Nietzsche and Rousseau

On Nietzsche's assertion that "Once we label something, we invalidate it."

This is true to an extent. Labels are inadequate representations. Defining an object reduces its reality, and much data is lost in the process.

On Rousseau:

Rousseau postulated that it is society that corrupts man (an otherwise noble creature). Society can be perfected, because man can be perfected. If corruption and evil exist, it is not human weakness that is responsible...it is societal imperfection. Hence the imperative: Society must be remade. Change as a goal, and motto.

Here we find the genesis of that elitist idea: the further from society one is (the loin-clothed barbarian, for instance), the more authentically noble one is. Instead of society being a shelter, a shield against the nature of man, it is a vehicle, to be discarded or rebuilt at will.

Opportunity cost was removed from the sphere of political science. Redistribution feels good, whatever the consequences. You can't hug your children with nuclear arms, etc.

Perfect became the enemy of the good. Thanks, Rousseau.

Thoughts on Belief

Beliefs must be real because they can affect reality. Anything that can change the future exists.

Which brings me back to a paradox, one I often cite, a true moral dilemma for one who searches for truth.

What if it were True that the effect of a false belief was more beneficial than the effect of Truth itself? Or another way, is the premise "Mankind can handle the Truth", False.

A placebo, once truthfully labeled, no longer works. Another example of a false belief that is...better...than reality. Which highlights even more clearly my dilemma: is belief in God a necessary placebo? What is it that we gain, what would be lost?

Only slightly flippantly: would Mankind be able to survive a session in the Total Perspective Vortex?

Nietzsche spoke of "What comes after Man" and called it terrible indeed. Maybe it is Truth that awaits in the darkness to terrorize our people.

Looking out my Backdoor: Katrina and the Crisis of New Orleans

I'm having a difficult time wrapping my mind around the scope of this disaster. We are looking at a mass displacement of hundreds of thousands of people for an extended period of time. Worse, most of these people are without means and poor, so they are truly adrift on a stormy sea for the foreseeable future. They will not be able to stay at motels, or eat at restaurants, or get jobs. They will be hundreds of miles away from their homes, resourceless and vulnerable. For months. What do we do? What can we do?

In the days ahead, we may see something truly uplifting, or truly terrible. Americans may open their arms and their homes, and rise to the challenge in what will be remembered as one of our finest hours. Or, we could all shrug and let the Government deal with it, which would be remembered quite differently.

We are at a turning point in our history. Which way will we go? Will citizens act for their countrymen, or will we punt and let Government act for its supplicants.

Either way, America, in the next couple of months, will be redefined.

Mourning in America

This is re: mourning-by-cause, which I believe is a neutral proposition, but can be shameful in practice.

Sheehan is either a pathetic figure or a contemptible opportunist. She is either a grieving mother who has lost all perspective, or she is a despicable activist who is exploiting the death of her son to further her own narcissistic rage against the machine. I do not have enough data to claim one or the other.

But those who use her I do understand. They are the dangerous ones. They are the Destructors.

Claire Sterling, Cassandra

If you are so inclined, you might find it worthwhile to read Claire Sterling's The Terror Network (1981). Here are some excerpts:

Many young people in this story set out with blazing revolutionary faith, only to reach the arid conviction that somehow, tragically, they had gone wrong. They wanted to make things better, and made them worse. In the end, they found a grotesque identity of interest with the Black terrorists, their hideous mirror image. Both were joined in a single-minded effort to disarticulate and eventually destroy the democratic order wherever they found it...

Terrorism...became a continuation of war by other means...

Not only is it easier and safer to be a terrorist in a free country than it is in a police state, it is ideologically more satisfying...

Methodically trained, massively armed, immensely rich, and assured of powerful patronage, they move with remarkable confidence across national frontiers from floodlit stage to stage, able at a word to command the planet's riveted attention...employing the power of impotence to expose the impotence of power, as a Western diplomat described the Iranian seizure of American hostages in Teheran.

The Tupamaros, who invented the original model for what has become the planetary fashion in urban guerrilla warfare, make a wonderfully instructive case...

Their ranks consisted of teachers, lawyers, doctors, dentists, accountants, bankers, architects, engineers, a model, a radio announcer, and an actress. They were radical Marxists, committed to profound revolutionary change, who unmistakably started out with fine intentions. They lived in a politically worldly society open to the winds of change and given to voting social-democratically left. Like middle-class revolutionaries everywhere, they were plainly moved by a strong sense of social guilt and an uplifting political vision. Even later, when they started to kill, they wept.

Signposts flashing through the night in vain, indeed.

Iraq's Constitution: A Thought

I have been consistently outspoken in my opposition to a Shariah-based Constitution, so I feel obligated to come forward with my thoughts on what in fact has been recently codified (thought not ratified).

To be quite honest, I am pleased with the result. I can only imagine the excellent, informative debates in the Iraqi parliament over whether this or that Shariah law also upholds Constitutionally protected human rights and freedom of religion, or whether this or that democratic principal can be reconciled with Islamic teachings on the role of women, etc. That this debate is actually guaranteed, because of the Constitution's protection of competing and sometimes contradictory interests, is surely a great bonus for our cause, in Iraq and elsewhere.

It will not all be green pastures. Those who claim to be surprised by this are either being intellectually dishonest or they are partisan hacks, or both. But we have come a long way from Saddam and No-Fly Zones.

The Iraqi constitution has codified the friction of Western and Near Eastern philosophies and pegged the selective criterion to the will of the people, which means the determinative metrics will be the efficacy of governance and the prosperity of the people. Three regions under different laws means that people can and will vote with their feet, and with three regions of different religious strictures, comparisons of success are inevitable. This codified competition is very good for us.

If the Constitution is ratified (a big if), grab a front row seat. Iraq's parliament is going to be one of the primary arenas of the war and, most likely, one of the arbiters of our final victory.

We Have the Right

The "what gives us the right" crowd needs this lesson more than any other: we have to live, or die, with the consequences of our actions and inactions.

From that fact alone obtains our right to judge and preempt. All beings have the right to stop the knife before it breaks the skin. And all civilized people have the responsibility to call a spade a spade.

Iraq, and Character Analysis

Me and Howard Dean: strange bedfellows? My response:

You distort my position. Firstly, I can hardly be against a constitution that has yet to be written and ratified. I can only be against contingencies. The contingency that would cause me to proclaim Iraq a failure is Sharia being codified into the new constitution. A limited argument.

Let's call Sharia black, and liberal democracy white. There are many shades of gray in between that would be acceptable. I believe we will see gray, I just hope it drifts towards the lighter side. But if it doesn't, I will not hesitate to call an Islamist society with vast oil reserves a danger, and an American policy failure.


And let me jump into this debate between Truepeers and Ash. It seems that we have different levels of argument working here, with TP going back and forth between the practical and the anthropological, and Ash firmly planting his flag in the abstract, with occasional nods towards reality.

