| Saturday, April 03, 2004 |
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Richard Pipes on Communism
By Diana Hsieh @ 2:25 PM
I'm presently reading Richard Pipes' excellent short history of communism, aptly titled Communism: A History. As people often claim that communism appeals to the poor, I was particularly intrigued to read his comments on that point:
Conventional wisdom holds that poverty breeds Communism. Reality is different: poor countries do not opt for Communism. Nowhere in the world has a poor majority, or any majority for that matter, voted the Communists into power. Rather, poor countries are less able to resist Communist takeovers because they lack the institutions that in richer, more advanced societies thwart aspiring radical dictators. It is the absence of institutions making for affluence, especially the rights of property and the rule of law, that keeps countries poor and, at the same time, makes them vulnerable to dictatorships, whether of the left or right variety. In the words of a student of the Cambodian Communist regime, the most extreme on record, 'the absence of effective intermediary structures between the people and their successive leaders predisposed the society to the unrestrained exercise of power.' Thus, the same factors that keep countries poor--above all, lawlessness--facilitate Communist takeovers.
Although my other readings on communism haven't addressed this question directly, the fact that communist revolutions were instigated and sustained by Marxist intellectuals rather than the proletariat and that Russian peasants resisted collectivization certainly lends credence to Pipes' view.
The poor lack money and education, but they aren't morons. (Unlike far too many western intellectuals, I might add.)
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| Friday, April 02, 2004 |
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Just A Reminder About Noodles
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:17 AM
Since comments are pouring in these days, it's worth a reminder that the easiest way to keep up with them is through the all comments page.
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Animal Cruelty
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:04 AM
Tonight, I watched the new Penn & Teller's Bullshit on PETA. Sadly, the episode was only so-so, but they did point me towards the National Animal Interest Alliance, a group which promotes animal welfare but opposes animal rights. There is also the Animal Welfare Council. I'm sure there are others... and I wonder how influential they are.
I'm presently writing on (or rather, against) animal rights for my environmental philosophy paper. One thorny question for me to address in the paper is whether animals deserve the legal protection of anti-cruelty laws.
For a variety of reasons, I would regard genuinely free market mechanisms as sufficient protection for animal used for commercial purposes. One of the pernicious side-effects of the present system of government regulation is that people minimize their own responsibility for buying morally-made products because the government is seen as looking after such matters. (This is particularly true of the products of human slavery imported from China.) At present, concerned consumers generally have few options, since government regulation discourages the development of private organizations for inspection and certification of proper treatment of animals. (One option is to buy kosher meat, as the animals are at least slaughtered more humanely, as far as I understand. According to the fine folks at Cook's Illustrated, kosher chicken is also the yummiest type of supermarket chicken due to the methods used during slaughter and processing. Another option is to shop at a place like my beloved Trader Joe's, which apparently checks into the animal products they sell.)
Private animal neglect is also not much of a worry, as concerned neighbors or passersby can often easily rescue an animal simply by offering to adopt it. Cases of sadistic abuse of animals are quite another story, however, since the sadist wishes to retain the animal so as to torture it. Perhaps the only valid justification for animal cruelty laws is that such sadistic behavior towards animals reveals a person to be deeply psychologically and morally disturbed -- to the point that he also poses a very real danger to human life. So the very same rage and helplessness which motivates a man to beat a dog senseless for failure to obey his every thought will also drive him to beat up weaker humans, particularly women and children. The very same pathology of delight in another's fear and pain which induces a girl to set fire to a cat will be all the more satisfied by seeing a human in fear and pain. I'm not denying free will here, just asserting some substantial degree of psychological and moral consistency.
Also, I'm not claiming that cruelty to animals ought to be outlawed since it is part of the triad of markers of serial killers along with late bedwetting and arson. Even taken together, the elements of that triad are necessary correlates to a rare type of criminal, not sufficient causes of abusers. Rather, my (tentative) claim is that wanton animal cruelty reveals something so profoundly wrong and fundamentally dangerous about a person's inner life that it warrants further investigation and perhaps even coerced psychological treatment. (Hrmph: Whether such treatment would be effective, particularly if coerced, is quite a question.)
That argument is the only possible potential justification I see of laws against animal cruelty. Although I have no doubt that a sadistic animal torturer is a grave danger to myself, other humans, and beloved pets everywhere, the question of state intervention is not a trivial one. Even given my doubts, I might try to develop this argument in my paper, just to see where it leads. It will be happy hunting, so to speak!
Update: I should have mentioned that Tibor Machan has a brand-new book on the subject of animal rights, liberation, and welfare entitled Putting Humans First. It's already on its way from Amazon, so I hope to make good use of it for my paper.
