Mark

From Dennis: My accusation was warranted and the other (related) subject is more important. I liked William Scherk’s comments on it, by the way. Iran hasn’t stolen any land in my lifetime. You might say Muslims are colonizing Europe, but this is immigration demographics, not empire -- the Europeans are bringing it on themselves. In 2001 Dr. Lewis may have opposed bombing Iraq (no stop for breath) while not bombing Iran first, but: From then to 2003 he knew how to keep quiet while all the principal ARI writers lobbied for invading Iraq. In 2004 he approved of the invasion, though he thought it would have been better sooner.

I’ll let the reader decide. I think the quotation implies that Lewis approved of the invasion, and I don’t think the quotation was out of context, either. As for Lewis’s other article denouncing the war, this only shows his inconsistency. He and ARI’s criticism of the war after they got it was not of the war per se but in how Bush handled it, even as Bush had said how he would handle it before he began bombing. In 2003 ARI people really just didn’t care how, just do it, right now -- that was their attitude. (Again, see Relentless Propaganda.) Then a year later they pretend they didn’t mean it ! ARI people want it both ways. Don’t hold me responsible for their mendacity. In any case, this is a quibble because if the war had been handled the way ARI wanted -- something along the lines of a nuclear bomb -- the war would still have been wrong. This is John Lewis’s memorial. He was an intellectual scoundrel. Dennis might tell us what Saddam Hussein ever did to you, or threatened to do to you, that your government should turn Iraq into a mass grave. By the way, note that Dennis has stepped around (1) Lewis’s glorification of U.S. entry into World War II, (2) Lewis’s claim that World War II is relevant to fourth generation, stateless, warfare.

"Humans are, at times, a bad lot." Some are, a truly profound remark. I'm being sarcastic. I couldn't get used to the foul (and foolish) mind of Robert Kolker in a million years.

Since war is hell all us Americans ought to follow our president into war. Now that’s an argument! "You can't make an omlette without breaking eggs" is a line straight from the Bolshevik playbook. Ayn Rand had Ellsworth Toohey, the main villain of The Fountainhead, utter the line. Part of the dialog in the novel It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis might have been written in reply to the above post. It’s between the hero and his son, the latter of whom has become sympathetic to the "Corpo" dictatorship. The excerpt begins with the son talking: "... No one abhors violence more than I do. Still, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs --" "Hell and damnation! ... If I ever hear that ‘can’t make an omelet’ phrase again, I’ll start doing a little murder myself! It’s used to justify every atrocity under every despotism, Fascist or Nazi or Communist or American labor war. Omelet! Eggs! By God, sir, men’s souls and blood are not eggshells for tyrants to break!" "Oh, sorry, sir. I guess maybe the phrase is a little shopworn! I just mean to say -- I’m just trying to figure this situation out realistically!" "‘Realistically’! That’s another buttered bun to excuse murder!" "But honestly, you know -- horrible things do happen, thanks to the imperfection of human nature, but you can forgive the means if the end is a rejuvenated nation that --" "I can do nothing of the kind! I can never forgive evil and lying and cruel means, and still less can I forgive fanatics that use that for an excuse! If I may imitate Romain Rolland, a country that tolerates evil means -- evil manners, standards of ethics -- for a generation, will be so poisoned that it never will have any good end. I’m just curious, but do you know how perfectly you’re quoting every Bolshevik apologist that sneers at decency and kindness and truthfulness in daily dealings as ‘bourgeois morality’? ..."

