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Prescribing Solutions for Radical Islam in America

December 11, 2015/in Culture War, Featured, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by The Forensic Panel

Dr. Welner, on Fox & Bill Bennett, Decries Lies About Mass Shootings and Crisis Incidents, Issues Multi-Pronged Homeland Proposal to Mitigate Risk.

New York – Reacting to the mass shooting incident at a staff holiday party in San Bernardino, the United States government and many media initially emphasized that a workplace mass shooting had taken place. The early national discourse directed itself to gun control advocacy. Once a terrorist motivation could no longer be denied, outlets began suggesting that the shootings were instigated by remarks that one of the deceased had made about Islam not being a peaceful religion, suggesting that he had provoked the killings. More recently, revelations of how United States immigration policy allowed one of the perpetrators into the country has touched off a highly-charged policy debate.Almost immediately after the perpetrators were identified, Dr. Michael Welner, forensic psychiatrist and Chairman of The Forensic Panel, recognized the event to bear the hallmarks of Islamist terrorism, given the role of a female perpetrator – a fact never associated with American mass shootings without direct personal conflict. Such American mass shootings customarily involve perpetrators aspiring to idealized destructive masculine identity.

Dr. Welner’s early appearance on “Fox and Friends” laid out the distinctions from workplace mass killing, and raised the importance of learning more of how a woman taking up destructive spectacle crime (which happens regularly overseas) related to how Muslim identity is expressed in America. Dr. Welner relied on his extensive experience in evaluating mass shooting incidents, workplace risk assessment, and risk assessment and other Jihadi psychology and criminology issues.

Dr. Welner added, in an appearance later that hour on “Fox & Friends,” that the hallmarks of how far one would go for their faith, demonstrated in a woman leaving an infant behind, bore the hallmarks of ISIS’ modus operandi. He encouraged the government and press to be straightforward about terrorist motivation, adding that being forthright was essential to devising public safety plans ahead.

Former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett, in his nationally broadcast program“Morning in America,” praised Dr. Welner for focusing the discussion on the core cause and not allowing a false narrative to take hold in the press. Dr. Bennett then invited Dr. Welner onto “Morning in America” yesterday to discuss Dr. Welner’s proposals for mitigating Islamist risk in America. Dr. Welner asserted that it was necessary to dismiss a number of oft-repeated false assertions as deliberate manipulations by informed authorities seeking to avoid addressing violence risks and risk factors of potential perpetrators, specifically:

Islamist terror is not Islam
Adherents to Radical Islamist thinking are very few in number
America is responsible for creating intense Muslim hostility towards this country
We are not at war with Islam
Frank discussion of Islamist terrorism endangers American Muslims

In their extended discussion, Dr. Welner proposed a number of policy prescriptions for mitigating risk. Dr. Welner’s recommendations, which have since been re-published by the Investigative Project for Terrorism and the New English Review, include:

Flipping the paradigm to focus on how American Muslims can actively defuse national anxieties of Americans who witness Islamist terrorism, rather than Americans’ alleviating anxieties of attacks on Muslims, which are altogether rare
Branding America and how it has helped Muslims around the world
Promoting Muslim attitudes reflecting loyalty to America first
Encouraging mosque, parental, and family responsibility to self-police communities in order to root out radical nihilists who recruit others and ensnare young people
Financially support Muslim institutions’ efforts to root out terrorism from within communities
Promote humor and the arts to promote the marginalizing, reform, and self-regulation of Islamist intolerance
Retake the campuses from rejectionist Islam, prevent access of radical leadership
Retake the prisons from intolerant imams who groom new and alienated adherents and feed angry violent wannabees into the community
Ban investment by governments and large donors promoting radical Islam from American media, campaigns, and academic institutions
End American backdoor funding and support of countries and entities that collaborate with Islamist terror
Expose and root out Islamist contributions to political candidates and to media entities
Full security screening of federal employees in sensitive positions who do not currently undergo security clearance
End exclusion of Jewish Arabic speakers by American intelligence services, who are available but not relied upon for gathering human intelligence

A more extensive explanation of these proposals can be found at billbennett.com

To listen to Dr. Welner’s interview with Bill Bennett, click here

Dr. Welner’s two interviews with Fox & Friends on San Bernardino, click here and here

The Dangers of Distraction

December 11, 2015/in Commentary, Culture War, National Security/by Henry Jackson Society

Every day’s news now is about distraction. What is the latest outrageous thing somebody has said? What is the latest outrageous thing somebody has done? Something happens and everybody is forced into having an opinion about it.

Yet all the while real things go on in the real world often unnoticed. The situation in Afghanistan is a good example. Having promised to ‘end the wars’, President Obama’s time in office is coming to an end with all those wars just more complicated and arguably worse than ever. It’s only Western attention that has left the scene.

In Afghanistan we now see a situation where the Taliban are looking like the moderate opposition. They are now engaged in a battle with ISIS to be the dominant force in the country. And it’s not just in Afghanistan that this is playing out. In Libya and across North and central Africa, through swathes of the Middle East and further afield there is a struggle involving ISIS in country after country which is going largely unreported.

There are obvious reasons for this. The technical one is that journalists cannot go to most of the places in question. Libya, like most of Syria, is simply too dangerous to go near. And it is no journalist’s fault that this is the case. There are many brave journalists in many countries. But travelling in ISIS-infested territory, where a journalist is a prize for the group, is not worth any amount of risk. And there is also the problem of attention. It is only a month since Paris, and only a week since Britain joined the fight against ISIS in Syria, but already the news has moved on.

At some point soon something will happen again and we will momentarily tear ourselves away from our daily diet of ephemera and chatter and look out at what is actually going on in the world. But it is likely once again to be temporary. And it is a shame that our attention cannot hold, because if it did then we could actually sort some of these problems out rather than just keep patching over the wound.

FROM THE DIRECTOR’S DESK

Much ink has been spilled this week about Donald Trump’s comments regarding Muslims. Having decided he would impose a blanket ban on Muslims entering America, the Republican primary frontrunner unhelpfully extended his comments to cover London and Paris too, suggesting that these European capitals could benefit from a similar move.

Defenders of Trump’s position – of which I am not one – have variously suggested that either his position has been misinterpreted, as the ban would only be temporary in nature, or that he only proposed it to open up debate about the issue of Islamist extremism in America. If indeed this was the case, as opposed to the more likely explanation that in common with much of his campaign rhetoric it just popped into his head and seemed like a good idea at the time. Trump would still be wrong.

