Jim Crum forwarded this video.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Glenn Beck on Global Warming
I seem to have been misinformed about Glenn Beck's position on global warming. These two videos suggest that World Net Daily's claim that Beck favors the global warming hypothesis may have been false. In the first video guest John Coleman calls global warming a scam. Coleman blames the "mainstream" (sic) press. In the second video Beck reports on the e-mails. So once again I have egg on my face concerning Beck, by way of World Net Daily this time.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Mass Murder and the Socialist State of Mind
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago spurred me to libertarianism, but I had read another book about mass murder, Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil a few years before when I was an undergraduate. I am re-reading Arendt's book and am struck by her controversial claim that the Judenraten, the Jewish administrative agencies that oversaw the holocaust, were in fact absolutely essential to the entire holocaust. In other words, Eichmann and the Nazis had to count not only on the Jews' submission, but on their cooperation, in seeing to their own deaths.
On page 125 Arendt writes:
"But the whole truth was that there existed Jewish community organizations and Jewish party and welfare organizations on both the local and the international level. Wherever Jews lived, there were recognized Jewish leaders, and this leadership almost without exception, cooperated in one way or another, for one reason or another, with the Nazis. The whole truth was that if the Jewish people had really been unorganized and leaderless, there would have been chaos and plenty of misery but the total number of victims would hardly have been between four and a half and six million people. (According to Freudiger's calculations about half of them could have saved themselves if they had not followed the instructions of the Jewish Councils. This is of course a mere estimate, which, however, jibes with the rather reliable figures from Holland and which I owe to Dr. L. de Jong, the head of the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation. In Holland, where the Joodsche Raad like all the Dutch authorities very quickly became an 'instrument of the Nazis,' 103,000 Jews were deported to the death camps...Only five hundred and nineteen Jews returned...In contrast to this figure, ten thousand of those twenty to twenty-five thousand Jews, who escaped the Nazis--and that meant also the Jewish Council--and went underground survived; again forty to fifty per cent...)"
Why the willingness among Jews to comply with a government intent on killing them?
Arendt blames this on Nazism's causing a moral collapse, but I think that claim is incorrect. Similar phenomena were seen in the Soviet Union and China. It is not attributable to Nazism, but rather to the tribalist philosophy of socialism in general, to what Popper calls the "closed society". Moreover, elements of it exist here in the US and have increased in force as the public has become increasingly trusting and obsequious to the state. For example, if the US Supreme Court violates the law and claims the state's right to seize property for corrupt private interests, the public does not see a violent action but rather a justifiable state position.
The socialization of conscience has two additional sources. The first is ordinary conformity that the famous experiments of Stanley Milgram exposes. The second is the other directedness that David Riesman discusses in his Lonely Crowd.
Trust in government, other-directedness and conformity to state directed norms are associated with the socialist mode. In twentieth century Europe, the socialist mentality of compliance and support for the state had extended to a much greater extent than it has here in the United States. What is shocking about this process is that, given sufficient governmental and social pressure, and given Jews' widespread acceptance of the socialist model, Jews were willing to see themselves murdered rather than question the power of the German socialist state.
Should Americans comply with the dictates of government? With the IRS? Do we have a single reason to trust the government of George W. Bush or Barack Obama?
On page 125 Arendt writes:
"But the whole truth was that there existed Jewish community organizations and Jewish party and welfare organizations on both the local and the international level. Wherever Jews lived, there were recognized Jewish leaders, and this leadership almost without exception, cooperated in one way or another, for one reason or another, with the Nazis. The whole truth was that if the Jewish people had really been unorganized and leaderless, there would have been chaos and plenty of misery but the total number of victims would hardly have been between four and a half and six million people. (According to Freudiger's calculations about half of them could have saved themselves if they had not followed the instructions of the Jewish Councils. This is of course a mere estimate, which, however, jibes with the rather reliable figures from Holland and which I owe to Dr. L. de Jong, the head of the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation. In Holland, where the Joodsche Raad like all the Dutch authorities very quickly became an 'instrument of the Nazis,' 103,000 Jews were deported to the death camps...Only five hundred and nineteen Jews returned...In contrast to this figure, ten thousand of those twenty to twenty-five thousand Jews, who escaped the Nazis--and that meant also the Jewish Council--and went underground survived; again forty to fifty per cent...)"
