Through Big Government comes a response piece by Ben Domenech of News Ledger to Steven Hayward's Washington Post intellectual flop "Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?" (which I myself posted a response to). Domenech's piece hits extremely close to home for this do-it-yourself blogger on many points. Most of Domenech's piece will be reposted here, due to its instructive value.
The Right's Real Problem: Too Big To Fail by Ben Domenech
It’s always interesting to me how the American Right — arguably the largest pro-capitalist, pro-market political force in the world — is so quick to ignore the lessons of the entrepreneurial marketplace when it comes to their organizations and structure. A powerful example can be found in the analysis of Steve Hayward, a smart scholar for the American Enterprise Institute who I respect greatly, whose Sunday column in the Washington Post on “Brain-Dead” conservatism prompted several reactions from libertarians, conservatives, and bloggers alike. I rarely disagree with Hayward, who is a bright and thoughtful fellow. But in the case of this piece, it is very hard to see past this level of self-indictment.
The real untold story of the past decade on the Right is one of profound misallocation of resources — particularly jarring considering we are discussing for the most part organizations and people who espouse again and again the virtues of competition and the wisdom of the marketplace. It is now a disaster of monumental proportions, one that has gutted innovators and entrepreneurs on the right for the sake of keeping a doddering establishment on life support. Taken as a whole, it represents a total market failure.
Hayward joins the conventional wisdom of Washington in missing the real story about the Right’s struggles in recent years — missing it in a profound way which exemplifies the inside-the-beltway thinking that continues to cripple conservatism. As my colleague Pejman Yousefzadeh summarizes it, Hayward “points out that there is a serious imbalance between intellectuals on the Right, and activists on the Right. There are plenty of the latter, but not nearly enough of the former.”
This strikes me as exactly the opposite of the truth. When one surveys the organization lists and attendees inside the Beltway and in most states outside it, you find scads of policy experts and think tank scholars. While state activist organizations have struggled on small budgets, and while conservative writers and pro-market bloggers can barely keep the lights on, national-level opinionmakers and opinionsharers remain plentiful, saturating the market, the panel circuit, and the cable news with their wisdom — which can be had for pennies, and if it’s a wannabe intellectual, for even less.
Why is this the case? The simple fact is that the dominance of the left in American higher education has left a great number of smart, well-educated people who would otherwise be known as the lone smart conservative professor in a department looking for more comfortable, more reliable, and better paid jobs. There can only be so many token ideological hires at the Ivy League level, and with the doors of the high halls of academia closed off to them, these intellectuals gravitate instead to the world of think tanks.
AEI is a perfect example of this phenomenon — in fact, they sometimes refer to themselves as a university without students. Their resident scholars are top-heavy with lots of impressive super-professors, department chairs as it were, who are free to write and do just about anything they want, with very few limits. Unlike some other examples of this model, most of these AEI scholars are actually worth the money — their new president, Arthur Brooks, has a profound understanding of the weaknesses and strengths of their model, and one of their fellows, Roger Bate, is a frequent contributor here — but AEI is the exception, not the rule.
The Right in America is heavy with clubs for smart people — many of whom are paid, essentially, to be smart — and burdened with the funding it takes to support them. Supporting these scholars costs a great deal, and that means a hefty donor relations department — after all, there’s no income from tuition, and many of these places refuse all corporate donations, in order to avoid any questions of conflicts of interest. If you expand this model out a dozen times, you see hundreds of people targeting thousands of the same donors for money to support professors who are paid to attend conferences, give quotes to journalists, and write about what they want to write about, whether it has anything to do with breaking news or topics before Congress or not.
At their best, the majority of these organizations are nice, pleasant, and irrelevant. Their salons on issues of note produce very little of any worth. There are no ramifications for their expensive speaker series attended by bored interns, inevitably featuring a Senator or Congressman or Governor reading remarks penned at the last minute by a press secretary. At their worst, they become pseudointellectual organizations with lazy, irrelevant, academic-lite campuses, full of would-be professors locked in contentious debates, and little or no thought given toward the outside world. They write for websites no one reads, and publish journals that gather dust on the shelf, and that’s that.
There are exceptions to this, of course. Some center-right think tanks are, as with the Center for American Progress on the left (though there is not one think tank on the Right that is as effective as CAP has been over the past few years), geared very much toward being cutting-edge policy shops: focused on the daily legislative grind, they are designed less as slow-moving places for highly-educated people to gain private-sector tenure and ruminate the days away then as places for wonks to gather, process, and inform. One white paper written by a wonk with a Bachelor’s Degree designed to inject a new idea into the debate can have a far greater impact on the formation of legislation at the federal and state level than hundreds of panels, speaker series, and yes, thoughtful Washington Post opeds about the Right.
These policy-focused institutions achieve far more in tangible political terms than places that are not as focused on outcomes and measurements of success. Applying better ideas to difficult policy questions is how you get policy successes like welfare reform — which is now, of course, a fifteen-year-old project and a twenty-year-old idea. Yet welfare reform’s success also begs the question of why, with so many think tanks filling the landscape and so many well-paid full-time smart well-educated intellectuals out there, why did the last decade — during which conservatives had a seat at the table for all ten, and Republicans dominated government for six — produce so few successfully applied conservative policy ideas? National Security concerns certainly intervened, but that alone cannot answer it.
The Right should not become anti-intellectual — of course not. If anything, as a recent series in the Chronicle of Higher Education showed, intellectuals on the Right have the ability to pose far more challenging questions then their colleagues on the left, and the ideological union of market freedom, social traditionalism, and strong opposition to tyranny that drove conservative ideas to the forefront in the 1980s is certainly in need of further consideration. The point is that while the Right might be served well by becoming more intellectual, it does not necessarily need more intellectuals. In fact, it may have too many intellectuals of a certain type.
Consider the example of one tenured think tank scholar, who I will not name, but whose identity may be fairly obvious. He is a resident scholar at a DC-area thinktank; he has co-written a book, which sold decently and prompted debate (more about its politics than its policy ideas); he is a contributing editor to several journals; and while he has never worked in government or on public policy, and has no advanced education in the discipline he primarily writes about, he is already living the life of a tenured professor. While he has never proposed a relevant policy solution on any matter, certainly not one that has been taken up by a politician, his students are an audience of readers who find his work of interest — he is now published regularly at more than a half dozen journals of opinion. For this he is well compensated.
Now consider the other side of this coin, the modern blogger — again, an individual I will not name, but who is well known within the center-right blogosphere. This is a young man, a veteran, with a family, a blue collar background, and a day job as a low-level tech worker. He writes on his own time, with his work focused on breaking news, and gets thousands of hits every day to his work. He has broken at least three major stories over the past two years by my count, including a news-breaking video that got extensive play on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. He gets no money to do this work, and the amounts he’s received from major sources have never been more than the occasional monthly car payment. He struggles to support his family, but he believes what he’s doing is important, so he sticks to it.
For the first candidate, money is not a worry. He is part of an organization that is focused on raising it, so this renaissance man can pay his mortgage, have an office, benefits, and never miss a paycheck or a TV appearance. This money will come from a center-right donor or group of donors, who could instead be funding this cutting edge journalist (breaking news that will drive the debate) or an activist at the state level (running investigative journalism project or government watchdog work) or the blogger in question.
This is the way things are, and given that it is the case, it’s hard to blame any individual writer or activist on the conservative side who decides to give up in this environment, when they see dollar after dollar headed to top-heavy, inefficient, old-guard organizations. To the next generation of activists, asking why is there no money for smart online activism, why people like James O’Keefe and others rebuffed by Washington must go out west to the very non-Beltway (a compliment) Andrew Breitbart to find cash for a project like the recent impressive work on ACORN, the answer is that it’s headed either toward paying for smart people to write and talk, or paying for aging response organizations to track when their writing and talking is ignored by the mainstream media.
ashington is full of organizations on the Right that raise buckets of money from conservative donors because they repeatedly say they are training, enabling, and encouraging the creation of more activists online and more investigative journalists. They send out thousands of letters to little old ladies across the country making these claims. Yet when you take a closer look at most of these organizations, you’ll find they spend most of their time claiming credit for things going on at the grassroots level that they in reality had nothing to do with — and in some cases, wouldn’t know how to do even if they tried. Donors say that investigative journalism and online activism training is what they want to support? Very well, they say, let’s repackage something we wanted to do already around that idea, even if it’s not our area of expertise — a new box for an old shoe.
Though some of them are quite well-meaning, the people at these organizations are not just not part of the solution — they are a part of the problem. They are assisted by wallet grabbers for hire, people who will lie on their behalf, rewrite any proposal to make their organization eligible for any grant on any subject, credit-claim to donor after donor (who usually doesn’t know any better) to continue to fund their inefficient, pointless, and irrelevant work. The organizations stay alive as the walking-dead they are, committing annual highway robbery of their ideological friends at their banquets.
It is worth noting here the context within Hayward’s piece appears — the ascendancy of the populist right, in the form of the Tea Party and town hall protests. This is a phenomenon that, while supported now by some organizations, happened organically because of the organization capabilities of modern technology, which equips individuals with all the tools they need to become better activists and organizers than the top-heavy DC presences could ever be. The populist upsurge, so out of character for staid small government types, was an organic and unwieldy phenomenon — but that didn’t stop twenty organizations from claiming credit for it.
O’Keefe himself worked at one time for one of the worst offenders in this category — he was fired.
If you believe in the marketplace — and you believe that organizations that take decades to adjust, are always behind the demands of the marketplace, and lean heavily on false advertising to achieve their funding will ultimately fail — then it should not surprise you that most of these organizations are dying. Over the coming years, their death will be hastened by the demise of their figurehead leaders, their obvious failure to adapt to the internet age, and the success of those online journalists and activists who actually do shift the daily news cycle and fuel stories that break through to the national level. Single-issue activist organizations, which is still where the right excels, will continue to thrive, and innovative new funding methods will emerge for promoting online journalism and activism at the citizen and state level. The market only fails for so long.
Until that happens, “more intellectuals” is simply not a solution for the reasons that the movement has failed. My colleague Dan McLaughlin has written that politicians are conservatism’s air force, activists the infantry, bloggers and opinion journals the artillery, and intellectuals and policy shops the munitions manufacturers — pointing out that “they’re a necessary part of the movement, but nobody ever stormed a beach with a factory.”
[Continued]
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The Sin of Being Better
The text below describes very well the psychological basis of both religion (including Christianity) and socialism. Both are directed against human life and pride, the motor that drives it.
He shrugged. "In my tongue, Ja'La dh Jin means 'the game of life.' Is not life a struggle — a brutal contest? A contest of men, and of sexes? Life, like Ja'La, is a brutal struggle."
Kahlan knew that life could be brutal, but that such brutality did not define life or its purpose, and that the sexes were not rivals, but meant to share together in the work and joys of life.
"To those like you it is," she said. "That's one difference between you and me. I use violence only as a last resort, only when it's necessary to defend my life — my right to exist. You use brutality as a tool of fulfilling your desires, even your ordinary desires, because, except by force, you have nothing worthwhile to offer to exchange for what you want or need — and that includes women. You take, you do not earn.
