Wave in an Ice Bucket

An open letter to all the collectivist morons that participated in the notorious "ALS ice bucket challenge."

Rarely have I encountered on this planet full of morons a horror as revolting as this ice bucket nonsense. First off, the obvious.

Making donations based not on data where a donation might do good, but on stupid pranks and videos predictably leads to a massive misallocation of resources.

Then, this stupid stunt can quite easily kill the very people trying to save lives the armchair activist way. Getting doused with cold water on a hot day can easily give you a heart attack, and at least one person died jumping into a particularly large "bucket."

But far worse than any misallocated money or death from freak accident is the sheer primeval mob spirit in which these pranks are performed.

When do you soaked, shivering rocket surgeons exactly plan to use your brains, to the extent that you have any, and start thinking for yourselves? When someone nominates you for a "light a firecracker in your mouth" challenge? When Al Qaida collects $100 million because they have a cool video? Before you vote for the next fuehrer because he has a cool party trick?

If you cheer mob spirit and irrationality, if "nominating," shaming, guilting, peer pressure, and blind following is the coin of your realm, this is what you are cheering on:

Don't ask who is destroying the world. You are.

If the world goes down your path, you are going to solve the ALS issue ironically, because people will once again be slaughtering each other before they ever get a chance to develop ALS, just like in the Dark Ages, just like in World War II. That is the nature of barbarity.

As ironically, if you would quit wasting time on collectivist blackmail and use it instead for teaching people to think for themselves, people would become more productive, GDP would increase, and more money would be available for all research even without pressuring people to give. That is the nature of progress.

You and your methods are disgusting, no matter how noble you claim the ends you advocate to be. Plus, wet, you look ridiculous. Now go away and be ashamed of yourselves.

Scottish Objectivist Explains Benefits of Smoking

In this enlightening video, a Scottish objectivist explains the benefits of smoking: Smoking is where all the great ideas come from.

"My life was terrible without cigarettes. I did nothing with my time. I was like, 'Oh, where am I going? What am I doing?' Now my life is rich and true and good and strong."

It even is good for your lungs:

"It makes your lungs bigger 'cause you're sucking."



Here it is with subtitles:


SCROOGIN ON A GREG by willanderson0

Happy Birthday, America!

Happy Birthday, America! Here's the present:

The Case of the Kidnapped O'Connors, free to download for your Kindle today, July 4, 2013, midnight to midnight Pacific Time. The Case of the Kidnapped O'Connors, the new Kevin Traynor mystery. A locked room mystery about art, anarchy, objectivity, and madness.

When his girlfriend's prized paintings are stolen from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Kevin Traynor has to find them fast, lest she slip from her usual objectivity and rationality into madness, mayhem, and murder. There is no lack of suspects — and no way how any human being can have smuggled the paintings out of that proverbial locked room. There simply is no explanation that is both rational and plausible. The hunt for the thief leads the couple into one dead end after another. It dawns on Traynor that the only way to find the thief is to find the paintings... But is he up against a mere mortal thief, or against The Phantom of the Met?

Kevin Traynor. With the right to be politically incorrect.

US Doesn't Understand the Concept "Ally"

What do the Mongol Empire, the objectivists, and the US government have in common?

They have no concept of "ally."

The Mongols knew only three conditions of foreign relations: "enemies", "conquered," or "in rebellion." The concept of "ally" was foreign to them.

In 1245, Pope Innocent IV wrote a letter to the Mongols, expressing a desire for "peace." But in the Mongol language, "peace" is a synonym for "subjection."

Khan Güyük understood it the only way he could and replied with a demand for submission:

You must say with a sincere heart: "We will be your subjects; we will give you our strength." You must in person come with your kings, all together, without exception, to render us service and pay us homage. Only then will we acknowledge your submission.

As for the objectivists:

As advocates of laissez-faire capitalism, avowedly committed to the supremacy of reason, it seemed as if the Randians would be valuable allies.

But the Randians did not understand the concept of "allies": in their universe, you either agreed with all of their positions, or else you were consigned to the Outer Darkness.

As the Edward Snowden affair has shown, the imperial federal government is no different. It expects to get everything in return for nothing. It expects unconditional and absolute submission to the evil empire.

The US government believes it can spy on the citizens of its allies, without bothering to obey its allies' privacy laws or applying for search warrants from its allies' courts. But then it expects those same courts it contemned to extradite its fugitives.

It's either or. Either Hong Kong and Russia are the United States' allies, or they are not.

If they are allies, how can the US government dare to bypass their laws and their courts and to violate the rights or their citizens? If they are not allies, why should they comply with US requests?

It appears that for the US government, too, there are no allies, but only conquered provinces, which have a duty to pay tribute to the US, no matter what outrage the US has perpetrated against their citizens the day before.

The Case of the Kidnapped O'Connors, Chapter One, Part Two

Begin with the beginning.

To save himself from exploding with laughter and from his girlfriend's ensuing ire, Traynor sauntered over to the column wall, where his best friend, Nick Parker, stood staring at Diminishing Returns, going, "For some reason, I like that mannequin…"

Short but muscular, with dark eyes and wavy black hair, Parker looked like a bull ready to charge a red rag. Apparently, he was giving the redhead he had been flirting with some time to miss him before he reeled her in. Traynor followed his friend's stare. The painting featured a painter's wooden mannequin sitting on a turquoise drum in turn sitting on a reddish cliff. Below, a blue ocean, or at least a reservoir, like Lake Powell on the Colorado River, stretched beyond a reddish headland. Above, a cloud in several shades of blue with a silver lining covered most of a blue sky. The mannequin was juggling what looked like colorful Christmas balls, with a red one already shattered on the ground.

To Traynor, it looked like surrealism, and not very good surrealism at that. The most he could make of it was a caricature of Howard Roark gone crazy on his cliff. According to Jennifer, the official Objectivist line was that the playful lay figure represented gaiety. If it made her happy…

As far as Traynor was concerned, the exact opposite might be just as true. The inescapably surreal nature of the painting might symbolize statism. The wooden, faceless, soulless stick figure might be a government bureaucrat playing with and casually breaking the baubles produced by capitalism.

Others said that the mannequin, having hooters, the drummer on her turquoise drum, was Ayn Rand, and that the balls she was juggling bore self-portraits of her husband Frank O'Connor. You take it from there. To Traynor, any interpretation was as good as any other in this case, as any the other flavor of intellectuals offered for the nonobjective art in the other galleries.

Parker stirred. "Gotta go now, look after another lay figure."

Traynor looked languidly on as his friend left the gallery. As languidly, the muddy river of the mayor's speech emptied into an ocean of applause. Now the crowd grew restless, some milling to the paintings, some out of the gallery to one of the impromptu bars. Traynor headed back to his girlfriend.

Whoosh!

Suddenly, clouds of smoke billowed from the air conditioning vents. The fire alarm sounded.

"Fire!" Panicky cries rang out, interspersed with coughs.

People rushed to the exits, but that moment something or somebody triggered the burglar alarm, and the massive steel doors clanked shut, locking everybody in. Traynor ducked under the thickening smoke screen. Where was Jennifer?

He dashed toward the place he had seen her last, rooted through a forest of legs, homed in on a fair pair under a black miniskirt, ran into her, and grabbed her by the wrist. "Gotcha!"

"You play with Nick for five seconds, and bang, there's a fire."

