m s. t h i n k

Capitalism Straw Man takes another hit

2008-07-17T13:49:00.007-04:00

Randex finds news stories that mention Ayn Rand and Objectivism. A lot of the stories it finds are derisive to both.

Today, Randex found a slap at The Ayn Rand Society in a Jewish Journal Op-Ed called "Beyond sicko." The author fears what would happen if that group started lobbying public officials. I doubt the author actually knows to which organization he's referring, or even that an organization by that precise name exists. If he did, I also doubt he would have picked on it: it's "a professional society affiliated with the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division" -- in other words, its members are a bunch of philosophy professors. Hardly the most likely Ayn Rand-affiliated group to start lobbying public officials.

The column is a call to concentrate on preventing poor health by abandoning "exhausted dogmas" like the free market and instead relying on the government to fix the causes of poor health. That is:

To me, the underlying reason America has fallen so far behind in the healthiest nation race is the exhausted dogmas that have dominated public discourse for something like 30 years -- Horatio Algerism, social Darwinism, the magic of the marketplace, deregulation is good, government is bad, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and devil take the hindmost.
We now know what America looks like when those kinds of ideas rule, and not only in the health sector.

This nonsense is fundamentally evasive at best and dishonest at worst. No-one who seriously reflects on the American economy can possibly believe it's been a free market for the past 30 years -- it's never been completely free, and the era of its greatest freedom was the end of the 19th century, over one hundred years ago. Since the enactment of New Deal legislation in the Great Depression, government regulation of our lives has been pervasive.

I mention this Op-Ed because it's a particularly egregious call for a nanny state. Marty Kaplan, the author of this Op-Ed, is a professor at USC, and as a professor, he should know better than to engage in the fallacy of attacking a straw man. For anyone as educated as Kaplan, to claim that any broad cultural or policy failures should be laid at the door of free market principles is sicko.

What U.S. "federalism" means

2008-07-16T12:15:00.002-04:00

Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe has a column today in which he waxes rhapsodic about the brilliance of the Electoral College. The Constitution's framers correctly recognized that "blind majoritarianism can become as great a menace to liberty as any king or dictator," and so

[t]he Electoral College (like the Senate) was designed to preserve the role of the states in governing a nation whose name - the United States of America - reflects its fundamental federal nature. We are a nation of states, not of autonomous citizens, and those states have distinct identities and interests, which the framers were at pains to protect.

I will not get into the absurdity of the assertion that American is "a nation of states, not of autonomous citizens." What I do want to get into is the non-essential nature of the debate over the propriety of the Electoral College.

The idea that there are states' interests and rights, practically speaking, is the idea that citizens of states elect their own government, in addition to the federal government, and have a right to prevent citizens of other states from interfering with the tasks they have set their state government. Put another way, federalism prevents the citizens of State A from overriding what the citizens of State B tell State B's government to do. But there's no such thing as the right of a state (or any other group) as such. That is, the state of Wyoming doesn't have any interests different or apart from the interests of Wyoming's individual citizens.

So much for Individual Rights 101.

The reason why the Electoral College debate misses the point is that we wouldn't be having this debate if it weren't for the fact that America's is a mixed, not a free, economy. In a free economy, economic advantages can be secured only by producing them yourself, or in voluntary trade with another producer. In a mixed economy, each state is just another pressure group, fighting for the right to secure advantages at other states' expense. What really upsets people about the Electoral College is the notion that a relatively small number of people are given strength in pressure-group warfare disproportionate to their numbers. In more graphic terms, it's as if citizens in smaller states are armed with machine guns and in the larger states, they have hunting rifles and birdshot.

In political terms, the power of small-population states in the Senate explains why there are a lot of farm subsidies and other pork expenditures geared towards rural states.

If you want to solve the Electoral College issue, divest government of the power to hand out economic benefits. Then the issue of relative power of small- versus large-population states in the war for federal tax dollars will be less pressing.

A Young Hero!

2008-07-15T08:00:00.004-04:00

I read about this story a month or so ago, and it's just so inspiring.

A Canadian high-schooler, Daniel Burd, won a science contest with his discovery of a microbe that can quickly break down plastic bags like the ones commonly used at grocery stores. With the right means of upscaling the process, it could be really valuable in getting rid of a kind of waste that is particularly hard to decompose.

Daniel, a 16-year-old Grade 11 student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, got the idea for his project from everyday life.
"Almost every week I have to do chores and when I open the closet door, I have this avalanche of plastic bags falling on top of me," he said. "One day, I got tired of it and I wanted to know what other people are doing with these plastic bags."
The answer: not much. So he decided to do something himself.

I just Googled the story to find the original link, and unsurprisingly, the sites showing up first on the search engine are "green" sites. But what's so great about the story is not that it's example of how to live "green." What's great is the confident rationality of the teen who made the discovery, and the way Karen Kawawada, of The Waterloo Region Record, walked the reader through the entire exciting process of experiment and discovery that led to the break-through.

