A Reflection on Modern Russia

The 1st September in any year ending with a nine is always a good time to look back on the war that, 64-70 years ago, claimed millions upon millions of lives. It is also a good time to analyse the thoughts about the War that come from some of its key participants. Out of those nations, the views that stand out the most is those of Russia.

At today's ceremony to commemorate the War, Putin put the blame for the War solely on the Western nations, notably Britain and the US, for making deals with Hitler that led to the start of the War. That is, of course, without mentioning the most important pact of the times - between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. Similarly, a Russian documentary last weekend justifies Stalin's invasion of Poland by making the claim that Poland and Nazi Germany actually entered into a secret alliance. (!)

Unfortunately, too many Russians today believe in this nonsensical idea of Russian patriotism - many even look up to Stalin admirably, and use Russian actions in WWII to justify Russian imperialism today.

Which is really a sad reflection on modern Russia.

Rioting in France

Hmm. Looks like the French are at it again.

A shame really, that a nation with a culture like France should fall into relapses of this violence every few years. I suppose, that's the price you pay for the society of moochers which has always been the end product of socialism.

Unfortunately, this has always gone hand-in-hand with the idea of "liberty". The combination of the two has never been pretty -case in point: the French Revolution.

The Evil of Appeasement

Today, 6 August 2009, marks 64 years since the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

Unfortunately, the West has failed to learn the lessons of Hiroshima. Leftists everywhere use it to demonstrate the horrors of war, and talk about how great world peace would be - one of the school notices today was entitled "Pray for World Peace".

Indeed, as Ayn Rand points out, war is a terrible thing. It has taken the lives of many millions of people just over the last century, and left countless more in mourning. But what the leftists refuse to recognize is that the root of war lies in something worse than war: in statism and tyranny. When a government has declared war upon its own citizens, it is never long until the surrounding nations are next. This is the way a tyranny works: it constantly needs victims.

And this is exactly what happened in World War II. The Third Reich and Japanese Empire brought war to an unprecedented new scale throughout the world. Trying to turn a blind eye to the devastation, it took until a direct attack on American soil itself for the US to enter the war. Even then, it took the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to show the Japanese the evil of the philosophy that had grasped their nation.

What this represents, as well as military appeasement, is a far greater philosophical appeasement of tyranny; after all, military force is no use without proper philosophical backing; without the forces acting for good knowing that they're acting for good. Chamberlain's pragmatism is what allowed Hitler's Germany to take over so much of Europe so quickly. Because the ideals of the Western enlightenment were thrown into jeopardy after the First World War, for several years Germany and Japan were able to spread their Empires almost without interference, whereas before the British Empire would've intervened.

One of mankind's greatest follies is the persistent belief that evil is omnipotent; that humans are born sinners and man's natural state is that of a barbarian; that evil will always be here to stay. But evil runs at the sight of good -at forces who know that they are fighting for what's right.* Unfortunately, on August 6 1945, it took an atomic bomb to instill that message in the Japanese.

If anything, the bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't a lesson about peace, they were a lesson about the evil of appeasement.
_________

*By this, I don't mean some fanatical suicide bomber. I mean a man who has genuine positive beliefs about his philosophy, not someone who kills out of fear from an eternal Hell or the frustration of emotions without a basis in reason.

A Culture of Fear

Much to the annoyance of the many conservative bloggers on the Kiwi blogosphere, most libertarian commentators on the internet on this side of the ditch have been out in full force protesting the Drug War. Of course, it makes sense given how the murder of a policeman, shooting of three other people, and 50-hour siege in Napier started, after all, in a "routine drug bust". But one can rant forever on the drug war -it's much deeper than just who's selling what to whom.

Now, in true benefit-of-the-doubt fashion (something akin to "Who is John Galt?"), most people will shrug it off as an isolated incident; after all, this guy did try to shoot 21 people, and opened fire at a friend's house four years ago. The more politically motivated will talk about gun control -we already hear reports about the number of unlicensed guns in New Zealand, and guns being sold freely over the internet. But no one will address the truly pressing concern in New Zealand, and indeed all of Western Society, that led to this siege: the culture of fear -and the accompanying culture of hopelessness- that has penetrated New Zealand society, and how it all leads to tragedies like this. This fear isn't about foreign wars and natural disasters; this is fear of friends, fear of neighbours, fear of government.

