Given the current concern about whether or not there was reason to believe that Al Qaeda and Iraq had a relationship, it is instructive to view this news report by ABC. Lest anyone believe that the report was a product of Bush Administration misinformation, the report came from 2000 during the Clinton Administration:
Click here.
Archive for the ‘Social Commentary’ Category
Al Qaeda and Iraq Link
Saturday, February 10th, 2007Posted in Politics, Social Commentary | No Comments »
William Arkin Ignites a Controversy
Sunday, February 4th, 2007On January 31, William Arkin of the Washington Post chastised American troops in Iraq who complained about the news coverage back home. The troops had the brazenness to ask critics to visit Iraq and see what was going on first hand before they criticized.
It would seem that the troops have a reasonable complaint about news coverage that is relentlessly negative, with nary a mention of heroic and humane efforts by the troops. The abuse at Abu Grab makes the headlines day after day, but the soldier who crawls under gunfire to rescue a civilian is largely ignored.
Arkin has a different view. Arkin claimed that the troops had enjoyed tremendous support and the provision of “obscene amenities” (whatever they are) despite the murders of civilians and abuses at Abu Grab. Does Arkin believe such events were typical rather than aberrations? Suggesting that American troops were “mercenary,” Arkin was tired of their complaints because it “wasn’t for them to disapprove of the American people.” Rights to criticize presumably are reserved for Washington Post writers.
As anyone with a marginal perception of public sentiment could easily predict, there was a deluge of outrage expressed on the forum pages of the Washington Post, as well as countless blogs, and even from US Senators.
In response, Arkin whined indignantly about those who disagreed with him. Admittedly, some of Arkin’s reader mail could euphemistically be described as colorfully disrespectful. Arkin tried to about wrap himself in the protective cloak of victimhood, fretting that he was being censored. Arkin must learn to master the difference between censorship and the rights of others to criticize him. If he can complain about the way the troops are doing their job, certainly others enjoy a right to criticize the way Arkin performs his.
Arkin belated conceded that, “I knew when I used the word `mercenary’ in my Tuesday column that I was being highly inflammatory.” If Arkin knew he was being “inflammatory,” then why was he surprised when he ignited a reaction? When writers are deliberately provocative, it seems hypocritical for them to be upset when they succeed in provoking.
But wait, it is the readers fault for misunderstanding Arkin. Later Arkin writes: “Mercenary, of course, is an insult and pejorative, and it does not accurately describe the condition of the American soldier today. I sincerely apologize to anyone in the military who took my words literally.” So which is it? Was Arkin being purposely inflammatory, or was he using mercenary as a mild metaphor?
Arkin’s original point had some merit. One can criticize the wisdom of the war in Iraq, was without condemning the troops, indeed even while strongly supporting them. However, Arkin then goes on to trash the troops, suggesting that the American people have put up with a lot of shenanigans from the troops. Arkin inadvertently tramples upon his own thesis and adds further evidence to the notion that those who are against the war harbor not-a-little anti-military sentiment.
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Pushing All the Chips In
Sunday, January 14th, 2007When the history of the Iraq War is written, it may well be concluded that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will have proven to be an excellent manager, but a mediocre war-time leader. It may well be the consensus that Generals William Casey, Commander of Multi-National Force-in Iraq, and John Abizaid, Commander of Central Command, were more talented as diplomats and administrators than as warriors.
At the outset of the Iraq War, there were two prevailing strategic theories to topple the Saddam Hussein regime, go in heavy or fast. Going-in-heavy meant the large systematic destruction of the Iraqi resistance using heavy armor and intense firepower. The upside of such an approach was a higher probability of military success with fewer US casualties. The disadvantage would be higher civilian casualties and greater destruction of Iraqi infrastructure. The strategy of going-in-fast relied more on speed, precision, and flexibility to reduce collateral damage, but at the cost of potentially increasing US casualties.
General Tommy Franks elected to go-in-fast and that gamble paid off handsomely. The war started on March 20, 2003. By April 9, Baghdad had fallen, and by April 15, the Saddam strong-hold of Tikrit also fell. The conventional part the war was effectively over with very few American casualties and minimum of collateral damage.
