REGINALD FIREHAMMER : Religion and Absolute Moral Values

The Liberal Institute

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ANALYSIS IN DEPTH

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Religion and Absolute Moral Values   by REGINALD FIREMAMMER   Religious people frequently claim religion is necessary because without it there would be no absolute moral values. They explain it by saying things like "without absolute moral values mankind would be morally rudderless," or "without absolute moral values mankind has no fixed direction by which to set their moral compass." While such expressions result in mixed metaphors, there is an important truth in them. Without absolute moral principles mankind truly is morally more mixed up than religion's metaphors. The peculiar thing is, while it is primarily the religious who are clamoring these days for a return to higher moral standards and true moral values, what the religious provide as absolute moral values is neither moral nor absolute.


God's Laws are Arbitrary, not Absolute
When the religious talk about absolute moral principles, they are referring to what they call "God's laws." God's laws are absolute, they say, because God is...well God, and whatever God says is absolute, because He says it. This may seem like a circular argument, but it isn't, because it is not presented as an argument at all. To the religious, it is an autoschediastic asserveration. Since you probably do not know what those words mean, you may be tempted to accept on faith that they are true -- that is how faith usually works. At the risk of endangering your faith, I will tell you autoschediastic asserverations are "self-listing truths," which means truths which are obvious, or what the bad philosophers call a priori knowledge.
(Note: A priori knowledge is the kind of knowledge you have without learning anything. It is the kind of knowledge people have if they receive their education in any modern public (government) school.) 

The problem with "obvious truths" is they are mostly incorrect. They are not the same thing as "common sense" which, as a matter of fact, should make us very suspicious of any so-called "obvious truths," especially those that contradict plain facts. Take, for example, the so called "obvious truth" that whatever God says is absolute. 

Since absolute means always true under all conditions, irrespective of anyone's wish or will nothing that depends on any authority's choice or declaration, whether that authority is a human or a god, is absolute. Anything that depends on anyone's whim, choice, or declaration is arbitrary and contingent. All dictated law is arbitrary because a dictator is not bound by any law or principle (else he could not dictate) and may declare, by fiat, anything he chooses. It is also contingent because it is not determined facts, but the whim or mood of the dictator at the moment the declaration is made and, of course, the dictator is free to change the "law" whenever a new whim or mood strikes him. Anyone who knows much about the history of religion, particular the Judaeo/Christian varieties, knows God frequently changes His mind -- which means His absolute laws are only absolute temporarily. 


True Moral Principles Absolute
True moral principles are neither arbitrary (dictated or pronounced by the fiat) nor contingent (dependent on any agencies, whims, or moods). Moral principles, like all truth, are determined by the nature of reality itself; and, like all truth, are discovered, not decided or chosen by anyone, not even God.

Those who claim there are no objectively discoverable moral values mean they have not discovered any. Human beings have a specific nature and live in a world of a specific nature and it is these facts that determine the moral principles by which human beings must conduct their lives to live successfully and happily in this world. 


Morality Determined by Principles, Not Codes
The moral systems of the religions all consist of moral codes which are nothing more than lists of prescriptions (things we must do) and proscriptions (things we must not do). While many of the things on these lists are things a moral individual would observe, no moral code can possibly be a good ethical system for at least three reasons:

• Moral principles and a moral code are opposites and contradictory. Moral values are not commandments, they are principles which one uses to judge which actions are morally right in any given circumstance. Morality pertains only to choice. A commandment eliminates choice. Those who accept the authority of commandments (or the dictator who issues them) have removed themselves from the sphere of morality; they exchanged choice for obedience, surrendering their choice to the will of the authority.
•  
• A Code of any kind takes the place of judgement. Choices are made by applying principles to circumstances to determine the appropriateness of an action. Principles enable one to determine consequences and to base choices on the reality of which actions will produce which results. A moral code eliminates the very essence of moral choice, judgement, by dictating action in all circumstances without regard to consequences or reason. 
•  
• A Code that does not cover every possible circumstance (no code can) provides no means of determining behavior in those cases not covered. There will always be more situations in the life of any human being requiring choices with moral consequences than any code, however extensive, will ever cover. With only a moral code and no moral principles, the individual is left with no moral guidance whatsoever in most of the moral issues of life.

When actual moral codes are examined their limitations as moral guides becomes apparent. The most common and well known of religious moral codes is the Ten Commandments of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. The Ten Commandments are presumed to be absolute, at least in the abstract. In practice, however, there is some question about this presumption.


The Ten Commandments
Except for two of the ten commandments, all are prohibitions, that is, "thou shalt nots." Of the two that are not prohibitions, almost no one keeps the first, "remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy,"; and the second, "honour thy father and thy mother," while loosely observed, is not even possible to many people, whose parents have passed away or who, for various reasons, have no idea in the world who their mother and father are. It is odd that an absolute moral code would include a requirement that, at least for some people, is not only impossible to keep, but totally without meaning. 

Another odd thing about the ten commandments is that there are not ten. In addition to the two "thou shalts" there are seven "thou shalt nots" summarized as follows: thou shalt not (1) kill, (2) steal, (3) lie, (4) make up your own religion, (5) fornicate, (6) covet, or (7) swear. But seven "thou shalt nots" plus two "thou shalts" only add up to nine. To get ten you must either turn the "make up your own religion" commandment into two, "have no other gods," and "make no graven images," as the Protestants do, or turn the "covet" commandment into two, "do not covet your neighbors house" and "do not covet your neighbor's wife," as the Catholics do. There really are only nine commandments, but ten seems much more impressive and significant, so why worry about exact truth when we're talking about God and absolute moral principles? 

These nine commandments, passed off as ten, are touted as the source and foundation of all Western civilization and the moral code that made America what it is today. One would expect anything responsible for so much would be very profound. When we examine these "ten" commandments, however, particularly the prohibitive commandments (you shouldn't kill, steal, lie, make up your own religion, fornicate, covet, or swear) there is not one profound thought among them.
They might seem profound to some aboriginal tribe in some backwater third-world nation, but to those who have spent their lives wrestling with moral issues in a modern advanced country like the United States, the assertion that murder, theft, and promiscuity are wrong are hardly earthshaking revelations. They are such simple concepts they are assumed everywhere there is civilization and intelligence. Even though they are regularly violated, their violation is always "justified" by some supposed "political necessity" allowed in the name of some kind of "rights" or excused as some kind of social or psychological "necessity" (they can't help it), and the justification is always vehemently argued. Even in their violation, their validity is admitted, else there would be no attempt to justify their violation. There is really nothing particularly profound about them. 

As for the other two prohibitions, do not covet or swear, far from being profound they are inane. To covet something only means to desire something which belongs to someone else. A desire itself cannot be immoral, even a desire, that if fulfilled, would be immoral. A wrong desire is only a temptation. What virtue is there in not doing wrong if one is never tempted to do wrong in the first place? So long as one only desires what another has, and neither murders them to get it, or steals it in some other way, there is nothing immoral in the desire. There is frequently a perfectly moral way to acquire the desired object anyway. 

Coveting is not only moral it is an absolute necessity to the economy of a free society. If no one ever "coveted" anything there could be no economy as we know it, or any other kind of economy for that matter. The local grocery, hardware, or drug store owners are our neighbors. If none of us ever coveted what is their property we would never go to their stores to purchase anything. It is only because we covet our neighbor's food (in his grocery store) or our neighbor's lawn mower (in his hardware store) or our neighbor's medicine (in his drug store) that we go to their stores and purchase the things we covet. 

