Our family first arrived in Narrowsburg [NY] in 2000, as city people hunting for a cheap house. For barely $50,000 we were able to buy the "weekend house" we thought would complete our metropolitan existence. But soon after we closed on the home, we moved to Paris, spurred by the serendipitous arrival of a book contract. When our European idyll ended after two years, and with tenants still subletting our city apartment, we moved into the Narrowsburg house. After growing accustomed to the French social system -- with its cheap medicine, generous welfare, short workweek and plentiful child care -- life back in depressed upstate New York felt especially harsh. We'd never planned to get involved in the life of the town, nor had it ever occurred to us that we might send our son to the Narrowsburg School. But suddenly we were upstate locals, with a real stake in the community.

[F]or the first few months, we felt uneasy. Eighty of Narrowsburg's 319 adults are military veterans and at least 10 recent school graduates are serving in Iraq or on other bases overseas right now. The school's defining philosophy was traditional and conservative, starting with a sit-down-in-your-seat brand of discipline, leavened with a rafter-shaking reverence for country and flag. Every day the students gathered in the gym for the "Morning Program," open to parents, which began with the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by a patriotic song, and then discussion of a "word of the week." During the first few weeks, the words of the week seemed suspiciously tied to a certain political persuasion: "Military," "tour," "nation" and "alliance" were among them.

[j]ust before Christmas, my son and I drove together into New York City with bags of children's clothes and shoes that he and his sister had outgrown. The Harlem unit of the National Guard was putting on a Christmas clothing drive for Iraqi children. On the way into the city, I tried to explain to my son what we were doing, and -- as best I could -- why. As we crossed the George Washington Bridge and the Manhattan skyline spread out below us, I began to give him a variation on the "Africans don't have any food, finish your dinner" talk. I wanted him to understand how privileged he was to live in a place where bombs weren't raining from the sky. It was a talk I'd tried to have before, but not one he'd ever paid much attention to until that day, trapped in the back seat of our car.

In simple language, I told my son that our president had started a war with a country called Iraq. I said that we were bombing cities and destroying buildings. And I explained that families just like ours now had no money or food because their parents didn't have offices to go to anymore or bosses to pay them. "America did this?" my son asked, incredulous. "Yes, America," I answered. He paused, a long silent pause, then burst out: "But Mommy, I love America! I want to hug America!"

Now it has been almost a year since my son scampered down the steps of Narrowsburg Central Rural School for the last time. We've since returned to the city, driven back to urban life more by adult boredom than our children's lack of educational opportunities. Our son is enrolled in a well-rated K-5 public school on Manhattan's Upper West Side; not surprisingly, the Pledge of Allegiance is no longer part of his morning routine. Come to think of it, and I could be wrong, I've never seen a flag on the premises.

My husband and I realized, though, that Narrowsburg did more than mold our boy into a patriot. He can, it turns out -- despite the warnings of other city parents -- read at a level twice that of his new peers. Since we returned to the city, he has learned how to ride a bike, long for an Xbox, practiced a few new swear words and, somehow, learned the meaning of "sexy." He has pretty much stopped favoring red, white and blue.

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Microsoft Corp. complained Wednesday that the European Commission had forced it to hand over trade secrets to rivals, effectively giving them a "free ride" on the work the software maker did to acquire new customers and develop new technologies.

But Microsoft's rivals said the company was trying to turn the case into a debate over intellectual property rights and skirt the commission's argument that Microsoft has abused its monopoly.

The European Commission's order for Microsoft Corp. to share its code so rivals' software can run smoothly with Windows took center stage Wednesday in the third day of the company's bid to have a landmark antitrust ruling against it overturned.

Microsoft lawyer Ian Forrester said the order had been an attempt "to handicap the (market) leader in perpetuity."

"The decision condemned a company for not saying yes to a company who requests a huge amount of secret technology for the future," he said.

"The Windows source code is copyright. It is valuable, the fruit of lots of effort," he said, adding that were it printed on paper, it would take up 12,650 pages.

Thomas Vinje, a lawyer for an industry group supporting the commission — the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, or ECIS — said Microsoft was blowing its patent rights out of proportion.

"Microsoft are trying to turn this into an intellectual property case when it's not," he said. "This is a case about abuse of a dominant position, about refusing to provide information to vendors."

Microsoft broke an informal agreement with EU advocates when it brought up the recent dispute over the company's compliance with the order to share its code_ earning them a stern reprimand from Judge Bo Vesterdorf, who told Forrester to stick to the issue at stake.

Forrester had claimed that Microsoft was being threatened with 2 million euros ($2.4 million) in daily fines, backdated to Dec. 15, for not creating "a new copyright work" derived from Windows' secret source code.

EU regulators had asked Microsoft to supply a "complete and accurate" support manual for developers to help them make compatible software.

Last December, they charged Microsoft with not obeying the order after an independent monitor branded Microsoft's 12,650-page technical manual as "unfit at this stage for its intended purpose."

The world's largest software maker says it has the right to guard its valuable intellectual property, and maintains that it has worked strenuously to comply with the 2004 EU ruling that told it to pay a record 497 million euro ($613 million) fine.

The ruling was handed down after a five-year investigation concluded that Microsoft had taken advantage of its dominant position to damage rivals who offered server software and media player programs. [Aoife White and Matt Moore, AP Business Writers]

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SACRAMENTO — As the statewide average price for regular gasoline passed $3 a gallon Monday, politicians and grass-roots activists pumped up their calls for new taxes on companies that produce or refine oil in California.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered the California Energy Commission to investigate possible gouging by gasoline refiners, wholesalers and retailers.

"We must not rule out the possibility of market manipulation, price gouging or unfair business practices employed by oil companies," Schwarzenegger said.

Also Monday, the chairman of the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee won a first vote on his latest proposal to slap a 2% surtax on so-called windfall profits from petroleum producing, refining and sales activities.

