Mendacious Mouse

The Amorphous Tea Partier

2010-02-06T05:58:00.000-08:00

The original Bostonian protesters against a tea tax were focused in what they were against. It wasn't the tax per se. It was that they didn't like it that the tax had been levied by the British Parliament instead of their local legislature.

The modern brand of protester is somewhat less precise in his complaint. Taken at face value the Tea Partirs seem to be protesting taxes in general. That would mean they are against paying for the Defense Department, debt service, Medicare, and Social Security. Remove these four from the tax burden and you're left with a piddling amount.

I may be wrong, but I doubt that the average Tea Partier is against any of those. He may not like paying for them, but he doesn't want to do away with them either.

There is, however, a segment of the population which would like to see two of these (excluding debt service and the Defense Department) go away. I refer to that 1% of the population that controls 80% of the nation's wealth. They have no need, and thus no use for Medicare and Social Security. It's paradoxical that this minuscule minority has somehow coaxed a sizeable segment of the population into a protest against its own best interest. Strange.

Needs Saying (Again)

2010-01-31T07:32:00.000-08:00

Perhaps we ask the impossible if we demand that all the people should be informed of all the facts before deciding significant issues. We are after all a republic in which elected representatives make decisions of the war-or-peace sort for us. Most of us have neither the time nor the intellect to devote to an assessment of the relevant issues. But even if time were afforded us, and even if all of us were reasonably educated concerning foreign affairs, our ability to determine the truth of the matter would still be impaired by the fact that we are often compelled by unconscious forces to believe the lie and doubt the truth. Difficulties far greater than those facing Pavlov’s dog face those whose “bells” are not mere bells but are plausible theories indelibly imprinted upon their minds. We love our freedom, and would be willing to die for it, but attach the word “freedom” to broad expanses of our neuronal territory, let it be emotionally interleaved with all our conceptions of thought – not merely the most fundamental – and we will find ourselves dying for causes that have little or nothing to do with actual freedom, ours or anyone else’s.

When, for example, the word “freedom” is repeated to us like a meditator’s mantra to justify the ambitions of a deluded politician, it is only by an almost superhuman effort that we ask whether an Iraqi would, to obtain his freedom, be willing to be killed by a foreigner who may be driven as much by a need for the approbation of his constituents (or contributors) as by a genuine care for the Iraqi, his wife, their sisters, brothers, and children – those the foreigner must slaughter in order to obtain the Iraqi’s freedom for him. And even if we were to ask ourselves that question, perhaps the word “freedom” will have been so positively charged by our own history, that we would answer for the Iraqi – who had no say in the matter – that he would surely welcome death if only his heirs could be assured a portion of that blessed freedom. It would perhaps never occur to us to wonder if the word “freedom” means to the Iraqi what it means to us.

To people unfamiliar with the Arab culture, that last sentence may seem only a rhetorical conjecture. It may seem that even if the Iraqi has a notion of freedom different from ours, his must certainly be false. Those so deluded will perhaps never have understood that all words – all but a logical few – have gotten their meanings out of human experience. T. E. Lawrence’s words provide a taste of the meaning of “freedom” as it might feel in the Arab mind, a feeling I can understand but do not share.

We had ridden far out over the rolling plains of North Syria to a ruin of the Roman period which the Arabs believed was made by a prince of the border as a desert-palace for his queen. The clay of its building was said to have been kneaded for greater richness, not with water, but with the precious essential oils of flowers. My guides, sniffing the air like dogs, led me from crumbling room to room saying ‘This is jessamine, this violet, this rose.’

But at last Dahoun drew me: ’Come and smell the very sweetest scent of all’ – and we went into the main lodging, to the gaping window sockets of its eastern face, and there drank with open mouths of the effortless, empty, eddyless wind of the desert….

‘This,’ they told me, ‘is the best….’

[Fron “Seven Pillars of Wisdom.”]

I have seen a lot of desert country, mostly in Arizona, but have experienced nothing like the exhilaration Lawrence was describing. To me the desert is a hot place. In no way does it figure into my idea of freedom. But just as I might include aspects of “cowboy life” in the feeling that goes along with my conception of freedom, so must the desert involve itself in the experiential life of the Arab. The author from whose book I grabbed the Lawrence quote spoke with great understanding of the Bedouin’s nomadic life, particularly of the ghazzu, which he briefly defined as “the raid,” but which another Englishman defined as “a cross between Arthurian chivalry and County Cricket.” [Page 27, "The Kingdom, by Robert Lacey.]

The idea was to steal another tribe’s camels, but in doing so, one had to obey the rules of the game: no molesting women and no raids between certain hours of the night. If your ghazzu failed and you were captured, the rules also required that you be fed well, and then turned loose, but your “team’s” camels and all but one firearm were confiscated. The “trudging back to camp after an unsuccessful raid was, apparently, a part of the game.” Perhaps in the Bedouin mind freedom feels something like being out on a raid, knowing that even if you fail, the rules of the game will be followed, something like the feeling I get when I think of home.

[Excerpt from a future book]

A Sunday Sermon

2010-01-29T06:34:00.000-08:00

[Following the publication of my book, "Spinoza's God," my church, The Unitarian Universalists of the Blue Ridge, asked me to deliver a talk focused on the book. The following "sermon" is what came of their request, last Sunday. It seems to have worked.]

Once upon a time, in seventeenth century Amsterdam, there lived a young Jewish man named Baruch Spinoza. Like most young Jewish fellows he had been brought up to revere the God of Moses, and for the better part of the first two decades of his life, that’s apparently what he did. We know he received a thorough education in the Hebrew language and in the laws and traditions of the Jewish faith. I can imagine him as a dedicated attendee in what we might call Religious Education class, like most bright young people, peppering his teachers with questions, in his case, many questions. The word “Spinoza” means, in Portuguese, “thorn” as in the spiny stickers on the stems of roses. And that’s what Spinoza became, a thorn in the side of the Jewish community of seventeenth century Amsterdam.

Somewhere along the way Baruch had run across the works of Rene Descartes, the most famous free thinker of that time. In intellectual circles, Descartes was the rogue in vogue. He was the philosopher you had to deal with if you wished to be recognized as a “learned person.” We know that a bit later, Spinoza’s ideas diverged from Descartes’, but we can easily imagine this bright young man as a teenager, challenging his teachers with Descartes’ new fangled ideas.

But Spinoza wasn’t just playing games. He had not simply read Descartes. He caught on to what that wily Frenchman was talking about. Descartes challenged people like the young Spinoza to question their ideas and to keep on questioning until they knew they had reached the base of their beliefs. It was not good enough to simply know things; it was infinitely more important to understand why you trusted your knowledge as the truth.

Eventually, Spinoza would fine tune that particular thought of Descartes’, but that’s skipping over the juicy part. In the meanwhile our young man of Amsterdam got himself in deep trouble with the Rabbis. His ideas, you see, were not simply challenging the Hebrew faith – they were apparently threatening the safety of the entire Jewish community. We know from our own history that the Pilgrims who eventually settled in America had first migrated to the Netherlands in search of a place where they could worship as they pleased. The Jews were also welcome in Amsterdam. But in the minds of the Rabbis, Spinoza’s ideas were raising dangerous questions about the fundamentals of Christianity. The Rabbis sought to protect their community from the same sort of treatment being dealt out to Jews in Spain and Portugal, so they took action against our young hero.

First they offered him a sizeable pension if he would publicly deny his heretical ideas. When Spinoza refused, they excommunicated him. He did not bother to attend the formal ceremony, but he was no doubt made aware of the harsh words with which he was drummed out of the faith.

Let him be accursed by day, and accursed by night; let him be accursed in his lying down. and accursed in his rising up. May the Lord never more pardon or acknowledge him; may the wrath and displeasure of the Lord burn henceforth against this man.

And in what could have been the unkindest cut of all ...

Hereby then are all admonished that none hold converse with him by word of mouth, none hold communication with him by writing; that no one do him any service, no one abide under the same roof with him, no one approach within four cubits length of him, and no one read any document dictated by him or written by his hand.

Spinoza was not yet twenty-four years old.

A scant twenty-one years later, he died, leaving us two books dealing with his philosophy, another on Descartes, and two unfinished books. One of those unfinished books was actually the first he sat down to write. It’s called “A Treatise on the Improvement of the Intellect.” It begins with these romantic words.

I resolved at length to enquire whether there existed a true good, one which was capable of communicating itself and could alone affect the mind to the exclusion of all else, whether, in fact, there was something whose discovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity.

A page or so later in that book we see Spinoza paraphrasing the thoughts Solomon had written in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Young Spinoza saw that fame, fortune, and the other achievements of what we normally call success, could not fill the bill of affording a joy to all eternity. It was from that awakening that he turned to philosophy.

His first published book was the commentary on Descartes, but in the preface to that book, he says straight out that his intention there was merely to explain Descartes and that he did not in all cases endorse those ideas. As it turned out, though, that was the only book Spinoza published in his lifetime that bore his name on the cover.

His second major work, “A Treatise on Theology and Politics,” not only does not bear his name but, for very prudent reasons, even the name of the publisher was fictitious. Today the TTP, as that book is called, is generally acknowledged as having fired the starting gun for the higher criticism of the Bible. It was the first book ever published that clearly asked and answered the question, “who wrote the Pentateuch,” the first five books of the Bible. Spinoza claimed the author wasn’t Moses, but rather an assemblage of writers and editors who lived as much as 500 years after the death of Moses. The knowledge contained in Spinoza’s TTP has been so thoroughly verified by modern research, that the book is now seldom studied in the higher ranks of academia. It remains, however, Spinoza’s most readable book, one that any group of liberal religionist lay persons would find great pleasure in studying. It’s still in print, and the author’s name is now on the cover. I’ll quote the book’s opening sentence: “If men were able to exercise complete control over all their circumstances, or if continuous good fortune were always their lot, they would never be prey to superstition.” As a Unitarian Universalist, I just love those words.

Spinoza’s final completed work, his masterpiece, is called, “Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated.” This book is not called a masterpiece because of its clarity. The last words of the book read like this, “. . . for all great things are as difficult as they are noble.” I remember thinking, after I had ploughed through the Ethics for the first time, that I wish Spinoza had not made his “great things” so hellishly difficult to understand. But I guess, if the Ethics were an easy read there would be no need for books like the one I just wrote, or the many others that have been written to “explain” what Spinoza was talking about.

What makes the Ethics so difficult, apart from the style in which it is presented, is that its ideas fly harshly right into the face of our superstitions. All Christians, Jews, and Muslims had been taught that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” That verse creates God as a being separate from the universe. God is one thing, the universe is another. But Spinoza spends the first few pages of the Ethics telling us, and trying logically to convince us, that God and the universe are one and the same thing. This idea is so blatantly different from what we’ve been taught that we don’t realize until much later that what Spinoza is actually telling us is this: if God were something apart from the universe, then we humans would have no means to learn of God and no reason to trust anything we’ve been taught about the nature of God. If we cannot deduce our knowledge of God from our experience of the world, then all bets are off as to what God actually is. If God is wholly other, then any and all theological statements about him are equally valid . . . and equally invalid. That is, all faiths based on so-called revelation, however foolish or wise they may seem, have an equal claim to the truth about God – none at all.

I now know that one of the things that made Spinoza’s Ethics so hard to understand for me was the fact that when I first read it I did not want to understand it. It wasn’t that I as an inquisitive young man did not consciously seek understanding. It was that I could not break the unconscious bonds that tied me so comfortably to my inherited beliefs. It’s one thing to be a brash kid challenging his elders, but another thing entirely to truly understand why you’re doing it.

You see, Spinoza was not, with his masterpiece, merely challenging this or that spurious belief. He was setting up an entire new system, one that took in, not only the relationship of Man to God, but of all of us to each other. It was not by accident that the word “ethics” appears in the title of his book. Every word in it is about ethics.

According to the dictionary, ethics is “the branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of actions and the goodness and badness of motives and ends.” Briefly, and philosophically, ethics is the search for the good. Practically every word written by Plato can be understood in terms of that search. Until the late 18th century philosophers were doing nothing other than trying to find a coherent answer to the question: what is the good?

I don’t want to diverge too far here, but it was shortly after Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” appeared in 1784 that philosophers began to take seriously the questions Descartes had asked. The answer modern philosophers finally came up with runs along these lines: everything we believe is a product of the human mind, and the human mind is enslaved by language. All our words were made up by the human mind, so in effect, what we have here Luke is not so much a failure to communicate, but rather a vicious circle in which we make up arrangements of words to justify, prove, or explain other arrangements of words.

You don’t have to think too hard to see that in order to question that idea you will be compelled to use words. And there you will find yourself . . . right in the traps laid by post-modern philosophy.

But five years after the first great world war, there came Bertrand Russell and his protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell saw it first, Wittgenstein later, that 250 years before that great war, Spinoza had seen that post-modernism was where philosophy was headed. Baruch did not say in the Ethics that his philosophy was “true for all possible worlds.” He said it is true for this world. Spinozism is true for beings like human beings whose knowledge of reality is limited by their ability to experience only body-like things and idea-like things. Spinoza saw that we are absolutely free to have ideas – good ideas, bad ideas, true ideas, false ideas – but that we are also, as bodies, just as absolutely bound by the laws of the physical universe. But for each and all of our ideas, good bad, or what-have-you, there exists a physical counterpart in the brain, and that physical counterpart, because it is physical, is absolutely obedient to the laws of Nature.

We may imagine we can fly like birds, we may even believe we can. We are absolutely free to have such thoughts. But the unchangeable laws of God make sure that we cannot actually do it.

It’s not the words of those last few sentences that make them true. Those statements are true because we find it impossible to deny them. We do not need proof that we can imagine ourselves flying like birds; all we have to do is to think that thought, and our freedom to think such a thought is proven. Nor do we need proof that we cannot actually fly like birds. We do not need to flap our arms trying to fly. We know without trying that the unaided human body cannot fly. No philosopher has convinced us of those facts. Out of what we are, we simply know those statements are true.

Plato had his hero Socrates constantly asking: what is justice? He never gave us a clear answer. Here’s what Spinoza might have had Socrates say: Justice is a possibility made possible because God, as Nature, is deaf, dumb, and blind to this or that creature’s needs. Nature treats us all the same. We are in fact all equal in the sight of God. To quote a famous Rabbi, “The rest is detail.”

Some 20th century philosophers, particularly the existentialist Jean Paul Sartre, perhaps echoing Nietzsche’s infamous declaration that God is dead, expressed a deeply felt anxiety over the fact that we appear to be alone in the universe. Apart from ourselves, there’s nothing in the universe that intends to help us out. That’s a logical conclusion we can draw from the fact that God plays no favorites. We can also conclude from this fact that we human beings are entirely and completely responsible for our thoughts, our feelings, and finally for our behavior.

But still, we’re not alone. If we were actually alone in the universe, we would be like an imaginary thing that obeys no law, but moves in and out of existence, in this or that direction, up, down, sideways, or no way at all, for no intelligible reason. If that were the case we would in fact be absolutely alone, without any sense of what’s possible and what’s impossible. Today, we might actually be able to fly like birds, and tomorrow, be able only to fly like rocks. There would be no order in the universe.

But that does not happen to be the case. We are not alone. We abide with Nature and her unbendable laws. We exist in and as integral parts of the logos, the intelligible whole that Spinoza decided to refer to as God. If we see ourselves committing atrocities, we know it’s possible for humans to do that. If we see ourselves creating great works of art, composing unbelievably beautiful pieces of music, we know it’s possible for us to do that, too. Operating within the logos that is God, we are responsible for all the ugliness and all the beauty we have created. Perhaps it helps us to know that there is no evil in God, nor any beauty, that all the goodness and all the horror are of our making. That leaves us more or less in charge of our destiny.

And perhaps, as Unitarian Universalists, we can begin to appreciate why it is that we do not entrust our souls to dogmatic creeds, but rather place our faith in the final and most convincing lesson Spinoza has taught us: we are the makers of meaning. When we occasionally in our mind’s eye catch a fleeting glimpse of a more meaningful, a more beautiful way the world might be, and then see in the next instant the meaning we have actually created in the world, we see that we have somehow failed as makers of meaning. We see the difference between what we actually have created and what we might have created out of a more perfect understanding of what we are, what God is, and how the world works.

We are the makers of meaning, and until the world is actually working in ways that everyone in his or her right mind would say is good, the meaning we have created will remain, fragmented, confused, incomplete.

Whether we know it or not – and I suspect most UUs do know it – humanity dwells in the shadow of a fact we cannot deny: ultimate beauty consists in seeking the beautiful, ever seeking to create beauty, in ourselves, in each other, in the world. That’s an idea, an idea we are absolutely free to hold dearest and highest in our hearts. Ultimate beauty, ultimate love, is the ultimate task and service of true religion.

[Spinoza's God, 265 pages, $18.95, postpaid, is available at www.alondrapress.com.]

Afghanistan: the real war

2009-11-17T05:02:00.000-08:00

This time the liberal community and the left-of-center press have it wrong. President Obama must not only fight the war in Afghanistan, he must win it.

Given the facts on the ground the choice is not even a hard one to make. If we do not destroy the efforts of the Taliban to resume control of that unfortunate country, not only will the al Queda regain a safe haven in which to plot outrage against the west, it and the Taliban itself will be in position to conduct guerrilla warfare against the nation of Pakistan. If that insurrection were successful, as it well might be, the radical, the insane wing of the Muslim religion would be in a position to make the "mushroom cloud" a reality.

Recall that our previous president was led into war against the nation of Iraq by two vital pieces of false information. One, that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and, two, that he was in cahoots with al Queda. On the basis of that false information, the U.S. Congress and the American people supported the president's invasion. That the real motive behind the action may have been economic (read, "oil") is irrelevant. We went to war in Iraq because we had been misled, either intentionally or by mistake, to believe that Hussein presented a genuine threat to the world.

In Afghanistan, the same threats are real. There's nothing false about the Taliban's alliance with al Queda and nothing false about Pakistan's possession of nuclear weapons. In my opinion, there's also nothing false about the outcome of the struggle that will ensue if we make a foolish decision and abandon Afghanistan. The Taliban, much better financed than even the legitimate government, will again come to power. Unlike the so-called moralistic regime currently in power, the Taliban has no qualms about conducting business in opium derivatives. And al Queda certainly will not be shy about using the funds thus generated to finance major operations against us and Pakistan. The Taliban is already waging indecisive battle against the Pakistani government. With better financing and a safe haven in Afghanistan from which to operate, the outcome of that struggle is, from a western standpoint, predictably bleak. Remember, Pakistan was a loyal supporter of the previous Taliban government of Afghanistan. The Pakistani sympathies that were beind that alliance have not gone away.

Outright pacifism is the only argument against increased levels of commitment in Afghanistan. But if there ever has existed a just reason for war, this one is it. Our involvement in Afghanistan resembles nothing more than a police action aimed at destroying a Mafia-like organization that threatens to take over a legitimate country. As I said, the choice is not difficult. We must win or sentence the future of the west to perpetual warfare against an opponent that welcomes death. That will be a harder war to win if we permit the Taliban to once more roll into power.

True, the decision has been made more difficult than it should be by the president's liberal base. But who's to blame them? The thinking wing of the American public has been led into a mild case of paranoia by the quackery of the previous administration. The fact that the right-wing of the Congress seems to be supporting the position I'm taking leads thinking people to wonder if we're not being led down another primrose path. We were fed so many lies and subjected to such a high level of clever propaganda, one can hardly blame us for being wary.

But this time the fears generated by the war mongers of 2002-3 have a genuine basis in truth. We cannot permit the illusions of the past to overshadow the realities of the present. We must do whatever it takes to destroy the Taliban as a political force, and with them, al Queda as a focal point for terrorism.

Belling the Cat

2009-06-13T04:40:00.000-07:00

Archibald MacLeish observes in his play J.B. that “If God is God, he is not good. If God is good, he is not God.” MacLeish intended by this challenge to conventional theology to lay the question of evil at the feet of a supposedly omnipotent and benevolent God. These discombobulating words from the play lose some of their mystery when MacLeish’s different uses of the word “God” unfold. He made “God” refer at one time to that without which nothing can be or be conceived, and at another to a name God goes by (in some people’s minds). Substitute a popular name of God into MacLeish’s sentences and you’ll see his meaning more clearly. “If God is Jehovah, he is not good. If God is good, he is not Jehovah.” No reading of the Old Testament can make Jehovah out to be good. Just ask any Canaanite or Philistine. The God MacLeish had in mind was the literarily appealing God who, to settle a bet, permitted Satan to inflict all manner of harm on the good man Job. But Job was only a character in an old folk tale, so as interesting as he is, we should not take literally the story told about him (although there’s much to be learned from the huge body of work analyzing the tale).

Theologians have cleverly adapted to the reality of evil by inventing and invoking free-will as a way to absolve God of the sins committed by human beings. The story goes that God, who gave us the power freely to choose goodness, cannot be guilty of our transgressions. That sleight of mind will not, however, free God (if he is Jehovah) of the evil nature he displayed toward the Canaanites and the other tribes who, in different Old Testament stories, he murdered as a favor to the Hebrews. That God, if he is in fact God, is by no stretch of the imagination good (not even if you happen to be a Hebrew).

Lost Bees

2009-05-23T06:29:00.000-07:00

Warm weather brings the bees. I mean, into my house. They come through or down one of the chimneys, and wind up dead on the floor in the room where I watch the TV. I usually just sweep their bodies out, not thinking too much about it, but the happenings of yesterday changed that. I now think about the bees . . . and other misplaced persons.

Yes, the bees have become persons to me. The transformation from insect to human happened to the bees when one of the wanderers happened to light on my pants leg. The bee was so tired (I thought) of banging its head against the window trying to get out it could hardly crawl. That was my standard explanation for why the bees died. The theory worked for me, but there had always been a flaw in it. I almost never saw a bee flying in the TV room. I only saw them on the floor, either dead or nearly so. I had no good explanation for that anomaly. Maybe once or twice over the years the thought crossed my mind that the bees had flown around in the chimney, and had worn themselves out in that prison before falling.

But then came the bee on my pants leg.

I walked out onto the porch, and using a small slip of paper, brushed the bee off. Lethargic as ever it landed on the porch floor, hardly able even to crawl. But it did crawl a little. What got my attention at first was the direction the bee took in its struggle. It headed straight for the outdoors, in this case, a small plot of garden where a few nondescript flowers grew. Being a romantic of sorts, I imagined that the bee was somehow magically drawn toward its natural home, choosing to die there rather than on the boards of an unnatural building.

But then came a miracle. The bee had limply crawled no more than a foot when suddenly it took off, flying as hard and as fast as ever, out into the open air. This was the same bee that a minute before had found itself unable to fly, letting itself be "walked" out of the house while clinging to my pants leg . . . the same bee, near to death in one moment, flying in the next as if nothing had happened to it.

I went back into the house and gathered three more bees onto the slip of paper, corralling them with my fingers. They offered little resistance, behavior you might expect from an organism teetering on the edge of death. I carried them onto the porch. They made no effort to escape. They were too near death.

I watched these three more carefully than I had the first. They too crawled toward the free air, and the flowers . . . and they too, took off like rockets, resurrected, I mused, by the clean air of their natural home.

I went back in and searched around under the furniture for more bees. I found four, but these seemed irretrievably dead, their little bodies curled lifelessly into themselves.

I rolled them onto the paper, taking care not to harm them any more than they had already been harmed. They did not move. Too far gone, I thought. Dead.

It was still daylight so I made a mental note of the place on the porch where I deposited the dead dead bees, deciding to leave them overnight. I checked them this morning. Perhaps it was the wind that took them away. I'll never know. I just know they were gone.

Last evening, when the first bee "incident" occurred, I had been watching the HBO movie, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee." And when I walked inside from watching the three bees fly away, I found myself humming the haunting theme song from the movie "Exodus." The coincidences did not elude the romantic mind of the Mendacious Mouse.

As Brief as a Mouse Can be

2008-12-09T05:36:00.000-08:00

Every week Calvin Trilling serves up a slice of doggerel in The Nation pulp magazine. Usually his fare is blatantly forgettable, but this week's deserves repetition (if not memorization). I paraphrase the punch line:

A lame duck cannot fly
But it can defecate.

I add a comment: this particular duck may not always have been lame, but it has always been quite capable of shitting on the American people (one-fifth of whom still seem to enjoy being shat upon).

The Economic Cycle

2008-12-04T07:13:00.001-08:00

Why does the economy fluctuate so widely, regularly moving from boom to bust, almost as if some higher power were in control? Economists, and a few crackpots, have long pondered that question, one of the latter even suggesting that it had something to do with sun spots. But correlation does not necessarily mean cause.

In my opinion, one economist, Ludwig von Mises, founder of the Austrian school of economic thought, got it right. In his book Human Action he pointed out (the generally accepted fact) that boom times come about as an effect of increasing investment in entrepreneurial enterprise. As the boom strengthens the capital base increases, that is, more and more money becomes available for investment. But -- and the “but” is critical -- the number of viable and worthwhile enterprises does not and cannot keep pace. There are only so many good ideas for new profit-making ventures. As the quality of new ventures decreases, the capital deployed in them becomes more and more at risk, until, finally, as the fledgling enterprises begin to fail, the incurred losses shrink the capital base, and the cyclic downturn begins.

The last two great burst bubbles in the American economy perfectly illustrate von Mises’ point. The dot.com and housing bubbles both burst because the number of potentially successful ventures in those two areas dried up. The dot.com bubble sucked up hundreds of billions of loose capital, with risk increasing as the number of new businesses increased. The real estate market produced trillions, not just billions, of risky investments, with the riskiest of the risky being leveraged by the formation of derivative pseudo-assets, securitized bonds and credit default swaps. In retrospect, the derivatives generated by the housing bubble look like stop-gap measures designed to delay the collapse of the dizzy house of cards that had been built on risky mortgages. In any case, both bubbles demonstrated von Mises’ explanation of the economic cycle; as a market grows, the chance for survival of new ventures lessens. (Classicists would refer this to "the law of dimishing returns.")

Von Mises’ theory applies to more than bubbles and to more than the weakening of the capital base. It is also illustrated by the emergence of entirely new products lines, some of which ought properly be recognized as frippery, Thoreau’s word for the bevy of unnecessary merchandise with which we surround ourselves. It’s not that we do not obtain personal value from expensive toys, all-occasions greeting cards, and similar niceties, but from an economic point of view, they constitute consumer products that will be speedily sacrificed when the economic curve bends downward. Looked at as an aggregate, the real value of frippery decreases as the size of the market for frippery increases. New niceties enter the market as more and more money appears in the pockets of the consuming public, and (generally speaking) the real value of each new product moves further from the baseline of necessity.

What happens next is relatively obvious. As the capital market for new ventures dries up, and as the weak sisters that came into being near the peak of the curve begin to fail, a snowball begins to form and to roll downhill. Von Mises thought that the capital goods market (goods used to make other goods) would be the first to suffer, and for very intelligible reasons he was right. And because the information available to the buying public is not nearly so good as the information available to businesses, the market for frippery would perhaps be the last to feel the effects of the bust. When the pain finally reaches the flesh and blood of ordinary humans, it’s already too late. The economic cycle is already over the hump and well on its way to the bottom.

John Maynard Keynes, writing during the worst of the Great Depression, suggested that history had reached the point where it was no longer a certainty that the “elevator” would hit bottom and subsequently begin to rise. I’m not sure he was right. I may be making a post hoc argument (like attributing the economic cycle to sun spots) but it seems to me that the economy had always risen after a bust, only getting stuck during the 30s when the government took a Keynesian hand in providing a boost to the market. Unemployment was 25% in 1932 and was still 19% in 1939. Roosevelt/Keynes (with a dollop of Marx) had not solved the problem, had perhaps made it worse. FDR’s claim that we have nothing to fear but fear may have been right, but a strong case can be made that fear is not lessened but increased when the only new jobs being opened are in government financed make-work projects. Our new president ought to think long and hard before he makes mistakes similar to those our government made in the 30s.

Ayn Rand and Spinoza

2008-11-25T06:41:00.000-08:00

I’ve intended for quite a while to write a blog explaining my understanding of the writings of Ms Ayn Rand. I read all her work several decades ago, named my daughter Dagny Ayn (after her and the heroine of Atlas Shrugged), and remain an admirer. At first, five decades ago, I was more than a mere admirer; I was a true believer who saw in her work an unvarnished picture of the way the world really is. Over the years my view has matured, and the following represents my mature thoughts.

Those Libertarians who read her work as if it presented a philosophical system in the classical sense have missed her point entirely (and maybe she did too, as some of her essays seem to indicate). At the core of her work is the notion that the quality of the world (as defined by humans) lies nowhere but in the quality of its people. She and I and Spinoza regard this as an axiom that does not need proof.

The world (as seen by human beings) is determined to be what it is by the unchanging laws of nature. But the face the world shows us is forever changing. The human brain, considered as an objective "thing," also operates in accord with unchanging laws. But our species -- no more than the collection of all rivers -- is not a homogeneous assemblage of like-minded things. Although the body parts -- including the brains -- of every human work in accord with unchanging laws, the values taken by the neural structure of each one of us is determined individually by our experience in the world.

Compare this to a computer's memory. As they come off the assembly line, all the memory chips look exactly alike, and as parts of the whole mechanism they all operate in accord with the same physical principles. But as the computers begin to be used, their individuality becomes manifest. The same memory location in computers of the same design will no longer be identical, They will be encoded with electrical impulses representing words and other symbols that will vary from machine to machine. So also do the memory functions of human brains contain (in a so far undecipherable code) different symbols, and some of those symbols, when brought into play in human behavior, function as human values, the actual determinants of the way we shall behave in reaction to the world.

Ms Rand was writing about those memories we refer to as values.

Before getting further into her "people" we must acknowledge and understand the difference between egoism and egotism. All of us, according to Spinoza and Ayn Rand, are egoists. Spinoza expressed our egoism by the Latin word conatus, by which he referred to the propensity of all things to perpetuate themselves in being. Note, all things, not just human beings. The very nature of the smallest atom and the largest star (and everthing in between) acts in such a way that the object will remain what it is until it is acted upon by a more powerful object. Human "objects," unlike most others, are aware of their desire to perpetuate themselves in being, so unlike those that are unaware, humans take actions that they perceive to be in the direction of their preservation. That is the nature of us all, and that is what Ms. Rand (and Spinoza) meant by the word "egoist."

An egotist, on the contrary, is an egoist who has a limited view of what it takes to survive in the world as a functional being (i.e., what it takes to be happy). He sees himself as a more or less isolated creature whose ego. along with all its values, whether good, bad, or evil, must be preserved. The egotist is an unenlightened egoist.

All the main characters in Ms. Rand's major books were intentionally written as caricatures of various qualities that occur in human beings, some of which are good, some bad, some downright evil. Some of those characters have been seen as representatives of the "Supreme Egoist," and in my opinion, some of them were. But the supreme egoist was not, as some imagine, neither John Galt (in Atlas Shrugged) nor Howard Roark (in The Fountainhead). The Supreme Egoist is a person who is equally capable of being a leader and of being led. He is just as physically alone in the world as are all of us, but he has spiritually bridged the gap between himself and others and has managed to view the world and all that's in it as an integrated whole, a One, a naturally adapted organism.

The principal characters in Ms Rand's books do not represent ideal versions of humanity, but rather ideal representations of specific human qualities. The best (but not only) example of this sort of being appears as the riveter, a minor character in "The Fountainhead." He comes as close to perfection as can be imagined. He's great at his work (delivering 8 hours of devoted work for 8 hours pay), loyal to his friends, and not overly consumed with himself. When we observe the riveter pitching a rivet with complete awareness of the importance of what he's doing, we may have difficulty seeing his action as an expression of his commitment to excellence. And even when we analytically resolve his perfection, seeing it as an expression of, say, his "upbringing" or his "morals" we miss the point. The characteristics Ms Rand gave him express everything he is (or better, has become). He is an effect of all that appears in his "driving" device, his very human brain.

And this is the element of her philosophy that Ms Rand left unexplored (and which I suspect she was incapable of exploring in herself). It remains much easier for her readers to fall into the traps of Objectivism, much easier to wind up believing that human qualities can be observed, much in the same way we observe the qualities of, say, a good poem. Just as the poem seems to be an object that can be objectively assessed, but that is a deception. Its authentic quality lies in the fact that it is an artifact of a human mind. As such it cannot be separated from the human being who created it, and he or she is a product of his or her whole experience in the world. (Note this well, since it follows that as more and more human beings become more adequately adapted to the authentic whole, the easier it will be for the rest also to adapt -- i.e., to find enlightenment.)

Literary deconstructionists go a step further in understanding the objects of their study, but they still, with all their cleverness, are unable to get their minds around the process that generated the work. The ideas the poet expresses in his work may be objectively studied and placed alongside similar ideas spoken of by other poets, but each poet's mind remains unique. As academics we may place this or that poet in a taxonomy of so-called cultural categories, but however much we may feel we understand the man by an observation of his work (and the similar work of others), we are still blind to the interacting content of the mind.

Now, when we look at the human world and see it as something akin to a work of art, we are apt to take the same sort of easy path, thinking that by making superficial judgments of the quality and character of the players we can understand the thing itself -- the uniquiness of all thinking and interacting things. But the human world is an effect of "human action" and human actions are effects of the undecipherable array of causes we euphemistically refer to as the human brain. Even if by some inspired leap of our science we are able to comprehend the workings of a generic brain, we will still not understand any particular brain, much less the multiplicity of brains that abide in the six-billion of us.

And that is why literature such as that produced by Ms Rand serves a useful (although limited) function. In her characters she has depicted the constituent parts of the non-objective world. As such, they can be viewed as models of how the ideal human should behave. But if for instance, we observe the quality of "productiveness" and think of it as a quality we ought to emulate, and make the mistake of thinking that productiveness is the end-all of human virtue, we will be mistaken. In the famous John Galt radio address Ms Rand identifies many other qualities besides productiveness. To emulate each of these, as if it were an isolated model, is a virtual impossibility. When correctly considered, they appear as undifferentiated aspects of the human spirit, as inseparable elements of the integrated whole that is reflected in the being-ness of the individual human brain. We act out of the whole, not out of the part . . . and the whole cannot be objectified as anything other than a poorly defined taxonomy that represents but does not define the human mind.

The human condition comes about as a pseudo-parallel, interactive effect of variously "configured" human minds. As such it is essentially incomprehensible. We make sense of it -- to the extent that we can -- by giving names to objectively observable categories of human action. We use the names Ms Rand and many others have given to our virtues and our sins. And when we do it right, we base our collective management (our governments) on the virtues while eshewing the sins. But the government that functions best is the one that recognizes the existential nature of the people being governed, all of which are essentially different.

Consequently, the basic principle incorporated in the most perfect government acknowledges and protects the fundamental freedom of all its subjects to remain, to the greatest extent possible, what they are. The differences among us cannot all be accommodated in the man-made laws of the land, so it is incumbent on the leadership to instantiate and "act out" those ideals that most conform to the taxonomy of values that perpetuate the nation and its inhabitants in their being. Identifying and expressing those ideals is the job of the "riveters" among us who are most capable of communicating the beneficence of the nation's ideals. As individuals, we each ought to lead ourselves and be led by our frail grasp of the goodnesses reflected in the qualities Ms Rand has laid out. In that sense, her work deals with ethics.

In Ms Rand's books and in reality, the individual is paramount, not only to him- or herself, but to the functional whole which is the world we make. The true believers who have made Ms Rand into an icon to be worshiped have made the same mistake she apparently made in her own life. They have let their egotism lead the egoism. The result is a caricature of what a human being actually is.

