In a recent "Intelligence Squared" debate, Bryan Caplan gave his classic argument in defense of the statement, "Let anyone take a job anywhere." You can read his opening statement here. If you know Caplan, you know the moral force his argument has: immigration restrictions are violent means by which people in rich countries prevent people in poor countries from reaching their potential and bettering their own existence. If you believe that all the people of the world have equal moral value, then there simply is no moral defense of this practice.
Where, then, is the conflict, particularly from someone on the left? Someone on the right, after all, can claim unapologetically to be a nationalist, to think that by virtue of where he is born he is indeed entitled to certain priviliges, and perhaps even to think that his culture is inherently superior to and must be protected from others. People on the left would (rightly) think this view is awful. None of these things can justify immigration restrictions for a liberal.
There are two things that I noted in the arguments of the opposition, particularly coming from Kathleen Newland, as well as from the audience's questions. One is a subtle tribalism, which creeps in without ever being named. Whereas some might be openly nationalist, there is a different form of tribalism which protests, "We haven't done enough to take care of our own, how can we possibly take in others?" The underlying assumption is that merely coming to work in the U.S. would be impossible; you must also join our system, depend on our government benefits, receive our public education, and so on.
The second is a not so subtle nationalism. Newland is so frank as to say that part of a government's job is to be biased in favor of its own people. In other words, egalitarianism be damned--nation states are more important than human rights. I could be wrong, but I rather thought Newland was coming from a point of view typical on the left, namely that the role of the state is to embody the will of the people. And therein lies the dilemma--the will of the people is really quite often in conflict with the idea of human equality.
Caplan calls his position basic human decency. I think that's unfair, but only because our instincts are so biased against decency. His "basic human decency" is actually a moral tradition built up over thousands of years of civilization--but that's competing against hundreds of thousands of years of tribal existence, in which loyalty to the tribe was essential for survival. The concept that everyone within the tribe is equal may come naturally to a lot of us, but the concept that all humans are equal is still as radical an idea today as it ever was.
But the left claims to champion this idea. The only problem is that it can't champion the equality of all human beings and the sacredness of nation states at the same time. Either anyone should be allowed to take a job anywhere, or not. Let's just be honest about why the left could not bear to allow this: then they would actually have to see the poor. And it would be the truly poor, not just the statistical bottom 10% in a wealthy, developed nation. It would be the truly poor from all over the world coming into this rich, blessed nation with the hope of making a better a life for themselves. The sight of them all would simply be too unbearable. It is better to force them to suffer at home than to come here and make us feel guilty for not having the resources to take care of them all.
In other words, it's paternalism or bust. The best we can do for the rest of the world is develop those other nation states (whose very existence was in many cases forced by the West) so that they can support the population living there with services which meet Western standards. If those nation states won't listen and won't reform, then shame on them. And too bad for the poor, who continue to toil for $1 a day.
The fact is, Caplan is really asking us to stretch our morals to their limits. The prospect of witnessing a flood of foreigners is instinctively horrifying, not always because of the fear of what is different, but rather because of the sorrow of seeing others who are so much less well off. Do we really want to live in a country with millions and millions of the world's poor, working on wages we find obscenely low, even if it means they have a chance of earning more than they could ever dream in their homeland? It is, after all, our own country.
My contention is that the left ought to give up this "paternalism or bust" attitude. It is far too convenient to insist that others ought to change their government, and then everyone would be fine. The truth is, we have no moral reason to keep people out, only excuses which come from our instincts. If we really believe in human rights, we should also accept the right of people to start from much less than what we have and work their way up--even if that means doing so in our own neighborhood. And that might mean a lot of sad things. It might mean watching people stumble and fall. It might mean watching people live without all thoese benefits we take for granted. It might mean watching people struggle with basic things like language and literacy. And it would all be right there for us to see with our own eyes.
Of course, poverty exists already in the U.S., as it does in all countries. The reaction that the left expressly desires to cultivate against poverty is one of anger and revulsion. We should not tolerate poverty. I find it bizarrely sickening to think that this revulsion at the sight of poverty could be a reason to lock more people in it.
I'm picking on the left wing here because of their tendency to think of themselves as moral guides on this issue. They're for immigration reform, certainly. They believe we should naturalize all the undocumented Americans who have been in the country living as productive members of society for years. They believe they are being sensible in all of that. But they are unwilling to accept the ultimate conclusion of their humanist principles, which is that there is simply no excuse for any restrictions on who can immigrate to the U.S. in the first place.