Burd proudly summarized his work as "a huge, huge step forward . . . We're using nature to solve a man-made problem." I have a quibble with this formulation, because plastic bags are so convenient, they've been such a boon. So I think, rather, that what Burd should be proud of is that he's used his mind to find a way to command nature to make our lives even more convenient!

Congratulations and thanks to Daniel -- hope he makes a pile of money on this discovery!

May Government Ban Advocacy Near Movie Theaters, Outdoor Restaurants, and the Like?

2008-07-14T17:23:00.004-04:00

The Volokh Conspiracy blog asks: May Government Ban Advocacy Near Movie Theaters, Outdoor Restaurants, and the Like? I'm no First Amendment expert nor have I thought about this issue longer than the last few minutes, but my knee-jerk answer is: YOU BET! Here's the comment I just posted:

If an advocacy group wanted to guarantee itself an audience, it would have to own or rent a speaking venue, or borrow one from sympathizers, and somehow convince people of the value of coming to hear what they have to say.
When advocates address people queing for a movie or dining al fresco, those advocates are taking something they have neither earned nor paid for: an audience. The people they are addressing have been attracted to that spot because of the value being offered by the movie theater or the restaurant. The advocates are drawn to that spot precisely because some business with something of value to offer has managed to attract a crowd. In effect, such advocates are stealing the good will and venues of the businesses whose patrons they accost. It does not matter that the movie theater or the restaurant may abut a public thoroughfare. Streets and sidewalks are for passage, they are not a means to violating the property rights of others.
However the concept has been perverted today, in reason, the right to free speech is not a right to make someone else pay to provide you with a forum in which to air our views. It is a right to use your own property to express your views, without someone forcibly preventing you from using your property as you so please.

Forced civic engagement by proxy

2008-07-14T10:51:00.009-04:00

The Economist has an article describing how our major candidates for president, Senators Obama and McCain, are "pitch[ing] their appeals to Americans' most selfless interests." According to the article, a reason for this is that the candidates have noticed that Americans have been eschewing public service.

On the one hand: Researchers have found that, by nearly every indicator, Americans’ “civic engagement” declined dramatically in the last three decades of the 20th century. A smaller share of Americans voted, joined civic-minded clubs, attended public meetings or volunteered on a campaign.

But on the other hand:

Decades-long trends are shifting: youth voter turnout has increased in the last three election cycles, the first time that has happened since 18-year-olds were admitted to the franchise. Studies have shown that college students are more interested in talking about and taking part in politics than their counterparts in the 1990s. If the primary campaign was any indication, in the autumn young foot-soldiers will not only turn out to vote in large numbers but will also volunteer in droves.

Now call me cynical (actually, don't, I hate that), but here's my take on what's going on.

Our cultural zeitgeist is the government is supposed to take care of everything: we have public education, Medicaid/Medicare, faith-based initiatives to help the under-whatevered, Fannie & Freddie to help people buy homes they can't afford, foreign aid to feed the internationally hungry, environmental regulation to save the endangered species-du-jour. And we're taxed to death and against our will to finance the welfare of everybody-and-every-possible-thing-in-this-universe-that-isn't-me. Any sane adult in these circumstances could make an absolutely rational choice to cease most or all private volunteering and charitable activities. Why bother? The government is already taking his money to supposedly do these very things. He's engaged by proxy -- he spends his time making money that is taken from him and turned over to these projects. It's just the same as if he'd volunteered his time (except for the small detail that he hasn't). On top of that, the recipients of his forced welfare contributions are claiming his "engagement" by right. Any genuinely charitable motives for "service" must be obliterated by such a scheme.

But young people haven't yet spent years being taxed. They have, however, just matured into their personalities after having their formative years sucking up this I-am-my-brothers'-keeper ethos. And they still think ideas matter -- much more so than the older adult population -- so they're willing to put their money where their mouth is.

The irony is, these young activists will fight for more of the same kinds of big-government policies that will, in my opinion, lead to their inevitable disengagement and disillusionment. And they'll fall faster, farther, and harder.

From the department of: gee, ya think?

2008-07-12T20:18:00.001-04:00

The title of this New York Times article nearly says it all: Long Protected by Washington, Fannie and Freddie Ballooned. "[A]n implicit government guarantee to back them up meant taxpayers would be left with the losses," so are we at all shocked that they grew out of control? The people who ran Fannie and Freddie weren't risking any shareholder money, they knew that if they made bad decisions tax dollars would bail them out and lobbyists would make sure they kept their jobs.

Backing up a business with taxpayer dollars is like giving a gambling addict unlimited credit. It's incredibly stupid and it's asking for a financial catastrophe.

Students are definitely not the priority on Long Island

2008-07-11T12:13:00.004-04:00

Now is the time for teachers' unions to vociferously denounce what makes this possible:

An English teacher in his Long Island district remains on the payroll, earning an annual salary of $113,559, even after pleading guilty earlier this month to drunken driving charges — her fifth DWI arrest in seven years.