"I try to do my best. But I'm not sure that there's fire where there's smoke."

However, the gallery kept filling with dark-gray smoke. Some people tried to filter the smoke by breathing through tissues or handkerchiefs. It did not seem to help much. Others dropped to the floor for clearer air. Panicky people cursed, screamed, raged, ranted, and banged their fists against the steel doors.

"Fuck!"

Cough!

"Fire!"

Cough!

"Terrorists!"

Cough!

"Anarchy!"

Cough!

"The end of the world!"

Wheeze!

"I knew we shouldn't have come here!"

Gasp!

"Give me that tissue!"

"Get your own tissue, bitch!"

Cough!

"Call 911!"

"Where's my phone?"

Cough! Gasp!

"Where are the firefighters?"

"Where are the police if you need them?"

"Stand back!" ordered one of the mayor's bodyguards.

"Freeze!" ordered another.

"Stand back!"

"Freeze!"

Wheeze!

"Stand back and freeze!"

Cough! Wheeze!

"Everybody, stay clear of his honor, or we'll fire!"

"The building has already been fired!"

Wheeze! Cough!

"I'm not even close to his honor!"

"Where does he have any honor?"

Gasp! Cough!

"Shut up! I bought his honor last week! A clean million into his Swiss bank account! Now it's strictly for the birds! What an irony, to die like this, together, like two rats!"

"Birds? Rats? Keep your imaginary zoo to yourself, or his honor will sue you! His honor doesn't have any bank account in Switzerland. He can't even find Switzerland on a map. He doesn't even know how to spell it."

"Who cares? He can't sue, 'cause we're all gonna die in here!"

"Gasp!"

"I never voted for that rat anyway."

"Who cares what you voted for? We're gonna die!"

Cough! Wheeze! Gasp!

"There ought to be a law against this shoddy construction!"

"There ought to be a law against these steel doors!"

"There ought to be a law against fires!"

Cough! Cough! Cough!

"Jesus, we're all gonna die!"

"Oh my god, the end is nigh!"

"Oh my god oh my god oh my god…"

"Yea, though I walk in death's dark vale, yet will I fear no ill. For thou art with me, and thy rod and staff me comfort still…"

Cough! Cough! Wheeze! Wheeze! Gasp! Gasp!

"Sam, I have a confession to make. I've been lying about my age for years. I'm not going to turn thirty next week. I'm turning forty."

"I know. I know. The divorce papers are in the mail."

Cough out loud!

"My poor hair! Oh, that damn smoke. It's going to ruin my hair!"

Rolling on the floor wheezing!

"Take the phone, Ferris, and say goodbye to the children!"

"Oh, come on. I know they're not my kids."

Cough-o-copter!

"Oh, those fucking terrorists!"

Cough! Cough! Wheeze! Wheeze! Gasp! Gasp!

In people's minds, the smoke grew into everybody's personal nightmare, be it fire, bombs, or poison gas. It became impossible to see anyone or anything more than a couple feet away.

Jennifer shook off her boyfriend's hand. "Where are the fire extinguishers?"

"There are some over there, but where's the fire? Maybe not such a great idea, blindly emptying the fire extinguishers into the ventilation ducts."

That moment, a busty brunette standing and coughing nearby, lacking a handkerchief, ripped off her blouse, sending buttons flying every which way, one hitting Traynor in the chest, and used it as a makeshift gas mask.

Through the smoke, Traynor watched her hooters strain against her bra and wobble with every cough. "Maybe coming here was not such a bad idea, after all. Too bad Nick isn't in here. He'd love that."

Coughing herself, Jennifer shot her boyfriend an icy glance. "You want me to compete on these terms?"

Traynor grinned. "Well, you'd be one step ahead of her, oh my braless wonder. Besides, she can't compete with you anyway."

"Thank you."

" 'Cause she isn't even blond."

"Thanks. I think."

Traynor drew his .45 Colt M1911 pistol and chambered a round. "Better 1911 than 911."

"Doesn't help much against the fire, though," cautioned his girlfriend.

Traynor coughed. "What fire? What about the burglar alarm and the steel doors? Looks more like a heist to me."

With the doors shut and the smoke, there seemed to be nothing they could do, except to be ready to defend themselves and to wait for the smoke exhaust system to cope and firefighters to fight the alleged fire and to open the doors. Through the smoke and the noises of the alarms and the charging mob, Jennifer and Traynor thought they heard a swishing sound from the center of the gallery. A shadowy figure clad all in black brushed past them. Jennifer gasped involuntarily. He or she — or it — had no face! There was nothing there but a dark blob of slime!

Buy the full story.

The Case of the Kidnapped O'Connors, Chapter One, Part One

Chapter One

The Phantom of the Met

Kevin Traynor yawned.

Jennifer Jordan rolled her blue eyes, then looked up at the ceiling of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's new south wing. Not that she expected any help from anywhere up there. Yes, it was boring — but did her boyfriend always have to put on a show on what he thought about others?

"Serves you right," she hissed. "You kept me waiting for half an hour."

Traynor brushed his hand through his dark-blond hair before he put his arm around her, flashed a roguish grin across his angular face, and looked her disarmingly into the eyes.

His sparkling blue eyes utterly denied the importance of being earnest or late. "Not my fault. As I said, Nick had two tickets for the Foxy Boxing World Championship."

"He had tickets? I thought he ran that circus."

"Anyway, you could have moved the opening to another night. Could easily have been more than half an hour. Was hard enough to bum a ride off of Nick to get here from the Garden. He wanted to go backstage, comfort the losers, and celebrate with the winner."

Nothing good could come out of a serious argument with Kevin Traynor.

"But he did drive you here."

"I told him there would be chicks. By the way, you used to enjoy a good catfight in your day, if I may say so."

"My day? I have not yet begun to fight! Anyway, you better watch out. My sources keep telling me that The Great D'Ancy is in town."

"Rene D'Ancy, the famous French art thief?"

"The same. Rene Honore D'Ancy. He's a genius with disguises. You better watch out. Anybody in here could be D'Ancy. Hell, I could be D'Ancy."

"That, we'll find out tonight."

"I don't think so. After all, you could be D'Ancy."

"Would that make any difference? Anyway, rest assured I don't feel terribly D'Ancy tonight."

"At least try to be a little more vigilant."

"I can't help it. That guy's a walking, talking bromide. It's more interesting to watch paint dry — or for that matter, to watch these columns grow."

The speaker, a portly gray-haired gentleman by the name of Publius B. Vandam IV, droned on and on about how his great-granduncle, the noted progressive, reformer, and philanthropist, had been martyred on a cross of gold by those Gilded-Age robber barons. Vandam was the chief executive officer of the company that had designed the interiors and the lighting of the new galleries. Before Vandam, Leslie Ford, the museum director, had exhorted the audience that art was not a commodity, but a public trust.

Before Ford, one Geraldine "Jeri" Culpepper, an elderly socialite, culture vulture, and philanthropist apparently well-known among the Four Hundred, had lauded donors for contributing to the cultural cause, but urged them to match their donations dollar for dollar with charity for the poor. Traynor figured that she had inherited or married into her money. Now her guilty conscience was as black as her dress and gloves. She could not "give back" her unearned wealth fast enough — to those who had not given it to her. Well, her problem. The trouble was that she wanted to force her betters, those who had made their money, like Jennifer and Traynor, "to give it back" as well. To whom? To those who had not made it. And before her, there had been a long line of similar silver spoon socialist speakers Traynor had forgotten or repressed.

