Random Stuff

A lot of things have been bugging me lately...

1) The trend of the left to rely more and more on appeals to consensus. It has always been the case with climate science. Al Gore has shouted for years about how all scientists agree, even though a simple Google search would reveal that not the case. Any scientist, expert in the field or not, who agrees with global warming is embraced, and any scientist who does not, qualified or not, is ignored or destroyed. We see this same tactice with Obama. With talking about the stimulus, he said that no economist he knows of is against it. In regards to Iraq and the surge in 2007, he said that no expert in the region he knows of or has spoken to has said that will make any difference. It did. And the point being that politicians will use that from time to time, but we should be wary, since any appeal to authority magically seems to favor the politician's approach.

2) Again with global warming. Of course, no amount of evidence to the contrary will be enough the shake the faith of the believers. If it had been an oil company, or a Republican-favored group perpetrating some of the things we've heard about from the IPCC, Democrats and liberals would be holding Congressional investigations. The media would be insisting the guilt of the accused parties with or without any evidence.

3) A must read book is The Vision of the Anointed by Thomas Sowell. One of the main themes of the book is about how liberals think that they can solve problem X, even if X isn't a problem or X has been getting better for years. Liberals get their hands involved and all of the sudden we are worse off for decades (see black unemployment). The vision is that of that there are perfect solutions and no tradeoffs involved. One can easily see this in things like the "right" to housing. Well, it is a right as long as other people subsidize you. Which of course, is the antithesis of a right in the classical sense.

4) Ever notice how most discussions of race and ethnicity leave out Asian Americans? In a lot of areas, Asian Americans do better than even whites. Of course, that doesn't fit the template of racist white Americans getting rich off the back of minorities. If we group blacks and whites (which I don't like doing because those groups are made of individuals making their own choices, which I think they are fully capable of doing), we could say that both groups could learn a lot from the habits of Asian Americans.

5) When liberals talk of rights, it isn't in the classical sense we would think, that the right is God-given, and with that right comes responsibility. On their terms, they think it means giving something to someone at taxpayer expense (surely infringing the rights of taxpayers), with no expectation that any responsibility lies with the person receiving the gift. For example, home ownership. I should subsidize other people living in houses they can't afford or those who took out multiple home loans to try to "flip" them, but they shouldn't have any responsibility in the first place. Such as, can they make payments, did they have an adjustable rate mortgage, or should they even have a house in the first place?