Easy Libertarianism

Baruch Pelta has agreed to resume our discussion about libertarianism. Beyond the issue of libertarianism, there is the issue of activist academics. Baruch takes offense that I would compare him and activist academics to Haredim. He also implies that I question the sanity of my opponents. Perhaps because I am a libertarian, I am very sensitive to any form of physical coercion. In a world in which the government did not fund academia, academics would certainly be free to do as they pleased. But as long as academics do receive money from the government and hence from every taxpayer, liberal, conservative, communist and white supremacist, academics have the obligation to not use their government-sponsored position to advance any particular partisan cause. To do so would be to force the government to take sides in the ideological conflicts of society and choose one side over the other, delegitimizing them and coercing them to pay for the advancement of those same ideas they oppose.


Are activist academics the moral equivalent of Haredim who blatantly distort historical facts in order to better advance their own personal beliefs? To be clear, I have run into Haredim who openly admitted to me that they did not believe in any independent concept of truth and that truth, therefore, was simply their personal Jewish beliefs. I do not see academics, even activist academics, as being that blatantly hostile to truth. That being said, if we break things down to their mental building blocks we will find that our activist academics and Haredim operate from identical premises. Both sides believe that the great masses of humanity are mentally flawed and in need of guidance by a "higher intelligence." If there is a difference it is that Haredim are more honest in their beliefs and utterly ruthless in pursuing the inevitable conclusions.


In this, I am following Friedrich Hayek's diagnosis of modern liberals. According to Hayek both left-wing socialists and right-wing fascists were really identical in that they accepted as their fundamental premise that government had the right to interfere in the economy in the name of some "public good," which the people are unable of accomplishing on their own. Fascists were simply those who had jumped ahead of their socialist forbearers in ruthlessly pursuing this ideology to its inevitable tyrannical conclusion.


Does this mean that I believe that my opponents are insane and should be placed on the next edition of the DSM? No more than Hayek did. Keep in mind that libertarianism would force the government into far narrower understandings of mental illness. Since the government would only deal with physical harm, it could only rule mentally unfit those incapable of understanding the social contract of not causing physical harm to others and are thus presumably at risk of causing such physical harm. By such standards, Baruch and the vast majority of liberals must be accepted as mentally fit. This does not mean that they lack for mental blind spots. As evolutionary psychology has taught us, human beings are hardly the invulnerable fortresses of rationalism. For example, like our primate relatives, we have difficulty quantifying risk.







This is relevant to libertarianism in that it explains why people are so easily scammed by government into only seeing how government helps their particular special interest in fleecing everyone else, ignoring how the government is doing the same thing for every other special interest as well.

I am just as "mentally ill" as Baruch. I recognize that my mind is flawed, but it is because I recognize that my mind is so flawed that I accept the fact that I cannot get by through my own intelligence and need it bound by various methods of thinking (like the scientific and historical methods) and should not take it upon myself to try enforcing the "truths" of this very flawed mind on other people.

It is telling that Baruch would juxtapose a quote of mine with H.L. Mencken saying that no one "has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." Apparently, Baruch seems to agree with Mencken. In truth, the masses of plain people are very intelligent, though, admittedly, only when they make decisions by themselves, without knowing what anyone else is thinking. Regardless of that, I ask you to consider the fundamental mental building blocks supporting the notion that regular people are not very intelligent. In the conservative worldview, people are not assumed to be very intelligent. Because of this, there is little hope in simply allowing people to negotiate through their differences and so solutions must be forcefully imposed from above by some "higher intelligence." Then there is the liberal worldview that holds that people are capable of negotiating through their differences if left to their own devices without some solution being forcefully imposed from above. I believe that human beings are mentally flawed, but that the free market has a way of compensating for this allowing human beings to interact with each other in a way that approximates reason. I am fundamentally a liberal in how I conceive the world. Haredim clearly operate out of a conservative worldview. Mencken, despite his supposed liberalism, was also really cut from the same cloth. I would say the same about any activist academic, using a government-funded post to push his values on the masses below him. What about Baruch? Where are his values rooted?

Ross Douthat on Libertarianism

Ross Douthat has a very good response to the Chris Beam article on libertarianism, which I posted on earlier. While Douthat accepts that many libertarian policies might not be practical, for that is beside the point.


But Beam's "of course, we'll never get there" kicker substantially undercuts the power and relevance of this critique. It's precisely because we're so far from minarchy, with no prospects for getting even remotely close, that libertarian arguments deserve a bit more respect and consideration than Beam's dismissive attitude affords them. If Congress was stocked with a few hundred members of the Paul family, if Penn Jillette ran the T.S.A., if the Cato Institute held veto power over every entitlement expansion and overseas military operation, it would make sense to use a long magazine article to fret, in detail, about the perils associated with the minimal state. But as it stands, Beam's lengthy critique of minarchy seems better suited to a college bull-session argument than to an article about American political economy as it actually exists, in all its bloated and not-at-all minimalist glory.
In this real world, the crucial question for non-libertarians pondering the movement's (modestly) growing influence isn't whether a libertarian minarchy would be the utopia that some enthusiasts imagine or a dog-eat-dog nightmare instead. Rather, it's whether a more-empowered libertarianism could have a salutary impact on debates over, say, the future of the entitlement system … or the reform of our incarceration policies … or the growth of the national-security state (to pick just a few rather pressing-seeming issues).


