Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Obama Engages Dictators, Abandons Pro-Democracy Movements
Friday, September 25, 2009
Interns Deserve Pay Too
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Local Media Scrutinizes Students for Justice in Palestine
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Pittsburgh: Proof that Capitalism Works
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Student Radicals Mistaken in Assault on Capitalism
Friday, September 18, 2009
Senate Votes to Allow Guns on Amtrak
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Camping Protesters Violate City Law, Residents' Rights
A group of six local and national protest organizations filed a federal lawsuit on Friday against the city, the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the Secret Service, The Post-Gazette reported. The suit alleges that the three defendants have conspired to deny protesters their First Amendment rights by failing to approve a number of permits for G-20 related protests.
Represented by American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania attorney Witold Walczak, the six plaintiffs are Code Pink, The Thomas Merton Center, Pittsburgh Outdoor Artists, Bail Out the People, G6 Billion and the Three Rivers Climate Convergence.
They are petitioning U.S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster to decide exactly how close to the convention center protesters will be allowed to go and to order the issuance of permits by the city.
The permits sought involve a variety of protests including a march from Oakland to downtown sponsored by the Merton Center and the erection of tent cities by Code Pink and the Three Rivers Climate Convergence in Point State Park. Similarly, Bail Out the People and Pittsburgh Outdoor Artists want to camp in East Park and South Side Riverfront Park, respectively.
This question of camping in parks and erecting tent cities is really the most baffling to me as a Pittsburgher because, rather than view this as a free speech issue, I see this as a question of the law and the rights of Pittsburgh tax payers.
City code states “No person in a park shall camp except with permission of the Director and only for groups of persons under adequate supervision. No person shall set up tents, shacks or any other temporary shelter for the purpose of overnight camping…”
Importantly, the parks director has not given these groups permission to camp in the parks, it would be almost impossible to adequately supervise these groups while they camp and it would be a violation of city code for these organizations to set up tents overnight.
These regulations govern the activity of every resident of this city throughout the year and I see no reason why thousands of protesters from out of town should be able to violate these regulations based on a flimsy claim that the First Amendment protects camping.
A statement on g20media.org, self-described as an “information clearinghouse and media support for dissent at the Pittsburgh G-20 Summit,” called on activists to “claim Pittsburgh parks for the people” and “affirm the people’s right to use the people’s commons for our activities.”
But these activists don’t represent the will of the residents of this city and their assertion of a right to our public parks to use for their activities is ridiculous. The citizens of this city whose taxes pay for the maintenance of these parks will be excluded from them if these activists have their way and are allowed to use our parks as free housing for the duration of the G-20 Summit.
For all of their criticism of the G-20 leaders who activists claim represent an “undemocratic” imposition on the world and on our city, at least the G-20 leaders, diplomats and attending press corps will be paying for their lodging while they’re here. But instead of paying for their housing, activists are asking a federal judge to allow them to violate city regulations and set up tent cities in our parks.
There is nothing more undemocratic than thousands of protesters from out of town asking a federal judge to overturn the judgement of the elected leaders of the city of Pittsburgh.
The G-20 Summit itself represents an inconvenience to many Pittsburghers with traffic jams, security cordons and closed businesses that many of us would not have chosen to bring to our city. That being said, it isn’t right for us to also have to confront the kind of violence and vandalism that G-20 protesters have brought to cities such as London, Seattle and Genoa when they’ve hosted international summits.
The protesters planning to camp in public parks, hold unpermitted protests against scores of local businesses and hold unpermitted marches in Pittsburgh neighborhoods are taking our city from us over the span of two days and then have the gall to speak on our behalf.
Let me put it simply, the G-20 protesters do not represent the interests or opinions of an overwhelming majority of Pittsburghers who would prefer to have the use of their parks, streets and businesses the week of the G-20 Summit. It is inappropriate for protesters to assume the mantle of “the people” while they try to take from us our parks and our city.
Monday, September 14, 2009
For Your Awareness...
Channeling the public theater of Soviet show trials, much of campus politics are based on appearances rather than effect. One of my favorite public displays of useless self-righteousness was when Students Taking Action Now for Darfur (STAND) painted a tent on the lawn of the William Pitt Union to raise awareness about genocide.
Take note incoming freshmen, “awareness” is a word that dominates campus politics.
Why? Because raising awareness is a goal without tangible results. STAND couldn’t claim to stop genocide by painting a tent but they could claim to be informing people through a public spectacle that had no effect on the University of Pittsburgh let alone the nation of Sudan.