Nevertheless, those who accept the ten commandments as an absolute moral code will swear that it is wrong to covet. They will also explain to you that the ten commandments do not prohibit what we normally call "swearing," only taking God's name in vain is prohibited. What they will not explain is what that means, because they are very likely to have a bumper sticker that reads "God is my co-pilot," and see nothing vain in that use of God's name. We are left wondering what in God's name they mean by swearing. 


Some Commandments More Absolute Than Others
Maybe the most peculiar thing of all about the ten commandments is that those who insist most vehemently they are absolute do not themselves regard them as absolute. If the commandments are absolute it would be no more immoral to break one of the commandments than another. 

In the United States this was, at one time, taken quite seriously. It was felt the dictum to observe the Sabbath was just as important as the prohibition against stealing. In most places "blue laws" were passed to prevent Sunday (the Christian substitute for the Sabbath) from being desecrated. Today the blue laws are all but gone, and while some Christians do sincerely believe they ought to be brought back, none of them are seeking laws to put people in jail for working on Saturday or Sunday or whatever the latest change to that absolute unchangeable law is. 


Missing From the Ten Commandments
The point of ethics is to tell us how we ought to live in this world. One of the first things one notices about the ten commandments is, except for the two mentioned, they are all negative. It's fine to tell us what we should not do but the real question of ethics is what should we do? To that question the ten commandments provide no answer. 

If you tried to live strictly by the ten commandments the only thing you would be required to do is honor your parents and spend Saturday doing nothing (to keep it holy). The ten commandments do not require you to do anything else, and so long as you never kill anyone, steal, lie, make up your own religion, fornicate, covet, or swear, you are perfectly moral. Of course, you won't be worth a blessed thing to yourself or anyone else in the world and will starve to death if someone else does not undertake to feed you but, according to the ten commandments, those, apparently, are not moral issues. 

Perhaps the most blatant contradiction of the absoluteness of the ten commandments is the way Jews and Christians, especially those who truly understand and practice their religions faithfully, live their lives. I do not mean they "break" the commandments, although they observe some more loosely than others. On the contrary, in their day-to-day lives they exhibit a decency, reasonableness, and moral rectitude that is much higher than simply observing the ten commandments would produce. Most are productive, self-supporting, honest, ambitious, responsible, and reasonable people who seek to excel and achieve the highest levels of virtue and accomplishment that they are able. In spite of their outward declaration of a belief in an absolute code they live by an absolute principle that "to do less than your best is a sin." 

This is not to be taken as an endorsement of Christianity or any other religion. With extremely few exceptions almost all religionists embrace and promote some form of superstition. Nevertheless, there are degrees of dangerousness in superstition. 

A Christian of the Reformed branch is much to be preferred to that anti-religious movement called Humanism for example. The Reformed Christians believe their God predestines the majority of mankind to eternal torment in hell but that hell, at least, is in the next world. In this world these same Reformed Christians are great defenders of individual liberty and moral values. The collectivist, statist, altruist, anti-moral, pseudo-intellectual ideology of the Humanists, however, if actually put into practice, would make a hell out of this world, here and now. 


REGINALD FIREHAMMER is the founder
and editor of The Autonomist

http://www.liberalinstitute.com/ReligionAndAbsoluteMoralValues.html

WILLIAM DWYER : The True Meaning Of "Civil Rights"

The Liberal Institute

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ANALYSIS IN DEPTH

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The True Meaning Of "Civil Rights" 
by WILLIAM DWYER    The term "rights" first appeared in the American political context in 1776 in the Declaration of Independence, which referred to rights as “unalienable” and applying to "all men," i.e., to all people (even though the founders didn't always practice what they preached), but the term "civil rights" did not appear until 1791, when it was used by Thomas Paine to whom it meant no less than what the term "unalienable rights" meant to Thomas Jefferson. "Civil rights", according to Paine, are based on the natural rights of every member of society. In his essay The Rights of Man, he states:

"Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have less rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured. His natural rights are the foundation of all of his civil rights. . . . Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. . . . Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent."

Moreover, in "A Serious Address to the People of Pennsylvania," Paine states that "[w]henever I use the words freedom or rights, I desire to mean a perfect equality of them. "It is this broad base, this universal foundation," he says, "that gives security to all and every part of society." It is only an equality of rights that promotes harmony among human beings and inspires one person to defend the rights of another. If, as was true under Jim Crow and is true again today, I have less rights than you, because you are a beneficiary of mandatory racial and ethnic preferences, then why should I care about defending your rights? Your rights are not my rights. It is only the repeal of mandatory preferences and a return to equal rights that can foster a mutuality of interest among different ethnic groups within society.

The term "civil rights" appeared in American law for the first time in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was designed to extend to blacks the same rights that whites already possessed. One of the principal sponsors of the Act described civil rights as "the absolute rights of individuals, such as the right to personal security, the right of personal liberty and the right to acquire and enjoy property." Civil rights were thus construed not only to apply equally to every individual, irrespective of race or gender, but also to include the fundamental rights enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. The principle underlying liberty and property rights is that no one may gain values from others without their voluntary agreement -- that just as people have the right to associate with others by mutual consent, so they have the right to dissociate from others through personal choice. 

For instance, if two people of different races want to marry, a law against miscegenation would violate their civil rights, but so would a law compelling them to stay married, if either party wants a divorce. If two people of different races want to do business, a Jim Crow law preventing them would violate their civil rights, but so would a law compelling them to do business, if either party refuses. 

Thus, to force a black worker to labor for a white employer (as was done on the Southern plantations) would violate civil rights, but so would forcing a white employer to hire a black worker (as is done under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Acts). To threaten a business with closure for serving blacks (as was done under Jim Crow) would violate civil rights, but so would threatening a business with closure for refusing to serve blacks (as is done under Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Acts). The proper function of government -- and the fundamental purpose of civil rights -- is to protect and defend freedom of choice, not violate it -- to protect people from being enslaved to others, not enslave people to others. 

If an owner or employer has liberty and property rights -- if he has rights to freedom of choice and freedom of association -- then he has the right to choose his employees and patrons on any basis he wishes, even one that is racially discriminatory. 
Although capitalism discourages invidious discrimination in the markeplace and would tend to create an economic system free of such discrimination, people still have the right to associate with, or dissociate from, anyone they choose, regardless of the person's race, religion, sex or national origin, and regardless of the reason for their choice. The right to dissociate from others, to be free from bondage to others -- which is clearly implied by the 13th Amendment -- does not mean that one is free to dissociate from another person only if one has a good, non-discriminatory reason for doing so. It means that one is free to dissociate from another person, irrespective of one's reasons for doing so. 
 Freedom of choice does not apply only to choices that are deemed rational by the government, nor does it depend on the particular reasons for one's choice. All that matters is that one be free to choose. 

In fact, the practice of racial and gender preference by businesses and private universities is already sanctioned by law, even though it constitutes discrimination on the basis of race and gender and is technically in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 
This kind of private discrimination was recognized by a Supreme Court decision in which the Virginia Military Institute was barred from discriminating against women, if it continued to accept state funding. The implicit premise on which the Supreme Court based its decision is that discrimination is permissible in institutions that are privately funded but not in those that are publicly funded. Just as we allow private universities, like Notre Dame, to favor a particular religion but not public universities, so we allow private universities, like Mills College, to favor a particular gender, but not public universities. 

