Faith in government is far more untenable than faith in any deity.

The left point to unanswered prayers, the lack of ‘proof’, the ability of science to explain the world as justification for Atheism.

Yet the fact that every leftist regime in the history of mankind has turned to totalitarianism. The fact that they distrust this government but would institute one of their own. The clearly elitist and self-serving leaders they continually elect to bring their ‘vision’. The inherently corrupting nature of power. None of this gives them pause.

They ask how god can exist in a world so full of suffering. They ask why god would unleash such pain on his children.

Yet they preach that overnment can cure the ills of society, ignoring how the welfare state, diminishing of self agency, and overarching governmental control inevitably creates those ills.

Click for video of a simulated child abduction.
HT: Caimlas of Boiled Frog

Before I left Lubbock for dubious educational opportunity in the northeast, I might’ve been shocked by this video. I would have asked how this might happen in a society as great as ours. 5 years older I’ve had enough contact with big cities, their people, and their politics to understand it all too well. What saddens me is that the very big city people who helped me come to my conclusions are just as incredulous as that 17 year old boy was what seems like eons ago.

The guy who ran the simulation on the streets of New Rochelle, suburb of NYC, gave two pretty much stock responses to why hours would pass before someone–anyone–would respond to a screaming 7 year old girl being manhandled by a man who was definitely not her father:

1. The Bystander Effect. It’s a well known psychological principle. The more people around, the more likely someone will assume ’someone else’ will stop and help the person in need. The classic experiment tested how many people would drive by a person with car trouble on the side of the road. The busier the road, the less likely help was to come. In one case, they actually gave up they had been waiting so long.

2. Fast Paced World. Everyone’s got tunnel vision. Everyone’s got a busy day and they just don’t have time for something that’s ‘none of their business’.

Both of these are valid, and to some degree, they are definitely part of the reason for this situation. Much as it sickens me, duty to your fellow man is not high on our list of priorities these days. But the growth of government–specifically the Nanny State–exacerbates these problems to a frankly dangerous degree.

As a Hindu, I was taught that the highest form of prayer was to help those around you. To protect the weak and help the poor with your own hands and your own pocketbook. I try to live up to this. It was the reason prayer scarcely passed my lips in my teenage years, and why today–though still Hindu–I consider myself agnostic. If god is the pure omnipotent being he is supposed to be, my works–not my belief–will be my path to salvation.

But I digress. In Lubbock, and here in Oklahoma City, I test the Bystander Effect constantly. I stop when I see a broken down car. I’ll spend 30 minutes chasing down a dog so I can return it to its owner. And half the time I stop at one of those broken down cars, someone else has already stopped to help them. And every time my literally incorrigible Miniature Pinscher gets loose, a phonecall within 10-15 minutes is inevitable with a “I have minnie. I can drive over there or you can come pick her up.” And while I hate to be the sentimentalist singing the praises of the heartland, my experience with people and their political ideologies leads me to the conclusion that people here are more likely to take care of our own because we don’t see it as Government’s job.

Several years ago, when I had more time and was less lazy, I instituted The Nick Challenge when formally or otherwise debating leftists who called into question my ’social conscience’ or ‘compassion’. If one dared use the ‘heartless conservative’ moniker, I’d get an evil little grin on my face and ask them how much time they spent volunteering. Having amassed several hundred hours working with children, vets, and animals, I was fairly certain they’d come up short. And you know, in the 4 years since I instituted it, not one leftie has taken me up on the challenge. Not one. They’d waffle. They’d say ‘that’s not the point’. Or ‘Good for you. But what about everyone else?’ Or natter on in some other inane avenue of idiocy.

I’m not trying to imply anything about the innate moral superiority of statists versus libertarians. Rather what I’m attempting to illustrate is that with the Nanny State comes a poisonous combination of the bystander effect and ‘I’ve already done my part.’ To the leftist, voting on a more progressive tax rate, for more social welfare, for civilian disarmament, and increased police power is equivalent to actually going out there, getting their hands dirty and actually helping the poor, protecting the weak, and acting on your conscience.

To the leftist, voting for government involvement in something replaces actually doing it. And so they judge others not by their works as the Hindu pantheon–should they exist–will judge me, but by how much government involvement they desire. They scream ‘You Shouldn’t Legislate Morality’ like it’s their anthem, yet their language shows they judge morality on how one votes. Both their own and others’.

Those in search of limited government are often accused–sometimes fairly–of being selfish jerks who ignore the poor and the weak. This charge may hold true for the Anarcho-Capitalists and the Neo-Randians who seem to have invaded the Libertarian Party making it hostile to individuals like myself. But all that a belief in limited government means is that we see the role of protector and nurturer to be played by individuals.

It’s ironic that the Party of Science and Defender of Evolution ignores what evolutionary biology and ecology tells us about reciprocal altruism, signalling honesty, and the protection of the weak. Behavioral ecologists like myself are enthralled by self-interested individuals cooperating with each other and sometimes helping others to their perceived detriment. We talk about the ways self interest manifests itself and ‘cheater detection mechanisms’ that ensure that individuals who aren’t helpful are chastised, change, or are thrown out of the group.

In Lubbock, a town large enough to have much of what the big city does, but small enough that the cop who pulls you over probably knows someone you know, these mechanisms are at play. As habitual designated driver due to religious beliefs, more than once, a policeman ignored the clearly underage raucous drunks in my car, happy that we were responsible enough to be using a DD. I never saw that play out in New York. And although my neighbors wore bemused expressions on their faces when we became the first minority family in our subdivision, now they know me as the terrorist-looking kid who despite driving a 2006 Mustang GT never speeds in th the neighborhood, slows down to a crawl when kids are playing on the sidewalk and the street, and brings their dogs back whenever he catches them. And unlike many of the younger people in our area, I get friendly waves and a lack of annoyance at the antics of my idiot dog. I’m similarly courteous to those who behave in the same manner. In short we have reputations. Not judged by how we vote, but what we do. And so we can rely on each other to check our mail and bring in the newspapers when we go out of town. To feed the dog when we can’t. To watch each others’ kids when we can’t find a babysitter.

When politics replaces personal action, when a vote replaces a pair of hands, you lose this. You lose the ability to judge both others and yourself. You’ve ‘done your part’ by authorizing someone else to do it. So if it doesn’t get done, it isn’t your fault is it? It’s government’s. Situations like the girl found herself in are the inevitable result of what happens when duty and obligation are transferred away from individuals to government. Obligation to others is an inherently individualist value. And when society forgets this, it abandons the individuals most in need.

When I took up my summer job at the Oklahoma State Department of Health I took an oath to the constitution. Anyone who works for a federal agency does. As we sat there, repeating after the lady from personnel, I couldn’t help but snort audibly and let the beginnings of an ironic chuckle leave my lips. Everyone staring at me, I realized how futile it would be to explain that by working for the department, most of us would be violating our oath every minute we were on the clock.

It occurred to me that if everyone realized the hollow nature of that oath, knew the constitution enough to understand the contradictory nature of their position, the world might be a better place. And it occurred to me that if one day everyone bound by that oath were to live up to it, America might be returned to her former glory.

While many don’t see it that way, abortion is one of the thorniest issues in libertarian thought. Most libertarians are pro-choice. But quite a few are pro-life. For scientific and philosophical reasons. On a personal level, I fall into the latter category as I believe life starts at implantation (not conception). On a political level, I see the issue as considerably more murky.

Libertarians for life has done a good job of outlining the basic libertarian argument against abortion:

1. Human offspring are human beings, persons from fertilization.[emphasis mine]
2. Abortion is homicide — the killing of one person by another.
3. There is never a right to kill an innocent person. Prenatally, we are all innocent persons.
4. A prenatal child has the right to be in the mother’s body. Parents have no right to evict their children from the crib or from the womb and let them die. Instead both parents, the father as well as the mother, owe them support and protection from harm.
5. No government, nor any individual, has a just power to legally depersonify any one of us, born or preborn.
6. The proper purpose of the law is to side with the innocent, not against them.

The problem comes in that their first statement boils down to a matter of belief. Self-evidently, fertilization gets the ball rolling, however, where life begins isn’t as cut and dried as that. An egg is just a single cell with the potential to create an entire human being. But after the first division at the two-cell stage, each cell is also capable of becoming a human, as it is for several divisions afterward. In fact, identical twins are the result of one of these early stage balls of cells dividing into two separate pieces. Does this mean at the two-cell stage what we have are two lives?

There are several ’starting points’ along the way that could just as easily be argued to be the start. Implantation–when the early embryo embeds itself in the walls of the uterus and it fuses with the fetal trophoblast to begin forming the embryo. The heart starting to beat in the 3rd week. The point at which fetuses are capable of surviving to adulthood with medical intervention (20-23rd week with various levels of debility). The point at which the cerebral cortex (the part of the brain that actually ‘thinks’) becomes functional (26th-29th week). The point at which the fetus can survive outside the womb with minimal or no medical intervention (highly variable but generally after cortical function). Or birth.

In addition to the question of where ‘life’ begins is the question of when that life becomes ‘human’. As I said earlier, I believe that it’s a life from the time of implantation. When does it become a human life? I’d argue from the point at which it could be removed from the womb and at a minimum develop into an adult with borderline normal human intelligence. Which is at some point between the 20th and 26th weeks. Curiously, most European abortion laws use some kind of the combination of logic I’ve presented here to set a point of no return that varies from the 20th to the 25th week depending on the country. It’s one of the rare instances where I’ll say that European law trumps ours.

The idea that life begins at birth is the most inane of all of them. Babies are routinely born 4 to 6 weeks early nearly indistinguishable from full-term babies. Meaning the only essential difference between a fetus 4 to 6 weeks from expected delivery date and a newborn is location. One can define what it means to be human in myriad ways, but I’ve never heard environmental context to be one of them.

The problem then becomes which of these points between fertilization and fully-matured fetus does human life begin at? Science cannot give an answer to that. And as I’ve attempted to show, any philosophical position on the matter is somewhat untenable.

‘Arbitrary’ and ‘just’ are mutually exclusive terms when it comes to the law. So while it goes against my belief that anything later than the morning after pill is murder, I must concede that this is a decision best left up to the mother and father.

And here the quandary moves from epistemological to moral. Yes, the decision is best left up to those who are the biological progenitors and eventual material and emotional supporters of the fetus. But the choice they will make is one that affects not only themselves but the potential person that is the fetus. The choice they make–and their philosophical reasons for doing so–thus determines if an abortion is murder or not.

As Libertarians For Life point out:

Politically, of course, our perspective is libertarian. Libertarianism’s basic principle is that, under justice, each of us has the obligation not to aggress against (violate the rights of) anyone else — for any reason (personal, social, or political), however worthy.

The question with regard to abortion is whether or not it represents aggression against another person. A fetus can’t be said to necessarily have the basic rights of all people–life, liberty,property–because it hasn’t been determined to be a person. However, it is owed at the very least a full inquiry as to whether or not it is a person. Anything less is a travesty of justice.

By engaging in a voluntary activity with the implicit consequence of creating a new person, the mother and father accept the consequence that–should life be created from the act–they have a duty to support this person. Because the question of when that fetus becomes a life they are indentured to is best left in their hands, they have a duty and an obligation to utilize all the information available to make that moral decision. Abortion awareness acts are one of the best methods at our disposal to ensure that this occurs. They aren’t perfect, but the only other solution I can come up with is to put each and every couple who undergo an abortion to a trial in which they defend their decision. Hardly preferrable. The most basic right of the fetus is a right to a fair trial.

