[Remember to head to the 2005 Weblog Awards and vote for your favorite blogs. Not that I have any preference, of course, but should your mouse happen to click on "Critical Mastiff," you just might find a large stack of gold bars under your pillow tomorrow. Hey, it could happen…]
Back when I attended high school, at a private religious school in California, everyone’s favorite class was Humanities. The teacher, a Fellow of the National Endowment of the Humanities, modeled his class after the old Greek idea of the Trivium: grammar, logic, rhetoric. We all loved his class, despite how hard we worked. More importantly from the school’s standpoint, after taking his class we achieved spectacular scores on our standardized tests. Other teachers wondered what it was that made his Humanities class so successful; yet when he suggested that the entire school adopt his methods, the administration said no. They felt that the school needed to more closely model its curriculum on the standards of the State of California. This is of course the same California whose public schools were ranked 43rd in the nation by Morgan Quitno Press for the 04-05 year.
At least my school chose to follow a flawed model. California’s standard public schools have no choice at all. They must comply with mandates from on high specifying what they teach, how they teach it, and what materials to teach it with. And the mandates are often driven not by how effective they are at teaching children the skills they need, but by political concerns, education PhD’s pushing fancy new programs in need of guinea pigs, or lobbying by textbook companies. And this problem does not end with California. All across the country, our children are subjected to public schools where teachers simply don’t have the option of teaching the way they think works best.
Particularly damaging are the abysmal textbooks used today. Cornell professor Donald Hayes examined textbooks published between 1860 to 1992, and concluded that “Honors high school texts [in 1992] are no more difficult than an eighth grade reader was before World War II.” Things have only gotten worse since then. Dr. John Hubisz noted in his review of middle-school science textbooks that a textbook is far more likely to be rejected by a state government for “offensive” material than for factual mistakes; naturally, publishing houses openly admit to employing more censors than fact-checkers. Hubisz concluded that “Not one of the books we reviewed reached a level that we could call ‘scientifically accurate.’ ”
Mathematics books fare no better. When the Education Department endorsed ten textbooks in 1999, 200 mathematicians and scientists, including 4 Nobel Prize winners, wrote an open letter to Secretary Richard Riley criticizing all ten texts, and calling for the government to retract its endorsement. Small wonder that among the 34 developed nations of the OECD, United States fifteen-year-olds ranked 29th in math in 2003, “significantly below average.”
Meanwhile, despite a large and growing body of research showing that studying fine arts can powerfully boost student’s academic performances, the arts are always first in line to be cut. The Council for Basic Education’s 2004 report “Academic Atrophy” found that a quarter of public school principals are reducing their fine arts instruction, and a third plan to do so in the future. These numbers are much higher for minority schools, who arguably need the fine arts most. At the same time, cuts are reported in elementary-level civics, geography, and foreign language.
In a global economy increasingly dependent on highly educated workforces, it is incredible that we have let our public schools dumb down our children. As a country we cannot remain at the top for long if we continue to produce students with such horribly abused minds.
What can be done? In California at least, parents and educators are flocking to charter schools. A charter school is a public school run by the teachers, parents, and the local community, and has significant autonomy from the state bureaucracy in determining their curriculum and teaching methods. The RAND Corporation, in their report, “Charter School Operations and Performance” (Zimmer and Guarino 2003), found that while nonclassroom-based charter schools had poor performace, classroom-based charter schools outperform public schools “…across grades and subjects except in elementary math, where the scores are slightly lower.” Moreover, charter schools offer broader education in the fine arts and foreign languages, and do it all using less money per student than comparable public schools receive.
The secret to charter schools is that they can teach in whatever way they think best. Free of the educational tyranny of state government, charters can choose their own teaching materials from anyone who can provide a quality product and tailor their methods to the needs of their students. The charter-school model has been shown to work, better than the standard public schools that have resisted every attempt at reform. For the sake of America and its children, we should promote charter schools across the country.
12/05/2005
12/04/2005
A Debt of Society
[As you know, I was chosen as a finalist in the Best of the Rest category of the 2005 Weblog Awards. Please check the link to see if voting is active yet, and if it is, do remember to vote.]
Free Money Finance, a blog discussing personal finance and budgeting issues, has a fun article about going to Russia and educating people about debt. The proprietor uses several verses from Tanakh, particularly Proverbs, to illustrate the Biblical attitudes towards debt. In particular, note the following:
As I wrote previously, we private citizens can donate money towards paying down the national debt. "But why?" you may ask. "Congress decided to spend that money without my say-so!" Very true. But aside from the fact that donating money towards the debt punishes Congress (by taking money out of the general budget), still we have a moral responsibility to pay back what this country owes.
Few politicians these days even consider really paying down the debt. Those who want to balance the budget typically want to do so with tax increases, and only so that they are free to invent new government spending. They would prefer to simply pay the monthly minimum on our national credit cards, as opposed to paying off the principle. Others, of course, prefer for America to live beyond her means. They want to be all things to all people, and to push off the costs to those poor saps left holding the bag in a few decades. This is wrong.
A government in debt ha a few options. The most moral, obviously, is to pay the debt off by living within the means of the country. Or, less happily, you can pay it off by raising taxes and funnelling the revenue towards retiring the debt. Or, governments can repudiate the debt entirely, which is breach of contract and comes close to outright theft.
But if a government's debts are denominated in its own currency, things get interesting. America owes a certain amount of dollars. America also prints dollars. The temptation is great for a country in this situation to simply inflate away the currency, reducing the real value of its debts proportionally. Of course, this ends up reducing the wealth of the people as well; this is why a stable level of inflation is called the "invisible tax," because it increases the wealth of government at the same time as it impoverishes the people.
But inflation is low, is it not? Well, maybe. Remember that government tax brackets are adjusted according to inflation, as are many types of government spending programs. And the inflation numbers themselves are reported by… yup, the very same government. If inflation is systematically underreported, then more people will drift into higher tax brackets at the same time as government payments are held artificially low. This is a constant hazard, of course; but it becomes all the more attractive to a government that is deeply in debt.
Whether or not government is actually deliberately inflating the currency, the massive amount of debt creates a continuing temptation to do so. For the sake of the very moral character of our government, we the people have an urgent need to get the debt under control if our elected officials will not. It is simply the right thing to do.
Free Money Finance, a blog discussing personal finance and budgeting issues, has a fun article about going to Russia and educating people about debt. The proprietor uses several verses from Tanakh, particularly Proverbs, to illustrate the Biblical attitudes towards debt. In particular, note the following:
If you do borrow, you must pay back all of the debt. It is a sin to borrow and not repay.The United States Government has been borrowing money for a long time, with very little thought about how to pay it back. The deficit is projected to get much worse as the Baby Boom generation takes advantage of Medicare and Medicaid; that money must come from somewhere. (I do think that the projections are too pessimistic; much of the cost that government pays is for caretakers for the elderly, and the Japanese have been researching robotic exoskeletons for the elderly specifically to avoid this problem. The exoskeletons should be ready for prime time in a year or two. Regardless, there's still a big hole in the budget.)
Psalm 37:21 says: “The wicked borrow and do not repay, but the righteous give generously.”
If we don’t want to be counted among the “wicked,” we must repay any debt we owe. It really doesn’t matter if the circumstances are beyond our control. If we make a debt, we’re stuck with it. Ecclesiastes 5:5 says: “It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it.”
As I wrote previously, we private citizens can donate money towards paying down the national debt. "But why?" you may ask. "Congress decided to spend that money without my say-so!" Very true. But aside from the fact that donating money towards the debt punishes Congress (by taking money out of the general budget), still we have a moral responsibility to pay back what this country owes.
Few politicians these days even consider really paying down the debt. Those who want to balance the budget typically want to do so with tax increases, and only so that they are free to invent new government spending. They would prefer to simply pay the monthly minimum on our national credit cards, as opposed to paying off the principle. Others, of course, prefer for America to live beyond her means. They want to be all things to all people, and to push off the costs to those poor saps left holding the bag in a few decades. This is wrong.
A government in debt ha a few options. The most moral, obviously, is to pay the debt off by living within the means of the country. Or, less happily, you can pay it off by raising taxes and funnelling the revenue towards retiring the debt. Or, governments can repudiate the debt entirely, which is breach of contract and comes close to outright theft.
But if a government's debts are denominated in its own currency, things get interesting. America owes a certain amount of dollars. America also prints dollars. The temptation is great for a country in this situation to simply inflate away the currency, reducing the real value of its debts proportionally. Of course, this ends up reducing the wealth of the people as well; this is why a stable level of inflation is called the "invisible tax," because it increases the wealth of government at the same time as it impoverishes the people.
