Thoughts Aloud

Archive for January 9th, 2009

I am getting sick of all the handwringing over Israel defending themselves against the incessant rocket attacks from Hamas. Those who know me, know that my libertarian principles completely fall apart when the subject of the welfare of children is addressed. Please view this 3 ½ minute video:

Go for it Israel; and don’t stop until you kill every member of Hamas. All of them. As difficult as it is for me to acknowledge the necessity, while you are at it, stop worrying about collateral damage. These kids are already lost to civilization. Every one you inadvertently kill now, will just be one fewer you will have to kill twenty years from now. I wish I were young enough to come help you do it.

Color me thoroughly disgusted with all the really foolish people in the world, who try to assign a moral equivalence between these barbarians and the Jews of Israel, because of their response to this existential threat. Nothing… no amount of twisted logic, no perceived wrong, no grudge, nothing… could ever justify grabbing a kid off the street in the middle of a firefight to use as a shield. Nothing! Wake up you fools; for the love of Zeus, wake up. ◄Dave►

I have been saying for some time that if one has not reread Atlas Shrugged as an adult in the past few years, it is worth doing just to notice how prophetic she was. This morning in the WSJ, Stephen Moore has a column entitled, ” ‘Atlas Shrugged’: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years“:

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises — that in most cases they themselves created — by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.

In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as “the looters and their laws.” Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the “Anti-Greed Act” to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel’s promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the “Equalization of Opportunity Act” to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the “Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act,” aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn’t Hank Paulson think of that?

These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008. We already have been served up the $700 billion “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act” and the “Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act.” Now that Barack Obama is in town, he will soon sign into law with great urgency the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.” This latest Hail Mary pass will increase the federal budget (which has already expanded by $1.5 trillion in eight years under George Bush) by an additional $1 trillion — in roughly his first 100 days in office.

The current economic strategy is right out of “Atlas Shrugged”: The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That’s the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies — while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to “calm the markets,” another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as “Atlas” grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate “windfalls.”

Indeed. Life continues to imitate art; and the clueless altruists continue to snidely denigrate those of us who subscribe to Ayn Rand’s philosophy. Too bad there is no John Galt they can turn to in the end… they wouldn’t listen to him anyway. ◄Dave►

Bill Whittle, the best contemporary essayist in America, happens to work in Hollywood; and Andrew Breitbart has recruited him to contribute at the new Big Hollywood blog. His first piece there, “The Workshops Of Identity” takes Hollywood to task:

One thing in common these patterns bear: the rise slow, the fall seemingly precipitous, and in every case we find the loss of nerve and strength and will comes not from the bottom, not from the common people at all, but from the rulers, the philosophers, the most affluent and educated who, in their comfort and Narcissism, abandon duty for self-absorption and self-gratification and who in boredom or self-loathing decide to fling open the gates of the city to the barbarians beyond, while the common man still stands at the walls prepared to die for the people in his charge.

And now here stands America, inheritor of that great tradition, astride that same cycle in its most dangerous and dire moment. And by any measure America is by far the most brilliant light the world has ever seen. And I can prove it, too.

Sean Penn recently wrote a piece for the Huffington Post in which he described America as a country much like any other, without any special claim to glory and indeed with an overabundance of sin to repent. Having visited Cuba and Venezuela, and having been enlightened by deep-thinking humanitarians such as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, he implores his countrymen to give socialism a try and take its rightful place as simply one of the 200 or so other members of the great family of nations. “Viva USA!” writes Penn. Ironically, he says this unironically.

Reading his remarkable and lengthy article I was, at the close of it, reminded instantly of Lincoln, who once wrote, “He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.” But Sean Penn is not only perhaps the most gifted actor of my generation… he also has the courage to come out and openly say what so many in Hollywood really and truly do believe.

And there’s the problem. Because like Sean Penn, almost all of this industry is composed of people whose intellectual, reasoning and analytical skills are fifty miles wide and a quarter-inch deep. Hollywood’s Chattering Classes despise their Uncle Sam, but they are deeply, deeply in love with Auntie America.

But Hollywood’s Chattering Classes are thoroughly, completely and spectacularly wrong. And therein lies the source of a looming tragedy so great it would take a thousand movies to simply sketch it out… were it not for the fact that if Hollywood as it now exists continues to do what it is doing unopposed, there will be no more movies because there will be no more electricity.

Like anything Bill writes, you owe it to yourself the treat of reading the whole thing. ◄Dave►