Two Sides of a Crooked Coin

[I apologize for my nonexistent posting lately. At a certain point, it felt like I didn't have anything interesting to say that wasn't being said already, and there are only so many "In Praise of Wretchard" posts I can write before it gets repetitive. Fortunately, I just got a job in legislative analysis, which should be enough to get my creative juices flowing again. Plus, there's grad school in the Fall…

In the meantime, here's something that I've been mulling over for some time, but hesitated to write about because it seemed to smack of the navel-gazing victimology for which I typically have no patience. As to whether I fall into that trap, you may judge for yourself.]

Jew-hatred is a fascinating topic for study, most of all because there are innumerable variations of it. One can tell a lot about a society by looking at the precise nature of its Jew-hatreds. (That some form will exist seems an immutable law of history, aside from being explicitly foretold in the book of Deuteronomy.) It seems, to my eye, that Jew-hatred generally starts with the common concerns of a society, takes them to grotesque lengths, and then puts the Jew in the center of it all.

Many forms of Jew-hatred exist today, of course. Some are simply variants of basic tribalism; some are sparked by envy for an economic competitor, much as ethnic Chinese are despised across Asia for their business savvy. Some are derived from religious ideas, a phenomenon that goes back thousands of years. But two broad strains today seem relatively new, both in that they have only existed for a century or two, and in that they are both based on non-religious or even anti-religious philosophies. For the sake of convenience, I shall call them Right-Wing Jew-Hatred (RWJH) and Left-Wing Jew-Hatred (LWJH). Both terms are gross misnomers, just as the terms Right and Left are misnomers; but since neo-Nazis and their ilk tend to be called right-wing, and Noam Chomsky and his ilk tend to be called leftist, the terms are readily understood.

These two ideologies hate Jews for precisely inverted reasons, as will be discussed below; yet ironically enough, both of them will find common cause with Jihadi Islam, despite Jihadism being their enemy as well when all is said and done.

Right-Wing Jew-Hatred

RWJH takes inspiration from a love of the soil, of skilled craftsmanship, of tight-knit communities. The ideal that followers of this philosophy pine for, in some obscure sense, is a nation in which people are united around bonds of kinship, deeply in harmony with the land around them through the work of their hands. The concreteness of life, the labor among tangible surroundings such as the land or artisanship, is expected to produce a sturdy type of citizen, ruggedly pure, courageous, and the undisputed master of his domain. D. H. Lawrence's ideas of "blood knowledge" would agree well with this philosophy (as would much else that he wrote, to be frank).

The nation is seen as a large extended family, tied together by history and a shared connection with the land. Other nations are outsiders; while the home nation might not bear outsiders ill will (a rare state of affairs, to be sure), it certainly has no obligation to see to outsiders' welfare. Least of all can the nations mix into an undifferentiated mass; if so, the unique heritage of each one is lost.

Thus far the ideas may be discordant to the ear of the modern sophisticate, but there is much here that is praiseworthy. Indeed, many of these ideas can be found in one form or another in many stouthearted communities in America: the importance of family and history; the sense of harmony with the land (less that of the hippy than of the veteran hunter, feeling closer to the animals around him than can any who have not killed); satisfaction with the work of your hands; deep patriotism and love of country.

But RWJH takes these virtues and turns them into a Manichaean struggle between the true citizen and the corrupt. For as these Jew-haters admit, this idyllic vision is not reality; in the real world, the deepest nature of the people is constantly frustrated by the work of the Jew. The Jew, an eternal wanderer between nations, is cut off from the deep connection to the land that true citizens enjoy. Similarly, the Jew cannot enjoy the blood ties to his neighbors that all true citizens possess, and is in a constant state of alienation. His soul is therefore twisted and warped, unable to derive satisfaction from the manly labor of the craftsman or the farmer.

Yet the Jew does not suffer his fate in silence. Sick with envy of the hearty folk around him, he plots to reshape society in his own image. Thus, the Jew promotes ever-more-abstract forms of capitalism, in which people are reduced to commodities and ripped from their wholesome communities. Rather than developing blood knowledge of the earth around them, capitalist drones exchange their labor for money, the ultimate abstraction. The Jew thrives on abstraction; he also knows that true citizens are starved by it. Eventually, the connection between true citizens and the physical world is severed entirely by the artificial system in which they labor.

The Jew also seeks to undermine the traditional institutions of the community. "Tolerance," "internationalism," and the like are simply avenues for the Jew to subvert the integrity of the nation, and thus reduce all peoples to one undifferentiated mass. The Jew also spreads perverted practices in order to destroy the traditional family, thus making all people as alientated from each other as he is. The end state for which the cunning Jew works is for all peoples to be adrift in a sea of symbols, with no deep connection to their neighbors, their homes, or their own native skills. Then, the Jew will be content, for he is innately suited for such an environment.

What must the RWJH do? Stand vigilant against contamination, of ideas or of blood. When it seems necessary, resort to violence to vanquish the Jewish menace. Yet in large part the battle is lost before it is begun; today's world is increasingly a world of ideas, of the intellect, not of virtuous labor. In particular, the "Jewish" banking and economic system is self-sustaining and omnipresent; even if ties of kinship and nationality etc. took on a new prominence for true citizens, the enervating effects of their financial environment would continue. I have not seen the RWJH community suggest a single serious alternative. Even Fascism would be insufficient; the Nazis used international banks just as much as the next government. In short, RWJHs are fighting what amounts to a desperate, doomed rearguard action. The modern world has left them behind.

Left-Wing Jew-Hatred

LWJH is ultimately motivated by the desire to build a peaceful world, a better world. The view of many on the Left is that humanity's ills are almost entirely the result of our brutish tribalism (expressed in the modern nation-state), the influence of irrational ideas such as religion, and most of all the failure of people to feel empathy for one another. For people to stop going to war, they must simultaneously feel no loyalty to discrete groups of people and feel a deep love and loyalty to all people, as fellow-citizens of the world.

A few seminal philosophers are worth citing here. First, Immanuel Kant proposed that war would inevitably be abolished once all nations were subsumed into a world government, an idea enthusiastically taken up by many. (That Kant also predicted that such a world government would be a "soulless tyranny" is immaterial.) The irrational loyalty that many have for the United Nations, whose peacekeepers are best known for sexually abusing young children and for leaving "protected" civilians to die in Bosnia, Rwanda and elsewhere, is due to the UN's promise to be a true global government.

(In case you doubt the ecstasy with which the Left views a world government, check out this post and remember that the sign in question was paid for with tax dollars.)

Second, Immanuel Levinas wrote extensively about how the act of cognition forces the rational mind, or logos as he referred to it, to construct "themes" or imperfect representations of the object being studied, since the logos cannot deal with an object's entirety. Therefore, nobody can truly know the totality of another person on an intellectual level; instead, you are dealing with a caricature.

That people are able to do evil to each other, Levinas wrote, is only possible because of this tendency of the logos. If a man would experience the totality of another, he could not bring himself to cause his fellow injury. Hence, violence is routinely accompanied by instinctive or deliberate depersonalization.

The only way to break out of this stranglehold of the logos is to experience people before the act of cognition, on a pre-cognitive or emotional level. Cognition, and especially language (which inherently captures meaning incompletely), cannot be allowed to rule our minds. They are useful tools, to be sure, but to rely on them is to allow people to caricature each other and do evil. Only the purest experience of empathy with others, in which the distinction between Self and Other breaks down and all that is left is the We, can ensure peace.

This idea was taken further by Levinas's student, Jacques Derrida, who wrote that since all formal systems are inherently incomplete, they cannot be depended on to dictate truth or standards of behavior.

In the real world, these ideas and others like them have inspired many on the Left to work against the idea of the nation-state and other such "artificial" dividing-lines between people, such as religion or race. Once all people see each other as brothers in a world fellowship, once there is no reason for conflict and only the "oceanic feeling" of total empathy, then the world will see peace.

Again, while the specifics of such ideas are sometimes unnerving, they are often built around laudible foundations. Peace should be beloved by all righteous people. Reflexive nationalism, and tribalism more generally, has been the cause of horrifying bloodshed throughout history, as have religions and entrenched power structures. Willingness to break free of convention, when that convention merely perpetuates harm, is indisputably good.

But again, these ideas are taken to a grotesque extreme. And as with the RWJHs, the LWJHs must admit that their ideal world does not yet exist. Men still make war on men, traditions are fiercely defended from attempts to nullify them, and tribalism is if anything increasing. Most galling to many LWJHs is the world economic system, i.e. capitalism, a system of endless competition between people in which there are winners and losers. That such a system is unmatched at improving the physical and technological well-being of humanity is beside the point; by setting people in conflict, capitalism makes a world of total empathy and We-ness impossible. And cooperative economic systems that would foster this empathy are inexplicably unpopular.

Jews are an especially severe problem for the LWJH. Jews (and note that LWJH will rarely speak of "the Jew" as RWJHs sometimes do) cannot be safely dismissed as an unenlightened people like African aborigines, unable to grasp the true way of globalism. To the contrary, Jews are at the forefront of every field of intellectual endeavor. Indeed, Levinas and Derrida were both Jewish, as are many in the vanguard of the globalist project. Yet the Jews had the effrontery to found a country based explicitly on an ethnic/religious identity, Israel. Moreover, Jews tried the socialist system in its least unsuccessful instances, the kibbutzim, before concluding that they were unsustainable as purely socialist redoubts.

