In defense of reason

An excerpt from an email I received today:

Nothing has any connection to reality...or has as much as you want it to...truth is absolute...its interpretation, experience and application are subjective...so no argument really holds!

My response:

You realize that your statement “Nothing has any connection to reality” is self-contradictory. If nothing has connection to reality, then neither does your statement.

However, you have elegantly stated the dominant epistemological viewpoint in academia today: the claim that knowledge is impossible (another contradiction by the way).

That such a statement is ludicrous on its face goes some length in explaining why academics are reviled by the “ignorant masses”, who tend to have more common sense.

I revere the pursuit of knowledge, and find it particularly tragic (ominous actually) that our brightest minds have committed themselves to attacking reason, when they should be its staunchest defenders.

Contrary to the skeptic/subjectivist party line, humans are fully competent to know the facts of reality. The knowledge acquired from the senses is valid. Concepts are derived from and do refer to the facts of reality. 2+2=4 and no amount of denial or evasion will change that.

However, to understand why is not obvious. It’s the subject of the branch of philosophy known as epistemology – or the theory of knowledge.

Today most people dismiss philosophy as frivolous. They think it has no practical advice to offer them. And in regards to current academic philosophy, that assessment is perfectly understandable. Most of today’s philosophers see their field as an abstruse parlor game with no connection to reality. However, philosophy is an indispensable practical necessity. If you brush aside the subject of philosophy, you will subconsciously absorb the dominant philosophic ideas that are taught in our culture. And as we can see from its effects on art, music, literature, politics, law, history, and even physics, bad philosophy can be disastrous.

Napoleon Dynamite and the end of mankind

If you want a sense of how bad things have become in the culture, go rent Napoleon Dynamite. I was appalled. Napoleon Dynamite is not merely awful, its essential purpose is cultural destruction. By venerating a nihilistic anti-hero, this movie not only revels in its utter bankruptcy, but seeks to undo the enlightenment and return us to the rule of the primitive. It is the ultimate expression of postmodern sophistry.

However, I did like his dance.

Fight!

The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours. But to win it requires total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence, which is man, for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the morality of life and yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.

John Galt quote that ended Ayn Rand's last public speech (New Orleans Nov 1981)

My letter to Time Magazine

In his essay The Class system of Catastrophe, Jeffrey Sachs uses the occasion of the recent tsunami disaster in South East Asia to promote his pet agenda: increased American foreign aid to the third world. Mr. Sachs correctly notes that the scourge of natural disaster is wrought more devastatingly in poor than rich nations. However, his proposal, increased development aid to impoverished countries, is merely a band aid solution that will do nothing to rectify the underlying problem. What is desperately needed in the third world is an ethos of personal responsibility, and government that recognizes individual rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In short, what the third world desperately needs is not more aid, but more capitalism.

Rational Selfishness

A key point of Objectivist Ethics became clear to me today. There is a crucial difference between acting selfishly and doing what you feel like. Acting selfishly, in its true and proper sense, means acting in your rational self interest according to your objective nature as man - a rational being. As man you have certain objective requirements: physical requirements like food, water and shelter; but also spiritual requirements like self esteem. Doing what you feel like may or may not promote your rational self interest. For example, you might feel like sleeping in, but if by doing so you arrive late to work and lose your job, you are not acting selfishly. This is an important distinction: the fact that you choose a particular action does not make it selfish; an action is only selfish if it is in your rational self interest.

According to Objectivist Ethics, to be moral is to be selfish. I know this is a difficult idea to swallow, so let's consider a case study. Is a bank robber selfish? A bank robber acts to satisfy his physical requirements for food, water, shelter and higher level amenities, but in the process he betrays his spiritual requirement for self esteem. He must live with the knowledge that he did not earn his posessions and can take no selfish pride in these things. Further, he is under the constant fear of being caught; every other person on the planet is now a potential threat who may turn him in. This is no way for a human being to live. It is clear that the bank robber did not act in his rational self interest. He did not act selfishly.

In contrast, consider the businessman who by his own effort and determination is able to bring a product to market and earn a profit for himself. He can take pride in his achievement and enjoy the fruit of his labors. He has promoted both his physical and spiritual needs. He has acted selfishly and morally.