Although, Franks had proved that going-in-light was a wise strategy to win the war, there was no follow-up with large numbers of Coalition troops to secure Iraq post hostilities. Perhaps, because Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld wanted to minimize the costs of the war, perhaps because some advised that a large US footprint would irritate Iraqis, perhaps because some urged a political solution as opposed to a heavy-handed military presence, the US maintained a modest presence of under 200,000 troops, usually less than 150,000.
The strategy championed by Casey and Abizaid was to maintain modest troop levels. The goal was to seek first to implement a democratic government under the belief that after a political solution, the violence would decline. Perhaps, we should have noticed that the increased troop levels used to secure Iraq during the election periods were actually very effective in reducing violence.
The theory of keeping US troop presence at a minimum was an honest and plausible post-war strategy, but it has not succeeded in the way anticipated. In conflict, cutting corners is dangerous and does not convince either friends or adversaries of ones commitment and strength.
Potential insurgents must never be allowed any success. Sources of power other than Coalition troops and the elected Iraqi government should never be allowed to exist. After initially quelling outbreaks by followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, militias loyal to al-Sadr have been allowed sanctuaries. Out of an effort to reduce stresses within the new Iraqi government, al-Sadr was given latitude. As a consequence sectarian violence has festered. In war, there is no substitute for victory and it must be complete.
Now it is possible that the proposed surge in troops in conjunction with different rules of engagement, and with the participation of Iraqi troops could change the momentum of the conflict. Most areas of Iraq, save Baghdad and Anbar province, are mostly secure. Focusing 20,000 troops in the correct places may work. Karl von Clausewitz warned that no military leader has ever become great without audacity. The surge should not be timid attempt to regain security, but grand attempt to gain victory
From a distance it is not possible to determine if the proposed troop surge and the plan to use these troops are sufficient to overwhelm opposition. We may know in a few months. At the poker table of the Iraq War virtually all Democrats, who are only sitting at the table for fear of being left out, and some squishy Republicans have already folded their hands. President George Bush has pushed all his chips into the center. However, this is only wise if one has a sufficiently good hand to claim the pot.
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America Alone
Sunday, January 7th, 2007The world is not at a loss for doomsday scenarios. During the 1970s, we were all concerned that the world would end in a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. We were told that would exhaust the worlds oil and food resources before the current century. New worries have ascended to the top of the list of worries recently. There is always the possibility of a large asteroid smashing into the Earth and wiping out most of the life on the surface, much as a similar asteroid probably accounted for the rapid extinction of dinosaurs. Evidence is accumulating that the Earth is warming auguring significant climate change effects.
Of course, the danger of nuclear war with the USSR was real and we fortunately avoided it. This does mean that the dangers of nuclear weapons have entirely been eliminated. Predictions of natural resource shortages have proven unduly pessimistic, or at least premature. While it is certain that a large asteroid will, at some time in the future, be on a collision course with the Earth, the probability of an impact in the foreseeable future is tiny. The net effect of climate change is still speculative.
To these concerns, Mark Steyn adds one more in his American Alone. Steyn’s thesis begins with unassailable fact that much of the Western World, particularly in Europe is in demographic collapse. In order for any society to maintain it population it must have a fertility rate of about 2.1, i.e., women on average have 2.1 children. The European Union, as a whole, suffers under a weak fertility rate of 1.47 with some countries like Italy and Spain suffering with anemic fertility rates of 1.33 and 1.28, respectively. Literally, there are places in Europe which will become depopulated of ethnic European in one or two generations.
There are at least a couple of consequences of a declining and aging population. First, the generous social welfare states of Europe are dependent upon an influx of young people to support the pensions and increased medical expenses of retirees. Without such an influx these countries face economic stagnation and declining living standards. Second, culture is a reflection of the integrated perceptions and attitudes of its citizens. A demographically young culture is innovative and energetic culture, whereas a demographically older culture is likely to be risk adverse and focused on maintenance of pension checks.
