"E pur si muove!"

The Prairie Dogs: A Story With No Moral

2008-07-16T10:17:00.005-05:00

I was almost there. The jeep road to the prairie dog town I came here to visit was just about three miles over the next hill. I drove past three guys by the side of the road who I soon realized were observing a prairie dog town by the side of the road. They had some fancy equipment -- big binoculars on a sophisticated stand and what looked like maybe some kind of directional microphone. Good, I thought. It's about time the Bureau of Land Management has begun to monitor a species that they and other branches of the government have done so much over the years to decimate and destroy. As my jeep flew past them, though, it occurred to me that they didn't look like rangers. Why not? That's it, they're not in uniform. Well, maybe they are scientists. Funny thing, though, they don't look like scientists either. Scientists aren't usually as chubby as these guys are, at least ones that do field work. Suddenly, bang!, I heard a detonation behind me. Then I realized that the thing I thought was some kind of directional mike was actually a high-powered rifle with a scope. These guys were waiting for prairie dogs to stick their heads out of their burrows and then blowing those same little heads off, for fun. Like playing whack-a-mole with real brain splatter.

Can you imagine a less sporting "sport" than this? Or a more perfect symbol of pointless, cowardly meanness? In South Dakota, licensed hunters are permitted to kill prairie dogs without limit. And since these Yankees don't eat prairie dogs, nor indeed any squirrel species, they just leave their exploded bodies to rot on the slopes of their burrow-domes.
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PS: For those who might be wondering about the answer to my two earlier questions: Yes, I was still able to get into the Indian Creek area. I guess having something declared a "wilderness" is not so easy. And, yes, my favorite prairie dog town is still there, and more or less as prosperous as it was last year, though still well below its peak.

Thomas M. Disch, RIP

2008-07-12T09:51:00.007-05:00

I'm still on the road, so I have no time to write anything elaborate. I was very saddened to find that classic science fiction author Thomas M. Disch died by his own hand shortly before I left home. (Hat-tip to 2 Blowhards here.) I have been a fan of his ever since my old friend Marc Kummel (alias Treebeard) loaned me his copy of Camp Concentration, circa 1972. One thing that blognotes about Disch sometimes fail to mention is that Disch was a delightful poet -- and that, always the contrarian, he wrote poems that scanned and rhymed. He was an ardent champion of "the new formalism" (ie., poems that scan and rhyme). A delightful example is this parody of Kilmer's Trees.

Poems

I think that I shall never read
A tree of any shape or breed -
For all its xylem and its phloem -
As fascinating as a poem.
Trees must make themselves and so
They tend to seem a little slow
To those accustomed to the pace
Of poems that speed through time and space
As fast as thought. We shouldn't blame
The trees, of course: we'd be the same
If we had roots instead of brains.
While trees just grow, a poem explains,
By precept and example, how
Leaves develop on the bough
And new ideas in the mind.
A sensibility refined
By reading many poems will be
More able to admire a tree
Than lumberjacks and nesting birds
Who lack a poet's way with words
And tend to look at any tree
In terms of its utility.
And so before we give our praise
To pines and oaks and laurels and bays,
We ought to celebrate the poems
That made our human hearts their homes.

I'm In South Dakota

2008-07-07T10:10:00.003-05:00

I'm sitting at a picnic table in a private campground in South Dakota -- one with free wireless internet, believe it or not. I'm headed for Indian Creek Valley in the Buffalo Gap National Grassland.

Every time I go there I am worried about two things.

First, I am not sure I will be able to stay there at all. For years a certain evil corporation (ie., the Sierra Club) has been pressuring the Bureau of Land Management to prohibit all motorized travel there. As I explained earlier, this would mean that it is impossible for people without horses to explore this beautiful tract of lonely, rugged terrain to any significant extent. Not being a local rancher or a rich guy, I don't have a horse.

Second, I am never sure that the the prairie dog colony next to my favorite campsite will still be there. Since the early 'nineties, when I started taking notes, the prairie dog population has fluctuated violently. I don't know why exactly, but I do remember a time when the BLM was encouraging people to shoot them. They eat some of the grass that the local ranchers want their cows to be able to eat, don't you know. Also, ranchers in the nearby Conata Basin have been pressuring the government to "do more" in the way of deliberately killing prairie dogs on public land at taxpayers' expense.

Well, here goes!

Happy Independence Day!

2008-07-04T14:09:00.013-05:00

I just read a blog post that ended: "For those inclined to celebrate America’s independence, enjoy the holiday weekend." Boy, that was a new one on me. So if someone thinks independence was a big mistake, he's not going to to wish him a happy holiday weekend? (Go here to see a very different sort of sentiment.) Of course, that's not what he meant. He probably mean that the Fourth should become like Xmas: because it means something, and doesn't mean the same for all, we should be very cautious and conditional in our well-wishing, lest we foist our meaning on others.

That would put me in a awkward position, since the Fourth has a peculiar sort of meaning for me. For me, its not a celebration of a flag or a government, but of independence from a government. It celebrates a brief period, ending in the counter-revolution of 1789, in which America was a free country.* It is thus one of the very few holidays in our culture (Passover and Bastille Day are the only others I can think of) that is really about freedom.

I guess I'll wish you happy Independence Day and figure you can just ignore it if you want. You are free to celebrate Dependence Day, if that's what you wish.

Me, I'm making a special dinner because Nat is coming home from his first IHS Summer Seminar. On the table: Deconstructed Tacos with Grilled Skirt Steak and Charred Tomato Salsa! __________________________________________
* Well, if you ignore the terrifying and shameful time-bomb of slavery.

Kinderarchy: It's the Thought that Counts

2008-07-02T17:00:00.007-05:00

Joseph Epstein published a piece about a month ago that seems to have reverberated sympathetically with a lot of people. His main idea is that kids grow into little tyrants because they get too much attention from their parents. Parents nowadays make kids the center of their lives, a thing that his own parents certainly did not do. The result is kinderarchy, rule by children

I see a fallacy here, and I see the same fallacy in some discussions of "helicopter parents." These of course are parents who hover over their kids even in a doomed effort to prevent them from ever failing or suffering. It is sometimes discussed as if the root of the problem is that the pay too much attention to them: they email them or talk to them on their cell phones ever week if not (gasp!) more often than not, and some of these kids even go to a college in the same town their parents live in (oh no, not that!).

I agree that there is a problem here to be addressed. As an anarchist, I am opposed to every sort of _archy -- including kinderarchy. Some kids -- and many adults (many of whom vote!) -- think they are entitled to the fruits of other people's pains and exertions and to massive amounts of self-esteem. But is the cause of this the attention they get from their parents?

There is a simple, logical distinction, which these arguments ignore, between quantity of attention and quality.

As to quantity: I am convinced, both by theory and my own experience, that, for kids, especially for small children, there is simply no such thing as too much attention. Nor can there be too much love or affection. Of all these things, the more the better. And as far as making them "the center of your life" is concerned, if you weren't prepared to do that, why did you bring them into the world in the first place?

