Worldviews

The Collapsing Old Order

August 20, 2011
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The Collapsing Old Order

In his review of Murray Rothbard’s Egalitariansim As a Revolt Against Nature, Andy Duncan notes how, even in the darkest days of the Cold War, Rothbard was already declaring the prevailing socialist/Communist movements to be doomed to failure, primarily because of their inability to stuff the genie of social and economic progress back into the bottle: The revolutions of the last few hundred years — particularly the Industrial Revolution — have made the world too complex for the Old Order to rule over in the manner to which it aspires. Yes, it can rule agrarian nonindustrialized societies, as it did with the Inca Empire, the Roman Empire, and the Athenian-dominated Delian League — though you’ll notice that none of these once-mighty edifices lasted. However, the world’s population will no longer stand for such serfdom and penury, even if it currently tolerates a pelf-extraction rate of 40 or 50 percent. The ratchet of liberty has clicked, and there’s no turning back the mass-industrial technological clock, says Rothbard. Even if we claim to be socialists, and allow the state to continually extract a pelf “protection” tax rate from us of 40 percent or more, we will only tolerate a society in which

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London Burning: The Apotheosis of Statism

August 11, 2011
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London Burning: The Apotheosis of Statism

By now we’re all well-informed of the widespread rioting and looting in Britain. But there is a mystery at the heart of it: motive. There must, one ponders, be some reason for large groups of people to break the law so wantonly and destroy their neighbors’ property in such egregious ways. Smaller-scale but similarly frightening incidents have occurred in the United States as well in recent weeks. They were preceded by rioting in Greece and other countries of Europe. What’s rather startling about the anarchy in the UK is how widespread it has been. One article (quoted below) says the London police force of 31,000 couldn’t handle the problem, and reinforcements had to be brought in. Think of that: 31,000 police overwhelmed by mobs. Looking at the pictures of the riots is sobering: the amount of destruction that bands of impassioned youths can cause in a supposedly modern, forward-looking Western society should wake that society up. Looking a little more deeply, we can see some clues to possible motivations for the riots. Here are some quotes from an article in a London paper: The small crowds of very young men and women, of every skin colour, typically dressed in almost identical hooded sweatshirts, were

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How the “Soft Left” Encourages the “Hard Right”

July 29, 2011
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How the “Soft Left” Encourages the “Hard Right”

By Mike Gray Has the situation in Europe already reached a point of no return? In failing to meet the threat of cultural subversion, the European left has facilitated the emergence of the illiberal and xenophobic branch of the far right. For as violence begins to move in from the car-burning and no-go Muslim enclaves in the margins toward the city center, as Shariah courts begin to pepper the landscape, as in the U.K., as Muslim immigrants continue to swell the welfare rolls, as rape statistics skyrocket and honor killings multiply, and as the authorities prove themselves increasingly helpless and vacillating – or even worse, as colluding – the reactionary and militant right will earn more and more legitimacy among the masses. The anemic lack of both fortitude and foresight among the political classes can only energize the factions of militant, far-right extremism. But there is hope: . . . . there is only one way to defeat the extreme right as it rises to its own depraved version of the defense of the West, and that is to disarm the common enemy and, by so doing, deprive a nascent fascism of its populist fuel. Multiculturalism has not led to

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Supermind Hearts Socialism

July 28, 2011
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Supermind Hearts Socialism

Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is. Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological differences do exist. The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately. In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history has—as is well known—been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country.

