28 Years Old and Still Have Not Taken Over a Single Country

Well yesterday I turned twenty-eight. It is therefore useful to take stock and look at what has been accomplished by people my age. Take for example Henry VII, who at my age defeated Richard III at the battle  of Bosworth field in 1485 and seized the throne of England. As Arthur D. Innes notes in his England Under the Tudors:

It is difficult to think of the first Tudor monarch as a young man; for his policy and conduct bore at all times the sings of a cautious and experienced statesmanship. Nevertheless, he was but eight and twenty when he wrested the kingdom from Richard. His life, however, had been passed in the midst of perpetual plots and schemes, and in his day men developed early -- whereof an even more striking example was his son's contemporary, the great Emperor Charles V. Young as Henry was, there was no youthful hot-headedness in his policy, which was moreover his own.

At twenty-eight I am at work on history book that if properly abused might serve as a guide to taking over countries by being elected Lord Messiah. I also have taken over the world numerous times on Civilization.

Academia as a Bulwark Against Conservatism (Part II)

(Part I)

Now if society, in order to function, needs to be a fundamentally "conservative" one, where everyone accepts certain rules already in place, it is also important that this established status quo be regularly challenged by a "liberal" force. This allows for progress and for society to adapt to ever-changing circumstances. Following J. S. Mill, I believe a healthy society functions as a dialectic between conservative and liberal forces, where the liberal advocates for change and the conservative defends the status quo, resulting in society slowly changing as it adopts the stronger liberal points while maintaining its fundamental integrity. This is a reforming society as opposed to a revolutionary one.

The chief value of a university is that it serves as this liberal force in society. Professors, whether they are actually smarter than others, are people of the mind and as such are naturally well suited to thinking outside of societal conventions and asking whether certain things are truly necessary or even consistent with the higher values that the outside society holds for itself. University students are no longer children but are still without the cares and responsibilities of adults. This puts them in an ideal situation to experiment with different lifestyles and values. Left to themselves neither the professor nor their students have any direct influence over the larger society, but this is also part of their value.

The university thus serves as a giant lab experiment, run by the professors. Students come out of high school and for four years are allowed the privilege of entering a sort of "black box" in which they can do and be whatever they want (barring causing direct physical harm to others), with no fear of future consequences. One suspects that most people will simply use this freedom for a rumspringa of sex, drugs, and alcohol. And there is value even to this as it might give cause to think about issues of sexuality, gender, and the pursuit of happiness. Hopefully, at least some students, though, will embrace this process as an intellectual journey and make their way to the classrooms of their professors, in both body and mind, where they might pursue some of these larger questions in a more vigorous and systematic fashion. After four years they reenter general society no longer children, but as adults, with what they learned, both inside and outside the classroom, and will be free to apply this knowledge as either liberals or conservatives as they take part in the larger societal discourse. 

Some of you may find this ironic, but the man who opened my eyes to this use of the university was Rabbi Aryeh Klapper, who used to serve as the Orthodox rabbi at Harvard. According to Rabbi Klapper, his service to the wider Orthodox Jewish community was that he was running an experiment in finding different halachically feasible ways to allow Orthodoxy o adapt to changes in societal norms, particularly in the role of women. Harvard is not an established Orthodox Jewish community with set norms. The students come from other communities and in a few years will leave for other communities. In the meantime, under Rabbi Klapper's guidance, they are free to experiment with different ways of doing things to see how it plays out with no real consequences to fear. As they leave to become leading members of other communities, they will take what they have learned and be able to make suggestions as to how best to apply these ideas.

It should be stressed, though, that in order for this experiment to work it requires a radical disjunction between the university and the rest of society. The value of the professor is precisely in that he is cut off from the rest of society, living in a world of theory without the power or inclination to change society. This "innocence" gives the university its moral authority and protects it from outside influence. The moment universities become engines for particular movements it becomes part of society. This means that there is no reason for anyone to respect what goes on inside the university as the source for refined theoretical thought, outside of the inevitable prejudices of the societal discourse, to give it the protection that is the logical consequence of this purity. If the university can be used to serve one faction of society then why should the opposition not, in perfectly good conscience, attempt to subvert the university and turn it to its cause?

In many respects, my ideal university has much in common with the world of Neal Stephenson's Anathem, which deals with a future alternative universe in which the philosophers are placed in medieval-style monasteries. Because these philosophers can have no direct influence on the larger society they are free to pursue their work without threats of violence or interference.

(To be continued ...)