But inflation is low, is it not? Well, maybe. Remember that government tax brackets are adjusted according to inflation, as are many types of government spending programs. And the inflation numbers themselves are reported by… yup, the very same government. If inflation is systematically underreported, then more people will drift into higher tax brackets at the same time as government payments are held artificially low. This is a constant hazard, of course; but it becomes all the more attractive to a government that is deeply in debt.
Whether or not government is actually deliberately inflating the currency, the massive amount of debt creates a continuing temptation to do so. For the sake of the very moral character of our government, we the people have an urgent need to get the debt under control if our elected officials will not. It is simply the right thing to do.
Thank You, Weblog Awards!
The 2005 Weblog Awards have just announced their finalists in the various awards categories. In each category, blogs could be nominated by anyone (including their authors) and fifteen would be chosen as finalists. I submitted my blog under the Best of the Rest category, and am proud to say that Critical Mastiff is one of the finalists!
(See, getting hardly any traffic can be a good thing…)
Tomorrow, the voting begins. So now I am appealing to you, my loyal readers… as well as the casual readers, apathetic readers, amused readers, and annoyed readers. Votes can be cast once in each category, EVERY DAY! Which means that the old maxim "Vote early, vote often" definitely applies. Now, the other nominated blogs are quite good, so take the chance to check them out first. Afterwards, you can vote for me anyway.
I will be posting reminders every day at the end of my posts, so take a few moments and do your blogospheric duty, starting tomorrow!
(See, getting hardly any traffic can be a good thing…)
Tomorrow, the voting begins. So now I am appealing to you, my loyal readers… as well as the casual readers, apathetic readers, amused readers, and annoyed readers. Votes can be cast once in each category, EVERY DAY! Which means that the old maxim "Vote early, vote often" definitely applies. Now, the other nominated blogs are quite good, so take the chance to check them out first. Afterwards, you can vote for me anyway.
I will be posting reminders every day at the end of my posts, so take a few moments and do your blogospheric duty, starting tomorrow!
12/03/2005
Running on Fumes
I have just come back from this year's Political Science Shabbaton down at Stern. Not quite as star-studded as last year's, but still very good. The highlight of the event was a visit by Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn/Bronx), House Democratic Whip. Congressman Weiner is exceptionally talented, having been the youngest person ever elected to New York's city council, and is still unusually young for his position.
Weiner's speech was fascinating to listen to, though I did not agree with much of it. I will note only two points in particular. First, he criticized what many in the blogosphere have also lamented, that President Bush has not asked the American people to sacrifice for the war, keeping an artificial divide between America's policies and the daily experience of most people. Indeed, by one way of looking at things the President has effectively bribed America with tax cuts. While many groups of citizens have taken it on themselves to support the war effort through organizations such as Soldiers' Angels, most people do not even know such organizations exist. The effect of all this has been to make the people quickly lose interest in the war. Congressman Weiner particularly feared that the general fatigue would make nearly impossible any military action against Iran's nuclear program.
Second, he mentioned that he was part of a small group of Democrats pushing for the party to take a tougher line on Saudi Arabia, both for sound foreign-policy reasons and to make the Republicans pay the price for their close ties to the Saudis. This would seem to be a no-brainer. Most people hate the Saudis, and many conservatives are livid that their party continues to deal with them. Moreover, Saudi Arabia continues to fund the spread of Salafi Islam, which is presently destabilizing much of Europe, while still taking advantage of preferred prices for American military equipment. Yet the Democratic leadership has resisted moving against them; indeed, despite the incredible political benefits of doing so the Democrats do not even talk about Saudi Arabia, leaving it to be covered by Michael Moore and his ilk.
Why? Perhaps the Democratic leadership is as compromised by Saudi money as the Republicans are; this is likely, given the strong ties between the Saudis and the State Department and the CIA. But I think that a larger reason is that to move against Saudi Arabia would be dangerous, and would only be tried if it were part of a larger strategy. The Democrats have no larger strategy for dealing with the world that I can tell, and certainly none that would justify the disruptions in the world oil market, the American munitions industry, and the Middle-East balance of power that would ensue from such a conflict.
In a later panel discussion by members of the faculty, our International Relations professor noted that the Democrats typically win the presidency when their candidate is credible on security (FDR, Truman, JFK, Johnson) or when the world is seemingly free of major conflicts (Clinton). But when the Democrats run a weak candidate during wartime, they get flattened (McGovern, Dukakis, Kerry). The Democrats will likely remain out of power until they regain a fundamental willingness to use force, and more importantly to justify using force.
This is the key point. When you look at the conservative end of politics, you find a distinguished group of intellectuals and philosophers who have between them developed a powerful and flexible conservative ideology. This group includes Leo Strauss, Irving Kristol, William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman, Allan Bloom, Victor Davis Hanson, and a host of others. Not only did such figures breathe new life into conservatism as an idea, but each could justify a set of consistent policies that flowed out of his philosophical positions. And conservative politicians could look to a powerful theoretical foundation to back up their agenda.
On the liberal end, this sort of intellectual firepower seems to be lacking. Not that liberals are stupid; but they cannot point to a clearly elucidated, consistent philosophy in the same way as conservatives can, unless they go back to discredited ideas from Marx's various students. A senior member of our faculty (who shows by her example that Trotskyism can be a good thing) calls the current liberal leadership "marshmallows" and is frustrated that they cannot describe what they stand for, because in many cases they don't know themselves.
In such an environment, the discourse of the Left is being taken over by those who scream the loudest, usually refugees from the '60's. These people fantasize that they can somehow transcend the evils of the present capitalist society by rehashing the same failed ideas that they tried the last time. Or, when the ideas themselves are useful, they do not represent a true alternative to the status quo.
Example: in the last few weeks there has been a great deal of coordinated media attention to a "movement" called Freeganism—essentially a euphemism for dumpster-diving. There is nothing wrong with dumpster-diving, of course; as the linked site notes, over 40% of U.S. food production goes to waste, to say nothing of furniture or clothing, and freegans can apparently make out quite well with the trash of others. But many freegans are not simply thrifty people out to benefit from the waste of others; they have the audacity to consider freeganism an alternative to capitalism! The movement's publicity is mostly funded by Wetlands Preserve, and the Freeganism site contains an article titled Everyday Revolutions which states, in part:
That the Left has become so intellectually bankrupt should not be a cause to celebrate. Not only is their incompetence allowing the Right to become smug and complacent, but society in general is denied the chance to refine its intellectual model. I strongly advocate capitalism, but I do not love capitalism. Its great advantages are balanced against the discomfort of the poor, the everpresent stress and tension of modern life, and above all the constant focus on materialism and the consequent narrowness of vision that capitalism creates. Spiritual concerns are pushed to the side; indeed, this may well be the eventual undoing of capitalism as Marx predicted.
But the present range of alternatives such as the welfare state are not alternatives at all; for all of them cause far greater misery and tyranny in the long run, compounded with a distateful infantilization of society. At any rate, they also tend to denigrate the spiritual in favor of the physical, so we have gained nothing thereby.
It should be the purpose of the Left to offer substantive challenges to the staus quo, that can actually improve the lot of the world. Instead, for the most part we get a jumbled mush of Third Way social welfarism, petulant anarchism, naked authoritarianism, and cheap populism. This is hardly an intellectual framework that leads to good policy, nor has it done so.
Until the Left produces a new generation of philosophers that can move beyond its many ideological flaws and offer something better, they will continue to hinder the advance of society instead of promoting it. This is particularly true since the Left's influence promotes the idea that Western civilization is not worth fighting for. When we are warring with an enemy that fervently believes in its own righteousness, such apathy will be lethal. Until the Left develops a true alternative to conservatism, they must be denied power.
Weiner's speech was fascinating to listen to, though I did not agree with much of it. I will note only two points in particular. First, he criticized what many in the blogosphere have also lamented, that President Bush has not asked the American people to sacrifice for the war, keeping an artificial divide between America's policies and the daily experience of most people. Indeed, by one way of looking at things the President has effectively bribed America with tax cuts. While many groups of citizens have taken it on themselves to support the war effort through organizations such as Soldiers' Angels, most people do not even know such organizations exist. The effect of all this has been to make the people quickly lose interest in the war. Congressman Weiner particularly feared that the general fatigue would make nearly impossible any military action against Iran's nuclear program.
