Yaron Brook’s Call to Action - July 2009

In a newly released video, Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute speaks out against the socialization of the medical industry (i.e. “health care reform”), reminding us that health care is not a right.

OCON Update - July 10 and 11, 2009

John Lewis concluded his course on “The History of Ancient Greece: The Archaic Period.”  I think it was my very favorite of the optional courses, which is saying quite a lot.  Naturally, his time was very limited in this short course, but Dr. Lewis managed to paint a wonderfully rich sketch of this amazing infancy of western civilization, and to demonstrate its significance as it leads to the classical period of Greek history.  LB and I came away from the course with a much better understanding of the archaic period, and we are both excited to explore some of the poetry and writings that Dr. Lewis introduced in the class.

I took copious notes in Elan Journo’s course, “Understanding the Arab-Israeli Conflict.”  He managed to cover an enormous amount of material, and interestingly, even though he was presenting this at OCON, I think his approach would be very suitable for a general audience.  (That is likely the intent, for it was being filmed.)  His was a systematic approach: a chronological, objective unfolding of facts with little or no evaluation.  It is true that a rational person could come to only one conclusion faced with these facts, but Mr. Journo left the conclusions to the listener.

In a general lecture called “Free Minds and Free Markets,” Peter Schwartz pointed out the inextricable connection of liberty and capitalism.  As Ayn Rand put it, “A free mind and a free market are corollaries.”  Mr. Schwartz elaborated upon this with his typical brilliance and intensity, and he illustrated his points with many examples, including some execrable quotes from Nicholas Kristof, David Brooks, and Cass Sunstein.

Wayne Fortun, the CEO of Hutchinson Technology, presented an inspiring lecture called “Objectivist Corporate Culture Is a Durable Competitive Advantage.”  The published and practiced values of his extraordinarily successful company incorporate Objectivist principles with consistency.  It is not a surprise to see this success, of course, but it is nice to observe the practical manifestations of implementing reason, and of establishing the virtues that derive from reason. 

Finally, Harry Binswanger presented the conclusion to his lecture, “The Objective vs. the Intrinsic and the Subjective.”  In this, he pointed out the false dichotomy of subjectivism versus intrinsicism, and showed how reality actually supports a trichotomy.  It is the objective view of ethics, politics, law, etc. that is proper, as against the subjective and the intrinsic.  Though there is a clear distinction between the subjective and intrinsic views, they often have a surprising amount in common... and of course are invariably wrong.  There is a wealth of material here, including some very powerful concepts that tie in with Leonard Peikoff’s DIM Hypothesis, so I plan to return to my notes frequently in order to “chew” on the ideas.  I would say that of all the general lectures at the conference - and that includes the ones by superstars like Tara Smith, Onkar Ghate, and Peter Schwartz - the most valuable ones for me were the pair by Dr. Binswanger.

____________

It would be hard to overstate the spiritual lift that these days at OCON have provided.  (Naturally, I use the word “spiritual” here in an utterly non-mystical sense!)  I came into the conference feeling a bit overworked and discouraged about the state of America and the world.  I feel completely recharged now and armed for battle, as it were.

If I have a regret, it is that LB and I had not come to OCON before.  I had attended one by myself back in 1992, but now I rue missing the conferences of the intervening years (though we had legitimate obstacles - it is difficult for us to leave for a week or two on a vacation that does not include the kids).  I don’t know when we will be able to return, but tentatively, we are regarding the Fort Lauderdale conference in 2011 as our next opportunity.  In the meantime, I am determined to improve my thinking and writing, and to fight a fight worth making: to make the world a better place... for me.

OCON Update - July 7 through 9, 2009

Lisa Van Damme concluded her course “Ibsen the Iconoclast” with an analysis of The Wild Duck.  While preparing the material for the course, Miss Van Damme had a dramatic transformation in her own thinking of the work - and indeed, of Ibsen’s work more generally - but I’m not going to reveal the nature of that transformation.  To find out, you’ll just have to purchase the recording, which will be available at some point at Ayn Rand Bookstore!

Yaron Brook finished with his course on “The Financial Crisis: What Happened And Why,”  He did an exceptionally good job of encapsulating and reducing to essentials an enormous amount of material in just over four hours of lecture time.  Similarly, Elan Journo has the challenge of condensing a complex succession of events in his course “Understanding the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” which began on Wednesday.  And last but not least, LB and I are together taking John Lewis’ course, “The History of Ancient Greece: The Archaic Period,” in which Dr. Lewis will establish the historical context for the Classical Period in Greece.  The depth of his knowledge is impressive and his enthusiasm infectious; he is clearly thrilled to be teaching a positive topic for a change, considering how he has lately been concentrating on the Islamist war on America.

LB and I have also attended all the general lectures.  Tara Smith gave her second lecture at the conference, entitled, “Humanity’s Darkest Evil: The Lethal Destructiveness of Non-Objective Law.”  In this, she demonstrates that for the very reason that the purpose of government sets the standard for objective law, a government that adopts or gradually accepts non-objective law becomes an unparalleled menace to human life.

Harry Binswanger’s lecture, “The Objective vs. the Intrinsic and the Subjective,” contained many profound ideas about objectivity in general.  One point in particular was something of a new perspective for me: that objectivity consists of the self-conscious, deliberate use of logic.  Note that both the self-conscious and deliberate components are required, something that I had not quite fully identified before.  It is not enough to use logic, but one must also know one is using logic in order to be truly objective.  Dr. Binswanger made another point that I regard as profound: he speculated that one of the troubles with the culture today is that people hold moral premises (ones that they have invariably absorbed uncritically from various sources) as if they were metaphysically-given percepts.  I think this is a brilliant insight, and it explains much of the overwhelming passivity - the non-thinking - exhibited by America and the West.

