I have heard this before, but I’m glad someone took the time to write an article about it: Earth Worshippers Cause Death in Space: Environmental Dogma Has Led to the Sacrifice of Fourteen Astronauts on the Space Shuttle

I’m back from vacation and eager to get my blog on once more. Preview OCON photos here, and some family photos here. More to come soon!

I was taking my final

I was taking my final early today because I am leaving for the Objectivist Summer Conference tommorow. My prof had me sit in the hallway while he was in class, and as I sat there doing my final, this couple comes out of a a nearby room and starts a conversation about 20 feet away from me. So the guy starts talking about morality, and I can’t help but listen since he actually sounds halfway intelligent. First he goes on bashing liberals and pragmatism, talking about how living according to principle is the only path to happiness, how modern society is corrupt, etc etc. The woman he’s talking to isn’t really following, but I quickly catch on to the flaws in his arguments and if you know me at all, you should know how I love a good debate, so I’m really temped to interrupt, but I’m taking my final exam and all, so I try and focus. Then the topic switches to money, and the guy suddenly goes on a rant about how money is the root of all evil, and how materialism is what’s wrong with society, etc, etc, and I can barely focus on my exam becuase he’s just so wrong and I have to sit there and think about relational databases and audit trails. Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, the guy starts preaching about the bible while I try to draw an ERD diagram, and about all I can do is try to sit there and not jump in the conversation. FINALLY they leave, and I thank God (hehe) that I can finish my exam in peace and go to a place where I don’t have to deal with irrational raving mystics, but hopefully do get a chance to debate my brains out. So if you dont see any posts for the next few weeks, you know what I’m up to.

Fox Hunting and the Politics of Compromise

(If you Googled this in search of an argument against animal rights, read this editorial first, then check out the articles here.)

The House of Commons has just voted for a total ban on fox hunting in England. One might be tempted to dismiss this as another sign of the loony leftists in Europe, but the failure of the “pro-hunt” lobby holds a number of important lessons for conservatives in America. The primary causes for the failure of the hunting lobby was their willingness to compromise and a failure to offer a moral defense of their rights.

Two weeks ago, Andrew Linzey, a prominent British “expert” on morality and “animal rights” compared fox-hunting to rape. To quote, “‘Causing suffering for sport is intrinsically evil. Hunting, therefore, belongs to that class of always morally impermissible acts along with rape, child abuse and torture…All acts of cruelty to animals are of a kind ….they diminish our humanity and offend.”

While Linzey’s argument is wrong on oh-so-many levels, I am more interested in what the opposition had to say in response. Here is one of the spokesmen of the Countryside Alliance, a pro-hunting group: “If you ask a rape victim or a victim of torture who has suffered so much whether they think what they have gone through can be compared to hunting, I think you know the response you would get. Frankly, it’s disgusting. We are talking about a legal pastime which is being likened to illegal acts of gross exploitation.”

Note that no attempt is made to refute the moral equivocation Linzey makes between human beings and animals. The best answer the spokesman comes up with is that rape feels worse that hunting. The second part of his reply is to say that rape is worse because it is illegal, which is completely irrelevant in the question of whether it is right. Similar flaws are found in arguments in all of the Alliance’s defenses. Their latest slogan is “59% say keep hunting.” Other arguments call for a defense of their “way of life” and that hunting an improper priority for the legislature. Not one has dared to offer a moral defense of hunting or to explain why it’s wrong to kill humans but not animals. Having forfeited the moral argument, they resort to appeals to tradition and popularity.

In response to the Alliance spokesman, Mr Linzey could easily say “Well how do know that rape feels worse than hunting? Have you ever been hunted?” In a comparison between being hunted down by dogs and being raped, most people would probably choose rape, and any sane person would certainly say that both are immoral and ought to be illegal. If a clear distinction between the moral status humans and animals is not made, what possible defense of hunting can be made? And how can one defend the moral status of humans if one does not recognize what makes them different from animals in the first place?

In short, hunting is doomed in England not because the arguments of the anti-hunt lobby have any merit, or because the defense of the hunters is wrong, but because hunters fail to provide any defense for their views at all, other to offer vague clichés such as “tradition,” “way of life,” and desperate resorts to public opinion. Realizing that they have nothing to offer in defense, they argue for compromise measures such as registration and various limits on where and how they hunt.

The gun lobby in America faces the same proposition. While the liberals offer laughable claims that guns are intrinsically evil, gun owners fail to defend their position on a basis of individual rights and refer to the traditional role of guns in American society and the Second Amendment. There is no certainly no question that gun ownership is an American tradition and a right guaranteed by the Constitution, but until recently fox hunting was an even older British tradition that collapsed before a small but vocal minority. Until gun owners on both sides of the pond realize that they must defend their rights on a moral basis and offer a principled stand for individual rights, their freedoms will continue to be eroded by collectivists with preposterous claims that hunting amounts to rape and guns are evil while criminals are not. Ironically, it is Tony Blair who stated in response to calls to weaken the hunting ban that “this is a moral issue, and as soon as you try and compromise on a moral issue you end up hacking everybody off.” Until conservatives stop “conserving” and start defending their rights, their stance is as useless as the fox hunters.

(By the way, I think the NRA’s willingness to compromise on their principles makes them unworthy of anyone’s support. If you want to support an organization that truly supports your rights, I recommend you check out Keep and Bear Arms)

Here we go again…

The NYT has an interesting story on the internal power struggle among the various Palestinian terrorist organizations. It makes a number of interesting points, such as that Arafat has refused to halt the terrorist attacks because he prefers using the threat of violence to get concessions from Israel, and that he remains a powerful influence despite having officially stepped down. The article also mentions that Abbas and his allies do want a more moderate (i.e. less barbaric) policy that represents a threat to the groups that maintain their power by terrorist activities.

As the article mentions in passing, the recent "truce" seems to have two motivations: first, the terrorist organizations are feeling the heat from Israel and want a chance to regroup and reload for another round, and two, they are hoping that the truce will fail miserably (which it will) and thus discredit Abbas and the moderates. Their demands (which include the release of all Arab prisoners) are outrageous enough to guarantee an imminent Israeli "breach" and a "justified" response of killing of innocent civilians.

The Hamas-run website of the Palestinian groups is actually very revealing of their goals. The English section is a long complaint list of "Zionist atrocities" (Israeli officials are always referred to as "Zionist authorities" as if "Zionist" is a dirty word.) Few photos of the "atrocities" are shown, and most of them are of Israeli soldiers at checkpoints doing their job and crying babies (no joke) without any "Zionist occupiers" in the vicinity. The Arabic section however, is a list of martyrs, vilifications of Israel, praising of the various terrorist cells, and Hamas calls for more attacks. The Russian section is slightly more moderate, with photos of terrorist attacks and martyrs surrounded by what can only be described as glowing halos. Unlike the slick and glossy English section, the relatively amateurish Arabic and Russian sections have articles featuring "answers to the occupation" (if my rusty knowledge of Russian serves me right) with graphic photos of dead Israelis. Can you guess why the English section is the only one not showing the murdered Israelis and praising the terrorists? Why is Sweden allowing Hamas to run its propaganda campaign from servers located within its borders? If you haven’t figured it out yet, I recommend you read Laurel’s comments on the nature of the Palestinian culture.