negative one, or why poverty isn't history

Maybe I have a negative point of view, but I think our political focus should be on the threats to the possibility of people living good lives. In particular, I fear Islam and environmental devastation, but we shouldn't forget socialist ideology is still up to evil. The obvious socialist evil today is North Korea, but I would like to address the more subtle One Campaign.

The One Campaign which "wants to make poverty history" combines socialism with liberal Christian do-goodism. I suppose it is a moral imperative for some people that every family on this planet have a black walnut dining room set and a big screen HDTV. The question I have for such people is how to create this utopia and what will it cost? If we truly want the most people to get wealthiest the quickest, the clear answer is free markets. Of course, the socialists and liberal Christian do-gooders would not be happy with anyone who points out that fact. Instead, they call for "fair trade", though not even "fair trade" plays much role in their plans to "make poverty history." Their ideologies require their giving to the poor and even those who don't agree with their harebrained ideas to give also. The disastrous consequences of their past givings has proved that "it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35)" in ways not quite intended by Saint Paul. Anyway, wealth is more a set of habits than material possessions. You could give a million dollars to most Americans living in what passes for poverty in the United States. After five or so years of living it up, they'll be living in poverty again. The same is true in most of the world. If we really want to help, we need a way to promote decent values in places of poverty. Now, of course, it is pretty impossible to teach decent values in many places of the world, because there are just so many orphans due to AIDS.

The One Campaign has an answer for that also, we should eliminate not just poverty but also AIDS, and not just AIDS but TB and Malaria also! They also want "fair trade", every child in school, and a genetically engineered tooth fairies to leave money under every child's pillow. This leads to the key weakness of the One Campaign. How much environmental damage is acceptable in the pursuit of their goals? Their answer is as always to ignore that we even face making a decision, which is consistent with their basic ideological belief that humans don't make decisions. Instead, human actions are forced upon them by evil corporations run by reptilian space alien advocates of free trade.

Anyway, let's think through the results of the elimination of disease. There would be huge growth in human population which in turn would have huge impacts on the environment. The environmental concern beloved by Socialist and liberal Christians is the greenhouse gases issue. There are of course other more urgent environmental issues out there, but they love the greenhouse gases issue because most of the blame can be placed on the multi-national corporations managed by the reptilian space aliens. Now, if the greenhouse gases will lead to the Global Warming they warn us about, then their efforts to increase the human population by disease elimination is only going to worsen Global Warming. Admittedly, the nuttier one claim that we just need to consume differently and everything will be ok, but I assume that the saner ones reject that bit of magic. I may be presumptuous in assuming saner ones, but to them I would address the question how much Global Warming is tolerable in the pursuit of the elimination of poverty? I only ask that you make an honest choice, and don't play the silly game that it is not the impoverished consuming the oil. Have you looked at the growth in fossil fuel usage in China recently? As countries become wealthier, huge increases in fossil fuel and/or nuclear fuel use will occur. You can't logically escape answering the question by blaming America's usage of fossil fuels, as habitual as that behavior may be for you.

There are some other little issues for the One Campaign. If we make muslims wealthier, what are they likely to do? More wealth means you can buy more guns and nuclear bombs. Why should we spend the effort to raise people up from poverty only so that they can commit terrorism against us? And it's not just muslims. I would suggest any culture made wealthy artificially is going to have dark habits that the new wealth will merely exacerbate. We do well here in the United States to keep our "pro-life" and animal rights loons under control, and we've had a long time to try to instill civilized behavior into people.

Black Cat Adoption and Halloween

Controversial issues tend to obscure more than enlighten. People react reflexively rather than reflect on their political habits. I wish to illustrate leftism through an issue which has not been even a minor issue in any election: black cat adoption and Halloween. In this issue, we see leftism acting to cause pain in the real world out of some misguided commitment to a bizarre principle--that black cats should be treated like other cats. To prevent the torture of black cats, animal shelters have not permitted the adoption of black cats near Halloween. Some leftists say that this practice harms black cats more than protects them.

From the AP arcticle "Black cat adoptions banned on Halloween" by Rebecca Boone posted on Sat Oct 28, 2006 5:19 PM ET:

"Black cats already suffer a stigma because of their color," said Gail Buchwald, vice president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals shelter in New York City. "Why penalize them any more by limiting the times when they can be adopted?"

Black cats tend to be adopted less often than other felines, Buchwald said.

"Behaviorally, there's no difference from the color of the cat. It's tied into this whole mythology about the animal — don't let it cross your path or some foreboding or foreshadowing of evil — and that's an outdated superstition," she said.

Basically, Buchwald is arguing for the torture of black cats in the name of removing their social stigma. The basic problem with freedom of speech is that people like Buchwald never have to take responsibility for the evil they advocate. In a just world, people would have to take responsibility for what they advocate when there are clear consequences. In this case, I advocate putting Buchwald in a prison cell. On the walls of her cells, there would be all day projections of films of black cats being tortured to death in the most gruesome ways. To get out, she wouldn't just to have to admit that permitting the adoption of black cats before Halloween in our actual society where there are sadist is a bad idea. She would also have to admit that the leftism that lead her to advocate the adoption of black cats before Halloween is utterly wrong. She would have to promise to forsake "rights"--human or cat--and think of consequence. No human or animal "right" makes a damn bit of difference when its only result is only to empower the most sadistic torturers. I continue to advocate freedom of speech despite leftist political frivolity.

This framework applies equally to people who call Islam a religion of peace. Sadly, freedom of speech also means that they too can be as irresponsible as Buchwald.

