Category Archives: Ayn Rand

This is a famous philosophical question, one that received prominent attention the last few years thanks to the late, lovely sitcom The Good Place. If you were to pose such a query to the protesters in some parts of America who are demanding an end to "stay at home" orders issued in response to the coronavirus pandemic, I suspect their answer would be: "not much."

This is a mistake, but an understandable one. Liberty, after all, is hardwired into the American psyche, and the limiting obligations of quarantine are in conflict with that instinct.

To recap: Demonstrators have hit the streets this week in Ohio, Kentucky, and North Carolina. On Wednesday, a protest in Michigan was dubbed "Operation Gridlock." Despite the firearms and Confederate battle flags, the protesters' demands might seem familiar, even sympathetic to most Americans. They want freedom freedom to go shopping, freedom to open up their businesses, freedom to go sit in a restaurant and have dinner with friends, freedom merely to do what they were doing unencumbered two months ago. Don't we all?

"Quarantine is when you restrict movement of sick people," one of the Michigan organizers told Fox News. "Tyranny is when you restrict the movement of healthy people."

But what if the free movement of healthy people creates more sick people? The protesters may soon find out many defied "social distancing" requirements, clumping together in close groups without masks and raising the possibility that this week's protests will be the source of next week's outbreak.

"We know this rally endangered people," Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) said afterward.

The anti-quarantine stance is driven by a powerful American impulse. Our country's story has been told to us primarily in terms of freedom: who has it, who doesn't, how we got it, how some of us had to fight for it for far too long, how some of us are still fighting for it, and even how we define it. Individual liberty isn't just one of our chief national values it can sometimes seem like the only principle we collectively share across the political spectrum. It's difficult to think of a song about America that doesn't include the word "freedom."

"Stay at home" orders are rooted in another, somewhat less-lauded virtue: community. We are staying home those of us who can not just because we don't want to risk contracting the virus, but also because we don't want to risk spreading the virus to others. We're looking out for the collective good. We don't necessarily have training for this. Our national stories and culture don't often highlight the merits of taking care of each other, though E pluribus unum is a notable exception. We fancy ourselves rugged individualists, and some of us even make heroes of fictional characters like John Galt, the Ayn Rand protagonist who went on strike against the very notion of collective obligations.

And yet the collective good exists. Without it, we might not have volunteer fire departments, public hospitals, or even book clubs. We are healthier, safer, and happier when we work together to create things we couldn't on our own. For all our love of rugged individualism, very few of us move to the country to live off-grid. We need freedom, but we also need each other. It isn't always easy to find the right balance, but in some circumstances like during a global pandemic we have to accept limits on our own lives so that others might benefit.

That's not to say all the restrictions being imposed by governors and mayors across the country are always smart or effective. But the public at large seems to recognize that some limits now might be good for the long-term health of the country. We owe each other and ourselves the chance to live. You can't enjoy your liberty if you're dead.

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The very American conflict between liberty and lockdown - The Week

Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler has not had a good few months. None of us have, but at least while we're social distancing and wearing masks to the grocery store and whipping our coffee and Zooming and repeatedly failing at baking bread we are not being accused of insider trading. This is because, unlike Kelly Loeffler, we did not sell off millions of dollars in stocks prior to the stock market crashing but directly after attending a confidential meeting about the impending impact of the coronavirus on the United States. Unless we are Richard Burr. Which most of us are not.

Some people (everyone!) think that is a bad thing that she did. Loeffler has maintained her innocence with the same explanation everyone who gets accused of insider trading has she didn't even know what was going on with her stocks because she's not in charge of them. Twas all a coincidence!

And she's been trying that line, to little to no avail, for a few weeks now. Alas, no one cares. Because the idea of a very rich lady who is literally only in office because she is a very rich lady and has no prior experience other than being a very rich lady getting even richer off of this pandemic when so many are struggling financially is a tad enraging.

But now, now she's got a new line one which very well may be more effective: Criticizing her is socialism!

She said:

How is that socialism? Is not doing crimes socialist? Do the workers own the means of criticizing Kelly Loeffler for insider trading? Is criticism of her actions meant to assist her process of self-change? Or does Loeffler just think that any criticism of anything anyone does to get lots of money, no matter how unethical or illegal, is inherently socialist?

Now, admittedly, there are very few socialists who are pro-insider trading. I don't know any at all! But also, there are very few people of any political persuasion who will openly say they think insider trading is great. In 2011, the STOCK Act, which prohibited insider trading by members of Congress and other government employees (yes, it was previously legal), passed with bipartisan support.

Sure, many of the Republicans supporting it only did so because they thought of it as ammo against Nancy Pelosi, who had just been one of the subjects of a "60 Minutes" investigation on Congressional insider trading but still! In the whole entire Senate, only two Republicans, Richard Burr (who is currently also in trouble for dumping all of HIS stocks ahead of the pandemic) and Tom Coburn, and one Democrat, Jeff Bingaman, opposed the law. In all of the House, only two Republicans opposed it. Is Kelly Loeffler saying that all of those Republicans who voted for the STOCK act hate capitalism and love socialism? Even Rand Paul, who is literally named after Ayn Rand?!?

And what about the Republicans who, even today, think that what Loeffler did was bad?

Seems unlikely!

What it does seem like is that Loeffler is counting on there being a significant number of Americans who, when told something good is "socialism," will immediately decide that the good thing is in fact a bad thing. That number, however, has been dwindling for a while and will probably continue to to dwindle as we continue to slough off the Cold War paranoia. Ironically, it is people just like Kelly Loeffler, who don't understand why profiting off of other people's misery is bad and who describe criticism of doing that as being "attacked for our success," who make socialism look more and more appealing every day.

[CNN]

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Kelly Loeffler Knows What Socialism Is, And It Is 'Opposing Insider Trading' - Wonkette

Being stuck in a pandemic is bad, but whats much worse is being stuck in a pandemic in a country whose ruling party got their ideas about economics and the role of government from Ayn Rand, C. Montgomery Burns, and the rotted brain of a long-dead Scotsman. Its time to ditch the whole concept of small, deliberately limited government once and for all, before anyone else gets hurt.

