In Memory of Harry Browne

Pablo Wegesend

Harry Browne, the Libertarian Party Presidential candidate in 1996 & 2000 elections, has died on March 1, 2006.

http://www.lp.org/media/article_294.shtml

I have learned about Browne through some politically minded friends in the summer of 2000. At the time, I was struggling between voting for Al Gore or George W. Bush. I knew what their political tendencies were, I just don't always agree with either of them.

Anyways, I read Harry Browne's political advertisement and his book "Why Government Doesn't Work" and I found his writings very convincing, especially on controversial viewpoints on ending the War on Drugs, privatizing all health care, selling national parks to those committed to preserving them, privatizing education, etc. His writings on those topics were so convincing that it changed the way I viewed those issues.

Though after 9/11, I became more of a foreign policy, and was disillusioned with Browne's anti-war politics. I thought that Browne spent too much blaming America, and not enough time on denouncing the Islamic Fascists.

I also think that while Browne's views on privatizing government services are very convincing, I think that having an immediate privatization of all those services (which he advocates) would cause mass confusion among the people who might be unprepared to deal with it. Which is why I prefer a more gradual approach to privatizing most government services.

I dont agree with the Libertarian Party on everything, but I do think they have valuable things to say about very important political issues, so please check out www.lp.org to learn more about it. Even if you don't agree with it, you would learn something from it.

And you can still check out www.harrybrowne.org

My One Complaint About 'Atlas Shrugged,' 2006

Stuart K. Hayashi

This is a revision of a post that appeared on The Fiftieth Star one year ago and later here at The Rebirth of Reason.


February 2, 2006, marks 101 years to the day of Ayn Rand's birth. That day of the month is of particular importance in American culture because, every February 2, if a politician crawls out of his hole and sees his shadow, we will have 60 more years of the welfare state.

As for Miss Rand's magnum opus, I enjoyed every syllable on each of the 1,087 pages of the paperback edition I read. The prose sparked vivid images that made me feel as if I were gazing upon an exquisite painting.

I was so enthralled by the grandeur of it all that I was quite sad to see it eventually come to an end.

And so I have only one complaint about Atlas Shrugged:

It was too short.

Yes, Osama Does Hate Us 'for Our Freedom'

Stuart K. Hayashi

For the past four years, it has been very common for a number of libertarians to say that the reason al-Qaeda attacked the United States was not "hatred for our freedom." Instead, they maintain, the 9/11 atrocity was retribution against an aggressive U.S. foreign policy that has oppressed the Middle East for decades.

The Libertarian Party's 2000 presidential candidate, Harry Browne, gave an assessment of 9/11 that surprised many of his readers. While, I agree with Browne's opinions on domestic political economy, he confounded me with the remarks he made on September 12, 2001 about the previous day's attacks.

"When will we learn," he asked rhetorically, , "that we can't allow our politicians to bully the world without someone bullying back eventually?"

The terrorists "bullying back"?

A few years after Browne published those thoughts, the Libertarian Party's 2004 presidential candidate, Michael Badnarik, weighed in on this as well. He had very sound views on domestic issues. Yet I felt uncomfortable with his pronouncements about what he perceived to be al-Qaeda's legitimate grievances. "First," he stated,

allow me to dispel a myth. People in the Middle East do not hate us for our freedom. They do not hate us for our lifestyle. They hate us because we have spent many years attempting to force them to emulate our lifestyle.

What does he mean by "[p]eople in the Middle East"? Not everyone in the Middle East "hate[s] us." The United States has a number of supporters in Iraq (though having even more of them would be preferrable).

Aren't Osama bin Laden and al-Qaedea so offended by "our freedom" that they see destroying it as a purpose in their jihad?

Jacob G. Hornberger, who is also usually right on domestic fiscal issues, evidently doubts that. "U.S. officials claim," he commented in October 2001,

that the attacks on New York and Washington were motivated by hatred for freedom, democracy, and Western values. But what if they're mistaken? After all, doesn't Switzerland support those values? Why aren't the Swiss being targeted by terrorists?

