D’oh!
I am writing something for a Tea Party-type audience, and had this intro to Hayek:
One of the scourges of the 20th century was the arrogant belief by many intellectuals that they could overturn the inherited social order and remake society from scratch. In their view, if the existing customs and social practices couldn’t be justified on a purely “rationalist” basis, then they were obviously obsolete and should be jettisoned in favor of new, “scientific” principles.
As I was writing, I could only think of one book [.pdf].
Stock Market Shenanigans
I felt like some old-school angry white man ranting and tuned in to Michael Savage on the way home from my lecture on banking. He said he couldn’t believe everyone had just accepted that there was a computer glitch and that’s why the stock market tanked (briefly) last week. Savage claimed that the circuit breakers are turned off in the last half hour of trading, and that the market started tanking precisely at 2:30pm.
Does anyone know if that’s true? This CNN FAQ is consistent with Savage’s claims, but not decisive.
Murphy Double Play
* I put the CBO’s March 5 budget projections in context in the Buffalo News.
* I still haven’t found the video of the Tea Party speech; I’m thinking maybe it was a special moment for the 3,000 (?) people still in the arena. But here’s the video (though it starts after my opening jokes) of my talk at Nashville’s “End the Fed” rally. You can’t see but I am talking to about 35 people across the street, who are lined up outside the Fed building. And if you’re interested, in a future post I can explain my powers of levitation. I find that speaking while parallel to the ground keeps people’s attention focused on you, instead of the cars driving by.
“And if there were a God, he certainly wouldn’t care about me!”
I have heard a variant on the above from several different atheists / agnostics. The comment has always been stated matter-of-factly, as if it were self-evident that any “rational” person would agree that an omniscient, omnipotent being would have much better things to do than to concern itself with the piddly goings-on at the tiny blue oblong spheroid revolving around a run-of-the-mill star in the Milky Way.
But that’s insane! You’re telling me if the Hubble found (a) a new quasar and (b) evidence of skyscrapers on Mars, that it would merely reflect our narcissism (“Ooooh, sentient beings just like us!!”) to focus on the apparent discovery of intelligent life?
There are two competing themes at work when it comes to evaluating the human race, and both the scientific atheist and the Christian incorporate both themes. I’m of course generalizing but here goes:
(A) The scientific atheist thinks there is ultimately no “reason” for us to be here, and no meaning to life. Officially, he endorses some variant of secular humanism and possibly even existentialism, because he senses that the pure Darwinian story leads to hopelessness and despair. But in moments of candor, he does admit that humans are worthless and disgusting.
(B) The Christian believes we are God’s children and that He considers us lovable, in fact infinitely so. We are the most special of His creations, the crowning jewel of the universe. The mysteries of Mother Nature are intriguing, and the properties of higher mathematics are amazing, but the relations of humans–especially their capacity for love–are far more profound and important. It is true, left to our own devices we are utterly depraved, but God rescued us from ourselves and showed us the path to come closer to what we are capable of.
As I say, the above worldviews are actually pretty similar, insofar as they view human beings. The one major difference is that the atheist doesn’t believe the entire universe, including humans, was created by an intelligent, loving consciousness, whereas the Christian does.
That’s kind of a big deal.
And when it comes to your evaluation of your own worth, if you think a God wouldn’t care about someone like you, then I have to inform you that you are simply mistaken. Knowing literally everything about you, God in fact loves you more than you can possibly comprehend. If you think that’s wrong, then you should reevaluate your reasoning, because He has told us that this is the case.
The Best Bill Hicks Clip
For Rothbardians who don’t know him, this is Hicks at his finest (naughty words, watch out):
American: The Bill Hicks Story
Sorry, I forgot who emailed me this…but thanks, and here ya go folks. I didn’t appreciate Bill Hicks when I was younger and saw his clips on Comedy Central’s “Stand Up, Stand Up,” but now of course I totally “get it,” as they say. I don’t think he’s nearly as funny as Carlin, but he’s definitely an interesting guy. (Watch out, naughty words in the trailer.)
Join Us In Iowa!
Man I really have to get better about giving you folks notice on these things. Anyway, I don’t need to invite you to the upcoming Campaign for Liberty event in Des Moines (this Friday through Sunday, May 14-16), because this guy is a bit more famous:
(HT2 Tom Woods who notified me of the video. Tom is also going to be there. And of course, if you can’t make the Iowa event, you can catch Tom and me in Nashville in July.)