We must understand all the ways in which this is a challenge to the globalist idea. Jews, certainly familiar with the ideas of globalism, rejected it in favor of (seemingly) the most primitive tribalism. The state they found is not simply tribalist; it is inspired (in some indeterminate fashion) by a religion, a religion that says that Jews are set apart from the world around them, that they must hold themselves within a code of law manifested by a God. The Jews as a nation declare that national identity has meaning, and that they are (in some sense) better than all other men. How abhorrent to the LWJH. Worst of all, the existence of a Jewish nation throws into question the bona fides of the Jewish globalists, who can be accused (in a supreme irony) of dual loyalty: to the idea of a global society, but also to their unique nation.

The Jews as a coherent body, and especially the State of Israel, are therefore a deadly threat to the LWJH dream of utopia. The LWJH must in turn work to stamp out this dangerous idea of Jewish peoplehood and religion, both through intellectual means and through physical means. (Thus we have such marvels as Noam Chomsky visiting Lebonan just long enough to extoll the Islamist Hizbullah. Why on Earth should Chomsky give such people the time of day? They are violent, they are religious, they are tribal — yet they are trying to destroy Israel, and that makes all the difference.) For the Jews, through their infuriating nationalism and religious delusion, are the most stubborn of a shrinking group of obstacles to world peace. (Another obstacle, of course, is the militant Jingo Christianist arrogant imperial unilateralist United States; this explains why on the Left, Jew-hatred and anti-Americanism often go hand-in-hand.)

Most of all, the LWJH must continue to chip away at the established hierarchies and moralities, subverting the very foundations and justifications of Judaism and religion/nationalism generally. The goal is to slowly convince the Jews to give up their selfish ideas on their own; LWJHs do not want an actual genocide like RWJHs, merely an intellectual genocide in that the Jewish people as such would cease to exist.

Parallels

As I noted above, RWJHs and LWJHs hate Jews for precisely inverted reasons. Yet they are both reacting to real phenomena. Jews are simultaneously alienated and clannish, abstract and rooted in the physical, iconoclastic and fiercely protective of tradition. True, a given subset of Jews will often manifest some of these traits and not others, yet there is no inherent reason for this. The traits listed are all implicit in Judaism. This permits two groups that agree on nothing else (RWJHs and LWJHs) to find common ground in their despite of Jews, if for different reasons.

It is worth pointing out that both ideologies have a pathological hatred for modern capitalism. RWJHs believe capitalism to stand in the way of "blood knowledge" and true vital connections to the world and our neighbors; LWJHs believe capitalism to stand in the way of progress away from the State of Nature and towards global harmony. Both, again, are reacting to legitimate concerns with capitalism, concerns which were noted by Schumpeter no less than by Marx. But neither ideology has a true alternative that works in the real world; scapegoating the Jews for their failures is a convenient way of obscuring this inconveniency.

And, of course, both RWJHs and LWJHs frequently work in concert with Jihadi Islamists. For RWJHs, this is a simple matter of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"; they view Islamists with contempt for the most part, but see them as the best hope of breaking the Jewish deathgrip on the world.

The attitude of LWJHs is more complex. Even though the Islamists are guilty of the same sins as the Jews, they are excused because they have not yet been enlightened. LWJHs unconsciously believe that the Muslim world must inevitably accede to the superior wisdom of the Left, as must the whole world; therefore, any actions they do in the meanwhile are less significant. Best to use them to chastise the Jews, who are not ignorant savages but spiteful heretics.

On the other hand, LWJHs recognize, even as they seek to deny it, that the Islamists have something they lack. Fundamentally, the ideology of the Left is hollow because it seeks universal brotherhood for its own sake, and nothing higher. In the absence of a metaphysical standard (e.g. a Supreme Being), what inherent meaning can be found in the life of a self-replicating collection of complex carbons? Islam, meanwhile, is built around submission to the will of God. The lives of believers are infused with meaning, leading to a certitude and self-sacrifice that LWJHs find awe-inspiring. Their identification with Islamism is in part a pathetic attempt to experience such certitude for themselves.

Ultimately, Islamism is the greater beneficiary of this strange parnership. For if the Left should succeed in sweeping away the old system in favor of their utopia, it will immediately crumble before the onslaught of the Jihadis. Indeed, it is crumbling already all across Europe. RWJHs are about as dangerous in the long run as a caveman stubbornly insisting he doesn't need to learn how to use tools; but LWJHs, advancing a seductive yet flawed philosophy, are setting the stage for their own enslavement.

Wherein I Yet Again Praise the Incomparable Wretchard

Wretchard, publisher of the Belmont Club, is on fire. Every post on his front page right now is amazing, and terribly important. Most important, I think, is this one about the apparent decision by the major American media to embargo reporting on the widespread unrest in Iran.

Why is the media suppressing this story, which could well be the most significant geopolitical event of the last two years? I would imagine that they should be encouraged by anything that holds out the possibility of removing the mullahs from power without a nuclear exchange. Are people in the media beginning to identify with Ahmadinejad, in some perverse form of preemptive Stockholm Syndrome?

Please, read the Belmont Club's front page after you read the linked article. I can think of no other writer not published by a major media outfit who is so profound as Wretchard. Indeed, few published writers are.

The War Continues

Two quick hits:

First, a roundup of the large Islamist terror cell busts in over six countries yesterday and over the last few months, provided by the frighteningly erudite Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom. The biggest cell was in Canada, and had at least 17 members who had assembled 3 tons of ammonium nitrate (the material used in the Oklahoma City bombing). One worrying thing for me is that several of the terrorists from different countries had met in person in Bangladesh, a country wracked by Islamist terror yet largely ignored by the Western counterterrorism effort.

Second, a fascinating discussion of trends in counterterrorism over at the Belmont Club. (A few acronyms need to be defined. COIN: counterinsurgency operations. GWOT: global war on terror.) Read the whole thing, plus as much of the comments as you can.

The Incentives of Power

I just stayed with cousins on the East Coast for the weekend. (I was in town for my graduation ceremony, an amusing bit of theater with no intrinsic significance… but fun anyway.) The husband is a white-collar employee of New York's MTA; being of a conservative bent, he will readily tell of the many ways in which the whole system is dysfunctional.

One anecdote I found particularly striking. In 1981, my cousin was heading in to work with an acquaintance of his, a man who had direct oversight of several welfare programs (five, I think). This man had just been directed by President Reagan to cut one of the programs, as part of the general push to trim back government.

Now, the man said to my cousin, which program should he choose to cut? Should he choose the most bloated, inefficient program that is doing relatively little to help his constituents? One would imagine yes; but in fact, the man decided to cut the leanest, most effective program that was helping the most people!

Why? Well, if the man had ended the least effective program, then it would be gone forever and the small-government types would be proved right. That would translate into a loss of power for the man in question; instead of overseeing five programs, he would now only have four. But if he ended the most effective program, then his constituents would scream bloody murder, the government would be forced to restore funding, and his power would remain secure.

This is in fact what happened. And it happens constantly, on every level of government. Everyone is familiar with the dire predictions that such-and-such a cost-cutting measure will victimize "children and the elderly." Do fiscal hawks have a pathological hatred for children and the elderly? Of course not. But those with direct control of the programs in question have a vested interest in making any cutbacks as painful as possible, to ensure the survival of their fiefdoms. In government, prestige is measured by the sheer number of resources one has control over, not on whether those resources are being used effectively.

What this means is that would-be reformers cannot leave too much discretion to the mandarins when they mandate cuts; if they want cuts to be at all effective, they must micromanage them as much as possible to stymie any attempts at sabotage by the mandarin class. More than that, reformers must constantly push government agencies to measure their effectiveness, and then make those numbers public. Only if officials are punished for doing poor jobs, even if only by public ridicule, will we see improvement.

Thoughts on Arnold

I have finally started reading the work of the Nineteenth-century British literary critic Matthew Arnold, on the recommendation of my old Humanities teacher. So far I have got through Democracy and The Function of Criticism at the Present Time, which are quite interesting when set alongside each other. In the latter essay, Arnold defines criticism (being primarily interested in literary criticism) as "a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world." He strenuously argues that the best criticism must be divorced from any direct involvement in immediate "practical" affairs. When a critic is personally involved in political or social projects, and attempts to advance a given outcome with his work, his efforts will necessarily distort his thinking and result in criticism that does not honestly respond to the material at hand:

Criticism must maintain its independence of the practical spirit and its aims. Even with well-meant efforts of the practical spirit it must express dissatisfaction, if in the sphere of the ideal they seem impoverishing and limiting. It must not hurry on to the goal because of its practical importance. It must be patient, and know how to wait; and flexible, and know how to attach itself to things and how to withdraw from them. It must be apt to study and praise elements that for the fulness [sic] of spiritual perfection are wanted, even though they belong in the practical sphere to a power that is maleficent. It must be apt to discern the spiritual shortcomings or illusions of powers that in the practical sphere may be beneficient. And this without any notion of favoring or injuring, in the practical sphere, one power against the other.

Which is not to say that criticism should have no impact on the world; much the contrary. By identifying and clarifying the best ideas — or what are perceived to be the best ideas — the critic helps ensure that these ideas will inevitably enter the practical realm, but only once they have been suitably refined by the critic.

The sentiment here is valuable — to a point. Certainly one wishes to retain enough disinterestess in his perception of the world so that it does not become clouded by prejudgements. It is well-established that most people will accept or discard hard pieces of data based on whether they conform to existing mental models; more insidiously, two people will take the same dataset and interpret it in wildly different ways based on what each of them brings to the exercise. So a conscious attempt at disinterestedness in thought is to be commended (even while true disinterestedness is impossible — and therefore should not be pretended to, especially not in one's own mind).

The difficulty arises if one becomes so detached from the "practical" world, and so enamored of theory and austere logic, that one forgets how messy human nature can be. Such critics and thinkers often propose new social or political orders that seem splendid on paper, but when translated into the real world become disastrous. Which brings us to the first essay noted above, Democracy.

