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Revolutions Eat Their Parents – Article by Peter St. Onge

Revolutions Eat Their Parents – Article by Peter St. Onge

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The New Renaissance Hat
Peter St. Onge
January 13, 2015
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Left-wing revolution is one of history’s biggest bait-and-switches. Both for the intellectuals who hanker for the grapeshot, and for the marginalized peoples who get concentration camps instead of the anti-capitalist utopia they were promised.

“Revolutions eat their children.” This observation, by a journalist during the French Revolution, was only partly true. In reality, revolutions eat their parents. In particular, history’s left-wing revolutions eat the left-wing intellectuals who made them happen. By “left-wing” here I mean revolutions that explicitly aim to use government power to reshuffle society. To remake society so it matches whatever version of “justice” strikes its promoters as attractive.

Of course, in such reformist revolutions the eggheads are just an appetizer. History’s reformist revolutions move straight on to the main course: the marginalized and minorities who were often the revolution’s most passionate supporters to begin with.

The left-wing revolutions of the twentieth century have all followed this pattern: midwifed by utopian intellectuals, power is quickly seized by political entrepreneurs who play to the basest instincts of the common people. Even in the most “civilized” places, such as “anything goes” Weimar Germany or 1950s “playground of the stars” Cuba, these newly enthroned are happy to see those eggheads and their “perverted” friends interred, tortured, hung from the nearest lamp post.

The litany is depressing. Especially for any tenured radical drawing taxpayer money to cheer on the violence. Mao famously boasted of “burying 46,000 scholars alive” meaning he shipped them wholesale to concentration camps so they would shut up and die. Pol Pot’s radical communist movement famously executed intellectuals in the thousands, extending to anybody who wore glasses. Even the supposedly “cool” regimes like Fidel Castro set up concentration camps for homosexuals, while the Soviet Union illegalized homosexuality for over fifty years, outdoing by a mile that light-weight hater Putin.

Most ironically, given his campus stardom, radical hero Che Guevara gleefully and personally executed homosexuals, whom he detested, while helping set up Fidel’s network of camps across the county to torture gays and effeminate men into renouncing their allegedly wicked perversions that were supposedly the product of morally corrosive capitalism.

Why do reformist revolutions enjoy executing both left-wing intellectuals and the very “vulnerable groups” so near to the leftist heart? Because power has its own logic. Because any government based on violence has to constantly watch its back. And that means it has to appeal to the basest instincts of the masses. If the masses hate gays, or Jews, or the eggheads, then the government will do what it’s told, stuffing the Gulags with gays, Jews, and eggheads. What the basest people hate, omnipotent government hates.

Why are intellectuals so blind to this horrible pattern? Presumably, they hope this time is different and that the campus radicals and their pet politicians will hold on this time. If history is a guide, they will not. Instead, their revolution will get snatched from them by political entrepreneurs and turned into their worst nightmare: a revolution that is anti-intellectual, anti-gay, racist, and anti-Semitic. No matter how pure the birth of the revolution, history suggests this is what it will come to.

This gives no pleasure to point out. None of us want radical leftists hanging from lampposts, or executed in Che’s office for his entertainment. What we do wish is that violence-promoting reformers would have a bit more respect for the fire they play with. For them to study a bit more history. To understand why it is, always and everywhere, so dangerous to ride the tiger of unlimited government.

The left thinks it can control the tiger of the masses unleashed. It cannot, and indeed it will be the first to hang. And that would be very sad for us all, left and right.

Peter St. Onge is an assistant professor at Taiwan’s Fengjia University College of Business. He blogs at Profits of Chaos.

This article was published on Mises.org and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution United States License, which requires that credit be given to the author.

We Must Proudly Reassert Free Speech and Universal Western Values – Video by G. Stolyarov II

We Must Proudly Reassert Free Speech and Universal Western Values – Video by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
January 12, 2015
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The horror of the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine – the murder of 17 people – journalists, policemen, and ordinary shoppers – by Wahhabist Islamist fanatics in Paris on January 7-9, 2015, highlights the stark threat that religious fanaticism poses to Western civilization. The perpetrators of this barbarism have thankfully been eliminated due to the concerted, decisive, and careful work of French police, who managed to destroy the murderers and hostage-takers without harming or terrorizing innocent, peaceful civilians in the process. But unless the Western world resolutely affirms the untrammeled right of free expression of ideas, the already commonplace heckler’s veto over speech will turn into the murderer’s veto.

Mr. Stolyarov explains the need for an assertive revival of Western Enlightenment values (which are also universal human values) and a widespread, unconditional defense of freedom of speech – in order to prevent humankind from relapsing into the muck of barbarism.

