SLUH Review 1.7

ET COGNOSCETIS VERITATEM ET VERITAS LIBERABIT VOS

SLUH REVIEW Vol. 1 Issue 7

A journal of Faith, thought, and civics

Avatar

By Luke Chellis, Senior Editor

February 1, 2010

That’s a story we ought to be able to understand.

Resources are scarce. And the private property Avatar champions is indispensible for any society no matter how it measures societal wealth. But if the Na’vi want to keep their property, it’s time for a smart business decision. It’s not entirely true, as Sully claims, “(the Sky People) have nothing (the Na’vi want.” Jake is wrong. The Na’vi need arms.

They need to make permanent the pilot chick’s (Michelle Rodriguez) defense in the final battle as she says, “That’s right. You’re not the only one with a gun.” In fact, the invasion is only repelled because of Jake’s placement of a few tactical grenades.

Forget its hippyish themes. At its core, James Cameron’s Avatar is about defending property rights against arbitrary coercion.

Many have been very critical of the Golden Globewinning film Avatar for its mystical mélange of trite leftist themes. My favorite is Frederica Mathewes-Green, who mocked its dreamy vision of “the apparently eternal conflict between gentle people with flowers in their hair and technologycrazed meanies.” But what they have missed (and I suspect James Cameron and his cronies missed it too) is that the essential conflict in the story is a battle over property rights.

They fail to see what’s really happening. The Sky People (a private company with a military bigger than that of most countries) have traveled to Pandora to take something that belongs to the Na’vi: their land and the minerals under it, and they are willing to use murder, terror, and mass destruction to get it. That’s a stark violation of property rights, the foundation of the free market and indeed of civilization.

At the end, Jake and company pack the surviving Sky People on their ships and send them home. But the overlooked question is what happens when they come back? Jake has no more grenades and their only scorpion helicopter was shot down. What if the next time the tree of Eywa is nuked from the upper atmosphere? If the Na’vi are smart, they will mine the valuable mineral in an unobtrusive way and trade it for Sky People weapons. Perhaps if they would have done that originally, they would still have Home Tree.

When the Pfizer Corp. and the city of New London, Conn. tried to take her land using eminent domain, Susette Kelo was unreasonable too, like the Na’vi: She wasn’t holding out for a better price; she just didn’t want to sell her house. As Jake tells his bosses, “They’re not going to give up their home.”

Avatar has its problems, from its barely serviceable, stilted dialogue to its embrace of the longdiscredited myth of the “noble savage” in tune with its goddess nature. But I, for one, appreciate a rare defense of property rights coming out of Hollywood.

Avatar is like a space opera of the Kelo case, which went to the Supreme Court in 2005. Peaceful people defend their property against outsiders who want it and who have vastly more power. Jake rallies the Na’vi with the stirring cry, “And we will show the Sky People that they cannot take whatever they want! And that this is our land!”

Who Was Che? Logan W. Hayward, Junior Editor A muddled picture of his visionary visage occupies many t-shirts, sold to many self-professed revolutionaries. Mike Tyson has a tattoo of him on his abdomen. A Burlington Coat Factory advertisement shows a youth wearing a shirt with -1-

his face on it. Periodically, a romanticized poster of his face pops up on a SLUH classroom wall. Who is he? He is Ernesto “Che” Guevara de la Serna, Cuban communist and terrorist, medic and mass torturer.

especially the case of Ariel Lima, a young boy. Che did not budge.”

If there are any among you who admire the Che tshirts and Che berets and Che golf ball place holders, know that you are admiring a depiction of a man who allowed the execution of young boys who were enemies to the revolution.

He was born in Argentina, on June 14th, 1928. His family was aristocratic, but socialist. He became a medical student, and eventually toured South America on a motorcycle. His socialist ideas became cemented in his mind when he saw what he thought to be inequality and injustice.

While American socialists show their devotion to a communist leader through their own choice to buy merchandise in a “free” market, others are forced to do so. Cuban schoolchildren begin every school day by pledging they “will be like Che.”

Che did not stop at mere socialism. He took his beliefs to full-blown communist revolution, supporting Fidel Castro’s violent overthrow of the dictator Fulgencio Batista in the late 1950s. It was in Cuba that Che’s iron-fisted beliefs came to their logical conclusion: mass, sadistic torture of civilians.

If a SLUH classroom contained an idealistic poster of Adolf Hitler, how many complaints would arise?

If rock bands glorified “Doctor” Mengele, would they sell many records? Why is there a double standard in the case of another sadistic “doctor,” who presided over the execution of children? Do people not know of Che Guevara’s barbarity? Or are they willfully blind?

Alvaro Vargas Llosa, in the process of writing an article for the progressive magazine The New Republic, interviewed José Vilasuso, a participant in the summary judicial process at La Cabana Prison, where Che Guevara was boss immediately following the successful revolution. This is what Mr. Vilasuso said:

Haiti

By Luke Chellis, Senior Editor The Haitian earthquake, measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale, is certainly among the ten deadliest earthquakes on record. If the death toll tops 255,000 as experts predict, it will overtake the Tangshan, China, earthquake of 1976 as the second-deadliest ever. (It is unlikely to rate higher than the 1556 quake in Shaanxi, China, which killed close to a million people.) Compare those death tolls with that of the great San Francisco 7.8 quake of 1906, which killed just 3,000 despite being about eight times more violent than Haiti’s, and you will begin to realize that even when quakes of similar magnitude strike similarly large population centers, there is some factor besides earthquake strength and population size affecting the fatality level. That factor is resiliency, and it protects against all natural disasters.

“Che was in charge of the Comisión Depuradora.

