Al Gore Killed Clean Energy

Former Vice President Al Gore gave a speech yesterday. He said

The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels.

and

Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years.

Sounds good, maybe. But in the early 1990s, Al Gore denied us truly clean carbon-free nuclear power.

When hit by neutrons, uranium atoms either split (giving off energy, neutrons and fission products) or transmute into heavier elements (the transuranics). So reactors produce two kinds of nuclear waste: fission products and transuranic elements.

Fission products are only dangerous for a couple of hundred years. I've seen plenty of buildings in Europe and elsewhere that old, so I'm confident we can safely store fission product waste until it decays to harmless dirt.

Transuranic elements can be dangerous for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Safely disposing that waste is a lot harder, particularly if you care about your great-great-great-great-grand kids.

But transuranic elements can be recycled. You chemically separate them from the fission products and put them back into reactors. Over time the transuranics "burn up", producing power while being converted into easily handled fission products.

One of the transuranic elements is plutonium. The Fat Man bomb that dropped on Nagasaki used a plutonium core.

Jimmy Carter decided that the risks of terrorist diversion of plutonium outweighed the benefits of recycling nuclear waste into new fuel. He feared shipments of reactor fuel could be hijacked by terrorists. Other presidents have upheld that policy. So the United States government refuses to allow industry to recycle nuclear reactor fuel. (France, Russia and Japan all recycle their nuclear reactor fuel, which is why they don't have a nuclear waste problem.)

15 years ago I was a new employee of Argonne National Laboratory. As a student I had worked with Argonne staff on the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) project. It aimed to demonstrate on-site fuel recycling, eliminating the possibility of hijacking shipments of spent fuel. It also demonstrated the inherent safety of a sodium coolant reactor.

The IFR project ended on September 30, 1994. Al Gore killed it.

When the Clinton administration took office in early 1993, they immediately decided to kill the IFR project. I think their constituents in the anti-nuke community saw that the IFR project answered most of their arguments against nuclear power. So Al Gore and Hazel O'Leary stripped all IFR funding out of the administration's Fiscal Year 1994 Federal budget request.

The nuclear industry and scientists lobbied Congress to preserve the IFR project. Congress added the funding back in to the FY1994 budget.

Word then came down from DOE headquarters to us at Argonne that if anyone so much as used a sheet of copier paper to write a letter to Congress or the media supporting IFR, that person would be criminally prosecuted for misappropriation of government property and other charges related to illegal lobbying activity. The administration (Al Gore and Hazel O'Leary) wanted IFR dead.

Through a combination of bullying the scientists and doing their own lobbying, the Clinton administration managed to keep IFR funding out of the FY1995 budget as passed by Congress. So the IFR project ended on September 30, 1994, the last day of the 1994 Fiscal Year.

Skip forward 13 years. Al Gore presents a speech on the "climate crisis", calling for the end of carbon-based electricity generation. But his jeremiad omits the very mention of the word nuclear. He still thinks it's more important to keep the irrationally anti-nuke crowd happy than save the planet from carbon dioxide pollution.

I will believe Al Gore really cares about greenhouse gasses when he admits his mistakes in 1993 and 1994, or at least reverses himself on nuclear power.

Involuntary Servitude

Today I must provide some unfree labor to the government. I knew this was going to happen, so I couldn't go on business travel for my employer. And the government isn't going to fairly compensate me for my time.

Technically, US Case Law (Butler vs. Perry, 1916) says that the 13th Amendment prohibition against involuntary servitude does not prohibit "enforcement of those duties which individuals owe to the state, such as services in the army, militia, on the jury, etc."

An individualist analysis of jury duty must balance two competing goods. On the one hand, jury duty is compulsory. I can't just opt out of the activity; the government ultimately makes me to do so through its monopoly on the first use of force. On the other hand, jury duty is an important check on the power of full-time government actors: a criminal or civil defendant's loss of life, freedom and/or property must be endorsed by ordinary citizens in her specific case, not just through rules and laws promulgated by the State.

Although it's a close call, I think it's reasonable to require otherwise uninterested ordinary citizens to serve on jury duty. The benefits to the individual (protection against government over-reach) outweigh the costs (time and inconvenience). That's why I will uncomplainingly report to the Benton County Justice Center this afternoon at 1:00 PM for jury duty.

