Deconstructing "Progressive " thought

[a_majoor]

There will be a lot of hungry Democrats at the convention. Perhaps that is to train them for what a real Socialist paradise is like.........

http://torydrroy.blogspot.com/2008/05/blog-post.html

The green dems

An interesting editorial in the Post. It seems the dmes have strict instructions to be green and have only locally grown food etc at their Denver convention. All of that is pretty hard in a cold place like Colorado (or much of Canada). It once agin shows one ignores market forces at one's peril.

The new hordes of green-eating advocates are merely reviving an old and well-known problem in a new form. In the 1920s, the economist Ludwig von Mises argued that rational economic production was impossible under socialism: Denied the price signals that give social needs and preferences an implicit hand in every decision a capitalist entrepreneur makes, a state planner could never hope to predict demand and make informed choices. The debate over economic calculation carried on for decades, but in the end, the collapse of the Soviet Union settled it to near-universal satisfaction. Mikhail Gorbachev and his colleagues knew that their economy had no reasonable method of answering questions like, "Do we make more shoes or more socks next year?"

De-linking household-type economic decisions (asparagus or beets?) from money considerations, and replacing them with an environmental standard of value, creates the same species of confusion.

 

[a_majoor]

An interesting critique of Multi-culturalism, a philosophy which will undergo violent death throes as more people figure out the true meaning and results (such as the HRC prosecutions of free speech) and react against it while the bottom feeders who advocate it do everything possible to retain their hold on State funding and power in support of these policies. (If they win, the Nation will likey undergo violent death throes as each group fights to secure State power and funding at the expense of everyone else).

http://freedomknowsnolimits.blogspot.com/2008/06/taylors-wrong-but-still-gets-gong.html

Taylor's wrong, but still gets gong

The award of the so-called "Japanese Nobel" to Charles Taylor, as well as his other countless Canadian and Quebecois gongs, leaves a bittersweet aftertaste. His work is of exceptional quality both in terms of eloquence and scholarity, and he surely is a principal source of inspiration for many policymakers. He is also owed great credit for putting up with months of drivel from his fellow Quebecois jabbering nonsense on immigration and religion and actually milking something sensical out of it. Furthermore, being closely associated with McGill, Mr Taylor brings this award very close to home.

However we should take a look beyond the scholarity and dive into the case studies we can find. Without going too far, the very same multiculturalism we see in Canada and its dreadful British inspiration are heading straight to the dustbin of history or, failing that, to ignominy. Although an excellent philosophical approach in theory, in practice multiculturalism becomes synonymous with chaos, anarchy and discord. Its very approach to human relations is flawed because it defines an individual based on the culture and heritage.

Without being wrong, it isn't right either. We are what we grow up to be, defined in indeed great part by what made us the people we are today. The State and public policy, however, do not EVER enter the picture: their concern is solely the orderly administration of affairs delegated to them by a free and independent society. Multiculturalism strives to give the State an unfairly large role in determining community relations. As a libertarian in many areas, I believe that when the State intervenes it does so badly, at the wrong time and with the wrong tools.

Taylor's philosophy is impractical from a policy perspective and morally wrong. The state is a trustee of the country, not its mother. Leave our heritages alone, let us sort out our own relations with one another and don't try finding a universal formula for running a country with different cultures in it. Somehow academics just can't trust people to get along with each other without being told to do so.

"By advocating 'communitarianism' and 'multiculturalism' from the perspective of 'holistic individualism,' Dr. Taylor has developed an enlightened philosophy that allows people of different historical, traditional and cultural backgrounds to retain their multiple identities while living together peacefully," the foundation said.

There isn't an -ism they haven't tried yet

 

[a_majoor]

How "Liberals" think is well documented these days. Look at the HRC's; quasi judicial kidnapping of children and the rampant disrespect for commercial and property rights of individuals that is displayed by governments and bureaucracies:

http://www.torontosun.com/Comment/2008/07/15/pf-6160221.html

Freedom alien notion to liberals
By THEO CALDWELL

In recent days, liberals around the world have made headlines for doing what they do best: Hectoring and bossing.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown lectured his countrymen on the evils of wasting food shortly before tucking into 14 courses over two meals at the G8 summit in Japan.

U.S. presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has advised Americans that maintaining their homes at 72 F is unacceptable in the eyes of the global community.

Meanwhile in Canada, so-called human rights tribunals continue to pillory columnists and comedians, and liberal justices recently ruled a father had no right to ground his 12-year-old daughter.

With these instances in mind, it is time to recalibrate our political labels. Specifically, the term "liberal," which is derived from "liberty," ought to be replaced with its common synonym, "left-wing." The reason for this is the totalitarian impulse of those who espouse modern liberalism. If a person imagines his wisdom and privilege are sufficient to tell you what you may say, how much you can eat, and how to raise your children, chances are excellent that he is what we would call in common parlance a "liberal."

But of course, he is no freedom-minded fellow. And liberals, as they are known, do not always base their prescriptions for others' lives on their position or perspicacity.

Indeed, they have a much more powerful and devious rationale. That is, the Common Good. "Don't you care about (insert 'the children' or 'the whales' or, most often these days, 'the planet')?" Such is demanded of anyone foolish enough to dissent from whatever orthodoxy is populating liberals' protest placards at the moment.

Just rhetorical

Be warned that this is a rhetorical question, and any attempt to respond may engender a flurry of profanity, encapsulating one's appearance to one's parentage (one cannot know the anger that adults are willing to commit to the eternity of e-mail until one has advocated some right-of-centre position in the public square).

What causes such outrage? It is not that you are wrong and they are right. It is that you dare to disagree.

The left does not have the evidence of history on its side -- they do not even know what that evidence is. True leftists are even less acquainted with facts than with showers. Your divergence from the herd is sufficient to kindle their wrath.

Conservatives, meanwhile, have two principal objections to this Common do-Goodery.

First, we usually reject whatever rationale liberals have put forward. For example, while liberals insist that "climate change" is the world's worst danger, conservatives are not so ready to take David Suzuki's word for it.

Second, conservatives aver that even if some legal, personal action of theirs results in a negligible net negative to the Common Good, the decision as to whether to cease or maintain that behaviour should fall to the individual, not liberal overseers. The discretion to be different is the essence of freedom, and it is anathema to the modern liberal world view.

Wouldn't it be good, liberals insist, if everyone were compelled to do only what is in the best interests of society and the planet? Conservatives demur that such notions are impractical and inhuman. As evidence, liberals refer to Al Gore's movie, while we cite the 20th century.

Nowadays, being liberal has nothing to do with freedom.

E-mail Theo Caldwell at [email protected].

 

[a_majoor]

The future looks bleak if we don't work to protect our liberty:

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=3e1053ae-d70b-4966-94b4-4d62c8bfd604

Liberalism: Its own worst enemy

George Jonas,  National Post  Published: Saturday, July 26, 2008

Robert Kagan's fine study, The Return Of History And The End Of Dreams, had me persuaded before I turned a page. I've never been a dreamer, and had reservations about the significance of the Soviet Union's collapse even during the euphoric days of "the end of history." It was unlikely, I wrote in 1994, that the defeat of Nazism and communism would signal the end of the totalitarian impulse in human beings.

Fascism and communism didn't come to us from Mars. As they hadn't been imposed on humanity by extraterrestrial forces, they had to have been created by an impulse inherent in human beings. This being so, I wrote, we couldn't expect their demise to provide us with more than temporary relief.

Kagan's conclusion is similar. He expects dreams to end, history to continue and the struggle between "us" and "them" -- that is, between desirable and undesirable societies -- to resume as a clash between U. S.-EU-style democracies and Sino-Russian-style autocracies. That's certainly possible and bad enough. However, I find a worse development more likely.

Man proposes, God disposes. Man proposed the democratization of autocracies; God disposed the autocratization of democracies. Russia may have moved closer to America materially, but America has moved closer to Russia spiritually.