To be sure, this distinction is not adhered to consistently, given the practice of affirmative action in public institutions, but the principle is defensible nonetheless. The separation of race and state and of gender and state is as justifiable as the separation of church and state. By the same token, just as we do not deny parochial schools freedom of religion, neither should we deny businesses and private universities freedom of association and freedom of choice. 
If a private school or business has the right to discriminate in favor of a particular religion, then it should have the right to discriminate in favor of a particular race or gender.

To allow a person the freedom to practice discrimination does not, of course, imply that one sanctions his conduct, any more than to allow him the freedom to express a racist viewpoint implies that one sanctions its content. Just as someone who opposes racist propaganda has no right under freedom of speech to ban it, so neither does someone who opposes racial discrimination have a right under freedom of association to ban it. The point is that one may not interfere with another person's freedom of choice simply because one disagrees with the way that he or she exercises that freedom. 

Defenders of the First Amendment often point out that the true test of one's belief in freedom of speech is whether or not one allows freedom for speech that one finds offensive. By the same principle, the true test of one's belief in freedom of association is whether or not one allows freedom for associations that one finds offensive (e.g., those based on racial discrimination). 

In fact, he who has no right to freedom of association -- no right to determine whom to associate with -- has no right to refrain from practicing racial discrimination, should the government decide to make such discrimination mandatory. It is just such mandatory discrimination to which the old miscegenation and separate-but-equal laws bear grim testimony, and of which the contemporary statutes on affirmative action and racial quotas are a modern expression.

Observe that whereas the original intent of Title VII was to make racial discrimination illegal in private business, that statute has subsequently been interpreted to authorize affirmative action, making racial discrimination mandatory in private business. And this, despite assurances by proponent's of the statute that no such thing as quotas could ever be inferred from it. Consider, for example, the "famous last words" of Senator Hubert Humphrey when the Civil Rights Bill was being debated in Congress:

"Contrary to the allegations of some opponents of this title, there is nothing in it that will give any power to the Commission or to any court to require hiring, firing, or promotion of employees in order to meet a racial 'quota' or to achieve a certain racial balance...."

Even more outrageous is that affirmative action violates explicit disclaimers included in Title VII itself. Section 703 (j) reads as follows:

"Nothing contained in this title shall be interpreted to require any employer, employment agency, labor organization, or joint labor-management committee subject to this title to grant preferential treatment to any individual or to any group because of the race, color, religion, sex or national origin of such individual or group on account of any imbalance which may exist with respect to the total number of percentages of persons of any race, color, religion or sex, or national origin employed by any employer . . . ."

Once the government can violate freedom of association in order to prevent discrimination, it can do so in order to mandate discrimination, even to the point of perverting and explicitly transgressing its very own civil rights statutes! 

In addition to violating freedom of association, Title VII violates freedom of choice in the use of one's property. If the government may dictate the use of one's property, then the government is the effective owner of the property, and you, the legitimate owner, merely its rightless, dispossessed custodian. The essence of ownership is the right of the owner to control his or her property (consistent with the right of others to control theirs). As the Supreme Court declared in 1917:

"Property is more than the mere thing which a person owns. It is elementary that it includes the right to acquire, use, and dispose of it. The Constitution protects these essential attributes of property.... There can be no conception of property aside from its control and use, and upon its use depends its value."

Furthermore, without property rights no other rights are possible. If people have no right to control their own property, then they have no right to control their own lives, in which case, there can be no such thing as civil rights. 
People whose lives are at the behest of a higher authority do not act by right but only by permission. 
Nor are the interests of blacks and minorities any more secure under a government that can function as either friend or foe, depending on the winds of political change -- a government that can dole out favors or demand sacrifices on the premise that people's lives and property belong, not to themselves, but to the state. 

A person who has no right to control his own life and property is a slave -- a status that cannot be any more reassuring for blacks than for whites. As 19th Century liberal Auberon Herbert observed, "no man can have rights over another man, unless he first have rights over himself.... and if we grant him the latter right, this is at once fatal to the former." (The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State and Other Essays, LibertyClassics, 1978, p. 46.) 

The "right to enslave others" -- to control their lives and property -- is, therefore, a self-contradiction. Quoting Ayn Rand:

"If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others [to the rightful property of others], it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor. "Any alleged 'right' of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.
"No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as 'the right to enslave'." ("Man's Rights", The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 96.)

If a black business owner prefers the company of black employees but is forced to hire members of other ethnic groups in order to avoid charges of racial discrimination, then he is deprived of freedom of choice and freedom of association, the very rights that black workers were deprived of in being forced to labor for white employers. 

This does not mean, of course, that the violations of civil rights inflicted on business owners today compare in severity or degree to those inflicted on blacks centuries earlier. But it does mean that these latter day violations entail a rejection of the same principle of individual autonomy as did slavery in the antebellum South. George Santayana observed that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. It is equally true that those who cannot grasp fundamental principles are condemned to repeat their violation. 


WILLIAM DWYER writes for Rebirth of Reason
and other Objectivist publications

http://www.liberalinstitute.com/CivilRights.html

GENNADY STOLYAROV II : National Self-Determination vs. Individual Self-Determination

The Liberal Institute

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ANALYSIS IN DEPTH

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National Self-Determination vs. Individual Self-Determination   by GENNADY STOLYAROV II  Opponents of any kind of American military intervention in the affairs of other countries will frequently cite the concept of national self-determination as a justification for their position. In their view, it is the right of “the people” of a particular country to “choose” what political arrangements will exist in that country. But this, by itself, is a muddled claim. When encountered by it, the best approach is to ask, “What is meant by ‘the people’?” and “Who is doing the choosing?” 

There are two fundamental and mutually incompatible ways of interpreting the term “the people.” Either, “the people” could mean “each and every individual, in his own capacity as a decision-maker” or it could mean “the government, using as the justification for its actions some kind of mandate from the people -- be it the decision of a majority or some other claim to legitimacy.” A somewhat different, but related, formulation of the second case might be “the majority of the population of the country, insofar as it tolerates the existing government by not rebelling against it or by not having already overthrown it.” 

If we take “the people” to mean each and every individual, then the right to choose means the right to take whatever actions a given individual sees fit to further his life, liberty, and property -- without infringing on the identical rights of all other individuals. If this premise is granted, it follows that there are certain courses of action that the government cannot take -- such as killing or expropriating an individual who has not taken anyone else’s life or property -- no matter how many people or how many officials want this action to occur. The right of an individual to life implies a prohibition on killing that individual for everyone else -- governments and majorities included. This is the basic formulation of the concept of individual self-determination. 

On the other hand, if governments have the right to do whatever course of action is sanctioned by majority rule, claims to divine right, “reasons of state,” “the common good,” “the greatest good for the greatest number,” or political expediency -- then it follows that there exist cases in which individual rights can be infringed by governments in order to obtain these allegedly “higher” ends. The government can justify killing an innocent man because the majority of his hateful neighbors wanted this to happen -- or it can justify killing him because the dictator wanted to take his property without his further resistance. Once “the people” is equated with “the government,” it becomes all too easy for the men in power to follow the example of Louis XIV and proclaim, “L’état, c’est moi!” (I am the state.) This, in essence, is the explicit formulation and implication of the idea of national self-determination -- although its proponents would certainly never put the matter so bluntly. 

Indeed, advocates of national self-determination have recently been heard to claim that “the Iraqi people” “chose” to live under the murderous, sadistic regime of Saddam Hussein. How did “they” “choose” this? Did “they” love Saddam Hussein? Probably not, considering how many of “them” he killed. Did “they” at least not attempt to rebel against him? In fact, thousands of them did -- on multiple occasions. He just happened to have more resources at his disposal than they did -- so he crushed the uprisings and killed them. What national self-determination has come to mean is -- in essence -- that the lack of a successful internal rebellion against any form of government necessarily legitimates that government. Indeed, by accepting the premise that the government can have legitimacy apart from protecting the inalienable rights of every individual under its jurisdiction, the proponent of national self-determination will often be led to argue the old Leibnizian optimist position that “What is, is right.” They may not want to advocate this position, but national self-determination taken to its logical conclusion necessitates that they do so -- and many fall into this trap. 