The new north and south wings of the museum had been paid for by a hundred-story apartment tower rising above each wing. First American Corporation had built the towers and the reinforced concrete shells of the museum wings on which they stood. Jennifer was First American's Vice President for Safety, Security, and Special Assignments, while Traynor, who had held that job before her, continued as a consultant.

However, the museum had insisted on awarding the contract for the interior design of the museum wings to Vandam Construction. After all, would it be fair for one multi-billion dollar corporation, and the world's largest at that, to monopolize the whole project? Moreover, Vandam was among the museum's most generous benefactors. Nevertheless, like his construction company was but a small part of the fortune he had inherited, his patronage of the arts was dwarfed by his charitable giving championing the poor, the underprivileged, and the disenfranchised. A philanthropist so public-spirited could not be ignored without a social backlash — in other words, without bad PR.

For Jennifer, her donation to the museum had been a chance to get her collection of Frank O'Connor paintings displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, much to the horror of every curator up to the director. Neither what he had called their "proto-fascist" provenance nor their amateurish technique had helped any. Ultimately, only Jennifer's thinly veiled threat that her position at First American permitted her to maneuver the Met Museum Towers project on a back burner through an uncharitable safety assessment had gotten her what she wanted. This had an even more horrified director gnashing his teeth, grudgingly permitting "those paintings" into his holy halls, half recognizing that she who pays the piper calls the tune, half rationalizing that one of the paintings having been featured on the cover of an enormously popular bestseller permitted a retrospective of the painter in the holy halls his paintings may in part have helped to build.

Consequently, the grand opening of the new wings was nothing short of an utter nightmare: Not only were there the usual inane speeches, but the silver spoon socialist speakers tried to outdo each other in their condemnation of the selfishness the O'Connors represented. The silver spoon socialists resented the fact that the new south wing would be named for First American's chief executive officer, whose name they scrupulously avoided to even mention. Culture vultures were furious that they had to thank what they called "those crass materialists" for the museum expansion, that they even had them materialists perch like eagles in their nests above the culture vulture haunt. But what they hated most was Jennifer's O'Connor paintings displayed on the wall of the sturdy column in the center of the windowless gallery, behind Vandam. They hated those paintings even more than they hated the fact that columns supporting the towers above intruded into the new museum galleries, which they believed they should have gotten for free.

The painting Traynor found most interesting, or frankly, the only one that aroused more than a passing interest in him, was Man Also Rises, Frank O'Connor's painting of a cityscape at dawn, which graced the cover of the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of The Fountainhead. Four white shafts of sunlight broke out of a gray cloud over a city skyline. In the foreground, the red steel frame of a skyscraper under construction rose through the right third of the painting. As Traynor loved the book and loved skyscrapers even more, he found the painting, however crude, appealing. Jennifer had purchased a couple more O'Connors, but to Traynor they constituted diminishing returns, and not only the one that was named thus.

Finally, Vandam having finished, the mayor launched himself into a flight of fancy extolling the nobility of public service. Mayor Mark Messing was as short and stocky as Ford was tall and slim. Together they looked like Mutt and Jeff. Apart from the mayor's head of carefully parted silvery hair, that is.

In contrast, Ford's tousled brown hair reminded Traynor of ruffled feathers. In fact, with a small head and a big nose shaped not unlike a toucan's bill, and a tendency to abruptly look hither and thither for imaginary smudges, scratches, chips, and tears on his treasures, the museum director did look like a bird on his perch. The two of them made for a preposterous picture. Traynor was chuckling inside. He could not look at the two of them for any length of time for fear of having to laugh out loud.

Read on…

Or buy the full story.

The Case of the Kidnapped O'Connors

Now available for your Kindle: The Case of the Kidnapped O'Connors, the new Kevin Traynor mystery. A locked room mystery about art, anarchy, objectivity, and madness. Free to download tomorrow, June 13, 2013, midnight to midnight Pacific Time.

When his girlfriend's prized paintings are stolen from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Kevin Traynor has to find them fast, lest she slip from her usual objectivity and rationality into madness, mayhem, and murder. There is no lack of suspects — and no way how any human being can have smuggled the paintings out of that proverbial locked room. There simply is no explanation that is both rational and plausible. The hunt for the thief leads the couple into one dead end after another. It dawns on Traynor that the only way to find the thief is to find the paintings... But is he up against a mere mortal thief, or against The Phantom of the Met?

Kevin Traynor. With the right to be politically incorrect.

57

Coincidence of the day:

In 1957, Humphrey Bogart, age 57, a heavy smoker and drinker, dies of cancer of the esophagus, after losing his esophagus, two lymph nodes, and a rib to cancer.

In 1957, Ayn Rand, a heavy smoker, publishes Atlas Shrugged, a book that she claims contains the gospel truth on all things in the universe (she claimed it encompassed her whole philosophy and that that was a closed system, i.e., not amenable to amendment), a book that features scenes that glorify the cigarette as symbol of the fire of the mind:

"When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind — and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression." (P. 64.)

She had driven far down the winding road, and the lights of the diner were long since out of sight, when she noticed that she was enjoying the taste of the cigarette he had given her: it was different from any she had ever smoked before. She held the small remnant to the light of the dashboard, looking for the name of the brand. There was no name, only a trademark. Stamped in gold on the thin, white paper there stood the sign of the dollar.

She examined it curiously: she had never heard of that brand before. Then she remembered the old man at the cigar stand of the Taggart Terminal, and smiled, thinking that this was a specimen for his collection. She stamped out the fire and dropped the butt into her handbag.

Train Number 57 was lined along the track, ready to leave for Wyatt Junction, when she reached Cheyenne, left her car at the garage where she had rented it, and walked out on the platform of the Taggart station. (P. 310.)

She was a slow learner. Later in life, she lost a lung to cancer and finally died of heart failure.

These days, aging objectivists are slowly smoking themselves to death. Though they are self-proclaimed advocates of reason, no amount of reason, logic, and evidence can convince them that that work of fiction is wrong and that smoking kills.

So sad.

And at the other end of the Nolan Chart, the authoritarians are busy confiscating weed. Not that killing people to save them from themselves would ever make sense, but if they would steal their cigarettes instead of their weed, that would be at least slightly less illogical. Not that there is any sort of smoke that isn't carcinogenic, though.

Don't drink and smoke, folks. That combination is as sure to kill you as you're to kill someone else if you drink and drive.

Here the movie version, thanks to Murray Rothbard:



And here the remake:



End of the public service announcement.

3D-Printed Guns: Orwell Was Wrong, So Was Rand

The 3D gun printing process doesn't constitute the invention of a new wheel of undocumented gun cottage industry. Skilled gunsmiths and semiskilled machinists have always been able to manufacture undocumented ("illegal," "unlicensed") guns.

The true significance of the 3D-printed gun is the "democratization" of gun manufacturing. Now all the equipment you need is a 3D printer and the skills required to operate it.

The knee-jerk reaction by the people's rulers, New York Senator Chuck E. Schumer and Congressman Steve Israel? They want to ban all plastic guns.

"But if you're going to download a blueprint for a plastic weapon that can be brought onto an airplane, there's a penalty to be paid."

