Maverick Philosopher

"I will not weaponize space," said Obama recently. That empty promise comes too late, and is irresponsible to boot: if our weapons are not there, theirs will be.

The very notion that outer space could be reserved for wholly peaceful purposes shows a deep lack of understanding of the human condition. Show me a space with human beings in it and I will show you a space that potentially if not actually is militarized and weaponized. Man is, was, and will be a bellicose son of a bitch. If you doubt this, study history, with particular attention to the 20th century. You can bet that the future will resemble the past in this respect. Note that the turn of the millenium has not brought anything new in this regard. Older is not wiser. All spaces, near, far, inner, outer, are potential scenes of contention, which is why I subscribe to the Latin saying:

Si vis pacem, para bellum.

If you want peace, prepare for war.

One must simply face reality and realize that the undoubtedly great good of peace comes at a cost, the cost of a credible defense. A credible defense is what keeps aggressors at bay. I mean this to hold at all levels, intrapsychically, interpersonally, intranationally, internationally, and in every other way. Weakness provokes. Strength pacifies. That is just the way it is. Conservatives, being reality-based, understand what eludes leftists who are based in u-topia (nowhere) and who rely on their unsupportable faith in the inherent goodness of human beings.

Here we have one of those deep differences between conservatives and leftists. Vote for the candidate of your choice, but just understand what set of ideas and values you are voting for.

This is more evidence of the delusional drift of the Leftist mind. Sarcasm? It appears to be foreign to Palin's nature. She is too perky and upbeat, too much the slightly naive eager beaver. I won't hold it against the tired sophisticates of the Left that they are put off by her wide-eyed girlish enthusiasm. But 'sarcasm' is a thoroughly inapt descriptor.

If you are from the provinces, does that make you a smug provincialist?

Her "hypocrisy about family and government?" That is on a level with Wendy Doniger's bizarre and by now infamous remark that "Her [Palin's] greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman." That is quite a thought. Palin pretends to be a woman, and in so pretending she is a hypocrite! Just as leftists cannot stand conservative blacks, who they tar with such epithets as 'Uncle Tom' and 'oreo,' they cannot stand powerful, successful conservative women who have achieved what equity feminists demanded. Doniger is implying that Palin is a traitor to her sex and thus not 'really' a woman. Thus her "pretense that she is a woman." Since Palin is quite obviously female, with living proof of the fact, Doniger's suggestion is that Palin is a traitor to her sex in the way that 'oreos' and 'Uncle Toms' are traitors to their race.

It would require a separate post to explain the leftist obsession with what they perceive as 'hypocrisy' in conservatives.

"Exploitation of mommyhood?" The Dems are sometimes polemically referred to as the 'the abortion party' or the 'party of death.' There is undoubtedly an element of truth in these labels. Sarah Palin, by contrast, quite obviously celebrates human life, even to the point of carrying to term a Downs Syndrome child. And this is what leftists, ever teetering on the brink of nihilism, cannot stand. How dare she celebrate human life! Raging as they do, leftists must read her obviously sincere stance as a cynical exploitation of "mommyhood" -- who is being sarcastic now? -- for the sake of political gain. Here is a good article on Palin Derangement Syndrome.

This bailout was a terrible idea. Here's why.

The current mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.

Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.

This subprime lending was more than a minor relaxation of existing credit guidelines. This lending was a wholesale abandonment of reasonable lending practices in which borrowers with poor credit characteristics got mortgages they were ill-equipped to handle.

Once housing prices declined and economic conditions worsened, defaults and delinquencies soared, leaving the industry holding large amounts of severely depreciated mortgage assets.

The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.

The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.

Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.

In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.

Thoughtful advocates of the bailout might concede this perspective, but they argue that a bailout is necessary to prevent economic collapse. According to this view, lenders are not making loans, even for worthy projects, because they cannot get capital. This view has a grain of truth; if the bailout does not occur, more bankruptcies are possible and credit conditions may worsen for a time.

Talk of Armageddon, however, is ridiculous scare-mongering. If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen.

Further, the current credit freeze is likely due to Wall Street's hope of a bailout; bankers will not sell their lousy assets for 20 cents on the dollar if the government might pay 30, 50, or 80 cents.

The costs of the bailout, moreover, are almost certainly being understated. The administration's claim is that many mortgage assets are merely illiquid, not truly worthless, implying taxpayers will recoup much of their $700 billion.

If these assets are worth something, however, private parties should want to buy them, and they would do so if the owners would accept fair market value. Far more likely is that current owners have brushed under the rug how little their assets are worth.

The bailout has more problems. The final legislation will probably include numerous side conditions and special dealings that reward Washington lobbyists and their clients.

Anticipation of the bailout will engender strategic behavior by Wall Street institutions as they shuffle their assets and position their balance sheets to maximize their take. The bailout will open the door to further federal meddling in financial markets.

So what should the government do? Eliminate those policies that generated the current mess. This means, at a general level, abandoning the goal of home ownership independent of ability to pay. This means, in particular, getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with policies like the Community Reinvestment Act that pressure banks into subprime lending.

