It would seem that the left still enjoys painting Rand and Objectivists as giggling baby-eaters. A recent spate of disinformation pieces have been circling the internet here and here. The basic gist is that they drop context on some lines taken out of Ayn Rand's personal journals in which she comments on the William Hickman kidnapping murder of a young girl in the 1920s. It's funny too, because they're really just plagiarizing the same drivel that was passed about a few years ago with an 2005 article here. The response should be the same as the response it got then...click the big red x in the upper right of the window. A brief discussion on the Objectivism Online Forum should help clarify how the argument is specious. I've included a link to that discussion here.
I quote the very eloquent summation of one poster, Dismuke:
"To summarize - that article drops several bits of very important context.
1. The fact that the journal entries were PRIVATE, not intended for publication and, therefore, the contents were not written for the purpose of being objective to any audience other than Ayn Rand's own eyes.
2. The entirety of Ayn Rand's explicit philosophy which was consistent across volumes of works written over the span of many decades - including her philosophy's contempt for those who initiate force.
3. The fact that Ayn Rand herself dismissed it all as probable "idealizing."
4. The fact that, Ayn Rand, unlike the author of the article, did not equate self-interest with "walking across corpses" and, therefore, did not regard an out-of-context admiration for certain attributes of a brutal murderer's statements and demeanor as having possible negative implications for a morality of self-interest worthy of giving serious consideration to in the mental exercise the journal entry documents.
Now, if someone who was very familiar with the William Hickman case but had never heard of Ayn Rand before somehow stumbled across that particular journal entry, I can fully understand why he might properly conclude that Ayn Rand must have been some sort of strange, sociopathic kook not worthy of looking into further. But the author of that article very clearly IS familiar with the larger context of Ayn Rand's work and her personal history - so my conclusion is the article is nothing more than a cheap and sleazy "hit piece" designed to smear Objectivism. Don't be too surprised if it is embraced by the likes of David Kelley and Barbara Branden as more "proof" that Ayn Rand was indeed nothing more than a malevolent neurotic kook who somehow, nevertheless, managed to make a few good philosophical points here and there."
I can't think of anything more to add to this, except to express my sincere hope that trash like this will stop popping up in the news results for Rand on the right side of this blog. It is increasingly clear that the Left has no rational refutation of Rand's philosophy and can only resort to character assassination and ad hominem flubbery. Context is everything. ANY quote taken out of context can be read to mean anything you want it to. That is why the process of contextualization is so important in all written forms of exposition and especially literary, scientific, and philosophical exposition. Ayn Rand's journals were none of these, simply personal notes and notations meant to guide her own thought process.
If a man were to find admirable qualities in Obama, it would not make him instantly an Obama acolyte. If a man were to find admirable qualities in Reagan, it would not make him instantly a Reaganite. One can admire certain qualities of a person without admiring their motivations or actions, hence the restriction to certain qualities. Some people admire Rommel, despite the fact that he was a Nazi. They can admire his intelligence and skill without admiring his political ideology. Some people admire Clinton despite his philandering. It doesn't mean they admire the whole person, just some things that he did or said. The only way to be certain of why, in what way, and under what conditions that admiration existed, is to have a properly contextualized account of that admiration. The reasons, the exceptions, the moderations...these elements are essential to understanding the meaning of any given utterance in the English language. Without this account, irresponsible accusations slapped onto decontextualized cherry-picked quotes say no more about the character of a person than graffiti on the wall of a bathroom stall--the very place where such "journalism" belongs...in the toilet.
Translator
Showing posts with label good. Show all posts
Showing posts with label good. Show all posts
Friday, February 26, 2010
Monday, November 23, 2009
The Montessori Classroom Part I: Practical Life
The Montessori Method is a student-driven, student-centered educational approach which relies on selective control of the environment, peer mentoring, and freedom of choice. The Montessori classroom is divided into curriculum areas, each of which focuses on a specific set of skills and knowledge. The primary curriculum area and the first to which students would be introduced is the ‘Practical Life’ area. This essay will attempt to summarize the purpose of Practical Life, its importance to child development, its principal characteristics and sequence, the role of the teacher in preparing the environment, the concept of ‘sensitive periods’, and how this curriculum area prepares the student for studies in math and language.
All the activities in the Practical Life curriculum serve a function on two different levels simultaneously. On one level, the one the children most readily appreciate, students learn how to perform common household tasks, use common implements, and take care of their person and the environment around them. For example, children may spend their time in this area learning to use scissors to cut along a line, pour water from one container to another, how to use a funnel or eye dropper, dress themselves, or even wash a baby. While this seems to be the direct goal of the child’s action, to the teacher the performance of these tasks are only indirect objectives, not unimportant, but secondary to the directed goals the teacher has in assigning them. The direct objectives of practical life exercises are most commonly to develop the skills of observation, coordination, concentration, and self-esteem. Furthermore, there is a focus on refining the child’s ability to manipulate their own hand musculature in a series of progressively more delicate operations where the hand must manipulate objects in certain ways to achieve desired outcomes. For example, a beginning student may start transferring beans from one container to another by hand. This focuses the child on a specific concrete objective, namely moving all the beans. This procedure is self-correcting. The child knows when the task has not been performed to completion and will strive to perfect its work. This develops concentration. The physical act of moving the beans will develop the hand musculature and coordination. The child will learn to notice spilled beans and beans left in one bowl or the other. They will also notice when other children are doing similar works, whether or not they make the same mistakes. This will increase their observational skills. Successful completion of the task will encourage the child to approach other tasks and build self-esteem paving the way for latter tasks of increased complexity. Once the child has mastered this method of bean transfer, they may be ready for more delicate maneuvers, such as pouring beans between two glasses, and then pitchers. From there, the child may learn to use a strawberry huller to transfer items, and then maybe even chopsticks. At each stage the child develops a greater refinement of manual dexterity, cognitive apprehension, and moral development.
Everything about the Practical Life area is organized to aid the development of these qualities. There is a specific sequence to the materials, top to bottom and left to right. This is meant to assist in the development of eye-scanning habits for later reading. The materials are arranged on trays on shelves. The trays help to separate one task from another so that the child is not lost amongst the arrays of various paraphernalia. There are also themes to the works. There are those, like bean transfer, which focus primarily on hand development. But there are also those which focus on care of the person like the dressing frames. Typically, the shelves would be arranged as follows. The first shelf may contain works devoted to bean transfer. The second shelf may introduce tools such as tongs or scissors. The third may be devoted to water transfer. Moving to the right, the next cabinet may have more refined water transfer works (such as those using funnels or basters) on the first shelf. The second shelf would have tasks requiring finer motor skills like using a clothespin or water transfer using an eye dropper. On the bottom shelf would be more tasks taken from daily life necessity, such as opening and closing jars or lunch boxes. If there was a third cabinet to the right, then it could continue with finer tasks like using nuts and bolts, locks and keys, or can openers on the top shelf. In the middle could be a sorting work, and folding or organizing works, followed by complex works like packing a suitcase or creating soap suds with an egg beater on the bottom shelf.
Once the children had become accustomed to the control of self and body necessary to accomplish these kinds of tasks, they may be introduced to more complicated tasks involving the care of the environment and their own person. They would probably start out with washing small objects like seashells, then move on to leaves of plants which are more delicate and then on to washing a baby doll. They learn to wash windows, tables, and chairs, to polish mirrors, wood, metal, and shoes, and to clean up after themselves. They learn how to dress themselves by focusing on a series of dressing frames designed to focus on specific fasteners for clothing (basically cloth fixed to a wooden frame which must be connected and disconnected using a specific fastening method like snaps or buckles). They learn how to prepare the food they eat and to sew. These works, being left out for the children to freely pick and choose, inspire the children to develop those areas where they are most in need of special practice. Once the child has mastered the skills therein, the child will move on by their own volition, for they will be bored with the task and it will have nothing more to offer them. However, which works will be made available to the children at what time will be something largely controlled by the teacher who bears the vital responsibility to control the environment of the class.
Since the children are free to choose the works they will, the teacher must be aware of the level of work appropriate to the children in the class. If the works are too simple, they will become neglected or be invitations to misuse. If the works are too complicated they will tend to draw the same and worse, they will tend to discourage the students from trying. For instance, a child who cannot transfer beans from one bowl to the other for want of hand strength and coordination cannot be expected to successfully remove the lid from a jar. More likely as not the jar will be thrown in frustration. But if the teacher, patiently observing which works the children are drawn to and how they are used, carefully selects the works to be made available at what time, then the children can be passively directed without infringing on their developing independence by actively assigning them to tasks desired by the teacher.
Also, the teacher has another principal method of controlling the classroom at their disposal. Contrary to what one may think, it is not a monopoly on knowledge. Other children in the classroom may very well be acquainted with all the practical life works and willing and able to instruct their younger peers. Montessori classrooms incorporate a peer mentoring element by teaching children between the ages of 3 and 6 in the same classroom. In this way, children can mentor and be mentored as they gain experience in the various activities available in the classroom. The teacher may be required to conduct larger lessons or to introduce works new to the classroom, but generally the classroom should be self-sufficient in terms of the transfer of knowledge and assuming it has been properly normalized. But the teacher holds authority as the ideal citizen of the classroom and a source of practical knowledge and experience. The teacher models constantly proper behavior consisting of calmness, grace, courtesy and deliberation. The teacher imbues in the students respect for the environment, not through lecture but by example and by maintaining an environment in which the children are able to have access to the tools and techniques necessary to maintain it for their own benefit. The teacher talks politely, and slowly. The teacher moves gracefully and measured. All this serves the double function of modeling polite, civil behavior and also to render one’s actions observable by children. Children, lacking adult proficiency in observation or a knowledge of critical essentials in any given situation, are not as adroit at picking out the salient components of an action, or the critical gist of a lengthy conversation. They need things broken down into readily comprehensible concretes. It is the teacher’s task to tell children what must be done in a way that can be heard and to show them how to do things in a way that can be seen. If a teacher can master these skills of observation and guidance then they will be able to lead children through the critical periods of their development in a way which will enable them to take full advantage of the opportunities they present.