Douthat has hit on what may be the biggest practical strength; that we offer an opportunity to transcend the traditional partisan debate and can offer compromise solutions that both sides might be willing to accept. I admit that I often frame discussions about libertarianism in their most extreme forms, such as arguing for the legalization of child prostitution, in order to make the point that I am actually consistent in my beliefs and am willing to follow them through on their downside in order to enjoy the positives. That is the theoretical strength of libertarianism. So to reemphasize the practical, I recognize that this country was not founded on strictly libertarian principles and that over the past century, in many respects, we have moved even further away from libertarian government. That being said, I still do see a libertarian government as the goal which I set before myself as my compass even if I know that we will never got there. In the meantime I am willing to work with liberals or conservatives at any given time to bring about policies that go in this direction. To all my liberal readers, yes public schools are here to stay for the near future. Now we may not want creationism taught in them, but do we really want the courts to be the ones to stop it. Keep in mind that conservatives are going to respond by trying to place their people on the bench to push a conservative agenda that goes way beyond education. For your own safety does it not make sense to simply get the federal government and the courts out of education and simply leave it as a local affair? Otherwise do not come crying to me when conservatives get politically energized, gain control of the government and try pushing their vision of America on you.

The King’s Speech and I

This past Shabbat the rabbi at my synagogue talked about the movie The King's Speech as part of his sermon. He used the movie as a way of relating to Moses' speech impediment. The King's Speech chronicles the struggles of King George VI with his stammer. As the younger son, it might not have been of critical importance, but then his older brother Edward VIII had his "women problem" (funny how the rabbi had to talk around the fact that Edward VIII was forced to abdicate his thrown after less than a year due to his marriage to his mistress, a twice divorced American divorcee). George VI eventually sought the help of a radically eccentric speech therapist and went on to deliver some of the most inspiring speeches of the Second World War. Soon afterwards I saw that Orson Scott Card also had given the movie high marks. With endorsements like these I figured I had to go see it.

This was hardly an exciting movie and at two hours does drag a bit. The film covers an interesting political story, with sex and romance, but it is not a political or a romantic film. The movie deals with World War II, but it is not a World War II movie. The movie could have been a comedy, but it has way too much respect for its lead character to make this a comedy. What you do have is a very human story with Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush giving some of the best back and forth acting I have seen in a long time. Rush certainly steals the movie as its sole source of comedy, but Colin Firth gives the best portrayal I have ever seen of living with stammering. That probably owes something to the fact that I cannot think of any other serious film explorations of the topic. I say this as someone who struggles with a stammer. What particularly struck me is that the stammer is one that is similar to mine. Like George VI, the real problem for me is less repeating syllables even if that sometimes is the result, but in finding one's voice getting caught and being unable to get out the words that are in one's head.

In the movie George VI is able to overcome his stammer by a combination of singing and letting out strings of curse words. These are both useful in that they allow a person to get around inhibitions, which is usually the true cause of any stammer. For George VI these inhibitions were growing up as the younger prince, in the shadow of a far more glamorous older brother and an often abusive father. I am not much into swearing, even if I take a certain pleasure in spouting out things that other people find bizarre and even offensive. This has the benefit of allowing me to take control of a situation and make it my own instead of having to constantly fashion myself to suit others. What has really worked for me is singing. I have a good head for lyrics, even if I cannot actually sing on key. Knowing that my singing is something that only I will ever enjoy and that it is something just for me, operating on my terms, in a way, makes it all the more helpful. Obviously I cannot sing every time I talk, but I can usually maintain some sort of rhythm. As long as I have that rhythm I can avoid the worst of my stammering.

I doubt that I will ever be able to truly overcome my stammer and I liked the fact that the movie did not have George VI overcome his either. But I do believe I have managed to become a relatively decent public speaker, though certainly one with an odd sounding voice. A side effect of my rhythm speaking is that I go up at the end of syllables. Hopefully I will never have to lead a nation though a world war; being able to stand in front of a classroom full of students will suit me just fine.

New York Magazine Does Libertarianism

Christopher Beam of New York magazine has a long article on Libertarianism, "The Trouble with Liberty." The article does a good job at placing Libertarianism within the context of modern political debate, starting with Ron and Rand Paul, the most prominent libertarians holding political office down through the variety of libertarian movements in existence. There is also a summary of the intellectual roots of Libertarianism, mentioning not just Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Ayn Rand, but Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard as well.

The problem, though, is that Beam seems unable to resist his journalist condensation, throwing in jabs like calling Libertarianism "the crazy uncle of American politics: loud and cocky and occasionally profound but always a bit unhinged" and "the weird, Magic-card-collecting, twelve-sided-die-wielding outcast of American political philosophy." This carries over into a condescending lecture as to how libertarians lack the practical sense as to how to go about realizing their ideals and that no one would really want to live under a libertarian government anyway. According to Beam:

Libertarian minarchy is an elegant idea in the abstract. But the moment you get specific, the foundation starts to crumble. Say we started from scratch and created a society in which government covered only the bare essentials of an army, police, and a courts system. I'm a farmer, and I want to sell my crops. In Libertopia, I can sell them in exchange for money. Where does the money come from? Easy, a private bank. Who prints the money? Well, for that we'd need a central bank—otherwise you'd have a thousand banks with a thousand different types of currency. (Some libertarians advocate this.) Okay, fine, we'll create a central bank.

