Thought on Interdisciplinarity in Light of the Olympics Gymnastics

The Chinese have a tradition of acrobatics, and the Russians have a tradition of ballet; both countries use their respective traditions as foundations for their gymnastics -- which is why their gymnastics teams are always so good. The American team, being typical Americans, are specialists in gymnastics. Thus, they are technically good, but quite often lack the flair needed to push a performance over the top. Specialization is great, and is a necessary aspect of a growing economy, but there comes a point when and where specialization-only reaches a brick wall. We see this in a lot of postmodern American and European art and literature, which is all about art and literature (since the artists and writers are specialists, they don't know anything else, and thus can't write about anything else). We see it in a lot of our attempts to solve complex problems with single disciplines, which is perhaps why we don't solve a lot of complex problems (we have the simple ones, like building cars, computers, and airplanes down pat). But we are not yet open to interdisciplinary approaches to much of anything. It perhaps does not help that interdisciplinary approaches are associated with Interdisciplinary Studies, which have been used as places where people who should not have even been allowed through the doors of a university can go when they fail out of underwater basket weaving, meaning nobody respects interdisciplinary studies, or interdisciplinary approaches. Which is a real shame, because interdisciplinarity is in fact difficult, and interdisciplinary studies should reflect that difficulty. In the meantime, other countries that are open to interdisciplinary approaches are going to take that advantage and use it. ONly if the U.S. continues to attract people from other countries will we remain ahead in the world.

A Climate of Bad Writing

So apparently evil white people disproportionately pollute the planet, and minorities disproportionately are affected. This, according to J. Andrew Hoerner and Nia Robinson. The insidious evilness of white people is truly astounding. At least, if you believe these two racist Marxists.

But you know, plenty of people are attacking their ridiculous article in general terms. Let me show how absurd it is from a purely English composition point of view. Let's take the first paragraph.

"Everywhere we turn, the issues and impacts of climate change confront us. One of the most serious environmental threats facing the world today, climate change has moved from the minds of scientists and offices of environmentalists to the mainstream. Though the media is dominated by images of polar bears, melting glaciers, flooded lands, and arid desserts, there is a human face to this story as well."

Let's begin with the first sentence. If we accept philosopher Donald Davidson's claim in "Truth and Predication" that truth is to be found in the predicate of the sentence, then we can see that the first sentence says nothing at all, since many other subjects can be interchanged with it (since the predicate is in fact predicating nothing). Examples:

"Everywhere we turn, the issues and impacts of welfare confront us."
"Everywhere we turn, the issues and impacts of illegal immigration confront us."
"Everywhere we turn, the issues and impacts of racists like Hoerner and Robinson confront us."

Take your favorite issue, plug it into the subject slot (the true subject is in the prepositional phrase "of ---"), and the sentence is just as meaningful. Meaning, it has no meaning. So the entire work starts off with a meaningless statement. So far, so good.

In the second sentence we have the term "climate change." This is a meaningless term. The climate has always changed, throughout world history. It will always change. The implication is that if humans weren't around, then the climate would never change, which is false. There is an implied world view in the term "climate change" that does not match reality. Truth must map well onto reality. So we have seen that the first sentence is meaningless, and the second sentence is implicitly untrue.

The last sentence of the first paragraph is equally nonsensical: "Though the media is dominated by images of polar bears, melting glaciers, flooded lands, and arid desserts, there is a human face to this story as well." I'm not ignorant of the picture of the polar bears they are referring to, but it's not explicit. It could in fact mean any picture of a polar bear in the media. Recent pictures of melting glaciers should perhaps give us pause, but I am pretty sure that floods and deserts have been with us for a long, long time. The implication is that all the floods and deserts came about due to climate change, which is false. So the nouns of the predicate of this sentence go from "uncertain reference" to "true implication" to "false implication" and "false implication." Which makes the entire final sentence false in its implications -- not to mention very sloppy. For example, aside from the examples I gave, they wrote "dessert" for "desert," though I do suppose "arid desserts" could be blamed on climate change if we suddenly saw a rash of dry deserts due to our having less access to milk and vegetable oils due to climate change.

It's a rather embarrassing beginning to an article, and it demonstrates the poverty of thinking skills of the authors. Writing demonstrates thinking clarity and skill. They have demonstrated immediately to the reader that they are neither clear nor skilled in their writing or thinking.

The Breck Girl Confesses All

John Edwards, not satisfied with using his wife's terminal illness to try to boost his unsuccessful Presidential campaign within this past year, just revealed what everyone knew, but the MSM refused to even try to investigate: he's been having an affair. My wife a year ago said he was the kind of man who would, seeing as he's the kind of person who can't imagine how lucky you must be to be with a man like him (in contradisctinction, men and women who don't cheat all can't believe how lucky they are). Of course, only John Edwards can't believe how great John Edwards is. He should be ashamed of himself, but you can't be ashamed when you're shameless.

Paris Hilton for President?

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Everybody else has it, so why not me? I do think it's funny that Paris Hilton was able to articulate a more coherent energy policy than Obama has been able to do. Apparently so do some Republican Congressmen, who should thank Paris Hilton for drawing some attention to their protest of Nancy Pelosi ignoring their calls for a vote on energy policy. The media has been completely ignoring them for days. Their incredible partisanship is getting incredibly disgusting. If the Democrats were holding a protest against a Republican-controlled Congress, the MSM would be covering it 24-7. This level of partisanship by the MSM is shameless.

But I seem to have gotten a bit off topic. With Paris Hilton articulating such a good energy policy, is it possible that Hilton and not Obama is the celebrity with the most substance? Not surprising, considering I have observed previously that Obama's speeches are almost entirely free of content. More so, Hilton is showing that she's more forward-thinking than Nancy Pelosi, who keeps bringing up the argument that it would take 10 years to get any oil which, even if true, is irrelevant. If gasoline prices doubled in the 2 years since she took over control of Congress, think of what it will be in 10 years without our adding any oil to the world supply. Her argument amounts to: since it won't help immediately, it won't help at all, ever. SOmeone who is that short-sighted has no business being in charge of anything. Paris Hilton WOULD make a better Speaker than Pelosi. Sadly, I just realized that's not quite the compliment to Paris Hilton I meant it to be.

To be honest, I've always appreciated Paris Hilton in an Andy Warhol kind of way, and I must say that this video only improves my opinion of her. This was exactly the right way to respond to the use of her image by the McCain campaign. Gotta love it.

Economics Does Not Lie

As Guy Sorman observes, Economics Does Not Lie. As economics has truly become a science, it has concluded that the free market -- a naturally-occurring system -- is the best economic system. To me this is much like an ecologist observing that the naturally-occurring ecosystem works best to keep organisms on earth alive, but sadly too many people don't understand this fact.

Walter Williams Book Review

Walter Williams reviews Edgar K. Browning's new book "Stealing from Each Other: How the Welfare State Robs Americans of Money and Spirit". In the review he shows that government transfers of money cost the economy 25% of GDP -- in other words, we should have an $18 trillion, not a $14 trillion, economy. The bottom 10% makes up to $10,500 in the U.S. If we assume everyone's income goes up 25% (meaning the rich get richer in absolute terms), then that $10,500 goes up to $13,125. I suspect it would go up more than that, simply because the disincentives to working welfare provides -- and which keep the bottom 10% with this little money -- would be gone. A full-time job at $6.25 a year makes you $12,500 a year before taxes (which you would get back at the end of the year anyway). And if everyone had to work, because they weren't getting welfare, that would eliminate the voluntary unemployed (the unvoluntary unemployed don't typically remain unemployed for long), thus making for a smaller supply of available workers, which would drive up wages. All of which is prevented by transfer payments.

In other words, crime contributes to keeping people in poverty. It doesn't matter if the thieves are gangs or government.

Innumeracy and the Cost of Gas

I heard someone complaining today on a talk show about the high profits of the oil companies, and the host, of course, pointed out that the oil companies make less than 10% in profit (right at 10% for Exxon), and that they pay more in taxes than they make in profit. The called kept going on and on about the amount of money, ignoring -- or ignorant -- of the difference between amount and percentage. Let me demonstrate.

If Exxon brought in $400 billion, but only 10% of that is profit, they would have a $40 billion profit. People seem to be focused on the last number, the mere amount. But let's look at it this way:

If we assume that all the money brought in is from gasoline sales (which it's not), and Exxon eliminated its profit entirely, then gas at $4 a gallon would only go down by $0.40, meaning gas would still be $3.60. Let's be honest, that's not a big difference. A far, far higher percentage of our gas price is in fact from both gas and corporate taxes (since Exxon and every other oil company passes down the cost of taxes to the consumer). Further, why would Exxon continue to be in business if it couldn't bring in a profit? They are providing a vital service to people, and only reap a small percentage profit from it. How much better off is your life because you have cars rather than horses as transportation. Do you consider that a mere 10% improvement in life?

Windfall Profit Tax on the American Consumer

I really don't have to say much more than is already said here on Obama's idea of a "windfall profit tax" on the oil companies. I willsay a few things, though. If the idea is to tax profits above 10%, then the proposal is completely empty, since that was the profit rate for Exxon, the most profitable US oil company. That means the government wouldn't take a dime from Exxon (which they shouldn't, anyway), but would be telling the American people that they are now really sticking it to the oil companies. How cynically manipulative can you be?

