A Few Shiny Pebbles

On Friday, I read a really clever post by Ferdinand, the Conservative Cat, in which he discussed the way a news report of the bad behavior of two policemen was written, pointing it out as a way that journalists can slant the news independently of what actually may have happened. Then he went on to discuss another problem that went well beyond such journalistic tricks. He compared our options when we don’t know the extent of a situation, such as our ignorance of how far bad behavior goes on a police force, to our options in other situations, such as when we didn’t know the full extent of the Menu Foods pet food contamination:

[T]he various people who buy food for their companion animals all came up with different ways to change their shopping habits in order to avoid accidental poisoning. We could do that because pet food is not provided by the government, nor is it a utility where you're forced to buy from a single provider. . . . . The police force, however, is part of the government, and when it screws up, we can't temporarily switch to another policing agency until the extent of the mess is confirmed. . . . . No one is ever going to privatize the police, but it's important to realize that when we move something from the private sector to the public sector, we lose that important tool for dealing with incompetence or failure—the Power of Choice.

The whole post set my mind working. Then, Sunday I saw the very clever post by Ed Morrissey, at Captain's Quarters, about the problem Britain faces with the new Iranian “hostage” crisis. This already ugly problem is especially exacerbated, he points out, by the fact the English can do little in terms of economic sanctions to Iran because the British economic system is tied into and controlled by the EU, and the EU isn’t going to modify its vastly profitable economic ties with Iran.

The European Union declined last night to provide any substantial support to Britain in its standoff with Iran over the captured sailors and Marines. While the European foreign ministers called for Iran to release its captives, they refused to offer any sanctions on the Iranians. . . . . . . . Once again, Europe shows that it has no sense and no courage. That fourteen-billion-pound trade with Iran will come in handy when the mullahs get the bomb. . . . . They have told Blair and the Brits that the Iranians are their problem, not Europe's. . . . . It may finally dawn on Britain that the failure to have an independent trade policy has hamstrung them politically and militarily. Iran attacked a British ship, and yet Britain cannot stop trading with Iran because Brussels controls their trade policies. When one gives up sovereignty, these are the consequences.

When we move from the private sector to the public sector, and from a national power base to a international base, we face all sorts of crucial problems. These are important kinds of problems, especially as we are now in a position of delegating power to different levels of control, and we have to watch carefully. Every time the control of a part of our lives moves to a higher position in the world hierarchy, we lose more choice, more individuality, and with that loss we face also the increasing danger of coercion and an increasing danger of punishment or of the loss of justice. I believe that I can state with certainty that there are major forces in the world that are pushing the private into the public realm, and the national into larger and larger international groupings; and while it is often portrayed as the inevitable drive of History, I believe that that force is not only not inevitable, but that it must be vigorously fought against. This driving force is one of the primary battlefields of the War on Culture.

You might ask, just how can a force be a battlefield?

Just as humans explore the physical world and its inhabitants, they also explores ideas, those insubstantial worlds created by the mysteries of mind and spirit. These explorations take place in words, in writing, in reading, in the education of the classroom, the lecture halls of the university, in the office and shop, in conversations on the street, in the home, and so on. People live, run their lives, have their lives run, and even die because of words on a piece of paper, because of complex and difficult arguments in books and in classrooms and in dimly lit rooms late at night in obscure government office buildings. Words on paper guide people when they fight wars and make peace, build bombs and jet planes and medical operating rooms, send people to prisons and to gulags and to death camps, when they do any of the billions of purposeful, skilled, and structured activities of the human world.

These words find themselves combining and becoming forces in religion, philosophy, law, government, music, art, literature, education, science, technology, hobbies, recreation, social usage, vows and curses and every other activity the human brain and body gets involved with. There are “territorial wars” in these arenas, too. We need to recognize the fact that the world is a vast battleground in which great philosophies struggle for the minds and souls of man.

Because of this, one of the important tasks for us is to recognize actual battlefield experiences and locations when they show up. To even recognize a battlefield, we often need to learn where it corresponds to something more compact, more easily seen in its main elements, to see the pattern in a way that produces information and possibilities. Luckily, there are others following their own paths in this journey of exploration, and we can learn from them, from the patterns that they pull together out of the blooming, buzzing confusion of the world. In the past few days, both the Conservative Cat and Ed Morrissey separated a vital issue from the disguises it wore. The force that tries to push everything into the political, everything into the control of larger political conclaves, does not standout, naked, for all to see and recognize. The Conservative Cat points out in the same post that we will be facing the issue of whether or not we want government-controlled health care before the next election, and we had better realize what it would mean to have the choice of where you get health care, the kind of care you get, etc., taken away from the individual and nationalized into a bureaucracy:

These kinds of choices tend to fade away under a one-size-fits-all public system. It's a very high price to pay. We are willing to pay that price for the police force, because enforcing the law is the most important function of a government. We have just discovered how wonderful it is that we haven't paid that price for pet food. It's important to remember that we want to pay that price as infrequently as possible.

Battlefields wear many disguises in a Culture War. We are at war—a real, harsh, bitterly fought war—but such is the nature of this particular cultural war, the disputants are publicly at odds over whether there even is an actual war going on or not. Regular wars, the kind that lead to violence, are well under way long before the first battlefield shot is fired—usually the war simmers beneath the surface of life before exploding into open violence. In order for a war to ignite, there must be fuel throughout the society. This fuel can take many forms, but whatever the form, the fuel itself is in the realm of ideas, just as with a Culture War. People fight for reasons, for concepts, for ideas, however various and with whatever validity those ideas exist. Before every shooting war, the fuel—the justifying ideas—is already in existence.

Changes that occur slowly over time, with no shooting war, can be as deadly. Though it moves slowly, the corrosion of rust can destroy as savagely, as brutally, as can a sudden conflagration. Consider the change that took place over a period of years in Germany during the 1930s. On one day, a German Jewish woman walks quietly along the street to her cousin’s house. A month later, she is arrested on the same street and trucked away, never to be seen again. No shot is fired, no plane strafes the ground, no tanks roll along the cobblestones. The act is carried out in the guise of legality, but the social definition of “the legal” has been quietly changed to include kidnapping and death camps. A Culture War can blindside you with its sly silence and quiet tread. Its slow corruption can spread like a rot, destroying from within until one day the façade crumbles and falls away, leaving only the grotesque mockery of what had once seemed robust and full of life.

Slowly, over the last few decades it has become a commonplace of life that there are suicide bombers going after innocent targets. Even in areas of the world where no shooting war is going on at the moment, the main-stream media takes its photos of the slaughter and reports the numbers of dead and wounded as though they were a normal part of life, just another ho-hum sigh of the mundane. Civilian and military hostages are taken and the discussion is no longer “How dare they?” or “This is monstrous!” or “Blockade them, now!” Instead, from the beginning, the media calmly discusses what “price” will be paid to obtain their release, and who benefits the most, and other like issues, quite as though it were a fraternity house nabbing the mascot of a rival team. If hostages are released, the media even may report that they were released “unharmed”, as though being taken and imprisoned by people willing to keep you imprisoned for years, willing as a last resort to torture and kill you, does you no harm if you are freed instead.

The “legal” and the “commonplace” are being redefined. The private and the individual have been transformed into the political, and the political is growing into the global. Such concepts as Liberty, Choices, Self-Determination, Small Enterprise, the Community Level of Participation, Personal Health Care, Voluntary Risk-Assuming, Morally-justified Warfare, Patriotism, and so many others are being attacked on widespread battlefields in the name of Compassion, Anti-Elitism, Multi-Culturalism, Tolerance, Equality, Security, Peace, Globalism, and other word-weapons of the Left.

