Liberaltarianism

In the early 1980’s I considered myself a libertarian. I even voted for Ed Clark in 1980. The libertarians made arguments for the free market that, taken out of context of their other ideas and their lack of philosophic underpinning, made sense to me. As an Objectivist I knew Ayn Rand opposed them as anarchists and “hippies of the right,” but I didn’t hear actual libertarians such as Clark talk about anarchy. I didn’t understand the nature of principles. (Today the libertarians’ opposition to the war against totalitarian Islam makes their danger to liberty and the rule of law easier to see. It also, I believe, makes them more irrelevant and marginalized.)

I went to work for a libertarian bookstore. They had a lot of stuff I had not read, including a most enlightening pamphlet by Peter Schwartz called, “Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty.” I quit the bookstore after two months.

A few times back in the old days I heard or read libertarians attempt to appeal to the left. I noticed that they downplayed economics and played up social issues – as if they could pull a fast one on the liberals by not talking about free market economics. There was also a moral relativist cast to their appeals, as if they were saying, “Hey, you leftists don’t have moral standards, and neither do we! We’re not stuffed shirts like those religious conservatives. Let’s live and let live together!”

I wondered who the libertarians were trying to kid. Love of the state is central to liberalism. (In America the word liberalism means socialism.) Liberals want the state to be your mommy, your daddy, your nanny, your psychotherapist, your nutritionist, your doctor, your lawyer, your conscience, your TV, your radio, your publisher, your employer, your climatologist, your insurer, your professor, the guardian of your morals and your jailer. Liberals are collectivists who fear and loathe individualism and want to use the state to force individuals to serve the collective. How can there be anything but a temporary ad hoc alliance between lovers of freedom and the lovers of power?

Liberals are never fooled into thinking libertarians are their allies, even though they agree on issues of spiritual values, such as abortion, euthanasia and censorship. As Ayn Rand noted, the left allows (some) freedom (for now) on these issues because it does not regard them as important. Socialists are materialists; to them, economics is important, and that is what they seek to control. Liberals understand that there are fundamental differences – differences of principle – between their statism and capitalism. You never hear liberals hoping to make an alliance with libertarians.

Moreover, liberals don’t need the libertarians. Socialists have been on the winning side for over a century now, and despite a few setbacks, the state has grown and continues to grow. Free market ideologues are still a small minority in America. Most Americans are happy with the welfare state, and the more they depend on handouts, the happier they are with the status quo. Why would liberals stop this highly successful program of advancing government into every aspect of our lives to compromise with a faction they think of as a right-wing fringe that is out of step with history?

Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute has made an earnest case for liberals and libertarians to unite in an article called Liberaltarianism. He describes the case against the Republicans well:

…runaway federal spending at a clip unmatched since Lyndon Johnson; the creation of a massive new prescription-drug entitlement with hardly any thought as to how to pay for it; expansion of federal control over education through the No Child Left Behind Act; a big run-up in farm subsidies; extremist assertions of executive power under cover of fighting terrorism; and, to top it all off, an atrociously bungled war in Iraq.

This woeful record cannot simply be blamed on politicians failing to live up to their conservative principles. Conservatism itself has changed markedly in recent years, forsaking the old fusionist synthesis in favor of a new and altogether unattractive species of populism. The old formulation defined conservatism as the desire to protect traditional values from the intrusion of big government; the new one seeks to promote traditional values through the intrusion of big government. Just look at the causes that have been generating the real energy in the conservative movement of late: building walls to keep out immigrants, amending the Constitution to keep gays from marrying, and imposing sectarian beliefs on medical researchers and families struggling with end-of-life decisions.

With this change in Conservatism, Lindsey sees an opportunity for the left to pick up libertarian votes:

The basic outlines of a viable compromise are clear enough. On the one hand, restrictions on competition and burdens on private initiative would be lifted to encourage vigorous economic growth and development. At the same time, some of the resulting wealth-creation would be used to improve safety-net policies that help those at the bottom and ameliorate the hardships inflicted by economic change. Translating such abstractions into workable policy doubtlessly would be contentious. But the most difficult thing here is not working out details--it is agreeing to try. And, as part of that, agreeing on how to make the attempt: namely, by treating economic policy issues as technical, empirical questions about what does and doesn't work, rather than as tests of ideological commitment.

Liberal blogger Kevin Drum gives an honest reply to Brink Lindsey. Drum’s bottom line:

Lindsey is better than most at diagnosing where the real differences lie, but those difference are core to the identities of both groups. It's hard to see the point of even trying to compromise on this stuff.

It is interesting that whereas the libertarian Lindsey is thinking in terms of political practicality (“empirical questions about what does and doesn’t work”), the liberal Drum thinks in principle. Drum zeros in on the economic issues Lindsey floats as areas of potential compromise, progressive taxation and entitlements. As Drum notes, these issues are fundamental to liberalism and no compromise is possible.

More important, issues such as progressive taxation and entitlements are moral issues to liberals. They support these policies because altruism demands that the strong serve the weak. People don’t compromise on moral principles, at least not as a matter of proud, explicit policy. Hypocrisy is done in the dark and is rationalized in evasive excuses, not in a party platform.

Lindsey senses the need for more than just political pragmatism:

If a new kind of fusionism is to have any chance for success, it must aim beyond the specifics of particular, present-day controversies. It must be based on a real intellectual movement, with intellectual coherence. A movement that, at the philosophical level, seeks some kind of reconciliation between Hayek and Rawls.

Rawls is liberalism’s most important theorist of egalitarianism. Hayek defends spontaneous order and tradition. Neither defends reason. Perhaps a reconciliation between these two is possible, but it would result in some form of welfare state, certainly not laissez-faire capitalism. So what is the point of such a reconciliation if it just means more of the same? And again, why do the liberals even need to bother?

Lindsey’s piece shows the futility of libertarianism. The movement is a hodge-podge of small factions that oppose the state on various grounds. Libertarianism itself lacks intellectual coherence because it is not a movement for individual rights and capitalism supported by a philosophy of reason.

Any movement that tries to work out some political compromise with liberalism without attacking the left’s morality of altruism will fail to make any meaningful change in the welfare state. They will merely become the left’s useful idiots. The left might compromise on marginal issues out of political necessity, but if their principles go unchallenged, these pragmatic compromises only serve to give socialism legitimacy and help it in the long run. But right now there isn’t the political necessity to force the left to do anything but laugh at the libertarians.

UPDATE: Slight revision.

Republican Fools

President Bush gave a State of the Economy speech.

In his address, Bush took aim Wednesday at lavish salaries and bonuses for corporate executives, standing on Wall Street to issue a sharp warning for corporate boards to “step up to their responsibilities” and tie compensation packages to performance.

This is the kind of socialist crap I expect from Barbara Boxer or Barney Frank. It is not the government’s business to lecture people about making too much money. Individuals should make as much money as the market will allow. Corporate executives have no gun at their disposal to force people to pay them too much money.

George W. Bush, on the other hand, does have a gun and in this speech he took the butt out of his shoulder holster a few inches just to show corporations that the gun is there.

George W. Bush is a fool. With this gross misuse of the bully pulpit, he has taken America one step further to tyranny. A small step, yes, but small steps add up over time.

Speaking of fools, I heard on the radio today murmurs of a recall effort against Governor Schwartznegger. I would support this recall. He has expanded environmentalist regulations and socialized medicine in California. The elitists would wring their hands and moan that California voters are weakening government by recalling their Governor every few years. Screw ‘em. The recall would put RINO’s on notice that when they act like Democrats they suffer.

I will not blog any more until Friday, starting… now!

Update

I'm swamped at work. No blogging until Friday at the soonest. And I mean it! I will not blog...I will not blog...I will not blog...

Self-Righteous Ignorance

Senator Kennedy apparently screamed on the Senate floor, "What is it about it (the minimum wage) that drives you Republicans crazy? What is it about working men and women that you find so offensive?"

I have not watched the video. I can’t stomach the man. He manages to combine ignorance of economics with love of state power and then he is self-righteous about his ignorance and power-lust.

I will only ask, what is it about individual rights that drives you Democrats crazy? What is it about freedom that you find so offensive?

Submit Or Die?

Diana Hsieh received a letter from an unintelligent Muslim threatening her with eternal damnation if she does not submit to Islam. The letter is of marginal interest in that it exemplifies how faith and force go together -- in this case, force administered by Allah beyond the grave. You don’t hear proponents of reason screaming “Accept my belief or die!” Quite the contrary, Leonard Peikoff once asked those who do not fully understand or agree with Objectivism not to call themselves Objectivists.

But Islam wants more than just belief. The word Islam means submission. From the beginning of its history Islam has been about forcing people to submit to Islam or die. The religion has a political program, Sharia law, that makes it more than just a matter of personal faith.

No religion is rational, but I do not believe they are all equally bad or bad in the same ways. Buddhism is a religion of passivity on Earth, which is bad and anti-life, but as far as I know Buddhists do not have a history of forcing conversion at swordpoint. (I could be wrong, as I have little interest in the history of religion.) Islam strikes me as a particularly pernicious and disgusting religion. From everything I have heard about Mohammed, he just sounds like a gangster to me who used religion as an ideology to aid him in his quest for power. It was a highly successful strategy in the Dark Ages. Whether or not Islam is worse than other religions or just as bad, totalitarian Islam is currently in our face and something must be done about it.

It is beginning to look more and more as if the central task of our time is to demonstrate to Islam in terms every Muslim can understand that America will not submit to Islam. Instead of letting their force and threats of force break our will, we must use force in self-defense to break their will. Pragmatic appeasement, multiculturalism and leftist anti-Americanism only weaken our will and embolden the enemy’s.

Someday the sleeping giant will awake. And then, to mix metaphors, a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

How John Kerry Is Right

John Kerry’s latest:

"When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don’t advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy,” Kerry said.

“So we have a crisis of confidence in the Middle East — in the world, really. I’ve never seen our country as isolated, as much as a sort of international pariah for a number of reasons as it is today.”…

Kerry is arguing that because America has not enchained our economy as the environmentalists would like and has not massively increased our self-sacrifice for the rest of the world, we are hated by the world. The implication is that our foreign policy problems are caused by our lack of altruism.

Republicans might respond that Kerry is just part of the blame America crowd. Let me shock my readers by suggesting that Kerry is right in one respect. The “rhetoric and standards” of the Bush administration are compassionate conservatism. Bush does embraces the idea that America should sacrifice altruistically for the rest of the world. As the President just announced in his State of the Union speech,

To whom much is given, much is required. We hear the call to take on the challenges of hunger, and poverty, and disease — and that is precisely what America is doing.

As long as the American government accepts the morality of the Democrats, then America is hypocritical to the extent that we don’t commit suicide. If we had a president who offered different rhetoric and standards – one who rejected altruism and forthrightly stated that America has a right to exist without sacrificing for the rest of the world – then Kerry could wallow in his loathing of America and capitalism all he wanted, but he could not call us hypocritical.

Bush and the Republicans will never appease the blame America crowd by debasing America before the world and accepting the premise that we have a duty to help other nations. The Democrats will always find their efforts lacking in sacrifice and the Republicans will always be helpless before their arguments from morality. The Republicans help give moral legitimacy to those who would destroy America.

Radio Dismuke

A commenter to this blog, Dismuke, introduced me to his web site, which has an internet radio station that plays music from 1925-1935. The recordings of the early ‘30s are my favorite of all time because they have that ‘20s bounce but also have a string section. Some of the ‘20s jazz combo recordings can sound too rinky-dink, and then the recordings in the late ‘30s and ‘40s get too sleepy. The big bands lost the string section in the late ‘30s – a string section is expensive – giving rise to the Glenn Miller/Tommy Dorsey sound that most people associate with swing. This sound is okay, but it doesn’t send me like that early ‘30s sound. ‘40s swing has neither the snappy hot beat nor the beauty of strings. Nothing can top a string section bouncing along an upbeat, syncopated melody.

(Along with arrangements, songwriting deteriorated greatly in the ‘40s. The rise of boogie woogie made the melodies less interesting. The stage was set for Rock’n’Roll and the backbeat juggernaut.)

Another great thing about ‘30s recordings is that the singers perform the songs at the upbeat tempo they were written to be sung at. Modern cabaret singers drive me crazy because they slow down the songs in order to show off their voices. This often destroys the songs. Take George and Ira Gershwin’s “I’ve Got A Crush On You,” for example. It was done on Broadway as an upbeat song. I would bet that if you listened to 100 modern cabaret singers do this song, not one would do it at the right tempo. They slow it down and make it a torch song. You lose so much when that happens, especially with Gershwin, who was the most kinetic and danceable of composers. (Harry Warren, in my opinion, has the second best dancing drive in his melodies. He is not as famous as the Broadway songwriters because he worked in Hollywood and the East Coast intellectuals used to turn their nose up at the movies.)

Also, the ‘30s singers sing the melody right, with the exception of Billie Holliday, who was constitutionally incapable of singing a song straight. When singers do a Sarah Vaughan and change the melody, I think, “Well, this singer considers himself a better songwriter than Jerome Kern (or whoever).” I prefer melodies sung the way they were written.

There was a long period in the 1980’s when I listened to nothing but ‘30s music. I found myself writing ‘30s songs in my head. I remember when I was around the age of 30 walking up Lexington Avenue in New York City with this Gershwin-like bouncy tune in my head. I decided I had to learn how to write music so I could get it down and not forget it. I bought books and learned (just barely) to write a lead sheet. I had long talks with a conservatory-trained composer at my day job and picked up some great tips for harmonizing. I then wrote the book, lyrics and music to an unproduced musical comedy in the ‘30s style.

Nowadays I’m writing songs in an early ‘60s style that I want to record in a studio in a fellow’s garage in Riverside, California. (It’s the Army of Davids scenario. I can do things in a garage that pros could not do 30 years ago.) I fear that listening to Radio Dismuke will screw up my songwriting, because when I listen to too much ‘30s music, I start writing it. After hearing just a few songs I have that sound running in my head right now. Lou Reed says it’s fun living with a radio in your head. I know what he means.

But it might not be so bad getting reacquainted with ‘30s songs. I have noticed that if you take ‘30s melody and harmony and put a backbeat to it, the result sounds like something from the late ‘50s or early ‘60s. Those Brill Building songwriters had roots in the pre-rock tradition. And some pre-rock songs have been quite successful in the rock era: “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” “Dream A Little Dream of Me,” “I Only Have Eyes For You,” “Summertime.” And who can forget Paco’s rendition of “Puttin’ On the Ritz”? I wish I could.

UPDATE: Dismuke’s myspace page has three fabulous recordings that play when you click on the page. The recording of “As Time Goes By” is a perfect example of what I mean about songs sung at the right tempo. For the last 60 years I don’t think anyone has recorded that song at the pace of the Columbians here. When you slow the song down, I tell you, it becomes dreary and dull. Why, oh why can’t singers get it right?

In the original production of Show Boat in 1928, believe it or not, both "Old Man River" and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man of Mine" were uptempo happy songs. Those repetitive, syncopated melodies are infectious toe-tappers when done moderately fast. Imagine trying to get a singer to do one of those songs with some pace today! I don't know if Paul Robeson was the first singer to slow "Old Man River" down, but it would be nice if he was -- then I could call slow tempos a commie plot.

I wish I could listen to this music while I work, but unfortunately my day job involves listening FM radio stations. Instead of Radio Dismuke, I have to listen to Hip-Hop, which is rather like saying instead of visiting John Galt I have to spend time with Charles Manson.

Lost Causes

I’m not a conservative, but it is accurate to call me a linguistic conservative because I want to conserve the standards of the English language. Here are three controversial and related stands that are lost causes.

1. I don’t use the word gender. The right word is sex. There’s a male sex and a female sex. The New Left, in its ongoing and highly successful quest to reshape Western Civilization according to the values of egalitarianism and collectivism, decided the word sex was out. They replaced it with gender, a grammatical term.

Why the change?

Snooping around the internet I found this explanation from the American Psychological Association, titled Removing Bias In Language:

Use of gender instead of sex. The terms "sex" and "gender" are often used interchangeably. Nevertheless, the term "sex" is often confused with sexual behavior, and this is particularly troublesome when differentiating between sexual orientation and gender. The phrase "it was sexual orientation, rather than gender, that accounted for most of the variance" is clearer than "it was sexual orientation, rather than sex, that accounted for most of the variance."

In the latter phrase, "sex" may be misinterpreted as referring to sexual activity. It is generally more precise to use the term "gender."

Notice that sexual orientation is important to their argument. The word sex brought with it the traditional connotation of heterosexuality. This presented problems to the New Left, because talking about the male sex and female sex implies that heterosexuality is normal and homosexuality is abnormal. Gender is a value-neutral term without any connotation of sexual preference.

Now, before I go any further, I should make clear that I do not oppose homosexuality. I do not believe it is immoral. Moreover, I don’t think it a psychological illness, as psychiatry did up until 1972, if I remember the date right. I even support gay marriage. Who cares if two people of the same sex marry?

I do, however, believe that homosexuality is abnormal. Heterosexuality is normal sexuality. Male and female bodies are built by nature for heterosexual sex. If people choose to be homosexuals, or are oriented that way by psychology or whatever, that’s fine -- but it is not normal.

My understanding is unacceptable to the New Left. They do not want a distinction between normal and abnormal sexuality. Heterosexuality and homosexuality must be equal not only before the law but by nature. The New Left is fighting for egalitarianism, even on the metaphysical level.

2. I don’t use the word sexism. I believe it is an invalid concept because -- unlike races, which are different only superficially -- there are metaphysical differences between men and women. They are built different, they think different, they are different. Egalitarians want to wipe out the differences or at least train people to act like the differences do not exist.

Feminists use sexism to mean men treating women unfairly. Historically, men have had more power than women; the concept sexism is meant to attack that power. Women are never sexist. As always with altruism and egalitarianism, the bad things are only committed by the strong, not the weak.

There is term for men treating women unfairly: male chauvinism. Or you could call it men being idiots. Either way gets the point across more clearly than using the term sexism, which is a package deal that smuggles in the egalitarian premise that men and women are metaphysically identical.

3. I try to avoid the term Ms., but this is difficult because feminists take the word Miss as an insult. Using Miss in a business letter is futile, as it raises questions and suspicions that cannot be answered in the letter. (“You see, I called you Miss because Ms. is a tool of the feminists intended to obscure the metaphysical differences between men and women…”) Philosophic education is not the purpose of a business letter.

Those are three lost linguistic causes. I considered calling them quixotic, but I won’t because I do not admire idealism detached from reality or practicality, as personified by Don Quixote, from whom the word comes.

Maybe in some distant future when our culture embraces reason, these causes will rally and the words gender, sexism and Ms. will be retired. Maybe young people in a generation yet unborn will look at the New Leftist culture they inherited and think, “This all comes from those smelly, ridiculous looking hippies in the 1960s and ‘70s. Let’s return to the standards of the era before that.” And the counter-revolution will have begun.

UPDATE: Grant Jones points out this piece by Keith Windschuttle, called “Language Wars.” He makes some great points about politicized language. Dr. Windschuttle must be a pariah in academia.

Brief Notes

1. Via Right Wing News I found this leftist screed against Christmas. Here’s a taste:

American Capitalism is a malignancy that permeates our economic, social, and political systems and institutions. This untreated cancer ravaging the body of civilization is spreading like an unchecked conflagration in a munitions factory. Feudalism didn’t die; it simply evolved. Corporatism, Consumerism, wage slavery, debt slavery, free trade agreements, deregulation, and privatization condemn most of the global population to varying degrees of slavery, serfdom or indentured servitude.

Isn’t it amazing how leftists can go through life getting everything exactly wrong? They think a free market leads to “varying degrees of slavery, serfdom or indentured servitude,” so they want the state to take control and tell everyone what to do at the point of a gun and that would be freedom.

2. Mike Bahr has a fascinating post about a job interview that turned into a coaching session. Networking can pay off big down the road, so as he notes, both parties stand to benefit from this encounter.

3. If I ran a classical repertory theatre company, maybe I would schedule the following season:

Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus
Philoctetes by Sophocles
The Phoenissae by Euripides
Plutus by Aristophanes
Perikeiromene by Menander
Pseudolus by Plautus
Paphnutius by Roswitha
Pericles by Shakespeare
The Poetaster by Ben Jonson
Philaster by Beaumont and Fletcher
Perkin Warbeck by John Ford
Polyeucte by Corneille
Phaedra by Racine
Psyche by Moliere
Pandora by Goethe
Penthesilea by Heinrich von Kleist
Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen
Platonov by Anton Chekhov
Paracelsus by Arthur Schnitzler
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

I would call it “the season of strange names that start with P.” And I am certain these plays would drag tired businessmen away from “American Idol” for an entertaining night at the theatre.

4. I love ABBA. "Dancing Queen," "SOS," "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do," "Waterloo," and "Take A Chance On Me" are all fabulous songs.

I'm straight.

State of the Sacrifice

I missed the SOTU speech, as I was at rehearsal, but I doubt I missed much. The speech has become a ritual of the mixed economy/welfare state. The President assures various pressure groups that they will get their share of the loot, but rarely sums up the state of the union with any wisdom or literary style. The state has grown so vast that the speech can become a tedious laundry list of programs that does not just bust the crow, it blows the crow out of the air with a double-barrel shotgun. (“The crow” is Objectivist talk for the fact that human consciousness is limited. The mind can only keep track of three or four different things before one’s eyes glaze over.) In my more suspicious moments I think Clinton’s mind-numbing SOTU speeches were actually meant to make people stop thinking and just accept his leadership with the faith and worship he thought he was due. Whatever you say, Glorious Leader, we will follow you with blind obedience!

Hopping around the internet I’m finding surprisingly positive reactions to the speech, but also a sense that it doesn’t matter much. I wouldn’t call Bush a lame duck yet, but he is close. Following Reagan and Clinton, Bush will be the third two-term president who was weak in his last two years. Big change is difficult to effect in American government at any time, but especially so in a President’s second term.

Looking at the transcript, I see that President Bush takes on earmarks and entitlements. This is nice, but talk is cheap. Let’s see Congress actually vote away their pork and reform entitlements.

On health care, he says,

When it comes to healthcare, government has an obligation to care for the elderly, the disabled, and poor children and we will meet those responsibilities.

Now, how can Republicans be horrified by the Democrats’ socialized medicine schemes but ignore this? If the government takes care of the elderly, the disabled and poor children, then the principle of free market health care is gone and the road is paved for socialized medicine. Once you expand the state to cover the weakest, then the next to weakest look like they deserve it too and sooner or later America’s health care looks like Canada’s. The Republicans will get us to Hillarycare, just not as fast as Hillary would have done it.

I don’t know if Bush’s tax deduction plan will pay for the expanded coverage or enlarge the deficit. Are the details of Bush’s plan a step forward, backward or sideways? I will look to such experts as Richard Ralston in the next few days for answers.

On immigration, I have never understood why the right gets so excited about this issue. I suspect that people’s fears that our culture and our country are out of control and careening toward disaster are being scapegoated onto illegal immigrants. (Is there a better way to write what I mean than “being scapegoated onto”?) I have no particular problem with amnesty. Most illegal immigrants are still coming here to work, which helps the economy – at least, I hope that’s why they’re coming. The welfare state makes the issue of immigration, like it makes most issues, more complicated and worse.

The alternative fuels section of the speech just looks to me like another foolish government program. Get the government out of energy and then supply and demand, market competition and the pricing system will take care of things much better than all the geniuses in Washington, D.C. ever could. Of course, this principle could be applied to every aspect of the economy.

Bush says some interesting things on the war. He restates the neoconservative vision that democracy leads to security. As the history of Athens shows, democracy does not guarantee liberty, so I’m dubious, to say the least.

And ladies and gentlemen, nothing is more important at this moment in our history than for America to succeed in the Middle East ... to succeed in Iraq ... and to spare the American people from this danger.

This is where the President is tragically wrong. Succeeding in Iraq is not winning the war. Eradicating all states that sponsor terrorism would be cheaper and easier than bringing democracy to Iraq, and is the only guarantee of our safety.

We went into this largely united — in our assumptions, and in our convictions. And whatever you voted for, you did not vote for failure. Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq — and I ask you to give it a chance to work.

What constitutes failure in Iraq? How long must we be there to succeed? Must we become something of a neocolonial power guaranteeing Iraq’s security for the long term? Look at how Bush begins the very next paragraph:

The war on terror we fight today is a generational struggle that will continue long after you and I have turned our duties over to others.

Here again, Bush is tragically wrong. How is it that we eradicated fascism in four years, but must struggle for a generation against Islamofascism? Only because George W. Bush and the rest of the establishment lack the will to fight a real war.

The United Nations has imposed sanctions on Iran, and made it clear that the world will not allow the regime in Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons. With the other members of the Quartet — the UN, the European Union, and Russia — we are pursuing diplomacy to help bring peace to the Holy Land, and pursuing the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in peace and security.

So the Quartet is America and… the UN, the EU and Russia? Will we have to get those three to approve of anything we want to do in the Middle East? This is a recipe for appeasement and failure. This is a recipe for eventual war, not peace. (Russia just sold anti-aircraft weapons to Iran. Do you think they will agree to any attack on that country?)

To whom much is given, much is required. We hear the call to take on the challenges of hunger, and poverty, and disease — and that is precisely what America is doing.

And after this statement of altruism follows a list of programs in which the money of hardworking American taxpayers will be thrown at third world hellholes. Those countries need freedom – individual rights and capitalism – not handouts. But really fixing the problem is not the point. Bush believes that sacrifice is the moral ideal:

When America serves others in this way, we show the strength and generosity of our country. These deeds reflect the character of our people. The greatest strength we have is the heroic kindness, and courage, and self sacrifice of the American people.

Kindness, courage and self-sacrifice – not exactly life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Bush and Jefferson have two radically different visions of America.

For the rest of the speech Bush gives examples of his altruistic vision of the moral ideal, hoping to end in loftiness and inspiration. Such demonstrations of loyalty to values can be inspiring, but only in a context of life on Earth and rational self-interest, Jefferson’s context. To Bush sacrifice is an end in itself. And this is why Bush is tragically wrong in our current war. When America wiped out Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, we acted with neither kindness nor self-sacrifice.

Jimmy Carter Negotiates Peace In Van Halen

Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth of the rock supergroup Van Halen announced that they would finally tour together after Jimmy Carter negotiated peace between them. It took five grueling 10-hour days of negotiations, but finally a 74-page agreement was hammered out between the two parties who have long hated one another.

“Van Halen is too important to the world for this conflict to have continued without resolution,” President Carter said. “It was not an easy negotiation as the two parties have a long history of mutual loathing. I’m proud of this peace agreement. It is the second best thing I have done. Only the Camp David Accord is greater than this."

Carter said the negotiations got off to a bad start that almost scuttled the talks when Mr. Roth discovered brown M&M’s in a candy bowl on the table. The volatile singer was so upset at the brown M&M’s that he began trashing the furniture and even heaved a chair through a plate glass window. President Carter had to work patiently for several hours to calm down Mr. Roth.

Guitarist Eddie Van Halen said in a press release, “When Jimmy Carter asks you to the negotiating table, it’s hard to say no. The man is a warrior for peace. I guess I’ll have to tour with Dave even though he is a d**khead.”

Singer David Lee Roth said, “Rock’n’Roll, baby! We gonna get some leg tonight! No more Van Hagar, dude! Awoooooo!”

When asked if he enjoyed Van Halen’s music, the former president said, “Personally, I prefer Winger.”

[Note: This post is satire.]

The Enemy At Home

Dinesh D’Souza discusses his new book, The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11. Wow! This book looks like a bombshell that will expose the real problem in American foreign policy.

I hope he starts with that hideous Democrat betrayal of the west when we forced the Brits and the French to give up the Suez Canal to Middle East thugs and… oh, wait. That was Eisenhower. Eisenhower was a Republican.

Well, how about the left’s monstrous appeasement of the worst mass murderer in history, Chairman Mao, when a Democrat president went to Red China and… oh, wait. That was Nixon. Nixon was a Republican.

But how about when the left showed Islamic terrorists that we are a paper tiger by doing nothing about the killing of 241 American servicemen in Beirut, a non-response that paved the way to 9/11 and… oh, wait. That was Reagan. Reagan was a Republican.

But surely the left must be blamed for the most idiotic, harebrained scheme of appeasement, the Iran-Contra scandal that… darn it. Reagan again.

I guess I’ll have to check out D’Souza’s book to see what it’s about. It should be a short book.

Hillary Clinton: Joan Of Arc?

Ron Rosenbaum likes Hillary because she’s mean:

…none of the Democratic candidates has demonstrated the vision or the courage to offer a foreign policy that recognizes and responds intelligently and coherently to the spread of theocratic terror. That’s why, of all the candidates so far, I’ve favored Hillary Clinton. Because she’s a woman and because she’s mean. Even if she doesn’t have a 16 point foreign policy plan, I feel her heart is going to be in the right place when she looks at the aggressive worldwide spread of a vicious and murderous medieval theocratic movement (jihad) that promotes the “honor killing” of rape victims, denies all the hard-won rights of women (not to mention gays, and liberals, and dissidents of all religious and political stripes). A culture that essentially wants to lock women up in the home, deprive them of the right to vote, to an education, to a full life as human beings.

I can see his point. The men leading us have been miserable failures so far. Maybe it’s time for a Joan of Arc to save America. Women are meaner than men. And what poetic justice if a woman defeated militant Islam, a culture that treats women like dogs.

(One remarkable result of our current crisis is how little the left cares about Islam’s backward treatment of women. Their opposition to America trumps everything else.)

Intellectual Property and the Internet

Google and Microsoft are scanning books.

Himalayas of information are still waiting to be conquered. And the highest peaks of all are the great libraries of the world, the repositories of the 100m or more books that have been produced since Johann Gutenberg invented movable type in the 15th century.

In December 2004, Google announced its assault on these peaks. It had made a deal with five libraries — with the NYPL and at the universities of Stanford, Harvard, Michigan and Oxford — to scan their stocks, making their contents available online via Google Book Search (books.google.com). Ultimately, it is thought, some 30m volumes will be involved. Microsoft, meanwhile, has made a deal with the British Library to scan 100,000 books — 25m pages — this year alone. Google has now scanned 1m books.

The first thing to be said is that Google Book Search, though still in its “beta” or unfinalised form, is an astonishing mechanism. Putting my own name in came up with 626 references and gave me immediate access to passages containing my name in books, most of which were quite unknown to me. Moreover, clicking on one of these references brings up an image of the actual page in question.

But the second thing to be said is that I could read whole passages of my books of which I own the copyright. At once a huge intellectual property issue looms. The Americans are ploughing ahead with this, scanning in material both in and out of copyright. The British — at Oxford’s Bodleian Library and the British Library — are being more cautious, allowing only the scanning of out-of-copyright books. This may, of course, mean nothing, since the big American libraries will, like the Bodleian and the British Library, contain every book published in English, so they will all ultimately be out there on the net.

American publishers are not happy. Before its 2004 announcement, Google had been doing deals with individual publishers to scan their books. But digitising the libraries would seem to render these deals defunct. Furthermore, since Google is acquiring copyright material at no cost, it seems to be treating books quite differently from all other media. It is prepared to pay for video and music, but not, apparently, for books. The Google defence is that their Book Search system is covered by the legal concept of “fair dealing”. No more than 20% of a copyright book will be available, the search is designed to show just relevant passages, and it will provide links to sites where the book can be bought.

Unimpressed, the Authors Guild, supported by the Association of American Publishers, has started a class action suit against Google. A deal may yet be done, but neither side sounds in a compromising mood, and it looks likely that this will go all the way to the Supreme Court, whose ruling on this case may prove momentous.

I’d be interested in what the lawyers think of this. My personal reaction is that I’m excited about getting all the books since Gutenberg on the internet. For the first time in history, everyone with a computer will have access to all knowledge. Anyone with initiative and ability will be able to pursue scholarly studies.

At the same time, if an author does not want his book scanned, Google and Microsoft should respect his decision. Perhaps in the future books will be published for a short period, maybe five or 10 years, then they will go online. Surely having a book in Google’s database is preferable to it going out of print and never being heard of again. And they should set it up so that readers pay Google something to read anything more than a short excerpt. That way an author’s book is available to those who want it and the author still makes some money from his intellectual property.

At some point a book should go into public domain, but when?

(HT: Polipundit)

Our Gutter Culture

Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen”:

Way back when in 67
I was the dandy
Of Gamma Chi
Sweet things from Boston
So young and willing
Moved down to Scarsdale
And where the hell am I

Hey Nineteen
No we can't dance together
No we can't talk at all
Please take me along
When you slide on down

Hey Nineteen
That's 'Retha Franklin
She don't remember the Queen of Soul
It's hard times befallen
The sole survivors
She thinks I'm crazy
But I'm just growing old

Hey Nineteen
No we got nothing in common
No we can't talk at all
Please take me along
When you slide on down

The Cuervo Gold
The fine Colombian
Make tonight a wonderful thing

We can't dance together
No we can't talk at all

This song is saying, “Hey, nineteen-year old girl, we have nothing in common – you don’t even know who Aretha Franklin is – but with the help of tequila and cocaine we can have sex.” (I’m assuming “fine Colombian” means cocaine, but it might be marijuana.)

Steely Dan is the name of a vibrator that Becker and Fagan got from a William Burroughs novel. This group is an excellent example of how the New Leftist subversion of traditional values has now become the status quo. If anything, Steely Dan seems like a staid, tightly produced Classic Rock band now, but they were daring back in the ‘70s.

What did Steely Dan and the rest of the cultural revolution pave the way for? Here are two lines from a current Hip-Hop song as I found them on the internet:

it'z like romeo and juliet
hot sex on a plattah juss to get you wet

I don’t want to come off as a prude, but rhyming Juliet with get you wet disgusts me. (Becker and Fagan, I should note, never disgust me because they do what they do with intelligence and style. Their integration of jazz harmonies with pop is as sophisticated as anything you'll hear in the rock era. I find their lyrical content often regrettably questionable.)

Augustinian Christianity hates everything in this world, most especially sex, and that’s wrong. But contemporary pop culture errs in the opposite way by reducing sex to physical processes. Notice that both religion and moral relativism separate sex and spiritual value. One celebrates spiritual value without sex, whereas the other celebrates sex without spiritual value.

We now have a culture that is mindless, brutish and crass. Hip-Hop, Heavy Metal, Howard Stern and Hollywood (lots of H’s) give us a vision of the lowest aspects of our nature without ideals. The vision of man they project is of a flawed, stupid creature who lives in the gutter and mocks those who aspire to anything greater.

I'm not saying that all traditional values were good. Some of them needed to go. But the New Leftist cultural revolution was a wide assault on standards as such in the name of egalitarianism, and this has left us much worse off.

The most depressing thing about our mindless culture is that young people grow up spiritually crippled without a vision of heroic, intelligent man. It's life without soul-inspiring ideals. The right's notion of ideals, religion, is a metaphysical fantasy; the left's notion of ideals, altruistic service to the collective, substitutes duty to others for rational self-interest. In neither case is man given values to pursue on this earth.

This value-deprivation, I fear, will contribute greatly to changing the American character so that people become more passive, obedient, unthinking and collectivist. I don’t want to get into any John Birch-like conspiracy theories, but maybe the New Leftist assault on traditional values was not entirely coincidental. It is amazing how the cultural change reinforces the political change as the New Left works to replace capitalism with statism. Such is the power of philosophy.

UPDATE: Slight revision.

Lakers: Halfway Point

After playing 41 of 82 regular season games, the Lakers are 26-15 (.634). They are in fifth place in the Western Conference. They are also fifth best in the entire NBA since the top six records are in the Western Conference. The best teams in the East are the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Washington Wizards at 24-16 (.600). (Each of those teams has a superstar, Lebron James and Gilbert Arenas, respectively. Great players matter in basketball. The Detroit Pistons are unusual in that they won the championship with a lot of good players and outstanding defense, but no bona fide superstar.)

The Lakers have stayed in fifth place despite missing their second best player Lamar Odom as well as Kwame Brown (not to mention that their starting center Chris Mihm is out for the season).

The Lakers are clearly not as good as the Dallas Mavericks 33-8 (.805) and the Phoenix Suns 31-9 (.795), two teams that score like Warren Beatty at a party in Laurel Canyon. However, they’re pretty damn good and once they get Lamar and Kwame back, they have a chance against anyone in a seven-game playoff series. Kobe can win one game all by himself in a playoff series, which might be enough to make the difference between winning and losing.

To say they’ll get in the playoffs is something of a joke because in the Western Conference more teams make the playoffs (8) than don’t (7). Right now all the teams in the West with winning records would be in the playoffs and all the teams with losing records would not. In the East it looks like one or two teams with losing records will make the post-season. You have to be really bad to miss the playoffs.

Remembering the Good Old Days

Reading Ronald A. Cass’s piece on Sandy Berger’s document theft, these paragraphs made me reminisce about the Clinton Presidency:

Politicians never like to admit mistakes. They see legitimate inquiries as politically inspired, which they often are. Changing the subject or shifting blame to others aren't tactics peculiar to the Clintons.

The Clintons, however, take the game of deny-deceive-and-distract to a new level. Their relentless personal attacks on Ken Starr were designed to undermine the credibility of information about Bill Clinton's perjury, to deflect attention from his own failings. Clinton's excessive reaction - complete with hyperbole, finger-wagging, and scolding - to a simple question from Fox News' Chris Wallace about his response to al-Qaeda is in the same vein. Something here touches a nerve.

This month marks six years without a Clinton Presidency. If the fates are kind to us, we’ll have another Clinton Presidency in a few years. It might not be good for America, but it would be a gold mine for talk show hosts and bloggers. Instant content!

The first and perhaps last Clinton Presidency made history in a few ways. Clinton was the first president never to stop campaigning and begin governing; it was the presidency of the permanent campaign. In fact, the campaign did not end with the presidency. Clinton is spinning his legacy now and will continue to campaign until he dies.

The Clinton Presidency set up a permanent war room to fight Republican attacks. If Clinton had set up a war room to wage war, he might have been a good president.