Arnold, ruminating on the debasing cultural tendency of democracy and noting democracy's inevitable rise in Britain, wishes to find a replacement for the declining aristocracy as an ennobling influence on the polity. Fearing that Britain will become "Americanized," i.e. will see its appreciation for high culture swept away in a tide of boorish populism, Arnold advocates for the State to assume greater power over society, and to use that power to improve the lot of the lower and middle classes. In particular he speaks of a system of public education that would instill love for high culture into the masses.

Concerning the traditional English suspicion of powerful governments, Arnold replies thusly:

In other countries the habits and dispositions of the people may be such that the State, if once it acts, may be easily suffered to usurp exorbitantly; here they certainly are not. Here the people will always sufficiently keep in mind that any public authority is a trust delegated by themselves…. Here there can be no question of a paternal government, of an irresponsible executive power, professing to act for the people's good, but without the people's consent, and, if necessary, against the people's wishes; here no one dreams of removing a single constitutional control, of abolishing a single safeguard for securing a correspondence between the acts of government and the will of the nation.

This will come as a surprise to modern Britons, who must pay a television tax even if they do not own a television, who are largely forbidden to own weapons of any kind and are absolutely forbidden to defend themselves against attackers, who can be imprisoned for "hate speech" even as burglars are let go with verbal warnings as a matter of policy, who are now under the juristiction of a genuine secret police.

Arnold seems to have forgotten that people can get used to anything, and easily become used to encroaching government power. Moreover, governments are genetically predisposed to seek greater power; it is their natural function. As President Reagan warned, "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction."

Arnold's specific recommendation, that of a public school system, is particularly apropos. Arnold desires for such a system to be a means for instilling culture; in practice, we find that government-run schooling is usually a means for indoctrination. Truly good culture is typically suppressed, as free-thinkers are not what governments want for citizens. Even when governments are not being malicious, culture and the arts are usually the first subjects to get the ax when budgets are tight. Far more important that good public citizens know how to work their calculators right. (This is aside from the indisputable truth that public schools, taken as a class, do a poor job of teaching their students anything, never mind high culture.)

Arnold was certainly correct to worry about the decline of the national culture. He was also correct that government power, when used judiciously, can serve to preserve and nurture culture. But he profoundly underestimated the degree to which, as his contemporary Lord Acton noted, "Power tends to corrupt." Were he indeed concerned with preserving liberty, Arnold may well have been more hesitant to recommend goverment expansion if he had more exposure to the "practical" realm.

Human nature cannot be boiled down to nice abstractions. People are messy. Theoreticians forget this at society's peril.

Quote of the Day

Democracy is a force in which the concert of a great number of men makes up for the weakness of each man taken by himself; democracy accepts a certain relative rise in their condition, obtainable by the concert for a great number, as something desirable in itself, because though this is undoubtedly far below granduer, it is yet a good deal above insignificance. A very strong, self-reliant people neither easily learns to act in concert, nor easily brings itself to regard any middling good, any good short of the best, as an object ardently to be coveted and striven for. It keeps its eye on the grand prizes, and they are to be won only by distancing competitors, by getting before one's comrades, by succeeding all by one's self; and so long as a people works thus individually, it does not work democratically.

— Matthew Arnold, Democracy (1861)

Quick Hits

My apologies for not posting recently. The last few weeks have been rather depressing, between Iran's continued provocations and the immigration clash. But things seem a bit better now, so I'll try to round up.

First, Wretchard over at Belmont Club writes a fascinating post on the sense of unease that has been percolating through the blogosphere, and the obscure knowledge of our deeper brains that sometimes comes bubbling to the surface. Don't miss the comments, either. That's usually where the good discussions are.

Via Ace of Spades comes this piece by Allah on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letters to President Bush, and now, the Pope. Read it carefully; far from an overture for diplomacy, these letters are meant as an ultimatum. Ahmadinejad called on the two most powerful figures of the non-Muslim world to embrace Islam, or suffer the consequenses. It's feeling a lot like 1938 right now.

Surprisingly, the immigration issue may turn out all right. The initial proposal, which seemed to be conceding an awful lot for not much in return, has been beefed up with some sensible provisions such as keeping out criminals; I think the final product will end up to be the best of a bad set of options, which is all we can hope for. I'm unsympathetic to arguments against the sheer number of immigrants who would come in under the proposed law; what is more important is whether those immigrants learn American principles of society and government (whatever those are…). An article in the LA Times today or yesterday (on the subject of highly-educated immigrants who can't find commensurate work) quoted someone as saying that we as a society are more concerned with immigration than we are with integration, and it's a problem.

In Gaza, the civil war between Fatah and Hamas has begun. May each destroy the other, and rid the Palestinians of their poison.

And finally, huge congratulations to Mark Harris, the 21-year-old graduating senior from George Washington University who defeated a 15-year incumbent to become the Republican candidate for state representative in Pennsylvania's 42nd district. I worked in the same office as Mark last summer during my internship; he's an outstanding guy who's passionately committed to limited government. I just donated to his campaign, the first time I have ever made a political donation. Much luck in the general election!

Permissive Government, Not Permissive Morality

A key tenet of modern Libertarianism is the Nonaggression Principle, abbreviated as the NAP. In the words of Walter Block:

[NAP] states, simply, that it shall be legal for anyone to do anything he wants, provided only that he not initiate (or threaten) violence against the person or legitimately owned property of another. That is, in the free society, one has the right to manufacture, buy or sell any good or service at any mutually agreeable terms. Thus, there would be no victimless crime prohibitions [i.e. drug prohibition—ed.], price controls, government regulation of the economy, etc.

Now, I have never been happy with the NAP, for reasons I discuss here and here. But even if we accept the premises of the NAP as valid, many libertarians fundamentally misunderstand it or misapply it, in ways that are profoundly damaging to our society.

The NAP is a theory about the appropriate uses of government power. It states that governments, a class of actors prone to oppression and the excessive use of power, should only use their power to regulate directly aggressive behavior, and not to enforce broader standards of morality no matter how laudible. It is the responsibility of civil society (says the NAP advocate) to enforce codes of morality, withut using coercion. Otherwise, you run into the slippery slope; power-hungry governments will take the opportunity to expand its power at the expense of the people, leading to tyranny.

Some libertarians make the mistake of carrying that argument one step further. They say that since governments should not prohibit certain behaviors such as sexual promiscuity or excessive body-piercing, therefore such behaviors have nothing wrong with them and nobody can make any objection to them whatsoever. After all, who are we to judge? Let people do what they want!

This line of argument is perhaps inevitable given that many libertarians follow the philosophy not out of any deep convictions on the role of government per se, but because they want their own personal tastes (such as drug use) to be legitimated. Therefore, it is not sufficient for a class of behavior to be permissible by law; what they want is for any social stigma attached to it to be removed. (Witness the continued efforts by the homosexual lobby to portray homosexuality as a "normal lifestyle.")

But this argument is flawed. It may be bad policy for governments to prohibit drug use, for a number of reasons (not least because of the power it gives to criminal networks); but that does not mean that drug addiction is a good thing, any more than alcoholism should be tolerated by other people merely because alcohol is legal. Similarly, merely because promiscuous or deviant sexuality may be consensual does not mean that it is without cost, and cannot be opposed on the grounds of morality.

This is one reason out of many, I think, that the Libertarian Party has been relegated to the fringe. It has largely been taken over by activists with a social agenda that transcends the boundries of mere government action or inaction. If libertarians want to have any practical influence over the course of government, they had best start thinking about how to promote moral behavior as a societal goal, without using coercion. Most Americans will not tolerate moral anarchy, and that is what the LP is offering them.

Quote of the Day

In the modern social order, the person is sacrificed to the individual. The individual is given universal sufferage, equality of rights, freedom of opinion; while the person, isolated, naked, with no social armor to sustain and protect him, is left to the mercy of all the devouring forces which threaten the life of the soul, exposed to relentless actions and reactions of conflicting interests and appetites….

It is a homicidal civilization.

—Jacques Maritain, Three Reformers

Second Amendment From a New Angle

The ways in which the statement, "A well-regulated militia, being necessary for the defense of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," has been interpreted to better match prevailing social mores are many and varied. What many interpretations have in common is the understanding that the "well-regulated militia" is the subject, or at least a restriction on the subject; the question then becomes whether the "people" are considered to be the militia (as indeed is made clear in the United States Code), or whether for our purposes the militia is a more restricted group, such as the National Guard.

In a contentious comment thread at Protein Wisdom over constitutional interpretation in general, commenter lee suggests an interpretation of the Second Amendment I had not seen before:

Actually, the intent of the second ammendment was to keep the government from enslaving the people. It’s because of the well-regulated militia that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.

In other words, because of the need to keep standing armies (which the Founders frequently reviled as being the first step towards tyranny), it is necessary to ensure that the people are powerful enough to resist them if necessary. Without a "well-regulated militia," there would be much less danger that the government could oppress the people with impunity; to mitigate the danger, the people must never be prevented from arming themselves.

Is this interpretation correct? It depends on what you mean by "correct." This was probably not the precise syntactical meaning intended by the Founders; the phrase "well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people" occurs in Article XIII of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (adopted in 1776, well before the Constitution) set against a strong attack on standing armies, making it unlikely that in the Constitution the phrase "well-regulated militia" actually referred to standing armies themselves. But if you are not an Intentionalist, and prefer to work from the text itself, lee's understanding seems as defensible as any other.

More importantly, it harmonizes the Second Amendment with the rest of the Bill of Rights as laying out a right of the people against the government. In that sense, and in the sense that its conclusions undoubtedly match the goal of the Founders, the above understanding may be called "correct."

