Skalduggery

Ever really wondered about lemmings? Why the mass suicide? After all, they’re cute, cuddly and cool. Other than knowing that they kind of looked like miniature Guinea Pigs, I didn’t know why some of the oft told tales were told in the first place. Saw the critters for the first time in Norway, as a sailor on liberty.

I could be construed as an old fart… a curmudgeon if you will – my first computer was a kit I built. I’ve actually seen a “core memory,” i.e., a matrix of little ferrous oxide donuts. I remember a nifty little game called Lemmings by DMA where the object was to save the mindless little fur balls from blindly committing mass suicide. It was an addicting game, something that a person could mindlessly play and wake up days later wondering where his wife and kids have gone. Myth has it that there were millions of people following each other into the game’s escapist abyss.

As it happens, Wikipedia has a pretty good entry on these lovely creatures that sheds a little light on their behaviors. They have another article that sheds some light on the game. The article (on the actual critters) is substantial enough, but there is a small and interesting little segment worth reproducing for your scientific, historical, and anthropological appreciation: *snort*

While many people believe that lemmings commit mass suicide when they migrate, this is not the case. Driven by strong biological urges, they will migrate in large groupings when population density becomes too great. Lemmings can and do swim and may choose to cross a body of water in search of a new habitat. On occasion, and particularly in the case of the Norway lemmings in Scandinavia, large migrating groups will reach a cliff overlooking the ocean. They will stop until the urge to press on causes them to jump off the cliff and start swimming. They then swim to exhaustion and death. Lemmings are also often pushed into the sea as more and more lemmings arrive at the shore.

The myth of lemming mass suicide is long-standing and has been popularized by a number of factors. In 1955, Disney Studio illustrator Carl Barks drew an Uncle Scrooge adventure comic with the title “The Lemming with the Locket”. This comic, which was inspired by a 1954 National Geographic Society article, showed massive numbers of lemmings jumping over Norwegian cliffs. Even more influential was the 1958 Disney film White Wilderness, which won an Academy Award for Documentary Feature, in which footage was shown that seems to show the mass suicide of lemmings. In more recent times, the myth is well-known as the basis for the popular 1991 video game Lemmings, in which the player must stop the lemmings from mindlessly marching over cliffs or into traps. A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary, Cruel Camera, found that the lemmings used for White Wilderness were flown from Hudson Bay to Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where they did not jump off the cliff, but in fact were launched off the cliff using a turntable.

Due to their association with this odd behavior, lemming suicide is a frequently-used metaphor in reference to people who go along unquestioningly with popular opinion, with potentially dangerous or fatal consequences. This metaphor is seen many times in popular culture, such as in the video game Lemmings, and in episodes of Red Dwarf and Adult Swim’s show Robot Chicken. In Urban Terror, falling to one’s death is called doing the lemming thing.

By now the video and the commentary should make a little sense… in terms of where this post is going, that is, and if it isn’t quite there yet, take a trip to the UK’s TaxFreeGold site and you’ll find an article that lifts an awful lot of info right out of the Wiki article – to compare and describe people chasing gold on eBay. That’s it, us human lemmings, what are we doing?

Believe it or not, this post was spurred by research on felony/criminal disenfranchisement. Before I actually posted anything on the topic, I wanted to comment on the craziness of Americans wanting to be more like Europeans. “Let’s do this thing, or that thing, because that’s how the Europeans do it… “I’m pretty certain my folks and grand folks said things like, “Steven, if all your friends jumped off a bridge – would you?”

Here we gooo...

…ok, bad example. There was that train trestle in Corvallis. Still, I’m pretty sure you get the drift here – I’m hoping we’ve somehow grown up. Tom over at Responsibility, Neo over at NeoNeocon, and countless others have been spending time reasoning with us about everything from health care to cap and trade, from taxes to Afghanistan. If we’re jumping from the cliff for goodness sake, let’s look before we leap.

A tremendous body of advocacy writing concerning felony disenfranchisement spends its time comparing us to European countries and waxing long on our failure to be like them… Screw that, let’s be like us, and if we want to change the way we do business let’s keep it internally consistent! Let’s do it because it’s the right thing to do, not because somebody else is doing it. Sheesh!!

