Morality, Religion & Philosophy: October 2003 Archives

Along similar lines as my previous post about college kids becoming more conservative, my mom passes along a US News article titled "The good-news generation" (beware of pop-ups!). John Leo discusses some of the qualities of Generation Y (the Millennials) -- members of the cohort born between 1977 and 1994, which I am proud to belong to.

Now the focus is almost entirely on millennials, 78 million strong and the largest birth cohort in American history. Speaking at the American Magazine Conference last week in the Palm Springs, Calif., area, Clurman described millennials this way: They are family oriented, viscerally pluralistic, deeply committed to authenticity and truth-telling, heavily stressed, and living in a no-boundaries world where they make short-term decisions and expect paradoxical outcomes. (The sense of paradox means that every choice results in some good consequences, some bad: Air bags save lives but kill people, too.) ...

Yankelovich and other researchers have been picking up a renewed emphasis on family for years. The yearning for a good marriage is a dominant value among millennials, Clurman says, and 30 percent of those surveyed say they want three or more children. Indeed, one research company, Packaged Facts and Silver Stork, recently predicted a 17 percent increase in the U.S. birthrate over the next 10 years. ...

Millennials are apt to trust parents, teachers, and police. Apparently they are likely to trust presidents, too. A Harvard poll released last week reported that President Bush has a 61 percent favorability rate among American college students. This may not mean much. The millennials are not a very politically active generation. But they are clearly able to resist programming by their professors, 90 percent of whom seem convinced that Bush is either Hitler or a moron.

I agree with all of Mr. Leo's conclusions, but he doesn't mention one thing that's particularly obvious (to me): Millennials are they way we are largely due to rebellion against our Boomer parents' approach to life. We love 'em, but we don't want to be like them in a lot of ways.

To many in my generation, the Boomers seem terribly unserious and preoccupied with fantasy rather than reality. There's a reason why the peace-nik protests of 2003 looked a lot like those from the 1960s: they were the same people. We yearn for strong marriages because far more than half of us have seen our parents divorce. We want kids and families of our own because we think we can do it right. We love the truth because our parents' generation is perpetually obsessed with style over substance, and most of the time they tell us there is no real truth.

Mr. Leo paints an encouraging picture, and I'm excited to find out whether he's right or not.

In response to this post about adults getting more involved in Halloween, my friend Craig passes on a Time Magazine article titled "Boo, Humbug! Call me a Scrooge, but why can't adults leave Halloween to the kids?" by Michael Elliott. Mr. Elliott writes a lot I disagree with (and some I don't), and I don't think he gets Halloween, any more than he gets the reasons behind the current wave of Francophobia sweeping the America. But anyway, let's take a look at what he says.

Still, if companies want to sell even more masks, lanterns, witch hats and the like, good luck to them. It's the gullible consumers who fall for the pitch whom I detest — the employees who insist on decorating sensible cubicles with orange and black streamers and littering the office with bowls of candy, the folk who dress up and throw pumpkin parties at country clubs, the hundreds of thousands who will come to work next week in costume. Chris Riddle is the Halloween trend spotter at card-and-decorations giant American Greetings, which estimates that 25% of the American work force will observe Halloween in some fashion this year. "It's a release," Riddle says of the way people deck out their suburban yards, "a way to say, 'I can still act like a kid.'"

That's my problem. Halloween, for me, is the gaudiest example of the infantilization of American culture. It's up there with other classics like McDonald's Happy Meals or Hollywood's post — Star Wars decision to concentrate on making kids' films for grownups. These aren't just the mutterings of an old curmudgeon. I like parties as much as the next guy (so would you if you'd grown up in a house where the Messiah was considered light entertainment), though I've never quite seen why you needed a specific date on the calendar as an excuse to let your hair down. There's a larger point. In time, infantile societies become degraded, unable to meet the realities that face them.

However, in the article I linked to in my previous post, York University history professor Nick Rogers points out that, "The notion that Halloween is simply for kids is a misconception based on the centrality of trick-or-treating in the 1950s, when there was an attempt to take the mischief out of Halloween and 'infantilize' it." So perhaps Mr. Elliott should be rejoicing that adults are de-infantilizing the holiday? After all, if his main objection is that the holiday is too childish, then one of the best things he can hope for is that Halloween will return to its more historical role as a community-wide harvest festival. Of course, most communities don't actually harvest anything anymore, so it's only reasonable that the holiday take on a different focus. I hate to break it to him, but adults have worn masks and dressed up in costumes for thousands of years, all around the world and in every culture, and such behavior is not generally seen as uniquely childish. That perception appears to be the product of late 20th-century America, more than anything else.

Further, I fail to see the connection between Happy Meals, "Star Wars", and the infantilization of culture. Happy Meals provide parents a cheap and easy way to feed their kids, and give the kids a fun toy; the food may not be healthy, but that has nothing to do with infantilization. Would he rather that kids be forced to eat gruel from a burlap sack with a shard of glass for a spoon?

"Star Wars" is a great movie, and nearly everyone in my generation loves it (even Europeans I talked to while traveling) -- so what's his point? Does he object to "Star Wars" and similar films because he thinks they cause his so-called infantilization, or because they cater to it by entertaining people without *gasp* literature?

How did cultural infantilization creep up on us? In The Disappearance of Childhood, a wonderful little book first published in 1982, Neil Postman, a New York University professor who died this month, identified a shift from a culture based on literature — on reading — to one based on the image. In a preliterate world, there's no distinction between children and adults. Look at a Bruegel painting, and you see adults eating, drinking, groping, necking, together with their children. Literacy changed all that. Reading has to be learned; it separates the world of the child from that of the adult. But children can absorb images — from TV, say — just as easily as their elders. Postman worried that a postliterate culture would be one in which barriers that protected children from the perils and temptations of the outside world would be torn down.

