In a Blog’s Stead

Archives: January 2003





An Open Letter to Osama bin Laden



Dear Mr. bin Laden:



I read with interest your remarks broadcast on al-Jazeera on 12 November 2002. I wish to point out, however, that your argument rests on a logical fallacy.



You point out, quite correctly, that the government of the United States is a "criminal gang" that has committed, and abetted, oppression and mass murder. You then go on to infer that Islamic terrorist attacks against the civilian populations of the U.S. and its allies are justified in retaliation. In particular, you write:





The road to safety begins by ending the aggression. Reciprocal treatment is part of justice. The incidents that have taken place ... are only reactions and reciprocal actions. ...



Why should fear, killing, destruction, displacement, orphaning and widowing continue to be our lot, while security, stability and happiness be your lot? This is unfair. It is time that we get even. You will be killed just as you kill, and will be bombed just as you bomb.

Posted January 26th, 2003



Permalink: praxeology.net/unblog01-03.htm#14



Comment

Why Fur Is Not Murder



I've been beating up a lot on the errors of right-wing deviationists these last few days, so I figure it's time I gave some attention to the errors of left-wing deviationists as well.



My target this time is animal-rights activists, the folks who commit acts of aggression in the name of concern for our furry, finny, and feathered kindred: throwing blood on women in fur coats (apparently some elements on the Left have made their peace with violence against women?), or knocking down fences to free cows from the farmers who "enslave" them (the liberated cows usually end up succumbing to starvation or predators).



I shall argue that animals do not have rights -- indeed, that the very notion of animal rights is conceptually incoherent.



This is not to say that we have no moral obligations toward animals. I think we have quite a few -- probably more than most libertarians would agree to. (For example, I think killing mammals for food is problematic. Lucky for me, I don't think eating mammals that somebody else has already killed is nearly as problematic.) What I claim is that any obligations we may have toward animals are not legitimately enforceable.



What would it mean to say that animals have rights? Roughly, a right -- say, X's right against Y -- has two components:





a) Y's moral obligation to treat X in a certain way



b) The moral legitimacy of X's, or X's agent's, using force to ensure that Y treats X in that way

Posted January 26th, 2003



Permalink: praxeology.net/unblog01-03.htm#13



Comment

Memecatcher



There's a great line in the movie Tucker:





When I was a little kid, maybe five years old, in the old country, my mother used to say to me -- she'd warn me, she'd say: "Don't get too close to people, you'll catch their dreams." Years later, I realized I misunderstood her. "Germs," she said, not "dreams": "you'll catch their germs."

Dear me, I'll try it one more time.



Yes, we definitely have a problem to communicate here, and I think it comes from inability to define our terms.



Multi-culturalism. As practised by the increasingly autocratic regime in Washington, DC, the imposition of alien cultures into the US. The fact that 80% of the people want a limitation on immigration, and the fact that the 1965 Immigration Bill was misrepresented to the American people prove that cultural and ethnic transformation has never been willingly accepted by the American people. It is being forced upon them.

Protecting the borders is what governments are supposed to do.

Yes, it's an "us" versus "them" thing. All of life is organized that way, and if you do not believe it, try telling your immune system to welcome whatever tries to set up shop in your body.

Identity is basic to all living things, be they individuals or societies. On the social level, it provides the stability that freedom requires to exist. Multi-culturalism, on the other hand, is the destruction of cultural and ethnic identity. A random collection of peoples cannot cohere. If you have failed to notice that Washington is taking more of our traditional Western freedoms from us, you're probably not paying attention. Such an erosion is inevitable when cultural stability is weakened. Look at Beirut.

Yes, let a thousand cultures bloom. But they cannot bloom without territorial integrity, without a place where its members can express their unique means of communicating. Do you really think there would be a Jewish Israel if it were taken over by Arabs?

Finally, cosmopolitanism is not a foundation for a real society. The Western rights you enjoy did not come out of the heads of tenured professors, but out of the experience of real people in a real society.

If you really believe we can continue to enjoy the fruits of Western culture when we're dominated by people who practise voodoo and santeria, you -- or your grandchildren -- are in for a nasty shock.

Addendum:



Mike Tuggle responds once more. (His contributions are indented; his quotations from me are double-indented and italicised.)





I can hardly be expected to agree with the rather insulting suggestion that tenured professors are not "real people in a real society." Most of them make Shirley Maclaine seem quite reasonable. At this point, I'm not even sure they're carbon-based life forms. They seem to think that the good things in life just magically appear uncaused. They think "multi-cultural" means more ethnic restaurants while the things they take for granted -- freedom of association, freedom of expression, right of private property, etc. -- are the givens of life, unaware that in such multi-cultural paradises as Zimbabwe, lives and lands are subject to the whims of savages.