The mini rant is over. I think I needed a diversion from this disenfranchisement research – it’ll be up soon (the post on felony disenfranchisement), and hopefully it’ll achieve a certain brevity and clarity that is sometimes missing here.

Cheers all!

Hard at Work fm The Weekly Standard

I am still working on a post about prison disenfranchisement. It’s a subject I find extraordinarily interesting considering the republic we celebrate. However, I received some interesting mail about my Ft. Hood post; the comments provided several areas to think about in addition to what was already published; and of the many blog posts and articles continuing the coverage, Christopher Hitchens and Robert Wright have a lively dance.

As always, I encourage reading Hitchens’ article and Robert Wright’s op-ed at The New York Times, well – not so much. Just kidding, read it – no, really. In a stunning race to oversimplify, Wright informs us that the left’s position is that the war on terror (oops, The War on Terror) is what made Major Hasan. Of course, Hitchens takes issue with this notion (me too, me too). Hitchens opens his Slate article like this:

It’s both amusing and educational to observe a consensus when it suddenly starts to give way at all points without yielding an inch. A couple of weeks ago, the consoling view was that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was a man more to be pitied than feared, a full-blown officer in the U.S. armed forces who was too shaken up by the stories of returned veterans to be able to function properly, and a physician too stressed-out to bear in mind that there was such a thing as a Hippocratic oath. Why, even the FBI had interpreted his e-mails to Anwar al-Awlaki as quite “consistent with research being conducted by Maj. Hasan in his position as a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Medical Center” (Slate 20091123:1337).

As he did last week, he does this week – Hitchens shreds these pretensions. Then he takes exception to Wright’s article. It’s worth providing a bit of Wright’s own words here to get a taste of his reasoning. It’s seductive in its emotional content, and the emotional appeal is often accepted by readers at the expense of their critical thinking skills. The unvarnished argument is that if you call Muslims names it’s sure to cause violence. Most grownups don’t respond with violence unless they’re attacked with violence. Here’s the varnished argument:

The more Americans denigrate Islam and view Muslims in the workplace with suspicion, the more likely the virus is to spread — and each appearance of the virus in turn tempts more people to denigrate Islam and view Muslims with suspicion. Whenever you have a positive feedback system like this, an isolated incident can put you on a slippery slope.

And the Fort Hood shooting wasn’t the only recent step along that slope. Six months ago a 24-year-old American named Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad — Carlos Bledsoe before his teenage conversion to Islam — fatally shot a soldier outside a recruiting station in Little Rock, Ark. ABC News reported, “It was not known what path Muhammad … had followed to radicalization.” Well, here’s a clue: After being arrested he started babbling to the police about the killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan (The New York Times 20091121).

Yes sir! You know how the liberal argument went down for the abortion doctor killer… why the more you denigrate those Christian fundamentalists the more slippery that slope becomes and… and, my goodness WE caused that evil little bastard to pull the trigger and shoot the doctor. Nope, didn’t quite go down that way – in fact, the prevailing opinion was that fundamentalist Christians calling for direct action against abortion clinics should be held accountable for their teachings. Anyone should be able to see that those teachings have consequences… hmmmm. Ok, enough of my mini-rant.

Hitchens takes aim in a somewhat different direction – who’s killing Muslims? After detailing a huge laundry list of Muslims killing Muslims, Hitchens reasonably questions Wright’s notion of the slippery slope, the “dubious” nature of foreign policy and more. Here’s his article’s finishing flourish:

Dubious? The only thing dubious here is his command of language. When did the U.S. Army ever do what the jihadists do every day: deliberately murder Muslim civilians and brag on video about the fact? For shame. The slippery slope—actually the slimy slope—is the one down which Wright is skidding.

It is he, who I am taking as representative of a larger mentality here, who uses equally inert lingo to suggest that Maj. Hasan was “pushed over the edge by his perception of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.” That’s a nice and shady use of the word “perception.” Might it not be equally true to say that Hasan was all-too-easily pulled over the edge, having already signaled his devout eagerness for the dive, by a cleric who makes a living by justifying murder of Muslims and non-Muslims alike?