The dominant morality of our day is altruism. According to altruism, an action is moral if it serves others. The bankruptcy of altruism is exposed by its inability to draw a moral distinction between the businessman and the bank robber. The same word, "selfish", is commonly applied to describe the actions of both. It is a sad commentary that our language does not draw a clear distinction between rational egoism and exploitation.

Democracy: The Sacred Cow

Carter Laren de-mystifies democracy and reminds us that the American political system is not a democracy, but a constitutional republic. Further, he argues that the system we should be promoting in Afghanistan and Iraq is capitalism.

Am I a conservative?

My politics are frequently branded as 'conservative'. It is not a label I abhor; nor is it one I am completely comfortable with. I must admit, I was a liberal for most of my life, and I have not completely recovered. One of the lingering effects of that malaise is a certain antipathy for the conservative label. Unfairly or not, I associate the term with traditionalism, authoritarianism, anti-intellectualism, religiosity, and a certain curmudgeonly resistance to change.

At the same time, I share much in common with conservatives. I believe in limited government. I am a capitalist. I am more hawkish than George Bush.

My problem with the term is that I find it too general. 'Conservative' is used equally well to describe the Heritage Foundation, the Christian Coalition, and mullahs in the Iranian regime. The essential question, I think, is not whether you are conservative, but what is it that you are trying to conserve? The welfare state? United Airlines? Traditional marriage? The only answer that impresses me is the one Thomas Jefferson gave: the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Which is why, in a way, I still consider myself a liberal. 'Liberal' once had nearly the opposite of its current meaning: classically, it was used to describe an advocate for freedom and limited government; now it is used to describe a proponent for every kind of state control. I think the right made a strategic error by yielding such a valuable term to the left. The right's denigration of the term 'liberal' makes counterintuitive the truth that ours is the side of political freedom. We are the true defenders of individual rights and freedom from excessive and arbitrary government. The left, in contrast, seeks freedom from reality, at the expense of the individual.

America, the stingy?

Some observers have taken the recent disaster in South East Asia as an opportunity to engage in their favorite sport: America bashing. A Norwegian UN official suggested that the world's richest nations were "stingy" with humanitarian aid contributions, clearly pointing a finger at the richest of those rich nations: America. He has some gall. In 2004, America contributed $2.4 billion in disaster aid, a full 40% of the worldwide total. Americans have always been the most generous people on earth. Gordon Sinclair summed it up best way back in 1973:

This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth.

Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.

When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it. When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped.

The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans.

I can name you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble?

Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those.

The Virtue of Selfish Love

Gary Hull debunks the conventional view that love should be selfless.

Some highlights:

Every Valentine's Day a certain philosophic crime is perpetrated. Actually, it is committed year-round, but its destructiveness is magnified on this holiday. The crime is the propagation of a widely accepted falsehood: the idea that love is selfless.

Love, we are repeatedly taught, consists of self-sacrifice.

Love based on self-interest, we are admonished, is cheap and sordid.

True love, we are told, is altruistic. But is it?

Imagine a Valentine's Day card which takes this premise seriously. Imagine receiving a card with the following message:

I get no pleasure from your existence.

I obtain no personal enjoyment from the way you look, dress, move, act or think.

Our relationship profits me not. You satisfy no sexual, emotional or intellectual needs of mine.

You're a charity case, and I'm with you only out of pity.

Love,
XXX.

Needless to say, you would be indignant to learn that you are being "loved," not for anything positive you offer your lover, but--like any recipient of alms--for what you lack. Yet that is the perverse view of love entailed in the belief that it is self-sacrificial.

Genuine love is the exact opposite. It is the most selfish experience possible, in the true sense of the term: it benefits your life in a way that involves no sacrifice of others to yourself or of yourself to others.

Loving Life

For all you procrastinators out there still trying to figure out what to get that special someone for christmas, allow me to make a suggestion: Craig Biddle's introduction to Objectivist ethics, Loving Life.

This book is the definitive answer to Dostoyevsky's claim: "Without God, everything is permissible".

