A return to the evolution debate

Here's the "missing link" to John Stossel's article addressed in the previous post: The Idiocy Of Energy Independence.

Rebutting John Stossel’s Views on the Idiocy of Energy Independence

Stossel commits two fallacies in his arguments that energy independence is not desirable for the United States and even harmful to the cause of free trade. First, he confuses the significant difference between preferring free-trade during times of peace as opposed to times of political conflict and war.
In a peaceful world free-trade is always desirable. However, from time to time political forces come to power that are interested in pushing national chauvinism, ideological expansionism, or intolerant religious subordination. These political forces are only interested in promoting free trade when it serves their purposes as a means to destroy the free enterprise system. In the same way Moslem Fundamentalists are using the First Amendment to hide behind as a means to eventually over throw the United States Constitution with Sharia Law.
Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya and Venezuela are regimes that don’t wish us well and when given the opportunity they have used their oil profits to promote terrorist movements. A complex geopolitical chess game must be played with each of these nations individually. But in none of these cases does the United States benefit from oil dependence. Nor do the internal dissident political forces with in these nations benefit.

Stossel points out that the United States gets most of its oil from Canada. But even if the United States were to receive a hundred percent of its oil from Canada it would still be a major concern for the U.S. because our major allies and trade partners Japan, China, India, and Europe would still be mostly dependent on oil from anti American regimes.

Historian Richard Pipes in his book Communism cites examples where the Soviet Union was on the verge of economic collapse but the West continuously came to its aid with trade deals. If the West had taken advantage of these opportunities in the 1920s perhaps the Soviet Union would have collapsed 50 years earlier and Stalin would have never come to power. Ironically, big business often benefited from such trade deals. In fact Vladimir Lenin once said, “We will sell you the rope to hang you.”

When the Nazis first came to power in the early 1930s Germany was suffering a major depression. Hitler realized that he had to quickly improve the German economy and if this did not happen soon the Nazis would not be able to stay in power. There was serious talk of a worldwide economic boycott against Germany. The Nazis were extremely fearful of such a world wide boycott. The boycott never happened. We don't know for sure but it is possible that a worldwide economic boycott of Germany in the early 30s might have possibly brought the Nazi government to its knees. During World War II the United States was almost completely energy independent and this was a major advantage over both Germany and Japan.

In his book Reagan's War Peter Sweitzer points out that President Ronald Reagan led a covert war against the Soviet Union and put a primary emphasis on hindering the development of a pipeline carrying oil and natural gas from Russia into Europe. If such a pipeline would have been built it is quite possible that the Soviet Union could still be in existence today because billions of dollars in economic aid through trade relations with Western Europe would have been able to keep alive the Evil Empire.

The post Soviet Union Russia is trying to use oil to reinsert Russia's influence. The current conflict in Georgia is in part an attempt to block oil going from the Middle East into Europe through Georgia. Russia is even trying to assert political and military control in the North Pole because it is apparently one of the last places on earth with even more oil than Saudi Arabia.

The second fallacy that Stossel commits is confusing the need for U.S. energy independence with supporting protectionism for American energy companies. If a Japanese company could find oil in the U.S. and distribute it cheaper than any American company then give the Japanese company the job. The same goes with nuclear power plants, wind mills, and solar panels.
Let’s use food production as an analogy. The United States is one of the biggest producers of food in the world. According to Stossel’s logic it would be fine for the United States to become more and more dependent on foreign sources of food. According to Stossel’s logic it would be perfectly acceptable for the United States not to be able to actually feed its entire population so long as we could buy it from other countries like China, Russia, Venezuela, and Iran. Does that make any sense?

There is nothing wrong when jobs in agriculture are outsourced or automated as long as the American consumer benefits. It is also all right for American consumers to prefer to buy cheaper and better foreign crops when available. But, anyone who would seriously argue that it would be desirable for the United States not to be able to feed its own population is on something. The fact is food and energy independence always will be amongst the most basic essentials for any autonomous civilization.

Finally, why is John Stossel hostile to offering a prize to anyone who can invent better energy technology like an improved battery, a more fuel-efficient car, etc? There are historical examples where such a carrot approach has been used successfully. For example the Longitude Prize offered by the British government through an Act of Parliament in 1714 for a practical method of precise determination of a ship's longitude led to John Harrison inventing the marine chronometer. It encourages the new Edison's and Tesla’s to show us their stuff. The consumer doesn't spend a dime until the actual device is demonstrated. It encourages excitement and more importantly creativity.

If Stossel wants to argue that it would be better for private companies and private organizations to offer such a prize fine. But, the fact is that offering such a prize for scientific technological creativity for such an urgent need is perfectly acceptable.

Stossel establishes a false dichotomy. The choice is not between energy independence versus a commitment to free trade. The real choice is being committed to the security of free enterprise, or having the free enterprise system robbed of its vital energy.

The way the world is:

Once again I have to think for someone whom we all know and love, now I have a question. Why and how did I get into a position, tonight this person who shall remain nameless lost his car keys. Now I have to put off my work once again to do the thinking for this person. So here is my request, I want someone else please, when this person loses his car keys, mind, wallet, brain, books, head, to please do the thinking for him and let me alone. Bad enough I have to think for one foolish person two is just too many.