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As Americans in general and New Englanders specifically, we are in love with the idea of the small, part-time government that generally stays out of societys affairs. After all, The best government is that which governs least, according to rugged individualist Henry David Thoreau, who coincidentally needed his mom to bring him food in the woods all the time.

But the ideal described by our dead Scot, Adam Smith, in which government provides only for defense, the protection of private property, and a few necessities like roads, hasnt been realistic since industrialization threw into sharp relief the desperate inequalities between rich and poor. Any attempt to force modern government to be smaller and less responsible for social welfare and regulation of the economy inevitably leads to disaster. See, for instance, the Great Depression and the 2008 fiscal crisis, just to name a few.

Were in the middle of another disaster right now, and while there is so, so much blame to go around for our countrys criminally incompetent response to COVID-19, a very large share can be placed at the feet of everyone who thought defunding vital government programs, cutting taxes for the rich, letting corporate titans decide their own paid sick leave policies, and blocking universal health care was a good plan.

As it turns out, being suspicious of anything the government does and trying to rely entirely on individuals to make their own choices is not a recipe for success in times like these.

To give you an idea of how this is going, Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R-South Dakota) scoffed that government efforts to mandate sensible social distancing precautions were all for just a bunch of sheeple, declared that South Dakota is not New York City, and left it up to the people of her state to do whatever they wanted. South Dakota is now an emerging hotspot, with 300 cases appearing at a single meat-packing plant alone.

Small government doesnt work for this or any other crisis. It doesnt even really work for normal times. How did our roads and schools get to be the way they are? Why are the rich getting so much richer while the middle class and the poor languish? Why is health care an impossible dream for so many people? Why are the streets of our richest cities full of the homeless?

Limited government has utterly failed to cope with any of those problems. Theres a toxic idea out there that deregulation and tax cuts will lead to economic growth, which through magic will benefit absolutely everyone. But thats never been remotely true. If it were, salaries wouldnt have been stagnating since the Reagan years, and the gap between rich and poor would have been closing instead of widening. Small government simply cant fix modern problems.

Heres the thing. Government isnt just some nebulous thing that exists only to tax us and make us wait in line at the DMV. Government can and should be the expression of the will of society as a whole, as carried out by the representatives of the people. Government is the only way the entire town, the entire state, and the entire country can work together as a single unit to attack problems the private sector cant solve, like wars, natural disasters, economic crashes, and pandemics.

This matters, because I firmly believe weve entered a time of ongoing global crisis. The threat of climate change was already becoming nauseatingly real before COVID-19 struck. The old American-led system of alliances is decaying, leaving power vacuums in dangerous places. The institutions of the West are struggling, and democracy itself is in retreat.

We cant address any of these crises if our government can barely tie its own shoes. We need competent governments that can do big things. We need to buy into the idea that were all in this together. Connecticuts government could start selling Quarantine Bonds, just like the war bonds of old, to raise money and give everyone a stake in the future.

Small government is the belief that we dont need one another to survive and prosper. The 21st century is teaching us once again that without one another, without the whole of society working together, were all screwed.

Susan Bigelow is an award-winning columnist and the founder of CTLocalPolitics. She lives in Enfield with her wife and their cats.

DISCLAIMER: The views, opinions, positions, or strategies expressed by the author are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or positions of CTNewsJunkie.com.

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OP-ED | The Era of Small Government is Over - CT News Junkie

The Facebook-founded Libra Association has revised its planned digital currency after regulatory concerns and public backlash made the project's initial vision untenable.

Libra was introduced last June as a global digital currency, that would be linked to the value of real-world currencies and used by Facebook and others. It was to be based on a permissioned blockchain only authorized parties could record transactions with permissionless governance no single party could change the rules of the network.

Initially, the idea took the form of a chaperoned version of Bitcoin. Rather than relying on permissionless consensus to exchange value, Libra's transactional bookkeeping was to be overseen by Facebook and an association of data-harvesting friends.

But its stated ambition [PDF] was to move toward the Bitcoin model, "where anyone that follows the rules of the protocol and contributes the right types of resources (e.g., computing power in the case of a proof-of-work system) can do so."

That's now been abandoned, replaced by more modest goals outlined in an explanatory paper [PDF].

Derisively referred to as Facebank or Facebucks, Libra alarmed regulators, advocacy groups, and competitors. The idea of allowing Facebook to set up a minimally accountable global financial data chokepoint after its many privacy and misinformation controversies raised more than a few eyebrows.

The criticism that followed last summer's launch announcement led to many of the initial Libra Association members to back away from the project.

So Libra now intends to play by the rules of global finance. On Thursday, the Libra Association asked the Swiss Financial Markets Supervisory Authority (FINMA) for permission to obtain a payment system license. The currency's future form thus looks more like PayPal than an Ayn Rand-inspired run around regulation.

According to David Marcus, co-creator and a board member of Libra and head of Facebook digital wallet subsidiary Calibra, this means implementing measures to combat money laundering, to avoid financing terrorism, and to enforce national financial sanctions.

Libra will now offer "stablecoins" digital currency pegged to, and exchangeable for, specific national currencies in addition to the multicurrency Libra Coin.

And instead of moving toward a permissionless model, Libra aspires to move toward "a market-driven open and competitive network," said Marcus via Twitter.

He also noted that the Libra Association is now member-funded, with less than 10 per cent of funding coming from Facebook. Distancing Libra from Facebook may make it more palatable to those put off by the ubiquitous social network.

The Libra Association anticipates that Designated Dealers (of Libra currency), Virtual Asset Service Providers (businesses selling digital stuff), and Unhosted Wallet Users (people with Libra Blockchain addresses) will be the major users of the currency.

Not everything is changing however: Libra will continue to rely on blockchain technology. The Register asked the Libra Association why a blockchain, as opposed to a traditional database, is necessary.

A spokesperson for the organization offered a not-particularly enlightening reply: "Blockchain technology leverages decades of experience with distributed and open systems. We are using blockchain technology to bring these innovations in security and operability to a new payment system."

