In Defense of Tattoo Freedom?

Humor, Political Correctness, Pop Culture
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The more I think about it, the less respect I have for the trite, and supposedly pragmatic, attack some people make on tattoos. It goes something like this: “How will that look when you’re 80?”

Basically, who gives a rat’s ass?

My suspicion is that by the time one gets to 80 years old, other areas of concern–like pooping regularly without help and figuring out whence that scratchy hair in strange places came–will dominate. You won’t be worried about whether or not your Celtic Cross still looks just as good as it used to!

The condition of your tats, and frankly, what anyone else thinks about how they look, won’t be in the Top 25 Things About Which to Worry. On top of that, let’s say you got that tattoo at 30. I submit that 50+ years of enjoyment ain’t too bad. Of course, YMMV.

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‘Hispanic’ vs. ‘White’

Political Correctness, Racism, Uncategorized, Vulgar Politics
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As a Hispanic, watching the media’s use of terms like “white” and “Hispanic” and “Latino” in the Zimmerman-Martin case has been an occasion for much eye-rolling. The way the press uses these terms betrays just how completely ignorant most reporters and talking heads are about even the basics of ethnicity and race in this country. Also, it’s a fair bet that the “journalists” at CNN and NBC have never actually seen a Hispanic who wasn’t scrubbing toilets or peeling potatoes back at the reporters’ Chevy Chase estates, so they can be forgiven for being so clueless on this matter. Our media elite might have to leave Martha’s Vineyard to actually meet a Hispanic who didn’t fit their preconceived notions of race and ethnicity.

With the Zimmerman-Martin case, Zimmerman is labeled as simply white, in spite of his claims of Hispanic heritage, because that’s what the media has determined will produce the most fertile ground for “racial” conflict. Had Zimmerman been the victim of a shooting, and the shooter were also white, then Zimmerman would of course then be labeled Latino, and the case would then be a national story on the oppression of Latino persons of color by whites in this country. In fact, Zimmerman is pretty obviously white or perhaps mestizo. What is not deniable however that he is also Hispanic. I don’t know why this is so hard for the media to grasp, but let’s just make this clear: According to anthropologists, ethnologists, historians, and census takers, “Hispanic” or “Latino” is not a racial designation. It is a term that denotes ethnicity.

Hispanics can be of any race. There are white Hispanics, black Hispanics, and even Asian Hispanics. Examples would be former Mexican president Vicente Fox, Cuban musician Ibrahim Ferrer, and former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, respectively. There are also, of course, mestizo Hispanics, such as Benito Juarez. …

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Fears of Decentralization

History, Immigration, Legal System, Libertarian Theory, Police Statism, Political Correctness, Racism, Statism, Taxation, The Left, The Right, Vulgar Politics
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Many libertarians, perhaps most notably Thomas E. Woods, support the decentralization of power from the federal government, including the power of nullification. Many people fear and denounce this power, often because they like the immense power of the central state and are supporters of big government. There are, however, some very real concerns by people who desire freedom as their highest political goal. A simple question, which is asked in various forms is “if decentralization leads to more freedom, why did African slavery thrive in a more decentralized America, and only go away (well, sort of) when the central state forced it to go away?” Similar statements could be said of Jim Crow.

Tom Woods briefly addresses a critical point which bears emphasis: a major problem with decentralization is that decentralizing power may have huge negative effects for people who cannot vote.  The very people who are most obsessed with them not having political power are the people who are most empowered by the receding power of the central state. This points to the people that libertarian activists should concentrate on protecting: non-citizens (including both legal and illegal immigrants) and convicted felons in states which strip them of the franchise. As most minorities have the ability to exercise the vote, the greatest evils of the past have no chance of being repeated. And some unprecedented benefits may come about. Without the significant support of the federal government, individual states could not maintain the murderous drug war at the levels at which it is currently prosecuted.  Family and morals-destroying welfare programs would have to be greatly scaled back without the ability to print money. Taxes would have to be levied to pay for these things, forcing citizens to carefully evaluate just how much they wish to impoverish themselves in the attempt to eradicate various victimless crimes.