The right view of the financial mess is that an enormous fraction of subprime lending should never have occurred in the first place. Someone has to pay for that. That someone should not be, and does not need to be, the U.S. taxpayer.

. . . mortgage lenders didn't wake up one fine day deciding to junk long-held standards of creditworthiness in order to make ill-advised loans to unqualified borrowers. It would be closer to the truth to say they woke up to find the government twisting their arms and demanding that they do so - or else.

The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and "redlining" because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites.

The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to "meet the credit needs" of "low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods." Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this "subprime" lending by authorizing ever more "flexible" criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up the questionable mortgages that ensued.

All this was justified as a means of increasing homeownership among minorities and the poor. Affirmative-action policies trumped sound business practices. A manual issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston advised mortgage lenders to disregard financial common sense. "Lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor," the Fed's guidelines instructed. Lenders were directed to accept welfare payments and unemployment benefits as "valid income sources" to qualify for a mortgage. Failure to comply could mean a lawsuit.

As long as housing prices kept rising, the illusion that all this was good public policy could be sustained. But it didn't take a financial whiz to recognize that a day of reckoning would come. "What does it mean when Boston banks start making many more loans to minorities?" I asked in this space in 1995. "Most likely, that they are knowingly approving risky loans in order to get the feds and the activists off their backs . . . When the coming wave of foreclosures rolls through the inner city, which of today's self-congratulating bankers, politicians, and regulators plans to take the credit?"

[Congressman Barney] Frank doesn't. But his fingerprints are all over this fiasco. Time and time again, Frank insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in good shape. Five years ago, for example, when the Bush administration proposed much tighter regulation of the two companies, Frank was adamant that "these two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis." When the White House warned of "systemic risk for our financial system" unless the mortgage giants were curbed, Frank complained that the administration was more concerned about financial safety than about housing.

Now that the bubble has burst and the "systemic risk" is apparent to all, Frank blithely declares: "The private sector got us into this mess." Well, give the congressman points for gall. Wall Street and private lenders have plenty to answer for, but it was Washington and the political class that derailed this train. If Frank is looking for a culprit to blame, he can find one suspect in the nearest mirror.

1. The individual is the locus of being and value. As important as groups and institutions are, they exist for the sake of the individual and his flourishing and not vice versa. We don't exist for the State, the State exists for us. Human flourishing is individual flourishing. Only in the individual case is humanity real and important. We need groups and institutions to socialize us, thereby lifting us from the plane of the merely animal; but the true task each of us faces is one of self-individuation. Collective entities often interfere with this process of self-individuation — a task that it is up to the individual to either prosecute or leave unprosecuted — and so these collectivities must be kept in check. This implies a commitment to constitutionally based limited government.

How limited? That is a topic subject to ongoing debate. There are only so many legitimate functions of government. I say control of the national borders is a legitimate function of government. Hence I distance myself from those libertarians who are in favor of open borders. And since to ask which functions are legitimate functions of government presupposes that there are legitimate functions of government, I cannot be an anarchist.

Conservatives share some values and ideas with libertarians, but they must not be confused.

2. Accept #1, and you cannot be a liberal in the current acceptation of this term. Contemporary liberalism is scarcely distinguishable in intent and tendency if not in present execution from socialism, which of course implies the subordination of the individual to the collective and the curtailment of the individual’s liberty. And of course accepting #1 rules out accepting more extreme forms of collectivism and totalitarianism such as communism and such combined political-religious ideologies as Islamo-totalitarianism.

3. An economic corollary of #1 is that the money people earn belongs to them and not to the government. The individual does not have to justify his keeping of his money; the government has to justify its taking of it. Inequalities of wealth are inevitable because people have different levels of ability and make different uses of the abilities they possess in accordance with their free choices. Some, for example, defer gratification and save and invest for the future. They typically — given a stable political and economic order such as we enjoy in countries like the USA — end up wealthy. Others choose to expend their income on present desires and give little thought to the future. They typically end up poor. Either way, it is matter of freely made decisions. There is nothing unjust or unfair or morally dubious about my net worth's being 100 times yours, or Bill Gates' being 10000 times mine.

Socialism does not derive from envy any more than capitalism derives from greed; it does seem to be true, however, that envy is the characteristic vice of those attracted by socialism.

There is nothing wrong with inequality as such. As a matter of fact, economic inequalities benefit the worst off, making them better off than they would have been without the inequality. But this, pace John Rawls, is not the justification for inequality. It needs no justification since there is nothing wrong with inequality as such. This is a key difference between conservatives and liberals/leftists. It apears to be a deep and non-negotiable difference.

4. Government is necessary for human flourishing and so is morally justifiable as a necessary means to this end. We need government to do jobs we cannot do ourselves. But government is a mere means, not an end in itself. This is why asking how to ‘save Social Security’ is to ask the wrong question. The right question to ask is how to arrange for individuals to have secure retirements, assuming they want them. (And if they don't want them, if they are forever in favor of the front-loaded life? Then that is their choice.) There is no rational presumption in favor of the maintenance of existing government programs since they are merely means to ends, not ends in themselves. It would be better to have no government if that were possible. But it is not possible. If anarchism is the doctrine that no government is morally justifiable, then a conservative cannot be an anarchist.