The organization's white paper provides a bit more insight into the ostensible benefits of a blockchain.

"One outcome of the above design decisions is that the Libra Blockchain will provide public verifiability, meaning that anyone (validators, Libra Networks, Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs), law enforcement, or any third party) can audit the accuracy of all operations," the paper says.

"Another outcome of the above design decisions is that the Libra Blockchain will support a privacy approach that will take into account the variety of participants on the network."

Yet the paper provides no detail about how everything will be both auditable and private, or how the Libra Association defines privacy, which in general means being unobserved.

"We will collectively continue to work as hard as we can to enable people and businesses to send and receive money globally as easily as it is to send a text message and at a much lower cost," said Marcus via Twitter.

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Facebook's Libra Association tries again at this digi-cash game, with more modest ambitions after global flop - The Register

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. Im Amy Goodman. The death rate from the coronavirus pandemic continues to accelerate, with worldwide confirmed deaths topping 145,000. In the United States, deaths surged to another record high Thursday, nearly doubling to surpass the previous record set just a day before, at 4,591, U.S. residents died over a single 24-hour period.

Well, today we continue my conversation with Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author of more than a hundred books. Hes a laureate professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught for more than half a century. Professor Chomsky joined us last week from his home in Tucson, Arizona, where he is sheltering in place his wife Valeria. We spoke just after President Donald Trump foreshadowed this weeks announcement that he would cut off U.S. support for the World Health Organization. This is Trump addressing reporters last week.

REPORTER 1: Is the time to freeze funding to the WHO during a pandemic of this magnitude?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, maybe not. I mean, Im not saying Im going to do it, but were going to look at it.

REPORTER 2: You did say that youre going to do it.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We give a tremendous no, I didnt. I said were going to look at it. Were going to investigate it. Were going to look at it.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what hes threatening to do right now? First they reject the WHO tests, that would have been critical, and now saying theyre going to defund the World Health Organization.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, this is typical behavior of autocrats and dictators. When you make colossal errors which are killing thousands of people, find somebody else to blame. And in the United States, its unfortunately the case, for well over a century, century and a half, that its always easy to blame the yellow peril. The yellow Theyre coming after us. Weve seen this all through my life, in fact way before. So, blame the World Health Organization, blame China, claim that the World Health Organization has insidious relations with China, is practically working for them. And that sells to a population thats been deeply indoctrinated for a long time, way back to the Chinese Exclusion Acts in the 19th century, to say, Yeah, those yellow barbarians are coming over to destroy us. Thats almost instinctive.

And its backed up by the echo chamber, so, you know, say, Rush Limbaugh. Science is one of the four corners of deceit, along with the media, academia I forget one of the others, but theyre the four corners of deceit. They live on deceit. You keep driving that into peoples heads. They say, Why should we believe anything? Why should we believe the news? Its just fake news. Theyre all trying to destroy our savior, our president, the greatest president ever.

Im old enough to remember as a child listening to Hitlers speeches over the radio, Nuremberg rallies. I couldnt understand the words, but the tone and the reaction of the crowd, the adoring crowd, was very clear and very frightening. We know what it led to. Its hard to it comes to mind at once when you listen to Trumps ravings and the crowd. I dont suggest that hes anything like Hitler. Hitler had an ideology, horrible ideology, not only massacring all the Jews and 30 million Slavs and the Roma, and conquering much of the world, but also an internal ideology: The state, under control of the Nazi Party, should control every aspect of life, should even control the business community. Thats not the world were in. In fact, its almost the opposite, business controlling the government. And as far as Trump is concerned, the only detectable ideology is pure narcissism. Me, thats the ideology. As long as I am smart enough to keep serving the real masters, pour money into the pockets of the very wealthy and the corporate sector, and theyll let you get away with your antics.

Its pretty striking to see what happened at the Davos conference this January. Thats the meeting of the people who are called the masters of the universe CEOs of the major corporations, you know, big media stars and so on. They get together in Davos once a year, congratulate each other on how wonderful they are, put on a pose of dedicated humanists who couldnt do you know, just totally devoted to the welfare of the people of the world. Youre safe leaving your fate in our hands because were such good guys.

Trump came along and gave the keynote address. They dont like Trump. His vulgarity is incompatible with the image that theyre trying to project of cultivated humanism. But they wildly applauded him, lustily applauded every word, because they know that he does recognize which pockets you have to fill with dollars and how to do it. And as long as he does that, as long as he serves his major constituency, theyll let him get away with the antics in fact, like it, because he mobilizes a crowd that will back policies like his legislative achievements. Main one is a tax scam that pours money into the hands of the corporate coffers and harms everyone else. The deregulation is great for business. They love it. They can destroy the environment and harm people as much as they want. Very harmful to the population.

You cut back on pollution constraints, on auto emission regulations, what happens? People die of pollution, of mercury poisoning. The waters are poisoned. And the world, it goes, is facing disaster. Youre accelerating the disaster. As I said, even in the February 10th budget, while cutting back on protection against diseases in the midst of a raging pandemic, increases funding for fossil fuel production, which is going to destroy us all. Of course, a lot more money for the Pentagon and for his famous wall. But thats the world were living in here, not everywhere. As I said, the Asian countries have been acting sensibly. New Zealand actually seems to have killed it also. Taiwan is doing very well. In Europe, Germany has maybe the lowest death rate in the world, Norway, as well. There are ways to react.

And there are ways to try to destroy everything what President Trump is leading, with the support of the Murdoch echo chamber, Fox News and others. And amazingly, this conjuring act is working. So, with one hand, you raise your hand to heaven: Im the chosen one. Im your savior. Im going to rebuild America, make it great again for you, because Im the servant. Im the loyal servant of the working class, and so on. Meanwhile, with the other hand, youre stabbing them all in the back. And to carry this off is an act of political genius. You have to recognize that serious talent is involved, whether intuitive or conscious planning. Its devastating. Weve seen it before. We see it now in dictators, autocrats, sociopaths who happen to get into leadership positions. And its now happening in the richest, most important country in world history.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you have this situation in the United States where the economy has been brought to a standstill because of the absolute catastrophe of this pandemic, that people have to isolate although isolation is a luxury. For so many essential workers, they have to come out into this pandemic and face enormous threat to their own lives. If you can talk about whether you see this pandemic perhaps threatening global capitalism overall or shoring it up, and how the trillions of dollars that are being put into these stimulus packages are going to simply intensify inequality or actually going to help people at the bottom?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Thats a choice, not an inevitability. I mean, the corporate sector is working hard to plan for a future of the kind that youre describing. The question is whether popular organizations will be able to impose enough pressure to make sure that this doesnt happen.