On the issue of the ban itself, Trump has made the classic mistake about making this whole debate about “The Other” and then labelling that “Other” incorrectly. We are not at war with Muslims. We are at war with Radical Muslims. And all other Muslims are engaged in that same war on our side. Because they are usually the Islamists’ first victims. The very idea of a ban also shows he is not serious about engaging with this civilisational battle of our time. His solution is to try and wish the problem away by pulling up the drawbridge, rather than take the battle to the other side. In this, he shares the approach of those liberals who are equally reticent to do this and suggest that we can avoid attacks from Islamists by not engaging with the world. They are the easy options, but they solve nothing.

Trump has also not succeeded in broadening the conversation, but narrowing it again. After the Paris Attacks in particular, there has been a growing awareness and desire to speak about the true nature of the Islamist threat in Europe, as it has played out once again before our eyes. With one rhetorical flourish, Trump has sent all those politicians and commentators just starting to poke their heads above the parapets to scurry back to the safety of a blanket position decrying his words as they are so outlandish. He has thus encouraged our leaders to once again take the easy option, just as they seemed ready to take the road less trodden.

But worse than this, Trump is playing the Islamists’ game. Their long-term desire has always been to provoke exactly the kind of reaction they have got in order to foster a ‘clash of civilisations’ style scenario pitting all Muslims against everyone else.

We won’t win this war by playing to the extremes. It is only by mainstreaming the idea that Islamism must be countered that we can do so. Donald Trump has made that task much harder than it needed to be.

Dr Alan Mendoza is Executive Director of The Henry Jackson Society

Follow Alan on Twitter: @AlanMendoza

How Affirmative Action Backfires by Richard Sander

December 11, 2015/in Courts & Law, Culture War, Education, Policy, Politics/by Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Affirmative action is before the Supreme Court again this week, as it rehears arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas. (I’ve discussed the legal issues in Fisher here.)

But perhaps the most important question about racial preferences is one that’s not directly raised by the case: do they even work? Do they help underrepresented minorities to achieve their goals, and foster interracial interaction and understanding on elite campuses? Or do large preferences often “mismatch” students in campuses where they will struggle and fail?

Scholars began empirically studying the mismatch issue in the 1990s, but in the past five years the field has matured. There are now dozens of careful, peer-reviewed studies that find strong evidence of mismatch.

None of the authors of these studies claim that mismatch is a universal or inevitable consequence of affirmative action. But in my view, only demagogues (of which there is, unfortunately, no shortage) or people who haven’t read the relevant literature can still claim that mismatch is not a genuine problem.

It is helpful to think about mismatch as three interrelated phenomena that could affect a student of any race — let’s call her Sally — who receives a large admissions preference, so that she attends a college where her level of academic preparation is substantially below that of her peers.

First, “learning mismatch” occurs if Sally learns less than she would at a less competitive school, because the pace is too fast or her professors are pitching their material at a level that’s not ideal for her.

Others and I have argued that learning mismatch occurs on a massive scale in American law schools, where African-Americans (and some other students) tend to receive very large preferences and then, very often, are never able to practice law because they cannot pass bar exams.

Our best estimate is that only about one-third of black students who start law school in America successfully graduate and pass the bar exam on their first attempt (see my September 2006 blog post here).

A second form of mismatch — “competition” mismatch — occurs when students abandon particular fields, or college itself, because of the practical and psychological effects of competing with better-prepared students.

Suppose that Sally dreams of becoming a chemist, does very well in a standard high school chemistry course, and receives a preference into an elite school where most of her classmates have taken AP Chemistry. Even if Sally does not experience “learning” mismatch, she may nonetheless end up with a B- or a C in chemistry simply because of the strength of the competition.

A long line of studies (e.g., this excellent study by two psychologists) have shown that students receiving large preferences, facing these pressures, tend to abandon STEM fields in large numbers. Competition mismatch thus appears to have large and damaging effects on the number of African-Americans, in particular, graduating with science or engineering degrees.

The third type of mismatch — “social mismatch” — is in some ways the most intriguing.

Several studies have now found that college students are much more likely to form friendships with students who have similar levels of academic preparation or performance at college. The phenomenon operates even within racial groups, but when a college’s preferences are highly correlated with race (as they are at many elite schools), social mismatch can lead to self-segregation by minority students.

The result is decreased social interaction across racial lines. That’s particularly relevant to the Supreme Court’s deliberations because its tolerance of racial preferences has been based on the idea that a diverse racial campus promotes interracial contact and learning.

But if preferences promote substantial social mismatch, then race-conscious admissions actually decrease interracial contact and learning — not only at the school where the preferences are used, but also at the college that the preferenced minority student would have attended in the absence of preferences.

Of course, new studies of higher education come out all the time, and one can point to some study to argue almost any point. What makes the evidence of mismatch so compelling is the large number of very high-quality studies that have appeared in the past few years, performed by a wide array of scholars and appearing in the strongest academic journals that exercise the most stringent peer review.

For example, the highly-respected Journal of Economic Literature last year commissioned two economists to summarize the state of research on higher education mismatch. To ensure an impartial study, the two economists JEL selected started out with different views of mismatch: one was a skeptic, the other the author of research that had found evidence of mismatch. JEL also asked seven other economists, again representing a wide range of perspectives, to peer review the article when it was drafted.

The resulting article is circumspect, but unequivocal in finding that much of the evidence on mismatch (especially in law school and the sciences) is compelling.

The American Economic Review — one of the three or four top journals in the social sciences — also recently announced that it is publishing a comprehensive study of mismatch in the sciences. It takes advantage of an unusually large database from eight campuses of the University of California, covering the period before and after California voters, through Prop 209, made it illegal to consider of race in public college admissions.

The study could thus examine how UC students who, through racial preferences, attended the most elite UC campuses before Prop 209 compared with very similar students who attended less elite campuses after Prop 209.

Peter Arcidiacono, Esteban Aucejo, and Joseph Hotz conclude unequivocally: “We find less-prepared minority students at top-ranked campuses would have higher science graduation rates had they attended lower-ranked campuses.”

The gold standard for empirical research is a genuine experimental design, where a group of subjects are randomly assigned to “treatment” and “control” groups. While random experiments are routine in medical research, they are still uncommon in the social sciences. A revealing study of that kind was recently conducted by three economists working with the Air Force Academy.

Based on other work, the researchers hypothesized that students entering the Academy with relatively weak academic preparation would learn more and do better if they were assigned to squadrons with particularly academically strong cadets, thus creating opportunities for mentoring and tutoring. The Academy agreed to do a large randomized experiment, assigning some of the targeted students to the experimental squadrons with strong peers, and other students to “control” groups comprised of more typical students.

Again, the results were unequivocal: academically weak students in the experimental group learned less and got worse grades. Having much stronger students in the same squadron increased the weaker students’ tendency to form study groups with other weak students — a strong demonstration of “social mismatch.”