 

We would not have to start from scratch, we would just have to accept that most of the major laws created since the New Deal and Supreme Court rulings since the Warren era were unconstitutional and toss them over the side. Creating a central bank to print most of the money for a county would be quite simple. You start with local banks owning precious metals or land and offering currency to shareholders. These currency shares could then be bought out by larger banks in exchange for currency of their own until one bank comes to dominate the printing of currency. None of this would require government to do anything more than prosecuting banks if they ever tried to defraud their customers and enforce all contracts.

 

Some people don't have jobs. So we create charities to feed and clothe them. What if there isn't enough charity money to help them? Well, we don't want them to start stealing, so we'd better create a welfare system to cover their basic necessities.

 

There is plenty of poverty around the world. Often this leads to people turning to terrorism. Yet somehow I can sleep at night despite the fact that my government has not taken upon itself the responsibility of ending global poverty by itself. Taking care of the have nots is the responsibility of those who have (and this includes people living on graduate student salaries). I see no reason to treat the far less extreme poverty in this country any differently. It would be a moral blight on society, as a whole, if someone were to starve to death, but that does not justify endangering the liberties of every single man, woman, and child by authorizing the government to redistribute wealth as it sees fit.

 

We'd need education, of course, so a few entrepreneurs would start private schools. Some would be excellent. Others would be mediocre. The poorest students would receive vouchers that allowed them to attend school. Where would those vouchers come from? Charity. Again, what if that doesn't suffice? Perhaps the government would have to set up a school or two after all.

 

If charity did not suffice perhaps a private business could offer a loan or parents could turn their children into stock companies and sell shares in the child's future earnings. If that does not work, perhaps we need to consider whether this child will actually benefit from a formal education in the first place and would not simply be better off shining shoes or picking cotton. Last I checked there is no such thing as a right to an education; that is simply one more scam invented by politicians in order to demand more power over private individuals.

 

There are reasons our current society evolved out of a libertarian document like the Constitution. The Federal Reserve was created after the panic of 1907 to help the government reduce economic uncertainty. The Civil Rights Act was necessary because "states' rights" had become a cover for unconstitutional practices. The welfare system evolved because private charity didn't suffice.

 

The Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression. Yes, there is a reason why our society has moved in a direction of greater government control. Every special interest group desires that government step in for their benefit. On top of that, there is the greatest special interest group of all, government bureaucrats. No matter what happens, government bureaucrats will insist that the solution is more government. You have a population brought up on politicians speeches and government public schools to believe this nonsense. Thus we have a society in which everyone tries to rob everyone else and politicians stand on the side taking the biggest cut of all.

 

Putting a libertarian government into power is simple in theory. We need a society that accepts libertarian principles and for everyone to agree to stop trying to use government for their own special interests. The fact that we do not have this cannot be blamed on libertarians but on those still under the sway of the scam of modern liberal big government. Libertarians unlike everyone else actually are consistent in their beliefs and have meaningful solutions to the problems of today that do not involve one group trying to trick or coerce any other. Our solutions may not make you comfortable; you might think that we are strange, but until you can offer something better you have no grounds to talk down to us or even debate us in the first place.

 

The Straight Dope on Libertarianism

Baruch Pelta put the issue of the legitimacy of government-funded public before the messaging board of Straight Dope. To my delight, Baruch's post received quite a number of comments, far more so than either of our blogs normally receives. These comments provide an excellent window into the sort of objections one usually finds from modern liberals. I would like, therefore, to respond in turn. More and more I am convinced that modern liberals simply have a mental block when it comes to Libertarianism that makes them unable to even contemplate the issues at hand. One, all government action is, by definition, coercive. Two, a government with the power to deal with non-physical harm, by definition, has the power to do anything since all human actions cause some form of non-physical harm. Three, government action, by definition, favors those with access to the government, the wealthy and well connected. Considering this, how can modern liberal political theory, built around the assumption that government needs to step in, in essence, use physical force, and protect people from non-physical harm, be considered anything but authoritarian, randomly creating privileged groups, likely those already well-positioned influence wise, and giving them special rights? It is not just that liberals have different solutions to these problems; they frustratingly refuse to even acknowledge that these problems exist.


Last I checked school boards still had to answer to the voters. So if he has a problem with what schools teach then he needs to take it up their boss, the voters.

 Certainly, I could accept it if local school boards were actually the last word in education. Except that liberals have spent the past few decades having courts interfere whenever schools do something that they personally disagree with, whether prayer or the teaching of creationism. Of all forms of government, local school boards are the least coercive, being the most answerable to the public and having the least ability to use coercive power against opponents. The courts are the most coercive as they are outside of the democratic process and are hierarchly positioned to order the other branches of government to use force in support of its wishes. This is particularly the case when the court operates according to a "living Constitution." When a court makes a decision that is not based upon previously agreed upon laws, but upon personal moral principles, and, on top of that personal, moral principles that the opposition may not even accept, the court declares that their opponents are outside the social contract at the heart of any free society. (See Doing What is Right in One's Own Eyes.)


First, the alternative to public schools is massive public ignorance; they were created in the first place because before the government stepped in most of the population had no formal education at all.

This demonstrates an unfortunate misunderstanding of history. Obviously, in pre-modern agricultural societies, mass education was impractical and had to wait until the urbanization brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Particularly in the case of Europe, government public schools were not put into place out of humanitarian concern, but as an authoritarian power grab against the Church, which until then had dominated the field of education. One of the virtues of the early United States was, as Alexis de Tocqueville noted, that it managed to avoid a head-on conflict with established religions. This changed in the last few decades when our courts stepped in and ripped up the social contract which, for all of its imperfections, kept this country free of religious conflict. And liberals act surprised that they are now faced with aggressive evangelical and tea-party movements of people who believe that the government does not represent them and therefore feel that they are not bound to play by its rules. Why should someone respect the democratic process and accept losing when one knows that even when they win their victory will be overturned?


