Karl Popper was a great philosopher who solved the problem of induction and who shed light on many philosophical problems related to freedom. Popper showed that people learn through critical thought and discussion, not by building their views on non-existent secure foundations. Karl Marx was an intellectual lightweight whose utter misunderstanding of economics, his antisemitism and his worship of violence combined to form a poisonous brew that inspired all the terrible tyrants of the twentieth century from Hitler to Stalin.

Nevertheless, when BBC Radio 4 held a poll about who is the greatest philosopher, Marx was at number 1 and Popper was at number 10.

Why do so many people celebrate Marx? Marx was only one in a long line of philosophers who advocated socialism - the idea that people should collectively own property. But people cannot collectively own property. A given piece of property can only be put to a finite number of non-conflicting uses, and people are fallible, which is why they disagree. When people practise capitalism they decide how property will be used through agreements to which they subscribe voluntarily. Socialists and other opponents of capitalism license one particular group to use violence, or the threat thereof, to steal property from another. Favouring one group through violence prevents critical discussion of different ways to use property, which is anti-rational. Popper argued that we should have an open society in which people are free to criticise and work for the alteration of current institutions through reason and persuasion. Marx's contribution to this debate was to say that logic was a creation of the bourgeoisie and so logic is an evil tool of oppression. The workers, Marx said, had a different logic. When Marx had thrown logic out of the window he could say anything he liked and so was free to argue for socialism. Many of Marx's intellectual descendants have used Marx's argument against bourgeois logic to say their opponents are bourgeois and therefore necessarily wrong, without bothering to address their arguments. Thus Marx provided socialists with a way to cut short debates that they would have lost if they had stuck to rational discussion. That is why so many socialists love Marx: he gave them an excuse for their intellectual and moral irresponsibility. If our readers want an example of the sort of confusion that Marx's philosophy helped to encourage, we urge them to listen to the discussion on the programme that announced the results.

People can only really use Marx's philosophy to entrench error. However, we can use Popper's insights on knowledge and the open society to puncture the pretensions of dogmatic philosophers, illiberal governments and tyrants, and to understand the nature of knowledge and freedom. Karl Popper and Karl Marx have the same first name, but there the similarity ends. .

We are saddened and angered by the terrorist attacks that took place this morning in London. At the same time, the leaders of the G8 were meeting in Gleneagles to discuss how to try to solve some of the world's problems. The leaders at the G8 summit disagree profoundly with each another about how best to do this. However, they are good people and good people resolve their differences through discussion. Evil people, like the terrorists and the world's various fear regimes, lash out violently and hurt and kill people instead of thinking seriously about how to solve problems.

There can be no doubt that if today's terrorists had had it in their power to murder and maim and bereave ten times as many people, they would have done so with relish. If such people get hold of weapons of mass destruction they will destroy entire cities without hesitation. The West must not hesitate to take action against countries like Iran to prevent them from developing such weapons. If they do, the Iranian government and their ilk will not hold a summit when they disagree with civilised countries: they will threaten or commit mass murder to get their way.

Milton Friedman once wrote that businesses only have a responsibility to increase their profits. For interactions within the laws of a free society, this formula is an excellent approximation to the truth. But when a business is involved with the government of a fear society, not everything it might do to increase its profits is morally permissible.

Microsoft has decided to block Chinese bloggers who try to use words like “freedom”, “democracy”, “demonstration”, “human rights” and “Taiwan independence”. Contrary to A Reasonable Man, we think Microsoft is behaving wrongly here. Microsoft has no duty to prevent the Chinese government from oppressing its citizens, but it should not collaborate with such attempts by acting as an enforcer. This is the difference a man between watching a thug beat somebody up because he is too weak or poorly armed or frightened to intervene, and the same man intentionally blocking the victim's escape route, or offering the thug a heavier lead pipe.

