Click the title for official instructions from the US Department of Education. Those parallels are getting more parallel every day....
Update: The document at the link above, on the official US Department of Education site, has been replaced with new version, with the totalitarian parts bowdlerized out of it. For the original version, please see my new blog posting, farther above.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
"Don't you ever question my reality!" (Part 2)
Hope you didn't miss Part 1, posted August 21 (the funniest epistemological spectacle of the year. No, it is not from The Onion.) The theater continues:
Lauren Stratford said of the decision to become a holocaust survivor without having actually suffered the holocaust, “I think only the individual can decide if he/she is a survivor.” .... Nobody shows a hint of doubt when a speaker by the name of “Royal”, at all of about forty years of age, stands before us (in 2009) to claim that she was a personal slave to nazi doctor Josef Mengele.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Ain't America No More
Once upon a time, the ordinary people of America framed their Constitution on a principled, if still incomplete, understanding of individual rights.
Welcome to 2009.
Last month, a Harvard University professor was arrested for "disturbing the peace" with public criticism of a government official. Conservatives on the Web cheered for the arresting officer. The idea, that under the First Amendment it is unconstitutional to arrest a person, just because that person's public speech, criticizing a government official, irritates a police officer, never crossed the Conservatives' alleged minds.
Now, a month later, another police officer threatened to arrest - but did not actually arrest, making the incident somewhat less outrageous - another critic whose take on a government official irritated the police officer. And now, everyone who was on the side of the arresting officer in the Gates-Crowley case is outraged, outraged, that a demonstrator can be threatened by a police officer with arrest, merely for public criticism that outrages the officer.
Unfortunately, as the police officer in the linked video says, this "ain't America no more." The America where people - never mind police officers - had principles in their brains, rather than merely on their tongues and then only when pragmatically convenient, has been deliquescing for half a century now. After decades of "education" by the Comprachicos running the schools, ordinary Americans - the full range from Socialists to Conservatives - are no longer capable of inducing a principle, even when the concretes from which to induce the principle are staring them in the face. In the form of high-profile news stories.
Ominous Parallels, anyone?
Welcome to 2009.
Last month, a Harvard University professor was arrested for "disturbing the peace" with public criticism of a government official. Conservatives on the Web cheered for the arresting officer. The idea, that under the First Amendment it is unconstitutional to arrest a person, just because that person's public speech, criticizing a government official, irritates a police officer, never crossed the Conservatives' alleged minds.
Now, a month later, another police officer threatened to arrest - but did not actually arrest, making the incident somewhat less outrageous - another critic whose take on a government official irritated the police officer. And now, everyone who was on the side of the arresting officer in the Gates-Crowley case is outraged, outraged, that a demonstrator can be threatened by a police officer with arrest, merely for public criticism that outrages the officer.
Unfortunately, as the police officer in the linked video says, this "ain't America no more." The America where people - never mind police officers - had principles in their brains, rather than merely on their tongues and then only when pragmatically convenient, has been deliquescing for half a century now. After decades of "education" by the Comprachicos running the schools, ordinary Americans - the full range from Socialists to Conservatives - are no longer capable of inducing a principle, even when the concretes from which to induce the principle are staring them in the face. In the form of high-profile news stories.
Ominous Parallels, anyone?
Friday, August 21, 2009
"Don't you ever question my reality!"
Click on the title (above) for the funniest epistemological spectacle of the year. No, it is not from The Onion. It is a reporter's account of a real event. I'd be rolling on the floor (laughing) if I'd only vacuumed my floor first....
Friday, August 14, 2009
Academic Freedom Abridged at Yale Press
An open letter from Cary Nelson, AAUP President, about Yale University Press' decision that "eliminated all visual depictions of the Prophet Muhammad from Jytte Klausen’s new book The Cartoons That Shook the World." Nelson writes,
"We do not negotiate with terrorists. We just accede to their anticipated demands.” That is effectively the new policy position at Yale University Press...Click on the title, above, to see the letter.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Insider Tips as Currency for Political Extortion
I would not trade on an exchange that allows insider trading: I have no wish to sell a stock that's known (to the buyer but not to me) to be about to go up; or to buy one that is known, to the seller but not to me, to be about to go down. It turns out that I've been a chump: the US Congress legislated its members, and their cronies in the Executive branch, out of all provisions, legal and contractual, against insider trading.
Many of our federal legislators and officials supplement their already juicy salaries and benefits by extorting bribes. But there is the technicality that bribes in cash or equivalent are illegal, and a provision exempting legislators from laws against getting paid off in cash wouldn't fly with the voters. So instead, they gave themselves a loophole: they legislated that the insider trading laws that apply to businessmen, and other non-members of the aristocracy of pull, do NOT apply to members of Congress, congressional staffers, and appointed officials of the executive branch. Thus, members of the US Congress have made themselves legally free to extort at will, provided the payoffs are not in cash or stock or other valuables, but rather in the form of insider information that the Congresscritters, etc., can use to steal value (legally - they made it so) directly from the retirement funds and other investments of the rest of us.
The link comes, ironically, from an organization dedicated to radical expansion of government power - and thus, of government-as-an-extortion-racket in general - a position its members justify, in part, by a naive belief that everything would be all right if only such loopholes were closed. Their opponents, on the other hand, insist that there is nothing morally wrong in insider trading - even when insider information is being used as the currency in which bribes are extorted from American business by our political rulers. "Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain..."
Many of our federal legislators and officials supplement their already juicy salaries and benefits by extorting bribes. But there is the technicality that bribes in cash or equivalent are illegal, and a provision exempting legislators from laws against getting paid off in cash wouldn't fly with the voters. So instead, they gave themselves a loophole: they legislated that the insider trading laws that apply to businessmen, and other non-members of the aristocracy of pull, do NOT apply to members of Congress, congressional staffers, and appointed officials of the executive branch. Thus, members of the US Congress have made themselves legally free to extort at will, provided the payoffs are not in cash or stock or other valuables, but rather in the form of insider information that the Congresscritters, etc., can use to steal value (legally - they made it so) directly from the retirement funds and other investments of the rest of us.
The link comes, ironically, from an organization dedicated to radical expansion of government power - and thus, of government-as-an-extortion-racket in general - a position its members justify, in part, by a naive belief that everything would be all right if only such loopholes were closed. Their opponents, on the other hand, insist that there is nothing morally wrong in insider trading - even when insider information is being used as the currency in which bribes are extorted from American business by our political rulers. "Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain..."
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Yes, there should be a legitimate market in organs for transplantation
Click on the title, above, for a comment in the New York Times "Freakonomics" column by Stephen J. Dubner:
And please, fellow Objectivists, hold back on knee-jerk reactions to "regulated." I doubt that in this context it means anything beyond objectively necessary requirements for fully informed consent, and safeguards against fraud.
Another man in Brooklyn, Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, was accused of enticing vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 and then selling the organ for $160,000. Mr. Dwek pretended to be soliciting a kidney on behalf of someone and Mr. Rosenbaum said that he had been in business of buying organs for years, according to the complaint.
Remember this story the next time someone brings up the need for a legitimate, regulated market for human organs, as we’ve discussed here many times in the past. Many people’s objection to such a market is that poor people would suffer because a) they won’t be able to afford to buy organs; and b) they may be coerced into selling them. But with the current black market, poor people are already being excluded from getting organs (because there’s a scarcity of donated organs) and being lured into selling them - although in this case, it appears that a middleman got to pocket $150,000 while the “donors” got only $10,000.