Oh brother. So, Halloween is connected to Happy Meals and "Star Wars", which in turn keep people from reading, which leads to illiteracy, and the infantilization of the culture. Ok, got it.

Halloween shows that the process works in reverse. We now have to be worried not just about children acting like adults but about adults behaving like children. That doesn't mean adults have to be serious all the time. It does mean that they should recognize when it's time — and what it means — to grow up and let the kids run their own holiday.

Sorry, in my world the kids don't get to run their own anything, because they're kids. I think it's important to separate the roles of children and adults, and I think that adults should be in charge of everything -- and I'm surprised that Mr. Elliott thinks otherwise. Even if adults don't dress up, who do you think is buying all the costumes and candy? Who's going to build the haunted houses for the kids to creep through? Who's going to walk the little ones door-to-door collecting treats?

Do I really need to expound on the bizarrely out-of-context Bible quote at the end of his article?

When it comes to the infantilization of culture and adults acting like children, I think there are far better targets than Halloween. Mr. Elliott briefly mentions TV, but doesn't mention the vast quantity of nonsense that inhabits most of our airwaves -- of course, New York intellectuals have railed against TV for years, so maybe he wanted to try something new. Or maybe that position is just wearing thin, considering that there are some truly great shows on TV these days. Similarly, there are a lot of terrible movies, but there are also some great ones. Oh yeah, there are some pretty awful books too, and some are even considered "classics".

If one wants to discuss the infantilization of culture, why not mention professional sports? Why not mention the sensationalism that runs rampant through our news organizations? Why not mention the grocery workers who are striking because they think putting boxes on shelves entitles them to $40,000 a year and free health care? Why not take the whiny, self-righteous Bush-haters aside and explain to them that there's more at stake right now than the next Presidential election? Why not condemn the welfare state that exists solely to create a childish constituency who will vote in favor of its own expansion?

Mr. Elliott may just not like Halloween -- and that's fine -- but he shouldn't try dress up his personal opinion as high moral virtue built on care and concern for our collapsing civilization.

It always amuses me when the self-appointed guardians of free speech choose to censor others themselves. It's not that Reuters don't have the right to prohibit religious groups from advertising on its property, but that it chooses to exercise that right seems hypocritical to me. Just imagine Reuters' reaction if, say, President Bush refused to speak to them because he felt they have an anti-American bias.

Many people see Jesus as a man of love and peace -- which he was -- but he also taught many very difficult lessons that were/are not always easy to accept. All of the following are quotes of Jesus speaking.

John 8:47
He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.

John 14:6
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Luke 9:57-62
57 As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go."
58 Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."
59 He said to another man, "Follow me."
But the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."
60 Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God."
61 Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good bye to my family."
62 Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God."

Matthew 5:10-11
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

Luke 6:27-36
27 "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
32 "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful."

Luke 8:19-21
19 Now Jesus' mother and brothers came to see him, but they were not able to get near him because of the crowd. 20 Someone told him, "Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you."
21 He replied, "My mother and brothers are those who hear God's word and put it into practice."

Luke 12:49-53
49 "I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50 But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed! 51 Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. 52 From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. 53 They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."

Luke 14:25-27
25 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26 "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple. 27 And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple."

Luke 20:20-26
20 Keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies, who pretended to be honest. They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor. 21 So the spies questioned him: "Teacher, we know that you speak and teach what is right, and that you do not show partiality but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. 22 Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"
23 He saw through their duplicity and said to them, 24 "Show me a denarius. Whose portrait and inscription are on it?"
25 "Caesar's," they replied.
He said to them, "Then give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."
26 They were unable to trap him in what he had said there in public. And astonished by his answer, they became silent.

Following up an earlier poll of Americans' belief in the supernatural, here's another.

LOS ANGELES -- An overwhelming majority of Americans continue to believe that there is life after death and that heaven and hell exist, according to a new study. What's more, nearly two-thirds think they are heaven-bound.

On the other hand, only one-half of 1% said they were hell-bound, according to a national poll by the Oxnard-based Barna Research Group, an independent marketing research firm that has tracked trends related to beliefs, values and behaviors since 1984.

There's a bunch of stuff in there about what people believe Heaven and Hell are like, but what's interesting to me are the contradictions that the poll found.

"Americans don't mind embracing contradictions," he said. "It's hyper individualism. They're cutting and pasting religious views from a variety of different sources — television, movies, conversations with their friends. Rather than simply embrace one particular viewpoint, and then trying to follow all the specific precepts or teachings of that particular viewpoint, what Americans are saying is, 'Listen, I can probably put together a philosophy of life for myself that is just as accurate, just as helpful as any particular faith might provide.' "

Pollster George Barna, a former minister who founded the research group, noted that one out of 10 born-again Christians — those who believe entry into heaven is solely based on confession of sins and faith in Jesus Christ — also believe in reincarnation, which violates Christian tenets. Nearly one in three claim it is possible to communicate with the dead, and half believe a person can earn salvation based on good deeds even without accepting Christ as the way to eternal life.

Many who describe themselves as either atheistic or agnostic also harbor contradictions in their thinking, Barna said. He said that half the atheists and agnostics surveyed believed that everyone had a soul, that heaven and hell existed and that there was life after death. One in eight atheists and agonistics believe that accepting Jesus Christ as savior probably makes life after death possible.

That is... most people are just flailing around in the dark, without any substantial confidence when it comes to what may (or may not!) be the most crucial question of existence.

(Found via Drudge.)

