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ZSorenson

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  1. Back to this. I've thought about it some more. I've realized that singles can be discriminated against because the issue of equal protection doesn't apply. The only essential characteristic to differentiate between single vs. couple is 'personhood'. 1 person vs. 2 persons. Equal protection rules prohibit the use of gender which is a non-essential characteristic. The idea is that gender is non-essential to marriage, so can't be the basis for differentiation. The government can rule whatever it wants concerning 'persons' and marriage - including special treatment and how many people can be involved etc. Fine and dandy. But gender is essential to marriage. Child bearing might not be, neither race, nor gender essential to roles - but that marriage is established in society because it is a long-standing tradition, that that tradition is based on the overwhelming historical and cultural correlation between monogamy and men and women bearing children together, and the fact that the legislative and constitutional process (i.e.: of the institution - State of California - that defines marriage) have said so all mean that gender is essential to marriage. Jesus, you all scared me out of the argument the Conservatives have been using, but upon time, reflection, and reason, I've realized it's logically sound. Marriage in society is a gender-based institution. The vast majority of men and women would never engage in what marriage is with anyone if they weren't doing it with the opposite gender. Just because a minority can and does does not negate the essential role of gender in marriage. If it weren't for gender, marriage wouldn't exist except as a marginal institution for gays. Society has instituted marriage because it feels that marriage is an institution of significance in society. It is significant because the vast majority of society is attracted to the opposite sex. Granted, there's no good general argument for why gays should be prohibited from this institution. Their inclusion does not necessarily affect the position of significance of heterosexual marriage (well, as a religious institution maybe, which many believe marriage to be anyway, so I guess there's a general case there). Still, that doesn't affect the constitutional argument. Gender might not be essential to roles within marriage, but that does not equate to gender being non-essential to marriage. Race might not be essential to marriage, as significant portions of all races marry in the essential spirit of the tradition, but that does not make gender somehow non-essential. Honestly, just logically, for marriage according to the reasons why society instituted it, gender is essential. Men and women like living together. So gays do too? That doesn't make the majority situation necessarily discriminatory (constitutionally, I mean; I think it does generally). Marriage would be what marriage is if there were no gays, so the argument about discrimination fails. Unfortunately, this new understanding of mine lends greater legitimacy to marriage. I see now why constitutionally marriage is legitimate in general. And so now I see why Judge Walker's argument is trash. My bias was that I was okay with homosexual marriage and didn't see it as particularly differnt from heterosexual marriage. Nor did I see the need for a special legal status. But logically when viewed according to what marriage is as a societal institution - i.e.: why it even has a legal status - gender is essential. I had integrated this subconsciously, and knew this ruling contravened something, but I was too attached to my bias about marriage to recognize what was contradictory. In other words (subconsciously being too strong), I knew the reason was because of gender, but was unwilling to embrace that because it seemed wrong intutively because of my bias. So I danced around some other argument. The conclusion is the same though: use of judicial discretion to put opinion in the place of law. A judge could just as easily pass a health care mandate by assuming that not buying health care is regulated commerce. The argument being that not buying necessarily implies future commerce because it is his opinion that society will definitely pay for this person's health needs at that time (this is Obama's actual argument, before it became that the mandate was just a tax). It may be true, even legally true, that society will pay for that person's health needs. A court might have even ruled that a law to the effect of providing free health care can't discriminate based on pre-existing conditions (irrelevant to the choice of having prior coverage, but to make a plausible parallel about equal protection). But it is not constitutionally true that society must pay for those needs, and therefore not buying insurance would not necessarily correspond to commerce, and cannot therefore be mandated through Congress's commerce powers. When judges read whatever the f&*k they want into the constitution, that is bad, because it subverts the rule of law at a foundational, constitutional, level. Jesus, that gender is not essential to marriage is his f&*king opinion! His cited precedents do no imply that, despite the camoflauge.
  2. From another thread, I've concluded that tyranny is intrinsic to anarchy. In a state of anarchy, there is no common and objective standard established to provide definitions of objective concepts of law for men to use in their interactions. Because men exist at different levels of knowledge, they cannot act rationally within a society of men without such standards. Not being able to act rationally, they have no liberty, only muscles. What is best in life? Governments are tyrannical only inasmuch as they fail to identify man's nature as a rational being. Or, inasmuch as they represent a partial step up from a state of anarchy. Governments give men liberty when they treat them as rational creatures, tyranny when they fail to. More tyranny leads to more anarchy. Look at the fall of Rome, or the history of Collectivism and post-Soviet Russia (etc.) If you want anarchy because it's so great, then vote for tyranny so that it can treat men as irrational creatures and slowly spend and spoil the gains of civilization. Eventually, the tyrants will no longer have the means to power. Centralization of power is a product of reason. That tyrants have access to these means is a short-term occurance and you will notice that it trends towards anarchy. So, anarchy vs. tyranny vs. liberty vs. progress is not the issue. The issue is whether men identify their rational natures or not. Whether they decide to depend on reason for survival or not. If so, the trend is TOWARDS liberty, if not, it is AWAY from libert. If so, it is TOWARDS government, if not it is TOWARDS chaos. Tyrants appear to be 'governmental' because they hijack civilization's effort to organize itself and centralize law to promote liberty, and use that centralization to exploit short-term resources produced because of liberty. So again, it's not about government vs. not government. That is the EFFECT. The cause is something else. So tyranny is not intrinsic to governments. It only seems that way because the more developed a civilization, the greater the temporary power of the tyrant. [EDIT - tyrants who cause anarchy and regression sometimes realize their mistake and liberalize. Likewise, 'great kings' more often then not are known for legal institutions they found rather than those they pull back This is seen historically. While these examples produce no black&white cases of free vs tyrannical government, they do show the correlation between progress and the rule of law. Tyranny by definition is the subversion of the rule of law into whims]
  3. The issue with Libertarianism is, again, deeper than the mere political or even ethical. Why is Libertarianism 'right'? I couldn't exactly articulate their most common philosophies, but on the face of it this fellow's argument is rather pragmatist. If the principle is liberty for liberty's sake, then any people or group of people have to be thought of as equally free without taking into context the actual essential content of their identities. That's the flaw here, a refusal to even identify the groups or their nature, a philosophical commitment to not identify them. I can't say why they do this, but I'd bet it is tied to their metaphysics on down [Edit - I figured it out a bit better lower down]. Nevertheless, a simple argument will refute this. Just say that the government holds a commission, granted by all people in the society, to enforce the laws. Democracy is the vehicle for establishing common consent. So the government is acting equally with others because it is fundamentally composed of others - it is the agent of all. In other words, government is granted unanimous permission to enforce the laws achieved by vote. For a constitutional republic, restrictions are put on what the vote outcome can be, but the format is basically a social contract like a pure democracy. Those restrictions grant greater legitimacy to outcomes that some might disagree with. They pay for the right to vote and live in the system by putting up with the outcomes of that system. Thus, participation in the system does not mean that a person gives consent to never commit crimes, but rather that they give consent to the enforcement of justice. This is the difference between trying to commit a crime and escape justice, and rebellion against the system of justice to overthrow it (the two can concur, but are very different, as some criminals use the law when they decided it's to their advantage). In fact, this nuance is the justification for retributive law. The idea is that society does not consent to uphold the law, they consent to its enforcement. It is therefore dependent on the enforcer to execute the laws and punishments in order for them to be of effect. There's a reason why this nuance exists as part of the construction of the social contract, which I will mention shortly. Now, the 'social contract' concept may or may not be Objectivist (at this point in my discussion), but it is the justification included in our actual legal philosophy of the USA. So the only variable remaining is the question of secession. If you encounter anyone else's property, public or private, you are subject to their rules and therefore their 'social contract'. What if you don't want to live under 'their' rules, and will not ever cross over to 'their' property? Actually, that's sort of the idea (according to non-Leftist understandings of it). Keep in mind, though, that if your property contains some justifiable claim by the part of someone else's 'social contract', they might apply their law to you. This is actually what the laws of war and diplomacy are all about. And in the international realm you do have a sort of perfection of the libertarian-anarchist world view. Different actors work out their differences according to established norms in an anarcho-libertarian framework. But again, what if you don't like that, and want to move to Wyoming where nobody lives? Sorry, what if the USA explored, claimed, defended with their Army, and oversaw assignment of deed, or organized the future assignment of deed for those who sought it from within their system for that land? You would not have a right to it, they most certainly would. So, the anarcho-libertarian argument fails on logical grounds for the same reasons it fails pragmatically. Pragmatically, anarchy WOULD lead to competing warlords and mafias (I know libertarians would contest this, so lets just assume it might be true for now, with evidence to believe it possibly could be). Why? Because when people are forced to adopt a new set of rules of behavior for each and every person they meet - given the lack of any standard - the laws of chaos mathematics favor the emergence of sources of order or common law. Libertarians might agree, saying that that's the point. The problem is that these sources of order will naturally emerge along lines of material resources, not people's abstract preferences. So, force and resource distribution will guide the emergence of order, not whether or not people are satisfied with these arrangements personally. More likely than not, the strong will get more. It's a flaw of analysis, frankly, and is therefore sort of pathetic. The world began in a state of anarchy - the libertarian dream world. Our governments of today are directly evolved from that - hence the nuance - our governments are natural constructs more so than deliberate - they are evolving to be more deliberate though. You don't evolve into anarchy, you evolve out of it. But their bizarre commitment to liberty for liberty's sake as some metaphysical primary is probably the cause of this mistake. This mistake is to treat all identities as equal, with non-identification as a necessary precondition for this treatment. Now, as for the Objectivist view, human identity is well established. Humans exist and therefore have rights intrinsic to them. These rights are based on what actions and activities are intrinsic to humanity. Those rights are infringed only by other humans. Therefore it is right for human, sustaining the actions and activities intrinsic to them, to act against the actions, activities, and therefore actors that interefere with those actions and activities. Libertarianism, as a primary, refuses to identify what is 'right' for human beings to do. That is the basis of Libertarianism - now that I think of it - to prevent any defintion of man's nature from being established. To preserve to man a non-identity. This way he's 'free' to 'be whatever he wants'. Tyranny is the result of society letting man 'be whatever he wants', or basically refusing to identify man's nature. The enlightenment (and Greco-Roman, Chinese, etc. political philosophy) was all about identifying man and establishing systems to create order for him. The alternative is barbarism and warlords. They knew that, which is why they were okay with tyranny. The medieval serfs put up with kings because they brought more liberty than the marauding Goth armies. Libertarian, I guess, equate identifying man's nature with tyranny, because they look at systems of government as tyrannical. Again, a failure of analysis, anarchy is a source of much greater tyranny. Let me say it: the Soviet Union was better than ancient Mongolia (unless you were a strong warrior, in which case you might carve a niche in some cave). The Soviet Union had industry, despite its terrible flaws and death camps. It parrotted most of its technology, but did develop some. And at least it had infrastructure for distributing and implementing that technology. Wait, would I prefer the Soviet Union to ancient Mongolia. Only the romantic individualist in me says no. The reasonable man realizes - holy crap - that yes I would. That is, of course with a direct choice. If ancient Mongolia were populated with reasonable Westerners that might establish free civilization, with a %10 chance, over the decades, I would choose ancient Mongolia. The last question now is: how would a pure Objectivist government differ from a very limited Constitutional Republic? Actually, I think even Ayn Rand would say not by necessarily that much. But for the hell of it, what would a pure Objectivist government look like in contrast? Well, rights are essential to man's nature, not his specific activities. So laws would differ depending on impact. For example, someone could pollute a river if nobody fished from it. But if someone did, the polluter could have a legal requirement placed on him that would cost him economically. Therefore, there MUST be a mechanism for creating laws that is representative of the people currently under the scope of a government. Two tablet style 'objective law' won't cut it. However, the rights of lawmaking are not retained by the people. The rights are intrinsic to humanity and Objective. This could mean that lawmaking would be arbitrative almost. You have to argue why a law is necessary to uphold your rights in order for it to be passed. A sort of due process on the law making side. WOW! Would that change our country today (think anti-trust). Judicial systems are today objective enough. The executive is also uncontroversial beyond the taxation issue (which is non-essential to form of government). Objectivist government would reject the 'pay to play' theory of the social contract (evolved from a state of anarchy). This is what I mentioned whereby you pay for legal protection by agreeing to honor the outcome of democracy. By rejecting this, you have serious concerns about political legitimacy. Let's say legislation is passed arbitratively, but you don't like it conceptually. In a social contract, you are inherently 'okay' with laws you disagree with, because you acknowledge that's part of the deal. In an Objectivist government, in theory, every rational person would agree with every law. Law enforcement would cover failures of self-regulation, or impact the few criminals who are alien to reason and therefore their own human nature. Nevertheless, and again I think Ayn Rand agrees here, part of human nature is that even rational people can exist at different levels of understanding. She would say 'let reality judge'. What if reality can't judge whether similar inventions invented around the same time should be intellectually protected or not? How do you fit this into a concept of government that is nonetheless more than a pragmatic consensus? How do you accept the objective legitimacy of a government that allows for a plurality of knowledge (as opposed to opinion, which often differs basically because of the former issue)? There's a practical answer, which is a limited Constitutional Republic. But is there a solid philosophical answer? Thinking... Okay, the answer lies with the answer to the question: Why are humans the only ones who can infringe other humans' rights? Can't nature kill and destroy the rational efforts of men? Yes, but humans can use reason to destroy reason. They can employ a rational process to justify, say, theft. "If I let him produce, I can then come and steal from him." Man responds to nature with reason: plan for contingency, build dam, make spear to fight bear. Criminals who act as criminals fall into a state of nature, something to contend with rather than to reason with. So again, why would humans uniquely be the infringers on other humans? Consent. Think Atlas Shrugged. Think egoistically. A thief whom you permit to come and take from you is created by you. You have refused to place the theif with the rest of nature and treat him as such. You are granting him the status of a rational being by allowing his continually theivery. He is not to be contended with, but rather, reasoned with. You beg to have less stolen next time. You plead for more merciful treatment. So, laws enacted that you disagree with are legitimate so long as the process to create them is rational, based on rational principles, by men worthy to be considered rational. So the process and government is therefore legitimate so long as it only makes room for reason. This is why legislation must be arbitrative, because there must be rational just cause for any law that must be rationally defended before enactment. A legislature cannot be judge and jury here, as recent history has proven. Those who decide the rationality of a law cannot also decide the standard for its rationality. Seperating the two preserves the process against human barbarism, because a dedicated step is built into the law. Also, representation cannot be considered purely legitimate. There is enough evidence that a mass population does not have the requisite knowledge to rationally decide on each and every issue. But you have to protect against the elites who would use their position of power vis-a-vis information to pull one over on the rest of society. Thus, the legislative process would have to include stakeholders, just like the judicial process. If your state doesn't have border problems (simply: smuggling of stolen goods), you shouldn't vote on the procedure for dealing with the issue of crime related to the smuggling unless there's a justifiable relationship between these efforts and your stolen goods. You'd have to give weight to different stakeholders depending. This implies a compartamentalization of law, which already basically exists in any federal system. You could have a 'tribune' to represent the whole society marginally in any given case, on the assumption that the system of law is common, and so even the most marginal issue might affect everybody. I'm just speculating now. Long story short: Objectivism requires a government monopoly on force, because the legitimacy of force is subject to reason, and reason can only be established between men by an established, rigid, transparent, universal and common process. Your reasoning might be that self-defense might have been justified: "Grandma digging in my trash had to be blasted to hell!", but grandma might beg to differ despite her trespass. Law allows knowledge between men to be integrated by applying conceptual common denominators despite differences in total knowledge or perception. A law is an open-ended concept, that applies to many specific situations, but outside of those situations is nevertheless understood. That 'outside-ness' is what makes it common, because it applies not to men but to their objective acts. Ha, Objectivist epistemology is the only good explanation for civilization's form of law. Ayn Rand $trike$ again b$$che$!! An Objectivist government would require these processes sufficiently insulated from human subjectivity, for the purpose of identifying which actions constitute the infringement of rational rights, followed by a process to reconcile the issue proportionate to the infringement. The form of government is constrained to strictly fulfill that purpose. Mind you that a man does not consign himself to non-humanity through one illegal act, only that in that act he acted barbarically, and so the punishment must be proportional. Mass murder is inhuman, so the man may ethically deserve execution. As for form of government, hell, you could have a 20 councils at each level of government. It would be practically inefficient if philosophically sound. So the trick is finding the optimal balance. I'd say a system of judges that pass up-down choices to a legislature that acts quite like a jury, while also passing enforcement authority to an actual executive.
  4. This is very long, for which I do not apologize as I have written it and posted it. I only ask that you read it for the proper reasons: that it interests you. Thus, I would not like to see criticisms for the length per se. If you do not read or reply, I can take that as evidence enough of disapproval. If specific content is of concern, I welcome debate. Only note that the length itself means that any debates have to be about specific statements or facts, and even better if these are about the more general points I make. A summary is due as well: I posit that the Tea Party is an inevitable consequence of the evolution of America's culture of political socialization. This socialization refers to the legitimacy of the political system to the population in cultural terms. I argue that the dominant culture of socialization in American has not been essentially based on individual rights, but that it can be if the Tea Party succeeds as a movement. Here is my analysis: With less than a month until the 2010 midterm elections, the time has come for many to reflect on the nature and origin of the Tea Party. While the Tea Party has been around for over a year, and has arguably been a significant phenomenon as a curious and unique manifestation of political energy in the story of the American Republic, the anticipated effect of this movement on the upcoming election has finally been recognized. The phenomenon has become a force. We don't know what the full and final effects of this force will be. It has been argued that the American Constitution has facilitated the evolution of a number of different American Republics. Certain elections and administrations mark the evolution of the federal government into new forms that represent new relationships between government and the people. Among these: Jackson's populism, Lincoln's unionism, Roosevelt's entitlements, and so forth. It is argued that this most recent Tea Party phenomenon will push America into a yet another new form of government. Will we see a significant change in the role of the federal government? I can't imagine we will. I think we could say so if changes such as the repeal of the federal minimum wage, the elimination Dept. of Education, Commerce, Energy and so forth are effected. The American way of life has long meant freedom from the fear of actual failure in life. No one will starve, no one will break bones, no one will work hard enough to render permanent harm to their bodies over the course of their careers. We won't accept these conditions. But we outsource these conditions to other countries. I maintain that these economic principles still hold true: 1) Robust growth is necessary in order to afford the benefits that protect those at society's margins from suffering 2) Our industrial economy has not yet developed to the point where robust growth is possible without cheap labor. If we don't grow, the margins will have to suffer: all the rich won't even have enough money to pay for all the needs of the poor. We may someday, but have not yet, integrated the technology into our industrial production chain, that will render cheap labor unnecessary. Once upon a time, the world had small populations, and also was content - of necessity - to suffer the ravages of disease and famine. Industrialization changed both of these factors. Now, because of our population size, we must have industry or millions will most certainly perish. And if we hope to live with our level of life-saving sophistication, again we depend on an industrial economy. What this has to do with the Tea Party is that the political struggle, whose essence is at the heart of the current movement, has its roots in the social response to the Industrial Revolution. We think of smokestacks as relics of a distant, Dickensian past. As if the fog of history covers this period only slightly less densely than that of knights, castles, and dragon. And yet, our political memory is much more fresh. We remember TR, and Wilson. The Progressives, Hoover, and FDR are vibrant figures in the discussions we have about our current political situation. This should serve as evidence that despite the seeming distance of our pre-industrial past, in fact many of the political and social questions that arose during that period are as relevant and unanswered today as they have ever been. This is important, because the fundamental premise that the Tea Party exists to challenge, is that these questions have been eternally answered. There is a line of thinking that a modern society is so complex that it necessarily requires large government bureaucracies to function without chaos a social unrest. This is what the Tea Party challenges. The debate goes back to the time of the Progressives, at the turn of the 20th century. In that time, the notion that the federal government would be involved in economics was outrageous. Not only would many oppose it, but it simply had never been done. It was outside of the experience of the country. And yet, so was much of what was happening due to industrialization. Consider the case of Standard Oil. Many feared that Standard Oil was too rich, and too powerful. We often fail to acknowledge that this accumulation of wealth to levels never before seen corresponds directly to a never before seen increase in the use and availability of lantern oil in a society. For those angered at Standard's position, they need only decide to forgo the nighttime light that humanity had lived without for so many millenia prior. But they would not. Instead, people clamored to fix an 'injustice' in the national economy. It was the Republicans who championed this. Granted, social justice was not their concern. The vitality and position of the Republic as master in society was their concern. Anti-trust was a show of force, in an age of sudden tycoons, and captains of industry. Though Standard's competitors maintained a much smaller share of the market, the competition they offered was fierce. Standard Oil's position in the market was a consequence only of its ability to offer more for less, which it had to constantly do better at, in order to survive as market master. So, American society's response to industrialization - in this context and example - can be seen as a failure to understand the economic facts at hand. Many American communities paid subsidies to get rail lines to their towns, only to sue companies as sufficient traffic to fill those lines led to track closings and loss on investment. The premise that no line was built in the first place, because economically it couldn't be sustained, this was lost on many. And this is without mentioning the bizarre doctrine of social justice, which seemed to treat economic advances as manna from God, to be split and shared amongst scattered Israel. The rational, deliberate nature of the efforts to industrialize wealth production was not understood by the masses who demanded this justice. But the advocates of this doctrine, loud, boisterous, appealing to the best and worst of humanity and Western culture, drove their point home. Not all accepted their claims, and in fact even American labor unions were skeptical of the 'pinkos'. Nevertheless, it was the newness, the novelty and therefore misunderstood nature of industrialization, that made Americans complacent as the freedom that made it possible was under attack. Note that in 1910, industry was still rather novel. For reference in 2010, industry was about as developed as computers. The first railroads came into place around the mid-19th century, the first computers by the mid-20th. 2000-2010 marked the maturing of the internet, likewise the automobile from 1900-1910. By 2010, we have not yet decided how to regulate the internet. In fact, there is substantial opposition to doing so. We have barely begun to tax it, and there are no current laws on content or access to content. It is new, but perhaps in 100 years, once regulated, people will scoff at the notion of the internet being 'free and open' as 'impossible in such a complex society'. So, when those such as Woodrow Wilson rose to power with claims of subverting industry to scientific bureaucratic controls, while many vocally opposed such an idea, most were rather ambivalent. Industry was appreciated, accepted as part of society, but its full implications were perhaps not fully understood. And so Wilson got his way, especially with a war to justify his controls. And with war we see the relevant strain of American politics that perhaps defines its course throughout its history. America was founded because of a war, and political socialization for our two and a half centuries has been based off of how we identify with those wars. For American culture, American liberty has not been the story of individual enlightenment through liberty, but rather of collective salvation in liberty. Liberty has been earned by the shedding of the blood of the people. Its value lies therein, and Americans are taught to value liberty for this reason above all others. Granted, perhaps not individually. But our collective devotion to liberty, that which unites us politically and socially, is a devotion to the sacrifices of our compatriots for the sake of America as a whole. The issue isn't belief in philosophical principles, the issue is whether one sustains or does not sustain the legitimacy of a political system comprised of others in making decisions about one's life. Lincoln wrote about the effect of the Revolutionary War on creating a united America, and perhaps wittingly or unwittingly oversaw the war that would recommit the Union to Unionism. But this civil war alienated half the country, and occurred at an unfortunate period of time marking significant social changes at the onset of industry. World War I was the war that finally gave all Americans: North, South, Irish, poor, working, farmer, black, rich, middle class, a reason to feel united. All the unanswered question of the industrial period, all of the unresolved issues, were ignored, subsumed into a spirit of unity fostered by war. And along with this war, the welcomed growth and enlargement of the federal leviathan. If Americans understood one thing, it was that war is what united them as Americans. This doesn't make America war-like or war-mongering. Rather, war is the political language most Americans spoke. This has to do with what I will call the "Infallible Americanism". By 1910, there was a notion in American society that the nature and form of American government represented a political perfection. 