Today’s live show, and then later the archive recording, can be accessed here.

To access the show page, which will allow you to check out a past episode, or to subscribe to the recorded archives via iTunes and other services, use this link.

I will still be posting and discussing news items at the Don’t Let It Go…Unheard page on Facebook, and may even, time permitting, squeeze in a fresh blog post here. Have a great two weeks, and I look forward to “seeing” you on June 3!

Today’s live show, and then later the archive recording, can be accessed here.

To access the show page, which will allow you to check out a past episode, or to subscribe to the recorded archives via iTunes and other services, use this link.

Planned Topics: The Obama campaign’s new “Life of Julia” website, the French elect a socialist, “The Avengers” movie, and more.

Today’s live show, and then later the archive recording, can be accessed here.

To access the show page, which will allow you to check out a past episode, or to subscribe to the recorded archives via iTunes and other services, use this link.

Today’s live show, and then later the archive recording, can be accessed here.

To access the show page, which will allow you to check out a past episode, or to subscribe to the recorded archives via iTunes and other services, use this link.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amypeikoff/2012/04/23/dont-let-it-go-unheard

Today’s live show, and then later the archive recording, can be accessed here.

To access the show page, which will allow you to check out a past episode, or to subscribe to the recorded archives via iTunes and other services, use this link. I particularly recommend last week’s interview with Yaron Brook, President and Executive Director of The Ayn Rand Institute, which is the featured episode.

The live show, and later the archive, can be accessed here.

To access the show page, which will allow you to check out a past episode, or to subscribe to the recorded archives via iTunes and other services, use this link.

The live show, and later the archive, can be accessed here.

To access the show page, which will allow you to check out a past episode, or to subscribe to the recorded archives via iTunes and other services, use this link.

The live show, and later the archive, can be accessed here.

To access the show page, which will allow you to check out a past episode, or to subscribe to the recorded archives via iTunes and other services, use this link.

The live show, and later the archive, can be accessed here.

To access the show page, which will allow you to check out a past episode, or to subscribe to the recorded archives via iTunes and other services, use this link.

The live show, and later the archive, can be accessed here.

To access the show page, which will allow you to check out a past episode, or to subscribe to the recorded archives via iTunes and other services, use this link.

In the meantime, you can pick up her book, which I’ve read and very much enjoyed. (It’s also available in Kindle, Nook, and iBook formats.)

Also, here are some stories that I had planned to discuss today:

“Charges Dismissed in Pennsylvania Prosecution for Attack on ‘Zombie Mohammed’ Atheist Parader” from The Volokh Conspiracy.

See also, this post by Eugene Volokh: “The Irrelevance of Anti-Sharia Laws to the ‘Zombie Mohammed’ Case”

I also planned to discuss our civilian and military leadership apologizing for our soldiers’ burning the Koran. My response would have been something very much like this, but I doubt I could have said it better.

Feel free to discuss these issues here; we may still get to them next week.

In the meantime, you can catch up on an episode you missed, either on the BlogTalk Radio archives at this link, or (for older episodes) right here on my blog, by browsing the “Don’t Let It Go…Unheard” category.

The live show, and later the archive, can be accessed here.

To access the show page, which will allow you to check out a past episode, or to subscribe to the recorded archives via iTunes and other services, use this link.

Now more than ever we want to be inspired by our politicians. The economy, not just in the United States, but worldwide, is in dire straits. The threat of Islamic Jihad, made real to us on September 11, 2001, and always waiting in the wings since, seems to be growing now, as Islamic political organizations take advantage of the post-Arab-Spring power vacuum. It may become even more serious when the Islamic Republic of Iran or Saudi Arabia – both leading state sponsors of terrorism – obtain nuclear weapons. Rapidly escalating debt, over-extended entitlement programs, immigration, and health care all present domestic problems that require intelligent, principled solutions.

But for as long as I can remember, our politicians have disappointed us. Unfortunately, this is true of the 2012 field as well. Of course President Obama had to disappoint everyone, given the egalitarian nature of his goals and the lack of capitalistic wealth to raid – his predecessors succeeded in destroying so much wealth and human initiative, there was almost nothing left to loot. But one has a hard time maintaining that Obama has practiced integrity with respect to even his stated goals. He has indulged in lavish, frequent vacations and campaign trips using taxpayer dollars, played numerous rounds of golf, and on numerous occasions has bent laws and rules that don’t suit him (e.g., his recent “recess” appointments).

On the GOP side, our current politicians are equally disappointing. Look at the “final four”: A candidate who, on issues of immigration and foreign policy, tells it like it is, as no other candidate does, but who seems to be a wild card otherwise and, in particular, doesn’t seem like he will significantly reduce the size and scope of government, rather than use it as a laboratory for trying out some of his interesting ideas; a candidate who, as governor, enacted what is essentially Obamacare at the state level, whose promise to repeal is accompanied with a promise to “replace” it with something almost as bad, and whose other policies allow for similar levels of government intervention in our lives; a third candidate who wants government to intervene on behalf of manufacturing and “families,” whose only true “conservative” credentials are with respect to social issues, which will (properly) alienate voters and would, if he were elected, distract him from the problems that really need fixing; and a fourth who promises to make the sorely needed drastic cuts in the size and scope of government, but who is inconsistent when it comes to the protection of individual rights and who advocates a “non-interventionist” foreign policy that, especially today, would be dangerous.

Why is it that this is all we have been able to produce? Has the energy and message of the Tea Party, in particular, gone completely unheeded? Why does it seem so difficult to find an “electable” politician who truly wants to reduce the size and scope of government?

I think part of the answer lies in big government itself. Wrote Bastiat, of government that has gone beyond its proper function of protecting individual rights:

[A]s long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true mission, that it may violate property instead of securing it, everybody will be wanting to manufacture law, either to defend himself against plunder, or to organise it for his own profit. The political question will always be prejudicial, predominant, and absorbing; in a word, there will be fighting around the door of the Legislative Palace. The struggle will be no less furious within it.

