Separation

"The issue is not between pro-business controls and pro-labor controls, but between controls and freedom. . . . Government control of the economy, no matter in whose behalf, has been the source of all the evils in our industrial history--and the solution is laissez-faire capitalism, i.e., the abolition of any and all forms of government intervention in production and trade, the separation of State and Economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of Church and State."

Ayn Rand, Notes on the History of American Free Enterprise

Demonizing Capitalism

The Oklahoman carried a story today about a new exhibit at the Individual Artists of Oklahoma Gallery here in Oklahoma City.

The show is called "Corporatocracy" and is described as:

Satire and negative sentiments prevail in an exhibit exploring "the impact of large corporations"

Strawmen and stereotypes and bromides, oh my!

And that's all the coverage of this event that I have the stomach to give.

NATIONAL socialism

I was reading an article on the NY Times website about the Republicans' changing plans for their convention because of Hurricane Gustav when this line jumped out at me:

They . . . said they would mobilize corporations who have contributed millions of dollars to put on the convention . . . to raise money for relief efforts.

This, I submit, is a kind of power and influence over private industry that crosses the line from 'mere' corporate welfare. There is no way I can take claims of Republican support for free markets seriously any longer.

I suspect that Gustav has given the Republicans the perfect opportunity to pull out all the stops in an attempt to out-do the Democrats at putting on a three-ring circus of altruism over the next few days.

Thus demonstrating why it is crucial to recognize the moral foundation of Capitalism and to frame the debate about Capitalism in moral terms.

(By the way, the title of this post comes from a comment by Burgess Laughlin to Ed Cline's latest post at Rule of Reason:

I think of the difference between McCain and Obama as the difference between "NATIONAL socialism" and "national SOCIALISM.")

Prosperity and authority: a further note

In my post, "Prosperity and authority", I wrote:

Those who give in to unearned guilt by giving God the credit for the results of using their own judgement to achieve success in this life, thereby earn guilt by slandering themselves.

I would add that giving someone else the credit for the results of your effort is anti-justice.

Hmmm . . . justice and selfishness . . . I'll be thinking about this further . . . Could it be said that selfishness - rational selfisness, that is - is a form of justice?

Provenzo's LTE

http://newsok.com/letters-to-the-editor-saturday-august-30-2008/article/3290606

Faith itself is enemy of freedom

The Oklahoman published five letters in Your Views on Aug. 22 criticizing Diana Hsieh (Your Views, Aug. 14) of the Coalition for Secular Government, for arguing that a free society can't be founded upon religious dogma, Judeo-Christian or otherwise. None of these writers objecting to Hsieh's position were able to articulate how mysticism leads to individual freedom beyond their merely asserting it. After all, there were 1,776 years between Christ's birth and the establishment of America as the world's first individual rights republic.

If the Holy Bible is full of ideas that lead to individual freedom, why the long disconnect? Why did other religious thinkers give us the Dark Ages, the divine right of kings and the Inquisition, while the supposedly equally religious American founders gave us the First Amendment? The reality is that faith itself is the enemy of freedom. It takes reason to look at humankind and see beings who require liberty in order to prosper.

We owe the liberty we enjoy today to the champions of reason; we owe our freedom more to a man like Galileo turning his telescope toward the heavens and accurately reporting what he saw (in bold defiance of the faith-based tyrants of his day) than to any religious prophet or savior.

Nicholas Provenzo, Washington, D.C.

Provenzo is chairman of the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism.

One Governor

The current issue of Church and State, the magazine of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, has an in-depth report on Louisiana's so-called "Science Education Act".

http://www.au.org/site/News2?abbr=cs_&page=NewsArticle&id=9947

In my Aug. 14th post, "Two Governors", I wrote,

On June 25th, Governor Jindal signed Senate Bill 733 into law. He issued no public statement.

Apparently this is incorrect. According to the article, Jindal did issue a brief statement:

Despite all the controversy surrounding this issue, Jindal barely publicized his signing of the new law. The press was not invited to witness the signing, and Jindal issued only a brief statement, in which he promised to "consistently support the ability of school boards and BESE [the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education] to make the best decisions to ensure a quality education for our children."

Perhaps Jindal’s hush-hush behavior results from his indifference to the many educational, science and legal organizations that pleaded for a veto of the measure. Even Jindal’s former college professor released a statement through the Louisiana Coalition for Science.

“Gov. Jindal was a good student in my class when he was thinking about becoming a doctor,” said Prof. Arthur Landy of Brown University, “and I hope he doesn’t do anything that would hold back the next generation of Louisiana’s doctors.”

Nine of the nation’s most prestigious scientific societies sent letters to the governor asking him to veto the bill.