Second, he mentioned that he was part of a small group of Democrats pushing for the party to take a tougher line on Saudi Arabia, both for sound foreign-policy reasons and to make the Republicans pay the price for their close ties to the Saudis. This would seem to be a no-brainer. Most people hate the Saudis, and many conservatives are livid that their party continues to deal with them. Moreover, Saudi Arabia continues to fund the spread of Salafi Islam, which is presently destabilizing much of Europe, while still taking advantage of preferred prices for American military equipment. Yet the Democratic leadership has resisted moving against them; indeed, despite the incredible political benefits of doing so the Democrats do not even talk about Saudi Arabia, leaving it to be covered by Michael Moore and his ilk.
Why? Perhaps the Democratic leadership is as compromised by Saudi money as the Republicans are; this is likely, given the strong ties between the Saudis and the State Department and the CIA. But I think that a larger reason is that to move against Saudi Arabia would be dangerous, and would only be tried if it were part of a larger strategy. The Democrats have no larger strategy for dealing with the world that I can tell, and certainly none that would justify the disruptions in the world oil market, the American munitions industry, and the Middle-East balance of power that would ensue from such a conflict.
In a later panel discussion by members of the faculty, our International Relations professor noted that the Democrats typically win the presidency when their candidate is credible on security (FDR, Truman, JFK, Johnson) or when the world is seemingly free of major conflicts (Clinton). But when the Democrats run a weak candidate during wartime, they get flattened (McGovern, Dukakis, Kerry). The Democrats will likely remain out of power until they regain a fundamental willingness to use force, and more importantly to justify using force.
This is the key point. When you look at the conservative end of politics, you find a distinguished group of intellectuals and philosophers who have between them developed a powerful and flexible conservative ideology. This group includes Leo Strauss, Irving Kristol, William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman, Allan Bloom, Victor Davis Hanson, and a host of others. Not only did such figures breathe new life into conservatism as an idea, but each could justify a set of consistent policies that flowed out of his philosophical positions. And conservative politicians could look to a powerful theoretical foundation to back up their agenda.
On the liberal end, this sort of intellectual firepower seems to be lacking. Not that liberals are stupid; but they cannot point to a clearly elucidated, consistent philosophy in the same way as conservatives can, unless they go back to discredited ideas from Marx's various students. A senior member of our faculty (who shows by her example that Trotskyism can be a good thing) calls the current liberal leadership "marshmallows" and is frustrated that they cannot describe what they stand for, because in many cases they don't know themselves.
In such an environment, the discourse of the Left is being taken over by those who scream the loudest, usually refugees from the '60's. These people fantasize that they can somehow transcend the evils of the present capitalist society by rehashing the same failed ideas that they tried the last time. Or, when the ideas themselves are useful, they do not represent a true alternative to the status quo.
Example: in the last few weeks there has been a great deal of coordinated media attention to a "movement" called Freeganism—essentially a euphemism for dumpster-diving. There is nothing wrong with dumpster-diving, of course; as the linked site notes, over 40% of U.S. food production goes to waste, to say nothing of furniture or clothing, and freegans can apparently make out quite well with the trash of others. But many freegans are not simply thrifty people out to benefit from the waste of others; they have the audacity to consider freeganism an alternative to capitalism! The movement's publicity is mostly funded by Wetlands Preserve, and the Freeganism site contains an article titled Everyday Revolutions which states, in part:
If we are to build a revolutionary movement with the power to truly challenge the status quo, we must demonstrate that the principles we uphold offer not only planetary survival, but a better everyday life. We must recognize that for most working people, the threat of not being able to pay rent is a much more immediate than loss of biodiversity , threats to civil liberties, or nuclear war.Freeganism will never "challenge the status quo," of course, nor will it "build a truly revolutionary movement." Freeganism is not an opponent of capitalism, but a parasite. Parasites are valuable in any ecosystem, and freeganism could have a valuable impact on society, but to say that freeganism will overthrow capitalism and its associated activities is like saying that vultures will unite and wipe out Africa's lions. That people could seriously make the statements above suggests either monomania, abject stupidity, or shallow and simplistic thinking in otherwise intelligent people.
To build a truly revolutionary movement, we link our indictment of the horrors of the current system, things like factory farming, the Iraq war, and rainforest destruction with the sense that we offer a better way than the status quo to provide for people’s food, shelter, health, community, security, intellectual stimulation, and joy in their lives. When we build a movement that demonstrates the capacity to offer all of these things, while challenging the greed, misery, and destruction of megacorporations, their puppet government, and entire capitalist-industrialist model, then we can begin to build broad support and engagement in ecological resistance struggles, and finally have a real chance to liberate this world.
That the Left has become so intellectually bankrupt should not be a cause to celebrate. Not only is their incompetence allowing the Right to become smug and complacent, but society in general is denied the chance to refine its intellectual model. I strongly advocate capitalism, but I do not love capitalism. Its great advantages are balanced against the discomfort of the poor, the everpresent stress and tension of modern life, and above all the constant focus on materialism and the consequent narrowness of vision that capitalism creates. Spiritual concerns are pushed to the side; indeed, this may well be the eventual undoing of capitalism as Marx predicted.
But the present range of alternatives such as the welfare state are not alternatives at all; for all of them cause far greater misery and tyranny in the long run, compounded with a distateful infantilization of society. At any rate, they also tend to denigrate the spiritual in favor of the physical, so we have gained nothing thereby.
It should be the purpose of the Left to offer substantive challenges to the staus quo, that can actually improve the lot of the world. Instead, for the most part we get a jumbled mush of Third Way social welfarism, petulant anarchism, naked authoritarianism, and cheap populism. This is hardly an intellectual framework that leads to good policy, nor has it done so.
Until the Left produces a new generation of philosophers that can move beyond its many ideological flaws and offer something better, they will continue to hinder the advance of society instead of promoting it. This is particularly true since the Left's influence promotes the idea that Western civilization is not worth fighting for. When we are warring with an enemy that fervently believes in its own righteousness, such apathy will be lethal. Until the Left develops a true alternative to conservatism, they must be denied power.
12/01/2005
Quote of the Day
Good leaders create followers. Great leaders create other leaders.
—Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth Jonathan Sacks, speaking at my college today.
11/30/2005
The Uses of Law
When would-be reformers go through the law code looking for bad laws to attack, often they are simply paralyzed by the sheer volume of damaging laws. Priorities must be set; given scarce resources, one must decide to change this law before that one. Yet as far as I know, no one has tried to categorize laws by what they do, so that they could be compared to each other qualitatively or quantitatively.
Such a system, if it were clearly defined and accepted, could work wonders in getting people to agree on what needs changing now, and what later. While I have no idea how the quantitative aspect could work, I have some thoughts on how to categorize law.
Fundamentally, law can do three things:
1. Law can make a statement of morality, i.e. say that such-and-such is good or bad in itself. Example: laws against child abuse.
2. Law can regulate and promote civil order (or, less generously, create unintended consequences in society), without necessarily making a moral judgement on the things being regulated. Example: traffic laws.
3. Law can privilege one actor or group of actors over another. Example: agriculture subsidies.
Now, most laws have components of all three of these elements. For example, families with children get a tax writeoff for their children because our culture considers childraising to be a great good, and in order to keep the population growing fast enough to avoid a deflationary spiral. In the process, families with children are privileged over families without children.
But by taking a law, determining the totality of its effects, and classifying these effects using the above three components, one may more easily analyze its effects or identify the underlying assumptions of the law. One these are clarified, one may more easily ask whether the law is good or bad.
This is about the point where I should ideally demonstrate this method (say, on the Accredited Investor laws), but it's late and my brain is running on empty. I'll get around to a demo soon.
Such a system, if it were clearly defined and accepted, could work wonders in getting people to agree on what needs changing now, and what later. While I have no idea how the quantitative aspect could work, I have some thoughts on how to categorize law.
Fundamentally, law can do three things:
1. Law can make a statement of morality, i.e. say that such-and-such is good or bad in itself. Example: laws against child abuse.
2. Law can regulate and promote civil order (or, less generously, create unintended consequences in society), without necessarily making a moral judgement on the things being regulated. Example: traffic laws.
3. Law can privilege one actor or group of actors over another. Example: agriculture subsidies.
Now, most laws have components of all three of these elements. For example, families with children get a tax writeoff for their children because our culture considers childraising to be a great good, and in order to keep the population growing fast enough to avoid a deflationary spiral. In the process, families with children are privileged over families without children.
