A fresh breath of honesty

I am pleasantly surprised to learn that Arab opinion is not unanimous in its condemnation of Israel's retaliatory actions. Ahmed Al-Jarallah, Editor in chief of the Arab Times, thinks that Israel is acting in the interests of the Arabs:

While the people of Palestine and Lebanon are paying the price of this bloody conflict, the main players, who caused this conflict, are living in peace and asking for more oil from Arab countries to support the facade of resisting Israel. With the Palestinian Authority close to collapse and the Lebanese government beginning to give up responsibility for what is happening in its territory, Saudi Arabia has been forced to come out of its diplomatic routine and indirectly hold Hezbollah responsible for what is happening Lebanon.

This war was inevitable as the Lebanese government couldn’t bring Hezbollah within its authority and make it work for the interests of Lebanon. Similarly leader of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas has been unable to rein in the Hamas Movement.

Unfortunately we must admit that in such a war the only way to get rid of these irregular phenomena is what Israel is doing. The operations of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon are in the interest of people of Arab countries and the international community.

I am pleased that there is at least one honest man in the Arab world.

Israel: virtuous and innocent

I am quite disgusted by the widespread condemnation of Israel's retaliatory strikes. These strikes are frequently characterized as "disproportionate". Actually I agree that they are disproportionate. They are disproportionately mild. A true defense would eliminate the Hezbollah threat and target the regime that sponsors Hezbollah: Iran. However, I'm glad that Israel is taking some action, however tepid it may be.

Those who wail that Israel is killing Lebanese civilians have no regard for Israeli civilians. Who should pay the price when Israel is attacked by Hezbollah or Hamas or other jihadists? Either Israel pays the price, or the nation that harbors those terrorists pays the price. Nations cannot go to war against individuals, nations can only go to war against other nations (this is why it matters what kind of nation you choose to live in). It is literally impossible for Israel to destroy Hezbollah without destroying infrastructure and civilian lives in the nation that harbors them. Either we let Israel do what is necessary to destroy Hezbollah, or we allow Hezbollah to destroy Israel. There is no middle ground.

I will grant that there are probably a lot of decent people in Lebanon who just want to work and raise their families. But sadly they have allowed a terrorist infestation in their country. And since they are unwilling or unable to remove it, Israel must. Either Israel has a right to defend itself or it does not. If it has a right to defend itself, that means it has a right to defend itself successfully - that is, to destroy its enemy. If Israel were to obey calls by the international community to show restraint in its retaliation, the party who benefits is Hezbollah. Anything less than total defeat is a victory for Hezbollah. Hezbollah knows it can hunker down, wait for the international community to condemn Israel to the point where Israel lets up its response, and then hit Israel again.

There is a lesson that must be learned in the Middle East, as Onkar Ghate writes here:

To achieve peace in the Middle East, as in any region, there is a necessary principle that every party must learn: the initiation of force is evil. And the indispensable means of teaching it is to ensure that the initiating side is defeated and punished. Decisive retaliatory force must be wielded against the aggressor. So long as one side has reason to think it will benefit from initiating force against its neighbors, war must result.

Israel and America are united in a war against a common enemy - and it isn't terrorism; terrorism is just a tactic of the enemy. The enemy has an ideology (Islamic Jihad) and an ideological center (Iran). Only the Americans and the Israelis consider this a battle worth fighting. However, these half battles that are currently being fought will not be enough to defeat this enemy. Only total war can win. This war must be fought like the world war that it is. Like in WW2, where a proud self confident America certain of its own virtue issued the following declaration to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan: unconditionally surrender, or face extinction. We owe our freedom to the moral courage of the WW2 generation. To save civilization we need that kind of courage again.

Justice is on the side of the Israelis. There will never be peace in the Middle East until Israel and America wage a total war in self defense.

The Objective Standard

The Objective Standard is a new magazine of culture and politics from an Objectivist perspective. Their intro provides a good summary of what an Objectivist perspective is.