But of course, such a denunciation isn't going to happen any time soon, not when Richard Iannuzzi, president of New York State United Teachers, spouts crap like this:

"Tenure provides the right to due process. It is consistent with the American way; a person is innocent until proven guilty."

"Innocent until proven guilty" refers to citizens' protection having their life and property arbitrarily seized by the government. This protection is necessary because the government has a legal right to point a gun at you, but only if proper procedures are followed. "Innocent until proven guilty" has absolutely nothing to do with employment relationships, which should be a matter of free trade. Employment should continue just as long as -- and only as long as -- everyone is getting the value they've contracted for. Employees should stay as long as the work provides the desired material and emotional values. Employers should retain employees as long as the employee furthers the employers' goals.

A drunken teacher who has no regard for the lives of others sharing the road with her cannot possibly further the goal of educating children. This teacher is clearly unfit for duty. She's been arrested for driving under the influence five times in seven years and she's pled guilty to the offense. Throw her out on her ass post-haste! That union officials can possibly defend keeping her on the Long Island school district payroll is evidence that the New York State United Teachers has its priorities completely out-of-whack.

(Via Overlawyered.)

Enough with the auto worker sob-stories already!

2008-07-10T16:30:00.005-04:00

Stories like these make me nuts: This is not the American Dream, this is the Auto Industry Nightmare. It is yet another tale of an older person being laid off from their auto manufacturing job and not having any marketable skills that will allow them to maintain their standard of living.

And what? WHAT? What am I supposed to do about it? I definitely feel badly for someone who made a bet like that and lost (that is, this worker made a bet that he did not have to educate himself or have a plan B in case he could not keep a job in which he was no doubt overpaid). It must be incredibly frightening to be over 50, in poor health, uneducated and out of work. But what am I supposed to do about it?

It would be one thing if someone like him came directly to me for charity, and admitted he was making an appeal for charity. Or if someone like Jill Miller Zimon, The Moderate Voice blogger posting the story, openly solicited donations on this unemployed gentleman's behalf.

But nooooooo. After Miss Zimon tugs at our heartstrings, she ends her column with an appeal to a government fix-it:

Now what? Barack Obama? John McCain? Gov. Granholm? Anybody?

Any appeal to a government solution is an appeal for tax dollars, no-one would bother to deny this. Any appeal for tax dollars is an appeal to take money from people by force that they would not willingly part with -- or at least, not part with in the amount sought -- else, why resort to the government instead of direct appeals for cash?

So here's my question for Miss Zimon, the same question any statist needs to be asked and of course never has a good answer for: why am I responsible for for Mr. Laid-Off-Autoworker's plight? Did I make him take that job? Did I make him stay in it? Did I make him not have a Plan B in case his meal ticket vanished? Did I make his employer lay him off? Did my actions cause him to have arthritis?

And a question for every laid-off unionized auto worker: did you have any sympathy for the thousands who remained unemployed when you used the power of government guns to prevent them from joining your union or prevent them for underbidding you for your job?

An Open Letter to Medical Students: Please don't become primary care physicians!!

2008-07-09T13:56:00.003-04:00

All the talk about the health care crisis is about the costs. All the solutions proposed to the health care crisis are aimed at making it more affordable.

No one ever talks about access to health care. And with good reason -- because everyone knows, in their heart of hearts, that access to health care means access to physicians, and the only way to even attempt to guarantee access to physicians is to enslave them.

What is missing is a proud and open statement by physicians that they, too, understand that guaranteed access to health care -- government socialization of health care -- means enslavement of physicians. Physicians as a group need to stand up and be proud of the decades of hard work it took for them to become a physician -- and ask everyone clamoring for universal healthcare if they can conceive any mechanism, even brute force, that can make someone learn to be a doctor.

Many doctors are leaving the profession, because the bureaucracy is crushing them, preventing them from spending time practicing, and because they aren't getting paid enough for what they do. It is a senseless and useless argument to claim that doctors are being greedy and should accept whatever low payment we healthcare-needing consumers are willing to pay. It doesn't matter. There is nothing that can be done to stop a doctor from leaving the profession. You wouldn't even want to force a doctor to stay in the profession -- ask yourself if you would be willing to operated on a surgeon who didn't want to do the operation and was only there because he was threatened. Could you possibly trust the advice of a practitioner who hated what he did? Does anyone truly believe a mind can be forced, that good judgment can be elicited at gunpoint?

The healthcare access crisis is acutest at the primary care level and for the elderly on Medicare. Primary care physicians are the gatekeepers for all the bureaucracies and bear the burden of all the regulations and requirements. (Do not go on about how HMOs and insurance companies are greedy private concerns. They are subject to thousands of laws and regulations telling them what services they may or may not offer, what things can and cannot be covered. Anyone making this objection should know that, since they are the ones lobbying for all the laws.) Primary care physicians receive the lowest compensation. And primary care physicians are the ones everyone needs, they are the ones who get to know the patients and refer them on to specialists.

