SUMMER SIX-PACK: Whales, Christians, babies, beer & credit!

Six more of the best from the NOT PC archives. Enjoy!

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Opening a whole new can of whales

    We eat cows. The Japanese eat whales. The only difference is that cows are privately owned, and whales are much larger. Despite the hand-wringing over the killing and eating of whales , it's no more nor less barbaric than the killing and eating of cows.
    Fact is, if you don’t like where food comes from, then don’t eat it yourself.
    But here's what really is barbaric: trying to stop whaling by sinking whalers with a 'can opener' -- as the self-appointed Sea Shepherds have done nine times before. Meeting these efforts with defensive force -- as the Japanese whalers have now asked their military to do -- is simple prudence. Good for them. When you're being rammed by a ship with a 'can-opener' attached, being piloted by people intent on sinking you, why wouldn't you defend yourself?
    In that context, Jeanette Fitzsimon's call to have a New Zealand frigate sent to protect "the safety of our citizens on the protest ships" is worse than stupid. Much like she is really. Best she stick to marketing her Green Organic Defoliant.
    PS: Robert Winefield's comment below on Green inconsistency is worth highlighting:

    “The fact that Fitzsimons wants the RNZN to fight the Japs over a bunch of sodding whales just shows you how idiotic she and her minions are. Do the Greenz not provide the Minister for Disarmament from within their own ranks?
    “Sure, let Osama and Saddam rape, kill and torture MEN, WOMEN and CHILDREN in Iraq and Afghanistan and it's ‘How dare anyone raise arms against them.’ 
    “But harm one hair on some blubbery sea-beast... and it's ‘let's send in the navy!!!’"

PPS: Samizdata contributor James Waterton makes socially responsible whale-meat of the arguments made against minke-whaling by anti-whaling zealots. "Soft-headed, shallow and emotionally driven," he calls the points raised by Greenpeace's eco-pirates. And you thought I was harsh.

 

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Monday, December 15, 2008

Police investigating greens?

The Sunday Star Times published claims yesterday that a police intelligence unit was spying on Greenpeace protestors.

Since this was the same Sunday Star Slime (and the same so-called reporters) that not so long ago published claims that Tariana Turia was being bugged by the SIS – a claim investigated and subsequently demolished by Justice Paul Neazor, who called it "a work of fiction"  – you’ll forgive me if I don’t lend any credence to the report without better evidence than that provided by Nicky Hager and Anthony Hubbard.

But let’s assume for argument’s sake that the claim is true.  Then so what? I’d be far more surprised if green groups weren’t being investigated. After all, the groups said to be under investigation are said to include the likes of Safe Animals from Exploitation (SAFE), Peace Action Wellington, GE-free groups, and Save Happy Valley, all of which are law-breakers – as is their ‘mother ship’  Greenpeace, who if you’ll remember were supporters of the likes of the Sea Shepherd, which spends time in freezing Antarctic waters trying to sink Japanese whaling ships with all the lives on board. 

These people are not part of a knitting circle.

• SAFE have a history of breaking and entering, and destroying people’s property. 
• It was GE-free groups who broke into Lincoln University a few years back and destroyed experiments worth millions (and, incidentally, risked spreading the GE virus against which they were protesting). 
• And Save Happy Valley and Peace Action Wellington are nothing like as benevolent as they sound: members of both these groups have been arrested and investigated in the past for wilful damage, and both were included in those arrested last year as part of the Te Qaeda/Urewera 17 operations. 

So even if the Sunday Star Slime’s claim were proven, if these groups are being investigated then it simply means the police are doing their job.

PS:  If you harbour peaceful feelings about any of these groups, do yourself a favour and search Trevor Loudon’s blog for information on what they get up to, and what they’re involved with.  You’ll raise more than just your eyebrows.  Here’s a few links just to get you started:  Greenpeace, Peace Action Wellington, Save Happy Valley Coalition and animal rights groups.   Says Trevor, “Can't think why the police would be interested in these people. Any ideas?”

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Wednesday, August 02, 2006

What's wrong with designer babies?