The bill garnered the minimum four votes needed to move to its next committee.

"It's time we made these companies pay," said Assemblyman Johan Klehs (D-San Leandro), the bill's author. "They can avoid paying the tax by reducing their prices for gasoline."

Klehs' proposal, an outgrowth of a bill defeated on the Assembly floor in January, would earmark proceeds to provide tax credits to middle- and lowincome seniors to buy prescription drugs. He estimates that the tax could amount to as much as $190 million annually.

The new bill has won the endorsement of Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles). Nuñez said Monday that he was considering sponsoring his own windfall profit tax on oil company earnings in California.

"We believe oil companies are ripping us off and artificially inflating the price of gas at the pump," Nuñez said. "The 120 legislators in Sacramento ought to be as outraged as the 14 million motorists in California," he said, referring to members of the Assembly and the Senate.

Prices at the pump set a new record in California on Monday, after rising more than 17 cents in the last week, to an average of $3.068 for a gallon of regular, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Citing surging prices across the country, House Speaker J. Dennis J. Hastert (R-Ill.) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) wrote Monday to President Bush, requesting that he order the Federal Trade Commission and the attorney general to investigate oil company profits and executive pay, as well as the factors behind tight gasoline supplies.

Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Texas) called for a similar probe by the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.

Oil industry representatives expressed confidence that any new federal or state investigation would reveal no evidence of market manipulation.

"There have been 30 investigations in the last 20 years. In not one case has there been any evidence of wrongdoing," said Joe Sparano, president of the Western States Petroleum Assn.

He said gasoline prices were especially high in California because of a precarious balance between supply and demand. The state is served by only 14 refineries, compared with 32 in 1980.

At the same time, U.S. crude oil production has plummeted to 5 million barrels a day last year from 10 million in the 1980s, increasing the country's dependence on supplies imported from often politically unstable foreign countries, Sparano said. California currently produces about 773,000 barrels a day of crude oil. [Marc Lifsher, Los Angeles Times]

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President George W. Bush pressured profit-rich oil companies to invest in new refineries on Tuesday and announced steps against any price gouging to contain gas prices that have soared while his popularity plummets.

He directed the Environmental Protection Agency to suspend federal clean-burning gasoline rules this summer that are forcing consumers to buy expensive new gasoline blends.

Bush temporarily halted shipments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a way to get more oil on the market and try to combat prices that have soared above $3 a gallon.
But he acknowledged that Americans are in for a tough summer on the road.

"Energy experts predict gas prices are going to remain high throughout the summer. And that's going to be a continued strain on the American people," he told the Renewable Fuels Association, a group advocating expanded use of ethanol as an alternative fuel source.

Bush, his own popularity hitting a new low, is under pressure to do something about soaring gasoline prices in hopes of staving off a potential election-year problem for Republicans trying to hang on to control of the U.S. Congress.

A former Texas oil man who in recent months has advocating curing America of its addiction to oil, Bush was unusually blunt with oil companies enjoying record profits. He said they should use some of their largesse to invest in new refineries and researching alternative fuel sources.

"We expect there to be strong reinvestment to help us with our economic security needs and our national security needs," he said.

He also said he wanted Congress to take away from the oil companies about $2 billion in tax breaks over 10 years, such as subsidizing research into deepwater drilling. He said the tax breaks are unnecessary at a time of "record oil prices and large cash flows."

"Taxpayers don't need to be paying for certain of these expenses on behalf of the energy companies," Bush said.

Bush said Congress should find a way to approve permits to build new refineries a year after they are filed.

The fact that no new refineries have been built in 30 years is frequently cited as a reason contributing to soaring gas prices.

[ . . .]

Before the speech, the White House released a letter in which the federal government urged state attorneys general to vigorously enforce laws against price gouging that may have contributed to rising gasoline prices. [Steve Holland, Reuters]

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On August 6, 1945 the American Air Force incinerated Hiroshima, Japan with an atomic bomb. On August 9 Nagasaki was obliterated. The fireballs killed some 175,000 people. They followed months of horror, when American airplanes firebombed civilians and reduced cities to rubble. Facing extermination, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. The invasion of Japan was cancelled, and countless American lives were saved. The Japanese accepted military occupation, embraced a constitutional government, and renounced war permanently. The effects were so beneficent, so wide-ranging and so long-term, that the bombings must be ranked among the most moral acts ever committed.

The bombings have been called many things--but moral? The purpose of morality, wrote Ayn Rand, is not to suffer and die, but to prosper and live. How can death on such a scale be considered moral?

The answer begins with Japanese culture. World War II in the Pacific was launched by a nation that esteemed everything hostile to human life. Japan's religious-political philosophy held the emperor as a god, subordinated the individual to the state, elevated ritual over rational thought, and adopted suicide as a path to honor. This was truly a Morality of Death. Japan's war with Russia had ended in 1905 with a negotiated treaty, which left Japan's militaristic culture intact. The motivations for war were emboldened, and the next generation broke the treaty by attacking Manchuria in 1931 (which was not caused by the oil embargo of 1941).

It was after Japan attacked America that America waged war against Japan--a proper moral response to the violence Japan had initiated. Despite three and a half years of slaughter, surrender was not at hand in mid-1945. Over six million Japanese were still in Asia. Some 12,000 Americans had died on Okinawa alone. Many Japanese leaders hoped to kill enough Americans during an invasion to convince them that the cost was too high. A "Die for the Emperor" propaganda campaign had motivated many Japanese civilians to fight to the death. Volunteers lined up for kamikaze--"Divine Wind"--suicide missions. Hope of victory kept the Japanese cause alive, until hopeless prostration before American air attacks made the abject renunciation of all war the only alternative to suicide. The Japanese had to choose between the morality of death, and the morality of life.

