Eric Adams, the embattled current mayor of New York City, has ended his reelection bid in an effort to make it easier to defeat anti-Semitic socialist Zohran Mamdani.

Not surprisingly, the conservative New York Post had little to offer other than opposition and a limp appeal to that city's apathetic electorate to get off their couches to vote.

This is no surprise, since, even before the conservative movement traded in what little sense it had for a leash held by Donald Trump, it was always a collection of disparate elements united by opposition to the left, rather than any positive agenda, let alone a pro-freedom one.

This problem is, of course, on top of the fact that New York City strikes me as a place where appeals to preserve capitalism or even to be tough on crime risk alienating a leftist electorate that will reflexively smear such appeals with ridiculous leftist caricatures.

And all that is on top of the fact that the strongest opponent, Andrew Cuomo, left office as governor of New York in disgrace due to allegations of sexual harassment.

What to do?

Image by Infrogmation of New Orleans, via Wikipedia, license.

Appeal to the tiny and vanishing bit of common ground still shared by voters just to either side of center: Basic human decency. Mamdani is well-known to be sympathetic to Hamas. For example, he just recently hemmed and hawed his way around condemning the genocidal butchers of October 7, 2023.

Cuomo, while nevertheless a terrible choice in any other election, deserves to win in this context in light of his past support for Israel. He -- or at least Mamdani's opponents -- should lean into this. Hard.

And Mamdani's opponents can simultaneously help him while also acknowledging their champion's flaws -- by borrowing from a similar campaign, the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial race, which pitted the corrupt and unpopular three-term Edwin Edwards against David Duke, who, among other things, had once been a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

The extremely negative runoff was notable for David Duke's own party repudiating him and a plethora of unofficial bumper stickers that humorously lamented the choice while offering the only decent solution:

Humorous unofficial bumper stickers were created in support of Edwards over Duke, despite Edwards' negative reputation. One bumper sticker read "Vote for the Lizard, not the Wizard", while another read "Vote For The Crook: It's Important."

Might I suggest one for New York: "Vote for the Creep. It's Important." I'm sure others more clever than I can outdo this.

-- CAV

Winston Peters has done the right thing. The entirely performative act of recognising the “State of Palestine” by three countries with left-wing governments is not a reason to follow. For a start, at least in the UK and Australia, the respective Labour (and Labor) parties fear losing Muslim voter support to minor parties or independents. The UK, Labour lost four predominantly Muslim electorates to independents in 2024. Some Australian federal divisions have similar challenges, with both independents and the Greens presenting challenges. France doesn’t quite have the same challenge, but France’s colonial past drives it to take its own stance to wage power in the region. 

Objectively, nobody honestly believes that the “State of Palestine” actually exists. You’d think that might matter, but in this post-modernist age of relativism, then if you “believe” something is real, then it is true. So, let’s go through the factual basis for rejecting the recognition of something that can’t objectively be recognised as such.

The act of “recognising” a sovereign state is that of one state acknowledges another entity is legitimately its “equal” at least under international law. Almost always, this is a formality because states meet the formal legal criteria for actually “being” states. That being:

• Clearly defined borders

• Effective government over those borders and most of its territory

• A permanent population (comprising its citizens)

• The means to engage in relations with other states

The “State of Palestine” lacks most of this criteria for a whole host of reasons. It doesn’t have clearly defined boundaries. The State of Palestine has never existed, as before 1967 the West Bank was under the control of Jordan, and Gaza under Egypt. Given discussions on peace under the Oslo Accords were about this topic, it is clear this is far from settled.

There is no effective government over the borders of a not clearly defined territory as Israel and Egypt have control over those borders. Even if there were such control, there is no government with control over both the West Bank and Gaza, and even the Palestinian Authority has limited powers over part of the West Bank. With Hamas controlling Gaza, it hardly is a territory with effective control by the government.  It’s hard to imagine a sovereign state without sovereign powers including that of entry or exit of its territory.

It may be possible to identify a permanent population, although many Palestinians identify as “refugees”, inferring they are not permanent residents of the land they live on. However, this isn’t such a barrier.

