Bill O’Reilly and the Dope-Smoking Dutch

O’Reilly did a segment on the Netherlands, touting it as a “secular-progressive” Disneyland, with legalized drugs and prostitution.  This, old Bill says, is what will become of America if the liberals take over.  He points out that secular-progressives of America use the Netherlands as a good example of why this philosophy works.

Of course, O’Reilly and his ilk use the Netherlands as a good example of why a permissive culture doesn’t work.And the best he can come up with is that organized crime has a big foothold there.  That’s it.  He just sat there and listened to the statistics: the Netherlands has a much lower crime rate, murder rate, rate of incarceration, etc., but hey, that’s all inconsequential, because organized crime is there.

What exactly does that mean?  Organized crime or not, the Netherlands still has much lower crime rates than America.  So what does this information mean?  Nothing.  Of course, we get an anecdotal story about thugs hanging around seedy districts menacing schoolchildren.

This is how Bill O’Reilly operates:  All the statistics say that the Netherlands is a virtual paradise compared to America when it comes to crime rates, and he gives us anecdotes and meaningless asides.

(Please not that I’m not saying the Netherlands is a better place to live than America, nor am I necessarily an advocate of their society; I’m simply stating the obvious: their permissive culture is clearly not leading to a breakdown of morals and polite society, as people like O’Reilly would have us believe.)

The funniest part, however, was when his guest Gretchen Carlson pointed out that despite legalized marijuana in the Netherlands, a higher percentage of Americans smoke it or have tried it (40% of Americas to 26% of Dutch).  That would seem like a powerful argument that legalizing marijuana does not necessarily lead to more smokers, right?  But what did O’Reilly say? “Oh, but they do their statistics differently over there, and the Netherlands has a much smaller base.”

A smaller base?  Yeah, that’s why Ms. Carlson said percentage, you pinhead.  Not the number of Dutch potheads as opposed to the number of American potheads; the percentage.  And the Dutch report their statistics differently?  Please explain, Mr. O’Reilly, how the Ditch alter their statistics to fit your traditional Christian worldview.  I’m sure you’ll come up with something.

How do Canadians handle their statistics?  Because in Canada, where marijuana is largely decriminalized, you find the same result: A lower percentage of Canadians have smoked pot than Americans. 

It’s very common, O’Reilly.  It’s nothing of which to be ashamed.  Every human on the planet is prone to this most common of logical fallacies.  We all tend to find a hypothesis, stick to it, and look for ways to vindicate it while ignoring things that might contradict it.

Obama and the Folks

I don’t know why anyone should be surprised that our president is a typical politician.  He made it the centerpiece of his campaign that “95% of Americans won’t see their taxes raised one cent” under his administration.  He repeated it over and over.  He castigated John McCain for not promising the same, that heartless Republican who only cares about big corporations.

Then what does 95% of America get?  We get Cap and Trade, we get new sin taxes, a tax on OTC drugs, and now the federal income tax is probably going to go up.  What a shock:  I guess all that class warfare idiocy Obama is so fond of espousing is bullshit after all.  He can’t pay for his multi-trillion-dollar socialist agenda by simply raising taxes on some rich, selfish scumbags.  Nope, it looks like those folks Obama tried his best to pander to during the election are going to foot some of the bill.

It’s amazing how these politicians and bureaucrats think.  Tim Geithner was asked flat-out about taxes going up even for the middle class.  Doing his best impression of his boss, he danced and pranced around and brought up some disgusting, collectivist notion about “social responsibility.”  He warned that everyone in America is going to have to get used to sacrificing to get us out of this economic mess, and that the reality is that government must raise tax revenue to pay for these deficits.

All I could think was: “WHY NOT STOP SPENDING, YOU BUNCH OF CROOKS!?”  Doesn’t that sound reasonable?  Wouldn’t that get rid of the deficit?  Then we wouldn’t have to raise anyone’s taxes!  Why can’t this option be on the table?

You want to talk about sacrifice?  Who’s sacrificing here?  Not Obama, not his family, not his cronies and czars, not his administration, not Congress, not their families, not the lobbyists.  No, the only people who are sacrificing are the ones out there who don’t have any political power or allies in government.  That’s it.  If Obama wants to fix the economy, if he wants to fix the problems in this country, he needs to fix the freaking government.  And further, he needs to fix his whole philosophical viewpoint.