    Otago University Researchers have been very quick to affirm that the start to government funding* for genetic screening of human embryos for birth defects will not mean designer babies.
But why shouldn't it? What's wrong with choosing characteristics of your offspring if that's scientifically possible? Why limit parents to selecting for sex only on compassionate grounds? It's very good news that a complete handbrake on this life-affirming work hasn't been applied, but why has any been applied at all?
    "We shouldn't play God," say religionists motivated by religious dogma -- who say it's wrong to end the suffering "chosen by God," and wrong even to stop suffering beginning -- who say that screening for genetic defects "cheapens human life," when in fact it does exactly the opposite.
    This isn't playing God -- it's being precisely and heroically human.
    "We shouldn't meddle with nature," say commentators, without perhaps realising that meddling with nature is exactly how we human beings stay alive: from morning to night, from birth to a hopefully far-off death, our lives and longevity are made possible precisely because we do meddle with nature.
Staying alive because of advanced medical technology is not 'natural' -- if Nature had her way we'd all be dead at thirty or less once our teeth decay and our bodies start failing -- in fact staying alive at all is unnatural. If we didn't meddle with nature to produce food, we wouldn't even be alive. 'Meddling' with nature keeps us alive.
    Constructing and living in buildings 'meddles with nature' -- if Nature had her way we'd still be in caves instead of planting crops, breeding animals, building dams and abattoirs and factories and oil rigs and hospitals and cyclotrons and skyscapers ... all examples of how we 'meddle with nature' to make our lives better. Indeed, these are the very means by which we human beings stay alive.
    You see, unlike other animals, man, the rational animal, cannot live as nature delivered us into the world -- naked, unarmed, without the claws, the fur, the sharp teeth of other animals. Without our brains and the science and the industry and the food and the shelter and the clothing we produce by applying our brains to nature, we'd die. The first man who hunted down and killed and ate another animal was meddling with nature, as he was when he began making the weapon to do it with. Man as a species has to discover and produce for himself all the values needed for survival and flourishing.  Everything we do 'meddles with nature' -- we investigate, we rearrange, we tinker, we plan, and by so doing we work to make human life much better, much longer, and more abundant.
    That, by the way, is a good thing.
    Trish Grant from the IHC, on the other hand, who says that this research "devalues the lives of those children who are living with a disability" is just talking errant nonsense. What hatred of human beings she must have to demand that other human beings live with crippling dieases just so her charges (she says) can feel better about themselves. She would condemn other human beings to live by her choice with Downes Syndrome, with achondroplasia, with Marfan syndrome, with Tay-Sachs disease, with cystic fibrosis, with haemophilia, with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, with all the other possible genetic birth defects when it's completely and utterly unnecessary. Meddling with nature to avoid this is good. Not meddling with so as to ensure such suffering is criminal.
    Technology such as this truly values human life.
    The real enemies of human life are those who stand in its way.

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* Yes, the taxpayer is being forced to pay for this. No, you shouldn't have to. Yes, when governments pay for such things, some of those required to pay for it actively object to what their money is paying for, yet their views are just overridden. And yes, that is wrong.
As Yaron Brook from the Ayn Rand Institute said recently when commenting on Bush's disgraceful stem-cell veto,

    “It is only because science today is so dominantly funded by the government that restrictions on [state] funding can wreak the devastation they have--severely hindering a promising area of potentially life-saving medical research.
"If science were left free, as it should be, funded solely by private sources, a scientist would not have to plead the merits of his work before a majority of politicians, however ignorant or prejudiced by religious or other dogmas they might be."

LINK: Embryo report calls for changes - TVNZ
Government versus science - Yaron Brook, Ayn Rand Institute

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Thursday, April 12, 2007

A Christian nation?

    WHAT’S THE BASIS OF western civilization? A commenter here at Not PC suggested that religion, specifically Christian religion is the foundation for western civilisation.
   Now that's a widespread view to be sure, but being widespread doesn’t mean it’s not totally wrong. Which it is.
    As I said in response to that commenter, "I suspect the Classical Greeks might raise some objections to the proposition, as might several historians of both the Dark Ages and the Enlightenment." If the basis of western civilisation can be described as a focus on reason, individualism and happiness on this earth -- ideas that were a product not of theologians but of Classical Greeks; ideas which were fortunately rediscovered for the west in the Renaissance, and developed further in the Enlightenment -- then far from being any sort of foundation for these ideas, Christian religion is at odds with all of them. (More on that below.)
    Now, my commenter suggested that as leading proof of his thesis the observation that the US,

   “a heavily Christian country ... produced 173,771 patents in 2006. Check all Islamic countries since 1700 and you might get 1000.”

