The Anger of Compassion

This Just In: Mises, Menger, Hazlitt Not Austrian!

Prompted by a discussion at SoloPassion, I went to the Ludwig von Mises Institute and took the quiz, "Are you an Austrian?"

Well.

I read a remark, a few years ago, that the place should call itself the Rothbard Institute, since they're pushing Rothbard more than Mises, and I do tend to agree. The quiz itself is a good example of that: I consider myself pretty consistently Austrianized, if not entirely an Austrian, so I wasn't shocked at my less than 100% score. But it wasn't my answers on unions or monopolies that kept me from scoring as a perfect Austrian; nor was it my responses about the Historical School, the gold standard, or praxeology that did me in. In fact, there were no questions on those last three items.

Nope. It was my answers about legitimate government functions. Apparently, there are none, and to think otherwise is un-Austrian -- which would have come as quite a surprise to Henry Hazlitt, who wrote a book, A New Constitution Now, in which he argued for a premier-parliamentary form of government in order to avoid another Watergate crisis, and to Ludwig von Mises himself, who served as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian cavalry in time of war, and, I warrant, to Carl Menger, who served on a law faculty, tutored an archduke, and spent time on a commission which aimed to reform the monetary system of Austria-Hungary. Not an anarchist in the bunch.

The word "tendentious" comes to mind. And I read and enjoy a lot of the stuff at their site. The quiz itself is interesting, too, for the most part, and enjoyable. But I don't think I'm going too far in saying that it writes Menger, Mises, and Hazlitt out of the Austrian universe.

Or at least...they're no more "Austrian" than I am. I mean, I did score 96%. Heh.

(There's a ten-question version of the quiz. I scored 100% on that one. And if you like, there's a Spanish version as well.)

UPDATE: Score and punctuation added.

Gates and Jobs: Top Dog, Underdog, and the Double-Dog Dare

Will Collier takes this:

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates will share a stage [Wednesday, May 30] at the D: All Things Digital tech conference in California next week for a 75-minute joint interview.

Besides a brief shared appearance at an Apple event in 1983, the two have never appeared together in public before.

And comes up with this:

Steve, I dare you--no, I double-dog dare you to walk onto that stage and say, "Hi, I'm a Mac, and he's a P.C." while pointing at Gates.

Good on ya, WIll. He's right about the double-dog dare, too.

Steve, you're on.

And you think you've got game

This guy couldn't buy a clue if you spotted him two vowels:

Two men robbed a U-Haul truck rental store around 3 p.m. Sunday, taking an unspecified amount of cash, according the store's owner. But instead of fleeing, one man lingered and tried to strike up a conversation with the woman he had just robbed.

"He stuck around and was trying to get the female employee's number," U-Haul store general manager Patrick Sobocinski said. "She said he was just saying, 'Hey, baby, you're pretty fine.'"

Think recommending The Game or The Mystery Method would help? Where should he start: should he work on his approach skills, or on demonstrating higher social value?

Anger of Compassion Official Advocates for the Rights of Prisoners

From The Local: Sweden's News in English:

Sweden's Justice Ombudsman has received a letter from the Prisoners' Council at Sagsjön jail in which the women bemoan the fact that they are not permitted to wear bikinis.

"It's a human right," wrote the chairwoman of the council.

Since bikinis are not standard issue in jail, and inmates are not permitted to wear their civilian clothes, the prisoners consider themselves victims of discrimination, Aftonbladet reports.

"How are we supposed to be able to sunbathe at all? They answer we have got is that we can sunbathe in shorts and sports tops.

"In other words, we are treated differently because we are in an institution and we are disriminated against because of our gender," the women wrote.

In an announcement which stunned the humanitarian community, Craig Ceely of The Anger of Compassion announced this evening that he would be willing to put the entire thrust of his blog into this effort.

"This is a fight I can really get behind," Ceely said, speaking at The Anger of Compassion Tower in El Paso, Texas. "I can design nineteen to thirty bikinis using the amount of material in one female prison uniform. I really am up for this." He denied rumors of an ultra-secret monokini project.

"The 36C Project is a serious project, and I am a serious prisoners' rights advocate," Ceely continued. "I will probably deliver each of the items personally. It would be my responsibility to ensure a good fit for each one. But it's a responsibility I'm willing to get into."