5. The justification for #4 is in the theory of human nature. Conservatives take a sober and realistic view of human nature. They maintain that the world is a dangerous place, that it always has been and always will be, and that that these are not contingent facts but necessary consequences of human nature. This conviction distinguishes conservatives from liberals and leftists on the one hand and anarchists and libertarians on the other. For the conservative, his political brethren to the Right and Left of him cherish too sanguine a view of the world and the people in it. They dream of possibilitities that are not genuine (realizable) possibilities, possibilities which are such that, if one tried to realize them, would make things worse. For example, the notion of a classless society does not not correspond to a realizable possibility, and 20th century attempts to achieve it led to mass murder on an unprecedented scale. The communists murdered 100 million in a vain attempt at realizing their utopian dreams.

The essential point is that conservatives believe that there is such a thing as human nature. Human beings are not indefinitely malleable, and they are certainly not perfectible by human effort whether individually or collectively. Improvable yes, perfectible no. Conservatives understand that human beings are capable of good but also of great evil, and that the propensity for evil is fixed and ineradicable. A conservative may seek to provide a metaphysical or theological underpinning to this observed fact of the human inclination to evil behavior, or he might just accept it as a fact that the study of history reveals. Conservatism and theism fit together nicely, but there is no logical necessity that a conservative be a theist any more than there is a logical necessity that a liberal be an atheist. There is a Religious Left just as there is an Irreligious Right.

To underscore the essential point: Human beings are not inherently good, the fantasies of Rousseau and Marx notwithstanding. Conservative thinkers, since they are reality-based, understand this. It is not as if society corrupts what is inherently pure. All the deeper thinkers recognize radical evil in man. Utopian schemers tap into this radical evil and release it in their murderous revolutionary activities.

6. A consequence of #5 is that the conservative sees the need not only for various checks on the power of government, but also the need for various checks on the power of individuals and corporations. Conservatives thus avoid the equal but opposite errors of liberals and libertarians. Whereas the liberal tendency is to look to government for the solution of problems, the libertarian tendency is to see government as incapable of doing anything right. This leads to such absurd libertarian proposals as the selling of the National Parks. The libertarian in his naivete thinks that the people who would acquire them would, motivated by their own self-interest, manage them wisely, forgetting that greed is a powerful force in human life, a force that must be kept in check. The libertarian, like the anarchist, thinks that human beings are better than they are, that they know their self-interest and will act in accordance with it. The evidence is otherwise. Many people do not know their true, long-term, self-interest and even if they did would not act in accordance with it. One simply has to have one’s eyes open to see that this is true.

7. It is sometimes superficially maintained that while conservatives want to conserve the old, liberals want to progress to the new. This is superficial because there is nothing in the nature of conservatism to require opposition to change as such. It is also obvious that when liberals/socialists/progressives gain power they aim to consolidate it and maintain their status quo. Here their progressivism meets a severe limit. The Soviet state did not ‘wither away’ in the approved Leninist manner, but simply collapsed under the weight of its own ‘internal contradictions’ with the aid of some well-placed kicks from Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II. It is easy to show that on specific issues such as Social Security reform, it is conservatives who play the reformers and progressives the reactionaries.

It would be better to say that for conservatives, there is a defeasible presumption in favor of traditional ways of doing things, and a certain scepticism about the application to human affairs of a reason unchecked by traditional judgments. The very fact that a policy, institution, mode of comportment works is prima facie evidence that it ought to be treated with some respect. Given their realistic (neither optimistic nor pessimistic) view of human nature – see #5 above – conservatives do not hanker after ‘pie in the future.’ They work for a better future without denigrating the past or the present.

That is quite a thought. Palin pretends to be a woman, and in so pretending she is a hypocrite! Just as leftists cannot stand conservative blacks, who they tar with such epithets as 'Uncle Tom' and 'oreo,' they cannot stand powerful, successful conservative women who have achieved what equity feminists demanded.

An oreo, for those of you who don't know, is a cookie that is darkish brown on the outside and white on the inside. To call a black an 'oreo' is thus to accuse him of being a white in disguise, a traitor to his race, someone who is not 'really' black. Doniger is similarly implying that Palin is a traitor to her sex (not 'gender' which is a grammatical term) and thus not 'really' a woman. Thus her "pretense that she is a woman." Since Palin is quite obviously female, with living proof of the fact, Doniger's suggestion is that Palin is a traitor to her sex in the way that 'oreos' and 'Uncle Toms' are traitors to their race.

And then there is the inimitable Rep. Charles Rangel, Democrat, who a few hours ago called Sarah Palin "disabled." This is the same race card dealing Charles Rangel who compared President Bush to Bull Connor, the Birmingham, Ala., police commissioner whose resistance to the civil rights movement became synonymous with Southern racism.