Greg Salmieri presented a lecture called “Atlas Shrugged on the Role of the Mind in Man’s Existence.”  In this he explored the theme of Atlas Shrugged from a philosophical perspective, including Ayn Rand’s unique position on reason, consciousness, and the false dichotomy of the soul and body.

Finally, John Allison, the heroic former CEO of BB&T, made a very inspiring speech called “Principled Leadership.”

On Thursday night, LB And I had a great time going out to dinner with many OBloggers whom we had never met before.  Of course, we already knew C. August from Titanic Deck Chairs, but we also got to meet Diana and Paul Hsieh from NoodleFood, Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn, Kendall J from The Crucible, Jason from The Rational Egoist, Shea Levy from Cogito’s Thoughts, Craig Biddle from The Objective Standard, Mark from Randex, and special guest Trey from Flibbertigibbet!   

Objectivist Round Up #104

Welcome to the July 9, 2009 edition of the Objectivist Round Up!  This blog carnival features posts by blog authors who are advocates of Objectivism.

Objectivism is the philosophy of the 20th-century novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand.  It is a comprehensive system of thought that identifies the basic axioms of the universe, and formulates and defends a reality-based theory of concepts, free will, morality, political liberty, history, and aesthetics.  In short, it is a philosophy for living life.

If you are new to Ayn Rand and wish to discover more about her philosophy, I recommend you start by reading her two greatest novels, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, followed by some non-fiction works such as Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.  The Ayn Rand Institute and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights provide very relevant information and commentary, and a great introduction to Ayn Rand’s works can be found here.

In addition to items of general interest, this week’s posts feature reports from some of the “tea parties” that have been held across the country - in particular, the one in Boston, for which many of the bloggers happened to be present because of the 2009 Objectivist Conferences.  

So, with no further ado, I present this week’s Objectivist Round Up posts:

Andy presents “The Purpose Driven Life (Part 1)” at The Charlotte Capitalist, saying, “On Independence Data, Mega-pastor Rick Warren served up a nasty Dark Ages-Nazi Cocktail. I foresee a very bad hangover.”

Paul McKeever presents “Paul McKeever’s Minimal Maxims and Bon Arrows, volume 1, issue 6” at Paul McKeever, saying, “ignorance, need as a value, the nature of a free man, and the daily clamour for something to make the worthless feel valuable...who could ask for more?”

John Drake presents “History of Information Systems” posted at Try Reason!, saying, “Inspired by The Objectivist Standard's many great articles and their emphasis on history to demonstrate principles, I have been redesigning a core business class to focus on the historical lessons about information systems and how those principles can enhance business success. This post details my reasons and challenges with this redesign.”

Paul Hsieh presents “Photos from the Boston Tea Party” posted at NoodleFood, saying, “Lots of Objectivists turned out for the Boston Tea Party!”

Jason Crawford presents “The Cult of Need” posted at The Rational Egoist, saying, “First post on my new blog!”

Ari Armstrong presents “July 4 Tea Party Arvada Colorado” posted at FreeColorado.com, saying, “Listen to the concerns of those who attended the Arvada Tea Party July 4.”

Francis Luong presents “Celebrate Your Independence By Choosing To Read Atlas Shrugged” posted at Just Add Rationality.

Grant Jones presents “Manhattan, Kansas July 4th Tea Party” posted at The Dougout.

Jared Rhoads presents “Tea Party” posted at The Lucidicus Project, saying, “The July 4th Tea Party protests in Boston were a success. Here is a brief report, with photos.”

Edward Cline presents “Parsing Obama” posted at The Rule of Reason, saying, “To grasp the magnitude of the national debt Obama (and his Republican predecessor) has been ringing up, a comparison should help illustrate the task. Bernard Madoff’s robbery and defrauding investors of some $50 billion can be represented by the diameter of the solar system. The federal government, using the same scamming tactics, is amassing a debt about the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy. Madoff’s scheme can be measured in millions of miles. The federal government's, in almost limitless parsecs. That measurement ought to suffice to dramatize the scale of the hole he is deliberately digging for the country in his role as Community-Organizer-in-Chief.”

Stephen Bourque presents “The Reluctant Dictator” at One Reality, saying, “Barack Obama is not trying to lead a government takeover of one American industry after another.  We know this because he told us so himself.”

Michael Labeit presents “Midget, Midget, Midget, Midget, Midget....” posted at Coroner's Bureau, saying, “Midget, Midget, Midget, Midget, Midget....”

C. August presents "Alan Reynolds, the Answer to CAFE is NOT Taxes" posted at Titanic Deck Chairs. 

That’s it for this week.  Titanic Deck Chairs will host the carnival next week.  Please submit your blog articles for the next edition of the Objectivist Round Up using the carnival submission form.

UPDATES

I added a post from Titanic Deck Chairs.

OCON Update - July 4 through 6, 2009

Tara Smith, one of my favorite Objectivist speakers, presented a very interesting lecture called “No Tributes to Caesar: Good and Evil in Atlas Shrugged.”  Upon a re-reading of Atlas Shrugged, Dr. Smith was struck anew by the “either/or”-ness of the novel - that is, that there is no refuge from the absolutism of the basic alternative of life or death.  Objectivists are naturally familiar with the axiom of non-contradiction - that something cannot be both A and non-A in the same respect.  But here, Dr. Smith is emphasizing a less common, but crucial perspective: the law of excluded middle.  Something must be either A or non-A; it cannot fall somewhere in between.  Dr. Smith illustrated the point with several examples from Ayn Rand’s novels.