Montessori refers to ‘Sensitive Periods’ of a child’s development. These are spans of time when children are uniquely attuned to a specific sensory input, set of skills, or knowledge. The most apparent example is language acquisition. There is a period of time when children are very young during which the acquisition of language is almost automatic. After this time period has lapsed, other languages can be acquired but it requires a high degree of personal motivation and effort. The same principle can be applied to almost any of the principle skills of human existence. There is a time for the effortless acquisition of gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and even eating and sleeping habits. After these periods have passed, they still may be learned or corrected, but if the proper stimulus is available at the proper time, then the acquisition will be practically effortless. The Practical Life curriculum area accommodates these sensitive periods in several ways. Each exercise in Practical Life is devoted to honing some specific skill. Later exercises build on skills developed in prior ones and create a scaffolding effect which helps children be prepared to successfully engage them. Children are free to select from a wide range of the activities and thus target the areas where they are deficient. As was pointed out before, if they have already mastered the work, it should, in principle, be uninteresting to them and thus something which they would not be engaged with for long. If it is too hard, the task would seem insurmountable. If, instead, the work represented a level of skill exactly in the range where development would be needed, it would also naturally fall in that area of works which would be engaging to the child. The self-correcting control of error present in the works would also help to discipline the child’s movements and help them focus on the tasks which drive their development. Now, especially if the child was in a period sensitive to the skills inherent in the work, they would be even more likely to be drawn to those specific works from which they could benefit the most. The reason is that they are simply more sensitive to and thereby aware of them more than others. As their sensitive period closes and they are drawn to different stimulus, they would move on to more challenging areas. So, too, once they have passed through the periods sensitive to the stimulus of Practical Life, they would be drawn out into the more challenging areas of math and language once they have acquired the basic skills necessary to preparing them to be sensitive to the more abstract works.
Practical Life helps prepare children for the study of math and language in various ways. The focus on hand manipulations in work which involve water transfer using an eye dropper or picking up beans with tongs readies them to physically hold a pencil. The focus necessary to achieving mastery of their work prepares them to focus on the salient variables of a complex problem amidst potential distraction. The social bonds formed during the exercise of their work cycle will also be a motivating influence when they see their peers and mentors investigating the more ‘academic’ works. More concretely, the organization of materials on the shelves and the order of movements in the works themselves are predominantly left to right and top to bottom—the progression in which English and most, if not all, European languages are read. Works like the jars and lids, which involve removing and replacing matching lids from their jars, teach one to one correspondence, an important pre-mathematical concept. This is also found in works which require the matching of nuts to bolts, the counting of steps, or the sorting of objects. Water and bean transfer may even be seen as a preparation for grasping concepts like Piagetian conservation of volume.
On one level, Practical Life prepares children for practical living. On another level, it prepares them cognitively, emotionally, and physically to engage their mind in productive works geared toward enhancing their own existence and apprehension of reality. This curriculum area builds self-esteem, self-awareness, and self control. It develops the child physically and cognitively to go into the world and begin to exert control over themselves and their environment. It also prepares the way for academic study, laying the concrete foundations necessary to ground abstractions in reality—a fitting beginning for an educational philosophy dedicated to unifying intellectual endeavor with physical experience.
For Part II: Sensorial, click here.
All the activities in the Practical Life curriculum serve a function on two different levels simultaneously. On one level, the one the children most readily appreciate, students learn how to perform common household tasks, use common implements, and take care of their person and the environment around them. For example, children may spend their time in this area learning to use scissors to cut along a line, pour water from one container to another, how to use a funnel or eye dropper, dress themselves, or even wash a baby. While this seems to be the direct goal of the child’s action, to the teacher the performance of these tasks are only indirect objectives, not unimportant, but secondary to the directed goals the teacher has in assigning them. The direct objectives of practical life exercises are most commonly to develop the skills of observation, coordination, concentration, and self-esteem. Furthermore, there is a focus on refining the child’s ability to manipulate their own hand musculature in a series of progressively more delicate operations where the hand must manipulate objects in certain ways to achieve desired outcomes. For example, a beginning student may start transferring beans from one container to another by hand. This focuses the child on a specific concrete objective, namely moving all the beans. This procedure is self-correcting. The child knows when the task has not been performed to completion and will strive to perfect its work. This develops concentration. The physical act of moving the beans will develop the hand musculature and coordination. The child will learn to notice spilled beans and beans left in one bowl or the other. They will also notice when other children are doing similar works, whether or not they make the same mistakes. This will increase their observational skills. Successful completion of the task will encourage the child to approach other tasks and build self-esteem paving the way for latter tasks of increased complexity. Once the child has mastered this method of bean transfer, they may be ready for more delicate maneuvers, such as pouring beans between two glasses, and then pitchers. From there, the child may learn to use a strawberry huller to transfer items, and then maybe even chopsticks. At each stage the child develops a greater refinement of manual dexterity, cognitive apprehension, and moral development.
Everything about the Practical Life area is organized to aid the development of these qualities. There is a specific sequence to the materials, top to bottom and left to right. This is meant to assist in the development of eye-scanning habits for later reading. The materials are arranged on trays on shelves. The trays help to separate one task from another so that the child is not lost amongst the arrays of various paraphernalia. There are also themes to the works. There are those, like bean transfer, which focus primarily on hand development. But there are also those which focus on care of the person like the dressing frames. Typically, the shelves would be arranged as follows. The first shelf may contain works devoted to bean transfer. The second shelf may introduce tools such as tongs or scissors. The third may be devoted to water transfer. Moving to the right, the next cabinet may have more refined water transfer works (such as those using funnels or basters) on the first shelf. The second shelf would have tasks requiring finer motor skills like using a clothespin or water transfer using an eye dropper. On the bottom shelf would be more tasks taken from daily life necessity, such as opening and closing jars or lunch boxes. If there was a third cabinet to the right, then it could continue with finer tasks like using nuts and bolts, locks and keys, or can openers on the top shelf. In the middle could be a sorting work, and folding or organizing works, followed by complex works like packing a suitcase or creating soap suds with an egg beater on the bottom shelf.
Once the children had become accustomed to the control of self and body necessary to accomplish these kinds of tasks, they may be introduced to more complicated tasks involving the care of the environment and their own person. They would probably start out with washing small objects like seashells, then move on to leaves of plants which are more delicate and then on to washing a baby doll. They learn to wash windows, tables, and chairs, to polish mirrors, wood, metal, and shoes, and to clean up after themselves. They learn how to dress themselves by focusing on a series of dressing frames designed to focus on specific fasteners for clothing (basically cloth fixed to a wooden frame which must be connected and disconnected using a specific fastening method like snaps or buckles). They learn how to prepare the food they eat and to sew. These works, being left out for the children to freely pick and choose, inspire the children to develop those areas where they are most in need of special practice. Once the child has mastered the skills therein, the child will move on by their own volition, for they will be bored with the task and it will have nothing more to offer them. However, which works will be made available to the children at what time will be something largely controlled by the teacher who bears the vital responsibility to control the environment of the class.
Since the children are free to choose the works they will, the teacher must be aware of the level of work appropriate to the children in the class. If the works are too simple, they will become neglected or be invitations to misuse. If the works are too complicated they will tend to draw the same and worse, they will tend to discourage the students from trying. For instance, a child who cannot transfer beans from one bowl to the other for want of hand strength and coordination cannot be expected to successfully remove the lid from a jar. More likely as not the jar will be thrown in frustration. But if the teacher, patiently observing which works the children are drawn to and how they are used, carefully selects the works to be made available at what time, then the children can be passively directed without infringing on their developing independence by actively assigning them to tasks desired by the teacher.
Also, the teacher has another principal method of controlling the classroom at their disposal. Contrary to what one may think, it is not a monopoly on knowledge. Other children in the classroom may very well be acquainted with all the practical life works and willing and able to instruct their younger peers. Montessori classrooms incorporate a peer mentoring element by teaching children between the ages of 3 and 6 in the same classroom. In this way, children can mentor and be mentored as they gain experience in the various activities available in the classroom. The teacher may be required to conduct larger lessons or to introduce works new to the classroom, but generally the classroom should be self-sufficient in terms of the transfer of knowledge and assuming it has been properly normalized. But the teacher holds authority as the ideal citizen of the classroom and a source of practical knowledge and experience. The teacher models constantly proper behavior consisting of calmness, grace, courtesy and deliberation. The teacher imbues in the students respect for the environment, not through lecture but by example and by maintaining an environment in which the children are able to have access to the tools and techniques necessary to maintain it for their own benefit. The teacher talks politely, and slowly. The teacher moves gracefully and measured. All this serves the double function of modeling polite, civil behavior and also to render one’s actions observable by children. Children, lacking adult proficiency in observation or a knowledge of critical essentials in any given situation, are not as adroit at picking out the salient components of an action, or the critical gist of a lengthy conversation. They need things broken down into readily comprehensible concretes. It is the teacher’s task to tell children what must be done in a way that can be heard and to show them how to do things in a way that can be seen. If a teacher can master these skills of observation and guidance then they will be able to lead children through the critical periods of their development in a way which will enable them to take full advantage of the opportunities they present.