The Confusion of Morality and Religion

The movie mentions abortion as one of those 'hot button' topics that divides red-staters and blue-staters. But the movie fails to make clear something that is very important, namely, that the abortion question is a moral, i.e. ethical question that can and should be discussed independently of religious and 'faith' questions. Although in many cases opposition to abortion is based on the dogmatic pronouncements of a church, or on interpretations of a sacred scripture, or on contentious religious premises, a strong rational case against abortion can and has been made that does not rely on any of these sources. The potentiality argument discussed earlier, for example, does not draw on any of these sources. An atheist could accept the argument. And my rejection of the Woman's Body Argument is not based on anything Biblical or dogmatic or religious or 'metaphysical.'

But if you confuse religion and morality, then the fact that religion involves faith may lead you to the erroneous conclusion that objections to abortion can only be faith-based. But as I have just pointed out, there are reason-based objections to abortion that have nothing to do with faith.

For an example of just this confusion, see this leftist attack on Sarah Palin by a professor in the University of Chicago's Divinity School.

The Confusion of Church-State Separation with Morality-State Separation

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .” What this means is that Congress shall not set up any religion as the state religion, membership in which would be a condition for holding office, voting, etc. The Establishment Clause thus effects a separation of church and state; the state shall not promote any religion, but neither shall it prohibit any religion; citizens are free to worship as they please, or not worship. On their side, churches are not permitted to interfere in state functions.

Now consider the case of a state official, a judge say, who posts the Ten Commandments in his chambers. It ought to be completely opaque to any rational person how the posting of the Ten Commandments could be taken to be an establishment of a particular religion as the state religion.

First of all, a judge is not the Congress. Second, the mere displaying of an ancient document does not suffice to establish a religion. Third, the Ten Commandments are not specific to any one religion: they are common to the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This is a very important point too often unremarked. To my astonishment, I have encountered leftists who think that the Decalogue is specifically Christian. It is not. The Commandments are stated in two places (Exodus 20.1-17 and Deuteronomy 5.6-21) in what Christians call the Old Testament. Must I point out the obvious, namely, that Christianity came on the scene only with the New Testament? Although Christians of course accept the Ten Commandments, their origin antedates the rise of Christianity. There is nothing specifically Christian about them. And because they are common to the three Abrahamic religions, posting them in a public place cannot reasonably be taken as an endorsement by the government of any one particular religion. It is only the virulent anti-religious animus of leftists that makes them fail to appreciate this glaringly obvious point. But hatred of religion has been part of the Leftist charter since 1789.

Fourth, seven of the Ten Commandments say nothing about God. One is positive, enjoining respect for parents, while the others express prohibitions against killing, lying, stealing, adultery, and coveting the property and spouse of another. One might even call these seven commandments a-theistic since their content is logically independent of the existence/nonexistence of God. Would a Buddhist disagree with them? A Hindu? Any reasonable person? Is any reasonable person opposed to the prohibitions against killing, lying, and stealing? Do leftists think that life would be better if there were more killing, lying, and stealing? Presumably not; but then why the aversion to the promulgation of these proscriptions?

Think about it: the content of 'Thou shalt not kill' is independent of the existence of God. One could of course ask where this content gets its ethical bindingness. The theistic answer is that it derives from a command of God the supreme moral authority. But that does not change the fact that the content is independent of God's existence or nonexistence.

When one reflects on examples like this, in which leftist extremists such as ACLU members misinterpret the Constitution for their radical ends, one comes away with the impression that what these people want is not a separation of church and state, but a separation of morality and state. For if you suppress such seminal documents as the Ten Commandments, driving them from the public square, then at the same time you remove from the public square their ethical content.

The government is secular and ought to be. But many of the values that inform this nation are Judeo-Christian. The Left's assault on religion is an assault on morality. For by assaulting religion and attempting to drive every vestige of it from the public square they assault a prime vehicle of morality.

Note also the double-standard that leftists apply: they are vicious in their attacks on Christianity, but Islam, which alone of the three Abrahamic religion fuels terrorism, gets a pass.

Coming back to the abortion question, what I am opposing is the confusion inherent in the tendency to think that opposition to the legality of abortion somehow violates the separation of church and state. It does not. For, first of all, questions about the morality and legality of abortion are independent of questions about religion and faith. And secondly, separation of church and state does not require the driving of morality from the public sphere.

That's from Paul Krugman in The New York Times. It is the kind of rubbish that one would expect to find on some obscure left-wing website. Notice the illogic of it. Krugman apparently thinks that one who affirms

1. If you own something, then you have a vital stake in the future of our country

must also affirm

2. Citizens who rent can't be properly patriotic.

But it doesn't take a genius to see that (2) does not follow from (1). Suffering as he does under the burden of Bush Derangement Syndrome, Krugman misses the point entirely. The point is that homeownership is a good thing. When you work for something and acquire it and then own it, you value it to a greater degree than if you merely rent it. The homeowner has a financial and not just financial stake in his property and in the community in which it is located. He is not just concerned with economic property values but also with quality of life: the very fact that he has purchased a house shows long-term commitment to a neighborhood. And by paying property taxes he supports worthy public works such as public libraries.