One of the first steps in this Culture War is for you to recognize and acknowledge your own individuality. You are unique. Never in the history of the world has there been someone just like you. Never in the future will there ever again be someone just like you. Sometimes we hear so much about “The People” that we are in danger of forgetting that there is really no such thing as The People—there are only individuals. And every individual is uniquely filled with promise. As Martha Graham wrote:

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening which is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.

Human beings are not modular. One-size-fits-all solutions are the Enemy in disguise. Giving up your national sovereignty to groups of nations takes away your individual potential for Justice.

We all must recognize this growing battlefield and join the fight. While we can.

One of the problems with excerpting a juicy selection of material from a post on the Conservative Cat Blog is that the whole post is usually brilliant, and everything it contains is pertinent. I’m going to excerpt some, but please go there for the rest.. (By the way, the computer Dictionary says, “enthymeme” means “an argument that assumes the truth of one or more premises and therefore omits them from the logical sequence.”) In The Conservative Cat’s The Cat’s Meow, “Outrage Politics”, we read:

Cynicism is not a substitute for evidence.

One of the most common fallacies in political discussion is something Bruce calls the cynical enthymeme. It usually goes something like this.

* Premise 1: If A is greedy and immoral, then A would do B.
* Premise 2: A did B.
* Conclusion: Therefore A is greedy and immoral.

[. . . ]Now, as presented above, the logic is clearly faulty. If X implies Y and Y is true, it doesn't tell you anything about X. For example, if it rains, then the sidewalk gets wet; however, if you see a wet sidewalk, it could have been caused by an overzealous lawn sprinkler instead of inclement weather.

This is so important. Faulty logic means you’ve demonstrated nothing. And since often this fallacy appears when people are judging other people, it is essential to recognize that when it comes to the actions of people, then you have even more problem with this kind of false “logic” pattern, because a person might hose the sidewalk at any time, and for any reason. Sprinklers and rain are pretty much modular, and they wet sidewalks by happenstance. Human beings are not modular, and they might wet the sidewalk just to irritate you, or worse. (Actually, since human beings can lie, bluff, behave irrationally, and even give you the middle finger, even properly used logic needs more evidence to provide a valid basis for judgment.) The Conservative Cat goes on:

What enables people to use the cynical enthymeme and get away with it is a third premise hidden so deep in the human brain that most people don't even know it exists.

* Premise 3: People who disagree with me are bad.

Yes! The moment I read this, I remembered a significant instance of Premise 3 in operation, and to discuss it I want to add an obvious (and equally faulty logic) corollary to Premise 3: Corollary 3: People who disagree with me are the ones doing the bad things that are being done.

In a way the following example is a group misuse of reasoning powers, and all because of the lurking Premise 3 and its Corollary 3, or P3/C3. (Okay, It sounds like a small mobile robot, but really, it’s a useful shorthand.)

In 2005, I read a study saying that the more religion there was in a Western industrialized country, the more dysfunctional the society was, and that the United States was the most religious and the most dysfunctional. Since I wasn’t yet a warrior in the Culture War, I sighed and ignored it. Then, In last December’s Scientific American I saw an article that mentioned the study positively. I was upset, because there are major problems involved in taking multiple census studies and polls done by other people and using the data to make judgments. (You know the type: The United States has more tornadoes than any other country; the United States has more MacDonalds than any other country. There must be a causal relationship between tornadoes and MacDonalds.) And this doesn’t even begin to deal with the status of the data sources. Like the wet sidewalk and the rain, I believe that this study isn’t science, and shouldn’t be mentioned in Scientific American. But once again, I shrugged my shoulders and ignored it.

I shouldn’t have ignored it, We’re in a Culture War, and when someone launches a P3/C3 at us we have to take appropriate defensive measures. If a work claims to be scientific, we can’t just say, “They’re at it again,” and shrug and go on with our life. Policies, laws, regulations, penalties, curricula for schools, other studies, politically correct speech determinations, grades and degrees at education facilities, and many more aspects of our lives, even aspects that are life-threatening and life-destroying, are often created from data and “findings” in P3/C3 studies. Where people may be looking for something to bolster their own prejudices, this kind of P3/C3 study can spread, carrying the false imprimatur of “Truth” as it goes, often becoming the basis for other P3/C3 work.

If what propagates a belief is really science, the motivation doesn’t matter. But if the belief is fallaciously reached to provide comfort and impetus to an emotional need, and then propagated because the emotional need is shared by others, it is not science or fact and it must be courageously fought, no matter what the belief is, or who is comforted by it. It is imperative that we examine information that is written first in important journals and press releases from labs and universities and colleges, and then is also quoted by radio, television, and other Main Stream Media outlets. If it furthers an anti-American, or Progressive or Leftist cause, or if it tries to destroy a pro-American, or Conservative belief or value, be wary. This is true of even the “hardest” science or mathematics whenever it becomes enmeshed with medicine, biology, or a soft science, such as a social science, statistics, probability, polling, and so forth. Normal criticisms rarely reach the level where they carry any weight with the MSM or are even mentioned. The criticism has to be on many sites to reach the critical mass necessary to get the word out. Had the criticisms of the Paul study carried weight in the Fall of 2005, I wouldn’t have found the positive article about it in the December 2006 Scientific American.

In 2005, Gregory S. Paul study, “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies”, appeared in the Journal of Religion and Society. (I recommend reading the whole thing.) Paul writes that, because in the 20th Century prosperous Western nations (other than the U.S.) became basically secular, and also because religious people believe that a belief in benevolent God is necessary for a healthy society, then [My emphasis]:

A quantitative cross-national analysis is feasible because a large body of survey and census data on rates of religiosity, secularization, and societal indicators has become available in the prosperous developed democracies including the United States. [. . . ]The primary intent is to present basic correlations of the elemental data. Some conclusions that can be gleaned from the plots are outlined. This is not an attempt to present a definitive study that establishes cause versus effect between religiosity, secularism and societal health.

Nonetheless, G.S. Paul then proceeds to write as though he was establishing a causal relationship through correlation. And what is his data base? [My emphasis.]

The approximately 800 million mostly middle class adults and children act as a massive epidemiological experiment that allows hypotheses that faith in a creator or disbelief in evolution improves or degrades societal conditions to be tested on an international scale.

Paul acts as though the 800 million people in the prosperous developed democracies were in a controlled experiment and he is making correlations and conclusions from it. But when he cites some of the statistical studies and polls he is taking his data from, they turn out to be an collection of polls, census data, etc,, many of them surveys where participants are asked opinions on a spread of choices, along with other data. He then writes [My emphasis]:

In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies. The most theistic prosperous democracy, [. . .] [t]he United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a “shining city on the hill” to the rest of the world is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health. […] Although they are by no means utopias, the populations of secular democracies are clearly able to govern themselves and maintain societal cohesion. Indeed, the data examined in this study demonstrates that only the more secular, pro-evolution democracies have, for the first time in history, come closest to achieving practical “cultures of life” that feature low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion. [. . .] The U.S. is therefore the least efficient western nation in terms of converting wealth into cultural and physical health.

And I’m not the only one who thinks this study is not scientific. As one example, I came across “So That's the Reason: A scientist blames America's problems on religion,” by Theodore Dalrymple, (a contributing editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal) October 14, 2005. He describes the study and then cites numerous details of conflicting data, but my interest in this, other than as another criticism of Paul’s study, is confirmation that the information has spread to MSM outlets:

Mr. Paul's study has been covered in newspapers from Australia to England and lauded smugly in academic circles. As one University of Southern California student wrote in the Daily Trojan: "The last thing we [Americans] need is any more blind faith."

And, Dalrymple believes that there’s a motivation of hatred behind Paul’s flawed study:

The crudity and selectivity of Mr. Paul's thinking betrays an animus not only toward religion but toward the U.S., or at least toward American society. [. . .] To present America, even by implication, as an intellectual and cultural wasteland is an inaccuracy that can derive only from a visceral hostility that is not conducive to honesty. [. . . ] Mr. Paul's paper strikes me as an attitude masquerading as a search after truth. And perhaps I should end by declaring an interest: I have no religious belief.