When challenged to compare himself to other humanitarian or civil rights advocates, Ceely said, "Look, it would take years to acquire the reputation of a Jesse Jackson or an Al Sharpton. But let me ask you: did Sally Struthers go to Africa and starve with those children? Nope. But I'm wiling to go live among those prisoners, facing the stiff challenges and burying myself in the effort."

Anger of Compassion officials denied rumors that Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and Rudy Giuliani were involved in negotiations to be the public spokesmen for the project, although Ceely did admit that they obviously possessed the requisite moral character for the job.

"Besides," he added, "They'd probably do a lot less harm with us than they would in any other public position."

"Ask Not What Your Native Language Can Do For You..."

"Ask what you can do for your native language."

Which, in this case, would be to shut the hell up.

An anti-endorsement, mockery of a presidential candidate's grammar (and it ain't George Bush, neither!), and a Fearless Political Prediction, all in one short post at Ceely's Modern Usage, Your Indispensable Guide to the Mother Tongue.

Ayn Rand Talks Available at No Charge

I can't call it awesome, 'cause Diana Hsieh has already used that word, but this announcement is big:

Thanks to an exclusive permission generously granted by the Estate of Ayn Rand, aynrand.org is now able to offer its registered users, free of charge, an expansive collection of Ayn Rand audio and video recordings. This unprecedented selection includes lectures, interviews, and the complete series of Ayn Rand's Ford Hall Forum lectures.

I recommend that you listen to them, for the most part, in chronological order. Since Ayn Rand's comments are often on political and cultural events, it can be interesting to see her views as expressed over the years. Unfortunately, the way ARI has listed the items makes it difficult to do that, so, as a service to readers of The Anger of Compassion, I did it myself.

My methodology was simple: I just looked up as many dates as I could in my bound volumes of The Objectivist Newsletter, The Objectivist, and The Ayn Rand Letter. Mayhew's Ayn Rand Answers helped with some ambiguities (Ayn Rand spoke often in the early Sixties, and gave the same talk or lecture on more than one occasion. In such cases, I have no idea which version we're listening to.)

The oldest stuff there dates from 1960. Here we find two items:

"Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World"
"Conservatism: An Obituary" (later reprinted as an essay and anthologized in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

1961

"The Objectivist Ethics," 9 February
"The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age," March

(Video) "Ayn Rand and the 'New Intellectual,'" 1961
(Video) "Capitalism vs. Communism," Dec 1961

1962

"Our Esthetic Vacuum," April
"The Fascist New Frontier," 16 Dec 1962
"Introducing Objectivism," column printed in the LA Times in June
"America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business," 17 Dec 1962

1963

"Aristotle"

1964

"Let Us Alone!" was published as an article in the Summer 1964 Yale Political Magazine
"Is Atlas Shrugging?" 19 April
"Significance of the Goldwater Campaign" would seem to fit here

The remainder of the Ford Hall Forum lectures:

"The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus," 18 April 1965
"Our Cultural Value-Deprivation," 10 April 1966
"The Wreckage of the Consensus," 16 April 1967
"What Is Capitalism?" 19 November 1967 (published as an article in 1965)
"Rebellion at Columbia" would seem to fit here
"Of Living Death," 8 Dec 1968
"Apollo and Dionysus," 9 Nov 1969
"The Anti-Industrial Revolution," 1 Nov 1970 (not listed as one of the available recordings)
"The Moratorium on Brains," 1971
"A Nation's Unity," 22 October 1972
"Censorship: Local and Express," 21 October 1973
(let's not forget, either, the classic "Philosophy: Who Needs It," which was delivered March 6, 1974 at West Point)
"Egalitarianism and Inflation," 1974
"The Moral Factor," 1976
"Global Balkanization," 1977
"Cultural Update," 1979
"The Age of Mediocrity, " 1981

(Video) "The Sanction of the Victims," 1981

Finally, my cassette tape copy of the interview "Objectivism in Brief," conducted with James Day, bears a 1983 copyright. For obvious reasons, I don't think the interview was conducted that year.

If anyone spots a mistake, or has more to add, please let me know.

