Tuesday, January 26, 2010 |
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Deism in the Declaration |
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By Diana Hsieh @ 8:00 AM   
Crossposted from Politics without God.
My husband Paul Hsieh (of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine) recently pointed me to an essay by Eric Raymond entitled Deism and the Founding Fathers. I'd definitely recommend reading the whole essay, but I wanted to except a few critical passages:
Religious conservatives are fond of replying by pointing excitedly at the references to "Nature's God", "Divine Providence", and the "Creator" in the Declaration of Independence. Raymond then quotes the relevant passages of the Declaration:
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights;
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. Raymond then cites some other passages in Jefferson's writings where he displays as obvious hostility to Christianity. So Raymond asks, "Of what 'God', if not the Christian one, was Jefferson speaking?" He replies:
The answer to this question -- which also explains the references in the Declaration of Independence -- is that Jefferson, like many intellectuals of his time, was a Deist. The "Creator" and "Nature's God" in the Declaration of Independence, and the God of Jefferson's altar, is not the intervening Christian God but the God of Deism.
Deism was an early attempt to reconcile the mechanistic world-view arising from experimental science with religion. Deists believed in a remote sort of clockmaker-God who created the universe but then refrained from meddling in it afterwards. Deists explicitly rejected faith, revelation, religious doctrine, religious authority, and all existing religions. They held that humans could know the mind of God only through the study of nature; in many versions of Deist thinking, the mind of God was explicitly identified with the laws of nature.
Thus "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God"; in Deist thought these concepts blurred together. The phrase "endowed by their Creator" could be rendered accurately as "endowed by Nature". In modern terms, this is an entirely naturalistic account of human rights. That's exactly right. Finally, Raymond notes:
Jefferson’s "altar of God" quote and the references in the Declaration of Independence are easy to misconstrue today because Deism did not long outlive the Founding Fathers. In their time it functioned as a sort of halfway house for intellectuals who rejected traditional religion but were unwilling to declare themselves atheists or agnostics. As the social risk of taking these positions decreased, Deism waned. Given the bravery of the early Americans in opposing the British Empire, I doubt that intellectual cowardice was the reason for their deism. I suspect -- although I've not much researched the subject -- that they accepted some version of the Argument from Design. Absent a solid grasp of the fact that physical laws are the necessary expression of the identity of entities and absent an explanation for the great diversity and complexity of living organisms, the Argument from Design would seem quite plausible. It's still flawed, purely on philosophic grounds, but the mistake was understandable in the 18th century. Deism was the rather benign result of that mistake.
Today, people have far less excuse for believing in God's existence on such grounds, as the scientific and philosophic objections to the Argument from Design are well-known and devastating. They have no excuse for leaping from such arguments to claims about the truth of Christianity. The Argument from Design, even if sound, could not lend the slightest bit of support to the myths and dogmas of Christianity.
For more, see my three podcasts on the Argument from Design: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Part 4 is forthcoming.Labels: History, Religion
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Friday, December 04, 2009 |
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Invented Only Once? |
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By Paul Hsieh @ 8:00 AM
In Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead, there's a scene where villain Ellsworth Toohey looks at the New York City skyline and muses about modern civilization:...Look at it. A sublime achievement, isn't it? A heroic achievement. Think of the thousands who worked to create this and of the millions who profit by it. And it is said that but for the spirit of a dozen men, here and there down the ages, but for a dozen men -- less, perhaps -- none of this would have been possible. And that might be true.
(Part 2, Chapter 8) When I first read that passage, I wasn't sure whether it was historically accurate or not.
But as it turns out, there a number of crucial innovations that some claim to have only been invented and/or discovered once in history, then spread to the rest of humanity from that single source.
I can't vouch for the accuracy of all of the following, but some purported examples include:
The wheel
The alphabet
Dog domestication
Iron smelting
And probably the most crucial to Western civilization:
Logic (Aristotle)
If these claims are true, then it may indeed be the case that our modern technological society (including my ability to compose this blog post on a MacBook Pro and upload it onto a remote web server where it can then be read by people around the world) would not exist were it not for a half-dozen mostly-anonymous innovators.Labels: History
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Monday, November 30, 2009 |
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The Culture of Hatred |
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By Greg Perkins @ 8:00 AM
 The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 10, "The Culture of Hatred" -- a reference to the rise of Nihilism in the German culture. Topics we discussed included: - We explored how "the first truly modern culture" in the world emerged, more accepting of contemporary-everything: the "Weimar culture," shaped by the "free spirits" of the German Republic, the the avant garde in the humanities, sciences, commentary, journalism, and so on. A key question to answeris: what is "modernity" is in this sense? What principle unites Kaiser, Kandinsky, Schoenberg, Mann, Barth, Freud, Heisenberg?
- Touring the culture, Peikoff started with literature ("art is the barometer of a culture, and literature is the barometer of art"). The prominent philosophical novel by Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain) was characterized by a contemporary as the "saga of the Weimar Republic." "To a country and in a decade swept by hysteria, perishing from uncertainty, torn by political crisis, financial collapse, violence in the streets, and terror of the future -- to that country, in that decade, its leading philosophical novelist offered as his contribution to sanity and freedom the smiling assurance that there are no answers, no absolutes, no values, no hope." It was a hit that resonated with the culture.
- Turning to poetry like that of Rainer Maria Rilke, a Christian mystic admired across the board, as well as Kafka, Peikoff finds them offering "nightmare projections of nameless ciphers paralyzed by a sinister, unknowable reality."
- Turning to the philosophy of Existentialism and Martin Heidegger, it underscores existence being unintelligible, reason invalid, man a helpless "Dasein" -- a creature engulfed by "das Nichts" (nothingness), in terror of the supreme fact of his life: death and doomed by nature to "angst," estrangement, futility. Heidegger's works rejected any systematic defense of his ideas and were praised as the "intellectual counterpart of modern painting."
