E. D. Hirsch Jr.'s Cultural Literacy: A Secessionist Response

 

E. D. Hirsch Jr. is one of my favorite education theorists. I find that cultural literacy makes intuitive sense to me with its emphasis on things that children should know. While Hirsch often gets accused of trying to promote "white education," his goal has been to help children of color. If you live in a society founded upon European culture and you wish to function within it then you are going to need to know the things that members of the dominant culture take for granted. This does not mean that there is anything superior about European culture nor does it mean that American culture cannot or should not change to reflect the greater diversity of its people. One adapts to the world around oneself.  

Having a common set of cultural references functions in much the same way as language in allowing for a functional democratic country. A monarchy can function and even benefit from the fact that the peasants in different parts of the country speak different dialects and would not understand each other even if they were to meet. A democracy, on the other hand, needs a population capable of deliberation to at least come to the belief that they are one people with a mutually understood common good that all parties can be trusted to sacrifice themselves for. In practice, this requires that people have a common language that allows them to understand each other. 

In truth, it is not enough that people speak a common language; to avoid people simply speaking past each other, it is important that people also have a common set of cultural references. For example, being familiar with Star Wars to the point that you take being called "rebel scum" as a compliment, shows me that you have a deeply ingrained sense that it can be legitimate to oppose certain kinds of authority. This can serve as a useful foundation for political cooperation. From this perspective, it makes sense to teach Star Wars in school in much the same way that we teach Shakespeare. (Schools can even use Ian Doescher's Shakespearian adaptations of Star Wars.)     

Following Hirsch, I am skeptical of claims to be able to teach critical thinking as it is difficult to evaluate. If students are unable to say who the American Revolution was fought against, I am inclined to assume, barring evidence to the contrary, that they are incapable of coming up with coherent arguments in favor of democracy or monarchy. Furthermore, my cynical self suspects that the push by schools to teach critical thinking is a cover for their failure to actually teach. If schools can pretend that they are teaching critical thinking (and there is no easy to prove that they are not teaching it) then the fact that they objectively fail to teach basic facts about the American Revolution cannot be used to reach the obvious conclusion that the school is a waste of the students' time as well as the tax payers' money and should be dismantled.

Similarly, it is a dead end to try to teach reading in the abstract. Students can never become good readers in general but only good readers of specific subjects from which they have mastered the necessary vocabulary and references. To do this, students need to do extensive reading in those subjects. Along the way, they should be aided by teachers who are themselves well-read in the particular subject and understand the particular vocabulary and references that are necessary to make sense of the material.  

An area where I disagree with Hirsch is that Hirsch favors a highly centralized school system with a set curriculum that does not change from teacher to teacher and school to school. To be fair to Hirsch, he is not a libertarian and has no prior commitments to limiting government authority. Furthermore, there are practical reasons to support top-down curriculums. It simply is not workable to expect teachers to design their own curriculums that are going to effectively teach state standards. It is one thing if teachers are simply expected to offer courses on their eccentric selves (not necessarily a bad method of teaching) to allow them the liberty of teaching whatever they think is worthwhile. If we expect teachers to fulfill specific goals then they should be given PowerPoints, videos, and assignments to teach that information. 

From a social or political perspective, it makes sense to not only insist that teachers in the same school teach a common curriculum but that all schools in a city, state, or even country teach the same curriculum. If you want a unified society or country then students are going to need a common set of things that they can assume that everyone else knows as well such as the English language or Star Wars.

As a secessionist, I believe that the diverse people currently living in the United States would be better served if the country were to be divided. This would end the culture wars and allow everyone to live in a country designed to suit their particular tastes. As such, I believe in the importance of cultural literacy but it serves a different purpose for me. Instead of using cultural literacy as a normative claim that everyone should have a set of common cultural references to allow them to function as part of one country, I see cultural literacy in positive terms. Where should we draw the lines for the different "un-United States?" A useful place to start a discussion would be to privatize education and see what kinds of curricula different schools would create. Those schools that developed similar curricula based on similar cultural references should likely remain as part of the same country. Those populations that clearly have different cultural references to the extent that they would not want their children taught in the other group's school system should split up. 

It is obvious to me that the Hasidim of New Square or Kiryas Joel should be given their own country. One can see this simply from the fact that they want a different kind of school curriculum for their children based on making sure that these children grow up without cultural references like Star Wars. I am also willing to accept that people who want their children taught a 1619 Project or a Howard Zinn version of the American Revolution should also belong to a different country from me. All of this can be done peacefully and would actually help different groups live with each other. I can be perfectly tolerant of people with radically different political values from mine when they live in a different country. It is when we have to share a country that we are at risk of conflict.      

         

Fighting the Losing Battle

 

Here is an utterly fantastic fan-made Star Wars lightsaber duel. This is a great example of fans understanding Star Wars far better than the people who run Disney or even George Lucas. If only we got rid of copyright laws, we might actually get some decent Star Wars. 

What I would like to particularly call attention to is the moment where the Light Side force user has a vision that she is going to die. Her response is to sit and meditate upon the Force, which is how the Dark Side person finds her. This scene pays homage to the lightsaber duel in Phantom Menace where the fighting is stopped because of the energy shields. Qui-Gon sits and meditates while Darth Maul angrily paces. 

 

The idea here is that Qui-Gon is at peace with the Force as opposed to Darth Maul being consumed by his Dark Side-fueled hate. One gets the sense that Qui-Gon is indifferent to the outcome of this fight, whether he lives or not. He serves the Force and it is the Force that has brought him to fight Maul. If it is the will of the Force that he dies, then so be it. (The fact that Obi-Wan turns to anger to defeat Maul after Qui-Gon is cut down is one of the more subtle ways in which the Dark Side is the real winner of the film.) Similarly, in our film, the woman accepts her coming death as the will of the Force. The fact that following the light has led her to this position does not cause her to turn to the Dark Side in the hope that she can change her fate.  

As I have mentioned previously, the chief conflict of Star Wars, when understood properly is that the Jedi are not capable of truly fighting the Sith. While the Jedi might be allowed to protect themselves and their friends, the moment they attempt to save the galaxy from falling to the Sith, an inevitable part of an unending cycle, they have already implicitly fallen to the Dark Side by acknowledging the central assumption of the Sith that the Force needs to be used to "fix" the galaxy. This inevitably means taking over the galaxy and ruling over it as an emperor, killing anyone who gets in the way. As such, to defeat the Sith means to become the Sith lengthening the time that the Galaxy must remain under Sith dominion. The only way to defeat the Sith is to allow them to eventually destroy themselves as they turn on each other in their bid to be the Sith Master.  

Does Reading Make Someone Less Likely to Be Evil?

 

"I know that having a good vocabulary doesn't guarantee that I'm a good person," the boy said. "But it does mean I've read a great deal. And in my experience, well-read people are less likely to be evil." ...

There are, of course, plenty of evil people who have read a great many books, and plenty of very kind people who seem to have found some other method of spending their time. But the Baudelaires knew that there was a kind of truth to the boy's statement, and they had to admit that they preferred to take their chances with a stranger who knew what the word "xenial" meant, ... (Slippery Slope, p. 95-96).

I confess that would I be more willing to trust someone who knew what xenial meant or, for that matter, had read Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. This is because they have something in common with me. As such, it is plausible to imagine that they would be able to better empathize with me, which would make it harder for them to betray me. Of course, this line of thinking can easily be manipulated by con artists, who know that they can trick people into trusting them by convincing them that they have the same taste in art or religion or belong to the same ethnic group.  

Does reading actually help make someone less likely to be evil? If you are a humanities person, whose life and profession center around books, there is much at stake in being able to claim that this is so. Consider the question, are plumbers less likely to be evil? The issue is irrelevant as society requires plumbers in order to function regardless of their moral quality. If studying to become a plumber had the same effect on one's moral development as spending a year on Korriban communing with the force spirits of ancient Sith Lords then so be it. It is not so obvious that society needs history and literature teachers if we cannot assume that they will contribute to the moral development of students. As such, those of us in these professions need to either be able to make a convincing case that we promote morality or confess that what we do is merely a hobby for people of leisure, much the same as gardening or video games.   