Clinton was the social metaphysician as President. Social metaphysics is a psychological problem in which a person places the opinions of other people above reality. What is true or good does not matter as much as what other people think. What Clinton actually accomplished was not as important as what he could make people think he accomplished. Polls became a metaphysical standard: if enough people approved of something the President did, then it was good.

It makes for an entertaining show if you can get past your initial disgust at a President so psychologically twisted that he can’t tell the difference between reality and the lies that come out of his mouth. How many normal people could say the following with a straight face?

It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--if he--if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement....Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.

The entertainment is intensified when the media decide their job is not to report the facts objectively but to serve as the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. Hey, with Rush Limbaugh and Fox News propagandizing for the right, it's only fair if the New York Times and CBS pitch in for left.

An interesting question for the philosophers: how is this political culture of subjectivity related to modern philosophy? Certainly, postmodernism, with its idea of truth as “narrative” fits Clinton well. Multiculturalism’s idea of different ethnic groups and sexes having different ways of thinking is a development of Marx’s idea of different classes having different logics. Marx was a Hegelian, Hegel was influenced by Kant…

But I’m over my head now, as I’ve read very little German philosophy other than Nietzsche, and I’m too old to start. I just turned 50, you know, and some things are foolish for a 50-year old man to pursue, such as 19-year old girls. With my time on earth dwindling, surely it would be foolish to attempt to read German philosophers. That’s my excuse, anyway. Maybe I should take a poll to see if I’m right.

Papa's Got A Brand New Bodybag

James Brown’s body still has not been buried.

James Brown's body was moved Thursday from a guarded, climate-controlled room at his Beech Island, S.C., home where it had been since Dec. 30, said Buddy Dallas, the late entertainer's estate trustee and longtime counsel. Brown died Dec. 25 of heart failure in Atlanta at 73.

Dallas would not why the body was moved, but said no decision has been made on where Brown's final resting place will be.

This is happening because his family wants to make money off of the corpse.

Brown's six adult children are planning to put the body in a mausoleum, perhaps turning the singer's home — about 9 miles east of Augusta — into a museum that would include his grave. Family members plan to consult with Elvis Presley's family on how they opened Graceland, Presley's mansion in Memphis, Tenn., which attracts 600,000 visitors each year.

Welcome to the Big Leagues, Senator Obama

Gotta love it:

"Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a Madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?

This is the question Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's camp is asking about Sen. Barack Obama.

An investigation of Mr. Obama by political opponents within the Democratic Party has discovered that Mr. Obama was raised as a Muslim by his stepfather in Indonesia. Sources close to the background check, which has not yet been released, said Mr. Obama, 45, spent at least four years in a so-called Madrassa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia.

"He was a Muslim, but he concealed it," the source said. "His opponents within the Democrats hope this will become a major issue in the campaign."

When contacted by Insight, Mr. Obama's press secretary said he would consult with "his boss" and call back. He did not.

Sources said the background check, conducted by researchers connected to Senator Clinton, disclosed details of Mr. Obama's Muslim past. The sources said the Clinton camp concluded the Illinois Democrat concealed his prior Muslim faith and education.

"The background investigation will provide major ammunition to his opponents," the source said. "The idea is to show Obama as deceptive."

As John Hawkins notes,

In a way, this reminds me of the way that the Kerry campaign handled the "Mary Cheney issue" during the 2004 campaign. Democrats always claim that conservatives hate gays, but during the campaign, the message was, "Think twice before you vote for Bush because Dick Cheney's daughter is a lesbo!"

Now it's, "Conservatives hate Muslims and foreigners, but did you know that Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim foreigner! Watch out or he'll amend the Constitution to make the burqa mandatory and put 'In Allah We Trust' on the back of the dollar!"

Why can Democrats get away with a personal attack that would be denounced as hate-mongering character assassination if a Republican tried it? Because Democrats have goodness in their hearts; they have altruist ends that make them moral. Yes, they can be a bit rough in the pursuit of power, but politics ain’t beanbag, you know.

Mayhew vs. Tracinski

Robert Mayhew demolishes part five of Robert Tracinski’s “What Went Right?” series.

Tracinski’s thesis is, in my words, history moves philosophy. As evidence he offers the history of ancient Greece, in which Aristotle follows the cultural efflorescence of the 5th century. Aristotle used the achievements of Greek culture that came before him inductively in forming his philosophy.

Actually, ancient Greece shows the opposite of Tracinski’s point -- the power of philosophy. The glories of 5th century Athens make no sense outside the context of a robust philosophic culture that went from Thales in the 6th century through the Sophists. As Dr. Mayhew explains, the ideas in the great plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides come from contemporary philosophy.

Tracinski seems to have been led astray by the fact that ancient philosophy peaked with Aristotle in the 4th century, after Greek culture peaked. But the fact that the 5th century Greeks were not influenced by Aristotle does not mean they worked in a philosophic vacuum.

Tracinski is not yet done with “What Went Right?”, but so far it looks like a failure.

UPDATE: I went back and reread part five of Tracinski's series to make sure I understand his point. He writes:

The role of the philosopher, historically, is not as the sole motor of all progress, but rather as the observer, defender, promoter, and intellectual amplifier of that progress.

Philosophy is not the sole motor of progress, therefore philosophy and other factors are the motors of progress. But what is the most important, fundamental cause of progress, ideas or something else? What are the other factors? And what causes the other factors?

I want to note here that I respect Robert Tracinski and I value TIA. I think he is mistaken here, but he has not made a breach of morality. We should criticize his mistakes without getting hysterical.