Enabling Tyranny

So Bill O’Reilly thinks American corporations that create off-shore tax havens are being “unpatriotic” and scamming the system.  He stated this while simultaneously assuring his viewers that he himself wouldn’t do something like that, because he’s a good old American boy who wants to do good for his country, not just selfishly enrich himself.

I’m so tired of hearing that false dichotomy.  I thought it was trumpeted mostly by the semi-literate, thieving politicians (most notably Democrats), but here we have O’Reilly championing the “little guy.”  The fallacy with this argument is that self-interest is the most American behavior possible.  This country was founded on individual rights, not on any notion of collectivism or government-mandated altruism (an oxymoron anyway).

But that’s another argument.  I want to address this notion of blind patriotism.  What’s the cut-off point?  At what point does a corporation make the decision that the American government is being unfair and taking too much of its profits?  Should the wealthy producers in this country all just blindly accept a 65% income tax, or 70%?  It’s close to sixty now in some states.

Blind patriotism is an insult.  Blind patriotism enables tyranny.  We love America because of its attributes, because of its freedom and opportunity, because of the heroic things it has done.  We don’t just love a name; we love an ideal.  Not to be melodramatic, but that ideal is being tarnished.  The government is doing immoral, unfair things.  At some point, I would hope that those corporations decide they’ve had enough and say, “I’m going somewhere where my money isn’t stolen from me and used to get a politician reelected.  I’m going somewhere that actually appreciates my productivity.”

They have an obligation, you say?  They need to give back to the country?  They have a duty to America?

Well, doesn’t America have a duty to them, its citizens?  Doesn’t it have an obligation to protect our individual rights and our property?  At some point, the collectivists take over and drop all the pretense of freedom and opportunity.  If that point arrives, it becomes immoral to continue to support such a system.

I hope the corporations continue to go overseas.  I hope they continue to invest their money where they can make an honest profit.  If the politicians scamming America strip this right from them, then it’s their fault.  Perhaps they ought to rethink their thieving ways if they really want investment capital to start flowing in this country again.

Looking Out for the Stupid Folks

The other night, O’Reilly had a segment about Bill Mahr’s recent comment that America is a stupid country.  One of his guests was Mark Lamont Hill.  I don’t know why; Professor Hill’s raison d’etre seems to be race hustling, and there was no illusion of racial injustice here for him to exploit.  O’Reilly’s other guest, however – Naomi Wolf – made a relevant and insightful argument (a difficult thing to do with O’Reilly breathing down your neck).

She disagreed with Mahr that this is s stupid country, but made the point that Americans are being woefully misinformed (by public education).  She spoke of the well-documented studies about how a majority of young adults don’t know the first thing about how our government works, so this makes them vulnerable to demagogues.

Absolutely.  Further evidence of this comes from the flip side.  The demagogues wouldn’t have a foothold if Americans weren’t so interested in hearing their nonsense.  Take a listen to the way our politicians speak.  Try to find any actual substance in the presidential debates last year.  In fact, try to find anything other than pandering, sophistry, fact mining, and glaring logical fallacies.  The tragedy of America is our political system.

It starts with our so-called leaders.  Remember when President Bush mocked a reporter for asking a question in French?  This is the general atmosphere I see everyday, particularly on cable news.  Since when did it become risible to speak a second language?  Only in the realm of willful ignorance and the “home-grown wisdom” of the “good old folks.”

About half of all Americans don’t “believe” in evolution or think that it’s “just a theory.” (Disagreeing with the theory of evolution in either of those two ways shows a stunning lack of education in itself.)  Worse, most of them don’t even know what they’re denying.  They claim that creationism is a valid science, and in the same breath say that creationism is the “truth” taught by the Bible.

Then we have O’Reilly, who in this segment stated that since Sarah Palin had  a fifty-five percent approval rating in Alaska, his guests have no right to say she did a bad job.  Really?  Is O’Reilly honestly saying that since a majority of people like Sarah Palin, that is evidence that she did a good job as governor?  Obama’s approval rating is around fifty-five percent – is that indicative of how much good he’s doing this country?  Should we gauge the condition of California by Schwartznegger’s approval rating?

What a grand idea for America: Let’s surrender to the opinion of a majority.  Let’s stop looking at evidence, let’s stop using reason to figure out our problems, and simply side with whatever horde happens to scream the loudest or wield the most power.  Let’s use feelings and emotions to run our economic system, let’s allow a Christian parent’s belief to determine what should be taught in science classes.  Even better, let’s allow others to vote our individual freedoms away.