That doesn't even begin to make sense. Hijacking aircraft is already illegal. A hijacker, particularly if he's a suicidal religious fanatic, isn't going to be deterred by an additional gun charge.

Over at the Huffington Post, the assorted fascists, commies, gun control freaks, and other intellectual bottom feeders creeping around there are huffing and frothing at their mouths. But just that they don't like reality doesn't change it.

"This elegant statement of purpose [the Preamble to the US Constitution] confirms that our Founders saw a more energetic, more capable federal government as the best possible guarantor of individual rights."

Only that this government turned out to be the most vicious destroyer of individual rights. Apparently, the huffy poster is unable to distinguish between individual rights and the will (the tyranny) of the majority.

"He prefers an anarchical society where government lacks the ability not only to accomplish great things, but also to do the mundane, like ensuring that judgments are enforced and laws executed."

Let me take Israel's nonsense statement and turn it around into something meaningful:

We're all for enforcing (Anarcho-Capitalist) laws against true crime. But if you're going to raid someone's house to steal his books, computers, and weed, to lock him into a cage, and to murder him if he tries to defend himself, there's a penalty to be paid.

If everybody has a gun, no organization, be it a fascist state or an Anarcho-Capitalist corporation gone rogue, can afford to enforce laws against victimless "crimes." Neither fascist pigs nor Anarcho-Capitalist security guards will be at all eager to enforce contempt of cop on even the lowliest individual.

The case of 3D-printed guns proves two popular antifascist writers, George Orwell and Ayn Rand, wrong.

In 1984, Orwell painted the dystopian picture of an omnipotent state enslaving its subjects through technology. Now we see that technology is not the evil tool of the fascist state.

At worst, technology is morally neutral, neither good nor bad, its moral worth depending on which party uses it, the state or the freedom fighters. At best, however, technology is so disruptive that, once genie is out of the bottle, it reduces any organized monopoly government ad absurdum.

Murray Rothbard correctly stated that:

"Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism."

Which, as this case demonstrates, can be turned into this corollary:

Technology is the fullest expression of anarchy, and anarchy is the fullest expression of technology.

Advanced technology makes totalitarian rule impossible, and the absence of pointless regulations allows more technological progress.

Rand believed that anarchy would result in the rule of brute force, and consequently fantasized about how to keep some hypothetical "limited government" limited. Now we see that anarchy is not the rule of brute force, but of force controlled by the mind.

Anarchy is the "rule," for lack of a better word, of those who can operate 3D printers. Not the rule of decrepit old men like Chuck E. Cheese, who cannot tell the "intertubes" from their feeding tubes, old men who love nothing better than to at the drop of a hat make laws to kidnap and murder random individuals who never harmed anyone.

If you want to wrap your mind around how far the lunacy of the government toadies goes, look at this huffy poster contradiction:

"The concept of a government 'monopoly on force' may sound inconsistent with the political traditions of a country steeped in stories of its own revolution, but it is the fundamental organizing principle of any nation-state."

Versus

"We don't know if the project will be producing serviceable handguns and assault rifles anytime soon, but if it does — and if these weapons avoid regulation — political violence could one day replace political dialogue as the hallmark of our democratic system."

In the first quote the gun control freak extols the state's monopoly on force. In the second quote he condemns political violence.

But what is the state's monopoly on force, if not political violence, political violence perpetrated by the majority to enforce its will on the minority? Looks like political violence is fine with freaky-boy as long as it has been rubberstamped by the majority.

Majority tyranny, democracy, is fine and dandy for him. Looks like he expects to always have a leftist majority to back him up.

But be careful, freaky-boy. A government that is powerful enough to give you anything you want is also powerful enough to take away everything you have. I dare say that if your authoritarian government turns on you, saving an authoritarian like you from death row will be the lowest of the low priorities for any anarchist.

You dirty fascists, commies, conservatives, and socialists. Your government stole our herbs, guns, and books it didn't approve of, locked us in cages, and murdered us. When we complained, you basically told us to go fly a kite.

Now liberty and anarchy is coming to you, and you don't like it one bit. You complain to us.

You know what? Go fly a kite.

Anarchy is the way of the future. Better get used to it.

The shot heard 'round the world.

What Is the Market?

One reason why anarchists and minarchists are arguing at cross-purposes is the failure to understand what the (free) market is and how it works. Let me explain. 

What is a market? A market is a place where people exchange goods and services. 

What is free? Free means free from initiatory force. 

What then is a free market? A free market is a place where people exchange goods and services voluntarily. 

The state claims a coercive monopoly on the provision of certain goods, i.e., defense and justice. The state claims only it is qualified to provide them. 

Anarchists hold that the market will provide these goods better, cheaper, and more humanely, like it provides all other goods in that fashion. Minarchists claim that for a free market to exist, it needs to be created and protected by a preexisting limited government, but they cannot explain how such a limited government could come into or remain in existence. 

This apparent contradiction is best explained in a model. Let's assume there's a world that contains three individuals: Alice, Benito, and Carl. 

The three of them go to the market to trade. Alice is more intelligent than Benito and Carl. Therefore, her products are more advanced and more valuable to every one of them. 

Because she is more intelligent, Alice has made a pistol for her self-defense. Benito and Carl have only slingshots, as they don't know how to build anything more advanced. 

Now, the archist argument is that that market is not free, because Alice has got a gun, but the other two haven't. Alice can force the other two to trade on terms that they would not agree to if they were on equal terms in firepower. Therefore, archists claim that the three of them have to set up a government, which will somehow administer the gun, i.e. the use of force, objectively. 

Yet, governments do not exist independently of individuals. Governments consist of individuals. 

So in our market, Alice, Benito, and Carl establish a government and have a democratic vote on whom to use the gun against. I bet you can imagine what happens next. 

Right, Benito and Carl gang up on Alice and vote to point the gun at her and expropriate her superior products from her, so they get for free what they could barely have afforded in a hypothetically truly free market, where no one can threaten to use force against their trading partners. 

This is precisely what has happened in our world. The minarchist solution is to plead with Benito and Carl for one of them to side with Alice. 

They promise Benito and Carl that if they let Alice go with her tools now, she will come back with even more and better products, and everyone will be better off. But Benito and Carl only care about free stuff now. 

Then the minarchists explain to Benito and Carl that it is immoral to steal Alice's stuff, even if they steal by way of democratic government. But Benito and Carl only care about free stuff now. 

Besides, they have rationalized their crimes, so that they can go on looting, but still face themselves in a mirror. Benito makes himself believe that democratic government is holy and can do whatever it wants. Carl makes himself believe that Alice didn't really create her goods, but just found them somewhere, so she doesn't really have a right to them. 

So in the real world you only have two options: Alice keeps her gun and makes the rules for everyone, or Benito and Carl vote on what rules to make and enforce at the point of the gun they could never have created. The market cannot and should not be free as in "Everyone has the same firepower" or "No one should be able to threaten the use of force against trading partners." The market can only be free in terms and to the extent of "Everyone gets to keep the guns he can manufacture to defend himself with." This way, the most intelligent have the most firepower, and initiatory force and injustice is thus minimized as much as humanly possible. 

Sure, it's not ideal to have the intelligent and productive make all the rules, for to be intelligent and productive does not necessarily mean to be moral and just. But it sure beats the current situation, where the stupid and unproductive gang up into a majority and force their superstitions on their betters and loot from them. 