This renders book readers vulnerable to moral hazard. People's actual morality is likely to be inversely proportional to their belief in their morality. The more you think that you are a good person, the more likely you are going to be willing to justify doing bad things to your opponents. If they oppose you, they must be bad people who deserve what is coming to them. Why should a few bad people be allowed to stand in the way of all the wonderful things a good person such as yourself can do for the world? How truly dangerous must a person be whose sense of self is wrapped around books and needs to believe that these books have made them better people? 

The moral hazard goes even further. If people who read are morally superior then it makes sense that they should rule over the plumbers as philosopher kings. This goes to the heart of liberal arts. Historically, liberal meant "free." The liberal arts were those things that could be studied by the wealthy leisure class, who did not have to worry about developing a useful trade. To engage with the liberal arts itself was a justification to rule. The aristocrat, freed from the constraints of earning a living and allowed to study things simply to develop their souls, deserved to rule. Since they did not need to worry about money and personal gain, they could act for the "common good," which they learned through the liberal arts. This aristocratic ethos was later embraced by Roussoueauians and eventually Marxists. Neither of these ideologies are really about empowering the people or the working class. They are defenses for rule by intellectuals.    

There is a plausible case to be made that reading helps people expand their circle of empathy. Reading fiction and history allows one to enter the heads of people who are different from ourselves and recognize their humanity. If you can be emotionally moved by space aliens, perhaps you can be moved by the plight of refugees or even your next-door neighbor. This ability to empathize, though, would still require that the reader not believe that their reading is making them more empathetic. Otherwise, we fall back down the moral hazard hole, leaving us merely with someone who knows how to employ the rhetoric of empathy to claim the moral high ground and the right to rule. 

Has reading made me a better person? I enjoy reading as a means of coming to a better understanding of the world around me. My self-education through books has continued even after I failed to earn my doctorate when I could no longer assume that books would lead me to a position of respect and authority. Perhaps, my reading can be defended on the grounds that it has saved me from the sin of worldly ambition. Regardless, I will return to my joyously Sisyphean quest to get through my ever-expanding reading list.    

Fighting Star Wars: The Battle That Never Ends

Our first introduction to the deeper lore of Star Wars occurs in New Hope when Obi-Wan Kenobi explains to Luke Skywalker that for thousands of generations the Jedi stood as guardians over the Galaxy until the dark times of the Empire. In essence, once upon a time, the Galaxy was a reasonably good place. The fact that this is no longer the case must therefore be the fault of some villain.

There are clear political implications for this version of galactic history. If only that villain can be removed, the Galaxy will once again become a good place. If only Luke would be willing to abandon his moisture farm, help Obi-Wan rescue Princess Leia, blow up the Death Star with his X-wing, learn to use the Force, and put Darth Vader into a position where he has to choose between betraying Emperor Palpatine or watching his son be tortured to death with force lightening over the course of three movies then the people of the Galaxy will be able to live happily ever after. As such, Luke is morally justified in trying to do these things even though there is only a small chance of success. Furthermore, his actions will lead to a galactic Civil War with a body count escalating presumably into the billions the closer he comes to his goal.

From the Expanded Universe, we learn that Obi-Wan’s version of galactic history has as much validity as what he says about Luke’s father. Instead, the Jedi and the Sith have been locked in a cycle of combat that has gone on for thousands of years. Neither side can ever win this struggle because they are both trapped by their own ideologies. To be a Jedi means to obey the Force and not attempt to use the Force to take over the Galaxy even if it is done to refashion the Galaxy into what they think is a better place. Any Jedi who tries to "fix" the Galaxy by actually trying to eliminate the Sith will inevitably become a Sith Lord themselves. Thus, the cycle will continue even if the Sith Lord in question is defeated. We see this in the examples of Raven, Exar Kun, Ulic Qel-Droma, and Jacen Solo, all of whom become Sith Lords themselves precisely because they tried to fight the Sith. It is the Sith who believe in using the Force to refashion the Galaxy in their own image. So, anyone who tries to directly fight the Sith has already tacitly admitted that the Sith are right about fixing the Galaxy by killing a whole bunch of people. The only thing that remains is accepting that the Sith are also right about the relatively minor details such as wiping out the Jedi and destroying the Republic.  

What limits the Sith and stops them from conquering the Galaxy and destroying the Jedi is simply the fact that they are all a bunch of Sith Lords. They will inevitably stab each other in the back in order to claim the mantle of supreme Sith Lord.

The Sith Lord who understood this best was Darth Bane. He recognized that the Sith could never defeat the Jedi in head-to-head combat no matter their superiority in starfighters or lightsaber duelists. His solution was to wipe out all the other Sith Lords and establish the Rule of Two. There should be a Sith Master and a Sith Apprentice. The purpose of the Master is to train the Apprentice to be powerful enough in the Dark Side to kill them. If the Apprentice fails, they will die and the Master will find a new student. If the Apprentice succeeds, they will become the new Master and be tasked with finding an even more powerful student to kill them in turn. Following this logic, the Sith Lords of the Bane tradition left the Galaxy in the hands of the Jedi for a thousand years until Darth Sidious was able to take over the Galaxy as Emperor Palpatine by baiting the Jedi into fighting the Clone Wars.

Recognizing that there is no defeating the Sith allows one to put a different twist on the original films. It should be noted that neither Obi-Wan nor Yoda ever bother to directly fight the Empire. Instead, they submit themselves to the will of the Force and trust that the Sith will naturally be their own downfall. (Whatever Disney is planning to do with the Obi-Wan series that does not fit with this should be rejected as a retcon done in the spirit of greed and not out of faithfulness to the original.)  

When Luke comes to him with R2-D2 and the message from Leia, Obi-Wan agrees to leave Tatooine not to fight the Empire but to train Luke in the Force. Rather than fight against Darth Vader, Obi-Wan allows himself to be killed, teaching Luke the pacifist lesson that it is better to allow the Sith to kill you than strike them down and risk becoming a Sith Lord yourself. Obi-Wan guides Luke in destroying the Death Star. This is an act of self-defense and not designed to fix the Galaxy. Of true importance here is that Luke learns to trust the Force to fire the torpedo and not his ship's computer.

Later, in Empire Strikes Back, Luke wishes to go rescue Han, Leia, Chewie, and the droids. Both Yoda and Obi-Wan warn him not to go. It is more important that Luke stays in a swamp studying the Force than to try saving his friends on Cloud City as this will likely lead him to the Dark Side. Luke does not listen to this advice and because of this loses his hand. On the plus side, he does gain a father.

Discovering the truth about Vader forces Luke to internalize the lesson that Obi-Wan and Yoda had been trying to teach him. He cannot defeat the Sith in a lightsaber duel. To win such a fight, killing his own father, would actually be a worse outcome than dying as it would turn him to the Dark Side. Luke, though, still wants to help the Rebel Alliance destroy the Second Death Star so he agrees to join Han and Leia on their mission to Endor. Sensing Vader’s presence, finally causes Luke to realize that there is nothing he can do to help the Rebellion. His only option is to surrender to Vader in the hope that he can either convince Vader to run away with him or that both of them would be blown up in the Death Star along with the Emperor when the Rebel fleet arrives. 

Taken before the Emperor, Luke finds himself forced into a fight with Vader that he knows he cannot allow himself to win. Of course, the Emperor is relying on the fact that Luke is not capable of simply standing back, allowing the Rebellion to be crushed, without trying to swing his lightsaber at something. Even here, Luke tries to avoid fighting Vader until Vader baits him with the possibility that Leia might turn to the Dark Side. Without the Rebellion to use against the Empire, Leia would have no choice but to turn to the Dark Side to continue her fight. That is unless Luke is willing to sacrifice himself to the Dark Side in order to defeat the Empire. While Luke initially gives in (leading to my all-time favorite Star Wars moment as Luke beats down on Vader to somber vocals), he refrains from striking the killing blow. Palpatine tries to seal the deal on Luke's downfall by making sure that Luke murders his father with the full knowledge of the consequences, but this causes Luke to step back. Luke realizes that killing Vader would not do anything to bring down the Empire but would simply make himself Vader’s replacement at the Palpatine’s side. He, therefore, gives himself over to the Force and throws his lightsaber away, knowing that Palpatine is going to kill him. In the end, Luke is saved because he refuses to fight the Sith. Instead, he allows the Sith to destroy themselves as Vader both finds his redemption but also fulfills his duty as a Sith Apprentice to kill his Master.   

