The whole thing is worth reading, but here is one excerpt that stood out for me:
North Korea is so broke that it can't even expand its prison system. Currently, there are six main work camps, holding 200,000 prisoners. The camps run factories, mines and farms, but to build additional camps requires cash and resources the government doesn't have. So food for the camps is being cut, to encourage the weaker prisoners to die, and make room for the many new "economic criminals" (especially those sneaking food in from China.)
There is also paralysis at the top when it comes to resuming negotiations with the U.S. and neighboring countries, that are willing to provide food and other aid, if the north will abandon nuclear weapons. Many North Korean officials are willing to make the trade, but refuse to allow the inspections demanded.
The big fear is that the outsiders will find out how bad off North Korea really is. This, despite the fact that this is not much of a secret anymore.
Fortunately, it looks like the Obama Administration is not in a hurry to agree to more negotiations and talks with such a weakened (yet unrepentant) enemy.
Given that I oppose so many of the current President's policies, I do wish to give him credit on those occasions where I agree with him.
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:00 AM
On Saturday morning, I gave my first speech to Liberty Toastmasters. I was very pleased with it -- more so than expected.
The speech wasn't brilliant or deep, but it was perfect for the audience. I was able to use my notes as nothing but a rough outline, then ad lib around that. (Although I never write out speeches in full, I'm usually too dependent on my notes.) My delivery felt good too. In fact, I'm happy to report that I won the "best speaker" award -- by a unanimous vote! Hooray! My strength in Toastmasters has always been evaluations: I can give a kick-ass evaluation at the drop of a hat. So I'm really hoping to develop my skills at impromptu speaking and prepared speeches.
Honestly, the speech went so well that I wished that I'd recorded it. However, I decided to do the next best thing: I recorded a video of it when I got home.
I've been wanting to try video for a while, but I just couldn't carve out an opportunity. Finally, I had one! So I recorded it with my iSight webcam on my iMac, plus the good condenser microphone that I use for podcasting.
As you'll see, it's rather rough, not just because I did it on a lark, but also because I allowed myself just one take. Next time, I'm going to have to work on keeping eye contact with the camera. I'm used to roving my eyes around the room while speaking, so focusing on the video camera is something new. I need to find ways to position my notes, so that they're not a distraction to my eyes. I need to adjust the light in my office. And I want to try shooting the video with my new camera, then perhaps with a real video camera.
However, I'm pleased by how much more of me is captured in video than in blog posts and podcasts. I'm really fascinated by that, and I'm going to think about how to best use that.
By Diana Hsieh @ 2:00 PM
I want to strongly recommend this recently-released lecture by Onkar Ghate on "The Separation of Church and State," given at OCON in 2009. It was particularly stellar.
With religion on the rise in America, maintaining the separation of church and state is now a pressing issue. This talk begins with an examination of the contemporary debate about the principle of separating religion from government. Dr. Ghate argues that both sides of the contemporary debate are mistaken and explains why today even most well-meaning Americans are unable to mount a tenable defense of the principle. To understand what the principle actually means, Dr. Ghate then considers some of the history behind the principle, focusing on John Locke's crucial contributions. Finally, Dr. Ghate sketches what a full philosophical argument for the separation of church and state looks like.
For an understanding of the philosophic foundation of the secular government, including the problems with the standard attacks on and defenses thereof, you won't find anything better. Most people in the audience were surprised and delighted by the discussion of John Locke on faith. I wasn't surprised, but I was delighted! I've always taught a class on "Faith and Reason" in my Introduction to Philosophy courses, and Locke is undoubtedly the highlight. While he defends faith, his defense is such that faith cannot sustain any foothold in cognition. (Locke is far, far better than Thomas Aquinas on this issue... but that's a subject for a future podcast.)