Allan Gotthelf presented his lecture “Hallmarks of Objectivism: The Benevolent Universe Premise and the Heroic View of Man.”  I found this material to be quite fascinating.  It included many interesting facets of Ayn Rand’s thinking, including a description of how she developed her heroic view of man.  One idea in particular was new to me and struck me as quite profound.  At one point, Ayn Rand realized that it is not necessary to defend mankind as a species; indeed, this might be difficult or impossible to do without inventing some sort of deterministic “original virtue” to contrast with the “original sin” posited by Christians, which of course would be an unjustifiable departure from reality.  All that is needed to see man as heroic is to see what an individual is capable of.  This alone   (I hope I’ve gotten this right.  While Dr. Gotthelf was making the point, my mind started racing on the implications, but I believe I’ve captured his point faithfully.)

Onkar Ghate had an excellent lecture on the topic of “The Separation of Church and State.”  He pointed out how the three main arguments addressing the “wall of separation” today - namely, those of the religionists, the secularists, and the compromisers - are all mistaken, and none have a proper view of the role of the state with respect to individuals.  Dr. Ghate then presented the proper, principled defense of the separation of state and church (and for that matter, of the separation of state and economics). 

Beyond these general lectures, I am enjoying some of the optional courses.  In “Ibsen the Iconoclast,” Lisa VanDamme is analyzing three masterpieces of the Norwegian playwright.  We’ve already competed the remarkable Brand and have moved onto A Doll’s House.  In “The Financial Crisis: What Happened And Why,” Yaron Brook is debunking the preposterous popular account that pins the financial crisis on the free market by presenting the real underpinnings of the current recession.  

LB is taking a couple of interesting courses as well: Craig Biddle’s “Moral Rights and Metaphysical Law” and Thomas Bowden’s “Property Rights - and Wrongs.”  Hopefully, she is taking good notes because I want to get the essence of both of those topics!  From what she has told me so far, both classes have been of great value to her.

Overall, we are having a great time.  It has been very inspiring.  We have met some old friends (in particular some former Massachusetts friends that I had not seen for many years), some new friends, and have met many people whose writings we like and in many cases greatly admire.

The Reluctant Dictator

Barack Obama is not trying to lead a government takeover of one American industry after another.  We know this because he told us so himself:

And so it’s puzzling to me sometimes to hear the standard conservative critique of what we’re doing, when essentially every step we’re taking really involves the mess that we found when we arrived here at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Let’s take autos as an example.  Other than basic issues like consumer safety - seatbelts, airbags, which save a lot of lives - and consumer protections - lemon laws and making sure that people know what they’re buying - the only real regulatory approach that I’ve been interested in is raising fuel efficiency standards so that we can wean ourselves off dependence on foreign oil.  Beyond that, the last thing that I want is to be running a car company, or to be having to make decisions about what the auto market of the future is going to look like.[Note 1, emphasis mine.]

Really?

These are the words of the politician who fired the head of America’s largest car maker (a private company!), strong-armed two of the Big Three car companies into “restructuring” as his administration saw fit, trampled bankruptcy law to force rightful creditors to take pennies on the dollar, and seized future control of GM by ensuring that the federal government holds a majority share of the company when it emerges from bankruptcy.

Such actions would not be surprising from a Hugo Chavez or a Robert Mugabe.  They would be outrageous, of course, and deserving of the harshest censure from the civilized world, but we have come to expect this from tin pot dictators.  For this to happen in America is a shameful nightmare.

There exist only two possible conclusions regarding the president’s statement.  If running a car company and manipulating the auto market is truly “the last thing he wants,” then Mr. Obama is either stunningly incompetent (because he has achieved exactly what he claims he doesn’t want) or he is utterly disingenuous.

Of course, considering what we know about the career bureaucrat, the latter is obviously true.  The Obama administration, propelled by the momentum of the Bush administration, has with remarkable rapidity and consistency intruded into virtually every aspect of private life.  For this president to say that he “actually would like to see a relatively light touch when it comes to the government” is plainly false.  It is a jaw-droppingly brazen lie, contradicting everything the man has ever done or believed in.  

But the true marvel of his performance is that he can get away with it - and he knows it.  This is the tragic indictment of American culture today.  Apparently, all one has to do to be a dictator is to feign reluctance.

This erosion of the American republic cannot be blamed on Barack Obama.  It cannot be blamed on Capitol Hill.  These men and women were ushered into office by Americans; they are applauded by Americans.  It is true that almost half of the people who showed up at the polls in 2008 voted for John McCain, but even if John McCain had won the election, he would be decimating liberty more or less at the same rate as Barack Obama.  Mr. Obama complains about the “standard conservative critique” of his administration, but conservatives do not present any principled opposition to him, and in fact, play directly into his hands.  After all, it was the Bush administration that handed Mr. Obama the lever - the initial bailout money - with which he compels auto makers and financial institutions to do his bidding.  Though few from either side may like to admit it, the Obama administration’s sacrificial agenda of “lending a helping hand” to the unfortunate perfectly satisfies the aims of “compassionate conservatism.”

Neither Republicans nor Democrats, neither “liberals” nor conservatives, properly defend American values.  The parties bicker about the details of which sacrifices Americans should make, but a principled defense of individual rights is almost non-existent.  Politicians of every stripe fail to recognize that the purpose of the Constitution is protect every citizen from them, the politicians.  Republicans and Democrats treat the law as an instrument to push people around, and they do so without a second thought or apology.

The challenge for us, as defenders of liberty, is to bring Americans back to the principled path.  This is not easy, for as Edward Cline pointed out in an excellent post, “Generations of dumbing-down and educational indoctrination can’t be undone during a single repressive administration.”[Note 2.]  This is not to say that Americans are “dumb” - far from it, for young Americans are still the bright hope of the future.  However, being intelligent and being able to think are two different things, and each successive generation of American minds emerges from an educational system that increasingly hobbles its students.  It is the rare person that can learn to think properly given a modern education that discourages independence and eschews principles in favor of disparate, agenda-driven facts and factoids.  Nevertheless, it is precisely a principled argument that we must make if the republic is to be saved, for America is above all a nation based on a principle: the principle of individual rights. 