The fundamental question, then, is: what is the fundamental unit of social decision-making? Is it the individual, or is it the collective? Wow -- I do have my work cut out for me.



The rights that are an inherent part of Western civilization refer to the accepted rules of interaction between the self-organized society and the individual. Thanks to the prosperity and security our culture has created, it is easy to succumb to the notion that the individual rights created by this interaction are self-perpetuating. They are not. What you dismiss as a "collective" (Randian hate word!) is society, which men naturally form. We are political animals, not laminated monads lacking any relation to others.

Hobbes and Rand (thanks to their materialistic worldviews) saw only the atomized individual as real, and intercourse with others as nothing more than a means to gratify individual appetites.

In fact, people all over the world spontaneously organize themselves into social units. It is our God-given nature. An organic community is not the Borgian "collective" that the Randians dismiss; it is an active interplay between distinct individuals within distinct, mutually beneficial relationships. As Aquinas would tell us, both the particular and universal are real. Without those relationships, we are less than real, and less than human. It is out of those many relationships that society emerges as a real thing, which both shapes, and is shaped by, its individual members.

A "collective," on the other hand, would be an undifferentiated mass of people, which is an impossibility.

As I see it, the ideas that are dragging our culture deeper into the morass of statism are ideas that were hatched right here in the West. Ah, a minor breakthrough -- you do see that freedom is not a given in life, and must be constantly defended. And I'd almost given up on you. Yes, a healthy society must ensure that government does not exceed its delegated authority. Our Founding Fathers, for example, set up a decentralized system of government where the sovereign States retain the powers not specifically delegated.

The ongoing erosion of our right to keep our earnings, and to conduct our lives as we see fit are the result of the loss of State sovereignty and the usurpation of the central government. But that's another topic for another blog.

I'm curious to know in what way santeria and voodoo pose more of a threat to our values than do the more traditional Western religions. Oh, joy! You recognize "OUR VALUES" as opposed to their values! Another glimmer of hope.



It's not just one way, but two ways they threaten our values. Because the Feds have betrayed its people with the 1965 Immigration Bill, which directly attacks our traditional ethnic identity, we are being swamped with cultures who do not respect the rule of reason, the rule of law, or private property.

When these people become a majority, do you really believe they will sustain Western modes of interacting with others? Or will they vote to take your nice townhouse and Lexus?

You may protest that you "earned" those things, but they really know that men acquire nice things by luck or exploitation, so it wouldn't be fair to let you keep them.

The other way they threaten our values is that the inherent stability of a self-organized community will be disrupted by an influx of alien cultures with disparate sets of mutual expectations.

Once organic order is disrupted, the government will have to re-establish the peace that it destroyed by importing these peoples to begin with. That means increasingly powerful government. Look at the history of multi-cultural empires, such as Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, as opposed to small republics and see for yourself where traditional rights flourish and where they are snuffed out. Why would anyone willingly consent to having his nation transformed into a mess like Yugoslavia?



Oh, right. Free exchange of ideas -- the REAL definition of multi-culturalism. I forgot.

Alabama has a rather different culture from New York. Ain't that the truth?

To protect these respective cultures from alien influences, why shouldn't we place limits on how many New Yorkers can remove to Alabama, or Alabamians to New York? Bless you. The thought makes this ol' Southern boy all teary-eyed.

Posted January 25th, 2003



Permalink: praxeology.net/unblog01-03.htm#12



Comment

State of Denial?



The following letter appeared in this morning's Opelika-Auburn News:





Tuesday's editorial calls libertarians "romantic" and "in a state of denial" for failing to see that we need government to "teach and protect our children, build and repair our highways and tend to those things which make for a civilized society."



We libertarians have spent many decades (centuries, really), and many thousands of pages, arguing that private enterprise can provide these sorts of services more efficiently, more cheaply, more safely, and more justly than government can.



Now perhaps our arguments are wrong. Still, until someone examines our arguments and refutes them, I can't see that we have any reason to change our minds. Just asserting that we are in a state of denial is not a refutation.



For those who are interested in learning what the arguments for libertarianism actually are, a good place to start is Murray Rothbard's For A New Liberty, the complete text of which is easily available for free online.



Roderick T. Long

Associate Professor of Philosophy

Auburn University

Posted January 23rd, 2003



Permalink: praxeology.net/unblog01-03.htm#11



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A Wind in the Door



This morning at 5:54 a.m. I was awakened by what sounded and felt like an explosion, with debris slamming against my bedroom window. Apparently a small tornado, or something tornado-like, had touched down, directly in front of my apartment! No damage to me or mine -- but a look outside revealed trees thrown around, power lines torn down, etc. (The alert reader will discern the connection between the power lines' being torn down and my knowing the time of occurrence.) The tornado seems to have ripped along my street briefly, and then leapfrogged somewhere else; similar events were reported all over town, along with giant hailstones.



