Specifically, they report that an energetic form of evangelical Pentecostal Christianity is rapidly gaining adherents in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Furthermore, these evangelicals are "more liberal than their US counterparts on economic policy, but just as conservative on homosexuality and abortion". In other words, they are more consistent with Christian doctrines. Many of these new-style liberal evangelicals support greater government intervention in the economy to achieve "social justice" (e.g., forcible redistribution of wealth).
The CSM article also notes that these ideas will also become a greater force in the United States, as immigrants from Latin America come to this country.
My own prediction is that the current partial pro-capitalism leanings of many American evangelicals will continue to fade and be supplanted by the more philosophically consistent anti-capitalist ideology of these new evangelical Christians.
Furthermore, I predict we will increasingly see religious morality used to justify socialist government policies. In other words, the danger is not that the political battle will be between religious conservative Republicans (who partially support free markets although they hold terrible views on "social issues") and liberal Democrats (who might be somewhat better on some "social issues" like abortion but who are strongly opposed to capitalism). Instead, we may end up with the worst of both worlds.
Specifically, the biggest danger will be a deadly merger of religion and socialism/environmentalism. Both share an underlying anti-reason and anti-man philosophy which is completely antithetical to the pro-reason, pro-man Enlightenment philosophy that made America possible.
Hence, if we want America to survive, we must be willing and able to advocate our ideas -- namely, reason, ethical egoism, and individual rights.
Fortunately, we don't have to discover these ideas from scratch -- thinkers like Rand and Peikoff have already done much of the conceptual heavy lifting. But we have to be able to articulate and defend those ideas (as contextually appropriate), as if our lives depended on it.
By Diana Hsieh @ 2:00 PM Ari Armstrong writes a weekly column for the Grand Junction Free Press with his father Linn. Early in November, the newspaper published two inadvertently funny letters in response to them.
Do letter writers realize that by responding they are simply acknowledging and dignifying Linn and Ari's inane comments and opinions, and giving them even more reason to continue writing their column? The Armstrongs obviously relish what they're doing, stirring up readers' emotions and ire. Since their debut in the Free Press there have been many letters to the paper countering the many statements they have made, and still they continue to write a weekly column without regard to insights that writers have provided.
Then there is the Free Press. The main question is, why does the editor continue to run the Armstrong column? The editor would quickly answer by reciting the First Amendment. However, when all the layers of rationalization and justification are peeled off it comes down to selling copy. Bottom line, a newspaper (editor or editors) thrive on the fact readers are picking up the newspaper, reading the opinion page (at least), and responding to controversial opinions and half truths.
What, if anything, can be done to counter the Armstrong's weekly opinions? The most effective approach is to practice "shunning" the Armstrongs. That is, do not respond to the Free Press with a letter or letters to acknowledge and dignify their opinions. This also starts making the editor wonder if readers are picking up the newspaper or just ignoring it.
I love the idea of writing a letter to encourage people not to write letters. Plus, I suspect that attempting to kill the column by claiming that it sells papers isn't the best strategy.
The second letter, written as a response to the first letter by Robert Laitres, is even better.
In his recent letter to the Free Press, Sveto Djokic suggested that the Free Press stop printing stop printing the regular Armstrong column, or that others stop replying to them.
I would disagree even though there so-called ideology is the product of what is best known as pseudo-intellectualism.
If one looks at their columns, what one finds is that they keep repeating the same things over and over again. When faced with hard facts by others, they ignore them, resort to some theoretical haven, or accuse others of not knowing what they are talking about.
They, therefore, represent exactly what is also found in such individuals as former Free Press columnist, Rick Wagner, "I already know and don't have to listen to anyone else."
Such individuals believe that they have somehow found something new. They haven't.
It is but the resurrection of old ideas repackaged, and presented once again. It is only accepted by those who are gullible enough to accept it, or do so because it suits their purpose to do so.
Those who wish to understand them might like to read the book "Anthem," written by their heroine Ayn Rand. There we see these poor souls wandering aimlessly through some forest, searching for they know not what, until the chance upon some temple.
Notably, it is something that was constructed by others, not themselves. Such is what the Armstrong ideology is all about.
I say let the Armstrong column run. But, let those who disagree with them also be heard in order to point out how intellectually shallow and false is their theology of materialism, selfishness and greed.
The Armstrong's deceive nobody but themselves and their acolytes.
The description of Anthem is priceless, as are the long-winded complaints about lack of originality without any hint of why the ideas the Armstrongs advocate might be wrong. Yet most of all, I love the confusion of "there" with "their" in a sentence accusing them of "pseudo-intellectualism."
I have to think that the editors of the Free Press published that letter with a good chuckle. I don't see any other way to read it!
By Diana Hsieh @ 4:00 PM
Wow, I was just so thrilled to watch Jerry Johnson -- an Objectivist I've corresponded with periodically over the years -- speak on CNN IBN (a national Indian news channel) -- about being gay in India:
(Update: I'm now linking to the YouTube version. It includes extra footage.)
I particularly liked his point about moving out of the parental house, so that the gay person wouldn't wouldn't be beholden to anti-gay parents. From what Jerry has told me, it's very difficult to be gay in India: the culture is not accepting, and many are well-hidden in the closet. So that freedom from parental interference would be crucial for living an authentic life as a gay person in India.
A recent piece from PJTV floated by, "Is Barack Obama Jesus Christ?" It starts off with footage of one of those often-creepy examples of children singing patriotic songs or Jesus-jingles with the words modified to be about Obama (this time it appears to be a Jesus-jingle). The piece goes on to explore its title question with sarcastic tongue in cheek comparison and contrast that ranges through the schools that have kids singing like that, to the adoring treatment of Obama in the mainstream media and artistic community.
There's a lot to talk about here, but what struck me wasn't the quality or lack in the analysis. No, it was the sheer irony. This commentary was created to register some degree of outrage at the deification of Obama, at the sacrilege of any comparison of him to a Christlike Savior -- and the commentator is making a real point about how dangerous this is: after all, pretending doesn't make it so. Giving up our independent understanding and following authority in some sort of primacy-of-consciousness yes-we-can pretend world does in fact leave us dependent and exposed to all sorts of dangers, positioned poorly to deal with all those pesky facts of reality, ill-equipped to achieve genuine values in the actual world.
The video took some serious effort to produce, so what is being said isn't exactly casual -- yet it somehow misses the painfully obvious application of its criticism to precisely what it is defending! Check out the closing:
Luckily, though, if there's anyone on earth who can help us stop thinking or laughing or learning new information, it's our public school teachers, mainstream journalists, and state-loving artists.
So, boys and girls, is Barack Obama really Jesus Christ? Of course not! But working together we can all pretend, can't we? And if we pretend very, very hard, we can soon go to live in his magical kingdom, where everything is taken care of for us, and nothing costs anything, and we never have to make any of those nasty, old personal decisions for ourselves ever again. And then we're screwed.
And in religion -- most definitely including the one being defended against this slight/competition -- we are called to submit to authority and take important matters on faith (that is, it helps us stop thinking). And religion tells us that if we simply pretend (i.e., believe) very, very hard, we can soon go to live in God's magical kingdom, where everything is taken care of for us, and nothing costs anything, and we never have to make any of those nasty, old personal decisions for ourselves ever again.
By Diana Hsieh @ 5:00 AM
Just remember this article, next time an eco-freak tells you about the peaceful natives that used to happily roam across America: Sacrificial virgins of the Mississippi -- "Archaeologists are slowly unearthing the ghastly secrets of Cahokia, an ancient city under the American heartland" -- by Andrew O'Hehir
Ever since the first Europeans came to North America, only to discover the puzzling fact that other people were already living here, the question of how to understand the Native American past has been both difficult and politically charged. For many years, American Indian life was viewed through a scrim of interconnected bigotry and romance, which simultaneously served to idealize the pre-contact societies of the Americas and to justify their destruction. Pre-Columbian life might be understood as savage and brutal darkness or an eco-conscious Eden where man lived in perfect harmony with nature. But it seemed to exist outside history, as if the native people of this continent were for some reason exempt from greed, cruelty, warfare and other near-universal characteristics of human society.
