Theory and Practice

It's unconscionable that many on the left, people who are appalled by the political doctrine of Nazism, remain vaguely sympathetic to communism. That communist iconography is seen as a kitschy and cool addition to hipster gear is bad enough. But the deafening yawn that greets the politics of an outspoken communist (and Nobel-prize-winning) writer like Jose Saramago is sickening. A sharp, and nicely argued, op-ed by Jeff Jacoby on the recent death of Saramago shines a cleansing light on this dichotomy:

At this late date, there is no excuse for regarding communism and its defenders with one whit less revulsion than we regard neo-Nazis or white supremacists. Saramago’s communism should not have been indulged, it should have been despised. It should have been as great a blot on his reputation as if he had spent the last 41 years as an advocate of murderous repression and cruelty. For that, in a nutshell, is what it means to be an “unabashed’’ and “hormonal’’ communist.

Anyone who imagines that the horrors of communist rule is a thing of the past ought to spend a few minutes with, say, the State Department’s latest human rights report on North Korea. (Sample passage: “Methods of torture . . . included severe beatings, electric shock, prolonged periods of exposure to the elements, humiliations such as public nakedness, confinement for up to several weeks in small ‘punishment cells’ in which prisoners were unable to stand upright or lie down . . . and forcing mothers recently repatriated from China to watch the infanticide of their newborn infants.’’) Communism is not, as its champions like to claim, an appealing doctrine that has been perverted by monstrous regimes. It is a monstrous doctrine that hides behind appealing rhetoric. It is mass crime embodied in government. Nothing devised by human beings has caused more misery or proven more brutal.

Some try to distinguish the doctrine of communism from its application. It's a noble theory, but it just didn't work in practice, they beseech. In fact (and I mean in fact), communism is wretched in theory, as was made clear by its practice.

What makes a theory good? My objection is not only political (or moral), but epistemological. A good theory is one that successfully translates in its implementation. If I had a theory that flapping one's arms will result in flight, how good is my theory? My intention, no doubt, is good. There goes the need for the aviation sector. Just think of all the oil that will be saved (a nice fuck-you to BP). But, as soon as dead bodies begin to pile up below cliffs, would the proper reaction be: well, the dead didn't flap correctly -- it's still a good theory?

Was it the depravity of the human body that prevented it from defying gravity? If man's body were "better," would the theory work in practice? When do you stop condemning man and begin to question the soundness of a theory?

What Tolerance Is and Isn't

The wisdom of Robin Hanson:

“Tolerance” is a feel-good buzzword in our society, but I fear people have forgotten what it means. Many folks are proud of their “tolerance” for gays, working women, Tibetan monks in cute orange outfits, or blacks sitting at the front of the bus. But what they really mean is that they consider such things to be completely appropriate parts of their society, and are not bothered by them in the slightest. That, however, isn’t “tolerance.”

“Tolerance” is where you tolerate things that actually bother you. Things that make you go “ick”, or that conflict with strong intuitions on proper behavior. Once upon a time, the idea of gay sex made most folks quite uncomfortable, and yet many of those folks still advocated tolerance for gay sex. Their argument was not that gay sex isn’t icky, but that a broad society should be reluctant to ban apparently victimless activities merely because many find them icky.

I've been guilty of misusing, and misunderstanding, the concept "tolerance." Hanson's point is so obviously true that it's forcing me to rethink tolerance.

Doesn't "tolerance" stand directly opposed to "integrity?" Isn't there a difference between "political" tolerance and "personal" tolerance? For example, the recent Supreme Court case (which Hansen cites) that struck down a federal statute "criminalizing the commercial production, sale, or possession of depictions of cruelty to animals." Animal cruelty is a heinous act, no doubt, but the very purpose of the First Amendment is to protect speech that may seem unpalatable to many (or most). Yet should those depictions be exempt from moral condemnation, i.e. "personal" intolerance? I don't think so. Just as I think Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow have a right to bleat their inanities, I need not remain quiet and tolerate their views. I can use any means available, like this blog, to be intolerant toward them -- except the physical force of the state.