In other words, the existence of government that engages in legalized plunder, which ours has done for decades, will attract those who are suited for this sort of politics (or, if they aren’t already suited for it, it will make them so). Moreover, the electorate – including even most members of the Tea Party – seem to support candidates who promise to preserve their favorite entitlement programs. Americans have chosen, as Bastiat might have said, to partake in the plunder.

Bastiat attributed the willingness to engage in legalized plunder to either “egotism” or “false philanthropy.” By “egotism,” Bastiat meant a sort of self-interest, but he seemed to believe that men acted automatically to pursue their interests and, moreover, that they would reasonably see it as being in their interest to take the fruits of others’ labor. Following Ayn Rand, I believe both of these are incorrect, and place the blame, rather, on what Bastiat called “false philanthropy” or what Rand, more precisely, calls “altruism.” Wrote Rand, “The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.” It is false philanthropy, because it has nothing to do with charity or benevolence. It means that one must literally put others before himself. It is the only moral idea that can justify the welfare state, and it is also the principle that causes a GOP candidate, like Mitt Romney, to defend “profit” by pointing out that the profits will go to charities and pension funds. The altruist philosophy that made big government what it is today is still the primary morality held by politicians, the media establishment, the party elite, and much of the electorate.

This is why Rand and others have said, “it’s earlier than you think.” Until a substantial portion of the population explicitly rejects altruism, we can’t hope for a consistent defender of individual rights to be “electable.” And until such a person is elected, we can’t hope to limit government to performing only its proper functions. And because big government itself perpetuates belief in altruism, what we’re in for is likely a slow, gradual process. Our next Republican might be a little better than George W. Bush, and this will allow the culture to move away from the ethics of altruism a little bit, which will allow a slightly better politician to be “electable” the next time around, and so on. Our only hope to short-circuit this process, and to see significant change in politics during our lifetimes is, perhaps, for qualified (scandal-free) non-politicians to jump into politics, and to take full advantage of the rapid spread of ideas over social media and the Internet generally. Like the Founding Fathers, they should be, as Rand described, “thinkers who [are] also men of action.” I know such men exist; if only one were running for president.

(SPOILER ALERT for those who haven’t read The Fountainhead)

Many of you have already heard Leonard Peikoff’s recent podcast segment about obtaining sex through fraudulent means:

Few who have discussed the podcast have focused on Peikoff’s answer to the main question. I assume that is because they agree with the answer he gave and find it uncontroversial, or without any interesting implications? As has been true with other issues, some people seem to find it more interesting to focus on their disagreements with Leonard Peikoff. (Probably generates more web traffic.) With respect to this podcast, many have chosen to focus on Peikoff’s brief aside about the Kobe Bryant alleged rape case. In fact, someone (I don’t know who) went to the trouble of transcribing that portion of the podcast, probably within hours of the podcast being published (it was sent to me on Monday, February 6):

A woman can give her consent by her presence, in certain contexts, and that frees the man to have sex regardless of what she then says. I’m thinking of that case of Kobe Bryant, where the woman came up sometime in the middle of the night, after some drinking, to his bedroom, and then when he purported to do something, she said, ‘No, I don’t consent.’ You cannot do that. You have given every evidence that that is what you are going to do, and it’s too late at that point to say, “Sorry but no.”

In my view (and, I gather, that of many others), the above, as stated, is wrong. If the woman goes to his room, after he’s been drinking, etc., etc., then, yes, she should probably expect to have sex. But there are a number of reasons — some legitimate, some not — that might cause a woman to change her mind. And, whatever the reason, if she expresses her unwillingness to have sex, in a case in which there’s not enough established context to know it’s a feigned protest (i.e., in a case unlike that of Dominique/Roark in The Fountainhead), then the man should not force sex on her, simply because she had earlier given her consent. Think, e.g., of countless young girls who believe they’re ready for sex, but then decide they’re not ready quite yet, etc. No matter what the man may be justified in thinking of the woman if she changes her mind, he is not justified in forcing sex on her. And why would he want to, if he knew the woman had actually changed her mind?

Of course whether the accuser in the Kobe Bryant case actually did change her mind or put up any kind of protest is another question. But given my limited knowledge of the case, and given the way the case was presented very briefly in the podcast, I disagree with Leonard Peikoff’s analysis of it.

(Please note that I did not find it necessary to use any of the following adjectives or phrases in expressing the above disagreement: “disgraceful,” “disgusting,” “anyone of good moral character or intelligence…” etc.)

The live show, and later the archive, can be accessed here.

To access the show page, which will allow you to check out a past episode, or to subscribe to the recorded archives via iTunes and other services, use this link.

Just a reminder that there will be no live show today, as we’ll be watching the Superbowl with friends. I hope you will be doing something equally enjoyable, and that you can join us when we return next week.

In the meantime, you can catch up on an episode you missed, either on the BlogTalk Radio archives at this link, or (for older episodes) right here on my blog, by browsing the “Don’t Let It Go…Unheard” category.

“See” you next week!

The live show, and later the archive, can be accessed here.

To access the show page, which will allow you to check out a past episode, or to subscribe to the recorded archives via iTunes and other services, use this link.

The live show, and later the archive, can be accessed here.

To access the show page, which will allow you to check out a past episode, or to subscribe to the recorded archives via iTunes and other services, use this link.

UPDATE:

New York Times article about why Apple manufactures iPhones overseas can be found here.

The live show, and later the archive, can be accessed here.

To access the show page, which will allow you to check out a past episode, or to subscribe to the recorded archives via iTunes and other services, use this link.

The live show, and later the archive, can be accessed here.

To access the show page, which will allow you to check out a past episode, or to subscribe to the recorded archives via iTunes and other services, use this link.

