Reap the Whirlwind

The ever-devastating Mark Steyn has written a piece titled "Failure to solve Palestinian question empowers Iran," wherein he notes that the Arab powers created a terrorist monster that has finally gotten away from them, and is now serving the interests of their true enemy, Iran. Key paragraph:

Saudi-Egyptian-Jordanian opportunism on Palestine has caught up with them: It's finally dawned on them that a strategy of consciously avoiding resolution of the "Palestinian question" has helped deliver Gaza, and Lebanon and Syria, into the hands of a regime that's a far bigger threat to the Arab world than the Zionist Entity. Cairo and Co. grew so accustomed to whining about the Palestinian pseudo-crisis decade in decade out that it never occurred to them that they might face a real crisis one day: a Middle East dominated by an apocalyptic Iran and its local enforcers, in which Arab self-rule turns out to have been a mere interlude between the Ottoman sultans and the eternal eclipse of a Persian nuclear umbrella. The Zionists got out of Gaza and it's now Talibanistan redux. The Zionists got out of Lebanon and the most powerful force in the country (with an ever-growing demographic advantage) are Iran's Shia enforcers. There haven't been any Zionists anywhere near Damascus in 60 years and Syria is in effect Iran's first Sunni Arab prison bitch. For the other regimes in the region, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria are dead states that have risen as vampires.

Read the whole thing.

A Wholesome Philosophy

(Perhaps it is strange to be thinking of political philosophy and free markets at a time when Israel is crushing Hizullah and both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border are red with blood. But I have prayed for Israel and Lebanon and the boys of the IDF, and there is little else I can do. We must not stop building in times of trouble, else nothing will ever be built.)

John Mackey, founder of Whole Foods Market, may be an advocate of healthy living and personal fulfillment, but he is no longer much of a hippy. His brief flirtation with the political Left ended soon after he went into business and experienced the power of commerce to do good. On his blog is the text of a speech he gave at FreedomFest in Las Vegas in 2004, which he has titled "Winning the Battle for Freedom and Prosperity."

While I disagree with a few particulars, his general point is one which I profoundly agree with (and have often written about in one form or another on this blog): material prosperity, while important, is only one component of a larger picture. So long as freedom-lovers and Libertarians focus only on the material, and the negative good of freedom from government coercion, the ideal of freedom will remain spiritually stunted and gain no ground in society.

This section stood out:

The freedom movement, in my opinion, needs to embrace the ideal of not just economic growth, but personal growth as well. If we use Maslow's hierarchy of needs as our criteria for evaluating the freedom movement, we see that it is primarily focused on the lower need levels: meeting the physical needs and safety needs through increased prosperity. To be perfectly blunt about it: the freedom movement is largely materialistic in its approach to life, stuck in the lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy. The higher need levels, love, self-esteem, the good, the true and the beautiful, and self-actualization, are either taken for granted or simply ignored.

Study after study shows that material prosperity, by itself, does not create happiness. We have higher needs as expressed on Maslow's hierarchy and the freedom movement needs to stop ignoring them. The freedom movement needs to consciously create a vision that addresses meeting the higher needs of Americans, beyond basic physical and safety needs.

That is the secret of the success of the Left, despite its bankrupt economic philosophy. The Left entices the young with promises of community, love, purpose, peace, health, compassion, caring, and environmental sustainability. The Left's vision on how to meet these higher needs in people is fundamentally flawed. But the idealism and the call to the higher need levels is magnetic and seductive, nonetheless. The irony of the situation, as I see it, is that the Left has idealistic visions of higher human potential and social responsibility, but has no effective strategies to realize their vision. The freedom movement has strategies that could meet higher human potential and social responsibility but lacks the idealism and vision to implement the strategies.

The general attitude that many people have is that one becomes a Leftist out of idealism, and one becomes a libertarian or small-government conservative out of selfishness. At one point I managed to convince a college friend of mine that one could indeed oppose the government for idealistic reasons… but it took a lot of effort. A large part of the problem, as Mackey notes, is that many small-government types do seem fixated on their own selfish desires. A commenter to Mackey's post notes, "I grow weary of the defense of personal vices masquerading as a defense of liberty."

