A Letter To The New York Times

I realize that I have been quiet lately, but I will be trying to change that. Let's start by taking on one of the biggest newspapers in the country, shall we? I sent the following letter to the New York Times today. Shall we see how they respond?

I am curious as to whether or not your newspaper continues to employ a legal department or are people like Paul Krugman allowed to write libelous statements in your editorials and get away with it simply because it is called an opinion piece?
In the article titled "Who Cooked the Planet?" dated July 25, 2010, Krugman writes the following paragraph:

"You’ve probably heard about the accusations leveled against climate researchers — allegations of fabricated data, the supposedly damning e-mail messages of “Climategate,” and so on. What you may not have heard, because it has received much less publicity, is that every one of these supposed scandals was eventually unmasked as a fraud concocted by opponents of climate action, then bought into by many in the news media."

This is a blatant lie and I have a very difficult time believing that Mr. Krugman does not know that it is a lie. It has been argued that the importance of the emails was overstated; it has been argued that the emails did not mean what people claimed or thought that they meant; it has been argued that the emails did not invalidate the science. It has not been argued, let alone charged or proved, that the scandal was a fraud.
An accusation of fraud is an accusation of a crime and for a newspaper to print that someone has been proven to have committed a crime knowing that no such crime has been proven is libel. Ask your legal department, if you still have one.
I fully realize that Mr. Krugman believes that he is above the common man and thus able to say anything he pleases with impunity, but this is not legally true. He is bound by the same legal standards as all the rest of us and you, as a prominent newspaper, are even more bound.
I am sure that you will prepare a correction for this before any lawyers become interested, though I am equally sure that you will bury that correction so that no one ever sees it, except by accident. You should be aware, of course, that bloggers will be quite interested in such a gaff in such a major newspaper.

Who Is Ayn Rand?

So we've established that math is no longer taught in our public education system and now, apparently, neither is reading. I read a book review yesterday in the New York Times, written by Adam Kirsch (a senior editor for The New Republic) and supposedly reviewing Anne Heller's book, Ayn Rand and the World She Made. I say supposedly because, aside from quoting a few passages from the book, there is nothing in this review that reads at all like a book review. There is no opinion given. There are no comparisons of "this is good" and "that is not so good". This review says nothing about the book. Instead, it only tries to make a statement about Rand, conveniently enough, the same statement the book apparently makes. Beating your political drum is not how you write a book review, last time I checked.
Worse, the statement made about Rand is blatantly false and gives the distinct impression that neither writer actually bothered to learn a thing about Rand before deciding to speak against her. I'm going to give you an excerpt from the review in a moment, but I need to preface it with some background in order for it to make sense.
If you have read Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, you are already wholly familiar with the climactic John Galt speech toward the end. If you haven't read Atlas Shrugged, that one speech is nearly as long as many novels and is the encapsulation of everything Rand was trying to say through the course of the book. She spent two years writing that section alone. Needless to say, when editors wanted her to cut the speech, she wasn't interested. Instead, they reached a compromise where Rand would give up seven cents per copy sold from her royalties in exchange for the pages needed to print the entire speech. Considering the fact that she built a financial empire on the strength of that novel, it's a safe bet that she made the right decision.
Now for the excerpt:

"Yet while Rand took to wearing a dollar-sign pin to advertise her love of capitalism, Heller makes clear that the author had no real affection for dollars themselves. Giving up her royalties to preserve her vision is something that no genuine capitalist, and few popular novelists, would have done. It is the act of an intellectual, of someone who believes that ideas matter more than lucre."