References

– “We Must Proudly Reassert Free Speech and Universal Western Values” – Article by G. Stolyarov II – January 12, 2015
– “Excellent News from Turkey Regarding the Possibility of a More Humane Islam” – Post by G. Stolyarov II – November 28, 2008 – Excellent News from Turkey Regarding the Possibility of a More Humane Islam
– “German Newspaper Attacked After Publishing Charlie Hebdo Cartoons” – The World Post – Kirsten Grieshaber – January 11, 2015
– “These Are The Charlie Hebdo Cartoons That Terrorists Thought Were Worth Killing Over” – The Huffington Post – Catherine Taibi – January 7, 2015
– “Transhumanism” – Wikipedia
– “Wahhabism” – Wikipedia

We Must Proudly Reassert Free Speech and Universal Western Values – Article by G. Stolyarov II

We Must Proudly Reassert Free Speech and Universal Western Values – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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G. Stolyarov II
January 12, 2015
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je_suis_charlie_fist_and_pencil

The horror of the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine – the murder of 17 people – journalists, policemen, and ordinary shoppers – by Wahhabist Islamist fanatics in Paris on January 7-9, 2015, highlights the stark threat that religious fanaticism poses to Western civilization. The perpetrators of this barbarism have thankfully been eliminated due to the concerted, decisive, and careful work of French police, who managed to destroy the murderers and hostage-takers without harming or terrorizing innocent, peaceful civilians in the process. But unless the Western world resolutely affirms the untrammeled right of free expression of ideas, the already commonplace heckler’s veto over speech will turn into the murderer’s veto.

Anything but complete, unconditional condemnation of this attack allows the murderers and thugs to win. Anyone who claims, “I condemn the attack, but…” is blaming the victims and suggesting that any provocation, any motivation is capable of forming an acceptable causal connection between peaceful expression of ideas and murder. For those who resolutely defend the Western values of individual rights and secularism, the only question should be, “Does the expression of a viewpoint ever, under any circumstances, justify the death penalty?” If the answer is a resounding “No!” – as it should be – then there can be no “but…”.

The Western values that developed over millennia of philosophical evolution and finally emerged brilliantly during the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment are universal human values – affirming human dignity and decency, the potential for peaceful cooperation among diverse viewpoints, the superiority of the creative mind over brute force, the potential for the human condition to be elevated through reason and persuasion, not intimidation. The Age of Enlightenment tamed Christianity in the West, turning it from a religion of bloodthirsty Crusaders, superstitious witch-hunters, and intolerant inquisitors, into a relatively soft cultural force that, at any given time, largely echoes the prevailing moral climate some thirty years prior. Christians who have been influenced by the Enlightenment – and even those who reject it, who have nonetheless found it necessary to adapt to the world it shaped for over two centuries – accept, with the exception of a fringe of fundamentalist fanatics, the basic preconditions for life in a civilized society, including the respect for the political, economic, and philosophical freedoms of those who think differently from them.

The Islamic world still awaits its own Age of Enlightenment, though some Muslims have, to their credit, accepted the Western Enlightenment as their own or attempted a courageous modernization of Islamic theology. Those Muslims who say “Je suis Charlie” are my allies, and I wish to see more Muslims embrace this attitude. But they have an uphill battle to fight – not just against their fanatical co-religionists, for whom no human life is sacred, but against the purveyors of postmodernist political correctness in the West, for whom the avoidance of giving offense trumps the necessity of standing on principle when the stakes are high. And the stakes are high indeed: if the murderer’s veto can result in any idea becoming inexpressible due to self-censorship and pressure from the “reputable” elements of society, then it does not matter what laws or constitutions say. If a sufficiently large element of society exists, whose members have a hair-trigger for offense and will kill you if you infringe upon their arbitrary taboos, then freedom of speech becomes a legal fiction, and de facto blasphemy law is the reality.

The best protection for freedom of thought is its frequent and prominent exercise by as many people as possible. Had prominent newspapers and magazines given frequent circulation to the wittily and refreshingly irreverent cartoons that Charlie Hebdo produced – which does not, by the way, rule out also publishing critiques or rebuttals from any other peaceful perspectives – then the murderous quartet that planned the Paris attacks would have had trouble choosing a target. Indeed, much about Western culture and lifestyles “offends” Wahhabist Muslims today, yet we do not see Westerners being routinely shot for failing to pray five times per day, facing Mecca. Almost everything about Western science, representational art, music, and clothing is inimical to Wahhabist Islam, yet the purveyors of these ubiquitous aspects of Western life – many Muslims among them, too – go unharmed by the fanatics. If politically correct fears are allowed to marginalize any form of expression for fear that it might “offend”, then any person who dares stand up for that expression – as is that person’s inalienable right – becomes a target for those who would relinquish even their own lives in order to cow a society into submission to their twisted, progress-stifling ideology. Political correctness accelerates the transformation of rights into taboos, until nothing of importance can be said, and any act of substance, any design to improve the human condition, would involve maneuvering through a minefield of hysterical, volatile, contradictory, and irrational “sensibilities” of the offended parties du jour.

So what is the solution? The elimination of the murderers themselves does not guarantee that similar murders will not recur. Indeed, the few courageous newspapers that reprinted the Charlie Hebdo cartoons have themselves become victims of threats and even an actual attack on the Hamburger Morgenpost in Germany. The solution is to resolutely reject victim-blaming, and for the prominent political, journalistic, and cultural figures of the Western world to themselves espouse the sentiments that the murderous fanatics considered so enraging. “Je suis Charlie” is a decent start, but a reiteration of the messages of particular cartoons would be far more effective. If the cartoons were republished on whitehouse.gov, parliament.uk, and elysee.fr, as well as the websites of all other national governments and publications with large readership, then a strong signal would be sent that Western societies still stand for the complete ability of any intellectual expression to occur, without its author receiving the death penalty or the kind of politically correct condemnation that invites the executioners to try. While it is not the role of governments to opine on matters of religion, it is their role to protect the rights of their constituents against infringement. Standing by the Charlie Hebdo cartoons – and similar critiques of any religion – would be a stand for the safety of anyone who would express a controversial or unpopular idea. Without a clear promise that such safety will be pursued, free speech means nothing in practice, since the expression solely of bland, prevailing, or popular ideas can occur in any society, with or without legal protections. We should be thankful to the few publications that did re-post the Charlie Hebdo cartoons – such as the Huffington Post, which presented a prominent sample here.

