Matt's Temporary Blog

Francisco Ayala, Distinguished Scientist, on Science and Religion

2010-07-19T16:36:00.000-07:00

Francisco Ayala is a distinguished scientist and thinker, who left religious life to pursue science. His views on science and religion are worth hearing.

Kudos to Reason.TV for venturing beyond pure political philosophy and policy.

I can't help but take this opportunity to contrast the rather gentle Ayala with someone like Richard Dawkins, whose intellect I greatly respect, but not his manners. Ayala and Dawkins agree on some things in fact.

But one of Dawkins' greatest failings is toward his own stated objectives. He tries to accomplish several things with only one shotgun approach.

While he rightly challenges superstition and persecution of atheists with vigor, his own acid intolerance of religion and religious people undercuts the objective of his foundation, which is to "[s]upport the scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and human suffering."

(Philosophical note: Dawkins goes beyond "methodological naturalism" which many scientists practice, including Ayala -- meaning not injecting God into a scientific inquiry ("creation science") so as to poison it -- to assert the non-existence of God. This is known as "metaphysical naturalism," and is not a scientific position, but a metaphysical one.)

Why should one embrace a life of science and reason if it means acting like Richard Dawkins all the time? He is not a model of reason himself. At least not in anything other than the classroom or laboratory practice of science. Where is the element of "humanity" and "meaning" in his approach? Is that part of reason? Scientific or otherwise? Perhaps, as Ayala notes, these are the purview of religion? Perish the thought . . .

Borrowing from Venezuela: One, Two, Three Strikes, You're Out!

2010-07-16T07:45:00.000-07:00

In Venezuela, opposition students have come up with a clever saying to express their disdain for the megalomaniac Hugo Chavez: "Electricity, Water, Crime, Tas Ponachao," which, borrowing from the Venezuelan love of baseball, is roughly saying "one, two, three strikes, Chavez, you're out!"

The now-viral slogan appears on banners, signs, t-shirts and at baseball games everywhere in Venezuela, protesting the blustering and incompetence of Chavez's "reforms" against the evil bourgeoisie. (Well, maybe not appearing at the home of a businessman on the run, where Chavez's client-looters are happily eating in the kitchen or taking a dip in the swimming pool.)

I think a similar slogan should be applied to Mr. Obama and his party.

As Kimberly Strassel notes in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, after the so-called mainstream media touted Mr. Obama's third major legislative "victory": "There's no longer any question whether this White House can close a sale. Its problem is the country doesn't like what it's selling."

The most recent "finance reform" is an example of looting, exploiting a crisis to make it easier for unions and activists, for example, to crash corporate boards. Which has what to do, exactly, with reforming banking and Wall Street?

The state-supportive media no doubt will tout the historic victories. But the public is not buying it.

I think it's time we in the public coin a similar slogan for our friends in the Democrat Party ("Dem Bums"?), and Mr. Obama in particular, perhaps soon to appear on a t-shirt or at a local baseball game near you: "Stimulus, Healthcare, Banks, You're Out!"

Policy Group and Obama Administration to "Reform" the Media on the Model of Venezuela?

2010-07-14T06:54:00.000-07:00

The Obama administration has many policy pots on the stove. Perhaps too many to be effective. However, bubbling up are some truly radical notions, such as involving government heavily in the "management" of the media, threatening the First Amendment. This, modeled on the "policies" of Hugo Chavez, if you can believe it!

Apparently Sean Penn, Woody Allen and Oliver Stone are not alone in their admiration of the Venezuelan buffoon/strongman.

The Technology Liberation Front's Adam Thierer provides the details.

It's truly disturbing, and maddening how leftist policy "experts" relentlessly attempt to impose their visions on the rest of us, ignoring the wisdom of our Constitution, and the evidence of reality.

Stone's Film is a Sign of a Deep-Seated Tyrannical Temperament

2010-07-06T07:52:00.000-07:00

Oliver Stone has a new film out praising Latin dictators. It tells us something about how virulent the seeds of tyranny are, not just among the would-be dictators, but the clients that would support them.

In "The Republic," Plato provides some wonderful insight into the origins of tyranny. He distrusted "the mob" or mass of humanity because, he argued, they will seek to organize society around base needs, and not important philosophical principles such as justice and truth. When the so-called champion of the people demands unlimited power to protect his holy mission on behalf of the mob, the nation's fate is sealed.

This lesson plays out again and again in nation after nation. We see it today in dramatic fashion in places such as Russia and Venezuela, where buffoons and thugs, running the country in the name of "the people," do quite nicely for themselves while oppressing their enemies. This is the very essence of the false notion of "justice" offered by the Sophists in the first books of "The Republic."

Yet, time and again, people ignore this lesson. Lured by personal insecurity and pessimism, and emergencies real and manufactured, people sacrifice their own freedom and protection, under a republican system of laws, in favor a "strong man" with alleged insight into the "real nature" of the emergency, and the force of will to do something about it.

The paradox is that no one man can know enough about any political or economic problem to "solve" it. Often the dictator's solutions boil down to nothing more than the imposition of his personal whim in response to his own fantastical imaginings, buttressed by masterful demagoguery.

People may not like to hear this, but Barack Obama is a smaller version of such a creature. Observe his natural tendencies of demagoguery and his clueless imaginings about the roots of our economic problems. His answer to almost every problem is more of him and his fellow travelers, the economic illiterates Pelosi and Reid.

Paradoxically, the proper answer, is, of course, more of others. Not the Republican party, with the likes of dangerous attention-cravers such as Rove and Boehner and Gingrich. The answer is more freedom. More unleashing of the genius of the people to solve their own problems.

Obama's demagogic bellowing (about banks and other corporations - whom he negotiates deals with in secret because no one man can solve all problems) is restrained somewhat by the bars of the Constitution. A constitution he has shown himself -- like presidents before him -- willing to ignore or circumvent when he can.

He will not get to take power the way he thinks he deserves. But with each assault on the restraints on power by the constitution, (in his case by seizure of auto company assets, by health care mandate, by presidential "compensation funds") the bars weaken a little more. Setting the stage for a little more tyranny until (dare we suggest it in polite society???) the bars break.

Blindness to subtle changes in the constitution of freedom are somewhat understandable. As economists in the "public choice" school have observed, we often are distracted by other activities and incentives when slow encroachments on liberty take place.

This is a serious problem, captured in the political imaginations of many diverse authors, from Thomas Jefferson to Ayn Rand. To which there is no answer but a proper kind of sacrifice of those who would not seek power for themselves.

But, returning to my original point, how do you explain apologists for tyrants, such as Oliver Stone? His latest film, lauding Latin American dictatorship, makes one wonder about the problem of hardened paradigms. Amidst the most basic evidence about Chavez's mendacity and stupidity it is amazing how tightly some can cling to the paradigm of the "strong man."

A projection of their own insecurity, perhaps, even as they occupy positions of some modest influence over society.

Perhaps Mr. Stone, with more respect for the genius of his own film-making community, should go back and watch Chaplin's classic "Great Dictator" and other such films to clear his head a little. (Wikipedia entry here.)

More eloquent treatises have been written about this secondary problem of tyranny than mine. My only point is to note that dictators do not thrive without their foolish supporters. And as we see from Stone's latest piece of propaganda, the tyrannical temperament remains deeply and powerfully rooted in many places, even in so-called "free societies."

The Expand My Horizons Reading List

2010-07-02T08:24:00.000-07:00

My belief system has undergone dramatic shifts and challenges over the years. I find myself puzzling over certain questions, and have noted some areas where I feel the need to expand my knowledge.

1. Evolution. What is

One Man's Trial, and Gratitude for Life

2010-06-27T23:09:00.000-07:00

Rich Brodsky is Atomic Skunk. He's a musician whom I met via social networking. He writes cool ambient music. He also had brain surgery earlier this week. Second time in ten years, to address a slowly growing tumor. His remarkable blog post, written quickly after his experience, "Mr. Skunk's Wild Ride," is surely worth reading.

I wish the Skunk well in his recovery.

A Week to Use in Weeks Ahead

2010-06-25T18:20:00.000-07:00

A strange week, this one.

It seems the older I get the more life oscillates rapidly between light and darkness. I don't mean that it all happens to me, or that it all occurs in the same degree, but rather I simply observe, and hear about, and am provoked by so much more.

On my birthday, friends leave kind wishes with charitable hopes, at the same time that I am of necessity doing some of the most backbreaking and psychologically challenging work I have ever done -- in intense heat.

A successful musician I admire and correspond with socially undergoes brain surgery, calling forth images of my own late mother's similar procedure, while the same day a good friend endorses me most generously to his former employer; veritable gold in a time of some scarcity of opportunity.

The week overall brings reports from friends of great successes, and also revelations of deep cynicism. At home my family receive regularly sequenced acts of generosity from siblings, aunts, uncles and in-laws, and serendipitous kindness from strangers. Sometimes these displace moments of self-doubt. Sometimes they evoke new ones.

My children bring joy, and contemplation of their development and their natural beauty.

But also there is weariness, and sadness. Weltschmertz even.

One day this week I sat on a dock in Lloyd Harbor, overlooking a magnificently beautiful vista of rippling waters and anchored sailboats. Based on all past experience I should have enjoyed it deeply. But, beaten down by fatigue, no matter which way I looked on that water, all I could feel was what I was missing. There was no consolation or contemplation. I simply hoped to cool off my body a bit before stumbling back up the hill to work for several more hours in the heat. Feeling more than my age and more than a little off course from the destiny that seemed so clearly plotted in my youth. "Where is that benevolent, guiding force?" I wondered. Is it more subtle and sublime than I can imagine? Was it ever there?

Yet as all the impressions of these moments drift into the past and settle down in the memory, with the passage of time, they are refined into the raw material of "experience." To fuel the soul through another day, or week, or year to follow.

With hope, those will be better ones. But hopes like these have been had before.

Reason Video Nails Problems of FCC Regulating Internet

2010-06-19T10:41:00.000-07:00

When I grow up, I want to be as cool as Reason magazine's Nick Gillespie. In the video below he gives succinct summaries of the problems of this most recent and allegedly "light-touch" power grab by the Federal Communications Commission.

(By the way, all meaningless metaphors used by government officials such as the current FCC chairman are unenforceable for future generations of officials.)

Which is why Reason's third "reason" here, "Mission Creep" as a danger to FCC regulation of the Internet is a huge problem, and something the public rarely understands about government: its growth is almost inevitable.

I admire the pluckiness of libertarians in fighting the growth of the state, but in recent years I have become more dour about the prospects for our government and society to avoid decline. Despite even the empowering magic of things like the Internet.

Bureaucrats, however well intentioned, believe they can "help" with almost anything and relentlessly seek to insert themselves into private decisions. Those less well intentioned also see numerous opportunities to expand their power.

One reason the public doesn't understand this is because in essence the problem is highly philosophical. More specifically, epistemological. Government officials trying to help in a way allegedly free from self-interest (not true) concentrate more power in the hands of those with less knowledge than the entirety of the marketplace.

Freedom is a way of crowd-sourcing our problems; with more individuals handling smaller pieces of the logistics of delivering products and services. In a bureaucrat's way of seeing things, that means they have a less "comprehensive" view of the market, which requires a handful of nobles to facilitate (to their own benefit) greater "global coordination" and other such nonsense.

Political Over-promising and Under-delivering?

2010-06-11T07:07:00.000-07:00

Very good article today by the Washington Examiner on the continuation of the "blame game" campaign by President Obama regarding the Gulf Oil spill, and the backlash it's causing him politically. Basically, after years of "blaming Bush" the expectations of the executive have been raised so high, they are sure to disappoint when the increasingly human Barack Obama flails about.

Which raises a larger point. Remember the old adage: "Under-promise and over-deliver?" Doesn't that kind of sum up the entire political problem of modern liberalism (other than it's squishy "third-way" variant)? It's all over-promise and under-deliver.

Did we end the War on Poverty? Or create a Great Society? Did liberalism really bring about a New Deal where the so-called "little guy" was liberated from the corruption of government power by the very industries it claimed it would control? (Or, to put it in today's lingo "asses it would kick?")

The answer is No. Today we see the Obama presidency is rife with corporatism (BP, Goldman Sachs, General Motors, etc.)

So much of modern liberalism is grandiose and utopian, so full of over-promising. How can it lead to anything but disappointment? And yet, the faith lives on . . .

Sex Ed Movie Has Me Thinking (About Thinking)

2010-06-11T04:11:00.000-07:00

My ten-year-old son and I finally watched "the movie" this week at school about changes in the body. Fostering talks between us.

Since, as he learned this week, hormones play such a role in emotional and psychological changes, it seems that when he observes adult psychology at work and comments to me on it, we end up having similar discussions.

This week, for example, after discussing cigarette smoking, we have talked more than once about how adults deal with psychological and emotional stress, quite often resorting to some kind of drug or other addictive/compulsive behavior.

The curious thing for me is how much this little movie provoked my own thinking about adult problems. I find myself in many of these discussions feeling some pity for adults, whose minds seem both heightened and benighted by their hormones.

On the downside resulting not just in addictions, but sometimes even more serious pathologies.

Indeed, from what little I know about those suffering from mental illness, very bright minds that began at birth often face great challenges to their proper functioning when a mixture of traumatic childhood recollections meet with the earliest flood of procreational hormones.

(It makes me seriously wonder what Schopenhauer would say about his and others' adolescence. Is it the "Will's" nightmarish wake-up call?)

I don't have a remedy -- beyond the belief that warm embraces, kisses and saying "I love you" to children are forms of fighting mental illness. Only a certain melancholic puzzlement.

Article on The Higher Education Bubble

2010-06-06T09:49:00.000-07:00

As an adjunct professor, I have long thought the educational system is seriously dysfunctional. Students have little incentive to perform because they are insulated by the true cost of their education by their parents, the government and the taxpayers.

I say as much to the students, a number of whom are doing "do-overs" of their failed (drunken) first try at college some years ago.

The unintended consequence of all this helping in cheap credit and "free financial aid" by the government is out of control tuition inflation. Yet another distortion of the market in the name of creating opportunity.

Glenn Reynolds makes the case more eloquently than I could hope to in this piece today about the effects of cheap credit and mounting educational debt.

Problems of Belief

2010-06-04T22:53:00.000-07:00

1) The Problem of Evil

2) The Mushrooming of Belief Propositions (Or, the Zeno's Paradox of Belief) - To evangelize the faith means to take responsibility for a collection of propositions. But those are not a closed set, Through all of history. Leading to interminable debate for those who choose to participate.

3) Inability to find a "core" set of beliefs free from the centuries of accretions.

Mainstream Media Begin to Challenge Obama's "Reformer" Image in Wake of Sestak Job Offer Scandal

2010-05-25T06:51:00.000-07:00

Finally, the mainstream media pipes up on the Sestak "job-gate" scandal.

Washington Post: Lack of Sunlight Over Mr. Sestak's Claims

"This response would hardly have satisfied those who were upset during the previous administration about the firing of U.S. attorneys. If there was nothing improper, why not all that sunlight Mr. Obama promised?"

NY Times: For Sestak Matter, a 'Trust Us' from the White House

"Even if the conversations were perfectly legal, as the White House claims, the situation challenges President Obama’s efforts to present himself as a reformer who will fix a town of dirty politics. And the refusal to even discuss what was discussed does not advance the White House’s well-worn claim to being “the most transparent” in history."

Now people other than conservatives can respectably discuss it at their cocktail parties. What I humbly call "Carolan's Law of Liberal Credence": "No liberal shall believe anything a conservative says until it is repeated six months later by their favorite liberal pundit or publication."

"Philosophers Shouldn't Run for Office," Except Obama

2010-05-23T06:35:00.000-07:00

I can understand why people are upset with Rand Paul. I think they are misunderstanding his intentions, which are not racist. But I can understand how they could have that reaction.

From what I have read in the Twittersphere and in blogs, etc. people angry with Paul quite often show that they misunderstand the very nature of the crisis of southern segregation, which was not a spontaneous exercise in free dis-association, but a government mandated and enforced reality, under Jim Crow, etc. (Separate public facilities, anti-miscegenation laws, etc.) Laws which violated basic rights under the constitution, which were helping to integrate the races. Laws which were supported by a band of vigilantes in a secret society. So, why did this require laws, and "secret" enforcers?

I still think it is possible to have a reasonable discussion about what actually happened during that crisis and learn lessons from it. About lawmaking. The same way people still watch D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" to understand the reality of political propaganda, and how the Klan flourished.

If a senatorial candidate can't "philosophize" on the job, what is he or she doing running for the United States Senate anyway, which is supposed to be an aristocratic, deliberative body?

