Sunday, August 24, 2014

SOCIAL JUSTICE IS A MOST DIFFICULT CONCEPT TO ARTICULATE AND UNDERSTAND:Difficult because "social" is after all the root word of "socialism" a dreaded form of organizing human affairs to many Americans.

A DISSENTING VIEW ON SOCIAL JUSTICE:I am on this particular side of this discussion on "social justice".

ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP: Risk taking is important and typically underplayed.

ABOUT MONEY AND INFLATION:Keynesianism is about chasing your tail.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

BEWARE HISTORIANS WHO HAVE HIDDEN AGENDAS. LIKE AUTHUR SCHLESSINGER JR MAYBE THE WORST OF THE WORST.

Ron Radosh

Books

Wide Web

Our Bien Pensant American Historians: The New Friends of Hamas

August 22nd, 2014 - 8:58 am

In July of 1945, an organization called the Friends of the Haganah was created by American Jews, to support the defense forces of the Jewish community in Palestine. They knew that the Yishuv — the name of the Palestinian Jews who had built up the basis for a future state — were living under the dire threat of constant attacks by the surrounding Arab states.

How things have changed. Nowhere has this been illustrated better than in the recent petition signed by over 200 American historians (who now claim over 1000 signatures), condemning Israel for its “disproportionate” use of force and demanding the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, a permanent end of the Israeli blockade of Gaza, and most telling of all, the suspension of US military aid to Israel, until such time that aid is no longer used for “the commission of war crimes.” Nowhere in the petition is Hamas mentioned. (The list of those who were the initial signers and writers of the petition can be found here.) In essence, those who signed the document can be called “the Friends of Hamas.”

As a historian who has studied the American far Left for many years, and decades ago was part of, I immediately noticed that many on the initial list of signers are veterans of the already old New Left and either supporters of or fellow-travelers of the defunct Soviet Union and the Communist movement. Indeed, I know many of them personally, and are aware of their old affiliations and political allegiances.

The petition is a document created by a group called “Historians Against the War.” It refers not to the current war in Gaza, but to the war in Iraq, as exemplified by a panel sponsored by the group held about it in 2003, which I wrote about here. It is commonly believed that the group actually had its origins in the effort by leftist historians to create a caucus within the historical profession made up of historians opposed to the war in Vietnam. Then, and now, the group was composed of historians of the far Left. At their start, and it is hard to imagine, they were actually a minority of the historical profession.

What is different about this anti-Israel petition, is that the signers are writing not simply as American citizens opposed to Israel, but as “historians,” whose credentials are being used as evidence that their position in the profession gives them more expertise to comment on Israel’s would be perfidy. As historian K.C. Johnson writes at Minding the Campus, “This approach is odd given that many of the organizing signatories appear to have no academic specialty in U.S. foreign relations, Israeli history, or Palestinian history, the subjects of the petition.” To put it bluntly, the claim to be speaking as historians is nothing less than an attempt to fool the gullible into listening to them. Undoubtedly they are intelligent, Johnson says — a claim that I actually dispute — but, he adds, “they seem to possess no more academic qualifications to comment on U.S. foreign policy or Israeli-Palestinian security relations than random people wandering Central Park.”

Given that Central Park is in New York City, I actually think that the random bicyclist or walker in the park has ten times more wisdom than any of these historians. Even the left-wing Mayor Bill DeBlasio heralds his pro-Israel views, undoubtedly because he realizes that his own leftist base is out of touch with the majority sentiment of the city’s residents.

More importantly, the petition is not just anti-Israel, it is pro-Hamas. In a forthcoming op-ed that will appear in The American Interest by historian Jeffrey Herf, (to which a link will be provided when it is put online) he notes the spurious nature of their charges. They argue for Israel’s guilt without attempting to prove their case. To the left, this conclusion is simply a given. The actions of Hamas, which has fired more than three thousand rockets into Israel, cynically use civilians as human shields as they launch them from mosques, hospitals, UN schools and from heavily populated civilian areas, is not even mentioned once in the historian’s petition.