1776, 1789, were experiments, with an uncertain fate. 1865 tested that experiment, and it passed. By 1900, Americans were confident that their democratic republic, with its federalism and checks and balances represented the height of political organization. Not only was there no better way of doing it, but with such wonderful material advances from industry, many felt that America itself was a utopia. At least, the source of all that was good in America was its infallible Constitution and democratic framework, as a gift from Providence, earned through the shedding of blood, and justified by that blood. So, with war as a socializing factor, and a notion of America as the infallible pinnacle of human society, there resides the framework for American politics at the time. The champions of social justice, the "progressives", were the vocal minority to challenge this near-universal view. And in for many valid reasons, they were right. Racism was rampant in America. It would be intellectually lazy to dismiss racism as a product of fear and hate alone. I posit that racism was a social construct, meant to deal with the extremely difficult task of socializing many millions of people who had been for so many centuries so thoroughly dehumanized. The doctrine of Infallible Americanism - which with resounding success socialized so many millions of European immigrants - was not equipped to socialize former slaves. This is because Infallibe Americanism didn't identify solid philosophical principles as its justification, but was rather based on tradition, and nationalistic triumph through bloodshed. So racism acted as a stopgap to maintain the status quo despite a task it had enormous difficulty adapting to. But here we can see the seeds of the downfall of Infallible Americanism. Infallible Americanism was a gilded framework. Much of its success lies in its untouchable nature. But as society modernized - with Darwinism, urbanism, multiculturalism - the framework offered little guidance to accommodate these changes. The framework also suffered because of war as its primary force for socialization. Recall, it was the blood spilt for liberty, not liberty itself that served as the uniting factor. Let me explain my position a little more comprehensively. Political socialization is primarily a cultural phenomenon that has to do with large populations accepting the legitimacy of a political system according to social and cultural understandings. Infallible Americanism, as an identity, contains two elements: a cause, and a consequence. Culturally, the warfare and nationalism was the cause - the reason above all else why everyone ought to accept the legitimacy of the Republic. The consequence was that, according to tradition, the Republic uphold the principles of liberty. Liberty as an idea was only as relevant as the red, white, and blue colors of the flag. It was an expression that identified the phenomenon. Liberty was one thing that distinguished America - but it was not a primary in justifying it. While, in reality, liberty is the cause of America's prosperity, our culture at the time hadn't fully accepted this. The entire appeal of a concept such as social justice is evidence of this. American Populism would never have been possible if liberty was a cultural primary in America's political social identity. As Lincoln noted, it was the Revolutionary War that held America together: nearly all Americans of his youth had acquaintances and living relatives with experience of that war, and therefore a personal stake in it. This gave America a cultural, social stake in the American Republic - which was bought by the war. Lincoln noted that fewer and fewer living people had personal stake in the war, and that something else would have to emerge to give Americans a cultural stake in their Republic. He proposed the teaching of essential American ideals to youths on the knees "Republican Mothers". He identified what I will call: "American Exceptionalism". This refers to the philosophical ideas that have been, in reality, behind America's prosperity and success. Nevertheless, because a political system represents a social relationship, the culture of that society must accept that political system in order for it to function. American Exceptionalism requires a philosophical society, and one could argue that the Spirit of 1776 was philosophical in essence. Nevertheless, modernization challenges philosophies, and without proper philosophies to meet these challenges, stopgap cultural measures are needed to preserve political systems based on philosophy. In essence, Infallible Americanism is a non-philosophical stopgap which represents a pragmatic support of American values. Today's culture wars, and the rise of the Tea Party, are in direct consequence to the downfall of Infallible Americanism. World War I held the seeds of the downfall of Infallible Americanism. Social stresses were pulling the framework apart. America's enthusiasm for WWI was in many ways a last ditched effort to recommit to a common political culture, to preserve whatever it was, unidentified, that made America possible. The prosperity and peace that most enjoyed was the object of this longing. New immigrants came to American and knew implicitly that it was great. What they might not have been sure about was why. By diverting the energies of Americans in their devotion to America through the filter of war, the Wilson Administration and his Progressives enacted the changes that would bring down what had made America great. This was achieved through massive interference by the government in commerce and economics. There was an unprotested loss of economic liberty. In should also be noted in passing, that the efforts of the Wilson Administration to use propoganda and to set Americans to spy against one another, represent one of the most severe losses of civil liberty in American history. The issue at hand isn't purely economic, even though I maintain that economic liberty is the root of all liberty. The immediate consequence was a severe recession. In response, President Harding did what had been the tradition of most Presidents before him: nothing. The standing, and now forgotten, culture of the time was that the federal government had no business commanding business. It worked, the recovery was America's most successful. The 1920's her most prosperous decade. Except for the end, of course. The progressives, outside the framework of Infallible Americanism, continued their push against the status quo. They employed every means they could. Every failure of the status quo was used to their favor: racism, sexism, greed, poverty, ethnicity, academic ignorance. At this point, still, the Progressives represented an ivory tower of intellectuals. Their ideas had little to do with the day to day culture of America, and how it viewed itself in terms of the legitimacy of its government. America was evolving out of its traditional framework, though. Prohibition, and the flappers rejected traditional mores. These mores, and Infallible Americanism, were so closely tied together. America needed a new framework, something that gave everyone equal cause for devotion to liberty. Without tradition, all it had was war, and the central agent of war was government. The government was the only place American society, therefore, knew to turn to in order to find a source of unity and liberty. Like growing pains, stretch marks, and the like, American society fractured as it entered the modern world. And these fractures were filled by more and more stopgap measures on the part of government - the Grand Republic at the heart of Infallible Americanism. And these measures failed. 1929, a recession caused by two factors. 1) A failure on the part of American society to properly understand and take responsibility for market conditions. The formula for sound banking practice was well known. Greedy banks who failed to act rationally arose because society hadn't properly accounted for its own prosperity. No one said: responsibility, hard work, reality, these are the cause of our success. Instead, at least from a social perspective, the reasoning was: we're America, which is perfect, therefore we have prosperity. And naturally, failures were addressed by attempting to be 'more American'. This meant more government action. 2) Actions by the government to help Americans, in particular by the new Federal Reserve system, but also by misguided federal actions to reduce competition in the marketplace, led to an imbalance in the market. 1929 was the breaking point for this imbalance. The actions taken after that point only increased the level of these harmful activities on the part of the federal government. America reacted by electing FDR. FDR didn't change the Infallible America paradigm much. Instead, he used it, but evolved it. Part of the Infallible America premise is maintaining the status quo, that includes laissez-faire with regards to business. FDR didn't challenge Infallible America, rather he culturally introduced the idea that the essence of Infallible America lay with the strength of its government, and rejected the idea that the status quo of laissez-faire or tradition had anything to do with it. Though not well understood or taught in schools for all of the remainder of the 20th century, the fact is that FDR's policies did nothing to help the economy. People grew incredibly disillusioned of him. But his politics were ruthless, through coalitions and make-work jobs he got the votes he needed - barely - to stay in office. And through propaganda he maintained the illusion that if anything, he was trying to rule in the model of Infallible Americanism. It is no wonder, then, that he was chosen to lead the country through the crisis of World War II over newcomer businessman Wendell Wilkie. Business was no longer culturally understood as an essential player in Infallible Americanism. With World War II, the modern socializing factor of American society emerges. Modern patriotism is always understood through the framework of America's triumph in World War II. America's prosperity, international position, form of government, culture, 'goodness', and infallibility are all seen as vindicated because of that war. Even modern sentiments regarding Viet Nam, POW/MIA, and so forth, are all attempts to recreate the cultural vindication of World War II's triumph. World War II also represents the vindication of FDR. The economic implications of his policies are irrelevant, cuturally, because he won the war. Nevertheless, from the 1950's, there is a divergence in American culture. FDR gave Infallible Americanism a distinctly left-wing flavor. And so, a significant portion of society began to accept the legitimacy of left-wing ideas in the American conscience. This divergence is the root of the culture wars. The culture wars are the modern framework for American society. These have supplanted Infallible Americanism, which no longer exists. Rather, it persists as a bifurcated crippled shadow of itself. The culture wars started as rumblings in the 50's, full emergence in the 60's, maturity in the 70's, and have since been the status quo. While some might be inclined to see the culture wars as two opposing factions, both illegitimate heirs to American Exceptionalism, I contend that only one faction is the proper heir. Thusfar, I have been discussing something I have called Infallible Americanism. I consider this to be the late 19th century understanding of something I've called American Exceptionalism. American Exceptionalism is that part of the American political tradition devoted to individual liberty. This exceptionalism is found in the philosophical essence of the Declaration of Independence, and therefore transcends both the Constitution, as well as all of American history. The Declaration itself precedes the victory at Yorktown, and very much is what the the blood of patriots was spilled on behalf of. While there may have been battles, and discontent, prior to the signing of the declaration, the essence of the cultural spirit driving these events is contained in that document. Moreover, regardless of the other causes for the war, America itself as the product of that war and the object of that patriotism is defined in the declaration. Thus, all the socialization based on war, the liberty for which the blood was spilt, this liberty is defined in the Declaration of Independence. This liberty refers to individual rights, and by implication both all the gains in civil rights during the 20th century, but also in a negative sense to all the loses in economic rights during that time. Laissez-faire is generally a direct implication of this philosophical spirit. The importance of American Exceptionalism is that it represents what is truly an ideal. This ideal is based off of what can be called natural or even objective rights. Individual liberty is the proper state for mankind. And it results in the greatest prosperity and happiness for mankind. This real prosperity and real success behind the American system of government is what has united and inspired Americans to be American. Infallible Americanism is, unfortunately, how American society as a whole had come to understand American Exceptionalism. Today, the left-wing of the culture wars has achieved victory in advocating for the civil rights of Americans. Adopted into American culture through FDR's efforts (it was originally an intellectual movement with a strong European flavor), this version of Infallible Americanism was forward-looking. It sought to take the perceived formula of the Grand Republic, and apply it to new areas. This means bigger government with more responsibilities. So, correctly perhaps, this wing has been described as 'liberal'. Liberal would mean an openness to new ideas, in the context of Infallible Americanism. Well meaning liberals have advanced the civil rights element of American Exceptionalism through their efforts. Unfortunately, as of today they have moved beyond what is necessary to achieve individual liberty. What was once a battle for civil rights has become a post-modernist, deconstructionist, dehumanizing multiculturalism that is in effect no more than cheap Marxism. In almost no way can this wing be seen as the proper defenders of any portion of the American Exceptionlist philosophy. The right-wing has been properly described as conservative. More so than the left-wing, the right-wing defines itself by a backwards-looking attachment to Infallible Americanism. By default that means an attachment to old ideas rejected post-FDR, such as laissez-faire. For a time, this conservatism has also meant an attachment to old frameworks, such as institutional racism. Although conservatism has intellectually reconciled that racism is not compatible with the essence of American Exceptionalism, it is still attached to tradition, primarily religion, as the essence and cause of this exceptionalism. This is because of an attempt to reinstate the old framework of Infallible Americanism, which by default as much adhered to religion as it did to laissez-faire economics. The right-wing must be thought of as more devoted to the essence of American Exceptionalism, because of its efforts to hold true to past lessons. The left-wing seeks to move beyond these lessons. Despite the failure of Infallible Americanism to properly enshrine individual rights in the American social political culture, the essence of America as a concept, through the Declaration of Indepence - American Exceptionalism - is not inherently flawed. Thus, efforts to hearken back, and to discover and restore essential Americanism should be encouraged and applauded. Nevertheless, such efforts have to be intellectual and philosophical, rather than traditional or historical, in order to succeed. The 1980's marked a victory for the right-wing in the Reagan administration. This victory not only provided the right-wing with a much lacking sense of identity, it also solidified the movement's connection to old Infallible Americanism. In many ways, the success of the Reagan Administration in a pseudo-military fashion against the Soviet Union, reflects the essence of Infallible American socialization. Though no blood was shed in any significance, victories in Grenada, and military build up against a violent enemy put this victory in a military context. The left itself has sought identity through war. Although this is via opposition to war during the 1960's Vietnam war protests, these protests represented a fair level of cultural agitation. Where is the left's association with the anti-war movement, without Kent State? This, despite the victims having had nothing to do with the protest. Again, the left-wing of the culture wars is a socialization according to the framework of old Infallible Americanism. I would contend that the framework of the culture wars is not as divisive as one would think. Each side is defined by touchstone issues: abortion, religion, sex education, things of enormous personal, emotional, and hence cultural significance. Yet, these issues are of little significance in reality, at least when compared to economic issues. As long as each side remains split on the touchstone issues, the mainstream populations of both wings will accept the legitimacy of the system that enfranchises both. That's the key to understanding the culture wars. It is little more than old Infallible Americanism, defined now by a domestic split over irrelvant touchstone issues of popular cultural signficance only. The Grand Republic - big government, nationalism, and so forth - remains the dominant paradigm. This is why religious conservatives 'put up with' leftism in the media for so long. The media was an insitution of Infallible Americanism, with the 1st amendment as its banner. This is why progressives on the left were satisfied to participate in a political system whose constitution denied them the most basic political tools they deemed necessary to achieve 'social justice'. That same Constitution guaranteed them the civil liberties that would defend against ever worse foes like Nazis or Fascists, who as history showed, might not allow them to even publicly advocate their views. The system was legitimate so long as it met that requirement. This is the context for the culture wars that have persisted until Sept. 2001. The Tea Party movement grew out of the events of Sept. 11. That might seem odd, but it is true. Recall that both wings of the culture wars are built out of Infallible Americanism, which has war as its primary socilazing factor. Also, by 2001, the culture wars had reached a standstill. Reagan was demonized as ignorant, Clinton as immoral. Each side used its touchstones for self-identification to define the other side. Bush was moral, but ignorant. And yet, he represented no change of significance to the status quo. Abortion would not be banned. The federal government would not shrink. It was a ceasefire. Allow me to offer additional context to the idea of political socialization. Political socialization,again, is what causes a large enough population of humans to live with enough contentment within a legal framework, for that legal framework to be of any effect in that society. When people are desocialized, they reject the law, and there is chaos until some other arrangement is reached. In American history, the arrangements have more often than not evolved slowly enough so that no period of much chaos was necessary. What this means in terms of the year 2000, is that the established framework for contention between the two wings of the culture wars were sufficient for both sides to keep at it indefinitely. Both sides felt that they were close enough to gains, comfortable enough with their losses, that no significant changes were necessary. Thus, it is the perception of satisfaction with the political system - if not the outcome - that causes a political arrangement to persist. Consider therefore, the