From the inside flap:

If you want to live your life to the fullest, if you want to achieve the greatest happiness possible, this book is for you. It is about the essential means to that end: a proper code of values - a proper morality.

Contrary to popular myth, morality does not come from God; it is not a matter of divine revelation. Nor is it a matter of social convention or personal opinion. Being moral does not consist in obeying commandments, or in doing whatever is culturally accepted, or in doing whatever one wants to do. The rabbis, the priests, the relativists, and the subjectivists are wrong. Morality is not a matter of faith or conformity or feelings.

True morality is a matter of the factual requirements of human life and happiness. It is a matter of reason, logic, and the law of cause and effect. As such, it is an indispensable guide to living well and loving life. This is demonstrated in the pages ahead.

By the way, I won't mind if that special someone is me.

Inside an urban war

Want to know what a war is like? Great article in the NYT.

Democracy vs Individual Rights (cont'd)

A response to my previous post:

My initial reaction is that i don't necessarily disagree with what you are saying, but i think it's dangerous to go to first principles (which deserved headline billing in 1776) and ignore the fact that the US is a 10 trillion dollar economy encompassing 300 million people. Another way to look at it is to consider China, which has 1.3 billion people - one view for the difference in governance between China and western democracies is that the expediencies of different governance models changes at certain inflection points. So what you are saying may be fine for a small republic but is not sufficiently nuanced to be able to respond to the demands of governing the USA. One other thing I would add - while I don't disagree with your individual rights vs. religionist argument, I think we have to agree that there are other principles that our society puts a premium on which, while not religion, do give prefer to some over others. These are also societal judgments of the majority imposed on the minority.

My response:

I would agree the American model of governance is not the most efficient. With all its intricate checks and balances, it was deliberately designed to be inefficient; so that no one man, group, or party could wield unchecked power on the populace. Surely a different government model with more central control and less protection to individuals would be more expedient; the worry of course is what is it that the government is trying to expedite? And is it right? To lapse into extreme examples, a democratic Greece voted to put Socrates to death for his heretical views, and a democratic Germany elected Hitler. The principle of individual rights is not an arbitrary antiquated obstacle to effective governance; it is our guarantee that government will be subordinate to moral law.

Our society certainly places limitations on individuals, for example, we may be imprisoned for violating the rights of others. These limitations are consistent with the principle of individual rights - to violate another individual's rights is to deny the base of rights, and thus your own - and recognize the government's proper role to defend individuals from force initiated by others.

Despite their good intentions, I do have issue with other societal judgments of the majority imposed on the minority (affirmative action, seatbelt laws, laws against euthanasia). I don't believe it's the government's proper role to force the citizenry to be moral. In our own personal spheres, we should have the right to make choices. And we should have the right to be wrong.

Democracy vs Individual Rights

In the wake of Bush's election, many liberals are worried about the threat to the separation of church and state. As they should be. However, as this author notes, without fundamental grounding in the principle of individual rights, ideas such as the separation of church and state become empty slogans. Effectively, we have the tyranny of a majority who feels that democracy justifies imposing their beliefs on the entire population. What they, and we, often forget is that America is not a democracy; it’s a constitutional republic, where the power of government is subordinate to individual rights. At least that’s what it was designed to be. The 20th century saw the erosion of individual rights, as the government became more and more entangled in private economic affairs. The corollary to that erosion is that we have lost our principle argument for protecting freedom from the religionists.

Camille Paglia

While browsing Andrew Sullivan's blog, I happened upon an interview with Camille Paglia. She's a feminist intellectual who broke from the doctrinaire feminism that arose in the 70's. Some money quotes:

Capitalism is an art form, an Apollonian fabrication to rival nature. It is hypocritical for feminists and intellectuals to enjoy the pleasures and conveniences of capitalism while sneering at it. Everyone born into capitalism has incurred a debt to it. Give Caesar his due.

A woman simply is, but a man must become. Masculinity is risky and elusive. It is achieved by a revolt from woman, and it is confirmed only by other men. Manhood coerced into sensitivity is no manhood at all.

If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.

It is capitalist America that produced the modern independent woman. Never in history have women had more freedom of choice in regard to dress, behavior, career, and sexual orientation.

