May 6, 2008
A Taste of the 2nd Blog Novel - The Human Hoax
HIS WILL STAY ON TOP. SEE BELOW FOR NEW POSTS!
I have finally posted the Prelude and the first five chapters of the second Mac Mackenzie novel, THE HUMAN HOAX. Wish I had time to write more, but at least this might give you a taste of what's to come...if I can ever find time in my busy life.
I have posted my entire first novel as a BLOG NOVEL. It's a private eye mystery that naturally contains a lot of what interests me. To that extent, it's a kind of intellectual autobiograhy. But I hope it's a good read. Go there now: THE SATAN MANEUVER
Posted by witnit at 1:42 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
May 22, 2007
Lois McMaster Bujold
decided to look up the list of Hugo Award and Nebula Award nominees and winners over the years.
And I kept seeing this name come up: Lois McMaster Bujold. I haven't read much good science-fiction lately. So I thought I'd try her out. I picked up Cordelia's Honor, which combines two of her novels into one grand story.
It was great fun and SMART. I've gone one to read her series of Miles Vorkosigan novels and stories and find them great as well.
If you're looking for something new in Sci-Fi (sorry hardcore readers), check Lois out. She's a great writer and smart storyteller.
Posted by witnit at 4:26 PM | Comments (1)
March 6, 2007
Francisco d'Anconia
f there were one fictional character in all literature I would like to meet and spend time with, I think that person would be Francisco d'Anconia. If that name means nothing to you, then click on the extended entry below and read what he has to say about money being the root of all good. It's heady stuff, but makes a number of fascinating point about the true nature of capitalism, something that does not fully exist in this country, and perhaps cannot possibly exist given the nature of people. Nevertheless, I like the way he thinks. And if you ever take the time to read the powerful and dramatic book that he walks through like a Titan, you may understand why I would like to know him. Google his name if you must.
**********
Rearden heard Bertram Scudder, outside the group, say to a girl who made some sound of indignation, "Don't let him disturb you. You know, money is the root of all evil — and he's the typical product of money." Rearden did not think that Francisco could have heard it, but he saw Francisco turning to them with a gravely courteous smile.
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor — your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?
"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions — and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made — before it can be looted or mooched — made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.
"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss — the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery — that you must offer them values, not wounds — that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of GOODS. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade — with reason, not force, as their final arbiter — it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability — and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?
"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality — the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth — the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Money is your means of survival. The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money — and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it."
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another — their only substitute, demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich — will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt — and of his life, as he deserves.
"Then you will see the rise of the double standard — the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money — the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law — men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims — then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion — when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing — when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors — when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you — when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are.
"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while your damning its life-blood — money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves — slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers — as industrialists.
"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money — and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being — the self-made man — the American industrialist.
"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose — because it contains all the others — the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity — to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.
"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide — as, I think, he will.
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns — or dollars. Take your choice — there is no other — and your time is running out."
Posted by witnit at 11:10 AM | Comments (5)
The Trial of Hank Rearden
f you like what Francisco d'Anconia had to say about money, you might also like to read about the trial of Hank Rearden, a character that has a lot in common with Francisco. Hank embodies the kind of businessman Francisco talks about.
**********
For a month in advance, the people who filled the courtroom had been told by the press that they would see the man who was a greedy enemy of society; but they had come to see the man who had invented Rearden Metal.
He stood up, when the judges called upon him to do so. He wore a grey suit, he had pale blue eyes and blond hair; it was not the colours that made his figure seem icily implacable, it was the fact that the suit had an expensive simplicity seldom flaunted these days, that it belonged in the sternly luxurious office of a rich corporation, that his bearing came from a civilised era and clashed with the place around him.
The crowd knew from the newspapers that he represented the evil of ruthless wealth; and - as they praised the virtue of chastity, then ran to see any movie that displayed a half-naked female on its posters - so they came to see him; evil, at least, did not have the stale hopelessness of a bromide which none believed and none dared to challenge. They looked at him without admiration - admiration was a feeling they had lost the capacity to experience, long ago; they looked with curiosity and with a dim sense of defiance against those who had told them that it was their duty to hate him.
A few years ago, they would have jeered at his air of self-confident wealth. But today, there was a slate-grey sky in the windows of the courtroom, which promised the first snowstorm of a long, hard winter; the last of the country's oil was vanishing, and the coal mines were not able to keep up with the hysterical scramble for winter supplies. The crowd in the courtroom remembered that this was the case which had cost them the services of Ken Danagger. There were rumours that the output of the Danagger Coal Company had fallen perceptibly within one month; the newspapers said that it was merely a matter of readjustment while Danagger's cousin was reorganising the company he had taken over. Last week, the front pages had carried the story of a catastrophe on the site of a housing project under construction: defective steel girders had collapsed, killing four workmen; the newspapers had not mentioned, but the crowd knew, that the girders had come from Orren Boyle's Associated Steel.
They sat in the courtroom in heavy silence and they looked at the tall, grey figure, not with hope - they were losing the capacity to hope - but with an impassive neutrality spiked by a faint question mark; the question mark was placed over all the pious slogans they had heard for years.