To make a practical claim, I would have Ash compute and divulge what he sees as the possible consequences of his argument, in the real world. Putting perspective analysis aside, what possible good comes from the Mullahs having the bomb, and what possible evil?

Also, the idea of character has been lost somewhere in Ash's analysis. Two nations are equivalent in many areas: they are sovereign, made of people, and have needs and desires, etc. Yet these same two nations can be quite different in character. Ash wants to peg the privilege of nuclear weapons to the legal idea of sovereignty, which means every nation has a claim as a matter of right, and there is no way to distinguish one nation from the other in this respect.

Truepeers (if I am not misstating his argument) and I are arguing that the unique nature of nuclear weapons--unparalleled destructive power in an individual and portable device--should force us to limit the privilege of ownership. If one accepts this premise, that we must limit ownership of nuclear weapons, the argument from sovereignty is invalid, a priori. And so we look for a way to distinguish between nations.

Character is the most intuitive choice for a limiting filter, and this goes back to Charles Manson's knife. The Mullah's are not shy about their stance on Israel, and readily proclaim their contempt and hatred for America. They are also not shy about infiltrating Iraq and killing our troops.

Since we cannot know the mind of our enemy as it truly exists, we must use his actions and words as our evidence of his character and our insight into his intentions. In law this is the "eye in the sky" approach. A contract, in the abstract, is created by a meeting of the minds, but in a court of law it is only created by the actions and words of the parties. We may be wrong about the real intentions of the Mullahs, but our limit as human beings forces us to rely solely on their outward conduct as we try to determine their character. And their character determines the level of threat.

And to preempt any vacillation or equivocation, character must be judged from an American perspective. Abstract works until it doesn't, but reality works all the time. We are not simply impartial observers to this international crisis, and it is as Americans that we will feel the consequences of any misapplication of reason.

After taking this all into account, it is clear we cannot allow the Mullahs to have nuclear weapons. They are not politically mature enough to play nice with, or even be trusted not to not cause a wholesale slaughter of, the other kids in the playground. We have studied their character, and we have found it lacking.

Lessons, lessons everywhere yet not a sop to think.

In response to Wretchard's post, here:

Yes, the parallels with the '30's begin to pop up everywhere.

When Italy invaded Abyssinia in the middle of that decade, Stanley Baldwin's stirring call to action convinced the League of Nations to stand firm, in what Mussolini contemptuously labeled "fifty nations led by one." Led by Britain, the League imposed sanctions on Italy, but in one of the more insane moments of this time Baldwin made sure that the sanctions imposed were only those that would have no direct effect on Italy or on her ability to wage war. The sanctions were cosmetic and superficial, stopping shipments of fruit yet allowing the transport of oil, built to send messages, not punishment.

Instead of pulling back, Mussolini raped Ethiopia at will, and the only change affected was Italy's turn against Britain and the joining of the Fascists to the Nazis. As Churchill comments, Baldwin had roused the British for righteous action, yet refused to deliver a war! The British one-worlders, in their disarmament plans and phony sanctions, played the worst of all hands when looking across the table at rabid militancy. They bluffed big, and then they folded.

And here we are with Iran. The EU-3 are embarrassed daily and their only response is more noise, more pleas, and more time. There will be a showdown in the UN, and the peace-loving countries of the world will once again have a choice: unrighteous peace or righteous action. Once again an English speaking nation will lead the charge against outright intransigence and provocation. Will we pull up short, and be labeled appeasers by our children, or will we do that which is painful, but necessary, to protect our people?

We cannot afford to follow the pacifist chimera again, not with nuclear weapons, not when they will be owned by a few men adhering to a death-loving ideology. Yet I fear we will, and much like the '30's, our loud noises and dishonorable inactions will purchase a darkness the world has never known.

Hitler and Versailles

The debilitative remedies of the Versailles Treaty placed upon Germany were much more a cause of Hitler and National Socialism than Chamberlain and his ilk.

This is a common misperception. The cause of Hitler's dementia was his inability to believe that the Reich could possibly lose a war without some massive internal and external betrayal. After he regained his vision and was released from the Vienna hospital, he heard from his fellow soldiers dastardly tales of Jewish perfidy coming from Russia and the Bolsheviks. He then knew what had to be done. Since a nation composed of pure Germanic blood would inevitably take over the world, all one had to do was reunify the Germans and eradicate the Jews.

He used the Versailles treaty in the beginning to rally the German people much like he used British and French concessions later on. When the British allowed Germany to break both Versailles and the Locarno treaties, it did not improve Hitler's countenance nor the determination of the Nazis. In fact, the weakness and dishonorable appeasement led them to believe England wasn't even worthy as an ally. After all, why should they allow England to remain free when she was such a contemptible nag?

Had England and France actually enforced the Treaties for 15 or 20 years, Germanic fervor would have died down and the business of rebuilding would have proceeded apace.

A Child of Reason

So what Moral Authority does the U.N. exercise now? No more than that which resides in D.C., London, and the capitals of other free countries.

My inclination is the same; the UN's moral authority has been shattered in recent years, if it ever existed at all.

Yet I still do not believe that a global, normative institution is unhelpful per se. It is a tool to be wielded, and like any tool it can be used for good or for evil.

We are at a turning point in history, where we can let the current UN dissolve into a gentleman's club for authoritarian diplomats and an incubator for high crime syndicates, or we can hope to restructure based on certain basic principles. More specifically: we can hope to remake the UN in our image.

I do not wish to bend knee to a global Leviathon, nor am I a romantic about our prospects, yet I believe that the idea of the UN, as an institution to enforce basic norms like women's rights (which is truly the trojan horse for all our enemies), is a sound one. Language can be codified that is so simple and so universal that no government would long survive the embarrassment of a public refusal to accept it as law.

At the very least, it is a perfect time to try. America is unparalleled in her might, and thanks to our honorable but sometimes mistaken efforts around the globe we currently command the attention of the entire world. Almost 5 billion people on this planet have access to media outlets. If we codify the most basic of rights and rules, along with the necessary and inevitable punishment to follow any transgression (which includes an acceptance of violence in defense of principles), we may be able to succeed where others have failed.

It all depends on the willingness of a hyperpower America to set the example, and light the fire. It's possible that this dream of enforced global norms will never rise above the realm of ethical alchemy, but it would be noble to try.

There are many things for which a people could be remembered. We could do much worse than a functional and moral UN.

Cindy Sheehan, Pathetic Figure

trish: "Grieving parents of soldiers are allowed to say whatever the hell they want to say, no matter how mistaken or fruity."

Last I checked everybody in this country was extended that courtesy, by the Constitution, no less.

Sheehan's right to speak is not in question. Sheehan's right to demand a second audience with the President is not even in question. What's in question is whether the substance of her daily diatribes should be listened to and trumpeted around the globe by patsy fellow-travelers bored by the August news slowdown. What's in question is whether every left-leaning club, newspaper, and website is behaving ethically by using Sheehan's grief as a bludgeon on the American people, exploiting her "moral authority" to avoid critical argument so the Leftist opportunists can advance their subversive agenda of pacifism, socialism, and anti-semitism.