Now, it is always possible that the fertility rates in Europe will undergo dramatic reversal. However, these rates have declined over decades and it difficult to foresee a circumstance that would change current trends. Moreover, Steyn argues that the European social welfare states are themselves nurture suicidal attitudes to reproduction. He writes:
“…a variety of government interventions state pensions, subsidized higher education, higher taxes to pay for everything has so ruptured the traditional patterns of inter-generational solidarity that Continentals now exist almost entirely in the present tense culture of complete self-absorption.”
The Muslim population is increasing the Europe due to both immigration and the high-fertility rates of immigrant populations. Steyn questions whether Europe can undergo dramatic demographic change and not undergo dramatic political change. Thanks to lavish funding of radical mosques by Saudi Arabia and others, the Muslim populations in Europe and elsewhere are becoming radicalized. Certainly, there are moderate Muslims and they probably constitute a majority, but radical Islam represents the Zeitgeist of the Islamic world.
Moreover, the self-absorption of modern secular welfare states saps culture confidence. What Steyn calls “culture exhaustion” will make it impossible for Europeans to resist the Islamic demands for deference. In Steyns assessment, Europes demographic and cultural death spiral is too far along to reverse. Before the end this century, there will parts of Europe where Sharia law is enforced. Great societies are not killed, but rather commit suicide.
Steyn writes American Alone with cleverness and humor that belies his deeply pessimistic message. America may soon represent the only remnant of Western ideals, of liberty and personal independence. The only hope Steyn offers is that the example of Europes demise will make obvious even to the American Left, the necessity to resist the clash of cultures. After all, a world dominated by Sharia law as practiced by radical Islamists is not that will be hospitable to gay or abortion rights, the key concerns of the modern American Left. It is not one where women will be treated with equal rights and dignity. It will represent a return to the Dark Ages, before the Renaissance and before the Enlightenment. As Steyn asserts, “…much of what we call the Western World will no survive the twenty-first century, and much of it will effectively disappear with our lifetimes.”
Abraham Lincoln described the American Civil War as a great test of democracy and liberty that would determine “if any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” The United States represents are far freer country with a far less protective welfare state. Nonetheless, the United States, over the decades, has moved steadily closer to the European model, though among modern industrial states it is still “exceptional.” If Steyn is correct in his assessment that European suicidal fertility rates are an inevitable outcome of the “Eutopian” welfare state, then the clash with radical Islam represents a test to determine whether a society so structured can long endure.
Posted in Economics, Politics, Social Commentary | 3 Comments »
Honest and Decent
Saturday, December 30th, 2006The adjectives “honest” and “decent” have been so repeatedly attached to the recently deceased 38th President of the United States, Gerald R. Ford, that they are rapidly becoming cliché. Nonetheless, these traditional mid-western virtues explain a considerable portion of both Ford’s success and failures as president.
Ford was the only un-elected president and openly acknowledged that fact. When he assumed the presidency after the resignation of President Richard Nixon on August 9, 2004, Ford explained, “I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your President by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as your President with your prayers.” The words are poetic and his intent genuine.
When President Nixon resigned the country was deeply divided, in the final years of a bitterly divisive war, and in economic distress (unemployment 6-9%;, inflation 10-12%). Perhaps there was not an adequate sacrifice offered to the gods of a harsh justice, but it was Ford’s inherent decency and longing to assuage the country’s pains that explain his decision to pardon President Nixon. Many at the time were frustrated of an opportunity to pursue Nixon further and the decision probably caused Ford the election in 1976 to President Jimmy Carter. Ford knew the likely consequences of his decision and put his vision of what the country needed over any political advantage.
In retrospect, the decision was probably a wise one. An indictment and trial probably would have lasted through his term and through the term of the next president. Any political energy required to deal with the nation’s problems would have been dissipated by such proceedings. The country would not have been able to begin to address any of the problems confronting it.