The benefits don’t end there. Freedom would be catching in this country for several reasons. Our national myths support the value of freedom. The proximity of states and the freedom of movement among them, in the face of massive differences in the amount of liberty inside them, would mean that the most inventive, industrious people would tend to leave less free areas and go to more free ones. This would impoverish the most oppressive states, further pressuring them to liberate. Perhaps the single most important factor which would allow liberty to really catch in the United States is that the US military would not be looking to crush these efforts, as it does in other countries. If liberty is to be permitted by any government, it is likely that it will have to be permitted in the USA, as the American government is among the world’s most fervent supporters of foisting government on people, whether they like it or not, in the name of “stability.”

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Hayden Responds to “Climate Contrarians Ignore Overwhelming Evidence”

Environment, Political Correctness, Science, Technology
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Physicist Howard Hayden, a staunch advocate of sound energy policy, sent me a copy of his scathing letter to the Wall Street Journal in response to Climate Contrarians Ignore Overwhelming Evidence, a global warming screed by Prof. Michael E. Mann. It was not published, but the text of the email is appended below, with permission. Hayden is also author of the books A Primer on CO2 and Climate and the recent Bass Ackwards: How Climate Alarmists Confuse Cause with Effect, among others. See also my previous post, Physicist Howard Hayden’s one-letter disproof of global warming claims.

As noted in my post Access to Energy, Hayden helped the late, great Petr Beckmann found the dissident physics journal Galilean Electrodynamics (brochures and further Beckmann info here; further dissident physics links). Hayden later began to publish his own pro-energy newsletter, The Energy Advocate, following in the footsteps of Beckmann’s own journal Access to EnergyI love Hayden’s email sign-off, “People will do anything to save the world … except take a course in science.”

Here’s the letter:

***

December 5, 2011

Editor
Wall Street Journal

Re:  Michael Mann:  Climate Contrarians Ignore Overwhelming Evidence

Dear Editor:

One of the problems with being brilliant far beyond the rest of humanity is that you go through school so fast that you manage to skip a few things along the way.  The Geniuses of Deep Science (GODS), such as Michael Mann and the railway engineer who heads the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are in that category.

While we peons were in grade school learning about the Vikings settling Greenland in the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), the GODS were studying advanced electrodynamics and quantum mechanics. In our art courses we studied paintings from the Little Ice Age (LIA), but the GODS skipped that to concentrate on the Standard Model and string theory.

Not only did the GODS skip over basic science classes, they mastered the art of focusing people’s minds.  They were so good at the craft that they convinced their lesser colleagues and the Nobel Committee that one study of tree rings could supplant thousands of papers in geology journals, paintings in art galleries, and records of crop production from around the world.  Gone was the MWP.  Gone was the LIA.  Who needs that stuff, anyway?

The GODS even invented a new kind of hockey-stick statistics that is so brilliant that a committee of ordinary professors of statistics couldn’t even understand it, so they called it faulty.

You and I might try to draw a connection between CO2 concentration and temperature by making a kind of freshman-algebra graph with a measure of CO2 on one axis and temperature rise on the other.  But the GODS are so superior that they’ve never had to stoop to such childish maneuvers.

With the release of two sets of Climategate emails, the GODS have lost a little luster, but they should be able to hide the decline.

Best Regards,

Howard C. Hayden

Prof. Emeritus of Physics, UConn

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Another DeLong Cheap Shot

Finance, Political Correctness, The Left, Vulgar Politics
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Economist Brad DeLong has come out swinging against Austrian economics again, and once again he’s punched himself in the face. But he’s too numb to realize it. There’s a great response on the Mises Economics Blog by Jonathan Catalán, and I take a stab on my site, Wirkman Netizen.

It’s interesting that neither Catalán nor I attack, in our respective longer efforts, the worst calumny of DeLong’s, his insinuation that the Austrian distrust of fiat money comes down to anti-Semitism: “[I]n its scarier moments this train of thought slides over to: ‘good German engineers (and workers); bad Jewish financiers.’”

Since Mises was a Jew, and was treated badly for anti-Semitic reasons at times — why does DeLong think Mises left Austria? — and that  Mises never, ever supported anti-Semitism (nor did Hayek, for that matter), this is especially vile. It’s just another example of those leaning left (which means: technocrats who mislabel themselves as “liberals” and “progressives”) playing the racism/anti-semitism card when they lack a good hand.

DeLong should be ashamed of himself. But, then, one of the perks of being in the managerial class of the technocratic state means never having to say you are sorry.

 

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