Sheehan has an almost absolute right of speech, and she has an absolute right to be wrong. She is currently exercising both.

On Marx and Islam

Marx, in the instance of Jihad, is only relevant as a filter for the cross-cultural translation of Islam's imperial ambitions, yet this is enough to make it dangerous. Salafist and Wahhabist fascism is given cover from close criticism because the Imams and Jihadis have adopted the Marxist posture of grievance-mongering and victimology to espouse their position, a move that plays to the sympathies of the Western intelligentsia and our faux elites. Instead of evil and xenophobic conquerors, they become just one more group with legitimate complaints and demands against the European white man. Their bellicosity is thereby excused by their authenticity.

It is true that Muslims steeped in this Western pathology are more prone to adopt the fighting revolutionary role found in The Communist Manifesto; yet this is so only because their indoctrination begins with a recognizable language. Soon the focus shifts from a redress of grievances to an empowering jihad against the infidel.

The driving force behind terrorism is and will continue to be Islam the religion, coupled with the Imperial desire for a global Caliphate. Western Muslims may begin their reeducation via Marx, but their goal is pure Wahhabist in practice: they want nothing less than the total submission of those who, by their lights, are unclean and unworthy in the eyes of God. Even, and maybe especially, the oppressed Western proletariat.

Thoughts on a Saturday

On Terrorism as a US tactic:

There is a great difference between covert action on a terrorist cell and actual terrorist action on a civilian populace. If I read you right, you are advocating the latter?

I think that is a horrible idea, and, thank goodness, incredibly unlikely. Terrorism is what the weak do to the strong. It is a defection from all international norms: because cooperation in such an ethical paradigm renders the terrorist impotent, he chooses to operate outside the arena of acceptable behavior to achieve his goals, whatever they are.

We have a very strong interest in keeping this dynamic alive. As long as terrorism remains outside the norm, and as long as we continue to offer large disincentives for its practice, it will remain rare and unattractive as a strategic option. If the strongest player in the game begins to operate outside the cooperative norms, then the norms themselves will crumble and there will be a large flight towards total defection. The only thing that keeps countries from defecting now is the strength and posture of a United States ready and willing to add massive costs to any such move towards the unethical.

If we are to truly become safe from terrorism, we need to strengthen this ethical paradigm, and we need to get better at enforcing it upon everyone else.

On Iran: If I remember right Rasfanjani publically vowed to destroy Israel, even if it meant losing 200 million Iranians to a counterstrike. As he said, one or two nukes and Israel doesn't exist anymore. With his perverted calculus, the cost to Iran would be worth it.

And he was the moderate.

We know that Israel won't live with that threat. America won't either, and Iraq already has a long list of complaints, a list that pales when compared to the risk of a nuclear Iran next door.

Iran will not give in to diplomacy. Sanctions from the EU and US are likely, but not from the UN because of Russia and China. Even then, it would not guarantee a nuclear-free Iran.

Therefore, from this vantage point US military action looks inevitable.

We want to make this look like a punitive action, so leaving it to Israel causes all sorts of diplomatic problems. It would be seen as a war of aggression by the Arabs, and all the conspiracy-theorists would be seen as vindicated about a Zionist plot to control the ME (C4). Plus, the US would have to okay the mission and Israel would have to use Iraqi airspace. The Israel option therefore seems untenable. If we dally, Israel will be forced to do it, but the cost to our overall strategy in the ME would be enormous.

Iraq would also cause problems, most of which has to do with the quality and success of the mission. That leaves us. In the near future, we will be forced to attack Iran.

Does anybody see any flaw in that argument, and if not, what happens when Iran comes to the same conclusion?

If something is inevitable, it should be done when chances favor us and we control the initiative. A slow wind up in the UN won't cut it, I fear, yet I expect it will happen anyways. In the meantime, Iran is getting ready.


I am not as sanguine about waiting as you are, and I don't think Israel is either. If Israel thought it was necessary to attack Osirak, they are not going to allow Iran to bring their nukes online. And an Israeli attack could shatter the fragile progress we've made in Iraq so far, and the entire region could erupt in turmoil.

I think it comes down to time, and we simply don't have any. If we had 15 years, then sure, a revolution would be our bet. But we don't. The processing plant is back in action, the bomb design is ready, the Shahab-3 has been remodeled, and the hardliners have taken over the entire government. Ahmadinejad is training thousands as suicide bombers, and the ruling elite do not even bother to hide their intentions: they are going to spread Islam, whatever the cost, and they are going to start with Israel and the US.

To quote Saruman: "What time do you think we have?"

C4: Israel is not a signatory to the treaty. And yes, that makes all the difference. They developed the tech on their own. NPT signatories do not, they are given nuclear tech in exchange for promises, which Iran has broken.

Give it up. Iran is not just a threat to Israel. They are our problem, too.

"That is the sound of inevitability."

More innovations coming to Iraq, this from Defenstech.org:

New Scientist is right in saying that cells "provide a simple yet effective way for terrorists to remotely trigger a bomb." And that's why it'd be great news if an idea for "a portable device devised by US defence contractor Raytheon [to] quickly identify and disable such weapons" really works out.

The device includes a transmitter that mimics a cell phone base station and a metal horn to concentrate the signal from a 10 milliwatt power source in a single direction. Scanning... a concealed phone... with the tool... tricks it into thinking it is in range of a new network base station and blocks it from any genuine stations in the vicinity.

The suspect phone will also respond with a “handshake signal” containing its phone number, allowing a network operator to temporarily disconnect it from the real network, and preventing it from receiving a detonation call.

Wretchard's right. This is a game the terrorists can't win. The higher the stakes, the further back in time our enemies must go to find tactics that we haven't neutralized. Osama used to use email and satellite phones. Now he uses the communication tactics of Marathon.

The knowledge and skills we are learning in Iraq are probably the most underappreciated aspect of OIF. For decades we've studied how to beat powerful enemies; now, we are perfecting our approach to the weak. How long before the effectiveness of the car bomb and the suicide vest is deconstructed?

When the most powerful innovative force the planet has ever seen looks your way, it is only a matter of time.

The Power of Ideas

The majority of innovations in this new war will not be technological. The networking of our military and the decentralized market of ideas it helps to foster will play a much bigger role in our victory.

Substitute "military" with "people" and the statement remains true, in general.

Michael Yon, American

Wretchard pointed out Yon's latest, which is here.

Ed thought that taking the soldier to his parents was a good thing. It may be, but the reaction of the family and neighbors did not seem encouraging to me. I responded:

The terrorist's mom was proud of him. When they took this piece of shit out into his family's neighborhood, Yon says the neighbors shielded him. They looked on this terrorist as a hero for daring to stand up to the Americans.

Perhaps even more frustrating, the terrorist himself was imperturbed. These murderers know how good they have it with the Americans, how, once caught, they will get air conditioning and three squares a day and showers and all that. Yon writes that the mom was encouraging her son in front of our soldiers, wearing a smile and saying "Don't worry, you'll be released soon."

Then you have the rule that we cannot hand over a prisoner to the Iraqi police unless they assist in his capture. This is, of course, political correctness. Yon writes, "During lunch, the Chief persisted in his entreaties to LTC Kurilla, saying his police would find all the bombs, break the cell, and give the prisoner back tomorrow at the latest. And they could. The Iraqi Police could break the cell because they can break the man."

But we can't allow this to happen. If we hand one of our prisoners to the Iraqis, the NYTimes and Nancy Pelosi will grab onto that story will both hands and hold it up high: "We are complicit in torture!"

These Leftists and opportunists, who have no shame, register no interest in the only part of the story that matters. They willfully ignore the import of the first three acts, scan the second to last page of the fourth, find a terrorist who, though caught with a detonator and without uniform, was not given his Geneva Convention rights...and that becomes The Story that they will trumpet for the next two weeks. Instead of wondering whether the terrorist cell was in fact broken, and whether our troops were made safer, they wonder about Rumsfeld's resignation, time-tables for surrender, and how many dead soldiers' names they can fit onto a screen.

Meanwhile, the archetypes of courage and the drama of our success go unnoticed and unsung, except by a truly remarkable independent journalist riding, living, and maybe dying with Deuce Four.

Paul Campos Reads This Blog

Well, probably not, but look at this:

An old philosophical joke goes like this: The student asks the great sage, "O Master, upon what does the Earth rest?" The sage replies, "O seeker of knowledge, the Earth rests on the back of an enormous turtle." The student then asks, "Tell me, Wise One, upon what does this turtle rest?" The sage answers with annoyance, "Well obviously it's turtles all the way down!"

Then, a bit later:

Thus scientists such as Richard Dawkins are guilty of idolatry (not to mention tremendous philosophical naivete) when they argue that Darwinian evolutionary theory refutes religious belief. Such arguments in effect transform the naturalistic axioms of the scientific method into pseudo-theological claims.

Then read this, this, and this from your humble blogger.

Crisis of a Paradigm

From the NYTimes, no less:

As Westerners bow down before multiculturalism, we anesthetize ourselves into believing that anything goes. We see our readiness to accommodate as a strength - even a form of cultural superiority (though few will admit that). Radical Muslims, on the other hand, see our inclusive instincts as a form of corruption that makes us soft and rudderless. They believe the weak deserve to be vanquished.

Paradoxically, then, the more we accommodate to placate, the more their contempt for our "weakness" grows. And ultimate paradox may be that in order to defend our diversity, we'll need to be less tolerant. Or, at the very least, more vigilant. And this vigilance demands more than new antiterror laws. It requires asking: What guiding values can most of us live with? Given the panoply of ideologies and faiths out there, what filter will distill almost everybody's right to free expression?

Which brings me to my vote for a value that could guide Western societies: individuality. When we celebrate individuality, we let people choose who they are, be they members of a religion, free spirits, or something else entirely. I realize that for many Europeans, "individuality" might sound too much like the American ideal of individualism. It doesn't have to. Individualism - "I'm out for myself" - differs from individuality - "I'm myself, and my society benefits from my uniqueness."

Of course, there may be better values than individuality for Muslims and non-Muslims to embrace. Let's have that debate - without fear of being deemed self-haters or racists by those who twist multiculturalism into an orthodoxy. We know the dangers of taking Islam literally. By now we should understand the peril of taking tolerance literally.

The multiculti paradigm has engaged reality, and it has been shown to be wanting.

Et tu, Hawaii?

From Opinion Journal:

Ms. Johnson laments that more people in Hawaii are giving up on integration and listening to those with "hate in their hearts." She says much of the history taught at her old university and now used to justify the Akaka bill is "a distortion of the truth." For example, her studies convince her that the U.S. was "not directly involved" in the forced abdication of Queen Liliuokalani in 1893 and that indeed much of the Hawaiian monarchy supported the annexation of the islands. She believes that "rather than talk about how haoles stole the land, people should take responsibility for their own actions and work with others of good will to better themselves."

While her advice might be the best way to preserve the famous "aloha" spirit and racial harmony for which Hawaii is justly famous, current trends are moving towards further politicization and polarization. If the Akaka bill creating a separate race-based government in Hawaii becomes law, look for other racial and ethnic groups on the mainland to view it as a model for their own bids for political spoils.

The Fires of Amon Din

Sometimes we can never be sure. The world is a big place, and even the smallest village in the remotest deserts of Arabia has currents and tides too complex and too numerous to reduce to an article, or an essay, or even a large tome. The dangers of miscategorization and misinterpretation rise as our attention and our patience fall, until we find ourselves battling for one soundbite over another when both may be dangerously wrong, or, more often, both inadequately right.

September 11, if it did anything, broadened our attentions and enlargened our world. We had fooled ourselves into nonchalance, willingly hypnotized by the coziness of a predictability that wasn't, but our circumscribed lives never really existed, not in the way we thought. There was a blackness in the wilderness that we had chosen to ignore, until one fateful day it stepped into the light to spark a fire of its own. By this terrible new flame we saw that the danger, through our inattentiveness, had grown and multiplied. Darkness was everywhere, yet we knew what we had to do.

The enemy cannot be defined by what he is, for his mutations and permutations are many; instead, it is much easier to understand what he is not. I look around at the decency of our lives and the economy of our people; I gaze in awe at the prosperity and happiness that liberty and hope afford, and the enemy becomes very clear. We are in a fight with darkness itself, and darkness can only be known by its relationship to the light.

On Economic Mobility

Richard Posner critiques Krugman's latest apologia for the French lifestyle:

Krugman's failure to relate the European model to Europe's Muslim problem is telling. To point to the upside of Europe's social model without mentioning the most serious downside is to provide bad advice to our own policymakers. The assimilation of immigrants by the United States, compared to the inability of the European nations to assimilate them--with potentially catastrophic results for those nations--is not unrelated to the differences between economic regulation in the United States and Europe. Because the U.S. does not have a generous safety net--because it is still a nation in which the risk of economic failure is significant--it tends to attract immigrants who have values conducive to upward economic mobility, including a willingness to conform to the customs and attitudes of their new country.

Social mobility implies the opportunity to fail. If society protects jobs, the employment opportunities of ambitious newcomers are reduced and they may end up at the embittered margin of society. Thus, it is not poverty that breeds extremism; it is social policies intended in part to eradicate poverty that do so, by obstructing exit from minority subcultures. If Muslims in European societies do not feel a part of those societies because public policy does not enable them to compete for the jobs held by non-Muslims--if instead, excluded from identifying with the culture of the nation in which they reside they perforce identify with the worldwide Muslim culture--some of them are bound to adopt the extremist views that are common in that culture. The resulting danger to Europe and to the world is not offset by long vacations.

