Good and Evil

On this day:
1461
Wars of the Roses in England: Lancastrian King Henry VI is deposed by his Yorkist cousin, who then becomes King Edward IV.
1519
Hernan Cortes arrives in Mexico in search of the Aztec civilization and their wealth.
1776
American Revolutionary War: The Continental Army fortifies Dorchester Heights with cannon, leading the British troops to abandon the Siege of Boston.
1797
In the first ever peaceful transfer of power between elected leaders in modern times, John Adams is sworn in as President of the United States, succeeding George Washington.
1918
The first case of Spanish flu occurs, the start of a devastating worldwide pandemic.
2009
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issues an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. Al-Bashir is the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the ICC since its establishment in 2002.

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By pulling EV models from their lineups, repurposing EV battery plants and laying off workers in some EV factories, the automakers are taking $50 billion in combined write-downs on their EV investments. The electric-vehicle investment bubble egged on by the Biden administration reflected a classic disconnect between a government’s lofty policy goals and a public that wasn’t convinced. Biden set the fantastical goal that half of all new vehicles sold by 2030 should be EVs. Currently that number is just six percent and dropping.


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Don’t be misled by statements that private property rights put rights of property over rights of people. Private property rights are rights of people over uses of goods they own.-- economists Armen Alchian’s and William R. Allen’s Universal Economics (2018; Jerry L. Jordan, ed.)


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At a late January press conference, Mamdani lamented how "New Yorkers contribute 54.5 percent of state revenue and receive only 40.5 percent back." The irony here, City Journal's Adam Lehodey notes, is that Mamdani is essentially objecting to progressive taxation—giving out less in benefits to those who contribute more in revenue—between the city and state, while advocating for such taxation within the city.

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15,000-20,000 people, including Islamic State affiliates, are now at large in Syria, after an exodus from a camp that held jihadists’ families, U.S. officials familiar with the estimate said. Security at the sprawling Al-Hol facility fell apart in recent weeks after Syria’s government routed the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which had guarded the camp for years.

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Total global debt now sits at a record $348 trillion, driven by global investment in national security and AI. Trillion.

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Good and Evil

The attractive CEO murderer will stimulate a lot of discussion, even moral reflection. Remember, the bomber Kaczynski had a lot of support from American academics. Is it the analog of morality or just evil well disguised?

Here is an article (the source I can't remember), written about another topic, that has application.

Biden's speech at the UN was a sad farewell. As Israel ramped up its attack on Hezbollah positions in Lebanon, Biden prattled on about his hopes for peace. If possible, he projected a sad, discouraged optimism about a world with unfocused threats. Global warming was mentioned 6 times, Iran twice. The UN was quiet; you could not hear the explosions in Lebanon, the gunfire in Ukraine, or the war engines of China.

We want to think that the line between good and evil is clear and that individuals fall into one camp or another. In The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 1, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.”

Because the line between good/evil is not as straightforward as we wish, an essential principle for organizing society is, in F. A. Hayek’s words, to ensure that a “bad man can do least harm.”

Many know these famous words by Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 2: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.”

Those who deny this truth of human nature often believe that giving “good” people – those possessing the right ideology – enough power to control others solves the problem of organizing society.

Solzhenitsyn’s famous line doesn’t appear until page 746, and most people are unaware of the context. The famous sentence begins, “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good…”

Who disclosed this truth to Solzhenitsyn? It was his own experiences in the Gulag.

In the same section of his book, he wrote, “Looking back, I saw that for my whole conscious life I had not understood either myself or my strivings.” He then draws out what he saw in himself:

It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer, and an oppressor.

Insightfully, Solzhenitsyn saw the fallacy of using good intentions as a guide to action: “In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments.”

The worst villains can delude themselves into thinking they are doing good. We should not be fooled into believing that freedom can be preserved by relying on good people’s good intentions.

Take an honest look at your stream of thinking and notice how self-interested it is. Yes, notice your thoughts of kindness and generosity toward others, too. But there is no reason for society to trust your good intentions, or mine, with the power to control others.

To find goodness, Solzhenitsyn had first to see his darkness. And then, having done so, a path to goodness opened up: “And it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good.”

Following his famous sentence about “the line separating good and evil” Solzhenitsyn wrote, “This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains . . . an un-uprooted small corner of evil.”