As in the case of international aid which gets appropriated by the very governments that have caused the victims' poverty, a totalitarian oppressor can always arrange matters so that if one wants to help at all, one must collaborate with him and entrench his power. In the extreme case, terrorists do the same when they take hostages. At the other extreme, any trade (and some would say any government) creates an element of this moral dilemma, and there is room for disagreement about where a bystander becomes a collaborator. (The interesting movie The Accused also explores this issue.) We think that in this case Microsoft could and should have said no to imposing these restrictions, which are so odious to the culture in which it thrives and on which it relies. It said yes, and crossed the line.

The Anglican Consultative Council, whose President is the Archbishop of Canterbury, has voted to recommend that its member churches divest from businesses that support Israeli “occupation” of the territories. As Melanie Philips said, they did this in response to a report “full of the most inflammatory lies, libels and distortions about Israel”.

In an attempt to ward off accusations of bias, they also recommended that churches divest from businesses that support Palestinian violence against innocent Israelis. With this attempt at formal ‘even-handedness’ the Council betrays its moral bankruptcy and ignorance of the situation in Israel and Palestine as much as with anything else in the report. Palestinian terrorist groups try to attack Israelis and fantasise about destroying Israel. So the Israelis run military operations to stop terrorism and take security measures to prevent murderers from coming into Israel.

The Council are trying to be neutral between Palestinian terrorists on the one hand and Israel on the other. Their press release illustrates the dark logic of this moral equivalence. In it they do not mention terrorism. Nor do they mention that the Palestinian terrorist groups want to destroy Israel. Nor that their ideologies are based explicitly on wild antisemitic conspiracy theories, and that all the institutions of their society relentlessly transmit these to their children. Nor do they mention that Palestinian terrorist groups regularly murder Palestinians for “collaborating” with Israel, i.e. - for warning Israelis who are in danger of being murdered. However, they do manage to squeeze in a reference to “the draconian conditions of the continuing occupation under which so many Palestinians live.” The Council's problem is that if they wish to remain neutral then they can't mention the agenda or the crimes of Palestinian terrorists. If they did, then they would have to admit that the terrorists are evil and the Israelis are defending themselves from this evil. So they can only mention the Israeli government's security measures while carefully refraining from putting them into context. And so their ‘even-handedness’ leads directly to their one-sided condemnation of Israel. The Church of England has sold its soul for the sake of appearing neutral.

There are many frivolous lawsuits brought nowadays. This is not one of them:

A Kentucky woman who thought she won $100,000 in a radio station giveaway is suing for breach of contract after learning that her prize was actually a Nestle's 100 Grand candy bar. According to the below June 22 Circuit Court complaint, Norreasha Gill, 28, claims that she was listening to Lexington's WLTO-FM on the evening of May 25 when host DJ Slick announced that he would award "100 Grand" to the tenth caller. When Gill, the pregnant mother of three children, was that tenth caller, the radio host told her she could pick up her prize the following day at WLTO's studio. She subsequently learned that the contest was a "joke"

WLTO-FM's lawyers will undoubtedly be studying the classic and elegant case of Calill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Company:

We are dealing with an express promise to pay £100 in certain events. Read the advertisement how you will, and twist it about as you will, here is a distinct promise expressed in language which is perfectly unmistakable - "£100 reward will be paid by the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company to any person who contracts the influenza after having used the ball three times daily for two weeks according to the printed directions supplied with each ball."

We must first consider whether this was intended to be a promise at all, or whether it was a mere puff which meant nothing. Was it a mere puff? My answer to that question is No, and I base my answer upon this passage: "£1000 is deposited with the Alliance Bank, shewing our sincerity in the matter." Now, for what was that money deposited or that statement made except to negative the suggestion that this was a mere puff and meant nothing at all? The deposit is called in aid by the advertiser as proof of his sincerity in the matter - that is, the sincerity of his promise to pay this £100 in the event which he has specified. I say this for the purpose of giving point to the observation that we are not inferring a promise; there is the promise, as plain as words can make it.