effect of the worst attack on American soil in over 100 years. No single event in the 20th century was more deadly to civilian Americans, deadly on the American mainland, than what happened on Sept. 11. This is the sort of event that challenges perceptions. This is the sort of event that causes an evolution of the political socialization of a culture. There are many conceivable consequences of this event. I will mention the significant one: an end to the ceasefire in the culture wars. Despite the contention of the culture wars, each side existed so long as contention was relgated to irrelevant touchstones. If an issue became contentious, it became a touchstone. War is an issue that has almost acted as a touchstone, but never quite. At the outset of Vietnam, it was the left's interventionism that asked for the war. At its close, the right was its defender. Yet, even the right accepted a sense of illegitimacy for a war against a foe that had not necessarily done anything to America. Despite contention, there was no mainstream break along the issue of legitimacy regarding the war. Sept. 11 is important, because it has been an issue of too great significance to be ignored. It, as war, is also an issue that cannot exist as a touchstone in the culture wars. War is foundational to the doctrine to Infallible Americanism. Any split, in terms of legitimacy, over war, is a cultural split over the social legitimacy of the entire American political system. I will now discuss the war in Iraq, specifically. I will not be arguing the facts of that war, but instead will focus on the perception of those facts by each wing of the culture wars. To the right-wing, action in Iraq was not only a good idea, it was necessary under its framework of political socialization. America was attacked in such an obvious, historic, and flagrant manner. America itself - as an idea, a concept - demanded a response. The necessity of war was built into the idea of America. Those on the right-wing who took any stake in the democracy, and these would be voters, would demand war. This is because their commitment to America is based on a tradition and socialization built on war. This isn't to say these people are war-like. Recall that they accepted the left-wing's response to Viet Nam, more or less, because of the interventionist nature of the war and ambiguous nature of the enemy. But Sept. 11 was an irrefutable attack on America, and nothing about it was ambiguous. At first, the left-wing reacted in unity with the right-wing. Sept. 11 unified the country. This is proof of the common framework built off of Infallible Americanism that defines the culture wars. It is a framework of unity based on the spilt blood of American matyrs. For a time, many on the left even seriously considered the necessity of action against Iraq. But eventually they had to oppose it. Why? The culture wars, in many ways, represented a dialectic approach to politics. The right looked back, the left looked foward. The impossibility of unity on the touchstone issues is what made unity on the functional issues possible. Thus, Congress succeeds in raising the debt ceiling year after year, expanding entitlements, funding it all, so long as each congressperson gets their two cents in on where they stand on irrelevant issues like sexual education in public schools. No one questions the legitimacy of public schooling. Public schooling is a foundational project of the Grand Republic, and part of Infallible Americanism. Sept. 11 forced the left-wing to accept the fundamental legitimacy of the right-wing. A forward looking America would turn to the international community to deal with the issue of American spilt blood. A backward looking America would carry a big stick, and punish the bad guys before riding into the sunset. The Iraq issue meant that the left-wing needed to choose whether its 'left-ness' or 'American-ness' was more essential to the itself. Choosing the latter would subsume the left under the old umbrella of Infallible Americanism, which the right more closely represented. The culture wars themselves represented a synthesis of two opposing ideas. These ideas are foundationally economic, and based in reality. One is American Exceptionalism, the other is Western Collectivism. Infallible Americanism is a non-concept, it is a pragmatic umbrella under which was subsumed America's traditions. These traditions were mostly in the spirit of individual rights, but included a fair commitment to collectivism in the Christian tradition. The culture wars decided to retain Infallible Americanism into the modern age by refusing to deal with the consquences of integrating its disparate components. Individualism and collectivism cannot be integrated. The synthesis of the two is the culture wars. The synthesis is achieved by rendering the debate over individualism vs. collectivism as non-essential. Instead, stupid cutural issues became the essential aspects of the culture wars. The issue of individual rights was left to fall where it might, and fortunately America's strong traditions held onto many of these rights. War, however, while not necessarily essential to the issue of individual rights vs. collectivism (there is a healthy debate about that vis-a-vis Iraq), is essential to the culture wars synthesis, because it is essential as an issue to Infallible Americanism. There was through mainstream support for the Afghanistan war. The left, with Iraq, had a war that was no longer foward-looking and international, but part of the big-stick traditions of conservative America. Although refusing to support this war would only be natural for the left, making war a touchstone issue would dissolve the cultural synthesis. This meant having to implicitly reject the legitimacy of that synthesis, and therefore the legimitacy of the right-wing. Thus, the left-wing embraced openly its more radical elements. These elements bear ironically the label 'progressive'. Progressives weren't included - as 'liberals' - under the umbrella of Infallible Americanism, with the attendent mainstream legitimacy, until FDR. The pre-FDR progressives were outside the mainstream socialization. And today, the new progressives have placed themselves outside as well. MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, and the like, represent these radical elements. Why Iraq is important, is because the mainstream liberals in the media and congress openly embraced them because of this issue. They hadn't beforehand, because of a sense of commitment to the 'center' and 'moderation' - in other words, Infallible Americanism. While the mainstream left has dabbled with radicals before, particularly under the radar, the open rejection of the right's legitimacy is novel. What's new is that the right-wing's reaction to Iraq forced it to finally reject the left in return. They knew, in their minds, that the war had to happen for America to be America. And so, over the decade, there rose a growing skepticism of the voices that said otherwise. Consider how the left must have looked. Instead of saying the war was bad for America, they granted the right-wing legitimacy in its premise that this war was good according to the American tradition. What they instead argued, was that America - in its traditional essence - was bad. The success of outlets like Fox News, and conservative talk radio, are in direct consequence to this subtle change in identity on the left. Many right-wing Americans experienced a story of the war from their serving family members that contradicted that of the nightly news. They in turn began to give up on this traditionally legitimate Grand Institution of Infallible America. Nevertheless, the foundational issue is that neither side can any longer accept the legitimacy of the other. While the ever enlarging margins of both sides have felt this way for some time, Sept. 11 has caused the popular mainstreams of both to come to this point of view. Infallible Americanism is now completely dead. The right-wing and left-wing margins now represent the mainstream of both factions. It is now a battle for keeps to which entire populations are devoted. This sense of illegitimacy has manifested itself slowly but surely in the past few years. And this leads to the last critical issue at hand: economics. In terms of political socialization, economics is the most important issue in the sense that it affects the broadest swathe of the people. It also is a function of reality, and cannot be ignored by cultural cognitive dissonance. The 2000's were marked, despite a significant war, by general prosperity. The first major economic issue would be the first issue to generate enough interest to test the new political reality. This issue was raised oil prices. With $4.00 per gallon gasoline prices, people were no longer content with decades-old environmentalist drilling bans on the part of the left. This wasn't the fringe, most Americans wanted this. Had the issue been openly debated, had gasoline remained at that price, the congressmembers who voted to keep a drilling ban would be voted out of office in 2008. In the old political reality of Infallible Americanism, the old liberals would bend, or, at least, the old conservatives would give them a pass. As long as both parties were polarized on the touchstone issues, the system would remain legitimate. But 9/11, and the Iraq War, changed that. The conservatives would not give a free pass. Their mantra: Drill Baby Drill. The liberals would not bend. Nancy Pelosi wouldn't even allow debate. Congress was to recess before election. The Republicans in Congress spoke on the issue in the house floor despite Congress being in recess. Pelosi had the lights turned out. In the darkness, half of America was represented. They chanted in unison: "Drill Baby Drill". The legacy media, the old symbol of an objective united American identity, didn't cover it. So, as "Drill Baby Drill" was yelled in the 2008 Republican Convention, the leftist doctrine about conservatives, oil, and greed, completely misunderstood the nature of the changes occuring in their opposition. Are the Republicans so brazen as to openly declare their irrational, Dracula like, thirst for oil at the cost of the blood of brown peoples? To the left, yes - and this is because they do not accept the legitimacy of their opponents. And so, in 2009, the Stimulus, and Obamacare were passed. That a poll of a majority of Americans opposed the latter, that a legislative majority sufficient to pass a bill by transparent and traditional means was unavailable; it didn't matter. The Democrats, in their chicanery, have declared openly their lack of commitment to the American system of government. Their intellectual foes are illegitimate, the vote of a conservative only something to be subverted and worked-around. This has long been the view of the left-wing. But now, it is a view that the majority of Democratic politicians will vote on behalf of. The conservatives have received the message. That is the Tea Party: a movement that no longer accepts the legitimacy of the Infallible Americanism. The legacy media won't be trusted even when factual, the role of government won't be accepted even when legitimate, the secularism of the other side will not be tolerated. The Tea Party is characterized by one idea: lack of trust. The Tea Party does not trust the status quo, and while the economy affects so many, will continue to reject the old way of doing things. Rick Santelli may have said "Tea Party" first publicly, but its pioneering organizers are the same individuals behind "Drill Baby Drill". This statement seems spiritual, and is essentially so, but in fact the actual organizers of the "Drill Baby Drill" busings were heavily involved with the first tea party. And so where is the future? My hope, and analysis, is that the Tea Party will turn to the essence of Americanism as it seeks a new paradigm. In response, the left will reject that essence. The right will become the movement of true American Exceptionalism as this group of Americans begins to understand and identify individual rights as the source of prosperity in American history, and the secret behind its success. If the Tea Party succeeds in making major changes - limiting the federal government, repealing economic controls - and the economy rebounds, this might cement these ideas in the culture of American political socialization. It can happen. While their loved ones spilt blood for the ideal of liberty - so framed, even if incorrectly, by George W. Bush - their countrymen mocked them while at the same time voting for less liberty. In this way, the 'victory' paradigm remains in the context of war - and is familiar to the American culture - but the victory is not over some violent foe, but rather is an intellectual victory. Thus, an actual cultural passing of the torch from spilt blood nationalism, to philosophical principles. There is always a fear that these conditions will result in a war too - the thing that both sides understand best. Despite their insistence on peace, I am certain that the left won't mind war against their right-wing foes - whom they accept as essentially barbaric and violent. Against violence from the left, the right will handily respond with violence. Any individual rights that remain will have place in a colloquial framework, and will have to make room for religion, tradition, and nationalism - as they did in the Wilsonian era. Nevertheless, what will the future look like if the Tea Party succeeds? In the near future, will the left use their lame-duck status in Congress to engage in politically unprecedented abuses of power? Hopefully the changes they might make will be subject to future repeal. Hopefully they will be punished for this, or even stopped. The Tea Party must make significant changes to the federal government. Changes of no less significance than repeal of a federal minimum wage, rejection of the concept of public education, or the elimination of a major federal department. Some of the candidates who might succeed are advocating some of these ideas. These ideas haven't been legitimate in the cultural framework for over a century. That is change. Of course, for the left, similar changes mean anarchy and violence. Expect less respect for property, less tolerance of politically incorrect ideas, more violent anarchists, more lethargy as rebellion, more drug use and gang activity to fill the gaps, and more tolerance for it as a gleeful celebration of the declining status of the 'man'. It is more than likely that the national impact of the Tea Party will be minimal relative to the enthusiasm of its base. The states will become the agents of the battle. States will refuse to comply with the federal government, and the two factions will use this dynamic as the source of their conflict. This will be facilitated by a repeal of the 17th amendment. With Linda McMahon, Christine O'Donnell, Sharon Angle, Joe Miller, Scott Brown, etc., even the liberals will support the legislative appointment of senators. The Senate will be a major battleground going into the future. The federal government, and its unavoidable debt problem, and the even more pressing debt problems of individual states, will be the source of leverage in this battle. The liberals will threaten to sacrifice America to foreign enemies, rather than lose their battle for control. Expect phony wars by liberal Democrats. Going into the long-term future, religion will become a dead issue in politics. Conservatives will remove religion from politics, liberals will try to exploit it under the social justice framework. Abortion will be a dead issue. Forced birth control will become the dividing issue. This is not an inevitability, but an example of how the new political paradigm might look. In the end, the Tea Party will prevail, and American Exceptionalism will become the ruling paradigm. Lincoln's dream will come true as Republican Mothers teach the doctrines of American Exceptionalism to the youth on their knees. This is because America is fundamentally American, which is the factor that has sustained the culture wars for so long. It allowed America to resist the European collectivism that has been characteristic of the industrial age. Despite the flaws of Infallible Americanism, and the culture war paradigm, both have remained fairly essentially American. As the liberal experiment collapses under the weight of its own debt, as collectivism fails to square with reality and more and more are capable of identifying the philosophical causes, the principle of individual rights will prevail in the culture. So, I'm not too worried about the future in terms of the direction it leads. America itself was no accident. American Exceptionalism emerged because humans have progressed over the centuries to a better and better understanding of what is essential to proper human living. It is inevitable, so long as we survive, that the trend towards individual rights and reason would continue. That doesn't guarantee that we'll be there to see it. The alternative is a suicidal, nihilistic left, that sacrifices the country to foreign foes. They aren't powerful enough to raise enough domestic unrest to cause a civil war. But through fiscal and monetary policies, the arsenal of pax americana, America's last gasp of post-WWII preeminence, and through an appeal to old Infallible Americanism, the liberals can at least defeat their enemies by drawing America into an unwinnable war of last resort. Before the ship can change course, and it must change course, it can always be scuttled. This is my biggest fear. Whatever emerges on the other side, is horrible no matter what form it takes. That is my analysis.
