Media should have jumped on "consensus" earlier

The Wall Street Journal wrote the following fine editorial making fun of the "consensus" scientists trying to downplay the recent release of incriminating emails between pro-warming scientists around the world, suggesting a conspiracy to hide information and intimidate "skeptics" of the warming pathology. I wrote the following letter in response, blasting the WSJ a bit for not taking the lead before the emails were made public.

________________________

It was good to see the Journal’s glib rebuke of the global-warming “consensus” scientists’ meek attempts to downplay the recent publication of scandalous emails, and it’s been good to finally hear major periodicals finally give airplay to the fact that a “consensus” may have been rigged.

But this is all too little (and hopefully not too late). There has been entirely too little airing of the so-called “skeptics” and their hundreds of peer-reviewed articles over the last decade that have refuted alleged anthropocentric warming of the Earth. There have been few articles revealing the hoax in inconvenient, methodical detail, as has been done by the Australian scientist Ian Plimer and scores of other reputable scientists who’ve exposed the following:

Water vapor causes 95% of Earth’s warming, and the vapor is caused by the sun’s rays, and there is a direct correlation between solar cycles and Earth warming. CO2 itself is a trace gas in the Earth’s atmosphere, making up a very tiny 0.038% of the atmosphere (with slight seasonal variations), and the human-emission portion of that 0.038 is small. CO2 is virtually negligible as a warming gas. Contrary to the bucolics of Al Gore, one inconvenient fact that has been given airtime is that CO2 increases after Earth warms, not before, as he devoutly professed for years, as well as in his infamous video while speaking stentorian-style upon his embattled forklift. There are dozens of other natural causes of warming, including Earth wobble, galactic position of solar system, methane levels and much more.

It has been clear for some time that CO2, therefore, has been a red herring – a political red herring – and that scientists are not immune to politics and government incentivizing. This late revelation by some savvy hackers should be a lesson to the Fourth Estate to keep an objective eye, go boldly where no one has gone before and put an end to Leftist (or Rightist) schemes before they get a chance to embroil and bribe suspect scientists with similar ulterior motives.

If you care about your liberty, watch this!

How long is a good movie? About 2 hours?

OK, I'm asking all of you who care about your freedom and where this country is headed to watch the following video, which is 1 hour and 51 minutes. It will take your breath away, inform you, incite you and leave you shaking your head in disbelief. The pizza delivery segment and the IRS court case with Whitney Halley and the national ID card legislation will have you nauseated, angry and riveted. And they are just a few of the many enlightening moments in the video.

I will never file an IRS return again as long as I live. How's that for the video's effect?

Wow, those Google guys know their sheeite

Ever since I added Google AdWords to my blog, I've noticed ads popping up on the subjects I've discussed. Amazing, that!

I guess it's supposed to be that way, but I figured my little ensconced place in the blog universe might be overlooked. Nope. Not with Google. Immediately after I wrote about sinusitis, ads for sinusitis remedies started appearing. And there've been ads on other subjects I wrote about: Michael Jackson, health care and Jane Austen. (feel free, my dear readers, to click on those ads AT ANY TIME and MAKE ME MONEY)

Interesting thing is that the health care ads have been mostly for people against health care, so Google may have a way to gauge intent. There have been a few ads for pro-government health care, and that is a genuine fright to see on MY BLOG SITE!

My friend Daniel Wahl and I discussed this last point, and we both agreed that the money we make off of the good ads and the objective information we're providing obviate great concern over the inappropriate ads, but it makes the bad ads no less frightful.

Anyway, those guys at Google know their sheeite!

Another poo-poo-er of Wikipedia rears his head

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution printed another one of those elitist columns so pervasive today in which the elitist poo-poos Wikipedia. This time, however, it's not just the content of Wikipedia that so rankles the poo-poo-er; it's the fact that the people he meets allegedly are using the facts from Wikipedia to become dilettantes who brow-beat their interlocutors with dazzling bits of information -- and the information is itself suspect. The elitist says that people shouldn't just get the facts on Sherman's generalship during the Civil War; people should allegedly read good books on the Civil War to get a greater breadth of knowledge.