- In contrast to Heidegger's rejection of religion and God, the avant-garde theologians tried to reconceive these in modern terms -- "Avant-garde religion, in short, consists in ditching one's mind, prostrating oneself in the muck, and screaming for mercy."
- Next was the new psychology with the psychoanalysis of Freud. In the name of science it leaves us "Caught in the middle between these forces -- between a psychopathic hippie screaming: satisfaction now! and a jungle chieftain intoning: tribal obedience! -- sentenced by nature to ineradicable conflict, guilt, anxiety, and neurosis is man, i.e., man's mind, his reason or "ego," the faculty which is able to grasp reality, and which exists primarily to mediate between the clashing demands of the psyche's two irrational masters." More generally, the "new science -- like the new philosophy, the new theology, the new art -- becomes instead a vehicle of the willful, the arbitrary, the subjective."
- Finally, touching on sociology, political science, education, art historians, social commentators, philosophers… and even physics and math, we find everywhere that "The notion of 'reason enthroned' disappears into myth, and the rational man collapses…"
- In sum, we find that what is new and distinctive across the board is Nihilism: hatred of values and of their root, reason -- this, Peikoff contends, is the essential that underlies, generates, and defines "Weimar culture."
- How Peikoff traces Nihilism as a cultural force back to Kant's philosophy.
- How this new culture compares and contrasts with other eras of mysticism -- and how Peikoff's framing of it in this book relates to the way he is framing similar phenomena in his new DIM Hypothesis work (forthcoming).
Peikoff summarized the results, social and political:
In the orgy which was the cultural atmosphere of the Weimar Republic, the Germans could not work to resolve their differences. Disintegrated by factionalism, traumatized by crisis, and pumped full of the defiant rejection of reason, in every form and from all sides, the Germans felt not calm, but hysteria; not confidence in regard to others, but the inability to communicate with them; not hope, but despair; not the desire for solutions to their problems, but the need for scapegoats; and, as a result, not goodwill, but fury, blind fury at their enemies, real or imagined.
Nihilism in Germany worked to exacerbate economic and political resentments by undermining the only weapon that could have dealt with them. The intellectuals wanted to destroy values; the public shaped by this trend ended up wanting to destroy men.
The social corollary of "Weimar culture" was a country animated, and torn apart, by hatred, seething in groups trained to be impervious to reason.
The political corollary was the same country put back together by Hitler.
If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast -- just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page. And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Friday, November 13, 2009 |
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The Nazi Synthesis |
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By Greg Perkins @ 5:00 PM
The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 9, "The Nazi Synthesis" -- a reference to what gave the Nazis the ability to seemingly offer everything to everyone. Topics we discussed included: - How "The nationalists, at heart, were socialists. The socialists, at heart were nationalists. The Nazis took over the essence of each side in the German debate and proudly offered the synthesis as one unified viewpoint. The syntheses is: national socialism."
- This synthesis stressed the basic principles common to all groups and served as an opening to every major segment of the population, reactionary and radical alike. At the same time, the non-Nazi parties limited themselves to a narrower, more specific consituency while alienating the rest of the country.
- The "Twenty-Five Points" document outlining the Nazi agenda: how it demanded special state action on behalf of virtually every group, with the middle class as its most obvious target of appeal. These are the white-collar workers, small tradesmen, bureaucrats, academics -- those ravaged by the war and hit hardest by the hyperinfltion, and who felt pinned between government-protected cartels above and government-supported unions below.
- How the Nazis offered private deals and/or public promises to virtually every significant group in Germany to broaden their support -- all the way down to the spinsters. What enabled the Nazis to offer conflicting messages tailored to appeal to each audience, flattering everyone as uniquely important, soothing concerns about their interests, promising punishment of those they felt pitted against.
- The one real consistency the Nazis offered was that of supporting and sacrificing to the "public interest" -- rejecting the Weimarian mixed economy with its partial freedoms for utter totalitarianism.
- And much more...
The chapter closes by saying: The poor hated the rich, the rich hated "the rabble," the left hated the "bourgeoisie," the right hated the foreigners, the traditionalists hated the new, and the young hated everything, the adults, the Allies, the West, the Jews, the cities, the "system."
The Nazis promised every group annihilation, the annihilation of that which it hated. Just as Hitler offered Germany a synthesis of ideas, so, appealing to the nationwide, classwide spasm of seething fury, he offered the voters a synthesis of hatreds. In the end, this combination was what the voters wanted, and chose. If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast -- just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page. And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Thursday, November 12, 2009 |
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Was Herodotus Right? |
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By Diana Hsieh @ 2:00 PM
Awesome:
The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archaeology's biggest outstanding mysteries, according to Italian researchers.
Bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones found in the vast desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert have raised hopes of finally finding the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II. The 50,000 warriors were said to be buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C.
"We have found the first archaeological evidence of a story reported by the Greek historian Herodotus," Dario Del Bufalo, a member of the expedition from the University of Lecce, told Discovery News. Read the whole story for details.Labels: History
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Monday, November 09, 2009 |
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The Emotionalist Republic |
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By Greg Perkins @ 2:00 PM
The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 8, "The Emotionalist Republic" -- a reference to how there was one fundamental principle "everywhere in the ascendancy -- among artists and educators, radicals and traditionalists, young and old alike": the wholesale rejection of rationality for emotionalism. Topics we discussed included: - Why Peikoff characterized art as "the barometer that lays bare a period's view of reality, of life, of man."
- The rise of the Expressionism movement in art with its open break with the intellect, with material reality, with all 'middle class' values such as work and personal success, industrial civilization, money, business, section standards, law and order, etc. The spread of these values into everything from cartoons in the newspapers, architecture, films, poetry, music.
- The Conservative reaction to this, which they regarded as a product of "reason": turning to their traditional values of intuition and feeling with artists who portrayed an irrational, heroic, mystic world "beset by treachery, overwhelmed by violence, drowned in blood, and culminating in … an orgy of self-willed annihilation".