As archaeologist Timothy Pauketat's cautious but mesmerizing new book, "Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi," makes clear, Cahokia -- the greatest Native American city north of Mexico -- definitely belongs to human history. (It is not "historical," in the strict sense, because the Cahokians left no written records.) At its peak in the 12th century, this settlement along the Mississippi River bottomland of western Illinois, a few miles east of modern-day St. Louis, was probably larger than London, and held economic, cultural and religious sway over a vast swath of the American heartland. Featuring a man-made central plaza covering 50 acres and the third-largest pyramid in the New World (the 100-foot-tall "Monks Mound"), Cahokia was home to at least 20,000 people. If that doesn't sound impressive from a 21st-century perspective, consider that the next city on United States territory to attain that size would be Philadelphia, some 600 years later.
In a number of critical ways, Cahokia seems to resemble other ancient cities discovered all over the world, from Mesopotamia to the Yucatán. It appears to have been arranged according to geometrical and astronomical principles (around various "Woodhenges," large, precisely positioned circles of wooden poles), and was probably governed by an elite class who commanded both political allegiance and spiritual authority. Cahokia was evidently an imperial center that abruptly exploded, flourished for more then a century and then collapsed, very likely for one or more of the usual reasons: environmental destruction, epidemics of disease, the ill will of subjugated peoples and/or outside enemies.
Some archaeologists might pussyfoot around this question more than Pauketat does, but it also seems clear that political and religious power in Cahokia revolved around another ancient tradition. Cahokians performed human sacrifice, as part of some kind of theatrical, community-wide ceremony, on a startlingly large scale unknown in North America above the valley of Mexico. Simultaneous burials of as many as 53 young women (quite possibly selected for their beauty) have been uncovered beneath Cahokia's mounds, and in some cases victims were evidently clubbed to death on the edge of a burial pit, and then fell into it. A few of them weren't dead yet when they went into the pit -- skeletons have been found with their phalanges, or finger bones, digging into the layer of sand beneath them.
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:01 AM
On our trek to Trader Joe's yesterday, Paul and I saw two excellent advertisements from Starbucks, including the one to the right.
The other advertisement concerned their striving for -- and achieving -- perfection in their coffee.
I'm not a huge fan of Starbuck's coffee: it's a bit too bitter for my tastes. And I'm not a fan of their business philosophy -- particularly their support for "fair trade" coffee and environmentalist practices. However, I do love that advertisement!
Brooke Greenberg is the size of an infant, with the mental capacity of a toddler. She turned 16 in January. "Why doesn't she age?" Howard Greenberg, 52, asked of his daughter. "Is she the fountain of youth?"
Such questions are why scientists are fascinated by Brooke. Among the many documented instances of children who fail to grow or develop in some way, Brooke's case may be unique, according to her doctor, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine pediatrician Lawrence Pakula, in Baltimore. "Many of the best-known names in medicine, in their experience ... had not seen anyone who matched up to Brooke," Pakula said. "She is always a surprise."
Brooke hasn't aged in the conventional sense. Dr. Richard Walker of the University of South Florida College of Medicine, in Tampa, says Brooke's body is not developing as a coordinated unit, but as independent parts that are out of sync. She has never been diagnosed with any known genetic syndrome or chromosomal abnormality that would help explain why.
The whole story is well worth reading. Her medical history is interesting -- albeit in a kind of gruesome way. However, I'm far more disturbed by the way in which the family, particularly the parents, have devoted their whole lives to caring for this perpetual child.
Brooke has a caretaker during daytime hours, but the family's schedule revolves around her, year after year. The Greenbergs take no vacations, have few nights out and involve Brooke in as many family activities as possible. "To go to a swimming pool for the summer, or belong to a summer club ... we tried all those things, and it's lacking something," her mother said. "Brooke's not there. We're not a family without Brooke."
And, of course, Brooke goes to school at taxpayer expense:
Brooke goes to a Baltimore County public school, Ridge Ruxton, dedicated to special education. Based on her age, she would be a junior in high school. Jewel Adiele, one of Brooke's teachers, said she wonders sometimes what Brooke is thinking or perceiving.
Brooke's whole life is a strange kind of tragedy. It's abhorrent to think of her parents caring for her as a perpetual infant until the end of their days, but I cannot see what else they might do. And what will happen to her if she outlives them? Will her siblings inherit the burden, as often happens with severely autistic children? Even worse, the parents seem in the grip of warm and fuzzy feelings for their daughter, not guided by an honest recognition of the degradation and sacrifice involved in caring for a perpetual infant. They're spending their one and only lives on the care of a creature that -- by its very nature -- is more like a pet than a daughter. That's a terrible waste of a life.
I used to know a man who did restaurant health inspections for the state, and one of the food service establishments on his regular route happened to be the cafeteria at some "naturalist" colony in Middle [Tennessee]. I'll never forget his story about how odd and vulnerable and unattractive all the nudists seemed when he would encounter them pressed up against the protective glass on the salad bar line, or queued up for a second helping of banana pudding. Really, nobody, and I mean nobody can pull off looking good au naturel when illuminated by flourescent bulbs and clutching a plastic cafeteria tray topped with a sloppy joe.
Heh.
I'm not stuffy about my own nudity, in the sense that I don't much care if other people see me naked. However, I presume that other people don't wish to see me naked, hopefully just as much as I really don't want to see them naked. Even if a person is not repulsive, I'm just not interested in observing them in all their glory. Rolls of fat, saggy breasts, and/or a shriveled frank and beans don't augment a person's appeal to the eye. So outside a sexual context, I'd much, much rather admire even the most attractive person in flattering clothing than naked. They'll surely look better. Conversely, if someone other than Paul did want to see me naked, that would be creepy. It would indicate a most unwelcome kind of interest in me.
In any case, the point about all that is to say that (1) I'm not prudish about nudity but (2) nudism completely baffles me. Why do some people -- mostly men, it seems -- feel a need to put their usually less-than-attractive bodies on display? I just don't get it.
(Just to be clear, I have no objections whatsoever to women breastfeeding in public. The objections to that practice strike me as prudish, precisely because the practice of breastfeeding is good and proper.)
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:01 AM
Wow: Only six percent of Americans can answer all twelve questions on this current event quiz correctly. The average is just eight right.
I've paid little attention to the news in recent months. Also, even when I do follow the news, I don't follow any particular news source, nor regularly scan the headlines. In other words, my news reading is pretty haphazard and spotty -- and nearly nonexistent of late. Nonetheless, my score was perfect. I was a bit iffy on two questions, but I knew enough to make good guesses. Consequently, I'm pretty aghast that I did so much better than most Americans.
Wow, I'm glad that I don't live in this world: I'm Glad I'm a Boy! I'm Glad I'm a Girl! is a children's book on what boys do versus girls do in life, published in 1970. It's astonishing... and funny. (Someone told me that it's a satire, but I couldn't find anything suggesting that.)
By Paula Hall @ 12:01 AM The Washington Post ran a story the other day on the controversy over the recent George Mason University homecoming queen contest, the "Ms. Mason" pageant.
A gay student and drag queen performer entered "as a joke," competing as his drag alter ego "Reann Ballslee." He competed by wearing "a silver bra and zebra-print pants and . . . lip-syncing to Britney Spears's 'Womanizer.'" The other contestants included
a government and politics major from Chesapeake and a Chi Omega sorority member who told the school newspaper she should win because "I have pride in Mason to the point where my towels are green and gold."
"Reann" won the pageant.
"It was just for fun," Allen, 22, said over coffee at the Johnson Center, where he was congratulated by classmates with hugs and squeals. "In the larger scheme of things, winning says so much about the university. We're one of the most diverse campuses in the country, and . . . we celebrate that."
Apparently, the pageant had been held for five years previously with little engagement by the student body. Few students were interested in an event regarded as "the province of pretty blondes and fraternity boys." This year, however, with Ryan Allen as a contestant, students were interested.
"I've never been into homecoming over here. This is the first time I've actually wanted to support someone," said Melissa Benjjani, 21, from Lebanon. "He deserves to be queen. He's already a queen for everybody."
All was not joy in Mudville, however, when Reann won. GMU is in a years-long campaign "to revamp its image from commuter school to distinguished institution of higher learning." Although GMU's official statement is that the university is "very comfortable with it," a sophomore who helps with recruiting thinks
"It's really annoying," said Bollinger, who works as an ambassador for the admissions office. "The game was on TV. Everyone was there. All eyes were on us. And we do something like this? It's just stupid."