"I'm better than that. You don't value life or anything in it. I do. That's why you must crush anything good — because it puts the lie to your nothing of a life, shows by contrast how you do nothing but waste your existence.
"That's why you and those like you hate those like me — because I'm better than you and you know it."
"Such a belief is the mark of a sinner. To consider your own life meaningful is a crime against the Creator as well as your fellow man."
When she only glared at him, he arched an eyebrow with an admonishing look as he leaned a little closer. He held up a thick finger — adorned with a plundered gold ring — before her face to mark an important point, as if lecturing a selfish, headstrong child who was within an inch of getting a well-deserved thrashing.
"The Fellowship of Order teaches us that to be better than someone is to be worse than everyone."
Kahlan could only stare at such a vulgar ideology. That pious statement of hollow conviction gave her a sudden, true insight into the abyss of his savage nature, and the vindictive character of the Order itself. It was a concept that had abandoned the distant foundation upon which it had been built — that all life equally had the right to exist for its own sake — in order to justify taking life for the Order's own contrived notion of the common good.
Within that simple-sounding framework of an irrational tenet, he had just unwittingly revealed everything.
It explained the depravity of his whole cause and the determinant emotions driving the nature of those monstrous men massed outside, ready to kill anyone who would not submit to their creed. It was a dogma that shrank from civilization, praised savagery as a way of existence, and required constant brutality to crush any noble idea and the man who had it. It was a movement that drew to it thieves who wanted to think themselves righteous, murderers who wanted holy absolution for the blood of innocent victims that drenched their souls.
It assigned any achievement not to the one who had created it, but instead to those who had not earned it and did not deserve it, precisely because they did not earn it and did not deserve it. It valued thievery, not accomplishment.
It was anathema to individuality.
At the same time, it was a frighteningly sad admission of a rotting core of weakness in the face of life, an inability to exist on any level except that of a primitive beast, always cowering in fear that someone else would be better. It was not simply a rejection of all that was good, a resentment of accomplishment — it was, in fact, far worse. It was an expression of a gnawing hatred for anything good, grown out of an inner unwillingness to strive for anything worthwhile.
Like all irrational beliefs, it was also unworkable. To live, those beliefs had to be ignored to accomplish goals of domination, which in themselves were a violation of the belief for which they were fighting. There were no equals among those of the Order, the torchbearers of enforced equality. Whether a Ja'La player, the most professional of the soldiers, or an emperor, the best were not simply needed but sought after and highly valued, and so as a body they harbored an inner hatred of their failure to live up to their own teachings and a fear that they would be unmasked for it. As punishment for their inability to fulfill their sanctified beliefs through adherence to those teachings, they instead turned to the self-flagellation of proclaiming how unworthy all men were and vented their self-hatred on scapegoats: they blamed the victims.
In the end, the belief was nothing more than fabricated divinity — unthinking nonsense repeated in a mantra in an attempt to give it credibility, to make it sound sacred.
(Phantom by Terry Goodkind)
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Aristotle vs. Socialism
It never ceases to amaze me how many on the left fashion themselves "progressives" who are on the cutting edge of political innovation and insight. The left's main ideas, equality and unity, have been around for thousands of years. Every time a political community actually attempts to implement these ideas, economic hardship and eventually ruin are visited upon them.One of the earliest and most eloquent debunkers of the ideals of socialism was Aristotle, who criticized the proto-socialist Phaleas and the Western European philosopher of the "enlightened police state" Plato. Far from being outdated and esoteric, much of what Aristotle addresses in The Politics speaks directly to many of the assumptions of the political left in America today.
Book Two, Part I
Our purpose is to consider what form of political community is best of all for those who are most able to realize their ideal of life. We must therefore examine not only this but other constitutions, both such as actually exist in well-governed states, and any theoretical forms which are held in esteem; that what is good and useful may be brought to light. And let no one suppose that in seeking for something beyond them we are anxious to make a sophistical display at any cost; we only undertake this inquiry because all the constitutions with which we are acquainted are faulty.
We will begin with the natural beginning of the subject. Three alternatives are conceivable: The members of a state must either have (1) all things or (2) nothing in common, or (3) some things in common and some not. That they should have nothing in common is clearly impossible, for the constitution is a community, and must at any rate have a common place- one city will be in one place, and the citizens are those who share in that one city. But should a well ordered state have all things, as far as may be, in common, or some only and not others? For the citizens might conceivably have wives and children and property in common, as Socrates proposes in the Republic of Plato. Which is better, our present condition, or the proposed new order of society.
Book Two, Part III
But, even supposing that it were best for the community to have the greatest degree of unity, this unity is by no means proved to follow from the fact 'of all men saying "mine" and "not mine" at the same instant of time,' which, according to Socrates, is the sign of perfect unity in a state. For the word 'all' is ambiguous. If the meaning be that every individual says 'mine' and 'not mine' at the same time, then perhaps the result at which Socrates aims may be in some degree accomplished; each man will call the same person his own son and the same person his wife, and so of his property and of all that falls to his lot. This, however, is not the way in which people would speak who had their had their wives and children in common; they would say 'all' but not 'each.' In like manner their property would be described as belonging to them, not severally but collectively. There is an obvious fallacy in the term 'all': like some other words, 'both,' 'odd,' 'even,' it is ambiguous, and even in abstract argument becomes a source of logical puzzles. That all persons call the same thing mine in the sense in which each does so may be a fine thing, but it is impracticable; or if the words are taken in the other sense, such a unity in no way conduces to harmony.
And there is another objection to the proposal. For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it [also known as "The Tragedy of the Commons" - ed.]. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill ; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few. Each citizen will have a thousand sons who will not be his sons individually but anybody will be equally the son of anybody, and will therefore be neglected by all alike.
Further, upon this principle, every one will use the word 'mine' of one who is prospering or the reverse, however small a fraction he may himself be of the whole number; the same boy will be 'so and so's son,' the son of each of the thousand, or whatever be the number of the citizens; and even about this he will not be positive; for it is impossible to know who chanced to have a child, or whether, if one came into existence, it has survived [see Plato's Republic - ed.]. But which is better- for each to say 'mine' in this way, making a man the same relation to two thousand or ten thousand citizens, or to use the word 'mine' in the ordinary and more restricted sense? For usually the same person is called by one man his own son whom another calls his own brother or cousin or kinsman- blood relation or connection by marriage either of himself or of some relation of his, and yet another his clansman or tribesman; and how much better is it to be the real cousin of somebody than to be a son after Plato's fashion! [...]
Book Two, Part VNext let us consider what should be our arrangements about property: should the citizens of the perfect state have their possessions in common or not? This question may be discussed separately from the enactments about women and children. Even supposing that the women and children belong to individuals, according to the custom which is at present universal, may there not be an advantage in having and using possessions in common? Three cases are possible: (1) the soil may be appropriated, but the produce may be thrown for consumption into the common stock; and this is the practice of some nations. Or (2), the soil may be common, and may be cultivated in common, but the produce divided among individuals for their private use; this is a form of common property which is said to exist among certain barbarians. Or (3), the soil and the produce may be alike common.
When the husbandmen are not the owners, the case will be different and easier to deal with; but when they till the ground for themselves the question of ownership will give a world of trouble. If they do not share equally enjoyments and toils, those who labor much and get little will necessarily complain of those who labor little and receive or consume much. But indeed there is always a difficulty in men living together and having all human relations in common, but especially in their having common property. The partnerships of fellow-travelers are an example to the point; for they generally fall out over everyday matters and quarrel about any trifle which turns up. So with servants: we are most able to take offense at those with whom we most we most frequently come into contact in daily life.
These are only some of the disadvantages which attend the community of property; the present arrangement, if improved as it might be by good customs and laws, would be far better, and would have the advantages of both systems. Property should be in a certain sense common, but, as a general rule, private; for, when everyone has a distinct interest, men will not complain of one another, and they will make more progress, because every one will be attending to his own business. And yet by reason of goodness, and in respect of use, 'Friends,' as the proverb says, 'will have all things common.' Even now there are traces of such a principle, showing that it is not impracticable, but, in well-ordered states, exists already to a certain extent and may be carried further. For, although every man has his own property, some things he will place at the disposal of his friends,while of others he shares the use with them. The Lacedaemonians, for example, use one another's slaves, and horses, and dogs, as if they were their own; and when they lack provisions on a journey, they appropriate what they find in the fields throughout the country. It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.
Again, how immeasurably greater is the pleasure, when a man feels a thing to be his own; for surely the love of self is a feeling implanted by nature and not given in vain, although selfishness is rightly censured; this, however, is not the mere love of self, but the love of self in excess, like the miser's love of money; for all, or almost all, men love money and other such objects in a measure [Obviously, Aristotle and Ayn Rand differ on the "virtue of selfishness." - ed.].
And further, there is the greatest pleasure in doing a kindness or service to friends or guests or companions, which can only be rendered when a man has private property. These advantages are lost by excessive unification of the state. The exhibition of two virtues, besides, is visibly annihilated in such a state: first, temperance towards women (for it is an honorable action to abstain from another's wife for temperance' sake); secondly, liberality in the matter of property. No one, when men have all things in common, will any longer set an example of liberality or do any liberal action; for liberality consists in the use which is made of property.
Such legislation may have a specious appearance of benevolence; men readily listen to it, and are easily induced to believe that in some wonderful manner everybody will become everybody's friend, especially when some one is heard denouncing the evils now existing in states, suits about contracts, convictions for perjury, flatteries of rich men and the like, which are said to arise out of the possession of private property. These evils, however, are due to a very different cause- the wickedness of human nature. Indeed, we see that there is much more quarrelling among those who have all things in common, though there are not many of them when compared with the vast numbers who have private property.
Again, we ought to reckon, not only the evils from which the citizens will be saved, but also the advantages which they will lose. The life which they are to lead appears to be quite impracticable. The error of Socrates must be attributed to the false notion of unity from which he starts. Unity there should be, both of the family and of the state, but in some respects only. For there is a point at which a state may attain such a degree of unity as to be no longer a state, or at which, without actually ceasing to exist, it will become an inferior state, like harmony passing into unison, or rhythm which has been reduced to a single foot. [...]
Book Two, Part VII
Moreover, civil troubles arise, not only out of the inequality of property, but out of the inequality of honor, though in opposite ways. For the common people quarrel about the inequality of property, the higher class about the equality of honor; as the poet says,
"The bad and good alike in honor share. "
There are crimes of which the motive is want; and for these Phaleas [a forerunner of Marx by about two thousand years - ed.] expects to find a cure in the equalization of property, which will take away from a man the temptation to be a highwayman, because he is hungry or cold. But want is not the sole incentive to crime; men also wish to enjoy themselves and not to be in a state of desire- they wish to cure some desire, going beyond the necessities of life, which preys upon them; nay, this is not the only reason- they may desire superfluities in order to enjoy pleasures unaccompanied with pain, and therefore they commit crimes.
Now what is the cure of these three disorders? Of the first, moderate possessions and occupation; of the second, habits of temperance; as to the third, if any desire pleasures which depend on themselves, they will find the satisfaction of their desires nowhere but in philosophy; for all other pleasures we are dependent on others. The fact is that the greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity. Men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold; and hence great is the honor bestowed, not on him who kills a thief, but on him who kills a tyrant. [...]