People clamor for more primary care physicians while at the same time clamoring for regulations and costs that drive them out of business. And no one seems to get what is happening, or be willing to admit what is happening. But it's happening -- we're losing primary care physicians. And we're losing the doctors who treat the elderly. I'm middle-aged. By the time I am elderly, there will be few doctors available to treat me. And I am scared. I am scared that primary care physicians willing to treat the elderly will be hounded out of the profession. And I cannot blame them one bit for leaving. I am completely sympathetic to the medical student who chooses a lucrative specialty, like plastic surgery or dermatology, over primary care.

I think perhaps the most effective means to get the message to people that the only way to increase the number of doctors is to free them is: drastically to decrease the number of doctors on the explicit grounds that they are not free. So, medical students of today, I beg of you -- don't go into primary care! Let everyone know that you are avoiding primary care because it is too regulated and doesn't pay you enough. If you are a primary care physician, find a way to quit, and scream from the rooftops the reason why! Doctors and doctors-to-be, find a way to leave the primary care profession altogether, because if you try to go on strike while retaining your right to practice, the bureaucrats will use the antitrust laws to destroy you. Just leave!

And hopefully, when there are no primary care physicians in a few years, everyone will see what must be done. Only when everyone sets the doctors free, should they come back to primary care. Hopefully, this process will be quick -- so that when I am old, I will be able to find a good doctor.

(Inspired by a column by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), appearing on the Real Clear Politics website -- and which does not go nearly far enough in making the case for doctors.)

Americans Want To Have Their Cake And Eat It, Too

2008-06-30T12:18:00.003-04:00

Gallup is out with a poll on how Americans Oppose Income Redistribution to Fix Economy:

When given a choice about how government should address the numerous economic difficulties facing today's consumer, Americans overwhelmingly -- by 84% to 13% -- prefer that the government focus on improving overall economic conditions and the jobs situation in the United States as opposed to taking steps to distribute wealth more evenly among Americans.

Ms. Think wonders: how can the government finance the steps it would need to take to improve overall economic conditions and the jobs situation? Ms. Think sends out an open challenge to anyone to demonstrate how any possible government action, apart from repeal of all economic legislation and establishment of laissez-faire capitalism, could possibly be done without "distributing wealth more evenly among Americans" through taxation and other seizures of private property.

Life BEFORE Death

2006-07-23T12:49:00.000-04:00

On a website called Personal Development for Smart People (as opposed, I suppose, to "Personal Development for Dummies") is an article called "Life After Death." In it the author and creator of the website, Steve Pavlina, takes us through a thought process whereby he tries to discover what the fact of inevitable death can teach us about how to live our lives.

First, he rules out all of the things that the state of death cannot be. Primarily, these are things physical. It is clear that a dead body does not vanish, it does not go anywhere. It changes its form in one way or another, but it does not suddenly disappear after death. Similarly, things acquired during a person's life do not vanish at death, as if they had some how followed consciousness to wherever it is that consciousness goes. As Pavlina so aptly notes: you can't take it with you.

Then he examines what he believes are the two possibilities for the fate of consciousness. Either it continues in some form completely divorced from its previous physical form, or indeed, any physical form, or it goes out of existence altogether. If consciousness goes out of existence altogether, he reasons, then once you die, there is no part of you left to evaluate your life or what happens after you die. He concludes, therefore, that to believe consciousness goes out of existence at death is learn that life is to be lived for the moment.
At this point, anyone who has read some of my other blog posts will have an idea where I'm headed on this one.)

Pavlina then turns to what he believes are the two options for the continued existence of consciousness after (physical) death: either consciousness is fixed in whatever state it has at the moment of death or it can continue to change after death. If consciousness is frozen at the moment of death, so that whatever state of conscious development we've reached during life is the level of consciousness we will retain for all eternity, then what we learn if we believe this to be true is that we should strive to develop our consciousness as fully as possible during life so that we'll be a highly developed consciousness during the unmeasurable eons after our death.

If, on the other hand, consciousness can change after death and even interact with other consciousnesses, then what we learn by holding this belief is that we should strive during our physical existence to achieve growth of all consciousnesses, our own and others'.

OK. I have one smart-ass comment and then a more serious point to make.

The smart-ass comment: We might just as well wonder what happens to the animating spirit of plants, ring worms, amoeba, cats and dogs as humans.

The serious point/question: how has Pavlina determined that "living for the moment" is in the best interest of a being whose consciousness will cease to exist at death? It seems that we can only infer by what he focuses on in the article what he believes supports this conclusion: that the cessation of a thing's existence renders its previous existence meaningless. That is, life has no meaning if it is not eternal. Existence is the primary standard of value, the sine qua non of meaning.