But by taking a law, determining the totality of its effects, and classifying these effects using the above three components, one may more easily analyze its effects or identify the underlying assumptions of the law. One these are clarified, one may more easily ask whether the law is good or bad.
This is about the point where I should ideally demonstrate this method (say, on the Accredited Investor laws), but it's late and my brain is running on empty. I'll get around to a demo soon.
11/29/2005
Propoganda Techniques
Strategy Page provides a detailed list of the most effective and commonly used forms of propoganda. As they write, "If you spend any time at all consuming mass media, you will find these techniques familiar." Check it out.
Strategy Page is incredibly useful for anyone who wants to better understand modern warfare and strategy. Especially interesting are the "DLS" articles in the sidebar, which stand for Dirty Little Secrets.
Strategy Page is incredibly useful for anyone who wants to better understand modern warfare and strategy. Especially interesting are the "DLS" articles in the sidebar, which stand for Dirty Little Secrets.
11/27/2005
D.C. Summer: A Retrospective
[Yes, I finally got around to it…]
This past summer was spent in Washington D.C. doing a program run by the Fund for American Studies (TFAS), where I studied part of the day at Georgetown and interned at an NGO for the rest. (Check my June and July 2005 archives for some posts referencing my experiences.) I have been asked a few times to summarize my impressions of the way government works.
The NGO I interned at was relatively small and not intimately connected to the halls of power; but it was very much a part of the "vast right-wing consipracy," so to speak. Our major financial backer was one of the big names of the libertarian/conservative movement, and much of our board was composed of Heritage Foundation members. The NGO officers attended the Wednesday roundtables given by Grover Norquist, of Americans for Tax Reform. These roundtables served to brief all the major libertarian/conservative organizations in town, and coordinate their lobbying activities in Congress. While much of the gathering's goals matched those of the Bush Administration (and in the one roundtable I attended, an administration official was actually there to talk about Hugo Chavez), this was emphatically not a Republican alliance per se. They wanted deregulation and small government, and the President was giving them precious little to feel good about except for CAFTA.
In that room, I had the sense of a great deal of frustrated power. These people were all representing large constituencies of people who thought that government was too big, too intrusive, and out of control. Yet they could do nothing about it without the Senate, and while they certainly had influence in the House of Representatives, the Senate was much more hostile to their goals. In particular, the gathering's support for CAFTA was small potatoes compared to the direct lobbying by the President, and in the end the people around the room could do little but make their phone calls and hope that the President came through. In the end, of course, CAFTA passed.
TFAS arranged many events for the students; we visited the Federal Reserve, the State Department, the CIA. Everywhere we went, I got the same impression from the staff: they were generally competent people, working incredibly hard for relatively little pay because they genuinely wanted to serve the country. They were cynical as only government workers can be, and sometimes resentful of their low salaries, but they all did the work because they felt a calling, or because they loved being a part of Washington (in which sense that was true is a disturbing question).
(A word on the salaries. Looking at government salaries in the abstract, they don't seem too bad. But D.C. is possibly the most expensive city in America to live in. To get an tiny apartment on a starting government salary, you needed at least three other roommates. Yet the city is filled with people doing just that, in order to work at the center of government.)
At the same time, you could tell a lot about a particular agency by looking at where it was housed. The Federal Reserve is located in one of the great neoclassical edifices, and lavishly appointed in the old style. Inside, one got a tremendous sense of gravity and history. The deliberations of its members cannot help but be influenced by a sense of responsibility for the country whose money they control, as it should be.
The State Department, on the other hand, is located in a terribly ugly building in Foggy Bottom. It seems like something out of a 1950's "This is the Future" exhibit. There are no windows once you get inside, and the main conference room is closed off from the outside world. The employees gave off a vague sense of being out of touch, whether it was the outdated clothing worn by the secretaries or the way that people seemed to blink just a bit too quickly when confronted by a group of mostly well-behaved college students.
I was surprised to find that many midlevel government appointees are selected solely because of their work during election campaigns. One of the speakers who came to TFAS's career day was a midlevel member of the Treasury Department, who described how he had started working campaigns on the state level, eventually becoming a key member of the President's reelection team for his state. Because of that election job, he was given his post in the Treasury. While he was certainly qualified for the position, I was unsettled by the whole idea.
This official invited a few of us to a shindig he had arranged at Capital City Brewery. I was the only one to make it due to a terrible rainstorm, but I got to watch him work a long table filled with Washington professionals. They were senior congressional aides, or else midlevel officials like himself in other agencies. He had brought them together to outline plans for a lobbying organization he was setting up to get Federal funding for a poor area of his state; I suspect that at least part of his intent was to lay the groundwork for an eventual run for elected office. I was certainly not the only one to think so; the others spent the night making connections to this dynamic figure who promised to go far in politics.
My overall impression of how the government works, from my extremely limited vantage point, was that Washington is full of decent, hardworking people who love their country and serve it by playing according to the sometimes corrupt, sometimes nasty, sometimes hypocritical rules of the game. There is far too much money going around, as can be seen by the hordes of lobbying organizations that infest every decent-looking highrise, and that will skew people's behavior. One wonders how the system can ever be tamed, simply because it has become so tightly interdependent and full of incestuous linkages. But at any rate, I have much more respect for the average Washingtonian now than before the summer.
One final note: the Jewish Community Center looked like some sort of miniature neoclassical fortress. It gave off a sense of pathetic pretensions to wealth and power on the one hand, and a deep and abiding insecurity on the other. It may illuminate much about the mindset of the average Jewish lobbyist or politico. (On the other hand, the food was quite good, though I ate more often at Eli's Deli on 20th and N. Mmm, Capital Sandwich…)
This past summer was spent in Washington D.C. doing a program run by the Fund for American Studies (TFAS), where I studied part of the day at Georgetown and interned at an NGO for the rest. (Check my June and July 2005 archives for some posts referencing my experiences.) I have been asked a few times to summarize my impressions of the way government works.
The NGO I interned at was relatively small and not intimately connected to the halls of power; but it was very much a part of the "vast right-wing consipracy," so to speak. Our major financial backer was one of the big names of the libertarian/conservative movement, and much of our board was composed of Heritage Foundation members. The NGO officers attended the Wednesday roundtables given by Grover Norquist, of Americans for Tax Reform. These roundtables served to brief all the major libertarian/conservative organizations in town, and coordinate their lobbying activities in Congress. While much of the gathering's goals matched those of the Bush Administration (and in the one roundtable I attended, an administration official was actually there to talk about Hugo Chavez), this was emphatically not a Republican alliance per se. They wanted deregulation and small government, and the President was giving them precious little to feel good about except for CAFTA.
In that room, I had the sense of a great deal of frustrated power. These people were all representing large constituencies of people who thought that government was too big, too intrusive, and out of control. Yet they could do nothing about it without the Senate, and while they certainly had influence in the House of Representatives, the Senate was much more hostile to their goals. In particular, the gathering's support for CAFTA was small potatoes compared to the direct lobbying by the President, and in the end the people around the room could do little but make their phone calls and hope that the President came through. In the end, of course, CAFTA passed.
TFAS arranged many events for the students; we visited the Federal Reserve, the State Department, the CIA. Everywhere we went, I got the same impression from the staff: they were generally competent people, working incredibly hard for relatively little pay because they genuinely wanted to serve the country. They were cynical as only government workers can be, and sometimes resentful of their low salaries, but they all did the work because they felt a calling, or because they loved being a part of Washington (in which sense that was true is a disturbing question).
(A word on the salaries. Looking at government salaries in the abstract, they don't seem too bad. But D.C. is possibly the most expensive city in America to live in. To get an tiny apartment on a starting government salary, you needed at least three other roommates. Yet the city is filled with people doing just that, in order to work at the center of government.)
At the same time, you could tell a lot about a particular agency by looking at where it was housed. The Federal Reserve is located in one of the great neoclassical edifices, and lavishly appointed in the old style. Inside, one got a tremendous sense of gravity and history. The deliberations of its members cannot help but be influenced by a sense of responsibility for the country whose money they control, as it should be.
The State Department, on the other hand, is located in a terribly ugly building in Foggy Bottom. It seems like something out of a 1950's "This is the Future" exhibit. There are no windows once you get inside, and the main conference room is closed off from the outside world. The employees gave off a vague sense of being out of touch, whether it was the outdated clothing worn by the secretaries or the way that people seemed to blink just a bit too quickly when confronted by a group of mostly well-behaved college students.
