Monday, December 21, 2015
Walter Block Speaks to My Classes at Brooklyn College
Professor Walter Block, famed libertarian economist and Brooklyn College alum, spoke to my classes on November 3, 2015. Block spoke about his impressions of Bernie Sanders when they were classmates together at Brooklyn. (Sanders later transferred to the University of Chicago.) Block talked about the minimum wage and victimless crimes.
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Twin Peaks to Run on Showtime
In 2008 I opined that HBO should reprise Twin Peaks. Even better, Showtime has started to run ads saying that the show will run soon, presumably in 2017. The idea wasn't mine--I got it from Laura Palmer, whose Black Lodge spirit promised to Special Agent Dale Cooper that she'd see him again in 25 years. That was back in 1991, so she was off by but a year. Unfortunately, the show will run only as a limited series of nine episodes. My question is whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will replace Frank Silva as Killer Bob. Sadly, Silva, a stagehand whom David Lynch had discovered, died of complications of AIDS twenty years ago, in 1995. Either candidate can do a passable job.
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Bernard Iddings Bell's Crowd Culture
I picked up a copy of Bernard Iddings Bell's Crowd Culture, which the Intercollegiate Studies Institute had sent me ten years ago when I had helped a student start an ISI chapter at Brooklyn College. I hadn't heard of Bernard Iddings Bell before. According to Wikipedia:
Bernard Iddings Bell (1886-1958) was born in Dayton, Ohio. After studies at the University of Chicago, he was ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church USA. He served as dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin from 1912-1919. He was warden of Bard College from 1919 to 1933.
It is a short book, 136 pocket-sized pages, but it is a worthwhile one. Bell is not a libertarian; rather, he is a social conservative critic of Progressivism. The book is based on lectures that he gave in 1952 at Ohio Wesleyan University, and the difference between then and now is stark. I suspect Bell would not be allowed to speak on many college campuses today.
Two important points are his criticisms of the press or media and of secular humanism, which he calls a "nontheistic and merely patriotic Secularism." He writes (p. 48):
There are many religions in America, no one of which has a right to monopolize the schools or to appropriate all the funds provided by taxation for the schools. But in our present school system, which has a professed desire to be fair to all faiths and to teach the peculiar tenets and practices of none, all religions except one are in practice negated, and to that one religion is given monopoly care. The religion of the public schools is a nontheistic and merely patriotic Secularism. The public schools, without its being generally perceived by those who direct the schools, have become, because of this monopoly advocacy, the most dangerous opponents of religious liberty visible on the American horizon.
However, Bell is not a libertarian (Ibid.):
Because of this, if we desire the preservation of real religious liberty in the schools, each major variety of religion in America (including of course Secularism and Atheism) must not only have the right but be encouraged to conduct its own schools and to run them at public expense. Such various schools must be and can be unified by rigorous public control in all matters except religious teaching.
A more liberty-oriented solution to America's dismally failed public education system is Milton Friedman's vouchers, with the public having zero control over the content taught in schools. Voluntarism and decentralization have more in common with traditional Americanism than Bell's solution. I would also do away with laws that require children to stay in school to age 16. For many students, doing so is a waste of time and money. Properly run schools would by grade four teach writing at a level that today's average college student has not attained by her senior year of college. (I use the female pronoun because most college students today are female; political correctness and lack of job opportunities have driven away male students.) Today's college students are subjected to 12 years of ignorant preaching by badly educated, half-literate teachers in America's public schools. They graduate unable to read and write at a sixth-grade level. Bell makes this point correctly, but he nevertheless conforms--the subject of his book--to Progressive norms.
Bell is in effect a Progressive who would replace atheism and crowd culture with Mathew Arnold's sweetness and light: poetry, the classics, and philosophy. Such pursuits are, Bell rightly observes, available only to a minority. Thus, his criticism of Dewey is this: You are right to advocate public control, but you are wrong to advocate conformity to group norms and experimentation to derive policy.
Although, as Bell rightly observes, Dewey placed the crowd ahead of the individual, collective values ahead of individualist ones, and social adjustment ahead of individual achievement, at heart Dewey was an elitist. This is evident in his book The Public and Its Problems in which Dewey claims that the public can resolve public problems by hiring social scientists and allowing journalists free rein in painting of artistic portraits of the experts' observations for public consumption. That is very much an elitist argument, although it is cloaked in collectivist and democratic rhetoric. Dewey was a master at painting authoritarianism as a function of democracy, and he is part of the twentieth century's Progressive apologia for the mass murder that occurred under Progressivism's sister ideologies, international socialism, national socialism, and fascism.
In other words, Bell and Dewey have more in common than Bell admits because Bell does not reject Dewey's state authority, and Dewey does not reject Bell's elitism. Rather, Bell would replace Dewey's elite of expertise with an elite of religious humanism.
In contrast, libertarians reject the state altogether; religious state control is no better than secular state control. True diversity occurs without authority. Each can find his own faith within himself and within the institutions to which his conscience directs him.