The next thing to note is something I've said in a previous discussion on the Fair Tax, which is that companies don't pay taxes. If the government were to raise taxes on the oil companies, the oil companies would raise prices to make up for the lost money -- thus eating up the entirety of the $1000 per person Obama is promising.

It looks like Obama's ideas are as empty as his rhetoric.

Emergent Orders and Top-Down Structures

Welfare states like the U.S. are the opposite of spontaneous order -- a spontaneous order is a bottom-up process. The welfare state is a top-down imposed process. This is something which works well in creating incredibly simple objects from incredibly simple materials -- like cars and computers -- but it is a disaster when it is applied to complex, self-organizing emergent systems like humans and the spontaneous orders we create, like free market economies, science, cultures, and democratic governments.

We make mistakes when we apply one model to another without really thinking it through. Socialism was an attempt as "scientific economy" because the spontaneous order of science worked so well to create new knowledge. More recently, the Left have accepted the equality necessary for the spontaneous-order government of democracy to work as a good model for the economy as well. It's not. Votes and money do different things, convey different information, and have different outcomes. Votes work best in government; money works best in economies. Another mistake is thinking that complex systems are the same as emergent orders. As a result, you can get people thinking that what is applicable to a company is applicable to government. Again, it's not. Part of the problem too comes about from the fact that too often we do not understand how complexity comes about. For example, companies are not small planned economies. They are self-organizing systems. Over time they become more and more ordered, forming departments in order to keep information more local and contained, so that people can deal with them more easily. Complex systems all give the appearance of having been designed, but none of them truly are. Companies which are truly centrally planned and controlled collapse under the necessary weight of ignorance of the person at the top. I"m the President of The Emerson Institute for Freedom and Culture, Inc., and planning isn't something that is even possible. Which reminds me of an old saying, "When men make plans, God laughs." The more we learn about complex systems, emergence, bottom-up self-organization, and spontaneous orders, the more that saying makes sense.

A communist state definitely does not fit the definition of a bottom-up self-organizing system. It is top-down by any stretch of the imagination. But companies all start small and slowly self-organize into larger and larger companies. In communist countries, the bureaucracy is imposed form the top, but in a company, the company bureaucracy emerges over time. A company more closely resembles the evolution of animals from single-celled organisms to complex organisms with central nervous systems. Further, it may appear that a complex organism is controlled from the top, by the central nervous system, but that isn't true, either. No company was ever designed, but emerged out of a hodgepodge of good and bad decisions, good and bad fortune, good and bad people working for (and being fired from) the company over time. In the end a large corporation only appears in the most superficial way to a communist country -- but the way it is run, and the way it evolved and organized make all the difference in the world. Most people neither realize nor understand that, and so think that government can be run like a company. It can't. It's a different kind of entity altogether. A self-organized government wouldn't look at all like a company, as it has different goals and different forms of information creating it ( money for corporations, votes for democracy -- though each have partially infected the other, which creates problems). Believing a company is a top-down organization due to its structure and complexity is analogous to believing in creationism because you can't imagine or understand how complex organisms could have evolved.

RIP Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"It is we who shall die — art shall remain. And shall we comprehend, even on the day of our destruction, all its facets and all its possibilities?"

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1970 Nobel Prize lecture.

Today Alexander Solzhenitsyn died at 89. While one could criticize his lack of understanding the connection between Leftism and the gulag, about which he wrote so knowingly and passionately, one certainly cannot criticize his literary brilliance nor his unwavering courage. The loss of a great artist is always a great loss for the world.

The Gifts of Obama

After hearing recently that Barack Obama and his wife don't give Christmas or birthday presents to their daughters, I decided to look into it. Now, while Obama is quoted as saying they do this because they “want to teach some limits,” it turns out things aren't quite as dire as they seem. For example, instead of birthday presents, they throw big birthday slumber parties. I'm guessing his 7 and 10 year old daughters aren't complaining about that. And on Christmas the two girls do get presents -- they are all just labeled as being "from Santa Claus." Again, this works well for daughters who are 7 and 10. However, it also sends the message that it is the material goods which are important, and not who gives you the gifts. This I suppose is not too surprising, since Obama's political ideology is so clearly rooted in dialectical materialism. Materialists think that the only things which are important are material things, that economic considerations are the only considerations. So Barack Obama and his wife don't think it's important that their daughters get the presents from them, that their daughters understand that they give those Christmas gifts to them out of love -- they think the only thing that is important is that their daughters get those things. They are separating the giver from the gift -- something I suppose one should expect from a Leftist, since that is a precise definition of their social-economic policies. As far as the daughters are concerned, of course, they will learn one day that there is no Santa Claus, that their parents really were the ones giving the gifts. But still, there is something subtly dehumanizing in the Obamas' attitude toward gift-giving.

The Spoiled Children of Capitalism

Jonah Goldberg has an excellent article on why those who have benefited most from capitalism are those who hate it most. He correctly points out, as I have before, that it is not poverty which needs to be explained, but wealth. More, he hints at the fact that socialists are the ones who are deeply materialistic, not capitalists. It is socialists who think that everything involves materialism and only materialism. Thus, when resource-rich African countries are poor, Western exploitation is blamed -- even if no one can actually find examples of such exploitation. The real problems: lack of rule of law, lack of property rights protections, etc. But these are ignored. Why? Liberal guilt. Ironically, such liberal guilt results in more poverty and suffering, while if those same liberals would use their money and education to open up businesses, poverty could in fact be eliminated.

Meeting Bob Barr

Tonight I attended a meeting where I was able to meet Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party candidate for President. Someone asked him a question that seems relevant to hard-core libertarians who question his move from the GOP to the LP, which is how he could reconcile some of his votes while Congressman and his position now as a Libertarian. The bottom line is that people can grow and change. His answer was a bit more specific. He admitted that as a Congressman he had voted for some things that resulted in decreases in freedom, thinking those small losses weren't much to worry about. But then 9-11 happened, and he witnessed the massive power grab our government made in the aftermath, using it as an excuse. He said it then became clear to him that one could not lose any ground when it came to liberty, that you had to fight to roll back the government everywhere, and not give any ground, that it was important not to lose any liberty. Indeed, one can lose one's liberty through the slow creep of gradualism just as much as through a massive power grab. Worse, when it happens gradually, few if anyone notices. So I'm thrilled to learn Barr has evolved into a true libertarian.

Along those lines, it seems more than odd that there are Ron Paul supporters out there who plan to vote for John McCain rather than Bob Barr. The people who would do that are more loyal to a party that isn't interested in having them than they are to their own beliefs. John McCain is no friend of liberty. And don't let people scare you off with Obama and arguments about supreme court justices. Clinton polarized the true conservatives of the GOP; Obama could do the same thing. McCain will keep both conservatism and libertarianism asleep while he goes about appointing false conservatives to the Supreme Court. (McCain voted for Ruth Bader Ginsberg, after all -- so how can you trust him to put good people on the court?) If Ron Paul supporters are serious about liberty, they need to throw all their support for Bob Barr. If nothing else, a strong showing by the LP will show the politicians in power that there is a significant number of people who do support liberty. Why throw your vote away on someone who does not agree with you? That makes no sense. Quite frankly, if everyone actually voted for the candidate whose ideas most resembled theirs, Bob Barr would win. People need to vote what they believe and not "strategically." Voting strategically is what got the GOP John McCain.

In the meantime, if I were able to advise the Barr campaign, I would advise them to allow Ron Paul to have his moment during the GOP convention, and then immediately thereafter cheerfully announce that Bob Barr is taking up where Ron Paul left off, that he is taking Paul's baton, and that he welcomes all Ron Paul's supporters. ANd if an interviewer were to ask about ron Paul supporters, I would answer, "Why wouldn't they support us? We believe in the same things as Ron Paul. John McCain doesn't. We believe Paul's supporters are wise enough to vote for the candidate who believes what they believe rather than support a party that doesn't even want them around. Except on voting day, of course."

T. Boone Pickens and the Wind(bags)

We've been hearing a lot from and about T. Boone Pickens regarding wind power. The storyline is a good one: oil billionaire pushes alternative energy. So I looked him up. Turns out, he's building lot of wind turbines. Which is certainly fine with me. Just means he has a smart advertising campaign. However, it turns out that he's also pushing Congress for subsidies for wind power. So he's looking to make billions off of subsidies -- your tax dollars. Further, since wind energy has to be backed up by gas-powered energy, Pickens looks to make even more money from his extensive natural gas holdings. Certainly this makes sense, for someone who is looking to develop wind power to also own gas reserves as backup. What I object to is his seeking subsidies. If he really believes in this project, he won't need government money. If he really believes in this, he should spend his own money and the money of his investors. He doesn't need money stolen by the government. The fact that he's seeking laws to benefit him says volumes about his intentions. He should stick with the moral way of making money -- by providing a service -- and leave theft out of the equation.

Form and Experiment in the Arts

When I was taking creative writing classes, I eventually learned that I needed to develop a certain form of short story so I could get the kind of feedback I needed on characters, dialogue, plot, etc. When I turned in my more experimental work, I only got comments back on the experiment. So I started writing the experimental work on the side, turning in short stories written the "right way" for my classes. Those who did not ended up dropping out and failed to turn into good writers. WIth me, though, what I learned in the classroom with the classroom style moved over into the experimental work, and informed it, to make that kind of work, which I preferred, better.

