Natural Rights Libertarian

The rejection of meritocracy in favor of skin color diversity has long been a core principle of leftist ideology. This started in the 1960s with the advent of “affirmative action” in our colleges and universities, and ultimately metastasized into the realm of government contracting and university hiring, liberal judges mistaking disparate impact for illegal discrimination, and into the selection of political appointees and nominees. Although few ordinary people would select a person to design their dream home or a brain surgeon based on their skin color, this commonsense did not deter our progressive politicians.

From this perspective, President Biden’s rise and fall is so thick with irony, that you can cut it with a knife. Biden’s long public life prior to his election to the presidency is nothing if not mediocre. It was preceded by academic career that was spectacularly undistinguished, and in his 36 years in the US Senate he articulated no new or innovative ideas, nor is he associated with any notable legislation. His hostile questioning of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas was embarrassing both for its ugly tone and its ineptness. Continue Reading »

[NOTE: I accuse the authors of the article discussed below of lying. Clearly, I cannot know whether they are guilty of a conscious effort to deceive, but their erroneous allegations have all the appropriate indicia. For one, I find it incredible that two well-educated people who consider themselves knowledgeable enough to write on this subject do not understand that Egypt has an eight-mile border with Gaza, nor how critical this fact is to a proper understanding of this subject. Second, I called these authors out on their errors on another person’s Facebook wall, and they did not correct any of them or even respond. I will let my readers judge for themselves].

Apart from the “apartheid” lie, it seems that the most popular one circulating about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that Israel is inflicting unbearable suffering on the people of the Gaza Strip by turning it into the world’s largest open-air prison. Here is a classic example, written by two purported libertarians/classic liberals, Akiva Malamet and Shikha Dalmia, made even more egregious by its timing. That is, in the immediate aftermath of the monstrous, massive terrorist slaughter committed by Hamas in central Israel on October 7, 2023 for which many faculty members and students at our elite universities offer excuses.

  Here, in stark terms, is this hideous lie:

But if Hamas emerged and, what is more, flourished, it cannot be denied that this is at least partly because of Israel’s cruel 16-year-long blockade of Gaza and the brutal occupation of the West Bank….to prevent Gaza from militarizing after Hamas came into power, Israel sharply constrained the flow of people and goods between Gaza, territorial Israel and the West Bank, turning the spigot of free movement on and off at its discretion. Since 2007, the two million Palestinians in the 365 square kilometer Gaza strip have been subjected to an air, land, and sea embargo with only the minimum entry of goods allowed. Exports have nearly stopped. Meanwhile, Israel supervises all the international aid to Gaza….Hamas’s meticulously planned attack has exposed the spectacular failure of this approach to national security. But this approach has succeeded in turning Gaza, which many have appropriately compared to an open air prison, into one of the poorest societies on earth (my emphasis).

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