Are we Truly Free

2008-11-22T08:14:00.000-08:00

I mean by this, "Are we free to loosen the restraints imposed by our liberty?" If this sounds like double talk, scroll down and reread my blog on the difference between freedom and liberty. (A brief refresher: The former is what we are naturally born with, the latter what we have left after we bargain away some of our freedom.) Every law imposed by every government limits the freedom of the governed. Thus, every government, whether democratic or despotic, modifies the state of affairs that would exist if there were no government.

However, only in (small "d") democratic governments can the state of affairs created by the acts of government be said to have been negotiated by the interaction of the people and their government. Even in a republic, where the people delegate their law-making power to legislators and executives, the people are ultimately "in charge," since they can remove from power those they have put in power.

But in this country the process of removing elected officials from office is doggedly slow, two years being the shortest period that must elapse before a "hired hand" can legally be fired. Given the speed at which the modern world changes, much discomfort may ensue before the guilty parties are deprived of their power.

The Founders were well aware of this weaknesses they were building into the new constitution, but to be honest, they were more concerned with the intelligence of the people (who were ultimately to be in charge) than they were with the qualifications of the elected officials. Aside from setting certain age and (in some cases) citizenship requirements, they were of the opinion that even if the legislators and executives were somewhat less than perfect, their shortcomings would still offer a better alternative than entrusting the government directly to the people.

A much longer article than I intend to write would be needed to outline the various arguments offered pro and con by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The terms "federalist" and "anti-federalist" came out of that debate, with the federalists favoring the strong central government that finally won the day. The anti-federalists, led by George Mason and Patrick Henry, were concerned that the Constitution, as drafted, was silent on the matter of civil rights. Madison, the pro forma leader of the federalists, was finally persuaded (by a Baptist minister) of the need for a Bill of Rights, and in his capacity as a member of the first House of Representatives, led the fight to draft and ratify the first ten constitutional amendments.

Taken as a whole, the amended Constitution can be understood to establish a relationship between the people and their elected representatives. I will henceforth refer to the latter as "the government," but bear in mind, the government remains an elite group of people. The government thus exists as flesh and blood, whereas the laws enacted by the government exist as a set of ideas. It is in the light of that difference that I have asked the question that appears as the title of this piece: "Are we truly free?"

That is, given that the ideas embodied in our laws have been finely woven into the very fabric of our nation and its culture, can we actually change our minds about them? Do we still have enough residual freedom to undo in our minds some of the most fundamental ideas that bind us as a people?

These questions have come to the fore in the current government's struggle with the financial crisis. When the government, empowered by due process of law, decided to purchase stock in several large banks, the people (actually, the press and certain campaigning politicians) accused the government of socialism, using that word in a way that implied that socialism was somehow not legal in this country. And indeed, pure socialism, in which the government is the de facto and de jure owner of all property is directly forbidden by the Fifth Amendment: ". . . nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." While it is conceivable that the government could purchase on the open market a controlling interest in the nation's large corporations, the price paid being by definition a "just compensation," I do not imagine that such an arrangement would last unless the people were convinced that the government's actions were "good." Believing otherwise, the people could, by denying their trade, bankrupt the "socialized" businesses. Nevertheless, it does not appear on the surface that the government is legally restrained from purchasing stock in private corporations.

The question of whether they should or not gets to the heart of the question. An aversion to socialism exists de facto in the hearts and minds of the vast majority of the American people. But if that aversion were mitigated by circumstances such as arose in the Great Depression and as loom in the current situation, if in fact the people were to come to believe that true socialism (as opposed to regulated capitalism) were desirable, could the will of the people override the will of the government?

The phrase "the will of the people" begs for an explanation. Obviously, if all the people were of the same opinion regarding a move to a socialist economy, the question would be settled. The question remains arguable in view of the fact that the people almost certainly would not be of the same will. We would expect that those whose property would be taken by "just compensation" might be averse to the deal. But of more and of vital importance are the questions that would certainly arise in the minds of those who would disagree with the move on intellectual grounds, who, having no horse in the race, would nevertheless regard socialism as a bad idea.

This difference gets to the heart of the conflict the Founders dealt with (and reluctantly compromised on) in 1787. A majority of the people may desire what a minority may regard as economic suicide. The opposite might also be the case, the majority favoring the status quo, the minority favoring change.

As intellectually appealing as this disagreement may seem, the question would not be resolved by anything resembling intelligent discussion. It would be settled politically. The opposing cases might very well be presented to the people by intelligent commentators, say, George Will for the capitalist system, a resurrected Walter Lippman arguing for socialism. But unless the Founders were wrong about the sanity of the people, even if the cases were widely and fairly publicized, the masses would not be swayed by the logic of the arguments but rather by emotional appeals to their uninformed self interest.

Foremost among the forces that passes itself off as "self interest" is the desire of the people to continue along the path set for them by their inherited culture. Thinking is hard. Going along is easy.

These truisms do not hold when the pain being inflicted by the "way we were" becomes intense. Joseph Conrad observed that "No fear can stand up to hunger." He was referring to the inbred fear of cannibalism, but he might as well have (and may have in fact) meant the fear of breaking away from all inherited beliefs.

But neither pain of radical change nor the pleasures of "togetherness" qualifies as an intellectual argument. They both represent emotional appeals. Unfortunately, in the mind they share the same mental space as logical arguments. Hormones and neurons are two inter-related residents in the same cranium. Out of the cerebral admixture of thought and emotion come the ideas that determine action.

At least one of the Founders (Madison) viewed the mind in this Spinozistic way, and perhaps it was this view that led him to his Platonic distrust of the people. I do not know whether Madison or any of the Founders knew of the paradox they had designed into the Constitution, where the people elect clever men whose highest claim to cleverness lies in their ability to convince people of their cleverness. If we argue that their cleverness lies in their ability to reason with the people, then that implies that the people are reason-able. But if the people are reason-able, then they would not need to surrender their freedom to a "wiser" elite.

I personally believe that socialism is a bad idea, and that regulated capitalism is the best of the bad choices available to us. But if you were to ask me to defend my belief in a way that would have a chance of being accepted by "the people," I would find myself writing emotional appeals and couching them in high-sounding words like the ones you have just read. (My conscience dictated that last sentence.) I would be a politician.

There is an answer to the question I asked, but I am under no illusion that the answer would appeal to everyone. The answer is simply this: "Yes, we are truly free." And in our freedom lies the uncomfortable fact that we have created the mess we now find so painful. If we seek to exonerate ourselves personally from the ill effects of our economic miseries, then let us at least confess to having not thought too well before we delegated our freedom to men who were not quite up to the job we hired them to perform.

It works better, however, if we forget that argument and take personal responsibility. To act otherwise is to admit that we are a member of that ignorant "confederacy of dunces" the Founders took us to be. Better to admit to a mistake than to pretend that we are powerless to act.

The Difference Between "Freedom" and "Liberty"

2008-11-19T16:15:00.001-08:00

[I'm reasonably certain that I blogged the following two paragraphs over a year ago. They may have been part of a much longer statement. I'm too lazy to search out the previous writing. I find it necessary to republish these few words in order to make sure the ground is laid for my next blog, which I will publish either tomorrow or the next day.]

A part of our misunderstanding of what it means to be free arises from our misuse of the words “freedom” and “liberty.” They are not the same. Freedom is natural, a quantity closely related to our natural power. The abilities nature has given us determine the amount of freedom we have. We can do what we have the power to do, and we cannot do what our nature forbids. All of us have a measure of freedom and to the extent we use all of our freedom to satisfy our needs and desires, we have lived life to the utmost.

Liberty is a different matter. It can be defined as the reciprocal of the external limits placed upon our freedom. We are free to do whatever we can do, but we are at liberty to do only what we are permitted to do. We normally think of government and its laws as the power that limits our freedom, but any power – governmental, familial, economic, religious, or whatever – that has (and exercises) the power to control our actions, serves to constrict our liberty. We must therefore regard liberty (but not freedom) as a function of the family, clan, and nation into which we are born. Freedom is natural. Liberty is what we have left after we volunteer (or are forced) to recognize barriers to our freedom.

A Commentary on Hatred

2008-11-19T05:27:00.000-08:00

[I did not write the piece that follows. A blogger who calls himself "Jarhead" did, on another blog net. I would not normally publicize anything smacking so blatantly of hatred, but this little "essay" does it so perfectly and with such a creative spirit I could not resist offering it up as a "how to" example. Enjoy.]

White House Mutt

Obama says that he will give his daughters a dog now that he has won the keys to the White House. Why? Is there a written law that says every President must have a dog, or is this just more of Obama's snow-job to show how baseball, and apple pie he is? It gives me the impression that he doesn't want a stinking mutt pissing on the carpet of his Chicago mansion, but it's ok in America's house. That makes sense, because he has been pissing on America every step of the way himself.

There is no doubt, the dog of the President would live a life of luxury. It would get the very best of medical care, food, shelter, as well as regular professional grooming. None of which my old farm hounds get. If Obama snaps his fingers, the dog can have one of the sixteen bedrooms the White House has to offer. Indeed an honor for any living creature, much less a dog. From the animal shelter, to the White House is quite the promotion, but is it really what's best for the dog? It seems to me, that if Obama were such an Animal (sic) lover, he would already have a dog, but instead, this particular dog will be no more than a Presidential prop, and a photo-op companion. A man as arrogant, and self-centered as Obama, will never stoop to the peasant level of rubbing a dogs belly, or letting the dog slurp on his hand, when it is seeking attention. I can see Obama kicking the poor bastard in the ribs, and cussing every time the dog is in his majesties (sic) presence.

One thing that everyone discussing this issue forgets to mention is, a dog needs more than the pampering of Presidential servants, a dog needs the love, and companionship, that can only be provided by the host family. If Obama just wants a dog to make himself, and the first-family look All-American, then he needs to get a fish. Without love in the equation, the dog would be better off left in the shelter. Someone who truly wants him will come along, or he will be put down, either way, that is better than being ignored, just for the sake of a selfish mans (sic) image preservation.

[I add this, that one of Jarhead's fellow patient's volunteered that after Obama is defeated in four years, he. the defeated man, will no doubt drop the dog off a nearby bridge, drowning the beast so he will no longer have to put up with it. This guy Jarhead hangs the fly paper of hate and draws hateful flies. Personally, I hate hatefulness. Maybe that's why I'm publishing this hateful piece.]

The Difference Between "Data" and "Information"

2008-11-17T06:27:00.000-08:00

[Reading over my previous blog I noticed that I left two important terms undefined. Today I'm correcting that mistake.]

Imagine a machine capable of receiving all the types of inputs human beings are capable of receiving. The laws of nature determine that the machine can hear, see, feel, and smell. The machine receives data from all the senses and stores it away in its memory. But that’s it. That’s all the machine does. It senses but does not act (because it cannot). Call this machine-D, as in “might-as-well-be-Dead.”

Conceive now a similar machine, with similar capabilities. Nature has determined that this machine, in addition to receiving data, is capable of trying to make sense of the data it receives, and if it feels the need to do so, is able to act on what it learns. Call this one machine-L, as in Living.

Now imagine that both machines receive some data which when properly analyzed tells them that a great rock teeters above their heads and threatens to fall and destroy them. Which machine has the better chance to survive the crash? Of course, machine-L, the one that's free. (All human beings are of this type, some with more power to act than others.)

If machine-L were of a philosophical bent, it might feel itself absolutely free because it would recognize in itself more power to survive than it would notice in machine-D. That mistake is understandable; it’s based on observation. Remove the words “absolutely free” and substitute “free within the limits of the laws of nature,” and you have the truth.

After much analysis of these model machines, we see that machine-L transforms "data" into "information." We can now understand these two words more perfectly, with all that "more perfectly" implies. Data is unbiased. Information is personal.

Data has no meaning. Information has only meaning. But meaning is always personal.

The Included Middle

2008-11-14T09:38:00.001-08:00

No text I've ever read offers a name for the vast logical space that lies between the extremes of a hapless dichotomy. They just call it "the excluded middle." They're referring to a type of logical error, one ruled by the assumption that reality must be either this way or that way with no other possibilities.

That type of reasoning has a wide appeal. It works easily in the mind because it narrows the number of alternatives to be dealt with. Knowing that we must, for example, either take flight or turn and fight when confronted by a grizzly bear simplifies the problem. In situations of that sort, it would appear quite reasonable to exclude the middle, which might foolishly include the temptation to reason with the bear. If all the problems in life were that straightforwardly analyzable, the idea that there might exist an excluded middle would never arise.

But then some wise guy -- who has actually had to deal with grizzlies -- tells us that neither fight nor flight will work to our advantage. The bear is bound to win in a fair fight and outrun us if we choose to flee. So what does the guy suggest? (This is a real quote from a guidebook.) "Remain calm. Do not look the bear in the eye, but rather lie down on your belly drawing yourself up into the fetal position with your elbows closely tucked to your side. This may not discourage the bear from attacking, but will surely minimize the damage." There's a picture to show those who may not know what the fetal position looks like.

We have to think about this advice for a while before we catch on, that even if we do the right thing, we may still wind up badly mauled or even dead. The guide doesn't promise us that we will win, only that our chances for survival will be increased by including the middle.

Most of us will never have to face a bear, so the instructions for dealing with bears, taken literally, will not be useful. But when treated as an illustration of the logical errors we encounter when we exclude the middle, the guidance for dealing with bears takes on everyday value.

I mean the word "value" in this sense, that knowledge is always valuable. I qualify value this way because I'm gonna be talking about a dichotomy that most of us are not called upon to resolve but which nevertheless lies inside our heads as one of the "facts" we indirectly deal with on an everyday basis. I'm talking about the dichotomy presented by the choice between a free market economy or a socialist economy. And I'm asking, "Is this really an either-or situation?"

One of the great proponents of free market economics, F. A. Hayek, wrote an extremely good book called The Road to Serfdom. Chapter six of that book is a mini-masterpiece. It deals with the rule of law. After pointing out that the free market serves as an automatic system for setting prices (as opposed to having prices set by canon law or central planners), he describes the almost magical way prices are established in real time. Changes in supply and demand are almost instantaneously reflected in market prices, and these changes happen without there being a formal system to govern the flow of data. Hayek makes the point that this system functions as well as it does precisely because there are no rules governing the establishment of prices. He was saying (in 1944), as clearly as it had ever been said (clearer even than Adam Smith said it 168 years before), that the laws of the land must be crafted in a way that will not interfere with the free flow of price data.

As beautifully as Hayek presents his argument, and as appealing as it is to his kindred spirits, he has given us a clear-cut example of the excluded middle. He is saying, in effect, that either we leave the market alone or we will destroy the system that maximizes our knowledge of the price of things. Hayek does not (in his chapter six) consider that the price of things may not reflect the value of things.

Let me explain what I mean by that. What do prices tell us, other than the relative cost of products? Do they tell us the value of the goods being traded? No. They tell us only what someone is willing to pay for the products. To assume that price reflects real value would be to assume that every buyer (all demand) is rational -- by which I mean fully informed. But there are some people who buy that oily stuff that's plainly labelled " I can't believe it's not Butter" thinking the stuff is really butter. Countless pregnant women bought thalidomide thinking that just because it was being sold by a reliable pharmaceutical firm to relieve morning sickness (which it did, by the way) the stuff would not deform their offspring (which it also did, by the way).

I mention these examples only to illustrate the difference between price and value, and to make the point that just because the system Hayek described works perfectly to maintain a balance between supply and demand (called "price") does not mean the system works perfectly for anything else.

To correct the most noticeable faults of the free market system (which would permit misleading labels and harmful products) the government passes laws and rules that seem at first glance to interfere with the free market. But looked at with keener eyes -- in fact looking at price itself -- we see that the system Hayek described works better when the people representing supply (manufacturers) and the people representing demand (you and me) have better information about the commodities being traded. It would be better, for instance, if that oily stuff were plainly labelled "NOT BUTTER" and if thalidomide were identified as a harmful product. If that sort of information flowed through the system as easily as supply and demand data (note the difference here between "information" and "data") the system would not only still work automatically to set prices but would also work to improve the value of the stuff being bought and sold.

Unfortunately, information about value is not produced by an invisible hand. In matter of fact, the invisible hand's effect on some suppliers urges them to hide the value of their products, to make them seem to have more value than they actually do. Those unscrupulous manufacturers are, after all, guided only by a consideration of their own best interest. To paraphrase Adam Smith, to seek the common good would be to betray the effectiveness of the invisible hand that so perfectly determines the equilibrium between supply and demand.

So, in the excluded middle between the so-called free market and the so-called regulated market there exists the possibility of a mechanism that improves the knowledge base available to buyers and sellers. If the producers of goods become intuitively aware that their sleight-of-hand methods are going to be counter-productive in the marketplace, they will be less likely to seek deceptive methods. And even more obviously, the buyers of goods will be less likely to purchase valueless goods if they are more aware of the actual values of the goods in the market.

But as I said, the information regarding value does not flow as easily as price data. It does not come naturally to know not to run from a grizzly. We have to learn that fact. This natural slowness of flow tilts the system in the direction of ignorance. No matter how efficiently the agencies designed to measure and advertise value work, their output will always lag behind the efforts of suppliers to enhance the blackness of their bottom line.

To argue, as some well-meaning souls do, that the market-tinkering efforts of government violate some sacrosanct ideology, is not only to contribute to the difficulties in moving information through the pipelines, but also to condition the people being served to resist the efforts of the government to come to their assistance.

And of course, there is also the counter-force of ideologists of the so-called radical left, who seeing the benefits of the government's efforts, are prone to fight the bear. They seem to feel that they can make angels of human beings, apparently blind to the problems involved in trying to reason with bears.

Finding the middle ground is not easy when compared either to doing nothing or to doing too much. Neither flight nor fight will work when the problem is like unto a bear.

It's Over in Virginia

2008-10-20T08:50:00.000-07:00

Despite -- or to spite -- the ravings of the religious wrong here in Madison County, the race for the White House has ended in the Old Dominion. It's Obama by 6 lengths and going away. True, the pained cries of the McCarthyites (sill alive and well here) continued to scream well into the night, hours after all the networks had called it for "Old Big Ears" (as friendly historians began to call Obama in the 22nd century).

"Fraud!! Fraud!!" the wicked witches of the right wailed, their voices dying to nothingness in the cold night air.

"Recount!! Recount!!" the words striking fear into the hearts of the older good guys, memories of hanging chads and bought and paid for Supreme Court judges still quivering in their heart of hearts.

But all the sound and fury of the defeatist few were drowned out by the singing and dancing of young voices and feet in the storied cities of this, the last state to secede from the union and the first now to reenter in glory.

Dead and gone now, long forgotten are the mewling masses of the Palinites, their willing betrayal of their good senses having at last been dulled to silence by the images of that airheaded woman sitting in the White House with her extended middle finger resting feverishly on the red button of nuclear war. It was more than even the stone-headedest of the stoney-brained could bear to see. Perhaps many of them did still touch the names of McCain/Palin on the wired-for-victory electronic felons, but the magical prestidigitations of the hardware were not enough to offset the landslide. It was, as we have seen, Obama by six widening lengths.

Ah, Omar, where now is your "moving finger," where the unstoppable force of history that the tears of the defeated still try to wash out? Gone with the wind, you say? Overwhelmed by an even stronger hand? Washed away by the overwhelming will of God's unwavering goodness, left to wither as the new tides of history roll up the storied ruins of a desultory past. A new hand writes, a new history unfolds. The past is neither prologue nor memory, existing in the eyes of the New World only as the necessary foundation . . . .

Only the purple verses remain. As ever.

The Second Mrs. McCain

2008-10-19T17:31:00.000-07:00

I personally think Cindy McCain is a fairly understandable person, prone to excess, slightly vain, and no more or less devoted to her abusive husband than any other battered wife (her beatings being more verbal than physical). She seemed to be tracking well with her husband's standard pre-race palaver when she declared early-on that "John abhors negative campaigning."

But then came the shrinking numbers of the polls, and "the campaign" could no longer permit this ordinary woman to remain outside the pale of the mainline smear. It had her declare -- just prior to the great "town hall" debate in Nashville: "“The day that Senator Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund my son while he was serving sent a cold chill through my body.” At first I was filled with the sense of admiration that one writer feels when he reads another's clever words. (The thought never crossed my mind -- and never will -- that Mrs. McCain actually felt such a chill.)

But after the few seconds of admiration-inspired warmth had run their course, "a cold shiver of dismay ran through my body." It was conveyed in these words.

"My dear lady, if your husband had voted for the version of the funding bill that Obama voted for, your son would be home by now."

That bill, voted-on in early 2006, contained the requirement that U. S. troops should be withdrawn from Iraq within 16 months. It failed because John McCain, other Republicans, and faint-hearted Democrats voted nay.

So ma'am, if you want to take some sort of punitive action against those who have permitted your son to remain in battle, if you truly do feel a mother's regret that her child is being sent underfunded into war, I suggest you knee your dear husband in the balls the next time he has his campaign slanderers give you lines to utter. He deserves that and more.

Oh, and this for you John, words Obama might have offered in his "defense" when you finally spoke to his face of William Ayers:

Yes, John, you're right. I should have asked Mr. Annenberg to vet the background on those college professors and presidents he had invited along with me to serve on that board. I will confess to an error of judgment. But I will do this if and only if you also confess to an error when you pimped from 1999-on for an invasion of Iraq. But be warned. Gentleman that I am, I advise you not to take me up on this offer. The American people may be gullible, but they're not so stupid as to miss the truth that my error caused the death of no one, not a single solitary human being, whereas your error has led to the deaths of over 4200 American soldiers and the wounding of tens of thousands . . . and still counting. Best drop it John.

But McCain, being McCain, would fail to see the logic of Obama's generous warning and would proceed to defend his error as if the order to invade Iraq had been handed down from the almighty. He's that sure of his righteousness.

I'll be voting for Obama, a man of venial sins, rather than for John McCain whose sins are of the mortal sort.

Who is Barack Obama

2008-10-16T06:22:00.000-07:00

Obviously, Barack Obama is a giraffe, or at the very least, pals around with giraffes.

I have pictures to prove it. See, here, this one . . . isn't that him standing there actually feeding a giraffe . . . and this one, lifting his youngest daughter up so she can pet not one but two giraffes!!

You say the pictures don't prove Obama's a giraffe? You say he doesn't look like a giraffe? That he makes speeches and giraffes never make sounds of any sort?

Your problem, my friend, is that you don't want to believe your eyes. You're deluded by Obama's obvious attempts to hide his true nature with eloquence and charm.

Answer me this . . . have you ever heard him deny that he's a giraffe? No, you haven't . . . and you never will. Why? Because he is a giraffe. And that settles the issue. Until I hear him deny that he's a giraffe I'll stick with what these pictures tell me. Seeing is believing.

Book Excerpt

2008-10-15T06:14:00.000-07:00

[This exceprt from chapter eleven of my book The Several Roads to Serfdom has become more relevant today than it was three years ago when I wrote it.]

Hayek’s masterpiece: In chapter six of The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek explains the difference between economies that operate under the rule of law and those that operate by the whim of government. “Under the first the government confines itself to fixing rules determining the conditions under which the available resources may be used, leaving to the individuals the decision for what ends they are to be used. Under the second the government directs the use of the means of production to particular ends.” [Page 81.] One can see from the tone and scope of these keynote sentences that Hayek has focused upon the law as it relates to economic matters. The title of the chapter, “Planning and the Rule of Law,” leaves no doubt that Hayek has set out to contrast the way capitalist and socialist economies understand and use the law. Briefly put, capitalist governments make laws designed to maximize the free use of resources by individuals, whereas socialist governments reserve to themselves the power to restructure and redirect the use of resources as they see fit.

History has rendered that particular distinction practically obsolete. As Hayek acknowledged in the introduction to the 1976 edition of his book, and as Fukuyama confirmed in The End of History and the Last Man, “hot” socialist economies are almost extinct. Even the so-called communist nations, the People’s Republic of China, for example, while continuing their dictatorial ways, run their economies by means more capitalist than socialist. Those nations cannot, of course, be said to operate under the rule of law as Hayek understood it. The Chinese government still reserves the right to change the law to suit the momentary perceptions of the dictatorial rulers rather than to enforce the ideals of their quasi-capitalist economies. The local family enterprises that were the first to go into business in modern China, were able to do so because the government found it beneficial to make a law permitting the businesses to open. The Chinese dictators could just as easily pass a law forbidding for-profit enterprises and, thereby, revert to pure socialist practices. That it does not – or has not done so – speaks either to their good economic sense or to a visceral fear of uprising.

It has not eluded notice, however, that western, free-world governments have gradually taken on some of the trappings of socialism. The Medicare and Social Security laws in the United States are clearly not capitalist in nature, since by law they dictate the flow of certain economic resources. The U. S. government has also enacted laws of a quasi-socialist type to control (or benefit) certain areas of free enterprise. They have, for example, interfered with the tobacco business by methods that fly in the face of rule of law Hayek envisioned as the staple of free capitalist societies. The excise tax on tobacco aims primarily to encourage people to stop killing themselves. As noble as that objective may seem, the government has handled the “tobacco problem” in a self-contradicting manner. It has taxed smokers while leaving the tobacco farmer’s product relatively untaxed, leading at least this observer to believe that, in its treatment of tobacco farmers, the government has implemented one of the most fraudulent forms of economic fascism, that which favors a small body of producers with no possible benefit to anyone other than the recipients of the largesse.

Medicare, Social Security, and levies like the tobacco tax are a few of the tools of what has come to be called “social engineering.”[1] Such laws aim to produce effects the government believes will benefit the people. Social engineering laws, like all others, whether socialist or capitalist, are burdened with two separately identifiable – but closely related – bodies of cost:

(1) economic costs in dollars and cents, and

(2) ideological costs or benefits, like those enforced and obtained by the tobacco tax.

One or the other of the two costs lie at the heart of the disagreements that inevitably crop up when social engineering programs become subjects of debate. Legislators typically frame their analysis of economic costs by weighing them against benefits. But since the benefits derived from social programs do not lend themselves easily to dollars and cents evaluation, political issues arise even in that process. Imagine the difficulties involved in trying to put a dollar value on human life, or on good health.

Social engineering laws – and in fact, all laws – could be said to be plans. They certainly result from a governmental attempt to implement a “planned” solution to a perceived problem. Sometimes the plans work and sometimes they don’t, but in all cases, plans that seek to marshal the government’s power to limit or control people’s activities arouse objections. When raised by libertarian ideologues, the objections usually take the form of questioning the right of the government to do anything that might be interpreted as an interference with the people’s rights and liberties. Those of the opposite persuasion tend to think the government is obliged to do whatever is necessary to achieve social equality. Consequently, nations that permit free expression generally find themselves engaged in a continuous debate over what is good planning and what is not.

Hayek anticipated – or saw with his own eyes – the turmoil that arises from disagreements of that sort. To help us resolve the difficulty, he identified objectionable planning as “a central direction of all economic activity according to a single plan, laying down how the resources of society should be ‘consciously directed’ to serve particular ends in a definite way.” [Page 40, italics mine.] While this definition seems to make crystal clear at least one side of the argument, it still leaves loopholes in pure laissez faire theory that Hayek’s purported disciples have had difficulty accepting. If planning is bad only when “all economic activity” is controlled, the modern conservatives, with few pure socialist governments to criticize, have been deprived of most of their ammunition, which of course, hasn’t stopped them from criticizing any action of government which they find repugnant to their own beliefs.

But then, modern conservatives are not in the truest sense seeking to implement Hayek’s ideas. Having confused “economic activity” with any act of a central government, they find themselves enrolled in what appears to be a suicide club. They object to, and actively seek to defeat, measures designed to promote human health (Medicare), safety (the Pure Food and Drug Act), the health of the planet (the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts), and similar devices that are “economic” primarily because they have to be paid for.

But as I have said – and my tongue was no deeper in my cheek then as now – no one should blame these suicidal people (or any others) for seeking what they regard as their own best interest. That their measures may harm other people (and themselves) should be of no concern to us, since we all tend to do similar things, sometimes with equally suicidal results. But even as we ironically approve their destructive behavior, we should still hold them pejoratively accountable. They have, with increasing frequency, covertly used the power of government and abused the rule of law to satisfy their personal ambitions.

By way of setting up a contrast, consider that when the representatives of elderly people without health insurance sought to have the government institute a program to assist them, no one could (or should) have been in doubt about the objectives and main beneficiaries of the program. The way they went about seeking government assistance was open and above board. If there were cost problems with what they were asking – and by now it should be obvious that there were – the debate could have been (and was to a great degree) centered upon those problems.

But when corporate America, facing difficulties of its own, sought government’s assistance – by way of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) – the debate was almost entirely deceptive. NAFTA’s sponsors claimed that the act would benefit American workers by creating more new jobs. They did not make it clear that those jobs would materialize only after the living standard of the Mexican people was raised to a level where they could afford American products. But the deception went deeper than a mere error of omission. To suggest that American jobs would be gained as a result of NAFTA was a lie, since even if the Mexican living standard were raised (in four decades or so) most of the market thus created would be satisfied by foreign and Mexican competitors of American companies. In the four-decades of the meanwhile, Americans would lose their jobs, and probably lose them permanently to cheaper labor.

In the famous NAFTA television debate between Al Gore and Ross Perot, when Perot suggested that the job losses in America would create a “giant sucking sound,” Gore’s response was (1) to repeat the lie (that jobs would be gained) and (2) to engage in a character assassination of Mr. Perot. I do not recall that Gore or any other of NAFTA’s proponents acknowledged the time frame in which the putative Mexican market would materialize, and they certainly never admitted the probability that, in the long run, foreign workers would benefit more than American workers from the improved Mexican economy.

But then, none of that really mattered. The true objective of NAFTA (and now the Central American Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA) had nothing to do with long term benefits for American workers or anyone else’s workers. NAFTA (and CAFTA even more so) provides American corporations a way around the environmental and fair labor laws they must obey if they do business in America. The international corporations could foresee that those laws were not going to go away, so they engineered a side-step around them. The cheap labor of the Mexican and Central American nations – to which health insurance and other benefits do not have to be paid – could more easily be exploited than the more informed and more strongly supported American workforce. I cannot offer an estimate of the damage that will be done to the world’s atmosphere and water supplies by the actions of the NAFTA/CAFTA beneficiaries; that’s for water and air quality experts to assess. I can say that the ethical considerations involved in deceiving the American public are evidence enough to conclude that Smith’s invisible hand is sometimes attached to the arms of self-serving prestidigitators. If the impetus behind NAFTA/CAFTA were actually the promotion of free market theory, why not concentrate on opening up the markets between us and places like Great Britain, Germany, Japan, and Italy, instead of only those places where cheap labor and weak environmental laws exist? And why load NAFTA/CAFTA with caveats protecting those aspects of the American economy where the Mexicans and Central Americans can already compete, like in the sugar market?

I do not wish to create the impression that the long range effects of NAFTA/CAFTA are “bad” from every perspective. If the proponents of those measures were as idealistic as Friedrich Hayek about the goodness of open market capitalism, and as honest as him in seeking the benevolences of free trade, they would have informed the American people straight out that, even though NAFTA/CAFTA would cost many American jobs, the long run effects of those programs would benefit the world. If rationally applied capitalist ideas do in fact work as well as Hayek said they would – and I believe they do – and if that form of capitalism were adopted by all the world’s nations, the supplies of goods coming into the market would increase so significantly that the worldwide shortages of life’s necessities would soon be satisfied.

But the corporations who purchased NAFTA/CAFTA from our Congress were not seeking to export rational capitalism. Neither the plight of workers nor the health of the planet were their concern. Performing their magic tricks, just as every dogmatic laissez faire capitalist ought to, they were working to increase the earnings of their companies. If the American people had to be distracted by sleight-of-hand tricksters in order for their objectives to be met, no problem. With the wool firmly in place over the public’s gullible eyes, even pollutions of the earth can be justified. In the long run polluted air and water will provide opportunities for other capitalists to mount profitable cleanup enterprises, and the world will be better off. (Hmmmm.]

I found laughable the Democrats’ pleas for “a level playing field” during the most recent presidential campaign. They wanted Mexico to enact environmental and fair labor laws similar to those in America. The candidates making those pleas were either ignorant of NAFTA’s true purpose or were merely shedding crocodile tears. The NAFTA/CAFTA laws were enacted precisely to create a slanted playing field.

NAFTA‘s chapter 11, which gives corporations supremacy over pre-NAFTA American, Mexican, and Canadian laws and courts, clearly indicates that those who crafted those provisions did not have America’s best interest at heart. Chapter 11 was (probably) designed to prevent the three governments – primarily Mexico – from nationalizing capital investments, but the law has, so far, never been used for that purpose.[2] Instead, using NAFTA’s chapter 11, foreign companies have entered into litigation against American, Mexican, and Canadian taxpayers, seeking relief from the laws of those nations that inhibit their earnings. (They also seek compensation for the losses those laws have caused them.) The litigants are not suing in a formal American court or any other nation’s court. They are pleading their cases to a special tribunal created by NAFTA in which foreign companies can sue you and me for damages.

A company called Methanex, for example, incorporated in Canada, is suing us, claiming that California’s laws prevent the sale of the company’s gasoline additive.[3] They want close to a billion dollars of our money. [Note, not just Californians’ money, yours and mine, and that includes Californians. The state of California actually has no standing in the NAFTA tribunal, so it has to depend on the Federals to plead its case – and ours.] The fact that California enacted its pollution laws to counter a problem peculiar to California would appear to be irrelevant to the company bringing suit. In fact, from the plaintiff’s point of view, those laws are the problem. Their eye is on their bottom line, not on California’s smog.

United Parcel Service (“Brown”), another NAFTA litigant, is suing the Canadian government in the same tribunal, claiming that Canada’s postal service, by delivering packages, is unfairly competing with its service.[4] They want $160 million of Canadian taxpayers’ money.
CAFTA is worse. NAFTA elevated only foreign companies to the same level as sovereign nations. (Actually above them, since the NAFTA/CAFTA tribunal’s rulings supercede and render inoperative the laws of sovereign nations.) CAFTA will broaden that privilege, permitting the foreign subsidiaries of American companies to sue you and me in that same tribunal. Note well, that the NAFTA/CAFTA tribunal is not engaged in the adjudication of American law, or the law of any nation, ruling only upon the appearance that some law of ours (or some other sovereign nation’s) prevents or inhibits corporate profits.[5]

NAFTA/CAFTA, and similar broad-reaching economic measures, enacted by governments to benefit private economic ventures, violate the most fundamental principle of Hayek’s rule of law. They in fact closely resemble the fascist “laws” adopted before the Second World War by Germany and Italy. Those two Axis nations implemented a form of socialism, called corporatism, in which the state enters into partnership with the corporations to assure their partners’ profits. Hayek was writing against precisely those sorts of measures. Coupled with the neoconomics briefly summarized at the end of chapter three, the NAFTA/CAFTA coup clearly demonstrates the intentions of corporate America and its political agents in the Congress. They wish to own the world and are willing to sacrifice America’s sovereignty to reach their goal.

I do not, however, wish to suggest that no one in America other than the stockholders of America’s multinational corporations benefited from NAFTA. The almost two million American jobs lost because of NAFTA added a large supply of unemployed people to the workforce, effectively lowering (or constraining) the cost of American labor. Companies in the burger-flipping business thus benefited from the increased supply of cheapened labor. I’m sure you understand why this “benefit” was not advertised by those lobbying for NAFTA.

Those same pimps, in defending the esoteric (hidden) means by which the corporatists have sold their ideas try to put projects like NAFTA/CAFTA on the same footing as Medicare and Social Security, claiming the so-called “trade agreements” are just government programs aimed at promoting the general welfare. But NAFTA/CAFTA led to a loss of two-million American jobs, with no hope that those jobs will ever be recovered.

In making their case, the defenders of NAFTA/CAFTA will no doubt avoid speaking of those parts of the programs – like NAFTA’s chapter 11 – that by no means relate to the good of the American people. The NAFTA/CAFTA pimps may also avoid discussion of NAFTA’s real good. I spoke of the benefits that might accrue to the poor people of the world if liberal democratic capitalism were broadly adopted. But unlike the other programs I’ve named, even if those benefits were realizable – which is doubtful – NAFTA/CAFTA’s real goodness can only be appreciated from an international perspective.