Which is why I don't understand someone like Chris Matthews going on the Jay Leno show and saying "philosophers shouldn't run for office."

Matthews, it seems to me, thinks politics should be basically for the enjoyment of him and his beer-drinking buddies. Like sports; to watch the instant replays, talk about tactics and tell colorful stories about old Irish pols like his former boss, Thomas "Tip" O'Neill.

I used to enjoy Hardball, but I am finding Matthews' approach to politics growing shallower by the day. Perhaps he's been hanging around Keith Olbermann a little too long.

Anyway, who then was this guy (see below), who gave Matthews that thrill up his leg? You know, the guy who wants to "transform" America by eliminating the Founders' paradigm of negative rights?

I guess you can only "philosophize" about America if you're going in one direction -- which is away from the philosophy of the highly-philosophical Founders.

Tea Party, Libertarianism Do Not Equal "Old South"

2010-05-21T07:24:00.000-07:00

If First Amendment advocates say we must tolerate the cartoonish reality of Nazi and Klan street marches in order to protect our freedom of speech, are these advocates all inherently, secretly Nazis and Klansmen?

The answer, of course, is "No."

So, why then are libertarian- or "classical liberal"-minded advocates of property rights and free association, such as Rand Paul, automatically deemed "racist?"

Freedom sometimes generates cartoonish side effects. It doesn't mean those who advocate freedom advocate on behalf of the cartoons.

You could say that in regard to property rights and free association all of these things are "settled" questions, because the racist past of America was a terrible time that we would rather not revisit.

I agree. I would rather not revisit it.

However, today, because the narrative is that the expansion of federal government power then was an unqualified success, the federal government is empowered to address and "fix" now pretty much any thing the public (as interpreted by our legislators) deems cartoonish and unfair, using the power to tax and regulate property.

So, where does the growth of government (including all costly post hoc attempts to fix previous attempts) stop? What will be the total cost, in dollars and in freedom, not only in property, but even in speech (the "fairness" doctrine, etc.?) Name a "social problem" or even annoyance and today the government is empowered to "fix" it. (From hate speech to -- in my home state senator Schumer's balliwick -- the cost of carry on luggage and annoying ATM fees.)

This is why the Tea Party exists. To challenge that old narrative, and challenge the growing progressive costs in dollars and freedom. And Rand Paul, to his credit and his discomfort, zeroed in on the hot spot problem. He is now paying a heavy price, personally and politically.

You can attempt to smear the Tea Party movement by comparing it to the Old South. But if you look around the world, you see hundreds of governments empowered to do the very same things: "fix" society's ills, with sometimes catastrophic results in terms of debt, economic decline and social unrest.

When Ronald Reagan called America the "shining city on a hill" he didn't believe there weren't some ugly things going on inside that city.

Like it or not, at some point we will have to look back at what we did wrong in the middle of our success in the 1960s. Or else, the government's intrusion into the private sphere will just simply grow and grow, and America will begin to look like every other steadily declining socialist nation.

The Rand Paul Imbroglio Shows America Needs Less Deliberation

2010-05-21T04:47:00.000-07:00

No doubt the Rand Paul debate of the past few days has produced a few "cringe-worthy" moments. Whenever a candidate raises arguments about previous law that allow his opponents to suggest he is in favor of segregation, or is racist, well, that can soften the backbone of even the strongest candidates, their political consultants and political fellow travelers.

Paul's backpedaling since has also been somewhat cringe-worthy, creating the impression that he, like Connecticut senate candidate Richard Blumenthal, is only willing to say things to friendly audiences who might not seriously think more about or investigate his utterances.

But better that than the alternative, some potential allies might say. Rich Lowry, for example -- along with other commentators at National Review -- derides Paul's original discussion with Rachel Maddow, et al as a politically foolish theoretical exercise. Says Lowry:

"It turns out that a Senate campaign does not offer the same friendly confines for the discussion of libertarian doctrine as a seminar at the Ayn Rand Institute."

Lowry goes on to call Paul a "problem" for the GOP.

The problem it seems, is not that Paul's a racist. He clearly is not.

It's his ability to be labeled a racist by the opposition.

If only Rand Paul hadn't come along with his theoretical discussion about property rights, the left would never have called conservatives and libertarians "racist."

Indeed, as I watched Rachel Maddow smile that smirky smile last night, and chirp that one day later Rand Paul looked like the usual flip-flopping politician (trying to hide his racism, no doubt!) the problem of our country occurred to me:

Too many theoretical discussions!

We all know that theoretical exercises are dragging our country (and the GOP) down. Too many long, ponderous discussions of federal power, and the fine points of law in the Senate until all hours. Too many television talk show debates, commercially uninterrupted, full of historical consciousness, that show how property rights can be eroded to dangerous levels, just like free speech rights, leading to massive and costly attempts by the federal government to right every wrong from 50,000 feet.

Forget all that "theoretical" nonsense and "libertarian doctrine!" I mean, we can't get anything done!

Why risk upsetting the public when there are elections to be won?

There have to be other ways to defeat massive expansion of the federal government than actually talking about how massive expansions of the federal government come about.

Sometimes It's Right to Debate the Past

2010-05-20T13:50:00.000-07:00

Libertarians are often accused of spending too much time debating the past (a political rather than philosophical concern).

But, sometimes it makes sense to debate the past, particularly if there are salient facts that change the discussion significantly.

Reason magazine has an excellent blog post about the nascent controversy over Rand Paul's views on property rights and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, mentioned in my previous post.

Author Damon Root makes some important points about how property rights afforded African-Americans protection against discrimination by government. And when the government decided to simply ignore those.

From the post:

"It’s also important to acknowledge that economic rights are not in some inherent conflict with civil rights. In fact, we have significant historical evidence showing that legally enforced property rights (and other forms of economic liberty) actually undermined the Jim Crow regime. Most famously, the NAACP won its first Supreme Court victory in 1917 by arguing that a residential segregation law was a racist interference with property rights under the 14th Amendment.

"Finally, keep in mind that Plessy v. Ferguson, the notorious 1896 Supreme Court decision that enshrined “separate but equal” into law and become a symbol of the Jim Crow era, dealt with a Louisiana law that forbid railroad companies from selling first-class tickets to blacks. That’s not a market failure, it’s a racist government assault on economic liberty."

Rand Paul Bending or Breaking Under Charges of Racism, etc.?

2010-05-20T05:07:00.000-07:00

Odd exchange last night on CNN between Rand Paul, the GOP senate nominee from Kentucky, and host John King.

King pressed Paul on a number of questions, particularly on whether or not he would dismantle the Department of Education, and Paul, it seems to me, danced around that question a little, and some others.

CNN went ahead anyway, after the question was asked, and attributed to Paul in the caption that he did seek to eliminate the DOE and the Dept. of Agriculture. A little odd journalistically, I think.

Anyway, I suspect to Paul's supporters this behavior is excusable, because they see him under attack by liberal media. Paul is libertarian, but as his profile has been raised he now appears to be feeling the sting of responses to his positions on federal legislation, articulated in front of the more critical audiences on NPR, CNN and MSNBC.

But after the similar constant beat down that occurs on the national stage, would this same habit endear him to anyone years from now? I don't know how his father, Texas congressman Ron Paul, has withstood the onslaught for so long.

Rand has to practice his responses a little more for the national media I think, particularly on the federal departments. "The correct answer is," to borrow a trope from TV commentator John McLaughlin, that while these departments seem to place decision making in the hands of trained experts, they often concentrate more decision making in the hands of those with less knowledge about the overall education situation. Does anyone really believe that Head Start or No Child Left Behind are effective?

Devolution of political power to the local level outsources work on many more smaller decisions to MORE people. This is the paradox of large federal interventions. It places more power in the hands of fewer (self-interested) people, reducing the overall information and aggregate motivation available to solve social problems.

In a recent exchange, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow pressed Rand Paul on his views about federal civil rights legislation. Joan Walsh, the liberal editor of Salon magazine, makes great hay about Paul's "demolishment" at the hands of Maddow (video included). And today, the Twittersphere is full of comments about how Paul "opposed the Civil Rights Act," "supports segregation" and is "racist." Google Rand Paul and you see additional headlines asserting that Paul is defending discrimination.

Whereas, Paul explicitly said in the interview (!) that he would have voted for all but one part of the Civil Rights Act, he finds racism abhorrent and that segregation was actually a government policy and misuse of the law. I agree with him on all these points.

Paul acquitted himself reasonably well here in this one interview.

The problem for many liberals is that they will see in Paul what they want to see. Which is what they want to see in most people who want to protect property rights and limit government power, the core of Paul's philosophy: a closet racist and homophobe. All because he opposes a certain means of achieving a social objective. (A rather heavy-handed means with numerous unintended consequences.)

For many on the left, that the 1960s were a triumph of progressive legislation is a "settled question." The 1960s are never to be discussed with any critical eye again, because it was the age of Abraham, Martin and John. Unfortunately, libertarians keep cropping up.

But these libertarians often struggle to articulate the organic link between the expansion of federal power then -- however well intentioned it was -- and consequences being felt today in ever expanding, intrusive federal action over private initiative and all its related costs and debt, and little room left for local initiative.

All while feeling the sting of being called racist, because you oppose certain aspects of legislation touching on race - which is not the same thing.

Libertarians and conservatives have to repeat it until they are blue in the face, that supporting limited government and defense of private property does not mean they endorse repugnant social behavior. Wasn't it a great liberal with progressive attitudes about women, John Stuart Mill, who argued that social sanction rather than legislation should play an important role in behavior we find repugnant?

So, those of us who are libertarian should expect great moralizing on the part of the left this election season, and a sense of crisis that the KKK is back in town. Some don't know enough to know better. But some of those critics in the media clearly are educated enough to know better.

Rachel Maddow's parting comment to Rand Paul:

"Well, it was pretty practical to the people who had the life nearly beaten out of them trying to desegregate Walgreen's lunch counters despite these esoteric debates about what it means about ownership. This is not a hypothetical Dr. Paul."

No one says it's a hypothetical, and this is the usual posturing and playing to the left-wing audience by Maddow.

People who had the life beaten out them (and fire-hosed and attacked by dogs) had it done to them by the government. And those acts were disproportionate and already illegal and federal intervention was necessary to stop them. Paul AGREED on that much.

Maddow is smart enough to know that. But her comments were about demonizing, not actual, real discussion and journalism.

Not an exclusive province of MSNBC or left-wing media by the way. It's a pervasive risk of being a popular journalist, to play to an audience. You see the same kind of thing on FOX.

In response to certain external stimuli, journalists tend to bend and break as well.

Hugo Chavez is So Predictable

2010-05-18T20:50:00.000-07:00

Nowhere is politics more personal than in the mind of the socialist dictator; for whom the well-being of the state equals the well-being of his own ego.

Hugo Chavez's Expropriation Binge

Serial Contradictions, or, Why President Obama Needs Press Conferences

2010-05-16T10:30:00.000-07:00

I know a lot of people who admire and voted for President Obama. But, like Victor Davis Hanson, I assume these people also have a memory, and a sense for logical and ethical consistency.

Hanson compellingly chronicles once again in this piece the "serial contradictions" of President Obama, on everything from his own policies vs. Bush policies to the cost and impact of health care reform to how he differs from his political opposition today.

From his piece:

"The blatant hypocrisy and untruths are superimposed on a constant (it has not yet begun to let up in his second year) refrain of either “Bush did it” or “the opposition won’t let me be bipartisan.”

And all of this shows why President Obama can no longer be allowed to duck the real-time press conference, even with the likes of the White House press corps, an obsequious lot. His inconsistencies must be addressed, and reconciled, if that is possible. Otherwise, he, or we, might go mad.

Oft-Mentioned Resources for My Students

2010-05-14T06:22:00.000-07:00

There is no doubt that I teach my mythology and philosophy classes with a heavy emphasis on personal meaning and relevance.

One of the reasons I enjoy being an adjunct rather than a full professor is because I am able to bring more "real world" experience to the classroom, hopefully to the benefit of the students, who must experience real challenges outside the shelter of the campus.

My own life experience, and the testimony of the many students whom I have had the honor to know and converse with about their own challenges, shows that life is sometimes a disorienting, difficult and dark journey. Many students, whether new to school, or returning, bring their own amazing, illuminating stories of struggle and personal growth.

I am deeply humbled by the bond I have formed with these students during the past 15 years as an adjunct. (I think after all these years that this is the only job I do anywhere near well.)

In the course of our discussions, I have often mentioned resources for them to consult. But not so often listed them. I thought I would capture a few of them here:

The Artist's Way - The official site of Julia Cameron and her important work about creativity and psychological growth. When I experience particularly dark emotions, the practice of her "morning pages" (at any hour) is very helpful in a way I cannot explain at a rational level.

Care of the Soul -- Official site of Thomas Moore, whose work I always find deeply reflective and meaningful.

In particular, I recommend his wonderful book, Dark Nights of the Soul. I have been listening to this book on audio again, and it is amazing how different sections of it are even more important to me now after teaching my mythology class. I have taught the mythology class unconsciously using Moore's expanded idea of the "liminal" experience and rites of passage; both he and I being heavily influenced by the work of anthropologist Victor Turner. All of life contains times of disorientation, sometimes at intense levels. This is not theoretical darkness. It is unique darkness for your own life, and it will hurt. From this idea and experience I have formulated my own humble notion of "generative darkness," into which we reach as we stand at its perimeter, to pull out as if from a grab bag, some great gift for the next phase of our life. (Moore's comments on sentimentality in religion have also given me new concepts with which to frame my own disorientation and unhappiness with the "sentimentality" practiced by those who chose to interpret my mother's tragic death for me, and who choose to avert their eyes from certain dark aspects of reality highlighted by the likes of Darwin and Schopenhauer.)

MichaelGelb.com -- website of author Michael Gelb, whose work had a profound influence on my during my darkest days at Computer Associates, a company where the delta between the teachings on management and the actual culture, at that time, was at least a light year.

In particular, Gelb's book "How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci" opened my mind to the notion that we swim in a vast sea of life variables, many of which we are free to take notice of and act upon if we simply choose to. (WWLD? -- What would Leonardo do?)

Speaking of Computer Associates' dysfunctional culture, Jeff Gee was a good-natured teacher there who helped me survive the place as long as I did. His book "Super Service" was just one of those works that again taught me to become aware of the control I had over so much of my life.

For the theoretically minded, who like to take a structured, abstract approach to their own actions, there is no greater work than "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," by Stephen Covey. Again, in an unexplainable moment of serendipity, the worst boss I ever had sent me to a management class where this book was only casually mentioned. I sought it out, and it completely changed my life. Its first chapter on being "proactive" is now required reading for my philosophy students.

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck -- the ancient lesson that life must be difficult if we are to grow, taught in a modern context.

Man's Search for Meaning - by Viktor Frankl. The great work about his survival in a Nazi concentration camp and the lessons he derived from it, which would form the basis for his theory of "logotherapy." (He has a great influence on Covey.)

Learned Optimism - an important work about cognitive therapy by Martin Seligman. His formulation of pessimism as based upon judgments we choose to make (or not make) that problems are "pervasive, permanent and personal" is, well, powerful.

The Soul's Code by James Hillman. A fascinating reflection on destiny and character, rooted in the ideas of Jung and Plato. (He was the mentor of Thomas Moore.) I intend to read more of his works.

Creativity and Madness Blog - a new resource I am exploring of late, which features thoughtful posts and links to additional resources and events.

The Supreme Court Nominee, and the Context, are Both Disturbing

2010-05-12T05:34:00.000-07:00

If a Republican president . . .

lashed out at television news networks, radio hosts and others for their coverage of and opinions about him
questioned the legitimacy of the information on the Internet and the utility of the devices that provide it
had his agencies seek to reclassify Internet Service Providers for the purposes of greater regulation and control
and THEN nominated a friend and fellow law professor to the Supreme Court who said that the exercise of free speech is dependent on how the government calculates the social costs of that speech (!)

. . . would there not be great wailing, gnashing of teeth and hand-wringing across the land?

Would there not be ponderous statements from Senators about "deeply disturbing" revelations about the nominee that raise concerns about her qualification to serve on the court, and the president's overall intentions given a series of unseemly statements from the bully pulpit against political dissent?

(Let's leave aside for a moment the even larger context of the president's youthful associations with all sorts of "revolutionary" Marxist thinkers, his government taking more and more control of automakers, banks, insurance companies, etc., and his apparent disinterest in the tyranny of and crushing of political dissent by statists such as Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Castros, etc. Ex-communist James Burnham's maxim that for so-called liberals "there are no enemies on the left" seems more apropos than ever.)