Regarding Iraq, the intensity of ARI's pre-war promotion of the war can be judged from the selections in Relentless Propaganda. Mr. Lewis, far from regarding the war as a serious mistake, thought it wasn’t started soon enough. In his post-war essay "The Threat of a Faith-Based Defense of America" (Capitalism Magazine, June 6, 2004) he complains that Bush is: "undercutting the very idea of self-defense. Mr. Bush spent over a year asking the UN for permission to invade Iraq, all the while claiming that no permissions will be sought. He is re-defining ‘overwhelming force’ into ‘a consensual war fought with compassionate regard for innocents.’ " Evidently Mr. Lewis wanted Bush to invade Iraq sooner than he did. As for regard for innocents, you have to wonder what planet Mr. Lewis inhabits. Does he read the news at all? (That quote and comment can be found in Part II of "Presidential Elections – Ayn Rand & ARI" on ARI Watch here.) Mr. Lewis might have read the news, but as war propagandist and Israel booster he had no use for inconvenient facts. There are degrees of rottenness among ARI writers, John Lewis was one of the worst. About Saddam Hussein, he wasn’t responsible for any terrorist act against the U.S. proper. I don’t regard the far flung bases in the Middle East that help shore up the dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Uzbekistan etc. as proper. (And if memory serves even including these bases Saddam Hussein wasn’t responsible for any terrorist act against them. Israel is not part of the U.S. by the way.) ARI hadn’t a moral leg to stand on promoting that war. It wasn’t "Operation American Security" and never could have been.

... "Philosophical-practical-political disagreements or mistakes don’t always make a good man a bad man." Of course. But trying to convince young men to risk getting maimed or killed in the Middle East for the pack of lies and sophistries put out by him and ARI does rather tarnish the man’s image. ... "Being stupid is not a virtue and insulting a good man out of spite and ignorance ... [etc.]" Naturally I disagree with the epithets. I think the spite and ignorance is on the other side. ... "Dr. Lewis (and ARI) totally opposed the war in Iraq." False. Right up to its start they urged the war. Later -- as if Bush and the neoconservatives hadn’t been clear enough before the start -- they criticized its handling: Bush wasn’t brutal enough, etc. ARI wrote that U.S. soldiers were coddling the Iraqis even as they murdered and maimed with free and easy abandon. Not to mention war-profiteering military contractors getting rich at your expense. As for Thompson/Brook’s essay and book supposedly denouncing neoconservatism, these ARI people try to have it both ways. The fact is they have much in common with neoconservatives, almost everything that really matters these days, and they consort with, and in some case even support hardcore neoconservatives. See Birds of a Feather on ARI Watch. The panelists featured at their last shindig September 8 at the National Press Club was a Who’s Who of neocon think tanks.

Dying isn’t a virtue and dying doesn’t make a bad man virtuous. As a professional intellectual John David Lewis will be remembered for glorifying U.S. involvement in World War II. He had a agenda in the glorifying: he wanted the U.S. to invade Iran, and he compared German and Japan of the 1930s to Iran of today. He got what he wanted: the U.S. "sanctions" against Iran is an act of war. If Iran suffers enough to respond militarily, Obama will accuse Iran of aggression and begin bombing, which with bogus self-righteousness he will call self-defense. Lewis was too late on the Ayn Rand Institute scene to help with their propaganda promoting a war against Iraq, but he did approve of the war afterwards and criticized Bush for not bombing Iraq soon enough. Like most ARI people he consorts with neoconservatives, which is natural given their neoconservative views.

Regarding someone’s reference to Ron Paul’s "Blame America first" foreign policy, an analogy comes to mind between the way ARI-Objectivists, neoconservatives, and current GOP leaders treat Ron Paul -- and the way the Left treats Ayn Rand. Ron Paul views are twisted and caricatured, made fun of in sound bites, and if possible just ignored. Not to compare Ron Paul with Ayn Rand in intellectual stature, but Ayn Rand’s enemies use the very same put-down techniques. What Ron Paul says about the U.S. government’s foreign policy -- which few Americans support -- should be non-controversial. The complex of foreign interventions such as the 1953 CIA manufactured coup in Iran, the sanctions against Iraq before the Iraq War, the Iraq War, helping Israel fight its neighbors, propping up Saudi Arabia, etc -- call it all American Empire -- is bound to result in retaliation, whether the retaliation is worth the Empire or not. Obviously the victims of U.S. Empire will come to hate the U.S., and sooner or later support those who would bring the carnage to America. Ron Paul says that today the U.S. cannot afford American Empire, afford as in dollars. It’s true of course, but the point shouldn’t be emphasized. Emphasized, it insinuates that American Empire would be all right if the U.S. could afford it, that is, if the government could tax Americans enough. (Probably Ron Paul brings up the affordability point because the economy is a big issue in the election, and it’s a quick argument suitable for television.) But he’s spot on about the correlation between American Empire abroad and tyranny at home. As for the Iraq boogey-man, I mean the Iran, see Preventive War versus Deterrence (pdf) by Justin Logan and other articles at http://ARIwatch.com/Links.htm#Iran and the American Empire link above. The Banality of Evil by Craig Murray, about Uzbekistan, is especially worth reading. The U.S. is not the good guys. Selfishness does not mean never critizing your government.