Ford’s conspicuous forthrightness and directness, perhaps unfairly associated with mental dullness, also helped heal a nation. After Nixon, the country needed a president that did not appear too clever or nefarious.
Ford’s decency also explains a good deal of his failures. Only a good man who mistakenly expects his own notions of good will and patriotism to be embraced by others and who came from the WWII generation would have believed that “Whip Inflation Now” program to exhort Americans to restrain their wage and price demands had any possibility of succeeding.
Only a person who spent his life in the House of Representatives and believes that all differences are splittable would have been so willing to overlook Soviet behavior and eagerly negotiate with them. This eagerness caused him to twist his normal good sense and argue that Poland was not dominated by the Soviet Union and to spurn Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn, fearing that the Soviets would break off the warm relations of detente.
It was in Ford’s good nature, when he defeated Ronald Reagan for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976, at the end of the Republican National Convention, to call down Ronald Reagan to the platform with him. It was Ford’s moment, yet he extended the olive branch to Reagan and simultaneously undercut his own chances of victory against Jimmy Carter in the fall. Reagan was reluctant to come to the platform. After all, he had just narrowly lost the nomination. However, once he did, Reagan gave an impromptu speech which charged the Republicans present and gave everyone there the palpable feeling that in nominating Ford, they had just sellected the wrong fellow.
Ford was a caretaker president filling in between two elected president. Despite his shortcomings, Ford was welcome relief from President Nixon’s mendacity. Moreover, he served his nation’s interest far better than his successor President Carter. At least, he never embarrassed himself during his post-presidential years, as has Carter, in self-righteous dotage
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“Are there no prisons?”
Sunday, December 24th, 2006In the opening chapter of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is solicited for a private donation during the Christmas season to “make some slight provision for the poor the destitute” since “many thousands are in want of common necessities.” In one of literature’s most memorable exchanges, Scrooge asks, “Are there no prisons? … And the Union workhouses are they still in operation?” When assured that prisons and workhouses still are in operation, Scrooge dismisses any personal responsibilities by claiming that “I help to support the establishments I mentioned.” In other words the existence of large institutions for collective provision, Scrooge believed, relieved him of personal responsibility for the poor.
Unfortunately, one of the consequences of well-intentioned government provision is to attenuate the personal responsibility we all have with regard to the material needs of others. The empirical evidence suggests that those who most persuaded of the efficacy government provision are those who, as a rule, feel less personal responsibility. Arthur Brooks, in Who Really Cares, has thoroughly examined the statistics on charitable giving and has found that Conservatives, particularly religious Conservatives, are far more likely to donate to charities and in higher amounts than Liberals, particularly secular Liberals. Moreover, Conservatives are more likely to volunteer their time and even donate blood at a substantially higher rate.
These statistics represent a generalization. There are very many liberals who are quite generous with their time and money and their efforts should not be ignored or disparaged. However, Brooks does not allow us to escape the conclusion that Conservatives are more generous. It is not because Liberals are inherently less empathetic or compassionate, it is because the political ideology of collective provision saps the moral necessity for personal action.
This fact mirrors itself in national differences with respect to European countries who have bought into the socialized world view. The United States provides a large amount of direct foreign aid, but other industrialized countries provide more relative to their Gross National Product (GDP). However, much of the assistance to foreign countries from the US come through private donations to private non-governmental organizations. Indeed, private assistance dwarfs US official development assistance by a factor of three and few doubt that such private aid is more efficiently dispensed. When all these sources are taken together, the US ranks among the highest in generosity relative to its wealth.
When the ghost of Jacob Marley visits Scrooge, Scrooge wonders why Marley is so burdened in death since he was such a good businessman. Marley’s Ghost shouts, “ Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings ofmy trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean ofmy business! [emphasis added]” This observation is consistent with the Conservative intuition. A Liberal version of Marley’s lament would have substituted “our” for “my” and therein lies the difference between Conservatives and Liberals.
