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TGIF: Mises, Ryle, and Me | The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on July 11, 2020

In other words, Ryle set out to solve the old mind-body problem that had plagued philosophy at least since Descartes, and he did it without dismissing purpose, which we all understand in our everyday lives, or objective reality.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/sheldon/tgif-mises-ryle-and-me/

by

In 1949, the first year of Harry S. Truman’s only elective presidential term, three things happened that were of huge importance … at least to me. Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) published Human Action. Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976) published The Concept of Mind. And, oh yeah, I was born. The connection here is that Mises’s and Ryle’s books are two of the most influential things I have ever read.

What’s also interesting is what else the books have in common. Human Action sets out the logical structure of all purposeful action as well as its socioeconomic implications. Mises called the study of human action praxeology. Thus while Human Action is one of the most important books on economics ever written, it is so much more.

Ryle’s book is also about human action, but his philosophical accomplishment was to show that our purposeful pursuits require no “ghost in the machine” — no soul, spirit, or mind conceived as a nonmaterial organ — to explain them. (The ghost explanation in fact creates philosophical problems rather than solves them.) Ryle went a step further and showed that, contrary to determinists, neuroscientists, and the like, human action also would require no exemption from the laws of physics to exist. In other words, Ryle set out to solve the old mind-body problem that had plagued philosophy at least since Descartes, and he did it without dismissing purpose, which we all understand in our everyday lives, or objective reality. I’m not aware that the two men ever encountered each other or commented on each other’s work.

Here’s a morsel of Mises:

Human action is purposeful behavior. Or we may say: Action is will put into operation and transformed into an agency, is aiming at ends and goals, is the ego’s meaningful response to stimuli and to the conditions of its environment, is a person’s conscious adjustment to the state of the universe that determines his life. Such paraphrases may clarify the definition given and prevent possible misinterpretations. But the definition itself is adequate and does not need complement of commentary.

 

Conscious or purposeful behavior is in sharp contrast to unconscious behavior, i.e., the reflexes and the involuntary responses of the body’s cells and nerves to stimuli. People are sometimes prepared to believe that the boundaries between conscious behavior and the involuntary reaction of the forces operating within man’s body are more or less indefinite. This is correct only as far as it is sometimes not easy to establish whether concrete behavior is to be considered voluntary or involuntary. But the distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness is nonetheless sharp and can be clearly determined….

 

The field of our science is human action, not the psychological events which result in an action. It is precisely this which distinguishes the general theory of human action, praxeology, from psychology. The theme of psychology is the internal events that result or can result in a definite action. The theme of praxeology is action as such….

 

Action is not simply giving preference. Man also shows preference in situations in which things and events are unavoidable or are believed to be so. Thus a man may prefer sunshine to rain and may wish that the sun would dispel the clouds. He who only wishes and hopes does not interfere actively with the course of events and with the shaping of his own destiny. But acting man chooses, determines, and tries to reach an end. Of two things both of which he cannot have together he selects one and gives up the other. Action therefore always involves both taking and renunciation.

 

…Wherever the conditions for human interference are present, man acts no matter whether he interferes or refrains from interfering. He who endures what he could change acts no less than he who interferes in order to attain another result. A man who abstains from influencing the operation of physiological and instinctive factors which he could influence also acts. Action is not only doing but no less omitting to do what possibly could be done.

 

We may say that action is the manifestation of a man’s will. But this would not add anything to our knowledge. For the term will means nothing else than man’s faculty to choose between different states of affairs, to prefer one, to set aside the other, and to behave according to the decision made in aiming at the chosen state and forsaking the other….

 

It is true that the changes brought about by human action are but trifling when compared with the effects of the operation of the great cosmic forces. From the point of view of eternity and the infinite universe man is an infinitesimal speck. But for man human action and its vicissitudes are the real thing. Action is the essence of his nature and existence, his means of preserving his life and raising himself above the level of animals and plants. However perishable and evanescent all human efforts may be, for man and for human science they are of primary importance.

We need not ask if human action exists. As human beings, we know it does “from the inside.” Mises called this knowledge a priori because we don’t first discover human action “out there.” In fact, one obviously would demonstrate the existence of human action just by attempting to prove or disprove its existence. To ask if human beings act is in itself to act.

And now Ryle:

The fears expressed by some moral philosophers that the advance of the natural sciences diminishes the field within which the moral virtues can be exercised rests on the assumption that there is some contradiction in saying that one and the same occurrence is governed by both mechanical laws and moral principles, an assumption as baseless as the assumption that a golfer cannot at once conform to the laws of ballistics and obey the rules of golf and play with elegance and skill. Not only is there plenty of room for purpose where everything is governed by mechanical laws, but there would be no place for purpose if things were not so governed. Predictability is a necessary condition of planning…. [Thus] there is no need for the desperate salvage-operation of withdrawing the applications of [biology, anthropology, sociology, ethics, logic, aesthetics, politics, economics, historiography, etc.] out of the ordinary world to some postulated other word, or of setting up a partition between things that exist in Nature and things that exist in non-Nature. No occult precursors of overt acts [e.g., volitions] are required to preserve for the agent his title to plaudits or strictures for performing them, not would they be effective preservatives if they did exist.

 

Men are not machines, not even ghost-ridden machines. They are men — a tautology which is sometimes worth remembering….