I was surprised to find that many midlevel government appointees are selected solely because of their work during election campaigns. One of the speakers who came to TFAS's career day was a midlevel member of the Treasury Department, who described how he had started working campaigns on the state level, eventually becoming a key member of the President's reelection team for his state. Because of that election job, he was given his post in the Treasury. While he was certainly qualified for the position, I was unsettled by the whole idea.
This official invited a few of us to a shindig he had arranged at Capital City Brewery. I was the only one to make it due to a terrible rainstorm, but I got to watch him work a long table filled with Washington professionals. They were senior congressional aides, or else midlevel officials like himself in other agencies. He had brought them together to outline plans for a lobbying organization he was setting up to get Federal funding for a poor area of his state; I suspect that at least part of his intent was to lay the groundwork for an eventual run for elected office. I was certainly not the only one to think so; the others spent the night making connections to this dynamic figure who promised to go far in politics.
My overall impression of how the government works, from my extremely limited vantage point, was that Washington is full of decent, hardworking people who love their country and serve it by playing according to the sometimes corrupt, sometimes nasty, sometimes hypocritical rules of the game. There is far too much money going around, as can be seen by the hordes of lobbying organizations that infest every decent-looking highrise, and that will skew people's behavior. One wonders how the system can ever be tamed, simply because it has become so tightly interdependent and full of incestuous linkages. But at any rate, I have much more respect for the average Washingtonian now than before the summer.
One final note: the Jewish Community Center looked like some sort of miniature neoclassical fortress. It gave off a sense of pathetic pretensions to wealth and power on the one hand, and a deep and abiding insecurity on the other. It may illuminate much about the mindset of the average Jewish lobbyist or politico. (On the other hand, the food was quite good, though I ate more often at Eli's Deli on 20th and N. Mmm, Capital Sandwich…)
11/26/2005
How Does One Practice That?
A practitioner of Chi Gong (or Qigong) performed an amazing (and slightly off-color) feat of strength the other day in Fremont, California. Read about it here (rated R). The article seems not to have any quotation marks, but you can figure it out without much trouble.
At one point the article describes the body part in question as "look[ing] ready to burst." This is consistent with videos I have seen of other Chi Gong demonstrations, in which the practitioners appear to have swelled up significantly. You can also see a hint of this in the movie "Kung Fu Hustle"; compare the normal appearance of the tailor, Iron Fist, to his appearance while he is fighting. His skin appears to puff out, particularly his face and chest.
This was just too cool to pass up. Hat tip to Ace of Spades.
At one point the article describes the body part in question as "look[ing] ready to burst." This is consistent with videos I have seen of other Chi Gong demonstrations, in which the practitioners appear to have swelled up significantly. You can also see a hint of this in the movie "Kung Fu Hustle"; compare the normal appearance of the tailor, Iron Fist, to his appearance while he is fighting. His skin appears to puff out, particularly his face and chest.
This was just too cool to pass up. Hat tip to Ace of Spades.
11/22/2005
Rafah Crossing
The United States has just pressured Israel into transferring the Rafah crossing in Gaza to the control of the Palestinian Authority. This will almost certainly lead to increased weapons-smuggling into Gaza, as even while the Israelis are still there they routinely find sophisticated tunnels through which smugglers transport weapons, explosives, and people.
Is the objective of the exercise to guarantee Israeli security? Or is it to give the Palestinians a state? We cannot do both with any certainty, and which of the two options we prefer will dictate our response to issues like the Rafah crossing. A sovereign state must by definition control its own borders; the present Israeli checkpoints are a clear violation of any forecasted Palestinian sovereignty. Therefore, if the powers-that-be are serious about Palestinian statehood, the borders must eventually revert to Palestinian control.
But doing so threatens Israeli security, does it not? Yes, unless you happen to believe that the key for eventual peace lies in Palestinian statehood. Then the handover takes on the characteristics of an investment, in which you sacrifice security in the short-term for the sake of greater security in the long-term.
The flaw in such an argument, of course, is that it presumes that a sovereign Palestinian state will be a good neighbor. While I would be thrilled if such a thing were to come about, I see no evidence that a free Palestine would be anything other than a forward-base for Hamas, Hizbullah, and al-Qa'ida. But the optimists will not be satisfied until the whole experiment blows up in—well, not their faces exactly (except for the delusional Israeli left), but the faces of the poor schlubs on the front line.
In that sense, perhaps the transfer of the Rafah crossing is a good thing. Either it will work as intended, helping to usher the Palestinians into a new era of peace and goodwill, or it will hasten the day when the failure of Oslo becomes so spectacular, so all-encompassing, that Israel will finally discard its delusions, put away the olive branch and unsheathe the sword.
Is the objective of the exercise to guarantee Israeli security? Or is it to give the Palestinians a state? We cannot do both with any certainty, and which of the two options we prefer will dictate our response to issues like the Rafah crossing. A sovereign state must by definition control its own borders; the present Israeli checkpoints are a clear violation of any forecasted Palestinian sovereignty. Therefore, if the powers-that-be are serious about Palestinian statehood, the borders must eventually revert to Palestinian control.
But doing so threatens Israeli security, does it not? Yes, unless you happen to believe that the key for eventual peace lies in Palestinian statehood. Then the handover takes on the characteristics of an investment, in which you sacrifice security in the short-term for the sake of greater security in the long-term.
The flaw in such an argument, of course, is that it presumes that a sovereign Palestinian state will be a good neighbor. While I would be thrilled if such a thing were to come about, I see no evidence that a free Palestine would be anything other than a forward-base for Hamas, Hizbullah, and al-Qa'ida. But the optimists will not be satisfied until the whole experiment blows up in—well, not their faces exactly (except for the delusional Israeli left), but the faces of the poor schlubs on the front line.
In that sense, perhaps the transfer of the Rafah crossing is a good thing. Either it will work as intended, helping to usher the Palestinians into a new era of peace and goodwill, or it will hasten the day when the failure of Oslo becomes so spectacular, so all-encompassing, that Israel will finally discard its delusions, put away the olive branch and unsheathe the sword.
11/20/2005
Zarqawi Dead?
According to reports now hitting the wires (for example, read here and here) US forces surrounded a house containing eight senior al-Qaida members, most of whom detonated themselves to avoid capture. There is reason to believe, but no confirmation yet, that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was one of them.
Combined with the continued success of Operation Steel Curtain and Zarqawi's being made outcast from his own clan, prudent onlookers can conclude that we have long since passed the point of inevitable victory in Iraq. That victory will not be painless—as Churchill reminded the US Congress during World War 2, more Union soldiers died after Gettysburg than before, though the end was no longer in doubt—but it will come, unless we choose to quit the field and let the enemy win by default.
Be steadfast, America. Hold on to your weapons for just a little longer.
For a little perspective, check out the devastating political cartoons of Dr. Seuss during World War 2. Many of them could easily have been ripped out of today's headlines.
Combined with the continued success of Operation Steel Curtain and Zarqawi's being made outcast from his own clan, prudent onlookers can conclude that we have long since passed the point of inevitable victory in Iraq. That victory will not be painless—as Churchill reminded the US Congress during World War 2, more Union soldiers died after Gettysburg than before, though the end was no longer in doubt—but it will come, unless we choose to quit the field and let the enemy win by default.
Be steadfast, America. Hold on to your weapons for just a little longer.
For a little perspective, check out the devastating political cartoons of Dr. Seuss during World War 2. Many of them could easily have been ripped out of today's headlines.
11/18/2005
A Free-Market Approach to Reducing the National Debt
Much ink has been spilled and much hot air has gusted about concerning our expanding national debt. Everyone agrees that the debt is a bad thing; it makes us beholden to large holders of Treasuries such as China or Japan, it drives up the inflation rate, it takes more and more of our budget just to service existing debt, it makes borrowing more expensive, it weakens the dollar, et cetera.
With all the talk, not much has actually been done about paying it down. To do so requires some combination of revenue increases and spending decreases (though given the government's unprecedented revenue growth at all levels, many would say our main problem is with spending). Raising taxes would stifle the economy and be politically unpopular, and lowering spending would leave the old and the poor hanging, which is even more politically unpopular. That something needs to be done anyway is not enough for our Congress, which would rather spend its time on "cultural" issues of negligible fiscal significance than actually risk angering the interest groups.
So the debt continues to grow. And increasing taxes are hardly a solution, given that additional revenues would likely be used for more programs and not to plug the hole in our budget. At any rate, there is no guarantee that Congress would use additional revenues the way we want them to.
