(Source: The Guardian)

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 10:09 AM | Comments (3)

October 25, 2007

The Lazy Factor

Yet Thompson is now finding that his foothold on a presidential nomination is far from certain. As if to symbolize the national shift (or perhaps to follow it), Carter has taken the dramatic step of withdrawing his support and endorsement, and like so many social conservatives in recent days, he's jumping aboard the Mike Huckabee wagon. But the reason for Carter's departure from the Fred camp is revealing. He writes:

...it's almost like Thompson isn't campaigning at all. Defending his campaign work schedule on Monday he said, "I'm going to do it the way I want to do it." That's precisely the problem, doing it "Fred's Way" means not doing much at all.

Still, I hung on until this past weekend. After seeing his sloppy, lackluster, uninspiring speech at the Washington Briefing I realized I couldn't do it anymore.

Responding solely to the lazy charge, Thompson noted his rise from teenage father to factory worker to federal prosecutor and Watergate counsel and finally to the Senate, not to mention several Hollywood movies along the way. "If a man can do all that and be lazy, I recommend it to everybody," he said. Indeed.

There is something appealing about Fred's "I don't give a damn" attitude. He isn't biting at the bit to pander and please, and more than any candidate in decades, he has a complete sense of who he is and what he stands for. Fred appears to have views which are truly his own and independent of polling data. When he stakes out policy positions or pens a piece for National Review, one gets the sense that he actually believes it and, just as rare, actually wrote it.

But laziness is deadly and balance is needed. We like knowing our leaders are worrying late into the night about how best to address the nation's problems, and we certainly don't want a president who feels as though they can kick back and wing it. Nevertheless, as Michael Crowley so artfully argues in a recent New Republic piece that is a must-read for anyone interested in the race, this is all hogwash. Thompson's so-called laziness should be celebrated.

For better or worse, style matters with presidential leadership, and Fred hasn't fully convinced voters his style is one to embrace. Still, in true Fred fashion, he may not really care what you think. As he told an interviewer, "One advantage you have in not having this as [a] lifelong ambition is that if it turns out that your calculation is wrong, it's not the end of the world."

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 03:22 PM | Comments (13)

October 24, 2007

Ron Paul and the Gold Standard

It's no secret that Ron Paul has become the libertarian's standard bearer in the 2008 presidential election. The Libertarian Party nominee has even agreed to endorse Ron Paul if he were to get the Republican nomination. Never before has a libertarian candidate received so much attention and so much support.

As a libertarian-minded conservative, there is much for me to like about Ron Paul. He is unquestionably the staunchest defender of federalism, small government and individual liberty of all candidates. He opposes the interventionist foreign policy of so-called neoconservatives, and it doesn't hurt that he's a thorn in the side of generally detestable, ignorant and unprincipled candidates.

Yet Paul has a quirky obsession with the gold standard that just doesn't add up. Last week, on the heels of a tremendous fundraising quarter and a solid debate performance, Paul sent a lengthy email to supporters attributing his recent success to his opposition to the Federal Reserve and support for the gold standard. In various debates, he has also discussed monetary policy in answering completely unrelated questions. One gets the impression that this is priority #1 for Paul. As such, it deserves some consideration.

A common refrain by Paul is that the Fed "prints money" or just issues new currency whenever it needs cash. Paul also blames much of the national debt on the Fed. These are mostly erroneous claims that stretch the truth.

The Federal Reserve (the "Fed") is a private banking system which has a lot of money. And by "a lot," I mean massive amounts. Using this money, the Fed buys and sells bonds on the open market. Buying expands the money supply to make interest rates go down to the target federal funds rate, and selling bonds causes the money supply to contract until rates go up to the target rate. This is how the Fed controls inflation and is the essence of monetary policy. Without these Fed actions we would have absolutely no control over monetary policy.

Paul has a tendency to blame inflation on this policy and its use of fiat money and then imply that it is the reason prices for some goods, such as oil, continue to rise. But even if you assume that the value and supply of gold remains constant (which are, of course, impossible assumptions), prices will still rise. When the supply of a good decreases, or the demand rises, the price of that good will rise as well, regardless of the currency.

Ron Paul still sees gold as the answer. Using it as currency would relieve us of inflation and certain debt, he argues, and free us from bondage to the evil Fed. But as PJ O'Rourke has noted previously, it is possible that future generations may decide gold is revolting or immoral, and suddenly the price/value of gold will plummet and cause inflation. Similarly, new massive gold deposits could be discovered and also cause inflation. The possibility of inflation under a gold standard is just as great as it is under fiat currency. And there would be absolutely nothing we could do about it.

The key to understanding Paul's position is understanding the libertarian philosophy. Whereas many people view the potential volatility above with skepticism, Paul embraces it as a natural market force. These market forces, he would argue, are far more desirable than government manipulation through an unaccountable Fed.

Paul's monetary policy reveals certain limits to my libertarian leanings. I understand his position and the justification for it, but I just don't buy it. A Paul presidency would bring about a tremendous number of positive changes, but this one - one of his favorites - I can do without.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 11:42 AM | Comments (15)

October 23, 2007

Privacy, Individualism and the Death of Community

The piece below the fold is by Eric Youngblood, a pastor at Crossroads Christian Church in Evansville, Indiana. Given the libertarian bent of some contributors to ITA, including myself, this piece seems to offer an important perspective.

Privacy, Individualism and the Death of Community
by Eric Youngblood

We sure do prize our privacy, don't we? It has become one of our commandments, "Thou Shalt Not Invade My Privacy!" Parents concerned about their children read a journal, check out something online and find out that things aren't so good. Maybe their kids are into something they shouldn't be. So when the parents confront the children, the response of the child is, "You read my journal? How dare you!!! You don't trust me?" Then the parent is forced to feel like they are in the wrong. So let's talk about true community, true friendships and relationships and see, in light of the culture that we live in, are they really possible...