It's funny -- back when I lived in upstate New York, whenever I heard about a tornado occurring anywhere in the South, I was alarmed for the well-being of friends in Rutherfordton, NC. Now that I've lived in the South for over a decade, even a tornado on my doorstep doesn't seem all that exciting. I guess familiarity does breed, if not contempt exactly, then at least a certain sangfroid.







Posted January 22nd, 2003



Permalink: praxeology.net/unblog01-03.htm#10



Comment

Blinded by Complexity



Founders' America -- which I begin to suspect is a person, not an organisation -- has responded once again to my January 20 post "Eternal Hostility." (He is now signing himself "Heydrich," by the way -- a fact that does not inspire optimism.)



Herr Heydrich's responses appear to follow a pattern. He sends me a long screed on topic X. I pen a lengthy response. He responds to none of my arguments about X, but instead sends me a long screed on topic Y. And so on. The likelihood that further debate will prove fruitful continues to dwindle. (Well, I said in my original post that I wasn't going to engage him in debate, so I suppose I have only myself to blame.)



True to pattern, my correspondent now shifts the ground of argument to the question of childrearing:





Where to begin? Let's begin with family dynamics. How do your raise your children? Apply your libertarian views to the task of rearing children to healthy physical and mental maturity. ...



Various operations of the family household are the models for every form of government, or lack thereof: Either your children are family members -- citizens, so to speak -- or merely consumers residing in your household. Do your children hold a particular status in relation to your and your wife's authority? Do your children view you as a tyrant by your authority or as a democratic arbiter, or some combination? Such must be the nature of any State -- an expression of some particular form of family dynamic within the household, as someone must be in charge -- either autocratically or democratically -- because there exist inherently bright adults and dumb adults, inherently bright children and dumb children. Ergo, some kind of organization -- some degree of combination of cooperation and authoritarian control -- is necessary for people to live in peace in family, community or nation-state, as nature has dealt unequal abilities to adults and children alike. Or do you decide who is in charge in your family by the one with the most money? Does the money flow in an elitist sort of way, with you as provider and taxpayer and, ergo, decision-maker? Or does it flow willy-nilly for purposes of maximum consumption? Is your family a dictatorship, kingship, democracy, oligarchy of two, or libertarian commune? All political affiliations are understood by examining family dynamics -- by examining the various psychological dynamics of how members within the nuclear family may relate to one another, according to the abilities nature has dealt to you and yours.

The complexity with which you keep your positions is blinding you to the simple truth: There must be authoritarian controls at some level, whether a god from within or government from without ((or both)), in order to keep savagery at bay.

Again, try raising children with your libertarian principles.

I've explained in the article cited above how children can be raised in accordance with libertarian principles.





The claim that social order requires authoritarian control keeps getting asserted, but I haven't yet seen an argument. (And if we poor forked animals require authoritarian rulers to keep us in line, quis custodiet ipsos custodes -- assuming these paragons to be made from the same rude clay as ourselves?)





-- assuming these paragons to be made from the same rude clay as ourselves?) Herr Heydrich's reference to "the complexity with which [I] keep [my] positions" sounds like a complaint that my views don't fit his simplistic cardboard stereotype of an easily-refutable libertarianism. Well, brain surgery looks easier in the pictures than in reality too.

Addendum:

Founders' America responds:

Re: shifting the debate to arrive at the CRUX OF THE MATTER of libertarianism.



Yeah, I too don't see any reason to continue, as we are working against each other from opposing systems: yours being the rebellious teen-aged son and mine the authoritarian father-figure.

Please keep in mind that there are few humans who reach adulthood, in the mental/emotional sense; ergo, authoritarian controls are required at some level, to some degree, IN ALL HUMAN SOCIAL SYSTEMS.

That's why I shifted the debate from challenging your arguments ((posed against my "Dear Libertarians" essay)) toward getting to the CRUX OF THE MATTER:



Mankind needs and SEARCHES for AUTHORITY, which was the point of that letter to Gary North, about family dynamics.

Libertarians are always, or nearly so, confronting a father figure they've rejected and hated during childhood. ...



The root cause of libertarianism in men is found in the family dynamic (genetics notwithstanding), where a son develops a deep dislike for father's authoritarian control (father may have been too strict and uncompromising) -- but without rejecting father's rationalism altogether.