This year will be the 4th annual Shorty Awards, which their website describes as “Honoring the Best Producers of Short Content on Social Media.” The awards seem to be based entirely upon votes in the form of Tweets, and anyone with an active Twitter account (an account that predated the beginning of the voting period, January 3) can vote. If you would like to help the Ayn Rand Bot (you can read more about the Bot here) stay near the top of the list in the #author category (as of this writing, it’s at #5), go to this page for more details and instructions on how to vote.

Thanks for your help! Because each person can vote only once, any help you can provide in spreading the word to other Twitter users is also greatly appreciated.

Another game I saw yesterday was called “Socialism In Eight Words,” and I couldn’t resist joining in. Here’s what I came up with:

Because your life’s work belongs to the state.

Who needs to work, when you can mooch?

Slaves as far as the eye can see.

Down the slippery slope from a mixed economy.

Trying desperately to pretend that stealing is good.

Your mind and body belong to the state.

“The common good,” taken to its logical conclusion.

And, my favorite (which I thought of second):

Sharing your toys was just a warm up.

One person on Twitter, and another on Facebook, thought that Rand described Socialism in eight words better than anyone:

Hatred of the good for being the good.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that quotation was the inspiration for the game in the first place…

Again this week we’ll be having a shorter, one-hour show. Planned topics include: Year-end review and look to the year ahead. The Obama administration is working with Muslim Brotherhood jurist Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. What does this mean for us, and which GOP candidate(s) would do the same? More good stuff from Steve Jobs — this time from a 1995 interview. Join in live if you’re free; otherwise the archive recording will be available for listening/download at your convenience. Both the live show and, later, the archive, can be accessed at this link.

We will be having a shorter, one-hour webcast today. Planned topics include: Different perspectives on Christmas, the GOP caves on the Payroll Tax Cut, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul & more. Join in live if you’re free; otherwise the archive recording will be available for listening/download at your convenience. Both the live show and, later, the archive, can be accessed at this link.

Planned topics: The last GOP debate before Iowa: how did the candidates perform? Who do you want to win, and who do you think will win? Congressmen and CAIR put pressure on Lowe’s for pulling advertising from “All American Muslim.” Does a company have a right to free speech, or not? What does that entail? The latest on the “Arab Spring” in Egypt. And more if there’s time.

UPDATE: The show is now over. You can find the recorded podcast here. Thanks to all who participated live, especially Ed Mazlish of Conservative New Jersey for discussing his experience with the Lowe’s “Buycott” and other political/legal issues.

We know how this goes. First it’s just a “recommendation.” Next, it becomes a string attached to federal funding that the states can’t afford to do without. Or maybe Congress — or perhaps even a regulatory agency without even a peep from Congress — goes ahead and promulgates the ban under the pretense that calling while driving and texting “affects” interstate commerce. After all, if your refraining from purchasing health insurance affects interstate commerce (as many smart appeals court judges apparently believe), then surely phoning and texting while driving does.

In a proper society we’d have private roads, with the owners of those roads deciding what rules to impose. And we’d have insurance company policies and tort liability rules geared to punish those whose calling and texting behavior caused accidents. Instead, today we have the increasingly interventionist nanny state giving us a “one size fits all” approach.

Thoughts?

Tonight’s show is available here for listening/download. Thanks to all who participated during the live show!

If you join in live, you’ll have the ability to communicate with me and other listeners via text chat, which is provided on my BlogTalkRadio show page, and also by phoning in, either on your phone or via Skype (using Skype’s calling service, which unfortunately is not free, but it’s cheap). The advantage of this platform is that there is no registration required to listen to the show. As before, if you are not able to attend live, the recorded podcast will be available soon after the show is over, so you can download it and listen to it at your leisure during the following week. Links to subscribe to the show, via iTunes and other audio media platforms, are provided on my BlogTalkRadio show page as well. (Several episodes recorded on my previously used platform are still easily accessible on iTunes here, or by clicking on the “Don’t Let It Go…Unheard” tag at the bottom of this post.)

Here is the link specifically for TODAY’s show.

Topics Planned: A good old fashioned shredding of Obama’s Osawatomie, Kansas speech. Plus: what’s this middle-class-tax-countdown thingie he’s posted on the White House web page? We’ll also discuss last night’s GOP debate, a recent poll naming Jennifer Aniston as the sexiest woman of all time, and more. For a preview of the GOP debate discussion, check out my twitter feed @AmyPeikoff.

I hope you can join us!

If you’d like to check out last week’s show, you can listen to or download it here.

UPDATE: Tonight’s show is now over. Thanks to everyone who listened and participated in the live show! The archive recording is available for listening/download here.

Those of us who were on Facebook at the time the alleged misrepresentations occurred (mostly in 2009) remember fondly the viral status statements telling us, e.g., how we were now inviting Mark Zuckerberg into our homes to watch us shower, unless we immediately went and changed this or that setting. Facebook’s transition to its new system of privacy controls and settings did not go smoothly, apparently, and it was difficult for some users to understand how the new system worked. So maybe we should be glad that the F.T.C. cracked down on Facebook. After all, even Mark Zuckerberg, in a blog post made the same day as the settlement news broke, admitted that Facebook had made “a bunch of mistakes.”

After reading both the complaint and the settlement agreement (which contains the Consent Order), however, I think Facebook made a mistake. This “agreement” is a case of the punishment not fitting the crime — at all. As I said, the various counts of the complaint amount to misrepresentations Facebook allegedly made, either about its privacy policies or about the privacy controls it made available to users. Assuming the allegations were true, I would expect perhaps a fine to be levied, along with a threat of steeper fines in the future, should Facebook make similar misrepresentations.* Indeed, Part I of the Consent Order does say that Facebook “shall not misrepresent in any manner, expressly or by implication,” various things about its privacy policy. But the Order does not stop there. In Parts II-V of the Order we see that Facebook’s penalty, for misrepresentations it “expressly denies” making, is for it to give the F.T.C. total control over the substance of its privacy policies — for the next twenty years!