- How the "same epistemological cause leads ultimately to the same social effect (whatever the form). The left culturati called their political ideal "socialism." the right culturati called theirs "Prussianism." But, as Spengler pointed out in an influential work entitled Prussianism and Socialism, there is no essential difference between these two concepts. Under both approaches, he noted, "Power belongs to the whole. The individual serves it. The whole is sovereign… Everyone is given his place. There are commands and obedience."
- The spread of these values via the efforts of both the left and the right into the youth movements and the educational institutions.
- The effects of such emotionalism in economics: the failure in hyperinflation they would suffer as their mixed, Bismarckian-style economy drove individuals to join into pressure-group warfare.
- How this all combines into a miserable, volatile circumstance ripe for someone to deliver change and hope...
If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast -- just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page. And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Thursday, October 29, 2009 |
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United They Fell |
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By Greg Perkins @ 5:00 AM
The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 7, "United They Fell" -- a reference to Germans' widespread agreement on important fundamentals despite often fierce political differences that were evident as they strove to create a new, constitutional republic. Topics we discussed included: - A tour of the political diversity in both means and ends that was present as Germans drew up their nations new, republican constitution: the four major groups forming two broad coalitions in the Wiemar Assembly -- and the two paralleling major groups in the "street".
- How despite the seeming ideological diversity, all of the major groups battling to shape Germany's new government nonetheless shared the same essential ideas in epistemology (anti-reason, mysticism), ethics (sacrificial, altruistic), and politics (anti-capitalist, collectivist). They argued fiercely, even violently, over more derivative matters: In the formal discussions of the Wiemar Assembly, in the end the marxist Social Democrats and their allies sought state control of the economy for the benefit of the lower classes -- versus the conservative/monarchical Nationalists who sought state control of the economy for the benefit of the upper classes. And at the same time the major parties active in the "street" were more pure in their desired ends, and more direct in their means to achieving them: the Communists fought for an all-powerful state to determine the fate of individuals' lives, versus the Free Corps who fought for an all-powerful ruler who would determine the fate of individuals' lives.
- And much more...
The chapter closes: Wherever the German turned -- to the left, to the right, to the center; to the decorous voices in parliament or to the gutters running with blood -- he heard the same fundamental ideas. They were the same in politics, the same in ethics, the same in epistemology.
This is how philosophy shapes the destiny of nations. If there is no dissent in regard to basic principles among a country's leading philosophic minds, theirs are the principles that come in time to govern every social and political group in the land. Owing to other factors, the groups may proliferate and may contend fiercely over variants, applications, strategy; but they do not contend over essentials. In such a case, the country is offered an abundance of choices -- among equivalents competing to push it to the same final outcome.
It is common for observers to criticize the "disunity" of Weimar Germany, which, it is said, prevented the anti-Nazi groups from dealing effectively with the threat posed by Hitler. In fact, the Germans were united, and this precisely was their curse: their kind of unity, their unity on all the things that count in history, i.e., on all the ideas. If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast -- just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page. And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Friday, October 23, 2009 |
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Kant Versus America |
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By Greg Perkins @ 5:00 AM
The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 6, "Kant Versus America" -- a reference to the fundamental opposition between core American ideals and German ideological imports. Topics we discussed included: - German metaphysical idealism coming to America via the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson et. al -- an eclectic "literary" version of German romanticism. Then decades of Hegel's purified Kantianism dominating American philosophy departments.
- How some advocates of these ideas were open and clear about their rejection of reason for emotion/intuition/will, while others took the tack of presenting themselves as champions of rationality even while undercutting every essential element of it.
- How advocates of the American system of rights and capitalism tried to find ideological support in classical economics and evolutionary biology -- and how this was ultimately a doomed effort because these are not philosophically fundamental. Mill, Smith, Say, and the rest of the classical economists tried to defend an individualist system while accepting the fundamental moral ideas of its opponents (altruism, collectivism). And on the biological evolution front, Herbert Spencer tried and failed to defend capitalism while adhering to more fundamental ideas which clash with it (advocating a species-based collectivist approach that would be inspiration for Eugenicists, and thinking evolution would eventually eliminate egoism in favor of altruism in humans).
- What Pragmatism is and how it became the main American manifestation of the Kantian trend.
- Why Pragmatists adopt codes of values and political ideas designed by others (non-pragmatists), usually without consciously acknowledging this, through cultural osmosis.
- How Pragmatism was the only 20th century philosophy to gain broad, national acceptance in America (and how this happened through Orwellian twists of meaning and language to sell it to an audience who would otherwise recoil). How it enjoyed a disastrous acceleration by taking over the educational system (Dewey), its prevalence in politics, etc.
- How academic philosophy then all but disappeared in America -- as the "dead end" of the Kantian dichotomy between thought and reality, with the public rightly rejecting the field of philosophy as worthless (even though they nonetheless remained powerfully influenced by philosophy).
- And a lot more...
If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast -- just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page. And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Thursday, October 15, 2009 |
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The Nation of the Enlightenment |
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By Greg Perkins @ 5:00 AM
The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this past two weeks (due to technical difficulties) was Chapter 5, "The Nation of the Enlightenment" -- a reference to the central influence of the ideas and spirit of the Enlightenment in America's founding. Topics we discussed included: - The eras of reason in Western philosophy, and how this relates to Peikoff's characterization of the US as the Nation of the Enlightenment. Whether the US is indeed unique in being a "nation of ideas".
- How achievements in science and philosophy basically proclaimed the world open to reason -- with reason becoming a virtue, the norm and expected.
- The difference between early America and the America that the Founders built. How the American Enlightenment is a 'profound reversal' of the Puritans' philosophic priorities. What brought about the dislodging of Puritanism, and the religious outlook of the founding leaders.
- Why Aristotle is the first father of this new world. And Locke's contribution to that legacy.
- How the founders integrated their considerable knowledge of history to devise a brilliant, practical implementation of these abstract ideas with checks and balances, trying to isolate the operation of the state as much as possible from the moral character of any of its temporary officials, as well as subversion by an aspiring dictator or temporary sentiment.