The newspapers had snarled that the cause of the country's troubles, as this case demonstrated, was the selfish greed of rich industrialists; that it was men like Hank Rearden who were to blame for the shrinking diet, the falling temperature and the cracking roofs in the homes of the nation; that if it had not been for men who broke regulations and hampered the government's plans, prosperity would have been achieved long ago; and that a man like Hank Rearden was prompted by nothing but the profit motive. This last was stated without explanation or elaboration, as if the words "profit motive" were the self-evident brand of ultimate evil.
The crowd remembered that these same newspapers, less than two years ago, had screamed that the production of Rearden Metal should be forbidden, because its producer was endangering people's lives for the sake of his greed; they remembered that the man in grey had ridden in the cab of the first engine to run over a track of his own Metal; and that he was now on trial for the greedy crime of withholding from the public a load of the Metal which it had been his greedy crime to offer in the public market.
According to the procedure established by directives, cases of this kind were not tried by a jury, but by a panel of three judges appointed by the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources; the procedure, the directives had stated, was to be informal and democratic. The judge's bench had been removed from the old Philadelphia courtroom for this occasion, and replaced by a table on a wooden platform; it gave the room an atmosphere suggesting the kind of meeting where a presiding body puts something over on a mentally retarded membership.
One of the judges, acting as prosecutor, had read the charges.
"You may now offer whatever plea you wish to make in your own defence," he announced.
Facing the platform, his voice inflectionless and peculiarly clear, Hank Rearden answered:
"I have no defence."
"Do you --" The judge stumbled; he had not expected it to be that easy. "Do you throw yourself upon the mercy of this court?"
"I do not recognise this court's right to try me."
"What?"
"I do not recognise this court's right to try me."
"But, Mr. Rearden, this is the legally appointed court to try this particular category of crime."
"I do not recognise my action as a crime."
"But you have admitted that you have broken our regulations controlling the sale of your Metal."
"I do not recognise your right to control the sale of my Metal."
"Is it necessary for me to point out that your recognition was not required?"
"No. I am fully aware of it and I am acting accordingly."
He noted the stillness of the room. By the rules of the complicated pretence which all those people played for one another's benefit, they should have considered his stand as incomprehensible folly; there should have been rustles of astonishment and derision; there were none; they sat still; they understood.
"Do you mean that you are refusing to obey the law?" asked the judge.
"No. I am complying with the law - to the letter. Your law holds that my life, my work and my property may be disposed of without my consent. Very well, you may now dispose of me without my participation in the matter. I will not play the part of defending myself, where no defence is possible, and I will not simulate the illusion of dealing with a tribunal of justice."
"But, Mr. Rearden, the law provides specifically that you are to be given an opportunity to present your side of the case and to defend yourself."
"A prisoner brought to trial can defend himself only if there is an objective principle of justice recognised by his judges, a principle upholding his rights, which they may not violate and which he can invoke. The law, by which you are trying me, holds that there are no principles, that I have no rights and that you may do with me whatever you please. Very well. Do it."
"Mr. Rearden, the law which you are denouncing is based on the highest principle - the principle of the public good."
"Who is the public? What does it hold as its good? There was a time when men believed that 'the good' was a concept to be defined by a code of moral values and that no man had the right to seek his good through the violation of the rights of another. If it is now believed that my fellow men may sacrifice me in any manner they please for the sake of whatever they deem to be their own good, if they believe that they may seize my property simply because they need it - well, so does any burglar. There is only this difference: the burglar does not ask me to sanction his act."
A group of seats at the side of the courtroom was reserved for the prominent visitors who had come from New York to witness the trial. Dagny sat motionless and her face showed nothing but a solemn attention, the attention of listening with the knowledge that the flow of his words would determine the course of her life. Eddie Willers sat beside her. James Taggart had not come. Paul Larkin sat hunched forward, his face thrust out, pointed like an animal's muzzle, sharpened by a look of fear now turning into malicious hatred. Mr. Mowen, who sat beside him, was a man of greater innocence and smaller understanding; his fear was of a simpler nature; he listened in bewildered indignation and he whispered to Larkin, "Good God, now he's done it! Now he'll convince the whole country that all businessmen are enemies of the public good!"
"Are we to understand," asked the judge, "that you hold your own interests above the interests of the public?"
"I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals."
"What ... do you mean?"
"I hold that there is no clash of interests among men who do not demand the unearned and do not practice human sacrifices."
"Are we to understand that if the public deems it necessary to curtail your profits, you do not recognise its right to do so?"
"Why, yes, I do. The public may curtail my profits any time it wishes - by refusing to buy my product."
"We are speaking of ... other methods."
"Any other method of curtailing profits is the method of looters - and I recognise it as such."
"Mr. Rearden, this is hardly the way to defend yourself."
"I said that I would not defend myself."
"But this is unheard of! Do you realise the gravity of the charge against you?"
"I do not care to consider it."
"Do you realise the possible consequences of your stand?"
"Fully."
"It is the opinion of this court that the facts presented by the prosecution seem to warrant no leniency. The penalty which this court has the power to impose on you is extremely severe."
"Go ahead."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Impose it."
The three judges looked at one another. Then their spokesman turned back to Rearden. "This is unprecedented," he said.
"It is completely irregular," said the second judge. "The law requires you submit to a plea in your own defence. Your only alternative is to state for the record that you throw yourself upon the mercy of the court."