And please, fellow Objectivists, hold back on knee-jerk reactions to "regulated." I doubt that in this context it means anything beyond objectively necessary requirements for fully informed consent, and safeguards against fraud.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Free Speech and "Disorderly Conduct"
I'm amazed at the paucity of principled comment about the recent (and unfortunate) arrest of African-American literateur (and Harvard professor) Gates, by Cambridge police officer Crawley, on charges of "disorderly conduct." Gates' "disorderly conduct" is described, on the charge sheet, as "loud and tumultuous behavior in a public place" - the "public place" being the porch of Gates' home, and the "behavior" being loud verbal criticism, probably inaccurate, of a police officer.
Before the essentials, though, I need to say why I tend to think that Gates' criticism of the police officer as a "racist" was inaccurate. I once knew a Jewish gentleman from a country in Central Europe that back in the 1930s practiced its own kind of "Jim Crow" against Jews; anyone who so much as "looked Jewish" was excluded from the "better" places of commerce in that country well into the 1980s. Like many American immigrants from Central Europe, my friend favored shorts in the summer. And, looking for a good place to eat lunch, was often stopped at the door, and told that shorts were not considered acceptable attire in the restaurant that had caught his fancy. On those occasions he was certain that he had been stopped at the door because he "looked Jewish" - even though the same restaurant would welcome him with a smile in winter, when he wore slacks.
When dealing with people who had faced racism in the past, a competent police officer will take the context and effects of their experience into account. Gates, unfortunately, permitted his experience - his first faculty job was in a part of America where racism was common and assumed - to bias his judgment. He probably owes Officer Crowley an apology for inaccurate criticism - or would owe Officer Crowley an apology if Officer Crowley had not taken Gates' error as cause for arrest.
Of course there are, even by the most stringent standard of individual rights, contexts in which loud speech can be objectively criminal. But, outside the context of fraud, or of violations of intellectual property, any legitimate regulation of non-governmental speech must be strictly content-neutral. In a free society, there is only a small set of contexts in which non-governmental speech can be a cause for arrest:
1. The speaker uses a private platform belonging to someone else without the owner's consent. Gates spoke from the porch of his own home, so this is not relevant here.
2. The expression interferes with the process of justice. Gates was not in a courtroom during a trial, and in any case a policeman is not a judge. A policeman is a specialized emergency worker, trained to keep a cool head even in contingencies far more disturbing than loud and inaccurate verbal criticism from an unarmed and otherwise innocuous citizen. So this is not the case here either.
3. The expression invades the property of others and interferes with their other rights. For example, shouting loudly at night, when the noise would disturb the sleep of one's neighbors, might be criminal. But it was daytime, and no one (other than the arresting officer) was irritated by the noise. So again, no cause for arrest.
4. The delivery of a credible threat. Not the case here, and not even alleged.
5. The proverbial "shouting fire:" speech that, in context, can cause a crowd to panic and stampede; or perhaps the incitement of an unruly crowd to a lynching or a riot. But there was no crowd; the handful of non-police onlookers at the scene were outnumbered by uniformed police.
So what was it, about Gates' conduct, that could possibly have crossed the line into "disorderly," meaning "criminal," action? Objectively, nothing. Subjectively, the arresting officer may have perceived Gates' speech as repulsive and insulting. But this is hardly enough reason for a professional public servant, sworn to defend the rights of the people, including the free speech rights of Professor Gates, to arrest Professor Gates for nothing beyond loud and insulting verbal criticism of a government employee, even when that criticism was publicly delivered, on Professor Gates' porch, in that employee's face.
One mark of a Police State, is that one may not speak ill of a police officer without risking arrest. Where is the First Amendment when we need it?
Before the essentials, though, I need to say why I tend to think that Gates' criticism of the police officer as a "racist" was inaccurate. I once knew a Jewish gentleman from a country in Central Europe that back in the 1930s practiced its own kind of "Jim Crow" against Jews; anyone who so much as "looked Jewish" was excluded from the "better" places of commerce in that country well into the 1980s. Like many American immigrants from Central Europe, my friend favored shorts in the summer. And, looking for a good place to eat lunch, was often stopped at the door, and told that shorts were not considered acceptable attire in the restaurant that had caught his fancy. On those occasions he was certain that he had been stopped at the door because he "looked Jewish" - even though the same restaurant would welcome him with a smile in winter, when he wore slacks.
When dealing with people who had faced racism in the past, a competent police officer will take the context and effects of their experience into account. Gates, unfortunately, permitted his experience - his first faculty job was in a part of America where racism was common and assumed - to bias his judgment. He probably owes Officer Crowley an apology for inaccurate criticism - or would owe Officer Crowley an apology if Officer Crowley had not taken Gates' error as cause for arrest.
Of course there are, even by the most stringent standard of individual rights, contexts in which loud speech can be objectively criminal. But, outside the context of fraud, or of violations of intellectual property, any legitimate regulation of non-governmental speech must be strictly content-neutral. In a free society, there is only a small set of contexts in which non-governmental speech can be a cause for arrest:
1. The speaker uses a private platform belonging to someone else without the owner's consent. Gates spoke from the porch of his own home, so this is not relevant here.
2. The expression interferes with the process of justice. Gates was not in a courtroom during a trial, and in any case a policeman is not a judge. A policeman is a specialized emergency worker, trained to keep a cool head even in contingencies far more disturbing than loud and inaccurate verbal criticism from an unarmed and otherwise innocuous citizen. So this is not the case here either.
3. The expression invades the property of others and interferes with their other rights. For example, shouting loudly at night, when the noise would disturb the sleep of one's neighbors, might be criminal. But it was daytime, and no one (other than the arresting officer) was irritated by the noise. So again, no cause for arrest.
4. The delivery of a credible threat. Not the case here, and not even alleged.
5. The proverbial "shouting fire:" speech that, in context, can cause a crowd to panic and stampede; or perhaps the incitement of an unruly crowd to a lynching or a riot. But there was no crowd; the handful of non-police onlookers at the scene were outnumbered by uniformed police.
So what was it, about Gates' conduct, that could possibly have crossed the line into "disorderly," meaning "criminal," action? Objectively, nothing. Subjectively, the arresting officer may have perceived Gates' speech as repulsive and insulting. But this is hardly enough reason for a professional public servant, sworn to defend the rights of the people, including the free speech rights of Professor Gates, to arrest Professor Gates for nothing beyond loud and insulting verbal criticism of a government employee, even when that criticism was publicly delivered, on Professor Gates' porch, in that employee's face.
One mark of a Police State, is that one may not speak ill of a police officer without risking arrest. Where is the First Amendment when we need it?
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Economics as it can be and ought to be
What would Economics be like without the grossly false, yet somehow widely accepted, belief in the automatic and universal rationality of economic actors? MIT finance professor Andrew W. Lo, and Harvard economic historian Niall Ferguson, are making progress in that direction. The title above this blog post is a link to a Niall Ferguson lecture about the complicated relationships between the application of genetic algorithms - "evolution" - in biology and in economics. Ferguson induces his concepts from the facts of reality that he studies as a business historian. Finally, an economist with an epistemology that an Objectivist can applaud. Having once read Ayn Rand's marginalia comments about how lousy the epistemology of Ludwig von Mises had been, economics was the last place where I'd have expected scientific work - with a sound, inductive, contextual epistemology - to emerge.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Conservatives criticize official for opposing reproductive choice. Yes. Really.