SDB has a great essay up about the North Korea problem, and in it he gives a concise (!) explanation of America's Cold War nuclear deterrence policy (which I've commented on previously, slightly objecting to one of SDB's earlier positions; I either misunderstood what he was saying before, or he's rethought it and now agrees with me).

In that case, the Bush administration would have to publicly and formally renew a basic tenet of Cold War deterrence policy: any nuclear blackmail will be treated as if a nuke had actually been used, and the response to any such threat will be maximal.

During the Cold War, nuclear blackmail was one of the dangers. What would we do if the Hotline phone rang and the voice in the handset said, "Pull your forces out of Germany or we'll nuke Pittsburgh"? The strategists wrestled with that, and ultimately concluded that only deterrence could prevent such a thing. Thus it became American doctrine that if we received such a phone call, then the President would "push the button" (or at least consider doing so). Understand that I don't mean that it would happen ten seconds after hearing such a thing; there'd be time for diplomacy, and an attempt to deal with the situation via lesser means. But in the final resort, if we really faced such a demand, then it was publicly stated that American doctrine was to launch every nuke we had. No "proportional response", no city-trading-duel, no waiting to see if Pittsburgh really did get vaporized before launching. It was important that this be public because like any deterrent its real purpose was to make sure that the situation didn't arise at all. Since the Soviet leadership knew that was American doctrine, they couldn't be at all sure that we wouldn't really do it if they made that phone call, and it never happened. ...

We'd also have to establish a new doctrine, and this would be more controversial and politically risky. The doctrine would be that if anyone set off a nuke in our territory and no one claimed responsibility, or if a terrorist group claimed responsibility, in that case we'd also obliterate NK. No questions asked, no excuses listened to, no attempt to determine if the nuke had been sold by NK, no delays, no nothing. Under this doctrine put in place after an NK nuclear test, if any city of ours was destroyed, NK would be destroyed as soon thereafter as we could manage. That's the only way we can limit the danger that NK would surreptitiously sell one or more nukes to someone like al Qaeda.

That's the spirit of what I said before, although he says it more clearly and at greater length.

The only disagreement I have with what he's written is his characterization of evil.

Deterrence is a real moral problem. In some cases it's the only way to bring about the best possible case, but the only way you can have a deterrent is by being willing to commit tremendously evil acts. Is it immoral to be prepared to do evil things if through your willingness and preparation you avoid the need to do so and also prevent someone else from doing the same evil thing? Regardless of whether it's moral or not, that's what we'd have to do.

I don't think that nuclear deterrence is evil, even though we're threatening to obliterate the innocent people who live in a (presumably non-democratic) enemy country. In fact, even if we were put in a position such that we had to carry out the threat, our actions wouldn't be evil. Yes, millions of people who were not directly involved in the decision to threaten/attack us would be killed, but the morality of it seems very similar to the morality behind felony murder laws (which vary state-by-state, but are all pretty similar).

The felony murder rule is as old as this country. It's designed for instances where two people go to rob a bank. The getaway driver waits in the car-the robber goes in and shoots the teller-prosecutors can charge both with first-degree murder. ...

Under the state's felony murder rule, a person can be charged with murder if someone dies while the person is committing or attempting to commit a felony like arson-even if the death is accidental. Prosecutors don't have to prove intent, an element usually required for a first-degree murder conviction. ...

In Colorado, the felony murder law says the death of anyone during a serious crime or the "immediate flight" afterward makes everyone involved in the original crime guilty of murder -- no matter who did the actual killing or when.

Felony murder laws lay the responsibility for any deaths that occur during the commission of a felony at the feet of the criminal, even if he doesn't intend to kill anyone. An unarmed man tries to rob a bank, the security guard shoots at him, misses, and hits a customer, killing him -- the would-be bank robber is guilty of felony murder.

Similarly, if America is threatened or attacked with nuclear weapons, and we respond, the deaths that result are fully the responsibility of the people who provoked us to self-defense. Our policy of deterrence is not evil, any more than the bank guard in the above example was evil.

Samizdata gets the following email:

Dear Mr Micklethwait

I am writing a concise statement of ancient rights as part of a longer publication.

I want to include all the most important Common Law rights: life, liberty, property, family life, fair trial in open court, Habeas Corpus, trial by jury etc.

I cannot find a comprehensive list anywhere. Do you know of one please?

Regards,

Richard Marsden

I started writing a lengthy comment, but then realized that I've got my own blog! So, let me take a crack at it.

I think that most of our civil rights can be derived from the right to own property -- when you "own" something, you have the right to use it, and the right to exclude others from using it at will. Property rights (and the ownership of our own bodies) can cover almost everything we like as Americans:
- freedom of speech,
- freedom of thought,
- freedom of religion,
- freedom of self-defense,
- freedom to work,
- freedom to trade,
- freedom of association,
- and, in some ways, the right to privacy (though not as it is often believed).

Naturally, my exercise of my rights can interfere with your exercise of yours, and the details need to be worked out. How do we do that?

Criminal law is the system that society has at its disposal when it needs to curtail your civil rights because your exercise of freedom is impinging unacceptably on others. Under commonly recognized principles, the important aspects of criminal law revolve around the understanding that depriving someone of his civil rights is a serious matter, and should not be done lightly or easily. Taking away someone's rights should be be difficult, but civilization has recognized that such power is necessary in order for society to function.

So we've got:
- trial by jury (perhaps the most important),
- the right to be presented to the court (habeas corpus),
- the right to a speedy trial (and the duty to enjoy that right),
- the right to confront the accuser (even in rape cases),
- the right to the presumption of innocence,
- the right to commensurate punishment,
- the right to remain silent and not testify against yourself,
- &c.

Notice, there's no right to vote, although democracy is a good way to protect our rights. All that common law really comes down to is "leave me alone, and I'll return the favor."

