There’s no gatekeepers to distribution anymore, and while that can be a good thing, it has horrible unintended consequences, in that the masses that are consuming this drivel are idiots who don’t know how to pronounce “vice versa“. People are idiots, and “success” is defined as anything that appeals to those idiots. The folly of self-promotion is the idea that we need to appeal to mentality of those idiots.

The bigger issue is whether this is going to be the crack in the dam, inspiring legalization campaigns around the country. My interest is going to be in how the recent 10th amendment folks are going to react. We’ve been hearing a lot about nullification and states rights regarding “Obamacare”, but are these folks really principled federalists, or just whiners? Are they going to apply their newfound love for constitutional principles to issues they might not agree with? After all, it’s the commerce clause in the constitution that the federal usurpers use to defend control over drug laws and health insurance.

So, I put this as a challenge to the “tenthers” out there. Are you going to be consistent, or are you going to show that your “principles” were mere whitewashed pragmatism?

It’s kinda hard to miss Rand these days. Fox News has people from the Ayn Rand Institute on often criticizing just about every action made by the Obama administrator, and for good reason. The reactions of our current federal government in response to economic crisis (starting with the Bush administrator, I should note), reads like a significant portion of Atlas Shrugged, under the section of “what not to do”. It’s hard to watch the news without hearing stories of bailouts, crony-ism, “corporate welfare”, and other actions of governments and corporations not only in bed together, but filming amateur porn, and forcing us to watch it.

For those not familiar with Rand’s magnum opus, it tells of the story of a the struggle for success for American capitalists whilst overcoming a society increasingly jealous of their successes. Rand’s philosophy is based on the premise that society runs on the backs of private enterprise and entrepreneurship, and that as long as those entrepreneurs are willing to bear the load, society’s flourish. However, when the community takes advantage of these “Atlases”, at some point, it is no longer advantageous to the entrepreneur, and he will shrug off society, leaving it nothing left from which to leech.

In my opinion, Rand failed before she started writing Atlas Shrugged. Her goal was to write an all-encompassing philosophical defense and a page-turner at the same name, and her didn’t succeed in either respect. One reviewer wrote that the “characters are less flesh-and-blood humans than mouthpieces for various philosophical points” However, as a philosophical argument, her book does a fantastic job in fleshing out the various types of personalities that lead to the establishment in society of the false ideas of justice that endlessly eat away at the true freedom and liberty that society should enjoy. She could have written “There are people in society who feel entitled to the wealth of others,”, but instead she created those people, and this is where Rand succeeds.

However, my goal is not to defend her observations on the failures of society, but to critique her solution offered in Atlas Shrugged, and ethical egoism in general. My goal is to show that while Rand does correctly identify the sin of greed and especially established greed under the misnomer of “compassion”, her solution to government enforced equality is as bad as the problem.

Contrast this to what I believe is the Biblical view of ethics and personal property. When reading the Bible, it’s easy to defend diverse ideas of how wealth, poverty, property, and charity. A fiscal lasse faire capitalist, a mutualist, and a Marxist could all pull out different verses to support their positions. However, I believe that the Bible does support a single economic philosophy of personal and property “rights” (a la Rand), while still embracing charity as a moral duty. Unlike Rand, I see no reason for these ideas to conflict.

Charity and giving are clearly commanded of Christians in Scripture, and even codified in the morals law (Lev. 19:10). Even the Jubilee laws that commanded slaves be set free also commanded that the land be left fallow for an entire year “that the poor of your people may eat” (Exodus 23:11). In even a surface examination of scripture, it’s undeniable that the Bible stands in clear disagreement with Rand’s objections towards charity.

But, at the same time, the idea of property rights are also very strongly supported. From the root moral law of “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15), the scriptures condemn scripture and command restitution for property stolen (Exodus 21:1). (As an interesting aside, the Bible does recognize that one may sympathize with a person who steals, but it doesn’t take away the need for the thief to restore the stolen property, even if he were to forfeit all that he owns. (Proverbs 6:30-31)).