This is a case of P3/C3, a fallacious report that meets the emotional needs of the one doing the study. How can I say this for certain? In a brief segment of a radio show in Australia, “The World Today”, (which to its credit had a professor on who opposed Paul), a reporter, Julia Lamb, asks Paul why he wrote the study [My emphasis]:

GREGORY PAUL: Being a palaeontologist, I've for many years had to deal with the issue of creationism versus evolutionary science in this country. The United States is pretty much the only prosperous democracy where religion is still highly popular, with about two-thirds of the population absolutely believing in God, and creationism being very popular in among half of society. In all the other prosperous democracies religion is much less popular now and evolution is highly accepted. So it's an issue, it's a problem I had to deal with. JULIA LIMB: Mr Paul says there was plenty of data available which allowed him to compare the level of dysfunction in prosperous democracies, based on the popularity of religion.

[. . . ]

JULIA LIMB: Mr Paul concedes the problems faced in the US cannot be blamed on religious beliefs alone, but he says there's no denying that there are serious dysfunctions in the American society of the 21st century.

GREGORY PAUL: Well I don't say it's just religion. I mean I never would say that, and this is an initial study, but there are reasons to be very concerned. For example, in the United States, guns are unusually popular. There's very high private ownership. The people who advocate gun ownership the most in this country is the religious right. The phrase, "God, gun and the Bible". The way to put it is the United States is the only first world nation that retains rights to religiosity and scepticism for evolution that otherwise are found only in the second and third world.

I think that this is the perfect glimpse into Paul’s mind. This is a prime example of the Conservative Cat’s Premise 3: People who disagree with me are bad, and my Corollary 3: People who disagree with me are doing the bad things that are being done.

It is a clear and present danger when an example of fallacious reasoning moves from a prestigious journal to be acclaimed in the common media and at universities and colleges. Like a weed, it spreads and propagates, and ends up being orthodoxy, or, “truth”.

Consider the journal called Skeptic, seriously devoted to debunking things like bad science, the paranormal, superstitions, religion, belief in God, and the like, usually in experiments about ESP or bending spoons or bleeding statues, etc. Yet here we find an article based on the Paul study, using it as accepted accurate and true knowledge. In the Introduction, Michael Shermer, the Publisher and Editor of Skeptic, writes [My emphasis]:

In this article, we report the results of a study examining the relationship between a nation’s religiosity and its “moral health.” The received wisdom would lead one to predict a positive correlation [. . .] In fact, that appears not to be the case, and the example of the United States is most striking; Americans are among the most religious people in the Western world, and yet we have among the highest rates of homicide, abortion, and teen pregnancies. To the extent that these measures are related to something that might be called “national moral health,” the intuitive thesis that links religiosity to morality would seem to be gainsaid. For details, read on … and pass along these articles to your friends and colleagues and encourage them to subscribe to Skeptic and eSkeptic.

The article itself, “Religious Belief & Societal Health: New Study Reveals that Religion Does Not Lead to a Healthier Society”, by Matthew Provonsha, echoes these beliefs [my emphasis]:

It is commonly held that religion makes people more just, compassionate, and moral, but a new study suggests that the data belie that assumption. In fact, at first glance it would seem, religion has the opposite effect.[. . .] [The study] reveals clear correlations between various indicators of social strife and religiosity, showing that whether religion causes social strife or not, it certainly does not prevent it.

The author of the study, Gregory S. Paul, writes that it is [. . .] not an attempt to present a definitive study that establishes cause versus effect between religiosity, secularism and societal health.” However, the study does show a direct correlation between religiosity and dysfunctionality, which if nothing else, disproves the widespread belief that religiosity is beneficial, that secularism is detrimental, and that widespread acceptance of evolution is harmful.

[. . .] Surveys show that many Americans agree “their church-going nation is an exceptional, God blessed, ‘shining city on the hill’ that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly skeptical world.” This assumption flies in the face of the actual statistical evidence that Paul examined.

[. . .] With a database of 800 million people, this study is far more reliable than results based on smaller sample sizes used in other such studies. The data are also current and extensive, collected in the middle and latter half of the 1990s and early 2000s from the International Social Survey Programme, the UN Development Programme, the World Health Organization, Gallup, and other well-documented sources.

The article is long, and repeats the “conclusions” found in the study, including the “data base of 800 million people”. When the author admits “there is no clear answer” in the last paragraph, it itself is an excellent example of P3/C3, he is still skewing the “conclusions” against America and against religious belief [Again, emphasis mine]:

The question is one of causation, and there is no clear answer. Whether religion leads directly to dysfunctionality, or religions merely flourish in dysfunctional societies, neither conclusion from this study flatters religion. The first tells us that religion is a hindrance to the development of moral character, and the second that religion hinders progress by distracting us from our troubles (with imaginary solutions to real problems). This study is complicated enough that I do not think that we can draw definitive negative conclusions about religion. But we can at least conclude, contrary to popular belief in this country, that it is not a given that religious societies are better, healthier, or more moral. What we can be clear about from this study is that highly religious societies can be dysfunctional, whereas by comparison secular societies in which evolution is largely accepted display real social cohesion and societal well-being. As is always the case in science, more data and additional research will help clarify our conclusions.

Despite there being “no clear answer”, the Paul study is not far here from anointed truth, with 800 million participants. Michael Shermer, also writes a column for the journal Scientific American, not-surprisingly called “Skeptic”. In the December 2006 Scientific American issue is: “Bowling for God: Is religion good for society? Science's definitive answer: it depends” by Michael Shermer. Thus, the Paul study moves on, falsely gaining the imprimatur of Scientific Truth, even if Shermer starts his article with the words: “Is religion a necessary component of social health? The data are conflicting”. [Once again, my emphasis]:

On the one hand, in a 2005 study [. . .] independent scholar Gregory S. Paul found an inverse correlation between religiosity [. . .] and societal health [. . . .] in 18 developed democracies. [. . .]

“On the one hand,” actually sounds promising. But if you expect the next paragraph to start: “On the other hand, Paul may be wrong,” you’ll be disappointed. Shermer goes on [my emphasis.]:

On the other hand, Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks argues in Who Really Cares (Basic Books, 2006) that when it comes to charitable giving and volunteering, numerous quantitative measures debunk the myth of "bleeding heart liberals" and "heartless conservatives." Conservatives donate 30 percent more money than liberals (even when controlled for income), give more blood and log more volunteer hours. [ . . . ] In terms of societal health, charitable givers are 43 percent more likely to say they are "very happy" than nongivers and 25 percent more likely than nongivers to say their health is excellent or very good.

This is the “other hand”? Suddenly we are discussing Conservatives and Liberals, and societal health is measured by people saying whether they are happy or in good health on a poll? More from Shermer [my emphasis.]:

The theory of "social capital" may help resolve these disparate findings. [. . .]

Note now the Paul study is “findings”. Anyway, at the last moment, Shermer mentions that there may be other possibilities, but I believe it is worded in a way more to “cover all bases”. You must judge for yourself. Note that at the end, he can’t help but throw in a pet theory of his own. [My emphasis]:

Religious social capital leads to charitable generosity and group membership but does comparatively worse than secular social capital for such ills as homicides, STDs, abortions and teen pregnancies. Three reasons suggest themselves: first, these problems have other causes entirely; second, secular social capital works better for such problems; third, these problems are related to what I call moral capital, or the connections within an individual between morality and behavior that are best fostered within families [. . .] secular or sacred.

Remember that I am writing about the idea that, as with Paul’s study, P3/C3 “science” is pushing out good science because of an agenda shared by the Left, the Leftist Universities, and the Main Stream Media. I believe we can’t afford any longer to merely grimace and shrug and then go on to other things.