Well, what if you don't WANT more knowledge other than the basic facts: deaths, path of destruction, overview of battles, burning of Atlanta, etc.? And if you did want more, Wikipedia puts hyperlinks on words, so you can do more research, as well as find more authoritative names and sources.

I've found Wikipedia to be an astounding and mostly objective source for quick information. I've often spent hours going from one link to another to get a more profound understanding of a subject. The few times I've noticed bias, it was obvious -- and often it was noticed by someone else, who put a notation of a lack of reference on the bias or made a comment on it. The articles are reviewed by so many people that it is hard for erroneous information to last longer than a few days or weeks. In other words, it's a highly credible repository of information. There's always a caveat on anything you read that some of the information could be incorrect.

The main problem with the elitist, though, is his false generalization that people use Wikipedia as some sort of psychological battering ram. I haven't come across one person, that I know of, who's done such a thing, so I must wonder who this elitist rubs professorial elbows with.

In fact, most people I know who use Wikipedia have lots of fun facts that they love to share. They love the fact that they can access information on almost any subject within 10 seconds instead of having to labor over 12-volume encyclopedias and their indexes.

I've used Wikipedia probably a thousand times. I've given money to them during each financing campaign because of the value I get from them.

And now I love them even more because they get under the skin of elitists. Maybe I'll send them a bit more cash this month.

Who are the real Robber Barons?

Just wrote the following letter to the editor to the Wall Street Journal, after the Journal wrote a good editorial explaining how Big Pharma (the giant pharmaceuticals) will rue their decision to join Obama Dead Eyes in his bid to take over health care.

______________________-

Contrary to “progressive” propaganda for 150 years, the only Robber Barons in history have been governments. They are the coercive force, the monopoly and regulatory power, behind all confiscation of property, money and time of citizens. They are the Mafioso hooligans with an official police force behind all corrupt private endeavors by corporations to secure a captive audience (literally) and allegedly assured profits.

Without immoral government, no business could legally confiscate private property – and none would employ “lobbyists.” They are, figuratively, the Mephistopheles of big business and are an omnipresent temptation for immoral businessmen, including the railroad tycoons of 19^th century America (with James J. Hill of the Great Northern Railway being one eminent exception).

Now Big Pharma, as the Journal points out, has joined the hooligans of Congress and the White House in a deal with the Robber Baron devil. Yes, Big Pharma will gets its comeuppance. But by then, innocent, healthy, responsible Americans will have suffered the indignity of another coercive collusion that amounts to grand larceny and an abridgement of individual liberty.

Would you smile at a thief's party?

Obama Dead Eyes held a Thanksgiving dinner last night at the Ovum Office. The usual suspects scurried in: Steven Spielberg, Deepak Chopra, Jennifer Hudson, Colin Powell, Nancy Pelosi, more ilk.

But what was most notable at the jackal's den was the names of some of the most conservative "leaders" of the GOP, including Louisiana phenom Gov. Bobby Jindal. He and his wife not only made an appearance, they smiled broadly and waved and danced -- in front of the man who is attempting to destroy America, in front of the man they allegedly despise, in front of the man who is committing one of the greatest grand larcenies in the history of great America.

There are Tea Party groups who are attempting to dislodge all 535 thieves in Congress from their free passes in the coming years and replace them with "regular people." One can't blame the Tea Partiers for their dreams when the world witnesses the incestuous shenanigans of so-called "leaders" such as Jindal and his GOP ilk.

How much more credibility would Jindal have had if he had turned down the Leftist invitation to make happy in front of the despot? How much can we trust our liberty in the hands of a governor-cum-president-in-waiting who dances and grins for the despot? Would you smile for a thief and murderer of liberty?