All this impressive research — and much more in a similar vein — has had little impact upon educational institutions. Even though many educational leaders will admit in private that the research is compelling, they believe that any public admission that racial preferences are counterproductive would be met with the sort of campus reaction that routinely drives college presidents from office.

For the same reason, university presidents and other educational leaders aggressively block the release of information vital to mismatch research — data which could, for example, help determine the border between small, safe preferences and large, harmful ones.

All of this should give the Supreme Court pause in assessing racial preferences. Past Court decisions have invoked a traditional deference to the independence of educational institutions. But colleges and universities have demonstrated that they are politically incapable of acting as good fiduciaries for their most vulnerable students.

A version of this post first appeared at the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

Richard Sander

Richard Sander is an economist and law professor at UCLA, where he has taught since 1989.

Where Is Speech Most Restricted in America? by George C. Leef

December 11, 2015/in Commentary, Culture War, Education, Policy, Politics/by Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

A good argument can be made that free speech is least safe on private college campuses.

At public universities, the First Amendment applies, thus giving students, faculty members, and everyone else protection against official censorship or punishment for saying things that some people don’t want said.

A splendid example of that was brought to a conclusion earlier this year at Valdosta State University, where the school’s president went on a vendetta against a student who criticized his plans for a new parking structure — and was clobbered in court. (I discussed that case here.)

But the First Amendment does not apply to private colleges and universities because they don’t involve governmental action. Oddly, while all colleges that accept federal student aid money must abide by a vast host of regulations, the Supreme Court ruled in Rendell-Baker v. Kohn that acceptance of such money does not bring them under the umbrella of the First Amendment.

At private colleges, the protection for freedom of speech has to be found (at least, in most states) in the implicit contract the school enters into with each incoming student. Ordinarily, the school holds itself out as guaranteeing certain things about itself and life on campus in its handbook and other materials. If school officials act in ways that depart significantly from the reasonable expectations it created, then the college can be held liable.

As the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) puts it, “There is a limit to ‘bait-and-switch’ techniques that promise academic freedom and legal equality but deliver authoritarianism and selective censorship.”

With that legal background in mind, consider a recent case at Colorado College. If Franz Kafka or George Orwell had toyed with a similar plot, they’d probably have rejected it as too far-fetched.

Back in November, a student, Thaddeus Pryor, wrote the following reply to a comment (#blackwomenmatter) on the social media site Yik Yak: “They matter, they’re just not hot.” Another student, offended that someone was not taking things seriously, complained to college officials. After ascertaining that the comment had been written by Pryor, the Dean of Students summoned him to a meeting.

Pryor said that he was just joking. What he did not realize is that there are now many things that must not be joked about on college campuses. Some well-known American comedians have stopped playing on our campuses for exactly that reason, as Clark Conner noted in this Pope Center article.

In a subsequent letter, Pryor was informed by the Senior Associate Dean of Students that his anonymous six word comment violated the school’s policy against Abusive Behavior and Disruption of College Activities.

Did that comment actually abuse anyone? Did it in any way disrupt a college activity?

A reasonable person would say “of course not,” but many college administrators these days are not reasonable. They are social justice apparatchiks, eager to use their power to punish perceived enemies of progress like Thaddeus Pryor.

For having joked in a way that offended the wrong people, Pryor was told that he was suspended from Colorado College until June, 2017. Moreover, he is banned from setting foot on campus during that time. And in the final “pound of flesh” retribution, the school intends to prohibit him from taking any college credits elsewhere.

With FIRE’s able assistance, Pryor is appealing his punishment. Perhaps the college’s attorney will advise the president to back off since its own “Freedom of Expression” policy hardly suggests to students that they will be subject to severe punishment for merely making offensive jokes on a social media site. If the case were to go to trial, there is a strong likelihood that a jury would find Colorado College in breach of contract.

Even if the school retreats from its astounding overreaction to Pryor’s comment, the administration should worry that alums who aren’t happy that their school has fallen under the spell of thought control will stop supporting it.

This incident is emblematic of a widespread problem in American higher education today: administrators think it’s their job to police what is said on campus, even comments on a social media app. Many colleges and universities have vague speech codes and “harassment” policies that invite abuse; those positions tend to attract mandarins who are not scholars and do not value free speech and unfettered debate. They are committed to “progressive” causes and will gladly use their power to silence or punish anyone who doesn’t go along.

American colleges have been suffering through a spate of ugly protests this fall. Among the demands the protesters usually make is that the school mandate “diversity training” for faculty and staff. Instead of that, what most schools really need is tolerance training, with a special emphasis on the importance of free speech. Those who don’t “get it” should be advised to find other employment.

George C. Leef

George Leef is the former book review editor of The Freeman. He is director of research at the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

VIDEO: Young Conservative Confronts Planned Parenthood CEO in Debate

December 11, 2015/in Culture War, Healthcare, Policy, Politics, Video/by Dr. Rich Swier

Last week, Christian Ziegler debated Barbara A. Zdravecky the CEO of Planned Parenthood of South West and Central Florida at the Sarasota Tiger Bay Club.

During the debate, which focused on the taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood (Over $500 million annually), Ziegler confronted Planned Parenthood’s CEO about their lavish spending, abortion profits, why we must protect the unborn and the videos exposing the horrific actions of their organization.

Please take a moment to watch the informative debate and then click here to share any comments that you may have with Christian!

VIDEO URL: https://www.facebook.com/ChristianGOP/posts/672868719482680

Highlights & Topics (By Video Timestamps):

15:50: Colorado Shooting at the Planned Parenthood facility
17:58: Why we must stop giving Planned Parenthood taxpayer dollars & their lavish spending
26:20: Discussing profits made off of abortion
30:35: How I can be pro-life and a limited government Conservative & how future generations will reflect back on us
40:13: Why adoption is an important option and suggesting that we revisit the regulations on adoption
43:25: Why I oppose abortion
46:40: Social Conservatives & why protecting life goes beyond politics
49:45: Additional options for women (outside of Planned Parenthood)
55:27: Responding to Planned Parenthood’s claim that the videos exposing their organization were “heavily edited”
56:56: Discussing why I’m pro-life and pro-2nd Amendment

The Evidence of Greatness in America

December 11, 2015/in Commentary, Culture War/by Ron Edwards

When I was a little boy growing up in Cleveland my Dad would often tell me about the great people of America. Yes, he taught me about the obvious luminaries such as Dr. Benjamin Rush or Crispas Attucks. But he often talked about the unsung heroes who are just as important to society as any historical figure. Dad let me know that amongst the ranks of “We the People” resides the true backbone of our republic.