You cannot simply observe a minimal level of civic decency and consider your duty done. You must constantly develop your faculties, body, mind, and soul. Some religious people understand this; so do some on the Left, though they seem to go off in bizarre directions with it sometimes. But it seems that the idea of personal development is not as popular in small-government circles, and we all suffer for it.

(Part of this disdain for personal health and development, I think, is precisely a result of their embrace by hippy-types. Through a sort of perverse logic, it is understood in some quarters that whatever hippies do must be a waste of time. While this is often a good rule of thumb, it can cause beneficial practices to be scorned as well. I suspect this is part of why Tai Chi has taken so long to catch on in America; the hippies latched onto it first and trumpeted its meditative and health aspects, while ignoring the martial arts aspect entirely. Even today, most people are surprised to learn that Tai Chi is a martial art, albeit an "internal" art rather than an "external" one.)

Read Mackey's whole speech. Think of the power of commerce, in which all parties benefit by helping each other. Commerce need not be a cold system of winning and losing; at its best, it is a formalized web of people making each other's lives better.

Updates on the Hizbullah War

At Tigerhawk is a fantastically thorough discussion of the larger strategy behind the decision by Hizbullah to pull the trigger. Read the whole thing, but here is a key paragraph from Aristides:

Now, let's talk about transferring the captured soldier to Iran. Whether this was planned all along, or whether this move is opportunistic, it shows me two things: 1) As Tigerhawk said, Iran is positioning itself as the Muslim champion against the Zionists and the guarantor of the Palestinian agenda. 2) It also is a glimpse of what could happen if Iran had nukes. Every act of terrorism, every kidnapping, could be ultimately underwritten and protected by the Mullahs and their bomb.

Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. According to Khaled Mashaal, this attack was in the works ever since Sharon's stroke. This is not a one-off, but the beginning of a conflict for which Hizbullah has been preparing for years.

Also, one of my old schoolmates is currently in action in Lebanon with the IDF. Please have him and all the boys of the IDF in your prayers.

A Primer on Public Choice Theory

At Café Hayek, Jane S. Shaw gives a thorough summary of the field of economics known as Public Choice, which "takes the same principles that economists use to analyze people's actions in the marketplace and applies them to people's actions in collective decision making." As such, it is primarily focused on understanding government action.

If you ever wanted to know why governments don't care how much money they waste, or whether their fancy programs actually achieve the desired result, read the article. It is quite good.

War in Israel

Hizbullah, apparently hoping to relieve pressure from their Hamas allies in Gaza, launched a barrage of mortar rounds and rockets into Galilee this morning, and under cover of the attack ambushed an Israeli tank and a Humvee, killing 8 IDF soldiers and capturing two. They seem to have badly miscalculated, as Israel has responded by bombing the hell out of Hizbullah bases in Lebanon. Israel has publicly called the attack an act of war by Lebanon, and IDF special forces are presently operating inside Lebanese territory. A roundup of blog reactions can be found here. Rumors speak of a declaration of war by Israel later tonight.

The Jerusalem Post notes that while Israel is ostensibly acting against Lebanon, its choice of targets are carefully considered to impact Hizbullah, Hamas, and their masters in Syria. Syria is the true instigator here, not Lebanon; it is safe to say that the Lebanese are horrified by the present turn of events, and Hizbullah has never considered itself bound by Lebanese policy.

According to the Post, Israel cannot attack Syria directly due to the dictates of international law. Frequent readers will know with what high regard I hold international laws of this kind, that turn a blind eye to the actions of true tyrants and murderers but intervene only when they can impede those acting in self-defense. Given that Syria is clearly the destabilizing element here (along with its ally, Iran), I believe that the Israeli response should include Syria as well. At a minimum, the IDF should attack known terror bases in Syria; more appropriate would be a crippling strike to the Syrian military and government.

Syria is treading on dangerous ground. There are already several reasons for Israel, the United States, and Iraq to treat Bashar Assad's regime as an enemy: its complicity in supporting al-Qaida in Iraq, its alliance with Iran, its continuing interference in Lebanon via its stooge Hizbullah, its support for Hamas and especially its providing sanctuary to Khaled Mashaal, Hamas's true leader. But even before the latest escalation, Syria was intervening so heavily to keep the violence in Gaza going that Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak publicly noted that negotiations he led broke down due to "counter-pressures by outside parties" on Hamas. With the northern front exploding, Syria seems to be doing everything it can to invite an attack.