The culture of fear has always been present in dictatorships, the Soviet Union being the greatest example. If a neighbour didn't like you, he could simply denounce you -you would be dead soon. If you were caught saying something totally insignificant that the Party didn't like, you would meet a similar fate, and you always had to watch your back.

However, it has always been a rarity throughout the fundamentally optimistic Western World, and New Zealand has never, until recently, had any symptoms of a culture of fear. Similarly, a culture of fear has developed in the United States -observe that a recent cop shooting was over a fear that Obama was going to take away people's guns- Britain and France (riots, and all). To trace the development of the culture of fear seeping through Western society, we need to look at recent political developments.

Let's take Britain, as an example. At the end of WWII and into the 50s and 60s, Britain was hailed as a model society -a society in which you knew your neighbours and would always be happy to help. Its crime rates were some of the world's lowest. At the end of WWII, Lee Kuan Yew, of Singapore went to Britain to find out how they managed to create such a polite society, to try to recreate that culture in Singapore. Nowadays the opposite is true: Britain's crime rates are some of the highest in the Western World, and broken families abound.

In the United States, much the same occurred. In the words of Walter Williams:

"During the 1940s and '50s, I grew up in North Philadelphia where many of today's murders occur. It was a time when blacks were much poorer, there was far more racial discrimination, and fewer employment opportunities and other opportunities for upward socioeconomic mobility were available. There was nowhere near the level of crime and wanton destruction that exists today. Behavior accepted today wasn't accepted then by either black adults or policemen." Indeed, according to a recent documentary,* among the victims of many violent crimes, they will not tell who is was that shot, stabbed or assaulted them!

The same is now occurring in New Zealand. With the exponential growth in government powers in all three countries, a culture of fear is taking flight. So what happened in these last fifty years?
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In philosophy, we saw a much greater emphasis being placed on the "common good"* through the rise of political correctness, and a move away from an objective, independent reality to the primacy of consciousness -observe how art devolved from being based on human interpretations of an objective, proper reality (romanticism through to art deco), to negating such an idea, putting all emphasis on "feeling" (expressionism through to post-modernism). By therefore negating man's existence into inexplicable feelings, modern philosophy helped to destroy the idea of self esteem, and a moral existence.

This had profound implications on society. What would be the result if human actions were based, not out of value seeking rational individuals basing their actions on production, but out of people who believed that no such thing as a rational individual could exist, and that freedom meant freedom from reality, to be administered, by force, from the producers of the world? The idea of a human became one who survives only by short term actions against one another.

Indeed, modern liberalism bases its ideas on the principle that, as men have to be rational producers to survive, no such thing as total liberty (from force and fraud) exists, and that producers have a duty to feed the non-productive.

The outcome has been, and continues to be, the breakdown of human relations. Men can only live in harmony when they deal with each other as rational beings, through the paradigm of values. At this point, liberals will talk about how the welfare state** and "working together" is the antidote to the culture of fear; conservatives will discuss religion and community. Both will say that selfishness is the cause of the culture of fear, propose collectivist solutions, and call for the heads of the productive to roll.
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Political developments have reflected this trend in attitude. In centuries past, it would have been completely unthinkable that government should have as much control over private affairs, citizen's money and business that it does today. According to the US Libertarian Party, in 1950 the total money collected by all forms of government was 2% of total income. Nowadays, it is often an entire year's salary for a working family. There are over four million security cameras in Britain (all of which seem hopeless in preventing Islamist attacks, somehow).

When a government subscribes to the culture of fear, it does not trust its citizens with their lives or money. People must be controlled.

These developments in turn isolate the citizenry from those assigned to protect their rights -that's where Jan Molenaar, the man behind the Napier siege, comes in. A culture of hopelessness, increases in crime, and a dramatic decrease in living standards, has always been the result of a culture of fear - often followed by dictatorship, either of the proletariat, the Aryan Race, or some form of supreme leader.

And that, I fear, is where we're heading.
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Notes:

*Many people say that there was actually less emphasis on the individual in the old British Empire than now. However, times of war aside, subjects of the Empire were very astute as to their individual rights which were considered sacrosanct -in effect, going to War, as an example, was to safeguard these rights -not for some purely collectivist reason such as an arbitrary idea of "Britain is good". For a further discussion of this idea, refer to Ayn Rand's essay "Philosophy: Who Needs It".