To encourage the expeditious arrival of an Islamic Enlightenment, a clear distinction between “moderate” and “radical” Muslims should be made. Every cultural figure of prominence should emphasize the following minimal criteria to be considered a “moderate” Muslim:

  • Complete rejection and denunciation of any killing motivated by religion
  • Opposition to the enactment of blasphemy laws or any laws prohibiting the criticism of any religion
  • Opposition to the legal establishment of Islamic sharia law in the West
  • Opposition to the persecution and/or prosecution of any person, Muslim or otherwise, who refuses to adhere to sharia law
  • Opposition to the persecution and/or prosecution of “apostates” who choose to leave Islam for any reason
  • Opposition to all laws that bring special restrictions upon women, homosexuals, atheists, and others, based on gender, sexual orientation, or lack of religious belief
  • Support for the right of those who disagree with any tenet or practice of any variant of Islam to peacefully express their disagreement or criticism, even if such expression is uncomfortable to some Muslims and offends their sensibilities
  • Recognition that any individual should have the right to draw Mohammad or any other religious figure, and the choice to exercise that right or not is a purely personal matter.

Finally, the alarming tendency of many long-time residents of European societies to drift toward fundamentalist Islam should be culturally combated by means of a New Renaissance of Western culture. For those who consider, rightly or wrongly, contemporary Western life to lack a sense of purpose or direction, there are far better antidotes than a murderous creed of militant fanaticism, whose spread is explained by its function as a “mind-virus” that short-circuits logical thinking and renders its carrier impervious to empirical evidence. Here, the damage done by the postmodernist critics of Western culture and its universal human values should also be reversed. In particular, the idea of progress – of the ability of humans to dramatically improve their condition through the application of reason, science, and technology – should be revived and asserted with renewed vigor in all areas of life. Beyond survival, what is the purpose of life? To achieve progress, to uplift human lives by harnessing the laws of nature to solve previously insoluble problems.

The humanism of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment should be extended into its logical next phase – transhumanism: the application of science and technology to overcome age-old limits to the human condition. The deployment of the next generations of technologies – from medical breakthroughs to efforts to colonize other worlds – should occur as rapidly as possible in all fields. No amount of help is excessive in pursuing this goal, and so anyone can find meaning in contributing. While we implement such a decisive push forward along the path of progress, we should also remember that we stand upon the shoulders of giants. Great historical achievements of Western art, music, science, literature, architecture, and engineering should be emphasized and celebrated. The achievements of Middle Eastern thinkers of the early Islamic era – prior to the lapse into doctrinaire orthodoxy that occurred due to Al-Ghazali’s influence during the 11th century – could also be incorporated into this celebrated legacy, as doing so would show many Muslims that their own cultural history offers a way out of the quagmire of fanatical intolerance. New cultural monuments should emerge, inspired by the achievements of the past but also embodying an aspiration toward a better future. The legacy of the Enlightenment, in particular, could by itself create an exquisitely sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and proudly assertive cultural manifestation that would have far more to recommend itself than an orthodoxy based on a seventh-century creed ill-adapted to a hyper-pluralistic world of accelerating technological progress.

The murder of human beings for the expression of ideas draws humankind back into the muck of barbarism. It has no place in the twenty-first century, and no part of the world can claim itself to be civilized unless it decisively resists and neutralizes such threats to free speech. The threats, however, have metastasized beyond the individuals who carry them out. A major reassertion of the universal human values of the Enlightenment must happen in order to defuse the hostile environment in which these threats incubate. All decent human beings everywhere are welcome to take part in the revival of these values. Perhaps one day all of us can once more raise our eyes to the stars, without the fear of descending into the quagmire of savagery in which humans murdered each other over disagreements for vast stretches of history, until the Enlightenment raised some of us out.

The Importance of Free Speech to Human Progress – Article by Iain Murray

The Importance of Free Speech to Human Progress – Article by Iain Murray

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Iain Murray
January 10, 2015
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From Principia Mathematica to Charlie Hebdo

 

The massacre of 12 cartoonists and journalists at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris this week should remind us to ask: Why is free speech so important?

It is more than an inalienable individual right; it is fundamental to human progress. That is why it is one of the most important institutions of liberty.

When we look at the history of the freedom of speech in the West, we see that early on it was tied up with the freedom of the press, which is why the terms are used interchangeably in American constitutional theory. Yet, for most of the West’s history, the idea of “publishing” was meaningless. Books were copied by hand, first by scribes hired by Roman nobles to copy books they liked, then by monks in medieval scriptoria, with the more ancient texts copied as practice for copying the more important religious texts. As a result, many texts were lost, with others surviving by mere chance.

Having assumed the role of guardian of learning, the medieval church was ill-disposed toward innovations that threatened its position. The suppression of early English versions of the Bible is a case in point. Information traveled slowly, impeding the progress of intellectual innovation.