Becker's response is also worth reading:

Krugman's recent New York Times article on French "family values" cited by Posner is the latest of many attempts during the past decade to justify, high labor taxes, restrictions on the ability of companies to shed employees, a French law that restricts work to no more than 35 hours per week, and various other restrictive labor-market legislation in continental countries. They supposedly lead to more civilized goals than are obtained in the freer Anglo-Saxon markets. That this leads to very high unemployment rates and limited job opportunities, especially for immigrants and young low skilled native-born men and women, and a shortage of part-time work for mothers and others, is the price that apparently has to be paid for these advantages.

But are any advantages of this system worth such a high price? Clearly, the European system of employment helps the "insiders" with good jobs, and works against "immigrants" and other newcomers ,or "outsiders" in labor markets. It is claimed that the European system promotes "family values" over individualistic ones. Yet the data do not support this contention since marriage rates are lower in Europe than in America, and not a single European country has birth rates that are high enough to maintain their populations without continued immigration.

Debate with Truepeers, third iteration

re: changing my mind.

When I write of the origins of this or the fact of that, I write of assertions that I cannot prove. Most of these, like my belief in the emergence of group ethics, is no more than an educated guess precisely because I cannot truly know these things.

So, while I do absorb what you say and your words do broaden my inquiry, in the end my belief that experience comes before idea is dispositive. You seem to be saying that our nature was fixed or prefigured in some way, while I believe our capacity as animals was fixed from evolution, but any particular manifestations of that evolution was based on experiences iterated over time. This leaves us separated in debate because while I do not feign to know the exact progression of human beliefs, or aspire to explain the origins of individual permutations of societies, I do believe they stem from the capacity of the human mind and our biological traits developed by natural selection. The human mind is so adaptable that any number of naturally occuring events could explain the emergence of ideas that in their later iterations seem to have popped out of nowhere, like the idea of God. In fact, given that the idea of God is always built around unexplained natural phenomena like weather and water in its first iterations, it seems an earthly origin is undeniable.

Language is representation of ideas, and ideas stem from the active and passive correlation of impressions. Ideas and representations are attributed to the mind's ability to find patterns and continuities, and the raw data for these calculations are derived from experience. (I defer to Hume's treatise on the science of man on this.)

Language, like society, has organically built rules that derived from centuries of common usage; iterated experience led to an ethic of language, just like iterated experience led to an ethic of society. The human mind always strives for order in its thoughts.

Prudence Weighs In

Sometimes where a message originates matters just as much as what it says. Therefore, I believe that the Iraqis will be the ones making the case for punitive action on Iran and Syria, with Bush in the role of advocate instead of principal.

Hoshyar Zebari, the Foreign Minister of Iraq, sets our timetable:

"We were supposed... we are now actually in the process to start the process of writing the constitution. This must be finished by the 15th of August. And also this really needs to have the approval of the majority of the Iraqi people through a referendum by October. And then we will have a new election at the end of December."

Since it is likely that insurgent attacks will continue during this period, expect a steadily building chorus of Iraqi, US, and eventually European voices invoking Syrian and Iranian transgressions on the floor of the UNSC. And then, with resolutions in hand, the new Iraq government, with the strength and legitimacy of the December elections behind them, will be the ones to lead the charge.

This has to be an Iraqi thing, I think. I get the sense that Bush is trying to stay behind the Iraqis to push, instead of getting out ahead to pull. Where the idea comes from could make all the difference in its reception, and we absolutely need a good reception. We may only get one shot at Syria and Iran with the goodwill of the world behind us. Prudence gives the floor to Iraq.

The Sheriff and the Wild West

Wretchard: "But if so, it ought not to totally neglect the process of public salesmanship. Sometimes the US military resembles one of those companies with a good production division but really lousy marketing arm."

This has occurred to me, too. It seems almost unbelievable that we would sit on information that could facilitate our long-term goal of Syrian and Iranian regime change. Especially when you expose information like this almost every day: massive movements and offensives that extend hundreds of miles along the Euphrates, the astronomical casualties of the enemy, the nature and the origin of insurgent supplies and reinforcements, the governments that are fighting us, etc.

As a previous poster said, the war would have a very different flavor if the military and the Administration framed the debate the way Belmont Club has done, which is, really, nothing but the truth. When you read the statements of Rumsfeld and Meyers, you see that they grasp and understand the problem. In fact, almost every day these gentleman complain about the public's sources of information, yet they do nothing to supplement or improve them.

We are left to speculate whether it is all due to incompetence, which surely is a possibility, or whether these omissions are due to the restraints that adhere to some otherwise unknown overarching plan. I cannot believe that Bush is satisfied and mollified by taking down Saddam. There must be another step coming, right?

Syria, as I said, seems inevitable, the question is how and when. I think Bush was surprised by the international pushback over OIF, which he believed in his soul to be obviously, and urgently, necessary. I think he learned some lessons that he may never admit, but which are nonetheless constraining his strategy, and I think in the next campaign you will see the entirety of American might, with a profound focus on the diplomatic.

I have been waiting for a sign of forward momentum, and today I saw it. I have asked myself, "Why Bolton?" Why did Bush think that Bolton was so necessary that he would expend his scarce political capital to see him in the UN? My conclusion: the UN is Bush's chosen vehicle for global change, and Bolton is the guy that Bush believes can force through the necessary resolutions.

It comes down to cover, to the international legitimacy that so eluded the Iraq war. It comes down to the diplomatic nod that Bush discovered means so much more than it seems to, or should. We've always known we had the sheriff. Bush is looking for, and will probably get, his warrant.

Saddam the Bastard, His Victim the Iraqis

From Windsofchange.net:

There is no insurgency in the sense of Vietnam, Algeria, or even Chechnya. There is not a web of like-minded (much less amenable) patriots gaining succor and inspiration from the populace. There are a thousand disparate cabals and petit punks and opportunists, each with competing motivations and interests. A water truck leaving a coalition base may be fired upon by a host of various suspects. The "usual suspects" rounded up may include:

1) a 17-year-old who was paid $50,

2) a competitor of the truck's owner who covets his contract,

3) a local tribesman who resents the presence of another affiliate,

4) a garden-variety criminal out to steal the truck, or embezzle the business,

5) a former Ba'athist apparatchik fearing the end of his gravy train,

6) a Jihadist from Yemen or Saudi Arabia or Egypt hoping to please God, or
7) an Iraqi, proud and nationalistic, believing the US is on a craven crusade to plunder his country's oil and rich culture.

In a way, more troubling than a simple insurgency. The human frailty on display in Iraq is sobering, and disheartening. Saddam was a bastard, and these truly are his people.

Diplomatic Cover

trish,

If you think that the US government would turn down perfect diplomatic cover, I will not be able to tell you anything that will change your mind.

On our pacing, I too am sometimes impatient, but there are benefits in going slow, too.

The international fervor over Iraq has been quelled, which would not have happened had we gone immediately into Syria. Terrorism has been brought to the Arabs, instead of being an abstract, and the verdict is not looking too good for terrorism. Because we gave a chance for our narrative to catch up to our actions, and because so many people around the world finally believe we are doing what we have always said we would, even if they don't agree with it, any subsequent action on Syria will be viewed in the proper context. Iraq will stand with us shoulder to shoulder, and the world will nod or look the other way.