As Kagan notes, born-again autocracy masquerading as a respectable alternative to Western-style government is a dangerous ideological rival to liberal democracy. Any others? Well, there's militant, theocratic Islam, a self-evident rival since the Iranian revolution of 1979. Tribalism is another obvious rival, though probably self-limiting. Competing tribal doctrines might ignite cruel little wars, but lack the monolithic force of totalitarian ideologies. Actually, a European Union-type of techno-corporate state seems a greater threat to a free society. The EU's kind of supra-national bureaucracy, less bloody and more sophisticated than a communist state, is nearly as coercive and more likely to succeed.

I think the force with the greatest capacity for becoming a threat to liberal democracy is liberalism itself -- meaning loony-liberalism, a kind of ideological menage a trois between Timothy Leary, Karl Marx and Al Gore, at once passionate and arid, that in Western societies has all but captured the educational and judicial machinery of the state. In some, it's a virtual state religion, whose matriarchal, environmentalist, multicultural, anti-male, anti-family, anti-individual and public-hygiene shibboleths are enforced by Orwellian regulatory agencies, commissions and tribunals, better known as the smoke-, smut-, seat-belt-, thought-, language-and calorie-police.

Some of loony-liberalism's ideological strands, e. g., feminism and environmentalism, transcend borders and religions. Like all successful ideologies, they can absorb other kinds of self-identifications and loyalties. They can even absorb each other, as demonstrated by the 1990s movement of "eco-feminism." As millennial ideas, they hold out the promise of a new beginning, a fundamental change in human society. Both matriarchy and environmentalism combine mysticism with a quasi-scientific stance, much like fascism and communism did. Based on partial truths, they're all the more dangerous for appealing not only to the worst but to the best side of our nature.

Environmentalism, especially, promises to unite us with the cosmos. It identifies the enemy as the masculine-humanist tradition of "biocide" --a crime of which we're all guilty by virtue of being human. It's a faith, addressing itself to true believers, the very types who have a need to be ruled by something greater than themselves.

Until Kyoto, the nags Philogyny and Ecophilia ran neck-and-neck along the backstretch of the Despotism Sweepstakes, with Ecophilia leading by a nose. In today's post-Kyoto world, it leads by a length. Democracy, far from being eco-fascism's enemy, seems to be its friend. Its enemy is liberty. That's why I think liberty has as much to fear from democracy as from autocracy.

So, is it going to be Sino-Russian autocracy versus Western-style democracy, as Kagan suggests? I wouldn't rule it out. Nor would I rule out democracy allying itself with a kind of pseudo-scientific health-worshipping eco-maniacal post-family feminism, culminating in a whopping tyranny to make autocracy, or even oriental despotism, look like a Boy Scout jamboree.

Nor would I rule out crusading Christianity reverting to its medieval roots and putting itself on a collision course with the Muslim rage of fulminating Islam. Here, Tancred, say hello to Saladin! I wouldn't rule out anything, not even peace and tranquility, albeit more likely as a result of repression than of good government.

I'd give individual liberty the worst odds. I think it will continue to decline in the 21st century.

Ultimately, who wins? Since we're into crystal ball-gazing, let me end with a cautionary tale. It's rutting season, and the deer are alert. Younger stags have retreated to the rill, licking their wounds. Some foul old stags are fighting it out in the clearing. Watching them from the hillside, a young hind is very excited.

"Which one will win, which one will win?" she presses a mature mamma-deer standing next to her.

"I don't know," says the experienced hind, "but I can tell you this. Whoever wins, you and I will be screwed."

Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.

 

[faceman]

Great debate but an important point must be carried in the forefront of such a debate.   Leftist, progressive, conservative are labels and words, and mean nothing beyond their very limited use to describe political positions and political 'movements'.  Often these words mean nothing in the parliament beyond the usual partisan political stands.  Case in point Pierre Trudeau, the only prime minister to enact the war measures act.   Now he was a liberal, but enacting the war measures act seems to be something many people would fear Prime Minister Harper of doing, and certainly not a Stephan Dion.  There are some articles that are so full of crap on this thread my head is almost buried, but I'm not a leftist, I'm a social democrat who is a realist.  And i happened to vote for Harper if you must know, and I'm not totally regretting that choice...yet.  The reality is climate change is happening, whether or not you want to do anything about it or believe that 2 billion displaced and hungry people getting angry in a foreign land is going to affect us in Canada or not.  Unfortunately the only reaction to the radical left can often become very 'Americanized Conservatism', and this is no more rational than those who would have us protect cockroaches from murderous shoe stomping.  Almost half of all Americans believe the world was created in six days, less than 10,000 years ago.  No wonder they don't want to sign Kyoto, i guess they're waiting for Jesus.   Progressive, conservative, liberal  who cares....what matters is the truth, whether you care or not, and whether you have the balls to do anything about it (sorry girls, I'm being metaphorical).  Politicians will disappoint us every time, but our soldiers make us proud everyday they go to work!

 

[a_majoor]

Words indeed haev meanings, and consequences as well:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/01/uk_must_abandon_growth_to_cut_co2/

Greens: Abandon economic growth to beat CO2 offshoring
By Lewis Page
Published Friday 1st August 2008 14:02 GMT

Environmental campaigners, citing government-commissioned research, have said that the UK's claimed carbon emissions figures are "a big lie". The analysis adds carbon burdens associated with offshore manufactures, shipping and aviation to the UK total, and - according to the activists - shows that economic growth and carbon emissions are inextricably linked, and that the UK is actually responsible for much more greenhouse gas than it admits.

John Barrett (http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/sei/staff/jbarrett.html), one of the authors of the reports by the Stockholm Environment Institute at York (SEI-Y) for the government and campaign group WWF*, was quoted by the BBC today:

"We are constantly battling against increases of wealth... There's a very fundamental problem here that no one really wants to talk about."

Stuart Bond of WWF told the Beeb: "Our claims on emissions are simply a big lie.

"There is no way the government can hope to achieve any of its emissions targets without cheating unless it changes its policies on encouraging flying and hoping to satisfy people's insatiable demands for buying more and more stuff."

The Beeb's mildly famous (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/08/bbc_blog_bully/) environment analyst Roger Harrabin adds (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7536421.stm):

The government sat on the Defra SEI report since February, tested its calculations, then published it in an obscure press release on 2 July.
This confirms, as BBC News pointed out last year, that the UK's apparently virtuous carbon cuts have only been achieved because we are getting countries like China to do our dirty work.

Naughty old government, suppressing the "news" that manufacturing is moving from Europe to China, where they tend to make their energy in particularly dirty ways. The gov may have used a special secret press release, but SEI-Y issued a normal one (http://www.sei.se/index.php?page=newsitem&item=5720), and the gov did publish the report (pdf (http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Document.aspx?Document=EV02033_7331_FRP.pdf)). It could be, in fact, that the releases weren't picked up because people were generally saying "well, duh".

So it's now well established that people getting richer means they consume more energy, which given current power and transport technology normally means more greenhouse gas emissions. Often these gases are actually emitted in some other country, but they still happen.

So what should the government be doing?

We gave Bond of the WWF a call. He said that first and foremost, the government and Britain in general needs to measure its emissions under the new SEI all-inclusive rules as well as the conventional Kyoto ones, and act to reduce both figures rather than just the emissions which occur on UK territory.

As to how that should be done, Bond was reluctant to give specifics. But he said there was a need for a "strategic plan to set out very clearly how the UK will become a low carbon economy by 2050... at the moment there is no central priority for environmental issues. Consumers' consumption of goods is the driver of emissions. The continued pursuit of GDP, of economic growth - that is a mantra that we must question."

"We need to live within 450ppm CO2," he went on. "That's going to mean a very large cut - 80, 90 per cent - in emissions, within 40 years. We need to increase energy efficiency, sure, but it won't do to just put in a few energy-saving light bulbs. We need to think bigger."