My Former Classmate is a Marine

This evening we ran into the parents of a student who went to my high school. He is a few years younger than me, and if we were not close friends, we got along. He also enrolled at my college in New York and was there for at least a semester by the time I left. His parents told us that he had "ran off and joined the Marine Corps." The mother proudly showed us a wallet-sized photo of her son in his Marine dress uniform.

Looking at that picture left me profoundly humbled. Here is a young man whose family is doing well for themselves, who did quite well in school and was attending college among a community which is not anti-military, exactly, but where the military just doesn't occur to people as an option. Yet he decided to give up his comforts and enlist in the Marines.

May God bless him and safeguard him, and guide his weapons true.

Quote of the Day

XXIX. Now for my Part, being fully assured, by the Reasons I have already given, that there is some Right common to all nations, which takes Place both in the Preparations and in the Course of War, I had many and weighty reasons inducing me to write a Treatise upon it. I observed throughout the Christian World a Licentiousness in regard to War, which even barbarous Nations ought to be ashamed of: a Running to Arms upon very frivolous or rather no Occasions; which being once taken up, there remained no longer any Reverence for Right, either Divine or Human, just as if from that Time Men were authorized and firmly resolved to commit all manner of Crimes without Restraint.

XXX. The Spectacle of which monstrous Barbarity worked many, and those in no wise bad Men, up into an Opinion, that a Christian, whose Duty consists principally in loving all Men without Exception, ought not at all to bear Arms; with whom seem to agree sometimes Johannes Ferus and our Countryman Erasmus, Men that were great Lovers of Peace both Eclesiatical and Civil; but, I suppose, they had the same View, as those have who in order to make Things that are crooked straight, usually bend them as much the other Way. But this very Endeavor of inclining too much to the opposite Extreme, is so far from doing Good, that it often does Hurt…

—Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, Liberty Fund edition, Preliminary Discourses

Range Voting vs. Instant-Runoff

I have been a fan of instant-runoff voting, an electoral process in which voters rank candidates by preference, instead of casting a single vote. If nobody has a clear majority of first-place votes, the bottom candidate is dropped and his supporters apply their second-place votes. This continues until one candidate has a clear majority. Of course, IRV does not produce outcomes that match precisely with voter preference (whatever you want to define THAT as), tending instead to favor consensus candidates.

Some who pay attention to such things are now beginning to favor a system called range voting, or "rated vote." In it, each voter gives each candidate a rating between 0 and 99 (or 0 and 9, or whatever). The voter is advised to score his top preference as 99, and his bottom preference as 0. These ratings are averaged, and the highest-rated candidate wins.

Partisans for this system note that it has several perceived advantages over IRV, among them: there is no penalty for highly rating multiple candidates; you can more expressively represent your preferences than with simple rankings; there is no structural incentive to vote in a way that doesn't accurately represent your opinion.

Furthermore, IRV is seen to have most of the flaws of the present system, since there is still some degree of strategy in choosing who gets the vital first or second votes. After all, if all voters were to vote first for the most extreme candidates, the consensus candidate may well be eliminated. The reverse is also true, and more likely; those countries with IRV tend to have two strong parties and a host of minor ones.

The concept sounds interesting, and the proponents note that similar systems are presently used to rate content on the internet such as movies or books. But this points out my largest criticism with the plan as proposed by the linked website. In the version it proposes, voters have the option of expressing no opinion on a given candidate. Unfortunately, what often happens in places like Amazon.com is that the overall rating in disproportionally determined by strong partisans for and against a candidate. If a voting system were to allow voters to remove their views from consideration, outcomes would be determined largely by the fringes.

If a candidate has done such a poor job of outreach that many voters have no opinion one way or the other, he should not be rewarded by making his few supporters relatively more influential. There should be no "express no opinion" option.

Aside from that, however, range voting looks interesting.

Another Perspective on Illegal Immigration

Much of the debate on illegal immigration has focused on the effect of such immigration on the United States. But what about its effect on Mexico?

Captain Ed has reproduced an email from Artcamp Artesanas Campesinas, a communal business in Guerrero, Mexico, made up of women. The email calls for the immediate closing of the US border, because the lure of easy dollars has caused all the men of their village to leave the country, destroying families and the local economy:

As we struggle as women, against the difficulty of our situation, we focus all effort on building a business to sustain ourselves and our children.

But we need the help of our husbands and our brothers to re-unite our families and to help us develop economic opportunity in the traditional fashion jewelry production industry that is the heritage of our parents.

Please close the US Border to illegal migration and send our men home to us. Thank you.

Read the whole thing.

Oil: The Long Run

Oil rose past $75 a barrel today. And I feel fine. Indeed, I feel positively thrilled.

Why? Won't high oil prices act as a drag on the economy in general, and on the personal prosperity of millions and millions of people? Yes, in the short term. But over time, sustained high prices for oil will have a number of beneficial efffects.

First, high oil prices have stimulated a rush of investment in alternative energy sources such as biodiesel, ethanol, solar power, and improved batteries. Such investments languished during the halcyon days of $10/barrel oil during the Clinton Administration, prolonging our reliance on an energy source which is overwhelmingly controlled by oppressive foreign governments in general, among whom are states like Saudi Arabia and Iran which used their riches to attack us by proxy. But we are now rapidly approaching the break-point where we can transition away from oil as our main source of fuel, and therefore stop enriching our enemies.

Second, high prices will inevitably cause people to conserve energy. This is good by itself; but even better is that some of them will probably do so by using solar power or some other method of cogeneration. In this manner, the slow process of decentralizing our power system will be accelerated at least a bit. When energy production becomes decentralized (one could even say democratized), the system as a whole will be more resilient and less prone to critical failure, and individuals will take back some measure of control over their lives from the vast centralized distribution networks that dominate modern life. Self-reliance is a good thing.

Third, the rising price of oil is largely driven at present by speculation. All of our production capacity is back online by now, and supplies are near their highs. What this tells me is that traders are anticipating some sort of strike against Iran, or some other "geopolitical risk," and are positioning themselves accordingly. The benefit of such speculation is that it makes the shock of the event, when and if it comes, less painful; we are already prepared for the blow. Any price movement that lessens panic in the long run is good in my book.

So by all means, cut back on your oil usage. But don't rail overmuch against corporate greed or price-gouging as you do. The market is simply encouraging us to do now what we should have begun doing decades ago, and we owe it a debt of thanks.

Preparing the Battleground

How many times have you heard a variation of the following: "Islam is incompatible with violence. In fact, the word 'Islam' itself means 'peace.'"

I know that I have read such statements many times in news stories. And every time, I know that I am being lied to. "Islam" does not mean "peace," far from it. It means, in fact, "submission." And the mindset of "submission" is fundamentally opposed to that of "peace."

One who seeks peace above all else will avoid conflict, seek to resolve differences with neighbors amicably, and in cases of irreconcilable difference will agree to disagree. One who seeks submission before God, on the other hand, will only be happy when the entire world has submitted to the will of God alongside him. There can be no true compromise with opposing views, since that implies that you are ameliorating your perfect submission to the will of God. There can only be the ultimate goal of final victory.

That Muslims may not want their religion seen this way is understandible. Yet they could simply emphasize the personal aspect of submission, while keeping the societal aspect out of the limelight. Why then do many Muslim spokesmen feel it necessary to deceive the West, in ways that are so easy to disprove, about something so basic as the meaning of a word?

Because once they establish the idea that Islam itself is beyond reproach, then it is child's-play for Salafi jihadists to hide behind Islam as a whole to deflect any legitimate analysis of how their beliefs feed into their violence. In other words, people will be reduced to discussions about "root causes" such as poverty, social alienation, or specifics of foreign policy because the biggest root cause of them all — Salafi jihadism — will be totally off-limits.

Learn about Islam. Know when you are being lied to. Keep track of who the liars are. Understand their purpose. Don't let them get away with it.

Global Warming? Global Cooling? Which Is It?

Via Ace comes an editorial in the London Telegraph titled There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998:

For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).

Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.

As Ace comments:

It hardly needs pointing out that in the seventies environmental alarmists created a public scare over "global cooling," demanding that we immediately take drastic steps to protect the earth by, essentially, de-industrializing, or else the earth would freeze over.

The ink had barely dried on the "scholarly papers" predicting a new ice age before some of the exact same environmental "scientists" began scare-mongering over "global warming" in the late eighties, demanding that we immediately take drastic steps to protect the earth by, essentially, de-industrializing…. This is not science. It is Marxist Rousseauian "natural state of man" utopianism, and a cult of the worship of Earth as "Gaia."

As they say, read the whole thing.

The French are Losing France

About a year ago, the French government commissioned an exhaustive study of their school system, carried out by a team of educators and Education Ministry officials. Horrified by what the study reported, the government then tried to suppress it entirely; but it was leaked to the Internet a few weeks ago. Here is a summary, along with a link to the original 37-page document in French.

Excerpts:

Having by and large completed their takeover of the Moslem ghettoes, often by “targeted violence” against non-Moslems and moderate Moslems alike, the Islamist fanatics are making great progress towards achieving control of the educational system as well.

As usual, girls are the first victims of religious extremism. The “big brothers,” as the Islamists are known in school, enforce a strict Islamic dress code which prohibits make-up, dresses and skirts, forbid any co-educational activities and make going to the movies, the swimming pool or the gym all but impossible for Moslem girls.

The punishment for refusal to conform is often physical violence and beatings. And this, says the report, is a relatively protected environment compared to “what girls experience outside of school.” Such as forced marriages at 14 or 15.

…

In addition to the routine expression of violent anti-Semitic sentiments, schools have also become a major focus of aggressive proselytism. The report states that it is virtually impossible for non-practicing Moslem kids in school not to conform to the strict Islamist behavior prescriptions. Even non-Moslems are often forced to take part in Ramadan fasting, against the wishes of their parents.