The same thing happened with my brother with his art classes. And the same thing happened to those who did not do as my brother had done.

The same is true of any art form. We have to learn how to do it right before we can experiment. To be a good free verse or experimental poet, you first have to be able to write in form. Otherwise, like an artist who can't draw, you're just a scribbler.

Environmentalism and the Fear of Time

Environmentalists are against oil because it contributes to global warming.
Environmentalists are against coal because it contributes to global warming and acid rain.
Environmentalists are against nuclear power because of nuclear waste.
Environmentalists are against hydroelectric power because it disrupts river ecosystems.
Environmentalists are against wind power because the turbines are "unsightly."
Environmentalists should be against ethanol because it uses more fossil fuels to make the ethanol than is produced, and by turning food into fuel, that harms people worldwide -- the poorest especially. But I haven't heard too much against ethanol subsidies or its use as a fuel.
Hydrogen production still requires more energy than it produces -- but when that changes, you may rest assured that the environmentalists will find something to hate about hydrogen production.
Solar power still costs too much for too little -- but when that changes, you may rest assured that the environmentalists will find something to hate about hydrogen production.

The point for the environmentalists is not and has never been about the environment. Their new complaints about wind power prove that. All of these sources of power help to drive free markets, and it is free markets to which they are opposed. They are opposed to change -- to the passage of time itself -- as is obvious in their rhetoric about "climate change" and "unchanging nature." They are socialists who want socialism precisely because they know socialism stagnates the world. They want to banish time's passage. The constant changing and creative destruction of free markets is what they truly want to banish. They fear time's passage. Do they think that if they can stop change, that they will stop death? This is one of the legacies of atheism: the hopelessness that follows death leads such people to try to stop all change. This is also why Obama's "change" is in fact advocacy for ideas and policies which have already failed repeatedly. Or, perhaps, have not failed -- if your goal is a stagnant economy.

Historicization and Dehistoricization

If you asked the average molecular biology student what a transposon was, they could tell you. But how many could then go on to tell you that Barbara McClintock was the discoverer (and Nobel Prize winner for that discovery) of transposons? In the hard sciences, it is more the facts than the people who discovered those facts which are of primary concern, so it should probably not come as a surprise that as psychology and economics become more scientific in their methodologies (consider, for example, the short article in the latest Science: Homo experimentalis Evolves) that they have stopped focusing on personalities, notwithstanding historian Russell Jacoby's complaints. It's not that to some degree he's not right in lamenting the kind of information we lose by not talking about important people in a field, but what are we to do when scientific discoveries end up proving that the ideas of people we previously considered mainstream are in fact extremely marginal, if not almost completely wrong? No biology department is going to talk about the Russian biologist Lysenko or his theories, because they were utterly wrong. His ideas are a historical footnote pointing out some of the absurd ideas that came out of Soviet-style Marxism. Along those lines, what we are learning about economics disproves almost everything Marx ever had to say. We was, besides, a philosopher, not an economist -- notwithstanding Jacoby's mischaracterization of Marx. Freud probably still has some relevance in studying psychology, as the founder of the field, despite one of his main theses, the Oedipus complex, being shown to be completely wrong, as demonstrated by the Westermarck Effect (which can be seen at work in the very play "Oedipus Tyrannus").

I will say, though, that Jacoby is absolutely right about the situation in philosophy. Too many philosophers forget they are in a humanities department, meaning they are necessarily a historical department. It is especially ironic that Hegel is being ignored, as his ideas on dialectics are so important to the burgeoning field of complex systems. Jacoby is also right in suggesting that we need to pay a bit more attention to the history of our fields. We too often come away from university classes thinking that the few scientific heroes we hear about were pure scientists, with no outside interests, and no wrong ideas. We need to understand how they succeeded, which means understanding how they failed, as well. ANd what their quirks were. Newton was also an alchemist, after all -- and that's some pretty interesting information.

How the Rich Can Help the Poor

Nelson Mandela is encouraging the rich to help the poor, and that is something I agree with -- though I am certain that I only agree with him by purposefully misunderstanding what he means. He of course means that the rich should give their money to the poor. I disagree. That's the worst thing the rich can do with their money. Rather, the rich should try to make themselves much richer through opening new businesses and expanding the ones they already own. By doing so, they will grow the economy and provide more jobs for more people. This is how the rich can and will best help the poor. The idea that the rich should give their money away belies Mandela's zero-sum thinking: wealth is only of a given amount, so if the rich have it, the poor do not. But the economy is a positive-sum game, meaning when you engage in economic activities, you are making yourself and the people you are dealing with better off. The way to help the poor is to allow the rich to remain rich through their economic activities. Governments can help this process by getting out of the way of economic activity. It's not the rich who make poor people poor, but governments who prevent economic activity from taking place.

Literature as a Game -- Reprint

My article "Literature as a Game" has been republished at Esophy.

Happy Anniversary!

Today I've been married 2 years to the most beautiful, wonderful, loving woman in the whole world. (Jealous?) I love you, Anna!

Democrats Oppose Free Trade Agreement that Would Help American Businesses and Workers

Today, in his press conference, President Bush let the Democrats' real motives out of the bag when it comes to the Colombian Free Trade deal. The Democrats are naturally against free trade because they're socialists, and thus they fundamentally oppose all free trade. They use people's economic ignorance to argue against it, arguing that free trade takes jobs away from the American people. However, Bush observed that we already freely accept whatever and however many goods Colombia wants to send us. What the free trade agreement would do, then, was allow American companies to export goods freely to Colombia. In other words, it would benefit American companies and American workers, while benefiting the Colombian consumer by giving them cheaper products and more variety. So why would the Democrats be against such a trade agreement? Notwithstanding their misleading rhetoric to the American people, they do know all this.

The answer is that they don't want to benefit the Colombian consumers. A free trade agreement would benefit both countries, and that is the last thing socialists want: free trade benefitting anyone. Why, happier Colombian consumers might even undermine support for FARC even more, and we can't have that, now can we? Why has Obama avoided traveling to Colombia, while McCain has already gone? Because Obama would be meeting with who he considers the enemy in meeting the Colombian President.

Father Labeled a 'Pervert' for Taking Pictures of Own Children in Park

The article says it all. Seriously, things have gotten way out of hand. I'm only surprised this took place in Britain and not the U.S. first. Personally, when everyone sees a pervert under every bush, it is their mind which is the one that is perverse. Accusations of perversity for innocent behaviors reflect the perverse souls of the accusers.

Advice to the Barr Campaign

If Bob Barr is smart, he will be trying for the people at the center of the "Conservatives for Obama" movement, written about by Thomas Sowell. I mean, if this isn't a group of people ripe for the picking by the LP, I don't know what is.

Greens Pick a Candidate

So the Green Party (who should call themselves the Christmas Party, since they are just as Red as they are Green) has nominated Cynthia McKinney as their Presidential nominee. You may remember her from the time when she assaulted a U.S. Capitol Police officer who failed to recognize her. Should make for an interesting race. One can only dream that she does well enough to get in the debates.

$6.9 Million for an American Life

So the federal government has determined that your and my life is worth precisely $6.9 million. This is a drop of about $1 million over 5 years. This number is used to calculate the cost of regulations. To give the example from the article: "Consider, for example, a hypothetical regulation that costs $18 billion to enforce but will prevent 2,500 deaths. At $7.8 million per person (the old figure), the lifesaving benefits outweigh the costs. But at $6.9 million per person, the rule costs more than the lives it saves, so it may not be adopted." This raises a few questions. First, how do they know that a given regulation will prevent 2,500 deaths? And if it turns out that the regulation doesn't prevent that number of deaths, shouldn't they then logically get rid of the regulation? Second, do they calculate the number of deaths a regulation will cause? I'm almost certain that they do not -- and to the extent that they do, my guess is that it's greatly underestimated. I'm sure some statistical methods are used, but how much of this is just someone's best guess? I also wonder if they take age into consideration. Surely a younger person is "worth more" than an older person, if we're calculating this according to number of years left to live. On the other hand, middle aged working people are contributing more tax money, so they might actually be worth more. But who can calculate the worth of the elderly in family and social contributions? (With the elderly, should we calculate it as age brings wisdom, or there's no food like an old fool?) Also, this seems like a number that applies to everyone. Certainly in certain spiritual calculations, all people are worth the same; however, in society, that's just not the case. Isn't someone who starts a company that ends up employing thousands to hundreds of thousands of people and provide a product that makes peoples' lives better worth more than a crack whore? And if that's the case the numbers should be more personalized. This would mean, then, that a regulation that prevented a high death rate among crack whores perhaps should not be adopted, while a regulation that prevented the death of just one CEO should.

The point of all this is that this is patently absurd. I don't buy what the government is trying to sell me with these numbers. This is a bookkeeping trick designed to justify regulations that more often than not have no demonstrable benefit, and more often than not harm people. After all, driving up prices is a harm that I'm guessing isn't properly calculated in justifying regulations either. So the FDA can continue to keep drugs off the shelves that could save millions of peoples' lives, and not have to worry, since nobody is going to call them out on it, since those deaths are certainly not calculated. Certainly we should not expect the news to announce with every drug that was approved by the FDA that, "If they had released it ten years ago shortly after it was first created, 10 million lives would have been saved."