That the line between good and evil oscillates is a truth Solzhenitsyn expressed repeatedly. In Volume 1, he wrote:

During the life of any heart this line [between good and evil] keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood.

Clearly, Solzhenitsyn wanted us to understand our work is never done. Cultivating our goodness is the work of a lifetime.

In both Volumes 1 and 2, Solzhenitsyn repeats Socrates’s admonition, “’Know thyself.” In Volume 2, he added, “There is nothing that so aids and assists the awakening of omniscience within us as insistent thoughts about one’s own transgressions, errors, mistakes.”

It’s not only the other guy Solzhenitsyn was writing about. Evil can come through any of us if we don’t work to recognize and choose against it. Solzhenitsyn would say we are deluding ourselves when we think evil is only out there. This is a truth that continues to be vindicated.

Recently, Jonathan Mayo compiled new details of the November 2008 terror attack when ten youthful terrorists from the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba murdered 164 people in Mumbai, India. Their targets were ordinary Mumbai residents, people at a Jewish Center, and visitors at a famed hotel catering to tourists.

What stood out about the attack is that, in real-time, the ten terrorists were in communication with controllers, messaging them from Pakistan.

Mayo reports that while terrorists were at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, they received messages that the controllers in Pakistan “are furious there is no sign of a fire at the Taj.” The controllers phoned the youthful terrorists: “Nothing is going to happen until you start the fire. When people see the flames they will begin to be afraid. And throw some grenades, my brother. There’s no harm in throwing a few grenades.”

The terrorists in the hotel seemed “overwhelmed by the opulence of the hotel and [told] their handlers: ‘There are computers here with high-tech screens! It’s amazing!’ The controller [insisted] they ‘start a proper fire’ immediately.”

After the attack, one terrorist at the train station drove to a police roadblock and said, “Please, sir, I have done what I came to do. Please kill me.” The young man told police that “his father, a street seller, sold him to [the terrorist group], telling his son: ‘We’ll have money, we won’t be poor anymore.’”

The line between good and evil, even in the youthful terrorists, was moving in real-time.

Solzhenitsyn’s testimony helps us see that evil cannot be eliminated, but, in his words, “it is possible to constrict it within each person.”

If Solzhenitsyn is correct about the potential for evil existing in each of us, then Thomas Sowell, in his book A Conflict of Visions, has an important warning:

"Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late. Their prospects of growing up as decent, productive people depend on the whole elaborate set of largely unarticulated practices which engender moral values, self-discipline, and consideration for others."

Steven Pinker echoed Solzhenitsyn when he wrote, “Humans are not innately good (just as they are not innately evil), but they come equipped with motives that can orient them away from violence and toward cooperation and altruism.”

It would be a foolish bet to expect that each person will grow up civilized and exercise their moral agency to turn towards good. Human cooperation and flourishing are enabled by moral traditions and the rule of law that constrains evil.

When unconstrained ideology triumphs over rights and morality, we quickly discover how fast evil triumphs over good.

In contrast, the extended social order created by the free market expands our opportunities to cooperate with others, and crucially, accepts human nature for what it is. The more we cooperate, the more we see our well-being depends on others. The thicker the interdependence, the greater the incentives to cultivate the good side of our human nature. (from somewhere)

There is a Platonic element here, that virtue is taught, and evil is error. The commercial world just teaches better. But theft can alleviate hunger, and the Japanese really thought their Chinese victims were soulless lumber. Horribly, big evil looks like more than just a big mistake.

Vice

This is how I see mainstream media. The problem isn’t limited to race, gender, and sexual orientation, where Richard [Hanania] agrees that the media is crazy. The problem isn’t specific factual errors, either. The central problem is that the mainstream media’s standard operating standard is to use selective presentation to spread absurd views about practically everything that matters.--caplan

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Several rescue groups have withdrawn from their efforts in Turkey because of security threats

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The Richmond FBI prepared a memo on what it called “Radical Traditionalist Catholics” and the threat they posed, as a potential recruiting ground for ethnically motivated right-wing extremism.

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Vice

There is a remarkable evolution in the world's vision of virtue. The ancient Greeks felt that virtue could--and must--be taught. Such a notion in the modern West would be simply an inconceivable outrage.