Montessori refers to ‘Sensitive Periods’ of a child’s development. These are spans of time when children are uniquely attuned to a specific sensory input, set of skills, or knowledge. The most apparent example is language acquisition. There is a period of time when children are very young during which the acquisition of language is almost automatic. After this time period has lapsed, other languages can be acquired but it requires a high degree of personal motivation and effort. The same principle can be applied to almost any of the principle skills of human existence. There is a time for the effortless acquisition of gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and even eating and sleeping habits. After these periods have passed, they still may be learned or corrected, but if the proper stimulus is available at the proper time, then the acquisition will be practically effortless. The Practical Life curriculum area accommodates these sensitive periods in several ways. Each exercise in Practical Life is devoted to honing some specific skill. Later exercises build on skills developed in prior ones and create a scaffolding effect which helps children be prepared to successfully engage them. Children are free to select from a wide range of the activities and thus target the areas where they are deficient. As was pointed out before, if they have already mastered the work, it should, in principle, be uninteresting to them and thus something which they would not be engaged with for long. If it is too hard, the task would seem insurmountable. If, instead, the work represented a level of skill exactly in the range where development would be needed, it would also naturally fall in that area of works which would be engaging to the child. The self-correcting control of error present in the works would also help to discipline the child’s movements and help them focus on the tasks which drive their development. Now, especially if the child was in a period sensitive to the skills inherent in the work, they would be even more likely to be drawn to those specific works from which they could benefit the most. The reason is that they are simply more sensitive to and thereby aware of them more than others. As their sensitive period closes and they are drawn to different stimulus, they would move on to more challenging areas. So, too, once they have passed through the periods sensitive to the stimulus of Practical Life, they would be drawn out into the more challenging areas of math and language once they have acquired the basic skills necessary to preparing them to be sensitive to the more abstract works.
Practical Life helps prepare children for the study of math and language in various ways. The focus on hand manipulations in work which involve water transfer using an eye dropper or picking up beans with tongs readies them to physically hold a pencil. The focus necessary to achieving mastery of their work prepares them to focus on the salient variables of a complex problem amidst potential distraction. The social bonds formed during the exercise of their work cycle will also be a motivating influence when they see their peers and mentors investigating the more ‘academic’ works. More concretely, the organization of materials on the shelves and the order of movements in the works themselves are predominantly left to right and top to bottom—the progression in which English and most, if not all, European languages are read. Works like the jars and lids, which involve removing and replacing matching lids from their jars, teach one to one correspondence, an important pre-mathematical concept. This is also found in works which require the matching of nuts to bolts, the counting of steps, or the sorting of objects. Water and bean transfer may even be seen as a preparation for grasping concepts like Piagetian conservation of volume.
On one level, Practical Life prepares children for practical living. On another level, it prepares them cognitively, emotionally, and physically to engage their mind in productive works geared toward enhancing their own existence and apprehension of reality. This curriculum area builds self-esteem, self-awareness, and self control. It develops the child physically and cognitively to go into the world and begin to exert control over themselves and their environment. It also prepares the way for academic study, laying the concrete foundations necessary to ground abstractions in reality—a fitting beginning for an educational philosophy dedicated to unifying intellectual endeavor with physical experience.
For Part II: Sensorial, click here.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest 2009
Just got the word that I didn't place in this year's Atlas Shrugged essay contest. I look forward to reading the winning essays when they're posted on ARI's website. Anyways, here's my entry from this year. Hope you enjoy reading it. -- American Anti-theist
BUSINESS & PLEASURE: Vice and virtue in the life of Hank Rearden
Hank Rearden runs his business with ruthless efficiency. The standard of value by which every aspect of his foundry is decided is one simple principle: What’s best for making metal? The wage of every worker he employs is balanced against the cost that wage adds to the production process and the necessity of that worker’s labor to the creation of product. The prices of materials are balanced against the market price of steel. The market price of steel is driven up by customer demand for his steel and down by the prices offered by his competitors. The only way to survive, the only way to prosper, is to minimize costs, to increase quality, to honor contracts, to expand his production so that he can further minimize costs, increase quality, and so on. In order to accomplish this he must pay his employees wages commensurate with their value. He needs quality workers to create quality product. He must buy quality materials. He cannot satisfy his customers with defective product. He must constantly refine his production process. He must condemn waste. He must reward efficiency. The highest value, the benchmark of all these other contributing elements, is simply the extent to which it enables him to produce better, faster, cheaper steel in greater quantities and make the greatest profit while doing so. This profit is his reward for organizing the resources of his business in such a way as to generate surplus. It is his reward for creating that which would not exist were he not to have created it. In business, this reward takes the form of money, a measure of the value he has added to the lives of all those with whom he does business.
If Rearden were to live as he ran his business, he would deal with all the people around him privately the same as he would deal with them professionally. Every emotional investment would be balanced by an emotional gain. If every process and function of his professional life is to render him a greater producer of steel, then every process and function of his personal life would be geared to render him a greater producer of his life’s highest values. The virtues of business are to minimize costs, to increase quality, to honor contracts, and to expand production. The virtues of his life would thus be frugality, integrity, honesty, and ambition. Just as he cannot settle for hiring just any worker for any job at any wage, so too he cannot afford to accept just any stranger into any given role in his life as only justified by their just having shown up. Friends, lovers, wives, and even family relationships cannot be based solely on chance, on the arbitrary advent of circumstantial proximity. They must be evaluated in terms of the value they offer and the price they demand. If they demand too high a cost for the value they offer, then they are not worthy of the role. On the contrary, the significance of the meaning of the words ‘friend’, ‘lover’, ‘wife’, and ‘family’ rests on the value that the people who fill those roles contribute to one’s life. A businessman cannot afford to promote an employee to a position of importance in his organization which outweighs that employee’s worth to the company. So, too, no man can afford to promote a chance acquaintance to a disproportionate position of importance within his own life. The objective measure of the success of his business is monetary profit, the value created by the practical implementation of his business philosophy. The objective measure of the success of his personal life is happiness, the value created by the practical implementation of his personal philosophy.
Rearden does not, however, initially adhere to parallel philosophies in his business and private life. Instead, Rearden follows a diametrically opposed moral code in his private affairs. His brother Philip, his wife Lillian, his mother, his “friend” Paul Larkin…these characters all represent the philosophical opposites of who should fill those roles were Rearden’s values applied consistently in both modes of his life.
Philip is devoid of ambition and produces nothing. He lives only to beg resources off others for the sake of others. He is an empty vessel, a conduit to be used by other men. He takes no pleasure in his existence nor deserves it. He has so little integrity that he has the audacity to undermine the brother who has supported him without complaint, to accept his money but condemn his character. Rearden would not even consider him for the job of a cinder sweeper, yet he considers him worthy of the title “brother”. Rearden would not even let him inside his mills, yet he allows him into his home and supports his every endeavor.
Lillian taunts Rearden with her sex. She uses it as a weapon to disarm him and to break him with guilt. Rearden is tortured by his own sense of guilt and hypocrisy every time he succumbs to her wiles. Yet he does not recognize that the source of the guilt is not the act of sex itself, but the act of sex with someone so completely devoid of any of the values he holds dear. His relationship with Dagny is the one truly worthy of the title “wife” but he does not recognize this inversion for what it is—that he has made the whore his “wife” and the woman who should be his wife into a whore.
His mother, completely dependent on her son for subsistence can do nothing but condemn him for the virtues which enable him to support her. His childhood “friend”, Paul, is simply someone he happened to know as a child and now is still somehow a friend despite the fact that there is nothing Rearden can conceivably respect him for and that he actively works against Rearden’s interests. Among these characters who hold the highest titles of honor in his life—friend, wife, mother, brother—not a single one is deserving of any respect. If his highest ideals are indeed frugality, integrity, honesty, and ambition, then Dagny should be his wife and Francisco D’Anconia should be his best friend. Yet those who scorn everything he believes in are his most valued relationships and he must view with contempt those who most closely reflect his own values.
Rearden is guilty of a terrible sin, a gross error of judgment. As Francisco tried to warn, "You're guilty of a great sin, Mr. Rearden, much guiltier than they tell you, but not in the way they preach. The worst guilt is to accept an undeserved guilt—and that is what you have been doing all your life. You have been paying blackmail, not for your vices, but for your virtues. You have been willing to carry the load of an unearned punishment—and to let it grow the heavier the greater the virtues you practiced” (421). Rearden’s willing acceptance of blame for pursuing his highest values has chained him to a philosophical system which will mean his destruction. He has accepted that the values that make him an excellent businessman, an inventor, and an entrepreneur are values which also make him a vile and loathsome human being. He has accepted a false dichotomy which states that productive activity which supports and enriches your existence is evil and that the only good is to support the lives of others. He has accepted the rule which condemns the fulfillment of one’s own desires but praises the fulfillment of the desires held by others. To the exact proportion that Rearden excels in his work, he is evil in his life. This is Rearden’s central error, the one that turns his life upside-down, that tortures him throughout his marriage, that tortures him throughout his affair with the only woman he has ever truly loved, and that eventually forces him to turn over his life’s work and greatest achievement, Rearden Metal, to a thankless mob of thugs as impudent as they are undeserving.
Then, Rearden realizes the weakness of his enemies. That weakness is that they have no power over him except what he has conceded. His sanction is necessary for them to continue their deception. His validation of their moral code is essential to enable them to brand him immoral. Once Rearden withdraws his sanction and aligns his personal moral code with his professional one, he removes the only device by which he could be chained, his own sense of guilt. Guilt is only possible to someone who has virtues, who feels that they have betrayed those virtues and sacrificed a greater value to a lesser one. By removing his acceptance of the slanders against him, he removed the ability of his enemies to pressure him with the guilt he had willingly accepted. By refusing to allow his virtues to be branded as vice, he was at last set free to feel his full worth, to embrace the self-esteem which had been rightfully his to claim from the very first. He was free to embrace his ethical peers as friends and to truly love them selfishly. With that simple realization, he was also set free of the world of decay. For him, the doors of Atlantis were at last opened and his place in the world of the future secured. That simple realization was that one’s virtues really are virtues and that it doesn’t matter who says differently. The only true measure is in one’s own happiness, the profit of a virtuous life.