Is there anything we citizens can do? Actually, yes. I just learned today that the Bureau of the Public Debt has a program whereby individuals can donate money to the Treasury for the express purpose of retiring public debt. Apparently these donations are tax-deductible, though this is not immediately apparent from the BPD link.
People have a meaningful choice between sending money into the general revenues to pay for who-knows-what, or making a small sacrifice to devote money exclusively to paying down the national debt—while denying tax revenue to the budget. Donating towards paying down the debt could become not only an act of civic patriotism, but a powerful protest against Washington budget politics at the same time. Best of all, it is totally voluntary.
What's not to like?
Yes, Congress can easily borrow more money to make up for the shortfall, but since donations would be tax-deductible and not credited to taxes entirely, the total debt would go down more than the size of the shortfall. Moreover, if such donations became widespread enough it would be a stunning condemnation of our present budgeting culture, which may encourage a new crop of enterprisng politicans intent on cleaning house.
And to tell the truth, even if Congress would not reform in the face of such humiliation, we no longer have the luxury of waiting for them to act. If it takes concerted action by the people ourselves to get this country out of debt, then so be it. I am not convinced that a war with China is inevitable, but just the chance of it happening raises the spectre of economic warfare in which China drops the Treasury Bomb and destroys the dollar. We have a civic duty to protect this country from that threat, and the many other corrosive effects of a national debt.
With all the talk, not much has actually been done about paying it down. To do so requires some combination of revenue increases and spending decreases (though given the government's unprecedented revenue growth at all levels, many would say our main problem is with spending). Raising taxes would stifle the economy and be politically unpopular, and lowering spending would leave the old and the poor hanging, which is even more politically unpopular. That something needs to be done anyway is not enough for our Congress, which would rather spend its time on "cultural" issues of negligible fiscal significance than actually risk angering the interest groups.
So the debt continues to grow. And increasing taxes are hardly a solution, given that additional revenues would likely be used for more programs and not to plug the hole in our budget. At any rate, there is no guarantee that Congress would use additional revenues the way we want them to.
Is there anything we citizens can do? Actually, yes. I just learned today that the Bureau of the Public Debt has a program whereby individuals can donate money to the Treasury for the express purpose of retiring public debt. Apparently these donations are tax-deductible, though this is not immediately apparent from the BPD link.
People have a meaningful choice between sending money into the general revenues to pay for who-knows-what, or making a small sacrifice to devote money exclusively to paying down the national debt—while denying tax revenue to the budget. Donating towards paying down the debt could become not only an act of civic patriotism, but a powerful protest against Washington budget politics at the same time. Best of all, it is totally voluntary.
What's not to like?
Yes, Congress can easily borrow more money to make up for the shortfall, but since donations would be tax-deductible and not credited to taxes entirely, the total debt would go down more than the size of the shortfall. Moreover, if such donations became widespread enough it would be a stunning condemnation of our present budgeting culture, which may encourage a new crop of enterprisng politicans intent on cleaning house.
And to tell the truth, even if Congress would not reform in the face of such humiliation, we no longer have the luxury of waiting for them to act. If it takes concerted action by the people ourselves to get this country out of debt, then so be it. I am not convinced that a war with China is inevitable, but just the chance of it happening raises the spectre of economic warfare in which China drops the Treasury Bomb and destroys the dollar. We have a civic duty to protect this country from that threat, and the many other corrosive effects of a national debt.
11/17/2005
What Does it Take?
Here is a news report video concerning a member of the National Guard who attempted to pass to al-Qaida strategies on how best to kill the crews of armored vehicles, without destroying the vehicles themselves so that they can be captured by al-Qaida. The man was caught in a sting by Federal agents, during which he offered to defect from his unit and join al-Qaida in Iraq, and was just sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 19 years.
Many on the blogosphere are asking, "Why is this man not being executed for treason?"
He intended for his fellow soldiers to die; he offered to fight for the enemy; he gave information that would have placed our soldiers in great danger. He would seem to meet every standard for execution, with the sole mitigating factor being that the men he spoke to were not actually enemies of this country, as he believed them to be. Yet the actual effect of his treason should be irrelevant; that he acted to harm his brothers in arms should be enough.
In the United States, the death penalty is for all practical purposes restricted to cases of murder. While this limitation is logical enough, given a particular line of thought, it ends up mitigating the perceived severity of monstrous crimes that leave their victims alive. One who kidnaps a young child and commits unspeakable crimes, physical and sexual, over an arbitrarily long period would not be liable for the death penalty. Neither, apparently, would a traitor to his country and comrades who had the good fortune to be caught before he killed anyone personally.
The death penalty has many justifcations; chief among them, I think, is that it serves to identify a class of crimes worthy of the worst punishment society can offer. By that standard, America considers premeditated murder of a single victim to be qualitatively worse that treason to the whole, such that the murderer may be executed and the traitor may not. To be sure, the murderer is worthy of death; but to say that the traitor is not, is to say that America as a whole is less valuable than the least of its citizens.
Jewish law prescribes the death penalty for a range of crimes beyond murder. Many of these crimes threaten the very fabric of society; examples are adultery, and kidnapping persons and selling them into slavery. Similarly, in the Philippines drug trafficking is a capital offense. In my view, it is deeply irresponsible for America to restrict the death penalty as it has; while execution must surely be used sparingly and with great care, we have an obligation to defend our society just as surely as those who live in it.
Why have we become unwilling to say that our society is sacrosanct?
Many on the blogosphere are asking, "Why is this man not being executed for treason?"
He intended for his fellow soldiers to die; he offered to fight for the enemy; he gave information that would have placed our soldiers in great danger. He would seem to meet every standard for execution, with the sole mitigating factor being that the men he spoke to were not actually enemies of this country, as he believed them to be. Yet the actual effect of his treason should be irrelevant; that he acted to harm his brothers in arms should be enough.
In the United States, the death penalty is for all practical purposes restricted to cases of murder. While this limitation is logical enough, given a particular line of thought, it ends up mitigating the perceived severity of monstrous crimes that leave their victims alive. One who kidnaps a young child and commits unspeakable crimes, physical and sexual, over an arbitrarily long period would not be liable for the death penalty. Neither, apparently, would a traitor to his country and comrades who had the good fortune to be caught before he killed anyone personally.
The death penalty has many justifcations; chief among them, I think, is that it serves to identify a class of crimes worthy of the worst punishment society can offer. By that standard, America considers premeditated murder of a single victim to be qualitatively worse that treason to the whole, such that the murderer may be executed and the traitor may not. To be sure, the murderer is worthy of death; but to say that the traitor is not, is to say that America as a whole is less valuable than the least of its citizens.
Jewish law prescribes the death penalty for a range of crimes beyond murder. Many of these crimes threaten the very fabric of society; examples are adultery, and kidnapping persons and selling them into slavery. Similarly, in the Philippines drug trafficking is a capital offense. In my view, it is deeply irresponsible for America to restrict the death penalty as it has; while execution must surely be used sparingly and with great care, we have an obligation to defend our society just as surely as those who live in it.
Why have we become unwilling to say that our society is sacrosanct?
11/16/2005
Of Senators and Horses
I only take cheap shots at politicians on this blog for special occasions, and boy is this one ever special. Our distinguished Senator Barbara Boxer has apparently written a work of fiction called "A Time to Run" about a liberal senator trying to prevent the nomination of a conservative Supreme Court justice (sound familiar?). John J. Miller reviews it here (rated R), and the excerpts he notes are just awful.
Most amusing to me is the Hot! Equine! Action! passage, which takes absurdity to a new level. I have been around horses for most of my life, and I have never yet seen a horse that weighed "a ton." The author's inattention to detail screams out from every sentence.
Look upon her works, ye mighty, and despair!
Most amusing to me is the Hot! Equine! Action! passage, which takes absurdity to a new level. I have been around horses for most of my life, and I have never yet seen a horse that weighed "a ton." The author's inattention to detail screams out from every sentence.
Look upon her works, ye mighty, and despair!
11/15/2005
Quote of the Day
The two highest achievements of the human mind are the twin concepts of "loyalty" and "duty." Whenever these twin concepts fall into disrepute—get out of there fast! You may possibly save yourself, but it is too late to save that society. It is doomed.—Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
11/13/2005
Misguided Parenting Advice
On The High Road is a discussion about this article on parenting by clinical psychologist Dr. Ruth Peters. The general advice in the article, dealing with setting limits for your child's social activities, is reasonable if a bit more risk-averse than I care for. Of interest to the High Road crowd, naturally, is that the first scenario Dr. Peters presents concerns playing with toy guns:
I tend to be skeptical of bans on toy guns; while parents are free to have such bans, I suspect that they will be ineffective.
