It’s not hard to believe that Hillary Clinton won the Democrat primary in New Hampshire because of the tears she shed (or almost shed) the day before the primary. Her mediagenic emotional moment must have garnered sympathy from many a female voter — perhaps from many of them who hadn’t planned to vote, until the tears welled up.
It’s as if a goodly fraction of the women of New Hampshire rose up and said, “We are woman…we cry.” This is a qualification for office?
By my standards, only Goose Gossage and Less Smith should have been elected to the Hall of Fame yesterday. Well, the Goose made it. Better yet, no undeserving player was selected from a long list of undeserving candidates.
If only it were politic to un-elect the undeserving, membership in the Hall would really mean something.
A popular phenomenon (a song, a political movement, a cliché, an item of merchandise, a TV show or movie) is one that a large fraction of the population enjoys, endorses, practices, purchases, or watches. The fans, followers, speakers, buyers, and watchers who make a phenomenon popular are of two types: those who find intrinsic merit in the thing; those who find merit in adhering to what is popular. On which half of the population do you suppose the popularity of a thing mainly depends: the more intelligent half or the less intelligent half?
Now, do you really think popularity is a good thing?
Guest post:
As a disillusioned paleocon, I’ve complained about the old-right infatuation with extremism in my discussion of the late Samuel Francis. A further example of the paleocon meltdown is the career of Joseph Sobran, former National Review editor turned embittered pamphleteer, holocaust revisionist, and part-time campaigner for the Democratic Party—he has favored liberal candidates against Republicans, and has a decided preference for Democratic foreign policy. Not surprisingly, Sobran has alienated many readers over the years. Recently his erratic political musings were documented by a major Catholic intellectual (James Hitchcock, “Abortion and the ‘Catholic Right’,” Human Life Review, Spring 2007). This is particularly important because Sobran has marketed himself as a latter-day ultramontanist, publishing in Catholic journals like The Wanderer.
Sobran justifies his rhetorical excesses by pointing to the opposite extreme. But surely one can oppose racial quotas and reverse racism without endorsing the nearest Klan leader. Sobran, however, doesn’t have that sense of finesse. As early as 1986 he was offering cautionary praise (but praise nonetheless) for Instauration, a journal published by Wilmot Robertson who wrote The Dispossessed Majority, the bible of high-brow American racialism. As an aside, Robertson is as anti-Christian as he is anti-Jewish. The point here is that it’s hard to write off Sobran’s extremist statements as occasional foibles. No one can commit that many faux pas without really trying!
When people started criticizing Sobran, one of the first persons who rushed to his aid was Mark Weber, long-time member (currently director) of the Institute for Historical Review. The IHR is well known as a “holocaust revisionist” front for neo-Nazism. Sobran has returned the favor many times by championing the “courageous” views of the IHR. Sobran’s worst bit of journalistic muddling is seen in his piece “For Fear of the Jews,” which adopts his usual ingénue style of coy provocation. In it he tells us that Mark Weber is really a nice guy, which is quite beside the point (he’s trying to whitewash Adolf Hitler, who wasn’t a nice guy). As it turns out, Sobran was penning things for the Journal for Historical Review throughout the 1990s, including an essay on “Jewish Power” (January/February, 1999). In 2001 and 2003, Sobran attended conferences hosted by David Irving, who shares Weber’s habit of Hitlerian spin control.
Next time, an answer to apologists for Joe Sobran….
I was intrigued by this (at Freespace):
Judicial notice
“…speaking of college students generally the court observes that it is a matter of common knowledge and well established that groups of students are for the most part exuberant, boisterous, and hilarious, and that they do not ordinarily keep regular hours and are addicted to the use and abuse of vibrant and sonorous musical instruments.”
City of Long Beach v. California Lambda Chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, 255 Cal.App.2d 789, 796 (1967).
It seems that the City of Long Beach had enjoined fraternities from maintaining frat houses in an area that is zoned for apartment houses. Long Beach prevailed at trial; SAE appealed. Does the quoted passage evince “understanding” of the mores of frat boys? It could be read that way.
I was gratified to learn, via FindLaw (free registration required), that the appellate court upheld the judgment of the trial court,
which, in effect, declared that defendants (fraternity houses) be enjoined from occupying, maintaining and using certain described properties in an “R-4” zone unless a variance or exception to the zoning ordinance of Long Beach be obtained.