BTW, why don't they use this calculation for murderers and make them pay the families of those they killed that much?

Natural Economy vs. Manmade Economy

There is something faintly ridiculous in defending a naturally occurring system against artificial constructs. Free market economies are bottom-up, productive, complex, creative systems; all man-made (developed first in the mind of man rather than occurring through human interactions -- such as socialism, welfare statism, fascism, and communism) are top-down, entropic, simplifying, dehumanizing systems. So supporting free market economics -- the form of economy which emerged naturally through voluntary exchange first in northern Italy, and then in the Netherlands and in England -- is not ideological any more than supporting the heliocentric view of the solar system is ideological. Saying "I support free markets" is a lot like saying, "I support the ecosystem," or "I support the planets orbiting the sun," or "I support atomic theory," or "I support evolutionary theory." In other words, expressing support for free market economics is expressing support for a naturally-occurring system. What we really don't like is that free market economies are outside of our control, and we hate to have anything not in our control. The opposition to free markets is all about control and power. We have learned that we can't take that attitude toward the ecosystem -- when will we learn that we can't take that attitude toward the economy, either?

A Nation of Whiners

Phil Gramm is right. We are a nation of whiners. One can tell from the context of his remarks that he did intend to mean the leaders of the country, and that those whiny "leaders" have resulted in people perceiving a recession where there isn't one (thus his phrase "mental recession"). However, if Gramm has been teaching at a university lately, he would know that he was right in the broader sense -- at least among those getting educated, and those who are already educated. Most of the political whiners are in fact demagogues who are whining just to get more power. But there's an entire generation -- the post gen-x'ers -- who are about the whiniest bunch of people I've ever come across. Worse than the Boomers. My generation, gen-x, were cynical -- but it seems my generation has raised another one that is more whiny than the generation of our parents. Give me cynical over whiny any day. Cynical may be defensive, but at least it isn't weak and lazy.

Idiot as an Existential Category

The word "idiot" comes from the ancient Greek word "idiotes," which was used to refer to those people who were not socially engaged, but were rather solely concerned with themselves. Socrates referred to himself as an idiotes, as any true philosopher is. After all, "philosophy" comes from the Greek words philos, so, and phos -- love, inner, and light, respectively -- meaning philosophy is love of the inner light. Philosophy is self-regarding.

I start with a positive example because we are all familiar with the negative connotations of the word "idiot," to which I plan to contribute. Certainly, most people not socially engaged are not philosophers. Like "philosopher," "idiotes" is a composite Greek word. "Id" means "I" and "iota" means "one." An idiot is thus an I-one, a person entirely focused on his or herself at the expense of society.

The modern world seems full of idiots. Anyone who says, "You cannot possibly understand/sympathize with what I am going through" is an idiot. No one is terminally unique. More, neuroscientists have shown that when we witness someone in pain, our brains light up the same location and with almost the same intensity as when we actually experience the pain ourselves. Empathy -- "to suffer in" -- and sympathy -- "to suffer with" -- are real.

Another kind of idiot are those incapable of considering anyone's position but their own. I've tried to have discussions with people who won't consider a single fact that goes against what they believe (or even try to reinterpret the fact to support their position) or who do not read or hear what you actually wrote or said, but only respond to what they expect you to write or say. Such people are not even arguing with you -- you don't exist; you don't even matter; only their preconceived notions and rigid categories matter. Only they themselves matter. People who engage in such arguments are idiots.

Our schools have been turning out armies of idiots. We have a generation who have been taught to feel good about what they know, although they don't actually know anything; they've been taught to feel good about themselves, although they have been deprived of the necessary life lessons needed to have and develop a self. We have a generation who break down over the least bit of criticism. We have a generation of narcissists and idiots.

Actually, several generations now. The Baby Boomers were the first generation of idiots -- though for different reasons than subsequent generations (though still caused by those same Boomers). Existentialism argued for the alienated, angst-ridden idiot. Postmodernism is idiotic to its core. If I were to be optimistic, I'd say there were a half-dozen members of Congress who weren't idiots. Power-seekers are all idiots.

An idiot is self-regarding to the point that (s)he harms others, either directly or indirectly. The answer to idiocy is not the subordination of the individual to society or government, as power-seeking idiots would have you believe. The answer is to be socially engaged, not completely dissolved in the social until you lose your identity. To be socially engaged is to acknowledge your position within society, that you are a member of a social species and of a social body. Engagement means treating people in their full complexity and not ignoring their good aspects (or their bad ones). It means giving what someone says full consideration and trying to learn why they are saying what they are saying. It means being skeptical enough to be open to the possibility of being wrong, but not so skeptical as to not believe in truth at all (both extremes are idiotic). It means thinking of someone other than yourself (which is why we have such high divorce rates, as we have high idiocy rates as well).

Idiots at the Park

Sunday my family and I went to the part for a cookout with a friend and his family. While there, I took my daughter, Melina, down to the lake to look at the ducks and geese (she loves birds). There were people feeding the ducks and geese, so there were a lot of the birds on the shore. A woman and her (I'm guessing) ten-year-old son and a younger daughter were there, and the boy started chasing some ducks. Two older ladies told him to stop. This is how the subsequent conversation went:

Mother: Don't tell my child what to do.
Lady: He shouldn't be chasing those ducks.
Mother: I don't care. I'll get after my kid if I want to.
Lady: Ducks are a protected species. If a ranger saw him doing that, you would get a fine because he was harassing them.
Mother: I don't care. You don't tell my child what to do.

When the DNA-donor and her brats left, I went up to the ladies and said, "If you ever catch my daughter doing something she shouldn't, please do tell her not to do it."

The ladies thanked me, and we had a good time feeding the ducks and geese.

Those ladies were in the right, and that mother was in the wrong. Absolutely. If you and your children are out in public, in a public place, then you should expect people to help keep your children well-behaved. Otherwise, keep your brats at home. That is part of socialization. We go through life having others tell us what to do and not to do, subtly or directly. We obey traffic lights and speed limits. We dutifully get into a line at Starbucks. We do what we are told by our bosses at work. This latter is one of the main reasons why we should discipline our children and let them know that there are authorities out there, for without the lesson that you should listen to authority figures, your child is going to grow up to have a hard time keeping a job. And when a parent lets a child know, as this mother did, that (s)he doesn't have to listen to anyone, she is doing that child a disservice. That woman is raising an anti-social, narcissistic child who won't learn a thing in school and who will grow up thinking the world revolves around him. The problem with that is that it's not true and, being not true, it will result in someone who is seriously dissatisfied with life, since nobody's going to think he's as special as mommy does. In other words, this mother -- and all the mothers just like her, who seem to be dominating nowadays -- is raising an idiot. But that is an existential category you will have to wait until tomorrow to learn more about.

Happy July 4th!!!

Happy Birthday America!

My wife just observed that there are July 4th celebrations on all the Spanish-language channels, but no indication that it's Independence Day on any of the English-language channels, like ABC, NBC, CBS, or even Fox. I guess celebrating the birth of the U.S. is too politically incorrect for the Leftists running those stations. Don't want to offend themselves (the only people who would be offended to see such celebrations). Why does anyone want people with such an anti-American attitude either giving them their news or, worse, running the country? We're not talking about jingoism here, just an acknowledgment of our Independence on the 4th.

Left, Right, Gay, Lesbian

Homosexuals are imprisoned in Cuba.

This fact confused my wife, who wondered why a Leftist regime would care whether or not you are a homosexual. She could understand why religious conservatives would care, but a Leftist government?

That does, admittedly, seem a bit odd on the surface of it, but it's really not if you understand that one of the goals of the Left is to undermine all forms of organization other than the state -- and that includes the family. In other words, the Left agrees with the Religious Right that homosexuality undermines the family. The difference between the two is that the Right thinks this is a bad thing, while the Left thinks it is a good thing. Of course, once you do have a communist country in place, you no longer need to use homosexuals this way, and the fact that the country is now interested in 1) population increase, and 2) suppressing artistic creativity now puts homosexuals in a very precarious position. Leftist regimes are also notoriously against anything that might even come close to decadence, and homosexuality has historically been associated with decadence.

What the Left is doing in the U.S. and what the Left is doing where it is in complete control in relation to homosexuals should make people realize that the Left is only using homosexuals to forward their own agenda, and will be more than willing to do away with this group once their goals have been achieved. The Left believes the same thing about homosexuals that the Religious Right believes: homosexuals undermine families. I don't believe this to be true any more than my wife does, but that fact has nothing to do with what the Left in fact does believe.

Arctic Volcanoes

This article on volcanoes erupting under Arctic Ice warns that the heat from the volcanoes only warmed the water, and didn't have any effect on the ice. Yet, the volcanic eruptions coincided perfectly with the melting of the Arctic ice (Antarctic ice meanwhile has been accumulating). Why do I find it hard to believe that eruptions that warmed the water of the Arctic Ocean didn't affect the ice at all? Global warming really is a religion if scientists are making such an absurd claim to avoid any suggestion that other factors could have had a role in melting Arctic ice.

