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Saturday, August 21, 2004::

The Culture: The World Trade Center II Design 

Count me among the many who think that “Freedom Tower,” the proposed substitute for the destroyed World Trade Center complex is wanting in almost every respect. Ostensibly reaching 1,776 feet in height, a third of Freedom Tower is unoccupied. The productive spaces of the original structures are not restored. Instead of serving as a replacement for the World Trade Center, Freedom Tower is little more than a ghost of a building.

Unfortunately, I have not seen an alternative proposal that I found to be compelling. Every design I have reviewed seemed like a compromise to fear. Almost all evoked the feeling of a tomb, not a productive space.

That is, until now. The World Trade Center II Design by Kenneth Gardner and Herbert Belton restores the New York skyline with a new interpretation of Yamasaki Twin Towers design, with several enhancements and modifications over the originals. The effect of resorting the original shape and purpose of the twin towers is striking; is says in effect, we will have what we had before and we will have it better.

I think the effort by Gardner and Belton is laudable and I wish them every success. It will require significant political support to compel a change in plans for the World Trade Center site. I think it is a worthwhile goal though.

Anything less than what the World Trade Center site was before September 11th is a moral surrender to militant Islam. The new structure should be a defiant re-affirmation of who we are as a people and what the Trade Center was to New York. It’s time to write some letters to our elected officials.



Update: Here are some key adresses:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
City Hall
New York, NY 10007
Phone: 311 (or 212-NEW-YORK outside NYC)
Fax: (212) 788-2460
E-Mail: http://nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html

Governor George E. Pataki
State Capitol
Albany, NY 12224
Phone: 518-474-8390
E-Mail: http://161.11.3.75/

Lower Manhattan Development Corporation
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor
New York, NY 10006
Phone: (212) 962-2300
TTY Phone: (212) 962-0045
Fax: (212) 962-2431/33
WWW: http://www.renewnyc.org

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 6:24 PM | donate | link | |

Friday, August 20, 2004::

The War: The Party of Unapologetic Pacifism 

Dr. Michael Hurd, PhD, slams the Libertarian Party at the Daily Does of Reason:

The Libertarian Party is the party of unapologetic pacifism. They make John Kerry blush. Their 2004 presidential candidate proposes, for example, that all U.S. troops everywhere be sent home immediately. Why? Because, apparently, all government is bad. Anything the government does to intervene in the rest of the world--even if those interventions are to protect the United States at home--is bad.

Even worse, statements on the official Libertarian Party website imply that the United States is to blame for terrorism: For example: "How long can politicians pretend to be surprised when terrorist threats turn into bloody reality? How many more innocent Americans have to lose their lives before U.S. policy makers come to their senses and stop interfering in other nations' affairs?"

The implication of this statement is clear. If the United States did not have a military presence in the Middle East, and elsewhere, terrorists would leave us alone. America is to blame, not the terrorists.

This is as profound an evasion as I could ever imagine. It is the single worst example of blaming the victim that I have ever encountered in this age of blaming the victim (i.e., the United States).
Amen. But just in case you think even a broken clock is right twice a day, Hurd ends with this:

I don’t care what other points the Libertarian Party might make on the subject of taxes or limited government with which I might agree, in an out-of-context fashion. Evasions and errors of the magnitude just described come from a place I do not want to enter or go near. This viewpoint is unforgivable and inexcusable. Total surrender of the Middle East and our objective national interests to the likes of Osama bin Laden and the mullahs in Iran--not to mention other terrorist dictators throughout the world--wipes out any value from reducing the role of government in the economy. How can a capitalistic America flourish under the threat of a nuclear cloud, biological warfare or worse? If you think America is in danger with a troop presence in the Middle East and elsewhere, just imagine if we gave up the fight altogether.
Again, amen.

Wasn't there once this guy who said, "We're all libertarians now." Kinda makes you wonder just what in blazes this guy was thinking.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 7:28 PM | donate | link | |

The War: Senior Officer Violated Regulations  

As most RoR readers know, the so-called war on terror is actually a war between a free, secular republic and the practitioners of militant Islam. The fundamental distinction between the combatants is that our side values this life and the individual’s right to live it, while the other side values the afterlife and the right to kill for it. That is, of course, when Christian fundamentalists don’t muck it all up.

A Pentagon investigation has concluded that a senior military intelligence officer violated regulations by failing to make clear he was not speaking in an official capacity when he made church speeches casting the war on terrorism in religious terms, a senior defense official said Thursday.

In most instances the officer, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, was wearing his Army uniform.