There is nothing unpatriotic about renting, and when a conservative affirms a proposition like (1) he is not commenting on patriotism, but making the commonsense observation that homeownership is good, not just for the homeowner, but for everyone in the vicinity. Owning a house, one cares about it and maintains it. One takes an interest in what is going on in the neighborhood. One does one's bit to fight crime, etc. And this benefits not just the homeowner, but everyone who lives in the neighborhood, visits it, or just passes through it.

This is is just common sense, but commonsense is precisely what leftist academicians like Krugman lack.

George W. Bush, as deficient as he is, was absolutely right to promote what he called an "ownership society." The problem is not private property, the problem is that not enough people own private property. To interpret Bush's remark as an attack on the patriotism of renters, many of whom have good reasons for renting, is a contemptible and stupid slander.

But what can you expect from a leftist? Is 'decent leftist' an oxymoron?

I personally would want to see our tragic history, or the tragic elements of our history, acknowledged. I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it's Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds.

What's that, senator? Are you suggesting that our 'tragic history' has not been acknowledged? Surely you don't mean to imply something as foolish as that. And do you really mean to say that the U. S. government has been offering only words and no deeds? That is just too silly. Given that you are an intelligent man, you cannot mean what you are saying. Victor Davis Hanson offers the right rebuttal to this inane verbiage:

Anyone in any government-supported university the last thirty years knows that admission policies, graduate and professional school recruitment, assigned readings, curriculum, minority hiring and promotion, and university policies do not "just offer words, but offer deeds". It would seem that the Obama's own careers, in retrospect, have been helped a lot by "deeds" rather than mere rhetoric of the government.

In a June 3rd speech, Obama says that "the chance to get a college education should not be a privilege for the wealthy few, but the birthright of every American." This is another clear example of Obama's trademark blather. Does he really mean to say the the CHANCE or OPPORTUNITY to get a college education is the privilege of the wealthy few? To say that would be to say something plainly false. What he really means, I fear, is something else. He means that a college education is the birthright of every American, that every American has the right to be provided with a college education, an idea so breathtakingly loony as to be beneath refutation. There is first of all the question whether it would be a good thing for every American to go to college. The answer, of course, is that college attendance would be a waste of time and money for many Americans. (See The Overeducated) But even if it were true that every American would profit from a college education, how could there be a "birthright" to such a thing? Does one have a "birthright" to be provided with every good thing?

The Illinois senator is long on style but short on substance. And what substance there is is the usual leftist stuff.

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people's right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.

[. . .]

Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually but it was evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature; the world belongs to mankind and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems which must be corrected. Strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still is criminality and there even is considerably more of it than in the pauper and lawless Soviet society.

Solzhenitsyn is surely on the right track. We have lost our moral sense, and all the laws in the world can't save us. Freedom of expression is undoubtedly a high value; but contemporary liberals in their preternatural obtuseness cannot draw a line between liberty and license. They don't understand what freedom of expression is for, namely, the pursuit of truth. For them it is for any purpose, including the spilling into the public domain of the contents of the cesspool of their sick subjectivity. There is an endless proliferation of rights, but no sense of obligation or responsibility. (Barack Obama recently spoke of the right to a college education!) Hiding behind the First Amendment, ACLU and other leftist shysters will defend anyone's right to engage in every manner of cultural pollution.

It looks as if I am warming to a jeremiad of my own . . . .

I have no sympathy for predatory lenders and am not opposed to reasonable government regulation. I'm a conservative not a libertarian. But what I fail to see in Reich and other liberals is due appreciation of the fact that liberal policies undermine people, making them less self-reliant, less apt to practice old-fashioned virtues, and more dependent on Big Government and the nanny-state liberals who profit from it.

How can anyone be so ignorant as not to know whether they he can afford a mortgage payment? One is typically a renter before one is an owner, and one knows from experience what rent one can afford. You say some of these people took out adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs)? But then my question becomes: why did they do that stupid thing? Everyone knows that low interest rates do not remain low.

I could go on, but there is little point. Liberals in their preternatural obtuseness won't understand what I am saying, and conservatives will find it boringly obvious. What we have here is the 'different planets' problem. Liberals and conservatives live on different 'planets.' To me it is just self-evident that one does not enter into some complicated important transaction without adequate preparation. Before I bought my first house, I read several books on the topic. I made sure I understood the essentials appertaining to mortgages, interest rates, escrow accounts, and the like. I took that to be MY responsibility. Caveat emptor.

One of the key notions here is individual responsibility. Intentionally or not, liberals undermine the individual responsibility of the people they want to help. And pseudo-conservative Republicans make it worse when they bail out the lenders.

Whether one accepts this argument or not, it clearly invokes no religious premise. It is therefore manifestly incorrect to say or imply that all opposition to abortion must be religiously-based. Theists and atheists alike could make use of the above argument.