The printing press changed all that, as it brought about the first series of real struggles over freedom of speech. Ideas could travel more quickly, and literacy exploded.

As people could finally read the Bible for themselves, Reformation movements grew all over Europe. Then they took to using the press to spread other ideas. In response, the church and its allies in positions of power took steps to restrain this new free press. In fact, early copyright law arose from efforts to regulate the production of printers.

It should not surprise us that early libertarians were often printers. “Freeborn John” Lilburne was first arrested for printing and circulating unlicensed books.

The great poet John Milton wrote perhaps the first great defense of free speech when the English republican Parliament reintroduced censorship via the Licensing Order of 1643 (censorship had effectively been abolished in 1640 along with the Star Chamber, which tried Lilburne). In his Areopagitica, Milton passionately demanded freedom of the press and tolerance of heterodox publications, saying, “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”

The licensing order lapsed in 1694 as a result of the Glorious Revolution of 1685, which instituted a more liberal constitution in England and helped to inspire the American Revolution — and eventually the Bill of Rights and First Amendment. But the Areopagitica is still with us. Fittingly, the US Supreme Court cited it as an authority on the inherent value of false statements in the landmark case New York Times v. Sullivan:

Even a false statement may be deemed to make a valuable contribution to public debate, since it brings about “the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” Mill, On Liberty (Oxford: Blackwell, 1947), p. 15; see also Milton, Areopagitica, in Prose Works (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1959), vol. 2, p. 561.

The free press opened new communication channels for theoretical innovation. It is often noted that Sir Isaac Newton was born the day Galileo died. What enabled Newton to take Galileo’s experiments and turn them into modern physics was the printing press. Newton published Principia Mathematica in 1687, and revised it in 1713 and 1726. The book was published by the Royal Society, founded in Oxford in 1660, which essentially invented peer review (see this here fascinating series of videos on the society’s role in the invention of modern science). Newton’s book spread throughout Europe, which would not have been possible under earlier regimes where printing was tightly controlled.

Central to the principle of a free press is the right to be wrong — which enables peer review and criticism in the first place. It is also central to scientific and technological innovation and experimentation, and therefore also central to economic progress, which has led to the great explosion in human welfare we have seen over the last two centuries. Free speech allows more ideas to “have sex,” to use Matt Ridley’s phrase, and that is why societies that are frightened by the consequences of this ideological sexual revolution are those with the most severe censorship laws.

At this point, one might argue that it is absurd to compare a “blasphemous” cartoon to the Principia Mathematica. But that would be a mistake. As Stephen Law has written for the Center for Inquiry, the point of such cartoons is not to cause offense, but something far greater:

More often than not, the lampooning is done with intention of shattering, if only for a moment, the protective façade of reverence and deference that has been erected around some iconic figure or belief, so that we can all catch a glimpse of how things really are.

It is exactly that goal — to help us determine what actually is, rather than what is simply asserted — that free speech and free inquiry make possible. As an institution of liberty, free speech must be defended wherever it is attacked. (My colleague Hans Bader has written elsewhere about letting down our guard.) Those who seek to suppress free speech want to keep mankind mired in poverty and ignorance, subject to their own whims and beliefs. They cannot be allowed to succeed.

Iain Murray is vice president at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

This article was originally published by The Foundation for Economic Education.

The Real Meaning of the 1914 Christmas Truce – Article by Ron Paul

The Real Meaning of the 1914 Christmas Truce – Article by Ron Paul

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Ron Paul
December 28, 2014
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One hundred years ago last week, on Christmas Eve, 1914, German and British soldiers emerged from the horrors of World War One trench warfare to greet each other, exchange food and gifts, and to wish each other a Merry Christmas. What we remember now as the “Christmas Truce” began with soldiers singing Christmas carols together from in the trenches. Eventually the two sides climbed out of the trenches and met in person. In the course of this two-day truce, which lasted until December 26, 1914, the two sides also exchanged prisoners, buried their dead, and even played soccer with each other.
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How amazing to think that the celebration of the birth of the Prince of Peace could bring a brief pause in one of the most destructive wars in history. How sad that it was not to last.

The Christmas Truce showed that given the choice, people do not want to be out fighting and killing each other. It is incredibly damaging to most participants in war to face the task of killing their fellow man. That is one reason we see today an epidemic of PTSD and suicides among US soldiers sent overseas on multiple deployments.

The Christmas Truce in 1914 was joyous for the soldiers, but it was dangerous for the political leadership on both sides. Such fraternization with the “enemy” could not be tolerated by the war-makers. Never again was the Christmas Truce repeated on such a scale, as the governments of both sides explicitly prohibited any repeat of such a meeting. Those who had been greeting each other had to go back to killing each other on orders from those well out of harm’s way.

As much as national governments would like to stamp out such humanization of the “enemy,” it is still the case today that soldiers on the ground will meet and share thoughts with those they are meant to be killing. Earlier this month, soldiers from opposing sides of the Ukraine civil war met in eastern Ukraine to facilitate the transfer of supplies and the rotation of troops. They shook hands and wished that the war would be over. One army battalion commander was quoted as saying at the meeting, “I think it’s a war between brothers that nobody wants. The top brass should sort things out. And us? We are soldiers, we do what we’re told.”

I am sure these same sentiments exist in many of the ongoing conflicts that are pushed by the governments involved – and in many cases by third-party governments seeking to benefit from the conflict.