The damage done by NAFTA/CAFTA goes far deeper than thievery. The nation has, since its founding, been suspicious of government. On the political front, nothing has happened since Vietnam to do anything but deepen that historical distrust. As the saying goes, we need further deceits about as much as we need “a hole in the head.” If American corporations need cheap labor markets to survive, then why don’t they just say so, and forget this shadowy game of deceit they are playing with the American people.

[1] Paul Johnson, in his book Modern Times, claims, by curvilinear reasoning, that over 100 million people were killed in the 20th century as “unintended consequences” of social engineering projects. He’s contending, for example, that Germany’s socialist economic policies led directly, though not by intention, to the Holocaust. I contend that Hitler’s political tactics, fueled by ancient prejudices derived from the Christian gospels, led intentionally to the Holocaust. I do not aim to account for all of Johnson’s 100 million dead. I’ll just say it straight: Johnson’s claim is phony, a blatant example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical error.

[2] Some observers believe the provisions of NAFTA’s chapter 11 have been abused by investors who saw a loophole in the law. If that were the case, the loophole could have been closed in CAFTA. It wasn’t. It was made wider.

[3] The details of this proceeding read like a James Bond spy novel, with Methanex accusing the officers of its American competitor, Archer-Daniels-Midland Inc, and California Governor Davis of actions (to put it in the words of the tribunal) “likely to offend any self-respecting person.”

[4] United Parcel Service is, to Canada, a foreign company.

[5] Additional information may be found at www.epi.org and www.tradewatch.org.

Divided We Stumble

2007-03-05T11:14:00.000-08:00

For reasons historians will be dealing with for the next century, the nation is severely divided. The war, race, economic inequality -- these are the primary dividing forces, but regardless of the cause, the fact remains: we are two nations, a Red and a Blue. I'm writing today -- and you are reading -- a proposal to mend the rift.

Simply it is this. Both of the major political parties should nominate the same candidates for the highest offices in the land. The parties should meet in joint caucus and they should nominate two candidates; we'll call them Jones and Smith. The election in 2008 would still contain two slates, one having Smith as President, the other, Jones. It would thus be preferable, but not necessary, for one of the candidates to come from each party.

Prior to the caucus the current contenders for the nomination should each make a public statement withdrawing their names from consideration and endorsing the caucus. In my opinion, all of the Democratic Party's major candidates possess divisive images. Mrs. Clinton will never be accepted by the right wing of the Republican Party nor by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. If she were elected president, the nation would not only remain divided, but would perhaps find its differences even further accentuated. Mr. Obama, while an obviously attractive candidate, predictably will not heal the racial animosities that still prevail in the south and in many parts of the mid-west. John Edwards campaigned in 2004 on one issue, economic inequality. It is not likely that he can, with that one issue riding squarely on his shoulders, heal the nation.

Apart from Mayor Giuliani and Senator McCain I am not as familiar with the Republican candidates as I am with the Democratic. But it appears that Mr. Giuliani has, by his stand on certain hot-button issues, angered significant elements within his own party. It is not likely that his would be a healing administration. John McCain has, for what appear to be political reasons, sacrificed his natural persona as a straight-shooting centrist. Perhaps, if he would come to his senses and return to his authentic self, Senator McCain might be a candidate who could bring the nation together.

For absolutely impersonal reasons, I incline toward people resembling the junior Senator from Virginia, Jim Webb, as the ideal candidate for higher office. If we are to bring the nation together again we need leaders who have at least some appeal to partisans on both sides of the divide. Jim Webb was, in my opinion, a better Republican than the man he defeated in his race for the Senate, and a better Democrat than those who court support among their party's idealistic sub-groups. He is, in a word, a Republicrat, the sort of candidate the bi-partisan caucus ought to be seeking. But I will say no more about that.

Finally, it's not only this nation that needs reunification. The world itself is divided, and dangerously so. Humankind seems to be choosing up sides for the next "war to end all wars," a slogan that, unfortunately, may in this case be appropriate, since none of us may survive to fight the next war. The United States, despite its most recent history, remains the only world power that could conceivably calm the troubled waters stirred by terrorists and fanatical religionists of every stripe. A reunited America, committed to a new purpose, might very well emerge as a healing balm.

Of course, my recommendation is impractical, requiring too many leopards to change their spots. But as a wise man once wrote, "All great things are as difficult as they are noble." We shall see.

A Fundamental Analysis

2007-02-14T05:19:00.000-08:00

[Milady is an Emerson lover. She tells me that both the author, Diggins, and Ronald Reagan have misinterpreted the great transcendentalist. Geroge Will seems to share their mistake -- if milady's right and it is a mistake). I love Will's observation of James Madison as "the wisest" of the Founding Fathers. I also admire Will's candor expressed in the following line: "Hence Reagan's unique, and perhaps oxymoronic, doctrine -- conservatism without anxieties." No form of government is without anxieties and Will does us a service by reminding us of that fact. Methinks I am growing fonder of Mr. Will's commentaries.]

The Limits Of Sunniness

By George F. Will

The Washington Post

Sunday, February 11, 2007; B07

In this winter of their discontents, nostalgia for Ronald Reagan has become for many conservatives a substitute for thinking. This mental paralysis -- gratitude decaying into idolatry -- is sterile: Neither the man nor his moment will recur. Conservatives should face the fact that Reaganism cannot define conservatism.

That is one lesson of John Patrick Diggins's new book, " Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History." Diggins, a historian at the City University of New York, treats Reagan respectfully as an important subject in American intellectual history. The 1980s, he says, thoroughly joined politics to political theory. But he notes that Reagan's theory was radically unlike that of Edmund Burke, the founder of modern conservatism, and very like that of Burke's nemesis, Thomas Paine. Burke believed that the past is prescriptive because tradition is a repository of moral wisdom. Reagan frequently quoted Paine's preposterous cry that "we have it in our power to begin the world over again."

Diggins's thesis is that the 1980s were America's "Emersonian moment" because Reagan, a "political romantic" from the Midwest and West, echoed New England's Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Emerson was right," Reagan said several times of the man who wrote, "No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature." Hence Reagan's unique, and perhaps oxymoronic, doctrine -- conservatism without anxieties. Reagan's preternatural serenity derived from his conception of the supernatural.

Diggins says Reagan imbibed his mother's form of Christianity, a strand of 19th-century Unitarianism from which Reagan took a foundational belief that he expressed in a 1951 letter: "God couldn't create evil so the desires he planted in us are good." This logic -- God is good, therefore so are God-given desires -- leads to the Emersonian faith that we please God by pleasing ourselves. Therefore there is no need for the people to discipline their desires. So, no leader needs to suggest that the public has shortcomings and should engage in critical self-examination.

Diggins thinks that Reagan's religion "enables us to forget religion" because it banishes the idea of "a God of judgment and punishment." Reagan's popularity was largely the result of "his blaming government for problems that are inherent in democracy itself." To Reagan, the idea of problems inherent in democracy was unintelligible because it implied that there were inherent problems with the demos -- the people. There was nothing -- nothing-- in Reagan's thinking akin to Lincoln's melancholy fatalism, his belief (see his Second Inaugural) that the failings of the people on both sides of the Civil War were the reasons why "the war came."

As Diggins says, Reagan's "theory of government has little reference to the principles of the American founding." To the Founders, and especially to the wisest of them, James Madison, government's principal function is to resist, modulate and even frustrate the public's unruly passions, which arise from desires.

"The true conservatives, the founders," Diggins rightly says, constructed a government full of blocking mechanisms -- separations of powers, a bicameral legislature, and other checks and balances -- in order "to check the demands of the people." Madison's Constitution responds to the problem of human nature. "Reagan," says Diggins, "let human nature off the hook."
"An unmentionable irony," writes Diggins, is that big-government conservatism is an inevitable result of Reaganism. "Under Reagan, Americans could live off government and hate it at the same time. Americans blamed government for their dependence upon it." Unless people have a bad conscience about demanding big government -- a dispenser of unending entitlements -- they will get ever larger government. But how can people have a bad conscience after being told (in Reagan's First Inaugural) that they are all heroes? And after being assured that all their desires, which inevitably include desires for government-supplied entitlements, are good?
Similarly, Reagan said that the people never start wars, only governments do. But the Balkans reached a bloody boil because of the absence of effective government. Which describes Iraq today.

Because of Reagan's role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Diggins ranks him among the "three great liberators in American history" -- the others being Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt -- and among America's three or four greatest presidents. But, says Diggins, an Emersonian president who tells us our desires are necessarily good leaves much to be desired.

If the defining doctrine of the Republican Party is limited government, the party must move up from nostalgia and leaven its reverence for Reagan with respect for Madison. As Diggins says, Reaganism tells people comforting and flattering things that they want to hear; the Madisonian persuasion tells them sobering truths that they need to know

Why We Are In Iraq

2007-02-13T04:44:00.000-08:00

Project for the New American Century

Statement of Principles

June 3, 1997

American foreign and defense policy is adrift. Conservatives have criticized the incoherent policies of the Clinton Administration. They have also resisted isolationist impulses from within their own ranks. But conservatives have not confidently advanced a strategic vision of America's role in the world. They have not set forth guiding principles for American foreign policy. They have allowed differences over tactics to obscure potential agreement on strategic objectives. And they have not fought for a defense budget that would maintain American security and advance American interests in the new century. We aim to change this. We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership.

As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world's preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?

We are in danger of squandering the opportunity and failing the challenge. We are living off the capital -- both the military investments and the foreign policy achievements -- built up by past administrations. Cuts in foreign affairs and defense spending, inattention to the tools of statecraft, and inconstant leadership are making it increasingly difficult to sustain American influence around the world. And the promise of short-term commercial benefits threatens to override strategic considerations. As a consequence, we are jeopardizing the nation's ability to meet present threats and to deal with potentially greater challenges that lie ahead.

We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration's success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities.

Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership or the costs that are associated with its exercise. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership.

Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:

• we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;

• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;

• we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;

• we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.

Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.

Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush,

Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky, Steve Forbes,

Aaron Friedberg, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle,

Donald Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz,

Dan Quayle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen,

Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber, George Weigel, Paul Wolfowitz

[From: http://www.newamericancentury.org/]

Meaning Without Mendacity

2007-02-09T13:41:00.000-08:00

The subject is meaning, by which I do not mean the meanings we give words, but rather the meaning a lot of people declare they are seeking in their lives, the meaning life is supposed to have if – as they say – it is to be judged worth living. Even though meaning (as normally conceived) is largely ineffable, some religious people associate meaning with a gift from God, a fullness life would not have were it not for their devotion to the almighty. To religious people, meaning possesses some of the characteristics of “ultimate value.” Others, people of the New Age persuasion, see meaning as a state of being to be sought by “enlightenment,” and enlightenment is to be obtained by grasping the deeper meanings with which Being itself is supposedly endowed.

And certainly, if by “deeper meaning” we mean knowledge not given immediately by the senses or knowledge not apparent by an exercise of common sense, it must be so that Being does possess a deeper meaning. We do not learn the secrets of, say, quantum mechanics by sitting and watching sunsets; we must seek the deeper meanings of the world if we wish to acquire such knowledge. But then, neither the religious people nor those of the New Age would agree that that’s what they mean by the meaning they seek. Meaning has to be . . . well, something deeper than mere knowledge.

If by the word “obtain” we mean something like “reaching out and taking hold of,” then I am of the opinion that meaning is unobtainable. We may experience something like the Buddhist satori or Christian salvation, but when the rush of emotion passes, we still find ourselves wondering, “Is this it? Is this the meaning I’ve been seeking?” We may of course, answer “yes” and spend the rest of our lives in relative happiness, content with the meaning we have “obtained” from our experience.

But even the most devoted Christian convert or New Age devotee must occasionally examine the joy he or she has “gotten” and wonder how this joy differs from others. If they’re clever with words they may even manage to express the difference in a satisfying manner, but finally – if they’re really into thinking about such things – they may admit that what they were seeking as a meaning in their life was much more than merely “joy.” They were seeking meaning and to them meaning, at the very least, has to be something that produces joy. And that means it is not simply the joy produced. Once we face that realization and come to grips with the difference between the things that give us joy and the experience of joy itself, we may find ourselves in possession of an understanding of meaning that gives us a leg up on our search for it in our lives.

Meaning – in the meaningful sense – is an emotional experience, a feeling of worth, of value, of direction and purpose. It is a particular kind of joy, but it is not associated with an object “out there.” It emerges out of the simplest sort of internal realization, and that awareness is of oneself as a valuable person. By this I do not mean what a New Age therapist might prescribe as an affirmation repeatedly addressed to oneself in the hope that the “inner self” will sooner or later believe it to be true. I mean the reasoned acknowledgement of one’s value as a person in the world.

But again, I do not mean the sort of value we are presumed to have from the simple fact of being born. If that value were real in any sense other than the legal sense, questions of meaning would never arise. Real value emerges out of a person’s honest assessment of him- or herself as a being of positive worth. Let’s look at a few examples to see how that assessment might be made by people who might normally think of themselves as of no value to themselves or anyone else.

Consider the factory worker who has repeatedly been told that he is “only a cog in a wheel-gear,” a replaceable part, an expendable, and who, even if he has paid no attention to those assessments, might feel bored with the job he’s doing. How might this “worker bee” find meaning in his life. Well, lets say he is employed in Adam Smith’s famous pin factory, where we are told – and it’s true – that by working on an assembly line 20 workers can produce 100 times more pins than the same 20 men could produce if they each were working alone. The worker who merely sharpens the points after the pins are assembled, may trick himself into thinking his life is meaningless, but when he begins to think of himself as a member of a team that has made pins available to the world at a price that would never have been possible without him and his team mates, his life takes on more meaning than it had before.

Consider the woman who works “only” as a mother and housekeeper. Because she is not paid wages, or because her work does not seem as much fun or as stimulating as the work of the man in the pin factory, or the banker who provided the financing for the operation, she might feel that her life has no meaning. But this one is too easy. What can possibly be more meaningful than the work of a good mother, not to mention the less obvious fact that the good man, her husband, could not be nearly so productive as a pin factory worker if she were not taking care of the home front. The two of them are also a team, applying separation of labor theory to the family’s needs.

Consider the man who is out of work, taking welfare payments in order to live. Not much more need be said in order to see that he could easily feel his life has no meaning, no value. Can this man possibly find qualities in himself that might permit him to value himself as a person? Can nobility possibly exist in the bread line? Well, of course. The unemployed man knows in his heart when he is not doing all he can to find employment … and consequently, there must exist the man who knows the opposite, that he is exerting every effort to change his circumstances. In this man’s case we may find greater difficulty seeing how he could possibly find meaning in his life, but given that his circumstances are only more noticeable than the banker who could not see into the future and thus made more bad loans than he might have, or the entrepreneur who has miscalculated the market and gone bankrupt, harming all those he had employed, and we see that there are elements of nobility that may or may not express themselves in all of us when misfortune comes our way. The man in the bread line may hold his head meaningfully high when he knows he is doing his best to improve his circumstances.

None of these cases may actually come to pass. The factory worker, the housewife, and the unemployed man may all curse their circumstances and bemoan the lack of meaning in their lives, and when they do take that easier road, they will all be telling the absolute truth: their lives will have no meaning. Oh, they may each of them turn to some alternative source of joy – the church (as a social club), alcohol, daytime television – but unless those alternatives somehow convince them of their value as human beings, their lives will continue to seem meaningless. We may not know how to define it, but we know real value when we see it.

Something else may also happen with these people. They may indeed recognize themselves as valuable human beings, making pins, raising children, seeking work, and they may all, while living their meaningful lives, seek also to find greater meaning. They may seek to improve their education, to volunteer meaningful assistance to their community (through their church, perhaps), or they may merely set an example to others of how, even in dire straits, a person can still express noble qualities.

It should be easy enough to see that when we are already leading meaningful lives, we find ourselves energized. When we are leading meaningful lives, and know it, we see all around us the mirrored effects of meaningfulness working in the world. We see life becoming a living thing, in no way resembling the zombie-like existence of the man who feels victimized by “things.”

Joy, you see, is never an input to the human psyche. It’s what the psyche produces when it is in the presence of beauty or of greatness … and what can be a greater presence than the recognition of one’s self as a valuable and meaningful person … a thing of beauty that shall be a joy forever.

Spinoza on Hope

2007-02-07T06:20:00.000-08:00

Spinoza did not define "Hope" but if he had it would have gone something like this:

Hope is a mixed emotion of joy and sorrow associated with the idea of some future thing that we imagine as the cause of the emotion.

We are joyful when the idea of the future thing is more powerful in our minds, sorrowful when we are assaulted by fear that the future will not contain the thing hoped for. Hope differs from expectation in the degree of certainty we feel toward the future thing, expectation being the more certain. The object of an expectation can be either joyful or sorrowful, depending on the nature of the thing expected. The object of hope, on the other hand is always associated with joy.

With these definitions in mind we can see that hope would not be hope without the presence of a creative mind to imagine some future world in which may exist the object hoped for. A scientist, for example, might notice an anomaly in the current views held in some particular area of concern and, after some thought, conceive of a hypothetical solution to the problem. He would then set about experimentally to prove or disprove his theory, hoping to prove it but fearful that he might not.

On the other hand, a highly credulous person might be given a treasure map that he trusts completely to be valid. If he were a man of the "busy" sort he might hope to someday find the time and resources to search for the treasure. But he might nonetheless expect that if he had the resources the treasure would certainly be found. Such a person might spend his entire life wishing and dreaming, deriving a measure of joy out of the certainty that the treasure is where the map says it is.

We lead rational lives when we are able to transcend our hopes, questioning, first, whether their objects actually exist, and second, acting on the basis of the answers we obtain. The treasure seeker might, for instance, ask, "Why do I trust this map?" and being rational, may finally see that his trust is a product of the joy he feels in the expectation that the map is valid and that the treasure actually exists. He might then put the map away as an interesting artifact of human credulity. He would have learned something of value. But if he concludes that the map is indeed valid and that his reasons for believing so are beyond question, then he might safely and rationally center his life on the hope that he might someday be empowered to undertake the exploration. The emotions of his hopes would fluctuate as his efforts tended toward or away from his goal.

The ethical man hopes to lead the life he has imagined as the life a good man should lead. He may even have a rationally derived view of how such a man would behave when faced with temptations that might deflect him from his ideal. But even if the man has never swayed from "goodness," the joy he would derive from leading such a virtuous life would nevertheless always be tempered by the sorrowful thought that someday he might be unable to do the right thiing, even knowing it. He would hope to never fail but would never be free of doubt.

So, if we are human, as opposed to robotic creatures, we hope for something. We may even hope that someday the words of men like Jesus of Nazareth might be taken seriously, and that the superstitions that have grown up around him would be dispelled. We might then expect our lives to be filled more with treasure than with dubious maps.

What Are You, a God or a Mouse?

2006-12-02T09:45:00.000-08:00

The difficulty, you see, in writing about something called "Spinoza's God" is trying to convince your readers that you're actually talking about God. Spinoza so completely destroyed supernaturalism that it's almost impossible to fit what he repeatedly called "God" into any of the currently held understandings of God. God is supposed to be someone who looks out for the human race, who dictates the difference between right and wrong, who created the heavens and the earth, who's actually "up there" somewhere. Spinoza's God, being everywhere, being ambivalent toward humanity, and who, if he does create, creates something out of something else, not from "nothing," is none of those things. At first glance, the only thing Spinoza's God has going for him is the fact that you don't have to pretend to believe in her -- whatever that means -- for your life to start working. You just have to catch on to it that you're the most highly evolved species that ever existed on the earth, then find out what there is about you that makes that so, and act accordingly. Simple.

Well, OK. Maybe not so simple. Real simple would make it a matter of just choosing between the opposing thumb or the big brain that has become aware of itself. Just because we humans have figured out more of the world than, say, a chipmunk has, and just because we see our ability to manipulate things with our hands better than, say, a whale can, that doesn't make a featureless God any easier to respect as the God.

[I had come back here for the purpose of deleting the last blog, which was, after all, a reprint of someone else's work. While here, I discovered the above fragment of what was to be my next blog, if I had finished it. But it was this scrap that reminded me of what I was supposed to be doing with the time I have left of my life: writing a book called "Spinoza's God." And that's what I'm doing. I may blog again after the book is finished.]

Mouse Manners & Other Droppings

2006-10-30T07:55:00.000-08:00

You probably never noticed two mice considering a piece of cheese in a mouse trap, one brighter than the other. "After you, my dear."

That song, "They asked me how I knew my true love was true ..." was a setup. "They" were already sleeping with the guy's true love.

"Our father who art in heaven..." made sense only for Jesus.

Marie Antoinette probably thought the fools had cake.

Henry the Eighth set an example for how high church Anglicans are supposed to behave. No schlepping around on doctrine. If the broad don't lay male child eggs, bury her in two pieces.

A line from one of the Lethal Weapon flicks, [the Danny Glover character to Mel Gibson] ... "Did you ever meet a man you didn't kill?"

One version of the Book of Mark (no doubt a forgery) makes Jesus out as a homosexual (or a switcher at best). [Google "Clement Mar Saba."]

Two mud-splattered dogs chasing another on a godawful day. One of the chasers says to the other, "It's a bitch ain't it." Other replies: "It better be."

La Gioconda smile was brought on when the lady finally caught on to an off-color joke Leonardo had just told her and was trying to hide that fact.

George W. Bush actually flew 55 combat missions in Vietnam. He spread that National Guard story out of modesty.

Based on the only written records we have of them, neither Tom Sawyer nor Huckleberry Finn ever peed.

All politics is local horseshit.

And in a reverse vein: "One could do worse than be a swinger."

Mouseworld -- Three

2006-10-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I tried to say something brilliant about the causes of war ... and failed. Why did I fail? Because I committed one of the sneakiest of logical errors. I was explaining "war" as if all wars were the same, and because I traced the causes of war to non-specific concepts, specifically to the words "emotion" and "reason," as if all people were driven by the same mixture of those two abstractions. True, I did give an example that got down to cases, but in wrapping up my argument, by explaining the decision to go to war in Iraq as a failure to think, I never quite got inside the heads of the people who actually did the failing. I made only a half-vast attempt -- Newtonian inertia -- to explain the processes, when it was probably obvious to most of you (and certainly was to a young student) that there's more going on in our heads than can be explained by the laws of mechanics.

There is, though, a sense in which all wars are the same. They all are caused by human action. If that were not so, we could study war the way we study the weather, with equally marginal results. We may learn everything there is to know about typhoons and tornadoes without ever being able to do anything to prevent them. They are not caused by human action, so no amount of human action can change them. Leaning on the fact that all things that are caused by human action can be changed, I could say -- and did -- that war is certainly not inevitable. But that statement, true as it might be, says nothing about the processes of human thought which are, after all, the "intrapersonal structures" that lead us to do everything we do, both the stupid things and the wise things.

I briefly alluded yesterday to the dual aspects of human thought. Here's a bit more detail.

There exists for every idea, whether emotional or reasoned, a concomitant physical structure. If I think to run like hell when I see a hungry lion, the idea to run is accompanied by a bevy of neuronal and hormonal actions, all of which can (potentially) be explained by neurological and chemical analysis. Everything I do to escape the threat -- my running, my screaming for help, everything I might be observed to do -- can be understood by an analysis of the physical causes involved. But my desire to survive what I imagine to be a dangerous threat cannot be explained by any sort of physical analysis. My feelings of fear or of desperation certainly have counterparts in my physical structure, but the experiences themselves, the feelings, cannot be understood by an examination of my physical processes. Hence, Spinoza's two related claims, one, that the "the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things," and two, that the causes of things cannot be explained by reference to ideas, nor the causes of ideas by reference to things. Our ideas make sense only in the context of other ideas. The actions of the brain make sense only in relation to other physical causes.

We are physical beings, but our actions in the world are mediated by meaning. Said another way, we can explain every observed thing that happens by looking at the laws of physics and chemistry, but to understand human action we have to examine the world of meanings. Said still another way, human motivation is determined by what humans bring to the table. We do not act simply because we are physically compelled to act. We act because we, in our dual capacity as thinking bodies, determine ourselves to act. That is, we choose to do this or that, something or nothing, as physical beings who are motivated by meaning.

We are, thus, simultaneously engulfed by two disparate but related streams of causation. Those streams limit our ability to comprehend ourselves as meaning makers. Our physical selves set limits on our mental selves, and our mental selves are restricted by the paradoxes that crop up in our making of meaning. We are capable in our physical selves to do whatever is not denied by the laws of physics and chemistry, but those laws leave us with a finite set of possibilities. We are capable in our mental selves of thinking anything for which we can make up a word or an image or a feeling, but some of our words contradict themselves, some of our images cannot be translated into real physical things, and some of our feelings would have us destroy ourselves. We are, in a word, finitely limited beings. We cannot bootstrap ourselves out of our selves.

Philosophers of the materialist persuasion, focused on the physicality of the universe and of ourselves, have come to the conclusion that we are absolutely determined, that is, that human freedom is an illusion. Philosophers of a radical idealist bent have convinced themselves (here I use Schopenhauer's words) that "the world is my idea," or (Nietzsche) "all is determined by a will to power," or (Hegel) "men are driven by a quest for recognition." As true as any of these ideas may seem, they all derive their "truth" by attending to one or the other of the dual aspects of human nature. The reason none of them completely satisfies traces to the very point at which their proponents began to think. Starting with the physical world as the all-in-all of existence, the materialist finally finds it impossible to explain his own thoughts. Beginning with the mind (and disregarding the physical brain) the idealist reaches a point at which nothing is actually real as anything other than an idea.

The dual aspect way of thinking about the world doesn't necessarily satisfy us either. We're still stuck with what we have come to call "the human condition." But this particular brand of stuck-ness has going for it that it is not forced to deny reality. The mind and the body are both real. We can at least understand why the human condition is such a messy affair. Our minds and bodies limit each other. Because the dual aspect theory seems to be describing things as they actually are, it provides us a way to intellectualize (i.e., to know) the nature of our limits. Out of that knowing we can begin to act with more power (i.e., more freedom) than we would were we restricted to one or the other of the aspects of our being. We can begin to run our lives on the basis of what my other favorite philosopher (Bernard Lonergan) calls "transcendent being." Because we know the struggling nature of the processes going on in our selves, we can act as if we were standing outside our selves. We can look at our "reasons" as proposals for action, rather than as settled affairs. We can assess our motives as "questions to be answered." We can see ourselves as whole beings -- as minds and bodies -- rather than as robotic "things" driven by impulses of one or the other.

As transcendent beings we will, of course, not have been satisfied with a mere awareness of the data, or the "facts." (That's what motivates dumb animals. They see, they react.) Nor will we be satisfied with the first sense we make of the data. (That's what fools do. They believe everything they think.) We will instead have asked of our selves if in studying our ideas we have considered all possible interpretations of the data, and we will have continued the process until we have run out of questions to ask ourselves. Then, and only then, can we act responsibly, since that's what being responsible means. It means to know why we are doing what we're doing. It means to be transcendentally honest with ourselves and others about our actions in the world. We can do that because we will have no reason to be ashamed of what we're doing, since we have performed at the highest level of which a human being is capable.

Will we always succeed? No. Why not? because we are not God. We do not know all that we can know, we know only what we do know. But because we have acted responsibly, because from our transcendent position we have treated our ideas as if they were actually someone else's, we can with virtual certainty say we have done all that was humanly possible.

So there are now at least two ways to fail. We can fail because we have not acted transcendentally, or we can fail because we did and were incapable of doing better than what we did.

Mostly, we fail for the first reason. We have acted impulsively. We've seen the data, and like any animal have acted without thinking. We have made sense of the data, and acted without asking if that sense can stand up to the scrutiny of responsible inquiry. We have asked questions, but have stopped short of asking questions we know we should ask. We have acted as self-limiting beings, ending our quest for true responsibility at what may well be a comfortable place. We have not acted as powerfully or as freely as we might have. We have acted as prisoners of one or the other of the ways we are.

This way of understanding ourselves does not assure that we will act responsibly. We must still act, and knowing is not acting. But because we now can claim to understand what it means to act responsibly, we are better able to understand why the world is such a messy place. We can confess that we have not acted as responsible beings, and thereby put to rest any concern for why it is that bad things happen to nice people, and worse things to a world that could be better. We can take blame for the way it is, and perhaps out of a sense of conviction, begin to take responsibility.

Mouseworld -- Two

2006-10-26T16:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I half-heartedly promised that I would write a followup to that day's blog, the subject of which was, "why do bad things happen to nice people." The focus yesterday was, however, not specifically on the nice people that the bad things happen to, but rather upon the general structure of causes and effects. I fully intended to write today about the intrapersonal structure of causes, how it is that human beings, while nevertheless trapped in a macroscopic universe of causes and effects, still seem to possess the ability to change the world. But I was having some difficulty finding a good lead sentence and so procrastinated on beginning at all.

But then I mouse-clicked over to Miss Fairhope's blog and read some of the comments her readers had posted, one comment in particular. Miss Fairhope had written forcefully (and well) of her feelings about war, not just the war in Iraq, but all wars, and 'lowed as how she couldn't figure why it was that human beings could be so stupid. A commenter had this to say:

[Y]our blog of today was written through a sense of confessed naiveté, and as such was failing to understand the reality of things. One thing is what we'd like things to be and the other is how things are -the reality-, and that is especially true when it comes to the reality of man and the wars, little or large, he conducts.

Now, a logician might immediately cast aside the commenter's argument on the ground that it is circular. He (or she), trying to make a case (I suppose) for the inevitability of war, says that "the reality" is that we engage in war. Well, yes, we do, and that's the problem Miss Fairhope saw with our behavior. To merely admit the reality of war is not to justify or explain war. It is simply to restate the problem.

Well, as I say. That's how a logician might respond if his aim was merely to put down a vacuous argument. But in taking that path the logician would have made no headway in answering Miss Fairhope or in seeking the real causes of war. So, I decided to defer until another day the analysis of how personal freedom emerges from an ineluctable structure of causes and effects and take a look at one large class of effects, war, or to be more specific, why those who see war as an inevitable product of human nature are mistaken. That is, I want to see how the structure of causes and effects might work to produce results in which war would be the exception and not the rule.

First, the reality of the way the human mind works involves us in making decisions out of two great bodies of cause, reason and emotion. Between these two, we may find many differences but I want to concentrate on one of them. Reason is reflective. Emotion is impulsive. It is altogether fortunate that we can reason upon some things, and equally fortunate that we can be impulsive about others. Facing immediate and sudden danger, we would be foolish to reflect on the matter before acting. But if the situations we face do not necessarily involve immediate danger, if in fact we have available to us the time and means to weigh and marshal evidence before taking action, we would be more than foolish to "act without thinking."

Generally, the dangers for which war is the solution are of the second sort. In fact, a nation that goes to war without thinking would be almost certain to be unprepared. Typically, but not always, the decision to go to war takes place after a studied deliberation. So we can with reasonable assurance say that the activity we call war is of the reflective sort. We have the time and the means to consider the alternatives before actually loosing "the dogs of war."

Consider the example of the war in Iraq. [I will here assume that the reason given for that war was the real reason, the possibility that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, the means to produce more, and the will to use them.] First, a few facts.

(1) We were already fighting a limited police action in Afghanistan, seeking to bring to justice the criminal who had conspired to perpetrate a capital crime.

(2) In November 2002, at our insistence, the UN had deployed and empowered two teams of inspectors into Iraq, to determine the truth or falsehood of the WMD claims being made by the intelligence services in the US and Great Britain.

(3) The US, taking stock of its armed forces and noting their limitations, could also have legitimately concluded that it would be better to finish the work in Afghanistan before opening hostilities with Iraq.

With those three facts in mind, the administration might have decided -- key word, decided -- to ask the UN to increase the number of inspectors in Iraq and to extend the length of their mission. Behind that decision would have been the logical belief that with the inspectors in Iraq, looking over Saddam's shoulder, he would be relatively incapable of producing more weapons or of using the ones he allegedly possessed. If that policy were implemented in the UN then the US and its allies fighting in Afghanistan would have much more time and many more resources to bring the criminals to justice. Simple common sense....

Now this example shows clearly that there was nothing inevitable about going to war in Iraq. So why did we? Answer: because we failed to exercise an available option. We made a decision on the basis of something other than reason. We acted on the basis of what was either a reason other than the WMD threat, or we acted for reasons that could not be justified by reason.

Yesterday I used the example of a man who died for "evil" reasons, either incompetence, ignorance, or administrative failure. In each of the three chains of cause and effect I analyzed we saw that the problem was that the people involved had not used an available cure of which they were ignorant. The "evil" that killed the man was thus not inevitable in terms of what might have been. The cure might very well have been known if the doctors had been better educated. In the example of Iraq, we see a similar pattern. A "cure" was available. It was simply not used. The evil that followed -- war -- was thus a product of the failure of a few men to exercise simple human judgment.

The commenter might reply to this by pointing out that this is exactly what he meant by "what we'd like things to be." The "reality" is that the intelligent choice was not made. But if he meant by his comment that war is inevitable, then he must be saying that it is inevitable that men will always fail to use their minds reasonably, that they will inevitably be controlled by their emotions, that they will act on impulse, and not on reflective judgment. That this is not the case -- nor need it be -- is evidenced by the countless times throughout history in which men of wisdom and (yes!) virtue have acted on the basis of reason. We are as free to be reasonable as emotional.

But one thing explains -- but does not justify -- our failure to always be reasonable in cases where reason is possible (i.e., where the danger in not immediate and sudden). To act spontaneously on the basis of emotion is easier than to act reflectively out of reason. We must make a conscious effort to pause and reflect, and every effort requires energy. And if it is so that for every idea there exists a concatenated physical counterpart, then it is inevitable that the laws of inertia will assert themselves into our physico-mental efforts. We are thus prone to not-think rather than to-think.

But this does not mean or imply that reflective judgment is impossible or that the failure to judge is inevitable. Nor does it imply that evils such as war are natural. It means simply that war, like every other evil, is caused by a failure to exercise those qualities of our being that make us truly human. Wars may certainly happen, even when we judge correctly, but wars such as the one we are fighting in Iraq would never take place if we were ruled by reason.

Consider, for instance, that the inspection effort would finally have concluded that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, no factories to produce them, and consequently no will to use them. Perhaps we would by now have brought Osama bin Laden to justice, managed with the help of our allies to talk sense into the leader of Iraq, and brought about something like stability in the middle-east. And perhaps if the policy outlined above had been implemented, George W. Bush might have gone down in history as one of our greater presidents rather than as an abject failure.

Mouseworld -- One

2006-10-25T14:08:00.000-07:00

We continue to wonder why bad things happen to nice people, and for serious-minded folks, this wondering might translate to, what kind of God permits evil? The quick answer might be, the God we've got, because it certainly does appear that if there is a God, she's decided to let bad things happen to nice people. The far-right religionist might counter by explaining that there's no such thing as a completely nice person and that God has chosen to make an example of the marginally nice just to show what she meant by those ten commandments (or to show what a piss ant she can be ... on occasion).

Questions of this sort have come up here before -- or maybe it was over on Miss Fairhope's blog. In any case, the answers we got were nowhere near satisfactory. Which is not surprising since there's never going to be a totally satisfying explanation of why God would permit such things as World War I, typhus, and crop failures, not to mention the particular bad thing that popped into your mind when the question was asked. We've been trained, conditioned, or whipped into believing that for God to really be God she has to be on the lookout for the human race. It ought to be fairly clear that the question of why God permits evil would not come up if we had not been taught to think we're "the creator's pets." We still might wonder why bad stuff happens, but we wouldn't have the option of thinking that God had fallen down on the job. Maybe then we'd have a better chance of finding the real causes of evil.