And as a matter of fact there are pro-life atheists. Nat Hentoff is one. In The Infanticide Candidate for President, he takes Barack Obama to task:

But on abortion, Obama is an extremist. He has opposed the Supreme Court decision that finally upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act against that form of infanticide. Most startlingly, for a professed humanist, Obama — in the Illinois Senate — also voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. I have reported on several of those cases when, before the abortion was completed, an alive infant was suddenly in the room. It was disposed of as a horrified nurse who was not necessarily pro-life followed the doctors' orders to put the baby in a pail or otherwise get rid of the child.

Hentoff is also right about the so-called Fairness Doctrine as I explain here.

Hitchens is also right about Geraldine Ferraro:

Ferraro may have sounded sour when she asserted that there can be political advantages to being black in the United States—and she said the selfsame thing about Jesse Jackson in 1984—but it's perfectly arguable that what she said is, in fact, true, and even if it isn't true, it's absurd to try and classify it as a racist remark.

But then our man goes off the deep end, joining Dawkins and the rest of the Gang:

How true it is that religion poisons everything.

Hitchens' brilliant mind, so capable of nuance, shuts down when religion comes up. He saw through the illusions of the Left and courageously broke with his former comrades; but in his unreasoning hatred of all religion he is a leftist still.

From Reflections on the Human Condition (Harper and Row, 1973):

He who proselytizes in the cause of unbelief is basically a man in need of belief. (p. 34)

It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it. (p. 34)

Hoffer uses 'native Americans' above correctly as opposed to in the PeeCee manner. You may enjoy my Proof that I am a Native American.

Sorry to offend my European readers, but it must be said:

We are told that the paradise of the masses in America is a 'pig heaven.' Granted; but the Europe the masses left behind was a pigsty. (p. 32)

I'd quote more but another library patron has recalled the book from which I am quoting. The audacity of the fellow!

Die Gedanken sind frei, wer kann sie erraten;
sie fliehen vorbei, wie naechtliche Schatten.
Kein Mensch kann sie wissen, kein Jaeger erschiessen;
es bleibet dabei: Die Gedanken sind frei.

Die Gedanken sind frei, my thoughts freely flower,
Die Gedanken sind frei, my thoughts give me power.
No scholar can map them, no hunter can trap them,
No man can deny: Die Gedanken sind frei!

Ich denk was ich will, und was mich begluecket,
Doch alles in der Still, und wie es sich schicket.
Mein Wunsch und Begehren kann niemand verwehren,
es bleibet dabei: Die Gedanken sind frei.

So I think as I please, and this gives me pleasure,
My conscience decrees this right I must treasure;
My thoughts will not cater to duke or dictator,
No man can deny: Die Gedanken sind frei!

Und sperrt man mich ein in finsteren Kerker,
das alles sind rein vergebliche Werke;
denn meine Gedanken zerreissen die Schranken
und Mauern entzwei: Die Gedanken sind frei.

And if tyrants take me, and throw me in prison,
My thoughts will burst free like blossoms in season.
Foundations will crumble, the structure will tumble,
And free men will cry: Die Gedanken sind frei!

Drum will ich auf immer den Sorgen entsagen
und will mich auf nimmer mit Grillen mehr plagen.
Man kann ja im Herzen stets lachen und scherzen
und denken dabei: Die Gedanken sind frei.

So worries I will always renounce
And never torture myself with whims when they pounce
Because in one's heart one can keep laughing and joking
While thinking: Die Gedanken sind frei!

Ich liebe den Wein, mein Mädchen vor allen,
sie tut mir allein am besten gefallen.
Ich bin nicht alleine bei meinem Glas Weine,
mein Mädchen dabei: Die Gedanken sind frei!

I love the wine, and my girl even more,
Only I like her best of all.
I'm not alone with my glass of wine,
my girl is with me: The thoughts are free!

I did receive a very nice supportive letter from Panayot Butchvarov, although it may have been in reference to an earlier letter in which I protested the APA's taking of a group stand against capital punishment. Having lived under Communism, Butch is familiar with the perils of groupthink. You may enjoy my post, Young Butchvarov Swims to Freedom and Makes His Mark in Philosophy.

I am glad to hear you let your membership lapse. So did I. And I encourage other conservatives and libertarians to ask themselves whether it is really in their best interest to fund Left-leaning organizations. But even liberals should be able to appreciate that professional organizations ought not take group stands on eminently debatable political questions. Here is the Iraq letter, published in the Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, vol. 77, no. 2 (Nov., 2003), p. 85.

Dear Editor:

The APA Pacific Division has proposed a resolution to "express our serious doubts about the morality, legality and prudence of a war against Iraq led by the United States." If individual members have doubts, it is their right to express them in their capacity as private citizens. But a collective expression by the APA as a whole, or in any of its Divisions, is clearly inappropriate. The reason should be obvious. The purpose of the APA is "exclusively educational, literary and scientific . . . " as per its constitution. It is therefore in keeping with its charter that the APA provide a framework in which serious discussion of questions concerning pacifism, just war doctrine, etc., can take place. But for the APA to endorse pacifism, or just war theory, or a version of just war theory that rules out preemptive strikes, or to express doubts about the moral justification of a particular war, is clearly in violation of its mandate. This would be as wrong, and indeed as absurd, as if the APA were to adopt an official stance on the mind-body problem, or on any other philosophical problem. If the APA is not prepared to take sides in the debate between, say, John Searle and Daniel Dennett, then it ought not take sides in the debate in foreign policy between, say, William J. Bennett and Noam Chomsky.