Israel should take Assad up on his invitation. Flyovers of Assad's palace clearly have had no deterrent effect. The next flights should drop bombs, and lots of them. Israel needs to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that kidnapping its citizens will accomplish nothing for the terror groups and their masters — nothing beyond their own devastation.

The previous lopsided "prisoner exchanges" wherein Israel freed hundreds of terrorists in exchange for single hostages were, in the final analysis, a terrible mistake. The Talmud has a general rule that one should not pay higher ransoms than the going rate, for fear of encouraging more kidnapping. This is precisely what has occurred here; the terrorists expected that Israel would back down, perhaps after some token strikes to "demonstrate resolve," and would inevitably give Damascus what it wants. It is past time to bury that expectation once and for all.

Should Judaism Seek Out Converts?

Some time ago, Dennis Prager wrote a number of articles (such as this example) arguing that Judaism needs to shed its traditional reluctance to proselytize, and actively promote Judaism to the non-Jewish world. Traditional Judaism has historically dissuaded converts, for good and bad reasons. First, if the convert is not fully committed to Jewish law, conversion will end up being a net negative for his spiritual well-being; instead of only the Seven Noahide Laws that bind all of humanity, he will be liable for the laws of the entire Torah and be punished for their breach. Far better to remain a righteous non-Jew then to be an uncommitted convert.

Second, when you live among a society with another dominant religion, such as Christianity or Islam, actively seeking converts can be dangerous both for the convert and the entire community. Most Christian countries used to forbid Christians to convert to Judaism; Islam does likewise today, and there are many cases of former Muslims being attacked and murdered for daring to leave Islam. In such an atmosphere, it makes sense for proselytizing to be kept to a minimum. But surely America is a free country in which these concerns are minimal? Yes, but traditional Judaism is typically slow to change its behavior. (Not so with the more liberal branches, as will be discussed below.)

Third, and shamefully, some communities (certainly not all) are disdainful of converts, for reasons spanning excessive concern for family history to a pseudo-racialist mentality. Those who do so are grossly violating the Torah, which repeatedly commands the Jewish people to love the stranger. Moreover, those non-Jews who do end up converting despite the obstacles placed in their way are often shining examples of morality and commitment to Jewish law; to reject them because of their origins is disgraceful. But it does happen.

Prager's main reasons for encouraging proselytism are the following:

1. "If Jews do not seek converts, they must make peace with the fact that the rest of mankind will either remain where it is, adopt other religions, or invent new ones [i.e. inferior religions, given that we believe Judaism to be the true religion]… In order to influence the world, Jews can and must do two things: teach ethical monotheism and offer Judaism. Or the world will go its own unmerry way, and the Jews once again will be victims of a world they did nothing to influence."

2. "We lost one out of every three Jews during the Holocaust. Today we continue to lose about the same percentage to assimilation. Obviously, we are in terrible need of more Jews." (This is perhaps the great driving factor in the embrace by Reform, and to some degree Conserative, Judaism of dramatically lower standards for accepting converts; the more liberal Jewish movements are most affected by assimilation.)

3. It will lessen anti-semitism, both by reducing the resentment non-Jews feel at our insularity and clannishness, and by giving more people in society exposure to Jews and Judaism through the new converts.

4. More converts will improve Judaism by injecting their dynamism and vitality into our often inbred intellectual climate, and will better the world by spreading Jewish morality further than "Born Jews" could alone.

I tend to agree with Prager's larger argument, though I think that seeking out converts will increase anti-semitism and not decrease it, at least in the short term. This should be obvious; if we actually encroach on the turf of other religions instead of staying in our ghetto like good little Jews, they will fight back. In that light, America is perhaps best suited for a proselytizing movement, since there is less chance of a violent backlash.

But Prager's argument does not distinguish between Reform et al and Observant Judaism, which is unfortunate since they are based on very different philosophies of the world, even though they both rely on the Torah as a source text. (Though for Reform, "rely" is too strong a word, which is part of the problem.) Given that Reform et al do not actually observe Jewish law with any stringency, converts into those movements should for our purposes be thought of as Noahides, if that.