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Reducing Income Inequality
Sunday, December 3rd, 2006The Gini Index is a conventional measure of income distribution equality. A Gini index of 0 corresponds to every household having the same income, while an index of 100 corresponds to one person earning all the income. The Gini index in the United States tends to be a higher than in Western European countries. The US Gini index is about 45, while most European countries have Gini indices in the 30s. However, this comparison can be misleading, since European countries individually tend to be more culturally and socially homogeneous than a large continental nation like the US. The more proper comparison is between the US and the entire EU. The total US population is comparable to that of EU and there are significant income disparities from country to country within EU that broaden the net EU income disparity. The per capita gross national product (GDP) in Denmark is $34,800 as compared to Poland whos per capita GDP is about $13,100. Hence, income inequality for the EU as a whole can be substantially larger than that for any single European country. (See the CIA World Factbook for these figures)
There can be little statistical doubt that there has been a gradual increase in US household income inequality since 1980, with a particularly large jump in the early to mid 1990s. There are many causes for this increase. There has been a long-term change in the labor market valuing skilled as opposed to unskilled labor increasing the relative income of highly trained individuals. Households have changed, with more single-parent households which traditionally have had lower incomes. Even for a couple where both people earn a good income, divorce will drive down relative household income and putting them at a relative economic disadvantage. The rise in two-income families has widened household income disparity. Two people can generally earn more income than one person working outside the home. Moreover, high income individuals tend to marry other high-income people further exacerbating household income disparity.
There are two important values that seem to be at odds here. It is important for countries to maintain a sense of community identity and common purpose. This affinity can be attenuated with high levels of income disparity. On the other hand, we value meritocracy where earnings and achieve are not artificially limited by forced equality of outcomes. The more severe the meritocracy is, the greater the income disparity is likely to be. A common example of this effect can be found in professional sports where even members of the same team can earn radically different salaries based on their perceived contribution to the team.
It seems that dealing with widening income distribution with punitive tax policies is counterproductive. It reduces growth, which hurts the poor the most, and sets one income class against another income class. An alternate solution is to maximize social mobility in a couple of ways.
First, schools, particularly those for the poor, are largely a failure. The differences between public schools in affluent neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods will tend to broaden income distributions in the following generations. The introduction of vouchers for educational choice will broaden the range of educational options for poor children. It would also likely improve public schools in those very same poor neighborhoods.
Second, the collapse of families is correlated with all sorts of pathologies that curb the prospects of child in such families. As a culture we should encourage the maintenance of stable two-parent families and not pretend that all familial configurations are just as likely to produce successful and happy children. The government can help by easing the economic pressure on young families. One method to do this is to increase the dependent deduction, particularly for young children.
One thing is clear, unless changes are made on the front end of life, there will be little can be done on the back end to reduce the consequences.
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We Have Reached a Consensus on Tax Rates
Saturday, November 25th, 2006Over time, ideas can imperceptibly evolve from unthinkably naïve, to politically plausible, to conventional wisdom. The value of low marginal tax rates is one such idea that has taken root, at least in the United States. During World War II, the highest marginal tax rates were 94 percent. Given the economic demands of that war such confiscatory rates might be acceptable as a short-term expedient. However, marginal federal income rates remained over 90 per cent into the early 1960’s. Then President John Kennedy’s Administration worked to lower the top marginal rate to 77 percent with a resulting decade of high economic growth. The rates lingered in the 70-percent range through the 1960s and 1970s. As inflation cut in, more and more people were pushed into higher brackets and higher tax rates. By the 1970s, the US was suffering under double-digit inflation rates and unemployment rates of over 8 percent.
The Ronald Reagan became president in 1980. During the Reagan years the highest marginal tax rates gradually dropped from 50 per cent to 31 per cent, the result was higher growth rates, lower inflation, and lower unemployment. During the Clinton years in the 1990s the highest marginal rates increased to 39 per cent, higher than 31 per cent, but still very low by historical or international standards. The Bush tax cuts decreased the top marginal rate to 35 per cent, pretty much the average over the last 20 years. Democrats enjoy railing about the about how drastic the Bush tax cuts are and how they might raise taxes, but no one is talking about returning the rates of the 1970s, much less the confiscatory rates before 1980. The Reagan tax revolution has become about as permanent as anything gets in politics.