I'm simply overwhelmed to read Tony Judt's account of a single night stuck in the prison of his body, ravaged by ALS (a.k.a. Lou Gherig's disease). Here's how he describes his basic condition:
By my present stage of decline, I am thus effectively quadriplegic. With extraordinary effort I can move my right hand a little and can adduct my left arm some six inches across my chest. My legs, although they will lock when upright long enough to allow a nurse to transfer me from one chair to another, cannot bear my weight and only one of them has any autonomous movement left in it. Thus when legs or arms are set in a given position, there they remain until someone moves them for me. The same is true of my torso, with the result that backache from inertia and pressure is a chronic irritation. Having no use of my arms, I cannot scratch an itch, adjust my spectacles, remove food particles from my teeth, or anything else that--as a moment's reflection will confirm--we all do dozens of times a day. To say the least, I am utterly and completely dependent upon the kindness of strangers (and anyone else).
Please, go read the whole thing. While I don't know what Mr. Judt's own religious views are, I regard his life as a clear demonstration of the life-hating brutality of Christian doctrine. To wit:
Christianity regards suffering like that of Mr. Judt as not merely noble and elevated, but positively divine. It's not good to live fully, happily, robustly according to Christianity: it's good to suffer and die. That's what Jesus taught -- and then he lived and died by that ideal.
Christianity regards the body as a vile, despicable prison that leads a person's divine soul astray into the dark depths of sin. Mr. Judt is positively lucky, as his body really is a prison: he cannot indulge pleasures of the flesh, not even the seemingly minor ones like scratching his own itches.
Christianity regards Mr. Judt's life as God's property, not as his own. So Mr. Judt must be forbidden by law from ending his own life, if and when it becomes intolerable. If anyone attempts to help him end his life, that person should be imprisoned as a murderer. As a bonus, if Mr. Judt manages to end his own life somehow, the loving Christian God will consign him to the torments of hell for all eternity.
Of course, many Christians do not live by such dark principles. They are kind, decent people, loathe to see anyone suffering from such a tragic condition. They might even support stem-cell research, and even assisted suicide. To that extent, their values are more American -- loving science, seeking happiness, and upholding individual rights -- than Christian.
It is time to tell people the unvarnished truth: to stand up for man's mind and this earth, and against any version of mysticism or religion. It is time to tell people: "You must choose between unreason and America. You cannot have both. Take your pick."
If there is to be any chance for the future, this is the only chance there is.
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:00 AM
Despite the good news of late, the inmates are still running quite a few wings of the asylum.
Three colleges seeking to experiment with using the Kindle rather than expensive textbooks have been forbidden from doing so by the Justice Department. Why? Because they're not fully functional for blind students. Of course, the Kindle offers a good text-to-speech reader, so that makes it superior to an ordinary textbook for a blind student. However, the problem is that the menu functions of the Kindle require sight to navigate at present.
According to the Justice Department, blind college students are so profoundly disabled -- despite reaching college without the benefit of sight -- that they cannot possibly find any way around this problem. It would be impossible, for example, for them to ask a fellow student or a roommate for help with locating the right file. Of course, that wouldn't be ideal for them. I'd love to see the Kindle updated so as to read out the menu items for the sake of blind users. Yet the idea that a blind person couldn't manage this problem -- despite overcoming so many difficulties to get to college -- is absurd... and offensive.
According to the Department of Justice:
Under the agreements reached today, the universities generally will not purchase, recommend or promote use of the Kindle DX, or any other dedicated electronic book reader, unless the devices are fully accessible to students who are blind and have low vision. The universities agree that if they use dedicated electronic book readers, they will ensure that students with vision disabilities are able to access and acquire the same materials and information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as sighted students with substantially equivalent ease of use.
That's demanding the impossible, particularly in a college setting. Blind students necessarily lack the easy access to visual information available to any sighted person. They will have to work harder to read a textbook or handout than a sighted student. Some forms of information, like PowerPoint presentations or writing on the chalkboard, might be largely inaccessible to them. The simple fact is that blind people have to work harder to educate themselves. Technology can make that process easier, but blind people cannot be made equal to sighted people -- except by blinding sighted people.
Notably, conservatives often oppose such policies. They reject the ideal of "equality of outcomes" in favor of "equality of opportunity." Yet notice that the Department of Justice appeals only the "equality of opportunity" to justify their interference. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said:
Advancing technology is systematically changing the way universities approach education, but we must be sure that emerging technologies offer individuals with disabilities the same opportunities as other students. These agreements underscore the importance of full and equal educational opportunities for everyone. [Emphasis added.]