The question & answer sessions are priceless. I don't mean to come off as "If you think you know Objectivism from reading the Ford Hall Forum stuff..." because there are plenty of people out there who know more than I do. But this stuff is not only entertaining but rewarding (for example, it's fun to compare Rand's comments on Mises with contemporary Misesian libertarians' comments on Objectivism). Enjoy!

(Hat tip on the announcement: Diana Hsieh at NoodleFood)

UPDATE: Some of the audio files do contain some information on when the talk, interview, or whatnot was conducted. In some cases, it's only the year, but that's better than nothing. I'll add those as I get to them.

For Uncle Joe: A Salute and a Beer

(This is an update of a piece I wrote for Memorial Day a few years back. The original version appeared on May 28, 2002 at the old SoloHQ.com site.)

I never knew my Uncle Joey -- my mother's uncle, actually. He died years before I was born, and in fact it was only this past week that I learned a little bit about him. That doesn't really matter much, I suppose.

I never met a fellow Marine who recognized the name John Locke. Not once in twelve years.

That certainly doen't matter, either.

But we all regarded life, liberty, and property as values--and everyone I knew recognized "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as the words of Jefferson. No one I knew was willing to offer himself up as a sacrificial animal--we all wanted to live. But all were willing to fight--and, if necessary, to die--in defense of such values.

Joey was, too.

But values are meaningful only for, and to, the living--and it is only the living who can mark any occasion, properly or improperly. Professional scolds (including most conservatives) tell us that Memorial Day should be more than just another three-day weekend: we should be somber, we're told, in remembrance of American war dead. President Bush, for example, speaks of "honoring the great sacrifices." Like his fellow conservatives, the president insists that we "must pray for peace." He means well, but he misses the point.

They just don't get it.

Those who died on America's fields of battle died defending values--they gave their lives, yes, but they sacrificed nothing.

I raised an American flag today (Memorial Day, 2002). But I also took my family to the El Paso Zoo, where we enjoyed the new ocelot exhibit, the Mexican wolves, and the two leopard cubs. My son rode a rollercoaster for the first time. The evening held promise of grilled shrimp and beer. Have I dishonored America's war dead by turning Memorial Day into, as the moralistic harangue goes, "just another three-day weekend?"

Horsefeathers. The Sourpuss Right is right, although not the way they mean it: Memorial Day is not just another three-day weekend. It's a great reason to have one, among the best. It's an assertion that American fighting men do not sacrifice their lives, and that it is a sin against decency to suggest that they should.

For life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness--these values cherished by Americans--these values which must be defended, sometimes unto death--these values have meaning only for the living, and they have meaning only on this earth. This earth is where those values are enjoyed. This earth is where those valiant warriors fell, defending them. And this earth--well, this earth, and only this earth, is where their remembrance is made.

And if--as is sadly inevitable--more brave young Americans die in Afghanistan and in Iraq -- we'll remember them, too.

And that does matter.

But: please, a remembrance worthy of them, worthy of their lives on this earth. Ditch the long faces. Note that life goes on, that the sun still warms, that Beethoven still inspires, that laughter is shared, that enemies can be and have been vanquished and leopard cubs have been born and friends made. That rollercoasters still thrill. That life has been lived. That burgers and shrimp have been grilled and beer consumed and gratitude has been offered but no apologies, ever, for any of it.

(Dedicated to the memory of Private First Class Joseph Samodulsky, 253rd Infantry Regiment, 63rd Infantry Division, U.S. Army, who fought in the winter push through the Heasbourg Gap to Germany and fell on March 3, 1945. His final resting place is the Epinal Cemetery in northern France.)

Brother Hitchens and Titles One Must Someday Live Down

Here's video of the Christopher Hitchens - Al Sharpton debate.

Maybe I'm more thoroughly secular than I thought I was (in spite of my Catholic upbringing), but...geez, Al Sharpton was ordained at the age of nine?! What the hell is it with religious folk? Nine years old and you can be ordained, nine years old and you can be married to a Prophet?

And Sharpton...my god, the very first thing he falls back on is the old chestnut of "If there's no God, then the powerful can do anything they want..." Is this still the most reliable argument the Believers feel they can bring to bear?