Me either. I'd beat him to a pulp and toss him in prison with the pedophiles.

Then I'd smile.

The power of Jane Austen

Of all the letters I've had published in newspapers over the years, the one that got printed earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal on Jane Austen exceeds them all. I've gotten several letters and a contact on Facebook from people who hunted me down and praised my letter -- and Jane.

That lovely Jane's eloquence and ability to connect with the best in us still moves us two hundred years after her death. Here's one note I got from a nice 30-something man who found me on Facebook after the letter was published:

"Just wanted to tell you how much my family enjoyed your letter. I am a huge Rand fan, and my sister is a huge Austen fan. Never before have we seen a link between the two! So thank you!"

Now, that's enough to simply make my day, and it did!

Old Gray Lady finally talks money

The New York Times has finally put one toe in reality with a front page (Business) article on the impending debt catastrophe by the U.S. government.

The time is good, considering the the U.S. Senate's beginning discussions on the destruction of the health-care market.

Hilarious SNL routine on Obama Dead Eyes

Y'all have GOT to see this hilarious skit on Oba-mao done by Saturday Night Live, which has, of late, been deliciously roasting the occupant of the Ovum Office.

Take a peek and get ready to belly laugh!

The greasy Malthusians and Mother Earth's oil

The eternally pragmatic and often wretched conservative columnist George Will finally nailed a good one.

You remember Thomas Malthus, right? He's the early 19th century guy who predicted that the Earth's population would soon outpace agricultural supply, and human beings would be forced to return to an agrarian/subsistence Medieval/primitive living. He proved embarrassingly wrong when the inventive mind of man and the concomitant industrial revolution allowed for excessive agricultural supply, far exceeding the pace of population -- and still doing so with 6.5 billion voracious human beings.

The Malthusians weren't limited to just agriculture, however. From early in the oil-production era, the Chicken Littles raised hue and cry about the alleged apocalypse of a vanquished Earth, siphoned of her rich oil reserves. Mr. Will gives a brief accounting of this lunacy, correctly connecting the hysteria not to rationality, but to big-government types seeking to aggrandize political machinery by fiat environmentalism and scare tactics.

Each generation since the 1859 oil discovery in Pennsylvania has had its prognosticators of doom, predicting a final depletion of oil and gas within a decade or so. Each time they've been grossly mistaken, and each time they do not learn from earlier doomsayers and the evident wonders of capitalism. They do not wish to learn, of course, because they seek to shackle corporations and liberty.

With recent technology, huge discoveries have been made in Northeast America, the Rockies, Canada, the Gulf of Mexico, near Australia and many other places, with current estimates on supply going out well over 100 years (and probably much longer in reality since the middle oceans and much of dry land haven't even been touched yet). Giant oil companies are now building $1 billion "capture" ships that make it possible to pump oil and gas directly onto the ship instead of having to lay expensive pipeline, thereby opening up vast expanses of ocean that until recently lay beyond the viable reach of man.

It is an exciting time for exploration -- if we can keep the Malthusians and their political keepers at bay in Copenhagen, Kyoto and beyond.

The dearly departed and his genius

After having vented my wrath upon the irrational (see previous post), it's time I moved to a more soothing and venerated subject: great men and their unfortunate recent passing.

Albert V. Crewe died recently. He was the physicist who invented the high-resolution electron microscope, allowing the world to get its first glimpse of the atom!! Mr. Crewe stunningly never won the Nobel prize for his work, for whatever political reasons, but he revolutionized entire scientific fields by giving scientists and engineers in computing and biology a powerful new tool to understand the architecture of everything from living tissue to metal alloys.

Mr. Crewe was not known for wearing baggy pants halfway down his butt crack. He was not known for car-jacking, home invasions or convenience-store robberies. He was not known for doing drugs. He was not known for seeking handouts on street corners. He was not known for demanding food, shelter or free health care.