Of course, there are Palestinian ambassadors, embassies and other trapping of being a state, in terms of foreign relations, so arguably it does meet that criteria.

However, that’s not enough. There are not clearly defined borders, there is no effective government over most of the territory that could conceivably be part of a Palestinian state, and certainly not its borders. It may be easier to claim a permanent population and the means to engage in diplomatic relations, although given it can’t control its borders or airspace, it’s rather empty.

By contrast, Taiwan (Republic of China) absolutely meets all of those conditions, even if de jure it claims sovereignty over all of the territory governed by the People’s Republic of China, it’s clear where the demarcation line between the territory governed by the two Chinese governments is (and we all know the government in Taiwan has long ceded any formal interest in expanding its control beyond its current territory). However, you won’t see any serious campaigns to recognise Taiwan (for many reasons), but I digress.

Luxon and Peters had a choice. Look like they are following the UK, France and Canada (and over a hundred less than liberal democracies along with outright dictatorships), or look like they are following the US. What he did do was neither, although the critics bay it is some sort of Trumpian act (the ultimate pejorative nowadays, much worse than supporting Hamas or Iran), it is aligning NZ with Japan, south Korea and Singapore. 

When the UK and others recognised the “State of Palestine” Hamas claimed that its tactic, of the 7th October pogrom “worked” alongside its sacrifice of thousands of Gazans as human shields for its members.  “Pro-Palestine” activists don’t care about that, because far too many of them minimise Hamas’s pogrom, let alone its theocratic fascist policies (zero tolerance for political or religious dissent, zero tolerance for equal rights for women, let alone LGBT people), because they are driven more by hatred of Israel and Western capitalist liberal democracies than concern for Palestinians.

That doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be a “State of Palestine” at some point, once there is a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority that resolves the borders, the relationship between both entities, Israeli settlements, sidelining eliminationists on both sides, and guaranteeing peace and security for citizens in both entities. It appears difficult to envisage when neither side is willing to compromise or negotiate, but neither Netanyahu nor Abbas will govern forever. However, until there actually is a “State of Palestine” agreed which lets it fulfil all of the legal conditions for statehood, it is pointless “recognising” it.

Recognising Palestine DOES give succour to Hamas AND to Netanyahu, because it gives them both reason to snub any compromise. “You see, murdering Jews en masse DOES work, because it means they will create thousands of our martyrs and the world will hate them”.  For Netanyahu “see the world hates us, to hell with them, we will ensure there is no Palestinian state”.

It's empty showboating, there is no State of Palestine yet, it’s absolutely right to refuse to engage in the nonsense of pretending there is one to recognise, even if you wish it existed.  Peace on that sliver of land is a long way off, but it wont come from engaging in propagandist make-believe.

This is the first of 11 “Alex Notes” on my book Fossil Future—like Cliff’s Notes, but actually written by the author. Enjoy!

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(Some of you will remember that I started creating “Alex notes” as part of the Fossil Future book launch, but never got past Part 1. I’m doing them a bit differently this time around, and most importantly I’ll finish them!

Also, for those who preordered Fossil Future or who are premium subscribers to this newsletter, I’m doing a special live event “How to talk to anyone about climate change” on October 23. The invite will come to you next week.)

Our “knowledge system”—the people and institutions we rely upon to research, synthesize, disseminate, and evaluate expert knowledge—consistently ignores the massive, life-or-death benefits of fossil fuels.

(A summary of Fossil Future, Chapter 1)

• Save the World With…Fossil Fuels?
  
  I am going to try to persuade you of something that might seem impossible: that one of the best things you can do to make the world a better place is to fight for more fossil fuel use—more use of oil, coal, and natural gas.

• Questioning the “Expert” Moral Case for Eliminating Fossil Fuels
  
  We’re told rapidly eliminating fossil fuels is the expert consensus, but consider: 1) sometimes the alleged “expert” view is wrong, and 2) eliminating fossil fuels is a radical and potentially disastrous change.

• How to Know When the “Experts” Are Wrong
  
  We acquire alleged expert views via a “knowledge system” consisting of four phases—1) research, 2) synthesis, 3) dissemination, and 4) evaluation. 2, 3, and 4 are particularly prone to distortion—this holds true with fossil fuels.

