It looks obvious

In today’s WSJ David Boaz challenges Obama’s and McCain’s claim that Individuals should submit themselves for the needs of the collective. Aside from the obvious hypocrisy involved in such claims David Boaz argue that:

But hypocrisy is not the biggest issue. The real issue is that Messrs. Obama and McCain are telling us Americans that our normal lives are not good enough, that pursuing our own happiness is “self-indulgence,” that building a business is “chasing after our money culture,” that working to provide a better life for our families is a “narrow concern.”

They’re wrong. Every human life counts. Your life counts. You have a right to live it as you choose, to follow your bliss. You have a right to seek satisfaction in accomplishment. And if you chase after the almighty dollar, you just might find that you are led, as if by an invisible hand, to do things that improve the lives of others.

“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.”

Thomas Jefferson

I think that Thomas Jefferson would have nodding his had approving the signs, and the students that hang them, this morning on the M.I.T. main campus building:

Signs like this, together with the very impressive donations bomb for Ron Paul today,  are a pretty appropriate way to send a message, isn’t it?

It is still long before the Patriot Act will completely reversed, but this is a very big step in the right direction:

A federal judge struck down controversial portions of the USA Patriot Act in a ruling that declared them unconstitutional yesterday, ordering the FBI to stop its wide use of a warrantless tactic for obtaining e-mail and telephone data from private companies for counterterrorism investigations.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in New York said the FBI’s use of secret "national security letters" to demand such data violates the First Amendment and constitutional provisions on the separation of powers, because the FBI can impose indefinite gag orders on the companies and the courts have little opportunity to review the letters.

[...]

"The risk of investing the FBI with unchecked discretion to restrict such speech is that government agents, based on their own self-certification, may limit speech that does not pose a significant threat to national security or other compelling government interest," Marrero said.

There is a lot to be said about the importance of cultural traditions and their strength compared with a written law. Yesterday ruling is a demonstration of such traditions backed by judicial tradition. I am very optimistic today about the prospect of restoring some of our civil liberties sooner than I thought.

Note to myself: to check the immigrations rules to Paynotaxtopia

This short tribute for communism clip, which I originally saw here, reminded me a conversation I had a while ago with a friend that claimed the communism was never tried. Her logic was simple, and I heard it in other places. She argued that non of the regimes called communist was actually one, and therefore cannot be used to demonstrate the failure or success of the theory.

But can we really argue that the theory of communism cannot be judged by the constant failures of many attempts to implement it? Can we blame the human nature and keep the theory blameless? I doubt.

Can the Russian attempt of collectivization describe as anything but a massive effort to implement communism? and can’t we deny that the artificial famine in Ukraine at 1932-1933 is anything but the natural, horrifying,  results of such implementation? Did Stalin, Mao and Castro betray the revolutionary ideas, or were they actually the final step in the logic derive from it?

One could have argued about how evil communism is before it was tried, since it was only theoretical. It is sad, however, to see that many people failed to see how evil communism is after all the horrors its implementation attempts created.

Tags: Communism Stalin Ukraine Famine Collectivization Stalin Mao Castro

Although his many deficiencies and mistakes I will always remember Yeltsin favorably. His decision to open arm the citizens of Moscow with weapon, during the 1991 Coup attempt, and his aligning himself against the coup was crucial.

We know now that Yelstin’s decision wasn’t ideological decision. We know that he calculated his chances and took what was a calculated risk. But what is easy in retrospect and the quite isn’t as easy during a coup.

While Putin tighten his grip and destroying the Russian democracy, we ought to remember and salute the brave citizens of Moscow - And Yeltsin as their leader - who gave Russia a brief taste of freedom.

May he rest in peace.

It is the end of Passover, and while we are celebrating our freedom we should remember that many people aren’t as fortunate. The most devastating fact is that we are not even close to declare that slavery is a phenomena that belong to the past. Throughout the world women’s sex slavery and children slavery are still common phenomena.

One of the parts that I like the most in the ceremonial telling of the Passover story is the commandment foe each person to see himself/herself as he personally was freed from slavery. It isn’t an ancient tails but a modern sore evil that we, the fortunate free people, have to fight and abolish.

If the UN was the organization it was supposed to be stories like the story of the slaves in Mauritania would have been in its highest priority:

Tags: Slavery Human Rights Mauritania

Awhile ago I wrote about the migration of population away from high tax states to low tax state. This phenomena becoming more and more visible, at my work place alone we had 4 people leaving in the last two months moving to southern states like North Carolina, Texas and Florida.

One of this people is John and he blog about the move:

We moved down to North Carolina on February 28th. Early in the morning we packed everyone and everything into our Honda Odyssey with the U-haul on the back and started down the road. 2 Adults, 3 kids, 1 4 week old infant, 2 dogs and 500 miles to go.

Sound like an American story, isn’t it? 

Few days ago I wrote about Arla Food, a Danish company that under the pressure of the Arab boycott published a letter of apology for the Muslims about the Muhammad Cartoons.   

In response to this post Ragnar Danneskjold wrote :

We encourage all of you to buy all the Danish goods you can.  Money to Denmark is money to Denmark, whatever the channel.  At the same time, we acknowledge that not everyone may agree with our position. 

He later added the following :

I advocate an anti-boycott without exceptions. We need to give the Danish business’s an option of not capitulating to the nutters. We all make bad decisions when faced with stress and it only gets worse when your family and friends are affected as well. We may not be able to buy enough cheese from Arla Foods to make up for the Islamic boycott but I believe we can give them options they won’t have if we don’t do what we can. Arla may give in this week and seek to appease the boycotters but next week their eyes might be opened to other opportunities by our support.

While these are compelling arguments they offer an approach which I cannot accept. The truth is that I never called to boycott anyone and I called to support the Danish for their struggle to preserve freedom. The sad fact is that my, and other, support for company like Arla Food will not provide an alternative to the management, but will only increase the sales figures. Arla Food made its decision to kneel to the extremist and to publicly denounce the freedom of speech and therefore, while not calling to boycott its products, I will not make any effort to support them.