In many recent reports of this controversy one has seen reporters from respectable papers referring not just to generic, uniform “Muslims” but even to the places where they live as “Muslim lands.” If you would object to seeing the absurd term “Christendom” in your newspaper as a description of Europe, let alone to reading about “Jewish land” on the West Bank, then please have the fortitude to complain next time violent theocracy is smuggled into the discourse under the increasingly feeble disguise of multicultural masochism (Slate 20091123:1337).

I’d say that pretty much wraps it up – except for a couple of articles at The Weekly Standard here and here that you may find of interest. They echo and expand on some of the elements presented here – including, wait for it… some evidence based journalism 😀

Again, Happy Thanksgiving all!

In Search of the Lost Chord

…the Big Bang, Schrödinger’s Cat, Bacchus (the god of wine), excellence, or – dare I say it – the Lost Chord! When I was a kid, the reason I liked The Moody Blues was simple; like most other kids they were in search of something (supposedly themselves). In the case of this album, In Search of the Lost Chord, several of the songs are about the search for spiritual fulfillment. Ostensibly the search is for the lost chord, and in the cut The Word, that chord has a name and it’s found at the end of the poem… which introduces the next song – Om. Um, ok, if we accept this Hindu thingy then we’ve found the source of all, um, well language and science and, um, well… everything! KEWL! But really, we know it can’t quite be true because The Moody Blues kept searching… for something, er, um, truth?

Doesn’t matter, I still love that album and am a fan of the band. Let’s face it though, like many modern people – especially in the west – the band was more concerned with the SEARCH for the truth rather than finding and holding her close. Why bother with The Moody Blues? Well… it’s all about citizenship! More to the point I suppose, it is about the certainties I spoke of in my post Bothering with Citizenship. I’ve addressed the notion of facts being real and independent of our persons, but the postmodernists of many different flavors would strongly disagree with me – because they are certain that there is no privileged point of view.

I’m trying to keep this short and manageable, but it will be most difficult. On several occasions I’ve addressed several of the problems with the idea that because I “feel it” it must be true. Something I have only addressed indirectly is the idea that the majority determines truth. Ann Marlowe, in a recent article for The Weekly Standard (TWS) entitled Cool Gone Cold, reviewed a book called The Birth (and Death) of Cool by Ted Gioia. At its most basic, according to Marlowe, the book chronicles the notion of “cool” in terms of jazz greats of the early 20^th Century. Gioia complains that coolness deteriorated and “eventually boiled down to how one was perceived by others. Coolness, even more than beauty, is inevitably in the eye of the beholder” (TWS 20091109). Rather than quote Marlowe at length for her explanation of Nietzsche’s concept of perspectival thinking (which is excellent), I’ll settle for a quick and effective definition from the Dictionary of Philosophy by Alan Lacey:

Perspectivism: The theory that there can be radically different and incommensurable conceptual schemes or perspectives, one of which we must, consciously or unconsciously, adopt, but none of which is more correct than its rivals.

Marlowe believes that “The idea that reality is whatever it is perceived to be, rather than something with independent existence, is likely to be with us as long as our culture survives. This is a good thing, too” (TWS 20091109). Now, before I reveal why she believes this to be a good thing, let me mention a small bit of commentary from another TWS article: All Crisis, All the Time: The American addiction to overreaction by Irwin Savodnik. He first identifies what a legitimate crisis is, and then shows how our “Illegal immigration, farm, credit card, and education crises,” while substantive concerns – are hardly comparable to plague, world wars, etc. Savodnik also reports that American responses to these “substantive concerns” are overreactions that point “to mythical thinking, a way of embodying our emotions and impulses in tales of our fears, vulnerabilities, and guilt in strange, often colorful, stories” (TWS 20091102). Seriously, is the Chrysler crisis going to be resolved with a government designed vehicle?