Working the political angle was slow and painful, but Lebanon is sure glad we did. Because of the January elections and the righteous anger over the murder of Hariri, Syria lost Lebanon and gained an enemy. Syria has long been labeled an international pariah, but now, even worse for them, they are seen as a weak and unstable pariah. Iran won't rush to defend them, Assad is boxed in and his regime is failing, and not since before Hafez Assad gained power in 1970 has Syria been so weak and vulnerable.

This may not have been the plan; in fact, it would be more than amazing if it was. But it is not all brown on this side of the fence.

Debate with Truepeers, cont.

First let me say that, though I disagree with your ontology entirely, I have very much enjoyed our discussion so far.

When I say random, I mean random in the sense of chaos theory:

"Systems that exhibit mathematical chaos are deterministic and thus orderly in some sense; this technical use of the word chaos is at odds with common parlance, which suggests complete disorder. See the article on chaos for a discussion of the origin of the word in mythology, and other uses. When we say that chaos theory studies deterministic systems, it is necessary to mention a related field of physics called quantum chaos theory that studies non-deterministic systems following the laws of quantum mechanics." (from Wiki)

You write: "cultural evolution requires on behalf of its agents a learned understanding, at least on some intuitive level, of the nature of humanity."

I would dispute this with the example of elephants and apes, and the phenomenon of elephant and ape culture (likewise for dolphins). And I dispute pegging cultural evolution to the ethical. I peg it to organizational fitness, which is, of course, a survival value.

I think our ontology is simply incompatible. For me, ethics are purely representational of and contingent on survival behaviors. The first survival behavior we should concern ourselves with is that which led apes to form groups, and I define this behavior as the semi-rational desire to survive and not die violently (and on my blog I speak about the visual experience of empathy as being a primary mover in this regard). Once this happened, the formation into groups, the further evolution of the brain, the evolution of walking, opposable thumbs, etc. all created new dynamics in the group that led to new learned behaviors.

The group, which was dependent upon its members' behavior, was held together by the punitive dominance of the leader, or perhaps an oligarchy of elders. It was the threat, and occasional example, of corporeal punishment that kept behaviors in line, much as it does in the animal kingdom in all kinds of group dynamics.

The properties of the group, its goals, and its collective knowledge determined the type of ethical behavior that allowed it to survive and advance. For instance, once humans stopped living from hand to mouth, and started farming, the organizational structure of the group changed, different needs developed, and behaviors that were beneficial adapted.

As an example, concept of "stealing" probably began with the idea of possessing women and territory. Within the group the ethic of "not stealing" was enforced by the dominant male, and any group member who stepped over the line was punished in short order. The male that kept the tightest ship, who exercised his power most consistently so as to be predictable as a punisher, had better organizational success and therefore a higher survival value. It is important to note that his punitive actions were not derived from high-minded ethical abstraction, or from rational choice, but from the selfish feelings of possession and the jealously of power found in almost all animal males.

In another example, "telling the truth" was probably a response to the paucity of accurate information in ancient civilizations, with accurate information itself having a survival value. Inaccurate information, occasionally, would have drastic and dire consequences for the group, so it also was proscribed and deterred by this emerging ethic.

Fundamentally, these ethical behaviors evolved because order and survival were, and are, closely linked. Ethical concepts, therefore, are simply post-phenomenon representations of evolutionarily advantageous behavior. Codifying these ethics facilitated communication of norms, but the concepts came from experience, not the other way around.

I firmly believe that the group evolved, not from rational choices, but from the pre-language primate's desire to survive and not die violently. The success of the group in pursuing this goal would have been immediately apparent, even if none of the members could explain why the group dynamic was so benefical. These behaviors were then taught to the young, and they taught their young, and so on until language came around to supplement learning-by-example. And that is the advent of linquistic based ethical concepts.

(As an aside, love is a chemical state and can manifest in many ways outside the ethical. Resentment is the same, and these phenomena are found in other primates.)

If treated as survival traits, ethical behavior becomes no more mysterious than the tooth or the claw of the tiger. Without these survival tools, the tiger would not be around to study; likewise with ethics and man.

Because of this evolutionary paradigm, there was never any necessity in the rise of man. We are successful simply because our distinctiveness helped us to survive better than all other animals. Our distinctive mental and linquistic abilities, our distinctive posture and distinctive hands, and the distinctive accidents of memetic creation allowed our preeminence.

And that last sentence of the previous post was my attempt at a joke. It would take much more than a friendly debate to change my mind on these core beliefs.

I think you err in correlating my evolutionary understanding of society with idolizing it. If anything, the evolutionary paradigm diminishes society by diminishing its inevitability and necessity. I do agree that we are more free now than ever before and that history has had a visible direction towards liberty, but you must see that this may not always be the case. If the conceptual paradigm that humans have built for themselves runs into an unkind and incompatible reality, the whole thing could come crashing down.

Be careful not to idolize it to much, yourself.

Why we won't be an Empire

Stephen Vincent, may he rest in peace, at NRO:

"That leaves conservation. Abbas estimated that if Basrans reduce their energy consumption by half, they could enjoy 24-hour electricity. "It would be a hardship, but not impossible." To test his theory, I asked friends if they'd be willing to cut back on their lights, wide-screen TV watching, washing machines and, above all, air conditioning. Without exception the response was no. "Why should we? Iraq sits on a sea of oil," is a typical response, followed by the usual slam against America.

"Well, of course," Abbas replied, when I gave him the results of my poll. "People were deprived of power for so long, they now feel they have a right to as much as possible." Sighing, he added, "Iraqis have no sense of moderation. If you're thirsty, you drink as much as you can, even if you're no longer thirsty. Basrans have gotten used to a certain degree of comfort, and they don't want to let it go." It's not an answer that would satisfy Sheik Baghdali, of course — but then again, for Basrans like him, it's always easier to sit in the dark in an un-air conditioned room and curse America."

Soon, so long and good riddance to that particular problem. America will never be a care-taker for lazy ingrates, and that goes double for at home.

An Appeal to the President

Wretchard: "I wonder if you have it the other way around. We are getting as much war, and the kind of war, that our political system will allow. Why guard the Syrian border when we are at peace with Damascus? Even in the months immediately after the fall of Baghdad, the Marines, who took over from the Army in Qusabayah found they were in the middle of a 'secret war' with Syria."

Only the President can deliver the necessary context. The American people need to understand, and it needs to happen now.

What's the Frequency, Kenneth?

Wretchard: "The need to make a case, especially when that case must be made to perfection, was part of the long run-up to OIF. And the case now stands, like a kind of surreal monument, to the day the thinking stopped. In a way, the case became a casus belli in itself."

In information theory, lossy compression is a real problem, where compressing data and then decompressing it retrieves information that may be completely different in meaning. The hope is always to be "close enough" to the original to pass the fidelity criterion.