The conservative blogosphere has exploded with condemnation of a federal official for expressing opposition to reproductive rights. Yes, you did not accidentally inhale: the same people who would forcibly stop a woman from aborting an unwanted pregnancy, and force her to give birth against her will - including thousands of officials who once held jobs in the Bush administration on the strength of this position - are now a-blather because 32 years ago a Dr. John Holdren, now director of the Obama White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, better known as the "science czar" (barf) expressed support for a Chinese-style "one child policy" with "population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion."
Consider my experience, with what those two variants of opposition to reproductive choice mean in practice. Back in the 1980s, my then-wife and I wanted a child - but we were faced with a significant risk of genetic defects. The prospective results of having a genetically defective child were so catastrophic that for many years we did not dare to take this risk, and nearly resigned ourselves to never having a child. And then amniocentesis for genetic testing became available, together with safe and legal second-semester abortion, eliminating the risk: now we would be able to try again if our first fetus happened to be defective. Fortunately our first fetus turned out to be OK, and eventually became a healthy child. Thanks to the availability of safe and legal abortion we became parents. Without the availability of abortion we would have continued to face an unacceptable risk, and we would have been forced to remain childless.
And then consider the position of the Conservatives. They, under the previous administration, happily endorsed the appointment of officials whose anti-abortion position, if enacted into law, would have forced me to remain childless. But now they turn all hysterical at the appointment of their fellow scumbag whose policy, while despicable, would have been less devastating to my happiness, than their own policy would have been.
Oh well. One more fact in evidence that the bulk Conservative is cognitively crippled, unable to think conceptually about either life, or morality, or politics. But then, they do not even pretend that what they have, instead of ideas, is the result of anything beyond intuition, "common sense," and supernatural revelation. Their usual opponents, on the other hand, are beset by delusions of cognitive adequacy. Creepy and loathsome, the slime on both sides of the sewer.
Consider my experience, with what those two variants of opposition to reproductive choice mean in practice. Back in the 1980s, my then-wife and I wanted a child - but we were faced with a significant risk of genetic defects. The prospective results of having a genetically defective child were so catastrophic that for many years we did not dare to take this risk, and nearly resigned ourselves to never having a child. And then amniocentesis for genetic testing became available, together with safe and legal second-semester abortion, eliminating the risk: now we would be able to try again if our first fetus happened to be defective. Fortunately our first fetus turned out to be OK, and eventually became a healthy child. Thanks to the availability of safe and legal abortion we became parents. Without the availability of abortion we would have continued to face an unacceptable risk, and we would have been forced to remain childless.
And then consider the position of the Conservatives. They, under the previous administration, happily endorsed the appointment of officials whose anti-abortion position, if enacted into law, would have forced me to remain childless. But now they turn all hysterical at the appointment of their fellow scumbag whose policy, while despicable, would have been less devastating to my happiness, than their own policy would have been.
Oh well. One more fact in evidence that the bulk Conservative is cognitively crippled, unable to think conceptually about either life, or morality, or politics. But then, they do not even pretend that what they have, instead of ideas, is the result of anything beyond intuition, "common sense," and supernatural revelation. Their usual opponents, on the other hand, are beset by delusions of cognitive adequacy. Creepy and loathsome, the slime on both sides of the sewer.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Three Democides by False Morality - Part II, The Ban on DDT
(This part follows Three Democides by False Morality - Part I, Holodomor.)
If there is a single idea at the foundation of all contemporary collectivisms, it is that the individual human is merely an organ or a cell of some supra-individual social superorganism. Collectivisms differ as to the identity of this alleged superorganism - family, clan, tribe, state, nation, religion, race, even all of humanity - but they all agree that the only "moral" action for an individual, is action that benefits the designated social "superorganism," even if it harms or kills individual humans, often including the individual for whom that action is alleged to be "moral."
Just as the root of altruism in Western cultures is the Christian doctrine of "Imitatio Dei," applied to Jesus' total self-sacrifice for the sake of sinners, so too the core doctrine of modern collectivisms - the notion that human individuals are mere organs or cells of the body of a collective superorganism - derives from Christian doctrine. It comes from Saint Augustine, who wrote (in Iohannis Evangelium Tractatus, 21[8]) "We have become Christ. For, if he is the Head, we, the members; he and we together are the whole organism." It is on the basis of this doctrine that the Church justifies the extermination of heretics, as no less moral than the amputation of a gangrenous limb for the salvation of the "whole body of the Church." And even as some still healthy flesh may need to be cut off in such amputations, so the faithful Christian must not hesitate to sacrifice, in a crusade against heresy, some lives of the possibly innocent: "Kill them all - God will know his own." This conception of the collective "body of the faithful" as a superorganism was later copied by Islam, and by every collectivist ideology since. In every collectivist "morality," the individual is no more than dispensable flesh (or sacrificial meat) to the collective Superorganism.
Until Rachel Carson and the advent of Environmentalism, appeals to the collective as a "superorganism" always included in that superorganism the biological relatives, and especially the children and grandchildren, of the human individuals comprising the collective in question. Because one's progeny are a genuine value to the individual, this allowed the false morality, of sacrifice to the collective, to be cast as a matter not so much of consent to one's own self-destruction, as one of working for the life and happiness of one's children and grandchildren. The children, and the future, were the central theme in the propaganda of the collectivisms of old. Invariably the "members," or "cells" of the corresponding "superorganisms" were themselves individual human persons. It is this aspect of traditional collectivisms that was transcended by the first American to perpetrate a world-scale democide of her own.
Rachel Carson was a marine biologist and science writer fascinated by the unfolding scientific understanding of the complex web of interrelationships among the many organisms in natural ecosystems. Her fascination with the emerging understanding of biological ecosystems led her into a Platonic reification of the global ecosystem as the ultimate social Superorganism, one that included not only the humans, but every organism on Earth, and their environments as well. This made her particularly aghast at the use of chemical pesticides with the potential to eliminate entire non-human species, such as the insect vectors of malaria parasites and other deadly microorganisms, to save the lives of humans. In Carson's view, this amounted to one kind of cell harming the Superorganism for its own benefit - the equivalent of a global cancer.
Carson set out her view of the global ecosystem as a Superorganism, of which the individual human was at most a disposable cell, in her best-selling book "Silent Spring." The title "Silent Spring" is a masterpiece of bait-and-switch propaganda. It is sane and good for people to enjoy birdsong, and to value a healthy and abundant natural environment for human life. But in the course of the book Carson gradually shifts the viewpoint, so that by its end an intellectually careless reader has been persuaded that the global ecosystem constitutes a Superorganism with an intrinsic moral value far greater than that of individual humans, or indeed of the entire species of Homo Sapiens. Once this viewpoint is assimilated, it becomes a "moral crime" to view the global biosphere as merely a value for human existence, a value that can be technologically improved, by human action, for human benefit. The reader is persuaded, instead, to view the global ecosystem as a single living Superorganism - and that morality consists of subordinating not only one's interests as an individual human, but even the persistence of the human species, to this Superorganism's welfare. Rachel Carson's book gave rise to a new kind of Collectivism, and to a new false morality of unequaled virulence.