The process followed the law of the Sierra: there was a military court and Che’s guidelines to us were that we should act with conviction, meaning that they were all murderers and the revolutionary way to proceed was to be implacable. My direct superior was Miguel Duque Estrada. My duty was to legalize the files before they were sent on to the Ministry. Executions took place from Monday to Friday, in the middle of the night, just after the sentence was given and automatically confirmed by the appellate body. On the most gruesome night I remember, seven men were executed.”

A chaplain who visited those sent to die under the communist regime said:

As tragic as the Haitian calamity is, it is merely symptomatic of a far deeper tragedy that’s completely ignored, namely self-inflicted poverty.

The reason why natural disasters take fewer lives in our country is because we have greater wealth. It’s our wealth that permits us to build stronger homes and office buildings. When a natural disaster hits us, our wealth provides the emergency personnel,

“A rumor went around that I hypnotized prisoners because many remained calm, so Che ordered that I be present at the executions. After I left in May, they executed many more, but I personally witnessed fifty-five executions. … I pleaded many times with Che on behalf of prisoners. I remember

2

heavy machinery and medical services to reduce the death toll and suffering. Haitians cannot afford the life-saving tools that we Americans take for granted. President Barack Obama called the quake “especially cruel and incomprehensible.” He would be closer to the truth if he had said that the Haitian political and economic climate that make Haitians helpless in the face of natural disasters is “especially cruel and incomprehensible.”

says that because of burdensome regulations and bribery, starting a business in Haiti takes an average of 195 days, compared with the world average of 38 days. Getting a business license takes about five times longer than the world average of 234 days -that’s over three years.

We have been reminded that Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. At a time when many countries in the less-underdeveloped areas of the globe have been rising out of poverty over the last several decades, Haiti, however, is one of those countries that has continued to stagnate with a 50 percent rate of unemployment of the work force and with 80 percent of the population estimated to be living below the poverty line before the earthquake.

At a time when more and more countries are becoming industrialized and economically more diversified, over 65 percent of the people in Haiti still depend upon low productivity farming for their meager standard of living.

In general, wealth correlates with greater resiliency.

This claim is backed up by data from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, of all places, which finds a strong correlation between overall poverty and vulnerability to natural disasters (Haiti placed 17th in terms of risk). As people grow richer, they demand more security over uncertainty. They therefore demand insurance, and companies respond by competing for business and making insurance cheaper, meaning a virtuous circle of insurance develops (although this can be broken by government subsidies’ encouraging risky behavior such as building in flood zones). Wealthier people are also more able to help their neighbors via charitable networks (although, again, these can be disrupted by governments taking over charitable roles).

The way out of Haiti’s grinding poverty is not rocket science. Ranking countries according to: (1) whether they are more or less free market, (2) per capita income, and (3) ranking in International Amnesty’s human rights protection index, we would find that those nations with a larger free market sector tend also to be those with the higher income and greater human rights protections. The rule of law guarantees transactions and keeps contracts free from political interference. Open trade encourages competition, fosters innovation, and enables people to convert the wealth represented by their property into capital. Good governance, enabled by transparency and accountability among officials, is also crucial for the operation of a free market and wealth formation.

Haitian President Rene Preval is not enthusiastic about free markets or human rights; his heroes are none other than the hemisphere’s two brutal communist tyrants: Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

The biggest reason for Haiti being one of the world’s poorest countries is its restrictions on economic liberty. Let’s look at some of it.

According to the 2009 Index of Economic Freedom, authorization is required for some foreign investments, such as in electricity, water, public health and telecommunications. Authorization requires bribing public officials and, as a result, Haiti’s monopolistic telephone services can at best be labeled primitive. That might explain the difficulty Haitian-Americans have in finding out about their loved ones.

Corruption is rampant in Haiti. In fact, there is a very strong correlation between countries’ vulnerability to natural disaster and their ratings on Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index. Haiti ranks 177th out of 179 countries in the 2007 TICPI. Its 2009 survey found only seven countries out of 180 with a worse corruption score than Haiti’s. Its reputation as one of the world’s most corrupt countries is a major impediment to doing business. Customs officers often demand bribes to clear shipments. The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom

What the people of Haiti need are the individual liberty and secure property rights in an open, free market that can draw upon the creative potentials of the people themselves. No bureaucrats or politicians in either Washington, DC, or in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince possess a fraction of the knowledge about what needs to be done— how, where or when, and for whom—that is known by the 10 million Haitian people, themselves.

3

Yes, they can use all the assistance that any and all men of good will may choose to provide right now, but the recovery of tomorrow can only come about by releasing the creative energy and abilities of the Haitian people to relieve themselves of the tragedy of self-inflicted poverty. And that means that their government and other governments need to get out of the way and not make a market-based recovery process more difficult than it has to be.

 SLUH Review is online and on demand!

Check out current and archived issues under the publications section of Media Galleries, found at the left-hand side on the front page of SLUH’s website sluh.org.  The SLUH Review meets weekly on Thursdays in room M109, in the freshmen hallway. Come to discuss ideas presented in the SR and present ideas of your own. If you cannot make the meeting, please send your comments, reactions and questions to sluhreview@sluh.org.  Not currently a student or faculty member at St. Louis U. High but still interested in receiving the SLUH Review? Please join our mailing list by sending an email to sluhreview@sluh.org. Be sure to use “mailing list” as the subject line.

Enjoy!

Interested in SLUH Review?

Have intelligent opinions of your own?

Write for the SR! We seek pieces that are thoughtful, well-written, and honestly pursue a Truth grounded in Faith and values. We accept all perspectives.

• The opinions expressed in SLUH Review are the opinions of the individual writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SLUH, the moderator, or the publication as a whole.

• All pieces must be submitted a week prior to the publishing date. Please submit to sluhreview@sluh.org.

4