The City of Long Beach brought an action to enjoin the named fraternities from continuing to use and occupy described premises as fraternity houses. The described premises are located in what is generally known as the “R-4” apartment house district under the Long Beach comprehensive zoning ordinance….
The ordinance in this instance is a valid and proper exercise of the police power, the city council properly and legally exercised its discretion in restricting fraternity houses in an “R-4” zone.
If the City of Long Beach sought to enforce the ordinance against the fraternity because of the behavior of the frat boys, so much the better. Statutory law should, if nothing else, preserve the norms of civilized behavior. Frat rats* are, in my experience, decidedly uncivilized — as noted by the court.
__________
* “Frat rat” was, in my long-ago days as a college student, a derogatory term for fraternity members. (Perhaps it’s still in use; see no. 3, here.) GDIs (Gosh Darned Independents), such as I was, used the term advisedly, having heard, seen, and endured more than enough of the rude, crude, and lewd doings of frat boys.
UPDATED (02/17/08)
I wrote here about the temperature records at the weather station nearest my home. (The station is about two miles from my home — as the crow flies.) The average temperature for 2007 has just been posted, leading me to make some further observations:
In the interval from 1935 to 2002, my city’s population grew ten-fold; twenty-fold when you include the city’s sprawling suburbs, of which there were none in 1935. What was in 1935 a mid-sized city had become by 2002 a top-40 metropolitan area and, thus, an urban heat island.
UPDATE: See this teaser about the UHI effect in Phoenix.
…and if it’s happening there, it can happen here. What? The suppression of politically incorrect speech by the state — not just a tax-funded university, but the central government itself.
Wolf Howling has the story. It’s about a British blogger, Lionheart, who lays it on the line here, and links to his “offending” posts.
P.S. A good subtitle for this post is “Cowering before Islam.” Someone who is not cowering before Islam, even though his government would like to is Geert Wilders of the Netherlands. (Thanks, again, to Wolf Howling.)
P.P.S. I should have mentioned Canada, of course. Cases in point, the “human rights” complaints against Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn.
As if to rebuke the extreme individualists who invoke his name, Ludwig von Mises writes:
Seen from the point of view of the individual, society is the great means for the attainment of all his ends. The preservation of society is an essential condition of any plans an individual may want to realize by any action whatever. Even the refractory delinquent who fails to adjust his conduct to the requirements of life within the societal system of cooperation does not want to miss any of the advantages derived from the division of labor. He does not consciously aim at the destruction of society. He wants to lay his hands on a greater portion of the jointly produced wealth than the social order assigns to him. He would feel miserable if antisocial behavior were to become universal and its inevitable outcome, the return to primitive indigence, resulted.
It is illusory to maintain that individuals in renouncing the alleged blessings of a fabulous state of nature and entering into society have foregone some advantages and have a fair claim to be indemnified for what they have lost. The idea that anybody would have fared better under an asocial state of mankind and is wronged by the very existence of society is absurd. Thanks to the higher productivity of social cooperation the human species has multiplied far beyond the margin of subsistence offered by the conditions prevailing in ages with a rudimentary degree of the division of labor. Each man enjoys a standard of living much higher than that of his savage ancestors….
One of the privileges which society affords to the individual is the privilege of living in spite of sickness or physical disability. Sick animals are doomed. Their weakness handicaps them in their attempts to find food and to repel aggression on the part of other animals. Deaf, nearsighted, or crippled savages must perish. But such defects do not deprive a man of the opportunity to adjust himself to life in society….
Related post: “A Critique of Extreme Libertarianism” (27 Jul 2007)
The very late Murray Rothbard didn’t want to be called an “anarchist” because the word has acquired several negative connotations. It is clear, however, that Rothbard was an anarchist; he just didn’t want to be called one.
Robert Higgs reifies government:
The beginning of political wisdom is the realization that despite everything you’ve always been taught, the government is not really on your side; indeed, it is out to get you.
On top of that, he counsels an ostrich-like foreign policy:
[D]espite everything that is claimed for the military’s protective powers, its operation and deployment overseas leave us ordinary Americans facing greater, not lesser, risk than we would otherwise face, because of the many enemies it cultivates who would have left us alone, if the U.S. military had only left them alone. (Yes, Virginia, they are over here because we’re over there.)
I guess Higgs wouldn’t care if the Middle East and its vast reserves of oil were to fall into the hands of Islamofascists.