The equalization of property is one of the things that tend to prevent the citizens from quarrelling. Not that the gain in this direction is very great. For the nobles will be dissatisfied because they think themselves worthy of more than an equal share of honors; and this is often found to be a cause of sedition and revolution. And the avarice of mankind is insatiable; at one time two obols was pay enough; but now, when this sum has become customary, men always want more and more without end; for it is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it. [End.]
Aristotle continues by preaching virtue and temperance rather than redistribution of wealth and equalization of property. Nearly two thousand years later, an economic system would harness greed for the benefit of mankind; this is a moral conundrum that has baffled and disgusted the left for over two hundred years.
But much fault in the left's understanding of capitalism lay in their definition of greed. Is greed developing a product that people want to buy and putting men and women to work to produce it? And can many people buy mass produced goods if the majority live on subsistence wages, as Marx argued would inevitably happen in a "capitalist" system? Does greed actually benefit society when there is a sound linkage between production and perceived utility?
There are some serious root philosophical problems that go unchallenged on the left; and indeed that was the reason for the marxist left's turn to neo-marxism, with Gramsci, Alinsky, and the Frankfurt School. The left's shift to cultural marxism belied that their understanding of reality, as expressed by Marx's dialectical materialism, was weak.
This is why the left must attack, smear, lie, and slander. The left's ideals rest on feet of clay, as we can see with Obama's naive pronouncements, which are debunked at every turn.
The left has lied for so long to justify their own power to "transform" the world - namely, by obliterating every institution lending the United States (and many Western European nations) strength and stability - that they have come to believe their own lies. This is why the left cannot have an honest conversation. That is why the left must cheat.
Because to the left, it is not about being right anymore, it is just about being in control. The problem is, what they want to control is beyond their control. So their best intentions must inevitably lead them, and those in their charge, down a path of increasing authoritarianism.
Georgia on My Mind
As America descends into the bottomless pit of socialism under Reichskanzler Obama’s valiant leadership, and the rest of the world follows suit, there is one place on Earth that has not abandoned reason. The country that gave the world the most totalitarian and bloodthirsty leader in history, Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili (more widely known as Joseph Stalin), has atoned for this by giving birth to the most libertarian leader in modern history. I have already devoted a post to this subject before.
On Tuesday, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili declared unequivocally that Georgia was building a libertarian state, and that Georgia’s economic policy would be based solely on libertarianism. My account of Saakashvili’s speech is based both on news reports and on first-hand accounts provided by an acquaintance of mine who speaks Georgian.
The most striking news is that he used the word itself – not some vague notion like economic liberalism or “free-market” but LIBERTARIANISM, despite the fact that the word is rarely used by high-ranking politicians, especially outside the US.
Saakashvili outlined the Economic Freedom Act, which may bring Georgia closer to the ideals advocated by the U.S. Founding Fathers at the time when America itself is abandoning them. The act envisions providing constitutional safeguards for Georgia’s free-market reforms, setting an upper threshold for government spending at 30% of GDP and for the budget deficit at 3% of GDP, requiring a referendum for any tax increase, banning the creation of new license requirements and new regulators, prohibiting price controls and banning the government from having stakes in banks.
While the rest of the world is again embracing the fallacies that have brought chaos and destruction so many times, Georgia is choosing the opposite solution:
“Achieving this goal is of special importance and also possible and needed now, when ambiguous, disoriented and populist socialist trends are spreading around the world shaken by the global economic crisis,” Saakashvili said. “Sometimes socialist ideology - like only the government can save, the government should regulate, the government should interfere - is heard in such countries that I am totally taken aback. Our experience is that nothing good is happening where there is government.”
Saakashvili also described his encounter with IMF idiots, who had advised him to stick to socialism, and added that he had rejected their advice.
Speaking about Georgia’s achievements, Saakashvili said Georgia ranked as the world’s fourth most tax-friendly country, according to the Forbes 2009 Tax Misery & Reform Index.
Saakashvili also mentioned that Ilia Chavchavadze, a 19-century Georgian writer and journalist, was a classical liberal (ironically, Chavchavadze was a teacher of Stalin when he studied at a seminary in Tbilisi).
Saakashvili said Georgia’s commitment to libertarianism was closely linked to its desire to be independent from Russia’s hegemony.
“One of the major reasons that explain our aspiration towards independence from Russia is not only national independence… but also freedom from the uncivilized way of living and way of thinking on which the Russian empire is based,” he said.
As far as Russia is concerned, it is quite clear now what happened in August 2008. In the run-up to the war, South Ossetians attacked several Georgian villages. Moreover, it was quite evident that Russia had been preparing for the war for several months – it moved troops closer to the border and conducted military exercises, while civilians were evacuated from Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. Eventually Russian troops moved into South Ossetia, and the Georgians were not foolish enough to misunderstand their plans – Russia intended to attack Georgia itself. Georgia decided to prevent the inevitable invasion by attacking Tskhinvali. Even if the fact that South Ossetia is de jure part of Georgia is disregarded, Russian troop movements were a knife in mid-strike (not a knife that has already stabbed you but a knife nonetheless), and Georgia had a sufficient reason for self-defense. By the way, most of the shelling in Tskhinvali (which was reported by Kremlin-controlled Russian media (i.e. most of them) as carried out by Georgia, turns out to have been done by the Russians when the Georgians were in the city).
It is pretty sad that a recent E.U.-sponsored report on the war aims to have its cake and eat it too – it splits the blame between Russia and Georgia. The report, which was written by typical representatives of European socialism, demonstrates the intellectual collapse of our civilization, with all paraphernalia present – pragmatism, subjectivism etc. The EU commission defaulted on its task to find out the truth – exactly because our civilization has rejected the notion of objective truth.
It seems that European socialists share much more in common with Russian thugs than with Georgia. While the EU is falling into the infernal abyss of socialism, and Russia sticks to its old thuggish ways, Georgia seems to be heading the opposite way.
It is important to understand that, before Saakashvili, Georgia was basically a failed state. The republics of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Ajara were independent (the first two still are), while the Kodori Gorge was controlled by local warlord Emzar Kvitsiani, while Chechen insurgents were based in the Pankisi Gorge. Coups were the only way of changing government. The rump of a central government remained in Tbilisi, with corrupt plutocrats and gangsters ruling in the old Soviet way under Eduard Shevarnadze, a former member of the USSR’s Politburo and ex-Soviet foreign minister.
Saakashvili brought radical change (though not in the Obama sense). Instead of a failed state, rule of law was introduced, and a government committed to protecting individual rights and cracking down on criminals was established.
P.S. The pictures indicate the possibility that Georgia (the country) may accept something akin to the libertarian elements of confederate Georgia (the U.S. state).
Monday, October 5, 2009
Rogue General Calls Out Obama for Lack of Vision in Afghan War
Telegraph:According to sources close to the administration, Gen McChrystal shocked and angered presidential advisers with the bluntness of a speech given in London last week.
The next day he was summoned to an awkward 25-minute face-to-face meeting on board Air Force One on the tarmac in Copenhagen, where the president had arrived to tout Chicago's unsuccessful Olympic bid.
In an apparent rebuke to the commander, Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary, said: "It is imperative that all of us taking part in these deliberations, civilians and military alike, provide our best advice to the president, candidly but privately."
When asked on CNN about the commander's public lobbying for more troops, Gen Jim Jones, national security adviser, said:
“Ideally, it's better for military advice to come up through the chain of command.”
Asked if the president had told the general to tone down his remarks, he told CBS: "I wasn't there so I can't answer that question. But it was an opportunity for them to get to know each other a little bit better. I am sure they exchanged direct views."
An adviser to the administration said: "People aren't sure whether McChrystal is being naïve or an upstart. To my mind he doesn't seem ready for this Washington hard-ball and is just speaking his mind too plainly."
In London, Gen McChrystal, who heads the 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan as well as the 100,000 Nato forces, flatly rejected proposals to switch to a strategy more reliant on drone missile strikes and special forces operations against al-Qaeda.
He told the Institute of International and Strategic Studies that the formula, which is favoured by Vice-President Joe Biden, would lead to "Chaos-istan".
When asked whether he would support it, he said: "The short answer is: No."
He went on to say: "Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support."
The remarks have been seen by some in the Obama administration as a barbed reference to the slow pace of debate within the White House.
Gen McChrystal delivered a report on Afghanistan requested by the president on Aug 31, but Mr Obama held only his second "principals meeting" on the issue last week.
He will hold at least one more this week, but a decision on how far to follow Gen McChrystal's recommendation to send 40,000 more US troops will not be made for several weeks.
A military expert said: "They still have working relationship but all in all it's not great for now."
Some commentators regarded the general's London comments as verging on insubordination.
Bruce Ackerman, an expert on constitutional law at Yale University, said in the Washington Post: "As commanding general, McChrystal has no business making such public pronouncements."
He added that it was highly unusual for a senior military officer to "pressure the president in public to adopt his strategy".
Relations between the general and the White House began to sour when his report, which painted a grim picture of the allied mission in Afghanistan, was leaked. White House aides have since briefed against the general's recommendations.
The general has responded with a series of candid interviews as well as the speech. He told Newsweek he was firmly against half measures in Afghanistan: "You can't hope to contain the fire by letting just half the building burn."
As a divide opened up between the military and the White House, senior military figures began criticising the White House for failing to tackle the issue more quickly.
They made no secret of their view that without the vast ground force recommended by Gen McChrystal, the Afghan mission could end in failure and a return to power of the Taliban.
"They want to make sure people know what they asked for if things go wrong," said Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defence.
Critics also pointed out that before their Copenhagen encounter Mr Obama had only met Gen McChrystal once since his appointment in June.
EU Morons Want to Have Their Milk and Drink It Too
Months of protests by European dairy farmers angry over low prices culminated in a standoff Monday in Brussels when protesters poured milk onto the streets, hurled eggs and other missiles, and started makeshift fires that filled the air with black smoke.
The morons are unhappy with being unable to loot and coerce sufficiently to prop up dairy prices.
The morons are unhappy with being unable to loot and coerce sufficiently to prop up dairy prices.
A Response to Moore's Delusional "Capitalism: A Love Story"
Michael Moore has released a pathetic ode to communist crapology called "Capitalism: A Love Story," which has hit the brick wall of the American public's tolerance for hypocritical socialist nonsense from spoiled multi-millionaires.
The insipid drivel of a grown man extolling the virtues of communism (he closes the flick with a tribute to the Soviet anthem) could be allowed to pass without response into the quiet of Hollywood night. If a socialist whines alone in a movie theater, does he make a sound?
Nevertheless, it can be quite fun to smack around liberal arguments like a cheating five year old bats a pinata, so here goes.
There is a part of me that is too exasperated to argue with indoctrinated leftist drones over specific manifestations of their insanity - it is like debating a first year art student on the meaning of the melting clocks in The Persistence of Memory. You can't make rational arguments to irrational people and expect them to change their mind. There is no "mind" there to begin with - only an infantile limbic instinct to blame all the shortcomings of their lives and the world on "greedy" people - people who happen to come up with marketable ideas and products that give others meaningful work.