Now, the key word here is "causes." Once we catch on that everything that happens has a cause we could begin to see things more rationally. We'd perhaps, first, modify our idea of what God is. Instead of thinking of her as a potentate or king or ruler of any kind, we might start thinking of her as the ultimate understanding of everything that is. Which is not to say that it is humanly possible to understand everything, but that there really is an intelligibility to everything, and that if God had a mind like ours it would contain a complete understanding of that intelligibility.
But for anything to be intelligible there must be some sort of regularity to it. That is, it must obey something like what we call the laws of nature, especially the law that demands that every effect have an intelligible cause. You can see that if that law were not true, there could never be said to be anything understandable, not even to God. She might understand a thing today, but if there were no assurance that the same causes would produce the same effects tomorrow then it wouldn't be right to say that God -- or anyone -- understands anything. If nature were truly random, then the claim that the universe is intelligible would be a lie.

Follow that trail just a little ways and you see that the way to understand why evil things happen is to seek to understand the causes that led them to happen. Take the case of a good man's dying of what might be a curable disease. Let's say he received treatment from a public health clinic and because the clinic made a wrong diagnosis or administered an ineffective medication, the man died. Well, why would God have permitted that to happen? Why didn't God make the doctors smarter? Well, it's obvious that by blaming God we're looking in an altogether wrong direction. We ought to be asking questions of the doctors themselves, or of the schools that trained them, or perhaps of the state that may not have provided enough funds to hire well-trained doctors. Looking in those directions, we might eventually come up with an explanation for why the bad thing happened to the man. We might find an intelligible series of causes and effects that led to the bad thing's happening.

In the process of examining this series of causes and effects we might get an insight into the nature of evil. We might see that in addition to the series of positive causes that led to the man's death -- bad diagnosis, wrong medication, improper funding -- there was also a series of negative causes, things not done. Because I started this by saying the man died of a curable disease, it's clear that he was killed by a series of bad choices. A cure existed but it was overlooked. The people involved in any of the three series of suggested causes may indeed have done something positive (but deadly), but at the same time they failed to do another positive (and therapeutic) right thing.

Now this may seem so obvious that one may wonder why I even chose to write it. But backing off from the view of the situation as a medical question, and taking a look at it as a theological question, we see that in addressing evil just this way we have answered one of the most basic questions theologians have had to deal with. If God is all powerful, if God is the creator of all that is, then (as we have asked above) why does God permit evil? How do we equate an all-powerful God with the fact of evil?

By regarding evil as the effect of a failure to do the right thing, we have removed God from the chain of causes and effects that have led to evil things happening. It was not God who failed. It was us. For some reason -- which is bound to be ultimately intelligible -- we have failed to do something we might have done to avoid evil. The responsibility for evil rests squarely on human shoulders. Speaking positively, we see that there's a strong connection between the things we do and the things that happen to us. But speaking negatively, we see that there's an even stronger connection between the things we did not do and the things that happen to us. When we act at our best, we act positively on the basis of what we know to be the right thing to do, but in many, many cases, our best is not good enough. And it is not merely that we do not know the right thing, but that we think we do know the right thing.

But there is hope in this way of viewing God -- especially the all-knowing contents of her mind. If there exists an ultimate intelligibility, and if we identify that existence with the abstraction we have named "God," then it follows that the purpose of our religious commitment ought and must be to seek to know what God knows. The Jesuit philosopher/theologian Bernard Lonergan spoke eloquently (and exhaustively) of this commitment to God in his masterpiece, Insight. He found that not only does the intelligibility I spoke of exist but that humankind appears to be consciously self-compelled, by what he called an unrestricted desire to know, to seek God, that is to seek the same understanding of reality that exists in God's mind. He makes the claim that we are religious by nature, and that the object of our religious persuasion is to learn the will of God.

This seems a neat place to end this first excursion into "Mouseworld." Perhaps the spirit will move tomorrow upon the Mouse's watery brain and lead him to make a further statement about the transcendent nature of the human soul.

[Hmmm. You say you didn't think that's what I was talking about? Well, surely you didn't think God was dictating this stuff.]

The Mendacious "October Surprise"

2006-10-21T06:23:00.000-07:00

With the November 7 election date less than three weeks away and significant Democratic gains in the House, Senate, and state governor races a distinct possibility, the nation's voters are on edge waiting for the illustrious Karl Rove to spring a last minute, last ditch surprise. They may be waiting in vain. In saying this, I mean to take nothing away from Rove. He has in the past proven his abilities as an election strategist, using frightening symbols and horrifying words to manipulate the minds of the American people. In 2004 he let loose a pack of bare-toothed hungry wolves upon the fragile psyches of the voters, and managed, with the help of a somewhat bent election mechanism in Ohio, to pull off victory. He has already sent a new ad to a few small market areas featuring none other than our old friend Osama bin Laden, still shouldering an automatic weapon and threatening us with devastation worse than "what happened before." But this ad, blatant in its attempt to create fear, is only a stalking horse, a teaser Rove has sent out to test the water. He wants to see if the same old tactic still has legs.

It hasn't. The television media rolled over to Rove in 2004 (probably because they were anxious to sell air time and didn't wish to offend the would-be purchaser), but this time, they're acting differently. Every reputable news channel ("not you Fox") ran clips of the new scare commercial and had their commentators identify it as nothing but what it was, a redeployment of an old tactic that has worn out its usefulness. Rove got his answer: This time the scare maneuver will not work.

At first, before I came to an even darker conclusion, I -- like everyone else -- thought Rove would finally come up with a tactic just as effective as the wolf pack. My favorite was a scheme in which Rove would have Cheney fake a heart attack and resign as VP. The current occupant of the White House would immediately appoint John McCain as Cheney's replacement, and off we would go to at least two more years of Fascist rule.

It didn't take me long to see that scam as a bit too risky even for Karl Rove. If the trick had failed and the Dems managed to win a majority in the House, and with McCain and not Cheney as the heir apparent, impeachment would be sure to follow. Cheney's presence as VP has served better than the Secret Service to keep the CO healthy.

So, with terror a dead issue and the war in Iraq an issue that would best be kept quiet; and with so-called family values having been scuttled by the well-publicized misdeeds of several Republican Congressmen, where could Rove look for an issue that would have even a bare chance of success? Taxes? Better not bring that up. The Dems will counter with the $7 billion a week of "your taxes, my fellow Americans" the mis-administration is squandering in Iraq. Can't run on the record either. There ain't nothing to brag about. Oh dear, what can we do?

The answer is obvious. Nothing. Let the Dems have the House and maybe a bare majority in the Senate. The person serving as president, and the remaining neocon Fascists in the House and Senate will still have enough power to make sure that the quagmire the current occupant has created will get even deeper during the next two years of "Democratic rule." (Watch for that, sports fans; that will be the keyword in the Fascist propaganda program over the next two years: "Democratic rule.")

The guys running the swamp at the present time didn't get there by being altogether stupid. After all, they're the ones who invested their hard-earned money in think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Group. Those organizations are peopled by scholars who are quite capable of seeing two years into the future. "OK, they reason," as any smart mouse would, "the world is a screwed-up mess, and quite frankly, we don't think the Dems can clean it up in two years, especially with only bare majorities in the Congress and a puppet Fascist in the White House. Let the Dems try ... and then empty the whole bag of shit at their feet in 2008."

Far fetched? I don't think so. A strategy of that ilk is at least within the visionary capabilities of the bright folks running the think tanks. And the Fascists who funded them have clearly demonstrated their ability to think long term. They started funding the think tanks and enrolling the religious right 30 years ago. Two years of hapless Democratic rule may be the final nail in the coffin of the form of government envisioned by the Founding Fathers and documented in the Constitution. Complete victory for the Fascists would finally be won, not by the usual tactic of stuffing ballot boxes with fraudulent votes and the heads of the voters with deceitful emotions. It would be won by giving the opposition an impossible task. How better to explain away even the fiascoes of the last six years than by handing the responsibility to "those loud mouth liberals who pretended to have all the answers"?

Far fetched? We shall see.

[Oh, my Lord! I just thought of another possible surprise the Fascists may engineer. I won't describe it in detail, but say only this: "Secret Service, be on your toes. The current occupant's life is in great danger.]

Mouse Tells the Mendacious Current Occupant of the White House What He Should Say to North Korea's Leader

2006-10-18T14:04:00.000-07:00

"I acknowledge that you have the right to defend yourself against your enemies. And I stipulate that in naming you as one of the three members of an 'Axis of Evil' I have openly declared that I am your enemy. I also completely understand, given our actions in Iraq and our belligerent attitude toward Iran, how you might feel threatened by us, by me in particular. In a word, you as the leader of a sovereign nation are completely within your right in taking the steps you have taken.

"But there is an alternative. By asking yourself how I came to think of North Korea as an evil state, you might then try to find a way to remove or change the behaviors that led me to that conclusion. That's one way people might act when they see that they are doing something offensive to their friends. You might ask yourself whether there is another way to raise revenue for your nation other than by selling missiles and other military hardware to my enemies and the enemies of my friends. You might ask yourself whether it is wise to spend nearly all of your nation's income on the maintenance of armies rather than on feeding your people. You might wonder whether it would be better to sit down with me in a friendly discussion of these and other issues rather than spending yourself further and further into debt.

"I have asked myself these very same questions in regard to what I have been doing in Iraq, and I venture to tell you that the answers I have been giving myself are just as distasteful to me as I imagine yours would be to you. I clearly made a mistake by arbitrarily naming you as an evil nation without first trying to settle our differences. I have clearly made a mistake by going to war with Iraq. I see now that my concerns for Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction might have better been resolved by other means, the UN's inspection teams being one of them. I see now that many -- perhaps most -- of the world's problems could be resolved if you and I and other national leaders were to act more like human beings than petulant children. I see that I have been as guilty as you have in not seeking peaceful solutions to the aches and pains of nationhood.

"You may wonder how I came to this sudden change of heart. It happened quite suddenly, and came about from a conversation I was having with one of my daughters. I don't recall exactly how the subject came up but my daughter had wondered why our history books were so filled with the exploits of people like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte when, as she said, 'those guys were not much more than empire building killers.' I know she didn't mean her question to have the effect it had -- at least, I don't think she did -- but I couldn't help but see that history might record me the same way, as an 'empire building killer.'

"That started me to thinking. I asked myself, 'Why did those historical figures do what they did?' I'm not a historian but I knew enough to realize that one of them, Alexander the Great, and maybe all of them were acting probably the only way they thought they could act. Alexander was born at a time when the Greek city states were constantly at each others' throats. It must have seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to conclude that it's either kill or be killed. He might easily have concluded that he had no choice but to go to war if he was to protect his people from certain death.

"It was not hard for me to see that in today's word it's not city states but nation states that are engaged in this constant state of war. Nor was it hard for me to see myself as just another man like Alexander. It was as I say easy because by that identification I could have have created for myself a measure of justification for the things I have been doing since taking office. But as you may know, I am also a Christian, and we Christians sometimes when we're in a quandary ask ourselves, 'What would Jesus do?' I got an answer that went something like what I am proposing to you. Jesus would ask us -- you and me -- to make sure that we put our love for humanity and for life itself at the forefront of all our relationships. He would advise us not merely to say that war is a 'last resort,' but actually to behave as if we honestly and completely believed what we were saying. He would ask us to find a way to live together in peace.

"When I heard those answers, I knew right then that I had not done enough to do God's will. I had acted in the way of a barbarian, a man who had never heard Jesus's message of love. And I committed myself -- then and there -- to speak to you as I am speaking at this moment. And yes, as you might imagine, I have told my advisers and other interested people what I was going to say to you, and as you might also imagine, they were adamantly opposed. 'Haven't we already tried to meet them halfway? Haven't we exhausted all possible means to avoid direct conflict?' I answered them as I am answering you: 'Have you ever heard me say to Kim Jung Il anything like the words I have told you I intend to say?' They could only shake their heads, and that told me -- and them -- that we had not exhausted all possibilities. We have not spoken as human beings who know the difference between right and wrong. We have, as I said earlier, acted as petulant children.

"Jesus, you see, had seen what Alexander had not been able to see. Jesus saw things as God might see them. He saw that we human beings are capable of behaving out of a deeper caring for humanity than we had at any time in history. He saw that we are in fact capable of acting in a manner reflecting a care for all of humankind and not for ourselves alone. I suppose, human minds beings what they are, he had no illusions that it would be easy. But you may be assured that, in speaking to you as I am, I am doing one of the easiest things I have ever done. I am speaking the unguarded and absolute truth and, as Jesus said it would, this truth has set me free. I am more of a man at this moment than I have ever been before, and if you take me at my word, if you agree with me that there is nothing in this world that we cannot accomplish if we apply our hearts, minds and souls to the task at hand. If we do that, I am confident we can find a way to live together as loving brothers.

"I pledge to you that these words are the truest I have ever spoken. They are the best I have within me. I pray their meaning will find a comfortable place in your heart and that you and I can henceforth set an example to all the world of how people might behave when they truly accept responsibility for themselves and for all of humankind.

"Thank you, and good evening."

The Mendacities of Democracy

2006-10-13T11:10:00.000-07:00

A commenter to the previous entry here pointed to a rather sophisticated blog that (with a large dollop of irony) suggested that the Foley scandal was an act of God. The theory embedded in that facetious suggestion was that the American people are so busy working and watching The Simpsons they have no time to get themselves informed about political matters. Because God has made us addicted to work and trivia we need something like a soap opera to get our attention, hence God, recognizing the flaw he designed into us, has intervened on our behalf. By exposing Congressman Foley’s flirtations, God sent us a wake-up call.

Now I will confess that the previous blog was written more in anger than by thought, but now that I have asked myself the important question, “Who were you pissed-off at, Frankie?” I see that, even when driven by emotion, the Mouse gets closer to the truth than “sophisticated bloggers” do when they think. I was angry at the so-called religious right, flabbergasted that they needed a bit of salacious trivia to call their attention to the political debauchery of the current administration. I suppose Glenn Greenwald, the “sophisticated blogger,” was making the same point, but he never comes right out and says where the fault lies. He never admits that the fault lies in the existential fact – recognized by Plato and James Madison – that pure democracy has a deadly flaw built into it: the (presumed) stupidity of the masses. It was in recognition of that fact that the Founding Fathers labored to form a government sheltered from the direct control of the people. They founded a republic, not a democracy. Laws were not to be enacted by the people, but by respected men who were presumably of nobler character and, thus, less likely to be swayed by selfish concerns.

In theory, that idea works. Even Madison’s opponents in the Constitution Convention of 1787 agreed with him that direct rule by the people would be folly. No subject so completely commanded the attention of the convention as that one: how to assure that the best among us would be elected. The Fathers finally concluded that, while risks would still exist – not all noble men are as noble as they seem – they were far less than would be the case in a pure democracy.

One of the risks given short shrift in 1787 has become a major problem in the 21st century. Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, the authors of The Federalist Papers, acknowledged that the people’s elected representatives in the Senate – particularly the representatives of the smaller states – might form alliances among themselves and thus create circumstances in which the minority would rule the majority. They saw this danger, likened it to the power then held by the British House of Lords, and decided. nevertheless, to accept the risk as the lesser of two evils. But none of the Founders could possibly have foreseen the emergence – crossing all the branches of government, even the judiciary – of the great alliances we know as political parties. Nor could they have foreseen the technological advances that would permit the parties to communicate their ideas almost directly into the minds of the people, nor the extent to which the means of communication would become, as it were, a tool in the hands of the parties, a tool they would use to shape the people’s thinking. The problem has become, not that a minority of the people might rule, but that the majority might be conditioned to accept bad rule as good.

A more optimistic Mouse might acknowledge these three facts – political parties, better communications, and the ignorance of the masses – and yet see in them the possibility that the first two could be the salvation of the last. But for that to happen the political parties must be presumed to have the education of the masses as their objective, and that is not the case. The parties seek to have the people adopt the parties’ objectives of their own. They do not wish to make the people think; they wish to make them believe.

From this observation much philosophical meander might follow, but perhaps one or two simpler illustrations might stand-in for a better and boring analysis. (It’s too early for a nap.) Take the words “Democrat” and “Republican.” If a candidate running as a Democrat can make the voters believe that all people deserve, by natural right, to have a college education, a good job, and the best health care money can buy (appealing ideas), and if these ideas can be instilled as the hard rock truth, then the word “democrat” may be made to seem a synonym for education, full employment, and good health. To achieve this desirable form of vocabulary, the Democratic politician would never speak of these halcyon benefits as things that must be paid for, but as things that are “yours by natural right, and anyone who would deny them to you is an enemy of the people.” The Republican, on the other hand, might speak of fiscal responsibility, or the right to life, or the death tax, and would do what he could to make his opponents seem spendthrifts, abortionists, and “tax-and-spenders.” Neither, if they were masters of the game, would ever make the mistake of presenting both sides of any of these issues. They would draw the world in two colors, black and white, and condemn as ninnies anyone who would see it differently. If I may be permitted one tiny excursion into philosophical thought, they would try to create a set of axioms from which the only logical conclusions make them seem like angels and their opponents like devils.

In a word, the Founding Fathers could never have imagined a world in which major alliances of elected officials would adopt as a means to their ends, making the ignorant masses even more ignorant. They could not have imagined that whole industries would emerge whose only product would be the shaping of human minds. They could not have imagined the nation as it has become.

Oh, we hear it said everyday that “the country is going to hell in a hand basket,” but the phrase always comes in the context of “it’s them that are carrying the basket, so trust us!!” We never hear it said that the problem lies exactly where Plato and Madison always knew it was, in the people, the ignorant people who can be bamboozled into swallowing the murder of a hundred thousand, while choking on the mote of a single perverted Congressman. True, as Greenwald suggests, the mote has forced the people to wake up a bit to the frauds and deceits of the current administration, but I wonder if anything will ever convince the people to lay the blame for their blindness where it belongs, squarely on themselves.

Yeah, sure, let’s say it’s a fact that the people all have to work and have to entertain themselves. But let’s also say it’s a fact that, in saying that, we have identified the fundamental problem of our nation. The belief that we lack the time to know the truth may work very well as an excuse, but it cannot justify our ignorance. In fact, nothing can, not even Plato’s wisdom or Madison’s fears. We may have needed God’s intervention to wake us up, but we are not by our nature – those two worthies notwithstanding – essentially uneducable. We have simply misaligned our priorities. You see, there’s always time to do what we want to do. We just, so far, have not wanted to take responsibility for the condition of the world. We have chosen to be entertained rather than to be informed, and to be informed rather than to question what we are told. And I seriously doubt that God's wakeup call will change that. The writers of The Simpsons are just too good at doing what they do. (Shit. I bet they think of themselves as part of the solution.)

As The Mouse Sees It

2006-10-10T09:33:00.000-07:00

Altogether too much is being made of that shitass Congressman who wrote "suggestive" emails to 16 year old boys. I hear that the so-called religious-right is having "second thoughts" about their allegiances, that because of this "incident" they're actually beginning to question the ethics of the sorry shits they have alligned themselves with. Pisses me off.

Since that "story" broke, over 500 Iraqi men, women, and children have been slaughtered in the streets of their homeland -- over 100,000 since the boob in the White House lied us into the murderous adventure he calls "the war on terrorism."

And the religious-right is having second thoughts because of the actions of one perverted pipsqueak? Holy shit.

A Sideways Way of Teaching

2006-10-07T11:05:00.000-07:00

...not exactly mendacious.

We were taught to sing an old song ... for a hidden reason ... for several hidden reasons....

Flow gently sweet Afton among thy green braes
Flow gently I'll sing thee a song to thy praise.
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream
Flow gently sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

I didn't know at that time -- I was maybe 10 or 11 -- what a love song was, but I somehow knew that this song was not a meaningless string of words. I suspect my classmates knew it, too. We were told that the words were written by a famous Scotsman, a poet, who had the same first name as one of my best friends. Perhaps we got our first clue about the song's importance from the word our teacher used to describe the poet: We understood fame.

We didn't understand love, or why a man would write a love song. Oh, I knew already about how love feels. I was deeply -- and silently -- in love with Gloria Brown, but I didn't have a name for what I felt. I just had the passion without the poetry.

When we finally mastered the melody, it seemed everyday after that, when the time came for music lessons, someone in the class would suggest that we sing Flow Gently Sweet Afton. Apparently I wasn't the only one who had found in that melody a sound to match his or her feeling. At that stage of our lives, we must all have been experiencing, for the first time, the strangeness of love.

The people who put together the fifth grade curriculum probably gave us that song to sing for the very purpose of letting us know that love was not something to be ashamed of, that even a famous poet had been in love. I'm not sure the lesson took. I don't recall that my classmates and I were suddenly transformed into troubadours pleading our love in song and word. The outward expressions came a few years later. So did our realization of the other lessons hidden in Robert Burns's poem. We could never have known at 10 or 11 how it is that love and death both get the deepest part of their meaning from each other. We did not understand the depth of Burns's love because we did not truly understand that Mary was dead.

I still have a hard time believing that our teachers sought to teach us that complex lesson. But on good days, when I'm able to break through the barriers of disillusionment raised by the realities of war and deceit, I can manage to imagine that our teachers, whether they intended it or not, were teaching us a lesson they already knew. For after all, our teachers were older. Listening to the beautiful sound we made with our unchanged voices, they must have heard in their own hearts the reverent pathos Burns had written. They knew of death. They knew of their own childhood loves. They knew, as we all know now, the painful contradiction of life's ending and love's permanence.

Oh, we were probably supposed to ask, "What's a brae?" and to wonder whether Mary would someday awaken from her dream. But the lady sitting there at the head of the class, moving her hands as if to conduct us as a choir, would have heard in our voices a more plaintive cry. All the teachers who have listened with their adult hearts to the gently flowing voices of childhood, would -- when their souls were awake -- have heard not simply the beginning of love as a sounded passion, but the unending joy of their first, last and always loves, and the knell of the certain end of life -- the murmuring harmony of passion and fear.

And those of my classmates who still exist must feel something of what this one feels ... abiding lessons, perhaps never meant to be taught, and yet, never forgotten.

The Mendacity "Factor"

2006-10-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

Bill O'Reilly has quite a following among the far-right wing of the Republican Party. His program, amusingly called, "The Factor," is the highest rated cable "news" show in the 8 PM (eastern) time slot.

I had (admittedly, not too often) wondered how he had managed that. By way of an answer, I had assumed that a large segment of the American listening public was in tune with O'Reilly's agenda, that being, essentially, that everything the current occupant of the White House and his cronies say is true, and anyone who disagrees is a traitor. But as it has turned out, that was an undeserved put-down of the American people.

I had read Al Franken's book -- I forget the name -- in which he claimed to have broken the Factor's code; he could tell when O'Reilly was lying and when he wasn't -- if his mouth was moving he was lying. But I put Franken's claim down to petty envy. O'Reilly, by being nothing more than a bullying nincompoop had obtained more success than Franken had with his barbed, and sometimes barbarous wit.

I have to confess that until last evening my opinion of O'Reilly was formed on only one actual viewing of his performance. He was interviewing the Commissioner of the IRS, trying to get to the bottom of some issue that was enjoying its 15 minutes in the spotlight. O'Reilly had an opinion that differed from the Commissioner's, and the way he managed to "win" the ensuing debate bordered upon brilliance. He would pose a question to the Commish and then let him answer ... after a fashion. If the first five or six words sounded like the Commissioner was going to make a point negative to O'Reilly's position, the Factor would loudly interrupt, supported no doubt by the technicians who were in control of the volume mixer backstage. If the Commissioner was about to say something mealy-mouthed and indecisive, O'Reilly would let him talk and then hop in to repeat the man's mealiest and most meaningless words, just to make sure, don't you see, the audience had heard correctly. It was theater of the absurd at its best. Nothing made sense, and wasn't supposed to.

But last evening I watched The Factor again, lured by what the program trailers claimed was to be an interview with Bob Woodward in which O'Reilly would put the quietus to the distortions of Woodward's latest book, State of Denial. For those of you who have been camped out in the inaccessible reaches of the Blue Ridge for the past week, let me explain. Woodward, God forbid, had claimed that the current occupant of the White House and his accomplices had from the beginning been in a "state of denial" regarding the lack of progress of the war in Iraq. Instead of telling us the truth, the CO et al had been spinning the war as a success story. This, of course, was a theme that would be absolute anathema to O'Reilly and his highest-rated followers. The ads pimping the show had repeatedly used the word "spin" in referring to Woodward's book. That fit well with The Factor's subtitle, which is something like, "the no-spin place" -- the exact words elude me.

O'Reilly started out by asking Woodward, "What would be the headline of your book?" Woodward answered, without so much as a blink of an eye, "The title says it, the administration is in a state of denial." O'Reilly seemed to roll a bit with the answer, but took it like a man with a purpose. He switched to his main argument. After getting Woodward to admit that the war hasn't yet been lost -- we're still there fighting -- O'Reilly then claimed that there are people "out there" who want to see us lose, and [State of Denial] is aiding and abetting these (he didn't say, but meant) traitors.

And that was the worst possible tack O'Reilly could have taken. Throughout the remainder of the interview, Woodward pounded home the point that the American people do not like being lied to, finally asking O'Reilly himself to answer a question: "Why doesn't he [the current occupant] just tell us straight-out that things are going badly?" O'Reilly answered: "He can't do that," elaborating by explaining that the [CO] cannot seem to be defeatist, that he must, in essence, serve as a cheerleader for the war effort.

Woodward pounced. "If he would make a speech in which he repeated his 9/11 strength, that it's going to be rough but we will prevail, if he would tell the American people the truth [he didn't say, for a change, but should have] his ratings would soar." O'Reilly muttered an unintelligible reply, and then signed off to interview none other than Miss Ann Coulter, a part of the show I missed (seeing as how I had switched to a cartoon channel).

O'Reilly's interview with Woodward finally revealed to me that Al Franken got it right right. The secret of O'Reilly's success rests firmly upon his ability to lie, and the most egregious lie of all is the one bleated in his sub-title, "the no-spin zone" (maybe that's the right wording). He had, in defending the CO's repeated lies to the American people, said straight-out that the CO cannot tell the truth about the war, that he must "spin" the truth into a pep talk. This not only undercut O'Reilly's primary lie -- "no spin here" -- but cast the CO in a role so unpresidential we ought, out of justice to real presidents, ask for a refund of the salary we have been paying the current occupant for the past five-going-on-six years.

Oh, and yes, we ought also to change the rating scheme we've applied to O'Reilly's show. Make it the highest rated cable farce in the 8 PM (eastern) time slot.

Mendacity Becomes Treasonous

2006-10-02T09:39:00.000-07:00

“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she cannot recall then-CIA chief George Tenet warning her of an impending al-Qaida attack in the United States, as a new book claims he did two months before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

" ‘What I am quite certain of is that I would remember if I was told, as this account apparently says, that there was about to be an attack in the United States, and the idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible,’ Rice said.”

Yes, Miss Rice, I also find that incomprehensible. And yet, the two people who made that report to you – Tenet and the CIA’s top counter-terrorist official Cofer Black -- are both quite sure that they not only made the report but that you seemed to brush them off. In other words, the report was in fact made to you, my dear, and for some reason you are now claiming that it wasn’t. Let me suggest a reason.

Not only did you hear the report, but you were sufficiently convinced of its credibility that you reported it to the current occupant of the White House. Long discussions ensued with, not only the CO and his political advisor, but with VP Cheney as well. The conclusion of the meeting was that, if true, the attack would finally provide the “another Pearl Harbor” the administration had been longing for so that it could open hostilities with Iraq.

Yes, dear lady, it is absolutely inconceivable that you would not have recalled the report, or that you would not have reported it to the White House. More inconceivable to me – but obviously not to you – is that the report would have been considered good news, but that is the only conclusion I have been able to reach given the inconceivability of your not remembering.

Mouse Versus the Volcano

2006-10-01T08:43:00.000-07:00

The case for global warming rests on indisputable evidence: (1) Actual temperature measurements, and (2) Visible effects, e.g., glacial melting.

The question of whether human activities contribute to global warming ought to be just as easily resolved, but that question is still debated. The case for human causation is grounded in four facts: (1) That carbon dioxide (CO2) causes so-called greenhouse effects, (2) That human activities add more CO2 to the atmosphere than would be the case if humans still lived in caves, (3) That the natural system of CO2 balancing – primarily photosynthesis – has itself been reduced by human-caused deforestation, and (4) That in any case, human processes add CO2 to the atmosphere at a faster rate than the natural systems can handle. None of the facts has been seriously disputed. Click here for a graphic overview of the global warming problem.

Nevertheless, the case for human causation is still debated. This would not be so surprising if the objectors were evenly spread across the political spectrum, but they are not. Politicians in America who call themselves liberals are almost 100% in agreement that human activities contribute to global warming, while a high proportion of those who call themselves conservatives disagree. Given that the facts involved in deciding the issue are essentially scientific in nature, it is difficult to understand how and why a split along political lines has occurred.

As I blogged yesterday, it is understandable why corporations that would be adversely affected by remedial actions are among the objectors. They are and necessarily must be in business to make profits. That they have funded conservative leaning think tank organizations to make a case against human involvement naturally follows. One of the early presentations of the case-against appeared in 1997 shortly after the liberal president had declared a desire to enter into an international treaty agreement to combat global warming. [The points made in that broadside have since been refuted, but the assault continues.]

The anomaly, though, does not lie in the fact that corporations would seek to prevent their ox from being gored, but lies rather in why the conservative political wing would appear to have joined their effort. Ultra-partisan liberals may argue that the conservatives are “bought-and-paid-for” cronies of the oil industry, but let me suggest that their behavior can better be explained without such rancorous accusations. They are philosophical true believers in the libertarian teachings of Adam Smith, arguably the most important economist who ever lived. The following is an excerpt from my blog of July 17, 2006.

“His classic book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, has rightfully been acknowledged as the most fundamental of the intellectual building blocks that undergird the capitalist system. The most famous quotation from that book has become to the capitalist what the first commandment of the Decalogue was to the Jewish people. In a single sentence, Smith defined the guiding principle that has ever since guided capitalist theory.

" ‘By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he [the industrialist] intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.’ [Book IV, chapter 2]”

The unintended “end” Smith referred to was – and note this well – the maximization of industrial output. The case has been conclusively made that no system of central planning can come close to matching the efficiency of the capitalist system in achieving that end. To debate the point would be folly. But a similarly effective case has also been made pointing up the difference between maximizing industrial output and maximizing the “general welfare.” If, for instance, a subset of the industrial base were engaged in the manufacture of harmful products, e.g., tobacco, the more efficient the industry, the worse off will be the people.

An analytical case can also be made between the ideal of human freedom and the underlying principles of laissez faire capitalism. If men ought to be free then they ought to be left alone to conduct their legal business affairs without government interference. As compelling as this argument seems to be it hinges upon a definition of “freedom” that does not square with the most fundamental lesson of American history. In our republic we are free to determine the laws by which we shall be governed. And given that every law infringes someone’s freedom, it is fundamental to the American system that we have engaged ourselves in government primarily for the purpose of infringing our freedom. If individuals were left to their own devices, we can be assured that society would be a much more dangerous place. It would perhaps not be absolutely out of control because human beings still possess a natural desire to survive that could be trusted to provide a semblance of order to their lives even without formal government, but in view of the disagreements that persist, even with government, life would still be a messy affair.

When, however, the desire to survive is seen to apply to corporations as well as to flesh and blood humanity, the achievement of even minimal order cannot be so easily trusted. Legally speaking, corporations are persons, but they differ from real persons in one significant respect: corporations have no conscience. I do not say this maliciously, but simply as a statement of fact. Conscience-stricken human beings will occasionally act in ways that can only be interpreted as for the common good. That is, we may lay aside our own immediate best interest in exchange for an indirect socially desirable benefit. But as Adam Smith said, not exactly in these words, the enterprise that works for the good of society acts in a suicidal manner. So we may safely observe that when Exxon/Mobil and Phillip Morris seek to influence the people to believe that their products are not harmful, they act exactly as good corporations should act. They act in an absolutely selfish manner. They desire to survive.

The conservative movement in America has become, on one of its political sides, committed to Smithian economic principles, and on the other, to what should be (if words possess meanings) a diametrically opposed set of ideas, the Christian religion. On the first side they have overlooked the difference between maximum production and maximum happiness. They have in that regard catered to and promoted the consumerist attitude that pervades American society, that having more equates to having happiness. With that idea firmly implanted in the public’s mind, it follows that the unquestionable benefits of Smithian economics ought to appeal to politicians of both the liberal and conservative stripe. But it has been only the conservatives who have permitted themselves to be wholly committed to the idea that what’s good for big oil is good for America. They have bought into Smith’s invisible hand as if it were a panacea to all social ills. They have overlooked that the hand is sometimes balled into a fist.

With the Smithian mindset firmly imprinted on their thinking, it is no small wonder that the conservatives are more prone to believe the propaganda being doled out by the oil and coal industries. Even though both parties have succumbed to the consumerist persuasion, the liberals seem at least capable of listening to the arguments for and against human involvement in global warming without becoming embroiled in true believer-like reactions. They are perhaps not totally unselfish in this regard, their constituencies being more environmentally conscious, but that observation merely pushes the concern one level deeper: why are environmentally conscious people better listeners?

The case finally comes to this question: Has the conservative mindset been so infected by Smithian economic dogma that it is now incapable of thinking outside that box?

I mentioned yesterday a subcommittee hearing that I witnessed on C-Span. For the better part of four hours the congressmen threw questions (and speeches) at six panelists, three of whom were advocates of the “hockey stick” view of global warming, and three of whom had questioned the statistical methods of the other three. Apparently, none of the six panelists disagreed on the larger question. When a young liberal congressman from Washington state asked the panelists to raise their hands if they had any doubts about human involvement in global warming, no hands were raised. The congressman then, in a few words, pointed out that one of the oil companies had decided to get on board with the environmental movement and its global warming concerns. The company had done several things, which the congressman summarized, and having done so, actually found that they had cut their costs by $300 million. Within a matter of less than five minutes later, the conservative chairman of the main committee spoke up. And what did he say. “It’s going to cost too much.” He had been sitting right there, and unless he had fallen asleep, had heard the young congressman point out that by doing the right thing, one company had actually saved money, and yet ….

Well, you get the picture. We may add to the oil company’s experience the fact that many of the things home owners can do – such as using compact fluorescent light bulbs in lieu of normal incandescent bulbs – will produce savings while reducing power consumption. And as Steve Brown said Friday evening, here in Virginia, when we use electricity in our homes we’re actually burning coal, the worst CO2 offender.

Finally, if it turns out that global warming does involve human action, we ought to be thankful. We can do something about human activities. But if the global warming we’re experiencing is entirely natural, then we had better hope and pray that the predicted effects are grossly exaggerated, because if they’re not, then the human race is in for a terrible future.

The Mouse in Limbo

2006-09-30T11:18:00.000-07:00

Last night Mrs. Mouse & I attended a talk on global warming sponsored by the local Democratic Committee and delivered by Rev. Steve Brown, Director of Virginia Interfaith Power and Light. This county -- named for James Madison -- is largely Republican, so we were careful to advertise the event as a non-partisan, religious gathering. We sent letters to all of the local ministers outlining the program and asking their help in getting their congregations to attend. Indeed, the final newspaper announcement appeared in the religious section, and indeed again, the speaker was none other than a minister of the Presbyterian faith.

So, who attended. With four exceptions, no one other than the same cadre of Democratic activists who attend all the events sponsored by the Committee. The exceptions? The minister of the local Episcopal Church, the minister (and his wife) of the Presbyterian Church where the event was held, and a man well-known in the community for his devotion to what the Mouse calls "true Christian principles," care for the poor, love of his God, and devotion to doing what he can to improve the lives of everyone. I do not know the voting habits of the four "strangers," but apart from them, I can say for sure there was not a person there who is of the Republican persuasion.