The encouraging message we should take from the Christmas Truce of 100 years ago is that given the opportunity, most humans do not wish to kill each other. As Nazi leader Hermann Goering said during the Nuremberg war crimes trials, “naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany.” But, as he added, “the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

This is where our efforts must be focused. To oppose all war propaganda perpetrated by governments against the will of the people.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Janet Yellen’s Christmas Gift to Wall Street – Article by Ron Paul

Janet Yellen’s Christmas Gift to Wall Street – Article by Ron Paul

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Ron Paul
December 21, 2014
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Last week we learned that the key to a strong economy is not increased production, lower unemployment, or a sound monetary unit. Rather, economic prosperity depends on the type of language used by the central bank in its monetary policy statements. All it took was one word in the Federal Reserve Bank’s press release — that the Fed would be “patient” in raising interest rates to normal levels — and stock markets went wild. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average had their best gains in years, with the Dow gaining nearly 800 points from Wednesday to Friday and the S&P gaining almost 100 points to close within a few points of its all-time high.

Just think of how many trillions of dollars of financial activity that occurred solely because of that one new phrase in the Fed’s statement. That so much in our economy hangs on one word uttered by one institution demonstrates not only that far too much power is given to the Federal Reserve, but also how unbalanced the American economy really is.

While the real economy continues to sputter, financial markets reach record highs, thanks in no small part to the Fed’s easy money policies. After six years of zero interest rates, Wall Street has become addicted to easy money. Even the slightest mention of tightening monetary policy, and Wall Street reacts like a heroin addict forced to sober up cold turkey.

While much of the media paid attention to how long interest rates would remain at zero, what they largely ignored is that the Fed is, “maintaining its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities in agency mortgage-backed securities.” Look at the Fed’s balance sheet and you’ll see that it has purchased $25 billion in mortgage-backed securities since the end of QE3. Annualized, that is $200 billion a year. That may not be as large as QE2 or QE3, but quantitative easing, or as the Fed likes to say “accommodative monetary policy” is far from over.

What gets lost in all the reporting about stock market numbers, unemployment rate figures, and other economic data is the understanding that real wealth results from production of real goods, not from the creation of money out of thin air. The Fed can rig the numbers for a while by turning the monetary spigot on full blast, but the reality is that this is only papering over severe economic problems. Six years after the crisis of 2008, the economy still has not fully recovered, and in many respects is not much better than it was at the turn of the century.

Since 2001, the United States has grown by 38 million people and the working-age population has grown by 23 million people. Yet the economy has only added eight million jobs. Millions of Americans are still unemployed or underemployed, living from paycheck to paycheck, and having to rely on food stamps and other government aid. The Fed’s easy money has produced great profits for Wall Street but it has not helped — and cannot help — Main Street.

An economy that holds its breath every six weeks, looking to parse every single word coming out of Fed Chairman Janet Yellen’s mouth for indications of whether to buy or sell, is an economy that is fundamentally unsound. The Fed needs to stop creating trillions of dollars out of thin air, let Wall Street take its medicine, and allow the corrections that should have taken place in 2001 and 2008 to liquidate the bad debts and malinvestments that permeate the economy. Only then will we see a real economic recovery.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

House Chooses New Cold War With Russia – Article by Ron Paul

House Chooses New Cold War With Russia – Article by Ron Paul

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Ron Paul
December 7, 2014
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Last week the US House voted overwhelmingly in favor of an anti-Russia resolution so full of war propaganda that it rivals the rhetoric from chilliest era of the Cold War. Ironically, much of the bill condemns Russia for doing exactly what the US government has been doing for years in Syria and Ukraine!

For example, one of the reasons to condemn Russia in the resolution is the claim that Russia is imposing economic sanctions on Ukraine. But how many rounds of sanctions has US government imposed on Russia for much of the past year? I guess sanctions are only bad when used by countries Washington doesn’t like.

The resolution condemns Russia for selling weapons to the Assad government in Syria. But the US has been providing weapons to the rebels in Syria for several years, with many going to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS that the US is currently bombing!

The resolution condemns what it claims is a Russian invasion of Ukraine (for which it offers no proof) and Russian violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. But it was the US, by backing a coup against the democratically elected Yanukovich government in February, that first violated that country’s sovereignty. And as far as a military presence in Ukraine, it is the US that has openly sent in special forces and other military advisors to assist the government there. How many times have top US military and CIA officials visited Kiev to offer advice and probably a lot more?

The resolution condemns Russia for what it claims are attempts to “illicitly acquire information” about the US government. But we learned from the Snowden revelations that the NSA is spying on most rest of the world, including our allies! How can the US claim the moral authority to condemn such actions in others?

The resolution attacks Russian state-funded media, claiming that they “distort public opinion.” At the same time the bill demands that the thousands of US state-funded media outlets step up their programming to that part of the world! It also seeks “appropriate responses” to Russian media influence in the rest of the world. That should be understood to mean that US diplomats would exert pressure on foreign countries to shut down television networks like RT.

The resolution condemns what it claims is Russia’s provision of weapons to the Russian-speaking eastern part of Ukraine, which seeks closer ties with Russia, while demanding that the US government start providing weapons to its proxies on the other side.