Connecting with Technology

What kind of technology user am I?

According to this survey, I'm a Connector:

The Connectors’ collection of information technology is used for a mix of one-to-one and one-to-many communication. They very much like how ICTs keep them in touch with family and friends and they like how ICTs let them work in community groups to which they belong. They are participants in cyberspace – many blog or have their own web pages – but not at the rate of Omnivores. They are not as sure-footed in their dealings with ICTs as Omnivores. Connectors suspect their gadgets could do more for them, and some need help in getting new technology to function properly.

Not as confident as an Omnivore, am I? Damn, I use a PC and a Mac every day, but I'm not as confident as an Omnivore. Them Omnivores must be pretty...um, omnivorous. Or something.

(Hat tip: Out Of Lascaux)

Gordon Brown: Tory?

According to Ann Coulter, yes. In her May 9 column, "C'est Si Bon," on the occasion of the recent election of the slightly less statist of the two statist candidates for the French presidency, she writes:

Along with [Australian Prime Minister John] Howard, Bush's staunchest ally in the war on terrorism has been Britain's Labor Party leader Tony Blair. He's about to leave office — only to be replaced by a leader from the even more pro-American Conservative Party.

Hello? People, Blair will be replaced -- as Labour party leader and as Prime Minister -- Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, a man who is (ahem) not a member of the Conservative Party.

Good thing these professional writers and columnists have editors and fact-checkers. Unless the lowly bloggers among us.

Meanwhile, I'll have whatever Ann Coulter is smoking.

Cinco de Mayo and Americana

So tomorrow is Cinco de Mayo -- and, according to this story from BoingBoing, it's also Free Comic Book Day. How American is that?

Free Comic Book Day FAQ here.

Where to get free comics here.

List of available comics here, and quick reviews in a Salon article by Douglas Wolk.

Oh, yeah, it's Cinco de Mayo, too. Not to be confused with Mexico's other Independence Day.

UPDATE: And, as I've just learned from Charles Hill, it's also World Naked Gardening Day!

Obligatory Friday Catblogging

Been a few years since this one was taken:

Alexandria, Egypt, summer of 2000. From left to right: Harry Potter, Oliver Twist, Craig Ceely.

Hitchens: God Is Not Great

"There are," insists Christopher Hitchens, "four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking."

I just wish he wouldn't hold back his fire on such a matter...

Ceely's Modern Usage Is Back

New post, too, after a long hiatus, this one about The Economist Style Guide.

You were expecting maybe naked women?

Medieval Help Desk

Those clever Norwegians. This is funny.

(Hat tip: Dick Eastman at Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter)

America's Top 10 Millionaire Counties

This one is via CNNMoney.com: the Top 10 Millionaire counties" in the US. By this they mean "the nation's top 10 counties with the highest number of millionaire households, which have a net worth of at least $ 1 million, not including the value of a resident's home." According to TNS Financial Services, those counties are:

1. Los Angeles County, California
2. Cook County, Illinois
3. Orange County, California
4. Maricopa County, Arizona
5. San Diego County, California
6. Harris County, Texas
7. Nassau County, New York
8. Santa Clara County, California
9. Palm Beach County, California
10. King County, Washington

Some of these are pretty obvious: L.A., I think, and Cook County (Chicago). Nassau? Probably 'cause I was born there, and probably, too, because it's just outside New York City. Orange County and Palm Beach County aren't really surprising, either.

But Harris County, Texas? That's Houston, folks. The county which contains America's fourth largest city is also one of its wealthiest. Hmm...I wonder if El Paso's public officials -- and voters -- will conclude that it's because Houston is a good place in which to do business?*

Smart money has already said: No.

*Hint: No zoning.

Happy May Day, Comrades

Today is May Day, once celebrated throughout the communist world -- when there was one.Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is celebrating by impoverishing the future of his people, in today's case by stealing the last privately-operated oil fields in Venezuela. That kind of thing ought to work out just about as well as it has everywhere else it's been tried.

Speaking of which, today's probably a good day to remind everyone of Bryan Caplan's Holocausts of Communism Quiz. Here's what I wrote about the quiz when I discovered it in 2004:

Go ahead. Take the test. I'll wait.