We have to find examples and point them out, so that we learn to recognize their impact and work against their propagation as truth.

In order to fight for what we believe in, we must be clear about (1) what it is that we are defending, and (2) what our Leftist enemies are trying to do to us to bring about their own utopian system, which also means, (3) analyzing what they say for what they might really mean. I want to try to translate this citation from a Scientific American article into terms that I can use to see what lies behind the words.

In an earlier post, I cited excerpts from an essay I had read in a 1991 issue of one of the premier scientific magazines in the world: “Essay: Marx Wasn’t All Wrong” by Nathan Rosenberg, Scientific American, December 1991, page 158:

Perhaps we should hesitate before consigning Marx to the dustbin of history. Recent events in the Soviet Union are being interpreted as evidence of the final breakdown of Marxism, but one might question such a reading. . . . . Marx’s writings essentially analyze the historical process by which capitalist societies grow and become transformed. Marx needs to be disengaged from the disastrous 20th-century economic experiments with socialism because in his view of history socialism would emerge only out of advanced capitalist societies. Socialism would arise after capitalist societies became wracked by their “internal contradictions.” Socialist societies were destined, according to Marx, not only to resolve the internal contradictions of capitalism but to inherit the immense productive apparatus that mature capitalist societies were incapable of utilizing. When socialism finally appeared on the world stage, it would immediately take possession of a highly productive industrial technology, and it would administer that technology far more capably than the social system that had generated the technology. Thus, in at least one limited but essential respect, the collapse of socialist economies serves to prove that Marx was right, not that he was wrong. . . . . [. . . .] . . . . Marx may be said to have finessed the “equity versus efficiency” trade-off by assigning to capitalism the historical role of providing efficiency and to a later socialism the role of delivering equity.

Look again at this part of the quotation from the Scientific American essay:

Socialism would arise after capitalist societies became wracked by their “internal contradictions.” . . . . When socialism finally appeared on the world stage, it would immediately take possession of a highly productive industrial technology, and it would administer that technology far more capably than the social system that had generated the technology.

Let me translate this:
“Socialism would arise”—means “socialism will take over. . .”

“after capitalist societies became wracked”—means “after the enemies of America have succeeded in driving our morality, religions, sexual behavior, etc, into their own image of what it should be . . .”

“by their “internal contradictions.”—means “by the problems the enemy has caused in trying to change the American system of values into the enemy’s system of values—which does actually produce contradictions—but they are not the contradictions of the American philosophy; they are rather the contradictions that now exist because so much of the American philosophy is being destroyed.”

“When socialism finally appeared on the world stage,”—means “when socialists finally take off their disguises and finally take control. ..”

“it would immediately take possession of a highly productive industrial technology,”—means “socialists would immediately steal the economy, the economic means of production, and all property, and everything else it could get its hands on to be controlled by themselves, the leaders of the new Communist United States,”

“and it would administer that technology far more capably,”—means “the enemies of America believe that they are better at controlling everything. They believe that they know everything there is to know about how you should live your life and how what once was your property or your home or your business should be controlled. Big Brother Knows Best.”

“than the social system that had generated the technology.”—means “the socialists know that it was the capitalist, democratic, Bill of Rights, Checks and Balances, religious, moral, trational America that produced the wonder of the ages—the richest, most technologically advanced, and freest society in the history of the world, but hey! Big Brother Can Do It Better.”

What the heck! Let’s look at a little more of the Scientific American quote:

Marx needs to be disengaged from the disastrous 20th-century economic experiments with socialism because in his view of history socialism would emerge only out of advanced capitalist societies. . . . . . . . . Marx may be said to have finessed the “equity versus efficiency” trade-off by assigning to capitalism the historical role of providing efficiency and to a later socialism the role of delivering equity.

This is one of the scariest segments of the whole essay. Let’s translate some more:

“Marx needs to be disengaged from the disastrous 20th-century economic experiments with socialism”—means “Okay, even the most die-hard Communist, socialist, Leftist has to admit that socialism has failed disastrously everywhere it has been tried. . .”

“because in his view of history socialism would emerge only out of advanced capitalist societies.”—means “actually, Marx really did think that socialism would arise from more advanced societies. That is true. Marx thought that it would come that way because, in his view of history, capitalism was needed to build the infrastructure of an advanced society—oh, you know—capitalism was necessary for the small things like building the greatest industrial, medical, social, free society on earth. Trivialities, but necessary for Big Brother to take over after the targeted country became the greatest industrial, medical, social, free society on earth, because as the first part of this showed, socialism has been disastrous at doing anything good itself.”

“Marx may be said to have finessed the “equity versus efficiency” trade-off”—(I love this one!)—means “Marx didn’t see how everyone could be “equal” and yet the system become efficient. This is probably because (1) someone who can work harder and produce more in the same amount of time sometimes earns more money than someone who is unable or unwilling to do as well, and (2) someone who can produce a computer program or an automobile or a piece of art or has an athletic or musical talent that lots of people want to pay lots of money for will probably do better than someone who produces things less popular. (3) Capitalism rewards effort. (4) Capitalism encourages individuals in entrepreneurial, technological, productive growth. (5) Etc. These conditions are viewed as unfair by some people—of course, a lot of them are the people who assume that they, in the role of Big Brother, will do brilliantly and therefore will at that time deserve the best homes, the most money, and private stores so that they can buy beautiful things (which people of their taste can appreciate) and not have to wait in lines (with those people that they, by the brilliance of their Big Brother mind, control). This, naturally, Big Brother knows is fair.”

“by assigning to capitalism the historical role of providing efficiency”—means “Marx just knew that socialism wouldn’t be able to produce anything really useful. It takes capitalism to transform the world into something wonderful.”

“and to a later socialism the role of delivering equity.”—means “and after the enemies of America take control, Big Brother will make certain that all the non-Communist-Party people are treated equally and fairly. They will all be the same: equally controlled, fairly allowed to take what Big Brother considers ‘fair’, equally unable to individually do anything to better their life or change the circumstances that were decided by others to be their lot in life. The people in the highest power are, of course, equal in their own way, and they will equally live their lives in special, luxury circumstances that they themselves have equal access to.”

Okay. That makes sense.

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At the Barking Moonbat Blog, a really great blog—check it out!—the Skipper has a post listing some of the European reactions to the Virginia Tech murders. As to be expected, they mostly deal with how rotten we are in America and how we have a lax gun control system. It is a matter of “the usual suspects”, or in this case, “the usual griping”. When I read the quote from the German Bild, I thought it was interesting for several reasons (Emphasis mine.):

Now we will probably begin discussing the overly lax gun laws in the United States. There, buying a machine gun is often easier than getting a driver’s license. And a new ban on violent games and killer videos will also be put back on the agenda. But in the end, nothing is likely to happen. And the next killer already lives somewhere among us. But we have little reason to point an accusing finger at the Americans. Despite strict gun legislation, we (in Germany) have experienced the school shootings in Erfurt and Emsdetten. We have to consider the problems in our society. And we have to take care of our fellow humans.

The reporter is wrong, of course, about machine guns, but that’s a typical gripe. What I find more interesting is that it actually mentions the fact that even with their strict gun control they have had such school shootings in Germany, and that it means that they have to “consider the problems in our [German] society”. I would normally think, “Maybe there’s hope that people will start realizing it’s not the guns that kill people,” and other such hopelessly optimistic thoughts. But instead, I remembered two other articles I read recently. They bring a spotlight to bear on the line that I emphasized in the quote: “And the next killer already lives somewhere among us.”

The first is an excerpt from an article about how the EU is pressuring the UN into a world-wide ban on the Death Penalty:

The European Union has vowed to step up efforts aimed at a global ban of the death penalty in the wake of the recent executions of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and two of his aides.