"I do not."
"But you have to."
"Do you mean that what you expect from me is some sort of voluntary action?"
"Yes."
"I volunteer nothing."
"But the law demands that the defendant's side be represented on the record."
"Do you mean that you need my help to make this procedure legal?"
"Well, no ... yes ... that is, to complete the form."
"I will not help you."
The third and youngest judge, who had acted as prosecutor snapped impatiently, "This is ridiculous and unfair! Do you want to let it look as if a man of your prominence had been railroaded without a --" He cut himself off short. Somebody at the back of the courtroom emitted a long whistle.
"I want," said Rearden gravely, "to let the nature of this procedure appear exactly for what it is. If you need my help to disguise it - I will not help you."
"But we are giving you a chance to defend yourself - and it is you who are rejecting it."
"I will not help you to pretend that I have a chance. I will not help you to preserve an appearance of righteousness where rights are not recognised. I will not help you to preserve an appearance of rationality by entering a debate in which a gun is the final argument. I will not help you to pretend that you are administering justice."
"But the law compels you to volunteer a defence!"
There was laughter at the back of the courtroom.
"That is the flaw in your theory, gentlemen," said Rearden gravely, "and I will not help you out of it. If you choose to deal with men by means of compulsion, do so. But you will discover that you need the voluntary co-operation of your victims, in many more ways than you can see at present. And your victims should discover that it is their own volition - which you cannot force - that makes you possible. I choose to be consistent and I will obey you in the manner you demand. Whatever you wish me to do, I will do it at the point of a gun. If you sentence me to jail, you will have to send armed men to carry me there - I will not volunteer to move. If you fine me, you will have to seize my property to collect the fine - I will not volunteer to pay it. If you believe that you have the right to force me - use your guns openly. I will not help you to disguise the nature of your action."
The eldest judge leaned forward across the table and his voice became suavely derisive: "You speak as if you were fighting for some sort of principle, Mr. Rearden, but what you're actually fighting for is only your property, isn't it?"
"Yes, of course. I am fighting for my property. Do you know the kind of principle that represents?"
"You pose as a champion of freedom, but it's only the freedom to make money that you're after."
"Yes, of course. All I want is the freedom to make money. Do you know what that freedom implies?"
"Surely, Mr. Rearden, you wouldn't want your attitude to be misunderstood. You wouldn't want to give support to the widespread impression that you are a man devoid of social conscience, who feels no concern for the welfare of his fellows and works for nothing but his own profit."
"I work for nothing but my own profit. I earn it."
There was a gasp, not of indignation, but of astonishment, in the crowd behind him and silence from the judges he faced. He went on calmly:
"No, I do not want my attitude to be misunderstood. I shall be glad to state it for the record. I am in full agreement with the facts of everything said about me in the newspapers - with the facts, but not with the evaluation. I work for nothing but my own profit - which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it for their benefit at the expense of mine, and they do not buy it for my benefit at the expense of theirs; I do not sacrifice my interests to them nor do they sacrifice theirs to me; we deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage - and I am proud of every penny that I have earned in this manner. I am rich and I am proud of every penny I own. I made my money by my own effort, in free exchange and through the voluntary consent of every man I dealt with - voluntary consent of those who employed me when I started, the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who buy my product. I shall answer all the questions you are afraid to ask me openly. Do I wish to pay my workers more than their services are worth to me? I do not. Do I wish to sell my product for less than my customers are willing to pay me? I do not. Do I wish to sell it at a loss or give it away? I do not. If this is evil, do whatever you please about me, according to whatever standards you hold. These are mine. I am earning my own living, as every honest man must. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence and the fact that I must work in order to support it. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it better than most people - the fact that my work is of greater value than the work of my neighbours and that more men are willing to pay me. I refuse to apologise for my ability - I refuse to apologise for my success - I refuse to apologise for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it. If this is what the public finds harmful to its interests, let the public destroy me. This is my code - and I will accept no other. I could say to you that I have done more good for my fellow men than you can ever hope to accomplish - but I will not say it, because I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognise the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life. I will not say that the good of others was the purpose of my work - my own good was my purpose, and I despise the man who surrenders his. I could say to you that you do not serve the public good - that nobody's good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices - that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the right of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say to you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation - as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won't. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise. If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own - I would refuse. I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!"
The crowd burst into applause.
Rearden whirled around, more startled than his judges. He saw faces that laughed in violent excitement, and faces that pleaded for help; he saw their silent despair breaking out into the open; he saw the same anger and indignation as his own, finding release in the wild defiance of their cheering; he saw the looks of admiration and the looks of hope. There were also the face of loose-mouthed young men and maliciously unkempt females, the kind who led the booing in newsreel theatres at any appearance of a businessman of the screen; they did not attempt a counter-demonstration; they were silent.
As he looked at the crowd, people saw in his face what the threats of the judges had not been able to evoke: the first sign of emotion. It was a few moments before they heard the furious beating of a gavel upon the table and one of the judges yelling:
" -- or I shall have the courtroom cleared!"
