Maggie's Farm

From a comment on Henninger's What Are Taxes For?

Assume for a moment that a command-and-control economy or a benevolent dictatorship were necessary for the U.S. to remain the world's pre-eminent economic (and military) power for the next generation. I'd rather have a less rich and and less militarily powerful America that is more free. Luckily, this is pretty much a hypothetical...

Legal Insurrection reminded me of this:

"two-thirds of Americans believe that success is not outside their control. In Germany, 68% answered the exact opposite way.... By more than six to one, Americans believe failure is the result of the individual, not society… 71% of Americans believe people can escape from poverty. Only 40% of Europeans believe the same....Asked why people are wealthy, 64 percent of Americans say [it is] because of personal drive, willingness to take risks, and hard work and initiative." And why do others fail? When asked that question, 64 percent of Americans cited a lack of thrift, 53 percent ascribed the failure (at least in part) to a lack of effort, and a like percentage said that failure was due to lack of ability. ..... but “in Europe, a majority in every country – with the exception of the U.K., Czech Republic, and Slovakia – ‘believe that forces outside of an individual’s personal control determine success.'"

These really are different views of the world and of the human being.

From Totalitarianism and Education, at Brussels Journal:

I have heard a history teacher describe Stalinist Russia as a basically benevolent and prosperous society with a few minor problems. I have looked through a school library for a biography of Mao Zedong, only to find it populated exclusively by hagiographies written by 70s radicals. I have had philosophy teachers who have never heard of Friedrich Hayek. I have been told that dialectical materialism is an indisputable fact in which all historians believe. I have, as mentioned, read course plans which openly instruct teachers to fail students who affirm the existence of human nature or objective truth, and to give good grades to those who regard history as a political tool of the ruling classes. I have had  textbooks on 20th century philosophy with dozens of pages devoted to mediocrities like Simone de Beavouir but not a single mention of Wittgenstein or Russell. I have had lessons on the Middle Ages that have consisted almost entirely of infantile urban legends. (Angels on the head of a pin, feudalism, etc.) I have heard of teachers who openly exhort their students to vote Socialist. I have been told that it is racist to pass moral judgment on female genital mutilation.

Our view tends to be that "bipartisans" and "moderates" are simply those who approve of slow socialism by mistaking goo-goo nursery school sentimentality for opinion and principles.

Stacy McCain gets it: The Fierce Fury of the Angry Mob of Impassioned Bipartisan Moderates. He begins:

Few things are more predictable than this: Whenever Republicans are on the upswing — whenever conservatives are on fire with enthusiasm, proclaiming their core principles and clearly on the winning side of important issues — the mainstream media will devote enormous coverage to an alleged groundswell of discontented moderates whose demands for “bipartisanship” and “civility” are accompanied by condemnation of “divisiveness” and complaints that “extremists” are ignoring the vast majority of independent “centrist” voters.

Bernie Goldberg proposes a monument to rich people in DC.

We need to add his site to our blogroll. Very smart, funny fellow. 

I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline. Particularly when one can’t see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window — no, I don’t feel how small I am — but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.

No recruited athletes, no legacies, no ethnic or sex balancing. Why Caltech Is in a Class by Itself. A quote: 

All recent Caltech undergraduates have scored 700 or above on the math SAT, and far from being a bunch of inarticulate science and math geeks, the vast majority have scored over 700 on the English verbal SAT as well.

Caltech is interested in enrolling only the academically most accomplished and advanced students, who have a genuine passion for the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), and virtually all of its entering students have achieved at the 98th or 99th percentile in terms of their scores on competitive national exams.

What this means is that at Caltech, there are no dumb jocks, dumb legacies, or dumb affirmative action students. It is clear from its published statistics that the non-academic criteria that preoccupy admissions committees at all other elite universities count for little at this beacon of pure meritocracy.

Excellent summary of the topic at The American by Arthur Brooks and Peter Wehner.

Perhaps I like it because it confirms my line of thinking, but says it better than I can. They begin:

The model of human nature one embraces will guide and shape everything else, from the economic system one prefers to the political system one supports.

At the core of every social, political, and economic system is a picture of human nature (to paraphrase 20th-century columnist Walter Lippmann). The suppositions we begin with—the ways in which that picture is developed—determine the lives we lead, the institutions we build, and the civilizations we create. They are the foundation stone.

From Prof. Sean Kelly's Navigating Past Nihilism (h/t, reader BL):

“God is dead,” Nietzsche wrote in a famous passage from “The Gay Science.”  “God remains dead.  And we have killed him.”