Perhaps most troubling is the study’s finding that this new generation of Moslem children, born and raised in Europe, is growing up already indoctrinated to consider themselves part of a “Moslem nation” separate and opposed to everything Western civilization stands for.

I am increasingly afraid that the world is about to see a prolonged era of religious war the likes of which we have not experienced since the time of William of Orange. All the trends are toward increased polarization, increased violence in the name of Islam, increased bitterness and anger in the Christian community, demographics that favor religious peoples of all stripes over their secular countrymen, and the continued impotence of Western culture in the face of this terrible danger.

I pray that I am wrong. But I have little cause for hope.

Typical

Writing about the anemic response by the American black community to the genocide in Darfur, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes:

Among the barriers [to a strong black response], say scholars and social activists, are a lack of news media attention, black leaders' focus on surviving critical domestic problems, the black community's lack of focus on international issues and the perception that the Darfur campaign is largely the province of the Jewish community.

One of the few black activists, Mrs. Anna Thorpe, has been desperately trying to build awareness in the black community. She says:

I've heard people say we have a genocide over here. But [compared to strife in Africa,] this is cake. We have this mentality that we're always oppressed.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

Ideological Purity (or, Apple Does Wintel)

For some time now, Apple Computer has been shipping machines built around the Intel Core Duo processor, which has the same instruction set as any other Intel processor. When this move was first announced, Steve Jobs emphasized the gains in reduced processor heat and increased speed; but observers speculated that this was Step One in a bid to allow Windows use on the Mac.

A few days ago, this potential became reality as Apple introduced Boot Camp, software that allows you to partition a section of your hard drive and install Windows on it. Apple has no intention of shipping Windows software itself, so users have to buy the operating system from Microsoft and install it on their own; but as a marketing move, this is brilliant. Apple has been struggling along with a 3% market share in personal computers. Many people who would prefer to use Macs are forced to use software for their work that is only available for Windows; owning a Mac under these circumstances was a luxury. But now, you can buy a Mac and still use all the Windows software you want, including computer games or anything else. Suddenly, the equation changes; now, when buying a Mac you are paying a slight premium over other PC models for the exceptional hardware design, and access to the beautiful OS X and the specialized software that comes with it — while losing no functionality.

Moreover, as more people begin to experience the joy that is Macness, fewer people will tolerate working with Windows software if they can avoid it. The opportunity cost of purchasing a given piece of software for Mac, as opposed to Windows, just plummeted. In time, many people might completely transition to Mac software, using Windows only for specialized applications.

So, who can possibly be upset by such a shrewd business move? Apparently, the Los Angeles Times.

Last Friday, the print LAT carried a lead editorial titled Apples, Oranges and Windows. In it, they accused Steve Jobs of selling out to the Man:

Apple's move looks like a concession, if not a defeat, in its three-decade-long battle against rival Microsoft. For years, Apple's advertisements have urged computer users to abandon Windows, asserting that the choice between Mac and Windows was a choice between easy and confusing, cool and geeky, good and evil. On Wenesday, however, Apple started giving away software for Intel-powered Macs that makes it easy to install Windows XP…. Instead of trying to cure people of their Windows addiction, Apple is now an enabler…. It seem[s] silly, like trying to fit a lawnmower engine inside a Vespa scooter….

But from a cultural standpoint, it's jarring. It used to be said that the difference between the two tycoons of the computer age is that Bill Gates just wants your money, while Steve Jobs wants your soul. What Wednesday's announcement shows is that, if forced to choose, Jobs will take the money too.

This editorial should be embarrassing for the Times. Good heavens, a businessman actually wants to make money! Imagine that!

More than that, this editorial perfectly demonstrates a pernicious worldview that continues to harm American politics, of which the Times is often a major exponent. In this worldview, image is more important that reality, and cultural subversiveness is prized above all. It doesn't matter that Apple's computer business was continually struggling on the edge of irrelevance, with a market share that would horrify General Motors. No, what matters is that Apple is part of a Manichaean war with the font of all evil, Microsoft, upholding the sacred virtues of coolness and soul.

Never mind that this Manichaean drama was never so cut and dry. Microsoft, while it had some business practices that were definitely unethical and occasionally illegal, and while its software is generally clumsy and poorly written (and has the aesthetic sense of ten drunken clowns in a flea market), performed the service of making software that was good enough. And Bill Gates has in recent years been using his prodigious fortune to fight the spread of malaria in Africa, fund biomedical research here in the States, and assist in a host of other beneficial activities.

Never mind, too, that the Times's narrative uncritically accepts Apple's slick advertising pitch. The idea that you could demonstrate your moral superiority by your choice of computer is laughable. But it appeals to a certain class of people who want to be seen as virtuous, not because of what they actually do in the world, but because of the image they project.

Note the horror with which the Times treats Steve Jobs's desire for profits over so-called principle. They would be much happier, I'm sure, had Apple continued to flail away in the quicksand of the marketplace without getting anywhere, but still preserving their purity of ideas, the pristineness of their vision. Actually getting things done is not important. What is important is to be true to your beliefs in some bizarre sense that holds that intentions trump reality.

Therefore, if you cut taxes for the rich, even if it helps the poor in the long run by stimulating economic activity, you are evil. If you raise taxes for the rich, even if this puts hundreds of thousands of people out of work, you are righteous. If you oppose universal health care, even if such programs are a disaster in every country that has them, you are evil. If you force businesses to purchase health insurance for their workers, even if this makes them fire everyone they can spare, you are righteous. What is important is not real-world consequences, but the beauty of your inner vision.

Needless to say, if you ignore basic economics, if the idea of cost/benefit analysis is beyond you, if you make decisions based on emotion and not logic, if the long run is too far in the future to even cross your mind, if you lack the ability to think three moves ahead, if you willfully disregard Murphy's Law and Heinlein's Law of Tanstaafl (there ain't no such thing as a free lunch), if you insist on casting the basic operations of a free society as an apocalyptic clash between good and evil — then you will tend to create ruinous public policy.

These people should learn from Steve Jobs. They do claim to venerate him, after all.

Alternative Energy Roundup

At Winds of Change, they've posted an extensive series of links about advances in alternative energy. Lots of good stuff over there, you should check it out. Especially interesting to me is the piece about plasma energy experiments at Sandia National Labs, which (IIRC) I've mentioned here in the past. Also interesting is that Honda is apparently researching home cogeneration units, including one that can refine hydrogen. Honda is perhaps interested in establishing a market for hydro-cars, whether the infrastructure is in place or not. Good for them.

My general optimism about our energy problems continues unabated. The trick is getting people to take the initiative in using all this good stuff.

(Hat tip: Instapundit.)

Zarqawi Booted From Insurgent Leadership Role

It would be hard to hat tip everybody I've seen who linked to this, but suffice to say that the blogosphere is reacting gleefully to the news that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has reportedly been unseated as leader by Iraqi insurgents:

According to Huthayfah Azzam, the son of Abdullah Azzam, al-Zarqawi’s former mentor, the notorious commander of al-Qaeda in Iraq was stripped of his political duties at a meeting two weeks ago.

“The Iraqi resistance high command asked al-Zarqawi to give up his political role and replaced him with an Iraqi because of several mistakes,” said Mr Azzam in an interview with al-Arabiya, the Arabic news channel. “Al-Zarqawi’s role has been limited to military action,” he said.

…

Al-Zarqawi then faced a humiliating climbdown in December when he was forced to drop his opposition to general elections in a clear ideological split with the mainstream Sunni Arab population in Iraq, which participated in the polls. Certainly today al-Zarqawi is no longer regarded by the authorities in Baghdad as the main threat to the country’s stability.

As many other commentators have noted, this is a clear sign that the insurgents are rethinking their strategy of indiscriminately murdering the populace. It has backfired rather spectacularly, leading their former supporters among the Sunnis to switch camps. If the events of the past few weeks are any guide, the insurgents are now trying to game the political system instead of opposing it entirely, by exacerbating tensions between the various political parties. This may end up backfiring as well, as it seems that the most lasting effect of the recent turmoil in Baghdad has been to force the United states and the Iraqi military to finally confront Moqtada as-Sadr's Mahdi Army. (For more on this, go to Belmont Club and just keep scrolling down.)

Of course, this shouldn't be seen as a sign that we're actually winning in Iraq. Because, you know, everyone on TV says that it's a quagmire. And the LA Times even showed gruesome pictures of wounded soldiers on the front page! Things must be bad! Surely it's irrelevant that the highest daily casualties the US has suffered in months came from a single vehicle accident?

Perhaps a year or two after the invasion, I made an off-the-cuff prediction that the stabilization of Iraq would take no less than four years, and not too much more than that. This was based on nothing more than extrapolations based on what I knew about Arab politics in general, and the histories of previous stabilization efforts by the United States, particularly in the Carribbean and Philippines (read Max Boot on the subject). The person I was speaking to was shocked. He said words to the effect of, "The government never told us that we should expect the war to last four years!"

Perhaps I am atypical, given that I did a lot of reading in my youth about the Civil War, WWII, Korea, and other wars that tended to last a long time. My expectations are calibrated to those measurements; I do not consider four or five years to be a long time in which to rebuild a country from the ground up. And it seems from everything I can see that we are more or less on track to hit that goal. Yes, we have suffered temporary setbacks, but that's all they were: temporary. American casualties have dropped precipitously in the past several months. The Iraqi governing coalition continues to take shape. The Iraqi military has grown to more than 230,000 troops. The trend is still our friend.

