The Flatliner Tax

Here's the newest proposal for all newly proposed taxes. They are dead on arrival. No new taxes. No old taxes. No taxes.
The new flatliner tax. No taxation without representation. No taxation with representation. No taxation of Americans. No government theft.
Flatlined.

Simplicity vs. Simplistic

One of the fascinating aspects about the theory of evolution is its simplicity – and its argument that complexity in organisms (e.g. humans) was arrived at via simplicity (lower organisms) evolving ever-greater complexity.
This, of course, flies in the face of the mystic “argument” for complexity (alleged gods) creating organisms of much greater simplicity. This simplistic statement reveals not only a knack for denial (or lack of an attempt at understanding) of the facts but also an anthropomorphic fait accompli: “I believe there must be a god, therefore it created all things.” This simplistic belief was perhaps somewhat understandable at the dawn of human rationality, but after 5 centuries of scientific discovery, it’s worse than childish; it’s a fraud. There are mystics who try to rationalize a marriage of the two – god and evolution – but their agonizing rationalizations are, well, agonizing.
I’ve found in my 47 years that there are those who seek simplicity and those who seek the simplistic, those who seek the gorgeous facts of life and those who seek cold comfort from not “having” to think. A better way to put it might be “those who are honest and those who are dishonest.”
The virtue of honesty plays out in this venue, as it does in all others, but the irrationalist’s trenchant doggedness to deny evolution is especially stark, considering the overwhelming amount of evidence that is readily available to anyone who makes even a brief attempt to understand the theory. One thing I’ve noticed about Objectivists is their desire for Occam’s razor: “the simple explanation is usually the best.” Simplicity is usually right. That can’t be confused with the simplistic, the arbitrary.The acknowledgement of the theory of evolution by those of us in honesty’s camp makes for a wonderful camaraderie of the mind. Simplicity makes for a rich, complex life of happiness. Cheers.

Guardians of the "Should"

Newspaper reporters and editors can be often heard to proudly tout their “objectivity.” (What they really mean is “neutrality,” but that’s a story for another day.) They claim to always offer both sides to a story, allowing both parties to state their case.
This is obviously untrue to any objective observer. Moreover, neutrality is immoral because it means nonjudgmentalism, allowing equal time to the wrong instead of condemning it. Newspapers should be the guardians of the “should.” They should be the frontline soldiers for individual rights and explicitly base all of their journalistic principles upon this one principle.
Here are some examples of neutrality gone woefully wrong.
“Public education.” Newspapers regularly print articles on how to improve this atrocity when, in fact, they should be denouncing the very idea.
Global Warming: Newspapers have actually agreed (without saying so outside of their opinion pages) that the Earth’s warming in recent years is predominantly man-made, and so their seemingly endless fabrications (excuse me, I mean “stories”) simply concern how to prevent global warming – from world summits to socialist marches to “everything green” to school classes on environmentalism, all of which are written in glowing terms about the fools who also have gobbled up this latest Chicken Little tale. There are great articles out there that denounce global warming, but few newspapers ever print these.
“Welfare.” This issue, of course, is a non-issue with newspapers, who have it as a cause-celeb for decades. It is never a matter of “why”; it is always a matter of “who” and “how much.”
National defense. Newspapers have never tried, to my knowledge, to even define what national defense is and, therefore, what it should entail. They are too preoccupied with “world opinion,” which belies their own skepticism about whether America (much less a single human being) can take moral stands unilaterally or even understand what is rational and right by itself. Stories on this subject, like all of the subjects above, tend to lean to the left by using stronger quotes from the left, as well as placing them more strategically in stories and using pejorative verbs for speakers of the right, like “claimed” and “stated” and “proclaimed” and “announced” and “contended” instead of the neutral “said.” And, as in all the subjects above, newspapers flatly refuse to do their own research on subjects or to report when facts favor the side they are opposed to (unannounced of course). It took virtually all American newspapers (except for the Wall Street Journal and a few others) more than four months to print even a token story on the success of the surge in Iraq.
There are dozens of other “shining” examples of bias and so-called neutrality (FDA, CDC, farm programs, regulation, taxation, eminent domain, “public utilities,” drugs, alcohol, tobacco, etc), but the modus operandi remains the same: alleged neutrality.
It is ironic that newspapers scoff at the old Horace Greely days of “should” journalism, when newspapers 200 years ago explicitly stated what was right and wrong in front-page articles. The newspapers were often wrong, but their hearts and minds were in the right place: “What is good for individuals? What is good for Americans?”
If you add Objectivism (objectivity) to the intent of early-American journalism, then you have created the grand protector of individual rights in a medium that rightly endeavors for the “should.”