As I have said, this is one of the worst pieces of legislation I can remember. And trust me, I have seen some pretty bad bills. It is nothing but war propaganda and it will likely lead to all sorts of unintended consequences.

Only ten Members – five from each party – opposed this reckless resolution. Probably most of those who voted in favor did not bother to read the bill. Others who read it and still voted in favor may have calculated that the bill would not come up in the Senate. So they could vote yes and please the hawks in their districts – and more importantly remain in good graces of the hawks who run foreign policy in Washington – without having to worry about the consequences if the bill became law.

Whatever the case, we must keep an eye on those Members of Congress who vote to take us closer to war with Russia. We should thank those ten Members who were able to resist the war propaganda. The hawks in Washington believe that last month’s election gave them free rein to start more wars. Now more than ever they must be challenged!

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

North Korea: From Hermit Kingdom to Merchant Kingdom? – Article by J. Wiltz

North Korea: From Hermit Kingdom to Merchant Kingdom? – Article by J. Wiltz

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J. Wiltz
December 7, 2014
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Toward the end of her remarkable speech at this year’s One Young World Summit in Dublin, North Korean defector and human rights activist Yeon-mi Park listed three ways in which ordinary people can help freedom-seekers in North Korea:

One, educate yourself so you can raise awareness about the human crisis in North Korea. Two, help and support North Korean refugees who are trying to escape to freedom. Three, petition China to stop repatriation.

To this list, Swiss-born businessman Felix Abt might add a fourth suggestion: do business with them. This suggestion forms the heart of Abt’s new book, A Capitalist in North Korea: My Seven Years in the Hermit Kingdom (Tuttle Publishing 2014).

From Hermit Kingdom to Merchant Kingdom

 

Those familiar with the situation in North Korea (officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK) will not find Abt’s title as shocking as it’s probably intended to be. Indeed, as early as 2009, and undoubtedly even before that, Western media outlets were reporting on “the secret capitalist economy of North Korea” (i.e., the black market) which sprung up in response to the famine of the mid-1990s. Writing for the Washington Post in May 2014, Yeon-mi Park herself even referred to the young people currently living in North Korea as the “Jangmadang, or ‘Black Market Generation’.”  These young people, she says, are far more individualistic than their predecessors, far less loyal to the ruling Kim regime, and infinitely more likely to be exposed to outside media and information.

Abt’s book echoes and elaborates on all of these points. Drawing on his personal experience as the foreign head of a North Korean pharmaceutical company, as well as a co-founder of the Pyongyang Business School, he details the DPRK’s early forays into franchising, customer service, online forums(!), bicycle merchants, performance incentives, and even that most un-socialist of all market activities, advertising.

These ideas and practices are still very new to the world’s most notorious “bastion of communism” (Abt’s words), but already the government is being forced to make gradual changes to its market policies. Two quick examples: “More flexible opening hours are allowed for markets, and more companies are permitted to interact with businesses abroad.”

In spite of these positive developments, however, Abt laments, “There appears to be no end in sight for the severe economic problems of the world’s most centrally planned economy.” He divides the blame for these problems among several perpetrators: (1) North Korean military policy; (2) over-dependence on foreign humanitarian aid; and (3) foreign sanctions and embargoes.

“North Korea,” says Abt, “is the most heavily sanctioned nation in the world, and no other people have had to deal with the massive quarantines that Western and Asian powers have enclosed around its economy.”

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

 

To be sure, arguments against North Korean sanctions are a tough sell, given the country’s well-documented human rights abuses and annual nuclear threats against the United States and South Korea. Several Amazon reviewers have accused Abt of simply parroting North Korean propaganda, calling him “Pyongyang Pete” and “the Kim Dynasty’s useful idiot.”  Even many libertarians, long opposed to the Cuban embargo, can probably agree that many of North Korea’s domestic and international woes are self-inflicted.

For example, in 2006, the former president of South Korea’s largest dairy company came up with the strategy to provide every child in North Korea a daily glass of milk. “Charities and wealthy individuals committed to the project,” Abt writes, “but after Kim Jong Il’s first nuclear test, the prospect quickly vanished.”

Abt also notes that in 2007, the website DailyNK reported that North Korea spends up to 40 percent of its annual budget on monuments and celebrations dedicated to the Kim regime. Abt recounts how he “gasped” at the sheer size of these monuments, as well as other buildings like the Koryo Hotel where “up to 1000 guests can stay in 504 rooms on 45 floors.”

But read to the end of A Capitalist in North Korea and you’ll find that “fewer than a third of all hotel rooms are occupied during most weeks.” Pyongyang tourist videos on YouTube corroborate this point. On almost every day of any given year, the 504 rooms of the Koryo Hotel sit empty (a predictable side effect of the DPRK’s notoriously tight travel restrictions). This is not what an efficient allocation of resources looks like.

Moreover, the North Korean government sometimes reacts to the market activities of its foreign investors with repression and cronyism. In 2006, a Chinese-run pharmacy was closed because it posed a threat to the socialist public health system. Several years later, a German internet provider was able to lobby the government, making it impossible for other foreign-invested businesses to install their own satellite dishes.

“So how will reform come about?”

