Objectivist Roundup #55

Titanic Deck Chairs has the 55th Objectivist Roundup. Go take a peek!

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David Allen on GTD

After many years of using David Allen's Getting Things Done method of managing life, I cannot imagine living without it. So I was delighted to find, via Gus, a 45 minute talk he gave to Google introducing GTD. In the video, Allen doesn't talk about the details of how the system works. (For that, you'll have to buy the book. Given its power to transform your whole approach to purposeful endeavors for the better, it's well the few bucks.) Instead, he's giving a broad overview of why GTD works -- unlike any other system of "getting yourself organized."



The basic lesson: The mind has identity, and if you want your mind work superbly well in your pursuit of values, then you'd better develop a system of managing information, goals, and actions that respects its capacities and limitations. That system is GTD.

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Creationism Gets Green Light in Louisiana

Despite heroic opposition, irrationality made headway in Louisiana with the passage of the impressive-sounding, Science Education Act.

This law will allow teachers to use "supplemental materials" to promote the "open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning."

That might sound pretty good, given the deplorable state of science education in the public schools, but it's not. The purpose of this bill is to allow schools to teach Creationism in the science classrooms, a blatant violation of the separation of church and state.

People who believe in Creationism--the biblical explanation for the origins of the earth and life--are fighting against Darwin's theory of evolution, a brilliantly-discovered thesis which ignores God in favor of actual facts.

There is no credible scientific debate against evolution. It is the unifying theory in all biology, and has been proven over and over again. The mere act of denouncing it in favor of "what the bible says" does not constitute a valid competing theory.

The bill's stated goal of teaching "critical thinking" is a sickening offense to the human mind. It will critically shut off all rational thinking, exhorting young minds to accept on faith alone ancient mythical tales of our beginnings.

The Discovery Institute, a big promoter of teaching Creationism, deeply criticized the opponents of Louisiana's law. They had the nauseating audacity to equate Galileo's struggle against the church with their struggle against what they call, the "antichurch." The author states: "But a funny thing about the truth is that no one can control it because sooner or later it reveals itself."

This statement is a direct repudiation of our essence as humans: that we are beings who must discover the truths of reality by a process of reason in order to survive. The faithful have no more choice about this fact of our existence than the non-faithful.

Teaching the myth of Creationism, which requires faith, alongside the science of evolution, which requires reason, will cause confusion in students' minds about what science is and why it's important. It will impair--not enhance--the development of their ability to think.

Learning about evolution is a wondrous and fascinating experience. And it's a crime that evangelicals are basically telling the next generation: "learning how to reason is irrelevant."

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European Cartoonists

Those who are interested in the future of free speech in Europe might find this article from the July 12, 2008 Wall Street Journal noteworthy. It documents the contrasting responses of Denmark and Holland to cartoonists accused of insulting Islam. Here are a few excerpts:

"Denmark protects its cartoonists. We arrest them," says Geert Wilders, a populist member of the Dutch Parliament...

The contrasting Danish and Dutch responses "show that there is a serious struggle of ideas going on for the future of Europe," says Flemming Rose, a Danish newspaper editor who commissioned the drawings of Muhammad in Jyllands-Posten. At stake, he says, is whether democracy protects the right to offend or embraces religious taboos so that "citizens have a right not to be offended."

As Arts & Letters Daily notes, "The Netherlands once sheltered Jews and other refugees from the Inquisition. Now it runs its own Inquisition..."

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Individualism, America, and Ayn Rand

The following letter appeared in the online edition of the July 13, 2008 Denver Post, with negative reference to individualism and Ayn Rand. Since her name doesn't frequently appear in our local paper, I took this as an opportunity to set the record straight.

Here is the original letter:

It wasn't individualism that settled the West

Re: "The Cowboy Myth," July 6 Perspective article.

There are two problems with Jeffrey Lockwood's support of the Cowboy Myth. First, we are constantly told that it was reality, that cowboys were the essential ingredient in the winning of the West. Truth is, the average cowboy was about as significant as today's parking lot attendant.

Perpetuating the Hollywood/dime fiction image of the cowboy propagates the false belief that Ayn Rand individualism was the historical way and will be the best future way to solve our nation’s problems. Truth is, the sodbusters were the key, the heroes: risking all, sticking determinedly in their forlorn shacks to raise their crops and banding together to raise their barns, build their schools and defend their homes.

The key to our nation's past successes was Americans joining together in common cause, not individualism. Working together will also be the key to our future.

Bill Belew
Boulder, CO

My response was as follows:

America was made by great individuals working under a system which (albeit imperfectly) protected their right to use their rational minds to create value and advance their lives. Where would we be without the likes of Thomas Edison, Westinghouse, and Henry Ford? This was a key insight of Ayn Rand and she deserves tremendous credit for promoting a philosophy that celebrates individual achievement -- the philosophy that underlies the positive and optimistic "can do" American sense of life.

Of course individuals can and should band together voluntarily when it suits their purposes. I have no problem with "working together" with others for mutual benefit as a voluntary arrangement, as many did in the Old West.

However, this notion is too-often corrupted into a vicious morality which preaches that the collective should take precedence over the individual, that individuals should be coerced to help one other, and that therefore we need massive government intrusions into the economy (such as “universal health care”) to automatically provide for everyone’s needs at taxpayer expense.

This approach will destroy the sorts of individuals who made America great, and will eventually destroy America. We need to celebrate and support the individuals who embody the American spirit and work-ethic, not punish them.

Paul Hsieh
Sedalia, CO

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Blogroll Updates

I've made a few noteworthy additions to the blogroll lately:

The Little Things by Amy Mossoff, mostly on parenting. I love the fine print:

This blog contains excessive amounts of positive parenting stories. Non-parents may experience sudden urges to procreate and should be advised that THIS IS NOT REALITY. Please read with caution. You are advised to consult with your partner before making any life-altering decisions.

One Reality

Valzhalla

Galileo Blogs

3 Ring Binder

Ms. Think

I'm surprised that I didn't have some of those on the blogroll already! On a less philosophical note, my parents have travel blogs:

Travels with Daisy by Susie Brickell (featuring fabulously funny drawings!)

Jamie's Travel Log by Jamie Brickell (featuring facts and figures!)

And last but not least, the Coalition for Secular Government's Politics without God.

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The Environmentalist Life

Sigh:

Dear Miss Manners:

A conflict of values: I have always been committed to the practice of sending handwritten expressions of thanks for kindnesses in an appropriate and timely manner, and have valued receiving the same from others.

However, I am also committed to doing my small part to reduce the impact of greenhouse gases on our precious environment. I recycle, take canvas bags when I shop, receive and pay bills electronically, and send electronic greeting cards to friends. I have canceled all catalogues and magazine subscriptions, carefully managed the use of electricity and gas in my home, and am careful about fuel consumption in my auto.

I find myself feeling guilty when I write a thank-you note, as each note uses resources in the form of both the paper on which it is written and the fuel required to send it from place to place. I would like to replace these notes with similarly appropriate expressions of thanks via e-mail to those of my friends who I know use e-mail. I would value your thoughts on this dilemma.

Wow. Gaia forbid that a person use and transport a wee bit of paper!

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Objectivist Party?

Yesterday, I got the following FaceBook message from Tom Stevens. (I'm reproducing it because it's a form letter from someone wholly unknown to me.) It said:

I am the Objectivist Party Presidential Candidate and we need 9 registered Colorado voters to list as Presidential Electors. There is no obligation but if we do not get said registered voters, we will not be on the ballot.

If you could help by letting us list you, it would be appreciated.

In Liberty,

Dr. Tom Stevens
Presidential Candidate
Objectivist Party

I wrote up a quick reply, then realized that my comments might be of interest to NoodleFood readers. So I put a bit more work into it, so that I could post it here. (Be forewarned, I wrote the comments below before I realized that this guy is a Libertarian. More on that below.) Here's my response:

Tom,

I can't grant your request. While I am a strong advocate of cultural and political activism, I think that attempting to change American culture via a third party is not just ineffective but downright counterproductive.

The problem with American politics today is not that Americans are looking for an Objectivist candidate but the major parties will only run statists. The majority of voters are reasonably satisfied with their choice between left-wing and right-wing statists on Election Day. Objectivists must work to change the culture toward secularism, reason, egoism, and individual rights. Only then can we expect better politicians to mount a credible campaign, let alone win elections.