But to those who see some utopian Hegelian moment in unity for the sake of unity, and who therefore see government as somehow able to give their lives meaning, how can you convince them that such delusions are exceedingly dangerous and misguided? Ninety-nine percent of the time - you can't. But for the one percent of leftists who are able to deprogram from reading a blog entry, a bit of intellectual exercise might move them a nanometer back to reality.
Michael Moore makes the claim (used occasionally by those who are intuitively against any notions of American exceptionalism) that America only ascended to superpower status after World War II due to the decline of Germany and Japan. Now did Germany and Japan decline on their own? No - America defeated them militarily!
America did not defeat Germany alone, to be sure. The Brits and the Russians, among many others, helped defeat it. But what did America do after Germany's defeat? It installed the Marshall Plan - billions of dollars used to rebuild Europe. The U.S also defended Europe from further forcible Russian occupation. Only a thoroughly doctrinaire leftist would debate these points.
During the Cold War, the United States footed much of the security bill for Europe as it rebuilt. This allowed the Europeans to develop all manner of socialist welfare programs and to temporarily sustain them economically. American not only did not get credit for preserving the peace and defending Europe from Soviet encroachment, America was condemned for some imaginary form of "neo-imperialism." Certainly, the fence put up around East Berlin was put up by the Stasi to keep people from fleeing to the "evil" American capitalists, with all their MREs and chocolate bars, not to keep the other Germans from rushing into East Berlin with glee to meet their Soviet oppressors. And let's not even get started on France.
So now we turn to Japan. Anyone who is not a complete fool can see that America dropped the atomic bombs on Japan to prevent even more casualties than would have resulted from an invasion. The specifics can be legitimately debated, but there should be no mistaking two points: The first is that Japan initiated the war against the U.S.; and the second is that Japan would never have surrendered without taking millions of casualties in absence of the use of the atomic bombs.
After the U.S. defeated Japan militarily, again America built the country up economically and footed its security bill. This allowed Japan to grow and become a world economic power - even at the expense of American companies! Surely, building up a country so that it can flood your market with Hondas cannot be considered insidious by anyone with their sanity still intact.
The case of Korea is even more stark. The U.S fought off the communist North Koreans and the Chinese to protect South Korea. This military intervention was even underwritten by international law. Today, a satellite picture of North Korea and South Korea taken at night shows the north to be a desolate wasteland, and such South Korean cities as Seoul to be vibrant, industrious, and thriving.
Vietnam is usually the bug-bear of all leftists. In the progressive imagination, big mean America was picking on the poor North Vietnamese national socialists. After decades of defending the South Vietnamese from the designs of Ho Chi Minh, the left was finally able to get the U.S. to depart and embark upon a course of detente with communist countries. The North Vietnamese responded by massacring the Southerners and creating hundreds of thousands of fleeing refugees. Then there was the living nightmare of Cambodia, which was partly a result of the power vacuum left in the region when America departed.
So much for history. In regards to economics, it is ironic that Moore mentions the economy of the 1970s. According to Keynesian theory, the kind that FDR was committed to, the government should intervene in an economy in order to stimulate employment. Inflation (typically created by the central bank by increasing the money supply) is seen as naturally beneficial because it leads the economy along (it encourages spending and discourages saving). Then what explains stagflation, Mr. Moore? This is the combination of massive unemployment and inflation at the same time. According to Keynesian theory, progressive inflation and progressive unemployment, over a reasonable period of time (accounting for lag indicators), is impossible.
Which brings us to the left's bogeyman of Reagan. Obviously, we have to consider who we are arguing with when someone blames Reagan for slashing taxes and cutting unemployment. The typical objection of Reaganomics on the left is, "Sure, Reagan cut unemployment, but the rich got richer and the poor got poorer." But to paraphrase an insight from Margaret Thatcher, the left would rather that everyone be poorer than everyone be richer, if the latter means the rich are more rich.
To argue that building a defense infrastructure that ostensibly led to a devastating arms race for the Soviets was "corporate welfare" is an interesting tell for determining who is a socialist or communist "fellow traveler." What really infuriates the left about Reagan is his anti-government, pro individual responsibility message, which, "heartless" as it is, actually works.
But even more to the point, the Reagan years did not see the type of corporate welfare through injections of easy credit until Greenspan was made chair of the Fed in 1989. (And never mind that the behavior of the Fed, whose very existence is a page right out of the Communist Manifesto, naturally contributes to the effect of making the rich richer and the poor poorer).
The coup de grace to the Michael Moore narrative is exactly how much Obama's candidacy was fueled by "big corporations" like GE, Caterpillar, and Goldman Sachs, and how Obama's administration is thoroughly penetrated with corporate lackies and former lobbyists. Goldman Sachs is deeply embedded in Obama's Treasury and the SEC; and the Wall Street investment firm's management of the $787 billion "stimulus" package is a pyramid scheme so colossal it makes Bernie Madoff's look like a childhood erector set.
If we can't trust Barack Obama, who bears all the hallmarks (and hallmark cards) of a quintessential leftist, to be committed leftist when "running the country," doesn't that suggest that something is amiss with leftist ideology to begin with? If Michael Moore would get off his donkey long enough to take a look around, he will see that his beloved leader has become a true fascist (even if a "smiley-faced" one). And lest the moron Moore should be confused, free market capitalists loathe and despise corporatism and fascism.
We can develop an atmosphere in which people can thrive and prosper, but this is best done by preserving freedom and leaving it up to each individual whether or not to succeed or fail by each person's own standards. You cannot empower human beings by stripping them of their agency. People who want to succeed in America, generally succeed.
The great majority of people in America are wealthy or "middle class" by world standards.If this is somehow a condemnation of the country, then I count myself among the damned. As for the communist Vladimir Lenin, I have visited his tomb, and I testify that he is as dead as Moore's beloved ideology. Someone should inform Moore that not only has Russia reversed itself from communism, so has formerly Maoist China. Even many European "socialist" states are beginning to reverse themselves back to more market-friendly economic models.
Communism only appears attractive to desperate, severely backward nations. Socialism is only economically feasible if you are free-riding off a great power's ability to ensure your security. Capitalism, in free market form, is not only the most prosperous economic system, it is the only one compatible with individual freedom.
The insipid drivel of a grown man extolling the virtues of communism (he closes the flick with a tribute to the Soviet anthem) could be allowed to pass without response into the quiet of Hollywood night. If a socialist whines alone in a movie theater, does he make a sound?
Nevertheless, it can be quite fun to smack around liberal arguments like a cheating five year old bats a pinata, so here goes.
There is a part of me that is too exasperated to argue with indoctrinated leftist drones over specific manifestations of their insanity - it is like debating a first year art student on the meaning of the melting clocks in The Persistence of Memory. You can't make rational arguments to irrational people and expect them to change their mind. There is no "mind" there to begin with - only an infantile limbic instinct to blame all the shortcomings of their lives and the world on "greedy" people - people who happen to come up with marketable ideas and products that give others meaningful work.
But to those who see some utopian Hegelian moment in unity for the sake of unity, and who therefore see government as somehow able to give their lives meaning, how can you convince them that such delusions are exceedingly dangerous and misguided? Ninety-nine percent of the time - you can't. But for the one percent of leftists who are able to deprogram from reading a blog entry, a bit of intellectual exercise might move them a nanometer back to reality.
Michael Moore makes the claim (used occasionally by those who are intuitively against any notions of American exceptionalism) that America only ascended to superpower status after World War II due to the decline of Germany and Japan. Now did Germany and Japan decline on their own? No - America defeated them militarily!
America did not defeat Germany alone, to be sure. The Brits and the Russians, among many others, helped defeat it. But what did America do after Germany's defeat? It installed the Marshall Plan - billions of dollars used to rebuild Europe. The U.S also defended Europe from further forcible Russian occupation. Only a thoroughly doctrinaire leftist would debate these points.
During the Cold War, the United States footed much of the security bill for Europe as it rebuilt. This allowed the Europeans to develop all manner of socialist welfare programs and to temporarily sustain them economically. American not only did not get credit for preserving the peace and defending Europe from Soviet encroachment, America was condemned for some imaginary form of "neo-imperialism." Certainly, the fence put up around East Berlin was put up by the Stasi to keep people from fleeing to the "evil" American capitalists, with all their MREs and chocolate bars, not to keep the other Germans from rushing into East Berlin with glee to meet their Soviet oppressors. And let's not even get started on France.
So now we turn to Japan. Anyone who is not a complete fool can see that America dropped the atomic bombs on Japan to prevent even more casualties than would have resulted from an invasion. The specifics can be legitimately debated, but there should be no mistaking two points: The first is that Japan initiated the war against the U.S.; and the second is that Japan would never have surrendered without taking millions of casualties in absence of the use of the atomic bombs.
After the U.S. defeated Japan militarily, again America built the country up economically and footed its security bill. This allowed Japan to grow and become a world economic power - even at the expense of American companies! Surely, building up a country so that it can flood your market with Hondas cannot be considered insidious by anyone with their sanity still intact.
The case of Korea is even more stark. The U.S fought off the communist North Koreans and the Chinese to protect South Korea. This military intervention was even underwritten by international law. Today, a satellite picture of North Korea and South Korea taken at night shows the north to be a desolate wasteland, and such South Korean cities as Seoul to be vibrant, industrious, and thriving.
Vietnam is usually the bug-bear of all leftists. In the progressive imagination, big mean America was picking on the poor North Vietnamese national socialists. After decades of defending the South Vietnamese from the designs of Ho Chi Minh, the left was finally able to get the U.S. to depart and embark upon a course of detente with communist countries. The North Vietnamese responded by massacring the Southerners and creating hundreds of thousands of fleeing refugees. Then there was the living nightmare of Cambodia, which was partly a result of the power vacuum left in the region when America departed.
So much for history. In regards to economics, it is ironic that Moore mentions the economy of the 1970s. According to Keynesian theory, the kind that FDR was committed to, the government should intervene in an economy in order to stimulate employment. Inflation (typically created by the central bank by increasing the money supply) is seen as naturally beneficial because it leads the economy along (it encourages spending and discourages saving). Then what explains stagflation, Mr. Moore? This is the combination of massive unemployment and inflation at the same time. According to Keynesian theory, progressive inflation and progressive unemployment, over a reasonable period of time (accounting for lag indicators), is impossible.
Which brings us to the left's bogeyman of Reagan. Obviously, we have to consider who we are arguing with when someone blames Reagan for slashing taxes and cutting unemployment. The typical objection of Reaganomics on the left is, "Sure, Reagan cut unemployment, but the rich got richer and the poor got poorer." But to paraphrase an insight from Margaret Thatcher, the left would rather that everyone be poorer than everyone be richer, if the latter means the rich are more rich.
To argue that building a defense infrastructure that ostensibly led to a devastating arms race for the Soviets was "corporate welfare" is an interesting tell for determining who is a socialist or communist "fellow traveler." What really infuriates the left about Reagan is his anti-government, pro individual responsibility message, which, "heartless" as it is, actually works.
But even more to the point, the Reagan years did not see the type of corporate welfare through injections of easy credit until Greenspan was made chair of the Fed in 1989. (And never mind that the behavior of the Fed, whose very existence is a page right out of the Communist Manifesto, naturally contributes to the effect of making the rich richer and the poor poorer).