Hypocrisy in politics is nothing new, nor is it restricted to the Democratic Party. However, when the people with "good intentions" are running the show apparently, tyranny, even in creeping soft forms is deemed impossible. Right up until, as the French Revolution showed, they're not running the show anymore, and their heads are in the guillotines.

But, civility and courtliness will prevail, because after all, they're all friends and colleagues in Washington.

So, Elena Kagan will be confirmed, and the creep of soft tyranny will continue.

Thoughts on Another Semester in Mythology

2010-05-07T07:54:00.000-07:00

I'm completing my students' mythology final examination today, for them to take tomorrow.

It was an ambitious class, taught mostly from a psychological and spiritual point of view. It was all about our struggle with darkness, and its power to transform. I think I either frightened or bored the students sometimes with this talk. I dwell on this mystery all the time.

It helps to know every civilization shared the same struggles, even as it puzzles about the ultimate source of being. That is what I take away from this class, in brighter hues each time. Science goes its own way, to greater and greater reductionism. But for humanity, myth illustrates the absolute mystery of existence.

More Analysis of Presidential Rhetoric

2010-05-05T14:08:00.000-07:00

Obama’s Good and Bad Words - Victor Davis Hanson - National Review Online

Columnist Notes Uptick in Presidential Negativity

2010-05-05T05:19:00.000-07:00

I think Dan Henninger of the Wall Street Journal makes an excellent point. The contrast between Barack Obama the campaigner and President Obama the Manichean is dramatic. He has become, as noted below, his own Saul Alinsky, demonizing his opposition at every turn, from the State of the Union on.

Perhaps this is because VP Joe Biden, who would traditionally play this political role, is too much the happy gaffer. Or perhaps it is because this is the President's true nature; something he really enjoys, and reflects his true beliefs -- post "Hope and Change."

Such "internal demagoguery" as I call it, is surely the stock in trade of totalitarians such as Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin, who use it to justify their seizure of property and suspension of rights. But our country has its practitioners as well.

I stepped back from political journalism years ago because of my own tendency to take it, and make it, much too personal. It's a kind of radioactive madness that infects many in political life.

MI6 Guy on Torture and Terrorism

2010-04-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

Can't say this argument is without merit. Some of us do not consider ourselves over-the-top, chest-thumping Nathan R. Jessup conservatives.

Heroes and Death, Post-Einstein

2010-03-08T07:28:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Cablevision's recent PR war with WABC New York, I got to watch free on demand movies yesterday on Cablevision, and took a break from my routine to watch the latest installment of the Star Trek movies. "The Future Begins."

Time travel is central to the film. A hackneyed idea at this point, for sure. And the film features all the usual chronological confusion as a result. (A palatable parataxis for the sake of the story.)

Something about time travel in this film, however, in combination with another classic Star Trek idea, left me intrigued. The other idea is that of the unbeatable Kobayashi Maru test, which Kirk legendarily hacked at the academy.

The film features a conflict between Kirk and Spock, the designer of the test, over Kirk's cheating. Spock accepts death logically, and the test is meant to show all cadets what that experience is like. (Which is questionable given that everyone knows it's a simulation.)

However, the important point is that Kirk refuses as a matter of principle to ever accept defeat. To the point of "cheating death."

This got me thinking about science fiction heroes post-Einstein.

In the ancient Gilgamesh Epic, Gilgamesh also refuses to accept death. He goes on a quest to find the secret to eternal life, only to be told by Utnapishtim, the Mesopotamian version of Noah, that he can never achieve it. Later, shown the secret by the ferryman of the dead, Gilgamesh watches it slip through his hands; stolen by a snake. Presumably, the story reflects the wisdom of accepting death.

Kirk, as a hero and representative of the values of our culture, uses every trick available to him to cheat death. Which includes exploiting the power and paradoxes of relativistic physics.

Ironically, he is aided by an older and wiser version of Spock, himself a time traveler, who has somewhat "lightened up," from his old self. Spock has multiplied himself in fact, to live two lives, via time travel. Logically, it would seem, he could do that again. Which made me wonder if a science fiction story exists using multiple (more than two) versions of people created via time travel.

Maybe I am reading too much into the story. But it interesting to think about the evolution of the hero story in our time; an age in which mastery and possession of nature seems so much within our grasp.

This is not Indiana Jones, for example, who faces and accepts the dominance of forces beyond his comprehension. This hero, Kirk, aided by men of science Spock, McCoy and Scott (a brilliant relativistic physicist) takes heroism in a completely new direction. Still cleverly solving problems, like so many other heroes. But also, exploiting the most basic mysteries of the universe to escape mortality.

This movie series has already "cheated" its own death by introducing this plot. As I looked at Captain Christopher Pike in his wheelchair at the end of the film, not as hideously deformed as he was in the television series, I recalled the dialogue of the film that an alternative future had been created for all the characters.

Personally, I would look forward to more of these films, with these characters, taking old plots in new directions, or creating new plots.

But the more significant question for me is, what will a generation of heroes that looks like this young Kirk say about our expectations as a culture? This is not the wise, ironic Kirk of the television series or the earlier films. This is a young man of science, full of good intentions and a sense of justice, but also hubris against the most basic forces of the universe. Will more myths and heroes of this type follow? And what will the culture be like that favors these stories?

Thoughts on a New Book about "Romantic" Science

2009-12-18T06:25:00.000-08:00

"Romantic Science." What an interesting idea. Expounded upon in "The Age of Wonder" by Richard Holmes, and in this book review. (I have reserved the hardcover from my local library.)

The reviewer, Michael Knox Beran, sums up the spirit of Romantic Science; a rebellion against the crude mechanism of the 18th century:

"The wonder revealed by science is not, finally, severable from the mind of the wonderer. Holmes cites Richard Feynman’s belief that science is “driven by a continual dialogue between skeptical enquiry and the sense of inexplicable mystery,” and that if either is permitted to get the upper hand, “true science” will be “destroyed.”

"Even as he studies the outer world, the Romantic scientist is preoccupied with the secret of his inward existence. Banks observing the customs of the Tahitians, Davy on laughing gas, Mary Shelley wondering “in what sense Frankenstein’s ‘Creature’ would be human”: all remained perplexed by the mysteriousness of man. What laws govern his being? How do changing conditions affect his nature? Is he a creature created on purpose or a mere material accident?

"If Enlightenment thinkers built on the metaphor of the well-ordered machine, the Romantics sought to understand the spark that makes a thing live, whether it be a human being, a work of art, or a nation-state."

I very much identify with the spirit of this science, in which the primary mystery is always "man's inward existence." I discovered a similar spirit in the Confessions of St. Augustine. I have a sense of confusion and wonder about myself, and as I look within I cannot fathom what I am (See the Confessions' "On Memory" for a taste.) Look to the world, and things are even more mysterious. (See the Confessions' "On Time").

While this spurred Augustine to a sense of awe and reverence for the creator of such mystery, I must confess that I am more prone to grumbling. Steeped as I am at this point in my life in the notion of efficiency of process, I express much frustration with, and to God instead. I am pondering writing a cranky book entitled, "Life: The End User Experience."

This is also why Descartes, a later student of Augustine, fascinates me. As a person, he seemed more troubled by mystery, and wished to obliterate it. (Was he stymied by his own embarrassments and failures?) Hence, the rise of what we are talking about here, in reaction to the mechanistic natural philosophy of Descartes, and others like him.

However, the last paragraph quoted above also points to the dangers of Romantic Science: Its vitalism prepared the way for myths of living states, such as Nazi Germany. While Lincoln did not go so far, even as he read the Romantics, Bismarck and the rest of the Germans did.

Thankfully, my own crankiness will not lead me to posit a living spirit in a country, which I would then, perhaps, feel a need to save. I will leave that to more optimistic types. Personally, I believe the mechanical "checks and balances" of our society, referenced by Michael Knox Beran in this review, are falling apart, and that this machine called the United States is piling up fatal political defects. I may be wrong, and I pray that I am wrong, but I don't see the machine lasting long.

But so long as man's sense of his own mystery lives, new experiments in liberty will come forward.

Random Thoughts for the Week or So

2009-12-16T03:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the Atlantic Yards project sold a ton of bonds to finance a new arena in Brooklyn for the awful New Jersey Nets, and possibly the awful New York Islanders. I will not attend a game at that venue, ever, because its creation is, whether our jurist intelligentsia wish to admit it or not, an abuse of the power of eminent domain. A taking of property from private land- and home-owners for the benefit of a few politically connected developers and athletes. Not to mention buffoons like Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and similar self-aggrandizing, "visionary" politicians (using other people's money.) "Economic development" by the government is an illusion. The same abuse of economic development was justified to revitalize the area now occupied by the politically connected New York Times -- struggling to stay alive. The government has no crystal ball to tell which businesses will "revitalize" an area and which won't. This is a lie, and yet another movement away from the unique founding principles of our country.

***

Everything that can be said about Tiger Woods' moral implosion has been said. And more. As an average golfer and a confused person, I am no doubt tempted like everyone else to experience schadenfreude over Tiger. His super human golf skills didn't irk me nearly as much as his apparent mythic self-knowledge, springing forth from the womb with a driver in his hand knowing he was to dominate professional golf worldwide. I don't know from one golf swing to the next who I am. As it turns out, neither did Tiger. We see a young man who, while facing the rigors of his father Earl Woods' disciplined approach to golf and life, never really had anything he loved denied to him that would bring him closer to himself. With a billion dollars in his pocket and access to women nearly every moment he was off the golf course and away from his apparently troubled marriage, he consumed in mass quantities, taking whatever was there with no regrets. Until now, when he departs, reportedly, on a mythic journey to Sweden; a descent to a Nordic netherworld, to find out who he truly is. There will be more arc to Tiger than just his swing, there will be an arc to his character. On the next phase of the journey, I wish him, his wife and family well, whatever they choose.

***

As I watch the Tiger Woods saga unfold in the media, I wonder, seriously: who "owns" marriage? Marriage, defended and praised by clergy, politicians and pundits, is an inexhaustible resource for moral back patting. Yet, who among marriage's "defenders" will take responsibility for marriage's defects? If marriage were a product, with a near 50 percent divorce rate and untold frustration and difficulty in so-called happy marriages, would anyone bring it to market? So, while individuals own their own happiness, who, if anyone, has the onus to fix marriage as an institution?

***

Among political conservatives, there is strain of thinking espoused by Edmund Burke that holds that the "wisdom" of our institutions can be difficult to justify to "rationalists," armed with their destructive, deconstructive metaphysics. I find this thinking increasingly troubling. Does this mean that marriage shall remain forever elusive, its defects and suffering and scandals to the children we love so much, acceptable, because of its barely expressible, non-rational wisdom?

***

In the churches, the barest resources exist to understand and control the defects of marriage. In my church, a weak, almost comically embarrassing "Pre-Cana" conference might be followed years later by a patch-up "Marriage Encounter." And what else?

***

The New York Post will inform its readers about this apparent scandal against marriage by publishing picture after picture and detail after detail about Tiger Woods liaisons. So will many other "conservative" tabloids, magazines and television shows. All so we can cluck about marriage, with a few cheap thrills thrown in. The Rupert Murdoch formula.

***

As I ponder both practical politics, and the myths I teach my students this semester, such as the founding American myth of Daniel Boone, I am becoming increasingly conscious of how unique our times are historically. First, there is nowhere else to go for the sake of an idea. No westward expansion through "virgin" territory to create a new world. What does that mean for our increasingly aging world? Secondly, myth- and ritual-based communities are breaking down in the face of an explosion of media technology. Culture is becoming increasingly heterogeneous and consumer-driven. If ritual and myth played a central role in establishing a person's identity, what will the new world of "chosen" identity look like?

***

With our massive, unscientific, undisciplined incursions of government debt, increasing political polarization and disgraceful lack of statesmanship in Washington -- if you agree legislation is an emergency measure, should you really hold out until you extract your slice of pork? -- I think it is quite possible to say that the United States might not exist in its current form in 100 years. There seem to be too many people in the political class who believe and act in a way that assumes that the Republic is immortal.

Kickstarter for Creative Project Funding

2009-12-01T09:15:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting way to fund new creative projects: Kickstarter.com. In conjunction with Amazon.com, they provide a platform for you to do promotion of and collect funds for your creative projects. You supply promotional samples of your projects, and the offers for donors at various levels of support. I like it.

Some Great Readings on the Problem of Evil

2009-11-24T23:30:00.000-08:00

The New Atlantis has just posted a very interesting article from their latest issue about Charles Darwin's personal sensitivity to the problem of evil and suffering in nature, and how it influenced his views on evolution. It is entitled "Darwin's World of Pain and Wonder." Excellent. I recommend it highly.

It calls to mind an excellent book I read on the same subject not long ago, entitled "Darwin's God" by Cornelius Hunter, about which I wrote some thoughts at the time.

Another very interesting article on evil I found via Wikipedia. It is by a Catholic theologian, explaining the theodicies, or defenses of God against evil and suffering, offered by Saints Augustine and Ireneaus. I found it interesting because it acknowledges how many puzzling issues remain for the believer even today. Of course, the author attempts to resolve some of those problems in his theory of "salvation." Which I will continue reading with interest.

Is this the Next Generation of Mobile Computing?

2009-11-19T14:58:00.000-08:00

This is an amazing vision of the future. It will make owning the iPhone seem quaint.

No Need to Violate the First Amendment When You Have Industrial Policy

2009-10-24T07:07:00.000-07:00

Just a bit more on the Charles Krauthammer piece mentioned in my previous post. Mr. Krauthammer makes a couple of points. One is about Madisonian norms.

But even more importantly, and what makes his piece so trenchant, is that he is exposing a subtle way to suppress and control the media without explicitly violating the Constitution. It's called industrial policy.

Threaten a network and you are also sending signals to other who might get in the way of a political agenda.

To potential advertisers: we control a lot of money, contracts and life support in bad times. Don't advertise on networks where we find stories unfavorable to our political agenda.

To media rivals: don't follow the disfavored media outlet or we'll do the same to you that we're doing to them.

This is the change we've been waiting for? Co-opting the NEA, ACORN and other government-funded groups for political propaganda purposes? And cutting the financial legs out of the free press if it interferes with our "revolution?"

How very Hugo Chavez-like of Mr. Obama.

On Obama Thuggishness toward Dissenters

2009-10-23T17:56:00.000-07:00

Charles Krauthammer is one of Washington's most intelligent and respected opinion journalists. He makes an important point in this piece. President Obama and his thuggish administration, in trying to delegitimize political dissenters (Fox News, Chamber of Commerce, Insurance Companies, etc.) and in fact intimidate them into silence by threats, is ignoring the Madisonian traditions of our country.

You know, the traditions that say we must respectfully tolerate dissent.

The traditions that differentiate us from countries such as Russia, Iran and Venezuela, whom Mr. Obama has such cordial relations with, but who all intimidate, prosecute and even murder dissenters as enemies of the state, Allah, or the revolution.

Mr. Obama is showing himself to not only fail at all of his promised open-minded and open-dooredness. He is showing himself to be diametrically opposed to it.

Can a person with such a vaunted opinion of himself and his mandate to "fundamentally reform America" be trusted to respect dissent, or even the Constitution itself should his project be threatened by political failure?

When he attempts to exclude Fox News from a press event, as took place this week, how long before, Hugo Chavez-like, he finds some reason to shut down Fox News entirely?

Is this intolerant behavior the "change we've been waiting for?"

Waxing Poetic about Logic. Really.

2009-10-20T06:38:00.000-07:00

Last night I gave a lecture to my three Dowling College students (yes, three), about the importance of logic and critical thinking.

I am perhaps the only person I know who can get excited about this subject.

Perhaps I can capture some of that magic here.

Logic was one of those remarkable gifts given us by Aristotle, the great observer of nature, who found and captured patterns in everything, from the heavens, to state constitutions, to thought itself.

In stepping back, even from thinking itself, to observe its patterns, we are able to control thinking, and expand its power. (We also discover deep mysteries in it, and paradoxes. More on that below.)

If we observe the syllogism: "All mebops are ziggly. Zanthor is a mebop. Therefore, Zanthor is ziggly" we understand the power of logic. No, seriously.

Why? Because we recognize that logic illuminates aspects of thought that move beyond questions of truth.

First, this nonsense example shows that thought has a flow. From premises to conclusions. We feel impelled to draw a certain kind of conclusion, even in this example about something we have no experience of, because of that flow. From here Aristotle would catalog way in which thought flows properly and improperly. ("Validity")

Secondly, that flow is supported by our ability to say "if this were true." An awareness of this aspect of thinking is important because it is the basis of hypothetical or imaginative thinking. Once we recognize the flow of thought, and its roots in saying "if this were true" of the premises, we become self-consciously aware of our ability to turn on and off the truth of statements or claims about reality.