The bombings marked America's total victory over a militaristic culture that had murdered millions. To return an entire nation to morality, the Japanese had to be shown the literal meaning of the war they had waged against others. The abstraction "war," the propaganda of their leaders, their twisted samurai "honor," their desire to die for the emperor--all of it had to be given concrete form, and thrown in their faces. This is what firebombing Japanese cities accomplished. It showed the Japanese that "this"--point to burning buildings, screaming children scarred unmercifully, piles of corpses, the promise of starvation--"this is what you have done to others. Now it has come for you. Give it up, or die." This was the only way to show them the true nature of their philosophy, and to beat the truth of the defeat into them.

Yes, Japan was beaten in July of 1945--but had not surrendered. A defeat is a fact; an aggressor's ability to fight effectively is destroyed. Surrender is a decision, by the political leadership and the dominant voices in the culture, to recognize the fact of defeat. Surrender is an admission of impotence, the collapse of all hope for victory, and the permanent renunciation of aggression. Such recognition of reality is the first step towards a return to morality. Under the shock of defeat, a stunned silence results. Military officers no longer plan for victory; women no longer bear children for the Reich; young boys no longer play samurai and dream of dying for the emperor--children no longer memorize sword verses from the Koran and pledge themselves to jihad.

To achieve this, the victor must be intransigent. He does not accept terms; he demands prostrate surrender, or death, for everyone if necessary. Had the United States negotiated in 1945, Japanese troops would have returned to a homeland free of foreign control, met by civilians who had not confronted defeat, under the same leaders who had taken them to war. A negotiated peace would have failed to discredit the ideology of war, and would have left the motivations for the next war intact. We might have fought the Japanese Empire again, twenty years later. Fortunately, the Americans were in no mind to compromise.

President Truman demonstrated his willingness to bomb the Japanese out of existence if they did not surrender. The Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945 is stark: "The result of the futile and senseless German resistance to the might of the aroused free peoples of the world stands forth in awful clarity as an example to the people of Japan . . . Following are our terms. We will not deviate from them. There are no alternatives. We shall brook no delay . . . We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces . . . The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."

The approach worked brilliantly. After the bombs, the Japanese chose wisely. The method was brutally violent, as it had to be--because the war unleashed by Japan was brutally violent, and only a brutal action could demonstrate its nature. To have shielded Japanese citizens from the meaning of their own actions--the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March--would have been a massive act of dishonesty. It would have left the Japanese unable to reject military aggression the next time it was offered as an elixir of glory. After the war, many returning Japanese troops were welcomed by their countrymen not as heroes, but with derision. The imperial cause was recognized as bankrupt, and the actions of its soldiers worthy of contempt. Forced to confront the reality of what they had done, a sense of morality had returned to Japan.

There can be no higher moral action by a nation than to destroy an aggressive dictatorship, to permanently discredit the enemy's ideology, to stand guard while a replacement is crafted, and then to greet new friends on proper terms. Let those who today march for peace in Germany and Japan admit that their grandparents once marched as passionately for war, and that only total defeat could force them to re-think their place in the world and offer their children something better. Let them thank heaven--the United States--for the bomb.

Some did just that. Hisatsune Sakomizu, chief cabinet secretary of Japan, said after the war: "The atomic bomb was a golden opportunity given by Heaven for Japan to end the war." He wanted to look like a peaceful man--which became a sensible position only after the Americans had won. Okura Kimmochi, president of the Technological Research Mobilization Office, wrote before the surrender: "I think it is better for our country to suffer a total defeat than to win total victory . . . in the case of Japan's total defeat, the armed forces would be abolished, but the Japanese people will rise to the occasion during the next several decades to reform themselves into a truly splendid people . . . the great humiliation [the bomb] is nothing but an admonition administered by Heaven to our country." But let him thank the American people--not heaven--for it was they who made the choice between the morality of life and the morality of death inescapable.

Americans should be immensely proud of the bomb. It ended a war that had enslaved a continent to a religious-military ideology of slavery and death. There is no room on earth for this system, its ideas and its advocates. It took a country that values this world to bomb this system into extinction. For the Americans to do so while refusing to sacrifice their own troops to save the lives of enemy civilians was a sublimely moral action. This destroyed the foundations of the war, and allowed the Japanese to rebuild their culture along with their cities, as prosperous inhabitants of the earth. Were it true that total victory today creates new attackers tomorrow, we would now be fighting Japanese suicide bombers, while North Korea--where the American army did not march--would be peaceful and prosperous. The facts are otherwise. The need for total victory over the morality of death has never been clearer.

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With the demands of family, work, and taxes, most of us do not have sufficient time to devote to the activism required to insure the justice necessary for our lives. Therefore, financing professional activists is as important to our long term well being as taking out an insurance policy. How much to give? Each of us has to decide for ourselves. I look at it in terms of time; if I contribute an hour of my wages/salary to CAC, then that is an hour that I worked to advance capitalism.

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

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Two Northern Lebanon [Pennsylvania] school-board members object to a revised district policy that makes it optional for a student to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

[ . . . ]

"I respectfully disagree and will not support this policy," school-board member Daniel Martel said. "Every person should pledge allegiance to the flag. The Constitution allows us to have these rights. I understand freedom of expression, but I also served in the military. Some things are sacrosanct."

Fellow board member Stephen Lum joined Martel in opposing the policy. He was the only other board member to vote against it.

"My thing is the new wording. It states that a district 'may offer opening exercises.' The old policy made it mandatory for the district to offer the Pledge of the Allegiance," Lum said.

The new wording, Martel added, makes it "too easy for a student to refuse to do it. Before, they had to list the conviction that prevented them from doing it." [Chris Brown, Lebanon Daily News]

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

We think the action of the local authorities in compelling the flag salute and pledge transcends constitutional limitations on their power and invades the sphere of intellect and spirit which it is the purpose of the First Amendment to our Constitution to reserve from all official control.