It's not the quantity of attention that is a problem, but the quality. That might seem to mean that good parenting is something that is impossibly subtle. What kind of attention is the right one, and how do you monitor it? But it's not really all that subtle. The right kind of attention, I would say, is the kind that is given, automatically, by someone who thinks everyone has rights that are not to be violated -- including not only the kids but the kids' teachers and the parents themselves. When I say "thinks everyone has rights," I am not talking about some superficial political opinion, but about how you live your life from day to day. Good attention is the kind you get from someone who treats everyone -- including themselves! -- as persons with rights that have to be respected. If that is your mindset then go ahead and love your kids and make them "the center of your life." They will grow up to make you proud.

Parents who do not have this mindset, I predict, will often have children who think that the world owes them everything they desire -- because that's what their parents think! Where's the mystery there?

In either case, it is the thought that is the active ingredient, not the sheer brute quantity of attention or affection. Humans are very good at reading other humans, starting at a very early age. Your kids can sense where your actions are coming from, and that is what makes the big difference.

Food Network: Swerving Toward Excellence?

2008-06-30T11:32:00.021-05:00

Chef Anne Burrell's instructional show, Secrets of a Restaurant Chef, premiered yesterday.

I'm hoping it is part of a trend of some sort. When it was founded in 1993, with Mario Batali, Emeril Lagasse, and Bobby Flay on board, the Food Network spent several years producing instructional cooking shows. The intended audience was food hobbyists and the aim was to show them how to cook the sort of fancy food you get in a good restaurant. The point of view was what used to be called "gourmet" (a word that is now fast disappearing from the language). Then they were bought by media conglomerate E. W. Scripps in 1997. I have no way of fact-checking this, but it seems that around that time things changed fundamentally. Today the intended audience of the network is women who cook for their families and want to do it better, a much bigger and more lucrative audience than "gourmets." Today FN is a very Rachel Ray kind of place. Bobby, Emeril, and Mario no longer have instructional shows.* Everything is quick 'n' easy, all the ingredients can be found in any supermarket. Bobby has a new show that will begin soon. In it, he travels around the country cooking with ordinary folk in their back yards.

And then, yesterday, Anne somehow slipped under the door. The very title of the show gives away that it's about restaurant food. The FN website reassures us that she will be showing us how to turn restaurant methods into easy home cooking. This is clearly not true, as anyone who saw her making the bolognese sauce yesterday can tell you. The fact that FN publicity is trying to position her show as typical neo-FN fare makes me worry, because it means that their incredibly rigid policy of quick-'n'-easy-everything has not really changed.

So I've got an open letter to Bob Tuschman, Programming Vice President of the Food Network. Here goes.

Dear Bob,

Please, please, please don't cancel Anne's show! I know it's good, and that it treats food as if it were an artform, but is that really so terrible?

Now, I know that a giant corporation needs a lot of customers, and that this means aiming their product mainly at the average person. It's democracy in the market place.

I'm not saying go back to the old programming policy, but would it really hurt to allow one show that teaches fancy cooking skills to survive?

And besides, would you really lose viewers by permitting one or two of these shows? Sure, some of your main audience would avoid it, but you would pick up new viewers, people who now feel that your daytime lineup offers them nothing. People like me.

A year from now, I hope I will still be able to tune in and see Anne, still winking at the camera, shouting, throwing handfuls of salt into the sauce, and flailing her plump but shapely arms.

And, in the meantime, could you please move her out of that 8:30 on Sunday morning time slot?

Yours truly,

L.
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* Correction: As I point out in the comments section, Emeril does have a new instructional show on the Food Network, one with a much lower profile that "Emeril Live" had.

News Flash: I just got a message from Sienna Farris, who apparently is a public relations representative of the Fine Living Newtork, with the excellent news that a new "Emeril Live" will soon premiere on the Fine Living Network. She had this to say:

Fine Living has created a show page for Emeril Live which includes
special preview videos (embeddable), original recipes, a blog by Emeril's
culinary crew, and 30 fun facts you never new about Emeril (including where
the famous "BAM!" came from, among other things):
http://fineliving.com/emerillive

You can catch all new episodes of Emeril Live on Fine Living Network 7
days a week @7pm, starting 7/7.

Here is an article by food writer Juliette Rossant about these developments. Note that she says some of the same things I have said above, but without the anger and the whining. She gives more details here.

I see that FLN is also running Mario Batali's Molto Mario (= "Extreme Mario"). It's interesting to note that like FLN, FN, is owned by Scripps. Maybe Scripps is considering using the smaller (half of FN's audience-size) FLN to appeal to some of the audience that was gradually squeezed out by FN's creeping RachelRayism. So that's another glimmering ray of hope.

Cell Phone Prohibition

2008-06-28T08:29:00.017-05:00

Whenever there is no absolute necessity, whenever legislation may fail to intervene without society being overthrown, whenever, finally it is a question merely of some hypothetical improvement, the law must abstain, leave things alone, and keep quiet.
-- Benjamin Constant

An interesting issue came up un 2 Blowhards lately. Starting Tuesday, all cell phone use while driving will be prohibited in the state of Washington (except in emergencies). As explained here, there are now five states that have such prohibitions: including, in addition to Washington, California (of course!), Connecticut (no surprise there!), New Jersey (ha!), and New York (need I say more?). [In case one of these states might want to change its official nickname to "The Busybody State," I hereby offer the idea as a gift.]

As Donald Pittenger Blowhard asks, is talking on the cell phone that much more dangerous than talking to a person in the car? Should that be prohibited too? More generally, are we prohibiting this driving practice while permitting others that are equally or more hazardous to others?

The answer to the last question is surely "yes." In 1965 my mother's parked Corvair Monza was totaled by a passing driver who at the time was tuning her radio. Which of course was perfectly legal. Okay, that's one anecdote, but it says here that an NHTSA study indicated that manually dialing a cell phone (presumably much more dangerous than talking on one) is about as hazardous as eating or grooming. (Grooming would presumably include, eg., combing one's hair, brushing one's teeth, and shaving with a battery razor, all of which activities I have observed on the road.) What's most remarkable is that all three of these activities were found to be less hazardous than changing CDs in the car CD player. The NHTSA apparently classifies CD-changing, in degree of distractingness, with reading. (I once had a friend who would read novels while driving long boring stretches of South Dakota freeway, but I suppose they mean things like reading written directions or looking at a map.)

It is very obvious that talking on the cell phone while driving (excluding manually dialing it yourself) is less dangerous than an abundance of other activities that are at least as hazardous to others but are legally permitted. These likely include such things as eating, shaving, brushing one's teeth, reading, and CD changing. Surely, the only reason it is being banned is a combination of three factors: 1) it is easy to see people talking on the phone, and partly for this reason 2) it constantly pisses people off, and 3) pissed-off people vote.

An enormous number of things we do are hazardous in one way or another. Yes, it is legitimate to prohibit activities that are excessively hazardous. But there is no really reliable method for figuring what is excessive and what is not. Consequently, a sort of moral black hole opens ahead of us. Political reactions to risk are often over-reactions, resulting in resentment from people who want to do the risky activities. And resentment leads to retaliation. Alright, then I'll just prohibit your risky activity, Killjoy!

Partial solution: call it the "live and let live rule."* Tolerate marginally risky activities when this is part of a pattern of tolerance from which you benefit.

Such tolerance is a public good. That is why there is so little of it.
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* With apologies to Richard Epstein.