Anyway, Higgs asserts that
[a]lthough the mugger, the sneak thief, and the con man are not the only types of government operatives, they make up a large proportion of the leading figures in government today. The lower ranks, especially in the various police agencies, have a disproportionate share of the bullies.
I’d like to see his data. Certainly a goodly share of cops are bullies, and a goodly share of government “operatives” behave like bullies, muggers, sneak thieves, and con men (Higgs’s characterizations). But the way Higgs puts it, it’s as if government was invented to serve those types, which is rather unfair to Mr. Madison et al.
Here’s a better way of putting it: Government, when allowed to assume functions beyond the minimal ones alloted by the Constitution, becomes a haven for some bullies, muggers, sneak thieves, and con men. But most of them, I daresay, are not in government.
Related posts:
“But Wouldn’t Warlords Take Over?” (24 Jul 2005)
“Liberty As a Social Compact” (28 Feb 2006)
“The Source of Rights” (06 Sep 2006)
“The Golden Rule, for Libertarians” (02 Aug 2007)
“Anarchistic Balderdash” (17 Aug 2007)
“The Fear of Consequentialism” (26 Nov 2007)
“Optimality, Liberty, and the Golden Rule” (18 Dec 2007)
…that the debate about global warming has become more balanced when a website affiliated with CNN picks up a story from IBD. Here’s some of it:
Climate Change: Skepticism about man-induced global warming has reached the science pages of the newspaper of record. This suggests the debate not only isn’t over, but that it’s also finally newsworthy….
In his first [NYT] column of the new year, [John] Tierney writes that the deniers of truth are in fact Nobel Laureate Al Gore and those who ignore both scientific evidence and the historical record in their prophecies of doom. 2008, says Tierney, will be no exception….
A case in point cited by Tierney was when Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites. It was hardly a blip in Earth’s geological history, but Tierney noted how “it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming.”
Less dramatic and newsworthy was the announcement that the same satellites also recorded that the Antarctic sea ice had reached the highest level ever….
In the same week Gore received his Nobel Peace Prize, the respected scientific journal Nature published a paper you probably didn’t hear much about. It concluded that global warming had a minimal effect on hurricanes….
As for temperature, Tierney reports how British meteorologists made headlines predicting that the buildup of greenhouse gases would make 2007 the hottest year on record. After 2007 was actually lower than any year since 2001, the BBC still proclaimed: “2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend.”…
But for greenies, it doesn’t matter what the weather actually is or what the data actually show. It’s all caused by global warming. As Canadian Greenpeace rep Steven Guilbeault explained in 2005: “Global warming can mean colder; it can mean drier; it can mean wetter; that’s what we’re dealing with.” Oh.
We hope Tierney’s piece signals the beginning of a fair and balanced debate on the Earth’s climate and man’s impact on it in the mainstream media, including all the inconvenient truths that are fit to print.
Posts at Liberty Corner:
“‘Warmism’: The Myth of Anthropogenic Global Warming” (23 Aug 2007)
“Re: Climate ‘Science’” (19 Sep 2007)
“More Evidence against Anthropogenic Global Warming” (25 Sep 2007)
“Yet More Evidence against Anthropogenic Global Warming” (04 Oct 2007)
“Global Warming, Close to Home” (22 Dec 2007)
Plus, many more in this category.
Said by Anthony Y.C. Koo, professor of economics, when I asked him if he knew the whereabouts of my faculty adviser. Koo answered my question with the quoted statement, and a bit of research; that is, he checked my adviser’s calendar. Prof. Koo’s words, and example, have guided me these past fifty years.
Actually, 2007 was (as usual) a year of sitting in the comfort of my home watching DVDs. I find movie theaters to be messy places filled with inconsiderate, blabbering idiots.
I watched (or started) 80 theatrical films in 2007. (I also saw 15 made-for-TV movies and mini-series.) I list below the 80 theatrical films, in the order in which I watched them. I indicate for each film the year of its release (according to IMDb) and my rating (on a 10-point scale). Most of my ratings are relatively high (6 points and up), which indicates selectivity in choosing films.
Not that I am always able to avoid stinkers, as you will see. Five rentals stand out as especially egregious choices: The Da Vinci Code, Black Snake Moan, Dreamgirls, Live Free or Die Hard, and Superbad. Five other almost-as-bad choices were Casino Royale, The Draughtsman’s Contract, Seraphim Falls, Spider-Man 3, and Ratatouille.
