Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Any time I run across some piece of writing that contains the assertions that the world, especially the United States, has been in the grips of market fundamentalism or the doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism, I tend to drop everything and pen a firm response. It’s a lie, nothing less. Take the case of Ryan Blitstein, who has written, in the course of a review of a book in the Miller-McCune.com magazine, that “America now faces the blowback from 40 years of political dominance by right-wing market utopians, who cha... Full story
Any time I run across some piece of writing that contains the assertions that the world, especially the United States, has been in the grips of market fundamentalism or the doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism, I tend to drop everything and pen a firm response. It’s a lie, nothing less. Take the case of Ryan Blitstein, who has written, in the course of a review of a book in the Miller-McCune.com magazine, that “America now faces the blowback from 40 years of political dominance by right-wing market utopians, who cha...
Most likely, President George W. Bush was prevaricating, not confused, when he stated, looking straight at the audience listening to his speech about the financial disaster, “The market is not functioning properly.” That’s because he — or his advisers — must know the American economy is not a genuine market at all but a politically manipulated arena of criminal interference with people’s economic decisions. Take the plain and easily demonstrated fact that during Bill Clinton’s years in the White House the two g...
In genuinely free markets, prices reflect the overall intersection between supply and demand. No prices are too high or too low. Such notions express personal expectations and nothing objectively true. An exorbitant price is one someone finds beyond his budget, a good deal something well within it. In particular, if airfares were truly exorbitantly high, planes would fly with few passengers, just as few people drive Bentleys or Maseratis, both of which cost a bundle. Planes are mostly filled to the brim. As someone who flies...
A welfare or positive right is something that can only be protected by coercing others to provide it. Consider the right to health care. This supposed right can only be honored by making health-care professionals provide services for those who have need for it. In contrast, a negative right, such as the right to one’s life, may be respected and protected without making anyone do anything. To respect a negative right one need do nothing at all, merely abstain from doing something like killing or assaulting or robbing s... Full story
Do voters actually believe it when candidates promise them health, happiness, vacations, clean air and all those other goodies while also demanding they stop being selfish, stop joining special interest groups and dedicate themselves only to the public good? I doubt it very much. This sort of pitch seems to put most reasonable voters on guard. Something is up, a ruse is afoot, for no one can deliver on these promises. (Or are voters like all those gamblers flocking to Las Vegas who think they will come away big winners?) So... Full story
PRAGUE, Czech Republic — In 1953 I was smuggled out of Hungary by a professional “flesh peddler” (as Time magazine called these extremely helpful people) and landed, for three years, in Munich, Germany. That’s because my father was working at Radio Free Europe (RFE) there, as a director of sports coverage. My stepmother was doing some acting gigs there for the Hungarian sector, and even I got to do a few lines in various plays that had a character in his teens. I used to hang out a lot at the facilities in the Engli... Full story
Never have I resided in or visited a locale in America where there hasn’t been an active historical preservation society. These are organizations that impose all sorts of restrictions on property owners about what may or may not be built, renovated, restituted within the borders of what the activists consider to be “their community.” Now and then I even attend planning commission meetings where I live, just to witness the utter, unabashed arrogance of these preservers of architectural history. Members of such commi...
A central topic of philosophy throughout the ages has been whether human beings can trust their minds, including their sensory awareness and thinking. Skepticism about this has been a major challenge and many from Socrates to Ayn Rand and John Searle have responded with more or less elaborate arguments defending our capacity to get things right about the world. Just now a new source of skepticism has surfaced, from within the field of neuroscience. In a recent review essay of several books on the topic, “How the Mind W...
There are those who believe that business is inherently corrupt — communists would be among those, and socialists, too. The very idea of striving to make a profit is treated by these people as morally objectionable. Of course, some even think medicine fits the bill, or military service. For my money, the one profession that has indeed become completely, utterly morally irredeemable is politics. Not that even this is necessarily the case — politics could be an upstanding profession in a genuinely free country...
I have explored Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Second Bill of Rights because recently some heavy hitters in politics and legal theory (e.g., Cass Sunstein) have made a point of championing these ultimately phony rights. With the Democrats back in power in Washington, it is not unreasonable to suppose that securing and expanding FDR’s list of rights — as distinct from those laid out by the American founders in the Declaration of Independence — will once again dominate the federal government’s agenda. Not that Republicans put up mu...
As a kid in Budapest I read a bunch of exciting American novelists, including Mark Twain, Zane Grey, Max Brand and others. I also saw some pretty exciting movies before the Soviets marched in and banned them all in 1948. Even afterward, we kept trading the books back and forth in our small black market. They helped us counter the really nasty propaganda the Soviets and their Hungarian puppet regime put out against America through the government-controlled press and educational (read: indoctrination) system. Yes, much of this...
A wonderful aspect of a free, capitalist society is that nearly everything is privately owned. That applies to churches. They are owned by the order — Roman Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Muslims and all the more than 4,000 different religious groups that exist now in the United States — or by their congregations. Because a free society has no state religion, various religious groups are not involved in politically squaring off. Sure, there are political aspects of some religious orders, but in the main their affairs are le...
