Atlas Shrugged Part 1

April 15, 2011

Evolve!

Feb. 12th is Darwin's birthday!

Spontaneous Order

One of my favourite "media guys" is John Stossel. From years ago he did information programs on ABC's 20/20 about Junk Science, that I frequently used as a teaching tool. Today, alas, I can't watch him on television because my cable company does not carry the Fox Business channel (it is a government plot).
Stossel and I have much in common, we share exactly the same birthday (dd/mm/yyyy), ethnic origin, sort of close on religion, and we are both outspoken libertarians. OK, I'm not even close to his level of "outspokenness," but I'm certainly annoying to friends and family. But I digress, the purpose of this posting is to present a clip from a recent STOSSEL about something that is poorly understood by most people who have been schooled by the collectivist educational system in Canada and the United States: Spontaneous Order in economics.
Stossel interviews Larry Reed of FEE and its great stuff, simple, clear and to the point. 

Drugs? - "There's too much money in it!"

Some people say the dumbest things.

The price of democracy?

Muslim Brotherhood logo

"The dark ages are staging a comeback via the age of enlightenment." So begins a column in the National Post where George Jonas muses about the Egyptian Crisis. In Opening a back door to theocracy, Jonas suggests that it may be goodbye Hosni, which leads ultimately to hello Hamas.
Democracies have done this before, yielding to religious or non-religious dictatorships, especially when limits are not adhered to. Yes, Mubarak's 30 years have been dictatorial, but the implication is be careful what you wish for.
Jonas suggests that recent comments by Obama have not helped. Actually it was the comments that Obama didn't make that might lead to problems. Obama didn't say how the current uprising would lead to an orderly transition. He didn't say how the past and present unorganized opposition would suddenly get organized. Most importantly he didn't say how these protests would prevent handing over Egypt to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.
Of course we would say that is the price of democracy, the people may choose and sometimes those choices are not wise. In limited democracies where there are checks and balances, where orderly transitions can and do occur, mistakes can be corrected. Just remember, the Muslim Brotherhood needs only to be elected once.   

Unrecorded History?

One reason people find history so boring and difficult to relate to, is that those people, who are portrayed in history books, were the movers and shakers of the world in their time. They were the leaders, the monarchs and nobles, the presidents and prime ministers, the explorers and discoverers, and the dates of their achievements were recorded and transmitted for posterity.
But what was everyone else doing? You know, the common folk. Did they not play a role in shaping their present and their future. Of course they did, but few of them were taking notes, so much of that history - interesting history - is lost.
In the following ReasonTV video clip, author Thaddeus Russell attempts to recover some of that lost history. His new book A Renegade History of the United States could be very interesting. As he says, these people did not write pamphlets or manifestos, they were not explicitly political, they were just living and often "doing things they were not supposed to be doing." In doing that, they have left us all a legacy of freedom, far greater in many cases, than was achieved by the leaders. Of course by extrapolation similar stories were not written every where else.  

Hey Canada, what's a Bieber?

Forget the football game. This is what you missed if you live in the Great White North. The wonderfully creative, and hugely entertaining commercials, that the Yanks get to see between the downs. For me they are the "ups", have a look, they are all here.

A loveable libertarian?

I can't recall the last time I watched a TV sitcom regularly. Was it Seinfeld, All in the Family, I Love Lucy, I'm not sure?
My wife showed an article in MACLEAN'S magazine the other day, I guess she thought it reminded her of me. The MACLEAN'S article titled The Lovable Government Hater refers to the character played by Nick Offerman in the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation.
The character played by Offerman (Nick Swanson) is a "libertarian, government-hating bureaucrat," which sounds like a contradiction in terms. As the MACLEAN'S article points out, most government-haters on TV are portrayed as militia fanatics, but Nick Swanson is - a nice guy. What a relief, TV is breaking out of the practice of stereotyping, although not entirely. Nick Swanson is still portrayed as being religious, gun-loving, humourless,  a throw-back to the '70's and "virulently anti-government." The good news? He is conflicted, which makes him seem real, almost human. That's a good thing, we don't need one-dimensional government-haters, we need caring people with better solutions.

Egypt - The end of Statism?

Stefan Molyneux makes a compelling argument for the end of Egyptian statism in a video blog on the Freedomain Radio YouTube site.
In it, he talks about how Egypt virtually invented the idea of "state" 6000 years ago, but still suffers the terrible poverty of any third world nation. Why?
Watch!

Ron Paul talks about Foreign Aid

This is refreshing.
Rep. Ron Paul is interviewed on a CBC Radio program about the Egyptian crisis, and the whole idea of foreign aid. He answers questions about foreign aid to Egypt, to Israel, and to many of the countries in the middle east, but most importantly Rep. Paul outlines the libertarian view of foreign aid as only he can, in simple, clear and unambiguous terms. The interview was broadcast on Sat. Feb. 5, 2011 in edited form. But here is the entire uncut version of the interview, enjoy: Uncut Ron Paul Interview.