Jimmy and Hamas Gang

Last week in Palestine, after overseeing a Hamas victory during federal elections former American President Jimmy Carter once again demonstrated the shallowness of leftwing thinking when he stated "[I believe the electoral victory will have a moderating effect on their ideology]"

Carter believes granting a terrorist group that’s ideology is bent on genocide political powers will be beneficial in the long wrong. He believes pragmatic appeasement is the best process to achieving peace—that appeasing evil is the best way to achieve peace.

So I ask this question—what is the compromise between terror and freedom? Does Carter think the goal is to have Hamas agree to fewer suicide bombers? There can be no compromise with the ideology of genocide. You either believe in the mass murder of Jews or you don’t. You cannot "somewhat" believe in it— you cannot somewhat commit a terrorist attack— you either do or you don’t.

And who does appeasement and endless compromise benefit? It sure isn’t the Jews. In exchange for Arabs temporarily ceasing to blow up their citizens Israel will relinquish more land. What did Israel gain? A brief period of stability before the suicide attacks begin again in pursuit of the next boarder. In fact compromise never benefits the Just. Because the Just is always relinquishing the good (a rightfully gained value—whether it be freedom or property) in exchange for the attacker reducing the amount of evil he will commit. The Just has gained no value. If a mugger demands money it is of no benefit for the victim to affably compromise half of his money.

-Give me your wallet.
-I can only give you half
-Well then you have to agree to not inform the police
-Deal

The victim has relinquished half of his money and the right to persecute his attacker in return the oppressor has gained money which he has no right to and found safety from the law. There can be no compromise between principles. Principles are either/or choices—freedom and slavery—the rational and irrational—honesty and dishonesty.

Carter has once again demonstrated the shallowness of leftwing thinking.

Allan Slater and pacifism

Last week on a local radio program, Allan Slater of the Christian Coalition for Peace had a chance to explain and promote his upcoming mission. He was about to leave for Iraq in order to promote pacifism to a world wide audience. In his own words he was there to document the plight of the average Iraqi. "War was waged between old men and it was young men that died". His duties included "staying alive and promoting peace" and it was ironic that his actions represented the antithesis to either of these goals unless by peace he meant man acceptance of slavery and genocide and by staying alive he meant saving his own butt through promoting oppression.

You see Allen Slater who does pacifism help? Does pacifism help the oppressed, the victims? No pacifism is only beneficial to the oppressor. Pacifism never helps the victim of a mugging? Pacifism doesn’t ever help victims and in fact it helps the perpetrator, the attacker, dictator, the bully. The victim of an attack receives no benefit fro an onlooker’s "pacifism". He is hoping for no intervention. The oppressors and attackers want people to stay out of the pillaging and genocide. Pacifism is evil’s friend. They are the only ones that receive the benefits of a pacifist creed.

And how does Allan Slater achieve peace? By endlessly compromising values? By being willing to compromise your rational values to whatever whim an attacker, dictator or bully believes. China threatens Taiwan with war and sure death unless they are willing to compromise their values of freedom and democracy. The pacifist would claim well at least being a communist slave is better than fighting and possible injury. This practice of continually compromising your values eventually leads to holding no values. Because really, what’s the point if you are just waiting to compromise them. Imagine the worship of your God being forbidden and having a new religion forced upon you. The pacifist, a glassy eyed pawn would dutifully accept with no intellectual or moral challenge.

Just like only Saddam or Iran benefit from pacifism only individuals and victims are hurt by the apathetic moral creed. Peace cannot logically be a primary value—unless you believe in slavery and oppression— instead peace is a symptom of freedom and the observance of individual rights and limited governments. And when men like Allan Slater, trudge about self righteously claiming to help the victims let it be known they are instead giving moral credibility to evil which is only beneficial to evil.

Next Week: an examination of Allan Slater’s defense; moral equivilance.

Capitalism Critics

When socialists and welfare state apologists critique capitalism they continually make the same mistake; namely they presume anything said or done by a busisnessman is an example of capitalism. For example slavery is blamed on capaitalism (because the wretched act of selling humans mercantile) yet it clearly conflicts with a capitalist credo of individual rights, and is in affect a consequence of tribal or statist thinking and because Hitler was friendly with the looting morally corrupt business leaders of Germany leftists affilliate fascism with capitalism when nothing could be further from the truth.