  5. I haven't figured it out, but there is this liberalism that Ayn Rand associated with the old left that is individualistic, reason loving, but for some reason attached to collectivist economic policies.
  6. I guess the real question is: is it okay to be asexual? The answer is yes, by all means, passionately, emphatically, be who you prefer to be! But implicit in asexuality is the forfeit of any close relationship with a man. Male/female relationships are sexual. I was wondering about this asexual community, and like other minority lifestyle communities, I would imagine there are people in them who are genuinely the way they are, and there are also people who are confused. By confused I refer to stolen concepts. In the asexual case, one cannot both be asexual and also have romantic relationships minus the part they don't like. Only because that would mean that maybe they aren't quite asexual. A lot of these identity groups use stolen concepts because I think some of the people in them join specifically because the epistemological nature of the identity being embraced is contradictory and allows them to live with evasion. I haven't seen this in your posts, but I do hear, "Well, I AM asexual" as a starting premise. And I'm wondering if that self certainty isn't derived from others who are in the asexual community who have asserted that this identity exists. Again, I'm not saying you aren't asexual, I'm saying that asexual seems to mean no romantic relationships. You enjoy kissing? Kissing is gross, so if it causes any tingle in your bosom ever - you are sexual. Here's the thing about men: there are great guys, and there are great guys' sex drives. The two are often at odds, but their packages nature is a fact of life. Your bf may be aggressive sexually, or even too 'big'. That's all completely possible. I knew a girl once who had no interest in sex, her experiences had always been painful. It was a product of her emotional relationship with one man, and the physical uh dimensional realities as well. Since then, she has learned to love sex. That doesn't mean someone can't genuinely be asexual. So I recommend you really figure out your exact sexual nature. If you like kissing, and closeness, more with your bf than say some gf, you are a little sexual. Try really masturbating. I find earlier posts funny, when it comes to sexuality, masturbation and sex are pretty close. You don't have to do anything really painful to masturbate, you're in control. Also, from what I understand, even pre-pubescent children have 'sensations' - you said you like touching. So really really masturbate, and under controlled conditions of just you being involved, figure out just how sexual you are. I apologize for the details, I just know that really rationally examining the self is a good exercise. You can't answer 'why' you're asexual without professional input. But it seems like there's a lot of 'how much' you still need to discover. It could be that you are perfectly sexual to maybe just a tad disinterested. Maybe you just suffer from an aversion. Maybe it's scary, and personal, and weird and you're not ready and might never be. That's okay. There's no immorality in being who you are. But you have to figure out what you are going to do and that includes dealing fairly with your boyfriend. What if you really like him, because you are sexual, but you're in no way ready for sex? Then you just have to decide how far you can go for him. That's all, unfortunately.
  7. Sorry if this offends, but I have a question. Isn't asexuality implicative of neutrality? Maybe not, I'm smart enough to know of the invasive and otherwise bizarre nature of the sexual act, and that it's consequences can be more than uncomfortable physically. Still, if you are truly emotionally intimate with someone, then much of that psychologically would be mitigated. A neutral stance on sex would permit it from time to time at least for the joy it causes the other partner, and the symbolic intimacy. It seems like a strong aversion to sex is not asexuality, but something else. This is the difference between no interest and not interested. I'm bringing this up only in the philosophical sense that it is sometimes possible to overrationalize issues that are at core not rational. My point is that maybe you could ask yourself why your response is 'NO' instead of 'meh' (you're inner response to the thought of it). I don't pretend to say that that has anything to do with it, I'm just contributing a thought that has been with me as I've read here. Good luck
  8. Democracy as a process for governance, has limited purpose. With an Executive consitutionally seperated from law-making, this is even more the case. There are only two roles for democracy to play in selecting an executive: 1) Most importantly the vote is a check against the Executive, to limit its power. Representation is irrelevant in this example, because all that's functionally needed is a critical mass that feels the Executive has overstepped its bounds. 2) The vote also serves to give approval to a candidate, as recognition that they will do a proper job upholding the law. This is a very limited judgment, and not subject to a large differing of opinion. A rational human will tell whether a person is or is not upholding the law. The only place of disagreement is if a law is being poorly upheld. A real-life example is in Arizona, but that is fraught with many complicated details that are problematic in any event to good governance. A good hypothetical would be: offshore drilling rights. Let's say Congress has enacted a procedure for dispensing and enforcing offshore drilling rights to private entities. These rights bring wealth to the national economy (say, the stock market). However, coastal states might be affected tourism wise if there were a spill. An Executive that was effective in enforcing just law would do the work required of inspecting facilities for proper safety measures as a condition of granting a license to an activity that could substantially, directly, and explicitly harm others. He might be lazy in this. Only the coastal states would care. Hey, this isn't as hypothetical as I thought! You would want to overrepresent the smaller states in order to make sure that their concerns were well met. Since the vote is a check on the Executive, it is a negative procedure. That is, the purpose of the vote is to guard against rather than advocate for. Hence, the overrepresentation of minorities. This assumes that the government is properly limited in scope. When the Executive has the powers he does today, then it really doesn't matter how he's elected. There's no way to correctly represent individuals in a collectivist system that has power over them. So, in today's context, you want to keep the electoral college. It might not 'give' what we 'want' but its form still serves as an effective bulwhark against aggressively active executives. To see this in effect, look at an EC map and subtract 2 from the EC votes of each state. The traditional breakdown - Dems: DC to Maine, WI, MI, IL, NM, West Coast, HI; Repubs: everything else - this ends up scoring Dems: 243, Repubs: 295 with 270 to win. Adjust the numbers and the score is Dems: 257, Repubs: 231. This way, the Dems have a permanent majority. Only Reagan revolutions can affect that. Currently, Dems can win without a massive revolution of ideas. Only a few red state switches are needed to win the White House for Democrats. Basically, the hubs where the universities exist are blue, everywhere else is red. The Electoral College rejects the influence of university ideas over the executive. Yes, this leaves a vacuum to be filled by, say, Bush. However, non-ideas can't oppress you. Bush can send the country to war, but is not smart enought to instate a permanent state of war. That's Obama: putting ideas in place that permanently change the role of the executive. Granted, that's a mighty oversimplification. But the premise holds. Concentrated populations tend to share ideas, so diluting their power relative to other populations is a check against dominant ideas. In many sense, the EC is undemocratic. That's the point. It blocks ideas, rather than enabling them. It should be kept because to what extent the differences in ideas are relevant, the EC still has an effect. The Executive should never have any ideology other than upholding the law as has already been determined in the legislative process. Assuming the civic responsibility of the citizens, they will be happy with an executive that enforces things they don't like so long as they know those things are the result of an honest legislative process. This doesn't perclude wanting to change the legislative process, but according to seperation of powers the Executive shouldn't be held to any other standard than upholding the law. There is, after all, only one of him for everyone in the country. What the law is, is completely objective.
  9. <a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2010/09/justice-stephen-breyer-is-burning-koran-shouting-fire-in-a-crowded-theater.html#tp">This</a> is Justice Breyer saying that burning a Koran *may be* like shouting fire in a crowded theater. The lovely National Review commented that if enough people rioted when American flags were burned, perhaps that could be banned too. Great. So much for the moral imperative of voting for Democrats - who put these guys in power. Although, I have to wonder, is the first ammendment an imperative for the government to act in defense of free speech. In other words, does the FBI have a duty to protect free speaking citizens from violent reprisal? I would say not necessarily, but yes if that's what they were elected to do. That's why we have a second ammendment by the way - an implicit 'negative' right allowing for the first. Congress cannot outlaw speech, but are obviously under no obligation to defend it. They must not, however, prevent you from defending that right if they will not. Because that would be an implicit violation of the first ammendment. I wonder if leftists aspire to what you might read about them in Atlas Shrugged. That novel seemed to imply that the whole leftist scheme of government - where arbitrary rules make everyone guilty, empowering men over laws - is the result of non-thinking, and evasion. But are the real-life actors more malicious in intent? I saw a debate between Justice Breyer and Justice Scalia. Scalia, despite his faults, well defended the concept of strict interpretaion of law. Otherwise, he said, the meaning of law is bascially decided by who is in power, which defeats rule of law. The specific subject of the debate was over whether judges should look at the notes of congressional aides (as they draft laws) to discern intent. Scalia pointed out that Congress doesn't vote on intent or the thought process of aides, but rather on the law itself as written. Breyer seemed to take the position that the purpose of Congress was basically to represent who was 'in charge' and enable the bureaucracy to do what the 'people' wanted. He ridiculed Scalia's argument for being pre-modern. He seemed to argue that modern society needs a bureaucracy, that Republican Democracy wasn't fit, and that our system should function like a parliamentary social democracy. This first ammendment attitude seems to reflect that. But what is the end? The Democrats are empowering the Republicans - should they gain power - essentially. But then again, with amnesty, civil rights redistricting, the educational system, and so forth, the Democrats seem to be seeking a 'permanent majority'. This goes back to FDR's coalitions. Note also the talk of lame-duck votes this fall should the Democrats do poorly in November. What is it about a political party that causes its voting Congresspeople to have some agenda apart from and beyond what their voters actually desire? They'll cover their hides to get votes, but then go ahead with what they 'really want' when votes don't matter. Someone is in charge of this, some clever political junkies have schemed this up. Remember that the public option for healthcare was invented by a Berkeley student as a trick for instituting inevitable nationalization of the system. So what is their scheme? Is it bland green 'progressivism' a la 60's Britain - with $12.00 minimum wages and a 'right to work', plus nationalization? What is it? Rule by professors? Is it "Wall Street" manipulating - George Soros? I'm not saying any of that is true, nor am I saying the Republicans do not also share some of these ambitions. Just note, that when a Supreme Court judge says that he doesn't think free speech applies if it conflicts with some other function of government ('security'), that asking oneself, why?, is in order. (EDIT - his argument isn't this, it is about a speech action causing harm to people, but seeing as how burning a Koran has nothing to do with merely inciting mischievous harm and everything to do with political protest, I have to think Justice Breyer is smart enought to have some other motive. The one I mentioned was arbitrary for example's sake.) Why would he say that? What is his philosophy and its end? Not just implicitly, but what is the explicit intent? We know the implicit result, but I think it could be more obvious and malicious than that. And I don't have a clue as to what exactly it could be.
  10. Addiction is physiological. Solving it is more to do with brain and medical science and not philosophy. The right treatment totally depends on the drug in question. Philosophy can tell you something about avoiding addictive substances or the benefit of being free of such, but that is all.
  11. My grandmother was a social worker, and my aunt ran Legal Aid in L.A. for awhile. My mother is a big altruist. Being my mother, my sympathies end up being near hers in terms of desiring to help people be better people and have better situations then what they've got. Unfortunately, in political debates, my mother is very skeptical of laissez-faire. After debate after debate, after really getting to the heart of what altruism is, I think I have convinced her to agree that people help other people because it is 'selfish' for them. However, though unspoken, she still, I believe, is foundationally tied to the notion that people must be forced to help others. There is an angry violence in her worldview she would never admit. But she cannot accept the notion that people who 'have' be let alone while there are people who 'have not'. She might not like violence, but 'non-violent' force, civil disobedience, disruption, etc. she would support wholehearted. The issue is almost metaphysical to her. Ask your girlfriend: "If there are people, who by merit or even luck, but not by injustice, have more than they 'need', and others in society have less than they 'need', should the 'haves' be forced to help the 'have nots'? Or do they have the right to be left alone?" If she cannot accept their right to be left alone, and becomes emotional about it, you need to tell her that you may admire her for her enthusiasm about helping people who struggle extra in life, and love her, but that her attitude about forcing people to accept her morality is both vicious, violent, and that you cannot accept her because of it. Otherwise, tell her that that's what ultimately matters, and that ideas like Rand's are complex, nuanced, and she shouldn't be offended by your pursuit of them because ultimately you have nothing against her job or lifestyle.