As he turned back to the table, Rearden's eyes moved over the visitor's section. His glance paused on Dagny, a pause perceptible only to her, as if he were saying: It works. She would have appeared calm except that her eyes seemed to have become too large for her face. Eddie Willers was smiling the kind of smile that is a man's substitute for breaking into tears. Mr. Mowen looked stupefied. Paul Larkin was staring at the floor. There was no expression on Bertram Scudder's face - or on his wife, Lillian's. She sat at the end of a row, her legs crossed, a mink stole slanting from her right shoulder to her left hip; she looked at Rearden, not moving.
In the complex violence of all the things he felt, he had time to recognise a touch of regret and longing: there was a face he had hoped to see, had looked for from the start of the session, had wanted to be present more than any other face around him. But Francisco d'Anconia had not come.
"Mr Rearden," said the eldest judge, smiling affably, reproachfully and spreading his arms, "it is regrettable that you should have misunderstood us so completely. That's the trouble - that businessmen refuse to approach us in a spirit of trust and friendship. They seem to imagine that we are their enemies. Why do you speak of human sacrifices? What made you go to such an extreme? We have no intention of seizing your property or destroying your life. We do not seek to harm your interests. We are fully aware of your distinguished achievements. Our purpose is only to balance social pressures and do justice to all. This hearing is really intended, not as a trial, but as a friendly discussion aimed at mutual understanding and co-operation."
"I do not co-operate at the point of a gun."
"Why speak of guns? This matter is not serious enough to warrant such references. We are fully aware that the guilt in this case lies chiefly with Mr. Kenneth Danagger, who instigated this infringement of the law, who exerted pressure upon you and who confessed his guilt by disappearing his guilt by disappearing in order to escape trial."
"No. We did it by equal, mutual, voluntary agreement."
"Mr. Rearden," said the second judge, "you may not share some of our ideas, but when all is said and done, we're all working for the same cause. For the good of the people. We realise that you were prompted to disregard legal technicalities by the critical situation of the coal mines and the crucial importance of fuel to the public welfare."
"No. I was prompted by my own profit and my own interests. What effect it had on the coal mines and the public welfare is for you to estimate. That was not my motive."
Mr. Mowen stared dazedly about him and whispered to Paul Larkin, "Something's gone screwy here."
"Oh, shut up!" snapped Larkin.
"I am sure, Mr. Rearden," said the eldest judge, "that you do not really believe - nor does the public - that we wish to treat you as a sacrificial victim. If anyone has been laboring under such a misapprehension, we are anxious to prove that it is not true."
The judges retired to consider their verdict. They did not stay out long. They returned to an ominously silent courtroom - and announced that a fine of $5,000 was imposed on Henry Rearden, but that the sentence was suspended. Streaks of jeering laughter ran through the applause that swept the courtroom. The applause was aimed at Rearden, the laughter - at the judges.
Rearden stood motionless, not turning to the crowd, barely hearing the applause. He stood looking at the judges. There was no triumph in his face, no elation, only the still intensity of contemplating the enormity of the smallness of the enemy who was destroying the world. He felt as if, after a journey of years through a landscape of devastation, past the ruins of great factories, the wrecks of powerful engines, the bodies of invincible men, he had come upon the despoiler, expecting to find a giant - and had found a rat eager to scurry for cover at the first sound of a human step. If this is what has beaten us, he thought, the guilt is ours.
He was jolted back into the courtroom by the people pressing to surround him. He smiled in answer to their smiles, to the frantic tragic eagerness of their faces; there was a touch of sadness in his smile.
"God bless you, Mr. Rearden!" said an old woman with a ragged shawl over her head. "Can't you save us, Mr. Rearden? They're eating us alive, and it's no use fooling anybody about how it's the rich that they're after - do you know what's happening to us?"
"Listen, Mr. Rearden," said a man who looked like a factory worker, "it's the rich who're selling us down the river. Tell those wealthy bastards, who're so anxious to give everything away, that when they give away their palaces, they're giving away the skin off our backs." "I know it," said Rearden.
The guilt is ours, he thought. If we who were the movers, the providers, the benefactors of mankind, were willing to let the brand of evil be stamped upon us and silently to bear punishment for our virtues - what sort of "good" did we expect to triumph in the world? He looked at the people around him. They had cheered him today; they had cheered him by the side of the track of the John Galt Line. But tomorrow they would clamour for a new directive from Wesley Mouch and a free housing project from Orren Boyle, while Boyle's girders collapsed upon their heads. They would do it, because they would be told to forget, as a sin, that which had made them cheer Hank Rearden.
Why were they ready to renounce their highest moments as a sin? Why were they willing to betray the best within them? What made them believe that this earth was a realm of evil where despair was their natural fate? He could not name the reason, but he know that it had to be named. He felt it as a huge question mark within the courtroom, which it was now his duty to answer.
This was the real sentence imposed upon him, he thought - to discover what idea, what simple idea available to the simplest man, had made mankind accept the doctrines that led it to self-destruction.
Posted by witnit at 11:09 AM | Comments (19)
Francisco's Take on Sex
rancisco d'Anconia also has something very interesting to say about sex, a statement that is ironic given his reputation as a playboy. He has this conversation with Hank Rearden.
**********
"Do you remember what I said about money and about the men who seek to reverse the law of cause and effect? The men who try to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind? Well, the man who despises himself tries to gain self esteem from sexual adventures-which can't be done, because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a man's sense of his own value."
"You'd better explain that."