Bond also considered it essential that limited wealth and resources be distributed more equitably around the world.

"We need to make this work for all," he said, "not just the privileged in developed countries."

Asked if this wasn't, in the end, going to mean a fairly hair-shirt lifestyle for us Brits - no cars, no tumble dryers, fewer showers and iPods and so on - Bond said that "economic wealth isn't the same as happiness or directly linked to quality of life ... It's about a quantity lifestyle - more and more stuff - versus quality".

Bond was also sceptical about the chances of a technological solution appearing - for instance nuclear-fusion power, so far harnessed only in the form of H-Bombs. Working fusion reactors, if they could be built, might offer abundant and effectively inexhaustible energy without carbon emissions.

"The idea of a technological fix is one we should be cautious about," he said. "So often there are unintended consequences or trade-offs. Look at the 'paperless office' - there's now more paper, not less. Look at biofuels. I'd be wary of believing that a technology solution will arrive in time.

"We need to find ways of living that address the problem."

Looking at the business and financial news, we may soon get a chance to do just that. ®

*The one-time World Wildlife Fund, set up in the Sixties to protect endangered species. Nowadays it has widened its remit considerably, and like the multinational arms goliath BAE says that its title letters no longer refer to specific words.

 

[a_majoor]

Ingsoc seems to be almost complete; in the UK, 1984 has become a "how to" manual rather than a warning:

http://dustmybroom.com/content/view/4946/1/

UK Struggles To Control Big Brother Creep
Written by WL Mackenzie Redux     
Thursday, 07 August 2008 

Now there are 1,000 laws that will let the state into your home

....last night as it was revealed that there are now 1,043 laws that give the authorities the power to enter a home or business. Nearly half have been introduced since Labour came to power 11 years ago.

They include the right to:

• Invade your home to see if your pot (potted) plants have pests or do not have a 'plant passport' (Plant Health England Order 2005).

• Check that accommodation given to asylum seekers is not being lived in by non-asylum seekers (Immigration and Asylum Act 1999).

• Raid a house to check if unlicensed gambling is taking place (Gambling Act 2005 Inspection Regulations 2007)

• Survey your home and garden to see if your hedge is too high (Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003).

• Seize fridges without the correct energy rating (Energy Information Household Refrigerators and Freezers Regulations 2004). [...]


Some 420 new powers of entry are the product of laws introduced since 1997. A further 16 are in laws due to be approved by Parliament in the next few weeks.

A recent study by the Centre for Policy Studies think-tank warned that the 'proliferation and variety' of such laws mean householders can no longer 'realistically be aware' of their rights and legal obligations.......

"Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."

(Atlas Shrugged' 1957)

 

[Brad Sallows]

>Survey your home and garden to see if your hedge is too high (Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003).

Nothing any artist or writer has ever contrived as social commentary can possibly compete with reality.

 

[a_majoor]

Where do these ideas come from anyway? Why are they so hard to dislodge from the body politic (aside from Socialists doing the "long march through the institutions" that is?). Steven Den Beste:

http://denbeste.nu/entries/00001160.shtml

It's amazing where you can end up when you choose an axiom incorrectly. John Calvin began with the axiom "God is omniscient and omnipotent." His religion didn't admit any other alternative; the Bible said that God was all knowing and all powerful and Calvin believed in biblical inerrancy. If God is omnipotent, then God controlled every aspect of the fate of the universe at the moment it was created. If God is omniscient, then at the moment He created it he knew everything that would take place within it to the end of time. But that, in turn, meant that He knew everyone who would be born, what they would do during their lives, when they would die, and most important of all, whether they would go to heaven or hell. But if God knew those things, then it means that they are predetermined. There is nothing any of us can do about it. Some of us will reside in heavenly bliss, some will burn in eternal agony, and nothing whatever that we do while we live will change it. That became known as the "doctrine of predestination", and the creed of "Calvinism" was based on it; several major modern Protestant faiths (such as the Methodist Church in which I was raised) are derived from it. But logically, this means that none of us have free will (because God predetermined what we would all do when He created the universe), and therefore in one sense there can be no sin. "Sin" generally means to act in a way which contradicts God's will for us -- but under predestination that is logically impossible. There is no justice in the unverse; some will be rewarded and some punished, but not for anything that they themselves actually do. And indeed, Calvinism states forthrightly that there is nothing that a person who is condemned to hell can do in their life to change that.

In academia today, there exists in some segments of the humanities a new "postmodernist" theory which eschews such concepts as objective reality, logic, right and wrong and instead adopts a universal concept of relativism. I believe I know where this started: the axiom is, in fact, political correctness: No-one should ever be offended. Never hurt anyone else's feelings, never tell them they're wrong about something. But what if two people actually do fundamentally disagree about something? If neither of them is wrong, then it must be possible for contradictions to exist. Logic says that can't happen, so logic must be wrong. If they make contradictory statements about the real world, then they must both be right, which means that reality is entirely subjective, never objective. (If reality was objective, then at least one of them must be wrong, and no-one is ever wrong, for then it would be necessary to tell them so, which would offend them, and axiomatically we may never offend anyone.) In defense of that axiom, the result is a tower of babble.

A professor of physics at NYU named Alan Sokal observed this process and was bemused, and progressively more and more disgusted by it. Five years ago he decided to try an experiment:


For some years I've been troubled by an apparent decline in the standards of intellectual rigor in certain precincts of the American academic humanities. But I'm a mere physicist: if I find myself unable to make head or tail of jouissance and différance, perhaps that just reflects my own inadequacy.

So, to test the prevailing intellectual standards, I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment: Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies -- whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross -- publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions?

The answer, unfortunately, is yes. Interested readers can find my article, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,'' in the Spring/Summer 1996 issue of Social Text. It appears in a special number of the magazine devoted to the ``Science Wars.''

What's going on here? Could the editors really not have realized that my article was written as a parody?

His paper is a masterpiece of double talk, including puns masquerading as argument, non sequiters, unsupported and outrageous statements, and sheer nonsense. They published it. The first paragraph is typical:


There are many natural scientists, and especially physicists, who continue to reject the notion that the disciplines concerned with social and cultural criticism can have anything to contribute, except perhaps peripherally, to their research. Still less are they receptive to the idea that the very foundations of their worldview must be revised or rebuilt in the light of such criticism. Rather, they cling to the dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual outlook, which can be summarized briefly as follows: that there exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and indeed of humanity as a whole; that these properties are encoded in "eternal'' physical laws; and that human beings can obtain reliable, albeit imperfect and tentative, knowledge of these laws by hewing to the "objective'' procedures and epistemological strictures prescribed by the (so-called) scientific method.

..and it only goes downhill from there. And they published it. Then Sokal went public with his description of the experiment, which is much more lucid.

I don't think that these ideas in academia will ever have much impact in the real world, if for no other reason than because they don't survive application to the real world. They seem to flourish in the ivory tower and are taught to many students, but leaving the womb and actually trying to make a living in the real world for a few years is like a splash in the face with cold water. Still, as long as this was confined to fuzzy academic papers, it was mostly harmless, as long as it didn't permanently damage any of the students exposed to it.

But with recent political events, the people subscribing to these beliefs are coming out of the woodwork and attempting to apply their world-view (such as it is) to the political realm, specifically to the war we're now fighting. (As might be expected, they're all opposed to the war.) The result has been amazing and apalling. This morning I found the following statement posted on MetaFilter, which I will reproduce in its entirety:


"The majority of the people out there who hate the U.S.A are the misinformed ones. Many of them are uneducated and illiterate and absent of basic human logic"

yes alot of people on the face of the earth are illiterate, and without the means of aquiring much (if any) "formal" education.