- How this rising nation of ideas then fell prey to bad ideas in Europe: There was no American attempt to give systematic statement to and defense of the American approach to liberty -- we had no major philosophical innovators and relied on Europe to provide this (e.g., Locke). Unfortunately, there were gaps and problems, leading to the "American conflict" between the implicitly egoistic upholding of rights vs. the explicitly altruistic morality of the culture.
- And a lot more...
If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast -- just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page. And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Wednesday, September 30, 2009 |
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The Ethics of Evil |
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By Greg Perkins @ 5:00 AM
The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 4, "The Ethics of Evil" -- a reference to the implications for peoples' lives that flow from the ideas they accept about values. Topics we discussed included: - How Obama matches and doesn't match fascists in history -- an important distinction to observe.
- The two fundamentally opposed approaches to morality.
- How Kant carried Christianity's ethics to its climax -- and how Christianity "prepared the ground" for modern totalitarianism by entrenching three fundamental ideas in the Western mind.
- Christianity's non-sacrificial ethical nod to Pagan egoism -- and how Kant expunged this.
- How Kant felt he wasn't an innovator in the realm of morality, but yet he was an innovator in in an important respect: actually divorcing morality from values, with moral perfection being uninterested action devoid of any love or desire.
- What evil consists in, for Kant: not self-love per-se, but giving self-love priority over morality in one's heart. Kant's version of Original Sin.
- How for Kant, "It is the lot of the moral man to burn with desire and then, on principle -- the principle of duty -- to thwart it. The hallmark of the moral man is to suffer. … It is sacrifice -- sacrifice as against apathy or indifference, sacrifice continual and searing -- which is the essence of Kant's moral counsel to living men." [p.80]
- How Kant did not preach Nazism (he likely would have frowned on the Nazis) -- yet he established a necessary precondition for their development.
- The rise of the formal doctrine of Altruism, giving a target to sacrifice… Then Hegel's development bringing 'social relativism' to ethics -- and how the Nazis' pragmatism dovetails with it to strengthen their sacrificial, collectivist program.
- Why physical coercion and persuasion are the only two methods for people to deal with one another -- and how altruism gives the use of force a moral sanction, making it not just a practical recourse, but a positive virtue (in both secular and religious forms).
- How the many "mindless activists and nonideological brawlers" were nonetheless in the grip of a particular philosophy, morphing and rewriting their program, yet never altering the three fundamental ideas that their program rested on from start to end.
- That the world has not learned its lesson from history, with these three fundamental ideas still spreading throughout the Western world and increasing in their potency (and damage).
- And a lot more...
If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast (just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page). And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Wednesday, September 23, 2009 |
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Hitler's War Against Reason |
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By Greg Perkins @ 9:00 AM
The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 3, "Hitler's War Against Reason" -- a reference to the implications for peoples' lives that flow from the ideas they accept about knowledge and its acquisition and use. Topics we discussed included: - The connection between the rejection of reason and the use of force.
- the Nazi "epistemology": the wholesale undercutting and replacement of reason as a source of knowledge and guide to action -- in favor of feelings, instincts, "will" or (as Hitler was so surprisingly breezy in putting it) whatever you want to call such things.
- Irrationalism as the rejection of reason, Mysticism as the supplementing or replacement of reason, and [non-esthetic] Romanticism's existing strength in the German culture being necessary for Hitler and the Nazis to accomplish their aims.
- The timeline and major philosophical players in the transition from the Enlightenment reliance on reason to its rejection for romanticism and voluntarism.
- Hitler and the Nazi's profound, central reliance on and promotion of two forms of anti-reason: dogmatism and pragmatism.
- How this mixture of dogmatism and pragmatism brought something new (and seemingly paradoxical) to the world: "the absolute of the moment, or the immutable which never stands still, issued by an omniscience that ceaselessly changes its mind."
- A more general exploration of the subjectivism that underlies the above, how despite being present systematically since Greek times, it was able to take off and dominate a culture at this time and in this place.
- The naked use of force that subjectivism/primacy-of-consciousness has always brought -- even necessitated -- in politics.
- How the Nazis were utterly dependent on the groundwork laid by philosophers, merely "cashing in" on what was already in place.
- And a lot more...
If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast (just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page). And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Friday, September 18, 2009 |
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Myths of American History |
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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. Go read the whole thing.Labels: Culture, History
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Wednesday, September 16, 2009 |
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The Totalitarian Universe |
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By Greg Perkins @ 4:00 PM
The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 2, "The Totalitarian Universe" -- a reference to the implications for peoples' lives that flow from the metaphysical ideas they accept about the nature of reality. Topics we discussed included: - The complex, centuries-long development in the history of philosophy involving dozens of figures that brought about modern German culture and its Nazi climax -- boiled down to the the essential turning points found in three major philosophors: Plato, Kant, and Hegel.
- Plato's metaphysics and what it says about men, ethics, and politics -- how the implications in politics mean some men must rule others.
- The fundamental contrast Aristotle offered.
- The points at when Plato's and Aristotle's contrasting outlooks alternately dominated cultures, and how Kant's innovations drove the most recent transition to an essentially Platonic outlook.
- The difference between Plato and Kant -- how Kant "purified" Plato epistemologically and ethically.
- How Kant and Aristotle are similar in their professed political ideas not expressing the implications of their metaphysics/epistemology (and how later thinkers in their lines went on to develop those implications).
- The role of Hegel as a post-Kantian Platonist; how he "purified" the Kant and made Plato's totalitarian blueprint pale by comparison.
- The forms in which Hegel's ideas propagated -- Fascist Italy vs. Nazi Germany -- as well as the ways in which Hegel's ideas were secularized and made more materialistic and seemingly scientific. (Social Darwinism with Hitler, and class/economic determinism with Marx).
- And a lot more...
If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast (just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page). And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Thursday, September 10, 2009 |
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The Cause of Nazism |
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By Greg Perkins @ 5:00 AM
The Objectivism Seminar just started going through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 1, "The Cause of Nazism." Topics we discussed included: - Hitler's explanation of the moral philosophy of Nazism, which underlies "the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men." He contrasted this with egoism/selfishness (which we only found surprising for its forthrightness).