Many today have concluded that since charity is a moral good, and since the civil government is an agency for promoting good (Romand 13:4), therefore, the civil government should be an agency for charity. This thinking, however, passes the moral buck, and in fact, undoes all the charity works to accomplish the life of the giver. When a person is forced to give (if I can even put those words together), the moral goodness that comes from the act is stripped. Likewise, when the state coerces a person to give under duress, whether that penalty be the threat of fines, jail, or even death, the state is no longer acting as an agent of good. In addition, it can cause the victim to begin to horde whatever money is left to them by the state.

In order to promote charity as an social norm, we must first promote a society where property is protected. The ultimate moral responsibility for charity is the individual alone (although he may choose to voluntary work with collective organizations like the local church), and it should be the role of the state to promote this reality by encouraging charity, while protecting property rights. Historically, America has excelled at private charity, and I strongly believe that this follows from recognizing our wealth, promoting strong property rights, and upholding charity as a strong moral good. For the most part, I believe America still considers the poor as an opportuntiy to show love, and not as a mass of ingrateful consumes. I strongly hope that this positive attitude is not replaced by politics of greed, forcing the rich to turn to people like Ayn Rand for ideas about how to protect their wealth from the masses.

As a final thought, I think the best argument against Rand’s personal philopsophy of ethical egoism is the results her life showed as she attempted to live according to her principles, dying arrogant and alone. She has many admirers, but very very few friends. I honestly cannot imagine a true friendship based on upon the ideas of Rand’s egoism. After all, if you knew that a person was going to act exclusively in their own best interest, then any relationship with them will always last as long as it is practical for them. The idea of personal sacrifice is unknown, even immoral, and even if an egoist were to help you, you would always suspect an ulterior motive.

• Installing Zimbra.
• Messing with VirtualBox.
• Enjoying Sapporo.
• Preparing to travel to Colorado.
• Starting to invest using TradeKing and Kapitall.
• Watching the kids grow up.
• Enjoying Tab getting her yellow belt in karate.
• Waiting for summer.

People in Japan do head up north, but generally it’s a winter vacation destination with fantastic skiing and amazing hot spring baths (Onsen). They had a map in the tourist center showing at least fifty different onsen within a thirty mile radius of Aomori.

The one local delicacy we were able to enjoy was the local apples. Aomori apples are known throughout Japan and the rest of Asia as some of the best apples, and they truly were amazing. The countryside was covered with orchards, and each tree was meticulously maintained and pruned, with the fruit individually protected on the trees with coverings.

After spending the morning in Aomori, we decided to head across the water to Hokkaido via a ferry that travels between the two towns. There were a couple different types of ferries, but since we were paying out of our pockets, we decided to go with the cheapest, no-frills option. The cheapest ferries are used to let people going to Hokkaido bring their cars along with them, and the ticket salesman was a bit surprised when we told him we didn’t have a car. He sold us the tickets anyway for about $13 and a few minutes later we were walking through the belly of a well-worn ferry past people in their cars. We carried our bags up on deck, and relaxed in a small room while the rest of the cars were being loaded onto the boat. When the ship was ready, it backed out of the port and we spent the next four hours on the deck of the ferry leaving the Aomori harbor and heading to Hakodate (pronounced “Hah-ko-dah-tay”.

We arrived in Hakodate and took a taxi into town. Anwar and I both have guidebooks, and by their powers combined, we’ve managed to make out pretty well. They recommended a rather inexpensive hotel in Hakodate called the Hotel Route Inn, which, according to the book, had small rooms but an included onsen. After spending the last few days on our feet, and covered in salt spray from the ocean, a free onsen sounded really good.

We checked into the hotel, dropped our bags off in our room, and headed into town. Hakodate is no Tokyo, and the major means of transportation is an old trolly that runs through the town. The town is famous for Mount Hakodate, jutting and rising high out of the water. It’s a bit of tourist mecca, and when you look at the top of the mountain at night, you can see the flashes from the cameras shining like fireflies. We took the trolley to the base of the mountain and rode a cable car up the side of the mountain to the peak. The view was amazing, and it was one of the few sites that pictures really can’t capture. The area is one of the more populated areas of the northern island, and it was amazing to see the lights of civilization leading away from the shore to the base of the mountains, and then just stop, leaving nothing but the dark mountains beyond.