Britain's Slide into Totalitarianism

From Samizdata comes a frightening post about the creation of a new law-enforcement body in Britain that seems, quite literally, to be a secret police. Agents of the Serious Organized Crime Agency will not take the Police's customary oath of service to the Crown that mandates adherence to the rule of law; they are authorized to act out of uniform, anywhere in the world; the names of SOCA agents will be kept secret; the locations of SOCA offices in Britain will be kept secret; there is at present no address or email given for SOCA, and the only way that private citizens can contact them is through a P.O. box. (There is a phone number given, for media use only.)

SOCA agents can act without judicial warrants; they can deputize anyone else to act on their behalf. They can gain access to secured data from most government agencies, and are authorized to pass data on to whomever they choose. SOCA is exempt from Freedom of Information requirements, and answers to nobody except the Home Secretary.

Most worrying, perhaps, is that SOCA is ostensibly meant to fight not terrorism (which might perhaps justify such abridgments of standard checks and balances) but organized crime, while not being limited to same. Rather, it is authorized to enforce all laws as needed. In other words, the infrastructure is now in place for Britain's government to totally subvert the traditional police powers and ignore judicial restraint.

Tony Blair may be an ally of the United States in international matters, but he is not a good man. His government is steadily exerting control over more and more areas of private and public life in Britain. And he has the almost total cooperation of the leading opposition party, the Tories; the debate is not whether to erect a police state, but in what manner.

It is perhaps not a coincidence that the erosion of Britain's Bill of Rights began in earnest after the 1997 ban on handguns.

Quote of the Day

Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

--Sir Robert Peel, founder of London's Metropolitan Police Force, generally acknowledged to be the first "modern" police force.

There is no moral distinction, in the abstract, between taking violent action in self-defense or in defense of others, and expecting the police to do so on your behalf. There is considerable moral cowardice in believing that you must not act violently in self-defense or in defense of others, and the police must act violently to keep you and yours safe. And there is great hazard in the unsupportable belief that the police will always keep you safe, and that you have no responsibility for securing your own safety or the safety of those around you.

(Hat tip: Kevin at Smallest Minority.)

Quote of the Day

The reason the American Army does so well in war is that war is chaos, and the Americans practice chaos on a daily basis.

— Unknown West German general

What Message From the Medium?

[Disclaimer: I am not a rabbi, nor do I play one on TV.]

Jewish tradition records that we received at Mount Sinai two interdependent codes of law: the Written Torah (or simply the Torah, i.e. the Five Books of Moses) and the Oral Torah (Torah sh-ba'al peh, the core of what would become the Talmud). On the one hand, we were commanded to transmit the Written Torah according to precise scribal rules which could not be deviated from; on the other hand, we were originally forbidden to transcribe the Oral Torah at all. Scholars were allowed to make their own study notes, but not to pass them on. The Oral Torah could only be passed on by word of mouth. The Talmud was only redacted when there was a danger that the Oral Torah would be lost entirely, thanks to the Romans hunting down and executing the musmakhim (members of the High Court).

When one reads the Torah, one is struck by its subtlety as an educational tool; not only does it describe the process by which the Children of Israel first were taught the law, but simply reading about that process teaches us the law as well, in a multitude of ways. At its heart, the philosophy of the Torah is that by mandating a set of behaviors (many of which are highly symbolic), the human soul is taught virtues and principles that ultimately extend beyond the limits of the law to infuse all of life.

The Torah is the immutable word of God. (Indeed, some mystical traditions believe that the text of the Torah is a representation of God's essence, perhaps in the manner that a two-dimensional pencil sketch can suggest a fully formed being.) That word is meant to permeate our beings and purify our souls. But it is important to realize that in many ways, the medium is the message.

That the Torah is written is a deep lesson all by itself. It is an implicit command that we as a people learn to read, and learn poetry and music (embedded in the text are often subtle poetic forms that escape the reader who is not looking for them). It forces us to check our understanding against an unchanging source, and not to stray from it over time. It is a physical embodiment of the tradition and the Covenant, focusing our attention in ways that an abstract concept cannot.

Yet if that is so, then what is the intrinsic meaning of an oral tradition? And why must we have both a written and oral law? Many cultures have had oral traditions, and more modern cultures rigorously record their histories and legal systems. What is the purpose of mandating both methods of propogation, and why forbid that the Oral Torah ever be written down?

[At this point, I'm more or less taking a shot in the dark. See disclaimer.]

First, the obvious difference. A written work is unchanging, assuming accurate transcribing; but oral traditions are notoriously prone to evolve. To accurately transmit an oral tradition requires tremendous dedication and study on the part of the scholar, and even then there is a constant danger that material will be lost. Several times the Talmud records the lament of rabbis who were unable to learn all that their teachers knew, and were unable to teach all they knew to their students.

This sharpens the question. If you want the material to be propogated, why prohibit written records? And if you already have a body of written material, why entrust additional material to such an unreliable mechanism? What is being accomplished here?

I can only assume that such gradual evolution of the Oral Law is not a bug, but a feature.

The Written Torah is primarily a pedagogic tool, not a self-contained legal system. It contains only the broadest strokes of the civil law, enough to convey the underlying principles that it is built from, and to set specific anchor points that cannot be deviated from, yet not enough to stand on its own as a comprehensive source for legal rulings. The minutia of the law are found in the Oral Torah.

What effect would this have? While the fundamental principles of the Law would remain absolute, the practical aspect of the law would have a relationship with the evolving society which, although certainly not "dynamic" in the usual sense, is at least not rigid. Oral traditions are quite powerful and capable of resisting change when such change is anathema to the whole; yet on minor points, oral traditions are often quite pragmatic. This allows the law as a whole to remain vital.

The Talmud was written as a series of freewheeling debates, preserving the opinions of scholars who were later outvoted and organized around the idea that "These and these are the words of the Living God" — in short, that there are many valid forms for the law to take. This gave rabbis in later generations a degree of freedom in applying the law to their own situations; in extremis, one could rely on a minority opinion if necessary. In this way the organic character of the Oral Law was at least partially preserved.

But later works such as the Shulkhan Arukh ("Prepared Table" by R' Yosef Karo) were written as authoritative reference books, laying out the law as a series of definitive statements. When differences of opinion are recorded, it is only so that scholars can seek to satisfy both opinions at once. This made the Oral Law largely static; it became much harder to adapt to the needs of the day without being called a backslider by a horde of lesser figures frenziedly waving legal codes. The vitality of the law became endangered. And that has led to all sorts of problems today.

This is not to say that we must bend whichever way the wind blows. The Written Torah is still supreme, and the Oral Torah is still authoritative. Traditions should evolve, not be forcibly crossbred. Yet today, for many people, the Oral Law is encased in amber — to such a degree that it often eclipses the Torah itself in importance, in reality if not in theory. To let ourselves fall into this trap is to disregard the meaning of an oral tradition.

What is there to do? I don't know. It is incredibly dangerous for individuals to begin passing judgement on the modern Jewish Law, despite its flaws. That way lies the void. But we who love the Torah should at least begin the discussion, on our terms. We have for too long allowed criticism of the Law to be monopolized by those who disdain the Law in the first place, nullifying such criticism's value. Now, we must stand up again.

Worker Shortages in China

This article in BusinessWeek (hat tip: ArrogantAthiest commenting at Samizdata) discusses how a shortage of skilled workers in China is causing wages to grow rapidly. Salaries at multinational firms in China increased 8.4% last year, and job turnover jumped to 14%. At the same time, working conditions are improving dramatically, as employers must compete for skilled employees.

This is having several cascading effects. Internally in China, the multinationals are building infrastructure further inland in search of cheaper labor, helping to extend prosperity to the peasants that have long been the Communist Party's most loyal dependents. I suspect that this will reduce the relative power of the government in the long run, which is good. At the same time, the existing middle class on the coast is becoming stronger, and is beginning the cycle of endlessly-rising expectations that is the first nail in a centrally-planned economy's coffin. All the best state employees are being poached away by multinationals, hastening the demise of state-owned companies.

At the same time, the increase in wages may slow the exodus of manufacturers to China, easing some of the protectionist pressures that have pushed the West into some asinine economic policies. (On the other hand, more companies may move to Vietnam or Cambodia instead. Ah well.) Perhaps this will give the United States more time to transition more completely to an Information Economy.

On the other hand, only China's low prices have saved us from broad inflation over the past few years. Now that the party is coming to a close, we have already begun reaping the fruits of our reckless monetary and fiscal policy. Inflation is creeping up, rates are rising, and yet Congress still spends money like there is no tomorrow. Yet tomorrow will always come, and in this case it is a tomorrow without the safety-valve of low Chinese business costs. We should plan accordingly.

Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land

A few days ago, President Bush gave a speech in Cleveland, Ohio, laying out his fundamental vision of how the war in Iraq is progressing. Much has already been said about this speech, which was apparently one of the President's better ones; but I would like to look at one small point in the Q&A session. When a representative of the Cleveland Hungarian Revolution 50th Anniversary Society [?] asked:

[H]ow can we help you, from the grassroots level, how can we help you promote the cause of freedom and liberty for all peoples throughout the world?

The President responded:

[T]he best way you can help is to support our troops. You find a family who's got a child in the United States military, tell them you appreciate them. Ask them if you can help them. You see somebody wearing a uniform, you walk up and say, thanks for serving the country.

While giving emotional support to the military is certainly valuable, the President completely missed the point of the question. In his conception, apparently, the role of private citizens is to lend their support to the initiatives of government. What the questioner was interested in, which I think is much more important, was the ways in which private citizens can act independently of government in ways that advance freedom and the broad national interest.

The Bush Administration has consistently underestimated the importance of engaging the people and harnessing our energies. For all the talk of the dreaded Rove Machine, the White House's PR has been inept at best. And while there have been some moves towards exploiting the strength of distributed systems rather than centralized planning, the trend in all areas of the Federal government is in the opposite direction. (A notable recent exception has been the release of intel documents from Iraq and Afghanistan, for which I am exceedingly grateful.)