A libertarian can think logically but he gets hostile when anyone tries telling him how to run his life.

Regarding the rearing of children, libertarian "adults" instill anger and resentment for authority in their children, which causes parents to lose control of them to any number of bad influences, such as recreational drug use.

I thank you for the exchange of ideas.



You may have the last word if you wish, to which I'll not respond. ...



P.S. Attack the argument not the man, regarding "Heydrich."

Posted January 22nd, 2003



Permalink: praxeology.net/unblog01-03.htm#09



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Let A Thousand Cultures Bloom



Mike Tuggle responds once again to my January 19 post on "Culture and Anarchy" (see below). Mr. Tuggle writes:





Hmm. I fear the hermetic world of academia has done irreparable damage here. Calling Dr. Occam!

Now really. In response to my comment:



Contrary to the multi-cultural dogma of our day, cultural ties do not cause ethnic conflict. Imperial conquest of one group over another causes conflict. You replied:



But what makes one group willing to participate in the imperial conquest of another, if not cultural ties (of the wrong sort)? It's easier to slaughter and enslave people you're accustomed to thinking of consistently as "the others" and never as "our people." Huh? The most egregious tyrants and conquerors were the universalists out to force the world to accept a "better" way than the traditional cultures of their victims. Alexander, Charlemagne, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin -- all were internationalists out to forcibly reconstruct the world around a magic formula (yes, one ring to rule them all).

And we have a real problem with defining multi-culturalism.

First, human beings are culturally embedded in the sense that they grow up and live within a culturally structured world and organize their lives and social relations in terms of a culturally derived system of meaning and significance.



This does not mean that they are determined by their culture in the sense of being unable to rise above its categories of thought and critically evaluate its values and system of meaning, but rather that they are deeply shaped by it, can overcome some but not all of its influences, and necessarily view the world from within a culture, be it the one they have inherited and uncritically accepted or reflectively revised or, in rare cases, one they have consciously adopted.



Second, different cultures represent different systems of meaning and visions of the good life. Since each realises a limited range of human capacities and emotions and grasps only a part of the totality of human existence, it needs other cultures to help it understand itself better, expand its intellectual and moral horizon, stretch its imagination, save it from narcissism to guard it against the obvious temptation to absolutise itself, and so on. This does not mean that one cannot lead a good life within one's own culture, but rather that, other things being equal, one's way of life is likely to be richer if one also enjoys access to others, and that a culturally self-contained life is virtually impossible for most human beings in the modern, mobile and interdependent world.



Nor does it mean that all cultures are equally rich and deserve equal respect, that each of them is good for its members, or that they cannot be compared and critically assessed. All it means is that no culture is wholly worthless, that it deserves at least some respect because of what it means to its members and the creative energy it displays, that no culture is perfect and has a right to impose itself on others, and that cultures are best changed from within.



Third, every culture is internally plural and reflects a continuing conversation between its different traditions and strands of thought. This does not mean that it is devoid of coherence and identity, but that its identity is plural, fluid and open. Cultures grow out of conscious and unconscious interactions with each other, define their identity in terms of what they take to be their significant other, and are at least partially multicultural in their origins and constitution. Each carries bits of the other within itself and is never wholly sui generis. This does not mean that it has no powers of self-determination and inner impulses, but rather that it is porous and subject to external influences which it assimilates in its now autonomous ways.



A culture’s relation to itself shapes and is in turn shaped by its relation to others, and their internal and external pluralities presuppose and reinforce each other. A culture cannot appreciate the value of others unless it appreciates the plurality within it; the converse is just as true. Closed cultures cannot and do not wish or need to talk to each other. Since each defines its identity in terms of its differences from others or what it is not, it feels threatened by them and seeks to safeguard its integrity by resisting their influences and even avoiding all contacts with them. A culture cannot be at ease with differences outside it unless it is at ease with its own internal differences. A dialogue between cultures requires that each should be willing to open itself up to the influence of and learn from others, and this presupposes that it is self-critical and willing and able to engage in a dialogue with itself.



What I might call a multiculturalist perspective is composed of the creative interplay of these three important and complementary insights -- namely the cultural embeddedness of human beings, the inescapability and desirability of cultural plurality, and the plural and multicultural constitution of each culture. ...



We instinctively suspect attempts to homogenize a culture and impose a single identity on it, for we are acutely aware that every culture is internally plural and differentiated. And we remain equally sceptical of all attempts to present it as one whose origins lie within itself, as self-generating and sui generis, for we feel persuaded that all cultures are born out of interaction with and absorb the influences of others and are shaped by wider economic, political and other forces.