When I read this story I did not know what to think. On the one hand, this is clearly a no-skin-off-my nose situation; who cares who the homecoming queen of George Mason University is? Why should there be any controversy? And besides, we live in a country where people are trying to keep gay men and women from getting married to the person they love, so it's refreshing to see what looks like very public acceptance of one gay man's lifestyle.
On the other hand, I felt bad that a benign tradition was being subverted in some sense. Wikipedia describes homecoming as a tradition that is "celebrated" by bringing together alumni and others for banquets, a football game, and a ceremony where two students who have "gone above and beyond the call of duty to contribute to their school" are crowned Homecoming King and Queen. Crowning a man homecoming queen as a "joke" seems to thwart what many people expect and enjoy about homecoming celebrations. When Ryan Allen entered the competition, he did not intend to be judged by the same standards as the other two contestants. That is, he was not trying to show school spirit, or to demonstrate that he was a good student, or even that he was the prettiest contestant. He hoped to win despite those standards; he wanted those standards to be disregarded. Put another way -- there may not have been any official rule barring a drag queen from participating in George Mason University's homecoming pageant, but it does seem that when Ryan Allen entered the pageant, he broke the spirit, if not the letter, of the "law."
Humor is the denial of metaphysical importance to that which you laugh at. The classic example: you see a very snooty, very well dressed dowager walking down the street, and then she slips on a banana peel . . . . What's funny about it? It's the contrast of the woman's pretensions to reality. She acted very grand, but reality undercut it with a plain banana peel. That's the denial of the metaphysical validity or importance of the pretensions of that woman. Therefore, humor is a destructive element--which is quite all right, but its value and its morality depend on what it is that you are laughing at. If what you are laughing at is the evil in the world (provided that you take it seriously, but occasionally you permit yourself to laugh at it), that's fine. [To] laugh at that which is good, at heroes, at values, and above all at yourself [is] monstrous . . . .
I wonder: if Ryan Allen entered the pageant as a "joke," what did he hope people would laugh at? Is the Ms. Mason homecoming pageant the proper subject of a joke? Is there something evil about it, such that it is good to deny its "metaphysical importance?" So far as I am aware, it was never any part of the GMU homecoming tradition to disparage homosexuals, such that the pageant should be considered evil for contributing to prejudice against gay men. If I'm invited to ridicule the pageant as a result of this, am I contributing to the destruction of something evil, or of a value?
Perhaps in the end, what people will take away from this episode (to the extent anyone notices) is that the-times-they-are-a-changin' -- in a good way. But that will only be in contradiction of Ryan Allen's original intent, which was to make the pageant the subject of a joke. Which means -- to destroy the pageant.
Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is in the eye of the beholder. From where I sit this doesn't look like a harmless joke. It looks like a spiteful prank.
By Greg Perkins @ 1:00 PM Fat Head (movie website) is a brand new documentary by Tom Naughton that started out as a hilarious and informative sendup of the Super Size Me documentary from a few years back. The resulting film is that, plus a lot more -- it’s also a hilarious and informative sendup of the nutritional industry’s disastrous turn of the last several decades!
Now, I’m the sort of guy who will cheerfully devour books like Gary Taubes’ meticulous and astonishing Good Calories, Bad Calories, but that is simply too much of a long, technical grind for most folks (he was really addressing doctors and professionals in the nutrition industry). I can’t give that to my parents, for example. In contrast, this movie is a wonderful resource I can pass on to introduce others to what I’ve learned from people like Taubes.
Naughton features many of the big names we’ve come to recognize in this area, like the Drs. Eades, and Fallon and Enig from the Weston A. Price Foundation. And he consulted with people like Taubes -- so even when he needs to simplify something, the result is nonetheless strong. Naughton cleverly, effectively, and humorously addresses topics such as:
The many distortions and errors of Supersize Me.
The “lipid hypothesis”, where it came from, why it’s complete crap, and what damage it’s done.
Metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, and the mechanisms of energy storage and use in our bodies -- what the science actually says about how people get fat.
Inflammation and heart disease, and how they really relate to cholesterol.
How activists and special interests and their coercive efforts via government intervention are responsible for so much dietary mischief that's hurting us.
And the look on his doctor's face after seeing the results of a month of thoroughly flouting the standard advice of the nutrition industry was priceless!
While there is of course much more to say than can be packed into a film like this, Fat Head just became the first resource I’ll share with family and friends on this front -- highly recommended!
By Diana Hsieh @ 4:14 PM
Some weeks ago, I found that I needed a word for the male version of camel toe. (Sadly, Al Michaels was seriously afflicted on Sunday Night Football at the time.) And lo and behold, a few days later, I found that the proper term is "moose knuckle."
Just thought you might need to know that too, just in case you need to warn some poor man against it.
Beck poses as a victim, asking why it is that the 10% of the country who doesn't believe in God is pushing the other 90% around and forcing their nonbelief down their throats. Believers don't do that, he says, so why not just let people be? Of course, striking down a mandatory moment of silence-or-prayer isn't forcing nonbelief down peoples' throats -- it's only stopping believers from forcing their religion down others' throats via violations of individual rights. Talk about spin. Even purely secular-sounding "moments of silence" only exist because of believers' desire to get God into the classroom to indoctrinate children.
Beck goes on to exaggerate that "it's been deemed unconstitutional to even say the word 'prayer' to our children," and Dobson says that "they just have to eliminate even the possibility that someone might pray." Um, no: the kiddies are free to pray anywhere at any time as long as they aren't being disruptive. What's been deemed unconstitutional is taking money from taxpayers by force to fund schools students are compelled to attend, and then requiring them to do or be indoctrinated in your religion. Reading the text of the ruling, you can see how the judge traces out where and how the line is crossed. (Of course, if we didn't have government schools that people are forced to fund and required to attend, then this would be a non-issue. Don't like your school's policy regarding religious indoctrination? No rights violation there, and you're free to find or form another school. Have a nice day.)
So, does it count as dishonest or just weak-minded when Beck turns to a wider point to claim that "in this country, our rights come from God" and to ask the rhetorical question, "if you take God out of the picture, then where do rights come from?" Oh, I see your point: you don't seek to ram your religion down peoples' throats... but we really do have to make sure your religious ideas are rammed down peoples' throats lest civilization collapse. Got it.
But I'm happy he asks about the basis of rights, because it reminds me that more people need to appreciate the analysis Ayn Rand offered in her classic essay, "Man's Rights":
The concept of individual rights is so new in human history that most men have not grasped it fully to this day. In accordance with the two theories of ethics, the mystical or the social, some men assert that rights are a gift of God -- others, that rights are a gift of society. But, in fact, the source of rights is man's nature.
The Declaration of Independence stated that men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." Whether one believes that man is the product of a Creator or of nature, the issue of man¿s origin does not alter the fact that he is an entity of a specific kind -- a rational being -- that he cannot function successfully under coercion, and that rights are a necessary condition of his particular mode of survival.
"The source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A -- and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational." (Atlas Shrugged)
Once again, the answer to the idea that our options are restricted to either religion or anything-goes subjectivism is that this alternative is malformed. Rather: it is either objectivity and facts, or whim. The right-religious whimsy approach to "rights" is just as wrongheaded and dangerous as the left-secular whimsy approach to "rights."
By Greg Perkins @ 12:01 AM
Really, I was ready to let it go and move on. But then this floated by in one of those endlessly-forwarded emails that friends and family pass around. What's so revolting is the utter inversion of justice it represents in the mainstream treatment of the accident.
God is routinely given credit and thanked for saving those people; but notice that He's not similarly given "credit" for needlessly killing those geese, destroying that plane, endangering and distressing the people involved, and soaking up lots of resources to deal with it all. Nor is He reflexively given such "credit" for all the deaths that aren't averted in other plane mishaps.
Such psychoses aside, the real problem I have with this is that it dilutes and distracts from the recognition genuinely earned by the heroes involved!
The pilot trained long and hard to be able to fly planes of various kinds, and to identify and execute just such a lifesaving maneuver. Then, in the moment it was needed and under tremendous stresses, he kept his head and did an absolutely brilliant job.
The crew trained as well in managing such a process -- and when their moment came they likewise kept their heads and executed brilliantly.
