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.

Aramaic Physics

I am in middle of watching the show Miracles. It was on back in 2003 when it suffered a similar fate as Firefly, being canceled after less than a full season. I guess certain networks have a problem with off-beat premises with a sense of humor backed by solid acting that requires actual thought on the part of the audience. The show is about a paranormal investigative team. Think X-Files or Fringe with theological content.

The following episode involves a plane that disappears briefly. When it lands it turns out that everyone aboard has undergone some sort of supernatural experience. In the scene starting at the 5:10 mark, the flight attendant starts talking in a mysterious language which turns out to be Aramaic. When the head of our investigative team points this out to the head government agent, his reaction is: "like Jesus" and then asks "that language has been dead for two thousand years you think you can understand it?" To which our investigator responds: "a little."

Jews have been keeping Aramaic alive for two thousand years. It is the language of the Talmud. Syriac Christians speak a form of it as well even today. But I guess we could not expect an idiot government agent to realize that. Later on in the episode it turns out that the flight attendant is spouting advanced physics, giving lessons on how to quantumly destroy the universe. The secrets of the universe being given in Aramaic. You have to give the show's writers credit for essentially smuggling in Kabbalah into mainstream television.  

Free Markets Not Turkey are Sending You Illiterate Immigrants

Hat tip to Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein.



Austrian MP Ewald Stadler goes on a rant against the Turkish ambassador, Ecvet Tezan. In general I find it useful to watch foreign politicians in action. It serves as a useful remainder for whenever someone says that our politics, here in the United States, are rough. For better or worse, our two party system guarantees that everyone behaves themselves and keeps to the moderate and boring center.

What caught my intention was Stadler blaming Turkey for sending Austria "all the illiterates of Anatolia" and "stone-age Islamists." (2:53) Anyone who is a libertarian understands that countries do not ship out their undesirables, unless at gun point; the market is responsible for that. People go wherever the best jobs they can get are available. This is a good thing as it allows for the maximal use of resources. If anything, Stadler should blame the State welfare programs for attracting "illiterates." (In all fairness, his BZO party seems pretty good in terms of economics.) Not that there is anything wrong with people who are illiterate beyond the fact that it is an inefficient use of a valuable and finite resource, the human brain. Once you assume that the State is supposed to fight poverty, how can you not open your borders to all human beings in need. As for stone-age Muslims wanting bury teenage girls alive, it is the responsibility of the State to make sure that everyone obeys the law and does not cause physical harm to anyone. Beyond that, let every person practice whatever stone-age belief they feel like.      

Making Goethe Jewish

David Goldman has an article, "Faustian Bargains," on the continued importance of German cultural tradition for Judaism. Much of the article focuses on Orthodox Judaism, particularly R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, Michael Friedländer and R. Joseph Soloveitchik. Unlike most narratives, which focus on the Kantian philosophical tradition, Goldman argues for the preeminence of German literature, particularly Goethe, for understanding German-Jewish relations. According to Goldman:


Two German thinkers demarcate the opposite poles of German culture and its Jewish response. One was Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), whose Critique of Pure Reason leapfrogged 2,000 years of debate about the ultimate nature of reality. We cannot penetrate into the inner nature of objects that we perceive, Kant asserted: All we can know is the mechanisms for understanding them that are hard-wired into our brains. The apogee of Enlightenment rationalism, Kant thought that reason would prescribe ethics and foster world peace. The poet and polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) saw instead the dark side of the Enlightenment: Freed from constraint, tradition, and faith, modern man faced instead existential despair and self-destruction. Men use reason, Mephistopheles tells God in the prologue to Goethe’s great drama Faust, to be beastlier than any beast. Kant dismissed Judaism as a relic of ancient irrationality; Goethe learned Hebrew and drew on the Bible to make sense of the spiritual crisis of modernity.

Jews who veered toward assimilation embraced Kant’s universalism, most prominent among them Hermann Cohen, Germany’s leading academic philosopher in the last years of the 19th century. Cohen never abjured his Jewish identity and struggled until the end of his life to reconcile the unique calling of Israel with Kant’s universalism. His story has become an object lesson in failed assimilation. The Jewish encounter with Goethe in many ways is more telling, for its failures as well as successes. Some of the great rabbis of the 19th century did not hesitate to draw on Goethe’s reading of the Bible; Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik saw theological importance in Goethe’s rejection of scientific determinism.

