[Cafe Hayek] ... is from page 154 of my late colleague Jim Buchanan's profoundly important 1986 essay "The Potential for Tyranny in Politics as Science" (reprinted in Moral Science and Moral Order, Vol. 17 of The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan):
When politics is wrongly interpreted as being analogous to science, as a truth-discovery process, coercion may find moral legitimization for those who claim enlightenment. By contrast, when politics is rightly interpreted as a process for settling conflicts among interests, which are acknowledged to be individually derived, those who seek to impose preferred solutions do so without claim to moral superiority.
Especially widespread among intellectuals and "Progressives" is the notion that there exists a "correct" way for society to operate. Such people believe that social organization is an issue of engineering, one with a single best "solution" -- and that this "solution" must be discovered and implemented in the same way that all engineering solutions are discovered and implemented, namely, by the objective brain-power and design of the engineer. For society or the economy to be engineered requires, of course, a grand overseeing engineer: the state, advised by the best and the brightest who are equipped with all the latest data-gathering and processing techniques, as well as with the latest and most advanced engineering tools.
As Jim Buchanan points out -- in the same as has Hayek, Mises, and nearly all other thoughtful (classical) liberals -- conceiving of social organization as an engineering problem, and of the state as the engineer, is not only factually mistaken, it paves the way for tyranny. The reason is that if this social-engineering view of economy and society were correct, anyone who disagrees with "the experts" advising the social-engineer hard at work to design and implement a good society is an enemy of The People.
#1
as a engineer, I have to say... there is no Correct solution to any perceived need. Rather their are products created that attempt to fill the niche and the market and mental landscape at product introduction determine if the product will be used. All the social engineering bull misses that point. Remember the Apple/Mot Newton? (a product before it's time)
How much lower will America sink before it regains its senses? Wednesday, two Muslims walked into a Christmas party at a community service center in San Bernardino, California where one worked. They were wearing body armor and video cameras and carrying automatic rifles, pipe bombs and pistols. They opened fire, killed 14, and wounded 17.
The murderers, Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik were killed by police.
Speaking to the Daily News, Farook’s father said his son, “was very religious. He would go to work, come back, go to pray, come back. He’s Muslim.”
Farook’s neighbor told the paper that over the past two years, Farook exchanged his Western dress for Islamic gowns and grew a beard.
These data points lead naturally to the conclusion that Farook and his wife were jihadists who killed in order to kill in the name of Islam.
But in America of December 2015, natural conclusions are considered irresponsible, at best.
In an interview with CNN following the shooting, US President Barack Obama said the massacre demonstrates that the US needs stricter gun laws. As for the motives of the shooters, Obama shrugged. “We don’t yet know the motives of the shooters,” he insisted.
In other words, while ignoring what in all likelihood drove Farooq and his wife to murder innocent people, Obama laid responsibility for the carnage at the feet of his political opponents who reject his demands for stricter limitations on gun ownership.
Here is the place to note that California has some of the most stringent gun control laws in the US.
According to the victims, Farook and his partners were able to reload their weapons and shoot without interruption for several minutes until the police arrived because there was no one to stop them.
Obama wasn’t alone in deflecting attention away from the likely motivations of the murderers.
Wednesday evening, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), held a press conference at the Islamic Center of Orange County. Farook’s brother in law, Farhan Khan was carted out before the cameras to tell the world that he for one had no idea why his brother in law opened fire.
Two other speakers at the event were Hussam Auyloush, CAIR’s regional executive director and Muzammil Siddiqi, the director of the Islamic Society of Orange County.
Auyloush insisted that he had no idea would could have possibly prompted Farook and his wife to murder those gathered at the center. Auyloush raised the prospect that they could have been mentally ill, or perhaps they just didn’t like the victims, or maybe they were garden-variety extremists.
For his part, Siddiqi insisted that Islam had nothing to do with the shooters’ decision to murder innocent people, (how he could be so certain, is unknown).
Siddiqi added that he hopes law enforcement bodies will conduct a full investigation into the “people and motives,” behind the attack.
To a degree, the very fact that Siddiqi had no compunction about stepping in front of the cameras just hours after the attack is proof that the US has lost its way.
#1
the very fact that Siddiqi had no compunction about stepping in front of the cameras just hours after the attack is proof that the US has lost its way
What's Arabic for 'chutzpah'?
#5
Gríma Wormtongue
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Wormtongue" redirects here. For the Icelandic poet, see Gunnlaugr Ormstunga.