People's opportunities in life often depend on factors beyond their control -- meaning, on bad luck. A person might be born with a congenital disorder. He might be born to stupid, poor, or amoral parents -- or in a backwards, irrational culture. He might suffer a terrible injury in an accident. A person can be the victim of bad luck, such that he must work harder than others to live well. Undoubtedly, that's unfortunate, perhaps even pitiable. Such people are often worthy of benevolent help. They are often admirable for overcoming their misfortunes by courage, determination, and hard work.
However, justice does not oblige anyone to help to unlucky people so that their opportunities in life are the same as everyone else's. A person is responsible for making his own life as good as he can, whatever misfortunes he might suffer. That's his basic job as a human person. Other people are only obligated to leave him free to do that, by respecting his rights. That's what a person needs -- more than anything else -- to overcome any kind of bad luck: he needs the freedom to act according to his own best judgment, for the sake of his own life and happiness. Moreover, the unlucky person needs other people, whatever their luck in life, to enjoy the same freedom. The freedom of others will enable them to be most productive, and the unlucky person will thereby benefit in trade. In addition, although far less important, that freedom will enable others to more easily help him through charity, if they wish to do that.
The Justice Department rejects that approach based on each individual's right to his own life and responsibility to live it as best he can. They prefer to deny everyone, rather than permit some people to enjoy the benefit of a technology that others cannot fully enjoy at present. In other words, everyone must be held down to the standards of the least capable -- in the name of equality of opportunity.
My theme is that the recent election in Massachusetts (as well as the earlier November 2009 elections in NY, NJ, and VA) show that independent voters want limited government. Specifically, they want "the Democrats out of their pockets and the Republicans out of their bedrooms."
Here's the opening:
In the aftermath of Scott Brown's stunning upset election victory in Massachusetts, pundits will be debating the meaning and political implications for weeks to come. However, one fact is incontrovertibly clear. The race hinged on the independent voters.
In Massachusetts, 50% of the registered voters are independent, as opposed to 37% Democratic and 12% Republican. In this week's election, independents voted overwhelmingly for Brown, giving him a 52-to-47% victory -- in a state where Barack Obama easily won 62% of the vote in 2008. This enormous swing shows that the independents represent a powerful political force that neither party can take for granted.
Independents are also the driving force behind the tea party rallies. Many tea party supporters have been quite explicit in warning that their opposition to the policies of our current Democratic president and Congress should not be mistaken as automatic support for the Republicans.
So what do the independents want? In a word, limited government...
However, the fallout for the health care debate has begun as Democrats in Congress are starting to shy away from ObamaCare. Even Barney Frank has expressed his doubts about its eventual passage.
Although we're still a long ways away from genuine free market reforms, last night's election may have halted the momentum towards a seemingly-inevitable government takeover of medicine. Perhaps now, some genuine free market reforms can be part of the health care debate.
I would like to highlight the fact that the Massachusetts election confirms what Duke University professor John Lewis observed in his superb article in the Fall 2009 issue of The Objective Standard entitled, "Obama's Atomic Bomb: The Ideological Clarity of the Democratic Agenda":
...This is the clarity that Obama has brought to the American political scene. To see a president’s clear and principled commitment to an ideology -- any ideology -- is precisely what America has needed for decades. This sight has helped many people understand the issues at a more fundamental level than they ever have.
Obama and his congressional allies have unwittingly launched a grass-roots movement that is actively questioning the role of government in our lives. Although a large portion of the protesters remains confused about the principles at stake, an increasing number are gaining clarity. They are coming to see the Democratic proposals for health-care "reform," for instance, not as a matter of new programs backed by good intentions, but as an attack on individual rights and an effort to impose a dictatorship -- as signs at tea parties attest. And many are beginning to see that the Republicans as well have been guilty of such attacks.
...Many Americans are now able to see Obama's plans as an assault on the founding principles of this nation. In addition, many Americans realize that time is running out -- that the future is here, today. These two factors are energizing otherwise nonpolitical Americans to literally rally around the flag, to confront their elected representatives, and to turn against the administration in droves.
Last night, the people of Massachusetts spoke loud and clear to express their rejection of ObamaCare and the underlying ideology.