Regarding the epithet "isolationist," consider what Ayn Rand said at the Ford Hall Forum Q&A November 9, 1969 when someone asked her about the Vietnam War: "... the Republicans and Democrats are pretty equally guilty of it [entering the war], but since it was up to now a Democratic administration, it’s their war. ... you can look up the record of Vietnam and of Kennedy’s speeches about it, of Johnson’s speeches. And if you want to go further back, go to World War Two and read about the campaign of the same gang – and there’s no other word for it ... – that were insulting as ‘isolationists’ everybody who was opposed to our entering World War Two. ‘Isolationism’ was regarded as a very dirty word. You were accused of being narrowly patriotic and selfish because you didn’t want to mix into a foreign war." More at Footnote to "Ayn Rand on WW II" 　

I guess it doesn’t get any lower than that does it. Its seems like a great many people – anyone possessing a tincture of residual Americanism, and that includes many liberals – think "anyone but Obama." In effect the GOP nomination is almost the presidential race, the actual presidential race a foregone conclusion. It’s a little like Obama vs. John McCain in 2008. McCain was associated with Bush and the "anyone but Bush" attitude was so strong it trumped Obama’s anti-American baggage. We got "Change." Gingrich resembles Bush II (superficial religion, talk conservative act liberal, neoconservative, etc.) and I can’t get too enthused over another Bush. Or too worried over another four years of Obama. We can probably survive four more years of Obama because we’ve survived the first four years of him. Gingrich has a reputation for telling people what they want to hear in order to get elected, then giving them the same old creeping despotism. How much he’ll creep when given the power of the presidency is an unknown quantity. Less than Obama? Maybe, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Anyway, the GOP fight is only beginning and it would be better to promote Ron Paul than defend a political hack like Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich’s interview with Glenn Beck – mealy-mouthed, hemming and hawing, it depends on – is in the same key as his 2nd Amendment position. From "Georgia Gun Owners Take Aim At Gingrich": ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In a statement Monday, the group stated "Georgia Gun Owners know Newt’s history of gun control. He represented parts of our state for 20 years. He’s been playing both sides of the gun issue as long as we can remember." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ You can read specific examples (such as voting for the Criminal Safezones Act) at ronpaul2012.com. Another item I should have mentioned is that Gingrich supported the Patriot Act(s). And I have no doubt you can dig up some statement he made denouncing the Patriot Act. Yes, on the single issue of gun control Obama appears worse than Gingrich. (But then Gingrich is not yet president.) This doesn’t turn Gingrich into the better candidate. 　

The result of a poll depends on the sample of people interviewed. Ideally the sample is representative, but in this poll certain people are favored by self-selection: they have Internet, they’re concerned about politics, they took the trouble to find the poll and vote, etc. The sample is a poor reflection on people who vote in GOP primaries, it’s biased towards the affluent, the intelligent, the aware. You can conclude what you want from the poll. I think it shows that Ron Paul is not the total political loss that some people make him out to be. The claim that the poll fails to show Ron Paul is a shoo-in, therefore the poll is worthless, is a straw-man argument. By the way, in my list of Gingrich’s past fascist acts – see my previous posts – I neglected to mention that he advocates yet more gun control. The man no longer supports those ideas? — oh please. Regarding Gingrich’s domestic dishonesties: If a man is accused of killing two men and a dog, producing the dog alive doesn’t help him much.