Tolerance is only a virtue in the political sphere, to protect actions I may despise that don't violate the rights of others. Those crazies who think gays will go to hell have a right to say so. Politically, I must tolerate them. But personally, I have the right to be as intolerant as they are. Only persuasion, personal intolerance of those opposed to "gays, working women, Tibetan monks in cute orange outfits, or blacks sitting at the front of the bus," leads to acceptance. As Alex Tabbarok notes:

[G]ay rights have not advanced because of more tolerance per se, i.e. they have not advanced because more people are willing to accept behavior that bothers them. Advance has occurred because fewer people are bothered by the behavior.

What's in a Name?

Karl Marx, archenemy of the free market, gave capitalism its name. It was a smear; but it was a smear that stuck, a smear that denotes a specific politico-economic system. Unfortunately, it also connotes, as Professor Bryan Caplan writes, "a system of rule by capitalists for capitalists," while its antipode, socialism, connotes, "a system of rule by society for society." In other words: capitalism bad, socialism good. Should those who are outspokenly pro-free market, those like me, adopt a new name for the system we advocate, purely for clarity's sake?

My answer, in short: no way.

It's true, many may equate any country apart from North Korea or Cuba, like the United States since the 1890s, as capitalist. Yes, the waters have been sufficiently muddied. But as Professor Caplan notes, the alternative only leads to further cognitive disarray.

There are no capitalist countries and, apart from the aforementioned extant communist economies, no socialist countries left on Earth. We only have gradients of mixed economies: from China to the USA. What's a free-marketer who demands clarity to do? Modify. Call it laissez-faire capitalism. Those who know the term will understand. Those who don't, don't matter anyway.

My Name Is Peter Tabakis, and I Approve This Message

Civilization Versus Barbarism

Kurt Westergaard, the 74-year-old Danish artist whose cartoon of Muhammad set off a cultural firestorm in 2005, was attacked by a Islamic terrorist on Friday. Thankfully, he survived the attack, which wasn't the first attempt at his life.

Here's the full story from the NYT.

For the sake of championing civilization, I publish the cartoon below.

The Meaning of New Year's Day

No other national holiday is celebrated with as much brio as New Year's Day, without a defined idea of what is being celebrated. Other holidays are obvious: Independence Day celebrates American political freedom, Halloween the pleasure of masquerading, Thanksgiving material abundance, Christmas (in the secular sense) good-will toward loved ones, May Day (and Earth Day) the establishment of international socialism. But what of New Year's Day? Is it a taking stock of the prior twelve months? Is it a commitment for better times ahead? I think both are true, but they are corollaries of the real meaning of New Year's Day.

New Year's Day is, in a way, a meta-holiday; it's a celebration of existence, of life, as such. That's why it can be seen as a taking stock of the past and a look to the future at once. The common theme here is one's own life: where one has been and where one wants to go. The holiday takes introspection and turns it outward in celebration.

The two main traditions that define the holiday, the singing of "Auld Lang Syne" and the establishment of New Year's resolutions, capture the backward and forward looking nature of New Year's Day. "Auld Lang Syne," a song everyone knows, yet almost no one knows the lyrics to, is concerned with fondly looking back. The title roughly translates to "days gone by."

Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and days of old lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

New Year's resolutions, on the other hand, are commitments to better oneself in the coming year. No matter how good or bad the prior year was, the tradition of making resolutions is still one of further improvement.

There is a third tradition that unites both aspects of New Year's Day: the drinking of champagne. Champagne is traditionally brought out for the most important of celebrations, and it shows the import of the New Year's holiday. Here's where you raise a glass and toast; it's both a well done! and a here we go! in one clink of glass.

The underlying premise is that life is worth celebrating and is capable of being improved. It's a feeling few people express during the rest of the year. For some that feeling survives the afterglow of the holiday and is a permanent state of mind. But for a few hours before and after midnight on December 31, we can feel that life isn't only a series of disappointments and frustrations. For a few hours we can all agree on one thing: life is good.

Is *Crash* the Worst Movie of the Decade?

I've never seen Crash, nor do I plan to. From what I know about the film, it represents the worst of the multiculturalist ideology, which I hold is the philosophical equivalent of a shrieking baby on a plane. Happily, and a bit surprisingly, the Atlantic's Te-Nehisi Coates agrees:

Before we go any further, I need to admit that several people who I love and respect actually like Crash. I need let them know that I don't hold this against them, and I still love and respect them--though, with Crash in mind, more the former than the latter.

