If you're sniffing the money, do it quietly

So here we go again, where business freedom, religious values and equality laws clash. At "The Way the Ball Bounces" Richard recounts two cases, one in the UK and one in PEI, of devoutly Christian accommodation owners running into the wrath of Stonewall - a gay advocacy group - and the HRC. 

We cherish business freedom as a foundation of the free market, and our own freedom to do as we please as the bedrock of democracy. When these appear to conflict with the law of the land, we are quick to cry foul and demand legislative change. Is this rage always justified?

"Money doesn't stink" - Adam Smith would say if he were explaining the market to an ignoramus as me. Picky owners of businesses that provide a service to the public (a.k.a. all businesses) sniff the money before taking it. Should they have the right to? Definitely, but it's not smart.

Denying an advertised service based on nothing but personal belief flaunts the law, and advocate of personal freedom as I may be, I recognize the supremacy of the statute book. Business owners have a duty to know the letter of the law of the jurisdiction they operate in. Would you argue in favour of a Christian who is being done in Iran for selling alcohol? Or a Muslim shopkeeper who refuses entry to women not wearing a headscarf? I wouldn't.

There isn't a law that can't be circumvented. The B&B owners who want to discriminate should simply make their services by invitation only. Have prospective bookers fill out a form online asking several questions and waive their right to appeal if the invitation is denied. Denying services to people who misrepresented themselves is perfectly legal, or at least gives you more of a case. After all, you're still pushing the envelope without a cost justification.

If you can't prove a cost, comply.

Establishments have no-pets policies because of the added clean-up, no-children policies because of potential insurance issues and over-occupancy policies because of perceived fire hazards, to say. 

Washing sheets that have been bonked on will cost the same, whoever soiled them.

Obam-ology bashed

The good old Times cautions against placing excessive hopes on Barack Obama and bestowing virtues and laud upon him before seeing the goods. I will not lie, I like the guy. The policies he proposes are as sure to miss their targets as American missiles are of missing Bin Laden when there's no US election coming, but he gave the heir presumptive Billary the roughest ride of her life, and maybe the boot out of politics.

In a recent reply on his "Italians" blog, Corriere Della Sera journalist Beppe Severgnini argued that an Obama nomination would ensure the grassroots and "new electorate" he galvanized will come out and vote Democrat in November, while Clinton on the ballot paper would suffice to disillusion them, securing a Republican victory. This is possibly true, and it would be a sad reality. It would indicate an Obama personality cult of sorts, an "Obama or nothing" mentality that would damage the Democrats far beyond the drawn-out nomination race we are witnessing.

Hailed as the breath of fresh air with a bit of anti-establishment feeling, Obama has charmed many to the point that nothing seems to sink his ship. From reverend Wright to Hamas-entangled aides through blue-collar insults, his campaign does not seem to suffer.

This is worrying. He hasn't been the subject of the kind of scrutiny most presidential candidates go through, and hasn't been held to account for his weaknesses as a person aiming for such high office should. He may be inspiring and charming, but I fear for his ego.

The premature sanctification of St Barack of Chicago (or Honolulu if semantics is important) is consistent with the savior ideology many Dem fans adhere to. This kind of thinking is likely to give President Obama a power trip, which can only result in ill-thought measures being rushed through a blue Congress in the wake of popular (or factional) enthusiasm. Hoping for a messiah weakens people's perceptions of their liberties as well, as they entrust the newly-come prophet with any authority he may demand to carry out the promised "Change We Can Be Duped Into".

It would be interesting to investigate how the party that champions civil liberties (but also statism) can be the egg that hatches the biggest threat to American freedoms and Americans' love of them since the Patriot Act. For my part, I'd stay safe with McCain and a weak Democratic majority in one of the Houses.

Score one for common sense and justice

Slamming courts whose rulings make no sense may be fun, but giving credit where credit is due is mostly a pleasant task. Ontario's Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the sex offender registry, with Justice Blair noting the likelihood of reoffending trumps the freedoms of the criminal.

The Globe and Mail made my day sunnier. The score since yesterday is thus

Justice: 1, Nonsense: 1.

If more judges had Robert Blair's common sense we'd all rest more assured that the laws of the land were in safe hands to interpret.

Our freedom is not secure

I am one to mind if a corrupt loser government shuts off its own people's access to information. I am also one to really mind if that meddling touches half the globe.

Pakistan's telecoms authority evidently wanted to pull an enormous joke on us, since their zeal outed YouTube not only within the confines of the piece of land cursed by the rule of that congregation of mediocrity and idiocy, but on half the planet.

This SNAFU is a very worrying sign of the vulnerability of the world's information highways to the arbitrary whim of any dictatorship. Today it's Pakistan, tomorrow it could be anyone from Uzbekistan to North Korea. I would appreciate our communication providers secured our access to what is rightfully ours, from funny videos to anything one (but not me) might define un-islamic or contrary to any sort of faith precept. Failing to safeguard our freedoms will bring nothing but misery in a very foreseeable future.