     Now observe that being “heavily Christian” is not a leading cause of scientific inquiry--the Enlightenment focus on reason and this earth is. Fact is, theocracy -- any theocracy -- is bad for free-wheeling scientific research, and it's equally true that religion -- any religion -- is a hindrance rather than a help to scientific research. (Faith and mysticism are not handmaidens to truth, but they are the twin handmaidens of religion, so-called shortcuts to knowledge that are nothing but short-circuits destroying the mind, and destroying science if we would let them.)
    Observe that the number of patents issued during the Dark Ages, over which the Christian church presided, can be counted on the fingers of one foot. Given that Islam is now enduring its own Dark Ages, it’s no surprise to find that their religious darkness is just as stultifying as our own was.
    Fact is, the reason for the disparity in those quoted figures is not because there are different religions in the US and in Islamic countries, it is because the influence of religion is far less and far less all-pervasive in the US than it is in the Islamic theocracies. The separation of religion and state was well done by America's Founders.
    NOW IT MIGHT BE argued here that in fact the US was founded as a Christian country. Well, it wasn't. The Founding Fathers never intended that. John Adams himself declared,

    “The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”

    Read that again just so you take it in:

    “The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”

    That was John Adams totally dismissing the claim. You can't get too much more of a blunt declaration than that. 
    Fact is, America's revolution was not founded on God or religion, but upon a view of human freedom and a declaration of rights that were both a product of the Enlightenment. As Thomas Jefferson explained (and he would know):

    “Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, no more than on our opinions in physics and geometry...”

    So declared Thomas Jefferson. 
    Fact is, the US was not a nation founded on religion, it was fully a Nation of the Enlightenment, that proud era in human affairs that represented an overthrow of religion and a renaissance of reason. [More quotes in this vein here, courtesy of the Ayn Rand Institute] In fact if religion is anything to America it’s a handbrake, not a bulwark. It’s a threat, not a foundation—which is a  what philosopher Leonard Peikoff maintains.
    Think about it: Just what did religion bring to history? Founding Father James Madison has the summary:

    “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise....During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.”

    Ignorance, superstition, bigotry and persecution. They do not describe western civilisation, but they do describe the Dark Ages to a 'T'; that ordure-strewn wasteland of crosses and graves and misery; those dark centuries over which the Christian church so dolefully presided.
    As philosopher Leonard Peikoff explains,

    "The Dark Ages were dark on principle. Augustine fought against secular philosophy, science, art; he regarded all of it as an abomination to be swept aside; he cursed science in particular as "the lust of the eyes". . .
    “As the barbarians were sacking the body of Rome, the Church was struggling to annul the last vestiges of its spirit, wrenching the West away from nature, astronomy, philosophy, nudity, pleasure, instilling in men's souls the adoration of Eternity, with all its temporal consequences.""

   The church made Augustine a saint for his views. No wonder. Augustine distinguished between what he called the City of God (based upon faith) and the City of Man (based upon reason) – he praised the former and damned the latter. Concern solely with life on Earth was a sin, he said. For Augustine, man was "crooked and sordid, bespotted and ulcerous."   

    "Intellectually speaking [concludes Peikoff], the period of the Middle Ages was the exact opposite of classical Greece. Its leading philosophic spokesman, Augustine,
held that faith was the basis of man's entire mental life. ‘I do not know in
order to believe,’ he said, ‘I believe in order to know.’ In other words,
reason is nothing but a handmaiden of revelation; it is a mere adjunct of
faith, whose task is to clarify, as far as possible, the dogmas of religion.
    What if a dogma cannot be clarified? So much the better, answered an earlier
Church father, Tertullian. The truly religious man, he said, delights in
thwarting his reason; that shows his commitment to faith. Thus, Tertullian's
famous answer, when asked about the dogma of God's self-sacrifice on the
cross: ‘Creo quia absurdum. (‘I believe because it is absurd.’)
    "As to the realm of physical nature, the medievals characteristically
it as a semi-real haze, a transitory stage in the divine plan, and a
troublesome one at that, a delusion and a snare - a delusion because men
mistake it for reality, a snare because they are tempted by its lures to
jeopardize their immortal souls. What tempts them is the prospect of earthly
pleasure.
    "What kind of life, then, does the immortal soul require on earth? Self-
denial, asceticism, the resolute shunning of this temptation. But isn't unfair
to ask men to throw away their whole enjoyment of life? Augustine's answer is:
what else befits creatures befouled by original sin, creatures who are, as he
put it, "crooked and sordid, bespotted and ulcerous"." [Religion vs America, Leonard Peikoff]