Needless to say, as we approach yet another time of Christmas I am more prone to take the time to fondly remember great individuals I’ve come to know. Many have been great friends and others just fantastic people met along the blessed path of life I have traveled. So often we may take for granted those we have known for a long time or have been friends with for years. Sometimes we can be guilty of overlooking or not paying to the crowning achievements of those we are familiar with.

It is what I have come to recognize as not realizing that those we have known for a long time are just as capable of greatness as those who are already well known. Whether they are great explorers, inventors, or other American of notoriety. Mr. Carver had that others around him didn’t was the knack for researching far beyond what was the normal level of looking into the properties of botany specimens.

Another fine example is American founding father, John Adams who was very short in physical stature. Yet he is considered by many objective historians as one of the giant pillars that upheld the successful break from British tyranny. His tenacity helped set the fledgling republic upon the road to become the greatest nation in the history of the world.

Of course we have all heard about the enormously popular Rocky movie series that was written and mostly produced by Sylvester Stallone. But what many fans of the blockbuster cinematic rags to riches story do not know, is the epic battle that Stallone had to endure and overcome to get Rocky to the silver screen. For starters, Sylvester Stallone was on the lower rungs of the financial ladder. But he never gave up on his vision of scripting and developing what became the record breaking Rocky movies.

Sylvester Stallone never allowed doubters, circumstances, or even initial rejections from every movie studio in Hollywood he approached, to stop him from forging ahead with his vision of success.

So often in life, people from all walks of life are blessed with visions of greatness. In fact, everyone has a seed of greatness that God plants within us. Unfortunately, most individuals do not tap into that seed of greatness and end up taking what God place within them to the grave totally unutilized. Today America is full of many sovereign individuals who have been indoctrinated against rugged individualism. Sadly, they rarely think of or dream of new inventions or writing the next great Broadway play, or some new innovation that no one else ever thought of.

For many years, I have engaged in numerous conversations with Americans about the awful business of abortion and Margaret Sanger’s diabolical, duplicitous, dangerous and deadly plans for Black Americans. In fact, that topic has been featured on numerous pages of The Edwards Notebook syndicated radio commentary. But all of the conversations, research and commentaries together don’t hold a candle to the effort put forth by one Bruce Fleury. Mr. Fleury is a great American whom, by the grace of God did what no-one else thought about doing or were too lazy to put in the necessary work. He wrote and produce an excellent book entitled The Negro Project. Bruce was born in the garden state of New Jersey. As a youngster he moved with his family to Michigan with his parents and five siblings.

He has been employed at Ford Motor Company and resides with his wife in the Detroit metropolitan area. Through the years Bruce has been building upon his vast knowledge of American history. His love of the gifts of Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness prompted him to focus on the ongoing legalized murder of unborn babies. Bruce also concentrated on the Margaret Sanger mission to wipe out the Black American population through birth control, then later via Planned Parenthood abortion mills.

The book The Negro Project is a cornucopia of history, regarding the diabolical plots and plans of racist democrat party progressives who’s biggest mission is to control and fundamentally change America. They are out to control, divide and conquer the United States through death and moral destruction. The Negro Project book is yet another fine example of how an American from any walk of life can do extraordinary things.

Check out The Negro Project by Bruce Fleury on Amazon.com or at your nearest Borders book store.

God Bless America and May America Bless God.

Galactic Survey: What Are Your Star Wars Politics?

December 10, 2015/in Budget and Finance, Culture War, Featured, Policy, Politics/by Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

The survey is courtesy of The Freeman.

Who Do Economic Profits Belong To? by Sandy Ikeda

December 10, 2015/in Culture War, Economy, Policy, Politics/by Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Do we deserve to keep the profits that result from our actions?

Most libertarians would maintain that any economic profit — the residual of revenue over cost — that you earn from voluntary exchange is indeed moral and rightly belongs to you. The puzzling thing is that standard microeconomic theory, which libertarians as well-known as Milton Friedman have used to defend their free-market beliefs, is completely irrelevant in justifying that belief.

I attended a talk recently given by Professor Israel Kirzner in which he addressed the question of whether economics can tell us who does and doesn’t deserve profit. I won’t summarize the entire lecture here, which I expect Professor Kirzner intends to publish, but I will touch on an important and often-neglected point he made.

Specifically, it’s that because microeconomic theory is utterly useless in morally justifying economic profit, we need to look beyond one of the most cherished slogans of economics: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, or TANSTAAFL for short. Indeed, in order even to begin seeing economic profit as moral, you have to set TANSTAAFL aside. (I wrote on a related theme in “But There ARE Free Lunches!” in May 2011.) Now, how does that relate to the question of who, if anyone, deserves economic profit?

The Value of the Marginal Product

Let’s say you want to sell a new kind of musical instrument. You buy or hire every single ingredient you need to produce it: the various kinds of skilled labor and equipment, the working space, management and financial knowhow, and whatever computing and power needs you require. You also contribute to production as the owner of the firm, and your contribution includes the risk you take to start the business as well as your industriousness, tenacity, and courage.

You then pay each and every one of these factor owners, including yourself, its “marginal value product,” which is the revenue the business earns from selling what each input produces. You pay wages or rents to everyone and a return to yourself to compensate for the resources you bring. Economists since John Bates Clark have used the marginal value product and continue to do so to explain how income from production is distributed. But there’s a problem.

Suppose, after paying all the input owners including yourself, there’s still something left over. That something, the residual of all actual revenue over all actual costs, is economic profit.

Again, you’ve paid every factor owner all of what each has contributed to the value of the musical instruments produced. That means that the value of the marginal product, the central concept in the modern microeconomic theory of income distribution, cannot explain who deserves to keep the economic profit because it cannot explain profit.

It’s important to keep in mind that economic profit is not “earned” in the same sense that wages and rents are earned. It is what’s left over after all other earned income has been paid out according to the value of its marginal product.

To whom then does economic profit properly belong?

The Concept of Entrepreneurship Offers a Clue

For Kirzner and other economists working in the tradition of Austrian economics, the key to answering that question, though not the complete answer, begins with the concept of discovery.

There is knowledge that we don’t possess because we choose not to know it. If someone asked me for the phone number of a person whose name is drawn randomly out of the New York City telephone directory, the chances are very good that I won’t know it. Although I’m aware of the existence of the directory, I haven’t memorized it, simply because I haven’t deemed it worthwhile. I’ve chosen not to know.

But if I didn’t even know of the existence of such a directory and I needed to call a particular person, my learning about the directory would come as a revelation. Moreover, I would have found out that I didn’t even know what I didn’t know — what Professor Kirzner calls “sheer ignorance.” He then defines entrepreneurship as that aspect of human action that discovers, and thereby removes, sheer ignorance.