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I assembled a team from business, academia and government and asked them first to find out who was uninsured, and why. What they found was surprising. Some 20% of the state's uninsured population qualified for Medicaid but had never signed up. So we built and installed an Internet portal for our hospitals and clinics: When uninsured individuals show up for treatment, we enter their data online. If they qualify for Medicaid, they're enrolled.

Another 40% of the uninsured were earning enough to buy insurance but had chosen not to do so. Why? Because it is expensive, and because they know that if they become seriously ill, they will get free or subsidized treatment at the hospital. By law, emergency care cannot be withheld. Why pay for something you can get free?

Of course, while it may be free for them, everyone else ends up paying the bill, either in higher insurance premiums or taxes. The solution we came up with was to make private health insurance much more affordable. Insurance reforms now permit policies with higher deductibles, higher copayments, coinsurance, provider networks and fewer mandated benefits like in vitro fertilization--and our insurers have committed to offer products nearly 50% less expensive. With private insurance finally affordable, I proposed that everyone must either purchase a product of their choice or demonstrate that they can pay for their own health care. It's a personal responsibility principle.

Some of my libertarian friends balk at what looks like an individual mandate. But remember, someone has to pay for the health care that must, by law, be provided: Either the individual pays or the taxpayers pay. A free ride on government is not libertarian.

Another group of uninsured citizens in Massachusetts consisted of working people who make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford health-care insurance. Here the answer is to provide a subsidy so they can purchase a private policy. The premium is based on ability to pay: One pays a higher amount, along a sliding scale, as one's income is higher. The big question we faced, however, was where the money for the subsidy would come from. We didn't want higher taxes; but we did have about $1 billion already in the system through a long-established uninsured-care fund that partially reimburses hospitals for free care. The fund is raised through an annual assessment on insurance providers and hospitals, plus contributions from the state and federal governments.

To determine if the $1 billion would be enough, Jonathan Gruber of MIT built an econometric model of the population, and with input from insurers, my in-house team crunched the numbers. Again, the result surprised us: We needed far less than the $1 billion for the subsidies. One reason is that this population is healthier than we had imagined. Instead of single parents, most were young single males, educated and in good health. And again, because health insurance will now be affordable and subsidized, we insist that everyone purchase health insurance from one of our private insurance companies.

And so, all Massachusetts citizens will have health insurance. It's a goal Democrats and Republicans share, and it has been achieved by a bipartisan effort, through market reforms.

We have received some helpful enhancements. The Heritage Foundation helped craft a mechanism, a "connector," allowing citizens to purchase health insurance with pretax dollars, even if their employer makes no contribution. The connector enables pretax payments, simplifies payroll deduction, permits prorated employer contributions for part-time employees, reduces insurer marketing costs, and makes it efficient for policies to be entirely portable. Because small businesses may use the connector, it gives them even greater bargaining power than large companies. Finally, health insurance is on a level playing field.

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Mark Pumphrey is Polk County's appointed e-Champion, and was largely responsible for pulling together the original 22-member e-communities planning committee, and for holding this group together ever since. Mark has been a professional librarian for over 20 years, having worked previously at institutional libraries in his home state of Kentucky, followed by seven years as a library consultant for the South Dakota and South Carolina State Libraries. In 1992, he moved to the mountains of Western North Carolina and in 1994 became the Polk County Library Director. Mark has been a leader in our county's effort to improve Internet access since its beginnings in 2001. Polk County Library, under Mark's leadership, has won Webjunction's first Library of the Month in the U.S. and Canada for Technology Planning." The library also won the "Unstoppable Library" designation by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for technology development in their staff online newsletter. An article in the American Library Association's Interface newsletter told our story of technology development through the Gates grant and e-communities effort. Mark was also selected as a speaker on Technology Planning at the American Library Association pre-conference in Toronto, sponsored by the Gates Foundation.

As an interesting relic of the past, this outlandish piece of propaganda is worth the listener's time, even though the author's overconfident sense of her own rightness and persistence at pressing her points with little respect for opposing views can quickly become more than a little annoying. Using outdated words such as "altruists" to represent the forces of evil who would overburden the poor, beleaguered American business community, Rand "protesteth" far too much. Americans have seen many of the abuses come to pass that Rand, writing in 1946, claimed would never happen if free enterprise were just left to its own devices, so many of her arguments will be lost on a modern listener. For instance, the antitrust laws forced railroad barons to use illegal payoffs to forge ahead with expansion, and they shouldn't, therefore, be blamed the antitrust laws are the real problem. Narrator Anna Field's cold, crisp voice is actually well suited to such a heartless piece as this. Recommended.

This is Ayn Rand's presentation of the moral and philosophical case for capitalism. It includes theoretical essays defining the nature of capitalism and the moral foundation of individual rights, articles outlining the proper application of capitalism to such issues as patents and copyrights and public ownership of the airwaves, essays on the historical record of capitalism, and commentary on specific political events. (Of particular interest are two essays written in the 1960s by Alan Greenspan defending the gold standard and attacking antitrust.) The sum is a refutation of the myriad smears against capitalism and the presentation, for the first time, of a genuine intellectual foundation for the defense of capitalism.

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[L]et's remember what David Kelley actually said in support of this Muslim organization: "I salute Kamal Nawash for the absolute, unqualified stand he has taken, and for his courage and commitment in speaking out. I salute the Free Muslims Against Terrorism for sponsoring this rally. I urge everyone to support them and make common cause with them."

So David Kelley did not just offer some qualified praise for a Muslim organization opposed to terrorism. He endorsed that Muslim organization wholeheartedly. Moreover, David never criticized Islam in that speech -- not once. Instead, he argued for an "open system" interpretation of Islam on which the classical liberal values supposedly "transcend[ing] differences in religion and worldview" should be grafted onto Islam -- even though Islam is wholly opposed in principle to all such this-worldly values.