With that said, I don't think there's a single human being in Crash. Instead you have arguments and propaganda violently bumping into each other, impressed with their own quirkiness. ("Hey look, I'm a black carjacker who resents being stereotyped.") But more than a bad film, Crash, which won an Oscar (!), is the apotheosis of a kind of unthinking, incurious, nihilistic, multiculturalism. To be blunt, nothing tempers my extremism more than watching a fellow liberal exhort the virtues of Crash.

If you're angry about race, but not particularly interested in understanding why, you probably like Crash. If you're black and believe in the curative qualities of yet another "dialogue around race," you probably liked Crash. If you're white and voted for Barack Obama strictly because he was black, you probably liked Crash. If you've ever used the term "post-racial" or "post-black" in a serious conversation, without a hint of irony, you probably liked Crash.

And I swear if any of you defend the film, I'm going to ban you. Not just from this site, not just from the Internet, but from all public life. Don't test me. My armies are legion.

In this sense only, consider me one of Coates' foot soldiers.

Pernicious Behavior

Moral suasion is a powerful social tool to alter behavior, and a justified one in certain circumstances. Citizens of Abilene, Kansas took up the cause against what many thought was a pernicious new intruder to their town. What evil entity were these people combating? An "adult superstore." From Time:

But Abilene — terminus of the great longhorn cattle drives, boyhood home of Dwight D. Eisenhower — fought back. Some folks anyway. Citizens launched Operation Daniel, named for the biblical prophet who was thrown into a lion's den but somehow tamed the beasts. As lonely truckers pulled into the parking lot, protesters met them waving signs that threatened, "Think Again or We Report." They vowed to send the tag numbers of porn-purchasing drivers to corporate employers. Wal-Mart soon put out the word to its drivers to steer clear.

They used intimidation to prevent private individuals from purchasing legal products like sex toys, adult videos, and "sheer little costumes." If you want to see pure, naked hatred for humanity, look to people who think "there is a link between pornography and fantasy-driven criminal behavior."

The article focuses on a legal battle over commercial speech, which the store ended up winning (for now). But what jumped out at me was the mentality that thinks porn (read: sexuality) leads to "the rape of a child." Perhaps I have been naive, but how is it possible that people really believe this? Frightening.

"Hate Crime" is Thought Crime

Today the House voted to expand the definition of "hate crime" to include a victim's "gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability." The NYT reports:

Democrats and advocates hailed the 281-to-146 vote, which put the measure on the brink of becoming law, as the culmination of a long push to curb violent expressions of bias like the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay Wyoming college student.

“Left unchecked, crimes of this kind threaten to ruin the very fabric of America,” said Representative Susan Davis, Democrat of California.

What would this legislation accomplish? The article quotes Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat,

“The hate-crimes act will hopefully deter people from being targeted for violent attacks because of the color of their skin or their religion, their disability, their gender, or their sexual orientation, regardless of where the crime takes place,” he said.

The idea is, the current punishment for crimes like the heinous murder of Matthew Shepard is an insufficient deterrent. We must punish the motive, as well as the act. Supporters were quick to offer the following caveat:

[T]he bill specifically bars prosecution based on an individual’s expression of “racial, religious, political or other beliefs.” It also states that nothing in the measure should be “construed to diminish any rights under the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.” [Emphasis mine.]

What are we to make of this apparent contradiction? What is the mainspring of attacks motivated by "the color of [the victim's] skin or their religion, their disability, their gender, or their sexual orientation," if not a criminal's "racial, religious, political or other beliefs"? Are we really just penalizing pure, non-ideological, animal hatred?

The point is, every action is somehow motivated by a belief, by a value judgment. Even when the action is not premeditated, implicit premises motivate an action. Otherwise our choices and actions would be completely random, motivated by nothing but whim. (It could be argued that even actions based on whim have premises at their root, however emotionalistic. A truly unmotivated action would be the result of the purely probabilistic flip of the coin. Yet the decision to cede a decision to probability, is still a decision based on belief.)