Why does Marlowe believe that reality is whatever it is perceived to be a good thing? It’s worth an extended quotation here:

The radical subjectivism which gave birth to contemporary art and to counterinsurgency theory has also given us cultural relativism and a loss of confidence in Western values. But the skepticism inherent in perspectival culture will not be the destruction, but the saving, of Western civilization. Poseurs and, especially, their commercialization may be annoying, but they don’t blow up airplanes or commit suicide bombings. It takes a belief in the objective reality of one’s beliefs to produce fanaticism. (TWS 20091109)

Really? Take a short tour through the late sixties and seventies to notice that Marxist and other groups that were incredibly influenced by Nietzsche’s perspectivist perspective maimed, killed, and bombed scores of innocents. In August of 1970 – the Sterling Hall bombing. In 1971, the Black Liberation Army, a socialist group kills three police officers. In October of 1971 the Post Office Tower of London was bombed by the IRA. The IRA, Red Brigade, ETA, FALN were/are all left groups with perspectivist systems of belief. Although many of these groups demonstrate that subjective beliefs produced fanaticism, ultimately, these groups with shared perspectives on reality (defined in terms of their perceptions) are mere “quibbles” in this debate.

If the only real thing Marlowe is certain of is that there are no certainties, then it makes this kind of discussion virtually meaningless. On the other hand, we could pretend to believe what she seems to be implying here – that, like psychology, normalcy is defined by the majority. If reality is whatever it is perceived to be, then the majority view would tend to define reality… which won’t be the perspectivist “view” because they’ve lost confidence in their own Western values.

I hope we haven’t lost confidence in our Western values. I hope we stop overreacting to things that are not crises. I would equate Marlowe’s “radical subjectivism” to what Savodnik calls “mythical thinking.” It is:

…a way of embodying our emotions and impulses in tales of our fears, vulnerabilities, and guilt in strange, often colorful, stories. We dread our powerlessness and concoct magical cures for our weakness. Such thinking is regressive. That myths are the outcome of the flight from reality, that we hop from one myth to the other and supplant reason with emotion, tells us that we have regressed. We’ve chosen ways of thinking found in children, tribal cultures, and dreams.

There is a moral dimension to all this. We are not children anymore. We are not mere mythmakers. We know fairy tales don’t solve the problems that plague us. We have a choice between thinking in Dr. Seuss terms, and in reflective adult ways. When we don’t acknowledge this internal dichotomy, we are acting in bad faith. (TWS 20091102)

I wonder why so many are “going Galt?” Let’s find our certainties.

Cheers to all!

“Politics should be the wise exercise, distribution, and maintenance of power.” ~Robert Redford in the movie Legal Eagles

“Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit. A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty — their power and privilege — to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by … politicians.” ~P.J. O’Rourke in the book All the Power in the World

I suppose I could multiply quotes concerning the nature of politics, but the first one will do with one caveat, and that is “Politics is the acquisition, exercise, distribution, and maintenance of power.” While it should be wise, that is more wish than fact. P.J. O’Rourke’s definition, on the other hand, serves fine as is 😉 I’ve already written about my take on the nature of Apollonian vs. Dionysian religions as a paradigm for politics and governments. In that discussion I addressed the nature of (Apollonian) cerebral and (Dionysian) visceral man, and why virtue and liberty are so closely interrelated. One of the implications of that discussion is that certainty about one’s place in the world tends to express itself in certainty of action. Witness the certainty of action in the Muslim community worldwide with the Danish cartoon conflagration. America claims to support freedom of expression, diversity, even a diversity of ideas. More to the point, the Danes didn’t simply claim to support these ideas; they were internationally recognized as one of the most tolerant societies while remaining one of the most firm supporters of these civil liberties.

That brings me to the notion of citizenship – seems to be the next step after politics, hey? For the purposes of this discussion I am going to ignore the notions of “corporate” and “global” citizenship for the simple reason that these ideas are conjured up for reasons (to instill a responsibility to “surrender part of their liberty”) similar to that of many politicians when they are “acting in our better interests.” Another obvious reason to ignore these ideas is that there are no rights, privileges and immunities enumerated by consent that are associated with these supposed “corporate” or “global” responsibilities. In other words, citizens tend to be associated with democracies – for other forms of government the term is typically subjects.