There is much debate about the meaning of Nietzsche’s famous claim, and I will not attempt to settle that scholarly dispute here.  But at least one of the things that Nietzsche could have meant is that the social role that the Judeo-Christian God plays in our culture is radically different from the one he has traditionally played in prior epochs of the West.  For it used to be the case  in the European Middle Ages for example ─ that the mainstream of society was grounded so firmly in its Christian beliefs that someone who did not share those beliefs could therefore not be taken seriously as living an even potentially admirable life.

At Insty. One quote that he quotes:

...approximately 60 percent of the increase in the number of college graduates from 1992 to 2008 worked in jobs that the BLS considers relatively low skilled—occupations where many participants have only high school diplomas and often even less. Only a minority of the increment in our nation’s stock of college graduates is filling jobs historically considered as requiring a bachelor’s degree or more.

The error is in considering a BA as job training. It is not. It is a paper credential for sure, but I am not sure it makes sense to view it as an investment. America needs more gunsmiths and plumbers and software developers and small business creators, not more BAs in Anthropology.

A skilled gunsmith makes more money than any anthropologist - if income is what one wants. My gunsmith charges $170/hr for metal work, a bit less for wood work, and leads a fun, interesting, and adventurous life and gets to meet and befriend all sorts of fascinating people (like me). My local digital equipment repairman charges $175/hr. Scholarly types go to college for spoon-fed intellectual nurturing and development, but I am not convinced that those things "pay off" very much in a financial way - especially nowadays, when anybody can go to college. There are plenty of schools eager to accept a fat check from anybody who can sign their name.

"Twenty years of school and then they put you on the day shift..."

When people are curious and want to learn everything, they will do it with or without a BA, and they will never quit doing it until they die even if they never make a penny from it. Real learners never quit reading and learning and trying new thoughts. It's easy to identify real scholars - after they finish whatever formal schooling they do.

Prof. Cass Sunstein is one of them. As Scott at Powerline notes,

By contrast with the doctrine of rights conferred by God and nature set forth in the Declaration of Independence, Sunstein holds, in Tom Palmer's words, "You owe your life -- and everything else -- to the sovereign. The rights of subjects are not natural rights, but merely grants from the sovereign. There is no right even to complain about the actions of the sovereign, except insofar as the sovereign allows the subject to complain. These are the principles of unlimited, arbitrary, and absolute power, the principles of such rulers as Louis XIV."

Having his own view of things is fine, but his views are profoundly un-American. He doesn't get what America is about. The American ideal is - or was - that we are born with freedom, and granted a tiny bit of it to the State for specific, limited purposes. For heaven's sake, Prof. Sunstein, we created the State in 1787 - it didn't make us, or give us anything.

Mind you, this guy is the Regulation Czar in the White House.

Furthermore, his arrogance is unbelievable. A 56 year-old University of Chicago Law Prof who probably never held a real job in his life wants to structure how I live? He knows more about life than me? Has deeper wisdom than I have? Give me a break. That's a bad joke. He's just a control freak - with power.

I have a much better idea: How about I tell him how to live? For his own good, of course.

Wisconsin has an army of deer hunters.

We could use them around here.

[T]he first priority for addressing the budget deficit has to be getting the economy growing again at a rapid rate." The tax deal, he said, "offers the best prospect that was available for achieving the kind of escape velocity that we've been seeking for the past two years.       

Larry Summers, as quoted in American Thinker's Larry Summers - Oh, You Don't Say? The author of that piece surely gets what this is all about.

It's clear as day that Leftists are interested in restricting information flow and limiting, suppressing or intimidating dissenting voices. That's good old "Liberal fascism." They can't stand the new reality of diversity of news and viewpoints.

Have you ever heard a Conservative push the government to limit public access to cable, broadcast, or internet information or opinions? I haven't (except for porn).

True, we are opposed to PBS - but not because of their bias. It's because it's taxpayer-supported. I'd be fine with PBS as a donor-supported organization. We do believe that government-supported or controlled media is a terrible and frightening idea. At Maggie's Farm, we do not ask for a penny from the government to help us put our stuff out. So why PBS?

FCC push to regulate news draws fire

Sharpton: We’re Going To FCC… Limbaugh “Doesn’t Have The Right” To Use Public Airwaves

What’s Next for Internet Regulation?

Via Phi Beta Cons,

Listen to this illuminating interview Peter Schiff did with a student who is $200,000 in debt for a sociology degree from Northeastern University. He gets right at the root of the problem: government-guaranteed student loans.