Read the whole thing. The parallels are eerie and, if the facts are as reported, WLTO doesn't have a leg to stand on.

However, the plaintiff is asking for punitive damages. And that is frivolous and unjust. She should get her hundred grand plus costs and not a penny more. If she wins punitive damages, it will be an injustice almost as great as if she lost the case altogether. The whole idea of punishment where there has been no crime should be anathema to any civilised society.

Via LGF we learn that the Australian State of Victoria's new Racial and Religious Tolerance Act has just been used to prosecute two pastors for

suggesting that the Koran promotes violence and terrorism

The Court ordered them to publish a retraction, and to undertake never to say the like again.

They say they will not comply. Hence, they will go to prison.

When a terrorist is next convicted in Victoria, and claims that his actions were justified by the Koran, will he be convicted under that same Act? And after serving his sentence, will he remain in prison for contempt of court until he agrees to attribute his crime to some other motive?

The British Foreign Office is yearning to be allowed direct and open contact with Hamas and Hezbollah. Their excuse:

The British Government is considering a Middle East policy switch that would mean direct and open contact for the first time with the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah, which are expected to make significant electoral gains in the West Bank and Gaza and in Lebanon...

But the Foreign Office feels it would be hypocritical to encourage democracy but refuse to accept the outcome, even if it means working with groups it finds distasteful.

“Distasteful”, indeed!

Hamas and Hezbollah are not democratic parties. They are gangs of terrorists who also participate in elections when it suits them tactically. They systematically intimidate and murder people and should be disqualified from anything that seriously aspires to be democratic. Hamas murdered a woman for holding hands in public with her fiance. Hezbollah has a 25,000 strong army in Lebanon, where they run a TV station that incites terrorism. They also run an international terror network. If you can't go out in public and criticise a group without fear of reprisals, then they are not fit to participate in elections. Hamas and Hezbollah are as politically illegitimate as the Nazis were, regardless of their hollow electoral victories.

According to the latest opinion polls, the most likely winner of the forthcoming Iranian Presidential election is former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

"regarded as a pragmatist … has raised the possibility of improved relations with the United States"

says the press. None of the mainstream reports of this, so far, has mentioned Rafsanjani's pragmatic opinion about the Jews of Israel. Namely, that they should be exterminated by a nuclear attack.

If one day, he said, the world of Islam comes to possess the weapons currently in Israel's possession [meaning nuclear weapons] – on that day this method of global arrogance would come to a dead end. This, he said, is because the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.

Not important enough to mention.

The US Army has dismissed Sergeant Robert Stout for admitting that he is gay. We agree with Andrew Sullivan that this policy is unfairly discriminatory, and is especially ironic at a time of shortage of good soldiers.

But that is putting it too mildly. The “don't ask, don't tell” policy is a cruel and stupid outrage. If the US military fires a soldier because he admits that he's gay, they are effectively handing a free casualty to the enemy. And more: for every gay soldier that the Army fires, several more won't bother applying.

Even that is not the worst of it. This policy is a declaration that we are not fighting a war, we are playing a game. A game of rituals and taboos and arbitrary rules. But the only relevant rules for conduct in the armed forces in wartime are those connected to the performance of military operations. The US Army are worried that gay soldiers might fall in love and refuse to fight. Nonsense. The IDF and the British armed forces both have gay soldiers, and we have yet to see a report that any of them have become ineffective at fighting because they are in love. Men and women work together in those armies too, and in the US forces (including gay soldiers who ‘don't tell’). Good soldiers of any sexual orientation are not stupid animals who follow their hormones regardless of morality or consequences. They are thinking beings who are capable of sticking to the hard and dangerous business of fighting to preserve freedom, under all sorts of pressures. We need them to do that, and to honour them for doing so. Shame on the authors and supporters of this immoral policy.

