Kyle Varner’s Blog

Carnival is an Antiguan tradition, and people here take it very, very seriously.  They prepare for months, rehearsing dances and music, preparing costumes, and all manner of wonderful things.

I, unfortunately, cannot go to carnival because shelf exams are coming up (on the 12th!).  However, I have come up with another way to celebrate.

Carnival is a celebration of the end of slavery in Antigua; I can think of few better reasons to celebrate.  Human liberty is a splendid thing.

I am fond of brining up the notion of slavery when discussing government, because it is both vivid and accurate.  Ayn Rand once characterized the future of the freedom movement as “setting man free from men.”  We are in the midst of an ideological battle that is every bit as important as those of the past.  One thousand years ago, it was accepted that individuals ought to be bound to their lords.  Most people were serfs.  This was a form of slavery.  Several hundred years ago, it was commonly accepted that men derived their rights from the permission of the King.  Only two hundred years ago, it was still accepted that men can own other men as possessions.

Reason prevailed in each of these cases.  Ideologically, we are closer than ever before to men living as free individuals in a rational society.  We have set man free from specific other men.  Now, we must set man free from men.  We must promulgate and advocate for the idea that men derive their rights from their very nature as rational beings, and not from membership in a group, culture or society.  The natural conclusion of this is that men, i.e. society, i.e. Hobbes’ Commonwealth, must never presume to be the source of man’s rights, and must never violate them.

Collectivism was the ideological basis of slavery, and its abolition represented a tremendous step forward.  Let us celebrate by working towards taking the next step forward in the grand ideological battle for freedom.

How?  In honor of the end of slavery in Antigua, I’m going to make a contribution to Bob Barr.  I can’t afford much, what with being a medical student, but I can afford something.  Bob Barr may not be perfect, but his campaign is a vehicle through which we can reach millions of people with rational ideas.  Let’s fund this vehicle so that it can reach as many minds as possible.

As someone who travels internationally with great frequency, I was disturbed (but not surprised) to learn of an official policy at the Department of Homeland Security that allows this wretched entity to conduct electronic searches with no evidence of suspicion. They may seize laptops, cell phones, PDAs and the like, without evidence, and keep them for months or even longer, until they see fit to return them.

The Washington Post Reports:

Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Other reasons? What other reasons? As written, the policy is a blank check to allow these thugs to do anything they want. It is downright creepy.

Even creepier is the fact that the higher-ups defend their practices as necessary to keep us safe.  I don’t know if they actually believe that, but I sure as hell don’t.  The US Government is far more dangerous than Al-Qaeda!

Introducing…the newest topic of my blog: The Top 5. There are a lot of great bloggers out there, and I always find a number of their posts very interesting. So, I’m going to start linking to the most interesting ones! I’m going to try to do this every week, but I make absolutely no guarantees that it will happen every week. I am a busy man, but I’ll do what I can. I’m hoping to have two Top 5 posts per week: One on medicine and one on politics and philosophy.

So, here is my inaugural Top 5 political and/or philosophical blog posts for this week! Keep in mind that the order in which they appear is not an attempt to rank them. This is just an attempt to share with my readers what I have found most interesting this week.

“Voters’ Preferences are Not One-Dimensional”

From: Cafe Hayek

Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek posts a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal discussing voter preferences. He argues that simple votes do not indicate the so-called “will of the people” because they do not take into account the intensity of voter’s preferences. Boudreaux goes on to explain (outside of his letter) that the number of people who decide to show up and vote does something to indicate what the will of the people is. I think that this is a very valid point. Boudreaux goes on to suggest that this may be a valid argument against the notion that voting is a civic duty.

I must wholeheartedly agree with Boudreaux: most voters should excuse themselves from politics, because they do not understand what they are doing. They don’t understand the nuances of the candidates’ plans, nor do they understand the primary principles upon which our Republic is based. This is, of course, especially true of the vast majority of Obama’s supporters who are being led about by his oratory prowess and empty rhetoric.

Social Welfare is a Red Herring: The Return of Feudalism

From: The Last Psychiatrist

The Last Psychiatrist has a fascinating take on social welfare, where the author dissects the motives of those who advocate socialism, specifically in health care. He is right on the money with regards to their motives—they are more interested in punishing capitalists than in improving the well-being of individuals.

He begins by stating, “The policies sound good, and perhaps they would be, if not for the malignant intentions that motivate them.” He is right: their intentions are malignant. I, however, don’t think their policies sound good, and they would most definitely not be good. Nonetheless, this piece is well worth reading.

Swimming in Government Waste

From: The Mises Institute

The Mises Institute (one of the most important modern intellectual defenders of liberty) discusses government pollution in Ohio. They point out that while a for-profit business could never get away with pumping sewage runoff into rivers, but somehow its OK if a government entity does it. I am always fond of such examples. It is a wonderful illustration of why the government is the last entity to which we ought to look if we are in search of a healthy environment.