A Great Day for Individual Freedom

2008-06-26T23:40:00.019-05:00

The U. S. Constitution is not perfect, but it's a lot better than what we have now.
-- Durk Pearson

Today the Supreme Court, in the historic decision in D. C. et al v. Heller, explicitly held that the Second Amendment grants the right to own a gun to individual human beings.

Of particular interest: The District of Columbia ordinance was struck down because it a) made it virtually impossible to own a gun and b) because it required that the few guns that were allowed have trigger locks or be disassembled. The Court specifically said that this is wrong because it renders the guns useless for purposes of self-defense. In other words, you have a constitutional right to self-defense. The D. C. ordinance disarmed its citizens against violent attack, and was meant to do so. This they may not do.

The Amendment reads (in the copies originally circulated to the states for ratification):

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

For many years those of us who thought that this language does grant an individual right felt as if we were required, in defending our interpretation, to prove that water really does run downhill, and that black is not white. How could anyone seriously think that "You have right R because it serves purpose P" means "You have a right to serve purpose P"? How could they have thought that "This right is important because militias are important" means "This right belongs to you as a member of a militia?"

That, as you probably know, is the interpretation used in anti-gun jurisprudence. I have been reading Scalia's majority decision in this case and the attack he launches against this interpretation seems devastating to me. (Of course, I am on his side on this one, so you can take that with a grain of salt I suppose. )* I don't always agree with Scalia, God knows, but when this guy is good, he's great.

Added later:

Among the arguments Scalia gives that I had not thought of: "Virtually all interpreters of the Second Amendment during the century after its enactment interpreted the amendment as we do" (p. 32). The collective right interpretation took root long after the document was written.

Here's another historical argument. It's one I've never seen presented in quite this way, but it has always made sense to me.

I have always thought that the fact that the amendment mentions the militias is actually evidence for the individual rights interpretation. What after all were the militias? They were not government bureaus, like a modern police force. They were private citizens, banded together for common defense and the maintenance of order. Daniel Boorstin, in The Americans: The Colonial Experience [(New York: Vintage, 1958), pp. 352-72], tells the interesting tale of this -- to us -- curious institution. The most curious thing about it, on Boorstin's telling, was how popular the idea of a militia was to the founders: they even mention it in the constitution. The thing is that militias were never very effective. They were poorly disciplined and difficult to coordinate, and desertion rates were astronomical. A modern police force or the regular army makes much more sense in military or administrative terms.

So why did the founders like them so much? The answer, Boorstin says, can be found, not in the realm practical military considerations, but in that of ethical and political ideals. To the people who founded this country, the idea that security and order should be a gift of the state, that the individual should be the passive recipient of state-provided protection, was a very troubling one. They favored the inefficient and impractical militia system because they wanted private citizens to possess lethal force and be ready to use it against their fellow human beings. They wanted the individual to have real power.

The collective right interpretation of the second amendment assumes that individual gun ownership was a mere means and the militias were the end. In fact, virtually the reverse is true: the militias were a means, and individual possession of lethal force was the end. More exactly, individual gun ownership was an end in relation to the militias. And it was an end because it served the deeper end of the dignity, power, and independence of the individual citizen.

According to the collective right view, the second amendment is a sort of legal ghost town: since the militias no longer exist, there is no possible point to a right to have a gun. I say that, when we see the real point, it is one that is applicable today, just as it was then, though in a different institutional environment.

To put it another way: even if the founders had only meant to guarantee us a right to belong to a militia then, given that the militias no longer exist, the right ought to "evolve" as part of "the living Constitution," into an individual right. That would be far more in the spirit of what the document meant than to allow the disarming of the citizenry.
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* I realized several days after writing this that I am probably one of the signers of one of the amicus briefs in this case, the one submitted by Academics for the Second Amendment. I should have mentioned that.

George Carlin 1937-2008

2008-06-24T16:56:00.010-05:00

George Carlin liked to tell audiences, "If God exists, may he strike me with lightning right now! [Pause.]"

When he died yesterday apparently no lightning was involved, only a simple, naturalistically-explicable heart attack.

Here are bits from his last interview.

He was one of my heroes and I will miss him.

GC quotes for today:

"I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it."

"I'm completely in favor of the separation of church and state. My idea is that these two institutions screwed us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."

"When fascism comes to this country, it won't be wearing jackboots; it'll be wearing sneakers with lights in them."

"The only good thing ever to come out of religion was the music."

"I love people, I hate groups. People are smart, groups are stupid."

I like to think of him as a "standup philosopher." (Hat-tip on that one to Butler Shaffer.)

Multiple Choice

2008-06-23T17:00:00.001-05:00

This one should be easy.

The Republican Party is in serious political trouble today because:

1. The Democrats have suddenly become very good at selling socialized medicine to the voters.

2. The Republicans pursued traditional conservative policies -- reducing the size of government, balancing the budget, and protecting the value of the dollar -- and the voters did not like the results of these austere measures.

3. The Republicans kept their promise to avoid unnecessary nation-building, but the voters prefer a more interventionist foreign policy.

4. None of the above.

Last Week's Flooding: Blame It on Global Warming!

2008-06-22T19:39:00.010-05:00

This is amazing. It's an article by a Wisconsin Environmentalist, and activist named Keith Reopelle, that appeared in today's Wisconsin State Journal. As you may know, we had horrific flooding here in the Midwest last week. The news has been carrying pictures of detached houses piled up against bridges, and many other horrors. In the article, this guy blames your flooding on [insert sinister music from Jaws here] global warming.

This article is the most perfect tissue of informal fallacies that I have ever seen, in print, in my life.

He asserts, as weighty reasons to accept his conclusions, that the floods have caused hardship and suffering. "We have all witnessed the devastation floods can wreak on Wisconsin 's towns, landscape and economy. One has hardly been able to escape the images of homes sliding into a torrent of water, city streets submerged and Lake Delton drained." This is the argumentum ad misericordiam, or appeal to pity. This is awful -- therefore accept my solution (or you're a hard-hearted bastard!!!).

Then there is the appeal to authority, or argumentum ad verecundiam. "For years, climatologists, researchers and scientists have predicted that ..." "Leading U.S. scientists are now telling us that..."

Alright, I admit that this is only two fallacies, but these are the only things in the piece that could be called argumentation. There is nothing in it that even remotely approaches the status of evidence for his explanation of the flooding.

Worst of all, he never says word one about the most obvious problem for his thesis. As everyone knows, there has been no global warming for a while now, as is pointed out in this contrasting opinion piece in today's State Journal.

I have heard of actio en distans (action at a distance, aka. magic) but this is nuts.

Global warming is indeed a magical thing. Not only does it predict both droughts and flooding (so that it is confirmed almost whatever happens -- goodbye Karl Popper!) but it can cause these awful events without even raising the temperature.

Like I said, amazing.

AIDS: The Pandemic that Never Was

2008-06-18T21:47:00.021-05:00

Dr. Kevin De Cock, head of the WHO's AIDS Bureau (or whatever it is called) tossed a fossilized bombshell last week when he announced that "the threat" of a world pandemic of heterosexual AIDS "is over" (such is the wording used in reporting the announcement by the UK's left-of-center The Independent). Unless you are a gay man, a needle-sharing drug user, a sex worker, or live in sub-Saharan Africa, your chances of getting the disease are virtually zip.* What really bothers me about this is that, as pointed out by Brendan O'Neill (hat-tip to Arts and Letters Daily), this was known long ago. Science journalist Michael Fumento published The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS in 1990. O'Neill mentions a friend of his, a doctor, who had written to the same effect two years before. Twenty years ago!

