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Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Miscellany:10/21/15

Quote of the Day
All warfare is based on deception.
Sun Tzu

Tweet of the Day
Charity of the Day

See embedded video at the end of the post. Familiar readers are familiar with my references to Beito's From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967. My Dad was a member of such a Roman Catholic fraternal benefit society, his local Knights of Columbus chapter; in fact, the hall hosted a funeral luncheon for the family and guests following my Dad's funeral mass.
Since the Knights of Columbus Christian Refugee Relief Fund launched in August 2014 to support those suffering persecution in Iraq and Syria, anti-Christian violence in the region has reached unimaginable dimensions. For more than a year, a campaign of religious cleansing by the Islamic State group has terrorized Christian communities and other religious minorities in the region. Confronted with a stark ultimatum — convert to Islam, pay jizya (a submission tax), leave or be killed — hundreds of thousands have fled their ancestral Christian homeland.
In response to the humanitarian crisis, more than $3 million has so far been distributed through the Order’s Christian Refugee Relief Fund to help persecuted Iraqis, Syrians and other refugees. The Supreme Council has also urged members and their families to pray for those affected.So far, the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil, Iraq, and the Melkite Greek Catholic Archdiocese of Aleppo, Syria, have utilized donations from the fund. Other gifts have gone to assist the Holy See’s relief efforts in the Middle East, as well as to help Catholic communities suffering from the violent conflict in Ukraine, where the Order established a formal presence in 2013.

Image of the Day

Ron Paul's photo.
Via Freedom Memes
I've slept through tornadoes and hurricanes, but not lemurs on my head...
Privatization is the Future



Hillary Clinton's Disingenuous Gun Control Politics



Joe, We're So Ashamed of You, Too



Facebook Corner

(FEE). Politics is a tribal game, where members of one team will always assume that their leaders are really on their side and doing the right thing.
She and her supporters are doing much the same thing then-candidate Obama and his supporters did in 2008.
Not really. You can argue that Obama ran a populist campaign and said things people want to hear, like many politicians. But let's take Obama's alleged support for traditional marriage. He had opposed DOMA as a state senator and in 2008 he opposed California's proposition 8. So I never bought into Obama's flip-flop when popular opinion supported traditional marriage. At the time Obama "evolved" on marriage, gay marriage had not carried in state referendums, including Prop 8. Hillary waited until the polls caught up to favoring gay marriage before she "evolved". What Clinton has been doing is purely political, trying to co-opt her leftist opposition: her State Department provided favorable findings on Keystone, she worked on TPP. The flip-flops are as if she had never been Secretary of State. It's not flip-flopping: it's revisionist history. She has "evolved" on positions she ran on in 2008. I think Obama was not really motivated by power so much as ideology. Hillary is all about personal ambition.

(Cato Institute). "Trump’s insinuation that trade has destroyed U.S. manufacturing is fundamentally mistaken. The truth is that U.S. manufacturing is thriving, although the industry employs fewer people, mainly because of automation—not trade. Would Trump undo technological progress and massive savings to bring back manufacturing jobs?
 "Would Trump undo technological progress and massive savings to bring back manufacturing jobs?" I doubt anyone would, or could. That said, it'd be nice if The Cato Institute would acknowledge that besides contributing to GDP, manufacturing employment has played an important social role - it makes productive use of millions of men who aren't creative geniuses, and who don't have the conscientiousness or sensitivity to be that good at service work.
This is a fascist thread. The Luddites and Malthusians have long played the Chicken Little angle, only to see the economy to progress past their limited perspective. Today only about 2% of the workforce is involved in our world-leading agricultural economy; what would happen to all the people who earned their living on a farm? The fact of the matter is that manufacturing percentage of the global economy (not just the US) has declined--part of that has to do with inevitable technological progress making operations more efficient and productive. Lower prices mean more disposable income is available for other goods and services. As the Cato Institute piece points out, we are migrating to more value-added manufacturing, reflective of the law of comparative advantage. What we need is less worry about second-guessing the Invisible Hand and more worry about the counterproductive economic interventions by the hubris of the authoritarian State.