NOTES

1.  Transcript of Obama Interview with the Journal, Wall Street Journal, http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/06/16/transcript-of-obamas-interview-with-the-journal/.

2.  Edward Cline, “The New Sons of Liberty,” http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2009/06/new-sons-of-liberty.htm.

Rachmaninoff’s Hands

Here is a humorous demonstration of what was certainly true: that Sergei Rachmaninoff had big hands.

Actually, what this really demonstrates is the density and richness of Rachmaninoff’s music.  The Prelude in C sharp minor is a stunning example of this.

Image from Wikipedia.

The Merits of Sonia Sotomayor

“Sotomayor Rose on Merit Alone, Her Allies Say.”  So declares the title of a New York Times article, and if you are a modern “liberal,” there is no need to read on; you have the only talking point you need to defend the President’s choice for the Supreme Court against those inclined to see her simply as an Affirmative Action nomination.

Not quite willing to accept this pre-digested assertion without some supporting facts, however, I decided to actually read the article.

The thrust of the Times story is that Sonia Sotomayor emerged from a hardscrabble upbringing in the Bronx housing projects to succeed as an assistant district attorney, corporate lawyer, and federal judge - all without the help of political bosses that is typically required to advance in the New York political machine.

The article focuses on the critical, maturing period of her career from 1984 through 1992.  “She rose with remarkably little help from the traditional arbiters of power,” such as Governor Mario Cuomo and Mayor Edward Koch, the Times writes.[Note 1.]  Yet this is seemingly contradicted by the very next paragraph, which states that she “found an influential patron in [Manhattan district attorney Robert] Morgenthau” and managed to “catch the eye” of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  Furthermore:

Her generational timing, too, was fortuitous.  She was an accomplished Latina lawyer at a time when officials sought to diversify the white power structure by promoting more blacks, Latinos and women. 

Similarly, when Ms. Sotomayor was recommended by Ellen Conovitz, Governor Cuomo’s appointments secretary, for a position on the board of the New York state mortgage agency Sonyma, Ms. Conovitz said approvingly, “The Cuomo administration sought more blacks, Latinos and women.”

When Judah Gribetz, a lawyer for the judicial search committee of Senator Moynihan, spoke of his selection of Ms. Sotomayor as a worthy candidate to become a federal judge, he said, “If you live in the end of the 20th century, there was nothing incompatible between diversity and excellence.  Obviously we were looking for people who were representative, and with the right credentials.  She fit the bill.”  And later, the Times article states that in submitting an application for a federal judgeship, Ms. Sotomayor found herself in “an almost accidental elevation”:

But familiar patrons made her case and her timing was good.  Senator Moynihan had made it clear he wanted more female and minority candidates.[Note 1 again, emphasis mine in all quotes.]

So, if an overtly friendly New York Times article, setting out to make the case that Sonia Sotomayor rose on merit alone, cannot help but mention that at every step of the way her heritage and gender were significant considerations in her advancement, what are we to think of Ms. Sotomayor’s qualifications?

  

It is apparent that in a worldview that holds “diversity” as a value, for Ms. Sotomayor to “fit the bill” for a judgeship, it means that she has two qualifications: she is a judge, and she is an Hispanic woman - not necessarily in that order.  Such “credentials” are blatantly racist and sexist.  If the fact of being born Hispanic or female or in the Bronx can be construed as merit, then the very word has lost its meaning and the concept of merit itself is destroyed.

NOTES

1.  “Sotomayor Rose on Merit Alone, Her Allies Say,” The New York Times, 4 Jun 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/us/politics/05judge.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Sotomayor%20Rose%20on%20Merit%20Alone&st=cse .  

Dennis Prager: If There Is No God, Part 8

(Note: This is Part 8 in the series started here.  The previous installment is here. In each post, I comment on one of the fourteen points made by Dennis Prager in his article, “If There Is No God.”)

Dennis Prager’s Point #8:

If there is no God, the human being has no free will. He is a robot, whose every action is dictated by genes and environment. Only if one posits human creation by a Creator that transcends genes and environment who implanted the ability to transcend genes and environment can humans have free will. (Note 1.) 

As is often the case with these items, I object to both the overall thrust of Mr. Prager’s assertion and the particular argument that he makes to support his case.  

The broadest issue here is that the statement is arbitrary and unfounded; there is no more reason to posit a God to explain free will than to explain any other observable entity or quality.  Free will - the ability of a human being to choose his actions - may be more difficult to understand than say, a simple object that one may hold in one’s hand, but it is nonetheless as ostensive and undeniable as any direct perception.  

If free will seems “mysterious,” it is so not because only miracles can it explain it (as if that were an explanation at all), but because we have gaps in our knowledge and an incomplete understanding of human consciousness.  As with all knowledge, the only way to improve our grasp of the operations of consciousness is to apply reason; faith can never yield an iota of knowledge of anything.  In any case, the advance of our understanding of free will is irrelevant to its simple identification, which is the issue at stake here.  No matter what our state of knowledge is or ever will be, the existence of free will is undeniable, for I can perceive it directly in myself (via introspection), and can generalize (via observations of others) to conclude that it is a quality of all humans.  God never enters into it.

Let us now examine the particular argument offered by Mr. Prager, the sentence upon which the logic of his point entirely rests: “Only if one posits human creation by a Creator that transcends genes and environment who implanted the ability to transcend genes and environment can humans have free will.”  

Is this really how creation in general works?  A creator must himself have the characteristic that he “implants” into his creation?  Prager’s proposition, in essense, states this: only a creator with quality x can implant this x into his creations.  