That cultural change will be felt within the major parties -- so long as Objectivists don't sequester themselves into political irrelevance in their own unelectable political party. If Objectivists (and sympathizers) demand that the major parties court their vote, then political change for the better is possible.

The history of the political influence of the abolitionist movement bears out this analysis. Abolitionists created new political parties, some focused on the single issue of abolition and others broadly pro-liberty. All such parties failed to gather any significant votes; they had no positive impact. If anything, they had a negative impact, in that they siphoned off strong abolitionist voters that the fledgling Republican Party would have otherwise had to woo. Eventually, the Republican Party did adopt abolitionism -- due to effective cultural activism, not those minor abolitionist parties. By uncompromising moral arguments, a small band of committed abolitionists changed American hearts and minds about the evils of slavery in just a few decades. (Brad Thompson discusses this fascinating political history in his excellent lecture course, American Slavery, American Freedom. Hopefully I've remembered it reasonably accurately.)

Today, if the small but growing number of Objectivists and sympathizers gravitate to an Objectivist political party, the Republicans and Democrats could safely ignore us for decades to come, knowing that they've already lost our vote. That's a license for more statism, not less.

Objectivists should follow the same model as the abolitionists: change American hearts and minds, and the politicians will follow. Political advocacy can and should be a large part of those efforts to change the culture, as seen in the activities of the Ayn Rand Institute and Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM). Unlike running wholly unelectable candidates for office, that kind of activism works. And that's where Objectivists ought to be focusing their time and efforts.

After writing most of the above, I examined the web site of this proposed Objectivist Party in more detail. In my first look, I'd noticed a strongly anti-libertarian statement in the platform itself, in the form of this quote from Harry Binswanger:

The "libertarians"...plagiarize Ayn Rand's principle that no man may initiate the use of physical force, and treat it as a mystically revealed, out-of-context absolute...In the philosophical battle for a free society, the one crucial connection to be upheld is that between capitalism and reason. The religious conservatives are seeking to tie capitalism to mysticism; the "libertarians" are tying capitalism to the whim-worshipping subjectivsim and chaos of anarchy. To cooperate with either group is to betray capitalism, reason, and one's own future. (Harry Binswanger: "Q & A Department: Anarchism," TOF, Aug. 1981, 12.)

So, I thought, however counterproductive the endeavor, it didn't seem to be corrupt. That's one reason why I was willing to write such a detailed reply to the request. However, on reading the biographical information on Tom Stevens, the founder and 2008 presidential candidate, it became perfectly clear that he's a Big-L Libertarian in Objectivist clothing. See for yourself:

Dr. [Tom] Stevens is the Founder of the Objectivist Party. He was elected to the Judiciary Committee of the Libertarian Party in 2006 and re-elected in 2008. He served as a New York State Delegate to the Libertarian Party's National Convention in Atlanta in 2004, Portland in 2006, and Denver in 2008. He currently serves as President of the Libertarian Freedom Council, a national organization of students, young professionals and entrepreneurs and also serves as a member of the LPNY State Committee. In the Republican Presidential Primary, he was a supporter of Ron Paul and served as Political Consultant and New York State Coordinator for the Paul For President Coalition.

(I might add that I find other aspects of the biography, particularly the range of college-level courses that he's taught somewhere unspecified "during the past few years," as suspect.)

So that makes clear to me the value of this endeavor so-called "Objectivist Party." Libertarians are not allies in the struggle for liberty. So while I think that my comments above are worthwhile as general points about political and cultural activism, this request was not worth so many electrons.

Update: July 3rd, 2009: For all that you need to know about Tom Stevens' view of Ayn Rand and Objectivism, see his blog post Farrah Fawcett's E-Mail Reveals Ayn Rand Thought Their Sharing The Same Birth Date Had Significance. First, you've got to be kidding -- only he's not. And second, UGH.

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Cultural Movements: Creating Change

Yaron Brook and Onkar Ghate's three fantastic lectures on "Cultural Movements: Creating Change" -- given at OCON less than a month ago -- are already available for free in the "Activism" section of the new Ayn Rand Center web site. All three lectures are available in full. (You can navigate to the various parts via the scrolling list that's just below the video box.)

Here's the description from the OCON brochure:

Among the cultural forces in ascendancy over the last few decades are "free" markets and the resulting globalization; environmentalism; and religion. These three lectures examine the rise of global markets, environmentalism and religion in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. The lectures address questions such as: What steps did these movements take to gain their success? How were they organized? What did they count on? What do they seem to be planning for the future?

Having examined these movements, Dr. Brook and Dr. Ghate extract what we can learn from them in regard to changing a culture. How can we as a movement organize and work most effectively to bring about the kind of world Ayn Rand's philosophy equips us to create?

Roughly one lecture will be devoted to globalization, one to environmentalism and religion, and one to strategies for the present and future.

Did I mention that these fantastic lectures are free? Probably, but it's worth repeating.

If you're interested in working to change the culture for the better -- rather than just sitting on your ass, whining and complaining while it goes to hell -- then I strongly recommend these lectures. Go watch them now.

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Dr. Peikoff on iTunes

Leonard Peikoff's wonderful podcasts are now available via subscription from iTunes, thanks to some help from Arthur Lechtholz-Zey, a regular guest on the TalkObjectivism podcast.

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Pathetic Pickens Plan

T. Boone Pickens is all over the airwaves and internet with his "Pickens Plan" to develop wind power (can anyone say "public relations campaign?). You'd think that a billionaire couldn't get that way without knowing some basic things about economics, but you'd never know it by reading the Pickens Plan. Maybe Pickens is more mixed-economy pull-peddler than straight-up capitalist and that's how he made his bucks. Can't say I know too much about him, he's never impinged on my consciousness before the Pickens Plan hit the airwaves. Hope I forget about him soon.

In essence, the main reason we're supposed to give the Pickens Plan the time of day is because: buying foreign oil is a massive "transfer of wealth" that will impoverish and endanger us. Featured prominently in his TV and web messaging is his complaint that the U.S. is going to spend $700 billion on foriegn oil this year.

To address point-by-point the third-rate argumentation and simplistic reasoning of the Pickens Plan would be shooting fish in a barrel and I'm not going to bother. His method is to pander to the xenophobia, economic ignorance, and intellectual laziness in the worst of his audience. I do, however, want to take a moment to blow off some steam about the economic argument he makes, which I find most offensive coming from a freaking billionaire.

Here's the pitch on the Pickens Plan website:

It's an addiction that threatens our economy, our environment and our national security. It touches every part of our daily lives and ties our hands as a nation and a people.

The addiction has worsened for decades and now it's reached a point of crisis.

In 1970, we imported 24% of our oil. Today it's nearly 70% and growing.

As imports grow and world prices rise, the amount of money we send to foreign nations every year is soaring. At current oil prices, we will send $700 billion dollars out of the country this year alone — that's four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.

Projected over the next 10 years the cost will be $10 trillion — it will be the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind.

Alex Epstein at ARI has a great column on "oil addiction" and what our real national security issues are, so I'll let him handle that one. I want to give T. Boone a little lesson in Econ 101 to address this "transfer of wealth" nonsense he's got his panties in a bunch over.

Have you ever heard of division of labor, Mr. Billionaire Pickens? You know, that neat little arrangement where people produce what they're best at producing, and then trade their goodies with each other? That economic principle that makes possible our elevated standard of living? That mode of production the opposite of which is a life of squalor on a self-sufficient farm? No? Well, here's a little tutorial. We buy foreign oil because foreigners produce it more cheaply than we can domestically. And we buy it with the money we earn by producing the things we can most cheaply and efficiently produce. Now, we can get into the weeds over why this is the case, but as long as it's the case, it's completely rational to buy foreign oil. The consequences of going through a withdrawal from this "addiction" would be: getting on an express train to a 19th century standard of living. (A train fueled with coal, by the way.) Capice?

Oh, and can I offer you a little help finding that $700 billion you're acting like we've irretrievably lost? Here's a hint: we actually bought a product with that $700 billion, it's called oil. I suppose that if it were better for us, we could buy the oil and then turn right around and sell it again -- then we'd get our $700 billion back and all would be well, eh? Of course, then there'd be the little detail that we wouldn't be able to get to work in the morning, or fly our airplanes, or power our factories . . . but we'd have that $700 billion. For what it would be worth, under those circumstances.