To be honest, that was expected. I cannot recall ever seeing a Republican at any Madison County event that promised to deal with liberal or progressive issues. But then, how and why has it come about that global warming is considered a liberal issue? If 98% of the scientific community is right about its worldwide catastrophic effects, global warming is a human issue. To the extent we think of it as a problem that can be batted around by politicians and pressure groups until it just goes away, we are disastrously mistaken.

Think about one of the facts presented last night. Hurricane Katrina affected a coastline about 90 miles long and produced 150,000 refugees. Global warming will affect every coastline in the world and could produce more than 100,000,000 refugees, that's one hundred million. Katrina killed less than 1,000 people. Global warming may kill millions.

Madison County's Republicans are not the only ostriches. The Washington Post, three days ago ran a story focusing on the report just released by NASA's chief climatologist, James Hanson, in which the facts were spelled out as clearly as could be. The article appeared on page A22. I recently blogged about a subcommittee hearing that ran on C-Span, in which the debate centered not upon what to do, but rather upon whether the statistical methods employed in the famous "hockey stick" report employed a method different from another statistical method -- and those people, your elected representatives, were serious!

Let me say something about that "hockey stick," where it got its name. If you track the ratio of CO2 to temperature change over the past 450,000 years you get a correlation that is essentially perfect. That is, as the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere rises, temperature also rises. As CO2 falls, temperature falls. Smooth out the minor squiggles, and you get two curves that are essentially parallel. The interesting thing is that at the peak temperatures -- seven of them over the 450 millenia -- the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere topped out at 300 parts per million (PPM). If you draw a trend line connecting those high spots, you get a more-or-less straight line. That's the handle of the hockey stick. Now look at the most recent measures of CO2 in the atmosphere. The number is 380 PPM, almost 30% higher than at any point in the measured past. What's more, if you project the current trend of CO2 being put into the atmosphere into the future, you get a line running up at a near perfect 90 degree angle, the only slope being that brought about by the passage of time. Connect that line to the straight line of the handle, and you get the hockey stick's blade, a graph that shows CO2 shooting to almost double any amount observed in the past.

Now recall the almost perfect correlation between CO2 in the atmosphere and temperature, and you get the fact that, unless we do something pretty soon, the earth is going to be hotter than it has ever been in the past 450,000 years. When that happens, the polar ice caps will melt, sea levels will rise by 40-60 feet, climate patterns will dramatically change, and many thousands of living species will cease to exist, one of them perhaps the species homo sapiens.

In any case, human life will be in grave danger.

So, back to the question. How has it come about that global warming has been considered a liberal issue? Surely liberals are not the only ones who can read and comprehend the meanings of "hockey stick" graphs and other scientific facts. Surely liberals are not the only ones who, when faced with death-dealing predictions, would be concerned. And surely liberals are not the only ones who will be affected by global warming.

A possible answer -- in fact, the most likely answer -- for the blindness of certain partisans lies in the fact that certain economic entities -- Exxon/Mobil and Shell Oil -- have taken action to distort the facts associated with global warming. They are doing this because they perceive that some of the things we might do to save ourselves from the worst effects of global warming will cause their profits to fall. If for example, people start buying high-mileage automobiles and start using other than oil-based fuels, Exxon will certainly sell less gasoline. The coal industry as well has begun to fight back against the incontestable fact that coal is the worst of the CO2 offenders. I have in the past several days seen at least three TV commercials vouching for the cleanness of coal, the opposite of the truth. In short, the industries affected by what we might do to avert global disaster have instituted a brain-washing campaign to make the American people believe the opposite of the truth ... and it is working, since even some liberals have bought the story.

Add to this the apparent fact that the present occupant of the White House and his fellow travelers in the legislature are more the servants of the corporations than of the people, and the answer to our question becomes patently clear. We're in for big time trouble because corporations (understandably, because their conscience is focused on the bottom line) and our government (unforgivably) have managed to sell us a bill of goods. They've told us we're playing a friendly game of Bingo when in fact we're playing Russian Roulette with all the chambers loaded.

I've discussed in the past, right here, the underlying reasons why some government officials have made their mistakes. I don't for a minute think they're all evil men, but I do think they have been persuaded by a philosophy that is fundamentally flawed. As I say, I've talked about that before, but tomorrow I'm going to talk about it some more. In the meanwhile, be assured that there is hope. If no other message was made clear last night, it was that the means are available with current technology to head-off the worst effects of global warming. All that's needed is the moral and political will to act.

Getting Beyond Mendacity

2006-09-28T12:11:00.000-07:00

On the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks Newsweek ran an article questioning the role of religion in the deeds, not only of 9/11, but for many thousands of similar atrocities that have occurred throughout history. The analysis got my attention because it placed emphasis on the epistemological methods of the religious mind. "Tell a devout Christian ... that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever."

It may be argued that the word "devout" nuances the remark so significantly that it might apply only to Christians of the Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson ilk, but there is no Christian of any persuasion who does not ground his beliefs in one or more of the "incredible claim[s]" of scripture.

In a discussion with several acquaintances about the article, one of them, a frequent commenter on this blog, made this statement: "So what do you care? If you don't believe the way that I do why do you care what I think about hell or God or salvation?" The person who made the statement had not grasped that the Newsweek article did not deal with what he or any other person believes, but rather how he came to that belief and why he thinks it's valid.

Now, I grant you that when we attempt to trace any belief about ultimate reality to its source, we eventually come to a place we cannot get beyond. Some cause-like things must forever remain unknown for the simple reason that the records have been obliterated. The Big Bang -- which perhaps ought to be called "the great evidence shredder" -- took care of a lot of that destruction. For very practical reasons we cannot go beyond that point in our search for reality, but that fact has not put the quietus to the human imagination. We can still believe things for which no valid reason exists.

But as I said, I'm not concerned with beliefs as such, but only with the method used to form them. A person may, for example, experience a deep and meaningful joy in believing that The Koran is the final word of God, and may place great faith in the men-more-learned-than-I who interpret the words of The Prophet in such a way as to justify the killing of all non-repentant infidels. The joy the person experiences provides evidence enough for him to "know," beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it is okay to fly airplanes into tall buildings.

On the other hand, the person may be of a Christian persuasion and may have had a direct and joyful experience of God, inspired by certain statements from the Bible. Because this Christian gentleman is not flying airplanes into tall buildings, because he is in fact leading an ideal Christian life and enjoying the rewards that usually accrue to the pious, the joy of his experience vouches for and reinforces his belief in the authenticity of the written words that inspired it. He has arrived at a knowledge of the truth by way of his feelings. Joy has convinced him.

It may never occur to the Christian convinced by his feelings that he and the Muslim terrorist share the same epistemology. They both believe something simply because if feels good.

What does this say, then, about all religious beliefs? Are they all grounded in emotions?

Well no. Some are grounded in axioms that may or may not be true. John 3:16 is such an axiom. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life." True, those who immediately believe this axiom experience a sort of joy that may be likened to the joy experienced by those who have a direct experience of God. But the source of that joy is so easily seen as superficial -- who wouldn't get joy from everlasting life? -- most religionists who think at all are not persuaded simply by John's promise. They might then assume the statement to be true and seek to work out a reasoned "plan of salvation" grounded in the notions (1) that God cares, and (2) that God cares enough that he would sacrifice his son. (We leave unquestioned the means by which God sired the son.) A complex theology (or Christology) follows: original sin, redemption from sin by blood sacrifice, eternal life, etc etc. If that theology works, it also will produce a certain sort of joy. The superficial joy obtained by believing in life everlasting is now intensified by a reasonable workout explaining everything.

But by grounding his belief in a reasoned theology the Christian has opened his belief to the normal criticisms aimed at all reasoned systems. The most fundamental of those criticisms involves the fact that all genuine axioms are unproven and unprovable, and consequently, they need some way to test their validity. One way lies in applying the axioms to real world models of known authenticity. We may ask, as the Corinthians asked Paul, questions about the nature of the afterlife, what form the body shall take after the resurrection? The answer, as delivered by Paul, required the creation of another axiom, another unproven and unprovable "fact": The "incorruptible" soul alone shall be resurrected. From this has naturally followed "disputations" and "concerns" lest the "whosoever" referred to in John's promise be not flesh and blood as was seen in the risen Christ, but some other sort of "person," the nature of which remains (to this day) mysterious.

As more and more axioms are created to resolve "concerns" we eventually arrive at a system so shot through with unproven and unprovable statements that we would be justified in calling it "imagined" rather than "reasoned."

Nevertheless, experiences of God are real. To deny their reality would be to deny the reported experiences of millions. They occur to believers of all religions and have generally been interpreted as experiences of another world. Such experiences are of two sorts. One comes without form or shape, only as a feeling as if we were suddenly filled with great knowledge and the whole of eternity were opened to us. Another form of the God-experience is more like a vision, a seen view in which objects appear: faces, gates, clouds, great lights. This second sort of experience also conveys to us a feeling of great knowledge or power, and so may be understood as a conditioned form of the first sort of experience. A Christian might experience gates and faces like those artists have created for Jesus. (Paul himself heard only a voice.) A Hindu might see Nirvana unfolding as an altogether different experience, filled with symbols from his own real-world life.

But when we finally judge the reality of these experiences, we see that it is the experience that is real, and not the things (if any) which appeared in the experience. We have had what the Buddhists call satori, an ineffable experience of the "All."

I mention these apparently diversionary details to introduce the possibility that there may in fact be a ground greater than mere joy that can be appealed to as a justification for some forms of religion. If we forget the joy, and focus only upon the imageless content of the satori, we see that it has something to do with knowing, more to do with a sense of totality, and all to do with an awareness of ourselves as a part of whatever eternity is. We experience ourselves as if we were infinite.

So, what sort of axioms might we concoct that would explain our experience. Well, we might try these two: (1) the All is infinite, and (2) we relate to the All as effects in an infinite stream of causes and effects. Then, if we feel the need -- born in our culture -- to have a God, we may consider ourselves as natural and necessary parts of an infinite God. And we may do this without too much fear that our axioms will be subject to disapproval, since to disprove them, one would have to reach the end point of an infinity, a point which does not exist.

And this is what some folks call natural religion, a religion that does not require us to doubt the reality of what seems most real to us. True, this religion may not provide us an eternal life, but if we are already parts of an infinite being, we must in some very real sense already have eternal life. Just a thought, but one that has an appeal, both to what is undoubtedly real and that which will forever remain mysterious to the living.

True Mendacious Occurrences

2006-09-27T08:33:00.000-07:00

After delivering myself of that great body of unforgettable truth that appears as yesterday's blog (actually I'm writing this yesterday, too) I decided that I needed a bit of relaxation. Too much earthshaking knowledge in one day can lead to a frightful distemper. So I went to my bookshelf hoping to find there an antidote for the disease.

I happened to espy, tucked away between two huge volumes of assorted lore, a little book-like thing that did more than any man could ask for by way of dispelling an approaching case of the heebie-jeebies. The volume -- I hesitate to call it a book -- bears the title, Eating Democrats, Alien Porn, The Zambian Space Program, and other True Remarkable Occurrences. Beneath the title, in the place normally reserved for the author's name, appears a "truthful" statement intended to explain how this collection came into being. It says it was "Compiled and Annotated by John Train, Illustrated by Pierre Le-Tan, Preface by George Plimpton," all of which has the appearance of truth. Mr. Train was at the time a financial guru gainfully employed by Forbes magazine, and Mr. Le-Tan had earned a measure of fame as a cover artist for The New Yorker and as the writer/illustrator of three children's books. The late Mr. Plimpton needs no introduction, as his involvement in matters of the sort represented by this book had, even before his untimely passing, become a distinguished exhibit in America's museum of foolishness.

But enough of this preambulation. The remarkable occurrences compiled by Mr. Train and illustrated by etc etc etc has provided your (now) more humble Mouse protection aplenty from the overdose of thinking with which he had been afflicted. The potions assembled between the smallish covers of this epi-tome, are designed to cure ailments of all sorts, though -- it must be admitted -- some of the remedies may have side effects. Of that number, one stands out. Here it is, word for word, exactly as the compiler delivered it. This is from the section entitled Affairs of State and bears the title, Chops Populi.

Victor Biaka-Boda, who represented the Ivory Coast in the French Senate, set off on a tour of the hinterlands in January 1950 to let the people know where he stood on the issues, and to understand their concern -- one of which was apparently the food supply. His constituents ate him.

(A footnote describes Biaka-Boda as a "small, thin, worried-looking man.")

This would not be funny if it were not true. 'Twould be just another of the anecdotes for which the French are famous. I'm sure you remember Charles DeGaulle. Need I say more?

Mr. Train has not exactly overwhelmed us with volume. There cannot be more than 50 remarkable occurrences total, but as people like Plimpton say when they are being serious, what they lack in number they make up for by the thinness of the volume. My favorite -- and I will confess to a bias here -- is entitled Hare Trigger. It appears on page 39, in the section called Sport.

Near Louisville, Kentucky, a rabbit reached out of a hunter's game bag, pulled the trigger of his gun, and shot him in the foot. -- The New Yorker, May 1947.

Unlike the episode of the unfortunate Mr. Biaka-Boda, the truth of this tale may be doubted. It seems to me just possible that the hunter accidentally shot himself in the foot and concocted the story of the rabbit, not only to maintain his good name as a careful hunter, but to earn himself a place in history as the only man ever shot by a rabbit. Several of the occurrences in the book are of a similar sort, stories that may have a measure of fact about them but which could be understood differently.

Finally, this one, taken from the writing of a genuine authority. Train gave it the title, Cover-up.

Of Pope John's trial at the Council of Constance in 1414-1418, Gibbon records that "The most scandalous charges were suppressed; the vicar of Christ was only accused of piracy, rape, murder, sodomy, and incest."

Train's footnote perhaps explains why the trial lasted four-going-on-five years. "The council was also attended by seven hundred harlots, according to reliable authorities -- fifteen hundred, according to others."

The book, published in 1978, is probably out of print, but can probably be obtained from one of the internet's used book markets. [Parental guidance advised.]

The Mind's Mendacity

2006-09-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

The notion persists that the universe is somehow mathematical. Nevertheless, to move from Galileo’s and Einstein’s descriptions of the behavior of inanimate forms, to Watson and Crick, who dealt in the stuff of life itself, may seem a leap from one mathematics to an entirely different one. The equations describing acceleration and energy seem distinct from the combinatorial mathematics slowly emerging as a depiction of the way DNA relates to life. One is, at best, the stage upon which life is played out, while the other relates directly to the script the players follow. Nevertheless, the fact that, in theory, both can be described mathematically suggests that mathematics is the language spoken in the mind of God.

Let’s assume that’s so. Let’s say that not only can the universe and all that’s in it be described in mathematical terms, but that the equations possess the characteristic of all genuine scientific laws, that they can be manipulated to predict the future.

If these assumptions are granted, then it would appear that the great mathematician in the sky knows how everything is going to turn out, and the rest is to be nothing more than strut and circumstance. Religionists, for theological reasons, will quickly deny this, pointing to free-will as the wild hair in the matrix that will upset all predictions. But if there actually is such as free-will, then our assumptions are false: the universe is not mathematical, and God does in fact roll dice that behave in an absolutely random fashion. The underpinnings of quantum mechanics seem to suggest that a form of randomness occurs at the particle level, but these effects do not appear to change the world into a chaos. We do not observe radically random effects in the world of “large things.” The causes that change things at the experiential level all seem mathematically explainable. Besides, the behavior of the particles themselves is also predictable, but only by reference to the laws of probability, a branch of mathematics equally as dependable as arithmetic. So the world, even at its lowest levels can be described mathematically.

So, how do we explain apparent free-will, and how then relate to God?

Consider the human brain. It is certainly a physical thing that behaves in what appears to be a mathematically predictable fashion. The ten billion or so neurons all work in accord with known principles, and collectively they determine the way we behave. It is thus theoretically possible to write an equation describing how the human brain works. So, what’s the problem?

Well, the brain by itself may control certain bodily functions, but until it receives data from the outside world it is useless as a determinant of human behavior. Like a PC’s internal processors, they are useless until they are given a program to execute and some data to manipulate. But then, all human brains do in fact receive input from the world and they do begin to process the data in a way that determines how the human being will think and act. So, again in theory, if we have an equation that describes how the brain works, and given a determined set of data, we ought then be able to predict the behavior of the human who owns the brain.

But then, who is this human? Well, because we have said that he is the owner of one brain, and that he has experienced a determinant set of input data, we realize immediately that if we have two different humans they will act differently even if their brains are identical. Why? Because their inputs were different. Nothing could be simpler to understand. We behave differently because we are working with different sets of data. So even if the workings of each of the two brains can be said to conform to a mathematical equation, the behavior of the two different humans will be different. They may be running the same equation, but they’re processing different data.

Note well, that from the viewpoint of our mathematically-minded God, everything is as it ought to be. Nothing happening in the world is out of the ordinary. It is only from the viewpoint of the different human beings that what’s happening seems unusual. We do not understand how that person could not see things as we see them, and that might suggest to some of us that the world is more like a chaos than the cosmos it actually is. Multiply the two persons we have been dealing with by three billion and the problem of trying to understand human behavior becomes extraordinarily difficult.

But it’s worse than even that. I’m sure you have experienced many, many occasions when your stream of thought has suddenly and radically shifted from one idea to an entirely different one. Psychologists have tried to explain this by referring to hidden associations, overlapping meanings of which we are not sufficiently conscious. And of course, that is sometimes the case, else some forms of psychotherapy would not work. But the cases requiring treatment are far outnumbered by non-pathological diversions of the train of thought, but if we are to retain the hypothesis that all the brain’s actions are mathematically predictable, these also must be explainable. We might explain them as benign hidden associations, but if that were always the case, we ought at least, upon reflection, to be able to discern the connections, as we sometimes can. But we are dealing here with cases in which no apparent connection exists, so if we are to find an explanation it must lie outside the scope of meanings. So where?

Perhaps it is the case – and this is an hypothesis – that neurons participate in more than one “train of thought.” We know that a PC’s memory devices are divided into separately addressable locations. When these locations are used to store data from the outside, they each contain a fixed number of bits, usually eight or nine. None of the bits are shared by different data. If a certain location contains the word “cat” no other data can use that location. But we have no reason to believe neurons are similarly restricted. We rather suspect that the same neuron may be a part of many different neural networks, each of the nets representing a different element in the brain’s collection of “ideas.” If that is the case, then sudden switches in the train of thought might be explained as a “sidetrack” in which a system of neural firings that had been proceeding in one “direction” encounters a different train of thought with which it shares one or more neurons. Circumstances so far not understood by neurological science, but (by hypothesis) clearly reflected in the brain’s equation, cause the train of thought to switch at one of the junctions of shared neurons. The result would be a pseudo-connection of two previously unrelated trains of thought. The impact of these new connections into the pattern of ideas that determine behavior adds a deeper level of confusion to an already complex equation.

We must also quite realistically observe that this rather structured picture of the brain ‘s neurons is suspended in a “wash” of peptides and hormones. In real time, these chemicals change the way we feel about the meanings we experience. We may one day love this and hate that, and in the next feel the reverse. Those suffering from illnesses brought about by hormonal imbalances may see their emotions soar up and down the scale of joy and sorrow like feathers in a windstorm. To them the illusion of free-will vanishes. Many of the rest of us continue in the delusion.

And it is easy to see why that is so. Even if there is a mechanistic, mathematical equation that describes the brain’s operation, the equation is so complex and the produced behavior so unpredictable, we will appear to be free. But if we are, then not even God, possessed of all the equations and an infinitely powerful processor could understand why we behave as we do. We would be free of him. And in that case, he would no longer be God.

So, what are we to do about this? First, we need to educate ourselves to understand the general structure of the way our brains work. We ought to grasp the relationship implied in the slogan, “we are what we were when our heads were filled with data.” And we ought to understand that our equations, though all similar, work to produce for us a different way of seeing the world, and that that is not only the way it is but is the way it must be. Then, if we truly catch on, we may see that it is not God who is to rescue us, not God or Nature – for they have made us what we are – but that we ourselves must find our own way to salvation.

Perhaps, we as the whole of humanity may never find the way, for after all, it is difficult. But each of us, in his own being, can know what we are and why we are the way we are, and out of that knowing, relate to the world in a way not permitted to those who remain ignorant of the truth. In a word, salvation is a private and personal achievement.

Only by what seems a dream may we imagine that a critical mass of humanity will find the way, and that out of that force … well, who knows what may happen when great numbers of human beings wake up.

Contagious Mendacity

2006-09-24T11:58:00.000-07:00

The al Quedas are using pictures of the dead and mangled bodies of Iraqis as recruitment posters. They're saying that the "invaders" were the ones using the bombs.

The current occupant of the White House is upset that the al Queda would tell such lies.

He thought he was the only one to have been granted the privilege to lie.

The Opposite of Mendacity...

2006-09-23T12:17:00.000-07:00

… is “Truth,” and there are at least two kinds of it. The first involves accessible matters of fact, statements a person can know to be the truth. If a sane person were asked, “Where were you at around 2 PM yesterday,” he or she would almost certainly know the answer. No mystery would shroud the truth. For private reasons the person may choose not to answer truthfully, and depending on the circumstances, the lie may be more or less harmless. If the question were more difficult, like, “Where were you at 2 PM on this date last year,” the most truthful reply may be, “I don’t remember,” the truth of the matter being inaccessible, not because it cannot be known, but simply because it is not known. An infinite number of questions of this sort might be asked, with the answers unknown but knowable. We may call these, questions about the empirical world. They can be answered by taking a look, though sometimes taking the look may be difficult.

The second kind of Truth involves questions that cannot be answered truthfully by even the most powerful empirical look. “Why is it that every effect has a cause?” is a question of that sort. We may say without fear that every effect has a cause, but even if we were to catalog every such instance of causes and effects, we would still not know why it were so that no effect can exist without a cause. We would just know that every effect has a cause.

We approach answers to this sort of question by metaphysical means. We may, for example, imagine a chain of causes and effects progressing back into the past, each cause being the effect of some prior cause or causes. But eventually we would see that such a chain would be endless. We cannot even imagine that the chain would have a beginning. We then might do something like what mathematicians do when they represent an infinite series of, say, prime numbers. They list a few of the numbers separated by commas and then put an ellipsis at the end. When we see “1,2,3,5,7…” we know the three dots mean that the mathematician does not know the last number in the series and, moreover, that he cannot know the number. Such expressions are metaphysical, even though they appear regularly in rigorous mathematics. They transcend the scope of any possible empirical look.

Situations of this sort lead to several “explanations,” none of which completely satisfy. We might say that to ask, “What is the highest prime number,” is not a legitimate question because it has no answer. We may then adopt a metaphysical rule that tells us we should never ask questions of that sort, and while we may not like it that some mathematical fact has restricted our freedom, we would, if we were reasonable people, admit that there was in fact little to be gained by asking unanswerable questions.

But what if the question is changed. Instead of asking “What is the highest prime,” we ask, “Is there no such thing as a highest prime?” In other words, are we asking a legitimate question when we ask if the ellipsis is telling us the truth, that there are in fact an infinite number of primes? A truthful answer is available: yes, it is true – and Euclid himself proved it – there is an infinite number of primes, so the question as rephrased is legitimate. That is, it has an answer.

Immediately after we grasp the infinity of the set of prime numbers, we are led to notice the similarity of the set of primes to the set of causes, which also appears to be infinite. But if we then try to apply something like Euclid’s proof to the set of causes – seeking to prove that it is actually infinite – we see that in order to do so we will have to assign something like numbers to the causes. Well, that can be done. We can map the set of prime numbers onto the set of causes, such that every cause in the infinitely regressive set of causes is identifiable as a prime number. We then apply Euclid’s proof and, presto, we see that, yes, the number of causes is infinite. We have asked a legitimate question, “Is the number of causes infinite?” and have gotten an answer.

But note well, none of this is empirically observable. Just as we do not know the highest prime – and to seek it is illegitimate – so do we have no knowledge of the “first” cause. Why? Because there is no first cause. The word “infinite” means no beginning, no end, so the notion that some cause might be “first” is foolishness.

But then a mathematician more mathematical (and, as it turns out, less metaphysical) than the Mouse might object. “You have used number theory analysis, and Gödel has shown that any system that is subject to number theory analysis is either inconsistent or incomplete.” By “inconsistent” Gödel meant that there was some true theorem derivable from within the system which would be found untrue within the system, and by “incomplete” that there was some theorem derivable from the system that cannot be proven, true or false, within the system. But if we consider each of the prime numbers as a “theorem derivable within the system,” we see that in theory, every one of them can be shown to be truly prime, so the charge of inconsistency could not be effectively brought to bear. But what of incompleteness? Surely it must be the case that no matter how many primes a person was able to list, the list would never be complete, so in a very real sense the system of primes, and consequently of causes and effects, is incomplete. That is, both sets are, by definition infinite so they are both eternally incomplete.

But then the metaphysician, with a bemused look on his face, would answer: “Hmmm. Isn’t that what Euclid proved? That the set of primes is eternally incomplete? And isn’t that what I just proved by applying Euclid’s proof to the set of causes? That it also is eternally incomplete?” To make his idea comprehensible to the mathematician, the Mouse might then put the matter in practical terms. “If there were in fact a Big Bang, then it was not the “first” cause of the universe. It was only the next cause in an infinitely regressive series of causes. Something caused the Big Bang, and something else caused the cause of the Big Bang, etc etc etc …”

The mathematician would, of course, grasp the meaning of the three dots, and would (in the Mouse’s dreams) nod his approval and go forth forever assured that the universe (or whatever) is infinite.

And that is an example of the second sort of Truth. We do not, by that method, know the nature of all the causes that have produced the world (or even a gnat’s eyeball), but we have made a true and definitive statement about the nature of “the all.” We know something for sure that we cannot prove by empirical methods. We have gone beyond the limits of what is scientifically knowable. We have, in a word, said something about “everything” that cannot be grasped by an examination of any of the parts of “everything” or of any finite subset of those parts. The ultimate nature of Nature can only be grasped by methods that do not depend on empirical fact for their validity. They depend simply and only on Reason.

Mendacious Idols

2006-09-20T14:04:00.000-07:00

I have more or less committed to write a series of articles on the U. S. Constitution for the local newspaper. Coincident with my preparations for the articles I have also continued to participate in a weekly discussion group which is ostensibly a Bible study. This morning it was actually a Bible study, the subject being Psalm 115. In the course of the group’s dissection of the Psalmist’s words, it came up that the barbs he threw at the pagans for their idol worship were somewhat a distortion of the truth. The pagans actually believed in transcendent Gods and the idols were nothing more than representations of those Gods. And that’s where this discussion of the Psalm coincidentally tied into my study of the activities leading up to the writing of the Constitution.

I had been struck by some of the measures the Constitutional convention had considered. One of the sticky points the delegates had to handle concerned the matter of representation. Under the Articles of Confederation each state had been equally represented in the federal government, an arrangement the large states found unacceptable, since it gave the smaller states an amount of power disproportionate to their population. The delegates from New Jersey – at that time, one of the smaller states – had proposed (probably for strategic reasons) a radical alternative. They suggested that the boundaries of the current states should be eliminated and a new set of districts be formed in which the population would be approximately equal. Hamilton, one of New York’s delegates, countered with a magisterial proposal that the states be eliminated altogether. Neither proposal met with success. The states were left as they were and the government as we know it today (with a few differences) became the structure implemented in the Constitution.

I mention these radical proposals only to show that the convention was serious about their business. They ruled out nothing. They were even at one time considering a monarchical form of government, with George Washington as the king. (That was probably the agenda behind Hamilton’s proposal.) These were men determined to do the right thing.

But what was their overall grand objective? Given the far-ranging scope of their considerations we may legitimately conclude that they were not seeking any pre-ordained form of government, but were striving to design a government that could be trusted to implement and maintain the ideals of freedom. They had a purpose that transcended the forms and functions of government. They had an idea that was to them so perfect they were willing to consider any constitution, however radical, that would enable them to assure for themselves “and their posterity” a way of life infused with liberty. The Senate, the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, the Presidency … all these were means to an end. We might even say that they held their ideals above even the land then known as the thirteen states, though I concede that the land and those ideals were so closely knit it would be hard to say they were different. Nevertheless, we can say without fear of contradiction that the Founding Fathers regarded the constitutional government they finally constructed as the best means they could devise to bring about the realization of their ideals.

It must be added that these men, at least some of them, primarily James Madison, recognized the dangers inherent in federalizing so much power in the hands of so few men. They knew human nature to be such that, in time, the means might be transformed into the ends, and the ideals of liberty and justice sacrificed on the altars of security. It was with eyes wide open that those men entrusted the destiny of their ideals to a government elected by and administered by men.

I doubt, however, that they imagined that the government they had designed would degenerate to the point where it would relate to their ideals as did graven images to the Gods they represented. I doubt that they imagined serious men proposing that government dictate the terms of marriage, that government should be empowered in times of danger to suspend the guarantees of liberty, or that government would actively implement policies designed to favor one class of citizens over another. I doubt that they imagined that political partisans, seeking raw power, would cater to religious majorities, actually denying the fundamental separation of church and state. I doubt that they could possibly have imagined a nation so completely given over to material possessions that it would condone the manipulation of currencies for what are euphemistically called “economic necessities.” I doubt they would have envisioned the nation being so blinded to the ideals of freedom that it would pursue policies designed to impose “freedom” on foreign nations at the point of a gun. I doubt they would have imagined the nation they founded would have become an aggressor hated by half the world.

We have become idol worshippers, devoted to our government more than to our ideals. We have become like those religionists who worship their Bibles and their theologies more than their God. We are more in love with a scrap of paper, more devoted to this piece of real estate, more committed to politicians than to justice. We would today answer Patrick Henry in the affirmative. “Yes, Mr. Henry, we do love peace and life so much that we are willing to purchase them with the chains of slavery.”

Well, maybe that’s a bit too strongly worded. I at least do have the liberty to speak freely, to worship or not as I please. If I and my happiness were the only things that mattered, I should have no complaints. If I were assured that my children and theirs were destined to enjoy as much of the fruits of liberty as I have, I would have said none of this. If I did not see the last bastion of liberty – the free press – being bought and paid for by fascist powers, if I did not hear with my own ears respected religionists claiming that our Constitution was based on their Bible, if I were not fearful that the forces of economic tyranny were every day strengthening their grip around the throat of the American dream … if I were hopeful … I assure you I would have writ not a word of this.

But as it is, I cannot in good conscience erase a word of it.

Morning Mouse

2006-09-19T08:40:00.000-07:00

Waking-up moves with the sunrise in a narrow band over the face of the Earth. At the equator it measures perhaps a thousand or fifteen-hundred miles across, tapering as it nears the poles. I would say it looks something like an orange peel, except I've never seen an orange peeled the way longitudes would look if they were peeled from the Earth. In any case, this band travels over the continents at the speed of the sunrise and within it, people come up out of their dreams and into life. There must be a favored hour or two during which the multitudes of China and India wake up. I've often wondered if those hours hold more mystery than the others, so much life all at once seeing itself alive again.

At other times I wonder if the word "mystery" has any meaning left.

Weird thoughts like that one started coming up for me a month or so after this blog itself became mysterious. I'd wake up at two-thirty in the morning and find myself sitting on the side of the bed staring at a print of a little Klee fish painting on the east wall. Some nights the moon is dark, others light, but no matter which, the tiny fishes, as I watch them, seem to glow and to tremble, soundlessly. Before, when occasionally I would be up and about for nature's reasons, I would take no notice of the silence. But tonight -- especially tonight -- I see silence as a human thing, an effect of carefully arranged stone and glass. Outside, there's plenty of sound, crickets and owls, the gentle wind, the river's endless play upon the rocks -- plenty of sound -- but it all seems foreign and penned up, something that remains outside.

Strange, how differently I see things since these fits of wakefulness started. Unlike milady, who notices everything, I never noticed much of anything before. I just lived here. This house might as well have been a Bowery tenement with windows opening onto alleys littered with trash. But the first time I brought her here, even before the place was refurbished, as she stood just there, before that window, watching the narrow mountain stream bouncing downhill, she wondered aloud about the thoughts that might have passed through the minds of the Indians who first chanced upon this view. She said she would like to have been one of the few who could say, "we alone have seen this idyllic stream."

Now I see -- at least here in the night -- that the river does possess a certain kind of sacredness. The Blue Ridge darkens its window after eleven-thirty, and the countryside changes from the orderly assemblage of rural fields and barns it is by day into a black mass of crowded foliage. After midnight, like an indolent thought, the river folds into a hushed softness that lures the mind into its stillness. Darkness elevates the river's daylight greyness into a moonlit ribbon of light, truly worth being the first to see.

Listening to these words in their silence, I hear a disparagement of civilization, the same civilization that brought us the wherewithal to purchase this home ... this very window. But I think that when we see our culture as wholly other to some prior and presumably better world, we see it wrongly. Buildings and street lamps don't destroy the world. They only change the way it looks. For some people, a well-made museum stirs as much awareness of beauty as the paintings hanging there, or as the nature that inspired the painter. Museums, broad avenues, and windows to stand behind while watching the night work its magic on the human soul, merely witness the magnificence we create for ourselves when we work at our best.

The river was never beautiful until milady's Indians chanced upon it.

The world is everywhere a mystery.

Mouse Makes Amends

2006-09-16T11:53:00.000-07:00

I’m told that my previous blog was confusing. I of course disagree, but then who am I to say? I’ll try again.

All of our ideas are formed in our heads. They’re of several sorts.

One: Some of our ideas appear in our heads as words, pictures, and feelings depicting the stuff communicated to us by our senses. Those images etc are always consciously experienced, though we may notice some of them more than others. Nothing in our consciousness of sensate data is explanatory. If we were limited to our senses, we would have no knowledge of the causes of the things we experience. So this is the lowest form of knowledge. For want of something to call such experiences, we may call them “imaginations” or “hearsay” or just raw, unprocessed consciousness.

Two: Some of the words we hear ourselves thinking are of the sort we call “names.” At sometime in our personal past we have learned to connect certain words to certain things. When we see an image that looks like a tree we connect the image to the word. But before we can do this, we – or those who taught us the names – must also have engaged in a third kind of experiencing, called “wonder.”

Three : We wonder what these sensed things are. We may not be conscious of our wonderings, but it seems apparent that our brain/minds are challenged to identify similar things – like different kinds of dogs – and that our brain/minds invent concepts like the word “dog.” We are never conscious of the process that forms concepts, but when the brain/mind is stumped about what to call a thing, we may become conscious of the brain/mind’s problem. That’s what we might call a conscious wondering.

Four: A special form of wondering occurs in our heads when we “hear” ourselves wondering about the why and wherefore of things. These may proceed into actual inquiry, though nothing in the experience of wondering specifies the method by which the why’s and wherefore’s may be sought. One method involves what we have come to call science. Another involves religion. All such methods, however, begin with wonder and proceed through a different form of experience called “theorizing.”

[None of the above involve actual knowledge of causes and effects. They may all be classified as what Spinoza calls “knowledge of the first kind.”]

Five: Theories arise as potential answers to wonderings of why and wherefore. Before the formation of a theory, the mind has been a passive “presenter” of experience, but as it forms its first theory about why or wherefore (or even, “what should I do about this?”), it becomes an active part of the human being, an ally in the human’s need to survive.