**Many leftists claim that the reforms of the 1980s and 9os are the cause of the culture of fear. However, economic reforms come and are now going, and the culture of fear can be traced far back before the 1980s. Institutions and cultures are two different things, and capitalism works with a culture of entrepreneurship to accompany it -not a culture of fear.

References:

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4770
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5012
http://www.lp.org/issues/family-budget
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6108496.stm“Killadelphia”; Narrator: Louis Theroux
The Economist
A further discussion of the ideas of art discussed here and their philosophical meaning can be found on Not PC, or other Objectivist websites and blogs.

Edison Hour

In a few minutes Earth Hour will kick off in New Zealand -and, predictably, there's been heaps of hype over it on the TV, radio, and internet. So in retaliation, I will be celebrating Edison Hour -a celebration of industry, progress, and human happiness.

Helping Form NZ Education Policy :-)

About a week and a half ago, I received this email:

Tena koe Callum

Reading your press release I'm interested in your perspective on education. What do you see as alternative to the current system or changes that could be made to improve what we have?

Regards
Kelvin Davis MP
Associate Spokesman Education
Labour
Kelvin Davis MP
------

My reply (in a formal, rather PC tone):

Hello Kelvin,

Sorry for the delay, and thanks for your interest in my press release. Do many of your colleagues read press releases from organisations such as SOLO?

Throughout most of human history, education has been a highly personal field, built fundamentally upon the relationship between student and teacher -that the educator would take a genuine interest in what goes on inside the student's brain, adjusting curriculum and teaching methods accordingly, and the student would take an interest in what they're taught, and its application. In effect, there existed a relationship of mutual respect and cooperation between the two, education being the common value. Thus, parents and other members of the community would take an active role in the education of schoolchildren.

When this connection between pupil and educator existed most strongly, the results have been good -regardless of external conditions. A good example of this comes from 19th Century Washington D.C -less than ten years after the civil when when institutionalised racism was rampant, at a school called Paul Laurence Dunbar Senior High School. The school was an entirely black school far less resourced than the area's white schools. However, most students, after graduating, went off to Ivy-League or other top American Universities, and soon overtook the white schools of Washington in test scores. Despite being a very working class school with less than adequate facilities, it outshone the other schools of the area.*

State-run education was first introduced by Bismarck in Prussia, during its wars with France, as a means of supplying the military with plenty of new recruits.

However, schools based on the relationship between student and teacher, and one-room community schoolhouses were the norm in the early 20th Century. But as the concept of universal education by the state became common in political thinking after World War II and the development of economies-of-scale in manufacturing, schools in New Zealand (as well as around the world) became far less personalised, with the goal being to get as many children through the education system as possible with the skills needed for the new era of technology. The relationship of mutual respect and cooperation between student and teacher based on the common value of education essentially broke down, and although students and teachers could still be friends with a mutual interest in one another, there were suddenly many other children that needed to be dealt with. The value of education was replaced by the necessity of education -having an inverse effect, as 2 of every 5 NZ adults today are in fact functionally illiterate**, thanks to state curriculum.

A key argument for state education today is that only state funding can provide resources for education in the "knowledge economy". However, looking back to the industrial age when new machines required new skills, we do not see faltering economic growth because of a lack of such education.
__________________________________________________________

Based on this brief summary, three changes need to be made in regards to education:

1) education is a value -not a commodity, and educational thinking needs to be based around this. As thus, educational involvement needs to be done at an individual and community level, where education is a genuine value to all parties.
2) education is not done on a societal level -children do not belong to any one country, but their immediate surroundings and people.
3) the recognition that, therefore, that education is not the state's responsibility -that state-run education is dangerous to a nation's free speech (by having reign of what gets into a child's brain) and is often compromised by political goals, in turn undermining democracy. There is little evidence to suggest that state involvement improves the quality or quantity of education, as the fact that levels of functional literacy in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries was higher than today and people had the necessary skills to keep the economy growing.

To reinforce, the goal of these changes is to make education a value with mutual respect and cooperation as its means, as opposed to a commodity.

Thanks,
Callum McPetrie

*http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5241, "Patterns of Black Excellence in Education" by Walter Williams
**"The Free Radical" issue 76 page 19, "The Look and Guess Lady" by Graham Crawshaw

School's Out

As of today, the school year has ended for High Schools and Colleges all over the country, with Primaries and Intermediates finishing now or next week. Some kids will be out around the towns and cities, but most of them will be at home.