Update:

In 1066 and All That, their classic spoof of British history (or rather, of history lessons), W.C.Sellar and R.J.Yeatman list the main objective of the Peasants' Revolt as having been:

a) To obtain a free pardon for having revolted.

They also remark that, having succeeded in that objective, they were all executed anyway.

In today's surrealistic political scene, unintentional self-parody among the Left and among opponents of the war is commonplace and there is no scope for talents of the kind possessed by Sellar and Yeatman. Therefore it is not surprising to find that many take for granted not only that the (real, secret) objective of the war is to steal oil, but that if a war must be fought, its principal objective should be:

a) That none of our soldiers should ever violate the rules of war.

This has the same logic as Sellar and Yeatman's joke: it is an objective that can only be realistically achieved by surrendering in advance; and it is an objective perfectly compatible with all being executed anyway. Even Bill Whittle, in the fine essay we referred to recently, seems to be analysing the morality of the war in terms of which side adheres more closely to the rules of war. By that standard, the Coalition comes out overwhelmingly ahead. But that neither diminishes the crimes that Coalition soldiers do commit, nor is it a valid argument that the Coalition side is in the right.

We make no excuses for cruelty, nor do we condone violence that is not justified by self-defence. But we do not confuse the issue of enforcing the law among soldiers with that of what the objective of, or justification for, fighting is.

The French people have emphatically rejected the proposed European Constitution. In doing so, they have killed the great project of European political union.

Hurray for them!

The French voted non for all the wrong reasons. Nevertheless, this is a moment to be charitable towards them, as New Sisyphus has been in a very interesting commentary:

The French, so the story goes, reject what they see as an Anglo-Saxon liberal power-grab in the guise of a greater Europe, while, ironically, the Dutch and the British see in it a rise of a socialist super-state with very little accountability.

Perhaps. There is no doubt that there is some truth to that line of analysis.

[…]

And, yet, at the same time we detect something deeper, something more fundamental. A great nation has been asked to vote itself out of existence, to subsume its identity in a larger mix.

We know not what the ultimate destiny of the French shall be, but it shall not be this, of that we are certain. France is eternal, great and glorious; it shall not whimper and walk off the world stage mixed with Belgians.

Indeed. And along the same lines we note, more pragmatically, that the very fact that different European nations are rejecting the Constitution for diametrically opposite reasons is a strong indication that the Political Union project is not only dead, but will also prove impossible to resurrect in any other form.

There are hopeful signs that both the Dutch and French people will vote No in the forthcoming referendums on the proposed EU Constitution.

The Eurocrats' attitude will be ‘so what?’

Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg and holder of the rotating EU presidency, told Le Soir newspaper in Belgium that he would act swiftly on Sunday night if France voted No.

He would appear with the head of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, and demand that all 25 EU nations complete the process of ratifying the constitution, in referendums or parliamentary votes.

Got that? The prime minister of Luxembourg will demand that the 25 parliaments and/or electorates of European nations vote Yes – including the ones that have just voted No. If they don't – then he'll … he'll …

"If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue'," he said.

In reality, if it's a No, we'll say ‘off you go’, and if it's a Yes, we'll say ‘off we go’.

There is nothing in this report of mistreatment of prisoners by US soldiers in Afghanistan that would make a reasonable person doubt its authenticity or a decent person deny its seriousness.

It is a story of casual cruelty, torture and murder, unmitigated by the heat of battle, force majeure, ‘ticking-bomb’ necessity, or even good intentions.

The United States authorities will now prosecute the perpetrators of those crimes. We are confident that they will also discover, and do whatever is necessary to rectify, the negligence or institutional failings at a higher level which, it seems likely, were a necessary condition for those crimes to be committed.