And there are ways. Take the corporate what you just described. The corporations right now are hiding their copies of Ayn Rand and rushing to the nanny state and asking for benefits from the public to overcome the results of their criminal behavior. What have they been doing for the last years? Profits have been going sky high. Theyve been indulging in an orgy of stock buybacks, which are devices to increase the wealth for the rich shareholders and for management while undermining the productive capacity of the enterprise at a huge scale, setting their offices somewhere in a little room in Ireland so they dont have to pay taxes, using tax havens. This is not small change. This is tens of trillions of dollars, robbing the taxpayer. Does that have to be the case?

Take the current giveaway to corporations. It should be accompanied by conditionalities term were familiar with from the IMF. They should be required to ensure that there will be no more use of tax havens, there will be no more stock buybacks, period. If they dont do that, with a firm guarantee, no money from the public.

Is that utopian? Not at all. That was the law, and the law was enforced, up until Ronald Reagan, who turned on the spigot to rob as much as you like, with Milton Friedman and other luminaries in the background telling him, Thats liberty. Liberty means rob the public massively by things like tax havens and stock buybacks. So theres nothing utopian about these conditions. It says, Lets go back to a period of pretty much regimented capitalism, which developed since Roosevelt, was carried through til the 70s, when it began to erode, and, with Reagan, just ended.

There should be further conditionalities, should be working people should be placed part of management should be representatives of workers. Is that impossible? No, its done in other countries, Germany, for example. There should be a requirement that they guarantee a living wage not just minimum wage, a living wage. Thats a conditionality that can be imposed.

Now, we can move further and recognize notice that all of this is pre-Trump. Trump is taking a failing, lethal system and turning it into a monstrosity, but the roots were before him. Just think back to the reason why the pandemic occurred in the first place. Drug companies are following capitalist logic. They dont want to do anything. The neoliberal hammer says the government cant do anything the way it did in the past. Youre caught in a vise. Then comes along Trump and makes it incomparably worse. But the roots of the crisis are pre-Trump.

The same with the healthcare system. Like we know that everyone knows they should know the basic facts. Its an international scandal: twice the costs of comparable countries, some of the worst outcomes. The costs were recently estimated by a study in The Lancet, one of the worlds leading medical journals. They estimated that the costs, the annual annual costs to Americans are close to half a trillion dollars and 68,000 lives lost. Thats not so small.

AMY GOODMAN: World-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky. When we come back, hell discuss conditions in Gaza during the pandemic, and the rise of authoritarianism around the world, and the progressive response. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: The Puerto Rican rapper Residente, performing the Quarantine Edition of his new song Ren. This version includes his mom and about 30 other musicians who joined him from their homes.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. Im Amy Goodman, as we return to Part 2 of our conversation with Noam Chomsky, world-renowned linguist, political dissident and author. I asked him about Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on Earth, where at least 13 cases of COVID-19 have been reported. The World Health Organization reports there are just 87 ventilators for Gazas 2 million residents. Nearly 300 cases and two deaths have been confirmed in the West Bank. This is Professor Chomsky.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk for a moment, globally, about whats happening on an issue that has been close to your heart for decades, and that is the Occupied Territories, Gaza and the West Bank, what it means for a place like Gaza, called by the U.N. and people around the world a kind of open-air prison of almost 2 million people, what the pandemic could mean there?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Its almost impossible to think about. Gaza is 2 million people who are in the living in a prison, open-air prison, under constant attack. Israel, which is the occupying power, recognized by everyone in the world except Israel Israel is imposing has been imposing very harsh sanctions ever since the Palestinians made the mistake of carrying out the first free election in the Arab world and electing the wrong people. The United States and Israel came down on them like a ton of bricks.

Israels policy, as was explained by Dov Weissglas, the person in charge of the withdrawal of Israeli troops, the withdrawal of the settlers and imposition of the new regime he explained frankly, We are putting the people of Gaza on a diet, just enough to keep them alive, meaning wouldnt look good if they all die, but not anything more than that. So, not a piece of chocolate or a toy for a child. Thats out. Just enough to stay alive. And if you have a serious health problem, maybe you can apply to go to the hospital in East Jerusalem. Maybe after a couple of weeks, youll be allowed to go. Maybe a child is allowed to go, but his mother is not allowed to come.

If the pandemic there are now a couple of cases in Gaza. If that extends, its a total disaster. International institutions have pointed out that by 2020 thats now Gaza will probably become barely livable. About 95% of the water is totally polluted. The place is a disaster. And Trump has made sure that it will get worse. He withdrew funding from the support systems for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank UNRWA, killed the funding; Palestinian hospitals, killed the funding. And he had a reason. They werent praising him enough. They werent respectful of the god, so, therefore, well strangle them, even when theyre barely surviving under a harsh and brutal regime.

Incidentally, this extends to Palestinians in Israel, as well. Human rights activists in Israel pointed out recently theres articles about it in Haaretz that Israel finally began to set up a few drive-by testing areas only in Jewish areas, not in the areas with Palestinian population. And to make sure that the intended results would follow, they announced it only in Hebrew, not in Arabic, so Palestinians wouldnt even know. Well, thats within Israel. In the Occupied Territories, far worse.