In some respect this is true: to value something, one must first exist. But it does not follow the inevitable cessation of ability to value means one should not bother to value while one has the ability. In fact a human being, if it exists, MUST value to continue to exist. That is, a human being must consider food valuable, shelter valuable, at the very least must consider the requirements of physical existence valueable, worth the voluntary expenditure of effort to obtain, in order to remain alive. Nutritional food does not march into one's mouth, shelters do not miraculously assemble themselves over one's head. Food and shelter have to be discovered and produced, and discovery and production take effort that must consciously be undertaken.

If humans must value and pursue values to exist, then the questions become: what to value and how to pursue it? Pavlina addresses much of this in his website, which is jam-packed full of wonderful how-to-live advice, as he is a prolific writer. In fact, based on what he has written and assuming he writes it from the assumption that consciousness can exist and develop after physical death, it appears that living to maximize one life on earth and living to maximize one's consciousness after death (as he understands it) means adopting many of the same goals and virtues. So I recommend his site.

I just recommend that you do not buy into the false dichotomy of eternal life vs. meaningless life. It is a canard that any recovering drug addict or reformed hedonist can tell you is untrue.

THIS is what's wrong with the United Nations

2006-07-13T15:45:00.000-04:00

The U.N. Security Council drafted an Arab-backed resolution condemning Israel for defending itself by attacking Gaza, where one of its soldiers was recently captured and generally a known staging area for the many terrorist attacks it has endured. But where are the draft resolutions condemning attacks on Israel?

Thankfully, the U.S. has just vetoed that resolution. What a farce; the other Council members have to have known the U.S. would veto. So they have a perfect platform for now "condemning" the U.S. for its pro-Israel "bias." Whereas if all were right in the world and the United States was not a member of the U.N., such resolutions would be exposed for the racist shams that they are. Of course, such resolutions would have to be made in a hurry once the U.S. left, since the U.N. would collapse for lack of funding and credibility without the U.S. to give it a patina of respectability.

A couple of good collections of essays on the U.N. appears at Capitalism Magazine, here and here.

Speak for yourself

2006-07-13T15:06:00.000-04:00

I was just reading comments to a post at the Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog, here. All this Strang und Durm about how the theocrats on the right "accuse" those who believe in evolution of being atheists -- and the syllogism goes: atheism=immorality. So a lot of fundamentalist Christians in the U.S. see the choice as between evolution and God, and, not wanting to be seen as anything other than God-fearing, reject evolution without considering the science behind it or the fact that 80% of the world's Christians accept it.

But the thing that really irks me me is equating atheism with immorality. Anyone who believes that seems to me to be making a confession about their own soul. That is, if a person thinks that morality is impossible without the threat of hell or a say-so from some unaccountable and unquestionable authority, they must also believe there is no reason to be moral. They're confessing the mindset of a child who hasn't learned to think, and therefore acts morally only when told "do it because I say so."

To me, that is the real insult, to be accused of not seeing any reason to be moral. For that's all it is, the belief that morality is impossible without a supernatural authority telling everyone what to do: a personal confession of possessing the same level of moral immaturity as a three-year old. It's not a confession you'll ever hear me make.

Not calling a spade a spade

2006-07-04T23:55:00.000-04:00

The title of a recent Boston Globe article says it all: Experts debate labeling children obese.

So, what is being debated? Whether or not a child with rolls of fat should be told to his or her face that he or she is "obese."

Maria Bailey of Pompano Beach, Fla., whose 12-year-old daughter, Madison, is self-consciously overweight, opposes the proposed change. She said their pediatrician has told her daughter to exercise more and see a nutritionist, but "hasn't told her that she's in a (weight) category."

"We're already raising a generation of teenagers who have eating disorders," Bailey said. "I think it would just perpetuate that."

What, her kid doesn't already have an eating disorder?

Paola Fernandez Rana of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has a 9-year old daughter who at 40 pounds overweight is considered obese. Rana said doctors "refer to it as the 'o-word' " in front of her daughter "in an effort not to upset her."

I guess it's much better to help her daughter perpetuate an illusion that is going to keep her fat and unhappy for the rest of her life unless she faces the fact that she is what she is: overweight.

Dr. Michael Wasserman, a pediatrician observed:

"There's a tremendous amount of denial by parents and children."

Not quite right -- let's not forget that children are, after all, children. They are not adults; whatever their mental state is cannot be mentioned in the same breath as an adult's mental state. "Denial" by adults is a far more pernicious and blame-worthy state than in children. What is primarily going on is that in America at least, a bunch of adults too lazy to teach their children good eating habits don't want to be called the neglectful parents that they are. What is primarily going on is that the parents of these children do not think they are or should be responsible for their children's behavior -- after all, that's what public schools are for.

The existing categories are convoluted and "rather ironic, since the U.S. leads the world in terms of obesity," Cole said. "There must be an element of political correctness."