Combine that with the idea of the flow of thought, and we become aware of what might follow when we combine new thoughts or truths together. That ability to see the implications is powerful.

(I often use the example of Steve Jobs, whose own logical skills allowed him to consider what it would mean for the world if it were true that there were personal computers. Even as many others, such as the bankers who rejected him, could not consider the possibility, stuck as they were in the logic that supported only the current uses of the mainframe.)

Michael Gelb's books on genius, such as "How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci" and "Discover Your Genius," opened my eyes to thinking of logic this way, as he argues that genius is not mere intuition, but a powerful combination of intuitive, imaginative thinking with deep analytical skills, uniting both sides of the brain. Geniuses had to be conscious of the assumptions of their current pursuits, so as to transcend them.

Hearkening back to the dialectic of his teacher, Plato, Aristotle's description of thought as moving from premises and conclusions also makes us aware of the need to examine the truth of our premises; themselves the conclusions of some rudimentary previous "arguments" in our minds. Hence, for example, how did we come to believe that "all mebops are ziggly"?

We begin to recognize that all thought is built on previous thought. Even as we also see that those previous thoughts disappear into the mysterious depths of our memory and our senses. Only a small portion of our thought "flow" or process is available to us at the conscious level. A riddle.

One can see here the groundwork for everything from Augustine's awe-inducing reflections "On Memory" in the Confessions, to Descartes' consideration of the Evil Genius, to Freud's theories of the Unconscious.

From these kinds of mysteries, people might be inclined to conclude that thought disintegrates into impenetrable irrationality. However, despite that mysterious disappearance of prior thought into the depths of the senses and unconscious, I still believe Aristotle's gift of logic remains inherently progressive.

Only by recognizing one's premises and those of others can one move toward any kind of consensus at all. (Or any act of forward-thinking genius, as I noted above.)

We continue even today to strive via the dialectic in psychology, art, and other disciplines to draw our experiences from the depths, into conscious awareness.

We learn to examine prior premises, even our own, for the larger purpose of understanding, expression, and yes, even reaching agreement.

How about Re-Engineering our Distrusted Media?

2009-10-15T07:48:00.000-07:00

So CNN reports alleged racist "quotes" Rush Limbaugh made without fact-checking them. But it does fact check a parody done by Saturday Night Live about President Obama. Public trust of the media is at all time lows, because of bias and shoddy reporting like this.

Meanwhile, my and many other local newspapers are dying for lack of readership.

How would an engineer solve this problem? Or an entrepreneur? I asked myself these questions this morning as I looked over the tabloid rack at the local supermarket.

How about if the media began doing what engineers and entrepreneurs do all the time? As I am trying to do with my own small business ventures on the model of The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael Gerber.

That is, put processes in place to standardize where there is variation, and remove "bias" surprises, so that the media consumer knows more of what to expect.

How?

These days, a self-policing "ombudsmen" reporting on the media outlet itself is about as far as many media outlets go. And that weekly or monthly cleanup comes usually too late for our rapid fire news cycle. And, quite frankly, such people and stories are boring.

How about making the processes by which stories are written more transparent to the consumer? How about posting them in a wiki, for ongoing modification, and maybe even public comment, or task-taking when the story goes awry. And linking to them in each and every story written for additional comment?

For example, a captured process might say, if a story is about X controversy (abortion, taxes, government spending), then the following must be included.

You get the idea. The first tries and "captures" of these processes in a media team wiki, for example, will be halting and have mistakes. But think about what it would mean if CNN, or Fox News or MSNBC created processes that the public could compare the stories against, for quality and consistency!

If we allow "advocacy journalism" on television or in print, another process could describe how it should be clearly delineated to the consumer at the beginning.

I think that would improve the quality of journalism, restore public confidence, and also sharpen the discussion in areas where "opinion" is tolerable.

Given the lousy shape of the media, I'm surprised it has not been done already.

Commentary on a Recent Viral Video Defense of Religion

2009-10-01T06:47:00.000-07:00

Some of my Facebook friends are passing around the video below. It's an interesting defense of religious belief, going viral on the Internet. It's good to see that not only the atheists like social media.

The argument made by the young Albert Einstein in this video is one taken directly, although in less scientific form, from St. Augustine, its original author.

Simply put, evil is not "real" but rather the absence or "privation" of goodness.

Augustine made this argument against the Manicheans, who held that evil was an equal and opposing force to good. If so, Augustine reasoned, then man has no free will, being caught up simply in the war of two opposites. A convenient deterministic theory for escaping responsibility.

An elaboration of this argument is made in a modern context by author Jean Bethke Elshtain in a talk given at GooglePlex, entitled, "Harry Potter, St. Augustine and the Confrontation with Evil." In it, she elaborates on the idea of evil as a parasitic form of non-being, using the examples of the Nazis and Voldermort from Harry Potter." It's a very interesting talk, parts of which I show my philosophy students every year.

Interestingly in the first video, however, the young Einstein makes a "reductionist" argument against his instructor. He cites darkness as the absence of light, not a reality itself at the subatomic level. The same for cold, which is the absence of heat, which is subatomic activity.

However, if one were to rely on the subatomic level, what would we say about love? Is it a reality at that level, or something else?

There are risks to denying realities that man experiences at his own level. That is why Einstein's instructor is onto something, and why the argument for atheism persists. Because just like our experience of love, we experience cold, or darkness, or myriad other evils at our own, not the subatomic level.

I recently had a conversation with a friend about this very same point. And about my concerns with the limits of Augustine's argument.

I sometimes think Augustine's argument is stretched too far from its original purposes.

If one proposes that evil is a lack or privation, then it is merely a zero or non-being. There is nothing to see in it, only to ponder the mystery, as Ms. Elshtain does, of its parasitical nature.

But what if one looks at the myriad manifestations of evil in the world? The privations of so many goods, that yield so many different and disturbing forms of evil, at our human level, not the metaphysical or the subatomic.

This is the gist of the black comic points made in first video in the comic series "Mr. Deity," which I truly enjoy, even as it disturbs me greatly. The episode is entitled "Mr. Deity and the Evil."

God is questioned as to why he wants SO MANY evils. Now, one could argue that God simply wanted to create so many goods. And each good must, by God's own plan face its own potentially horrifying privation. Granted, privation is the absence of good. I've got that.

But at another level, you must consider the black comic point above. What the heck is the plan for history when there is so much evil that seems to be driving it? Just think of the Nazis, for example. Or child abuse. Or cancer. History is moved greatly by the reality of evil. Privation is everywhere. Pervasive.

Collectively, we are resilient in the face of it no doubt. But I do not believe, as I noted in a previous post, that one can dismiss an individual's being scandalized by the experience of it, as Michael Novak has done at times, as a "morose" concern with it.

I have no answer to the comic point raised above. Except to recall the point made by Aquinas in the Summa Theologica, which scandalized me in graduate school. (II-II, Q. 19, Article 11. "Whether Fear Remains in Heaven.")

Aquinas argued that even in a state of beatitude in Heaven, man would still feel fear of God. This entire passage is contained in a section on "The Gift of Fear" contained in a larger treatise on "Hope." (I think this section bears re-reading on my part, for sure.)

I don't think Aquinas would be willing to call God "dark." But when one considers the prominent role of evil and suffering in the world, and even the scandalous and almost fetishistic obsession among Christians with evil and suffering, one can't help but feel disturbed. By them, and by God's apparent "plan" for "sacred history," so-called.

Is it in any way inefficient? If so, what does that say about the nature of God?

It certainly disturbs atheists, especially when they read the gleeful way in which Christians were willing to see them in a state of eternal damnation for their annoying lack of faith. Today, we have far more empathy and understanding of our fellow man, and should reject co-dependency with them, for their and our own sake. And recognize that their concerns are our own.

A Weekend with a Theme

2009-08-31T06:20:00.000-07:00

I entered this past weekend with one thought. "This is the anniversary of my mother's death." I don't know what I expected of this anniversary. There is nothing about a 22nd anniversary that should mark it as special.

What's more, as I have noted in other places in this blog, I believe I have long since outgrown the religious habit of seeking signs; a habit that bound me closely to my mother in my youth. So, why would I expect this kind of anniversary to yield any thoughts of significance?

During my mother's illness, I sought signs more than ever, and thought I found them. I saw them everywhere. My mother would be OK. I only felt betrayed when they did not bear out.

In the years that have followed, my advanced education and teaching of critical thinking has taught me too much about confirmation biases and other quirks of the mind to allow myself to get so carried way again. Better to wander with no "signs" at all, I have thought, and see what happens. Reality has other ways to hit you in the head.

But perhaps this weekend, I still wanted something. Perhaps I am still a child who wants something from his mother. Perhaps also, the lingering effects of baptism are not so easily washed away. And the foolishness of religious sign-seeking is permanently embedded in me.

As I awoke this morning, one thought occurred to me. Whatever I thought I sought from this anniversary, I may have received. More on that after this necessary explanation.

My mother died 22 years ago from a brain tumor. Her death was traumatic to our family. She was the center of it. A source of strength. In the days that followed my father did not do very well, and things looked very shaky for all of us. Somehow, though, we managed to survive.

Her death also seriously shook my religious faith for the first time. In way that never recovered, thanks also to reinforcement from the events of 9/11 and a few years of natural disasters that followed, and other, deeper personal crises.

All of which revolved around hopes and dreams being snuffed out. My mother had just turned 48 when she died. The last of her children would soon go to school. And my mother would be free, finally, to pursue dreams she had put on hold for many years.

Her potential would go unfulfilled.

When I saw the infamous photo of the man falling to his death on 9/11, upside down, I meditated on what his hopes for the future were that morning, before he found himself in that nightmare. The same could be said for the water-swept dead bodies in the photos of "The Tsunami" and Hurricane Katrina.

I have always been an actualization person. I want very much to grow. I value the desire to grow in others highly. It inspires me and attracts me.

I have suffered as an idealist in Fortune 1000 to Fortune 100 corporations for 7 years now. I have learned many things about growth there, and grown enormously during that time. But I found those places did not really create the cultures they preached about. And it frustrated me terribly.

I despise statism for many reasons, but perhaps most importantly, because it shackles the natural growth potential of human beings.

I have come to learn over the course of my life that personal growth is highly important to me. And I continue to think about how it is frustrated quite often in life. And I wonder how a God can make that part of his plan, for his inherently forward-looking creatures.

***

I find myself in perhaps the toughest situation of my professional career. Out of work for now seven months, I have struggled like never before to understand my marketability, and myself. I have made unprecedented, expensive investments of time and energy in myself and my own career. And I am, for whatever reason, struggling to show for it.

Not in personal growth. I have learned a great deal about myself. I have valuable clarity about a number of important issues.

But in more tangible ways, things are very tough now. I won't be able to get by much longer at all. Things could become very bad, as winter approaches. And that will affect the "growth" of possibilities for the four shining stars of my life, my beloved children. Thoughts of their suffering, and restricted possibilities in life have haunted me in recent weeks.

***

My weekend began on Friday night with an unexpected phone call from my sister Susan. She had a baby just a few weeks ago. We don't often talk on the phone. Now would seem to be even less opportune for her. And yet, she just wanted to say hello, and to offer encouragement, and financial help if necessary. I was deeply touched by her call. It carried me for hours and hours after with a bit of hope.

On Saturday, I had many plans to continue my networking, my job search, and the daunting plans to build my own business. But I felt exhausted. The thought of continuing with all this effort for yet another, fruitless day, where there was only I and no RO on the I was not appealing.

My two sons roped me into the "Rocky Marathon." I would watch one with them perhaps. I didn't think they would watch the first Rocky movie for long. Too much Paulie and Adrian and not enough slugging in the ring. But, to my great surprise, they did watch. Along with Rocky II, III and even part of IV. With me right along with them. My plans would go to hell for Saturday, and I felt better. I also appreciated Sylvester Stallone's screenwriting like I had not before. Recognizing adult themes of suffering, and hope, and redemption like I had not as a kid, when I saw these movies for the first time.

Sunday morning, I returned from church, which I left earlier than ever in my life, to find the boys ponying up their own money to watch "Rocky Balboa" on demand. OK, another Rocky movie. I'll bite again. And more admiration for Stallone, especially when he, playing a "has been" in the movie, lectures his son about the importance of getting up again after being knocked down.

Sunday afternoon we took the kids to Sunken Meadow State Park, where the kids just swam. I took their pictures along the rocky beach, confident that some day we would all look back on those photos fondly. And I forgot nearly all of my worries.

And then, Sunday evening, when everyone was asleep, I read a small pamphlet from the Five O'clock Club, which talked about the daunting challenges of the new economy, as well as the great rewards that would follow if workers would only take charge of their own careers. New growth, new flexibility and constant change in response. But all built around a vision that comes from deep inside, which, when acted upon, can be deeply satisfying.

And then, oddly, a chance encounter with Joel Osteen on my television. A man who combines religious preaching with a gospel of self-help and success. I respect his conviction, but I don't accept uncritically his assertions. To me, they often lack evidence.

By strange coincidence however, this night, I found him repeating the same theme I heard from Rocky Balboa earlier in the day. When life knocks you down, he said with his trademark squint and a smile, you have to keep getting up. He cited his friend stricken three times with cancer, and other anecdotes. What can you say to that? It's not an argument. To me it simply seemed self-evident. What else can you do, unless you want to lay down and die?

In the silence of Sunday evening, I found myself wondering why some people choose to look at the good anecdote, the hopeful one, and not the bad one, as I often do. Why is our world half beautiful and half horrible? Which makes you more of a fool? Despair? Or hope?

As I awoke this morning, I realized that my entire weekend, which went nothing as planned, was filled with themes of hope. From start to finish.

An anniversary gift from my mother? Perhaps.

Confirmation bias? Perhaps.

Article: What Would Reagan Do About Torture?

2009-08-30T09:02:00.000-07:00

Steve Chapman, writing in Reason magazine, sums up feelings I have long had about the debate over so-called "enhanced interrogation methods" practiced by the CIA against Al-Qaeda suspects.

Political conservatives, including those at the Wall Street Journal and my old employer, National Review, have been far too uncritical of these methods and the people who practiced them.

Partly they do this for political reasons, it seems to me. Because in a political prize fight with the left, fought for current advantage, they are rooting for their old warrior Dick Cheney. Who is flat out wrong about this issue.

Partly they and Cheney make this case because they are all uncritical about the underlying moral principle they are embracing. Which Chapman notes, is "the ends justify the means."

Chapman makes two important points, which I would like to elaborate on.

The first is that no less than Ronald Reagan denounced torture and supported legislation banning it.

From Chapman:

"He would get an argument from Ronald Reagan, who signed an international ban on torture, which made no allowances for grave security threats. 'No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture,' it says.

"Reagan undoubtedly knew what modern conservatives forget—that once you rationalize torture, there is no logical place to stop. If threatening a prisoner with a power drill is permissible, why not drilling holes in him? If choking is OK, why not strangulation? If threatening to kill a detainee's children passes muster, why not actually killing them? If 30 wall slams don't do the job, why not 100?"

Reagan's moral logic was unambiguously clear. The ends never justify the means.

What would conservatives say to that?

Perhaps they might argue that Reagan had the luxury of saying such things because he was not faced with "an immediate threat."

Perhaps. But I find, as I noted in a previous post, a disturbing eagerness for some conservatives to adopt the morally liminal persona of Col. Nathan R. Jessup. Perhaps in a need to feel culturally "important." To make a patriotic contribution.

Jessup, you may recall, is a character in the play and film "A Few Good Men" who is both proud, and tortured by his existence in a morally liminal space from the rest of society:

"Son, we live in a world that has walls and those walls need to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and curse the Marines; you have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives and that my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use then as the backbone of a life trying to defend something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you," and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest that you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to. "

The morally arrogant Jessup embraces ends-justify-the-means thinking to "save lives." In so doing he inflates his own sense of importance as a kind of morally liminal superman who lives on the boundaries of society.

Yet, when he returns to civilization, to a world of laws, he finds himself, paradoxically, disoriented in being charged with a crime for ordering the death of someone under his command.

Why do societies have laws at all? Just laws. To protect people from those who think they can do good and "save lives" or other morally righteous things by trampling over what man possesses from God and nature." In other words, law itself is a rebuke to utilitarianism.

If some conservatives do not seek to "conserve" the idea that the ends do not justify the means, or that there are, in the same vein, limits on the power of the king rooted in nature itself (Magna Carta anyone?) then they stand for the conservation of nothing.