Anthropology and Melina

My daughter, Melina, has a plush multicolored snake. Several days ago, Melina pulled it out of her toy box and held it up, pointing it at her mom, and began making a hissing noise and pretending to make it strike at her mom. She had a big grin on her face, clearly delighted that she was "scaring" her mom with the snake.

The thing is, Melina has never seen a live snake, let alone seen one do this, and we have never played with her plush snake this way with her. In fact, it was in the toy box, unseen, since we bought it a few months ago. So how did Melina know that it would/might scare her mom? Or that she should make it strike to make it scary? We know that primates have a natural fear of eagles, large cats, and snakes -- but even if she was tapping into this instinct, this seems pretty specific. Could our instincts be that incredibly specific? I mean, this is a pretty innate "idea."

The Sounds of a Culture

Here is an interesting article on the sounds of the Aztecs and Mayas. In the article it is observed that archeologists tend to treat ancient cultures as if they were "deaf ad mute." Indeed, we tend to forget a lot of the daily goings-on in now-dead cultures -- even with the current interest in daily life among historians. In a poetry discussion group, the ignorance about the importance of poetry in older cultures is astounding. They seem ignorant of wandering bards and raconteurs, that the first poetry was sung and acted as a way to carry cultural and religious beliefs from place to place, and across time. This, too, was part of the cacophony of life in the past.

What will future archeologists understand about our sounds? What could we now say about them?

Limited Government and the Rule of Law

If you want to know what is good for society, you first have to know what is good for the individuals which make up that society. What is good for individuals is a life of virtue (Aristotle), and the purpose of society is the perfection of the individual. This is why we need a free society: because freedom makes it possible for us to flourish and to become excellent.

The Church, by definition, limits the state, because it (and God) requires loyalty -- meaning the state cannot have our full loyalty. The presence of other institutions that require our dividing our loyalties is known as "subsidiarity." UNder this idea, a community of higher order should not interfere with the internal life of a community of a lower order except to aid in the true common good. We have loyalties to ourselves, to our families, to our churches, etc. Of course, those in favor of large, strong governments know this, which is why those in favor of big government (the Left) are anti-religion, anti-family, and anti-individualism. Totalitarianism sees Christianity as an obstacle. This is not only because the church requires a certain level of loyalty, but also because the Church proclaims that whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State goes against Christian theology. Those in favor of utopian states also go against Christian theology. Humans are good, but fallen, and we therefore need to deter and punish people, meaning we need to implement justice (but also use mercy -- the Left is all too happy to impose justice, but avoids mercy). If we recognize that people are not and can never be perfect, then attempts to create utopias will always fail, and create Hell on earth. There is no such thing as a "right person" to rule, since any ruler we get will also be an imperfect person. That being the case, it is best to decentralize power to allow for more natural social bonds to form. More often than not, big government breaks as many social bonds as possible, to make sure all loyalties are to the state. But we need society, community, social order, and love to flourish and live a life of virtue. Government can supply none of these things -- but it can break the bonds that contribute to love, order, and virtue. Under totalitarianism, we lose the freedom to be responsible. This is devastating to the human spirit.

The state must obey the same laws as the individual citizens. When a government creates laws it does not have to abide by, either 1) the law for the citizens is unjust, or 2) the lack of law for the state is unjust. An unjust law is no law at all (Aquinas and Augustine). Thus, the law should not be arbitrary. We should have rule of law, not rule of men. Just laws include due process, enforcing of contracts (voluntary agreements), and consistency within the law, meaning the law has equal application and is predictable. Further, the state should contribute to the common good. The common good does not mean that the state should do everything (or even that it should do much of anything). No government can know everyone's hopes, dreams, needs, wants, etc. So no government could ever run a society and culture efficiently -- even if efficiency were the only issue (and who wants a dehumanizing "efficiency"?). The common good are those social conditions which allow people to reach fulfillment fully and easily. The foundational conditions of this are life and freedom. On top of the founding conditions must be laid such things as a proper economy, proper foreign policy, etc. The proper end is the creation of virtuous people. Human vice is what causes social problems; social problems are not the cause of vice (though social problems may encourage vice in a vicious circle). We have the kind of society we have because of the virtue or vice of the people in that society. The society then, in turn, encourages or discourages vice or virtue. If we are not creating more virtuous people (or the unvirtuous are growing), then there is something wrong with the society and the government (the church especially is guilty of having fallen short in it mission too, it seems). State control prevents loving personal concern and is therefore dehumanizing. You cannot expect a dehumanized people to be virtuous. Of course, it is well known that virtuous people need less government, so the fact that the government has programs, like welfare, that make people less virtuous, should give us pause. Why should a government want its people to be less virtuous? Well, if you want more power, and a virtuous people need less government, the easiest way to get more power is to make the people less virtuous.

Now, while we certainly want a society which encourages virtue, does that mean that law should forbid all evil? Certainly the law should not condone nor encourage bad behavior -- but it should tolerate such behavior. Why? A forced virtue is no virtue at all. Still, the claim that "You can't legislate morality" is nonsense on the face of it, since all law is legislation of morality. What we have to decide is what laws will make for a more truly virtuous people. The law should never be a burden, and mercy should always be part of the calculation.

The Supreme Court's Wrong Decision

I find it more than a bit odd that the Supreme Court declared that the rights recognized by the U.S. Constitution apply to non-citizens/residents. What other country would have the audacity to declare that their Constitution's laws extended to include the citizens of other countries? The Constitution applies only to "We the People of the United States . . ." The Constitution makes it clear that the Congress is supposed to pass treaties. The international treaties we have agreed to abide by make it clear what we should do with the captives at GItmo. The Supreme Court should have declared what is in fact the case: they have no jurisdiction to decide anything about the citizens of other countries or about treaties we have signed.

I do think they were right about the 2nd Amendment, though. And while I'm against the death penalty, I do sometimes find the Court's understanding of "cruel and unusual" to be a bit odd.

Poll

Who is the world's greatest contemporary thinker? Why?

Praxis

Which is the best course: "Don't just sit there, do something," or "Don't just do something, sit there (at least for a while)"?

The first is termed "priority of praxis" -- praxis being "right action." WIth a philosophy of priority of praxis, what matters is what we do, and what we do affects what we think. If this is true, then it leads naturally to relativism. This is to be compared to the idea that what we think affects what we do. When we put thought before action, we first ask "why are we doing what we are doing?" This is a question not important under priority of praxis.

If action is what matters, then what we see is history just working itself out, and what we think doesn't matter. More, we should think at all about what we're doing. If action is all, and history is action, history is all, and we're not responsible for our actions. THe priority of praxis attitude leads to such catch-phrases as "Don't just sit there, do something," and "What's important is that you do something." As a consequence, what is important is one's good intentions, not the outcome of one's actions. It doesn't matter if you're on the right path or not, so long as you are moving forward. The problem is, with such an attitude, all one is going to do is get lost.


Good intentions don't matter. But neither do the ends justify the means. Virtuous action means first doing things for the right reason, then second knowing how to actually achieve the ends desired. If you intend to help someone, but you harm them instead, you should not be praised for good intentions. A good example would be if someone is having a heart attack, and you don't know CPR, but you administer it anyway and end up breaking the person's ribs, making it impossible for someone who does know CPR to save the person's life. You may have had good intentions, but the dead man's family would be right in being angry with you. They are right, because you acted unethically in attempting to do something you were not trained to do. Piety is no replacement for proper methods.

A Few Thoughts on Reason

Reason was an important topic at Acton U. A few observations about reason that were made there:

ratio is empirical reason. It is scientific reasoning
Intellectio is reasoning about deeper things. It is philosophical, religious, and artistic reasoning, or reasoning in the humanities.
The two were split in about the 1300's, with the decisive split made by Descartes.

Faith without reason leads to fanaticism.
Reason without faith leads one to a scientistic denial of human liberty.
Faith (the subjective, feelings) and reason (the objective) are both necessary to have a full, complete, holistic human being.

Freedom for excellent is more reasonable than freedom for indifference.

The freedom to choose means that you have both rational and irrational choices. SInce many people today try to avoid judgement, many theorists have denies that we in fact have freedom to choose. If we don't believe in choice, we don't believe in freedom. When we don't value human freedom, we look to government to solve all our problems.

If we are to be balanced, whole human beings, we need to embrace feelings, experience, and reason. All three simultaneously. Those who want to deny reason are doing so because they don't want to be judged, they don't want to be responsible for their actions. They are selfish and immoral, which leads them to discarding reason and freedom to justify their actions. Why are we allowing selfish, immoral people to tell us what the world is like?

Against Nominalism

One of the issues that was raised in the talk on Christian anthropology was that of nominalism. Nominalism says that universals don't exist outside the mind, and that things with similar names but which are different objects have no connection to each other. For the nominalist, physical particulars are what exist, and that universals and concepts are mental constructs. This has resulted in the postmodern ideas that we only name things, and that things have no real outside reality, and that there is no such thing as natural inclinations in humans. A consequence has been the gradual abandonment of reason and the elevation of the will -- meaning that nominalist freedom is freedom to choose absent reason. Freedom is freedom of the will to do what it pleases. The idea of nominalism was first suggested by William of Ockham, and has gradually evolved to the philosophy of Nietzsche (where the speaker stopped) and, more so, to postmodernist theory.