I am more concerned with conversion into Observant Judaism. This is both because we actually keep to Jewish law and philosophy, and because we are most in need of the intellectual vitality that a transfusion of converts can provide. But can Observant Judaism find a ready audience in modern society? Judaism is based on disciplining the body's lusts and channeling them for a sacred purpose. Moreover, it is highly rigorous, with dramatic restrictions on what we can eat, mandated prayer for over an hour each day (and much more on holidays), a forced withdrawal from the technological world on the Sabbath, and many other laws and restrictions. Compared to how most Americans view religion, Observant Jews are warrior-monks (albeit with better sex).

Can there be a broad audience receptive to Observant Judaism? And is there such a compelling need for a proselytizing program for us to set aside our longstanding aversion to proselytizing?

I think the answer to both questions is yes. And this is demonstrated clearly by the rapid growth of Islam in the West.

Islam features an unbalanced version of the Jewish ethos. It features strict subordination to a law code called Shari'a which is comparable in several ways to halacha, the Jewish law. It is built around submission to the will of God, and requires its adherents to place Islam above all other duties. While much of Islam's growth is due to immigration, some is the result of conversion into Islam. This demonstrates that there is a population of people who are open to the idea of a disciplined life in the service of God.

But Islam also has several troubling aspects to it that contribute to the growth of Islamist violence. Chief among these are the many passages in the Qur'an that call for such violence. Unlike Christianity, which began as a pacifist religion and only developed militant ideas once it controlled governments, Islam began as a religion of war and invasion. Only once Islam was faced with large societies to manage was it forced to temper these qualities, and they remain in the Qur'an for any would-be fanatic to see. And unlike Judaism, which challenges us to be a "Light to the Nations" and does not require the world to embrace Judaism, Islam must ultimately be imposed upon the whole world, by the sword if not by the pen.

That being the case, I view it as imperative that we place Observant Judaism out in the religious marketplace, so that those who would otherwise turn to Islam can be given a better option. To do otherwise is to be incredibly short-sighted. After all, if we do have the true religion, what possible purpose is served by letting non-Jews who seek discipline and submission to the will of God blunder into a flawed religion instead?

Shakespeare Badly Used

Having now seen Al Pacino's rendition of the Merchant of Venice, which ostensibly presented an "incendiary drama" (quoth the DVD jacket) focused largely on a more "humanized" Shylock, I can categorically state that it was an offense to Shakespeare; and noxious to this particular Jew at least, because the makers felt it advisable to pander to the Jewish community in such an inept manner. Ye gods, if you want to pander, at least do it with some class!

Some background. The Merchant of Venice can be read as sympathetic to Shylock, and certainly gives him some of Shakespeare's best lines. But any reading of the play should not disregard that it is a comedy, an elaboration of the Comedia del Arte framework. This is especially true given the use of gender-crossing disguises, and the manner in which Portia and Nerissa delightedly turn the tables on their husbands. As such, the play needs a chief villain, and Shylock is used for that purpose.

Shylock is given many of the stock tropes of the villainous Jew in the text. For example, his chief complaint with Antonio in Act I Scene iii is that Antonio lends out money for no interest, driving down usury rates for all of Venice. But he is also the target of much more abuse than is typically leveled at a comic villain, some of which gives him occasion for the famous lines in Act III Scene i:

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs
dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means
warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer
as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us,
do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

However, it would be a mistake to read Shylock as anything other than the villain in this story. This is clearly shown in the courtroom scene; Shylock, having insisted on his cruel justice, is hoist on his own petard by the clever Portia, and under threat of execution pledges his belongings to his daughter and her Christian husband upon Shylock's death. As well, he assents to baptism; the structure of the scene leaves no doubt but that this is meant to be a joyous conclusion to the conflict.

For whatever reason, rather than sinking into obscurity along with so many of Shakespeare's plays, The Merchant of Venice has remained popular even as its portrayal of Shylock becomes more discordant. Indeed, for over a century it has been the fashion for actors to demonstrate their skill by turning Shylock into a fully rounded character. That this is possible speaks to Shakespeare's skill as a crafter of villains.