The coup de grace to the Michael Moore narrative is exactly how much Obama's candidacy was fueled by "big corporations" like GE, Caterpillar, and Goldman Sachs, and how Obama's administration is thoroughly penetrated with corporate lackies and former lobbyists. Goldman Sachs is deeply embedded in Obama's Treasury and the SEC; and the Wall Street investment firm's management of the $787 billion "stimulus" package is a pyramid scheme so colossal it makes Bernie Madoff's look like a childhood erector set.
If we can't trust Barack Obama, who bears all the hallmarks (and hallmark cards) of a quintessential leftist, to be committed leftist when "running the country," doesn't that suggest that something is amiss with leftist ideology to begin with? If Michael Moore would get off his donkey long enough to take a look around, he will see that his beloved leader has become a true fascist (even if a "smiley-faced" one). And lest the moron Moore should be confused, free market capitalists loathe and despise corporatism and fascism.
We can develop an atmosphere in which people can thrive and prosper, but this is best done by preserving freedom and leaving it up to each individual whether or not to succeed or fail by each person's own standards. You cannot empower human beings by stripping them of their agency. People who want to succeed in America, generally succeed.
The great majority of people in America are wealthy or "middle class" by world standards.If this is somehow a condemnation of the country, then I count myself among the damned. As for the communist Vladimir Lenin, I have visited his tomb, and I testify that he is as dead as Moore's beloved ideology. Someone should inform Moore that not only has Russia reversed itself from communism, so has formerly Maoist China. Even many European "socialist" states are beginning to reverse themselves back to more market-friendly economic models.
Communism only appears attractive to desperate, severely backward nations. Socialism is only economically feasible if you are free-riding off a great power's ability to ensure your security. Capitalism, in free market form, is not only the most prosperous economic system, it is the only one compatible with individual freedom.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
"Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?": A Retort.
"Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?" by Steven Hayward
It never ceases to amuse me when self-appointed spokepersons for the right ask themselves rhetorical questions and then proceed to smear conservatism in the most superficial, disconnected, and pointless manner. If you, Mr. Hayward, consider yourself a conservative, then I can understand why you imagine conservatism to be brain dead.
But for the sake of briefly entertaining your premise, let me disabuse the assuredly astute and open-minded readers of the Washington Post of several ridiculous assumptions in your screed, lest anyone should confuse your article for political wisdom or something of serious intellectual merit.
Firstly, as a matter of philosophy, conservatism in the Burkean mold is merely a recognition of the limited capability of men in each generation to apprehend and adapt to their environments. It poses that radically destroying institutional, religious, and societal constructs disorients individuals and may lead to anarchy, chaos, destruction, and reaction.
Cultural Marxists and Fabian Socialists early in the twentieth century recognized many truths of philosophical conservatism and adopted them to their "radical" socialist programs. Examples of "radicalism" adopting philosophically conservative elements include: The Gramscian strategy of infiltrating and co-opting institutions, instead of attacking and destroying them; Saul Alinsky's use of "pragmatism" to refrain from frightening the lower and middle classes with "Weatherman" style radicalism - to convert people with religion, or by using language within their realm of experience; and the Cloward-Piven strategy of using existing government welfare programs and overwhelming "the system" with new applicants and massive debt. All of these "radical" strategies recognize a certain classically described "conservative" tendency in human beings.
Secondly, let us consider that conservatism in the American context is not associated in any manner with European statism or traditional authority. American conservatism, as we know it now, is in direct and unequivocal opposition to statism; this is a distinction that requires recognition.
To condemn conservatism as "out of ideas," so to speak, is to feign that the American experiment in freedom, as conceived, was ever seriously tried. In fact, early in the Republic the state-adoring Hamilton introduced a central bank, specifically condemned and ruled out at the Constitutional Convention. This outrage was followed by suppressed rebellions, the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the "progressive" obliteration of limited government under the rubric of the "necessary and proper clause," and the "general welfare clause" (both condemned by the likes of Jefferson and Madison). The American "conservative" vision of freedom and organized liberty cannot seriously be called a "failure," as if all that we've had in the U.S. since the founding was monolithic "freedom" or "capitalism"; such a conception is laughably common, even among so-called "intellectuals."
Thirdly, it is one of the great philosophical tricks of the left and right Hegelians to embed "temporality" in philosophy; as if the relative rightness or wrongness of a philosophy matters on its situation to the left or right on a timeline. The incessant bantering about "progress" on the left is a self-conscious ruse to propagate in the culture the idea that they stand for the inevitable future, and those who stand opposed are teleologically backward and swimming against the tide of history. The left acts as if opposition to their self-described "progressive" agenda of reversing limited goverment and The Constitution must be inherently antequated and thus obsolete.
To draw on an idea of Karl Popper's, we must not stand on the shoulders of giants, we must stand side by side with them. The ravings of a Janeane Garafalo, a Michael Moore, or a Keith Olbermann are not more sage or prescient than the astute observations of an Aristotle, a Marcus Aurelius, or a Thomas Jefferson simply by virtue of the former having post-dated the latter.
The world we live in is one conditioned by material reality, and we may choose to live in accordance with that world and to accrue wisdom to pass on to our children, or we may burn it all in a futile rage, out of dissatisfaction or impatience. To develop a mature mind, able to accept hard truths and to warn one's fellow men of them is an inglorious and often thankless task; but it is more beneficial than concocting self-destructive fantasies and attempting to superimpose them on the world whether it is amenable or not.
Delusions are acceptable in a political order where each individual is free to live according to his own conscience and to suffer his own consequences. To attempt to institute utopia in a government, an inherently coercive body, is not only the height of folly, it is morally wrong; as it often produces cruel results, including an increase in human misery and suffering.
10/4/2009 11:45:37 PM
It never ceases to amuse me when self-appointed spokepersons for the right ask themselves rhetorical questions and then proceed to smear conservatism in the most superficial, disconnected, and pointless manner. If you, Mr. Hayward, consider yourself a conservative, then I can understand why you imagine conservatism to be brain dead.
But for the sake of briefly entertaining your premise, let me disabuse the assuredly astute and open-minded readers of the Washington Post of several ridiculous assumptions in your screed, lest anyone should confuse your article for political wisdom or something of serious intellectual merit.
Firstly, as a matter of philosophy, conservatism in the Burkean mold is merely a recognition of the limited capability of men in each generation to apprehend and adapt to their environments. It poses that radically destroying institutional, religious, and societal constructs disorients individuals and may lead to anarchy, chaos, destruction, and reaction.
Cultural Marxists and Fabian Socialists early in the twentieth century recognized many truths of philosophical conservatism and adopted them to their "radical" socialist programs. Examples of "radicalism" adopting philosophically conservative elements include: The Gramscian strategy of infiltrating and co-opting institutions, instead of attacking and destroying them; Saul Alinsky's use of "pragmatism" to refrain from frightening the lower and middle classes with "Weatherman" style radicalism - to convert people with religion, or by using language within their realm of experience; and the Cloward-Piven strategy of using existing government welfare programs and overwhelming "the system" with new applicants and massive debt. All of these "radical" strategies recognize a certain classically described "conservative" tendency in human beings.
Secondly, let us consider that conservatism in the American context is not associated in any manner with European statism or traditional authority. American conservatism, as we know it now, is in direct and unequivocal opposition to statism; this is a distinction that requires recognition.
To condemn conservatism as "out of ideas," so to speak, is to feign that the American experiment in freedom, as conceived, was ever seriously tried. In fact, early in the Republic the state-adoring Hamilton introduced a central bank, specifically condemned and ruled out at the Constitutional Convention. This outrage was followed by suppressed rebellions, the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the "progressive" obliteration of limited government under the rubric of the "necessary and proper clause," and the "general welfare clause" (both condemned by the likes of Jefferson and Madison). The American "conservative" vision of freedom and organized liberty cannot seriously be called a "failure," as if all that we've had in the U.S. since the founding was monolithic "freedom" or "capitalism"; such a conception is laughably common, even among so-called "intellectuals."
Thirdly, it is one of the great philosophical tricks of the left and right Hegelians to embed "temporality" in philosophy; as if the relative rightness or wrongness of a philosophy matters on its situation to the left or right on a timeline. The incessant bantering about "progress" on the left is a self-conscious ruse to propagate in the culture the idea that they stand for the inevitable future, and those who stand opposed are teleologically backward and swimming against the tide of history. The left acts as if opposition to their self-described "progressive" agenda of reversing limited goverment and The Constitution must be inherently antequated and thus obsolete.
To draw on an idea of Karl Popper's, we must not stand on the shoulders of giants, we must stand side by side with them. The ravings of a Janeane Garafalo, a Michael Moore, or a Keith Olbermann are not more sage or prescient than the astute observations of an Aristotle, a Marcus Aurelius, or a Thomas Jefferson simply by virtue of the former having post-dated the latter.
The world we live in is one conditioned by material reality, and we may choose to live in accordance with that world and to accrue wisdom to pass on to our children, or we may burn it all in a futile rage, out of dissatisfaction or impatience. To develop a mature mind, able to accept hard truths and to warn one's fellow men of them is an inglorious and often thankless task; but it is more beneficial than concocting self-destructive fantasies and attempting to superimpose them on the world whether it is amenable or not.
Delusions are acceptable in a political order where each individual is free to live according to his own conscience and to suffer his own consequences. To attempt to institute utopia in a government, an inherently coercive body, is not only the height of folly, it is morally wrong; as it often produces cruel results, including an increase in human misery and suffering.
10/4/2009 11:45:37 PM
Libs Loot State of California, Fifty-Six More to Go
Will California become America's first failed state?Los Angeles, 2009: California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state staff are being paid in IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike. So what has gone so catastrophically wrong?
By Paul Harris [Guardian]
California has a special place in the American psyche. It is the Golden State: a playground of the rich and famous with perfect weather. It symbolises a lifestyle of sunshine, swimming pools and the Hollywood dream factory.
But the state that was once held up as the epitome of the boundless opportunities of America has collapsed. From its politics to its economy to its environment and way of life, California is like a patient on life support. At the start of summer the state government was so deeply in debt that it began to issue IOUs instead of wages. Its unemployment rate has soared to more than 12%, the highest figure in 70 years. Desperate to pay off a crippling budget deficit, California is slashing spending in education and healthcare, laying off vast numbers of workers and forcing others to take unpaid leave. In a state made up of sprawling suburbs the collapse of the housing bubble has impoverished millions and kicked tens of thousands of families out of their homes. Its political system is locked in paralysis and the two-term rule of former movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen as a disaster – his approval ratings having sunk to levels that would make George W Bush blush. The crisis is so deep that Professor Kenneth Starr, who has written an acclaimed history of the state, recently declared: "California is on the verge of becoming the first failed state in America." [Continued]
Truth and Freedom Against Overwhelming Odds
In 480 BC, a millions-strong (according to Herodotus, though this is disputed) Persian army faced 300 Spartans, along with about a thousand other Greeks, at Thermopylae.Although extraordinary valor was displayed by the entire corps of Spartans and Thespians, yet bravest of all was declared the Spartan Dienekes. It is said that on the eve of battle, he was told by a native of Trachis that the Persian archers were so numerous that, their arrows would blot out the sun. Dienekes, however, undaunted by this prospect, remarked with a laugh, “Good. Then we will fight in the shade.”