Bottom line here, T. Boone -- wealth isn't money, wealth is what you buy with money. Wealth directly supports our lives, but money is just paper. Ever try to eat money, or get your car to run on the paper money is made of? Even if money were gold coins, there is literally nothing in gold that can keep body and soul together. Unless those foreigners themselves turn around and buy some actual products with their money, the wealth transfer will all be from the foreigners to us -- we'll have oil, and they'll have a bunch of paper. And who knows? Maybe those foreigners will use that $700 billion to buy from the United States some of that wealth they need to survive. Ya think? (Sheesh.)

Pickens is pushing wind power as an alternative. I'll leave it to someone else to address the technical details of why it's not feasible. Why? Because I don't have to address those details. If wind power were a viable alternative, potentially a real value in our real every day lives, you can bet that selfish, profit-seeking entrepreneurs would have been all over it by now, confident that people would buy it. And they'd put the research dollars into it -- look at the hundreds of millions drug companies will spend developing a drug, confident of future sales. Maybe one day wind power will be a viable alternative, but at present it just isn't a money-making enterprise, or T. Boone wouldn't have any trouble privately raising the money needed to develop it.

So you know what? I don't think the Pickens Plan is a plan to "save America." I think it's a plan to extort $1.2 trillion tax dollars from hard-working American citizens to fund schemes T. Boone can't persuade people to voluntarily support, by scaring them half to death with horror stories of impoverishment at the hands of evil foreigners.

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Recap #2

This week on Politics without God:

• Monday, July 21, 2008: GOP Platform Website by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Tuesday, July 22, 2008: Why The Republicans Have Lost My Vote by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Wednesday, July 23, 2008: Religious Freedom in the Military by Diana Hsieh
  
• Thursday, July 24, 2008: Feds Broaden Definition of Abortion by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Friday, July 25, 2008: Bad News from South Dakota by Diana Hsieh

This week on We Stand FIRM:

• Monday, July 21, 2008: Medicare's "Free Market" Facade by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Tuesday, July 22, 2008: Socialists in Houston by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Wednesday, July 23, 2008: Hsieh LTE in USA Today by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Thursday, July 24, 2008: Concierge Medicine by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Friday, July 25, 2008: Bokor on the Houston Meeting by Paul Hsieh, MD

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Sunday Open Thread #7

Here's yet another a Sunday Open Thread for your thoughts:

For anyone in the fiery grip of a random question, comment, joke, or link they'd like to share with NoodleFood readers, I hereby open up the comments on this post to any respectable topic. (Please refrain from posting personal attacks, pornographic material, and commercial solicitations.)

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Leopard Versus Crocodile

Nature's beneficent peace and tranquility in action: Leopard versus Crocodile.

Go leopard!

(Via Marginal Revolution)

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Bullshitting in the Humanities

Here's a gem from xkcd on bullshit in the humanities. Sadly, it's all too true!

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Reminder: Objectivism Seminar Resuming This Sunday

Just a reminder that The Objectivism Seminar will be resuming its tour of Dr. Leonard Peikoff's seminal book, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. We're about to begin Chapter 2, so if you aren't already participating, now is a great time to catch up and join in!

(From last time:)

Veteran or newbie, fan or critic, here's your chance to enjoy a real upgrade to your personal understanding of Rand's philosophy, your ability to live like ideas matter, and your facility in helping change our culture for the better!

I have to say that I'm really pleased with how our new meeting format is shaping up. Everyone seems to be growing and sharpening their understanding -- newer and more experienced students of the philosophy alike. Basically, we have been discussing just one section of the book each week (maybe 5-15 pages of reading), and then working over the material from several angles in discussion. Each meeting runs for about an hour and a half, and if you want to see (hear) what it is like, just visit the Objectivism Seminar's page at TalkShoe to listen or even subscribe to the podcasts for past sessions.

If you want to jump in, now is a great time: all you have to do is read Chapter 1, hopefully listen to the podcasts of the sessions for it, read at least the first section of Chapter 2, and show up for the next session this Sunday!

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South Dakota's De Facto Abortion Ban

My Politics without God post on South Dakota's new restrictions on abortion might be of interest to NoodleFood readers.

(I'm feeling a bit rusty in making arguments about abortion, as I haven't worked on the issue in over two years. Still, I'm reasonably happy with how that post turned out.)

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Religious Right in Colorado Must Drink Lots of Caffeine

The religious right in Colorado is at it again, and they just won't stop! I have decided to call them, "The Colorado Coalition for a Talibanesque America."

A religious anti-abortion Colorado group already got a ballot initiative that would grant legal rights to a fertilized egg--which of course is an open attack on reason and liberty.

Now a local church is going for a ballot initiative to force schools to provide 5 minutes of meditation each day. This is nothing more than a naked attempt to get prayer in the schools, and they darn well know it.

These groups are not ignorant of our constitutional right to worship as we choose. But it isn't good enough for them to practice their religion and respect the right of others to do the same.

Their goal is nothing less than to impose upon all Americans a society legally based on religious-right Christian morals. If you don't believe me, just read their websites.

Our precious freedoms in America are based on secular principles of reason and reality, not on mystical ideas like those defining the repressive, backward and utterly irrational Sharia laws of Islamic societies. And we certainly can't forget the centuries of stagnation and suffering under the tyranny of the power-lusting Catholic Church.

The separation of church and state protects churches from being overtaken by the state, and protects our society from being overtaken by the church.

But more than that, it's a principle that upholds as society's moral foundation not ghostly revelations by control freaks wearing goofy hats, but the facts of human nature and our requirements for thriving as civilized and rational beings.

The religious right groups must be stopped before they've had that second pot of coffee. In each of our states where these initiatives are happening, we must not sign their petitions. And we must soundly defeat their initiatives at the ballot box. We must write letters to the editor and to our legislators saying, "No more!"

If we don't defeat the religious right by proudly reclaiming America as a secular society, we will have the church in our schools, in our doctors' offices, in our bedrooms, in public buildings, in parks, at work: we will have the church in our lives everywhere.

If we don't stop the religious right from hijacking the moral foundation of our society, we will never be able to turn back.

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The Mortgage Mess

The July 18, 2008 issue of Forbes has a good analysis by Yaron Brook of the home mortgage mess and how the government created the crisis in the first place:

The financial peril of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--the government-sponsored, government-regulated mortgage giants regarded as instrumental in solving the nation's mortgage market problems--has one benefit. It should help expose the lie that today's financial problems are the result of an insufficiently regulated market.

And Amit Ghate points towards good retrospective in the July 14, 2008 Wall Street Journal detailing years of corruption and ineptitude in those two quasi-governmental agencies.

Articles like these rebut the usual claims that villainous lenders are to blame, as if they would somehow benefit from defaulting clients.

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John Lewis in Israel

On Principles in Practice, John Lewis blogs about his recent trip to Israel. It begins:

I just returned from a speaking engagement at Tel Aviv University (pictures from the trip are on my website). My honorarium was four days of sight-seeing in Tel Aviv, Abu Gosh, Jerusalem, En Gedi and Masada, and a series of meetings with writers, policy analysts, academics and writers. I came back with one overriding conclusion, which stands for me stronger than it did before my trip: Israel stands at the front-line of the war between civilization and barbarism. As Eric Hoffer wrote over forty years ago, "as it goes with Israel, so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us all." ("Israel's Peculiar Position," LA Times 5/26/68)

It's very illuminating. Read the whole thing -- and be sure to check out John's remarkable pictures.

You can also listen to the first ten minutes of the lecture, courtesy of Boaz Arad.



(Most of Boaz's videos are in Hebrew, but I did notice that he has one by Yaron Brook. If you like these videos, remember to rate them highly!)

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The Roundup

Rational Jenn is hosting this week's Objectivist Roundup. It looks like an excellent collection of posts, so go take a peek!

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Hsieh LTE in USA Today

The July 23, 2008 edition of USA Today has printed my LTE critical of mandatory insurance, including my affiliation with FIRM:

Reform health care

Paul Hsieh, M.D., Co-founder, Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine - Sedalia, Colo.