I have no doubt that the Free Muslim Coalition is substantially better than most Muslim organizations. They are surely not "hate-filled Islamists." That doesn't make them proper intellectual allies.

Similarly, Mr. Nawash may well be an honest, even admirable man. The fact remains that the approach of his organization is still fundamentally flawed. The Free Muslim Coalition is not a secular organization promoting rational, secular values to Muslims. It is a Muslim organization attempting to convince Muslims that values wholly contrary to their faith are actually compatible therewith. It's an approach doomed to failure.

[T]his discussion raises the issue of how Objectivists view social change. Do we expect that in the future millions of Muslims will read Rand, become Objectivists, reject their religion as well as the irrational aspects of their culture and the will lead to a better world? I do want more Muslims -- and everybody else -- to read Rand and change their ideas.

But changes in ideas and culture are a complex process. The process involves introducing ideas into public debates, popular culture, university classrooms, the media, etc. Over time, if promoted well, these ideas can catch on and provide the basis for promoting more good ideas. So if more people understand Rand's notion of the sanction of the victim and thus, for example, more business folks stop accepting unearned guilt for creating the richest country on earth, that's a good basis for promotion other Objective ideas on which this understanding is based.

And this approach means that if you find Muslims who are generally promoting the right ideas but not all of the right ideas, you help them if possible and reinforce the positive.

The Free Muslims Coalition does not seek to change the tenets of the religion. However, the Coalition believes that the Koran only provides general principals of governance which leaves the faithful with substantial flexibility to modernize popular Muslim practices and beliefs.

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A parade of objectors spanning American business, unions and charities are going before federal regulators to make the case against allowing Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to expand its empire into banking.

The first-ever public hearings by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on a bank application are drawing a wave of opposition to the move by the world's largest retailer.

The company insists that consumers and retail banks have nothing to fear and is pledging to stay out of branch banking and consumer lending.

Some 300 institutions operate branches in 1,150 Wal-Mart stores and the company says it doesn't want to compete with them.

Opponents are not convinced. They portray Wal-Mart's proposed in-house bank — which would handle the 140 million credit, debit card and electronic check payments the company handles each year — as leading eventually to full-scale banking with retail branches that would destroy local banks.

Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart already is too big, they say, with 3,900 stores nearly saturating the U.S. market and unrivaled dominance — accounting for 10 percent of the U.S. retail economy, according to some researchers.

"Wal-Mart is a company that does not play by the rules," Robert E. McGarrah Jr., a corporate governance official with the AFL-CIO, said in a statement prepared for Monday's hearing.

"That factor alone makes its proposed bank a threat to the taxpayers and the nation's banking system. ... Wal-Mart's record in communities across America reveals a company that ruthlessly wipes out important community businesses," McGarrah said.

In an unusual alignment, the banking industry, unions and consumer groups have come together to make the case that a Wal-Mart bank would unfairly concentrate power over retail and small-business lending in one company that is already the biggest business in many small towns and rural communities. [Marcy Gordon, AP Business Writer]

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The West once again has been forced to confront the clash of cultures. Muslims worldwide rage and riot over Danish newspaper cartoons that, in their eyes, commit the double sin of depicting Mohammad and satirizing him disrespectfully. Many Muslims consider any illustration of their prophet to be an insult to their religion. Of course, other religions often find their ideas and icons satirized or criticized. Yet rarely do they respond with death threats, riots, arson, and murder.

There are three principles implicitly involved in the current cartoon controversy: free expression, tolerance, and sensitivity. While related, these principles are not identical. Free speech concerns politics, while tolerance and sensitivity concern social relationships and moral evaluations of our fellows. The distinctions and relationships between these concepts must be understood if we in the West, to say nothing of those in the Islamic world, are to get a clear picture of what is behind the cartoon controversy.

The human mind is the vital tool that allows us to discover how to survive, achieve values, and flourish. But thinking does not occur automatically, or collectively; we must each choose to focus and employ our own minds. Others ultimately cannot think for us. As individuals, we must exercise our independent judgment concerning how best to meet our needs and direct our lives.

[One way ] we could deal with one another [is] by means of physical force and compulsion. The physically or politically strong would oppress others. Free thought, appeals to reason, and free expression would be dangerous to those with power, and thus would be restricted or stamped out.

But such practices would limit all the creative fruits of human intelligence--and the entire legacy of human achievement. A society based on force and compulsion cannot remain modern and productive. Where minds are not free to discuss, share, and actualize ideas, society at best can progress in fits and starts, and usually stagnate.

The English thinker John Stuart Mill understood how the free exchange of ideas in a society serves our interests. If we are mistaken in our beliefs, then in open discussion with others we will have a chance to see the error of our ways and come to the truth. If we are right in our beliefs, then we will gain a better understanding of the truth as we confront the errors of others.

Society, [Mill] argued, has the power to enslave or destroy its exceptional men, but it should permit them to be free, because it benefits from their efforts. Among the many defaults of the conservatives in the past hundred years, the most shameful one, perhaps, is the fact that they accepted John Stuart Mill as a defender of capitalism.

The intellectual standard which is here set up to rule an individual's mind--to prescribe what an individual may write, publish, read or see--is the judgment of an average person applying community standards. Why? No reason is given--which means that the will of the collective is here taken for granted as the source, justification and criterion of value judgments.

While a civilized order defends the principle of free speech and tolerance, this is not to say that all opinions are of equal value or validity. But because reason is a faculty of individuals, such judgments must be made by each of us as individuals. The value of an expression of opinion--especially an unpopular one--is rarely apparent in advance. Value is also personal: what is useless or offensive to many of us may contain a vital piece of information or usefulness for someone else. These determinations cannot be made before the fact or even after the fact by collectives, or by governments.