Happily, I saw 26 films to which I have given a rating of 8 or higher: Roberta, The Others, Dear Frankie, The Browning Version (1951), The Navigator, Stranger Than Fiction, Empire of the Sun, Volver, El Aura, The History Boys, Notes on a Scandal, The Queen, Children of Men, The Painted Veil, Venus, Breach, Sweet Land, Flags of Our Fathers, The Accidental Tourist, The Chorus, The Lives of Others, Away from Her, Snow Cake, Vitus, The Cameraman, and The Ladykillers (1955).
Here is a guide to my ratings:
1 – unwatchable
2 – watched all the way through, to my regret
3, 4, 5 – varying degrees of entertainment value, but altogether a waste of time
6 – generally engaging, but noticeably flawed in some way (e.g., a weak performance in a major role, trite story, a contrived ending, insufficient resolution of plot or sub-plot)
7 – well done in all respects, with only a few weak spots; enjoyable but not scintillating
8 – a thoroughly engaging movie; its weak spots (e.g., a corny plot), if any, are overwhelmed by scintillating performances (e.g., the spectacular dancing of Astaire and Rogers), sustained hilarity, a compelling plot, a witty script, etc.
9 – an “8” that is so good it bears re-watching (a rating I have given to only 61 of the more than 2,000 theatrical films I’ve seen)
10 – a movie that I didn’t want to end; a masterpiece of film-making (a rating I have given to only 5 of the theatrical films I’ve seen)
Here’s my movie list for 2007:
Walk the Line (2005) 7
Little Manhattan (2005) 7
Roberta (1935) 8
The Others (2001) 8
The Illusionist (2006) 7
Foreign Correspondent (1940) 6
Happy Accidents (2000) 7
The Captain’s Paradise (1953) 6
Conversations with Other Women (2005) 7
Counterfeit Traitor (1962) 7
Kinky Boots (2005) 7
Dear Frankie (2004) 8
Hollywoodland (2006) 7
The Heiress (1949) 7
The Browning Version (1951) 9
The Departed (2006) 7
The Navigator (1924) 8
Flushed Away (2006) 7
Keeping Mum (2005) 7
The Prestige (2006) 7
Stranger Than Fiction (2006) 8
The Da Vinci Code (2006) 2
Empire of the Sun (1987) 8
Casino Royale (2006) 4
Immortal Beloved (1994) 7
The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982) 4
The Silent Partner (1978) 7
Volver (2006) 8
El Aura (2005) 8
Three Kings (1999) 6
The Good Shepherd (2006) 7
The History Boys (2006) 8
Notes on a Scandal (2006) 8
Modern Times (1936) 7
Plein Soleil (Purple Noon) (1960) 7
The Queen (2006) 8
Children of Men (2006) 8
Dreamgirls (2006) 2
The Painted Veil (2006) 8
Deja Vu (2006) 7
Venus (2006) 8
Seraphim Falls (2006) 4
Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) 7
El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth) (2006) 7
Breach (2007) 8
Miss Potter (2006) 7
Becket (1964) 7
The Freshman (1925) 6
The Big Clock (1948) 7
Sweet Land (2005) 8
Black Snake Moan (2006) 1
La Tourneuse des Pages (The Page Turner) (2006) 7
Why Worry? (1923) 7
Hot Fuzz (2007) 6
The Woman in the Window (1944) 7
Cashback (2006) 7
Flags of Our Fathers (2006) 8
The Accidental Tourist (1988) 8
Fracture (2007) 7
Les Choristes (The Chorus) (2004) 8
The Lookout (2007) 7
Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) (2006) 8
The Ultimate Gift (2006) 7
Away from Her (2006) 8
The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) 7
Snow Cake (2006) 8
Zwartboek (Black Book) (2006) 7
Spider-Man 3 (2007) 5
Ten Canoes (2006) 7
The Tracker (2002) 6
Live Free or Die Hard (2007) 2
Waitress (2007) 7
Vitus (2006) 8
Superbad (2007) 1
Ratatouille (2007) 5
The Cameraman (1928) 8
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) 6
Stardust (2007) 6
Amazing Grace (2006) 7
The Ladykillers (1955) 8
UPDATED (01/09/08)
According to Baseball-Reference.com, the following players are on the ballot for membership in the Hall of Fame:
Brady Anderson
Harold Baines
Rod Beck
Bert Blyleven
Dave Concepcion
Andre Dawson
Shawon Dunston
Chuck Finley
Travis Fryman
Rich (Goose) Gossage
Tommy John
David Justice
Chuck Knoblauch
Don Mattingly
Mark McGwire
Jack Morris
Dale Murphy
Robb Nen
Dave Parker
Tim Raines
Jim Rice
Jose Rijo
Lee Smith
Todd Stottlemyre
Alan Trammell
The question I ask and answer here is this: Which of the candidates should be in the Hall of Fame, based on his performance — regardless of the credentials of any players who are undeservedly in the Hall? Here are my criteria for Hall of Fame pitchers and batters (revised slightly since I first published them):
A pitcher must have at least 15 seasons of 30 or more games pitched, and must have recorded
- at least 300 wins, or
- at least 250 wins and an ERA+ of 120 or higher (go here and scroll down for the definition of ERA+), or
- at least 200 wins and a W-L average of .600 or better and an ERA+ of 120 or higher, or
- an ERA+ of 120 or higher while relieving in at least 750 games.