"Did it ever occur to you that it's the same issue? The men who think that wealth comes from material resources and has no intellectual root or meaning, are the men who think-for the same reason- that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of one's mind, choice or code of values. They think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you just about in some such way as if iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you Ins valuation of himself. No matter what corruption he's taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self- exaltation only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body and to accept his real, ego as his standard of value. He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience- or to fake-a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer- because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut. He does not seek to. . . What's the matter?" he asked, seeing the look on Rearden's face, a look of intensity much beyond mere interest in an abstract discussion.
"Go on," said Rearden tensely.
"He does not seek to gain his value, he seeks to express it. There is no conflict between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body. But the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to a woman he despises-because she will reflect his own secret self, she will release him from that objective reality in which he is a fraud, she will give him a momentary illusion of his own value and a momentary escape from the moral code that damns him. Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives-and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy. One proceeds from the other. Love is our response to our highest values-and can be nothing else. Let a mail corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws-and he will have cut himself in two, His body will not obey him, it will not respond, it will make him impotent toward the woman he professes- to love and draw him to the lowest type of whore he can find. His body will always follow the ultimate logic of his deepest convictions; if he believes that flaws are values he has damned existence as evil and only the evil will attract him He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worthy of enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that vice is the only realm of pleasure. Then he will scream that his body has vicious desires of its own which his mind cannot conquer, that sex is sin, that true love is a pure emotion of the spirit. And then he will wonder why love brings him nothing but boredom, and sex-nothing but shame."
Rearden said slowly, looking off, not realizing that he was thinking aloud, "At least . . . I've never accepted- that other tenet . . . I've never felt guilty about making money."
Francisco missed the significance of the first two words; he smiled and said eagerly, "You do see that it's the same issue? No, you'd never accept any part of their vicious creed. You wouldn't be able to force it upon yourself. If you tried to damn sex as evil, you'd still find yourself, against your will, acting on the proper moral premise. You'd be attracted to the highest woman you met. You'd always want a heroine. You'd be incapable of self-contempt. You'd be unable to believe that existence is evil and that you're a helpless creature caught in an impossible universe. You're the man who's spent his life shaping matter to the purpose- of his mind. You're the man who would know that just-as an idea unexpressed in physical action is contemptible hypocrisy, so is platonic love-and just as physical action unguided by an idea is a- fool's self-fraud, so is sex when cut off from one's code of values. It's the same issue, and you would know it. Your inviolate sense of self-esteem would know it. You; would be incapable of desire for a woman you despised. Only the man who extols the purity of a love devoid of desire, is capable of the depravity of a desire devoid of love. -But observe that most people are creatures cut in half who keep swinging desperately to one side or to the other. One kind of half is the man who despises money, factories, skyscrapers and his own body. He holds undefined emotions about non-conceivable subjects as the meaning of life and as his -claim to virtue. And he cries with despair, because he can feel nothing for the woman he respect8, but finds himself in bondage to an irresistible- passion for a slut from the gutter. He is the man whom people- call an idealist. The other kind of half is the man whom people call practical, the man who despises principles, abstractions, art, philosophy and his own mind. He regards the acquisition of material objects as the only goal of existence-and he laughs at the need to consider their purpose or their source. He expects them to give him pleasure-and he wonders why the more he gets, the less he feels. He is the man who spends his time chasing women. Observe the triple fraud which he perpetrates upon himself. He will not acknowledge his need of self-esteem, since he scoffs at such. a concept as moral values; yet he feels the profound self-contempt which comes from believing that he is a piece of meat. He will not acknowledge but he knows that sex is the physical expression of a tribute to personal values. So he tries, by going through the motions of the effect, to acquire that which should have been the cause. He tries to gain a sense of his own value from the women who surrender to him-and he forgets that the women he picks have neither character nor judgment nor standard of value. He tells himself that all he's after is physical pleasure-but observe that he tires of his women in a week or a night, that he despises professional whores and that he loves to imagine he is seducing virtuous girls who make a great exception for his sake. It is the feeling of achievement that he seeks and never finds. What glory can there be in the conquest of a mind- less body? Now that is your woman-chaser. Does the description fit me?"
"God, no!"
"Then you can judge, without asking my word for it, how much chasing of women I've done in my life."
"But what on earth have you been doing on the front pages of newspapers for the last-isn't it twelve years?"
"I've spent a lot of money on the most ostentatiously vulgar parties I could think of, and a miserable amount of time on being seen with the appropriate sort of women. As for the rest-" He stopped, then said, "I have some friends who know this, but you are the first person to whom I am confiding it against my own rules: I have, never slept with any of those women. I have never touched one of them." "What is more incredible than that is that I believe you."
