Category: Politics

In a stellar short essay, Uriah Kriegel illuminates a dangerous trend in legislative thinking — adherence to the principle: that which is not explicitly allowed is therefore forbidden.
Kriegel focuses on some absurd recent rulings of the European Commission, but his insights apply equally well to all countries’ regulatory bodies.
He rightly points out that such a principle is entirely antithetical to the American system of government, in principle if not always in practice.
His use of Justice Stephen Bryer’s recent book, Active Liberty, as an example is apropos, especially in light of recent debates over ‘judicial activism’.
Readers of Anthem and Atlas Shrugged will understand the principle already, but Kriegel makes his own case with no explicit reference to Rand’s philosophy.
And make it he does… in spades.
The essay is available on Tech Central Station’s web site.

The Heritage Foundation’s Ariel Cohen has an interesting article today titled “War Games: Russia, China Grow Alliance.”
After reviewing various aspects of a warming alliance between Russia and China, Cohen makes the following observations and recommendations:

If the U.S. and the three European powers, which failed to negotiate a halt in the Iranian nuclear program, bring the case against Tehran to the U.N. Security Council, Russia and China are likely to block real sanctions. They may threaten to veto a resolution calling for the use of force to terminate Iranâ??s nuclear-arms bid.
Moscow and Beijing want to work together because each country now views the other as its â??strategic rear.â? Given this reality, the U.S. should take prudent steps to drive a wedge between Russia and China. To do that, the Bush administration should:
â??Work with Russia to battle radical Islamic groups in Central Asia. Opposing Islamic terrorism and militancy is a joint interest for the two powers. Washington should help develop joint energy, services and manufacturing projects in Central Asia among, for example, Russian, Turkish and Indian firms.
â??Increase intelligence monitoring of relations between Russia and China, especially in national security areas. Intelligence gathering should focus on the condition of Russian forces in the Far East, including the possibility of the Russian Pacific Fleetâ??s intercepting the U.S. Seventh Fleet in any confrontation in the East China Sea.
â??Strengthen military and security cooperation with India and Japan. The U.S. should work with them to secure shipping lanes and develop Central Asia and the Russian Far East to offset Chinaâ??s growing economic power.
Despite strides in Sino-Russian rapprochement, Moscow remains nervous about China, especially its intentions in the Russian far east and Siberia. Riding the Chinese dragon may well prove even less comfortable for the Russians than they anticipate.
At that point, they may wish to renew a genuine partnership with the United States. But until then, we must monitor this emerging partnership carefully â?? and work to keep it from getting too cozy.

See the full article for more.

Free audio lecture, Neoconservatives Vs. America: A Critique of U.S. Foreign Policy Since 9/11, by Yaron Brook, is available online for registered users of the Ayn Rand Institute’s website. To listen, click here.

John Stossel has a terrific new article titled “In Praise of Price Gouging.” It begins:

Politicians and the media are furious about price increases in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. They want gas stations and water sellers punished.
If you want to score points cracking down on mean, greedy profiteers, pushing anti-“gouging” rules is a very good thing.
But if you’re one of the people the law “protects” from “price gouging,” you won’t fare as well.
Consider this scenario: You are thirsty — worried that your baby is going to become dehydrated. You find a store that’s open, and the storeowner thinks it’s immoral to take advantage of your distress, so he won’t charge you a dime more than he charged last week. But you can’t buy water from him. It’s sold out.
You continue on your quest, and finally find that dreaded monster, the price gouger. He offers a bottle of water that cost $1 last week at an “outrageous” price — say $20. You pay it to survive the disaster.
You resent the price gouger. But if he hadn’t demanded $20, he’d have been out of water. It was the price gouger’s “exploitation” that saved your child.
It saved her because people look out for their own interests. Before you got to the water seller, other people did. At $1 a bottle, they stocked up. At $20 a bottle, they bought more cautiously. By charging $20, the price gouger makes sure his water goes to those who really need it.

Read the full article for more.

In a new article for The Objectivist Center‘s The New Individualist, David Mayer—a Constitutional scholar and Professor of Law and History at Capital University—sets out the criteria by which the next chief justice should be judged. Written before Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s death, Mayer lays out the legacy of the Rehnquist Court:

Although the Rehnquist Court has fallen short of a consistent application of originalist principles to constitutional law—and indeed has fallen far short of following anything like a true contextualist approach to the Constitution—it has, in many respects, reacted against the left-liberal judicial activism of its predecessors, the Warren and Burger Courts. In doing so, the Rehnquist Court has challenged both sides of the post-1937 “revolution” in constitutional law, beginning the process of restoring an older jurisprudence more faithful to the Constitution.

Mayer also sets out the path that the next Court should take in order to restore “the Constitution to its proper place in the American system of government.” Mayer writes:

Ideally, however, Bush will nominate someone who is not an ordinary conservative, in the mold of Rehnquist: someone who adheres to constitutional principles such as federalism out of mere devotion to American constitutional tradition. Rather, Bush ought to nominate someone who grounds his or her jurisprudence in something more objective: in originalism, rightly understood, or better yet, in a contextual understanding of the Constitution. In other words, the next chief justice of the Supreme Court ought to be someone capable of leading the Court in a principled reaction against the “New Deal Revolution” of 1937 and the damage it wrought on the Constitution as an effective limit on the powers of government, particularly the federal government.

Read the full article…

In an astute new op-ed for the Ayn Rand Institute, Alex Epstein writes:

To listen to most of our foreign-policy commentators, the biggest problem facing America today–four years after Sept. 11th–is the fact that many Muslims are mad at us.
â??Whatever one’s views on the [Iraq] war,â? writes a New York Times columnist, â??thoughtful Americans need to consider . . . the bitter anger that it has provoked among Muslims around the world.â? In response to Abu Ghraib, Ted Kennedy lamented, â??We have become the most hated nation in the world, as a result of this disastrous policy in the prisons.â? Muslim anger over Americaâ??s support of Israel, we are told, is a major cause of anti-American terrorism.
We face, these commentators say, a crisis of â??Muslim opinion.â? We must, they say, win the â??hearts and mindsâ? of angry Muslims by heaping public affection on Islam, by shutting down Guantanamo, by being more â??evenhandedâ? between free Israel and the terrorist Palestinian Authority–and certainly by avoiding any new military action in the Muslim world. If we fail to win over â??Muslim opinion,â? we are told, we will drive even more to become terrorists.
All of this evades one blatant truth: the hatred being heaped on America is irrational and undeserved. Consider the issue of treatment of POWs. Many Muslims are up in arms about the treatment of prisoners of war in Iraq and at Guantanamo–many of whom were captured on battlefields trying to kill Americans. Yet these same Muslims are silent about the summary convictions and torture–real torture, with electric drills and vats of acid–that are official policy and daily practice throughout the Middle East.
Or consider â??Muslim opinionâ? over the U.S. handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which the United States is accused of not being â??hard enoughâ? on Israel–a free nation with laws that protect all citizens, Jew and Arab alike–for Israelâ??s supposed mistreatment of Palestinians. Yet â??Muslim opinionâ? reveres the Palestinian Authority, a brutal dictatorship that deprives Palestinians of every basic freedom, keeps them in unspeakable poverty, and routinely tortures and executes peaceful dissenters.

See the full article for more.