As far as basic human logic is concerned, I don't follow you on that one. I assume Basic would be something fundamental, you know something that forms as a "base". The word human generalizes us all as the human race. Logic is reasoning, which more or less depends on your interpretation of reality. The problem with logic is that it is treated as a science. And science is interpretive also. Scientists objectify principles involving the systematized observation of and experiment with phenomena, but generally fail to include feelings, opinions, personal idiosyncrasy. The scientists role has been that of an alien observer if you like, not connected to the phenomenon. So simply put you could say that science is not an exact science.

What I'm getting at is logic is subjective to the interpretor. the fact that you state "the people out there who hate the U.S.A" are "absent" of logic implies denial of significance or worth as human beings.

all humans have an equal value in my opinion. How about you?

You can see the axiom coming out in that last sentence; "all people have equal value." In one sense that is correct; and on one level I believe it to be true. I think that everyone should have equal rights, and I don't believe ethically that all other things being equal we have a right to decide that one person is more valuable than any other person, for instance so that we could kill one person deliberately so as to use them as an organ donor to save the life of another. But I don't extrapolate from that to the idea that every idea held by anyone is equally valid. I accept axiomatically that there is a real world which exists objectively. I recognize that our perceptions of it are subjective, but to the extent that they are congruent to the real world they are valid, and to the extent that they are not congruent they are invalid. If two people have different opinions about the real world that are contradictory, at least one of them must be wrong (whether that hurts their feelings or not). It's possible that they both are wrong, but they cannot both be right, because there is only one objective reality.

But see where his argument takes him: Logic is reasoning, which more or less depends on your interpretation of reality. Since when? Logic is part of mathematics; it is precise and unambiguous and only permits one answer for a given set of assumptions. If two people get different and contradictory conclusions, then either the assumptions themselves were contradictory, or one of them made a mistake. No amount of arguing about the validity of conflicting viewpoints will change that. Logic has nothing to do with "your interpretation of reality", nothing whatever.

But to these postmodern thinkers, logic is anathema precisely because it only permits one answer, which means that in any situation where logic can be applied, different opinions can't be equally valid. Their axiom requires that they must be equally valid, so from their point of view logic must be a local phenomenon, not a universal mathematical construct. In other words, I use formal logic only because I believe it to be true; if someone else uses a different logic (or no logic at all) and gets a different answer, they must also be respected for that.

The problem with logic is that it is treated as a science. And science is interpretive also. Scientists objectify principles involving the systematized observation of and experiment with phenomena, but generally fail to include feelings, opinions, personal idiosyncrasy. It's also necessary to abjure any idea that there is objective reality, and since Science is based on that, then it must also be wrong; it's not an observation of objective reality, but rather a matter of opinion. Given that there can be differing opinions about the real world, then there must not be any "real world", which means it can't be studied objectively. The world must be what we think it is; reality is equally local. Unfortunately, the real world isn't going to cooperate. If someone decides that they can breath under water, I can show them physiological evidence to the contrary and they'll simply respond "That's your reality, not mine." OK, fine, but if they decide to test it out, they're still going to drown.

The rest of this is equally disjointed; from his observations he concludes that "science is not an exact science", i.e., that it's a matter of opinion. In some reductionist sense there's a little bit of truth to this, but not damned much.

What I'm getting at is logic is subjective to the interpretor. the fact that you state "the people out there who hate the U.S.A" are "absent" of logic implies denial of significance or worth as human beings. And here we have the crux of it; here is the axiom I mentioned, in all its glory. The act of disagreeing with someone and stating that they're wrong is an act of disrespect, which is not allowed. Simply because of that, it is not allowed to disagree with someone, or to say that they are wrong.

Now the person they were arguing against made a point which in fact may not have been correct; the fact that "slappy" spouted this nonsense doesn't prove that "rabbit" was right. Still, I found slappy's statements to be incredibly outrageous, and objected to some of them. Slappy's response to me was as follows, quoted in full:


Steven I'm not going to dignify your response. Except to say that I'm sorry. I cannot help you.

I have three observations on this. First, it is amazingly condescending. Second, I think that slappy wasn't able to respond to my arguments on the merits. Third, and perhaps most importantly, axiomatically slappy wasn't able to respond precisely because doing so would have required arguing with me and telling me I was wrong.

I would never dream of censoring this kind of thing -- and I don't need to, for this shows the value of the marketplace of ideas. We make our decisions collectively (and by necessity we must collectively make a single decision) and it isn't possible to make such decisions unanimously. So the philosophy of the First Amendment is that we publicly debate: different people express different points of view, they argue with each other, and the majority of voters who are undecided listen to the arguments and decide who has made the most persuasive one. After a while, a consensus (not unanimous, but a plurality) agree on one position and then the state adopts that position for its policy. When a position is as intellectually flawed as "postmodern literary theory" (or whatever the heck this is called) then it will not survive this process of examination and will be rejected by the body politic -- and indeed, it is having little or no effect.

Of course, this process itself is anathema to believers in this, because it requires debate, i.e. it requires people to tell others that they are wrong about things and to tell them why, which axiomatically is unacceptable. Oddly enough, this leads them to a contradiction as profound as Calvin's; beginning with omniscience and omnipotence of God he ends up denying free will or sin or any kind of cosmic justice. (If God is all powerful and all knowing, then God cannot be all loving, else why would He condemn some to hell?) Equally, beginning with the concept that no-one should ever be offended or told they are wrong, believers in postmodern literary theory have become among the most militant believers in censorship in the US now. It manifests on college campuses where there is a new Inquisition against the thought crime of "Insensitivity"; offenders are censured -- and censored -- and condemned to a gulag for reprogramming (otherwise called such things as "diversity training", a form of political indoctrination to make them think correct thoughts).

Think this is an exaggeration? I'm sad to say that this is going on all the time on campuses in the US. The student newspaper at Berkeley published an editorial cartoon in the wake of the WTC bombing which showed two of the attackers discovering that they were in hell instead of in heaven. And the Berkeley student council decided this was insensitive because it might offend Muslims; they tried to force the paper to publish an apology, and the newspaper refused. So the Student Council decided to punish them; it tried to raise their rent and tried to condemn them all to the gulag of diversity training. Unfortunately, the case got national attention and became very embarassing, and the result was for them to pass a face-saving measure which had no real effect.

If this proves nothing else, it proves the value and importance of our fundamental right to tell someone that they're wrong. We can respect someone and disagree with them at the same time -- and we must have the right to disagree with them, publicly, even if it hurts their feelings. If we lose that, none of us will be free to say anything at all. (discussion in progress)

Update: letourneau, in that same thread, links to a beautiful description of what is called "Logical Rudeness" -- I recommend it highly.

Update: More supplemental reading on the nonsense of Postmodern Literary Theory.

Update 20011021: I was not the only one who found slappy's one-line dismissal to be condescending and inadequate. In response to a chorus of criticism about it, slappy says the following: I dismiss intellectual intimidation. It's a waste of time. Steven could have contributed a critical perspective to my "block of text " (as you so eloquantly put it) without slanderous remarks. Just as you yourself choose to respond as a hositle and judgemental neocolonial. So did he at that point. Neither of you intimidate me, and because of *your* rudeness, now any impressions you might have made are as inconsequential as my response(s). judge me as condescending. it takes one to know one. While my original response did contain a small element of scorn, it was hardly slander. Apparently the only "critical perspective" which would have been acceptable would have been one which didn't disagree. (There's that axiom again.) The mere act of disagreement is "intimidation" and "slander".

 

[Kirkhill]

But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide.

  Salon-Paglia

Camille Paglia - Feminist author, and self-described, Libertarian, Atheist Democrat.  A feminist, feminists love to hate - summing up her article in Salon on Sarah Palin. - Generally she supports, or at least does not condemn Palin.

Most curiously I find Paglia's position on Abortion fascinating:

.... the pro-life position.... is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument (as in my first book, "Sexual Personae,") has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.

Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman's body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman's entrance into society and citizenship.

On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?

What I am getting at here is that not until the Democratic Party stringently reexamines its own implicit assumptions and rhetorical formulas will it be able to deal effectively with the enduring and now escalating challenge from the pro-life right wing. Because pro-choice Democrats have been arguing from cold expedience, they have thus far been unable to make an effective ethical case for the right to abortion.

The gigantic, instantaneous coast-to-coast rage directed at Sarah Palin when she was identified as pro-life was, I submit, a psychological response by loyal liberals who on some level do not want to open themselves to deep questioning about abortion and its human consequences. I have written about the eerie silence that fell over campus audiences in the early 1990s when I raised this issue on my book tours. At such moments, everyone in the hall seemed to feel the uneasy conscience of feminism. Naomi Wolf later bravely tried to address this same subject but seems to have given up in the face of the resistance she encountered.

Liberals and unexamined dogma and intolerance....... The religion has changed but the religious have not.

 

[a_majoor]

While this might be more appropriate for the election thread, this article really says a lot about where these candidates come from:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080927.BLATCH27/TPStory/National/columnists

Fired candidate: Was Liberal lefty clobbered by her own swing?

CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD

[email protected]
   
September 27, 2008

The most wonderful thing about the Lesley Hughes story is not that Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion finally asked her to step down yesterday, or her odd beliefs that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job and that the war in Afghanistan is the result of "lengthy failed negotiations between American business and the Taliban over access to drugs and oil," or even her bewildered, injured insistence yesterday that her firing "is so incredibly unjust."

No, what is wonderful is that Ms. Hughes has had such a good go of being such a proper little Canadian lefty (I rarely use words like this, but there ain't no other way to describe her) that I have no doubt she's genuinely bewildered.

She's played by all the rules as she knew them, embraced all (well, okay, almost all, the Sept. 11 conspiracy theory, being a shade out there) the right causes, and what, now this kick in the teeth?

Not even a Raging Granny, one of those women who with hideous regularity show up at protests and the like to sing hideous ditties, could have summoned up greater righteous indignation.

As a perfect illustration of the peculiar sort of Canadian-ness Ms. Hughes seems to embody was what she said yesterday when a TV reporter broke the news to her that Mr. Dion was giving her the boot, and then, it being television, asked her how she felt.

"I guess this is how soldiers die in trenches, eh?" she said. "This is how it must feel."

Only a particular kind of Canadian woman of a certain age who has spent her life in the safe and cozy confines of Winnipeg, making a decent living and reputation as a caring social activist and never coming within a hair of a battlefield could compare her suffering as a cruelly aborted Liberal candidate to that of a dying soldier.

Ms. Hughes is by my count the eighth candidate to be given the boot in this campaign. She joins two other Liberals, three New Democrats and two Conservatives who have stepped down, under threat of being stepped upon, as a result of dope or dopey statements. She's the one who most interests me, however, because she was so good.

She is a journalist, a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists, a former writer at both her hometown papers, for a time a popular columnist with the city's free paper, and for a decade ending in 1995, the co-host of Information Radio, a local CBC show.

She was fired in 1999 by the Sun, apparently for taking the paper to task in a column for what she considered its "anti-Cuban bias" during the Pan-Am Games, and promptly launched a complaint with the provincial human rights commission; she ended up winning a settlement of $1,000.

When, in 2003, she was bounced from her job at the free paper, she said she would launch another complaint, but I couldn't find any record of whether she did, and what the resolution was, if any.

Even a sympathetic columnist in the Sun noted that Ms. Hughes's work "stood out for its fiercely anti-establishment views and she has often been labelled stridently left-wing."

Now, she is a member of the "collective" that runs Canadian Dimension magazine (which bills itself as being "For people who want to change the world" and describes itself as an "independent forum for left-wing political thought and discussion") and is a frequent contributor to it, too, as well as a co-host of the magazine's online radio show, where she and her fellow host still sound for all the world as though they were reading for the Mother Corp.

In Winnipeg, where she has raised two sons (one of whom, Geoff, is an actor and proud pro-marijuana activist who credits his mom with teaching him "to fight for what I believe in"), she appears to have led a rich life.

She has taught at the University of Manitoba (journalism basics in the school's continuing education side), been the media liaison for the Lieutenant-Governor's Advisory Council on Children with Disabilities in Manitoba (and was publicly thanked by the L-G three years ago in a speech for her writing on fetal-alcohol issues), and is routinely described as a passionate advocate for various causes, including women's equality and aboriginal rights.

She is a member of the Ba'hai faith, whose cornerstone, she said in a 1998 online report of a "Faith in the Newsroom" workshop, "is that the law is love."

Two years ago, she was a supporter of the United Nations Platform for Action Committee (Manitoba), or UNPAC for short, and did a radio interview with the "Femme Fiscale", a superheroine created by the group, who "flew into the Manitoba Legislature to ask how Budget 2006 would make life better for the province's women."

She also has written a one-woman play, Bloomberg's Radio, launched in 2002 at the city's famous Fringe Festival.

It was there that the first glimmer of what was to come may have showed itself, for in an interview, Ms. Hughes told the writer Morley Walker, "Both U.S. and Canada have become quasi-security states" because of laws passed since the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We just haven't found that out yet," she said. "And the mainstream media in North America are doing little to challenge this."

Then came the story she wrote called "Get the Truth" and which cost her the candidacy, and which read, in part, "Israeli businesses which had offices in the Towers, vacated the premises a week before the attacks, breaking their lease to do it. About 3,000 Americans working there were not so lucky."

It was no one-hit wonder, either. According to one of the many 9/11 conspiracy websites, Stop Lying, Ms. Hughes was part of a "push for truth" about 9/11 in Winnipeg in the spring of last year.

At an evening called "Code of Silence" hosted by Barrie Zwicker, who has written a book and produced a documentary on the "media coverup" of 9/11, Ms. Hughes was part of a panel discussion on the same subject.

Funny, but eight years ago, when Stockwell Day was running for the leadership of the old Canadian Alliance, Free Press columnist Gordon Sinclair Jr. wrote about an encounter Ms. Hughes, then a freelancer, had with Mr. Day.

She approached Mr. Day to ask what she called "an awkward question."

The question was, "Jim Keegstra [the Alberta Holocaust denier convicted of promoting hatred against Jews] claims to be a friend of yours" and "that he would vote for you."

Mr. Day was upset, and Ms. Hughes said, and I can imagine her smarmy smugness, "The part of the country you come from has struggled with a lot of ugly movements.

"I'm thinking here about the whole neo-Nazi thing and racism of a very virulent kind."

Well, what goes around comes around, even to a good leftie Canuck.

 

[a_majoor]

One of the reasons listening to "Progressives" seems like sitting in an echo chamber is they have such circumscibed world views. As Mark Steyn put it, even "Blue State America really consists of a Red countryside and a few big Blue cities" (paraphrase). In our own experience, we see the same thing with the colours reversed; the Liberalverse is contracting to Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, while the CPC paints the suburbs and the rural map blue. The frightening part is in the highlighted paragraph; these people do not know or understand the "real world"; so thier proposed solutions are flawed right out of the box as they have no grounding in reality. The behaviour of the global markets to the various rescue packages put out by national governments should be interpreted as a warning sign; every State effort to create stability decreased market confidence instead.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2008/Q4/mail540.html#finances

The Withering Away of Manhattan, New York

Dear Jerry,

Many of the Wall Street quants have taken to the blogs. And the present uproar has focused attention on some quants' 2-3 y/o ' blogs. For them taking to blogging was an unwise step in my view. It's never good when Toto pulls back the curtain on that little man in the rear booth in Oz' main audience chamber.