There’s been a recent push for ‘abortion awareness’ acts both federally and at the state level. Legislation requiring that ultrasound be offered at abortion clinics, and that mothers be made aware that fetuses may be capable of feeling pain in the womb, in particular. Leaving aside the issue of legality of abortions in the first place, the reason I laud this development is that I believe in the importance of having as much information about any choice you’re going to make as possible. Efficiency and rationality of choices are highly dependent on the fidelity of one’s information, whether speaking economically, ecologically, politically, or morally. Abortion is a highly polarizing issue, and the less-than-honest tactics of Planned Parenthood are well known. I’m sure that some of the national organizations on the pro-life side of the aisle can be just as manipulative, but despite years as a pro life activist, I never encountered any of them. One-sided information, coercion, psychological manipulation are all par for the course (and I’ll admit that the latter is highly prominent in the pro-life activism playbook).

I’m not sure how many people are aware of the fact that Jane Roe is now a pro-life activist. But if you ever hear her story, it’s heart wrenching. When she went in for her abortion, she was told it was nothing more than a mass of undifferentiated tissue by the people at the abortion clinic. Such was not exactly the case. I’ve had medical embryology. It was my favorite class. And any doctor competent to do any kind of procedure on a pregnant woman knows a good deal more about pregnancy and fetal development than I do. Since only doctors can perform abortions, this means that the doctor either lied or was complicit in the dissemination of propaganda. Ms. Roe later found out the truth. I didn’t get to see her speak at Cornell, being in England playing with monkeys at the time. But my fellow members of CCFL told me it was pretty evident the guilt that was eating her from the inside.

Considering that these lies are still told (Friends have posed as couples interested in abortion before), and that every day more Jane Roes are created, I fail to see how the option of viewing an ultrasound, or being told that after 20 weeks a baby may be able to feel pain is a bad thing. The more information you have the better. There are those who’d disagree, of course. They say that somehow being told that a fetus may be able to feel pain is an abortion ‘restriction’. They also say the same thing about a woman being offered an ultrasound beforehand. You don’t have to accept the ultrasound or anesthesia offer.

It is true that there’s some controversy about whether and when a fetus can feel pain, but it is established medical fact that fetuses have pain responses even before 20 weeks. Reflexive movements away from needles, surges in stress hormones, and readjusting themselves to be ‘comfortable’ in the womb. Since some of this can occur without involvement of the brain at all, let alone the cortex, this may not be the best indication of whether they experience pain or not. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to cut the leg off a frog while its still alive, with no anesthesia. Because they have hardly any cortex, and therefore must not be able to really experience pain. Just kidding. The point however is that there’s a good deal of controversy over it and that it’s something one should at least be aware of. Here’s a pretty unbiased link I found.Personally, I’m in the 26th week camp. And I really don’t care that that applies to less than 1% of all abortions. That means it still applies to abortions.

If you’re going to take an action which affects the life of another (sorry, a beating heart [3rd week] is a beating heart), you should understand exactly what the action is you’re taking and what it means for the other individual. You should at least have the option of knowing what the fetus looks like, and how it might respond to the procedure. A lot of pro-choice people argue that this amounts to trying to guilt-trip the mother out of having the abortion. But the way I see it, being deliberately misinformed about fetal development and having other information concealed from you because it might make you change your mind means that those controlling said information are really the ones making the decision for you.

The open border policy that many libertarians support continues to baffle me. Do they not understand the implications of such a policy in today’s political environment? Do they not understand that we are in an era where some people vote money out of others’ pocketbooks? Do they not understand that in a social welfare system, the more poor people, the greater the tax burden on everyone else? Do they not understand that the lower per capita income is the larger the welfare state will grow? And that the larger the welfare state grows, the harder upward mobility will become? Yes I agree that a strong border policy isn’t necessarily a libertarian position. But are you so wedded to principle that you will cling to it as you openly invite and foster the growth of the Nanny State?

Positions such as these are one of the reasons I’ve chosen to call myself a classical liberal. To me the term not only implies the dedication to life, liberty, and property that we share with libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, but also the knowledge that while not good, a state is necessary. Laws are necessary. And that sometimes compromises must be made to better protect those rights we hold so dear.

I’ll concede that if we lived under a perfect libertarian system, if our government still resembled that envisioned by the framers, that there would be less need for a closed border (but there would still be a need for immigration control). But such is not the case, and in this world even stronger border controls than a libertarian government would call for are necessary. And as such, we must recognize that in this less-than-ideal current form of government, sometimes counterintuitive positions must be taken. This was the basis for my essay on Liberty in a Statist World.

So lets go back to the basics. We aren’t anarcho-capitalists. Therefore we all acknowledge that the state does have a legitimate role in society. I like Chris’ list the best. It’s more or less what I ascribe to as well. All of us are going to agree with most of that list, so let’s leave minor quibbles aside. Most of what a state should do is distributed equably among the people. Roads, the court system, etc. The state is funded through taxation. Obviously, this state needs borders. A line of demarcation in which services are paid for and rendered. For this state to be just, it goes without saying that the zone of taxation and the zone of services must be perfectly overlapping. There are basically two competing forms of taxation: income and consumption taxes. Currently we operate under an unconstitutional income tax system. Most of us favor a consumption tax. But that has its own problems. In the situation like we have, where a sizeable proportion of a certain immigrant population’s paychecks are sent out of the state, that means that this money is exempt from taxation. I feel it’s a relatively minor foible, and at any rate, it isn’t the system we operate under so let’s move on.

Any income tax that isn’t a flat fee is by its nature progressive. Whether it’s a flat percentage or a ridiculously progressive rate (like the system we currently have in place), the more you earn, the more you pay. Yet under a libertarian government, you don’t necessarily receive more in government services. Rather than worry about how fair such a system is, let’s move on to the basic realities of a government so funded. Government spends roughly the same amount of money on each person, yet it receives more from some, less from others. An influx of people on the lower end of the scale means that the per capita revenue and thus per capita expenditure drops considerably. A general raise on taxation rates would thus become necessary to maintain the same level of government service. And under a welfare state as the United States is (43.5% of government expenditure goes to social welfare), the more you make, the more you pay, yet the less you receive. Since government can’t tax those who receive welfare and medicaid benefits, increases in taxation would be borne fully by a relatively small proportion of the population. I developed this idea more fully, with better examples in The Economics of Illegal Immigration.

Moving on from an economic perspective, lets turn to equality. Being fully committed to the idea of negative rights, we are the only political ideologies fully wedded to the idea of equality. But in this day, equality of opportunity has been replaced with the idea of equality of outcome. Such is the political climate, like it or not. And it will only become worse. Whether it’s college admissions and courses being less dependent on test scores and more on waffling ‘qualitative’ factors, or how many black actors there are in sitcoms, sometime before I was born it was decided that equality can only be measured through proportional representation in every part of the human condition.

We are importing a population that is by and large uneducated. That doesn’t speak English. And where many show no desire to. Into this home environment children will be born. And more children per family than their native counterparts. Will these children do as well economically and academically as the native population? Doubtful. And so the hue and cry of ‘racism’ and ‘prejudice’ will be raised. A generation from now Sharptons and Jacksons with latinized names will rise up, speaking to cultural identity that their only path to ‘freedom’ lies in increased governmentally-sanctioned privilege. Privilege that will come at the expense of freedom and opportunity for all other races. And in this political climate, they will be all too successful.

Let us not forget that when the modern left redefined rights as privilege, stealing from us the title ‘liberal’, the very word that defines us, they changed the nature of American politics. They changed our nation from one that defended our inalienable rights to a tool by which one party gains advantage over another. They created a political machine in which people vote to take away the rights of others to further their own desires.

Even in a minarchist country, where there would be no welfare state, no juggernaut of privilege encroaching upon our very liberty, we must yield to basic economics. A state can only be maintained so long as the proportion of people who pay less than the average taxation amount are balanced by those who pay more. Or even those most minimal of government services we believe necessary will find themselves compromised.

This is a world in which benevolent dictatorship does not work. This is a world in which democracy is our best tool. A world where documents as strongly worded as the constitution find themselves to be as fragile and brittle as the parchment they’re written on. The greatest threat to our liberty is an oppressive majority. And it is that which you would usher in with your open borders.

A little light this week. Possibly because I suck at publicizing, but anyway, here goes.

Matt Barr argues that the NC law against cohabitation shouldn’t have been struck down by judges but by the people. Judges are designed to protect minorities. Legislatures are supposed to respond to majorities. Interesting argument.

One Man Bandwidth talks about the impending Chinese ban on organ trafficking for anything other than medical research, and how it might actually backfire.

I hate Wal-Mart. I’m guessing many of you do too. But that’s the important part about principle. I’m still happy that a federal court overturned a Maryland law requiring them to spend more on healthcare or pay a stiff penalty. Pubcrawler did an excellent writeup. Be sure to read his other entries as well.

And you’ve got to love Shining City’s analysis of how to fight the ‘con-cons’. A ‘con-con’ is a strange bird that thinks the Republican Party still resembles the conservatism it claims to embody.

Whining about the lack of AC when you’re government is footing the bill for your evacuation? Really? How ungrateful and melodramatic can you be? London Fog has highlighted everything wrong with the Left.

As a guy in his early twenties, I’m pretty sure that the real reason record company revenues are down is because new music sucks. People are tired of girly men and cookie cutter divas, eye candy though they may be (the divas, not the girly men). But if you’re going to blame filesharing, Legal Redux makes the point that the only effective way is to go after the uploaders.

Ogre details the lunacy of multilevel politics (literally) in Building Height Freedom. No one wins when the local and state legislatures battle over just how little freedom you should have and who gets to decide.

Doug Mataconis of Below The Beltway brings us three submissions this week. Congress made a mockery of freedom again with a different flag protection law. And I die a little inside. As does Doug. He also highlights how restrictive zoning laws interfere with religious freedom. And the saga of Abraham Cherrix, the poor 16 year old who’s being forced to undergo a medical treatment he doesn’t want.

Stephen Littau at Fearless Philosophy For Free Minds reminds us that we’re picking up the tab for the lebanon evacuees’ risky behavior. They take the chance, we pay the cost. Hardly fair in my book.

Thinker of What Is George W. Bush Doing wonders if the recent problems in the middle east and impending gas crisis in Venezuela might be the beginning of World War III. I wonder too.

Last, and probably least, are my own submissions. My thoughts on the Free State Project. And in The Issues Don’t Matter I argue that the issue-based platform of the middle is precisely the reason whe find ourselves in such a statist mess. Far more important is ideology.

Next week we’ll be hosted by Homeland Stupidity (shameless plug: I blog there too, once or twice a week. Usually medical issues).

I like getting emails related to the blog. They make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Someone wanted to know my thoughts on the Free State Project. He’s taken the First 1000 pledge. I’ve got a couple of close friends who’ve signed up to be part of the Free State Project, so I was passably familiar with it. But for some reason I’d always thought it was about secession. Which it isn’t.

What they are:

The Free State Project is an effort to recruit 20,000 liberty-loving people to move to New Hampshire. We are looking for neighborly, productive, tolerant folks from all walks of life, of all ages, creeds, and colors who agree to the political philosophy expressed in our Statement of Intent, that government exists at most to protect people’s rights, and should neither provide for people nor punish them for activities that interfere with no one else.

Sounds like all you could ask for in an activist group. And I think it’s an awesome first step. Some may call them optimistic, but I think those 20,000 could serve as the catalyst for something big.

New Hampshire is a great place to start; it’s already one of the most minarchist states in the union:

…it has the lowest state and local tax burden in the continental U.S., the second-lowest level of dependence on federal spending in the U.S., a citizen legislature where state house representatives have not raised their $100 per year salary since 1889, the lowest crime levels in the U.S., a dynamic economy with plenty of jobs and investment, and a culture of individual responsibility indicated by, for example, an absence of seatbelt and helmet requirements for adults.

The lack of federal support they receive is quite important. Federal funding is quite often used as a tool to twist a state’s arm into doing something they don’t like. Remember when Montana changed its speed limits to ‘Whatever Prudent’? Despite a lack of increase in crashes or fatalities, it wasn’t long until the Federal Government turned the thumbscrews on Montana, threatening to cut off their interstate funding unless they brought the limit down to 80. It was a similar situation when MADD railroaded through the increase in legal drinking age to 21.