Just today, an article appeared in the Dominion Post warning that New Zealand's "She'll be right" attitude (what attitude? it died out years ago when, mysteriously, crime was on the rise) is to blame for fatal accidents where youths are the victims. However, would it be better to condemn those kids to a life of fear of the outside world?

While it is true that parents can take a worthy role in the education of their children about the outside world, a child must learn about it for himself. Children, more so than the rest of us, have an intrinsic desire to explore and learn about the world around them, and to have fun doing so. Education through experience best helps a child to learn about the world around them. How does preventing them from experiencing the outside world help their development?

Once again, the politically-correct cotton-wool culture of modern day New Zealand is at work, trying to protect their child -and intervening in the lives of other people's children- from the culture of self-loathing and hopelessness that they created, by changing New Zealand culture from one of self-reliance to complete reliance on others.

Perhaps removing politically correct cotton-wool culture from every facet of a child's life may help us rebuild that culture and allow our children to discover the world around them, and to build their own ideas of right and wrong, rather than having those ideas forced down their throats by a politically-correct clique.

Should We Get Our Hopes Up?

At his Speech From the Throne today, John Key said :

"In pursuing this goal of economic growth my Government will be guided by the principle of individual freedom and a belief in the capacity and right of individuals to shape and improve their own lives."

There are things that John Key wants to do, that will be applauded by Libertarians. However, as Lindsay Perigo notes, is it all rational to get our hopes up? There are still many anti-freedom elements to the new regime.

Nevertheless, it's still much better having a government that will actually listen to its citizenry (RE: electoral finance act, anti-smacking*) and will at least hold self-responsibility as its ideal, than the all-arrogant and all-pervasive Labour Government of 1999-2008.

*Admittedly, Key had a role to play in this as well.

Terror in Mumbai

Over the past three days, terrorist scum in Mumbai have killed 150 people, injured hundreds more, and caused irreversible damage to India's largest city.

This latest attack is not the first of its kind; there have been many such terrorist attacks, committed in the name of Islam, over this century and the last. Terror has been committed in the name of Islam ever since its founding over 1400 years ago, when Muslims took over much of Europe and Arabia. The terrorists weren't poor and desperate; they didn't make demands. They were there to commit an atrocity in the name of Islam.

Yet, the West continues to ignore this. They ignored it during the later half of the twentieth century when America was targeted for allying with Israel, a country who takes the most blows of Islamic violence. They ignored it during 9/11, and in the London, Madrid and Bali bombings. They've ignored it again.

The usual suspects from the left will be crying out about how George Bush's war on terror has caused all the recent attacks in the Middle East. Take note: the Bush Administration always uses phrases like "Militant Islam", "Islamic Extremism", etc. To appease "moderate" Muslims, they make it seem that they're only fighting a small, out-of-the-ordinary group of Muslims. They always avoid using the word "Islam" to describe the ideology -ideology- that these attacks have been committed in the name of.

What we're seeing isn't a random group of people against another group of people, we are seeing a fundamentally ideological fight. The terrorists know that. The West is trying its utmost to evade it -and is paying the price.

Nia Glassie: My Verdict

Libertarian Sus outlines the three main reasons for the continuing murders and abuse of children, such as Nia Glassie, in New Zealand:

"1. loser dads to bugger off and leave Mum with the kids, knowing that the poor old taxpayer - again - picks the tab, and

2. loser blokes to move in with single-Mum-with-kids-on-DPB, to be fed and screwed on demand, and

3. young women to screw anything with no personal regard for future consequences, ending up with children they really don't want, who are treated accordingly."

It's interesting how this coincides with Chris Trotter's new goals for social democracy, outlined on Friday:

"Labour has to understand that its state houses, and the welfare state that built them, was just the first, not the last, stage and crowning achievement of the socialist journey. Social democracy must never be about maintaining vast swaths of the population in perpetual electoral peonage.

State houses, along with our public health and education services, must be regarded as launching-pads for heroes, not stables for Labour's donkey-vote."

In effect, social democracy ought to be so bad that it's good, by getting people who once relied on the state for every whim to try to escape as far away as possible from the state houses in which they grew up!