The lamp on the floor beside him threw broken bits of light across Francisco's face, as he leaned forward; the face had a look of guiltless amusement. "If you care to glance over those front pages, you'll see that I've never said anything. It was the women who were eager to rush into print with, stories insinuating that being seen with me at a restaurant was the sign of a great romance. What do you suppose those women are after but the same thing as the chaser-the desire "to gain their own value from the number and fame of the men they conquer? Only it's one step phonier, because the value they seek is not even in the actual fact, but in. the impression on and the envy of other women. Well, I gave those bitches' what they wanted-but what they literally wanted, without the pretense that they expected, the pretense that hides from them the nature of their wish. Do you think they wanted to sleep with me or with any man? They wouldn't be, capable of so real and honest a desire. They wanted food for their vanity-and I gave it to 'them. I gave them the chance to boast to their friends -and to see themselves in the scandal sheets in the roles of great seductress. But do you know that it works in exactly .1 the same way as what you did at your trial? If you want to defeat any kind of vicious fraud-comply with it literally, adding nothing of your own to disguise its nature. Those women understood. They saw whether there's any satisfaction in being envied by others for a feat one has not achieved. Instead of self-esteem, their publicized romances with me have given them a deeper sense of inferiority: each one of them knows that she's tried and failed,. If dragging me into bed is supposed to be her public standard of value, she knows that she couldn't live up to it. I think those women hate me more than any other man on earth. But my secret is safe-because each one of them thinks that she was the only one who failed, while all the others succeeded, so she'll be the more vehement in swearing to our romance and will never admit the truth to anybody."
Posted by witnit at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)
September 28, 2006
The Human Hoax
've written the first 5 chapters of the second book of Mac Mackenzie's story that I began in THE SATAN MANEUVER.
I want to get about 100 manuscript pages completed for Part One. I hope to get these up around Thanksgiving, so those of you who have finished the first book, hang in there. It gets cookin'.
Posted by witnit at 3:47 PM | TrackBack
September 19, 2006
Typhoonless Taiwan with Dragon's Breath
he weather is moderate here in Taiwan. The jet-lag not too bad. I'm doing three days training a trainer here.
I've also started a new trilogy of fantasy novels that Peter Jackson (diretor of Lord of the Rings) has optioned for movie-making purposes. The novels are by Naomi Novik: His Majesty's Dragon, Throne of Jade, and Black Powder War. Imagine the Napoleanic Wars with dragons for aerial combat. Patrick O'Brien meets Anne McCaffrey. You get the idea.
Big thumbs up. Temeraire is one heck of an interesting dragon (in His majesty's service, of course).
You can also read a short story involving this dragon at the temeraire.org website.
Posted by witnit at 5:18 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 4, 2006
Christmas 1776
his holiday weekend, we honor and remember
our original American heroes.
It was bitter cold, the kind of cold that hurts to the bone, the kind of icy wind that slashes the skin like cold razors. The night before, Christmas Eve, The General had met with his senior officers at Nathanael Greene's headquarters to go over the attack plans one last time.
One force of 1500 Pennsylvania militia and veteren Rhode Island troops would cross the Delaware at Bristol and advance on Burlington, led by Cadwalader and Reed. A second force of 700 Pennsylvania militia would cross at Trenton and hold a wooden bridge. The third and largest force, 2400 Continental Army soldiers, would cross nine miles above Trenton at McKonkey's Ferry before turning south toward Trenton, dividing into two columns led by Greene and Sullivan. The General would ride with Greene.
The crossing would be completed at midnight, Christmas night, the advance to Trenton throughout the night would end in a 6:00 a.m. attack in darkness. Absolute silence was the law that came down from The General to all 4600 troops. The password for the night was "Victory or Death."
The General was now sitting on his horse, observing his troops warming themselves around makeshift fires, tattered uniforms tugged tightly around them, exhausted faces, some stumbling from the seemlingly endless exertions. Each man carried sixty rounds of ammo and three days worth of food in the freezing rain.
They had crossed the Delaware in high, flat-bottomed Durham boats. An ominous full-blown northeaster storm had arrived, and broken sheets of ice covered the river. Getting horses, men, and cannon on those boats and across that ice-filled, strong-current river in that freezing cold, biting rain, pounding hail, and whipping snow with oars and poles required real heroism. The only good news--the storm had covered the sounds of their crossing.
Two men froze to death that night. To survive on the far side of the river, the men had to pull down fences and start fires, turning themselves round and round, since facing the fire meant freezing their backsides.
It was 3:00 am, three hours behind schedule, and The General knew there was no turning back. He had no way of knowing that General Ewing and General Cadwalader had greater trouble with the ice-covered river and had already called off their attacks. The General's plans had been completely shattered.
As the 2400 marched south, the weather took a turn for the worse, battering the troops with rain, sleet, snow, and vicious hail. The road rose steeply for more than half a mile, then dropped into a ravine. Numb with cold, and moving at a child's pace, the troops staggered on doggedly observing The General's law of silence. To stop and give in to the numbness was to lay down and die.
After hiking five miles, the troops split, Sullivan's troops to the right, Greene and The General's troops to the left. Only four more miles of miserable hiking to go on the slick icy road. The General rode up and down the column urging his men on. This was The General's first time with them as a field commander about to attack. When informed that the men's guns were too soaked to fire, The General told them to use their bayonets.
The two columns reached Trenton an hour after daybreak, at about 8:00 a.m. Most of the people of Trenton had fled, leaving their homes and public buildings to 1500 Hessian soldiers, led by Colonel Rall, who only held contempt for the rebel army. Rall had been alerted to a Christmas attack on Trenton 15 hours earlier. Not long after, a small rebel patrol had fired on a dozen Hessian guards. Rall assumed this was the attack he had been warned about. Given the blinding weather, it never occurred to him that a larger force was doggedly marching down on him. Christmas night, Rall lay drunk in his bed.