Part II of the order requires Facebook to get a user’s express consent before allowing the user’s data to be shared with a third party, when such sharing “materially exceeds the restrictions imposed by [the] user’s privacy setting(s).” Part III requires Facebook to make a user’s information, stored on Facebook’s servers, inaccessible to any third party, no longer than thirty days after the user has deleted either the information, or his entire account. But it is Part IV of the Consent Order that constitutes the real power grab by the F.T.C. It requires Facebook to establish a “comprehensive privacy program,” which must be “documented in writing.” The program must “contain controls and procedures appropriate to [Facebook's] size and complexity, the nature and scope of [Facebook's] activities,” and so on, as judged by (per Part V of the Order) an “independent third-party professional.” Except that said third-party professional can’t be completely independent: He must be “approved by the Associate Director for Enforcement, Bureau of Consumer Protection, Federal Trade Commission, Washington, D.C. 20580, in his or her sole discretion.” Said “independent third-party professional” is to prepare and submit reports on the substance of Facebook’s privacy policies, every two years for the next twenty years.

As I’ve argued numerous times elsewhere (e.g., here), and as I argue in my forthcoming book on privacy, I believe the best way to provide legal protection for states of privacy is by means of our individual rights to property and contract. In this manner, law would not only recognize how states of privacy are actually created, but it would also allow businesses and individuals the freedom to design privacy policies that suit their needs and preferences. If Facebook wants to set up a social network in which users have virtually no privacy protection for the material they share with others, why not let it? Just let the market decide. What Obama’s F.T.C. has done, via this Consent Order — and similar “agreements” with Twitter and Google — is establish itself as the de facto dictator of privacy policy for the major social media outlets. And it did so without even having to ram unpopular legislation down the throat of the American people, as was done with Obamacare.

I can’t understand why Facebook would have agreed to this, and further, why Zuckerberg would be so effusive about it in the above-linked blog post. The only plausible reason I can think of, is that Facebook was concerned that the government would not allow it to go through with its anticipated IPO. Whether it was for this pragmatic reason, or because Zuckerberg is, as he said in his blog post, truly looking forward to cooperating with big government bureaucracy in the running of his business, he and his partners will get what they deserve.** If the F.T.C. wants to find a way in which Facebook has violated this Consent Order, so that it may take even more control of Facebook’s operations in the future, it will.

MySpace, anyone?

*Of course in an ideal world the F.T.C. would not exist and all this would be done via lawsuits initiated by disgruntled users. But given the current legal context, this is what I would expect.

**Further reading: Sanction of the Victim.

If you join in live, you’ll have the ability to communicate with me and other listeners via text chat, which is provided on my BlogTalkRadio show page, and also by phoning in, either on your phone or via Skype (using Skype’s calling service, which unfortunately is not free, but it’s cheap). The advantage of this platform is that there is no registration required to listen to the show. As before, if you are not able to attend live, the recorded podcast will be available soon after the show is over, so you can download it and listen to it at your leisure during the following week. Links to subscribe to the show, via iTunes and other audio media platforms, are provided on my BlogTalkRadio show page as well. (Several episodes recorded on my previously used platform are still easily accessible on iTunes here, or by clicking on the “Don’t Let It Go…Unheard” tag at the bottom of this post.)

Here is the link specifically for TODAY’s show.

Topics Planned: FTC’s settlement with Facebook. Herman Cain suspends his campaign. What are we left with? Bosch Fawstin talks about his recent Front Page Magazine article, “Non-Mulsim Muslims and the Jihad Against the West.” Senate passes its bill, S 1867, and some argue that it allows the President to deem pretty much anyone a terrorist and detain him. Does it? And more if there’s time.

UPDATE: I’d also like to discuss this article, published on Forbes.com, which cheers “The Bomb Buried in Obamacare” which will push us towards socialized medicine.

I hope you can join us!

If you’d like to check out last week’s show, you can listen to or download it here.

UPDATE 2: Today’s show is over. Thanks to everyone who attended live and participated via phone and chat, we really appreciate it. If you missed the show, you can find the archive here.

How could “Small Business Saturday” be anti-small business? Well, consider what is actually in the interest of small business — or any business. For a business to be successful, it needs to be able to plan long-range. It needs to be able to anticipate demand and allocate its resources accordingly. If a business is being patronized sporadically by people who are buying from them out of guilt, altruism, or misplaced patriotic feeling, rather than rational self-interest, then the business cannot determine the true demand for its product or service, the demand that will remain when the feeling-based fad-of-the-moment passes.

Moreover, any rational business owner has as his goal the providing of value to his customers. He needs to be confident that he is actually earning the money his customers spend on his products or services — that they would not prefer to be spending their money elsewhere. Otherwise, how can he feel the confidence in himself, his company, and his product, that is necessary for him to keep his business operating, developing and growing?

It is true that small business today is akin to an endangered species, and that we are in danger of losing the values that only it can offer — including, in many cases, specialized knowledge and personalized service. But the answer is not to ask people to, e.g., spend more money on a product than they would have otherwise, simply because they were told they had a duty to patronize a small business. Such a policy is antithetical to the idea of human beings born with an inalienable right to pursue their own happiness — the uniquely American ideal. This is particularly true today when, thanks to our government moving further and further away from that ideal, it may be that the only big businesses can earn enough profit to hire new workers or reinvest. Only big businesses enjoy the economies of scale often necessary to thrive in spite of the huge regulatory and tax burdens they are forced to bear.

If you really want to help small business, buy exactly what you want or need, where you want to and can best afford to buy it. And then spend the rest of your money donating to those organizations or candidates who are most likely to help lift our government’s huge regulatory and tax burden — from all businesses. Only when our economy recovers can there exist a substantial, stable customer base that can afford, based on their tastes and preferences, regularly to patronize both small and big businesses. And abolishing as much of the tax and regulatory burden as possible, as soon as possible, is essential to the process of recovery.

(For more, see “‘Buy American’ is Un-American,” by Dr. Harry Binswanger of ARI.)

