This post originally used a comment at a blog that I then had a chance to check out and found unpalatable, so I’ve deleted it and just retained FBI statistics below:

Lila: Let’s check the FBI statistics for “hate crimes” (its own pet index) as a rough short-hand for the existence of hatred for minorities (with the caveat that what’s reported is not equal to what might exist):

FBI.gov hate crimes for 2011 by state:

Total no. of incidents: 6,222

No. 1 California: 1040

Thereby disproving the sexual libertinism=racial paradise thesis

spun by the Hollywood-CIA mind-control factory

No. 2  New York: 542

Home of Wall-Street-govt stock mafia

No. 3  New Jersey:  508

Bedroom state for NY financial mafia and HQ of Democrat political machinery

No. 4 Massachussetts:  367

HQ of government-academic complex and PC factory

Lila: Of course, statistics can be massaged any which way: correlations are not causations, absolute numbers are not relative numbers and a whole bunch of other things, but as far as narratives go, it looks like there’s evidence enough to spin things counter to the official PC story of racism.

Edward Feser, one of the best Catholic thinkers in the blogosphere, delivers the Hayek memorial lecture at the Austrian Scholars Conference in Auburn, 2005:

“Three things would seem to follow from this.  The first is that the only freedom of action we can have an absolute natural right to is whatever level of freedom is required for us to be able to make truly voluntary moral choices and thus develop genuinely virtuous character.  The second is that this would seem to entail that to some significant degree, determining the specific amount of freedom we ought to have from outside interference with our moral choices must be a matter of prudential judgment and contingent circumstances rather than a clear-cut appeal to self-ownership rights.  The third is that this is bound to entail that it is at least in principle legitimate for government to outlaw actions that are, from the point of view of natural law, intrinsically immoral, such as prostitution, the sale of illicit drugs and pornography, and so forth.

I want to emphasize that none of this is meant by itself to prove that there ought at the end of the day to be laws against every behavior considered vicious from a natural law point of view.  It is rather to say that the Catholic natural law tradition holds that to a significant degree the question of whether there ought to be such laws is a matter of prudence, not a matter of respecting rights.  Rothbardian arguments to the effect that certain specific drug laws, for example, are draconian and entail a dangerous increase in government power, or that the cost in some circumstances of outlawing vicious behavior might outweigh any benefits to be gained, lose none of their force.  But the Rothbardian view that such laws against intrinsically immoral behavior are always inherently unjust, always violations of natural rights of self-ownership, is incompatible with the Catholic conception of natural law. “

Comment:

And that is roughly where my thinking on the matter is, although of course I’m on the opposite side of Feser’s positions on the Iraq war ….and on several other issues, I imagine.

But that is for prudential reasons.

I think one can with ease call oneself a Christian and a libertarian…..

I think it’s self-delusion to claim to be a traditional Catholic and a consistent Rothbardian.

That doesn’t make me part of any anti-Rothbard cult.

In fact, it’s a busy day when I see anything other than a gecko or a squirrel…let alone so sophisticated a mammal as an anti- Rothbardian.

And I’ve no wish to change that.

Not that I’m a Catholic, traditional or otherwise, either. And I don’t subscribe to Feser’s assertion that  the Judeo-Christian monotheistic tradition alone establishes the dignity of man.

That sounds like reaching.

It’s just that when it comes to furnishing my mind, I’ll take the quality and style that’s stood up to all weather for some twenty centuries before I’ll spend good time and energy on inventory assembled in the  shadow of the Cold War.

Anthony Wile at the Daily Bell points out more alarming evidence linking Mark Zuckerberg’s sinister venture to the intelligence agencies:

“In Facebook’s case, there is clear monetary evidence linking Facebook to the CIA and other Intel outfits.

Here, from the New Zealand Herald, circa 2007:

There is a dark side to the success story that’s been spreading across the blogosphere. A complex but riveting Big Brother-type conspiracy theory which links Facebook to the CIA and the US Department of Defence.

The CIA is …using a Facebook group to recruit staff for its very sexy sounding National Clandestine Service.

Checking out the job ads does require a Facebook login, so if you haven’t joined the site – or are worried that CIA spooks will start following you home from work -check them out on the agency’s own site.