6:00 PM update: The defendant failed to appear, so the judge issued a bench warrant for his arrest and dismissed the jury pool. I still have to check in twice more, but the jury room supervisor opined that it's unlikely our group will be called back again.

My Favorite Horror Movie

This one's a classic:



Poor guy suffered a "catastrophic failure of the victim selection process." Heh.

Rush, Call Your Dermatologist

Rush Limbaugh loves to say he knows liberals "like every square inch of [his] glorious naked body." Well if that's true he should visit his skin doctor immediately! He's missing something very important and very scary.

Lord Obama--the Democratic nominee--is "troubled" about contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan:

I'm not arguing that there are never going to be uses for private contractors in some circumstances. What I am saying is if you start building a military premised on the use of private contractors, and you start making decisions about armed engaged based on the availability of private contractors to fill holes in gaps, that over time you are, I believe, eroding the core of our military's relationship to the nation and how accountability is structured. You are privatizing something that is what essentially sets a nation state apart, which is the monopoly on -- on violence, uh, and to set those kinds of precedents I think will lead us over the long term into, uh, some troubled waters.

Rush said "[Obama] doesn't know what he is talking about now. He is strictly wandering aimlessly in vain search of a cogent thought. He wasn't even coherent there."

But Rush missed Obama's point. As I've written before, socialists want to restrict all capabilities for violence to government employees. Guns in private hands empower the individual at the expense of the collective will. A 110 pound woman rejects the unitary will of the collective by arming herself. This empowered individual becomes a "rival entity" and thus an enemy of the collective, even if she never uses the weapon.

Lord Obama's point is very clear: a nation state must have an absolute monopoly on the capacity for violence. He believes contractors can provide supplies and transportation, but capacity for violence must always remain in government hands. His statement is coherent and consistent with socialist theory and practice.

Tens of millions of people died when socialists achieved their political goals in Russia, Germany, China and Cambodia. The collective, in the form of the nation state, infringed on individual rights to the capacity for self defense. Once the state held the monopoly on violence, dissenting or dehumanized people died. It's that simple.

For the record, I reject the unitary will of the collective. Legitimate government is instituted to protect individual rights, not to hold a monopoly on violence.

A seemingly minor blemish can turn out to be life threatening skin cancer. Lord Obama's beliefs must be examined and treated with similar care and concern.

When Individual Rights Collide

There's a legal fight on here in Washington State, with both sides claiming their rights are being infringed. Women want to protect their individual rights to control their reproduction, while some pharmacists have religious grounds to refuse to dispense the "Plan B" drug sold by Barr Labs.

At first glance it appears to fall under settled law and precedent. In the early 1960s we decided as a country to disallow commercial discrimination. The Greensboro Woolworth's lunch counter policy of not serving seated African Americans was protested by massive sit-ins. Those protests led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act, barring such discrimination.

But there's a key difference. The seated African American students weren't asking Woolworth's for some special food not offered on the menu. The problem was with discriminating which customers would be served, not which food would be served.

Civil Rights law does not dictate what food a given restaurant must serve. As a restaurant owner I can choose not to serve anything, or to limit my menu in any way I want. It's perfectly legal for me to open a vegetarian restaurant and refuse to serve meat, even if my reasons against serving meat are based on my religion--or if I'm running the only restaurant in town.

The same is true of the Washington pharmacists. They are quite willing to serve any customer, but they are not willing to dispense a particular medication.

Once someone has decided to do something, it's reasonable for government to regulate how that something will be done. Any real-world action could have consequences beyond the first actor, and so it's reasonable for government to intervene to protect the individual rights of others. Once a restaurateur decides to offer a given food she must comply with laws and regulations protecting her customers. Likewise, Civil Rights law requires her to serve that food to anyone who comes in the door with money.

The fundamental individual right of Liberty includes a strong presumption against government compulsion or coercion. With some very few exceptions (e.g. military draft, jury duty) the government should not have the power to force someone to do something they don't want to do.

The Washington women want to use the coercive power of government to force pharmacists to do something they don't want to do. The pharmacists' right not to do something at all necessarily overrides a woman's intent and desire to avoid the consequences of her choice to have sexual intercourse. The pharmacists should and must prevail in this legal matter.