He was known for a grand work ethic, total dedication to tasks, inventiveness, clinical reasoning, improved lens and detection technologies, designing enhanced electron sources, revolutionizing the world of the minute that had, till then, been the object of correct supposition going back 2 and half millennia.

His name should be known by all humans above all presidents. He is venerated by a small community of thankful scientists. He was a genius and got complete satisfaction in doing his work, never complaining about prizes not awarded.

I'll give him the greatest compliment I can give.

He was a man.

The nouveau "addicts" and volition

Into your lexicon of drug addicts, alcohol addicts, gambling addicts, sex addicts, lying addicts and TV addicts, please add "car phone addicts."

Yes, they simply CAN'T put down their cell phone in the car -- and they "admit" that they must be forced to do so.

So says Dede Haskins, the fricking chief executive of a software company in Washington! She cannot personally alter her behavior, so she and others have signed up for something called ZoomSafer, a free service that uses her phone's GPS sensors to determine whether she's at driving speeds, and then disables her cell phone until she stops the car -- whether she likes the invisible nanny's decision or not.

How are we to have a revolution, folks, when even the chief executives of our country's businesses seek a personal Big Brother to suppress their irrationality, along with the government Big Brother they vote for? If ostensively efficacious individuals do not have a clear understanding of their own volition, reasoning powers and efficacy, then we cannot expect their indignation at intrusive government.

If they can relegate their behavior to "uncontrollable addiction" or "ADD" or whatever, then their minds are pure mush, and their wills are stuck in the mush, and they are obedient automatons marching to the currently fascist tunes.

And they to all this with a straight face, or worse, the superciliousness of the converted.

Hackers uncover global-warming charade

Hackers recently broke into the email system of a British university and stole emails exchanged between climate scientists and allegedly found incriminating evidence suggesting that the scientists used "tricks" to doctor data in favor of alleged anthropomorphic warming.

I don't know yet whether the institution was a government one, thereby making the theft perfectly moral, since such fiat entities are buttressed by the confiscation of citizens' cash. If it is a private university, then the hacking is immoral and illegal, and the assailants should be jailed.

Either way, if this breech exposes the climatologists for what they are, scoundrels, then let's just say one bad turn deserves another -- an eye for an eye.

The happy conspiracy to take my money

Just when I've giddily enjoyed my iPhone for more than a year, Verizon has to come out with the Droid, which surpasses the iPhone on many levels and has me salivating at a time of budget-consciousness!

Damn these producers and inventors and wicked capitalists and their tantalizing gadgets designed to separate me from portions of my checking account! I hate them! Oh, how I hate them!

Reminds me of a time in 1995 when I was a journalist at a N.C. newspaper. I was getting off of work around 6 p.m. "What are you doing tonight, David," I was asked by a co-worker. "Going to stand in line," I said. "Stand in line? Where? For what?" he said. "For Windows 95. It goes on sale at midnight," I said with a smile, knowing what was to come from him and the co-workers around us. They mocked me and had some fun with me, and I did them in turn. I got my Windows 95 and stayed up to 4 a.m. installing it and exploring it. What glorious bliss!

The following weekend, the editorial page chief ran his usual "enlightenment" column. This time it was on the "foolish" who selfishly stand in line at midnight for new electronics purchases when there are more important things in the world to think about. He would not let me write a counterpoint column, so I emailed him that he was a benighted, soul-less creature and other choice things (I was younger then and, um, more candid).

Anyway, I long for the Droid. I'm grokking. I'm lustful. I must have one!

Damn you, capitalist conspirators! How can you keep doing this to me?!

Raise hand if Sarah Palin is "blessed"

Sarah Palin has a child who has Down syndrome. Sarah Palin can't put two coherent sentences together. Sarah Palin goofy-grins when discussing serious subjects. Sarah Palin has the gravity of an interstellar dust particle.