For a representative government to work, the majority would have to be intelligent and productive, instead of stupid and unproductive. Given that it isn't, there are only two ways to establish civilization on this planet. 

Either you adopt Anarcho-Capitalism straight, where the rules are made by corporations, where the richer shareholders have more votes. Or you have to go back to "anarchy light," i.e. the system the Founding Fathers established, with census suffrage, where the rich got more votes than the poor, so the latter could not outvote the former to loot from them. ("Anarchy light" because it attempted to replicate the results of Anarcho-Capitalism without fully going there, without recognizing individual sovereignty.) 

But if you go that far, you may just as well go the whole nine yards to Anarcho-Capitalism. But then, you can bury your head in the sand like the minarchists and hope that someday some miracle will happen and establish a market where no one has more firepower than anyone else. 

The funny thing is that the minarchists (or at least the objectivists) are vociferously opposed to a world government. I.e., they abhor the state of nature among individuals, but they are adamant that the state of nature be preserved among nations. 

But in logic, if it is wrong for individuals to live by the law of the strongest (which means the most intelligent, as conflicts are no longer decided by bare fists and brute muscle), then it is wrong for nations, too. So if you want a government to rule individuals, you have to want a world government to rule nation states. 

What we have right now between nations is the Alice, Benito, and Carl state of nature described in the beginning. Alice, the US, the most rational — or rather the least irrational — nation, rules as she sees fit, and Benito and Carl, or the socialist slave states of Europe and the theocratic states of Islam, want to disarm her via the UN. 

Which means that archists, minarchists, and objectivists have no argument on their side but the status quo. We need world anarchy, or the world government will democratically vote to disarm the US and annihilate Israel. But we cannot have individual anarchy, because it's never been fully tried and is scary. The archists are afraid of change and can only resort to "discussions" along the lines of "La, la, la, I'm not listening to this." 

Prove me wrong and try to prove me wrong. If you can. Otherwise I hope those government boots you're licking at least taste good. 

The Bankruptcy of Minarchy

For a declaration of bankruptcy of minarchism, look no further than this blog post in one objectivist gazette by the name of The Objective Standard.

The objective standard. What a claim.

You'd think if that's their objective standard, it's their best shot. Yet the claims I had to read in that post are patently illogical, the author doesn't seem to have read even the basics on anarchism, and that whole tempest in a tea post amounts to one big fur ball fight randroid vs. straw man, a trap set by knaves for fools that never heard about anarchy except as in "chaos."

"Events last week surrounding the hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers were instructive regarding the contradiction that is anarchy."

On the contrary, as the pigs made a huge mess out of that manhunt, using excessive force against suspects who turned out to be innocent, and the case was solved by a civilian in the end, those events were in fact instructive regarding the contradiction that is the state.

"Anarchy, the absence of government, leaves political justice to the will of the general public."

Democracy leaves political justice to the will of the general public. Anarcho-Capitalism leaves it mostly to corporate professionals, but also to individuals, if they choose to accept the liability risks of taking the law into their own hands.

"Had there been no government… no law… how would these killers have been identified and apprehended? By individual citizens investigating and prowling around on their own?"

Not likely. That would be very inefficient. Capitalism leads to division of labor.

Also, that there are no governments in a free world does not mean that there is no law. In a free country, the law is made by corporations, by free, voluntarily cooperating individuals, just like everything else.

In our mixed economies, the state makes no bread, but that does not mean that there is no bread. In fact, thanks to corporate and individual bakers, we have more and better bread than the soviet slaves got from their state.

"By multiple private 'defense agencies,' … following their own favored practices regarding the use of force?"

Yes, law and security will be manufactured by private corporations, just like everything else. Why would any different practices regarding the use of force be a problem, assuming that they would not be standardized through a negotiated body of intercorporate law in the first place?

And why don't the obis have a problem with the fact that different governments follow different practices regarding their use of force, which have not been standardized by international law? By that logic, only a single world government would be permissible.

By they way, it's not like there aren't multiple agencies under government that get in each other's way. Only that they don't compete. So in that respect you already have the downsides of anarchy without the upsides.

"Over the course of that week, how many people were wrongly identified as 'suspects' by the police… Without… the rule of law and due process, how many innocent people would have been assaulted and possibly slain?"

Obviously, fewer than by the pigs that rampaged through Boston like Rambo. Who could the poor people of Boston call against the pigs raiding their homes? No one.

In Anarcho-Capitalism, any would-be pig has to be real careful not to "assault or slay" any innocent individual, as that pig would find itself at the receiving end of its victim's defense agency. The same is true for individual vigilantes. Defense agencies would try rogue security guards and vigilantes alike for murder if they ended up lynching the wrong person, so there is no additional incentive for lynch justice in Anarcho-Capitalism. In fact, there is less incentive for legalized lynching, as there finally will be someone you can call against the pigs.

Governments unjustly slay more innocent people than defense agencies would, precisely because democratic voting and the lack of competition permits the government to operate without reason or objectivity. Capitalist competition will lead to better standards of evidence than the ridiculously low standards the government uses and that get all those innocent people on death row right now.

"The hunt…  illustrates why the use of retaliatory force (outside of immediate self-defense) must be placed under objective control — that is, control of pre-established legal processes enacted by a government strictly limited to the protection of individual rights."

The eagerness with which governments aggress against the innocent accused is the one best argument against government. Government courts are little better than legalized lynch mobs, where you find little reason or objectivity.

And "outside of immediate self-defense"? Funny.

By the obi logic, self-defense would in fact have to be outlawed. If individuals are too nonobjective to mete out justice without harming the innocent, how can they be objective enough to defend themselves without harming the innocent? In a hypothetical obi land, the randroids would in fact have to stand, deliver, be raped, and be slaughtered rather than defend themselves, for fear of using "nonobjective" force.

And who exactly should or would pre-establish that strictly limited government? The people?

In other words, the majority? No one hates strict limits on government more than the majority does.

In democracy — or any other form of "one man, one vote" representative government the objectivists may prefer to egalitarian, direct democracy — it's the majority that elects the politicians. And it's the politicians that make the law according to the majority's wishes.

The majority does not intend to give up legalized looting. Nor does it intend to stop sacrificing liberties for sham security.

Only if the law is made by capitalist corporations in a free marketplace can things change for the better. In a corporation, the poor shareholders cannot gang up on the rich ones, as the latter get more votes, according to the number of their shares, which is, the size of their fortunes, which is, their productivity.

Anarcho-Capitalism rewards intelligence, merit, and productivity. Egalitarian government rewards mob rule.

In Anarcho-Capitalism, you're free to build a defense agency that does not sacrifice liberty for sham security, even though the majority may hate it. All it takes is enough customers, and wealthy enough customers, that vote for you with their wallets. With that money, you can fund your Navy, Air Force, and Army, strong enough to keep any rights-violating gangs and fascist nation states at bay.

The funny thing is, for all their harping on about governments' real and anarchists' hypothetical rights violations, the TOS obis committed a rights violation themselves in that post. The pic of Murray Rothbard they used is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Yet I can find no attribution in the post. There's just a link back to Wikipedia, but no attribution to the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

I don't think it's fair use, as the post is on anarchy, not on Rothbard. The post doesn't comment on or even mention Rothbard.

