Robert Theron Brockman II thinks the passage I quoted from Adam Smith earlier this week (see here and here) is"overly optimistic." Pointing to Smith’s line"All men, even the most stupid and unthinking, abhor fraud, perfidy, and injustice, and delight to see them punished," Brockman writes:
This is demonstrably untrue. If said fraud, perfidy, or injustice is perpetrated by themselves, their clan, their tribe, their race, or their nation, men’s tolerance (and often enthusiasm) for such things is greatly increased. This is most easily observed at the national level. Most people (including and especially Americans) consider the people of other nations largely expendable, and are willing to justify exceptional amounts of betrayal and" collateral damage" to the extent it furthers"national greatness." Any loss of life on one's"own soil" (hundreds of miles away owned by strangers), justifies massive (poorly targeted) retaliation and collective punishment.I agree with everything that Brockman says here (see, e.g., my article Thinking Our Anger) – except his evaluation of Smith.
The values of Secular Humanism (or even Christianity) are very, very rare. Most of the planet operates under either tribalism or that scaled-up form of tribalism we call nationalism. I think it's despicable but there you are.
Smith was by no means unaware of the fact that when"said fraud, perfidy, or...
Are we reading the same book? Thus far, I have seen little new or original in Black’s account that was not first said many years ago by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. For example, Black, like Schlesinger subscribes to the thesis that Roosevelt “saved” capitalism from itself and thus preserved it and American democracy from the extremes of fascism and communism. This always seemed to me to be a dubious claim. American voters were mad as hell in 1932 but I have not seen any persuasive evidence that they were ripe for a fascist or communist revolution.
Did they want a"third way" in the form of a statist New Deal? It is hard to say but FDR certainly did not present it to them that year. He talked out of both sides of his mouth promising to maintain the gold standard, cut the budget by 25 percent, while, at the same time, making vague pledges to"do something" for the unemployed. Hence, he could win the enthusiastic support of such diverse figures as H.L. Mencken, Stuart Chase, Henry Wallace, and Harry Byrd.
I have little to add to the insightful reviews of Jim Powell ,...
... what a beautiful, beautiful name. Okay, so maybe I don't like Barbra Streisand's politics, but I really liked the movie"Funny Girl." So sue me. Omar Sharif, the"Hello Gorgeous" Egyptian-Lebanese actor who played Fanny Brice's husband in the film, has shown that he's also pretty astute on Middle Eastern affairs. (Perhaps he learned a thing or two when he played Sherif Ali ibn el Kharish in"Lawrence of Arabia"...)
At the Capri-Hollywood Film & Music Festival, Sharif criticized the Bush administration for attempting to impose democracy in Iraq."The moment the troops leave," he said,"that culture will return to its old tribal governing ways." He adds that if Bush"went to Iraq to achieve a democracy, he was wrong. If he went to Iraq to remove weapons of mass destruction, he was wrong, because there never were any."
Sharif likes the idea that a tyrant was removed from Iraq, but he asks:"So many tyrants in this world, why this one? There is more reason to attack North Korea. And Pakistan has the atomic bomb."
Who said actors know nothing about international politics?
I just wanted to take this opportunity to welcome to the Liberty and Power Group Blog our newest participant: Steven Horwitz. Steven is Associate Dean of the First Year, and Interim Director at the Center for Teaching and Learning, and Professor of Economics, at St. Lawrence University. You can find out more about Steve here. Speaking personally, I'd like to say that he is one of my favorite hot-shot radical libertarian-Austrian-school thinkers, and also has a terrific page on the rock band, Rush. In fact (start shameless plug), he recently published a provocative paper on"Rand, Rush, and the De-totalization of the Utopianism of Progressive Rock," for The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, for which I am a founding co-editor (/end shameless plug).
Welcome aboard, Steve!
My apologies if my html is bad in this first post.
I just wanted to post a quick hello and to thank you all for inviting me on board. I've been a reasonably regular reader for the last few months and have enjoyed your contributions. It's particularly nice to be here with several folks I know (Dave, Don, Chris, Sheldon) and others (such as Rod, Gene, and King) who I've met briefly over the years. King may not remember when we met - I interviewed for a job at SCSU back in 89 and didn't get an offer. (I won't hold that against him though.)
The links Chris provided give you a good sense of my professional and not-so-professional life. In addition to what's there, I have a current interest in issues of gender and family, having taught both economics and first-year seminar courses on the topics for several years. I think family issues are particularly challenging ones for classical liberals and libertarians, and find exploring them to be endlessly fascinating. I also love TV and rock music, and am always on the lookout for ways to link those topics to my more academic and political interests. Finally, as a result of spending the last 15 years at a liberal arts college, I'm very interested in issues of pedagogy, from the nitty-gritty of how you teach first-year students to write a substantial research paper, to the role of technology in higher education, to issues of political correctness and ideology in the classroom.