The only guage is evidence, O’Reilly.  Whether Ms. Palin left the state in a better condition or not.  That’s it.  She either did or did not, but an approval rating will not discern this.  People’s opinions and feelins are utterly irrelevant when it comes to evidence.  People’s opinions and feelings do not change reality.

What a beautiful example of the ignorant and dangerous demagoguery that Ms. Wolf pointed out to O’Reilly.  Too bad he didn’t listen to her.

Megyn Kelly Mocks Madonna’s Muscles

Okay, I don’t know the state of Madonna’s health, I don’t know if she has “body dysmorphic disability” or some other pseudo-condition.  I don’t know if she binges and purges, and I don’t know her blood pressure, body fat percentage, or HDL count.  But I’m pretty sure Megyn Kelly doesn’t either, and even if she does, she certainly didn’t present any of this information during her little rant about Madonna’s physical appearance the other morning.

Let’s recap.  Ms. Kelly said that Madonna’s arms were “disgusting,” that her “veins were bulging from her biceps,” that her body fat must be “zero percent,” and continuously raised questions about her mental and physical health.  Apparently to Ms. Kelly, peak physical condition is indicative of sickness.

First of all, Ms. Kelly should be informed that zero-percent body fat is impossible for a living human being.  In fact, Madonna is considerably less “ripped” than female pro fitness models.  Lean muscles and visible veins are a consequence of dedication to resistance training and diet.  Regardless of whether Ms. Kelly thinks they’re “disgusting,” they are not indicative of any health problem.

The only bit of useful information in this segment, the only thing that might be relevant to the discussion, the only thing that wasn’t Ms. Kelly’s catty opinion about another woman’s body, was the fact that Madonna works out for two hours a day.  Wow, what a horrible, disgusting person she is!

Predictably, Madonna’s influence on young girls was brought up.  She sounds like a very positive influence to me.  I’m trying to divest my personal opinions about the female physique and look at this objectively.  You don’t get in that kind of condition by starving yourself or special celebrity diets; you only get it through hard work and discipline.  In a nation full of fat kids being spoon-fed junk food by their fat parents, maybe we all need a bit more of Madonna’s work ethic in this matter.

I like Megyn Kelly; I think she’s one of the most intelligent and rational reporters on the screen.  She’s literally made me stand up and clap at the TV.  But this is astonishing.  The last I heard, Ms. Kelly, you know nothing about Madonna’s mental or physical health.  It’s not for you to decide what’s aesthetically pleasing about her body, either, and to call her “disgusting” is beneath you.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – maybe Madonna thinks your round, limp, toneless arms are disgusting.

Health care Fiasco, Part Two

Watching Obama trying to sell his health care bill to the public the other night on prime time TV, I kept thinking of one thing: A sinking ship.  Appeal to emotion is the last bastion of the irrational.  When all else fails, when your argument is as thin as silk, when you have nothing to present but a failed, miserable ideology, you replace thought with wish.

You say, “We have to do this,” and you tell the story of some poor pathetic person who needs health care that only the government can provide.  It’s usually a child or an elderly person, or perhaps that struggling single mom who works so hard for the American dream, then has it thrown in her face by corporate greed.  People have a right to medical care, you say.  People have a right to be in good health.  At whose expense?

No, I’m sorry, but they don’t.  People have a right to get the best medical care they can afford.  They have a right to shop around for the best plan.  They have a right to invest as much or as little as they desire in health insurance.

But they do not have the right to health care given to them on someone else’s buck.  But that’s what they want.  That’s what Obama wants to give them.  That’s what Obama calls “morality.”  He has decided that the rights of one group of individuals are more important than the rights of other individuals.

This is similar to the fallacious notion that ever American has a right to get a decent job.  No, they don’t.  They have a right to search the job market and take any job they want.  They have a right to quit if they don’t like a job.  They have a right to educate themselves and gain skills that would make them valuable to an employer.

But a right to a decent job means the rights of an employer will be violated.  The right to health care means the rights of other taxpayers will be violated.  In America, you can’t pick and choose whose rights are more important.

At least, you shouldn’t be able to.  Unfortunately, that’s all we get from politicians nowadays.  They seem to have forgotten that America grants rights to the individual, and the government is there to protect them.  Not rearrange them, not favor one of another, but protect them.