This perspective on the original Star Wars films offers us a window on part of what was wrong with the prequels and sequels and how they could have been done better. The prequels should have been about Anakin's fall to the Dark Side. Rather than focusing on Anakin's relationship with Padme, we should have been given Anakin's relationship with Senator Palpatine. (The novelization of Attack of the Clones actually tries to fix this problem.) Anakin should not have gone to the Dark Side suddenly in the second half of Revenge of the Sith out of a desire to save Padme. Instead, Anakin should have spent most of the prequels faced with the problem that the Republic and the Jedi could not save the Galaxy even from petty slave dealers on Tatooine let alone from the Separatists. The only person who can help Anakin is Palpatine. Once Anakin realizes that Palpatine is a Sith Lord, he makes the choice to submit himself to the Dark Side, sacrificing the Republic and the Jedi in order to save the Galaxy. 

In the sequels, having Luke refuse to fight the First Order was fine. That being said, he should not have turned on the Force. Luke's decision not to fight to protect the New Republic should have been what drove Kylo Ren to the Dark Side. He knows that Palpatine is out there and the Republic is not capable of standing up to him. The only solution is to use the First Order to conquer the Galaxy so there is a united Galaxy to fight Palpatine. Kylo Ren is even willing to kill his own father, Han Solo, simply to more fully submerge himself into the Dark Side. He believes that only by giving himself completely to the Dark Side, no matter the personal cost to his soul, can he possibly be able to stand against Palpatine. This would explain his adoration for his grandfather Darth Vader. From his perspective, Vader was the true savior of the Galaxy. He became a Sith Lord to fight that evil from within. 

When Star Wars is at its best, it features not just space battles and lightsabers, but a profound moral question. Is it possible to fight evil without succumbing to it? As with Return of the Jedi, we should see tens of thousands of people fighting in space over Republic or Empire, a few dozen on some mission and it all comes down to one Jedi trying to save himself from becoming a Sith Lord.     

Can There Be a Video Game Too Immoral to Play?

In a Jonathan Haidt style exercise of asking disturbing moral questions that people feel strongly about even as they are unable to defend their positions, I asked a student of mine whether it is possible for there to be a video that would be immoral to play. He immediately jumped on the obvious liberal utilitarian response of no; simply playing a game, by definition, cannot, in of itself, harm anyone so it can never be immoral.

Level One: Wolfenstein 3D.




This classic game involves running around and systematically shooting people and dogs, who scream and produce pools of highly pixelated blood. Of course, the people you are shooting are Nazis (as are the dogs one guesses) so pretending to commit mass murder is, perhaps, defensible.

Level Two: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR).




It is a feature of a number of Star Wars games that you can choose to turn to the Dark Side. This means that instead of light-sabering and blasting your way through stormtroopers (the moral equivalent of Nazis) you can murder innocent people on your path to becoming the Sith Lord ruler of the galaxy, bringing misery to trillions of beings.




In defense of KOTOR, the violence here is safely out of the realm of reality. None of us can use the Force (let alone become Sith Lords) or lightsabers. Perhaps, the distance from actual mass murder is enough that pretending to commit such horrors is not in bad taste.

Level Three: Grand Theft Auto (GTA).

GTA allows you to play a street-level criminal. You can commit crimes ranging from selling drugs to running over the prostitutes of a rival pimp and shooting police officers. Unlike Sith Lord, this is a plausible career choice for players. This raises the question of whether GTA encourages violence. Alternatively, a person who likes GTA is at least signaling that he might wish to behave like this in real life. Clearly, a game like GTA forces our utilitarian to hunker down on his insistence that direct physical harm should be relevant. He is particularly vulnerable here as it is hardly obvious that banning the game would not reduce crime. By insisting on only direct harm, our utilitarian is showing that it is his liberal convictions that dominate.

Level Four: Racial Violence

It is my understanding that neo-nazis and others of that ilk have produced games that allow players to fight a race war against blacks, Jews, and other "undesirables." Imagine a game where you can shoot your way through a black church and then burn it down with small children inside.

My student conceded that such a game would be immoral to play though he could not offer a reason why pretending to murder black people in church should be wrong while pretending to murder cops is ok. It cannot be simply that playing a racist game is itself racist and not just pretend racism. To be ok with shooting cops in a game also demonstrates a lack of concern for the lives of cops, particularly to the extent that you are not ok with shooting blacks in a game.

The stakes here are very high and not just for video games. Once we acknowledge that there are some things so horrible that you should not even pretend to do them, much of literature becomes endangered. Plato famously wanted to ban the Homeric epics on account of their immoral behavior. In defense of Plato, the fact that Achilles and Odysseus make lies, murder, and sexual assault appear respectable, arguably makes the Illiad and the Odyssey a greater moral threat to society than a racist video game.

I agree with my student that there is an important line between GTA and racist violence games. If I were to defend this position, I would argue that even pretend racist violence is out of bounds because it violates a kind of social contract in ways that regular pretend violence does not. Chris Caldwell argues that the 1964 Civil Rights Act created a new constitution with the power to trump even the actual Constitution. Similarly, we can see American whites after the Civil Rights Movement agreeing to a new social contract with blacks. Since blacks had the moral high ground due to the fact that America's history of slavery and segregation was particularly embarrassing during a period of post-colonialism and the Cold War, they could demand not only technical legal equality but also that the American narrative should be reimagined to place the struggle over racism at the center. Blacks got to become an essential part of the American story and not just an inconvenient historical quirk. Liberal whites got to be the whites who fought for equality. Now for a white person to now be a "good American" they must actively present themselves as active opponents of racism.

Part of what makes this new social contract possible is that whites consistently underestimate the difficulty of living up to their end of it. It is easy to condemn racism as something other less enlightened people do. Truly opposing racism is actually quite impossible. For a white person to argue that they are free from racism is to demonstrate that they are actually racist as they fail to appreciate the true centrality of racism. To the extent that any white person can escape the taint of racism, it loses some of its centrality and reduces the relevance of blacks.

To be white in America is to be Tantalus, ever reaching for that reasonable goal of not judging people by the color of their skin and hoping that black people will give them absolution. If we only denounce other white people slightly less embedded within this narrative then that absolution can be ours. This game gains its highly seductive power precisely because it appears so reasonable. Racism is real and it should be denounced. Reasonable people should be able to agree that certain things, particularly within the context of the real horrors of American history, should not be said or done. So only a "racist" could reject this process. For example, I oppose the use of blackface and the n-word. I oppose Trump largely because he empowers genuine racists. Does this protect me against the charge of racism? To believe that it might would demonstrate that I am, in fact, a secret racist.

From this perspective, playing a racist game raises a different question from playing a murderer. For the American post-Civil Rights narrative to function, we must see the murder of blacks as different from other kinds of murder to the extent that we would take racist murder as something personal that strikes at our very being. Anything else demonstrates that we do not truly buy into the notion that racial struggle is central to American identity or worse that we take the white-supremacist side. Regardless of how we really feel about a racist game, it is of even greater importance that we condemn other people for being open to playing such games. Who can resist the opportunity to earn a little absolution for racism at so little cost by taking a stance against a hypothetical game?

There is a certain irony here. Freedom of expression is an intrinsic part of American identity. As such, it would be considered un-American to condemn the playing of a game even one that advocates murdering prostitutes and cops. To even attempt to argue from the perspective of virtue ethics that such a game could corrupt one's soul simply and that one should at least be bothered by the concept demonstrates that one is not sufficiently embedded within the American notions of freedom of expression. To support censorship when it comes to racist violence becomes a kind of antinomian embrace of American values. You value the new narrative of defining America in terms of the struggle against racism that you are even willing to support censorship, risking your American identity.

As Haidt argues, our moral values are intuitively formed in our emotions and it is left to our intellects to justify our morality after the fact. My objection to racist games is honestly heartfelt. As a product of the post Civil Rights social contract, I was educated to not only oppose racism intellectually but, more importantly, to be horrified at the concept. Any attempt on my part to defend anti-racism on intellectual grounds is bound to feel contrived at best. 

So I put it to my readers, is it immoral to play a racist game as opposed to shooting cops in a game? If so, what intellectual justification are you willing to offer as opposed to strongly worded self-righteousness?

Why Is the Rebellion Justified?