And the Trump hammer came in saying, Were not even going to give you a penny, because youre not respectful enough of me. I dont know how to describe this kind of thing. I cant find words for it.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, what do you think is required in an international response to stop the rise of authoritarianism in response to this pandemic? For example, in the Philippines, where the authoritarian leader, Trump ally, Duterte, talks about killing people; the massive crackdown, without support of the people of India, 1.3 billion people, with Narendra Modi. President Trump was in India as the pandemic was taking off, never saying a word about it, packing a stadium of 100,000 people. You have Orbn in Hungary, who is now ruling by decree. What would it take to turn that around to be a progressive response?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, actually, whats happening, to the extent that you can find some coherent policy in the madness in the White House, one thing does emerge with considerable clarity namely, an effort to construct an international of the most reactionary states and oppressive states, led by the gangster in the White House. Now, this is taking shape.

I can run through it, but since you mentioned India, Modi, who is a Hindu nationalist extremist, is systematically moving to destroy Indian secular democracy and to crush the Muslim population. Whats happening in Kashmir is horrifying. It was bad enough before, now getting much worse. Same with the Muslim population, a huge population in India. The current lockdown is almost you can almost describe it as genocidal. Modi gave, I think, a four-hour warning saying total lockdown. Thats over a billion people. Some of them have nowhere to go. People in the informal economy, which is a huge number of people, are just cast out. Go walk back to your village, which may be a thousand miles away. Die on the roadside. This is a huge catastrophe in the making, right on top of the strong efforts to impose the ultra-right Hindutva doctrines that are at the core of Modis thinking and background.

Whats happening in quite apart from this, India in fact, South Asia generally is going to become unlivable pretty soon, if current climate policies persist. Last summer, the temperature in Rajasthan went up to 50 degrees centigrade. And its increasing. Theres hundreds of millions of people in India that dont have access to water. Its going to get much worse, could lead to a nuclear war between the two powers that basically rely on the same water resources, which are declining under global warming: Pakistan and India. I mean, the horror story thats developing is, again, indescribable. You cant find words for it. And some people are cheering about it, like Donald Trump and his friend Bolsonaro in Brazil, a couple of other sociopaths.

But how do you counter a reactionary international? By developing a Progressive International. And there are steps to that. They dont get much publicity, but this I think its this coming December, there will be a formal announcement of what has been in process for some time. Yanis Varoufakis, the founder and leading figure in DiEM25, the progressive movement in Europe, very important Varoufakis and Bernie Sanders came out with a declaration calling for a Progressive International to combat and, we hope, overcome the reactionary international based in the White House.

Now, if you look at the level of states, this looks like an extremely unequal competition. But states are not the only things that exist. If you look at the level of people, its not impossible. Its possible to construct a Progressive International based on people, ranging from the organized political groups that have been proliferating, that have gotten a huge shot in the arm from the Sanders campaign, ranging from them to self-help mutual aid, self-help organizations that are rising in communities all over the world, in the most impoverished areas of Brazil, for example, and even this astonishing fact that I mentioned, that the murderous crime gangs are taking responsibility for bringing some form of decent protection against the pandemic in the favelas, the miserable slums, in Rio. All of this is happening on the popular level. If it expands and develops, if people dont just give up in despair but work to change the world, as theyve done in the past under much worse conditions, if they do that, theres a chance for a Progressive International.

And notice, bear in mind, that there are also striking cases of internationalism, progressive internationalism, at the state level. So, take a look at the European Union. The rich countries in Europe, like Germany, have recently given us a lesson in just what the union means. Right? Germany is managing pretty well. They probably have the lowest death rate in the world, in organized society. Right next door, northern Italy is suffering miserably. Is Germany giving them any aid? No. In fact, Germany even blocked the effort to develop euro bonds, general bonds in Europe which could be used to alleviate the suffering in the countries under the worst conditions. But fortunately for Italy, it can look across the Atlantic for aid from the superpower on the Western Hemisphere, Cuba. Cuba is, once again, as before, exhibiting extraordinary internationalism, sending doctors to Italy. Germany wont do it, but Cuba can. China is providing material aid. So, these are steps towards progressive internationalism at the state level.

AMY GOODMAN: World-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky, laureate professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona, Tucson, professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught for more than half a century. Noam Chomsky joined us last week from his home in Tucson, Arizona, where hes sheltering in place with his wife Valeria. Go to our website at Democracy Now! to see Part 1 of our conversation.

When we come back, a new policy at New Yorks public hospitals requires medical workers who call in sick to produce a doctors note. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Lean on Me by Bill Withers. The legendary singer-songwriter Bill Withers died last month at the age of 81 from heart complications. We were showing, during that music break, nurses dancing around the world to give strength to each other, themselves and their patients.

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Gangster in the White House: Noam Chomsky on COVID-19, WHO, China, Gaza and Global Capitalism - Democracy Now!

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a negative impact on all aspects of human life, and the U.S. economy is no exception. The virus outbreak and governmental reactions to it have sent the stock market crashing and dealt a major economic blow.

In a special installment of our webinar series Philosophy for Living on Earth, the Ayn Rand Institutes chief philosophy officer, Onkar Ghate, sat down with finance and economics specialists Yaron Brook and Rob Tarr to talk about the effects of the virus and government intervention on the markets and the economy. The discussion covered many aspects of the ongoing financial crisis and approached the topic from a perspective informed by the philosophy of Objectivism.

Some of the questions covered in the discussion include:

Stay tuned for future installments of our webinar series, where we willcontinue to analyze the effects of the pandemic from the principled perspectiveof Ayn Rands philosophy. And please consider donating to ARI if you value ourunique and rational evaluation of this crisis.

Watch the full discussion between Ghate, Brook and Tarr, below.

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Experts Assess Pandemic's Damage to the Economy - New Ideal

Author Yaron Brook is Tom Needham's special guest this Thursday at 6 pm on WUSB's SOUNDS OF FILM. He will be discussing what one can learn from Ayn Rand's ATLAS SHRUGGED and FOUNTAINHEAD during the virus Crisis.

Yaron Brook is the host of the Yaron Brook Show, renowned best-selling author, and world class speaker. Brook's podcast can be heard on the Yaron Brook Show at BlogTalk Radio, Spreaker, Spotify and YouTube.

Brook was the Executive Director of The Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) for 17 years (2000-2017). He remains Chairman of the Board of ARI and its primary spokesperson.