For most of us, fear drives us to hide. "If you knew my thoughts, my fears and insecurities, my past sins, my struggles and motives, would you condemn me and run away from me and hide? Would you reject me?" That is essentially the struggle we have in life. As little children, we wore everything on the outside. When we were tired and grumpy, everyone knew. When we were hungry, everyone knew. When we were happy, everyone knew. When we were angry, everyone knew. As children we weren't very good at lying and covering up what we had or had not done. These are all things that we learned as we grew up. We learned by intimidation, by manipulation, by rejection and condemnation that there are things inside of us that we should never let other people see, or at least not until they get close enough. So we slowly begin our retreat inside. We put on a smile, we laugh and joke, we drown ourselves in distraction, endless entertainment and the pursuit of fulfilling our lusts. We bury our hurt and pain, we bury our anger and unforgiveness, we bury our disappoints over the failures of those closest to us.

Now in a backwards attempt, all of our hiding, our demands for privacy, the covering over of ourselves, it is our way of staying close to people. We don't want them to reject us and run away from us, so we don't let them see us for who we really are. We do it in our dress and makeup - hoping to hide our blemishes, accentuate the acceptable parts. We do it in our dating relationships, putting the best foot forward until they have already become emotionally attached enough to stay with us once the ugliness starts to come out. We do it at work - it is encouraged, if not demanded in the workplace. We do in our marriages as the husband and wife express frustration, disappointment and disapproval with one another. I mean, even in our closest relationships, we hide and can often be overcome by loneliness.

But here is the sad truth: We are often correct in assuming that people would reject us if they really saw us and knew us, warts, sins, failures and all. In their self-righteousness and self-deception, they would probably look down on us, turn away and say, "I don't believe it. I would never do that. How could they do that or think that or be like that?" And there we stand alone. But a sadder truth is that though we may be in the receiving end of rejection and judgment, we continue the cycle as we pass along rejection and condemnation to others who don't fit our mold.

That is the powerful thing of the story where the woman caught in the act of adultery is brought before Jesus. Did you catch what I just said, "CAUGHT IN THE ACT OF ADULTERY"? They probably didn't take the time to put a nice outfit on her or possibly even allow her to dress. She most likely was naked. Yes, she was physically naked before this angry, condemning mob, but she was also naked morally. She couldn't deny her sin. She couldn't act like it didn't happen, like some prominent people in politics today (I'm not naming names). She just laid there on the ground exposed for everyone to see. Put yourself in that position - exposed with nothing to hide behind. No clothes, no smile, no jokes, no personality - nothing can hide your nakedness. The mob is demanding Jesus to judge her and condemn her like they already have in their own minds and are ready to condemn her to death with rocks on their hands. I mean, it's the law, right? So Jesus stooped down to write on the ground. What did he write? Whatever it was, people started dropping their stones and walking away, starting with the oldest. I can only imagine. Listing sins? Listing names of people who had committed adultery in the crowd? Listing the adulterous thoughts of these very zealous and religious people? Whatever it was, everybody left. There she lay on the ground, still naked and now alone with Jesus. So what did Jesus say to her? He knew everything. He knew her actions, but he also knew her thoughts. He knew her loneliness and her shame. He knew her longing. He knew her craving for love and acceptance. He knew her completely and fully. Yes, his eyes most likely saw her physical nakedness, but more than that, his eyes could see right into the nakedness of her heart and uncover all of that. And then he speaks, "Woman, where are those that condemn you?" Yes, she was embarrassed, humiliated and guilty, but she also was very scared because this angry mob wanted to kill her in condemnation on the spot. So she probably was not looking up at this point. But after he speaks, just picture her lifting her head, looking around, and everyone is gone. Then Jesus says, "Neither do i condemn you. Go and sin no more!!!"

Have you ever experienced the release of guilt before? Guilt and shame for something you did or said can weigh you down to the point that it seems like it weighs you down physically. But something happens. Maybe you confess it to someone. Maybe you are caught and punished, and the act of punishment frees you to let go. But the weight is released and there is lightness in your heart and spirit. I remember in high school when this happened. I had been living a hidden life from my mom, and then one day she found something in my coat. And there I was naked. I couldn't lie. I couldn't cover up. I was exposed. And she punished me, but she also poured her love on me. And the weirdest thing happened. I was grounded for a month, but I hadn't felt so happy and free for a long time. Multiply that a thousand times over, and that is probably what this woman felt.

Let me finish with this verse I read the other day in 1 John 1:7. "But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin." Light and darkness are a picture of the two different kinds of lives. We hide in darkness, fear of being exposed. Jesus actually said that some people hated the light because they loved evil and needed the cover of darkness to continue on in their sin. But the light - that is where things are seen for what they really are. That is where we can't hide anymore, where we stand naked and exposed for what we really are. The light is where we put aside our external attempts (often called "works" or self-righteousness) to cover over our nakedness, to whitewash our tombs, as it were. And do you realize that it is only in the light that you and I, that anyone can really love and be loved? It says that it is in the light that we have "fellowship" with one another. This doesn't mean we get together and see a movie or have cookies or play games (you know, all those things that we call "fellowship" in our day). Fellowship meant "oneness, sharing, communion." It is the place where we really connect with another person. I mean, that's what we are all looking for, isn't it? That's what all our songs, movies, TV shows and books seemed to be consumed by. But notice what else John says. he says that yes, a real fellowship can only happen in the light, but it also says that it is in the light that the "blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin." We all carry around guilt, shame and regret over things we have done, said, or maybe not done and said. It is only in the nakedness at the foot of the cross where we are going to find all that we are looking for. In the garden, Adam and Eve sinned and they tried to hide from God and also to hide their nakedness. Then they tried to blame one another. We have been battling the same thing since the beginning of mankind. But there Jesus stands while we are laying on the ground naked, ashamed, hiding our faces. Can you hear him saying to you, "Where are those that condemn you? Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more." It is in this light that we are finally free to love and be loved.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 03:24 PM | Comments (3)

Could Pirates and Ninjas be Far Behind?