So then, a definition of citizens’ rights and responsibilities of citizenship must reside in the correlatives of citizenship’s component parts. One can turn to the Wikipedia, Britannica, or other reference and find at least three common elements of citizenship. First, it implies membership in an enfranchised (the right to vote) democratic political community. Second, the collective rights, privileges, duties, and immunities connected with membership are a celebrated component of citizenship. Finally, participation in civic life that affords a certain equal protection under the law seems to be a clear component of membership. At the very least these elements combine to protect the citizen’s body and property from harm by “enemies both foreign and domestic,” and to offer reasonably consistent conditions for the many ways citizens interact, e.g., travel, commerce, and marriage.

Granted that this is a simple and cursory look at citizenship, I do believe it provides a basis to challenge our thinking on subjects which we are or are not certain. I’ve read a ton of these little essays on politics, citizenship, government, etc., and I have trouble locating sources – but I know I’ve read something like “Revolutionaries are the graffiti artists of history.” Tell me you haven’t noticed some graffiti that hasn’t captured your attention… Europe and America’s revolutions ultimately provided for universal suffrage, and this makes it necessary for our democratic populations to avoid confusion about political ideas and the arrogant notion that somehow modern ideas are necessarily better or superior to those of our predecessors. We must be on guard against the biases of the moment and recognize that the notion of progress assumes our current ideas and certainties are somehow better than those of the past.

This is dangerous. Today we tend toward cultural relativism, an avoidance of responsibilities to our fellow citizens by accepting that one culture is equal to another. We pretend that this somehow makes us superior to the overconfidence of the past. That opinion is somehow on the same level everywhere. This is dangerous; it is a serious self-delusion that hides our own arrogance concerning our own tolerance – that it is somehow superior to the ideas of our past and the prejudices of other traditions.

I hope the primary point isn’t lost in the discussion – we must be cautious with our ideas or risk falling to our own hubris. All cultures are not equal. All opinions are not equal. Some ideas and practices should be recognized for the vile violations of civil liberties they are… Squelching freedom of expression to prevent offense is nonsense. Squelching dissent to prevent a free exchange of ideas, or to assure an untrammeled path to passage of a prized bill is worse. As citizens we should be seeking to protect each other and our civic life from these encroachments.

Citizenship requires us to think reasonably – let’s not fall for a phony populism or a fake egalitarianism. A culture that accepts the mutilation of its women for “cultural reasons” is not equal to a culture that protects its women from mutilation. Period. Making distinctions isn’t inherently racist, bigoted or intolerant.

Find your certainties. Think them through. Act… and I’ll wait for the hate mail.

Cheers all, have a great Thursday.

p.s.     This piece was originally aimed at a discussion of felony disenfranchisement. Guess that will have to wait! I’ll let the current frustration settle, then try again 😀

Take a trip over to Responsibility – there is a killer post up concerning taking things one step at a time, especially when things are overwhelming or complicated… or overwhelmingly complicated. He takes as a point of departure Peggy Noonan’s article over at the WSJ in which she says that Americans are disheartened, and worse that:

We are governed at all levels by America’s luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they’re not optimists—they’re unimaginative. They don’t have faith, they’ve just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don’t mind it when people become disheartened. They don’t even notice.

Look for a little optimism, a plan, or at least the next brick! We need to make sure our locals notice.

Cheers!

I can’t wait, I’m leaving soon to visit one of my daughters – I’m going to be a grandfather… again 😉 Had to throw that out there – and now that it is out there, I’ve another short tidbit before work instead of a nice focused post. The American Spectator had an article in their September issue that takes aim at our notions of freedom. The title of the article, What’s Your Metric, works on a variety of levels. First it really does get a person to thinking about his method of gauging his current liberty. Second, I’d bet it reveals that many of our personal measures of freedom are woefully inadequate. Like Tom over at Responsibility, the article likes to ask questions. Tom asks a series of questions to provoke thought, and Daniel Oliver opens his article with questions:

HOW DO YOU WATCH FREEDOM? How do you watch it grow? How do you watch it shrink? What’s the metric? What’s your metric? What do you think the metrics of your fellow citizens are? If you have no idea what their metric is, how do you talk to them about freedom with any sense of urgency?