The Islamist threat to civilization

In a brilliant essay Amit Ghate identifies the essential strategy employed by Islamists in their quest to destroy the West: divide and conquer. We have placed our rights to self defence under the objective control of our Western governments with the understanding that government will defend us if our rights are ever threatened. However, as we saw first with the Rushdie affair and continue to see in the case of the Danish cartoonists, our political leaders are betraying their most sacred trust: they are failing to defend the rights of their disarmed citizens.

Live like you mean it

This is your life. You will not get another. We are mid performance on the grandest of stages: existence. Never forget that every moment of your life is a value you can never replace. Don't float along on the capricious waves of outrageous fortune. Make conscious choices. Choose a course that will lead to your happiness. Make your life extraordinary.

Nobody but yourself

To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting

- ee cummings

Truly amazing video

Dr Wafa Sultan passionately defends the values of Western civilization on Al Jazeera!

May the non-existent God protect her.

I am Spartacus

Here's why the fracas over those Danish cartoons matters. I stand with you Denmark. You can find all the cartoons here.

Deeds speak

"We are what we repeatedly do." - Aristotle

The meaning of life

I used to think that life had to have some external meaning outside ourselves. I used to be in search of a great big Meaning (with a capital M) out there in the nebulous void. But I was ignoring an important detail about the concept 'meaning'. For something to have meaning, it has to be of meaning to someone. Nothing is intrinsically meaningful; things are meaningful to us when we find value in them. So the meaning of my life is to make it meaningful to the person living it - namely me. The way to do that is to consciously define my values and to pursue them with the best within myself. The meaning of life is no mystery. The meaning of life is to live it!

Spielberg's Munich

Frontpagemag has this take on Spielberg's latest film Munich. I haven't seen it but I am not surprised by the claims that Spielberg is engaging in moral equivalency. There is nothing more pathetic than a man who works as an apologist for sub-humans who would gladly remove his head. When is the world going to relearn that the wages of appeasement are death. When you feed the crocodile, you will be eaten.

Heroic selfishness

If you want to understand how selfishness is a virtue, go find a copy of The Fountainhead and flip to the scene where Howard Roark is offered the commission for the Manhattan Bank Building. Roark's architectural practice has been floundering and he desperately needs the commission. Mr. Wiedler fights for him, but the board keeps him waiting. Finally, they offer it to Roark, but on one condition - Roark must change the building's facade to a more conventional design. Roark believes a building should have integrity just like a man; he believes that a building's form should follow from its function. Roark refuses the commission. The board members are incredulous; Roark is on the brink of utter destitution, yet he turns down a major commission in the heart of New York City in order to protect the integrity of his design. "Do you have to be quite so fanatical and selfless about it?" they ask. And there's this wonderful moment where Roark picks up his drawings and sqeezes them to his side, then responds, "That was the most selfish thing you've ever seen a man do."

Creationists defeated in Dover

A judge today in Dover, PA ruled "it is unconstitutional to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom" on the grounds that "intelligent design is a religious view."

There is hope for mankind after all. Hallelujah!

Read the full article here.

The importance of 'should'

The culture is suffused with bad ideas. Here's an indication. In the kitchen at work today I overheard the end of a conversation between a colleague and our HR director. My colleague was expressing exasperation about some topic unbeknownst to me, and concluded by saying that someone 'should' have behaved differently. And then our cheerful HR director quipped, "There is no 'should'. There is only 'is'."

I was stunned speechless. I have never witnessed a more literal demonstration of the is-ought gap. Our HR director may not have realized it but she succinctly expressed the dominant view of ethics amongst intellectuals: namely that no rational ethics is possible. The philosophical mainstream maintains that it is impossible to move from a statement of fact to a statement of value - that is, to move from an is to an ought. This is the explanation for the moral relativism of the elites.

To understand how to bridge the is-ought gap, you should read a book called Loving Life by Craig Biddle. Or read the original source of the solution: Ayn Rand.

The incident was a powerful demonstration of how bad ideas trickle down into the culture.