The story starts once Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had launched … Facebook’s first round of venture capital funding ($US500,000) came from former Paypal CEO Peter Thiel. Author of anti-multicultural tome ‘The Diversity Myth’, he is also on the board of radical conservative group VanguardPAC.

The second round of funding into Facebook ($US12.7 million) came from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Its manager James Breyer was formerly chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, and served on the board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. One of the company’s key areas of expertise are in “data mining technologies”.

Breyer also served on the board of R&D firm BBN Technologies, which was one of those companies responsible for the rise of the internet.

Dr Anita Jones joined the firm, which included Gilman Louie. She had also served on the In-Q-Tel’s board, and had been director of Defence Research and Engineering for the US Department of Defence.

She was also an adviser to the Secretary of Defence and overseeing the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is responsible for high-tech, high-end development.

… Wikipedia’s IAO page says: “the IAO has the stated mission to gather as much information as possible about everyone, in a centralised location, for easy perusal by the United States government, including (though not limited to) internet activity, credit card purchase histories, airline ticket purchases, car rentals, medical records, educational transcripts, driver’s licenses, utility bills, tax returns, and any other available data.”.

Not surprisingly, the backlash from civil libertarians led to a Congressional investigation into DARPA’s activity, the Information Awareness Office lost its funding.

Now the internet conspiracy theorists are citing Facebook as the IAO’s new mask.

Facebook’s own Terms of use state: “by posting Member Content to any part of the Web site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, reformat, translate, excerpt and distribute such information and content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorise sublicenses of the foregoing.

Nothing has really changed with Facebook. It’s still the same odd business, pilfering information from its users to resell or trade with others. When company officials were making public statements about 800 million users, SEC filings revealed 400 million users, and even that number was probably exaggerated.

And recently we read this about Facebook, posted at Wired and entitled “Facebook Is Trying to Buy Its Way Into the Developing World” …

Facebook just plunked down a reported $100 million to $200 million to buy a company that trims smartphone bills. And there’s a good reason for that: The social network needs new users, and those users are increasingly cash strapped.

At a time when new U.S. users are drying up and saturation in other developed markets is on the horizon, Facebook is increasingly prioritizing emerging markets to fuel growth. It’s a tricky gambit, given the paucity of online and commercial infrastructure in such markets, and one that could take years to pay off. But Facebook could reap the spoils of being a pioneer, among the first to tackle a challenge that other large internet companies, Twitter foremost among them, will soon be grappling with themselves.

Israel-based Onavo said it is being acquired by Facebook, giving Facebook a suite of apps for reducing mobile data usage via com. Trimming smartphone bills is particularly important for users in developing countries, and Onavo is Facebook’s second big play for such users in as many months, the other being its Internet.org initiative to wire the developing world.

“We … hope to play a critical role in reaching one of Internet.org’s most significant goals — using data more efficiently so that more people around the world can connect and share,” Onavo CEO Guy Rosen says in a blog post.

Such a goal may sound generous, but Facebook’s motives are hardly altruistic: The company needs the developing world in order to grow.

Revenue grew 88 percent in emerging markets versus just 43 percent in the U.S. Monthly users in the second quarter grew 32 percent in Asia and 29 percent in Africa, South America, and other emerging markets — compared to just 6 percent in the U.S.”

From Aletho News:

“Everyday communications of Italians are also on the watch list of the US National Security Agency, a new report has revealed. While an Italian parliamentary committee seeks clarification of NSA activities, local security sources defend the snooping.

Italy’s spy watchdog COPASIR has recently learned details of large-scale monitoring of Italians by the US intelligence agency NSA, according to a report published by Corriere della Sera.

COPASIR stands for Parliamentary Committee for the Intelligence and Security Services and for State Secret Control, and is tasked with overseeing the activities of Italy’s own spy agencies. The body has free access to intelligence agencies’ offices and documents and has the authority to overcome judicial and banking secrecy.

In order to confirm the snooping on Italians, the committee members had to go to the United States and meet with US intelligence agency directors, as well as with congressional committee chairs.

A delegation of parliamentarians from the COPASIR confirmed their concerns regarding the extent of the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program during an official visit to the US three weeks ago, the media said. As part of the program, phone calls and computer communications of “millions of Italians” are reportedly being gathered.