For the nominalist, freedom is the power to affect things. Will is determined by nothing (it is neither external nor internal) -- as it is neither connected to PLatonic universals nor to human nature. The result is that autonomy is freedom -- autonomy from nature, law, God, etc. One does not gain truth through rational discourse or reason-driven investigation, but by will, resulting in a clashing of wills as the driving force of history.

Now, it's not that nominalism rejects reason outright, but that it sees reason as being slave to the will. Of course, nominalists do use rational arguments to forward their nominalist philosophy, so one could easily argue that nominalism is self-refuting. The rejection of reason would be reason enough for Catholic theologians to reject nominalism, but the fact that nominalism also holds that divine revelation is not rational (meaning God is therefore not rational) should make Christians concerned with the dominance of this philosophy. Yet, I have had discussions with professed Christians who believe that nobody receives divine revelation (at least, not anymore -- they solve the problem of what the NT says by saying that divine revelation and miracles had its time and place, but that we're no longer in a time where those things happen). A Christian who denies divine revelation is in fact a nominalist. This is perhaps why we see more and more people seeing God as arbitrary and willful rather than as being a loving God.

Nominalism leads to a deterministic world view (which includes historical determinism, like Marxism). Since we are determined, we are not responsible for our actions. Since we are water atoms in the river of history, we are being moved rather than moving anything -- so how could we be responsible for our actions? This being the case, nominalism leads to a lack of virtue (or vice) in action. It further leads to a view of the world as being only empirical -- that the senses provide the only evidence for reality.

The speaker talked about how nominalism leads us to the philosophy of Nietzsche, a claim I could spend a lot of time discussing. On one hand, it most certainly does. It certainly leads to the postmodernist conception of Nietzsche's philosophy, at least. In fact, what we see in Nietzsche is an attempt to first take nominalism to its logical conclusion -- nihilism. Nietzsche then tries to develop a philosophy on the other side of this critique. Unfortunately, Nietzsche uses some of the same language as nominalism -- things like will, like in his Will to Power -- and this can cause a great deal of confusion. Nietzsche sought to resolve many of the problems of nominalism, while retaining the critique of universals. It seems clear that while we do indeed look at many different things and subtract the differences to get the concept, at the same time, it seems that there is in fact a similarity there to notice. This seems to be resolved with the idea of strange attractors, which brings back the idea of there being universals "out there" -- outside the human mind -- without them being quite Platonic Forms. I'm of the opinion that Nietzsche was in fact groping toward this idea with his ideas of the Will to Power and the Eternal Return. The real result of nominalism, thus, is not Nietzsche per se, but the postmodernists.

In the end, nominalism is wrong. Strange attractors theory shows how there can be universals in a physical sense. Further, determinism has been greatly problemitized by quantum physics, systems, complexity, and emergence. Emotions or will may in fact precede reason evolutionarily, but that does not mean it rules reason. What comes later often rules what came before. Reason is one of those things. Further, a great deal of biological research has shown that there is in fact a human nature and, more, that we have a set of natural ethical drives. So science -- biological science especially -- has proven the intractability of nominalism. It may not return us entirely to ancient Greek and Medieval Christian ideas, but it is remarkable how far toward those positions things like emergence, systems, and strange attractors have pushed us. We do not have to accept nominalism's end result of nihilism. The world is in fact meaningful and full of value. Meaning, value, and virtue are what make us free, not nihilism and anarchy.

What is Freedom For?

Too often we take for granted that freedom is something we should want to have. Thus, we take it for granted. Further, we treat it as an end and not a means to something. Thus, we don't even understand what freedom is.

At Acton U., freedom was connected to virtue. The aim is not liberty as libertinism, as license to do whatever you want. The aim is to allow people to have liberty so that they are able to chose to do right. Virtue is not coerced. If I hold a gun to someone's head and make them do something immoral, that person is not culpable for their actions. Conversely, one is not to be praised for being forced to do what's right. Both vice and virtue must be freely chosen. Love, too, must be freely chosen to be love. In the end, the aim is to have a virtuous liberty -- but to have that, you have to have the option of choosing vice.

It was observed at Acton U. that in the Old Testament, the jews connected the obeying of the Mosaic law with liberty. This showed a deep understanding of the connection between rules and liberty. For Jews, liberty was liberation from servitude -- and this included the servitude of sins and the base appetites. If you are a slave to mental sickness, you are not truly free. The same is true of immoral behavior. Indeed, those who are slaves to immorality are more easily enslaved to people and to governments. So following good rules in fact allow you to have more freedom, not less. A child banging on a piano demonstrates only a very primitive kind of freedom. No rules are involved. However, as a child learned to play piano, that child goes through certain stages toward developing freedom. First, the child has to have discipline. This leads to rote playing. Mastery follows, which then leads to the child being able to create their own musical compositions. This helps demonstrate the connections among liberty, good, and truth. One has to learn the true way to play piano to become good, which then leads you to creative liberty. (This same approach should be taken in poetry and the other arts -- why do we not take a pianist who hasn't learned how to play the piano properly seriously, but we will take seriously artists and poets who won't learn their arts in the same way? -- people think because they can speak, they can do poetry, though they would never think they could compose music just because they can hum.)

With the advent of Christianity, though, you have the introduction of Christian freedom. Rather than merely having prohibitions, you are now free to do good. For the Christian, freedom is a call to be holy; freedom is liberty in Christ.

For St. Thomas Aquinas, reflecting the influence of Aristotle, freedom was freedom for excellence. Free choice was oriented toward human happiness and excellence and was therefore connected to virtue and reason. For Aquinas, there is a connection among happiness, love, and truth. Freedom comes about through a rational inclination to truth and happiness. Reason leads to truth, while will leads to goodness.

Humans are free and in control of our actions because of our rational inclinations to truth and happiness, not in spite of these things. Reason and virtue lead to freedom which leads to a more human life of choice and happiness.

Thoughts on Human Dignity (Sirico)

In my recent posting I hinted at the first point Sirico made, which is that in an argument, we should try to find the source of disagreement so that we can discover truth. We should do this because we should love truth rather than our own opinion. Indeed, the importance of truth was emphasized throughout the conference. The truth discussed was truth as correspondence rather than truth as alatheia, as one would expect at a conference focusing primarily on economics. Why support free market economics? Because it is the true source of wealth, value, and liberty.

Central to the question of truth is the question of anthropology. Do we know who we are? "Who is man that thou art mindful of him?" (8th Psalm). We need to have a clear understanding of who and what human beings are -- what is the truth of human nature? The Christian perspective is, of course, that man is imperfect, having fallen from grace after eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. (The irony here being that by becoming more like God, in knowing of good and evil, we fell from grace with God.) If man is not perfect, then utopia is not and can never be an option. We cannot have heaven on earth. Indeed, every attempt to create a heaven on earth has in fact resulted in the creation of hell on earth. One doesn't need Christian theology to tell you that -- the empirical evidence is in.

Sirico observed that we typically have a misunderstanding of our nature. He observed that we are not spirit inside of flesh (the dualist perspective), but spirit-flesh. There are several implications to this. One is that rules are not arbitrary and are not imposed from above, but rather emerge from the full truth of who human beings are. "Is implies the ought." Further, this means that human beings all have integrity -- that is, a unified behavior which we can apply to multiple places. Postmodern thought has emphasized our lack of integrity, much to our detriment. We expect people to act differently with different people, and so they do. My parents expected me to act the same way no matter where I was, whether I was with them or not -- and I did, for the most part. The fact of the matter is that, of course, we act somewhat differently in different situations and with different people, but we also should have enough integrity that we can and do live by a set of core values and morals.

This anti-dualism also helps us to understand that the material and the spiritual are related. Yes, we are material beings, meaning we are, like animals, bound to things by instincts, but we are also spiritual beings, meaning we are bound to things by reason as well. Indeed, it is reason which gives rise to property in the human sense (I have also observed in a previous posting that instincts equally give rise to property -- the combination of the two only strengthens the idea of private property). As spiritual beings, man related to the material world through universality/permanence. Property comes about when people place value on things and give them purpose. Labor combined with nature gives rise to property (remembering that, in a factory, the workers are selling the property created by their labor to the company they are working for). A river, for example, is just a body of water. But a river combined with human reason and purpose makes a river into a transportation route to improve lives. As a result, the right to property makes possible the protection of human dignity and liberty.

Central to what the Acton Institute is trying to emphasize, though, is the primacy of the human person. A great deal of economic science was criticized for ignoring this very thing, for seeing humans as a sort of dehumanized "economic man" -- something all socialists in particular are guilty of. We have to remember that a person is a thing, while "people" is an abstraction -- something Marxists, socialists, and welfare statists all forget. Part of realizing that the person is a thing, and that we need to consider the primacy of the human person is realizing that the free economy has to be tied to virtue for the society to be virtuous. Free markets spread good and bad equally. To free markets, what matters is what people want -- a free market is just as willing to distribute pornography as Bibles. Thus, it is best that one have a moral populace when one has free markets (we will see later that regarding some activities, markets do actually make us better people, while in other activities, we have to be good first). If we take liberty as license and also get rid of truth (as the postmodern Left does), we get decadence and oppression. So what is the end of Freedom? LIving a life of dignity and virtue. RIght is the moral implication of the truth. Truth (is) implies right/morals (ought).