Why the willingness among Jews to comply with a government intent on killing them?
Arendt blames this on Nazism's causing a moral collapse, but I think that claim is incorrect. Similar phenomena were seen in the Soviet Union and China. It is not attributable to Nazism, but rather to the tribalist philosophy of socialism in general, to what Popper calls the "closed society". Moreover, elements of it exist here in the US and have increased in force as the public has become increasingly trusting and obsequious to the state. For example, if the US Supreme Court violates the law and claims the state's right to seize property for corrupt private interests, the public does not see a violent action but rather a justifiable state position.
The socialization of conscience has two additional sources. The first is ordinary conformity that the famous experiments of Stanley Milgram exposes. The second is the other directedness that David Riesman discusses in his Lonely Crowd.
Trust in government, other-directedness and conformity to state directed norms are associated with the socialist mode. In twentieth century Europe, the socialist mentality of compliance and support for the state had extended to a much greater extent than it has here in the United States. What is shocking about this process is that, given sufficient governmental and social pressure, and given Jews' widespread acceptance of the socialist model, Jews were willing to see themselves murdered rather than question the power of the German socialist state.
Should Americans comply with the dictates of government? With the IRS? Do we have a single reason to trust the government of George W. Bush or Barack Obama?
Friday, February 19, 2010
Obama: All Americans to Live on Debt
Barack Obama has announced that he aims to prohibit natural resource extraction from a large part of the southwest. At the same time, he boasts that after seventy years of deficit spending the January unemployment rate of 9.7% proves that "stimulus" has stopped unemployment.
In a phone interview today, Mr. Obama announced that he aims to illegalize productive jobs and improve the economy through government spending and printing more money. "Jobs need not produce anything of value," Nancy Pelosi says. "Only reactionaries believe that work needs to produce something." Rather, according to Mr. Obama, "if we double the money supply, wealth will be doubled. With twice the number of dollars, we can afford to reduce output. The nation will become richer as we spend and go further into debt."
Tim Kaine, chair of the Democratic National Committee, agrees. "Progressives know that by borrowing, in the long term more money means greater wealth." Kaine said that he supports the Obama plan of mandating indebtedness of all Americans.
To implement the non-productive work policy, Mr. Obama is releasing an executive order. All productive work will be curtailed or eliminated. Future generations of Americans can choose from seven careers:
Mortgage lender
Real estate developer
School teacher
Investment banker
Trial attorney
Government bureaucrat
Drug and guidance counselor
All other forms of work will be eliminated. Americans will be required to borrow an unspecified sum each year. "Through the expansion of borrowing, all will become wealthy," according to Mr. Obama. "Anyone who tries to produce something will be subjected to IRS enforcement," he added.
In a phone interview today, Mr. Obama announced that he aims to illegalize productive jobs and improve the economy through government spending and printing more money. "Jobs need not produce anything of value," Nancy Pelosi says. "Only reactionaries believe that work needs to produce something." Rather, according to Mr. Obama, "if we double the money supply, wealth will be doubled. With twice the number of dollars, we can afford to reduce output. The nation will become richer as we spend and go further into debt."
Tim Kaine, chair of the Democratic National Committee, agrees. "Progressives know that by borrowing, in the long term more money means greater wealth." Kaine said that he supports the Obama plan of mandating indebtedness of all Americans.
To implement the non-productive work policy, Mr. Obama is releasing an executive order. All productive work will be curtailed or eliminated. Future generations of Americans can choose from seven careers:
Mortgage lender
Real estate developer
School teacher
Investment banker
Trial attorney
Government bureaucrat
Drug and guidance counselor
All other forms of work will be eliminated. Americans will be required to borrow an unspecified sum each year. "Through the expansion of borrowing, all will become wealthy," according to Mr. Obama. "Anyone who tries to produce something will be subjected to IRS enforcement," he added.
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