I also like the fact that the Free State Project is not affiliated with any party. I’m not a big fan of the Libertarian Party. If anyone thought that the Anti-Federalists were out of touch with reality, they’d be dumbfounded at how insulated from the real world the LP’s positions seem to be. In my opinion, they’re only one step away from leftists in the naivete exhibited by their world view.

Personally, I think what we need is a return to the first principles of liberalism: Life, Liberty, Property. How best to protect those rights is a matter for intelligent debate. But it’s a debate that can only happen if people agree on the meanings of those words and on the fundamentally oppressive nature of the state.

And this is precisely what the Free State Project pledges to give us. Some might find their mission and goals somewhat optimistic, and they are. But it’s pessimism as much as anything that has allowed liberty to wane these past two centuries. 20,000 people moving into one state might not sound like a lot. But this is a state that is already predisposed to classical liberalism. And 20,000 activists who have gone so far as to uproot themselves and relocate to a new part of the country for the sole purpose of political change is another story entirely.

New Hampshire could become a beacon of hope to libertarian-leaning people everywhere. Even now a paragon of state and local government restraint, it would gain the label it already epitomizes. It could become a state in which the classical liberals debate the libertarians who debate the anarcho-capitalists in a situation not so far removed from that our Founding Fathers found themselves in.

The situation and the publicity it would engender might be the hot iron that libertarian-leaning conservatives and fiscally-conservative democrats have needed to campaign against the party line…and win. Bush’s dismal approval ratings–much of it due to conservative disfavor with the growth of government spending and federal power–weren’t enough. Neither is the economic and social implosion Europe is starting to go through due to the untenable nature of their ’social model’ democracies.

My one worry is that the federal government would resent New Hampshire’s independence. And as they’ve already shown in their proclivity for (so far) nonviolent blackmail and bribery, the fed is quite willing to trample all over states even when there is no benefit to doing so. And as federal power is ever on the increase, it may not be too long before we end up in a situation much like Thomas Kratmann’s State of Disobedience. But then again, I’ve been claiming for the past 5 years that the United States would fall into civil war between the statists and the libertarians sometime before 2025.

Unfortunately, while I’d love to pledge I don’t see it happening for at least 10 years. I want to be a specialist in a small field and be in academia. My career dictates where I move. Unless of course I screw up on the boards and don’t get the specialty I want. In which case, sign me up!

Gotta love nights like tonight. The fireflies alighting bare inches from me, a cheap cigar in one hand, a novel in the other. My computer playing a mellow-bordering-on-morose country playlist, and the slightly sticky sweat borne of a 90 degree twilight. This is what summer is all about.

I watched an episode of The Boondocks last night because I was too lazy to change the channel. Boondocks is a funny cartoon. Much better than the comic strip. But the author’s politics are both ridiculous and juvenile. Which is an easy turn off for me.

This one was a dream in which MLK wasn’t killed but merely fell into a coma until the year 2000.

And throughout the entire episode it struck me just how schizophrenic Black Culture and Politics are today. The author of Boondocks pretty much holds every stereotypical Black Democrat position you can think of. Which made the speech he gave MLK at the end rather amusing:

Dr. King: This is it?! This is what I took all those ass whoppings for?! I had a dream once. It was a dream where little black boys and little black girls could drink from the river of prosperity, freed from the thirst of oppression.. But lo and behold, some four decades later, what have I found but a bunch of triflin’, shiftless, good-for-nothing niggers! And I know a lot of you don’t want to hear me say that word. It’s the ugliest word in the english language, but that’s what I see now. Niggers. And you dont want to be a nigger, because niggers are living contradictions. Niggers are filled with unfulfilled ambitions. Niggers wax and wane. Niggers love to complain. Niggers love to hear themselves talk but hate to explain! Niggers love to be another man’s judge and jury. Niggers procrastinate until it’s time to worry. Niggers love to be late! Niggers hate to hurry!

It was particularly unexpected since McGruder (the creator) excoriated Bill Cosby for his almost identical remarks in front of the NAACP some time ago.

I’m not much for the psychology of politics schtick like Dr. Sanity does, but as a writer, I will say that what an author writes in fiction can reveal things about himself even he’s not aware of. It was about my 8th short story involving a slightly schizoid guy whose great resume didn’t match up with his borderline personality. A man who kept travelling, kept searching for a group of people he truly belonged with before I realized I was talking about myself. What this episode of The Boondocks revealed is something every Black American knows deep in his heart but few are willing to accept.

Externalization of Responsibility can be quite comforting. “It’s not my fault I’m fat. It’s my genes!” Never mind that the population genetics of that doesn’t work out. “I come from a broken home! How could I be expected to be anything but a criminal!”. Nevermind the tons of friends I can point to who are doing just fine despite such barriers. Or “I have a horrible nerve disorder! I need narcotics!” One of my greatest fears is that I travel down that road.

Few can argue with the fact that things are better for Black Americans than they’ve ever een. Opportunities abound and most honest people of color will tell you that what little racism we see 99% of the time is only a matter of minor annoyance. Yet what have we seen? We’ve seen things get worse and worse for Black America. Working in public health for the summer, I’ve watched the sexual and overall trends with astonishment. By many indicators, Black Americans were healthier and more responsible in the days of segregation as they are today.

Notice I’m not saying segregation is a good thing. What I’m saying is given that they are more free than ever today, what the hell excuse do they have? NONE.

About forty years ago, Black Americans made a deal with the devil: they chose to enslave themselves once again. And just as in the days of the Slave Trade, their subjugation would not have been possible without the help of black slave traders…in this case calling themselves Black Leaders.

There’s a good man up in Langston, Oklahoma (home of Langston University) who understands this. Goes by the name of Uncle George. He’s running for mayor this fall and you’re reading an entry by one of his campaign workers. We had a great conversation when I went up there for a restaurant inspection. What the black community needs is a person who’ll stand up and give them tough love. Who’ll help them help themselves. This is the future Dr. King saw. A future in which Blacks could work their way up the ladder through their own merit.

I think he’d see what I see when I look at Black Politics. He’d see that Black Americans want to be given prosperity; earning it is out of the question. He’d see that, while racism still exists, far more worrying is the fact that Blacks have traded comfort for opportunity. Why blame yourself when you can blame someone else? The Democrat leadership’s platform revolves around removing accountability for everyone, but most pointedly for ‘minorities’ (although less than 1% of the population is from the Indian subcontinent, we aren’t considered minorities because we’re almost like Jews in our ability to climb our way to prosperity within a generation or two). Democrats offer to give them what most others have to earn. And as the old saw goes, you never really learn the value of anything until you have to earn it.

In my piece on Affirmative Action, I argued that AA essentially subsidizes mediocrity. The same is true of social welfare, medicaid, and every other redistributive program. If I feel like it I’ll probably return to that topic sometime next week.

And yes, I am politically burnt out. So deal.

Sad really. This was my last summer of freedom. My last break longer than 4 weeks for at a minimum the next 8 years–and more likely the rest of my life. I spent it working. One standard 8 to 5 cubicle deal. And training for a part time for this Fall. Our little clique didn’t even do that much hanging out. Sad really, since the majority of us either worked in the same building or within walking distance all within the health science center complex. It happens.

The good news is that the danger period has passed and I avoided developing a summer girl for the first time in 6 years. I did this by being fatter, more unhygienic, and even more contrary and antisocial than usual.

But like all young men who’ve grown cynical and bitter before their time, I’m a hopeless romantic. Which explains the country mix I’m rocking at the moment. And the 3 doors down. And the fact that recently I’ve been spontaneously bursting into Iambic Pentameter.

Anyway, here’s the country CD. Feel free to add suggestions or question my taste in music:

1. Dierks Bentley - What Was I thinking
2. Keith Anderson - Pickin Wildflowers
3. Tim McGraw - Something Like That
4. Brad Paisley - Mud On The Tires
5. Pat Green - Baby Doll
6. Keith Anderson - Every Time I Hear Your Name
7. Josh Turner - Would You Go With Me
8. Tim McGraw - Just To See You Smile
9. Cowboy Troy - I Play Chicken With The Train
10. Shooter Jennings - Fourth Of July
11. Garth Brooks - The Dance
12. Rascal Flatts - Fast Cars And Freedom
13. Pat Green - Three Days
14. Oh Brother Where Art Thou - Man Of Constant Sorrow
15. Jimmy Buffet & Toby Keith - Piece Of Work
16. Josh Gracin - Nothing To Lose
17. Tobt Keith & Willy Nelson - Beer For My Horses
18. Trace Adkins - Rough And Ready
19. Pat Green - Carry on
20. Cross Canadian Ragweed - Maybe I Miss Your Body

And with that I’m gonna go outside, sit on my patio, and kick my dog.

Just a quick note. I call myself Hindu and Buddhist because it was their teachings that formed me. I don’t pray, I don’t meditate. I only visit temples for the architectural and historical interest. But Hinduism helped frame how I think about myself and the world around me. Buddha’s words helped me deal with my nerve injury. They led me to evolutionary biology and then to psychiatry. You could take them away from me now and I wouldn’t change a single bit. But I’m not sure I would’ve become what I am without them.

My take on religion is pretty much the standard Hindu canned response. I don’t care what god you pray to or how you do it. The only thing I care about is that you’re a moral person. Your road to morality might differ from mine, but the important thing is that we do our best to reach that destination. Hinduism holds that moral teachers can come from any religion, any area of the world. Inasmuch as an agnostic is capable of using the world ‘holy’, I apply it as readily to Jesus as I do to Krishna. In Hindu philosophy, God simply doesn’t care if we pray to him or not when it comes time to judge. In fact, the agnostic tradition of hinduism–of which I’m an adherent–finds its roots in our most ancient texts. It was popularized most recently by Mahavira (Jainism) and Buddha. The one common belief is in a natural law, a natural order that God is the guardian of but which in many ways is more powerful than he is. He is as bound to it as we are. And so he judges us based on our adherence to these basic precepts. And they all boil down to one thing: All living things are interconnected. Your actions are connected by this web to every other living organism on the planet. This interconnection is sacred. Respect it. Respect life.

Respect the Earth, respect animals, respect each other, respect yourself.

Like hygiene, feminine sensuality, and tact, faith is something I don’t have but nonetheless appreciate in others. And like all good things, faith can be overdone.

The cultural anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (yes his parents probably did hate him) posited that man seeks to explain the world through three different methods: Magic, Religion, and Science (probably in that order, historically).

Magic explains the things that literally dumbfound us. We don’t know where to start or where to end. Can’t even concoct a story about it.

Religion, religion is when men seek to make stories to explain what they see. It differs from magic in that we have an explanation for what’s going on, we just lack proof. Could start as simply as some tribal looking up at the rain and thinking “There must be a cloud person crying in there.” And over time, as our stories get longer, as more people tell, retell, and massage them, we may believe that it is Mother Earth herself crying. Or angels bowling up in heaven.

Science is an explanation, but it’s an explanation with proof. Hindus believe that the universe started with a word. Well, a lot of words. The Vedas. The Vedas set the rules, and things unfolded from there. There’s no proof of course, no tape recording of Brahma whispering into the mic “testing, testing. Is this thing on?” And at some point, a bunch of Devas (minor gods) used a mountain to churn a sea of milk from which all animals erupted (can you see why so few of us–even our scholars–insist on the infallibility of Hindu texts?). They say that all animals are related through our souls; there is scarcely any difference between the mind of a dog and that of a child. Today science has yielded the big bang theory and Hubble’s corroborating evidence of an expanding universe. We have Darwin’s theory of evolution, with increasing merit from every branch of biology. Science is stories too. Sometimes almost the same as those of religion, but science has proof.