The Atlantic has an article on the rising legalization of vice.

Vice has made some legal advances, mostly as part of a hands-off, libertarian, personal responsibilities theme.
Since the Supreme Court struck down previous restrictions on sports betting in 2018, 36 states have legalized it (26 of which allow mobile betting), and new ballot initiatives are proposed every year.

Only four states still prohibit all uses of marijuana. In 19 states, the recreational use of marijuana is now fully legal; all other states allow medicinal use of cannabis products.

Natasha Dow Schüll’s book, Addiction by Design, carefully documents how electronic slot machines are designed to get players addicted.

As much as 50 percent of revenue comes from “problem gamblers,” while one study showed that in 1998, only 4 percent of gambling revenue from video lottery games came from “responsible” gamers. Just as tobacco companies would go out of business if people used their products responsibly, gambling wouldn’t be a multibillion-dollar industry if it weren’t for addicts.

"Virtue is not simply doing good deeds, but also a set of dispositions and habits that must be practiced in order to flourish. Just as people can be sucked into addictions, we can also work to develop the virtues inside us so that we can be kind, generous, and self-controlled throughout our lives.

Driven by this rich view of life together, we should make it as difficult as possible to access things that impair our ability to make good decisions. It’s not the government’s primary job to protect people from their own worst impulses, nor is the state the primary source of our virtue formation. But we do recognize that policy plays a role in shaping the environment so that we can develop our virtues."

Origins of Resolutions

What was the Great Barrington Declaration's evil plan? To stop lockdowns and mandates from turning the formerly civilized world into an economic & social dumpster fire? To give poor kids a decent, uninterrupted education? To prevent rabid, prissy hypochondriacs from destroying third world economies?-- Jay Bhattacharya

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India will likely become the most populous country on Earth this year, and, yet, outside of the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, there are only four State Department consulates in the country of 1.4 billion. That is fewer consulates than the State Department operates in France and fewer offices than the U.S. Embassy services in Spain. The Canadian province of Quebec, whose population totals less than nine million, merits two consulates in the State Department’s view.

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Taliban update.
Women now need a male guardian to travel more than 48 miles, or to undertake basic tasks such as entering government buildings, seeing a doctor, or taking a taxi. They are banned from nearly all jobs, except medical professions and, until Wednesday, teaching. Women also can no longer visit public parks.

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Origins of Resolutions

Pale Gas is the mnemonic for the seven deadly sins (vices): pride, avarice, lust, envy, greed, anger, and sloth. These were originally listed by Pope St. Gregory the Great but, of course, redefined by Aquinas who felt they were rather vices that led to sin. It is a shame that lust so dominates our cultural prohibitions because the other vices are vibrating and alive. They all deserve some thought. And these old thinkers thought about them so well.

Five are of the "inordinate desire" variety: "For one's own excellence"--pride (Aquinas changed this to "vainglory", the desire for the recognition of one's own excellence), of "possession or riches"--avarice, "sexual pleasure"--the old reliable lust, "of food and drink"--gluttony, "for revenge"--anger (vs. the righteous anger of seeking justice.)

Anger, the Achilles killer, is surprising as only revenge, an interesting sharpened point. And the church fathers struggled over pride and where it fell among fulfillment, ambition, and achievement which explains St. Thomas' modification away from excellence and into the recognition of same. Envy is defined as "sadness on account of the goods possessed by others." Envy is sadness! And sloth is "sorrow in the face of spiritual good", not just laziness but "a malady of the will which causes us to neglect our duties." (Sheen, Fulton not Martin) Sloth is more than slobbering weakness or self-indulgence, at its core is sorrow! Therapists take note.

The world is the lesser for the absence of these thinkers, high-minded, confident, and clear. And it misses the debate on these qualities--or lack thereof. There is a frisson in just the reading of them.

Tension, drama, fullness, even reflection, are all impossible without confines, without a fixed point, without the right of judgment.

Maturation of Virtue

 

                                                         Maturation of Virtue 

Christ was tested often, once about divorce. Christ was asked how he reconciled his view of marriage as inviolable when Moses allowed divorce. Christ said that those hardheaded people at the time of Moses were unable to rise to God's real demands.