When I was six, we would play with other kids specifically to get our hands on their toys. Which is why few kids ever wanted to come to our house, since we didn't have a game console, high-powered computer, swimming pool, et cetera. If this hypothetical six-year-old really wanted his friend's company, he would have invited him over to the parent's house to begin with.
My broader problem with this piece is Dr. Peters's assumption that good parents keep their homes gun-free. Violence is an ugly thing, but so is passivity in the face of evil. Some parents prefer to discourage the former, some the latter—and some do both, for there is nothing contradictory about a disciplined approach to violence. But Dr. Peters seems to believe that violence is the greatest of evils, no matter what its form. Such an attitude is acceptable for the usual business of society, but fails catastrophically in times of danger and upheaval. In such times, the warrior must once again come to the fore. And those who train their children to be warriors should not be given the brand of shame by a society that increasingly places the burden of its defense on them.
Your six-year-old son wants to play with the kid down the block who appears to be a ballistics expert. He always seems to be in the front yard shooting cans with his BB gun, owns three (count them, three) fake hand grenades and brags that his father has rifles in the house. You have a standing family rule for all of your kids that guns, even toy ones, are off-limits. Your child, who has recently become interested in all things military, accuses you of being unfair.When my brother and I were young, our parents forbid toy guns in the house, and also did not let us watch violent movies. So far as we can tell, we were in a completely gun-free environment—until my brother and I started constructing weapons out of Legos, at which point our parents conceded defeat. My mother is convinced that affinity for guns is genetic.
I tend to be skeptical of bans on toy guns; while parents are free to have such bans, I suspect that they will be ineffective.
What to do? First, be sure that you’ve listened to your son’s entire argument, and if there’s room for compromise, do it. Perhaps you can allow his friend to come to your house to play with your son’s toys and games — it may turn out that the lure is not really the play weapons, but his buddy’s fun presence.Um, no.
When I was six, we would play with other kids specifically to get our hands on their toys. Which is why few kids ever wanted to come to our house, since we didn't have a game console, high-powered computer, swimming pool, et cetera. If this hypothetical six-year-old really wanted his friend's company, he would have invited him over to the parent's house to begin with.
Many families do not allow their children to play with toy weapons, as the parents believe that these toys are “gateways” to the real McCoy…Uh-huh. Right. If I had to make a guess, I would say the opposite: most kids with toy guns end up getting bored with them in a few months or years; and some families who own guns do not allow their children to have toy guns, believing that they teach bad safety habits. The parents just start their kids right away on the real thing.
Ask the boy's mom or dad if they possess a gun and how it is stored. If you feel even the least bit uncomfortable with the answer — don’t allow your child to visit their home.It's one thing if the parents leave their guns around within reach of their children, or store the guns inside their liquor closet or something as bad. But I suspect that the target audience of this article would feel "the least bit uncomfortable" with the mere presence of guns, thanks in no small part to articles such as this one that demonize all guns and gunowners. Many gunowners complain that their children are stigmatized by other parents, who refuse to let their children come play simply because somewhere in the house is a self-aware, malicious, devious firearm just itching to crawl over to some innocent children and pull its own trigger at them.
My broader problem with this piece is Dr. Peters's assumption that good parents keep their homes gun-free. Violence is an ugly thing, but so is passivity in the face of evil. Some parents prefer to discourage the former, some the latter—and some do both, for there is nothing contradictory about a disciplined approach to violence. But Dr. Peters seems to believe that violence is the greatest of evils, no matter what its form. Such an attitude is acceptable for the usual business of society, but fails catastrophically in times of danger and upheaval. In such times, the warrior must once again come to the fore. And those who train their children to be warriors should not be given the brand of shame by a society that increasingly places the burden of its defense on them.
11/10/2005
Housekeeping
I just added a whole bunch of rich bloggy goodness to my sidebar. In particular, the link to the Belmont Club is now updated. Check it out, they're all good…
Sadly, I decided to remove the Imperial Rottweiler. The site has gone downhill fast. Every post that goes up becomes flooded with comments calling for genocide, and I can get better writing without the idiots over at Protein Wisdom.
I also removed the Amazon ad. It wasn't doing much for me, and besides it's irritating.
That is all.
Sadly, I decided to remove the Imperial Rottweiler. The site has gone downhill fast. Every post that goes up becomes flooded with comments calling for genocide, and I can get better writing without the idiots over at Protein Wisdom.
I also removed the Amazon ad. It wasn't doing much for me, and besides it's irritating.
That is all.
11/08/2005
Logical Conclusions
Tonight, Dr. Daniel Pipes spoke at my college on radical Islam and the War on Terror. Much of what he said I agree with, some of it less so. One of Dr. Pipes's themes is that Islam must undergo a change comparable to the Christian Reformation, or the larger war cannot end. During questions, one student said words to the following effect: given that within our own community [i.e. Orthodox Judaism] we look upon so-called religious moderates with contempt, is it not hypocritical to expect the Muslims to do what we will not?
Now, I have frequently thought about this issue. I know just how resilient Halachic Judaism has been in the face of outside pressure; I also know that there are areas where great philosophical shifts took place, though the process took hundreds of years. Since Islamic law is structurally comparable to our own, I can imagine that a fundamental shift away from radicalism will be very hard to pull off, and will take time.
But that wasn't the way that the particular student asked the question. He was not saying, "Here is a problem with your proposal, which we need to think about and address." He was saying instead, "Here is why your proposal is intellectually dishonest, hypocritical, and demonstrates that you are not being fair." The word hypocritical came up several times, as well as some scurrilous comparisons between radical Islam and certain fringe Jewish groups who want a Greater Israel.
This student may have thought he was being clever, or exposing the inauthenticity of a noted conservative voice. But this whole mindset is facile for two reasons. First, hypocrisy is one of the greatest forces for good in society. Nobody is perfect; therefore, everyone is being hypocritical to some degree whenever he acts in any way more elevated than base self-interest. Hypocrisy makes the world go 'round.
Second, the student did not try to challenge Dr. Pipes's view that radical Islam is the problem, and is growing ever stronger in the Muslim world. In that case, the only conceivable alternatives to a religious reformation within Islam are total capitulation by the West, or else genocide.
To repeat: if their religion cannot change, then every Muslim would necessarily become a threat to the West. Genocide is the logical end to this line of reasoning.
By advocating a religious reformation, Dr. Pipes is not being hypocritical or imperialistic to the Muslim world. He is instead arguing for its very survival. That the Left cannot see this is just one more proof of their fundamental unseriousness on the whole issue.
Now, I have frequently thought about this issue. I know just how resilient Halachic Judaism has been in the face of outside pressure; I also know that there are areas where great philosophical shifts took place, though the process took hundreds of years. Since Islamic law is structurally comparable to our own, I can imagine that a fundamental shift away from radicalism will be very hard to pull off, and will take time.
But that wasn't the way that the particular student asked the question. He was not saying, "Here is a problem with your proposal, which we need to think about and address." He was saying instead, "Here is why your proposal is intellectually dishonest, hypocritical, and demonstrates that you are not being fair." The word hypocritical came up several times, as well as some scurrilous comparisons between radical Islam and certain fringe Jewish groups who want a Greater Israel.
This student may have thought he was being clever, or exposing the inauthenticity of a noted conservative voice. But this whole mindset is facile for two reasons. First, hypocrisy is one of the greatest forces for good in society. Nobody is perfect; therefore, everyone is being hypocritical to some degree whenever he acts in any way more elevated than base self-interest. Hypocrisy makes the world go 'round.
Second, the student did not try to challenge Dr. Pipes's view that radical Islam is the problem, and is growing ever stronger in the Muslim world. In that case, the only conceivable alternatives to a religious reformation within Islam are total capitulation by the West, or else genocide.
To repeat: if their religion cannot change, then every Muslim would necessarily become a threat to the West. Genocide is the logical end to this line of reasoning.
By advocating a religious reformation, Dr. Pipes is not being hypocritical or imperialistic to the Muslim world. He is instead arguing for its very survival. That the Left cannot see this is just one more proof of their fundamental unseriousness on the whole issue.
11/05/2005
Mediocrity vs. Moderation
[This is adapted from a dvar Torah given by one of my fellow students last night. He cited the Maharal of Prague and the Shem mi-Shumel for different parts of the whole, but I no longer remember which part went with whom, so just keep that in mind.]