Partial-birth abortions will be illegal, as soon as Bush signs the bill that the Senate passed 64-34 yesterday (the House passed it a month ago). In theory, this law will prevent up to 5,000 abortions of convenience each year (since, as Bill Hobbs notes, the AMA says the procedure is almost never medically necessary; Donald Sensing says that physicians have testified for years that the procedure is never medically necessary).

Considering that I view abortions of convenience as murder, I would have preferred if the federal government had stayed out of it and left it to the states (which generally prosecute murderers), but my affection for federalism is outweighed by the thousands of lives that will potentially be saved. Furthermore, many similar state laws have been struck down:

The measure is similar to, but somewhat more detailed than, a Nebraska state law that the Supreme Court struck down by a 5-4 vote three years ago. That ruling had the practical effect of nullifying 30 state laws. Up to that time, Congress had been trying unsuccessfully for five years to enact a similar proposal at the federal level.

My lamentable Senator, Barbara Boxer, has this to say:

California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, who helped lead opposition to the bill, called it "a very sad day for the women of America."

But, of course, she's only considering women who are already out of the womb, and has little concern for the women who will now not have their brains sucked out by vacuums and their bodies dismembered.

Along the same lines,

But an abortion rights supporter said the ban "will bring an end to providing the best and safest health care for women."

It will bring an end to the mass-murder of thousands of children. Physicians all seem to agree that this procedure was never medically necessary, so it certainly can't be required for the best and safest health care for anyone. Congress concurs:

In drafting the new national measure that has now passed, Congress wrote lengthy findings that contradict the Supreme Court's conclusion that abortions using the procedure banned by the bill are sometimes medically necessary to protect a woman's health. "Congress finds that partial-birth abortion is never medically indicated to preserve the health of the mother," the bill's preamble says.

The problem is that the abortion-rights people don't seem to understand that they're arguing a different point than most people are conerned with.

"This dangerous ban prevents women, in consultation with their families and trusted doctors, from making decisions about their own health," said Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Most Americans don't see abortion as a private issue that only affects the mother, no matter how much abortion-rights advocates want to spin it that way. They purposefully misstate the pro-life position, which is that an unborn baby is a human being, and that as such the medical privacy concerns of the mother are inconsequential compared to the right of that other human being to live. As I wrote in that earlier post:

2. Michelman states that the position of pro-life advocates is that the government should be involved in people's private medical decisions, when that isn't the crux of the matter at all. To an opponent of abortion, the critical issue is that a fetus is a human being, and as such should not be killed without a cause more substantial than mere convenience. It has nothing to do with a lack of respect for the privacy of the mother, or with a desire to interfere with her private medical decisions. To a pro-lifer, the decision to have an abortion isn't private, because it necessarily involves another person: the unborn baby.

For a really excellent scientific explanation of why unborn babies (from conception) are alive, and are "real" human beings (without any reference to religion), I highly recommend "Life: Defining the Beginning from the End".

And finally, "Who, after all, could consider a fetus as life unworthy of living, once they've held its hand?", asks Sydney Smith, a family physician, and author of MedPundit.

David Bernstein gives a truly horrific account of the funeral of his girlfriend's mother, who was Jewish and lived in Israel. Apparently, Israeli law requires that a state-sanctioned, orthodox rabbi preside over all funerals (despite this not being a requirement of Jewish law), and Mr. Bernstein describes in detail how oppressive and obfuscated the ritual was, and how upsetting the entire experience was for himself and his girlfriend.

Apparently, the ceremony I saw was typical. I suspect that many rabbis in Israel don't explain anything because they want the public to be ignorant. They rely on this ignorance for their political power. For example, the Orthodox rabbinate insists on having a monopoly over marriages and funerals even though there is nothing in Jewish law that requires, or even suggests, the presence of a rabbi at these functions. In Jewish law and tradition, a rabbi has no greater authority or privileges than any other observant individual. For the Israeli rabbinate to demand the continuation of its monopoly makes no sense under Jewish law, a fact that Israelis of my acquaintance are not aware of. To take another example, many otherwise non-religious Israelis, especially Sephardim, go to "special" rabbis for blessings; there's one famous for helping infertility, one for serious illness, etc. Others go to kabbalists, who basically add religious mumbo-jumbo to traditional fortune-telling scams. The organized rabbinate should discourage such anti-Judaic nonsense, but as far as I can tell the situation is quite the opposite.

In Israel, then, the rabbinate functions something like, from what I've read, how the pre-Vatican II Catholic clergy often apparently functioned: as intermediaries seen to be necessary for ritual, who mumble ancient prayers and follow ancient customs that no one really understands, and that no one bothers to explain. (Though I suppose Israelis at least understand some ancient Hebrew, unlike Catholics who didn't know any Latin.) Anyway, the Catholics have democratized (and translated) their rituals, but still use priests as intermediaries, and that's fine for Catholics, but it's completely against Jewish tradition for rabbis to establish themselves in that role. Rabbis are supposed to be teachers, helping the laity understand and follow traditions, not obscuring what they are doing the way the rabbi at the funeral did. For example, I noticed that the rabbi followed at least one superstition that I felt dishonored the deceased, and in fact made me a little ill. Had the family been asked, I'm sure they would have told the rabbi not to do it, and adhering to such superstitions are in any event contrary to Jewish law.

The rabbi's obscurantism, adherence to superstition (or, more precisely, pagan superstitions), failure to learn or inquire about the deceased at all (he had to ask her name at the gravesite!), combined with the utter sexism of the service, and the lack of familial participation in it except at the rabbi's command, really distressed me.

