Syria, finally

It seems that the good guys have finally decided to act against Syria despite protests from the likes of Russia. As I argued earlier, non-action in the face of the likes of Bashar Assad would only make it easier for dictators to crush internal revolts in the future. The chemical attack on a residential neighborhood near Damascus was a direct result of earlier do-nothing behavior. The regime had already tried out chemical weapons several months ago on a smaller scale (and fired SCUD missiles into residential areas) just to see what the West would do. The West did nothing but slightly increased its rhetoric, so the regime decided to move it up a notch. (This should also remind us of the importance of American hegemony: without it Assad would have gone completely cavemen on his own people a long time ago with Russia nodding in approval.) The regime's timing could not have been more arrogant and bold: the attacks were carried out while UN inspectors were not many miles away. To anyone living in the West Assad's behavior may seem irrational, considering the international environment and Obama's threats about crossing the "red line", but it's a fact that Middle Eastern dictators have had problems in the past understanding the civil, diplomatic threats that Western leaders issue. Even Saddam Hussein believed, to the very last second, both in 1991 and 2003, that the United States would not invade.

For the West, there should be no turning back now. If the regime is left unpunished, Assad will become even more ruthless. The reverberations of Western inaction would be felt elsewhere too: America's enemies are surely paying attention. Obama may be extremely reluctant to act but even he should understand that it never had to come to this: had he been more decisive before, all this could have been avoided. But Obama, with his doctrine of realpolitik, was caught completely off guard by the Arab revolts that beautifully demonstrated the power of ideas, ideas that Obama's predecessor believed were not as alien to the ordinary Arab as was commonly and fashionably thought. America can now demonstrate that it stands behind those ideas by putting its money where its mouth is instead of being obsessed with maintaining the status quo, i.e., the one where ruthless dictators are kept in power for the sake of stability, breeding resentment toward America among the common folks.

To be sure, there are no easy solutions to the situation in Syria or the Greater Middle East in general. Arming moderate forces (probably easier said than done) within the opposition should alleviate the problem America faces with respect to Islamic rebels. Keeping boots off the ground seems like a no-brainer. As in Libya, air strikes and cruise missiles may be an effective and cheap solution (it should be noted that the West may wish for a regime change but doesn't seem eager to set that as an objective), contributing virtually nothing to America's long-term budget problems (which result from entitlement spending) while providing the kind of assets against the regime the rebels never could have dreamed of. In the long run, it can only be hoped that the ongoing revolutions mark the beginning of the end of autocracy in the Middle East, just as the 1848 revolutions did in Europe.

Quiz

http://www.isidewith.com/ ---- I was listening to Bill O'Reilly talking about the elections and he's 100% right that if Obama wins it'll be because of the huge number of people who "want stuff" from the government and they think Obama will give it to them. In the long run it will not end well.

Nobel & Americans

As I predicted a few weeks back, at least the vast majority of Americans see Obama getting the Nobel for what it is worth, a low attempt by irrelevant foreign powers to interfere with America's politics. A respectable 36% of Democrats did not think Obama deserved the prize so "only" 59% of American Democrats are totally insane.

Of course polarization may serve the interests of the Democratic party because instead of focusing on making themselves look relevant again, the Republicans have instead opted for going insane, making sure that no one will care about them when the election day hits.

Obamalle Nobel

Vain yhdeksän kuukautta presidenttinä toiminut Barack Obama on voittanut Nobelin rauhanpalkinnon. Samalla koko palkinto menettänee uskottavuutensa kymmenien miljoonien amerikkalaisten silmissä. Kaleva-lehti on toista mieltä:

Sosialistiksi ja kommunistiksi haukuttu Obama saanee arvostelijat hiljenemään, ainakin hetkeksi. Heidän on pakko huomata ainakin jossain määrin se, että vaikka kotimaassa kaikki näyttää menevän pieleen, niin ulkomailla Obama on yhä erittäin korkeassa arvossa ja hänen linjaansa uskotaan.

Onpa typerä analyysi. Obaman vastustajat lähinnä näkevät tämän ulkovaltojen puuttumisena Yhdysvaltain sisäpolitiikkaan. Republikaanien kupissa ei paljoa paina, miten paljon norjalaiset, ruotsalaiset tai ranskalaiset Amerikasta pitävät. Nobel-palkinnot eivät todellakaan ole tehneet Al Goresta tai Jimmy Carterista mitenkään pidettyja, vaan monet republikaanit näkevät erityisesti jälkimmäisen lähinnä maanpetturina.

Samalla palkinto on läimäys päin presidentti George W. Bushin kasvoja, vaikka sitä ei sanottukaan aivan suoraan.

Juuri näin. Tällä eleellä osoitettiin, että koko muu maailma on demokraattipuolueen takana, mikä lähinnä lisää republikaanien ponnisteluja Obaman sisäpolitiikan vastustamiseksi.

Muslim women and burqa - not free to choose

Barack Obama in Cairo:

"it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practising religion as they see fit - for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear." (The Economist.)