In the modern world, magic is something that can more or less be dispensed with. Explanations come almost exclusively from the not-necessarily-opposing institutions of religion and science.

I used Hindu scripture for my example precisely because the stories are so similar, making the oft-mentioned religion-science conflict a complete non-issue. The major difference between these stories is the presence or lack of evidence. More importantly, reason can be loosely defined as using this evidence to construct one’s story. A religion’s teachings can be logical without being reasoned. Where religion relies on faith science relies on reason. It’s a slightly artificial use of the two words, but it’s the best I can do at the moment. I don’t get paid enough to do any better.

The interaction between religion and science can thus be said to be the dichotomy of faith and reason. It doesn’t have to be a struggle. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that pure reason and pure faith shouldn’t be in conflict.

While it may seem pretentious for an agnostic to venture an opinion on the nature of god, I’m nothing if not egotistical, so I’m going to go ahead and do it. While in general I loathe Descartes, the one thing he got right is that if there is a god, he would not try to trick us. Man’s greatest gift, what really separates us (a difference of degree, not in kind–a large difference perhaps, but reason is far from only a human attribute) from other animals is Reason. The idea that God would give us this amazing gift and then tell us not to use it is unsconscionable. That would not be a benevolent deity but at best Loki, the Norse trickster, and at worst, an evil spirit.

It is interesting to note that particle physicists are among the most religious of all scientists. They, some of the most mathematical, rigorous, and logical. They see themselves on the cusp of the threshold where there is nothing smaller to look at. And they see turn to faith to fill that void.

Faith and reason work together to allow us to see the world. No, I do not believe in a god, but I do worship at the altar of nature’s order. In the forest or in my mathematical models I see an elegance that no mere mortal could have come up with. And regardless of how it came to be, I know it is something that my scientific training will never allow me to fully grasp. And it is here I find faith of a sort. A place where science ends, yet a place that, somewhere deep within my mind, I am still able to know.

There are those who believe that someday we will develop a Theory of Everything, a combination of Physics’ Grand Unified Theory and Asimov’s Foundation. I believe no such thing. From the behavior of subatomic particles up through the social interactions of any animal, the universe behaves in an inherently probabalistic manner. And such people also forget about emergent properties. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. What happens in our heads and in the world, is more than just DNA dictating the symphony of life. It is, at some level irreducible. There is a point beyond which science cannot look. When numbers cease to tell the story. Where we cannot seek out evidence because none exists. It is here that religion lives. Do we have souls? What happens when we die? Who started the big bang? These are issues that only faith can deal with.

I’ve hit this issue before. But it’s in the news again, so I thought I’d return to it. For a little background, you can see a piece I wrote or a highly recommended, if slightly older article written by a real doctor. Sorry for the lack of links. I’ll throw up a link list sometime in the next few days.

When Michael Reagan stood up at his father’s funeral and cried about how Embryonic Stem Cells could have saved the man who ended the cold war, I cried a little myself. I cried because I wish I was old enough to have better memories of a president who was by most accounts an amazing statesman and just a great man all around. I cried because it was wrong for the man’s own flesh and blood to use his father’s death as an excuse for political posturing. But mostly I cried because every time someone stumps for the new panacea, I see development of a real cure farther and farther away.

I’ll start by saying that my political position is that despite being pro-life, I have no moral qualms with harvesting new ESC cultures from cord blood or discarded embryos. In the former case, there is simply no moral quandary; the cells weren’t taken from an embryo/fetus/bay. With regard to the latter case, the operative term here is discarded. Any objections one would have to harvesting stem cells in that case would also apply to organ donation in adults as far as I’m concerned.

My scientific position is that ESC’s make for excellent models but bad therapy. ASC’s on the other hand are the exact opposite. Each have their place in the biomedical sciences and medicine. Embryonic stem cells are comparatively easy to harvest, sustain, and grow in culture. They’re also capable of differentiating into more kinds of tissue than any given adult stem cell. In addition, ESC lineages are standardized (currently 19 of them. Should be more), meaning studies are more repeatable. Adult stem cells, on the other hand are not as amenable to laboratory manipulation. They’re harder to get to (although we’re finding more accessible places where they exist), they’re harder to sustain, and they’re much harder to grow in cell cultures. On the other hand, despite tiny budgets and little attention from funding bodies or the public at large, ASC researchers have had much more success in therapeutic applications in animal models and humans alike. Even at a theoretical, freshman biology level, the advantages of ASCs in therapy are fairly obvious.

Embryonic Stem Cells

A recent issue of Scientific American highlighted the similarities between ESC’s and cancer cells (which is one of the objections to the use of ESC’s as therapy). ESC research may lead to greater understanding of the etiology (development) of various cancers. And more importantly, since when we were embryos our stem cells didn’t go tumor on us, we may be able to reverse engineer the process by which ESC’s are controlled. This could very well lead to better cures and preventive treatments when it comes to cancer. ESC’s are also a good deal more pliable than ASC’s (another problem when it comes to therapy). Which means you can do more with them in a laboratory setting, particularly when it comes to understanding developmental biology. ESC’s give us a convenient model with which to study proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. They’d be useful in studying how things go wrong in human embryonic development as well as how things go right. As well as in understanding the nature of the switches that turn these cells on and off and how to operate them. This is stuff we’ve been doing for decades, but thus far only with animal embryos. The moral implications of raising a human embryo for the purpose of experimentation are pretty grim. ESC harvesting methods are much more morally neutral while allowing many of the same benefits.

Of course, what makes ESCs so suited as models is what makes them so poor at therapy. Which is something the ESC researchers conveniently forget to tell the press and the public. After high school, I worked in a cell biology lab with CHO cell cultures. CHO stands for Chinese Hamster Ovary. No ordinary reproductive cells, these are all descended from an unlucky rodent’s bout with cancer. I always found it interesting that what made it such a useful laboratory model is why it killed that poor little pet. Like cancer, ESCs are immortal. Like cancer, a lot of the regular processes that differentiated cells go through are shut down. Like cancer, ESCs love to grow. Getting an ESC to stop growing once it’s in an adult body has proven to be a difficult proposition in animal models. Getting an ESC to turn into the kind of cell you want is also tough. And assuming you’ve got past all those roadblocks, you now have to deal with immunocompatability issues. When you get an organ transplant there is a pretty high risk of rejection, no matter how close a match the new organ is. It isn’t you. Your immune system knows it isn’t you. And it wants to kill it off. The immune system is a marvelous and sophisticated system that was designed for the sole purpose of killing off foreign cells. If you want those donor cells, tissues, or organs to stick around, you have to cage up that immune system, leaving yourself open to the depredation of other foreign cells. In other words, taking immunosuppresants for the rest of your life is not exactly fun. ESC researchers don’t mention to you that these problems apply to ESC therapy as well, do they? The one big success I’ve seen with them is in the nervous system. Which is somewhat expected. The nervous system is one step removed from a lot of other bodily processes, including circulatory and immune processes. Not to mention the fact that glia (support cells in the brain and nerves) secrete a chemical that actively inhibits nerve cell division and proliferation, meaning less likelihood of tumors. The one big benefit to ESCs compared to ASCs is that because they are less constrained, a single ESC culture can be turned into many different types of tissues, whereas any given ASC colony is significantly more limited.

Adult Stem Cells

What about adult stem cells, surely they can’t be any better, right? Not as models, no. ASCs are by their very nature dormant. That’s part of why they’re so hard to find and why people weren’t even sure they existed until recently. They’re hard to culture and hard to ‘turn on’. And because ASCs are at a later stage of differentiation than ESCs, they can turn into fewer types of cells. Meaning that it might take 2 or 3 different ASC colonies taken from different parts of the body to create all the kinds of tissue you can with just one ESC colony. ASCs can also be rather hard to get to: the hollows of your bones, deep in your brain, embedded in your heart muscle. Not a whole lot of people are going to volunteer for major operations just so some guy with no social skills in a white coat can play with test tubes. And, even if you could get people to do that, you’d still have the problem of lack of standardization. A researcher using stem cells he harvested from my bone marrow could do one experiment and get completely different results from another researcher halfway around the country who used your stem cells, not because the experimental process is unpredictable, but simply because you and I are different, and so are our cells.

Again, these weaknesses as a model translate to strengths as therapy. Imagine that you are told you have to hold a gun to the head of your best friend and you have your choice of two trigger types. One gun doesn’t go bang as long as you pull the trigger. Release it and you’ll be covered in brain stew. The other gun is much more conventional. If ESCs are the former, ASC’s are the latter. I’m pretty sure which one I would choose. While ASCs can be hard to get to, more accessible sources (that don’t require surgery) are being found even as we speak. These same studies are also finding that ASCs are easier to culture and are perhaps more flexible than was once imagined. At any rate, a situation in which one person has multiple degenerative disorders each needing a different ASC is bound to be rather rare. And the implications of self-harvesting for therapy are pretty obvious. Unlike ESCs–which are essentially transplants–ASCs are you. They’re your DNA and your tissue. Instead of organ transplantation, the process is more analagous to a scar fading to nothing over time.

Conclusion

Both ESCs and ASCs have much to offer us in understanding and treating disease, and they do so in a complementary, rather than competitive manner. Of course, research is highly competitive, and so whichever works better in a laboratory setting is the more likely to be funded. And it’s true that ESCs have greater potential to increase our understanding of cell biology because of this. But treatment doesn’t necessarily require understanding. When Fleming invented Penicillin he had no idea that the compound contained within put holes in bacteria cell walls, causing them to burst open. He just knew that the stuff killed bacteria. When Edward Jenner invented the smallpox vaccine, he probably had very little idea of how immune systems worked, he just knew that if you gave someone cowpox (which isn’t deadly) they woudln’t get smallpox (which is). Understanding can improve treatment, which is why it’s important. But there’s no harm in getting the ball rolling, which is exactly what we’re refusing to do by focusing on the politically expedient and the glamorous (if laboratory biology can be glamorous).

Adult stem cells offer us the potential to literally heal ourselves. To quote some old dead guy, ’tis a consummation devoutly to be wished’

The medical marketplace is one of those rare situations where the idea of government oversight has merit up to a point. An efficient market depends on the consumer being both informed and rational in his choices. This obviously requires familiarity with the performance of the product (success rate, side effects, etc.) as well as an understanding of how the drug works. This is a bit much to ask of your average consumer, considering all of the education and training required to make a doctor or a pharmacologist. It’d be a textbook case of a highly inefficient market with a great degree of misallocation of resources. In other words, patients would go broke as they died while pursuing ineffective treatments.

Is a government agency like the FDA the best solution to this problem? I can’t really say. But I think they’re a valid solution. The problem comes when they move away from that role in improving patient information to actually dictating which meds a patient can and cannot use and for what they can use them for.

FDA Approval
The ridiculously long clinical trial process is designed to determine how effective a given drug is as well as what, if any, the major side effects are. Based on this the FDA then makes a rather arbitrary decision as to whether or not the costs outweigh the benefits. Strangely enough, moneymakers like antidepressants, ADHD drugs and the like are allowed considerably higher thresholds than treatments for things like lupus, multiple sclerorosis, and other debilitating diseases.

The clinical trial itself is a good thing: It improves patient information. FDA approval is not. What the FDA deems ‘unacceptable risk’ might be far different from what an individual patient may think. Tysabri, a treatment to prevent relapse in Multiple Sclerosis, is a perfect example of this. 3 of the 1200 clinical trial participants developed a rather rare brain infection and subsequently died. These are not odds that the FDA likes. However, MS is quite a debilitating disease, and a patient might feel completely differently from a bunch of healthy people in white coats sitting far away from the pain, the debility, and the hopelessness.

Off-Label Drug Use
Another peculiarity of the FDA approval process is that a drug isn’t merely approved as ’safe’; it’s approved as ’safe and effective’. Which is a horse of an entirely different color. The FDA doesn’t approve drugs, but rather approves the use of a given drug in the treatment of certain conditions.