More on Lord Phillips

Over at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, people are misinterpreting Lord Phillips:

Now, far be it from us to impose our “un-nuanced” ways on anybody, but we simply can’t see the attraction of stonings, pre-teen marriage and forcing women to wear burlap bags. One would think that if the muslims, their women in particular, were so enamored with being treated slightly worse than livestock, they’d have stayed right at home.

My church teaches that premarital sex is wrong, based on our reading of the Christian Bible. So if I get a woman pregnant outside of marriage it’s perfectly legitimate for my church to say I can’t be a church officer, sing in the choir or preach from the pulpit.

Likewise it’s perfectly legitimate for Muslims in the West to arrange their private relationships in agreement with Sharia law.

The bright line we must not cross? My church can’t tell the government to put me in jail for premarital sex. The mosque can’t tell the government to fine a woman for not wearing her headscarf. In fact, the government must protect my individual right to sexual expression and the woman’s right to go around bare-headed--the church or mosque is not allowed to enforce any sanction beyond separation from the voluntary organization.

Both sources of authority (religion and state) are legitimate in their own sphere, but they must be kept separate.

Even Eisenhower and McArthur allowed the private practice of Shintoism in post-World War II Japan. They only forced it out of the government sphere.

From that perspective, Lord Phillips has it right. He made it very clear that any government sanctions must be based entirely on English and Welsh law, not on Sharia. But private individuals can voluntarily structure their lives and relationships following Christian church law or Sharia law.

Naming the Enemy

Via Insty, now comes the Times of London reporting on the clearing of Al-Qaeda from Mosul Iraq.

But Glenn missed the money quote:

Al-Qaeda was also bleeding support as allied Iraqi insurgents accepted an amnesty. It did not apply to Al-Qaeda. “If you are fighting to install sharia [Islamic law] on this country, you are going to have to be killed,” said Colonel David Brown, an American adviser to 2nd Division.

There you have it. That's what the Americans and Iraqis are fighting and dying for--freedom from the imposition of religion-based law.

Two More Reasons

A couple of days ago I explained why I'm an American Individualist, not an Anarchist. Unlike Eric S. Raymond, I believe the history of 1930s Germany and late 20th century America are different enough that we don't need to be Anarchists.

In my last post I articulated three reasons: First, advocating Anarchy is like advocating unilateral disarmament--your enemies will happily infringe your liberty if you stop protecting it. Second, the Feds got well and truly deterred in the 1990s by events at Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Oklahoma City. Their approach to the Montana Freemen bears that out. Third, Mr. Raymond misses a crucial difference between 1930s Germany and the American Republic: the Establishment cause of the 1st Amendment. The Nazis were able to neutralize criticism from the Catholic church in large part because Catholic church officers were confirmed and paid by the government.

Kim du Toit's 4th of July Geopoliticus blog posting was almost uncharacteristically optimistic. I commented that I agreed with his point that we Americans have kept faith with the Founders, protecting and preserving the gift they bequeathed us.

My comment seems to have motivated two other very interesting comments. Ken writes I was

missing one big historical victory for the freedom (i.e., 2nd Amendment side): the successful campaign against Smith & Wesson for its surrender to the Clinton administration over gun control.

It amazes me that this absolutely critical event in history should be so overlooked. This was the turning point in the gun control fight. It convinced both George W. Bush and Albert Gore, Jr., that the 2nd Amendment supporters were the “strong horse,” although both had previously backed gun control.

Ken makes the astute observation that the politicians and industry had their own wake up call after the Smith & Wesson "settlement" caused a measurable marketplace reaction. The politicians saw where the people were going, and any successful American politician must eventually run to the front of the crowd and yell "follow me!" The gun industry saw that their primary market--civilian weapon sales--could dry up in a hurry if a manufacturer accommodating people who wanted to give the state a monopoly on the tools of force.

Windy Wilson points out another key difference between the politics of 1930s Germany and the United States:

Parallel, another point of great divergence from the Weimar/Nazi transition is that during the Weimar period, many if not most of the Germans did not recognize the legitimacy of the Weimar government—not Hindenburg as president, but the entire government, and longed for a return to the pre-WW1 setup (Richard J. Evans, The Rise of the Nazis). That alone would make it easier for someone to overthrow the government as the Nazis essentially did. For all the crybaby “Stolen Election” drivel, I don’t see anyone contesting the legitimacy of the Federal government here in the US.