Ayn Rand’s Road to Serfdom (Part II)

(Part I)





The plot of Atlas Shrugged occurs against the background of Friedrich Hayek's scenario. The biggest departure is that Ayn Rand never bothers to bring in a formal dictator. Even this can be seen as an astute adaption of Hayek. For Hayek the creation of a Hitler, while the endpoint, is really incidental to the whole process. The real work of Fascism was not done by the Nazis, but by the mainstream German left and right decades before. Tyranny does not corrupt the free society, but is the incidental byproduct of the corrupted free society.

In the novel the two main characters, Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden, are businesspeople trying to succeed against a government and a society following Hayek's downward trajectory. Dagny works in railroads and is trying to build a new line in Colorado, the state with the fewest government regulations and the most robust economy. Hank is trying to market his new "Rearden Steel." Dagny and Hank form a business relationship (and start sleeping together) with Hank providing Dagny with Rearden Steel and Dagny providing Hank the opportunity to showcase to the world what Rearden Steel can do. The problem for Dagny and Hank is that the United States which they live in is dominated by the notion that private businesses should be run in such a way as to advance "the public interest." Dagny and Hank are unaware of this change in the culture and its implications for them. They are both people consumed with pursuing their own particular interests (with almost Asperger like dedication), who assume that everyone thinks like they do. This is not the case with Dagny's brother, James Taggart, and Hank's chief competitor, Orren Boyle, who embrace this new public minded spirit and, instead of working on their businesses, devote themselves to working the corridors of Washington in service of this "public interest."

In the name of public interest James gets an "anti-dog-eat-dog rule," to limit "destructive" competition and drive his chief competitor out of business. Next, James and Boyle get an "Equalization of Opportunity Bill" passed with the help of Wesley Mouch, Hank's lobbyist, who betrays his employer. The Equalization of Opportunity Bill is a laundry list of regulations designed to serve the "public interest," but which descends into favors for special interests at the expense of someone else. The railroad unions want fewer cars to be run on each train and a lower speed limit to give more hours to workers. James, in the spirit of public mindedness, gives in to this demand when he is given a break from paying back the bonds bought by the investors Dagny brought aboard. Hank is stopped from moving his business to Colorado in order that jobs not be lost, but a limit is also placed on how much he can produce in order that other less fortunate people, like Boyle, are given a chance.

With the help of people like James Taggart and Orren Boyle, Wesley Mouch is able to become the Senior Coordinator of the Bureau of Economic Planning and Natural Resources, an unelected official with almost dictatorial power over the country. He rules through an unholy alliance of special interests, from James and Orren to Fred Kinnon of Amalgamated Labor and Dr. Floyd Ferris of the State Science Institute. Together they pass Directive 10-289, which shifts the logic of the Equalization of Opportunity Bill from corrupt meddlesome government to State Fascism. Everyone must work for the public benefit; anyone who does not is not just selfish, but a criminal. All businesses must produce the same amount as pre-depression times. Workers must work the same amount of hours and at the same pay as they did before. No one is allowed to leave their job without special permission from the "Unification Board." Everyone must spend the same amount of money as they did in previous years. There is even a rule against new books being published (including books that might be critical of these policies) so that authors whom the public had yet to read could be given a chance.

In the spirit of Hayek, Rand is most effective when confronting the issue whose public interest is at stake and the consequences of accepting unstated philosophical premises. Some of the best scenes in the book are when the various villains wave the banner of "public interest," a term that Rand turns into a curse word by the end of the book. The villains, to great comic effect, sit down and try negotiate, between themselves, which of the many "worthy" public interests need to be considered and who should have to be sacrificed in the name of the public interest. Finally there are the moments when these characters have to face up to the true consequences of their abandonment of firm moral principles for pragmatism. For example, James Taggart finds himself yelling about the sacredness of a contract, when the labor union controlled Unification Board makes him the sacrifice to their public interest, only to realize that he was the one who destroyed the value of a contract when he sacrificed his investors by not paying them for the bonds.