Uh, you think? Let's really call a spade a spade, here. What we're suffering is not primiarly an obesitiy epidemic, but a mind over matter epidemic. That is, too many people think that their minds create reality. So if they don't call these pathetic kids obese, then they don't have to take a good hard look at the cause of the modern spike in childhood obesity: irresponsible parents.

Calling a spade a spade

2006-06-28T15:41:00.000-04:00

What a great essay: Multiculturalism Breeds Terrorism by Glenn Woiceshyn atCapitalism Magazine.

The principle behind Woiceshyn's claim -- that to hold that all cultures are morally equivalent is simply a means by which morally bankrupt cultures hijack the prestige of moral cultures -- applies to any number of arenas. The FDA standards are a minimum above which there is no incentive to rise, and gives charlatans with good attorneys a chance to look just as good as quality companies simply by virtue of the fact that their products are both FDA approved. Dictatorships and other criminal governments are legitimized by their co-memberhship in the United Nations with freer, rights-respecting societies. And so on.

My favorite part of the essay:

Multiculturalism—a creation of leftist, Western, nihilistic, post-modern philosophy professors—begins by promoting “cultural relativism,” which holds that all cultures are of equal value; no culture is better or worse than any other. Logically, this serves to de-value Western values, such as reason, science, productiveness, and each individual’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, by equating them with the most irrational and destructive practices of primitive, mystical cultures such as voodoo medicine, the subjugation of women by men, genital mutilation, and even cannibalism. As essentialized by Peter Schwartz, “Multiculturalism is the debased attempt to obliterate values by claiming that they are indistinguishable from non-values.”

Damn straight.

Babies have fathers, too

2006-06-26T07:35:00.000-04:00

A 24-year-old Salibury, Massachusetts woman was arrested for leaving her infant alone while she went out and got drunk. A neighbor discovered the baby, the police took the baby into custody. When the woman got home and discovered her baby was gone, she went to the police station, where she was arrested.

There is outrage, naturally, and there should be. But where was the father? Why was the father never mentioned in this story? Why wasn't the father arrested? Will anyone on the theocratic right, so hot to put women on the hook for abortion, ever call for the arrest of fathers in such circumstances?

I do not know this woman's story; I do not know whether she could have had an abortion or would have ever considered it. I do not know anything about the relationship of this woman to the child's father. But I do know that man doesn't have to be pregnant or present at the birth of a child. A man doesn't have to personally, physically experience an abortion and the stigma that comes with it; a man doesn't have to personally, physically experience childbirth; a man doesn't have to personally, physically be present when the child arrives; a man doesn't have to personally, physically be present when the decision is made, if it is made, to give the child up for adoption.

Because of biology, these experiences, all unpleasant at best if a child isn't wanted, cannot be avoided by the woman. These are her choices when a pregnancy is unwanted: abortion, adoption, child abandonment -- acceptance of a potentially life-long burden. Men? The worst they experience if they don't want a child is being on the hook for child support.

If fathers of unwanted babies want to go out and get drunk they don't have to find a babysitter on pain of being arrested for endangering a child.

Even if the argument is that this Salisbury woman should have gotten drunk at home or found a babysitter, the point is -- it takes two people to make a baby. Who will call for the arrest of the father of this endangered child? If no-one will, WHY NOT?

Restless leg syndrome: the new plague?

2006-06-19T09:37:00.000-04:00

I heard on the radio yesterday morning an advertisement seeking participants in a study on a drug designed to treat "restless leg syndrome, or RLS." I put the entire phrase -- "restless leg syndrome, or RLS" -- in quotes because what struck me about the radio spot was the tone of voice of the woman delivering it. You know, that breathy, throaty, "it's-OK-I'm-trustworthy-and-soothing" voice. And the fact that giving something initials legitimizes the complaint; "I have RLS" sounds better than "I have restless leg syndrome" ("you have what?" giggle, giggle), and rattling off those initials may intimidate people into believing it's a serious medical condition so pernicious and widespread that they ought to have heard of it -- after all, its got it's own acronym, right?

My first reaction was, "God, what next? How many different claims to victimhood can the medical drug establishment peddle?" But that reaction quickly gave way to respect and awe.

Think about it -- the general standard of living has gone up so much, we are so much less vulnerable to illnesses that centuries ago routinely cut people down in their forties, that a drug company can spend millions, tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, bringing to market a drug designed to keep people's legs from shaking. You should have heard the "testimonials" that comprised much of the radio spot, the despair the actors affected in their voices, which no doubt is experienced to some extent by RLS sufferers. But after all, RLS is not the bubonic plague. It's a terribly uncomfortable and not-remotely life-threatening condition.

Isn't it wonderful that we, the human race writ large, live in times so technologically advanced that we can afford to despair over and throw millions at shaking legs?

For those who find it outrageous that millions could be spent developing drugs for restless leg syndrome while Americans pay so much for drugs and healthcare, my thoughts on such an objection closely track those set forth a few years ago in a Capitalism Magazine article by Thomas Sowell, "Drugs and Politics."