 

And yet, not one of these things — not the nuclear tests, the empty hotels, or the shady business dealings — could in any way be prevented by sanctions that target foreign banks, farm equipment, fertilizer, mobile phones, alcoholic drinks, French cheese, or luxury items. “The current sanctions have not only failed to curtail the nuclear ambitions and human rights abuses of the ambitious North Korean leader,” says Emma Campbell in a May 2013 article for East Asia Forum, “they are also constraining the actions of humanitarian NGOs trying to carry out life-saving activities inside the DPRK.”

Among these life-saving activities is the development of a market-minded merchant class that is less dependent on the regime and better able to conduct business with the outside world in a peaceful, profitable manner. While Abt is clear that doing business in North Korea is by no means a guaranteed success, he rightly sees it as one of the best methods for improving the lives of millions of North Koreans caught between domestic and foreign repression. “Business,” he writes, “is the way forward for Kim’s country … a promising way to open and change the hitherto isolated country and the course of things for the better.”

The decades-long task of opening North Korea to the outside world may very well be accomplished by first opening the outside world to North Korea.

J. Wiltz writes from Anyang, South Korea, where he teaches English and blogs at A Day with J.

This article was published on Mises.org and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution United States License, which requires that credit be given to the author.

Mockingjay: Are You Uncomfortable? – Article by Sarah Skwire

Mockingjay: Are You Uncomfortable? – Article by Sarah Skwire

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The New Renaissance Hat
Sarah Skwire
December 4, 2014
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The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part One, directed by Francis Lawrence, 2014.

Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay, Scholastic Press, 2010.

Mockingjay – Part One is an uncomfortable movie. I suspect this is why it has not been greeted with the praise that was heaped on The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. But I’m glad this first part of Mockingjay isn’t comfortable. It’s not supposed to be.

As Mockingjay opens, Katniss Everdeen has been rescued from her second appearance in the vicious Hunger Games — where the children of formerly rebellious districts battle to the death to entertain the pampered citizens of the tyrannical Capitol — and is being sheltered by the residents of District 13. Formerly an area that specialized in nuclear technology and military weaponry, District 13 is the only district in Katniss’s country of Panem that can hope to have the wherewithal to overthrow the Capitol’s control.

Katniss, as the winner of one Hunger Games and the destroyer of the arena where the even more vicious “Quarter Quell” Hunger Games took place, is a potent symbol of survival and resistance. Peeta Mellark — her friend and co-competitor — is another.

Much of the plot of this first of two Mockingjay movies focuses on the machinations the two sides in the battle for Panem engage in to use Katniss and Peeta as symbols for their sides. Katniss, who had been forced to do endless public appearances as part of the publicity for the Hunger Games, is blunt about her lack of enthusiasm for this role.

What they want is for me to truly take on the role they designed for me. The symbol of the revolution. The Mockingjay. It isn’t enough, what I’ve done in the past, defying the Capitol in the Games, providing a rallying point. I must now become the actual leader, the fact, the voice, the embodiment of the revolution.…They have a whole team of people to make me over, dress me, write my speeches, orchestrate my appearances — as if that doesn’t sound horribly familiar — and all I have to do is play my part.

Katniss is, quite simply, tired of being used.

That exhaustion runs through the novel and was, for me, convincingly portrayed in the film. Watching Katniss be primped and dressed, yet again, to appear before the public and mouth unconvincing sentiments written for her by others; watching Katniss, yet again, realize that the survival of her family and her friends turns on her ability to persuade the people in charge of her that she is really trying her best to sell herself — we’re exhausted just watching.

But I think Mockingjay should make us more than just worn out. I think that if we’re watching carefully, it should make us very, very nervous as well.

I want to avoid potentially spoiling the second Mockingjay movie for those who haven’t read all the novels. So I shall just mention a few things that struck me, watching the film this week.

Did you notice how the leader of District 13, President Coin, first appeared as an administrator, reluctant to “use up all the air in the room” by giving long and flashy speeches? Did you notice that by the end of the film, she appeared to thoroughly enjoy her time on the balcony, to extend it, and to lengthen and elaborate her speeches? Did you notice her insistence on bringing Katniss out onto the balcony with her? Did you think, then, about Lord Acton’s warnings about the inevitable corruption that comes with power?

Did you notice that during the air raid, Plutarch Heavensbee — former game designer of the Hunger Games — sat beside President Coin while she ordered the oxygen in the District 13 bunkers to be cut to 14  percent? Did you remember, then, the way that Heavensbee ordered various torments added to the Hunger Games — poison gases, dangerous predators, fires, and floods — in order to produce a more interesting spectacle?

Did you notice how awkward it was, knowing Katniss’s whole history, to applaud and cheer for what should be a very sympathetic Hollywood-style band of brave rebels as they held up Katniss and her fellow shell-shocked competitors as little more than battle flags?

Did Mockingjay make you a little uncomfortable?

It should have.

And if the second film follows the plot of the novel, things are only going to get more uncomfortable from here on out.

When the lives of individuals are used as symbols for the purposes of politics, no one wins but the politicians. For those waiting to see the second half of Mockingjay, the question is whether everything that is human in Katniss — her love for her sister, her confused affections for Peeta and Gale Hawthorne, her complex friendships with people like Effie Trinket and Haymitch Abernathy — will be subsumed into the contested symbol of the Mockingjay. Or will Katniss be able to find a way, for one last time, to thwart those who want to use her as part of a bloody spectacle?

