Author Archives: admin

The left’s own war on science

How much longer can the liberal left survive in the face of growing scientific evidence that many of its core beliefs are false? I’m thinking in particular of the conviction that all human beings are born with the same capacities, particularly the capacity for good, and that all mankind’s sins can be laid at the door of the capitalist societies of the West. . . .

One such Charles Darwin figure is the American anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon. He has devoted his life to studying the Yanomamö, indigenous people of the Amazonian rain forest on the Brazilian-Venezuelan border, and his conclusions directly challenge the myth of the noble savage. ‘Real Indians sweat, they smell bad, they take hallucinogenic drugs, they belch after they eat, they covet and at times steal their neighbour’s wife, they fornicate, and they make war,’ Chagnon told a Brazilian journalist. His view of the Yanomamö people is summed up by the title he gave to his masterwork on the subject: The Fierce People. . . .

In 2000, in a book called Darkness in El Dorado, the journalist Patrick Tierney accused Chagnon and his collaborator James Neel of fomenting wars among rival tribes, aiding and abetting illegal gold miners, deliberately infecting the Yanomamö with measles and paying subjects to kill each other. Shockingly, these charges were taken at face value and widely reported in liberal publications like the New Yorker and the New York Times. . . .

Chagnon has now been exonerated and resumed his career.

Dreger has not abandoned her own liberal convictions. She believes the search for scientific truth and social justice go hand in hand and ends her book with an plea to academic colleagues to defend freedom of thought. But her title, Galileo’s Middle Finger, suggests the progressive left may not survive these clashes with heretical scientists.

www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/the-lefts-own-war-on-science/

My Propertarianism Summary

Putting this here so that I can cut and paste.

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Social norms need to be treated as property (ie. defended with violence). Social norms are expesively created. We pay for them with opportunity costs every time we don’t steal, don’t cheat, don’t defraud, help our neighbors.

The high trust society of Europe (really, North-Sea Europe) is the miracle that laid the foundation for modern civilization.

Rothbardianism creates a false binary of harm that preserves parasitism.

(Think of Jews benefitting from European law, and high trust, but maintaining separatism, and never sacrificing to contribute to the high trust society.)

Harm is really a gradient, not a binary. Focussing only on physical aggression and relegating lying, fraud by omission, cheating, and other anti-social behavior to a footnote on NAP, is an attempt by cheaters to prohibit retaliation.

This is why an-caps attract a minority of scoundrels. They correctly perceive it as a liscence to cheat and a prohibition on retaliation.

Hoppe realized the importance of social norms, but his reputation is tied to Rothbard’s, so he’s trying to preserve NAP and enforce social norms by voluntary exclusion. That’s good, if it works.

But really it is perfectly just to defend social norms with violence. We invested in the behavioral commons and need to protect our investment.

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So libertarians fall into two categories. Some are trying to make the enforcement of the commons voluntary and prevent the mal incentives of bureaucracy. That’s good.

Other libertarians are denying a commons exists, or are active trying to prevent its emergence.

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unlanded ethics of diaspora people — I will go to where other people have created property rights.

landed ethics of aristocracy — my family guards this wall. Your family will guard that wall. Inside we will enforce property rights.

Jewish groups hail Obama’s executive action on gun control

“While it has been extremely frustrating to watch Congress not act on this problem, we are encouraged to see the president take the steps he is now taking,” Jared Feldman, vice president and Washington director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, told The Times of Israel. . . .

Other groups that lauded the president’s actions were the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the political arm of Reform Judaism in the United States, the Anti-Defamation League, the National Council of Jewish Women and Jewish Women International. . . .

www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-groups-hail-obamas-executive-action-on-gun-control/

BUSTED: Harry Reid Owns 93 Acres Next to Bundy Ranch

Harry Reid has run 52 ranchers out of business so far, just like their recent efforts with Cliven Bundy, because of his ownership in Reid Bunkerville, LLC, which holds 93 acres in Nevada.

The parcels seem to be in the way of future development with the Chinese, which may even involve a freeway interchange and loop, and all sit west of the same general area as the land where all these ‘trespassing cattle’ graze.

We all know that the Reid crime syndicate had ulterior motives for the attacks on Cliven Bundy. Here’s the proof.

www.truthandaction.org/busted-harry-reid-owns-93-acres-next-bundy-ranch/