Let’s take this out of the supernatural realm to see if it holds true generally.  If it were so, I could replace “the ability to transcend genes and environment” in Mr. Prager’s sentence with some other quality.  For example: “Only if one posits the creation of a communication device by a creator that can travel at the speed of light, who implanted the ability to travel at the speed of light, can such a device exist.”  Well, I cannot travel anywhere near the speed of light (at least, not in the reference frame of my dear reader), yet the radio circuits that I create do indeed send information that fast.  It is simply not true that I myself must travel at light speed to create a device that can send radio waves.  Similarly, a painter need not possess physical beauty to make a painting that is beautiful; a computer designer does not need to be capable of performing millions of floating-point calculations per second in his head in order to design a computer to do so; an architect need not be extraordinarily tall to create a skyscraper.  Prager’s logic here (insofar as logic can pertain to God) is patently wrong.

Nevertheless, let us momentarily accept Mr. Prager’s premises to examine another aspect of his proposition.  He offered “transcendence” from a merely mechanistic universe as being one of the characteristics of his God, one which is necessarily possessed by God for Him to imbue it to man.(Note 2.)  We could substitute considerably less appealing characteristics without disturbing the validity of Prager’s logic.  For instance, it would be just as valid to say, “Only if one posits human creation by a Creator that is petty, cruel, power-lusting, superstitious, and foolish who implanted the ability to be petty, cruel, power-lusting, superstitious, and foolish can humans display such characteristics.”  I’m not sure Mr. Prager would wish to characterize God as possessing every possible human trait (though there is plenty of support for God’s power-lusting and cruelty in the Old Testament), yet it follows directly from his own formulation.  One might object that it is not fair to substitute free will, which offers only the potential for malevolent choices (cruelty, power-lusting, etc.), with those qualities themselves, but there is nothing in Prager’s logic that supports this restriction.  The objection would simply represent further mental contortions to escape faulty logic.

There is another curious implication from Prager’s point, too, that he probably did not intend.  From a certain perspective, he accidentally implies that except for free willed beings, nothing else would require God to be its creator.  Specifically, his emphasis that free will and human behavior require some sort of divine “transcendence” that is explainable only by introducing a God as a creator suggests that the rest of nature might be explainable in natural terms.  Again, this is not something that Mr. Prager is likely to agree with, for surely he believes that all of nature - inanimate objects and life-forms simpler than humans - were created by God.  If so, though, why introduce some special considerations for beings that possess free will?  Prager could have said simply, “God created humans like He created rocks, only He deemed that humans have free will.  Period.”  Instead, Prager used this “transcendent” quality of man as evidence of a transcendent God, which suggests that without man no such evidence would exist. 

In short, Mr. Prager’s assertion pertaining to free will is completely unfounded.  His proposition is demonstrably wrong, collapsing in defeat before any number of simple counterexamples, and it gives rise to some implications that are likely inconsistent with Prager’s own vision of a perfect, omnipotent God.  Man’s free will is directly observable, and is thus undeniable.  Any attempt to validate free will by referring to the realm of God not only is unnecessary, but actually sabotages its defense by implicitly accepting that no natural explanation is possible.  

(Note: The next installment in the series is coming soon.)

NOTES

1.  Dennis Prager, “If There Is No God,” http://townhall.com/columnists/DennisPrager/2008/08/19/if_there_is_no_god.

2.  I think Prager has used “transcendence” here in a meaningful manner, to distinguish free will from deterministic processes.  Nevertheless, I suspect he may have chosen the word to hint at the more familiar and vague “transcendence” of God from the physical, empirical, non-spiritual, etc., a trait that is no doubt appealing to those who tend to value mystery and poetry above precision.

WSJ Letter-to-the-Editor

My letter-to-the-editor was published in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal:

In "Capitalism in Crisis" (op-ed, May 7), is Judge Richard Posner's conclusion that capitalism is inherently unstable intended to be ironic? His article accurately enumerates some of the causes of the financial crisis, including the sheer presence of a government-controlled central bank and the Fed's detrimental manipulation of interest rates. To this we could add government meddling in the housing market through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the reduced lending standards imposed by government policies and programs, the government bailouts and safety nets (like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.) that encourage foolish risk-taking, etc. Judge Posner places the blame where it belongs: "not on the bankers . . . but on the government officials." What has any of this to do with capitalism? The evidence points to what should be obvious: It is not free markets that fail, but government-controlled ones.

The Information Age

In my previous post, my qualified statement that sometimes I love the Internet - and sometimes I don’t - led to the obvious comment from LB: “And why don’t you love the Internet?”  I started to reply in the comments section, but my response got so long, I turned it into another post (this one).

Overall, the Internet is a great thing, of course.  In terms of boosting human productivity it is of immeasurable value, and it is (so far) a vast forum of those hallmarks of liberty: free speech and free commerce.  Just for me personally it has revolutionized the way I do my job (as an electrical engineer), and obviously I would not be publishing this blog post were it not for the Internet.  Understand, too, that my comment was a little bit offhand, and I wouldn’t “wish the Internet away” even if that were possible.

Nevertheless, there are a few things that temper my complete enthusiasm for the medium.

Perhaps my most prominent complaint is that I think the Internet should almost never be used for educational research until maybe college.  (When I say "should not," I naturally do not mean there should be laws or rules against it; I mean that teachers should consider it to be largely detrimental to their students' development.)  The immediacy that made it possible for me to discover the painting Amity in less than four minutes is the very thing that subverts a developing conceptual faculty.  Why?  Because the information on the Internet is largely flat, hierarchically.  

For instance, suppose a typical high-school student today had to do a report on the first scene of Wagner's Ring cycle.  (Forgive the contrived example, which I concocted more or less randomly from a book that happened to be near me.)  The student would probably “Google” the text "first scene of wagner's ring" and out would pop dozens of pre-digested summaries.  Ten minutes later, he would be finished with his report and move on to something else, like playing video games or watching MTV.  