On the way back to the hotel, we attempted to hunt down some food. As I said, Hakodate is no Tokyo, and English speakers are hard to find. We found a seafood restaurant on the way back, and we were invited by one of the waitresses to come in for a set meal (set-toe). Besides the mountain, Hakodate is also famous for their large crabs, and we were served a small, but tasty meal of crab tempura and conch sashimi. Delicious, but we were still hungry. 7-11 heroically came through, and a few minutes later, we were in our room munching down convenience store sushi and cold soba.

By this time, my back and feet were hurting, and the onsen was calling to me. We grabbed our towels and washcloths and headed up to the 13th floor. We were greeted by a small but very pleasant hot spring bath that soothed all the aches in my body. The hot bath is, without any doubt, a part of Japanese culture that is superior to America. Our fear of public nudity limits us to quick, purely utilitarian showers at the YMCA, and precludes us from taking the time to relax and enjoy becoming clean. I’ll probably expand on this in a future post, but for now, I can’t encourage you enough to enjoy an onsen if you visit Japan. (BTW, my friend Billy says the baths in Korea are great as well.)

The next morning, we walked around the local fish market, saw some of the biggest crabs I’ve ever seen, still alive and moving their half-meter bodies around their tanks. Some of the vendors had little grills with crab legs toasting on them. For breakfast, I enjoyed a “Hakodate donbori”. Donbori is simply rice with different kinds of sushi on top. A Hakodate donbori had local crab leg meat (about five inches long), ikura (salmon roe), and uni (sea urchin) on top of rice and seaweed. Delicious!

After that, we hopped on a train and we’re currently heading south towards Nikko, with a quick stop off at Matsushima and Sendai. We need to check into our hotel tomorrow evening, but we have just enough time to enjoy these few sites.

In addition, I have a suspicion that their air condition is broken or non-existant, which is highly unusual. You can be riding a packed Tokyo subway in 90 degree weather and feel pretty comfortable with the air conditioner blowing on you. But I can’t feel any draft, and the humidity is making my skin pretty disgusting.

I don’t know if it’s really cloudy, or if there is a new moon out tonight, but it’s really dark outside the train windows. It’s about 3am and I see occasional lights on the horizon, and of course, the bright lights from each of the train stations we pass through, but other than that, it’s all darkness. If the humidity is any indication, though, I think it’s really cloudy out. But, yeah… it’s dark.

Anwar has the top bunk in the sleeping car, thank God. I had the ticket for the top bunk, but it would have been an original mix of comedy and tragedy if I tried to get up there. My claustrophobia would have kicked it, and bad things would have happened. As it is, I’m on the bottom bunk, and I actually got about 5 hours of sleep on the train, in addition to the 5 or 6 hours I got on the plane. I should be pretty rested when we finally do arrive in Hirosaki around 9am.

The only food we had since getting off the plane was a decent salmon and cream cheese bagel at the train station. Starting to get a little hungry again, and I know I won’t be getting any food for at least six more hours.

No place to plug in the laptop, and still no wireless connection, so I’m stucking playing with the DS. I’m kicking myself for not picking up Zelda before I left.

We almost has a major disaster. When we came through customs, we flashed our brand new CAC cards which identifies us as being “military” folks, and falling under the SOFA rules. So, when we got to the train station at Narita, we went to get our train passes and the woman took our passports to verify that we were “tourists”. Well, I didn’t know, but people who are in the country under SOFA are not considered tourists, so we weren’t eligible for the train passes.

Anwar and I groaned to each other, but the woman, with even being asked, said “I’ll validate your tickets this time, but technically, I’m not supposed to.” Disaster averted because of one extremely cool person.

We took a subway over to Ueno, and now we’re getting ready to take an overnight train to Hirosaki. I don’t have any internet connectivity yet as I’m writing this post/email, so I don’t know if the Ghents have written back to me. I might try giving them a call tonight, or tomorrow morning when we arrive in Hirosaki. Once we arrive, it’s a quick train hop to Goshogawara.

Real quick comment on movies on the plane:

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull –> Disappointing.
Prince Caspian –> Also disappointing, but I can’t put my finger on why.
The Baker –> Only saw the first half, but it seemed interesting. I like black comedies, though.

My job has taken me to Japan quite a few times (I think my passport has 14 Japan entry stamps in it). Prior to taking this job five years ago, I had rarely left Pennsylvania, and had only once left the United States when we had driven through Canada when I was a kid (I slept the whole way).

