In the course of John Galt's climactic speech in Atlas Shrugged, he spends a paragraph on what today is recognizable as RINO cowardice in response to America's extremist, pro-Antifa, fake-news media, starting with the New York Times. We are witnessing this most recently vis-a-vis the Stephen Moore nomination:
You, who are half-rational, half-coward, have been playing a con game with reality, but the victim you have conned is yourself. When men reduce their virtues to approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it's picked up by scoundrels--and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously compromising evil. As you surrendered to the mystics of muscle [leftists] when they told you that ignorance consists of claiming knowledge, so now you surrender to them when they shriek that immorality consists of pronouncing moral judgment. When they yell that it is selfish to be certain that you are right, you hasten to assure the that you're certain of nothing. When they shout that it's immoral to stand on your convictions, you assure them that you have no convictions whatever. When the thugs of Europe's People's States snarl that you are guilty of intolerance because you don't treat your desire to live and their desire to kill you as a difference of opinion--you cringe and hasten to assure them that you are not intolerant of any horror. When some barefoot bum in some pesthole of Asia yells at you: How dare you be rich--you apologize and beg him to be patient and promise him you'll give it all away.
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
Letter to Senator Grahm Re Moore Nomination
Dear Senator Graham:
I noticed your comments about Stephen Moore. I appreciate the importance of shallow grandstanding in politics, but you might consider the one-sided bias of the media in "outing" conservative Republicans and protecting leftists. Saying that Moore's nomination is "problematic" does much to empower Antifa and its media mouthpieces like the New York Times.
Sincerely,
Professor Mitchell Langbert
I noticed your comments about Stephen Moore. I appreciate the importance of shallow grandstanding in politics, but you might consider the one-sided bias of the media in "outing" conservative Republicans and protecting leftists. Saying that Moore's nomination is "problematic" does much to empower Antifa and its media mouthpieces like the New York Times.
Sincerely,
Professor Mitchell Langbert
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Ayn Rand on the Fake Media
I have been rereading Atlas Shrugged, and I have reached the chapter, "This is John Galt Speaking," in which John Galt makes his grand speech. I noticed a passage on page 916 of the Signet edition, a few pages before the speech, that describes the media in the Atlas Shrugged world right after Hank Rearden disappears. The description sounds like the media in today's America. As a child Rand had lived under Soviet totalitarianism, and the media in today's America likely has much in common with the USSR's media, which is likely the model for this description:
It was strange, she thought, to obtain news by means of nothing but denials, as if existence had ceased, facts had vanished, and only the frantic negatives uttered by officials and columnists gave any clue to the reality they were denying. 'It is not true that the Miller Steel Foundry of New Jersey has gone out of business.' 'It is not true that the Jansen Motor Company of Michigan has closed its doors. 'It is a vicious, anti-social lie that the manufacturers of steel products are collapsing under the threat of a steel shortage. There is no reason to expect a steel shortage.' 'It is a slanderous, unfounded rumor that a Steel Unification Plan had been in the making and that it had been favored by Mr. Orren Boyle. Mr. Boyle's attorney has issued an emphatic denial and has assured the press that Mr. Boyle is now vehemently opposed to any such plan. Mr. Boyle, at the moment is suffering from a nervous breakdown.' But some news could be witnessed in the streets of New York...
It was strange, she thought, to obtain news by means of nothing but denials, as if existence had ceased, facts had vanished, and only the frantic negatives uttered by officials and columnists gave any clue to the reality they were denying. 'It is not true that the Miller Steel Foundry of New Jersey has gone out of business.' 'It is not true that the Jansen Motor Company of Michigan has closed its doors. 'It is a vicious, anti-social lie that the manufacturers of steel products are collapsing under the threat of a steel shortage. There is no reason to expect a steel shortage.' 'It is a slanderous, unfounded rumor that a Steel Unification Plan had been in the making and that it had been favored by Mr. Orren Boyle. Mr. Boyle's attorney has issued an emphatic denial and has assured the press that Mr. Boyle is now vehemently opposed to any such plan. Mr. Boyle, at the moment is suffering from a nervous breakdown.' But some news could be witnessed in the streets of New York...