Mandatory insurance does not solve our underlying health care problem, which is government interference in the free market. This approach has already been tried in Massachusetts and has led to long waits, skyrocketing costs and frustrated patients ("Individual health policies leave many in the lurch," Cover story, News, Thursday).

Instead of government-imposed "universal health care," America needs free market health reforms -- reforms such as eliminating mandatory insurance benefits, repealing laws that forbid purchasing health insurance across state lines, and allowing individuals to use health savings accounts for routine expenses and low cost, catastrophic-only insurance for major expenses.

Such reforms would respect individual rights, allow patients to choose from the best offerings from all 50 states, lower costs and make health insurance available to many who currently cannot afford it.

You can post comments in response to this letter.

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The Coming Merger of Religion and Environmentalism

At the OCON 2008 conference, one of the predictions made by Dr. Yaron Brook and Dr. Onkar Ghate was the coming convergence of religion and environmentalism in the US.

This is been mentioned in news stories in the past, and further evidence of this can be found in this recent story from the July 18, 2008 New York Times:

Pope Warns on Environment

Pope Benedict XVI used his first major address at the Roman Catholic Church's youth festival here [Sydney, Australia] on Thursday to warn that the world was being scarred and its natural resources used up by humanity's "insatiable consumption."

In a broad criticism of consumer culture, before a crowd of more than 140,000, Pope Benedict reinforced the Vatican's growing concern with protecting the environment, a theme he has addressed before.

Although environmentalism and religion would seem to be fairly disparate ideologies, Drs. Brook and Ghate point out that the two could easily unite in an "unholy marriage" in which each strengthens the other.

For instance, many of the radical environmentalists believe they have failed in their attempts to change the culture. Although they had hoped that their ideas would cause Americans to renounce industrial society, this simply hasn't happened. Americans are not willing to sacrifice their current level of material prosperty for a nebulous ecological concept such as "Gaia". On the other hand, they might be willing to renounce material prosperity if their religion preaches that such material prosperity is immoral. And some radical environmentalists are starting to recognize this fact.

Similarly, many of the younger religionists are moving beyond a concern with traditional "social conservative" issues (such as abortion and gay marriage) and onto causes more typically associated with the secular left, such as "economic justice" and environmentalism. They frame environmentalism in terms of "stewardship" over God's creation (the Earth).

Religion also thrives on guilt. If people start to feel guilty for productive activities in the material world necessary for physical survival, then religion could gain much more power over the human spirit. Hence, there is a strong possibility of a synergy between environmentalism and religion, especially in the younger generation.

As Brook and Ghate note, what unites the environmentalists and religionists is the "don't move" approach. The environmentalists favor a "don't move" approach towards the material world. They want mankind to maintain a static relationship relative to the natural world. Any kind of change made to improve man's lot is viewed as disrupting this desirable "harmony" and therefore wrong.

Similarly, the religionists advocate a "don't move" approach towards man's mind. Obedience to authority is preferred over an independent mind that asks questions and is willing to challenge authority.

A union of religion and environmentalism could therefore form a powerful ideology which preaches that your very existence is a sin and that you should therefore feel guilty for merely wanting to live.

Fortunately, most Americans do not feel that way, at least not yet. But if this ideology ever gains a foothold in the American psyche, then we will be in deep trouble. Such an ideology would kill the innovative American spirit that has created computers, antibiotics, and factories, bring material progress to a halt, and return us to the horrors of a medieval existence, where life was "nasty, brutish, and short".

Hence, this is why it's important for humans to explicitly recognize that it's morally proper to want to live, that it's right to exercise our minds in order to better our lives, and that it's right to utilize natural resources according to our rational judgment for human benefit.

And this is why I'm proud to wear my Objective Standard t-shirt that reads, "Exploit the Earth Or Die". (Only $19.95!)

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Why The Republicans Have Lost My Vote

Over the past few days, I've sent letters to multiple county and state officials of the Colorado Republican Party, asking for them to support a strict separation of church and state. I wanted to let them know that their alliance with the Religious Right was costing them votes from former supporters such as myself.

Given that I believe that the Republicans will lose in 2008 here in the "purple" swing state of Colorado, I believe that it's important that they hear that particular message now (before the election) and later (after the election) -- specifically, that they lost because they were too religious.

In particular, I don't want the only message they receive coming from the evangelical Christians telling them that they lost because they were not religious enough.

Some analysts such as Ryan Sager (author of The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle to Control the Republican Party) have said that Colorado will be "Ground Zero" in the battle over the future of the Republican Party. Sager also believes that the Republicans will lose in Colorado if they continue to embrace the religionists. As they should.

The relevant excerpt from my most recent letter is below. Although I don't think I will necessarily change the minds any of the current local party leaders, it's still important for them to know that there are people who oppose them mixing religion with politics. I also wanted to articulate a positive vision of America that I do support, one which should resonate with the better Republicans:

...My parents came to America over 40 years ago as legal immigrants from Taiwan. They had very little money, but they came to America because they wanted to make a better life for themselves. Over the years, they worked hard, lived frugally, saved enough money to send two sons to college and medical school, and are now happily and comfortably retired in Los Angeles. From them, I learned a deep appreciation for America as the "land of opportunity". America is a beacon of hope to millions of people around the world precisely because it has a system of government which allows honest, hard-working people such as my parents to thrive and prosper. Our system of government is a testament to the genius of the Founding Fathers, who recognized that the proper function of government is protect individual rights, such as the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Consequently, I don't believe that one should ground principles of government in faith. Instead, they can and should be grounded in observable objective facts about human nature -- specifically our need to use our minds to think and live. Man's essential nature requires that he uses his reasoning mind to create the values necessary for sustaining his life. Hence, the basic purpose of a government is to protect a man's right to produce and to voluntarily trade with others for the products of their thought and labor. Protecting individual rights means protecting men from those who would use force to predate on others -- i.e., protecting Americans from external enemies who would wage war on us as well as from internal criminals who would use force to steal, murder, commit rape, etc. But apart from that, the government should leave honest people alone - which is why our government properly protects our right to free speech, the right to keep and bear arms, the rights of property and contract, and the right to worship freely.

In particular, a person's religious faith should not enter into issues of government. Instead, the government's role is to protect each person's right to practice his or her religion as a private matter and to forbid them from forcibly imposing their particular views on others. And this is precisely why I find the influence of the Religious Right on the Republican Party to be so dangerous. If someone chooses not to get an abortion for reasons of personal faith, then I completely respect her right to live by her beliefs. But she should not impose her particular religious stance on others. Other women must have the right to decide that deeply personal issue for themselves. The Religious Right's goal to outlaw abortions would violate that important right, and sacrifice the lives of actual women for clumps of cells that are only potential (but not yet actual) human beings, based on a religious dogma. As a physician, I find that position abhorrent and deeply anti-life.

The Religious Right's positions on other issues, such as banning stem cell research and same sex marriage are similarly troubling because it advocates using the power of the government to interfere with individual rights. I already see enough of that kind of harmful nonsense from the Democrats.

Hence, I think the Republican Party stands at an important crossroads. The Republican Party could choose to follow the principles of the American Founding Fathers and promote a limited government that protects individual rights but otherwise leaves people alone to live their lives. In that case, I would happily suppport it. Separation of church and state is a natural (and essential) consequence of that approach. Or the Republican Party could choose instead to embrace the Religious Right and enshrine into law the religious values of one particular constituency over others (thus violating everyone else's rights). In that case, it will alienate many voters and do tremendous harm to our great country.

Even though I can no longer regard myself as a Republican, I definitely regard myself as a loyal American. Hence, I believe the Republican Party should choose the first path -- the path of limited government, strict separation of church and state, and protection of individual rights. This is the America that brought my parents from a ocean away in hopes of a better life for themselves and their children. This is the America I want to live in. And this is the America I want the Republican Party to support.

Thank you for your consideration,
Paul Hsieh, MD

That letter was a response to an earlier e-mail I received from the secretary of my local county Republican Party, which I am posting below with his permission. In particular, he states that faith should be the basis of morality, and he explains his stance on abortion which essentially reflects the standard conservative Christian view. Here is an excerpt of his earlier letter:

...You seem to suggest that the opposition to stem-cell research and abortion places the GOP "in bed" with the religious right. Why this may appear to be the truth, there is an underlying connection that you are failing to acknowledge. The Republican Party upholds the founding principles of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, as the founding fathers specifically cited as rights Endowed by the Creator (Nature’s God, to be exact). These are rights not given, but endowed -- bestowed upon every human to protect. The idea of the endowment of Life is not new and not owned exclusively by the religious right. In the spirit of following the intent of the founders, and embracing their understanding of basic human rights, the Republican Party must uphold the Right of Life.