I have long thought about this debate, and even the so-called "conservative" position on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the firebombing of Toykyo and the total war assault on Dresden, that the right has adopted utilitarian ethics in direct contradiction of all that they stand for otherwise.

Reagan may have had his own moments of "utility" emanating from his perceptions of immediate threats. That is a longer debate.

But in a choice between Reagan conservatism, or today's regnant "Nathan R. Jessup conservatism" on this issue, I have always been a Reagan conservative.

The second point Chapman makes is a good one, and more philosophically subtle, but supports the first and needs to be looked at more carefully.

The CIA Inspector General's report on these methods, Chapman notes, came to no conclusion about the "effectiveness" of their use, because, as the author of the report noted, you cannot. The reasoning is utilitarian, which is inherently shaky in its attempts to calculate the long term benefits of any act, since you have no alternative to future to test it against.

As no less a conservative than Hadley Arkes, a contributor to National Review and other conservative journals, noted in his book "First Things" "The effects of Ceaser crossing the Rubicon are never all in."

Which sums up perfectly the philosophical criticism of utilitarian reasoning. Only by selectively looking at the "effects" of such actions as atomic bombings, waterboading and more, can you say that they "worked."

Worked for whom, and for how long?

Leftists are wrong about many things, and far too eager to attack America. They also embrace their own utilitarian reasoning when their "emergencies" seem to justify them. They would break down the rule of law just as quickly, if not more so, than libertarian-minded rightists.

But their criticism and reminders about what "works" here are useful. They are not automatically wrong to see utilitarian acts in war as inherently generative of, if I may borrow a term from another field, "codependent" responses. Or, as the CIA calls it: "blowback."

More concretely, President Barack Obama is wrong about so many things, and I find his policy positions dangerous. That is worth emphasizing.

But his being wrong about those things is not a good reason to stop up our ears and reject outright the argument that emanates from his mouth that America will be hurt by acts like these. To reject an argument because we reject a person or persons politically is anecdotal and illogical folly.

Only by selectively looking at torture from the perspective of an American public relations campaign can one say it worked, while ignoring all the things that may yet happen as a result: in generating more terrorists, or destroying the American brand abroad, which leads to easy rationalizations of acts of terrorism and total war against America.

Maybe not in ways that are immediately tangible, but America can be hurt by ends-justify-the-means acts.

Consider this possibility. We are rightfully outraged against the attacks of September 11th. They violate all known moral principles of just war and are repugnant.

But they are, without a doubt, some of the unintended consequences of all acts of total war that preceded and the selective calculations they entailed. Including Truman dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Acts of terrorism against America are acts of total war against a country which in the minds of the fanatics of Al-Qaeda has is collectively "guilty" and has embraced total war itself.

They are wrong about this of course. Collective guilt is morally impossible, except in the minds of fanatics.

"America" has not embraced total war. Even if, as bin-Laden argued, all Americans pay taxes to support the American government.

All Americans live today in a country which is the way it is because of all of its previous choices.

The mistake, made by Osama bin Laden, and Dick Cheney, is that all Americans see it as Jessup's blanket, which we embrace, or in the minds of Cheney, should embrace.

But we do not all embrace it that way. Many Americans have supported total war. Many Americans have not.

What makes a country "innocent" in this regard is that its morality is not determined by the choices of some in power. Even if those in power are supported by a majority.

It is precisely in the room under its laws for moral and political deliberation that all countries are "innocent." And even where there is no room for such deliberation, in totalitarian regimes, a vast majority of the people under such regimes remain "innocent" and deserving of the protection emanating from venerable rules of just war thinking.

Because government exists for the protection of individuals, not groups.

Finally, a personal note, which might provide some political insight.

Growing up as a Roman Catholic, in a Reagan Democrat household, I believed in moral certainties. They were the blanket I embraced, and seemed to provide a simple, straightforward path to self-discovery, self-awareness, individuation or whatever else you might call it.

As I learned only later in my teaching of the venerable myths of all of mankind, liminality and disorientation must follow.

Adulthood did follow, where I experienced the codependent and tribal behavior of politics, 9/11, natural disasters, and my own personal experiences of evil, and tragedy and all the confusing inclinations of my own complex and sinful mind.

At the root of all this confusion is the Creator. The comforting God of my childhood is now perhaps the primary source of my disorientation. I find myself questioning everything about him, and the tangled pattern of his world.

Why the need for emergencies, and moral liminality? Why so much scandal, and confusion? Why is there no simple path in life, where one can relax about oneself and one's choices?

During this time of confusion, I cling instinctively to the principle articulated above, as a last vestige of hope in the Creator himself. The ends do not justify the means.

Because if there are no praiseworthy paths written into the nature of things on behalf of individuals to follow to get where they must be, there is no Creator.

If there are only "circumstances," from which elites help us escape at times, but for no greater purpose for the individuals who do escape; if there is only escape, there is no ultimate "arrival." Life is reduced to mere escape, for as long as possible, and nothing more.

Yes, as Thomas More says in the play, "A Man for All Seasons," "our natural business lies in escaping." Of man serving God "in the tangle of his mind."

But that is individual man, not collective man, or some individual mind making tangled calculations on behalf of the collective. It is an individual act of escaping real evil and choosing real goods.

I find myself disoriented at this point in my life about many things, but not about this one principle. It is the last wall between me, and nihilism.

Logically related to this, is something that has always stayed with me from the Gospels: Jesus, when confronted by individual sinners, never treated them with contempt. It is as if he recognized that even in their sin, there was at some point also personal confusion and disorientation. That all of life entails this disorientation. Jesus forgave them, as a way of righting them again, and encouraged them to keep moving forward.

Perhaps at this time, the proper answer to this political fight is to reflect more on the principles in question, and how individuals in our government have fallen short of right action, during a time when confusion is easily possible. Confusion which lessens, but does not eliminate guilt.

The correct answer is to pardon those involved in our government who were confused. And to move forward.

Improvisation One Hundred Years Later

2009-08-23T06:24:00.000-07:00

When I was a teenager learning about music from my bass teacher, who was an ardent fan of Charlie Parker and Lennie Tristano, the notion of improvisation intimidated me immensely. After listening intently to these guys on vinyl, and observing my teacher's raptured looks, I thought to myself, "how does one choose?"

Being far away from technical mastery of my instrument didn't help. Licks were not yet embedded in my consciousness, even as my teacher urged me to "play what you hear." I didn't as yet hear much of anything.

Yet, if that genius was intimidating, what would a brilliant improvisational genius look like today, or even years from now, given all the tools that are available to us thanks to the likes of the late Les Paul (multitrack recording and editing) and Robert Moog (synthesis)?

Our ability to alter the parameters of sound extend to timbre, waveforms and more. Things the great Parker and Tristano did not have to calculate in their amazing minds.

What will the next great musical "genius" show us? (There are so many geniuses running around, perhaps there will not be a "one" or "two" greats.)

DJ's and remixers stir my imagination. (See the Pandora Musicology Series Episode below for a description of but the smallest of sampling thinking.) Because they are fluent in thinking about the alteration of musical parameters, quite often in live settings. Granted some electronic dance music is highly repetitve. Granted also, the audience is not always paying attention to the nuances, because they are dancing instead.

But some live performances with sound remixing are truly amazing. How do these artists' minds work? What exactly is their "instrument?" How do they "play what they hear" when what they can hear is literally the entire panopoly of what they have heard before in not just music (vinyl, CDs and MP3s) but what they have found in life (movie clips, sounds of nature, the human voice and more.)

How far could a contemporary Charlie Parker go in improvising sound?

And why stop with sound?

More on that in the next post.

From Pandora:

The three members of hip hop group V.E.R.A. Clique, one producer/beatmaker (Dan Craig) and two MCs (Anderson Ray and Macsen Apollo) join producer/beatmaker Johnny Igaz to talk about sampling. We look at hardware vs. software sampling, hear how different drum tones are layered to make for fuller hits, and dissect a sampled production. Craig and Igaz both work here at Pandora as well. (11 mins.)

That link above is to V.E.R.A. Clique's site, but this one is to their Pandora artist profile.

View Original Article

A Simple Philosophy to Help Mankind

2009-08-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

I am a recovering political junkie. I don't like the controversy of politics, or how crazy it makes people. I prefer not to wade into political controversy when there is very little chance of winning. I have learned a lot of hard lessons about this activity over the years and I try to stay on the wagon.

But now, when wild charges are being lobbed around about why people don't want so much government spending and debt and intervention into various sectors of the economy, we see some people, our leaders in government, engaged in the most outrageous ad hominem attacks and demonization against anyone who disagrees with them and their wild, self-serving activities.

I don't like being called a member of some conspiracy or a hateful person simply because I don't have faith in government's (read: mediocre, headline-chasing politicians) ability to save us from ourselves.

Embedded below is a very simple, powerful statement of facts about our current government programs. And a clear articulation of why markets work to improve the general well being of humanity and government does not.

There is no hate in this. There is no "code" or conspiracy. There is nothing here that well-intentioned progressives can take umbrage at. (Although, they will never give me the same credit of good intentions if I say that I truly believe the market, not government, is the best way to make life better for my fellow man.)

For the self-righteous progressive, people who articulate the cause of freedom can never be taken at face value. Why? Because to do so would require the hard work and risk to one's own righteous self-image of having to address real arguments and real facts like those articulated by Judge Napolitano below.

This Week with the Band: Takeaways

2009-07-27T06:20:00.000-07:00

We played a great gig the other night at Kappler's Bar and Hotel in Patchogue. A quaint and clean place as bars go, literally just south of the railroad tracks.

Takeaways from this week's performance with the band:

I am much more comfortable playing and singing out in clubs than before. People were three feet away from me and it didn't bother me a bit.
My amp can sound fine, and so can everybody else's. But we have to have a dedicated sound person out there covering our mix. Can't rely on just the goodwill of our musician friends.The mix was good, but some anomalies arose.
The crowd loved our uptempo numbers. In a short set like that, don't drop down that energy with something more obscure and slower, like we did right in the middle of the set this time.
There are so many wonderful, talented folks out there, doing just what we did. Getting together under the auspices of our promoter/host to perform because we love it. Some of the attendees blew me away with their singing and playing ability, and inspired me to work harder at both.

Our next gig is Saturday, August 8th, at Bartini in Babylon. (bartinibar.com). Another short warm up set. More lessons to be learned. More nice people to meet.

Another Fun Musical Discovery: Bonobo

2009-05-14T17:14:00.000-07:00

Pandora.com just keeps making my musical life better. Another great sonic revelation for me is DJ and remixer Bonobo. (The flute can be so cool.)

Here's a wonderful sample from YouTube.

A Meditation on Life's Absurdity is No Place for Politics

2009-05-12T07:43:00.000-07:00

I'm a sucker for meditation on life's mysteries and meaning. In fact, I think of myself lately as a "logos-holic."

So why wouldn't I like the new, much-talked-about production of Exit the King, starring Geoffrey Rush? Particularly given my turn toward existentialism of late, and its cutting meditations on life's absurdities, as well as Rush's acclaimed performance?

Heather MacDonald notes the power of the play, but bemoans the politically didactic production.

I think a fair-minded person would agree that if I approach of work a literature deeply concerned about my own mortality, the fleeting nature of my desire and the falling away of all that is within me, the last thing I care about is George W. Bush, as cast member Susan Sarandon and the show's producer do; attempting to shoehorn it into this great work.

Why are they not denounced as philistines then by the theater community? I don't know.

But perhaps I'll search Amazon for another production of this masterpiece.

Thanks anyway, Broadway.

Out of Suffering Comes Beauty: Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs

2009-05-06T00:03:00.000-07:00

Tonight, due to the sadness of a long-suffering friend, I find myself reflecting very much on the troubles of this life.

To console myself somewhat, I turn to one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard, inspired by great human suffering.

This classical music video is taken from the second movement of Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3. The vocals are sung with incredible passion by Dawn Upshaw.

Górecki has maintained that the overall work is about the ties between mother and child. (One might add to that the qualifier "broken by war.")

However, the second movement particularly was inspired by a prayer to the Virgin Mary scribbled by an 18-year old girl, Helena Wanda Blazusiakowna, on a Gestapo cell wall in the Polish town of Zakopane. She would later die there.

This particular piece of the symphony is often associated with Holocaust memorials, and was even performed at Auschwitz for a documentary film.

It is still one of my favorite pieces of music.

As I listen to it, I wonder what is it about suffering that draws beauty, even sometimes incredible, ethereal beauty such as this, into this world. And, why does it have to be that way?

2009-05-03T08:05:00.000-07:00

I love teaching. It teaches me things. No matter if the material is old or new, I always learn something about a thinker, an idea, or myself.

This semester has been no different. I've had the new opportunity to teach Western Philosophy II, covering everyone from Descartes to Nietzsche. And learning so much in the process.

I find myself thinking a lot about the views of Soren Kierkegaard lately. I have not studied him much in my career. Yet, my thinking was like his during important times in my life.

Independently of Kierkegaard, but now with additional support in reading him, I find myself thinking about life in what I would call "existentialist" terms. As opposed to "sentimentalist" terms. Whether anyone will recognize this distinction the way I do I don't know. But what it means for me is that life is not uncomplicated by desire (sentimentality.) Life is defined by the frustration of desire more so, I think, than it's fulfillment.

But, start with Kierkegaard's views about the man who says confidently that he will come to a friend's dinner, only to be struck and killed by a falling tile that very same day. Kierkegaard's story to illustrate the fragility of life, our inability to speak with any confidence about the future, and our need to recognize the mystery of our existence, strikes me deeply. My own "tile" falling was the Falling Man at the World Trade Center. I meditated for months after the events of 9-11 on how those people that day went to work that morning thinking all about the future.

Those meditations reawakened in me and caused me to interpret anew my own mother's death at 48. She wanted a certain kind of future for herself, after many years of sacrificing for her children and husband. Yet, none of that came true for her.

What is desire then, which is future oriented? What is its function in God's world, which is fragile and contingent?

When desire is part of love, we say it comes from God. At least the first time, when you get married. After that, it's on its own.

What about desire for health, growth, self-development and success? Does that come from God? Even as it resides in the mind of the dying? At what point is it no longer "from God?"

What if we lose desire that "comes from God?" Is that possible?

Kierkegaard was puzzled by human desire. Yet, he tried ultimately to validate all of it through faith in God. Even faith in "impossible" things. He illustrates this in the story in Fear and Trembling of the common man who falls in love with a princess he can never possess. Yet, he will hold on to this impossibility through faith in God, in whom nothing is impossible. Of course, that faith no longer requires even the presence of the object of desire. The princess can go her way.

I interpret that story to say that the point is that the desire is held in faith as legitimate, despite its worldly impossibility and absurdity. Is Kierkegaard then validating desire in a Platonic fashion? The world can never fulfill the desire, but what we long for will find fulfillment nevertheless? Somehow?

Shades of C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed, which I read repeatedly in high school. Lewis puzzles over the death of his beloved wife, in the face of a all loving God. He draws the conclusion that he will not simply get back what he once had. He will get back something much more deeply satisfying than what he previously had.

Shades of Thomas Aquinas as well, who holds that in the afterlife, the beatific vision provides first the intimate knowledge of God as first cause (an intellectual satisfaction) but all things thereafter that we "desire" are fulfilled as a secondary effect. See my previous post on that here.

Why is desire secondary, here and in the hereafter?

Free Physics Lectures Online

2009-03-30T06:19:00.000-07:00

Ooh, boy! Only I can get excited about this. But a friend and former colleague with a science background sent me this link to the public lectures of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Subjects covered include natural laws and probability, Einstein, the Big Bang and more. For those moments in life when one's thinking drifts towards pure contemplation of ultimate causes.

No Exit for Three Idiots

2009-03-27T19:05:00.000-07:00

The news today is that the new axis powers continue their "cooperation." Putin, Chavez and Ahmadinejad. The political murderer, the "president for life" and the Holocaust denier.

Hosting each others' ships and planes, and talking about "technology transfers."

These three dearly deserve each other. Just like the three characters in Jean Paul Sartre's "No Exit."

Who will screw whom in the end is anyone's guess. But character is destiny.

The Hidden Heroism of the Soul

2009-03-21T04:56:00.000-07:00

I'm dashing off a quick thought this morning before class, based upon my experiences of recent days down at Robert Moses beach.

Why is it that so many people wander to the beach, or the mountains, a lake or the woods for solace?

What is it about landscapes and horizons that connects with us? I don't know.

But it has occurred to me recently that when I walk across a woods, or along an empty shoreline, that I am looking within life itself. And seeing my own soul. These natural, beautiful places point within, to deep and vast vistas of internal human drama.