One last word: now that I've gone over to the dark side as a half to full-time administrator, I'm particularly grateful to be part of this group, as I need all the opportunities to engage in this sort of give-and-take that I can find.
Thanks again for having me. Substance will follow.
Discussing the Iraq war with the Washington Post last week, former General Anthony Zinni took the path chosen by so many anti-Semites: he blamed it on the Jews.
As Mowbray has it, Zinni has committed blood libel by charging that the President's foreign policy has been hijacked by administration neocons, whom Mowbray charges"everybody knows" are Jewish. Personally, I didn't know that Douglas Feith was Jewish and didn't care. Next thing you're going to tell me that Lewis"Scooter" Libby--Dick Cheney's chief of staff and a PNAC member who's usually ID'd as a leading neocon--is Jewish. Well, I don't believe it. No self-respecting Jewish man would adopt a WASPy moniker like"Scooter." He sounds like the preppy villain in a John Hughes film--you know, the kind of guy who tells Andrew McCarthy not to date Molly Ringwald because she comes from the wrong side of the tracks. Is State Department neocon John R. Bolton Jewish? Do right-wingers really expect war critics to go through the distasteful task of vetting last names like early 20th century Ivy League admissions officials before...
Bidinotto's original article: The Contradiction in AnarchismI'll post a link to my counter-counter-counter-reply as soon as I've written it!
My critique of Bidinotto's article: Anarchism as Constitutionalism
Bidinotto's reply: Contra Anarchism
My counter-reply: Anarchism as Constitutionalism, Part 2
Bidinotto's counter-counter-reply: Contra Anarchism, Part II
Sometimes too we have occasion to defend the propriety of observing the general rules of justice by the consideration of their necessity to the support of society. We frequently hear the young and the licentious ridiculing the most sacred rules of morality, and professing, sometimes from the corruption, but more frequently from the vanity of their hearts, the most abominable maxims of conduct. Our indignation rouses, and we are eager to refute and expose such detestable principles. But though it is their intrinsic hatefulness and detestableness, which originally inflames us against them, we are unwilling to assign this as the sole reason why we condemn them, or to pretend that it is merely because we ourselves hate and detest them. The reason, we think, would not appear to be conclusive. Yet why should it not; if we hate and detest them because they are the natural and proper objects of hatred and detestation? But when we are asked why we should not act in such or such a manner, the very question seems to suppose that, to those who ask it, this manner of acting does not appear to be for its own sake the natural and proper object of those sentiments. We must show them, therefore, that it ought to be so for the sake of something else. Upon this account we generally cast about for other...
Consider, for example, Lord Acton’s oft repeated quote, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts, absolutely.” What is the difference between the two; power and absolute power? And how do either of those relate to the Liberty and Freedom of an individual?
The most important observation in this regard which I have heard, was made by the historian, William Appleman Williams, speaking at a Model United Nations regional meeting held at Florida Atlantic University in 1966, in some remarks which he titled, “The United Nations and the Achievement of True Sovereignty,” and from which I shall draw liberally in some of the comments which follow.
Today, we have become so immersed in the corruption of the concept of power as associated with the National State, that we have somewhat lost touch with the notion of power as related to an individual’s Freedom or Liberty.
The Nation State claims to be Sovereign as the very basis of its power, but the actions of the United States both in overthrowing Saddam Hussein in Iraq and now the attempt to rebuild that nation along “Democratic” lines, suggests that if Iraq had some sort of Sovereignty, it was limited in the face of the Power, a kind of Absolute Sovereignty, which the United States could, and did, exert against it. That in turn suggests that Liberty and Power, or Sovereignty and Absolute Sovereignty, have to be viewed along some sort of spectrum or continuum.
Historical Thinking...
Fortunately, the morning news was kind to me. It seems that Steve"Crocodile Hunter" Irwin has run afoul of Australian authorities in a very Michael Jacksonesque sort of way. The famed naturist was caught on tape feeding one of his friendly crocs with one hand and holding his infant son in the other.
After having a talk with the Irwin family, and being assured that no such antics will happen again, Queensland's department of children's services dropped the matter.
The Irwins are lucky they live in Australia and are famous. Were they nobodies in the United States, they might never have seen the tike again. My cynicism is born of experience. For the past several months, I have followed the trials of a Guatemalan immigrant who, until recently, was denied access to her infant son by the Alabama Department of Human Resources because the child had scabies, a skin condition that is hardly life threatening.
I hope that Part IIA of my discussion about Angels in America provided enough details to give a sense of what the experience of watching the film is like -- and to give an indication of the variety and complexity of themes that run through it.