The inadequacies of libertarianism

Interesting post by Gus Van Horn on libertarianism.

http://gusvanhorn.blogspot.com/2008/08/whats-difference.html

Prosperity and authority

In contrast to the Michael Gershon op-ed of August 6th which extolled the virtue of suffering for others, The Oklahoman has been running several stories lately that lean more toward the so-called "prosperity gospel", which extolls the blessings and rewards that await those who turn off their brains and place themselves completely in God's hands. This whitewashing of Christian morality ultimately leads to the same goal: mindless authoritarianism.

Adherents to the "prosperity gospel" confuse the issue by claiming that their success on earth was achieved by God, not them, regardless of the actual circumstances and the amount of actual effort they made, themselves. They evade the guilt inculcated by altruism by claiming, in effect, "But it's God's will! My own judgement had nothing to do with it!"

The person who has abandoned his own independent judgement has abandoned rationality, which is the human means of survival. Such a person has defaulted on the basic responsibility of being human: the responsibility to think.

Those who give in to unearned guilt by giving God the credit for the results of using their own judgement to achieve success in this life, thereby earn guilt by slandering themselves.

My latest LTE

The Oklahoman has printed my latest letter:

http://newsok.com/letters-to-the-editor-wednesday-august-27-2008/article/3289117

Complete opposites

On Aug. 22, several contributors to Your Views responded to Diana Hsieh (Your Views, Aug. 14) of the Coalition for Secular Government. They disagreed with her assertion that the United States wasn't founded on Christian principles. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness aren't Christian principles and have nothing to do with Christian morality. To me, life, liberty and especially the pursuit of happiness are complete opposites of the worship of the suffering of another. How, then, could the U.S. be said to be founded on Christianity?

I see nothing in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution about worshipping the suffering of another.

Rob Abiera, Oklahoma City

And only 2 days after I sent it in!

Here's the letter as I originally emailed it on Monday:

In the August 22nd Your Views column, several letter-writers responded to the August 14th letter by Diana Hsieh, of the Coalition for Secular Government, to disagree with her assertion that the United States was not founded on Christian principles.

I am not surprised that so many Christians are unwilling to face the truth about their own morality, which makes this life on this earth impossible. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are not Christian principles and have nothing to do with Christian morality. To me, Life, Liberty and especially the Pursuit of Happiness are complete opposites of the worship of the suffering of others. How, then, could the United States of America be said to be founded on Christianity? I see nothing in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution about worshipping the suffering of others.

While I had thought my letter was short enough as it was, The Oklahoman trimmed it even further. Perhaps this was due to the length of the other letters they printed today. Interesting that they chose to excise the line, "I am not surprised that so many Christians are unwilling to face the truth about their own morality, which makes this life on this earth impossible."

Long ago and far away

Interesting comment about altruism and emergencies: Paula Hall posted this morning at NoodleFood about a scene in The Dark Knight. In her post, she mentions Ayn Rand's essay, "The Ethics of Emergencies". Her post also contains spoilers, by the way.

Ms. Hall wrote, in part (starting with an excerpt from "The Ethics of Emergencies"):

The psychological results of altruism may be observed in the fact that a great many people approach the subject of ethics by asking such questions as: "Should one risk one's life to help a man who is: a) drowning, b) trapped in a fire, c) stepping in front of a speeding truck, d) hanging by his fingernails over an abyss?"

Her point was that altruism doesn't tell you how to live, but only under what conditions you're supposed to sacrifice your life. Rand explained this approach to ethics as follows:

If a man accepts the ethics of altruism, he suffers the following consequences (in proportion to the degree of his acceptance): ...

[A] lethargic indifference to ethics, a hopelessly cynical amorality--since his questions involve situations which he is not likely ever to encounter, which bear no relation to the actual problems of his own life and thus leave him to live without any moral principles whatever.

Altruism is the dominant morality in our culture, meaning there are a lot of people for whom morality is irrelevant, most of the time. Yet no-one wants to think of himself as amoral. So when can an altruist take morality seriously? In a hypothetical life-or-death situation. The ferry dilemma in The Dark Knight provides a perfect outlet for seeming to take seriously the morality of altruism--in a fantasy world where it doesn't matter if you practice what you preach.

One of the commenters to this post, Grant Williams, wrote:

"This post clarified fully for me why so many Americans choose to fixate on every random, minor, more or less inconsequential injustice that occurs in the world."

This had the effect of concretizing for me how some people are able to accept altruism. Since they cannot consistently apply altruism to their own lives - due to the fact that it is impossible to practice in reality - they grasp at anything which alleviates the sense of guilt which results.

Moral fantasies about helpless people suffering in need somewhere, out there, far enough away that they do not have to see altruism's flaws - or as Ms. Hall put it, "where it doesn't matter if you practice what you preach" - give them a cover for their evasion.