I think Windy Wilson is referring to this book:

I haven't read it yet, but I've just added it to my Amazon.com wishlist so I don't forget about it.

As an Individualist I'm concerned that the Federal government has too much legitimacy, particularly beyond its core purpose of protecting individual rights. Too many people want its scope of activity to extend much further; see (for example) my criticism of the National Endowment of the Arts. But Windy is right--all the calumny heaped upon George W. Bush was motivated by the perception he stole something important and valuable. The hue and cry would have been considerably less powerful if the prize--the Presidency--was itself considered illegitimate in some way.

Thanks Ken and Windy!

Lord Phillips Has it Right

Now comes Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, speaking to the London Muslim Centre in Whitechapel:

"There is no question of such [Sharia] courts sitting in this country or such sanctions being applied here.

“So far as the law is concerned, those who live in this country are governed by English and Welsh law and subject to the jurisdiction of the English and Welsh courts,” he said.

It's about time someone in Britain defended the legitimacy, supremacy and authority of national law over Sharia law. After all, people are free to vote with their feet:

“Those who come to live in this country and benefit from the rights enjoyed by all who live here also necessarily come under the same obligations that the law imposes on all who live here.”

Absolutely right. Legitimate government must equally protect the rights of all residents. If some people's rights are privileged, other people's rights are denigrated. Any government policy that fails to protect someone's individual rights is illegitimate and immoral.

I have several friends who immigrated to the United States from other countries. They came and played by the rules and are exemplary citizens. I have a special respect for people who give up the comforting familiarity of their early lives to become Americans. But I have nothing but disdain and condemnation for people who want to live in America and enjoy the benefits of America while disrespecting and disparaging the very values that make America great.

Good on you, Lord Phillips, for defending the British rule of law.

End the NEA

The National Endowment for the Arts should go away.

Yesterday I explained why I think it's safe to be an American Individualist, and not an Anarchist. An important factor is that the government is prohibited by the Constitution from supporting religion. That keeps religious organizations free from worry that something they say will impact their government funding. Specifically, in contrast to 1930s Germany, American religious bodies don't have any government entanglements that compromise their ability to respond and criticize government speech.

Consider this paragraph from the Chairman's Statement in the 2006 NEA Annual Report:

Because we know the difference that availability to a thriving arts community can make to our youth and families, the NEA has made a priority of reaching every community. To be truly national, the National Endowment for the Arts has awarded at least one direct grant for every 760,000 Americans. Every member of Congress can return to his or her district and find at least one arts organization that is receiving catalytic support from the NEA.

In other words, arts organizations in every congressional district are compromised. They receive government funding. Government funding is always conditioned on something, either explicitly or implicitly.

Note that the Chairman is admitting that their funding decisions are not based entirely on merit. It's not a coincidence that the NEA funds organizations in every congressional district. Inevitably the merit-based evaluation process must be skewed to obtain this result.

It gets even worse. The Chairman goes on to write:

I say catalytic because for every dollar the NEA grants, seven to eight additional dollars are generated.

In other words, these Federal funding decisions have an impact above and beyond their base dollar amount. An organization receiving Federal arts funds can turn around and get seven or eight dollars in third party funds for each government dollar. The pernicious truth is that the converse is also true--if an art organization loses Federal funding, their third party funds dry up as well.

That's too much power for government. Government's purpose is to protect my liberty. Making decisions on the quality of art does not advance that narrow purpose. And as we've seen in history, government influence in the marketplace of ideas can lead to bloody ends.

Not an Anarchist

I'm an Individualist, not an Anarchist.

Eric S. Raymond is an Anarchist. He reviews the history of the 20th Century, deciding that even the United States Constitution isn't enough protection for individual liberties:

The Founding Fathers of the United States thought they had found a way to successfully head off the degeneration of governments into pathological monstrosities: ensure that the people remain armed, and teach them that it is part of their duty as free citizens to check the arrogance of government — by threat of armed revolt or by actual revolution, if need be. Thomas Jefferson would have asked why the Jews and Gypsies of Germany allowed themselves to be disarmed by Nazi gun-confiscation laws without rising in revolt — and, more pointedly, why the soi-disant civilized nations of the world did not see the confiscation of civilian weapons as a sure harbinger of the Holocaust to come.