A batter must have recorded
- an OPS+ of at least 150 (go here and scroll down for the definition of OPS+) in a career of least 15 seasons of 100 games or more, or
- at least 2,800 lifetime hits and a lifetime batting average of at least .300, or
- an OPS+ of at least 120 and at least 2,000 lifetime base hits and a lifetime batting average of at least .300.
I make an exception for a batter with at least 15 seasons of 100 game or more, if
- he is among the top 20 in home runs per at-bat for a career of at least 5,000 at bats, or
- he led his league in fielding percentage for his position in at least 10 seasons, or
- he won at least 10 Gold Gloves.
Against my criteria, who among the current candidates belongs in the Hall of Fame? Answer:
Goose Gossage
Lee Smith
UPDATE (01/09/08): No player, regardless of his accomplishments, should be in the Hall of Fame if it is proved, to the satisfaction of the Commissioner of Baseball, that the player used performance-enhancing drugs for a cumulative period of more than half a baseball season, when such drugs were banned by baseball. Moreover, no coach, manager, or executive who placed bets on baseball games while active in baseball should be in the Hall of Fame if such betting activity is proved, to the satisfaction of the Commissioner of Baseball.
It should go without saying that the involvement of any player, manager, coach, or executive in the throwing of games or shaving of scores, when proved to the satisfaction of the Commissioner of Baseball, must lead to that person’s immediate banishment from the game. No such person should ever be eligible for the Hall of Fame.
1. Do not read books, listen to audio presentations, watch videos, or attend lectures or seminars on the subject of management. The perpetrators of such material are “consultants,” not managers with decades of hands-on experience.
2. Do not hire “consultants,” unless you want someone you can blame for sweeping changes in your organization or its personnel structure. Don’t do it even then, because you will have wasted money to no avail; you employees won’t be fooled by the blame game.
3. Accept the traditional perks of your office, otherwise your employees might doubt your standing (and thus theirs) in the organization. But don’t grab new perks for yourself. If you do, your employees (rightly) will think that your perks may (in lean times) cost some of them their jobs. Of course, if you don’t mind envious, suspicious, and low-motivated employees, go right ahead and treat yourself to more perks. Better yet, pay lavish sums to have a “consultant” justify your new perks.
4. Do not agonize over decisions. It is better to make a few mistakes — and correct them as necessary — than to reveal yourself as an indecisive worrier. Gather the relevant facts, but don’t chase down every loose end. Rely on the counsel of persons with relevant experience whose independence of judgment and discretion you trust.
5. Do not befriend any of your employees. Boss-subordinate friendships cause suspicion and resentment among the excluded, and can lead to nothing but trouble when an employee-friend screws up or stops being a friend.
6. Be friendly toward all of your employees. If you have an effective employee whom you can’t stand, avoid him. If you can’t avoid him, find a (legal) way to fire him. But don’t put up with employees whose attitudes and behavior you dislike. Dislike breeds distrust. Distrust breeds bad decisions on your part.
7. Make it abundantly clear that you reward employees only for good performance. Make your standards of performance abundantly clear, through praise, perks, and pay. (See no. 11.)