Thus, punishing a criminal for their motivation is tantamount to thought crime. Otherwise, it would be impossible to prosecute someone for a "hate crime." The animals who slaughtered Matthew Shepard were motivated by hatred. But that hatred had a root, be it religion, prejudice, whatever. It is impossible to untangle the source of this hatred and punish it, without punishing the ideas that caused the hatred.

Once the door is open to punish the criminal's motive, it is a short road to codifying "political crimes," as well. I personally think the leftist-anarchists who destroy private property, in the name of anti-capitalism, are motivated by pernicious ideals. Should we also punish their motives, on top of their crimes? Do these crimes not "threaten to ruin the very fabric of America?"

Hatred is an emotion, a response to an individual's values. Ultimately, the punishment of "hatred" is the punishment of values and the ideas that define them. Crimes ought to be punished, because they are crimes, i.e., because they infringe on the rights of an individual. The motive of the crime is only important in establishing guilt. Otherwise, we are punishing ideas, however wrong and unpopular. That is the very definition of thought crime.

What Makes a Genius Evil, and Evil Genius?

Russ Roberts, responding to Bryan Caplan, argues that the impact of an evil genius, say a would-be Hitler or Stalin, is mitigated by those who fight their rise:

The expected impact of an evil genius is often smaller than the expected impact of a wonderful genius. There are lots of would-be mass murderers and the bigger the population, the bigger the absolute number. But their ability to murder lots of people is limited by the fact that most people try to stop them. Yes, in some systems (Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union), a mass murderer is able to enlist lots of people to help him. But that is rare. Most of the time, people try to stop them, and in some systems it is especially difficult to kill lots of people over any long period of time.

I think Roberts is correct, though he is downplaying the fundamental impact of ideas in this struggle. The march toward statism in America has been slowed by the (however implicit) American political philosophy originally identified by Jefferson, Madison, and, ultimately, Locke. Conversely, it was the ideas of Kant, Hegel, and Marx that allowed Wiemar Germany and Czarist Russia to largely embrace the rise of Nazism and Communism.

Geniuses on both sides were responsible for these antipodal philosophies. It follows from your value judgments how you assign the designations of "good" and "evil" to them. You can't have it both ways (and I'm not arguing that Roberts tries to): the same person cannot logically label Locke and Hegel as "good" geniuses, or Jefferson and Marx as "evil." They're opposites. Given the full-scale bloodbaths that were unleashed as a result of the ideas of Kant and his ilk, I think "evil" is the only way to describe their genius.

What makes their evil so genius? It's that their philosophies are taken seriously and downplayed. Insomuch as they are studied in academia, the philosophies of Kant and the rest are seen as important, worthy of study. But their impact on the cultures of Wiemar Germany and Czarist Russia are largely skirted (at least in the popular descriptions of the rise of totalitarianism, and with some notable exceptions). It's this disconnect, that their explicit philosophies are studied and their impacts ignored, that makes them genius, however evil. It's why their legacies are still felt to this day.

This is why I think an evil genius has a greater effect ideologically, than he does in particular instances, like Hitler and Stalin. Hitler and Stalin, however evil and opportunistic, were not geniuses. As Hannah Arendt noted, they were banal. It's the ideas that spawned them, that bolstered their rise and political legitimacy, that must be combated, even more so than these despots who where their logical conclusion.

This is the evil that must be destroyed at its root, so its particular brand of genius does not endure.

Good News

From the Washington Post:

The percentage of Americans who call themselves Christians has dropped dramatically over the past two decades, and those who do are increasingly identifying themselves without traditional denomination labels, according to a major study of U.S. religion being released today.
....

The only group that grew in every U.S. state since the 2001 survey was people saying they had "no" religion; the survey says this group is now 15 percent of the population. Silk said this group is likely responsible for the shrinking percentage of Christians in the United States.

Northern New England has surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the country; 34 percent of Vermont residents say they have "no religion." The report said that the country has a "growing non-religious or irreligious minority." Twenty-seven percent of those interviewed said they did not expect to have a religious funeral or service when they died, and 30 percent of people who had married said their service was not religious. Those questions weren't asked in previous surveys.