Such stunts are necessary because most campus political organizations are focused on major global issues that are impossible for them to affect.
They won’t. But they justify their existence by claiming to “help spread the word, make the population aware, distribute information, and have meetings.”
Similarly, the International Socialist Organization, International Students for Healthcare Reform and Immigrant Care, Campus Anti-War Network and the Students for Justice in Palestine all include language about raising awareness or educating the public as part of either their statement of purpose or list of activities.
Such organizations champion the causes of the hard-left using Student Government Board funds and tactics that could be called street theater at best. Painting tents, holding demonstrations on street corners and championing the cause of failed ideologies such as socialism makes these groups appear nothing more than a costly distraction.
But as ridiculous as the ideologies and tactics of many student groups are, it’s important to realize, as an incoming freshman or a graduating senior, that the image of the world they present is a distorted one.
In real life, governmental bodies don’t hand out money to people to host candle light vigils for Palestine.
In real life, genocides aren’t stopped with painted tents but with guns.
In real life, it’s what you do that matters far more than what you say and what awareness you raise.
Student organizations on the right and left at the University of Pittsburgh have created a fantasyland where moderates are marginalized and extremists are the norm. Not only does such a political atmosphere fail to prepare people for the actualities of American life, it creates a false environment where intention matters more than action.
In fact, the only aspect of the campus political atmosphere that is representative of the nation in general is party politics. Like their national counterpart, the College Republicans play a negligible role on Pitt’s campus.
After all, very few college students have any stake in the repeal of the estate tax.
Just as the College Republicans are in decline, the College Democrats are in ascent.
During the election, Pitt was one sprawling campaign office for Barack Obama with his face and name plastered everywhere. Not much has changed on campus with his victory except that there’s a bit more self-righteousness in the air.
Importantly, the College Democrats are fairly well funded as student organizations go thanks to generous SGB allocations.
This brings up an important point: These groups are spending your (or your parents’) money. Every foolish publicity stunt, every speaker who comes to talk about the plight of a new brutalized minority in Africa and every fringe publication is paid for by an SGB allocation.
So remember, the political similarities between a college campus and the world at large are limited. Don’t take any group too seriously and keep in mind the fact that you’re funding their stunts. It’s not wasted money as long as you get a good laugh every time they do something ridiculous on the Union lawn.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
The Rhetoric of the War on Terror
Its goals are laudable even if its execution has been flawed but as a term it has engendered partisan bickering and ideological conflict in a way that no martial phrase has in recent American memory. Both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration have attempted to phase out “The War on Terror” as a descriptor of American foreign policy in an attempt to dump the ideological baggage that comes with it and start over.
But the American people will always think of the current world conflict as “The War on Terror,” a phrase that came about logically in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The public consciousness on this issue will not be changed nor should it.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Hitchens Rebuts Afghan War Critics
Christopher Hitchens published a well-argued rebuttal to critics of the Afghan War who have begun to lay the foundation for American withdrawal from Afghanistan. I won’t attempt to summarize Hitchens’ point because I highly recommend you read it for yourself but he brought up two important points.
First, we’ve given the Afghans our word that we wouldn’t abandon them to the Taliban and their particular version of Islamic Medievalism. Too many good Afghans have stood alongside NATO forces and taken their country back from these Islamist thugs for us to leave them before they are capable of defending themselves and burying the Taliban for good.
Second, the campaign in Afghanistan is part of larger war against Islamic Terrorism that will most likely lead to conflict with the Iranian dictatorship. For this reason, Afghanistan is an important training and staging ground.
Anyway, I recommend that everyone read Hitchens this week and compare his reasoned argument with Thomas Friedman’s adoption metaphor and decide which one is most compelling. My money is on Hitchens.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Religious Rhetoric Has No Place in Health Care
This column was just published by The Pitt News. Read it and comment.
President George W. Bush and his Republican Party consistently used religious faith to justify their policy initiatives during the Bush administration’s eight years in office. Stridently opposed by the Left, Bush injected religion into every issue — from the war in Iraq to stem cell research — and used faith as a crutch to support weakly reasoned policies.
But the American Left that assailed Bush’s religious initiatives as a violation of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause has been remarkably silent now that President Obama is enlisting religious leaders in his health care reform assault. A clear sign of desperation, Obama and his Democratic allies have attempted to use faith to sell health care reform since June, when Democrats organized an Interfaith Week of Prayer on Health Care .