And I wonder, like the physical landscapes created by all the force and violence of nature, can all that beauty of a windswept soul remain hidden forever? Will all that wonder, and desire to be seen and understood, be lost to history?

Or, is there something in nature, and in the order of things that demands that those vast landscapes too will be revealed someday, for all to contemplate and share in wonder?

Adding a Dark Layer to Prayer?

2009-03-19T12:29:00.000-07:00

I can't explain exactly why, but I have had a hard time praying for quite some time. It's because my view of God is so much darker than before.

I still hang on to the belief going back to the Book of Job that God's ways are not my ways. There seems no other way to explain it all, short of atheism.

But in the past I would have thought of God as an unknowing bull in the china shop of my life. He just goes about his business, never mind the damage. (That's a theologically unsound view by the way, even if it seems to explain life. Because God is supposed to be all knowing.)

Okay then. Add in my life experience (and inner doubts) and there is new dark context to this belief about God's ways. God's ways seem to do more than just ignore my ways. The all knowing being, I think now, must also surely know that He adds pain to my way. That "His ways" frustrate me sometimes. The he makes a mockery of my projecting myself into the future, simply because of what He "allows."

* * *

Lately, a thought has occurred to me about a new dimension that should be part of my prayer. I don't know why, since it seems masochistic. But, it seems when I pray for something in my life, I should meditate on all the people in the world suffering similar experiences to my own. And acknowledge that it would be manifestly unfair of me to expect any kind of relief when God allows, and has allowed for centuries, so many others to experience the same pains and losses without relief.

(Is God making this obvious to me, or is it Satan whispering it in my ear?)

The act of asking, considered in this light, is ridiculous. Why should I expect any help? I shouldn't.

And yet, I always do. Why?

Music's Blessing: It Can't Be Misunderstood

2009-03-16T10:56:00.000-07:00

A week or so ago, I posted a "tweet" to Twitter (gosh, I hate even saying that) suggesting that Music and the Mind by Anthony Storr was interesting, but contained no major revelation for me.

I wish to recant that statement (tweet - ugh). Storr recounted an observation by the author Marcel Proust that in the absence of language, which is inherently problematic due to its ambiguity, vagueness, etc. music might have provided an effective way for mankind to communicate.

I have been thinking about this idea for about a week now, and wishing it were true. Music provides me with such solace. But language always fails me in explaining myself. It is subject to misinterpretation. (That is probably why I have always been so enamored of the "principle of charity" in interpretation. In fact, I wrote about it in my other blog.)

I have often imagined that heaven is a place where musical celebration would take place all the time. Perhaps, if Proust is right, it is the very essence of the afterlife. Works for me.

Thoughts on Completing "No One Sees God" by Michael Novak

2009-03-02T05:38:00.000-08:00

Following up on the promise made in a previous post, I have finished Michael Novak's "No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers." Finally. It's a worthwhile, if somewhat slow read for people like me, who are struggling to understand the darker sides of life and religious faith.

Some concerns to start: The book meanders (Novak acknowledges this) and begins with a pious tone before polemics. Not a good way to start the book in my estimation. You lose the unbeliever. But that is not likely to be the reading audience of this book, I think.

In the current atmosphere of aggressively polemical atheism and constant exposure to the reality of evil through the mass media, I would have preferred that Novak begin the work in a more direct, logical format. Some more trivial arguments (such as that Christians report having more satisfying sex than atheists) could have been left out.

Additionally, Novak is such a happy warrior for faith that he may not recognize how his pious tone fails with non-believers. Overall, the book feels like it is written, especially in the beginning, for those who are already highly conversant with the Judeo-Christian tradition.

That aside, there are things to recommend the book. Including some provocative ideas. Here are a few random highlights for me:

Platonism: It is powerfully evident that Novak relies heavily on Platonic "eros" or constant striving for truth as a fundamental drive in the universe, one which explains science itself. Having taught such eros for many years now at local colleges, I can say that it is intoxicating and makes one interested in seeking the terminal point of all knowledge and levels of being. However, one must have a certain cast of mind to accept this argument, and Novak could have done some more work to explain that eros, in Plato's divided line, his reliance on mathematical forms as the spur to his own ideas, etc. This might have been helpful in adding significance to his argument.

God the Novelist. Often times Novak refers to God as an author-like figure, with a taste for drama. Indeed. This idea bothers me (it seems insouciant about evil) and provokes me. I have found myself slipping into my usual meditations on evil and suffering and rather than thinking of God as uncaring, this idea makes me think of God as deeply involved in the unfolding of the story. But, it also makes me think of God as somewhat bipolar, who is likely to "allow" crazy things to you just for his own kicks of a good story. This is an idea I am thinking about a lot lately.

Secularism Crumbling. In the concluding chapters of the book, Novak provides a valuable overview of the origins of "secularism" in Christianity. He notes the tensions which have arisen within modern, militant secularism, challenged from within by the likes of Nietzsche, Derrida, etc. And, the risks that secularism taken to its nihilist extremes might energize fascism. Additionally, I was unfamiliar with many of Irving Kristol's arguments against secularism and will be sure to look into those more.

Constructive Dialogue. When I attended Fordham University for my graduate philosophy degree, Jurgen Habermas's name was much bandied about. I had other concerns at the time, but Novak has stoked my interest, insofar as Habermas, not a believer, is yet an active proponent of dialogue with belief, and recognizes that certain important concepts within the unbeliever's lexicon are heavily dependent upon their religious origins. This struck me as a jumping off point of a Socratic dialogue between belief and unbelief, where certain key terms seen darkly must have their meaning clarified by a healthy metaphysical answer. Additionally fascinating to learn, the acknowledgments of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) in dialogue with Habermas about the "toxicity" that religion can generate, and how it must be purified in dialogue with the secular.

The Two Faces of Belief. Darkness within faith is not the product of reading the "wrong books." Such as when I have read and taught David Hume, for example. Novak calls for a healthy respect for and dialogue with atheism because we see in atheists another side of ourselves. If we are honest. From Novak's appendix of favorite "dark" biblical passages, to the Via Negativa of the Pseudo-Dionysios to the Dark Night of John of the Cross, there are strains of darkness within religious faith. We need more such resources in a modern form. And I felt a certain sense of relief at reading Novak's acknowledgments of this aspect of faith and his call for an open discussion of it.

Perhaps we will yet see progress in our lifetimes.

A Few Thoughts on Kate Winslet

2009-02-28T18:53:00.000-08:00

A few thoughts this weekend for the Long Island Sentinel on Kate Winslet's win at the Academy Awards.

Despite the views expressed by Hollywood elites like Winslet and husband Sam Mendes about the unfeeling life of the suburbs, their choice of projects might say something about their own feel for life, morality and aesthetics.

Bill Moyers? Really?

2009-02-21T18:17:00.000-08:00

I had heard the story about Bill Moyers trying to dig up dirt on Jack Valenti's sexual orientation when he worked in the administration of Lyndon Johnson. But apparently there's a whole lot more dirty tricks in Moyers' past than I had ever known. Wow.

The picture to the right is Moyers back in the day. One could run an interesting caption contest on what he is hearing. Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.

P.S. I met Jack Valenti back when I worked at National Review. He struck me as a dapper, somewhat Napoleonic figure, what with his square jaw and deep booming Texas voice compensating somewhat for a diminutive stature. If this was his mien consistently through his life, then it seems to me only the politically obsessed, such as J. Edgar Hoover, LBJ and Moyers could have projected onto him that he was hiding something about himself.

Sentinel Interview with Steve Levy

2009-02-21T02:20:00.000-08:00

Interesting interview with Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, a Democrat, one of Long Island's most fiscally responsible and emotionally intelligent politicians; often spoken of as a candidate for higher office.

I've known Steve Levy for a number of years in my experience as a columnist for Newsday. While I don't agree with everything Steve stands for, there is no doubt that we could use more elected officials of his character and sense of responsibility to the electorate.

A Baseball Contribution, and Some Additional Thoughts

2009-02-19T05:57:00.000-08:00

Another contribution to the Long Island Sentinel, this time about my desire to skip the baseball season this year.

It's just going to be another unpleasant season, with the steroid mania, and all the rest. I spent the last several years obsessing over the Yankees chances, only to be disappointed. Add in the controversy, and I don't need it.

Not to mention, professional sporting events are ridiculously overpriced. In the golden days of baseball, tickets were relatively cheap, and baseball was a rite of family bonding. Now, the world is much more heterogeneous, and offers so many more choices of what to do. Why waste so much time when there are so many other ways to develop oneself, rather than idolize those who will eventually disappoint you?

Chavez a Lifer: Venezuela's a Goner

2009-02-16T19:22:00.000-08:00

We are living in strange, dangerous times. With yesterday's news that Hugo Chavez can have his job for life, it's time to short Venezuela. Latin America should prepare for refugees.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to emasculate itself with massive deficit spending, and the promise of more interventionist regulation and spending to come.

The world, it seems, is on a path to fiscal instability and the increasing politicization of economies. Willingly, through the popular vote.

Madness.

Newsweek Not the Best Source of Economic Advice

2009-02-13T18:23:00.000-08:00

Bias and economic illiteracy continue to rule in the mainstream news media, as Daniel Gross at Newsweek has put forth a stupid argument against tax cuts.

Gross's entire argument is predicated on the notion that tax cuts won't stimulate immediate consumption - contrary to conservative claims. A college professor may feel especially "flush" and buy books, Gross argues, but an average worker, in today's unique economic climate of fear, will not.

Putting aside the specious claim that today's climate is uniquely fearful, compared to say the days of the Carter Administration, Gross's argument is a straw man. It has nothing to do with the arguments that conservatives have been making on behalf of permanent, marginal tax rate cuts to create incentives to entrepreneurship and investment, which in turn creates new, good paying jobs.

It's never been about spurring consumption among the average worker. Newsweek is not the best source to get your economic policy guidance, I would suggest.

Did David Letterman Deliberately Abuse a Mentally Unstable Joaquin Phoenix?

2009-02-12T08:04:00.000-08:00

Was David Letterman really the aggrieved party in his odd interview with Joaquin Phoenix? (Phoenix, who everyone knew from media reports, might be suffering from mental illness?) It seems to me that Letterman was somewhat prepared for what he got, and was equally ready to mock someone who could be mentally ill. (Even if it was a a "put on," as has been suggested, does David Letterman have a responsibility to his audience not to appear to be abusing the mentally ill? I never liked Brother Theodore on Letterman for the same reason.)

You lost me for good Dave, and I've been a fan from the beginning.

Should Letterman or Sean Hannity or the View really have had on Rod Blagojevich? It seems to me that our media heroes deserve some scorn sometime for the things they bring before us.

More Sully, less exploitation please.

AP Fact Checks Obama's "No Pork" and Other Fibs

2009-02-09T18:08:00.000-08:00

Helpful piece today from the AP in response to what can only be described as brazen untruths told by President Barack Obama about his stimulus bill and his administration.

The campaign may be over, but the campaign mode is not. But it seems now the media are not so wowed by Obama and are beginning to question his tactics more seriously. A good development, if a little late.

Today's Contribution to the Long Island Sentinel

2009-02-07T17:02:00.000-08:00

Another modest contribution today to the Long Island Sentinel, this time about Sam Tanenhaus's argument that "conservatism is dead."

I don't think so. I agree that America is not full of conservative true believers. Nor is it full of liberal true believers. There are many people who don't pay attention (which seems to me a sane approach to politics.)

But when people's backs are against the wall, and the porky stimulus god fails, and the economy worsens because of endless meddling (not that I am wishing for that, but there is something about adversity that will concentrate the mind), I think, with some discipline on the part of the Republican Party, conservatism can make a comeback. Here's to the midterms in 2010. Don't blow it this time GOP, with a return to your stupid, big spending ways.

Real Leaders Needed to Combat Forthcoming Inflation, or Stagflation

2009-02-06T05:40:00.000-08:00

Make no mistake, with the Fed printing money like mad, inflation will return. George Melloan explains why it could also be a return to "stagflation."

The question that is particularly acute, especially after the disgraceful performance of Congress on the disgusting, irresponsible stimulus pork barrel bill, is are there any real "statesmen" in Congress, or in the government at all for that matter.

Leaders, who who will call the government and the country to account for its wishful fantasies that cheap money and spending by government on just about any stupid thing (Keynesian stimulus - a great excuse for pork) will solve all of our problems. America needs true courageous leaders in government, more than ever.

The Biological Roots of Goodness

2009-02-03T07:12:00.000-08:00

Fascinating, fascinating discussion on John Batchelor's KFI radio show/podcast of February 1, with Dacher Keltner about his book "Born to Be Good." (Listen about 1 hour and 35 minutes into the show.)

Keltner's book explains how we are biologically wired from birth to be good, not live lives that are nasty, brutish and short. He talks brilliantly about the biology of shame, embarrassment, conscience and more.

Check out the podcast, it's brilliant. And just one more reason why John Batchelor's wide-ranging Sunday evening radio programs on WABC and KFI are some of the most interesting on the radio.

I'm adding this book to my ever-growing reading list.

It's Now Acceptable to Criticize Obama

2009-02-02T21:18:00.000-08:00

Bad news for President Barack Obama. With this article from the New York Times, it's now officially acceptable for the so-called mainstream media to criticize the new administration for hypocrisy. Less than month after the glorious inauguration.

How About An Interactive Oscars?

2009-02-02T19:44:00.000-08:00

Interesting story about attempts to make the Oscars more interesting. Hugh Jackman hosting? C'mon. He's talented, but the show will still drag, Peter Allen numbers or not.

Want to make the Oscars more interesting? Try making the show interactive. Put some graphics on the screen about who won, where they are from, what they have done. Let people Twitter on screen about the show - edit of course - and add some context. Maybe throw in a pair of industry commentators. Right now it's all host and celebrities going on and on.

There is so much you can do with that show, and yet it's taken the Academy years to still not do it. (For the record, I still liked Steve Martin hosting the Oscars the best.)

Anastasia Baburova, Stanislav Markelov, R.I.P.

2009-01-31T20:56:00.000-08:00

Another Russian journalist, this time a mere 25-year old "cub" reporter, Anastasia Baburova, is murdered by a masked gunman just blocks from the Kremlin, as is human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov.

Another Long Island Sentinel Contribution

2009-01-31T10:00:00.000-08:00

Another modest contribution today to the Long Island Sentinel, this time about signs of weakness in the Obama presidency.

Let the Overreach Begin

2009-01-29T15:12:00.000-08:00

Prior to Barack Obama's inauguration, a number of pundits predicted that Obama would need to triangulate to some degree away from his Democratic colleagues in the Congress, lest they overreach and cause the chief executive to waste valuable political capital, as happened in the early days of the Clinton presidency.

As this trenchant political analysis by my old colleague Larry Kudlow demonstrates, Mr. Obama has indeed allowed himself to become identified with a Democratic House pork-barrel bill -- usually the ordinary disgraceful business of Congress -- masquerading today as emergency "stimulus."

As Kudlow notes, criticism is now coming from all sides, including former Clinton budget honcho Alice Rivlin.

One wonders if Obama will now try a charm offensive to put lipstick on this pig, or cut his losses. Either way, this is no First 100 Days FDR for sure.

Today's Contribution to Long Island Sentinel

2009-01-26T07:04:00.000-08:00

I have made a modest contribution to the Long Island Sentinel today. A little something about the too-important-to-prosecute-for-tax-evasion Treasury Secretary designate, Timothy Geithner.

Stimulus Plan Pork Justifies Cynicism about Obama

2009-01-25T20:11:00.000-08:00

The change we've been waiting for continues. Great story today on the SF Chronicle web site with some of the details of the so-called Obama stimulus plan.

Included are the same kind of pork-barrel projects we see in "normal" times in Washington. Yet, this is supposed to be an emergency, and the kind of situation that requires immediate action. To do what, renovate malls? Give me a break.

I think it's all clear to be cynical about Obama, even for the Obama zombies. It took us, what, all of a few weeks?

Long Island Sentinel Launches

2009-01-23T06:04:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to my good friend and always entrepreneur Ray Keating, on the recent launch of the Long Island Sentinel, a much needed alternative voice on Long Island for free markets and less government here, and across the country.

The web-based publication is producing new content seven days a week, on the model of a daily newspaper. It also features cultural and sports commentary as well.

I will be participating to some degree in this new venture, with an occasional contribution about this and that. An honor and a privilege.

NSA Spying Story Disturbing

2009-01-22T20:07:00.000-08:00

A disturbing story is bubbling up in the recent days about the National Security Agency (NSA) allegedly spying without warrant on American citizens.