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| Thursday, April 01, 2004 |
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Oh That Lily White Condoleezza Rice
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:07 AM
An anecdote from a friend of Jay Nordlinger living in Arkansas:
A co-worker of mine has a daughter in public elementary school, here in Pine Bluff. They're still doing Black History Month stuff, apparently, because the kids were told to come to class dressed as a famous (and presumably accomplished) African-American. My co-worker's kid was told to come as Tina Turner. My co-worker informed the teacher that her child would come as Condoleezza Rice instead. The teacher refused to allow it, on grounds that Rice 'is for white people.' Nice, huh?
There is so much racism (and sexism) from the left these days.
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| Wednesday, March 31, 2004 |
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Wiggle Kitty
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:43 PM
Elliot, our new kitty, didn't quite understand the idea of holding still for pictures. But I did manage to snap a few:
  
Now I just need to add an audio file of him purring, as it's quite loud and vigorous. He's just unbearably cute!
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More Miss Manners
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:10 AM
I love this line: "Miss Manners can think of no respectable social activity in which some people are clothed and others are not."
If you want to know what prompted that remark, you'll have to go read the column.
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| Tuesday, March 30, 2004 |
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Contextual Etiquette
By Diana Hsieh @ 5:51 PM
Miss Manners' latest column concerns the contextual nature of etiquette standards of vulgarity. After examining the various arguments put forth in favor of vulgarity, she writes:
Miss Manners is willing to grant that standards about what constitutes vulgarity are relative and subjective. She knows that repetition wears away the shock, so that allowing vulgarity to take its own course eventually renders it unexceptional. And she yields to no one in her opposition to censorship and the abridgment of rights.
Nevertheless, she cannot help noticing that not everything natural is good. Earthquakes, for example. And she fails to see the benefit to anyone if natural human functions, even ones that produce beneficial results -- she is much too delicate to name them -- are on public view.
That some like to observe or be observed does not strike her as a reason for arranging for the disinclined to do so when they are going about their normal business. And that some things may be delightful in one context and shocking in another is not a contradiction that should trouble anyone with a modicum of sophistication.
Vulgarity is one of those lapses of manners that do not arise from accident or ignorance. Whether it is showing off or showing too much, it is done to provoke others to envy or disgust. So while allowing it to become commonplace helps dull the reaction, it forces down the standards with which everyone else has to live.
Now we get to the tricky part. How do you shield some people without suppressing others?
By custom. The mannerly principle of not deliberately provoking others, which is the foundation of civilized living, supplies a sense of etiquette about what is permissible where. If you attend orgies, you cannot complain of indecency; if you stumble upon the same activities in the grocery store aisles, you should. The vulgar have their venues and should not expect to be allowed to set the tone everywhere.
Ah, how I love Miss Manners!
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| Monday, March 29, 2004 |
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Selective Quotation, Damage, and Regrets
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:33 AM
Jimmy Wales recently said the following on the Atlantis mailing list: "I think Diana is essentially right about everything." Wow, what an endorsement! If I was a movie, I'd definitely put that on my poster. (Actually, Jimmy was referring to Compare and Contrast post about ARI versus TOC op-eds below. But that's just a minor detail.)
I am surprised at the lack of comments on that post, although I know that many good and honest people who still support TOC in some fashion largely agree with my criticisms of TOC's cultural activism. So perhaps they have little to say at present. I hope they soon realize that such insipid, weak, misleading, and outright wrong op-eds are not merely an ineffective waste of funds, but actively harmful to the goal of wider recognition of Objectivist ideas in the culture. I hope they soon realize that after five pathetic years of TOC's focus on cultural activism, the damage must be apparent to someone as smart and knowledgeable as David Kelley. I hope they soon realize that no improvement is possible given the subjectivism implicit in the founding philosophy of TOC.
If I were David Kelley, I'd rather shut down the organization than publish another op-ed like The Human Spirit of Christmas. Instead, he mails out copies of that op-ed to sponsors as proof of TOC's good works. Thus TOC continues along its chosen path. It's deplorable, but not surprising.
At present, my only real regret about leaving TOC is that I will no longer be able to hang out with friends at the Summer Seminar. Since I can keep up contact in other ways, that is an insignificant price to pay for my freedom and independence from such an organization.
Of course, I have other kinds of regrets, like that I spent many years at IOS/TOC largely coasting on my background knowledge of Objectivism, that I absorbed certain common erroneous interpretations of Objectivism, that I partially adopted the standard causal and unserious attitude towards Objectivism, that I pretty much uncritically accepted the Brandens' accounts of Ayn Rand's actions and person, that I cut myself off from contact with various smart and friendly ARI-affiliated scholars, that I supported the organization morally and financially, that I recommended TOC to others, and so on. But those aren't actually regrets about leaving TOC, but instead regrets about the length and depth of my stay.
Given my deeply moral objections to the underlying philosophy and actions of The Objectivist Center, my departure was obligatory. Since the moral is the practical, that decision has already benfitted me in a number of ways. And since reason and emotion are harmonious, I am glad to be gone.
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