Some people are saying how odd it is that the truth was there in plain sight for so long and we just didn't see it. Nonsense. As the comments on the O'Neill piece indicate, some people did see it, but were subjected to threats and character assassination for saying what they saw. This is not a case of passive ignorance, but of active suppression of the truth.

Why did such a big lie last for so long? I think the main reason was that it was a lie upon which the interests of three main factions of those who rule us converged. Some conservatives had a reason to like it because it encouraged people to see their own sexuality as a destructive force, which was the traditional, orthodox Christian view for two millennia. Environmentalists had reason to like it because it encouraged people to wear condoms, thus reducing the rate at which they produce new people. And ditto for left-liberals, at least the ones who assume that people will not spend enough money fighting AIDS unless they think it is a dire threat to themselves. ... and who assume, in leftie fashion, that it is their job to decide what "enough money" means, the actual owners of the money existing as mere means to their noble ends.

The only "threat" of heterosexual AIDS that ever existed was the reign of fear that was inflicted on us by people in positions like that of Dr. De Cock himself -- that is, by activists, officials in governmental and quasi-governmental bureaus, and other so-called authority figures.

So what was wrong with that, as long as it was for a noble end, you may ask? Well, aside from the fact that it was cynical, arrogant, and cruel, it probably resulted in the misallocation of charitable donations. As mentioned in the Independent article, it meant spending millions to teach London school children who are not at risk that they should use condoms, while people are dying by thousands upon thousands in Africa.

This sort of lying is a power-trip on the part of people who feel invulnerable. They think their actions will only have the consequences that they themselves intend. Of course, they won't.

But isn't that always true? Why not just tell the noblest lie you can, and hope for the best? "Where's the scandal?" as Dr. De Cock asks in a related context.

Here's the scandal, Dr. De Cock, and all you other would-be World-Manipulators: if you tell a lie to manipulate people to your own ends, and your lie causes people to die who would have lived, then you are to blame for their deaths. If you tell the truth and people die anyway, that is a tragedy, but at least you are not morally responsible for it. You are at least not a murderer.

In case this conception of moral responsibility is too abstruse for you, here is a utilitarian argument inspired by John Stuart Mill: If you feed false information into the public debate on an issue, you will in the long run bias the mechanism of debate in the direction of wrong results. Garbage in, garbage out. You may think you know how the mechanism works, so that you can manipulate it like a mere tool, but you can't. The mechanism is a truth-discovery device, and to manipulate it as if you already know the truth is a fundamental mistake. If you really care about justice and humanity, you should take the most scrupulous pains to be truthful.
____________________________
*Added Later: Since then, Dr. De Cock has backpedalled somewhat on this statement. Fossilized or not, it seems the bombshell must have detonated and someone read him the riot act. ... Finally, let me point out that I got all the way through this post without making any jokes about Dr. De Cock's name. Whew! But my hands are still shaking from the strain. I think I need a drink.

Happy Dad's Day to All!

2008-06-15T10:38:00.012-05:00

This is the first Father's Day I've spent without my dad. It is sad, as I knew it would be.

Doesn't the sadness itself have value, in a way? I wouldn't want to live in a world where people "get over" the deaths of loved ones in a hurry, so that nothing can get in the way of their happiness. There is some danger that America itself will become such a world. We put too great a weight on avoiding negative emotions.

I would usually get in touch with Dad on this day. It had one great advantage over his birthday, for me: it is plainly marked in the calendar, every year. I am terrible at remembering dates of any sort and I would often be late for his birthday. I hope he realized that this was just a disability from which I suffered (and suffered, quite literally, more than anyone), that it was really nothing personal. Of course, now I will never know for sure.

Take it from me folks, don't miss out on any of the Dad's Days you have left. Eventually, sad to say, you'll have nothing left of him but memories.
_______________________________________
In the above photo, we are about to begin a 29 mile trip to the old Gold Rush mining town of Jenny Lind, a distance of 29 miles. I am on the far left. Yes, that is a lit cigarette in Dad's left hand. Yyyyyep.

Forcing "Liberty" on People: That French Annulment Case

2008-06-06T07:53:00.016-05:00

This story is a real clash of cultures. Most commentators are seeing it as a clash between Islamic values and liberal European ones. I see it as an example of a more vicious and intractable sort of clash: the eternal conflict between people who want to cram their values down the throats of others, and the rest of us. It might not be so obvious that this is what is going on because the value being thus crammed is currently mislabeled "liberty."

A man and a woman (henceforth Mr. X and Ms. Y) sought a marriage annulment in a French court. The desire was mutual. They also agreed on the grounds: before the marriage, Y had assured X that she was a virgin, but on the wedding night she admitted that she had lied. (X and Y are both Muslims, he an engineer and she a university student.) The judge granted the annulment on the grounds given: misrepresentation. Thus he was treating the marriage like any other contract: a mutual, conditional, agreement between free individuals.

The decision, as you may know, has enraged a stampeding herd of talking heads. "Ironically," conservatives and feminists are united in their rage at this brave judge. (I'm just kidding about the irony of course. That kind of conservative and that kind of feminist are often working the same side of the street.)

[Disclaimer: I have never had sex with a virgin and intend to avoid doing so for the rest of my life. Why someone would want to have sex with a completely inexperienced partner is literally beyond my comprehension. Obviously, the distance between Mr. X's values and mine is to be measured in light years. In a way, that is my point: how can such different people live together in peace in the same legal system? To see part of the answer, read on!]

What are the talking heads so mad about? The main idea was expressed by the French bureaucrat who said that the court decision "is a real fatwa against the emancipation and liberty of women."

This is a very different view of liberty from mine. Clearly what the bureaucrat is thinking is that Ms. Y's liberty should be preserved, though at the expense of Mr. X. Sure, he doesn't want to be stuck in a relationship he entered under false pretenses. He want's the easy exit of annulment rather than the messy one of divorce. But that's just too bad. Ms. Y needs to be protected against the patriarchal double standard value system that says that a bride must be a virgin while a husband need not be.

I would argue that these conservatives and pseudo-feminists are threatening to coerce both Mr. X and Ms. Y. After all, she wants the annulment too. She does not want the slower, more public, and thus more humiliating process of a divorce. And she has said so, eloquently.

More importantly, if the law does not allow annulment on these grounds, it is not treating Ms. Y as a free and responsible adult. Presumably, these "feminists" would not mind allowing an annulment if Mr. X had misrepresented himself in some way that was important to Y. Oh, but that's different. After all, he's a man, and doesn't have to be protected against oppressive value systems that he foolishly has bought into -- that is the position of Ms. Y. Isn't it obvious how this sort of feminism shows contempt for the promises, commitments, and therefore the choices of the woman in this case? She's a woman, so when she promises something, it doesn't count. This is the sort of feminism that women can really do without. Further, Ms. Y has made it clear she does not want the "help" these people. As she told an interviewer, "I don't know who's trying to think in my place. I didn't ask for anything."

The killer premise that underlies this contempt is the idea that true freedom, at least for women, means being protected against oppressive value systems, especially value systems that they accept. To this end, the institution of marriage has to have certain values -- the right values -- built into it. Values like equality.