What does the discovery of sheer ignorance result in? Economic profit!

Why marshal all the resources to produce a new musical instrument? Because you believe you see what no one else sees. You believe that it offers a better investment for you than what you’re doing now. Why do you think that? Because you’ve realized — made the discovery — that after compensating all the factors of production with the value of their marginal product, there will still be a pure residual left over that you couldn’t have gotten doing anything else. If you’re right, you get that residual, the economic profit; if you’re wrong, you suffer the economic loss.

This means, of course, that TAANSTAFL is wrong. Opportunities to make economic profit do exist. There are free lunches. In fact, in a world of sheer ignorance, such as ours, free lunches are everywhere.

Toward an Answer

I haven’t mentioned how Professor Kirzner addresses the issue of whether economic profit is moral or deserved. To get a good sense of what he says in the remainder of that lecture, have a look at his 1989 book, Discovery, Capitalism, and Distributive Justice.

(Also, see this book review by FEE writer Charles W. Baird.)

A good economist needs to have a firm grasp on standard microeconomic theory: supply-and-demand analysis and all that. At the same time, it’s important for her to appreciate its limits, which are severe indeed on the question of the morality, or even the origin, of economic profit.

Sandy Ikeda

Sandy Ikeda is a professor of economics at Purchase College, SUNY, and the author of The Dynamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism. He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.

Florida Rep. Ray Pilon files legislation returning power to parents, teachers and school boards

December 10, 2015/in Culture War, Education, Policy, Politics, Regulation/by Dr. Rich Swier

Florida Citizens Alliance (FLCA) has been working on both a comprehensive bill to restore local K-12 education control and a focused curriculum bill to fix the loopholes in SB 864, passed in 2014 as FS 1006.283.

FLCA in a press release states:

We are very pleased to report that Senator Alan Hays and Representative Ray Pilon are championing companion bills to fix FS 1006.283 and its loopholes: SB 1018 and HB 899.

The purpose/intent of the original SB 864 was to assign constitutional responsibility for all instructional materials to school boards, and require a transparent policy/process for school boards and parents to remove objectionable materials. Due to several loopholes in FS 1006.283, the spirit and intent of the original bill are currently being ignored by many school districts in Florida.

Here is a brief summary of the loopholes that the two companion bills (SB 1018 and HB 899) that are intended to “fix” FS 1006.283.

FLCA in an email states:

Please use the petition at right to send a “shout out” to Senator Hays and Representative Pilon, thanking them for their leadership, and to urge your Florida House Representative and Florida Senator to co-sponsor their respective versions of these bills. The petition is also copying your local school board, asking them to aggressively support these companion bills.

FLCA is urging Florida parents, students and teachers to call their house representative and senator to ask that they co-sponsor these bills. Here are FLCA talking points you can use in your call. Use these links to get appropriate phone numbers for the Florida House and Florida Senate. We strongly suggest that you call now (before Christmas) and again in January as the legislative cycle begins.

Passage of these companion bills will require an aggressive and sustained set of actions to garner support. Here is an expanded set of 5 actions that FLCA urges parents, students and teachers to put into practice in support of these companion bills.

ABOUT THE FLORIDA CITIZENS ALLIANCE:

The Florida Citizens’ Alliance (FLCA) is a coalition of citizens and grassroots groups working together through education, outreach and community involvement to advance the ideals and principles of liberty. We believe these include but are not limited to individual rights, free markets, and limited government.

VIDEO: Knife-brandishing Muslim threatens Donald Trump

December 10, 2015/in Culture War, Elections, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion, Video/by Jihad Watch

This video is certain to convince ol’ Trump that Islam is a Religion of Peace, and that he should, as Bah Ebou demands, show some more “respect.” Or else.

If Trump is circumcised, will he change his mind about Muslim immigration?

WARNING: Strong language, high emotions, and a certain paucity of calm, rational argumentation.

Video thanks to Tea Partyer.

EDITORS NOTE: Will U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch arrest this Muslim for violent talk?

Study: Internet now the ‘driving force’ in creating political power, voter influence and accountability

December 10, 2015/in Culture War, Elections, Must Read, Policy, Politics/by Dr. Rich Swier

LOS ANGELES, CA /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Move over, television – the Internet has become a driving force behind politics and political campaigns.

The Center for the Digital Future has found that large and growing percentages of Americans now view the Internet as vital in key aspects of politics – for conducting campaigns, for generating political power, and for making elected officials more accountable.

The Center’s study found that 74 percent of all respondents agree that the Internet has become important for political campaigns, up from 71 percent in the previous study and a new high for the Digital Future studies that began in 1999.

“The Internet has become a vitally important tool for users seeking political information during campaigns,” saidJeffrey I. Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future and creator of the World Internet Project.

“Fifty years ago, television surpassed newspapers as the primary communication medium for people seeking information for political campaigns,” said Cole. ” Now the Internet is assuming a much more prominent role in political communication – for learning more about candidates, for sharing political views, for mobilizing constituents, and especially for fundraising.”

“And we have found significant changes in the number of users who believe that the Internet can become a tool for political power and voter influence,” Cole said.

The findings on the role of the Internet in the political process are featured in the thirteenth edition of the Digital Future Report, released today by the Center. The 171-page report for 2015 explores more than 100 issues involving the impact of online technology in the United States.

New high levels of agreement about the Internet in the political process

All of the following are the highest levels to date for the Digital Future Project:

Sixty-seven percent of users agree or strongly agree that going online can help people better understand politics, up from 63 percent in 2013.
Forty-two percent of users agree or strongly agree that by using the Internet, people like them can have more political power, an increase from 37 percent in 2013.
Forty-two percent of respondents believe that by using the Internet, public officials will care more about what people like them think, up from 32 percent in 2013.
Forty-one percent agree or strongly agree that the Internet gives people more say in what the government does, up from 32 percent in 2013.

“These trends are clearly demonstrated in recent political campaigns,” Cole said. “In 2008, the Republicans did not pay attention to social media, but Barack Obama used digital communication in his first presidential campaign as a primary tool in developing his power base. Now social media is integral to all campaign strategies – Democratic or Republican.”

2015 Digital Future Report: Background

The Digital Future Report has been produced annually by the Center for the Digital Future since 2000, and is the first to develop a longitudinal panel study of the views and behavior of Internet users and non-users in the United States. The survey, conducted from October 2014 to January 2015, has a margin of error of +/- 3.0 percent. The annual report of survey findings, now in its 13^th edition, is the longest continuing study of its kind. The study’s broad categories include:

Internet Users And Non-Users: Who Is Online? What Are Users Doing Online?
Media Use And Trust
Consumer Behavior
Communication Patterns
Social Effects

To view the report and findings from previous studies, visit www.digitalcenter.org.