Brown may not be a perfect candidate, but his election will buy supporters of free markets and individual some valuable time to promote our ideas.
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:00 AM
You might be surprised to learn that New York City doesn't have a mayor. Yet it's true! New York City is governed by an armed nanny, Michael Bloomberg. He is determined to coerce adults into his vision of healthy living, without regard to their rights or the relevant science. His latest proposal concerns salt. The New York Timesreports:
First New York City required restaurants to cut out trans fat. Then it made restaurant chains post calorie counts on their menus. Now it wants to protect people from another health scourge: salt.
On Monday, the Bloomberg administration plans to unveil a broad new health initiative aimed at encouraging food manufacturers and restaurant chains across the country to curtail the amount of salt in their products.
...
The city's campaign against salt resembles its push to cut trans fat from restaurant foods, which began with a call for voluntary compliance. When that did not work, the city passed a law to force restaurants to eliminate trans fat.
But city officials said it would be difficult to legislate sodium reduction.
"There's not an easy regulatory fix," said Geoffrey Cowley, an associate health commissioner. "You would have to micromanage so many targets for so many different products."
Oh, don't worry about those pesky details! Nanny Bloomberg will do his very best to mandate salt reduction at the point of a gun when his "voluntary" scheme fails.
Back in April, John Tierney wrote an excellent op-ed for the New York Times about this proposal, likening it to an ill-founded experiment using the whole city as unwitting subjects. That's clearly immoral, particularly given that the case against salt -- not just for healthy people but even for people with heart disease -- is weak at best. Tierney writes:
First, a reduced-salt diet doesn't lower everyone's blood pressure. Some individuals' blood pressure can actually rise in response to less salt, and most people aren't affected much either way. The more notable drop in blood pressure tends to occur in some -- but by no means all -- people with hypertension, a condition that affects more than a quarter of American adults.
Second, even though lower blood pressure correlates with less heart disease, scientists haven't demonstrated that eating less salt leads to better health and longer life. The results from observational studies have too often been inconclusive and contradictory. After reviewing the literature for the Cochrane Collaboration in 2003, researchers from Copenhagen University concluded that "there is little evidence for long-term benefit from reducing salt intake."
Even worse, salt-reduction might kill people with heart disease:
In the past year, researchers led by Salvatore Paterna of the University of Palermo have reported one of the most rigorous experiments so far: a randomized clinical trial of heart patients who were put on different diets. Those on a low-sodium diet were more likely to be rehospitalized and to die, results that prompted the researchers to ask, "Is sodium an old enemy or a new friend?"
Moreover, salt might be the only source of iodine for many people. Of course, iodized salt isn't a great source of iodine, and much salt isn't iodized. Nonetheless, further salt reduction would likely only exacerbate the all-too-common iodine deficiency in America today. Such iodine deficiency can be a source of major health problems -- such as hypothyroidism, retardation in children, goiter, and possibly breast disease. Moreover -- surprise, surprise! -- hypothyroidism dramatically increases risk of heart disease -- the very condition that the Nanny of NYC seeks to reduce by limiting salt.
No, I won't call that an unintended consequence. Like the politicians determined to worsen the mortgage crisis with their good intentions, Nanny Statists like Bloomberg ought to know better. They deserve to be morally condemned in the strongest possible terms for the suffering and death they cause by their negligent exercise of force.
The Obama administration’s $75 billion program to protect homeowners from foreclosure has been widely pronounced a disappointment, and some economists and real estate experts now contend it has done more harm than good.
Since President Obama announced the program in February, it has lowered mortgage payments on a trial basis for hundreds of thousands of people but has largely failed to provide permanent relief. Critics increasingly argue that the program, Making Home Affordable, has raised false hopes among people who simply cannot afford their homes.
As a result, desperate homeowners have sent payments to banks in often-futile efforts to keep their homes, which some see as wasting dollars they could have saved in preparation for moving to cheaper rental residences. Some borrowers have seen their credit tarnished while falsely assuming that loan modifications involved no negative reports to credit agencies.
Some experts argue the program has impeded economic recovery by delaying a wrenching yet cleansing process through which borrowers give up unaffordable homes and banks fully reckon with their disastrous bets on real estate, enabling money to flow more freely through the financial system.