The probe by the Defense Department's deputy inspector general also found that Boykin, the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, violated Pentagon rules by failing to obtain advance clearance for his remarks, which gained wide publicity last fall.

In one appearance, Boykin told a religious group in Oregon that Islamic extremists hate the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christians. ... And the enemy is a guy named Satan," according to news reports last fall.

Discussing a U.S. Army battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia in 1993, Boykin told one audience, "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." [AP]
I love this plain-talking Christianity. “Who gives you these ideas that individual rights come from a philosophic understanding of man’s nature and his requirements for survival? Is it a guy named Satan?”

As punishment for his breach, General Boykin should be ordered to research and teach a seminar on the history of secularism and freedom in the United States. If our generals don’t understand the lines in this war, how can we ever hope to win it?

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 12:38 PM | donate | link | |

Thursday, August 19, 2004::

The Movement: The Evolution of Diana Hsieh 

Diana Hsieh has gone through a tremendous transformation. Once a supporter of David Kelly’s Objectivist Center, she became disenchanted by what she viewed as the group’s lack of scholarship and intellectual consistency. This compelled her to revisit the writings that led to Kelly’s ostracism from Objectivism; from there, she concluded that her original positive assessment of Kelly’s arguments was wrong.

At that point, Hsieh decided that she wanted no further relationship with Kelly’s organization and its lieutenants and she said so publicly. Many of people Hsieh was distancing herself from were long-time friends; her decision was no doubt difficult and painful. To make it was a heroic act of honesty—a virtue that makes the truth the cornerstone of one’s being. I admire both her (and her husband, it should be said) for making it.

In the months since, Hsieh has chronicled the thinking that led her to this realization at her weblog. It has been an earnest and thoughtful effort, explaining some of the off-putting things ARI supporters did (it seems the notorious Objectivist charm brigade struck her with full force) as well as the evolution of her thinking over the past ten or so years. Judging from the comments section or her weblog, her writing has piqued tremendous interest from both sides of the debate, including that of the owner of a website she used to manage—none other than defrocked Objectivist Nathanial Branden.

Hsieh has revisited Branden’s writings as well and decided that he too is an opponent to what she stands for and cut off ties to him accordingly. She asked him not to contact her or post on her website—a request evidence now indicates he is unwilling to respect. Apparently, he got his girlfriend to post to Hsieh’s comments section in an attempt to goad Hsieh into debate and then began make posts himself in his girlfriend’s name. Branden’s act is appalling—it shows no respect for Hsieh’s request for distance and privacy from a person that she no longer agrees with.

As I said before, everything I’ve seen in Hsieh’s writing has struck me at thoughtful and honestly introspective, if not painfully so. She says she is working on a complete statement of her transformation and the reasons behind it. Philosophy is a powerful tool, but its malpractice can lead to devastating effects. Because of her past, Hsieh feels compelled to answer the questions posed by the Branden/Kelly alliance. I look forward to these writings. I think they will do much to bring light to the mistakes people make about Objectivism from a person who understands them all too well. I think her analyses will carry a lot of weight and serve as a useful guide for others as they grapple with the questions that being an Objectivist poses. In the face of the attacks we all know she will face as she works on this project, I wish her the best.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 5:50 PM | donate | link | |

Justice Denied: The Venezuela Referendum  

I know Thor Halvorssen from my college days at George Washington University; then he was the program director of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Collegiate Network which had given a grant to the undergraduate student newspaper I edited at the time. I remember Halvorssen as quietly intense, almost having the face one would find on the hero of an Ayn Rand novel. I remember talking to one of the other CN staffers about Halvorssen and them saying to me that he and his family were Venezuelan and had been though a lot of hell in their lives. In an article Halvorssen writes for today’s Wall Street Journal, it’s gotten worse.

Within one hour of the gathering, just over 100 of Lt. Col. Chávez's supporters, many of them brandishing his trademark army parachutist beret, began moving down the main avenue towards the crowd in the square. Encouraged by their leader's victory, this bully-boy group had been marching through opposition neighborhoods all day. They were led by men on motorcycles with two-way radios. From afar they began to taunt the crowd in the square, chanting, "We own this country now," and ordering the people in the opposition crowd to return to their homes. All of this was transmitted live by the local news station. The Chávez group threw bottles and rocks at the crowd. Moments later a young woman in the square screamed for the crowd to get down as three of the men with walkie-talkies, wearing red T-shirts with the insignia of the government-funded "Bolivarian Circle," revealed their firearms. They began shooting indiscriminately into the multitude.