If the goal is economic prosperity, the facts are in: that is achieved only by allowing people to engage in free enterprise. This results in the sharing of intelligence across society, which is only interrupted by government interference. This is the truth of economics. Thus, it is only right and moral to support free market economics and to oppose Marxism, socialism, and the welfare state. No small reason for this opposition, though, is the fact that the state simply cannot love. This is far more important than people believe. Without love, help and charity is dehumanizing. This is why welfare programs are as devastating as they are to the morals, psychology and material well being of the people on welfare. They take away and offend the dignity of those receiving welfare, whose lives are rendered meaningless and dehumanized, driving them to offend their own dignity even more in drunkenness (whether with alcohol, drugs, or power), delusion, ignorance, and the acceptance of bribes (which includes the bribery they receive from government in the form of welfare). What they need is the kind of authentic love which helps to get them out of their desperation, a desperation which makes it hard for some to have the authentic hope (not the platitudes of a Barack Obama, but the real thing) necessary to see possibilities and to get out the trouble and problems they find themselves in.

The complete talk can be heard here

On Universities -- Markets and Egalitarianism

The crisis in the universities has come about because of two influences: egalitarianism and markets. As universities have embraced an egalitarian ethos, they have lowered standards to let in more and more students. In turn, this has resulted in a market for those students, which has further driven down standards across the board. This also happens in no small part because most universities receive government funding, and so do not want to be seen as "discriminating" in any way, shape, or form. Of course, this, too, is part of the egalitarian ethos. This helps explain why universities, when exposed to market forces, have gotten worse and worse. We don't see this in things like grocery stores, for example. The grocery stores are not controlled by people with a singular ideology. Some grocery stores want to serve the poor, others want to serve middle-incomes, and other grocery stores want to serve the wealthy. The result is that the poor get cheaper food, though they may have to spend more time looking through the produce to find good tomatoes -- while the wealthy have to pay more for the privilege of not having to look through the produce at all. The rich can have boutique grocery stores, while the poor have more affordable food. If the universities weren't run by egalitarians, we could have the same thing in higher education, based on abilities. The smartest could go to boutique universities, where they would be faced with the most challenging education possible, while those with average intelligence could go to Wal-Mart University. One could argue that we have this with community colleges, state universities, and the Ivy League schools (and their equivalents), but the fact is that the last two are increasingly dumbing down. I have taught at a state university that was not giving any better an education than was the community college I taught at. I have also taught at a state university that was offering a better education overall, though local companies still complained that the graduates couldn't write.

One thing that was emphasized over and over at Acton U. was that the market will give the people what they want. This was seen as both a blessing and as a potential problem (markets are most efficient at distributing both food and pornography). But what if the ones providing the service have a unifying ideology that ultimately results in a cartel, as we see in the universities? That's when we get market failure. We need more education entrepreneurs who can open universities that are bereft of egalitarians so that high-quality education can be provided for the best and brightest. The cartels need to be broken up -- they are standing in the way of true market forces, which can release the latent talent, creativity and energies of this country.

On Facts and Opinions

Last night I heard an objection I have often heard in various guises: "Why should I listen to you or anyone else? Everyone thinks they're right." The assumption behind this is one of the basic problems we find in the U.S. -- the inability to differentiate between fact and opinion. Involved in this is an inability to understand the relationship between fact and opinion, and the differentiation between true opinion and mere opinion. But let's start with the first distinction.

For the most part, people aren't typically going to challenge what you say about scientific facts at the physical, chemical, geological, meteorological (unless they're an ecotheist), biological (unless they're a creationist), or ecological (see ecotheist comment) levels -- but if you start talking about human things, like human nature, psychology, culture, social behaviors, economics, politics, or the arts, then you run into the objection that everyone thinks they are right. Here the assumption is that there is no such thing as human truth/facts, but that it's all nothing but opinion. But there are facts about humans we have to take into consideration. Humans are social, but also individuals. Humans have a large number of instincts which express themselves as universals. Humans have moral minds, which lead to ethical universals. One could go on and on. Of course, there are variations on these universals, giving them somewhat fuzzy edges, but just because something has fuzzy edges doesn't mean it doesn't exist. This being the case, there are in fact things one can say about humans that are in fact right, and it doesn't matter if you think they are right or not. Facts don't care a whit about your opinion of them.

Thus, if there are facts about human beings, one can develop opinions based on those facts that are more or less correct. The more of these kinds of facts on takes into consideration, the more likely your opinion is going to be right. The result is the development of a true opinion. Those who rely only on how they feel about something, not taking facts into consideration, have a mere opinion. They may discover that the facts do happen to agree with them, at which point it becomes true opinion, but i have discovered that when it comes to human things, especially economics, this is rarely the case.

I try to avoid mere opinion. If I do not know something, I admit the fact. I also try to learn what is actually the case about human nature, and make fine adjustments in that light. So when I give someone advice, it is because I have a fairly high level of confidence in my knowledge about human beings in that area. It doesn't mean I'm absolutely right, of course. There's plenty out there we still must learn about human beings. But it does mean I have true opinion rather than mere opinion on those things I am willing to venture to talk about. In other words, I have actual reasons to believe I am right -- it's not all mere opinion.

Acton U. -- A Brief Summary (and Table of Future Contents)

Today I have returned from the Acton Institute's Acton University. It was a lot of fun, I learned a lot, clarified some thoughts, and met some interesting people. On Tuesday, the day we all arrived, we heard the welcome address by the president of Acton, Rev. Robert Sirico, titled, "Thoughts on Human Dignity," where he introduced many of the ideas that would be developed in the conference sessions we would take. Keep in mind that the Acton Institute is primarily interested in the moral foundations of the free market, Christian morality especially, and Catholic moral teachings most especially. Truth, morality, and economy were emphasized -- but I will go into more details later. I plan to post something on each of the sessions I attended and then to give an overview when I'm done. That being said, let me list everything I attended:

Session 1: Christian Anthropology: Freedom and Virtue by Dr. Samuel Gregg

Session 2: Christianity and the Idea of LImited Government by Mr. Michael Miller (don't let the "Mr." fool you -- he has a M.A. in International Development, a M.A. in Philosophy, and a MBA in International Management)

Session 3: Economic Way of Thinking by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse

Session 4: Myths About the Market (well, we got 3 out of 8, anyway) by Dr. Jay Wesley Richards

These were all required for those who were attending for the first time, and were all on the first full day, at the end of which everyone watched the Acton-produced documentary "The Birth of Freedom." The next two days were sessions of my choice.

Session 5: Economics and Human Action by Dr. Carlos Hoevel

Session 6: The Catholic Social Encyclical Tradition by Mr. Kishore Jayabalan

Session 7: Private Property: Scriptural, Moral and Economic Foundations by Mr. Michael Miller

We then had discussion groups, where we could go to talk about various topics. I was invited to go to the "Globalization: Africa" discussion group, where there was lively discussion about the relationships among Africa, the West, and globalization. After dinner we heard Lord Brian Griffiths, who was a special advisor for Margaret Thatcher (and who knew Frederick Hayek), give a talk on the Theology of Capitalism in a Fallen World. He was brilliant and funny.

Session 8: The Ethics of Capital and Interest by Mr. Jeffery Tucker (you will hear much more about this talk, since it dealt with peoples' time preferences, and I'm very interested in time. In fact, I'm very interested in pursing some of the ideas he talked about further, and combining them with other things I have read about children's time preferences in relation to education)

Session 9: Business as a Moral Enterprise by Mr. John Beckett (he's a corporate chairman)

Session 10: Economic Liberty in Catholic Social Teaching by Mr. Kishore Jayabalan

That night we had the final dinner lecture, Piety and Technique, give by Rev. Robert Sirico. I unfortunately didn't have my notebook handy, so I couldn't take notes. But the gist of the talk was that we should not replace good intentions (piety) with good technique and truth. A lot of people have a pious interest in helping people, and think that their piety is good enough. But the real question is: is what you are doing actually going to have the results you are after? Piety is no replacement for technique. While piety may help you decide to do good things for people, it is equally important that what you do will have the desired results. Thus, is and ought are deeply connected. To have true moral action, one must both have good intentions and good results.

I met many, many, many wonderful people. Who could list them all? Even if the sessions weren't as great as they were, it would have been worth going just to meet all the people I met.

Truth, Morals, and the Market

It's been a lot of fun here at Acton U. so far. I have heard a lot about the relationship between ethics and free markets and it has really helped me to synthesize some of my own ideas on the connections among ethics, economics, justice, truth, and beauty (I'll get more into this later). A lot of emphasis has been made regarding the importance of having moral people in a market system, since it was observed that markets themselves will provide either moral or immoral services with equal efficiency. Still, markets affect actions, and their presence or lack affect moral choices -- oftentimes making moral choices easier.

I also came to realize much more clearly (though I understood this in a vague sort of way) that those who wish to abandon the idea of truth are doing so precisely for political reasons -- precisely to make it easier for them to argue against free markets. If they have to acknowledge there is truth, they have to acknowledge the fact that markets are the best provider of freedom, wealth, and other values of any economic system in the world. That is simply a fact. Thus, to undermine markets, you first have to undermine truth.

Acton U.

I am currently in Michigan attending the Acton Institute's Acton University. I will be posting all about everything I learned while here, so stay tuned.