In honor of the new Star Wars movie, I would like to pose a question to my non-anarchist readers; why is the Rebellion (whether the original one or the Resistance) justified? Specifically, why are you willing to defend the Rebellion and not the Separatists of the prequels? If you think about it, the Separatists have a much stronger case. The goal of the Separatists is to create a separate government from the Old Republic and live in peace with it, not destroy it. The Rebellion seeks to destroy the Empire.

The tempting argument is to say that the Old Republic is simply incompetent while the Empire is evil. The problem is that this argument actually strengthens the imperial position. First, by making a pragmatic argument you throw away the principled high ground. If the Rebellion is a matter of utilitarian calculus then it is hardly obvious that getting billions of sentient brings killed in a galactic civil war on the off chance that the Rebellion wins and manages to create a functional government is justifiable.

Second, clearly neither the Separatists nor the Empire necessarily accepts this premise of the moral standing of the Old Republic and Empire. Separatists would argue that the Old Republic is bad. For example, it is being run by a Sith Lord. An imperial apologist would point out that the Empire is being run by the same Sith Lord so it cannot be worse than the Old Republic. Therefore Separatists and Imperials would be able to fight their wars and believe they are right.

These two arguments set up the third argument that the very act of Rebel propaganda (the opening crawl) calling the Empire evil undermines the Rebellion's case and justifies every imperial counter-measure. Imagine an alternative New Hope in which the Rebellion captures the Death Star instead of blowing it up. The Rebel leadership meets to consider two choices. Either defeat the Empire by using the Death Star against Coruscant or give up the fight against the Empire. Anyone who seriously believes that the Empire is evil and that the Rebellion is the only hope for the galaxy must choose the first option.

Any Rebellion “moderates” looking at the ruins of Coruscant and wishing to Pontius Pilate themselves by claiming that they support human rights and not mass murder must be a liar or an idiot. The moment the Rebellion called the Empire evil and these people did not turn on the Rebellion, they had signed a pact in blood to blow up planets.

This does not mean that the Rebellion is wrong. If Rebels honestly believe that the Empire is evil and they are willing to follow the logic of their convictions to their Hobbesian conclusions then so be it. As all we know about the Galaxy Far Far Away's politics comes from Rebel sources, we can have no opinion about the Empire. We must proceed on the assumption that the only reliable facts are those harmful to the Rebellion.

Once we accept that the Rebellion is morally tainted by the very nature of their claims against the Empire, the ironic conclusion is that the Empire gets a moral blank check to crush the Rebellion to the extent that it is difficult to plausibly argue that the Empire is evil. Imagine that the blast helmet people object to Grand Moff Tarkin’s “you may fire when ready” order against Alderaan. (This is assuming that we even accept the Rebel claim that the Empire is responsible for the destruction of Alderaan.) Tarkin asks Leia about the intentions of the Rebellion. She would not be able to deny that the Rebellion is a conspiracy to murder billions of people including every person on the Death Star, even the blast helmet people trying her (which is what happens at the end of the movie). The moment she responds, by attacking imperial policy, she is confessing. Whether or not Leia is right or not in killing billions of people is irrelevant to the fact that she is trying to do so.

It is not as if Alderaan and the other Rebel planets are trying to secede from the Empire. On the contrary, they seek to overthrow the Empire even at the cost of murdering all supporters of the Empire. The fact that most people on Alderaan might not be Rebels is irrelevant. The fact that Leia and her father have been so reckless as to endanger the galaxy and their home planet means that they are the ones who are truly responsible for Alderaan’s destruction. Thus, the blast helmets can fire when ready with a clear conscience as they are not required to make martyrs of themselves.

To be clear, this is not a defense of the Empire overall as a political institution. Again, I am neutral in regard to the facts of Star Wars. This is simply a demonstration of the Hobbesian logic of calling the Empire evil and how it damages the Rebel case. I can only conclude that the Separatist cause is justified as it does not require the initiation of violence against the Old Republic. The Rebellion is not justified as it is premised on initiating a war with the Empire. This makes all the atrocities of the war, including the destruction of Alderaan, the fault of the Rebellion. So much for fighting for justice in the galaxy.

The Curriculum: Education’s MacGuffin

In literature, a MacGuffin is an object or goal that motivates the characters, setting the plot in motion. For example, the plot of New Hope centers around the Death Star plans stored in R2-D2. Without the Death Star plans, Luke, Han, Chewbacca, and Obi-Wan do not team up to rescue Princess Leia. The fundamental weakness of MacGuffins is that, almost by definition, they are narrative ploys. We do not actually care whether the Rebels get the plans and save the galaxy just as long as our beloved heroes get into cool space battles and use the Force.

This does not mean that MacGuffins are bad; they are unavoidable. It is not even necessary that a character never abandon their MacGuffin. As a character changes, it can only be expected that their goals change along the way. The boy who spends the entire story trying to win a girl may decide that he does not want her after all as in the case of Stardust.

The trick is to find the right balance in which the MacGuffin does not become too important that we lose sight of the fact that it is the characters that are more important. This is the problem with just about any story where the hero has to save the world. The point of James Bond is not that he saves the world but that he should find himself in extreme situations involving some combination of sex and peril and make pithy comments. This was Sean Connery’s insight into the character and every subsequent portrayal of Bond has succeeded or failed depending on how well the actors understood this. On the other hand, a MacGuffin needs to be taken seriously as something more than a plot device. It is this latter problem that presents the greater challenge.

The real problem with MacGuffins comes when the author blatantly abandons the MacGuffin when it is no longer convenient, demonstrating that the MacGuffin was nothing more than a cheap ploy by a lazy writer. For example, most of Phantom Menace is spent trying to get our heroes to Coruscant so that the Republic can send a fleet to save Naboo from the Trade Federation when it should have been obvious to the characters, from the beginning, that the Republic lacked the resources and political will to go to war with the Trade Federation. A Republic that cannot enforce its own laws against slavery and whose currency is flat out rejected in the galaxy cannot be of much military use. Thus, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan should have never left Naboo. Act II of the film should have been them fleeing the Trade Federation on Naboo and trying to put together a resistance army. Along the way, they could have no recruited an adult Anakin as a fighter pilot.

We see a similar problem with the Star Wars sequels. The first part of Force Awakens centers around the MacGuffin of a map to Luke stored in BB-8. All of a sudden the plot switches to Star Killer (Death Star III). Having wasted the later part of the film blowing up this new Death Star and with moments left in the film, R2-D2 wakes up and, deus ex machina, hands over the critical information to find Luke. How much better it would have been if the film had continued with the quest for Luke. Kylo Ren could have still killed Han (the best scene in Star Wars since the originals). Force Awakens could have then ended with Star Killer blowing up a planet. This would have better set up Last Jedi by explaining why the New Republic simply surrenders without a fight.

Last Jedi offers a master class in how not to use MacGuffins. Luke proves useless and not worth the search. Canto Bright serves no other purpose than to allow the dreadfully boring Finn to suck the film emotionally dry. This sets up the Last Jedi’s ultimate sin of deciding that the backgrounds of Rey and Snoke didn’t matter when they were the central questions of the film. Ultimately, a bad MacGuffin amounts to the writer, much like the post-modern professor, mocking the audience for caring about a work of fiction while still intending these same fools to continue to offer their financial support.

This balancing act for MacGuffins is useful for understanding the role of curricula in education. Recently, I have begun homeschooling Kalman for kindergarten. We are using the K12 online curriculum and he has several live online classes a week with a teacher through iQ Academy California. I think the teacher is fantastic and we have developed an excellent relationship. The irony here is that our communication is far more frequent than if she was a conventional teacher. Since the foundational assumption of our relationship is that I am the teacher who needs the guidance of a professional, communication becomes a necessity. If she were a conventional classroom teacher, we likely would fall into the moral hazard of saying that it is her job to teach and my job to be grateful to her for taking Kalman off my hands during the day.

I do not think there is anything impressive about K12’s curriculum. It is highly paint by the numbers. This is perhaps necessary as an essential part of the system is that it needs to be idiot-proofed for parents. I am reminded of the joke from Herman Wouk’s Cain Mutiny that the Navy is a system designed by geniuses to be run by idiots. K12’s program is also way too easy for Kalman and I have needed to make things more challenging for him. In essence, they want to teach him phonics, while I am trying to teach him to read; they are teaching counting when I am teaching addition and subtraction.

