Newsweek’s Quran-down-the-crapper allegations, published after a suspicious sourcing process, now a media staple, sparked deadly riots from Jakarta to Jalalabad —17 dead so far, presumably Muslims killed by their co-religionists. Just for good measure, 200 Qurans were likely burned when a library was set on fire. How did the neoconservatives respond? As “committed cultural and religious relativists who firmly believe a good democratic heart throbs in every thorax,” they groveled obsequiously —”Any desecration of the Koran would not be tolerated,” kvetched Condi. And they pretended there was nothing deviant about the Islamic response —and its devastation. Can you imagine contemporary Christians reacting so savagely to the perennial disrespect their teachings elicit? (The ACLU would need to relocate to an undisclosed bunker.) A prominent Rabbi is beaten to a pulp in Moscow (currently a regular occurrence around the world). Do his followers go on a rampage? From Buddhists to Bahá’Ãs —such barbarism is almost unheard of in this day and age among peoples of other faiths. This reaction is yet another reminder why we have no place in those parts of the world (although, to be fair to the administration, the riots were a response to putative wrongdoing in Guanta¡namo). The storm alleged to have begun in a toilet bowel is also a testament to the impotence of American empire. If one wants to transform the Muslim world —something I’ve opposed on ethical, pragmatic, and historical grounds —one must have a core. Multiculturalism and majoritarianism are no match for fundamentalist fanaticism.
Let Private Property Prevail
Feminism, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Private Property
A new right may soon be minted by the nation’s “representatives”: the right to have one’s birth-control prescription filled. As a pro-life protest of sorts, pharmacists across the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth-control and day-after pills. In response to their posturing —and the bleating by “reproductive rights groups” — The Great Centralizers in the House and Senate have proposed a bill that’ll allow a pharmacist to refuse to fill a prescription only if a co-worker is on hand to pick up the slack. It goes without saying that a federal law, if passed, would further corrode the cornerstone of civilization: private property. The keys to the store belong with the owner of the pharmacy. The decision is his as to what goods he distributes. If an employee —the pharmacist —refuses to sell goods the owner stocks, the latter has every right to sack the saboteur. One doesn’t possess a right to have a prescription filled, but, equally, one also has no inherent right to stay employed while refusing to peddle the boss’s wares.
The market —not the meddlers —has the best solution: pharmacies that cater to women who use the pill and apothecaries that don’t. The former will employ people who’ll supply these clients; to the latter will flock workers who have an aversion to certain dispensing duties. (My guess is that preachy pharmacists —be they employers or employees —will have a negligible niche market.)
Inhabitants of the land of the free forget that criminalizing behaviors entirely licit in natural law legalizes the use of force against these innocents. (One consequence of the last is that hundreds of thousands of Americans languish in jail for ingesting, injecting, inhaling, or exchanging “unapproved” substances.)
By the same token, Weyco, a medical-benefits provider in Michigan, is just exercising its property rights by refusing to employ anyone who smokes. Inherent to private property is the right to include or exclude; associate with or dissociate from. States that “have passed laws that bar companies from discriminating against workers for lifestyle decisions” are infringing a proprietor’s property rights.
Companies (Investors Property Management in Seattle is another example) who don’t hire smokers are responding to the costs of having to provide workers with another bogus right: healthcare coverage. Their reaction is an example of the perfectly predictable consequences of regulation. It also showcases the immortality of those who clamor for regulation —American workers are all for compelling companies to pay for their healthcare, but want to ban businesses from screening out high-risk candidates.
Immigration Occlusion
The exclusive emphasis of late on border security in the immigration debate has helped open-border advocates immensely. Everyone (and his dog) currently concurs that we have no problem with legal immigration, only with the illegal variety. It’s now mandatory to pair an objection to the invasion of the American Southwest with an embrace of all forms of legal immigration.
Yet nothing has changed since, “in 1965, with no real debate or voter participation, the U.S. Congress replaced the national-origin immigration criterion (which ensured newcomers reinforced the historical majority) with a multicultural, all-nations-are equal quota system, which effectively resulted in an emphasis on mass importation of people from the Third World. The new influx was no longer expected to acculturate to liberal democratic Judeo-Christian traditions. With family ‘reunification’ superseding all other considerations, immigration became an economic drain —as demonstrated, for example, by Harvard’s George Borjas.”
The sole emphasis on border security has, in all likelihood, entrenched the status quo — Americans will never assert their right to determine the nature of the country they live in and, by extension, the kind of immigrants they welcome. The security risk newcomers pose is the only legitimate conversation. (There’s no dispute, however, as to who foots the bill for immigration.)
Putin And Sharon: Bred-In-The-Bone Patriots
Vladimir Putin and Ariel Sharon should have made more of their recent meeting. It was Sharon’s chance to get Putin on his side. Unlike George Bush the internationalist, Putin and Sharon are fierce nationalists who care first and foremost about their respective countries. Both, paradoxically, are under pressure from the U.S. for their treatment of terrorists —the two leaders are expected to make concessions to murderers who kill their civilians, while Bush and the international community make no such allowances for al-Qaida. The Murder Inc. of the Middle East (Hamas) and that of Russia (Chechen terrorists) have pan-Islamic aspirations and ties to al-Qaida. That the Left sympathizes with violent societies like Chechnya and the Palestinian Authority (their July-17 election is predicted to be a shoo-in for Hamas) is to be expected. From the Right one expects better, although it’s certainly a pleasant surprise to read an article in a libertarian publication which, for a change, rejects the root-causes rubbish: “[A] high-violence society does not get that way because of any particular cause or condition,” writes James L. Payne in The Prospects for Democracy in High-Violence Societies. “It is better understood as a society mired in the past, a society that has failed to make the transition away from primitive, counterproductive modes of interaction.”
In any case, a better understanding between Russia and Israel might take the pressure off Sharon to keep making concessions to “Hamastan,” and, perhaps, inject a new dynamic into the current imbalance of power in the world.