Japanese Rebellion Against Conformity Leads to Egalitarianism

Please, somebody get to Japan and let them know what bully-parents have done to the U.S. It has turned this country into a bunch of wimps who are so fragile that they cannot survive the smallest criticism.

I do find it funny that in these parents' rebellion against conformity that the result was egalitarianism -- which is really a kind of conformity. You cannot have a story without hierarchy of characters, people! Nor can you have a play without a hierarchy of actors playing the hierarchy of characters.

Japan is taking on the worst characteristics of the U.S. It's doomed.

A Society of Sociopaths

Every person who did not stop to help this man is a dangerous sociopath and should be removed from society. This is what the radical individualism of postmodernism that tells you to mind your own business lest you get sued or distracted from your own navel-gazing gets you.

Is "Sin" Being Out of Alignment with Obama's Values?

We really need to get to know who Barack Obama really is.

In 2004, he gave an interview to Cathleen Falsani who was the religion reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times. Here's a very interesting part of it:

CF: Do you believe in sin?

BO: Yes

CF: What is sin?

BO: Being out of alignment with my values.

Now, this means either one of two things: 1) Sin is completely subjective and relative, or 2) He thinks that only his values are the correct ones, and that for a person to not be in alignment with his values is for that person to be in sin. The first one belies his statement that he believes in sin -- at least, anything one could reasonably call sin. The second one suggests that he has a Messiah complex. This would be very much in alignment with his being a Leftist, since Leftists to a person do not believe that there is anyone greater than themselves -- which is why they believe they should be put in control of everyone's lives and decisions. The first would make him a moral relativist -- which should disqualify him as President, since you have to be able to recognize some sort of right and wrong to be able to make reasonable judgments as a President, especially in relation to foreign leaders (though this might explain why he thinks it's possible to talk with Iran's President). The second possibility would make him a very, very dangerous, delusional person. Too many already think of him as a Messiah figure -- enough that they might convince him of it, if he's not already convinced. I do not want someone like that in any sort of political office.

Online Radio Interview for The Emerson Institute

I will be on a blog talk radio show Monday to talk about The Emerson Institute. More information at Grizzly Groundswell. Hope everyone comes by and listens!

Fun With Power Laws (and City Populations)

Power laws state that there are few large things, many medium-sized things, and a whole lot of small things in any kind of system. It further predicts exactly how those sizes will be distributed. Consider:

City Rank City Predicted Pop. Actual Pop.
1 New York City 8,250,567
2 Los Angeles 1/2 NYC = 4.1 million 3,849,378
3 Chicago 1/3 NYC = 2.8 million 2,833,321
4 Houston 1/4 NYC = 2.1 million 2,169,248
5 Phoenix, AZ 1/5 NYC = 1.6 million 1,512,986
6 Philadelphia 1/6 NYC = 1.3 million 1,448,394
7 San Antonio, TX 1/7 NYC = 1.14 million 1,296,682
8 San Diego 1/8 NYC = 1.07 million 1,256,951
9 Dallas 1/9 NYC = 0.92 million 1,232,940
10 San Jose, CA 1/10 NYC = 0.83 million 929,936

It may seem to break down after a while, but if we take the other aspect of power law distribution into effect, we get a somewhat different picture:

City Rank City Predicted Pop. Actual Pop.
1 New York City 8,250,567
2 Los Angeles 1/2 NYC = 4.1 million 3,849,378
3 Chicago 1/3 NYC = 2.8 million 2,833,321
4 Houston 1/4 NYC = 2.1 million 2,169,248
5 Phoenix, AZ 1/5 NYC = 1.6 million 1,512,986
6 Philadelphia 1/6 NYC = 1.3 million 1,448,394
6 San Antonio, TX 1/6 NYC = 1.3 million 1,296,682
6 San Diego 1/6 NYC = 1.3 million 1,256,951
6 Dallas 1/9 NYC = 1.3 million 1,232,940
9 San Jose, CA 1/9 NYC = 0.92 million 929,936

I made San Jose 1/9 because San Diego and Dallas are practically identical in population as to be able to include them together. In fact, if we continue on, we see the following:

City Rank City Predicted Pop. Actual Pop.
9 Detroit 1/9 NYC = 0.92 million 918,849
11 Jacksonville, FL 1/11 NYC = 0.75 million 794,555
11 Indianapolis 1/11 NYC = 0.75 million 785,597
11 San Francisco 1/11 NYC = 0.75 million 744,041
11 Columbus, OH 1/11 NYC = 0.75 million 733,203

We start seeing small groupings of similarly-populated cities, as we would expect from a power law distribution. Of course, these are rough equations -- more accurate ones would give more accurate predictions, but I'm no mathematician. However, this should tell you a lot about the natural distribution of population in a system like human population dynamics. We self-organize in very predictable ways.

Don't Believe the Media -- Obama Hasn't Won Anything Yet

In one of the worst cases of media irresponsibility I've seen in a long time, the AP and NBC are reporting that Obama has finally won the nomination. WIth Clinton winning South Dakota, and Obama not having enough delegates from the states to clinch the deal, the superdelegates are still going to be the ones to determine the outcome of the race. They are basing their declaration that Obama won on a report that enough superdelegates have declared for Obama for him to win. Big deal. That means nothing. A declaration that you are going to vote one way or another in two months amounts to nothing. There were several states where Obama was polling better than he actually did in those states. Further, a lot can happen between how and August. Does anyone really think the Clintons are going to sit around for two months and wish for the best? Of course not. They are going to work to find some major dealbreaker to encourage the superdelegates to vote for her instead. And they will be working all the superdelegates the whole time as well. Obama hasn't won anything yet.

Apocalypse

I don't think I have to say much more than to just give this quote by Ian McEwan regarding President Ahmadinejad of Iran:

" In Jamkaran, a village not far from the holy city of Qum, a small mosque is undergoing a $20m-expansion, driven forward by Ahmadinejad's office. Within the Shi'ite apocalyptic tradition, the Twelfth Imam, the Mahdi, who disappeared in the ninth century, is expected to reappear in a well behind the mosque. His re-emergence will signify the beginning of the end days. He will lead the battle against the Dajjal, the Islamic version of the anti-Christ, and with Jesus as his follower, will establish the global Dar el Salaam, the dominion of peace, under Islam. Ahmadinejad is extending the mosque to receive the Mahdi, and already pilgrims by the thousands are visiting the shrine, for the president has reportedly told his cabinet that he expects the visitation within two years."

Oh, . . . Barack Obama thinks we can reason with this person. Which should actually tell you something both about Obama's judgment, and his own level of theological belief (none). I say "none," because if Obama did actually believe in God, he would have some sort of understanding of President Ahmadinejad's beliefs -- and some understanding of whether or not one can reason with him in the way Obama thinks is possible.

Florida and Michigan, Unite Against the Two Major Parties!

So, the Democratic Party decided that the citizens of Michigan and Florida should only be counted as half a person. Slaves counted as 3/5 of a person. So I think we are seeing a degradation in the Democratic Party's attitude toward people: they once considered a certain group of people as 3/5 of a person -- now they consider a certain group of people as 1/2 of a person.

I'm not too happy with the GOP engaging in these kinds of shenanigans either (which they did, though the DNC had to catch up with the GOP, moving from complete unfairness toward the citizens of these states to partial unfairness). What difference should it make when states hold their elections? How is that the business of the parties? How can they be granted so much power over the voters as to tell certain voters whether or not their votes count? There is something seriously wrong with that. True, it's the party nominations, and one can argue that they get to make their own rules -- but these kinds of things discourage people from voting in the general election. I would love it if Michigan and Florida voters decided to return the favor and refuse to vote for either major party.

Dear Media: Bob Barr's Votes Belong to Him!

In the first news interview I saw with Bob Barr, the question that always gets asked, and will probably get asked over and over and over and over and over was asked: won't you just be a spoiler and take votes away from McCain. This question carries with it the assumption that McCain deserves rather than earns the votes he gets. Also, it exposes the media bias against anyone running against the two ruling parties -- primarily in the number of times anyone running as a third party candidate gets asked this question.

Also, I keep hearing people say that while some third party candidates have done well at times (Teddy Roosevelt on the Bull Moose Party, and Ross Perot with the Reform Party), no third party has won. That is historically inaccurate. Abraham Lincoln won the Presidency running as a third party candidate. Once upon a time the Republican Party was a third party. Lincoln had been a member of the Whig party, but joined the upstart Republican party in 1854. Within six years, the Republicans would elect a President, and replace the Whigs as one of the two major political parties in the U.S.

Of course, the Republican Party had one major issue they were concerned with: preventing the spread of slavery, with the intention of abolishing slavery. And that issue was so big and polarizing, that it catapulted the Republicans into the White House in a few short years. I don't really think opposition to big government to the extent the Libertarian Party is opposed to big government is popular enough this year to send Barr to the White House. But with the Republicans trying desperately to emulate the Demcorats, with McCain being the posterboy of that move, and the unpopularity of the war, there may be something there a charismatic leader could pull together and turn into a large enough voting block to win. But it will take some major strategizing. A typical Libertarian wouldn't be able to do it, but a successful former politician could. Bob Barr may not be the dream ticket for many Libertarians, any more than McCain is the dream ticket for many Republicans -- but Barr may be the best chance the LP has ever had.