In other words, if your new wonderdrug has a second potential use? Guess what? Another trial, another 5-10 years before people at large can actually use it. Even though it’s already been deemed safe.

This is particularly problematic given the nature of the human body. Take Viagra for instance. Bob Dole may use it for one thing, but it has great potential in treating pulmonary hypertension and other cardiovascular problems involving constriction of your blood vessels. Although there are other meds out there, they often take a ‘bigger hammer’ approach and in many cases are incompatible with either the patient’s condition or their other drugs. Viagra, on the other hand, is quite a bit more gentle in its effect.

It’s an interesting thing about medicine in that the core of our knowledge hasn’t changed. I use the same textbooks in physiology and pharmacology as my mother did 30 years ago. They’ve been updated in the ensuing decades, but I bet I could get the same letter grade using her ancient version as mine.

A drug is approved for treatment of one illness because it has a certain effect on the body. If this effect is known to be useful in alleviating other maladies, then why must I be hindered in using it in order to treat my patients, simply because of the FDA’s shortsightedness?

Conclusion
The FDA’s biggest sin is micromanagement. As an overarching organization, it can help both patient and doctor make informed treatment decisions by bringing to the fore otherwise unobtainable data on drug performance (and more importantly harmful side effects). As such, it can liberate an imperfect market and allow better allocation of medical and economic resources.

However, when the FDA decides to make the decision for doctor and patient it not only limits their freedom, it compromises the patient’s health and the doctor’s ability to change lives. At least once in my medical career, I will literally hold my patient’s life in my hands. I will be what stand between him and an untimely death. The idea that some suits in Washington can tell me what I can and cannot do in such a situation is absurd.

Every patient is different; the etiology of their disease, its progression, severity, and how it impacts the patient’s life qualitatively. For one man with a relativeley mild case of Multiple Sclerosis, a 1 in 400 chance of dying may not be worth the risk. For a woman who finds herself in a wheel chair, losing sight, losing dexterity, losing her self, she may choose differently. Perhaps to her a year of relative freedom is worth more than 5 years of increasing debility. Who has the right to take that choice away from her?

The number one rule of shadow boxing (other than doing it in a dark room far away from the rest of humanity so you don’t look like a spaz) is that you never throw a full force punch. The reason being that without a punching bag to stop your fist, your arm will want to keep travelling forward. You can strain or even dislocate your shoulder from the momentum of your humerus wanting to pull right out of the joint. And you can overextend your elbow, meaning yummy bone chips. Basically, your muscles in an explosive movement are a good deal stronger than the tendons and ligaments that hold them back.

Well, I was all giddy with the fact that physical therapy had gone well, and for the first time in years the vertebrae my upper back actually articulated instead of being stuck together. So I started training again. And dancing. But we’ll leave that latter part out. In my wanton displays of youthful physicality I sorta forgot rule 1. Now, my back is fine, but my elbow and shoulder, not so much.

The moral of this story? Don’t be an idiot.

I’ve been puttering around AR15.com for the last few days, getting ready to buy myself an Evil Black Rifle. And it just amazes me how Walter Mitty these guys get.

I mean, I believe in preparedness, I believe in knowing the layout of your house in the dark (mainly cuz i’m too lazy to turn on a light at 4 am when I get the munchies), and I keep a 36″ hickory axe handle under my bed, even though I’m usually the biggest, scariest, darkest man in the neighborhood no matter what time of day it is.

But these guys are just ridiculous. Someone posts a question about getting an AR-15 with a 20″ heavy barrel and the mall ninjas swarm out of the woodwork screaming “NOOOOOO. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO CQB WITH A 20″?? IT’S TOO LONG!!!!”

My question is how am I going to CQB (close quarter’s battle) anyway. The ONLY conceivable situation where that would arise is a home invasion robbery. And a rifle is a poor choice for home defense, regardless. Especially one with as many levers, latches, and buttons as an AR-15. Shotguns and revolvers, on the other hand, excel at that kind of use. After all, an S&W revolver is the original point and click interface. So if you buy an AR-15, why not buy one with a nice long heavy barrel so it can actually put bullets where you tell it to?

“Dude if there’s a nuke, an EMP might knock out your red dot. You should have a backup scope!” Yes, since nukes are such a likely threat to any of the cities where you can actually own an AR-15. No. Wait. Probably not.

When the shit really does hit the fan (and I don’t doubt that it will), you are not going to go commando. You are going to get you and yours to safety, you are going to keep them safe. It’s a simple task that can be accomplished with a couple of relatively simple rifles, shotguns, and handguns. A few gallons of stockpiled fuel. And a well-put together kit to keep yall alive for a month or so.

These people just dumbfound me. I’m a live and let live kinda guy. If you want a four rail freefloat handguard, taticool adjustable stock with storage, flashlight, laser, nightvision, reddot, scope, and fancy BUIS adorning your rifle go ahead, but be honest and admit it’s just for fun. I like gadgets too, and some of those appeal to me. Not because it’ll make me more deadly on some imaginary battlefield.

Needless to say, I seriously doubt I’ll be posting pictures of my AR-15 when it’s done. Which will be about as un-tactical as you get. Then again, it’ll do all that you can ask of a target/plinking rifle. .5MOA groups (half an inch at 100 yards) with good yet economical ammo, the speed and convenience of a semi-auto with available 40rd mags, and ease of cleaning and modification. All for about 700 dollars. Few other guns can claim that combination (if any). That–and the fact that it’s Evil and Black and therefore scares lefties–is why I’m buying it.

Not going to be too political about it. Just a funny thought I had while I was at lunch with some friends.

All of us are fairly pro-Israel. It happens when you just get really tired of the Islamists’ crap. Not to mention that Palestine was created by Arab countries when they took away the citizenship of their own people for the express purpose of creating an anti-Israel terrorist state. Say what you want about the whole conflict, about us giving the Jews a country to call their own, and all that. But there was no such thing as a permanent resident of the palestinian area until very recently (head to wiki and here for more info. The latter is particularly good). Arabs in Palestine were largely nomadic up until rather recently. They were forsaken by their own people to become a political tool.

Walid Shoebat, a former terrorist, says it best:

“Why is it that on June 4th 1967 I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian?”

“The Arab refugees are being used as pawns’ to create a terror breeding ground, as a form of aggression against Israel”

“The Arab refugee problem was caused by Arab aggression and not Israel. Why should Israel be responsible for their fate?”

Anyway, we were talking about how fun it’d be to go over there, get up on top of some buildings with lawn chairs, a cooler full of beer and soda (the latter for me) and act like football fans. Paint ourselves up like the Israeli flag, hold big #1 hands up, and wear beer hats. Just get like thousands of people out there and act like jackasses. Score artillery hits, cheer troops, and just have a blast.

Well, I’d be entertained anyway.

Final post on why all moderate movements can go to hell. For this week anyway.
Earlier Entries
Never Trust A Moderate
Pragmatism Is Not An Ideology
The Issues Don’t Matter…
Meddling Tends To Backfire

Thomans Brackett Reed looks like a pretty interesting character. He ran in the same social circle as Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt, two of my favorite American icons. I really wish I knew more about him, but the following quote tells me that if our paths had ever crossed, we probably would have gotten along just fine:

One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.

Unity08 ‘doesn’t have a platform’. And it’s true that they haven’t taken a position on what they’re going to do. But they have decided they need to do something about ‘pressing issues’. While I’m also concerned about our dependence on oil, the state of social security, and the laughable excuse for an education system we call public schools, I doubt I’d go about fixing it in the same way they would. As I’ve articulated several times in the past couple of days, they have defaulted to an interventionist position simply by taking a ‘focus on the issues’ stance.

Unity08 and the Radical middle in general want to move away from ideological issues to pragmatic issues. It’s a dangerous step. At the end of the day, whether its legal or not to burn a flag doesn’t really change things in this country all that much. It’s an ideological matter–an important one, banning flag burning is equivalent to urinating on the Bill of Rights and claiming you’re ‘restoring’ it–but ultimately one that matters little to the prosperity and safety of our country. On the other hand, violence, social security, healthcare, and education all have a much more palpable impact on our daily lives, on the other hand. Which is what makes these issues so dangerous to discuss without a clear ideological framework on the role of government.

Issue-driven politics becomes nothing more than a combination of bribery, scare tactics, and offers of protection in return for subjugation. Politicians offer you safety and prosperity in return for your tax money and your liberty. Sometimes they appeal to your greed (medicare drug benefits, welfare expansion, etc.) and sometimes they appeal to your fears (crime is up! must ban guns not used in crimes! Because criminals are far more scared of soft targets than they are hard ones!).

Issue-driven politics is about explaining to you that if you were reasonable you’d see that you don’t really need all that freedom, and excuse me while I assemble the walls of this cage around you “for your own protection”. I once heard the practice of purdah justified using similar logic. Bollocks.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to order my AR-15 before ‘reasonable’ and ‘pragmatic’ men attempt to ban a low-powered semiautomatic rifle just because it looks scary and I don’t actually need it.

Fourth in my Unity08 prompted extended rant about the dangers of centrist politics.

I watch a lot of family programming. ABC Family, Nickelodeon, Disney channel. While I can enjoy a dirty joke as well as the next guy (and frequently make them), I get rather tired of it when it comes to sitcoms. Maybe I’m just thirsting for the days of Leave It To Beaver and the Dick Van Dyke Show, but I like the idea that people are capable of producing an entire 22 minute program without resorting to crudities and sexuality–especially as so much of TV seems infested with teen promiscuity and other wanton behavior. Call me old fashioned, but I’m of the opinion that if you’re doing adult things you ought to be an adult. Not to mention that, having worked in public health for the past couple months, I’ve come to understand all too well the hidden and not-so-hidden dangers of the free love that modern culture seems so insistent on foisting upon us. But that’s a topic for another time.

That’s So Raven is a show on Disney Channel, a fairly funny series about a girl who has psychic visions of the future, and predictably attempts to interfere in things, either to prevent or ensure their occurence. And you know what? It almost inevitably backfires. This basic plotline is a conceit that has appeared multiple times in almost every sitcom known to man, not to mention a host of funny novels (such as all PG Wodehouse work). It’s just possible that they may be on to something.

As I’ve been talking about throughout this discussion, the biggest danger of centrist politics is that it is only issue-driven–usually practical rather than ideological–and thus focused only on how to legislate away problems. But today rather than focus on the tendency of a ‘centrist’ state to devolve into totalitarianism faster than either leftist or conservative states, I thought I’d focus on the pragmatic side of state intervention, since that’s what the middle claims to be all about.

One of the major problems with the mindset behind interventionism is that it is built upon a false premise. Understanding the order of social systems and the behavior of the individuals within them requires first that you understand that it is a dynamic process. When the behavior of one individual changes, the behavior of everyone else changes to a greater or lesser degree in response. The very order of a society is subtly changed every time one participant is affected by the actions of another. It’s a point neatly encapsulated by Gandhi’s quote that when you take an eye for an eye, everyone ends up blind.

In other words, things don’t stop, their effects reverberate throughout the group, the end result oftentimes opposite that of the initiating event. Interventionism ignores this fact, treating society as static and assuming that the only effect of a given act of government interference will be the direct one. It is as if the interventionist pulls the trigger on a .50BMG rifle expecting to make a bullet fly out the muzzle, only to be surprised when the firearm recoils in his hands. And in fact this is exactly what those sitcoms show us time and time again. The action gets the ball rolling, but cannot control what direction it takes or just how far it will travel.

One of my favorite examples of this is the push to raise CAFE standards. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? Raising fuel economy standards will mean we’ll need less gasoline for the same amount of commuting and travel, which would mean a reduction in our . But, because of reduced demand, prices would drop. Less gas at a lower rate would mean that we’d be spending less on gasoline, and therefore we’ll have less incentive to turn toward alternative fuels such as ethanol or biodiesel.