The demands they make upon Israel, Herf argues, without corresponding demands made on Hamas, is in essence repeating Hamas’ demands as their own. The petition writers do not even mention that the fighting in Gaza began with Hamas’ aggression. This is, Herf continues, a major change in the Left’s position taken over many years. Once a movement that always claimed to be “anti-fascist” above all, it is now supporting and praising the equivalent of the Islamic fascists.

Herf makes a sound analogy between their position and that taken by the old Communists in the years of the Nazi-Soviet Pact from Aug. 1939 to June 1941. Just as the Communists ignored fascism — the Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov famously said that “fascism is a matter of taste,” the historians now justify many of the Islamists’ actions as a cultural difference that Westerners should respect. Recall that historian Joan Scott of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton a few years ago refused to condemn Tariq Ramadan’s failure to oppose the stoning of women to death in Muslim nations. Stoning, she said at a forum, was an aspect of their culture that we had to understand.

What explains these historians’ actions? Do they really want to be known as supporters of Hamas? Have they bothered to read the Hamas Charter? If not, how can they purport to be scholars and historians? Either they have read it and ignore it; or are so negligent as to not have bothered to learn what Hamas’s beliefs and aims are. It is especially shameful that these senior scholars, many of whom are historians of Germany no less and are proud of their anti-fascism, totally ignore the nature of Israel’s enemy.

There is an answer to why these historians are all anti-Israel, and it is the same answer I gave in my column last week at PJ Media. The American Left, following the long standing stance of its British comrades, favors an alliance with the West’s greatest enemies. The Left is now defined by one thing — hatred of and opposition to Israel. The hatred of their own country — they used to spell it as “Amerika” — has now been replaced by their hatred of Israel. As for Hamas, its own agenda is eerily similar to that of ISIS. True, they do not behead their enemies or crucify them. But as Alan Dershowitz notes in an important op-ed appearing today, “Hamas has probably killed more civilians — through its suicide bombs, its murder of Palestinian Authority members, its rocket attacks and its terror tunnels — than ISIS has done.” As for its own tactics, he says, they are the moral equivalent of beheading:

And it matters little to the victim’s family whether the death was caused by beheading, by hanging or by a bullet in the back of a head. Indeed most of ISIS’s victims have been shot rather than beheaded, while Hamas terrorists have slaughtered innocent babies in their beds, teenagers on the way home from school, women shopping, Jews praying and students eating pizza.

Shame on these supposed intellectuals, historians all, who have abandoned the most basic tenants of the historical method to propagandize for the Islamists, whom the late Christopher Hitchens aptly referred to as “Islamofascists.” As Roger Cohen of The New York Times wrote recently, the recent conflict has shown “how the virulent anti-Israel sentiment now evident among the bien-pensant European left can create a climate that makes violent hatred of Jews permissible once again.” For the Europeans, he writes, “not having a negative opinion of Israel is tantamount to not having a conscience.”

Writing in The Washington Post, columnist Richard Cohen asks, “how did the moral center of the American left get so isolationist and selfish?” He adds another question: “Why does it see no difference between a moral obligation to save lives, [he refers to Israel’s self-defense measures taken against Hamas rockets] by avoiding murder — not just with humanitarian measures — and a kind of militarist lust” exemplified by Hamas?

Both columnists — men who are often critical of various Israeli policies — understand the legitimacy of Israel’s current fight against its enemies. How different are their arguments than these would-be intellectuals and historians, who indeed reveal themselves as nothing more than part of the bien pensant group of thoughtless intellectuals, who spout anti-Semitism as a new form of wisdom.

They exemplify well what in the 1920s, the French writer Julian Benda called La Trahison des clercs, roughly translated asThe Treason of the Intellectuals. In an introduction to a new printing of the book, my PJM colleague Roger Kimball writes that once the intellectuals abandoned their traditional scholarly and philosophical set of ideas, they “had lately allowed political commitment to insinuate itself into their understanding of the intellectual vocation as such.” He quotes Benda who wrote that “Our age is indeed the age of the intellectual organization of political hatreds.” The historians who wrote the current petition verify Benda’s insight, as well as his statement that the current work of intellectuals was a “cataclysm in the moral notions of those who educate the world.”