Delivering a stunning uppercut to the GOP field, superhero Chuck Norris has endorsed former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee for President. Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson will really have to act tough now if they still want to win the macho conservative primary.

(hat tip to Mark Byron)

Posted by David Darlington at 10:19 AM | Comments (5)

October 22, 2007

This will give you pause

There are more World of Warcraft players in America than farmers. Perhaps Ron Paul does have a chance after all.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 05:19 PM | Comments (1)

Rockbox

Tired of your iPod's same old bland interface? Want to be able to adjust base, treble, and other playback settings? How about some games other than the limited set Apple pre-installed or offers for $5 a pop?

Check out Rockbox, a free open-source alternative firmware for iPod and other portable music players. Installation for the iPod is very simple. First, enable disk access to the iPod in iTunes. Then either use the automatic installer, or simply unzip the Rockbox files into a directory on your iPod (just like you would a flash drive), then run the patch program to update the firmware loader.

The one drawback to installing Rockbox is that it won't be able to read the music files you've placed on your iPod using iTunes--at least, not without some additional work. But if you have spare storage space, you can load files specifically for Rockbox and switch between it and the original Apple interface whenever you want to. Both firmwares can coexist on your iPod without interfering with each other. I'm currently using the original firmware for listening to music, and Rockbox for playing chess.

Posted by Eric Seymour at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2007

Sick in America

Not long ago John Stossel, television's libertarian champion, did a fantastic piece on the state of American health care. It's available on YouTube in six parts: One, Two, Three, Four, Five and Six. Like a good book, it's best to watch it only if you can watch the whole thing.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 10:51 PM | Comments (20)

AlloDerm is people!

This Reason article from March about the macabre industry which processes human tissue into surgical products is rather apropos reading for the Halloween season. The author, Kerry Howley, points out that everyone is making a profit from donated human remains--except for the individuals (or their family members) who make the decision to donate their body tissues. Howley suggests that people should be allowed to sell their body tissues--a transaction which is strictly forbidden by current law.

As opposed to the strictly-regulated system of organ donation, tissue donation is relatively unregulated. A wide array of for-profit enterprises have sprung up to collect and process donated tissues. By law, they are not allowed to sell the tissue, but rather to charge a "reasonable" price for their services. Whether the tissue banks and biotech firms are providing services as the law describes, or whether they are (as Howley argues) actually selling body parts as commodities seems to be a matter of perspective. If I buy a wooden object that an artist has sculpted from a piece of driftwood, am I paying him for the wood, or for the service he has provided in transforming it into something I'd like to display in my home?

There does appear to be some need for reform in the tissue donation/processing system. But I'm not convinced that allowing people to sell their tissue would solve anything. In true libertarian fashion, Howley implies that the scarcity of organs available for transplant and the relative availability of tissues is due to the strict regulation of the former and light regulation of the latter. However, as the article mentions, the chief reason for the scarcity of organs is the limited set of circumstances under which they can be donated--they generally must come from healthy, young people who died from car crashes or other lethal injuries. Tissues, by contrast, can be taken from older people, and from people who die from chronic disease, etc.

Nor does it seem to me that allowing people to sell their body parts (or, more likely, the right to take ownership of their body parts upon their death) would increase the supply for patients in need of transplants. Doing so would change many people's perception of the re-use of body parts from a noble, altruistic act to a queasy transaction. Since it is likely that there would still be fewer organs available for transplant than patients in need, a true market for organs would turn the current waiting list system into a bidding war. While I oppose socializing health care, I also cannot stomach the idea of a purely capitalistic system where a rich person could buy a new organ to replace one they've ruined by smoking or alcohol abuse, while a poor person with a congenital defect has no opportunity for a better and/or longer life.

Posted by Eric Seymour at 09:01 AM | Comments (5)

October 17, 2007

Firefly

I just finished watching Joss Whedon's brilliant and short-lived series Firefly on DVD.

I'm sure this has been more than well-covered elsewhere on the Internet, but I feel compelled to note that Fox executives are despicable.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 09:28 PM | Comments (4)

Calvin on Snoopy

Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes has a great review of Schulz and Peanuts, a new biography of the Charlie Brown creator.

Posted by David Darlington at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)

October 16, 2007

Videotaping Police

Earlier this summer Radley Balko penned a compelling column arguing in favor of a citizen's right to videotape police (the related ITA post and comments can be found here). The evidence supporting such freedom seemingly mounts daily as ordinary citizens videotape police conducting illegal or unethical activities, typically to the citizens' detriment.

In May in Oregon police conducted an illegal search, destroying property illegally along the way. When nearby residents videotaped the incident, they were "shot with a bean bag gun and a Taser". Why? Because they had "refused to drop the camera which could be used as a weapon." You can make up your own mind by viewing the video here.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:21 PM | Comments (1)

October 15, 2007

Defining Sexuality One Vote at a Time

"We want it to be helpful to the church and faithful to its core convictions. Our task force, like the whole church, represents diverse backgrounds. There is genuine respect for one another, reflective of our unity in Christ, but we do not see all things in the same way."