What I admire about Kalman’s program is not the curriculum but the support staff, as I mentioned. In addition, the system gives us a list of things to check off every day. This has the advantage that even when Kalman is not into the material, he just has to get through his assignments and he is done for the day. Furthermore, having specific things to check off keeps us grounded.

In essence, the K12 curriculum works well when treated as a MacGuffin. It gets the ball rolling for our lessons and gives us structure as we try to check everything off in our daily lessons. As with any good story, it is the side things that are of true importance. One of the hardest lessons in teaching I have found is that you cannot teach anyone anything. You cannot teach someone who does not want to learn. If someone is interested in something they will learn it regardless of you. Teaching is really about facilitating, creating the right conditions for students to teach themselves.

What I hope Kalman takes away from his time homeschooling with me (whether it lasts through kindergarten or 12th grade) is that I value academics. I could inform him of this fact and even preach passionately about it but teaching does not work. Instead, what I offer is that every day I am willing to spend several hours with him, going through the curriculum and any side adventures. He sees my excitement and knows, good day or bad, I am with him. Succeed or fail, we are a team. What Kalman might learn that can be presented on a transcript is simply a MacGuffin that should not be ignored but not taken too seriously.

Liberals are Sauron, Conservatives are Boromir: My Adventures in Narrative Thinking

We human beings are fundamentally narrative creatures and it is specifically good vs. evil narratives that attract us. We make sense of the world through a framework of a once-great world under attack by the forces of evil who threaten to plunge us into perpetual darkness. It is the task of the hero to defeat evil to usher in a new golden age or at least to allow some sliver of good to survive.

This is part of the appeal of fantasy as it is the genre that is most unapologetic about its embrace of good vs. evil. Take the example of Lord of the Rings. It is the task of Frodo to save the Shire from Sauron. We are never meant to question the fact that Sauron is evil or consider negotiating with him. That path leads to Saruman. Now it is the genius of Tolkien that he deconstructs this very narrative. The reader who is paying attention will realize that the chief villain of the trilogy is not Sauron but the Ring and, by extension, potentially our heroes trying to save Middle Earth. This is crucial for the story because as long as someone thinks that the main villain is Sauron, they will inevitably, when pressed, fall to the temptation to use the Ring. This is Boromir’s mistake. He joins the Fellowship under the perfectly reasonable assumption that his job is to save Gondor from Sauron. If the only way to prevent the imminent destruction of Gondor is by taking up the Ring then so be it. That being said, even Tolkien's deconstruction relies on the power of good vs. evil to control our thinking. Boromir could never have fallen unless he believed that Sauron was an evil that needed to be defeated at all costs.

One might respond, why not just stick to the facts. Part of what makes narratives so important is that they allow you to make use of facts. Without a narrative, facts are just gibberish, difficult to remember and useless even if you could. Furthermore, the good vs. evil narrative is a powerful weapon that allows you to stare down your opponent. You cannot hope to stand up to someone speaking the language of good vs. evil without a counter-narrative of your own. Lacking such a narrative, you will be reduced to a quivering “but I am a good person and let me show you how reasonable I am by compromising on everything important.” When you care more about what the other person thinks about you than vice versa, you have lost. If your opponent is Sauron, you will never be tempted to care if he likes you.

Consider the example of the Westboro Baptist Church. Part of what is so hard for most people to understand about the WBC is to the extent that this church honestly does not seek popularity. The WBC waving signs saying "God Hates Faggots" and picketing the funerals of American soldiers was a diabolically genius move to guarantee that everyone in this country, from left to right, would hate them. It was never designed to stop the gay rights movement. On the contrary, by giving the LGBTQ movement a villain straight out of central casting, WBC likely hastened the legalization of gay marriage by several years. We are used to shock jocks who try to offend but still, deep down, want respectability. This country was never prepared for people who truly wanted to be hated and were not simply striking a pose long enough to cash in. As Megan Phelps-Roper discusses in her memoir Unfollow, since the WBC believe in predestination and see themselves as the elect and essentially everyone else in the world as damned, their protests have never been about outreach even to social conservatives. On the contrary, they are designed to alienate even potential allies.

This makes sense if you truly, to the very core of your heart, believe your opponents are irredeemably evil. The moment you believe that your opponents have some sliver of goodness (think of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi), it is inevitable that some part of you will try to reach out and convince them. This leads to compromise as you try to frame issues in their terms.

The WBC does not care if you walk away from them feeling compelled to march in your town's next Pride parade. On the contrary, it proves their point. From their perspective, you deserve to go to Hell because you value your own sense of right and wrong over the word of God. The fact that you would reject their "biblical" morality because it was not pitched in the right fashion simply proves that they are right about you. Thus, the WBC advances the coming of the Kingdom of God when the world will be clearly divided between those who obey God's word even if their sinful hearts find parts of it distasteful and those who think they know better than God. 

The most powerful narrative figure on the political stage at the moment is teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg. Part of what makes her such a frightening opponent is that, for her, there is no debate in the face of her narrative. Older people are responsible for endangering all life on this planet and now the only choice is to get behind her plan whatever it is. If I could put her in a formal debate, I would pick the late Hans Rosling as her opponent. I would love to see her having to handle questions like "are you willing to forgo getting the world's poorest billion out of poverty."

Thunberg’s narrative strength as an activist makes her useless for actually doing something for the environment. She speaks as if she has a nuclear weapon to threaten her opponents. On the assumption that she (or the people pulling her strings) does not, what is the plan? The very purity of her narrative will never allow her to compromise and politics is the art of compromise.

It is telling that for all the policy disagreements I have with my teenage self, what had not changed is my fundamental narrative. Traditional society is fundamentally good as it is what protects us against the Hobbesian horrors of both Nazism and Communism. In the long run, this traditional society is best protected through a Burkean commitment to reform founded with a healthy dose of rationalism and respect for individual liberty. Traditional society finds itself under attack by leftist liberals. These leftists are not classical liberals like those previously integrated into the system with the rise of modernity. The leftist marches under the banner of justice for all. This is cover for the leftist grab for power.

To battle the leftist liberal, one needs to first sure up one’s defenses to take away the obvious charges of prejudice. Not that anyone is ever truly free of prejudice. That is part of the hypocrisy of the leftist. It does not really believe in holding itself to its own standards. The leftist will accuse you of bigotry no matter what. The trick is to force leftists to get creative with their post-modern sophistry and expose the fact that they do not care about actual human beings. When liberals say “equality and justice for all people” what I hear is “non-liberals are not human and it is only right to harm them if it benefits liberals, the true humans.”

In addition, becoming a libertarian has meant that I see all government activity as literal violence. So when liberals talk about government programs, I hear “we are planning to kill you.” To give an example of this. Beto recently proposed seizing all privately owned AR-15s. When a gun owner responded that he would be waiting with his AR-15, Beto accused the person of advocating violence. No mass confiscation of firearms could happen without the government signing off on Ruby Ridge scenarios in which federal officers murder women and children. The fact that Beto’s conscience does not struggle with this issue means he is a moral dark lord who loves to kill people. Because of this, despite the fact I have moved left on most policy issues, I am not more inclined to cooperate with the Democratic Party in its current form.

One might object, what about conservatives? For all that I can intellectually articulate the flaws of conservatives, my heart cannot bring itself to fully embrace a sustained anti-conservative narrative. Thus, I am inclined to de-narrate conservatives who do things I oppose, like embracing racism or other forms of collectivism, as lunatics. When forced to acknowledge that something is truly rotten in the state of conservatism, my inclination is to simply fall back on my narrative. Such conservatives need to be eliminated because they play into the hands of those nefarious liberals, thereby endangering the world by allowing liberals to triumph. For example, my primary reason for not supporting Trump even on pragmatic grounds is that, long after Trump has left the White House (whether in handcuffs or after finishing a second term), I do not want liberals to be able to use Trump as a weapon. I consider this to be more important even than control over the Supreme Court.

This means that, while I might denounce many conservative figures and policy positions, I do not see myself as fighting Sauron for the fate of the world. At best, I feel like I am going against Boromir and trying to stop him from seizing the liberal Ring of Power for himself. Boromir may need to die but it is not because he is evil. It is because his failure endangers the Fellowship's mission. (Yes, Boromir does not actually die as a result of trying to seize the Ring. The fact that he is killed several minutes later though indicates that he is being punished for being the one person in the Fellowship to give in to the Ring's temptation. Boromir clearly sees and accepts his death in these terms.)