Florida Constitutional Amendments

Vote Smart Florida has a convenient listing of summaries of the upcoming proposed amendments to the Florida Constitution. On the page for each amendment, there is also a link to a pdf of the full text of the amendment.

LibraryThing

LibraryThing is a site where people catalog their books online. I recently got an account, and most of my books are listed there.

Scott Horton interviewed Pat Buchanan about his new book on Antiwar Radio. We've had two posts so far about this book, so here's some more material on the subject.

The Nietzsche Family Circus

The Nietzsche Family Circus pairs a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche with a panel from the The Family Circus.

Pat Buchanan's new book

The last post was about Churchill, Hitler and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, Pat Buchanan's new book. I read all the articles linked to in the post. I also read Patrick Buchanan and the Necessary Book and Morality — Trotskyite vs. Christian (comparing Christopher Hitchens views on the issue and Buchanan's). I also watched interviews with Buchanan on The Colbert Report and The Situation Room. Having absorbed all of this, here's my view.

Buchanan repeatedly admits that Hitler was a violent, vicious, antisemite who targeted Jews before the war. He's saying that it was the war that magnified his campaign against them to the point that it resulted in the Holocaust, and that the war might have been prevented if the British had acted differently. His case is that essentially, Hitler lit a fire and Chamberlain (with his war guarantee to Poland) and then Churchill tried to put it out with gasoline.

Buchanan is not denying the Holocaust, he is arguing that it might have been prevented. He is not saying that Churchill wanted it to happen. He is not saying that Hitler was not a murderer who was fine with killing 6 million Jews and many others. He's talking about unintended consequences of taking the wrong course of action in foreign policy. In my analogy for his argument, Hitler starts the fire, and Churchill tries to put it out. However, doing things the wrong way can be disastrous.

I don't think I can speculate exactly on what would have happened if Chamberlain and Churchill hadn't pursued the course of action they did. I can, however, think of a few possibilities.

The first is what he speculates, that the war could have been prevented. If the war didn't happen, the Holocaust might not have. Here is why I think this is possible. In the U.S., Japanese people were rounded up into camps because their loyalty was held in question. There would never have been such camps if it weren't for the war. If, similar to Germany, we had had 10 years of a viciously racist anti-Japanese dictatorship which repeatedly used Japanese people as scapegoats and perpetuated the idea that they were subhuman, and it was that dictatorship that put them in those camps, those camps would have been deadly. Someone in that dictatorship may have cooked up a "final solution." In a time of war, whatever freedom you have shrinks, as government demands you give up more of it out of "necessity." In the case of Jewish people, Hitler demanded the last one, the freedom to live.

A second possibility is that the Germans may have gone after the Russians, but not fought Western Europe. This would have spared French Jews, Belgian Jews, etc., but the fate of Jews East of Germany would have been the same. I don't see a reason why the victims of the concentration camps would be treated differently in this case. As Buchanan says, British troops wouldn't have died fighting on the side of Stalin, and the British Empire might not have crumbled, at least the way it did (although I don't support empires). It's a better scenario for the British and the rest of Western Europe, but no different for anyone targeted domestically by the Nazis, the people of Eastern Europe, or anyone living under Stalin.

The last possibility is that the Chamberlain and Churchill couldn't have avoided the war, and things would have been the same all around. In that case it wouldn't matter as much what they did.

Given all of this, it seems that there could have been either a positive effect if they followed his advice, or no effect. Taking a gamble between an improvement and no change seem like good odds to me. There's nothing to lose and millions of lives to win. This man is not a "freaking idiot."


As for the question at the end of you post, I wouldn't say he represents the conservative view. He represents a conservative view. Conservatives disagree with each other on plenty of things. As an example, Buchanan called Barry Goldwater, who some called "Mr. Conservative", "the father of us all" (conservatives). He also wrote an introduction to Goldwater's book The Conscience Of A Conservative. However, if you compare their views, you'll find that Goldwater supported Planned Parenthood, gays in the military, seperation of Church and State, and was a saber rattling hawk. Buchanan on the other hand, opposes abortion, gays in the military, and separation of Church and State, while he is a non-interventionist in foreign policy. However, their views are much closer when it comes to issues like gun rights, states rights, and reducing taxes.

Lecture series and book excerpt.

The author of The Politically Incorrect Guide To American History gave a series of lectures under the same name, which is available at Mises.org. Given that a Garden member brought his book to a meeting, this might be of interest to some of you.

Also, at the pub on Sunday, I referred to "What is Fascism?" which is an excerpt from John T. Flynn's 1944 book As We Go Marching. It is also available on Mises.org as an article and as an audio file. Although the author refers to Italian Fascism as capitalist, I think it shows that Fascism is more about concentrating political power than about being ideologically "capitalist" or "socialist."

What happened when Israeli Arabs met to remember what happened 60 years ago?

"It was a reminder, if we needed it, that this is a Jewish state and we are even less welcome than usual when we meet as Palestinians."

Given our discussion of Israel last Sunday, I would like you all to read this article.

Here is video of the incident that the article describes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-P4LI1ceGA