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Legal Challenge to New York’s Same-Sex Marriage Law

July 26, 2011
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Legal Challenge to New York’s Same-Sex Marriage Law

“Back room tactics were rampant in the passage of this law. New York law requires that the government be open and transparent to keep political officials responsible. When government operates in secret and freezes out the very people it is supposed to represent, the entire system fails. … The law should be set aside and the process should begin again to allow the people a voice in the process.” — Mathew Staver Despite its merits, the suit could get thrown out if, as in California, the judge happens to be “gay” and/or a member of the ACLU. Specifically, the lawsuit alleges the Act became law through: Meetings that violated the state’s open meeting laws, including a closed-door gathering reported by the New York Times in which billionaire and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg lobbied with Republicans to vote for the Act; The suspension of normal Senate voting procedures to prevent senators who opposed the bill from speaking; Failure to follow Senate procedures that require a bill must be sent to appropriate committees prior to being placed before the full Senate for a vote; Governor Cuomo’s violation of a constitutionally mandated three-day review period before the Legislature votes on a

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The Totemic President

July 26, 2011
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The Totemic President

Obama, you see, is our nemesis. He is a totem, the logical manifestation of a warped media, the reification of some crazy — and arrogant — ideas about redistributive politics, the statist economy, and cultural and social life that permeated American life the last forty years. He is the president with a 1,000 faces that we have all seen at work, on TV, throughout American life, and at some point the odds determined that we had to have a rendezvous with him — perhaps a catharsis to teach us the wages of Keynesian debt, of a social policy contrary to human nature with its equality of result doctrines, of an all-powerful, all-growing unaccountable government, of the now hip ambiguity about past American protocols and history. Obama is the exaggeration of all the dubious ideas that arose since the 1960s — brought to fruition on his watch, delivered by mellifluous cadences by an untouchable persona. — Victor Davis Hanson, “Our Ten-Trillion-Dollar Man”, Pajamas Media

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The Crackpot Murderer in His Own Words

July 25, 2011
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The Crackpot Murderer in His Own Words

“As for the Church and science, it is essential that science takes an undisputed precedence over biblical teachings. Europe has always been the cradle of science, and it must always continue to be that way. Regarding my personal relationship with God, I guess I’m not an excessively religious man. I am first and foremost a man of logic. However, I am a supporter of a monocultural Christian Europe.” “I trust that the future leadership of a European cultural conservative hegemony in Europe will ensure that the current Church leadership are replaced and the systems somewhat reformed. We must have a Church leadership who supports a future Crusade with the intention of liberating the Balkans, Anatolia and creating three Christian states in the Middle East. Efforts should be made to facilitate the de-construction of the Protestant Church whose members should convert back to Catholicism. The Protestant Church had an important role once, but its original goals have been accomplished and have contributed to reform the Catholic Church as well. Europe should have a united Church lead by a just and non-suicidal pope who is willing to fight for the security of his subjects, especially in regards to Islamic atrocities.” “‘Logic’

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A Chat with My Daughter

July 23, 2011
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A Chat with My Daughter

by Warren Moore My fourteen-year-old was reading about the horror in Norway this afternoon, and asked me what the news meant by “right-wing extremist.” I told her that was a term for Nazi sympathizers and the like. Then she said, “There are left-wing extremists too, right? Like the PETA folks who burn government labs and stuff?” “Or like the Greenpeacers who vandalize genetically modified crops,” I said. “Why’d they do that?” “Because the crops aren’t ‘natural.’” “Well, they aren’t plastic, are they? That’s just dumb. Like the people on Whale Wars,” she said. “I can’t stand them; they’re a bunch of self-righteous jerks. I mean, they’re attacking ships with actual human beings on them. It’s not like the whales are choosing to fight back. If the whales start going Moby Dick on the Japanese, then I’ll be impressed.” “Well,” I said, “now when the Great Aquatic Mammal Rebellion begins, you’ll be blamed as an instigator.” “Meh,” she said. “Then we’ll just have to bomb the oceans… which will suck for us, too. But it’ll look cool. And it’ll take care of those rapist dolphins, too.”