  12. This is what I have produced. I haven't sent it, am debating whether I should, and whether it merits the additional care and effort of hand writing or not. Please keep in mind that I am considering my audience (National Review), and sort of make quite a few rhetorical concessions (presuming the existence of God as I discuss him). I don't believe in God, but I also don't think what I have written necessarily implies that. My point is that while I support the essence of my argument, please do not hold the rhetoric against me. Although, that makes me a poor Objectivist writer, I suppose. Also, I realize I am advocating for a spirit/matter dichotomy. I don't. But a theist, by implication, must. I can't ignore that fact, and have decided that it is politically prudent to ask a theist to treat the dichotomy objectively. I think this is okay, because the conceptual essence of the theist's 'transcendence' is something I attribute to an epistemologically correct conclusion about man's identity. This is worthy of another topic, though perhaps will fit into a thread about conservatism. Basically, I think that man's concept of self - spiritual self - i.e.: the sort of virtues he must possess in order that he might obtain certain values - is necessarily open-ended. In other words, your virtues are specifically related to the values you haven't yet obtained that you might obtain. An integrated self requires that which is not 'known'. I speak, of course, from the 'conservative' point of view here. I've read good Objectivist commentary that criticizes conservatives for labelling all secular knowledge as 'a priori' when of course Ayn Rand's contribution to philosophy was integration. Thus conservatives automatically view Ayn Rand in a category to which she doesn't belong. Fine. My point in this letter is to encourage them to learn that, ultimately. First, they must be willing to actually - you know - read the whole book. So my rhetoric appeals to the dichotomy they have created for the world. My conclusion is that the full realzation of self is (well obviously) a personal affair, so it can't include the state. That's why any sort of concept of 'divine justice' has no place in a discussion about men judging other men. Or, there is a dichotomy, between the defined and the potential, but identity is the integration of the two, not existing as one or the other. "Dear Editors, I am writing you concerning the recent article you have published entitiled “The Great Ghastly Ayn Rand”. I do not expect that I am the only one. As a result, my comments will be rather limited in scope. My main concern is that Mr. Steorts, with his main concern about Atlas Shrugged, is missing the point. I don’t want to belabor the debate over his specific argument, though I must address it; instead I wish to make clear why I think that a certain incorrect premise is what led Mr. Steorts to his conclusion. While I believe that this premise is definitive of contemporary conservative, I don't think it is essential to it. In other words, I’m worried that the best conservatism has to offer could be squandered if it cannot adapt to new ideas. I think, with Ayn Rand, it has retrenched itself against the advance of knowledge. I also think that conservatism needn’t betray itself or its fundamental core values in order to integrate itself with many of the core ideas advocated by Ayn Rand. That is why I am concerned with National Review’s stance against Ayn Rand, given that it has traditionally represented a youthful and adaptive (not compromising) conservatism. To the point: Mr. Steorts’s main concern with Atlas Shrugged seems well represented in the train tunnel ‘gas chamber’ he discusses at length in his article. I am certain that this argument is familiar to you - but the problem with Mr. Steorts’s analysis is that he attributes to Ayn Rand a status of moral omnipotence, he places her in shoes he reserves for God, when the foundational premise - metaphysically - of her entire philosophy was in diametric opposition to any man taking this role. His mistaken premise is that the divine standard of justice is equivalent to the societal, or ‘earthly’ standard. This is conservatism's error as well. You know how liberals get mad at believers who say that sinners will go to hell? They say that these believers’ opinion is hateful, and that the believers themselves are moral bigots. Do you agree with that? I would think that you would not. This is because there are two standard: one of divine justice, and one of worldly justice. The divine pertains to man’s soul, the afterlife, and the transcendent. The worldy pertains to Creation, reality, reason. I would also guess that Mr. Steorts would not agree that he is conflating the two standards. But that is what he has done in condemning Ayn Rand. Yes, as the author she put those people to death. But, when she did so she was not applying any divine standard of judgment. Ayn Rand wanted the world to know that you can’t cheat reality, and that reality is objective. Nowhere in this vision is a place for transcendent moral ‘oughts’, so to speak. When the mother tucks in her children who later die along with her in the train crash, never does Rand ask if the human heart could bear such a tragedy. Her whole point is: reality will bear such a tragedy, and the tragedy occured explicitly because the victims would not bear reality. If you take the message of the novel in its entirety, you will see a desperate, vicious, crying plea for people to accept reality, and for them to not think that they can will or ‘faith’ themselves a better world. The tragedy of this train crash, and of its victims is that they did deserve it. They deserved it in a worldly sense, it was ‘what they had coming’. And it is tragic because no standard of divine justice could alter that reality. The tragedy occurred despite what goodness or evil was in their souls. Their choices and actions and personal insistence on preserving their worldview led to their deaths. They would not give up their premises, and no man or God condemned them: only the facts. If Ayn Rand was vicious to these people, than it was as much because of God rather than in spite of Him. For what will God do for man that he, within his ability, will not do for himself? Put another way: was it God who condemened those that might have drowned in the New Orleans floods following Hurricane Katrina? Was he perhaps judging them for foolishly living below sea level in a stormy clime? I don't think but only the most fringe of pastors would claim as much. More so, they might blame the tragedy on some unnamed sinfulness. Instead, the vast majority of thinking adults - clergy included - would acknowledge that while any given storm is hard to predict, it is probably a bad idea to live in a place that is so sensitive to them. Has not National Review spoken out against rebuilding here, when we've already seen the consequences? And ask yourself this: am I more sympathetic as an advocate against rebuilding if the future inhabitants are ignorant masses, or if they are the very souls who initiate and insist upon the rebuilding effort. I said I wouldn't belabor the debate, but I must say: if Ayn Rand didn't viciously codemn those in the train wreck for their views, if she had forgiven them, she'd essentially be excusing their worldview, and would be an accessory to their deaths. Again, note the difference between divine forgiveness, and worldy apathy. The only conclusion I can draw is that Ayn Rand accepts the fundamental, basic worth of the human soul (divine or not), which is particularly why she so harshly condemns those who treat it as a thing of nought. I digress. Let me now ask: was there never an Aquinas? Was it not St. Augustine who quipped that man should act one way and pray another? And that leads me to my point. Ayn Rand’s message to the political world is that any institution of justice with dominion over men must apply a standard of justice proper to man: a worldly standard. It is wrong for one man to apply - and I refer to force (leaving aside intellectual judgment) - a standard of divine justice upon another. A man cannot punish another man for being evil. He can punish him for causing demonstrable harm. I maintain that God’s dominion is over man’s soul, and his heart. I maintain that divine justice is a matter resolved between God and individual souls. This does not preclude the possibility of intermediaries - rather it suggests that they lose legitimacy as intermediaries the moment they exercise force. I maintain that justice in society is man’s means of dealing with other men. That is all. And the standard common to men, sinner and saint, is worldy, and factual. This is fundamentally American. Is there an element of deism in American political religion? Yes! There is. In politics is the secular man qualified to make these conclusions? I can only respond by asking: was Galileo qualified to make the conclusions he did? Was Copernicus qualified to determine the true nature of the solar system? The church, in that instance, deemed no. But it has learned, perhaps, that that is not the sort of judgment it is charged with passing. Which is why I believe that National Review needs to change its position on Ayn Rand fast. Science has eroded in many ways the traditional place of religion in society. But I don’t know any responsible conservatives that reject science. Ayn Rand is a rare practitioner of the science of ethics, and of philosophy. This does not make her view completely or even mostly correct, depending on your analysis. But it does mean that her ideas contribute to the base of human knowledge. Two evidences that she has done so legitimately are first: what I have said about societal justice being the province of reason and men - that perspective came to me through her writings - and second: the vast influence and popularity of her ideas. I only mean to say that Ayn Rand’s ideas are important. They are worth learning and understanding if not accepting. But Mr. Steorts’s re-review does National Review’s readers the immense disservice of discouraging them from even pursuing those ideas. By not even reading all the way through (yes, I know he had once prior) for the sake of a review, Mr. Steorts immediately labels Ayn Rand as ‘not worth even trying’. What an affront to human knowledge! As I have said, I believe he has done so because he - and I worry that National Review in general shares this position - does not wish for Ayn Rand’s ideas to gain any traction. I believe that the reason why he feels this way follows the same reasoning he uses in trying to discredit those ideas. Namely: that societal justice must reflect divine justice. Ayn Rand merely asked, ‘what if it needn’t?’ Because otherwise the argument is conceded to the liberals. They might propose a program that doesn’t work. But it means to work, and is therefore just. I think Mr. Goldberg has beautifully explained why conservatives should be uneasy about Pragmatism. Liberals might propose radical changes based on secular philosophies that don’t reflect divine will. But we’re not all the same religion, so what is divine will anyway? Ayn Rand said: ‘you’re missing the point’. Recently, I read in The Corner about how America is a statistical outlier in terms of being both wealthy and relatively religious. I would venture that this is precisely because America’s political tradition has recognized that God’s role is outside, above, and beyond that system and its justice. I would also venture, from the evidence, that if God is the Creator, then that is how he intended it. Ayn Rand is among the most prominent thinkers to advocate a system of justice for human society that relies on what man is, in the world. It needn’t be called secular, because it intentionally doesn’t address man’s divine purpose. It is a system that regulates the interactions of men based on facts. Period. This is also the same sort of system envisioned by the founders. They left a common purpose, divine even, to the king to establish in his society. For themselves, they chose a society that let each man to his own divine destiny, to pursue it as he saw fit to establish between himself and the Lord. And how can God judge man otherwise? In that sense, maybe Ayn Rand is one of the biggest advocates for divine justice, as well. But perhaps she doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously. Is that what one gets for irking Bill Buckley? Too bad her followers are dogmatic, immature, tribalists indeed. And my sarcasm is deliberate. From his prose, I feel that Mr. Steorts must be smarter than what his arguments imply. I sense deliberate misdirection. That is shameful, if true. Conservatives have to ask themselves if the ends justify the means. And depending on the answer, they must decide which direction they will take their conservatism. "
  13. From Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: "Willy Wonka: [to Charlie] I can't go on forever, and I really don't want to try. So who can I trust to run the factory when I leave and take care of the Oompa Loopa's for me? Not a grown up. A grown up would want to do everything his own way, not mine. So that's why I decided a long time ago that I had to find a child. A very honest, loving child, to whom I could tell all my most precious candy making secrets." Why does the brute take from the producer - because the producer isn't a merely a value sought, but a source of value. Dominate him, and you'll have access to a source of continuous value. But that is irrational, because he cannot rationally produce and be dominated. Something will give. Children can derive their entire sense of life from the example and efforts of their parents. And they become a source of value, they produce the values that are valuable to their parents, in the manner discussed at length in this topic. What would be an immoral and improper relationship between adults is both proper if not necessary between parent and child. There is a missing component here. Each adult was once a child, and though reason provides access to obtaining a proper sense of life, the basics are meant - by nature of the human species - to be obtained from parents. Things like basic self worth, integrity, even psycho-epistemological factors like how value is obtained in the world. Again, all this is accessible to any adult through reason, but I think that children are meant to learn the basics from their parents. What this implies is a generational chain of virtue. Not to mistake this for ancestor worship or collectivism, but the nuance here is that a functional rational generation progression can multiple the value in a man's life. With parents and children sharing his essential values, the man can see them multiplied in his life. This is also the genesis of culture and the basis for the sort of non-familial relationships he might seek. Where the nuance comes in is that what I refer to is a process or framework, and the role of family in a man's life depends primarily of the content of their values. Thus, generationalism is only proper when the values it sustains are objectively proper. You know, individual rights and responsibilities within the family. No mooching. But if a family has the right values, it can serve as a powerful multiplier of these intergenerational values for it's individual members. This is because we are human (ergo, birth, infancy, maternal instinct, etc. all of which is a content independent framework for how humanity reaches maturity).