Not all businessmen are capitalists...

There are two types of businessmen. The first group seeks profit by production. They seek freedom to produce wealth by their own means. Their produced wealth comes at zero cost and risk to the public and when they are successful the public are the biggest benefactors-- see better medicine, the ability to travel cheaply....

The second group seeks profit through bureaucratic favor-- grants subsidy, favorable legislation-- mandated contracts, trade restriction-- protection from competition. This group of businessmen are not capitalists instead they are statist socialists with political connections-- see Air Canada and Bombardier.

Capitalism is not of that "which capitalists do" rather it a system of individual rights and limited government. Thus business men may be socialists.

More Idiocy

How Does a looting powerhungry government regain moral credibility with its citizens? Well Paul Martin removes another check from government. As if a lack of checks is Canada's biggest problem. We have to few checks, which enables corruption and state coercion. The Canadian system is designed for governing efficiency which is a foundation for corruption. Removing the Notwithstanding clause from the constitution removes the only check we have over our appointed courts. Being undertood that the clause allows the government to overrule the courts if need be-- a check on their power.

Canada is already without important judicial checks. Beside the fact they have the power to "interpret and amend" the constitution-- very dangerous, Judges should not be appointed, rather they should be elected or in in the very leastaffirmed by parliament. Canada would be further enabling a system where by the appointed Prime Minister (parties are free to appoint their leaders) appoints his judges who are free to pass his mandates (as Supreme court appointee is a reward for judicial servitiude) leaving citizens and parliament alike, powerless to defeat any preposed reforms-- see gay marriage. This is another attempt to allow the ruling liberal elite even more arbitrary power over our lives.

Picture this.

PM-- I want to ban guns and the house won't pass the motion.
Judge-- What are the options?What type of ruling our we looking for?
PM-- It conflicts with the Charter of rights. Find it incompatible with every citizens right to freedom.
Judge-- consider it done.
PM-- You're a good friend
Judge-- you've always been fair to me.
*secret handshake*

Why would citizens that are dealing with such rampant corruption want to remove more checks on the government? it makes zero sense. How about more checks? No much too straighforward.

How to Construct a Ghetto with Good Intentions

With inner city gun violence being such an important issue of the campaign I have decided to create a post on its origin; the ghettoization of neighborhoods in Canada. Social engineering fails at almost all tasks and government sponsored neighborhoods are no exception to this rule.

When a conscientious, socially active, compassionate individual undertakes the problem of helping the underprivileged, inevitably his mind ends up at some point in agreement with the idea of increasing the amount of social housing that is available. "Creating affordable, subsidized housing is exactly what poorer families need so that they can spend more of their resources on food, clothing and education, which increases their children’s chances of success and ending the poverty cycle" is a usual dogma. The solution is rational only on the most naïve and superficial level, because generally what occurs is the inevitable degradation of a community, the cementing of the poverty cycle within a family, the concentration of a class in the neighborhood, and an isolation from mainstream aspects of society; such as business, acceptable schooling, and eventually medicine, and reliable law enforcement.

Since it is very expensive to build a single house in a different location each time, social housing is usually created in large subdivisions of row or tract housing to minimize property, material and logistic costs, because the goal of these projects tends to be quantity, due to the nature of altruism.

A chief problem of any public endeavor is that when everybody owns something then nobody in particular owns it, which leads eventually to the more important problem; that nobody in particular feels or is obliged to maintain the ownership, or more specifically the property. The responsible maintenance of property is best achieved by utilizing the incentive of ownership (see collective farming vs. private farming, public industry vs. private industry, public schools vs. private schools, and public housing and reservations vs. private property studies). Because of the inherent qualities of public housing—meaning that it is never owned—nobody feels the particular duty to be responsible for the property, in the same way that if family and individual’s income was dependant on the property value. This lack of duty, on a general level, quickly leads to an area becoming unmanaged and rundown.