[....]

I am left with the bleak conclusion that no attempt to hold the arrogance of government in check will work — because a majority of the people themselves are too easily seduced into abandoning their own institutional protections against tyranny by the false promises and poisonous dreams of statist propaganda.

That is why I am an anarchist.

Mr. Raymond, I must respectfully dissent. I believe your analysis misses three important points.

First, a policy of Anarchism is national suicide, which will inevitably lead to denial of the individual rights we enjoy in America. Too many nation-states in the world today would be only too happy to conquer the United States by force. Some would be motivated to expropriate our wealth. Some would simply like to enslave the people, whether for economic or religious reasons. Others simply see American success as an unacceptable proof that their own philosophies and beliefs don't provide universal Truth in some way. We really do need "governments...to preserve...[our] rights."

Second, he doesn't put appropriate weight on four events in late 20th-Century American history: Ruby Ridge, the Waco Siege, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the Montana Freemen standoff. At Ruby Ridge, an assault by Federal agents on an isolationist family led to deaths on both sides, and the target of the raid (Randy Weaver) was eventually acquitted of the underlying charge by a jury. At Waco, Federal agents tried to raid the compound of a fanatic religious group--but the group stopped the assault by shooting and killing several agents. Federal agents eventually assaulted the compound with military vehicles and chemical weapons, but the resulting fire led to widespread criticism and outrage. Timothy McVeigh was motivated to bomb the Murrah Federal Building as revenge for Ruby Ridge and Waco.

But when they came to arrest the Montana Freemen, Federal agents took their time and managed to make the arrests without violence or deaths. Federal agents got the message; it's simply not a good idea to ride roughshod over Americans. Even though the Federal agent killer of Randy Weaver's wife didn't go to prison, and the surviving agents responsible for Waco didn't lose their jobs, Federal police tactics became much more respectful of American individuals--even obvious criminals.

Third, early-20th Century Germany did not separate church and state. Catholic church officials were nominated by the Vatican, but their names were approved by the German government and their salaries were supported by tax money. This structural collusion between the Vatican and the German government meant that the Church was dissuaded from criticizing government policy. It ensured that German government ideas and propaganda weren't easily challenged in the open marketplace of ideas.

In contrast, the Framers of the United States Constitution wanted to keep the government from concentrating either the power to shape public opinion (First Amendment) or the power to force public compliance (Second Amendment).

The First and Second Amendments are both necessary to restrain government: The First amendment makes sure there are competing voices in the marketplace of ideas, accessible to many individuals. The Second Amendment makes sure that once individuals make up their minds about a public policy, they can make their decisions stick in the face of raw government power--or at least greatly increase the cost in blood and treasure for the government to crush the individuals.

Bottom line: I believe it's safe and appropriate to be an Individualist in the United States.

Update 5 July 2008: please seetwo more reasons suggested by comments at Kim du Toit's Geopoliticus blog.

Dog-loving Individualist

I've just changed the "about me" description to your left. It used to say

A mostly conservative computer security scientist type guy.

When I started this blog I thought I was a conservative. To me, a conservative is someone who agrees with Rush Limbaugh most of the time. The Republican party is the American political home of conservatism.

Right-wing, conservative politics are based on preserving or returning to some traditional authority. Left-wing politics are based on social change or progress. My fundamental values aren't based on returning to something old or trying something new.

So rather than a conservative I'm more of an individualist. From a very young age I was taught that each person is a unique, valuable individual. Everyone has God-given rights, and is worthy of respect. To respect someone as a person means respecting and allowing them to make their own choices.

For the past 3.5 years my wife and I have been blessed to share our home with Kiko. He thinks he's a black Labrador Retriever, even though his mother is half chocolate Lab and half pointer. As you can see in our picture, he loves his people--nothing more satisfying and fun than to lick my face.

So I'm changing my self-description. Individualism better describes my personal philosophy, and my love for dogs like Kiko is important too.