In his book A History of Knowledge ,Historian Charles Van Doren points out that

"God was the last of the three great medieval challenges [note: others being the “struggle for subsistence” and a “world of enemies”], and the most important. Human beings had always been interested in God and had attempted to understand his ways. But the Greeks, and especially the Romans, had kept this interest under control…In the early Middle Ages it overcame the best and the brightest among Europeans. It can almost be said that they became obsessed with God." [‘A History of Knowledge’, Charles van Doren, p. 100]

    What were the practical results of this approach to life?
    Dutch economic historian Angus Maddison points out that from 500 to 1500 AD Europe suffered from zero percent economic growth, this in a period in which a slice of bread per day could be considered a good meal, and in which the average infant had a life expectancy of just 24 years -- if that is they weren't of that third who failed to live beyond their first year. [See Angus Maddison, 'Phases of Capitalist Development, pp 4-7, and Angus Maddison, 'The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective']
    Says French historian Fernand Braudel of the pre-eighteenth century era,

"Famine recurred so insistently for centuries on end that it became incorporated into ma's biological regime and built into his daily life..." [Fernand Braudel, 'The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Centuries,' pp 73-78]

Everything human took a dive, only re-emerging centuries later with the Renaissance (and the rediscovery by the west of Aristotle and the Classical Greeks) and the Enlightenment (which represented the application of Aristotelian reason to human life).
    Life during the Dark Ages was shit. Sanitation collapsed, and disease rocketed; agriculture barely fed those who worked the fields, and that in good years; literacy and education plummeted; learning almost vanished; scientific research was non-existent, replaced instead by arcane theological explorations into the nature of the supernatural ; life expectancy as we've said was just barely above the teens ... and the ethic of faith, sacrifice and suffering oversaw it all. The only thing that flourished in this time was the church, and its churchmen.
    The result was not a flourishing of reason and a devotion to life on earth. Quite the opposite. For that we had to wait for the rediscovery of Aristotle (for the west) in the Renaissance – and for that we have to thank the world of Islam (whose scholars had preserved Aristotle’s works, and during the period those works and their secular focus were valued Islam enjoyed its own Golden Age.)
    W.T. Jones, the 20th century's leading philosophical historian summarises the state of the west at this time:

    "Because of the indifference and downright hostility of the Christians ... almost the whole body of ancient literature and learning was lost... This destruction was so great and the rate of recovery was so slow that even by the ninth century Europe was still immeasurably behind the classical world in every department of life... This, then, was truly a 'dark' age." [W.T. Jones, 'A History of Western Philosophy, vol. 2, The Medieval Mind,' pp141-142]

    And so it was. An age in which ignorance, superstition, bigotry and persecution flourished. In no way do those qualities describe western civilisation, but they do describe the Dark Ages to a 'T'—those centuries over which the christian church so dolefully presided, and whose shackles the west had to break to emerge, like a butterfly, from its pagan chrysalis.
    And those qualities also describe to a ‘T’ the present-day Islamic theocracies—who like the west of that Dark era rejected the sunlit secularism of the Greeks only to embrace its polar opposite. 
    So in summary, the basis of western civilization is not Christian religion. The leitmotifs of western civilisation are not ignorance, superstition, bigotry and persecution, but their polar opposites: reason, freedom and individualism.
    We got these beneficient ideas from the Greeks. And we had to shake off centuries of religion to rediscover them.

LINKS: Murdering tall poppies - that's what Easter is all about - Not PC
The Founding Fathers on religion - Ayn Rand Institute
Religion vs. America - Leonard Peikoff

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Monday, November 03, 2008

The global financial/economic crisis: causes & solutions

Sovereign Life's David McGregor has penned a great summary of the global financial and economic crisis: it's real causes and the only long-term solution.

If you're looking for some clarity as to why the current financial crisis has happened - and what needs to be done to not only fix it, but to ensure such events need never happen again -- then I urge you to read and reflect -- and to download the quoted publication at the conclusion.

The Global Financial/Economic Crisis:
The True Causes And Only Long Term Solution
    As financial and market instability persist, as governments flail and fumble, one thing is for sure - we're on the brink of a most serious economic event - a "depression" which is the BUST component of the typical "boom/bust" cycle.
    Popular criticism is centred on blaming the bankers, the financiers, and to some extent the politicians, and the overall lack of "regulation." And above all there is a consensus emerging that it is ultimately the fault of the free market, of capitalism - and that what is needed to "fix" this problem is more regulation, more easy credit (debt), and ultimately more government.
    Nothing could be further from the truth.
    The cause of the "bust" is the same as the cause of the previous "boom" - the willy-nilly creation of credit out of thin air, for the purposes of creating political and economic advantage in the short term.
    To understand the root cause of this crisis you need to understand the root cause of "boom and bust". Contrary to popular opinion, this is not the result of capitalism or the free market, rather it's caused by the nature of the banking and monetary system itself - the way it operates.
    The boom cycle is achieved by the three pillars of the global financial system - the "Trinity" of the banking "religion" - which are fiat money, fractional reserve banking, and central banks. When the pyramid of debt generated by this unholy Trinity gets out of control, it must be liquidated, creating what we call the "bust."
    Consider these facts:

1. Banks lend out more than they take in. The reason banks
   can and do fail, is because if all depositors ask for their
   money back at the same time, the bank is unable to meet such
   a demand. The money is simply not there.
2. Banks employ what is termed a  "fractional reserve" policy,
   which means they can literally take in $1 on deposit and
   lend out $10. Thus the basis of the banking system we all
   take for granted is fundamentally fraudulent. The money you
   think the bank has on your behalf is in fact not there. The
   business of fractional reserve banking is based on faith and
   confidence. In other words, it's a CONfidence trick.
3. It's fraudulent because banks are lending out money held
   on deposit which is supposed to be "on demand" and are
   effectively making money on money they do not have, and
   have no right to use.
4. Because of this fractional reserve system, and the essentially
   fraudulent nature of it, it's always possible that banks can
   fail - if enough depositors suddenly show up to withdraw all
   their money. And to avoid this "ugly" scenario, central banks
   were created to be "lender of last resort"  - in other words to
   provide the money (out of thin air) the banks don't have, in
   order to make good on their bogus promises. This is designed
   to maintain the "faith" in banks.
5. Central banks manipulate the money supply at will, by
   controlling all elements of the fractional reserve process,
   by altering the reserve requirements and the total money
   supply as and when deemed necessary. Operating under a state-
   granted monopoly, central banks wield enormous "hidden"
   power.
6. Governments love fiat money, fractional reserve banking
   and central banks, because it allows them access to "free"
   money with which to bribe the electorate and carry out their
   objectives. It allows governments to appear "generous" by
   over-promising on social welfare - and to take aggressive
   actions by financing wars and mayhem out of the same
   store of "funny money".
7. Money can be manipulated in this way because it is money
   by edict/command - or what is called fiat money. Fiat money
   is paper money without any true or inherent value - and is given
   "value" simply by government command, via the legal tender
   laws in each country. Unlike the money which naturally evolved
   during history - gold and silver - fiat money has no natural
   constraints and no historical precedent for long term success.
   When the state inflates the fiat money supply ad infinitum, then
   such money simply loses its purchasing power, becoming a
   stealth tax on the people. And when the end-game arrives it
   becomes as valuable as toilet paper (but not as absorbent!).
8. Governments and bankers love fiat money and fractional
   reserve banking because they are "partners in crime" and
   co-conspirators in the business of engaging in fraudulent
   financial transactions - at the expense of the rest of us.
9. The current financial/economic crisis has its roots in
   the expansion of easy credit (debt) - which creates the boom
   and bust cycles. This is made possible by loose monetary
   policy as initiated by central banks and endorsed by their
   political masters - using the mechanisms of fiat money,
   fractional reserve banking and central banks.

    The only solution to all these shenanigans is to unwind the CONfidence trick, and de-nationalise the world's money:

1. Abolish fiat money and reinstitute sound money, backed by
   real commodities.  Ideally, make all currency backed once
   again 100% by gold - the only money that has evolved over time via
   the true free market in money. [George Reisman explains very simply how to go
   about it.]  Note that gold (and to a lesser extent silver)
   is "market" money, whereas as fiat money is government
   money - backed by force.
2. Change the laws so that banks must hold 100% of all
   demand deposits in reserve - and put an end to all fractional
   reserve banking. Make banks behave like any other business
   - and to ensure no fraud takes place.
3. Close down/abolish all central banks.
4. Remove the issuance of money from the government's
   hands - because as long as they control its issuance, either
   directly or via their central bank proxies, they can and will
   manipulate it to their own political advantage.
5. Allow private banks to issue money -- 100% backed by
   gold -- and keep them in line via anti-fraud legislation,
   i.e. legal provisions to ensure they do not lend any more
   than what they have on deposit. In other words, end fractional
   reserve banking.
6. Do away with national fiat currencies and floating exchange
   rates. Instead, allow gold to become the naturally evolved
   global currency - a money fully backed by something which
   cannot be manipulated by banks OR politicians.
7. Establish a free banking, non-fractional reserve, 100%
   gold-backed global monetary system - the only monetary
   reform that attacks the problem at the root, and the only
   reform that will not only abolish boom/bust, but will bring
   about a rational international system of exchange.
8. Abolish the "boom and bust" mentality and reality, and
   allow purchasing power to increase over time, as production
   grows in relation to the gold held as currency backing.