If you want to fix health care, get rid of government programs like Medicare and Medicaid.  If you want to fix corruption and drive prices down, get rid of political clout and lobbying power.  If you want to insure more people, stop taxing them and let them do it themselves.

In other words, there’s nothing wrong with health care that the government butting its nose out wouldn’t solve.

Health Care Fiasco

In John Stossel’s book Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity, he showed a flowchart, an incredibly tangled web of bureaucratic nonsense required to fire a public school teacher in New York City.  This irrational system allowed teachers accused of sexual improprieties with their students to sit on administrative leave with pay.  It makes it impossible for bad teachers to be reprimanded, and doesn’t encourage any innovation or merit-based advancement.

It was funny, because on the news I saw a very similar flowchart describing the way the health care system is shaping up.  I was immediately struck by the similarities.  Somehow this administration is going to push through a universal health care plan that we can’t afford, and that’s most likely going to fail as utterly as the public school systems are failing.

The universal health care proponents don’t care.  They’ve decided, as part of the train-wreck that they call their ethics, that it’s okay to take money from private citizens to pay the medical bills of those who can’t afford them.  This is thievery even under the best of circumstances; for the government to do it is thievery with a topping of unbelievable incompetence.  Here’s a suggestion: Why doesn’t the government work on fixing Medicare and Medicaid before even thinking in the direction of health care reform?  You know, those two wasteful, inept programs that are going to bankrupt America?

Here’s something else:  If Obama and the government is solely interested in health care, in improving the lives of Americans, in making sure they have adequate health care; if they really want to help people and not simply expand their power, control, and tax revenue, why not give a tax credit?  Give every business a tax credit for providing health care for their employees, and they’ll find the best plan they can for those employees.  It will cost them nothing, and the businesses with the best plans will attract the most skilled workers, pushing other businesses to get equal or better plans.  The taxpayers don’t have to pay anything, the government doesn’t have to be involved to screw everything up, and every employee gets health care.

But wait, if we do this, the government will lose money!  Tax revenues will take a major dive!  Government will have to cut spending in a major way!  And the scheming little crooks in Washington, the self-serving free-loaders, the conniving imps who could teach Wall Street bigwigs a little something about greed, would never have that.

O’Reilly, Ingraham, and Wishful Thinking

The proclamations of the foolish are generally just wrong, but the proclamations of the wishful, the hopeful, the desperate-to-be-validated, are more than wrong; they’re wickedly anti-intellectual.

Yesterday, when bemoaning the secular nature of the Obama administration, O’Reilly had a message for our president: “The United States has become one of the most powerful and prosperous countries in the world largely because of Judeo-Christian values.”

Largely because of Judeo-Christian values?  This is not a matter of your feelings, O’Reilly.  The United States has gained its power and most certainly it unprecedented prosperity because of capitalism.  That’s the mitigating factor, the keystone that holds it all together.  Without a free market, private ownership, and individual freedom, we’d be a shabby little third-rate, second-world slum.  All of Western civilization is rooted in Judeo-Christian thought, but no one has ever come close to the status of America.  Would O’Reilly have us believe that this is due to the strength of our faith?  Sorry, but reason led to the Enlightenment.  Reason gave us science and reason definitely gave us capitalism and individual rights.  Not a sacred belief.

O’Reilly then had Laura Ingraham on to support his view.  Her affirmation was framed thusly: “America’s morality is rooted in the Christian religion.”

Is that a joke?  How many of the Ten Commandments are actually the law of the land in this country?  Try two; and prohibitions against murder and theft are necessary for the function of any society.  This has been known and practiced thousands of years before there was anything even vaguely resembling Judeo-Christian values.  It took secularism to provide true individual liberty.  Without the freethinkers of the Enlightenment, we’d all still be languishing in a Christian Dark Ages.

The type of thinking exhibited by O’Reilly and Ingraham is what has degraded our schools, our political debates, and out understanding of reason and science.  While they’re ideological opposites of the liberal intellectuals who are revising textbooks to fit a cultural agenda, they’re methodologically identical.  They all think their wishes and hopes – their opinions – are more valuable than reality.  They all abandon reason when it presents them with something their feelings can’t abide.

Of course Christian philosophy has contributed enormously to the development of Western civilization.  No one could possibly deny that.  But those who share O’Reilly and Ingraham’s position should be reminded that the United States of America, the greatest experiment and example of freedom man has ever devised, was possibly only by booting their religion out of government, out of the law, and granting authority not to God, but to the PEOPLE.