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them—Anti Biotech Edition

From: Reason Hit and Run

I love it when the anti-genetic engineering crow gets called out on its lies. These people are not interested in safety, or in human welfare, they are interested in recasting man in Rousseau’s image of the Noble Savage. While this article makes use of data provided by government agencies, which is notoriously suspect, the data is the best we have available, and the data sources are known for exaggeratin, not downplaying, the dangers of technology. Almost fifty years with no reports of adverse effects is pretty damn good in my book.

Penn Jillette on Bloomberg

This came to my attention on the Bob Barr for President Blog. I am a huge fan of Penn Jillette and the Penn and Teller show. Penn is an outspoken advocate of reason, and I think he has reached a large number of people with his unique style of humor and serious intellectual argument. I couldn’t embed the video here because bloomber has it disabled on their youtube channel, but just click on the link above.

By the way: I will be casting my vote for Bob Barr.

Prescriptions—who needs ‘em?

There is something really cool about living in a third world country. The government usually isn’t strong enough to enforce a bunch of petty regulations. They haven’t got the money and they haven’t got the motivation. This can lead to a lot of convenience.

When I was living in Belize, I had food poisoning a couple of times (that is also a perk of the third world). It was easy enough to get rid of. Two tablets of Cipro and I was good to go. No problem.

Antigua, it seems, is not such a nice place with regards to that. Pharmacies here actually want prescriptions. This is more than mildly annoying, especially since it is harder than hard to get in to see a doctor.

There is a medication that I take on a regular basis, and I’ve run out. My refill will arrive from the United States sometime this week, but until then, I’m stuck. There isn’t any of this particular medication available on this island, but there is an unpurified form. It isn’t ideal, but I can make do for a week on it. I went to the pharmacy and asked for it, and was told I need a prescription. Why? That is indeed a very good question.

It is a very good question not only because this medication is harmless and I only want a supply for one week, but it is just an all-around good question. Why must I go to a doctor, sit in the waiting room and then pay $100 to get him to jot down the drug I want? If I know what I need, I should just be able to go to the pharmacy and buy it.

Noooooooo, scream so many ill-advised individuals. Some of those drugs are dangerous! You might know what you need, but most people are dumb!

So what? Dumb people do all sorts of dumb things that screw up their lives. They drink too much, they spend their money on frivolous things, they have unprotected sex, they share needles. Then, they live with or die by the consequences.

While some people may want to enact laws to protect stupid people from themselves, reality dictates that this is impossible. No law that congress passes will make people smart. They will never be able to stop people from ruining their lives and killing themselves. Everyone knows this.

So, why do I need a prescription?

Throughout most of the world, medicine is an organized cartel. Physicians and their (soon, our) ilk have banded together and lobbied governments to require them. They may claim that it is all about safety, but anyone with half and ounce of critical thinking ability knows this isn’t the case. Its about money. If people can’t get the drugs they need without going to see a physician, they’ll come to the physician’s office, and pay him a nice fee to jot some stuff down on a piece of paper.

This is not what physicians are for! We’re not here to be nannies and keep people from hurting themselves. People will still go to doctors, but instead of going just to get a script, they’ll go when they’re actually sick. Chances are, they’ll not have to endure monumental waits, and they may very well pay lower prices due to a new supply-demand dynamic.

Oh well, we must all sacrifice so that the dumb don’t overdose….

I became aware of Kent Snyder’s death only today; I’ve been wrapped up in my studies and haven’t been keeping up with the current happenings in the Libertarian movement as much as I’d like to have.

Kent Snyder was the chairman of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, and he did a damn good job. He was actually the individual who persuaded Dr. Paul to run.

I spent a few days volunteering at the Ron Paul campaign headquarters in DC, where I met Kent Snyder, and handed him about $5000 in checks from a fund raiser that I held at my parents house. He was such a nice guy, and thanked me several times for my volunteer efforts, both with regards to the fund raiser and with regards to my work at the campaign headquarters. He was an asset to the libertarian movement, and a great guy.

I am rather surprised, though, that Kent Snyder’s death has provoked criticism of Ron Paul and of Libertarianism in general. Kent Snyder spent about two months in the hospital suffering from viral pneumonia.  He did not have health insurance, and as such, has a $400,000 medical bill for which his estate liable. Those in favor of “universal health care” have actually gone so far as to insinuate that Snyder died BECAUSE he didn’t have health insurance, and they have criticized the Paul campaign for not offering it to their employees.

I am sure Snyder would have said the same thing that I am going to say: Snyder didn’t had health insurance because he chose not to. He could have purchased it for himself, but he made the judgment that it did not make financial sense to do so. Yes, his estate needs to pay the bills. They will do so.

Friends of Snyder have set up a website collecting contributions to help pay this debt. You can view it at www.KentSnyder.com

This is in no way a political issue, but our opponents are trying to make it into one. This is very unfortunate.

Yes, I said the S word.  Slavery!  It brings to mind horrors of the past, when this ugly practice destroyed lives and dehumanized millions.  I want to bring that to mind, because it is important that we associate the philosophical underpinnings of slavery with their vivid and horrifying results.