Moreover, Corriere della Sera added that the implications extended to “a monitoring network that started years ago and is still active,” of which the Italian government and spy agencies might have been well aware of.

Such discoveries have prompted uneasy questions to officials, with leading members of COPASIR now seeking clarification from the government, and reportedly awaiting the junior minister for the intelligence services, Marco Minniti, to visit the committee’s offices on Wednesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, Italian intelligence sources quoted in the report rushed to justify the surveillance activities of their partners.

The acquisition of the sensitive private information “has as its sole aim the fight against terrorism,” one source was quoted as saying, while another denied that the NSA’s spying ever breached Italy’s sovereignty.

“We have never had any evidence that this kind of monitoring might have involved political spying on Italian public figures. All our investigations into any such eventuality have proved negative,” the source maintained.

However, such explanations did not satisfy COPASIR, nor did the NSA deputy director’s promise of “a complete overview of communications to and from the United States.”

According to the Italian media, the committee member Claudio Fava from Left Ecology Freedom (SEL) party, was “openly perplexed” as he commented on such statements.

“It’s a data trawling system based on various sensors. US intelligence experts explained that their main concern was to comply with American data protection laws and intervene to safeguard national security. Whether this conflicts with other countries’ laws is of no concern to them but it should be to us,” Fava was quoted as saying.

Another COPASIR member, Felice Casson of the Democratic Party (PD), said that the replies the committee received from top Italian intelligence officials were “far from reassuring.”

“It is clear that the United States has acquired information on individuals and institutions across Europe. What concrete elements exist to rule out that this has happened to politicians and institutions in Italy?” Casson questioned.

Leading Democratic Party (PD) politician Ettore Rosato also demanded an explanation from the government, saying that “a few months ago, when the first [NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s] revelations emerged, both the prime minister, Enrico Letta, and the foreign minister, Emma Bonino, professed astonishment at what came out.”

So far, the documents obtained by various world media from the former NSA contractor Snowden have revealed that the Italian embassy in Washington was subject to spying along with the diplomatic missions of other countries. Italian intelligence sources have been careful to deny the claims only “off the record,” Corriere della Sera says.

Right before the NSA scandal emerged, the collaboration between Italian and American intelligence services was “at its peak,” and, according to the media, included sharing of communications through the SIGINT interception system. However, such cooperation appeared to have been justified by the ongoing allied wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the search for western hostages there, the media adds.

But in the wake of recent revelations on the US spying activities in France, which triggered a media frenzy and public outrage, the media speculates Italy may find it difficult to maintain the same “stance” towards the NSA programs.”

“Google just got a tad creepier.

Thanks to tweaks made to its terms of service today, Google will be able to use its users’ names and photos in select advertising beginning next month (November 11). The updated terms of service, first noticed by The New York Times, specifically allow for the company to use what it calls “shared endorsements,” which, the Times explains, occur only when a user comments, +1s (Google’s equivalent of a Facebook ‘like’) or follows pages or brands included in Google’s services.

That means anytime a Google Plus user endorses a company—say, McDonald’s—by giving it a +1, Google can then use those endorsements alongside an ad it later runs for the company. Google will only share the endorsed ads with the people who originally saw the endorsement, making it all the more important that users specify the friend groups, or circles with which they share their feedback and reviews. Otherwise, a publicly shared endorsement will allow the company to include a user’s name and photo in online ads distributed to just about anyone. Nearly 400 million users engage with Google Plus either directly or indirectly through interaction with other Google-owned sites like YouTube.”

Read the full story (and how to opt out) at Quartz.

Meanwhile, the new Internet privacy “Czar” is a Googler, Nicole Wong.

Walter Block on Canadian journalist Barbara Amiel:

“According to Barbara Amiel, “a rapacious Asian demand for ivory is creating such terrible killing fields that elephants face extinction by poaching.” She writes this bit of economic illiteracy in Maclean’s Magazine (October 7, 2013, pp. 12-13). Before probing the reasons why this is so totally wrong, here is a bit of background. Barbara Amiel, wife of Conrad Black (and ex-wife of  George Jonas, another semi- demi- quasi- libertarian with whom I have also tangled in these pages) is a sort of Canadian equivalent of Ann Coulter: brilliant, beautiful, a gifted writer, conservative, vaguely libertarian on a few issues.