BUSINESS & PLEASURE: Vice and virtue in the life of Hank Rearden
Hank Rearden runs his business with ruthless efficiency. The standard of value by which every aspect of his foundry is decided is one simple principle: What’s best for making metal? The wage of every worker he employs is balanced against the cost that wage adds to the production process and the necessity of that worker’s labor to the creation of product. The prices of materials are balanced against the market price of steel. The market price of steel is driven up by customer demand for his steel and down by the prices offered by his competitors. The only way to survive, the only way to prosper, is to minimize costs, to increase quality, to honor contracts, to expand his production so that he can further minimize costs, increase quality, and so on. In order to accomplish this he must pay his employees wages commensurate with their value. He needs quality workers to create quality product. He must buy quality materials. He cannot satisfy his customers with defective product. He must constantly refine his production process. He must condemn waste. He must reward efficiency. The highest value, the benchmark of all these other contributing elements, is simply the extent to which it enables him to produce better, faster, cheaper steel in greater quantities and make the greatest profit while doing so. This profit is his reward for organizing the resources of his business in such a way as to generate surplus. It is his reward for creating that which would not exist were he not to have created it. In business, this reward takes the form of money, a measure of the value he has added to the lives of all those with whom he does business.
If Rearden were to live as he ran his business, he would deal with all the people around him privately the same as he would deal with them professionally. Every emotional investment would be balanced by an emotional gain. If every process and function of his professional life is to render him a greater producer of steel, then every process and function of his personal life would be geared to render him a greater producer of his life’s highest values. The virtues of business are to minimize costs, to increase quality, to honor contracts, and to expand production. The virtues of his life would thus be frugality, integrity, honesty, and ambition. Just as he cannot settle for hiring just any worker for any job at any wage, so too he cannot afford to accept just any stranger into any given role in his life as only justified by their just having shown up. Friends, lovers, wives, and even family relationships cannot be based solely on chance, on the arbitrary advent of circumstantial proximity. They must be evaluated in terms of the value they offer and the price they demand. If they demand too high a cost for the value they offer, then they are not worthy of the role. On the contrary, the significance of the meaning of the words ‘friend’, ‘lover’, ‘wife’, and ‘family’ rests on the value that the people who fill those roles contribute to one’s life. A businessman cannot afford to promote an employee to a position of importance in his organization which outweighs that employee’s worth to the company. So, too, no man can afford to promote a chance acquaintance to a disproportionate position of importance within his own life. The objective measure of the success of his business is monetary profit, the value created by the practical implementation of his business philosophy. The objective measure of the success of his personal life is happiness, the value created by the practical implementation of his personal philosophy.
Rearden does not, however, initially adhere to parallel philosophies in his business and private life. Instead, Rearden follows a diametrically opposed moral code in his private affairs. His brother Philip, his wife Lillian, his mother, his “friend” Paul Larkin…these characters all represent the philosophical opposites of who should fill those roles were Rearden’s values applied consistently in both modes of his life.
Philip is devoid of ambition and produces nothing. He lives only to beg resources off others for the sake of others. He is an empty vessel, a conduit to be used by other men. He takes no pleasure in his existence nor deserves it. He has so little integrity that he has the audacity to undermine the brother who has supported him without complaint, to accept his money but condemn his character. Rearden would not even consider him for the job of a cinder sweeper, yet he considers him worthy of the title “brother”. Rearden would not even let him inside his mills, yet he allows him into his home and supports his every endeavor.
Lillian taunts Rearden with her sex. She uses it as a weapon to disarm him and to break him with guilt. Rearden is tortured by his own sense of guilt and hypocrisy every time he succumbs to her wiles. Yet he does not recognize that the source of the guilt is not the act of sex itself, but the act of sex with someone so completely devoid of any of the values he holds dear. His relationship with Dagny is the one truly worthy of the title “wife” but he does not recognize this inversion for what it is—that he has made the whore his “wife” and the woman who should be his wife into a whore.
His mother, completely dependent on her son for subsistence can do nothing but condemn him for the virtues which enable him to support her. His childhood “friend”, Paul, is simply someone he happened to know as a child and now is still somehow a friend despite the fact that there is nothing Rearden can conceivably respect him for and that he actively works against Rearden’s interests. Among these characters who hold the highest titles of honor in his life—friend, wife, mother, brother—not a single one is deserving of any respect. If his highest ideals are indeed frugality, integrity, honesty, and ambition, then Dagny should be his wife and Francisco D’Anconia should be his best friend. Yet those who scorn everything he believes in are his most valued relationships and he must view with contempt those who most closely reflect his own values.
Rearden is guilty of a terrible sin, a gross error of judgment. As Francisco tried to warn, "You're guilty of a great sin, Mr. Rearden, much guiltier than they tell you, but not in the way they preach. The worst guilt is to accept an undeserved guilt—and that is what you have been doing all your life. You have been paying blackmail, not for your vices, but for your virtues. You have been willing to carry the load of an unearned punishment—and to let it grow the heavier the greater the virtues you practiced” (421). Rearden’s willing acceptance of blame for pursuing his highest values has chained him to a philosophical system which will mean his destruction. He has accepted that the values that make him an excellent businessman, an inventor, and an entrepreneur are values which also make him a vile and loathsome human being. He has accepted a false dichotomy which states that productive activity which supports and enriches your existence is evil and that the only good is to support the lives of others. He has accepted the rule which condemns the fulfillment of one’s own desires but praises the fulfillment of the desires held by others. To the exact proportion that Rearden excels in his work, he is evil in his life. This is Rearden’s central error, the one that turns his life upside-down, that tortures him throughout his marriage, that tortures him throughout his affair with the only woman he has ever truly loved, and that eventually forces him to turn over his life’s work and greatest achievement, Rearden Metal, to a thankless mob of thugs as impudent as they are undeserving.
Then, Rearden realizes the weakness of his enemies. That weakness is that they have no power over him except what he has conceded. His sanction is necessary for them to continue their deception. His validation of their moral code is essential to enable them to brand him immoral. Once Rearden withdraws his sanction and aligns his personal moral code with his professional one, he removes the only device by which he could be chained, his own sense of guilt. Guilt is only possible to someone who has virtues, who feels that they have betrayed those virtues and sacrificed a greater value to a lesser one. By removing his acceptance of the slanders against him, he removed the ability of his enemies to pressure him with the guilt he had willingly accepted. By refusing to allow his virtues to be branded as vice, he was at last set free to feel his full worth, to embrace the self-esteem which had been rightfully his to claim from the very first. He was free to embrace his ethical peers as friends and to truly love them selfishly. With that simple realization, he was also set free of the world of decay. For him, the doors of Atlantis were at last opened and his place in the world of the future secured. That simple realization was that one’s virtues really are virtues and that it doesn’t matter who says differently. The only true measure is in one’s own happiness, the profit of a virtuous life.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Religion: Laugh Your Ass Off
I've been thinking lately. Maybe the reason that religion gets to cling on to it's social respectability despite all the vicious, maniacal, and just plain ludicrous stuff it tries to get away with--maybe the reason is that we all take it so seriously. I mean what would happen, if we just laughed our asses off whenever somebody said they believed in God? What would happen if we just doubled over with tears streaming out of our eyes whenever somebody even mentioned heaven, hell, Satan, Jesus, Mohammad or Buddha? I guess it makes it harder to laugh at people who are really intent on enslaving and/or killing you (though not necessarily in that order). Anyways, a world were we could just laugh those silly freaks away and not have to worry about them anymore, is a world worth working for. Until then, here's a taste of what it might feel like to be able to laugh them all away:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ope-1Zb5t-k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ope-1Zb5t-k
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Even Joy Must Be Silenced For the Sake of Control?
As you read today's recommended news article, I would like to suggest that it may be enlightening to ponder these thoughts that have gone before:
"If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them."--George Orwell
"None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free."--Goethe
"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have these three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to practice neither."--Mark Twain
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."--Thomas Jefferson
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25083792/
Arresting people for a public display of joy is disgraceful. It is a clear violation of constitutional rights and should be stopped immediately. Public schools especially are subject to the mandate of public ownership, which means that basically the owners of that school are the very people who are cheering. A private school may have grounds for ejecting people, but as long as public funds are being used to pay for the ceremony, then anyone should be able to go and cheer as much as they like. At the very least there is no excuse for actually arresting people and carting them off for clapping or cheering. The government should put a leash on its goons.
"If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them."--George Orwell
"None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free."--Goethe
"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have these three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to practice neither."--Mark Twain
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."--Thomas Jefferson
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25083792/
Arresting people for a public display of joy is disgraceful. It is a clear violation of constitutional rights and should be stopped immediately. Public schools especially are subject to the mandate of public ownership, which means that basically the owners of that school are the very people who are cheering. A private school may have grounds for ejecting people, but as long as public funds are being used to pay for the ceremony, then anyone should be able to go and cheer as much as they like. At the very least there is no excuse for actually arresting people and carting them off for clapping or cheering. The government should put a leash on its goons.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
A Further Defense Against Koenichfuerst
For the story thus far see this link:
http://anamericananti-theistabroad.blogspot.com/2008/05/rebuttal-to-some-arguments-against.html
and then this link for his counter-argument:
http://koenichfuerst.blogspot.com/2008/05/rebuttal-of-rebuttal.html
Now, to get down to business.
1. By stating that "Existence exists" is a tautology, you are stating that existence is something which is. If existence is something which can possibly not be, then "existence exists" is not necessarily a tautology. It could then be wrong. If, however, you state that existence must by definition exist, and therefore be a tautology, then you have conceded that existence does indeed exist. You can't have it both ways. You concede that you don't believe that you're in the matrix, so basically you're arguing a moot point. There isn't anything debatable about it. What is, is. It's purely a statement of identity. It is not an argument. How you can hope to disprove the identity of everything around you, is a matter for you and your grasp of reality to work out. For anybody else, it is clear that the very fact that we are having this debate is proof that we have both accepted that there is a common experience of existence through which we can negotiate meaning. The very use of language or any communication medium, presupposes that there is a common reality external to us both through which we are communicating.
You have yet to offer any counter to this except to say, well, "It doesn't have to be that way." To which I shall reply thus: If there isn't then there is no point to our even debating. Because I am then just a figment of your imagination. As is the whole universe. And while it may be comforting to place yourself at the center of a delusional dream-world, it runs against the entire scope of scientific knowledge. If you want to argue that existence is debatable and therefore not a given, then you must take the opposing stance that existence is not real. But if you do so, then you lose the ability to use science as a justification. Since all science is built on the presupposition that what you are measuring is measurable by others in the same way and with significantly replicable results. This is something which would not hold in a largely subjective universe.