Brook, an internationally sought speaker, travels extensively promoting Ayn Rand and her philosophy, objectivism.

THE SOUNDS OF FILM is the nation's longest running film and music themed radio show. For the past 30 years, the program has delivered a popular mix of interviews and music to listeners all over Long Island, parts of Connecticut and streaming live worldwide on the internet. Past people interviewed for the show include Rob Reiner, Alec Baldwin, Dionne Warwick, Chuck D, Alexander Payne, Michael Moore, William H. Macy, Billy Joel and Howard Shore.

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Yaron Brook Talks Ayn Rand's ATLAS SHRUGGED, FOUNTAINHEAD & Covid-19 On Tom Needham's SOUNDS OF FILM - Broadway World

We make fun of U.S. Sen. Rand Paul a lot. OK, more than a lot. Going waayy back.

But who deserves it more? Befitting his status as Kentuckys junior senator, only our senior senator Mitch McConnell suffers more scorn and bad-natured roasting from us at LEO.

Now, in The Time of Corona, Paul, a doctor and obstructionist of virus relief bills, gets a special poke with a hot stick for reportedly getting tested and going to the gym and consorting with colleagues before he got back the result.

And guess what?

He tested positive.

Paul released a statement this week defending his decision to not self-quarantine, saying he shouldnt have been tested at all. Whaat? Read this convoluted reasoning and let us know what kind of byzantine map of logic we would need to understand it.

Paul should have known better than to risk the health of other people. But we must understand that Rand Paul, who might as well have been named after the purposely selfish, libertarian, wack-job Ayn Rand, would be thinking about himself only.

Here is what he had to say:

Given that my wife and I had traveled extensively during the weeks prior to COVID-19 social distancing practices, and that I am at a higher risk for serious complications from the virus due to having part of my lung removed seven months ago, I took a COVID-19 test when I arrived in D.C. last Monday. I felt that it was highly unlikely that I was positive since I have had no symptoms of the illness, nor have I had contact with anyone who has either tested positive for the virus or been sick.

Since nearly every member of the U.S. Senate travels by plane across the country multiple times per week and attends lots of large gatherings, I believed my risk factor for exposure to the virus to be similar to that of my colleagues, especially since multiple congressional staffers on the Hill had already tested positive weeks ago.

As for my attendance at the Speed Art Museum fundraiser on March 7, unlike the other Kentucky government officials there, I had zero contact or proximity with either of the two individuals who later announced they were positive for COVID-19. The event was a large affair of hundreds of people spread throughout the museum.

There was an announcement by the Museum and Metro Louisville Communicable Disease department that those who public health officials consider at higher risk from possible exposure are being notified. Louisvilles health director put out a statement in The Courier Journal that most of the people at the Speed Ball were at very minimal risk. I was not considered to be at risk since I never interacted with the two individuals even from a distance and was not recommended for testing by health officials.

I believe we need more testing immediately, even among those without symptoms. The nature of COVID-19 put me and us all in a Catch-22 situation. I didnt fit the criteria for testing or quarantine. I had no symptoms and no specific encounter with a COVID-19 positive person. I had, however, traveled extensively in the U.S. and was required to continue doing so to vote in the Senate. That, together with the fact that I have a compromised lung, led me to seek testing. Despite my positive test result, I remain asymptomatic for COVID-19.

For those who want to criticize me for lack of quarantine, realize that if the rules on testing had been followed to a tee, I would never have been tested and would still be walking around the halls of the Capitol. The current guidelines would not have called for me to get tested nor quarantined. It was my extra precaution, out of concern for my damaged lung, that led me to get tested.

Perhaps it is too much to ask that we simply have compassion for our fellow Americans who are sick or fearful of becoming so. Thousands of people want testing. Many, like Daniel Newman of The Walking Dead, are sick with flu symptoms and are being denied testing. This makes no sense.

The broader the testing and the less finger-pointing we have, the better. America is strong. We are a resilient people, but were stronger when we stand together.

Here is what one person tweeted in response to his statement:

You did not need to go to the gym. Americans all over this country cannot go to theirs, or do much of anything else. You felt you could do as you pleased and risked others. I hope you recover well, but you are not excused from being entirely selfish and overly privileged.

And, our favorite: Atlas Coughed.

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Sen. Rand Paul's reply to why he risked exposing people, or Selfish is as selfish does - Louisville Eccentric Observer

When I asked whether the virus had interfered with his lifestyle, Bret laughed. Oh, Im going to the shooting range tomorrow, he replied.

Was he worried that his friends might disapprove if they found out?

No, he told me, around here, I get much more of people saying, Why dont you go Saturday so I can go, too?

Terry Trahan, a manager at a cutlery store in Lubbock, Texas, acknowledged that a certain toxic tribalism was informing peoples attitudes toward the pandemic. If someones a Democrat, theyre gonna say its worse, he told me, and if someones a Republican, theyre gonna say its bad, but its getting better.

As an immunocompromised cancer survivor, Trahan said hes familiar with commonsense social-distancing practices. But as a conservative, hes become convinced that many Democrats are so invested in the idea that the virus will be disastrous that theyre pushing for prolonged, unnecessary shutdowns in pursuit of vindication.

Among experts, there is a firm consensus that social distancing is essential to containing the spread of the virusand they warn that politicizing the practice could have dangerous ramifications. This is a pandemic, and shouldnt be played out as a skirmish on a neighborhood playground, Dina Borzekowski, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, recently told Stat. (For the moment, at least, the scientists seem to have brought the president around: Yesterday, Trump announced he was extending social-distancing guidance until the end of April.)

Read: The four possible timelines for life returning to normal

Of course, not everyone who flouts social distancing is making a political statement. Many have to work because they cant afford not to; others are acting out of ignorance or wishful thinking. Beyond personal behavior, there is a legitimate debate to be had about how to balance economic demands while combatting a global pandemic.

Still, the polarization around public health seems to be accelerating: In recent days, Republican governors in Alabama and Mississippi have resisted calls to enact more forceful mitigation policies. Polling data suggest that Republicans throughout the U.S. are much less concerned about the coronavirus than Democrats are. According to a recent analysis by The New York Times, Trump won 23 of the 25 states where people have reduced personal travel the least.