• How Research Works
  
  Research, the foundation of any knowledge system, involves highly specialized knowledge that is hard for us to evaluate.
  
  One clue that it’s being distorted is when a new view is attributed to all scientists, e.g., a 2° C increase will mean global catastrophe.

• There is a wide range of views among researchers about what level of warming leads to what consequences—including from Nobel Prize–winning climate economist William Nordhaus, who concluded that 2°C is not catastrophic and that trying to prevent it would do more harm than good.1

• How Synthesis Can Go Wrong
  
  Synthesis, in which the near-limitless amount of specialized knowledge is organized, refined, and condensed, can be distorted honestly or dishonestly.
  
  One way to detect a syntheses error is when crucial variables or facts are omitted.

• An example of synthesizers omitting crucial facts is the latest “synthesis report” on human climate impacts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—which leaves out the crucial fact that climate-related disaster deaths have fallen by 98% in the past century!2

  

• How Dissemination Can Go Wrong
  
  Dissemination, in which the essentials of synthesized research are communicated to the public, is frequently highly distorted.
  
  One way to spot distortion is to even briefly check whether the sources cited are being accurately essentialized.

• An example of distorted dissemination is the UN Secretary-General’s portrayal of the latest IPCC synthesis report (”AR6”) as a “code red for humanity”—even though the content of the report, while tending toward exaggeration, showed nothing resembling an existential threat.3

  

• How Evaluation Can Go Wrong
  
  Evaluation, in which institutions and people evaluate what to do about disseminated conclusions, must always be questioned.
  
  Two errors to look out for are 1) using an anti-human “standard of evaluation” and 2) failing to consider the full context.

• An example of using an anti-human “standard of evaluation” is climate catastrophists’ focus on replacing fossil fuels with exclusively “green energy,” often opposing nuclear and large-scale hydro—the most effective forms of non-carbon energy.
  
  They value “green” over human life.

• An example of failing to consider the full context is our knowledge system’s consistent practice of calling for the rapid elimination of fossil fuels while failing to acknowledge their unique, massive, and desperately needed benefits.

• The Unique, Massive, and Desperately Needed Benefits of Fossil Fuels
  
  I knew our knowledge system was misevaluating fossil fuels when I learned 3 undeniable facts about fossil fuels’ benefits that are ignored or contradicted by our knowledge system’s case against fossil fuels.

  

• Fossil Fuels Are a Uniquely Cost-Effective Source of Energy
  
  Fossil fuels are a uniquely cost-effective source of energy, providing energy that is 1) low-cost, 2) on-demand, 3) versatile, and 4) on a scale of billions of people in thousands of places.

• The unique cost-effectiveness of fossil fuels is why despite 100+ years of aggressive competition, fossil fuels provide 80%+ of the world’s energy and are still growing fast, above all in places that care most about cost-effective energy, such as China.4

  

• Cost-Effective Energy Is Essential to Human Flourishing
  
  Cost-effective energy is essential to human flourishing because the more cost-effective energy is, the more people can use “machine labor” to produce vital material values such as food, clothing, shelter, and medical care.

• For an example of the incredible power of machine labor, consider that a modern combine harvester can reap and thresh enough wheat to make 500,000 loaves of bread in a day—about a thousand times what a highly capable human can!5

  

• Billions of People Are Suffering and Dying for Lack of Cost-Effective Energy
  
  Billions of people lack cost-effective energy, resulting in tragic amounts of suffering and death—such as premature babies dying because there is no reliable electricity for incubators.

• 3 billion people use less electricity than a typical American refrigerator.
  
  Of those, almost 800 million are classified by the International Energy Agency as having no access to electricity.
  
  And 2.4 billion people use primarily wood and animal dung for heating and cooking.6

  

• Do Our Designated Experts Really Ignore the Benefits of Fossil Fuels?
  
  Our “designated experts” (spokespeople for our knowledge system) ignore 1) the catastrophe that would come from losing fossil fuels’ benefits and 2) the failure of solar and wind to rapidly replace fossil fuels.