The Mephisto Irony

For 500 years, the Mephistopheles story has depicted a man (usually named Faust or some version of that name) who sells his soul to the devil (usually Mephistopheles as the devil or a representative of the devil) in exchange for riches and/or happiness. Of course it always has a bad ending because the soul is what they’re trying to make happy and yet they’re selling it off. Pretty nasty Catch-22
Christians can get into high unction in the telling of this parable (usually to those who live “too much” in this world) or in some modern or ancient statement that plays on the story: “Money doesn’t buy happiness.” “What profits a man to gain all the riches of the world if he loses his soul?” “It’s easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle, then for a rich man to go to heaven.” (Ouch!) “Money is the root of all evil.”
Blah-de-blah-de-blah. Do these people EVER tire of being dark and ominous? God, I’d hate to be in their heads!
The irony in all of the above is that religion itself is a metaphorical Mephisto. It is mystical people’s desire to sell their rational mind so they can allegedly get riches: eternal life and all its accoutrements: fireside chats with Jesus, yellow-brick roads, gilded lilies, galaxy-size flat-screen TVS, popcorn that’s out of this world, extra time with long-lost grandpa, etc. (Sounds pretty good actually, except for the monotonous chats with the tiresome ne’er-do-well from Nazareth.)
The religious are told they must adhere at all costs to the F-word: Faith. Say the faith-mongers: “Simply blow up your rational faculty and believe our nonsense and make a cud-chewing obsequious cow of yourself and we promise eternal life with the father, the son, the holy ghost, a planet of virgins, a billion infants who died at birth, et al – and don’t you DARE think that you should try to make any sense of this nonsense or you’ll GO STRAIGHT TO HELL.” I forget which early Christian “father” (Ambrose maybe) said Christianity is true BECAUSE it is ludicrous. (And I thought Jesus would be tiresome to talk with!) His point was that Christianity is so fricking crazy that nobody could’ve possibly made it up and so many people couldn’t possibly have believed it. So it must be true. You just gotta love the “logic” of Christians.
Here’s the bargain, in a nutshell, that Christians and their mystic friends have made with devil-religion. “Yes, we’ll give you our minds and we’ll look the other way when you make outlandish claims and we’ll even get on our knees and pretend that somewhere out there must be a god-man-woman-person-thing-whatever, even when we can’t hear or see or touch or smell or taste it, if you promise to give us all that we desire here and, especially, in the afterlife that you swear is real, even though you haven’t told us what that’s going to look or feel or sound or smell and taste like and even though I haven't yet had one certifiable contact aforesaid being.”
Talk about a Mephisto bargain: pawning your rational faculty – the one magnificent thing that separates us humans from the lower animals and gives us not only consciousness but also conscientiousness, which constitutes our soul – for a preposterous dupe. The mystics have bought into the mental method (faith) that is diametrically opposed to rationality, which is the only human means for survival, happiness and self-esteem.
They’ve bought into the method that implies: “You are not capable of judging properly, of living properly, of handling money properly, of finding out what you do well and doing it with moral force, of being honest all of the time, of determining for yourself what is right and wrong.” They have bought into the philosophy of skepticism, which is what religion is all about, after all, isn’t it? Its presumption is all of the above: humans aren’t CAPABLE by themselves of handling their own lives, discovering the proper ethics and being satisfied with this life – so they need religion to give them alleged comfort and guidance. Talk about another irony: the morality actually lies OUTSIDE of religion -- not in commandments, but in a rational method and construct. On another ironic note, those who are rational are actually the MOST spiritual since they understand what it is and cultivate it purposely and thoughtfully.
What this Mephisto bargain has created on Earth is hopelessly lost souls – literally. Billions of people have no idea WHO they are or of the potential power of their own mind and do not have the concomitant self-esteem to feel like they have the right to live for themselves, for their own happiness here and now. You see it in their eyes. You hear it in their frustration in not knowing what to do in many situations. You flinch at their self-satisfied forgiveness of wrong-doing instead of the proud man’s insistence on justice. You discover it in their repetitive “white” lies and frequent big lies that they justify by the fact that they are fallen and are simply expected to do such things and can’t help themselves. You notice it in their wish to have government become bigger and more ominous and allegedly do for them on Earth what they want done in their make-believe heaven: take care of them because they can’t do so themselves. Religion always equates to oppressive government. After all, the mind has already surrendered to a tyrant. “Please, sir, may I have another?”
But, indeed, humans are capable. We are efficacious. We can define and live by “honesty,” “justice,” “pride,” “integrity,” “productivity,” Those of us who are confident in our rationality and have worked out what is right are truly the ones who understand what it means to be human, to want to live a fulfilled life, to feel the self-esteem of living efficaciously and rightly. We have no use for Mephistos of either kind. We’ve already got what the Fausts and mystics don’t have: a love of THIS life and a knowledge that we’ve already got everything we need between our ears to live happily and richly, if we so desire. We need no desperate bargain to give us fulfillment.