    Any monetary "reform" that does NOT attack the cause of the
problem - fractional reserve banking and monopolised banking
using fiat money - is doomed to failure.
    Don't let those who have caused the problem in the first
place be the only ones writing the "rules" of reform - because
you can bet your bottom dollar, it will not be the reform we
need or want.

    If you think the proposal is crazy, or that commodity-backed or gold-back money doesn't work, or leads inevitably to instability,  then just see how things worked out in New Zealand and Britain in the nineteenth-century, back before our money was nationalised.  What you see below (which shows The Course of Prices in NZ, 1960-1910) is a stable currency in both countries, gently easing prices and increased purchasing power for every pound in your pocket-- which effectively means increasing real wage levels and more prosperity for all -- with no great schocks or monetary booms and busts -- and this is despite the over-borrowing by the likes of Julius Vogel:

And compare that to all the ups and downs in the price levels over the twentieth century once the gold standard was abandoned in 1914, and money was finally completely nationalised in 1936, two years after the Reserve Bank's founding in 1934 [graph courtesy Bryce Wilkinson from Wellington's Capital Economics Ltd, referenced in Frederic Sautet's article: 'The Disastrous Effects of Central Banking: Let’s Get the Story about Inflation in New Zealand Straight.']

Anyway, David McGregor concludes (and I thoroughly approve his recommendation):

    “For a complete theoretical and practical exposition on all of
the above - and a rigorous assertion of the viability of a 100%
gold backed currency and non-fractional reserve banking, I
recommend you download the following e-book. At 876 pages
it's not your average bedtime read, but if you have any interest
at all in where all this is headed, then you owe it to yourself
to discover why it has happened and the only sure way to prevent
it happening over and over again in the future.

    "Money, Bank Credit And Economic Cycles"
    By Jesus Huerta de Soto

    “Published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and available for
free download here:  http://mises.org/books/desoto.pdf
    “Like I said, it's a BIG book - but even if you only read
certain chapters, the ones that immediately interest you,
you will already be better informed on this crucial subject
than all your ‘leaders’ put together!”

To get a heads up on the brilliance of De Soto's analysis, listen to this richly explanatory recent interview while you sort out your download, and check out his article: Financial Crisis & Recession.

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Thursday, June 19, 2008

Hot songs about cold beer

    NOT PC beer writer Neil Miller talked to Radio NZ's Jim Mora recently about beer tours, beer songs and other things beer.  He did well (audio here) but disgracefully, the best he could come up with in the way of great beer songs was Th' Dudes' 'Bliss.'  Uuugh.
    I figure between us you and I can do a lot better than that so the poor chap is better equipped next time he's put on the spot.  Here's a list to start with:

Great songs about beer, and drinking.
'One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer' - George Thorogood
'Warm Beer & Cold Women' - Tom Waits
'Pub With No Beer' - Dubliners
'Beercan' - Beck
'Six Pack' - Black Flag
'Special Brew' - Bad Manners
'Milk and Alcohol' - Dr Feelgood
'Beer' - Reel Big Fish
'I Spent My Last $10 (On Birth Control and Beer)' - Two Nice Girls
'Drink, Drink, Drink' - from Sigmund Romberg's 'Student Prince'
'Look What I Found in My Beer' - Beautiful South
'Long Neck Bottles' - Captain Beefheart
'Beer Goggles'- Brilleaux
'Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers' - ZZ Top
'Boys From County Hell' - Pogues
Two Pints of Lager' - Splodgenessabounds
'Drinking Song' - from 'The Vagabond King'
'Let Us Drink' - from Verdi's 'La Traviata'
'Beer is a heaven's gift indeed...' - From Smetana's 'Bartered Bride'
'A Long Hard Thirst Needs a Big Cold Beer' - TISM
'Last Lager Waltz' - Kevin Bloody Wilson
'Titties and Beer' - Frank Zappa
'Philosophers' Drinking Song' - Monty Python's Flying Circus

What's yours?  (Remember, "a lot better than that " excludes anything sung by anybody wearing a stetson hat, meaning this is out -- and probably excludes songs you sing after a bucket load of beer. Probably.)

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Thanks for reading.  As your reward, here’s Tom: