The Anti-Progress Coalition

Last January I wrote:

One realignment I fear is that the religious right will make a deal with the environmentalist left. They both oppose freedom and want to take society back -- the right wants to take us to the middle ages and the left wants to take us to the Pleistocene. I fear they will make a deal saying, essentially, “The right can have its way on abortion if the left can have its way on the economy. The right can enchain man’s spirit, whereas the left enchains his body.” Such a realignment would put America into two clear-cut camps, individualists and collectivists.

Secular Foxhole posts on evangelicals signing onto global warming.

Also of interest is a story from the February 6, 2005, washingtonpost.com called “The Greening of Evangelicals.” If the religious right accepts environmentalism, then the Republicans in power will follow. Republican politicians would be able to please both the MSM and a huge part of their base. How many of them could resist that?

The coming together of religion and environmentalism is an important trend to watch. It makes sense that the two would unite because they are both, fundamentally, anti-science and anti-progress in this world. The two movements strengthen each other: environmentalism gives religion a veneer of practicality in this world (however specious); religion gives environmentalism moral justification (however wrong). Furthermore, with faith religion gives environmentalism an alternative epistemology to reason, which can be unkind to the woozy, emotionalist thinking of environmentalists.

UPDATE: Also see Edward Cline’s God Goes Green.

And the word is that George Bush will make an environmentalist proposal in his State of the Union Speech, something about global warming. We’ll have to wait for the speech to hear exactly what he says, but I will speculate now that this could be an ominous development.

Random Thoughts

1. I don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh much anymore. Conservative talk radio bores me now because it’s the same old thing over and over. When they focus only on the inadequacies of the liberals, they miss a story that is at least as important: the failure of conservatism. I’m glad to hear from Dithyramb that Rush has finally read Atlas Shrugged and is promoting it. I heard him mention the book twice back in the ‘90s, both times commenting with some reservations on how small the print was. I got the impression he’s not one who reads hard books; he picked up his conservative knowledge from his father, life experience and National Review. I hope for his sake he bought a large-sized copy instead of the little mass market paperback and a nice pair of reading glasses.

This is great news because Rush has a huge audience, far bigger than anyone on cable TV news channels.

2. Harry Binswanger commented on his private email group that plastics have become so strong that it’s hard to open wrappers even with your teeth. I keep a steak knife on the kitchen counter at all times; between packages that come in the mail and plastic wrappers, I use that knife daily. It seems kind of stupid to make wrappers that you have to fight to open.

3. The Dougout has lots of bloggy goodness, such as an astonishing comparison of the sizes of celestial objects. Antares is one big mutha. Also he discusses Just War Theory as applied to the Civil War.

By the way, you can easily see Betelgeuse in our northern hemisphere sky; it is the lower armpit of Orion. You can actually see its red color compared to the white of other stars.

4. My guard goes up whenever I hear the words “the community,” and I hear them every day. They are always said in hushed, pious tones, for here is the altruists’ moral ideal: other people. Altruism distorts what is important in life. A man can work like a slave educating himself, starting a business and putting in 70-hour weeks producing wealth, but none of that is of moral worth because it is selfish. But if this same man wastes his valuable time picking up scraps of trash on the roadside, simple work that would bore a retarded teenager, that is held as moral and important because it is for “the community.”

Is it any wonder people give up to cynicism and passivity when everything that is colorful and interesting and productive is ignored or even sneered at and doing relatively unimportant community service is glorified?

5. In a recent post I said things were getting better. In a subsequent post I said that only the spread of a rational philosophy can turn around the downward course of civilization. Isn’t this a contradiction? If we are on a downward course, how can things be getting better?

Let me clarify. I think Objectivism is in the process of spreading throughout our culture right now. If America continues in our current welfare state without crises, then the economy should continue to grow and reason should continue to spread. I think Objectivism is spreading faster than Aristotelianism did in the Middle Ages because of the speed of modern communications and the Information Revolution. In the 13th century monks were still copying books by hand.

At the same time, both the nihilist left and the religious right are getting worse. And the state will continue to grow as it has for over a century. I am not optimistic about how our mixed economy will respond to any crises in the near term. (Within 10 years? 20 years?)

I see civilization in a kind of philosophical horse race. (If you knew my luck at the race track, you wouldn’t have much confidence in my bets.) This is the best I can do in assessing how our culture is changing. I don’t have a crystal ball.

Round Two From Noumenalself

Noumenalself makes some good points in his second post on Tracinski’s series.

Tracinski is impressed that in the field of economics there are a few people such as Julian Simon and Manmohan Singh who got it right and changed the world for the better, and they acted in today’s culture with its bad philosophy.

How do we explain their achievement? I would say man has free will and some individuals can think about reality first-hand and get it right. These remarkable individuals are the exceptions in our bad culture that prove the rule.

It is true that many people do good work every day and even advance civilization. Remember, it is impossible to be consistently anti-life without immediately committing suicide. Every breath is taken on an implicit pro-life premise. So irrational philosophies are inconsistent and contradictory. In assessing a culture’s philosophical trend, one has to make sure to understand what is fundamental and what is a contradiction. The fact that religious people continue to live on earth and enjoy the modern world instead of locking themselves in medieval-like cells does not make their philosophy any better. (The more consistently religious our culture becomes, then the more we will see people actually becoming monks and hermits and renouncing the pleasures of this world.)

We are grateful for the contradictions among those who hold irrational philosophies; their lack of seriousness buys us time for a rational philosophy to spread.

The world is still, as Ayn Rand put it, perishing in an orgy of self-sacrifice. Only the spread of a philosophy of reality, reason and rational self-interest will turn around the downward course of civilization.

UPDATE: Revision.

Apologist For Terror

The New York Post has found an outrageous passage in Jimmy Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid:

"It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel." (Emphasis added.)

There is no other way to read this sentence but as a justification of suicide bombings and terrorism if Israel does not accept “international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace.”

A man who has spent his post-Presidency preening about his role as a peacemaker has become an enemy of peace. But then, as one who appeased our enemies during his Presidency, he never was a true friend of peace. Certainly, his thumb-twiddling in response to the Iranian hostage crisis did not lead to peace.

Just One Example

In my last post, I lamented the wealth that is wasted and destroyed by the mixed economy/welfare state. Let me give one example to make it more real to you.

In 2007 the budget for the Department of Agriculture is $19.7 billion. All of that money is wasted. A free market with competing producers would deliver food that was better and cheaper.

Agriculture is a pressure group. Politicians in farm states buy votes by assuring farmers that money will continue to be stolen from the rest of American taxpayers and given to them. Any politician in a farm state who refused to guarantee this theft would not be elected.

Complicating the waste is environmentalism, which erects regulations prohibiting individuals from using their property as they see fit.

This vast exercise in state power results in taxpayers paying $19.7 billion to a system that makes food more expensive and of lower quality.

I repeat, we’re paying $19.7 billion so that we can pay more for inferior food in the supermarket.

****

But the damage done by the Department of Agriculture goes beyond wasting almost $20 billion a year to make food worse. State intervention in agriculture destroys the self-respect of farmers by making them wards of the state. Instead of proud, productive individuals, farmers are parasites living on stolen goods. Instead of practicing such virtues as productiveness, honesty and integrity, farmers mooch handouts and play the game to get benefits from the state. The state spreads cynicism and guilt among farmers who know the subsidies they receive are unearned.

The one proper function of the state is to protect the individual from the initiation of force, but in the mixed economy the state becomes the initiator of force. The state, which should protect justice, becomes a source of injustice. The rule of law is weakened by state intervention, which further weakens individual Americans’ respect for the law. Statist institutions such as the Department of Agriculture are not just impractical, they are immoral.

State intervention in the economy spreads the rule of force and destroys the use of reason. Civilized standards are necessary when men use reason with one another in a free society, but these standards erode when reason is supplanted by force. The more the state intervenes in the economy, the less civilized America becomes.

The welfare state is destroying the American character and the American way of life. As collectivism waxes and individualism wanes, so goes the “can do spirit” that developed when America was a free country. America is becoming less a nation of individuals who are expected to use their initiative to better themselves and more a nation of passive wards dependent on the group for survival. America is becoming more like the nations of Europe with their traditions of authoritarianism and state worship. Once our heritage of individualism is gone, it will be difficult to return to freedom. A nation of trembling parasites is unlikely to embrace self-reliance.

To return to the realm of the practical, the spiritual destruction in America further destroys wealth because individuals give up trying to better themselves and passively accept mooching off the group like everyone else. Instead of producing wealth, individuals become accustomed to receiving redistributed wealth. We lose far more than $20 billion a year in a statist institution such as the Department of Agriculture. We can never know how much wealth is not created as individual Americans lose the fire in their soul and give up.

As the state intervenes in the economy, America loses its future.

Better Or Worse?

Noumenalself addresses Robert Tracinski’s series, What Went Right?, in a post called “Tracinski on the Non-Collapse of Civilization.” Although Noumenalself does not state outright that civilization is collapsing, he gives examples of how things are getting worse: the anti-globalization movement, the spread of socialism in South America, militant Islam and authoritarian dictatorships in places such as Russia.

I wrote about the non-collapse of civilization in a post called Good News. I credited two things: 1) the remarkable power of even a hampered free economy; and 2) the invention of the computer.

The rule of law, which protects property rights, is a powerful economic force. Statists can enchain half an economy and the free half will still cause so much economic growth that the chains feel light.

( Digression. When I see how much wealth is created in our semi-free economy, I lament what might have been. If America had a laissez-faire capitalist economy, the wealth created would be… well, it’s unimaginable. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to suppose that major diseases such as heart attack, stroke, cancer and alzheimer’s would be cured or at least prevented better. Man would live longer. Middle-sized cities would have ballets, symphonies and regional theatres. People would be living on the Moon and Mars.

If you want something far out, try this:

Recently in his book The Sun as a Gravitational Lens: Proposed Space Missions, Claudio Maccone, a space scientist at Alenia Aerospazio in Turin, Italy, suggests implementing the sun’s gravitational lensing effect (as predicted by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity) in a telescope. In other words, the Sun could be used as a lens producing an aperture the diameter of the sun. Its focus is at about six hundred astronomical units away. If the proper equipment were placed at the Solar focus, extremely detailed images of extra-solar planetary surfaces could be captured.

Someday we could have a telescope that sees planets around other stars. It won’t happen in our lifetime, but who knows what might have been in a free economy.

The more wealth that is made, the more wealth there is for medical research, science and the arts. We’ll never know what we’re missing because such geniuses as Barbara Boxer and George W. Bush would rather control part of the economy for our own good. End of digression.)

The second thing keeping us afloat is the invention of the computer, which makes every aspect of the economy more efficient. Remember when stores had to do inventory? Retailers had to work overtime counting everything on their shelves. Today computers keep inventory automatically and order replacements as soon as goods leave the shelves. That is just one example out of millions of the stunning power of computers.

There is a third factor I might speculate about: the influence already, today, of Ayn Rand’s philosophy. How has it changed the world? What would the world be like without it? Martin Anderson credited the Reagan Revolution to free market ideologues who had read Rand in their youth. The libertarian movement would be even more insignificant than it is now without people who have read Rand. The self-esteem movement in psychology would not exist. I would be a liberal.

How many people read The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged and did not pursue the philosophy further, but were inspired by Rand's picture of achievement enough that they thought, "I will go back to school and get that MBA" or "I should move to that city I've always wanted to live in"? Their lives changed in little ways that spread more change in the lives they affected positively like ripples in a pond.

It’s hard to measure the impact of philosophy on anything less than the scale of centuries. Right now Objectivism is still too far underground to tell, but I think it has made some difference already. We’re dealing with another might-have-been like laissez-faire capitalism, but in reverse: the world would be better with capitalism and worse without Objectivism.

So where do I come down? Is the world getting better or worse?

Here is the x factor, the question that must be answered before we will know for sure: Is the welfare state stable? Both Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises said the mixed economy/welfare state is an unstable transition phase between freedom and dictatorship. In the laboratory of history exhibit A was the first welfare state that began in Bismarck’s Germany and deteriorated within two generations into the Nazi dictatorship.

Mises explained a process in which the state intervenes a little, creates a crisis, blames the crisis on the remaining element of freedom and finally takes over total control. The only problem with this theory is that the American welfare state is now 70 years old and we are still semi-free.

Could it be that the computer has been such an enormous boon to the economy that it has kept crises from crashing down and thus stalled the process that leads to dictatorship? Could the statists in Washington, D.C. continue intervention to the point that they catch up with the good computers have done and finally create a crisis? Are we just living on time borrowed by the silicon chip?

Or is it possible that our heritage from the Enlightenment of individualism and freedom and the rule of law written in the Constitution are so powerful that an American welfare state might muddle along in semi-freedom for centuries? If so, then there is hope that Objectivism will spread and the culture will change before America collapses in dictatorship.

I have noticed one thing: America’s politicians don’t show much lust for nationalizing industry. Hillary wanted to sink her fangs into health care, but that power grab failed. The thing is, if the state owns industry, then the state is responsible for it and the state gets the blame when things go wrong. Perhaps we should say a quiet word of thanks that our politicians are spineless cowards who are afraid to take over the whole show. They want property to remain in private possession; they just want to tell people what they can and cannot do with their property.

As long as we stay semi-free, a hampered free market with computers will probably continue to create wealth.

Better or worse? I’ll guess better, but no one can predict the future. A series of crises such as retiring baby boomers sucking wealth from younger workers, President McCain mandating two years of service to the state by every young person, an exotic virus killing tens of millions, China attacking Taiwan, and totalitarian Islam attacking everyone else could easily plunge us into dictatorship. And the growth of religion is another x factor.

It’ll be close.

(On Tracinski’s theory of history, I’ll wait until he is done. I’m not sure about it yet.)

UPDATE: I forgot to note that today, January 14, 2007, is my 50th birthday. I was born the year Atlas Shrugged was published. 1957 was also the peak year of the Baby Boom; lots of people my age. I'm surprisingly optimistic about the future for someone who is almost dead.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Slight revision.

Exiles From Ibsenism

Exiles (1919) is the only play written by James Joyce (1882-1941). Joyce was a great admirer of Henrik Ibsen and he wrote this play in his idea of the Ibsen manner. The chief value of the play is that it shows how great a playwright Ibsen was by comparison.

Joyce’s play is about an Irish writer, Richard Rowen, who is a self-portrait of the author. Richard Rowen’s first and last name begin with the same letter, just like James Joyce. Richard’s neurotic relationship with his wife, Bertha, is supposedly based on Joyce’s relationship with one Nora Barnacle. If so, I feel sorry for Nora (but then, no one forced her to marry James Joyce). Richard lived on the continent, but has returned to Ireland when the play begins; Joyce did the same thing in real life.

I will summarize the entire plot in the next three paragraphs. Custom demands that I warn of spoilers, although I doubt that anyone will go through the trouble of reading this obscure, dreary play.

Act I opens with Richard talking to Beatrice, his best friend Robert’s cousin and sometime lover, a woman Richard had an affair with when he lived in Italy. Beatrice has been giving Richard and Bertha’s eight-year old son Archie piano lessons. Their dialogue gives a lot of exposition, but is otherwise pointless. When Richard hears Robert Hand coming, he leaves because dredging up the past and his tortured relationship with his recently deceased Mother has upset him. Robert enters with roses intended for Bertha. Robert and Beatrice engage in small talk, then Robert chats with Archie. More small talk until Beatrice and Archie leave, then Robert pursues his real purpose of seducing Richard’s wife Bertha. He kisses her and makes an appointment for her to come to his house at 8pm that night. She is noncommittal and unenthusiastic, but she does not say no. Richard comes in and and Bertha leaves. (Entrances and exits are a frustrating technical problem for the dramatist. Characters need important and logical reasons to enter and exit. Joyce handles this problem clumsily throughout the play.) Robert and Richard talk about Richard’s past and about women. Robert tells Richard that the vice-chancellor has invited Richard to dine at his place at 8pm. After some business with Archie and Beatrice, Robert leaves with them. Richard and Bertha have the last scene of the act together. Bertha tells him everything that happened between her and Robert. She asks if she should go to Robert. Richard says it is up to her.

Act II is at 8pm that night at Robert’s house. Robert is in evening dress, expecting Bertha, when Richard arrives. Robert is remorseful and glad that Richard has stopped him from having an affair with Bertha. Richard talks about his guilt over cheating on Bertha. When they see Bertha coming, Richard says he will leave Robert and Bertha alone here. Robert leaves to get an umbrella (another clumsily handled exit). Richard tells Bertha to love Robert, then leaves. Robert and Bertha have the last scene of the act. Robert wants Bertha to love him, but she is still noncommittal and unemotional. Robert knows she loves Richard, but he asks if she also loves him. The act ends with the stage direction “She does not answer. In the silence the rain is heard falling.”

Act III is back at Richard’s house the next day. After business with the maid and Archie, Bertha and Beatrice talk in veiled terms about Richard, the man they both love (God knows why). They reach an understanding to be friends during the act. When Bertha and Richard are alone, she accuses him of destroying three women with his neurotic games, Beatrice, Bertha and Richard’s Mother. Robert comes and tells Richard that he failed with Bertha and is leaving for Surrey. Some confusing business with Archie, with implications that Robert might be the father. In the last scene Richard tells Bertha he has “a deep, deep wound of doubt” in his soul about her. “I have wounded my soul for you – a deep wound of doubt which can never be healed. I can never know, never in this world. I do not wish to know or to believe. I do not care. It is not in the darkness of belief that I desire you. But in the restless living wounding doubt. To hold you by no bonds, even of love, to be united with you in body and soul in utter nakedness – for this I longed. And now I am tired for a while, Bertha. My wound tires me.” To which Bertha responds, “Forget me, Dick. Forget me and love me again as you did the first time. I want my lover. To meet him, to go to him, to give myself to him. You, Dick. O my strange, wild lover, come back to me again!” And then she closes her eyes and the play ends.

Naturalism, as Ayn Rand explains in The Romantic Manifesto, is based on the premise that man does not have free will. This is clearly the case with Richard. He is wracked with guilt about his past, but unable to do anything about it. He is hopelessly trapped in his guilt-ridden existence. The only thing he can think of to ease his pain is to urge his best friend to have sex with his wife, a neurotic solution at best. Because he has no goal, no plan of action, the play has no plot. The play ends with Richard moaning about an unhealable wound of doubt in his soul. There is no hope of happiness for Richard and Bertha.

Many of Ibsen’s characters are guilt-ridden like Richard, but they form a plan of action, sometimes a last-ditch effort to change. (Hedda Gabler, Ibsen's most horrifying monster, acts out of envy to destroy the joy she cannot know.) Ibsen’s plays have a plot that keeps the audience on the edge of their seat wondering what will happen next. Even Ibsen’s tragic characters have a larger than life quality that makes them fascinating to contemplate.

Just as Aristotle was not served by the medieval Aristotelians, Ibsen has not been served by the Ibsenites. He must be the most misunderstood playwright in history. He is a romantic realist who, because his plays are about middle-class people in drawing rooms instead of Spanish dons flashing swords, has been considered a naturalist. Ibsen complained that the actors in his day did not act his characters with enough passion because they were misled by the realism to think they had to make the characters life-size and subdued, the way most people act in their living rooms.

Chekhov, a real naturalist, was one of the few people intelligent and perceptive enough to understand Ibsen. During a rehearsal at the Moscow Art Theatre one day, he commented about an Ibsen play that real people did not act like that. By Chekhov's naturalistic standards, Ibsen's characters are unrealistic. Ibsen's characters are not statistical averages; they are not the girl next door; they are concretes that embody wide abstractions, like the characters of Schiller, Hugo and Dostoyevsky.

The thesis play that flourished in the early 20th century among second-rate playwrights such as Hervieu and Galsworthy is another misunderstanding of Ibsenism. These playwrights would take a concrete bound idea, such as “a mother’s love can be destructive” or “poverty leads to crime” and make a play proving that point. Ibsen’s plays deal with wider philosophical themes and are not built to prove a narrow political point. Feminists claim A Doll’s House for their own, but really the play is about individualism and free will; it is more than a feminist tract.

Joyce takes Ibsen’s style and fills it with naturalistic content. On the surface Exiles is Ibsen-like: tortured souls discuss their past in realistic interior settings, with much of the talk about individual freedom vs. a parochial, judgmental society. But the differences between Joyce and Ibsen demonstrate the fundamental importance of plot (or lack thereof). Ibsen’s characters do not just talk, they have goals and act to achieve them; Joyce’s characters have little else but talk because they are trapped in their guilt. Like the characters in Sartre’s existential play, there is no exit.

One passage, I believe, reveals James Joyce’s sense of life and his view of man:

Robert: You will give me a headache of you make me think today. I cannot think today. I feel to natural, too common. After all, what is most attractive in even the most beautiful woman?

Richard: What?

Robert: Not those qualities which she has and other women have not but the qualities which she has in common with them. I mean… the commonest. I mean how her body develops heat when it is pressed, the movement of her blood, how quickly she changes by digestion what she eats into – what shall be nameless. [Laughing.] I am very common today. Perhaps that idea never struck you?

According to Robert, and probably to Joyce, what is most attractive in a woman is not her beauty or character or any spiritual qualities, only the fact that she shits.

Suburban Populism

Rahm Emanuel talked to David Ignatius about Democrat strategy for the next two years.

Emanuel believes that the November election voiced a deep public frustration with Republican leadership, and opened the way for what could be a long-term realignment, if the Democrats are smart. A key trend was what he calls "suburban populism.'' Middle-class voters are angry because they feel that their standard of living -- from education to health care to retirement -- is under assault.

Might less government and lower taxes help these middle-class voters? Or is the solution to redistribute wealth from the rich to the middle class? I think the real Democrat goal here is make the middle class dependent on government.

For a generation, GOP strategists encouraged these suburban voters to focus their anxiety and resentment on urban minorities, but Emanuel argues that isn't working anymore.

This is a Democrat smear. Opposing the welfare state does not mean resenting urban minorities. If Rahm Emanuel believes this, then his strategizing is not based on clear thinking but on leftist propaganda. Not a good sign for a political strategist.

"Today, the new welfare queen is corporate America,'' he says. Suburban voters, like those in the inner cities, "are angry at powerful citizens who are getting a better deal than they are.''

Corporations depend on making a profit for their survival, not on government handouts, so they are not really welfare queens. Democrat strategy is to whip up envy and hatred of corporations in order to justify expanding the welfare state so that the suburbs are as dependent on government as the urban areas are. Dependency on government = Democrat votes.

The secret for the Democrats, says Emanuel, is to remain the party of reform and change.

That will be harder in ’08 with the Democrats in control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The country is angry, and will only get more so as the problems in Iraq deepen. Don't look to Emanuel's Democrats for solutions on Iraq. It's Bush's war, and as it splinters the structure of GOP power, they're waiting to pick up the pieces.

The Democrats want Iraq to remain a mess that they can use to club the Republicans with in ’08.

Big business is, as Ayn Rand said almost 50 years ago, America’s most persecuted minority. The Democrat plan for the next two years is to continue the persecution.

A Vision of Sacrifice

Victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship. But victory in Iraq will bring something new in the Arab world -- a functioning democracy that polices its territory, upholds the rule of law, respects fundamental human liberties, and answers to its people. A democratic Iraq will not be perfect. But it will be a country that fights terrorists instead of harboring them -- and it will help bring a future of peace and security for our children and our grandchildren.

(From the President’s speech last night)

Will a democratic Iraq make our children and our grandchildren at all safer? As Bill Quick writes,

There is absolutely no hope of anything like this coming to fruition for at least a full generation, twenty to thirty years, minimum, and that is under the best of circumstances.

Absent the removal of armed subversion from the Mullahs of Iran, the Baathists of Syria, and the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia, there is no hope at all of achieving this victory.

If we had left Saddam Hussein alone and not invaded Iraq, would we be safer, less safe or about the same? I say about the same because we must destroy the states that sponsor terrorism to end terrorism. Iraq is a distraction, a side show. At best – and this is speculative – it is a strategy that will take a generation to work. That’s a generation of Americans dying in Iraq. That’s a generation of taxpayer’s money going to Iraq – trillions and trillions of dollars. (How much would it cost to bomb Iran into the stone age?)

America might be marginally safer without Saddam Hussein, but removing him must be separated from the subsequent mission of bringing democracy to Iraq. Imagine that we had invaded Iraq, shot Saddam in his spider hole, then departed the country, taping this note to the rubble: “If you threaten us again, we will destroy you again.” Would we be safer, less safe or about the same? Well, Saddam would be dead and dictators such as Qaddafi would still get the message. It would have been a boost for American morale and a blow to the enemy's morale, but in the long run we would be about as safe because Iraq has never been the fount of militant Islam.

The war in Iraq is not about America defending itself, it is about America sacrificing for the weak. Here are the final three paragraphs of the President’s speech:

In these dangerous times, the United States is blessed to have extraordinary and selfless men and women willing to step forward and defend us. These young Americans understand that our cause in Iraq is noble and necessary -- and that the advance of freedom is the calling of our time. They serve far from their families, who make the quiet sacrifices of lonely holidays and empty chairs at the dinner table. They have watched their comrades give their lives to ensure our liberty. We mourn the loss of every fallen American -- and we owe it to them to build a future worthy of their sacrifice.

Fellow citizens: The year ahead will demand more patience, sacrifice, and resolve. It can be tempting to think that America can put aside the burdens of freedom. Yet times of testing reveal the character of a nation. And throughout our history, Americans have always defied the pessimists and seen our faith in freedom redeemed. Now America is engaged in a new struggle that will set the course for a new century. We can, and we will, prevail.

We go forward with trust that the Author of Liberty will guide us through these trying hours. Thank you and good night.

The burdens of freedom? This is a vision of America as a nation that must sacrifice to bring freedom to Iraq. The Author of Liberty (God) gave us liberty and now it is our duty, “the calling of our time,” to do God's work and bring freedom to Iraq.

It's a package deal of altruistic sacrifice and self-defense. The self-defense part serves to make the moral ideal of sacrificing for Iraq seem practical. The sacrifice part serves to give killing the enemy a moral justification. This package deal is necessary in our confused culture because Americans would not accept pure sacrifice for Iraqis without some idea that it is in our self-defense; at the same time, Americans do not understand that a non-sacrificial self-defense is moral.

Bush’s mystical-altruistic neoconservative vision has many flaws, among them the idea that democracy is freedom. A democratic Iraq will not be a nation of individual rights. If this nation of muslims elects Islamic radicals, then individuals, especially women, will lose rights.

In “The Lessons of Vietnam,” Ayn Rand wrote,

In compliance with modern politics, the war was allegedly intended to save South Vietnam from communism, but the proclaimed purpose of the war was not to protect freedom or individual rights, it was not to establish capitalism or any particular social system – it was to uphold the South Vietnamese right to “national self-determination,” i.e., the right to vote themselves into any sort of system (including communism, as American propagandists kept proclaiming).

The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system – and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny. Outside the context of a free society, who would want to die for the right to vote? Yet that is what American soldiers were asked to die for – not even for their own vote, but to secure that privilege for the South Vietnamese, who had no other rights and no knowledge of rights or freedom.

The same thing is happening in Iraq. Instead of bringing freedom to Iraq, we are bringing a consequence of freedom, the right to vote. Without capitalism and without the philosophical premises that make capitalism possible, the right to vote will not bring freedom to Iraq. If muslims vote in Sharia law, then Americans are sacrificing to bring religious dictatorship to Iraq.

Bush and the neoconservatives have turned Iraq into another Vietnam, an altruist tragedy. We are unnecessarily sacrificing American lives and fortune because our leaders have neither the philosophical understanding nor the moral confidence to effect a foreign policy of rational self-interest. Sacrifice is held as a moral ideal, so Bush has set America on a mission that will see American men and women butchered for a generation in order to bring democracy to Iraq, instead of doing the one simple thing that would really ensure the safety of our children and our grandchildren: destroying the enemy.

UPDATE: Slight revision.

The Prerogative of the Philosopher-Kings

Republicans are having fun as Democrats evade their campaign promises to withdraw from Iraq. As Tony Blankley puts the Democrats’ predicament:

(1) The Democrats cheerfully campaigned all last year on "re-deploying" our troops out of Iraq, (2) now that they are in charge, many of their voters want and expect them to legislate their campaign promise, and (3) the Democrats want to continue to express their unflinching determination to oppose the war and bring the troops home.

Their problem is that many Democratic Party leaders don't want to actually cut off the money necessary to fight the war for fear that if things go badly, they might be held responsible by the voters in 2008 for a Middle East catastrophe.

Cassandra at Villainous Company examines Joe Biden’s lack of seriousness when he says cutting off funding would be “unconstitutional.”

…the political cost of continued carping is nonexistent, while the cost of actually doing something about the problems Democrats are complaining about may be unacceptable to them.

As Rich Lowry puts it, the Democrats are not being "straightforward" when they do not admit what they really believe, that the war is lost.

So the Democrats are being evasive and less than forthcoming. Normal people (meaning people who are not politicians) call this behavior lying. The Democrats want to criticize the war to please their base, but they also want to support the troops to please the rest of American voters. They want to blame Bush, but they don’t want any responsibility for which they might be blamed in ’08.

Will the Democrat base mind that their leaders lie? The far left might grumble a little, but in the long run, most of the base will accept the lying. Here’s why.

In the liberal imagination America is a nation of sheep who are easily deluded by capitalism/corporations/patriotism/ racism/greed/Rush Limbaugh/Fox News/Teflon presidents, etc. Wave the flag or a wad of dollars before these sheep and they become hypnotized and will follow any lies their corporate masters tell them, even if it is to their own harm. We would have socialized medicine in America were it not for greedy corporations manipulating the sheep.

Liberals, on the other hand, are America’s Platonic philosopher-kings who see the true reality because they have goodness in their hearts and are not corrupted by greed. As long as America’s contemptible sheep have the right to vote, liberals have the right to lie to them in order to get elected and hold power over the sheep for their own good.

Liberals are used to their leaders lying. They have heard their leaders lie all their life. Will they mind lies about Iraq now? No. Quite the contrary, they expect it.

UPDATE: The inevitable slight revisions.

The Class Envy Shtick Is Getting Old

From Real Clear Politics:

Desperate to compete with Barack Obama before a black audience in Harlem yesterday, Hillary came up with a doozy: "It is not rich people who made this country great," she said. "It is hardworking Americans who have worked hard to lift themselves and their children up."

Why does Hillary assume rich people have not worked hard to lift themselves and their children up? Maybe she is introspecting about how she was given $100,000 in cattle futures because she was the Governor of Arkansas’s wife and the local businessmen knew who they had to buy off.

Somalia

From Pajamas Media:

The al-Qaeda affiliated Islamic Courts Union’s (ICU) rapid retreat in the face of Ethiopia’s military campaign in Somalia has puzzled many observers. How could the Ethiopians roll up the jihadists so quickly? Pajamas Media has learned that one significant factor is that U.S. air and ground forces covertly aided the Ethiopian military since its intervention began on Christmas day.

U.S. ground forces have been active in Somalia from the start, a senior military intelligence officer confirmed. “In fact,” he said, “they were part of the first group in.”

So, right after the Democrats are elected to power over widespread unhappiness about our stalled out non-war in Iraq, we expand the war, invading another country, a country where we had suffered a miserable defeat and pullout during the Clinton Presidency.

Am I the only one who finds this remarkable? It’s encouraging, too. Would a Democrat President have done this?

For all of Bush’s faults, and they are many, he has to get credit for this one. It looked like the Islamicists were advancing in Somalia and we were just going to watch it happen, as we did for the previous two or three decades – and as the State Department and the left wish we still would. I didn’t hear one angry word from our government. Instead, we quietly and efficiently did the job with the Ethiopians and rolled back totalitarian Islam in Somalia.

This sends a powerful message to the bad guys: the election of the Democrats has not taken the fight out of us, at least not yet. I'm not claiming the war is won or is being fought well, but this battle is a victory for America.

If this report is true and my interpretation is right, then this is big story.

(HT: Kriegsegefahrzustand)

UPDATE:

Brussels - The European Commission on Tuesday criticised the reported United States airstrike against a suspected al-Qaeda cell in southern Somalia, calling it counterproductive to peace efforts for the war-torn African country.

Wrong, Euroweenies. Killing terrorists is highly productive of peace.

Is It A Joke?

From Kriegsgefahrzustand we learn about the Beard Liberation Front. I can’t figure out if it’s a joke or not. They should have ZZ Top perform at one of their rallies.

Tunesmith

For anyone interested in the art of songwriting, Tunesmith by Jimmy Webb is essential. Webb wrote “Up, Up and Away,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Worst That Could Happen” and “Wichita Lineman,” among others. In the late ‘60s Webb was the most famous songwriter in the world. He has been called the last great American songwriter of the 20th century, but Burt Bacharach might disagree.

The book has sound advice on every aspect of an art that can drive you nuts trying to master. Simple tunes such as “White Christmas” by Irving Berlin or “Dancing Queen” by ABBA sound like pop fluff, but achieving such perfect integration of words and music is nothing to sneeze at.

Webb’s wisdom comes from a lifetime of sitting at the piano writing songs. He has spent those agonizing hours struggling to find the perfect line to fit a melody. There’s nothing rationalistic or “ivory tower” about his advice; he learned it the hard way.

Songwriting is not an epic art. Webb compares it to Swiss watchmaking. It’s an art of small details that must be fitted together to make a thing of beauty. 32 bars does not give one time to say much – just one point that evokes feeling, makes people laugh or maybe makes them think.

Among Webb’s gems of advice, he warns songwriters against excessive, schmaltzy chromaticism in the melody. This is moving the notes by half-steps, as was common in the 19th century. Cole Porter’s “Night and Day” has a lot of half-steps. The first three notes of “Ain’t She Sweet” move in half-steps. In the rock era half-steps must be used with care and taste or they can sound cloying. (This is something I have to watch out for because I love romantic music. Rodgers and Hart's "Isn't It Romantic," for instance, sends me. But I admit, chromatic intervals can easily get sleepy or sickeningly sweet.) He also warns against going too far in the other direction and writing huge intervals that are too hard to sing.

Webb’s chapter on harmony (that’s the chords) has some great tips. You’ve heard about rock songs with only three chords – Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” for example. Those chords are a I-IV-V progression. The other ubiquitous progression in pop music is I-VI-IV-V, which is “Heart and Soul,” “Blue Moon” and a million other songs. In the key of C, I-VI-IV-V is C-Am-F-G. I don’t know how many times I’ve come up with a melody in my head and picked up a guitar to find that the harmony was I-VI-IV-V. This progression is so natural and inevitable that it’s hard to escape.

Webb shows how to get out of the I-VI-IV-V rut by finding substitution chords. All you need is one note in common. For instance, you might substitute I-II-IV-V, which in the key of C is C-Dm-F-G (probably the most common substitution for I-VI-IV-V). This can lead to some unusual sounds, especially if you get into intense jazz chords, but sometimes experimentation finds that perfect chord that sounds fresh and new but also right.

In his chapter on lyrics, Webb writes, “The amateur songwriter’s greatest single failing and one that is immediately obvious to the listener is that the writer does not know where the song is going.” The song starts out with an interesting idea maybe, but comes to nothing.

In my experience lyrics are much harder than music. Music is one or two ideas that might come to you in five minutes, but finding words for that music can take hours of agony. You want to find an idea or images that are fresh but not idiosyncratic. You look for concretes that express an abstraction, which is hard enough, but fitting them to a melody can be brutal.

Webb’s prose style has its pretentious moments. (What do you expect from the man who wrote “MacArthur Park”?) Sometimes he comes off as a half-educated man trying to sound smart by using big words he doesn’t understand. He even quotes Immanuel Kant, but weirdly writes prolegomena as “Prolem Gamara.” But this is a minor drawback in a book that is rich with good instruction. If the novice songwriter can’t get anything of use from this book, maybe he should try some other field of endeavor.

Moral vs. Practical

Jeff Jacoby's piece about the different ways liberals and conservatives argue is interesting and makes some good observations.

…as a broad rule, intentions are the currency of the left, while results matter most to the right. That is why Bill Clinton could feel our pain, while Ronald Reagan insisted that facts were stubborn things.

Conservatives might draw the conclusion from Jacoby’s article that their arguments are superior because the right is more in touch with reality, whereas the liberals have only wishful thinking. The conservatives would be wrong. The liberal argument wins because the liberals have morality on their side. The conservatives try to argue practicality separate from morality.

It is better to be befuddled, inaccurate, impractical and moral than it is to be precise, accurate, practical and immoral. Even conservatives sense this and they are disarmed whenever liberals get away from numbers and facts to ethics – as liberals have learned to do as fast as possible.

As the expansion of the welfare state over the last century shows, in the long run the liberals win. They have utterly dominated. It was common for conservatives during the Cold War to think they were on the losing side. In the battle of the west vs. communism, they were wrong -- communism had no future -- but in the battle of freedom vs. the welfare state, they were right. The state would continue to grow throughout the 20th century despite the right's feeble attempts to restrain it.

There have been momentary setbacks of liberalism, such as the Reagan Presidency. The Republican rise to Congressional power in 1994 forced Bill Clinton to call the era of big government over. But government continued to get bigger, despite anything Clinton said. Today the Republicans have given up the fight and have joined the liberals in supporting the welfare state and big government. Some of the writers at the Weekly Standard support "big government conservatism."

Big government conservatives are favorably disposed toward what neoconservative Irving Kristol has called a "conservative welfare state." (Neocons tend to be big government conservatives.)

The conservatives are in a confused, transitory phase; with the advent of "compassionate conservatism" and the growth of the religious right, they seem to be changing into a party of religious welfare statism. The secular, free market faction, at least among prominent politicians, is shrinking. This too shows how morality determines a movement's direction in the long run.

If the welfare state is to be rolled back in the 21st century, we must demonstrate its immorality. This means arguing that rational selfishness is moral, and that altruism, the morality of sacrifice, is not.

UPDATE: Slight revision.

Congressman Not-So-Frank

For decades the Democrats have been unable to speak honestly about their goals. If they bluntly said, “We’re socialists and we want more government intervention in the economy,” the party would go the way of the Whigs within a year. So they develop rhetorical tricks that evade and muddy the truth and appeal to emotions, calling government intervention in the economy a “partnership with business,” talking about the children and so on.

One of the new two-bit Democrat dictators, Congressman Barney Frank, has come up with some new Orwellian double speak.

(CNSNews.com) - American companies can expect proposals mandating increased wages and health care, a boost in union membership and greater scrutiny of trade agreements, a key Democrat promised Wednesday.It's all part of the new Democratic congressional majority's agenda to reduce what Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) calls "inequality" that inhibits economic growth.

How does inequality inhibit economic growth? As I understand it, economic growth depends on capital saving for future investment. If you take money from the rich and redistribute it to the poor, you get more consumption and less saving and investment. So inequality helps economic growth, doesn’t it?

"Inequality is not necessarily a bad thing. It's necessary in the capitalist system, and I'm a capitalist," Frank said during a speech to the National Press Club. "But we do not have to have a government that reinforces it."

(If Barney Frank is a capitalist, then the word has no meaning.)

What does he mean by the government reinforcing inequality? He wants to use the government to force corporations to redistribute wealth to workers, so what he is saying here is: if the government does nothing, it reinforces inequality. It’s a nice linguistic trick. If freedom leads to an undesirable result, then the government is reinforcing that result by doing nothing. He turns inaction by the state into a form of action. If doing nothing is the same as doing something, then the government might as well intervene in the economy.

Let me spell this out for any socialists who are accidentally reading this blog. There is a fundamental difference between the government doing something and doing nothing in the economy. When the government intervenes, it violates individual rights. Laissez-faire capitalism means the government does nothing. This inaction has other old-fashioned, politically incorrect names, such as freedom or liberty. To call this lack of intervention “reinforcing” whatever economic results might happen is nonsense. It evades the fundamental distinction between freedom and government control.

Frank said members of the working class would not care about economic growth if they did not see any benefit for themselves. This created "gridlock" that prevents pro-business legislation from passing, and therefore bridging the income gap was in the best interest of business, he argued.

More verbal legerdemain from Congressman Frank. What is pro-business legislation? That would be deregulation or laws that keep the government off the back of business so that people can make money in freedom. Anti-business legislation is laws that restrict freedom. His term “gridlock” implies that pro-business legislation (freedom) and anti-business legislation (control) are just two separate but equal forms of lawmaking. Congressman Frank is actually blackmailing business, saying they must redistribute profits to the workers in exchange for the government allowing them to exist with a little more freedom.

Frank was not specific on every proposal, but he said he intends to hold hearings into income disparity and what the government can do about it. He is also proposing a "grand bargain" that will tie trade bills, regulatory relief and other business-friendly legislation to mandates on increased wages, union empowerment and health care coverage.

“Grand bargain” is more fancy talk from Congressman Frank. You can only have a bargain among traders who have something of value to trade. Congressman Frank's "bargain" amounts to the government allowing more freedom in certain areas if the corporations become little welfare states that redistribute income to the workers. This “bargain” is equivalent to the Godfather’s line, “Make him a deal he can’t refuse.”

And if regulations were so important in the first place, how is it that they can now be used as bargaining chips? The cynicism of power lies beneath the facade of Congressman Frank's words. The real purpose of regulations is not to protect the environment or workers or anything else; it is to give the state power over individuals. All the justifications for regulations are just window dressing for power.

"Government doesn't have to interfere with the free enterprise system, but we can work along with it to reduce inequality," Frank said.

More BS. The only way the government can "work along" with the free enterprise system is to interfere with it. The government has no value to offer business, it has only a gun. Offering to let business have a little more freedom if it redistributes income is not “working along with it.”

Unfortunately, business is intellectually unarmed and helpless before strutting caesars such as Congressman Frank:

Hank Cox, spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers, said that with the new Democratic majority in Congress, the business community would face the need to compromise.

"It's a new world we're going to be in," Cox said. "It's safe to say we'll be playing more defense than offense. That does not mean we're going to fold our tents and go home. More deal making will go on."

The battle is already lost. The corporations will cut “deals” with the Democrats, hoping to get a little freedom in other areas in exchange for becoming little nanny states that take care of workers. It’s a nice deal for the government, because it expands the welfare state at the same time it clouds the issue of who is in power. Workers will complain about their employers not doling out enough health care, profit-sharing, benefits and so on, not understanding that government guns are behind the whole set-up. This already happens with health care benefits, to give one example. Corporations began giving health care benefits in the 1940's as a way to get around income tax, since wages were taxed but money that went to health care was not. 60 years later, people think of corporations giving health care benefits as just the way things are, a metaphysical fact like the air we breath, when actually the practice came about because of government intervention in the economy. In a free economy workers would be responsible for their own health care, which they would buy with their wages like they buy everything else. (And health care would cost a fraction of what it now costs under massive government intervention.)

Come the next crisis, the corporations will get the blame while politicians shout indignantly about greed and preen about their compassion. This is why American politicians prefer the fascist style of socialism to the communist, in which the government owns the means of production. By allowing the means of production to stay nominally in private hands, the state evades responsibility and blame. (This is why Congressman Frank calls himself a capitalist.)

"Ultimately the thing we've got to work on is becoming more competitive and surviving in the global market place," Cox said. "We can't do that if we have to go it alone with all these new requirements. The answer is not arbitrary rules that drive the cost of doing business even higher."

One way to stay competitive in the global market place, Frank said, is to use the U.S. leverage to push other countries to adopt similar workplace standards. Ultimately, he said, countries will bow to U.S. demands for their own economic survival.

So part of the deal is that the US will force other countries to hamper their economy as much as ours is hampered, which will help US companies compete in the global market place. Instead of being the world’s last best hope, the Democrats are turning America into a force that makes the whole world less free.

Frank is the incoming chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission and sets policies for the banking, securities and housing industries. As such, he will be among the most powerful members of Congress in setting economic policy.

Be afraid.

UPDATE: Revised.

Predictions for 2007

1. Right-wing radio will thrive with the Democrats in Congress. Rush, Sean and friends are at their best with polemics against the other side. When the Republicans run everything, they’re forced (as they see it) to carry water for people who don’t deserve it. The result is boring radio.

2. The Oakland Raiders will win more games in 2007 than they won in 2006. All they need is three victories for this prediction to come true.

3. The Los Angeles Lakers will win the NBA Championship. This is what you call a homer prediction.

4. The American people will continue to hide from history, paying more attention to Britney Spears’s underpanties (or lack thereof) than anything serious. But in 2008, watch out…

5. No major troop reduction in Iraq.

6. Top 40 music will continue to stink, making me unhappy at my job, which involves listening to commercial FM stations.

7. Gwen Stefani will continue as the most innovative and interesting pop singer. Pink and Kelly Clarkson will also be good. Outkast and Black Eyed Peas might be okay.

8. Reality TV ratings will plunge.

9. The economy will grow. The MSM will be torn as to whether or not they should report the good news. Will it help Bush or the Democrat Congress?

10. The Democrats will make many stupid expansions of state power and spending. This prediction is so certain that it’s really not fair. It’s like predicting that humans will breathe in 2007.

11. The Republicans will huff and puff and make faces about Democrat laws that destroy our liberty, then the Democrats will say something about the children and denounce "mean-spirited right-wingers" and the Republicans will fold like a cheap lawnchair.

12. No terrorist attacks on US soil.

For A Better Pilgrimage

The Hajj went off without a stampede, proving that 3 million Muslims can commune with a rock in peace. There are often problems when the pilgrims pass three walls representing Satan that they pelt with pebbles.

Frankly, the whole thing looks like a mess to me. They would be better off selling it to Disney. They could separate the thing into two parks, Allahland and Satanland. Pilgrims would board cars outside the walls that would drive them through both lands. If there were 20 pilgrims per car and four cars at a time stopped at the rock for 10 seconds each, 80 pilgrims could have rock time every 10 seconds. That would make 480 pilgrims per minute, 28,800 pilgrims per hour. 3 million pilgrims could be safely processed through the ride in 90 hours.

After seeing the rock, the cars would enter Satanland, where each pilgrim would be given a pebble to throw at the wall as the car drives by. The ride would be financed by money from Saudis that had been intended to support terrorism.

If the Religion of Peace wants my help in entering the 21st century, I’m available.

Fiesta Bowl

Wow. Boise State 43, Oklahoma University 42. Watching the hapless Oakland Raiders this season, I thought I'd lost my love of football, but the Fiesta Bowl reminded me what a great game it is. Boise State won because they did not play conservatively. They played with boldness and they pulled it off. Their last play of regulation was a pass with a lateral designed in it, and it worked for a touchdown. Their last play of OT was, I think, a Statue of Liberty play. It was like a Hollywood script in which the hero goes for broke against the odds and wins.

It takes guts to call trick plays when the game is on the line. But as this game showed, trick plays work when the defense is not expecting them. It's all about deception and surprise, rather like warfare.

How sweet it is to see a game won by offensive daring. Boise State, a team without fear! I should give credit to OU also for coming back from 8 points down to tie the game with a touchdown and a two-point play. The momentum shifted so many times at the end that it was breathtaking. Remarkable game, certainly one of the best college games I have ever seen, right up there with Doug Flutie's Hail Mary.

BTW, I like their OT rules better than the NFL's. The NFL should rethink their OT rules. Sudden Death is often anticlimactic because it becomes a game about getting field position to kick a field goal. In Sudden Death the most important play is the coin toss. BORING! Set it up so that both teams have at least one chance to score in OT. More excitement.

Saddam Swings

Saddam Hussein was hanged. (The right word is hanged. Hung is something else entirely, something good for porn stars.) He deserved to die. Justice was served -- but was it delayed?

To me the most interesting questions are: Is it necessary and proper to have a courtroom trial of a dictator whose country we invade? Was the rule of law strengthened in Iraq by a Iraqi trial of their former dictator? Did America buy goodwill and respect from muslims by allowing Iraq to try Saddam or did we look weak and lose respect? Would America be better off establishing the principle that we will summarily execute any dictator who initiates force against us?

I don't know the answers to these questions. I would be interested in reading the opinions of experts in international law, war and foreign policy.

Josh Trevino rounds up the reaction on the left side of the blogosphere to Saddam’s execution. One might regret their moral equivalence, but I think their reactions are mostly colored by their hatred of Bush. Bush’s Middle East policy must lead to nothing good in their minds, not even the death of a sadistic monster like Saddam Hussein. If a Democrat were President, all but the most recalcitrant anti-American leftists would be cheering. America would be better off if Democrat and Republican partisans could think a little more deeply than my gang vs. your gang.