German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said on Tuesday the bloc was planning to submit a resolution to the United Nations to put the moratorium on the agenda of the UN General Assembly.

"We all believe that the death penalty is something that should be rejected," her colleague, German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, told reporters after informal talks with his and Zypries' EU counterparts in the eastern German city of Dresden.

"The EU will continue to campaign for a worldwide abolition," he stressed.

I guess even murdering, burning, using a wood-chipper to kill, torture, rape, biochemical murder methods, and all of the other means Saddam Hussein used to destroy and murder people still isn’t enough for the Death Penalty according to the sanctimonious EU and others. This really sickens me. It’s bad enough that they think imprisonment is a proper penalty for all murders, not even separating out the Saddam Husseins of the world. But, combine this idea of imprisonment as the highest penalty with the knowledge about the fact—and it is a fact—that the next mass killer in Germany (or anywhere else) is already alive and paying attention to decisions on crime and punishment, makes the information in the next article obscene [Emphasis mine.]:

“GERMANS FREE RADICAL KILLER AFTER 24 YRS” Reuters

March 26, 2007 -- BERLIN - Germany freed ex-Red Army Faction militant Brigitte Mohnhaupt yesterday, more than 24 years after imprisoning her for her role in radical left-wing killings that rocked West Germany in the 1970s.

Mohnhaupt, 57, co-led the RAF, aka the Baader-Meinhof Gang, which left an indelible mark on this nation through a series of abductions, murders, bombings and robberies.

A court last month ordered Mohnhaupt, who was sentenced to five life terms for kidnappings and murders that peaked during the so-called German Autumn of 1977, freed on five years' probation after completing the minimum [life] term under German law.

Her release comes as President Horst Koehler weighs pardoning her colleague Christian Klar, also in prison 24 years.

Founded by Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, the RAF rose from the student protests and anti-Vietnam War movement of the late '60s. Suspected of killing 34 people from 1972 to 1991, it disbanded in 1998.

Five life terms for kidnappings and murders. What was it the Bild reporter said? “And the next killer already lives somewhere among us.” Well, yes, he does.

And he must be laughing his head off.

In 2004, historian, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., wrote in the Los Angeles Times about presidential vision in times of crisis. He quoted FDR: “All our great presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified."

I believe that this is one of those times. We are going to elect a new president in 2008, and that means we are going to elect a specific future for America and for the world. This coming election and its aftermath will be studied for generations to come with the intensity that the decade before World War II and the war itself commands. Just as with the 1930s and 1940s, our future promises to get a great deal worse before it gets better. How much worse, and for how long, will be determined by our votes. It would help if we tried to get it right.

I looked for the Schlesinger article because it was quoted in a piece by Steven Warshawsky on May 7, “Where Is The Republican Vision?” (American Thinker Blog). Warshawsky’s excellent complaint was that the Republican presidential debate shows that the candidates lack vision, and that since the American people both left and right want change, then, (emphasis mine):

The candidate who is best able to harness this mood and attach it to a coherent political program is going to be our next president. [. . . ] No one is proposing a "Contract with America" or an "ownership society"—a bold, principled plan for moving our country in a direction other than the same broadly liberal trajectory in which we have been heading for the last 40 years.

In a political campaign, it is important to devise a powerful model, a vivid metaphor to bring the contest to each mind and eye. This coming presidential campaign is an important time for a detailed analysis of visions, and for a striking, revelatory metaphor for where we are going and what we are trying to do. It is most definitely a moment when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation have to be clarified.

Warshawsky quoted from Schlesinger:

The president of the United States, wrote Henry Adams, the most brilliant of American historians, "resembles the commander of a ship at sea. He must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek." The Constitution awards presidents the helm, but creative presidents must possess and communicate the direction in which they propose to take the country. The port they seek is what the first President Bush dismissively called "the vision thing."

Schlesinger’s is the image of a President steering the Ship of State toward a glorious visionary port. This is a venerated image, and both political parties have used it to their advantage. A Ship of State carries the imprimatur of risk and adventure: Each nation setting forth upon the seas of Time. Now, a metaphor is a powerful enchanter of the mind. It captures worlds of thought into the framing of an image. How easily we take the that surface metaphor for what it seems, and rarely look to its implications and details.

Is the Ship of State part of the GOP vision for the future? It has occurred to me that there is a second universe of meaning in the term the Ship of State, and I believe that this second meaning is the perfect metaphor to clarify why the Democrats, the Left, should not be elected to guide us into our future. Ironically enough, it carries with it the same negative characteristics as a metaphor to display the fundamental reasons why an Islamofascist state is wrong.

THE COLLECTIVIST SHIPS OF STATE

If we look closer, we can see that all ships have a common form that dictates their use: They‘re self-contained and limited. I believe that the great Ideologies, the Utopias, of the Leftists and the Islamofascists fit perfectly into the closed metaphor of a ship at sea. Whether it is one of the collectivist states of the Left in Europe, or the extremists like China, North Korea, Vietnam, the old USSR, and Cuba, or an all-encompassing theocracy of the Islamofascists, each is the image of one single, mammoth Craft, the whole State on the Ship, the Captain at the Helm, the vast Crew at various tasks set by internal mandates of their Ideology, the Passengers along to survive the best they can—and Pay. This is no pleasure cruise.

I believe these Utopian ideologies must see the world this way. Their basic philosophical stand demands a zerosum Ship where everything is politicized. (At its extreme, there is no way out. It is a prison, disguised as a State. There is no private property, except for the fact that the ship itself belongs to the leadership.) The Passengers are separated according to Identity Politics into collective groups of race, sex, economic class, and religion. The ship’s Ideology is the final arbiter, the legislator and judge, the jailor and executioner. It sets up the barriers that people face, not nature. There is no free movement between the decks. The rules—social engineering, micro-managing, centralize all power. Needs are defined and limited. Those grudgingly allowed to ply a private trade—pay more and more of the cost of “services” for everyone.

And though some passengers look longingly at the shore, wishing for space to stretch their spirits, to create a vaster world, the State keep them all on “onboard” the Ideology. (At its extreme, with a the Berlin Wall or North Korean border, and jumping ship is often penalized by death.) No matter what they promise about human rights, it is only the small number of leadership members who soar to the skies on occasion.

One of the hallmarks of a Utopia is the need for harmony, for stasis, for everyone keeping to an assigned place in the Whole. (A hat-tip to Bruce and Ferdy, the Conservative Cat, for pointing out to me this crucial need that a Utopia has for stasis.) The deck and section you are born into defines you, “authenticates” you, puts you in “harmony” with others in your group. The “inauthentic” becomes a danger.

Their catch-phrase is equality of results. (Except for the leadership group, who of course need more because of the arduous work in running the ship.) All who dare to excel are punished, because “It isn’t fair.” (Except of course for those the leadership choose to elevate because of a talent in an area recognized by the State as appropriate.)

“You’re only entitled to your fair share,” they say, although they never quite define just what this “fair share” means. They call each deviation from their norms a moral crime to all. They create categories such as “hate crimes”, “speech codes”, “acts that offend”, and institute thought police. Any wish for private gain by individuals is sinful selfishness. And any desire to spend the funds you earn yourself on causes self-defined by you is also selfishness, and is, of course, unfair.

They turn one labeled-group against another with the politics of envy and resentment. They call the favored Passenger groups “the People” and “the Victims”—allowing them to label the rest as undeserving and unfair, who deserve to be forced to surrender their individuality, to conform to the Ideology.

The Utopians are trapped by their Ideological Metaphor of Life, their Ships of State all eventually Titanics—however different their outward form, they all share the inner structure of the tyranny. Throughout the world those who have patterned thusly their Ships of State—those who have made a single Ideological Ship of vast complexity—are striking Icebergs set there by Truths they can’t escape.