Engineers labored long and hard to design a plane that didn't just fly, but which would have ever better chances in all sorts of rare and strange circumstances, working to reduce the odds and impact of the unexpected. The result is a craft that could withstand this sort of water landing and float long enough to get those people out.
People on the ground sprang into action to scoop up the passengers and contain the danger.
And on and on. How about the experts who will analyze what happened and use it to make people a little safer in the future?
These folks deserve all of the credit and admiration and thanks, and it's an absolute injustice that the mainstream reaction would take even the tiniest sliver of their due and pretend it was earned by someone or something else.
By Greg Perkins @ 11:12 AM
Over at HowObamaGotElected.com, they wanted to investigate how someone like Obama sails into the White House. Their conclusion? That the news media simply refused to do their job.
On Election day twelve Obama voters were interviewed extensively right after they voted to learn how the news media impacted their knowledge of what occurred during the campaign. These voters were chosen for their apparent intelligence/verbal abilities and willingness to express their opinions to a large audience. The rather shocking video below seeks to provide some insight into which information broke through the news media clutter and which did not.
It is indeed shocking to see the demonstration of just where abysmal ignorance contrasts with easy knowledge.
I wouldn't lay it at just the media's feet, though -- this sort of thing is enabled by serious cultural and epistemological degradation. The state of the news media is only a symptom. An incredibly nasty symptom.
UPDATE: A little clarification: the quote from their website was only sharing what they claim. Obviously, I have no idea what their methodology was for selecting their interviewees, nor how fair they were in their editing. What caught my attention was the contrasting pockets of knowledge and ignorance within the individual people.
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:31 AM
Rob Tarr recently posted the following warning on HBL about people turning to religion en masse in times of crisis. (He also sent it to me, as I don't subscribe to that list. He gave me permission to post it here.)
From Rob Tarr
What about a turn to religion as a test?
I expressed in a Sep 18th post my fear that the coming severe recession/depression would cause a strong turn to religion:
"Tens of thousands of people working for Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns saw their jobs, careers, and life-savings wiped out this year. There will be millions more throughout the economy as we head into a very deep recession in the next 6 months. Times of crisis always lead people to reassess their lives and turn to whatever version of philosophy is at hand to explain the "true meaning of life". Often this has been religion, and with the energized state of religion today, this will be true more than ever. The religious message will resonate more deeply than ever as many people watch their material wealth evaporate (wealth that in many cases they have worked decades to accumulate). Doesn't this prove that pursuing material wealth is a "false god", a "mirage"? That you shouldn't be wasting time piling up "treasure on earth"; instead you should be piling up "treasure in heaven"?"
This week, the Pope stole my talking points, and started his "p.r. campaign" to take advantage of the crisis, in a widely reported story:
"Opening a Synod of Bishops in the Vatican the Pope referred to a passage from St Matthew's Gospel on false prophets, saying ''He who builds only on visible and tangible things like success, career and money builds the house of his life on sand''.
''We are now seeing, in the collapse of major banks, that money vanishes, it is nothing. All these things that appear to be real are in fact secondary. Only God's words are a solid reality''
Expect to see this times 100 over the next few years. I see this as the biggest danger by far. People will turn away from rational, this-worldly, long-term values en masse. Why work for decades long goals when you can lose it all in a few months? People will become *much* more short-term focused in their plans and values over the next few years, due to the crisis and the uncertainty; and much less interested in long-term material production as a goal. But that is a difficult place to be, psychologically. Religion will step in to fill the void.
This warning is important to my -- and hopefully your -- effects to advocate good principles in the culture. It underscores the urgency of the task, as well as the importance of advocating Objectivism as an alternative to the mysticism of the right and the nihilism of the left.
Personally, I'd thought about the possibility of a major economic crisis making people ripe for major lurch toward statism. In contrast, during good times, most people aren't willing to knock over the apple cart of prosperity and comfort for the sake of ideology. However, in such times of crisis, a mass lurch to religion seems just as likely -- and even more dangerous in the long run.
By Greg Perkins @ 12:32 PM
Bill Maher has a new documentary slamming religion, Religulous, which opened Friday night around the nation. Short review: Sure, go see it. It will make you snort and laugh and shake your head at the endless nuttiness of religion. And it will make you think -- but not that much. Unfortunately, there is a fundamental flaw that keeps it from being great.
The movie had the working title of "A Spiritual Journey," and it begins that way with homey early photos of Maher up to his adolescence, and some sit-down exchanges with his mother about their family's religion (raised Catholic, though half Jewish). But the movie isn't really about him and his spiritual journey; it is mainly spent in interviews with an array of religious figures representing various big and some not-so-big religions and sects. We get to gawk at their goofiness, and Maher gives them plenty of opportunities to show their plumage. Interspersed are passages of him talking while driving around the nation. (Maybe that's the sort of "journey" he's really referring to.)
Maher is a comedian who's made religion a target for years, so he's got lots of funny, biting material to toss off. And sometimes his boldness and quick wit really pay off in his interactions with the religious loonies he's rounded up for inspection. That is where the film shines. He wraps the film up with a speech about the dangers of faith and religion, and generally encourages people to grow up.
It is refreshing to see a film here in one of the reddest of the red states taking a huge swing at the endless goofiness and insanity of religion. But as with 'New Atheists' like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris, its effect will be necessarily shallow and likely counterproductive in improving the culture. Consider: Maher wants to ding the destructiveness of faith and expose religionists' obvious nuttiness -- yet he works from the weak platform of a Skeptic who Just Doesn't Know, and who explicitly touts Doubt as his big epistemological tool. Well, the faithful will simply see him as ultimately expressing just another kind of faith, and they'll rightly think him a bullying hypocrite for baselessly attacking theirs. If he wants to be effective, he has to gain enough of the correct philosophical grounding to be able to explain just how one knows with valid certainty that faith and reason, science and religion, are fundamentally different and utterly irreconcilable.
And believers will see the gray kind of Relativism that flows from such skepticism and rightly dismiss his approach as a dangerous prospect -- after all, humans' need for morality is real. Lost in this sadly-partial exchange is the fact that both the religious and the subjectivist approaches to morality are dead wrong. Values have an objective basis here in reality -- they aren't subjective constructs or edicts from another realm -- and moral principles to guide us in pursuing the values required to live happy lives are just as open to discovery, dissemination, and proper use as the principles of engineering and economics.
While Maher's movie has a lot of humorous red meat for the god-free, all that believers will find is a journey out of the frying pan and into the fire. That is a shame, if the goal is to help humanity get over religion.
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:01 AM
Over the past week, I have been absolutely horrified by the venomous hatred expressed by those supposed lovers of life, peace, and mercy: the fundamentalist Christians committed to strangling America with the law of God.
One might hope for better from the intellectual leaders of this movement. After all, they earn their bread and butter by argument: they seek to persuade others that their views are correct. So even if hopelessly wrong, they must maintain some semblance of rationality, right?
Nope.
Catholic talk show host Barbara Simpson said on the air that "there was a day when someone would take somebody like this Provenzo guy out in an alley and beat him beyond whatever. He deserves it." Nice.
Yet even worse was Laura Ingraham's interview of Nick: she failed to conduct anything remotely resembling a fair debate, yet her methods were more subtle than Simpson's explicit appeal to thuggery.
To understand the problem, let me explain how to respectfully argue with someone who disagrees with you.
You allow someone to explain their views. You ask them tough questions about the reasons for and implications of those views. The whole time, you allow them to speak for themselves. You represent their views fairly. And then you crush them with your own devastating criticisms, always politely given. You allow them to reply, and then you crush them again. That's what any decent radio talk show host -- and any respectable intellectual -- does in debate.
That's not what Laura Ingraham did. She made no effort to understand Nick's position. Despite his protests, she refused to focus on the actual intellectual disagreement between them. She refused to consider his reasons for his views. Worst of all, she attributed a variety of morally repugnant ideas to Nick, purely of her own invention. Then she refused to allow him to reply, choosing instead to pontificate to her listeners.
Her method of debate was that of a gang leader seeking to impress her minions by intimidation, not that of a respectable intellectual concerned with airing out ideas in pursuit of knowledge. Given that, Nick deserves a good bit of credit for conducting himself as well as he did.