Go read the whole article. Conservatives tend to speak of these kinds of harms to underwater homeowners and financial markets as "unintended consequences." That's terribly wrong, I think.
Politicians should know better than to enact such laws. They ought to take some care in how they do their job -- just as electricians, doctors, and even garbage collectors do. That includes investigating the likely effects of proposed laws -- rather than hand-waving them away with the thought that they mean well. If they fail to do that due diligence, we are entitled to think them negligent -- or worse... that they intend their laws to fail so as to excuse even more violations of our property and contract rights.
Let's make sure that we call the spade that's digging our mass grave "a spade," not an "unintended consequence."
By Paul Hsieh @ 8:00 AM
As many people have observed, California is often a bellwether for trends that will hit the rest of America.
Or as New York Times columnist Ross Douthat puts it, "The argument about what went wrong with California is really an argument about the future of America".
Those of us in Colorado have also noted that many Californians like to move here to escape the high taxes and high regulations that made their lives miserable. Yet once here, many of those refugees then vote to impose the same policies in CO that caused them to leave CA in the first place!
Hence, I thought NoodleFood members might be interested in the new laws that will take effect in California in 2010. All of these laws were passed by a Democratic state legislature and presumably met with approval by Republican governor Schwarzenegger.
Air safety: Allows airports to kill birds that pose a danger to aircraft without violating state fish and game laws.
Blueberries: Creates a California Blueberry Commission, to be funded by an industry fee of up to $0.025 per pound of berries sold.
Burial fees: Allows state-owned cemeteries to waive the fees for interment of the spouses and children of honorably discharged veterans if they determine the families cannot pay the costs.
Charter schools: Allows such schools access to about $900 million in voter-approved bond money for construction. A separate law gives districts more incentive to approve them by cutting red tape.
College violence: Allows universities to obtain restraining orders on behalf of students against a person who has threatened them with violence.
Cow tails: Bans the dairy-industry practice of shortening cows' tails unless necessary to protect the health of the animals. Some argue that tail-docking is inhumane.
Delta restoration: Creates a new Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Conservancy to oversee restoration of the failing delta ecosystem. Sets goals of "providing a more reliable water supply for California and protecting, restoring, and enhancing the delta ecosystem." Part of the larger water package.
Dog fights: Raises the maximum penalties against those convicted of being spectators at dogfights, subjecting them to as much as a year in jail and a $5,000 fine.
Drunk driving: Creates a test program in four counties, including Los Angeles County, in which judges can require that first-time drunk-driving offenders install a breath-testing device on every vehicle they own and pass a test on it before the vehicle will start.
Education: Allows school and student performance data to be used to judge the quality of instruction. The change will allow California to compete for federal Race to the Top education grants.
Fat in food: Requires restaurants to use oils, margarine and shortening with less than half a gram of trans fat per serving of regular foods. The standard will apply to deep-fried bakery goods next year. Trans fat has been linked to heart disease.
Football stadium: Exempts a professional football stadium proposed in the City of Industry from state environmental laws, so it can proceed despite a lawsuit filed by opponents.
Fire prevention: Requires government officials to improve guidelines for protecting property from wildfires, including larger brush-clearance zones and better access roads in regions vulnerable to such fires.
Fire safety: In response to evacuation problems during a 2008 wildfire that destroyed dozens of mobile homes in the San Fernando Valley, a new law requires owners of mobile home parks to adopt and post notice of an emergency preparedness plan.
Gangs: Allows tougher penalties, including a fine of up to $1,000 and up to a year in jail, for gang members who return to school campuses within 72 hours of being asked to leave.
Gasoline: Increases the underground storage fee paid by gas retailers to help fund grants and loans to those who need to meet tank cleanup rules and install devices that capture more vapor from gas nozzles.
Gay marriage: Recognizes same-sex marriages performed in other states before California voters banned gay marriage in 2008 by approving Proposition 8.
Hanging nooses: Makes it a misdemeanor to hang a noose, "knowing it to be a symbol representing a threat to life," in order to terrorize a person who lives, works or attends school at the property where the noose is hung. The law is in response to a series of incidents at California colleges.