The Nobel Laureate in literature, Gunter Grass, whose book “The Tin Drum” made him world renowned as Germany’s most prominent postwar novelist, had one major obsession: How all of Germany must be held guilty for the Holocaust. “The Tin Drum” itself harps on that theme and he has continued to focus his attention on morally castigating all Germans — not only those who had a hand in the atrocities and murder of millions of Jews and others during the brief history of The Third Reich. The other day however, it came to light from... Full story
The Nobel Laureate in literature, Gunter Grass, whose book “The Tin Drum” made him world renowned as Germany’s most prominent postwar novelist, had one major obsession: How all of Germany must be held guilty for the Holocaust. “The Tin Drum” itself harps on that theme and he has continued to focus his attention on morally castigating all Germans — not only those who had a hand in the atrocities and murder of millions of Jews and others during the brief history of The Third Reich. The other day however, it came to light from... Full story
Another way of titling this column could be “hazards of determinism.” But my specific focus is ethnicity, following a monthlong visit to Europe and many discussions about just how much one’s ethnic or national origins matter. One favorite way of attempting to understand people is by reference to their ethnicity: “Oh, well, now I understand — she comes from Italy (or India, Kentucky, New York or Romania, you name the place).” Many books address this issue, and one Nobel Laureate in literature, the Indian novelist V.S. Naipau... Full story
The late Peter “Lord” Bauer devoted much of his life to championing the political economy of classical liberalism for developing societies. This is what would bring them out of their wretched states, not a bunch of foreign aid and intervention by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund or the United Nations. His friend and sometime critic, Amartya Sen, a Nobel Laureate who teaches at Harvard, had a serious disagreement with Bauer. Sen had been defending what he has dubbed the capabilities approach whereby the peo...
If you haven’t visited former Soviet bloc countries it is difficult to appreciate the devastating impact socialism has on human community life. Judging by the continued popularity of socialism among academic political philosophers, economists and theorists, it is not likely that many of these folks have ever traveled to Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, the Ukraine, Georgia, Poland or Albania. Of course, even among these people the form of socialism championed has changed from the massively planned, top-down economy to what are lab...
Among those of us who prize the protection of individual liberty as the primary public good, never to be sacrificed, the issue of eminent domain is troublesome. The reason is the same as with subpoenas. They both seem, at first sight, to be violations of our unalienable rights — to property, to liberty. So what gives? Arguably, however, when one chooses to be a citizen of a country, and remains there voluntarily, one willingly signs up for some provisions, as a matter of one’s own free choice. For example, when in the cou... Full story
Most years I do a lot of international traveling and make some observations in light of topics of current interest. So on recent trips, for example to Argentina, Chile and South Africa, I noticed how in most airports and establishments of various kinds smoking tends to be banned, either by law or because proprietors prefer it. One might even say there is a global trend toward eliminating smoking as an acceptable pastime. Although there are some who protest such “imperialism,” they are not your usual critics of glo... Full story
The charge that George W. Bush is merely trying to kowtow to his base with his promotion of a constitutional ban on gay marriage sounds plausible enough, but that’s really not the crucial issue. Never mind his motives. Whether the idea is sound is what counts. Should the Constitution be amended to ban gay marriages? Lets see why such a ban is supported. Bush says it has to do with upholding and supporting traditional marriages. Some others claim the matter needs to be taken out of the hands of courts and placed into the h... Full story
Tibor Machan Syndicated columnist It looks like some media outlets are making use of prepackaged “news” produced by the state department and various corporations. The Center for Media and Democracy, a left-wing media watch group, did a study in which it found that “at least 77 television stations were making use of these faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs).” Moreover, the organization reported, “Not one told viewers who had produced them.” It is a demonstration of the merits of a free marketplace...
So you think this column is motivated by my vested interest in having philosophy taken seriously? OK, that’s part of it. But then, so what? Some things are in my interest, and this alone would suffice to justify championing them. In this case there is also the fact that all of us have a stake in the issue. The free society is best suited to living a human life here on Earth, and yet the free society is getting a bum rap in many circles. As best I can tell, the reason is in part philosophical. That is to say, certain w... Full story
In Florida, we can witness a rather direct confrontation between citizens and the nanny state. The case reportedly involves the “owners of two local escort services — Destin’s Angels and Florida Dream Girls — (who are) facing possible prison time on charges they used escorting as a front for other crimes,” the State Attorney’s Office said. “These escort agencies were fronts for prostitution,” Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Michele Nicholson told reporters. The details are not important here, although matters...
As I was channel surfing the other night, I went past one broadcast channel on which I saw and heard the following sentence uttered by a young woman: “He was a businessman so he would do anything to turn a profit.” I caught a glimpse of the name and it was “Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit.” Then I moved on. But I could not shake the experience, so I stopped searching for something to watch and began to reflect on what I just saw and heard. The sentence in question was extremely revealing. It gave a rather unambiguo...