Why I love Mad Money

Think of your typical business show. Pretty boring, right? Not so Jim Cramer's Mad Money. Mad Money is financial news and analysis on speed (or at least very heavy doses of caffeine). Jim breaks furniture, sweats profusely, and baffles his viewers with his encyclopedic knowledge of listed equities.

Most of the business professionals I know thumb their noses at Jim Cramer. They see him as a sort of financial cartoon-buffoon. And to be fair, he is a caricature of himself. However, I find enormous value in his show. I'm talking about a value beyond his financial acumen or stock picking ability - I won't comment on those. Jim Cramer is creating enormous excitement for capitalism! People who would otherwise never read the Wall Street Journal are now following with interest the fortunes of Conoco Phillips and Sirius Satellite Radio. Capitalism is not merely the only moral social system - it is also magnificent! And Jim Cramer is getting the word out! For that, I salute him.

Preying on Gatsby

I'm currently reading the Great Gatsby. I bought this book years ago but have yet to make my way past page 30. Finishing this book is not at the top of my value hierarchy, but I do intend to get to it. I could tell almost immediately that Fitzgerald subscribes to a proto-post modern philosophy. However, his writing is frequently beautiful. This quote, which was excerpted in God of Small Things, is what compelled me to buy the book in the first place:

"Gatsby turned out all right in the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men."

Wonderful rhetoric.

Home on the Ranj

After a brief sojourn at an msn space I am back to my original home in the blogger-sphere. Dear reader, I realize I have been infrequent in my posts for the past several months, but I intend to here resume my blogging habit with aplomb. Expect even more colorful commentary, brilliant analysis, and irreverant wit!

And with that I sound my battle cry. To the power of ideas! To the glory of man! To life extraordinary!

In defense of reason

An excerpt from an email I received today:

Nothing has any connection to reality...or has as much as you want it to...truth is absolute...its interpretation, experience and application are subjective...so no argument really holds!

My response:

You realize that your statement “Nothing has any connection to reality” is self-contradictory. If nothing has connection to reality, then neither does your statement.

However, you have elegantly stated the dominant epistemological viewpoint in academia today: the claim that knowledge is impossible (another contradiction by the way).

That such a statement is ludicrous on its face goes some length in explaining why academics are reviled by the “ignorant masses”, who tend to have more common sense.

I revere the pursuit of knowledge, and find it particularly tragic (ominous actually) that our brightest minds have committed themselves to attacking reason, when they should be its staunchest defenders.

Contrary to the skeptic/subjectivist party line, humans are fully competent to know the facts of reality. The knowledge acquired from the senses is valid. Concepts are derived from and do refer to the facts of reality. 2+2=4 and no amount of denial or evasion will change that.

However, to understand why is not obvious. It’s the subject of the branch of philosophy known as epistemology – or the theory of knowledge.

Today most people dismiss philosophy as frivolous. They think it has no practical advice to offer them. And in regards to current academic philosophy, that assessment is perfectly understandable. Most of today’s philosophers see their field as an abstruse parlor game with no connection to reality. However, philosophy is an indispensable practical necessity. If you brush aside the subject of philosophy, you will subconsciously absorb the dominant philosophic ideas that are taught in our culture. And as we can see from its effects on art, music, literature, politics, law, history, and even physics, bad philosophy can be disastrous.

Napoleon Dynamite and the end of mankind

If you want a sense of how bad things have become in the culture, go rent Napoleon Dynamite. I was appalled. Napoleon Dynamite is not merely awful, its essential purpose is cultural destruction. By venerating a nihilistic anti-hero, this movie not only revels in its utter bankruptcy, but seeks to undo the enlightenment and return us to the rule of the primitive. It is the ultimate expression of postmodern sophistry.

However, I did like his dance.

Fight!

The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours. But to win it requires total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence, which is man, for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the morality of life and yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.

John Galt quote that ended Ayn Rand's last public speech (New Orleans Nov 1981)