Keith Olbermann is not my favorite guy, but I have to say that tonight I sat riveted by the program Countdown as he reported on allegations that the NSA illegally obtained information about ordinary Americans, particularly journalists.

This may be another example of how, as I mentioned earlier, speed limits in our laws get pushed. Give the government the power to spy on foreign nationals in the U.S. (who do not enjoy the same constitutional protections) and you run the risk that gung-ho security types will abuse that power.

I'm going to be waiting and watching on this one, especially when the whistleblower, Russell Tice (seen in the video below), and others in the security business go before Congress to tell what they know.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Tax Cheat Tim Geithner "Too Important" To Reject for Treasury?

2009-01-21T06:47:00.000-08:00

Amazing, absurd story today about tax cheat Tim Geithner, Barack Obama's nominee for Treasury. When the political class decides a tax cheater is too important to their plans to "fix" the economy to disqualify for office -- even though the same tax cheat will oversee the IRS -- you know the country is in serious, serious trouble.

This is the "change" we've been waiting for? If a Republican tried this, the Democrats would be apoplectic. Don't tell me this is a principled group in Washington. They deserve nothing but scorn.

Read Byron York's coverage of this story at National Review Online.

More Political Murder in Putin's Russia

2009-01-19T10:57:00.000-08:00

Another day in Vladimir Putin's Russia, another "troublemaker" murdered.

Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer representing the family of a murdered Chechen girl, who also represented murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya and other abused Chechens, has been shot and killed. Curious how all these people making trouble against the Russian established order just happen to die.

One of George Bush's worst mistakes, among his many, was calling Mr. Putin someone he could work with, and his "friend." The prospects for the naive Obama administration are not much better, since BO seems to think he charm just about anyone.

Putin is, in fact, a murderer. And a potential mass murderer if energy prices rise again, which may encourage him to return to overrunning the former Soviet bloc nations such as Georgia and Ukraine. One shudders to think of the political murders that will ensue then.

In Case of Waterboarding Conservative, Break Glass

2009-01-16T06:40:00.000-08:00

I failed to note in my previous post that Joe Scarborough and Patrick Buchanan can't seem to decide what they are debating. A) Waterboarding is or isn't torture, or B) Who cares, it works.

As I noted in another previous post, it may well "work" in overly narrow terms. Not the point. The issue is do the ends justify the means?

In the video in the previous post, Buchanan asks Financial Times editor Christia Freeland if she would waterboard someone to save nine plane loads of people from terrorist bombings. Classic utilitarian reasoning.

The proper response, which you are welcome to use if you run into waterboarders: "The Nazis "experimented" on Jews in the concentration camps. If that information saved nine plane loads of people's lives, would that make what they did moral? Or, if you prefer a "guilty" analogy - if we could save nine plane loads of people's lives by doing "controlled" experiments on our murderers, rapists and child molesters to obtain valuable medical information, should we do it?"

At this point, one would expect nothing more than a sigh and a roll of those squinty eyes from Scarborough. Who knows what Buchanan would say. But, in any case, the answer to both of them is to debate the principle, not the results. The debate is not about what "works," which the "realists" define according to their own narrow terms, independent of blowback and damage to moral standing. The debate is about the logic of one's morality, and its longer term results.

What frightens people about some conservatives is that in situations where the high goods of God and country appear threatened, they too easily cast off their principled mantles - the one's they don so well (and rightly so) on the constitution and free markets, and embrace "extremism in defense of liberty (and possibly God) is no vice."

I never liked that statement by Barry Goldwater. I always thought it was stupid. What I realize now is that it was revelatory of a deep utilitarian strain that some, some conservatives need to purge from their thinking.

(Goldwater's statement is right up there with that of irresponsible idiot Ann Coulter's comment: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.")

Torture Debate Brings Out the Worst in One Conservative

2009-01-15T07:11:00.000-08:00

I discovered this video posted on a very right wing blog recently. It's of an MSNBC debate about waterboarding and torture. The author of that blog had a different view of it than I did.

Sorry, but Joe Scarborough is being enormously unfair here. Arrogant. And a jack ass. (And normally, I like Joe Scarborough.) He is doing his best paternalistic Jack "You Can't Handle the Truth about Our Dangerous World" Nicholson routing here, and it's not working. I think there is also a bit of male chest thumping.

Not everything a left-winger, or so-called moderate says is wrong. There are no limits to what Buchanan and Scarborough are advocating. It offends the sensibilities of people who don't want crude "realist" thugs protecting our freedoms.

As I have said before, the willingness to believe one has to do these things in order to protect freedom, as the "only choice," is (aside from cheap utilitarian reasoning toward which conservatives are usually averse - see previous post) a kind of exercise in Nietzschean over-man beyond-good-and-evil vanity. And, sad to say, some conservatives just LOVE IT.

On Torture and Exceeding Speed Limits

2009-01-14T04:44:00.000-08:00

The news today is that another "detainee" was tortured, at least according to a Bush administration official. Except for the fact that someone in the Bush administration is admitting to it, from my point of view, this is sad news.

While I consider myself a right-leaning individual, (something of a libertarian), I have never accepted the rationalizations of torture from the right, or attempts to parse the meaning of torture so that waterboarding skirts that definition.

Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, enforced nudity and other coercive acts all strike the average person as acts of torture - physical and mental. Yet, national security-minded media outlets like the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, and others on the right, continue to dance on the heads of semantic pins, and invoke situational ethics to defend these practices. (The fact that Congress may also have been aware of these acts and supported them, only to turn into hypocrites about it later, is completely beside the point. Sorry, WSJ.)

I have no doubt that you can get some good information from torture. Sometimes. And, from that you can "do good." What is forgotten -- ridiculously, embarrassingly and conveniently forgotten on the right -- is the distinction between means and end - and the so-called "unintended consequences" that flow when you skirt that distinction.

Conservatives are highly skilled at pointing out the unintended consequences of all sorts of other policies, such as income redistribution, unfunded mandates, etc.

But when it comes to the so-called "blowback," or the codependent political responses that will be generated by acts of torture, rendition, subversion of governments and more, many conservatives degrade into so-called political "realists."

Conservatives know that every law can be twisted, pushed beyond its normal limits. Just like we all drive 60 in a 55 MPH zone. Henry Paulson's TARP has been a mockery of legislation - leaving aside the fact the constitution bars any of this kind of intervention by the federal government. As TARP could "morph," so can waterboarding and rendition. You stay away from the edges, so the edges don't get closer to the norm. That's the point of having a constitution and limits on national security practices.

Yet, somehow for the right, foreign policy remain hermetically sealed from these kind of considerations, buried in a mayonnaise jar at Foggy Bottom. (Sending out a horse laugh to Hillary Clinton today, and her absurd claim that she will make American foreign policy "smart." Just like smart urban planning, eh? All we need is some "smart" people and everything will be great. $&^#*#*!!!)

I got my first taste of the right-wing "realpolitik" blind spot when, as a junior editor at National Review, I made the argument that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, along with the indiscriminate bombings of Tokyo and Dresden, were immoral acts, contrary to thousands of years of natural law tradition. (You know, the kind of tradition we Burkean, Judeo-Christian conservatives are supposed to defend?)

With a few exceptions, I was met with intransigence and utilitarian rationalization, befitting the likes of Jeremy Bentham and Joseph Fletcher.

And while today, I don't find the world as "neat" as I did then, I cling to the distinction between means and ends as I do the love of my children and my own sanity. If there is no such distinction, there is no meaning at all, and nothing worth protecting.

A lesson long understood by some conservatives, somewhere.

Musical Artist Friday: Anders Trentemøller

2009-01-09T06:13:00.000-08:00

Today, instead of writing about the latest political nonsense, I'm discussing music. More of this important subject matter to follow(!)

One of my favorite artists, among the many, is Anders Trentemøller. He creates some beautiful, amazingly layered music. I won't put a label on it. Many people do. I'll just say I love his stuff.

This piece, "Moan" is from the album "The Last Resort." (Note the use of singing birds to enhance the ambient backgrounds of the instrumental version song - along with various snaps, crackles and pops that are characteristic of his style.)

Below are the instrumental, and then vocal versions of the same song. The music video for the latter, complete with silly Soviet era imagery, is quite fun. It's also hauntingly beautiful, with the vocal support of Ane Trolle.) Check him out on YouTube when you get a chance. And buy his stuff.

Polyvore Throws Me a Fashion Lifeline

2009-01-07T06:27:00.000-08:00

I just stumbled across "Polyvore" a fascinating online tool for fashion lovers (and the fashion challenged, like me, who just might learn something). Members create "sets" or combinations of items gathered from across the web that others can look at, learn from and buy if they like. (When it comes to my look, I need all the help I can get.) The content is searchable by tags like "rock" or "jeans." Some women I know will just LOVE this site. What do you think?

for men by • silent 3 •

learn to walk away by ♥MOOSEGiRL♥

Russian Gas Cutoff Signals Much-Deserved Desperation

2009-01-03T15:03:00.000-08:00

Troubles for Putin's Russia and its energy giant Gazprom, as they get cagey in shutting off supplies to Ukraine. The International Herald Tribune notes:

"[E]nergy experts said that the Kremlin's decision to employ the gambit again in a pricing dispute with Ukraine was an indication as well of Russia's deepening economic woes."

Indeed, as world energy prices fall, Putin and his jackals are increasingly desperate for cash. Let's hope it's just the beginning of their troubles.

2008: Mission Statement Partly Accomplished

2009-01-01T08:29:00.000-08:00

Several years ago, during a time when I was diagnosed with a chronic illness and "underemployed," I wrote a mission statement for myself. As I wrote it, I realized it was okay to aspire to be a serious "creative," because in doing so, I could share the benefits of these activities with my children, broadening their horizons at a young age in a way my I never did. Here's an excerpt from what I wrote:

"To renew a sense of value in my life, bring me back to the true interests that have been with my throughout my life and career, and draw my family, friends and those who experience my work into a world of creativity and humor with me. To allow my family, friends and associates to enjoy the social, cultural and spiritual benefits of this life, in the hopes that they also will be inspired to be creative and effective. To create cultural works that will be of lasting value and inspiration."

In the time since, I have taken a few shots at this. I experimented with some standup comedy for a while, and worked on some television commercials, corporate videos, a "mockumentary" and a horror film.

I continue to pursue opportunities in all these areas. But above all, I have come to realize that music offers me some of the most promising opportunities to achieve my mission statement objectives. I have been a musician since I started playing bass guitar with my friends at about age 14. Many years have passed, and while I have had the guitar out on and off, actively playing music has not been a part of my life.

In that sense, 2008 had already been a great year for me. I took a shot answering a Craigslist ad for a guitarist, and thanks to the welcoming Andrew Camarco, Bob Muller, John Cunningham and John Esposito, I am part of a great band - Triple 7 - whose motto is: "If I ain't having fun, I'm done."

And we are having fun. I'm learning new music, expanding my musical abilities, and meeting great people. My bandmates are all passionate about expanding their abilities and playing out, which we've done a few times now.

However, my hosts for last night's New Year's Eve bash, the extended Camarco family, could not have known how important last night was to me. Because it offered the opportunity to close out an already great year by having my kids see my band play for the first time. One of the goals of my mission statement.

Well, due to some weather and other logistical problems, some members of the band couldn't make it. But Andrew, our drummer, and his nephew Brian, a former member of the band, were available to do drums and bass respectively. At Andrew's prodding I grabbed the nearby guitar (Brian's Fender Strat - thanks Brian) and we jammed a few songs - while the rest of the crowd did what I understand is classic Camarco Karaoke.

From afar I could see the kids watching. And clapping along. Singing. Connor had already received some free drumming lessons from Andrew earlier in the evening. (He just started taking guitar lessons this year.) Later, during a break in the action, Kevin and Connor would sit while the rest of the Camarcos sang some other tunes. Kevin would also grab the mic for the first time, and just make silly noises into it, uttering his trademark hearty laugh.

It didn't matter that daughter Emma would throw up on me later that evening. (She's fine now.) Nothing could "dampen" my spirits. I had, to some degree, done what I had set out to do several years ago. It has been a long, twisted path. But here I am, thanks to some good luck and some great people.

And there are more fun gigs to come in the months and years ahead. And more improvement of my playing. We'll see how far it will take me and my family and friends.

My success here has also given me the confidence to pursue more of my goals. 2009 will hopefully bring more successes.

I also found out this week from my doctor as well that my chronic illness ("Crohn's Colitis," as my doctor unconventionally calls it) has eased off so much, that I won't need to be checked out so frequently. I am extremely fortunate to have what appears to be a "mild case" as she described it.

It started to get milder around the time I wrote my mission statement.

I don't know what the future holds, medically, or musically. I pray a silent prayer every day to a darker God than that of my childhood that I and those I know and love will escape tragedy. But I am deeply grateful for the good things that 2008 has brought. And more hopeful for the future than I have been in some time.

Shlaes Reminds Us of the Cost of Government Arrogance

2008-12-31T12:17:00.000-08:00

Excellent piece today by Amity Shlaes, disabusing us of our current New Deal nostalgia. Did you know, for example, that FDR set the price of gold daily at his breakfast table, based upon his own "lucky numbers?" (Shlaes' latest book, "The Forgotten Man" is up there on my reading list for '09.)

Make no mistake: Barack Obama, often compared to FDR on the basis of his nascent popularity and his big spending plans, has absolutely no idea how to fix the American economy. He and his administration minions will "experiment" and tinker like Roosevelt, because, like Roosevelt, they are supremely confident in their own competence.

Shlaes reminds us of the remarkable arrogance and folly of such an approach.

The answer to economic growth is simple. Get out of the way. Animal spirits in the marketplace create growth, not government. Government redistributes resources via coercion, which produces nothing at its best and destroys productive resources at its worst.

Sadly, it seems likely that we will have to suffer for at least 24 months, until the midterm Congressional elections, and perhaps more, if the Republican Party cannot rid itself of its pathetic, grasping leadership and return to its roots in classical free market economics and limited constitutional government.

Will Canada Show America the Way?

2008-12-19T01:08:00.000-08:00

Great, educational piece by Theo Caldwell up there in the Great White North about Canada debating tax cuts and economic growth. The Canadians are pondering real solutions to economic woes, while America ponders the cult of Obama and his big-spending brain trust. Goh, Canada!

Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) Nothing More than a Slush Fund

2008-12-15T06:15:00.000-08:00

In addition to the secretive manner in which the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money has been spent by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, we now have the possibility that the "vision thing"-challenged Bush Administration will use TARP for other bailouts, such as providing cash to the Big Three car makers.

Can anyone doubt now that TARP is -- and always was given its loose wording and its even looser execution -- nothing more than a political slush fund? And an expensive one at that. Future generations will paying one of the most expensive bills ever for one to two years worth of political gain for Washington politicians.

To break that "gain" down even further, this political slush fund allows the Democrats to derive marvelous benefits at low to no political cost, thanks to the Stupid Party.

Congressional Democrats vote for the auto bailout, but it gets killed in the Senate. Enter the eager to please President Bush, who has already accepted his abuse for the bank failures, very much the fault of Congressional Democrats. Now he stupidly pays the political cost with the rest of America for bailing out Detroit. We're sure the UAW will vote Republican next time around, right? (Michigan Representative Thaddeus McCotter, a Republican, after his fierce attacks on TARP, continues to disappoint with his rationalizations of using TARP or other bailouts to save Detroit.)

And then there is the persistently lucky Barack Obama, who is handed this expensive slush fund at no political cost to him as he takes office.

Didn't the cheerleaders in the financial press, such as the editors of the Wall Street Journal, see any of this coming? The lesson here: the business of America's government is not business. It is national defense, in the strict sense. The rest is subject to endless permutation, manipulation and stupidity.

Obedience, or Abuse in Mother Theresa's Order?

2008-12-09T07:54:00.000-08:00

Years ago I would have listened to this fascinating interview between John Batchelor and former Missionary of Charity Collette Livermore and thought she was obviously "proud" and under the influence of dark forces. (Download Hour 3 from the web page, and begin the podcast at 19:25 for the interview.)

Now, after years of my own struggles with the human dimensions of Catholicism in particular cultural forms, I see Livermore on a journey of painful inquiry much like my own, over what is proper for Roman Catholicism.

Livermore made a commitment as a young girl to help the poor by joining Mother Theresa's Missionaries of Charity in India. But she could not stay on, due to the pain the order's superiors inflicted upon her.

As she recounts in the above radio interview, and in greater detail in her new book, Hope Endures, her efforts to help the poor were attacked for bureaucratic reasons, and for authoritarian ones. Her motives were portrayed constantly as being more prideful than charitable.