A Tribute to Her (poem)

Where and what would I be today,
Without her, her vision, her way?
She was the light for my inn’r cave.
I was a man, but high-browed knave.
For are we not all knaves in fact,
When as imbeciles, we do act
With no thought of thought in accord
With bare truth or Sir Occam’s sword?
She bravely did what I would not.
She, who untied Gordian’s knot,
Gave breadth to the eternal mind,
Breath and sight to formerly blind.
It was she who stared life in eye.
She, it was, who nodded with “aye.”
She birth’d human like no other,
Though never, herself, birth mother.
In her is found emotions’ flight
With brother brain as guiding sight.
What she did, I could ‘lone have done.
In youth, my tools already won,
I had ears, eyes and mind, for sure,
But ‘lacrity for conjurer.
I made sense of father’d nonsense.
Past evasion dogg’d future tense.
I proclaimed things where things were not.
Low injustice won silent lot.
I worked hard, yes, but not for me.
“I” lost wars to part-purchased “we.”
And so it went, days of turmoil,
My head in air, no feet on soil,
‘Til one morn, atop stack of books,
Lay friend’s gift, novel, not of crooks.
Dust stood thick on jacket cover,
He’d said, “Read it. You will love her.”
But he talked too much of ideas,
Not clichés or panaceas –
Ideas of revolution
That would topple my “solution.”
One grows fond of the ways of wrong.
Changing paths is not to belong.
But honest souls, always crying,
Must get to living or dying.
I turned the page, then another.
Howard Roark, a long-lost brother,
Compatriot of once-I-was,
Stood erect, fierce and proud because
Life was his, and this he well knew,
The mind was king, and kings it grew.
Words can paint pale scene of wonder
Of soul putting past asunder,
Of flying beyond the blue sky
And steeped in a real-world dye.
Hard-fought days surely followed, too.
New sight blends with work for the true.
But these many happy years hence,
No longer perched upon a fence,
I thank friend and Howard and she
Who gave glad birth to new-formed me.
It is her, the first of a kind,
Who let me see the worth of mind,
To whom I now do proudly stand
And say, thank you, my dear Ayn Rand.