What, you ask, are the philosophical underpinnings of slavery?

It is the idea that man exists not for himself, but for the sake of others, and that his very existence requires the sanction of others.  If you hold that man has rights, and those rights are the very essence of his being, you automatically reject slavery.  If you reject the notion of man’s rights, you accept the notion that the strongest may enslave the weakest, and that the biggest gang may do as it pleases with the rest of humanity.

Barak Obama’s National Service Plan is a fundamental rejection of man’s natural rights.  He would have every high school student perform fifty hours of mandatory community service per academic year, and require 100 hours of mandatory community service each year for college students.

Quite honestly, under those circumstances, I may not have even graduated high school, let alone college.  I strongly object to being told when to be charitable.  I have rights, and the government is there to protect them, not to force me into servitude.  The philosophical underpinnings of this proposal are the same as those of slave-traders:  The mighty (in this case a gang known as the Democratic Party) may subject the helpless to their whims.

You might think that it would be a very nice thing for high school and college students to “serve” others.  If so, I recommend that you go back to college, take some philosophy courses, and “serve others” yourself.  Be generous with your own time, not with mine!

I’ll close with a quote from Ayn Rand:

It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.

Barack:  I am not your slave, and neither is anyone else.  That dark era of our nations past is over.  You speak of hope–and it is becoming clear that your hope is to take America down a dangerous course of collectivism that can only lead to abject misery for all.

To my readers:  remember the consequences of ideas.  It is ideas that drive human action.  The same ideas usually get the same results.  Let’s not revert back to the idea of slave and master.  That idea will bring us nothing but misery.

On a forum that is frequented by a number of AUA students, there was a thread recently started that led to a lot of people expressing a dislike of homosexuals.  I think that this world view is inherently irrational.   Every piece of evidence we have suggests the homosexuality is a biological phenomena, akin to being right or left handed.  How can one pass any sort of moral judgment upon someone whose biological nature leads them to seek their happiness in another direction?  Even if someone has a religious problem with homosexuality, it is likely the case that their religion teaches them something akin to “Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner”, which would seem to me to indicate that they would not have a problem with homosexuals as such.

In any case, homophobia is utter nonsense, and quite often, I think, the result of some sort of psychological neurosis.  In my experience, most of the people I have met who don’t like homosexuals are those who are undereducated.  In college, there were a number of openly gay students, and no one treated them any differently because of it.  They were just as popular, just as accepted, and just as well-liked as anyone else.  I attributed this to the fact that students had been enlightened by their education and understood the irrationality behind homophobia.

In response to those AUA students who expressed their distaste for homosexuals, I offered the following thoughts on the forum:

 For those of you who are expressing your distaste for homosexuals, I would like to call your attention to a study performed by researchers at the University of Georgia, and published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology (which is owned by the APA).

The study compared the sexual arousal of self-reported heterosexual men. The study used the Index of Homophobia to determine whether to assign the men to either the control group (non-homophobic) or the test group (homophobic).

Here is what the study says about the classification:

The score obtained is a measure of “dread” an individual experiences when placed in close quarters with a homosexual; a low score equals low dread, and a high score equals high dread….Because most of the items contain the terms comfortable or uncomfortable, dread can be assumed to mean anticipatory anxiety about interacting with a homosexual person. For example, one item states “I would feel nervous being in a group of homosexuals.” Positive and negative statements are used to control for response set biases. The
authors reported .90 reliability coetficient on a sample of 300 respondents. O’Donahu¢ and Caselles ( 1993, p. 187 ) commented that the authors of the IHP used a “more empirical and psychometrically sophisticated approach than previous researchers who have produced instruments to measure homophobia.”

Here is a synopsis of their results:

In the homophobic group, 20% showed no significant tumescence, 26% showed moderate tumescence, and 54% showed definite tumescence to the homosexual video; the corresponding percentages in the nonhomophobic group were 66%, 10%, and 24%, respectively.

You can read the entire study here: http://www.oogachaga.com/downloads/h…al_arousal.pdf

Quite frankly, homophobia is irrational, and it disappoints me that students at AUA would express these opinions. (I’m not saying that anyone should prevent you from doing so, I’m just saying that I’m disappointed in you for holding such an irrational world view). In any case, I think the joke, “You’re so homophobic you can’t touch yourself” may have a lot of truth to it.

Hopefully this will provoke a little bit of discussion and thought on the topic.  If you are a doctor, you’re going to have patients of all types, and it would behoove you to get over your homophobia before you have to examine a gay man’s inguinal hernia.

I like to read about what my life is going to eventually be like.  It helps give me the discipline to complete those 18 hour study marathons!

In any case, I enjoyed reading this post:  Advice for New EM Grads

Yeah, it’s not an explanation of how awesome life is going to be (we all hope we’re going to love every aspect of our lives, don’t we?).  But it helps to keep one’s eyes on the prize to remain motivated.