Inasmuch, the question is begged: When does life begin? Therein lies the debate.

In accordance with the 14th amendment, the rights of the founding documents are applicable to those "born" in the United States. That word would seem to indicate that a fetus of any gestational age is therefore without rights. This is the basis of the Roe decision in the Supreme Court. However, as a doctor, you should well understand that a fetus is very much alive and responsive to their environment from a fairly early gestational age, regardless of their ability to survive independent of their mother at the time. With the complexity of life in gestation, it serves humanity to better define Life -- not limiting life to begin merely at birth. Therefore we are in support of the Right of Life, as we consider life to exist during gestation.

Barack Obama has shown in his political career that he shows almost no compassion for life in the womb, supporting late term abortion and referring to children as a punishment. Having lost our first pregnancy, my wife and I are happy to have recently delivered our first child -- rest assured we do not feel punished. My brother and his wife also recently gave birth to their first child, who has been diagnosed with Propionic Acidemia -- and rest assured, they do not value his life any less, nor feel punished. I would assume that Mr. Obama would consider such a child a burden on society and the parents -- most likely he would suggest such a fetus be discarded. But is it not the challenge of life that should cause us to persevere... perhaps this young child holds the key to medical research that could aid in curing this and other genetic defects. Where Obama sees punishment and burden, I choose to see opportunity. This is a fundamental difference between me and the Senator -- and I would imagine that this is a similar difference between the Senator and a majority of Republicans who continue to fight, not because it is easy, rather because it is right.

The Republican Party does not openly nor privately advocate for any one religion, but we are advocates against the absence of faith from the lives of Americans. We are not a Christian organization, merely an organization that supports and endorses the existence of faith as a basis of morality -- not in government, but in the lives and hearts of the individual, at their own request and choosing. I personally could never be part of an organization that openly endorsed a state religion (such as the Constitution Party which openly supports naming Christianity as the official religion of the US). Furthermore, you will notice that the ranks of the GOP are filled with many people of faith, from many different religions. We support them all...

Sincerely,
Steven M Nielson
Secretary, Douglas County Republican Party

(This post originally appeared on Politics Without God, the blog for the Coalition for Secular Government.)

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Niles on Property Rights and the Electrical Grid

I just finished reading the featured article in the Summer 2008 issue of The Objective Standard, "Property Rights and the Crisis of the Electric Grid" by Raymond Niles, and I can whole-heartedly recommend it.

I had always wondered how the electrical utilities evolved into their current dysfunctional state as quasi-governmental entities, and never understood why utilities didn't function more like private providers of essential goods (like grocery stores or airlines). Niles traces the history of the electrical utilities from the 1880's to the present time, and shows how the current problems with the electrical industry are the result of government interference with basic property rights from the very inception.

I was particularly interested in his account of the California "deregulation" fiasco of 2000-2001. Diana and I lived in San Diego at that time, so we experienced this crisis of skyrocketing costs and rolling blackouts first-hand. However, I couldn't make sense of the newspaper accounts at the time, which generally blamed the "free market" for the problems. (For a typical portrayal of the events, this Wikipedia entry on the "California Electricity Crisis" is a good example of the conventional wisdom).

Fortunately, Niles is able to reduce this complex topic to its essentials, using property rights as the unifying theme. As an industry analyst, he has tremendous knowledge of the history, and is able to communicate it clearly to a lay audience. And besides offering a critique of the current system, he also articulates a positive alternative vision of a free market electrical system in which property rights are genuinely respected, and the benefits it could bring to producers and consumers alike.

Because his article is the featured free article, it is available to both subscribers and non-subscribers. So read the whole thing.

(On a personal note, I had the pleasure of meeting Ray Niles at the OCON 2008 conference a few weeks ago, and found him to be a thorougly intelligent, articulate, and pleasant dinner companion.)

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Greasy Congressional Fingers in Our 401(k)s

Isn't it enough that Congress forcibly takes your income and spends it any way it wants--for the frivolous or ridiculous, extravagant or exorbitant? Now they want to control the way you spend your own money!

Democrat Senators, Charles Schumer (NY) and Herb Kohl (WI), will introduce a bill prohibiting the use of debit cards to withdrawal from one's 401(k) as well as limit the number of loans a 401(k) participant can take (doing so requires a monthly payment, fees and interest). Because of the crisis in the housing and financial markets, more people are dipping into their 401(k)s. Some financial experts believe this is an unsound financial practice.

Some people make bad financial choices, like getting overburdened with credit card debt, obtaining a loan for an unaffordable house, or investing 100% of their savings in some retirement swamp in the bayou.

But what if you needed money from your 401(k) and you needed it now? What if you judged it to be in your best interest? Your financial choices--good or bad--should be up to you as an adult to decide. And it should be no body's business but your own.

But Senators Schumer and Kohl won't give you permission to make those choices. So, you can just go to your room without supper!!

This bill is just another of the countless historic violations of the separation of state and economics, and here are some reasons why this bill is bad:

1. It's a grotesque trampling of your property rights: your money really isn't yours--not the money in your pocket nor in your savings account.

2. It's a flagrant and demeaning demonstration of paternalism: the idea that government knows better than you do what's best for your financial situation.

3. It's a total disregard for the right to pursue your life with the only resource that makes that possible: the earnings from your work to purchase the necessities and enjoyments of life.

Here's my letter to those Senators: "Get your greasy pork-fat fingers out of my pockets!"

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She’s Baaaack . . .

I initially brought myself to Diana's attention by blogging as Ms. Think a couple of years ago. In fact, I used my blog entries at Ms. Think to sell Diana on the possibility of my joining NoodleFood. I didn't make Ms. Think a priority back then and stopped posting after a couple of months, but I'm pleased to say that Ms. Think is once again up and running!

I'm definitely a NoodleFoodler to stay -- but Ms. Think is my outlet for blogging with a little more edge.

I've put up a batch of new posts over the last two weeks -- check them out at www.msthink.com when you get a chance! Here are links to a few posts to get you started . . .

• Capitalism Straw Man takes another hit


• Forced civic engagement by proxy


• Enough with the auto worker sob-stories already!


• An Open Letter to Medical Students: Please don't become primary care physicians!!

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Does Wall-E Deliver on the Pixar Promise?

Okay... I'll admit it. I anxiously anticipate each new Pixar film. Not only that, I get tingly just thinking about the pre-feature short animations that inevitably precede each Pixar release. And when the lamp in their logo hops across the screen, I can't help but grin.

Things haven't always been this way. When Pixar started working their magic back with Toy Story, I was less smitten with animated feature-length movies than I was with the sundry amusements of adolescent boyhood. But by the time Finding Nemo hit the theaters in 2003, I was ready to give 'cartoons' another shot. I'm glad I did. When The Incredibles followed a year later, I was a bit skeptical at first... did the world really need another superhero movie? Prior to seeing it, I couldn't have even begun to suspect that Pixar's superheroes were not just struggling against an evil villain, but also against an egalitarian culture marked by disdain for achievement (and a legal system in serious need of tort reform). To me, The Incredibles was another delightful Pixar surprise. And while I found Cars, their next movie, to be a vacuous disappointment, Ratatouille renewed my enthusiasm for the Pixar brand. In light of all their recent successes, Pixar's future seemed promising.

Wall-E, Pixar's latest film, was released on June 27^th. For those of you keeping track, that was just about the time that OCON 2008 got underway, so I didn't get a chance to check it out on opening weekend. This past Sunday my girlfriend and I found the time to head off to the multiplex and give Wall-E a proper viewing. In what follows, I'll provide an indication of why I regard Wall-E as an enjoyable but deeply flawed movie. And just so you know, my comments are basically spoiler-free.