First of all, claiming that Rand gave up her royalties is a horrible misrepresentation of what actually happened. She negotiated a deal where she received slightly smaller royalties in exchange for something else she wanted. That is pure capitalism and the fact that these writers claim otherwise indicates that they know nothing about capitalism. The fact that they claim a novelist wouldn't make this decision - the decision to cut a small amount of renumeration in exchange for keeping the work whole - indicates that they know nothing about writing. The only novelists who wouldn't make this trade are the hacks who shouldn't be writing in the first place.
As for the rest of the claim, all I can really say is, duh! Anyone who has read more than ten sentences of Rand's writing already knows this. She didn't love the dollar and she made that clear on numerous occasions. Ayn Rand abhorred dollar chasers, people who thought that acquiring money was the goal. Money, according to Rand, is a symbol. The American dollar is a symbol of trading value for value and meeting as equals instead of master and slave. Rand did not, as Kirsch implies in the review, revere businessmen in her writing while disdaining them in real life. Most of the villains in her books are businessmen! Those businessmen she revered were the ones - and only the ones - who lived up to her ideals. All others received even more scorn than the average "looter" or "moocher". It was not that Rand believed that businessmen were better. It was that she believed they should be better.
Ayn Rand was far from perfect. She had brilliant philosophical axioms but, when she tried to expand on those axioms with corollaries, she tended to get deranged and extreme. She was, in my opinion, an idiot savant. Miraculous genius in some areas, brain dead imbecile in others. In Rand's defense, most of her dumb ideas can be understood in context. She was a child in Russia in the early years of the Communist take over. See if you can live through something like that without going a little extreme on some issues.
Adam Kirsch really wants to speak ill of Ayn Rand. That glows through most of the words in this so-called review. Unfortunately for Kirsch, the most he can come up with is lying about what she stood for, pointing out that her personal life was not as ideal as she would have preferred, and dismissing her characters as being nothing more than "abstract principles set to moving and talking." I think that last part might explain the rest. Apparently Kirsch is one of those pathetic creatures who must believe that everyone else is as venal as he is, in order to justify his own existence. Rand didn't believe in people having to justify their existence and here's a news flash for Mr. Kirsch: Those of us who don't believe we have to justify our existence to the likes of you, those of us who really do believe in high ideals and do our utmost to live by them, those of us who believe that those who cannot produce have no right to dictate to those who can, those of us who believe that the American dollar is a symbol and that it is your perversion of that symbol that has devalued it ... We really do exist. We are not abstract principles and we really are disgusted with the fact that we have to share the world with people like you, who would rather tear us down than get out of our way and let us build up.
If you're going to criticize a writer, you should probably know something about what she wrote first. Of course, why I would expect such standards from a rag like The New Republic is a mystery. I guess I just have high standards. I'm a walking abstract. Well, at least I can read.

Breaking The Language Barrier

One of the biggest international news stories of the last few days was the incident of the U.S.N.S. Impeccable being harassed by Chinese ships in international waters. It is a known fact that Chinese officials do not comprehend the language of international boundaries but, from what I have discovered, neither apparently does most of the mainstream media. The sentence I just gave contained the extent of the location details given in most MSM articles on this story. In order to find out exactly where this confrontation happened, I had to go to a blog that is so far left the writer and many of the commenters actually consider the New York Times to be a Republican mouthpiece.
I'll give you a moment to settle the laughter from that last sentence.
Ready to continue now?
So, where did the confrontation take place? (Amusingly enough, I return to that blog for my notes and it seems that all reference to the exact location has been removed. Glad I have a good memory, but this does mean that I won't be giving exact numbers.) The Impeccable was operating about 75 miles off the southern coast of China. My knowledge of international law is sketchy at best but, last time I checked, international waters begin about seven miles off coast. Even if my memory on this is not precise, you do the math. There is absolutely no way to claim that the Impeccable was not in international waters and there is absolutely no way to claim that the actions of the Chinese vessels (approaching to within 25 feet and even stopping directly in the path of the moving Impeccable, forcing an emergency stop) were not a violation of Maritime law. Take a guess at how many mainstream media outlets are actually calling China out on this blatant violation. If you guessed any number higher than zero, you need to be paying more attention to current affairs.
China has been trying for years to claim territory that does not belong to them and this behavior is just another example of that attitude. By not denouncing these actions loudly and without reservation, the international community is letting them get away with it.