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Mahathir (you can also see Justin Raimondo there in the background). The photograph was taken at the recent Perdana Global Peace forum, where, along with Dr. Mahathir, Garris, and Raimondo, such luminaries «em>cough> as “his excellency” Robert Mugabe spoke. What I think is interesting about this picture is that if, instead of Eric Garris or Justin Raimondo, it were Glenn Reynolds or Tom Palmer standing there, wouldn’t Antiwar.com be having a field day over it? I suspect the shouts of “Warmonger!” would be endless. Take a look at this page, where Tun Mahathir is acting in his capacity as chairman of the Perdana Global Peace Forum. Everything seems fabulous, there. But now, contrast it with this page, which is the text of a speech he gave at the 10th Islamic Summit Conference. Now, I think a careful reading of Dr. Mahathir’s words gives him just the right measure of plausible deniability. But, do you not agree that it is difficult not to interpret his speech as “incendiary,” and “a call for global war against the Jewish people by 1.3 billion Muslims,” as the Anti-Defamation League has done? Even if we recognize that the ADL has an incentive to sensationalize when it serves them, and in spite of Justin’s borderline anti-Semitism (though he may still have a small sliver of plausible deniability on that score), I still have to wonder. Why is it that Garris and Raimondo believe that it is helpful to their cause or to the cause of peace to associate with Dr. Mahathir? Lots of discussion of this over at Tom Palmer’s blog. * Note that I myself actually agree with the Herbert Spencer quote found in that link.

I’m in the middle of reading H.L. Mencken’s biography of Nietzsche, and I found this passage, on pages 56-58, to be rather humorous: Nietzsche never married, but he was by no means a misogynist. …During all his wanderings he was much petted by the belles of pump room and hotel parlor, not only because he was a mysterious and romantic looking fellow, but also because his philosophy was thought to be blasphemous and indecent, particularly by those who knew nothing about it. But the fair admirers he singled out were either securely married or hopelessly antique. “For me to marry,” he soliloquized in 1887, “would probably be sheer assininity." There are sentimental critics who hold that Nietzsche’s utter lack of geniality was due to his lack of a wife. A good woman - alike beautiful and sensible - would have rescued him, they say, from his gloomy fancies. He would have expanded and mellowed in the sunshine of her smiles, and children would have civilized him. The defect in this theory lies in the fact that philosophers do not seem to flourish amid scenes of connubial joy. High thinking, it would appear, presupposes boarding house fare and hall bed-rooms. Spinoza, munching his solitary herring up his desolate backstairs, makes a picture that pains us, perhaps, but it must be admitted that it satisfies our sense of eternal fitness. A married Spinoza, with two sons at college, another managing the family lens business, a daughter busy with her trousseau and a wife growing querulous and fat - the vision, alas, is preposterous, outrageous and impossible! We must think of philosophers as beings alone but not lonesome. A married Schopenhauer or Kant or Nietzsche would be unthinkable. …Nietzsche himself sought to show, in more than one place, that a man whose whole existence was colored by one woman would inevitably acquire some trace of her feminine outlook, and so lose his own sure vision. The ideal state for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polygamy. [emphasis added]Now, maybe I keyed in to this passage because it struck a little too close to home - not that I’m any kind of great philosopher, mind you - but the question is this: Is this truly an accurate assessment? Have all the greatest philosophers (and perhaps even artists–Beethoven, for example) been bachelors? ...

I never cease to be amazed at how the White House’s own web page is faithfully documenting and publicizing this administration’s stupidities. In a way, I guess, it’s strangely comforting. I mean, consider the alternative. What if all the embarassing Bushisms were whitewashed away, replaced by erudite prose? The implications, if that were the case, bring disturbing thoughts to mind–memory holes… Ministries of Truth… that sort of thing. It seems we’re not quite there, yet, as you can plainly see here, where Alberto Gonzales does a lot of hand-waving, dodging, and dashing in response to the question, “If FISA didn’t work, why didn’t you seek a new statute that allowed something like this legally?" That question was asked earlier. We’ve had discussions with members of Congress, certain members of Congress, about whether or not we could get an amendment to FISA, and we were advised that that was not likely to be – that was not something we could likely get, certainly not without jeopardizing the existence of the program, and therefore, killing the program. And that – and so a decision was made that because we felt that the authorities were there, that we should continue moving forward with this program. ...