As you may have been able to gather from the media buzz, Wall-E is a movie about a robot. A robot trash-compactor. More precisely, it is a movie about a "Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth-class," or "WALL-E," for your anthropomorphic convenience. (I'll henceforth use the all-caps "WALL-E" to refer to the robot character, and "Wall-E" to designate the movie itself). According to Wall-E writer-director Andrew Stanton, the original spark that ultimately gave rise to the film was a scenario in which the last robot on Earth toiled away in lonely isolation, longing for companionship and social fulfillment. Indeed, this is how Wall-E begins. After briefly surveying a horrific, almost post-apocalyptic landscape, the viewer is introduced to WALL-E who is busy performing his characteristic task: compacting and organizing trash. After another extreme wide shot or two, the magnitude of WALL-E's project becomes clear, as his stacks of trash reach towering heights alongside abandoned skyscrapers and other similarly massive pillars of industry.

The bleakness of this world is expertly rendered by Pixar's typically stunning animation and audio work. The stylistic excellence and technical proficiency that made Ratatouille burst with lush colors, textures, and sound effects, are also evident in Wall-E, though they are for the most part utilized to portray a world of trash. As unappealing and valueless as a world of trash sounds, WALL-E takes it upon himself to collect (rather than compact) those items that he finds to be of interest. After all, one human's trash is another robot's treasure. It's comical to see what WALL-E chooses to collect and what to discard, though perhaps his most cherished possession is nothing to laugh at. What is it? A copy of Hello Dolly on VHS that he found amidst the refuse of civilization. Of particular value to WALL-E are the numbers "It Only Takes a Moment" and "Put on Your Sunday Clothes," both ostensibly about companionship and love. Hearing these songs played by the last, lonely robot on Earth serves to heartbreakingly accent the tragedy of such radical isolation.

I'm getting misty just thinking about it.

But WALL-E's isolation doesn't last too long, as another robot (EVE) is soon on the scene. After EVE arrives, WALL-E finds a new purpose for himself in the quest for companionship. And this is really what the rest of the movie is about, about WALL-E attempting to gain and keep the attention of EVE. In other words, it's a robot love story. And it's a pretty entertaining one, at that. But given that the principals are robots, there is a sizable barrier in telling a convincing story about their relationship: robots don't have language. Prior to this movie's release, I remember there being some serious concern about how audiences would respond to a movie whose main characters engage in basically no dialog. Fortunately one of Pixar's major virtues (at least in the Pixar movies I've seen) is that they go to great lengths to actually show the viewer what's going on, to demonstrate the plot without having to unnecessarily explain events as they're unfolding. At least in this respect, Wall-E is an excellent movie. Though little is said, little need be said; the data are there for the viewer to infer the movie's meaning without superfluous exposition or hand-holding.

Although the Pixar team is able to dispense with dialog without sacrificing intelligibility, they unfortunately sacrifice something else: depth. Since language is not a big part of how Wall-E is told, characterization is primarily achieved through action. That is, we know WALL-E not by his words (not by his stated convictions) but rather by his deeds. The same goes for the other main characters. We don't see them engage in deliberation. We don't listen to them make choices. We don't explicitly know what motivates them. And, perhaps most importantly, neither do the other characters of Wall-E know such things. WALL-E cannot verbally communicate his desire for companionship to EVA, just as she cannot verbally communicate her intentions and purposes to him. What this ultimately means for WALL-E's romance with EVA is that while these robots are capable of showing one another THAT they are attracted, they cannot communicate WHY. Although viewers can probably create a story as to why EVA means so much to WALL-E, it's doubtful that EVA could herself construct such an account. Because of this, the romance in Wall-E is superficial. Of course, that shouldn't suggest that the story isn't touching. It just isn't reflective of the values (and the expression of values) that I take to be indicative of a truly great cinematic or literary romance.

To summarize thus far, Wall-E is an enjoyable but limited success insofar as one considers it as a love story. But when one looks beyond the romantic element of the movie, there are much larger issues looming in the background that threaten to swallow the love-narrative wholly. In my judgment, these issues represent serious aesthetic deficiencies that diminish the artistic value of the movie as whole. Let's now take a look at them.

I first heard about the premise of Wall-E in an interview between writer-director Andrew Stanton and Terri Gross, host of NPR's "Fresh Air." (The interview is available here.) Terry Gross lead into the interview by noting that Wall-E is set after a consumer-driven environmental apocalypse has made Earth uninhabitable. Upon hearing this, I was half-way down the road to disgust, but Stanton quickly responded by saying:

I [chose this setting] very reluctantly. I sort of reverse engineered my decision. It was all based on character and emotion. The conceit that got me interested in this movie was: the last robot on earth doing its job forever, not knowing that it was a waste of time. And I thought that was the ultimate definition of futility - I completely was seduced by that. And so, in my mind, that's what was so charming - the last robot on earth - so I had to just come up with SOME conceit that would make that situation. Just to get this kind of character, I was forced to come up with a scenario...

At the time, Stanton's response calmed me down a bit because the gist of it was something like: "Look, environmental destruction isn't an integral part of the movie; it's extra-thematic, and is only there as a pretext to allow the characters I wanted to represent to come out into the open; I had to set the context SOMEHOW, and this was just the most convenient device to allow the movie to come together."

If this represented how the movie finally turned out, I would have been okay (though not delighted) with abstracting away from the setting and focusing in on the somewhat shallow love narrative. But in the final analysis, the setting for Wall-E is not unessential to the themes the film ultimately expresses. I haven't mentioned any human characters yet in this review, because they're basically irrelevant to Wall-E's plot. But let me digress for a moment to give you a brief indication of the type of human being you'll encounter in this film. In doing so, I hope you'll gain a sense of why Wall-E is the mixed bag that it is.

All the humans we see (in non-flashback form) in Wall-E are obese, weak-willed, ignorant adult-children who have been carted around their entire life by robots. Every human in the movie is a passenger on a 700+ year space-cruise that was necessitated by the environmental apocalypse. The planet was dying, so the humans went on a cruise while all the robots cleaned up. These people spend their entire lives sprawled out on moving robot hoverchairs watching computer screens, drinking meals from cups, altogether unconcerned with the need to think, work, or make decisions. Did I mention that they're so unconcerned with physical activity that they've experienced severe bone loss? Moreover, the people aboard the cruise ship are altogether anti-social in that they rarely (if ever) stop to talk to those around them, but instead interact through virtual social networks on their robochair-mounted screens.

If you were to ask a contemporary neo-Marxist to draw a caricature of contemporary American "consumerism" (whatever that is), it is doubtful that the result would be much different from what is presented in Wall-E. Perhaps the best thing one might say about Pixar's handling of the people in Wall-E is that they're presented as relatively sympathetic creatures. That is to say, they're not presented as drinking crude oil from their Big Gulp cups (though their ancestors apparently drank up all the oil long ago) and they aren't shown clubbing baby seals. But they are docile, complacent, fat. Watching screens. Living a lifestyle that destroyed the world.

While viewing the film within the confines of my northwest Ohio theater, I dimly wondered if the film was intended to insult its audience.

To say that Wall-E's presentation of humans was distracting is to say the least. To the extent that humans are involved in the narrative at all, they have been crammed into characters and roles determined by the "lonely-robot context" requirement. Simply put, Wall-E's humans have been dehumanized so its robot could gain the shallow appearance of humanity.

Artistic license does not carry a "by any means necessary" clause; it does not entitle one to ignore or degrade genuine values (like the life-giving power of commerce) for the sake of portraying one's pet character. If one wants, at root, to convey a story of love borne out of tragic isolation, this does not require one to invent an alternative future in which particular societal arrangements have been destructive of life as we know it. The inclusion of any such claim is not to be taken lightly; it is an indictment that certain practices are massively disastrous and deserving of moral condemnation.

To build such a claim into the setting of a children's movie, and to do so simply for the sake of gaining plausibility for an empathetic character, is more than distracting. It's obnoxious.

I'm not the only viewer who took notice of Wall-E's apparently didactic, anti-industry sub-theme. In the interview mentioned above, Terry Gross read Stanton excerpts from two prominent reviews, one liberal and one conservative. The liberal review amounted to the endorsement that Wall-E was more in tune with current political issues than candidates on either side of the debate platform; the conservative-leaning reviewer felt that the movie assaulted him with environmentalist propaganda. Responding to these reviews, Stanton said:

Sadly, I'm not surprised. But I tried very hard not to have any kind of a [didactic message about environmentalism or consumerism]. I just went with [the] logic of how you could be in this scenario so that I could tell the story of a lonely little robot.