The latest installment in this process, the statement "Free in Christ to Serve the Neighbor: Lutherans Talk About Sexuality," carries a title that Garrison Keillor couldn't eclipse and includes sessions such as"Sexuality, Culture, and Freedom," "Sexuality and Social Institutions," and "Sexuality, Money and the Bottom Line." Responses to the statement are due by 1 November, at which time the Task Force will develop a preliminary official social statement, which will be distributed to the denomination during March 2008. It will be this preliminary statement, based on reader responses, that the denomination will finesse into a final official statement that the Churchwide Assembly will accept or reject in 2009. It's kinda like Nicaea or Chalcedon, with a dash of democracy.

Posted by Seth Zirkle at 07:35 PM | Comments (19)

October 12, 2007

The Conservative Malaise

This has a lot to do with it:
toothpastefordinner.com

I sometimes wonder how the current GOP leadership can talk about limited government and fiscal responsibility without bursting into laughter.

Posted by David Darlington at 10:35 AM | Comments (1)

October 11, 2007

The Pedigree of the Conservative Mongrel

The debate over what is wrong with conservatism has a lot to do with the complete mess wrought by the national Republican Party, but as we've noted before, the conservative label has been broken for a long time -- the current troubles are only the latest consequence of that confusion.

The key to understanding the Right is to recognize that conservatism exists on three tiers. The first one is the dispositional conservatism David Brooks brings to light. The second is the ideological conservatism, of which there are different -- and sometimes conflicting -- kinds. The third is identity conservatism, which is perhaps the real source of our current woes.

Contra Brooks, the story begins not with Burke but with Kirk, or at least the mid-20th-Century writers who sparked the conservative movement. The goal at this early stage was to simply give intellectual heft to conservative dispositions (for which Burke was rediscovered and recruited). These dispositions are relatively modest, and Russell Kirk identified "six canons of conservative thought" in his 1953 work The Conservative Mind:

1. belief in a transcendent moral order, based on divine intent or natural law
2. social continuity, with value given to the gradualness of change
3. prescription, faith in tradition and a consciousness of the limits of reason
4. prudence, a recognition of the complexity and fragility of society and the disastrous consequences of seeking to construct society anew
5. variety, a respect and appreciation for the differences in men and societies and a deep distrust of the uniformity of equality
6. imperfectability, the acceptance that the imperfect nature of man necessarily leads to an imperfect society and so the impossibility of utopia on earth

The intellectual descriptions by those early conservative thinkers paved the way for the ideological prescriptions of the emerging conservative movement. In an article I linked to two years ago, Austin Bramwell (incidentally, one of the trustees of National Review) elided the canons and equated conservatism with these ideological doctrines: "limited government, anti-utopianism, free-market economics, patriotism, traditional morality and religion, federalism, anticommunism, and belief in 'absolutes.'" The distinction is an important one, as Daniel Larison points out in his response to Bramwell. These tenets may be an extension of conservative temperament, but they aren't the necessary manifestations of it. The result is that Bramwell and other conservatives are mistaken about the foundations of conservatism -- the dispositions, not the agenda, undergird the movement.

Of course, those doctrines Bramwell identifies are only the most broadly-accepted. Unmoored from the canons, a variety of ideological prescriptions have fallen under the label conservative. Sometimes these different platforms war with each other, if not over the label then over the priorities of the Republican Party, the party of conservatism.

In the practical realm, ideological conservatism can largely ignore dispositional conservatism, for two reasons. First, few remember dispositional conservatism (which is why Brooks can wring a column out of simply bringing it up). I marvel that there was once a time when the classic works of the mid-Century thinkers were pored over by university students; my own experience was that a College Republican was considered well-read if he surfed NRO. The GOP has no need to appeal to the ancients in any substantive way because so few of the activists within the party demand it. Second, even if dispositional conservatism is remembered, it has no apparent utility. This is part of what Bramwell describes as Holy Grail thinking:

Each conservative writer claimed to have uncovered the Holy Grail -- the argument or principle that would expose the errors of liberalism (and communism, socialism, feminism, etc.) once and for all . . .

Most [conservatives] simply assume that the Grail has already been found. Thus, they breezily dismiss liberals with some of their favorite epithets . . . Never mind that liberals, nonplussed by the vituperative quality of right-wing thought, themselves reject these labels. Someone out there has already proved that one or another will stick.

Indeed, the more a right-winger exalts one set of ideas, the more marginal he becomes; by contrast, the more foggy he remains about what the Holy Grail is, the more influence he can have. Thus, on the one extreme, the votaries of Ayn Rand refuse to talk to right-wingers who do not take Rand's works as gospel; somewhere in the middle, "Claremont conservatives" sometimes castigate those who do not share their enthusiasm for the Declaration of Independence, yet stop short of trying to expunge them from the movement; finally, intellectual omnivores such as Buckley never allow themselves to be identified with one conservative theorist or another. In the end, nearly all the competing schools of thought manage to co-operate.

Conservatism has reached an unacknowledged consensus about the outcome of the theoretical debates of the '50s and '60s. The consensus holds, first, that someone has discovered the Holy Grail that will vindicate conservatism once and for all, otherwise why be a conservative in the first place? Second, it holds that, whatever the Grail actually is, it does not do any good to describe it with too much specificity. These beliefs contradict each other, yet the conservative consensus has proved remarkably stable.

So long as electoral outcomes were fruitful, the coalition of the three major kinds of prescriptive conservatism, i.e., social conservatives, business interests, and small-government types, could get along without bickering over limited political capital. In these times, that resource has become scarce, and the bickering has flared. The Economist blames the woes of the GOP on the crack-up of this coalition. Brooks blames them on the tension between the temperamental conservatives and ideological conservatives in general. Both of these analyses ignore the major source of the current conservative crack-up: identity conservatives.