Just those questions make serious thought a necessity if we are to intelligibly discuss our notions of freedom. Some of the metrics mentioned are interesting and raise questions of their own. Milton Friedman’s metric for example, “was the percentage of GDP spent by government.” Naturally it was inversely proportional 😀 Another measure offered was by either counting or weighing “the Federal Register or the Code of Federal Regulations.” Oliver then offers that “A better measure is the COST of regulations” (emphasis mine). He then gives us a standard definition to work with:

Freedom House defines freedom as “the opportunity to act spontaneously in a variety of fields outside the control of the government and other centers of potential domination.” Quick: name a field that is outside the control of government?

There’s the rub. It shouldn’t be that hard. I’d encourage you to run over to The American Spectator and read the article – it’s a short and sweet little missive, and well worth the read to get finally to:

Are those imperfect measures? Perhaps. But then, what’s your metric?

Cheers all,

I’m off to work.

Rest Stop for a Sunny Day

It’s probably not as clever as I’d hoped. The title of my post takes a direct stab at Obama’s campaign to unify America. There has been A Slobbering Love Affair for Obama in the media generally, and an obvious lack of holding our newest president to account for his actions or lack of action. The media tended to be all over any misstep on the part of the last administration (much of it deserved by my lights), and completely ignores similar behavior on the part of the new administration. We need our journalists back, we need our news agencies back, as a nation we once relied on news sources to provide some much needed perspective – instead, we’ve a whole new crop of advocacy “journalists” who seem to be busy servicing everything but the public interest.

Bush promised to be a unifier also, just like Obama promised… it seems Obama’s doing an even less effective job than Bush. The biggest difference (follow the link, it is a slobber-fest) is that the failure to unify the electorate was all Bush’s fault – not the left-wing rabble rousers. Currently, it IS the right-wing rabble rousers that are the reason for Obama’s failure to unify the electorate. I got tired of hearing left wingers say, “He’s not MY president.” I can’t stand hearing right-wingers say it now, but I, well throw up a little, when I hear left wingers chide right wingers for the same actions. Moreover, when Bush was president, left wingers were “right” to call the administration and others down for saying dissent was not patriotic or un-American… and yet that is precisely what is being done now. The DNC is running ads that are deliberately divisive, and Obama is joining in the derision of those who oppose his policies. Our country is tanking, and it’s tanking because we’re forgetting our AA.

There are several left wing writers trying to call on all citizens to pay attention to the arguments of our founders, and though I don’t generally agree with their political views, I do agree with some things that are fundamentally more important. Howard Fineman wrote an excellent book where I got the title for my post. My “AA” is an abbreviation for part of his title – The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates that Define and Inspire our Country. Though I believe Fineman was a part of the slobbering love affair, I also believe he has a compelling argument for us, the electorate, to not forget our roots.

Why mention Fineman if I find him too far to the left? Because despite his anecdotal bits and pieces he uses to illustrate these foundational arguments (and his obvious slant when discussing the enduring debates), he is right about the nature of our American nature. The first two paragraphs of his introduction entitled For the Sake of Argument make the point:

First, I owe you a definition, then an explanation. You will see the word “argument” throughout this book. By “argument” I mean something besides shouting or name calling, though both often are part of the transaction. I mean a clash between at least two people (or regions, political parties, candidates, or economic interests) over facts and ideas in the search for answers – in this case, answers to questions about the future and fate of America. The gist (the “argument,” if you will) of this book is:

We are the Arguing Country, born in, and born to, debate. The habit of doing so – the urgent, almost neurotic need to do so – makes us unique and gives us our freedom, creativity, and strength. By my count, there are thirteen foundational arguments that comprise our public life – hence the title of this book. Rather than argue too much, which is the conventional wisdom’s critique, we in fact do not argue enough, about the fundamentals. If we fail to draw strength from our argumentative nature, we risk losing what made us great and gives us hope. Our disputes are not a burden, but a blessing.