(Herodotus)
Stelios, a character from Frank Miller’s 300 based on the said Dienekes, said in the movie:
I've fought countless times, yet I've never met an adversary that could offer me what we Spartans call a beautiful death. I can only hope, with all the world's warriors gathered against us, there might be one down there who's up to the task.
Less than a month later, a Greek fleet led by Themistocles faced a similarly mind-boggling challenge at Salamis:
Of what other man have we learned from history that by a single act he caused himself to surpass all the commanders, his city all the other Greek states, and the Greeks the barbarians? In whose term as general have the resources been more inferior and the dangers they faced greater? Who, facing the united might of all Asia, has found himself at the side of his city when its inhabitants had been driven from their homes, and still won the victory?
(Diodorus Siculus)
Eventually, the barbarian monster was crushed. A hundred and a half years later, about 50,000 men led by Alexander the Great aspired to an even greater challenge – they embarked on a quest to free almost the whole of Asia (in the Greek sense of the term) from the Persian yoke. They succeeded.
Terry Goodkind’s Phantom describes a struggle against even more impossible and devastating odds. A brutal tyranny called the Imperial Order has conquered most of the world. To say that the Order’s army vastly outnumbers the forces of the free people is an understatement. This horde is virtually limitless. What makes it so colossal and ever-growing is not military strategy or some political intrigue but the idea behind it. It takes so much more than just military talent or genius for organization to stem this tide of despotism. Yet a way to oppose the horde has been found – it involves unflinching commitment to the cause of liberty and the willingness to face the truth, regardless of whether it is unpleasant or unconventional. A is A – so simple a statement and yet so complicated.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Barack's O-lympic Dreams Dashed
Barack Obama jets off to Copenhagen, Denmark to accept the IOC's desperate pleas to host the 2016 Olympics. The Commander-in-Chief steps off of Air Force One. A pure beam of white light cuts through the puffs of black wafting smoke. A Cheshire Cat grin sparkles.A moment of awe. A frantic mother runs to The One to heal her baby before being tackled by a secret service agent. Then flashbulbs. Oh God, the flashbulbs. The entourage bathes the narcissist in explosions of blinding light, coating him like an infant in his mother's womb. This was Obama's element.
Terry Schwab, a thirty five year-old unemployed steel mill worker in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, head in hand, goes through the stack of bills one more time, desperately looking for a way to trim the family expenses. His wife Jen and three elementary age girls, Michelle, Molly, and Sarah, are in the kitchen laughing as they bake a tray of brownies. The family is barely getting by. His wife works at a diner and makes enough to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, and little more.
Terry has been searching for over two years to find meaningful employment, but the sad fact is that industrial jobs in America are dying or being outsourced, due partly to increasingly stringent environmental regulations. So Terry returns to his old job site, now the home of a casino and hotel complex, to try to get on as a construction worker or even a card dealer. Unfortunately, the casino is out of job apps, and may not be giving out more to the public until next week...
President Obama sips champagne elegantly from his fine-fluted glass and chortles. Not so much a chortle, but more "expression of amusement number five," which Emanuel assures him is a "real killer."
At the Olympic Committee roundtable, Obama picks at his goose-liver pate. Already dreaming of a Riefenstahlesque ode to his glory, the president brings himself back to attention when a shadowy figure tip-toes lightly to his right ear. "Mr. President, now - were the teabaggers to be Nazis or racists this week? I can hardly keep it straight."
"Let's go with Nazis," the president replies, staring down at his arugula salad. He wipes his mouth coolly with a napkin, dabbing each corner of his reptilian lips. He discards the napkin deftly onto the plate and nods his head in dismissal.
Cut to Afghanistan. Private First Class Mike Thomas is out on a routine patrol around the outskirts of the Northern Afghani village of Durkali. The dust clouds roil from the back of a well-worn jeep SUV, pock-marked with 7.62s. The portable stereo blares AC/DC's "Highway to Hell." Thomas, a corn-fed Nebraskan, flicks a half-burnt cigarette out the window and turns to Sergeant Jim Miller, Ray Bans shining like viper eyes in the wan glare of the Afghan sun.
A high-pitched whirr screams past Thomas' ear and slices through the jeep. Then rounds ping around the front right wheel-well. The jeep jolts as the tire bursts. The sound of AK-47s and furious whelps.
Miller rips the wheel hard left off the road to establish cover. The two soldiers pile out, and using the jeep as a screen, make their way to a secure vantage point. They spot two Afghani soldiers, apparently Taliban, on the roof-top of a chalky hovel. One is armed with an assault rifle, the other is pacing with a handheld radio. Two women and a thin child are escorted from behind the far side of the building by a man with a rifle slung over his back and hurried into the front door.
The Sergeant glances at Private Thomas with an expression of knowing and swears. This was definitely a planned ambush. Taliban support troops were sure to be roving in the hills surrounding them, and if they made their way back to the vehicle they could be pinned down with sniper fire. Sarge pulls out his radio-set and laser-gun to paint the target for an air strike. "But what about the women and children? Thomas asks. "The new ROEs specifically state..."
"Get Mayor Daley on secure teleconference." Barack and his entourage were absolutely giddy over their presentation for Chicago 2016. It was flashy, carefully edited, and most importantly, it drew attention to all that is best about the windy city. Namely, him.
"It's a done deal, Rich. I had some of our people bribe the Germans, and we all know about the Russians..."
"Good, Barry. I knew we could count on you to pay us back for delivering the vote. Those of us who doubted you were dead wrong."
"I also got you that extra funding you requested, as long as we agree that the word will get out that this is to be the 'O-lympics.' You don't know how much bullshit I had to say about the greatness of America to lock this baby up."
"We all appreciate your sacrifice, Barry. Anything else you propose?"
"Well, I have this idea that occurred to me last night in a dream. In it, instead of the bourgeois notion of competition we replace the entire concept of the O-lympics with the idea of equality."
"Well, how in the hell do we do that?"
"First, we replace the judges with "praisers," who lavish praise on the participants regardless of their performance. We need to nurture people to bring out the best, I mean, the most equal in them. Second, everyone should be awarded gold medals. But again, gold - such a capitalist notion. Besides the government could put the gold to better use - say, adorning my presidential picture frames. So instead, we should issue certificates to represent gold medals, equally valuable, or equally worthless depending on your perspective."
"But wouldn't that demotivate the contestants, I mean, the participants?"
"That's why I want a giant 200-foot portrait of myself looking down adoringly on all the participants. If that doesn't motivate them to do a good, I mean, mediocre job, I don't know what will. Now about that National Anthem, there's a nice little ditty I heard on YouTube, mmm mmm mmm..."
"Sir, the judges are about to make their announcement!"
Twenty five men in hard hats stand above a large metal dome, tubes and pipes snaking around a dim underground facility. Covered lamps glow pale green in each corner. There is a faint background hum, like holy men meditating in a circle. A clanking of boots on a steel grill walkway. The sound of Persian, and a thrown switch. The piping clanks and the machine springs to life with a fit. "Allahu, Akhbar!..."
"And the winner is - Rio de Janeiro!"
Thousands of stunned Obama supporters' jaws drop to the floor. A wail emerges from the crowd, followed by a mustered collective groan. "Why? WHY?!?"
A glint of rage and then calm floods over the president's countenance. With a wave of his hand, he dispatches his entourage. The president bitterly buries his head in both hands.
"Sirrr..." a trembling voice blurts out. "I am sorry to disturb you, but there is growing public outrage about unemployment, the War in Afghanistan, and Iran's nuclear program. This Olympics bid was our best chance to quell the furor. What are we going to tell the people back home?"
"Blame it on Rio," the president mumbles.
Nietzsche's Verdict Against Christianity
The Judeo-Christian priest against science:
I have been understood. At the opening of the Bible there is the whole psychology of the priest.--The priest knows of only one great danger: that is science--the sound comprehension of cause and effect. But science flourishes, on the whole, only under favourable conditions--a man must have time, he must have an overflowing intellect, in order to "know." . . ."Therefore, man must be made unhappy,"--this has been, in all ages, the logic of the priest.--It is easy to see just what, by this logic, was the first thing to come into the world :--"sin." . . . The concept of guilt and punishment, the whole "moral order of the world," was set up against science--against the deliverance of man from priests. . . . Man must not look outward; he must look inward. He must not look at things shrewdly and cautiously, to learn about them; he must not look at all; he must suffer . . . And he must suffer so much that he is always in need of the priest.--Away with physicians! What is needed is a Saviour.--The concept of guilt and punishment, including the doctrines of "grace," of "salvation," of "forgiveness"--lies through and through, and absolutely without psychological reality--were devised to destroy man's sense of causality: they are an attack upon the concept of cause and effect !--And not an attack with the fist, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! On the contrary, one inspired by the most cowardly, the most crafty, the most ignoble of instincts! An attack of priests! An attack of parasites! The vampirism of pale, subterranean leeches! . . . When the natural consequences of an act are no longer "natural," but are regarded as produced by the ghostly creations of superstition--by "God," by "spirits," by "souls"--and reckoned as merely "moral" consequences, as rewards, as punishments, as hints, as lessons, then the whole ground-work of knowledge is destroyed--then the greatest of crimes against humanity has been perpetrated.--I repeat that sin, man's self-desecration par excellence, was invented in order to make science, culture, and every elevation and ennobling of man impossible; the priest rules through the invention of sin.
Christianity against reality
Such a religion as Christianity, which does not touch reality at a single point and which goes to pieces the moment reality asserts its rights at any point, must be inevitably the deadly enemy of the "wisdom of this world," which is to say, of science--and it will give the name of good to whatever means serve to poison, calumniate and cry down all intellectual discipline, all lucidity and strictness in matters of intellectual conscience, and all noble coolness and freedom of the mind. "Faith," as an imperative, vetoes science--in praxi, lying at any price. . . .
Christian faith as the urge to avoid the truth
Christianity also stands in opposition to all intellectual well-being,--sick reasoning is the only sort that it can use as Christian reasoning; it takes the side of everything that is idiotic; it pronounces a curse upon "intellect," upon the superbia of the healthy intellect. Since sickness is inherent in Christianity, it follows that the typically Christian state of "faith" must be a form of sickness too, and that all straight, straightforward and scientific paths to knowledge must be banned by the church as forbidden ways. Doubt is thus a sin from the start. . . . The complete lack of psychological cleanliness in the priest--revealed by a glance at him--is a phenomenon resulting from decadence,--one may observe in hysterical women and in rachitic children how regularly the falsification of instincts, delight in lying for the mere sake of lying, and incapacity for looking straight and walking straight are symptoms of decadence. "Faith" means the will to avoid knowing what is true. The pietist, the priest of either sex, is a fraud because he is sick: his instinct demands that the truth shall never be allowed its rights on any point. "Whatever makes for illness is good; whatever issues from abundance, from super-abundance, from power, is evil": so argues the believer. The impulse to lie--it is by this that I recognize every foreordained theologian.—
Christian faith: absurdity as the criterion of truth
In a formula: "I believe that faith makes for blessedness--therefore, it is true." . . But this is as far as we may go. This "therefore" would be absurdum itself as a criterion of truth.—(…) The experience of all disciplined and profound minds teaches the contrary. Man has had to fight for every atom of the truth, and has had to pay for it almost everything that the heart, that human love, that human trust cling to. Greatness of soul is needed for this business: the service of truth is the hardest of all services.--What, then, is the meaning of integrit yin things intellectual? It means that a man must be severe with his own heart, that he must scorn "beautiful feelings," and that he makes every Yea and Nay a matter of conscience!--Faith makes blessed:therefore, it lies. . . .