Another example is the federal subsidization of college loans. Which has likely been a key factor in the explosive growth of tuition fees in the past few decades. College opens doors, so it makes sense that we find a way to help as many people pay for college as possible, regardless of income level. In this case, the unintended consequence is quite large in its deleterious effect. While many more can finance their post-secondary education, once out they find themselves under mountainous levels of debt.

To understand why this has happened, I’ll use the example of automobiles. When I moved back to the states, I knew I’d need a car. While walking 2.5 miles to and from school every day is quite feasible in London, this isn’t quite the case in Oklahoma City. I’m not a fan of debt, and so had intended to buy a 1998 Ford Ranger outright when I got settled in. My parents offered me in essence a no-interest loan on a 2006 Mustang GT that I would have to start paying back when I started residency (eerily similar to the college loan situation). I took the deal, tripling what I was willing to pay for a car. The situation is much the same for college tuition. If there was no financing available, there is no way that the current costs of tuition would be sustainable.

These are just a few examples among many. While the initial government action may be quite simple in nature, its effects are rarely straightforward. And more importantly, it can often worsen the situation. By appealing to ‘the issues’, centrist parties and the moderates that support them set themselves up to create far more problems than they will actually solve. Their solutions are too simplistic, too lacking in grounding in the science of social behavior, and too much based on the need to ‘do something‘ rather than properly address the problem itself.

Third installment in the anti-moderate rant. You can head to Unity08 to see what prompted me.

The issues don’t matter, ideology does.

My very first post on this blog made my stance on this quite clear:

The war isn’t about issues, it’s about definitions. Our definition of freedom is incompatible with theirs; granting the rights they wish to grant can only be achieved by constraining all men. We must attack their ideology, and not just their legislation.

It’s why I don’t do the link-quote-comment-quote-comment-rant thing. The problem today is that the very way we look at political issues is flawed.

In an email I received yesterday, a reader made the following comment:

I read your post today, and I think you are way off base when talking about Unity08. I think you need to read more about their core values, and less about what their supporters personal ideologies are…

I believe this is what Unity08 is saying: Politics is messed up because political parties are only pushing wedge issues (in order to GOTV). Therefore, no real issues are being pursued (education, social security, health care, etc etc). Unity08 believes that by nominating (and maybe electing) a viable third ticket, that the major political parties will have to cater more towards the middle, and therefore get back to the core issues that Americans want resolved (or at least talked about).

Unity08 hasn’t taken a stand on any issues (because they have not nominated any candidates) – so to say that they are anything but an organization claiming to provide Americans with a third choice come 2008, is simply wrong.

And he’s right in that this is all Unity08 claims to be. But my very problem with them stems from the fact that they are trying to divert attention toward those which ‘reasonable people’ want addressed. Yesterday’s rant about pragmatism could easily have been devoted to ‘reasonable legislation’ with nary a word changed.

While wedge issues do have the unfortunate side effect of diverting attention away from impending challenges our nation will face, they are important in that they allow for a quick and easy identification of a politician’s ideology. Michael Bloomberg has done an excellent job of painting himself as a rather libertarian-leaning Republican, but his draconian stance on gun control reveals his true colors. Without such wedge issues, many might never have known any better.

The problem isn’t right or left, the problem isn’t that we’re choosing polarizing issues to elect our leadership on, it’s not that we’re failing to focus on the ‘crucial and pressing’ issues, the problem is that we are electing people based on how they will increase the scope of government.

I’m not a big fan of the middle. While some have clearly developed and thought out their moderate stance, most take the position because they’re vaguely dissatisfied with the polarizing rhetoric of both parties, but see something wrong in society and think ’someone ought to do something’. That ’someone’ is usually government.

In my opinion the middle has taken the first step of seeing something wrong with the social limitations Republicans want to impose as well as the socialism that the Left clearly so wants to take us toward. But the fact that they fail to question whether government should get involved in a given issue at all is what makes them so dangerous.

Just because a piece of legislation is ‘reasonable’ doesn’t make it right. I’ve used the helmet law example because I currently work for the Oklahoma State Department of Health and hearing the Injury Prevention people going on about how we’re ‘backward’ for being the last state without a helmet law really gets my goat. I don’t even ride motorcycles or quads, nor do I plan to. But it’s an almost textbook case of a ‘reasonable’ law that is nevertheless completely unjust. Yes, there is a traumatic brain injury problem in Oklahoma. But why should the government be able to criminalize my doing something that can only harm myself.

Another problem with the middle is that they’re more focused on ‘doing something’ about these pressing issues than what effect government intervention will actually have. That’s the topic for tommorrow’s post so I won’t go into much detail here. But we can all think of laws that were passed and had an effect quite the opposite of what was intended.

The Founding Fathers were quite wary of government. They understood that it could be used by some citizens to oppress others. By politicans to oppress citizens. And that eventually all governments would cease to serve the interests of their constituents. It was for this reason that they were so adamant about philosophical discussions. This is why thousands upon thousands of different pamphlet titles were produced in our Nation’s formative years. This was why the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists started one of the earliest newspaper editorial wars. This is why, although similar in background, temperament, and ideology, Jefferson and Adams fought to their dying days about the implementation of their political philosophy.

What will save our country isn’t shifting attention to issues that interest the middle, but rather engaging everyone in a frank and open discussion about what the role of government should be, why they have authority, when they should interfere in the affairs of man, and how they should do so. Only if we elevate ourselves to be truly political beings can citizen participation bring anything but oppression and tyranny. A friend of mine back in high school told me that the first duty of a good jew was to question. It’s that questioning spirit and intellect that our country most needs now.

Continuing my week-long rant dedicated to the inanity of the radical middle. Prompted by Unity08.

When I ask a moderate to actually explain what he believes in (i.e. negative liberty, collectivism, whatever), frequently enough his answer is, “I’m a pragmatist.” He’ll then usually accuse me of having my head in the clouds. Which is funny, since I take my philosophy from real life. From history and from evolutionary biology. I’ve taken the time to really understand human nature and not to think only about the ‘problem’ and the government ’solution’, but about the the unintended consequences as well. More importantly, I don’t think there is a more pragmatic viewpoint than classical liberalism. It is the only political philosophy that balances the occasional failures of self-interested individuals to organize, the maximization of liberty, and the threat of tyranny against each other. Most other ideologies ignore one or more of these aspects of human nature.

Pragmatism is not an ideology, but a tool. Classical liberalism (in my opinion) can be differentiated from libertarianism primarily through its higher degree of pragmatism. We share with libertarians our inherent distrust of government; However, we also recognize that the market can’t solve all problems and that sometimes central planning can be necessary (as in highways). As I said yesterday though, this position isn’t to be confused for statism. A classical liberal sees government intervention as inherently bad but sometimes necessary. A statist on the other hand, sees intervention as fundamentally good. They see government in an enabling role whereas we see it in a restrictive role.

Pragmatism is a tool. It is the flexibility to compromise your ideology to better harmonize with the realities of a far more complex world. As I discussed in the debate I had with Francois Tremblay, an ideology is much like a mathematical model. It works only when certain conditions are valid. When these conditions don’t apply, the model doesn’t work so well. Pragmatism allows you to bridge that, to recognize when the model doesn’t work, and to aid you in finding a solution, rather than merely ignoring the problem altogether.

When a moderate calls himself a ‘pragmatist’ what he really means is that he is an adherent of interventionism. He supports the use of government restriction, regulation, taxation, and criminalization to fix societal problems and to curtail personal choice. He sees a problem and immediately assumes that government is the best source for a solution, often ignoring the fact that government caused the problem in the first place. It is the moderate you’ll find supporting ’sensible’ legislation. Helmet and seatbelt laws, fast food taxes, gun control (because a pistol grip makes a rifle so much more dangerous), and other such monstrosities. And slowly the role government plays in making personal choices for us will grow. They will cage us before our very eyes and we won’t even notice, feeling comforted by the boundaries they place around us.

There’s a new third party group out there calling themselves Unity08.

It’s more or less the same ‘Having no political ideology is an ideology’ garbage typical of the Radical Middle.

Let’s look at who they say they are:

Unity08 divides issues facing the country into two categories: Crucial Issues – on which America’s future safety and welfare depend; and Important Issues – which, while vital to some, will not, in our judgment, determine the fate or future of the United States.

In our opinion, Crucial Issues include: Global terrorism, our national debt, our dependence on foreign oil, the emergence of India and China as strategic competitors and/or allies, nuclear proliferation, global climate change, the corruption of Washington’s lobbying system, the education of our young, the health care of all, and the disappearance of the American Dream for so many of our people.

By contrast, we consider gun control, abortion and gay marriage important issues, worthy of debate and discussion in a free society, but not issues that should dominate or even crowd our national agenda.

I could scarcely come up with a more comprehensive list of all possible ways a government could meddle in the affairs of its citizens.

My problem with moderates is that by positioning themselves between the two poles of statism, they would create the worst of all possible worlds. The Left sees economic redistrubtion and social engineering as inherently good. The Right sees restriction of ‘immoral’ behavior as a worthy province of government intrusion. ‘The Middle’ challenges neither of those perspectives, instead accepting that both are good ‘in moderation’ whatever that means. But if there is one thing we can learn from history, it is that governments grow over time. They grow more ponderous, they grow more restrictive, and their interests grow farther and farther away from those of the people they claim to represent. By failing to question whether or not government should even be allowed, they would open the floodgates of power and so cage us all. Hardly a desirable platform.

Moderates also confuse ‘democracy’ for ‘freedom’. To do so is to ignore the lesons of history, of human nature, and of the sad excuse for a constitution that Iraq recently ratified. They forget how short a step it is from ‘rule of the people’ to ‘mob rule’. And that a tyranny of the majority is still a tyranny. But most importantly they fail to understand that democracy is nothing more than a tool. And like all tools, it needs to be guided. No one can deny the importance of voting in a just society. But it also can’t be denied that all too often the vote has been used to imprison one group or to allocate special privileges for another. Such things are hardly just and do anything but further the cause of freedom and prosperity.

The importance of structural restraint of government power as well as the danger of democracy were things well known to our founding fathers, who sought to create a way to keep both inherently destructive forces at bay with the Constitution. Moderates forget both of these lessons, perhaps two of the most important ones the founding fathers conferred upon us

Nick bored, you get short story.
It wasn’t exactly a room and wasn’t exactly a lean-to. Three walls, half a ceiling and a bed. That’s where I woke up on a blustery October morning.

I rose in a panic, fighting for every breath, wondering just how an 18 wheeler had parked itself on my chest while I was asleep. Too shocked to even open my eyes, I feared a severe asthma attack…and then I remembered I didn’t have asthma. Then I thought it was a heart attack. But I was a 27 year old living in the woods, I couldn’t be out of shape or even find cholesterol if I tried my damnedest. Logic finally invading the miasma of confusion, I realized the only thing I was being attacked by was a moron.

Growling “You stupid git” in a voice that started in a gravelly bass and ended somewhere around a male contralto, I wrapped my large-ish hand around the short, deep muzzle of a moronic orphaned adolescent black bear sleeping on my chest and wrenched his oversized head off me… in the process of which he fell on the middle-aged three legged wolf who’d been sleeping at the foot of my bed. So now I had a snarling 100lb former alpha male and a 120lb adolescent bear snuffling at me like a kicked puppy. And my fleece pullover was covered in a congealed pool of bear snot and saliva. Growling right back at them, I hurled the ruined North Face at the wolf, causing the already movement-impaired animal to trip and fall on the bear in a yelping seven legged tangle of fur and idiocy. As I stomped out of the pseudo-room muttering obscenities under my breath, the animals still managed to take it as a sign of affection…which, in truth, it was.