Of course, Obama’s use of religion in support of public policy has grown more brazen as the debate has grown more difficult. In an Aug. 19 speech before a group of religious leaders, Obama called his health care reform plan a “core moral and ethical obligation” and identified his opponents in the health care debate as “bearing false witness.”
Obama’s language is that of the most dangerous thief who would take money from the American worker and redistribute it to the unproductive in the name of morality. He has revealed his core ethical obligation to be a massive expansion of entitlement spending, contributing trillions of dollars to this nation’s deficit, and he justified the entire program through the language of religion rather than reason.
What’s worse is that Obama has enlisted religious leaders to sell this thinly veiled theft in a blatant violation of the intent of our Constitution. The Founders understood that collusion between religious institutions and the state was not in the interest of the citizenry’s liberty.
For this reason, the Founders included the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment, and presidents and politicians have respected this division between church and state for centuries. Indeed, the 13th president, Millard Fillmore, said, “I am tolerant of all creeds. Yet if any sect suffered itself to be used for political objects I would meet it by political opposition. In my view church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact. Religion and politics should not be mingled.”
But Obama has ignored this strong secular sentiment evident in our nation’s history and done exactly what Fillmore and the Founders warned future leaders not to do: mingle faith and politics.
Now Obama is spreading his bastardized brand of politics and religion across the country in a desperate attempt to recapture public support for health care reform. Just last Wednesday, Organizing for America sponsored a health care rally on Flagstaff Hill where both a priest and a congressman enjoined the crowd to
support Obama’s health care goals.
Just as the public use of religion to justify national policy demonstrated the intellectual poverty of the Republican Party during the last decade, Obama’s attempt to sell Americans on health care reform through faith rather than reason should be understood as a sign of weakness.
Indeed, it is a weak politician who cannot support his policy positions with facts and reasoned arguments but instead resorts to statements of belief and morality. This is just what the Democratic Left is doing today by relying on the language of religion and morality in the health care debate.
Toward this end, the Democratic Left has introduced the notion that health care is an inalienable human right that the government has a moral duty to provide to all Americans. This is a great lie designed to separate hard-working Americans from the fruits of their production and redistribute it to the unproductive.
It is a dangerous argument that suggests that the American people have a right to the services of doctors and hospital administrators that trumps the right of these medical professionals to work for their own profit. It is, plain and simple, an assault on individual liberty.
And it is in this assault on individual liberty that the Obama administration has found allies in the nation’s religious leaders. Religion tells man to love his neighbor as himself and to subordinate his interests to an almighty god, just as Obama’s statist ideology demands that citizens assume their neighbor’s burden as their own and submit their liberty to the almighty state.
Both ideologies are incompatible with the republican foundation of this country that’s Founders recognized religion and government as defining threats to individual liberty. When government and religion unite, they are certain to have only one goal: the subjugation of the individual American citizen.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
This Week's Pitt News Column
Tens of thousands of protesters are planning to descend on Pittsburgh in late September in order to oppose the G-20 summit being held at the David Lawrence Convention Center. Environmental groups, human rights organizations and advocates for the poor all plan on protesting the G-20 Summit and, although I disagree with many of them, I fully support their right to nonviolently express their opinions in public.
That being said, a small minority of protesters promises to physically disrupt the G-20 through illegal means. Organizing on the Internet, this minority has released countless statements denouncing capitalism as a brutal economic system responsible for the world’s ills.
One such group, the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project, calls the G-20 “the managers of our oppression” and is calling on people to “confront and disrupt the G-20 and its political, corporate and institutional enablers throughout the city” according to a proclamation on its website.
Toward this end, the Resistance Project is planning an unpermitted march in violation of city ordinance on Sept. 24.
According to plans detailed on its website, the march will involve unspecified “direct actions,” a term that has, at past international conferences in London and Seattle, served as code for violently disruptive protests and vandalism by other groups.
Most notably, the anarchist Direct Action Network planned protests against the World Trade Organization meeting in 1999 in Seattle that included the vandalism of storefronts, the smashing of windows and violent confrontations with police.
The Resistance Project has even posted a list of targets for unpermitted protests, including Starbucks, the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute and the Oakland Planning and Development Corporation on Atwood Street.
The Resistance Project also issued an online statement calling for supporters who cannot come to Pittsburgh to “plan local actions” and to “disrupt schools and financial institutions” as a form of protest against the G-20 Summit.”