This sort of formalistic insistence on incomprehensible ritual isn't uncommon for Judaism or Christianity (at least), and was one of the principle motivations for the Reformation. In fact, Jesus made similar complaints about the rabbis of his time, as well.

Luke 11:46, 52-54
46. Jesus replied, "And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.
53. When Jesus left there, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, 54. waiting to catch him in something he might say.

That's quite a powerful indictment of chief religious leaders of his time, and we should always be on guard of any leaders, civil or religious, who try to control us through the claim and exercise of special privilege.

Modern Pretestant ecclesiology largely lines up with Mr. Bernstein's description of the proper role for Jewish rabbis. Pastors and leaders exist to teach, guide, and serve, but hold no special spiritual authority under God and wield no peculiar power. As a Christian, my relationship and fellowship with God are not dependent on any other human being; no one has any power or authority to dictate spiritual rules or laws to me, or to speak in God's name and command my obedience. Rather, God speaks to me specifically and individually, and my relationship with him is wholly sufficient without any human intermediary.

Christian churches are conglomerates of individual believers, each is solely accountable to God for their actions. God uses such a group of believers as a corporate body to do his will in the world, and all such organizations need leaders in various capacities, but those in leadership roles are required by Jesus to be the most humble -- they are servents, not masters.

Mark 10:42-45
Jesus called them together and said, "You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

This goes against human nature, of course, and there are a great many so-called spiritual leaders who do not live by these principles.

Randy Barnett over at the Volokh Conspiracy posts a short excerpt from a Libertarian Alliance article about "The Mystery of Fascism" that illustrates how the familiar left-right political spectrum is pretty nonsensical when applied to reality.

From 1912 to 1914, Mussolini was the Che Guevara of his day, a living saint of leftism. Handsome, courageous, charismatic, an erudite Marxist, a riveting speaker and writer, a dedicated class warrior to the core, he was the peerless duce of the Italian Left. He looked like the head of any future Italian socialist government, elected or revolutionary. ...

Given what most people today think they know about Fascism, this bare recital of facts is a mystery story. How can a movement which epitomizes the extreme right be so strongly rooted in the extreme left? What was going on in the minds of dedicated socialist militants to turn them into equally dedicated Fascist militants?

Mean Mr. Mustard wrote an an excellent article on fascist China six months ago (before he quit blogging) that explains it all pretty clearly. He discusses how no nation has ever really been "Marxist", and that all communist states quickly morph into de facto fascism. To quote at length:

Marx's glorious proletarian revolution was supposed to take place in advanced industrial countries. That's why it was called a proletarian revolution, because the revolution itself was to be the result of the vast majority of the population becoming urban wage laborers, who would systematically exploited for profit at the hands of the capitalist class. For Marx, the idea that a communist revolution could take place in an undeveloped country was madness. Marx and Engels both wrote exhaustively about the need for societies to undergo the developmental phase of bourgeois capitalism, because it was those processes that would create an advanced industrialized system, which only then could be transferred into the hands of the proletariat, which by that time would constitute nearly the entire population.

For all that's wrong with that theory (and any discussion as to just how wrong it is would take up much more space and time than I intend to use right now), it's undeniable that Marx was indeed right about at least one thing: any communist revolution undertaken in a country that had not reached a certain level of technological and industrial advancement was doomed to failure, and to be marred by the worst kinds of violence and oppression that would make the evil capitalist oppressors look like pikers. Marx was perfectly right about communism not working in underdeveloped countries (he just happened to be ass-backwards wrong about why it would work in developed countries).

He and Engels stated many times in plain, unambiguous language: any revolution undertaken in pre-industrial countries would fall back upon the same system of a small elite controlling development and oppressing the vast majority for their own gain. Furthermore, the only way the revolutionary system would be able to be maintained was through large amounts of violence.

Sound like any countries you know of? ...

Gregor has said that if you go to China today and try to talk about "Marxism," the people will look at you like a child molester.

What features characterize Chinese government today?

- Single party, undemocratic rule with a single charismatic leader, meaning a figure who is held to be essentially infallible.
- A corporative system of representation, in which people are assigned representatives according to their special interest associations, such as soldiers, teachers, students, business people, etc.
- An organizing principle of nationalism as the rationale for the government's legitimacy.
- A strong emphasis on industrial development.
- Sweeping reforms of the military and educational systems to make them more effective in the ultimate goal of China reasserting its international prominence.

What kind of program is this? It's one that correllates remarkably close to the fascist program for development begun by Mussolini in the 30's. For all intents and purposes, China today is a fascist nation.

Go read the whole thing, and you'll have some good insight into why the hard left and the hard right in America look so similar. They're after different things (sorta), but they both want to control you and tell you how to live. There's not much functional ideological difference between Castro, Kim Jong Il, and Saddam Hussein.

I've written about love and marriage quite a bit; I expect to get married someday and I have a lot of thoughts on the matter. I have fears and anxieties about both love and marriage, and it's good to put all my thoughts out in text so that I can keep track and make sense of it all.

I also look for as much advice as I can find on the matter, and Donald Sensing typically has some good pointers; yesterday he wrote out some of the direction he gives when counseling people who come to him and want to get married, and he gives some excellent advice, but he discounts the fear involved in making such an immense decision.

Many men, however, claim that men avoid marriage, or get married later than otherwise, because divorce laws are stacked against them. To which I say, maybe so, but why on earth would a man get married with one hand on the ejection seat? When men and women get married with some level of expectation that the marriage will fail, then the prophecy sadly can become self-fulfilling.

It's true that such expectations can be self-fulfilling, but ignoring such fears and pretending that divorce will never happen certainly doesn't protect you. Divorce is an ugly fact of life, and there are lots of statistics that demonstrate that fact and reinforce my fears.