Why Do People Love Public, Hate Private?

Move over, Atlas Shrugged, here comes real life! You'd believe that this article on unionized postal "workers" protesting the end of six-day delivery was a satire. Yet it appears to be authentic, and the people quoted seem to really believe what they say.

She added, "We will lose the security of the mail because if we don't deliver on Saturday, somebody will and you don't know who will be delivering on Saturday."

This is wrong on so many levels. In my experience, pretty much every time I deal with a private business, I get cheaper and better service than from one that's regulated or even run by the government. Any service the government pretends to provide can be provided cheaper, better, and more humanely by the free market.

So the government won't deliver on Saturday anymore? Somebody will? We don't know who it is?

Yay! Whoever it is, if experience is a judge, the service will get better!

Of course, the unionist that made that original statement had an ulterior motive. She'd say anything, any nonsense, to keep her and her looter and moocher accomplices' jobs.

But I keep hearing that insane sentiment from people independently of whose ox is being gored. Why do people root for the state like that?

(In other countries even more than in the US. In Europe, people complain if corporations collect their customer data and send them to the US with its less restrictive data protection laws for processing, but don't mind filling out all the bullshit forms their governments force them to, giving their governments personal data they'd never even dream of giving out voluntarily. The best thing about the US is that it's the only country where there are still freedom-loving people left that don't trust the government.)

I don't understand why most people are such knee-jerk collectivists. Why is it that most people tend to approve of anything if it comes from the state, but criticize anything that comes from private industry?

Is it because in a democracy everybody gets one vote in the state, so the state is "we," but a private company is "they"? Is it because the majority figures they can vote to force the minority to pay for the service? Is it because private industry is out to make profit, and religion holds that profit is immoral?

Anyways, the article continues with plenty of funny antics from your local chapter of the CCCP (Communist Clowns and Comedians of the Posts) union.

We want the PMG (postmaster general) to know we stand in solidarity, all of the craft unions," Warren said in a speech to the participants, eliciting applause from the group.

So delivering mail is a craft now? What special skills does it require?

Fitting rectangular envelopes into rectangular slots? Checking the numbers on the stamps against tables with the correct postage?

What's next? The Wal-Mart cashier craft? The burger flipper craft?

Oh, my bad! Of course it's all crafts. I forgot about those hygiene technicians and appliance technicians. :)

With ongoing cuts including the Saturday delivery, she worried that "we'll be a private company" when its over.

Again, what's so bad about private? The loss of your cushy benefits and homing from work?

Reminds me…

Sacking out on his sacks of mail, a postal "worker" finds himself lying on something hard punching him from below. Rooting for it, he finds an old oil lamp. He proceeds to rub it, and out comes a genie.

"Hi! Thanks for getting me out of that cramped lamp," says the genie. "For that, I owe you three wishes."

"Hmm… Lemme think… First, I want to go to Hawaii."

Bang!

He's lying on the beach in Waikiki.

"Second, I want a beautiful girlfriend."

Bang!

There's a supermodel lying next to him.

"Third, I never want to work again."

Bang!

He's back lying on his sacks of mail.

Clay Myer, vice president of the Alabama Rural Letter Carriers Association, said customers want to retain the six-day delivery. "We work for the American people and the American people want six-day delivery. That's it," he said.

Unfortunately, the American people want six-day delivery only if they don't have to pay for it, buster.

The Ultimate Obama Meme

Everything you always wanted to know about Obama and much more in a huge 4 x 4 matrix.

The Ayn Rand Curse

(Today we'll take a well-deserved breather from reason.)

Don't fuck with The Fountainhead. Ever since the movie Dirty Dancing smeared The Fountainhead in 1987, the cast and crew of the former has been dying premature deaths. The curse has been observed before, but to my knowledge, its cause has never before been identified.

Let's keep track of the cast here:

Max Cantor (Robbie Gould) died of heroin overdose in 1991, aged 32.

Cantor's character was the one that mischaracterized The Fountainhead as a Nietzschean affair that teaches "Some people count, some people don't." Coincidence that he was the first to die?

Anyway, the Dirty Dancing curse didn't stop there. For the curse, guilt by association is sufficient for a death sentence.

Jack Weston (Max Kellerman) died of lymphoma in 1996, aged 71.

Jerry Orbach (Jake Houseman) died of prostate cancer in 2004, aged 69.

Patrick Swayze (Johnny Castle) died of pancreatic cancer in 2009, aged 57.

In 2010, Jennifer Grey (Frances "Baby" Houseman) survived a bout with thyroid cancer only because she happened to get a medical checkup for Dancing with the Stars.

Director Emile Ardolino died of complications from AIDS in 1993, aged 50.

Executive producer Steven Reuther died in 2010, aged 58.

The studio, Vestron, went bankrupt in 1990.

Honorable mentions:

Charles Coles (Tito Suarez) died in 1992, aged 81.

Paula Trueman (Mrs. Schumacher) died in 1994, aged 93.

Alvin Myerovich (Mr. Schumacher) died in 1996, aged 89.

However, those can't be called premature deaths, given their ages.

Ayn Rand herself had died of heart failure in 1982, after a bout with lung cancer years before. Is it a coincidence that so many of the curse's victims died of cancer?

In any event, thanks to the curse and the fact that its origin has now been discovered, you can pretend you can cheat death by simply not insulting The Fountainhead while keeping your bad habits, like smoking.

Are you a believer in the curse now?

Tea Party vs. Flea Party

Insanity is… this. Sigh. The fleabags need a padded cell more than they need to get maced.

So, I corrected it. I guess they can be glad I didn't grade it, too.

Tea Party	Flea Party
(Grassroots movement)	(Astroturf)
Most events ignored by the media, except by Fox News.	Left-leaning mainstream media cheer looters on.
Participants revolt against the sick and poor who use need as a claim.	Participants provide free food, healthcare, and emotional support to everyone present, then claim they cannot pay their student loans and call for another round of looting.
Anti-union, anti-moocher, anti-looter, anti-government, anti-Obama ("racist"); I grant you bigoted and xenophobic — the fundies insisted on tagging along.	Strives for inclusion and participation of every moocher, looter, and rotter in the world, but xenophobic when "American" jobs are "exported," as if America or any country collectively owned jobs.
Funded by the Koch brothers. Avoids leaders — decisions made by the market, i.e., by the people who worked for their money.	Funded by Buffett and Soros. Decisions based on consensus imposed by Ivy Starnes and her comrades.
People show up with "assault rifles," shout and spit at members of congress (boy, do they deserve it), and the police take no notice. Why should they?	People show up committed to looting and violent overthrow of capitalism, and get maced and beaten by the police, as they deserve.
THIS IS WHAT LIBERTY LOOKS LIKE. DON'T TREAD ON ME!	THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE. THIS IS WHY THE FOUNDING FATHERS EXPLICITLY REJECTED DEMOCRACY.
Benefits the 53%.	Benefits the 47%.

Open Letters to Two Fleabaggers

(1) Fleabagger complains that Ayn Rand stylized murderer William Edward Hickman into a Nietzschean superman for his sociopathic qualities, i.e. for his standing against society.

How is Ayn Rand's idealization and idolization of William Edward Hickman any different from you all's idealization and idolization of Che Guevara?