Understand that when I talk about my narrative it is not necessarily what I actually believe intellectually. It is a framework to which I instinctively fall back on when I feel threatened and angry. I am very good at fitting facts into my narrative, perhaps too good. This arms me with the moral certainty not only that I am right but that I am righteous and that my opponents are satanic and outside the realm of moral obligation. Keep in mind that my narrative is fundamentally a counter-narrative designed to respond to the liberal narrative. If liberals are going to question the good intentions of their opponents then we must conclude that either liberals are right or that they are evil. It is the mark of imperfect but not evil people that they can see how even their opponents might also be in the same category.

One of my goals for writing Izgad was less to convert liberals than to simply get them thinking outside the liberal narrative by being the kind of person who does not fit into the liberal narrative of I support social justice so I am a good person and my opponents must be hateful bigots. When I find myself talking to liberals, regardless of the particular issue being debated, the conversation that I am having in my head is whether or not they can think outside of the liberal narrative. Convince me of that and regardless of whether we agree on anything of substance, we can have a productive conversation. A good example of this is the blogger Clarissa. There is very little, in terms of practical policy, that we agree on. That being said, she has demonstrated a consistent ability to operate outside the liberal narrative. I can even forgive her use of the term "neo-liberal" as she mostly uses it to go after the liberal narrative. The moment I believe that I am talking to the liberal narrative and not a person, I fall back on my narrative and the discourse slowly but surely goes down the drain into Godwin's Law. I will be compared to Hitler and I will show my superior class by simply calling the other person Sauron.

2018 in Reading

Here is a shoutout to some of my favorite books, whether on Judaism, history, education, or science fiction, that I read this past year. 

Judaism

Hasidism: A New History. Ed. David Biale.

This book reminds me of the famous H. H. Ben Sasson Jewish History as a large single volume with multiple people writing different parts that summarize where the scholarship stands at a particular moment. This is not an easy book, but, certainly, one that repays careful reading. On a personal note, my father's favorite shul, Emunas Yisroel, gets a paragraph as an example of how Hasidism can function without a formal rebbe. 

Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson by Elliot Wolfson. 

The book about Chabad messianism by a former professor of mine not named David Berger. Wolfson exemplifies an argument that figured prominently in my dissertation on Jewish messianism that, at the heart of rabbinic Judaism, there is a thin line between the spiritualization of messianism and its elimination. Reading Wolfson has helped me make sense of a line of Chabad apologetics I have run into in personal conversations in which the Rebbe was a successful messiah if we just properly understood what messianism is supposed to mean. 

Jewish Law as Rebellion: A Plea for Religious Authenticity and Halachic Courage by Nathan Lopes Cardozo.

This is one of those books designed to generate conversations/pick fights. One can make a fair case that Cardozo is a heretic from Orthodox Judaism in the sense that, even if his beliefs cannot be refuted merely by appealing to the source material, there is something about his thought that subtly undermines an aspect of Judaism that is necessary to its identity. Critical to Cardozo's claim to legitimacy is the assumption that there exists a constituency of halakhicly serious Jews who do not identify as Orthodox or at least might become serious if only they could be presented with a more flexible less morally tone-deaf version of halakha. I fall into the former category but have never gotten the sense that you could build a community around people like me. The Conservative movement is collapsing and I fail to see where there exists a market for a more traditional but still not conventionally Orthodox version of the movement. Perhaps things are different in Israel. 

American History

The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro.

I have read three of the four volumes. I still need to read the really big one on LBJ's years in the Senate. These books are the real-life version of the kind of politics you see in House of Cards. 

Much like Richard Rothstein’s Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Caro seems caught between his heart and his head. Both writers feel a compulsion to insist that the New Deal protected the common man from big business or blacks from segregationists. At the same time, the actual story they are telling is how New Deal politicians were corrupt and in bed with the worst sorts of business interests and segregationists.  

The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind - and Changed the History of Free Speech in America by Thomas Healey.

One of the challenges of history is to get your mind wrapped around the idea that people thought differently. Here, we have a critical part of the story of how the J. S. Mill understanding of free speech came to replace the more traditional one of William Blackstone, which only stopped the government from arresting people before they publicized an idea but not afterward. The Blackstone model while keen on protecting the people's ability to have the information needed to make use of their vote, did not value diversity or believe in social progress. The group in charge believes that they are right and oppresses their opponents. If a minority is willing to undergo martyrdom for their beliefs, maybe one day they will seize power and turn the tables on their oppressors. Ultimately there is no wider value system built around freedom of expression beyond the letter of the law. One advantage of this position is that it does not require you to rely on the intellectual honesty of your opponents that if you allow them to spread their ideas, they will allow you to do so in turn. In a world in which both the right and the left accuse the other of hypocrisy when it comes to free speech, it might make sense for both sides to drop Mill and replace him with the narrow legalism of Blackstone.  

Classical History

Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD by Peter Brown.

Here is another book that asks you to rethink terms you take for granted. In this case, wealth, poverty, and charity. Brown's larger project has been to map out a period of late antiquity from the fourth through sixth centuries in which Rome did not suddenly become Christian and come to a violent end leaving the Middle Ages to come out of the rubble. In this book, Brown charts how one goes from a pagan Roman understanding of wealth as something to be spent for the benefit of the city in order to gain honor to donating to the Church to earn a reward in heaven. This also involves the invention of the poor as a trans-urban class with their paradoxical states of blessedness and pity/contempt. Libertarians will find inspiration in considering how the modern welfare state, as the product of a post-Christian world, is the heir to this same paradox when confronting poverty. This book will also prove helpful to readers of Deirdre McCloskey's Bourgeois series trying to understand her argument that bourgeois values are a product of the eighteenth century as Brown offers us a distinctly pre-modern unbourgeois understanding of wealth. 

Spirituality

How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem by Rod Dreher.

In looking over the ruins of the conservative movement in the wake of Donald Trump, one needs to consider the failure of the conservative intellectual tradition that made this possible. In order to reconstitute such a tradition, conservatives will need to go back to educating a class of intellectuals from the foundation up. This means literature, which sets the agenda for the imagination. Dreher provides a good example of what it means to read literature from a religious perspective. In addition, we have a powerful memoir of a difficult and ultimately tragic family life. Dreher's family reminds me a lot of my own in that my parents and siblings have made different decisions in our lives and, no matter how much we love each other, it is the kind of love best conducted at a distance. In contemplating the challenge facing conservative intellectuals trying to affect the modern imagination, see also Alan Jacobs' Year of Our Lord 1943, which takes a critical look at the failed attempt by Christian thinkers such as C. S. Lewis to influence the course of post-war culture as it was being born.     

What I Believe by Leo Tolstoy.

If you think of Tolstoy as simply a writer of long melodramas involving Russian aristocrats, welcome to the other later and highly subversive Tolstoy. Here is the Christian Tolstoy at war with all Churches, particularly the Russian Orthodox one. If you have trouble understanding how serious spirituality will inevitably threaten any religious establishment, here is a good place to begin. What I found particularly intriguing about Tolstoy is his brutal consistency as a pacifist. He recognizes that pacifism will not end oppression nor lead to peace on this Earth. On the contrary, as a Christian, Tolstoy embraces martyrdom as the endpoint of his pacifism. Furthermore, Tolstoy is an anarchist and does not dance around the fact that, forget about the military, no true Christian can allow themselves to serve on the police, in the legal system, or hold any political office.  

Education (Politics)

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff.

For fans of Jordan Peterson and the whole school of "owning the libs," here is a better alternative. This is a book that could have simply been a polemic against Social Justice Warriors and probably would have sold more copies if it did. Haidt and Lukianoff, perhaps because they are not creatures of the right nor are they trying to ingratiate themselves with the right by offering it a pat on the back, are able to implicitly attack the campus left by avoiding the trap of left vs. right. This may not sell books but, in the long run, this is how you reach out beyond your echo chamber and influence people.

In a similar vein, I recommend Sen. Ben Sasse’s Vanishing American Adult and Them, which deal with the failure of modern American education to create proper pathways to adulthood and how this has contributed to our current politicized discourse. In examining the origins of this politicization Yuval Levin’s Fractured Republic points to the fact that both the right and the left show a certain nostalgia for mid-20^th century America. He argues that the social revolutions of the period such as the civil rights movement and the counter-culture were made possible because they were working off of the strong social cohesion of the 1950s. In essence, both liberals and conservatives want to go back to a part of the 50s while ignoring an essential aspect of what made that culture possible. All of this literature owes a debt to Robert Nisbet’s Quest for Community, which argues that Enlightenment relativism has cut off the very branch that it relies on to make itself possible.  