Academia as a Bulwark Against Conservatism (Part I)

Clarissa has a post on the issue of academics being politically liberal. Rather than deny the claim she takes it head-on with no apologies. This is part of her charm and it works, I find, because, from getting to know her, I realize that, in practice, she is far more nuanced. According to Clarissa:

To the contrary of what many conservatives fear, progressive professors don't use the classroom to voice their political convictions. We simply don't need to. When I come into the classroom, looking chic, fashionable and professional and begin to share my knowledge with the students, my way of being is the best argument there could be against female subjection. I don't have to proclaim feminist slogans in the classroom. I bring my point across just by existing. In the same way, I make my students reconsider their dislike of immigrants. And of intelligent, knowledgeable, educated people. The list can be continued ad infinitum. (The dislike of people who use expressions such as ad infinitum could be added to the list).



Every literary text we read in class, brings the students closer to progressive values. For some unfathomable reason, there don't seem to be that many great writers who advocate accepting things the way they are, resisting all change, and trying to revert to some imaginary paradisaical moment in the past where things used to be perfect.


We teach our students to think for themselves, identify gaping holes in any argument ... to analyze and operate with facts. We are not always successful, of course, but when we are we end up creating more open-minded, intelligent, progressive people.

Conservatives exist on campus, of course. They are treated by everybody with compassion. Not because of their political beliefs, but because they are those hapless academics who never manage to publish anything. The conservative academics' CVs are very light on publications not because ... there is some bias against their so-called ideas in liberal publishing houses and journals. Rather, the very nature of research calls for the creation of something new, for progress, for a rejection of old certainties. A piece of research is always judged, first and foremost, on the basis of whether it contributes anything new to the understanding of the subject. The definition of a conservative is "Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change." It is self-evident, I believe, why this kind of person will not be able to transform their area of expertise in any significant way by their research.

In essence, I agree with Clarissa though I would frame it somewhat differently. If Clarissa would allow me, perhaps I could be her good cop to her bad cop in the struggle for the hearts and minds of our conservative students.

First let me be clear about what, by conservative, I am not attacking. I do not wish to attack mindless bigots, who desire to keep women down and suppress immigration for the simple reason that such people are not worthy of engaging in discourse with. (This is not to say that I have not from time to time given in to such temptations.) If I am going to talk to someone, it is because I fundamentally respect them and see them as intelligent, and open to being convinced by what I have to say. Now even very smart people can come to believe some patently absurd things. I may attack conservative ideas, but to do that I must respect conservative people.

Let me also say that there is a place for conservative ideas in society and that all of us, even us liberal academics rely on them. By conservative I mean a defense of the establishment as having value merely because it is the establishment; if we have done something a certain way then we should continue to do it this way simply because this is the way it has been done in the past. Society is built on agreed-upon traditions, many of them unwritten, to act in certain ways because this is how it has been done in the past and we absolutely refuse to change. For example every month I rely on the university to follow through with its dead letter, non-living contract, with me to send me a slip of paper with a dollar sign followed by numbers. I then hand this slip of paper to a bank, which relies on societal traditions to add those numbers to my bank account. I then take another slip of paper with numbers and hand it to my landlady as "rent money." This process relies on the fact that our societal traditions about paper money and checks are absolute. The moment anyone involved begins to even question this or thinks that this process can be renegotiated then the system would collapse and I would be out of work and on the streets. 

(To be continued ...)

Oh Nuts Purim Gift Basket Giveaway

My friends at Oh Nuts are having a Purim gift basket giveaway for readers of this blog. The winner will get a $30 gift certificate to use at Oh Nuts




Readers have 3 ways to enter:





1. Readers should go to the Oh Nuts Purim Basket Gift page. Choose your favorite Purim Gift and leave a comment on under this blog post with the name and url of the gift you love the most.


I will pick a random winner and Oh Nuts will send them a $30 gift certificate.





2. Readers can go to the oh nuts facebook page become a fan and post on the wall the url and name of your favorite Purim Gift Basket . You should also write "I am here via "Izgad"





3. Readers can follow @ohnuts and should Tweet " Win a Purim Basket from http://bit.ly/aWXLzp Follow @ohnuts and RT to Enter Daily "

Defending the King's F-Word Speech

I did not watch the Oscars last night, but I am glad to hear that the King's Speech walked away with awards for Best Actor, Best Director and Best Picture. I adore this movie and cannot recommend it highly enough. Aspirations, my autism support group, is actually doing an outing to see the movie, something I pushed for. Now my roommate just pointed me to an article that says that the King's Speech is going to be edited to make it PG-13. The King's Speech is probably the cleanest most "G rated "movie with an R rating attached to it. There is no sex, no violence, just lots of good humor, inspiring moral courage and a scene in which the main character lets off a string of profanities, including several F-words.