That of course is the conservative view of marriage as well, but with different values built in. Marriage is between a man and a woman. ... marriage must be egalitarian and non-oppressive ... and in both cases, whether you want it or not.

I say that in a truly free society, marriage would simply be a contract. This would make it infinitely adaptable to different value systems. If you want gay marriage, you can have it. If you want a marriage based on strange, kinky preferences like virginity and chastity, you can build an institution to suit yourself. The possibilities, of course, are considerably wider than that. When we are strong enough to grant such freedom to each other, we will have it ourselves.

The Godfather: Overrated

2008-06-04T09:02:00.021-05:00

I just saw the movie again, this time with my son Nat. He had not seen it before and I suppose this is why I saw it rather differently this time. It seemed better crafted but also shallower than ever before. As I suggest in my title, it seems obviously overrated to me.

This is hardly the most original thought I have had so far today. After all, how on earth could it not be overrated? It is consistently at the top of lists of the top ten or top one hundred greatest films of all time. Maybe this shouldn't bother me. After all, I remember a time when every guy's favorite movie was "High Noon" or "Casablanca" (and his wife's favorite was "The Red Shoes"). That was when "Gone with the Wind" was often regarded at the ultimate in Filmkunst. But this was before there was such an academic discipline as film studies. These people were plain folks, not intellectuals. I don't mind it a bit if they watch "Gone with the Wind" until their eyeballs roll down their cheeks like big gelatinous tears.

But The Godfather's inflated reputation does bother me. There are people whose judgment I respect who take it seriously as a work of art, or claim they do. It is now #2 on the loathsome AFI list. This seems really, really silly to me. The Godfather doesn't even belong in the same league as "High Noon" or "Casablanca," let alone that of "Citizen Kane" or "Vertigo" (and would it be a cheap shot to mention "The Rules of the Game,""Tokyo Story," or "M" here?). The reason is that, unlike all these other films, this one lacks a center.

I'll explain this in a minute, but first I might as well make some admissions. Yes, it has one of the greatest casts ever assembled, and all the thespians in it are doing a great job. It also is persistently watchable. No boring parts at all. Really reaches out and grabs you by the short hairs.

Also, Nino Rota's score is of course excellent, considered simply as music. But as a contribution to the film? Here the problems begin. This Italian opera based score has the very regrettable effect of romanticizing these brutally nasty characters. This is one of several ways in which this film, which is about morally compromised characters, is itself guilty of the same sort of opportunism and hypocrisy. (In The Sopranos there are many joking hints that this is the real-life gangster's favorite movie. I bet it is. Nothing in the world is more flattering to them than this film.) Here is a detail that has bothered me for a long time. In the climactic baptism scene, you can hear very clearly, as part of the diegetic church music, Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. There is something wrong with this. And I don't mean that Bach was a Lutheran and there is nothing remotely liturgical or religious about this piece, so that one could not have heard it in a Catholic church at the time at which the scene is set. Okay, I admit those things do bother me a little, but that's not my point. It's that the minor mode tonality of the piece adds a distinctly Dracula-like creepiness to the scene in the church. The problem with this is that it undercuts the whole point of the scene, which is the ironic* contrast between the holy events in the church and the half-dozen gory murders, from here to Las Vegas and back, that we keep cutting to. Why did they choose this piece for this scene? I suppose the answer is that, dude, it just sounds cool. And it does! It's rather obvious, somewhat cheap, and thematically pointless, but undeniably it does sound cool. And, emotionally, it works. Not that it results in thematically meaningful emotion -- it actually fails where that is concerned -- but it does result in more emotion.

That's this movie in a nutshell. All this obvious shlockiness really does work. Never lets go of those short hairs. There is nothing wrong with liking a movie like this. Heck, I happen to love Viennese operetta myself. But I don't claim that Lehar and Kalman are Wagner. And I don't list Zigeunerliebe as the second greatest musical drama of all time. I just let it sweep me me off my feet, that's all. Isn't that enough?

Again, I admit that the film has many images that stick in the memory, which I ordinarily would take as a sign of movie greatness. But what sorts of images are they? Moe Green's eyeglass lens suddenly going white as he is shot in the eye with a 22 pistol. Capt. McClusky's fingers quivering over his throat because he has been shot there by Michael. Paulie Gatto's head resting on the steering wheel as blood drips down his nose. You don't have to be a great artist to make such things memorable. The art is in managing to forget them. (Note that Godfather, Part II, generally a better film, is entirely lacking in such going-for-the-easy-effect shots. As I recall, the murder of Fredo is depicted at long distance. You just hear a single hollow report. Now that's how you do a hit! In a movie, I mean.)

So what did I mean by lacking a center? In 1952, Manny Farber published a classic essay, "The Gimp." In it, he introduced a critical concept that should have caught on but never did. The gimp was a device supposedly used by lady golfers during the Victorian period. In involved a hidden string running from the hemline to the waistband of her skirt. At a crucial moment (to distract her male adversaries?) she would flick the gimp, revealing briefly a some lawn and high-buttoned shoes -- but suggesting so much more! The male would get the impression he had really seen something (an inch of living, human ankle?) but in fact he had been shown nothing.

Movie gimps are details that suggest profundity without delivering it. "He chomps on his cigar that way because he has a father complex," the viewer thinks, giving the artist an undeserved free ride.

The Godfather has the biggest, most effective gimp of them all. Sprinkled throughout it are hints that it is really about the true nature of America. The first line is "I believe in America." Then there is the Statue of Liberty in the background of the "leave the gun, take the cannoli" scene. My favorite by far is of course Kay's line: "Oh, Michael, do you realize how naive you sound? Senators and Presidents don't have people killed." (In 1972, this was a laugh line.) But what is this movie actually saying about America? That the American government is a gangsterish organization? That the heads of American business corporations are no better than Mafia Dons? That the American state is gangsterish? That Americans themselves are a marauding mob of thugs, imposing their protection racket on the rest of the world? That the American cult of success inevitably involves gangsterish methods? Or are they merely saying that the mafia was a part of the process by which poor immigrants became integrated into American society, so that it is part of the story of how America became what it is?

Of course, it's not saying any of these things. It combines the gimpy hint that it is somehow about such things with obvious-effect images, schmaltzy music and other highly effective devices to ravishing effect, creating the illusion that the powerful feelings it arouses are deep, whereas they are merely powerful. Pauline Kael once said that Ingmar Bergman is the favorite director of people who don't like movies -- in other words, of intellectuals. The Godfather is the favorite movie of the opposite sort of person. It brilliantly appeals to the dumbass in all of us.
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* I can't resist the obvious point that this is very heavy-handed irony. There are no subtle touches in this movie. If there were, it wouldn't have the particular sort of emotional power that it actually has.

Spoilers: A Defense

2008-05-29T21:43:00.011-05:00

Last weekend, the Libertarians nominated former Congressman, and former Republican, Bob Barr for President. This is probably the most important single event in the history of their party since its first presidential campaign in 1972, as it means they will get much more attention, and probably far more votes, than ever before. It is also historically interesting in another way -- as one more bit of damage the Republicans have done to themselves since 9/11. People are continuing to grab life preservers and jump out of their neocon ship.