In recent years the Catholic Church has been the subject to harsh attacks for covering up for pedophile priests. Often, rather than kicking them out of the church and turning them over to law enforcement, church officials simply transferred them to other parishes where they continued to commit crimes against children. In the wake of the scandal, some Catholic apologists were offended by harsh, even obscene depictions of their religion. But they should have been more offended--as many Catholics in fact were--by the obscene cover-ups by their own church officials, to say nothing of the behavior of the priests themselves. Catholics should have focused on cleaning up their own house, and fortunately, many did.

Related but not identical to tolerance is the practice of sensitivity. Sensitivity means taking account of the possible emotional reactions that others might have to the expressions of one's ideas in whatever medium--writing, the spoken word, art, even cartoons.

But should a thoughtful individual take account of the possible emotional reactions of individuals as a principal determinate of how he ought to act toward or speak to them?

In social or private settings, I still might act with some sensitivity when in the presence of a particular Muslim whom I know to be an individual of generally good moral character, who favors a more enlightened Islamic culture, and who shows respect for those who have different religious beliefs. I have no desire to gratuitously insult such a person. But to extend that sensitivity to all Muslims, including the ones who reject the fundamental principles of a free society--to fail to defend the core political and moral principles of a free society for fear of giving offense to religiously motivated opponents of freedom--is to treat faith-based feelings as equivalent, even superior, to a reasoned belief. In fact, it would require the sacrifice of reasoned belief to irrationalism.

In a free society, we can't prosecute individuals merely for holding or advocating noxious ideas. However, a country's policies towards immigration and citizenship, including voting rights, should be informed by the need to protect the values of freedom. And those who act on treasonous viewpoints, actively conspiring to giving material "aid and comfort" to our nation's international enemies, should of course face legal prosecution and, where applicable, deportation.

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In Naval Nuclear Power School -- the only place I have ever had to pass a final to lift an average for a class (thermodynamics) into passing range -- test grading is especially brutal. An acronym I never got myself was RAWR, short for "right answer, wrong reason".

NNPS wasn't some slacker college course where a student could just slap down whatever he knew on paper to get partial credit. Quite to the contrary. Your underlying reasoning had to be good. This meant that even if you somehow regurgitated the right "short version" of the correct answer to a question, if what you said demonstrated that you did not know the way to get there, you lost points. All the points. Why? Because in the real world, you can't guess correctly all the time. Only a thorough knowledge of the relevant facts and the applicable principles will carry the day.

Paul Hsieh's post on "Why it's important to agree on the fundamentals" reminded me, indirectly, of that. His point carries RAWR into the arena of ideas as he points out why Objectivists make it clear we are not Libertarians. A Libertarian might, for example, oppose taxation. But then, since the Libertarian movement can't be bothered with silly details like, "Why is taxation wrong?" or even "What is liberty?" that same Libertarian might also be against our government having a military, or even against us having a government at all. Both of these stands contradict the first since the purpose of (and need for) a government is to protect individual rights. Individual rights ultimately derive from man's nature as the rational animal, his consequent need to think in order to survive, and the fact that the initiation of force by other men can prevent someone from benefitting from the use of his intellect. But without such an understanding, the Libertarian who guesses "correctly" about taxation misses the mark on other issues, to the ultimate detriment of his professed cause.

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The latest entry is that of one William E. Perry, who has apparently broken with David Kelley's The Objectivist Center, and is announcing to the world at large that he is "no longer employed by, or affiliated with The Objectivist Center. ... I left because of a variety of issues. Most of them pertain to my growing disagreement with David Kelley's views about judgment and toleration. My view of the application of justice is far different than David Kelley's view."

Perry informs us that:

I intend to take about a year to consider certain issues in Objectivism. I am about to complete a basic philosophical education course of my own design, which will better enable me to evaluate those issues. The course included working through John Hospers' introductory text, David Kelley's logic text, and the entire nine- volume history of philosophy by Frederick Copleston. (I am in the ninth volume of Copleston.)

I am then going to re-examine issues in Objectivism. I may write about them, but I don't intend to publish or post anything from May 1, 2006-April 30, 2007. Nor do I intend to participate in any Objectivist conferences. My only contact with Objectivist groups of any sort will be attendance at Arizona Objectivists and other local groups. If I post anything on any website it will be about applications only, or about non-philosophical issues.

However, I will be writing a few things and posting them on SOLO Passion between now and May 1. I will discuss what I write until that date.

I love it. He knows it will take a year, and what he will read, and knows that after this time, he'll have figured it out. And he announces this to people. Is it just me, or is this a bizarre type of behavior peculiar to Randians?

Another recent brouhaha I heard of concerns the Ayn Rand Institute getting upset with Robert Tracinski, publisher of The Intellectual Activist, for being too pro-Bush, and threatening to shut down that long-time Objectivist newsletter. I just can't keep these guys straight.

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It has become fashionable in certain circles to say that unions and government regulations are unnecessary nuisances, sand in the gears of the economy. The invisible hand of capitalism would take care of all our problems, if we would just let it alone.

It's a free country, and the talking heads on Fox News have a right to say whatever they like. But this week, if they have any sense of decency, they should be silent. For Saturday is the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

Sept. 11, 2001, was not the first time that New Yorkers watched in horror as people jumped to certain death to avoid a more terrible death by fire. On March 25, 1911, dozens of workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory made the same grim choice. They were blouse-makers ("shirtwaist" was an early term for "blouse") -- mostly women, mostly recent immigrants. They worked six days a week, for as little as $7 a week. They worked in a crowded tinderbox of flammable material. And 146 of them died that day.

They died because there was no sprinkler system. They died because the flimsy fire escape quickly collapsed. They died because only some of them were able to make it through the single open door before it was blocked by fire -- and the other door, which could have led to safety, had been locked by the owners. The owners said that they had lost perhaps $25(!) worth of company property to employee theft, so they needed to watch all the employees leave, through a single door.

There was a law against locking employees in -- but it wasn't enforced. They had a union -- but no law required the employers to recognize and negotiate with that union on issues such as wages, hours and safety.