Hell freezes over

2006-06-18T13:39:00.000-04:00

Put on your ice skates, everyone. A political body has decided that maybe, perhaps -- could it be? -- public employees should not receive automatic pay raises, but pay raises based on merit.

The Boston Globe is reporting today that Woburn City Councilors have voted to "form a committee" to study how a merit-based pay scheme would work as applied to the heads of the city's departments.

Of course, for a political body to "form a committee" to study an idea is usually tantamount to driving a stake through the heart of it. ("Die, you disgusting, innovative, sensible idea, die!") And then we must consider what one city politician had to say on the subject:

Alderman Darlene Mercer-Bruen said she also supported the change, but with one caveat. "No politics," she said. "We should come up with objective, performance-based measures that have no politics involved."

Clever little twinkle-toes.

So perhaps we shouldn't be putting the ice skates on. But maybe we could try to remember which closet they're buried in.

The Cult of the Other

2006-06-17T08:54:00.000-04:00

I briefly corresponded with a man who said he loves to travel because of the opportunity it affords to "learn from other cultures." In particular, he loved traveling in Asia and learning about Asian culture.

Many claim learning about "other cultures" as a benefit of travel. I have observed that the statement "learn from other cultures" is usually pronounced with reverence, in that voice people adopt when they are trying to impress upon the listener that they are speaking of a higher and worthy pursuit. In other words, "other cultures" are not regarded as an object of mere curiosity, but as a source of deep enlightenment.

I have always been annoyed by hushed awe and seriousness with which some people discuss how affected they have been by few weeks or months of their lives they have spent "immersed" "other cultures." As if the fact they have traveled on its face makes them more knowledgeable about the human condition.

Other cultures may be a source of interest because their artifacts and institutions are different. It can be educational to see the many ways in which technology and social institutions can promote human well-being. But this is not the way in which I think most people think we can benefit from other cultures, because most people when they talk about other cultures are not speaking of European culture, which is very similar to (although certainly not identical to) American culture. That is, the "other cultures" referred to are nearly always non-Western. Therefore, I think the high regard for learning from "other cultures" is in fact a thinly-veiled slap at our culture, at Western culture; I think what people claim to learn when they spend time in other cultures is that we Westerners are "not the center of the universe." I think the glorification of "other cultures" is an attempt to undermine what is perceived as Western smugness. It is an attempt to pooh-pooh the materialism, high standard of living, and technological might that is the product of Western culture.

And I think in a lot of cases, professed love for learning about other cultures is simply an admission by the individual of fear and inadequacy. Western culture is very demanding, it (by and large) rewards effort and innovation and not laziness and stagnation. If you prefer laziness and stagnation, either from lack of virtue or fear of failure, then naturally the Buddhist exhortation to be as Siddhartha under the Bodhi tree is a far safer route to feeling like a valuable human being than the Western ethic's insistence that happiness is achieved by active (effortful) pursuit.

I have a few questions for those who worship at the altar of other cultures. Aren't human beings much more alike than they are different? Aren't there principles applying equally to Asians and Africans as well as Americans and Europeans? And if so, isn't it true that "difference" does not equal "superiority" unless it is by some standard applicable to all people? Or are you claiming (hoping) that truth is different depending on where you live, so that it is possible that virtue attaches to passive cultural membership rather than active effort?

And of course the obvious question, like shooting fish in a barrel -- if the "other cultures" are so great, why do people emigrate to Western cultures in overwhelmingly greater numbers than they do to "other cultures?"

Bang the populist drum

2006-06-16T09:44:00.000-04:00

The Boston Globe is reporting today that indepdent gubernatorial candidate Christy Mihos paid no tax on his yacht to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He set up an entity in Rhode Island which purchased the half-million dollar yacht from a Portsmouth, Rhode Island dealer. It was perfectly legal (although no-one's purchase of a yacht voluntarily sold ought to be the subject of regulation). This story's been on the radio, too. If I turned on the TV I'll bet news programs are also running with this one.

As if it were a bad thing to avoid paying taxes by every legal means possible.

This story is meant to get people all fired up about how unfair it is that some people can afford expensive toys without kicking back protection money to the less-fortunate masses as a bribe to allow the rich to enjoy their wealth unmolested.

And, unfortunately, it will work.

Now I know why people hate poetry

2006-06-15T14:48:00.000-04:00

Oh-my-god. Is this art?

Well, there are nine players on a baseball team, so to speak, and
there are nine innings, with trivial
exceptions like extra-inning games
and games shortened by rain or darkness,
by riot, hurricane, earthquake...

This is supposed to be a poem. Its author is Donald Hall, the new Poet Laureate of the United States of America, so-named today by the Library of Congress. Granted, I know nothing of Hall's work other than what the New York Times chose to feature in its article announcing the appointment. I think it instructive that the Times, out of what presumably is an extensive opus, chose this poem (and one other) as representative of Hall's work.