Second, evolution and the falsehood of creation is a fact, not just an opinion.

This may be true in your mind and even in reality, but that does not mean it can be accepted as fact by the government. Keep in mind that Christians believe that Jesus rising from the dead is a fact. There is nothing you can say that will convince them otherwise. Considering this, what deal can you offer such Christians to stop them from trying to have the government acknowledge this "fact?" The only thing I can think of is to have everyone agree that the government will endorse no "facts."

Third, children are not the toys of parents to exploit as they will, they have rights too; including the right not to be rendered hopelessly ignorant because their parents prefer lies over truth.

 True, but again keep in mind all those Christians who believe that every child deserves to be raised with the knowledge of Jesus as their personal savior. Can you offer them a coherent reason as to why the government should not step in to "educate" such children that does not involve puffing up your chest and insisting that these Christians are wrong about Jesus? As a libertarian, I can offer Christians a government that only deals with whether children are being physically harmed and does not concern itself with whether or not children are being raised in "ignorance" or are being "lied" to.


And fourth, his position is the authoritarian one; as libertarians typically do he is pretending that government action is the only possible source of oppression. Saying that the government should only take action to defend "people from direct physical harm caused by other people without their consent" is a demand that the primary function of government should be as a tool of oppression for the wealthy and powerful organizations. Because the rich and large organizations like corporations, political parties and religious organizations and so on don't need to use violence to get their way, to oppress and exploit the common people. The common people however need the government to protect them from just that. And if the government refuses to protect them, then all the common people have left is force - and then and only then is when the libertarians like your friend want the government to step in, on the side of the wealthy and powerful. Under the system your friend wants the only real function of the government is to serve as a giant boot to stomp on any of the lower classes who get uppity. not to help people, not to educate or defend them from being exploited; just to crush them when they get tired of being treated as slaves.

I certainly do not believe that the government is the only source of oppression. If I did I would insist on no government and be an anarchist. Yes, I believe in government precisely because I am afraid of being oppressed by my neighbor. Of course, government has the potential to be far more oppressive than any individual. Which is why, before we agree to submit ourselves to the authority of government, we need specific limits to its power. (See My Bargan with Fearless Leader.) 

One has to wonder where this person goes every time there is a complaint that the government seems to act on behalf of the wealthy and powerful and that such people have too much influence. It is not possible to create a law that actually benefits those at the bottom for the simple reason that those at the top are the ones in the best position to understand the laws work them to their advantage. Take the example of poor inner-city youth. Liberals claim that they understand are looking out for his best interest so they offer him free public education. The problem is that his family lacks the money to support him while he goes to school. So he has to drop out of school, and therefore receives no benefit from it even though he will still have to pay for it with his tax dollars. He wants to earn an honest living to help his family, but liberals have placed child labor laws that limit his ability to work. Furthermore, no company will be willing to hire him at minimum wage and, of course, liberals have made it illegal for any company to have him at less than a minimum wage. Notice though that the free schools, the child labor, and minimum wage laws do benefit people higher up on the economic latter; people who can support their children while they take advantage of free education at society's expense. These adults are helped by the fact that they are protected from any competition from poor children willing to undercut them by working for less than the minimum wage. Of course, liberals are not conspiring, with say the skilled working class, against the desperately poor unskilled workers, whatever the evidence that stands before our eyes. We, as a society, are engaged in a massive act of inter-generational robbery of those too young at present to vote, with our national debt and social security entitlements, which they will have to pay for. But we can trust politicians to look after the needs of children.

Libertarians know how to end poverty. It is a multi-generational approach that allows unskilled workers the chance to work for whatever someone is willing to pay them and earn the money to give their children the education needed to become skilled laborers and small business owners and their grandchildren a chance to go to college and enter the middle class. It is a hard and slow road, but it worked for generations of immigrants and there is no reason why it cannot work for poor people today, no matter their race. We libertarians are not going to lie to poor people and rob them by creating programs that we pretend are going to help them when in fact they are designed to help those with more money and influence and keep them in poverty.

In Support of Public Schools Teaching Intelligent Design and Other Nonsense III

Baruch Pelta, in his second post, gets nasty, accusing me of putting up a "destabilizing lie meant to pull emotional strings." Yes, I have the nerve to compare his mode of dealing with opponents to that of Haredim in that, while intellectually he may understand that people disagree with him, at a psychological level he fails to internalize this. This gets him stuck on the fact that he is "objectively" correct. (Note that I did not accuse him of being a Nazi, which is what I would have done if I were trying to simply score polemical points.) One should not think ill of Baruch; this is a problem that afflicts most people. Being a true liberal, one who respects all beliefs and refuses to use any physically coercive measures, even against those he disagrees with, to force people to go against those beliefs, requires years of disciplined critical thinking. It is something I still strive to work on in myself.

 A useful exercise is to think in terms of x and y instead of actual ideas. X and y are both ideas held by people living in society. In order to get x and y supporters to not force their beliefs on the other, they need to be promised that the other side, in turn, will not try to force their beliefs on them. Now x might be evolution and y creationism, but that is irrelevant in face of the more abstract x and y social contract model we agree to serve. Thinking in abstract terms allows you to get around the psychological hang-ups we all have about the beliefs that seem to us to be obviously true.