Arab governments conspire against freedom of speech

They are at it again, in the name of their own style of social cohesion and obscurantism as we haven't seen since the times of the Inquisition.

Governments of several Arab countries have voted in favour of a media code which stipulates that broadcasters should conform to Islamic rules and values, "not threaten public order" and plenty more of such nonsense. Al Jazeera (of all!) has been banned from several Arab countries and is one of the most vocal opponents of such moves, and if one googles the words "arab media code" this article comes up top.

Kudos to Lebanon for not giving in to such mediocrity. Information, despite what those oil-drunk pseudo-leaders of the Arab League may think, is about opinions, facts, reporting and above all: Information is about the TRUTH. Which in the Arab world seems to be more inconvenient than Bacardi 151 and Jenna Jameson put together.

Smart Power is yesterday!

Anyone advocating "smart power" as a combination of brute force and attractiveness misses a key point: we have lost the lead in it.

America had a great opportunity to exercise its smart power, having emerged victorious from the cold war. Their model was triumphant, their military might unparalleled and feared the world over. People saw the US as a shining light at the end of a tunnel.

What do we have today? Compare the US to a company with a "panic button" which represents brute force. In the rare occasions when the panic button is pushed everyone gives 110% to ensure the company stays afloat. The panic button is revered and its call is taken as an appeal to an employee's honour and loyalty. But what if the panic button keeps on being pushed every five minutes? Everyone is disillusioned, people seek alternative employment, the company falls apart.

Same thing with the US today. By squandering its military might in useless efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq the US have weakened their appeal for their military failures bleaken their successes in other areas. It's not about imposing your way of thinking and your system on populations who in all honesty aren't ready for it. National security is about mere survival. If somebody threatens to nuke you, you nuke him first. Plain and simple, use force only when needed. Instead the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have become a mishmash of national security, flawed democracy, Halliburton and God knows what else.

The US can't use smart power at all because they lack one of the components, and Europe is too weak on its own. They've got the "I told you not to" high ground, but this is no good tactic for attracting people to your model.

Where will "smart power" come from then? My bets are on India and China. Nations are eyeing up to them as a model for economic development, these countries are investing in Africa and Central Asia, they know their stuff. They don't waste time arguing with the US because they know there's a whole world out there ready to be conquered. You can't mess with them as their military (especially nuclear) might is something to fear without hesitation. Face it, they've got the lead now and they will use it.

Our soft power is our only resort. And we can use it only if we expand our horizons showing everyone else that we are doing it and achieving marvellous results. What are our assets?

1) Education. Our systems are the best. In their diversity they give the individual something beyond mere technical knowledge necessary for his/her profession. It is a global outlook and hopefully a mind that values ambition and effort. As long as other educational systems focus on the utilitarian approach to education, we've got a competitive advantage that we must rub in their faces. Not to impose our system on them, but to encourage them to change their system to something maybe even better than ours!

2) Our values.

We are founded on freedom. Freedom for an individual to dream, to live according to his wills, to satisfy his wants, to make his own decisions.

We are founded on rights. The right to own yourself and everything associated with your life, to own property and dispose of it as you see fit, to pursue your ambitions, to express your thinking and seek knowledge.

We are founded on the individual. Everything begins and ends at every single one of us. No entity is above the individual and his imprescriptible rights. No family, no State, no culture.

These mere three values are worth more than any might, because we are in the RIGHT. We have to realise this and stand armed with these three spears against the aggression by sets of values that aim to impose constraints on our rights, on our freedom or on the individual as a whole. And I speak of China especially here.

3) Trade. The exchange of goods fosters more efficient production and ultimately the best use of resources. Trade is a double-edged weapon, and we can use both edges. It is a vector for conveying our success to others (e.g. exporting our better products) as well as a coercion tool (I won't trade with you because you are crap). Let me exemplify with two controversial case studies:

a) GM seeds being sold to Africa. Now I am no expert in the field of agriculture, but if someone can't grow anything good on his land and we have something that'll grow like mad, it seems reasonable that we will want to sell this good and the poor sod will want to buy it. Free trade, duh. If the African countries don't want to be dependent on our seeds then sometime soon they'll realise that maybe building a lab and a factory is a better investment than buying AK-47s for rebels in a neighbouring country. Their squandering of their own resources and of our aid is no concern of ours because in a liberal world the entity has the right to make wrong decisions.

b) The Jackson-Vanik amendment and the extensions of it I advocate. If trade is free then I'm free to choose whom to trade with. And if the country doesn't satisfy my criteria then I must be free to not trade with them. If we set our criteria wisely we can compel the most despotic and mediocre countries into reform. Not necessarily "our reform", but some kind of change driving them into a new direction.