Monday, April 29, 2019
Alberto Mingardi's "Is Liberal Civilization a Somewhere?"
In Econlib.org Alberto Mingardi writes a useful critique of Daniel B. Klein's "10 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Call Leftists Liberal," which I also just blogged. Mingardi makes a good point: The claim that liberalism is the heart of Western Civilization overstates the case.
Western civilization was born in two ancient cities: Athens and Jerusalem. One bestowed reason; the other bestowed morality. Rome transmitted both traditions through its longstanding admiration for Greek culture, which likely began with its close links to the Etruscans, and through its adoption of Christianity following Constantine's conversion.
In turn, the Germanic tribes that invaded and assumed control of Rome adopted Christianity, so by 1100 almost all of Europe was either converted to Christianity or conquered by Islam. Hence, there are a number of sources of European culture, including the values and cultures of the barbarian tribes, which may have contributed to belief in natural law, and Islam, which transmitted Aristotle, who had been lost, back to Europe. Thomistic scholasticism, the fusing of Aristotelian and Christian thought in the 12th and 13th centuries, would not have been possible without the recovery of Aristotle.
Hence, the sources of Western civilization are diverse, and its manifestations are even more diverse. Mingardi is right: the Reign of Terror, the Holocaust, and Noam Chomsky's denial of the Cambodian holocaust are as much parts of Western civilization as are the Wealth of Nations and the Declaration of Independence.
However, Klein makes a slightly different point. He says that classical liberalism is the soul of Western civilization. That is, while there are many elements of Western civilization, the tradition that is best, that is most rational, and that has helped humanity more than any other is classical liberalism.
Saying that liberalism is who we are is like saying that Aristotle was what Greek philosophy was or that the Declaration of Independence rather than his ownership of slaves was who Jefferson was.
Western civilization was born in two ancient cities: Athens and Jerusalem. One bestowed reason; the other bestowed morality. Rome transmitted both traditions through its longstanding admiration for Greek culture, which likely began with its close links to the Etruscans, and through its adoption of Christianity following Constantine's conversion.
In turn, the Germanic tribes that invaded and assumed control of Rome adopted Christianity, so by 1100 almost all of Europe was either converted to Christianity or conquered by Islam. Hence, there are a number of sources of European culture, including the values and cultures of the barbarian tribes, which may have contributed to belief in natural law, and Islam, which transmitted Aristotle, who had been lost, back to Europe. Thomistic scholasticism, the fusing of Aristotelian and Christian thought in the 12th and 13th centuries, would not have been possible without the recovery of Aristotle.
Hence, the sources of Western civilization are diverse, and its manifestations are even more diverse. Mingardi is right: the Reign of Terror, the Holocaust, and Noam Chomsky's denial of the Cambodian holocaust are as much parts of Western civilization as are the Wealth of Nations and the Declaration of Independence.
However, Klein makes a slightly different point. He says that classical liberalism is the soul of Western civilization. That is, while there are many elements of Western civilization, the tradition that is best, that is most rational, and that has helped humanity more than any other is classical liberalism.
Saying that liberalism is who we are is like saying that Aristotle was what Greek philosophy was or that the Declaration of Independence rather than his ownership of slaves was who Jefferson was.
Dan Klein's "10 Reasons You Shouldn't Call Leftists Liberal"
Daniel B. Klein has written an excellent piece in Intercollegiate Review on the 10 reasons why you shouldn't call leftists "liberal." Klein notes that the word "liberal" has two meanings: (1) that pertaining to generosity and (2) that pertaining to a free man, as in "liberal education." The first to use the term in its political meaning was Adam Smith, and some scholars, such as Larry Siedentop, have claimed that liberalism was the result of Christianity.*
The ideology of the Progressives was not liberal, for it places state institutions at the center of economic decision making, leaving a sphere to a market that is shaped and dominated by the state. This approach was the product of the later German historical school led by Gustav von Schmoller, and Bismarck implemented it.
As it turned out, Schmoller and Bismarck's third way turned into Hitler's third way, which adapted aspects of Mussolini's third way: Fascism. Like Hitler and Mussolini, Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed cartelization and intense state influence on industry. The Supreme Court scuttled Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act, but elements of it, such as the National Labor Relations Act, were enacted.