But Al Pacino's production goes completely overboard. It is foolhardly to turn a comedic villain into some sort of hamhanded demonstration of the evils of anti-semitism. The first two minutes of the movie are especially sickening, being essentially an exercise in overly self-aware flagellation: "Oh look, we're being so unflinching by exaggerating the meaning of anti-semitism in the story!" Worst is that in the process, they bring up in passing a much more terrible affront to Judaism than a simple comedy, the burning of the Talmud in Italy. That they dare to link this national tragedy to a story of a vengeful usurer is contemptible.

Aside from that, on the purely artistic level the movie did poorly. Scenes were dragged out unmercifully, especially the courtroom scene. The whole tenor of the production was relentlessly somber, which is a bit absurd given that the audience is supposed to accept the intervention of the "doctor of law" and her "clerk" at face-value. The music was maudlin; the cinematography was just fraught with meaning with every single freaking shot. And by the climax, Pacino's characterization was vacillating between a hectoring shtetl-yenta and an annoyed New York Italian. The production had members of the mob spitting on him in the courtroom scene to inject some badly needed emotional impact, which was sorely lacking in Pacino's performance. His reading of the lines beginning But, say, it is my humour: is it answer'd? was just terrible.

It would have been better to do a straight-up performance of the play, with all of the depth that Shylock is given by Shakespeare and no more — or else to do another play entirely.

Soulless Tyranny

At Samizdata the other day, they posted a video of a speech given in the European Parliament, directed towards British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in his capacity as rotating President of the E.U., in which Mr. Blair is savaged for backing down on his purported efforts to reform the E.U. The speaker notes midway through that the EU's auditors have refused to sign off on the budget for eleven years running.

A similar video has another member of the same political party running down a list of the more egregious members of the European Commission, the unelected body that exerts far more control over the EU's law than does the elected Parliament, a point which he makes. Indeed, so much power does the Commission have that it intends to implement the European Constitution, despite said document being resoundingly defeated in public referrenda in France and the Netherlands.

The EU seems to be following a similar trajectory as the United States did in its early years: from a political alliance of sovereign states, bound together for mutual defense and open trade, to a government in its own right that supercedes the sovereignty of its constituent members. What is worrisome is that the body elected directly by the people, Parliament, has little actual power. Power is instead concentrated in the hands of an entrenched bureaucracy, led by a Commission that is accountable to nobody. Even in the earliest days of the U.S. Federal Government, the body directly elected by the people, the House of Representatives, could propose or block any bills it chose to. The European Parliament, on the other hand, does not have the power to initiate legislation, nor does it have an unrestricted right to amend or veto laws.

Furthermore, while the United States was built on a profound mistrust of human nature and government power, the EU is generally organized around the precise opposite attitudes. Government action should be as pervasive as possible, goes this theory. Should you doubt this, consider that the EU regulates materials and processes according to the Precautionary Principle:

In its most basic form, the principle suggests that because we don't know everything about a technology, product or process, it is better for regulators and legislators to "err on the side of caution" — to regulate, restrict or even prohibit technologies, substances and processes unless they are proven "safe."

To give an idea of how far that can be taken, the linked article notes that exposure to electromagnetic fields (such as those produced by MRI machines, for example) is now tightly regulated.

Additionally, as the second linked video makes clear, there is a much higher tolerance for corruption and abuse of power in Europe in general than in most of the United States. This corruption can be especially pernicious because the idea of fundamental citizens' rights is much weaker in Europe. The EU is quick to silence its critics with state coercion, which Parliament is powerless to prevent.

Europe is on the road to becoming a totalitarian superstate, unchecked by the people and ruled by the bureaucratic class. We in America should take notice.

Sacred Separations

Yesterday, one of my close friends got married. The new bride and groom are some of the nicest, most fun people I know. I wish them much happiness and joy together; may their house be among the splendours of the House of Israel.