  14. I still stand by my description of nominal wealth as an 'IOU' or 'claim ticket' on the 'pot' of real wealth. Real wealth is comprised of values that are consumed. Nominal wealth cannot be consumed, only traded. (so real estate is consumed in the sense that each period of time that passes is a lost 'use' period for that real estate) Any monetary strategy of economic intervention, if I'm not mistaken, seeks to influence the distribution of 'claim tickets' to incentivize producers to increase the size of the 'pot'. Or, on occasion, simply distribute 'claim tickets' to underproducers who otherwise wouldn't have access to credit. With such manipulations - extending credit to counter-balance a debt deflationary spiral - I have to imagine that the value of credit for credit's sake could eventually be distorted beyond the value of actual real wealth. That is, possessing access to the institutional means of recycling and multiplying nominal wealth would ultimately produce more 'claim tickets' than producing the real values they have claim upon. So fewer and fewer will be producing (the dismantling of the investment cycle), yet all will be clamoring for greater access to what real production is left. I would predict that certain economic interventions: wage fixes, antitrust laws, barriers on energy production, would first lead to deflation, that the Fed could counter this deflation with monetary policy, that this would provoke a bubble, which would pop and lead to incredibly rapid deflation, countered by more aggressive monetary policy, until the point of a sovereign debt crisis (where the claim tickets become so worthless that the institutional recyclers don't even want them), at which point there is sudden and disastrous hyperinflation as the massive stockpiles of cash are dumped for what little value they can claim. In short, I can't help but perceive any kind of monetary intervention to be some sort of institutionalized economy of pull. If the power to manipulate nominal wealth is created, who excercises it, and what actions should they take? Without that power, the market determines the different values of things. With that power, people do. And so the ear of the right person can become more valuable than the values in the market. And it's only inevitable that the money itself would become more important to the chief financial institutions than the actual real wealth it has claim upon. More money means more sway with the masters of money. It almost makes you wonder if it isn't some scheme. Granted, even the most brilliant minds can make stupid mistakes, but I'm a little weary of the thought that so many could be so stupid for so long. But there is no evidence for this, only a lack of evidence against it. So, until the Fed receives a proper audit, I have no reason to believe there is NOT some scheme going on. That, I think is the prudent course of thought. And it's falsifiable. A simple audit will answer the question. Among other solutions.
  15. There are a series of articles this week at pajamasmedia.com about the educational system in America today. The thesis is: in the struggle between the X-tian Texas BoE and the liberal Obama-California axis, everybody loses. That to me highlights why I'm not concerned about religious conservatives. In the worst case scenario, they are a different flavor of what we already have. But it is far more likely that they will contribute to structural fixes that will be beneficial. For instance, school choice.
  16. <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/244381/greatly-ghastly-rand-jason-lee-steorts?page=1&sms_ss=twitter">The National Review article of the same name.</a> (I do hate the word 'eponymous') Some of you might recall that National Review published one of the most historically significant reviews of Atlas Shrugged in 1957. <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/222482/big-sister-watching-you/flashback">Here it is.</a> It was written by one Whittaker Chambers, a former Marxist, turned religious believer (great turnaround, huh?) It's said that perhaps Mr. Chambers hadn't even read the whole book. <a href="http://blogcritics.org/books/article/ayn-rand-vs-whittaker-chambers-and/">This</a> is only one response to Mr. Chambers's review, explaining many of its deficits. National Review's history of trying to silence the message promulgated by Rand is astonishing. It is ironic that 'Conservatism' has had its most memorable champions in Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan - both of whom publicly adopted a political philosophy closer to that of Rand's than that of Chambers's. (Reagan's policies and politics aside, recall that he went from 8 points behind Jimmy Carter to 10 ahead because of their single, 1980, debate. Look it up on Youtube. Among other things he talks about why the minimum wage is bad. In other words, without defending Reagan's presidency, I can draw conclusions about the message that I attribute to his election and popularity) It is also ironic that Ayn Rand's politics aren't far removed from the norm throughout most of American history leading up to the 1930's. Today, with the resurgence of interest in Atlas Shrugged I suppose that National Review feels that they need to silence Miss Rand once again. I plan on hand-writing a letter to the NR offices in response to this article, and will post the text in this thread when I am done (I will not claim to be anything more than a fan of Miss Rand's). I think NR lately has shown some promise, particularly with Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism as well as NR's stance in opposition to the neoconservative likes of Weekly Standard during the last election cycle. I have to conclude that this was a hit job, and intentionally so. But I will still try to appeal to what sound minds might be over there. Although I will post my letter here later, I do want to mention the one point that disturbs me the most in the hit job. The author finds his biggest complaint against Rand in her 'killing' of a train full of people 'including innocents' as they pass through the mountain tunnel. The author presumptuously concludes that Rand is taking upon herself the role of God in condemning and disposing of these people. That couldn't be further from the truth and betrays his biggest intellectual handicap. The fact is that Miss Rand absolutely refuses to pass judgment of the sort he is describing. The author's religious mentality has constrained him to judge human action based on a subjective standard of good and evil as set forth and judged by God. Without God's presence on the Earth, that standard and its fulfillment are the responsibility of men. Whether of their own invention, or through interpretation of revelation, man is the subjective judge when the matter is one of sin and righteousness. Ayn Rand refuses to take God's responsibility in this matter. She in no way judges the people on the train to be good or evil according to a standard of sin and righteousness. Rather, the 'evil' of the people is judged only by the objective consequences of their choices. And the punishment doled out is not Miss Rand's, but reality's. Ayn Rand did not condemn them, they were doomed by the facts, and their refusal to acknowledge them. To say Ayn Rand 'condemned' them to death, is to say that she wished for their death. On the contrary, her heroes are tireless advocates for reason and responsibility. Ayn Rand's message was a cry, in the name of the innocent, for society to embrace reality. The tunnel was her warning. I would not wish National Review ill, I would hope that with their exposure, they would lead a more wholesome intellectual course. And otherwise, I am happy to let them to themselves and their own pursuits. But, just as Kip Chalmers demanded that the train defy reality, against all the facts, one might worry that National Review, by doing the same, will lead Conservatism to a dark dark place. Will they deserve it? Yes. Am I the depraved judge to say so? Rather, I'd think the force behind reality, their beloved Creator, would have much more to do with it.
  17. This is what I meant, originally. Nevertheless, I wasn't commenting on the rightness of receiving/not receiving benefits, I was trying to refer to the attitude some have that one deserves a thing merely because it is there. Entitlement, in spite of the role others' reasoned choices might have played in producing and providing what yours have not.
  18. I do think bullfighting qualifies as an art. I just think it's wasteful to destroy life for the sake of art. Food serves an obvious purpose, and can be art, but even so is still food. There are plenty of reasons to kill animals. But I think the spiritual - the 'art' value - of preserving life trumps an event that is purposefully staged to end it. I'll compare it to cockfighting: there are no values being expressed (beyond the skill of the human trainers). It's life being subordinated to the passion of men to kill. Not a proper valuation, in my opinion. I won't say I'm against it, I'd say I don't care for it. Same with bullfighting. The life and death struggle, with reason winning over animal power, would only be compelling if it was an actual struggle. And in that instance the artist/gladiator is purchasing your attention with by leveraging his own life. That is improper. So I can't say that there's anyway to make bullfighting legitimate to me, rationally. An animal is being killed in reality, to portray a value in the abstract. Food is a real value. The bull was raised to die for the sake of dying. Weird. (food is raised for the sake of dying, for food)
  19. As others have said: sex seems like a much bigger deal than it is until you do it. I don't want to minimize romance, but the perspective I'm discussing is critical. Imagine if you had never eaten a delicious sweet. And everyone else had. They all say, "Oh man, this is so great!" You think, "I wish I knew what they meant." One day, you finally have a sweet for the first time. You realize, that yes, it is very good. And that's all it is. Very good. Maybe excellent. But in not having one ever, there was no 'hidden knowledge' you were missing out on. That's how I felt about sex while a virgin: that there was something everybody else knew that I didn't. I felt epistemologically, even metaphysically inferior to everyone else. I don't know why this is. If a friend had travelled the world, survived death countless times, was brought so low that he discovered his true nature and the extent of his integrity, and all I had done was gone to college, I might feel metaphysically inferior in a sense. But sex, this is no big deal. One day, you'll no longer be a virgin, and you'll observe a group of young people discussing the issue obsessively. You'll hear music on the radio, and observe suggestive imagery on TV. And all you'll have to say, is, (sarcastically) "Really, sex is great? Thanks. Thanks for making that clear. For a while, I thought you might be the only, or at least, the first ones to have ever made this discovery." Generally, knowledge of, experience with sex is part of adulthood. So it's easy to not feel quite an adult without it. But that's false thinking. How many millions of non-virgins have never raised a child? Never owned a home? Never lost a loved one? Never made a single deliberate, rational, decision in their life? How many ridiculous 13 year olds have already lost their virginity, and yet only barely have the biological capacity to do so? And is there something really special about a 13-year-old awkwardly, you know? Because of alcoholism in my family, I've never drank. I'm almost old enough now that I just might never do it. I've never done drugs. Twice, I've had Nitrous Oxide at the dentist. I drink coffee. Am I missing out? Plenty would tell me yes. Alcohol is so central to the 'fun' and 'social' and 'relaxing' and 'good-feeling' needs of so many people I know, that at times I find it very very difficult to even feel like I'm of the same species as them. I don't even have a clue what being drunk or even buzzed would feel like (nor am I advocating against it). But it doesn't even matter. I love my life. Have you ever been buzzed? Was life beforehand miserable? Pointless? Without compare? I doubt it. Sex is just what it is, and most of the people who do it, because they're most people - probably couldn't begin to appreciate what they're doing up the level of rational satisfaction that you might have picking your toenails. (Wouldn't it be ironic if poster comes back tomorrow with: "I'm not a virgin anymore!")
  20. I would respond with an Anthropological argument. You see, women in many societies are task with child rearing. This causes them to seek material support from others, it being impossible to both care for a child, and provide the material support for oneself and the child. As a result, women in these societies become conditioned to view reality through their relationships with others rather than through facts. This in turn causes women in many societies to doubt reality itself. This in turn causes them to doubt the reality of their identity, and their self-worth. This contradicts the self-evident, with objective gender-unbiased reason as the source of that knowledge. As a result, they become desperate to restore the conviction that they are unique individuals, with the right to pursue happiness within their own societies. They are desperate to reconcile their world-view with their self-evident and foundational needs. However, because of the social conditioning they've experienced, they are fearful that they might discover that their unique identity is worthless in reality. Not because it is, but because their society has been conditioned to reject reality. As a result, they desperately seek examples of individual self-worth in others, where there's no risk to themselves. They constantly seek to give and love, or advocate for the needs of others - everyone but themselves - because they have disassociated themselves from reality. This is why many women in today's society feel that they are not understood. Because they have been conditioned to expect that others provide for them what they can only provide for themselves: personal acceptance of objective reality, and the conviction that they have a right to pursue their own happiness. Objective fact exists. That the 'female mind' doesn't have access to these facts is not a fact. That anthropological forces might impede women in their effort to learn truth: that's the real story. Tell your professor: "I think I understand what you're saying. But, I maintain that women are capable of learning objective truth and indeed ought to. If I felt otherwise, it would be as if I didn't have a respect for the humanity of women. And that I wouldn't think they deserved an equal station with men, because of the meer fact of their reproductive organs." Anyway, this isn't a theory of mine. Maybe a speculation, but nevertheless I'm making a point about the vaunted logic of sociological science. Best response in this thread: "She speaks with such certainty, like she knows what she's talking about. She must be a dude." Yeah, that's the point.
  21. Isn't bullfighting mostly staged? I don't mean to say that there is not risk involved, but my understanding was that bullfighting events only end one way. That being said, isn't the purpose of bullfighting for the crowd to take pleasure in the conquest of the animal? That's more art than sport. And it's not good art. It reminds me of dueling, where the purpose is for someone to gain at the death of another. I know that it is an animal that is dying, but I have to presume the matador will never die. If there was a chance he would, then bullfighting is like a barbaric gladitorial contest. This is what inspired me to compare it to a duel. The matador is not conquering the bull, because the game is fixed. Compelling and exciting at points, reflecting a semi-rational metaphysical value-judgment (man over nature via reason), but overall it falls short for that reason. If two men were competing against each other in how fast or how well they could kill the bull, that would be more legitimate as a sport. If a film or a painting portrayed an actual struggle between man and beast, that would be legitimate art. But I find the actual killing of a creature, when the whole things is staged and phoney anyway, to be a bit out of taste.
  22. I read <a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/08/31/welcome-to-kiryas-joel-please-dress-accordingly/">this</a>, and was pleasantly surprised by the end. Basically, this Jewish community in New York has posted signs at their town's entrance asking visitors to dress modestly and 'maintain gender seperation'. At first I rolled my eyes. But then I changed my mind. The comments from the local civil liberties union sealed the deal for me. I found the approach of this community to be refreshing. Basically, the signs are privately funded, on private property, and correspond to no consequences. It is only a polite request by town residents (some of them) to respect their cultural habits while in the town. Imagine that! But it goes to show how divisive public property and public policy can be. And how uncontroversial and settled private property can be. Like the stupid mosque issue. But there's a thread for that (my conclusion was that even if the mosque's builders were the worst ideologues, the best we could do is use our freedoms to protest and insult their beliefs). I also found it ironic that someone visiting the town said, "I feel like my constitutional rights are being violated." If the town legally mandated these rules, that would be a problem I guess, but I found that this comment in particular smacked of the classic leftist attitude of entitlement. I'm not sure what there is to discuss, but, again I'll say that I found the story to be refreshing. I'm glad something so controversial can also be so completely uncontroversial because of private property. Do you feel the same way?