A 61-year-old grandmother was shot in the back as she ran for cover. The bullet ripped through her aorta, kidney and stomach. She later bled to death in the emergency room. An opposition congressman was shot in the shoulder and remains in critical care. Eight others suffered severe gunshot wounds. Hilda Mendoza Denham, a British subject visiting Caracas for her mother's 80th birthday, was shot at close range with hollow-point bullets from a high-caliber pistol. She now lies sedated in a hospital bed after a long and complicated operation. She is my mother.

I spoke with her minutes before the doctors cut open her wounds. She looked at me, frightened and traumatized, and sobbed: "I was sure they were going to kill me, they just kept shooting at me."
This is horrific—an unmitigated nightmare of vicious brutality. Yet Chavez’s iron fist is nothing new; his thugs did the exact same thing in 2001. That time, no one was punished—no justice was delivered. I expect the same with this atrocity as well. This is what you get from a leader who admires Castro.

Yet perhaps most shocking is the sanction given by former president Jimmy Carter to a fraudulent election. Carter was part of a team of foreign observers sent to monitor the Venezuelan referendum. His oversight was essential to insure its integrity. Rather than investigate the many claims of massive fraud, reports indicate that Carter simply took the Chavez government’s word that the vote tallies were honest and left the country. The evil of Carter’s failure to act in Venezuela ranks up there with his failure to act against the Iranian Ayatollahs in 1979.

It is axiomatic that there will be fraud in an election of a Marxist to power. Dishonesty, and brutality are the essential characteristics of the proletariat revolution. It is appalling that Cater turned a blind eye to it—that he turned a blind eye to Thor Halvorssen’s mother as she lay bleeding in the streets from the hand of a ruthless tyrant.

My thoughts are with Halvorssen and his family. I wish them safety—and justice.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 9:56 AM | donate | link | |

Monday, August 16, 2004::

Rights and Reason: Housecleaning 

I've decided to cut the Volokh Conspiracy from the blogroll due to the addition of GMU law professor Todd Zywicki to the list of conspirators. Zywicki just returned from a stint at the Federal Trade Commission, an organization he praised in a post he wrote this Saturday:

Debbie Majoras takes over as Acting Chair of the FTC, along with Jon Leibowitz. Both are very able lawyers and people of great character, smarts, and integrity. Which will be needed, of course, to help the Commission recover from the "Zywicki interregnum." Seriously, Majoras and Leibowitz are excellent choices to continue the amazing successes of the FTC over the past few years, under the leadership first of my new colleague Bob Pitofsky and then my old colleague Tim Muris.
Amazing successes? Majoras was a key figure on the government side in the Microsoft antitrust case settlement—the final act in a case that should never have been argued in the first place. Both Majoras and Muris have been instrumental in denying the rights of physicians to negotiate as a group with HMO’s. And Pitofsky, in testimony before Congress, posed this precious gem of a hypothetical:

All of the doctors in Elgin, Illinois, get together over lunch and say, "We are not making enough money, our kids are going to expensive colleges, and we are not driving the luxury car that we prefer. Let's go to this one HMO that is committed to cost containment, and we will say we are going on strike. Unless you pay us twice as much money, we are going on strike. We are not going to take care of people in your organization."
So wanting to send one’s children to "expensive" colleges and drive the luxury car of one’s preference is an indictment of the free market? Working toward the good life is a sign of avarice? From this, doctors lose the right to communicate with other doctors as they negotiate their fees?

These people Zywicki goads over are not just bad—they are appalling, ideologically committed opponents to individual rights and economic freedom. Zywicki’s praise for them symbolizes precisely what is wrong today with the intellectual leadership on the right. If the leadership of the FTC can be praised as good, anyone can do anything and somehow still be a proponent of freedom. Given Zywicki’s intellectual credentials, he ought to know better.

Blogs come in all strips and the inclusion of one on our blogroll is not an endorsement; the blogs CAC links to indicate our interests, not our agreement. Still, CAC does not link to enemies. One of the greatest threats today in the realm of ideas are the proverbial wolves in sheep’s clothing—those who say they support freedom and then act against it. There is nothing good to say about the FTC or its leadership. The laws that animate it are morally bankrupt and should be held to be unconstitutional. We don’t pretend otherwise and play chummy with "colleagues" who act with impunity against businessmen. Neither should anyone else.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 1:29 PM | donate | link | |

The War: A True Statement 

Cox and Forkum get it right again here, here and here.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 12:47 PM | donate | link | |

 

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