I believe that more and more the United States is growing into such a single PC Ship of State. As Warshawsky wrote in his complaint about the candidates, no one has “a bold, principled plan for moving our country in a direction other than the same broadly liberal trajectory in which we have been heading for the last 40 years.” That Leftist trajectory is busy shaping the United States with the contour of a ship. But is this America? Surely America cannot be encompassed within the confinements of the concept of a single Ship! The largest imagined ship on Earth is much too small to span the giant that lives in any one of us, let alone to span the vast unbounded mental frontier that is America.

A DIFFERENT SHIP OF STATE

When I was a child I learned a famous poem about an American Ship of State, written when the North had won the Civil War and Lincoln had been assassinated—“Oh Captain! My Captain” by Walt Whitman. The image Whitman gave was somehow different from the others I’ve quoted here. It spoke of the poet crying to the president, dead on the deck, that: “the prize we sought is won”, “for you the shores a-crowding” and, “The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done; From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;” . . . .

Now, Schlesinger, spoke of the ship as though it carried us all within its frame, aimed at some future visionary state. The difference between this Leftist or Islamofascist ship and that of Walt Whitman is important and revealing. Whitman spoke of the ship as though it had been a battleship, out upon the mission of the Civil War, Captained by Lincoln, and now that the war was won the ship had returned to port to the cheering population who lived onshore.

The Leftist and Islamofascist ships of state would both form closed boundaries to our scope and limit all our dreams to those of an obedience to tyranny, a future of mediocrity and dust. Whitman’s Ship of State is a metaphor that speaks to us of adaptability, of a creation out of the moment’s need. We on the right must find a new and leaner metaphor that will allow the rest of us to shape our own small vessels, our own crafts, individual and free to roam the seas and shores and skies that lure us with their unknown wealth. With home ports, families and communities built by a person’s own volition, it won’t be a centralized giant, where only the top leadership can soar. We need a world of open-end, providing a thousand million crafts—that each may sail through life with a chosen navigation and a goal of our own. For those who need help with their craft, there must be basic blueprints to be fashioned for their use. But with all, freedom is the key.

We still need a new conception of the American past, present, and future, a new metaphor of what America is and can be, but it has to be an image that can provide the scope for all the individuality and achievement that could be ours. A vision that can carry us through the difficult years to come.

But it is not as a single Ship of State.

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When the main leftist collectivist ideologies were written down and studied, they were not embedded in a country at that time. Versions of them were later put into play in countries, such as with Russia, China under Mao, Camodia under Pol Pot, and with Cuba and Venezuela, but the groundwork and establishment of the infrastructure of the ideology had already been argued, clarified and/or made more complex. These versions had developed the sidetracks and idiosyncratic superstructural modifications that appeared when the versions of the ideologies were brought into real countries to become physical realities. In short, everyone knows that communism and socialism and other collectivist “isms” are ideologies, and that their incarnation in a real country is an attempt to put that ideological version into play.

That’s why some people argue that communism has never really been tried in the right circumstances, or some other rationalization of why it doesn’t work when tested in reality. But it’s also why such ideologies are studied as philosophies, why their theoretical “pure” form is developed outside of the rigors of actual reality, why any in reality problems are rationalized, and why their ideas have grown an international following of true believers. The Leftist Collectivist Ideologies are Utopian visions, viewed as historical eventualities. To their true believers they carry the infallibility and imprimatur of both science and religion.

Dennis Prager interviewed the author of a new book on his talk radio program. The book, Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion, by David Gelernter, says that Americanism is a religion. Now, I believe that the more explorations we make about what America is the better. I can’t wait to get Gelernter’s book and read it. One of the things I want to see is where we agree and disagree, but I know that Gelernter is highly intelligent and extremely interesting and I expect to agree with most of what he says, especially after reading the comments on his book on the Amazon listing. But I need to say this:

In my blog so far I have written of utopian collectivist ideologies, of the Left and the Islamofascists, both of which deal with people and societies in terms of groups and a central leadership that controls every aspect of existence (hence “collectivist”). I think that the utopian ideologies are religions and we may as well say it, because they act as though they are the ultimate perfect societies and are inevitable by historical drives. They speak of changing humans into angels or into perfect members of the social order, of removing all the things in human nature that keep people from behaving perfectly. (They also often claim to be scientifically proved or provable or even provable beyond science.) The Leftist Collectivist Ideologies, such as Marxism or Maoism, for example, are teleological and claim historical inevitability and a “religious” infallibility. The Theological Collectivist Ideologies, such as Islamofascism, are already self-identified as society-controlling infallible religions, with all that implies.

But America’s ideology is non-Utopian. It talks of the shining city on the hill, but it does not claim to produce perfection, or to be historically inevitable, nor does it claim to be a science. It wasn’t a physical inevitability, although it encapsulates most of the dreams of those who were or are subjugated and who wished to be free. It is individualistic in scope. It is more like a technology or a craftsman’s design for a practical machine or utility or body of techniques. It doesn’t claim it’s a utopia, just a specially designed machine producing prosperity, freedom, and individualism when used the right way. It acknowledges that people are different and will wish to live lives that bring them individual meaning.

It does not speak of equality of results. It works best at creating what is variously known as the Middle Class, or the Bourgeoisie, and it also produces a significant number of people who become extremely wealthy. Because individualism and freedom are fundamental values, some people will be living on the fringes of society, with values and a way of life allowed by America but out of the norm, and some people will need help to survive, because they are disabled in some way and cannot follow the normal methods of achieving a meaningful life. However, if the “American ideological technology” is allowed to operate efficiently, the society will thrive, and be strong enough and rich enough to be able to help the people who have trouble in an individualistic society.

The individualism of the outcome is determined by each individual who goes through the process, so people will have different meaning in their lives. This is not a “cookie-cutter” process. The “cookie-cutter” model belongs to the collectivist apparatus, which dictates the shape of everyone not in the small leadership group. In collectivisms, the members of the leadership always have a different lifestyle than, and benefits that are forbidden to, the rest of the collective. In a collectivism, “the people” are modular and interchangeable. Their identity is that of the group. In the Islamofascist collective, this modularity can is actually visible in the way women are treated, with their individualism literally erased by the clothing they are forced to wear and the activities that limit their behavior. Under the Taliban Sharia Law, women were not allowed to learn to read, to be employed, the leave their house alone, to sing, to be recognizable outside their home, and so on.

This is why I think it is important to think of America as a groups of ideas and methods. It is heavily involved with Judeo-Christian values and practices, but it is not itself a religion. (Although, as I said, Gelernter’s book will add valuable insight into America, and there is plenty of room for different facets of the whole.)

But I think one of the most important things about America as an ideology is that much of what it is and can be has been overlooked because it did not exist as a written ideology before it became incarnated in a physical country. America could easily have arrived as a written ideology that never found a possibility for incarnation, in which case I believe it would have been studied more and it may have then become nearer to a religion, nearer to a utopian vision. The fact that it was created and embedded into a real country at the same moment made it immediately subject to the problems involved with reality.

We were incredibly lucky that this simultaneity of creation of America and of the United States happened. We Americans reap the benefits of its incredible ideological success. However, there was a price to be paid for that miracle of simultaneous creation. It means that the history of the United States got mixed up with the history of America, and in a free society, where people can freely carry out anti-American acts and write, speak, and teach anti-American views, that mixture is complicated. (This isn’t as much of a problem in full-fledged collectives, where laws forbid anti-collective—or any proAmerican, for instance—acts or writing. The Islamofascists execute or cut off people’s heads, or murder in some other form, when people disagree or act in ways other than approved of by the Jihadists. In the old Soviet Union, a sentence criticizing Stalin, in a letter sent by Solzhenitsyn to a friend, got Solzhenitsyn sent to a gulag for years. This is why collectivists outlaw writing or media of any kind that might present a differing view. That’s why samizdat, secretly handwritten or copied material, was so dangerous.)