Well, it could’ve been worse. There were mornings where I’d seriously contemplated installing monkey bars in the ceiling so I could get from the bed to the door without wading through a knee-deep sea of mammalian rejects. I started the fire with a shaving of magnesium and a lighter, threw on the coffee pot and stumbled into the bathroom. After at least paying lip service to hygiene I glanced up at the poem pasted on the mirror–in fact, it was up somewhere in every room here. Kipling’s words on manhood and maturity stared back at me with questioning eyes, asking if I was lying to myself about this little excursion.

I’d claimed to myself to be inspired by Thoreau’s Walden, to prove to myself and everyone that a man could live alone, separate from society, and that in doing so, discover the truth about himself. But, Kipling’s pen jabbed me in the ribs…and I faced the thought I’d been shying away from for several months. There was something to the idea of finding myself by living alone, but there was also another truth, that I was running away from something I found hard…society and sociality. The same could be said for Thoreau. He was a brilliant man who often went underappreciated and grated under the seeming imprisonment of mediocrity and small-mindedness that surrounded him. It was rage at this that prompted his famous demonstration and later pamphlet on Civil Disobedience. A work that would inspire both Gandhi and King. If Thoreau had been honest with himself and his readers, he would’ve admitted that this same rage played no small part in his escape to that fabled pond. If I had been honest I might’ve said the same thing.

I thought of the little menagerie of formerly wild animals around myself and remembered the words my mom had spoken more than a decade ago: “Somehow, you only seem human when you’re around animals.” Sounds retarded, but it was true then and still is. The zoo that had insinuated itself into my little corner of the rockies reminded me of that. And today, now that I was willing to face the truth, I realized that the very quality of the animals I surrounded myself with drew me even closer to them than most. They, like me, were in a vice. Much as I would love for it to be possible to be a hermit, it wasn’t, not without losing my humanity. But at the same time, I’d never feel free or at peace with society; I was born in the wrong century, the wrong millenium. A guy like me needed the battlefield and the library. And the days of the warrior-scholar were dead and gone. The wolf, the bear, and the others, they were born wild, they had lived wild, but they could never be again. They’d have to live in the pseudo-captivity imposed by the circumstances of their conditions. For the wolf, his still imposing bulk meant that 3-legged or not, he’d be seen as the biggest threat to whatever alpha there was in his pack. And with only 3 legs, he wasn’t a threat, and would likely lose his life in the ensuing clamor for dominance. I had replaced the bear’s mother in affection, but I’d never replace her ability to teach him how to live. These guys no longer had a prayer of survival in the wild, but they could never be at peace with their new lot in life.

As the smell of coffee rose up to meet me, I reminisced back to the days when the incorrigible flirt in me would inevitably respond to the barrista’s ‘How do you want your coffee?’ with a ‘Just like me…You know, Hot, Strong, and Dark.’ But enough of that, there was work to be done and furry parasites to feed…

I’m a goofily built guy. Probably the only 5′10-6′ (back problems, yes it does vary that much week to week) guy who has to shop at big and tall and isn’t fat. I own only one button-down shirt with a long enough sleeve length to actually wear without the arms rolled up.

Which makes shooting fun too. Regular-length riflestocks just don’t feel right to me. In prone it’s just uncomfortable. I feel like I have to literally crawl into the gun to get a good hold. Offhand or in a kneel, it’s actually painful to hold on target for too long (nerve damage again).

I remembered that Anarchangel had talked about rifle ergonomics before so I decided to measure myself and see if it was just perception, the nerve problem, or an actual anatomic reason.

Shoulder seam to length of pull: me 35-36″
average 24″-27″

Max length of pull: me 17.5-18″
average 13.5″ (smell a problem?)
Min length of pull: me 15-15.5″
average 9.5″
Optimum overall length: me 39″
average 32″-35″

A 16″ AR-15 is right around 34″ with a fully extended collapsible stock, and has an LOP of around 13″. Getting an A2 would add about .5 inches to that LOP. LOP on my .22LR rifle is around 12″ IIRC. See the problem there?

The good news about my longish measurements is that a 20″ AR is actually almost perfectly ideal (as far as maneuverability) for me. And a 24″ is better than a 16″ (slightly).

Since I plan on shooting paper, and probably have plenty of time before TEOTWAWKI (I estimate 10 to 20 years for that), that means the 24″ I’m going to buy here in a little bit wouldn’t actually be that awkward.

I got a chance to play with a 24″ with a 1″ buttpad installed and was very happy with the ergonomic results. LOP’s still a bit short, but I can hold on target so much longer than before without my bad arm acting up. It actually swings and points a lot easier for me than an M4gery which was a pleasant surprise (numbers notwithstanding).

Finding a way to squeeze another inch of length of pull onto the gun is a pain in the butt (no pun intended), but happily I’ve got a gunsmith friend in the UK who offered to make an extension for me.

I’m eyeballing the DPMS Super Bull

mainly because DPMS rifles are consistently more accurate than others in magazine reviews, with most getting .5moa groups with at least one of the tested loads.

Now, to find a pistol grip that can fill my 8″ long hand comfortably.

July 7 was a morning like any other for me. I woke up in the tiny cubbyhole they called my dorm room, washed my face, changed packed my bags and sat down to check the news. Was I in for a shock. King’s Cross St. Pancras tube station. Not two miles from me. My station, had been hit by a suicide bomber. The park next to my college was the scene of two or three more. These ones were on buses, one of which bore an all too familiar route number. While this was happening, a mile or two north of me, Islamic immigrants were in the streets chanting ‘Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda’.

After two hours of trying to get through the grid to tell my parents that no, I wasn’t dead, since I’d slept in and missed class, I gave up and just sat there. Brooding. In the coming days and weeks, the police were on a hair trigger, literally. You heard about the Brazilian electrician who was mistakenly killed. And, well, I had more than a few MP-5’s off safe pointed at me. Which wasn’t very reassuring given that British police don’t understand the concept of ‘trigger control’ (Finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot).

You’d think it would have been a wakeup call to the Brits. It was more like when you hear a sound that’s loud enough that you snort, switch positions, and then fall back asleep without ever really becoming awake. For a while they were ‘Oh now we get what Americans have been saying’, but almost before my eyes they reverted to ‘We just need to coddle them. Make advertisements for ham sandwiches illegal! And ban the public display of calendars featuring piglets! [both of which happened] That’s why they kill us!’.

This despite a British poll corroborating the Mark 1 Brain where 1/3 of islamic immigrants in Britain said they believed they should actively work to destroy western society, 56% understood why the bombers did what they did, and 6% feel they were fully justified.

There was a great Terry Pratchett quote from his newest book, Thud which I wanted to put up today. I’m at work and book’s at home, so I’ll put it in this evening.

If it looks like a terrorist sympathizer, it quacks like a western civilizaiton-hater, and it walks like an intolerant buffoon, why would you tolerate it? If someone hates everything I stand for, I will not bother asking why. I won’t try to blame myself. I won’t ask them if my piggy calendar or ham&cheese hot pocket offends him, because quite frankly it’s none of his business. If he threatens me. If he supports those who threaten me either actively or in sentiment, I will simply stand and fight.

A few of my fellow med students took a trip to Kenya to do AIDS outreach work this summer. Dispensing medication and the like. I told them they had just consigned a lot of innocent and uninfected people to die and would be actively working to spread AIDS. I then went on to explain to them how most foreign aid to nations which are under unsustainable conditionds is not only useless, it is harmful. They were understandably upset. Which doesn’t change the fact that I’m right. And I felt vindicated when they came back saying now they understand what I was talking about. I was also pretty happy that the experience has started one of my leftie friends on the road to rationality.

You see someone starving, hurt, or dying, and it’s only natural to want to do something about it. As social mammals, we’re literally wired for compassion. But, one thing that separates us from other social mammals are the size of our brains. It would be nice if we used those once in a while. There’s a reason why theoretical economists, ecologists, and the like have to go to school for so long. And that’s because these issues are quite complex. And a simple action-reaction model quite frankly almost never works. A small dose of poison can leave you healthier than none at all. Sometimes tax cuts can increase GDP and federal tax revenue (see Laffer Curve). And yes, withholding aid to impoverished nations often results in less total suffering than granting that aid.

There’s a lot of different ways to look at foreign aid and understand just why it’s so harmful. I once wrote a 25 page paper on one of these perspectives that barely did the concept justice. Needless to say, I won’t be going into full detail in this initial post. Just wanted to introduce the basic ideas.

Ecology
I became a die-hard Hardinite while taking a class about the intersection of EEB and culture. When it comes to method of political discourse, he’s probably my clearest influence. Following his example, I take things back beyond economics to the more encompassing science of ecology. And like him, I come away from it with a strong libertarianish bias. Hardin wasn’t the first political behavioral ecologist, though. That would have to be the maligned and misunderstood Thomas Malthus, who interestingly enough both preceded and heavily influenced Darwin.

Mr. Hardin was very critical of foreign aid his entire life, seeing it as aggravating a problem caused by an already artificially high and unsustainable population level. The basic idea is that a given ecological area has a certain carrying capacity. That’s how many animals it can sustain indefinitely. Now, you can support a larger population level on that land for a while. But eventually the area will crash. Resources will have been eaten away instead of being replenished. And the population will almost completely die off. Because the land was so badly ravaged, the new carrying capacity will be considerably lower than it used to be.

Which is pretty much the situation we have in many parts of Africa and Asia. We simply have too many people for what the land can support. Foreign aid can’t change the intrinsic factors of fertility and natural resource distribution. But it can support and even increase this artificially high population. Which will further ravage the land and further decrease the carrying capacity. Not pretty.

Epidemiology
The thing about STD’s like AIDS is that they’re often spread actively and voluntarily. For something like TB, malaria or leprosy, it’s a bit of a different story. Transmission happens diffusely. With the latter diseases foreign aid can be effective. This is partly because you can actually cure the infected. Diseases like those three are dependent on a number of environmental and population level factors and don’t really have all that much to do with the individual person. Every time I go to the backwaters of India, I’m exposed to all three. And, even though I’ve got a lot more money than the poor, there’s really not a whole lot more I can do to protect myself from those pathogens. I’m always a bit surprised when my TB exposure test comes back negative. I know I don’t have it. But I’m almost positive I’ve been exposed. And malaria? Fairly positive I’ve had that.

India’s also got a rather high density of AIDS infections and an escalating rate of infection. But that doesn’t even faze me. This is because unlike the other three, which will spread no matter what you do (more or less), AIDS requires that people engage in certain activities. Which I don’t do. And, unlike the other three, you can’t cure AIDS. You can only extend the asymptomatic period using anti-retroviral drugs (the drug cocktails you hear about on the news every now and then). Which basically means you’re given more time in which to spread the virus.

This is a particular problem in areas where there’s a high degree of promiscuity, unplanned pregnancy, and rape, which is much of subsaharan Africa. You have people both knowingly and unknowingly spreading the AIDS virus to many different partners, who also have many different partners. You have already infected people becoming pregnant. And you have strange ideas about how raping virgins can cure you. Artificially extending the period during which a given person can be a part of that vicious cycle–especially when they probably will be–is thus actively increasing the incidence of HIV infection.

Human Nature
The thing about money is that it’s a symbol. It’s a piece of paper or common metal, or even just a number in a computer somewhere. You can say “this is to feed the starving”. But once you hand it to an African politician, all bets are off. As a guy I was talking to once remarked “When you think about all the money that’s going into Africa, how much richer their politicians are getting, and how much worse the continent is getting, it’s not too hard to connect the dots”. Which sounds about right.