[I’m tired of this. The rest should be easy for anyone. The point, though, is that ideas – whatever their form or category – emerge for us out of ourselves. There is nothing like any of the above in the world “out there.” We are the final arbiters of what we believe to be right or wrong for us. If we get it wrong, there will probably be consequences, some bad, some worse, some deadly. The troubles we find in the world – apart from the catastrophic events of nature – have nothing to do with the world itself except as it is manifest in what we are. But that’s common knowledge. We have, however, made the mistake of believing that there’s a fatal flaw in human nature, an “original sin,” as it were. The only flaw we actually have is the one that we have created, the belief that we do not have it in our power to make up a world in which human beings can live together in peace. We’ve come too far from caves and smallpox to accept the notion that we are a species doomed to its own destruction. We need only start recognizing the source of our ideas. None of the ones dealing with “rights” and “religions” have come to us from the mind of God. We made them up, and the sooner we catch on to that the sooner we will begin to approach the boundaries of real salvation.

A commenter to the previous blog said, “In the end, the scriptural exhortation 'to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God' is the attitude that will bring peace to the world." He was of course right in the part he quoted, but by referencing a “scriptural exhortation” he has apparently believed that the advice he proffered came from somewhere other than a human being. If so, he’s wrong in one of the deadly ways. He’s also holding on to a notion of God that is as far from reality as I am from a genuine mouse. (The mouse is grey.) When obviously bright people like our anonymous friend wake up to their own power, then, and not before, will the world turn from the destructive path onto which current epistemological beliefs have led it. Selah.]

How Mice Know What They Know

2006-09-13T10:24:00.000-07:00

I promised a friend that today I would write a blog on epistemology, that branch of philosophy that deals with how we know, and how we know that what we know is true. This grew out of a bumper sticker milady stuck on her car: DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU THINK. I mentioned this sticker in a group discussion and out of that came the promise to say something Mousefully meaningful about epistemology.

But think about it: Saying something -- saying anything -- about “how we know” is closely akin to lifting yourself by your bootstraps. The apparatus we use to make meaningful statements is the same apparatus we’re trying to explain. It’s like a mirror looking at itself in another mirror; all it’s gonna see is an infinitely regressing image of itself. No matter how deeply we peer into the array of pictures of ourselves, there never will appear in any of the images anything completely new. So, what’s a poor little old Mouse supposed to do who has promised to say something meaningful?

Well … maybe the problem is not so difficult as that trick with mirrors has made it seem. Let’s say the Mouse is one of the mirrors, the one who’s looking into a real mirror. True, as the Mouse reflects the image of himself back into the facing mirror, he’ll still be the same Mouse, but the Mouse can say at least one thing without fear that he’ll be saying something false. He can point to the mirror he’s facing and say, “Those images are not me.” Then, pointing to himself, “I’m me and those images are just reflections of me.”

Bearing in mind that the mirrors are metaphors for the thought process, that each image is an idea, the Mouse will know, for sure, that he and his thoughts are different things. He knows that he will remain “the Mouse” regardless of what he thinks, so what he thinks and what he is must be different things.

Sounds reasonable, at least at first glance. But then – on second glance – the Mouse realizes that some part of himself must be changing when he thinks whatever he thinks. His brain, the whole apparatus he has come to call his neurological system is constantly changing, and every changed state of the system relates in some way to his changing ideas. He’s not sure how those two “parts” of himself interact, or even if they do. He just knows that for every brain state there is a corresponding idea. The brain may be physically causing his ideas, or it may just be operating in parallel with them. Whichever of those happens to be the case, the fact will remain that the order and connection of his ideas will be the same as the order and connection of his brain states.

At a more general level, the Mouse will have come to the conclusion that his ideas emerge out of something he is. To believe otherwise would be to believe that what he calls “his ideas” are actually pumped whole into his mind from somewhere outside him. He suspects – but cannot know for sure – that that’s a false notion. It seems almost a certainty that his senses receive signals from outside, but that those signals remain essentially meaningless until they enter his brain and get “processed” into ideas. The Mouse would never have known that those images in the facing mirror were of himself unless he were more capable of thinking than he would be if he were merely another mirror. The reflections would still exist as light rays (or what have you) but they would never become ideas without the special capabilities of his neurological system.

Hmmm. So, now the Mouse knows a trifle more than he knew when he first acknowledged that the images of himself were not him. He knows that he is the source of that idea. True, he would never have had the idea had not his senses admitted the light into his body, but it was still him, his brain and its supporting network of senses, that converted the light rays into ideas. Without even trying to do it the Mouse has placed himself at the center of a different philosophical sub-category. He has identified himself as the “object” responsible for all ethical decisions.

But that’s not what the Mouse promised to do today. Getting a leg up on the question of ethics is important, but whether the Mouse and all mice can function effectively as moral agents must finally depend on whether the ideas forming in their bodies are true or not. The Mouse can behave absolutely in accord with his ideas and think he’s doing the right thing, but unless those ideas are in some sense “true,” the Mouse, though he may have very good reasons for his actions, may be doing all the wrong things.

And that’s where we came in. How can the Mouse know that the ideas he is basing his actions on are true?

Answer: Apart from the sorts of knowledge we’ve already admitted must be true, the Mouse can never know that any of the ideas he forms of the world are completely and consistently true. He may know that his body and his thoughts are different, he may know that his ideas form internally to himself, and he may know that his senses provide unprocessed data. But he can never know that the sense he makes of his sensations is the absolute truth. His ideas of the world and of its complexities may be valid, but they are almost certainly not the whole and unquestionable truth.

Valid ideas are those that an observer – if he knew them – could correctly analyze to interpret our behavior. We act in accord with what we believe to be the truth, and those beliefs would be a valid explanation of our actions and our subsequent thoughts. We think they are true because the neural apparatus that has formed our ideas operates like a logic machine, with the difference that it not only draws its conclusions from immediate premises – raw input data – but works also to make its “new” ideas fit neatly with all the other ideas we have formed. And some of those “old” ideas entered our heads as unexamined “facts” that were merely assumed to be true.

If our brains have managed to do their job well, if they have produced a concoction of ideas that is quite capable of dealing with new sense data with a minimum of pain, then we will have an array of valid ideas that works for us, and it wouldn’t matter a rat’s ass whether that array were even marginally the truth.

But what does it avail us to know this? How can this view of the epistemological problem be made to work for us? Well, if we know that the ideas we have formed of the world (as apposed to those intuitive ideas that cannot be doubted) are only satisfying arrangements put together by a pragmatic neural mechanism … well, think about it … if we know that of ourselves, then we must also know it of all who are like us, whether they are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Democrats, Republicans, neighbors, strangers, or what have you. We must know that we are all fundamentally alike.

And with that idea firmly implanted in our mechanism, isn’t it possible that we might deal with the world in a significantly different manner than we would have if we all made the mistake of treating our merely “valid” data as the truth. We might be able finally to see ourselves as a unity of similar beings, all facing the same epistemological reality.

It seems to me that if we were finally awakened to the reality of what we are, we would experience a form of joy quite unlike the joy we obtain from believing we are solely and uniquely right. We might actually all fall in love with the same God, the one within which we, and all other beings, exist as whatever we are.

The Poetic Mouse

2006-09-12T04:26:00.000-07:00

A Place in a Garden

A half-tone shaman leaned against the grey gate
of an ancient fence he'd conjured
and, wielding hoodoo like an axe, dreamed
himself in Alabama when magnolias bloom.

He had never been in Alabama and wanted less
to be there than here, leaning on a voodoo gate...

but to see a magnolia open when its time came
to see the brash flower surrender its inhibition

to watch the petals of a pale magnolia turning sepia
in the white-hot glare of Alabama

to live, perhaps an instant after leaning here
and wishing here to watch a white magnolia
blooming in Mobile (where magnolias flourish)

...a magical vision conjured in the afternoon
of a pretended garden somewhere not in the Alabama
where magnolias die.

Mouse Reporting Next Year's News

2006-09-11T17:58:00.000-07:00

Dateline El Paso, TX
The Hallibrton Corporation (NYSE, HAL) has been awarded a $150 billion contract to construct a 15 foot high wall along the Texas border with Mexico. Contract options include extending the contract into New Mexico and Arizona as the effectiveness of the wall is demonstrated.

Dateline Mexico City, MX
Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corp (NYSE, HAL) has been awarded a $125 billion contract to teach Mexican's to pole vault. The terms specify that B & R will be paid a flat rate of $100,000 per trainee, but only for those trainees who demonstrate proficiency at heights greater than 15 feet.

Dateline Yuma, AZ
The United States Marine Corps recently announced the award of a cost plus fixed fee (CPFF) contract to Marksman, Inc, a spinoff of the Halliburton Corp (NYSE, HAL). The contract calls for Marksman to deploy patrols along the wall that is to be built by Halliburton along the Mexico-Texas border. The amount of the award has not been disclosed, but confidential sources have indicated to the Mouse that payments in the amount of $100,000 per body will be paid to Marksman for every pole vaulting Mexican shot in the vicinity of the wall.

Dateline Washington DC
President Bush announced from the oval office that he has signed a Presidential Order directing that the Washington Monument be dismantled. The President reacted swiftly to a study conducted by the Foundation for Sexual Purity that the phallic monument has been a leading cause of increased homosexuality and oher forms of sexual promiscuity among Washngton teenagers. This follows on the heels of the Foundation's demands that the domes of the capitol building and several other landmark buildings along the Washington Mall be flattened. When asked the reason for this expensive alteration of the Washington scene, Foundation spokesman Horace Perriwinkle blushed.

Dateline Washington DC
Presidential spokesman Tony Snow responded vigorously when he was asked in yesterday's press conference about the abortion that was apparently performed in 1971 on one of the President's girl friends. "That is old news that has been completely discredited." Charles "the Blaster" Gertling, the reporter who raised the question, was in the process of producing affidavits and other paper work when he was escorted from the press room by heavily armed guards. At press time, Gertling was unavailable for comment.

[And that's the datelines for today, sports fans. Be sure to wear the safety helmets provided by the Office of Homeland Security. The diarrhetic pidgeons we reported yesterday -- believed to have been medicated by terrorists -- are still on the loose.]

Mouse Teaches Semantical History

2006-09-10T10:40:00.000-07:00

The brave people of the 13 colonies rebelled against their king because they felt they were being denied certain liberties to which they, as Englishmen, felt they were entitled. They did not rebel because the king was destroying their property and threatening their lives. (The Boston Massacre comes as close as any pre-revolution event to something like 9/11, but that seems to have been a put-up job in which Sam Adams took advantage of a situation to provoke an actionable cause.) No, the patriots rebelled for political reasons.

Now one may wonder why King George III would have denied his colonial subjects their rights. Why would he levy taxes upon them when they had no voice in the English Parliament by which they might have argued for or against the taxes? Well, George III thought it only proper that the colonials shoulder some of the costs associated with administering the colonies, especially those costs the king had incurred in defending the colonials in the French & Indian War. The colonists, not necessarily opposed to the idea of repaying their king, felt it would be proper for the taxes to be levied by their own provincial governments. The king, by his arbitrary action, was depriving the colonials of what they saw as their just rights, so they went to war. That is, they put their lives on the line for their rights.

And make no mistake. If the patriots had lost the war, all of the Founding Fathers would have been executed as traitors. Franklin, Washington, Adams, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, and all the rest would now be remembered in English history as something less than scum, and Benedict Arnold would be revered as a true and loyal soldier.

During the war that followed, some of the colonials – for reasons that now appear to have been purely monetary – sided with the king. They organized themselves into guerilla bands, murdered their defenseless neighbors, and pillaged their homes. If we take it on face value that the king approved of these acts, then the king and his supporters should properly be called terrorists.

But this raises a question. Let us imagine that the king, instead of inciting these criminals to action, had somehow restrained them, had in fact managed to fight the war by the Queensbury rules, army against army. Would it nevertheless still be legitimate to think of the king as a terrorist? Does active suppression of the rights of the people constitute terror?

One of the dictionary definitions of “terror” runs like this: “violence or threats of violence used as a means of intimidation or coercion.” This suggests that the king, because he was quite capable of instilling fear as a way of intimidating and coercing the colonials to surrender their implied rights, was guilty of terrorism. The very presence of his armies and, in fact, the nature of government itself, clearly indicates that when the king chose, illegally, to impose his will upon the people, he expected that the “threat of violence” would be sufficient to assure that he would succeed.

Of course, the case for the revolutionaries rests upon a fine point of the law. Nothing in the British constitution dealt with the rights of colonials. It was merely the fact that most of the patriots were of English origin that led them to believe they were entitled to the rights of Englishmen. Like I say, a sticky point, one that, in truth, is still debated by historians.

But it seems that if we apply the same logic to the situation in America at the present time, the “sticky point” loses it gumminess and becomes an easily defensible position. The Constitution of the United States of America is quite clear about the rights of the American people, and two centuries of common law have defined those rights so perfectly that any “king” who might choose to use the powers of the American government to impose his will illegally upon the American people could unequivocally be recognized as a terrorist.

In other words, if this logic holds, then the current occupant of the White House is a terrorist.

More Mouse Talk: On Morals

2006-09-08T11:30:00.000-07:00

[Written in the spirit of Erasmus and the vernacular of the later Twain.]

Some people imagine that what we are calling moral behavior has been dictated to us by a higher and wiser power. More often than not, the people making that claim are referring to words in one or the other of several old books written by Moses, Mohammed, Joseph Smith, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Saul/Paul of Tarsus, and several other now-dead men who claimed to have been God’s secretaries. To Christians and Jews the most famous of those writings appears in what Christians call the Pentateuch and what Jews know as the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament in the Bible. And the most famous part of those writings appears in the Decalogue, or the Ten Commandments. To “the people of the book” those few words contain the underpinnings of all morality.

The Jews have logically expanded the less than 200 words of the Decalogue and the less than 100,000 of the Torah into 23 volumes of detailed guidance called the Talmud, of which there are two (but don’t quote me on the number of volumes in each). The Christians, conditioned by ages of separate-but-unequal independent thinking and non-thinking, and thus finding themselves less susceptible to regimentation, have relied upon a more-or-less loose-leaf book of morals, where what is right and wrong is decided by what has come to be called “situational ethics” – that is, they do as they damn well please, but are always careful to logically justify their behavior by turning to one or more of the conflicting “prophets” for their premises. Both approaches – Talmudic and loose-leaf – work quite well. The Jews have managed to maintain their unity as a persecuted people, and the Christians to excel as more than capable persecutors of both the Jews and themselves.

Both groups of well-meaning religionists seem to have believed that the laws of God – as compiled by men – are not the same as the laws of nature. We may violate the laws of God (they thought) but not the laws of nature. Hence the necessity for armed forces here on earth to apprehend and dismember violators and for a hereafter to “take care of” those who escape justice here on earth. Those arrangements also work. Maintaining the armed forces and the places of business of those preaching the hereafter provide a tremendous cash flow and assure the useful employment for many who might otherwise find themselves destitute.

But the same people who believe that men have been endowed with free will – so as to be able to violate God’s laws – also (occasionally) profess a belief in divine providence. This is the belief best expressed in the words of the famous German plagiarist, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, who put it this way: All things are ordered by God just so that the world we have is the best of all possible worlds. It has not gone unnoticed that the notions of “free will” and “divine providence” contradict each other. As we speak, there have been written exactly 234,873 full-size books (a book being a document between covers that consists of at least 111 pages) and ten times that many lesser papers, memos, and bulletins to explain how it is that we are free to do as we please while, at the same time, being compelled by God’s divine will to do as he pleases. Those explanatory writings have not been nearly so successful in making their point as have the armed forces that administer and execute God’s laws, although if the two were evaluated on an economic scale, the writings would certainly be found superior.

[The remainder is written in the spirit of Spinoza and in the Mouse’s own vernacular (though the latter may seem the same as the vernacular employed above, since the Mouse is one of Mr. Twain’s 1734 reincarnations, may their tribe increase).]

God, being God, does not make laws that can be broken. To think otherwise would be to suggest that God is no more than any other earthly potentate whose dictates are subject to disobedience, even to nullification. The sum extent of God’s irrevocable and unbreakable laws is not known to us, and probably never will be. The laws of nature – the ones scientists are trying to identify – are the category we most often think of when we imagine God’s laws, but the laws of science (even if we knew them to be true) presuppose and depend on another body of law, and that body is what philosophers address when they study God’s laws. The most pre-dominate and pervasive of those metaphysical laws expresses itself as the “law of causes,” the law that says there can be no effect without a cause, nor a cause without an effect. You can see that if that law were not a law, whatever laws scientists might discover would be of no effect, since they could not be said to be laws if the law of causes were not a law.

The law of causes, and many of God’s most fundamental laws, are referred to as “metaphysical” primarily because they cannot be proven by reference to the sorts of things scientists refer to as “empirical data.” They cannot be directly observed. They can only be inferred from what is directly observed. We see things, hear things, touch things, smell things … we sense things, but we cannot, in the same sense of the word, sense things like the law of causes. And yet, the behavior we observe in all things implies that they are obedient to the law of causes.

Some philosophers, called logical positivists, in thrall to the physical sciences, have treated the fact, that the law of causes cannot be observed, as proof of the fact that it is a convention of some sort invented by men to enable them to organize their thoughts in an orderly fashion. The logical positivists got their inspiration for this from the German idealist philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who observed, quite correctly, that the law of causes could only be explained as a function of the way the human mind works. This same man, though a devout Christian, said that the existence of God could not be proven, only assumed. Apparently Kant had forgotten, and certainly the positivists have disregarded, Spinoza’s most fundamental claim: Without God, nothing can be or be conceived. That same Spinozistic claim can be understood as an acknowledgement that all things, including human beings and their minds, are in God, either as his creations or as naturally occurring beings. (Christians and Jews may choose the first, Spinozistic pantheists and scientists of the natural religion persuasion the latter.) If that is so, then transcendent laws, like the law of causes, must be understood, either way, as fundamental constituents of the mind of God. We may go so far as to suggest that they are thoughts in the mind of God.

To get directly to the point, that is, to synthesize the contradictory notions of free will and divine providence, and to place them in the context of a consideration of moral behavior … the law of causes stands beneath any conceivable moral code. Whether we conceive the functioning of morality as the mysterious workings of Fate or as “what goes around comes around” or as “whatsoever ye sow, so shall ye reap” or as the human conscience or merely as “the long arm of the law,” we cannot fail to see the law of causes. If there were no such law, then morality, in any sense, would not, and could not, exist.

Human beings have, for the most part, composed their understanding of morality by supposing God to be just, but even the most casual understanding of his true laws – i.e., those laws that cannot possibly be broken – demonstrates the error of that understanding. The law of causes sees to the punishment of the just and the unjust with equanimity. God plays no favorites. To God, humanity is one of the infinite effects of nature. Consequently, to God the word “justice” has no meaning.

It does not follow from God’s (or nature’s) unconcern with the affairs of men that men themselves ought to be unconcerned. (And certainly we are not.) God is infinite and thus need not be concerned with his survival, but men, and all things, are finite; consequently the drive to perpetuate themselves in being operates as a cause with the effect that, in nature, all things are in conflict. (See Hobbes, Leviathan.) And it is from this fact – which is also from God’s divine providence (though not by intent, since God has none) – that the need for Justice arises.

The rest should be easy, but obviously is not. Nature has determined that men are free to interpret their needs differently. Hence, they are free to arrange their moral codes differently. Some – unfortunately, a great majority – have seen fit to identify their codes as God’s, a mistake devastating to the possibility that a truly effective Justice might be obtained. Though the state of nature Hobbes saw as an inevitable outcome, that would be sure to prevail without governments, has been somewhat mitigated, the essential differences and the mistaken authorities assigned to those differences have created a world in which the “all” who are struggling with “all” have emerged as entities far more powerful, and thus far more deadly, than the individuals who would have been at war in the Hobbesian state of nature. We have organized ourselves as “true believers,” ordained our so-called moral codes with the imprimatur of the divine, and have set about to destroy ourselves and, perhaps, all the innocents of the earth.

Well, yes, denial is easy, because we “know” we are right. And yes, finding the power to lift ourselves by our bootstraps out of a sea of error is bound to be difficult. “Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labor be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.” Those are the final words of Spinoza’s Ethics, and I feel compelled to observe that they have truly resulted from the one mistake that great man made: he spoke his truth so obscurely that men have been able to use their ignorance of it as an excuse for their murderous and “moral” ways.

And those are the Mouse’s final words … for today.

Mouse Talk: Health Care

2006-09-07T07:40:00.000-07:00

Health care is a moral issue. Health care is not an economic issue.

But surely, the house cat argues, it has to be paid for; doesn’t that make it an economic issue?

Mouse answers: economic goods – automobiles, televisions, electric back scratchers, and similar nice-to-haves – flow into the possession of those who can afford them. The desire to possess them can be satisfied better by those who are economically successful. To increase one's power to acquire them might be regarded as an economic incentive to work hard. So we must ask whether health care should be similarly regarded as a reward to successful people that is denied to the less successful.

To help decide that question we ought to substitute for the words “health care” the much more understandable single word “life.” Should economically successful people be granted more life than others?

House cat replies: If you put it that way you certainly have a point, but even if I give you your word for it, wouldn’t you say that in the great scheme of things, it’s all about life. Life would seem to be the ultimate incentive and health care just one of the ways it translates into a practical goal.

Mouse paused, deep in thought. Several answers to house cat’s logic trickled through his mind, but for each of them, an equally logical rejoinder also cropped up. Finally, he realized that moral issues and economic issues are obedient to different strains of logical thought, and that they both begin with the answer to a question that is as fundamental as life itself.

Are we in this struggle as individuals, each alone fighting against nature? Or is this a battle we join as a species?

Mouse recalled the mythical scene described in the Bible, of the Samaritan who interrupted his journey to come to the aid of a stranger lying injured beside the road. Yes, the story is most often told to illustrate the ecumenical, Jews and Gentiles, nature of the new religion, but doesn’t the bottom line of even that interpretation suggest that we are one people, Jews, Gentiles, and barbarians, all together, one people in God. True, the story of the Good Samaritan was not about the health care the injured man received. It was about the nature of the human heart, about what is morally good, and what is morally wrong. It makes the point that life is a moral good, not an economic incentive. The Samaritan was not necessarily a rich man. He was a good man.

The Mouse smiled knowingly (as he had seen the house cat do on occasions that shall remain unnamed). He knew that to argue the point further with a carnivore would not be fruitful, could even prove dangerous. He decided he had framed the issue well. Leave it now to the people in power to decide. He did not feel very confident that they would see it his way, but what else could he do? After all, he’s only a lowly little mouse.

Medacious Message from a Burning Bush

2006-09-05T16:15:00.000-07:00

[Or at least he will be burning if there is a Hell.]

He said we're still at war.

[He's read the poll numbers that seem to be saying 47% think he'd do better than a democrat at waging this war. It's insignificant that the majority now thinks the dem would do better. The "war" is where he scores the highest.]

Still no apology for getting us into this fiasco.

[No apparent chagrin for the 100,000 dead.]

He says the nation is still in danger.

[No indication that he's caught on to the fact that he's the source of the danger.]

I'm tired of pussy footing around with this incompetent boob. I think I'll ask for his resignation.

Applied Mendacity

2006-09-04T11:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I blogged about the two fundamental lies that constitute the political substance of the American system of government. The blog was a complete failure. You see, I had entertained the notion that someone might take the idea seriously and begin to wonder why in the world a good American like the Mouse would say the nation’s highest ideals were lies. Instead, all I got was a snide remark from one of my dearest friends, to which I replied with equal “snididdity,” which was no way for a gentle Mouse to treat a friend. What made this so bad was that I knew my friend to be quite capable of finding an explanation for the Mouse’s arrogant behavior. She had, herself, just the day before acknowledged in her own blog that it has been humanity, and not God himself, who has loaded God with the tons of religious baggage he’s carrying around these days. In other words … we have all been lying about God. How much less can it be to acknowledge the lies upon which our nation is founded.

Well, perhaps there is a difference. Presumably there is a truth about God, and perhaps that truth could be found if we unloaded the baggage. But there’s no guarantee that such as a truth about the way we ought to govern ourselves exists. I acknowledged in my blog that quality of humankind that seems as if it were God-given, our existential freedom, but was quick to point out that our freedom to do as we please is exactly the reason we need governments.

On reflection I might have achieved a more meaningful response had I been more direct in saying what I had to say. I had thought – stupidly – that it would have been much better if I left unsaid “the moral of the story,” and left it to my readers to discover for themselves the truth of those two lies. I still believe that we have to discover for ourselves the bedrock constituents of our creeds, and not have them drummed into us by teachers, preachers, and gurus, however well-intended those worthies may be. But I guess, if we wish to share our beliefs – and that’s exactly what I was doing yesterday – we have to be much more specific than I was being. I was expecting people to be mind readers.

OK. Here’s the straight of it.

The human embryo, and hence the human being, is not imprinted with ideals. We are not born knowing that “all people are created equal.” We are in fact born believing the opposite, that we are the center of the universe. We are not born believing that “all people are endowed with unalienable rights.” We are in fact born believing that we have rights that all others are obliged to respect, We are born as selfish children. We have to be taught to be “good citizens.”

But who’s to teach us? Well, no one, if we expect our teachers to have been born into a different, all-knowing species. Our teachers derived their principles from the same sorts of places we did. They got their ideals from other human beings, and if we trace back far enough, we’ll discover that some other human beings – with names like Madison, Hamilton, and Jefferson – made them up. Now I know that things that are just “made up” are not necessarily lies. I thought – again, stupidly – that if I called them lies I might attract more attention than if I just called them “made up ideals.”

Didn’t work that way. It didn’t work at all that, because human beings created the ideals upon which our nation is based, we should take ultimate pride in recognizing the greatness of which humankind is capable. It didn’t work at all that we should take full responsibility for believing our lies, that we should defy anyone who thinks our lies are not working to make up better ones. It didn’t work at all that we should each acknowledge ourselves as the source and sustenance of the dream.

Maybe I would have let it go, but this morning I received an email from another blogster asking me to write something encouraging people to write out a statement of their Credo. (Capital “C” intended.) He told me that he had done it and that he thought it would reinforce everyone’s commitment to life if they were to openly state the principles guiding their decisions. I told him I would make such a request, but I found that I couldn’t get into it until I made it clear that all such creeds are made-up things. We might claim we based them on authoritative sources like the Bible, or the Constitution, but in order to take full and unquestionable responsibility for our creeds, we have to confirm ourselves as the persons who decided to take those sources seriously. And in order to do that – and to know that we had not foolishly bestowed our allegiance – we ought to have a clear understanding of why we did that. We ought to think hard about those things we agree to treat as authorities.

For you see, in addition to making us free, God has also made us reasoning animals, and just as we may exercise our freedom in self-destructive ways, so may we also use reason to justify what is essentially false. So maybe that’s why the friend who emailed me this morning found making a Credo so useful. When we write something down, something like a statement of beliefs, we are forced to ask of ourselves if we are telling the truth in the practical sense of the word. If for instance I were to write that I believe all people are created equal, I am not necessarily saying that’s a fact. I am saying simply that I am running my life on the assumption that all people are created equal. If that’s the truth, if I am actually treating my fellow human beings as if they were my equals, then it wouldn’t matter that the statement itself was true or false. My part of the real world would be operating as if that statement were the truth.

And that’s what I meant yesterday when I spoke of the dialogue that we as individuals ought to be carrying on with ourselves. If we hear in our mind’s mind the voice of those two lies I spoke of, if we are guided by the small voice of our most precious ideals … if we are true to our own lies, and if they are good lies … well, you see, that’s how the God of the Bible – if he were real – would have us behave, not merely as obedient to “the law,” but as a law unto ourselves. (Reread the “Sermon on the Mount” – Matt 5-7 – with that idea in mind.) (Or read Spinoza’s proposition 43, in Part Two of the Ethics.)

The world works better – anything works better – when we take responsibility for making it work. Maybe taking the time to write out a Credo will be a good beginning, or a good way to reaffirm our commitment to making our nation a workable place. And maybe if we do that … who knows, maybe even the world will work out better for those it’s not working so well for at the moment.

Mouse Tells All: Plato Nods Agreement

2006-09-03T10:33:00.000-07:00

So, if in his Republic Plato wasn’t prescribing the details of a practical system of government, what was he doing? Very simply, he was telling us of certain understandings that all men ought to employ in their conduct at all levels of their lives. The details of the republic – training of the philosopher-kings, organization of the armies, etc – were, in my opinion, laid on to provide a structure for the book’s “story.” Swift used similar devices in his great satire, Gulliver’s Travels. He created Gulliver as an almost completely different sort of being from those his travels brought him into contact with, and did so, not because he thought men were that much different in themselves, but because he needed a stark contrast of their differences if he were to successfully argue his case. Plato’s devices were more subtle, since his “props” seem almost believable. Only by a careful analysis – and by a large dose of imagination – can the “facts” presented in The Republic be separated from the book’s true intention.

Begin with the great lie – and bear in mind that Plato tells us, in bald face words, that it is a lie. Here’s the logic of the lie.

All men are made of earth, but the earth is not uniform in its being. Most of the earth is pure dirt, but the Gods have embedded within that great mass certain other substances, iron, for one, precious metals for another. Hence, some men, because they were shaped by the rare iron, are made to be soldiers, while others, who derive their being from the even rarer gold and silver, are made to be philosophers and rulers. But the great mass of men are made of the plentiful substance, dirt, and are thus fit only to be controlled by the men of iron, and ruled by the men of gold.

Now, Plato certainly was not of the opinion that all men possess the same qualities, but – because he told us he was lying when he said it – we know he did not believe men’s differences could be traced to the natural substances from which they all were made. But if not that, then what?

To answer, consider the education of the philosopher-kings. In yesterday’s blog I made the point that no great body of absolute truth existed that these pupils could be taught. What then specifically differentiates the method of their training from, say, the education of the masses? Two answers come to mind.

Answer number one: The prospective philosopher-kings were taken out of the world, isolated from the corrupting influences which every day were bombarding common men. They were shielded from life as it actually is. Plato, then, is telling us that there is something about the way life is being lived by common men (read, all men) that gets in the way of their being able to learn the way life ought to be lived. Throughout The Republic Plato offers an almost interminable list of influences that shape the way men see the world. Not all of these influences are frivolous, some are even necessary if life is to be successfully lived, commerce for example. The pressures placed upon the business man, the shop keeper, and those who work for wages divert their eyes and souls from the broader view of the world that, if they could but see it, would permit them to live more in harmony with nature and with themselves. I mentioned yesterday the difference between the work of the corporate executive officer and the wise king. The one must focus on a narrow objective – corporate success – while the other must seek to bring all the divergent forces of a nation into harmony. The CEO is not paid to harmonize anything other than the relationship between his company, its suppliers, and its customers. To the extent he does this, he is successful, though his success – which often comes at the expense of others – might constitute a major problem for the wise king. If during his training a fledgling philosopher-king were exposed to too many influences of the sort that naturally affect common men, he might not be able to achieve the necessary level of objectivity. He might become “one of them.”

Answer number two: Philosopher-kings were not taught truth in the sense that truth can be expressed as a body of facts. They were taught the method – dialectic – by which an effective “truth” could be derived. That is, they were taught how to think. Plato was sold on the dialectic (by which he meant, the discursive way of seeking answers). If the world is viewed as an infinity of constantly moving forces, each with aims and methods of its own, to understand the world as a body of facts would be virtually impossible. We may not therefore understand the world the way we might understand an arrangement of numbers, but we can understand the people of the world in the sense that we know they have aims that are their own which, if sought without restraints of any kind, might not – almost certainly will not – produce universal harmony. We can see that, left to their own designs, people and their society will become a conglomerate of individual forces, each setting the rules of its own behavior. Now, it is easy to see that trying to force these free entities into discourse, each with the other, would be difficult. So, if as Plato suggests, dialectic is the answer, what is to be the nature of the dialogue? This question brings us back to the noble lie.

“All men are created equal and are endowed with certain ‘unalienable rights’.” Both clauses of this sentence are lies. By no actual measure are all men equal, and even if there were such as natural rights, they would certainly not be “unalienable.” But just as Plato’s noble lie was intended to create belief in the infallibility of the philosopher-kings, so does the lie of the American experiment have a noble intent. To the extent that lie is believed, and to the extent it becomes a partner in the private dialogue all Americans have with themselves, so will the American nation avoid many of the internal conflicts that throughout history have plagued other forms of government. The lie that served to maintain the power of monarchies – divine right – stopped working when the monarchs started believing their own lie, began to think they were actually divine, and thus stretched their ambitions beyond the point they could be sustained.

The American lie is more believable than the other. There is a sense in which men are equal: we are all born existentially free. And there is a sense in which men’s desires and powers can be interpreted as “rights.” But the most fundamental problem of government lies in men’s existential freedom. Governments can, by force, control men’s tongues, but can never control men’s hearts. The drive to be free is not simply an act of so-called free will, but is rather a fact of the way men are. Our “rights” become rights only when we treat "power" and "right" as synonyms. They become logically and physically defensible when we recognize them as a part of the great lie we have agreed to believe.

Oh yes, the word is agreed. For, you see, the great American lie is unlike others lies – which lose their effectiveness when they are seen to be lies. I may know very well that all men are not equal and that my rights exist only because a powerful government has been committed to protect them, but I know just as well as I know the lie to be a lie, that if we the people begin to behave the way we respond to other lies, we will be doomed, not only as a people, but in all likelihood, as individuals as well. We are protected from the worst aspects of the Hobbesian notion of life as “mean, cruel, and short” by the ideas we have embodied in the notion that “all men are created equal and are endowed with certain unalienable rights.” It does not matter that the sentence contains two lies. What matters is that if we behave as if we doubt their truth, the power and glory of the American dream will come to a bloody end.

It must be admitted that many of the glories of “the dream” have been lost to us in recent times. Powerful forces within the land have found ways to use the lie the way Plato’s lie was originally intended: to establish the ultimate power of those in command. The dialogue that works – the one we must continually carry on between ourselves and our noble lie – has been turned on its head. The American dream has been made an apotheosis, has been made into “America,” has been given substance just as touchable as the real estate we live upon. And in defense of that physical substance we have too often found it necessary to discard the insubstantial ideas that form the core of America’s humanity. We have started to behave as if the lie were no longer relevant to the affairs of men. We’re behaving, again, as Hobbesian creatures, struggling all against each, and each against all. We have lost our awareness of our ideals.

Perhaps in the end that's all Plato's understanding has meant to us. His analysis has served as one of the many contributors to the evolving sense of self that finally grew into the American idea. But nothing in the evolution of ideas suggests that it has an end point. If it took men like Madison and Hamilton, Randolph and Mason, to thrash out the statement of a great and practical lie, perhaps history now has need for a convention of different men, new men who can manage in themselves the sort of isolation from the masses that’s needed if a better and more transcendent lie is to emerge. Perhaps we need open our minds to the possibility that the American ideal was but a small step on the way across the bridge from what we are to what we might become.

I would love to live long enough to see it, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. That’s OK. I can still imagine such a world and can still hope that the world we have remains sufficiently sane that I can carry that hope with me close to the edge.

Mouse Reveals Plato's (Secret) Plan

2006-09-02T12:48:00.000-07:00

Twenty-four centuries ago Plato complained that governments based on pure democratic principles were bound to result in nations that were poorly administered. He based his pessimistic view of democracy on what he saw of the masses that constituted the vast majority of the population of 5th century BC Athens and the other city-states of the Peloponnesian peninsula. He saw people who were not only illiterate, but whose lives were so completely given over to making ends meet they didn’t have the time or energy to devote to a reasoned consideration of the issues they would have to deal with in order to make an effective contribution to self-government. He was disappointed with even the limited democracy practiced in Athens; out of a population that may have numbered 200,000, only about 6,000 Athenian citizens – primarily the propertied class – were allowed a vote. Perhaps Plato, in taking his anti-democratic stand, was still teed off about the death sentence those privileged Athenians had laid upon Socrates, the man he regarded as the finest Greek who ever lived.