While national self-determination can provide a justification for any government on the basis of its mere existence, individual self-determination imposes more rigorous criteria; it requires that the government in question actually be just by protecting every one of its constituents without itself infringing their rights. If any government violates this purpose, then -- in the words of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson -- “it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.” What, then, is meant by “the people” in this formulation? To remain consistently within the framework of individual self-determination, “the people” means “each and every individual, in his own capacity as a decision-maker.” 

Consider this: if you individually had the abilities of Superman and the resources of Bill Gates, by the theory of individual self-determination, you individually would have had the right to go into Iraq, overthrow Saddam Hussein, and remove any other unambiguous violations of individual rights that you observed. You would, of course, not have any moral or legal obligation to do so -- because to impose such an obligation on you would be to violate your own right to liberty. Besides, you could not possibly fulfill such an obligation consistently -- as there are also major individual rights violations in Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and tens of other countries and minor individual rights violations virtually everywhere in the world. 

How would you know which would be the best way to prioritize among these competing deeds of benevolence? Which people would you need to save first? While this question cannot be answered in an abstract, morally unambiguous way, it is clear that if you chose to save any person from political oppression, you would be doing a good, generous, benevolent deed for that person. More basically, it is clear that you have the right to do this -- just as courageous individuals in the antebellum North had the right to shelter escaped slaves and conscientious citizens in Nazi Germany had the right to protect Jews from deportation. 

Indeed, while virtually no one among us has the ability to individually liberate an entire country, we know numerous instances of courageous private persons who have saved tens or even hundreds of people from misery, oppression, and death at the hands of unjust governments. These people are typically praised as heroes, not condemned as violating any kind of alleged self-determination. 

Where does the recognition of the right of individual self-determination put American military intervention? All that can be said is that it is the right, but not the obligation, of the American military to remove oppressions of individual rights wherever they can be found. For instance, opponents of the Iraq occupation may cite other prudential reasons for opposing the occupation, but they cannot say that the U. S. military had no right to occupy Iraq in the first place. Serious objections can be made to the planning of the occupation, its duration, its management, and its continuation – but recognizing individual self-determination implies conceding that the occupation was at least legitimate from a theoretical natural rights perspective. It is still possible to oppose any particular proposed military intervention -- in Iran, North Korea, or elsewhere -- as unwise, counterproductive, or an undue expenditure of resources. But it is not possible to say that there exists no right for anybody -- America’s military personnel included -- to remove or correct oppressive governments wherever they may be found. 

GENNADY STOLYAROV II is a writer and artist in almost every genre;
more information is available at his literary-intellectual review
The Rational Argumentator

http://www.liberalinstitute.com/NationalVsSelfDetermination.html

BRAD TRUN : On Ayn Rand On Racism

The Liberal Institute

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ANALYSIS IN DEPTH

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On Ayn Rand On Racism
by BRAD TRUN

Ayn Rand repudiated collectivism in all forms, but she reserved her most strident and sweeping condemnation for what she regarded as collectivism applied to racial identity. She wrote, "Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage..."

This oft-quoted passage from The Virtue of Selfishness is, of course, intended to be an affirmation of individualism. But, as I shall argue forthwith, Rand's overly broad conception of racism affirms premises of political correctness that stifle independent thinking.

According to Rand, asserting that race carries moral or social (which subsumes political) significance constitutes racism. A Black Panther who advocates killing white babies is surely, then, a racist, insofar as he regards whites as morally less deserving of a right to life than blacks.
But a racist in Rand's lexicon, as in the Orwellian lexicon of political correctness, can also be anyone who studies racial variation honestly and in full context, taking into account aspects of it that are socially significant. An evolutionary biologist who offers an explanation for the disproportionate success of sub-Saharan Africans in sprinting, based on their longer limbs and higher centers of gravity as compared to other races, risks facing the same charge as a militant Black Panther: racist. (Though for political correctness' most militant adherents, only the scientist would be considered racist. Blacks, they say, can't be racist, and ethnocentric blacks are automatically deemed civil rights activists.)

Racial variation in athletic ability arguably doesn't -- or shouldn't -- carry much social significance. But racial variation in intelligence -- the very attribute that distinguishes the human species from all others and makes wealthy, free societies possible -- surely is socially significant. A geneticist who seeks to identify markers for East Asian aptitude in mathematics, or for Europeans' higher scores on tests of verbal ability as compared to Africans, will be branded a racist regardless of whether the findings are objectively true.

The geneticist will be condemned not for ascribing moral superiority to any one race over another, but simply for making an assertion of fact pertaining to the distribution of genes that code for intelligence. The only way a geneticist or an evolutionary biologist can be sure to avoid being the target of a "racist" epithet coming from the politically correct thought police or a strict adherent of Rand's definition of racism is to profess a belief that cognitive capacity is distributed roughly equally among all branches of the human species, in spite of:

• the fact that biogeographical branches, or races, of humanity possess characteristic, measurably distinguishable skull morphologies that affect brain size and structure;

• 
  
• the impossibly low probability in evolutionary theory that cognitive adaptations would be exempt from the same adaptive processes that formed variations in physical traits;

• 
  
• the consistency and persistency of racial IQ orderings around the world that no real-world combination of cultural, political, and economic influences has proven capable of reordering.

It's not that the weight of the evidence augers against the premise that all races are equally equipped cognitively. It's that there is no evidence to weigh in consideration of the equalitarian hypothesis even being plausible. Equalitarianism is pure idealism.

There isn't a single nation, a single city, a single school district anywhere in the world where black students perform at or above white and Oriental students on average. Yes, some individual blacks do excel academically. Cognitive capacity, as with height, nose width, vocal strength, and other phenotypes, is distributed in a range that approximately takes the shape of a bell curve for both blacks and whites, respectively. The bell curves for blacks and whites overlap, so there is a fair chance that a random black person would be more intelligent than a white person selected at random. But there is virtually no chance that a large population of blacks would be endowed with mental hardware that functions on par with a large population of whites.

The average IQ score of blacks in the U.S. is slightly more than one full standard deviation lower than the average for whites. The IQ gap has held steady for as long as it has been measured -- even going back to the days of segregated schools -- increasing modestly in some years and decreasing modestly in others. Averages matter because they have long-term predictive power. If a black population were to completely replace a white population in a geographic area (as has nearly occurred in Detroit, for example, which went from 90% white to 90% black in the latter half of the twentieth century), the social consequences would necessarily be significant.

They would be as predictable as the consequences of lowering that population's average IQ by one full standard deviation: more poverty, more crime, more corruption, more dysfunction, and less freedom for generations to come. From Detroit, to Rio de Janeiro, to London, every non-African city on Earth that has attempted to integrate African populations has experienced varying degrees of these very predictable consequences.

Under the regime of political correctness, welcoming more African diversity is deemed to be a moral virtue. But proffering an accurate prediction of the effects of African diversity is verboten.

Given that the United Nations projects the population of Africa will triple in this century, growing by 2.6 billion people while the developed world shrinks, citizens in countries that will be subject to massively increasing immigration pressures from Africa should know what to expect.