When a person or a society is secure in its cultural moorings, it is able to assimilate new ideas and incorporate them into their existing worldview. That's the ultimate sign of a healthy sense of identity, without which we have no means of dealing with the world. Identity comes from a sense of relatedness with the past, and with others with whom you share common values, and yes, history.

Contrast that with the malignancy of what Washington DC is doing to us. Without a shared culture to unite us, Big Government will have to impose order. Yes, it is unnatural to impose disparate groups together. When the 1965 Immigration Bill was passed, Ted Kennedy assured the American people the country's ethnic composition would not be changed.

Today, 80% of voters favor a reduction or elimination of Third-World immigration.

Can we have a free, rational society when we've destroyed the stable expectations as to the behavior of other people under specified conditions? That's a large component of what culture is. This is destroyed when Third-World cultures supplant our own -- courtesy of an immoral Federal government seeking to elect a new, more pliable citizenry.

And finally, far from "an automatic, unearned self-esteem" or "fostering cultural prejudices," ethnic and cultural heritage is a challenge upon which one grows. It is a task of self-discovery and outreach. As Goethe said, "What you have as heritage/Take now as task;/For thus you will make it your own."

Posted January 21st, 2003



Permalink: praxeology.net/unblog01-03.htm#08



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Eternal Hostility



One of the responses I received to my article My Libertarian Life was a lengthy, anonymously authored screed titled "Dear Libertarians: You Have No Right to an Immoral Life or an Immoral Liberty or an Immoral Pursuit of Happiness. What Thomas Jefferson Meant by 'Liberty'." This edifying document came my way from an outfit called Founders' America. A quick glance at their website reveals a penchant for the following sort of sociopolitical analysis:





Hitler's "Jewish Question" was no unwarranted anti-Semitism. The question of how to extricate white Anglo-Saxon Europe from the clutches of Jews' heritable, familial in-fighting was a critical question, because: wherever Jews go they bring with them ... in-born drives ... to seize control of the host culture; a genetic- and religious-based proclivity ....

do your own thing

it's just another lifestyle

don't be a bigot

don't discriminate

don't be judgmental

live and let live

don't be a prude

don't knock it if you haven't tried it

if it feels good, do it

they're just like you and me

people everywhere are the same

who's to say what's right or wrong?

it's a victimless crime

it's none of your business

nothing to do with differences in heritable talents exhibited between men and women, between child and adult, between ethnic or racial groups, or between any two individuals, but relates an idea of equality of spiritual being among humans, as bestowed by God, which idea was meant by Jefferson to answer the question of whether some humans may lack a soul, and which essence of the idea is found in equal justice -- not outcomes -- under the rule of law.

Too many economic conservatives are libertarian in their "thinking," which philosophy really is infantile and wrong. One need only trace the idea of social man being hatched from "individualistic" and savage beginnings to uncover libertarians' fatal flaw: that any individual man was ever able to be born and survive physically and emotionally by his own devices. Adam was a social being in his relationship with his Creator. No man has ever been a rugged individualist. Individual initiative has been extremely important to Man's progress but initiative has never been done outside the context of social intercourse -- at some vital level.

Libertarians' dumbest idea is this:



"What you do is okay with me, so long as it doesn't injure me or anyone else."



How is it possible to do anything without affecting someone? Even a micro event like, say, an ant pissing in the woods may, according to quantum mechanics, affect macro events.



For example, a libertarian might argue that he won't hurt me by practicing, say, autoerotic asphyxiation in his home. But he does risk harming me and others by his private risk-taking.



If he gets careless, the stench from his rotting body may get my attention and ruin a good meal, or I might look through his window to see why his mail is stacking up and be forever troubled by the gruesome sight. ...



Libertarians refuse to see that there's virtually nothing we do in private that doesn't ripple out to affect all of society -- if not directly, then by spreading immorality ....

Libertarians will tout legalization of drugs until their libertine neighbors get stoned and apply libertarianism in, say, molesting their child or slashing a relative to pieces in an hallucinatory fit of anger or running down grandma walking in the neighborhood.

Addendum:

Founders' America responds by sending me another (anonymously authored) email. This one informs me that I am "woefully ignorant about Jews," and directs me to a URL where I can "begin [my] education." Following up the URL takes me to a webpage devoted to a "sociobiological" study of Judaism. Since I regard sociobiology as conceptually incoherent (see, e.g., my September 25 post Slip Out of Those Genes), I'll waste no further time on that issue.