So virtue is time-sensitive with a sliding scale? Is there an evolution of virtue?

And, as an aside, someone handing a weapon can not be wrong about it. There is no hierarchy of responsibility, no chain of knowledge.

Chesterton

                                                               Chesterton

Chesterton shows that we really do not change. And our problems are on a loop.

"The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus, some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus, some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity is often untruthful […] they have parted [Christ’s] garments among them, for His vesture they have cast lots; though the coat was without seam woven from the top throughout."

And also with time.

"Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father."

Chesterton lived from May 1874  to June 1936.

Wolves

If the failures of the governments during this plague year do not disillusion you, certainly, at least, you will admit that the self-appointed leaders are of no more a higher moral or intellectual makeup than the rest of us. This was actually the original idea of the American Revolution.


                                         Wolves

I know this is a repeat. I just like it.

An elderly Cherokee chief was teaching his grandchildren about life.

He said to them, “A fight is going on inside me, it is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One wolf is evil — he is fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, competition, superiority, and ego.

“The other is good — he is joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

“This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too.”

They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Realization

The number pi, a constant in math and, like the Pythagorean theorem, an example of the universality of forms, was not arrived at by insight.

The ancient Babylonians calculated the area of a circle by taking 3 times the square of its radius, which gave a value of pi = 3. One Babylonian tablet (ca. 1900–1680 BC) indicates a value of 3.125 for pi, which is a closer approximation.

In the Rhind Papyrus (ca.1650 BC) the Egyptians calculated the area of a circle by a formula that gave the approximate value of 3.1605 for pi.

And from the Old Testament: "Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about." (II Chronicles 4:2) Some authors claim this passage as evidence that the ancient Hebrews used a value of 3 for pi. This passage occurs as part of a description of the building of Solomon's temple, and all the measurements in it are very round numbers, so perhaps this was not meant to be more than a rough estimate.

Archimedes of Syracuse (287–212 BC), one of the greatest mathematicians of the ancient world, approximated the area of a circle by using multiple polygons of known areas and circumference. Archimedes knew that he had not found the value of pi but only an approximation within those limits. In this way, Archimedes showed that pi is between 3 1/7 and 3 10/71.

A universal truth was found step by step, approximation after approximation, over millennia. Yet, even at the beginning, its existence was known.

Is Civic Virtue Taught?

Is civic virtue taught? The Greeks thought so. "Ethos" and "ethics" are both from the Greek work "habit;" they believed the qualities of  personal responsibility--and social responsibility--were learned from childhood, practiced and developed. Learned--and therefore taught.

 

If civic virtue is taught--and schools are not teaching it--someone else is.

 

Education is curious in this country as it is focused upon continuing on in testing; it has no real social arm. And it is taught by people obsessed with balance, with evenhandedness. Imagine a school system where ethics was a course like geometry, a course you could fail. Imagine the different breed of teacher that would require. What would happen if that grade followed you through life.

 

This would be a revolution in the West. Imagine the crisis that would occur if social and personal behavior had a societal net where every citizen had a basic, school taught foundation. Such a system would, of course, require a general agreement on what the basic social requirements would be. That is an easier task in ancient Greece or contemporary Japan with the obvious homogeneity advantage. But how would such an idea be implemented in the U.S.? What basic, stripped down behaviors would be encouraged as correct?

 

And how would diversity fare? What element in such a system can not be diverse? (Keeping in mind that much of current social and economic thought views diversity as a crucial component of the creative, experimental process that all economies and societies unconsciously undergo.)

 

In a diverse culture, is such a system of accepted ethics even possible? Or, in the other view, in an ethical culture, how much diversity is possible?

Sunday/Truth

A recent article by Gershowitz laments the decline of truth in American politics. He originally described the rise of "The Narrative" as Truth's replacement. So our leaders call Cormac McCarthy as witness for their defense. This recalls Zito's wonderful and insightful description of Trump: "The Press takes him literally but not seriously, his voters take him seriously but not literally."

The partisanship in American politics has made all analysis insincere. The Press supports their liars--the Progressives, the Clintons--and FOX theirs, Trump. The Gershowitz article has the openhandedness to blame both.