Working as an intellectual historian also helps. For example, I have been spending much of my time these few months trying to understand Sabbatianism. It is not my place to judge those who believed that Sabbatai Sevi was the Messiah. If it seems absurd to me then I have to work all the harder as seeing Sabbatai as they might have and put myself in a frame of mind in which accepting Sabbatai as the Messiah can become reasonable. This is done by immersing oneself in the words of Sabbatians themselves and their worldview.

In terms of actual arguments, Baruch challenges my larger definition of religion, pointing out that the Constitution specifically refers to religion and not to ideas in general. Fair enough, but I would point out that, in the eighteenth century, the only examples of large-scale organized ideological groups, the kind that might have the power to overthrow the government in hopes of being able to force their beliefs on others, were religions. Keep in mind that the main "religious" concern of the Founding Fathers was to not have Catholics and Protestants repeating Europe's religion wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on American soil. I assume that they would have adjusted their terms if they were writing only several decades later and saw the Communist Party. At the end of the day, it does not make sense to have one set of rules for the Catholic Church and another for the Communist Party. Baruch, are you suggesting that the beliefs of Communists are outside of the first amendment? Richard Dawkins, of all people, has essentially made my argument that religion should not be treated any differently from any other belief. I agree with Dawkins that being a Quaker should not offer you special conscientious objector status not available to people who are pacifists on simple intellectual grounds.
 

Midwest Orthodoxy

There is a post up over at Dr. Alan Brill's blog about Orthodox communities in the Midwest. The author sets up a model of Orthodox life in these communities, contrasting it to the East coast, and makes the case for why Centrist Orthodoxy may no longer be viable for such communities when faced with competition from Haredi Orthodoxy and non-Orthodox movements. According to the author, Midwest Centrists operate on an immigrant narrative: "they came from Europe, they became American, and they remained Orthodox." This is in contrast to the "elitist" narrative that dominates on the East Coast. The author is not clear what he means by East coast elites. I assume he is referring to the ideals of being able to engage in advanced Talmud while going to the Ivies as exemplified by schools such as Maimonides in Boston. It is certainly the case that there are specific Orthodox congregations in cities like Boston, New York, and Washington DC that are packed with professionals with advanced degrees in a way that is just mind-boggling. Whatever the potential long term weaknesses of the elitist model, the immigrant narrative is of little use for people who are already several generations removed from Europe. What is left of this narrative is a vague Americanized cultural Orthodoxy as exemplified by shul clubs. This leaves Midwestern Centrist Orthodoxy without a firm ideology with which to stand against those from either side of the ideological spectrum.

I am a Midwesterner, the product of Columbus OH and McKeesport PA. There is a lot of truth in this model of Midwest cultural Orthodoxy and its origins in the immigrant experience. McKeesport, even in my time, was quite literally an immigrant community. (The joke was that everyone in McKeesport was Hungarian even the gentiles.) That being said, in this knocking of the Midwest, there is something missing. My religious experience growing up was very non-partisan. There was no sense of us versus them; we were Jews. There were some Jews who were more observant and there were some who were less observant. I think there is something very healthy about growing up like that. The fact that fewer Orthodox Jews growing up today, particularly those "elites" on the East coast, have this experience is unfortunate and a source of many of the problems today. Ideologies like biology are also subject to the laws of Darwinian evolution. The ideologies that survive to reproduce a next generation are not necessarily "better," just better at indoctrinating the next generation under the given circumstances. Honestly tolerant non-partisan ideologies, lacking a strong sense of us versus them, are almost always the losers in this struggle.

 The Orthodox community in McKeesport has almost completely died out and Columbus shows little sign of being able to expand. Above and beyond ideology, there are pragmatic reasons for this. As a single person in his late 20s, the most obvious one is the dating pool. Dating requires a baseline pool of other available singles. No Orthodox community in the Midwest has that baseline. What happened in McKeesport, where you had just a few families and the children just married each other until everyone was related somehow, is not an option today. If you are Orthodox and single you essentially have to move to New York. This has led to communities like Washington Heights, full of Orthodox singles from Midwest communities, including Columbus. Several years ago, oblivious to these dynamics, I moved from Washington Heights back to Columbus. I did this right at the time in my life when I wanted to start seriously dating. In good consciousness, I could never recommend someone in a similar situation to do what I did and move away from my dating pool. Of course, this dooms a community like Columbus far more so than any lack of a coherent ideology.

In Support of Public Schools Teaching Intelligent Design and Other Nonsense II

Baruch Pelta has responded to my earlier post. I think it is important to note that he is unwilling to openly come out and support the legitimacy of public schools; essentially he is "agnostic" in regards to this issue. He does raise two arguments. One, allowing the teaching of creationism and intelligent design would violate the separation of Church and State. Two, it is possible to make a distinction between religion and other ideas as demonstrated by the fact that we have a separation of Church and State. Finally, Baruch asks that I define what I mean by "liberty."

If we are going to have public schools, I do not object to these schools teaching children, as a historical fact, that Jesus is their Savior as long as this directive does not come from the government itself and no public funds are specifically earmarked for this purpose. The reason for this is rooted in how, as a libertarian, I understand the role of government. Government only has a legitimate interest in protecting people from direct physical harm. A teacher, even one working in a government funded school, standing up and trying to convince students to accept Jesus causes no physical harm. Therefore it is of no interest to the government. (If the teacher were to hand out bonus points to those who accepted Jesus then that would be a different matter.) The fact that non-Christian students might be uncomfortable in such a situation and feel left out is irrelevant. This is what it means to live in a free society. You open yourself up to every manner of non-physical torment and you must learn to live with that and accept that the government cannot in any way be used to help you in this matter.