The equalitarian idealists expect what they've been expecting for decades: that which never has been and never will be. Ever since the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the idea of achieving substantive racial equality has trumped recognition of racial realities.

Leading up to the Brown decision, the neologism "racism" popped into popular discourse. The invention of the term coincides with the rise of political correctness, which renders the pursuit of truth inseparable from and subservient to ideological imperatives.

A racist in popular parlance is anyone who says anything about race that is socially unacceptable. What makes one a racist is vague, subjective, ever-changing, and ultimately ungraspable. The arbitrariness of the term means anyone can hurl an accusation of racism against anyone on virtually any grounds.

If the term ever functioned as a valid concept, Rand failed to articulate it. Instead, she conceived of racism as being anything that ties race to moral or social significance. This amounts to a mis-integrated package deal.
The reason why is illustrated by the ideas of Thomas Jefferson. The man who penned, "All men are created equal" didn't intend to imply what modern-day egalitarians believe: that nature endowed all races with equal attributes. To the contrary, Jefferson believed that blacks were "in reason much inferior" to whites. But he regarded blacks as the equals of whites morally, as far as their basic rights as human beings were concerned.

Jefferson would have found the attempt to lump into a single concept a principle establishing moral equality with one prescribing innate equality in intelligence to be strange and unenlightened. Observations of human attributes are either accurate or inaccurate, irrespective of any notions of morality. As Jefferson urged, "Follow truth wherever it may lead."

Does age have social significance? Does gender? One's being eight years old versus eighteen carries social significance in terms of one's suitability to obtain employment, to serve on a jury, to engage in sexual relations, etc. An eighteen year-old will be treated differently in social situations than an eight year-old, but not because being eighteen makes one morally superior. Similarly, being male or female carries social significance not because one gender is superior to another, but because there are important physiological differences between the two. Does recognition of such differences make one a sexist? Does recognition of age differences make one an ageist? Or does recognition of objective age, sex, and race differences make one a realist?

A conclusion that racial disparities in intelligence are explainable by racial genetics is not a normative assertion. It either corresponds with reality, or it doesn't. Either the adaptive process over hundreds of thousands of years created unique physiological variations within geographically isolated branches of the human species that extend to their respective brain development, or it didn't.

The truth can't be deduced from moral proscriptions against racism, however one wishes to define it. The truth about race is that which corresponds to the reality of race. Efforts to demonize discussions of the social significance of racial lineage are tantamount to efforts from religionists of centuries gone by to prevent astronomers from informing the masses that Earth isn't the center of the universe.

Those who hurl the charge of "racist" against those who merely identify biological origins and properties of human races are, in effect, declaring that they regard nature itself as racist. They take their idea of racial equalitarianism as a metaphysical starting point and condemn those whose grounding is in a reality that doesn't conform to idealistic impositions.

Metaphysical realism is the foundation of Ayn Rand's Objectivism. Rand made a number of normative assertions that Objectivists widely regard as non-essential to her philosophy. For example, she infamously remarked that it would be improper for a female to run for President of the United States. She also held that homosexuality was disgusting and immoral. Rand's moral proscriptions on female political ambitions and particular sexual expressions can be rejected as being at odds with more fundamental principles she espoused and with what science now tells us.
We know, for example, that homosexuality is innate to some people's genetic makeup. They cannot be judged morally for the sexual orientation that nature gave them.

We also know that racial differences that are more than skin deep inevitably do manifest in ways that are socially significant. Black sub-Saharan Africans aren't immoral for carrying genes that code for relatively low general intelligence; nor are people who identify this fact of reality. Blacks aren't heroic for carrying genes that give them superior running speed; nor are those who substitute an idea of innate racial equality for the racial variation that is metaphysically given.

Just as Ayn Rand was mistaken to morally impugn homosexuals, she was mistaken to apply a term of condemnation to those who seek the truth, wherever it leads, about the nature and social implications of racial variation. In attempting to package two disparate standards by which racism could be identified -- ascription of moral or social significance -- into a single concept, Rand created an anti-concept. Without an objective criterion for differentiating a racist from a non-racist, "racist" has no clear meaning other than that of a vacuous insult, which is what the term as it's popularly used, overused, and abused to no end today, functions as.

It's time for serious advocates of reason and liberty to ditch the anti-conceptual epithets, ditch the unfounded idealism, and pitch any remaining vestiges of political correctness into the ash heap of their personal intellectual history. For too long, too many within and without Objectivist and libertarian circles have felt bound by ideology to evade the realities of race. Evasion is, as Rand herself might well have put it, the lowest, most primitive form of irrationality.

 http://www.liberalinstitute.com/OnAynRandOnRacism.html 

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Full text of Trump's Riyadh address to the Muslim world - May 21, 2017

Full text of Trump's Riyadh address to the Muslim world

By JPOST.COM STAFF

May 21, 2017 18:26

US President Donald Trump called on Arab leaders to do their share to fight "Islamist extremism" on Sunday in Riyadh.

US President Donald Trump shakes hands with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan as he sits down to a meeting with of Gulf Cooperation Council leaders during their summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (photo credit:JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS)

I want to thank King Salman for his extraordinary words, and the magnificent Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for hosting today’s summit. I am honored to be received by such gracious hosts. I have always heard about the splendor of your country and the kindness of your citizens, but words do not do justice to the grandeur of this remarkable place and the incredible hospitality you have shown us from the moment we arrived.

You also hosted me in the treasured home of King Abdulaziz, the founder of the Kingdom who united your great people. Working alongside another beloved leader – American President Franklin Roosevelt – King Abdulaziz began the enduring partnership between our two countries. King Salman: your father would be so proud to see that you are continuing his legacy – and just as he opened the first chapter in our partnership, today we begin a new chapter that will bring lasting benefits to our citizens.

Let me now also extend my deep and heartfelt gratitude to each and every one of the distinguished heads of state who made this journey here today. You greatly honor us with your presence, and I send the warmest regards from my country to yours. I know that our time together will bring many blessings to both your people and mine.

I stand before you as a representative of the American People, to deliver a message of friendship and hope. That is why I chose to make my first foreign visit a trip to the heart of the Muslim world, to the nation that serves as custodian of the two holiest sites in the Islamic Faith.

In my inaugural address to the American People, I pledged to strengthen America’s oldest friendships, and to build new partnerships in pursuit of peace. I also promised that America will not seek to impose our way of life on others, but to outstretch our hands in the spirit of cooperation and trust.

Our vision is one of peace, security, and prosperity—in this region, and in the world.

Our goal is a coalition of nations who share the aim of stamping out extremism and providing our children a hopeful future that does honor to God.

And so this historic and unprecedented gathering of leaders—unique in the history of nations—is a symbol to the world of our shared resolve and our mutual respect. To the leaders and citizens of every country assembled here today, I want you to know that the United States is eager to form closer bonds of friendship, security, culture and commerce.

For Americans, this is an exciting time. A new spirit of optimism is sweeping our country: in just a few months, we have created almost a million new jobs, added over 3 trillion dollars of new value, lifted the burdens on American industry, and made record investments in our military that will protect the safety of our people and enhance the security of our wonderful friends and allies – many of whom are here today.

Now, there is even more blessed news I am pleased to share with you. My meetings with King Salman, the Crown Prince, and the Deputy Crown Prince, have been filled with great warmth, good will, and tremendous cooperation. Yesterday, we signed historic agreements with the Kingdom that will invest almost $400 billion in our two countries and create many thousands of jobs in America and Saudi Arabia.