But the Triangle tragedy shocked the conscience of New York and of the nation. And as David Van Drehle writes in his excellent book, "Triangle: The Fire that Changed America," New York's corrupt Tammany Hall political machine decided that there had to be some response to the public outrage. The New York legislature passed laws requiring fireproof stairways, functional fire escapes, open doors that swing outward, sprinkler systems and fire drills. And, having been forced to face the conditions in which factory workers labored, they went beyond safety to pass a bill limiting the work week to 54 hours.

Years later, politicians who served in that same New York legislature expanded on those ideas at the national level. Robert Wagner, as a United States senator, passed the Wagner Act, requiring employers to recognize unions. Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- whose Labor secretary, Frances Perkins, had witnessed the Triangle fire -- passed minimum-wage and maximum-hour legislation.

We take all of these things -- safety laws, labor laws -- for granted today. But they were not given us by the invisible hand. They were the product of hard work and much suffering.

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They are being hailed in some circles as "capitalists with a conscience" — as bold, visionary, see-beyond-the-horizon risk-takers, helping to finance a clean energy revolution that will wean the country from fossil fuel dependency.

But most of the those who are pumping money into the alternative energy sector — and investing heavily in ethanol, wind and solar power — are just shrewd people, who understand that it’s hard to go wrong when Uncle Sam is helping hedge your bets and guarantee a return on investment.

We’ve seen a spate of news stories breathlessly reporting the sudden craze for "green" investing. "Wall Street wakes up to find ethanol shedding Midwest roots and gaining hold as alternative fuel," was how The Baltimore Sun headlined one.

"Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates recently invested millions in it," the story began. "Morgan Stanley is a huge player. And scores of venture capitalists are starting to take a look as well. We’re talking corn, not cyberspace."

We’re not impressed. Ethanol manufacturers and wind and solar power providers are among the safest investments in the world right now, given the lengths government is going to to prop them up, and forcibly carve out a market niche for them, through mandates, subsidies and regulatory actions.

"The alternative fuels gold rush is being driven by continued instability in the Mideast, rising gas prices and a presidential appeal to reduce the nation’s addiction to oil," reports the Sun. Only later does the story acknowledge that "the (ethanol) industry’s growth trajectory is all but written into the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which requires the U.S. to use 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuels annually by 2012, or nearly double the amount of ethanol produced today." No wonder investors are putting their money behind what the story calls a "sure thing."

Real eco-capitalists exist. But no one should trumpet the wave of investing in ethanol production facilities, wind companies and makers of solar panels as a breakthrough. These investors aren’t being bold, but are playing it safe, understanding that Uncle Sam is standing ready to virtually ensure their return on investment. So please, let’s not make these investors into heroes.

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Shall we dance? In New York it depends on where we hear the music. A state judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit that sought to force the city to allow private, social dancing in restaurants, clubs and bars.

State Supreme Court Justice Michael Stallman found that the city's license requirements for cabarets--places that have food and drink and allow personal recreational dancing--are constitutional.

A group calling itself the Gotham West Coast Swing Club and several people said that because the city's cabaret law barred them from dancing with other people it unconstitutionally infringed on their right of free expression.

The plaintiffs also contended that the city's application of zoning laws was arbitrary and capricious and deprived them of due process. They said they should be allowed to dance in any bar or restaurant they wanted to.

The judge disagreed. He said dancing is not constitutionally protected expression and the city has the right to regulate circumstances under which eating and drinking places can let patrons dance. [AP]

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Wendie Malick, the salty fashion editor of NBC's sitcom "Just Shoot Me," will star in Off-Broadway's Burleigh Grimes, Roger Kirby's comedy about capitalism in America.

["S]et in a world where no bad deed goes unrewarded, Burleigh Grimes examines the overwhelming force of capitalism in America," according to the producers. "In an arena where the naïve and sentimental face ruin, Burleigh Grimes, a hard-driving Wall Street powerhouse, may not be entirely sincere in appearance or agenda. With a manipulative hand and flexible business tactics, Grimes is a man of infinite calculation and relentless purpose, further assisted in his financial schemes by media maven Elizabeth Bigley (played by Malick)."

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Please help us to understand your concept of free speech by answering our questions[.] [D]o u (sic) believe freedom of speech includes the following:

1) The right to insult the Queen?
2) The right to divulge state secrets?
3) The right to incite racial hatred?
4) The right to incite murder?
5) The right to incite religious hatred?
6) The right to glorify terror?
7) The right to slander people?
8) The right to promote communism?
9) The right to question the official record of the holocaust?
10) The right to demonise (sic) religious/ethic communities

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These are, as people have pointed out, likely the most newsworthy cartoons in the history of cartooning. It's impossible to thoughtfully discuss the controversy over them, certainly with the concreteness and depth that an academic exchange demands, without showing them. Are they racist, as some say they are? Are they fair criticism or excessive criticism? Would much of esthetic or political value be lost by foregoing the representation of Mohammed in cartoons, movies, and the like? It's impossible to discuss this without displaying the cartoons and pointing out their details in the process of discussing them.

Though some have argued that the cartoons are outside the bounds "of civil discourse," that is the very point that the cartoons panel was trying to explore; and it seems to me that no university committed to academic freedom can just categorically accept claims that any depiction of Mohammed, or even any depiction of Mohammed used in the process of condemning Islam, is outside "civil discourse" and thus censorable. Discussing them in front of not just a purely NYU audience, but one that includes both NYU students, faculty, and staff and members of the public, simply fulfills the university's traditional role as a creator of knowledge and debate for the public's benefit, rather than some insular community of savants speaking only among themselves.

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I was sitting in class, and the graduate journalism professor was saying how there was no such thing as ethics, no absolutes, no truth, no "what," no "how," no "who"--no "why." And these are literally his words. He was literally standing there telling the journalism class that there was no such thing as truth! Well...already in love with art history...I stood up in the middle of class and stated: "Professor, I absolutely will never enter this room again as a journalism student--and that's the truth!" I walked out, and never returned.