Gríma
Tolkien's legendarium character
Aliases Wormtongue, Worm
Race Men
Book(s) The Two Towers (1954)
The Return of the King (1955)
Unfinished Tales (1980)
Portal icon Middle-earth portal
Gríma, called (the) Wormtongue, is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. He appears in the second and third volumes of the work, The Two Towers and The Return of the King, and his role is expanded upon in Unfinished Tales. He is introduced in The Two Towers as the chief advisor to King Théoden of Rohan and henchman of Saruman. Gríma serves as an archetypal sycophant, flatterer, liar, and manipulator.
The name Gríma derives from the Old English or Icelandic word meaning "mask", "helmet" or "spectre".[1][2] It is also possible to link the name to the English word "grim", which among other characteristics means "ugly"[3] in Old English.
Rantburg is educational as well as enlightening. Pardon my ignorance.
[NYSUN] It may be too soon for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to conclude that the slaughter in San Bernardino was an act of Islamic terrorism, but if so it is also too soon for President B.O. to suggest, as he did, that "The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world." For the killings at San Bernardino may well be something other than what the President suggests has been the pattern.
The familiar pattern is of a mentally ill person who got his hand on firearms and went on a terrible rampage. This is what happened at Newtown, Aurora, Tucson, and Blacksburg, among others. What is has been unfolding at San Bernardino, by contrast, involves two Muslims who are married and armed with military gear and whose slaughter is being greeted with joy among our Islamist enemies, who are exulting that America is burning.
That would not be not the first time Islamist terror was implicated. There is, most famously, also Fort Hood, where a Muslim doctor, Major Nidal Malik, who had been exchanging email with Anwar Awlaki and other Islamists, slew 13. But it does not appear to be the normal pattern, and it was an error of judgment for Mr. Obama to rush out and suggest it is. It was an error that appears to be animated by a highly ideological commitment to gun control.
This has gotten so bad that the New York Times ...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... rushed out an editorial this morning that actually blames Paul Ryan ...U.S. Representative for Wisconsin's 1st congressional district, serving since 1999. He is a member of the Republican Party. He proposed an alternative to President Obama's 2011 budget and made himself the target of both Democrat and Republican verbal pies... for calling, in the wake of the killings at Colorado Springs, for supporting a bill to expand mental health services. The Times seems to think that trying to identify and treat mentally ill persons who might go on a rampage is a smokescreen to avoid infringing on rights the Second Amendment prohibits the government from infringing.
No wonder Americans are arming themselves at record rates. They bought more guns on the first day of the holidays shopping season this year than on any single day in history. There were 185,345 background checks sought November 27. Some police authorities are starting to encourage Americans to arm themselves. "More guns, fewer problems" is the way CBS News sums up the views of bankrupt, increasingly impoverished, reliably Democrat, Detroit ... ruled by Democrats since 1962. A city whose Golden Age included the Purple Gang... 's police chief, James Craig. It seems there's more than one way to react to whatever pattern is emerging.
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[DAWN] NEUTRALISING violent elements in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... was never going to be an easy task, given the fact that for years, the state has looked away as such elements entrenched themselves within the bustling metropolis.
Hence while the operation launched just over two years ago to rid Karachi of murderous Moslems, bully boyz and criminal gangs has witnessed some successes, it'll be some time before the state can proclaim 'mission accomplished'.
The fact that law enforcers and military personnel are particularly vulnerable to retaliatory action was reinforced on Tuesday when two army men were killed on the arterial M.A. Jinnah Road in broad daylight.
For those unfamiliar with Karachi's geography, this is perhaps the city's busiest and most congested thoroughfare, which points to the audacity and confidence with which the attackers carried out the act.
Police officials have said it is a planned attack, though only a full investigation will reveal whether this was the case, or if the soldiers -- who were in uniform and travelling in a military vehicle -- were victims of an opportunistic hit.
What is clear is that the murdered men were travelling without back-up, even though military personnel are supposed to move with support.
Men in uniform have been targeted in other attacks as well; most recently four Rangers' troopers were killed in an armed attack while over 75 coppers have been killed in the city this year.
While the space for bully boyz and criminals has certainly been "considerably constrained" in the words of the city police chief, it is apparent that violent elements still have just enough space to hit back at the state.
The truth is that in Karachi, there is a complex mixture of political, sectarian and ethnic murderous Moslems, along with active criminal syndicates.
