In the Spirit of the Holiday I thought I would provide you free market haters some treats. Don’t ever say I never did anything nice for you.

Scores of sex offenders in Anderson, South Carolina, will be corralled for Halloween tonight in a move authorities say is needed to keep kids safe as they trick or treat.

Thank for clearing that up South Carolina. Sounds constitutional to forcibly hold people for crimes they could potentiality commit.

This also serves as nice reminder that the state has a monopoly on force.

That Marx challenged capitalism because of a condition called hidradenitis suppurativa. Apparently this condition prevents the sweat glands from expelling properly leading to inflammation. Communism has always been the nasty armpit of economics so I guess its unsurprising that a malfunction of this body party brought the communism into existence. It’s science, so it has to be true that hiradentis suppurativa caused communism. Intuition doesn’t tell me that. Rationality does.

Apparently Kevin Smith director of Dogma was present at a protest of his film when it was first released.

My left leaning readers should get in line at the tobacco store to play their part in providing infrastructure for poor kids.

Smoke it up.

Here is a reminder.

This should piss Dan off pretty good.

It is the second incident of piracy reported in recent days. A second U.S. Navy destroyer was searching waters off Somalia for pirates who hijacked a Japanese-owned ship, military officials said.

Recenly Bettina emailed me to say:

I have been rereading and rereading your latest dialogue with your roomate, and at the end of all this, I came to the conclusion that one label was missing, the anti-humanist label.

Basically Bettina thinks I’m an anti-humanist. Given what I know of humanism I think this is fair to say. Intrigued by the notion of humanism I clicked to wikipedia to get a more solid foundation of Humanism. Turns out there are lots of different flavors so I’m not sure which kind of Humanist Bettina thinks I’m opposed to. One that I found of interest was the so-called new-Humanism which have a set of core beliefs only a naïve child could believe is true.

Solidarity – defined as treating other people the way one would like to be treated

It’s probably obvious to say so, but a painfully ill defined proposition. There are many ways to attack this silly proposition, but perhaps the most effective is to say that on some fundamental level it’s simply not possible to accomplish. Imagine a triad in which treating one person a certain way ends up violating the way in which someone else wishes to be treated. How does humanism suggest we resolve this problem.

I must also state that I absolutely hate defaulting to the other person determining how they should be treated. There are obvious examples, like the tyrant that would not wish to be stopped, but there are more prosaic examples. Imagine a prospective student wishing to get into graduate school. He has nothing to offer why should he be the one to determine how the scientist should treat him? Since the scientist has something to offer he should be the one to determine he treats the student. If those demands become to onerous for the student then they should drop out of that lab.

If someone is doing you a favor they determine how they treat you. If that treatment negates the gain of the favor then simply reject the favor. How is this hard? It doesn’t require this quasi-Christian silly proposition that everyone should be actively modeling how others are to be treated and constrain their behavior accordingly. How silly.

Coherence – defined as thinking, feeling and acting in the same way.

Apparently those that crafted the main tenets of Humanism were unaware of the fact that people and circumstances change. This only reflects their jejune worldview.

Placing the human being as the central value and concern, in such a way that nothing is above the human being and no human being is above another.

Again, more childish thinking. It depends on what you mean by no human being is above another, but I can think of many people that are more important than me. Many writers, artists, architect, priests, and scientists are much more important than me. Hell some concepts are more important than human beings. I would gladly sacrifice myself in instance where I felt my freedom was truly being compromised. In this way I would argue the value of freedom is more important than humans. Come to think of it, some people are worthy of sacrifice just to protect objects like rare artifacts. We call them soldiers and they defend our culture.

Affirming the equality of all human beings.

Such a foolish canard that is demonstrably false.

Recognizing personal and cultural diversity, affirming the characteristics proper to each human group and condemning discrimination, whether motivated by economic, racial, ethnic, or cultural differences.

Again the problem here is that its just painfully naïve. Sure there are instances where respecting other cultures is warranted particularly in cases that don’t matter. But when cultures do things that do matter to your culture you must be willing to draw distinctions and classify according to good and bad. Cultures that are into oppressing woman and killing homosexual are bad. Cultures that are into “Recognizing personal and cultural diversity, affirming the characteristics proper to each human group and condemning discrimination, whether motivated by economic, racial, ethnic, or cultural differences are good.” Well at least according to some of you it is.

Developing knowledge beyond the limitations imposed by prejudices accepted as absolute and immutable truths.

This is pretty solid. Of course one must ask is there any reason not to treat these principles of Humanism as ‘absolute and immutable truths’? They sure are written that way. Of course that would mean this principle violates itself which in turn is a violation of the previous proposition ‘Coherence – defined as thinking, feeling and acting in the same way’. Seriously, only a child could genuinely believe this crap.

Affirming the freedom of ideas and beliefs.

Okay, I will stop caging that which has no corporeal form. Sounds good.

Repudiating violence in all its forms.

I will never repudiate violence committed against those I judge to be bad. Those that do, condemn themselves to a life of oppression and death. Again this proposition speaks to the utter juvenile nature of Humanism.

If humanism is to be defined this way, then I gladly, almost ecstatically, embrace anti-humanism. But then again most people become an anti-humanist by age 12.

If you ask me the problem with Humanism is that it took the argumentation for how the state should treat the citizens and applied it to a much larger scope. If you properly seat these propositions in the context of how the state should treat the citizenry I would agree with most of them. When we examine this more closely we see why humanism principles must be bound to the state. The state has a monopoly on coercion and these principles aim to insure that this force is not used in terrible ways by restraining that force.

Laura Bush supports Jamie, Dan, Darwin, and Bettina’s position.

I have stumbled across an example that perfectly articulates what I mean by editoral bias. A post I was recently reading was reporting on how Fox News had covered the angle that perhaps Al Qaeda had a role in starting the fires in San Diego. Several days earlier I read a story on CNN about how Global Warming might of had a role in those fires.

The conservative agenda at Fox News pushed the editorial decisions to be about a terrorism link while the liberal agenda at CNN pushed the editorial decisions to be about global warming. Both of them are equally asinine explanations for the San Diego fires.