- The degree to which the German people were aware of the political aims of the Nazi party (the "total state", a totalitarian regime) when they freely voted the Nazis into power.
- Terminology: statism, totalitarianism, individualism vs. collectivism, socialism and its relationship to communism and fascism, etc. For the Nazis, socialism was much broader than economics.
- How property and economic action fare under Marxist/communist treatment vs. fascist/Nazi treatment.
- Peikoff's argument that "An evil of such magnitude cannot be a product of superficial factors" (a good number of which he names and dispenses with). And why there is no direct or even approximate causal relationship between any "specific practical crises and the development of Nazism." (Like losing WWI or a nasty economic depression.)
- What it means to understand things in terms of fundamentals, and why the tools for doing so are necessarily philosophical.
- Peikoff's basic argument that philosophy is the fundamental factor behind the destiny of nations and the course of history.
- Peikoff's statement that the science of philosophy had to be destroyed for the horrors of the 20th century to come about.
- And a lot more...
If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast (just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page). And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays for an hour or hour and a half. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 |
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The Bureaucrats are Coming! A New Madiera for the 21st Century |
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By Gina Liggett @ 12:01 AM
As I have been learning in a wine certification seminar, Madeira wine, called the "Wine of the Patriots," played an important part in American colonial rebellion against the British.
For years during the American colonial period, Madeira wine was uniquely exempted from taxation because of the British Navigation laws, and became a symbol of American rebellion against the British. When John Hancock's sloop, Liberty, was seized in Boston harbor, the stage was set for the Boston Tea Party. George Washington toasted the signing of the Declaration of Independence with Madeira, and it was used in the christening of the warship Constitution. It was also favored by the likes of Benjamin Franklin and John Adams.
When the ordinary American colonist walked into a pub and boldly ordered a Madeira rather than a British beverage, the symbolic rebellious gesture was nothing less than piquant.
Madeira is a fortified wine made on the Portuguese island of Madeira. It is a rich-tasting mélange of the flavors of roasted fruit, burnt oranges, espresso coffee and sugar-coated nuts, as described in the Complete Idiot's Guide to Wine Basics by Tara Q. Thomas. (I can attest to that description, having tasted some delicious Madeiras recently.)
Sadly, there are only nine producers of Madeira left in the world, questioning its sustainability as an enduring legacy in wine making. But it's obsolescence as a symbol also raises the question of what could be our contemporary symbol of rebellion in our fight against the anti-egoism state of our culture. America is morphing every day into ever-greater states of dependency, paternalism, socialism, irrationalism and even nihilism. As Objectivists, we want to create a new American Renaissance through the power of ideas.
The symbol of rebellion that I display in public is the mysterious and foreboding question, "Who Is John Galt?" I display that bumper sticker on my car and wear tee-shirts with that quote. One day, when someone at the gym read my tee-shirt, he looked me straight in the eye and gave me a knowing thumbs up. I felt a camaraderie with that stranger. I wonder if in some small way what I felt was the same kind of pride a colonist felt when he ordered Madeira in a bar full of British soldiers.
I challenge other readers to suggest a new "Madeira" for today. I look forward to your suggestions! Cheers to all!Labels: Food, History, Politics
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Friday, October 17, 2008 |
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Two Cheers for Divided Government |
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By Paul Hsieh @ 1:06 PM
There's been a lot of buzz on the blogosphere lately regarding this chart in the October 14, 2008 New York Times showing that since 1929, the stock market has done far better under a Democratic President than a Republican President (even if you exclude the Herbert Hoover years).
The annualized rate of return under Democrats was 8.9% where as under Republicans was 4.7% (excluding Hoover) and 0.4% (including Hoover).
However, this article in the Wall Street Journal shows that although the figures are true, the stock market has actually done best under a divided government -- and specifically when the President is a Democrat and the Congress is Republican.
This makes sense to me. Under a divided government, each party tends to moderate some (although not all) of the worst excesses of the other party. Furthermore, a divided system seems to work better with a Republican Congress restraining a Democratic President, rather than the other way around. For a variety of reasons, Republicans are better in the opposition than in power and will then sometimes even fight for fiscal responsibility. On the other hand, when we've had a Republican President and a Democratic Congress, the President often tries to be "more altruist than thou" in outspending the Democrats, so as to avoid looking mean and selfish.
Yaron Brook once said that we've seen the least growth in government when we've had this pattern of divided government with a Democratic President and Republican Congress. It's good to know that this also is the best combination for the stock market and economic growth.
Unfortunately, it seems pretty unlikely that we'll have that particular combination in 2008. But depending on how the next 2 years turns out, we could easily see this relatively desirable combination in 2010 (just as Democratic control of both branches in 1992 turned into the "better" divided government in 1994.)Labels: Economics, History, Politics
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Tuesday, October 14, 2008 |
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LTE about Ayn Rand in The Telegraph |
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By Paul Hsieh @ 5:00 PM
The October 14, 2008 edition of the UK paper The Telegraph printed the following letter on Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged (towards the bottom of the page):Sir - Ayn Rand has been mentioned several times in your pages of late, but it is startling how prescient was her novel Atlas Shrugged.
There is the socially responsible banker who went bust because he gave loans to those who needed them, rather than to those who could afford them. There's the government regulation and takeovers to ensure that failed businesses keep going.
There's the unthinking desire to cling on to "stability", and the consensus that it is a global problem and everyone must pull together for the common good.
All is in denial of reality, a rejection of reason. Result: the rational is distrusted; men are guilty of being "unfair" if they value competence and "unfeeling" if they refuse to indulge failure. The individual is subordinated to the national, and the national to the international.
If Rand was right thus far, what of the years ahead? Perhaps the motor of the world is stopping.