I don't know bin Laden's opinion on the Swiss, but, a year after Hornberger's commentary was published -- and over a year before Michael Badnarik began campaigning for U.S. President -- we already had access to something that provides much insight on what reasons Osama bin Laden gives for killing Americans.

I am referring to an "Open Letter to Americans" penned by none other than Osama bin Laden himself, published in the November 24, 2002 London Guardian. This same letter was republished in 2005's Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden -- an anthology of bin Laden's political writings.

In the first half of his letter, the terrorist mastermind does cite the excuse for murdering Americans that some libertarians allude to -- he strongly objects to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, accusing our military of imperialism. Browne said he was "bullying back" the U.S. government for "bullying the world" first, and bin Laden, independent of Browne, concurs.

But the second half of bin Laden's open letter completely contradicts the contention so popular among numerous libertarians and radical leftwingers that al-Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups would stop attacking America if only it withdrew occupying troops in Saudi Arabia and other countries.

Indeed, bin Laden does intend to murder those who do not submit to his interpretation of Islam. He explains,

While seeking Allah's help, we form our reply based on two questions directed at the Americans:

(Q1) Why are we [al-Qaeda members] fighting and opposing you [Americans]?

(Q2) What are we [al-Qaeda members] calling you to, and what do we want from you? [ . . . ]

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam. [ . . .]

It is to this religion that we call you; the seal of all the previous religions. [ . . . ] It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme.

Radley Balko, a Cato Institute scholar who has written many excellent commentaries like "Prosperity's Nitpickers," has mocked hawks who attribute the World Trade Center attack to bin Laden's "hatred for our freedom."

"Unfortunately," he propounds,

the 'they hate us for our freedom' reasoning fails the Occam's Razor test. It's difficult to believe that a loathing of strip clubs, rock music, cable TV, and all-you-can-eat buffets would motivate 19 young Arab men would move to the U.S. from thousands of miles away, live and work here for several years, learn to fly airplanes, and then immolate themselves in a mass suicide attack [emphasis added --S.H.].

That sentiment was also voiced by the intelligent and articulate Sheldon Richman, editor of The Freeman, in September 2001:

The Bush administration says incessantly that the terrorism was an attack on civilization: freedom, prosperity, self-government. Government officials, pundits, and cartoonists insist that the terrorists' intent is to bring down American society. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, 'What this war is about is our way of life.'

That view may give some people comfort, but it misses the mark by miles. [ . . . ] If Osama bin Laden was really the instigator or mastermind, we can know precisely what he intended. He's given many interviews to Western journalists. Transcripts are available on the Internet. Never does he say that his motive for a holy war against America is the destruction of capitalism, wealth, freedom, or any other abstraction [emphasis added].

If what Richman said in 2001 -- that bin Laden had not denounced America for its capitalism -- was true at the time, it was no longer true when the Guardian published bin Laden's open letter in 2002.

Recall that Balko dismissed the possibility that al-Qaeda could want to murder Americans for merely having the following institutions:

* Strip clubs

* Rock music

* Cable TV

Actually, bin Laden does want to kill us for alleged sins relating the those three cultural indicators.

He says that for we Americans to spare ourselves from his violent wrath, we must give in to his demand that we "reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and trading with interest."

Richman sounded skeptical of "[g]overnment officials, pundits, and cartoonists" for "insist[ing] that the terrorists' intent is to bring down American society." Nor did he appreciate it when "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, 'What this war is about is our way of life.'"

However, this was one of the few cases in which Rumsfeld was right. Bin Laden does see "our way of life" as something bad enough to kills us over by his own hands. He tells you that his intent is to bring down American society. As bin Laden puts it, "It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind."