But, folks, she's "blessed." Her whole family is blessed. "We're blessed." Just read her novel, she says, and you get the truth and see that her family is "blessed." Yes, just ask her kid with Down syndrome about being blessed, and I'm sure you'll get a goofy grin (at least he has a good reason for it). He's been blessed with little or no introspection capability, little or no conscious control of complex action, little or no ability to plan for the future, little or no capacity for judgment -- in other words, little or none of what we know makes us human, sort of like liberals.

But, those around him are "blessed" to have him. Their god has particularly honored them with a retarded child to help them understand the importance of not being retarded.

The mystic mind is a fascinating and macabre thing of wonder. A vice presidential candidate for the most powerful nation the world has known thinks that her life is guided by ET, without the cute big eyes and the long fingers. The dude in the sky with a big cigar, a galactic easy chair and a big fucking wide screen TV for Monday Night Football is not just paying attention to her squealing, whining, soporificating and nasalising, but has anointed her, blessed her -- even above the football players pointing toward the easy chair in thanks for a nice pass. "No prob," the god says. "I wasn't too busy allowing a million rapes to occur during the game so that a million families could be blessed with knowing how good it feels to NOT be the ones raped."

The toxic mistress with a big do had better be glad that there is no proper heaven. Otherwise, Thomas Paine would let loose of a thunderbolt, and she would be a crispy cunt on the speaking-tour dais.

Then we'd all be blessed.

Beating or wounding sinusitis

I've gotten sinusitis at least two times a year since I was a kid, once in the fall and once in late winter or early spring, and sometimes an extra time or two a year. I've been experimenting with methods to prevent this for four years now and have found out a lot. Here it is.

First, the solutions to prevention: keep the humidity in the house between 50% and 55% year-round (though some specialists recommend 45%- to 50%, I've found that higher is better). Second, use a Neti pot (or something similar) to flush the sinuses when necessary (I'll elaborate on "necessary" in a moment). I've been using the Neti for four years now and, with that, have been able to reduce the number of sinusitis incidents, but it still bedeviled me until I installed enough humidifiers in my house to maintain proper humidity levels. (I use two Vicks humidifiers sold at Bed, Bath & Beyond. Each humidifier is at each end of the house.)

You can accurately measure relative humidity with a hygrometer that's accurate to within 5%. Here's the one I bought and am very satisfied with. By watching your hygrometer regularly, you can adjust your humidifiers' output accordingly for while your asleep by how much you expect your heater or A/C will turn on during the night and dry the air. I've gotten to where it's almost a fun challenge for me before bedtime. I tend to err on the side of too much humidity than too little.

The reason for this is that dry air irritates and inflames sinuses, thereby making them more susceptible to infection and less efficient in filtering pollutants: voila, sinusitis! Also, humid air stalls the proliferation of dust mites (they dig dry air), whose dung creates allergy symptoms, which creates mucus, which can lead to sinusitis. There are ways to check the level of dust mites in your house and to kill them. Here is a web site with the products for that. Pets and stuffed animals are havens for dust mites, as well as bed sheeting, beds and carpet. Here's a good web site for controlling dust mites.

If you get allergies regularly, it's important that you use the Neti pot at least once a day during allergy season, and several times a day if you're outside. Use it several times a day as soon as you feel allergy symptoms coming on. This will reduce your symptoms dramatically and perhaps forestall sinusitis. Also, when you get a cold or the flu, be sure to use the Neti to cleanse your sinuses several times a day to prevent or shorten a sinusitis infection. Be sure to use the Neti, too, after cleaning you home because of irritating chemical pollutants and the temporary increase in dust mite offal in the air.

I've found that staying vigilant in the above has helped me stay healthier and enjoy my life more. Good luck. Respond to this post if you have any questions.