Harvard, Yale and Columbia predominate, naturally. What struck me is the large numbers of liberal arts undergrad degrees in art, history, sociology, anthropology and other non-quantitative, non-technical and non-scientific fields. The resume was typically shined up later with the all-purpose MBA.

It's the Fareed Zakeeria problem writ large, or writ tiny. And it seems most of these folks' larger worldview really is informed by Newsweek, the New York Times and the Financial Times in London. They have pretensions to cosmopolitanism but it's a very superficial type. It's circumscribed by perhaps 10 airport terminals, urban cores and resort conference centers.

Their view of Middle America and of real economic activity reminds me of mid-19th Century maps of Africa: an accurate map outline of the continent with pictures of elephants and lions drawn in the interior. Even the most progressive among them in anticipating the bubble pop are clueless about what's next. They have no idea about how to reconnect their paper chase numbers to real economic activity.

Businesses of the Mrs Fields' Cookies and Starbucks type get capital because these people really don't understand anything more complicated. Irrelevant is the ultimate impression they convey. A Green Energy bubble informed by James Hansen's globo-warming hysterics is probably how they'll lose their last chips.

Best Wishes,

Mark

 

[a_majoor]

More theoretical underpinnings. I tend to agree with the view that many small holdings are better than an oligarchy (or a State sanctioned monopoly), even if you don't understand politics or economics, you can think of agricultural monoculture and the devastating end results when something goes wrong (the Irish potato famine, for example) and use that as an analogy. We need a vibrant economic and political ecology just as we need a viable natural ecology to live, grow and prosper.

http://jerrypournelle.com/view/2008/Q4/view541.html#Distributism

Distributism vs. Redistributism

Obama and the Democrats propose a redistribution of incomes through the "earned income tax credit". This is often confused with the distributist views of Belloc and Chesterton, The differences are profound.

Belloc and Chesterton were both conservative capitalists, and very much opposed to Socialism (which is the best single-word description of Obama and the left wing Democrats). They did not believe the State would or could be fair in implementing its policies. They did believe that using the State to distribute incomes would inevitably lead to corruption.

They also saw truth in Marx's observation that unrestrained capitalism led to capitalists devouring each other, with more and more of the wealth and means of production concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. Marx saw that as leading to revolution, with the elimination of social classes entirely. Government would shrink to nothing, and a man might be a worker in the morning and an artist in the afternoon. Management would not be for maximum profit, but merely for maintenance. The resulting stability -- some would call it stasis -- would be the end of history.

Fascism accepted Marx's principal observation that history was the history of class warfare, but solved the problem of class warfare by erecting a State superior to all the social classes and institutions that would force everyone to work together, not for the benefit of any particular class or institution, but for the good of all. Mussolini began as a Socialist and said he remained a Socialist to the day he died; his Socialism was intended to be progressive. He built airports and not only made the trains run on time but built many of the railroads.

Socialism is sometimes described as Marxism with a human face. Hilaire Belloc presciently said that the result would be "The Servile State" in which subjects begged state bureaucrats for favors, and nothing was allowed without a permit. A man might not erect a chicken coop in his back yard without permission -- indeed, it wasn't his back yard. It belonged to the state which graciously allowed him to live there. One may judge the success of this approach by the fate of Pruit-Igoe in St. Louis, or any Chicago or New York public housing project. Proponents of public collective projects have various fixes which they say will take care of the problems if applied. The fixes do not usually include giving actual ownership to anyone but the state.

The distributist approach would be to give actual title to the property to the occupants. Chesterton argued for peasant ownership of the land even as he understood that English yeomen would not care to be called peasants. At the time he was writing, about 90% of the land in England belonged to a few hundred families who rented out farmland to those who worked it. At that time agriculture was a significant part of the British economy, and factory management, though more complex than Marx believed, was still considerably simpler that it is today. From the distributist view, if peasant ownership of farms was a proper solution in agriculture, worker-owned factories would likely be the proper solution to industry.

Both Chesterton and Belloc were concerned by the trend of increasing consolidation of industry into large conglomerates and trusts, in theory responsible to stockholders but in practice responsible to no one but the managers. James Burnham, formerly an anti-Stalinist Communist and at one time a leader in Trotsky's Socialist Workers Party, took up this argument in The Managerial Revolution (1941) and Suicide of the West. He later broke with the left and became one of the founding editors of National Review; he was a major influence on the late Samuel Francis, the populist paleo-conservative.

Most of these socio-economic views have one major concern: the increasing concentration of control over society into the hands of fewer and fewer people. This is not quite the same as increased concentration of wealth: wealth itself is no great threat to the social order although it can be used for that purpose. Socialism would tax wealth in order to set up bureaucracies that would fairly redistribute the wealth. At one time Socialism demanded the nationalization of the means of production, but experience showed this didn't work very well, either in the Soviet Union, or in the Scandinavian welfare states, or in England. Bureaucratic management "for the public good" is neither efficient in production nor particularly effective at pleasing its public clients (who are usually very much treated as clients; see the Roman origin of the word).

Distributists claim to be a third alternative to ruthless capitalism and bureaucratic socialism. The distributist view can be summarized fairly in Chesterton's statement "Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists." They believed in transparency and subsidiarity  -- local control of most resources coupled with maximum freedom. (Note that the late Jane Jacobs thought those principles the only way to avoid a coming Dark Age.) One means of distributism would be through death taxes : the money would not go to the state, but be instantly and irrevocably divided.

Distribution of ownership of the means of production might lead to Jeffersonian Democracy in a largely agricultural country, but it's much more difficult in industrial states. Worker owned companies are sometimes both efficient and successful, but they often succumb to ruthless competition from manager-controlled companies and cartels.

There are plenty of Socialists who seek to redistribute the wealth through government action (which always means creating a bureaucracy). The neo-conservatives generally favor unregulated capitalism, which generally leads to concentration of wealth. There are few distributists in the modern political picture. Yet many of us can agree that "Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists."

I suppose that the free lance programmer who owns his own computers is the best modern example of what Chesterton and Belloc sought. I would also suppose that more vigorous enforcement of the anti-trust laws, even if that led to some inefficiencies, would meet their approval. To the charge that this would destroy local industries through ruthless international competition, they would probably answer by raising tariffs.

Incidentally, the Regulatory State seems determined to restrict America to two kinds of companies: those with fewer than 50 employees, and giant corporations with thousands of employees. No one in his right mind would expand a company -- particularly in California but Federal Law is making this universal -- from 49 to 51 employees. The instant one gets to 50 (or 51 depending on the state) a huge panoply of regulations kick in, so many that even if one can afford to comply with them all, one will also need a compliance staff of several employees to make sure one is in compliance. This means that up to 10% of one's work force does nothing productive except keep the owners out of jail. This makes the company singularly uncompetitive when faced with companies that don't have to devote so many resources to complying with regulations. This is probably not what distributists had in mind.

 

[a_majoor]

As jerry points out, it is difficult to define a means of preventing a concentration of wealth, even under a distributive system. Capitalism's answer is the inefficient fail and the able carry on with the resources tha inefficient left behind, which is pretty Darwinian, to say the least. The other problem is in a globalized environment, it is very possible (and even probable) that outside influences which are hostile to free market capitalism can interfere with the market (remember George Soros gained his fortune by generating a run on the British Pound. It is easy to imagine hostile nations using "sovereign wealth funds" to manipulate or destabilize markets, and government mal regulation can cause disasters on a global scale, like we see today).

If there is a solution it would be to encourage the growth of employee shareholder corporations with tight holding rules. Employees will have an incentive to work hard for their companies, and also to hold onto the shares; the downside is these will be relatively illiquid and companies will plateau at a relatively small size (putting them at a disadvantage against giant state owned conglomerates and unable to take advantage of economies of scale in their internal markets). No solution is 100%

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2008/Q4/view541.html#Distributism2

Distributism and Socialism: Part Two

For those wondering why the short commentary on distributism, I happened to be reading Chesterton on what's wrong with the world and it came to mind. I'm not a convert to distributism, but I Infinitely prefer dispossessing the wealthy to grow the size of the middle class to dispossessing the wealthy to growing the size of the government and bureaucratic redistribution of the wealth. Breaking up the Earl's estates to hand out land to the tenants may or may not be a great idea, but it is infinitely better than making Earl and Tenant alike the tenants of the government in the form of collective farms.