Two weeks ago, at a gathering to celebrate the approaching wedding, my friend gave a drash (loosely translates as "sermon") regarding the blessing we recite during the betrothal ceremony. Originally, the betrothal, called kiddushin, was held months in advance of the actual wedding, or n'suin. (In modern times, the two ceremonies are held on the same day.) However, in many respects a couple who have gone through kiddushin are considered already married; the man and woman require a divorce document to separate, and the future husband has significant financial obligations towards the future wife. The largest difference between kiddushin and n'suin is that the couple are still not allowed to have marital relations until after n'suin.

During the ceremony, the following blessing is recited:

Blessed are You, Eternal One, our God, King of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments, and has commanded us regarding forbidden unions; Who forbade betrothed women to us, and permitted women who are married to us through canopy and consecration. Blessed are You, Eternal One, Who sanctifies His people Israel through canopy and consecration.

("Canopy" refers to the bridal canopy of the n'suin ceremony, and "consecration" is the literal translation of the term kiddushin.)

In many ways this is a strange blessing. Blessings are generally divided into three categories: those sanctifying a commandment, those marking the enjoyment of some pleasure, and those expressing thanksgiving. Our bracha here does not seem to be sanctifying a commandment, since its main subject is a negative, the prohibition against sexual relations without n'suin; we do not, for example, make a blessing when we refrain from stealing or murdering, so why would we here? Similarly, we are hardly deriving enjoyment from abstaining from sexual relations. And if we are expressing thanksgiving, why are we doing so?

Many commentators have tried to explain this difficulty. My friend offered his own explanation. He suggested that the blessing is indeed one of thanksgiving; we are thanking God for forbidding sexual relations between the engagement and the wedding. Why? Because it allows the couple to build a relationship on an intellectual and spiritual level, before the physical element is introduced.

Physical interaction is incredibly powerful, so much so that the emotions it evokes often interfere with the attempt at building a spiritual relationship. Marriages in which the physical element is the foundation run into trouble when the physical element is threatened. But when the cornerstone of a marriage is a spiritual and intellectual bond between husband and wife, the physical level becomes a crown of splendour for the marriage, without being paramount. It is for this opportunity for couples to build a deep, abiding relationship between betrothal and marriage for which we thank God, with the blessing of kiddushin.

New York Times Compromises National Security, Again

The Grey Lady of Gotham has decided to publish a report about the government analyzing records of international money transfers. Readers have surely seen articles about it in any major newspaper by now. The program was legal, Congress was notified, other countries were notified and actively participated in the program, safeguards were in place to prevent abuse, and the program had been instrumental in stopping quite a few terror attacks. Yet the Times blew the lid off of it anyway, for no particular reason except a vague appeal to the "public interest."

Glenn Reynolds has a roundup of reactions across the blogosphere, none of which are particularly kind to Bill Keller, editor-in-chief of the Times. Glenn comments:

What's interesting to me is that when you talk about military force, we're supposed to use law-enforcement and intelligence methods instead. But if you use law-enforcement and intelligence methods, people shout "Big Brother" and the Times runs stories exposing them.

Another point that I get out of all this, if I can return to an older topic, is that currency is fundamentally the property of the government that issues it. The dollars that we spend are effectively lent to us by the Federal Reserve for the convenience of the people and the government both, and while governments generally permit us to do what we like with their currencies, there comes a point at which governments reassert their power.

"What!" you say. "What do you mean that we don't own our dollars?" Consider that it is a Federal crime to deface a dollar bill. In no other case are we forbidden to destroy our own property, unless doing so harms others. Consider also that governments have the power to devalue the currency, without needing to pass laws to do it.

Government allow us to use its property as a medium of exchange so that we can acquire property of our own efficiently. That being the case, government retains the privilege of knowing what is being done with its property. Similarly, there is nothing wrong with collecting information about foreign currency transactions, since it is a simple question of intelligence-gathering on another country's assets.

The situation will persist until private currencies become more widely used. In the meanwhile, for the Times to betray one of the cornerstones of our national security policy should be grounds for prosecution. As Emperor Darth Misha I is wont to say:

Rope. Tree. Journalist.
Some assembly required.

Da, Comrade!

Imagine my surprise, as I browsed through my inbound links at the Ecosystem site (see sidebar) to find that I have apparently been drafted into the Alliance of Communist Blogs!