8. Micro-manage, if that helps you sleep better at night. But accept the fact that your most effective employees will resent your micro-management, require extra compensation to put up with it, and curb their creativity and initiative in the face of it. In other words, try like the devil to avoid micro-managing, but do not go to the opposite extreme of complete hands-off management. Go to the middle ground: clearly stated expectations and prompt, regular feedback. If you are uncomfortable in the middle ground, you shouldn’t be a manager; find a job doing something instead of managing it. If you wait too long to drop out of the management game, you’ll be locked into it financially and to avoid the appearance of failure. The resulting stress will make you ill, and may kill you.
9. Do not undercut those you have placed in supervisory jobs by criticizing them openly or by implication (e.g., encouraging their subordinates to come through your “open door”). But do keep your ear to the ground; people love to gripe. If you hear of unacceptable behavior, dig into it (discreetly). If the story checks out, act on it, quickly. If a subordinate isn’t doing his job, or has done something egregious, talk to him about it and explain what you expect him to do (or not do). If that doesn’t fix the problem, find a job that he’s better suited for, or help him move on to greener pastures.
10. Be sure that your employees know the bounds of their authority and initiative. Lack of clarity in such matters leads to frustration and poor performance. Give your employees as much leeway as you can, but not so much that they are put in conflict with each other or “empowered” to sabotage your operations or relations with customers.
11. Most importantly, know what you want your organization to accomplish. Be sure that your employees know what it is. Be sure that every part of your organization is aimed toward the same objective. Tie praise, perks,and pay to it.
12. If you have a boss, you have an additional job, which is to be a boss-manager. Your challenge as a boss-manager is to get your boss to observe the eleven preceding rules. You must be subtle but firm in that effort. You cannot expect down-the-line success, but if you fail on too many points, you will be miserable in your job. When you are miserable in your job because of your boss, you have three options: find another job, retire, or put up with your boss if you cannot do either. Nobody promised you a rose garden.
13. There is a fourth option for dealing with a “bad” boss, if the boss is incompetent or has committed an improper act: try to have him fired. But, as the adage goes, “if you strike at the king, you must slay him, lest he rise and seek retribution.” If you are going to strike at your “king,” you must have your exit plan ready.
The LA Times reports that Carlos Sousa Sr., whose son was killed on Christmas by a tiger at the San Francisco Zoo,
said he planned legal action in response to his son’s death.
“Put yourself in my shoes,” he said. “Money isn’t going to replace my son. But I have to live with this for the rest of my life.”
If it’s true that money can’t replace his son (and it is true), it must also be true that money cannot assuage the pain and emotional distress caused by his son’s horrific death. Why, then, was Mr. Sousa so quick to hire a lawyer, one James Geagan, and to threaten legal action? Is the death of a loved one an opportunity for financial gain?
The American way of death may be the overblown funeral, but the American way of grieving has become the hasty resort to litigation.
I have written many times about the dependence of liberty on traditional norms. (See, for example, “Social Norms and Liberty” and “‘Family Values,’ Liberty, and the State.”) Thanks to this article by Lee Harris, I have come across his long essay on “The Future of Tradition: Transmitting the visceral ethical code of civilization” (Policy Review, June & July 2005).
The essay is best read in its entirety, with all of its logical connections. However, I cannot resist quoting the passages that make Harris’s central point:
[I]t is a mistake to conflate the automatic with the irrational, since, as we have seen, an automatic and mindless response is precisely the mechanism by which the visceral code speaks to us. It triggers a rush of emotions because it is designed to do precisely this. Like certain automatic reflexes, such as jerking your hand off a burning stovetop, the sheer immediacy of our visceral response, far from being proof of its irrationality, demonstrates the critical importance, in times of peril and crisis, of not thinking before we act. If a man had to think before jumping out of the way of an onrushing car, or to meditate on his options before removing his hand from that hot stovetop, then reason, rather than being our help, would become our enemy. Some decisions are better left to reflexes — be these of our neurological system or of our visceral system….
Imagine a stranger coming up to you and asking if he can drive your eight-year-old daughter around town in his new car. Presumably, no matter how nicely the stranger asked this question, you would say no. But suppose he started to ask why you won’t let him take your little girl for a ride. What if he said, “Listen, tell you what. I’ll give her my cell phone and you can call her anytime you want”? What kind of obligation are you under to give a reason to a complete stranger for why he shouldn’t be allowed to drive off with your daughter?