As Bruce Ramsey points out in the June issue of Liberty, this raises once again an interesting issue that Libertarians do sometimes find themselves facing. Do you really want to do in 2008 what Nader and his supporters quite possibly did in 2000? Some are saying that Barr could cause the Democrats to win this time.

Actually, in my case, the candidate I would vote for if I don't vote for Barr would almost certainly be Obama. There are no circumstances (except, possibly, torture) in which I would vote for an imperialist, authoritarian warmonger like McCain. This raises an interesting sub-issue for me. Suppose the Barr vote benefits Obama. Does this, by itself, mean there is no "spoiler problem" for me?

No, I don't think so. If you vote for a third party candidate who can't realistically win, then you are diverting a vote from your second-best candidate.* And if this second-best candidate is a possible winner, then you are undermining them and helping your less preferrable electable candidate -- regardless of who eventually wins. I think the concept of "spoiler" is relative to the individual voter. You are always spoiling your favorite electable candidate. (I suppose we should speak of voters as being spoilers, as well as candidates.) ... and I should never "spoil" my favorite electable candidate, right?

Again, I don't think so. There is actually one good reason to always go with the spoilers. After all, there are good reasons why I don't like the idea of voting for Obama. Granted he is somewhat less imperialistic than McCain. He is probably also more pro-liberty (at least slightly) on a number of domestic issues (eg., abortion, the war on drugs, the domestic war on terror). But it is also true that if elected he will serve up more of the same socialism-plus-tapwater (eg., more "free" health care) that the Democrats have been decanting since 1933. If voters are going to third party candidates, the major parties will know that they are doing something to chase these people away. If there are enough of these votes, the majors will want to bring them back. If Barr takes enough votes away from Obama, the Dems will have a reason to nominate less socialistic candidates in the future. If he takes enough votes way from McCain, the Republicans will have a reason to nominate candidates who are less imperialistic than he is, next time around. As a matter of fact, both these things can happen at the same time.

So, though spoilers have a negative effect on the current election, they have a positive effect on the next one. And the latter effect becomes more and more important as the "spoiler problem" also becomes more important: that is, the more people will vote for the Libertarian candidate and "spoil" the election, the stronger my reason to join them. In other words, the I have a reason to vote for the a third party candidate, and in addition a reason to not vote for one. This year, both reasons are particularly strong.

Of course, they are different sorts of reasons. The reason to not be a spoiler has to do with caring who wins the current election. The reason to be a spoiler has to do with caring about the future. Right now, I am leaning toward voting for the future.
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* I am assuming throughout that it makes a difference who you vote for, and that the difference it makes is that it raises (or lowers) the probability that the candidates that you vote for (or refrain from voting for) will win. This is actually not true, just because the probabilities involved are too small to matter. As Wendy McElroy has pointed out, it is much more likely that I will be killed on the way to the polls than that my vote will affect who wins or loses. Voting is purely symbolic, insofar as it is a rational thing to do at all (which of course is doubtful). But the present discussion could be translated (with some extra verbiage) into a series of claims about what my vote symbolizes.

On the Purity of Walden, and Against Purity as an Ideal

2008-05-29T08:39:00.006-05:00

While I was in Concord last week I managed to walk out to Walden Pond via the railroad tracks one of Henry's favorite ways to get there. To the left you see "Thoreau's Cove," where he would bathe in the morning, as it looked on that day. In a way, I ought to write something lyrical/devotional about Thoreau and his Walden sojourn, but I think the only thing I have to say that would half-way original involves expressing a doubt or worry about an aspect of his world view (though I should add that it is an aspect that overlaps to some extent with my own).

The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and, though very beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, ... yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth and purity as to merit a particular description. It is a clear and deep green well, half a mile long and a mile and three quarters in circumference, and contains about sixty-one and a half acres; a perennial spring in the midst of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or outlet except by the clouds and evaporation.

That is Henry's description of Walden Pond in the chapter of Walden called "The Ponds." Walden, as he said, is noteworthy for two things (among others): the purity of its water and the fact that it has no surface inlets. Indeed, these two features are surely connected. Any given water molecule in Walden has been sitting on the surface of the earth for a relatively short period of time. It has not long been wandering from lake to lake, exposed to light, air and nutrients. The result is a gem-clear lake. I have noticed this phenomenon many times in other lakes. The lake you see behind me in my blog portrait in the left sidebar is one I have visited many times since 1969. It is perched atop a mountain of granite, fed only by melted snow. To the the right is a view of the lake, looking down into it. The shape you see near the bottom of the picture is a large boulder at the bottom of the lake. (Click to enlarge.) The lake has algae, but no weeds, no macroscopic plants at all. In fact, my lake is much "purer" than Walden, as it doesn't even contain any fish.

Maybe you can now guess what my point is: Where bodies of surface water are concerned, purity is death.

What is purity, after all? The idea of purity rests on three more fundamental ideas. To have a concept of purity you must, first, have the idea of a type of material as properly belonging in a certain domain (eg., domain: lake; material: water). Second, you need the idea that everything else is (eg., anything that can obstruct my view of the bottom) foreign matter and does not belong here. Finally, when this foreign matter invades the material that belongs here, what you have (third fundamental idea) is pollution (the Greeks called it miasma).

Aesthetically, purity is a very attractive idea. Anyone who has looked into a flawless gem or a pure (ie., dead) body of water knows this. But I see deep ethical and political problems with the idea, possibly fatal ones. Purity is, first of all, a entirely negative. To achieve purity is simply to chase certain things out, or annihilate them. Second, it is profoundly reactionary. If purity is ever achieved, all changes in regard to it are by definition bad and to be resisted. So its ideal end state is stasis stillness. In view of that it is no surprise the purity and death go hand in hand. Finally, if the concept is in a way profoundly intolerant. The idea of purity involves splitting the world up into the element that belongs here and the foreign element that does not, and should be chased back home or wiped out of existence.

We associate the idea of purity with ascetics, and so we should. Ascetics are deeply negative people, obsessed with chasing out the bad thoughts, flushing out their bad feelings, avoiding "wrong" foods and, in extreme cases, flushing "impurities" out of their very bowels. But it also is of great interest to a certain sort of environmentalist. After all, as I have said, pollution is nothing but the introduction of impurities. At their most purity-obsessed extreme, environmentalists can be very negative, reactionary, and intolerant people. Finally, and less obviously, purity is an idea that is very congenial to racists. Indeed, you could almost define racism as nothing more or less than the application of the purity-ideal to race. I can't really weigh in on the question of whether the Third Reich was the first consciously environmentalist government, but I can say there is a connection between Nazi racism and Nazi conservationism: they share a common theme in the idea of purity. Note that the Nazis referred to racial intermarriage as "race-pollution." To a racist, that is exactly what it is.

Thoreau's hunger for purity is both attractive and worrisome. (On both points, see the opening pages of the Walden chapter, "Higher Laws".) The more I think about it, though, the more I want to resist my own tendency to seek purity. And to exhort others: Oh my brothers and my sisters, be positive, be tolerant, commit pollution! Dare to be impure!

Off to Concord!

2008-05-21T21:03:00.004-05:00

I'm leaving for a Liberty Fund colloquium I'm directing on Hawthorne and Thoreau -- in Concord Massachusetts itself! Both men, as everyone should know, lived there, where they were good friends and fishing companions.

When Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne moved into the Old Manse in 1842, the garden that supplied their vegetables had been planted by Thoreau. This was three years (to the day, almost) before he moved in and Walden.

In all the times I've been there, I've somehow failed to come back with any pictures of Walden Pond (do Catholics take snaps of the Vatican's interior when they go their for an audience with the Pope?). This time I'll try to make good that oversight and post one or two when I return.

Anyway, I probably won't be able to post until I return after Memorial Day. Too busy! Have a great holiday weekend everyone!

I Weigh in on the Miley Cyrus Thing

2008-05-20T21:03:00.002-05:00

There's something about reading final exams that makes me want to surf the net for ten minutes at a stretch, reading about things that are none of my business. Here is something that was quite a flap for a week or so recently. Fifteen year old Singer and actress Miley Cyrus appeared in a series of photos (I think the fourth one in the slide show is probably the so-called "topless" shot) in Vogue Magazine, some of which seem obviously sexual and just as obviously aimed at adults. One feature that drew a lot of ire was a video on the Vogue web site in which she snuggles with her dad in ways that some people found creepy (it seems to have been removed). There was a chorus of "you slut!" from her fans, an apology, some back-pedaling. (If you think the above picture is one of the controversial ones, you should probably take a look at the Vogue slide show. Or maybe time-travel to an earlier century.)

The largely negative reaction to the photos begot its opposite reaction, and some have suggested that Ms. Cyrus is simply a teen who is taking charge of her life, exploring her sexuality, and good for her (hat-tip here to Hugo Schwyzer). As an ultra-libertarian and the parent of a teen, I have a lot of sympathy for this reaction, at least for the values that lie behind it. But I think the facts of this case are probably a lot more complex than this interpretation makes them sound. This is not, after all, just some high school sophomore exploring her alternatives. Aside from the semi-relevant fact that young Mylie does not even attend high school, there are several powerful causal agents involved in addition to her own deliberation and choice: a high-profile photographer, her parents*, two giant business corporations (Disney and Conde Nast, the owners of Vogue), and positively shocking amounts of money. To some extent, I am sure she is being used by agents who are basically moral idiots.

There is one other feature of the situation that dampens what might otherwise be my enthusiasm for Miley's exploratory behavior. Many girls discover at an early age that they have a peculiar sort of power over men. With just a little practice, they can get them to do amusing things: stammer, bump into things, give them peculiar amounts of drooling attention. It must be very tempting to inspire this sort of reaction as an end in itself. After all, it is a sort of power. But power over people, when sought as an end in itself, is always evil. It is power over nature that is good. (This was Ayn Rand's revision of Nietzsche.)

Here someone will want to object: "Power?" -- there's nothing coercive about it, and if men make fools of themselves over women, it's their own darn fault. And besides, the behavior you are talking about is perfectly natural. And, besides, without the pursuit of this sort of power, whole branches of art and popular culture would not exist. All this is of course true. It means, among other things, that the question of how parents and others should respond to this sort of behavior is a deep and difficult one. A coercive response, including parent-on-child coercion, is not justified. That being said, it is also true that the typical behavior of the coquette, the tease, the thousands of web cam girls shaking their money-makers on YouTube and amateur pornography sites is ethically problematic. Surely, at a minimum, such behavior, in children, should not be encouraged by adults. The fact that said adults stand to make money off it only makes it worse.

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* They seem to be wonderful examples of the type of over-wealthy ignoramus that America n capitalism produces in such abundance. They named her little sister "Noah." Her dad is famous for one of the worst songs ever to soar into the stratospheric portions of the top 40. (I almost said the worst song, but I had forgotten about "Who Let the Dogs Out?" Why would my memory play such a trick on me, I wonder?) By the way, notice that the one detail in the elder Cyrus' signature song that makes it stick in the memory like a splinter under a fingernail -- namely, substituting "achy breaky" for "achin', breakin'" was his idea.

All Tied Up!

2008-05-14T18:17:00.003-05:00

I'm buried in term papers and exams now and my postings and comments may be sparse for up to a week.

Just now I am reading a bunch of papers about Triumph of the Will, and they're pretty good. I'm learning something, which is great!

For years now I've had the impression that our students are getting better and better. I know that sounds suspiciously like Emile Coue's magic mantra, but I swear it's true. There's probably another school somewhere, where the students are getting worse and worse.

So I'm feeling little pain but, rather like Andromeda on her rock, I'm all tied up.

The Rights of Fetuses and Animals: Who Really Believes in Them?

2008-05-10T15:57:00.004-05:00

George Carlin has a routine I heard once years ago, and have been thinking about ever since. The people who say that a fetus is a person just like you and me, and that abortion is therefore murder: do they really believe that? Why aren't fetuses counted in a census? If a fetus is a human, why do people say we have two children and one on the way instead of saying that we have three children? Why is a funeral not given when a woman has a miscarriage?

I would add some more questions, ones that I admit would be out of place in a comedy routine. If the pro-lifer's expressed opinions are true, then abortion as it is practiced here in the US is an evil akin to that of the Holocaust. In that case, why aren't these poeple bombing abortion clinics and murdering doctors? Why don't most of them even go so far as to favor laws that impose penalties on women who have abortions? Haven't these women paid someone to commit "murder," like the clients of Murder, Incorporated? Of course, there are a few people who do draw these seemingly logical conclusions, but they are regarded as obviously insane, even by other right-to-lifers.

Similar questions can be asked about animal rights advocates. Hugo Schwyzer, in a vegan blog I enjoy visiting, poses a thorny problem. He recently invited some friends to dinner at a restaurant of his choice and picked up the tab afterwards, even though some of the friends had eaten steak and lobster. What should he do in situations like that, he wonders. After all, he tells us, he believes animals have rights. I appreciate the moral bind he is in, but I also think that if he really believed that animals have rights in the sense that we do, there would be no conflict at all. That belief would logically imply that eating a steak is wrong in the very same way that cannibalizing humans -- humans, moreover, who had been killed in specifically in order to be eaten -- is wrong. Paying someone to do that would be, once again, morally on a par with patronizing Murder, Inc. It would simply be off the menu. So, no moral conflict.*

There is another thing that vegetarians often do that does not seem to fit their declared beliefs at all. They frequently eat foods that are obviously designed to resemble meat products. They put hamburger-like soy protein crumbles in their chili, they eat breakfast links that are meant to resemble pork sausage, and so on. I eat these foods myself for health reasons, but if I seriously believed that pigs have the same right to not be killed and eaten that you and I have, I would avoid them with horror. If you were a reformed cannibal, would you eat foods that were designed to resemble human body parts? "Mm. Try one of these. They're just like real human toes. Crunchy!" I don't think so.

This is a very interesting phenomenon, one that deserves to be studied and explained. I don't know what the full explanation would be, but at minimum it must include the supposition that these people do not actually hold the beliefs they claim to hold. Surely, there has to be an element of behaviorism in any conception of what a belief is. If it's a belief, and not a hope or a hunch, you act on it. These people, I admit, surely must believe something that is different from what I believe, because they act differently than I do. But their actual behavior is far, far from fitting their beliefs as they describe them. Something else is going on here. What it is, I can only wonder.
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* As with the pro-lifers, the animal rights movement does include a tiny minority whose actions are actually consistent with their declared beliefs. These are the ones who blow up science laboratories and commit other acts of violence. But they are generally regarded as crazy, even by other anti-vivisectionists.

