I’ve been AWOL (even more so than usual) for a while now, due largely to my seeming inability to muster the necessary focus to take on any other projects outside my very satisfying but equally time-consuming tech job. (Given that I’m writing sentences like the foregoing, that may not be such a bad thing.)
I’ll be back when I can. In the meantime, I’m overjoyed to use this space to note that there’s been lots of activity again lately over at Bill Whittle’s site, Eject! Eject! Eject!, and to heartily recommend a visit over there. Bill’s in the process of printing a second edition of his truly inspired “Silent America” essay collection, in which he’s succeeded brilliantly at what I can only dream in my best moments of being able to do: illuminating with great eloquence the virtues of this modern Civilization of ours, and the crucial importance of keeping its brightly burning light of freedom, reason, and virtue vital and alive. By all means, if you haven’t had the pleasure of reading Bill’s work before, whatever are you doing still here? Find a comfy chair to settle into for a while, head over to www.ejectejecteject.com, pick any essay at random from the archive links in the right-hand sidebar (they’re consistently amazing), and enjoy!
(Courtesy of Instapundit)
From global superpower and world cop, America is now recasting itself as feel-good therapist for rogue regimes — seeking to know what’s really on the mind of Kim Jong Il, and ready to break bread with the ayatollahs. It all sounds so civilized.
But I am more worried now than I have been since that clarifying and awful morning of Sept. 11, 2001. While America’s policy may be shifting, the nature of our enemies has not. We are now seeking good-faith deals with governments that rule by terror, and lie and cheat with an impunity that our own leaders cannot afford.
…
[W]ith terror-based governments, regime change remains the only real answer. And if America is now living in a dream world in which there is no war unless we choose to declare it, our best hope remains that these regimes — like the former Soviet Union — will collapse from within. On that score, our real allies are not the tyrants who now deign to haggle with us over “stability” while pursuing weapons of mass murder and supplying roadside bombs to terrorists.
Our natural allies are the people living under such tyrants; people who desire not a false détente while their despots build bombs, but the genuine rights and freedoms that America not so long ago was promising to support.
A spot-on, beautifully articulated essay from Johan Norberg on the achievements and discontents of entrepreneurship, in the Winter 2007 issue of Cato’s Letter. I haven’t been able to find a plain text copy online, but here’s a PDF link. By all means, read the whole thing. It’s succinct, relevant, and well put.
Think about that heroic journey once again, and think of the persons I just talked about — people like you, thinkers, innovators, entrepreneurs. What makes it possible for us to buy equipment and goods from the other side of the world? Entrepreneurs face ancient traditions, political obstacles, taxes, and regulations, but they also have friends — people with access to capital, to knowledge, to other businesses. If they are lucky, entrepreneurs succeed. If not, they learn something new, make it even better the next time, and bring to the community something new that changes lives forever.
That is the heroic epic. The entrepreneur is the hero of our world. We do not really need the Frodos, the Luke Skywalkers, or the Buffy the Vampire Slayers. We have the Malcolm McLeans of the world.
But as you all know, that is not really what popular culture thinks of capitalists and entrepreneurs today. If you go to an average Hollywood movie, the hero is someone quite different.
The scientist and the capitalist are the enemies in most Hollywood productions. That is a bit ironic, because we would not have film technology if there were no scientists, and we would not have a film industry if it were not for the capitalists. But they are presented as villains.
Some anti-globalists and people opposed to free trade are now well-paid consultants who sit on the boards of big companies and tell them that what they do is really a bad thing and that they must accept much more corporate social responsibility. In their terms, corporate social responsibility means that what you have done so far is not social. It is not enough to create goods, services, and technologies that increase our life expectancies and save the lives of our children. No, you need to do something more. After making your profit, you need to give something back to society.
Give something back to society? As if the entrepreneurs and capitalists had stolen something that belonged to society that they have to give back! Profit is not something that we have to apologize for. Profit is proof that the capitalist has given something to society that it cherishes more than the material wealth it has given to the businessman.
I must emphasize that entrepreneurs should never be grateful for a society that gives them license to act, to dream, to innovate, and to create. I think that we, the society, should be grateful to the entrepreneur and to the businessman for what they do. Entrepreneurs are the heroes of our world — that despite the risks, the hard work, the hostility from society, the envy from neighbors, and state regulations, they keep on creating, they keep on producing and trading. Without them, nothing would be there.
Wise words from the mind of Christopher Hitchens, from the closing of the “Holier Than Thou” episode of Penn & Teller’s “Bullshit!” (Season 3):
“Faith is the surrender of the mind. It’s the surrender of reason. It’s the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It’s our need to believe, to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the virtues, of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.”
Via Pajamas Media, a video clip of comments by filmmaker Pierre Rehov at this year’s Liberty Film Festival, regarding what may yet be in store in the fight against radical Islam:
I’m going to give you my honest opinion. I think we are on the edge of World War III. This is no longer between Israel and the Palestinians. This is between Islam and the West.
I hope he’s wrong. I fear he may be right.