This landmark agreement includes the announcement of a $110 billion Saudi-funded defense purchase – and we will be sure to help our Saudi friends to get a good deal from our great American defense companies. This agreement will help the Saudi military to take a greater role in security operations.

We have also started discussions with many of the countries present today on strengthening partnerships, and forming new ones, to advance security and stability across the Middle East and beyond.

Later today, we will make history again with the opening of a new Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology – located right here, in this central part of the Islamic World.

This groundbreaking new center represents a clear declaration that Muslim-majority countries must take the lead in combatting radicalization, and I want to express our gratitude to King Salman for this strong demonstration of leadership.

I have had the pleasure of welcoming several of the leaders present today to the White House, and I look forward to working with all of you.

America is a sovereign nation and our first priority is always the safety and security of our citizens. We are not here to lecture—we are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be, or how to worship. Instead, we are here to offer partnership – based on shared interests and values – to pursue a better future for us all.

Here at this summit we will discuss many interests we share together. But above all we must be united in pursuing the one goal that transcends every other consideration. That goal is to meet history’s great test—to conquer extremism and vanquish the forces of terrorism.

Young Muslim boys and girls should be able to grow up free from fear, safe from violence, and innocent of hatred. And young Muslim men and women should have the chance to build a new era of prosperity for themselves and their peoples.

With God’s help, this summit will mark the beginning of the end for those who practice terror and spread its vile creed. At the same time, we pray this special gathering may someday be remembered as the beginning of peace in the Middle East – and maybe, even all over the world.

But this future can only be achieved through defeating terrorism and the ideology that drives it.

Few nations have been spared its violent reach.

America has suffered repeated barbaric attacks – from the atrocities of September 11th to the devastation of the Boston Bombing, to the horrible killings in San Bernardino and Orlando.

The nations of Europe have also endured unspeakable horror. So too have the nations of Africa and even South America. India, Russia, China and Australia have been victims.

But, in sheer numbers, the deadliest toll has been exacted on the innocent people of Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern nations. They have borne the brunt of the killings and the worst of the destruction in this wave of fanatical violence.

Some estimates hold that more than 95 percent of the victims of terrorism are themselves Muslim.

We now face a humanitarian and security disaster in this region that is spreading across the planet. It is a tragedy of epic proportions. No description of the suffering and depravity can begin to capture its full measure.

The true toll of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and so many others, must be counted not only in the number of dead. It must also be counted in generations of vanished dreams.

The Middle East is rich with natural beauty, vibrant cultures, and massive amounts of historic treasures. It should increasingly become one of the great global centers of commerce and opportunity.

This region should not be a place from which refugees flee, but to which newcomers flock.

Saudi Arabia is home to the holiest sites in one of the world’s great faiths. Each year millions of Muslims come from around the world to Saudi Arabia to take part in the Hajj. In addition to ancient wonders, this country is also home to modern ones — including soaring achievements in architecture.

Egypt was a thriving center of learning and achievement thousands of years before other parts of the world. The wonders of Giza, Luxor and Alexandria are proud monuments to that ancient heritage.

All over the world, people dream of walking through the ruins of Petra in Jordan. Iraq was the cradle of civilization and is a land of natural beauty. And the United Arab Emirates has reached incredible heights with glass and steel, and turned earth and water into spectacular works of art.

The entire region is at the center of the key shipping lanes of the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, and the Straits of Hormuz. The potential of this region has never been greater. 65 percent of its population is under the age of 30. Like all young men and women, they seek great futures to build, great national projects to join, and a place for their families to call home.

But this untapped potential, this tremendous cause for optimism, is held at bay by bloodshed and terror. There can be no coexistence with this violence. There can be no tolerating it, no accepting it, no excusing it, and no ignoring it.

Every time a terrorist murders an innocent person, and falsely invokes the name of God, it should be an insult to every person of faith.

Terrorists do not worship God, they worship death.

If we do not act against this organized terror, then we know what will happen. Terrorism’s devastation of life will continue to spread. Peaceful societies will become engulfed by violence. And the futures of many generations will be sadly squandered.

If we do not stand in uniform condemnation of this killing—then not only will we be judged by our people, not only will we be judged by history, but we will be judged by God.

This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects, or different civilizations.

This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it.

This is a battle between Good and Evil.

When we see the scenes of destruction in the wake of terror, we see no signs that those murdered were Jewish or Christian, Shia or Sunni. When we look upon the streams of innocent blood soaked into the ancient ground, we cannot see the faith or sect or tribe of the victims – we see only that they were Children of God whose deaths are an insult to all that is holy.

But we can only overcome this evil if the forces of good are united and strong – and if everyone in this room does their fair share and fulfills their part of the burden.

Terrorism has spread across the world. But the path to peace begins right here, on this ancient soil, in this sacred land.
America is prepared to stand with you – in pursuit of shared interests and common security.

But the nations of the Middle East cannot wait for American power to crush this enemy for them. The nations of the Middle East will have to decide what kind of future they want for themselves, for their countries, and for their children.

It is a choice between two futures – and it is a choice America CANNOT make for you.
A better future is only possible if your nations drive out the terrorists and extremists. Drive. Them. Out.

DRIVE THEM OUT of your places of worship.
DRIVE THEM OUT of your communities.
DRIVE THEM OUT of your holy land, and
DRIVE THEM OUT OF THIS EARTH.

For our part, America is committed to adjusting our strategies to meet evolving threats and new facts. We will discard those strategies that have not worked—and will apply new approaches informed by experience and judgment. We are adopting a Principled Realism, rooted in common values and shared interests.

Our friends will never question our support, and our enemies will never doubt our determination. Our partnerships will advance security through stability, not through radical disruption. We will make decisions based on real-world outcomes – not inflexible ideology. We will be guided by the lessons of experience, not the confines of rigid thinking. And, wherever possible, we will seek gradual reforms – not sudden intervention.

We must seek partners, not perfection—and to make allies of all who share our goals.
Above all, America seeks peace – not war.

Muslim nations must be willing to take on the burden, if we are going to defeat terrorism and send its wicked ideology into oblivion.

The first task in this joint effort is for your nations to deny all territory to the foot soldiers of evil. Every country in the region has an absolute duty to ensure that terrorists find no sanctuary on their soil.

Many are already making significant contributions to regional security: Jordanian pilots are crucial partners against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Saudi Arabia and a regional coalition have taken strong action against Houthi militants in Yemen. The Lebanese Army is hunting ISIS operatives who try to infiltrate their territory. Emirati troops are supporting our Afghan partners. In Mosul, American troops are supporting Kurds, Sunnis and Shias fighting together for their homeland. Qatar, which hosts the U.S. Central Command, is a crucial strategic partner. Our longstanding partnership with Kuwait and Bahrain continue to enhance security in the region. And courageous Afghan soldiers are making tremendous sacrifices in the fight against the Taliban, and others, in the fight for their country.

As we deny terrorist organizations control of territory and populations, we must also strip them of their access to funds. We must cut off the financial channels that let ISIS sell oil, let extremists pay their fighters, and help terrorists smuggle their reinforcements.

I am proud to announce that the nations here today will be signing an agreement to prevent the financing of terrorism, called the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center – co-chaired by the United States and Saudi Arabia, and joined by every member of the Gulf Cooperation Council. It is another historic step in a day that will be long remembered.

I also applaud the Gulf Cooperation Council for blocking funders from using their countries as a financial base for terror, and designating Hezbollah as a terrorist organization last year. Saudi Arabia also joined us this week in placing sanctions on one of the most senior leaders of Hezbollah.

Of course, there is still much work to do.