This simultaneity of being a philosophy embedded in a real country created something else that is special. When Communism is tried, and it fails, its followers rationalize it with it being tried “in the wrong place”. America, however, succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its creating forefathers. There is no problem with whether American Ideology would succeed—it did. People risk their lives to leave Communist countries. People have always risked their lives to enter America.

This openness in America makes it hard to recognize America’s unique ideological infrastructure, especially when the discussion comes down to people separating out some aspects of America that are “pro-American” and other aspects of America that are “anti-American”. This also leads to arguments that are incredibly complicated as the writer gets enmeshed in keeping track of the conflicts he or she has inadvertently created by conflating the United States with America.

Here is a great example of what I mean when I say that the way it is argued about now, as though there are two Americas, and that that is the separation, rather than the way I separate it. See how complex arguments become. The cover story of the July 19, 1993, National Review, by John Gray, “The Left's last utopia”, 3078 words long, said, in part (here is just part of the article):

[. . .]

IN AMERICA, of course, the decades of postwar hegemony were a period--especially from the early Sixties onward--of an indigenous anti-Americanism at least as virulent as any abroad. Indeed it is tempting to speculate that, in the obsessional intensity of its self-loathing, American anti-Americanism, particularly during and after the Vietnam War, provided a model for anti-Americanism throughout the world, and most obviously for that in Europe. For it was in these years that anti-Americanism acquired its most radical form—as an attack, not just on the policies and institutions that happened then to prevail in the United States, but on the values and way of life most definitive of America itself. For the Sixties radicals, these were individualism and capitalism. For them and their European counterparts, America embodied modernity in its most extreme and threatening form—a culture founded on experimentation and novelty, unencumbered by tradition or history, in which both communal life and individual identity had to be constantly reinvented. It can even be said that America showed the threatening face of modernity to these radicals in what they saw as its pervasive anomie—in the felt lack of any common or authoritative meaning of life itself. Whether they knew it or not--and some undoubtedly did—the radical critics of America were critics of the modem age of which America is the most unequivocal exemplar.

[. . .]

The risks of modernity--which evoke the anti-Americanism of foreigners--are real enough. Decoupled from tradition and history and from any genuine transcendental faith, with inherited religious traditions having succumbed to the Pelagian heresy of the indefinite improvability of the human lot, modern man is defenseless when faced by the myriad political religions, projects of social engineering, and psychotherapeutic technologies that promise an exorcism of tragedy from human life. It is this spiritual emptiness from which the Enlightenment project--that is to say, the liberal project--emerges and which it aspires to cure. But a politics that promises to exorcise tragedy from history and to foster a new kind of human being is bound to bump up against such obstacles as traditional ways of living, cultural affinities, national loyalties, religious attachments, and so on.

Not a Nation but an Idea

IN THE case of American liberalism, this mode of politics has a conception of America as being not a nation like any other, having an identity grounded in the contingencies of language and cultural affinity, but an ideological construction whose identity derives from universalist principles, notably civil liberty and human equality. For the liberal, America is not a nation but a civil religion ("an idea"), and loyalty to it is a matter not of sentiment but of ideological commitment. But of course America is also--and first and foremost--a nation existing in history, with an unavoidable legacy of particular traditions, institutions, common ways of thinking and speaking. The actual nation is bound to clash with the civil religion from time to time. And given the tendency of American culture, noted by Mr. Hollander, to veer between idealistic optimism and anger when the idealism is thwarted, it was only to be expected that attachment to America as a civil religion should come to express itself as hatred of the values and institutions that are most definitive of America as a historic nationality.

Hence the litmus test of liberalism in America today is the commitment to multiculturalism, with its concomitant delegitimation of all that remains of a common national culture. This liberal rejection of the very idea of a common culture as being itself repressive goes with the interpretation of the United States as being, not a nationality like others in the world, but a universal nation. This oxymoronic conception, endorsed not only by liberals but by many others, including prominent neoconservatives and libertarians, expresses the conviction that the United States is unique, the first of its kind, and the precursor of a new universal civilization.

[…]

The liberal project of destroying a common national culture in America, and so of hyphenating American national identity, has been under way for some time, and has already had consequences that are probably irreversible. It has not, of course, diminished ethnic conflict-America must now be the most ethnically obsessed and divided of any of the world's liberal democracies—but it has further Balkanized American political life into a contest between ethnic and other special-interest groups for group rights and similar legal privileges. Is it still a real option for America to reassert its identity as an historic nation having a common culture? Or has that option already been closed by liberal multiculturalism? These questions can be put in another way. Can America now do without the liberal civil religion of universal nationhood, when the particular content of its historic national identity has been largely drained away or at least discredited in acceptable political discourse as "nativism" or "racism"? And what does history—that ghost at the feast of liberal ideology--suggest about the fate of a state whose civil religion is based on denying the necessity of a common national culture?

Surely this is unnecessarily complicated, both because it puts elements of two different ideologies into the same category while separating others of the same ideology, but also because it is so often wrong-headed about American ideology. For example, Gray states that “America must now be the most ethnically obsessed and divided of any of the world's liberal democracies” whereas I say that it is the United States that is divided. America has never lost its belief in a common national culture, celebrating the ideology of America itself.

Because clarity is so important to any attempt at understanding a complicated issue, I choose to view the breakdown in this different way. This is why I repeat so many times that America is the ideology that was brought out of the abstract and set into Reality in the country of the United States. To say anti-American aspects of the argument belong only to the United States, and pro-American aspects belong only to America, allows a clear discussion of the issues. These aspects have all been mixed throughout the history of our country because all ideas, pro-American and anti-American, have to be incarnated through the living human beings that carry them out, consciously or subconsciously. There are people who carry anti-American ideas into being and people who carry pro-American ideas into reality. This way, the history of the physical incarnation of the ideology America, that got rid of slavery and that passed women’s suffrage, for instance, can be seen in context and as different from the history of the physical country of the United States, which had Jim Crow laws and fought the American ideals of human beings being created equal and universal suffrage.

People who support the individualistic ideology of America do some things to support America, and people who support collectivist ideologies, such as those of the Left and that of the theocratic Islamofascists do other things to try to defeat ideological America and create a Leftist United States or an Islamofascist United States.

I believe that this separation will be tremendously helpful in any investigation of what has gone wrong with our country, America, and what we can do to get it back.

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Several interesting posts and links about Michael Moore’s “documentary”, SICKO, caught my eye in the past few days. Each of these excerpts should be read in their entirety at the linked blogs, because they are important to all of us who want more facts on hand about the Healthcare Issue.

On Josue Sierra’s Blog, Josue writes that Dr. Darsi Ferrer reports that it is his opinion that:

Havana, August 6, 2007—There is no doubt that the Cuban authorities will not allow the Cuban people the possibility of watching this documentary by Michael Moore, a leading movie producer and ideological ally of the Cuban regime.

Although it might look contradictory, the propaganda used in the film to discredit the USA health system while trying to highlight the excellence of the Cuban health system, turned out to be considered “subversive” by the Cuban regime. It so happens that he based his arguments on gross lies that do not represent at all the Cuban health drama.

[. . .]

The Cuban health system can be described with one word: Chaos. The majority of the installations are in ruins, with continued great physical deterioration coupled with disastrous operating conditions. In contrast, the exclusive medical institutions, reserved for foreigners with hard currency, members of the “ruling elite” and the high ranking military personnel offer excellent medical services.

Josue Sierra links to “Sicko Banned in Cuba” by Val Prieto, at Babalublog, who further discusses SICKO and Cuba. And a little further searching got me to Hugh Hewitt, who excerpts from and links to a post about the Canadian healthcare system by “Dr. G.” at his blog, Abducens Nucleus:

Some patients just aren’t willing to sit back and take it anymore. The nation’s health system is long on promises and short on delivery. The litany of delays in care due to limited access grows by the day. In one instance, a patient sued her insurer because she was forced to wait four months for an MRI for her brain tumor and then months more to see a neurologist. In one metropolitan area, waiting times in the ER average four hours, while one in ten waits more than 12 hours.