This is a good example of how my very conservative personal values clash with my libertarian opposition to censorship and loses. This is usually because it turns out in the end that my libertarian side does a better job at defending my deeper conservative values than my conservative side. In general I am not a fan of the use of profanity and you would be hard pressed to hear me using any. That being side I find the rating system used by the film industry, largely to forestall actual government censorship, to be so arbitrary as to invite absurdity and ultimately to corrupt society into hypocrisy. Our rating system has created a situation where a movie can show people's naked back sides while having sex or hacking other people apart and still receive a PG-13 rating, but God help us if there are two F-words. As if sex and violence were ok, but we must protect children from hearing a word regularly used on the street.

This does not help traditional values, but rather corrupts them. Take for example the infamous "wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Superbowl halftime show, when millions of viewers where treated to Janet Jackson's exposed nipple. I was not so lucky as I was engrossing myself in my Latin flashcards while at a Superbowl party. I heard shouts of "boobie" and I looked up and asked "boobie where?" For all of those churches and synagogues hosting Superbowl parties, who felt guilty about exposing "innocent children" to Janet Jackson's boobs, what about an entire halftime show, that as far as I could tell from looking up from my flashcards was all about sex? If you are ok with people bumping, grinding and singing about sex then you should not be bothered by a little partial nudity at the end. Why should traditional Judeo-Christian values bow before the edicts of a random board?

In general I do not like hearing the F-word. The King's Speech is one place where it should be. Any parent who would refuse to take their children to see this movie because of a few F-words can go F themselves.

  

Hebrew Hovers at the Doorway of Symphonic Metal CDs

It is funny the unexpected places where one runs into Hebrew. For example the first time I read through Dune I paid little heed to the title used for Paul Muad'Dib, Kwisatz Haderach. In the novel, the Kwisatz Haderach is meant to refer to a theoretical superhuman messiah figure that the Bene Gesserit sisterhood has been working towards for thousands of years through their breeding program. It was only after I finished that a friend of mine pointed me to the index and the fact that Kwisatz Haderach is the Hebrew phrase קְפִיצַת הַדֶּרֶך meaning shortening of the way.

Today I had downloaded and was listening to the Dutch symphonic metal band Epica and their album Divine Conspiracy when I noticed the title to one of their songs "La‘fetach Chatat Rovetz." I first thought it was French until it hit me that it was the Hebrew לפתח חטאת רובץ, sin hovers at the doorway. If I were of a more Haredi disposition I might think that this was a heavenly sign warning me away from non-Jewish music.

Emes Ve-Emunah and the Horrors of a Libertarian Society

Baruch Pelta just sent me a recent post by Emes Ve-Emunah on the issue of gay marriage. It is a pretty good piece attempting to balance a principled opposition to gay marriage with an honest caring for individual homosexuals. Then at the end he drops this bit of wisdom.

The ultimate libertarian ideal is to make no value judgment at all placed on any behavior that is private and among consenting adults. As long as you do not hurt or force yourslef on others – who cares what goes on in the bedroom? Sex between siblings – if they agree - why not? Mother-son, father–daughter? …as long as they are adults and agree, why stop them? Do we as a nation really want to go down that path? Without the bible what possible objection could one have?

Do we want to go down this path? Why not? If people wish to not live under biblical principles and violate every sexual taboo in Leviticus why should it be my problem that I should risk my life and liberty threatining them with government sanctioned coercion, inviting them to retaliate in kind? I accept the Constitution, not the Bible, as the basis for our legal system. So yes I have no possible objection. (See Religious Choices.)

Jesus Versus the Backside of a Girl

College posting boards, which allow anyone to put up what ever they like as long as someone does not come afterwards to tear it down, can make for some interesting bed fellows. Take for example the posting board at the back of my classroom, with its poster for a vacation spot, featuring the backside of a girl in a bathing suit, and a collection of "Christ is Victor" pamphlets. What story can we tell about this? How about "stop just staring at the backside of the girl in the bathing suit and hand the nice lady a pamphlet about Jesus. This will give you an opportunity to stare at her from the front."

I cannot wait for the weather to clear up and the campus oval circus can come to town. This features lots of girls in bathing suits and a collection of preachers in suspenders calling them whores and threatening them with hellfire. As a hellbound Jew, I am comforted to know that my side has the pretty girls in bathing suits even if the preachers are a whole lot more entertaining.