My parents are divorced, and it's something that I never want to put my kids through. Heck, I've broken up with girls and that's something I never want to go through again, if I can help it. I can only imagine how much more traumatic divorce would be, and then when you kick in all the financial and social costs... ugh.

Donald seems to advocate never marrying someone unless you're absolutely sure you trust them, but people change and are inherently not trust-worthy. Men get older and buy Ferraris and trophy wives; women get bored and lonely, or whatever. Who knows. The point is, no one can be completely trusted. Christians have nearly identical divorce rates as non-Christians (possibly because Christians get married younger, on average; and I don't know if that accounts for divorces that occur before they became Christians). It's scary. I agree that I would never enter into marriage with the "we can always get a divorce if it doesn't work" attitude, but doesn't it make sense to consider all the possibilities?

I suppose, in the end, all you can do is try to love your spouse in a Christ-like manner, and leave the rest to God. Maybe that's what Donald means -- there's no use worrying, you can only do your best. Maybe. I know I want to get married, so it's not like I have to be talked into it, but it's still a jittery prospect.

It took the FBI 5 weeks to find some box cutters that a man hid aboard two Southwest Airlines jets (link removed), despite an email he sent to federal authorities alerting them to his actions. Aside from the obvious security concerns, this brings to my mind the really nifty concept of attractors and strange attractors, and is an excellent example of an attractor in real life. What's an attractor?

The basic idea behind an attractor is that a dynamic system will tend toward certain states as time goes on. The simplest form of an attractor is the point attractor. Consider a normal pendulum, it doesn't matter where you release it from, it will always come to rest in the same position, perpindicular to the ground. This state is the attractor for the system.

From another story, it appears that the box cutters were simply hidden in a compartment in the airplane bathrooms. We've all seen the compartments, I imagine; there are several panels in those bathrooms that all look removable. But we've never opened them, and have probably not even wondered what they're for. The man told the authorities exactly which planes to search, but it still took them 5 weeks to find the knives because they were hidden outside the areas the searchers were attracted to, for whatever reason.

Strange attractors are like normal attractors, except that they're chaotic. Chaotic systems never revisit a point they've been to previously, so you may wonder how such a system could have an attractor at all -- well, it can't, but it can have a strange attractor. A chaotic system may never return to an exact previous position, but it can go to a position that's similar to a previous position (and much depends on how you define "similar", which in turn depends on the system in question).

Human behavior is (arguably) chaotic -- it's immensely dependent on initial conditions, and tiny changes in our inputs can yield drastically different outputs. If I happen to get a piece of dust in my eye, I may twitch, stub my toe, decide not to walk to lunch, and avoid getting hit by a car. Nevertheless, humans often behave in ways that are very similar to their past behavior, and we are often quite predictable. Our patterns, movements, thoughts, and life can be seen together as a giant strange attractor that represents the most likely state of our being and that describes our operational progression through time.

Consider your movement patterns through your house. There are probably several areas where you spend the vast majority of your time -- such as the bed, the couch, the bathroom, the computer -- and the rest of your house may be rather sparsely visited. How often do you peer into the crawlspace under the floor, or go up into the attic? How often does the crevice behind the fridge see the light of day? How often do you open that cabinet over the oven? Maybe once a year, or maybe less than that.

If you were to draw a map of your house and trace your movements over the course of a month, you'd probably see that 75% of the floorspace was completely untouched, and that 95% of the volume enclosed by your house did not ever contain a human being. We look at the corners of our rooms from time to time, but we never go up into them. You see the ceiling every day, but when was the last time you touched it? Even when we lose something and we say we've looked everywhere, we know that's just a turn of phrase. We haven't looked under the carpet, or behind the shelves, or inside the TV. But we shouldn't have to, because our car keys are not going to be inside the TV -- that location isn't a high-frequency part of the strange attractor that represents the movement of our keys.

Similarly, thousands of people rode the Southwest jets over the 5 weeks the box cutters were hidden in the bathrooms, but no one found them because no one ever opens those compartments. They're 6 inches from your head when you wash your hands, but a million miles away conceptually.

Similar strange attractors can be found in almost everything, if you want to search them out. Consider the various ideologies that divide humanity, and that 90% of people believe in one of maybe a half-dozen religious systems. There are all sorts of reasons, but the system is so complicated and chaotic that it's impossible to fully describe. In all likelihood, no two people hold exactly identical religious beliefs, but the vast majority are similar enough that they can be easily clustered into just a few buckets.

Strange attractors are everywhere, and by recognizing and studying the attractors that describe our own behavior we can get a better understanding of how we are, and why we are.

I'm on the leadership board at my church, and the confluence of business and spirituality is an interesting phenomenon to me. Via Donald Sensing and Josh Claybourn, here's a fascinating Forbes Special Report on Christian Capitalism that investigates several different aspects of modern Christian churches, from the structure and history of "megachurches" to (generally awful) Christian video games. An excellent series of articles that I highly recommend to anyone interested in how churches look in the 21st Century.

There's a lot that can be said on this topic, but I don't think it's difficult to summarize my thoughts: Christian churches need to operate in the world, even though we aren't of the world. Methodologies and programs need to be malable and dynamic, even though the gospel of Christ is unchanging and the message remains the same. Using technology and business-savvy to spread God's Word is no different in spirit than when Jesus fed the crowds who came out to listen to him with fish and bread, or when he sent his followers out to the surrounding towns, two-by-two, to share his good news.