These words indeed do apply to these thoughtless historians, who whether they intend it to or not, have come down on the side of not only Israel’s enemies, but the humanistic values they purport to hold. Let us respond by no longer listening to anything these people write, including all their books and articles.

HERE'S HEARTENING NEWS FOR ALL SOCIALISTS:

ECONOMY, WELFARE

Welfare Nation

by Lonely Conservative • August 23, 2014 • 2 Comments

New data has come out on means-tested welfare programs, and the news is alarming.IBD points out that we are reaching a tipping point, which many of us believe has been the goal of the progressives all along.

New data on federal public assistance programs show we’ve reached an ignominious milestone: More than 100 million Americans are getting some form of “means-tested” welfare assistance.
The Census Bureau found 51 million on food stamps at the end of 2012 and 83 million on Medicaid, with tens of millions of households getting both. Another 4 million were on unemployment insurance.
The percentage of American households on welfare has reached 35%. If we include other forms of government assistance such as Medicare and Social Security, almost half of all households are getting a check or other form of government assistance. The tipping point is getting closer and closer.
So much is shocking and dismaying about these numbers. (Read More)

Even more disturbing is that the numbers don’t include disability, unemployment, or those added to the Medicaid rolls under Obamacare. This is the legacy of the Democrats – turning the United States into a welfare nation.

Monday, August 18, 2014

GOOD FOR THIS REPORTER HE GOT IT MOSTLY RIGHT:This is a story of Democrats doing what they do best to the economy. Screw it up.

WE'RE GOING NOWHEREAnd fast.

THIS IS A PRETTY GOOD COMMENTARY ON FERGUSON:This rerun is pathetic and never ending because blacks refuse to come to grips with their dysfunctional community. Been this way since the '60's.

IT'S ALL THERE FOR ALL BUT THE BLIND TO SEE:Reverend right had in partly right when he said "the chickens are coming home to roost."

LIMOUSINE LENINISTS INDEED:NR lost an excellent thinker when they fired Debyshire for alleged racism.

THE DOJ AS ALL OTHER OBAMA ADMINISTRATION GOVERNMENT DIVISIONS IS CORRUPT:This poor officer is going to have a hard time making his case with this guilty until proven innocent crowd.

Friday, August 15, 2014

BEEN OF THIS MIND FOR YEARS NOW:These types should have no role in our governance. As long as they do, we live amidst chaos.

THIS IS ALL A GAME, SADLY:How long can they keep getting away with this stuff???

WAS THERE LAST YEAR:Still don't know why we gave this asset away?

HERE'S MORE ON PANAMA CANAL:Changing the name from Gaillard Cut to Culebra Cut doesn't sound right.

MORE ON RUNAWAY UNIONS:This union thingy is killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

THERE IS HOPE IN THE BLACK COMMUNITYAs long as there's a few like this, there's hope.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

IT'S COME TO 1984:

DENNIS SAFFRAN

Lewis & Clark’s Racial Inquisition

How good-natured joshing turned two college football teammates into pariahs.

12 August 2014

PHOTO BY M.O. STEVENS

Has it really come to this? This spring, the estimable Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) reported on a caseout of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, in which two friends and football teammates—one black, one white—were punished for joking about race during a game of beer pong at a private dorm party in November 2013. No one at the party was offended, but an informer in another room overheard the banter and turned them in.

The black student had jokingly named his beer pong team “Team Nigga” and would shout the name whenever the team scored. At some point, the white student—reprising a running joke on the football team, in which black students would greet white teammates with the phrase “White power!”—said, “Can I get a white power?” The black student replied, “White power!”