At the end of this week's Torah portion, we see for the first time the family of Avram (who would later become Avraham, forefather of the Jewish people). The narrative speaks briefly of his brother Haran, saying only that he "died before the face of his father."
A well-established tradition expands on the narrative in the text to explain what happened. (While there is little evidence for the expanded version in the Torah itself, it is accepted as authoritative history by even the arch-rationalist Maimonides.) According to this tradition, King Nimrod had set up a cult of the god-king based around himself. Avram, having already reasoned out the existence of God, refused to worship Nimrod or any other idol and was thrown into a furnace in punishment. Haran was watching at the time, and not having Avram's faith was afraid to intervene. God saved Avram from death and eventually he was retrieved from the furnace.
At this point there are two variants. In one, Haran saw that Avram survived and immediately announced that he too would not worship Nimrod—at which point he too was thrown in the furnace, and was consumed in the fire. In the other variant, God strikes Haran down directly for his lack of faith, again with fire. In either case, Haran dies because he lacks true beliefs and just goes where the wind blows.
If you look at the three letters of his name, "hei reish nun," you find something interesting. The numerical value of "hei" is five, i.e. midway between one and ten (on the low side). The value of "nun" is fifty, i.e. midway between ten and a hundred (again on the low side). The value of "reish" is two hundred, midway between one hundred and four hundred (only four letters are valued in the hundredths-place).
Essentially, Haran was the ultimate example of mediocrity. His instinct was to converge on the center, with no other purpose than to avoid standing out in either direction. When it seemed that Nimrod was the ultimate power, Haran acquiesced to Nimrod's orders. When it seemed that Avram had bested Nimrod, Haran immediately switches over to Avram's side. But his inconstancy is his undoing and he ultimately perishes. But the story is not done.
According to a kabbalistic tradition, Aharon the Priest, brother of Moshe (Moses), was a gilgul of Haran. In simplistic terms, this means that Aharon's soul had the same "spiritual DNA" as that of Haran, and was sent to the world in part to rectify Haran's mistakes.
Aharon's name contains all the letters of Haran's name, with the additional letter "aleph." This implies that Aharon shared the same instinct towards the center that Haran did, with the difference that his centrism was dedicated towards the service of God (hence the aleph). Aharon was the great peacemaker of Israel, called by Hillel "a lover of peace and a pursuer of peace." He was especially known in the tradition for reconciling two good friends who had quarreled, or a husband and wife who had marital discord.
Several times in the Torah we see Aharon taking great risks to head off disaster. During the episode of the Golden Calf, Aharon acquiesces to the demands of the mob and actually facilitates their idolatry, but in such a way as to delay them and contain their lawlessness; in the end, the damage to the people was lessened by Aharon's actions and he was pardoned. In another instance, Aharon intercedes when God sets loose a plague amongst the people, and the plague is halted.
The difference between simple mediocrity and a true spirit of moderation, it seems, is that the mediocre man has no firm principles animating his conduct. His every action is geared towards his own advancement or self-preservation, with no higher aim. The true moderate, on the other hand, seeks to bring other people together for a higher purpose—in this case to serve God and to promote peace among the community. To do so he may take great risks, but they are always in order to increase fellowship and peace. May we see fewer examples of mediocrity, and more examples of true moderation motivated by the service of God and humanity.
At the end of this week's Torah portion, we see for the first time the family of Avram (who would later become Avraham, forefather of the Jewish people). The narrative speaks briefly of his brother Haran, saying only that he "died before the face of his father."
A well-established tradition expands on the narrative in the text to explain what happened. (While there is little evidence for the expanded version in the Torah itself, it is accepted as authoritative history by even the arch-rationalist Maimonides.) According to this tradition, King Nimrod had set up a cult of the god-king based around himself. Avram, having already reasoned out the existence of God, refused to worship Nimrod or any other idol and was thrown into a furnace in punishment. Haran was watching at the time, and not having Avram's faith was afraid to intervene. God saved Avram from death and eventually he was retrieved from the furnace.
At this point there are two variants. In one, Haran saw that Avram survived and immediately announced that he too would not worship Nimrod—at which point he too was thrown in the furnace, and was consumed in the fire. In the other variant, God strikes Haran down directly for his lack of faith, again with fire. In either case, Haran dies because he lacks true beliefs and just goes where the wind blows.
If you look at the three letters of his name, "hei reish nun," you find something interesting. The numerical value of "hei" is five, i.e. midway between one and ten (on the low side). The value of "nun" is fifty, i.e. midway between ten and a hundred (again on the low side). The value of "reish" is two hundred, midway between one hundred and four hundred (only four letters are valued in the hundredths-place).
Essentially, Haran was the ultimate example of mediocrity. His instinct was to converge on the center, with no other purpose than to avoid standing out in either direction. When it seemed that Nimrod was the ultimate power, Haran acquiesced to Nimrod's orders. When it seemed that Avram had bested Nimrod, Haran immediately switches over to Avram's side. But his inconstancy is his undoing and he ultimately perishes. But the story is not done.
According to a kabbalistic tradition, Aharon the Priest, brother of Moshe (Moses), was a gilgul of Haran. In simplistic terms, this means that Aharon's soul had the same "spiritual DNA" as that of Haran, and was sent to the world in part to rectify Haran's mistakes.
Aharon's name contains all the letters of Haran's name, with the additional letter "aleph." This implies that Aharon shared the same instinct towards the center that Haran did, with the difference that his centrism was dedicated towards the service of God (hence the aleph). Aharon was the great peacemaker of Israel, called by Hillel "a lover of peace and a pursuer of peace." He was especially known in the tradition for reconciling two good friends who had quarreled, or a husband and wife who had marital discord.
Several times in the Torah we see Aharon taking great risks to head off disaster. During the episode of the Golden Calf, Aharon acquiesces to the demands of the mob and actually facilitates their idolatry, but in such a way as to delay them and contain their lawlessness; in the end, the damage to the people was lessened by Aharon's actions and he was pardoned. In another instance, Aharon intercedes when God sets loose a plague amongst the people, and the plague is halted.
The difference between simple mediocrity and a true spirit of moderation, it seems, is that the mediocre man has no firm principles animating his conduct. His every action is geared towards his own advancement or self-preservation, with no higher aim. The true moderate, on the other hand, seeks to bring other people together for a higher purpose—in this case to serve God and to promote peace among the community. To do so he may take great risks, but they are always in order to increase fellowship and peace. May we see fewer examples of mediocrity, and more examples of true moderation motivated by the service of God and humanity.
11/03/2005
Creative Translation (Updated)
Posting has been light as I gear up for the big push on my thesis. During my research, I just came across something interesting. The official name of Osama bin Laden's umbrella organization is usually given in the news as the "World Islamic Front for the Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders." I have just seen the Arabic (in a transliterated form) for the first time. Here it is:
Al-Jabhah al-Islamiyya al-'Alamiyya li-Qitaal al-Yahud wal-Salibiyyin
Notice a word missing? Nowhere in the name is the word "Jihad" mentioned. The word that was apparently translated as "Jihad" is actually a verbal noun derived from the root QaTaLa, "to kill." So a better translation would be, "World Islamic Front for the Killing of Jews and Crusaders."
Puts a bit of a different spin on it, huh?
In all the years that we have known of this organization, why have the media and the government never once translated its name correctly?
UPDATE (Nov. 14): I mentioned this to my Arabic teacher, and he said that Qitaal is properly a verbal noun of Qaatil, "to try to kill," or better, "to fight." So the translation should be "WIF for fighting Jews and Crusaders."
At any rate, there is still no hint of meaning related to Jihad. I suspect some Westerner decided to romanticize the name, and it stuck.
Al-Jabhah al-Islamiyya al-'Alamiyya li-Qitaal al-Yahud wal-Salibiyyin
Notice a word missing? Nowhere in the name is the word "Jihad" mentioned. The word that was apparently translated as "Jihad" is actually a verbal noun derived from the root QaTaLa, "to kill." So a better translation would be, "World Islamic Front for the Killing of Jews and Crusaders."
Puts a bit of a different spin on it, huh?
In all the years that we have known of this organization, why have the media and the government never once translated its name correctly?
UPDATE (Nov. 14): I mentioned this to my Arabic teacher, and he said that Qitaal is properly a verbal noun of Qaatil, "to try to kill," or better, "to fight." So the translation should be "WIF for fighting Jews and Crusaders."
At any rate, there is still no hint of meaning related to Jihad. I suspect some Westerner decided to romanticize the name, and it stuck.
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