1.2 Hofstadter's points on free will are on pages 710-714 of the 1999 paperback version of Godel, Escher, Bach. He lays out how what we consider free will could be expressed in terms of how a self-referential self aware system may perceive its choices. He also states that it is not intuitive and it may be one of those things which is not intuitively comprehensible. The long and the short of it is though that these cycles of self-referential mechanistic systems would give rise to the phenomenon that we perceive as free will, namely our ability to choose between courses of action. This is in effect what free will is all about.
Of course this argument is well after Rand's, so she couldn't draw on these concepts in the expression of her philosophy. But the practical upshot is that free-will is rendered explainable in a mechanistic view of the universe. Hofstadter does not remove "our" responsibility for making decisions. Especially as the cumulative effect of what "I" comes to mean in this perspective of consciousness is the meta (meta-meta? meta-meta-meta?) level of the system of which we are aware. It by no means removes from people the option of choice, anymore than the knowledge that atoms are mostly empty space removes us from the restriction on not falling through the earth or walking through walls. It is simply a 'quantum' level explanation of consciousness and free-will, where it comes from, so to speak.
2. Your argument on ethics once again does not go deep enough, and I think it's interesting that you consciously avoided referencing Rand's footnote to that quote, which I will restate, properly quoted. As you say, Virtue of Selfishness, p. 16-17.
"Only a living entity can have goals or can originate them. And it is only a living organism that has the capacity for self-generated, goal-directed action. On the physical level, the functions of all living organisms, from the simplest to the most complex--from the nutritive function in the single cell of the amoeba to the blood circulation in the body of a man--are actions generated by the organism itself and directed to a single goal: the maintenance of the organism's life.*"
To which I now add, the footnote (italics in the original):
"When applied to physical phenomenon, such as the automatic functions of an organism, the term "goal-directed" is not to be taken to mean "purposive" (a concept applicable only to the actions of a consciousness) and is not to imply the existence of any teleological principle operating in insentient nature. I use the term "goal-directed," in this context, to designate the fact that the automatic functions of living organisms are actions whose nature is such that they result in the preservation of an organism's life."
Her argument then is that since man is not born with automatic 'knowledge' of how to sustain his life, then he must discover it. That is to say, that the genetic programming of animals seems to provide them the skills necessary to survive in their environment, but that man's genetic programming does not seem to have this information hard-wired in.
Because of this, man has to choose, has to learn. There is no necessity in man choosing values which will lead it to a full, healthy, and rewarding existence. However, choosing the right values, will. Values guide a person's long term goals. If that value is life, then the long-term goals of a person will be the preservation and elevation of that life. If the value is death, well then that is also another option. But happiness, is only possible by choosing life as a value. Choosing death as a value leads to pain, because death is painful.
You're also neglecting that Rand states that organisms incapable of choice cannot have values, as such. Once again, I quote from The Objectivist Ethics, VOS, p. 16.
""Value" is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. The concept "value" is not a primary; it presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? It presupposes an entity capable of acting to achieve a goal in the face of an alternative. Where no alternative exists, no goals and no values are possible."
As for your spurious accounts of the animal world, you have yet to provide an example of a creature which consciously works against its own survival genetically or otherwise. Unless that you are arguing that something with the brain the size of a praying mantis or a peacock is conscious enough to have values, then those examples still stand invalidated.
As for Zahavi's hypothesis that some animals display colorfully precisely because it is dangerous and thus makes them more appealing to females, mathematical modeling by Alan Grafen has shown that this may possibly lead to an evolutionarily stable state and may well be an adequate explanation of such behavior. But I stress again that the goal is to live and pass on one's genes. The display is a result of both the pressures for survival and the pressures to reproduce acting in concert on the genetic make-up of the animal and it's mode of behavior. The peacock is successful in mating because it is good enough to survive in spite of it's tail. If it were to be a handicap that guaranteed death then it would not be able to reproduce. If anything it makes it that much harder for the peacock to survive, but it does not entail that the peacock is not directed to survive by the same forces which drive all other animals. It has simply developed to respond to the pressure on its evolution in unique ways.
3. The "is-ought" gap.
Virtue of Selfishness, p.17
"Life can be kept in existence only by a constant process of self-sustaining action. The goal of that action, the ultimate value which, to be kept, must be gained through its every moment, is the organism's life.
An ultimate value is that final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means--and it sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated. An organism's life is its standard of value: that which furthers its life is the good, that which threatens it is the evil.
Without an ultimate goal or end, there can be no lesser goals or means: a series of means going off into infinte progression toward a nonexistent end is a metaphysical and epistemological impossibility. It it only an ultimate goal, an end in itself that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept of "value" is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of "life". To speak of "value" as apart from "life" is worse than a contradiction in terms. "It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible."
In answer to those philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of the ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the issue of the relation between "is" and "ought." "
And if that isn't clear enough, let me connect the dots.
1. To have values, one must have choice, so one must be conscious.
2. If a conscious organism wishes to continue surviving then it must choose life as it's ultimate value. Especially as human beings are not hard-wired with values, or knowledge of how best to survive, this is not a default choice. Humans must reason in order to solve the problems of survival. Reason is an active process, actively decided upon.
3. If a being chooses survival, and therefore life as a value to be pursued, then the facts of reality dictate what it should do in order to pursue that goal effectively. Every "is" therefore implies an "ought".
The argument for objectivist ethics doesn't rest on the desires of animals. It rests on the necessary consequences of what values a conscious being sets . Of the ultimate goal it decides to pursue. And on the influence of the environment in which we live (i.e. existence) on what is necessary to ensure survival. There's nothing arbitrary about it at all. Unless you wish to choose death as your ultimate value, then you are welcome to it. Let's see how far that gets you.
I apologize on the Albert Ellis criticism. Like I said, I am not well-versed in his theories. I might point out, however, that the "reference" to objectivism was not in the article proper (actually none was) it was merely the title of a book in the bibliography which was phrased as a question and provided no indication of his stance on the matter.
So, in all fairness, I researched Ellis's views in more depth. Well, the first thing I noticed is that Ellis does not seem to be in the mainstream with regards to the psychological evaluation of the value of self-esteem and self-worth. While I would agree that it would be destructive to deify Rand as some are wont to do, this is not something promoted by her philosophy in and of itself. It is the misguided knee-jerk reaction of some of her followers. And just as ad hominem attacks do nothing to disprove a theory in any other field, they do little to provide serious criticism in philosophy or psychology either.
I will fully concede that Ayn Rand was capable of making wrong decisions, that she did not have all facts, as not even science has all facts. But the framework she laid out for her philosophical system was rational, just as the empirical assumptions which drive the scientific method are rational. They are consistent with what we know of reality today, just as they were then. The concept of our ethics being determined by the facts of our existence and our happiness being determined by our individual natures in the details, but overall by the biological necessities of our survival is a solid one. The details and arguments of merit are therefore, those which focus on what is indeed our nature as human beings, and what are indeed the facts of our existence.
You will get nowhere by challenging notions of existence or of survival. These are well accepted concepts in the sciences. You can continue beating a straw man if you wish, but I fail to see the merit in it and shall waste no more time trying to disprove you of this notion.
If you can come up with a truly scientific argument that supports your claim, then please spell it out explicitly and I will take it on. But I have a limit to how many times I can reiterate the same argument.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Will You Let Your School Murder Your Child's Mind?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24761899/
This is truly terrifying. What are these teachers thinking? What are the parents thinking? Why are these teachers still working? They should be fired for child abuse. School is not to indoctrinate our children with religious propaganda. Even worse, if they come away from these classes believing in creationism, believing that the world is less than 10,000 years old...then they are basically being handicapped from any career in the sciences.
Scientists cannot afford to accept arbitrary judgments at face value. And by saying that there is even a shred of respectability to the ideas of creationists, then those teachers are gutting their students' ability to make valid scientific judgments. There is no proof of ID. There is no proof of creationism. Teaching it as part of a science course flies in the face of everything that science is about.
Teachers have a responsibility to teach children how to reason critically. It is a skill which is essential to negotiating one's way through life. Without it, children are malleable, controllable, programmable creatures with no notion of what ideas are worth accepting and which are worth rejecting. Well...I guess that makes it pretty easy to see what the creationists want. They don't want truth, religious or otherwise. They want a world of slaves.
Fight this! If you are aware of this going on at your children's schools, fight it or face the reality that your child is being set up for a blue collar job in a propaganda state. Go to the school board! Go to the newspaper! Scream bloody murder until these irresponsible and vicious abusers of children's minds are kicked out of academia and back into the pulpits where they belong. After all it's your child's future. Are you willing to throw it away for the sake of whim and superstition?
This is truly terrifying. What are these teachers thinking? What are the parents thinking? Why are these teachers still working? They should be fired for child abuse. School is not to indoctrinate our children with religious propaganda. Even worse, if they come away from these classes believing in creationism, believing that the world is less than 10,000 years old...then they are basically being handicapped from any career in the sciences.
Scientists cannot afford to accept arbitrary judgments at face value. And by saying that there is even a shred of respectability to the ideas of creationists, then those teachers are gutting their students' ability to make valid scientific judgments. There is no proof of ID. There is no proof of creationism. Teaching it as part of a science course flies in the face of everything that science is about.
Teachers have a responsibility to teach children how to reason critically. It is a skill which is essential to negotiating one's way through life. Without it, children are malleable, controllable, programmable creatures with no notion of what ideas are worth accepting and which are worth rejecting. Well...I guess that makes it pretty easy to see what the creationists want. They don't want truth, religious or otherwise. They want a world of slaves.