No one can know for sure. Not even her superiors, by the way.

This woman, now a secular doctor, strikes me as sincere and of good will. She was clearly stunned by her superiors' constant guessing at and demeaning her motives. One gets the sense that in this environment, authority became a license to abuse.

It's not an uncommon story. Rarely do the humans who inhabit saints' religious orders share the "charism" of the founder. The question Livermore raises however, is did these abusive individuals do their acts of uncharity with the approval of Mother Theresa? Because Mother Theresa felt such humiliation was a refuge from the greater problem of doubt?

Better to live in uncertainty about your own worth, than God's worth in your life?

The question is briefly touched upon in the interview. But I sense from it that there is no definitive answer, only speculation.

I'll leave it to the Church to decide how this story affects Mother Theresa's case for sainthood. From my perspective however, the ability to live with doubt, questioning, even being scandalized by evil in the world and the inscrutable nature of the First Cause's universe is all part of the essential struggle of faith and reason. One almost gets used to it as the background noise of a life in pursuit of God.

I can't speak for the ultimate conclusions of Livermore's book, which I will have to read. But, this interview angers me, because I care about religion, and don't like the idea that unjustified, unverifiable, and ultimately codependent acts of humiliation would be used as an answer to doubt.

Eminent Domain and the Struggling New York Times

2008-12-08T10:06:00.000-08:00

Interesting story that the New York Times is mortgaging its new building in Manhattan to keep itself afloat.

What might be forgotten is that New York City officials used eminent domain to kick successful businesses out of that same space the Times building now occupies, in Manhattan's Theater District, in the name of "economic development."

Perhaps these officials assumed, aside from their own infallibility, that the New York Times would never be subject to economic difficulties, or would never go out of business.

But exactly what is the definition of "success" for economic development? If there is one, can the Times now be said to be hitting those targets?

The arrogance of central planners on display.

Photo used courtesy of Freefoto.com.

An Eloquent Editorial

2008-12-03T19:52:00.000-08:00

Bravo to the editors of The New Criterion for an eloquent editorial regarding the gradual loss of freedom (or, rise of government paternalism) in the United States.

Excellent reading.

The problem is not the fault of any one party. It is the result of a "fatal conceit" by the ruling class in Washington and the States for decades that all things, from who should own homes to steroids in baseball, fall under their purview. Nothing escapes the scrutiny of our deeply "concerned," selfless politicians.

Reflections on Powerlessness

2008-11-23T19:53:00.000-08:00

I often think about the fragility of life, and how truly powerless we are. This is the result of several events in my life, and the larger events of 9/11, Katrina, etc., which have completely altered my psyche in this regard. I think about economic powerlessness, powerlessness over the fate of my children, and much more.

Several videos I have come across on YouTube recently, about the temptation of Christ in the desert, have spurred me to think about my concerns with control and fear of powerlessness.

The video embedded below is a bit over stylized and interpretive, but it is a provocative presentation of Christ's choice to eschew power over the world.

Funny then, after seeing videos of this type, I watched just this week a PBS special about the creation of the Hebrew Bible.

Touching on the question of power, this series noted that the great book was completed during the Babylonian Captivity, at the lowest ebb and most powerless time of the Jewish people. And yet, it would unite the people of Israel, and eventually the Western World.

Is there anything more that we (I) can derive from these experiences of Israel's captive powerlessness and Jesus's chosen powerlessness? And, is it any different from other myths of renunciation and redemptive suffering?

My immediate temptation is to think that just the "right" embrace of one's powerlessness might actually empower you. But, how might one "embrace" that, and what kind of empowerment does it bring? Would it be the same experience as having no metaphysical anxiety at all? I sincerely doubt it.

Yet, beyond that, I don't know the answers. I just thought I would capture the questions. More to think on for another time.

Obama's Seeming Justice: Stunning Election Day News

2008-11-04T05:39:00.000-08:00

Stunning story today in the Washington Times, as summarized beautifully by John Batchelor.

The FBI, at this hour, is involved in the investigation of Barack Obama's land deal with Tony Rezko. At issue: graft and lying on a Senate ethics form (a crime which took down Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska.)

This on top of last week's revelation of a "restrictive covenant" on the property which suggests collaboration between the two, in contradiction of Obama's own statements to the press.

This may be the shortest presidency in modern history. And no doubt, it will rival Bill Clinton's, at an even earlier stage, for partisan warfare. Right out of the gate, can you say "failed presidency?"

Despite the surreal resistance of the Bush-Haters and the Obama-Philes to the facts, the corrupt Barack Obama is a living example of what the sophist Glaucon described in Plato's Republic over 2,000 years ago:

"So let the unjust make his unjust attempts in the right way, and lie hidden if he means to be great in his injustice (he who is found out is nobody): for the highest reach of injustice is: to be deemed just when you are not." -Glaucon, Book II, Republic.

Palin Commits a Gaffe on the First Amendement: Left Goes Whoopee!

2008-11-01T14:44:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin committed a clear gaffe in speaking about the First Amendment. However, judging by the reaction of the left-wing blogosphere, and other commentators, you would think she issued a full-blown policy prescription calling for the First Amendment to be repealed.

Just in case some did not see the manifest incoherence of the statement, law professor Jonathan Turley felt compelled to rebut Palin's "Palinprudence" (a paragraph) with four very impressive citations of jurisprudential giants.

Elsewhere, on the harder left, a stream of obscenities and ad feminem attacks have ensued. Clearly the gaffe had reinforced some already hardened positions against Palin and her intellectual abilities. (Never mind that Joe Biden has uttered a host of gaffes and has had more than one charge of plagiarism in his schooling and political career.)

Considering that McCain-Feingold specifically gave the Federal Election Commission the ability to restrict (a.k.a. suppress) "negative attacks" (a.k.a. "free speech") to so-called "media organizations", and Palin's statement about her fear for the future of free speech, it seems far more likely that her statement was a "rogue" one gone bad, about political incumbents (with help from their government-approved "media organization" friends) attempting to suppress any non-sanctioned "negativity."

In any case, Palin should clarify the meaning of her clearly incoherent remarks immediately, and Palin haters should throttle back on the obscenity-laced misogyny.

Review Revisits an Ancient (and Tired) Quarrel about Justice

2008-11-01T09:03:00.000-07:00

In recent classes I have talked with my students about the sophist charge in Plato's Republic that all claims about the nature of justice are disguised power grabs.

Interesting then that Adam Kirsch should write a review on CityJournal.org about a new book by philosopher Raymond Geuss, "Philosophy and Real Politics," which makes claims similar to those of the sophists thousands of years ago.

I say similar, because as Kirsch notes, if only Geuss were as consistent as sophist Thrasymachus, who urges us to be "happily unjust," Geuss would avoid contradiction.

But, rather, neo-Marxist/Leninist Geuss adopts a moral stance against the exercise of "real power" that masquerades as Justice. Which in turn suggests he has insights into a purer form of Justice. The very kind of Justice pursued by Plato and other philosophers that Geuss attacks.

It's a common contradiction found in the arguments of today's critiquing radicals.

But there's more to it. Simply attacking alleged (economic) injustice won't do. Radicalism has to raise the spectre of Thrasymachan injustice in order to do a clever switch.

What is really intended is an attempt to invalidate a certain economic or social class's ability to speak truthfully or credibly about Justice.

In other words, the discussion was never really about the nature of Justice at all, but rather about who is fit to participate in the discussion.

An Expanded Reflection on the Afterlife

2008-11-01T08:53:00.000-07:00

Thanks to my old friend Cris Rapp for an expanded reflection on my previous post about Facebook as a prefigurement of the afterlife.

Dueling Philosophical Movies

2008-10-31T13:51:00.000-07:00

Following on dueling political documentaries by and against Michael Moore, now we see, dueling philosophical films?

"The God Who Wasn't There." vs. "Expelled." A good thing? This marks an interesting trend. I suppose it is good to see more philosophical subject matter in the public square, as filmmaking has become more democratic.

My only concern, which I can see in the trailers for many of these films, is to latch on the most extreme example of theism and atheism, in censorship and hate. And the most codependent behaviors, to become codependent in turn.

What's the answer? I don't know. The marketplace must decide.

But each film pulls its audience in some way into reactive behavior against extreme opponents. That is a problem. Are boring university seminars the only answer?

Obama's Whitewater, and the Evidence that He Lied

2008-10-31T08:45:00.000-07:00

Another major revelation this week about the Tony Rezko and Barack Obama land deal. (a.k.a., Obama's Whitewater.)

At the time of the deal, Obama told the media that there was no deal, no coordination and no undue influence in Tony Rezko buying the adjacent lot to his own mansion. But GOPmom blog has uncovered evidence of a coordinated effort.

Heretofore unknown, and conveniently never mentioned by Obama, a restrictive covenant existed on the adjacent property, that would have made it not worth Rezko's time and effort to buy that property. A restrictive covenant that was conveniently dropped before the closing.

Now, thanks to some mysterious source, it's out there. (Has the second Clinton arrow flown?) (See also John Batchelor's interesting musings on the source of this discovery.)

What this suggests is coordination, among the numerous buying and selling parties in this deal, all of which is currently being investigated by prosecutors in Chicago as Rezko sings.

Despite the hatred of George W. Bush and Republican policy -- some of which is much deserved -- which blinds the public to the questions of ethics at hand, GOPmom blog drives home the salient point:

"According to numerous media reports, foreign nationals financed Rezko. The public must openly speculate about who holds undue influence over Senator Obama and how these people can influence domestic and foreign policy. This has nothing to do with dubious associations or even poor judgment. This is about political corruption in government. Unfortunately, Senator Obama’s actions should concern anyone who believes in a well-functioning government of the people, by the people and for the people."

It's time to care, Bush haters. Because, "the battle is won [or lost] before it is ever fought." The impeachment has begun before the election results are even in.

Great Lines from McCain Today

2008-10-31T08:12:00.000-07:00

Great lines from John McCain on the campaign trail today:

"We've got Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder with us today, real working-class heroes who've had the courage to stand up and say that Barack Obama's tax and spend policies are not good for America. Not good for working class people who are trying to get ahead. Of course, now they are using Ohio's confidential data to dig into Joe's background. [Pause for boos.] Thank you for your courage gentlemen. I'm proud to have you on my side."

"And who does Barack Obama have on his side? Tony the Fixer, Jeremiah the Hater and Bill the Bomber!" [Loud applause]

Oh, actually, McCain didn't say that yet. But he should.

Feel free to use, Senator McCain.

The Wall Street Journal is Shocked at Bad Behavior

2008-10-31T06:48:00.000-07:00

Today, the Wall Street Journal's editorial board is shocked, shocked to learn that businesses are lining up at the trough to get some of Henry Paulson's bank bailout plan money. A plan that the Wall Street Journal endorsed.

These are the risks of hurried government solutions to poorly defined problems. And the Wall Street Journal editorial board certainly should have known it would happen.

More to come, I fear. Much more.

One More Obama October Surprise This Week?

2008-10-28T06:19:00.000-07:00

We got our October surprise for Barack Obama in the form of radio excerpts on YouTube. These were reportedly uncovered by "Naked Emperor News" a relatively unknown web site.

In the interview, Obama speaks rather candidly about his belief in the redistribution of income, possibly through the courts, but more likely through legislation. He cites the paradigm of "negative rights" as a failing in the American Republic.

I had expected this October surprise. But not from the Republicans. The news media are giving them too much credit by suggesting these are Republican tactics.

In fact, I would say that because the Republicans are too incompetent to mount true political attacks, expect a second October surprise later this week, but before Sunday. The true sources of the current surprise are waiting to see if the radio interview can carry a second or third news cycle.

But whenever this story loses momentum, a second arrow will fly. And it will come, as did the first, from the Clintons.

Who is more likely to know Boston and Chicago progressive radio, the GOP, or, say, someone in the circle of a Clintonista like Rahm Emmanuel (D., Illinois)?

If Hillary is going to be president, Obama must lose, so that she can face off against Sarah Palin on '12. That is the Clinton objective. Not a mere seat on the Supreme Court, which Hillary won't get. The Clintons do not leave things to the good will of their rivals.

When Sarah Palin was selected, the Clintons had an epiphany, which caused them to lick their chops all the more. Let Palin take the rest of the hits to break the glass ceiling. The environment will be much more conducive to a "tough woman" in '12. Especially after an aging president decides he can no longer continue and leaves it to his VP (Palin).

Note well: If you see the second arrow fly, you will know where it came from.

Barack Obama is Unfit to be President

2008-10-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

Andrew McCarthy, writing in National Review describes just another event that Barack Obama and that guy in his neighborhood Bill Ayers attended. It is absolutely telling.

A man who would glad-hand with such despicable characters to advance himself politically is not a person who would stand up for anything during a time of crisis. That is the great lesson that is missing during Obama-mania.

Barack Obama is a soulless, self-concerned hack, and completely unfit for the Presidency.

Do me a favor Obama supporters: You may hate Bush. I think he's a boob. McCain may be another pathetic, visionless creature of Washington. But please, Obama supporters, tell me you're holding your nose when voting for this guy, and that you are not really proud of someone who cozies up to the most radical, terror-loving, anti-Semitic kooks, just to advance his own pathetic political career.

Review Asks: Can Life Be Perfected?

2008-10-25T07:24:00.000-07:00

Following up on the previous post, here's a timely and interesting review in City Journal by Theodore Dalrymple of new novels by Philip Roth and Ian McEwen. The title of the review is "Careful What You Wish For."

In it, Dalrymple notes:

"The idea that mankind might find life beautifully easy if only the right laws could be promulgated and the right social attitudes inculcated is a beguiling one. It suggests that dissatisfaction and frustration arise from error and malice, rather than from the inescapable and permanent separation between man’s desires and what the world can offer him. Difficulty, however, cannot be abolished; it is the condition of human life itself. We try to avert our eyes from this truth as we avert them from death itself."

Is Facebook a Prefigurement of the Afterlife?

2008-10-25T04:14:00.000-07:00

Growing up Christian, one becomes familiar with the concept of "prefigurement." The Old Testament, for example, is said to contains signs that "prefigure" the coming of Jesus Christ. After Christ, Thomas Aquinas would argue that the glories of accomplishment in this world are but prefigurements of the extreme glory to be found in the kingdom of heaven.

You get the idea. One thing is the sign of something greater to come.

Implicit in much of this is the Platonic idea of the world as an imperfect reflection of some higher, transcendent super-good.

Any good of the world is subject to this same kind of argument.

I can't help but think about prefigurement, then, when contemplating the good of "ambient awareness" generated by social networking.

For some of us, at least, social media's capability to provide frequent updates on the status of our friends and acquaintances makes us happy. We are the open books who long for a deeper connection with others; to have our inner life heard and validated, and do likewise for others.

Will the afterlife be the ultimate form of ambient awareness?

According to Thomas Aquinas, yes, but only insofar as that is an "overflowing" result or side benefit of knowledge of God. Call Him the Ultimate "Friend." Once God has gratuitously "friended" you, all your other friendships are perfected. (The notion of such an "overflow" is explained in St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica, First Part of the Second Part, "Treatise on the Last End," Question 3.)

Here's why:

For Christians, no natural longing is ever the same after Plato. "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee" is the most haunting line of Christianity - written by the neo-Platonist, Doctor of the Church, St. Augustine. Augustine posits that natural goods can never satisfy us. We seek the transcendent God. This is rooted in a long series of arguments from Plato, and finds stirring literary exposition in St. Augustine's "Confessions."

Thomas Aquinas would later explain this argument in great, although more boring, detail, borrowing also from Plato's student, Aristotle.

Following Aristotle, Aquinas argued that we seek knowledge through causes. However, knowledge of secondary causes (all the things of the world) is imperfect. There is always more to know.

Happiness consists primarily of knowledge of the First Cause, Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, a.k.a., Plato and Augustine's ultimate, transcendent good.

When we are granted Knowledge of the First Cause, God, by His sheer gift, it will provide beatific insight into all the other causes. This is sometimes called Thomas Aquinas's "intellectualist" vision of perfect happiness.

The reason it is called "intellectualist" is because it places happiness primarily in the exercise of reason, which is most essential to human beings. But, the overflow comes when all else that we experience as human beings is perfected by this primary form of knowledge.

Social media doesn't prove anything theological. It only underscores a human need, the solution to which is always moving into a better state thanks to science and technology. (Why we must exist in an imperfect state at all is a very unsatisfying mystery of religion.)

But once you read Plato, you are next inclined to ask whether social media and other solutions to the problem of life's imperfections can reach a state of "perfection." And if so, how? Christianity volunteers a compelling answer.

Image used under Creative Commons license courtesy of ewen and donabel.