But is this all? Is it the usual "clash of civilisations" talk? Us against them? Right against wrong? Good against Evil? The never-ending deadlock that lies at the origin of today's troubles, trapping us in a spiral of mediocrity and utter short-sightedness and idiocy? Of course not. If we want others to change and follow our lead we've got to demonstrate we are going somewhere.

Now I maintain that our way of thinking as defined by the culture of freedom, independence, free trade and liberalism is the best so far achieved by mankind. While other mentalities/cultures might have enhanced certain positive aspects of human beings (industriousness, attachment to one's family, loyalty, etc) they have failed miserably to achieve the fine balance that allows our yet imperfect society to function as the leader in world progress. We've made the G7, for God's sake!

The greatest asset we possess is the ability to challenge ourselves and our knowledge. We can think centuries ahead, dream up new ideas, new approaches, new ways of thinking. Our greatest treasure and our best export is therefore ambition and the willingness to pursue it.

We've got an advantage over those able to use smart power: our soft power is stronger, is based on solid ground and is open to progress. Lets therefore focus on developing our thinking and rubbing our advantage into the faces of those who think they're smart enough to progress without reforming their ways.

If we are strong enough to demonstrate our superiority despite a lack of hard power we will show hard power is barely needed at all in a globalised, informatised, liberalised and ultimately CIVILISED world.

On education and freedom

As John F. Kennedy once said, Liberty without Education is always in peril, Education without Liberty is always in vain.

What did he mean? Does it imply that we shouldn't teach people in undemocratic countries, or that in countries where education is failing liberties should be taken away out of fear of misuse?

Totally oppositely, as you might have guessed, JFK merely meant to express in simple terms a very straightforward truth: we need to be free to learn, and we need to learn to be free. The world has been driven by two powerful forces: Man's desire of freedom and Man's desire to know.

How do these two forces interact? The possible interpretations are as numerous as the grains of sand in a desert, but let me pick one of them and look at it in detail.

Education is not all about mnemonics. You might learn whole books by heart and still never understand how to apply the general knowledge you have acquired. Whether you know that 2+2 is 4 doesn't mean you grasp the principle behind addition.

Education is the development of a human mind into something unique, powerful and independent. The whole purpose of teaching children to read is to enable them to acquire further knowledge later in both academic and independent study. A teacher's purpose is to teach students to ask themselves questions, and seek answers.

But what happens when you ask yourself questions, and seek answers? You don't think just about the elementary things in life; you might wander into the abstract realms of philosophical thinking, taking human nature and the world to bits in order to analyse it.

Here's where liberty becomes essential. Philosophical and independent thinking in general require no boundaries for it to be set, to foster exploration and discovery of new concepts and doctrines. Had the ancients surrounded their lands with walls assuming there was nothing beyond, Columbus would have never been an explorer.

Free thinking, independent philosophical analysis and knowledge development occur only in those societies that are prepared to accept or debate the new findings in order to establish their validity. Where this is not the case, human beings drift into a state of idleness, performing only subsistence tasks without challenging the marvellous ability given to us in the form of critical thinking.

What is then the purpose of breeding new thinkers and educated people if we will deny them the right to develop their thinking talent and share their findings with us? Whereby we deny the liberty to think in a novel way, we take all purpose away from education beyond the level needed to carry out basic subsistence tasks such as counting the money at a rural market stall. This is unacceptable and is an insult to the human nature of Man.

Taking a look at the problem from the opposite direction, we notice a different focus. Whereby we have the freedom but not the infrastructure to deliver education and knowledge, people find themselves in an awkward situation of handling the precious gift of freedom without knowing even which way to hold it. We witness this situation in recently freed countries such as de-colonised Africa. Leaving aside the many responsibilities of the colonising powers in creating today's problems, we notice a particularly worrying trend.

Sub-Saharan Africa's crippling or non-existent education is an endemic problem brought by many factors such as unrest and poverty, and there's a vicious circle which makes these countries spiral deeper into trouble. Let us take a part of this chain, lack of education.

What happened? With de-colonisation, peoples who were used to some sort of domination (foreign, tribal or other) were bestowed with a precious gift which was independence and freedom to run themselves as a country. However, their critical thinking had not been fostered (full blame goes to the colonising powers), thus the newly-acquired freedom was squandered by loyalties arising along ethnic, religious or other lines instead of becoming a loyalty to the newly-freed community. As if this wasn't enough on its own, unscrupulous (and frequently uneducated but ferocious) leaders indoctrinated their people to believe that the only way to settle a dispute is to kill your opponent.

We left these populations at the mercy of unscrupulous warlords, unaware of how precious independence and liberty were to give them away. Had we educated these populations and opened their minds to the vast ocean of knowledge that centuries of civilisations have helped to fill, the value of freedom would have been much more appreciated.

All this serves to prove one essential point, grasped fully by Kennedy. As much as we need to set no boundaries to human thought and independence, we also have a moral obligation to empower people to cross known boundaries and explore the world outside their mindsets. Miss out on one of those commitments, and all your efforts are vain and result in nothing but waste and disaster.