That means honestly confronting the crisis of Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups it inspires. And it means standing together against the murder of innocent Muslims, the oppression of women, the persecution of Jews, and the slaughter of Christians.

Religious leaders must make this absolutely clear: Barbarism will deliver you no glory – piety to evil will bring you no dignity. If you choose the path of terror, your life will be empty, your life will be brief, and YOUR SOUL WILL BE CONDEMNED.

And political leaders must speak out to affirm the same idea: heroes don’t kill innocents; they save them. Many nations here today have taken important steps to raise up that message. Saudi Arabia’s Vision for 2030 is an important and encouraging statement of tolerance, respect, empowering women, and economic development.

The United Arab Emirates has also engaged in the battle for hearts and souls—and with the U.S., launched a center to counter the online spread of hate. Bahrain too is working to undermine recruitment and radicalism.

I also applaud Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon for their role in hosting refugees. The surge of migrants and refugees leaving the Middle East depletes the human capital needed to build stable societies and economies. Instead of depriving this region of so much human potential, Middle Eastern countries can give young people hope for a brighter future in their home nations and regions.

That means promoting the aspirations and dreams of all citizens who seek a better life – including women, children, and followers of all faiths. Numerous Arab and Islamic scholars have eloquently argued that protecting equality strengthens Arab and Muslim communities.

For many centuries the Middle East has been home to Christians, Muslims and Jews living side-by-side. We must practice tolerance and respect for each other once again—and make this region a place where every man and woman, no matter their faith or ethnicity, can enjoy a life of dignity and hope.

In that spirit, after concluding my visit in Riyadh, I will travel to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and then to the Vatican – visiting many of the holiest places in the three Abrahamic Faiths. If these three faiths can join together in cooperation, then peace in this world is possible – including peace between Israelis and Palestinians. I will be meeting with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Starving terrorists of their territory, their funding, and the false allure of their craven ideology, will be the basis for defeating them.
But no discussion of stamping out this threat would be complete without mentioning the government that gives terrorists all three—safe harbor, financial backing, and the social standing needed for recruitment. It is a regime that is responsible for so much instability in the region. I am speaking of course of Iran.

From Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, Iran funds, arms, and trains terrorists, militias, and other extremist groups that spread destruction and chaos across the region. For decades, Iran has fueled the fires of sectarian conflict and terror.

It is a government that speaks openly of mass murder, vowing the destruction of Israel, death to America, and ruin for many leaders and nations in this room.

Among Iran’s most tragic and destabilizing interventions have been in Syria. Bolstered by Iran, Assad has committed unspeakable crimes, and the United States has taken firm action in response to the use of banned chemical weapons by the Assad Regime – launching 59 tomahawk missiles at the Syrian air base from where that murderous attack originated.

Responsible nations must work together to end the humanitarian crisis in Syria, eradicate ISIS, and restore stability to the region. The Iranian regime’s longest-suffering victims are its own people. Iran has a rich history and culture, but the people of Iran have endured hardship and despair under their leaders’ reckless pursuit of conflict and terror.

Until the Iranian regime is willing to be a partner for peace, all nations of conscience must work together to isolate Iran, deny it funding for terrorism, and pray for the day when the Iranian people have the just and righteous government they deserve.
The decisions we make will affect countless lives.

King Salman, I thank you for the creation of this great moment in history, and for your massive investment in America, its industry and its jobs. I also thank you for investing in the future of this part of the world.

This fertile region has all the ingredients for extraordinary success – a rich history and culture, a young and vibrant people, a thriving spirit of enterprise. But you can only unlock this future if the citizens of the Middle East are freed from extremism, terror and violence.
We in this room are the leaders of our peoples. They look to us for answers, and for action. And when we look back at their faces, behind every pair of eyes is a soul that yearns for justice.

Today, billions of faces are now looking at us, waiting for us to act on the great question of our time.

Will we be indifferent in the presence of evil? Will we protect our citizens from its violent ideology? Will we let its venom spread through our societies? Will we let it destroy the most holy sites on earth? If we do not confront this deadly terror, we know what the future will bring—more suffering and despair. But if we act—if we leave this magnificent room unified and determined to do what it takes to destroy the terror that threatens the world—then there is no limit to the great future our citizens will have.

The birthplace of civilization is waiting to begin a new renaissance. Just imagine what tomorrow could bring.

Glorious wonders of science, art, medicine and commerce to inspire humankind. Great cities built on the ruins of shattered towns. New jobs and industries that will lift up millions of people. Parents who no longer worry for their children, families who no longer mourn for their loved ones, and the faithful who finally worship without fear.

These are the blessings of prosperity and peace. These are the desires that burn with a righteous flame in every human heart. And these are the just demands of our beloved peoples.

I ask you to join me, to join together, to work together, and to FIGHT together— BECAUSE UNITED, WE WILL NOT FAIL.

Thank you. God Bless You. God Bless Your Countries. And God Bless the United States of America.
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http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Read-full-text-of-Trumps-Riyadh-address-492440

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Lasha Darkmoon : Snuff Porn Pedophilia: Killing Children for Sexual Pleasure

Snuff Porn Pedophilia: Killing Children for Sexual Pleasure

Lasha Darkmoon May 20, 2017 

 

 

Before providing the gruesome details of the sadistic cruelties inflicted on sexually exploited children, many of them toddlers kidnapped from orphanages in Russia and tortured to death, it is necessary to set out the basic statistics: the principal facts and figures of the worldwide porn industry.

BEYOND  THE  PALE

“This is a sick world we are living in.”
— Dr William Pierce (in video below)

These notes come from an unpublished article of mine written a few years ago which I have just found among my papers after misplacing them. I have updated the figures wherever possible, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they are in some cases an underestimate. This is because porn addiction sucks millions of new victims into its net every year. There were only 670 million internet users worldwide in 2002, for example, but by 2013 this figure had soared to 2.7 billion. (See here). In other words, the pool of potential victims of porn addiction has grown much larger with each passing year.  

Most of the figures  cited below, except those with separately numbered references within the text, are sourced from Family Safe Media’s Pornography Statistics. Otherwise, they will be found in Top Ten Reviews’ Internet Pornography Statistics.

Total world revenues per annum from pornography amount to $100 billion, with $3,100 spent on porn internationally every second. These revenues are larger than the revenues of the top technology companies combined: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink.

There are 7 billion people in the world spread over 200 countries. It would be of interest to know which countries are most given to porn consumption on a per capita basis. Given the inseparable link between pornography and masturbation, the citizens of those countries could then be justly regarded as the “most lustful in the world” — or, at any rate, as the world’s most prolific masturbators.
These are the top 10 countries most given to masturbatory lust, based on per capita expenditure on pornography:  (1) South Korea ($527 per capita). (2) Japan ($157 pc). (3) Finland ($115 pc). (4) Australia ($99 pc). (5) Brazil ($53 pc), (6) Czech Republic ($44.9). (7) United States ($44.6 pc), (8) Taiwan ($43.4 pc), (9), U.K. ($32 pc). (10) Canada ($30 pc).

CLICK TO EXPAND

Why the South Koreans and Japanese spend such enormous amounts of money on porn, compared to other nations, is subject matter for a sensational PhD thesis which I hope some eager doctoral student will write one day.
For 11 years in a row, South Korea has ranked at No. 1 in the suicide rate among OECD nations. Whether there is any correlation between high porn consumption and high suicide rates is a fascinating conundrum which academic researchers might wish to solve.