Patrick Hynes identified them when he declared, "let's be clear, American conservatism has devolved from a movement into an identity group." An identity group is blind to their own faults, hostile to even constructive criticism, unflaggingly loyal to the ingroup, disinterested in philosophy, and devoted to power as an end unto itself. This thirst for power, combined with assurance that conservatism, whatever it happened to be, was right, led to all sorts of mischief: the exploitation of wedge social issues, abandonment of fiscal responsibility, disastrous foreign policy, hypocrisy, incompetence, and corruption. And still, there are die-hard partisans, and they are the face of the conservative movement, probably because everyone else has left (or was thrown out).

And here is where I will concede what every other commentator has said about Brooks: he's half right. To some degree, the awful policy prescriptions of ideological conservatives have offended the latent temperamental conservatism of many Americans. But the real heat, the real outrage, has come from the disasters the identity conservatives have cheered and abetted, and this, I think, is what John Cole is on to:

For starters, people got tired of being associated with these drooling retards. Then, when they realized that these drooling retards had ideological allies running the show in the Bush administration and then began to experience their idiotic policies, they moved from disgusted to outright hostile.

Like me. It had nothing to do with Burke, and everything to do with what the party had become. A bunch of bedwetting, loudmouth, corrupt, hypocritical, and incompetent boobs with a mean streak a mile long and no sense of fair play or proportion.

Seriously -- what does the current Republican party stand for? Permanent war, fear, the nanny state, big spending, torture, execution on demand, complete paranoia regarding the media, control over your body, denial of evolution and outright rejection of science, AND ZOMG THEY ARE GONNA MAKE US WEAR BURKHAS, all the while demanding that in order to be a good American I have to spend most of every damned day condemning half my fellow Americans as terrorist appeasers.

And that isn't even getting into the COMPLETE and TOTAL corruption of our political processes at every level.

The current conservative movement is broken because temperamental conservatives and ideological conservatives who aren't vulgar and crazy have been marginalized, almost hidden from view, partly because there are so few of them and partly because they find it so difficult to distinguish themselves. That leaves the identity group, a pack of conservative mongrels, unprincipled and Chauvinistic, tearing at the scraps.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 07:30 AM | Comments (8)

October 10, 2007

How Cool It Is

A graphical depiction of the discovery of new music.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 08:11 PM | Comments (1)

On Burke and Bush

David Brooks's essay on "The Republican Collapse" is a must-read, if you haven't already. In it, Brooks argues that the failure of Republican conservatism in recent times is due to the fact that it's a "creedal" conservatism, rather than a conservatism of disposition like that of Edmund Burke, characterized by "a reverence for tradition, a suspicion of radical change." I think there's something to Brooks's argument, even if it is somewhat simplistic. Or perhaps it just speaks to the kind of conservatism I've always identified with--a kind of conservatism that says "let's slow down and think this through before we go changing things"--rather than have any transforming ideas of its own. It certainly explains my discomfort with Christian Nation types or world-conquering neoconservatives. A few more quotes:

When conservatism came to America, it became creedal. Free market conservatives built a creed around freedom and capitalism. Religious conservatives built a creed around their conception of a transcendent order. Neoconservatives and others built a creed around the words of Lincoln and the founders.

Over the years, the voice of Burke has been submerged beneath the clamoring creeds. In fact, over the past few decades the conservative ideologies have been magnified, while the temperamental conservatism of Burke has been abandoned.[...]

The world is too complex, the Burkean conservative believes, for rapid reform. Existing arrangements contain latent functions that can be neither seen nor replaced by the reformer. The temperamental conservative prizes epistemological modesty, the awareness of the limitations on what we do and can know, what we can and cannot plan.[...]

To put it bluntly, over the past several years, the G.O.P. has made ideological choices [the war in Iraq, doctrinaire free market ideology, too much social policy meddling] that offend conservatism's Burkean roots. This may seem like an airy-fairy thing that does nothing more than provoke a few dissenting columns from William F. Buckley, George F. Will and Andrew Sullivan. But suburban, Midwestern and many business voters are dispositional conservatives more than creedal conservatives. They care about order, prudence and balanced budgets more than transformational leadership and perpetual tax cuts. It is among these groups that G.O.P. support is collapsing.

UPDATE: I thought this bit from Larison's post was good too:

Perhaps it is implicit in the rest of the column, but Brooks does not seem to stress enough that the reason why GOP support among these groups ["suburban, Midwestern, and many business voters"] is collapsing is that ideologically driven policies take little account of present realities and attempt to shoehorn society into an imagined model. GOP support isn't simply collapsing because its increasingly ideological nature offends the temperamental conservatives in America, but because the policies it has managed to implement have generally failed even on their own terms. It is in no small part ideology's hostility to reality and the repeated, doomed attempts to force reality to conform to absurd expectations that makes the temperamental conservative flee from it.