The Socialist approach is that government knows best.  That has been disproven in many experiments, some of them quite bloody, others less bloody but in all cases with unsatisfactory results. The Iron Law of Bureaucracy prevails in nearly every case. (I may as well say in every case, since no one has been able to give me a counter example.) The Soviet complex of states is generally held up as a good example of the failure of bureaucratic rule, and indeed it was. In addition, a particularly disastrous instance was the attempt by good Socialists to spread the wealth after the fall of Communism in the USSR. Most of those involved had good intentions. The results were pretty ghastly.

Pure capitalism leads to business cycles, in which the low point is generally better (in terms of standard of living) than Socialism (and certainly preferable to Communism, if only because the low points in a business cycle are considerably shorter than the reign of the bureaucrats in either Socialist or Communist states, even if the Communism has a human face, which it seldom does: see the movie The Lives of Others for illustration). As Mr. Chesterton said, the problem with pure capitalism is not that it leads to too many capitalists, but to too few capitalists.

I learned freshman economics the hard way: I was suddenly required to take over a very large class in Freshman Economics when the professor was disabled, so I had no choice but to read the textbook, read other relevant books, and stay ahead of the class. Fortunately for me the textbook was that of David McCord Wright rather than some of the more popular economics texts, and I was struck by Wright's logic and became one of his fans. This may be why I am inclined to favor vigorous enforcement of anti-trust laws. I confess I was a bit distracted from this view by arguments from National Review when Buckley ran that magazine; but I have recovered. The argument against enforcement of anti-trust laws and preventing any single or small group of companies to dominate an industry is the argument of efficiency: a few small companies in competition will produce more widgets with a smaller number of employees because there won't be so much administrative redundancy. Note that this has always been a major argument for Socialism including the old Socialist fervor for nationalization of industries: what is the need for 27 companies making soap powder or breakfast cereal, each having personnel departments, marketing departments, legal staffs, and other such employees not concerned with making widgets or boxing cereal? I confess that as an undergraduate I was impressed with that argument and vigorously employed it myself.

The Socialist argument failed in practice, succumbing to the Iron Law, as well as to the economic technical problems concerning flow of information: markets are better at concentrating and distributing information on demand than any bureaucracy could ever hope to be. Besides, competition keeps everyone on their collective toes: produce efficiently or lose business to the competitor. Certainly we have enough information now to conclude that for efficient production of widgets, or bread, or cars, or nearly anything else tangible, capitalism is the superior system. You get a bigger pie, and if one has a larger pie then distribution of the pie is a lot easier.

For most of the time this is unquestionably true: but there remains the problem of the business cycle: a time when everything seems to come apart. Fortunes are lost, employment drops, and panic -- usually but not always unjustified by the actual conditions -- sets in. The panic sends the western world deeper into depression (both psychological and economic). For a while economists were certain that John Maynard Keynes had solved this problem and the only requirement was to apply good Keynesian principles to even things out; there would be business cycles, but they'd never get to the panic stage because we now understood them and could halt the slides as they began.

This does not appear to be self evidently true in Fall of 2008.

One does wonder whether the efficiency of having a few very large financial institutions outweighs the cost of the disasters that ensue when a Black Swan appears; whether it might not be better to have, instead of one institution so large that it justifies paying its top executives $100 million a year, one hundred such institutions paying executives $1 million a year? Certainly this would be less efficient. The highs would not be as high. But would the lows be as low? Why must there be institutions so large that they cannot be permitted to fail, and must be rescued by the common purse?

I recently got this email:

Distributism vs. Redistributism

So what's your opinion about the government owning equities in formerly private (but publicly held) businesses? Distribute the shares to all citizens?

roger

I am not sure I have a proper answer to that: how does the government divest itself of ownership in key financial institutions? And can it do so in a way that benefits all? We have lessons in how NOT to redistribute the wealth from the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union. Giving everyone a share of stock and allowing them to sell to the highest bidder in an unregulated auction doesn't seem a bright idea, but then having bureaucrats negotiate deals for the people doesn't seem so bright either. Should shares be distributed equally to all? Should those who pay the most taxes get more shares? That latter seems more fair, but also concentrates wealth; but then an open and unregulated auction would probably end with concentration of wealth also.

I haven't thought about this enough to have a strong recommendation; but I do think it an important problem and I've seen little discussion of it elsewhere.

It is time to consider this question: is there a way to divest the government of its ownership and equity in the key financial institutions without causing total disruption; and can we do that in a way that minimizes the concentration of wealth into a few institutions who, however efficient they may be, can never be allowed to fail? Would it be better to use the government's power through these purchases to break these things up into a number of smaller institutions, any one -- or any dozen -- of which can be allowed to fail without ruining the lot of us?

 

[a_majoor]

Why rich people like socialism; indeed:

http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/6377.html

Why the Really Rich Love Socialists
Posted by Shannon Love on October 30th, 2008 (All posts by Shannon Love)


This article [h/t Instapundit] shows that the U.S. has a more progressive tax code than the democratic-socialist states of Europe.

Such a state of affairs should not come as a surprise. Our own history shows that the very wealthy benefit from leftist policies of high tax rates, “targeted” taxation and industrial policy.

The ugly truth is that the really wealthy can manipulate the political system to their own ends better than ordinary people. They can lobby for specific tax breaks that only they can take advantage of. They can get government trade protection for their companies. They can get bailouts. If all else fails, the truly wealthy can simply relocate their wealth into whatever area the government policies du jour make the most profitable.

In the extremes, they can simple sit on their wealth and wait for the political winds to change.

The history of Europe since WWII has shown that it really pays to be a big company in a socialist country. Socialists like stasis. Socialist politicians like to guarantee jobs. They like predictable tax revenue. To this end they select a handful of major companies and in return for heavy regulation, protect them internal and external competition. The largest companies in Europe are much larger compared to the size of their national economies than are the largest companies in America. The largest companies in Europe also keep their top positions while a great deal of turnover by comparison occurs in American companies.

America saw the same thing happen between 1945-1980. At the zenith of the Left’s influence in America the tax code grew so riddled with loopholes and shelters that the wealthiest paid little taxes. For three years in the 1970s, Malcomb Forbs, then the world’s richest man, paid zero income tax. After the Reagan tax reforms, such a thing would be unthinkable today.

The Democrats want to put us on a road back to the 1970s when the rich got off scot free, corporations grew fat and lazy behind trade barriers and high taxes, and inflation and deteriorating government services slammed the middle class. It will happen again. The perverse outcomes are guaranteed by the incentive structure built into our political system.

Why do we have to go through all that again?

 

[a_majoor]

It really is all about power (think about "SHARP" training):

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-mcpherson21-2008nov21,0,4090949.story

The sham of sex harassment training
It's little more than politically correct indoctrination.
By Alexander McPherson
November 21, 2008
» Discuss Article    (78 Comments)


Four years ago, the governor signed Assembly Bill 1825 into law, requiring all California employers with more than 50 people to provide sexual harassment training for each of their employees. The University of California raised no objection and submitted to its authority.

But I didn't. I am a professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at UC Irvine, and I have consistently refused, on principle, to participate in the sexual harassment training that the state and my employers seem to think is so important.

For a while, it didn't seem to matter much that I had refused. I (and fellow scofflaws) were periodically notified that we were not in compliance, and we were advised to get with the program like everybody else. Then the university began warning me that my supervisory responsibilities would be taken away if I did not promptly comply.