Harvey Milk: Proclaims gay-rights activist Harvey Milk's May 22 birthday as a day of recognition and encourages schools to consider commemorating his life.
High-speed rail: Requires the state's High-Speed Rail Authority to prepare, publish and adopt a business plan by Jan. 1, 2012, and every two years thereafter, so the public knows how its money is being spent.
Hospital fee: Imposes a new fee on hospitals to make them eligible for $2 billion in federal funds. The funds are subsidies for Medi-Cal, the state's health insurance program for the poor.
Human trafficking: Quadruples the fine, to $20,000, for those convicted of human-trafficking crimes and allows law enforcement officers to seize traffickers' assets.
Inhalants: Makes it a misdemeanor for a person to sell or furnish products containing nitrous oxide to a minor.
Jail guards: Allows jail guards and custodial assistants to have the blood of people taken into custody tested for specified communicable diseases when exposed to the suspect's bodily fluids.
Liquor ads: Waives rules prohibiting indoor alcohol advertisements in one club that sells the featured products: Club Nokia, a downtown Los Angeles venue owned by billionaire Philip Anschutz.
Mammogram safety: Requires facilities that operate mammogram machines to post any notices of "serious violations" they may receive in an area visible to patients. Serious violations are those posing a significant threat to public health.
Mortgage crimes: Creates a new offense, "mortgage fraud," punishable by up to a year in prison. Such crimes are defined as those in which someone makes "any misstatement, misrepresentation or omission during the mortgage lending process with the intention that it be relied on by a mortgage lender, borrower, or any other party to the mortgage lending process."
Office bets: Changes the penalty for participation in a non-commercial or office "sports betting pool" from a misdemeanor, punishable by fines up to $1,000, to an infraction, punishable by a fine not to exceed $250.
Paparazzi penalties: Allows celebrities and others to sue for up to $50,000 when someone takes and sells their pictures without permission while they are engaging in "personal or familial activity," such as taking their children to school.
Plastic surgery: Enacts the Donda West law, named after the deceased mother of rapper Kanye West, that prohibits elective cosmetic surgery unless the patient is first cleared by a physical examination.
Political spouses: Prohibits political candidates from paying their spouses or domestic partners to work on their campaigns to enrich their own households.
Prostitution arrests: Allows local government agencies to impound vehicles used in the commission of prostitution-related crimes.
Rental cars: Allows car-rental companies to recover from customers an increase made last year in the vehicle license fee from 0.65% to 1.15%.
School books: Expands the use of digital textbooks in public schools by allowing districts to use textbook money to buy electronic viewing devices.
School buses: Extends to school buses the $300 penalty already applicable to commercial vehicles that idle too long. Existing clean-air regulations prohibit school buses from idling for more than five minutes within 100 feet of a school, but the fine has been $100.
School safety: Makes it a misdemeanor to possess a razor blade or box cutter on school grounds.
Talent agents: Prohibits talent representatives from charging advance fees.
Teen voting: Permits a California resident who is 17 to pre-register to vote.
Snake food: Requires pet stores to use specific, "humane" methods for killing rodents before they are used as food for another animal.
Toll roads: Allows toll road operators to use license-plate-reading technology to bill motorists who use their roads.
Used car sales: Bars car dealers from selling a used vehicle until action is taken to cover any previous loan or lease obligations held by a previous owner. Also boosts by $25 fees for dealers' state business licenses.
Vietnam veterans: Establishes an annual Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day on March 30.
Water management: To better manage California's water supplies, creates a statewide monitoring program to track groundwater levels.
Water softeners: Allows local governments to ban residential water softeners if regulators find that salts discharged into municipal sewer lines pose a pollution problem.
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:00 AM
As 2009 comes to a close, you must read one thing, namely Dave Barry's lengthy review of the year. It's insanely hysterical -- and depressing. Here's the opening:
It was a year of Hope -- at first in the sense of "I feel hopeful!" and later in the sense of "I hope this year ends soon!"
It was also a year of Change, especially in Washington, where the tired old hacks of yesteryear finally yielded the reins of power to a group of fresh, young, idealistic, new-idea outsiders such as Nancy Pelosi. As a result Washington, rejecting "business as usual," finally stopped trying to solve every problem by throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at it and instead started trying to solve every problem by throwing trillions of taxpayer dollars at it.