Tell U.S. News & World Report who you want the GOP to nominate: http://www.usnews.com/polls/who-is-your-pick-for-the-gop-2012-nomination

Gingrich supported Bush’s prescription drug bill (the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003). This added 17 trillion – trillion – to Medicare’s "unfunded liabilities" – which I guess means instead of being paid by Medicare fees it’s paid by either taxes or inflation. This pit is far worse than that of Social Security. In 2005 along with Hillary Clinton he proposed the "21st Century Health Information Act" which would create a federally administered national health database. He’s a leading advocate for war against Iran, a reprise of his position ten years ago regarding Iraq. He uses environmentalism as an excuse for new and larger government programs, you can look up the details. Whoever says "anyone but Obama" doesn’t know how low a politician can sink. Rather another four years of Obama than this jerk. I write "jerk" advisedly. But of course there are no other alternatives. I'm being sarcastic.

That Newt Gingrich might be eloquent, intelligent, learned – or have been nice to his previous wives – can be set aside. The question that matters here is: Does his past behavior show that he honestly holds a fairly good political philosophy and acts on it? Gingrich’s 1994 "Contract With America" was a list of reforms that the Republican Party pledged to enact if it got control of the House. It was a mixture of the Communist Manifesto and random piecemeal pragmatic measures some of which had a good sound to them. The Republicans did get control of the house. Six years later America was generally worse off than before. Gingrich is a neoconservative in what he says and with whom he associates. He belongs to three neoconservative think tanks: the American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institution, and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He advised the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (liberation being code for bombing, invasion, occupation) and serves on the Committee on the Present Danger (promoting the Iraq War and a future Iran War). He’s endorsed by the neoconservative Weekly Standard edited by William Kristol. The depth of his disagreement with Michael Scheuer (see this video: ) can be gauged by his statement: Islamics "want to kill us because they want to kill us." He promoted the Iraq War and now promotes (the) one with Iran.He recently wrote a book called Rediscovering God in America. I haven’t read it but a reviewer quotes: "There is no attack on American culture more deadly and more historically dishonest than the secular effort to drive God out of America’s public life." Judging from the book review he’s trying to get the Christian vote by pretending to be one of them. His Gingrich Group, Inc. received between $1.6 and $1.8 million from Freddie Mac in return for his advice (which was: expand home ownership to the poor), then he lied about it afterwards. This is not a shame, not depressing, not something to be weathered, it’s an indication of the man’s character and what to expect in the future. He seems content with the Patriot Act, the TSA, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, and other police state measures. As a defender of individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism – "free enterprise" if you want to use that language – he’s a complete fraud. In short, of all the candidates he’s the one best suited to ARI-Objectivists. Among the candidates, ARI writers either ignore or trash by far the best authentic defender of individual rights, Ron Paul, who last week was 2% points ahead of Gingrich in an Iowa poll. More in the same line in this OL post.　 　

Video (with a British accent?): Who needs to register Republican to vote for nomination of Ron Paul

Strange to relate, once in 1965 Ayn Rand herself suggested that the political branch of her philosophy be called libertarianism. See Ayn Rand’s Political Label. Quoting Jeff Riggenbach: 　

"... if just one component of a 'theory' is shown to be factually correct, then, QED, the whole conspiracy must be correct" If someone argued that way they'd be arguing fallaciously. Does Kurt Haskell argue that way, or does he have first hand evidence and reasonable conclusions, and reasonable speculations presented as such, that one might do well to listen to instead of rationalizing inside a hermetically closed cell? I doubt if many people argue as follows: "The Reichstag burned in 1933. Ergo such and such 9/11 conspiracy theory is true." No one has argued that way here. I doubt if many people argue this way: "FDR knew more about Pearl Harbor than he pretended, therefore such and such 9/11 allegation is true." Or, because the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a fraud, or because of many other past government lies, such and such 9/11 allegation is true. But former (now after the fact realized to be) examples of government corruption are worth mentioning in connection with contested government corruption today in that they address the following attitude – apparently held by a few participants in this thread – that our government would never lie to us. It has in the past, many times, so we’d better take a close look at the evidence for it today. Sure, there are cranks who advocate crazy conspiracy theories regarding 9/11. That American Airlines flight 77 didn’t strike the Pentagon and so forth is one of them. But remove the crank allegations from the "9/11 truth movement" and what’s left is worth worrying about.