Also of note, is the typical leftist groups who go around say that "it is our problem", without first addressing the root causes of the problem in the culture of complete and total dependency, and then expecting us to be spies on our neighbours to solve the prolem. Any culture which resorts to the expectation that people spying on their neighbours keeps those neighbours from doing terrible things is well over the edge.

The Last Tragedy Of Shakespeare

It could read like a Shakespearean tragedy: using the excuse of their students' personal weaknesses, bureaucrats at the Ministry of Education are trying to remove Shakespeare, arguably the finest mind ever in literature, entirely from the national curriculum. Amidst fears that his works are too removed from the mind of the average High School student to understand, Shakespeare could be scrapped.

Perhaps these bureaucrats should consider the reasons why students in New Zealand are so out-performed in other countries. After years of politically-correct, post modern "teaching" strategies implemented by both Labour and National Governments, students, parents and teachers in this country have been left with the short end of the stick. What we are seeing today is a population so dumbed down that many lack basic skills and knowledge, with many ending up on the welfare state. Indeed, the reason why many students "don't get" Shakespeare has been through the curriculum introduced by the same "education officials" now proposing this measure.

This latest proposal to remove Shakespeare, and letting a student who studies a blog as a piece of English literature obtain the same marks as a student who studies Shakespeare's incredible works, is simply the next piece in the puzzle. Shakespeare's works are the best pieces of literature around, and are still very relevant in today's world.

Teachers in schools are smart enough to know this. Said one, "I am genuinely upset that the amount of literature students are required to study is being reduced and replaced with ambiguous standards which seem to water down the work students are required to do."

Said another, "All the challenge and in-depth analysis and skills required at each level are being modified, and in my opinion, made easier. "Is the implication that we should not dare to challenge students, or heaven forbid, ask them to engage with texts that really speak to the human condition in a superbly crafted form? Dumbing down again."

Yet "education officials" who have no idea of how a child's mind works dictate what gets learnt.

Politically-correct, big government dictatorial thinking at work again. Appealing to the lowest common denominator, and not challenging students to think beyond the box of government mandated thinking -the concepts of "sustainability", "equality", or in my English class, "altruism". It is taught much the same in countries such as Britain and the United States -with similar results. The most intelligent students come from countries where they are required to know the facts, instead of writing essays with criteria such as "describe an important scene in [whatever's being studied] and explain why it's important."

In a freer world, schools would be entirely free to teach whatever they want, with the choices of parents and teacher deciding what ought to be taught. As an interim measure, save us from yet more entrenchment of political correctness at school -save Shakespeare.

Quite Something!

It's not too often you come across something quite like this, from friday's Dominion Post:

"Wrenched away from their homelands; required to learn a whole new language; subjected to grotesque racial stereotyping and often outright verbal and physical abuse; these children, backed by their families, have never wavered in their quest for academic, sporting and cultural excellence.

Who is served by belittling, or condemning, the distinctions conferred upon these children? Who is served by an ideology that refuses to recognise that crucial aspect of the human spirit which refuses to accept the brute statistical reality that many are called but few are chosen?"

So, who said that? Milton Friedman? Ronald Reagan? Ayn Rand? No; those were the words of Chris Trotter -yes, that's right, Chris Trotter- on Friday.

A rather remarkable change of heart for a man who said that "All my life I have given thought only to those with no hope of receiving the glittering prizes. Even when (very occasionally) I received one myself, I could not help feeling that tug of guilt; that blush of embarrassment at being distinguished from my peers." His upcoming columns may be rather interesting!

Full revelation at the Dominion Post.

Obama: New Frontiers for the Republicans?

With Obama's election result as the new President of the United States, America's taken a big leap to the Left.

However, this election result isn't about the new found sense of "hope" in American politics; it's a reaction to the smack of conservatism and a lack of willing to make proper free market reforms that have destroyed the Republican Party. It's Bush's budget deficits and Greenspan's policies of inflation, disguised as capitalism, which have triggered a reaction against the Republican Party in this election; and despite distancing himself from Bush rather well, McCain suffered for the same reasons that the NZ Labour Party is doing so.

And it's for precisely that same reason that Ronald Reagan did so much to help his party in the 1980s. America was hurting from the Oil Woes of the 1970s, and could not afford to look weak in front of the Soviet Union. Instead of following the detente policies of Jimmy Carter, he was a charismatic leader who made many substantial reforms, and in doing so made the Republican Party the party of reform.