The American Dream

Here's a follow-up to my random thought below.

Zogby International has published a new survey of our view of the "American Dream." While definitions of the American Dream vary, the gist is that the American system of capitalism allows anyone with the determination to improve their lot the ability to do so. The results of the poll show a fundamental difference in viewpoints.

For those, the 56%, who still believe in the American Dream, their top reasons were:

59%: "I'm intelligent and work hard, so I should succeed."

52%: "America is the land of opportunity."

25%: "I am an optimist."

For those opposed:

44%: "The powers that be don't care about people like me."

29%: "Americans shouldn't think of themselves as special and entitled to an ideal life."

27%: "Where I live, it costs too much, and the American Dream is just out of reach."

Notice that the latter are collectivistic ("the powers that be don't care about me"), anti-American, and pessimistic; the former are individualistic, pro-American, and optimistic. Who do you think is more likely to advocate statism? Freedom?

[HT: Russ Roberts.]

Passing the Onus

In an article about a controversial London ad campaign (see right), Christian activist Stephen Green is quoted as saying the following:

"I believe the ad breaks the Advertising Code, unless the advertisers hold evidence that God probably does not exist."

Mr Green has challenged the adverts on grounds of "truthfulness" and "substantiation", suggesting that there is not "a shred of supporting evidence" that there is probably no God.

Perhaps Green could explain how one can show evidence of a nonexistent. Still, I'm sure that if the question were turned around on him (as the onus for the existence of a God is on he who is claiming the hypothesis to be factual), he would have a "shred of evidence."

HT: Matt Briner.

Stop the Presses: Values Influence People

In his Findings column in the NYT, John Tierney reports on a new study by University of Miami psychologists Michael McCullough and Brian Willoughby that finds "religious belief and piety promote self-control." The tone of the article is one of semi-serious surprise:

Does this mean that nonbelievers like me should start going to church? Even if you don’t believe in a supernatural god, you could try improving your self-control by at least going along with the rituals of organized religion.

Hold on, atheists. Before we all make a mad dash for a pew, Tierney continues:

But that probably wouldn’t work either, Dr. McCullough told me, because personality studies have identified a difference between true believers and others who attend services for extrinsic reasons, like wanting to impress people or make social connections. The intrinsically religious people have higher self-control, but the extrinsically religious do not.

Great. So what now?

Dr. McCullough’s advice is to try replicating some of the religious mechanisms that seem to improve self-control, like private meditation or public involvement with an organization that has strong ideals. Religious people, he said, are self-controlled not simply because they fear God’s wrath, but because they’ve absorbed the ideals of their religion into their own system of values, and have thereby given their personal goals an aura of sacredness. He suggested that nonbelievers try a secular version of that strategy.

“People can have sacred values that aren’t religious values,” he said. “Self-reliance might be a sacred value to you that’s relevant to saving money. Concern for others might be a sacred value that’s relevant to taking time to do volunteer work. You can spend time thinking about what values are sacred to you and making New Year’s resolutions that are consistent with them.” [Italics mine.]

Really, John? This is news?

I typically admire Tierney's articles, but this one is tantamount to reporting that "morality aids in decision making." Should it surprise anyone that adhering to a system of values, even a wrong one, influences how someone behaves?

CHRISTMA$

Christmas in America is an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist productivity, and the enjoyment of life. Yet all of these are castigated as "materialistic"; the real meaning of the holiday, we are told, is assorted Nativity tales and altruist injunctions (e.g., love thy neighbor) that no one takes seriously.

That's Leonard Peikoff on the commercialization of Christmas. You can read the entire article here.

Killer Iconography

I have long been both baffled and disgusted by the proliferation of communist iconography on everyday merchandise like t-shirts, mugs, and knit onesies. What makes Nazi paraphernalia reprehensible, but the far-more-bloody communist paraphernalia winsome (like the aforementioned onesie)? Here's a guess: the left is still holding on to the "ideal" of socialism. They understand the ideological connection between Marxism, and the "friendlier" forms (democratic socialism, welfare statism) they advocate.

It seems like Reason has had enough, as well.