Perhaps Robert Kolker knows what he meant by that remark, but his flippant manner of expression is out of place. The Reichstag (German parliament building) fire in 1933 was arson perpetrated by Marinus Van der Lubbe. He claimed he acted alone, and from what I've read that's probably true. However the Nazis claimed he was in the vanguard of a communist invasion and used the fire as reason to suspend civil liberties in Germany and ramp up their police state apparatus. The Nazis worried about communist agents and sympathizers inside Germany in the way one mob of gangsters worries about another mob taking over their territory. To the German public the Nazis claimed to be their protector from the communist menace. Some claimed that Van der Lubbe was a patsy and the fire was a Nazi operation. If true it wouldn't make the Nazis look any worse than they do already, so I think it's a historical detail of little consequence. You often see the analogy made between the Reichstag Fire and 9/11, that is, the Reichstag fire was to the Nazis as 9/11 is to the Neoconservatives. It's a good analogy in that the Neoconservatives yearned for another "Pearl Harbor" in order to make the U.S. more belligerent towards Israel’s enemies than it was already. Other elements in government may also have wanted another "Pearl Harbor" because "war is the health of the state" – lust for money and power explains a lot. In any case 9/11 might as well have been made to order for them.

As used here "conspiracy theory" is an anti-concept. From " ‘Extremism,’ or The Art of Smearing," The Objectivist Newsletter, Sept. 1964, reprinted in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal: "It [the technique] consists of creating an artificial, unnecessary, and (rationally) unusable term, designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concepts – a term which sounds like a concept, but stands for a ‘package-deal’ of disparate, incongruous, contradictory elements taken out of any logical conceptual order or context, a ‘package-deal’ whose (approximately) defining characteristic is always a non-essential. This last is the essence of the trick." From "Credibility and Polarization," The Ayn Rand Letter, Oct. 11, 1971: "Intellectual confusion is the hallmark of the twentieth century, induced by those whose task is to provide enlightenment: by modern intellectuals. One of their methods is the destruction of language – and, therefore, of thought and, therefore, of communication – by means of Anti-Concepts. An anti-concept is an unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept. The use of anti-concepts gives the listeners a sense of approximate understanding. But in the realm of cognition, nothing is as bad as the approximate ... . One of today’s fashionable anti-concepts is "polarization." Its meaning is not very clear, except that it is something bad – undesirable, socially destructive, evil – something that would split the country into irreconcilable camps and conflicts. It ... serves as a kind of "argument from intimidation": it replaces a discussion of the merits ... of a given idea by the menacing accusation that such an idea would "polarize" the country – which is supposed to make one’s opponents retreat, protesting that they didn’t mean it. Mean – what? ... It is doubtful ... that one could get away with declaring explicitly: "Let us abolish all debate on fundamental principles!" ... . If, however, one declares; "Don’t let us polarize," and suggests a vague image of warring camps ready to fight (with no mention of the fight’s object), one has a chance to silence the mentally weary. The use of "polarization" as a pejorative term means: the suppression of fundamental principles. Such is the pattern of the function of anti-concepts.

Tony's comments on "The Colossal Deceit Known As The Underwear Bomber Case" are devastating! I’m being sarcastic.