Topics:

“Occupy Black Friday” — Why was it a failure? And were Tea Party groups right to promote “Small Business Saturday” as a response? (Hint: I argue they weren’t, even though they had the right to do so.)

Bosch spoke on a panel at David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend, in which the topic of discussion was what terms we should use when referring to the enemy’s ideology — “Islam” or “Islamism.” (The panel, along with numerous discussions on this topic, inspired me to write this blog post earlier this week.) We discuss the issue, and get your input.

The GOP Foreign Policy Debate: What we learned about the candidates, and why Newt Gingrich’s supposed gaffe on immigration just wasn’t that bad.

A brief discussion of the NBA Lockout and the power of the player’s union.

Thanks to all who attended live and participated in the chat room. And to the caller who had sound problems: please try again next week!

If you join in live, you’ll have the ability to communicate with me and other listeners via text chat, which is provided on my BlogTalkRadio show page, and also by phoning in, either on your phone or via Skype (using Skype’s calling service, which unfortunately is not free, but it’s cheap). The advantage of this platform is that there is no registration required to listen to the show. As before, if you are not able to attend live, the recorded podcast will be available soon after the show is over, so you can download it and listen to it at your leisure during the following week. Links to subscribe to the show, via iTunes and other audio media platforms, are provided on my BlogTalkRadio show page as well. (Several episodes recorded on my previously used platform are still easily accessible on iTunes here, or by clicking on the “Don’t Let It Go…Unheard” tag at the bottom of this post.)

Here is the link specifically for today’s show.

Topics planned include: Recap of David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend (the reason we didn’t broadcast last week), including “Islam vs. Islamism,” the panel on which Bosch Fawstin appeared, and which inspired this blog post. This week’s GOP Foreign Policy Debate. The Failure of Occupy Black Friday. The End of the NBA Lockout. And more…

I hope you can join us!

UPDATE: The show is now over. Thanks to all who attended live and participated in the chat room! If you missed the show, you can access the archived recording here.

This weekend I attended David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend in Florida. One of the panel discussions was entitled “Islam vs. Islamism,” the purpose of which was to discuss the ongoing debate between Andrew McCarthy and Robert Spencer regarding the terminology we should use to refer to those who, today, pose a threat to us and our way of life, along with the ideology that motivates them.

Over the years we have seen the enemy’s ideology referred to using a variety of terms: “Islamism,” “Radical Islam,” “Militant Islam,” “Political Islam,” “Islamic Totalitarianism,” and “Islamic Supremacism,” among others. The primary motivation for using such terms, instead of just saying “Islam,” is to acknowledge the fact that only a minority of those who call themselves Muslims wish to kill us or destroy our way of life.

I’ve discussed the issue off and on, over the last few years, with Bosch Fawstin, who wrote this essay about it. After hearing the panel presentations by Robert Spencer, Andrew McCarthy, Bosch Fawstin, and Baroness Caroline Cox this weekend, followed by a couple hours of discussion with Bosch Fawstin and Robert Spencer, I’d like to explain the issue as I currently see it and invite your input.

The goal is to use only terms that will help us to think about the issues ourselves, and to communicate the truth to others. The focus should be on the facts of reality — what actually needs to be identified and conceptualized — and, as a secondary consideration, whatever is required for clarity in communication. In choosing terms, we must not sacrifice honesty or accuracy. The context here is that of war, where we need to properly identify the enemy so that we will take those actions necessary to eliminate the threat.

With respect to the terminology that is motivating our enemies, I agree with Bosch Fawstin and others who think it is best to just say “Islam.” The reason for this, as Fawstin has argued for years, is that whenever you use another term, like those listed above, you are implying something about Islam itself that is not true: you are implying that Islam is either not supremacist, or not militant, or not totalitarian, etc. From Fawstin’s essay:

Imagine, if during past wars, we used terms such as “Radical Nazism”, “Extremist Shinto” and “Militant Communism”. Those who use terms other than “Islam” create the impression that it’s some variant of Islam that’s behind the enemy that we’re facing.

The only plausible counter-arguments I’ve heard to using “Islam” as the term have to do either with (1) the necessity of communicating with others who don’t share your context of knowledge; or (2) as Andrew McCarthy and others have argued, that such terms would give would-be-moderate or non-Muslim Muslims some “rhetorical space,” and that this is something that we either should give them, or even that we somehow owe them.

As for (1), a term like “rational self-interest” is an example of a term used by Objectivists to communicate to those who do not share our understanding of “self-interest”. Same with “individual rights.” Objectivists do not believe in a self-interest that isn’t rational, or rights possessed by groups or parts of individuals, and yet we use these terms to communicate with others who are under the (we think mistaken) impression that these things do exist. Because I think the terms other than “Islam” have not served us well in the ten years since 9/11 (and perhaps before that), I am starting to question even the use of these Objectivist terms, so I’d love to hear any input on that issue in general as well.

The reasons I’ve heard for giving would-be-moderate or non-Muslim Muslims some “rhetorical space,” are either that we want to do this to encourage moderation, which might, e.g., encourage them to help us in fighting the enemy, or because of an altruistic motive: we want them to have a nice religious life, to not think their religion is bad, etc. When I hear these arguments, I tend to wonder how much help we will actually get from these individuals anyway, and I certainly don’t think that we owe them this as a duty. We may choose to do this, as a matter of charity, but, particularly as an atheist, I worry that there will almost always be self-sacrifice involved. I also agree with a point made by Robert Spencer at the panel this weekend: of what value is “rhetorical space” if it is based on a lie?

The second issue is what term(s) you use to refer to Muslims, in order to distinguish those Muslims that wish to kill you and destroy your way of life from those Muslims who have no such propensity or desire. While there is not, in reality, a distinction between Islam and the ideology that motivates our enemies (see Robert Spencer’s work), it is true that only a small minority of Muslims are actively trying to kill us or destroy our culture. The majority do not seem to be rejecting this minority, unfortunately, but I think we still need to have terms to distinguish these groups of individuals.