Know Thy Enemy: Naomi Klein

This week's New Yorker has an illuminating profile of Naomi Klein, the new Queen of Anti-Capitalism. Klein first became prominent with her anti-corporate tome No Logo, which was notable for being toted around by rockers like Thom Yorke in the early 2000s. Klein's most recent book, The Shock Doctrine, posits that capitalism requires disasters, natural and man-made, to succeed, that economic freedom requires "shocks" to force its unpalatable ideas down the throats of an unsuspecting public.

It would seem, at first blush, that Klein is a threat to capitalism, given her recent popularity. However, Klein's arguments are flimsy and contradictory. Her method is the Big Lie. She distorts history, rather than argue from principle. In fact, Klein can't argue from principle. Socialism has long been proved to be a bankrupt system. Instead, Klein drops context, conflates neo-conservatism with pro-capitalism, and knocks down a straw man named Milton Friedman.

To illustrate my point, here are some excerpts from the New Yorker article. Klein on the recent financial crisis:

On the one hand, the initial reaction to the economic crisis followed her theory—the shock (the bank failures and the market’s nosedive) had inspired the government to attempt to seize unprecedented power (seven hundred billion dollars with no strings attached), claiming that in such a crisis everyone should simply trust it to do the right thing, even though the actions it wanted to take would seem to enrich the wealthiest at the expense of everybody else. That was the textbook part. But the plan wasn’t working. Constituents wrote thousands of outraged letters, and bloggers wrote about how this felt familiar, like the aftermath of September 11th, and how the bailout was the economic equivalent of the Patriot Act. It was just as she had written at the end of the book: memory was shock’s antidote. (Another difference, of course, was that the government wanted to enact not Friedman-style reforms but the opposite: enormous interference in the market. Still, since the point of this interference was to bail out banks, this difference did not strike Klein as of much importance.) [Italics mine.]

The difference didn't strike Klein as important. Of course it didn't. It refutes her argument. Corporatism is not synonymous with capitalism. Swedish historian Johan Norberg further illustrates Klein's distortion of history in his review of The Shock Doctrine:

The strangest thing about Klein's suggestion that crises benefit free markets and limited government is that there is such a long record of the exact opposite. World War I led to communism in Russia; economic depression gave us Nazi Germany. Wars and other disasters are rarely friends of freedom. On the contrary, politicians and government officials often use crises as an opportunity to increase their budgets and powers. As one prominent economist put it while explaining his opposition to war in Iraq: "War is a friend of the state....In time of war, government will take powers and do things that it would not ordinarily do." The economist? Milton Friedman.

Furthermore, Klein's arguments are contradictory. In the New Yorker article she is described as such: "In principle, she is a Keynesian, but she distrusts centralization, institutions, platforms, theories—anything except extremely small, local, ad-hoc, spontaneous initiatives." Anyone who is familiar with Keynesianism knows that it is rooted in "institutions, platforms, theories," albeit the wrong ones. But these quibbles are unimportant to Klein, the same woman who, as is shown in the New Yorker article, is comfortable with appearing on (the massively corporate) MTV. It's anyone's guess what the above "ad-hoc initiatives" would comprise of, given Klein's politics, without "centralization, institutions, platforms, [or] theories [italics mine]."

Klein's true motivation's are revealed when the New Yorker article focuses on her infatuation with Milton Friedman:

Why does Klein place such emphasis on Friedman? Perhaps because she wants to draw a parallel between capitalism and Communism, to make their two histories look as similar as possible, and for that she needs not the messy, pragmatic, ad-hoc capitalism of corporations but the purist, utopian capitalism of the Chicago School. Violent autocrats of the free-market persuasion, though there have been many, have not soiled Friedman’s name in the way that Stalin soiled Marx; somehow, the misdeeds of a Pinochet or a Suharto or a Yeltsin are attributed to these men as individuals—to their lust for power, their greed, their drinking. But Klein holds capitalism guilty of all their sins. Friedman’s followers must no longer get away with shaking their heads when their advisees start killing people, she believes.