Bernard Iddings Bell (1886-1958) was born in Dayton, Ohio. After studies at the University of Chicago, he was ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church USA. He served as dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin from 1912-1919. He was warden of Bard College from 1919 to 1933.
It is a short book, 136 pocket-sized pages, but it is a worthwhile one. Bell is not a libertarian; rather, he is a social conservative critic of Progressivism. The book is based on lectures that he gave in 1952 at Ohio Wesleyan University, and the difference between then and now is stark. I suspect Bell would not be allowed to speak on many college campuses today.
Two important points are his criticisms of the press or media and of secular humanism, which he calls a "nontheistic and merely patriotic Secularism." He writes (p. 48):
There are many religions in America, no one of which has a right to monopolize the schools or to appropriate all the funds provided by taxation for the schools. But in our present school system, which has a professed desire to be fair to all faiths and to teach the peculiar tenets and practices of none, all religions except one are in practice negated, and to that one religion is given monopoly care. The religion of the public schools is a nontheistic and merely patriotic Secularism. The public schools, without its being generally perceived by those who direct the schools, have become, because of this monopoly advocacy, the most dangerous opponents of religious liberty visible on the American horizon.
However, Bell is not a libertarian (Ibid.):
Because of this, if we desire the preservation of real religious liberty in the schools, each major variety of religion in America (including of course Secularism and Atheism) must not only have the right but be encouraged to conduct its own schools and to run them at public expense. Such various schools must be and can be unified by rigorous public control in all matters except religious teaching.
A more liberty-oriented solution to America's dismally failed public education system is Milton Friedman's vouchers, with the public having zero control over the content taught in schools. Voluntarism and decentralization have more in common with traditional Americanism than Bell's solution. I would also do away with laws that require children to stay in school to age 16. For many students, doing so is a waste of time and money. Properly run schools would by grade four teach writing at a level that today's average college student has not attained by her senior year of college. (I use the female pronoun because most college students today are female; political correctness and lack of job opportunities have driven away male students.) Today's college students are subjected to 12 years of ignorant preaching by badly educated, half-literate teachers in America's public schools. They graduate unable to read and write at a sixth-grade level. Bell makes this point correctly, but he nevertheless conforms--the subject of his book--to Progressive norms.
Bell is in effect a Progressive who would replace atheism and crowd culture with Mathew Arnold's sweetness and light: poetry, the classics, and philosophy. Such pursuits are, Bell rightly observes, available only to a minority. Thus, his criticism of Dewey is this: You are right to advocate public control, but you are wrong to advocate conformity to group norms and experimentation to derive policy.
Although, as Bell rightly observes, Dewey placed the crowd ahead of the individual, collective values ahead of individualist ones, and social adjustment ahead of individual achievement, at heart Dewey was an elitist. This is evident in his book The Public and Its Problems in which Dewey claims that the public can resolve public problems by hiring social scientists and allowing journalists free rein in painting of artistic portraits of the experts' observations for public consumption. That is very much an elitist argument, although it is cloaked in collectivist and democratic rhetoric. Dewey was a master at painting authoritarianism as a function of democracy, and he is part of the twentieth century's Progressive apologia for the mass murder that occurred under Progressivism's sister ideologies, international socialism, national socialism, and fascism.
In other words, Bell and Dewey have more in common than Bell admits because Bell does not reject Dewey's state authority, and Dewey does not reject Bell's elitism. Rather, Bell would replace Dewey's elite of expertise with an elite of religious humanism.
In contrast, libertarians reject the state altogether; religious state control is no better than secular state control. True diversity occurs without authority. Each can find his own faith within himself and within the institutions to which his conscience directs him.
Friday, October 30, 2015
Moderation as Vacuity
Americans sometimes claim to be moderate in their views. "I don't believe in abolishing the Fed, for I am a moderate," is an example. Moderation means limiting change to a moderate distance from present policy. But what if present policy is extreme? Franklin Roosevelt might have said: "I don't believe in ending concentration camps for Japanese Americans. I believe in a more moderate course." Andrew Jackson might have said: "I don't believe in ending my policy of banishing all Native Americans east of the Mississippi. I believe in the moderate course of extending the Indian Removal Act to just one more tribe."
Is moderation as a mere increment meaningful in the context of policies whose effects are devastating or reprehensible?
There are other possible meanings, though. Perhaps moderation underlies a claim that state action is not a moral but a pragmatic question. "Only extremists hold that theft is wrong under all circumstances. We moderates hold that taxing some to redistribute to others is a pragmatic course." Here, however, the claim is contradictory. If morality that prohibits theft is extreme, why is the morality that motivates redistribution of wealth not an extreme? If it is wrong to say that theft is wrong, why is right to say that income inequality is wrong?