 

Questions of … patterns are properly asked of certain chain-processes. The question ‘What makes the bullet fly out of the barrel?’ is properly answered by ‘The expansion of gases in the cartridge’; the question ‘What makes the cartridge explode?’ is answered by reference to the percussion of the detonator; and the question ‘How does my squeezing the trigger make the pin strike the detonator?’ is answered by describing the mechanism of springs, levers and catches between the trigger and the pin. So when it is asked ‘How does my mind get my finger to squeeze the trigger?’ the form of the question presupposes that a further chain-process is involved embodying still earlier tensions, releases and discharges, though this time ‘mental’ ones. But whatever is the act or operation adduced as the first step of this postulated chain-process, the performance of it has to be described in just the same way as in ordinary life we describe the squeezing of the trigger by the marksman. Namely we say simply ‘He did it’ and not “He did or underwent something else which caused it’.

TGIF — The Goal Is Freedom — appears on occasional Fridays.

Be seeing you

 

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Why the EU Keeps Fighting Brexit | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on July 11, 2020

To put this into perspective, the UK is as rich and powerful as the nineteen weakest economies in the EU combined. This shows that although Brexit is not an easy transition for the UK, it will not be without consequences for the EU.

Although Brexit now appears to be a done deal, the EU bureaucracy may find ways to punish the UK for its independence. Moreover, the EU may use the Brexit experience as a reason to further limit the freedom of member states so as to avoid any future exit by other member states. This represents a sort of bait-and-switch for member states that were sold on membership as an opportunity to join a free trade bloc and a chance to participate in a more cooperative Europe. The reality today is something much different.

 

https://mises.org/wire/why-eu-keeps-fighting-brexit?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=c96eb260b4-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_07_10_03_38&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-c96eb260b4-228343965

The 2016 Brexit referendum was the culmination of a debate which had been ongoing for years. While the Leave promoted rhetoric targeting the EU as an illegitimate and despotic entity threatening the freedom of all British citizens, the EU institutions together with politics and media supporting the Remain disregarded most of the concerns raised by the Leave to focus on the pieces which could be easily labeled as either xenophobic or anti-European. It was difficult to find any constructive conversation about the motivations of citizens supporting the leave option. Nevertheless, listening to what the Leave said shows that behind Brexit is a complex of interconnected issues about what the EU has become and what perspectives the EU proposes for the future.

But opposition to the EU has long been about the growing power of the EU bureaucracy over the member states and their populations. During his last speech in front of the EU parliament, UK deputy Nigel Farage summarized his viewpoint by reminding them that the UK had signed an agreement to facilitate business relationships, reciprocity, and exchanges of scientific and technical expertise, all of this to foster collaborations among Europeans. Mr. Farage pointed out that the initial agreements never included the legal framework for the implementation of a bureaucracy made up of unelected technocrats interfering with affairs normally controlled by the states. He also reminded his audience what problems appear and worsen with bureaucracies designed so that a minority of individuals is granted power without accountability.

Brexit in a Nutshell: What Is (Really) at Stake

The EU’s power rests in many ways on its revenue, and this is among the reasons why the EU has so long fought a British exit.

To understand the importance of the UK’s exit from the EU, one should keep in mind that the UK is the fifth-largest economy in the world. With a population of 65 million, the UK represents around 13 percent of the EU’s population while its economy accounts for 18 percent of Europe’s GDP. This makes the UK the second-largest economy of the EU. To put this into perspective, the UK is as rich and powerful as the nineteen weakest economies in the EU combined. This shows that although Brexit is not an easy transition for the UK, it will not be without consequences for the EU.

The EU should feel the economic consequences of Brexit in three stages. In the short term, there is the loss of the British contribution to the community budget. As the contribution of member states to the EU budget is dependent on their GDP, it is understandable that behind Brexit there will be considerable financial consequences. It was sometimes said that the negotiations, from the day after the initial Brexit vote and through their interminable duration, only served to perpetuate the English contributions to the EU budget which should have otherwise been compensated mainly by Germany and France. In the medium term, both parties need to redefine agreements to ensure the continuity of trade and business relationships. Trade talks should continue until December 31, 2020, when it will be known whether the transition period has allowed the two sides to establish strong points of convergence. Finally, in the longer term, the UK having freed itself from all European regulations, there is a good chance of seeing there develop an economic and social model competing with that advocated and imposed by the EU on its members. The UK will be free to conclude trade agreements with new partners and could reach an advantageous agreement with an EU that cannot do without either the British market or its army, whereas with the withdrawal of the British, the military expenditure of Europe is cut by 21 percent.

EU Destiny: From Fostering Collaboration to Empowering a New Form of Continental Statism

In any case, the regulatory power of the EU has grown over time.

Until the Maastricht treaty of 1992, the European Economic Community applied the principle of subsidiarity by confining itself to its areas of exclusive competence. The exclusive powers of the union were the Customs Union; the establishment of the competition rules necessary for the functioning of the internal market; monetary policy for member states whose currency is the euro; the conservation of marine biological resources within the framework of the common fisheries policy; common commercial policy; and the conclusion of international agreements. In terms of barriers to trade, the EU has been beneficial when it has put an end to customs barriers and to repeated devaluations which were a means for companies to avoid the need to make productivity gains. European integration, as it took place up to and including the Single European Act of 1986 (which preceded the 1992 treaty), has made European economies more modern and more competitive.