Posted by David Darlington at 07:22 PM | Comments (6)

October 09, 2007

Of Mars and Venus

John at Confessing Evangelical points us to a fascinating series of excerpts in the Guardian from a new book titled The Myth of Mars and Venus, by Deborah Cameron. Among other things, the book argues that the differences between how men and women communicate are far smaller than we have been led to believe. Perhaps most surprising of all, research suggests that men actually talk more than women. The reason is insightful and may have implications beyond the male/female divide:

The reviewers are inclined to believe that this is a case of gender and amount of talk being linked indirectly rather than directly: the more direct link is with status, in combination with the formality of the setting (status tends to be more relevant in formal situations). The basic trend, especially in formal and public contexts, is for higher-status speakers to talk more than lower-status ones. The gender pattern is explained by the observation that in most contexts where status is relevant, men are more likely than women to occupy high-status positions; if all other things are equal, gender itself is a hierarchical system in which men are regarded as having higher status.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 09:38 AM | Comments (4)

October 08, 2007

Cheer up, chaps

As a nice follow up on Zach and David's recent posts demonstrating some societal ills may not be as bad as they're perceived, Stephen Moore draws attention to a new United Nations report call "State of the Future," which concludes: "People around the world are becoming healthier, wealthier, better educated, more peaceful, more connected, and they are living longer." Read the whole thing.

Update: Perhaps this kind of news hasn't been accepted very well because negativity is contagious.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 03:04 PM | Comments (2)

October 07, 2007

Artificial Resolution

So, does this finally prove intelligent design?

Posted by Zach Wendling at 12:43 PM | Comments (11)

October 06, 2007

A More Perfect Union

This New York Times article on divorce, which Zach linked to earlier this week, is worth another look. It confirms what I've heard anecdotally in the past couple of years: that the declension narrative about divorce (that divorces are on the rise) we've been hearing in the mainstream culture, and from family values advocates, is incorrect. A few key paragraphs:

THE great myth about divorce is that marital breakup is an increasing threat to American families, with each generation finding their marriages less stable than those of their parents. [...]

The story of ever-increasing divorce is a powerful narrative. It is also wrong. In fact, the divorce rate has been falling continuously over the past quarter-century, and is now at its lowest level since 1970. While marriage rates are also declining, those marriages that do occur are increasingly more stable. For instance, marriages that began in the 1990s were more likely to celebrate a 10th anniversary than those that started in the 1980s, which, in turn, were also more likely to last than marriages that began back in the 1970s. [...]

Why has the great divorce myth persisted so powerfully? Reporting on our families is a lot like reporting on the economy: statistical tales of woe provide the foundation for reform proposals. The only difference is that conservatives use these data to make the case for greater government intervention in the marriage market, while liberals use them to promote deregulation of marriage.

But a useful family policy should instead be based on facts. The facts are that divorce is down, and today's marriages are more stable than they have been in decades. Perhaps it is worth stocking up on silver anniversary cards after all.

This reminded me of a piece I wrote for ITA nearly a year ago. In it, I accused Christian family values advocates of committing a minor sin by holding up the 1950s as a great time for traditional family values, when in fact the era was a rather exceptional era of family cohesion in response to external pressures, as argued by historian Elaine Tyler May and others. The point is, as the article above mentions, conservative family values advocates have a vested interest in promoting the 1950s as a great time for families, and in the declension narrative of divorce, for political reasons. Of course, liberals need marriages to be in trouble as well, so they can push a whole different set of reforms.

Then you have the baby boomers, who need the 1950s to be so traditional so that they can continue to imagine the 1960s as the most important time in the history of the planet. :)

Posted by David Darlington at 03:53 PM | Comments (2)

October 05, 2007

By The Way

You have bad taste in music.

(hat tip: Matthew Stevenson, who has a new website)

Posted by Zach Wendling at 07:34 AM | Comments (1)

Haidt and Libertarians

Where do libertarians fit in Haidt's moral calculus? Andrew Sullivan posts a graph showing the scores of self-described libertarians who've taken the YourMorals test. They side with the liberals on the group concerns, and yet, confounding expectations, they side with the conservatives on the individual concerns. Overall, they score rather low on all dimensions of morality, a bit troubling for an ideology that considers itself principled.

I think it is because the logic of libertarian, or really simply market, economics is poorly reflected in Haidt's morality. Part of the reason is that economics is positive as well as normative, so some stances probably do not require any morality other than the conviction to be realistic. For the majority of issues, though, libertarians, liberals, and populists all make moral cases for their differences over economic policy. Haidt does explain the liberals and populists, but which axis supports economic freedom?

The absence of a clear answer does not reveal the im- or amorality of libertarianism, but rather the limits of Haidt's research. He and his colleague base their insights on cross-cultural surveys of morality, interpreted in light of cultural evolution. Those insights necessarily reflect the history of morality, not its future. According to this logic, moral sentiments will be contingent on social progression.

The sophisticated study of economics has occurred relatively recently in human history, as has the rise of classical liberalism. Could this be the emergence of a sixth dimension of morality? Arnold Kling summarizes the novelty:

Steven Pinker, a professor of cognitive psychology at MIT, points out that it is natural to resist economic reasoning. One of the chapters of Pinker's recent book, The Blank Slate, is called "Out of Our Depths." In this chapter, Pinker describes certain fields where the knowledge that we have acquired is challenging for cognitive faculties that were designed for prehistoric hunters and gatherers. One of these difficult fields is economics.

Pinker cites the work of anthropologist Alan Fiske, who has found that all interpersonal transactions can be sorted into four relational models.

• Communal Sharing
• Authority Ranking
• Equality Matching
• Market Pricing

In a Communal Sharing transaction, such as a family dinner, every member of the relationship is entitled to share in what is available.

In an Authority Ranking transaction, such as a decision made in a traditional corporation, there is a linear hierarchy, with people lower in the hierarchy deferring to those who are higher up.

In an Equality Matching transaction, such as taking turns going through a four-way stop, people operate according to an intuitive sense of balance and fairness.

In a Market Pricing transaction, such as buying a used car, people make decisions on the basis of calculating costs and benefits.