Economics
Not much here because I don’t think you can have a full discussion of this without taking a more in depth look at ecological factors and their interplay with economics (no nothing as boring as Guns, Germs, and Steel), so I’ll get to it later. But I will say this. The strength of an economy is fundamentally dependent on its natural resources, either past or present. If a nation can’t feed itself, it can never develop into something greater. Once its economy is off the ground, the agricultural self-sufficiency part becomes a little bit less necessary. But in Africa we have an entire continent that is so far beyond its carrying capacity one can barely fathom how it got there. People like Gates are throwing money at the place so they can feel better about themselves, talking about ‘development’ and ‘education’ and all that. Utter rot. You cannot build a castle in the clouds for the simple reason that all economies need low-level workers. All economies no matter how service and/or technology oriented need entry-level, unskilled, and semi-skilled labor. And if the people who would fill those jobs can’t get enough to eat, how are they supposed to provide the foundation of your economy?

Conclusion
The only time you can make a truly strong case for foreign aid is when a transient deficiency occurs, such as a tsunami or a hurricane. I know it sucks to see other people suffer. And giving and helping out feels so good. But sometimes help can really hurt. I’m going to leave you with a hick parable that I think you’ll find fairly apt:

A fire breaks out in the barn…the summer heat, all that hay, and even looking at it funny could’ve done it. Everyone on the farm breaks as fast as they can for the buckets, forming a chain from the cattle trough to the barn. The bucket is filled, and as it gets passed from one peson to the next a little bit of the water sloshes out. By the time it gets to Poppa, who’s closest to the fire, it’s only halfway full. Dousing the growing conflagration, he’s surprised when instead of sizzling and popping, it explodes with tinges of blue, bigger and hotter than ever. That wasn’t the cattle trough, but JimBob’s corn whiskey still. As everyone begins to flail around in panic, you realize they’re only fanning the flames…

Common Sense
I confess that this is an emotional hot button for me. As an immigrant (well, son of immigrants), I view this a little more passionately than most. And as a man who’s had to deal with language barriers in multiple countries (despite speaking the ‘native’ language) thanks to ‘multiculturalism’ efforts, I am slightly more fervent in the expression of my opinion on the idiocy of it.

I’ve seen how this idiocy has adversely affected England and India firsthand. And have heard plenty of horror stories from my Parisian roommates during grad school. That’s the thing about Europe. They’ve made most of the mistakes the left wants to make here. We should try and learn from them.

Nevertheless, I’ll state again that among non-hispanics only cowards, nihilists, and the unreasoned support this crap. Amongst hispanics, we have people with misplaced loyalties and a shocking lack of respect for their hosts.

The latest outrage would have to be Oregon firefighters losing their jobs because they don’t speak spanish.

Much as it pisses me off, I’m not going to say that businesses shouldn’t be able to require bilingual workers/managers. I am, after all, a free market supporter. And if a restaurant puts up a sign saying ‘Employees Speak English Only’ I’ll be eating there fairly frequently. Turnabout is only fair play.

But government is a totally different matter. There are several reasons why:
1. Solidarity: One language, one people.
2. Practicality: One language is cheaper, easier, and more streamlined
3. Equality: Spanish-speaking amounts to a privilege for people of a certain race over others.
4. Neutrality: Although English was invented by white people, it is universal. It does not define a single race, ethnicity, or creed.

These are about as self-evident as you get and need no exposition. So I’m not going to bother.

What Makes Them So Special?
But from one of Kim du Toit’s readers comes a great little story:

So, after the “undocumented immigrant doing work no American will do” left with his beer no American could drink, I said to the clerk, “So here’s the question: If YOU can speak English, why can’t *that* guy?” This guy starts wagging his finger at me, and in this great Indian accent starts screaming about illegals who have been here 15 years and can’t speak English! He says, “Dees guy come into my store, and is about to be buying some-teeng, I don’ rememba wot, and he no speek English. I say to him, You f*cking guy, you are leeving in dis country 15 YEARS, and you don’ learning the English? You f*cking guy!!! So dees Mexican illegal telling me I am bod bod mon, and dees Italy woman standing behin’ him say to him, Dees mon is right! You learn da Eenglish! We all did!”

Which sounds about right doesn’t it. Immigrants are guests. And a good guest follows the rules, traditions, and codes of behavior of his host. As a sign of respect if nothing else. Learning a new language can be hard, and that’s why a reasonable attempt to try English is good enough. We’re not asking for world-class orators here, just a good faith effort. I don’t hesitate to drop into Spanish if they try English first. Try Spanish on me first and I might as well be deaf.

I’ve brought it up before, but it really does apparently bear repeating. What makes them so different? Why do they get a privilege not accorded to my parents? And if no other immigrant group in the past has needed this privilege why do they? Why are we forced to bend to their desires? Coercion of the lowest order. It is nothing more than racism. It is a preference accorded to one ethnic group but not to another. If I were to go to the Department of Health and demand to speak to someone who knew Telugu, or even French, they’d look at me like I was insane. But Spanish? Well then, that’s a different story.

The Benefits Of Bilingualism: A Diversionary Tactic
Personally, I think knowing more than one language is very important, even if you never have to use anything but English. My grammar and composition abilities in English improved dramatically as I became conversational in French, for one thing. Telugu, well, that’s my mother tongue, I have to be at least half-competent in it if I’m going to be able to look myself in the mirror and call myself Indian. And Spanish? Cornell told me that Telugu wasn’t a language, so I’d have to learn a new one to fulfill that requirement (where was their [censored] ‘respect’ for other cultures there? Oh, you mean it only matters if the other culture is politically expedient? Imagine that). Still, it’s good to be able to claim you know Spanish if you’re going into the medical professions (which pisses me off). And it’s made reading articles in portuguese about Brazilian monkeys relatively painless. Which is good, since I study them.

Needless to say I’ll be pushing my kids to learn at least a couple of languages. But what angers me about that argument is that first of all, it’s a mischaracterization of the ‘English Only’ position. We are not opposed to bilingualism. We are opposed to newcomers telling us to change while making no attempts to do so themselves.

Furthermore, while they want us to be bilingual, they make no such demands on the immigrant group itself. It’s fine for them to continue to speak only Spanish. In fact, if they were willing to ask of hispanic immigrants what they ask of you and me, we wouldn’t have this problem in the first place.

I Feel Carpal Tunnel Coming On
Someone’s going to have to learn a new language to keep the lines of communication open. Logically, who should it be?

Radio sucks. Ergo, it got stuck on Tammy Bruce during my iced tea run. She was going on about how the guy who woke up from the coma changes everything about the Schiavo situation. I was going on about how she’s a stupid [censored]. Apparently the conservative world needs a quick lesson in neurobiology. So here we go.

This is a nerve cell (neuron):

(from http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/color/pic1.html)

Notice that there’s a big fat part at the top. That’s the cell body. That’s where all the machinery that makes the cell do its thing is. That’s where the DNA, the mitochondria, the ribosomes, all of that are. These provide the instruction set, energy, and proteins, respectively.

Now the long part is called the axon. It’s basically a biological combination of an electrical conduit and a subway tunnel. It’s essentially a passive structure. Nothing starts in the axon, merely passes through it.

At the end are the synaptic terminals. This is how the nerve cell sends a message to the next nerve cell in the chain.

Looking back to the top of our picture, the yellow branch-looking thingies are what receive the signals sent by the synaptic terminals.

Ok, now that we know all about that we can discuss how nerves respond to injury. Nerve cells, along with muscle cells, don’t keep proliferating and dividing in adulthood. They’re done. This is why after a heart attack you have reduced heart function. Once those cells die from lack of oxygen, nothing can grow back to replace them. This is also why in stroke patients, even after they recover function, it’s rarely as good or as natural-feeling as it used to be. The injured area doesn’t regenerate, other cells just learn to pick up the load.

But while we can’t make new nerve cells, injured nerve cells can regenerate. This is why finger re-attachments work. They can even take the relatively useless sensory nerves that pass over your collar bone and put them into your face to replace damaged or congenitally absent nerves there.

It’s important to note that a neuron can only regenerate if its body is intact. As I mentioned, all the machinery is in that body. Without that machinery, there’s no way to repair the damage. If it’s the axon though, the nerve cell’s body can repair it, although it may take years.

The difference between a coma and a persistent vegetative state is that in a coma, generally the cells are all there (well most of them anyway), it’s just that the axons are all screwed up. Generally as a result of blunt force trauma. In a PVS on the other hand, the cells themselves are dead. Hence the term braindead (the old non-PC term for PVS).

In a coma there is generally brain activity because the cells themselves are still alive. It’s just scattered and disorganized since the wires are tangled and snapped off. Axon growth is inhibited by several chemicals in the brain (that you don’t see in the peripheral nervous system) which is why regrowth can take months, years, even decades…but at least it can potentially actually happen. In a PVS there is nothing. There are no cells to fire. There are no cells to regenerate themselves. There is no chance of recovery.

Terry Schiavo’s brain was gone. This guy’s wasn’t. I don’t want to get overly philosophical here, but if the brain is the seat of the soul and the brain itself is no longer functioning, I really can’t consider it taking her life. Terry was a vacant body, this guy was not.

John Eyler makes a very good point about the role of the press in keeping a watchful eye on the government. Yes, mainstream media annoys all of us. We don’t like their ideology, their bias, or their inability to understand the difference between ‘reporting’ and ‘editorializing’. But just because they are one-sided doesn’t mean that what they say about the current administration should be censored.

Talking about their recent exposure of whatever the newest Bush domestic spying plan is (can you tell how upset I am about their compromising this ’secret’?), John makes the point so succinctly that I’m not even going to try to one up him:

What is sure is that the Press in this instance was keeping an eye on our government and that is their job. I don’t care if the Press goofs now and again, prints secrets it shouldn’t, I want them philosophically out to get the government. I wish they were just as rabid with a Democrat in the hot seat, but as a rule I don’t want them holding back or taking orders. [emphasis added]

I think what a lot of bloggers forget is that we are very much a part of the media. Maybe people don’t pay to read us, and maybe our advertising income isn’t so great (I’ve made 38 dollars since the end of March…woohoo!), but what we do is present news and editorials to a large (relatively) and diffuse audience. Which, as far as I can tell, is what the MSM does. What applies to NYT et al. applies to us.

The first amendment is one of the most important checks against the growing power of government. Without the press’s ability to bring issues to a large number of people in a limited amount of time, we would be far more hampered in our ability to keep watch on and control an inherently dangerous (but necessary) institution.

We tend to limit our discussion and understanding of checks and balances to the three major branches of the federal government. But just as important are the checks and balances that the Founders placed in our own hands. Freedom of speech, assembly, and press are paramount among them. And they all work hand in hand to deliver a much more powerful gestalt than merely the individual pieces. Imagine the freedom to say what you want, but only to a handful of people at a time. Imagine the freedom to gather in a large group, but be limited in how you could address your cohort. Imagine the freedom to publish whatever you want in the broadsheets, but your readership left unable to discuss it.

No, these freedoms work together, and they work together precisely to keep the government from becoming too powerful. Which is why the Bill of Rights protects them from government desecration.

As John said, I’d prefer it if the MSM acted this way no matter who was in power. And the world would be a much better place if the truth of the European style ’social model’ the Democrats would have us live under were known. But chastising the NYT, saying what they did shouldn’t be allowed because government doesn’t like it? Kind of like shooting yourself in the foot.

John made another comment about diversity in the media as well:

The only caveat I have is that we must have more diversity of thought in the Pressrooms around America. Too few owners are in control and the breadth our debates could attain is thwarted by this. This is the great problem that the MSM afflicts us with. Give us a larger more competitive Press and we will only benefit.

He’s right. Much of the problem with the spread of leftist ideologies today has to do with biased ‘reporting’. Every mistake of conservatism laid bare, every mistake of neo-socialists both here and abroad simply whitewashed away. But that’s why we exist. We are the answer to diversity in the media. Newspaper subscriptions are plummeting. CNN is no longer the monopoly it once was. And everyday more and more people forsake the biased, one-sided traditional media for the blogosphere. We are biased too, no denying that. But we declare our bias openly. We have comments and trackbacks. We debate and we submit to carnivals. We take elements of all three freedoms and blend them together. And we are stronger for it.