But this vague language is a clear threat against educational institutions around this country and their ability to function free from the interference of extremists. What really piqued my interest was that a Pitt student organization, Students for Justice in Palestine, is listed on the site as having endorsed the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project.
Wondering why a student organization would support the disruption of educational activities, I spoke to Jonas Moffat, the group’s president. During our conversation, Moffat listed a series of grievances that, he said, justified his organization’s opposition to the G-20 Summit.
From President Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan to the state of health care in the United States, Moffat’s grievances had absolutely nothing to do with the policies of the G-20 but instead focused on the policies of the United States as an individual nation.
Moffat’s sole criticism of the G-20 was that it had excluded Iran and Venezuela from membership in the group even though both states possessed large international economies. Our conversation became more confrontational when I asked Moffat if he believed that Iran, as a state sponsor of terrorism, and Venezuela, as a socialist state opposed to international capitalism, should be allowed into an international body designed to promote economic cooperation.
He refused to answer the question, saying simply that some people (he didn’t specify who) believed it and then said that some people also believe that the United States is a sponsor of international terrorism. When asked to provide a yes-or-no answer as to whether the United States is an international sponsor of terrorism, Moffat said that my questioning was too aggressive and ended the interview.
In a later interview with The Pitt News, Moffat said that he declined to answer the questions because the members of Students for Justice in Palestine have many conflicting opinions and he didn’t think it would be right to give an opinion on behalf of his group or inject his own opinion. Moffat did say, however, that his group’s leaders and more active members voted on whether to endorse the proclamation, and the decision was unanimous.
I respect individuals who defend their convictions reasonably and factually, but for the leader of a student organization to defend his group’s actions through innuendo and suggestions is simply irresponsible. Moffat owes us an explanation of his reasoning because his organization is calling on students to take action against their schools.
Moffat’s group has endorsed a proclamation calling on students to disrupt schools, and his only justification for this is that the G-20 hasn’t allowed Venezuela and Iran, two nations ruled by dictators, to participate in the Summit.
This is ridiculous, and what’s even more disgusting is that every student on campus is funding this group’s activities through the student activities fee. According to Moffat, Students for Justice in Palestine received about $5,000 in funding from SGB last year and he expects to receive even more financial support from the University this year.
Certainly, the student activities fee is used to support a broad range of activist organizations with goals not every student agrees with.
But Students for Justice in Palestine has called on students to disrupt educational activities, and it is unconscionable that we should all be monetarily supporting its existence on campus. Academic funds should not go to those who do not respect the academic process and instead encourage its disruption.
Indeed, Pitt’s “Guidelines for Student Organization Certification” says that student organizations must “refrain from advocating, inciting or participating in any material interference or physical disruption of the University” and by calling on students to “disrupt schools,” Students for Justice in Palestine is employing language that has led to such violations in the past.
It is inappropriate that such a group be affiliated with or supported by this University, its administration or student body. At minimum, this organization’s certification should be suspended and their conduct reviewed by the Student Organization Resource Center.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Proposed Pittsburgh Ordinance Riles Gun Owners
An ordinance proposed by Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl includes a clause that would ban the carrying of 37 different firearms in the city “for the purpose of defeating lawful removal” by the police, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette reported.
Intended to prevent G20 protesters from carrying weapons, the ordinance has been construed by some gun owners and supporters of gun rights as a back door assault weapons ban and the NRA has been informed of the ordinance’s existence.
But where some see an attack on their liberty, I see this ordinance as a rational proposal to prevent protesting hooligans from carrying automatic weapons in the streets of Pittsburgh. Tens of thousands of people are expected to protest the G20 summit and not all of them are going to be peaceful.
Indeed, the ordinance wouldn’t ban people from owning or carrying these weapons; it would only ban the carrying of these weapons with intent to use them in opposition to police directives. The one and only problem I have with this ban is that some on City Council may use it as a way to maintain an indefinite ban on assault weapons in Pittsburgh.
For instance, according to the Post Gazette, the ordinance has no sunset provision so it remains in force indefinitely. Councilman Bruce Kraus has even suggested that the ban might be necessary for “daily policing.”
But just as the ordinance itself is an appropriate law enforcement measure in preparation for massive, potentially violent, demonstrations, it is inappropriate for lawmakers to use this ordinance after the G20 summit has happened.
This shouldn’t really be an issue and it hopefully won’t be one in the future as long as Pittsburgh’s political leaders behave like adults and don’t try to use the G20 as an excuse to further their personal agendas. Of course, that’s probably asking for too much.