Fight this! If you are aware of this going on at your children's schools, fight it or face the reality that your child is being set up for a blue collar job in a propaganda state. Go to the school board! Go to the newspaper! Scream bloody murder until these irresponsible and vicious abusers of children's minds are kicked out of academia and back into the pulpits where they belong. After all it's your child's future. Are you willing to throw it away for the sake of whim and superstition?
Monday, May 19, 2008
Free Trade and Political Spin
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24695933/
This article is a fairly even-handed and thoughtful explanation of the way in which free trade between nations actually helps people in the working class and not just the movers and shakers.
It's easy to forget sometimes, what with all the political and media spin on the marketplace. It's easy to forget because Obama and Clinton spout off about how they want to help the little guy by gutting 'big bad' business. They never stop to think that 'big bad' business is what is giving the little guy a job to do. If they make it harder for businesses to set up in the US, then they will go abroad. It's that simple.
Free trade makes sense, but a free economy at home makes even more sense. Just imagine how much prices would drop if there weren't tariffs, taxes, and surcharges latched on to everything. Of course, the reason why people don't realize this is because they're hopelessly dedicated to the morality of altruism. They think that making money for yourself is evil, so they want to make it as hard to make money as possible. What people don't realize is that if you can't make money, you can't live. So which do you want? A new morality that will let you make money and feel good about it? Or the old morality which will drive you to die for a notion of good which makes it impossible to live?
You decide. After all the choice is only yours.
This article is a fairly even-handed and thoughtful explanation of the way in which free trade between nations actually helps people in the working class and not just the movers and shakers.
It's easy to forget sometimes, what with all the political and media spin on the marketplace. It's easy to forget because Obama and Clinton spout off about how they want to help the little guy by gutting 'big bad' business. They never stop to think that 'big bad' business is what is giving the little guy a job to do. If they make it harder for businesses to set up in the US, then they will go abroad. It's that simple.
Free trade makes sense, but a free economy at home makes even more sense. Just imagine how much prices would drop if there weren't tariffs, taxes, and surcharges latched on to everything. Of course, the reason why people don't realize this is because they're hopelessly dedicated to the morality of altruism. They think that making money for yourself is evil, so they want to make it as hard to make money as possible. What people don't realize is that if you can't make money, you can't live. So which do you want? A new morality that will let you make money and feel good about it? Or the old morality which will drive you to die for a notion of good which makes it impossible to live?
You decide. After all the choice is only yours.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Yet Another Pastor Who Proves How Moral Religion Is
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24686805/
Yep, the above article is another vivid portrait of just how effective religion is at keeping our society on a moral course. I mean really, if preachers, pastors, holy men cannot be led to a path of moral righteousness by their devotion to religion, then just how is it that they expect it to keep the rest of the world on a moral footing? Isn't this just one more proof of how morality has nothing to do with religion?
Morality is a choice. It is a framework of choices built upon values. And a person's values are what make them either good or evil. God cannot save you, because there is none. Belief in god cannot make you moral. Understanding WHY something is wrong is what makes one moral. And you don't have to be religious to understand why it's wrong to solicit little girls on the internet (Baptist), rape choir boys (Catholic), or sentence rape victims to death because they commit adultery (Islam).
What you have to do to be moral is to THINK about your actions, to THINK about your values, and to THINK about what values are good for yourself in the long term. If you really think about these things then you will find that moral decisions are easy. But you will also lose the pleasant reassurance that your evil will be forgiven. Evil cannot be forgiven. The best you can do is to work to undo the damage you have done and never do it again. In the worst cases where there is no sign of rehabilitation or remorse, or where compensation is impossible, you must be removed from the company of civilized men and women forever. There is no easy way out of your responsibility. If this seems harsh, then let it be a warning to whoever would shirk the awareness of their own actions. Ignorance of morality is not a defense. Defaulting to religious doctrine to defend you is not a defense. You must KNOW whether your actions are right are wrong. And if you still do evil things then all will KNOW that you are evil.
Yep, the above article is another vivid portrait of just how effective religion is at keeping our society on a moral course. I mean really, if preachers, pastors, holy men cannot be led to a path of moral righteousness by their devotion to religion, then just how is it that they expect it to keep the rest of the world on a moral footing? Isn't this just one more proof of how morality has nothing to do with religion?
Morality is a choice. It is a framework of choices built upon values. And a person's values are what make them either good or evil. God cannot save you, because there is none. Belief in god cannot make you moral. Understanding WHY something is wrong is what makes one moral. And you don't have to be religious to understand why it's wrong to solicit little girls on the internet (Baptist), rape choir boys (Catholic), or sentence rape victims to death because they commit adultery (Islam).
What you have to do to be moral is to THINK about your actions, to THINK about your values, and to THINK about what values are good for yourself in the long term. If you really think about these things then you will find that moral decisions are easy. But you will also lose the pleasant reassurance that your evil will be forgiven. Evil cannot be forgiven. The best you can do is to work to undo the damage you have done and never do it again. In the worst cases where there is no sign of rehabilitation or remorse, or where compensation is impossible, you must be removed from the company of civilized men and women forever. There is no easy way out of your responsibility. If this seems harsh, then let it be a warning to whoever would shirk the awareness of their own actions. Ignorance of morality is not a defense. Defaulting to religious doctrine to defend you is not a defense. You must KNOW whether your actions are right are wrong. And if you still do evil things then all will KNOW that you are evil.
Friday, May 16, 2008
A Rebuttal to Some Arguments Against Objectivism
(This post may be hard to follow if you're not familiar with objectivist philosophy, but I'll try to make my rebuttal as concise as possible)
Well, the inspiration for this post comes from the following video. :
Please watch the video as I'll be destroying the objections raised therein one by one.
(First of all: the Axioms)
The video claims that objectivist axioms are not automatically accepted by anyone trying to attack them. I hold that they are. Let us see what his arguments are.
(1.1 Existence exists)
The video claims that the statement of identity is tautological and that this renders it meaningless? It's an axiom. Axioms are simply statements of reality. They are the bedrock upon which an argument is based. A tautological axiom would seem to be a given. I fail to see what the problem is in starting a logical derivation from something which is universally accepted (i.e. tautological).
The video then goes on to propose this question as being the truly essential point, "Is there existence apart from my experience in the first place?" Well, in short....yes. And of course the creator of this video accepts this because they went to the trouble of making the video in the first place. If this person truly rejects the idea that there is a common existence outside of his experience, then to make the video in spite of that would be truly mad. That, in itself, would be enough to disqualify this person from the status of "rational".
He then proceeds to prove that he is mad by proposing that "existence can be denied". How then is it possible that I am writing this critique of something which he created, put on the internet, and I subsequently viewed? Existence exists. This statement, which the video's creator initially conceded was a TAUTOLOGY (something which is ALWAYS true), is now contradicted by the statement "existence can be denied." This is a contradiction and renders this line of argument invalid. At best, this approach is intellectually dishonest. To paraphrase koenichfuerst, I think that's a sneaky way of pushing relativist nonsense down your throat from the very start. If "existence" exists by definition, as it would have to in order to be a tautology, then, by definition, it cannot be denied.
He then moves on to suggest that the great debate of metaphysics is to establish whether or not sense perception actually exists or if we are all Keanu Reaves in the Matrix. (Oh, boy....pop analogies here we come...). Once again, if all of our perceptions are wrong, and he truly believes this, then why are two human beings able to communicate at all? Why are we able to read each other's words and understand the content? How are we able to reach any agreements on anything whatsoever if the nature of existence is indeed so subjective?
I'm jumping ahead but koenichfuerst later invokes evolution as a support of a later argument. Evolution would have no meaning if our perceptions were all illusory. The whole theory of evolution is based on the idea that living beings change bit by bit over time. But one of the agents of that change is the environment in which they live. The better adapted to that environment they are, the better they are at surviving and in passing along their genes. Those who aren't as well adapted die off without the chance to pass them along. Evolution demands a direct correlation between survival and reality, between existence and life. You can't dismiss the identity principle as "begging the question" and subsequently use a theory which would be meaningless without it for support. This is another sign of intellectual dishonesty. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I hope that this is sufficient to brand koenichfurst as a charlatan and a liar. No wonder he didn't want to stick his face to this nonsense.
But, let's continue just to clean up all his inaccuracies.
koenichfuerst: 0
American Antitheist: 1
(1.2 Free Will)
Basically he is saying that free will cannot exist in a deterministic system. So, he says that if we accept physics, evolution, biology...in short the scientific explanation of existence and rule out any supernatural mumbo jumbo, that there is no room left for free will. If the man had any familiarity with cognitive science at all, then he would realize that this is just not so.
Of course objectivism supports the scientific view of our existence which rules out the possibility of a metaphysical soul. But, if you take a look at cognitive science, and in particular the work of Douglas Hofstadter, you will begin to see that it is possible to explain consciousness from within a deterministic framework. The window is called self-referentiality. For a detailed exploration of this concept I recommend you to Hofstadter's book, Godel, Escher, Bach. Although I must note that Hofstadter is in no way connected with objectivism and some of his personal opinions run definitely counter to it. However his initial theory of strange loops and tangled hierarchies seems to have a lot of value in the fields of cognitive science and artificial intelligence. And it is an eloquent depiction of just how likely it is that deterministic science and free will can co-exist.
Never say never, dude.
koenichfuerst: 0
American Antitheist: 2
(2. Ethics)...oh, goody...let's see what he has in store for us....
He is saying that the biological goal of life is reproduction not survival.
Well, he's half right, but mostly wrong.
The biological goal of genes is reproduction. And they have worked under evolutionary laws for so long that the "gene machines" or bodies they have constructed to carry and reproduce them have become highly effective at enabling them to do so. From a post-Dawkins Darwinian perspective, genes are the principle actors in evolution and from the gene's perspective it is most definitely concerned with survival. A gene can survive for thousands and thousands of years and the gene's "goal", so to speak, is to survive indefinitely. It is by the process of evolution that it "hopes" to do so. Of course the gene doesn't actually "hope" for anything or have goals, but the analogy helps to visualize the aggregate effects of natural selection at the gene level. Of course, this is too highly intricate a concept to be dealt with in a paragraph. I refer the reader to Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene for a fuller treatment of the idea. Of course, Dawkins is not an objectivist either, but since objectivism is a philosophy of reason, it can freely draw from science to support itself. And Dawkins is a brilliant evolutionary biologist.