There is always a limit as to how much you can compress data and still retain original meaning. What is that limit with the information we are dealing with? A speech? An article? A year's worth of research?

I agree that any process that sets out to convince the public of our need would be interesting. Perhaps here is where we can most fully understand the betrayal of the modern media, in its abdication of its responsibility to keep the public up-to-date. It makes the job of persuasion near impossible.

But he has to try, and it needs to begin.

Response to Cedarford's Pentagon Complaint

Cedarford,

I think you are right in calling out the Pentagon, in a way, but Iraqi problems are too heavy to hang around just our necks.

We telegraphed the Iraq war for an entire year. Saddam was, and Al'Qaeda and the Baathists are, a thinking enemy, and they are working against us actively and dynamically. Not that I am saying your opinion is superficial, but something else you must take into account is the fact that the terrorist attacks are targetted specifically to bring about the reactions we see in the media everyday. They are a performance for the American media consumer, and the coverage skews their real effect.

I believe an unintended consequence of the Al'Qaeda and Baathist atrocities will be the creation of an Iraqi national narrative: the immense heat of the fire will forge a more solid foundation than we ever could have done ourselves. Put another way, our mistakes and Al'Qaeda's depravity may give us a victory that otherwise would have been forever out of our reach.

That is a best case scenario, but it is possible. I am confident in Iraq's future. It is the rest of the war that I am concerned about.

Wherefore Restraint?

rwe: "The only solution I have come up with is massive camps in remote desert areas in which we would incarcerate as many people as would be required to solve the problem. If that is 95% of the Sunni population of Iraq, then so be it."

I've thought about it long and hard, and I have no good answers. The Leftist dodge of more troops on the ground and "no plan" rings true in some parts, but not in the way they mean it. Our biggest strategic mistake was going to the UN for a year, giving Saddam and Al'Qaeda time to plan the insurgency.

More troops on the border I can see, and I have to think it would have helped. But more troops in the cities would have been madness. Giant "reeducation camps" make sense to me, but in the end I think Iraq is going to have to work out its own problems in that respect.

The restraint I referred to is our response to the pressure of the anti-war camps. The banshee shriek from the Left when the US exercised her might clouded the good judgment of the Administration, and at a time when momentum was clearly on our side. The case against Syria should be made publically, forcefully, and often, and if Assad doesn't change his ways, swift punitive action should be visited upon his head. Let the Syrians worry about their next regime. All I care about is the decapitation of a government so willfully fighting against us. You can bet the next Syrian administration would walk a little lighter around us.

But, on the other hand, perhaps we are building up Iraq's army and collecting incontrovertible data so that Iraq will make the case for retribution.

All I know is that lately we have used the velvet glove but have forgotten to include the iron fist. As Wretchard says, it seems like we are hoping time is on our side.

Response to Truepeers

truepeers: Your argument is eloquent, but I remain unconvinced that Christianity itself was a precondition for the type of generation you speak of, at least as a rule that governs reality. It may be so that in our universe that is what happened, but is it what had to happen to reach a similar place of intellectual progress? (Anthropic Principle Alert)

Perhaps this question will elucidate why I am skeptical:

Do you think the propensities that you ascribe to Christianity are inherent in the faith, or simply inherent in humanity in general, when men are given access to a large amount of disparate information? I.E. Is not the ability to create new patterns out of varieties of data just a natural effect of having a higher order consciousness and the freedom to use it?

I ask this because the values of secular liberalism have many origins, some of which predate Christianity.

The Dawn of Man

From an article recommended by KevinB:

Freud believed that education and establishing the dictatorship of reason would be the only solution to the cruel and immoral behavior that characterizes human history. Our best hope for the future, he proclaims, is that intellect the scientific spirit, reason may in process of time establish a dictatorship in the mental life of man. In a letter to Albert Einstein, who had written to Freud asking what could be done to protect mankind from war, Freud responds: The ideal condition of things would of course be a community of men who had subordinated their instinctual life to the dictatorship of reason.

The article goes on to discuss the tragedies of the 20th century and the abominations of "reason" that swept the globe and did unspeakable evil.

I think we can safely say that reason itself is not the source of morality. (And this destroys the functionalist analysis of ethical game theory, where morality is chosen rationally instead of developing irrationally. But I adhere to evolutionary game theory, anyways).

(Speculation Ahead)

But we know it came from somewhere because we know it exists, and we know it exists because we can see the effects of its causal gravity all around us.

My hunch is that morality is in its first instance visual. Empathy, projection, whatever you want to call it, I think the human ability of extrapolation is the source of morality.

When a person sees another slaughtered, for instance, that visual experience is not isolated. The realtime data is filtered through that person's mental posture, and one of the thoughts that emerge is what it must be like to have that happen. This projection is built off of the watcher's prior experience of pain and anguish, and transmuted onto the other person's visible horror at what is happening to him.

In the book "Wider than the Sky", which is about consciousness, the author talks about levels of conscious development. The first level is simply receiving and acting on data without storing it, the next is storing and comparing in real time (reactionary), the third is storing and comparing reflectively (the genesis of the self).

If a small animal is walking through the jungle and hears a growl, and right after that growl a tiger appears, the next time the animal hears a growl it will not have to wait for the appearance of the tiger to react as if the tiger had already appeared. This is the reactionary level, where the memory cannot be accessed until the same circumstances that created the memory occur once more to unleash it. It is the most primitive level of learning, but you can see how it adds to survivability.

The ability to actively access memory in reflection, which is the higher consciousness of human beings, is the next level. After a certain period of development and use of this higher consciousness, a being's aggregate of memories creates the impression for him of being a 'sensation receiving unit' that extends linearly backwards, and this impression becomes the idea of the self. This is why it takes a child until 5 or 6 to realize that he is an interacting unit in a system of other interacting units.

This also allows for extrapolation, which is the basis of imagination and invention. When new information comes in, not only does it filter through old experiences, reflection can create new correlations that may or may not really exist. Likewise, the juxtaposition of a pattern from one experienced system to another, like in Hume's example of the gradation of color. If you experience one color's gradation, e.g. light to dark blue, you do not have to experience light to dark red to get an idea of it.

So, if you are watching someone getting slaughtered and no other emotions are predominant (like hate, which acts to dull your reflective capacity), your brain can analyze the situation and extrapolate that action onto yourself, which creates the emotional phenomenon of empathy. You cringe in these situations because you are mentally recreating that episode with yourself as the victim.

Enough of these emotional bonds and actions amongst like-minded individuals soon will be coordinated, and it is here we enter the Hobbesian realm of "flight from fear" leading to society. The visual experience of such episodes supplies you with something to be fearful of, and creates acceptance of novel arrangements. These arrangement are taught to the next generation by example, and society builds as life goes on. Society is built by education, and memory. Memory and the empathy it engenders is the genesis of the Golden Rule.