Iwan Price-Evans, Enfield, Middlesex The big question is whether our version will have the same happy ending or not...Labels: Economics, History, Literature
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Wednesday, August 06, 2008 |
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Who Has The Wealth? |
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By Paul Hsieh @ 1:01 AM
Megan McArdle has written an interesting analysis of the following map showing GDP per capita in various countries:
She writes:When you see the map, it becomes radically apparent just how firmly Britain was the root of the Industrial revolution. With the lone exception of Japan, the darkest places on the map are either next to Britain, or former British colonies. And aside from Saudi Arabia and Chile, all the growth seems to spread outward from those Anglosphere points of infection. Nowhere, not even Saudi Arabia, has the income density of Western Europe and North America. Of course, the interesting question is why is there this distribution?
Dr. William Bernstein (a neurologist turned financial analyst/historian) does a pretty good job of answering this question in his book, The Birth of Plenty : How the Prosperity of the Modern World was Created. In particular, he analyzes history and economics over the past 400 years and makes a good case that there were four key factors that allowed men in some countries to prosper, whereas men in other countries couldn't. The four key factors he identifies are: "property rights, the scientific method, capital markets and communications". He argues that countries prospered to the extent that these factors were present. And in particular, when Great Britain embraced all four of these, it then led to the explosion of wealth known as the Industrial Revolution.
Although Bernstein's analysis is fairly good, it does not quite go far enough. His four factors can be further essentialized to two: reason and rights.
His first factor, "property rights", is self-explanatory. Property rights is the direct application of the concept of rights to humans living in a material world. It is a recognition that if men are to live, they must live under a government which respects and enforces certain principles with respect to how men should deal with physical objects, and with other men. In particular, it establishes objective principles of property ownership, and all of the corollaries (e.g., the right to use, sell, trade, dispose of, and exclude others from one's property.)
His second factor, "the scientific method", is the application of reason to the practical world -- namely, using man's mind to understand the nature of reality and the causal factors that allow men to shape the world for their purposes.
The third factor, "capital markets", is an extension of property rights into the realm of finance. When men have confidence that their property rights will be respected in the long term under an objective rule of law, they are able to devise increasingly complex contracts to suit their financial needs, with terms involving time intervals that could span months, if not years. Men could create financial instruments that permit them to engage in lending, insurance, futures and options. Similarly, the birth of the limited liability corporation and the associated rise of stock markets greatly facilitated the ability of investors to shift their capital to ventures that could yield the greatest return, allowing both investors and producers to create and execute long-range plans over a period of years, if not decades.
The fourth factor, "communications", is the practical outgrowth of both reason and property rights. Even the apparently simple task of guaranteeing the safety of roads for travel and commerce required a government able to protect individual rights from thieves and highwaymen. More sophisticated forms of communications and transport, such as the telegraph and railroads, became possible only as men's reasoning minds created the necessary technology in a context where they could be turned into viable businesses under the protection of a government that respected property rights.
All of these factors were mutually reinforcing, in that the respect for rights and reason created prosperity which allowed for more innovations in science, technology, capital markets and communications, which led to more prosperity, etc. But the roots of this prosperity were ultimately philosophical. Without a proper understanding of rights, grounded in a philosophy of reason, none of the prosperity of the Anglosphere would have been possible.
Therefore, it is no coincidence that the GDP map tracks closely with countries that still respect reason and rights, which tracks closely with the Anglosphere. The prosperity of modern-day Japan follows from the sweeping cultural and political changes imposed on that country during the American occupation following World War II, and some regard it as a part of the "Anglosphere" in that sense.
(Note: William Bernstein is pretty good when it comes to historical discussion, but he is definitely not an advocate of full laissez-faire capitalism. For a more consistent defense of free market capitalism on both philosophical and historical grounds, I'd recommend the book by Andrew Bernstein, The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire. To the best of my knowledge, there is no relation between William Bernstein and Andrew Bernstein.)Labels: Economics, History
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Tuesday, August 05, 2008 |
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Our Secular Constitution |
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By Diana Hsieh @ 12:54 AM
[Originally posted to Politics without God, the blog of the Coalition for Secular Government.]
The Christian theocrats are attempting to transform America into a thoroughly Christian nation in her laws, institutions, and mores. They demand that abortion be banned, solely based on their tenuous interpretation of scripture. They vigorously campaign against any attempt to allow loving homosexual couples to secure their bond by law. They demand that all television be prudishly "family-friendly," without a boob or butt in sight.
One of the most common arguments of these theocrats for their coveted religious transformation is based on an appeal to our Founding Fathers. The Founders, they say, were devout Christians seeking to establish a Christian nation. The Founders, they say, never envisioned anything like the secularism of today's society and government.
Most Americans feel some reverence for our Founding Fathers, yet they know little of the actual words and deeds of the men who shaped our country: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, and others. (Thanks, government schools!) So too many American can be bamboozled by these claims of the theocrats. The snippets so often quoted by Christians to support their case are usually ripped from their proper context, then interpreted through Christian lenses. Any mention of God is read with an endorsement of Christianity and Christian government. The deism of many prominent Founders is ignored, as is their strident opposition to any kind of promotion of religion by the government.
However, the most clear evidence that the Founders intended their new government to be independent of any religion is found in three places in the Constitution:
First, the Preamble:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Notice what is missing from that basic statement of purpose: God. Moreover, the Constitution attempts to secure the very kind of this-worldly goods like peace, security, and justice that Jesus admonishes his followers to ignore. And it does not aim to promote the otherworldly goods like the salvation of one's soul that Jesus admonishes his followers to seek above all else.
Second, Article 6:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. So all government officials are required to uphold the Constitution, yet none can be subject to any kind of religious test. They cannot be required to espouse belief in Jesus, nor even belief in God, nor even in some vague Higher Power. Surely, if the Founders wished to create a Christian nation, they would have required that government officials be Christian.
Third, the First Amendment :
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The First Amendment forbids the government from interfering in people's religious lives, whether by forbidding or promoting certain religious beliefs and practices. If a Christian nation was their aim, then the Founders should have required the government to promote Christianity -- not forbidden it from doing so.