This is certainly an unexpected honor, but I suppose I have to play the part now. Henceforth, no quarter will be given to capitalist running-dogs such as the Alliance of Free Blogs and their lackey the Right Hand of God who seek to undermine and subvert the glorious People's Republic of China. We join with our comrades in China to strike back against the capitalists' devious efforts to corrupt the youth with the evils of religion and free speech.

Victory to the proletariat!

(Ps: Now's as good a time as any to add Basil's Blog to my sidebar. He's been linking to me for forever, and he's funny as all heck.)

Quis Docet Ipsos Doctores?

As my father and I were waiting for the start of my brother's graduation ceremony last week, the conversation somehow turned to the program of study for the Master's in Education. My father commented that as he understood it, Education students are primarily trained in the theory of education, especially from a developmental and psychological standpoint. There is certainly some value in learning such. But what is not emphasized is the practice of actually teaching: how to convey information to students, how to keep their attention, how to enforce discipline. Teachers are more or less expected to learn that on their own. Moreover, teachers do not necessarily gain expertise in the subjects they teach. (Many of us know of the archetypical PE coach who is drafted as a math teacher; what the two fields have to do with each other, Heaven only knows.) My father concluded that teachers really needed to be taught two things which are neglected today: "stuff," i.e. deep, substantive knowledge of the subjects they teach, and "vocational training" in the nuts-and-bolts of standing in front of a young audience and instructing them.

Looking at the Ed.M. program at Harvard (which could be expected to represent what passes for state-of-the-art these days), one notices that there is little emphasis on practical training. Of the thirteen courses of study offered, at least five seem geared towards educational policy and administration, two seem primarily psychological/biological, several are research-oriented, and one focuses on building a proper "community atmosphere" for learning, whatever that means.

One program looks eminently practical, the Teacher Education Program, which is billed as "Preparing individuals to become middle or secondary school classroom teachers in urban settings." Surely such teachers are rigorously prepared in the practical arts of teaching! And indeed, when one looks at the curriculum, one sees more emphasis on the practical than in the other programs. Yet even here, there are required courses such as "Race, Class, and Power in Urban Schools," in which "students will explore theoretical frameworks for understanding cultural difference as it impacts teaching and learning in the urban classroom."

Theory is important. But this is true up to a point, for two reasons. First, often scholars of education can become so wedded to their theories that they disregard evidence that the theories are counterproductive in practice. The "whole language" debacle is a good example. Second, people's perception of the world is often determined by the mental framework they apply to their perceptions. One too steeped in theory might disregard data that he cannot categorize in the theory. To be truly effective, an observer must be able to see things as they are first, and then try to organize his observations.

Aside from that, many theories are simply overelaborate ways for teachers to justify not holding their kids to a high standard. This is why a practical approach is so necessary. A friend of mine teaches at a local public school, which is disproportionally low-income and had been known for poor grades. Then the principal decided to have all the students taught with the GATE curriculum for gifted students, a decision which would send the average theoretician into apoplexy. Wonder of wonders, test scores for the whole school shot through the roof!

So why not do this across the public school system? Because it doesn't fit the theory…

The teaching profession in general has frequently been willing to discard practices that work in real life, in favor of innovations that sound good on paper. (New Math, anyone?) This does a tremendous disservice to students. Better for teachers to be trained to focus on results first, last, and foremost, and not whether the methods involved are trendy in the theoretical world.

Quote of the Day (Bonus Edition!)

Zelos, emulation, is a good thing and characteristic of good people, while phthonos, envy, is bad and characteristic of the bad; for the former, through emulation, are making an effort to attain good things for themselves, while the latter, through envy, try to prevent their neighbors from having them.

—Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.10.1

A self-pitying inclination to contemplate another's superiority or advantages, combined with a vague belief in his being the cause of one's own deprivation, is also to be found among educated members of our modern societies who really ought to know better. The primitive people's belief in black magic differs little from modern ideas. Whereas the socialist believes himself robbed by the employer, just as the politician in a developing country believes himself robbed by the industrial countries, so primitive man believes himself robbed by his neighbor, the latter having succeeded by black magic in spiriting away to his own fields part of the former's harvest.

—Helmut Schoeck, Envy: A Theory of Human Behavior

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!