Rx for Capitalism

There were two significant ironies this week. The first was that I finished the last chapter of the biography of Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne C. Heller on the very same weekend that the Democrats stitched together the 60 votes in the Senate that were needed to pass President Obama’s Health Care Bill. Ayn Rand was the stalwart defender of capitalism, liberty and individualism in the 20th century and along with William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman ranks among the intellectual giants that fought against the evils of collectivism.
Rand was a Russian Jewish immigrant that saw firsthand the corruption of collectivism in Soviet Russia as she witnessed the destruction of her father’s livelihood at the hands of the Russians when they drove her father’s drugstore out of business twice. Today her seminal works, Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and Anthem sell very well. Rand had her flaws and Heller fairly raises them in her book. She was given to black and white thinking. She could be irascible and cut off friends and relatives that rubbed her the wrong way. She did not stay faithful to her spouse. Still, her value as a backbone of capitalist thinking cannot be underestimated. And this biography comes at a time when capitalism is under the most severe full frontal assault since the 1930’s. The Health Care Bill threatens almost 20% of our economy with a government takeover. The EPA with its December 7 pronouncement to regulate carbon emissions and international bureaucrats in Copenhagen are threatening our economy with impossible burdens in the name of preventing climate change. Capitalists are being punished through higher taxes and a verbal assaults from the Obama Administration with bankers being labeled as “fat cats” and insurance companies accused using “smoke and mirrors” to stop reform. It is almost as if an Ayn Rand novel is unfolding in real time before our very eyes, with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi starring as the bad guys.
The second irony is that it was Nebraska’s Senator Ben Nelson that caved in to give the Democrats a filibuster proof majority. This is Nebraska, the epicenter of self reliance, the same state that gave us Willa Cather, author of Oh Pioneers! This is the land that epitomizes rugged individualism. If Nebraska is responsible for handing over such a large chunk of our economy to the feds, is there any hope left?
Yes, Ayn Rand could be insufferable and doctrinaire at times, but we sorely need someone of her fortitude and intellectual reach today to defend capitalism and freedom.

Obama a Man of Science or the New Religion?

It’s just not that long ago that the Left was ranting over conservative Republicans supposed assault on science. The claim was that the Republican party had largely been taken over by fundamentalists and creationists. Some school districts were required to teach Darwinism side by side with creationist theory. Other groups attempted to get the National Parks to carry creationist literature in their bookstores. The Left fanned fears that Intelligent Design proponents were undermining hard science and over the last few years, several dust-ups occurred in which we were re-fighting the Scopes Trial.

While I am a conservative Catholic, I am a strong believer in science, the scientific method, hard analysis, and hypothesis testing to explain phenomenon in the natural world. Conservatives have gone off the rails attempting to supplant scientific knowledge with a fundamental biblical explanation of the natural world and a literal interpretation of the Bible. These people undermine our credibility as conservatives and they muddle the notions of traditional conservative values embodied in scripture with explanations and models for how the natural world was created and evolved.

True science involves continuous hypothesis testing and challenge to conventional wisdom. It involves constant reassessment and reinterpretation of data as new data becomes available and as old data is reexamined. All good scientists challenge conventional wisdom. Truly great scientists are not afraid of the challenge of others—indeed, an intellectually pure scientist is passionate about finding one thing—the truth and great scientists sometimes “eat their own children” and revise their own view of the world as new knowledge is gained.

The Left is correct to be concerned about fundamentalism thinking attempting to fence in science. They occupy two different realms (not necessarily incompatible with one another in my view) and they should stay that way.

But now the Left has adopted a religion of its own that it has deemed beyond the challenge of science and it is just as pernicious as the Creationists—Global Warming.

The science of Global Warming is difficult and complex. It involves interpreting data of thousands of years of history in which even without man’s influence, global temperature changes were subject to wide fluctuations. It involves teasing apart natural and potentially man made environmental changes. The questions are large and complicated. Is the globe getting warmer? Is this a normal cycle? Is it bad for everyone or just for some? Even so, can we do anything about it that will have real impact?