Of course, it is the Market Pricing mode of interacting that is studied in economics. However, Market Pricing requires techniques and thought processes that have not always been available to mankind. As Pinker points out,

Market Pricing is absent in hunter-gatherer societies, and we know it played no role in our evolutionary history because it relies on technologies like writing, money, and formal mathematics, which appeared only recently.
--p.234

Or maybe libertarians are just flattering themselves that they represent the next stage in human evolution.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 07:23 AM | Comments (6)

October 04, 2007

Quick Links

Here are some pieces so interesting I'm at a loss for further commentary:

• A map of the 2004 election, better than the ones you've seen before.
• "In fact, the divorce rate has been falling continuously over the past quarter-century . . ."
• The clever scheme to fund the Ansari X-Prize
• "Did Tea Drinking Lead to Urbanization?"
• In 2005, US forces shot 250,000 bullets for every insurgent killed.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 08:29 AM | Comments (3)

October 03, 2007

Faith is the Expression of Tradition

During today's general audience, Pope Benedict continued his reflection on the Church Fathers:

[Saint Cyril] places himself willingly, explicitly, within the Tradition of the Church, in which he recognizes the assurance of continuity with the Apostles and with Christ himself...This was his criterion, valid nonetheless even today: The faith of the People of God is the expression of Tradition, it is the guarantee of sane doctrine. Thus he writes to Nestorius: "It is necessary to convey to the people the teaching and the interpretation of the faith in the most irreprehensible way and to remember that whoever scandalizes only one of the children who believe in Christ will suffer an intolerable punishment."

Posted by Seth Zirkle at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)

Not Too Charitable

Free Exchange spanks Robert Reich, hard, for writing something moronic. I'm amazed by how perfectly he epitomizes the nasty caricature of the arrogant, liberal technocrat.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 07:42 AM | Comments (6)

The Moral Calculus

I am not as influential as the New York Times. Almost a year ago, I noted Jonathan Haidt's theory of moral sentiments, and no one blinked. Then the Times does a big write up about it based upon his new book, and now everyone's talking about it.

You should read the article to get the full gist of the theory, but briefly:

[Haidt] identified five components of morality that were common to most cultures. Some concerned the protection of individuals, others the ties that bind a group together.

Of the moral systems that protect individuals, one is concerned with preventing harm to the person and the other with reciprocity and fairness. Less familiar are the three systems that promote behaviors developed for strengthening the group. These are loyalty to the in-group, respect for authority and hierarchy, and a sense of purity or sanctity.

The most remarkable thing about the theory is, as I noted so long ago, it helps explain the divide between liberals and conservatives; namely, that conservatives have a deeper appreciation for all five axes than do liberals, who tend to focus on those dimensions that are concerned with the individual. Consequently, conservatives have a pretty good grasp on where liberals are coming from, whereas conservatives befuddle liberals. Will Wilkinson elaborates at greater length in this essay, which dissects some errant ways in which liberals have tried to explain their opponents -- and their elecoral losses. (No doubt other explanations will fall into the same pitfalls.) More broadly, political gurus who fail to use these axes to measure the public, their parties, and their platforms may be destined to fail. That would include the Right.

Briefly, Rod Dreher applies the logic:

The high Authority-low Loyalty scores probably explain my disinterest in supporting the Republican Party in 2006. They had Authority. They misused it badly. But my other scores indicate why I'm disinterested in supporting the Democratic Party either.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 07:25 AM | Comments (3)

October 02, 2007

Turning the Tide at Ave Maria Law School?

Founded by Domino's mogul Thomas Monaghan and molded in the wake of John Paul's Ex Corde Ecclesia, Ave Maria School of Law embodies the modern identity of what it means to be a Catholic university...until recently, so far as the alumni board of the School is concerned. For the second time, the alumni board has given a vote of "no confidence," calling for the ouster of Dean Bernard Dobranski and Board Chairman Monaghan, who gave more than $50 million to establish the School. At the heart of the imbroglio is Dobranski's and Monaghan's desire to move the School to Naples, Florida, which now appears to be a done deal. Numerous faculty and alumni believe the move will damage the School's nascent reputation (already one of the highest bar passage rates in the country) and alumni support network. Since fall of 2006, the leadership of Ave has selectively silenced faculty who have expressed concern over the leadership of Dobranski and Monaghan.

Many in the Catholic education community are troubled by what has transpired at Ave. The statement issued by the contributing authors of the Mirror of Justice blog perhaps best captures the tenor of those concerned: Not only are the actions of Ave's leadership damaging academic integrity, but also dismantling the Catholic identity and mission of the School. It remains to be seen whether Dobranski and Monaghan will heed the call of their alumni.

Posted by Seth Zirkle at 12:25 PM | Comments (4)

In Every Box

I recently watched Tyler Cowen's intriguing speech to Google on prizes and grants. I think prizes are tantalizing, so it is an important message about when, where, and how they can be most useful, or at least moreso than grants.

I was particularly struck by how prizes can obviate one of the main criticisms of grants, namely, that it is impossible to give money away for free. The common argument goes like this: a granting institution announces $10,000 ready for distribution to the worthy applicant. Ten organizations apply for the grant, each spending $1,000 on the effort. This particular example if a zero-sum game, but it illustrates the hidden transaction costs that lower the efficiency of granting.

Prizes, on the other hand, can have runner-up awards, and even non-winners may have done work that has broader applications, i.e., positive externalities. Toiling away at a grant application is wasted effort if one doesn't get the grant. Toiling away at the prized activity can accomplish something even if one doesn't win.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 08:05 AM | Comments (2)

Unreal Time

Without delving into the intellectual honesty of Bjorn Lomborg, I would point out that Scott Adams' account of his treatment on Bill Maher's boorish show Real Time is revealing. Adams' is a fan of the show, but I think this illustrates the limitations both of Maher's festival of inanity and television in general: it is hard to discuss a complex issue in a medium that lends itself to distraction (including the cavalcade of celebridiots Maher regularly invites onto the show to recite bumpersticker arguments). Lomborg has an interesting point about complex public policy; I'm not sure what good it does to go to an author, a comedian, and a musician for commentary.