The Center for the Digital Future

Since 1999, the Center for the Digital Future (digitalcenter.org) in the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism has examined the behavior and views of a national sample of Internet users and non-users in major annual surveys of the impact of the Internet on America. The center also created and organizes the World Internet Project, which includes similar research with 37 international partners.

About the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

Located in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California, the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism is a national leader in education and scholarship in the fields of communication, journalism, public diplomacy and public relations. With an enrollment of more than 2,200 students, USC Annenberg offers doctoral, master’s and bachelor’s degree programs, as well as continuing development programs for working professionals across a broad scope of academic inquiry. The school’s comprehensive curriculum emphasizes the core skills of leadership, innovation, service and entrepreneurship and draws upon the resources of a networked university located in the media capital of the world.

“Racial” and “Religious” Profiling Now — or Death Later

December 9, 2015/in Culture War, Immigration, Must Read, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Selwyn Duke

“If You See Something, Say Something™” the DHS slogan goes (yes, it is trademarked). “It takes a community to protect a community,” the feds continue. “Informed, alert communities play a critical role in keeping our nation safe.” No doubt. But the best information in the world is of little use if social pressure prevents one from disclosing it. Such was the case before the San Bernardino tragedy, when a man living near terrorist Syed Farook’s Redlands home noticed suspicious-looking Middle Eastern men in the area. But he “decided not to report anything,” wrote CBS Los Angeles, “since he did not wish to racially profile those people.” Ah, the power of a lie — to silence. And to kill.

And it’s time to kill that lie. This starts with grasping a simple truth: There is no such thing as “racial profiling” or “religious profiling” per se. There is only good criminal profiling and bad criminal profiling. The good variety considers all relevant factors, based on sound criminological science, regardless of political concerns. The bad kind discriminates unjustly among those factors and only allows greater suspicion and scrutiny of people who aren’t politically favored.

For example, I’m a member of one of the most profiled groups in the nation: males. Police view men much more suspiciously than women because men commit an inordinate amount of the crime. If this is just, however, shouldn’t we apply the exact same standard to all other groups that commit an inordinate amount of crime? And if considering racial factors is “racial profiling” and must be eliminated, isn’t considering sexual factors “sex profiling”? Shouldn’t it also be forbidden?

Of course, racial factors are considered all the time. If a white man is cruising a bad neighborhood in an expensive car, the police may stop him because they know the probability is relatively high he’s there to buy drugs. And at one time part of the profile of someone in the methamphetamine trade was “white,” as white motorcycle gangs used to be its main players.

Profiling is simply a fancy name for the “application of common sense.” As economist Dr. Walter Williams has pointed out, it’s a method by which we can make determinations based on scant information when the cost of obtaining more information is too high. For example, an Israeli airport-security agent could make far better judgments if he could spend a month living with every prospective traveler, getting to know him and his family. But since this is unrealistic, the agent has to assess probabilities based on the little information he has. And rest assured that the Israelis scrutinize young Muslim men far more closely than elderly Norwegian grandmothers.

We all engage in profiling, as it’s necessary for survival. If a person avoids a group of rough-hewn young men walking down the street, refuses to buy a car off a sleazy-looking used-car salesman, or if a child is wary of petting a strange dog, the individual has engaged in “profiling.” To refuse to thus act would be as silly as a cat not avoiding dogs because there are the odd canine-feline friendships. It could win you the year’s Darwin Award.

Doctors practice profiling, too, when they assess the diseases and conditions for which a patient should be screened. To use some examples Dr. Williams has cited, Pima Indians have the world’s highest diabetes rate; black men have a prostate cancer rate twice that of white men; and physicians check women and not men for breast cancer even though men occasionally develop it, and recommend prostate exams for men over 40. When a doctor does this, is he guilty of “racism,” “sexism” and “ageism”?

Reality: if he didn’t consider these relevant racial, sex-related and age-related factors when conducting his duties, he’d be a bad doctor. In light of this, let’s finish the following sentence: If a policeman doesn’t consider relevant racial, sex-related and age-related factors when conducting his duties, he’s _ ___ _________.

Oh, note that any politician, activist or voter who encourages him to be a _ ___ _________ is a bad citizen.

And there are many relevant group-related factors for authorities to consider. Men account for 81 percent of all violent-crime arrests; those aged 15–24, though only 14 percent of the population, account for approximately 40 percent of all arrests; and 96 percent of all crime in NYC is committed by blacks and Hispanics. Should these facts be ignored by authorities?

There are belief-oriented factors in crime as well. There was quite a bit of terrorism in the 1970s, perpetrated mainly by left-wing groups such as the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, anti-Vietnam War protesters and the Black Panthers. Thus, harboring these groups’ beliefs was part of the terrorist profile. Today, almost all the terrorism bedeviling us is committed by Muslims. Should authorities in 2015 play the three-monkeys game and ignore a clear-cut and consistent belief-oriented association with terrorism?

FACT: “Muslim” is now the most relevant factor in the terrorist profile. Anyone who denies this in political correctness’ name is hurting our country and should be shamed, stigmatized and ostracized. He should hear: “You’re a bad person. You’re a malefactor. And you’re aiding and abetting terrorism.”

Mind you, even those who rail against good profiling — using the propaganda term “racial profiling” — profile using racial factors. They just do it all wrong. Immediately after the San Bernardino shooting, MSNBC suggested it might be the work of pro-lifers (profile: “white”). CNN opined that it could have been perpetrated by militia types (profile: “white”). It was the kind of dishonesty inspiring some leftists to claim that white people are our biggest terror threat. Yet this assertion uses a raw-numbers comparison of murderers from a group representing 62 percent of the population with those from a group representing less than 2 percent of it, conflates a category with a creed (non-ideological mass killings with Islam-inspired incidents), and confuses acts of deranged minds with global jihad. Moreover, as I illustrated last year using statistical analysis, it’s a myth that whites commit in inordinate percentage of mass shootings.

Despite this, we’re supposed to believe criminal profiling is criminal itself when applied to some of the most criminally inclined groups. You can profile men. You can profile the young. You can profile whites. But profile Muslims or some other thought-police favored group, and you’re told you’re bigoted. It isn’t consistent application of good criminological science that indicates prejudice, however. Rather, that’s reflected in refusing to do so, in discriminating when applying that science — in contravention of its own findings.