As the government does not control property values, values cannot be stopped from falling when housing becomes neglected and rundown within the neighborhood. When property values start falling, property-owning individuals seek to sell quickly, instead of standing put for an irrational principle of fairness (irrational in the sense that the moral code is essentially an anti-moral code; if you want welfare don’t do anything— the more that you are rewarded by individuals, the more you are penalized by the collective. The individual’s natural concern is in protecting the value of his modest assets, in order to protect his family from hardship. In reality, no individual wants to martyr his family for a primitive, socially dictated abstract principal.
As property in the neighborhood becomes rundown, and devalued, and usually segregated, community morale begins plummeting, and violence increases reciprocally, due to the many understandable factors of futility that we have socially engineered with our "good intentions". As property owners leave the neighborhood, and violence increases, businesses begin removing their assets from the community. This removal of small businesses from the community only further entrenches the poverty cycle, as now there is nobody left to provide goods and services, employ community members, support community events, sponsor sporting teams, and contribute to school fundraising. Equally worse is that businesses, sadly enough, are not easily recreated in the neighborhood either. Most small businesses are originally funded with their house as collateral, and when housing can only be rented, occupants are unable to borrow against its ownership, severely inhibiting entrepreneurial motives and abilities of a community.

Next to leave are the doctors, nurses, teachers, and law enforcement, which leads to shortages, and at best, a lack of experience in dealing with an exceptionally challenging role. The nation’s overall shortage of doctors, nurses, policemen and teachers gives them the ability to choose where they live, so eventually the roles can only be filled by using young inexperienced staff, which leads to the further erosion of public systems inside the community that needs them the most.

We have now cemented the poverty cycle within the neighborhood. Through the advent of social housing, as we have created rundown, sometimes racially segregated, violent neighborhoods, without local businesses, doctors and teachers; a neighborhood entrenched in a cycle of futility, or in other words a ghetto.

The Relevance of Poverty

A favorite lie of the left when trying to debunk the factually and philosophically proven merits of freedom and capitalism is too point to wealth discrepancies "the gap between the haves and the have nots is increasing" or "how can a society be considered just when the gap between rich and poor is ever widening?" Both are out of context representations of justice and fairness.

If discrepancies in wages are seen to be a mark of corruption and unfairness then by this measure of justice North Korea is more just than South Korea and China is more progressive than Hong Kong. Is this what the left is really saying? The answer is yes.

Instead a nation’s fairness is objectively measured by its access to opportunity. A nation which bars arbitrary discrimination and coercion is a just nation.

Another mistake of this lie—that fairness is based ending wage discrepancies—is the fact poverty is relative! For instance would you rather be lower middle class in Alberta or lower middle class in New Dehli? The Albertan would have clean water, heat, a bed, an old car, basic cable, regular ground beef—as opposed to extra lean—and generic beer meanwhile in New Dehli poverty means no education, lack of clean drinking water, and possible starvation. With these differences in mind doesn’t it seem juvenile and intellectually shallow to typify lower wage earners as being poor in North America? Or even more so; what does it mean to be poor? Does it mean to live without satellite television or does it mean to live without clean water?

And with this in mind it should be noted that all socialist attempts at limiting earning discrepancies—rent control, unionization, affirmative action…-- in fact only succeed in limiting opportunity and as a consequence reduce the overall living conditions of the masses (see France). More poignantly who benefits more from innovation; the innovator or the masses? Sure Ford was rich beyond anyone’s wildest imagination but because of his abilities mankind was free for the first time to travel cheaply. Who benefited the most from the invention of the forklift? How about the guy who increased his ability to lift pallets ten fold and thus his wage increased ten fold based on his ability to operate a forklift. This is why a Chinese laborer is paid ten cents an hour to dig a hole with a rudimentary pick while the Canadian makes 30 bucks an hour using a bacco to dig holes. The bacco increased his efficiency by a thousand percent! The average man is the biggest recipient of innovation. Sure the innovator is rewarded handsomely for his efforts, but his efforts raise the overall living and earning conditions of society as a whole—something very hard to quantify with money.