Malaria, a disease caused by mosquito-borne parasites, was on the verge of eradication in 1948, the year Swiss chemist Paul Mueller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 "for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods." "Silent Spring" was a best-seller that spawned a mass movement whose first target was the use of DDT against malaria-carrying mosquito populations. The new "ecological" collectivism first grew in the United States, and within 10 years became influential enough to push through a federal ban on spraying DDT (in 1972,) and by 1985 also on manufacturing DDT, even for export. Because malaria was most widespread in countries that lacked the industrial infrastructure to manufacture DDT, the spraying of mosquito populations stopped, and deaths from malaria surged back to between 1 and 3 million per year - between 24 and 72 million to date.
In 2001, demand from countries where malaria was widespread led to a slight relaxation of the anti-DDT regime. In the Stockholm Convention of that year, the use of DDT was authorized - but only for applications that did not threaten the "integrity of the global ecosystem." This means that DDT is only available for indoor use, which can only protect those who live and work in houses with solid walls. The latter include the politicians and diplomats who negotiated the Stockholm Convention. People who live or work outside those walls continue to die.
Three Democides by False Morality continues: Part III, The Ban On Cloning
If there is a single idea at the foundation of all contemporary collectivisms, it is that the individual human is merely an organ or a cell of some supra-individual social superorganism. Collectivisms differ as to the identity of this alleged superorganism - family, clan, tribe, state, nation, religion, race, even all of humanity - but they all agree that the only "moral" action for an individual, is action that benefits the designated social "superorganism," even if it harms or kills individual humans, often including the individual for whom that action is alleged to be "moral."
Just as the root of altruism in Western cultures is the Christian doctrine of "Imitatio Dei," applied to Jesus' total self-sacrifice for the sake of sinners, so too the core doctrine of modern collectivisms - the notion that human individuals are mere organs or cells of the body of a collective superorganism - derives from Christian doctrine. It comes from Saint Augustine, who wrote (in Iohannis Evangelium Tractatus, 21[8]) "We have become Christ. For, if he is the Head, we, the members; he and we together are the whole organism." It is on the basis of this doctrine that the Church justifies the extermination of heretics, as no less moral than the amputation of a gangrenous limb for the salvation of the "whole body of the Church." And even as some still healthy flesh may need to be cut off in such amputations, so the faithful Christian must not hesitate to sacrifice, in a crusade against heresy, some lives of the possibly innocent: "Kill them all - God will know his own." This conception of the collective "body of the faithful" as a superorganism was later copied by Islam, and by every collectivist ideology since. In every collectivist "morality," the individual is no more than dispensable flesh (or sacrificial meat) to the collective Superorganism.
Until Rachel Carson and the advent of Environmentalism, appeals to the collective as a "superorganism" always included in that superorganism the biological relatives, and especially the children and grandchildren, of the human individuals comprising the collective in question. Because one's progeny are a genuine value to the individual, this allowed the false morality, of sacrifice to the collective, to be cast as a matter not so much of consent to one's own self-destruction, as one of working for the life and happiness of one's children and grandchildren. The children, and the future, were the central theme in the propaganda of the collectivisms of old. Invariably the "members," or "cells" of the corresponding "superorganisms" were themselves individual human persons. It is this aspect of traditional collectivisms that was transcended by the first American to perpetrate a world-scale democide of her own.
Rachel Carson was a marine biologist and science writer fascinated by the unfolding scientific understanding of the complex web of interrelationships among the many organisms in natural ecosystems. Her fascination with the emerging understanding of biological ecosystems led her into a Platonic reification of the global ecosystem as the ultimate social Superorganism, one that included not only the humans, but every organism on Earth, and their environments as well. This made her particularly aghast at the use of chemical pesticides with the potential to eliminate entire non-human species, such as the insect vectors of malaria parasites and other deadly microorganisms, to save the lives of humans. In Carson's view, this amounted to one kind of cell harming the Superorganism for its own benefit - the equivalent of a global cancer.
Carson set out her view of the global ecosystem as a Superorganism, of which the individual human was at most a disposable cell, in her best-selling book "Silent Spring." The title "Silent Spring" is a masterpiece of bait-and-switch propaganda. It is sane and good for people to enjoy birdsong, and to value a healthy and abundant natural environment for human life. But in the course of the book Carson gradually shifts the viewpoint, so that by its end an intellectually careless reader has been persuaded that the global ecosystem constitutes a Superorganism with an intrinsic moral value far greater than that of individual humans, or indeed of the entire species of Homo Sapiens. Once this viewpoint is assimilated, it becomes a "moral crime" to view the global biosphere as merely a value for human existence, a value that can be technologically improved, by human action, for human benefit. The reader is persuaded, instead, to view the global ecosystem as a single living Superorganism - and that morality consists of subordinating not only one's interests as an individual human, but even the persistence of the human species, to this Superorganism's welfare. Rachel Carson's book gave rise to a new kind of Collectivism, and to a new false morality of unequaled virulence.
Malaria, a disease caused by mosquito-borne parasites, was on the verge of eradication in 1948, the year Swiss chemist Paul Mueller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 "for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods." "Silent Spring" was a best-seller that spawned a mass movement whose first target was the use of DDT against malaria-carrying mosquito populations. The new "ecological" collectivism first grew in the United States, and within 10 years became influential enough to push through a federal ban on spraying DDT (in 1972,) and by 1985 also on manufacturing DDT, even for export. Because malaria was most widespread in countries that lacked the industrial infrastructure to manufacture DDT, the spraying of mosquito populations stopped, and deaths from malaria surged back to between 1 and 3 million per year - between 24 and 72 million to date.
In 2001, demand from countries where malaria was widespread led to a slight relaxation of the anti-DDT regime. In the Stockholm Convention of that year, the use of DDT was authorized - but only for applications that did not threaten the "integrity of the global ecosystem." This means that DDT is only available for indoor use, which can only protect those who live and work in houses with solid walls. The latter include the politicians and diplomats who negotiated the Stockholm Convention. People who live or work outside those walls continue to die.
Three Democides by False Morality continues: Part III, The Ban On Cloning
Monday, July 06, 2009
Death by Conservatism
" .... The Strongin-Goldbergs, in turn, had nine unsuccessful invitro attempts, and finally had to use marrow from an imperfectly matched unrelated donor to treat their son Henry, who was running out of time. He died of graft vs. host disease at the age of seven. .... One of the reasons that the Strongin-Goldberg family lost Henry was because research on PGD was stalled for a year and a half in the middle of their attempts to use it — stalled by government officials who called it stem cell research, and who feared a slippery slope, and designer babies, and parents who use their children for spare parts. Had this family not lost those 18 months of research time, their real life story might have had a different ending."
Read the whole story (click on the title, above.) Everyone dies, sooner or later, but how much sooner depends on whether the politicians in power are on the side of Man, the animal that lives by his mind - or on the side of faith, of ghosts, and of living and dying in fear of their stupid and arbitrary God. And, depending on which medical technology your life will eventually depend on, consider how many months or years of research time they already took away from your life.
Read the whole story (click on the title, above.) Everyone dies, sooner or later, but how much sooner depends on whether the politicians in power are on the side of Man, the animal that lives by his mind - or on the side of faith, of ghosts, and of living and dying in fear of their stupid and arbitrary God. And, depending on which medical technology your life will eventually depend on, consider how many months or years of research time they already took away from your life.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Sunk With The Tea
(No, I'm still posting the "three Democides" series - but I am not allocating a great deal of my time to blogging this year, and I decided to give temporary precedence to a current, real-time topic.)