The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money by Bryan Caplan.

One of the frustrating things about trying to make the case for not sending my kids to school is that defenders of conventional education operate as if the burden of proof is not completely on them. Instead, they turn around and make unicorn arguments premised on assuming that schools actually do what they are supposed to. I am then challenged to explain how my admittedly flawed alternatives can possibly compete with their ideal system. The key to reading Caplan is to not whether you find his figures convincing. Rather, it is to recognize that it is even possible to seriously question the value of conventional schooling. The moment you find Caplan even vaguely plausible then a crushing moral burden has been placed on defenders of education. Either they produce evidence to justify spending billions on education (the kind of evidence that would convince people to throw similar kinds of money on pharmaceuticals) or they must step aside and allow for the separation of education and state.   

Autism

Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna by Edith Sheffer. 

Some of you may have noticed that I have stopped referring to myself as an Asperger. In recent years, the reputation of Dr. Hans Asperger has taken a downturn as more information has surfaced indicating that he was a Nazi collaborator. Sheffer offers another nail in the coffin for anyone still wanting to hold on to the belief that Asperger was a humanitarian physician trying to protect special needs children from being murdered. Beyond the question of Asperger's clear guilt, the book illuminates a certain conservative collectivist mindset that valued being amiable with the status quo as a critical part of social intelligence and ultimately of one's value as a human being. Such a perspective made it frighteningly easy for people who were not Nazis to become full collaborators and wash their hands of the affair afterward. 

Science Fiction

Skyward by Brandon Sanderson.

In a break from the dense worldbuilding of the Cosmere, Sanderson tries his hand at a fairly conventional YA novel essentially featuring a Katniss Everdeen as a fighter pilot. This is a book that was predictable and should have been lame were it not for the fact that Sanderson is a master subtle dash of humor writer, something that is easy to lose sight of in the shadow of his world-building. Jerkface could have easily been a straw-man villain but he is actually kind of sweet even if it is still fun to hate him. Keep an eye out for the computer M-Bot, who snuck up on me as my favorite character largely because he is an autistic type character who is allowed his "humanity." 

Star Wars: Lost Stars by Claudia Gray.

I believe that the Force, with its struggle between the light and dark side, is essential to Star Wars. One of my concerns with Last Jedi was that it tried to refashion Star Wars without Jedi and Sith. That being said, this book, like Rogue One, did a magnificent job even though it is also guilty of trying to get away from the Force. I guess it is possible for a Star Wars book to be good without necessarily being a good Star Wars book. That being said, it is great to see the original trilogy from the perspective of "regular" people on the ground. Also, Gray deserves credit for what she has added to the Star Wars universe in that she has effectively written an apology for the average imperial soldier. The two main characters are teenagers who want to get off their home planet and make something of themselves while improving the galaxy along the way. So they end up in the Imperial Academy and become imperial pilots. If a few imperial bad apples commit war crimes, that does not make the Rebellion innocent, particularly as the Rebellion does not offer a clear way forward as an alternative to the Empire. In the end, one of the characters defects to the Rebellion but that comes across as a personal decision that does not lessen our sympathy for the one who stays with the Empire. 

Scourged: The Price of Having a Character Who is Too Powerful

A few months ago, I used Brandon Sanderson's Second Law, which deals with the importance of non-omnipotent characters, as a means of talking about the Exodus narrative. Here I would like to further explore this with Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid series, one of my favorites over the past few years. It is about a two-thousand-year-old druid named Atticus O'Sullivan on the run from deities from numerous pantheons. As far as I am concerned (and the evidence of a tournament suggests that there is a large fan base that agrees with me on this), the real star of the series is Atticus' wolfhound side-kick, Oberon. This is in no small part due to Luke Daniels' incredible voice narration. Largely on the basis of this series, Daniels has become one of those narrators that, barring a romance novel, I will read a book regardless of the author just because he narrates it.

I would like to discuss one weakness of the series and its ramifications for its ending in Scourged. Even (and perhaps especially) for a fantasy series, Atticus is simply way too powerful. There is not a single character in the series that completely outclasses him in brute magical strength. Furthermore, he is immortal thanks to a secret mix of herbs a regularly consumes as well as a special relationship with a death goddess, the Morrigan. In addition to moral problems about Atticus' decisions as to whom he shares his herbs with, for all intents and purposes, Atticus being immortal makes him a god with all the narrative pitfalls that come with it.

For a story to have emotional power, the main characters need to change. A god, by its very nature, cannot change without destroying itself. The reason for this is that part of what makes change possible is confronting real stakes in which something important is at risk.  Gods are beings above the natural order of things including suffering and loss. Because of this, nothing that happens to a god can really have high stakes. A narrative event happening to a god as opposed to a mortal is the difference between playing a friendly game and being in the Hunger Games. Think of the Book of Job. What starts as a friendly wager between God and the Satan becomes a blood-soaked tragedy for a human being like Job. We can emotionally invest in a character like Job in part because there is actually something at stake for him. Will he or will he not get justice from God? It might be interesting to tell the story from Satan's perspective as he is playing a truly high-stakes game of baiting God. As for God himself, he is fundamentally boring in his utter incomprehensibility.

For a god to be interesting as a lead character, as opposed to serving as a personified force of nature, they have to face change in the form of the destruction of whatever context they made sense in, the true meaning of death for a God. The classic example of this is Norse mythology where the gods possess a tragic pathos precisely because they are fighting a battle they cannot win; their choices can only end in Ragnorak and their destruction. This is the essence of the Wotan character in Wagner's Ring Cycle. He is a god who is trying to cheat fate through his ability to make laws only to be undone by his own laws. The modern author who best comprehends this ethos is Neil Gaiman. Key to his Sandman series is the fact that Dream cannot avoid change. Ultimately, that means that he needs to die and his only real choice is the circumstance under which that happens. It is not a coincidence that in recent years, Gaiman has turned to directly retelling Norse mythology something that has been an undercurrent in almost everything he has written. What is particularly strange, is that Hearne is clearly a fan of Gaiman's and understands this principle. It is precisely for this reason, that he kills the Morrigan off in the middle of the series. That being said, he refuses to apply this same logic to Atticus.

What is ever at stake for Atticus? He is already two-thousand years old. Even his death would simply be his long-overdue fate as a human. For the series to work Atticus needed to embrace his godhood by sacrificing himself on the altar of facilitating change to a world that, even if it might be a better one, has no place for his kind of magic. Hearne, though, is too charmed by all of Atticus' power and his joking personality to write the kind of tragedy this character needed.

One never gets the sense that, over his long life as an immortal on the run, Atticus was ever any different from the wise-cracking twenty-something bookstore owner. Note that this would have been fine if Atticus had started the series off as precisely that without any backstory. Once we have trapped Atticus into his two-thousand-year-old self, it is difficult to plausibly get him to change. 

Going back to the very first book, Hearne had the option of killing off Atticus and making the series about Atticus' student, Granuaile. This would have had the advantage of giving Granuaile all of Atticus' challenges even, as a druid in training, she would remain distinctly ungodlike. This would not be any different than having Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter having to solve the problems of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Albus Dumbledore. Oberon would still be in the series and would now have a real purpose beyond comic-relief. In between trying to convince Granuaile to give him more sausages and tell him what a good hound he is, he could cough up some partial bits of wisdom remembered from his time with Atticus. Instead, Atticus is left as the main character of the series, despite the fact that he is too powerful to serve in that capacity. Granuaile is left to serve as Atticus' love-interest despite the fact that their power differential make them uninteresting together. This further wastes an opportunity as Atticus and the Morrigan would have made sense as a couple.

The critical turning point in the series was the third book. Much like Prisoner of Azkaban allowed J. K. Rowling to elevate Potter from a collection of clever jokes about school and mythology to a story with real stakes by having Harry make the mistake of keeping Peter Pettigrew alive with the consequences for the rest of the series, Hammered allowed Atticus to make the mistake that he spent the first two books being maneuvered into, leading an attack on Asgard to kill Thor. Having Atticus take on the consequences of getting one friend killed and causing another to eventually betray him in addition to setting Ragnorak in motion could have elevated the series to another level. Instead, Hearne treats this as an afterthought to training Granuaile and Atticus being his upbeat self despite the fact that this does not fit the story that needs to be told. This is similar to the Star Wars prequels in which George Lucas wanted to tell all kinds of stories except the sci-fi Paradise Lost/Faust sci-fi telling of the origins of Darth Vader that was needed.