As an alternative to democracy, Plato proposed a "sophistocracy," a government administered by professional “philosopher-kings” who, from childhood, had been selected and trained for the work of governing. Their training would be perfectly geared to produce men whose every thought would be for the good of the nation, and whose ability to govern would be assured by their mastery of what Plato called “dialectic,” but which was nothing other than logical reasoning. My own opinion is that Plato never intended his ideas to be implemented, but that The Republic, the book he wrote describing the system, was intended as irony, a demonstration of a system of government so obviously impossible that the difficulties of government would be made visible. It was a fine example of indirection, a plan designed to reveal insurmountable problems, while pretending to propose solutions.

My opinion is, of course, debatable. Nowhere does Plato say, or even suggest, that The Republic was not meant to be taken as a realizable plan. But one thing about that plan, and another thing about the philosopher-kings, must be admitted as possible clues to its ironic intent: the plan assumed that an indisputable body of truth could be identified, and that teachers could be found to inculcate that truth into the fledgling kings. Plato must certainly have known – because Socrates had been his instructor – that no such body of truth existed, and that, as a consequence, no teachers to teach it existed either. As for the kings themselves, if they actually materialized as Plato described them, they would be specialists so perfectly focused on their work they would seem almost inhuman.

But the superhuman focus of the kings would not appear to be impossible to obtain. Modern corporate executive officers are expected to display similar total commitment to their work, so much so that they too, if they actually did it, might seem inhuman. But the task of the CEO is remarkably different from the task of a king. Without argument, the CEO can be said to have succeeded if he optimizes a tangible reality, bottom-line profit; but the rulers of a nation are successful only if they govern in such a way that the people being governed are reasonably happy and assuredly safe.

Plato recognized, though, that not all people would be made happy by the same governmental policy, even when the justice of the policy was not in question. So Plato’s republic would succeed only if the people were to believe the philosopher-kings were always right.

We can certainly agree that people might seem to be happy if they are made to believe they are happy, and that’s exactly what Plato proposed as the grand strategy for his philosopher-kings. The details of the lie by which that goal was to be achieved are too silly to imagine that it would work in today’s world, but the same lie has shown up, in different forms, throughout history. The so-called divine right of kings was a variant of Plato's lie, as are the superstitions that under gird theocratic governments, and those more-or-less secular governments whose leaders claim divine guidance. In any case, such lies only work when the people remain relatively ignorant.

We might imagine that in today’s world Plato’s low opinion of the people’s abilities might not be quite so valid as it was in his day. Free public education has certainly created a much higher percentage of literate people, and the internet has made possible a much wider debate of the issues. But some of the facts of Plato’s time remain with us. It is still true that the great masses of us still spend huge amounts of our time working for a living. Even if we might have a few more free hours, the same sorts of technological breakthroughs that gave us the internet and the nightly news, also brings us boatloads of time consuming entertainments that have nothing to do with public debate of critical issues. We as a people are probably no more able to make an assessment of the issues than were the plebeians of Athens. Moreover, because the techniques by which believable lies are formulated and delivered have been vastly improved since Plato’s time, we are perhaps even more prone to believe lies than the Greeks were. As I wrote two blogs ago, we are also not educating ourselves to be critical thinkers, but rather, to be true believers in the infallibility of “the American way.”

Well, the American way may not be perfect, and the American people may not be as aware of its imperfections as they might be with a more liberal education, but the American experiment has played a necessary role in the progressive development of government as it is now practiced in all of the western democracies. And tomorrow, Gates willing, I will continue this exposé of Plato’s secret plan.

Mouse in Firelight

2006-08-31T09:50:00.000-07:00

When is crime no longer crime?

I watched a film last evening, Firelight by name, a love story, and a tale of two crimes. A young woman, for pay, allowed herself to be made pregnant by a scion of an English peer whose lawful wife (the son’s, not the licentious Lord’s) was in a coma and, consequently, could bear him no heir. Hence, the first crime, a bargain forbidden by law, by custom, and – as it turned out – by the instincts of mother-love.

The girl-child is taken from the mother immediately after birth. The mother-for-hire accepts her fee, and leaves … for seven years. Somehow the comatose wife is still alive, but absolutely “dead to the world.” (This is in the 1830s, so we are asked to suspend a ton of disbelief that a totally comatose person, unable even to blink, could have been kept alive that long.) The child's mother, seeking somehow to find her way into her child’s life, hires on as her little girl’s governess. The rest – including the second crime – you can imagine, though some of the dialogue between the mother and child, and the father and governess goes far beyond the merely imaginable. If there is a flaw in the script, I did not hear it.

The miracle of the film – and it was miraculous – emerged for me as much out of what was seen as from the words and action. Sophie Marceau, the governess, is beauty personified. The child’s father, played by Stephen Dillane, looks to me like the sort of man who would take center stage in the pleasant dreams of women. Marceau and Dillane are a beautiful couple. Still, their charms might have been wasted by a director intent on titillation, but in the carefully restrained hands and mind of writer/director William Nicholson (“The Gladiator,” “Shadowlands”) their beauty is made to seem almost to emanate from the whole of the story and its pictures. The colors Nicholson caused to appear on the screen, and the way he has asked them to move – like “firelight” – upon the actors’ faces and against the sometimes frigid – but always liquid – scenery, creates a world unlike any world we might encounter simply “out there.” The film is art in its highest form: dramatic action unfolding as on a living canvas, poetry spoken as by the heart itself, music that reaches the ear, not so much as sound as barely sensed tension. Silence becomes dialogue, expressing thoughts that perhaps might have been spoken but never so eloquently as when left unsaid….

There had been at least one moment in the week or so when Dillane and Marceau were making the child, when the pure commercialism of their actions gave way to true passion ... to love, if you will to call it that. And they both knew it. Seven years later, when it has been almost invisibly made clear that the passion never died, Dillane asks the governess, in a room lit by the firelight of their yet unspoken love…

“Do you remember that moment when …” [fade to silence.

She replies: [silence] (When any other answer would have said it less clearly.)

Then, after a moment has passed, perhaps to let the audience “hear” what Marceau has heard…

Dillane: “Please tell me that moment can never come again.”

Marceau: [silence] (…and when, even the dullest must know that the deep and genuine love they had discovered in themselves seven years before has become objectively real, we begin to see, and not merely to feel, the “firelight.”)

The film also uses a few truly radical devices. It violates one of the stage world’s most honored clichés, Chekhov’s famous advice: “If you call attention to a gun on the wall in act one, be sure you fire it in act three.” But in a scene immediately after Marceau is hired as governess, the camera follows her as she walks toward a staircase. Just as she reaches the landing, her eyes, for the briefest instant, move to the left where she notices something outside the camera’s view. What was that something she has obviously called our attention to in act one? If we expect she has seen an object of some sort that will take on a meaning in act three, we have misled ourselves. She has “seen” nothing that relates to the plot. She has merely created a suspenseful tension that would otherwise have been much less had she merely ascended the stairs and “noticed” nothing. We have been caused to sense mystery without the usual trappings of relevance. Our emotions have been appealed to so subtly we hardly knew what was happening. We have been brought into the play at its most meaningful level.

In the end, after the story has turned itself on its head, after crime and circumstance have had their way with the characters, after two extremely moving climactic scenes – one between the lovers, another between the governess/mother and her child – the story folds together in a way that could never have been made so right had its every message been spoken. This story has no moral. If anything, it has an immoral, a denouement so perfectly in violation of what ought to be, we come away wondering why we are so happy that it ended just that way. Perhaps life occasionally presents us with instances when crime is no longer crime.

Mouse on Education

2006-08-28T11:30:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, when the Mouse was a senior in high school, a teacher of his, a lady (of the genuine sort) named Miss Ruth Lipscomb, taught him and his peers American History. The text and the course outline seems upon reflection to have been designed to make good citizens of the lot of us. Columbus discovered America and that was a good thing, no mention being made of the genocidal effects of that discovery on the Arawak people of the Bahamas. The Triangle Trade was presented as a more-or-less benign affair. The guns and ammunition the Europeans sold to the slave traders of West Africa might just as well have been sold as collectibles for all we learned of the uses to which they were put. And the slaves and rum that closed the triangle?… mere commodities, things of value people were willing to take in trade for other things. The Revolution had no purpose but “freedom,” and had nothing to do with the debts of southern planters held by English banks, and certainly nothing to do with the desire of New England manufactories to be protected from their competitors abroad. We southern brattlings were supposed to swallow all this without a whimper, and for the most part we did.

That is, we did until we were brought face-to-face with the Civil War. There, things got a bit hairy.

You see, Miss Lipscomb was a renegade teacher. Oh, she gave us the usual run of the thing – the firing on Fort Sumter, Bull Run I & II, Shiloh, Gettysburg, and Appomattox, but of course, no Andersonville. We heard, about Dred Scott, but did not appreciate that, by declaring slaves to be property as protected in the Constitution, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation – a Presidential decree – was made an unconstitutional act. We heard about John Brown’s final battle at Harper's Ferry, but nothing of Virginia Governor Pierpont’s order to the Virginia Militia, immediately after secession, telling it to raid the Federal Armory at Harper’s Ferry to take by force the munitions stored there, an act of war before Virginia was even at war. We heard lots of neat stuff about good old Marse Bobby Lee, and were really, really impressed by the fact that he showed up at Appomattox with shined boots, whereas Grant’s were muddy. (A few of us did sense that the mud bespoke of Grant’s hard-nosed victory.) We got the Civil War just about the way it is perhaps still being taught. But as I have implied, we also got more than we might have expected. We got Miss Lipscomb’s curriculum, too, the one she had fairly well kept to herself before the Monday morning after our “understanding” of the Civil War was formally completed. Miss Lipscomb – the renegade – decided to teach us how to think.

Without so much as a preamble to warn us of what was to come, our history teacher asked us two questions:

Why did some people think slavery was a good thing?

... And ...

Why did some other people think it was a bad thing?

Those of you who wish to comment can answer those questions as you wish. But that’s not what I’m up to here. I’m remembering the next five days of Miss Lipscomb’s class, how it was that a bunch of ordinary southern kids were caused to think about thinking. Oh, we started out trying to make the point, anachronistically, that everyone “knows” slavery is bad, but our teacher would have none of it. She quickly put that notion to rest simply by asking us to consider that many thousands of soldiers on the southern side had died to defend the right to keep slaves. “Were they consciously fighting to defend something they thought was wrong?”

That follow-on question left us squarely in our minds. From its consideration to a deeper “epistemological” question was only a short hop. (We didn’t know that long word, but we didn’t need to; the problem was apparent even if we had no name for it.) How is it that people come to believe what they believe?

We struggled – or better, muddled – our way through that problem for the better part of the first day. Maybe we never settled the question, but we did for sure confront it, and recognize it, as a more fundamental question than “how many died in this or that battle?” We were learning to think.

I will not claim that the five days of that discussion produced solutions to any of the world’s day-to-day problems. After all, we were dealing with questions that underlie all problems, and we were being taught – whether we knew it or not – that perhaps wrong answers to those fundamental questions underlie many of the world’s “real” problems. We were being taught that unless citizens know how to think, the phrase “good citizen” is an oxymoron. (We didn’t know that big word either, and again, didn’t need to.)

I have mentioned this educational experience to several of my friends, and have heard the same reply on almost every occasion: “Miss Lipscomb would never get away with that today.” And maybe that’s true. I hear about the schools being forced to achieve their objectives within what is called Standards of Learning, SOLs, and that suggests to me that children are being taught to develop proficiencies that can be measured. Now I realize that it sort of sounds like it makes good sense to administer the school system in such a way as to let the taxpayers know they’re getting their money’s worth, but it also makes a sort of good sense to realize that that objective is not necessarily the same as producing good citizens in the non-oxymoronic sense. Kids can pass tests, and thus make their schools look good, without having mastered the ability to think.

That much is common knowledge. I don’t expect any of you to argue with it. (Even mice can dream.) What’s not so obvious is that it may be the case that in mastering the skills needed to pass tests the students are learning to think. To decide that issue, one way or the other, requires thought. Is it possible that the mental skills involved in learning the sorts of facts needed to pass tests are no different from the mental skills needed to engage in critical thinking? Is it possible that even the most indicative of tests – those that measure reading comprehension – measure something other than the ability to reason? It may be the case that in trying to decide what this or that complex paragraph “means,” the student may actually be unconsciously weighing one interpretation against another, and finally choosing the one that “feels good”? And isn’t it possible that that’s what goes on in critical thinking?

May be. But if the epistemological process turns upon something like unconscious emotional responses – and let’s say that it might – it does not follow that reading comprehension tests, or any other form of skills measurement, prepares the pupil for conflicted situations where the alternative that looks legitimately reasonable is the one that feels the worst. Such circumstances might never arise if all learning took place within the box of formal education. Kids would (presumably) learn nothing that would contradict the reasonable case. But it is probably provable that just as many of our “facts” are taught to us outside the box of formal education (and here I treat such things as moral and ethical principles as facts). As a consequence of that fact, the tests that determine whether the SOLs are being met, do not measure the extent to which students are capable of dealing with uncomfortable facts … and need I say it, the world is full of those.

Now, I am not suggesting that schools ought to be teaching ethical and moral facts. God forbid. I am suggesting that the schools might be doing the world a favor if they taught in such a way that the graduates of their system matriculate as good citizens, able to reason the whys and wherefores of their beliefs. I suggest that that objective cannot be reached if all we teach are those facts that tend to make our children “good citizens.” Children who have been properly educated ought (though I dislike that word, here it is), they ought to know how to defend their principles when they can think of no reason why those principles are false, and to know why they are surrendering to superior principles when their reason demands.

But unless they know how to deal with the difference between reasoned facts and believed "facts,” they will have been set loose in a world they are practically – but perhaps not wholly – unable to deal with. We muddled through Miss Lipscomb’s challenge. We were not by that experience made into philosophers, but we did realize we had encountered a different sort of learning. We had learned a little of what’s involved in dealing with contradictory “facts.” We had learned that the truth is not always the first thing that comes to mind, that in fact, it is the tension created between what we think we know and what we suspect we do not know, that drives the ineluctable desire to know. Armed with the lesson Miss Lipscomb had taught us, we finally came to understand that we come into the world equipped with the ability to think, yet knowing nothing. That fact – and countless others – had been opened up to us as possibilities by a teacher who desired to produce good citizens and not mere jingoistic robots.

[No brag, Thierry, just fact.]

Once Upon a Mouse ...

2006-08-27T11:03:00.000-07:00

Back when I was working as the supposed leader of a bunch of computer programmer animals, I had occasion to take an official action that -- had it turned out one of the ways it might have -- would have put an end to my career as a computer weenie. Seems there was a new Army Colonel -- a lady Colonel, no less -- put in charge of one of the organizations my bunch did work for. As is the habit of all new Colonels, this lady decided she had to do something right off to let the world know she was all business. (I think it's in the Army manual that they must do this.)

A work order initiated by the lady Colonel appeared on my desk the very next week after she took Command of her group, which had something to do with administration, you know, like, maybe running a tight ship. Seems the lady wanted us to do a little program that would produce a printout of all the civil servants who had on more than one occasion within the past year "abused" their sick leave by taking a Monday off. Well, okay. Not a big deal, and not a difficult program either ... about a half-hour job.

BUT ... one of the gals who worked on my team had recently submitted a formal suggestion that those people who had taken no sick leave in the past year be recognized by some sort of certificate or other form of recognition for their great performance. The suggestion came back unapproved, and it was the lady Colonel herself who had written the reason for the rejection: "Good health is its own reward."

Fine. Who could disagree with such logic? Well ... no one maybe, no one but your humble Mouse, the guy who's sitting there staring at the two pieces of paper, the "illogical" suggestion, and the work order.

In what must have been a moment of temporary insanity, I stapled a copy of the rejected suggestion to the work order and scrawled in very large letters across the face of it, the following equally logical response.

And bad health is it's own punishment.

Of course I knew, and the lady Colonel knew that people do abuse sick leave, some more than others, and that perhaps if the work force learned that their names would appear on a shit list if they made a habit of it, they might refrain. But if taking Monday sick leave is potentially an abusive act, it is also a temptation many must be exposed to. It follows then that those not taking Monday sick leave could be understood to have made conscious choices not to abuse the sick leave privilege. If the offenders were to be punished, why not reward those who "did the right thing?"

Well, all logic aside. My venture into "bravesville" did not turn out badly. As chance would have it, before the lady Colonel received my contemptious reply, she and I had occasion to meet on another matter. And seeings as how I was in those days almost as handsome and congenial as I am now, the lady Colonel was swept off her feet. I never heard a word from her about the work order. She did not even bother to resubmit it. I guess she saw the illogic of her ways. Not all Army Colonels are stupid.

I was inspired to write this by a comment made to my previous blog by a blogster who uses the name of the minor French actor, "Thierry Beauchamp," or who may be that actor. Old Thierry struck a sensitive spot in the Mouse's thick skin ... counted almost to 20 before gathering myself for my usual polite and deeply meaningful response.

The Maturation of the Mouse

2006-08-25T09:50:00.000-07:00

Until I was about 42 years old I wondered how it had come about that I had come to feel nothing like the prejudices I should have been feeling. Reared in the deep south of share-cropper lineage, I had ought to have grown up not only saying things like “had ought to have” but also looking down on black people as inferior beings with whom white people should have no truck. But I didn’t. For some reason – or reasons – I grew up trusting that the differences among the peoples of the earth had more to do with the way they were raised than with the accidents of their birth. It seemed I had just always believed that racial differences didn’t much matter.

But I guess when I reached 42 something must have happened that led me to wonder how I had gotten that way. It just didn’t seem “right” – although it was certainly right – for a southern boy to believe as I did. So I began to wonder.

Well, my wondering turned up a lot of reasons. I wrote of one of them in my blog of May 22. I ‘lowed as how the incident described in that piece explained how I became color blind. Maybe I misspoke myself there. The change may very well have taken place long before, and nowhere near Crawford Park. I finally came to understand that it had a lot to do with my father, a railroad engineer who never learned to drive an automobile. His best friends were railroad firemen, and the firemen were all black men. You see, the railroad had an unwritten policy that no negro would ever be promoted to engineer, and when that fact was coupled to the company’s seniority rules, it was bound to happen that the vast majority of the firemen would be black.

One of those firemen, Jerry Shepherd, who could drive a car, always came by to pick up my dad when they were scheduled for the same run, and it had become the custom that dad would invite Jerry – who we were brought up to call Mr. Shepherd – for a cup of coffee or even breakfast, if it was that time of day. That certainly must have had a liberating effect on the child that I was. But then, why didn’t it also affect my brother who remained a “good southern boy” all his life? I really don’t know the answer, not even now.

Later, when I was 19 years old, another incident occurred that I am convinced finally sealed the matter. I was then a railroad employee myself, working in the clerk’s “extra board,” which meant that I would work the vacation time or other off-time for the regular employees. This particular day – a Sunday morning – I was working as the “call boy,” a job with no duties other than to go to the rooming houses where the away-from-home railroaders slept and wake them up for their run. During the daylight hours the job was almost a no-job, since most of the men would be awake and not need the services of the call boy. So, I was sitting around the depot, earning my wages the hard way – doing nothing. But that turned out OK on this particular day, because it happened that the U.S. Congressman from our district, Mr. Frank Boykin, wandered down to the depot that morning himself and sat down on the bench beside me and told the true story I’m about to tell you. As I say, that story closed the jar lid on my growing up to be what I am as regards the “race issue.”

These were Mr. Boykin’s words:

An old black man came in one day to the court house up in Jackson, in Washington County. Said he wanted to register to vote. That would have been a first, you understand. No n_____ had ever voted in Washington County.

The registrar knew what to do. He proceeded to ask the old man a series of questions that had been put together just for the purpose of disqualifying n_____s from voting. “Have you ever had trouble with the law?” The old man answered, “Yessuh, once I happened to park the boss man’s horse an’ wagon two minutes longer than I wuz s’posed to … over at the feed store.” The registrar asked: “And that’s all? You never had any real trouble with the law?” “Yessuh,” the old man answered. “I’se purty much stayed to myself all these years.”

The registrar, even though a product of his times, was a decent man, so he realized that question had failed in its mission. He proceeded to ask four or five more questions, all of which the old black man answered to the satisfaction of the registrar. Finally came the question that had never failed. “Here’s your last question. What is a writ of certiorari” The old man, knowing he had met his match, slowly rose from the chair, put on his hat an started shuffling toward the door. But then, sadly shaking his head, he made this answer: “I guess, cap’n, tha’s a writ they done made up to stop a pore ole n___ah from votin’ in Washington County.”

At that point Mr. Boykin paused, like a good story teller, shook his head in admiration, and then, in a voice filled with pride, finished the story: “And that, young feller, is how they came to register the first black who ever voted in Washington County.

On that Sunday morning the story had certainly come across as a form of southern humor, but years later, when I came to reflect on the problem of how I came to be an “abolitionist” in Alabama, I remembered something else that had happened to me, or in me, as the story ended. I remembered that I had not only laughed but had also felt something like prideful hope, a feeling that seemed to be telling me more about the mindset of the registrar than of the old black man. Oh, for sure, the old man had his wits about him, and maybe he was permitted to vote only because he had entertained the registrar. But … well, maybe it was Mr. Boykin’s way of telling the story. I’m sure he told it as a way to make me laugh, but there was a look in his eye that spoke of a deeper, more enduring purpose. Mr. Boykin knew that he was telling me a story of how the injustices of the south began to unravel. He knew he was talking about a past that had to change, and even though he could never have been reelected if he had spoken aloud the words I saw in his eyes, his message was clear. “It’s wrong, boy. The way we have treated negroes has always been wrong.”

I cannot be sure of the role Frank Boykin’s story played in the stage play that has been my life, but I like to think it contributed a moral to the plot. Otherwise, it would be just another funny story. As it has turned out, now that I am closer to the curtain than I was when the “plot began to thicken,” it seems to me that … well, let me put it this way … I may not be all that I ought to be, but I like the part of me that I learned from the likes of my dad, and Jerry Shepherd, and Frank Boykin, and … yes … from that old man, the first negro who was registered to vote in Washington County Alabama. Yes, I like that part of me.

An Afterthought

2006-08-24T00:50:00.000-07:00

When three decades ago I first considered the order of "be, do, have," it seemed to me that once we "have" something it becomes a part of our being. That was a wrong idea. It's not the "things" that become part of us, but our attitude toward them. If we regard “things” as Faust did – as a relief from certain kinds of boredom – our beingness in relation to things will have us situated as victims who are caused to be what we are by things that are not us. We will be “objects” produced by other “objects.”

Now, it's obvious that we cannot escape being surrounded by things that would – if we remained passive in our understanding of them – cause the innermost sense we have of ourselves to be determined by outside causes. But digging a bit deeper into the distinction Miss Robin made between objects with and without souls may shed some light on the difference between being an active human being and being a mere passive piece of breathing meat.

Take for instance this business we call "loving" that commands so much of the attention of women and men. In its simplest form – disregarding the fact that loving men and loving women both have souls – lovers might regard the object of their affection as just another "thing" that happened to come along in their lives just in time to relieve certain natural cravings, relief from boredom being the one less talked about. If that’s essentially the sum of the effect our beloved has on our being, then we might well admit that a soulless rubber ducky could have served us just as well.

But the man or woman who loves just happens to be an object with a soul, and even more certainly, just happens to be the object of his or her own most enduring love. We love ourselves. And, of course, we must if we are to remain concerned for our own well being.

With that fact in mind, think once again of that question and answer Karl Jaspers saw as fundamental to an understanding of Spinoza. The question: “On what do happiness and unhappiness depend?” The answer: “On the nature of the objects we love.” We are compelled by existential forces to love ourselves, but nothing in nature – the world’s or our own – compels us to value ourselves. We may in fact hate what we are while continuing to behave in the world as if nothing in it were more important than ourselves.

One possible source of self hatred lies in our relating to other people as if they were soulless objects. We are intuitively aware that all people are essentially like ourselves in the sense that we all possess souls. [This cannot be proven, and that’s precisely why that knowledge remains intuitive, i.e., not provable and not needing proof.] An ethical intuition also suggests to us – without compulsion – that it is wrong to treat other people as if they were not like us in that respect. To the extent we violate that moral imperative, we devalue ourselves, and to the extent we lack value, the love we bestow upon ourselves is directed toward an object that does not deserve to be loved. Hence, unhappiness.

The loving relationships between men and women have taken on so many different patterns it would be virtually impossible to catalog, much less analyze, them all. But there do seem to be certain general forms in those relationships that can be put into the mill of self analysis. Spinoza spoke of the desire the lover feels toward his beloved, said that the lover desires to “possess” his beloved. But he then went on to say that the desire to possess another flies in the face of the existensial fact that it is impossible actually to possess another. We may be able to possess soulless objects, because they have no desire to be not possessed. But every thing with a soul loves itself, and that self love cannot be taken away by another’s love, no matter how sincere or enduring. Lovers may make themselves “one,” but they remain two. They may give each other pleasure, but the pleasure happens in two different souls. We may wish to possess our beloved, but in order to do so we would have to make of them objects unlike ourselves. We would be compelled to deny them a soul.

But loving also has positive characteristics. We desire happiness for our beloved, and the more happiness the beloved enjoys the more joy we also experience. But this one has a cutting edge. Our beloved may find joy in someone other than ourselves. It is not altogether certain that our joy would thus increase as hers did. But if we have truly loved, and if we have transcended the traps of possessiveness, I suppose it may be possible to experience joy in our beloved's enjoyment of another's love. This may be more likely to occur in cases where a person loves from afar, or where the strictures of society prohibit the mutual sharing of joy. The lover, in those cases, may in fact take pleasure in knowing that his beloved is living a joyful life. It should not pass notice that when the lover does in fact experience that sort of joy, it is likely that he will find a value in himself that would not otherwise be there. It should, however, also be noted that society’s strictures often compel a person to endure less joy than he or she might find with another. Cases of that sort multiply sorrow, both in the soul of the lover and the beloved.

If we now analogously extend these understandings to objects other than individual lovers, if we think of families, cities, and nations – perhaps even the earth – as loving and beloved objects, we find ourselves able to make sense of much of the world’s unhappiness. Families feel compelled to love black sheep sons and daughters, cities and nations to care for their lost sheep, the world itself, if it were sentient, to mourn the losses imposed upon the unfortunate by nature’s vagaries. If we think of the so-called “consumer generation” as a lover who has centered its affection on objects of fleeting value, we may begin to understand at least one of humanity’s central afflictions: we can only truly possess things that rot and decay, and we intuitively understand that there is something wrong with us for that compulsion. The world is the object of star-crossed lovers.

Well, enough for one passing morning – which has already made its way into an afternoon. Perhaps another day will find a more joyful way to speak of the earth. We are still, when we are operating as authentic humans, a community of I’s and Thou’s. We are objects with souls, lovers and beloveds, seekers of the perfect way to love and be loved.

The Faustians and the Mouse

2006-08-23T20:23:00.000-07:00

The story of Professor Faust has been likened by "Miss Robin" -- in a comment on this blog -- to children of our time, those we've come to call "the Baby Boomers." I vowed when I read her comment that I would try to say something "brilliant" about all that, not altogether sure that I could, you understand, but a bit taken aback that a young lady less than 1/3 the Mouse's age had put a slant on our recent history that -- I confess -- had never so much as crossed the Mouse's mind -- not even as a shadow. And today's blog is it ... the Mouse's "brilliant" expansion on Miss Robin's truly brilliant insight. (Hmm. I first spelled it "incite," and perhaps would never have noticed my "error" had I not heard Herr Doctor Freud laughing his head off in Prichard, Alabama ... the place where the souls of the righteous but unwashed dead were transferred after the Pope abolished Limbo.)

Faust's story has been written a thousand times, but most notably by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a German writer, some would say, the German writer . We've had Benet's "The Devil & Daniel Webster," an opera "Faust" by Gounod, a modern novel by Thomas Mann, and at least one dramatization by the lady we know on this blog as "Finding Fairhope." [She named the devil, Nick. Thought I'd forgotten, did you?]

The story's actually quite simple. A man with a problem strikes a bargain with an all-powerful being -- makes a contract, as it were -- and enjoys for a time all the benefits he had traded his soul for. Miss Robin understood that "the Baby Boomers didn't sign any such contract." She claimed they just happened to come along at a time in history when the world was primed to render the benefits. The contract was unconsciously negotiated. They were carried along into the sin of "consumerism" by the favoring gales of fortune. They didn't realize they had sold their souls.

Miss Robin's Faustian allegory is thus, in a profound way, far more devastating than Goethe's. At least Professor Faust had the benefit of an arm's length deal, as they say; he bargained with his eyes wide open. But the Boomers hardly realized that by falling in love with "things" they were sacrificing the only thing that, finally, would make life worth living. They had lost sight of the value of life itself. Having confused life with the all-too-fleeting sensations produced by having this or that object, they imagined -- in their wildest dreams -- that "things" would put an end to boredom. "If I only had a rubber ducky, the girl of my dreams would love me, and I would forget about the Mercedes" ... until tomorrow they should have added.

If Goethe had leapt ahead a century or so and read his Sartre and Camus, he could have had his man Faust moaning about the bassackwardness of the way the Boomers -- and most of us -- consider that the world works. He could have had Faust arguing with his angelic self about the order of the verbs, be, do, and have. Instead, he threw the good Doctor Faust onto the ass end of the triad, had him believing that if Mephistopheles would just let him have great knowledge, then he would do great works, and be the man he had always sensed that he could be. Of course, Goethe knew what he was doing, even if Faust didn't. Goethe was, after all, a good Spinozist! Goethe arranged it, you see, that when the Devil came for his due, Faust's beloved Margarete, so in love with Faust's kisses while the contract terms were in his favor, would now be led to cry:

Are you no longer able to return a kiss?
So short a time away from me. my love,
and you've forgotten how to kiss.

Faust has had his fling with knowledge and sensuous living, he has done all that the wealthiest Prince's of the world might have done, and now he is left where he began, with his own being. He has had his rubber ducky, and has found it wanting.

The world as we know it emerges out of our being, here and now. To the extent that our being drives us to do things out of our being, rather than out of our having, (X) we are become as better beings, able to do mightier works with greater perfection, able to have the power to move on to the higher levels of being to which we are now empowered. It is out of our being that we see and judge goodness and beauty. It is out of our acting as more enlightened and appreciative beings that we are able to do -- with natural ease -- things we might before have judged impossible.

Faust had not seen it that way, though Goethe had. Faust was already a learned man, a powerful man, but somehow came to believe he was being deprived. He thought because he lacked a knowledge of everything, he knew nothing. His rubber ducky -- the power he wished he could wheedle from Mephistopheles -- he already had ... or else there was no such. He had been deluded by visions of a Heaven that he knew, from his learning, was a fiction, but which he nonetheless imagined as something real. Perhaps he suspected, or merely wished, that all allegories had a counterpart in Being, that if he could imagine Heaven it must in some sense be obtainable. If he had simply compared the power he knew he possessed in his own soul to that possessed by, say, a frog, he would have seen the only Heaven there is ... the divine force Dylan Thomas saw, "the power that through the green fuse drives the flower," the elan that drives the human soul.

So, Faust had a problem. But his was not a problem brought about by ignorance. His emptiness became apparent to him only in his fullness. But the Boomers were different. They never sensed fullness, only emptiness. They set about with a frenzy to fill it with whatever seemed to momentarily relieve the dullness created by the safety and sameness of the world as it seemed to be in the sitcoms of the 50s and 60s. But that emptiness is like the hole in the barn roof Twain's jaybird kept putting acorns in, the one he never filled, and never could. If the jay had been capable of reflecting on life's rewards , as Spinoza was, and as Goethe parodied in Faust, he may have reflected as the philosopher did in the first paragraph of his Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, probably the most poetic, and certainly one the most fundamental passages in his prose:

After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.

Spinoza found his happiness in exactly the place where Faust had found his sorrow, in a true knowledge of the world and, thus, of God. The Boomers, though, became bogged down in the "vain and futile" trappings of the "usual surroundings of social life." They never made it out of their senses into a discovery of their mind. Small wonder that their pleasures have not delivered "continuous, supreme, and unending happiness." They were -- and remain -- in love with the wrong sorts of objects.

Perhaps in time, after the vanities have run their course, a critical mass of humankind will awaken to the greatness and glory of simply being human, learning to revel in what they are instead of in what they might someday have. That'll be Heaven

Two Loves for a Mouse

2006-08-22T10:10:00.000-07:00

Writing a daily (almost) blog gets easier as the blog becomes more popular and more and more people comment. My blog just before this one, for example, was inspired by an observation made by a commenter, and today’s blog is to be no different.

Last evening a young lady who calls herself “Robin” asked a telling question, “Do WE have integrity?” and added a punch line: “I'm talking about you and me.” The Mouse assumed – for comforts sake – that the “we” she had in mind were the people of the United States of America. If I read her intent correctly, she was putting the blame for the sins committed by our nation squarely on the shoulders of the American people themselves, those who in a republic are ultimately responsible for their own government.

As you might imagine, an indictment of that breadth has caused the Mouse a few sleepless hours. Nothing gets to him quite so effectively as the well-aimed thrust of a verbal spear. And nothing disturbs him quite so deeply as a sense of personal guilt. If I, as one of the people, am guilty of the atrocities that have been committed in my name, what exactly is the nature of my guilt? And what must I do about it?

Because I am more a man of words than of deeds I suspected that the first question would be the easy one, and perhaps it was. But the answer that came up for me to that question caught me completely off guard and elevated “what must I do” from a mere civil action – “get involved” – to something that more resembles a religious penance than a rational response.

I have been rereading Karl Jaspers’ commentary on Spinoza, keeping the thin little volume beside my keyboard here, to read whenever the harpies of hyperspace temporarily cease their torture. This morning the book fell open to what Jaspers referred to as the first question we must address when setting out to understand Spinoza. His question did not at first seem related to the one I had posed as my first, but after he answered, I saw that his question not only related but provided, in effect, an answer to both of mine. Jaspers asked: “On what do happiness and unhappiness depend?” And quickly answered: “On the nature of the objects that we love.”

If we as a people – and I as an individual – have permitted our nation to create conditions of unhappiness, it must be that we have fallen in love with the wrong objects.

In yesterdays’ closing paragraphs I referred to the idea that so long as the ideals of this nation remain alive hope endures. But maintaining a stock of ideals in the mind’s storehouse is not the same as loving them. While we may on occasion trot out references to “the Founding Fathers” and to “the American experiment” to add volume to empty phrases, if those ideals were in fact our “true loves,” I seriously doubt that we would have permitted the series of misadventures I summarized in yesterday’s blog. We would not have been mesmerized by “manifest destiny,” puffed up by dreams of empire, nor (finally) incapacitated by the pathological delusions of grandeur that naturally afflict those who imagine themselves “masters of the universe.” We would not murder innocents in the name of “freedom.”

If we are not in love with our ideals, then what do we love? What is the object that occupies the foremost place in our hearts? Perhaps it is, as many have suggested, simply the emotional comforts and stimulations provided by “things.” Perhaps we have become so distracted by the consumerist calling that we have lost sight of the ethical ideals embodied in The American Dream. It has been, after all, those ideals that have produced the wealth that makes consumerism possible.

I observed yesterday that, “This nation was not established to change men’s nature, but rather to establish a framework of order and justice within which men might seek their own sense of righteousness, and see to their own happiness.” It did not occur to me when I wrote those words that a strong possibility exists that when the nation succeeds in establishing “a framework of order” the people, in seeking their own happiness, might easily lose sight of the selfless ideals that undergird and actually create the nation’s strength. By focusing on themselves and on their immediate happiness, the people may have fallen in love with the wrong object.

But as I have implied, the escape from consumerism may more resemble a penance than a practical solution. If we were at this late date to follow Thoreau’s advice to “simplify, simplify, simplify,” odds are we would bankrupt the nation and send the world into an endless depression. But surely there must be a middleground. Surely we can stop consuming some of the objects we are consuming without creating economic panic. Surely our government can exercise restraint in some of its spending without endangering the wealth and health of the nation. How many billions are we spending each day for no reason other than to sustain our armies in foreign fields?