Pick up the book, give it a look, and argue boldly for what you believe. Engage in the public debate. It’s very American. Get your dose of AA today, the enduring American Arguments.

Cheers.

P.S. The picture is from the Oregon Gardens, I called it Rest Stop for a Sunny Day. It is a place to cool off, get quiet, and then re-engage in our country’s great debates. While shooting pictures in the Gardens, my brother and I engaged in the discussion of chapter three: The Role of Faith.

If you remember a video I posted/embeded concerning the “Whitehouse Snitch Line,” it’s been removed… Hat Tip to Politico:

Following a furor over how the data would be used, the White House has shut down an electronic tip box — flag@whitehouse.gov — that was set up to receive information on “fishy” claims about President Barack Obama’s health plan.

Read the article – it’s a good read 😉 I’ve heard rumor that another line has been set up at a brand new website here… have fun.

Cheers

Once upon a time religions were categorized or classified as either Apollonian or Dionysian. The Apollonian faiths were more cerebral, focused on knowledge, poetry, and the arts. Dionysian faiths were more earthy and visceral, focusing praise, celebration, fellowship. Think in terms of Episcopalians and any of the many Charismatic churches. In a variety of ways, western systems of government can be classified in just such a fashion.

Today, it is commonly believed that our government is patterned on the democratic Greek city states. The Greeks were the Apollonians of government. This is cerebral man, theoretical government. Think in terms of the polis, policy, police, and of course, our word politics. We too often forget the very real impact of the Romans on our system of government. From Rome we get civility, citizen, civilization – being civic minded. Central to Roman government was our visceral man – love of country forged a Roman’s perspective on citizenship. “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” – It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. One can see the root for our word patriot in that Latin sentence.

Perhaps the most fascinating and one of the more important features of the Roman Republic was its notion of the auctoritas. Almost ancestor worship, its body of “something more than advice but less than law” was foundational to the moral base of Rome’s august body known as the Senate. For so many in the West throughout our history since Rome, it was Rome’s moral anchor, its virtue that made such wide spread freedom possible. Our founding fathers managed to make a splendid blend of both practices. Whether it is in the terms of gods or governments, leaving out either the mind or emotion leads to an imbalance in practice.

Long way round to the topic of virtue, but I wanted to tie cerebral man to visceral man. Leaving gods and governments aside for the moment, the kind of virtues I want to talk about are the natural or cardinal virtues. Before enumerating these, a moderately simple definition of virtue is in order. Merriam Webster’s definition of virtue:

1 a : conformity to a standard of right : morality b : a particular moral excellence
2 pl: an order of angels see celestial hierarchy
3 : a beneficial quality or power of a thing
4 : manly strength or courage : valor
5 : a commendable quality or trait : merit
6 : a capacity to act : potency
7 : chastity esp. in a woman

Though all of these definitions are useful, the first is obviously the one I want to tinker with when it comes to the cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. First, according to Britannica, the word cardinal is from a Latin word meaning “hinge,” because on these four virtues “all lesser attitudes hinge.” Second, it would be easy to spend pages on each of these four virtues, but I’ll leave that to you 😉 What I’m interested in here is a reasonable and concise definition of each of these cardinal or secular virtues. Again from Merriam Webster’s:

Prudence:

1: the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason
2: sagacity or shrewdness in the management of affairs
3: skill and good judgment in the use of resources
4: caution or circumspection as to danger or risk

Temperance:

1: moderation in action, thought, or feeling: restraint
2: habitual moderation in the indulgence of the appetites or passions

Fortitude:

strength of mind that enables a person to encounter danger or bear pain or adversity with courage

Justice:

1 a : the maintenance or administration of what is just esp. by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments b : judge c : the administration of law ; esp.: the establishment or determination of rights according to the rules of law or equity
2 a : the quality of being just b  (1): the principle or ideal of just dealing or right action (2): conformity to this principle or ideal : righteousness c : the quality of conforming to law
3 : conformity to truth, fact, or reason : correctness