I saw this article in forbes about the health benefits of sex. I can't say I'm particularly surprised at their findings. Strange that an act at the center of out very existance would have physical and psychological benefits. But aside from my mormon friends all dying of prostate cancer, there was one part of the article I really liked. At the end:

"I see it in pro football players," says Eid. "They use Viagra because they're so sexually active. What they demand of their body is unreasonable. It's part of playing football: you play through the pain." This type of guy doesn't listen to his body. He takes a shot of cortisone, and keeps on going. And they have sex in similar fashion."

It's pretty common knowledge that football players do terrible things to their bodies, I guess I should have known they'd also be destroying their penises. The article uses the word scarring. Ow. Of course, if it was with our Britney lookalike, I guess I could understand.

I have a fun dillema. My girlfriend does not particularly believe in monogamy. At the same time, she doesn't actually act on this belief. I don't really have any concerns either way about monogamy...being in this situation is, theoretically, every guys dream, right? Eat your cake, have it too, etc etc. Only two problems with this:

To make it work in my favor, it seems I'd have to lie to any girl I dated

I'm really, really good at lying, but this just isn't something I can lie about

I guess the obvious solutions are "stop being an idiot" or "find a girl who doesn't care", but I thought I'd broach the issue and maybe see what people thought about the morality or "correctness" of the whole thing anyway. Is monogamy or being monoamorous the only way to go? Does anything else make sense? Is my little problem entirely a societal construct?

In my last entry I "quoted" Earl Weaver. I stole the quote from this article on ESPN.com. But if you go there, you'll notice that quote is no longer on the page. Earl is no longer considered part of the top 10 list of managers or coaches flipping out. Heck, he's not even on the honorable mention list. I had read this article this morning and had seen it; When I connected to my computer at home, I still had the article open, and Earl was there! Relieved to discover that I wasn't crazy, and that I could steal that great quote, I began to think about what ethical problems there may be with changing stuff you publish online with no indication you changed it.

Obviously, this article isn't that important. Maybe they pulled the quotes because they were completely fabricated (good thing I used em!). Anyway it's a list and a fluff opinion piece, not real news in any sense of the word. But websites seem to do this all the time, go in and change and edit articles or news with no indication that they did so, other than what might exist in the wayback machine. Hmm, seems Earl isn't there.

Magazines can't retract things or change them without new editions, in fact in no medium before the internet could you just change it and hope no one saw the original version. Is this ethical? I don't really know. While on one hand I don't see the purpose of announcing you made changes, it does seem kind of underhanded to just cover up your mistakes with no acknowledgement. Also, what if the changes are due to some totally different reason? Political or social pressure on a website to censor an article? If you don't keep an archive, you'll never be able to show what you saw was really there before. I don't know, perhaps it doesn't matter at all, but it really bothers me for some reason.

I've written about women at war previously; as I've said before, I don't think there are any good reasons for allowing women to serve in combat positions, and there are plenty of very compelling reasons not to.

I came across a post on a site called Equity Feminism that notes that when women recruits are held to the same physical requirements as men are, their injury rate increases by more than 100%.

Great Britain used to train men and women separately, with different requirements, but many women soldiers finished basic training without the abilities needed to perform their jobs. In 1998, the army began holding women to the same standards as men, and this change in policy resulted in the discharge rate due to training injury for women to rise from 4.5% to 11%, a jump of almost 150%. [Update: medical discharges for men were below 1.5%, according to the source BBC article.]

Regardless of anyone's opinions on the matter, women simply cannot attain and maintain the same physical abilities than men can, and as such they make inferior combatants. As I've written, in some circumstances (such as in Israel) every fighter is necessary -- perhaps because the population is small, or the war is particularly large. America is not in such a situation, and we have the luxury of keeping women out of combat roles in our armed forces. This policy improves the quality of our military in numerous ways (as I've outlined in my previous postings), and also serves a valuable social function.

Cypren says there are no more heroes running for political office who can keep their noses clean (along with Francis, in the comments), but I don't think such people have ever existed. In any social system -- democracy or depotism -- the people who rise to power tend to share similar characteristics. They have strong personalities, they're outgoing, clever, subtle, manipulative, and they have ambition. These are all powerful attributes and they will lead a person to great success, or to great failure. By their very nature such people will not tolerate any middle ground.

The people we see rise to power tend to be so endowed, and only come to our attention because they are great successes already. Sure, they may lose an election for president or governor, but they're already great successes by the standards of the world. The huge numbers of people with these qualities who never fall into the public eye are not middle-class professionals -- they're gamblers, criminals, con men, used car salesmen, and petty politicians (but I repeat myself).

So it shouldn't surprise anyone that every politician has a closet full of skeletons. Such people take risks, and suffer the consequences when they lose. It's hard to climb a mountain and never fall down; if you don't want to fall, you don't climb mountains. That's not to say that their failures are excused by virtue of their personality traits; we all have traits that incline us more towards certain failings than others, and we are all responsible for avoiding the temptations that accost us each individually.

One may also ask: why is it that most politicians are rich? Some are born into it, but again, is it really so surprising? Anyone who is a viable candidate for a major political office must have traits that would also allow them to be successful in that great American endeavor, making money. That's not to say they have business savvy -- there are plenty of other ways to make money. But I, for one, wouldn't elect a poor man to office. If you can't handle your own finances, stay away from mine.

So what does this mean? That character flaws are unavoidable and unimportant? Not at all. If a smart, ambitious, good person could be enticed into running for office, that would be excellent. But consider: every office requires someone smart, and no one who is unambitious will run... but what role does goodness play? There's so selection factor that encourages good people to run for office, and so they don't. Maybe there should be, but people just don't seem to care. Goodness is a bonus, and every other issue is non-negotiable.

I've written before on why I'm not a Libertarian, and SDB goes in a similar direction as he explains why property rights are not the panacea that Libertarians claim. He writes that Libertarians are misguided and narrow in thinking that the enforcement of strong private property rights would eliminate the need for government regulation, and he argues that such a system would merely transfer power from the Executive and Legislative branches to the civil courts, leading to paralysis.