The noise from the party awakened a student in another room in the residence hall (no doubt, college football players of all races, creeds, and colors can be loud and rowdy while playing beer pong). She reported this exchange to the Campus Living office, and an inquisition began. Campus Living turned the matter over to the campus police, which launched an investigation into the “racial and biased comments” at the party. Learning of the comments’ origins on the football field—where not only did black players greet white players with “White power!”, but blacks and whites both used “What’s up nigga?” as a friendly greeting—the investigating officer spun into full Inspector Javert of the Left mode. As stated in his report, “I asked . . . which players . . .—naming them individually—commonly used the n-word” and “expressed hope that . . . [the black student] would shoulder the responsibility to speak up and shed some awareness to his teammates and friends about how those particularly racist comments, and other even less inflammatory biased comments, negatively affect community members of color—and the community as a whole.”

Justice was swift. Several days after the party, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the two students were charged with inflicting “Physical or Mental Harm” and “Discrimination or Harassment,” as well as with disorderly conduct. The complaint noted that the charges were based both on the banter at the party and on “suggest[ions] that similar language may have occurred at other times . . . in the Football team locker room, and around campus generally.” The students were told to submit the names of any defense witnesses by 9 a.m. on Monday morning following the break, and directed to appear at a hearing on Tuesday.

Within days after the hearing, the two were found guilty of all charges, placed on probation, and ordered on threat of suspension to undergo “Bias Reduction Training.” The ruling stated, without any support, that their “language ha[d] contributed to the creation of a hostile and discriminatory environment.” They were given five days to submit “full and complete appeals.” (By comparison, appellants in court have months to prepare their cases.) The appeals were rejected in less than two weeks.

Rarely does the modern Left’s humorlessness, authoritarianism, and subversion of its own goals come together as starkly as in this case. Today’s liberals not only threaten to create a 1984 culture, in which informers who overhear private conversations turn in the perpetrators for reeducation. More troublingly, in the name of “multiculturalism,” they also seek to ban the kind of affectionate ethnic teasing between friends that for years—long before our elite liberal betters came along to lecture us on “diversity”—has allowed people in this polyglot country to break down barriers between groups and bond with one another. The upshot is that the only intercultural relationships allowed will be the phony liberal ones at food coops and faculty lounges, in which no one ever talks except to mouth hackneyed dogma and platitudes, and, in the absence of honest and unstilted conversation, increasingly Orwellian efforts are employed to ferret out “unconscious bias” and “micro-aggressions.” It’s all done in the name of a false multiculturalism that increasingly drives people apart.

I don’t know if the “Bias Reduction” brainwashing worked on the Lewis & Clark teammates, or whether, to the gratification of the Investigating Officer, they emerged to lecture their friends on the evil of their former ways. But I’m sure that if it did work, it also created a wall between them, and that their new, exquisitely polite, politically correct relationship will never approach the closeness of their previous friendship. I hope, of course, that the reeducation efforts failed, and that, like Galileo in the dock, as the Bias Reduction Trainer droned on, they whispered to each other: “What’s up nigga?” “White power, bro!”

Dennis Saffran is an appellate attorney and was recently the GOP candidate for the city council seat representing District 19, in Queens.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

HOW ABOUT REPUBLICANS BOYCOTTING HOLLYWEIRD CONTRIBUTORS?Hit'm where it hurts.

AN ETHNOGRAPHER WEIGHS IN:An ethnographer is one who weighs in on black crime.

PROMISING DEVELOPMENT FOR BRAIN TUMORS:This is worth watching.

MORE CONFUSING EMPLOYMENT DATA: Whee's the labor participation rate number?

Diminishing Marginal Utility: It's a Law

Mises Daily: Monday, November 03, 2008 by Art Carden

Why are diamonds, which are little more than decorative baubles, so much more valuable than water, without which we would die? The answer is that value is determined at the margin, meaning that we value not "diamonds" as a category compared to "water" as a category, but one more diamond compared to one more unit of water.