The decision of some Objectivists to support, and to participate in, the "Tea Party Movement" has come to exactly the end that Ayn Rand predicted for such efforts. As Robert LeChevalier writes in the OActivists mailing list,
Those who advocate collaboration with the "Tea Party" movement sometimes cite Ayn Rand's one narrow exception to her caution against "unprincipled alliances:" "The only groups one may properly join today are ad hoc committees, i.e., groups organized to achieve a single, specific, clearly defined goal, on which men of differing views can agree." But in its original context (The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. 1, No. 7 January 3, 1972, "What Can One Do?") what Ayn Rand wrote was:
The decision of some Objectivists to support, and to participate in, the "Tea Party Movement" has come to exactly the end that Ayn Rand predicted for such efforts. As Robert LeChevalier writes in the OActivists mailing list,
Evidence is growing that many Tea Parties around the country are being subverted by those who neither share our values or the values on which this country is founded, and that they are paying lip service to them while manipulating the Tea Parties to dilute their effect (Democratic hacks, Libertarian dupes, Republican opportunists, or even very likely the police, by the way), or simply using them as a cash cow for any end you can imagine.Or, as one organizer of a "Tea Party" wrote to another OActivist,
I'm sure you're aware the focus of the Tea Parties is limited government, fiscal responsibility and free markets. Individual rights certainly doesn't contradict any of those key points but I don't feel it fits ....One of those slogans (none is specific or well-defined enough to call it a goal) is "fiscal responsibility." "Fiscal responsibility" is also the main slogan of ongoing proposals and campaigns, in several US states (and also at the federal level) to raise taxes (yes, I know that "fiscal responsibility" may also mean "cut spending," but Christian Republicans are not about to give up on the Christian principle that "we all have a responsibility to help the less fortunate.") And the claim that a campaign to raise taxes "does not contradict individual rights" could only be made by someone who has no idea of what rights are.
Those who advocate collaboration with the "Tea Party" movement sometimes cite Ayn Rand's one narrow exception to her caution against "unprincipled alliances:" "The only groups one may properly join today are ad hoc committees, i.e., groups organized to achieve a single, specific, clearly defined goal, on which men of differing views can agree." But in its original context (The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. 1, No. 7 January 3, 1972, "What Can One Do?") what Ayn Rand wrote was:
Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to "do something." ... It means that you help the defeat of your ideas and the victory of your enemies... The only groups one may properly join today are ad hoc committees, i.e., groups organized to achieve a single, specific, clearly defined goal, on which men of differing views can agree.Far from having "a single goal," the organizers of "Tea Parties" seldom list fewer than three or four. And even fewer of these are either specific or well-defined (the ambiguity of appeals to "fiscal responsibility" is just the last case-in-point.) The "Tea Party" movement is - in all respects - the paradigmatic embodiment of "we've got to do something." This means, you help the defeat of your ideas and the victory of your enemies. If only Ayn Rand were alive today to say, "I told you so."
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Three Democides by False Morality - Part I, Holodomor
The function of objective morality is to enlarge the quality and the span of human life. The result of false morality, and of its enforcement by law, is death. Prior to the last century, this death was meted out primarily to individuals who were believed, whether falsely or accurately, to have broken the many laws that enforced the false moralities of their age. The last century, beginning in the 1930s, added democide - mass death of millions, many of them visibly innocent of any individual breach of the proclaimed moral law - to false moralities' toll.
The author of the first democide by enforcement of a false morality was Joseph Stalin. Marx, Engels, and most of their Russian followers were consistent materialists, and had no use for the concept or the language of "morality." Stalin, who became the de facto dictator of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s, largely on the strength of his genuine proletarian origins was not, as far as anyone knows, either a systematic materialist or an Atheist. Stalin had been educated for priesthood in the Orthodox Christian Church, and there is controversy about whether or not he was duly ordained as an Orthodox priest. Two successive Patriarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church vouched for Stalin as an Orthodox Christian believer in good standing with the Church - and while their endorsement may have been made under duress, Stalin's understanding that he needed this endorsement was a radical turn away from the explicitly materialist stance of his predecessors. Stalin frequently appealed to "God's Will," both in his official speeches and in his everyday conversation. More than any other dictator in history, Stalin engineered popular assent to his power by appeal to (a false) "morality." It helped that Stalin's "Socialist Morality" was largely identical to the traditional Altruist "morality" of Orthodox Christianity.
Stalin was the first tyrant to use, possibly without any overt understanding, the fact that it was possible to eliminate humans by the million with relatively little direct use of gallows, gas chambers, or firing squads. It was enough to make it impossible for men to use their minds to support and extend their lives. The human is the animal that lives by its mind, and dies when denied its use.
By 1930 Stalin had achieved nearly complete totalitarian control of every aspect of life in the Soviet Union, including its economy. The only significant exception was agriculture. For a thousand years, what was now the Western quarter of the Soviet Union, and especially Ukraine, was the "Breadbasket of Europe," growing much of the Old Continent's harvest of wheat. Its productive, prosperous independent farmers (in Ukrainian "kulaks") were the Soviet Union's last men outside the economic power of the State. It was against them that Stalin deployed the first exercise of enforced "morality" as a means of democide.
Stalin drew on two religious notions. The first, whose roots go back to the pre-history of religion, is that food is not created by human agriculture, but is a holy gift of God or Gods, to be treated as sacred, and consumed only as part of a religious ritual. The second, peculiar to Christianity and going back to the New Testament episode of Jesus driving the money changers out of the Temple, is the notion that it is immoral, and sacrilegious, to trade, for selfish commercial profit, in the stuff of sacred religious ritual. Stalin's fusion of these notions was that food, the sacred stuff of life, belonged to all people, and for individuals to trade it for selfish profit was contrary to Socialist Morality. Therefore commercial trade in food was banned. Farms were systematically searched for grain that had not been turned over to the Soviet State. Farmers convicted of trading or hoarding grain were shot. The resulting famine, the Holodomor, killed between 7 and 15 million people, including 5 to 10 million Ukrainians. The Holodomor was also remarkable for the lack of any resistance. Because they were being murdered in the name of a "morality" that they also shared, Stalin's first democide enjoyed a unanimous sanction, and even a kind of endorsement, from its victims.
Next Part: Three Democides by False Morality - Part II, The Ban on DDT.
The author of the first democide by enforcement of a false morality was Joseph Stalin. Marx, Engels, and most of their Russian followers were consistent materialists, and had no use for the concept or the language of "morality." Stalin, who became the de facto dictator of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s, largely on the strength of his genuine proletarian origins was not, as far as anyone knows, either a systematic materialist or an Atheist. Stalin had been educated for priesthood in the Orthodox Christian Church, and there is controversy about whether or not he was duly ordained as an Orthodox priest. Two successive Patriarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church vouched for Stalin as an Orthodox Christian believer in good standing with the Church - and while their endorsement may have been made under duress, Stalin's understanding that he needed this endorsement was a radical turn away from the explicitly materialist stance of his predecessors. Stalin frequently appealed to "God's Will," both in his official speeches and in his everyday conversation. More than any other dictator in history, Stalin engineered popular assent to his power by appeal to (a false) "morality." It helped that Stalin's "Socialist Morality" was largely identical to the traditional Altruist "morality" of Orthodox Christianity.
Stalin was the first tyrant to use, possibly without any overt understanding, the fact that it was possible to eliminate humans by the million with relatively little direct use of gallows, gas chambers, or firing squads. It was enough to make it impossible for men to use their minds to support and extend their lives. The human is the animal that lives by its mind, and dies when denied its use.