It takes such a massive evasion of history, political theory, and philosophy to equate capitalism with communism, that someone as intelligent as Klein has to know better: (Observe, too, that the New Yorker writer states as fact that there have been many "autocrats of the free-market persuasion." It is no coincidence that the author of this fawning article has no idea what constitutes free-market ideology.) What you are witnessing is the Big Lie at work. Norbert's article on Klein for the Cato Institute illustrates Klein's evasion:

Astonishingly, in a book of more than 500 pages, Klein offers almost no argument to the person who isn’t already convinced that free markets are bad. […] A look at the EFW data shows that Klein has it backwards. Poverty and unemployment are lowest in countries with the most economic freedom. In the freest fifth of countries, poverty according to the United Nations is 15.7 percent, and in the rest of the world it is 29.8 percent. Unemployment in the freest quintile is 5.2 percent, which is less than half of what it is in the rest of the world. In the least economically free quintile, filled with the kinds of restrictions on private property, businesses, and trade that Klein claims are ways of helping the people against the powerful, poverty is 37.4 percent and unemployment is 13 percent.

The only way to oppose Naomi Klein is to identify that which she evades: history, theory, facts.

To Save a Mouse

Here is Jamie Berube responding to Peter Singer on Down Syndrome. Berube's post comes on the heels of a debate I recently had about Peter Singer and his ideas on "animal liberation." I have not read Animal Liberation, but I have been researching Singer's ideas and have identified two major problems with his ethical theories:

1. Animals and man do not have "similar interests." For Singer, all moral decisions are made by using the calculus of "equal consideration of similar interests." For an illustration of how this calculation works, I refer you to Singer's FAQ:

   Q. If you had to save either a human being or a mouse from a fire, with no time to save them both, wouldn’t you save the human being?
   A. Yes, in almost all cases I would save the human being. But not because the human being is human, that is, a member of the species Homo sapiens. Species membership alone isn't morally significant, but equal consideration for similar interests allows different consideration for different interests. The qualities that are ethically significant are, firstly, a capacity to experience something -- that is, a capacity to feel pain, or to have any kind of feelings. That's really basic, and it’s something that a mouse shares with us. But when it comes to a question of taking life, or allowing life to end, it matters whether a being is the kind of being who can see that he or she actually has a life -- that is, can see that he or she is the same being who exists now, who existed in the past, and who will exist in the future. Such a being has more to lose than a being incapable of understand this.
   Any normal human being past infancy will have such a sense of existing over time. I’m not sure that mice do, and if they do, their time frame is probably much more limited. So normally, the death of a human being is a greater loss to the human than the death of a mouse is to the mouse – for the human, it cuts off plans for the distant future, for example, but not in the case of the mouse. And we can add to that the greater extent of grief and distress that, in most cases, the family of the human being will experience, as compared with the family of the mouse (although we should not forget that animals, especially mammals and birds, can have close ties to their offspring and mates).
   That’s why, in general, it would be right to save the human, and not the mouse, from the burning building, if one could not save both. But this depends on the qualities and characteristics that the human being has. If, for example, the human being had suffered brain damage so severe as to be in an irreversible state of unconsciousness, then it might not be better to save the human.

   If such a process of reasoning had actually taken place in a burning building, both men and the mouse would have perished. Of course, Singer doesn't expect anyone to actually go through this reasoning. It's enough that you equate the two species at all (lest you be branded a--gasp--speciesist).
2. Singer sets up a straw man by arguing against "intelligence" as the criterion for differentiating humans from animals. Singer argues that a normally functioning Great Ape is technically more intelligent than a brain-dead person. But it's not only intelligence that differentiates us from animals: our most distinguishing characteristic is that reason is our basic means of survival. No other animal survives by reason, no matter how intelligent.
   

These are my two major problems with what I understand Singer's position to be. Unfortunately, tackling either one would require an essay-length response, and a blog is not the proper venue for that. However, I do plan on returning to Singer, and the "animal liberation" movement, in the future; this is not an issue that is likely to go away anytime soon.

Tara Smith at the National Press Club

Dr. Tara Smith, Objectivist scholar and professor of philosophy at the University of Texas, will be speaking about pragmatism on December 8, at the National Press Club. If you are a fan of Ayn Rand's philosophy, or just serious about ideas, I highly encourage you to go. I've had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Smith speak on a few occasions. This is a free talk, so if you're a DC local, this is a no-brainer. (Har.)