Leave the supposed logic of the situation aside. As an artist, one's primary concern is the presentation of a theme, one's central idea and vision. If a film's theme concerns a "lonely little robot," viewers shouldn't exit the theater wondering how they can do their part to stem the coming post-industrial holocaust. And sadly, I think that's what many people (especially children) will do.

I believe Stanton was sincere when he said that he didn't intend for his movie to have a didactic message. I don't think he intended to brainwash children into joining radical environmentalist movements. (In this respect, Wall-E is obviously superior to Fox's FernGully: The Last Rainforest.) For all Stanton's intelligence, he seems to have simply made a mistake in constructing his story. The fact that multiple reviewers paused to note that his film has strong political/policy undertones is indicative that he let his theme get away from him. This is the main reason I regard Wall-E as a major disappointment.

As it stands, the movie is too thematically disjointed to qualify as great art. The doom and gloom of the sub-theme end up distracting the viewer from what's really supposed to be important. Regardless of how one evaluates Wall-E's anti-industrial elements, they unnecessarily divert attention away from the screenwriter's primary concern. At some points it seems as though a polemic against consumerism is of central importance, with the romantic element being a mere interesting side-issue. In light of Stanton's stated purpose of creating a love story, the movie fails to effectively communicate what is supposed to be essential to its theme. And unfortunately, Wall-E is overly successful in emphasizing elements that are inessential to Stanton's central message. While watching, it's too easy to forget that even robots can fall in love.

What a shame.

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Good Deeds

Here at NoodleFood, we like to use our powers for good.

I'm now blogging regularly at Politics without God about secular government, as is Paul. Paul also continues to blog regularly at We Stand FIRM about free market medicine. Some of the posts from those two blogs have been and will be cross-posted to NoodleFood, most posts have not been and will not be. However, many would be of interest to NoodleFood readers. So from now on, I'll post a quick list of the week's posts from each blog each Sunday, exactly like this:

Politics without God:

• Monday, July 14, 2008: McCain on Adoption: Gay Couples Need Not Apply by Diana Hsieh
  
• Wednesday, July 16, 2008: Washington Post on Amendment 48 by Diana Hsieh
  
• Friday, July 18, 2008: GOP Platform: Speak Out by Diana Hsieh

We Stand FIRM:

• Monday, July 14, 2008: Paula Hall: Don't Become A Primary Care Physician by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Tuesday, July 15, 2008: Father of Canadian Health System Says It's In "Crisis" by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Wednesday, July 16, 2008: Peikoff Video: Health Care Is Not A Right by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Thursday, July 17, 2008: More On Massachusetts Mandates Mess by Paul Hsieh, MD
  
• Friday, July 18, 2008: Commonwealth Fund At It Again by Paul Hsieh, MD

Enjoy!

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Brandon Byrd, NoodleFoodler

I'm delighted to announce the addition of yet another NoodleFoodler, Brandon Byrd.

Brandon Byrd is a graduate student in philosophy at Bowling Green State University in northwest Ohio. His research interests are primarily ethical, but include relevant aspects of economics, political science, and public policy. Aside from philosophy he is interested in art, broadly construed. In particular he enjoys virtuoso pianism, electronic music (though quite selectively), and the stage and screen.

His first post -- a stellar non-spoilerish review of the movie Wall-E -- will be posted tomorrow morning.

Welcome, Brandon!

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Sunday Open Thread #6

Here's yet another a Sunday Open Thread for your thoughts:

For anyone in the fiery grip of a random question, comment, joke, or link they'd like to share with NoodleFood readers, I hereby open up the comments on this post to any respectable topic. (Please refrain from posting personal attacks, pornographic material, and commercial solicitations.)

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Inspiring Before and After

Wow, these are an inspiring set of before-and-after pictures highlighting the importance of proper diet in addition to exercise. The before pictures are actually after two months of CrossFit plus an active job, yet eating the usual high-carb junk. The after pictures are from a mere three months later. The couple continued the exercise but switched to a paleo diet, eating whatever "they wanted from meats, fish, chicken, seasonal fruits, and veggies." The difference is almost shocking. (The pictures are found in the link above, but the full discussion is in this MS Word document.)

The original source, Robb Wolf, says, "From my experience bad nutrition will block virtually all the effects of exercise."

(One of the benefits of being home again after OCON is the capacity to eat all and only what I want. Life is so much better that way!)

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Very Odd Spam

Sometimes, very strange mail makes it through my spam filter. (I use the server-side program SpamAssassin to simply reject obvious spam, then I filter the rest via my mail program based on SpamAssassin's score. That works fabulously well.) Here's a recent head-scratcher that made it into my inbox:

Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:42:41 -0400
From: "I will be a total Sheriff" <exclusive@bsd.com>
Subject: Clarification. Herbert West III, Candidate for Sheriff.
To: diana@dianahsieh.com

..I have shown and will continue to show, that I will remove and expose any and all corruption and problamatics. I refuse to give anyone, to include those who feel their stature as a cop places them above the law, any different special consideration. I will be a total Sheriff, not a paid puppet who protects corruption....

[mysterious link which I won't reproduce]

Um, okay, dude. Best of luck with that.

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Global Warming Science In Action

Dedicated scientists will stop at nothing in the fight against global warming:

In an attempt to understand the extent of cow flatulence on global warming, scientists in Argentina are strapping plastic bags to the backs of cows to capture their emissions. Argentina has more than 55 million cows, making it a leading producer of beef. In the study, the scientists were surprised to discover that a standard 550-kg cow produces between 800 to 1,000 liters of emissions, including methane, each day...

"When we got the first results, we were surprised," said Guillermo Berra, a researcher at the National Institute of Agricultural Technology in Argentina. "Thirty percent of Argentina's (total greenhouse) emissions could be generated by cattle."

In their study, the researchers attached balloon-like plastic packs to the backs of at least 10 cows. A tube running to the animals' stomachs collected the gas inside the backpacks, which were then hung from the roof of the corral for analysis.

Unfortunately, the global warming authoritarians will just use this as an excuse to clamp down on cows as well as people.

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"Common Carrier" Craziness

The common law doctrine of "common carrier" would be funny if it weren't so stupid. In effect, the common carrier doctrine operates by designating a service as indispensible, and then destroying that service.

A New York Times article discusses the doctrine in the context of the debate over the advisability of "net neutrality," which is "the idea that Internet access providers like Comcast should not be allowed to favor some uses of their networks over others."

[The chairman of a net neutrality advocacy group] said the issues at stake go back to the common-law concept of a common carrier, which defined certain businesses — from blacksmiths to ferries — as so essential to commerce that their owners could not discriminate against any paying customer.

The 'Lectric Law Library fleshes out what it means to "not discriminate," in the classic application of the doctrine to a transportation provider:

1. To carry passengers whenever they offer themselves and are ready to pay for their transportation. They have no more right to refuse a passenger, if they have sufficient room and accommodation, than an innkeeper has to refuse a guest.

What's funny is that no-one seems to follow this policy to its logical conclusion. Let's say a common carrier does routinely refuse to provide service to certain individuals or a class of individuals. If the carrier is profit-seeking, the refusal to provide service will rest on the profitability of that refusal, or else some other carrier will enter the business to provide service to the denied individuals. Under the common carrier doctrine, such "discriminating" carriers would have to be punished, in proportion with the severity and persistency of their discrimination. Eventually, one or all of the following three things will occur: 1) common carriers will cease to be profitable as a result of increasing fines, and go out of business, 2) punishment of carriers will escalate to forcibly shutting noncompliant carriers down, or 3) no-one will undertake common carrier trades. Either way, the doctrine must have the effect of eliminating the businesses designated as common carriers.

If all of the above is true, then why, you may ask, do we still have common carriers? It is because we have a mixed economy. In a free economy, all property is privately owned, including all businesses. In a mixed economy such as ours, internet service providers such as Comcast can do business only if they are first licensed by the government. Once licensed, they enjoy a near-monopoly, with the ability through incumbency and lobbying to prevent other potential providers from entering the field.