Unfortunately, this consensus has not reached a Europe that still languishes with marginal tax rates over 50 per cent. Since 1991, the United States with low rates has grown at the average annual rate of 3.3 percent, while Germany and France with high tax rates have managed only 1.4 percent and 2.0 percent, respectively. While these growth rates may not seem very different, compounded over many years they result in dramatic differences. From 1991 to 2004, Germany grew by 19.8 per cent, France by 29.4 per cent and the Unites States, by a whopping 52.5 per cent. If the US had grown as slowly as Germany, it would have to raise the mean current tax rate by over 25 percent to obtain the same of revenue it now achieves at lower rates. The Europeans remain too smart to see the value of low marginal tax rates.
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Milton Friedman – R. I. P.
Saturday, November 18th, 2006“A society that puts equality — in the sense of equality of outcome —ahead of freedom will end up with neither. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who will use it to promote their own interests. On the other hand, a society that puts freedom first will, as a happy by-product, end up with both greater freedom and greater equality.” Milton Friedman, Free to Choose.
We often do not recognize the intellectual giants of an era until long after their passing. This fortunately was not the case for economist and the plain-spoken polemicist Milton Friedman who died November 16, 2006 at the age of 94. Friedman received professional recognition by winning the Nobel Prize for economics in 1976 for his work on consumption analysis and monetary history and theory as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom for contributing to the idea that “man’s economic rights are as vital as his civil and human rights.” Friedman matched his professional notoriety with the ability to explain his economic and political ideas to lay people. In his seminal TV series “Free to Choose,” broadcast ironically on PBS, Friedman took his case for economic and political freedom to millions of viewers. The series was an outgrowth of a book by the same, co-authored by his wife Rose. Conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. described the book as an important, shrewd, omnicompetent readable guide to reasoned thought for those who choose to be free.
The early decades of the last century marked the rise of collectivist ideology that maintained that societies are run more efficiently if centrally managed. The course of the century made clear that such societies are lees free and generally less economically well off.
Friedman walked in the footsteps of Friedrich Hayek the Austrian economist and political philosopher who wrote The Road to Serfdom. Hayek argued that whether Fascist or Socialist, centrally-controlled societies inexorably led to a loss of freedom and individual autonomy regardless of the how well-intentioned the motives of government are. Friedman continued the making case arguing that free enterprise is a necessary component to any free society. It is the market that insures that no one power, the government, a business, or a union has too much power. Indeed, Friedman argued that free markets protect both workers and consumers more than effectively than governments or unions.
Friedman is perhaps best known as an articulate spokesman for vouchers for public education. Like any monopoly public schools are inefficient and primary serve the interests of the monopoly and not the customer. If parents were given a “voucher” to spend for their children at any school, publicly or privately run, the will of parents rather than education bureaucracies would be sovereign. Those schools that most efficiently met the needs of parents seeking the education of their children would be the ones that prospered. In the book Free to Choose, Friedman demonstrated that the decreased educational output was correlated with the growth of larger and larger educational bureaucracies. Comparing the periods 1968-1969 to 1973-1974, the “number of students” in public schools “went up 1 percent, the total professional staff went up 15 percent, and teachers 14 percent, but supervisors went up 44 percent.”
Opponents of vouchers argued that it would harm the poorest students the most, but Friedman countered that they would be the most empowered. Presently, parents already have some choice in education, only it is means tested. Wealthy parents can send their children to any school they want to. The middle class can do they same at significant economic sacrifice, while the poor have no choice but to accept their local publicly-run school. Armed with vouchers, poor parents would begin to have some of the same choices as wealthier ones. All schools would improve under the pressure of an education market.
Friedmans wit and ire was most passionately directed at the conceit of some school administrators who object to vouchers or any market approach to education on the grounds that educational professionals are more component to make such decisions than parents. Friedman derisively cited the headmaster of a school in Kent England as suggesting that “I’m not sure that parents know what is best educationally for their children.” This arrogance is a consequence insulated bureaucracies. [See this exchange from Free to Choose at YouTube.]