As Objectivism makes ever-greater inroads into the culture, some people will behave like civilized adults in debate. And others will use whatever dirty tricks they can muster to misrepresent our views. We've just seen a taste of the latter. I must admit, I've grown accustomed to civilized discourse between reasonable adults -- or at least the appearance thereof. So this week has been a bit of a wake-up call for me. I expect that I'm not alone in that feeling.
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:01 AM
Some evangelicals are less than thrilled with Sarah Palin's new role as the Republican vice-presidential candidate. According to them, a Christian woman's proper place is in the home, raising her family and supporting her husband. While probably a minority opinion at present, such views are worthy of our attention, I think. They represent the leading edge of evangelical Christianity in America. If the Christians win their battle for American politics and culture, these views will become ever-more dominant. Women will be confined to their homes, relegated to a life of supporting husband and children. Women will not be lawyers, doctors, politicians, journalists, or entrepreneurs. They will be daughters, then wives, and then mothers.
If that seems insane, just consider the following quotes collected from Christian message boards about Sarah Palin:
Why is a wife and mother with five children (including a newborn with Down's syndrome) running for vice president? She has a bountiful amount of work cut out for her by the Lord sitting in her lap and around her dining room table. I can certainly respect her Christian and biblical views, but I am really amazed at Christians leaping to embrace putting a wife and mother into political office--particularly an office that will essentially make her the helpmate of the highest official in the land and practically remove her from her husband and children.
Isaiah 3:12 truly applies: "As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O My people! Those who lead you cause you to err, and destroy the way of your paths." I can assent to Sarah Palin's conservative views and even applaud them, but I mourn for a nation whose men have forgotten how to lead their families and their land in the way our Founders envisioned and the way God intended. A wife and mother has already been elected by God to the highest office in the land. She has her own particular husband to help, his calling to make successful, and her children to nurture and train to the glory of God. How could the vice-presidency possibly compare with a task that God has personally designed her to fill?
And:
The home, the family, the raising of children--it is the zenith of human accomplishment. It's a full-time job, requiring full-time attention if it's to encompass all God intended. [...]
The message is "women can have it all"...and it is a lie, because they can't.
The message is "men and women should have equal access to the same roles". The reality is, that's not how God created HIS universe to run. He created them male and female, and yes, by their very biological design, nature screams at our dull senses "YOU ARE DIFFERENT"! Created for different purposes, created to compliment one another in their life work.
Such views are not from nowhere: they are actively developed and advocated by Christian intellectuals. For example, some critics of Palin favorable quoted Christian minister William Einwechter's 2004 essay entitled "Should Christians Support a Woman for the Office of Civil Magistrate?" It argues that a woman ought not hold any public office, based purely on scripture. Here's the opening paragraph:
With more and more women entering the political sphere and running for political office, the conscientious, biblically oriented Christian is confronted with the question of whether or not he should give his support and vote to a woman. This question becomes more pressing for many when the "best candidate," i.e., the most conservative, pro-life candidate in a particular race is a woman. A number of years ago, we in Pennsylvania were confronted with this issue when an articulate, pro-life, politically conservative woman (who was also a wife and mother) ran for governor of our state. Many Christians enthusiastically supported her. But not all of us were confident that this was the right or consistent thing to do. The following essay grew out of the concern over her candidacy, and seeks to address the larger questions of the acceptability of women magistrates and the Christian's responsibility before God in regard to supporting a woman for political office.
His methodology is simple: scripture reigns supreme, reason is dispensable. He writes: "In approaching this matter, we need to first understand that these questions can only be answered from Scripture. Mere human opinion or reason is not sufficient for the Christian. The Word of God is the only infallible, authoritative standard for directing us into the paths of righteousness."
He considers four scriptural "arguments" against women holding political office. His primary case -- with the most far-reaching implications -- is found in the first section. Here it is, in full:
1. The Biblical Doctrine of the Headship of Man Disqualifies a Woman for Civil Office.
The scriptural revelation of the creation of man and woman, and the scriptural commentary on their creation establishes the headship of the man over the woman. The text of Genesis 2:7 and 2:18-24 teaches us that man was made first, and then the woman was made to be man's helper and companion. The Bible instructs us that this order of creation was by God's design, and that it establishes the positional priority of the man over the woman in regards to authority and leadership. In setting forth the authority of the man over the woman in the context of the local church, Paul appeals to the creation order saying, "For Adam was formed first, then Eve" (1 Tim. 2:13). In another passage, Paul states the divinely ordained order of authority and headship: "But I would have you to know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God" (1 Cor. 11:3). Therefore, the Apostle Paul teaches that God has decreed that the order of authority be as follows: God-Christ-Man-Woman. Each one in this "chain of command" is under the headship (i.e., authority) of the one preceding him or her. Later on in this same text, Paul, as in 1 Timothy 2, calls upon the order of creation to show man's headship over the woman. He says, "For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man" (1 Cor. 11:8-9). The Bible explicitly states that the man has headship over the woman, and that this headship is not based on cultural factors, or even the fall; rather, it is based on the created order established by God Himself.
Now it is also plain in the Bible that God has ordained that the order of the headship of man must be maintained in each governing institution set up by God. There are three primary institutions established by the Lord for the ordering of human affairs. These are the family, the church, and the state. Each of these institutions has authority to govern within its appointed sphere. We could say, then, that there are three "governments" in the world: family government, church government, and state government. In each of these governments, God has commanded that men bear rule. The man has headship in the family (Eph. 5:22-24), the church (1 Tim. 2:11-14; 1 Cor. 14:34-35), and also by implication and command, in the state as well (1 Cor. 11:3; Ex. 18:21; see point 2 below).
Could it be that the man has headship only in the family and the church but not in the state? No, this could not be, lest you make God the author of confusion, and have Him violate in the state the very order He established at creation and has revealed in Holy Scripture! If one is going to argue for the acceptability of women bearing rule in the civil sphere, then to be consistent, he or she also needs to argue for the acceptability of women bearing rule in the family and the church. Now it is true that some attempt to do just that; but their denial of male headship for the family, church, and state is really a rejection of the Word of God and is a repudiation of God's created order. And it is not sufficient to contend that it is acceptable to support a woman for civil ruler when she is the best candidate, unless you are also prepared to argue that it is acceptable to advocate a woman for the office of elder because she is better suited than the available men in the church; and unless you are also prepared to say that the wife should rule over her husband if she is better equipped to lead than her husband is.
Notice that his arguments do not merely concern the proper place of women in politics. He explicitly claims that men must rule over women in the family, in the church, and in politics. Yet his analysis would apply just as well to any endeavor, including business. By his principles, no woman should ever claim any authority over any man in any sphere of life, regardless of her knowledge, skills, experience, and capacities. So a woman doctor ought never order a male nurse to medicate her patient as she directs. A woman police officer cannot rightfully demand a male criminal to submit himself to lawful arrest. A woman professor cannot fail a male student for cheating over his protests. A woman business owner cannot fire a male employee for failing to show up to work on time. God has designed men and women such that men always have "positional priority" over women in "authority and leadership."
That's our future -- unless we fight for rational values today.
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:05 AM
I wish Sarah Palin's youngest son Trig -- afflicted with Down's Syndrome -- the best life possible to him. Yet based on my experience working with a man with Down's Syndrome in a high school job at a movie theater, I regard his life as inherently tragic and likely quite miserable. I also wholeheartedly support the vast majority of women who choose to abort a Down's Syndrome fetus rather than saddle themselves with a perpetually dependent child.
Most of all, however, I'm disgusted by the the worship of retardation exhibited by Christians in response to Trig's rise to national prominence, as in this National Review article by Michael Franc:
"Children with special needs," Gov. Sarah Palin said during her acceptance speech at the Republican convention, "inspire a special love." As someone who grew up alongside a brother with Down Syndrome, I can attest to that observation.
But these special children, and the special adults they grow up to be, inspire something else of equal importance. When these little, unexpected ambassadors of God enter our lives, they offer us the opportunity to rise to that greatest of all challenges — to treat others as we would want to be treated. Their presence, in short, elevates all of us.
That's a good expression of the mind-set of so many of today's devout Christians. They are not content to limit reason to make room for faith. They go further: they laud retardation as a virtue. In the process, they must -- and do -- disparage normal human intelligence as a vice.