None of this has any bearing on the justice of the liberation of Afghanistan, nor of Iraq. Those wars and any future wars of that sort will turn closed societies where casual cruelty and insitutional flaws are allowed to remain entrenched, into open societies that try continuously to root out such problems. But more: the overall war is a war of necessity – a come-as-you-are war. The United States did not ask to be attacked, nor did the West choose the logic of what has been or will be necessary to allow its uniquely benevolent and peaceful civilisation to survive. Nor, therefore, can the fear of further such incidents affect any future decision by the United States or its allies to take military action. To consider those two issues as even remotely connected would in the first instance be an insult and betrayal of the liberated. But more importantly it would also be a betrayal of those for whose longer-term protection such action would, if it were justified, be essential.

Stem cell researchers in South Korea say they have managed to create stem cells with the same DNA as sick donors. Some pessimists have claimed that this isn't possible. If someone has found a way to do it anyway, we are not surprised. Human beings are unique among animals in our capacity for critical and imaginative thought. However, we are made of cells that are not spectacularly dissimilar to those of other mammals. Some mechanism that we don't yet understand arranges these cells in a pattern that instantiates thoughts and feelings and so on. For any disease you can think of, one day doctors will understand the human body well enough to be able to cure it. We find these reflections not only robustly plausible, but far more cheering than the idea that the key to immortality is a sufficiently determined refusal to think critically about magical ghosts called 'the soul' and 'God'.

Sanctuary by Bill Whittle.

Read it. We don't think you'll regret it.

Some anti-capitalists held a protest called “Wake Up to Trade Justice”.

Organisers want to see an end to trade rules which, they say, force farmers in developing countries to compete with cheaper international imports.

So the organisers of “Wake Up to Trade Justice” want people in poor countries to get less food for their money? Perhaps they haven't bothered to think through their position and realise its implications.

Virtually any choice taken by anyone will hurt some people and benefit others. It is impossible to add up, or even to know, what all these costs and benefits are. What we can do is favour institutions under which ideas can be tried out and mistakes corrected rather than entrenched. In this respect free trade clearly wins over “fair trade”. Under free trade, people choose the product they think gives the best value. So people who don't produce good products that others value have to change their behaviour. Thus, free trade has a mechanism to eliminate bad products.

In this case, free trade will make African farmers who aren't very good at farming move into jobs they are better at, because the African people actually eating the food don't want what they are selling. Forcing them to buy it anyway is entrenching indefinitely the poverty of all concerned. That is not justice.

Update: Broken link now replaced by a different one. Thanks to a reader for pointing this out in a comment.

“May the Lord spare us from things that could have been worse”, says a gloomy old truism. The outcome of the election could have been worse. Mr Blair remains in office with an increased majority in his own constituency, despite being challenged by a smorgasbord of calumniators and conspiracy theorists. Only one constituency in England and five in Northern Ireland elected apologists for political terror – in both cases, an increase of only one; the remaining 640 constituencies elected democratic politicians. The disgraceful Liberal Democrats ended up with only about 60 seats, a disappointingly small (to them) increase of only 11. That is the best we can muster by way of consolation.

It is a painful fact that vast numbers of British people did indeed want to punish Mr Blair for doing the right thing in Iraq, and that they do believe vile conspiracy theories, both about him and more generally too. It is also painful that moral relativism, cynicism, racism, antisemitism and even outright violence have played a greater role in this election campaign than at any time in recent history. The people of Bethnal Green, in particular, have no excuse for electing George Galloway, who would serve the country far better in jail than in Parliament. Some people, like the Liberal Democrats, are anti-war because they have no moral compass at all, merely a wish that the world should be a warm and fuzzy place. George Galloway has a moral compass that points directly towards evil.

Perhaps the most consoling outcome of the election is Michael Howard's announcement that he will stand down as leader of the Conservative Party. Nothing in his tenure as leader became him more than the leaving of it. For this quick decision, and for the fine, gracious and insightful speech in which he announced it, he has regained no small measure of respect from us. If he succeeds, as he says he intends to, in reforming the Party's system for choosing leaders before he goes, he may yet leave a legacy of which he could be proud. For this may, in due course, allow a leader from the untainted, younger ranks of the party to be elected and restore it to its former stature. Perhaps someone like Michael Gove, the excellent Times columnist who was just elected MP for Surrey Heath. As an example of his quality, look here. You heard it here first, folks…

Update: The BBC link above for Michael Howard's speech leads to a page which blocks users outside the UK from viewing the clip. Their video server does not itself enforce this restriction: here.