• In his book on fossil fuels and climate, The Madhouse Effect, “expert” Michael Mann explains how rising CO2 from fossil fuels will, in his view, do harm to food production.
  
  But incredibly, he 100% ignores the fact that today’s food abundance is utterly dependent on fossil fuels!7

• Ignoring the Benefits of All Cost-Effective Energy
  
  The ignoring of fossil fuels’ benefits is not an isolated incident but rather an instance of a systemic devaluation of and even hostility toward cost-effective energy as such by our knowledge system.

• Supporting Efforts to Eliminate Cost-Effective Nuclear Energy
  
  Our knowledge system has long supported those who seek to eliminate clean, safe, non-carbon, proven nuclear energy—with no concern for the horrific consequences of losing both fossil fuel energy and nuclear energy.

• “Expert” Paul Ehrlich has fought vehemently to eliminate nuclear energy.
  
  In his 1975 article “An ecologist’s perspective on nuclear power,” Ehrlich wrote, “Giving society cheap, abundant energy at this point would be the moral equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”8

• Supporting Efforts to Eliminate Cost-Effective Hydro Energy
  
  Our knowledge system excludes clean, non-carbon, proven hydroelectric energy from most “renewable” policies and supports shutting down hydro projects—with no concern for the cost-effective energy that would be lost.

• Indifference to “Green” Opposition to Solar and Wind
  
  Our knowledge system expresses little concern about the widespread local opposition to its supposedly beloved solar and wind energy, or the fact that as a result many solar and wind projects face lengthy delays.

• Ignoring Energy Experts
  
  Not only has our knowledge system designated energy-devaluers as experts, its designated experts are almost exclusively people who are not energy experts but rather “environmental experts”—experts on energy’s alleged negative environmental side-effects.

• A Broken Knowledge System
  
  Our knowledge system’s devaluing of and apparent hostility to cost-effective energy as such means it is guaranteed to give us bad guidance, and that it may be significantly misrepresenting fossil fuels negative climate side-effects.

• Our Knowledge System’s Apparent Hostility Toward Cost-Effective Energy Could Be Driving It to Overstate Fossil Fuels’ Negative Side-Effects
  
  Our knowledge system is guaranteed to underestimate our ability to use cost-effective energy from fossil fuels to cope with climate danger.

• Our Knowledge System Might Be Dramatically Underestimating Our Ability to Use Cost-Effective Energy from Fossil Fuels to Cope with Its Climate Side-Effects
  
  Our knowledge system may be driven by hostility toward cost-effective energy to exaggerate fossil fuels’ side-effects.

Coming next week: A summary of Chapter 2 of Fossil Future, “Catastrophizing Side-Effects.”

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Suppressing free speech by intimidation paralyzes its victims, helping it look like they’re acting voluntarily when they aren’t.

The post What Happened to ABC and Jimmy Kimmel Wasn’t Censorship. It Was Worse appeared first on New Ideal - Reason | Individualism | Capitalism.

 

Download video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/-j3YdxNSzTk

Avoiding concessions to the enemy: Rand urges Leonard Read to use uncompromising language when defending capitalism and free markets.

The post Rand on the Uncompromised Defense of Liberty: From the New, Expanded Edition of <i>Letters of Ayn Rand</i> appeared first on New Ideal - Reason | Individualism | Capitalism.

 

Today, October 1, The Wall Street Journal has the following headlines:

Lumber Prices Rise on Trump’s New Tariff

EU to Propose 50% Steel Tariffs Outside Quotas, Matching Trump Levies

Trump Order Seeks to Use AI to Help Treat Childhood Cancer

Judge Rebukes Trump Administration’s Efforts to Deport Pro-Palestinian Campus Activists

Trump Unveils Deal With Pfizer, New Website for Cheaper Drugs

Trump says Deal With Harvard Is Near

This is one day’s news. And all these events concern what one man demands and commands.