A fairly serious essay by Prof. Bertonneau at Brussels titled A Lesson for Our Time in Three Late-Antique Narratives: Satyricon, The Golden Ass, and Confessions.  One quote from this literary jeremiad:

 Everyone has vices. Most people manage to overcome the worst of their viciousness. It therefore requires a mighty labor not to see the so-called explanations of vice as mere excuses – indeed, as lame excuses – for irredentism and indulgence. The claim of personal helplessness is the creed of people who like their vices and who will on no account reform themselves. These non-explanations nevertheless have wide currency, but so also do the indifferent notion that the self is a “logocentric” illusion and the relativistic opinion that to flout a stricture is morally equal to observing it. The political religions of the Twentieth Century all relied on – and indeed mandated – these views as part of the ‘correct” view of existence. Socialism generically predicates its own inevitability and it then necessarily also predicates the emptiness of individual determination or action. Radical restructuring of society comes upon us inevitably, the vanguard always argues; and restructuring is justified because there are whole classes of victims whose misery is supposedly not of their own making, but has impinged on them from an outside beyond the control of the afflicted. In its less acute form of the multicultural welfare state, socialism insists that victim-groups not only cannot help themselves but that they cannot actually be reformed and that it is the duty of everyone else, first, to refrain from any condemnation of counterproductive behaviors and, then, to subsidize the pathological consequences of those behaviors.

Read the whole thing. It's a good reminder about those three classic texts, too, which we all read before we had the age on us to really appreciate what the authors were talking about.

Non-technical education is wasted on the young, because they are too interested in questions about themselves than in the big questions. These books were not written for adolescents.

I think she is a celeb, and if she runs for office, she'll be a celeb candidate. Obama was a celeb candidate, and we see how that worked out. We live in a world of non-serious, lens-lice celebs who take themselves all too seriously, and I don't like that.

Furthermore, I refuse to get all tingly about any pol. I tend not to think very highly of pols, as a class, and I tend to be suspicious of any pol's seductive talents because it is so often a substitute for substance.

It's been explained to us here that Presidential candidates are just figureheads of vast, sprawling political parties and power and money interests. The candidate is "the talent," as they say in show biz and in the sports biz. I take that into account, and I know that in our TV and YouTube age, this applies to politicians much more than it used to.

This is not to say that I do not like Sarah. I do like her, and she's clearly a colorful figure and an exciting spokesperson for many people. I'd hunt or fish with her anytime.

My thoughts are in reference to Potemra: Rumblings of Discontent — on Palin

I have been neglecting my Fallacy portfolio here at Maggie's for quite a while. My bad.

Category Error is not a complex notion, but it was formulated in a somewhat complex way by the brilliant Gilbert Ryle in his classic work, The Concept of Mind (this via Wiki):

The term "category-mistake" was introduced by Gilbert Ryle in his book The Concept of Mind (1949) to remove what he argued to be a confusion over the nature of mind born from Cartesian metaphysics. Ryle alleged that it was a mistake to treat the mind as an object made of an immaterial substance because predications of substance are not meaningful for a collection of dispositions and capacities.

Specifically, the phrase is introduced in chapter 1, section 2. The first example he gives is of a visitor to Oxford. The visitor, upon viewing the colleges and library, reportedly inquired “But where is the University?"^[1] The visitor's mistake is presuming that a University is part of the category "units of physical infrastructure" or some such thing, rather than the category "institutions", say, which are far more abstract and complex conglomerations of buildings, people, procedures, and so on.

Ryle's second example is of a child witnessing the march-past of a division. After having had battalions, batteries, squadrons, etc. pointed out, the child asks when is the division going to appear. 'The march-past was not a parade of battalions, batteries, squadrons and a division; it was a parade of the battalions, batteries and squadrons of a division.' (Ryle's italics)

His third example is of a foreigner being shown a cricket match. After being pointed out batsmen, bowlers and fielders, the foreigner asks: 'who is left to contribute the famous element of team-spirit?'

He goes on to argue that the Cartesian dualism of mind and body rests on a category-mistake.

Yes, I think it does. But... I think, therefore I post things at Maggie's Farm. From another site, here's a simple formulation of this common and basic fallacy:

These fallacies occur because the author mistakenly assumes that the whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts. However, things joined together may have different properties as a whole than any of them do separately. The following fallacies are category errors:

• Composition (Because the parts have a property, the whole is said to have that property)
  
• Division (Because the whole has a property, the parts are said to have that property)

Give us some solid examples. I don't have time think up some good ones today. Duty before pleasure.

Unlike Leninism, Socialism, Marxism, Keynesianism, capitalism is not a theory. I may be naive to think that this is an important point. Capitalism is just what humans naturally and practically do to survive, to exchange things, and to try to thrive, when they are left in peace by Power. It's win-win transactions in which people get what they want without killing or otherwise using force against eachother. That's all it is - a benign and highly productive aspect of human nature.

Those Wyoming obsidians found on Long Island, NY, a few years ago in a buried Indian cache tell it all. I try to imagine the capitalist transactions involved, from wampum to beaver pelts to who knows what other currencies, all the way across the USA. Whether the item is obsidian chips or Italian credit-default swaps, it's all the same: if you want it, compensate the owner.

