Positive Liberty

Mark Skousen described the new book, “Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics,” as, “A cock-eyed, frolicking hell of a read.”

Anyone familiar with William (Bill) Bonner’s work at The Daily Reckoning would expect no less. He and his co-author, Lila Rajiva, used poignant rhetoric, colorful analogies, and often surprising humor, to drive home the point that following the crowd or trusting modern day prophets is a recipe for human disaster.

Decades ago, Hayek taught us about the Knowledge Problem in dry prose. Bonner and Rajiva expound upon and apply the Knowledge Problem to current events, and the result is an instructive laugh-fest.

But Bonner and Rajiva aren’t contrarians for the sake of ideology or humor. They want to establish that the world we’re in and the events we’re witnessing are NOT rational. Therefore, they canNOT be scientifically managed or anticipated. Their primary concern is the investor looking to increase the value of his portfolio: Following the crowd or taking the guru too seriously, that same poor investor might lose it all.

Bonner and Rajiva warn people of the dangers of world improvers and self-professed experts. Once again, they use shocking questions and humorous tales to illustrate their points.

1. They openly question insanity — Continue Reading »

I’m sure the timing had to do with the (hopefully soon-forgotten) movie, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.” An email, targeted at Christians, arrived in my Inbox that read, “In the Beginning… What Really Happened?” But it was the next sentence that jumped out at me.

“Science insists that life and the universe are nothing more than cosmic accidents.”

A link labeled “where does the evidence really lead?” led to a promotional video — starring the Intelligent Design movement’s Who’s-Who.

But that sentence about science is really troubling.

First, science never “insists.” That’s a straw man. Physical science involves constant questioning and never quite arriving. Each mystery solved unlocks several new questions to be resolved. Only a scientIST can insIST.

It is impossible for science to “say” anything. Science is not a person, nor is it a democracy. Science is practiced by a sometimes incorrigible, generally competitive bunch of people, often hell-bent on proving each other wrong and getting famous with some new discovery. Now, there is, generally, a scientific consensus, but science is always provisional. In most instances you are well-advised to place your bets carefully on the consensus, because it’s been known to change — even quite abruptly. But evolution, which is extensively researched, well-cataloged, and supremely-tried, is one of the safest scientific bets.

Second, statements about the purpose of life and the meaning of the universe are NOT scientific. They are philosophical speculations, outside the purview of science — beyond falsification. Science is mechanistic — obsessed with measuring material, unable to locate ethereal meaning. Science is a tool and, as we’ll see, it can easily be misused.

Third, can you see, hear, touch, smell, or taste a cosmic accident (no double entendre intended)? How would you quantify and define a cosmic accident? How would you test it and, most importantly, falsify that? Science, properly practiced, doesn’t involve metaphysical properties. Theologians and philosophers can interpret and speculate and, in my humble opinion, even have some degree of success. But there’s no materialist method for measuring what is and what is not a cosmic accident.

The great boogeyman of the Intelligent Design movement is Richard Dawkins — or as a hilarious, viral, spoof video portrays him, Dick to the Dawk.

But the supreme irony is that there’s another boogeyman on the field — Phillip Johnson, the intellectual godfather and chief strategist of the Intelligent Design movement. Johnson fundamentally agrees with Dawkins! Both shape the battle as evolution wins, God loses. As theologian John Haught put it, “…all in their own ways, carelessly tolerate a simplistic conflation of science with ideological assumptions, whether these skeptics be religious or materialistic.” (Haught, God After Darwin, p 31).

And let’s be candid here: Richard Dawkins’ movement, New Atheism, and Phillip Johnson’s movement, Intelligent Design, need each other. They are thesis and antithesis. They are the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, or Tom and Jerry.

Now the aforementioned email advertisement might have been accurate if it had read, “Richard Dawkins insists that life and the universe are nothing more than cosmic accidents.” But that probably wouldn’t have provoked a sufficient number of Christians to click the link, so they too could learn how to burn straw men.

But Richard Dawkins did indeed say something almost exactly like that. Here’s the quote: Continue Reading »

(by Jim Babka, with tremendous assistance from the late Harry Browne)

Perhaps you’ve been told that you don’t have to pay the Income Tax. I’m sorry to be the one to break the bad news to you, but all of the theories floating around are based on misguided or dangerous interpretations of the income tax rules. And, as I’ll demonstrate later in this article, they’re not the best way to end the Income Tax and win a much smaller, constitutionally limited government.