An apt analogy: That some people can’t deal with the extent of their own government’s corruption is like a man in a state of denial over his fatal disease. The psychology might well be the same. Many people who allege a conspiracy – in the legal sense of the term – were unhappy to discover the conspiracy. Like most people they would rather their government be honest. Some people want so much for their government to be honest that they just tune out when you try to point out the evidence that, for example, Vince Foster was murdered, or there was a lot more to the Oklahoma City bombing than Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, or that Edgar J. Steele (a free-speech attorney who defends unsavory characters) was framed, or the CIA and DEA engage in cocaine smuggling, or that the Underwear Bomber was facilitated by the feds. But the analogy doesn’t cover another important factor: peer pressure, the tendency to mindlessly go with the perceived crowd. Ayn Rand not publishing a review of a book promoted by NBI hardly negates her implied endorsement. Other old-timers have told me that NBI sold several "conspiracy" books but so far I haven’t been able to find out what the titles were other than Perpetual War by Barnes. Ayn Rand published favorable reviews of the following books which describe acts by government personnel that were criminal even by the government’s own alleged standards and which the government tried to keep secret: East Minus West = Zero: Russia’s Debt to the Western Worldby Werner Keller. The Objectivist Newsletter, November 1962. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Roosevelt Mythby John Flynn. The Objectivist Newsletter, December 1962. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------Roosevelt’s Road to Russiaby George Crocker. The Objectivist Newsletter, January 1964. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development: 1917-1930by Antony C. Sutton. The Objectivist, January 1970.

You can find a transcript of the video, with explanatory links, at The Corbet Report - 9/11: A Conspiracy Theory Without endorsing any particular conspiracy theory – some of which are loopy – Corbet makes the point that there's a lot more to the conventional 9/11 conspiracy than we are being told in the conventional news. To appreciate parts of his video you need to know a bit of history. For example, that girl tearfully testifying was testifying before the U.S. Congress in 1990, claiming that Saddam Hussein’s soldiers were snatching premature Kuwaiti babies from their incubators and leaving them to die. Her testimony was used by senators and the president as a reason to back the dictatorship of Kuwait against that of Iraq in the Gulf War – which the president wanted to do anyway. It later turned out the girl was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. Her speech before Congress was a theatrical act, a "public relations" stunt thought up by the firm of Hill & Knowlton working for the "Citizens for a Free Kuwait" – the free referring to a dictatorship as brutal as Saddam Hussein’s. The mainstream media repeated this fraud uncritically. Also the Jessica Lynch fraud, etc. Corbet’s point is that maybe they aren’t doing very well on 9/11 either. For some interesting articles about what happened on 9/11 see http://ARIwatch.com/Links.htm#9-11

Brant loses it at the end but a reply to the beginning is possible. First though, the following is my claim in a nutshell and what Brant should address: Israel has done many bad things to Americans, frequently in collusion with the U.S. government. Brant replies with a rhetorical question: "Israel, of course, has done many bad things – so too [has] the United States. Shall we too hate the United States ...?" In other words: The U.S. has done many bad things, therefore it’s all right for Israel to do many bad things. There are two problems with Brant's reply. (1) It doesn’t address my claim. The problem with Israel is not merely that it does "many bad things" period, but also to whom Israel does them. It does them to its benefactor. Set aside the billions in U.S. largesse to Israel (at the expense of Americans). What bad things has the U.S. done to Israel that somehow balances all the bad things Israel has done to America? (2) Considering what Brant does address, he argues using the tu quoque fallacy – "you’re another." The U.S. doing bad things to X – whom Brant doesn’t specify – somehow excuses Israel doing bad things. But of course it doesn’t. After this bit of (1) indirection and (2) logical fallacy, Brant attacks with implied slurs. One wonders if Brant would be pleased to hear them uttered. Talk about a straw man.

The U.S. must learn to mind its own business. Neither Israel nor Palestine are its business. Keep out of that distant conflict. Stop giving foreign aid to either side, including war materiel to Israel. Indeed, "if Israel would only" pay back the countless billions we've been forced to give it over the years "it would finally" be able to boast honestly of – to quote the words of David Ben-Gurion – "what the Jews can do." It’s past time for payback time. Ditto for Egypt and India and Uzbekistan and all the other Third World rat-holes. I’ll plant some flowers with my first Israel inspired tax-rebate and give them to Brant.