President Trump defines truth as being that version of events that best satisfies his needs or objectives, or salves his sense of self. Hence his inaugural crowds were the largest ever, and he would have won the popular vote but for the three million illegals who voted for Hillary Clinton. Both ridiculous assertions. President Trump simply says what serves his interest with complete abandon. For example, he blithely stated that his budget plan would offer “one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.” But in fact, Congress raised defense budgets by larger percentages than the 10 percent increase that Trump proposed three times since 2000. The base defense budget grew by 14.3 percent, in 2002; by 11.3 percent, in 2003, and by 10.9 percent, in 2008.

After all, President Barrack Obama knowingly assured the nation that under his healthcare program, (1) premium costs would decline $2400 by the end of his first term, (2) that everyone who wanted to keep his or her doctor could, (3) everyone who liked his or her plan could keep it, and (4) that he would veto the Affordable Care Act if it increased the deficit by one dime. To which, for emphasis, he added “period!” It wasn’t true.  It was never true, and the President knew it wasn’t true.


Remember when one of the key architects of the federal healthcare law, MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber told a panel that a “lack of transparency” and the “stupidity of the American voter” were essential in getting Congress to approve Obamacare. “Lack of transparency, he said, “is a huge political advantage,” Gruber continued, “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.” He said that voters would have rejected Obamacare if the penalties for going without health insurance (the so-called mandate) were interpreted as taxes, either by budget analysts or the public. “If CBO scored the individual mandate as taxes, the bill dies,” Gruber said. “If you had a law that made it explicit that healthy people are going to pay in and sick people are going to get subsidies, it would not have passed."


Gershowitz' overall point, however, is not criticism of liars but rather of their acquiescing victims who continue to excuse the lies to advance the narrative they favor.

Beauty is Truth

Beauty is truth, truth beauty...well, maybe not. Maybe truth needs a little help.

After

The Penultimate Vice

Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus
and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,
hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting
of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict
Atreus’ son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus. . . .

Translated by Richmond Lattimore (1951)

Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus’ anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men — carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.
           Begin it when the two men first contending
           broke with one another —
                                         the Lord Marshal
           Agamémnon, Atreus’ son, and Prince Akhilleus. . . .

Translated by Robert Fitzgerald (1974)

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Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles. . . .

Translated by Robert Fagles (1990) 

These are three translations, generally regarded as the best, of the first line of The Iliad, the great epic poem of Homer, one of the foundations of Western Art. The first line in epics of this type traditionally encapsulates the nature of the whole poem, as this line does. But these three are quite different in emphasis, Fagles, the more modern, highlights "rage" as the focus in the story, Fitzgerald "anger",  where Lattimore is more deferential with an invocation to the goddess as the stimulus of this story but then blames anger also. There is more than a qualitative difference in the words "anger and"rage." "Rage" is "anger" uncontrolled; "rage" possesses, "anger" torments. "Rage is "anger" in action.

The terrible Achilles, possessed as he is by "rage", destroys his own friends and countrymen. "Anger," being more self-contained, cuts a narrower swath and damages the self and those nearby, usually family, has less of an impact when compared to rage and seems an inferior choice.

So the great hero of the Iliad is a pawn to his rage and, in the first great epic in the Western canon, rage is elevated to the most prominent place among the destroyers of personality and life--even before "hubris," the Christian's "pride," that dooms Lucifer in the Old Testament. More important, one's fate and that of one's surroundings are not written in the stars but in our hearts.

The Source of Resolutions

Pale Gas is the mnemonic for the seven deadly sins (vices): pride, avarice, lust, envy, greed, anger and sloth. These were originally listed by Pope St. Gregory the Great but, of course, redefined by Aquinas who felt they were rather vices which led to sin. It is a shame that lust so dominates our cultural prohibitions because the other vices are vibrating and alive. They all deserve some thought. And these old thinkers thought about them so well.

Five are of the "inordinate desire" variety: "For one's own excellence"--pride (Aquinas changed this to "vainglory", the desire for the recognition of one's own excellence), of "possession or riches"--avarice, "sexual pleasure"--the old reliable lust, "of food and drink"--gluttony, "for revenge"--anger (vs. the righteous anger of seeking justice.)