By 1930 Stalin had achieved nearly complete totalitarian control of every aspect of life in the Soviet Union, including its economy. The only significant exception was agriculture. For a thousand years, what was now the Western quarter of the Soviet Union, and especially Ukraine, was the "Breadbasket of Europe," growing much of the Old Continent's harvest of wheat. Its productive, prosperous independent farmers (in Ukrainian "kulaks") were the Soviet Union's last men outside the economic power of the State. It was against them that Stalin deployed the first exercise of enforced "morality" as a means of democide.
Stalin drew on two religious notions. The first, whose roots go back to the pre-history of religion, is that food is not created by human agriculture, but is a holy gift of God or Gods, to be treated as sacred, and consumed only as part of a religious ritual. The second, peculiar to Christianity and going back to the New Testament episode of Jesus driving the money changers out of the Temple, is the notion that it is immoral, and sacrilegious, to trade, for selfish commercial profit, in the stuff of sacred religious ritual. Stalin's fusion of these notions was that food, the sacred stuff of life, belonged to all people, and for individuals to trade it for selfish profit was contrary to Socialist Morality. Therefore commercial trade in food was banned. Farms were systematically searched for grain that had not been turned over to the Soviet State. Farmers convicted of trading or hoarding grain were shot. The resulting famine, the Holodomor, killed between 7 and 15 million people, including 5 to 10 million Ukrainians. The Holodomor was also remarkable for the lack of any resistance. Because they were being murdered in the name of a "morality" that they also shared, Stalin's first democide enjoyed a unanimous sanction, and even a kind of endorsement, from its victims.
Next Part: Three Democides by False Morality - Part II, The Ban on DDT.
Sunday, June 07, 2009
GHF Climate-Disasters Report: Worse Than Fiction - A Lie
Roger Pielke writes: "A new report issued by the Global Humanitarian Forum ... is a methodological embarrassment and poster child for how to lie with statistics. ... The report is worse than fiction, it is a lie." (click on header above for the rest)
Friday, June 05, 2009
Exactly Why Late-Term Abortion IS Pro-Human-Life
The facts of reality that make the freedom to abort one's pregnancy, up to the moment of birth, a pre-requisite for living a life appropriate to Homo Sapiens (click on header.)
Monday, June 01, 2009
The Ayn Rand Center still needs quality control
The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights is the first Objectivist political action organization in history, and a learning curve is to be expected. Ayn Rand distinguished collaboration with those who share the same basic premises - which is to the advantage of the more consistent, in this case, to the advantage of the Objectivist - from collaboration with those whose basic premises are different, in which case collaboration advantages the more evil and irrational, who benefit from the sanction that collaboration gives them. Enlightenment-based Classical Liberals (Reason Magazine contributors such as Radley Balko, Virginia Postrel and Cathy Young, for example) are good potential allies. Supernaturalist Conservatives and populist/localist Libertarians, on the other hand, hold delusional premises - and giving them ideological credibility (and tainting our own) by collaborating with them can only be counterproductive. While individual Objectivists may well collaborate productively with non-Objectivist organizations on specific projects without appearing to endorse their ideologies, the Ayn Rand Center effectively lends Ayn Rand's name to organizations with whom it is seen to collaborate. But the task of distinguishing between those two categories of potential allies is hampered by America's current Pragmatist culture, which discourages even ideological organizations from openly stating their principles. Checking out the websites of potential allies, and identifying the premises underlying their political positions, is an essential component of ideological quality control - and an indispensable precondition of long-term political effectiveness.
I noticed that the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights is listed as a "Co-Sponsor" of the 09.12.09 Protest at the Capitol. Reading the list of sponsors, Ayn Rand's name is the only one that the average American will immediately recognize. The logo of the "Protest at the Capitol" shows, with the US Capitol in the background, three red fists, in the style of the old anti-draft Left Libertarian protests that some Objectivists joined back in the 1960s, prompting Ayn Rand to caution them, in the essay I cite in my April 5th blog post (below) against the hazards of unprincipled alliances. The impulse is understandable: slavery, whether by old means of conscription, or of the new threats of higher taxes, "national service," hyperinflation and so on, is despicable enough that even the most rational individualists will feel the impulse to look for allies. But emotions are not a guide to action. Alliances with nuts and cranks transfer the credibility of rational men to men who do not deserve to be made credible. Who are the other sponsors of this event?
The primary "National Sponsor" and main organizer of this event is, as can be told from the red fist logo, a Left Libertarian organization, one called "FreedomWorks Foundation." (When I wrote this blog entry I didn't know that FreedomWorks is a front for Dick Armey. See my comment #6, below.) Their idea of "Freedom" includes the "freedom" to make "free" permanent copies of rented DVDs to one's hard drive - regardless of copyright. Back before the present plague of Pragmatism, even Conservatives, much less Objectivists, would have had qualms at associating with such an outfit. But under the cover of Pragmatism, with its the rejection of principles qua principles, the Left Libertarian position (with its disregard of individualist principles - such as the principle that a creator rightly owns the product of his creative action - for the sake of some "larger" social or political "freedom") has a certain appeal to the sufficiently Pragmatist Conservative. After all, media producers, directors, entertainers and songwriters are big financial contributors to the "Left." If they can be deprived of a part of their income, the campaign coffers of the "Left" will be that much lighter. And about the principle of the creator's right to the product of his mind - "Principle? What's a 'Principle'? You talk like an Elitist Intellectual! The Enemy!" Yet if this principle is discarded, a protest against taxation is left without a moral foundation - and its participants can only look like objectors, not against taxation per se, but only against some specific ends to which they are being taxed.
So much for the organizers. What about the ARC's fellow co-sponsors? They come in two varieties. Some identify as "Conservatives." For example, here is the mission statement from the FAQ of a double co-sponsor, GrassFire, which also lists its ResistNet affiliate as a separate co-sponsor: Grassfire.org’s leadership team holds a strong and unwavering commitment to conservative, pro-family and pro-faith values. And those are the lesser evil.
The other co-sponsors ("Campaign For Liberty," "Young Americans for Liberty" - formerly "Students for Ron Paul." and so on) are "Ron Paul Libertarians" - anti-abortion, anti-immigration, anti-global-trade, "anti-militarist anti-Imperialists," believers that Iran would be harmless if Americans had not objected when "Iran wanted to control its own oil fields."
Nuts and cranks. And the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.
I noticed that the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights is listed as a "Co-Sponsor" of the 09.12.09 Protest at the Capitol. Reading the list of sponsors, Ayn Rand's name is the only one that the average American will immediately recognize. The logo of the "Protest at the Capitol" shows, with the US Capitol in the background, three red fists, in the style of the old anti-draft Left Libertarian protests that some Objectivists joined back in the 1960s, prompting Ayn Rand to caution them, in the essay I cite in my April 5th blog post (below) against the hazards of unprincipled alliances. The impulse is understandable: slavery, whether by old means of conscription, or of the new threats of higher taxes, "national service," hyperinflation and so on, is despicable enough that even the most rational individualists will feel the impulse to look for allies. But emotions are not a guide to action. Alliances with nuts and cranks transfer the credibility of rational men to men who do not deserve to be made credible. Who are the other sponsors of this event?