Now, America is facing another economic crisis, high oil prices, a huge national debt, and a war on terror which has not delivered the results it promised (not that the terrorists shouldn't be hunted down and punished, but the general lack of doing so isn't helping). The Republicans have completely gone back on their principles, crying out about the "greed" on Wall Street* and how we'd all be better if we weren't unselfish. Philosophically, they are no different to the Democrats.

And that's where the problem lies.

So, hopefully, the overall outcome of this election will be good for America, as not only will Obama, providing he does try to keep his promises, prove socialism a disaster, but the Republicans will actually get back to their original principles of small government, and laissez-faire, with recent evidence and anecdotes to base the claims upon. The only question to ask now is, which politician is willing to promote the free market anymore? Best to promote socialism and the "all things to all men" policy under the guise of the free market, and do the same when socialism proves a disaster!

*Where do you not find "greed"?

Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics

Some sense on the US election and politics in general today comes from John Stossel, who does hit show "20/20" in America, from his Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Hope you enjoy 'em! (first three from Not PC)

Ayn Rand Quote

Although written in 1960, this quote of Ayn Rand's rings as true today as it was back then, especially in light of the current financial crisis. It's been circling around the blogosphere, so it's here if you haven't seen it.

"People seem to insist on talking - and on carefully saying nothing. The evasiveness, the dullness, the gray conformity of today's intellectual expressions sound like the voices of men under censorship - where no censorship exists. ... The truth about the intellectual state of the modern world, the characteristic peculiar to the twentieth century, which distinguishes it from other periods of cultural crises, is the fact that what people are seeking is not the answers to problems, but the reassurance that no answers are possible."

Go into a book shop, wander over to the politics section, and you'll see what she means.

Te Aro Meeting

The Te Aro Valley Meeting is usually one of the most entertaining political meetings in New Zealand, with good justification. Luckily, I was there on Tuesday to support Bernard Darnton, the Libz candidate running in Wellington Central, and there was a good Libertarianz turn out to the meeting.

The Highlights:

1) Michael Appleby, the candidate for the Aotearoa Legalise Cannibis Party -he was really funny, and said afterwards that he's "a libertarian at heart".

2) The Worker's Party candidate looked like he'd walked straight out of the 1930s.

3) Meeting up with the other Libz (normally, Tuesday's our meeting night, and we did pop around to a local bar for a few minutes) and seeing Peter McCaffrey from ACT on Campus again -he's a great guy.

4) Bernard's answer to the question about which party he'd vote for, if not his own. His answer: Labour -for comedic value! (and to show the NZ public the evils of big government)

Lowlights:

1) Sue Kedgley -there aren't strong enough words that I could use to desribe her! She was (/is) very maternalistic in her demeanor and politics, and someone who wouldn't think twice about controlling every aspect of your life.

2) The United Future Candidate -he was younger than all the other candidates and obviously had no idea about what he was promoting, and performed a highly irritationg song/rap at the end of the meeting.

3) All the other leftist candidates proposing the same "all things to all men" policy.

All in all, it was a much more interesting political meeting than the last one I attended (in middle-class Eastbourne)!

Catholic Stupidity

The residents of the Vatican City have said many stupid things in the past, but few of them can get much stupider than this:

"Politics needs religion," Cardinal Bertone said in a speech published by the Vatican mouthpiece L'Osservatore Romano. "When instead God is ignored, the ability to respect rights and recognise the common good begins to disappear."

Are we talking about the same religion that started the Great Crusades? The God who sanctioned witchhunts? The Church that persecuted Galileo when he proved wrong Catholic scientific beliefs?

One of the fundamental principles of the Enlightenment was the seperation of Church and State, that the church (or any religious institution) played no role in the political development of nations and governments. It was done with good reason, too. Perhaps the Cardinal should look to the places where religion does play a big role in politics. Places like Nigeria, the US South, and, of course, the Middle East -all of whom are backwards in comparison to the rest of the world.

However, maybe he does have a point -so we can be shown again how bad religion is in politics.

The Price We Pay

Every day, we hear socialists expounding the benefits of the welfare state, and paternalistic governmental policies. When asked about the expanding social problems within modern New Zealand society, the answer is something along the lines of "more welfare ... more spending ... more intervention in people's lives. Of course, Roger Douglas is always to blame.

The price we pay for letting socialists get away with expanding the government to a size in which it is so concerned with what's happening in the lives of productive, good people that it largely ignores the true problems of the welfare state, is, in the case of one Aucklander, murder.