Water is super-abundant while diamonds are not; this is one reason why a diamond is so expensive while water is not. This also illustrates an important point about decision making. Instead of "setting priorities" and viewing things in terms of all-or-nothing decisions, we should look at trade-offs.

One of the most important principles of economics is that decisions are made at the margin, and one of the key problems in classical economics concerned the source of value. The law of diminishing marginal utility is a fundamental tenet of economics, and it is every bit as much a scientific law as the law of gravity (more so, perhaps, as it can be deduced from an axiom — man acts — that is self-evidently true). Marginal utility is not decreasing just because we assume it is. The law of marginal utility is an implication of the action axiom, not merely an ad hoc assumption.

The "utility" one derives from consuming a good or undertaking an activity is best understood as a set of wants that can be satisfied by employing means, not as the output of a function mapping from an agent's consumption set into the real number line. Following this definition, the "marginal utility" of employing another unit of a homogeneous supply of goods or services must be understood as the additional set of wants that can be satisfied by employing that marginal unit. From the fundamental axiom of praxeology — that "human action is the use of means to arrive at preferred ends"[1] — we can see that the marginal utility of employing unit n is preferred to the marginal utility of employing unit n+1; in the language of mainstream economics, marginal utility must be decreasing.

In his classic article "Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics" and in his treatiseMan, Economy, and State, Murray Rothbard asks us to consider eggs as an example. (I alter the example slightly here.) Consider Joe, who has a wife, a daughter, a dog, and the following value scale:

Feed his family with cake
Feed his daughter with scrambled egg
Feed his wife with scrambled egg
Feed himself with scrambled egg
Feed his dog with scrambled egg

Suppose he needs four eggs to bake a cake. With his first egg, he will feed his daughter because he prefers this to all other sets of wants he can satisfy with one egg. With his second egg, he will feed his wife, and with his third egg, he will feed himself.

Now, suppose Joe purchases a fourth egg. This leads us to a possible misconception: one might be tempted to look at the situation and exclaim, "Aha! With the fourth egg, Joe can feed his family with cake, which he clearly prefers to feeding them with scrambled eggs! Clearly, then, the marginal utility of the fourth egg is higher than the marginal utility of the third egg; therefore, marginal utility is increasing!"

This line of reasoning neglects a crucial point: the fourth egg can only be used to bake a cake in the presence of the first three eggs. Since "marginal utility" is a concept that can only be applied tohomogeneous units of a given supply, "one egg" is no longer the relevant unit of analysis. The homogeneity of units is determined by the set of wants that can be satisfied with a unit of a good; in this case, the relevant unit of analysis becomes "1 unit=a set of four eggs." Thus, Joe's value scale may now be

Feed his family with cake
Feed his family with scrambled eggs

He will clearly choose to feed his family with cake and, should he happen upon a second set of four eggs, scrambled eggs as well.

$60$50

The astute reader will notice that the value scales listed above were listed according to the wants satisfied by the marginal unit of a given good, not by the good itself after the fashion of Rothbard in "Toward A Reconstruction." Our hero Joe didn't prefer the first egg to the second in and of itself; he preferred feeding his daughter to feeding his wife. If only one egg is available, he must choose between competing ends, and the end that satisfies him most is feeding his daughter.

It should be evident that the law of marginal utility should be accorded just that epistemological status: a law. As Rothbard explains (and as Carl Menger and others showed before him), this theorem, which can be deduced from the action axiom, is more than merely empirically demonstrable: it is irrefutably true.

Art Carden is assistant professor of economics and business at Rhodes College and an adjunct fellow of the Independent Institute. He has been a visiting research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, and a summer research fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Send him mail. Comment on the blog.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

August 12, 2014

SO WHAT'S THE SURPRISE HERE? Not sure I'd call Thomas Freidman "respected" but other wide this is all unfortunately correct.

HIGHER EDUCATION FROM THE MANHATTAN INSTITUTE.Unfortunately children think like, well, children.

WELL, WELL, WELL,SURPRISE!When we refer to the corrupt media, it starts here.