Such people are not motivated by a soft heart. If they were, they would adamantly defend abortion as a moral means of freeing parents from the prospect of endless sacrifice to a retarded child. They would regard abortion as a moral way to prevent the infliction of a miserable, degraded life on the person that will emerge from the womb. Instead, they want to create more mentally defective and perpetually dependent children by outlawing abortion.
The people who worship retardation reject human reason as a value. They're as anti-man as the deep ecologists who regard mankind as a cancer on the earth.
Frankly, one wonders why such people don't lobotomize themselves, if retardation is such a boon to their fellow man.
By Paula Hall @ 3:00 AM
If Paul Krugman is right (and it would pretty much be ONLY about this), what we've been seeing in the Republican party since the days of Nixon is the politics of resentment.
One of the key insights in "Nixonland," the new book by the historian Rick Perlstein, is that Nixon's political strategy throughout his career was inspired by his college experience, in which he got himself elected student body president by exploiting his classmates' resentment against the Franklins, the school's elite social club. There's a direct line from that student election to Spiro Agnew's attacks on the "nattering nabobs of negativism" as "an effete corps of impudent snobs," and from there to the peculiar cult of personality that not long ago surrounded George W. Bush -- a cult that celebrated his anti-intellectualism and made much of the supposed fact that the "misunderestimated" C-average student had proved himself smarter than all the fancy-pants experts.
If you want to know why I have focused more on the shortcomings of Republicans recently than those of Democrats, this observation by Krugman is part of the reason why. They have explicitly made a virtue of "anti-intellectualism." Now, I'm not saying that Democrat-style intellectualism is the way to go -- it's not. Democrat-style intellectualism is basically just nihilism -- there is no right and wrong, everything's relative, and if you're looking for value you ought to stop looking for it in the human race and look for it in polar bears and wilderness. But still, the Left at least pays lip service to the notion that the right course of action is discovered by using your mind, by thought.
The Right sees thought as a threat, and openly so. They don't denounce the Left primarily for thinking the wrong things, but for thinking as such.
The Right militantly embraces faith. They don't embrace faith in the manner of Buddhists up on mountains contemplating their navels, or in the manner of Middle Age ascestics who stop flogging themselves only long enough to eat a piece of moldy bread and take a sip from a mud puddle. They openly embrace their faith just as Ayn Rand said faith ultimately must be embraced: with a steaming side helping of force.
A big part of the cities' woes is the professionalization of panhandling. The old type of panhandler -- a mentally impaired or disabled homeless person trying to scrape together a few bucks for a meal -- is giving way to the full-time spanger who supports himself through a combination of begging, working at odd jobs, and other sources, like government assistance from disability payments...
People's generosity encourages the begging. About four out of ten Denver residents gave to panhandlers, city officials determined several years ago, anteing up an estimated $4.6 million a year. Anecdotal surveys by journalists and police, and even testimony by panhandlers themselves, suggest that begging can yield anywhere from $20 to $100 a day -- though police in Coos Bay, Oregon, found that local panhandlers were taking in as much as $300 a day in a Wal-Mart parking lot. "A panhandler could make thirty to forty thousand dollars a year, tax-free money," [NYC resident Steve] Baker says...
...The rise of online panhandling advice helps explain why panhandlers and "sign flyers" -- beggars who use signs to solicit donations -- exhibit remarkably similar methods around the country. Currently, the direct, humorous approach is in vogue. That’s why in many cities today you'll hear some version of: "I won't lie to you, I need a drink." Panhandlers also report that asking for specific amounts of money lends credibility to pitches. "I need 43 more cents to get a cup of coffee," a panhandler will declare; some people will give exactly that much, while others will simply hand over a buck.
If it seems unlikely that a homeless person would surf the Web for advice on how to panhandle, that's exactly the point: many aren't homeless and are lying about their circumstances.
Of course, panhandling thrives only because productive people believe they are doing something morally good when they give money to someone on the basis of their need, even if the recipient has no redeeming qualities. This is just one of the consequences of an ethics based on altruism. Hence, it is no surprise that it rewards the lack of virtues necessary to lead a productive life (such as productiveness and honesty).
A contrasting (and far superior) egoistic approach to charity is the one expressed by Ayn Rand in her 1964 Playboy interview:
My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.
Diana and I gladly donate to charities in a fashion when it is consistent with our values and priorities -- i.e., when the recipient is worthy and we can afford it. Using these two simple criteria makes it incredibly easy to decide how and when to give charity to other people and organizations.
If more Americans adopted Rand's egoistic approach to charity, then they would find that they were supporting their actual values -- and also getting more for their money.
By Brandon Byrd @ 1:24 AM
Like many of you, I had been anxiously and ambivalently awaiting the beginning of the Olympic summer games in Beijing. On the one hand, I love the exhibition of raw human potential at some of its most actualized. The games offer a rare chance to glimpse the efficacy of human choice and loyalty to values, as the world beholds athletes who have been training their entire lives to achieve almost unimaginable feats of strength, speed, and agility. That I find the Olympics inspirational is an understatement. I celebrate the Olympics for showing me the height of what's possible and giving me the knowledge that it can be made actual. Despite my enthusiasm for the genuine value I find in the Olympic games, I had some considerable difficulty making sense of the extravagant opening ceremonies in Beijing this past weekend.
While watching the opening ceremonies, I found myself totally confused as to what I thought or felt about the spectacle that was unfolding before me. It was undoubtedly sensational, a grand event that dazzled the senses and left one's head reeling in wonder as to how it was all being accomplished. I heard that China spent something equivalent to roughly $300,000,000 (doesn't seeing all those zeros concretize the magnitude of the expense?) to produce the ceremony, and one can see that they got their money's worth. In the run up to the games, it was not infrequent for commentators to argue that the 2008 Olympics is “China's coming out party” and that the games would set the stage for China to gain recognition as a serious political and economic player. And indeed, this seemed to be largely the theme of the ceremony's presentation. Much of the pomp and circumstance was directed at the end of both celebrating Chinese culture and emphasizing the idea that China wants to cooperate with the rest of the world.
The celebration of Chinese culture went something like this: once upon a time there were Chinese who invented gunpowder and fireworks, had huge drum circles, fashioned incredibly ornate dresses, made some incredible paper and printed on it, and who philosophized at roughly the Pre-Socratic level of scope and sophistication. (The pre-Socratics [Western philosophers before Socrates] were the first group of Western philosophers and their interests primarily revolved around how to explain the metaphysical phenomenon of change (and how things persist through change without changing their essence). They typically did so through claims about how opposites [light and dark; night and day; hot and cold; atoms and void] interact. All this is also distinctive of much Chinese philosophy, as I understand it.)
Were these not the basic features of Chinese cultural greatness that were presented to us in the ceremonies? Perhaps the Chinese also demonstrated that they could get really large groups to do things precisely by drilling them for months on end. But what these massive demonstrations of precise collective action were used to demonstrate were the cultural products of Chinese civilization. Truly, these are not small change in the grand scale of human achievements, and I appreciate these things in the same way that I appreciate their Western analogues. To the extent that these things were done well, they represented significant advances in the human condition.
Upon reflection, however, I viewed the ceremonies as essentially a ploy to use some of Chinese culture's greatest offerings (in terms of its art, innovation, and philosophy) as a symbol for the greatness of the current Chinese regime. My reasons for believing that this is so largely because of a recent admission by certain Chinese officials about a memorable event during its supposedly glorious opening ceremonies.
Today the New York Times reports that there has been a bit of a recent scandal related to the opening ceremonies. The article reports that one of the most touching and memorable elements of the performance actually involved a bit of deception.
At one of the key moments in the ceremony, an adorable 9 year old Lin Miaoke stood center stage, replete with red dress and 'cute-little-girl hair,' and sang a song called “Ode to the Motherland.” (A video can be found on YouTube here. [Link Fixed]) Some time into her performance, the national flag of China enters in grand, Party-Approved fashion (the song is basically an ode to the flag, making it the perfect choice for a 9 year old girl to understand and communicate) and the whole world goes “Awww! Let's all be friends with China.”