Travel Writing or Denial

The most popularly emailed article at the New York Times this morning is from the Dining and Wine section. The article opens with a celebration the greatness of Italian pork products. I suppose people are in deep enough denial that they are capable of reading this article without wondering how soon will the muslims get pork banned in Italy?

What Muslims Say in the West

In conversations, we should listen to what other people say and try to interpret in the best light possible. What we should never do is interpret people's ideas like congressmen's vote are interpretted in attack ads in the United States. The worst possible interpretation of a vote is given--even when common sense dictates that the intent of the congressman's vote was something entirely different. It's hard for me to understand any person stupid enough to fall for these ads. For instance, when any person in their right mind is told that their far right congressmen voted to help the Chinese military, they should have doubts about the fairness of what is being said. Since this sort of ad exist, we must assume that many people are falling for them. I suppose I am being elitist here, but I'm not sure what other response is appropriate.

In conversations, we should also be careful about claiming people are lying. Before I would claim anyone is lying, I think it is important to claim that the liar has malicious intent in making a statement that he knows is contrary fact. This definition would, for example, exclude Bill Clinton during the sexual inquisition since even if he did perjure himself, he did not lie under this definition since he didn't have malicious intent. (Another important issue about lying is that the word "liar" should almost never be used, except as I used it before in this paragraph. Hollering "liar" at others impedes serious conversation and is uncouth.)

I bring all this up, because I have been watching Muslims on YouTube such as Ahmed Bedier and Imran Siddiqui. They make statements about civil liberties that they do not believe in the least. They know that they don't believe it, because what they say blatantly contradicts their religion. I should probably include the sources here, but if you read JihadWatch or LittleGreenFootballs, you should easily be able to find examples of Western muslims saying contradictory things in English and Arabic. Further more, the muslims say their counterfactual statements with the malicious knowledge that if they have the chance they they will make members of other religions second class citizens or worse. In short, even a fair minded person must admit that muslim spokesmen lie continually.

A Protest by Hindu Apostates

An important commentary on Islam is being made indirectly in India, yesterday (October 14, 2006). The BJP party, a Hindu nationalist party which overall I tend to support, has made a huge mistake in making it difficult to change religion in several Indian states. The Dalits, the polite terms for untouchables, protested this law by converting in mass to another religion, mostly Buddhism, though a small number converted to Christianity. That no one converted to Islam in this ceremony tells volumes about Islam. Islam is the second largest religion in India, and the protesting Dalits are able to assess whether Islam and its level of tolerance for apostates would be appropriate for their protest. They clearly did not think so. The next time Christianity is morally equivalenced to Islam, it’s worth bringing this incident up. It shows in small way an important difference between Christianity and Islam.

I am slightly concerned by the shortsightedness of the BJP. It needs to enlist the small religious minorities in India as allies against Islam and stop looking so intolerant. When the muslims are at the door with knives and nukes is not the time for petty bickering between traditions that are capable of mutual respect.

Media bias works in strange ways. Reuters showed a bias towards Christianity in its reporting of this protest, which is understandable as it is the more familiar. The reporting mentioned Buddhism and Christianity equivalently in the article and the accompanying photograph was of a Christian baptism. But, the number of converts was 9000 for Buddhism and 500 for Christianity.

Next Steps

I've been thinking about what we can effectively do about the war with Islam, and not coming up with any answers. Today, I was handed a Falun Gong newsletter and I thought that this is exactly what we need to do. You can see similar material to what was in the newspaper at http://www.faluninfo.net/.
A newpaper would work wonders because so many people are catching on to Islam that just a little push will send them our way. Seeing a professional looking newspaper will provide many the reassurance that they need to feel comfortable saying we need to deal with the problem of Islam. A newspaper could also create some buzz in other media. Finally, if we could develop a cadre of people working on this newspaper, we would also an infrastructure for other projects and have spokesmen for the media.

The newspaper should discuss the whole gamut of Islamic evil: killing of apostates, burning of churches, execution of homosexuals, genitial mutilation of women, stories about wearing burqas, stories of being whipped for alcohol, stories of being punished for sex, honor killing, wife beating, and so forth. In order to counteract the unhappy tenor of the newspaper, there would have to a few happy human interest stories. For example, there could a story about escaping muslim slavery in Sudan in which the angle is on the happiness of getting away. As much as it pains me to say this, we should avoid talking much about Jews or Israel. We must avoid the appearance of being propaganda for Israel or being Christian fundamentalist propaganda or else the newspaper will be a waste of time in terms of advancing our views. It is essential to win hearts and minds in groups beyond Jews and fundamentalist Christians. It is also essential to present the main stream media with nothing that they can really attack. Thus, the newspaper should be careful not to attack Islam or Muslims directly. The newspaper should claim to advocate peaceful solutions--just as CAIR does.

The two obstacles are getting funding and getting people to hand out the newspapers. I'm almost certain that there is some wealthy person who be willing to fund the whole thing or that we could even round up the funds ourselves. The bigger problem I think is getting people devoted enough to spend three or four hours a week handing out these newspapers. How do we develop a network? I suspect that right-wing Christians groups have the best organization to start the network. Hopefully, they will be willing to outreach to other groups, like gay people and the few feminists actually concerned about the fate of women in Islamic countires. We must be able to present ourselves as a coalition.


We also need a website like http://www.faluninfo.net/. I believe I've seen some sites going this way, but we need a really encyclopedic site--not a blog--about muslim evil including history.