The Continental Army attacked in the driving snow, which was blowing at their backs and into the faces of their enemy. The General watched from a nearby hill as 2400 Americans, wet, cold, and having stayed on their feet all night, pressed forward, forcing the Hessian guards to retreat.
More Hessians rushed from houses and barracks to face violent cannon fire down several streets. The main streets were cleared in minutes, but the Hessians found troops with bayonets waiting for them in the side streets. More than a thousand Hessians and Americans savagely fought house to house. The air was saturated with snow and smoke, dual storms battling in the streets of Trenton.
The enemy brought out a field gun, and immediately several Viriginians, including a young Lieutenant James Monroe, seized the gun, turning it on the Hessians. Colonel Rall was rousted out of bed, leaped onto his horse, ordered a charge, watched the line falter, ordered a retreat, and then was mortally hit, falling from his horse.
In less than 45 minutes, 21 Hessians were killed, 90 wounded, 900 taken prisoner, and 500 fled.
Only four Americans were wounded, none killed.
"The general, with the utmost sincerity and affection, thanks the officers and soldiers for their spiritual and gallant behavior at Trenton yesterday. It is with inexpressible pleasure that he can declare that he did not see a single instance of bad behavior in either officers or privates."
Not since taking command a year and a half earlier had The General given his troops such words of praise as he did after that fight.
And the Continental Army, all 2400 of them, looked upon their General George Washington, and they loved him.
Warriors know that a war must be won in the mind before it can be won in the field. The victory at Trenton, so unexpected that many at first did not believe it, changed the course of the American mind. In days, newspapers everywhere were filled with accounts of The General, George Washington, and his crossing of the Delaware, the miserable night march, the surprise attack, the numbers of men taken prisoner. Post riders quickly spread the word even further.
After that night, the American victory over the British was assured.
On July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years to the day of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, having retired to his home in Monticello, Virginia, to ponder such projects as his grand designs for the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson died peacefully.
On July 4, 1826, that same 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, having retired to his farm in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts, where he penned his elaborate letters to Thomas Jefferson, John Adams also died, whispering his last words: "Thomas Jefferson survives." But Jefferson had died at Monticello a few hours earlier.
Some people claim there is no divine Providence, nor any divine hand working in the founding of this great country. But then, that choice, that freedom to believe or not, is at the heart of true Providence. And at the heart of the American Experiment.
Please don't let your children forget. Teach them well about the founders of this country. Help them to read with pleasure the writings of Jefferson and Adams, Madison's notes on the Convention, The Federalist Papers, and the U.S. Constitution. Never in the history of the world have so many men with such great wisdom ever lived at one place at one time to come together to choose the path of a nation.
More than most, they deserve reverence and remembrance.
-----
A special thanks to David McCullough and his new book 1776 for inspiring this account.
--------
Posted by witnit at 2:27 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 13, 2006
Reading List
read a mention of the great Robert Crais over at Pun Salad. If you've never read Robert Crais, especially his Elvis Cole P.I. series, you're in for a treat. Cole is an L.A. Private Eye, with an apparently brutish friend named Pike, who likes Mickey Mouse and getting into trouble. Crais is a top-notch writer, and if you want a line on where to start, go to his page at booksnbytes.com and start with The Monkey's Raincoat.
This past week I started a couple new authors (for me). Stuart Woods and W.E.B. Griffin. I've known about both for a while, but because of my tendency to start from the beginning of an author and work my way through, I had some to finish up, like Lee Childs, another great writer with his Jack Reacher series.
I've already read the first two Stone Barrington novels by Woods. I have the rest in a stack. I'm now in the middle of the first The Corps novel, Semper Fi, and enjoying the hell out of it. It starts in Shanghai, 1941, where I'll be in a few days, in space if not in time. I'm going to take several more Griffin and Woods books with me on these next two trips.
If you like mystey/military/PI/justice kind of books, these are all good reading. I should also throw in Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone books, which I just ran through a few weeks ago. The writing and character is very similar to Spenser, but still good reading.
Posted by witnit at 2:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 10, 2006
101 Most Dangerous Academics
PDATE: Horowitz interviewed by NRO.
David Horowitz has published a new book: The Professors - The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. There's also a blog: Dangerous Professors.
You will find that many of these academics are involved in "Peace" studies, which often means apologizing for terrorists, seeing the U.S. as the real aggressor, and advocating pacifist stances that if adhered to in WWII would have meant the domination of the Nazis. You will also find racists who speak our against racism by demonizing other races, and feminists who barely disguise their hatred of men. And all of them will fill their classrooms with a kind of intolerant tolerance. Here is the list broken down by University. I'll be adding comments or links to let you know why each is dangerous (Not all of them are, methinks):
Arcadia University
Warren Haffar Haffar likens international terrorists to the American Indians, observing that, historically, ?they were looked upon as savages.?
Ball State University
George Wolfe ?Well regardless of how many students would be lost in the shooting there is no good reason to fire back.?
Baylor University
Marc Ellis
Boston University
Howard Zinn "Clearly, Bush is not trying to placate the population, but he is trying to placate his corporate supporters who will benefit hugely from military contracts and from his tax program."