[Lila:  Amiel is also a rape apologist and (although she makes a a good point about societal hypocrisy and moral panics) a pedophile apologist, as well. (Steubenville rape case).

The “”vaguely libertarian” bit in Block’s piece could refer to Amiel’s questioning of the “injustice” of the US justice system, for instance, during the uproar over Roman Polanski’s long-standing rape charges, and also,  no doubt, on the basis of former husband Conrad Black’s scrapes with the legal system.

Black is of-course a card-carrying member of the power-elite.]

Maclean’s Magazine is a rough equivalent of Time Magazine in the U.S.

Back to the elephants, of which Amiel is very fond; she also states: “The magnificent and highly intelligent elephant has always been treated abominably. Today helicopter gunships shoot them down in Africa and hack off heads for ivory tusks, leaving baby elephants orphaned.” Maclean’s Magazine (September 13, 2013). Why is her first statement entirely nonsensical, and her second, in that context, misleading at best? This is because the demand for ivory has nothing whatsoever to do with poaching. There is a “rapacious” demand for pork, too, on the part of “Asians,” and everyone else for that matter, and yet the pig does not face “extinction by poaching” or from any other source. The same is true for steaks and cows, wings and chickens, etc. There is also “a rapacious Asian demand for” things like cement for building, wood for chopsticks, steel for ships, etc., etc. And, yet, miraculously, there is no shortage, let alone total disappearance of, any of these things.

No, if we want to ferret out the source of the plight of the elephant, we must look elsewhere. Where oh where? I will give Amiel one hint: this difficulty stems from an institution that has played havoc with more, far more, than merely the elephant. Yes, that is it: the government. And how, pray tell, has statism caused grief in this particular case? It is simple. By not allowing private ownership in these creatures (and the same applies to the tiger, the rhino, the whale, and every other species in danger of extinction) the “public sector” has unleashed the tragedy of the commons on mankind, and with it the endangerment of all species that are not allowed to be owned privately.”

And, per Block, Elinor Ostrom, about whom I blogged here, is also economically illiterate, despite….or, should I say, based on… the fact of her winning a Nobel Prize for her work on governing the commons.

I don’t know enough to comment on her work.

Amy Goodman, the earnest and radical egalitarian at the head of the show, “Democracy Now,” one of the left’s most influential outlets, is owed $2 million by Pacific Radio, a non-profit supported by donations.

Someone making $2 million doesn’t automatically inflame my capitalist sensibilities, but when that someone spent a lot of her time deploying class and race warfare to shore up her own constituencies, while carefully engaging in  propaganda by omission, emphasis, and distortion, then my sympathies wilt.

They wilt even more when that person is a noted apologist for the Libyan invasion and a reliable Obama defender.

Seems that Goodman isn’t planning on “forgiving” any of her debts, even though she spent a lot of time raising money to buy up consumer debt and cancel it for pennies on the dollar, so consumers didn’t have to pay ,and even though a majority of Pacifica’s employees have had to be sacked so Amy gets her missing pay-checks:

“WBAI, a progressive radio channel, announced Friday that it will cut 19 of its 29 employees to cover operating expenses—which include $2 million owed to Amy Goodman’s show “Democracy Now!”—according to the New York Times.

At a board meeting last week members wrangled over the night’s agenda for the first 25 minutes, despite the radio station’s sizable layoffs only days before. Audience members sporadically jeered “fascist!” and shouted “Go back to the NSA!” before the board moved on to discuss financial matters.

WBAI’s greatest obstacle is paying their most popular broadcast, “Democracy Now!” which is hosted by Goodman. So far, “Democracy Now!” has refused to restructure the station’s debt.

Owned by the nonprofit organization Pacifica, WBAI depends on its 14,000 members to cover operating costs. Last year members contributed just $2.5 million.

The Times reported:

Berthold Reimers, WBAI’s general manager, reported that the station had $23,000 on hand and was scouring Craigslist and other sites to furnish new, cheaper studios in Brooklyn. An Ikea chair was bought for $40, he said. “That’s the cheapest we could possibly get.”

Former WBAI staff members complain that constant management turnover as the board instituted one “coup” after another made their jobs nearly impossible.