Anger, the Achilles killer, is surprising as only revenge, an interesting sharpened point. And the church fathers struggled over pride and where it fell among fulfillment, ambition and achievement which explains St. Thomas' modification away from excellence and into the recognition of same. Envy is defined as "sadness on account of the goods possessed by others." Envy is sadness! And sloth is "sorrow in the face of spiritual good", not just laziness but "a malady of the will which causes us to neglect our duties." (Sheen, Fulton not Martin) Sloth is more than slobbering weakness or self indulgence, at its core is sorrow! Therapists take note.

The world is the lesser for the absence of these thinkers, high-minded, confident and clear. And it misses the debate on these qualities--or lack thereof. There is a frisson in just the reading of them.

Tension, drama, fullness are all impossible without confines, without a fixed point, without the right of judgment.

Left/History

A War Against History

The Left has always been at a disadvantage in its attacks on America: The country was created out of the philosophical belief in the equality of men and, in two hundred years became wildly successful. Historically the Left has gone through many--sometimes contorted--ways to dismiss America. First Marxism and the "alienation from work" thesis, then the inevitable poverty thesis. When it was clear that America and its workers were more successful and more content than anyone in history, the Left agreed but said it was the function of a world-destroying engine run on petroleum which had to be dismantled. That did not catch on. Recently the idea that America disdained financial equality--a notion that is actually historically true--emerged but financial equality itself was a mushy concept and leading men out of inequality required a hierarchy that everyone saw, so that failed.


Their new tact might work. Their new tact is an attack on history. They have chosen the Civil War period. As with all spiritual ideas, it is a hard sell but it has promise. The idea is that we modern people can hold the rebels morally responsible for treasonous revolution and connect that revolt to slave-holding. This greatly simplifies the Civil War, of course; every high school student in the nation has sweated over that mandatory essay at some point in his academic career. But there is certainly guilt by association here.


The problem is its profound demands upon unreality: Slavery was  the product of war and greed, not bigotry, and was a time honored institution. And the people involved must be seen as prototypes, as pure elements rather than the complex amalgams they are. After all, if you want to burn a witch, she must be all witch, not a mother or sister or a daughter and a witch. She must be all witch. So the South must be held morally responsible for a legal act that, at the time, was virtually institutionalized throughout the world. More, every southerner must be seen solely as a representative of that outrage without any redeeming value. That done, we can now attack statues, works of art and Civil War paraphernalia with a righteous fury. The end point will be an attack on the founders of the country who certainly show imperfections. Once revealed, they may be able to invalidate their revolutionary creation.


This is a bold gamble but not without risk. What if feminists start examining Marx' personal life? What would happen if their opponents dragged up the old Progressive fascination with eugenics? What if Woodrow Wilson's racial beliefs became well known?
But this pales before the risk to Roosevelt, a man high in the Left hagiography, whose outrageous internment of American citizens of Japanese background violated most of our social and political mores, then and now.
Demanding purity and homogeneity creates a heavy burden. Ask Robespierre.

The Prince of Darkness on the Elevator

Many of our problems seem to stem from our willingness to avert our eyes from the essence, from the basics of the questions. Is the medical problem in the U.S. from the uninsured? Unfairness? Or, as Hillary said in her plan, do we simply use medical care more than we can afford; does our use of medical care have to decline? Should everyone get the same grades, expect the same success or are some people simply unequipped to succeed in the modern world? Can we trust our leaders to do the right thing or does the recurrent conflict of interest so often demonstrated by politicians infect the entire system, including apocalyptic weapon use? Are our social disparities a function of insensitivity and egocentricity or are the failures well earned? Do we have the personnel and the government system to right wrongs at all?

Years ago a social experiment was done testing the willingness of young women to enter an elevator. Actors were hired and made up to look as degenerate and depraved as one could expect out of an institution then put, one or several, in preassigned elevators in an office high-rise. Young women in the lobby of the building were subtly guided, individually, to the prearranged elevators. When the elevator doors opened, the woman was faced with the prospect of getting on the elevator with the dangerous looking man. The woman always got on the elevator.

Thus was demonstrated our species' willingness to risk death to be polite.

Conflicker

"Honesty is the best policy" has always been the subject of debate. Does the aphorism encourage honesty because honesty is morally correct or because it is simply advantageous?