(Reason). Libertarians have long been divided on the subject of intellectual property such as patents and copyright. Does natural law extend to intellectual property rights, just like "real property" rights? Or is IP just another government-granted monopoly that limits freedom?
The Progress Clause of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress authority to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." During the Constitutional Convention, this provision was adopted by an overwhelming vote and with little debate. But IP was much more limited at the nation's founding than it is today.
In fact, copyright terms are now 580 percent longer than at the start of the 19th century and patents are now granted for software, designs, and business methods that don't look anything like the traditional definition of "inventions."
How should libertarians regard the current legal and regulatory framework and does it help or hinder progress in the digital age? And when considering reform, how can policymakers balance the interests of creators while limiting the potential for regulatory capture and industry-driven cronyism?
On October 8, 2015, R Street and Reason co-hosted a discussion on the pitfalls and merits of intellectual property at Reason's DC offices. Joining the panel was Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute, Wayne Brough of FreedomWorks, Eli Dourado of the Mercatus Center, and Sasha Moss of R Street Institute. The discussion was moderated by Reason's Nick Gillespie.
Edited by Joshua Swain. Cameras by Swain and Todd Krainin.
 If and when I create something, maybe write a book or a song, invent a new technology, it's my property, period; I don't need some pseudo-libertarian Elizabeth Warren/Barack Obama wannabe with a morally corrupt copy machine arguing "You didn't create that." Property rights are natural rights, not invented by the State; what the State does is limit the rights to my own property, that parasites can't unduly profit from rationalized intellectual theft. Arguing that the property rights of mental labor is fundamentally different than the property rights from physical labor is an unsustainable double standard. If the government is not going to recognize my intellectual property, I have little incentive to share my work--I can't license copies to a publisher when some pirate can undercut the publisher's costs by cutting me out of the deal. These pseudo-libertarians need to read relevant discussion from people like Lysander Spooner and Ayn Rand.

(Reason). Snap out of it, Rand Paul! Here are 5 ways the libertarianish candidate can turn a depressing duty into a liberating opportunity.

via Catholic Libertarians
For once, I agree with the Holy Father--and let us not forget that a huge source is the authoritarian State.

via We Are Capitalists

The story I've seen is that most of us won't break even, e.g., from Time in 2012: "Social Security has reached another critical threshold: For the first time, a typical husband and wife retiring today can expect to collect less in benefits than it paid in payroll tax over the course of their life." We aren't socialist because government rebates part of what it stole from us. I didn't vote the redistribution scheme into existence; I didn't sign an agreement with the government when at 16, I saw payroll taxes taken out of my meager college work/study earnings.

(IPI). Thanks to Madison/St. Clair Record for covering our term limits petition. You can sign the petition here: http://illin.is/1Gp0mbs
Allowing fascists like Madigan to gain long-term disproportionate, corrupting influence through seniority or other corrupt partisan bargain hardly reflects the republican ideals on which this country was founded. The status quo reflects the "more equal" status of professional parastic political whores without any statewide mandate.

(Reason). Paul Ryan wants to change the way the Speakership works.
Paul Ryan wants to backdoor his way into a large power position, as if Speaker weren't already powerful enough! They need to laugh at him in the face and say Hell No!
Hell no to your approach, which maintains the status quo.

The Exquisite Harmonies of Celtic Woman





Politial Cartoon
Courtesy of Gary Varvel via Townhall
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Meat Loaf, "Not a Dry Eye in the House". I love, love, love this song/performance. The play archetype for phases of a relationship is epic and memorable. Warren's bridge verse "Act 1,...,  Act 4..."  Just brilliant songwriting, and what can you say about Michael Lee Aday's performance? The man has great pipes; I can't even imagine anybody improving on this...



Christians at Risk in the Middle East


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