In future blog posts [on Politics without God], I will say more on the relationship of the Founding Fathers to religion, as the half-truths and outright lies spread by the theocrats must be combated. Yet it's amazing that a clear look at just these few passages from the Constitution wholly undermine their basic claim that America was founded as a Christian nation.Labels: History, Politics, Religion
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Wednesday, July 30, 2008 |
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Individualism, America, and Ayn Rand |
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By Paul Hsieh @ 1:00 AM
The following letter appeared in the online edition of the July 13, 2008 Denver Post, with negative reference to individualism and Ayn Rand. Since her name doesn't frequently appear in our local paper, I took this as an opportunity to set the record straight.
Here is the original letter:It wasn't individualism that settled the West
Re: "The Cowboy Myth," July 6 Perspective article.
There are two problems with Jeffrey Lockwood's support of the Cowboy Myth. First, we are constantly told that it was reality, that cowboys were the essential ingredient in the winning of the West. Truth is, the average cowboy was about as significant as today's parking lot attendant.
Perpetuating the Hollywood/dime fiction image of the cowboy propagates the false belief that Ayn Rand individualism was the historical way and will be the best future way to solve our nation’s problems. Truth is, the sodbusters were the key, the heroes: risking all, sticking determinedly in their forlorn shacks to raise their crops and banding together to raise their barns, build their schools and defend their homes.
The key to our nation's past successes was Americans joining together in common cause, not individualism. Working together will also be the key to our future.
Bill Belew
Boulder, CO My response was as follows:America was made by great individuals working under a system which (albeit imperfectly) protected their right to use their rational minds to create value and advance their lives. Where would we be without the likes of Thomas Edison, Westinghouse, and Henry Ford? This was a key insight of Ayn Rand and she deserves tremendous credit for promoting a philosophy that celebrates individual achievement -- the philosophy that underlies the positive and optimistic "can do" American sense of life.
Of course individuals can and should band together voluntarily when it suits their purposes. I have no problem with "working together" with others for mutual benefit as a voluntary arrangement, as many did in the Old West.
However, this notion is too-often corrupted into a vicious morality which preaches that the collective should take precedence over the individual, that individuals should be coerced to help one other, and that therefore we need massive government intrusions into the economy (such as “universal health care”) to automatically provide for everyone’s needs at taxpayer expense.
This approach will destroy the sorts of individuals who made America great, and will eventually destroy America. We need to celebrate and support the individuals who embody the American spirit and work-ethic, not punish them.
Paul Hsieh
Sedalia, CO Labels: History, Objectivism
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Tuesday, July 22, 2008 |
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Niles on Property Rights and the Electrical Grid |
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By Paul Hsieh @ 11:33 AM
I just finished reading the featured article in the Summer 2008 issue of The Objective Standard, "Property Rights and the Crisis of the Electric Grid" by Raymond Niles, and I can whole-heartedly recommend it.
I had always wondered how the electrical utilities evolved into their current dysfunctional state as quasi-governmental entities, and never understood why utilities didn't function more like private providers of essential goods (like grocery stores or airlines). Niles traces the history of the electrical utilities from the 1880's to the present time, and shows how the current problems with the electrical industry are the result of government interference with basic property rights from the very inception.
I was particularly interested in his account of the California "deregulation" fiasco of 2000-2001. Diana and I lived in San Diego at that time, so we experienced this crisis of skyrocketing costs and rolling blackouts first-hand. However, I couldn't make sense of the newspaper accounts at the time, which generally blamed the "free market" for the problems. (For a typical portrayal of the events, this Wikipedia entry on the "California Electricity Crisis" is a good example of the conventional wisdom).
Fortunately, Niles is able to reduce this complex topic to its essentials, using property rights as the unifying theme. As an industry analyst, he has tremendous knowledge of the history, and is able to communicate it clearly to a lay audience. And besides offering a critique of the current system, he also articulates a positive alternative vision of a free market electrical system in which property rights are genuinely respected, and the benefits it could bring to producers and consumers alike.
Because his article is the featured free article, it is available to both subscribers and non-subscribers. So read the whole thing.
(On a personal note, I had the pleasure of meeting Ray Niles at the OCON 2008 conference a few weeks ago, and found him to be a thorougly intelligent, articulate, and pleasant dinner companion.)Labels: Business, History
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Friday, July 04, 2008 |
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Jefferson's Last Letter |
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By Paul Hsieh @ 10:59 PM
Thomas Jefferson was invited to attend a celebration in Washington DC on July 4, 1826, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He had to decline due to reasons of health, but he did write the following in his last letter:I should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged there congratulations personally with the small band, the remnant of that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day, in the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country, between submission or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact, that our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made.
May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.
That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them. (Via Marginal Revolution.)Labels: History
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Monday, May 26, 2008 |
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Memorial Day |
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By Diana Hsieh @ 10:34 PM
On this Memorial Day, I would like to honor the three men of the American Civil War who understood the terrible need for total war: President Abraham Lincoln, General Ulysses S. Grant, and General William T. Sherman. Their vigorous prosecution of the war preserved the Union, the very first nation founded on the principles of individual rights -- and, at the time, the only such nation. In so doing, they ended the most loathsome violation of rights ever known to man: chattel slavery. Without them, without the brave Union soldiers who fought under them, America would not exist today.*
So thank you, Mssrs. Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman. We are forever in your debt.
* For the details, I strongly recommend reading James McPherson's stellar history of the Civil War, Battle Cry of Freedom.Labels: History
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Wednesday, May 07, 2008 |
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The Post-American World |
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By Paul Hsieh @ 12:05 AM
Recently, there have been a couple of high-profile articles featuring excerpts from the forthcoming book by Fareed Zakaria, international editor for Newsweek, entitled The Post-American World.
One article can be found here at the Newsweek site: "The Rise of the Rest".
The second article from Foreign Affairs is mirrored here: "The Future of American Power".
The New York Times has just reviewed the book here: "A Challenge for the U.S.: Sun Rising on the East".