But the effort and expense spent on this hopelessly belated resolution are not entirely wasted. The arguments given in favor of the resolution, fallacious as they are, provide excellent fodder for logical analysis, and so may be of some use to teachers of logic. The latter can say to their students: Here is what happens when otherwise intelligent people allow ideological bias to cloud their thinking.

The bloodbath that conservative anti-Communists predicted in the wake of American withdrawal [from Vietnam] did take place and could not be denied by any honest observer. Yet New Left veteran, Danny Schechter, now a $100,000 a year producer with ABC-TV's 20/20, returned from Indochina after the massacres raving about the revolutionary achievements of Pol Pot and sporting a T-shirt that boasted: "We won in Cambodia." (K. L. Billingsley, "A New Left Balance Sheet" in Peter Collier and David Horowitz, eds. Second Thoughts: Former Radicals Look Back At The Sixties, Madison Books 1989, p. 251, hyperlink added.)

Billingsley's story about Schechter's T-shirt is corroborated by Ronald Radosh:

Soon after [the fall of Saigon in 1975], when Pol Pot's brutal forces ovethrew the Lon Nol regime in Cambodia and began the evacuation of the cities and the murder of thousands of their own countrymen, we again cheered. On a trip to Boston, Allis and I stayed at the home of her friend Emily Schatzow, who was then going out with Danny Schechter, the radical newcaster on the leading rock station, WBCN, who called himself "Danny Schechter, the news dissector." Schechter told us about visiting Cambodia for his station and seeing all the corrupt members of the ancien régime trembling before the fighting spirit of the forces led by Pol Pot. When Cambodia fell, Schechter wore a T-shirt with the slogan "We won in Vietnam and Cambodia." (Ronald Radosh, Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left, Encounter Books, 2001, pp. 130-131.)

Now that you know something about Schechter, read his e-mail:

Nothing very "maverick": about your philosophy--the same stereotyping, "lefty" putdowns, refusal to grapple with deeper economic problems, blame the victim mentality, unwillingness even now to realize the flaws of a free market unregulated system, inability to account for the billions of dollars lost by financial institutions because of greed and incompetetence, and failure to realize that some of the people I spoke with are conservative and can't be lumped together.,,.,.

Why in the name of philsopny[sic], such MUDDLED comemntary[sic]? .....The phlosophers[sic] have only studied the world, the point is to change it.

Which philosopher said that....think your crank needs more cranking

PH.D, my ass

Danny Schechter Director IN DEBT WE TRUST

1. This e-mail arrived without salutation of course; leftists have a problem with civility. In Leftists and Civility I take a stab at explaining why.

2. Schechter apparently doesn't know what a maverick is. So permit me to explain. A maverick, according to Robert Hendrickson, is "any person who holds himself apart from the herd, a nonconformist." The word is an eponym that derives from 'Samuel Augustus Maverick' (1803-1870). The gentleman named ran cattle that bore no brand. These animals were soon called mavericks, and then the term was extended to analogously unbranded persons. (QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 2nd ed., Facts on File, 2004, p. 473)

Schechter is making a very common mistake among those on the Left. He thinks that only leftists can be mavericks and that conservatives must be herd animals. This is connected with the equally nonsensical idea that the Left owns dissent. I very patiently explain what is wrong with this silly notion in On Dissent.

This notion that only lefties can be mavericks or dissenters or critical thinkers is particularly absurd in light of the fact that it is the Left that invented Political Correctness. PC after all came from the CP. Vivian Gornick in The Romance of American Communism (Basic Books 1977, p. 170) tells the tale of a poor fellow who was drummed out of the American Communist Party in the 1950's on charges of ‘white chauvinism.’ His crime? Serving watermelon at a garden party. And you thought that Political Correctness was something new? PC originated with the CP. There is no bigger bunch of lemmings than leftists.

3. Do I "blame the victim"? Schechter now trots out the standard victimology of the Left. Liberals and leftists love 'victims' for they make up their 'base.' 'Victims' are their ticket to power. He simply cannot understand that a person who makes financial mistakes day in, day out, year after year victimizes himself. He cannot understand such notions as self-denial, self-control, taking responsibility for one's actions, not blaming other people and circumstances.

4. "Free market unregulated system?" Is Danny delusional? Does he really think we have laissez-faire capitalism in the United States?

5. Schechter tries to quote Karl Marx but doesn't quite succeed. The 11th Thesis on Feuerbach reads, Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kömmt drauf an, sie zu verändern. "The philosophers have merely interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." Danny was close, though.