Al Gore, the great messiah of this religion, famously proclaimed that “the debate is over” in promoting his movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” That should have been the tipoff—for in science, the debate is never truly over.

And now the great arbiters of Global Warming, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), have been caught suppressing the work of scientists that present a challenge to the religion of the Left, and further were caught enhancing the effect of temperature change. This is important because the IPCC is highly influential and is the group of scientists that policymakers have been relying on to make their case that governments should exert greater control over CO2 emissions. The emails system of the IPCC was hacked into and these rather startling emails were exposed. The UK Telegraph called this the “worst scientific scandal of our generation.” This scandal has powerful implications for the discussions of the upcoming Copenhagen summit and the “Cap and Trade” bill under which will be asked to make enormous economic sacrifices for the new religion.

And what is the response from our new administration? Largely silence, which is odd on the eve of the Copenhagen Summit. John (Mr. Population Control) Holdren dismissed it as something that affected a small number of scientists. Barbara Boxer attempted to turn it around and attacked the hackers, calling it “email theftgate”. The mainstream media has mostly delegated it to about page 25.

This is an issue that has profound implications for our country, our economy and the relative power between the private and public sector and relationships between nations. In the end, its resolution will have much more international import than the Iraq War. The Left caterwauled that Bush Administration manipulated evidence over WMD to justify the invasion of Iraq (although there was no direct evidence of this). But here we have a smoking gun that shows that the “scientists” – the high priests of this religion-- have manipulated and suppressed evidence and yet our scientific president is silent.

Mr. President, the debate is not over. With this much at stake and so many open questions, it cannot be. If you truly are a proponent of science, you must express your outrage over this scandal. But I suspect you, like the others on the Left, simply wish to supplant the religion of the fundamentalist right with your own.

Half a Loaf

After over 90 days of agonizing, President Obama finally made his decision on Afghanistan this week. Over 3 months after General McChrystal asked for 40,000 troops to support his strategy to reverse the gains made by the Taliban, President Obama agreed to send ¾ of the requested troop levels. This is the first major decision by Barack Obama for which he will be held accountable, and, coincidentally, was made in about the same amount of time it took to pick the Obama family dog. We’ll see how he does when real events force Obama to make a decision in less than 90 days.
Is this a good decision or not? I have no way of knowing, but I am skeptical. McChrystal is on the ground and in the best position to know whether 40,000 is the right number. It may very well be that the job simply cannot be accomplished with 30,000 and we might as well pack up and go home. Often, the outcomes of these types of decisions are more like step functions. 40,000 may be the minimum needed to be successful.
But leaving that aside for a moment, announcing to the world that you plan we plan to exit in 2011 risks negating much of the benefit of the surge. We are fighting an enemy whose very strength is the ability to ebb and flow, disappear for long periods of time and then re-emerge. They have more tolerance for a long, drawn out affair than we do. If I were a Taliban leader, my message would be, “Akhmed, take a sabbatical for awhile. Go find a little fishing hold in Western Pakistan. We’ll see you in about 14 months and we can shoot a few Americans in the back as they are packing up.” So, by setting a goal of leaving rather than winning, it is more likely that we will have wasted blood and treasure and much of Afghanistan will be back in Taliban hands within 36 months.
I also find it highly ironic that Obama and the Dems fought Bush tooth and nail against the surge in Iraq, declared Iraq lost and we are now employing precisely the same strategy in Afghanistan.
Still, I have to give him some credit. Nearly a year in and Obama has yet to make a decision that leans hard against the left wing faithful. This is as close as he has come so far. With the Democrats almost certain to take a thumping in the midterm elections, Obama will need to get more comfortable with governing from somewhere closer to the middle. This is almost a certain result, even if we have to drag him kicking and screaming.