None. A question that is out of order does not require or deserve an answer. The moment you begin to answer the question as if it were in order, it is too late to point out your original objection to the question in the first place, which really was: Over my dead body.
Marriage was something that, until only quite recently, seemed to be securely in the hands of married people. It was what married people had engaged in, and certainly not a special privilege that had been extended to them to the exclusion of other human beings…. Was [marriage] defined as between a man and a woman? Well, yes, but only in the sense that a cheese omelet is defined as an egg and some cheese — without the least intention of insulting either orange juice or toast by their omission from this definition. Orange juice and toast are fine things in themselves — you just can’t make an omelet out of them.
Those who are married now, and those thinking about getting married or teaching their children that they should grow up and get married, may all be perfect idiots, mindlessly parroting a message wired into them before they were old enough to know better. But they are passing on, through the uniquely reliable visceral code, the great postulate of transgenerational duty: not to beseech people to make the world a better place, but to make children whose children will leave it a better world and not merely a world with better abstract ideals….
Marriage must not be mocked or ridiculed. But can marriage keep its solemnity now? Who will tell the rising generation that there are standards they must not fail to meet if they wish to live in a way that their grandfathers could respect?
This is how those fond of abstract reasoning can destroy the ethical foundations of a society without anyone’s noticing it. They throw up for debate that which no one before ever thought about debating. They take the collective visceral code that has bound parents to grandchildren from time immemorial, in every culture known to man, and make of it a topic for fashionable intellectual chatter.
Ask yourself what is so secure about the ethical baseline of our current level of civilization that it might not be opened up for question, or what deeply cherished way of doing things will suddenly be cast in the role of a “residual personal prejudice.”
We are witnessing the triumph of a Newspeak in which those who simply wish to preserve their own way of life, to pass their core values down to their grandchildren more or less intact, no longer even have a language in which they can address their grievances. In this essay I have tried to produce the roughest sketch of what such language might look like and how it could be used to defend those values that represent what Hegel called the substantive class of community — the class that represents the ethical baseline of the society and whose ethical solidity and unimaginativeness permit the high-spirited experimentation of the reflective class to go forward without the risk of complete societal collapse.
If the reflective class, represented by intellectuals in the media and the academic world, continues to undermine the ideological superstructure of the visceral code operative among the “culturally backward,” it may eventually succeed in subverting and even destroying the visceral code that has established the common high ethical baseline of the average American — and it will have done all of this out of the insane belief that abstract maxims concerning justice and tolerance can take the place of a visceral code that is the outcome of the accumulated cultural revolution of our long human past.
Thus, in the name of “enlightenment,” the “reflective class” subverts liberty.
Harris, by the way, has no immediate, personal interest in the preservation of marriage as a heterosexual institution. He flatly states in the essay that he is homosexual.
A post by Bryan Caplan reminds me of the F scale, an instrument designed by Theodore Adorno, et al., authors of The Authoritarian Personality. Their stated objective was to determine the degree of authoritarianism in a person’s makeup. Their not-so-hidden agenda was to equate authoritarianism with conservatism.
In my earlier post on the subject, I quoted John Ray’s “Does Authoritarianism of Personality Go With Conservatism?” There, Ray explains that “Authoritarian personalities alone are equally likely to be found on either side of the Left-Right divide.” Ray also makes that point in “Libertarians and the Authoritarian Personality.” As I say in my earlier post,
the authors of The Authoritarian Personality define conservatism to be authoritarian. They then wrongly assert that “authoritarians” (conservatives) are psychologically “sick” and that they behave in an authoritarian manner. The fact, however, is that authoritarian behavior knows no ideological bounds. The histories of Germany, Japan, Italy, Russia, Britain (under Labour), and the U.S. (beginning especially with the New Deal) amply demonstrate that fact.
Leftism and Rightism are statisms with different agendas.
As for the real meaning of the F scale, Caplan point to another piece by John Ray, “The Old-Fashioned Personality,” which I had not read. Ray concludes that
a view of the ‘F’ scale as primarily a measure of old-fashioned orientation has considerable explanatory force. It may be, of course, that having an “old-fashioned orientation” is not the most ultimately accurate way of characterizing high F scale scorers. That they could also fairly reasonably be characterized by related descriptions such as “cultural traditionalists” or “cultural conservatives” is admitted. “Old fashioned” would, however seem to be a simpler characterization so is perhaps to be preferred under the principle of parsimony.