But private citizens, when acting together, have tremendous power to spread the ideals of liberty on their own, without using tank battalions or national diplomacy. Given that the President unaccountably missed his chance to rally the people, as it were, I would like to submit my own suggestions:

1. Establish merit-based college scholarships for students from oppressed countries such as Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, China, or anywhere else where freedom is kept in check. Send the best and the brightest of these countries to schools where they will be taught the benefits of liberty, an appreciation for America, and the practical skills to establish open governments and free markets back home.

2. Privately fund radio broadcasts into oppressed countries, a do-it-yourself Voice of America so to speak. Translate the classic texts on liberty (Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, the Declaration of Independence, etc.) into the languages of oppressed countries and distribute them in as many formats as possible. For that matter, translate popular literature as well. Heinlein can be a better exponent of liberty than Madison, if more people read him.

3. Sponsor English teachers. The more people in these countries who can speak English, the better for America.

4. Invest in these countries. Not in the big government-linked crony-capitalist industries like oil or diamonds, but in the growth of middle-class entreprenuers. Instead of allowing oppressive governments to become more powerful with our money, private investors should be strengthening the middle class, the true engine of liberty. Additionally, the more contact we have with private citizens in these countries, the more knowledge we will build up about them and the more opportunities the government will have for effective intelligence-gathering.

5. Individuals should aggressively switch away from oil consumption towards alternatives such as solar power or coal. In every country where oil revenues make up a large portion of the economy, you find government corruption, oppression of the people, and rampant poverty. The oil industry by its very nature depends on cooperation with governments, and massive capital investments. Worse, at a recent event I attended, anti-slavery activist Aaron Cohen digressed from his main presentation to talk about the ways in which slavery and ethnic cleansing are often linked to large oil projects in the Third World. The bloodshed in Darfur? Largely over oil rights. Individuals can help by promoting technologies that are independent of huge, centralized government-run producers.

In brief, there are all sorts of ways in which private citizens can fight tyranny and advance the cause of freedom. If the government won't take advantage of what we can offer, we'll just have to do it on our own.

Gotcha: Saddam was Financing al-Qaida Affiliate

But, but, but surely Saddam had no connection to al-Qaida!

Read it and weep, useful idiots of the Jihad. John Negroponte finally got moving after the President gave him a direct order to release as many documents as he could, from the vast hoard of intelligence captured in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the documents is a fax to Baghdad from the Iraqi ambassador to the Philippines, outlining their previous financial and material support for the deadly Salafist terror group Abu Sayyaf. (Abu Sayyaf has had operational links to al-Qaida in the past.) As if we needed more proof of Saddam's involvement in terrorism, given his public support for Abu Nidal, the Palestine Liberation Front, and his paying stipends to the families of suicide bombers.

As for that absurd pseudo-argument stating that Saddam could never have worked with Islamist terrorists, since he was secular: remember that the saying "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" originated in Arabic. And Saddam showed no compunctions about using Islam to buttress his own authority.

That sound you hear is a million "Bush lied" drones frantically shoving their fingers deeper into their ears.

The Cheapening of Symbols

Tonight, I attended a production of Kiss Me Kate at UC Irvine. The production was in most respects quite good; the singing and acting were both top-notch, and the sets were lavishly done. But there was one sour note that had me fuming for most of the second act, unfortunately. The character of Harrison Howell, a Texas cattle-rancher in the original, had been rewritten for the 1999 revival as an Army general, apparently modeled on Douglas MacArthur. He is domineering, rude, and peremptory, and portrayed as the future running-mate of Republican Thomas Dewey. That I might have swallowed with only a little irritation, but in this production his military escorts were dressed in SS uniforms, and the main character mockingly gives the Sig Heil salute when the General's back is turned.

Perhaps it is to be expected from a theater department at UC Irvine. Surely they must think it highly amusing to take such a dig at the military today, given their presumed opposition to the war. Yet that they should do so by using Nazi imagery, in the same way that some today are fond of equating Bush with Hitler, suggests to me that such people no longer appreciate just how evil the Nazis were — or they understand it in some abstract sense that doesn't really penetrate.

For Jews, however, Nazi imagery can be incredibly powerful and inspires visceral reactions of loathing and hatred among some, and terrible fear and anger among those who actually went through the Holocaust. I remember going to see The Producers on Broadway last year; when the actors came out in SS uniforms for a dance number, I felt a sudden instinctive need to find a gun and shoot them. That was how strongly the very sight of those uniforms affected me.

Yet the very fact that the Nazis represented the pinnacle of evil, which should make people hesitant to use them as a point of comparison, instead had the reverse effect. It is too easy for sloppy thinkers to use the Nazis as a cheap shortcut for conveying just how strongly they feel about something, whether or not the use is justified. This phenomenon has become so widespread that Godwin's Law was formulated to try to discourage such hyperbole, at least on the Internet. Sadly, it has had limited effect, and now invoking the Nazis or Adolph Hitler has become a debating tactic with almost zero semantic content.

Now, people are so used to such sloppiness, such ahistoricism, that they often don't even consider the effect of such usage on listeners who might fully appreciate who the Nazis were, or the Communist Party, or the Ku Klux Klan, or any such incarnation of evil who has been appropriated by the ranting classes. When we hear such unthinking appeals to reflexive emotion, we only feel disgust for the one who is so willing to mangle history for the sake of the transitory political problem of the day.

Similarly, while Americans may be used to speaking of "crusades" as a general term, the Muslim world (and the Jewish world, for that matter) has much stronger memories of what the Crusades actually were. Hence the semantic confusion after one of President Bush's early speeches.

Perhaps such cheapening of symbols is endemic to democracies, which by their nature are forward-looking and have a poor appreciation of history. Associations to past events quickly fade; democracies constantly change, with few attachments to what came before. And those of us who are still stongly attached to our heritage are doomed to a constant, low-level dismay at the thoughtlessness of those who surround us.

After all, it's just a show, right?

Interesting… Flawed, But Interesting…

I happened to run across an editorial from last month by Ted Halstead, boss of the New America Foundation, in which he proposes a "new Homestead Act" to promote greater access to financial assets. His thesis:

The most promising way to revitalize America’s middle class is to update old traditions. In the nineteenth century, the U.S. sought to broaden the ownership of land; in the twentieth, the ownership of homes. In this new century, the target should be the ownership of financial assets. The logic for such a course follows from the economic dynamics that are widening the gap between today’s haves and have-nots.

This presupposes that financial assets are as fundamental a part of individual prosperity as are land holdings and home ownership. This assumption is off-base for a number of reasons, not least of which is that the small stockholder doesn't actually control anything to speak of, as a landowner controls his land or a homeowner controls his home; nor does stock directly contribute to physical security in the same way that a home does. But regardless. Setting aside the flawed comparison to the Homestead Act and the G.I. Bill, let us proceed to the meat of the proposal:

Imagine if every newborn in America were to receive $6,000 at birth as a down payment on a productive life. With the magic of compound interest [ed: uh oh…], that sum could grow to $20,000 or more by the time the child reaches 18. This young adult could then apply his or her nest egg toward various investments, such as college tuition, a down payment on a first home, seed money for a legitimate business, or retirement savings. Given the number of children born in America each year, the annual cost of such a program would be about $24 billion—roughly what the government squanders on farm subsidies. The benefits, however, would be immeasurable.

Endowing the next generation with resources to invest in its own human capital and financial future would create not only a much broader middle class but also a more self-sufficient, skilled, and entrepreneurial workforce. Gradually, the U.S. would witness the birth of a mass investor class, with ever more citizens deriving their income from returns on financial holdings as well as from wages. There would be less need for a generous welfare state, and the interests of workers and business would be better aligned.

A Homestead Act for the twenty-first century could also offer inner-city kids a new social contract:if they play by the rules and graduate from high school, then a pot of money will allow them to invest in their own futures. Paired with financial-literacy education in schools, such a policy could help turn a culture of poverty and dependency into one of hope and opportunity.

First, the obvious issues. Going from $6,000 to $20,000 in 18 years assumes a rate of return of about 7%. Assuming that Halstead is interested in real returns (i.e. adjusted for inflation), this would require a rather aggressive investment strategy, certainly more so than can be done with bonds. So either the "down payment" would have to be actively managed (with the corresponding risk of catastrophic losses), or else we should settle for smaller hypothetical gains — perhaps a $6000 stake could double (in real terms) in 18 years, reflecting a real rate of return of 4%, which is still being generous.

Second, this is a universal welfare program. The starting stake must come from tax revenue, and it further reinforces the notion that it is the government's job to take care of everyone by confiscating wealth from those who are most successful (cue Ayn Rand rant here).

That said, it has a few interesting features which can be examined. Assuming that such a program were instituted exactly as described (ha ha), everyone would grow up knowing that there is a lump sum of money waiting, which is not large enough to finance consumption for any length of time, yet is easily large enough for a down payment on a house, or the starting capital of a small business or an investment portfolio. Combined with a prudent upbringing (ha ha), the child would have a great incentive to learn the fundamentals of budgeting and money management, or even entrepreneurialism. That this would be of tremendous benefit should go without saying, especially compared to the status quo of widespread financial illiteracy.

Additionally, as noted above, this would constitute a financial incentive for students to graduate from high school (or the equivalent — homeschoolers should benefit as well). At present, many students see no benefit to sticking it out when they could go directly into the workforce, legal or illegal. Given the abysmal content of many high schools, I sympathize; but in any event, this would cause students to reassess their interests.

Moreover, if social welfare programs were indeed scaled back (har har), they would be replaced by a market system that allows the new adults to do whatever they wish with their stake, and reap the benefits or consequenses of their choices. Government spending could thus be employed more efficiently (hee hee), reducing the total cost to taxpayers (giggle).