The pattern is clear. As with monarchs of old, Donald Trump’s domain is . . . whatever he says it is. Tariffs, funding for ivy league colleges, electric vs. gasoline vehicles, arms for Ukraine, whether Israel may take over the West Bank, a comedian’s statements about Charlie Kirk, a Federal Reserve official’s mortgage application—anything and everything has to be pleaded at the monarch’s feet. Pleasing him becomes the primary focus of leaders in business, education, the media, and every walk of life.

Over 60 years ago, this poignant observation was made by Ayn Rand:

It is a grave error to suppose that a dictatorship rules a nation by means of strict, rigid laws which are obeyed and enforced with rigorous, military precision. Such a rule would be evil, but almost bearable; men could endure the harshest edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific and stable; it is not the known that breaks men’s spirits, but the unpredictable. A dictatorship has to be capricious; it has to rule by means of the unexpected, the incomprehensible, the wantonly irrational; it has to deal not in death, but in sudden death; a state of chronic uncertainty is what men are psychologically unable to bear. [The Objectivist Newsletter, Feb. 1962]

I don’t think Trump’s switches and leaps are deliberate or calculated. I think arbitrariness “comes naturally” to him. But deliberate or not, what results is journalists, business leaders, university administrators, his old enemies . . . everyone . . . becoming obsessed with Trump’s moods, his latest “Truth Social” outburst, and who is for this split-second in his good graces.

It’s amazing that most of the business/finance news is about the preferences, the demands, the emotions, the whims of Donald Trump. And the journalists and anchors don’t even notice.

Remember none of Trump’s headline-grabbing lurches apply legitimate powers of the president. No American president has any business intervening in the affairs of private entities. The president is the chief executive; he oversees the execution of the law. The goal of the law is: to protect the rights of the individual. But in interfering with, dictating to, lumber buyers, steel producers, Pfizer, Harvard, and campus speakers, Trump is acting not to protect rights but to violate them. He is not securing people’s freedom to act on their own judgment, he is telling them what to do. Headline from Monday:

Trump Calls for Firing of Microsoft Global Affairs Chief.

Still worse is the last of the October 1 stories, the page-one headline is:

President Tells Military Brass To Fight ‘Enemy Within’ U.S.

Trump is trying to turn the military into a force that will follow his orders for “solving problems” inside the country. The first such problem, he says, is crime. But crime has been decreasing for decades. Outside of slum neighborhoods, it is hardly a problem at all. Gemini AI documents statistics available on the web:

Crime has been decreasing in the U.S., with overall violent crime down 4.5% and property crime down 8.1% in 2024 compared to 2023, reaching the lowest rates in decades. Homicides have seen a significant 14.9% drop, . . . Both violent crime and property crime rates have been decreasing over the last few decades, with 2024 reporting the lowest violent crime rate since 1969.

Yes, a president is the commander-in-chief of the military, but he is not chief of police of any locality, let alone of all of them.

The need to fight crime is a pretext. Trump wants the military to act domestically for a different reason: to defend his hold on power. Against what? Free elections.

The preview came on January 6, 2021: fringe Rightists stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election. (Whether or not Trump sponsored this specific mob action, it is his endlessly repeated lie about a “stolen” election that is responsible for the attack on the Capitol, the ensuing deaths of 4 people, and the growing trend toward using violence to settle political disputes.)

It appears likely that Republicans will lose seats in Congress in the midterm elections. That would mean Trump would also lose a considerable amount of power, a turn of events he could not abide. What if, to nullify the midterm election, Trump can call on not just a rag-tag assemblage of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers but the National Guard and the United States Army?

America’s uniqueness comes from the political principles on which it was founded — the fundamental of which is the principle of limited government. In a system of limited government, government officials may do nothing except what is permitted to them. The citizens may do anything that is not expressly forbidden to them.

And, originally, the only thing forbidden was violating someone’s rights—using physical force to infringe on someone’s freedom of action.

The ominous phrase “enemy within” summons the scapegoats, criminals and immigrants, that Trump hopes will provide justification for a masked, secret police (ICE agents) and a military force to enable him to become, like Putin, “president for life.” Of Putin, Trump has said:

He’s now president for life. President for life. And he’s great... Maybe we’ll give that a shot someday.

In desperation, I will be voting straight Democratic in 2026.