The email also invites me to "rethink [my] position on censorship," and encloses an article (also anonymous) titled "Censorship: Everybody Does It All the Time." I'll proceed on the assumption that this article is also authored by "Heydrich." Just as Mr. Heydrich's previous article betrays an inability to grasp the difference between aggressive and non-aggressive forms of harm, so this time he seems unable to wrap his mind around the difference between aggressive and non-aggressive ways of imposing sanctions on unwelcome speech. He writes, inter alia:





We all practice censorship -- all of us. We censor ourselves regarding certain modes of dress, speech and social etiquette, and we -- we the people -- often petition our representatives to pass laws for censoring those who refuse to comply with social convention or who exceed the bounds of good taste and propriety.

There are two ways to sexually molest a child, PHYSICALLY and PSYCHOLOGICALLY; the former being too risky to attempt while the latter is easily accomplished by providing children access to pornography.

I once had asked a head librarian in Henrico county, Virginia, why she didn't carry The Washington Times:



"Oh, the Washington Times could never replace the Washington Post, and we have a limited budget," she replied.



Everyone practices censorship, and all the time.

Those who fight against censorship are whining hypocrites for denying their own threshold for triggering censorship. How many of them would shelve in public libraries the available underground books on how to have sex with animals or how to molest children?

Where does the tolerance end? When social chaos reigns?

And they're weak-minded in their ignorance of the absolute necessity for the majority of community members to control both the place and time for allowing expression of certain kinds of behavior and materials (a process called "democratic government") -- materials such as certain books and movies and music which undermine the general welfare and domestic tranquility of the community (read the purpose for which the Constitution was established, as set out in the Preamble).

The majority must wrest control of their libraries and schools and government from minority interests, by force if necessary, or abandon the idea of democracy in America altogether.

Posted January 20th, 2003



Permalink: praxeology.net/unblog01-03.htm#07



Comment

Culture and Anarchy



In response to my autobiographical article My Libertarian Life, Mike Tuggle writes:





I enjoyed your piece describing your political evolution. I can confess to a similar path myself, having been a patriotic American who supported the Vietnam and Iraq I wars. Rand made perfect sense to me at the time. However, I also began to notice the contradictions within Rand's philosophy, and started moving toward the "libertarian" direction. I have come to believe that Rand's philosophy is essentially no difference from what Hobbes offered the apologists of Big Government mercantilism: men have no connection other than common appetites, so government must forcibly bind them together to facilitate culture and commerce. Anything that gets in the way of commercial success should be blown up -- I cannot think of a better summary of the obscene statements of Peikoff on the desirability of invading Iraq.

Although I agree with many Libertarian positions, I have settled (for now!) among the paleoconservatives of the Southern movement. Individual rights are indeed a good thing, but are the outgrowth of a particular culture, not someone's brilliant manifesto. If the culture is obliterated, the shared interactions of its members, and the related set of expected behaviors toward one another we refer to as rights, will disappear as well.

So, as the US transforms itself into a multi-cultural (that is, anti-cultural) regime, our traditional rights are also being eliminated.

I will certainly be paying your website regular visits. Keep up the good work.

Addendum:

Swifter than eagles, Mr. Tuggle responds:





Your blog on individual rights ignores some basic lessons on human nature and the need for a sustaining culture as a foundation for individual development.



Culture does not refer to only the momentary mix of ideas floating among a random grouping of consumers. Culture describes both the heritage of the past and the awakening of individuals within that cultural context, and is a vital part of self-identification.

As social beings, people will always identify "our people" versus "the others." This is perfectly normal and healthy.

Contrary to the multi-cultural dogma of our day, cultural ties do not cause ethnic conflict. Imperial conquest of one group over another causes conflict.

Human creativity and imagination depend on the security offered by society, and, more important, on the opportunity to exchange thoughts, new ideas, and expressions of sympathy with compatible individuals. Culture refers to the sum of learned behavior patterns, attitudes, and beliefs of a distinct people. These behaviors and beliefs arise early in one's development in the course of those crucial early days of caregiving. Children absorb much more in their first years than can ever be recorded. Body language, emotions, taboos, fears, as well as personal and group associations and interactions all communicate a wealth of information to young children. From their earliest moments, children receive their culture's accumulated storehouse of behavior patterns. As they grow older, they accept their culture's stated and implied ideas, including how one communicates and receives information. Not only do the various cultures transmit different norms and ideas to their young, they also instill different ways of learning and behaving.

As to "liberty being the product of multi-culturalism," nothing could be further from the truth. The Western value of individual liberty emerged from a distinct civilization, and has emerged nowhere else in the world. Like all other cultural values, it is intrinsic to the particular experiences of a particular people. Limited government has always emerged in distinct cultures.

In the history of the world, no random grouping of people has come together to create democratic institutions.