Sarah Skwire is a fellow at Liberty Fund, Inc. She is a poet and author of the writing textbook Writing with a Thesis.
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This article was originally published by The Foundation for Economic Education.
Transhuman Libertarianism – Article by Kyrel Zantonavitch

Transhuman Libertarianism – Article by Kyrel Zantonavitch

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Editor’s Note and Announcement: The Rational Argumentator is hosting a series of articles on the relationship between libertarianism and transhumanism and the question of whether, and – if so – in what manner and to what extent, advocates of indefinite life extension should ever pursue government funding or programs with the aim of lengthening human lifespans.

This article below presents a perspective from Kyrel Zantonavitch, who strongly argues against government support for life-extension research and instead sees solely private research as being the most capable of achieving indefinite lifespans in our lifetimes.

Mr. Stolyarov’s own views are detailed in his articles “Six Libertarian Reforms to Accelerate Life Extension” and “Liberty Through Long Life” and “Liberty or Death: Why Libertarians Should Proclaim That Death is Wrong“.

The Rational Argumentator invites all advocates of indefinite life extension to share their views regarding these questions, and many perspectives will be considered and published – so long as the authors genuinely support the goal of lengthening human lifespans through science and technology. All articles submitted in response to this request will be linked alongside one another once a critical mass has accumulated, so that readers would be able to analyze the viewpoints presented and formulate their own conclusions.

~ G. Stolyarov II, Editor-in-Chief, The Rational Argumentator, December 4, 2014

The New Renaissance Hat
Kyrel Zantonavitch
December 4, 2014
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All transhumanists are libertarians. They are all believers in, and future practitioners of, laissez-faire capitalism. They’re advocates of 100% liberty in politics, economics, and sociology. Transhumanists never initiate force against their fellow man; they never aggress upon or attack them. Transhumanists think people and property are sacred and untouchable. All transhumanists are political and socio-economic freedom-fighters and libertarians to the point of infinity.

Or at least they should be.

Because nothing advances human biological/physical development, and intellectual/spiritual ascent, faster than political and socio-economic freedom. Nothing improves quality and quantity of life more deftly or more powerfully. For immortality to have even a remote chance of being achievable within the next generation or two, government-protected justice and liberty must be pure and limitless.

Nothing generates more opportunity for general and particular success and triumph than freedom. Nothing germinates more innovation and genius — more radical and revolutionary brilliance. And make no mistake: immortality within the next 20-40 years will require a lot of innovation and genius.

For this and reasons of fundamental morality, massive government subsidies of science and medicine, via the evil and tyrannical welfare state, are emphatically not the way to go. It would be like suddenly, militarily seizing the powers of world government, and then trying to physically coerce almost everyone on Earth into studying technology and healthcare. Whips and guns (and chains and cattle-prods) are not the path to longevity. As the philosopher Ayn Rand noted: “You cannot force a mind.”

Firstly, such government funding is a type of slavery. Coercive taxation, especially for non-freedom purposes, is evil at its foundation. And no good thing can ever flower from such bad roots. The ends never justify the means. Tyranny and depravity are never practical or workable.

Those who are talented and slick at obtaining government grants, and those who willingly, passively submit to government edicts, are virtually never good scientists or doctors. Meanwhile, the good and great scientists and doctors — mankind’s innovators, creators, geniuses, saints, and heroes — will be hugely misled. With minimalist political knowledge, they’ll massively tend to follow the money and prestige trail; these brainiacs will massively tend to go work for the Big Brother bozos and frauds. At the least, the Good Guys will solidly incline toward reading the Dumb Guys’ (mountains of worthless) papers, and following them and their organizations intellectually. Thus the only real hopes of mankind will overwhelmingly tend to be side-tracked down a dead end.

The purpose of government is to protect individual rights — not expand the human life span. The state has no ability whatsoever to accomplish the later. It can only get in the way. It can only hurt the cause. Anyone who hijacks the government for longevity purposes is sure to massively damage both liberty and transhumanism.

However ironic, the more state funds are spent on transhumanism, and the more people are forced by government to engage in transhumanist research, the slower progress will be. It’ll be a repeat of the U.S. government’s buffoonish 1970s’ “war on cancer.” We’ll go backward. The effort will be counter-productive. It’ll be like throwing money down a bottomless rat hole — only worse.

The reality of today’s welfare state world is that if we finally get around to terminating all government funding of education, science, and technology, then these three fields will have to turn to private industry and free enterprise. This, in turn, will cause human knowledge in general, and transhumanism in particular, to rise like a rocket.

If, say, a very plausible 10% of the world’s G.D.P. is voluntarily dedicated to transhumanist education, investigation, and experimentation via capitalism, this will generate far more progress than if a wildly unlikely 75% of the world’s G.D.P. is coercively dedicated to transhumanist research via welfare statism.

The paramount and stunning reality is one social system will create new versions of Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, and Steve Jobs. The other will create new, mindless bureaucrats and lifeless, soulless, hack, quack, bozo drones.

And pray note that the above discussion isn’t trivial or merely theoretical; nor is it some ideologue’s and freak’s dubious mere political opinion. It’s the way reality is. It’s the way government and science really interact and work. Misunderstand this, transhumanists, and we’re all gonna die.

Kyrel Zantonavitch is the founder of The Liberal Institute  (http://www.liberalinstitute.com/) and a writer for Rebirth of Reason (http://www.rebirthofreason.com). He can be contacted at zantonavitch@gmail.com.