“For the last 10 years working at WBAI has been a nightmare,” said Jose Santiago, the news director for two decades. “I compare it to the nation facing Democrats and Republicans in Washington. Their priority is to stay in power and bash each other in the head, and nothing ever gets done.”

World War II “conscientious objectors” founded WBAI in 1946 as the first radio station depending solely on listeners’ donations.”

Did Jesus condone slavery, meaning chattel slavery?

Atheist Community:

“While the Bible may be morally correct in some cases, it is certainly immoral where human slavery is concerned. It is the secular state, not the Bible, which we have to thank for ending slavery. Also it is the secular state, not the church, which stands as the guarantor of freedom and human rights.”

and

“What did Jesus have to say about slavery? Well, in the revered Sermon of the Mount, widely recognized as a prescription for Christian living, the institution of slavery is never mentioned. However, in Matthew 8:5-13, the story of the healing of the Roman centurion’s slave, not only does Jesus not condemn slavery, he actually compliments the centurion for his faithfulness. Therefore, we can only conclude that Jesus was aware of slavery and approved of it.”

Comment:

This is a misleading but common attack on the Gospel.

Here’s why.

1. Since Jesus overturned the tables of the money-changers in the Temple, condemned the rich man who did not feed the beggar at his gate, and healed the Centurion’s slave without partiality, it’s highly unlikely that his vision of the world was confined to talk or that he approved of slavery.

2. Not openly advocating violent revolution to end slavery is not the same as approving of slavery.

Words can be very subversive and powerful – far more than violent acts.

3. Jesus’ vocation was that of a healer and a teacher, not that of an armed rebel.

His goal was to change institutions by changing the hearts of people.

“I will take out your heart of stone and give you one of flesh.”

4.  The allegation also overlooks several Gospel passages that show the Jesus did not condone slavery.

1. In the prophecy from Isaiah that Jesus reads in the Synagogue as a prediction of his mission.

Luke 4: 18

King James Bible

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.”

New International Version:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.”

In the Sermon on the Mount, his spiritual manifesto, he himself clearly sets out his demands on his followers, demands so high that few people can master even one of them fully:

Matthew 5-7

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

The term Money (Mammon) in this verse does not not simply refer to physical coin.

It means material wealth and not just that which is unjustly acquired. Mammon is also the name of a devil, used to personify wealth or greed and exemplify an attitude toward the material world, that makes it all in all.

It refers to the worship of wealth to the exclusion of righteousness.

Jesus says that this world is diametrically opposed to his world.

But this may not imply an outright rejection of the “real world.”

For one thing, Jesus often told spiritual seekers (Children of Light) to learn a lesson from the real world (Children of the World) and  his parables were often drawn from ordinary life and business, that is, from the market-place.

He praised many rich men and at least one Roman centurion (captain) who had servants or slaves.

Still, Jesus wasn’t deluded by the “real world.”

In a notable passage ((“Render unto Caesar””) he pointed out the illogic and vanity of trying to question a system while being thoroughly beholden to it.

I blogged about it here, “What Jesus Taught About Taxes,” where I look at what Rushdoony, on the one hand, and Gandhi, on the other, had to say.

That captures the silliness of anti-capitalist jet-set “communists,” who are completely beholden to a system they claim to reject.

But it also captures the silliness of  Christian corporatists, who are equally beholden to a system they claim to transcend.

Did Jesus  advocate physical revolution?

No. I believe he thought one’s condition of life (male, female, master, slave, Jew, Gentile) was secondary to the transformation of one’s heart.

He taught, far more radically than any radical, that physical slavery or serfdom is not the real locus of evil.

The real locus is within each human being.

This is exactly the same teaching as Krishna’s in the Bhagvad Gita.

It is the teaching of Dharmakshetra Kurukshetra (the field of dharma is the real field of battle).

Spiritual jihad, in other words, not violent revolution.

“The timeless message of the Bhagavad Gita does not refer only to one historical battle, but to the cosmic conflict between good and evil: life as a series of battles between Spirit and matter, soul and body, life and death, knowledge and ignorance, health and disease, changelessness and transitoriness, self-control and temptations, discrimination and the blind sense-mind.”

God and Science has a more detailed account of the New Testament teaching on slavery.