Al-Qaeda's head honcho provides a list of reasons for wanting to annihilate us Americans so specific that it makes little sense to claim, after reading it, that bin Laden's violent actions are meant only to punish the U.S. for its foreign policy and not for peaceful behaviors its laws allow domestically. Bin Laden's list of grievances for American actions that so enrage him include:

(iii) You are a nation that permits the production, trading and usage of intoxicants. You also permit drugs, and only forbid the trade of them, even though your nation is the largest consumer of them. [ . . . ]

(v) You are a nation that permits gambling in its all forms. The companies practice this as well, resulting in the investments becoming active and the criminals becoming rich.

In this litany of America's supposed sins, sexual freedom is an item:

(iv) You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. [ . . . ] Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he "made a mistake," after which everything passed with no punishment. [ . . . ]

(vi) You are a nation that exploits women like consumer products or advertising tools calling upon customers to purchase them. You use women to serve passengers, visitors, and strangers to increase your profit margins. You then rant that you support the liberation of women. [ . . . ]

The above indicates that bin Laden sees our strip clubs as a sufficient reason to exterminate us. We will put a check mark next to "strip clubs." We can move on to other items Balko listed as bin Laden continues,

(vii) You are a nation that practices the trade of sex in all its forms, directly and indirectly. Giant corporations and establishments are established on this, under the name of art, entertainment, tourism and freedom, and other deceptive names you attribute to it.

Rock music is associated with what bin Laden perceives to be debauchery. The box for "rock music" should probably be checked. What else dose bin Laden carp about?

(x) Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaigns with their gifts. Behind them stand the Jews, who control your policies, media and economy.

Does bin Laden see our cable TV stations as grounds for punishing us with violent death? Check! Our cable channels, he believes, are the tool of a Jewish conspiracy he aims to wipe out.

The items on Balko's list check out.

Recall also Sheldon Richman's September 2001 comment that "[n]ever does" bin Laden say in the "[t]ranscripts" of "many interviews available on the Internet" that "his motive for a holy war against America is the destruction of capitalism, wealth, freedom, or any other abstraction."

A year later, bin Laden complains to Americans,

(ii) You are the nation that permits Usury, which has been forbidden by all the religions. Yet you build your economy and investments on Usury. As a result of this, in all its different forms and guises, the Jews have taken control of your economy, through which they have then taken control of your media, and now control all aspects of your life making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense;[...]"

Is bin Laden hostile to what Richman called capitalism? The answer is yes if the right to charge interest is a part of free enterprise.

If you consider the First Amendment's Establishment Clause to be part of your freedom, then bin Laden explicitly takes offense at your freedom, shrieking,

You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator [emphasis added --S.H.].

Interestingly, the al-Qaeda leader even faults the United States for not curbing fossil fuel emissions:

(xi) You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries.

By now, it has become much more evident that, for Osama bin Laden, this campaign to extinguish the lives of Americans is not only about U.S. foreign policy. Even if America withdrew its troops from other nations and adopted a more "isolationist" position, bin Laden would still see us as an affront to Allah for our domestic freedoms, for items like those Radley Balko listed: "strip clubs," "rock music," and "cable TV."

Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda do hate your freedom. Accusing the United States of being a bigger bully will not satiate al-Qaeda; withdrawing troops from Saudi Arabia is not an action that would sufficiently stave off assaults from this band of illiberal terrorists.

Bin Laden disapproves of the United States for allowing its citizens to engage in homosexuality, charging usury, and playing Las Vegas slot machines. If he had his way, women would be forcibly banned from employment. It is Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda that have bullied the United States; not the other way around (to put it mildly).