By way of comparison, even though the cost of medical care is a complex mixture of private and public spending, people are still generally free to choose their own doctors and medical treatment. Even though medical treatments are far more complex the educational decisions, everyone would cringe at a system that forced specific doctors and treatments on patients on the grounds that doctors know better than patients what is medically best for them.
Milton Friedman’s happy manner made it impossible for some on the Left to demonize him as uncaring and his academic credentials made it difficult to caricature as a Neanderthal Conservative. The force of his intellect and clarity of his exposition were important factors in ushering in the Reagan Revolution and the Right-ward shift of the country. It is an important measure of his success that it is hard to remember how truly revolutionary and liberating his voice was in the 1970s. Many present Conservatives were suckled on words of Milton Friedman. For those who were intellectually aware of the political debate during that time, his loss is a heavy one mitigated by the fact that his words will live on in his books and television series.
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Open Inquiry: A Casualty of the Climate Change Debate
Sunday, February 11th, 2007The extent to which global warming, or more generally climate change, will make life on Earth more difficult is a consequential and pressing question. However, it is already clear that the debate about climate change is damaging free scientific inquiry and contributing to popular misunderstandings about science. The contentiousness of the debate is making it more and more difficult for scientists to speak freely and has allowed politicians to cite scientific authority in an unquestioning way. Consider the following cases:
About a year ago, climate scientist Dr. James E. Hansen of NASAs Goddard Institute was directed to have his lectures and papers reviewed by NASAs Public Affairs Office. Hansen interpreted this as an obvious effort to suppress his warnings about global warming. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed when NASA’s Administrator Michael Griffin, in an e-mail to all NASA employees, explained that it is not the job of management, “to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA’s technical staff.”
Democratic Representative Henry Waxman is holding hearings on whether NOAA scientists where inhibited in making clear their scientific assessments about global climate change.
During the Clinton Administration, Dr. Indur M. Goklany, of the Interior Department was redirected to non-climate related work after he suggested that the economic costs of restricting greenhouse gases should be balanced against potential consequences of climate change.
Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist was brought up on charges of scientific dishonesty that were ultimately dropped for his critique of what he considered shrill predictions of environmental calamity. The Chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri derisively compared Lomborg to Adolf Hitler: “What is the difference between Lomborg’s view of humanity and Hitlers. If you were to accept Lomborgs way of thinking, then maybe what Hitler did was the right thing.”
If you believe some, all must now accept, without question, the scientific consensus on climate change. David Miliband, the British Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, declared “debate about climate change is now over.”
The debate about climate change and its political repercussions have revealed some fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of science. All who take the discipline of science must seriously subscribe to certain enabling axioms that seem to have been forgotten, or at least neglected.
Free and open discussion of data, hypotheses, and theories must be maintained. Ultimately ideas are tested in open forums. Others may or may not be persuaded, but logic and data are the agreed upon pillars upon which the debate rests. The suppression of expression, whether through government edict or popular intimidation, undermines free debate and is inconsistent with any scientific enterprise.
The validity of a scientific argument is independent of the character of the person making the argument. It only depends on the argument itself. Those who worry the most about climate change argue that some eco-skeptics are not to be believed because they receive funding from fossil fuel companies. Others, more critical of climate change predictions, suggest that scientists receive more federal funding if they can nurture fear and dread about the environment. Those arguments might be politically persuasive, but are not scientifically relevant. Even if inspired by the vilest of motives, the validity of an argument relies only upon evidence and logic.
Scientific consensus does not ever end debate. Science is entirely provisional, all ideas and theories are subject to re-investigation, all data open to re-analysis. Although it is true that if someone makes an important scientific claim, that seems on its face to contradict previously agreed upon conclusions, the claim must meet high standards of scrutiny and evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. However, there are no scientific theories about natural phenomena that cannot be challenged.
Living by these rules is a necessary condition to claim to be practicing science.
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