However, this event was not everything it seemed. The NYT reported that the voice we heard was not Miaoke's, but instead that of another girl, Yang Peiyi. It was Yang Peiyi who had the vocal range and skill to sing the Ode to the estimated billion viewers of the opening ceremony. She had the voice of the girl who should sing the song,
But not her face. Photos posted online showed a happy girl with imperfect teeth, hardly an uncommon problem in China. “Everyone should understand this in this way,” Mr. Chen [general music designer of the opening ceremony] said. “This is in the national interest. It is the image of our national music, national culture, especially during the entrance of our national flag. This is an extremely important, extremely serious matter.”
As the Joker might ask, “Why so serious?” The article explains:
Miaoke’s song was considered critical because it coincided with the arrival of the national flag inside the massive National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest. In his radio interview, Mr. Chen said that a member of the ruling Communist Party’s powerful Politburo, whom he did not identify, attended one of the last rehearsals, along with numerous other officials, and demanded that Miaoke’s voice “must change.”
By Tuesday, the Chinese media had already pounced on the story, instigating a national conversation that government censors were trying to mute by stripping away many, but not all, of the public comments posted online. The outrage was especially heated over the cold calculation used to appraise the girls.
Let me summarize: China's ruling party is censoring Internet traffic because it demanded that the general music designer of the opening ceremony fake a performance designed to glorify the Chinese nation. It was dissatisfied with this element of the ceremony, since at the end of the day they had to decide between a cute girl with insufficient vocal chops, and a less cute girl who had the voice to sing the song. Why choose? Why compromise Chinese national self-image (and thus cast doubt upon the Communist Party's ability to govern an international event? THIS IS SERIOUS! Though they could not choose between Miaoke and Peiyi, they could rebuild them; they had the technology (thanks to Western innovations in audio and video processing software).
Why China faked the ceremony and why they oppressively censor online comments is essentially the same reason: the Chinese regime is nationalist. At root, the opening ceremonies were meant to be a nationalistic demonstration of a nation's power on the world stage, showing how Chinese competence could produce a magnificent ceremony. That is, it was viewed by Party members (who had the power to shape the final form of the ceremony) as an expression of political prowess. It was China's coming out party, and nothing could blemish its reputation – not even an orthodontic travesty or a flat note here or there. Any expression of weakness or failure is an indication of national failure, of China's inability to succeed. The state, the people, the NATION must look good at any cost, even if it means engaging in deceptive behavior that manipulates children (who may or may not have known about the lip-synching at the time of the performance); even if it means selecting potential Olympic gymnasts at the age of three... even if it means placing stringent government controls on what can and cannot be said through electronic media.
Whenever I speak of Chinese collectivism, given their communist legacy in the 20th century, I often am met with a response like “Oh, China... sure they're ruled by a communist party, but they're not really communists. Look at all of their economic reform and liberalization!” This response seems to miss the mark altogether. The distinctive feature of communism was the view that individual interests could be curtailed for the sake of promoting class interest. Under Mao and his communist successors, collective interests took priority over individual rights and the liberties they secure. This view is precisely the same view held by the current Chinese regime, though they're replaced “class interest” with “national interest.” The principle that one can see manifested everywhere throughout contemporary Chinese politics and public policy is the same collectivist principle invoked by the communists: that individuals exist to serve the state, that the interests of the state take priority over the interests of the individual.
It was indeed China's coming out party, and the opening ceremony was supposed to communicate a message of friendship, cooperation, and human unity. It was supposed to show how China was willingness to engage in civilized participation with the rest of the world. It included a performance by 810 figures in Han-dynasty era clothing, who joined together to communicate the question “Isn't it great to have friends coming from afar?” and sent “All men are brothers within the four seas.”
Despite the inclusion of elements like this, I couldn't find myself convinced that the opening ceremonies should be viewed positively. Regardless of all the razzle-dazzle, what we witnessed was a calculated attempt by an oppressive government to justify itself through a mesmerizing performance on the world stage. It's a variation on the old Roman “bread and circuses” theme, except, of course for the bread (think how many capital goods $300,000,000 could buy to increase worker productivity and thus help to alleviate the wide-spread poverty in China). The ceremonies were a debut ball for China as a nation, with all this implies for a country ruled by a nationalistic authoritarian regime; they were a thinly-veiled celebration of the state. In this respect, I found the 2008 opening ceremonies eerily similar in tone to the 1936 games in Berlin.
All this is to say, I found China's ceremonial pleas for friendship and and cooperation to be disingenuous. To the extent that a person, culture or political system preaches collectivism, its hostility to individual human life makes it necessarily “unfriendly” (to say the least). A friend is someone who shares our values, and one cannot genuinely befriend anyone who advocates the destruction of individual liberty for the sake of the state. A friendly nation is one that does not oppress and censor its citizens. No amount of fireworks or electronic displays could change that.
To drive home this last point, (that spectacle is no substitute for achievement), I'd like to contrast China's grand debut ball with another debut ball, the one given for Dagny Taggart in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. It, like the Chinese opening ceremonies, was an extravagant event of considerable cost, designed to celebrate Dagny's entrance into adult society. The following passage sets the scene:
The ballroom of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel had been decorated under Mrs. Taggart's [Dagny's mother's] direction; she had an artist's taste, and the setting of that evening was her masterpiece.
"Dagny, there are things I would like you to learn to notice," she said, "lights, colors, flowers, music. They are not as negligible as you might think."
"I've never thought they're negligible," Dagny answered happily. For once, Mrs. Taggart felt a bond between them; Dagny was looking at her with a child's grateful trust. "They're the things that make life beautiful," said Mrs. Taggart. "I want this evening to be very beautiful for you, Dagny. The first ball is the most romantic event of one's life."
Dagny's enthusiasm for her debut ball wanes as the event drags on. By the end of the event, her initial excitement has turned into a dull complacency, the spark of the celebration now gone. She asks:
"Mother, do they think it's exactly in reverse?" she asked. "What?" asked Mrs. Taggart, bewildered. "The things you were talking about. The lights and the flowers. Do they expect those things to make them romantic, not the other way around?" "Darling, what do you mean?" "There wasn't a person there who enjoyed it," she said, her voice lifeless, "or who thought or felt anything at all. They moved about, and they said the same dull things they say anywhere. I suppose they thought the lights would make it brilliant.
Dagny's analysis seems totally applicable to the Chinese opening ceremonies. The ruling Communist Party seemed to believe that if it surrounded itself with a remarkable, perfect display, it could claim perfection for itself and thus enhance its legitimacy. That is, the Party believed that the lights would make them seem brilliant. But as the world knows, the Chinese government has little to celebrate.
I'll spare you the familiar complaints about the government's shortcomings and summarize my view as follows: It is only after the Chinese government abandons its authoritarian, collectivist ideology and adopts ideals of individualism, individual rights, and capitalism that we can recognize the People's Republic of China as a true friend.
It is only then that they will have reason to celebrate in as grand a fashion as they did on 8.8.08.
[Edited 2:46 EST on 8.13.08 with new YouTube link]
For what it's worth, Jason Fortuny aka"Weev" (the featured troll in the article) has explicitly stated that he believes we are living in a simulation. I'll leave it an an exercise for the reader to decide if/how that philosophy shapes his actions.
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:00 AM
I was pretty floored to read this LA Times story about the huge percentage of charitable donations often going to fundraising firms, rather than the charity itself. The article begins:
For 24 years, Citizens Against Government Waste has exposed pork-barrel spenders and rallied tax critics. Its "Pig Book" and "porker" awards, meant to shame congressional leaders who exploit the public purse, have made the group a media darling and a political force. But when it comes to policing its own fundraising practices, America's self-proclaimed "#1 taxpayer watchdog" seems to have lost its bite.
Records filed with the California attorney general's office show that over the last decade, for-profit fundraisers for the nonprofit kept more than 94 cents of every donated dollar. ...
A Times investigation found hundreds of other examples of charities that pocketed just a sliver of what commercial fundraisers collected in their names. Some didn't get a dime or even lost money.
According to a comprehensive review of state records filed over a decade, the problem of paltry returns extends well beyond what has been reported in recent years among benevolent societies for police, firefighters and veterans. It affects charities large and small, well-known and obscure. It spans a range of causes, including child and animal welfare, health research and opposition to drunk driving. ...
Among The Times' findings:
* More than 100 charities raised $1 million or more from commercial appeals but netted less than 25 cents per dollar. Fundraisers got the rest.