That was short and sweet. BTW,

Rand also wrote, "The first thing that impresses me about the case is the ferocious rage of a whole society against one man. No matter what the man did, there is always something loathsome in the 'virtuous' indignation and mass-hatred of the 'majority.' … It is repulsive to see all these beings with worse sins and crimes in their own lives, virtuously condemning a criminal…"

Sounds familiar, you lynch mob?

Now for some of your fleabagger sound bites:

"There's something deeply unsettling about living in a country where millions of people froth at the mouth at the idea of giving health care to the tens of millions of Americans who don't have it, or who take pleasure at the thought of privatizing and slashing bedrock social programs like Social Security or Medicare."

Yeah, how dare those who are forced at gunpoint to pay for those programs to froth at the mouth.

"It might not be so hard to stomach if other Western countries also had a large, vocal chunk of the population that thought like this, but the U.S. is seemingly the only place"

So if all Western countries have a democratic vote on it, it's OK, whatever it is?

"where right-wing elites can openly share their distaste for the working poor."

One thinks that if the "working" poor gang up to loot, distaste is the least they deserve from productive individuals. So you'd like us better if we concealed our distaste?

"It turns out, you can trace much of this thinking back to Ayn Rand,"

Who had the temerity to tell productive individuals that they have a right to the wealth they produce.

"One reason most countries don't find the time to embrace Ayn Rand's thinking is that she is a textbook sociopath."

Newspeak for individualist = sociopath. And of course Rand isn't popular in the socialist peoples' states.

"…including the key architects of America's most recent economic catastrophe…"

The key architects of the "recent economic catastrophe" are you, the looters and moochers, who clamored for and got free money from criminal governments Republican and Democratic.

(2) Fleabagger wants to be friends with Randians.

You reach out to us to live in your community, yet in the header call our beliefs "nonsense" and in the second paragraph, our viewpoint irrational. Looks like we Randian loners still have better social skills than you fleabaggers.

Anyway, it is your viewpoint that doesn't make rational sense:

"Why are you so obsessed with being separate from everyone?"

We are only obsessed with being separate from looters that rob us at gunpoint.

"we must also live in community with others, care for others and participate in a dynamic and nurturing society."

A society you expect us to build for you, at the point of a government gun, at no cost to you. Build your own society, if you can. We're on strike. Drop dead.

"You have no morality."

We have the best morality in the world, the one that recognizes that we have no obligations to looting, mooching scum. "Hakuna matata: a problem-free philosophy."

"You can be lazy."

You are the lazy ones. We build things for ourselves, for our friends, and for those who ask us for our help. You build nothing for no one, but demand that we help you, without a word of thanks. If we give you something, all we get is ingratitude and a mob that comes back to demand more.

Get lost. The party is over. Get a job, or start your own business, if we find you unemployable.

"Please help me understand rather than attacking me the way those who have a Rand fixation often do."

Said the skilled networker that started hurling insults in the header.

"Together, my friend, we are greater than the sum of our parts."

I am not your friend since the header. Plus, we are great and you are the parts/tools.

"I'm honestly trying to understand"

No, you're not. We already covered that. You start hurling the insults, you're intellectually dishonest by definition.

"why you feel it heroic to cast aside morality,"

Because the only purpose of your counterfeit morality is to permit you to steal from us, to enslave us, and to murder us if we don't comply.

"renege on your obligation to others"

We have no obligations to looting scum, slave drivers, and jackbooted thugs.

"and, most of all, lose out on all the benefits of community."

Your community has nothing to offer to us. You're intellectually, morally, and financially bankrupt. Get out of the way. Drop dead.

"Why do you waste your life so?"

Et tu, brute?

"Step out into the warmth of the sun, into the warmth of community and LIVE."

We are in the sunlight. It is you that is benighted. We neither need nor want the fug of your community. We are alive. You are mindless, lifeless zombies.

"Life's too short to be stuck in an invented narrative."

Life's too short to be stuck in your dream, uh, nightmare world. Life's too short to be your slave.

Meet Ellis Wyatt

Ellis Wyatt went to Washington, met Mr. Thompson; it didn't work. Anyone surprised?

Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma-based founder and CEO of Continental Resources, the 14th-largest oil company in America, is a man who thinks big. He came to Washington last month to spread a needed message of economic optimism: With the right set of national energy policies, the United States could be "completely energy independent by the end of the decade. We can be the Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas in the 21st century."

…

The other reason for America's abundant supply of oil and natural gas has been the development of new drilling techniques. "Horizontal drilling" allows rigs to reach two miles into the ground and then spread horizontally by thousands of feet. Mr. Hamm was one of the pioneers of this method in the 1990s, and it has done for the oil industry what hydraulic fracturing has done for natural gas drilling in places like the Marcellus Shale in the Northeast.

Reporting Evil Patriots to Attack Watch

Hey, Obama, I want to snitch on my parents. They say you're a communist.

Hey, Obama, I'm looking for the office of the Thought Police.

Hey, Obama, they say your IQ is 70, 35 in the morning and 35 in the evening.

Hey, Obama, they say you need an ear job.

Hey, Obama, they say you're dumber than either the shrub or Palin and have done more to destroy America than both of them together.

Hey, Obama, my fellow entrepreneurs say they won't hire anybody as long as they don't know what Obamacare will cost them.

Hey, Obama, they say you defrauded investors and handed GM to your union buddies/sponsors.

Hey, Obama, they say you fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.

Hey, Obama, they say you fell out of the idiot tree and hit every branch on the way down.

Hey, Obama, all my friends are libertarians, i.e., by your definition, domestic terrorists. Where can I report them?

Hey, Obama, I'm an anarcho-capitalist. Where can I report myself?

Hey, Obama, they say there are gremlins in your computer. Watch out!

Hey, Obama, they say you're dumber than you're ugly.

Hey, Obama, they say you, Papa Smurf, and Karl Marx are one and the same person.

Hey, Obama, my telescreen is on the fritz. You can't see me anymore. Help!

Hey, Obama, there's plenty of stuff on right-wing blogs that needs to go down the memory hole.

Hey, Obama, do you know that your new website sports the nazi colors?

Hey, Obama, you're late: 1984 has come and gone.

Hey, Obama, my neighbor Winston Smith has smashed his telescreen.

Hey, Obama, they say you should read a book called "Atlas Shrugged."

Hey, Obama, I want to report my latest book, "Mysterious Boat." It's full of evil anarchic right-wing stuff. Can you refute it?

Hey, Obama, the paper your book is printed on is way too tough.

Hey, Obama, they say you should publish your scribblings on toilet paper, so it has some use.

Hey, Obama, the exchange rate fluctuations caused by your insane policies have hurt my business. Will you give me a refund? After all, you have money for this here kind of shit.

Hey, Obama, they say you're second only to FDR as the worst president ever.

Hey, Obama, they say you could benefit from economics lessons from a Valley Girl.

Hey, Obama, they say you believe in shovel ready projects.

Hey, Obama, is this the website for Nobama for America?

Hey, Obama, I want to donate to your cause. I have a snail shell and two pieces of pocket lint.

Hey, Obama, I want to thank you for solving the immigration problem. Since you ruined the country, no one wants to come anymore.

Hey, Obama, I'll be rooting for you in 2012. The Republican candidates are all bigger morons than you.

Hey, Obama, where can I join the Junior Spies and the Youth League?

Hey, Obama, they say you look like the backside of a donkey.