The primary "National Sponsor" and main organizer of this event is, as can be told from the red fist logo, a Left Libertarian organization, one called "FreedomWorks Foundation." (When I wrote this blog entry I didn't know that FreedomWorks is a front for Dick Armey. See my comment #6, below.) Their idea of "Freedom" includes the "freedom" to make "free" permanent copies of rented DVDs to one's hard drive - regardless of copyright. Back before the present plague of Pragmatism, even Conservatives, much less Objectivists, would have had qualms at associating with such an outfit. But under the cover of Pragmatism, with its the rejection of principles qua principles, the Left Libertarian position (with its disregard of individualist principles - such as the principle that a creator rightly owns the product of his creative action - for the sake of some "larger" social or political "freedom") has a certain appeal to the sufficiently Pragmatist Conservative. After all, media producers, directors, entertainers and songwriters are big financial contributors to the "Left." If they can be deprived of a part of their income, the campaign coffers of the "Left" will be that much lighter. And about the principle of the creator's right to the product of his mind - "Principle? What's a 'Principle'? You talk like an Elitist Intellectual! The Enemy!" Yet if this principle is discarded, a protest against taxation is left without a moral foundation - and its participants can only look like objectors, not against taxation per se, but only against some specific ends to which they are being taxed.
So much for the organizers. What about the ARC's fellow co-sponsors? They come in two varieties. Some identify as "Conservatives." For example, here is the mission statement from the FAQ of a double co-sponsor, GrassFire, which also lists its ResistNet affiliate as a separate co-sponsor: Grassfire.org’s leadership team holds a strong and unwavering commitment to conservative, pro-family and pro-faith values. And those are the lesser evil.
The other co-sponsors ("Campaign For Liberty," "Young Americans for Liberty" - formerly "Students for Ron Paul." and so on) are "Ron Paul Libertarians" - anti-abortion, anti-immigration, anti-global-trade, "anti-militarist anti-Imperialists," believers that Iran would be harmless if Americans had not objected when "Iran wanted to control its own oil fields."
Nuts and cranks. And the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
On Crimes Motivated By Collectivisms, And Their Proper Punishment
The recent expansion of so-called "hate crime" legislation by the US Congress has drawn a storm of condemnation from Conservatives and Libertarians, occasionally echoed by other observers, including some who consider themselves Objectivists. Yet if one is to actually apply Ayn Rand's philosophy to the evaluation of such laws, one needs to strip away the false labels and intrinsicist arguments - and evaluate what is really being legislated independently of either.
"Hate crime" is a bad label, because hate is just as much a part of violence that falls outside the scope of this legislation, as of violence punished by longer prison terms under it. What the legislation actually concerns (and what, unfortunately, only Objectivists can accurately name) is crime motivated by collectivism: by animus, not against the specific individual whom the criminal assaults or kills, but against a collective classification to which the victim happens to belong. How should such motivation affect the punishment?
There are three distinct (albeit closely interwoven) reasons why crimes are punished, and need to be punished. The first is retribution: the criminal has inflicted an injustice on the victim, and justly deserves punishment. The second is retaliation: the prospect of punishment reduces, proactively, the incidence of crime. The third is prevention: the incarceration of the criminal prevents him from committing additional crimes while incarcerated - and, if provided and made use of, rehabilitation services may reduce the criminal's inclination to commit additional crimes after his eventual release.
How is each of these considerations affected when a crime is motivated by collectivism?
In an objective legal system, retribution is proportional to the product of two measurements: the harm done to the victim, and the irrationality of the criminal's action. If it were shown that no non-consensual harm was done to anyone, or that an accused person's action had been rational (for example, to save his own life in an emergency) then no criminal sanctions are objectively called for. To harm another individual not because of anything that individual has chosen or has done, but from bigotry about facts that were outside the victim's choice, such as where the victim was born, or her race, or her sexual orientation and so on - in other words, crime motivated by collectivism - is, outside of some barely imaginable emergency contexts, at the outer extreme of irrationality, and therefore at the outer extremity of injustice that deserves retribution.
Retaliation works indirectly, by enhancing, through the prospect of punishment, the disincentive against irrational (and therefore unjust) action. A greater irrationality - and collectivism is close to the acme of irrationality, exceeded only by such self-sacrifice as attempting to carry out a suicide bombing - needs to be met by the prospect of proportionally greater retaliation.
Similarly for prevention. Someone who strikes a cheating spouse or an abusive boss is acting out, however irrationally, against a specific individual's actions; such a person is not likely to endanger, after his release, anyone other than someone who would then choose to marry him or to hire him in spite of his criminal record. Once the requirements of retribution and retaliation have been met, such a person can be safely released. On the other hand, a collectivist who is out to bash or kill Mexicans or Jews or homosexuals or Blacks cannot be released, when there are many other potential victims against whom he bears the same anti-rational, collective animus, and whom his release would put in harm's way.
So by all means, let us call so-called "hate crimes" by their right name: crimes motivated by collectivism. And punish them accordingly.
"Hate crime" is a bad label, because hate is just as much a part of violence that falls outside the scope of this legislation, as of violence punished by longer prison terms under it. What the legislation actually concerns (and what, unfortunately, only Objectivists can accurately name) is crime motivated by collectivism: by animus, not against the specific individual whom the criminal assaults or kills, but against a collective classification to which the victim happens to belong. How should such motivation affect the punishment?
There are three distinct (albeit closely interwoven) reasons why crimes are punished, and need to be punished. The first is retribution: the criminal has inflicted an injustice on the victim, and justly deserves punishment. The second is retaliation: the prospect of punishment reduces, proactively, the incidence of crime. The third is prevention: the incarceration of the criminal prevents him from committing additional crimes while incarcerated - and, if provided and made use of, rehabilitation services may reduce the criminal's inclination to commit additional crimes after his eventual release.
How is each of these considerations affected when a crime is motivated by collectivism?
In an objective legal system, retribution is proportional to the product of two measurements: the harm done to the victim, and the irrationality of the criminal's action. If it were shown that no non-consensual harm was done to anyone, or that an accused person's action had been rational (for example, to save his own life in an emergency) then no criminal sanctions are objectively called for. To harm another individual not because of anything that individual has chosen or has done, but from bigotry about facts that were outside the victim's choice, such as where the victim was born, or her race, or her sexual orientation and so on - in other words, crime motivated by collectivism - is, outside of some barely imaginable emergency contexts, at the outer extreme of irrationality, and therefore at the outer extremity of injustice that deserves retribution.
Retaliation works indirectly, by enhancing, through the prospect of punishment, the disincentive against irrational (and therefore unjust) action. A greater irrationality - and collectivism is close to the acme of irrationality, exceeded only by such self-sacrifice as attempting to carry out a suicide bombing - needs to be met by the prospect of proportionally greater retaliation.
Similarly for prevention. Someone who strikes a cheating spouse or an abusive boss is acting out, however irrationally, against a specific individual's actions; such a person is not likely to endanger, after his release, anyone other than someone who would then choose to marry him or to hire him in spite of his criminal record. Once the requirements of retribution and retaliation have been met, such a person can be safely released. On the other hand, a collectivist who is out to bash or kill Mexicans or Jews or homosexuals or Blacks cannot be released, when there are many other potential victims against whom he bears the same anti-rational, collective animus, and whom his release would put in harm's way.
So by all means, let us call so-called "hate crimes" by their right name: crimes motivated by collectivism. And punish them accordingly.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Collaboration: Getting Ayn Rand 180-Degrees Wrong
The economic policies of the Obama administration are an increasingly evil continuation of the evil policies of the Bush years, and need to be opposed. Because of Obama's self-identification as a Liberal, most Christian Conservatives have switched sides, and now are (at least until they again have a Christianist in the White House) the main publicly visible source of opposition. It is predictably tempting for wannabe-Objectivists to collaborate with that opposition. But wait: did not Ayn Rand write something (back in 1964, re-published in "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal") about "The Anatomy of Compromise?" Didn't it have something to do with being more consistent than the other side?