Some of this is likely shaped by the fact that the most serious outbreaks so far in the U.S. have been concentrated in urban centers on the coasts (a pattern that may not hold for long). But there are real ideological forces at work as well.

Katherine Vincent-Crowson, a 35-year-old self-defense instructor from Slidell, Louisiana, has watched in horror this month as businesses around her city were forced to close by state decree. A devotee of Ayn Rand, Vincent-Crowson told me Louisianas shelter-in-place order was a frightening example of government overreach.

It feels very militaristic, she said. Im just like, What the hell, is this 1940s Germany?

But when we spoke, she seemed even more aggravated by the self-righteous people on social media who spend their time publicly shaming anyone who isnt staying locked in their house. It really reminds me of my kids who tattle on their siblings when they do something bad, she said. Im a libertarian I dont really like being told what to do.

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The Social-Distancing Culture War Has Begun - The Atlantic

By John Authers

The coronavirus pandemic is a test. Its a test of medical capacity and political will. Its a test of endurance and forbearance, for believers a test of religious faith. Its a test, too, of a different kind of faith, in the strength of the ideas humans choose to help them form moral judgments and guide personal and social behavior.

The epidemic forces everyone to confront deep questions of human existence, questions so profound that they have previously been answered, in many different ways, by the greatest philosophers. Its a test of where all humans stand.

What is right and what is wrong? What can individuals expect from society, and what can society expect of them? Should others make sacrifices for me, and vice versa? Is it just to set economic limits to fighting a deadly disease?

The lieutenant governor of Texas thinks that those over 70 shouldnt sacrifice the country by shutting down economic activity, but should instead be ready to sacrifice themselves. A 22-year-old partying on Spring break in Florida becomes a social media sensation with a different critique of social distancing, saying, If I get corona, I get corona. Consciously or not, both men are placing themselves in distinct moral traditions.

Several philosophies of social justice have claimed wide adherence in the modern world. They do not line up neatly with party political labels, and most people have sympathy for more than one. Here is a guide to some of the leading idea systems undergirding competing conceptions of right and wrong. Each is being put to the test. As you are put to the test, which do you choose?

RawlsiansMany westerners are Rawlsians without knowing it. Fifty years ago, the Harvard philosopher John Rawls tried to work out how people would construct their society if the choice had to be made behind what he called a veil of ignorance about whether they will be rich, poor or somewhere in-between. Faced with the risk of being the worst off, Rawls posited, humans would not demand total equality, but would need to be assured of the trappings of a modern welfare state. The assurance of basic necessities and the opportunity to do better would form the foundation for social and political justice and provide the ability for people to assert themselves.

Rawlss monumental 1971 book, A Theory of Justice, is now regarded as the clearest moral and intellectual justification for modern center-left mixed economies. But the idea comes from somewhere deeper. Rawls was not religious, but his philosophy is essentially in line with the golden rule handed down by the Old Testament prophets and by Jesus, that we should do as we would want to be done by. Some religious leaders have approached the awful dilemmas presented by the coronavirus just as Rawls would, by taking treatment of the worst off as the criterion for social action.

I hope the lessons we take from our countrys experience with Covid-19 arent about food or avoiding the spread of germs, wrote Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention in the New York Times, but about how we treat the most vulnerable among us. A pandemic is no time to turn our eyes away from the sanctity of human life.

Pope Francis also invoked sympathy for the most afflicted as he addressed a prayer to an empty St. Peters Square. "We have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, but at the same time important and needed, all of us called to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other," he said.

Perhaps because of their religious resonance, Rawlsian ideas have guided the approach to the pandemic chosen by authorities in the western world. Societies are mobilizing, and governments are taking extra powers to mandate claustrophobic lockdowns in a bid to minimize the death and suffering of the weakest.

Even those who arent religious tend to accept the logic of the veil of ignorance. If a person is unwilling to be abandoned, governments are not entitled to give up on them; they must do their best to protect everyone, particularly the weakest.

UtilitariansOther philosophies produce very different ways of dealing with the epidemic. Under utilitarianism, most associated with the 19th-century British philosopher John Stuart Mill, rulers must be guided to the total happiness, or utility, of all the people, and should aim to secure the greatest good for the greatest number.

In Victorian Britain, this was a radical creed, and the first utilitarians were passionate liberal reformers. But the utilitarian calculus opens up a new possibility that in situations such as a pandemic, some people might justly be sacrificed for the greater good. It would benefit society to accept casualties, the argument goes, to minimize disruption.

Explicit utilitarian thinking still seems beyond the pale. Last weekend, Britains Sunday Times reported that Dominic Cummings, chief adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, had advocated in private meetings a policy of letting enough people get sick to establish nationwide herd immunity, protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad. It caused an outcry and met with an immediate and impassioned denial by Downing Street. Even Cummings, an iconoclast, refused to be attached to such brutally utilitarian ideas.

Mill himself would not have advocated putting money ahead of peoples lives, but a utilitarian calculus is not about balancing money and life. If a recession could lead to shorter lives and widespread misery, it is possible that making less of an attempt to save every last life from the pandemic now could lead to greater total happiness.

In the U.K., a paper by an academic at the University of Bristol used mathematical techniques developed to measure the cost-efficiency of safety measures in the nuclear power industry to calculate the likely savings of human life by different approaches to the virus, and found that a 12-month lockdown followed by vaccinations would be best. But it cautioned that this would only create a net saving of life if the reduction in gross domestic product could be kept to 6.4% or less.

That paper, broadcast on the BBC, provoked a fiery response from economists, and some research suggests counterintuitively that recessions lengthen lives. Most people find the mere attempt at such an exercise callous, but its difficult to dismiss it. Governments and insurers do indeed put a notional price on a human life when setting policy. Must every last patient be given the utmost care if this plan of action causes greater suffering in the long run? Or, as President Donald Trump put it: We cant have the cure be worse than the problem.

Its intuitive to view moral problems through a utilitarian lens and then to find outcomes like this distasteful, and to reject them because they conflict with the golden rule. If the lockdowns drag on for months, utilitarian ideas may bubble back to the surface.