The problem with this idea is that the Islamic world (including Islamic enclaves within the Western world) does not recognize the right to practise religion as individuals see fit. Rejecting Islam is punishable by death in many countries including, in practice, western countries. Burqa (the thing that covers Muslim women from top to bottom) is not something Muslim women choose to wear but something they wear because they're afraid of the consequences of not wearing it. Freedom means freedom from physical violence or the threat of it. Freedom does not mean freedom to subjugate individuals in the name of religious nonsense.

Banning the burqa (which goes against the principle of individual liberty) should be viewed as a compromise: Because the Muslim world is nowhere near mature enough, we should assume that a woman wearing a burqa is not doing so out of her own free will. If banning the burqa means that some subjugated women will simply be forced to stay at home instead of walking outside in a burqa, then this should be taken as a call for further action against Islam in the West. Banning the burqa would be a violation of individual liberties only in a world where Muslim women are truly free from other Muslims.

Elitism on the rise in the US

Michelle Obama, drowning in vanity, is on the rise as America's new minister of culture. Under President Obama, America is taking steps toward the welfare model where enlightened politicians make important decisions, such as deciding which artist is worth your money.

“The first lady made it very clear that the White House plans to use its position and prestige to shine a spotlight on the arts in a way that has not occurred recently,”

When it comes culture, America has been a world leader for a very long time. Culture is flourishing in America because it's been left alone. As any liberty-minded would agree, no authority should dictate which art is superior to others. But there are people who believe that some art is objectively better and thus everyone should be forced to support it for their own good. This is either elitism or just plain selfishness (usually disguised as elitism).

When the National Endowment for the Arts was awarded an extra $50m (£31.4m) of public money in President Obama’s fiscal stimulus package, it was denounced as wasteful spending that would do nothing to lift the economy.

If this is not wasteful spending, then what is? Special interests are going to have a ball under the Obamas.

Obama, the superhero

A FoxNews piece is asking whether it's time for a black comic book superhero because of Obamamania. (There already is a notable black superhero, Spawn, whose comic book was America's best selling in the nineties. Spawn is only briefly mentioned in the article.)

The guy looks a bit like Obama. I wonder if stealing from the rich and giving to the poor (i.e., being a thief) is his super power?

But hey, at least Obama scrapped Nancy Pelosi's ridiculous plan to include funding for contraceptives in the stimulus package.

Creeping redistribution

Socialism is being sold to Americans, some of it behind curtains. The financial crisis is being used as a decoy to push through all kinds of ludicrous pieces of legislation that never would have passed three years ago. With Barack Obama in charge, there will be no one to put on the brakes.

Robert Reich, an Obama advisor, and his comrades are actually suggesting that handouts should be given not to those with skills who just happen to be currently out of a job but to those with no skills, no job prospects (many of who are long-term unemployed already) and to minorities and women. This is derived from Marx's "From each according to his ability to each according to his needs." Apparently the skilled should be punished for having acquired skills and the unskilled should be rewarded for not having acquired skills.



There are economic arguments for such handouts such as the average propensity to consume of low-income individuals which is higher than that of middle- and high-income individuals. But, unlike investing in infrastructure, such handouts make no sense in the long run. Supporting low income individuals with no prospects makes no sense since it simply allocates money away from more productive purposes. Why support those with no prospects instead of those with prospects and who could actually, one day, contribute to economic growth which then could lift even the ones with no prospects? And if we're talking about long-run prospects for growth then we only need to look at the example of the Soviet Union where unproductive pursuits were rewarded. Sending money to slums and inefficient car companies is no way to pursue a stable long-run growth policy.

Even more bizarre was Reich's talk of handing out money based on skin color & gender. How does that make any sense?

Like always, the left is using a crisis to seek ways to implement egalitarian policies.

Are we all Keynesians now?

It's the return of the shortsighted "In the long run we're all dead" (Keynes in Monetary Reform) kind of thinking that dominated political thinking ever since the Great Depression but ended in the stagflationary seventies and eighties. Apparently Obama has a plan to create 2.5 million new jobs by investing in infrastructure and green technology. Wow, another grand plan by a statist to help the ailing private sector! What next, tax hikes and more union power? It seems that Obama is learning all the wrong lessons from the disastrous New Deal.

As several economist, in a letter to the British Telegraph, warned: "It is misguided for the Government to believe that it knows how much specific sectors of the economy need to shrink and which will shrink 'too rapidly' in a recession... Thus the Government cannot know how to use an expansion in expenditure that would not risk seriously misallocating resources."

And what to do once the current crisis is over? How long is it going to take to bring down all the regulations, debts and obstacles to sound economic growth initiated during this phase of shortsightedness?

And so it begins

This concerns Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board, a board no doubt set to destroy the United States economy as soon as possible. As a Financial Times blogger notes, these guys are mostly labor union meanies, business people, protectionists and lawyers:

Except for a depressingly small minority among them, lawyers know nothing. They are incapable of logic. They don’t know the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions or between type I and type II errors. Indeed, any concept of probability is alien to them. They don’t understand the concepts of opportunity cost and trade off. They cannot distinguish between normative and positive statements.

In the Obama world this must be a part of that grand Change, a true bipartisan effort to save the US economy.

But worse, I'm sure, is on the way. No doubt Obama will take action by following in the footsteps of Hoover and FDR, presidents with experience in making matters worse, such as turning recessions into depressions. So, will there be a tax hike?

(Via Powerline.)