Adam Smith did not invent capitalism (or even use the term - yes, it was Marx who made it an "ism") - he just tried to explain what energetic and creative people do when they can do it peacefully, and by free choice.

Unless our kids take some real economics courses, or open a lemonade stand and figure out how the lemons got to them, or discuss real life with their parents, they won't get it at all. They are too insulated from reality nowadays, due to the prosperity of trade and capitalism.

At Wkly Std, More Adam Smith, Please . . .and less Barbara Ehrenreich.

In Socialist fantasies, I sometimes think they imagine that money and wealth come from Daddy. That's probably why the college kids like it.

Editor note: Re obsidian arrowheads, just Google the topic to find out how many people are knapping arrowheads, knife blades, and spearheads these days - for fun and profit. That's called capitalism, hard at work on the obsidian trade even today. Even real Indians are doing it to get into the game.

I came upon nothing interesting to be profound about today. But I did see this oldie and goodie (1933). h/t, Iconoclast - one of my favorite new sites.

The tune is from Say It With Flowers. (You know the old legal saying, "Say it with flowers, say it with mink, but never, ever, say it in ink.")

Re that Looking for Racism piece we (and many others) linked a while ago:

I spent most of the summers of my youth working side-by-side with black guys, doing manual labor. Mostly landscaping and in lumber yards, back before all the Mexicans arrived. My folks required us to labor during the summers. They did not wish to produce spoiled, snotty brats.

I loved those dudes, and they liked me. We were a bit culturally alien, but we all liked good music and thought about Jesus. They all grew up in the South. The differences made us more interesting to eachother. They'd invite me back to their places after work to listen to Kenny Burrell, smoke some weed (to which they introduced me), and drink cheap wine and smoke Pall Malls (the red packages - delicious unfiltered smokes) until it was time for me to wobble my parents' station wagon away from downtown back to Whitelandia. I miss them.

In my view, modern racism is an invention of the race-pimps and pols who make a good living off of inventing it and then exploiting it. Even Al and Jesse have trouble finding problems nowadays and, believe me, they do look for signs of them everywhere.

 Listening to cool Kenny takes me back to those good old days.

At some point, we become inured to the shrill Chicken Littles who make a crisis out of everything they wish to control. It all makes The Englishman want to blow smoke in their faces.

Last I read, there is really no harm at all to second-hand smoke.

George Will, in today's Our puritanical progressives, says it this way:

Progressivism is a faith-based program. The progressives' agenda for improving everyone else varies but invariably involves the cult of expertise - an unflagging faith in the application of science to social reform. Progressivism's itch to perfect people by perfecting the social environment can produce an interesting phenomenon - the Pecksniffian progressive.

I have no desire to be improved, unless they can make me taller, smarter, richer, and better-looking - and a few years younger. I would pay money for those things. She Who Must Be Obeyed would pay money to get those things for me, too.

Want something meaty to chew on tonight? Raymond Tallis' How Can I Possibly Be Free? 

He begins:

This essay is an attempt to persuade you of something that in practice you cannot really doubt: your belief that you have free will. It will try to reassure you that it is not naïve to feel that you are responsible, and indeed morally responsible, for your actions. And it will provide you with arguments that will help you answer those increasing numbers of people who say that our free will is an illusion, or that belief in it is an adaptive delusion implanted by evolution.

A h/t to Insty for this good find from Epstein at Forbes: Government By Waiver: The Breakdown Of Public Administration. He begins:

The past year has marked the passage of the two most massive legislative reforms in the history of American politics: ObamaCare for health care and Dodd-Frank for the financial sector.  Their size and complexity dwarf those of any New Deal legislation.

These new laws require a stunning acceleration of the longstanding practice of relying on delegated authority to implement statutory commands.  According to its New Deal champions, this welcome division of authority could cure the manifold defects of a market economy by combining the best of democratic politics with the best of administrative expertise.  Under the new division of labor, the political branches of government set the broad direction of legislative reform, and then trust skilled administrative agencies to turn general directives into specific commands.

The sheer magnitude of the new legislative ventures has thrown this model–which, in truth, has never worked well–into disarray.

Like the man says, read the whole thing.

From an essay of the above title:

The Obama administration’s  “Race to the Top,” at the cost of $4.35 billion, is the latest of a long line of lavishly funded federal education initiatives, joining “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) and others that have failed to reform education. As is typical, there are high hopes for change but a low probability that any significant or lasting reforms will be implemented. 

According to a report in Heritage Press, in April 2006, Neal McCluskey, a policy analyst with the Center for Education Freedom asserted, “Government programs have a troubling way of taking good ideas and ruining them with bureaucracy, unintended consequences and control by special interests.”