The conclusion:
With this I come to a conclusion and pronounce my judgment. I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian church the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption. The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul. Let any one dare to speak to me of its "humanitarian" blessings! Its deepest necessities range it against any effort to abolish distress; it lives by distress; it creates distress to make itself immortal. . . . For example, the worm of sin: it was the church that first enriched mankind with this misery!--The "equality of souls before God"--this fraud, this pretext for the rancunes of all the base-minded--this explosive concept, ending in revolution, the modern idea, and the notion of overthrowing the whole social order--this is Christian dynamite. . . . The "humanitarian" blessings of Christianity forsooth! To breed out of humanitas a self-contradiction, an art of self-pollution, a will to lie at any price, an aversion and contempt for all good and honest instincts! All this, to me, is the "humanitarianism" of Christianity!--Parasitism as the only practice of the church; with its anaemic and "holy" ideals, sucking all the blood, all the love, all the hope out of life; the beyond as the will to deny all reality; the cross as the distinguishing mark of the most subterranean conspiracy ever heard of,--against health, beauty, well-being, intellect, kindness of soul--against life itself. . . . This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all walls, wherever walls are to be found--I have letters that even the blind will be able to see. . . . I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough,--I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race. . . .
(The Antichrist)
I have been understood. At the opening of the Bible there is the whole psychology of the priest.--The priest knows of only one great danger: that is science--the sound comprehension of cause and effect. But science flourishes, on the whole, only under favourable conditions--a man must have time, he must have an overflowing intellect, in order to "know." . . ."Therefore, man must be made unhappy,"--this has been, in all ages, the logic of the priest.--It is easy to see just what, by this logic, was the first thing to come into the world :--"sin." . . . The concept of guilt and punishment, the whole "moral order of the world," was set up against science--against the deliverance of man from priests. . . . Man must not look outward; he must look inward. He must not look at things shrewdly and cautiously, to learn about them; he must not look at all; he must suffer . . . And he must suffer so much that he is always in need of the priest.--Away with physicians! What is needed is a Saviour.--The concept of guilt and punishment, including the doctrines of "grace," of "salvation," of "forgiveness"--lies through and through, and absolutely without psychological reality--were devised to destroy man's sense of causality: they are an attack upon the concept of cause and effect !--And not an attack with the fist, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! On the contrary, one inspired by the most cowardly, the most crafty, the most ignoble of instincts! An attack of priests! An attack of parasites! The vampirism of pale, subterranean leeches! . . . When the natural consequences of an act are no longer "natural," but are regarded as produced by the ghostly creations of superstition--by "God," by "spirits," by "souls"--and reckoned as merely "moral" consequences, as rewards, as punishments, as hints, as lessons, then the whole ground-work of knowledge is destroyed--then the greatest of crimes against humanity has been perpetrated.--I repeat that sin, man's self-desecration par excellence, was invented in order to make science, culture, and every elevation and ennobling of man impossible; the priest rules through the invention of sin.
Christianity against reality
Such a religion as Christianity, which does not touch reality at a single point and which goes to pieces the moment reality asserts its rights at any point, must be inevitably the deadly enemy of the "wisdom of this world," which is to say, of science--and it will give the name of good to whatever means serve to poison, calumniate and cry down all intellectual discipline, all lucidity and strictness in matters of intellectual conscience, and all noble coolness and freedom of the mind. "Faith," as an imperative, vetoes science--in praxi, lying at any price. . . .
Christian faith as the urge to avoid the truth
Christianity also stands in opposition to all intellectual well-being,--sick reasoning is the only sort that it can use as Christian reasoning; it takes the side of everything that is idiotic; it pronounces a curse upon "intellect," upon the superbia of the healthy intellect. Since sickness is inherent in Christianity, it follows that the typically Christian state of "faith" must be a form of sickness too, and that all straight, straightforward and scientific paths to knowledge must be banned by the church as forbidden ways. Doubt is thus a sin from the start. . . . The complete lack of psychological cleanliness in the priest--revealed by a glance at him--is a phenomenon resulting from decadence,--one may observe in hysterical women and in rachitic children how regularly the falsification of instincts, delight in lying for the mere sake of lying, and incapacity for looking straight and walking straight are symptoms of decadence. "Faith" means the will to avoid knowing what is true. The pietist, the priest of either sex, is a fraud because he is sick: his instinct demands that the truth shall never be allowed its rights on any point. "Whatever makes for illness is good; whatever issues from abundance, from super-abundance, from power, is evil": so argues the believer. The impulse to lie--it is by this that I recognize every foreordained theologian.—
Christian faith: absurdity as the criterion of truth
In a formula: "I believe that faith makes for blessedness--therefore, it is true." . . But this is as far as we may go. This "therefore" would be absurdum itself as a criterion of truth.—(…) The experience of all disciplined and profound minds teaches the contrary. Man has had to fight for every atom of the truth, and has had to pay for it almost everything that the heart, that human love, that human trust cling to. Greatness of soul is needed for this business: the service of truth is the hardest of all services.--What, then, is the meaning of integrit yin things intellectual? It means that a man must be severe with his own heart, that he must scorn "beautiful feelings," and that he makes every Yea and Nay a matter of conscience!--Faith makes blessed:therefore, it lies. . . .
The conclusion:
With this I come to a conclusion and pronounce my judgment. I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian church the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption. The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul. Let any one dare to speak to me of its "humanitarian" blessings! Its deepest necessities range it against any effort to abolish distress; it lives by distress; it creates distress to make itself immortal. . . . For example, the worm of sin: it was the church that first enriched mankind with this misery!--The "equality of souls before God"--this fraud, this pretext for the rancunes of all the base-minded--this explosive concept, ending in revolution, the modern idea, and the notion of overthrowing the whole social order--this is Christian dynamite. . . . The "humanitarian" blessings of Christianity forsooth! To breed out of humanitas a self-contradiction, an art of self-pollution, a will to lie at any price, an aversion and contempt for all good and honest instincts! All this, to me, is the "humanitarianism" of Christianity!--Parasitism as the only practice of the church; with its anaemic and "holy" ideals, sucking all the blood, all the love, all the hope out of life; the beyond as the will to deny all reality; the cross as the distinguishing mark of the most subterranean conspiracy ever heard of,--against health, beauty, well-being, intellect, kindness of soul--against life itself. . . . This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all walls, wherever walls are to be found--I have letters that even the blind will be able to see. . . . I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough,--I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race. . . .
(The Antichrist)
Christianity as the Destroyer of Rational and Life-Affirming Values
Below are Nietzsche's views on the role of Christianity in history:
On the destruction of Greco-Roman culture by Christianity
The whole labour of the ancient world gone for naught: I have no word to describe the feelings that such an enormity arouses in me.—(…) To what end the Greeks? to what end the Romans?--All the prerequisites to a learned culture, all the methods of science, were already there; man had already perfected the great and incomparable art of reading profitably--that first necessity to the tradition of culture, the unity of the sciences; the natural sciences, in alliance with mathematics and mechanics, were on the right road,--the sense of fact, the last and more valuable of all the senses, had its schools, and its traditions were already centuries old! Is all this properly understood? Every essential to the beginning of the work was ready;--and the most essential, it cannot be said too often, are methods, and also the most difficult to develop, and the longest opposed by habit and laziness. What we have to day reconquered, with unspeakable self-discipline, for ourselves--for certain bad instincts, certain Christian instincts, still lurk in our bodies--that is to say, the keen eye for reality, the cautious hand, patience and seriousness in the smallest things, the whole integrity of knowledge--all these things were already there, and had been there for two thousand years! (…) The Greeks! The Romans! Instinctive nobility, taste, methodical inquiry, genius for organization and administration, faith in and the will to secure the future of man, a great yes to everything entering into the imperium Romanum and palpable to all the senses, a grand style that was beyond mere art, but had become reality, truth, life . . --All overwhelmed in a night, but not by a convulsion of nature! Not trampled to death by Teutons and others of heavy hoof! But brought to shame by crafty, sneaking, invisible, anemic vampires! Not conquered,--only sucked dry! . . . Hidden vengefulness, petty envy, became master! Everything wretched, intrinsically ailing, and invaded by bad feelings, the whole ghetto-world of the soul, was at once on top!--One needs but read any of the Christian agitators, for example, St. Augustine, in order to realize, in order to smell, what filthy fellows came to the top. (...)
Christianity finds sickness necessary, just as the Greek spirit had need of a superabundance of health--the actual ulterior purpose of the whole system of salvation of the church is to make people ill. And the church itself--doesn't it set up a Catholic lunatic asylum as the ultimate ideal?--The whole earth as a madhouse?—(…) Christianity has the rancour of the sick at its very core--the instinct against the healthy, against health. Everything that is well--constituted, proud, gallant and, above all, beautiful gives offence to its ears and eyes.
On the rejection of Christian values by the Renaissance and the Reformation as the Reaction against the Renaissance
Is it understood at last, will it ever be understood, what the Renaissance was? The transvaluation of Christian values,--an attempt with all available means, all instincts and all the resources of genius to bring about a triumph of the opposite values, the more noble values. . . . This has been the one great war of the past; there has never been a more critical question than that of the Renaissance--it is my question too--; there has never been a form of attack more fundamental, more direct, or more violently delivered by a whole front upon the center of the enemy! To attack at the critical place, at the very seat of Christianity, and there enthrone the more noble values--that is to say, to insinuate them into the instincts, into the most fundamental needs and appetites of those sitting there . . . I see before me the possibility of a perfectly heavenly enchantment and spectacle (…) A German monk, Luther, came to Rome. This monk, with all the vengeful instincts of an unsuccessful priest in him, raised a rebellion against the Renaissance in Rome. (…) Christianity itself, no longer occupied the papal chair! Instead there was life! Instead there was the triumph of life! Instead there was a great yea to all lofty, beautiful and daring things! . . . And Luther restored the church: he attacked it. (…) (The Germans) also have on their conscience the uncleanest variety of Christianity that exists, and the most incurable and indestructible--Protestantism. . . . If mankind never manages to get rid of Christianity the Germans will be to blame. . . .