And then think, and try grasping the numbers, the numbers, the numbers. Victims in the millions--and, in case after case, all in one place.

I've been reading, for the first time, the classic espionage thrillers of Eric Ambler. Very well done, all of them. But this struck me: in Background to Danger, the hero is a Brit caught in machinations far beyond his own imaginings, and the only help he receives--at all--is from two dedicated Soviet agents.

The evil, of course, was perpetrated by fascists and by the nefarious machinations of Big Business in the City of London.

Well.

Those are by all means evildoers, are they not? But Background to Danger was written and published in the late 1930s, and yet its villains have their ideological descendents in today's America: as for Big Business, Microsoft has been persecuted for the unspeakable evil of offering its Internet Explorer browser free on both the Windows and Macintosh computer platforms, and Martha Stewart is about to be incarcerated for five months for a "crime" no accuser can quite explain.

On the political side, we have Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Admiral Hortha: none of them are admired today; their names and ideals are not fashionable, and it's a damn good thing. The very thought is considered objectionable, and novelists with far less ability than Eric Ambler are able to cash in on such villains.

I have no problem with associating these men's names with ultimate evil.

Why, then, are "idealistic" Marxists considered intellectually and morally capable of teaching in American universities? Why do so many Americans of the entertainment industry persuasion laud the intelligence and "idealism" of Fidel Castro, and the "achievements" of his island Gulag?

It's not recent, either, this bifurcation: Franklin Delano Roosevelt referred to Stalin as "Uncle Joe," and cooperated with Churchill in the pro-Stalin evils delivered at Teheran and at Yalta. British and American lawyers and judges, including an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, took part in the Nuremburg trials, thus making themselves and the Anglo-American legal tradition an accessory to Soviet evil. I myself have seen "idealistic" American protesters march down an American street, chanting simplistic slogans as some among them hoisted images of Ho Chi Minh and a North Vietnamese flag. An unregenerate, unrepentant Stalinist, the "poet" Pablo Neruda, is having his centenary celebrated as I write this.

As I write this...this...this mere blog entry, this solitary, at-the-keyboard activity which amounts to no more than pissing into the cultural wind, PETA activists will fling blood-colored water on those who wear mink or sable, while pleas are entered for understanding the dictators in North Korea and China, and Castro and the remaining, graying Sandinistas are openly lauded as idealists.

Another memory: reading the leaders of the Sandinista junta, interviewed in Playboy, one of whom sobbed that since Ronald Reagan had been elected to the presidency of the United States, he had been unable to write a line of poetry.

Well.

Well, Boo fucking hoo.

A hundred thousand lines of some poseur's pro-prole doggerel do not add up to the value of one honest peasant's life, his one, single, irreplaceable life, whether that life was stolen in Russia or China or Cambodia or Cuba.

Take the test. Take it now. I told you, I'll wait.

Done? Now, try grasping the numbers--some of the smaller numbers, say, the number of Cambodian victims of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. Try grasping those numbers, the numbers, the numbers... and...well, let me offer some help:

You have never had that many friends.

Friends, hell: you have never encountered that many people in your life.

You wish you had that many dollars.

You probably haven't ever had that many pennies, let alone dollars.

The pages in the books in your library don't add up to that high a total.

And yet these weren't pages in books, or pennies in a jar: these were individuals, they were human lives snuffed out because they didn't fit with someone's idea of what belonged where on the chessboard. Sons and daughters, parents and grandparents, poets and guitarists and clowns and rice farmers.

Here's the message I recieved when my own quiz results were scored: "You correctly answered 57.5% of the questions. This marks you as an Advanced student of Communist atrocities."

I don't think so.

I know how to read, and I was fortunate enough to have been born in a land where reading is legal. That's it.

Take the test.

I dedicate this
to all those who did not live
to tell it.
And may they please forgive me
for not having seen it all
nor remembered it all,
for not having divined all of it.
--Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The GUlag Archipelago

Food for thought: some observers, such as Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand, argued that Communism would fall of its own weight. When it did just that, conservatives rushed to hand the credit to three heads of state (Reagan, Thatcher, and Vatican head of state Pope John Paul II).

Nice job, guys. Way to show integrity. Way to defend America.