However, it is not merely big government which is to blame here -the underlying cause of big government is, and why it intervenes in the lives of productive people in order to give money to criminals (this isn't the first case).

The underlying factor, behind the government's size and the sanction of criminals, is political correctness, fueled by the moral equivalency of modern philosophical and political thought. It's the idea that the murderer is the true victim of an "oppressive society", and that the man who was murdered deserved it (considering, after all, that he's a businessman; one of the most hated professions by socialists). If he gets stabbed or shot, moral equivalency says: "so what?"

And it's precisely because of political correctness (and its predecessors) that we have a big, intrusive government in the first place, and that the government considers wealth an object of restribution -on the basis of need- which:

a) destroys the self-esteem of welfare recipients;
b) provides no economic incentive to produce wealth; and
c) sends out the impression that the "need" of welfare recipients must come before the production of wealth, and as thus the people who produce wealth are viewed with suspicion.

The entire premise of the welfare state is based on the irrational thought that wealth isn't created; it just simply lands in the hands of certain people through luck, or "greed". It pays no attention to the fact that material resources, in the ground, by themselves, mean nothing.

Only man, through the use of his mind, can determine the proper use of resources -through the market's laws of supply and demand. Only man can put a value on a certain resource; and apply his mind in order to make the largest number of uses a resource can have, a reality.

Socialism and political correctness ignores this. The moral standard, according to both, is "need" -not man's life and happiness. Until we finally wake up to this, and realise what a philosophical scam socialism is, the victim count will rise.

And the Difference Between the Candidates is...?

Paul McKeever, a Canadian SOLOist, has an outstanding article about the two US Presidential Candidates. I particularly like this snippet:

"McCain condemned the “me-first, country-second crowd”. He said he intends to honour the Stanley family for their sacrifice of their son. He told a touching tale of how he used to to do things “for [his] own pleasure; [his] own pride”, and how he “…didn’t think there was a cause more important than” himself. He explained that, thereafter, he discovered “the limits of [his] selfish independence”, learned that “no man can always stand alone”, and found that “nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself”. In short: it is right to sacrifice others, it is right to sacrifice oneself, and sacrifice will make you happy. Shorter still: dying makes one happiest of all.

Obama carved a path in the opposite direction, not referring to “sacrifice” at all. Instead, he explained, the “promise of America” is “the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper.” Obama explained that that promise “…has led immigrants to cross oceans and pioneers to travel west…”.

The difference is astounding. Whereas McCain says it’s right to sacrifice of oneself, Obama says it is right to move where you will be kept by others."

Truly revealing.

However, I'm going for McCain in this one. Although, like his Democrat counterpart, he pays lip service to altruism, he:

a) wants to lower taxes in general; whereas Obama is all for raising taxes across the board (disgustingly, to the applause of many of his supporters), and the redistribution of wealth.

b) wants to continue fighting the War on Terror, which is, at best, something Obama is trying to avoid (even though McCain and Palin seem to be justifying the War on Terror as "God's plan" -sounds similar to jihad?)

With candidates like these two, I can see why most Americans don't vote.

Student Stupidity

The recent challenge put out to students at Auckland University granting $3,700 to any student who makes a successful citizen's arrest of Condoleezza Rice during her recent visit to New Zealand represents no more than stupidity on behalf of David Do, the President of the typical leftist student group Auckland University Students' Association.

The prize money was offered to any citizen who could arrest Rice for, according to the President of the Students' Association, "overseeing the illegal invasion and continued occupation of Iraq".

Left-wing students in New Zealand have had a long history of idiotic anti-US demonstrations. First, it was against American occupation in Vietnam -but never mind the North Vietnamese. Then it was against American nuclear submarines in NZ waters -submarines that have NEVER presented any threat to New Zealanders. Now, it is against the American occupation in Iraq.

But do any of these students recognize that the increased US presence in Iraq since the troop surge has actually led to a huge decrease in violence in Iraq? Have they considered that very little violence in Iraq is actually committed by fundamentalist Muslims -not Americans? Have they considered the effects of radical Islamism on Iraq?

The answer, as always, is no. Instead, they run a smear campaign against America -which is actually doing something right. Unfortunately for the socialist students, it's a bad cover of their true campaign against capitalism, individual rights and Western Civilisation.