In contrast, my student (if I had any students) would be forbidden to use the Internet.  Thus, he would have to look up Wagner in an encyclopedia, where he would discover that the Ring is actually a four-opera behemoth, the first of which is called Das Rheingold.  He would then have to jot this information down, go to the library, find the section on the arts and music, and find a volume on operas.  In this book, the student would have to peruse the table of contents to see how the volume is arranged; he would see that there is a section on Wagner, a sub-section on Der Ring Des Nibelungen (which he would, in an exclamatory “aha!” moment, deduce must be the full name of the Ring), and a sub-sub-section on Das Rheingold.  This would lead him to flip to page 490, where he could read about the opening scene and decide what was relevant for his report.  Obviously, the latter experience would be incalculably richer for the student than the former.  He would make far more connections, would perhaps be drawn by curiosity to explore more paths along the way, and above all, would see how his narrow topic fits into the larger picture.  In short, he would have accumulated knowledge systematically and hierarchically. 

But there’s more.  Add to this the weight of a book that is held in one’s hand; the indescribably solid scent of age and wisdom that wafts toward one’s nostrils from an old hardcover that is cracked open; the gentle woosh and pop as one’s caressing finger slides along each sheet to reveal the next page; and the delicious exhaustion of emerging from a sustained mental effort, having been immersed without interruption in a magnificent volume that for all its wonder will not give of itself passively, but will open itself to - and bear fruit within - only an active mind.  Contrast this with Internet “research”: the contextless information that is plucked from a vast cauldron of disconnected facts by a search engine, and handed to a student with almost no effort on his part, seems a poor substitute for education indeed.

Another problem I have with the Internet - well, it’s more a product of the Information Age than of the Internet per se - is the plummeting quality of discourse, particularly in email correspondence.  The ease and convenience of writing a note today seems to be in inverse proportion to the need to punctuate, capitalize and spell correctly, or use proper grammar.  

This, incidentally, is not some sort of snotty, elitist position on my part.  (I was once accused of “insensitivity to the disadvantaged” when I complained about grammatical errors.)  Some of the worst culprits are the high-level managers that I’ve worked with.  I am convinced that it is not a matter of intelligence, but of laziness.  I can understand mistakes; try as I might to avoid them, I occasionally make spelling or grammatical errors myself.  But the deliberate, fashionable carelessness of perpetually “texting” teenagers and the Blackberry jet set is alarming to me.  I fear for the preservation of the English language.

Finally, no why-I-don’t-love-the-Internet list would be complete without mentioning the viruses, spyware, adware, etc. that can become a supreme nuisance.  A few weeks ago, my computer at work was assailed by a virus despite my having up-to-date anti-virus software.  It’s hard to stomach such pointless malice.

Now, I want it to be understood that these items do not discourage me from using the Internet or marveling at the technology; it simply makes me wary.  I recognize that my position is a little bit ridiculous - like disliking automobiles because there exist car thieves.  My reservations about the Internet are really only a specific case of a more general principle: to rigorously bear in mind the context of a tool, and to continuously remind oneself of the benefits and perils.  Really, this all comes down to the old maxim that my father impressed upon me in his workshop when I was a child: respect a tool, and use it only for the purpose for which it was intended.  The table saw that saves me physical labor can cut my hand off.  The spell-checker that automatically corrects errors in my paper can deteriorate my ability to spell words myself.  None of the disadvantages that I have listed are necessary aspects of the Internet and all (except maybe the malicious viruses) are in the complete control of the users.

Amity

Sometimes I love the Internet.(Note 1.)  

The Bas Bleu Booksellers catalog arrived in the mail last week, as it does from time to time, and I happened to glance at the cover, which displayed a colorful patchwork of book covers.  My eye was drawn to the top right corner, where a stunning painting adorned the cover of a paperback novel.  I set off on a mission: I had to find that painting and the artist.

I could just barely make out that the novel was Mariana, by Monica Dickens.  A quick Internet search revealed that the publisher was Persephone Classics, and by applying a few more judicious terms in a search engine, I found a blog that discussed works of art on book covers, among which were some of the Persephone Classics.  It turns out that the image on the Dickens paperback was indeed a significant painting called Amity; the artist was Bernard Fleetwood-Walker, whom I had never heard of.

So, about three and a half minutes after being struck by a tiny image on a book catalog, I had found not only the full reproduction of the original painting, but a biography of the artist and a collection of all of his known works.  That’s pretty amazing, when you think about it.  There was a day, not so very long ago, in which this “mission” to find the artist would have taken a lot more effort.

Image from the National Gallery of Canada

Anyway, if you like this sort of thing, I recommend checking out Bernard Fleetwood-Walker’s paintings and drawings.  Because it contains everything, the collection is not uniformly brilliant, but many of his works appeal strongly to my sense of aesthetics. 

NOTES

1.  And sometimes I don’t.  But that’s another story.

2.  Image from the National Gallery of Canada, http://www.gallery.ca/1930/themes.htm.

A Teardrop in the Sea

A contributor to the Harry Binswanger List recently pointed out an excellent video that makes quite vivid how paltry is the $100 million budget cut that Barack Obama challenged his cabinet to make over the next few months.

One hundred millions dollars is 36,000 times smaller than the president’s $3.6 trillion budget.  That’s 0.0028 percent - twenty eight parts per million.  Or for you electrical engineers out there, that’s about -45.6 dB, well below the noise floor for practical considerations.[Note 1.]

A couple of weeks ago, Gus Van Horn made a good comparison.  Referring to this $100 million cut, he wrote:

This is like lighting a cigar with a $100 dollar bill, and then bragging about picking up the nice, shiny penny he just spotted on the sidewalk.

Or, more precisely, when one recalls the nature of government as an agent of physical force, it's like Obama walked up to you, took a $100 bill at gunpoint, used it to light his cigar, and then promised you the nice, shiny penny he just picked up -- after it fell, unbeknownst to you, from a hole in your pocket.  You would find this not only unjust, but insulting to your intelligence, would you not?[Note 2.] 