To be sure, it was a year that saw plenty of bad news. But in almost every instance, there was offsetting good news:
BAD NEWS: The economy remained critically weak, with rising unemployment, a severely depressed real-estate market, the near-collapse of the domestic automobile industry and the steep decline of the dollar.
GOOD NEWS: Windows 7 sucked less than Vista.
BAD NEWS: The downward spiral of the newspaper industry continued, resulting in the firings of thousands of experienced reporters and an apparently permanent deterioration in the quality of American journalism.
GOOD NEWS: A lot more people were tweeting.
BAD NEWS: Ominous problems loomed abroad as -- among other difficulties -- the Afghanistan war went sour, and Iran threatened to plunge the Middle East and beyond into nuclear war.
GOOD NEWS: They finally got Roman Polanski.
The column then launches into a month-by-month survey of major events. It's fabulous. And it's awful. Go read the whole thing.
By Diana Hsieh @ 2:00 PM
What will happen if gays are permitted to marry? Pundits disagree, but this pie chart seems pretty accurate to me:
Oh yes... Be afraid, be very afraid.
Sadly, religious bigotry against gays -- although absurd in itself -- has very real consequences for gay couples and their children, as this Miss Manners' column shows:
Dear Miss Manners:
My partner and I adopted a child three years ago. He has become a happy, silly, active, loving child.
When we were going through the adoption process, the topic of being a "conspicuous family" was discussed. As two men with a child, we fall into that category.
Several times over the last couple of years, we have been verbally attacked. Twice we have been in a grocery store when someone informed us that we were not a "real family." On one of these situations, we were even told that we were condemned to hell!
Another time, when I was having breakfast out with our son, I was discussing children with a woman who was there with two of her own. The conversation was casual and amiable. When I mentioned "my partner" in the conversation, she started shouting at me, "You're evil! You are doing that child a great injustice!"
Our son's birth mother was a heroin and cocaine user during her pregnancy. She had the presence of mind to realize she couldn't take care of him and chose us as his adoptive parents.
We didn't decide to adopt to "save" a child, but the fact is, we will probably be able to give our son a much better life than if he had stayed with his birth mother.
How do we react to these people?
Miss Manners' advice is good, as usual:
A gentleman of Miss Manners's acquaintance was once subjected to a barrage of unwarranted insults. Outraged on his behalf, she asked why he did not trouble to defend himself.
His reply (and please forgive the inelegance for the sake of vividness) was: "If someone is throwing up on you, you get out of the way. You do not stay around to examine what is coming up."
There is nothing you can say to people who, whatever they may think, see fit to hurl crude insults at you, even in front of your son.
A stiff "I'm sorry you feel that way" is all you can utter before turning your back.
Happily, time is on the side of gay couples -- provided that America doesn't become the "Christian nation" sought by so many conservatives.
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.
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.
By Diana Hsieh @ 5:00 AM
Yesterday, Ari Armstrong published a good op-ed against the push by the American Booksellers Association appeal for antitrust action against sellers of low-price books like Amazon and Wal-mart. As he observes:
When politicians control the physical conveyance of ideas, they can control the ideas themselves. As a villain in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged explains, "If you breathe the word 'censorship' now, they'll all scream bloody murder... But if you leave the spirit alone and make it a simple material issue -- not a matter of ideas, but just a matter of paper, ink and printing presses -- you accomplish your purpose much more smoothly."
That was certainly the method used in the Soviet Union: the Bolsheviks suppressed opposition by taking control over mere property, namely the printing presses.
I see another parallel to Atlas Shrugged in this call for government intervention, particularly from the section that we just read for our Atlas Shrugged Reading Group. Ari writes:
The letter [from the American Booksellers Association] argues that selling low-priced books to people who want to buy them constitutes "illegal predatory pricing that is damaging to the book industry and harmful to consumers."
You might think that "lower prices will encourage more reading and a greater sharing of ideas in the culture," but you would be wrong, the ABA claims. Low-priced books will drive out "many independent bookstores," put book buying "in very few hands," and eventually allow "mega booksellers to raise prices," the ABA asserts.