I’ve been presented with several of these plans over the years by scores of well-meaning, patriotic people. In fact, my friend, the late Harry Browne (whose very words appear throughout this piece), looked at those plans starting back in 1962. Back then he worked professionally promoting the Liberty Amendment – a proposed constitutional amendment that repeals the Sixteenth Amendment (income tax) and restores the Tenth Amendment (limiting federal powers; federalism).

He continued to look at these schemes in the decades that followed. He wouldn’t recommend a single one of them.

Neither would I.

The theories advanced by the proprietors of these schemes usually include one or more of following contentions: Continue Reading »

Jon Stewart did it again: He played Chris Matthews for (as) the fool. By my count, that’s three times now. Hooray!

In this latest installment, broadcast April 3, 2008, Jon did a segment he called, “Obama Watch.” The prime target of the lampooning was Fox News Sunday and its host, Chris Wallace.

I don’t want to ruin it for you — since you can watch the video for yourself — but the utter silliness of Hardball is on full display in this brief clip. Hardball is almost devoid of content. It should come with a Surgeon General’s warning because you get dumber as you watch it. I’ve lost some brain cells myself.

In this clip, Matthews displays his court jester repertoire, which is amusing all by itself. But Chris also sets up the punchline as well and Barak Obama smacks him down.

Spoiler Alert: Chris Matthews is the punchline: You’ll say to yourself, “He had it coming.”

Yes, I enjoy seeing Chris Matthews kicked around by Jon Stewart. But it’s not like Stewart will be out of material. The world would be a better place if Chris Matthews was booted off the air.

Oh, Hardball delenda est. Hardball delenda est. Sweet Jesus, Hardball delenda est.
(Hardball must be destroyed)

THE TRICKINESS OF ORTHODOXY

Jon Rowe writes, regarding his favor for the Declaration of Independence, “…as a non-Christian, I don’t have Romans 13 on my conscience.”

Well, forgive me for my mild paraphrase, but as a Christian, I don’t have Romans 13 on my conscience either.

In fact, this doesn’t seem to be a very widespread problem amongst Biblically-focused Christians. Most of them think they wrote the Declaration of Independence!

Romans 13, Continue Reading »

I am always interested in how other people do their jobs. Sometimes you can steal a good idea from another industry and use it to promote your own career or venture.

Chris Sligh was one of the American Idol, Top 10 contestants from last season. At his blog he weighed out-loud the pros and cons of signing with a major record label, or holding out and going “indie.” (I think he ultimately chose to go independent in Christian Contemporary Music).

At the beginning of Sligh’s post is a link to a short MTV News video on the Future of the Music Business, with more on the subject.

The Internet services many new, deeper niches. Yet how many industries are getting flattened by the Net? In the MTV news vid, one record promoter explains that they can now make a profit with 1% of the sales major labels need to break-even.

It seems to me that,for the new age we’re in, opportunity abounds (in a variety of industries) for many more people to get in on the lower rungs and do what it is that they enjoy doing as a part-time or full-time career (if it weren’t for the Internet, I wouldn’t have my current jobs). But making it “big” may be harder than ever.

“Big” can be a real problem here in the United States. Big Labor. Conglomerate Corporations. Military-Industrial Complex. Institutional Media. These are all part of that amorphous blob populists fear called, “Big Business.”

And the populists, particularly of the more progressive stripe, have a point: Big Business uses our Monopoly Government to spy on, suppress, and even, occasionally, destroy competition. Sometimes, Big Business even gets new laws passed that impose new inconveniences, restrictions, or taxes on all of us. The coming “Real ID” is a boon for companies who make various “security products.”

But Big Business has a specific tool that makes some of their bigness (and resulting treachery) possible. It’s Big Government. That is to say, if we reduced the size of government, Big Business would, by necessity, become leaner and more customer oriented. Big Business would be largely de-fanged if we Downsized DC.

Americans understand that OPEC provides a method for artificially increasing the revenues of Middle Eastern oil producing nations. It’s a cartel.

Cartels are the inevitable step-children of government bureaucracies. These boards Continue Reading »

The point of Thomistic Natural Law is that Reason is not opposed to Revelation (a.k.a., truth revealed by religion, and specifically, in the Christian instance, by the Bible).

Reason and Revelation are not enemies or even opposites. They are complements to one another. Each, in the opinion of this author, as well as many esteemed minds of the past, is diminished by the absence or suppression of the other.

There may be disagreements between persons on how, specifically, these two things complement one another. But very few people that I’m aware of believe these two concepts are outright enemies within their own persons.