Fortunately, one libertarian -- Ronald Bailey -- remains objective in this regard. In fact, it was this article of his that brought bin Laden's "Open Letter" to my attention. He, too, notices,

Opponents of [laissez-faire, free-market republican, classical] liberalism like bin Laden are fully aware that [laissez-faire] liberal tolerance undercuts the traditional totalitarianisms they fight for by making all such totalitarian systems of belief voluntary. If an individual chooses to change her beliefs and her way of life, she is free to do so, and her religious, political, or cultural community cannot force her to remain. Thus the traditional sources of authority -- families, chieftains, priests -- are undermined as people seek new ways of shaping their lives. [ . . . ]

So would terrorist bombs stop going off in Madrid and London if the United States and its allies withdrew their troops from the Middle East entirely? Perhaps there would be a respite, but a showdown between the world's remaining traditional totalitarianisms and the expanding sphere of [laissez-faire] liberalism is inevitable.

Someone else with good judgment about this, Edward Hudgins, observes that "explaining suicide terrorism by way of purely political calculations is superficial and naive. Most suicide killers, in fact, are religious or ideological fanatics." Al-Qaeda terrorists do not want to only alter U.S. foreign policy, but to coerce us into living in "the kind of society to which their values lead: straight to the chamber of horrors that was Taliban Afghanistan."

Osama bin Laden wasn't "bullying back" on 9/11. He initiated the Terror Wars going on from 2001 to today -- he is the bully who started this ("bully" being too puny a word to describe bin Laden's brand of evil).

I implore you: The party that must be blamed first for 9/11 is not America or even the foreign policy that libertarians accuse of being too aggressive. The primary culprit we should blame for this war has been Osama bin Laden's own illiberalism all these years.

Moi

Stuart K. Hayashi







This is a picture of me.

This post serves no purpose other than to get my photograph to appear on the margin of this weblog. I hope this works; I'm not good at this sort of thing I'm also hoping that the photo won't send you to any outside link.



UPDATE several minutes later... I see it didn't work. I don't know if this is because I established this as a team weblog to begin with. But what I was attempting did work in Stu-Topia.

A Book Reviewer Who Doesn't Know the Definition of 'Book Review'

Stuart K. Hayashi

Jenny Turner was supposed to review the book Ayn Rand by Jeffrey Britting for the London Review of Books (referral from Rockwell; 11/3/05).

What Ms. Turner wrote can hardly be called a book review. You can see right on the top what the assigned subject was:

Ayn Rand by Jeff Britting [ Buy from the London Review Bookshop ] · Duckworth, 155 pp, £12.99

Yet, in this humungous mess belched out by Ms. Turner, we find that, out of all 49 of its paragraphs, Britting's book is only mentioned in three of them . . . in passing.

And in those three paragraphs, there are barely any references at all to Britting's writing style, to the manner in which he organized ideas, or in his presentation. Ms. Turner cares not to inform us whether this book is easy or difficult to read, whether it is worthy of interest by the general public or not, or whether it had any good or bad points.

You would expect the London Review of Books to notice that a book review's purpose is to assess the quality of work done by the author of the book being reviewed: in this case, the job Jeff Britting did with his book -- the one this publication claims to be reviewing, remember?

Turner's essay is a sham from the get-go, because it cannot be considered a book review by any reasonable standard. Instead, it's a review of Ayn Rand's reputation. Rather than address the quality of Jeff Britting's book, this "reviewer" launches a screed against the tome's subject.

Excuse, me, Ms. Turner, but if I wrote a book about Napoleon, you're supposed to talk about how well I wrote the book; not about how much you like or hate Napoleon.

Somebody needs to inform Jenny Turner and the London Review of Books that the publication's name isn't London Review of People. How difficult is it to understand that a book review is actually supposed to review a book?

He Denounced Japanese Internment When It Mattered

Stuart K. Hayashi


Steven Greenhut is the author of a terrific book about the horrors of eminent domain, titled Abuse of Power.

And, on Sunday, November 20, he produced a fascinating op-ed piece (referral from: L. Rockwell) about Orange County Register publisher R. C. Hoiles, who spoke out against the U.S. government's interment of Japanese-Americans when it mattered most: when this injustice was actually occurring.