Morning's Yellow Monster - (poem)

Terror fills the morning driver.
To Moon, for now, the Sun avers.
Belt buckle snaps, the heart races.
To first light, chilled car takes paces.
Nervous ear nears open window.
All’s quiet, no eternal foe.
Somewhere – out there – the yellow sloth
Devours young children like moths.
The stoplight is long; the toes tap.
Sweat breaks out between foot and cap.
It is the longest light ever.
In truth, forever and ever.
“Damn infernal government’s hide,
This beast, again, I must abide.”
But wait! Oh no, no! ‘Tis the sound!
Agony and heartbreak all ‘round.
“Please, light, turn green now! Please, oh dear!
Allow flight, give flow, let me steer!”
But no, infamous wretch stays red.
Here comes beast with its walking dead.
Jaundiced, lurching, belching devil,
Advancing at pace medieval.
It, of course, catches the light green,
Driver’s smirking grin too oft seen.
It’ll turn left – in front of me.
Oh woe, oh woe, oh woe is me!
At last, but too late, I see green,
But, in truth, am crimson in spleen.
I’m trapped again behind specter,
Trapped again in b’nighted sector.
Venomous thing halts for cargo,
Flashing reds, all prisoners know.
Breaks squeal, sign opens and doors notch
For listless prey with jeans at crotch.
But today, alas, I’ll have mettle.
Its doors closed, I hit the pedal.
With gusto and grin that lingers,
I give monster middle fingers.
Its haughty horn blares – and blares more,
For it thinks it belongs afore.
But not today, and this it knows.
Yes, I am free, and so it goes.
T’morrow it will early return.
My heart will ache and stomach churn.
But brave we must be, all of us,
'Gainst those two hated words: SCHOOL BUS.

Human Rights Need Nomocracy

Much has been said, both good and bad, about democracy (the rule of the people – or the “mob,” depending on how one interprets the Greek root demo). A strict definition of “democracy” refers to direct rule of citizens who participate in every aspect of law-making. But the term has come to mean “representative” democracy, wherein citizens vote for officials to effect their intentions.
Those who disdain “democracy” usually prefer to call America a “republic” (a political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them). This is similar to, if not the same as, representative democracy.
But neither “democracy” nor “republic” best describes the appropriate governmental system for protecting human rights and promoting the proper focus of what a government should do and how limits must be placed upon majority decision-making via the ballot box.
The best term is “nomocracy,” or “rule of law.” This places the emphasis on the law, and not on the people or on the geographic separation of governmental power – neither of which can protect human rights if the rule of law can be abridged and diluted simply by popular vote or by one of a multiplicity of government entities imbued with the power to rewrite rational law.
Nomocracy would be of little worth to human rights, of course, without objective (reality-based) law to gird it. In fact, some Islamic “scholars” have recently co-opted the term to supplant “theocracy” and proclaimed that “divine law” IS nomocracy – to give alleged validation to their irrationality.
Objective nomocracy would need a system of principles and definitions to protect humans from legislative abrogation of their rights. I’m no law expert, but here is some of what’s needed.

Definitions:

“Right”: A moral principle defining and sanctioning a person’s freedom of action in a social context.
“Liberty”: The non-initiation of force or fraud.
“Government”: Official entity elected by citizens to create and uphold objective law, ensuring the liberty of its citizens by defending them from those who wish to initiate force or fraud, by prosecuting those accused of initiating force or fraud, and by sentencing those guilty of initiating force or fraud.

Principle:

Human beings have the capacity for rationality, and therefore have volition, making them capable of making choices in the running of their lives, thereby giving them a right to their own life and property, and allowing them complete hegemony over their mind, their thoughts, their actions and their property, as long as they, themselves, do not initiate (or attempt to initiate) the use of force or fraud while in action. Their right to the above cannot be abrogated by fellow citizens and, more important, by government itself, through regulation of lifestyle or business, through taxation, through licensing or fees or excises, or through any restrictions or takeover of private property. Eminent domain of property shall always reside in the private owner’s hands, barring objective judicial judgment of law-breaking on the owner’s part that requires monetary compensation to victims.