David Horowitz: Not a Consistent Friend of Free Speech

2008-05-03T11:03:00.012-05:00

David Horowitz is angry. (Yea, I know, so what else is new?) This time it's about a cartoon he saw posted on a bulletin board by the Muslim Students Association at UW-Milwaukee when he went there to give a talk. (Hat-tip here to Ken Mayer.) You can find the cartoon here, together with a call by a National Review writer for the MSA to apologize to Horowitz and the Chancellor to reprimand them. Here you can find an essay by Horowitz alleging that the cartoon is anti-semitic. UW-Madison poli sci prof Kenneth R. Mayer commented, rightly I think, that there is no more reason for apology or reprimand here than there was when the UW-Madison Badger Herald offended the MSA by publishing the notorious Danish cartoons. Horowitz replies here. "The difference between the two cartoons," he says, "is that the university has rules against religious bigotry. The Mohammed cartoons were nothing of the sort."

I think this is a clear case of "what's sauce for the goose." I see nothing in this cartoon to indicate that it is about religion at all. And, as a friend of mine pointed out, except for a slight exaggeration in the nose, there is almost nothing in this cartoon to indicate antisemitism. True enough, references to Nazism (the armbands in this cartoon) in connection with someone known to be Jewish is offensive and contemptible for several different reasons, but they themselves don't rise (or descend) to the level of antisemitism either.

Above all, displaying the cartoon is clearly within the ASM's right of free speech. If UW had a rule against an offense as nebulous as "religious bigotry" (which of course it doesn't), it would obviously violate that right.

For my part, I think an institution like the university has to have (viewpoint-neutral) rules against harassment and intimidation in face-to-face encounters. Arguably, such a rule might be used against a student who calls a speaker an anti-semitic epithet. But this cartoon falls well outside that narrow class of actionable offenses. Distasteful as it may be, it is simply part of the cost of taking controversial positions on emotionally charged issues.

As William Allen White said, “Liberty is the only thing you can't have unless you give it to others.” Horowitz needs to improve his grasp of this fundamental truth.

What! Nozick Agreed With Rawls?

2008-05-02T07:36:00.007-05:00

It's nice to see an article in the popular press about one of my favorite philosophers. It would be even nicer if it were written by someone who really knows how to read. Well, I can't have everything, I guess.

The author, political science professor David Lewis Schaeffer, is writing about John Rawls (welfare state liberal, roughly) and Robert Nozick (libertarian) from a conservative point of view, complaining that the are really too much alike -- which, from his point of view, I guess they are. But what is the point of similarity that he sees?

From a conservative point of view, both advocate too much personal freedom. "Victimless" offenses, like using dangerous drugs or practicing prostitution, would be permitted, if they had their way. (It's actually not obvious that this is true of Rawls, but let it pass.) Where they differ, if at all, is on the issue of distributive justice. Amazingly, Schaeffer claims they agree here too.

As you may know, Rawls advocates the "Difference Principle," which says that inequalities of wealth and income are only to be permitted if they benefit the people who are the least well off. (For instance, they may be necessary incentives to induce talented people to produce these benefits for the least-well-off.) This requirement of benefiting the least well off could justify some sort of coercive redistribution of wealth, from those who have "too much" to those who have "too little." This idea is an example of what Nozick calls an "end-result principle." Regardless of the process by which you acquired what you have, if the result of the process does not fit this principle, you are liable to coercive redistribution.

Nozick's alternative is what he calls a "historical principle." Whether what you have is rightfully yours depends on past history. On his view, the "Entitlement Theory," you are entitled to your holdings if you acquired them in the right way (eg., by purchase and not by theft) from someone who was entitled to them (by this same principle). Since this rule is recursive, it goes back to the beginning of time unless it is qualified somehow. Of course, there have been people who acquired their holdings in the wrong way (eg., by theft). This brings in the Principle of Rectification, which requires that those who were wronged, or their heirs, be compensated for the wrongs they have suffered.

According to Schaeffer, this is where Nozick suddenly morphs into Rawls:

Ironically, however, Nozick himself ultimately acknowledges that his entitlement theory is insufficient to refute demands for a redistributionist state, since it can never be demonstrated that existing holdings derive from an unbroken series of voluntary transfers... Hence, surprisingly, he ends up suggesting that something like Rawls’s difference principle is morally required after all, in the name of “rectification,” on the dubious premise that those currently least-well-off have the highest probability of being descended from previous victims of injustice.

In the next paragraph, Schaeffer suddenly upgrades Nozick's "suggesting" this into an "area of agreement with Rawls." Apparently it was something more than a suggestion, according to Schaeffer. Let's look at what Nozick actually says.

Beginning with the paragraph in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (p. 152) in which he introduces the idea of rectification, Nozick acknowledges a number of times that the problem of how this principle is to be specified and applied raises all sorts of difficult questions. Right away, he raises, as an issue he will not try to settle, this question: "How far must one go in wiping clean the historical slate of injustice?" In other words, maybe we should recognize a sort of moral statute of limitations. Maybe, if the injustice from which your holdings derive happened before a certain cut-off date, you owe nothing on their account.

For whatever it might be worth, my own view is that it is virtually inevitable that we do this. The further back in time we go in finding injustices, the more insoluble the difficulties in deciding what sort of compensation would be required to set it right.

In a note on the next page (p. 153 n.), however, Nozick raises the possibility of quite a different approach. Suppose that rectification means making the victim's heirs as well off as they would have been had the injustice not happened. Suppose, further, that there are several different ways things might have turned out. Which one should the rectifier bring about? Here, he says, we might use some end-result principle to choose between these states of affairs. We might bring about the scenario that would create the most happiness overall (utilitarianism), or we might bring about the one that benefits the people who are now worst off (the Difference Principle), and so forth.

Again, much later (pp. 230-231), he plays with yet another possibility. (One thing Nozick had a lot of is ideas.) Maybe, instead of trying to figure out how things might have been if really old injustices had not happened, we could substitute, as "a rough rule of thumb," something like the Difference Principle, on the theory that the least well off people are most likely to be the ones whose ancestors were treated badly (African slaves, dispossessed Indians, etc.). He admits, though, that "this particular example may well be implausible."

This last idea must be the one that Schaeffer is (mis)reporting.

Obviously, Nozick is not agreeing with Rawlsian redistribution, for at least two reasons. For one thing, he is not asserting that any of these three ideas. They are mutually inconsistent, so he can't believe them all, and he has not picked one. Also, even if he were to opt for the last, most Rawlsian-sounding, one, the point of the transfer payments that he would be recommending would be to rectify past wrongs. Nozick repeatedly points out that whether it is redistributive to take from Peter to give to Paul depends on what our reasons are for doing it. If the reason is historical, if we are trying to right past wrongs, then we are not redistributing. You are simply returning things to their real owner. If, on the other hand, regardless of what happened in the past, you just think Peter has "too much," then -- and only then -- you are redistributing. Nozick's reasons, if he were to opt for this third idea -- which he has not done! -- would be non-redistributive.

As I have suggested, I think the obviously best solution here is the simplest one: some sort of statute of limitations. Nothing that even looks Rawlsian about that!