The EU in its current form is different in the sense that it has “shared competences” with the member states, “competences to support, coordinate or supplement the action of the Member States,” and, finally, “competences to take measures to ensure that member states coordinate their policies.” To the Europe of free trade was added the Europe of standards, regulations, and lobbying. There is no longer any principle of subsidiarity, and the EU can interfere in fields such as culture or social policies. With the extension of its prerogatives, the EU has turned into a bureaucratic organization whose institutional bodies continuously centralize powers. The EU pushes to reduce economic and societal disparities among its members, and this induces conflicting relationships between some European countries and European institutions. The UK often dissented within the EU and argued against EU policies while requesting exemptions. During the debates at the EU parliament, one deputy claimed that the Brexit started when the EU granted exceptions and that it was this that impaired integration under a homogeneous regulatory scheme. Far from questioning this quest for homogenization of the EU political and economic spaces, he asserted that the solution for avoiding such catastrophes was to ensure that no similar treatment would ever be granted in the future.

There remain many defenders of EU institutions, which are seen as guardians of “continental stability.” It is also argued that the EU is a powerful tool that constitutes a system of balances to protect individual rights against encroachment by member states. For the proponents of minimum governance, it would be preferable to decrease the government power at the national level rather than adding a layer of institutions acting at the continental level. The EU might look like a protective entity, but centralized structures are never politically neutral and are not exempt from regulatory overreach or abuses of power. Over time they tend to distance themselves from the viewpoint of the citizens. Technocrats working from within become convinced that they know better and that this justifies intrusions and interference in the business of others.

Although Brexit now appears to be a done deal, the EU bureaucracy may find ways to punish the UK for its independence. Moreover, the EU may use the Brexit experience as a reason to further limit the freedom of member states so as to avoid any future exit by other member states. This represents a sort of bait-and-switch for member states that were sold on membership as an opportunity to join a free trade bloc and a chance to participate in a more cooperative Europe. The reality today is something much different.

 

Author:

Brice M. Vanhaelen

 

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How America Exports Police Violence Around the World – The New Republic

Posted by M. C. on July 11, 2020

https://outline.com/yvEdge

Laura Weiss

As the protest movement responding to the police killing of George Floyd has erupted across the country in recent weeks, my now habitual encounters with police clad in full riot gear in my usually calm Brooklyn neighborhood have been a new and disconcerting experience. In certain moments, while listening to close-flying helicopters and begrudgingly following curfew mandates, as journalists are roughly arrested and beaten up by police, I’ve found myself responding to the surreal scenes with some familiar clichés. I’m not in Brooklyn anymore, Toto, “things” like this “don’t happen here.” Those of us who experience white privilege in the United States don’t typically encounter these sights. These police tactics are usually pushed out of the frame, beyond our sight lines, relegated only to poor minority neighborhoods in America as well as crisis-torn countries of the so-called “global south.”

In fact, the connections between my streets and the streets of others—between policing in the United States and policing in “third world” countries—run deep. While the U.S. polices Black and brown neighborhoods within its own borders as internal colonies, it exports those same militarized and abusive policing techniques to almost every country in the world, through both the State Department and Department of Defense, as well as private contractors. Though it’s difficult to obtain a full accounting, in 2018 alone, the U.S. appropriated over $19 billion in security aid to military and police forces to 144 countries around the world, according to the Security Assistance Monitor.

The role of the U.S. in perpetuating abusive police tactics in other countries has not figured into most conversations around defunding and abolishing the police in recent weeks. But the two are inextricably linked by a common philosophy, and curbing police abuses here at home should force both changes to the way the U.S. provides assistance to police and military forces abroad and a larger reckoning with the neocolonial power structures that enable the U.S. to continue to export its policing strategies and its guns to poorer and less powerful countries in the first place.

“You pick the point in history since the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States has been bringing its national security apparatus abroad and using police in other countries to achieve its goals,” said Stuart Schrader, a historian and author of Badges Beyond Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing. From its assistance to military dictatorships during the Cold War to its ongoing support of two endless conflicts with metaphysical constructs—the “war on drugs” and the “war on terror”—the U.S. has become firmly attached, Schrader points out, to a long commitment.

America’s infernal policing of the global order has manifested itself especially heavily in Latin America. There, U.S. counternarcotics aid has provided counterinsurgency training, equipment—such as tanks and Black Hawk helicopters—and tactical and intelligence support to police and military across the region. In addition to government aid, the U.S. has exported “broken windows” policing to cities across the region. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has pocketed millions from consulting with Latin American leaders on how to apply the strategy to their cities. Such policing strategies also disproportionately target both Indigenous and Black people across the Americas.

“The problem of anti-Black policing … is one that is very much alive throughout our hemisphere, and around the world,” said Christen Smith, an anthropologist whose work focuses on police violence against Black people in Brazil. “The way we police at home is also the way we police elsewhere.”

Walking home from protests in recent weeks has brought me back to my time spent living in Mexico City, where police in riot gear, carrying AK-47s, standing around passively on any given day in upper-class commercial districts, are a pedestrian sight. There, their bloated largesse is on full display, as they stare off blankly into the distance, fidgeting and picking their noses. The fact that they are holding weapons that could easily kill you is a passive, constant threat.

The U.S. government has funneled over $3 billion in security and development assistance to Mexico in recent decades, much of it in the name of stopping the flow of illicit drugs—and just as often, its people—to the U.S. This funding has involved multiple attempts to reform the police. These efforts typically amount to little more than a purge of personnel, followed by a rebranding of different “elite” police units, every time a new president is sworn into office. Other half-hearted measures involve the transfers of equipment, training, strategy, guns, and intelligence to Mexican police and military. The overall strategy, carried out in the name of the war on drugs, has chiefly involved the targeting and capturing of the heads of drug cartels. This has mostly led to a splintering and proliferation of violence across Mexico, leaving over 230,000 dead and over 60,000 disappeared since 2008.

Meanwhile, the security buildup of the U.S.-Mexico border wall has come alongside similar training and assistance to Mexico’s border patrol, notably in helping the Mexican government beef up security along its southern border to stop and deter Central American asylum-seekers before they even reach the U.S. border. Mexico’s border patrol, like our own, has been implicated in systematic human rights abuses.

The U.S. has also funded judicial reforms, as well as some nongovernmental organizations working on corruption and impunity in Mexico. But today, some 90 percent of crimes in Mexico remain unsolved. Mexicans know that the problem with the cops goes far beyond “a few bad apples.” Since the drug war began, it’s become increasingly difficult to locate exactly where the cops and the military end and where the “criminal organizations” they’ve pledged to fight begin. Despite this, the overall law enforcement strategy goes mostly unquestioned. This is largely due to the power dynamics at play: If Mexico—or any number of countries, for that matter—decided to do things differently, the U.S. would retaliate by cutting off aid, imposing sanctions, or even supporting a change to a more like-minded regime. Read the rest of this entry »

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Scientists devise new plan to test if mysterious ‘Planet Nine’ is primordial black hole — RT World News

Posted by M. C. on July 11, 2020

https://www.rt.com/news/494372-planet-nine-primordial-black-hole/

Scientists at Harvard University have developed a new method to hunt down black holes beyond our galaxy which may finally figure out what is going on with the oft-theorized but never-witnessed ‘Planet Nine.’

The method will make use of the upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) mission, which is expected to begin operations in mid-2022. Using a tennis-court-sized mirror and a 3,200-megapixel camera, the researchers will seek out accretion flares, which shoot out of disrupted comets as they are stretched apart by black holes.

RT

Artist’s impression of a black hole. © Public Domain

Space rocks pulled in by the incredible gravitational force of a black hole melt long before they reach the event horizon, owing to the heat emitted by background accretion – that is, the stretching out – of gas and other material on its doorstep. On melting, these small bodies, such as asteroids, comets and whatever other material was unfortunate to stray too close to the black hole, emit radiation bright enough to be visible against the absolute darkness – or so the boffins hope.

“Because black holes are intrinsically dark, the radiation that matter emits on its way to the mouth of the black hole is our only way to illuminate this dark environment,” explained, one of the leading scientists, Dr Avi Loeb.

Using this method, Loeb claims we can finally detect, or rule out, the planet-mass black holes on the edge of the Oort cloud, thus solving the long-standing mystery of the so-called ‘Planet Nine.’

Theories about Planet Nine range from it being an undetected or ‘missing’ planet, banished from our solar system, to it being a primordial black hole, formed soon after the Big Bang, creating disturbances on the edge of our galactic yard.

“Planet Nine is a compelling explanation for the observed clustering of some objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. If the existence of Planet Nine is confirmed through a direct electromagnetic search, it will be the first detection of a new planet in the solar system in two centuries, not counting Pluto,” said Amir Siraj, a Harvard astrophysics undergrad involved in the latest research.

One of the ideas put forth was the possibility that Planet Nine could be a grapefruit-sized black hole with a mass of five to 10 times that of the Earth.

The LSST mission will have instruments that are expected to be sensitive enough to detect radiation from beyond the Oort cloud – roughly 100,000 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. It will reportedly boast a field of view that covers the whole sky, collecting a whopping 10 terabytes of data per night, once fully operational.

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The New ‘Systemic Racism’ That Is Coming – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on July 11, 2020

No, again. Asians are 73% of the incoming class because they excelled
on the admissions tests in math, reading and science, and on the
essay-writing assignment.

They won admission to TJ not based on their ethnicity or race but
their academic excellence as demonstrated in standardized tests taken by
students all over Fairfax and surrounding counties.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/07/patrick-j-buchanan/the-new-systemic-racism-that-is-coming/

By

Before our Black Lives Matter moment, one had not thought of the NBC networks as shot through with “systemic racism.”

Yet, what other explanation is there for this week’s draconian personnel decision of NBCUniversal chairman Cesar Conde.

According to Conde, the white share of NBC’s workforce, now 74% and divided evenly between men and women, will be chopped to 50%.

Persons of color — Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans and multiracial folks — are to rise from the present 26% of NBCUniversal’s workforce to 50%.

What does this mean?

White men will be slashed as a share of NBCUniversal’s employees from the present 38% to 25%, — a cut of one-third — and then capped to ensure that people of color and women reach and remain at 50%.

White men can fall below one-fourth of the workforce, but their numbers will not be permitted to go any higher.

To impose race and gender quotas like this on the workforce at NBCUniversal — half women, half persons of color — would seem to trample all over the spirit, if not the letter, of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Why is Conde doing this?

“(W)e have a unique responsibility to look like and reflect all of the people of the country we serve,” he says.

But whence comes this responsibility, the realization of which means active discrimination against new employees because they are the wrong gender or race: i.e, they are unwanted white men?

America has succeeded as a meritocracy where excellence was rewarded, be it in athletics or academics. Our Olympic teams have triumphed when we send the best we had in every event.

This egalitarian and ideological revolt against excellence is also arising in Fairfax County, Virginia, at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, which, concedes The Washington Post, “often ranks as the top public high school in the United States.”

Why does TJ have a problem? Writes the Post reporter, the school is “notorious for failing to admit black and Latino students.”

Does TJ discriminate in its admissions against Blacks and Hispanics? Is the school a throwback to the old days of “massive resistance”?

Of 486 students in the freshman class this fall at the school, the number of Black students is tiny, smaller even than the 3% of the class that is Hispanic. Is this yet another example of “white privilege” at work?

Hardly. Whites make up only 17% of TJ’s incoming class.

The problem, if it is a problem, is Asian Americans. Three in 4 members of the fall freshman class at TJ are of Asian heritage.

Why do Asian American kids predominate? Are they being admitted on the basis of their race or ethnicity?

No, again. Asians are 73% of the incoming class because they excelled on the admissions tests in math, reading and science, and on the essay-writing assignment.

They won admission to TJ not based on their ethnicity or race but their academic excellence as demonstrated in standardized tests taken by students all over Fairfax and surrounding counties.

Thomas Jefferson principal Ann Bonitatibus says of her school, “We do not reflect the racial composition” of the Fairfax County Public School System.

No, it does not. But so what, if Thomas Jefferson ranks among the top STEM schools in the entire United States?

And Bonitatibus’ comment raises a legitimate question:

Is it possible to reflect the “racial composition” of Fairfax Country and to remain “the top public high school In the United States”?

A related issue is up in California. In 1996, in a state referendum, Californians voted 55-45 to embed a colorblind amendment in their state constitution:

“The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

Clear, coherent and colorblind.

The Democratic legislature, however, wants to be rid of this amendment as it outlaws the kind of racial and ethnic discrimination in which Sacramento wishes to engage.

An amendment is on the November ballot to repeal the colorblind amendment and allow California to start discriminating again — in favor of African Americans and Hispanics and against Asians and white men — to alter the present racial balance in state university admissions and the awarding of state contracts.

If this passes, more Hispanics and Blacks with lower test scores will be admitted to elite state schools like UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley, based on race, and fewer Asians and whites. Practices that were regarded as race discrimination and supposedly outlawed in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will henceforth be seen as commendable and mandatory.

There will be racial and ethnic discrimination, as in the days of segregation. Only the color of the beneficiaries and the color of the victims will be reversed.

And that is the meaning of the BLM revolution, which might be encapsulated: “It’s our turn now!”

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Now What? – Kunstler

Posted by M. C. on July 11, 2020

And who is the figurehead leading this Democratic Woke party wrecking crew of coercion? The empty shell of Joe Biden, a bumbling senator turned grifting vice-president, now a mere hologram of a candidate.

Who are they kidding with this pathetic wind-up mummy, this bare ruin of a crooked old pol? What treacherous game are they playing now? What’s next…?

A vote for Biden is in reality a vote for the VP candidate.

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/now-what/#more-12711′

James Howard Kunstler

Tired of getting mau-maued by the Woke Inquisition? That’s what it is, of course: a supercharged shakedown operation utilizing all the medieval tools of maximum mindfuck to hustle the USA out of its own existence. The animating principle of Black Lives Matter is not justice but coercion, and not just coercion, but the sadistic pleasure of inflicting pain, injury, and humiliation in the process of extracting money and power.

The tools are violent insurrection, bad faith, and unconditional dishonesty, applied like thumbscrews, strappados, and red-hot irons to a nation reeling from the dislocations of a pandemic virus and a financial implosion. Now, several weeks out from the June uproars of looting and burning, the true shape of this racist jacquerie is plain to see: they are the shock troops of the desperate and demented Democratic Party. The smoldering ruins of Minneapolis and Santa Monica are the Party’s policy platform. The Seattle CHOP is its shining city on a hill. Not everybody in the land has gone insane, of course, and not everyone will keep going along with the hustle.

The news media war chiefs of the Woke Inquisition — The New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC — are working overtime to terrorize the public into renewed Covid-19 hysteria, with the bonus of further destruction to America’s daily business by instigating new lockdowns. The nation’s economy was already in enough trouble. The question now is: how will a responsible political establishment manage contraction? The Woke Inquisition’s answer is simply to extend looting operations to whatever isn’t nailed down. The Woke Inquisition is like the parasitic wasp larva trying to eat its way out of a plump caterpillar, leaving nothing but a husk behind. It goes for the brain first and then for the guts.

Who is not impressed by the mindlessness of this vicious rabble? There’s no evidence at the core of their complaint that police nationwide are “hunting down black men.” If anything, black men are hunting each other down — and are oblivious to the collateral damage of infants and children blown away in their shoot-ups. Defund the police and tie their hands behind their backs? Well, the results are already in for that: huge increases in homicide rates in Chicago, New York, Houston, Baltimore, Kansas City, Newark, Nashville, et cetera, overwhelmingly black-on-black crime.

Leading, naturally, to the linchpin of Wokesterism: it’s Whitey’s fault. Whitey is racism incarnate. White Fragility makes redemption impossible. No amount of penance, apology, or remediation can fix it. Which raises another question: why even bother entertaining reparations for slavery? It will never be enough. Which may be exactly why the Woke Inquisition’s real aim is to undermine all of America’s institutions and then bust up the republic.

The petulant “Resistance” that dug in after Hillary’s shocking 2016 election loss did the groundwork by enlisting the FBI, CIA, NSC, DOJ and other federal agencies into seditious intrigues that made the federal apparatus of justice look (and act) corrupt and untrustworthy. Everything about the Mueller inquiry was an exercise in bad faith and perfidy, leaving the engines of official justice so broken that their misdeeds can barely be corrected, let alone prosecuted. To this day, the Lawfare cadres sponsor the continued persecution of General Michael Flynn, months after the DOJ formally dropped its case against him. Do you suppose these turpitudes don’t rankle the substantial number of citizens who still refuse to be driven insane by the Woke terror?

And who is the figurehead leading this Democratic Woke party wrecking crew of coercion? The empty shell of Joe Biden, a bumbling senator turned grifting vice-president, now a mere hologram of a candidate. The renewed campaign of Covid-19 hysteria in the Woke press may be just a psy-op to stuff poor Joe back in his basement and make sure he stays off public view. They took him out for a brief airing yesterday in Pennsylvania, a low-grade fiasco. In a formal speech, Mr. Biden said, “So today, I’m releasing a brewplint [sic] — I think the press had — how to create millions of good-paying union jobs, using Protestant technology [say what?] that we need now, and in the future.” Hmmm. Protestant technology? What could that be? Sounds like another one of Whitey’s endless tricks.

After the speech, some media cornered the candidate beside a campaign limo. He managed to decline taking any questions and waddled stiffly away, glassy-eyed, his hands strangely splayed like seal flippers (another symptom?). Who are they kidding with this pathetic wind-up mummy, this bare ruin of a crooked old pol? What treacherous game are they playing now? What’s next…?

Be seeing you

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Dispatch From the Front – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on July 11, 2020

After a moment of stunned silence an angry SM said “that sounds like a resignation.” Probably a bluff to scare me into compliance. JM agreed that it sounded like a resignation. I agreed it sounded like a resignation. So SM asked me, “so is this a resignation?” I said, “I guess so.” Done deal.

In prior thinking about the possible outcomes of an encounter such as this my Walter Mitty wanted me to utter the parting words, “I regret that I have but one job to give for liberty.” (To paraphrase Becky Akers’ correction of a well known saying.) But in the moment it didn’t come to mind.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/07/no_author/dispatch-from-the-front/

By Rod Peet, Jr.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

I thought my employer was my friend. I was approaching retirement without a job and it appeared I would be in dire straits during that final phase of life. Then I was given my latest job. It wasn’t an act of friendship, per se. More an act of capitalism. We both benefited. I made close acquaintances there. It felt like an act of friendship to me. Retirement was going to be OK.

Then the corona virus struck. It appeared to be a more aggressive form of the flu but the flu nonetheless. Precautions should be taken. Wash hands, isolate the sick, protect the elderly. Fine. Common sense response.

Then everyone’s enemy, the government, struck. Governments across the country began to engage in criminal activity (see U.S. Constitution, Amendment 1; Texas Constitution, Bill of Rights, Sections 6, 19, 27, 28, 29;  Title 18, U.S.C., Section 242).

Masks, anti-social distancing, isolation, lock downs, new propaganda (“shelter-in-place”, “we’re all in this together”, “flatten the curve”, “stay safe”, misleading statistics, etc., etc.). Business were crushed, lives destroyed, generations unborn pushed further into debt.

Then my new friend became friends with my enemy. Reaping billions of dollars in the process.

My employer mandated all the soul crushing activity for it’s employees that governments were mandating for the general population.

The friend of my enemy is my enemy. I found myself stuck behind enemy lines.

What to do. Join the enemy? For most this was the easiest thing to do. So they did. For me it was impossible. Fight the enemy? For most that was impossible. For me it was easy (but highly stressful). So I did.

I was a flight instructor for a major U.S. airline. My duties were to train new hire pilots and provide recurrent training for current pilots. On a typical day I would spend 90 minutes briefing them on a variety of topics and review the maneuvers we were going to practice in the simulator. Then it was four hours in the simulator practicing various procedures.

When the corona virus struck our training operation was shut down for three weeks for a thorough cleaning. We were informed that when we went back to work we were to wear masks while in the building, practice (anti-) social distancing and keep the place as sanitary as an operating room. I could not imagine talking for almost six hours with a mask on.

Thanks to LewRockwell.com I knew the masks did not work, were actually detrimental to our health, projected an image of fear, and were part of governments’ agendas to isolate people and keep them in fear. All the better to control them.

I knew I was not going to keep my job. But rather than just cross over the battle lines by quitting I thought I would plant some seeds of liberty and strike a small blow for freedom.

Before work resumed after the cleaning I sent an email to my supervisor (Junior Manager) asking the question children love to ask but are eventually trained to avoid: “Why?” Why the masks? I cited many statistics concerning the virus, mask use, transmissibility, etc. No answer.

Over 80 other employees received my email as I was responding to an email sent to everyone in the department. I got a few disagreements accompanied by “news” articles that pushed the scary narrative. Again, thanks to Lew Rockwell, I was able to refute the articles. No response to my critiques.

My final activities at work included not wearing a mask. In the spirit of colonial pamphleteers I placed printouts in the break rooms. The “pamphlets” contain facts that put the corona virus propaganda in context and expose the falsehoods. I should have signed them with a scarlet pimpernel but didn’t think of it at the time.

In case any of my students expressed concern over my not wearing a mask I prepared a single page paper with some facts concerning the efficacy wearing a mask and the transmissibility of the virus. One crew I showed it to requested to keep a copy of it. I jokingly said that with the creeping Communism about they should be careful because it might be considered contraband. Well, the joke was on me. I was right about the Communism but was wrong about their role. Turns out they were snitches, not sympathizers. They turned my papers over to management. We have a prohibition against unauthorized “handouts”. I understood this with respect to training materials. I didn’t think it applied to non-training information presented outside the scheduled training period. At least that was my reasoning. That is what I got called on the carpet for a couple of days ago. There was a meeting to “council” me. Had I READ the paper to the students nothing would have happened.

As luck would have it that day was also the day I decided to wear a mask in the building so as to avoid being accused of violating the mask policy. It had been very stressful going against company policy so I wore a “mask”. Like this one:

Got a variety of responses. I had it with me when I went to “the meeting”. The participants in the meeting were Senior Manager, Junior Manager, Union Rep and the Perp (me). SM was clearly angered by the mask. I said I was just following orders to wear a mask. That, in fact, my mask was more impervious than the cloth ones everyone else was wearing. This further angered him. He accused me of “calling out the sheep in the room”. I guess the shoe fit but pinched a bit.

The meeting was in a large conference room. I was the first to sit and the rest sat down about 10 feet from each other. Social distancing, dontcha know.

During the conversation I pointed out some of the contradictions in the mask policy. UR replied with appeals to authority and some irrelevant facts.

I asked, “why are you so afraid of the virus?” SM said, “we’re not afraid of the virus”. I asked, “so why are you acting like you are afraid?” No answer.

Every time I made a comment they could not respond to they reiterated that they were not going to debate this. I WILL wear a “proper” mask.

It’s interesting that there appeared to be no indication that they were going to fire me. A letter of counseling had been prepared in advance and signed by management. All it needed was my signature.

I was told that I was to follow protocol. If I didn’t I would be subject to another “counseling”. No word about being fired. It seems I could either comply or continue to suffer these meetings. They asked me if I wanted more such meetings. I said there would be no more meetings. I think they thought I was going to comply. My thought was I will not keep this job if I must comply and therefore there would be no more meetings. But I didn’t say that. I let them think what they will until I figured out a principled way out of this. I did not want to quit merely because I did not want to wear a mask. That would just be my stubbornness against theirs.

I don’t think they wanted to fire me. In the course of my job I rarely interact with other instructors or management personnel. I come in, spend 6 hours with two pilots, then go home. I generally get very little feedback on how I am doing as an instructor. But for some reason, over the past few weeks, a variety of sources have remarked that I have a good reputation and am considered one of the better instructors.

I don’t think they expected me to quit either. Who would give up an intriguing job that requires only 6 hours a day, 17 days a month and pays extremely well?

JM, my about-to-be-ex-supervisor, unwittingly handed me the solution. He asked me if I was a vet. “Yes”. What branch? “Air Force”. How long? “Four years”. The others all piped up with their branch of service and how long. I detected a new tone in their voices. More relaxed. Oh boy! We are all in the same club! I was part of the inner circle. They had me now. JM told me that they were all “leaders”. That I was a “leader”.  As such it was my job to set an example and enforce the rules. This is when the light dawned and I had a clear vision of what I had to do.

If I was to be a “leader” in this organization I would have to defend and enforce rules I did not believe in. I have facts that contradict the narrative yet I must ignore those facts and spout the company line no matter how much I disagree with it.

I told JM I was glad he mentioned leadership. That it gave me some clarity and would make coming to a decision easier. That I never thought of myself as a leader or that I was in leadership position. I agreed with him. I guess I am a leader and should act accordingly. He looked like he had hit the mark and thought I was coming around. Then I pointed to my cloth mask laying on the table and said, “as a leader that is not a direction I care to lead anyone.” I told them that between the masking and the riots this country is going down the tubes. We have had sensitivity training for sexual harassment and “unconscious bias”. Now it appears we will have training to root out “systemic racism”. “I cannot and will not lead anyone in that direction”, I said. That was not what they expected.

After a moment of stunned silence an angry SM said “that sounds like a resignation.” Probably a bluff to scare me into compliance. JM agreed that it sounded like a resignation. I agreed it sounded like a resignation. So SM asked me, “so is this a resignation?” I said, “I guess so.” Done deal. I was resigning on the principle that I could not lead people in a destructive direction. I had exposed the sheep to anyone who would observe. I made my case. I stood my ground. I wish I could have been more eloquent in my arguments but I am satisfied.

When we stood up and headed toward the door we ended up within a couple of feet of each other without masks on. I looked at them but they were not looking at anyone. It felt like an awkward departure. (Like a musical phrase without a cadence?) So I said, “it’s been good working with you” and held out my hand. They each shook it. Contrary to policy. That felt better.

In prior thinking about the possible outcomes of an encounter such as this my Walter Mitty wanted me to utter the parting words, “I regret that I have but one job to give for liberty.” (To paraphrase Becky Akers’ correction of a well known saying.) But in the moment it didn’t come to mind.

Rod Peet, Jr. [send him mail] has been a professional pilot for 45 years. He has worldwide experience as a bush pilot, crop duster, corporate pilot and airline pilot.

Be seeing you

 

 

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How the Left Uses “Public Health Crises” to Get What It Wants | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on July 10, 2020

In another case, researchers in the Annual Review of Public Health focus on suicides committed by firearm. But instead of taking issue with the mental health problems that lead to suicide, the pat and easy answer is simply more firearms prohibition, with the assumption that there can be no downside to this at all. Also ignored is the fact that the data doesn’t support the notion that suicides decline in the absence of firearms.

Not surprisingly, we find that these researchers often have little to no expertise in criminal justice or the actual history of homicides and gun usage. By labeling crime and gun usage to be a matter of “public health,” they have designated themselves, by virtue of being medical doctors, “experts” in the field. Peter Klein has noted how this attitude plays out:

https://mises.org/wire/how-left-uses-public-health-crises-get-what-it-wants?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=d548f54f68-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-d548f54f68-228343965

After insisting for weeks that leaving one’s home or gathering in groups of any size was “irresponsible” and a “slap in the face” to medical professionals, doctors and nurses completely changed their minds. The prohibitionist view toward gatherings was specifically applied to those who protested the stay-at-home orders. “Shame on you!” was the general attitude of many medical professionals who opposed the protests. “How dare you not follow the edicts of science!” But, when protests and riots broke out in the wake of George Floyd’s apparent murder by Minneapolis police officers, many doctors, nurses, pundits, and activists completely changed their tune. These protests, the doctors and nurses assured us, were perfectly fine.