But the economic demands placed upon us by our love all go by the boards when we finally catch on to it that we can love the ideals of liberty and justice – love them and commit to them without reservation – while at the same time seeking and finding our individual happiness. We are, after all, not robots programmed to perform simple tasks. It is entirely possible, within the context of a nation built upon a love of liberty and justice, to seek and to find safety and stimulation for our individual selves. It is possible to love the abstract ideals of our dream and, at the same time, to desire and have the concrete objects the implentation of those ideals have made possible.

But it ain’t easy. To love what we have in our hands demands first that we love those things that exist – and can only exist – in our hearts, and it is painfully apparent that we are more prone to love what we can see and hold in our hands than those things that exist only as ideas. It takes an act of reason to grasp the connection between the perceptible and the unseen, an act of wakeful recognition to sense the intertwining and interdependence of our loves.

And yet, if we take the easy path, the one that permits us to have our “things” while remaining ignorant of their source in the ethical infrastructure of our ideals, we are bound to be forced to answer Robin’s question in the negative. “No, my dear, we are not ethical. We are in love with objects that have no soul."

Pray, dear child, take us by the shoulders and shake us into wakefulness, lest we die – as a nation and as a people – in possession only of things destined to end in dust and decay.

If the dream is to survive, it must be lived.

Manifest Mendacity

2006-08-20T18:14:00.000-07:00

A man I know as “John (Sweden)” last evening posted a rather meaningful comment to one of the Mouse’s blogs. He wrote, in part: “America is one of civilization’s greatest tragedies, a failed democracy, and the number one threat and obstacle to peace and stability in the world.” John (S)’s statement was made in the context of a discussion of the Iraq war, in which the Mouse had opined – not exactly in these hackneyed words – that, while the invasion of that oil-rich country was ill-advised (to put it mildly), the U.S. now finds itself holding a tiger by the tail. To let go, and leave the tiger to its own designs could very well have disastrous effects.

John (S), after swapping remarks with another commenter, most of which could be dismissed as the sort of persiflage too often encountered in Internet “rooms,” finally broadened the discussion to a topic that could not so easily be set aside. When viewed within the context of that broader concern, the war in Iraq can be seen as merely a symptom of a deadly disease. America may indeed be “the number one threat and obstacle to peace and stability in the world.”

Once the notion struck me that John (S) might be right, I began to wonder how it could have come about that a nation founded on the ideals of human equality and “liberty and justice for all” could have become a monster to at least one reasonably intelligent man. Answering that question would be easy if it could be settled by solving the riddles of the current U.S. administration. There can be no question but that the nation’s ideals have been severely betrayed by George W. Bush and his accomplices. In even a modest expression of those ideals, no justification can be found for preemptive war, for misleading the American people with lies and distortions of fact, for eroding civil liberties, for, in effect, fomenting violence – all of which have become business as usual for our leadership. Yes, if it were that simple the problem could be solved very simply, by voting the miscreants out of office. But I suspect – no, I am convinced – the roots of the problem go much further back than the current occupant’s residency in the White House.

John (S) indirectly referred to the Vietnam War, and in retrospect I suppose most people would agree that war was a terrible mistake. And yet, it was justified at the time by honest civil servants as a continuation of a policy developed during the Eisenhower administration by John Foster Dulles. Designed to bankrupt the Soviet Union, Dulles’s “brinksmanship” strategy sought to keep the world on the brink of war, with the U.S. developing weapons of greater and greater technical capability, not intending necessarily to use them, but requiring the USSR to spend more than their fledgling economy could afford merely to keep up. Dulles was playing on Russian paranoia, an illness it acquired as a direct effect of the Stalinist purges and the tragic losses inflicted upon the Soviet people during WW II. The USSR countered by promoting a series of cheap guerilla type wars, the most significant for the U.S. being the war waged by Ho Chi Minh against the pseudo-American government of South Vietnam.

But even the so-called Cold War does not seem to have been the beginning of the malaise John (S) pointed to. America’s dealings with Mexico and the tribal nations of Native Americans reflected a small scale contagion of the Superpower mindset, a “childhood” disease as it were that has metastasized into an epidemic. We characterized those early violations of human rights as expressions of the nation’s “manifest destiny,” as if we, like the Joshua of the Old Testament, were empowered from on high to go forth and conquer. It seems never to have occurred to us to question those essentially empty words, accepting the evidence of our undeniable successes as proof of our divine authority.

The Spanish-American War finally brought into the open our belief that America was the “anointed of God.” Our quest for empire could no longer be glossed over as a territorial necessity. The islands of the Philippines were half-way around the world. We justified our murder of tens of thousands of native Filipinos in words that might have been spoken by an itinerant tent-show preacher: we were bringing Christianity to the heathens. That motive played well among the fundamentalist population of the late 1890s, with only a few voices being raised, notable among them one of my heroes, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain. But despite Clemens’ popularity, he was not heard. His was merely a voice of reason, with no chance at all against the jingoistic bellowing of the Hearst newspapers and, yes, the Old Rough Rider himself. The die was cast, and America was launched as a world super power.

The First World War solidified the casting, and our refusal to join the League of Nations, as merely one of many focused on world peace, confirmed that we regarded ourselves as something other than just another member of the herd of nations. We were, after all, the power that had snatched England's and France’s chestnuts out of the fire of the stalemated war, and brought Germany to its knees. Even today, the jingo lives on in our dogged reluctance to surrender even a part of our sovereignty to the United Nations.

Now all of this might have been for the good if we had based our “foreign entanglements” on the ideals of liberty and justice. Instead of enacting policies fraught with superstitious beliefs in manifest destiny and divine revelation, we could have adopted a “Lighthouse Policy,” demonstrating our righteousness by our example. If our system of government was the best – and there has never been a better – that fact, by itself, would have made more converts to democracy than our armies ever could – or will. If our system of limited capitalism was seen to produce more wealth than any other ever had or could, that fact too would have led at least the reasoning people of the world to emulation rather than hatred. If we had fought wars only for noble reasons, if we had never permitted our ideals to be sacrificed to delusions of grandeur, if we had humbly walked in the way of the ideas that must have been held in the hearts of the Founders, perhaps the world might not now see us as John (S) sees us, as a nation the world has passed by.

I grant, the Lighthouse Policy has never in history been implemented by any nation that was powerful enough to believe it could follow the path of conquest. As Thucydides wrote of the Athenian negotiation with the Milesians (before slaughtering them), “Of men we know, and of the Gods we suspect, they will rule where they can, and serve only where they must.” The madman Hegel wrote – though it took him roughly 400,000 words of bad German to say it: men are either masters or slaves, and desire to be the former. No powerful nation has for very long pursued a path lit by reason. All have followed where their lust for power would take them.

And here we are.

We are tempted to believe the world might be different if men would only come to their senses. Unfortunately, we must deal with people as they are, and not as we wish they were. This nation was not established to change men’s nature, but rather to establish a framework of order and justice within which men might seek their own sense of righteousness, and see to their own happiness. The United States of America was never created to be a world power, nor a savior of humankind. That it has come to this must be seen as a gradual assault of our demons upon the nobler angels of our ideals. It was to be expected, that when men use words without knowing their meaning, when nations feel they are “called” to “liberate” the world by force of arms … it was to be expected that at least one, and maybe two, reasonably intelligent men would see America as “a failed democracy, and the number one threat and obstacle to peace and stability in the world.”

But fret not, John (S). So long as it remains possible for men to speak and write words describing the ideals of the American dream, so long as people like yourself continue to keep alive – if only flickeringly so – the principles upon which this nation was founded …then this too shall pass and we shall see a rebirth of freedom, not forced upon the world, but growing out of the pure vision kept in your heart.

But what a pity that so many innocents have been caused to die by the blindness and stone-heartedness of those who are led by a will to power.

The Word on Spinoza's Ring

2006-08-18T10:15:00.000-07:00

Bento Baruch Benedictus de Espinoza wore a ring upon which he (personally) had engraved the image of a thorny rose and the Latin word "Caute." The flower represents a play on his name. Apparently, "spinoza" is the Spanish word for "thorn," and there can be little doubt that Benedict was aware that the powers-that-be regarded him as a thorn and his beliefs as thorny. In English the Latin word means "cautiously," so we can take it that Spinoza meant to remain a thorn, but to do so with caution. If we can judge by the way he lived his life -- especially, as regards the manner in which his works were published -- he was, to put it in the vernacular, "cautious to a fault."

Perhaps he adopted the life style of extreme caution after he was attacked at knife point in the year immediately preceding his banishment from the Jewish community of Amsterdam. His unorthodox views of the religion into which he was born were already well known, and it was for those views that he was attacked. In any case, during his lifetime he published only one book that bore his name on the title page, a geometric demonstration of Descartes' "Philosophy and Metaphysical Thoughts." But that book did not express Spinoza's own beliefs, a fact that was made clear in a brief preface to the book that Spinoza insisted someone other than himself should write. Later, his "Treatise on Theology and Politics" was anonymously published. It even bore a false publisher's name. None of his other work was published until after his death, at the tender age of 44. The "Ethics," a "Hebrew Grammar," and two unfinished pieces, the "Political Treatise" and a "Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect," were safely locked away in a small desk. Immediately after his death -- the next day -- the contents of the desk (still locked away) were sent to Amsterdam where they were shortly published, in both Latin (the language in which he wrote them) and in Dutch. The circle of friends who saw to the printing, by publishing the works in the language common people could read, seemed to be throwing Spinoza's caution "to the wind," in effect saying to the authorities who had dogged their friend throughout his life, "up yours!".

His friends -- none of them Jewish, most of them men of substantial means, and none of them particularly religious in the usual sense -- had less to fear than Spinoza, so felt no particular need for caution. One might thus be led to attribute to Spinoza himself a streak of cowardice, an attribution that might stick were it not for one particular incident. It seems that after Louis 14th's invasion of the Netherlands had finally been foiled, the "common people" decided to avenge the wave of destruction the French had caused. They chose for their scapegoat Jan de Witt, a man who could rightfully be compared to George Washington as the Father of his Country, for it was certainly de Witt who had led his nation to become the most democratic nation in Europe. But Holland still had its religious zealotry, headed by William of Orange, a pretender to the "presidency" and a man who would break down the already crumbly wall separating church and state. The mob, incensed by William's propagandists, murdered Jan de Witt and his brother, tore them limb from limb and fed their entrails to the dogs. When word of the atrocity reached Spinoza, he had to be physically restrained from racing into the street to denouce the mob as "The Greatest of the Barbarians." He had prepared a sign bearing those words, and would have posted it had his landlord, perhaps fearing for his own safety as a harborer of the heretic, not restrained him. Spinoza would almost certainly have been killed had he not been double-locked in his room. (He lived as a boarder, owning nothing of value save his books, his bed, and the lathe he used to grind lenses, an occupation that provided him a living.)

Spinoza had also inherited cautious ways from the Jewish community. The Jews in Amsterdam were, almost to a man, first generation descendants of Marrano exiles from Portugal and Spain, people who had been driven from several homelands by their refusal to disavow their religion. They lived cautiously or not at all. But then Spinoza was doubly exiled, not only from the land of his ancestors on the Iberian peninsula, but from the tight-knit Jewish "nation" in Holland. "Caute" became his watchword because history had thrust it upon him. He lived as long as he did -- which was not long in any case -- because he lived cautiously.

You can read a much more eloquent and revealing portrait of Bento Baruch Benedictus de Espinoza in a beautifully written book, "Betraying Spinoza," by Rebecca Goldstein. The last chapter of the book -- how can I say this without seeming more of a sycophant than I already am -- I was in tears as the final moments of Spinoza's death unfolded in Ms Goldstein's remarkable prose. I seemed to be in that "upper room" with the dying Spinoza and the young doctor to whom Spinoza communicated his instructions regarding the small locked desk. If Ms Goldstein took a large measure of poetic license in her description of that scene, well, dear lady, you are forgiven. Your poetry worked. You have written a beautiful book.

A Mouse in the White House

2006-08-17T09:15:00.000-07:00

First, I want to clear up the title. The mouse in the White House is a mouse, not the Mouse. The mouse currently occupying the White House
and -- I must add -- his political opponents do not see the double edged tragedy in the following statement (uttered by the mouse yesterday).

"Leaving before we complete our mission would create a terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East, a country with huge oil reserves that the terrorist network would be willing to use to extract economic pain from those of us who believe in freedom."

The current occupant of the White House hinges the future of his administration on the obvious fact that what he said is probably the truth. But he apparently is not willing to face the more compelling fact that he's the villain who created that uncomfortable situation. Moreover, the Democratic meatballs appear to be denying the terrible fact the mouse reported, crying for immediate withdrawal from Iraq when they ought to be forming their demands around simply getting rid of the current occupant of the White House and the much larger rats who put the crazy ideas in his head, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld.

The genuine, capital "M" Mouse reported the fact implied in the (little "m") mouse's speech over three years ago, before the troops were sent in. And the Mouse wasn't the only one telling his mousiness the truth. His Secretary of State told him that he was creating a "pottery shop" manifesto, "If you break it you own it." The current occupant disregarded that advice, and now complains that the mess he created is really a mess.

If the party that is now out wants to get in, they've got to stop this bullshit about getting out of Iraq now. They must be truthful about the status quo, admit that the nation is between the proverbial rock and a hard place, and brace the American people for a long, hard struggle. They must run their campaigns on the basis of the fact that the ("m") mouse is simply incompetent. It's not that he's merely stupid. It's that his particular brand of stupidity is the sort usually associated with evil people. Their brainless actions lead to tragedy and they take responsibility for none of it. The time has past when we can afford to keep brainless krill on the payroll.

Which raises an interesting question: do we have any intelligent politicians left in this country? The possibility truly exists that the election process itself has, by natural selection, produced politicians whose qualifications reside in the bone structure of their faces. To win office they must be photogenic. So, getting a politician elected who actually possesses the qualifications needed to lead the nation out of a quagmire is going to be difficult if not altogether impossible.

I would opt entirely for impossibility if I had not recently seen on CSPAN a young, good looking member of the House of Representatives who not only has the media-demanded qualification of being pleasantly photographable, but who seems also to have a brain that works. I'm referring to a fellow name of Jay Inslee, a Congressman from the state of Washington. If the one performance I saw is an idicator of the man's abilities, then I say let's promote him, make him the next current occupant (and maybe the Mouse can then actually say the President's name without gagging).

The CSPAN broadcast I watched was devoted to a subcommittee meeting in which the merits of the "hockey stick" analysis of global warming was being discussed. For the first hour or so the congresspeople on the committee were grilling six invited panel members, three of whom supported the analysis (which shows temperatures rising at an alarming rate) and three of whom were quibbling with the statistical methods that had been used. No one, not any of the members of the subcommittee who had spoken -- and certainly not the Mouse -- knew the first thing about statistics, so the words passing back and forth between the subcommittee and the panel might just as well have been grunts and growls for all they were contributing to an understanding of the problem. But then came Jay Inslee's turn to ask questions.

He first, in a matter of seconds, asked any of the six panel members who had any doubts about the human causes of global warming to raise their hand. None did. Then Inslee said, very simply, so the debate we're having is not about whether we have a problem, and added that the time has passed for defining the problem and it was now time to take action.

In short, Inslee had nailed the true problem and recommended a course different from the do-nothing process currently being pursued by the administration and the Congress. I was struck by his ability to see the truth through all the smoke and mirrors. He must be possessed of a logical, Spinozistic mind.

So, there is hope. Maybe Mr. Inslee is not the man the Democrats will put forth to do the job. He's not very well known. But the fact that people like him can still be found among the population suggests to me that all is not lost. The problem facing us in Iraq is difficult, but it can't be much worse than we have faced many times before. In my lifetime, the nation has risen from the poverty of a great depression, fought and won a major world war, lost an ill-advised war, rose above the criminal acts of at least two presidents and the sexual perversity of another, and yet is still breathing. But today we face major problems, perhaps as difficult as any we have faced since the Civil War. We must begin as a people to use our minds as active devices, questioning what we hear, rather than letting it soak into our already-made-up minds.

Yes, Mr. (little "m") mouse, tragedy might indeed result if we precipitously leave Iraq, but why in heaven's name should we trust you to solve the problem, the numbskull who put us there in the first place? You are the problem, and it's time for the American people to wake up to that fact. We've done it before, we'll do it again.

The Mendacious Mr. Lou Dobbs

2006-08-16T15:23:00.000-07:00

I want to talk about the most disgusting pundit currently peddling his wares on cable TV (CNN). I refer to the silver-haired mouthpiece of the far right, Mr Lou Dobbs. Every evenng for at least the past year -- and I do mean every evening -- Dobbs has belched forth on the evils of illegal immigrant labor. As the faithful may recall, we went over this topic a month or so ago, and given that the collective opinion of the Mouse-world represents the "truth for our times," I was convinced Dobbs would get the message and get off his Hitlerian bandwagon.

I didn't realize two things. First, he was (literally) "getting off" on the subject. Now I confess that it wasn't me who noticed this, but one of the Mouse's dearest friends. She advised me to watch closely as Dobbs's rant reaches its apex (every evening), how his breathing becomes more rapid and his eyes begin to scrootch together as he tries to hide the effects of his gathering orgasm. I did watch, and it was true. His efforts to withhold his burst of pleasure actually caused beads of sweat to pop out on my TV screen. I noticed also something else my friend had failed to mention. As Dobbs nears "completion," the little flag pin he wears on his lapel begins to wave, and just as he passes through the rages of petitte morte (I'm guessing about the spelling, FF) the flag gradually folds its colors and sags into a state of reverential repose.

But the orgasmic effects upon old Lou are only his personal reward. Dobbs's bosses at CNN reap a far more tangible, though perhaps less satisfying, payoff -- money. Dobbs appeals to the prurient interests of the American far-right, and as we all know, there is no limit to the amount of horseshit those worthies will swallow if it is packaged as flag-waving jingo-talk or as the "word of God." So old Lou is -- make no mistake -- a commodity, and his palaver but sugar-sweet icing to the tongues of the rabid right.

Five years ago, old silver-hair made his first attempt to enter the Jingo Hall of Fame by vomitting -- again every night -- on the evils of "exporting America." That also sold well with those who love capitalism but hate its realities, but as the punditry of the party line began to line up against our hero on this issue, he gradually transitioned to his present packaging. Hot cakes never sold so well. The maggotry at CNN, seeing how well Lou's sales were going during his regular 6 -7 PM (eastern) weekdays slot, began scheduling him into other shows as an "invited expert" on immigration issues.

A word about Lou's "expertise." As a Harvard educated economist he ought by now to have said at least a word or two about the economic values presented by the use of illegal labor to harvest crops in sunny California and elsewhere. And he could have detailed the effect deportation of all that cheap labor might have on the price of lettuce, or for that matter, on the lettuce crop, which would probably rot in the fields for want of hands to gather it. But no, Lou Dobbs, a man who should be able to speak with some authority on the pros and cons of the issue has -- to my knowledge -- said virtually nothing about anything other than the evils of "our broken borders." He belongs over on Fox News where the viewers are more accustomed to (and apparently, hungry for ) "fair and balanced" bullshit.

Obviously, CNN views Dobbs as their answer to Bill O'Reilly, the top-rated cable "news" pundit over on Fox. To the Mouse, the difference between Dobbs and O'Reilly is that one of them ought to know better and pretends not to, while the other is just a poor l'il old backroom potboiler who's line is so obviously "off" we are inclined to shed tears of pity. Dobbs used to bill himself as Moneyline, but now his marquee is just plain, simple, and unpretentious Lou Dobbs Tonight, champion of the "little people," and vigilant guardian of the Mexican border.

If he had not in the process allied himself with several of the most hateful of America's hate groups, he might be considered as just another feather merchant, doing what comes naturally in the American scheme of things -- chasing the "almighty" dollar (which is, incidentally, getting less almighty day-by-day.) The Nation reports (August 28, 2006) that, in covering a protest against Home Depot for hiring illegal immigrants, "Dobbs aired a clip of California Coalition for Immigration Reform spokeswoman Barbara Coe" identifying her as merely a "protester" when in fact the group (CCC) has been identified as a "hate group." Miss Coe -- no simple spokeswoman -- "in a speech last year, called undocumented workers, 'illegal barbarians who are cutting off heads and appendages of blind, white, disabled gringos.'" And it wasn't as if Dobbs was unaware of the woman's connections and opinions. He had been warned of the "incipient" dangers of some of his guests two years before. So, Dobbs, and CNN also -- by their decision to keep him on -- have allied themselves with forces that, if they had their way, would build concentration camps, and God knows what else, for the illegals and, I suppose, those who employ them. Hence my choice of the word "Hitlerian" in the first substantive paragraph of this fact-filled dissertation.

But let me end up with this: the fault for the success of Dobbs and his likes rests not so much with them as with the public who continue to tune them in. If there were not a market for their hate mongering, it would not be there. As one of the Mouse's fictious characters, Joanna Thompson, once said, "If people are getting pleasure from doing what they do, they're gonna continue doing it, even if what they're doing is wiping their asses with broken beer bottles."

That lady knew whereof she spoke. Dobbs's evil may not be quite so obvious as the toilet habits of the people she referred to, but his, for being made so palatable to the tastes of the ignorant masses, is far more deadly.

The Return of the Mouse

2006-08-15T09:55:00.000-07:00

Several catastrophic events have kept the Mouse imprisoned for the past two days. First a "massive" power failure here in Madison County and, next, a failure -- after the "precipitent" power drop -- of the Mouse's PC to function properly. To make matters worse, even in those rare moments when it became possible to send out emails to my adoring fan(s), the missives were invariably bumped back to me with a message from the "postmaster" informing that my letters were either "delayed" or worse. But thanks to the diligent work of the Allegheny Power Co, and my good friends at Crucial Computers (thanks Jonathan and Brian), the power and the PC are back, and the Mouse is ready to roar ... again.

I want to talk about the most disgusting pundit currently peddling his wares on cable TV (CNN). I refer to the silver-haired mouthpiece of the far right, Mr Lou Dobbs. Every evenng for at least the past year -- and I do mean every evening -- Dobbs has belched forth on the evils of illegal immigrant labor. As the faithful may recall, we went over this topic a month or so ago, and given that the collective opinion of the Mouse-world represents the "truth for our times," I was convinced Dobbs would get the message and get off his Hitlerian bandwagon.

I didn't realize two things. First, he was (literally) "getting off" on the subject. Now I confess that it wasn't me who noticed this, but one of the Mouse's dearest friends. She advised me to watch closely as Dobbs's rant reaches its apex (every evening), how his breathing becomes more rapid and his eyes begin to scrootch together as he tries to hide the effects of his gathering orgasm. I did watch, and it was true. His efforts to withhold his burst of pleasure actually caused beads of sweat to pop out on my TV screen. I noticed also something else my friend had failed to mention. As Dobbs nears "completion," the little flag pin he wears on his lapel begins to wave, and just as he passes through the rages of petitte morte (I'm guessing about the spelling, FF) the flag gradually folds its colors and sags into a state of reverential repose.

But the orgasmic effects upon old Lou are only his personal reward. Dobbs's bosses at CNN reap a far more tangible, though perhaps less satisfying, payoff -- money. Dobbs appeals to the prurient interests of the American far-right, and as we all know, there is no limit to the amount of horseshit those worthies will swallow if it is packaged as flag-waving jingo-talk or as the "word of God." So old Lou is -- make no mistake -- a commodity, and his palaver but sugar-sweet icing to the tongues of the rabid right.

Five years ago, old silver-hair made his first attempt to enter the Jingo Hall of Fame by vomitting -- again every night -- on the evils of "exporting America." That also sold well with those who love capitalism but hate its realities, but as the punditry of the party line began to line up against our hero on this issue, he gradually transitioned to his present packaging. Hot cakes never sold so well. The maggotry at CNN, seeing how well Lou's sales were going during his regular 6 -7 PM (eastern) weekdays slot, began scheduling him into other shows as an "invited expert" on immigration issues.

A word about Lou's "expertise." As a Harvard educated economist he ought by now to have said at least a word or two about the economic values presented by the use of illegal labor to harvest crops in sunny California and elsewhere. And he could have detailed the effect deportation of all that cheap labor might have on the price of lettuce, or for that matter, on the lettuce crop, which would probably rot in the fields for want of hands to gather it. But no, Lou Dobbs, a man who should be able to speak with some authority on the pros and cons of the issue has -- to my knowledge -- said virtually nothing about anything other than the evils of "our broken borders." He belongs over on Fox News where the viewers are more accustomed to (and apparently, hungry for ) "fair and balanced" bullshit.

Obviously, CNN views Dobbs as their answer to Bill O'Reilly, the top-rated cable "news" pundit over on Fox. To the Mouse, the difference between Dobbs and O'Reilly is that one of them ought to know better and pretends not to, while the other is just a poor l'il old backroom potboiler who's line is so obviously "off" we are inclined to shed tears of pity. Dobbs used to bill himself as Moneyline, but now his marquee is just plain, simple, and unpretentious Lou Dobbs Tonight, champion of the "little people," and vigilant guardian of the Mexican border.

If he had not in the process allied himself with several of the most hateful of America's hate groups, he might be considered as just another feather merchant, doing what comes naturally in the American scheme of things -- chasing the "almighty" dollar (which is, incidentally, getting less almighty day-by-day.) The Nation reports (August 28, 2006) that, in covering a protest against Home Depot for hiring illegal immigrants, "Dobbs aired a clip of California Coalition for Immigration Reform spokeswoman Barbara Coe" identifying her as merely a "protester" when in fact the group (CCC) has been identified as a "hate group." Miss Coe -- no simple spokeswoman -- "in a speech last year, called undocumented workers, 'illegal barbarians who are cutting off heads and appendages of blind, white, disabled gringos.'" And it wasn't as if Dobbs was unaware of the woman's connections and opinions. He had been warned of the "incipient" dangers of some of his guests two years before. So, Dobbs, and CNN also -- by their decision to keep him on -- have allied themselves with forces that, if they had their way, would build concentration camps, and God knows what else, for the illegals and, I suppose, those who employ them. Hence my choice of the word "Hitlerian" in the first substantive paragraph of this fact-filled dissertation.

But let me end up with this: the fault for the success of Dobbs and his likes rests not so much with them as with the public who continue to tune them in. If there were not a market for their hate mongering, it would not be there. As one of the Mouse's fictious characters, Joanna Thompson, once said, "If people are getting pleasure from doing what they do, they're gonna continue doing it, even if what they're doing is wiping their asses with broken beer bottles."

That lady knew whereof she spoke. Dobbs's evil may not be quite so obvious as the toilet habits of the people she referred to, but his, for being made so palatable to the tastes of the ignorant masses, is far more deadly.

A Mendacious Turn of Events

2006-08-12T11:17:00.000-07:00

Briefly, we should never have gone to Iraq. Having done so, the so-called "war on terrorism" has been made essentially unwinnable. It has been remarked by mice of every breed how it was that, after the events of 9/11, the world was almost unanimously on our side. With allies in every corner of the world, we may have been able quickly to ferret out the main terrorists, put dirt over their heads, and then go on with life as it has been for at least six millenia -- fighting open wars for hidden reasons, rounding up the occasional mad bomber, and watching Lucy & Ricky insult each other every Tuesday night (or whenever). As it is, we have bungled into a world in which Lucy and Ricky are living on Capitol Hill, mad bombers are multiplying like condomless fleas, and the rumors and reasons for war have become, not merely hidden, but labelled "State Secret."

Adding injury to insult, those who engineered the descent into Hell's inner circles are now screaming that those of us (the great majority) who see the world as the mess it has become are "soft on terrorism." Our leaders, who by their incompetence have escalated a matter for the police into a Holy War that's bordering on holy-caust, are implying that because they have managed to contain the "war on terrorism" so that only foreigners are being slaughtered, they should be trusted to continue in office. This has been made completely disheartening by the fact that there are still a few souls who agree with them. Where are you now that we need you, boy with eyes for the emperor's new clothes?

Hmmm. I almost left out the word "new." I had forgotten that it was a shyster tailor who convinced the stupid ruler that he needed a new suit, a Tartuffe whose ability to conjure illusions produced a king and a people unable to see the truth when it was staring them in the face. We certainly have our near-sighted emperor, and our smooth-talking Cheney-type devil whispering golden clothes in his ear. But our case is a shade different from the one that played out when the open-eyed boy pointed to the king's nakedness. We've got a coterie of suit makers, and gold merchants who profit from the illusion. We've also got a flock of people who remain so in thrall to the emperor's divine right to rule they remain unable to see the naked man as anything other than God's gift to humanity. We have a few here in Madison County who regularly have their picture taken as they stand by a lifesize cardboard cutout of His Nakedness, smiling as if they thought it just fine and dandy that on a good day only 35 Iraqi innocents die from the indirect effects of their hero's doings. (The deaths are direct effects by some views of the matter, those that see all Islamic people as terrorists.)

In about 90 days the American people will get another chance to express their opinion of those who led us into Iraq. Many seem to think that expression will result in the turning out of the emperor's sidekicks, but I have a less sanguine view of the matter. One of my unnamed mentors once said that no one ever went broke by over-estimating the gullibility of the American people. As for whether the emperor's invisible clothes will be "seen" remains a matter for the gulls to decide ... and I, a lowly mouse, trust them not at all to see.

But then, we shall see.

Mouse Rules

2006-08-10T09:34:00.000-07:00

Three rules, and how to apply them when you're not the second mouse.

These rules were presented to me by an old flame. (Well, she wasn't old when she offered me the rules, and you can take that fact as an explanation of why the rules seem a bit fuzzy in places.)

1. Never look in a woman's purse ('cause you might find something you wish wasn't there).

2. When looking for the iodine, look first in the medicine cabinet.

3. In a fog always dim your lights.

I have never understood the first rule, at least, not fully. I get it that what's in a woman's purse -- or anyone's purse -- is their business, and unless you're invited in, you should, like the rule says, never intrude. It's the parenthetical part that bothers me. I can think of a lot of things I'd like as not find in a woman's purse ... if I looked in, which I wouldn't be doing, don't you see, if I obeyed the rule in the first place. If the woman were someone I loved I certainly wouldn't want to find a draft of a suicide note, or a recently postmarked love letter from someone who ain't me. And I wouldn't want to find a pregnancy test kit -- I mean, if she were young enough for the thing to be of personal value to her, and if I knew her well enough for such things to have emotional relevance for me. I'm sure there are many other things I wouldn't want to find in a woman's purse, but as you see, that's not the reason I would take the rule seriously. Some rules ought to be obeyed without regard for the effect -- good or bad -- they might have on you if you broke them. (I think that makes sense, but I'm not sure.)

By one way of thinking, I understand the second rule as the sort of advice Mr. Spock might give to Captain Kirk. Think and act logically. When I heard the rule I was nowhere near creative enough to see it any other way, but now that I am a fully grown Mouse, old and wise, it occurs to me that people who are "looking for the iodine" have some sort of wound that needs treatment, and given the rule's commonsensible simplicity, it may imply that the "first" place to look, while logical, is not necessarily going to heal the wound. It's not "iodine" per se that the stricken man is looking for; it's healing. But then, as I said earlier, the person who gave me the rules was no older or wiser than I was when she gavce them to me, so maybe she meant it the easy way. "Think about it, Frankie. This makes no sense." And right she was. Still ... there's the wound to deal with.

And that's where the third rule comes in handy. Odds are, the iodine is in the medicine cabinet, and even though the chances are not quite so certain that iodine will do the trick, it's almost a certainty that if you run around in a fog with your head full of glaring lights, you're not only not going to heal your old wounds, you're going to add to them. But there's still a niggling of doubt here. Looking at these rules, or any rules as guides to living life, it's fairly clear that the person who follows rules is going to go around never taking chances and, consequently, never finding anything that's not there in plain sight that any self-respecting robot couldn't find.

At about the same time these rules were being laid on me, I was also learning a different sort of lesson from a different sort of person, a dead woman, old and wise. She was an educator, and one of the "rules" she had embraced -- she may even have invented it -- was that "education is not about getting ready for life; education is life." Those are probably not her exact words, but I don't think they've lost much in the paraphrase. We live best when we live as learning people. We live best if, when looking for the iodine, we look in a woman's purse, even though we may find there something we wish had not been there. And because we're always being educated, and thus are never quite educated, we're constantly in something of a fog. But then, so is everyone else, and when the bright lights go on, and more than one of us begins to see the truth of the fog and the frightfulness of the things we might run into by taking a look where we're not supposed to look, maybe, just maybe, if we exchange a few knowing glances, recognizing each other's wounds, maybe, just maybe we'll all open our purses to the world, empty them onto the floor and let the stuff fall where it will. Then maybe, sorting it all out in the fog, we'll find the real iodine.

But even if we don't, who cares a rat's ass? Life's for living and living's for learning. All that stuff to rummage through ... boy! bound to be a lot of learnin' goin' on in that foggy, foggy medicine cabinet.

Indirection as "Mendacity"

2006-08-08T13:50:00.000-07:00

A commenter -- or better, "commenteress" -- has suggested that I write about the Blacksox scandal of 1919 and do so without mendacity. I have no intention of adding my uninformed three-bits worth to the tons that have been written about "Shoeless" Joe's innocence -- except to say, I believe in it. I intend instead to explain the commenteress's cryptic two words, "without mendacity."

First, I have to confess that I received an email from her, adding an authoritative punch to her lack of respect for Joe Lieberman. I replied that I had neither much knowledge nor any concern for Senator Lieberman, but had rather used his plight as a way to set forth my own pet theory about why we are in Iraq without being accused of being anti-semitic. I had already warned another commenter -- before writing the piece -- that he should be on the lookout for its "indirection." By attributing my position to Joe Lieberman, and then excusing him for taking that position, I mendaciously managed to make it seem OK to believe that George Bush had sent Americans to die in Iraq -- and sentenced tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis to death -- simply to provide a backdoor defense for Israel. Had I taken that position more directly ... well, you see ... no one would be likely to accuse Joe Lieberman of anti-semitism.

To add another layer to that mendacious use of Senator Lieberman's difficulties, I now must confess that the theory I put into his head does not rank very highly in my full list of "reasons" (to use the word loosely) we are in Iraq. I say this even though the main architect of the neocon strategy, Paul Wolfowitz, is also Jewish. One can be a Jew and still be a damn fool. My top reason -- taken on the basis of powerful circumstantial evidence -- involves oil. I have said it here before, that even if in Iraq we had only succeeded in muddling up the politics in the middle east, the oil maggots would reap untold rewards of the money sort. Sending the Marines to Iraq would thus be a win-win strategy for big oil, since even if the weaponry of the US armed forces had succeeded, the new "democratic" government in Baghdad would be more or less obliged to create an economic (oil) system favoring western interests (rather than, say, China's).

With such a strong fit of the "data" to one theory, my others -- including the program for world domination proposed by Wolfowitz and his neocon accomplices associated with the "Project for the New American Century" -- gradually faded. Oil's the game and is quite likely to remain the game into the next two decades (unless a Democratic regime takes over in Washington less sold-out than its predecessors to the same big oil interests that own the current US government -- all three branches).

So, now with a full confession of my mendacity in the open -- at no one's expense (Lieberman has never heard of me) -- and the truth of the matter laid out for all my campaign workers to see, I can proceed with a relatively clean conscience to frame my agenda for my own version of "the new American century." And of that unfolding program I promise you will read more in the coming months.

MOUSE FOR PRESIDENT ... AMERICANS FOR THE MOUSE ... THE BEST LAID PLANS OF MICE AND MEN SOMETIMES WORK.

Lets all put all four of our feet to the treadmill and work for a better, safer world, where mice and men can dwell together in peace ... and cats and dogs "will fight no more forever." (Hmmm. Another "Joe" heard from.)