  23. This is a good question, and it's why economics is a dead science in its current utilitarian, equilibrium-seeking, historical modeling through econometrics and stochastic analysis format. Think about it like an economist (the reasoning skills of economics, in basic form, are quite powerful - tools like: "all else being equal" and making assumptions to help distill economic concepts). Why in the hell would someone not consume something that they can? Utility (Utilitarian, as I used it earlier, refers to a social policy of maximizing 'society's' utility, and is an awful concept. Utility as a concept refering to the abstract personal benefit received by doing something, is a powerful tool) - sorry - utility is gained by consuming additional units of a thing even if that utility is diminishing marginally. That means that even if, after eating ten cookies, an eleventh cookie will hardly benefit you, it will still benefit you more than if you hadn't eaten it. Keep in mind here we're talking about a simplified economics-think world (without weight gain or full bellies). If I made a million dollars, and bought a half-million dollar house, why would I not also buy a half-million dollar yacht? You might say: "Well, next year I won't make any money, and need to pay property taxes and bills." But, economic-think also extends across time periods as dynamic multi-year models are used. To give an analogue: imagine you have no heirs, and after the year's up, you'll die. In fact, imagine that the whole world will end in a year. Why in the hell would you not buy the yacht? Okay, imagine that you'll live forever, but that each year is the same as every other year. There are unlimited resources, but no children - everything's always the same. Machinery depreciates, it breaks down. So every year you 'invest' money in order to rebuild the machinery. It turns out, that that is not investment. That is called 'maitenance' (my word). In fact, putting money in stocks is not strictly 'investment' it's 'savings' (economic word). Investment is taking a surplus, and putting it into the future, to create a proportionally greater surplus at that time. The only reason you'd ever 'waste' your money (the boat, remember, it's waiting for you) on the future, is if you could get even more money out of it. Because of hierarchy of values, present consumption is always worth more than future consumption (because you have to consume now in order to 'get to' tomorrow). So defering value into the future requires a substantially greater return than what you'd get in terms of utility today. Now that that's been said, consider the implications. First, only Objectivism has ever offered an epistemology that can explain how investment really works. If you aggregate all the values, if you follow activities to their sum, the process of investing/saving/etc. over the years are just steps in a chain of ultimate prodution and consumption. Investment is an effect that occurs in an attempt to reach optimal production (equal to ultimate consumption). But that optimal level might occur only after the passing of future years. In other words, it exists in reality, but not within our history or knowledge. Only Objectivism can subsume tomorrow into today. Think of it like the Marxists (I did this in another thread): the poor, under Capitalism, give their 'share' of wealth to the rich - supposedly. In other words, Marxists like to talk about how, because technology (capital they call it) takes inputs and multiplies the resultant output, capitalism 'centralizes' the share of wealth in society to the owners of the machinery. Ayn Rand correctly asked: (not an actual quote) "Why and how do the capitalists build the machines in the first place?" That's the most important question. If you really believe the utilitarian economic model, then Capitalism and Industry are bust. Eventually, if Marxism is true, the wealthy who supposedly have all the poor peoples' money locked up - paying them dismal wages - have to actually spend that money (remember, the boat is waiting). If the vast majority of people in society are miserable proletariat, then that's where the money is going to be spent. And guess what? Maybe the bourgeoisie will pay the poor to stand in as chess pieces in a game of human chess, or act as living ottomans before their thrones. It doesn't matter, because these poor then are getting paid. And in turn, they spend that money elsewhere. Basically, over the long run, the 'wealthy' have to either 'redistribute' their wealth, or basically everyone dies. Marx admits this, predicting 'crises of overproduction' spurring communist revolution. He was sort of right! If a capitalist builds one factory, once, then eventually he'll have to pay everyone the same as himself or else (in the long run) his workers won't be able to afford to buy what he produces. Granted, this is assuming everyone's a rational actor. Still, it's a true economic fact. Unfortunately (for the Marxists), when wealth is concentrated to the wealthy, they take the 'excess' (which in the long run has to go back to the poor, or the system collapses) and invest it in ever more productive measures. And so, what they've created isn't a system of 'capital' (a static set of factories to give them temporary wealth - as much a redistribution as if the government gave it back), they've created a system of investment that spurs unending growth. "Capitalism" is all about continued investment. Yes, if we are all done building any new technology or new factories, or new infrastructure, and done investing new money, then wealth has to be redistributed forcibly or else people will eventually start starving to death. Isn't it ironic, then, that the socialists demand we stop investing and building and growing FIRST. THEN they ask for redistribution. That's why "Why were factories built in the first place?" is the MOST important question. The factories weren't built in a one-shot effor to temporarily extract gains from the poor over one lifetime. They were built in an ongoing cycle of investment extending across human history. Without continued investment in new and better modes of production, humanity is forced to rely on the immediate gifts of nature. Yet, as Ayn Rand pointed out, we aren't equipped to thrive in that environment. Recall: a baby human will crawl out over a glass surface laid over a tall height, a baby animal will not. Humans have little in the way of sheer instinct to survive off of nature. We survive through reason, and through a continued attempt to best our surroundings, and build and create more and better ways of using the resources available to us. The famines and wars throughout history are proof of this: they are 'hiccups' in that cycle of investment. They don't condemn it, rather they prove its utter necessity. Puts the environmental movement in a new perspective too, huh? The only alternative to constant growth is death: fast death, or slow and steady death. The sustainability movement aims for the latter, but will inevitably discover the former (since our world of 6 billion has been built on such intensive industry). In fact, population growth is important (if it occurs properly, as a 'sound investment'). With population decline, you have to have huge leaps in productivity to stave off deflation (the clearest real world example is in Japan where robots are being envisioned to help care for the elderly). By the way, since I'm on a 'roll'. Did you know some economists have proposed making the Yen an electronic currency so that people can't keep savings under their mattress, and banks can apply negative interest rates? Shows how well academia 'gets' the economy. And so, I'm done really. Investment is a continued process of growth. It has a dynamic identity - it is defined over time, not in a given moment. Marx, and the collectivists, define capitalism as 'industry': concentrating wealth in order to gain in efficiency, in order to extract a greater share yet of wealth from society's 'pie'. But capitalism is not 'industry', industry is made possible by capitalism. Capitalism is distributing a share of wealth from today, into tomorrow, by recognizing that IN REALITY wealth is something that exists ACROSS TIME. Capitalism makes the poor richer and the rich richer. The poor 'distribute' their wealth into tomorrow for a greater gain. The rich take a premium for facilitating it. Empiricism can't handle that, which is why Marxism was born in England, and then Europe romanticized it into nihilistic nonsense, whereby it was retransmitted back to the American university where our humanities departments aren't taken seriously by our science departments except in the cocktail lounge, boardroom, and halls of government (see Frankfurt School). For today's world, the biggest destroyers of capitalism are: limitations on the development of technology, malinvestment of funds for technology (federal funding of universities, 'green' technology, 'social' policy), limitations on energy development and exploitation, arbitrary limits and impositions on the growth and evolution of capital (antitrust), pointless and romantic life goals for generations of youth (save the world, help other people, save the environment) that divert productive energy away from production, policies that encourage investment in sub-optimal or prohibitive uses of new frontiers. One comment on that: the most, far and away, important near term effort for a long term goal that we have to be pursuing is the development of near space resources for commercial exploitation. I'm talking the moon, asteroids, that sort of thing. I challenge you to read a bit about NASA's history. You had people (Al Gore - no really) who made decisions at every step along the way in order to make the Space Shuttle as ineffective and expensive as possible. This ensured big budgets for petty science, and the oppressive crowding out of any private endeavor. The human capital and minds were sucked into NASA, the capital and Boeing and Lockheed were sucked into NASA: other attempts were ridiculed and underfunded and understaffed. Plus, international and federal law were designed to prevent the commercial exploitation of space. It's really an outrageous 'hidden' history. But so is the story of capitalism in general, right? Yes.
  24. Indeed, ditto, hear hear. To everyone. Religion has driven the defeat of capitalism. Look - please at least glance in order to understand - at the most recent awful and hideous National Review which again goes to painstaking efforts to excorciate Ayn Rand. In fact, I'll make a post on that later because there's a specific point I think needs to be made in response. The pseudo-concepts of religion are a problem. Let me offer an example (a big one): the idea that fate works in man's favor. This just isn't true, and it leads to an awful lack of attention to detail in reality. However, accepting this notion on faith allows a person to fully consider what they might do if fate were to work out in their favor. This allows them to plan for the better world before it can be seen. In other words, it allows for integration to occur without a full understanding of the epistemological principles involved. Remember that even Ayn Rand didn't expect everyone to be able to understand philosophy. A special class of intellectuals - according to the principle of division of labor - would study the science of ethics and philosophy, and pass down/along simplified principles to the rest of society. The goal is to reform that class. One way to reform that class is to defeat the factors that enable the mystics to inhabit that class. Religious mystics have long since been excluded from the top tiers of the intellectual class. The secular mystics are the problem. One way to defeat them is to erode their base of support in the public, by eroding the barriers they place on society's intellectual framework. Pseudo-concepts can serve as scaffolding, or bridges, over these barriers. The idea is that they connect good concepts to other good concepts. They make inaccessible good concepts available. Glenn Beck is a great example of where things are headed. I simply can't imagine his ratings rising more than what they are. I can imagine him continuing to erode the ratings of his competitors by undercutting their moral arguments - even if he has to appeal to pseudo-concepts in order to do so. In the end, the result is a vacuum - which we need to fill. Vacuums can be dangerous - read 'Ominous Parallels'. But part of why I'm glad Beck is the man doing what he's doing is that his ilk - his followers - are the sort to reject a vacuum. They'll continue to demand a certain integrity from their intellectual leaders. It might be a while before they can move beyond their religious worldview, I can conceive of a deistic approach that might work, but in the end I see no evidence to suggest that their political aspirations will be all that damaging. They'll never let the Catholics in their ranks install a monarch, nor will the Catholics allow an Evangelical takeover of the moral sphere. There's too much diversity, and America's history has provided too strong a basis for common cause: freedom of religion, and a source of prosperity through liberty. That's ultimately what Beck's message seems to be about. Again, I think the right response has been mentioned often. I don't endorse Beck, but I will defend him against the unfair criticisms leveled by the Left. I am also happy to join in the effor to erode the moral/cultural dominance of the Left in the public sphere. I will also continually advocate from within Beck's 'movement' against the religious emphasis. I will point out where that emphasis, and my values come to a common understanding. I don't think a religionist would ever accept my values, but they would accept me as an ally, and have a greater respect for me, and a greater willingness to make concessions to me, if I point out what we have in common. Beck isn't the enemy: National Review is the enemy. Jonah Goldberg isn't the enemy: Conrad Black is the enemy. The world needn't be split into one grand dichotomy. Elements of Beck's movement are bad, but most elements are good against the worst element of my worst enemies. This isn't a pragmatism, because I don't want to make any concessions to Beck. (EDIT: any concessions on core values, I mean) Conceding that people have a right to pseudo-concepts is permissible, so long as I ensure than they will not interfere with my right to reject those same pseudo-concepts.
  25. I watched Beck today for a few minutes. He went into a fair amount of pseudoMormon doctrine. Hell, he even told everyone to pay their tithing (I know ftw)? He's declared the Tea Party to be the third great awakening. He's basically insisting that this is going to be about God. That's not an endorsable aspiration. However as a religionist, he seems firmly convinced that religion means personal faith and personal salvation. Mormonism holds that knowledge is necessary for salvation. What knowledge, you ask? Good question, the answer is what makes Mormonism a total crock. But there is nevertheless an appeal to individual accountability for acquiring knowledge and for making choices. Glenn Beck is trying to force out any other interpretation of religion from the public sphere. Interpretations that include collective salvation and social justice. Religionists don't rely on solid evidence to construct their concepts. As a result they are more 'flexible' than academics. This has obvious drawbacks, but I have come to conclude that it gives religionists - particularly in American society - a phenomenal advantage in their inductive reasoning over the Left. Yes, they employ too many pseudo concepts - but this allows them to employ a broader inductive process. That's why they know that individual knowledge and choice is important, but they don't know why exactly. That's what Beck is appealing to: the reason they don't know they have. I don't like Beck's movement, but I'm happy about the possibility of it driving back Obama's. And this isn't a point about the lesser of two evils. I think we can hope that Beck will be influenced to identify the role of reason in his message. Or someone. Because we can't convince these people to give up God.
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