I think that those who argue that "property rights" can solve the problem are deceived by the assumption that it is shared or public ownership of the commons which is the root of the problem. Based on that, they reason that if they can just eliminate shared or public ownership, by somehow converting it into direct private ownership, then the commons will eliminated and therefore can no longer be spoiled. But in fact a commons doesn't necessarily involve ownership at all. A commons is defined by effects. The question of who formally owns the commons may not matter, and there may not be anything involved for which "ownership" even makes sense. ...

But in all these cases, even if property rights somehow did solve the problem, it doesn't actually eliminate government involvement. It just means that instead of the Executive and Legislative branches participating about equally with the Judicial branch in dealing with it all, the Judicial branch would gain exclusive control. Instead of those things being handled through passage of laws and writing of regulations enforced by the courts (and sometimes nullified by them), it would only be decided by judges presiding over a vast swarm of civil suits.

This is all true. If there were some sort of super-court with infinite capacity, objectivity, and speed, such a lawsuit-based system could conceivably work. Maybe someday in the future when we're all born with implanted microchips that track our every activity, computers will be able to instantly calculate the cost each one of our actions has on everyone around us, and will automatically transfer pennies back and forth between accounts. Nice, considerate people will make a profit, and rude, annoying people will have to pay the price for each person they inconvenience. Sounds like a Libertarian paradise, right? I'm sure they'll be first in line to get the chips inplanted.

SDB says that Libertarians are deceiving themselves, but deep down I bet many are thinking: "good, I wish society would grind to a halt!" It's wasteful and inefficient, true, but civilization actually turns out to be much more efficient than anarchy, which is the only alternative. What's more, anarchy isn't stable. All it takes is one guy with a gun and a bit of persuasive power, and all of a sudden you've got a chief. A little bit of fighting, and you've got a warlord, then a king, then an emperor. Anarchy is unsustainable, because there's always someone stronger than you who wants to tell you what to do.

So if we've got to have a society with imperfect, selfish, violent people (try to find some people who aren't), I think democracy is a pretty good way to go. Your town is unlikely to be plundered in a democracy, and it's unlikely that your wives and daughters will be enslaved. Sure, a bunch of leftists will try to take your money and use it to chase fantasies like universal health care, but they don't come with guns, and they're generally polite about it. [Polite lefties? -- Ed.]

Update:
Francis W. Porretto examines the topic with a larger economic perspective, and brings up some very interesting big-picture points. In a sense, I believe (as an engineer) that all forms of regulation will eventually lead to a "next problem" to be solved, but deregulation can lead to problems as well. We'll never have a perfect solution, but we can iteratively approach optimality through experimentation.

The impartial, nonpartisan press sure does love to beat on Republicans.

First up, Arnold's apology for innapropriate behavior is getting major play.

Schwarzenegger said: "Yes, it is true that I was on rowdy movie sets and I have done things that were not right which I thought then was playful but now I recognize that I offended people."

"Those people that I have offended, I want to say to them I am deeply sorry about that and I apologize because that's not what I'm trying to do," he said.

The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday that six women it interviewed said the Republican actor touched them in a sexual manner without their consent on movie sets and in other settings. The Times said the unwanted fondling and groping allegedly occurred as far back as 1975 and as recently as 2000.

I've been to parties where there's an awful lot of touching going on, and people are so doped up they're really incapable of giving permission for anything. I have no idea what the circumstances are surrounding these allegations, but I find it pretty easy to believe that a rich movie star and bodybuilder has been to much crazier shindigs than I have. Accusations of wrongdoing from 1975 seem pretty irrelevent to me, but 2000 is a lot more recent.

Is it a character issue? Yeah, it is. Arnold sounds like a ritzy-er version of President Clinton, although so far no one has accused him of using the Highway Patrol to harrass his victims. In my mind, this character flaw is a big minus, but Arnold still a thosuand times better than Grey "Vending Machine" Davis or Cruz "Slot Machine" Bustamante. I mean, it's not like Arnold has raped anyone or lied under oath. Besides, he married a Kennedy; this type of behavior shouldn't surprise anyone!

I think women can see through this pandering nonsense, and that's all it is. The press and the Democrats are trying to manipulate women, but I doubt they'll be successful.

Entry number 2 is all the hub-hub over Rush Limbaugh. I read on Drudge last night that Limbaugh resigned from his new job at ESPN, and that the National Enquirer is alleging that he has a drug abuse problem. I like Rush; I don't agree with him on everything, but I like him. So what's did he say to get in trouble?

"I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well," Limbaugh said on Sunday's show. "There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team."

That doesn't seem racist to me; if anything, Rush is accusing the sports media of being racist. Oh right, that's probably why the media reacted so violently and pushed this non-issue to the fore. It's a shame. I couldn't care less about football, but I know that this job was one of Rush's lifelong dreams, and I'm sympathetic.

And the drugs?

Talk-radio titan Rush Limbaugh is being investigated for allegedly buying thousands of addictive painkillers from a black-market drug ring.

The moralizing motormouth was turned in by his former housekeeper - who says she was Limbaugh's pill supplier for four years.

Wilma Cline, 42, says Limbaugh was hooked on the potent prescription drugs OxyContin, Lorcet and hydrocodone - and went through detox twice.

If those allegations are true, then Rush certainly broke the law -- a dumb law, but still a law. I can only hope that the media will investigate the countless other celebrities who abuse prescription drugs just as vigorously. This seems to be an easy trap for famous people to fall into, but it's disappointing nonetheless, if it turns out to be true.