Only "corporate responsibility" is profit-making

The Wall Street Journal published a series of articles on Nov. 19 on the alleged good of corporate "social responsibility" and concomitant "corporate responsibility." I wrote the following letter against such altruism to the WSJ today:

________________-

The Journal’s Nov. 19 stories on corporate “social responsibility” made me want to Google for companies engaging in such irresponsible “responsibility” and refuse to do business with them.

The one-and-only responsibility any company has is to make profits. It is to make and offer a quality product that consumers value so much that consumers wish to withdraw funds from their checking accounts to acquire that product. Such actions enrich the company, its employees, its shareholders and the lives of its happy consumers. *That* is “corporate responsibility.” Engaging in such corporate work and doing it honestly are the only ethical responsibilities any corporation has.

Any other activity (including unethical “social responsibility”) is an immoral diversion away from productivity, thereby reducing competitiveness, proper focus and quality – and it is an attempt to assuage guilt in our altruism-gone-rogue culture, in which giving good service and product is allegedly not the equal of the sordid “giving back.”

It is high time that the moralistic vipers of altruism and political correctness stand down – and for corporate leaders to stand up for the highest achievement in human life: hard work.

Jane Austen, how I worship thee

A culture critic in the Wall Street Journal wrote a piece on Saturday on his love of Jane Austen and how she is a guide for his morality. I wrote the following letter to the WSJ on my own love of Austen but on how novels represent one's own morality and do not stand as guides.

________________________

James Collins had me worried in his “What Would Jane Do” essay on Jane Austen’s moralizing. But it turns out Mr. Collins (not the one in Pride & Prejudice, of course) has sense and sensibility.

Mr. Collins’ visit down the tree-lined memory lane of Austen’s works was delightful for those of us who virtually worship Ms. Austen and her insight, perfumed elegance, sensitivity, morality and sensibilities. Her works are romantic and the best representations of high-mindedness, with characters speaking their inspired thoughts eloquently in honor of themselves and their interlocutors. Her novels are a sublime tapestry of expressed self-knowledge and dramas unfolding into further self-knowledge.

My only contention with Mr. Collins’ views is that a reader cannot use Ms. Austen (or any author) as a guide for morality. Novels are *representations* of morality. You either connect with them or you don’t, depending upon your own morality. I, for example, am an Objectivist (philosophy of Ayn Rand) and believe that humans can rationally run their own lives and give ultimate honor to others who do the same. In Austen’s novels, I find that honor between the best characters, and I see these characters correcting their false pride and prejudice or mistaken consumption of false mores, thereby achieving happiness. Ms. Austen’s morality, therefore, reflects my own. I do not learn from her. But I do worship her for representing the best in humans and savor her well-earned moments of moral encompassing.

Dawkins having fun at creationists' expense

Here's a fun, short video of Richard Dawkins giving one fact a "la la la" description of creationists. (follow my blog link to play the video)

Fantastic "History of Universe" series for kids AND adults

With clever (even subtle) jabs at creationists, this series is informative, creative, entertaining and remarkable. It is a wonder to behold and, indeed, made easy in its explanation of the complex. I challenge you to watch the first one and NOT click on the second one and so on! It is addictive fun.

With friends like the U.S. Chamber chief ...

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce chief, Tom Donohue, touts himself as a capitalist and has, admittedly, said some bad things about Obama Dead Eyes, but a recent column in the Wall Street Journal showed his real colors. The WSJ printed a letter from me on the column on Nov. 2. Here it is:

_____________________

With all the mealy-mouthed CEOs and politicians at large today, it was refreshing to read the spirited language of U.S. Chamber chief Tom Donohue in Kimberley Strassel’s interview. But, oh, how I wish he were a true capitalist.

Having not followed all of the Chamber’s actions closely over the last two years, I was unaware that it had backed the so-called “stimulus,” the “bailout” funds, the auto “bailouts,” and the Cash for Clunkers debacle. Moreover, Mr. Donohue says the Chamber supports cap-and-trade legislation.