As an aside, this is as good an explanation as any why Autistic kids never discover C.S. Lewis's natural morality. Autism is a sensory integration disorder. Memory and memetic correlations are severely atrophied, which leaves more power for primitive activities like counting, but does not leave room for higher consciousness and reflection. Autistics do not have the brain efficiency of a normal person, where "mundane" information is not processed. Because of this, the Autistic person feels himself continuously in a new situation, room, environment, etc. If the shadow on the floor changes, he can feel like he's in a new room entirely because the information has changed, if but a little. In many ways he is purely reactionary. One of the things he loses by this is empathy, and morality.

On the Assertion that I am Obsessed with Diminishing Christianity

The role of Christianity, to be properly understood, must be separated into several different levels. I am neither obsessed with diminishing its role on one level nor obsessed with exaggerating its role on another.

Christianity's moral precepts are superior insofar as they prescribe certain behaviors and proscribe others. Christ the moral philosopher is unparalleled as a benign force in human interaction, and all of mankind can thank Christian doctrine for the ultimate increase in decency and humanity that we see in the world.

But Christianity as an explanatory thesis just doesn't do it for me. Here is where I mentally diminish its role, not out of desire or ill-will, but out of skepticism. There is nothing in the Book that gives me the breadth and depth of understanding as does, say, quantum mechanics on the nature of the universe.

Nevertheless, at the bottom of reality there is still a nothingness, truepeer's indomitable mystery that cannot be explained away, so I remain open, even hopeful, that such mystery is truly our God, the first mover and the benign force behind it all. If so, there is still hope that death is more than it seems to be.

But that is all besides the point. Christianity is not about God the first mover, but God the protector, God the active player, God the omnipotent, and until a change is brought forth, either externally or internally, so that my skepticism is washed away by incontrovertible fact, I will continue to disregard Genesis and Luke as anything more than what they are: beneficial allegories.

Ontology: Short Version

It is easier for me to say what I don't believe in than what I do, but I will try.

When I think about existence, I think about it using different tools at different levels. From the sub-particle region on up to the atom I look to particle and quantum physics. From there on up to the macrocosm I look to physics, chemistry, biology, etc. When I think about the mind, I think in terms of neuroscience, but also in terms of evolution and memetics. When I think about thoughts, I think in terms of Hume's impressions and ideas, but also in terms, again, of neuroscience, and these form, for me, the foundation of psychology. When I think about the transmutation of thoughts, I think about linguistics and systems of representation, evolution, experience, etc. As you go up to societies, ethics, morality, and history, I use system theory, evolution, and linquistics first but then in many cases revert to all the other disciplines I have mentioned. (As an aside, this means I do not believe morality has any meaning below, or above, the level of human interaction. To speak of the morality of the bacterium is to speak jibberish.)

I think of mathematics, the ultimate descriptive system, when I ponder the Universe, though we may never evolve the language to properly represent it.

Basically, I'm an Anthropic principle kind of guy. When the answer's always "Because", you learn to stop asking "Why?" The world exists as it does because it exists as it does, and it is up to us to build systems of representation that will filter and distill as much needed knowledge out of the massive amounts of data as we can to survive.

Philosophers like Heidegger end up boring me, in framing ideas like "disclosure of being in which the being of beings is unconcealed." This effort at an intellectual walking of the dog gave us Clinton's "the meaning of is." It is completely worthless as explanation and description, and does more harm than good by convincing arrogant initiates that they need to tear down our illusions and rebuild the temple. (so I'm not a phenomenologist, existentialist, deconstructionist, etc.)

Ultimately my knowledge is not expert in any of these subjects (not enough time). Yet I find it useful to be moderately fluent in the languages of each area, for the sets of knowledge that you find there are aggregated around what I am looking for.

But I look forward to reading Truepeer's site material.

A Response to Wretchard's Metropolis

Wretchard,

I enter this subject...cautiously...because I do not mean to pervert what you say, or ruffle any feathers of the faithful.

You write: "Totalitarianism is ultimately founded on an idea; the exact reverse of the notion that all men are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights."

The Aquinas 'natural law' argument is indeed a formidable one. The idea of a teleological universe and a divine law, has, I will admit, done absolute wonders for the spread of decency throughout the scope of human endeavors. A debate, as you know, between Hobbsian 'natural law as a rational flight from fear' and Aquinas' 'natural law as an incident of divine truth,' has been going on for centuries in the West, most notably in the Anglo-Saxon philosophical sphere, with Bentham's twist leading to utilitarianism and legal positivism. I will not enter this debate right now.

I am interested in your distinction between totalitarianism as an idea, and Aquinas' 'natural law' as a divine notion (if this is truly what you have said). But first, a caveat.

I do not want my function as a commenter to be the arrogant philosophy police, especially as I make no claims to expertise or exactitude. Philosophy, however, is a subject that interests me, and I truly believe vast consequences can flow from simple principles, once taken in and embraced. In many ways our conceptual universe can be understood in chaos theory, since its shape is imminently dependant on initial conditions.

It may be, and I claim no certainty either way, that the intellectual posture of our founding fathers--their embrace of Aquinas, Locke, Smith, Bacon, Acton, and Whiggism in general--is truly the best and only one to take, if one is to maximize decency, humanity, and happiness. The posture that looks to the divine for inspiration and guidance, in other words, may be the only one that has the right effect regardless of its factual truth. Perhaps mankind needs the idea of God more than it needs the truth, whatever that is. In fact, an empiricist would look on the success of such ideals and faiths as a posteriori evidence of its fitness.

Hayek warned about fiddling at the bottom without having something in mind to replace what you remove, and I agree. The examples of the 20th century are unambiguous in their warnings of that kind of danger.

And yet, I still pause, because it may be that fiddling at the bottom by moral and social theorists is the least of our worries. The empiricist and mechanist mindset, whether we would have it or not, is sweeping across the moral lattice of Western Civilization through the forward march of science. More and more generations have this mindset 'impressed' from an early age, and the language of Aquinas, Smith, and Jefferson becomes more and more foreign to a youth steeped in experiences that seem to be incompatible.

I am not searching for new 'oughts', for in a way I myself do not believe in them as a priori propositional truths. But I do believe in effects, and I refuse to disregard the evidence all around me of the fundamental decency of your divine notion. If it is the only way, and Western Civ. can only survive by a revival of 'natural law', then so be it and let's get started. But the language barrier, I'm afraid, will continue to grow if we refuse to engage Western Civilizational 'founding doctrine' on the level of ideas. In other words, we may have to advocate 'natural law' from a standpoint of empiricism.

Totalitarianism was a gross perversion of ideas by a cabal of power-worshipping intellectuals, and it was defeated by the spirit of Western morality and decency. It was perhaps our greatest victory. And yet, I am seriously worried that the determinism of 'natural law', while it has served us so well and guided our actions even in the darkest of nights, may leave us helpless against the new threat that even refuses to acknowledge its existence.

More and more Western children choose to follow the norms of Smith and the morality of Christ while rejecting the reasoning of each as it applies to first principles. This adherence to an ethic is due to intellectual inertia, the comfort of belonging, and a lack of intriquing alternatives. What happens when the entropy kicks in? What happens when we look down and discover that there's nothing there?