The problem, then, is this: What term can we use to distinguish these two groups from each other, without whitewashing the nature of the ideology, Islam?

As for the terms I’ve heard, I like “Islamist” the best, simply because it adds no content to Islam. “Islamist” would refer to those self-described Muslims who are actively working to achieve the dominance of Islam and thereby destroy us and our way of life. But Robert Spencer thinks the majority in our culture already understand this term to imply that there are two different Islams and only one wants to destroy us. Spencer has sometimes used the word, “Islamic Supremacist,” which can be interpreted to mean the same thing, and other possible candidates are “Organized Islam,” which Fawstin prefers, and also “Fundamentalist Muslims,” which I believe I’ve heard from the Sultan Knish.

One might argue that any old term will do, because really the only concern in choosing a term to distinguish the people from one another, as opposed to the ideology, is that we might be worried that the use of such a term would mean to imply there is a separate ideology corresponding to each of the groups of people. But I am not: I am convinced, based on the evidence I’ve seen, that there is nothing that rises to the level of an ideology that is held by those self-labeled Muslims who do not wish to destroy us and our way of life. For more on that, I refer you to the writings of Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch. The only problem, then, is that most people (not even most Muslims, per Spencer) have not read the Koran, much less the writings of Spencer and other experts. For the sake of communicating with those who do not have this context of knowledge, I would want to use a term that conveys that there is a distinction, but that does not imply that there really are two essentially different, identifiable types of “Islam.”

My favorite, then, would be “Islamist,” because it draws a distinction without conveying additional content. Runners up for me would be “Organized Islam” (which refers to people) and “Fundamentalist Muslims.” Finally, while I owe much to Robert Spencer in terms of my knowledge of Islam, I myself would want to avoid using the term “Islamic Supremacist,” as use of the term might imply that there is something called “Islamic Supremacism” and that, therefore, Islam as such is non-supremacist. (To my knowledge, Spencer has not used the term “Islamic Supremacism.”)

Thoughts?

Later today I plan to write a blog post discussing the so-called “name game” regarding Islam. With respect to the current (unfortunately undeclared by us) war, do we refer to the enemy’s ideology as “Islam”? Or do we use a modified terms such as “Islamism,” “Militant Islam” or “Islamic Totalitarianism,” etc., etc.  This weekend I had the pleasure of speaking with Robert Spencer and Bosch Fawstin about it for a few hours, as well as attending a panel discussion devoted to the issue, and I’m looking forward to writing up my perspective and reading your comments.

One connection I made while thinking about the biography was something that would be more of interest to those who have studied a bit of philosophy — dare I call such people “philosophy geeks”?

It is that Steve Jobs, who was known for conducting business meetings while taking walks, might well be called a “peripatetic” businessman. “Peripatetic” refers to Aristotle’s school of philosophy, due to Aristotle’s habit of lecturing “in the Peripatos, a covered walk or loggia” at his school, the Lyceum. (Randall, Aristotle, p. 19)

That Steve Jobs liked to conduct important business meetings while walking is, taken alone, only a superficial similarity to the Greek philosopher to whom we all owe so much, but consider:

Legend has it that Aristotle chose to lecture while walking in the covered walkways, or colonnades, of the Lyceum. This Wikipedia article reports that Aristotle may have picked up this habit or technique from an earlier thinker, Hermippus of Smyrna. From what I’ve learned about Aristotle, he did not seem to be the type of person who would just unthinkingly pick up a habit of conducting lectures while walking, so I imagine it was done for a reason.

Fast-forward about 2300 years, to the time when Jobs, as Pixar’s CEO, was giving the chance to design the company’s headquarters in Emeryville, CA. Isaacson reports that Jobs purposefully designed Pixar’s headquarters in order to encourage his employees to have random, face-to-face encounters in a large, central atrium:

Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew all to well its isolating potential, Jobs was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings. “There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat,” he said. “That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘Wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.”

So the entire facility was designed to make people gravitate towards the central atrium. Jobs even tried to have “only two huge bathrooms in the building, one for each gender, connected to the atrium.” Jobs eventually compromised and allowed more bathrooms to be built, in response to complaints from employees, including one pregnant woman who “said she shouldn’t be forced to walk ten minutes just to go to the bathroom.” Jobs allowed there to be four sets of bathrooms, one set on each side of the atrium, on each of the two floors.

The new headquarters performed as Jobs had intended. “Steve’s theory worked from day one,” recalled John Lasseter, cofounder and creative force at Pixar. “I kept running into people I hadn’t seen for months. I’ve never seen a building that promoted collaboration and creativity as well as this one.”

Another parallel I recognized was in the two peripatetics’ methodologies. I recall from my study of Aristotle that the published works we have today are essentially lecture notes. And the way he proceeds in them is typically, per Randall, by starting with the general, the object of the investigation. In ethics, for example, the object of investigation is the first principles “of human conduct, the end at which man aims, acting well….” Skipping to the fourth and fifth steps (because here is where I next see the analogy to Jobs’ method), Aristotle would “find the relevant facts” and then “explain the subject matter, to exhibit the intelligible structure of facts.” (Randall, Aristotle, pp. 54-55).

In the Jobs biography, Isaacson tells the story of negotiations between Paul Otellini, president and later CEO of Intel, and Jobs, during “long walks, sometimes on the trails up to the radio telescope known as the Dish above the Stanford campus.” The description of Jobs’ methodology during these walks reminded me of Aristotle’s: “Jobs would start the walk by telling a story and explaining how he saw the history of computers evolving. By the end he would be haggling over price.” True, Aristotle probably didn’t end lectures by haggling over price! But he would have if he were a businessman, because in business price is one of the crucial facts that must be dealt with, which must be made part of “the intelligible structure of facts.” (Isaacson, Steve Jobs, Ch. 34) The CEO of Time Warner, Jeff Bewkes, said that Jobs was able to be both “a strategic thinker and a master of the tiniest details. ‘Steve can go readily from the overarching principals [sic] into the details,’ he said.” (Isaacson, Steve Jobs, Ch. 38)

And then of course there’s the breadth of the two men’s reach in terms of lifetime productivity. Says the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy about Aristotle:

His extant writings span a wide range of disciplines, from logic, metaphysics and philosophy of mind, through ethics, political theory, aesthetics and rhetoric, and into such primarily non-philosophical fields as empirical biology, where he excelled at detailed plant and animal observation and taxonomy. In all these areas, Aristotle’s theories have provided illumination, met with resistance, sparked debate, and generally stimulated the sustained interest of an abiding readership.