I find Ray’s term, “old fashioned,” vague and even tautological in this context. An old-fashioned person prefers traditional things, which is but another way of saying that an old-fashioned person is a conservative one.
“Older” is more fitting than “old fashioned.” That is, one’s outlook tends to become more conservative with age, as one learns (usually from experience) that tradition merits respect, not scorn. Tradition is the glue that makes possible civil society and, hence, liberty. The peaceful pursuit of happiness — liberty, in a word — is impossible absent the mutual respect and restraint that arise from the observance of socially evolved behavioral norms. (For much more on this point, see this post and the posts listed at the end of it.)
Just for fun, I took this version of the F scale, presented by one Chuck Anesi, who (appropriately) scoffs at its creators. Here is my score, followed by Anesi’s tongue-in-cheek interpretation of the scale:
Your F Score is: 4.033333333333333
You are disciplined but tolerant; a true American.
| If your score is… | You are… |
|---|---|
| Less than 2 | A whining rotter. |
| 2 to 3 | A liberal airhead. |
| 3 to 4.5 | Within normal limits; an appropriate score for an American. (The overall average score for groups tested in the original study is listed in the 1950 publication as 3.84, with men averaging somewhat higher and women somewhat lower.) |
| 4.5 to 5.5 | You may want to practice doing things with your left hand. |
| 5.5 or higher | Have trouble keeping the lint off your black shirts? |
UPDATED (12/29/07)
Jonathan Adler, writing at The Volokh Conspiracy, says:
Waterboarding was a horrific thing to do to someone, even someone as evil as Abu Zubaydah. Such conduct should be forbidden and never sanctioned as official policy…. At the same time, there may be extreme (and extremely rare) circumstances in which life does imitate an episode of “24,” and horrific measures may be necessary. This does not mean such measures should be legal. Rather… the specific context should be considered when authorities decide whether and how to prosecute those involved for breaking the law.
To which I say:
1. Adler, like most opponents of torture, frames the issue wrongly. If Abu Zubaydah is evil, he is evil because of what he does or enables others to do. The purpose of torture, when used against an Abu Zubaydah, is to prevent evil, not to commit it. By Adler’s standard, it would be wrong to defend oneself against an armed aggressor because the possible result — the aggressor’s death — would be “horrific.” As if one’s own death would not be “horrific.”
2. The “authorities” should prosecute those who commit an illegal act. To do otherwise — to wink at illegality — is to undermine the rule of law.
3. Uncertainty about prosecutorial responses to acts of “aggressive interrogation” will, in some cases, cause interrogators to restrain themselves when they should not.
4. It is better to define torture by statute and, as Alan Dershowitz advises, allow its authorized use.
UPDATE: Mark Bowden, in this article, makes the same wrong-headed case as Adler does with respect to the legality of torture. Bowden, at least, acknowledges its effectiveness in certain circumstances:
Opponents of torture argue that it never works, that it always produces false information. If that were so, then this would be a simple issue, and the whole logic of incentive/disincentive is false, which defies common sense. In one of the cases I have cited previously, a German police captain was able to crack the defiance of a kidnapper who had buried a child alive simply by threatening torture (the police chief was fired, a price any moral individual would gladly pay). The chief acted on the only moral justification for starting down this road, which is to prevent something worse from happening. If published reports can be believed, this is precisely what happened with Zubaydah.
People can be coerced into revealing important, truthful information. The German kidnapper did, Zubaydah did, and prisoners have throughout recorded time. What works varies for every individual, but in most cases, what works is fear, fear of imprisonment, fear of discomfort, fear of pain, fear of bad things happening to you, fear of bad things happening to those close to you. Some years ago in Israel, in the course of investigating this subject exhaustively, I interviewed Michael Koubi, a master interrogator who has questioned literally thousands of prisoners in a long career with Shin Bet. He said that the prisoner who resisted noncoercive methods was rare, but in those hard cases, fear usually produced results. Fear works better than pain.
In order to induce fear, torture must be known to be an option. There must be a real threat of pain or psychological terror (as in the case of waterboarding) if fear is to play its role in extracting crucial information.
Related posts:
“Torture and Morality” (04 Dec 2005)
“A Rant about Torture” (16 Feb 2006)
“Taking on Torture” (15 Aug 2006)
Politics and Prosperity 