As Greenhut observes, it's very easy for people today to condemn some horrible government action decades after the fact. It takes a real man, such as Hoiles, to speak out against it when it's happening. He was among a minority of people who spoke out for the rights of a minority whom bigots stereotyped as enemies of the American way on account of their being "unassimable" and coming from a "savage culture."

Speaking of people who stereotype minorities I am getting increasingly disappointed with Thomas Sowell. Greenhut's piece on the Japanese-American internment reminds me of this.

I found it quite self-contradictory that, in the very same column, Sowell endorsed the conclusions of two political books -- Greenhut's criticism of eminent domain and Michelle Malkin's apologia for Japanese-American internment.

Sowell correctly faults the governemnt for forcibly taking houses away from people, and yet he apparently doesn't fault the government for forcibly taking people away from their houses.

The real defenders of freedom are not jingoists, but people lik Hoiles who are rabidly in favor of laissez-faire enterprise and civil liberties and privacy rights equally.

Not surprisingly, Hoiles counted himself as an admirer of Ayn Rand's.

His is an example worth following.

Right On, Tibor!

Stuart K. Hayashi

Last Saturday, C-SPAN aired a panel discussion held at the second annual Liberty Film Festival. I taped it because its participants included communist-turned-neoconservative Ronald Radosh (ho-hum), NewsMax writer James Hirsen (ho-hum), and the Ayn Rand Institute's Jeff Britting, who was a co-producer of Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life (excellent!).

I was rather disappointed in the event, as Jeff Britting only got to have his say about three times. The moderator from the American Enterprise Institute pretty much let the leftwing movie critic Richard Schickel interrupt everyone else whenever he wanted.

Fortunately, business ethicist Tibor R. Machan of the International Society for Individual Liberty noticed what was wrong with this "discussion": "I think Jeff Britt[ing], with his Randian ideas, was treated shabbily and hypocritically." How shabbily?

Upon airing these views as Rand’s, Britting was told his ideas are ridiculous—by Schickle and some others. Even Ron Radosh, who is an ex-Communist but has long since recanted, made a special point of dismissing and deriding Rand’s viewpoint on this issue.

What did these people object to?

The gist of it went that if one seriously disapproves of someone's views, one has every right (and often ought) to boycott them. Otherwise one is aiding and abetting someone who is working against one’s ideals. Accordingly, if one is pro-capitalist and they are procommunist, one has the right and maybe even the responsibility to boycott and, if possible, blacklist them.

This really is a simple idea: Jews who didn't wish to purchase German cars even way after WWII were engaging in such a justified boycott -- refusing to give jobs to and enrich Germans who were very likely complicit in the horrors of Nazism. If one refuses to hire someone to clean one’s home or type one’s manuscripts or whatever, someone who is an avowed or secret but well enough known communist, one is doing the right thing. If one, a pro-choice advocate, refuses to do business with pro-life advocates, this makes perfectly good moral sense.

Generally, Rand held that one has every right to make a determination who one will freely do business with. She was not advocating any government action against the Hollywood folks. She did, however, think they were morally depraved for giving aid and comfort to Soviets and their American spies. So Hollywood had every right, even responsibility, to boycott or blacklist them.

Free speech means that you can say whatever you want to anyone willing to listen, without violating anyone else's right to life or property and without any other party -- government or otherwise -- threatening violence upon you on account of your speech. The threat of violence is embodied in every injunction, every citation, and every regulation of government since, the more one resists the law, the more severe the penalty will be enforced by armed government officials.

Free speech means that I can either make a movie out of my own screenplay or sell my screenplay to any studio wishing to purchase it. If I want someone other than myself to make a film out of my treatment, then I can only rightfully make this happen if I have the other party's permission. We have a natural, Lockean right to do this without anyone -- government-employed or otherwise -- threatening violence on us in order to coerce us to stop.

Free speech does not mean that, if no one will buy my screenplay willingly, I have the right to have the government or some gang of thugs coerce some film studio to purchase it under the threat of violence for noncompliance. That isn't upholding my right to free speech; it is violating the right of the studio to its own property -- and thus violating the free speech rights of the studio's owners. The right to free speech entails the right of any private citizen to refuse participation in any form of expression outside a court of law.