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[DAWN] THE seemingly stop-start Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... operation is to be expedited and its scope expanded to include the rest of Sindh as well.
This was, broadly speaking, the outcome of the Sindh Apex Committee meeting on Wednesday which was called by the chief minister in the wake of the murder of two military police personnel the day before in Karachi. In a briefing to the media after the meeting, a number of practical measures to that end were spelled out.
These include setting up 30 more Anti Terrorism Courts, appointing 200 prosecutors and an equal number of Sherlocks to ensure that over 7,000 cases of terrorism could be effectively processed.
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[DAWN] THIS year's likely tally of new polio ...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set... cases reported across the country may be lower than corresponding periods before, but Pakistain has no reason to be sanguine.
The ugly reality of this crippling illness here is thrown into even starker relief when it is considered that globally, the number of cases reported over the course of 2015 is at its lowest in history, according to a report released earlier last month by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
Sadly enough, the two countries still considered polio-endemic that stand in the path of success are Pakistain and Afghanistan; Nigeria, until recently the third country thus classified, was taken off the list in September.
On Wednesday, came further bad news. Two children in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... were confirmed as having contracted the poliovirus, bringing the number of new cases to four in just three days in the city. Significantly, both these children are said to have been administered the OPV. This is not for the first time that such failure of the vaccine has been reported.
The difficulty in reaching every child is well known, as are the problems of misconceptions about the vaccination, refusals and the ever-present security threat. More focus is needed, though, on the apparent failure of the vaccine to immunise a child.
One reason is the interruptions in the cold-chain storage process, which render the vaccine ineffective. On a few instances, vials have also been found to be past their expiry date.
An official of the emergency operations centre for polio in Sindh threw up another possibility about the two most recent Karachi cases: that the children may have compromised immune systems, which may have "assist[ed] the vaccine". It is true that vaccine-associated paralytic polio is a reality, though the incidence is fractional.
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[CNN] In the days following the Gay Paree attacks, some news outlets seemed intent on helping ISIS' propaganda efforts.
"Terrorism is an American product," blared one headline. Another recycled the tired, false-flag conspiracy theory that certain foreign intelligence agencies had carried out the attack in order to give Western countries carte blanche to invade the Arab world -- or whatever else they want to do -- in the name of fighting terrorism. It was reminiscent of the talk that was heard after 9/11.
Sadly, these headlines didn't come from ISIS or its offshoots. Instead, they came from the state-run media outlets of Egypt, ostensibly an ally in the U.S. effort to fight terror. And they were by no means the only examples. Just a quick survey of major opinion pieces in the Egyptian state-controlled media encapsulates a point of view that Egyptians are frequently bombarded with, with headlines including: "The Racism of the West and Terrorism," "Terrorism and the Super Powers," "The Western Deceit."
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#1
Time to recognize that affirmative action is a precursor to Sharia?
#2
Time to cut money to nations that use their state media to trash the USA. Time to prevent licenses to folks like Aljazeera that want to broadcast into the USA but frequently trash the USA.
Because of the 1st Amendment I'll let the market deal with domestic haters like CBS and MSNBC but there is no reason we should tolerate foreigners talking crap.
Seriously going to edit his speeches as to not mention his no massacre occurs outside USA while he was in Paris, no mention of fish swimming about Miami? Is the strategy to make Hillary! seem cognoscente?
Weeks after the Paris terror attacks that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds more, world leaders have converged on the French capital to discuss what they call the most urgent challenge facing the planet, a crisis that threatens to spreaddeath and destruction across the globe: an increase in global average temperatures of two degrees by the end of the 21st century.
#1
Since the last great ice age man has moved from a small region of the planet to occupy nearly all environmental and topographical niches of the world. From the Arctic to the equator, from jungles to deserts, from mountain ranges to Pacific islands, man is one of the most adaptable creatures on the planet. Man has weathered the warming, the Big Chill, and the re-warming. It was all done without modern government.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Cafe Hayek] ... is from page 154 of my late colleague Jim Buchanan's profoundly important 1986 essay "The Potential for Tyranny in Politics as Science" (reprinted in Moral Science and Moral Order, Vol. 17 of The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan):
leaders have converged on the French capital to discuss what they call the most urgent challenge facing the planet, a crisis that threatens to spreaddeath and destruction across the globe: an increase in global average temperatures of two degrees by the end of the 21st century.