Last month, the university finally followed through, sending me a letter announcing that my laboratory and the students I oversaw were to be immediately turned over to other university officials and faculty. I continued to refuse to take sexual harassment training, and do so now.

I am not normally confrontational, so I sought to find a means to resolve the conflict. I proposed the following: I would take the training if the university would provide me with a brief, written statement absolving me of any suspicion, guilt or complicity regarding sexual harassment. I wanted any possible stigma removed. "Fulfilling this requirement," said the statement I asked them to approve, "in no way implies, suggests or indicates that the university currently has any reason to believe that Professor McPherson has ever sexually harassed any student or any person under his supervision during his 30-year career with the University of California."

The university, however, declined to provide me with any such statement, which poses the question: Why not? It is a completely innocuous, unobjectionable statement that they should have been willing to write for any faculty member whose record is as free of stain as is my own. The immediate reply of the administration was that if I didn't comply with the law, I would be placed on unpaid leave.

So why am I am being so inflexible on this issue? Why not simply take the training and be done with it? There are several reasons.

First of all, I believe the training is a disgraceful sham. As far as I can tell from my colleagues, it is worthless, a childish piece of theater, an insult to anyone with a respectable IQ, primarily designed to relieve the university of liability in the case of lawsuits. I have not been shown any evidence that this training will discourage a harasser or aid in alerting the faculty to the presence of harassment.

What's more, the state, acting through the university, is trying to coerce and bully me into doing something I find repugnant and offensive. I find it offensive not only because of the insinuations it carries and the potential stigma it implies, but also because I am being required to do it for political reasons. The fact is that there is a vocal political/cultural interest group promoting this silliness as part of a politically correct agenda that I don't particularly agree with.

The imposition of training that has a political cast violates my academic freedom and my rights as a tenured professor. The university has already nullified my right to supervise my laboratory and the students I teach. It has threatened my livelihood and, ultimately, my position at the university. This for failing to submit to mock training in sexual harassment, a requirement that was never a condition of my employment at the University of California 30 years ago, nor when I came to UCI 11 years ago.

Interestingly, I have received many letters of encouragement -- about 25% of them from women. The comments have been rich with words like "demeaning," "oppressive," "politically driven" and "indoctrination." Other phrases included "unctuous twaddle" and "sanctimonious half-wits."

Sexual harassment is a politically charged issue. The people of California have granted no authority to the state to impose narrow political and cultural opinions on individual citizens.

Alexander McPherson is a professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at UC Irvine's school of biological sciences.

 

[a_majoor]

From Iowahawk:

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2003/12/why_i_am_a_demo.html

Why I Am a Democrat

[ed. note - today's burnt offering in the Satire Clearance is this 2000 CNSNews thingy, my entry in a DNC essay contest.]

I sometimes hear the question, "Why are you a Democrat?" and frankly, I have to laugh. Laugh and laugh, because perhaps this person may tire of my laughing, and he will eventually wander off. Sometimes I ponder seriously when I hear this question, because I'll look around and around and there's nobody there asking the question. Why am I a Democrat?

I am a Democrat because I believe everyone deserves a chance. And if necessary, a second chance. And if, by the eighth or ninth chance, this guy needs another chance, I mean, come on. This guy is due.

I am a Democrat because I believe in helping those in need. All of us, you and I, have an obligation to those less fortunate. You go first, okay? I'm a little short this week.

I am a Democrat because I believe in the equality of all people, regardless of their race. That is why I think we should give free medical degrees to minorities because, well, duh. Like any of those types are going to make it through medical school.

I am a Democrat because I fervently believe in tolerance. Tolerance is critical in our diverse society, and if you have a problem with that, mister, then I will inform the authorities and I bet that after a few hours in their "special room" you too will agree that tolerance is critical.

I am a Democrat because I believe that we should take our noses out of other people's bedrooms. I say we move the noses to their banks and storage sheds and scout troops, and so forth.

I am a Democrat because I hold sacred freedom of the press, as well as freedom of the TV and freedom of the movie. Where I draw the line is freedom of the talk radio, and don't even get me started about that damn Internet business.

I am a Democrat because I recognize that education is important. Very, very, extremely very important. We must increase spending on education and enact important education reforms, such as eliminating standardized tests. Because we can never hope to measure this beautiful, elusive, important thing we call education.

I am a Democrat because I believe in the separation of church and state. We must stop the religious extremists who want school-sanctioned prayers. Now, you tell me - with all that chanting and praying and incense-burning going on, how can our kids concentrate on the big condom-and-banana midterm?

I am a Democrat because I believe in the rights of women, be they lawyers or housewives or skanky interns. For too long women have been the victims of discrimination, and we must target programs to help these women, and also the various people who have descended from women.

I am a Democrat because I believe in women's right to choose. I mean, not a church school or a tax shelter, or something like that, obviously. Let's be reasonable.

I am a Democrat because I believe in the rule of law. Or, at least, lawyers. Because hey, according to my attorney, I could have been on the Number 7 bus when it crashed yesterday. As far as you know.

I am a Democrat because I believe a healthy economy depends on good jobs at good wages. So fork 'em over, you fat bastard boss man.

I am a Democrat because I believe the government should step in to create good jobs when that fat bastard boss man moves my good job to Mexico. Hey, I know! Maybe we can take all the money that boss man spends on non-job-creating stuff, like solid gold yachts and mink spats, and use that money to create jobs.

I am a Democrat because I fear the power of giant unrestrained monopolies, such as Microsoft, Nike, Parker Brothers, Univac and the Erie Canal Company. The government must wage an unrelenting, all-out war to crush these scary monopolies to a pulp before they get too powerful.

I am a Democrat because I believe in a strong military. Strong, yes, but caring and thoughtful too, and ready to face new challenges. A military that enjoys long strolls on the beach, cuddling in front of a warm fire, unafraid to show its vulnerable side. Must be NS/DDF.

I am a Democrat because I believe there is too much violence in society, especially in our schools. To avoid another Columbine tragedy, we should have mellow "rap" sessions with at-risk teens, such as the Goths. The violence will only end after the teen Goths see that we adults really care, and are "hip" to their groovy teen Goth scene.

I am a Democrat because I believe in campaign finance reform. Sadly, our politics are dominated by advertisements, paid for by the contributions of giant corporations. All too often, these drown out legitimate grassroots opinions, like the kind heard on TimeWarner-AOL-CNN, TimesCorp, or Disney-ABC.

I am a Democrat because I believe in public support of the arts. By "the arts," I of course mean those things made by, or excreted by, an artist of some sort. It is especially important that art be provocative and take controversial stances, like opposing Jesse Helms, and so on.

I am a Democrat because I believe in the environment and conservation. For instance, we must raise the price of gasoline, like they do in Europe, to increase conservation. If we don't, there will soon be a big gas shortage, and this will mean higher gasoline prices for you and me.

I am a Democrat because I detest greed. Especially the sickening greed of those who struck it rich in the 1980s, and greedily refuse to give me any of their stuff.

I am a Democrat because I... hey look! A new episode of Survivor! Geez, I hope they don't vote off Jenna, she's my favorite.

 

[CougarKing]

From Iowahawk:

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2003/12/why_i_am_a_demo.html

Wow. Appalling. You really think that Liberals/Democrats lack a longer attention span and are a bunch of hypocrites with futile ideals. 

 

[Edward Campbell]

Wow. Appalling. You really think that Liberals/Democrats lack a longer attention span and are a bunch of hypocrites with futile ideals. 

C'mon, CogarDaddy, it's a joke - a parody of the worst of the liberal/Dems. I know I've seen similar about Canadian Conservatives and American Republicans.

It really is funny because there is just enough 'truth' in every line to make us shake our heads (sadly) just a wee, tiny bit.

 

[Brad Sallows]

You need to broaden your Internet reading if you don't already know what to expect from IowaHawk.