Teaching History to Some Very Special Children

Yesterday I was invited for a second time to give a presentation to the high school of Haugland Learning Center, a special education school for autistic children. I would like to thank the absolutely wonderful and dedicated staff for allowing me to come and making me feel welcome there. The first time I came I spoke about college and dating. (My main piece of advice for dating was not to be an ax murderer.) This time around I gave a version of my presentation about research on the internet and the limits of Wikipedia. (See My Blog and Wikipedia Versus Frances Yates.) In truth both of these presentations quickly evolved into free running conversations with the kids, which is how I like to teach even as that rarely happens in my regular teaching experience.

I must admit to a rift between my inclinations as a teacher and as an academic. I am working on a doctorate in history, a path suited for teaching in a university. Left to my own devices I lecture on highly theoretical and technical topics best suited for a graduate school setting. (This is one of the reasons why I only lasted a year teaching at the Hebrew Academy.) On the other hand the people that I best relate to are children and particularly autistic children.

Children are not bothered by the fact that I am strange and that they do not always understand me. I am an adult so it is only reasonable that I am strange and not easily understood; adults can get away with this. That being said children quickly pick up on the fact that I am interested in them and respect them in ways that few other adults do. I am not very good at talking up to or down to people. I tend to speak to everyone as my equal and this includes children. For this reason children are far more willing to engage with me than adults are. This helps bring me out of a lecture mode; once I am responding to other people I can stop responding simply to the issues in my own head and deliver content understandable to the listener.

This is even more true for autistic children, who are used to adults looking down on them and thinking of them as things to be handled. I think they pick up very quickly how, on the contrary, it is a relief for me to be with them. I am not bothered by lack of formal social contact or odd gestures. With them I feel at home and I will work with them on their terms.  

If anyone knows of an autistic school looking for a general studies teacher, who, while lacking a formal training in special education, but relates well to autistic children and can serve as a bridge between special education and regular schooling feel free to contact me. (For more on my interest in working with children see My Ideal Job.)   

Kelly Hunter's Tempest Workshop

Recently Aspirations, the autism support group I work with here in Columbus, hosted Kelly Hunter to give a workshop on acting. Kelly Hunter is a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and specializes in using theater to work with autistic children. (A later search revealed that she also guest-starred in an episode of Doctor Who. I will leave it up to my readers to judge for themselves as to the relative importance of the two.)   

Ms. Hunter pulled off one of the most incredible teaching sessions I have ever seen. Beyond anything she can do for children, her performance was worth it simply as an exercise in teaching. She presented Shakespeare's The Tempest to a room full of parents and children and some were more interested than others. Not using the text of the play, she had everyone group up in a series of exercises to follow the various characters. For example, there was an exercise with Miranda teaching Caliban to speak and Caliban becoming a little "too friendly" with Miranda. (In the play Caliban actually tries to rape Miranda in order to produce "little Calibans.") My Caliban was inspired by Gollum in Lord of the Rings. And then there was Ariel leading Ferdinand to Miranda and the two seeing each other with "new eyes." This is followed by Prospero's objection. My Prospero was based on Sean Connery.

Such a method of teaching avoids the trap of lecturing to people, of forcing them to simply memorize information and instead invites them into the process to take it on their own terms and make it their own. Furthermore this method plays to all three varieties of learning styles, auditory, visual and above all kinetic.

Inspired by this, I attempted to apply some of these ideas in my History 111 class the next day by asking students to group up and role-play two different figures from different time periods that we had been discussing, Cicero and Giordano Bruno, and have them talk to each other. The students did not take well to this exercise and I was told that they preferred being lectured at. Well, you cannot win all your battles, but I am not going to give up on more theatrical history classes.    

  

History 111 Book: The Spartacus War

Proving once again that students prefer classical over medieval history, for the final book of the winter quarter my class picked The Spartacus War by Barry Strauss. The book deals with the Spartacus slave revolt of 73-71 BCE. It has much of what I like for a basic level history book. It is short, easy to read, but offers a glimpse into some of the wider complexities of the historical method. All of this while avoiding polemics. Strauss is particularly to be recommended in that he is taking a politically loaded issue such as a slave rebellion and avoids taking sides. Unlike the Kirk Douglas movie, this not about noble freedom fighters fighting for liberty against tyrannical Rome. Despite the generally negative role the Romans play in Jewish history, I admire them too much to simply dismiss them as villains.      