As to the issue of Church and State, it is important to keep in mind that it is not a legitimate legal concept, but a letter from Thomas Jefferson wrongfully brought into play in the twentieth century. Regardless of that matter, I understand the Constitution's establishment clause to apply to all ideas. Outside of a belief in the legitimacy of the legal system itself, the government has no businesses declaring any idea to be true or false. This goes for Jesus dying for the sins of the world, evolution and the Holocaust. I am even willing to go so far as to argue against tolerance education. The government may tell white supremacists that they need to follow the law and not murder blacks and Jews, but the government has no business telling these people that they should support a multicultural society as something positive.

As to the definition of liberty and how it might apply to children; I understand liberty as the ability to pursue your own good in your own way as long as you do not cause direct physical harm to others. As J. S. Mill pointed out, this concept does not apply to children as they are deemed as lacking the mental capacity to engage in the give and take of ideas. Children are placed under the control of guardians who therefore also take up the liberty that the child would have exercised if it were an adult. The only limit on this is that the guardian cannot cause direct physical harm to the child. That would bring the attention of the government which would have the right to step in and remove the child and place it in an environment where it would be less likely to suffer direct physical harm. (Think of the libertarian government as a deadly trip-wire alarm system. As long as no one is being physically harmed, the government is silent to the extent that you should not even realize that it is there. The moment that someone steps on the wire and causes direct physical harm to someone else, all of a sudden the government springs into existence and takes out the offender, with physical violence if necessary.) Part of the social contract we sign is that we allow people to come to harm through their ideas. This includes their children, whom they have the right to raise according to these ideas. If someone thinks that sweatshops or even brothels are good places for a child to receive an education then so be it.

This might sound funny coming from an Asperger, but I see Baruch as suffering from a lack of a theory of mind. (See Neurotypical Mental and Emotional Handicaps.) This goes back to our original discussion about parents raising their children. At a physiological level, Baruch simply does not get that there are other people out there who believe differently from him and are equally convinced of their beliefs as he is. Baruch thinks that it is so obvious that he is right that if he repeats his arguments or has the government step in and support him as being right, those other people will eventually come to their senses; Christians, Haredim, and white supremacists will suddenly realize that they are superstitious intolerant bigots, apologize to Baruch for being such naughty children and go home. Of course when those people follow this same line of thinking and try to use government to support their ideas against Baruch then that is them being intolerant and trying to impose their values. In the real world there are true and false beliefs (gravity being a good example) and those beliefs have consequences. In the politics of a free society there is no true and false. There are just people's opinions and a system designed so that these differing opinions do not turn into people killing each other over them.

On a final note, let me give a shout out to Baruch Spinoza, a fellow opponent of public schools, who has joined in on the debate.

In Support of Public Schools Teaching Intelligent Design and Other Nonsense

The debate with Baruch Pelta seems to have fizzled out, though I think for all the right reasons. We agree, in practice, on too many things and neither of us is interested in throwing around ad hominem polemics in an attempt to manufacture a disagreement. We have, though, continued to talk in private and what we found is that my pursuit of orthodox libertarian politics may, in fact, be a far more effective generator of disagreement than any defense of the Orthodox Jewish religion. This is particularly the case when it comes to public schools and the teaching of intelligent design.

Both Baruch and I support evolution and oppose intelligent design theory. That being said Baruch adopts a traditional liberal approach and supports the existence of public schools as instruments of teaching "objective facts." He draws a line between evolution, to be enshrined as objective fact, and intelligent design, which can be dismissed as mere religion. From this perspective attempts to teach evolution in public schools, even in the face of opposing parents, are a defense of the public good while attempts to teach intelligent design, even when backed by parents and local school boards, are attacks on the freedom of religion.

As a libertarian, I oppose the existence of government-funded public schools. As J. S. Mill understood, any attempt to bring government into education, by definition, means one group trying to impose their values on others. The teaching of evolution is a good example of this. While I accept the theory of evolution and desire that my children study it as part of the private education I hope to one day purchase for them, that is simply my opinion. I recognize that there are other people who do not accept evolution and do not want it taught to their children. In a free society, I must accept the fact that their views, no matter how based in ignorance, are of equal value to mine. Because of this, I have no right to make any attempt to use government (by definition a coercive act) to advance my views, no matter how right I think I am and how good my intentions are.

To justify the teaching of evolution, its supporters need to resort to an arbitrary distinction between religion and other opinions, with one being given special protections and allowed to be forced upon children as fact. Not only that, but the government is deemed capable of deciding what counts as science and what is a religion. This is sophistry, in which facts are simply those things one agrees with and religion is that which one opposes. Thus the very concept of freedom of thought is rendered meaningless.

I have yet to meet anyone seriously willing to defend public schools as in keeping with the maintenance of free thought. What I usually get it is this defiant attitude of "public schools are here to stay and I should get with reality." As if pragmatism could ever excuse a fundamentally unjust system. So here it is; if we are going to have public schools, and it looks like we are going to be stuck with them for the near future, this is what you will need in order to minimize government infringement on personal liberties. If the government is going to decide that education is an arena worthy of its interest then the government must be prevented from putting a meaningful definition on the term. The government can give money for "education" and it will be left to parents and school boards to decide what "education" means and spend the money accordingly. If they decide that science education means intelligent design or even creationism that should be their right. To be clear, white supremacist parents should also be left to decide that holocaust denial is a form of history and use government money to teach that.