So, we now we have the following perversion of incentives: a government policy of violating property rights (the common carrier doctrine) becomes a weapon by which those whose rights are violated (like Comcast) keep competitors out of the field by force. That is, the system is set up so that it is possible to make money by giving up your rights, so long as you thereby gain the power to violate the rights of others.

Ironically, this policy is supposedly designed to protect consumers. But it is consumers who lose in the end. Licensed common carriers have little incentive to provide good service at a good price, because consumers have no choice but to deal with them. So under common carrier policies, consumers must either 1) purchase overpriced and inferior services, or 2) face the complete unavailability of those services.
There's a way to describe a policy like this. It's called "stupid."

Actually, there's a better way to describe the common carrier doctrine. Wrong.

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Speak for Rights

Over on Politics without God, the new blog of the Coalition for Secular Government, I just published an instructional post on submitting comments in defense of the separation of church and state to the GOP Platform Committee, with a few samples of good comments.

Remember, any submissions should be clear, succinct, and polite, but they need not be your most eloquent work.

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Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

For those of you who've missed Joss Whedon television of late, you can satisfy yourself by watching the first two of three acts of his Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Nathan Fillion enters toward the end, but Neil Patrick Harris is just brilliant. The third act will be posted on Saturday.

According to this fascinating USA Today story, the musical miniseries has exceeded all expectations. As a result, "Whedon is now considering further webisodes, as well as Broadway and film." Hooray!

(Via Brian Smith)

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The Objectivist Roundup: First Anniversary Edition

Welcome to the First Anniversary Edition of the Objectivist Roundup. Yes, the Objectivist Roundup -- the weekly review of posts from Objectivist bloggers -- is one year old. The very first Objectivist Roundup was hosted on Kim's Play Place on July 19th. It was a small beginning, with just four submissions. Now, one year later, the Roundup has more submissions than I care to count. (I'll let the HTML do the counting for me.)

So without further ado, it's time to whack the birthday piñata to see what Objectivist goodies burst forth:

1. Jeff Scialabba presents The Next Hot Career Choice: Self-Immolation posted at The Undercurrent.
   
   
2. Guy Barnett presents Ending Racism through Racism posted at The Undercurrent.
   
   
3. Gideon Reich presents Armchair Intellectual posted at Armchair Intellectual, saying, "Here's my review of the Summer 2008 issue of The Objective Standard."
   
   
4. Paul Hsieh presents A Conversation With My Dentist posted at We Stand FIRM, saying, "It's important to spread good ideas. And it's equally important to give our moral sanction and support to others who spread good ideas. In both cases, you may make more difference than you realize."
   
   
5. Burgess Laughlin presents Quality Control in Movements? posted at Making Progress, saying, "How have movements of the past--such as the movement to abolish slavery in the USA--succeeded? One element of the answer might be quality control. Did members of successful movements of the past attempt some sort of quality control? This article offers preliminary notes for such an investigation."
   
   
6. Monica presents Environmentalists vs. The Environment posted at Spark A Synapse, saying, "This week, I discussed the Objectivist view of environmentalism and contemplated the question, 'Are hard-core environmentalists really pro-environment or are they are just anti-man?' I concluded that hard-core environmentalists aren't pro-environment any more than hard-core animal rights activists such as PETA are pro-animal, as evidenced by their desire to destroy all domesticated species. Likewise, hard-core environmentalists are nihilistic. Rather than seeking a positive value, they seek a negative: the complete absence of man's influence on the world. This is why viable solutions to the putative problem of global warming, such as nuclear power and forestry, are rejected."
   
   
7. Khartoum presents Enforcing Vegetarianism posted at Philosophy, Law and Life.
   
   
8. Ari Armstrong presents Denver Post's Crack Economic Team Strikes Again posted at FreeColorado.com, saying, "I poke holes in the claim that energy controls and subsidies are responsible for Colorado's economic success."
   
   
9. Stephen Bourque presents The Rescue of Ingrid Betancourt posted at One Reality.
   
   
10. Roderick Fitts presents The Importance of the Subject posted at NoodleFood, saying, "Tara Smith's paper, 'The Importance of the Subject in Objective Morality: Distinguishing Objective from Intrinsic Value' elaborates on philosopher Ayn Rand's view that the individual (the "subject") plays an important role in the generation and the instructions of an objective morality."
    
    
11. Myrhaf presents Sui Generis posted at Myrhaf, saying, "In this episode Myrhaf is asked to name authors who write like Ayn Rand, but fails to think of any."
    
    
12. Ken presents To the Republican Platform Committee posted at Ad Hoc, saying, "Here's my advice to the Republican Platform Committee regarding the religious right's threats to the separation of church and state."
    
    
13. Gus Van Horn presents Prager's False Equation posted at Gus Van Horn, saying, "The religionists are trying to keep us from realizing that the gay marriage debate is really about individual rights."
    
    
14. C. August presents Book Review: The Sparrowhawk Series posted at Titanic Deck Chairs, saying, "Do you long for new novels that live up to and reflect your sense of life? Are you tired of modern fiction that wallows in the mundane and profane, as if that's all there is in the world? Read this review to find out if you should add Sparrowhawk to your reading list."
    
    
15. Valda Redfern presents The Solution to the Food/Energy/Whatever Crisis posted at Valzhalla, saying, "'In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has' (Proverbs 21:20)."
    
    
16. Peter Cresswell presents Chrysler Building - William van Allen posted at Not PC, saying, "New York's Chrysler Building is now Abu Dhabi's Chrysler Building -- an unintended consequence of Keynesian economics and environmentalist anti-development policies."
    
    
17. Nicholas Provenzo presents Five Great American Paintings: Part III: Lincoln the Railsplitter posted at The Rule of Reason, saying, "This post discusses "Lincoln the Railsplitter," one of five paintings that I consider to be among American painter Norman Rockwell's greatest artistic achievements."
    
    
18. Edward Cline presents John McCain: Pseudo-Maverick II posted at The Rule of Reason, saying, "Senator John McCain is a political pseudo-maverick because, in reality, he subscribes to every major fallacy at large in contemporary Western culture."
    
    
19. Darren Cauthon presents Radio Royalty Rates Jumped? In Comes the Free Market! posted at Darren Cauthon.

That concludes this Anniversary Edition of the Objectivist Roundup. Now that you've gotten your fill of 19 (!) posts, it's time to pack up the birthday cake and head home from the party. On your way out, remember to give all due congratulations and thanks to the women of Kim's Play Place and Rational Jenn for creating and sustaining a fantastic carnival every week for a whole year!

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Coalition for Secular Government

I'm pleased to announce the formation of a grassroots ad-hoc group -- the Coalition for Secular Government (CSG) -- to fight for the separation of church and state. The mission of CSG reads:

The Coalition for Secular Government advocates government solely based on secular principles of individual rights. The protection of a person's basic rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness -- including freedom of religion and conscience -- requires a strict separation of church and state.

Consequently:

1. We oppose any laws or policies based on religious scripture or dogma, such as restrictions on abortion and government discrimination against homosexuals.
   
   
2. We oppose any government promotion of religion, such as the teaching of intelligent design in government schools and tax-funded "faith-based initiatives."
   
   
3. We oppose any special exemptions or privileges based on religion by government, such as exemptions for churches from the tax law applicable to other non-profits.

The only proper government is a secular government devoted to the protection of individual rights.

The Coalition for Secular Government seeks to educate the public about the necessary secular foundation of a free society, particularly the principles of individual rights and separation of church and state.

Currently, my primary aim with the Coalition is to promote secular government in Colorado by fighting the proposed "Definition of a Person" Amendment (a.k.a. Amendment 48) to the Colorado constitution. However, I urge people outside Colorado to join the fight for secular government. Every state in the union is violating the separation of church and state in ways worthy of opposition.

So if you agree with CSG's mission and wish to actively promote secular government, you can subscribe to CSG's Activists e-mail list. To do so, you must aim to engage in some form of activism for secular government at least once per month. Activism can be as easy as posting web comments, forwarding e-mails, and speaking to friends about the importance of secular government.

However, if you'd just like to keep informed about CSG issues and activities, you can join the News e-mail list.

Also, I'll be updating CSG's blog, Politics without God, about three times per week. I have a few good posts up already; comments are welcome.

(As will be evident to some, the Coalition for Secular Government is modeled on Lin Zinser's very effective group Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine. The two organizations are not affiliated, however.)

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