Ari's response to that is right:
Once a retailer purchases books from a willing publisher without pricing restrictions, the retailer properly has the right to sell the book for any amount it deems proper. If the retailer wants to sell books below cost as a loss leader, give them away, or pay people to take them, that's between them and their customers.
Yet notice that the ABA regards the most successful book sellers as eating up the whole market share, understood as a fixed pie, thereby taking business that would otherwise be given to the smaller bookseller. Yet that's a naive view of markets. As Ayn Rand observes, large producers often make the existence of smaller ones possible by keeping down costs. She makes this point in the course of describing the effects of Ellis Wyatt's quitting:
It had lasted less than six months after Ellis Wyatt had gone -- that period which a columnist had gleefully called "the field day of the little fellow." Every oil operator in the country, who owned three wells and whined that Ellis Wyatt left him no chance of livelihood, had rushed to fill the hole which Wyatt had left wide open. They formed leagues, cooperatives, associations; they pooled their resources and their letterheads. "The little fellow's day in the sun," the columnist had said. Their sun had been the flames that twisted through the derricks of Wyatt Oil. In its glare, they made the kind of fortunes they had dreamed about, fortunes requiring no competence or effort. Then their biggest customers, such as power companies, who drank oil by the trainful and would make no allowances for human frailty, began to convert to coal -- and the smaller customers, who were more tolerant, began to go out of business -- the boys in Washington imposed rationing on oil and an emergency tax on employers to support the unemployed oil field workers -- then a few of the big oil companies closed down -- then the little fellows in the sun discovered that a drilling bit which had cost a hundred dollars, now cost them five hundred, there being no market for oilfield equipment, and the suppliers having to earn on one drill what they had earned on five, or perish -- then the pipe lines began to close, there being no one able to pay for their upkeep -- then the railroads were granted permission to raise their freight rates, there being little oil to carry and the cost of running tank trains having crushed two small lines out of existence -- and when the sun went down, they saw that the operating costs, which had once permitted them to exist on their sixty-acre fields, had been made possible by the miles of Wyatt's hillside and had gone in the same coils of smoke. Not until their fortunes had vanished and their pumps had stopped, did the little fellows realize that no business in the country could afford to buy oil at the price it would now take them to produce it. Then the boys in Washington granted subsidies to the oil operators, but not all of the oil operators had friends in Washington, and there followed a situation which no one cared to examine too closely or to discuss.
But what of the authority of the state to do this? I do think it's a valid question. ... I think there can only be justification for such coercive action by the state if it's proven that the flu will be more dangerous than usual and if this vaccine has been proven effective against this virus in an objective scientific manner. Is that the correct Objectivist response?
I replied:
No, I don't think that's right.
First, any government action for an epidemic must concern a seriously dangerous disease -- meaning one that risks mass death -- not merely a "more dangerous than usual" flu. That danger must be demonstrated objectively by lots of actual deaths. Moreover, people must be unable to take measures to protect themselves from the disease such as wearing masks, not shaking hands, etc.
Moreover, while quarantine of infected people (or perhaps, in severe cases, suspected infected people) might be justified, a proper state could never mandate vaccination. Why not? Vaccination primarily protects the person vaccinated. It's not a violation of the rights of others to fail to be vaccinated. You have every right to get sick and die! The tort lies in knowingly or willingly spreading the disease to others.
So... when a person contracts a dangerous communicable disease and then exposes other people to it by ordinary social interactions, he violates their rights. It's akin to driving a car while drunk. That person is exposing other people to major threats to their life and limb without their consent. That's what justifies government action to protect the healthy -- but only in the form of forced isolation of the sick.
I was reminded of this discussion while catching up on some of Leonard Peikoff's podcasts a few days ago. In Episode #82, Dr. Peikoff addressed this issue, briefly answering the questions: (1) "Is it justified to force sick patients into quarantine if the disease is serious enough?" and (2) "What about a vaccine to force citizens to take it?" Like me, he said that quarantine would be justified in certain cases, but that vaccinations could never be required by the state. Good!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
E-mail Paul Hsieh
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