These articles have already gotten a lot of attention on the blogosphere, and I anticipate the book will also be widely discussed. The basic premise is that the current era of American dominance in the world will soon come to an end, yielding to other powers such as China and India, much as the British dominance in the 19th century ended in the early 20th century (fortunately yielding to the United States.)
Zakaria does recognize important differences between the two situations, and he makes a number of correct observations with respect to specific issues and challenges facing the US. For instance, in the Newsweek article, he correctly points out that the US benefits greatly from energy of hard-working immigrants seeking to better their lives. In the Foreign Affairs article, he correctly notes that onerous government regulations threaten to harm the vitality of our capital markets, to the detriment of Americans in a global economy.
However, he also makes some serious errors. For instance, in the first article, he argues that the key in the international arena is to work on stabilizing the "global system" and ensuring that "China, India, Russia, Brazil all feel that they have a stake in the existing global order", to lessen the dangers of "war, depression, panics, and breakdowns". In the second article, he blames our "dysfunctional" political system, and argues that politicians of both major political parties must "compromise" in order to address major issues such as "health care, Social Security, tax reform".
Overall, he doesn't quite manage to tie all his points into a single unifying theme. Hence, I think this is an excellent opportunity for interested Objectivists to set forth their own arguments on the source of American greatness, what happened to erode it, and how we can recover it.
For example, here is the LTE I sent to Newsweek in response to their article:American decline is far from inevitable. America rose to greatness because it was founded on the principle of individual rights for all men (albeit imperfectly implemented). The resultant boom in American prosperity and power was the result of a capitalist system that allowed men and women to freely use their reason to better their lives. China and India are prospering because they are starting to allow partial capitalism into their economies as well.
If America wants to remain a vibrant, prosperous country, we need to abandon our current path towards European-style welfare statism and return to laissez-faire capitalism. The government should confine itself to protecting the individual's right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, and barring the initiation of force between men. If we reaffirm that basic principle, America can continue to remain a shining example of freedom and prosperity for the rest of the world.
Paul Hsieh, MD
Sedalia, CO Obviously, much more could be written on this subject. And Objectivists have a number of important and unique ideas to contribute to this discussion.Labels: History, Politics
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Sunday, April 20, 2008 |
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Nick and Abe |
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By Diana Hsieh @ 3:31 PM
Yesterday, Paul and I had the pleasure of lunching with Nick Provenzo of Rule of Reason, then walking and talking around DC with him for a few hours. The company was delightful and the weather was lovely, but the sights were a mixed bag.
I particularly wanted to visit the Lincoln Memorial, as I've grown to admire Lincoln intensely, despite some significant disagreements with his policies, in my study of the Civil War over the past few months. That was excellent, despite the throng of people. It's an absolutely fantastic statue of Lincoln.
We also visited the new World War Two Memorial. That was worse than I expected in its utter lack of meaning. Blech.
Happily, we also stopped by the statue of William Tecumseh Sherman near Lafayette Square. I'd also like to see the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial, so that I can pay my respects to him. I should be able to do that tomorrow before I head home.Labels: History, Personal
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Monday, April 07, 2008 |
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Economics Lessons From the First Thanksgiving |
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By Paul Hsieh @ 8:34 AM
Caroline Baum, the Bloomberg financial columnist who has written favorably about Ayn Rand, once wrote an interesting essay about economic incentives and the first Thanksgiving.
Here are some excerpts from Baum's essay. (The material in quotes is from William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth Bay Colony for 30 years between 1621 and 1656):...The Pilgrims' first winters after they landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and established the Plymouth Bay Colony were harsh. The weather and crop yields were poor.
Half the Pilgrims died or returned to England in the first year. Those who remained went hungry. Despite their deep religious convictions, the Pilgrims took to stealing from one another.
...One of the traditions the Pilgrims had brought with them from England was a practice known as "farming in common." Everything they produced was put into a common pool; the harvest was rationed according to need.
They had thought "that the taking away of property, and bringing in community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing," Bradford recounts.
They were wrong. "For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much imployment that would have been to their benefite and comforte," Bradford writes. Young, able-bodied men resented working for others without compensation. They thought it an "injuestice" to receive the same allotment of food and clothing as those who didn't pull their weight.
...After the Pilgrims had endured near-starvation for three winters, Bradford decided to experiment when it came time to plant in the spring of 1623. He set aside a plot of land for each family, that "they should set corne every man for his owne perticuler, and in that regard trust to themselves."
The results were nothing short of miraculous.
Bradford writes: "This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corne was planted than other waise would have bene by any means the Govr or any other could use, and saved him a great deall of trouble, and gave far better content."
The women now went willingly into the field, carrying their young children on their backs. Those who previously claimed they were too old or ill to work embraced the idea of private property and enjoyed the fruits of their labor, eventually producing enough to trade their excess corn for furs and other desired commodities.
...With proper incentives in place, the Pilgrims produced and enjoyed a bountiful harvest in the fall of 1623 and set aside "a day of thanksgiving" to thank God for their good fortune.
"Any generall wante or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day," Bradford writes in an entry from 1647, the last year covered by his history.
We now know the Pilgrims' good fortune had nothing to do with luck. In 1623, they were responding to the same incentives that, almost four centuries later, have come to be regarded as necessary for a free, productive and prosperous society. I don't know if Ayn Rand was familiar with the Pilgrims' story when she wrote her fictional history of the Twentieth Century Motor Company in Atlas Shrugged. (Of course, her direct personal experience growing up in the USSR undoubtedly provided her with ample evidence of the importance of property rights, without having to study the history of the Pilgrims!)
But the parallels are striking, because the principle is the same. Trying to live by the credo of "from each according to his ability; to each according to his need" leads only to misery and poverty, and turns decent people into criminals. On the other hand, respecting property rights results in happiness and prosperity.
If only more Americans had remembered the economic and moral lessons of 1623, then we might have avoided some of the painful mistakes of the 20th century.Labels: Economics, History
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