Of course, in the real world such a program would most likely cause a boost in sales of luxury SUVs to recent high-school grads. Government spending would continue to skyrocket, nary a program would be cut back, and young people would develop an even worse mentality of entitlement. And there would be a proliferation of credit cards targeted to middle-schoolers, secured with the assets in this "Homestead" account.

So, not really useful. But an interesting idea nonetheless. It would be fun to compare this with Heinlein's idea of "legacies" that he put forth in For Us, the Living.

Brought to You by NASA

Some days it's really easy to believe that most of our problems will be solved by advancing technology:

Robert Downs: Well, on the 2009 [Mars Science Laboratory] mission nuclear powered machine that they’re going to put up there, lots of power, and they are going to put this little device that’s going to be in the order of 200 cubic centimetres in size and it’s going to sit out as an arm on the rover and it’s going to come up close to the rocks and it’s going to shoot a laser at the rocks. And the laser’s going to excite the atoms, make them vibrate and they’re going to send a signal back - it’s in the order of a million times weaker than the laser and we’ll see these tiny little spots of light that the rock emits and we can use them as fingerprints and we can identify minerals that the rock is made out of.

In other words, a small, portable device that can perform laser spectroscopy. And the manufacturer is hoping to commercialize it, since it can do far more than identify minerals:

[Downs:] You can shoot the Raman and the laser goes through that white plastic, it identifies the three parts of Tylenol the aspirin and it tells you what the plastic is made out of. It works on leaves – I can identify the species of trees by shooting their leaves. I don’t think the biologists are aware of this yet. I have a friend who collects snakeskins, I shot the snakeskins and I can identify the species of snake. Last month researchers in Switzerland showed that with the Raman instrument they could detect breast cancer. So we don’t know where this is going, it’s a brand new technology basically made because NASA funded it to make it cheaper, created the new optics and so on. And then we have people like Mike Scott [of Apple Computer, see more in the original article], who’s willing to put their own pocket money out to actually create the databases required to identify things.

Hat tip to Samizdata, where Dale Amon calls the device "a real tricorder."

Thoughts on Imperial Grunts

In his fantastic book Imperial Grunts, Robert Kaplan returns again and again to the way in which our military is constrained by a top-heavy bureaucracy, in which soldiers on the ground often cannot act without confirmation from multiple levels of high-command officers. In his section on Afghanistan, Kaplan notes that Special Forces teams receiving "actionable intel" on insurgents cannot strike against them until they secure authorization from the higher ups, which typically takes three days; in that time, the intel often goes stale.

Similarly, our deployments in Columbia and the Phillipines are subject to incredibly restrictive rules of engagement, such that our forces there can clearly point to factors that will undermine their mission yet be unable to do anything about it. The ROE's are usually laid down by the highest levels of the Pentagon, and while the leadership is most sensitive to the political environment in Washington they are least connected to the situation on the ground. Often, American troops can lose goodwill when civilians see that they have the power to act against narco-gangs or terrorists, yet refuse to do so for reasons that the civilians discount.

In general, the problem seems to be that soldiers on the front lines are not given the command authority they need, or access to the logistical support they require. There are good reasons for this, from a certain point of view; the Pentagon wants its troops to operate according to a unified strategy, which can be set according to the dictates of grand strategy and politics. Individual units, operating to complete their own missions, can conceivably act in ways that harm a larger effort. Similarly, there are only so many logistical resources to go around. Unless an authority can allocate these resources, units in combat will consume resources out of proportion to their utility.

But this merely changes the institutional bias from too much action to too much inaction. Worse, it removes control from officers on the ground, who can most deftly apply their strengths. Furthermore, while the Pentagon is acutely sensitive to large-scale politics, it is inherently ignorant of local politics in each of the hundreds of deployments around the world. Orders that seem appropriate from a high level can become hamfisted at the micro.

There is another problem with removing control from the front lines, one that is prevalent in all branches of government: the "just following orders" syndrome. If low-level agents have no discretion, they can blame all of their actions on those higher than they, who gave the orders. This enables them to act without caring whether the policy is actually helpful, or whether it is counterproductive. Meanwhile, those who give the original orders are often too powerful to discipline directly. This leads to what Hans Sherrer calls "bureaucratic inhumanity." It is true that soldiers are taught that "just following orders" is no excuse; but this just means that soldiers bear all the responsibility with relatively little of the power.

Meanwhile, in war as in everything else, the key is to respond to changing conditions more quickly than your adversary can. (See John Boyd for more.) The present structure of our military is slow and lumbering, an Industrial-Age organization in an Information-Age world. Something must be done.

Releasing control to the front line is not the hard part, and happens more often than I have implied, but only when it is relatively uncomplicated. The hard part is how to allocate logistical resources. And here, Kaplan is at his best. He repeatedly criticizes the military's bloated logistical tail, which consumes far too many resources just supporting itself to be able to nimbly support the troops on the front line. Kaplan argues convincingly that our troops would be more effective if there were fewer of them who were capable of more autonomous action. His harshest scorn is reserved for Camp Victory, the Army deployment in Iraq that is overrun with REMF's.

Robert Kaplan is an incredible observer of conditions on the ground, and the nobility and sacrifice of our soldiers. Everyone who is at all interested in the military or the future of American imperialism should read Imperial Grunts.

Quote of the Day

An "intellectual" is a man who takes more words than he needs to say more than he knows.

--President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Quote of the Day

The mind is not a storehouse to be filled
but an instrument to be used.

John Gardner

(Though to be precise, your mental instrument can be best used when it is guided by knowledge; but still, knowledge is nothing without application.)

Children and Childlessness

Shannon Love over at Chicago Boyz has written a piece on the economic consequenses of the growing numbers of childless adults. She argues that such adults are economic free-riders, since they benefit from society while doing nothing to perpetuate that society. This is not a moral judgement per se, as it does not consider whether such adults are childless by choice; not only are marriages occurring later and later in the West, but fertility seems to be lower in industrialized societies. But there can be no doubt that growing numbers of people have decided to remain childless, for reasons of personal convenience, rational economic calculation, or ideology.

The economic issue is perhaps the least difficult to address. Love writes:

In the pre-industrial era, children almost always contributed to the economic success of the family directly. Agriculture depended heavily on the labor of children, and children brought further benefits by extending support networks via marriages. In the industrial era, however, children began to contribute less and less while consuming more and more. Nowadays, children usually return very little if any economic benefit to the parents.

Being a parent costs one economically. Although we socialize some cost, such as education, parents pay most of the cost of raising a child. Parents also lose out in non-monetary ways such as in a loss of flexibility in when and where they work. If an individual sets out to maximize his lifetime income, avoiding having children would be step one.

A large part of this situation, I think, is due to child-labor laws, and the associated attitude that children are entitled not to work, and furthermore must not work for a living for fear that it would impact their (often pointless) schooling. My own observations seem to indicate the opposite. A struggling family I know in New York has seven children; at least one of them chose to work "under the table" (i.e. illegally) for businesses in the area starting from when he was twelve. Some of the other sons had their own catering business. Not only did their wages and earnings help pay for essentials, but the work experience has made them all more disciplined and dependable; the eldest son recently graduated college with a degree in business management.

Conversely, those of us who are unused to employment have a terrible work ethic and tend to spend money all the more freely for its being unearned. Additionally, people are waiting longer and longer after reaching legal age to go out and look for empoyment, simply because they can.

We must take steps to correct the present situation, in which children are incredibly expensive leeches for the first twenty years or more. One first step is to dramatically revise the child-labor laws, and to reprogram public attitudes towards honest work. As Thomas Sowell writes:

At one time, child labor laws were used to stop youngsters whose ages had not yet reached double digits from working in exhausting and dangerous factories and mines. Today, they are used to keep big healthy teenagers from handling pieces of paper in air-conditioned offices.

But this only begins to address one point leading to childlessness, the economic cost. Many people have chosen not to have children either because they don't want the hardship, or because they actually oppose childbirth in general. This is a more serious problem, having to do with societal attitudes and principles more than economic concerns. And here, Ms. Love's piece falls short; she does not point out that often, birth rates correlate strongly with the level of religious practice. This is certainly true in the Jewish community:

[The Orthodox] fertility rate is far above the Jewish norm. As against the overall average of 1.86 children per Jewish woman, an informed estimate gives figures ranging upward from 3.3 children in “modern Orthodox” families to 6.6 in Haredi or “ultra-Orthodox” families to a whopping 7.9 in families of Hasidim. These numbers are, of course, difficult to pin down definitively, but anecdotal evidence is compelling. In a single year, according to a nurse at one hospital in the Lakewood, New Jersey area serving a right-wing Orthodox population, 1,700 babies were born to 5,500 local families, yielding a rate of 358 births per thousand women. (The overall American rate is 65 births per thousand women.)

Religious Jews see childbirth as a Divine imperative, and a crucial obligation to the community. We are not alone in that regard:

The more Islamic a country, the higher the birthrate: Iran, Jordan, Lybia, Kuwait and Eritrea double their populations in 20 years or less, up to twice as fast as India.

I have thought for a long time that strong religions are a Darwinian survival trait for societies. Secularism offers few reasons why the perpetuation of a society is worth striving for. Is it any surprise that the "blue" states in the United States are steadily losing congressional seats to the "red" states?

God Bless Congressman Lantos

Be sure to watch this interview by Pajamas Media of Congressman Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), the only Holocaust survivor in Congress and a consistent champion of liberty. He recently chaired a subcommittee hearing to nail down Yahoo and Google for cooperating with China's political repression. The video linked above shows clips from that hearing, which demonstrate just how easily the companies have rationalized their complicity. We need about twenty more Lantoses, fast.