Consider me horrified. As a business owner and proponent of laissez-faire capitalism, I’m frankly stunned that an organization which purportedly represents the interests of 3 million businesses across America would favor massive redistributionist schemes aimed at stealing money from individual citizens and small businesses and handing the loot over to the biggest businesses and politicians!

And then Mr. Donohue has the temerity to say, “We want to encourage and promote … the free enterprise system with free capital markets and free trade and the ability to fail and fall right on your ass and get up and do it again!” (italics added)

Uhuh. Got any ocean-front property in Kansas, Mr. Donohue?

David Elmore

Roswell, GA

The obsession with helping others

OK, you've got a busy, rational life: career, health, family, friends, hobbies, vacations, parties, chores, bills.

But there's a bum in the ghetto or a starving kid in Ethiopia or a tsunami-ravaged village in Indonesia or a hundred homeless in a nearby shelter or 26 million without health insurance or a million families under the "poverty line" or children with crippling diseases ... or ... or ... or.

Why should you care? No, honestly, why should you CARE?

You've got a life to live. You've got a full, rich, fruitful life to live. You've got things to do ALL THE TIME. There's hardly a second not filled with your pursuits. You've spent enormous amounts of time educating yourself, building your careers, finding your hobbies, cultivating friendships, nurturing your loved ones, maintaining your health, etc. Yet you are bombarded with begging, pleading, demands and protestations to "give back" -- and when these entreaties don't work, the people doing the pleading form groups that vote for people to coerce you into "giving back."

You may feel some sympathy for some of these people (especially children) who, through no honest fault of their own, live with dire circumstances, but why should you spend any portion (even one minute) of your life or penny of your wealth to help these strangers?

The answer, of course, is that you don't HAVE to. You could easily go through your life not spending one moment of time or one dime of money on such people and, instead, trying to fully enrich you life and the lives of those you care most about. To spend time and money on strangers is to NOT spend time and money on those you care most deeply for. It is (in almost all cases, which I'll explain in a moment) an affront to yourself and your intimate acquaintances to give to those you don't know and have no way of knowing the FULL circumstances of their situation. And even if you did know, you have no moral obligation to them.

The morality of "giving back" (altruism) has already been easily refuted by Ayn Rand. She called it the abysmal principle of sacrificing a greater value for a lesser value. It is the obsession with filling a personal void with an allegedly good deed. It is the hallmark of low self-esteem and selflessness. It is the obsession with OTHERS so that the irrational mind may avoid personal and rational reflection and get allegedly momentary relief from the angst and anxiety of its lack of rational integration. It is the statement: "I know I am not good, but maybe I can feel good about being "good" to others."

It is also the irrational person's moment of condescension and schadenfreude (feeling good about others' misery). The do-gooder's do-gooding allegedly allows him to feel superior to the ones he "helps." It is the statement: "I may not be good, but look how good I can be by helping that poor miserable wretch over there who is even worse off than me." It is an immersing in and obsession with the misery of others and getting a subconscious kick out of it (though this is never admitted, but you can see it on their unctuous faces).

The only time charity is morally proper is when one has fully taken care of one's own fruitful values and has a few moments or dollars to spend -- and when the one receiving the charity is living honorably and wishes to continue living honorably and is a moral reflection of your great self. In other words, when the person receiving the charity could use some help but doesn't beg for it and knows that the charity will merely expedite his lifelong goals that he is already attempting to achieve.

Even in such honorable circumstances, the charity giver has every moral right to say, "I don't think I wish to give you any money, but good luck with your life."

The current "giving back" culture of America exemplifies the wretched philosophical and psychological state to which most Americans have succumbed. Only Ayn Rand's philosophy of rational egoism can correct it. I'm seeing that philosophy's adherents grow almost exponentially -- and that, my friends, is very good news for us rational beings, and for those who may truly deserve our rational charity in the future when we are no longer robbed of our wealth.