(The Antichrist)
On the destruction of Greco-Roman culture by Christianity
The whole labour of the ancient world gone for naught: I have no word to describe the feelings that such an enormity arouses in me.—(…) To what end the Greeks? to what end the Romans?--All the prerequisites to a learned culture, all the methods of science, were already there; man had already perfected the great and incomparable art of reading profitably--that first necessity to the tradition of culture, the unity of the sciences; the natural sciences, in alliance with mathematics and mechanics, were on the right road,--the sense of fact, the last and more valuable of all the senses, had its schools, and its traditions were already centuries old! Is all this properly understood? Every essential to the beginning of the work was ready;--and the most essential, it cannot be said too often, are methods, and also the most difficult to develop, and the longest opposed by habit and laziness. What we have to day reconquered, with unspeakable self-discipline, for ourselves--for certain bad instincts, certain Christian instincts, still lurk in our bodies--that is to say, the keen eye for reality, the cautious hand, patience and seriousness in the smallest things, the whole integrity of knowledge--all these things were already there, and had been there for two thousand years! (…) The Greeks! The Romans! Instinctive nobility, taste, methodical inquiry, genius for organization and administration, faith in and the will to secure the future of man, a great yes to everything entering into the imperium Romanum and palpable to all the senses, a grand style that was beyond mere art, but had become reality, truth, life . . --All overwhelmed in a night, but not by a convulsion of nature! Not trampled to death by Teutons and others of heavy hoof! But brought to shame by crafty, sneaking, invisible, anemic vampires! Not conquered,--only sucked dry! . . . Hidden vengefulness, petty envy, became master! Everything wretched, intrinsically ailing, and invaded by bad feelings, the whole ghetto-world of the soul, was at once on top!--One needs but read any of the Christian agitators, for example, St. Augustine, in order to realize, in order to smell, what filthy fellows came to the top. (...)
Christianity finds sickness necessary, just as the Greek spirit had need of a superabundance of health--the actual ulterior purpose of the whole system of salvation of the church is to make people ill. And the church itself--doesn't it set up a Catholic lunatic asylum as the ultimate ideal?--The whole earth as a madhouse?—(…) Christianity has the rancour of the sick at its very core--the instinct against the healthy, against health. Everything that is well--constituted, proud, gallant and, above all, beautiful gives offence to its ears and eyes.
On the rejection of Christian values by the Renaissance and the Reformation as the Reaction against the Renaissance
Is it understood at last, will it ever be understood, what the Renaissance was? The transvaluation of Christian values,--an attempt with all available means, all instincts and all the resources of genius to bring about a triumph of the opposite values, the more noble values. . . . This has been the one great war of the past; there has never been a more critical question than that of the Renaissance--it is my question too--; there has never been a form of attack more fundamental, more direct, or more violently delivered by a whole front upon the center of the enemy! To attack at the critical place, at the very seat of Christianity, and there enthrone the more noble values--that is to say, to insinuate them into the instincts, into the most fundamental needs and appetites of those sitting there . . . I see before me the possibility of a perfectly heavenly enchantment and spectacle (…) A German monk, Luther, came to Rome. This monk, with all the vengeful instincts of an unsuccessful priest in him, raised a rebellion against the Renaissance in Rome. (…) Christianity itself, no longer occupied the papal chair! Instead there was life! Instead there was the triumph of life! Instead there was a great yea to all lofty, beautiful and daring things! . . . And Luther restored the church: he attacked it. (…) (The Germans) also have on their conscience the uncleanest variety of Christianity that exists, and the most incurable and indestructible--Protestantism. . . . If mankind never manages to get rid of Christianity the Germans will be to blame. . . .
(The Antichrist)
Friday, October 2, 2009
Thursday, October 1, 2009
No Taxation - Regardless of Representation
Below is my case for abolishing taxation and switching to voluntary government funding.
1-All contracting parties wishing to have their contractual rights defended in courts of law may be required to pay a sum to the government. In a way, it's a voluntary form of government funding. Ayn Rand suggested it but warned that she did not think it was the best option and added that it could be abused.
2-Someone may VOLUNTARILY transfer or bequeath a business or a group of businesses to the government, thus providing the government with a constant source of revenue.
3-(My favorite option) Government financing may be a sort of charity. Unlike my opponents, I don't have a problem with that option. There are several arguments in its favor:
-You see, the current taxation system is based not only on force (though force is a major part) but also on the idea that government may be beneficial. If no one thought that government provides at least some benefits, this coercive system would likely disintegrate and turn into anarchy. No administrative or taxation system can be based on PURE coercion - there must be some idea behind it. Based on this assumption, it is likely that many people would regard government (within its proper limits) as beneficial even if the coercive system were removed. It should also be noted that it would be much easier to finance a MINARCHIST government because its functions are much more limited and it needs much less revenue.
-I don't doubt that rational men understand that the rule of law is extremely beneficial for them. That's why I don't see why they would oppose financing a minarchist government that guarantees the rule of law. On the other hand, if there are no rational men in society, it's quite useless to do anything - it doesn't matter if you force them to pay for government or not. Such a society is destined to collapse anyway. Moreover, if the government involved does not support the rule of law, why should it be financed?
-"The free rider" objection is meaningless because free riders exist now to a much bigger extent than in a minarchist system - they're called welfare recipients.
-Charity - THAT IS, COMPLETELY VOLUNTARY CHARITY - is now a multi-billion dollar business. How can one assume that people can spend such huge amounts of dough if inspired by the idea of "being my brother's keeper" (a wrong idea but that's not the point) but cannot voluntarily fund government if inspired by the noble and extremely beneficial idea of the rule of law?
1-All contracting parties wishing to have their contractual rights defended in courts of law may be required to pay a sum to the government. In a way, it's a voluntary form of government funding. Ayn Rand suggested it but warned that she did not think it was the best option and added that it could be abused.
2-Someone may VOLUNTARILY transfer or bequeath a business or a group of businesses to the government, thus providing the government with a constant source of revenue.
3-(My favorite option) Government financing may be a sort of charity. Unlike my opponents, I don't have a problem with that option. There are several arguments in its favor:
-You see, the current taxation system is based not only on force (though force is a major part) but also on the idea that government may be beneficial. If no one thought that government provides at least some benefits, this coercive system would likely disintegrate and turn into anarchy. No administrative or taxation system can be based on PURE coercion - there must be some idea behind it. Based on this assumption, it is likely that many people would regard government (within its proper limits) as beneficial even if the coercive system were removed. It should also be noted that it would be much easier to finance a MINARCHIST government because its functions are much more limited and it needs much less revenue.
-I don't doubt that rational men understand that the rule of law is extremely beneficial for them. That's why I don't see why they would oppose financing a minarchist government that guarantees the rule of law. On the other hand, if there are no rational men in society, it's quite useless to do anything - it doesn't matter if you force them to pay for government or not. Such a society is destined to collapse anyway. Moreover, if the government involved does not support the rule of law, why should it be financed?
-"The free rider" objection is meaningless because free riders exist now to a much bigger extent than in a minarchist system - they're called welfare recipients.
-Charity - THAT IS, COMPLETELY VOLUNTARY CHARITY - is now a multi-billion dollar business. How can one assume that people can spend such huge amounts of dough if inspired by the idea of "being my brother's keeper" (a wrong idea but that's not the point) but cannot voluntarily fund government if inspired by the noble and extremely beneficial idea of the rule of law?
A Defense of Principle
Mainstream conservatives oppose Obama's healthcare plan. Yet few of them advocate terminating government involvement in healthcare altogether.
Conservatives are against Obama's tax-and-spend policies. Yet they don't support abolishing all taxes completely.
Conservatives criticize the Fed's unprecedented monetary expansion. However few of them want the Fed to be abolished and state interference in the financial sector to be ended altogether.
This list can go on forever. The point is that conservatives' criticism of the Obama administration is rendered null and void by their rejection of principle. They don't want to be "too extreme" and go "too far." They castigate Obama's expansion of big government while at the same time conceding that some degree of statism is necessary. They want to deal a blow to the authoritarian hydra while at the same time exposing their backs to the onslaught of the authoritarian principle. Just like liberals, they yield to pragmatism and betray principle.
If state involvement in healthcare is necessary, why not expand it? Isn't it absurd to argue that the current involvement is enough? It's like saying that a person must "be good" but not "too good." Admitting that the government needs to lay its paws on healthcare makes any opposition to the Obama plan meaningless. Only a principled and extreme stand - the position that the government must get out of healthcare altogether - can have a chance against Obama.
Moreover, admitting that the government has a right to some of your money while opposing Obama's taxation policies is like criticizing large-scale theft while granting that a thief is entitled to some of your revenues. "No taxation without representation", though beneficial in some contexts, is a flawed principle. The right principle is "no taxation." Period. Robbery is wrong, whatever its form and whether perpetrated by one person, several persons or a majority of the country's population. No whim or wish can change the way things are and alter the nature of reality. Robbery is robbery. A is A.
A critique of the Fed's current inflationary policies is also unviable unless combined with a complete rejection of central banking, state-promoted paper money and state-protected money in general. Saying that the Fed's policies have become irresponsible implies that they can sometimes be responsible. In fact, they cannot. Once on the irrational course of central banking and paper money, a financial system can never be responsible. It can be more or less irresponsible, to be sure, but once the virus of state-backed paper money infects it, it can never become sound. The only way out is to kill the virus.
To sum up, only firm allegiance to principle can stop the advance of unreason and tyranny. Pragmatism and moderation are a breeding ground for evil and authoritarianism.
Conservatives are against Obama's tax-and-spend policies. Yet they don't support abolishing all taxes completely.
Conservatives criticize the Fed's unprecedented monetary expansion. However few of them want the Fed to be abolished and state interference in the financial sector to be ended altogether.
This list can go on forever. The point is that conservatives' criticism of the Obama administration is rendered null and void by their rejection of principle. They don't want to be "too extreme" and go "too far." They castigate Obama's expansion of big government while at the same time conceding that some degree of statism is necessary. They want to deal a blow to the authoritarian hydra while at the same time exposing their backs to the onslaught of the authoritarian principle. Just like liberals, they yield to pragmatism and betray principle.
If state involvement in healthcare is necessary, why not expand it? Isn't it absurd to argue that the current involvement is enough? It's like saying that a person must "be good" but not "too good." Admitting that the government needs to lay its paws on healthcare makes any opposition to the Obama plan meaningless. Only a principled and extreme stand - the position that the government must get out of healthcare altogether - can have a chance against Obama.
Moreover, admitting that the government has a right to some of your money while opposing Obama's taxation policies is like criticizing large-scale theft while granting that a thief is entitled to some of your revenues. "No taxation without representation", though beneficial in some contexts, is a flawed principle. The right principle is "no taxation." Period. Robbery is wrong, whatever its form and whether perpetrated by one person, several persons or a majority of the country's population. No whim or wish can change the way things are and alter the nature of reality. Robbery is robbery. A is A.
A critique of the Fed's current inflationary policies is also unviable unless combined with a complete rejection of central banking, state-promoted paper money and state-protected money in general. Saying that the Fed's policies have become irresponsible implies that they can sometimes be responsible. In fact, they cannot. Once on the irrational course of central banking and paper money, a financial system can never be responsible. It can be more or less irresponsible, to be sure, but once the virus of state-backed paper money infects it, it can never become sound. The only way out is to kill the virus.
To sum up, only firm allegiance to principle can stop the advance of unreason and tyranny. Pragmatism and moderation are a breeding ground for evil and authoritarianism.
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