During a presidential debate years ago, Ambassador Alan Keyes, a black man, was asked by a moderator if he’d be upset if a policeman stopped him because he was black. Keyes responded (I’m paraphrasing), “Yes, I’d be upset. I’d be upset at all of the young black men who committed crimes and caused authorities to look upon me more suspiciously.” We can all get offended, or pretend to be offended, by reality. But since I as a man want to be safe from crime, I accept that “male” will often be part of a criminal profile. If a young person wants to be safe from crime, he’ll accept that “young” will often be part of a criminal profile. If a black person wants to be safe from crime, he’ll accept that “black” will often be part of a criminal profile. Now, here’s another sentence to finish: If a person calling himself Muslim wants to be safe from terrorism, he’ll accept that “______” __ ____ __ ___ _________ _______.

If a politician can’t fill in those blanks, then that’s precisely what he’s shooting in the war against Muslim terrorism.

EDITORS NOTE: Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com. The following countries ban the entry of Jews: Algeria, Bangladesh, Brunei, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Yemen.

The Paris Energy Poverty Summit

December 9, 2015/in Culture War, Environment, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Alex Epstein

I recently wrote a series of articles for prominent newspapers around the country on why we should carefully watch the ongoing anti-fossil fuel negotiations in Paris. The summary:

“The heads of 190 countries, including President Obama, are meeting for the United Nations Conference on Climate Change.Their goal is to reach an international agreement that will stall – or even reverse – human progress.”

The article has been picked up by 22 newspapers in more than a dozen states and still counting…

The Montgomery Advertiser (AL)
The Waco Tribune (TX)
The Santa Fe New Mexican (NM)
The Alaska Dispatch News (AK)
The Delaware News Journal (DE)
The Detroit News (MI)
Tulsa World (OK)
The Ft. Myers News Press (FL)
The Knoxville News Sentinel (TN)
The Charleston Daily Mail (WV)
The Orange County Register (CA)
The New London Day (CT)
The Nashua Telegraph (NH)
The Richmond Times Dispatch [VA]
The Buffalo News (NY)
The Las Vegas Review Journal (NV)
The Colorado Springs Gazette [CO]
The Sun Sentinel (South FL)
The Tampa Tribune (FL)
The Reno Gazette Journal (NV)
The Northwest Indiana Times (IN)
The Lansing State Journal (MI)

How to Win Hearts and Minds on Energy, Part 3: From Champion to Thought-Leader

In part two of this series, I discussed how an energy advocate can become an energy champion. An energy champion is “An individual with a high level of clarity, confidence, and motivation who reaches dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of others.”

If you have a “regular job” as against being a full-time writer/speaker/advocate/activist, I think being an energy champion is both a rewarding and achievable goal.

If you want to go a level beyond that, though, it’s important to know that such a level exists–the thought-leader.

Energy thought-leader: An individual whom one of more significant audiences regard as a go-to thinker on energy issues.

Many different organizations and groups are actively interested in energy issues. To take just a handful: university professors, high school students, the Silicon Valley tech community, coal industry employees, energy-related think-tanks, churches, college students, Hollywood, chambers of commerce, political parties.

Ask yourself: what groups am I most interested in or connected to? And could I possibly be a thought-leader in those groups? Or–could I influence a thought-leader in those groups?

The second is usually much, much easier than the first. In the last installment I gave the example of my friend Chad Morris recommending The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels to business thought-leader Dan Sullivan; Sullivan loved the book and his thought-leadership exposed it to thousands of high-level entrepreneurs. Do you know of any thought-leaders you might be able to influence? If you do and want books or materials to send to them, just let me know.

But maybe you want to become a thought-leader yourself. I certainly did. And I think that full-time energy writers, thinkers, and advocates should at least aspire to this. So how is it done?

I don’t know of an exact formula, but here are some things that have helped me.

Get clear on your target audience or target audiences–and recognize that they are very, very different. For example, my first target audience for my energy ideas was college students. There are many distinctive features of college students: they tend to be more idealistic than average, they tend to be more inculcated in ideas opposite to mine, they tend to be “taught” a lot of things that are never explained very clearly, they tend to be receiving a lot of political propaganda, they tend to know nothing about energy or its value.
Once you are clear on your target audience, think about what unique value you can offer to be positioned as the go-to person. In my case, I was aware that I could provide unique value by doing several things no one else was doing, such as: explaining how energy worked very, very clearly; having a positive, infectiously enthusiastic approach to oil and other forms of energy; being idealistic myself; focusing on human progress as my goal, not being partisan politically or in favor of one particular form of energy.

This only scratches the surface of what it takes to become a thought-leader, but I think it’s a helpful lead. The concept of positioning is crucial. As yourself: am I positioned in the audience’s mind in such a way that they want to hear what I have to say vs. what others have to say? The worst form of positioning is to be a commodity: to be seen as interchangeable with everything else.

Good news: because the moral case for energy abundance is both new and clarifying, learning and promoting that view will greatly improve your positioning in people’s minds–and therefore your influence.

I’m interested in your thoughts on this issue, so I hope you write and let me know if this helps.

News: We just released How to Talk to Anyone About Energy. Check out the intro video. I promise that it will make influencing others so much easier.

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘Green’ Cronyism on Full Display In Paris

Paris Conference Leaders Want You to Think the Planet Is Facing a Climate Change Crisis. That’s Not True.

Jessica Jones, Free Will, and Leviathan by Jeffrey A. Tucker

December 8, 2015/in Commentary, Culture War/by Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

A subtext of most of the superhero genre of fiction is that government has failed. It doesn’t provide the security people need. Superheros (Batman, Superman, Spiderman, et alia) have to step in. The portrayal of the police and public servants in this genre ranges between incompetent and corrupt. At its best, the public sector can get out of the way and let the superhero do his or her job.

Jessica Jones, the acclaimed new series on Netflix (based on a Marvel Comics character), takes this approach to a new and much deeper level, particularly in its portrayal of the pathological villain Zebediah Kilgrave. Jones, a private investigator, spends the entire series trying to capture him. Kilgrave’s character allows us to think through an extraordinary issue. What if someone’s wish really were his command? What would happen to him, and what would be the social effects?

Jones is only a reluctant user of her superpowers, which are highly limited. She can run a 4-minute mile. She is strong enough to break locks with her hands. She can throw a punch that kills. And she can jump what appears to be about 15 feet in the air. Beyond that, she is as human as anyone else. Too much so.

The series adopts a 1940s-style film noir feel. Jessica (played by Krysten Ritter of Breaking Bad fame) has troubled personal relationships. She is alone by choice. She keeps a strange schedule and looks disheveled most of the time. She drinks too much. She is crabby, sometimes crude, often impolite, and constantly vexed.