Since all government action involves violence, and since the elimination of violence is a prerequisite to the foundation of civilization, all government action involves moral choice. Choice about violence,murder, or theft is inherently moral, and all government action involves violence, murder, or theft. Therefore, all government action is extreme if extreme is to be defined as making state decisions on the basis of morality.
A third possible meaning of moderation is that it accords with the majority. The majority in America believe the claims made on television and in newspapers. The writers in these sources are not well educated, and they have demonstrated a repeated capacity for advocating erroneous courses of action. One example was the Vietnam War. Another was, in New York City, the urban renewal policies of Robert Moses. A third was the Iraqi War and the strategy behind it. A fourth is America's monetary policy. Ancient Athens lost the Peloponnesian War because it chose to invade Sicily, a decision that was politically popular. America's disastrous invasion of Iraq was similarly popular, and I was among the mistaken supporters.
In other words, defining moderation as incremental decision making, pragmatism, or accordance with majority rule potentially leads to policies that are extreme. A fourth definition is mathematically certain, but it is also self-contradictory and equally vacuous. The ancient Greeks defined sophrosyne (σωφροσύνη) as temperance or moderation in the sense of being well balanced. Aristotle spoke of a range of virtues such as prudence, justice, and courage as well as sophrosyne. Moderation, in Aristotle's view, is the mean between two extremes. Courage is the mean between rashness and cowardice, for instance.
Perhaps moderation in state action can mean the mean between two extreme courses of action. In this sense, though, current American policies are not moderate. An economy in which public debt is in excess of $55,000 per man, woman, and child, forty-four percent of whom have no savings, is hardly a mean between two extremes. It is an extreme. The same may be said of monetary policy. The tripling of the money supply in 2008 and 2009 can hardly be called a mean between two extremes: Historically, monetary expansion of that magnitude has led to economic collapse. Nor can we say that a nation that subsidizes one industry, banking, to the extent that the US government has is taking actions that are the midpoint between two extremes.
Moderation can be defined as a small increment over current policy, pragmatism, majority rule, or the mean between two extremes, but none of these meanings is inconsistent with policies that are genocidal, horrific, radically redistributive, or economically destructive. Americans' claim that their choices are moderate, like their claim that they are free or their claim that they are prosperous, is a chimera.
Is moderation as a mere increment meaningful in the context of policies whose effects are devastating or reprehensible?
There are other possible meanings, though. Perhaps moderation underlies a claim that state action is not a moral but a pragmatic question. "Only extremists hold that theft is wrong under all circumstances. We moderates hold that taxing some to redistribute to others is a pragmatic course." Here, however, the claim is contradictory. If morality that prohibits theft is extreme, why is the morality that motivates redistribution of wealth not an extreme? If it is wrong to say that theft is wrong, why is right to say that income inequality is wrong?
Since all government action involves violence, and since the elimination of violence is a prerequisite to the foundation of civilization, all government action involves moral choice. Choice about violence,murder, or theft is inherently moral, and all government action involves violence, murder, or theft. Therefore, all government action is extreme if extreme is to be defined as making state decisions on the basis of morality.
A third possible meaning of moderation is that it accords with the majority. The majority in America believe the claims made on television and in newspapers. The writers in these sources are not well educated, and they have demonstrated a repeated capacity for advocating erroneous courses of action. One example was the Vietnam War. Another was, in New York City, the urban renewal policies of Robert Moses. A third was the Iraqi War and the strategy behind it. A fourth is America's monetary policy. Ancient Athens lost the Peloponnesian War because it chose to invade Sicily, a decision that was politically popular. America's disastrous invasion of Iraq was similarly popular, and I was among the mistaken supporters.
In other words, defining moderation as incremental decision making, pragmatism, or accordance with majority rule potentially leads to policies that are extreme. A fourth definition is mathematically certain, but it is also self-contradictory and equally vacuous. The ancient Greeks defined sophrosyne (σωφροσύνη) as temperance or moderation in the sense of being well balanced. Aristotle spoke of a range of virtues such as prudence, justice, and courage as well as sophrosyne. Moderation, in Aristotle's view, is the mean between two extremes. Courage is the mean between rashness and cowardice, for instance.
Perhaps moderation in state action can mean the mean between two extreme courses of action. In this sense, though, current American policies are not moderate. An economy in which public debt is in excess of $55,000 per man, woman, and child, forty-four percent of whom have no savings, is hardly a mean between two extremes. It is an extreme. The same may be said of monetary policy. The tripling of the money supply in 2008 and 2009 can hardly be called a mean between two extremes: Historically, monetary expansion of that magnitude has led to economic collapse. Nor can we say that a nation that subsidizes one industry, banking, to the extent that the US government has is taking actions that are the midpoint between two extremes.
Moderation can be defined as a small increment over current policy, pragmatism, majority rule, or the mean between two extremes, but none of these meanings is inconsistent with policies that are genocidal, horrific, radically redistributive, or economically destructive. Americans' claim that their choices are moderate, like their claim that they are free or their claim that they are prosperous, is a chimera.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