As citizens, I believe it’s easy to see the value in each of these virtues to our right action, to our beliefs, to our shared responsibilities. These are the primary elements in a moral suspension that provides our liberty. I believe the failure of these virtues results in a tyranny of some sort. I ran across a quote by Abraham Lincoln in a short speech he gave in Baltimore, Maryland in 1864. The entire speech is definitely worth the read because it speaks directly to slavery and the analogy of the wolf and sheep is a sound one. I’m going to include a little more in my rendering than did Mark Levin on the dust jacket of his new book Liberty and Tyranny. So then, in closing:

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name – liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names – liberty and tyranny.

update – The second and third paragraphs contain a collection of ideas expressed in Politics: A Very Short Introduction and verified in a few other text books from college. As for the linked book, I think it’s an excellent little essay by Kenneth Minogue and well worth the read! It’s been awhile since I’ve read either the book or texts from college – but I’ve pretty decent  notes.

Cheers!

My friend John and I had an exchange in the comments section of a video I embedded, and he used a phrase that resembled something I’ve heard on line a few times: “‘I got mine, screw everyone else’ types.” The discussion is about health care, and the comments are already on record, but I remembered seeing that phrase either in the newspaper or online. As it turns out, it was both. David Sirota over at the HuffPo wrote an article entitled “The Me-First: Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd.” Since the whole “tea-baggers” and “Screw Everyone Else” meme doesn’t fly well in other media, he edited the worst of the “offensive” commentary and published his little gem all over the place. Although it seems that there’s a huge reaction to the “me-first” crowd, it’s actually the same article reposted ad nauseam at online outlets.

Since Sirota is lumping the “tea-baggers” and “anti-tax” guys (apparently a group of “rich folks” groupies) in with his “me-first” crowd (apparently a group of “rich folks”) and conservatives in general, I don’t think I’ll waste too much time on his straw men. Not only do a majority of conservatives want substantive health care reform, many believe that increasing taxes to tackle OUR NATIONAL DEBT is in our country’s own best interest.

I think the thing I find most repugnant here is his (and the left’s version of the) constant claim that:

What you’ve discovered is that the me-first, screw-everyone-else crowd isn’t interested in fairness, empiricism or morality.

With 22,000 of their fellow countrymen dying annually for lack of health insurance and with Warren Buffett paying a lower effective tax rate than his secretary, the me-first, screw-everyone-else crowd is merely using the argot of fairness, empiricism and morality to hide its real motive: selfish greed.

No argument, however rational, is going to cure these narcissists of that grotesque disease.

This consistent claim to the moral high ground is laughable. So too are the claims to superior passion for fairness and empiricism. The entire notion that a dissenting opinion is somehow morally inferior is errant nonsense, and ascribing the “real motive: selfish greed” to his opponents is nothing more than childish projection… kind of like saying that Sirota’s real motive is “if you won’t be charitable on my terms, then I’ll take your damn money and force you to behave the way I want.”

One small quote from the research he derives his 22K from:

More broadly, these estimates should be viewed as reasonable indicators of the general magnitude of excess mortality that results from lack of insurance, not as precise “body counts.” The true number of deaths resulting from uninsurance may be somewhat higher or lower than the estimates in this paper, but that number is surely significant.

Throwing around a statistic as though it was a “precise body count” is worse than disingenuous, it’s deliberately misleading for the sake of an ideology rather than constructive discourse.

Despite these complaints, I agree with him concerning “some” of the people out there who are anti-tax simply to be anti-tax. I also happen to agree with much of his reporting on the actual tax facts he lists in his “guide to navigating the conversation.” What I find repulsive is the way he sinks to the lowest common denominator – and behaves precisely like those he loathes. The common tactic on BOTH the right and the left of claiming certain words are “code” for something morally offensive (“lazy” is a classic code word for “minorities” according to Sirota) is ridiculous. Lazy people are a minority – I believe the lion’s share of Americans is more than willing to work for their daily bread – and reasonably priced healthcare.

Sorry about the rant, but I decided I wanted to vent a little. I’m just tired of both sides using virtually the same tactics and crying foul. It’s dishonest and absurd. My great thanks to John for the always great counterpoint!

Ok, now I’ll head back toward where I want to be… posts headed toward the subject of Virtue and Freedom.

Cheers!