Perhaps Mr. Obama is hoping that Americans suffer from the same sort of innumeracy that he demonstrated when he was on the campaign trail.  “In case you missed it,” said the future president at that time, introducing his mourning with a folksy sarcasm that he probably came to regret later, “this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas.  Ten thousand people died - an entire town destroyed.”[Note 3, emphasis mine.]  Actually, twelve people died in that town, which was tragedy enough for them and is a shocking death toll for a natural disaster in America.  Ten thousand people dying from a tornado in Kansas would have been a cataclysm for the ages.

I’m not criticizing the president for misspeaking.  He was undoubtedly tired, and it must be difficult for him to not get carried away with the sound of his own voice when he is constantly faced with hordes of enthusiastic faces listening to him with unconditional admiration.  Gaffes happen.  My point is that Mr. Obama apparently has no “feel” for numbers whatsoever.  

This gaffe is not merely a matter of misremembering a fact.  If “ten thousand people died” can roll off his tongue as easily as “ten people died” - if he can confuse the death toll of say, a small airplane crash with that of the entire Vietnam War -  then he probably suffers from the same sort of numerical overload when he is considering dollars instead of human lives.  Furthermore, Mr. Obama can hope - with a good deal of justification, I suppose - that the average American will simply hear “$100 million” as a very big number without really grasping its relationship to the trillions of dollars in his budget.  A million, a billion, a trillion - they are all just very big numbers.  

I think it is quite possible that the president does not himself fathom the magnitude of the trillions he is toying with.  This, along with the fact that the money with which he plays and fiddles is not his own, may account for his apparent confidence as he proceeds with an almost childishly reckless plan that he has labeled “An Era of Responsibility.”

image from Hasbro

White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel tried to dismiss the $100 million budget-busting challenge as a symbolic gesture.  I would happily accept virtually any amount as a symbol of fiscal discipline if the president were really committed to cutting government spending.  However, the notion is laughable.  There is not an iota of reason to associate Barack Obama with cutting the size of an already bloated and intrusive government.  The $100-billion gesture symbolizes either the ineptitude of the administration or its utter contempt and disrespect for the American people.

Or both.

NOTES

1.  I express the ratio of dollar amounts in units of dB with tongue firmly in cheek.  A decibel (dB) is defined as ten times the base-ten logarithm of a power ratio.  So, since “money is power,” as the saying goes, I should be justified in using decibels for money ratios!  Joking aside, though, the result of -45.6 dB emphasizes how ludicrously small is the amount of Mr. Obama’s proposed cut.

2.  Gus Van Horn, “Too Late, Mr. President,” http://gusvanhorn.blogspot.com/2009/04/too-late-mr-president.html.

3.  “Obama’s Bushisms,” News Wire, http://www.capmag.com/news.asp?ID=1763.

4.  Image of Monopoly $100 bill from Hasbro, Inc., http://www.hasbro.com/games/kid-games/monopoly/default.cfm?page=StrategyGuide/gametools.

Objectivist Round Up #94

Welcome to the April 30, 2009 edition of the Objectivist Round Up! This blog carnival features posts by blog authors who are advocates of Objectivism.

Objectivism is the philosophy of the 20th-century novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand. It is a comprehensive system of thought that identifies the basic axioms of the universe, and formulates and defends a reality-based theory of concepts, free will, morality, political liberty, history, aesthetics... and virtually every other aspect of living a human life.

Miss Rand was once asked if she could express the essence of her philosophy while standing on one foot. She responded by saying: Metaphysics - Objective Reality; Epistemology - Reason; Ethics - Self-Interest; Politics - Capitalism.

If you wish to discover more about Ayn Rand’s philosophy, you can do no better than reading her two great novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. The Ayn Rand Institute and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights provide very relevant information and commentary, and a great introduction to Ayn Rand’s works can be found here.

With no further ado, I present this week’s Objectivist Round Up posts:

John Drake presents “A Changing Tide?” at Try Reason!, saying, “Obama's policies and apparent philosophy are prime targets for Objectivists. His presidency may help spread Objectivism throughout the culture by becoming its antithesis.”

Guy Barnett presents “Obama, No Take-Backs” at The Undercurrent, saying, “When the rules of the game keep changing, how can businesses and individuals make long-terms plans?”

Roberto Sarrionandia presents “Poisoning Money” at Tito’s Blog, saying, “How socialism poisons money.”

Jason presents “Ruminations on Meta-Ethics” at Erosophia, saying, “Ruminations on the difference between teleology and Ethics and the nature of ultimate ends.”

Mike L. presents “On the Epistemological Problem of Anarchy” at Coroner’s Bureau, saying, “With the onslaught of oppressive government in the form of inflationary monetary policy and deficit spending, many have been tempted to reject government in its entirely, wishing to replace it with anarchism. Here I defend the existence of limited government as an epistemological necessity.”

Jared Rhoads presents “The Lucidicus Project - Editorials on Individual Rights in Medicine” at The Lucidicus Project, saying, “Obama needs more doctors in order to carry out his plan to expand healthcare, but tinkering with reimbursement rates won't attract more people into this increasingly regimented field.”

Diana Hsieh presents "Just Say no Fast Tracking" at NoodleFood, saying, "The Democrats in Washington want to fast-track socialized medicine. Take a few minutes to write quick letter to your representatives expressing your opposition!"

Linn and Ari Armstrong present "After Tea, Try Liberty" at FreeColorado.com, saying, "After the tea parties, we need to return to the ideas of liberty."

C. August presents "Pragmatism, Social Justice, and the Failure of Conservatism" at Titanic Deck Chairs, saying, "A conservative columnist identifies, perhaps unwittingly, a crucial point about the nature of Obama's pragmatism, and damns his political philosophy in the process."