Interestingly, the movie Schickel called "the best of 2004" actually glamorized a real-life wealthy Hollywood producer who was a very outspoken participant in the blacklist. I suppose he likes seeing Hollywood producers consistently practicing capitalism in biopics but not in concrete reality.


The second-best panelist was James Hirsen, since he pointed out that Joseph McCarthy was right that Soviet agents really had infiltrated the U.S. federal government. But he didn't voice any support for Britting's view, I'm sad to say.

I should have known that only Dr. Machan would give this event the criticism it deserves.

UPDATE from Wednesday, November 9, 2005: I also like this November 8 column of Dr. Machan's about the hypocrisy of media corporations distributing motion pictures that denounce corporations per se.

Middle-Eastern Civilians More Murderous than American Ones?

Stuart K. Hayashi


I have often been told that Middle-Eastern Muslims should not be allowed to immigrate into the United States, because they are "culturally stuck in the Stone Age and murder is inherent to their culture."

When I ask people making such accusations to actually bother backing themselves up with statistics, they tell me that I'm just plain "ignorant of Muslim culture. If you weren't ignorant, you would understand that the Middle-Eastern culture enshrines murder and that Middle-Eastern immigrants carry that cultural baggage with them when they settle in the U.S. and Europe."

But if one is going to accuse an entire demographic of people of being murderous, one should actually look at the hard data collected on the number of murders. And it won't help to simply create a long list of all the murders ever committed by Muslims, because that doesn't put anything into perspective. That has no context. If one wants to prove that an immigrant from a Muslim-dominated country is likelier to commit murder than someone born in a Western country like America, then one should compare the murder rates of Muslim-dominated countries to Western ones.

When it comes to murder committed by the State itself, it is difficult to compete with an Islamic fundamentalist state like that of Iran or Saudi Arabia. For information on mass murder committed by national governments, one can check out information provided by Rudolph J. Rummel.

However, the story is different when it comes to the civilian populations of various countries, according to a chart provided by the United Nations Survey on Crime, which takes into account murders in general, as opposed to just "honor" killings.

The people who keep telling me about how Middle-Eastern immigrants are so likely to commit "honor" killings didn't provide me with statistics on this when I asked them for it last week, so I had to find this information myself. According to Human Rights Watch, one third of all the homicides in Jordan -- the Islamic country that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is from -- are "honor" killings.

Additionally, there were 400 "honor" killings in Yemen in 1997, and, out of the 812 homicides performed in Egypt in 1995, 52 were "honor" killings.

Expect some people to cite those statistics as proof that all Muslims are evil, without bothering to measures these figures against murders committed by non-Muslims or the number of Muslims who have not been charged with murder or domestic violence.

Inthe United States, where Muslims comprise only 1 percent of the population, there are 4 civilian-committed murders for every 100,000 people per year. That's a higher annual murder rate than in places like India, whose 144 Muslims comprise 13.4 percent of the population, the Muslim-dominated constitutional monarchy of Yemen, and Azerbaijan, which is 93.4 percent Moslem. The murder rates for India, Yemen, and Azerbaijan are all 3 civilian-committted murders per 100,000 people.

And Qatar,a Middle-Eastern nation that is 95 percent Muslim, the notorious Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia, which is 88 percent and which has seen attacks from particularly vicious Islamic terrorists, have the respective annual rates of civilian-committed murder: 1 per million per year (since the country has fewer than 1 million residents, this suggests that , occasionally a year may go by without any civilian-committed murders) 4 per million, and 1 per 100,000.

If these figures are corect, then that means that Qatar and Saudi Arabia have fewer civilian-committed murders than many of the more civilized countries that Middle-Easterners often migrate to: Norway (1 per 100,000), Denmark (1 per 100,000), Holland (the place where an Islamic fanatic murdered Theo Van Gogh, 1 per 100,000), the United Kingdom (1 per 100,000), and Canada (1 per 100,000).