And that’s only thirty-one surviving treatises out of an estimated total of perhaps two hundred that Aristotle produced.

In a similar life-span, Jobs is said to have “revolutionized [at least] six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.” Isaacson argues that retail stores might be added to that list, and anyone who has visited an Apple store might agree with him.

Jobs, according to Isaacson, had a “passion for perfection and ferocious drive.” Randall writes of Aristotle, “his may well be the most passionate mind in history: it shines through every page, almost every line.”

And then, unfortunately, we might also draw a parallel with respect to Jobs’ and Aristotle’s “Platonic” elements. For Jobs, it was his “Reality Distortion Field.” I discuss both the better, reality-oriented, Aristotelian aspects of this, as well as those aspects resembling a more Platonic, “primacy-of-consciousness”  approach, in my review. The analogue in Aristotle to Jobs’ “reality distortion field” might be Aristotle’s “active intellect.” Just as “reality distortion field” was a label used by others, not anything that was explicitly embraced by Jobs, “active intellect” does not occur in Aristotle’s own writings. Rather, it was inferred to be part of Aristotle’s thought, because of his reference to “passive intellect.” Writes Randall:

Pomponazzi and Zabarella, Italian Aristotelians of the beginning and end of the sixteenth century, of all professed Aristotelians probably the closest to the elusive “Aristotelian spirit,” held that intellect or nous….in its functioning…can rise above the body’s limitations.” (Randall, Aristotle, p. 101)

Unfortunately, as I discussed in my review, this may have been the sort of thinking that Jobs engaged in during the first several months after receiving his cancer diagnosis. Too bad Aristotle couldn’t take Jobs on a long walk and change his mind.

Topics discussed:

Why Herman Cain should not be called upon to prove a negative, or, 5 x 0 = 0

Frank Miller on the Occupy Wall Street “movement.”

What we learned about the GOP candidates from their performance in the debates this week, and what voting strategies we are considering for the 2012 election. If Mitt Romney is the nominee, will you vote for him? What about Cain or Gingrich, or some combination of the two?

Yet another terrible, likely unconstitutional provision of Obamacare. This one is worse, more fiendish, than anything Rand imagined for her novel, Atlas Shrugged.

Lots of lively discussion, both in the chat room, and from the callers. Thanks to everyone who joined in!

Tomorrow will be our third live webcast on BlogTalkRadio.

If you join in live, you’ll have the ability to communicate with me and other listeners via text chat, which is provided on my BlogTalkRadio show page, and also by phoning in, either on your phone or via Skype (using Skype’s calling service, which unfortunately is not free, but it’s cheap). The advantage of this platform is that there is no registration required to listen to the show. As before, if you are not able to attend live, the recorded podcast will be available later Sunday evening or Monday morning, so you can download it and listen to it at your leisure during the following week. Links to subscribe to the show, via iTunes and other audio media platforms, are provided on my BlogTalkRadio show page as well. (Several episodes recorded on my previously used platform are still easily accessible on iTunes here, or by clicking on the “Don’t Let It Go…Unheard” tag at the bottom of this post.)

Here is the link specifically for tomorrow’s show.

Topics planned for tomorrow include: Does the sheer number of Cain accusers mean that we should think there must be something to the allegations? How did the candidates perform in the debates this week? Who is your favorite at this point? For whom could you tolerate voting? Is there yet another truly horrible provision of Obamacare, one that might also make it unconstitutional? What does it say about our culture that college students are more upset about a coach being fired, than about the sexual abuse he helped to cover up? And more…

I hope you can join us!

P.S. If you’d like to get an idea of my perspective on the candidates’ performance this week, check out my Twitter feed @AmyPeikoff, and this post about Mitt Romney.

UPDATE: We’ll also talk about Frank Miller’s blog post on Occupy Wall Street.

UPDATE 2: The live show is now over. Thanks to everyone for participating live, especially for the new callers! Those who missed it can find the archived recording here.

Here are some choice tidbits:

1. He said, when asked why he supported a progressive income tax: “I want to take our precious dollars, as a nation….” Whose dollars?!

2. He said that we should get health care “to work more like a market.” How about having it work as a free market — i.e., get government out of health care?

3. He said, “Government is playing too heavy a role in health care.” Translation: Government — i.e., force — has a role to play in health care. My answer: it has no such role. Government is force. A gun is not a doctor. It cannot diagnose, treat or cure anything.

4. Romney proudly announces that he plans to cap spending … at 20% Of course he didn’t bother to say what I assume he means, which is 20% of GDP. Romney thinks he’s saying something bold when he says he wants the government to spend 1/5 of our gross domestic product on government.

5. Romney says “I love free trade, but…” and then says he plans to “crack down on cheaters like China” in the form of higher tariffs. This will make goods from China more expensive, at a time when he and others on stage were saying they did not want to increase taxes. Huh?

And that’s just the five things I happened to catch in one debate. Romney can use the phrase “free enterprise” in his plan all he wants; that’s not what he stands for.

I have been a loyal and enthusiastic Apple customer since 2002, when I bought my first iMac, the “Sunflower,” and wrote this review. I did not, however, get involved in the “cult” of Steve Jobs. I knew little about him until the media coverage of his deteriorating health made him almost impossible to ignore. I recall watching only one of his famous keynote addresses live, the announcement of the iPad in January of 2010. Around the time of his retirement in August, I, like so many others, watched his wonderful Stanford Commencement Address for the first time.