Hey, Obama, they say it's impossible to smear you: Whatever one says, the truth is worse.

Hey, Obama, the rich say you're already looting enough of the wealth they produce.

Hey, Obama, the rich say they will move to a place called Galt's Gulch.

Hey, Obama, the rich say they're gonna do some seasteading. Let me explain this to you: They all move on a big cruise ship, which means you and the other losers can then go tax each other.

Hey, Obama, the rich say they're gonna pay their fair share. Here it is:

Debacle: Failing to Rebuild the Twin Towers Out Now

Friends, Americans, civilized humans, lend me your eyes; I come to praise the WTC, not to bury it. The evil that men do lives after them; the good should not be interred with their bones: nor should it be with the bones of the Twin Towers. The vile Caesars have told you the Twin Towers were ambitious: If it was so, it was not a grievous fault, but their noblest virtue. But grievously hath Caesar answered it.

World trade means world peace… The World Trade Center is a living symbol of man's dedication to world peace. Beyond the compelling need to make this a monument to world peace, the World Trade Center should, because of its importance, become a representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and through cooperation, his ability to find greatness.

— Minoru Yamasaki

Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window — no, I don't feel how small I am — but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would like to throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.

— Ayn Rand

Those awesome symbolic towers that speak of liberty, human rights, and humanity have been destroyed. They have gone up in smoke.

— Osama bin Laden

Ten years ago today, murderous terrorists crashed jetliners into the Word Trade Center Towers, realizing their plan that the Twin Towers that stood for rational man's achievement, capitalism, freedom, free trade, and world peace should no longer grace the New York skyline, aiming to extinguish the twin beacons of liberty and enlightenment, so that the forces of darkness should rule the world once more.

The terrorists have failed, as rule by faith and force must always fail. They have not brought about another Dark Age. But they murdered 3,000 human beings, wrecked four jetliners, prompted people to sacrifice priceless liberties to fear, caused economic damage in the trillions of dollars, and destroyed two landmark building complexes.

Some of these battles are battles for another day and not the primary subject of our book. But on September 12, 2001, there was little doubt as to what had to be done about one of these points. The landmark complex less completely destroyed, the Pentagon, was quickly restored. To this day, people from around the US and the world are shocked to learn that what is built at the WTC is not new Twin Towers, taller, stronger, and safer.

For ten wasted years now, the worst of contemporary politics has made sure that no towers of comparable stature are rising at the WTC, thus kept the killers' legacy intact and respected their wish that New York and America be cut down to size, never to rise again.

Groups that favored drastically different philosophies of urban design, groups that saw professional opportunities for themselves, and groups that saw any pool of funds dedicated to relief of the needy as best devoted to their own priorities swooped in to claim they spoke for all.

Allied to this was the most vocal proportion of those who had lost loved ones in the attacks, casting about in their grief for solace. Whether seeking to blame someone for their loss or seeking maximum public recognition of their loss, they made pleas of a kind rare in previous historical disasters that often amounted to leaving the site as the killers of their loved ones had desired rather than permitting it to be reclaimed for the purposes to which and for which their loved ones had given their lives.

To the vulture-like opportunists seeing an opportunity to remake the city, and to the emotionally devastated seeking to see its unmaking left as a tribute to the victims, the officials listened. To the wider nation anxious to see the restoration of what could be restored, they paid no heed.

— Louis Epstein, World Trade Center Restoration Movement

WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein has been determined to rebuild the office space, but lacks the vision and vigor to rebuild the towers he had once said he lusted for, towers he could only buy, but not create. He prefers the bulk of the iconic Twin Towers to be broken down into a bunch of buildings each half the size of a Twin Tower, to be built at a pace that minimizes his economic risk.

Moreover, he won't permit any new building at the WTC to have nearly as many occupied floors as the 110-story Twin Towers, as he now believes he has to protect the people who would work there from themselves.

All new WTC buildings now planned or under construction are much smaller and shorter than the Twin Towers, with the exception of the antenna on the new One WTC, which will be slighter taller than the old antenna. Thanks to officials' incompetence, there will not even be a new Windows on the World restaurant.

While politicians made sure that the public was never offered a poll pitting the stunted designs preferred by the interests they catered to — victims' families, urban utopian planners, and Silverstein — against restored Twin Towers, any poll there was soundly rejected the official offerings, which never managed to beat "none of the above" and usually took a shellacking from "none of the above."

Results on Imagine New York (the LMDC's official poll):
Libeskind: 205 votes / 26%
THINK: 260 votes / 33%
None of the above: 323 votes / 41%
Total: 788 votes

Results on NY1:
Results since February 4, 2003
Libeskind: 6,853 votes / 21%
THINK: 4,615 votes / 14%
I don't like either of these plans: 20,892 votes / 64%
Total: 32,360 votes

Results on CNN:
Which of the two finalists' designs do you prefer for the World Trade Center site?
Libeskind: 33,050 votes / 32%
THINK: 34,867 votes / 34%
Neither is good: 35,747 votes / 34%
Total: 103,664 votes

The incompetent and intellectually bankrupt officials have seen their WTC plans fall apart again and again for ten years because they treated the WTC rebuilding as a random office development with a memorial plopped in and failed to heed the most fundamental advice for great architecture:

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will themselves not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.

— Daniel H. Burnham

The human beings we lost were bold. These people deserve majestic new towers as bold as they were. One of the best ways we can honor them is to carry on their work. Safer, taller towers will be a living testament that complements our memorial and helps make it one of the seven modern wonders of the world. We need a skyline that does justice to the wonderful people we lost. We will not sell these people short.

— Jonathan Hakala, tenant, One World Trade Center

In the words of New Yorkers from all walks of life, Debacle: Failing to Rebuild the Twin Towers chronicles their love of their city and their towers, their hopes for rebuilding, their experience with the corrupt official rebuilding process, and the blueprints that can still restore tall Twin Towers to the WTC.

Debacle: Failing to Rebuild the Twin Towers is now available for Amazon Kindle. Dead tree edition coming soon.

Debacle: Failing to Rebuild the Twin Towers Is Coming

Why aren't the World Trade Center Twin Towers being rebuilt taller, stronger, and safer? Why is what pretty much everyone took for granted on September 12, 2001, not coming true? Why are iconic 110-story Towers being replaced with a bunch of shorter buildings topped by pointless spires?

Ten years after the original disaster and ten years into the disaster that is the rebuilding process, New Yorkers and out-of-towners from all walks of life come forward to tell the story of the second destruction of the World Trade Center, not at the hands of terrorists, but at the hands of politicians, builders, and activists, who sacrificed the world's most famous landmark to their own narrow interests and thus perpetuated the destruction wreaked by the terrorists.

The tales they have to tell are not pretty: stories of corruption, venality, opportunism, greed, short-term thinking, irrationality, incompetence, cowardice, and betrayal. Keeping the Twin Towers destroyed did not even require a grand conspiracy. All it took was the business as usual of New York politics. The twin behemoths of City Hall and Albany were all it took to make sure that rebuilding the icons of New York, America, and the free world was sacrificed to the personal gain and the short-term political advantage of a few politicians pandering to vocal minorities and well-connected builders.

Together, these essays mesh into a kaleidoscopic epic of how the worst of mankind was first met with the best of man, only to be thwarted by the worst of contemporary politics.

Due out September 11, 2011.