My travel to Japan, and other parts of the world, has left with a real exposure to the huge differences in culture between the United States, Australia, England, and Japan. Since then, I wanted to make sure that my kids have an awareness of the different cultures around the world.

When Sarah and I made the decision to homeschool the kids, we both agreed that we wanted to make the most of the kids’ time at home with the family. Not being tethered to a school means that the family can travel with me, and we can move to different locations around the world and have hands-on exposure to the world around us.

Here’s my incomplete list of pros and cons for moving to Japan:

Pros:

• I did received a promotion to a senior staff position at Lockheed Martin. This usually requires a lot more experience than I have, and I’m excited to be “ahead” in my career.
• My company significantly reimburses us for different costs, which will allow us to save more money.
• Japan is a major country that is little known to the rest of the world. There is a lot of potential for outreach to a normally inaccessible culture.
• Despite the fact that over 128 million people speak Japanese, it’s one of the more little known languages amongst non-Japanese. One reason is that Japanese is a hard language to learn, but when my children learn the language, they’ll find that their skills as native English speakers with an understanding of Japanese will be potentially very beneficial to their careers.

Cons:

• Being away from my family is going to be hard. Despite Vonage, email, webcams, and other technologies, we won’t be able to just hang out like we do now. Plane tickets to Japan are not cheap either, but hopefully, our families will be able to come visit and have an experience they wouldn’t have otherwise
• While the weather is just as cold as it is in SE Pennsylvania, they get a lot of snow. They average 35 feet per year. That’s a lot.
• It’s not Tokyo. In Tokyo, you can eat at a different restaurant for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day for a lifetime and never hit the same place twice. The area is pretty rural and poor, so we’ll be traveling by car and when we go out to dinner, we’ll probably hit the same few places.

I’m sure there are more, and I might edit this post in the future to add other reasons. But that should be start.

For the last year or so, I’ve been browsing the Lockheed Martin job boards to see if there were any cool overseas positions. A couple months ago, I saw a position for a systems administrator in a small, remote village in Northern Japan called Shariki (even the Wikipedia page is extremely sparse). I applied for the position, and was rejected for the position, since knowledge of the program was required. I was disappointed, but life goes on.

A couple months ago, I got a email out of the blue asking me if I was interested in interviewing for an overseas position in Japan. The person who sent the email had a subject line that had the name of the program I had interviewed for earlier. I called the guy back and we chatted for a while. A few minutes into the conversation, I realized that I wasn’t interviewing for a systems administrator position, but for an Information Systems Security Officer (ISSO) position at the same site in Shariki. The interview went well, and a week later, I was told they were putting together an offer for me.

After talking to Sarah and my family, we decided to accept the offer.

The position will be for at least one year, but probably more like 2-3 years in Shariki. We’ll probably be living in a larger town further south called Goshogawara. I haven’t been up to the area, but I’m planning on heading up there next month after an upgrade in Tokyo next month.

The next few months are going to be pretty hectic, but I plan on doing a better job of keeping up with blog during the overseas travel. The Aomori area of Japan has some of the more remote and pristine areas of the country, and we’re really looking forward to some rural living over there.

(HT to Lew Rockwell)

Of the 236 pages that make up the issue, 112 pages are full page advertisements. Of the 124 pages of actual content, 14 of those pages have half page ads on them. That leaves 110 pages of unadulterated content.

Starting on page 115, there are 44 consecutive pages of beautiful content and photography, but it really does seem like a needle in a haystack.

If you only get one, I’d recommend The Ron Paul Revolution project. It’s a well-produced video about 45 minutes long that goes over Dr. Paul’s various policies.

These two DVDs (DVD 1, DVD 2) are compilations of various speeches, interviews and debates that Dr. Paul has done over the last few months. The DVD is easily traversable, and you can pick and choose what you want to watch.

Finally, one DVD was produced specifically to answer questions for Christian voters regarding values, taken from a speech in Iowa and from a pastor’s conference. This DVD is designed to answer a lot of the specific questions for Christian voters, including his position on abortion and foreign policy (including Israel).

If you’re unable to burn any of the moves above, but still want to watch them, shoot me an email, and I will burn a copy for you and send it via the mail.

Check out this video put together by a supporter… the campaign had nothing to do with the last contribution surge, and has nothing to do with this one. It’s the people coming together to support our candidate.