Brandeis University
Gordon Fellman
Dessima Williams
Brooklyn College
Priya Parmar
Timothy Shortell
California State University, Fresno
Sasan Fayazmanesh "To follow the saga of USrael's attempt to use Iran's alleged WMD to overthrow the Iranian government, I will chronicle below a sample of news reports..."
California State University, Long Beach
Ron (Maulana) Karenga
City University of New York
Stanley Aronowitz
Bell Hooks
Leonard Jeffries
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Columbia University
Lisa Anderson
Gil Anidjar "Can anyone seriously claim that the problem with Islamic countries is Islam?"
Hamid Dabashi
Nicholas De Genova "a million Mogadishus."
Eric Foner
Todd Gitlin Former President of the SDS
Manning Marable Reparations for black slavery
Joseph Massad
Victor Navasky Longtime editor of The Nation
Cornell University
Matthew Evangelista
De Paul University
Norman Finkelstein Jewish elites have manufactured a Holocaust Industry.
Aminah Beverly McCloud
Duke University
Miriam Cooke Gives thumbs up to the Taliban
Frederic Jameson
Earlham College
Caroline Higgins
Emory University
Kathleen Cleaver Former Black Panther
Foothill College
Leighton Armitage "Of course [the Jews are] buying our elections, which really pisses me off."
Georgetown University
David Cole
John Esposito
Yvonne Haddad Islam's Sensitivity Trainer
Mari Matsuda
Holy Cross University
Jerry Lembcke
Kent State University
Patrick Coy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Noam Chomsky "It is important to be aware of the profound commitment of Western opinion to the repression of freedom and democracy, by violence if necessary."
Metropolitan State College, Denver
Oneida Meranto
Montclair State University
Grover Furr A Scholar for Stalin
New York University
Derrick Bell
North Carolina University
Gregory Dawes
Northeastern University
M. Shahid Alam Defender of Jihad
Elizabeth M. Brumfiel
Bernardine Dohrn Former Weather Underground member [This listing may be more appropriate under Northwestern University.]
Occidental College
Penn State University
Michael Berube
Sam Richards Penn State's Ward Churchill
Princeton University
Richard Falk
Purdue University
Harry Targ Not Dangerous?
Rochester Institute of Technology
Thomas Castellano
Rutgers University
H. Bruce Franklin Radical Marxist
Michael Warner Literary Theory and Queer Theorist
Rutgers University, Stony Brook
Amiri Baraka Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed / Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers / To stay home that day / Why did Sharon stay away
San Francisco State University
Anatole Anton Another boring Marxist
Saint Xavier University
Peter Kirstein "Why I am described as ?dangerous? is somewhat puzzling to me. After all I merely call for a communist America."
Stanford University
Joel Beinin He denounces American imperialism on Al-Jazeera TV.
Paul Ehrlich Always wrong all the time.
State University of New York, Binghamton
Ali al-Mazrui Another Jihad apologist
State University of New York, Buffalo
James Holstun Another boring Marxist
State University of New York, Stony Brook
Michael Schwartz Another proponent of The Military Is All Wrong All the Time
Syracuse University
Greg Thomas
Temple University
Melissa Gilbert
Lewis Gordon
Texas A&M University
Truman State University
Marc Becker "Believing that both the Iraqi people and the American people have the right to determine their own political and economic futures (with appropriate outside assistance), we call for the restoration of cherished freedoms in the United States and for an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq."
University of California, Berkeley
Hamid Algar "You stupid Armenians, you deserve to be massacred!?
Hatem Bazian "How come we don?t have an intifada in this country?"
Orville Schell
University of California, Irvine
Mark Le Vine
University of California, Los Angeles
Vinay Lal
University of California, Riverside
Armando Navarro
University of California, Santa Cruz
Bettina Aptheker Another Marxist, and a radical feminist
Angela Davis A geniune idiot
University of Cincinnati
Marvin Berlowitz Another Marxist
University of Colorado, Boulder
Ward Churchill A profound liar and demigogue
Alison Jaggar Radical femnist
University of Dayton
Mark Ensalaco Not dangerous?
University of Denver
Dean Saitta Another boring Marxist
University of Hawaii, Manoa
Haunani-Kay Trask Born in the San Francisco Bay Area but declares "I am NOT an American. I will DIE before I become an American!"
University of Illinois, Chicago
Bill Ayers "I don?t regret setting bombs."
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Robert McChesney
University of Kentucky
Ihsan Bagby
University of Michigan
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Gayle Rubin Lesbian feminist
University of Northern Colorado
Robert Dunkley Exam question: Explain why George Bush is a war criminal.
University of Oregon, Eugene
John Bellamy Foster
University of Pennsylvania
Regina Austin
Mary Frances Berry
Michael Eric Dyson Attacks Bill Cosby
University of Rhode Island
Michael Vocino ?My name is Michael Vocino and I like dick.?
University of South Florida
Sami al-Arian Active supporter of terrorists
University of Southern California
Laurie Brand America bad all the time
University of Texas, Arlington
Jose Angel Gutierrez
University of Texas, Austin
Dana Cloud
Robert Jensen
University of Washington
David Barash Another "Peace Studies" professor
Villanova University
Rick Eckstein ANOTHER anti-war Marxist
Suzanne Toton More pacifist peace studies (and scaring students about a new military draft)
Western Washington University
Larry Estrada Does American Studies include white people?
--------
Posted by witnit at 8:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