Under such circumstances, giving over a meaningful education is likely to be a problem. This is a price I am willing to pay. It is the price that every supporter of freedom agrees to pay; believing in freedom means that allowing people to pursue their own misguided and destructive beliefs, no matter how horrific the consequences, is better than employing the slightest bit of coercion. Of course, as a supporter of freedom, I am also an optimist and believe that, in the long run, getting government less involved with education will mean more good teachers giving over a meaningful education to outweigh the intelligent designers, the creationists and even the holocaust deniers.

The Real Cause of Any “Dark Age”

To continue with my previous discussion of Hypatia, to blame the destruction of the Great Library Alexandria and the consequent loss of the knowledge of Greco-Roman civilization on Christian intolerance misses the point. Regardless of whether or not Christians performed the actual deed, in the long run, this knowledge was doomed to serve little practical use and be consigned to oblivion for two reasons, lack of effective means to reproduce and transmit this knowledge, and lack of an effective government under which the transmission of knowledge might be possible.

The real tragedy of the Library of Alexandria was that the tragedy was possible in the first place. Yes the Library was a true wonder, housing the intellectual wealth of the Classical world. There was a fire in the Library at some point, possibly even several fires, and with it went most of that heritage. What you have to ask yourself though is how did it come to be that so much knowledge was in one place and just one place to be destroyed in a fire? In our world of print and internet it is easy to take for granted how easy it is to reproduce texts and gain access to them. Take away print and the internet and you are left with the labor intensive project of reproducing texts by hand one at a time. Even a lover of knowledge, without an organized network to reproduce texts and pass them on is going to be trapped into single copies. An individual, or even a local group, would lack the means to do more and why should they do they as single texts cover their needs. The problem of course is that this creates situations like in Alexandria, large storehouses of texts existing only in that Library. A true monument to human achievement, but one that could do little for anyone outside of the narrow elite with access to the library and was a sitting target for the next outbreak of violence to destroy it.

From this perspective, ironically enough, the medieval Church fares better than the Roman Empire as a protector and transmitter of texts. It was the Church which successfully built knowledge networks of monasteries copying down texts and passing them along, to which we owe our knowledge of the Classics. Of course the ability of writing networks is quite limited compared to print networks, which would not come about until the early modern period. Without print, any attempt to transmit knowledge could at best only prove a holding action to the inevitable ravages of time such as natural disasters and angry mobs.

Knowledge networks, particularly fragile manuscript ones, can only exist to do whatever little good they might do under the protection of effective governments. The Romans did develop networks to pass on manuscripts, even if they were never as systematic about it as the Church. These though, could not survive the political collapse of Late Antiquity Rome. This started before the rise of Christianity. In the long run, Christianity may have failed to stop the collapse, but it certainly did not cause it. Potentially rioting murderous mobs exist in every society just below the surface, waiting to do harm. This goes even for supposedly civilized ones like Montreal in 1969, when the police went on strike for one day, as well as Late Antiquity Alexandria, which lacked an effective police system in the first place. Under such circumstances the library was doomed. It was not a matter of if the Library would be destroyed, but when and what particular spark would so happen to do it in. This has nothing to do with religion, though religion is as good as any other fuel under the right circumstances. (See Slouching Toward Bosnia.)

Even if the filmmakers had been right about Hypatia and the night before she was murdered she had cracked the big secret of the Scientific Revolution, anticipating both Copernicus and Kepler, it is unlikely that it would have changed the course of Western history. No matter how brilliant Hypatia may have been she lacked a knowledge network to pass her ideas along and allow them to become relevant to a larger society. This could exist within the political chaos of the collapsing Roman Empire. Like the Library, hers is the tragic story of a brilliant but ultimately useless monument to human genius, doomed to inevitable destruction and irrelevancy.

And I Called Her Kitty Stew

Recently, I have been spending more time than I ought to playing Mass Effect. (Time better spent on work or this blog.) This game has great action and a truly gripping story. The basic premise is that human beings, having recently made first contact, are now stepping out into the wider galaxy as one of many races of intelligent beings. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to anyone, galactic civilization leads a precarious existence. Outside the galaxy live an artificial intelligent race known as the Reapers. Every few thousand years, they come through the galaxy and systematically destroy all advanced organic lifeforms. These Reapers are about to come once again. The main character, Commander Shepard, turns up evidence of this Reaper plot as he tracks down a rogue alien named Saren, a willing collaborator with the Reapers. Shepard has to stop Saren before he brings about the return of the Reapers and the destruction of galactic civilization. Saren is actually a really interesting villain. His logic is that, rather than suffer the inevitable destruction of all, they should submit to the Reapers, prove their usefulness in the hope that the Reapers will allow some part of civilization to be saved. This is a story about hard moral choices. At one point you are even forced to choose between the lives of two characters on your team. The choices you make actually affect the larger story, changing the actual game.