Though China spends more on porn than any other nation in the world (a whopping 28 percent of total pornography revenues compared to America’s 14 percent), this is only because of China’s enormous population of 1.3 billion people. In spite of the fact that porn is officially “illegal” in China, a country sometimes described as “a land where porn doesn’t exist”, the Chinese appear to have easy access to pornography imported from Japan.
The annual expenditure on pornography in two countries alone, China and Japan, would be enough to feed the world’s hungry for an entire year.

There are over 4 million porn websites in the world, growing by the thousands every day. There are 68 million pornographic search engine requests a day, 25 percent of the total. Four out of 10 internet users view porn sites regularly. There are 100,000 websites offering illegal child pornography.
The largest consumers of internet porn, surprisingly,  are children aged 11-17.
There are 40 million regular users of porn in the US, and 20 percent of these are accustomed to peek at porn sites at work when they think no one is looking.
A new porn site is being created in the US every 40 minutes. The most expensive domain name ever purchased (site link deleted) cost $14 million: an indication of the enormous profits accruing to porn.
Roughly one in three visitors to porn sites are women, with almost one in six women (17 percent) admitting to a serious porn addiction. In the pre-internet age, women were relatively safe from the devastating effects of pornography. No longer. In the last three years alone, online porn viewership for women has quadrupled. It is a myth that women have different preferences to men and show less appetite for hardcore pornography.

A 2008 study found that women showed signs of arousal watching pretty much anything: masturbation, straight sex, girl-on-girl, guy-on-guy, bonobo chimps, everything — everything except pictures of naked men, which did not float a woman’s boat.

Average age of the first internet exposure to pornography is 11 years old. 
90 percent of 8-16-year-olds have viewed porn online, mostly while doing homework.

Over half of global child porn (55%) is produced in the US, mostly in the Los Angeles area. There are 100,000 websites offering illegal child porn. Annual child porn revenues range from a low of $3 billion  to an unrealistically high $20 billion.
Daily Gnutella “child pornography” requests are 116,000 and keep growing. Even more disturbingly, there is strong evidence that an addiction to “normal” adult pornography can lead in time to an appetite for child porn.

Between 2005 and 2009, there was a huge and unexplained 432 percent increase in child pornography use, taking this new sex plague to pandemic levels. 

The top video porn producers are found in the US, with Brazil and the Netherlands coming in second and third. The top six US erotica cities are Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Miami.

The fully employed female porn star can earn $100k-300k a year, three times more than the average male porn star.
The more unnatural the sex is, the higher the rates. An actress who gets $500 for a session of straight vaginal sex can demand $1000 for a session of anal sex and $2000 for “double anal sex”. Celebrity porn stars naturally get paid much more.  A criminal pedophile willing to molest a child in front of a live webcam can earn $1000 a night.

The top ten countries most opposed to porn are the Islamic countries, viz., Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Bahrain, Egypt, UAE, Kuwait, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore.

Almost 90 percent of the world’s internet porn pages are produced in the US for distribution to other countries, so the US can be seen as the world’s premier sex emporium.

The big players in the porn distribution market are now the major corporations, and, ultimately, the fabulously rich and faceless executives who control them. These are Fortune 500 companies such as AOL Time-Warner, AT&T, and General Motors. Through their cable and satellite subsidiaries they have distributed, and continue to distribute, vast quantities of pornographic material worldwide.

The number of pornographic websites owned by American Jews is of course a closely guarded secret—this is one politically incorrect statistic Wikipedia is unlikely to supply—but it is common knowledge that Jews dominate the porn industry (See also here and here ). Indeed, it is also common knowledge that six Jewish-owned companies own 96 percent of the world’s media and that Big Media and Big Porn are interlocking and overlapping concerns.

—  §  —

The Jewish Role in Child Murder
and Snuff Pornography

If 55 percent of the world’s child pornography is produced in the US—according to the British charity National Children’s Homes—23 percent of the world’s child porn is produced in Russia. (Link suppressed)

Whether or not Russian child porn is dominated by Russian Jews remains a nebulous issue. There is a high probability that it is, given that there is substantial evidence of Russian Jewish involvement in sex trafficking, kidnapping, pedophilia, and even child murder in the production of snuff porn movies.

Let me now quote from a news report first published in October 2000. I will intersperse snippets of this report — “JEWISH GANGSTERS RAPED, KILLED CHILDREN AS YOUNG AS TWO ON FILM” — with comments on the same case by Dr William Pierce which you can listen to yourself in the video at the end of this article:

ROME, ITALY — Italian and Russian police, working together, broke up a ring of Jewish gangsters who had been involved in the manufacture of child rape and snuff pornography.

Three Russian Jews and eight Italian Jews were arrested after police discovered they had been kidnapping non-Jewish children between the ages of two and five years old from Russian orphanages, raping the children, and then murdering them on film.
Mostly non-Jewish customers, including 1700 nationwide, 600 in Italy, and an unknown number in the United States, paid as much as $20,000 per film to watch little children being raped and murdered.

Here is what Dr William Pierce has to say:

“I suggest that if you asked your favorite Jewish media boss why his report of the police raids in Italy and the arrest of the child pornographers in Moscow didn’t get more news coverage in the United States, he’ll tell you that such news would only generate hatred against the Jews. And you know, he’d be right.
“My view is that such people should SIMPLY BE KILLED ON THE SPOT whenever and wherever they are found. More than that, the people who promote and encourage the extreme individualist mindset through their control of the media SHOULD BE EXTERMINATED ROOT AND BRANCH AS A CLASS.”  
(Video transcript, emphasis added) 

The news report concludes:

Jewish officials in a major Italian news agency tried to cover the story up, but were circumvented by Italian news reporters, who broadcast scenes from the films live at prime time on Italian television to more than 11 million Italian viewers. Jewish officials then fired the executives responsible, claiming they were spreading “blood libel.”
Though AP and Reuters both ran stories on the episode, US media conglomerates refused to carry the story on television news, saying that it would prejudice Americans against Jews. 

Dr Pierce is naturally outraged at these dirty tricks to conceal from the public the heavy Jewish role in snuff porn pedophilia: the systematic torture and murder of little children by Jewish pornographers in order to sate the jaded appetites of sexual perverts in the West:

“If there’s any group of people on this planet who have valid reasons for hating the Jews, it’s the Russians…. The Jews bled Russia dry with 70 years of Marxist rule and and murdered tens of millions of Russians—the best Russians—in the Communist slave labor camps or in the basements of the secret police headquarters or beside the shooting pits in forests all over Russia and Ukraine.
They have forced thousands of the prettiest young Russian women into prostitution and slavery after the fall of Communism; and now they kidnap Russian children and rape and sexually torture them in front of a camera in order to make child porn for rich perverts in the West.”
(Video transcript)

Are people in the West aware of the Jewish role
in producing the filthiest child porn imaginable?

With the full connivance of the American government,  Jews pursue this foul trade in the San Fernando valley, California, otherwise known as “Porn Valley”. (See here).  No, the public largely remains unaware of these iniquitous facts, for the simple reason that the media covers up the facts.

The situation in Russia is even more extreme, with the majority of Russians totally unaware of the historical crimes committed against them by Jews in the Communist era. Here is Dr Pierce’s incendiary comment, and we must make allowances for his white-hot anger:

The Jews are lucky they still control most of the television and other mass media in Russia—because if the Russian people ever are fully awakened to what the Jews are still doing to them, they will rise up and kill every Jew in Russia—every Jew—every Jew!—and they will be fully justified in doing so.
(Video transcript)

 
Whatever you do, don’t miss this electrifying video before it is banned.

https://youtu.be/Srz31gIFm50

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