Freespace

Obama's nationalism

Why does Pres. Obama think that the United States must define itself by outperforming other countries in various economic categories? We must have more college graduates than other countries, must produce more manufactured goods, must do this and that more than other countries.... Why? America is a nation, not a business enterprise. Even between firms in a free market, competition is a by-product, not a primary: firms are primarily focused on productivity and economic success, and they compete only secondarily. So why should America devote itself to achieving various economic goals in comparison with other countries? Is it because we imagine that for other countries to flourish means that we will starve? But we know that the opposite is true. Is it just because we are America and therefore "better" and need to prove it? But I thought Obama was supposed to be a more cooperative, less "America-first" sort of president than his predecessor.

Update: And he says also, that we should "we are working with the nations of the G-20 to...avoid the possibility of escalating protectionism." Does that mean, not that he's opposed to protectionism, but opposed to other nations trying prefer their own native products over American imports? Why is it okay for America to put itself first in this sense, but not other countries?

Summertime

By the phenomenal Red Molly:

The Republican war on science?

Hmm...

Why, since President Obama promised to “restore science to its rightful place” in Washington, do some things feel not quite right?

First there was Steven Chu, the physicist and new energy secretary, warning The Los Angeles Times that climate change could make water so scarce by century’s end that “there’s no more agriculture in California” and no way to keep the state’s cities going, either.

Then there was the hearing in the Senate to confirm another physicist, John Holdren, to be the president’s science adviser. Dr. Holdren was asked about some of his gloomy neo-Malthusian warnings in the past, like his calculation in the 1980s that famines due to climate change could leave a billion people dead by 2020. Did he still believe that?

“I think it is unlikely to happen,” Dr. Holdren told the senators, but he insisted that it was still “a possibility” that “we should work energetically to avoid.”

Well, I suppose it never hurts to go on the record in opposition to a billion imaginary deaths. But I have a more immediate concern: Will Mr. Obama’s scientific counselors give him realistic plans for dealing with global warming and other threats? To borrow a term from Roger Pielke Jr.: Can these scientists be honest brokers...?

“Some scientists want to influence policy in a certain direction and still be able to claim to be above politics,” Dr. Pielke says. “So they engage in what I call ‘stealth issue advocacy’ by smuggling political arguments into putative scientific ones.”

More...

Baby meerkats

The cutest of all carbon based life forms.*

*-with the possible exception of baby skunks.

I guess this is what "change" means

That things once regarded as horrifying war crimes are now not so bad.

Sinking of the Struma

On this day in 1942, the ship Struma was torpedoed and sunk by a Soviet submarine, killing 768 civilians. They were Jews who had escaped Nazi-occupied Romania in December in hopes of reaching Palestine, but the dismal engine repeatedly failed, and they finally had to be towed into a port in Turkey. There the diplomatic problems started. The British government, afraid of annoying the Arabs, was very strictly limiting the number of Jews allowed to go to Palestine, and refused to grant all but a handful of them visas. Turkey would not allow them to come ashore or to cross over land to reach Palestine. On February 23, the Turks towed the ship out to sea and abandoned it with its broken engine. The next day, as it drifted, a Soviet submarine, under orders to destroy all neutral shipping in the area, blew it apart. Only one passenger survived.

More here.

Libertarianism being bought off?

This is a very disturbing story (c/o). I am not at all surprised about Acton; any organization that tries to reconcile libertarianism with Catholicism is destined for such a farce. But the story about the Atlas Foundation is a bit more troubling.

Obama breaks medical marijuana promise

I just thought I would mention that it has now been a month, and President Obama, despite repeated promises, has done exactly nothing to stop DEA raids on medical marijuana clinics. David Kopel actually praised Obama on this front...but after a month, the Administration has not issued an executive order, has not proposed new legislation, has done absolutely nothing to stop sending armed federal agents to deprive cancer patients of their medicine.

Obama has wavered on this issue before.

Can't I just eat my waffle?!

My concluding thoughts on government subsidies for science research

I started this debate by pointing to the separation of church and state as a useful analogy for understanding why government should have no role in funding scientific research, and I want to return to that analogy now. In the eighteenth century, many people, including Patrick Henry, believed that without government subsidies to churches, religion would collapse and with it the moral foundations of society. Disestablishmentarians like Jefferson and Madison disagreed, arguing that such subsidies were immoral, impractical, and unnecessary.

They turned out to be right. Separating religion and state did not destroy religion—on the contrary, it probably made religion stronger in the United States, while at the same time temporizing the extremism of churches and making them more responsive to the actual needs of people and less an instrument of oppression in the hands of clerical elites. It liberated nonconformists to produce innovative new ideas, some of which were adopted by churches later, and it meant that churches would have to succeed by convincing people that they were worthy of support, rather than coercing them to support churches against their will. I believe interconnection between science and the state creates very similar problems—and that separating them would have the same benefits—as in the case of church and state. So far, Mike Dunford has offered few serious arguments against my position and has not shown why the same arguments for separating church and state do not also apply to separating science and state.

Coming to Charlottesville

I'll be speaking on Monday at noon to the Federalist Society at the University of Virginia Law School. The event is in room 298 of Slaughter Hall.