The interest in third way economic policies flowed from the war economy of World War I. Although World War I was on every level a fiasco, the media convinced the public--modern propaganda having been an important innovation during the war--that without a powerful state the Great War could not have been fought and won.
Alas, without its having been fought and won, the world would have been much better off, but that seems to have escaped my grandfather's and parents' generation, as well as my own.
Also during the World War I era, Herbert Croly and Theodore Roosevelt aimed to paint Progressivism, as Mussolini did Fascism, as a third way in between liberalism and socialism. Hence, Progressivism, Fascism, and Nazism are variations of the same system. They differ from the overt socialism of the USSR and Red China, and they also differ from liberalism, which is based on natural rights and profit-seeking and which leads to optimal economic performance. The third way systems and the twentieth century socialist systems evolved from the war economies of World War I, and they are linked to the military state.
Klein is right that the use of the word "liberal" to describe the views of the World War I-derived ideologies--the third way and social democracy--is Orewellian. Whenever the media calls a leftist liberal, a devil gets his horns.
*I was just listening to Professor William R Cook's Great Courses lectures The Catholic Church: A History, and it is evident that mainstream Catholicism has not been in favor of liberalism. In 1864 Pius IX issued Syllabus of Errors, which opposes separation of church and state and claims the right of the Catholic Church to use force. In 1891 the Catholic Church moved to a third way approach under Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum, which opposes class warfare, opposes socialism, favors natural rights (grounded in Thomistic philosophy) and favors private property, but opposes free-market wage determination and favors workplace regulation. Hence, the Bismarckian system, which was, I believe, the product of German Protestants, can also be called Christian. Liberalism is associated with Calvinism, but Lutheranism and Catholicism may be closer to the third way.
The ideology of the Progressives was not liberal, for it places state institutions at the center of economic decision making, leaving a sphere to a market that is shaped and dominated by the state. This approach was the product of the later German historical school led by Gustav von Schmoller, and Bismarck implemented it.
As it turned out, Schmoller and Bismarck's third way turned into Hitler's third way, which adapted aspects of Mussolini's third way: Fascism. Like Hitler and Mussolini, Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed cartelization and intense state influence on industry. The Supreme Court scuttled Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act, but elements of it, such as the National Labor Relations Act, were enacted.
The interest in third way economic policies flowed from the war economy of World War I. Although World War I was on every level a fiasco, the media convinced the public--modern propaganda having been an important innovation during the war--that without a powerful state the Great War could not have been fought and won.
Alas, without its having been fought and won, the world would have been much better off, but that seems to have escaped my grandfather's and parents' generation, as well as my own.
Also during the World War I era, Herbert Croly and Theodore Roosevelt aimed to paint Progressivism, as Mussolini did Fascism, as a third way in between liberalism and socialism. Hence, Progressivism, Fascism, and Nazism are variations of the same system. They differ from the overt socialism of the USSR and Red China, and they also differ from liberalism, which is based on natural rights and profit-seeking and which leads to optimal economic performance. The third way systems and the twentieth century socialist systems evolved from the war economies of World War I, and they are linked to the military state.
Klein is right that the use of the word "liberal" to describe the views of the World War I-derived ideologies--the third way and social democracy--is Orewellian. Whenever the media calls a leftist liberal, a devil gets his horns.
*I was just listening to Professor William R Cook's Great Courses lectures The Catholic Church: A History, and it is evident that mainstream Catholicism has not been in favor of liberalism. In 1864 Pius IX issued Syllabus of Errors, which opposes separation of church and state and claims the right of the Catholic Church to use force. In 1891 the Catholic Church moved to a third way approach under Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum, which opposes class warfare, opposes socialism, favors natural rights (grounded in Thomistic philosophy) and favors private property, but opposes free-market wage determination and favors workplace regulation. Hence, the Bismarckian system, which was, I believe, the product of German Protestants, can also be called Christian. Liberalism is associated with Calvinism, but Lutheranism and Catholicism may be closer to the third way.
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