Even though Lomborg isn't an economist, he clearly is familiar with the field. And Adam's main point is that training in economics is an inoculation against cognitive dissonance, since economists are able to think about issues from every perspective. I'm doubtful of this claim.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 08:02 AM | Comments (0)

Acts 28:16

The excerpt below is from a devotional by Dennis Kinlaw, sent to me by a friend. For whatever reason I feel compelled to share it.

"I love the ending to the book of Acts, which is the final story of the apostle Paul in the early church. Paul was a courageous spokesman for the gospel of Christ. He had given his life for the message, and at the end of his life he found himself under house arrest in Rome. In spite of the fact that he had to live shackled to a Roman soldier, he spent his time teaching people about Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God.

"If you had lived in Rome in those days, where would you have thought the future was? The typical person would have looked to Nero's palace for the power and the future, believing that the significant figure was the emperor ruling from his throne. The reality is that today, two thousand years later, we name our dogs Nero and our sons Paul. The world's people are never the people of God. The one who cast a long shadow over the next two thousand years was one who was tucked away in a simple house and shackled to a Roman soldier, not the one who sat on the throne, dictating to people how they should please him.

"Do you feel that your life is being wasted? Are you in some sort of captivity? If so, take heart. I am sure that Paul felt exactly the same way. Instead of taking the gospel to Spain, he was chained to a guard in Rome, influencing only those who came to visit him. But God's ways are not our ways, and God used Paul in the place of his captivity, with all its limitations, to change all of human history."

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:06 AM | Comments (2)

October 01, 2007

Novelty Trumps Utility

"The rules are simple: I put the self-timer on 2 seconds, push the button and try to get as far from the camera as I can."

Running From Camera

Note: This didn't make it into my RSS feed.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 07:39 AM | Comments (0)

The Weight Loss Post

Apparently, everything we think we knew about weight loss is wrong. Here is Gary Taubes in the New York Magazine:

For the last 60 years, researchers studying obesity and weight regulation have insisted on treating the human body as a thermodynamic black box: Calories go in one side, they come out the other, and the difference (calories in minus calories out) ends up as either more or less fat. The fat tissue, in this thermodynamic model, has nothing to say in the matter. Thus the official recommendations to eat less and exercise more and assuredly you'll get thinner. (Or at least not fatter.) And in the strict sense this is true -- you can starve a human, or a rat, and he will indeed lose weight -- but that misses the point. Humans, rats, and all living organisms are ruled by biology, not thermodynamics. When we deprive ourselves of food, we get hungry. When we push ourselves physically, we get tired. Our bodies, like all living organisms, have evolved a fantastically complex web of feedback loops.

Unfortunately, these two factors are inside that black box. We don't fully understand them, but we do know that diet and exercise can influence them in counterproductive ways. Taubes spends much of his article detailing how exercise can not makes us thin. Part of the reason is our metabolism does not respond to exercise in ways that sustain caloric losses. Another is that vigorous exercise increases our appetite: the more one works out, the hungrier one becomes.

For its part, there is now considerable evidence that diets don't work; initial losses are small, and in the long-term, dieters even end up gaining. Diet has complex interactions with both appetite and metabolism, as Gina Kolata explains in an excerpt from her new book, reprinted here in the New York Times. Kolata endorses the view that every individual has a set range of weight, 10-20 pounds, in which they will normally fluctuate. This range acts like a thermostat, and when pushed outside that range, the "complex web of feedback loops" will return a person to his normal weight through metabolism and appetite.

We can work down to the lower end of each of our ranges, so it is possible to lose 10 lbs. with some self-discipline. But even this expenditure of will-power takes a lot of effort, and remember, will-power is a limited resource. How much harder must it be for the obese, who must push far below their range to fall into what our culture deems normal? Their conscious expenditure of will-power must overcome crippling biological impulses. Their bodies are sending out every signal that they are starving, metabolism slows, and appetite skyrockets. Kolata summarizes research with weight loss subjects:

The Rockefeller subjects also had a psychiatric syndrome, called semi-starvation neurosis, which had been noticed before in people of normal weight who had been starved. They dreamed of food, they fantasized about food or about breaking their diet. They were anxious and depressed; some had thoughts of suicide. They secreted food in their rooms. And they binged . . .

Eventually, more than 50 people lived at the hospital and lost weight, and every one had physical and psychological signs of starvation. There were a very few who did not get fat again, but they made staying thin their life's work, becoming Weight Watchers lecturers, for example, and, always, counting calories and maintaining themselves in a permanent state of starvation.

They are people whose bodies are programmed to send the calories they consume to the muscles to be burned rather than to the fat tissue to be stored -- the Lance Armstrongs of the world. The rest of us tend to go the other way, shunting off calories to fat tissue, where they accumulate to excess.

And so we have a new frontier in weight regulation research. Hopefully, science will follow where fads have gone before. The Atkins Diet is a theoretical approach to changing metabolism, but it ultimately fails (among other reasons) because it is not sustainable. For whatever reason, we have an innate appetite for carbohydrates. Seth Roberts' Shangri-La Diet is an interesting stab from the other direction; it claims to be able to perpetually lower appetite. In a world of hundreds of diets, I suppose it's natural that at least two would have stumbled on the new insights. But maybe now we can stop groping in the dark.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 07:09 AM | Comments (6)