In fact, the opposite has occurred: as tyrants extend their power and corrode self-organizing societies by conquest, the unnatural mix of peoples has consistently been destabilizing, resulting in increased autocratic measures to restore order -- a prime example of centralized government being good for nothing but addressing the problems it causes. Odd, though, the problems are never solved -- as that great multi-culturalist Dick Nixon would say, "solutions are not the answer." Autocracy feeds itself on society, and as autocracy flourishes, freedom dies.

Posted January 19th, 2003



Permalink: praxeology.net/unblog01-03.htm#06



Comment

One Cheer for Political Correctness



There are two ways of letting political correctness control your mind.



One is to reject viewpoints, not because they're false, but because they're politically incorrect.



The other is to embrace viewpoints, not because they're true, but because they're politically incorrect.



We libertarians are seldom guilty of the first mistake. But we are often guilty of the second. Those who commit the second mistake are as much slaves of political correctness as those who commit the first.



At an academic reception I once saw a libertarian introduce himself to a female professor with the winning line: "Are you a feminist? I hate feminists." Libertarians describe the PC crowd as hypersensitive and too easily offended. The charge is often valid. But being hyperinsensitive, and too easily offensive, is no improvement.



T-shirts that read "Politically In correct!" are popular within our movement. But why, exactly, is political incorrectness something to brag about? The idea, presumably, is that we are independent-minded folk who hew to no party line. And it's certainly true that a great deal of silliness and even downright evil has been perpetrated in the name of political correctness (as well as in the name of just about anything else, it should be noted). And the tendency for concerns about hegemony and domination to melt away when the hegemony and domination are being exercised by the state for politically correct purposes can be breathtakingly hypocritical. But just how independent-minded is it to assume that the PC crowd is right about nothing?



For example, because it's politically correct to attribute gender differences primarily to cultural rather than to genetic factors, many of us seem to revel in embracing the opposite position. That this rush to sociobiology is often motivated more by emotional than by intellectual factors is suggested by the fact that in arguing for such positions, libertarians will often permit themselves the kind of sloppiness they would rightly excoriate in, say, economic discussions. For example, I've heard libertarians argue: "Psychological differences between men and women have neurophysiological correlates, so such differences must be genetically rather than culturally based." Does this mean that acquired psychological traits, unlike innate ones, don't have neurophysiological correlates?



Here's another: "If full sexual equality is possible, desirable, and consistent with human nature, how come no society in human history has ever achieved it?" Try substituting "libertarian freedom" for "sexual equality" in that sentence to see why it's an awkward argument for our camp to be espousing.



Libertarians -- including, sadly, many so-called libertarian or individualist feminists -- have been quick to embrace Christina Hoff Sommers' distinction between innocuous "liberal feminism" and scary "gender feminism." Liberal feminism accepts the institutions and practices of our society more or less as they are, and argues only for a more equal role for women within those institutions and practices. For gender feminism, by contrast, the institutions and practices of our society are deeply shaped by a socially constructed patriarchal order that systematically reinforces the disempowerment of women; hence such institutions and practices must be reformed in radical ways before equality can be achieved.



Well, gee. If those are my choices then hell yes, I'm a gender feminist!



It is of course quite true, as libertarians charge, that a) many gender feminists have taken this idea to absurd extremes, and likewise that b) the solutions for which gender feminists call typically involve an increase in state violence. But with regard to (a), there's no position so reasonable that it hasn't had proponents who've defended it in absurd or extreme forms. (Some libertarians, e.g., profess to find the constraints of deductive logic "coercive.") And as for (b), outside libertarian circles nearly everyone tends to appeal to state violence as the solution to any given problem. That gender feminists' proposed solutions are unacceptable to us does not show that they have not identified any important problems.



Many libertarians labour under the illusion that so-called "gender feminists" are one and all consumed with hatred toward men. I suggest they try meeting some. Reality check, comrades.



Another issue that inflames many libertarians against political correctness is the issue of speech codes on campuses. Yes, many speech codes are daft. But should people really enjoy exactly the same freedom of speech on university property that they would rightfully enjoy on their own property? Why, exactly?



If the answer is that the purposes of a university are best served by an atmosphere of free exchange of ideas -- is there no validity to the claim that certain kinds of speech might tend, through an intimidating effect, to undermine just such an atmosphere?



Or if the answer is that universities, as recipients of tax-supported funds, are representing the public and must therefore administer those funds in a nondiscriminatory manner -- does that mean that welfare recipients, too, must be prevented from spending their relief checks in a discriminatory manner? If taxation is theft, as we claim to believe, it's hard to see how tax funds for universities with speech codes are a worse violation of rights than tax funds for universities without speech codes. The real problem is that universities are being funded by extortion at all.