Read more at PJ Media.

Today will be our second live webcast on BlogTalkRadio.

If you join in live, you’ll have the ability to communicate with me and other listeners via text chat, which is provided on my BlogTalkRadio show page, and also by phoning in, either on your phone or via Skype (using Skype’s calling service, which unfortunately is not free, but it’s cheap). The advantage of this platform is that there is no registration required to listen to the show. As before, if you are not able to attend live, the recorded podcast will be available later Sunday evening or Monday morning, so you can download it and listen to it at your leisure during the following week. Links to subscribe to the show, via iTunes and other audio media platforms, are provided on my BlogTalkRadio show page as well.

Here is the link specifically for today’s show.

Topics planned for today include: Will we or Israel strike Iran’s nuclear sites based on the findings released in the latest IAEA report? Can Obamacare’s constitutionality be successfully challenged on *Spending Clause* grounds? What is going on with Greece? Will they honor the terms of the bailout they were offered? Is there any merit in Jesse Ventura’s complaints about his lawsuit against the TSA being dismissed? And more.

FOR REFERENCE: Here’s the amicus brief we’ll be discussing on today’s show re: the Spending Clause challenge to Obamacare.

UPDATE: The live webcast is now over. You can listen to or download a recording here at BlogTalk Radio. Thanks to all who attended live and participated!

On pp. 400-401, there is a letter from Rand to Archibald Ogden, the editor of Rand’s novel, The Fountainhead. In the letter she informs Ogden that the movie version of The Fountainhead is going into production, and then she chastises him for not writing her a letter:

Do you remember that you promised me a letter? But I said I would forgive you anything, and I shall always be running after you, if you want me to. (I ought to say that with a smile, but I don’t know how to convey a smile on paper.) Do let me hear from you, and if you want the details about our child’s screen incarnation, I will keep you informed. It’s going to be very exciting.

(Emphasis added.) Here is one of the few instances in which any 12-year-old child (maybe 8- or 10-year-old) living today could teach Ayn Rand something: “how to convey a smile on paper” — i.e., type a smile emoticon. Judging by the letter to Ogden, it seems she might have used emoticons in some of her correspondence, had she lived long enough.

UPDATE: Due to popular demand, Bosch Fawstin made his graphic available on t-shirts of various styles. You can check them out here.

Just go to my show page on BlogTalkRadio, and you will see the “iTunes” button right under the stylized, black-and-white drawing of me. Click on that, and iTunes should automatically start downloading my first BlogTalk episode, plus automatically subscribe you to future episodes.

I hope you enjoy the easy accessibility of the new platform as much as I do. I look forward to “seeing” you next Sunday!

Thanks to all of you who joined in live over on the new platform. People seemed to like the fact that no registration is required to listen to the show (although I think you may have to sign in to use the chat feature), and a couple of you reported the sound to be fine as well. I also like the fact that, on this platform, I can play you the intro music during the live show! I hope you can join in again next week as we settle in a bit more.

Those of you who missed the live show, but would like to listen to or download it, can find it here:

Don’t Let It Go…Unheard #35 on BlogTalkRadio

Tomorrow we will be trying, for the first time, to broadcast the live webcast on BlogTalkRadio.

If you join in live, you’ll have the ability to communicate with me and other listeners via text chat, which is provided on my BlogTalkRadio show page, and also by phoning in, either on your phone or via Skype (using Skype’s calling service, which unfortunately is not free, but it’s cheap). The advantage of this platform is that there is no registration required to listen to the show. As before, if you are not able to attend live, the recorded podcast will be available later Sunday evening or Monday morning, so you can download it and listen to it at your leisure during the following week. (Note: I will try to divide the recorded podcast into two segments of one hour each for your convenience, but I’m not yet sure how this will work on the new setup. Stay tuned.)

Topics planned for this Sunday: Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs. Herman Cain’s leading in the polls, despite his missteps. Flat tax vs. “Fair” tax vs. 9-9-9, which (if any) do you support, and why? Recent developments in the Middle East and with the Occupy Wall Street movement. And more.

If you would like to listen to a recording of my most recent webcast, you can find it here. Thanks to everyone who joined in live for our first show there!

UPDATE: The show is now over and the archived recording should be available soon at BlogTalkRadio

At first I just tweeted from the account sporadically, whenever I found a good quotation of 140 or fewer characters in my reading. I also drew from some extant online quotation resources, whenever I found a quotation that I particularly liked, and that would fit Twitter’s constraints.

Soon I realized that I would need to automate it for it to be of significant value (and for the account name to be authentic), and I found a tweet-scheduling service. I figured out how to schedule recurring tweets, but soon realized it would be best for the tweets to be delivered in a random order, until the database of quotations was exhausted, and then start again in a different order. So now I’ve figured out how to do that, too. There are currently over 400 tweets in my database; I add more whenever I get the chance. “The Bot,” as I call it, is nearing 1,900 followers from all over the world, many of whom retweet the quotations to their followers. Some also engage in discussions about the quotations, or even try to drag The Bot into debates about them!

If you would like to receive a steady stream of quotations from Ayn Rand in your Twitter feed, follow the Ayn Rand Bot. Retweets and mentions are greatly appreciated. There is also a Facebook page for The Bot. I will be sending the tweets to that page, as soon as Facebook enables that feature for pages.

If you follow the Bot, and you value what it does on Twitter, please endorse it for a Shorty Award here.

(Thanks to the Estate of Ayn Rand for giving me permission to operate the Ayn Rand Bot. Also thanks to Bosch Fawstin, for lending his Ayn Rand graphic for this post, and for The Bot’s avatar on Twitter.)

Don’t Let It Go…Unheard #34 Hour 2, October 23

(Sorry for the extra post, but the iTunes feed requires a separate post for each recorded podcast.)