Woman is the dominant sex. Men have to do all sorts of stuff to prove that they are worthy of woman's attention.

Extreme Games

I've found a new favourite voice on the Boston airwaves: Jay Severin. His pull no punches, take no prisoners approach to political punditry is the most entertaining thing on radio. Some Severin gems:

• On Bill Clinton: “the Adolf Hitler of American politics ... a domestic enemy of the Constitution of the United States; a traitor.”
  
  
• On Hillary Clinton: “that cynical, criminal, sociopathic bitch ... one of the worst people on the planet.”
  
  
• On taxpayer-funded services he doesn’t want to see: “free turkey basters for reproducing lesbians.”
  

In a world where the dominant position is to stand with both feet firmly planted on either side of the fence, Jay Severin's unabashed opinion radio is so refreshing.

A malu supermodel?

Nirali Magazine has a feature on Julie Titus, a malayalee American recently featured on America's Next Top Model.

The political divide: The good news

As Michael Hurd argues, we still have time to make the case for individual rights, limited government and freedom.

Why philosophy matters

Ayn Rand's speech to the graduating class at West Point, 1974

Some highlights:

You might say, as many people do: "Aw, I never think in such abstract terms--I want to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems--what do I need philosophy for?" My answer is: In order to be able to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems--i.e., in order to be able to live on earth.

You might claim-as most people do--that you have never been influenced by philosophy. I will ask you to check that claim. Have you ever thought or said the following? "Don't be so sure--nobody can be certain of anything." You got that notion from David Hume (and many, many others), even though you might never have heard of him. Or: "This may be good in theory, but it doesn't work in practice. You got that from Plato. Or: "That was a rotten thing to do, but it's only human, nobody is perfect in this world." You got that from Augustine. Or: "It may be true for you, but it's not true for me." You got it from William James. Or: "I couldn't help it! Nobody can help anything he does." You got it from Hegel. Or: "I can't prove it, but I feel that it's true." You got it from Kant. Or: "It's logical, but logic has nothing to do with reality." You got it from Kant. Or: "It's evil, because it's selfish." You got it from Kant. Have you heard the modern activists say: "Act first, think afterward"? They got it from John Dewey.

Some people might answer: "Sure, I've said those things at different times, but I don't have to believe that stuff all of the time. It may have been true yesterday, but it's not true today." They got it from Hegel. They might say: "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." They got it from a very little mind, Emerson. They might say: "But can't one compromise and borrow different ideas from different philosophies according to the expediency of the moment?" They got it from Richard Nixon--who got it from William James.

Now ask yourself: if you are not interested in abstract ideas, why do you (and all men) feel compelled to use them? The fact is that abstract ideas are conceptual integrations which subsume an incalculable number of concretes--and that without abstract ideas you would not be able to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems. You would be in the position of a newborn infant, to whom every object is a unique, unprecedented phenomenon. The difference between his mental state and yours lies in the number of conceptual integrations your mind has performed.

You have no choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your experiences, your knowledge into abstract ideas, i.e., into principles. Your only choice is whether these principles are true or false, whether they represent your conscious, rational conviction--or a grab-bag of notions snatched at random, whose sources, validity, context and consequences you do not know, notions which, more often than not, you would drop like a hot potato if you knew.

But the principles you accept (consciously or subconsciously) may clash with or contradict one another; they, too, have to be integrated. What integrates them? Philosophy. A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define you philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation--or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown.

Moral values

The exit polls indicated that the leading issue on the minds of American voters last Tuesday was morality. Nicholas Provenzo offers astute commentary on the state of morality in America today. In brief, neither the left nor the right offers a rational code of morality.

Susan Sarandon in la la land

So Susan Sarandon was on Real-Time with Bill Maher on Friday. Apparently she thinks we're still in 2000. Ms. Sarandon hysterically claimed all kinds of voter fraud and irregularity. She seems to believe 4 million hanging chads got past an army of Democrat lawyers.

Also on the program were Noam Chomsky and Andrew Sullivan. Maher shamelessly treated Chomsky like a folk hero. To his credit, Sullivan set the record straight on the America-hating, holocaust denying, terrorist apologist.