LibertariansThe libertarian place in American thought is long and distinguished. Its lineage goes back at least to the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke and the founding fathers, and in its modern incarnation gains inspiration from the author Ayn Rand, who outlined her ideas in novels and essays. For her, man had a right to live for himself and an individuals happiness cannot be prescribed by another man or any number of other men.

The most famous libertarian thought experiment was conducted by another Harvard philosopher, Robert Nozick, in a riposte to Rawls. He imagined what kind of political state would be built, and how much personal liberty citizens would surrender, if everyone were dropped into a utopian landscape with no social structures. The novelist William Golding gave one answer in The Lord of the Flies. To avoid the descent into violence that the schoolboys of Goldings novel endure, Nozick, in Anarchy, State and Utopia, reckoned that people would set up a very limited state dedicated to self-defense and the protection of individual rights but nothing more.

The western coronavirus response has hugely expanded state powers and limited individual rights with little debate, and to date populations have consented to privations that Rand and Nozick argued they should never accept.

But wait. There have been objections to lockdowns on the libertarian basis that they infringe on rights. Critiques are appearing saying that politicians havent proven that such drastic measures are necessary. Before the coronavirus, the U.S. suffered a measles epidemic as the result of anti-vaccination activism, a libertarian cause that put parents right to choose not to vaccinate their children above the states attempt to defend other parents right to expect that their own children wouldnt have to mix with unvaccinated peers. Panic buying, and hoarding of medical equipment also show that many people are following Rands idea of self-determination and putting themselves first. Such ideas may grow more appealing after a few more weeks of self-isolation.

In public spaces around the world, libertarians are in conflict with the state. Social media is full of images of big social gatherings, often in luxurious social settings. If I get corona, I get corona, as the 22-year-old said on video in Florida. At the end of the day, Im not gonna let it stop me from partying. Oklahomas governor even felt the need to tweet that he was at a packed restaurant.

Libertarians are not only found on the political right. As the crisis began to unfold, the American Civil Liberties Union made a statement accepting that civil liberties must sometimes give way when it comes to fighting a communicable disease but only in ways that are scientifically justified. It said, The evidence is clear that travel bans and quarantines are not the solution.

The right to walk in a park looks like a flash point. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was furious to see crowds expressing libertarian sympathies whether they saw it that way or not by gathering in parks. Its arrogant, Cuomo said. Its self-destructive. Its disrespectful to other people. And it has to stop and it has to stop now!

New Yorkers are organizing to keep the parks open.

In these conditions, individual choices become freighted with moral significance. How, for example, will society eventually judge behavior like that of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul? Arguably the most prominent libertarian in the U.S., he continued to socialize as normal for a week after being told that he had had contact with someone who tested positive for the coronavirus. He had no symptoms. Recall that there are many elderly members of the Senate. Last weekend, after a workout in the Senate gym, he discovered that he had himself tested positive.

CommunitariansYet another approach is based on the notion that everyone derives their identify from the broader community. Individual rights count, but not more than community norms. These notions go back to the Greeks, but in modern times, the philosophy is most widely connected to the sociologist Amitai Etzioni and philosopher Michael Sandel. Sandels Liberalism and the Limits of Justice is another riposte to Rawls, arguing that justice cannot be determined in a vacuum or behind a veil of ignorance, but must be rooted in society. He sets out a theory of justice based on the common good.

Speaking last week to Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, Sandel said: The common good is about how we live together in community. Its about the ethical ideals we strive for together, the benefits and burdens we share, the sacrifices we make for one another. Its about the lessons we learn from one another about how to live a good and decent life.

The virus has attacked in exactly this place, depriving everyone of life in a community. And communitarian ideas are showing themselves. Across Europe, people on lockdown have arranged to go to their windows and balconies to applaud their national health services. These are seen as bedrocks of society. At Londons Olympic opening ceremony in 2012, a pageant of Britishness, the organizers celebrated the National Health Service with dancing nurses wheeling hospital beds. For many countries with a modern welfare state, celebrating and supporting the workers of their public-health service is seen as a communitarian duty.

This is a critical point of difference with the U.S., where the expansion of medical care is a hugely contentious issue. Communitarians like Princetons Michael Walzer argue that any system of medical provision requires the constraint of the guild of physicians. The coronavirus promises to bring this debate to a head.

Communitarianism also underlies much social conservative thought. When the very conservative Republican Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said on Fox News that the rest of the country should not sacrifice itself for the elderly, he was making a communitarian argument, not a utilitarian one.

No one reached out to me and said, As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren? Patrick, who is 63, told the host Tucker Carlson. And if thats the exchange, Im all in.

In this telling, it is the patriotic duty of the elderly not to force privations on their country, and make life worse for their grandchildren. Such a communitarian ethic has always resonated within the U.S. (just read Alexis de Tocqueville), and it provoked an outcry on social media.

China practiced another kind of communitarianism after the coronavirus first appeared in Wuhan in January. The people of that city were told to lock themselves in, and often forcibly quarantined, for the good of the community and the state, largely identified with the Communist Party. Under Xi Jinping, the Party has rehabilitated the Confucian thought that long justified obedience to a hierarchical and authoritarian but benevolent state. That the notion of social solidarity remains strong showed in the spectacular discipline with which China and other Asian nations dealt with the problem.

We Are All Rawlsians NowFor now, the approach being adopted across the West is Rawlsian. Politicians are working on the assumption that they have a duty to protect everyone as they themselves would wish to be protected, while people are also applying the golden rule as they decide that they should self-isolate for the sake of others. We are all Rawlsians now.

How long will we stay that way? All the other theories of justice have an appeal, and may test the resolve to follow the golden rule. But I suspect that Rawls and the golden rule will win out. That is partly because religion even if it is in decline in the West has hard-wired it into our consciousness. And as the epidemic grows worse and brings the disease within fewer degrees of separation for everyone, we may well find that the notion of loving thy neighbor as thyself becomes far more potent.

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How Coronavirus is shaking up the moral universe - Economic Times