Leftist Oliver Kamm is supporting Tony Blair by voting Conservative for the first time in his life.

Those of us who can are supporting Tony Blair by voting Labour for the first time in our lives.

UPDATE: Due to the historic nature of this event we thought it appropriate to present the following evidence of our intention.

(Click the images for larger photos.)

The world is in danger. A terrible threat to our wellbeing is generating a vast surplus of hot, fetid air which, if unchecked, will poison every aspect of our lives. Yes, that's right, the environmentalists are sounding off again. They are suing the US government for causing global warming.

They are always suing somebody about something.

In fact global warming is the scientific equivalent of the boy who cried wolf. However, for the sake of argument let's suppose that global warming was real and that the US government was not doing anything about it. How would environmentalists suing the government contribute to solving the problem? Such a lawsuit would take up a lot of time and money that could surely be put to better use. Instead the environmentalists would be better advised to do research into economically viable technologies to replace the ones that they say are causing global warming. This would automatically persuade people to abandon the technologies that ostensibly cause global warming without coercive government interference – and they could use the profits to fund advertisements to persuade people voluntarily to adopt further aspects of the lifestyle the environmentalists favour. Why are they not doing this? Why are enthusiasts for global warming, and practically every other ‘environmentalist’ issue, more interested in having the government's ear to push a statist political agenda then they are in solving the real problems that they claim exist?

Because of the ‘public good problem’? A few free riders can spoil the value of a public resource for everyone? Nonsense. First of all, public good problems are in reality fairly rare phenomena, if they exist at all. Second, global warming, and many other ‘environmental’ issues, simply do not take the form of worrying about a few free riders spoiling things for everyone. They take the form of everyone, except a few campaigners with their heads full of hot air, simply not wanting to comply with some vast, ruinously expensive and intrusive madcap project. Yet somehow, because these campaigners have seized onto a weakness in contemporary politically-correct public morality, they get a free ride and aren't laughed out of public life. (Ironic, isn't it?)

By pursuing this agenda they have already generated mountains of wasted paper and reams of pointless regulations that impede economic growth. Environmentalists pose a special type of global threat to human wellbeing that has no counterpart in nature.

Having lost the lucrative Saddam contract, France continues to grub about among the world's dwindling supply of fear regimes looking for customers for its weapons. Now the French Prime Minister has said that if China invades Taiwan under the new law it has passed ‘authorising’ this, France would consider that only right and proper:

French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has said Paris will continue to push for the lifting of the European Union's arms embargo on China.

Mr Raffarin was speaking at the start of a three-day visit to China.

He also said France had no objection to China's anti-secession law, authorising the use of force against Taiwan should it move to declare independence.

That is appalling enough as it stands, but as always with France, attributing their immoral international stance solely to venality and cynicism is giving them far too much credit. For there is rank, undisguised malevolence there as well. As their President Chirac remarked recently:

A "no" vote to the European Constitution would weaken the EU and benefit the United States, warned French President Jacques Chirac, Thursday.

That the core objective of French policy is to harm the United States has always been implicit. Now it is becoming increasingly explicit. Many Americans dismiss French policymakers as pathetic buffoons. This may be a mistake. They are not stupid, and they can do a great deal of harm.

Update: InstaPundit remarks, in this connection:

You know, we should have just bribed Chirac et al. It's clearly the way these things are done.

But in reality they would not have accepted such a bribe. So what InstaPundit intends as a stinging criticism of Chirac and of France is really a free pass for the malevolence we spoke of. How do the French get these free passes, again and again?