Arianna Huffington Crosses the Aisle to Join David Brooks in Some Bi-Partisan Bashing of the Two Party System

Arianna Huffington has a post on a recent debate in which she joined with conservative David Brooks to defend the proposition that "the two-party system is making America ungovernable" against Zev Chafets and P. J. O'Rourke. What struck me is how gracious Arianna is when talking about the event and the issue being debated, both to a conservative like Brooks and to her opponents; the piece is worth it just for her tone, regardless of content. Perhaps this has something to do with being paired with Brooks, a writer whose chief strength is, following in the tradition of William F. Buckley, in being the gentleman conservative; the sort of conservative that liberals might disagree with, but cannot help respect.

Huffington argues that:


It [the two-party system] has ossified to the point where it can only deliver short-term fixes. It has led to entrenched thinking, complacency, and the deification of conventional wisdom -- all conditions that have made it harder and harder to challenge a broken status quo.


And the two-party system has not just narrowed our choices, it's narrowed our thinking. It has deeply infected our political discourse, our media, and our politicians. To paraphrase Einstein, the problems we are facing today cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.


The hunger for change is evident on both sides of the political spectrum -- from the meteoric rise to power of an outsider candidate like Barack Obama to the lightning in a bottle creation of the Tea Party -- both the result of grassroots, anti-establishment movements. The American people clearly want alternatives.


On practically every level, potential nominees in each party are running away from the establishment label and desperately trying to show their independence from the establishment wings of the two parties that are held in such low esteem.


And the Internet and social media are making the shakeup of the two parties much more likely, with young people less and less aligned with large, established institutions -- and more empowered than ever to connect with each other and cut through the spin perpetrated by politicians and special interests.

I would like to voice my respectful and courteous disagreement, precisely in that, as I see it, it is the two-party system that allows for the thin veneer of political civility we possess. If, as I have argued previously, politics is a means of negotiating as an alternative to violence. The value of politics is, therefore, less in any specific agreements that may be reached but in the fact that all parties have committed themselves to this process and not to violence.

The virtue of our two-party system is that it forces everyone involved to the political center. Get past the political rhetoric and you will see that the two parties are fairly close to each other. Both parties are in principle committed to state-guided capitalism, with private businesses and a welfare system designed to eliminate extreme poverty. Both parties support a large military that involves itself in foreign conflicts. Both parties accept that women are to be involved in the political and social sphere. I might not like all of these principles myself, but no one can operate within our political system without convincing voters that he holds to them. Now there are certainly very real disagreements between the parties, but as all involved see the other as accepting the same principles it becomes possible to create an ethos of compromise. In our legislative system, there are few debates over principles; it is a matter of negotiating a dollar amount, how much you are going to regulate something and what kind of restrictions to put in place.

To be clear this is not to say that the actual policies put out by such a system are particularly good, often they are ridiculous. What is important here is that the various factions in our society are negotiating and not trying to force their will upon everyone else. It is very well that few people actually like how our two-party system operates and the sorts of solutions it comes up with. That being said, no one, barring the likes of the Westboro Baptist Church and Aryan Nations,  is going to point blank reject the system.

Our political system does seem to be in crisis as the divide in our society seems to be widening and the rhetoric is being ratcheted up. More and more we are seeing an "us versus them" rhetoric, the logical consequences of which is violence. Some might blame the internet or talk radio. I blame the statist logic which both parties submit to. The more government interferes with people's lives and becomes the solution to problems the more people have reason to feel threatened by the government and see it as a foreign coercive force, which can only be met by going outside the system; a path whose logical conclusion is violence and the destruction of the political system.

If you wish for a respectful civilized political discourse then you may very well have no choice but to accept the two-party system with all of its very real flaws.                

  

Atlas Shrugged Trailer

So the Atlas Shrugged movie is coming out in April. If you are wondering how they are going to turn a thousand plus page book into a single movie, they are not; it is going to be a trilogy. Judging from the trailer, the first movie is going to deal with Dagney Taggart building the John Galt railroad line. It looks like they are going to take the train crash from later in the novel and place it here. Makes a sort of sense as this movie is going to need some action. No one is going to sit through a movie about building a railroad line with a new high tech metal, a plot line that was already thin in the 1950s; why do these characters spend days shuffling back and forth across the continent by train when they could just fly? If this movie is going to work they are going to need to turn to what Ayn Rand did best, political satire featuring her comic villains going into monologues about the need to protect the public interest. Do the filmmakers have the good sense to not take themselves and Ayn Rand too seriously and actually try to have some fun with this?