The problem here is that genes are intent on survival which means that we have a drive to replicate, but for the genes to continue to exist and to optimize their chance for survival, their hosts or bodies must survive, and be able to survive for as long as necessary. And even then, aside from gene theory, let's just look at observations of the animal kingdom. How many animals knowingly commit suicide? Let's see..........ZERO. The reason is that any animal that had a genetic propensity to kill itself off, would succeed and would no longer exist. Evolution would allow it its wish and it would cease to be. Let's weaken it then, would any animal even exist which worked against it's own survival? NO. Why? Well, same thing. If an animal worked against itself (or did not work to preserve its own life) then this would be a huge disadvantage and it would become extinct due to evolutionary pressures. So, you can't use evolution to say that animals don't try to sustain their lives.
Furthermore, Ayn Rand does not claim that life is the ultimate value of all living beings. Animals cannot have values, because they do not have choice, they are merely programmed by those genes. Human beings, on the other hand, have that already established free-will. So, they can CHOOSE not to live and commit suicide. They CAN work against themselves if they wish. Only IF you choose life as your ultimate value, will the is-ought gap be bridged. Why? Because then the answer to things' optimal use is answered. If the ultimate goal is life, then all things, all rules of existence must be utilized in the way which is optimal for your own survival and then again survival in accordance with your nature as a human being. Continued survival in a state which is in accordance with your human nature is what we call happiness. If you choose to hold death as your ultimate value, then you are free to do so, but it will not bring you happiness.
Of course, if you choose not to hold life as your ultimate value, then you are in an immoral state, as he points out. As such, you can leech off of whoever is willing to support you, whether it be the blood money raped from the labor of others and dispensed by a welfare state, or if it is simply the charity of others upon which you can depend (or demand as the case may be). Of course, you can also die as do people who commit suicide, or do suicidal things.
As for the example of the praying mantis, it is highly debatable whether the male is aware of the fate that will meet it when it copulates. Most likely, it is simply driven by its genes as are all animals. I'm sure that it would much prefer to go on living if it could, but once again a praying mantis has no choice in the matter. People do. And I fail to see how surviving genetically equates with existing. The male CEASES to exist. It dies. Once again (third time) this is a case of intellectual dishonesty where koenichfuerst is switching definitions mid-sentence. The intent is to confuse your frame of reference so as to cram his argument down your throat, so to speak. (Pardon the paraphrase.)
koenichfuerst: 0
American Antitheist: 3
Finally, the Albert Ellis defense holds absolutely no weight whatsoever. Ellis developed Rational Therapy. And just by checking out the Wikipedia article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Ellis
we find,
"RT required that the therapist help the client understand — and act on the understanding —that his personal philosophy contains beliefs that lead to his own emotional pain. This new approach stressed actively working to change a client's self-defeating beliefs and behaviors by demonstrating their irrationality and rigidity. Ellis related everything to these core irrational beliefs such as "I must be perfect" and "I must be loved by everyone". Ellis believed that through rational analysis, people can understand their errors in light of the core irrational beliefs and then construct a more rational position."
I fail to see how this is an attack on objectivism. Demanding that everyone love you would seem to be a chronic problem of someone without self-esteem or self-worth who is desperately seeking validation from everyone around them. As for the seeking of perfection, it depends entirely upon what your concept of "perfect" is. If it is based on the irrational, then of course pursuing it will lead to problems. If it is based on the rationally attainable, then there is nothing impossible about it. Perfection can be attained as long as your notion of perfection is defined by reality and does not consist of an attempt to redefine reality to meet your conception. As a philosophy which preaches that full acceptance of the reality of the world is fundamental to all else, objectivism would demand that people keep their goals realistic. If anything, given this article, I would think that RT is fully compatible with objectivism. Of course I'm not fully versed in the method, but the principles seem non-contradictory.
koenichfuerst: 0
American Antitheist: 4
Obviously, he's too busy to read any of the works he refers to, or research any of the ideas he's criticizing. Remember, koenichfuerst...ignorance is not a rebuttal. Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it isn't true.
Cheers.
(If you're interested, Koenichfuerst replied to this post, and I posted a link to his rebuttal along with my counter. It should be interesting to note that he has yet to respond to it. Here's the link: http://anamericananti-theistabroad.blogspot.com/2008/05/further-defense-against-koenichfuerst.html)
Well, the inspiration for this post comes from the following video. :
Please watch the video as I'll be destroying the objections raised therein one by one.
(First of all: the Axioms)
The video claims that objectivist axioms are not automatically accepted by anyone trying to attack them. I hold that they are. Let us see what his arguments are.
(1.1 Existence exists)
The video claims that the statement of identity is tautological and that this renders it meaningless? It's an axiom. Axioms are simply statements of reality. They are the bedrock upon which an argument is based. A tautological axiom would seem to be a given. I fail to see what the problem is in starting a logical derivation from something which is universally accepted (i.e. tautological).
The video then goes on to propose this question as being the truly essential point, "Is there existence apart from my experience in the first place?" Well, in short....yes. And of course the creator of this video accepts this because they went to the trouble of making the video in the first place. If this person truly rejects the idea that there is a common existence outside of his experience, then to make the video in spite of that would be truly mad. That, in itself, would be enough to disqualify this person from the status of "rational".
He then proceeds to prove that he is mad by proposing that "existence can be denied". How then is it possible that I am writing this critique of something which he created, put on the internet, and I subsequently viewed? Existence exists. This statement, which the video's creator initially conceded was a TAUTOLOGY (something which is ALWAYS true), is now contradicted by the statement "existence can be denied." This is a contradiction and renders this line of argument invalid. At best, this approach is intellectually dishonest. To paraphrase koenichfuerst, I think that's a sneaky way of pushing relativist nonsense down your throat from the very start. If "existence" exists by definition, as it would have to in order to be a tautology, then, by definition, it cannot be denied.
He then moves on to suggest that the great debate of metaphysics is to establish whether or not sense perception actually exists or if we are all Keanu Reaves in the Matrix. (Oh, boy....pop analogies here we come...). Once again, if all of our perceptions are wrong, and he truly believes this, then why are two human beings able to communicate at all? Why are we able to read each other's words and understand the content? How are we able to reach any agreements on anything whatsoever if the nature of existence is indeed so subjective?
I'm jumping ahead but koenichfuerst later invokes evolution as a support of a later argument. Evolution would have no meaning if our perceptions were all illusory. The whole theory of evolution is based on the idea that living beings change bit by bit over time. But one of the agents of that change is the environment in which they live. The better adapted to that environment they are, the better they are at surviving and in passing along their genes. Those who aren't as well adapted die off without the chance to pass them along. Evolution demands a direct correlation between survival and reality, between existence and life. You can't dismiss the identity principle as "begging the question" and subsequently use a theory which would be meaningless without it for support. This is another sign of intellectual dishonesty. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I hope that this is sufficient to brand koenichfurst as a charlatan and a liar. No wonder he didn't want to stick his face to this nonsense.
But, let's continue just to clean up all his inaccuracies.
koenichfuerst: 0
American Antitheist: 1
(1.2 Free Will)
Basically he is saying that free will cannot exist in a deterministic system. So, he says that if we accept physics, evolution, biology...in short the scientific explanation of existence and rule out any supernatural mumbo jumbo, that there is no room left for free will. If the man had any familiarity with cognitive science at all, then he would realize that this is just not so.
Of course objectivism supports the scientific view of our existence which rules out the possibility of a metaphysical soul. But, if you take a look at cognitive science, and in particular the work of Douglas Hofstadter, you will begin to see that it is possible to explain consciousness from within a deterministic framework. The window is called self-referentiality. For a detailed exploration of this concept I recommend you to Hofstadter's book, Godel, Escher, Bach. Although I must note that Hofstadter is in no way connected with objectivism and some of his personal opinions run definitely counter to it. However his initial theory of strange loops and tangled hierarchies seems to have a lot of value in the fields of cognitive science and artificial intelligence. And it is an eloquent depiction of just how likely it is that deterministic science and free will can co-exist.
Never say never, dude.
koenichfuerst: 0
American Antitheist: 2
(2. Ethics)...oh, goody...let's see what he has in store for us....
He is saying that the biological goal of life is reproduction not survival.
Well, he's half right, but mostly wrong.
The biological goal of genes is reproduction. And they have worked under evolutionary laws for so long that the "gene machines" or bodies they have constructed to carry and reproduce them have become highly effective at enabling them to do so. From a post-Dawkins Darwinian perspective, genes are the principle actors in evolution and from the gene's perspective it is most definitely concerned with survival. A gene can survive for thousands and thousands of years and the gene's "goal", so to speak, is to survive indefinitely. It is by the process of evolution that it "hopes" to do so. Of course the gene doesn't actually "hope" for anything or have goals, but the analogy helps to visualize the aggregate effects of natural selection at the gene level. Of course, this is too highly intricate a concept to be dealt with in a paragraph. I refer the reader to Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene for a fuller treatment of the idea. Of course, Dawkins is not an objectivist either, but since objectivism is a philosophy of reason, it can freely draw from science to support itself. And Dawkins is a brilliant evolutionary biologist.
The problem here is that genes are intent on survival which means that we have a drive to replicate, but for the genes to continue to exist and to optimize their chance for survival, their hosts or bodies must survive, and be able to survive for as long as necessary. And even then, aside from gene theory, let's just look at observations of the animal kingdom. How many animals knowingly commit suicide? Let's see..........ZERO. The reason is that any animal that had a genetic propensity to kill itself off, would succeed and would no longer exist. Evolution would allow it its wish and it would cease to be. Let's weaken it then, would any animal even exist which worked against it's own survival? NO. Why? Well, same thing. If an animal worked against itself (or did not work to preserve its own life) then this would be a huge disadvantage and it would become extinct due to evolutionary pressures. So, you can't use evolution to say that animals don't try to sustain their lives.