Brazil is emerging as a leader in cybercrime. One reason is Conflicker, a program that exploits a defect in Microsoft Windows. Microsoft patched it in 2008. But the market for pirated versions of Microsoft is gigantic in Brazil and those illegal versions have not been patched and so those versions can be breached. One common malware is Trojan, made in Brazil to mine for banking information.

So the people who have bought an illegal Windows are the only ones vulnerable.

Some version of Franklin is right.

Do Complex Questions Have Simple Answers?

Is it men, by that I mean males? Is it guns? Is it the lack of guns? If it is madness how does one explain McVeigh?

We are an inquiring species and not humble. We believe in our own ability to theorize and make sense out of the unknown. We even try to make sense of the senseless.

I doubt if we will have any insight here, how one decides to plot against strangers, attack children. But we are complex beings with a complex history. Are we a technological people with some outliers in Africa and the Middle East? Are we a primitive people with some outliers in North America and Europe? Are we thinking beings with an emotional overlay, an emotional beast with a thinking overlay? Are we an urban people? Hunter gatherers? Agrarians?

Are we trapped in our freedom now that we have gone beyond God and morality, as Niechiez thought? If that is so, how do we explain the religious bomber?

The ancient Greeks believed the relationship between the Polis and the citizen was not a natural, inherent relationship. They thought it had to be taught. Are we allowing shards to develop in the culture where individuals grow untaught about their responsibility to the polis, the whole? Does our obsession with freedom force us to refuse such teaching?

Or have we slipped the civilizing leash. Have we outrun our moral and civilizing supply lines.

Penn State and the Rule of Errors

The career of Bill Buckner's career teaches a lot about life. He played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball, 2517 games, 9397 at bats, 2715 hits, was in the top ten in doubles ('81 and '83), had 174 homers, 1208 rbi's, top ten in stolen bases ('74 and '76), averaged .289 with an OBP of .321 and a fielding percentage of .991. He batted number two because he was an accomplished contact hitter. In 1985 he hit .299 with 16 homers and 110 rbi's.

This looks like a good career and he seems to have been an able player, certainly an above average number two hitter. But in the sixth game of the 1986 World Series with the Mets down to their last out, he misplayed a soft grounder to first which allowed the Mets to tie the game and eventually win it. In the seventh game the Mets won the series. Buckner is remembered for that single moment in his career--not for the other 22 years of accomplishment.

Baseball only gives errors for physical mistakes, not mental, emotional or character errors and, while most fans remember Buckner's error, if pressed, they will give him his due. Yet it is still a harsh reality in sports that defining moments may not be characteristic ones. But errors in judgment, errors in character and errors in virtue are invariably seen as characteristic ones. This fierce rule will ruin the lives of everyone at Penn State who has been involved in this mishandling of the Sanduskey scandal, will invalidate their accomplishments and destroy their futures.

Sunday Sermon: Virtues and Values

Virtues and values are different. Virtues are qualities, values are opinions. Virtues always precede the creation of values. If virtues decline, the principles that create values decline. One of the great problems in the West is that we have made values a virtue; that is, any opinion if firmly held is to be honored as if it were a virtue.

Regrettably this is a direct result of diversity. Diversity at one time was a spice in life, an enjoyable holiday, even if momentary, from the everyday. One put one's judgment on hold and immersed oneself to some degree in something different and foreign. You ate uncooked fish, listened to music played on a different scale, tried to watch soccer, exercised in a sitting and distorted position. But this was always diversion; the proponents of diversity now demand you not just know and perhaps try it, they demand you approve of it. After all, who is to judge? The only difference between the Eskimos and the ancient Greeks is the Greeks died out. Perhaps their survival proves the Eskimos superior to the Greeks. But we want no judgments; we'll settle for the equality between the two.

This demand of reverence for diversity rather than a simple appreciation of it will never be a successful social attribute because it denies personal aspiration. It denies ideals. And everyone has them; they are not always interchangeable and they sometimes are in conflict. It is the basic element of tragedy and the energy behind history. It is the nature of what we are. We always hope to negotiate these differences but denying them is futile, blind and dangerous.

A culture cannot be universally accepting. Open mindedness is, by definition, not a principle; it is the absence of principle and dangerously close to indifference. Without unifying principles the culture shrinks into smaller units, then becomes tribal, then familial, then individual. Shards of a former whole, nihilistic and alone.