The above rights and principle are just a sampling of what will be needed for objective nomocracy, but they give an idea of the fundamental nature of what humans need from their government: a philosophically rational protection that clearly and objectively states what human rights are and how they are to be achieved – and the fact that government is about the rule of law and not the rule of people.

Masculinity and Femininity

Though I think that Betsy Speicher makes some great remarks regarding masculinity and femininity (and I loved her description of how she felt at the speech), I think she makes some fundamental mistakes on this subject that have been part and parcel of Objectivism since -- well, since Ayn Rand herself spoke about the essence of masculinity and masculinity. There are two main points I'd like to address:

1) Hero worship refers to virtues and is, therefore, open to both sexes. You can worship only that which is virtuous (honesty, integrity, pride, etc.), not biological, and since women and men are equally capable of being virtuous, they are equally capable of receiving worship. So, it is not worship primarily that women (or men) are feeling in romance (and in the bedroom). It is the laws of nature. Many on this thread have already eloquently stated how a woman must feel complete trust with (and admiration for) a man to completely surrender to him in the bedroom. Very true. Where I think many of these folks are going awry is to relate that (and other forms of "melting" in a man's presence) to "hero worship." It is, instead, biological -- and therefore also psychological. It is a surrender to the overwhelming physicality of the man and the resultant psychological manifestations -- and the thought of what that means in a situation (bedroom, doorway, dangerous place) where the man's physicality comes into play. The animal kingdom has not released us (thankfully) from the laws of the jungle (protection, dominance) applying to our romance, but I think we go too far to bring "hero worship" along with it on only one side of the gender equation. Yes, the woman worships (deeply admires) the virtues in her man, and yes, the man worships (deeply admires) the virtues in his woman. And it is these virtues that give such extraordinary value to the caretaker/surrenderer/dominant/submissive/hard/soft (biological) aspect of romantic relationships.

2) Masculinity does not exist without femininity and, therefore, does not occur in a forest while alone -- without a prior reference point to a woman. (Though a man could do other things alone in a forest that would bring women directly to the forefront of his mind. ) Strength and virility may remind us of our masculinity, but only in relation to women. Unless a man or boy has already defined his differences in relation to women/girls, he cannot identify his forest work as "masculine." The same goes for women. Alone, on an island without reference to the other sex ever, one would not feel manly or womanly. Each would have a different way of responding to reality, but there would be no gender identification.

You can quote me on that, baby

All Quotes are by David Elmore unless otherwise attributed


(1) I wouldn't have to be an "atheist" if there were no theists.

If you're gunning for San Francisco ...

The city of San Francisco recently voted overwhelmingly to ban handguns from its city limits -- even those of retired police officers and federal agents. Other locales that have done so in the past have been Chicago and Washington D.C., both of which then saw their murder rates skyrocket.
The Sidereal Messenger (TSM) has it on good source and would like to report first that it has discovered that criminals around the United States of America are now flocking to San Francisco -- not for a love-in, but for a shoot-in. TSM has just learned from some of the horrified moms and spouses (who are calling TSM from all over the country) that their nefarious relatives are phoning fellow criminals and singing to them. Yes, SINGING to them -- in jubilation. "If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to carry your pistols with you there. If you're going to San Francisco, you're gonna meet some unarmed people there. For those who come to San Francisco, wintertime will be a shoot-in there. In the streets of San Francisco, murdered people with bullets in their head. All across the nation, such a strange vibration. ... People in motion for those unarmed in San Francisco. Be sure to carry your pistols with you there. If you go to San Francisco, wintertime will be a shoot-in there."