My Week in Haiti: Intro
During the last week of April 2010, I was in Haiti in the city of Leogane, the epicenter of the earthquake. (Note that some bloggers, if I recall correctly, stated that Port au Prince was the epicenter of the quake, but it was actually much closer to Leogane, which is 18 miles west of PAP.)
Over the next few months I will be blogging about various aspects of my experience. In this introductory post, I just want to lay out the basics and give some of the pictures of the base camp.
In order to make sense of my stories, you need to know that I felt a religious conviction that I was supposed to go to Haiti. I am not trying to make this a spiritual set of posts so I won’t elaborate, but it’s not that I thought going was a “rational” thing to do. (You need to understand this in order to make sense of some of my complaints/worries later on in this series.)
I originally tried to go to Haiti with a religious group, but couldn’t find a good fit. I ended up registering with Hands On Disaster Response (HODR); they describe their Project Leogane here.
At the outset, let me say this: THESE GUYS ARE THE REAL DEAL. During my visit, there were about 85 or so volunteers sleeping in our base camp at any given time. (Every day there would be a turnover of 2-3 people.) I can attest that I have never seen such a concentrated group of hard workers in my life.
On any given day, I would say at least 20 people spent 7 hours in truly hard labor, using sledgehammers, pickaxes, wheelbarrows, and shovels to break up large concrete rubble and remove it from people’s land. Many of the Leogane residents lost their homes in the quake, and they were living adjacent to their former houses in tents sent up by relief organizations. They couldn’t even think of rebuilding their houses, because a huge pile of rubble sat on their land and they didn’t have the tools to tackle it.
As I say, on any given day at least 20 HODR people would work from 7:30 – 11:30, and then from 1:30 – 4:30, at these sites. (I know the times quite well because when you are on such a project, you are intimately aware of how long you have to keep yourself alive before lunchtime and then dinner time.) During my week, I think it broke 100 degrees on at least 3 of the days. One guy had to go to the Port au Prince hospital because of dehydration, and another guy collapsed at the site.
The other volunteers performed serious work too, but not as challenging as the rubble work. (We actually used rubble as a verb; e.g. “Did you rubble this morning? You look like crap.”) One day I spent at “ShelterQuest” and glued a bunch of PVC piping and joints together. Some guys from upstate New York had figured out a way to use PVC and the sheets you would wrap around your boat, in order to make very cheap shelters (for schools and living).
Also, the base itself was quite Spartan. It was a ruined hospital that was open air. A bunch of us slept in bunk beds that was under a roof, but the roof in the middle of the building had collapsed. So if it rained, the middle of the base got wet, but our actual bunks were shielded.
The base had electricity from 6pm – 10pm. The toilets didn’t have running water; we used the “yellow/mellow brown/flush-it-down” rule. There were buckets under the sinks, to collect the water from the taps. When you had to flush, you would use one of the buckets and dump used sink water in the toilet. Naturally, if you were paranoid like me you didn’t brush your teeth with the sink water, to try to avoid diarrhea.
To take a shower you filled up a bucket and took that in the stall with you. Then you had a smaller bucket to scoop out the water and dump it on yourself.
For meals a Haitian woman made us lots of rice, beans, and spicy vegetables. There was often chicken, but you could only have one piece per meal. (And I’m not talking a huge chicken breast, it was more like the size of a small KFC piece of chicken.) At breakfast if you wanted cereal, you had to use the powdered milk and mix it with water. (At one breakfast I asked a guy, “Hey, is that cottage cheese on your cornflakes?” because I wanted to get some. He said, “Huh? That’s the milk.”)
What’s my point? We were not staying at the Four Seasons. THIS WAS NOT A VACATION. So if that’s what has been holding you back from making a donation, then let me alleviate your fears. Of course I don’t know if the big-wigs at HODR Headquarters are skimming off the top, but I know for sure that the people in the field aren’t squandering donations. (Also, in case this clown made you think that Haiti has all the money it can handle…trust me, they don’t.)
In summary for this introductory post, here are some pictures taken with my inadequate Blackberry:
My bunk, complete with mosquito netting.
Our row
On top of the base, looking down toward our bunks.
No need to worry about running out of hot water in these showers...
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