The crucial difference between Hayek and Rand, where Rand goes off the train tracks to become Rand, is that for Hayek this scenario is a tragedy put into place by intelligent people, who had all the right intentions. If Hayek attacked Fascism (the socialism of the right), he also was defending German culture, essentially telling his English audience: we Germans did this not because we had any natural disposition to tyrannical rule or for mindlessly obeying orders. Our liberal tradition was as good as yours if not better. We fell because we so desired for the government to advance the public interest and turned to this ideal several decades before you did. Both the left and the right accepted this until between these two forces there were no honest liberals left. If these ideas came from the left, it was the German right that truly embraced them and took them to their logical and murderous conclusions.

For Rand, the problem is not just the notion that government should act for the public interest, but that people should try acting for the good of others in the first place. Thus, in the novel, there is no spirit of tragedy, or even tragic-comedy, in which good people are brought down by the unforeseen consequences of their strengths. On the contrary, there are simply moral degenerates, who fail to live according to Objectivist values of selfishness, and therefore deserve their fates. This is played out in Rand's solution to the problems faced by her heroes. She has them join John Galt and his followers in their "strike of the mind" as they attempt to bring down the entire economy even at the expense of allowing millions of people to die of starvation. For Rand, the true villains are not Mouch and his cronies in Washington, but the millions of people who honestly believed in doing good for others and thought they were doing that by supporting Mouch's economic planning. This point is most clearly made in one particular scene in which Rand sets up a major train crash in a Taggart tunnel. Before the accident occurs, Rand offers vignettes of different anonymous people on the train about to die, including a mother with her children who had always been hostile to the rich and assumed that government regulations would only harm them. The message is that these people, including women and children, were responsible for this state of affairs and deserved to die. The heroes are those, like John Galt, who can sit back with a lit cigarette (the groups special kind, featuring the symbol of the dollar) and allow society to crumble.

Following Hayek, I recognize and honor the good intentions and intelligence of those who support government control over the economy in the name of the public good. The fact that this is a path to the destruction of liberty, takes nothing away from this. On the contrary, it makes it a tragedy to be stopped and, failing that, to be mourned for. If a libertarian society is ever going to succeed it will do so ultimately because people are willing to work for the greater good and are willing to do so even without the government whip. For me, Libertarianism is not the rejection of public responsibility it is the opportunity to finally embrace it.

Ayn Rand's Latin

The Economist is in middle of hosting a debate between Lera Boroditsky and Mark Liberman over the role of language in shaping ideas. I have become interested in this issue recently from reading Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Pinker, as a supporter of evolutionary psychology, argues that genes are the primary arbitrator of how people think and polemicizes against those, particularly on the left, who accept it as a matter of faith that society at large, even with its power over language, truly affects people. As with Pinker's arguments against the blank slate model of  the mind, the debate about the role of language seems to be one of defining your terms. No one is really about to say that language is irrelevant for discussions about ideas and no one is about to say that language form an unbreakable chain, fating all speakers of given language to certain modes of thought.

In the opening round Liberman, in the role of the opposition, attacks the popular belief that certain languages "lack a word for x." Interestingly enough, he takes a swipe at Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged. In the novel Rand has a character claim that only Americans have a word for "making money." Liberman retortes:

But this cute theory runs aground on the shoals of fact. If we look up pecunia in Lewis and Short's Latin dictionary, we find the gloss "property, riches, wealth", and a reference to Cicero's use of the phrase "pecuniam facere", which deploys pecunia as the object of the verb facere (to make).


To be fair to Rand, there was an important shift in the early modern period regarding money, which rejected Aristotle's belief that money was something "barren." This belief was the foundation of the Church's opposition to lending money. Even in ancient times people recognized that wealth such as cattle, (the origins of the Latin word "pecunia") could be created by human hands. It was only in modern times, though, that the view of currency changed from something static to dynamic. Of course this still goes back before the United States. I guess Isaac Abarbanel was being an "American" when he defended interest lending, contrary to the Church and Aristotle, with the argument that "money could grow" by being lent out for productive uses.