As an individualist, I harbor no sentimental attachments to my species, any more than I do to my nation, my gender, or my race - in fact I despise the very notion of the collectivist “us-versus-them” mentality, and believe it to be a primary destructive force in the world today. As a “natural”, I lack belief in a human soul, whether mortal or immortal, so, in principle, I can’t see any objection to the idea that someone will one day succeed in creating an “artificial intelligence." Because of my naturalist and individualist bent, I’m really not bothered by the possibility that humankind might one day be destroyed, Terminator- or Matrix-style, by our machine offspring - at least not any more than I’m bothered by the possibility that I’ll be bludgeoned to death in a dark alley, or waste away, uncared-for, in a convalescence home. I wonder, though… Is the Terminator myth really a likely, or even possible, future? We’re still not entirely sure what “intelligence” really is, let alone how to create it (aside from growing and interacting with human babies, that is). Is the ability to be introspective and/or self-aware a requirement for intelligence? What about feeling emotions? What about having an instinct for self-preservation? I’m not sure about any of those things - and I’m not sure anyone else is, either (in spite of the attractiveness of the thesis found in the hugely entertaining book, Gödel, Escher, Bach). However, if there is a possibility for some sort of machine revolution, then we are surely doomed. If Congress’s reaction to a vegetable that could follow the movements of a balloon is any indication, then, long before our simulated friends (in meatspace or virtual space) have anything approaching a human-level intelligence, we will have been completely beguiled. Our reptile and monkey-brains are too entrenched for our prefrontal and frontal lobes to counteract the instinctive and immediate reaction to an attractive face. Witness the recent craze over the Furby. We even have a hard time not anthropomorphizing skinless heads (see also here). Throw in a little skin, some pretty eyes, and some basic interaction and it’s over. Even when it’s miserably failing the Turing test, we’re convinced in spite of ourselves that we’re talking with something that has - for lack of a better word - a soul. Spielberg’s prediction, in his film A.I., of the human reaction to our machines is dead on, I think–with the exception that we wouldn’t even be able to kill any of the Mechas that look like walking television sets. If I’m conveying the sense that I think any of this is bad, then I apologize, because I don’t mean to. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this stuff, yet. Like any technology, there are good and bad aspects.

I found this site in a roundabout way via this page over at Liberated Space. I tooled around a little bit, and aside from an essay making a valid criticism of the turgid and pleonastic prose of Joseph Schumpeter, this essay, described by the author as “a brief treatise on this commonly referenced and highly sought subject of economics,” particularly caught my eye, if only because being against profit has always seemed to me to imply that you then must be for losses. Am I making a bit of a logical fallacy, there? Constructing a bit of a strawman? Granted. The point serves, however, to illuminate the narrow way in which the far left always tries to define profit as synonymous with exploitation. This is, in fact, what Punkerslut attempts to do at the outset: Profit serves primarily as an economic idea. If a merchant were to purchase a single loaf of bread for one dollar and to sell it for two dollars, that would be a single dollar of profit, or what many economists would call a 100% profit return. What does money translate to for the merchant? It translates specifically to privilege: the right to possess and consume products and services, which would otherwise be unreachable, had the merchant sold his labor, instead of selling commodities.Now, my first complaint of the above quote is that it is simply a string of non-sequiturs. What does each sentence have to do with the previous - outside the broadest sense, that they are all somewhat concerned with the subject of “profit”? You can see, though, the foggy outlines of the basic Marxist notion that profit is exploitation of the “laboring class” (the only “class” that creates value - the Proletariat) by the “merchant class” (the parasitic “class” that produces nothing - Capitalists). But is the laboring class really the only class that creates value? Why is profit restricted to the Capitalist class? Can’t a laborer value his wages more than the labor he has exchanged - thereby “profiting” from the transaction? Reading Punkerslut’s essay just makes me sad.

I promise I had not read this article prior to writing this. Lippard (2006-12-09): Crichton isn't a reputable source on global warming.If you're going to deny that there is global warming attributable to human activity, you've got quite a lot of peer-reviewed scientific literature to rebut:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26065-2004Dec25.html Lippard (2006-12-09): Oh, and you should check out Chris Mooney's review of Crichton's latest book:http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/crichton/ ...

Nice to know that my maladjustments are not obvious.