In America, we stand not on the principles of deities, devils, and sacred knowledge, but on the shoulders of men such as Aristotle, Newton, Locke and Smith.

Let’s All Stop Respecting the Beliefs of Others

I used to think that this was a pretty obvious notion, but now I’m not so sure anymore.  Now, we seem to be moving closer and closer to a world in which every idea and belief deserves respect simply because it is put forth.  The idea that women should keep their faces covered so as not to “tempt” men, for example, is now defended by some as a belief that should be respected simply because it is held by some (even many) people.

Nonsense.  I’ll allow my inner nerd to shine forth and quote Gandalf the Gray:  “When did [we] abandon reason for madness?”

We should NOT respect the beliefs of others.  No freethinking person should ever follow such a craven, fatuous, and morally wrong principle.  Instead, we should use reason.  We should try to objectively look at each individual belief and determine whether it is a.) a good belief; b.) a bad belief; or c.) a faulty belief.  Regardless of what moral relativists and multi-culti pseudo-intellectuals might say, this is possible.  If it is a good belief, we should respect it.  If it is a bad belief, we should disrespect it.  If it is a faulty belief, we should amend it.  (When I say terms like “good” and “bad,” I mean measurably beneficial or detrimental to every human being on the planet.)

The belief that an individual has the right to determine his own destiny, for example, is a good belief.  We should admire and even spread this belief.

The belief that women should not have access to education and voting, on the other hand, is a bad belief.  It is a bad belief no matter what justification is given for it (there are especially to be no exceptions for religious justifications).  A belief such as this should be scorned.

The belief that evolution is bad because it represents an atheistic philosophy is an example of a faulty belief that’s very pervasive in this country today.  It’s faulty because it ignores reality.

It’s the height of irrationality and moral weakness to respect someone’s belief simply because.  Treating a person with a bad belief politely is one thing; assigning a bad belief the same worth as a good one is outrageous.  And refusing to scorn a bad belief because of some need to “be respectful of the beliefs of others” is contemptible.

Robin Hood Economics

I’ve heard this notion of “Robin Hood” economics several times, both from those who admire it and those who despise it.  To be clear, I rest firmly in the latter category.  I think the idea of politicians stealing money from people who earned it and giving it to those who they think deserve it is a moral crime and a horrible, ineffective economic policy.  Furthermore, I’d go so far as to say that people who spent their youth hanging out, partying, and getting pregnant don’t deserve a cent of the money others have earned through hard work and dedication.

That being said, I think the idea of “stealing from the rich and giving to the poor” has become muddled into a nonsensical slogan dumbed down for people who don’t care to learn the truth (the inevitable result of any idea that remains in the political world for long).  Those who support the idea (i.e., thieves) justify their criminal behaviour by saying something like, “the right of a starving person to eat overrides the right of a wealthy man to buy a yacht.”  Of course, this ignores the fact that in a country like America (and this would be more evident if America were a true capitalistic country and not the mixed result of the thieves’ utopian vision), no one is starving.  And if they were, it would be by choice.

Those who oppose Robin Hood economics (i.e., honest men), justify their position by saying that in a free society, no one – especially not the government – has a right to decide when you’ve become “too” successful and therefore should have your money taken by force and redistributed.  Ayn Rand even mentioned (and decried, of course) Robin Hood economics in Atlas Shrugged.

But I think both sides are missing the point.  Robin Hood did not simply steal from the rich and give to the poor; he stole from the corrupt.  He stole from thugs who had unearned and undeserved influence, men who deceived and oppressed to keep control over others, men who contributed nothing to society, men who lived off the honest work of others.  In other words, he stole from politicians.

Robin Hood didn’t steal from the idea of “the rich” touted by President Obama and his merry band of thieves as those who need to contribute more: Successful businessmen.  Businessmen earn their money honestly.  They have no power except the worth of their product or service.  Only those who turn to the government for favors are the thugs.

Make no mistake: Wealthy businessmen and corporations are not “the rich” of the Robin Hood fable.  If people want to emulate Robin Hood’s notion of putting money in the hands of honest folks, then they should be waylaying Obama’s tax collectors and cadre of “czars” and other bureaucrats.  These are the thugs, the men who contribute nothing to society, the men who live off the honest work of others.  These are the men who pass legislation to stifle the effort of ingenuity of free people and blithely walk over their rights in the interest of a failed and criminal ideology.