What he doesn't understand and never will understand, and what no Marxist understands is that truly ameliorative change presuppose a correct understanding of the world. Absent that, radical change is not improvement but disaster -- which is what Communism has led to. Or you don't think that the Communist murder of 100 million in the 20th century was a disaster? But someone who celebrates Pol Pot (see above quotations) cannot be expected to understand that.

The point is to understand the world so that your 'change' doesn't make a mess of it. Bear this in mind as you listen to the Democratic Party candidates chant their 'change' mantra.

If Schecter had any decency he would have thanked me for plugging his documentary which I described as "very interesting" and for linking to a YouTube excerpt of it. He might also have noticed that I described the credit companies as "predatory." The YouTube clip, meanwhile, has been removed. It would be a hoot, wouldn't it, if Schechter the socialist had it removed. But a decent leftist? Decency and civility are not among anything they would recognize as virtues. It is all just 'bourgeois ideology' to them. 'Decent leftist' is a good cadidate for oxymoron status.

And yet the guy, despite his obvious virtues, really rankles me. He said, a while back, that Americans won't pick lettuce. How could anyone say something that preternaturally stupid if he wasn't pandering? Of course there are Americans who will pick lettuce — but you have to pay them a decent wage. If illegal aliens are allowed to flood into the country, however, illegals who will work for chicken feed, then the growers will have no incentive to pay a decent wage.

I saw McCain on C-Span this morning. He was asked a question about drugs and gang-related drug violence due to weak border security. He uttered some platitudes but failed to make the essential point, namely, that, along with other measures, a physical barrier needs to be constructed to help stem the illegal flood.

Lindsay Graham, on the same C-Span panel, praised McCain for placing love of country above personal amnbition. But isn't it obvious that McCain's refusal to take the obviously right approach to illegal immigration bespeaks the fact that his desire for high office trumps his love of country? The man is no profile in courage. He panders for the sake of the Hispanic vote.

And please let's not hear anything about his comportment during the Vietnam war. None of that is very relevant, not in his case, not in Bill Clinton's case, nor in John Kerry's. What is relevant is what these gentlemen have done recently, what they have stood for, how they have voted. I am afraid Tammy Bruce is mostly right about John McCain, though I would not go as far as she does:

Let me be blunt. McCain is a self-serving, opportunistic pig. He, like other open-borders, Americans-Are-Lazy politicians, is a man who has grown soft and fat and elitist in Washington, DC, and has developed an obvious contempt for the average working American. Not only does he not deserve to even think about being president, he should not be in the U.S. senate. He is an example of the opportunistic narcissists in Washington whose only concern is their own career as they do whatever they think it'll take to advance themselves.

Gun-totin' Tammy is one straight-shooter. McCain's a careerist driven by personal ambition ueber alles, though he can't hold a a candle to Hillary Clinton in this regard. She is the Platonic Form of naked political ambition.

Here is a list of terms liberals apply to virtually every idea or action with which they differ:

Racist
Sexist
Homophobic
Islamophobic
Imperialist
Bigoted
Intolerant

The neologisms 'homophobic' and Islamophobic' — I hesitate to call them words — are particularly idiotic. A phobia is an irrational fear. One who argues against the morality of homosexual practices, or gives reasons for opposing 'gay' marriage is precisely — presenting arguments, and not expressing any fear, let alone any phobia. The arguments may or may not be cogent. But they are expressive of reason, and are intended to appeal to the reason of one's interlocutor. To dismiss them as an expression of a phobia shows a lack of respect for reason and for the persons who proffer the arguments. And similarly for 'Islamophobia.' There is nothing irrational in being concerned about the threat of militant Islam.

I hesitate to call liberals fascists for reasons given elsewhere in these pages and most recently in the comments to this post; but there is something thuggish about them. They attempt to shut down debate by the hurling of such epithets as 'homophobe' and 'Islamophobe.' The implication is that anyone who differs with them is cognitively deficient. I would have though that cognitive deficiency is more justly chargeable to their account.

"But some blacks found it offensive." So what? That's their fault, not Hillary's. They were not justified in taking offense at her objectively innocuous remark and it might be argued that their taking offense was itself offensive. For in taking offense they unjustly imputed unsavory motives to her.

The present social and political climate in which 'feelings' trump truth, a climate in which being 'sensitive' is a desideratum to be genuflected before, is of course one that contemporary liberals have brought about and fostered. And now it is beginning to backfire on them as David Brooks observes:

All the rhetorical devices that have been a staple of identity politics are now being exploited by the Clinton and Obama campaigns against each other. They are competing to play the victim. They are both accusing each other of insensitivity. They are both deliberately misinterpreting each other’s comments in order to somehow imply that the other is morally retrograde.

All the habits of verbal thuggery that have long been used against critics of affirmative action, like Ward Connerly and Thomas Sowell, and critics of the radical feminism, like Christina Hoff Summers, are now being turned inward by the Democratic front-runners.

For another example of how feelings trump truth in the world of the liberal, see Defending Coulter on "Jews Need to be Perfected."