Furthermore, Ayn Rand does not claim that life is the ultimate value of all living beings. Animals cannot have values, because they do not have choice, they are merely programmed by those genes. Human beings, on the other hand, have that already established free-will. So, they can CHOOSE not to live and commit suicide. They CAN work against themselves if they wish. Only IF you choose life as your ultimate value, will the is-ought gap be bridged. Why? Because then the answer to things' optimal use is answered. If the ultimate goal is life, then all things, all rules of existence must be utilized in the way which is optimal for your own survival and then again survival in accordance with your nature as a human being. Continued survival in a state which is in accordance with your human nature is what we call happiness. If you choose to hold death as your ultimate value, then you are free to do so, but it will not bring you happiness.
Of course, if you choose not to hold life as your ultimate value, then you are in an immoral state, as he points out. As such, you can leech off of whoever is willing to support you, whether it be the blood money raped from the labor of others and dispensed by a welfare state, or if it is simply the charity of others upon which you can depend (or demand as the case may be). Of course, you can also die as do people who commit suicide, or do suicidal things.
As for the example of the praying mantis, it is highly debatable whether the male is aware of the fate that will meet it when it copulates. Most likely, it is simply driven by its genes as are all animals. I'm sure that it would much prefer to go on living if it could, but once again a praying mantis has no choice in the matter. People do. And I fail to see how surviving genetically equates with existing. The male CEASES to exist. It dies. Once again (third time) this is a case of intellectual dishonesty where koenichfuerst is switching definitions mid-sentence. The intent is to confuse your frame of reference so as to cram his argument down your throat, so to speak. (Pardon the paraphrase.)
koenichfuerst: 0
American Antitheist: 3
Finally, the Albert Ellis defense holds absolutely no weight whatsoever. Ellis developed Rational Therapy. And just by checking out the Wikipedia article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Ellis
we find,
"RT required that the therapist help the client understand — and act on the understanding —that his personal philosophy contains beliefs that lead to his own emotional pain. This new approach stressed actively working to change a client's self-defeating beliefs and behaviors by demonstrating their irrationality and rigidity. Ellis related everything to these core irrational beliefs such as "I must be perfect" and "I must be loved by everyone". Ellis believed that through rational analysis, people can understand their errors in light of the core irrational beliefs and then construct a more rational position."
I fail to see how this is an attack on objectivism. Demanding that everyone love you would seem to be a chronic problem of someone without self-esteem or self-worth who is desperately seeking validation from everyone around them. As for the seeking of perfection, it depends entirely upon what your concept of "perfect" is. If it is based on the irrational, then of course pursuing it will lead to problems. If it is based on the rationally attainable, then there is nothing impossible about it. Perfection can be attained as long as your notion of perfection is defined by reality and does not consist of an attempt to redefine reality to meet your conception. As a philosophy which preaches that full acceptance of the reality of the world is fundamental to all else, objectivism would demand that people keep their goals realistic. If anything, given this article, I would think that RT is fully compatible with objectivism. Of course I'm not fully versed in the method, but the principles seem non-contradictory.
koenichfuerst: 0
American Antitheist: 4
Obviously, he's too busy to read any of the works he refers to, or research any of the ideas he's criticizing. Remember, koenichfuerst...ignorance is not a rebuttal. Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it isn't true.
Cheers.
(If you're interested, Koenichfuerst replied to this post, and I posted a link to his rebuttal along with my counter. It should be interesting to note that he has yet to respond to it. Here's the link: http://anamericananti-theistabroad.blogspot.com/2008/05/further-defense-against-koenichfuerst.html)
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
This is John Galt Speaking...
This is a 13-parter, so I can't embed all the clips here. But I seriously recommend that you at least look at part 1 and if you like, go check out the others.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Religion Illustrated
Here's another brilliant lecture by Christopher Hitchens. It's accompanied by artistic imagery so it comes off as an integrated performance art piece. Check it out:
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Will Bigotry Never Cease?
Here's a little gem I found over at Townhall.com today. I encourage you as always to check it out for yourself:
Americans Are Right To Resist An Atheist As President
By Michael Medved
To start with, what a wonderfully smug title. I propose a little thought experiment to reveal the true nature of this new attempt to paint fascism in the colors of civility. Let us take all the references to "atheists" and change them to "black". And let us change all the references to other religions to that of race. If it helps just imagine that this editorial was published about 50 years ago. Let us do this and see what it makes you feel like. Then you will see just how slimy Medved is. My alterations will be in red ink. My comments are in italics.
Let's start with the title, "Americans Are Right to Resist a Black President".
"Despite the recent spate of major bestsellers touting the virtues of blacks, polls show consistent, stubborn reluctance on the part of the public to cast their votes for a presidential candidate who is of black heritage."
...
"Of course, some civil rights activists respond to this state of affairs by decrying the American people as backward and benighted, while dismissing our politicians as hypocritical, falsely egalitarian blowhards. These activists point to the huge popularity of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X among others as evidence that the public resistance to racial equality and black candidates may be overstated."
...
"Actually, there’s little chance that blacks will succeed in placing one of their own in the White House at any time in the foreseeable future, and it continues to make powerful sense for voters to shun potential presidents who deny the superiority of the white race. A black may be a good person, a good politician, a good family man (or woman), and even a good patriot, but a black as president would, for three reasons, be bad for the country.
Hollowness and Hypocrisy at State Occasions. As Constitutional scholars all point out, the Presidency uniquely combines the two functions of head of government (like the British Prime Minister) and head of state (like the Queen of England). POTUS not only appoints cabinet members and shapes foreign policy and delivers addresses to Congress, but also presides over solemn and ceremonial occasions. Just as the Queen plays a formal role as head of the Church of England, the President functions as head of the “Church of America” – that informal, tolerant but profoundly important civic religion that dominates all our national holidays and historic milestones. For instance, try to imagine a black president issuing the annual Thanksgiving proclamation. To whom would he extend thanks in the name of his grateful nation –-the slave traders who enslaved his forefathers?"
...
"Skeptics may suggest that a black president would give the nation the long-overdue chance to purge itself of these inappropriate racist trappings in our governmental and public processes, but truly overwhelming majorities cherish such traditions. The notion of dropping segregation to avoid discomfort for a single individual amounts to a formula for a disastrously unpopular presidency."
I could go on, but seriously, why bother with this nonsense? And truthfully the task of rephrasing this malice in terms of race makes me uncomfortable. But the point is obvious isn't it? The so-called defenders of religious freedom are once again trying to make the cloak of free-speech into a cloak of invulnerability where they can spit malice with impunity and everyone can be expected to jump on the band wagon saying, "Well, of course he has a point..."
Shut this fascist down! Not with violence and not with law. Don't ban him, or cut him out of the spotlight. Instead push him into the merciless light of full attention. Comment, blog, e-mail, respond, protest. Get his name and this vicious attack out into the open. Evil only breeds when it has shadows to hide in.
Americans Are Right To Resist An Atheist As President
By Michael Medved
To start with, what a wonderfully smug title. I propose a little thought experiment to reveal the true nature of this new attempt to paint fascism in the colors of civility. Let us take all the references to "atheists" and change them to "black". And let us change all the references to other religions to that of race. If it helps just imagine that this editorial was published about 50 years ago. Let us do this and see what it makes you feel like. Then you will see just how slimy Medved is. My alterations will be in red ink. My comments are in italics.
Let's start with the title, "Americans Are Right to Resist a Black President".
"Despite the recent spate of major bestsellers touting the virtues of blacks, polls show consistent, stubborn reluctance on the part of the public to cast their votes for a presidential candidate who is of black heritage."
...
"Of course, some civil rights activists respond to this state of affairs by decrying the American people as backward and benighted, while dismissing our politicians as hypocritical, falsely egalitarian blowhards. These activists point to the huge popularity of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X among others as evidence that the public resistance to racial equality and black candidates may be overstated."
...
"Actually, there’s little chance that blacks will succeed in placing one of their own in the White House at any time in the foreseeable future, and it continues to make powerful sense for voters to shun potential presidents who deny the superiority of the white race. A black may be a good person, a good politician, a good family man (or woman), and even a good patriot, but a black as president would, for three reasons, be bad for the country.
Hollowness and Hypocrisy at State Occasions. As Constitutional scholars all point out, the Presidency uniquely combines the two functions of head of government (like the British Prime Minister) and head of state (like the Queen of England). POTUS not only appoints cabinet members and shapes foreign policy and delivers addresses to Congress, but also presides over solemn and ceremonial occasions. Just as the Queen plays a formal role as head of the Church of England, the President functions as head of the “Church of America” – that informal, tolerant but profoundly important civic religion that dominates all our national holidays and historic milestones. For instance, try to imagine a black president issuing the annual Thanksgiving proclamation. To whom would he extend thanks in the name of his grateful nation –-the slave traders who enslaved his forefathers?"
...
"Skeptics may suggest that a black president would give the nation the long-overdue chance to purge itself of these inappropriate racist trappings in our governmental and public processes, but truly overwhelming majorities cherish such traditions. The notion of dropping segregation to avoid discomfort for a single individual amounts to a formula for a disastrously unpopular presidency."
I could go on, but seriously, why bother with this nonsense? And truthfully the task of rephrasing this malice in terms of race makes me uncomfortable. But the point is obvious isn't it? The so-called defenders of religious freedom are once again trying to make the cloak of free-speech into a cloak of invulnerability where they can spit malice with impunity and everyone can be expected to jump on the band wagon saying, "Well, of course he has a point..."
Shut this fascist down! Not with violence and not with law. Don't ban him, or cut him out of the spotlight. Instead push him into the merciless light of full attention. Comment, blog, e-mail, respond, protest. Get his name and this vicious attack out into the open. Evil only breeds when it has shadows to hide in.
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