Let's look at the verse without line breaks:

"Well, there are nine players on a baseball team, so to speak, and there are nine innings, with trivial exceptions like extra-inning gamesand games shortened by rain or darkness, by riot, hurricane, earthquake...."

It reads as an utterly mundane -- and not remotely evocative -- and not particularly informative -- answer to the question, "What is baseball?" How can a few random line breaks transform this into poetry? If this is the best of his work, by what standard does Hall arrogate to himself the title "poet?"

Perhaps I am, as a baseball fan, simply offended that a game so many fans consider poetic could be the subject of such trash. The Argument From Intimidation is running full force, here -- how many, seeing a poet featured in the almighty New York Times, recognize that they don't have to regard something as art just because the Feds and the Times say so?

Turtles all the way down

2006-06-15T12:12:00.000-04:00

The New York Times ran an article today called "That Wild Streak? Maybe It Runs in the Family," on the debate over what it might mean if human behaviors are definitively found to have a genetic component. Will undesirable traits be more acceptable because people "can't help it?" Will there instead be a drive to eliminate undesirable traits or behaviors through drugs targeted to the offending genes, and a corresponding lack of tolerance for fixable flaws? If we identify genes for undesirable behaviors but do not develop medical treatments for them, will we end up with a bunch of people stigmatized for inborn traits that can't be corrected for?

I am interested in how the human mind came to develop, how it evolved. The field of evolutionary psychology posits that much of human behavior was selected for and has a genetic component. But this has implications for the existence and efficacy of free will that are incompatible with Objectivist epistemology and ethics.

NoodleFood has an old post and accompanying commentary that airs out some of these issues. I haven't yet thought deeply on evolutionary psychology and Objectivism, but my initial take on it is this: the mind is of nature, and part of man's nature is that he evolved. Whatever man's mind is, it exists only in man the physical being and does not exist absent a body to which it is inextricably linked. At my current state of knowledge about evolution I agree with Richard Dawkins that what is selected for are genes, not individuals; therefore, it must be that there is a genetic component to the human mind that caused it to exist in the form it does now.

In other words, whatever the genetic connection is, and whether we prove or disprove that there are genes for alcoholism or obesity or anorexia or sexual orientation or intelligence, the fact is human minds will still be wedded to human bodies, and human bodies are the form they are in because it suited their genes to be so. Even if we drill down from genes for specific behaviors to genes for far broader tendencies, at some point we must say "and this characteristic is as observed because of a gene." That characteristic might be free will, and I don't for a minute mean to say that because there is a physical cause there can be no possibility of free choice as a cause. Physical causes do not necessarily exhaust the world of causes. There can certainly be causes in reality that we humans have not yet discovered or properly understood.

There is a joke, perhaps I encountered it in my reading on Objectivism, that runs something like this:

An old woman insists that the world is carried around on the back of a giant turtle. A reasonable young man asks, "Well, what is that turtle standing on?" The woman retorts, "Oh no, you can't trick me young man! It's turtles all the way down!"

I kind of think that's what we're ultimately looking at, here, in this debate on genetics and behavior -- it's genes all the way down.

Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity

2006-06-12T12:54:00.000-04:00

Wow -- according to a reviewer at Capitalism Magazine, a mainstream, primetime television journalist, John Stossel of 20/20, has written a book which purportedly unmasks the errant thinking behind some of the more flagrantly untrue and hysterical stories hawked by the popular media nowadays.

Maybe I'll have to get this book.

Seagull rights

2006-06-12T09:09:00.000-04:00

WBZ radio reported this morning that a Boston window washer was fired because he killed a seagull on the job last week. He said he was continually being "dive-bombed" by the birds while on the job, it was interfering with his work and was dangerous.

He has been arrested and charged with cruelty to animals.

He has at least 15 pets at home, half of them birds.

So this is what it means for an animal to have rights -- a man doing a dangerous job 40 stories above the ground can be arrested for killing an animal that was threatening his life.

People in favor of extreme animal rights claim to be so because they are against cruety to other living things. Well, what say you about cruelty to other living human beings? How much of a chance are you willing to take with the life of a fellow human being for the sake of a flying rat?

Leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq Is Killed

2006-06-08T10:12:00.000-04:00

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead, finally, and I am thrilled. This is truly a wonderful development and it will make the world safer for Americans and anyone who loves freedom.

But it makes me nuts that Dubbya is speechfying about this and taking credit for it. Al-Zarqawi should have been killed, and probably could have been killed, long before now if our troops weren't crippled by rules of engagement that offer them up as sacrificial lambs.

How many American lives in Iraq could have been saved if President Bush valued the lives of American servicemen and servicewomen more than the lives Iraqi civilians who might have been killed in an earlier operation against al-Zarqawi that was probably rejected because of the risk of collateral civilian deaths? And if you, the reader, are uncomfortable with the prospect of collaterally killing Iraqi civilians in order to protect American lives, I hope you spend some time with your own independent thoughts to discover why.