Here are some examples of what advocates of collaboration with Christian conservatives have been writing in recent weeks:
"In any competition between people with the same basic principles, the more consistent one wins."
"In opposite principles, the more consistent one wins – due to its consistency. Any collaboration serves to undermine the inconsistent collaborator."
"In any cooperation between two parties, the more consistent one wins."
All of which are the precise opposite of what Rand actually wrote: "In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins." In context, Ayn Rand wrote:
And to put "the more evil or irrational one" into the context of collaboration with Christian Conservatives: all appeals to self-sacrifice in our civilization ultimately derive from the Christian doctrine of "Imitatio Dei," of imitating Jesus' ultimate act of self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice, not for the sake of the good and the virtuous, but for the unearned salvation of sinners. Ayn Rand's shrugging Atlas is a vision of the exact opposite of Jesus bearing the Cross: it is the vision of the heroic Spirit - the heroic Mind - refusing to bear the burden of sacrifice. "Going Galt" means nothing if it does not mean refusing - totally and absolutely - to "imitate Christ."
So what is one to make of Randians who give favorable references and Web links to Christianists, to the likes of Michelle Malkin - in the context of "going Galt?" Stupidity? Opportunism? A symptom of minds destroyed, even among wannabe-Objectivists, through the pervasive indoctrination of children into Pragmatism by the Comprachicos who run American schools?
If you want to work against the culture of self-sacrifice, and for the Human's individual human right to pursue his own happiness on Earth, then, and especially in contexts where you find yourself on the same side of the barricade with people of mixed premises who on other issues advocate for evil, the advocate of individual rights must make sure that his own basic principles are clearly and openly defined. The alternative, of hiding principles in the name of collaboration, amounts in the long-term to philosophical and practical suicide. And to those who "cited" the exact opposite of what Ayn Rand wrote: if you venture to cite Ayn Rand, at least try first to grasp what she actually said.
Does this mean (thanks, to Al Brown, for asking in Comments) that Objectivists must refrain from any and all collaborations and alliances in our political activism? No, not at all. When a potential collaborator shares our basic basic principles, the most consistent among the allies - the Objectivist - has the most to win. It is only in collaboration with those, whose basic principles are different from ours, that Objectivists lose. In politics, those basic principles are:
To collaborate with someone who differs with any of these basic principles is unavoidably counterproductive. For example, consider someone who believes that rights are only granted to men by the deity of a supernatural religion, and are handed down by revelation in his religion's holy scriptures. Unavoidably, this man's support for my right to pursue my own happiness on Earth will end where the prohibitions of his religious scriptures begin. My collaboration will make him stronger, and thus eventually better able to limit and infringe my rights - better able to undermine my ability to live according to my own basic principles, and eventually my ability to live a life appropriate to my Self as a human being - or to live at all. What good would it do me to slow down the growth of taxes this year, if it strengthened, as my current "allies," those who would stop the development of the cloning-based medical technologies on which my life is likely to depend a decade from now?
It is rational for me, in the political context, to collaborate with people who are not Objectivists in other things - but only with those who agree with me on basic principles of politics. Collaboration with Classical Liberals, for example, is often productive: they share our basic principles, but we are more consistent than they are in the application of those principles - and therefore the collaboration is to our advantage. Collaboration with Christianists, on the other hand - with Michelle Malkin and the like - would be a means, not to the advancement of my life and happiness on Earth, but to their destruction.
Here are some examples of what advocates of collaboration with Christian conservatives have been writing in recent weeks:
"In any competition between people with the same basic principles, the more consistent one wins."
"In opposite principles, the more consistent one wins – due to its consistency. Any collaboration serves to undermine the inconsistent collaborator."
"In any cooperation between two parties, the more consistent one wins."
All of which are the precise opposite of what Rand actually wrote: "In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins." In context, Ayn Rand wrote:
1. In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins.
2. In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins.
3. When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side.
And to put "the more evil or irrational one" into the context of collaboration with Christian Conservatives: all appeals to self-sacrifice in our civilization ultimately derive from the Christian doctrine of "Imitatio Dei," of imitating Jesus' ultimate act of self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice, not for the sake of the good and the virtuous, but for the unearned salvation of sinners. Ayn Rand's shrugging Atlas is a vision of the exact opposite of Jesus bearing the Cross: it is the vision of the heroic Spirit - the heroic Mind - refusing to bear the burden of sacrifice. "Going Galt" means nothing if it does not mean refusing - totally and absolutely - to "imitate Christ."
So what is one to make of Randians who give favorable references and Web links to Christianists, to the likes of Michelle Malkin - in the context of "going Galt?" Stupidity? Opportunism? A symptom of minds destroyed, even among wannabe-Objectivists, through the pervasive indoctrination of children into Pragmatism by the Comprachicos who run American schools?
If you want to work against the culture of self-sacrifice, and for the Human's individual human right to pursue his own happiness on Earth, then, and especially in contexts where you find yourself on the same side of the barricade with people of mixed premises who on other issues advocate for evil, the advocate of individual rights must make sure that his own basic principles are clearly and openly defined. The alternative, of hiding principles in the name of collaboration, amounts in the long-term to philosophical and practical suicide. And to those who "cited" the exact opposite of what Ayn Rand wrote: if you venture to cite Ayn Rand, at least try first to grasp what she actually said.
Does this mean (thanks, to Al Brown, for asking in Comments) that Objectivists must refrain from any and all collaborations and alliances in our political activism? No, not at all. When a potential collaborator shares our basic basic principles, the most consistent among the allies - the Objectivist - has the most to win. It is only in collaboration with those, whose basic principles are different from ours, that Objectivists lose. In politics, those basic principles are:
1. Individual human rights, the necessary preconditions for being able to live a life appropriate to a human, are facts of reality, objectively knowable from the evidence of the human senses, and neither arbitrary nor supernatural.
2. These pre-conditions include non-interference by others with one's life, liberty, and the pursuit of one's own happiness on Earth.
3. The only proper function of government is to secure these rights - by bringing the legitimate use of force among individuals under the control of objective law.
To collaborate with someone who differs with any of these basic principles is unavoidably counterproductive. For example, consider someone who believes that rights are only granted to men by the deity of a supernatural religion, and are handed down by revelation in his religion's holy scriptures. Unavoidably, this man's support for my right to pursue my own happiness on Earth will end where the prohibitions of his religious scriptures begin. My collaboration will make him stronger, and thus eventually better able to limit and infringe my rights - better able to undermine my ability to live according to my own basic principles, and eventually my ability to live a life appropriate to my Self as a human being - or to live at all. What good would it do me to slow down the growth of taxes this year, if it strengthened, as my current "allies," those who would stop the development of the cloning-based medical technologies on which my life is likely to depend a decade from now?
It is rational for me, in the political context, to collaborate with people who are not Objectivists in other things - but only with those who agree with me on basic principles of politics. Collaboration with Classical Liberals, for example, is often productive: they share our basic principles, but we are more consistent than they are in the application of those principles - and therefore the collaboration is to our advantage. Collaboration with Christianists, on the other hand - with Michelle Malkin and the like - would be a means, not to the advancement of my life and happiness on Earth, but to their destruction.
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