* In 430 campaigns, charities got nothing: All $44 million donated went to fundraisers. In 337 of those cases, charities actually lost money, paying fees to fundraisers that exceeded the amount raised.
* In hundreds of other campaigns, charities apparently entered into contracts that limited their share of donations to 20% or less, no matter how successful the campaign.
* Groups with strong emotional or patriotic appeal -- those supporting animals, children, veterans and public safety workers, for instance -- often fared worst. Missing-children charities received less than 15% of more than $28 million raised on their behalf.
I found the article interesting for three reasons, in increasing order of importance:
(1) It's a useful warning to anyone who donates to charity. Any donor should know where his money is going -- and how it's being spent.
(2) Altruism provides an all-too-handy cover for this kind of barely charitable activity. For many people, so long as they donate to some cause, even if their money is wasted, they're "doing good." In contrast, the egoist has every reason to care whether his money is being used to promote his values or not -- because those values are his motive for donating at all.
(3) I'm strongly inclined to say that a fundraising campaign for a charity where most of the funds raised end up in the pockets of mass marketers is fraudulent. Imagine that a person is asked to donate $50 to, say the American Breast Cancer Foundation, and so he writes a check to that organization. Yet in reality, $5 is going to that charity and $45 to the marketing company. In that case, the donation is not what the donor reasonably thinks it to be. Of course, marketing companies deserve to be paid well if they do their jobs well, and government regulations are pretty well useless. So perhaps "donor beware" is the proper rule unless a charity makes specific claims about how donor funds are used. Nonetheless, donors have every right to be pissed as all heck if they discover that the charity is mostly in the business of keeping itself in business.
By Diana Hsieh @ 3:20 PM
The NY Times Magazine recently published an interesting profile of Rush Limbaugh. As someone interested in changing the culture for the better, I was interested to read about his history, methods, and influence. However, the most amazing bit is the reporter's description of Limbaugh's capacity to speak for nearly three hours extemporaneously:
Limbaugh's program that day was, as usual, a virtuoso performance. He took a few calls, but mostly he delivered a series of monologues on political and cultural topics. Limbaugh works extemporaneously. He has no writers or script, just notes and a producer on the line from New York with occasional bits of information. That day, and every day, he produced 10,000 words of fluent, often clever political talk.
Also, Limbaugh's influence is not just his direct influence on his listeners, as those listeners influence others by their own advocacy:
Limbaugh entertains, but he also instructs. He provides his listeners with news and views they can use, and he teaches them how to employ it. "Rush is an intellectual-force multiplier," Rove told me. "His listeners are, themselves, communicators."
Fascinating! I might say, "if only his ideas were better..." but the fact is that his example is a valuable lesson for those of us with better ideas.
By Greg Perkins @ 3:25 PM We went to see the new Angelina Jolie flick, Wanted, the other night. Having watched the trailers, and noting that 75% or so of 150+ reviews were coming out positive, our expectation was of basically mindless summer action in a slick package.
We got all that: the production values were excellent, and the acting was just fine -- most of all, the action sequences were extremely stylish and fantastically unrealistic, though a bit over the top on gore at times. All of this is what you would expect. It's the "message" that is so horrid.
*** MILD SPOILAGE ALERT ***
The movie started out pretty quirky and random, and I was fine with cutting it slack even while Tammy was alternately squirming with boredom and revulsion at gory stuff as we waited for things to unfold. Soon enough, we got to see the main protagonist -- someone we are supposed like -- struggle briefly with and then accept the idea of killing innocent people on nothing more than blind faith in a mysterious, unseen and unfathomable authority saying they must be killed now to prevent never-specified future harms. Yes, the movie presents the issue that clearly, and then basically endorses the cold-blooded murder of innocents on faith. Our jaws dropped.
Oh, but it gets worse. Even after the danger of such blind faith and obedience was demonstrated to be problematic in the course of the plot, a second important character who we are to sympathize with and enjoy the action of goes and deliberately acts on such faith in the face of that demonstration -- and in a gigantically self-sacrificial manner! Our eyes boggled.
As if all that isn't horrid enough to be whacked in the face with, the movie underscores it by closing with a direct challenge addressed to the audience, along the lines of "see how I took splendid control of my life -- well, what have you done lately?"
We stood up and shuffled out, numb at the Columbine-level insanity of it's message... and of so many people thinking it is just fine, if not great.
By Paula Hall @ 12:26 AM
Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open again. He did it right after coming back from knee surgery, the recovery from which was still causing him pain. He did it after a must-make putt for birdie in regulation to force an 18-hole playoff. He did it by making yet another birdie putt when the score was still tied after the playoff. It was brilliant. He is awe-inspiring.
My husband and I have, from time to time, wondered aloud why we tend not to root for the underdog against Tiger Woods. We decided it was from sheer admiration - we are grateful to Tiger for creating in himself someone to admire. Of course, we appreciate anyone working hard to beat a statistical favorite, as Rocco Mediate did. Statistics don't describe individuals, and individuals must always fight. On the other hand - watching someone as accomplished as Woods is as close as an atheist will ever come to worship. He is just inspiring. Inspiration is food for the soul.
Now, contrast this attitude with that shown by David Brooks in his recent New York Times column on Woods's victory. The column is a blatant demonstration of sneering at and denigrating the good because it is good.
Brooks appears to start off well. The first one-and-a-half paragraphs of his column describes Woods in positive terms. But as the column progresses, terms commonly used pejoratively creep in. "Frozen." "Stone-faced." Then it gets a little worse, as Brooks starts to employ caricature (emphasis added below):
As an adult, [Woods] is famously self-controlled. His press conferences are a string of carefully modulated banalities.
And:
He's become the beau ideal for golf-loving corporate America, the personification of mental fortitude.
Now clearly, Brooks recognizes Woods's greatness, because Brooks's column is also filled with unambiguously positive descriptors of Woods, just a few of which are: "focused," "embodiment of immortal excellence," "exemplar of mental discipline," "precosity" and "athletic prowess." But Brooks gives with one hand, while with the other he taketh away. For example:
[Woods] achieves, they say, perfect clarity, tranquility and flow. We're talking about somebody who is the primary spokesman for Buick, and much of the commentary about him is on the subject of his elevated spiritual capacities.
Here, Brooks notes others' glowing praise for Woods -- and then belittles the praisers for their failure to note that Woods is a highly-paid spokesman for a car company. The implication: you can't use elevated terms to praise someone who trades the value of his good name and reputation for money. Snarky enough, but then Brooks does it again:
The ancients were familiar with physical courage and the priests with moral courage, but in this over-communicated age when mortals feel perpetually addled, Woods is the symbol of mental willpower. He is, in addition, competitive, ruthless, unsatisfied by success and honest about his own failings.
This paragraph reminds me of the way Ayn Rand defined the conjunction "but" in her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. To paraphrase, Rand explained that the conjunction "but" was to be used prior to introducing information that contradicts what would ordinarily be inferred from what was previously communicated. The first sentence of Brooks's paragraph implies that Woods is something positive, a throw-back to an era where men recognized greatness. But the second sentence is clearly meant as an insult, as a "but," because Brooks assumes (probably correctly, for most Times readers) that the column's readers share his appraisal of "competitive," "ruthless" and "unsatisfied" as derogatory terms.
Perhaps, by describing Woods's obvious excellence (usually through others' eyes), Brooks is hoping his readers will credit him with an ability to recognize and appreciate greatness. Perhaps Brooks is hoping his readers will miss the snide swipes at the character and virtues that made Tiger Woods's accomplishment possible, and credit Brooks with graciousness instead of metaphysical sour grapes.
Then again, perhaps not. Perhaps Brooks is counting on his readers sharing his disdain for achievement. Because the first sentence of the column's two-sentence final paragraph begins:
You can like this model or not.
I submit that the one thing a writer is aware of is that the last words penned are the most powerful in fixing in readers' minds the message the writer wishes to convey. The message in Brooks's last words? Whether you admire virtue and achievement is a mere matter of taste.
My last words to Mr. Brooks: speak for yourself. To anyone considering Tiger Woods's victory at the U.S. Open, I would ask, rather, "What's not to like?"
E-mail Paul Hsieh
Comments
We went to see the new Angelina Jolie flick, 