I chose to make my Commander Shepard a woman and named her Kitty Stew Shepard. My roommate asked me if this was supposed to be a nickname. Well, Kitty can be short for Katherine and Stew can be for Stewart. Hello Galaxy; meet your new savior. Katherine Stewart Shepard was born on Earth to a respectable secular Jewish family, with parents who expected her to go to law school. But she instead joined the Alliance military as the Kitty Stew Shepard of the SSV Normandy you know now. She travels throughout the galaxy armed with her pistol, shotgun, and biotics meeting new alien life forms and making difficult moral choices. Does she try to sleep with the aliens (an alien does not count as a gentile so she can bring one home to mom and dad) or just blow them all to bits? One thing is certain, whatever she does, she will look damn hot doing it.


On a side note, here is the trailer for Mass Effect 3:    

History 111 Book: Pursuit of the Millennium

The book club idea, doing specific topics and allowing students to pick books, proved to be a success even if I still have to work on getting more class participation. So I am going to try it again for my winter quarter 111 class. As before I am going to pick the first book for the class. This time around I am doing Norman Cohn's Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages. This book contains enough comedy and tragedy to entertain and its subject matter of religious apocalyptic violence is certainly relevant. I am also interested in further testing my theory about Christianity in the classroom that both Christian and secular students left to their own devices wish to avoid talking about Christianity. Christian students feel under attack by discussions of the religion in a classroom setting and secular students feel no connection. (See Are the Greeks and Romans Just More Popular?) Considering that much of my work deals in the history of religion, if I am going to have I future I am going to need some way around this problem. On a more personal level, this book allows me to teach what I actually study professionally, medieval and early modern messianism. In fact, Cohn's work is foundational to my dissertation. In many respects what I am trying to do is apply Pursuit of the Millennium to Jews.    

Agora’s Two Acts

I finally got around to watching Agora. My friend Lionel Spiegel got a hold of a copy and so, armed with popcorn, we got ready to wage merciless Mystery Science Theater 3000 against the movie's Whig biases. Agora tells the story of the female pagan philosopher Hypatia, who was murdered by a Christian mob, and the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria at the hands of Christians. I therefore expected a highly simplistic movie with virtuous enlightened pagans living in paradise and vicious intolerant Christians ruining everything and bringing about the "Dark Ages." I must admit, though, that the movie turned out much better than the trailers had led me to expect, managing for the most part to be fair to the actual historical events. This is until the second act of the film.

First off, full credit has to be given to the set designers for their breathtaking reconstruction of late fourth century Alexandria. This has to go down as one of the best reconstructions of a pre-modern city in the history of film. I was not even so bothered by the lack of mud; this still being the Roman Empire. Next, you have Ashraf Barhom's film stealing supporting role as the Christian monk Ammonius. If I had seen this movie earlier I would have tried showing at least parts of it to my 111 class as part of our unit on Christianity. Barhom's portrayal of Ammonius fits precisely into the Rodney Stark model of religious outreach that I presented. Ammonius preaches on the streets of Alexandria to crowds, picks debates with pagans and performs "miracles" (in his case walking through fire), but what makes Ammonius effective is his charismatic charm, which allows him to form relationships with individual people. This allows him to attract, not massive crowds in single dramatic speeches, but to slowly win over individuals, in the case of the movie Hypatia's slave Davus. This is essentially how I imagine Paul preaching and winning converts. Whatever you might think of his actions, this is a man that you like and can understand why others might change their lives around to convert to his religion and follow him.

Anchored by Barhom's Ammonius, the film actually does manage to offer a nuanced portrayal of Christianity, where, even if Christians are still the villains of the story in the end, there is a recognition that the world of late antiquity was not completely black and white. If the Christian mob ends up sacking the Library, it is only after the pagans' started the fight. In keeping with the narrative of the slow, quite non-dramatic spread of Christianity, the pagans find the tables turned on them by the unexpected size of the Christian counter-attack, leading one of the pagan leaders to exclaim: "who knew that there were so many Christians?"

If the movie had ended after the first act, I would have been on my feet acclaiming this movie as one of the greatest historical films ever, one that could allow Christians to burn down the Great Library of Alexandria and maintain some sense of nuance. The second act, though, with Hypatia's conflict with Bishop Cyril, leading to her death, manages to fall into all the Whig anachronisms I feared. First, there is Hypatia's grappling with the problem of the elaborate system epicycles, circles on top of the planet's circular orbits, in the Ptolemaic geocentric solar system. Even this is well done and worthwhile as a portrayal of the necessary thought processes on the road to heliocentrism. The fact that Hypatia is made out to be a heliocentrist is also not a problem, even if we have no evidence that she was, as the belief was found among the ancient Greeks. The film though decides to go one better and has Hypatia preempt Kepler in the theory of elliptical orbits, necessary in order to avoid the problem of epicycles. If you are going to go that far then why not have her ask why planets move in elliptical orbits and come up with Newtonian mechanics or even Einstein's Theory of Relativity? Then there is the crude misogyny of Bishop Cyril as he quotes Paul's Epistle to Timothy about the role of women. (Anyone who sits in smug judgment of pre-modern patriarchy without considering the inevitable logic of a highly militarized society, in which women do not serve in the military, has failed to engage in due historical thinking unfit to comment on historical events.) In keeping with this theme of misogyny, Cyril levels the ultimate patriarchal accusation of witchcraft against Hypatia even though the charge of witchcraft did not come into common use until the fifteenth century. (Sorcery is a completely different issue.)

No, we have no reason to assume that Hypatia could have jump started the Scientific Revolution in late antiquity Alexandria only to be stopped by Church misogyny. The story of Hypatia and the downfall of Greco-Roman civilization is tragic enough without that. By all means, go watch this movie for the first act; if you feel so inclined, try to stomach the second.