The inconsistency in this position was obvious, of course. There clearly was no scientific difference between a gathering designed for protesting forced business closures and a protest against racism. Many suspected (with good reason) that the only relevant difference between the two was that the antiracism protests happened to line up with the left-wing views of the doctors and nurses in question. Suddenly, the dour moralizing and finger wagging of the nurses was gone, replaced by enthusiasm for public gatherings.

But then the supporters of the new protests figured out a way to slap a patina of science on the obviously political nature and incoherence of the views expressed by groups like “Healthcare Workers for Justice“: let’s call racism a public health crisis.

The phrase immediately became common currency among pundits and mainstream media sources. The idea that racism is not just a bad thing but a “public health crisis” thus put the George Floyd protests on equal footing with stay-at-home orders as a necessary thing designed to combat a grave threat to public health. Countless headlines sprang up declaring “systemic racism is a public health issue” and that just as we need masks to protect ourselves from COVID-19, so we need mass gatherings and protests to protect us from racism.

There’s nothing new about this strategy, though. Declaring a wide variety of social ills to be a “public health crisis” is a timeworn tactic used to raise the profile of a specific policy issue. Thus, poverty, pornography, inequality, inadequate housing, road traffic deaths, and capitalism have all been declared to be public health crises.

“Public health crisis” is essentially a left-wing stock phrase at this point, as is reflected by the fact that the solutions proffered to the social ills in question are virtually always some sort of government regulation or income redistribution scheme forced upon the nation’s population.

“Gun Violence” Is a “Social Disease”

Perhaps the most robust example of this can be found in the literature of how “gun violence” is a public health crisis. It is now common to find research on homicides and suicides with firearms in academic journals devoted to epidemiology and public health.

On an article in the International Journal of Epidemiology titled “The Role of Epidemiology in Firearm Violence Prevention,” the authors conclude, “Firearm violence has reached pandemic levels” and is a “social disease.” The prescribed solution can be easily predicted by anyone familiar with these types of articles. The authors’ demand:

[P]ublic health can create, scale up and evaluate interventions designed to address social and behavioural factors associated with firearm violence. We call on governments, community leaders and community members to take meaningful action to support public health in addressing the problem of firearm violence.

These interventions, of course, are all assumed to be more government prohibitions and regulations punishable by fines and jail time.

In another case, researchers in the Annual Review of Public Health focus on suicides committed by firearm. But instead of taking issue with the mental health problems that lead to suicide, the pat and easy answer is simply more firearms prohibition, with the assumption that there can be no downside to this at all. Also ignored is the fact that the data doesn’t support the notion that suicides decline in the absence of firearms.

Not surprisingly, we find that these researchers often have little to no expertise in criminal justice or the actual history of homicides and gun usage. By labeling crime and gun usage to be a matter of “public health,” they have designated themselves, by virtue of being medical doctors, “experts” in the field. Peter Klein has noted how this attitude plays out:

A few years ago an economist colleague of mine debated a professor from our university’s school of public health on gun violence and gun control. My colleague walked through the empirical evidence on the effects of gun control laws on crime, accidental injury, and other social ills, citing well-known studies by economists and legal scholars…The public health professor — an MD who also teaches in the medical school — ignored these issues entirely, instead telling emotional stories about ER patients he’d treated for gunshot wounds and how everything must be done to stop this “epidemic” of gun violence.

It is only natural, of course, for scholars of public health to automatically assume that coercive state measures are the solution to nearly every problem. This is how public health officials and scholars think. Moreover, over the past century the field of public health has expanded to cover nearly every field of public policy as a public health concern. Whether we’re talking about urban planning, crime, highway design, or climate change, bureaucrats and academics—there’s really no difference between the two—in the field of public health have an easy “solution” for you. Chances are it involves a new set of laws and government regulations.

Once upon a time, public health was much more limited in its scope. “Public health” once implied that infectious diseases were involved in some way. This was notable, for example, in public health crusades against tuberculosis, which often spread quickly in the dirty and overcrowded urban tenements of the early twentieth century. In many cases, because of the weakness of state institutions, public health officials relied on education and voluntary adoption of better health practices.

This is rarely the practice anymore. In an age of supercharged state institutions, public health is far more characterized by laws, regulations, coercion, punishment, and mandatory “compliance.” The very use of the phrase “public health crisis” is designed to justify these measures. After all, if something is a threat to public health, we must surely all agree it is of the utmost importance. The Left has mastered the use of this phrase as a political ploy. “Public health,” after all is just a matter of scientific objectivity, and those who disagree are “anti-science.”

It’s a very effective ruse. It remains to be seen how long people will fall for it.

Author:

Contact Ryan McMaken

Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and The Austrian, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado and was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

 

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Do You Love The Classics?

Posted by M. C. on July 10, 2020

I sure do!

Who is your favorite composer of classics?

Mine is Willie Dixon

Spoonful

 

Seventh Son

 

Little Red Rooster

 

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The ‘Camo Economy’ Hides Military Costs and Exacerbates Inequality – Inequality.org

Posted by M. C. on July 10, 2020

The financial costs of military contracting are also opaque. While we know some top-line numbers, we know very few details about where our tax dollars go once they are paid out to contractors. We do know that contracting is more expensive, as contractors have limited incentives to reduce costs and they build profits into their contract agreements.

https://inequality.org/research/military-contractors-inequality/

by Heidi Peltier

 

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