The Problem of Kilgrave

Mostly, she is haunted by a past horror. A murderous villain named Kilgrave once abducted her, but not in a physical sense. His extraordinary power is causing people to give up their personal will. With just one word, he brings about the total surrender of his victim’s wishes to his own. He can ask for someone’s coat and get it. He can tell a dad to abandon his son and he will do it. He can tell a girl to kill her parents, and it is done. His control over others is limited by time (perhaps one day) and proximity, but otherwise, he gets his way.

He did this to Jessica. She spent some period of time under his control. During this period, she committed egregious acts. She feels deep guilt for this, continually assuring herself that she was not personally responsible because she was not in control. As she encounters other victims, she assures them they are not responsible either. A main plot device of the show concerns her desire to rescue one victim, who similarly did terrible things, from several life sentences in prison.

The trouble is that there is some ambiguity about the question of personal responsibility. Kilgrave’s victims describe feeling irresistibly drawn to follow his instructions. But they also report having some sense in the back of their minds that what they are doing is wrong. They find it impossible, however, to cause their inner conscience, never entirely blotted out, to rise above the Kilgrave-imposed will.

What If You Could Fully Control Others?

The character of Kilgrave raises some interesting questions. What if you had the ability to get your wish with everyone around, even strangers? Your words cause people to do exactly what you want them to do. You do not have to rely on persuasion or consent. You cause a core human trait, individual volition, to recede into the background.

If you had that power, would you use it? It would require a person of extraordinary moral character not to do so. You are at Starbucks and you could say: “add an extra shot at no charge,” and it would be done. You could tell your boss: “give me a 10% raise,” and you’d have it. If you tell someone “let’s go to dinner,” there would be no question. To imagine the power is to peer over the edge of a slippery slope.

In Kilgrave’s case, this power has had an extraordinarily corrupting effect. He rapes, he kills, he controls, he poisons. He feels no remorse. The social effects are catastrophic, causing all sorts of people to commit terribly anti-social actions that otherwise make no sense. His demand is always the same: people must not resist his orders. Thus do they lose their will, and thus do they lose their humanity. As for his own soul, the darkness is boundless.

Who has the power to delete the human will? By tradition, not even gods have this power. They have granted human beings the free will to make choices between good and evil. Gods can manipulate events, give clues, prod circumstances to prompt people, and even punish for wrong choices, but do not typically use their power (even if they have it in theory) to override human volition itself.

Choice is Baked Into Nature

Such power would certainly be abused, even by the gods. Surely it is not something that should even be granted to a fallible human being. Such power is fundamentally contradictory to the mental workings of the human person. Like all animals, we resist the cage. Those who try to override that impulse corrupt their own souls and finally fail.

Any parent who begins parenting with the intent of total control eventually learns that this is impossible. Perhaps as children there is a point at which we can become completely compliant. But the inner life matures, and by the time we become teens, the sense of independent decision takes hold. It might begin as an internal commitment, but, in time, it grows to be a life pattern.

Societies that function well must respect individual autonomy: the right to control our own lives. This is why Kilgrave’s powers are so terribly frightening. The effects are bad enough when such powers rest in just one person. But imagine a total social system in which everyone had the capacity for full control of everyone else. The results would be immediately and irredeemably devastating.

Power and the Human Will

Watching Jessica Jones causes us to reflect on modern policing via the public sector. Browse YouTube’s archives of police abuse. Think on what happens when you are stopped on the road for a traffic violation. Police are trained to demand total submission. Any evidence of insubordination is treated as a threat and a crime in itself.

For the duration of the interaction, your will means nothing and their will is all that matters. It is not surprising that this power leads to abuse; it’s surprising that it doesn’t lead to it more often.

The Kilgrave Society and the Right to Decide

We can extend this analysis to the public sector at large. The distinguishing mark of the state is its encroachment on individual volition. Its one weapon, its only method, is the promise of violence. But this is not enough to bring about stable rule, as the history of revolution and political upheaval show us. The longing to blot out human choice is ultimately untenable, and the attempt alone is deeply corrupting of both individuals and institutions. Kilgrave is the paradigmatic case.

In contrast, notice that private security takes a different approach. The foremost goal is to assure order and peaceful outcomes, not to bring about a perfect state of nonresistance. If the problem goes away, all is well and the job is complete. Such services know better than to try for total control.

In Jessica Jones, as with modern politics, there is some ambiguity associated with the attempt to erase the decision making of others. In the recesses of our mind, we maintain our own understanding and beliefs, and that alone makes us feel some degree of responsibility for acts committed under the influence of others. To overcome requires steely determination and resolute desire to think independently and live on our own terms.

Jessica Jones can’t leap tall buildings, can’t fly, and can’t run faster than a locomotive. But she has a power that is even more impressive. She possesses that determination to defend the right to think for ourselves. It’s not only the most precious human right: It is the right than makes the social order function toward everyone’s benefit.

Jeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Digital Development at FEE, CLO of the startup Liberty.me, and editor at Laissez Faire Books. Author of five books, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World. Follow on Twitter and Like on Facebook.

VIDEO: Protesters, police, chaos! Climate Hustle ‘staged its triumphant world premiere’

December 8, 2015/in Culture War, Environment, Policy, Politics, Science/by Marc Morano

Watch Exclusive Video of Climate Hustle Premiere in Paris:

More on CFACT’s Climate Hustle coverage:

Breitbart Review: ‘Climate Hustle is dynamite’ – ‘The Perfect Antidote To Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth’

James Delingpole review: Climate Hustle ‘staged its triumphant world premiere in Paris last night.’

‘Climate Hustle is dynamite – at least it will be to most viewers, especially younger ones – because what it says is so totally at odds with almost every documentary, TV programme and film that has ever been made on the subject of global warming.’

‘Every person who has ever been exposed to the lies of An Inconvenient Truth should watch Climate Hustle immediately afterwards an antidote.’

Climate Hustle is a ‘jaunty, likeable, fact-rich journey through the history of the ‘global warming’

‘Morano – even if he does look and dress a bit like a junior Mafiosi – makes a funny, engaging, no-nonsense presenter.’

‘One of the most powerful sections of the documentary is the one where various scientists and academics who have dared speak the truth about global warming describe how they have suddenly found themselves ostracised by their peers.’

Breitbart News: Climate Hustle ‘staged its triumphant world premiere in Paris last night’ – ‘Police turned up’

“Howl! Howl!” bayed two men dressed as giant spoons.

‘Then the police turned up and in characteristic no-nonsense French style forced the protestors to disperse before the stars – including 92-year old rocket scientist Fred Singer and Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore – in black tie arrived in their stretch limos and walked up the red carpet. It was the perfect launch for Marc Morano’s climate skeptical movie Climate Hustle – the skeptics’ long-awaited answer to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth – which staged its triumphant world premiere in Paris last night.’

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