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Quote of the Day — The Decline of the Cowboy and the Rise of the Superhero

July 21, 2011
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Quote of the Day — The Decline of the Cowboy and the Rise of the Superhero

That the cowboy has given way to the superhero in the American myth is painfully revealing. It is the siren song of the last frontier, giving way to an overcrowded and dangerous society where the law fails, and only a gift from the storytelling gods can give a man his freedom and let him do what’s right. The Western promised a kind of universal freedom available to anyone who could go out west. The comic book superhero turns freedom into something that is only magically available to a small elite. . . . . The tension between freedom and order is at the heart of all these narratives. The freedom to be an individual, to be left alone and still lead a moral life. The vigilante is a private figure. Mysterious. He may have a secret identity, or he may just show up when needed. His public self is not his real self. Yet it is his best known self. He participates in the group only on his own terms. He comes and goes when he pleases, rather than being compelled to by any authority. The superhero takes the ordinary urban battles of cops and robbers and makes them extraordinary,

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Is the Liberal-Progressive Welfare State a Moral Threat?

July 19, 2011
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Is the Liberal-Progressive Welfare State a Moral Threat?

By Mike Gray Dennis Prager says, “Oh, yeah!” and offers ten reasons why: 1. The bigger the government, the less the citizens do for one another. 2. The welfare state, though often well intended, is nevertheless a Ponzi scheme. 3. Citizens of liberal welfare states become increasingly narcissistic. 4. The liberal welfare state makes people disdain work. 5. Nothing more guarantees the erosion of character than getting something for nothing. 6. The bigger the government, the more the corruption. 7. The welfare state corrupts family life. 8. The welfare state inhibits the maturation of its young citizens into responsible adults. 9. . . . because almost no welfare state can afford a strong military, European countries rely on America to fight the world’s evils . . . . 10. The leftist weltanschauung sees society’s and the world’s great battle as between rich and poor rather than between good and evil. Prager elaborates on each of these points in his Townhall article “Ten Ways Progressive Policies Harm Society’s Moral Character.” You can buy Henry Hazlitt’s still-relevant economic critique, Man vs. The Welfare State, here.

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“Pretence of Knowledge”: Confusing Models with Reality

July 18, 2011
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“Pretence of Knowledge”: Confusing Models with Reality

By Mike Gray In everything from “global warming” to embarking on an “economic stimulus,” people with agendas trash the real world in favor of their models: “The very term ‘model’ is a pretentious borrowing of the architect’s or engineer’s replica, down-to-scale of something physical,” says Barron’s economics editor, Gene Epstein. “These are not models at all, but just equations that link various numbers, maybe occasionally shedding light, but often not.” Take this as a throwing down of the gauntlet. Macroeconomic wizards owe us more than the circular justifications for cushy jobs. Likewise, we have to explain that a scientist’s model, while useful in limited circumstances, is little better than a crystal ball for predicting big phenomena like markets and climate. It is an offshoot of what F. A. Hayek called the “pretence of knowledge.” In other words, modeling is a form of scientism, which is “decidedly unscientific in the true sense of the word, since it involves a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to fields different from those in which they have been formed.” A model is thus a cognitive shortcut for both the wonk and the journalist, the latter of whom wants to peg his story

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At the Bottom of the Bachmann-WELS Flap

July 16, 2011
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At the Bottom of the Bachmann-WELS Flap

By Lars Walker All right, I’ll come clean. Sam Karnick wore me down, and I have to admit it. I am a Lutheran. And that, at least according to Joshua Green at The Atlantic, would seem to be pretty fringey stuff. Definitely outside the realm of respectable opinion in today’s world. (Which must be a surprise to all those Garrison Keillor fans.) Or… maybe I’m not a Lutheran at all, really. If you were to speak to an official of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, to one of whose congregations presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann used to belong, they’d probably tell you that my own church, a member of a conservative but pietistic fellowship, isn’t really Lutheran in the proper meaning of the term. We’re insufficiently sacramental in our focus, and so not truly Lutheran. And you know what? I’m OK with that. Among ourselves, we other Lutherans laugh at the Wisconsin Synod sometimes. You might call them our Hasidim. A little strict, a little stiff by our standards. They have their own ways, which sometimes can even cause offense, as when we visit their churches and are denied communion. But at bottom we respect them. They have their principles, and

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"Culture is the expression of the guiding philosophy of the day."—Murray Rothbard
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