It also means that Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia have fewer civilian-committed murders per population than even more countries that Middle-Eastern immigrants flock to: Australia (2 per 100,000), France (2 per 100,000 [my rightwing critics would have you believe that the riots in France prove the evil of Middle-Eastern immigrants, of course, but we have yet to see how this will affect the overall trend in France]), and Finland (3 per 100,000). And all these countries have fewer murders per person per year than the USA.

And let's return to the subject of Jordan, where one third of all homicides are "honor" killings. That comes down to an estimated average of 33.4 "honor" killings out of 100 civilian-committed murders per year in a country with a population of 5.759 million people. That's an annual murder rate of approximately 2 people per 100,000 per year.

And we can also revisit Egypt, in which there were a total 812 recorded civilian-created murders in 1995. If that were the number of people civilians murdered per year, in a population of 77.5 million, then that also comes to an annual murder rate of 2 per 100,000.

That would mean that even Jordan and Egypt have fewer civilian-committed murders than Finland, India, Romania, and the United States.

None of this is to say that you are less likely to be violently killed in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Jordan than in the United States. The opposite is true! It's just that the party doing the vast majority of killing in illiberal, Islamic fundamentalist countries is the authoritarian government.

It it the autocratic states of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Iran that prop up the terrorists who have waged war against the West. Middle-Eastern immigrants flee to America, Finland, Holland, and Australia to escape from being executed by the State over something harmless like being homosexual, charging usury, or saying something blasphemous.

The point is not that Muslim countries are safer than America. They clearly aren't. The point is that, when somebody asserts -- without citing any statistics, mind you -- that allowing Middle-Easterners from Mohammedan countries to immigrate into Western countries will necessarily increase the Western coutries' murder rates, he doesn't make a rational case.

When my critics say that a Middle-Eastern Muslim immigrant is likelier to murder me than a native-born American, because that immigrant will "refuse to assimilate into American culture, and will isntead behave in America the same way he did in his home country," that rightwing critic refutes himself.

If an immigrant from Islamic Yemen is just as likely to murders someone when he's in America as he would be in Yemen, then there is a 33-percent greater chance of an American murdering that Yemenese alien than for that Yemenese alien to murder an American.

If my critics choose to dismiss the U.N. statistics I have cited, then I challenge them to come up with better, more reliable statistics. My critics can call me "ignorant of Middle-Eastern culture" all they want. The truth remains that, as long as my critics go along prattling about how letting Middle-Eastern peoples freely immigrate into the United States will necessarily increase the likelihood of my being murdered, their case will be based upon nothing but presumptions if they do not present any statistical data to support their inflammatory claims.

A Note About Changes at 'The Fiftieth Star'

Stuart K. Hayashi

As he has noted in the previous post, Fiftieth Star writer Grant Jones has started a new blog titled The Dougout.

For the record, he will remain on The Fiftieth Star's team and will still post here occasionally. However, The Dougout will now be his primary blog. More of his writing will appear there than over here. For Mr. Jones's many fans, The Dougout is the site to bookmark.

As of this moment, I am unsure about the future of The Fifieth Star. Before Mr. Jones's arrival on this blog, I had gone for an entire year without posting anything on it. I cannot promise that I will post on this blog very often in the near (or even distant) future.

I apologize for any disappointment this may cause our readers.

Rest assured, however, that this will probably not be the final post on The Fiftieth Star, which is currently undergoing a transitory phase.



UPDATE from Friday, November 4, 2005: Grant Jones will not be making any occasional posts on this blog in the future. Those who wish to read his work are directed solely to his new blog, The Dougout.

I Hate Moving

Grant Jones

But, sometimes it is necessary. I've started a new weblog called The Dougout.

Thanks to all the visitors of The 50th Star.