Ryan presents "20th Century Motor Company, Anyone?" at The Money Speech, saying, "Get ready for the Federal Bureau of Automobile Manufactures!"

Paul Hsieh presents "Alarming Flu Reports From Mexico" at NoodleFood, saying, "As more cases of swine flu appear in the US, how will the US government? What should you look out for on a personal and political level?"

Doug Reich presents “An Injustice of Injustice: Bossnapping vs. Capitalist Logic” at The Rational Capitalist, saying, “The "struggle against free market forces" (as evidenced by violent attacks against businessmen in Europe) is a struggle against the nature of reality - the same struggle implied by the morality of altruism.” Also, “Maybe It’s The Sun Part III,” saying, “Given yet more evidence that climate scientists do not yet understand the sun's role on earth's climate, this post concludes that the most dangerous scientific phenomenon facing man today is the computer model which codifies and extrapolates massive philosophical errors, viz., an invalid process of induction on the part of these climate scientists and the anti-human ideology of environmentalism.”

Miranda Barzey presents “America Should Leave the UN” at Ramen & Rand, saying, “The American delegation walked out of the UN, forever ending it's membership in the group...well, not really. But it did happen at my mock UN conference.”

Rituparna Basu presents “Thug Rule in Washington” at The Undercurrent, saying, “Ken Lewis recently revealed controversial threats issued to Bank of America by Paulson and Bernanke. When thugs like these are masked as political leaders, how can financial confidence be restored among the American people?”

Rational Jenn presents “Tough Choices” at Rational Jenn, saying, “This post describes a conflict I had with my oldest child recently, and how I used Positive Discipline techniques to reinforce my parenting principles and help my son make a tough (for him) decision.”

Gus Van Horn presents "Apuzzo on Fingerprinting" at Gus Van Horn, saying, "Apuzzo thinks torture is wrong, but fears that it might be effective. Being a pragmatist and a leftist, he damns it with an impossible standard of practicality."

UPDATES

Sorry, GVH! I've now added a last-minute entry by Gus Van Horn that should not be missed.

King Barack the Mild

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. penned an interesting opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal last week, in which he characterized President Obama as “King Barack the Mild.”

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, name-calling falls in the category of mere ad hominem, and is thus actually counterproductive to an argument.  However, occasionally a clever appellation can make a point more vividly and concisely than could an entire essay.  I am sympathetic to Mr. Jenkins’ comparison; he strikes an apt parallel between Mr. Obama’s administration and the heavy-handed, arbitrary, and often contradictory decrees that one would expect from an omnipotent monarch.  

So, if the royal shoe fits...

image credit to The Wall Street Journal, Ismael Roldan

The straightforward enumeration of “King Barack’s” policies related to Chrysler and General Motors serves to demonstrate the dictatorial nature of the administration.  In particular, Mr. Jenkins shows the illogic of juggling the various contradictory political considerations - as “[k]ingly prerogative... conflicts with kingly prerogative” - none of which takes any real account of market requirements or individual freedom.[Note 1.]

Consider the pressures imposed by the Obama administration upon creditors.  As “King Barack the Mild... tries to dictate terms of what amounts to an out-of-court bankruptcy for Chrysler and GM,” Jenkins writes:

He wants Chrysler’s secured lenders to give up their right to nearly full recovery in a bankruptcy in return for 15 cents on the dollar.  They’d be crazy to do so, of course, except that these banks also happen to be beholden to the administration for TARP money.[Note 2.]

This is exactly the kind of government force that I’ve warned about in previous posts.  The government seizes the earnings of private citizens, distributes it to corporations, then uses that “gift” as a lever to exact obedience, compelling the companies to make concessions or decisions that they would not have otherwise made.  

As for GM’s creditors, the Treasury Department’s advisor Steven Rattner “has delivered word that the king’s pleasure is that these unsecured creditors give up 100% of their claims in return for GM stock.”  The article points out the absurdity of this charade.  Why would GM’s creditors accept as payment, instead of the dollars that they are owed, the stock of a company that “the king’s own policies mean they’d be loony to buy?”  Why indeed, except that implicit or explicit compulsion is behind it.

Naturally, political agendas trump the logic of running a company.  Jenkins notes that it is “the king’s pleasure” that GM discontinue its GMC-brand SUV’s and pickups despite the fact that they earn the company’s highest profit margins - a suicidal position that can be comprehended only in the shadow of the president's environmentalist policy.  And with that same illogic, Mr. Obama has refrained from advising GM to discard the “profitless black hole” that is the Chevy Volt because such programs are the darlings of the environmentalists.

Concludes Jenkins:

There’s a reason royal discretion has long been outmoded as a way to run an economy: Things just work better if a realm’s subjects are left to resolve their own disputes and interests through the impersonal mechanism of the markets and the law.

This point is well taken, though of course there is an even deeper reason than markets simply “working better” under capitalism.  At the heart of the matter is the moral foundation of capitalism.  In her essay “What Is Capitalism?” Ayn Rand wrote: 

The “practical” justification of capitalism does not lie in the collectivist claim that it effects  “the best allocation of national resources...”

The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve “the common good.”  It is true that capitalism does - if that catch-phrase has any meaning - but this is merely a secondary consequence.  The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice.[Note 3.]

NOTES

1.  To write “market requirements or individual freedom” is a redundancy.  What the market requires is the liberty of individuals.

2.  Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., “GM Is Becoming a Royal Debacle,” The Wall Street Journal, 22 Apr 2009, p.A13.  All other quotes of Mr. Jenkins are from this article as well.

3.  Ayn Rand, “What Is Capitalism?” from Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Penguin Books, New York, NY, p. 20.  Article reprinted from The Objectivist Newsletter, November and December, 1965.