One in three households surveyed tried and failed to gain timely access to at least one health service within the previous three months. And in one study, the total waiting time between referral from a general practitioner and specialty care averaged nearly 18 weeks. Even the Supreme Court has weighed in on the unacceptable delays in care. But the lawsuit is not against a dreaded American HMO and the events did not happen in the U.S. All were byproducts of the Canadian health care system.

Now, I hadn’t thought of it before—and probably Michael Moore didn’t think about it until recently either—but propaganda is surprisingly tricky art-form. It’s clearly not a matter simply of telling the Big Lie. If you manufacture deliberate lies, distortions, misstatements, etc., in an attempt to prove something that is isn’t true, it seems that there are what might be considered “unintended consequences” when you turn to present the finished product—in this case, Moore’s “documentary” SICKO.

Michael Moore made tens of millions of dollars with his “documentaries” about capitalism, guns and racial hatred, and Iraq. He was hailed as a hero by the Left, and since the Left exists all over the world, his “documentaries” were popular all over the world. The Left hates America, and as a group the Left ignored the fact that so much of the “documentaries” was lies, distortions, and carefully crafted editing using images and words that accompanied them to imply a connection that wasn’t there. The Left, which controls the Main Stream Media in most of the world, also ignored the problems with the “documentaries”. This meant that most people who saw Moore’s work were not equipped with the information that would have empowered them to judge what they saw and heard. These “documentaries” were capitalistic successes, making Moore a great deal of money and fame, and generated extra anti-American animosity in the world.

Michael Moore had every reason to believe that his proven talent for skillfully mixing sound and images to lie about aspects of America would continue to generate him the same box office figures and the same acclaim. When he created SICKO, his “documentary” about how “terrible” the American health industries are, he released it to the world and sat back to receive the cash and the compliments.

But something went wrong. And it appears that lying propaganda is only useful when your side as a whole approves of it despite the lies, and when the average person seeing it gets convinced because of the skill of the propagandist and the fact that the average person so often doesn’t know about the lies. It turns out that it may be banned in Cuba, a Leftist stronghold, because the average Cuban knows very well that SICKO is lying about their own Cuban health care system—because the average Cuban has no choice but to use the health care that the average Cuban is forced to use. It doesn’t matter that the Left that controls the Cuban media is not going to report the fact that the only people who can go to the excellent Cuban Hospitals portrayed in the “documentary” are the Cuban elite. The Cuban people know from personal experience that their own health care system is chaotic, unpleasant, and dangerous. So you don’t want to show SICKO in Cuba.

And there is a problem in Canada, as well. And in other parts of the world. Because everyone has either their own experience with their own health care system or they know someone close who has. People travel, and a lot of people know about the health systems of a lot of countries. There are problems with health care systems all over the world, but most people have a lot of first and second hand information and experience to draw from when they judge “documentaries” about such systems.

And that’s a real problem for Michael Moore. He has no difficulties when the Left Media won’t expose his lies and distortions, or when he shows the “documentaries” to audiences who either rubber stamp his views or are taken in by the mastery Moore has in technique. But if he is going to show lies and distortions to people who know enough to judge those lies and other tricks for the propaganda they are, it all falls apart. The Left Media can’t protect his lies from people who know them for what they are, and the Left absolutely doesn’t want to allow his lies to be judged by people who are captive to Leftist health care systems.

Compared to his other “documentaries”, who would have thought that Michael Moore’s “documentary” SICKO would have had such a relatively unhealthy box office?

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(I have been posting infrequently during the past few weeks because of family needs that had to be met. I’ll be posting more regularly now.)

We are bombarded from every side with warnings and even threats about Global Warming. I’ll have more to say in future posts about Global Warming and my reasons for not being worried, but since we should be paying attention to what we can do as conservationists, in understanding and meeting the responsibilities of overseeing the natural world, I’ll start with an important factor in all such decision-making: unintended consequences.

It’s true that some unintended consequences come out of the blue and there’s simply no straightforward way to predict them. Others come from not thinking things through, or not experimenting properly, or the problems of dealing with complicated systems. But the most easily avoided unintended consequences come from ignoring or not even seeking out information that is already in existence.

In “An inconvenient fact”, a Vancouver Sun article about what Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace and chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. in Vancouver, has to say about Leonardo DiCaprio’s The 11th Hour “doomsday documentary” about climate-change, Dr. Moore says:

I'm concerned that we're losing sight of some indisputable facts. Here's a key piece of information DiCaprio, collaborator and long-time activist Tzeporah Berman and the leadership of my old organization Greenpeace are ignoring when it comes to forests and carbon: For British Columbians, living among the largest area of temperate rainforest in the world, managing our forests will be a key to reducing greenhouse gases. As a lifelong environmentalist, I say trees can solve many of the world's sustainability challenges. Forestry is the most sustainable of all the primary industries that provide us with energy and materials. Rather than cutting fewer trees and using less wood, DiCaprio and Berman ought to promote the growth of more trees and the use of more wood.

Considering a lot of the news, articles and commercials about trees and forests that I’ve seen over time, this is really astonishing. It turns out that:

Trees are the most powerful concentrators of carbon on Earth. Through photosynthesis, they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in their wood, which is nearly 50 per cent carbon by weight. Trees contain about 250 kilograms of carbon per cubic metre.

This entire article is really interesting, and a “must read”. According to Dr. Patrick Moore, we should use the trees we have for materials and fuels, and plant new ones. He makes several other highly pertinent statements and arguments and concludes with the point that DiCaprio’s movie is “anti-forestry scare tactics”, and that:

. . . instead of surrendering to the terror, keep in mind that there are solutions to the challenges of climate, and our forests are among them. This film should be a good, clear reminder for us to put the science before the Hollywood hype.

Now, I completely believe that DiCaprio wants to do good. But I am reminded about one of my favorite quotes, from Eric Hoffer, a brilliant American philosopher, who wrote [my emphasis]:

We of the present have a more vivid awareness of the tragic paradox central to the human condition than had any before us. [. . .] Our increased awareness has come from new revelations not about the nature of evil but about the nature of the good. No other generation has been made so poignantly conscious of the perils of doing good. We know that to set out to do good is to run the gauntlet of baffling, grotesque side effects. [. . .] The ills and woes which beset our society at present and strain it to the breaking point were born of a concerted effort to right wrongs and do good.

“…the perils of doing good”. One of those grotesque side-effects? I live in California, and I can tell you, we have really bad brush/forest fires every year, often with numerous homes lost. According to Brad Wilmouth, at newsbusters.org, in a recent fire in the Lake Tahoe region, one woman’s house was still standing amidst her neighbor’s burned-out shells. The reason? The law didn’t allow them to clear brush and other flammable items from the adjoining Federal land, even though it abutted on their land. So the neighbors followed the law. That is, all except for the one woman that disregarded the law and cleared the entire area around her home of danger before the fire and thereby saved her home.

How about more do-gooding? Accumulated brush and old-growth in forests are easily set afire by natural as well as human causes. But do you remember all the warnings we were given about leaving old-growth forests alone? (Google has a couple million references to saving old-growth forests.) And what does Dr. Patrick Moore say? He says that new trees help take in more carbon from the atmosphere and store it than do older trees. He says that new growth is better than old growth trees because forest fires and rotting wood, both high dangers in older trees, give off their carbon back into the atmosphere when they burn or rot. Therefore, we should at least study specific forests to determine whether and how much to clear old growth forests and the old growth in forests. Maybe leaving the old-growth in place will lead to some of those pesky unintended consequences.

I never know whether to laugh or cry at this kind of news.

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