Yes, there are fundamentalists out there. Yes, there are also hardcore atheists out there. Yet everyone reasons, even if they do it inconsistently or poorly — so poorly, in some instances, that they’re dangerous. And everyone has faith in something, even if they might want to call their “faith” by a different name.

Even more important, as someone who values the Bible: Revelation requires interpretation. How else can one interpret Revelation if they lack Reason?

At best, what can be said is that each person has a presupposition that starts with either Revelation or Reason. But what does that tell us about the result? Not much.

As the Answers in Genesis crowd (6-day creationist) proves, one can start with Revelation and then start playing science (albeit poorly).

One could just as well start with Reason and then turn to Revelation for support — a stance that appears to have been quite popular in the Founders that my co-blogger Jon Rowe quotes. But just a couple generations after the Founders, this Reason to Revelation approach was Continue Reading »

Anthony Gregory, writing for the Future of Freedom Foundation, provides a good summation of the problem of Corporatism (an ill that has plagued both the Republican and the Democratic parties in America)…

Principled advocacy of the free market requires an understanding of the differences between genuine free enterprise and “state capitalism”… which is in fact a common adversary of the free marketer and the anti-corporate leftist…

Indeed, corporatism, implemented by the state — whether through direct handouts, corporate bailouts, eminent domain, licensing laws, antitrust regulations, or environmental edicts — inflicts great harm on the modern American economy. Although [progressives] often misunderstand the fundamental problem plaguing the economy, they at least recognize its symptoms.

Conservatives and many libertarians, on the other hand, frequently dismiss many ills such as poverty as fabricated by the left-liberal imagination, when in fact it does a disservice to the cause of liberty and free markets to defend the current system and ignore very real and serious problems, which are often caused by government intervention in the economy. We should recognize that state corporatism is a [variant] of socialism, and it is nearly inevitable in a mixed economy that the introduction of more socialism [or corporatism] will cartelize industry and consolidate wealth in the hands of the few.

[Progressives] usually understand how wartime provides politically connected corporations with high profits and cushy contracts. What is more often neglected is Continue Reading »

A month or so ago, Mike Huckabee said something to the effect that all signs pointed to Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction (WMD), that it was easy to use the tool of hindsight to point fingers of blame, but that it was unfair to do so. Far better it would be, he suggested, to forget about the past and look to the future. Now that we are in Iraq, what will we do?

I don’t trust anyone who says forget about the past. If not by history, if not by experience, then how, pray tell, can we humans learn from, and avoid errors in judgment in the future?

But Huckabee is (presently) wrong and he will (still) be wrong in the future because of where he has placed his trust.

Yours truly, with a group of seven other people and a budget of just $10,000, dared to blaze a trail that defeated the intelligence agencies of multiple nations. We called it TruthAboutWar.org. We launched that site seven weeks BEFORE the campaign of “shock and awe” began. We froze it when the bombing started so that you can still see it.

And our claim number one, which we broadcast on radio ads in seven different cities (most of which kicked us out after one week because their listeners didn’t want to hear it), was that Saddam Hussein DIDN’T have WMDs. We made other claims as well, all of which have turned out to be on track.

No magical powers were required to be so prophetic. This was foresight, based on hindsight. This project represented Continue Reading »

Last week, Jason Kuznicki wrote what was, IMHO, a very important blog post titled, “Maryland: What if Marriage Were Strictly Religious?”

I’m surprised and disappointed that it didn’t receive more comments.

State legislator, Jamie Raskin’s idea, that marriages should be performed by church and government should only participate in civil unions, is, at first glance, radical. But the more you think about it, the more sense it makes.

But it should be particularly intriguing to the thoughtful people who read this blog.

I see in it a middle ground solution that soothes a culture war problem. So why only one comment about Raskin’s proposal?

HERE’S MY COMMENT

I don’t support the government’s involvement in marriage. And while I don’t agree with everything Matt Trewhella says in his pamphlet, 5 Reasons Why Christians Should Not Obtain a State Marriage License, I certainly find it compelling.

The marriages of the nation’s Founding Fathers were recorded in the family Bible — no license required.

Government involvement in marriage had its origins in the colonial period — in the form of anti-miscegenation laws. In other words, racism was the genesis.

It’s time to end this unholy marriage between holy matrimony and the State. Why should a civil government be able to “license” any form of private association between individuals?

Trewhella writes, Continue Reading »

Galileo said the Earth revolves around the Sun. Albert Einstein had E=mc2 Watson and Crick discovered DNA.

And here are my discoveries!

