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Republicans must not give moral sanction to ObamaCare

This whole ObamaCare episode is incredibly evocative of the final chapters of Atlas Shrugged. In the novel, as the country is falling apart, there is chaos and confusion on the part of the pro-totalitarian-government forces and their acolytes. Some admit the whole purpose of the exercise was to gain power for themsel ves, and they don't really care if the nation falls apart to get it. Some are terrified and confused. And some (the "Leader" Thompson in the book) don't know what to do - and that's why they arrest John Galt and try to make him an Economic Dictator - under the premise that he can force all the terrible laws they've been passing to somehow achieve good result. John Galt refused to go along with this charade, knowing that the whole root of the collapse was people using force to replace the choices of others with their own: Galt: "If you order me to issue a directive, I will issue the directive you order me to issue." Thompson: "Oh, bu

Liberty and Society Can Exist Together - via Property Rights

Liberty is our birthright - our nature - our requirement for survival. In the dawn of time Man was born into Liberty. In the State of Nature, man is free. He must seek, then create, the means of his survival - his food, his shelter. It is not given to him, it is not automatic. In the State of Nature, a man alone keeps what he makes through the use of his own reason. Then man invented Society and Government - and every government from the beginning of time until the founding of the United States was based not on Liberty, but on Force and Coercion. Every Government from the beginning of time has ended after injustice, torture, enslavement and death of its own people, followed by conquest, murder and enslavement from outside. This is because we chose Government of expediency - government of tradition - government of the jungle - government of force. We chose a Government in contradiction with our need for Individual Liberty. But at the founding of the United States, for perhaps the first

Donna Brazile - time to take your head out of the sand.

Donna Brazile tweets that she cannot understand why her health insurance premiums just went up. Only someone guilty of gross mental and moral evasion could ask this. Donna Brazile , conservatives and libertarians have spent the last two years explaining to morons like you why the price of health insurance was going to skyrocket under Obamacare. It's not that you're too stupid to understand. It's that you *evaded* the truth, you willfully put blinders on. It's time for people like you to get out of the way. Your "rule by feelings" is sending this nation over the cliff. http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/02/27/Donna-Brazile-Why-did-my-health-care-premiums-go-up

Today's Degenerate Politics

Law may properly intervene only where one's actions harm another person, without their voluntary consent. Government is not about any particular morality. It should be about banning force in human relationships so that all individuals may operate under whatever moral choices they think best. Almost all choices are moral because almost all choices affect our long-term lives, happiness and survival in some way.  By guaranteeing each person the freedom to pursue their own goals in any way they want (absent force) we will evolve as a society much more quickly than if a thug or gang forces everyone to live according to their particular choices - because we will see more quickly what works and what doesn't. And more fundamentally, we will live as *men* with our minds - instead of as animals do, by brute force. Our experiment in freedom has devolved into two rival gangs constantly vying to control government's power in order to restrict the freedom of choice of others. Those of u

Science is a process.

Science is a process, not a result. It is in particular a process of epistemology - it's a means of obtaining and verifying knowledge. Anyone who is wed to a theory as opposed to the facts is not a scientist. I've been watching Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" and there is a great episode about Johannes Kepler. You see, Kepler's original theory was that the planets travel around the sun in perfect circles nested in perfect solids nested in other perfect circles and so on. Kepler spent many long, frustrating years trying to match his theory to the data, but he couldn't make it work. At one point, he decided the data he had on hand was flawed, so he sought out Tycho Brahe who had the best data on the motions of the planets. Even with Brahe's excellent data, Kepler couldn't make his theory work. So at long last, he gave up his theory. And in doing so, he was able to make a great scientific achievement - the first laws of planetary motion. You see, the planets tr

Murder in the US

In 2011, I calculate the overall US murder rate as 4.6 per 100,000 population. But if you recalculate this, and assumed that black men murdered at the same rate as everyone else, the overall rate would drop to 1.9 out of 100,000 population. That would give the United States the 147th highest murder rate in the world - or, the 60th best. The insane disproportionate murder rate among US blacks is why the overall US murder rate seems so high. I don't understand why liberals refuse to talk about this. I don't understand why blacks refuse to talk about this. Blacks are just as often the victim as the offender - almost SIXTY PERCENT of murder victims in the US are black. Shouldn't they care about this? Where are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to talk about this? Yet they are silent. And it's not like this is any secret. This culture of violence, abuse of women, and plain thuggery is paraded around daily in pop music. It's glorified on TV shows like "

Krugman: We can just print money to solve our problems

Seriously. I shit you not. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/be-ready-to-mint-that-coin/ The bill above is from a period of Yugoslavian hyperinflation in 1993-1994. But Paul Krugman is arguing Obama can "sidestep" the debt ceiling negotiation by simply printing a trillion dollars. It's nice that Krugman hasn't given up his childhood belief in magic. But in the real world of grown-ups, such thinking is dangerous.

The Solution to Federal Spending - Tax the Rich!

Federal Spending has increased by $1 Trillion a year since Obama took office. These are big, absurd numbers that bear no relation to most people's daily lives. So let's put it into perspective. $1 Trillion, is a million millions. There are 300 million people in the US. Only about half of those, 155 million, are employed. One trillion divided by 155 million (i.e., each working person's share of the increased government spending) is $6,451. Per year, per working person. So if you are a typical family with two wage earners, your family's share of just the *increase* in Federal spending since Obama took office is $12,903. Per year. But the total Federal budget is actually $3.7 Trillion. Your family's share of the total Federal Budget is $47,741. Per year. Now let's take a look at soaking the rich. (You know you want to.) In 2011, about 6 million Americans made more than $200,000 in income that year. (1) Let's make them pay for everything! Ho