At my university, several white fraternity members were recently disciplined for dressing up, some in Klan costumes and others in blackface, and enacting a mock lynching. Is the university guilty of violating their freedom of expression? I can't see that it is. Certainly those students have a natural right to dress up as they please and engage in whatever playacting they like, so long as they conduct themselves peacefully. But there is no natural right to be a student at Auburn University.



One sometimes hears the argument: "if they're against such-and-such idea, there must be something to it." This attitude of quodcumque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi is an unreliable guide to truth, however. Does it speak in Hitler's favour that Stalin was against him? Does it speak in Stalin's favour that Hitler was against him?



Is it not true that the contributions of women, minorities, and nonwestern cultures have traditionally been marginalised and excluded? One needn't want to give George Washington Carver more pages in the history textbooks than George Washington to agree that the PC folks are on to something here. And look at the anti-Muslim, pro-war hysteria that's sweeping the country these days. The PC crowd, bless 'em, are certainly on the right side of that one. Libertarians should regard the PC crowd the way we regard conservatives: as potential allies. Often infuriating and wrongheaded potential allies -- but nonetheless people to cultivate, not to insult.







Posted January 18th, 2003



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Report from the Empire





Everywhere I go these days, I see signs saying "God Bless America." Why not "God Bless the World"?





Our Emperor opined this week that the University of Michigan's affirmative action policies, which "include or exclude people from higher education and the opportunities it offers" on the basis of (in part) their race, are "impossible to square with the Constitution." The imperial sovereign didn't say which clause of the Constitution he had in mind, but I'm betting it's the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.



I'd be curious to know, though: given that the Equal Protection Clause doesn't specifically mention race , why isn't it equally unconstitutional to "include or exclude people from higher education and the opportunities it offers" on the basis of scholastic aptitude ?





I'd be curious to know, though: given that the Equal Protection Clause doesn't specifically mention , why isn't it equally unconstitutional to "include or exclude people from higher education and the opportunities it offers" on the basis of ? If you drive an SUV, you're aiding terrorists. If you smoke marijuana, you're aiding terrorists. If you express alarm at the accelerating erosion of civil liberties, you're scaring people with "phantoms of lost liberty" -- and so, once again, aiding terrorists. This leaves me with two questions:



a) Does this mean I should stop paying my taxes?



b) Wouldn't "Phantoms of Lost Liberty" be a good name for a rock band?

Posted January 17th, 2003



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The Coming of Shadows



Fans of J. Michael Straczynski's work (see my November 1st posting, "Signs and Portents") have reason to rejoice. The first season of Babylon 5 on DVD has been such a success that the release of subsequent seasons is virtually assured; in fact Season 2 is already available for pre-order on Amazon.com. The Shadows are returning to their places of power.



(No word so far on the B5 tv-movies or the spinoff series Crusade, but I'm keeping my fingers and eyes crossed.)



Also now available for pre-order is Straczynski's Midnight Nation -- the twelve-issue comic series released as a graphic novel. This eerie tale of the invisible and abandoned among us represents some of Straczynski's best work for comics. (It's unclear whether the volume will also include Issue ½. It would be stupid to leave it out. But stupidity happens.)



At the date of this posting, Amazon.com actually says of Midnight Nation: "This title will be released on December 31, 1969." Let's all hope really hard that this is a typo.



In other welcome news, Showtime has picked up Straczynski's quirky postapocalyptic saga Jeremiah for a second season, and Sean Astin (Samwise in Lord of the Rings) will be joining the cast.



Some of Straczynski's Usenet posts on the War on Terror are worth a look too. (See here, here, and here). I'm pretty sure that Straczynski and I aren't in the same quadrant of the Nolan Chart, but he's certainly got my vote on this issue.



For more info about upcoming Straczynski projects, check out WorldsofJMS.com.







Posted January 10th, 2003



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Save Free-Market.net



Free-Market.net has announced that they're closing down and need financial help to salvage their operations. Governmental regulations also require them to find a nonprofit organisation to which to transfer some of their assets. Anyone interested in helping can get more information from their website.







Posted January 5th, 2003



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The Road from Serfdom (and a queue back)



Walter Block is putting together an online collection of how-I-became-a-libertarian stories; mine is posted here.



Vin Rosa read my contribution and wrote in:





I'm more than ten years your senior (though I'm not quite sure that's relevant), and I, too, at a young and apolitical age was outraged into awareness of governmental arrogance by my family's humble mailbox.



Wonder how many others share our epiphany? Could qualify us for minority status. Perhaps we should demand reparations for years of emotional anguish and use the plunder to buy our very own politicians.

Posted January 4th, 2003



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