The prequels trapped Lucas into telling a story he did not want to tell, the downfall of Anakin Skywalker, causing him to pursue it as an afterthought. Similarly here, Hearne cannot escape the need for the forces of evil, led by Loki. to break out and Atticus having to unite all the various pantheons in a last-ditch effort to save the Earth despite the fact that about the only thing the gods can agree upon is killing Atticus. This essentially is the plot of Scourged and Hearne has been building to it on the side when he has not been distracted by less important things.

The problem with Scouraged is that it has no sense that anything is really at stake. The only urgency here is to wrap the series up so that the author can move on to other things without angering his fan base. There is no sense that the good guys are outgunned and in need of something desperate and creative. On the contrary, one feels that Loki's forces are like the British soldiers of World War I about to cross the Somme after giving the Germans a ten-minute warning with the end of the artillery bombardment to get into position. Obviously, Loki stands about as much chance of winning as a James Bond villain, but the author owes it to the reader to allow for the suspension of disbelief that this is not the case.

Hearne clearly understands this problem that he has written himself into and tries belatedly to inject some consequences. Atticus loses an arm with the tattoos that bind him to the Earth and that serve as the source for most of his power. He ends up betraying Granuaile in order to keep her out of serious danger and she leaves him in the end. This allows for the Morrigan (a death goddess is never truly dead) to appear and offer Atticus the opportunity to join her in death. Atticus turns the offer down even as he acknowledges that there really is no drawback to someone like him choosing death. Even at the end, Hearne loves his super-powerful immortal Irish hippie too much to take him where he needs to go.

Towards a Good Exodus Movie: Brandon Sanderson's Second Law

There have been numerous film versions of the biblical Exodus story, none satisfactory. In honor of Passover, I would like to consider what it might take to do the Exodus right. We do not need Prince Moses discovering himself. As great an actor as Charlton Heston was, Moses should not be some macho superhero who is emotionally invulnerable. That being said, Moses should not whine or feel sorry for himself like in Prince of Egypt. We do not need a cycle of repetitive big special effects plagues followed by a stereotypical stubborn Pharaoh refusing to let the Children of Israel go. We need Moshe Rabainu, the Jewish tragic hero.

The first thing to consider is the soul of the story, something that the Exodus can offer like no other story. Harry Potter is about being taken to a magical place that you dearly wish actually existed. The Exodus is about God exists and he cares about the downtrodden. The unjust moral order that you take for granted is about to be overturned. I do not care if you are an atheist, you desperately want this to be true. The Exodus is about a good man, Moshe, living in a terrible world. He has given up trying to fix it. He is content to be a shepherd and a  family man. Then he receives the surprise of his life. Not that God exists (without God there can be no standard to judge the world as wicked) but that God cares about the scum of the earth Israelites that Moshe has tried to distance himself from. Now it is Moshe's task to get the Israelites out of Egypt and make them into a people worthy of God's love.

The critical challenge to telling the Exodus is the fact that Moshe is simply too powerful. He has the power of God behind him. How can the story turn out any other way than him defeating Pharaoh, taking the Israelites out of Egypt, and living happily ever after? This is predictable and boring. Furthermore, it does not challenge us. As with all stories, problems are opportunities to make something truly great. For this, we turn to Brandon Sanderson's Second Law of Magic; what a character cannot do is much more important than what he can do. It might be cool to imagine a character with all kinds of superpowers, but ultimately what gives you a plot are the limitations that even the powerful operate under. What kinds of problems can't the hero solve with their powers? Even better, what kinds of problems are created by these powers?

Moshe has a staff, his brother Aaron, God, and a whole battery of miracles to beat Egypt into submission. Here is what he does not have, the ability to force either Pharaoh or the Israelites to consent to anything. This is what makes Pharaoh an intriguing adversary. He has the power to thwart God himself. All he needs to do is harden his heart and be stubborn enough to allow the destruction of Egypt. As the plagues unfold, what is happening is not the wicked Pharaoh getting what he deserves. On the contrary, Pharaoh is winning. Egypt may be burning but for Pharaoh that is a small price to pay for him to beat God and prove that, in some sense, he is a god too. Despite all of Moshe's power, Pharaoh can lie and humiliate him with utter impunity.

In the end, Pharaoh does crack after the deaths of the first-born Egyptians, but he has one last card to play. He knows that the Israelites do not want to actually leave Egypt and become some kind of chosen people. All he needs to do is show up with his army and the Israelites will gladly hand Moshe over and return to Egypt. Pharaoh will have won and there is nothing Moshe or God can do about it. Pharaoh's plan is undone because the Israelites possess the faith to jump into the water and God is willing to differentiate between the Israelites and the Egyptians. As the Israelites sing at the shore of the Red Sea, it appears that God's miracles have not only redeemed Israel from Egypt but have led to a spiritual awakening to make them worthy of receiving the Torah.

I would suggest a corollary to Sanderson's Law; any hero who is sufficiently powerful must ultimately fail and come to a tragic end otherwise the audience would never believe that their weaknesses were ever genuine to being with. Think of characters like Oedipus or King Lear, all-powerful in their domains with no plausible challenges. There is no way to tell a story about them that is not a tragedy. Oedipus and Lear need to fall not because anyone could beat them but because they self-destruct through their failure of understanding. Oedipus, the man who understands the nature of man, fails to see himself and accidentally murders his father and marries his mother. Lear lacks the theory mind to appreciate how Regan and Goneril could lie to him and fails to appreciate the value of Cordelia speaking a simple selfless truth that he does not want to hear. By this thinking, we must follow Moshe's success in Egypt and at the Red Sea with an act II in which everything falls apart.

Let us go back to Moshe at the burning bush as he tries to tell God that he does not want to be the savior of the Israelites. This is not the Hero with a Thousand Faces initially refusing the call of destiny (Luke Skywalker not wanting to abandon the family moisture farm to rescue the princess). This is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane saying: "Take this cup away from me."



(Jim Caviezel anchors the movie with the scene. For the passion sequences to work, Jesus needs to both suffer and transcend that suffering. Jesus and the audience knows that he is about to be tortured.  Here we are allowed to see Jesus be truly vulnerable in a way that you can't in the rest of the movie as he needs to always be moving forward without ever wanting to escape his torment.)

Moshe knows that he is being set an impossible task. It does not matter if he can twist Pharaoh's arm into letting the Israelites go. The Israelites are not worthy of redemption and any attempt to do so is doomed to failure. Moshe is being asked to undergo not twelve hours of torture, but forty years of abuse and humiliation all for nothing. He is going to be Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill.

Moshe takes on this battle that he knows he cannot win. He undergoes his tribulations with Pharaoh and a few altercations with the Israelites to hint as to what is coming. They get through the Red Sea and on to Mount Sinai. Just as we are tempted to think that this might all work out after all, we get the Golden Calf. Here we get to the crucial moment for Moshe. He has proven that he was right about the Israelites all along. Even God now agrees and is going to destroy the Israelites and let Moshe off the hook. Moshe puts himself in harm's way to save the very people he despises by threatening God that if God will not save Israel, he does not want anything to do with God. More incredibly still, Moshe succeeds at doing what Pharaoh could not, forcing God to change his mind.

Despite Moshe saving Israel, things do not really improve. The Israelites demand meat, and the spies convince them not to go to Canaan and Korah rebels. Eventually, when the Israelites demand water, Moshe just snaps; he yells at them and hits the rock. God punishes Moshe and refuses to let him into the Promised Land. Moshe dies standing on Mount Nebo looking down as the people under Joshua prepare to enter the Land. We know that this is not going to turn out well. We have hundreds of years of the Israelites sinning against God, culminating in their expulsion from the Land and the destruction of the Temple at the hands of the Babylonians.

As with most good tragedies, there is transcendence and hope. Long after the pharaohs have gone, those Israelites who rejected Moshe time and again still keep Moshe's Torah. Every year, they gather around a Passover seder to remember their teacher as parents tell their children the real greatest story ever told.