Kelley's description of reason as a "help" to life is an illuminating abuse of language. Consider the meaning of the word "help." If A helps B, then A contributes something to an already-existing B. So if John helps Mary with her homework, that means that he offers her some assistance, not that he does it for her. In short, necessary conditions are not kinds of help. (The sarcastic exception -- as in "Oh, I guess it would help toast the bread if I actually plugged in the toaster" -- proves the rule.) So eyes are not a "help" to seeing: they make seeing possible. And reason is not a "help" to human life: it makes human life possible. Reason does not merely contribute some extra goodies to human life. Reason is not just one of many alternate means to human life. Rather, reason is the most fundamental and absolute requirement of human life. Kelley's tepid choice of words suggests a failure to grasp the true relationship between reason and life -- and his overall argument confirms that.

While writing up the bulk of this history in the summer of 2004, I came to a hard judgment about myself: Over the course of far too many years, I defaulted on the task of morally judging Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, particularly Nathaniel. To be clear, the fundamental problem was not that my moral judgment was in error, nor that my method of moral judgment was flawed, but rather that I refrained from moral judgment. Here's what happened -- or rather, did not happen. I did not come to a clear and solid evaluation of the Brandens' actions and character based upon the evidence available to me. When the evidence seemed mixed and confused, I did not set myself the task of answering the critical questions, e.g. "Are the Brandens' trustworthy recorders of Ayn Rand's life?" and "Are their criticisms of Objectivism just?" and "Are the Brandens genuine allies of Objectivism?" Instead, my judgments tended to drift along in confusion, pushed here and there by the evidence close at hand. As a result, I passively absorbed a fairly positive view of both Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, as well as a correspondingly negative view of Ayn Rand, from the culture of IOS/TOC. My negligence in this case resulted in substantial injustice, not just to Ayn Rand but also to all those who saw through the con game of the Brandens years ago.

The greens support nuclear power for exactly the opposite reason they should. Falsely equating nuclear power plants with Chernobyl, they see them as potentially very dangerous to mere human beings, but since saving "the world" is their priority over man, another such disaster is no big deal to them.

But for those who still think Borders et al. are culpable, please remember that: the Danish cartoonists are still in hiding while those who place bounties on their heads are out in public (and surrounded by adulating mobs); Ayaan Hirsi Ali has to be guarded 24 hours a day, and is often moved to army barracks just to be kept safe; Theo Van Gogh is dead; Iran has very recently reconfirmed the Rushdie fatwa against all those who are involved in publishing his book, etc. etc. Yet no Western government takes the steps necessary to remove those threats. How can you fault Borders for acknowledging that fact and acting accordingly?

"[T]he moral values driving the Bush Administration's tax policy decisions reflect objectivist ethics, a form of atheism that exalts individual property rights over all other moral considerations."

Sigh. Jennifer Snow sticks up for her hero (and he's not me).

So, Mr. Provenzo, Wakeland didn't accuse you (or anyone else) of treasonously supporting Islamists. Instead, he quite rightly observed that by favoring a pullout because the war isn't being fought strenuously enough, you're playing into the hands of those who would see a pullout, for any reason, under any circumstances, as a U.S. military defeat and be emboldened by yet another sign of the crumbling of the giant.

Whether one is dealing with the "Butcher of the Balkans," Saddam Hussein, Ceausescu, or Mussolini, everyone knows that these dictators are guilty of mass murder and the wholesale destruction of individual rights and lives. They are deserving only of death and the undying contempt of history. Anything else, particularly the years long spectacle of a trial where there is at least the theoretical possibility of their being set free and declared "innocent" is a horrific joke and slap in the face of those who suffered under tyranny and oppression.

The answer is not open immigration, or a closed society. The answer is a free
society. A free society is one in which everyone is self-responsible. Being
self-responsible means you're free to make your own way, but you're also
responsible. It's the kind of society we would be if there were no massive
welfare state; no massive public education bureaucracy requiring endless
taxation to support it; no pressure group warfare in which some groups (for
racial or other reasons, never stated) could keep others out.

My solution is simple: pay your own way. If you do so, you're in.

It's becoming more and more obvious that our government and our news media and most university intellectuals are determined to snowball the American people into a socialist state. The goal has been renamed from socialism and is now called "sustainable development." The political tool that will be used to get us there is global warming.

A still life can present exquisite manmade objects, perfect natural objects, or an arrangement of objects that complement each other, making them a delight to the eye and a reminder of how much beauty the world offers.

I have a message to all of the actors, directors, writers, and artists who are constantly struggling for "relevancy" and "authenticity"; who are uncomfortable with characters who are larger than life; who worship "complexity" and "shades of gray." There's a whole separate profession where you can ignore man as the hero he can be, and instead worship the observed statistical average that can be found in our value-deprived culture. Hell, you'll still be able to cram your left-wing politics down people's throats and they might not even notice it.

It's called journalism.

First, my bike cost $500, while pro bikes are up to $10,000. Second, the top cyclists in the world in 1980 could not get a bike like mine for any price. The world of cycling technology does not evolve as fast as say, computers, but thanks to global capitalism it does evolve, and over time, the difference is amazing.

Now that we have entered the 21st century and a new era of globalisation, it is important to remember the values of obedience, duty and sharing. Your political superiors at the European Commission are committed to enforcing these values, so that each European Nation State is subordinated economically and politically to the European continent as a whole, ensuring that productive European citizens exist for the sake of their unproductive European brothers. Gone are the days of independence, personal wealth creation and the pursuit of one's own happiness as the purpose of human existence, it is the welfare of the European continent as a whole that must be embraced as the highest moral duty of each European citizen if we are to achieve our great European vision.

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