Kushner's thematic material is endlessly rich and provocative. At the beginning of the second half of Angels, the Angel who has appeared to Prior Walter transmits her primary message:"Stop moving!" What she means is this: when God became displeased with His angels, He created man. But in that creation, God inadvertently permitted endless change -- progress, invention, immigation. But all of this constant change, all of this ongoing life, disrupts heaven and results in nothing but chaos and pain. Therefore, the only solution is stasis, peace, quiet, and death. Hence, all movement must stop. This is the message that the Angel wishes Prior to accept, and to act upon. And why wouldn't he? He has AIDS, he is getting sicker and sicker, and he has nothing to look forward to but endless, worsening pain. Moreover, he has been deserted by his lover, Louis.
The balance of Angels shows us how and why Prior rejects the Angel's message -- and why he chooses life. As he says several times: despite all the horrific elements of his existence at the moment, despite the pain, the loneliness, the grief,"I want more life."
Let me flesh out some of the play's themes that I indicated in the first part of this essay. I noted that one of Kushner's primary concerns is the relationship between the spiritual and the political. But more than this, Kushner is concerned about the interrelationships of the personal -- what we...
This is typical of the political class' way of thinking, which sees tax breaks as subsidies, as if all money belongs to the state.
“The top 400 American earners in 2000 provided nearly 7 percent of all the charitable gifts reported on income tax returns for that year, well in excess of their roughly 1 percent share of overall income, according to data released yesterday by the NewTithing Group, a charity that tracks giving.
The 400 taxpayers with the highest reported incomes in 2000 made an average of $174 million and gave away, on average, $25.3 million that year. Their combined giving totaled $10.1 billion, or 6.9 percent, of the $146 billion in charitable donations that Americans deducted on their income tax returns in 2000.”
"If listeners of the Today programme could introduce a new law to Britain, it would be one allowing them to kill an intruder in their home should the need arise.
That was the surprise - and, in the programme's own word, controversial - choice of listeners who voted for the piece of legislation they would most like to see in the statute book.
The audience for the Radio 4 programme were asked to put forward ideas that had a real chance of becoming law. Five were shortlisted and more than 26,000 took part in the final vote.
The winning idea, announced yesterday, would authorise home-owners to use any means to defend their properties from intruders. It received 37 per cent of the vote.
It narrowly beat a proposed Bill making it mandatory for individuals to offer their organs for transplant after death, unless they specifically opted out."
I've got a year-end essay at The Atlasphere on The Cultural Ascendancy of Ayn Rand. It deals with an increase in Rand references throughout popular culture, from television shows to comic books.
Happy New Year!
Some things are literally unthinkable. For example, Frederick W. Kagan's,"The art of war," an article in the November 2003 issue of The New Criterion, presents compelling evidence that attempting to dominate the world militarily will fail and lead to national ruin, yet Kagan, a teacher of military history at West Point, advocates just such a policy, and apparently sees no need to defend this choice. Excerpts follow:
"In each of the periods in recent history in which one might see a fundamental change in the nature of war, it is true that normally one state begins with a dramatic lead. …
"In each case, however, we must also consider the sequel. Napoleonic France, Imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all ultimately lost subsequent wars and were destroyed. ...
"History so far … has been very clear that 'asymmetrical advantages' gained by one state do not normally last very long. Technology and technique inevitably spreads. Other states acquire either similar or counteracting capabilities. The final victors of each new 'revolutionary' epoch have not usually been the states that initiated the revolution, but those that responded best once the technologies and techniques had become common property. …
"The search for an indefinite American 'asymmetrical advantage,' therefore, requires not merely a revolution in military affairs: it also requires a fundamental revolution in human affairs of a sort never seen before. …
"...[F]ew if any of America's enemies will have the vast resource-stretching responsibilities that America has. They will be concerned only with their own region of the world and will focus their efforts on developing communications...
Although Professor Dresner knows far more than I do about East Asia history, I am dubious about the usefulness of this comparison. Japan had tremendous advantages over Iraq in the nation building process.
Most importantly, it had the starting point of an ethnically/culturally homogeneous society. Despite internal clan and political divisions, the Japanese people had a strong and centuries-long common sense of nationhood. Iraq, by contrast, is a multi-ethnic/multi-religious artificial entity which was cobbled together in the twentieth century by the British. It is Bosnia writ large and, like Bosnia, probably cannot survive on its own as a unified democracy.
Although it too is a long shot, partition probably represents the best hope for freedom and peace in Iraq. Unfortunately, the U.S. state department can always be depended on to oppose such a solution (much as it did in the 1990s for Bosnia). The bloody demonstrations yesterday in Kirkuk between Turkmen, Sunnis, and Kurds do not bode well for those who wish to “build” a unified and democratic Iraq.
Finally, despite Commodore Perry and other foreign pressure, Japanese modernization was ultimately an indigenous process. Thus far, Iraqi modernization/democratization is a foreign imposed affair. As a result, Iraqi modernizers and democratizers, in contrast to the Japanese in the Meji period, are more likely to be tainted among their own people as lackeys of foreign...