Comic
1) Nearly every human’s fingers are perfectly sized to match their nostrils. Big fingers, big nostrils, and little fingers, mean little nostrils. This can’t be an accident. Obviously, this is evidence of Intelligent Design. My fingers may be too big to pick your nose. God wanted us all to be able to pick our own noses.
2) If you only watch a TV show once, and a couple months, or more, go by, and you happen to see it again, you will end up watching the very same episode you watched the first time. Corollary: If you only see 10 minutes of a movie as you’re channel surfing, if you happen to catch it again, you’ll see the exact same segment.

Tragic
1) Big Government costs you, inconveniences you, and occasionally hurts people you love. But it routinely injures a neighbor, damages your industry, and destroys your community — it even kills people. We must Downsize DC for Human Progress.
2) Almost no one is wrong, on purpose. Paid advocates, particularly lawyers, are an obvious exception. But most people don’t even know what they don’t know and are doing the best that they can with the knowledge they have. For that reason alone, ad hominem response to ignorance is bad form.

Let it not be said that I wasted my time on this planet and left nothing to show for it.

Now, discuss amongst yourselves.

Hardball delenda est.

On his bigger blog, Ed Brayton urges folks to come to DownsizeDC.org and take action. He writes,

Congress is on the brink of a vote on the Protect America Act, which will extend the earlier “compromise” (read: complete sellout) on FISA and warrantless wiretapping. DownsizeDC is urging people to write and call today, like right now, and pressure Congress to vote it down or, at the very least, vote for some key amendments to the legislation. Please click here. You can follow their links to send an email. Better yet, you can pick up the phone and call your legislators. This is a very key moment in American history; the continued relevance of the 4th amendment is, quite literally, at stake.

I thank Ed for sending people to DownsizeDC.org and now urge you to do the same. The relevant campaign can be found here. Once you’re logged in (registration required) you can see the phone numbers of your Senators.

Hardball delenda est.

One of the reasons I have been very interested in Ron Paul’s campaign is his opposition to the War in Iraq and the possible conflicts with Iran and in Pakistan. I am opposed to unprovoked, preemptive war.

Ron Paul has been saying something during his campaign that few people understand — make that very, very few people. Persuasive rhetoric — speaking in terms of concrete benefits — is not his strong suit. He’s an abstract, theoretical thinker, and so asserting that “we don’t even the declare the wars anymore,” is sufficient, to both he and his supporters. He said it. The point is made.

But every time Paul says this, he meets with smirks and giggles by his opponents. His supporters have tended to think that those smirks are due to some anti-Constitutional, pomposity. But those giggles are because, once again, he’s wasting his breath. Very few understand what is at stake.

Some have gone one step further and suggested that the wars, such as the one we presently have in Iraq, are indeed declared. Congress “authorized” them. That is, they took a vote to give the President discretion on the use of force.

But they can’t give that discretion to the President. It’s un-Constitutional (illegal). And that’s Ron Paul’s point.

It might seem like Ron Paul, and people who agree with him — such as, yours truly — are separating pepper from fly poop. Are we asking for a mere formality — that the resolution actually be called “a Declaration of War with (say) Bumstinkistan?”

This is not a question of formality. It’s a question of separation of powers.

Today, while reading part of a sermon by Fr. Earle Fox, a light bulb flicked on over my head. Here is the inspiring section: Continue Reading »

In the last couple of months, as Mike Huckabee surged to contender status, many expressed concern about his role as preacher. Would his faith result in a theocracy? Was he using his faith as a political wedge? Would his faith affect policies ostensibly related to science?

Well, Huckabee’s faith is definitely important. But perhaps not in the way his detractors feared.

In what has to be the dumbest thing uttered by any Republican candidate this season (and there have been some whoppers), Huckabee suggested to Chris Matthews that Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) were probably shipped to Jordan!

As I already pointed out in my last post, I was on vacation while this happened. But miraculously I saw the Huckabee interview live — perhaps God wanted me to see it.

I say miraculously, because I watched only 45 minutes of cable news political coverage during the entire vacation. When I watched this gaffe, I just about fell out of my chair.

BTW, Congrats to Matthews for actually dealing with substance. He actually acted like a real political reporter in possession of a clue (nevertheless, Hardball Delenda Est). Where are these kinds of questions instead of the constant horse race garbage?

As it turns out, Mike Huckabee has great faith… in the conning speculation of Dick Cheney. Evidence is unnecessary when making claims about the goodness of America as she polices the world, and proof of any degree will be unimportant for the tens of thousands who will glom on to spurious claims like “Saddam drove the WMDs out of the country” and repeat the fable back to you. But in case you’re interested, let’s look at the evidence… Continue Reading »