Showing posts with label liberalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label liberalism. Show all posts
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Sunday, May 6, 2012
The Life of Julia
In case you're not up on your politics, here is the link to Obama's new gimmick:
http://www.barackobama.com/life-of-julia
And I quote:
What happened to liberalism, that it now boasts of such wretched ideas? Is Barack Obama the people's monarch? Is that what we do when we vote? Are we electing our king?
Fortunately, there is at least one good response out there:
http://www.thelifeofjulia.com/
http://www.barackobama.com/life-of-julia
And I quote:
"Take a look at how President Obama's policies help one woman over her lifetime--and how Mitt Romney would change her story."This truly blows my mind. Is this what Americans really want? Is voting really an act of choosing which manager would be better suited to make our personal lives better, from cradle to grave? There is nothing "progressive" about this. Inculcating Americans with the idea that we can't live without the all-powerful government is not "liberal." Liberalism is supposed to be about freedom. It's supposed to be about limiting arbitrary power and unleashing the potential of the individual. What would be "progressive" is if we could truly imagine a world in which we didn't have to bring all our gifts before the altar of the state in order to make life better for ourselves and one another.
What happened to liberalism, that it now boasts of such wretched ideas? Is Barack Obama the people's monarch? Is that what we do when we vote? Are we electing our king?
Fortunately, there is at least one good response out there:
http://www.thelifeofjulia.com/
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Why shouldn't government be big?
Conservatives and libertarians often complain that government is "too big." Part of what they mean by this is that the government is involved in too many things, and this is detrimental to society because the government is less efficient in doing these things than the private sector.
Stated in this way, this mantra is actually an empirical claim which may be false. How do we know the government is less efficient than the private sector in everything that it does? Very often I suspect it is, but sometimes perhaps it isn't. And even if it is less efficient, the underlying principle really has not been addressed: why does the government turn out to be inefficient?
More importantly the real question is, can the solution really be for the government to simply stop doing the things it is doing? This seems like a regressive step, an admission of defeat, a blithe acceptance that maybe some problems just can't be solved. This is the kind of thinking that makes progressives' blood boil.
And rightfully so. The most aggravating thing I've found about conservatives is that often they are in fact conservative in the negative sense: they often want to call "not problems" things that are problems, and rather than optimistically seeking solutions they simply wish to be left alone. I'll be the first to complain about Obama's health care plan, but where were the conservative Republicans when they had a chance to address the problems of health care themselves? Why did they not address immigration reform? And why is it that under their watch no one spotted any of the systemic economic problems that led to the current recession? If the Left has recently had many bad ideas, the Right has simply had no ideas, which is in fact worse during times of crisis, when some idea, even a bad one, will move to fill the vacuum.
So if we're to avoid this kind of "do nothing" attitude, what are we to do about big government? Is it a problem? What exactly is the reason we are so upset by it? How do we fix that?
Stated in this way, this mantra is actually an empirical claim which may be false. How do we know the government is less efficient than the private sector in everything that it does? Very often I suspect it is, but sometimes perhaps it isn't. And even if it is less efficient, the underlying principle really has not been addressed: why does the government turn out to be inefficient?
More importantly the real question is, can the solution really be for the government to simply stop doing the things it is doing? This seems like a regressive step, an admission of defeat, a blithe acceptance that maybe some problems just can't be solved. This is the kind of thinking that makes progressives' blood boil.
And rightfully so. The most aggravating thing I've found about conservatives is that often they are in fact conservative in the negative sense: they often want to call "not problems" things that are problems, and rather than optimistically seeking solutions they simply wish to be left alone. I'll be the first to complain about Obama's health care plan, but where were the conservative Republicans when they had a chance to address the problems of health care themselves? Why did they not address immigration reform? And why is it that under their watch no one spotted any of the systemic economic problems that led to the current recession? If the Left has recently had many bad ideas, the Right has simply had no ideas, which is in fact worse during times of crisis, when some idea, even a bad one, will move to fill the vacuum.
So if we're to avoid this kind of "do nothing" attitude, what are we to do about big government? Is it a problem? What exactly is the reason we are so upset by it? How do we fix that?
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Beating Leftists at their own game
Over at Mother Jones, they're wondering whether pro-life activists are finally succeeding at making Kansas the "first abortion free state" (since Roe v Wade, of course). The article is here. What's interesting is how they're doing it. How do you get a business to shut down without actually making it illegal? Regulate it, of course:
Back in April, the state legislature passed a law directing the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to author new facility standards for abortion clinics, which the staunchly anti-abortion GOP governor, Sam Brownback, signed into law on May 16. The law also requires the health department to issue new licenses each year, and it grants additional authority to health department inspectors to conduct unannounced inspections, and to fine or shut down clinics.There's a sort of poetic justice here, in that the one business for which the Left will offer up a libertarian defense feels the crushing grip of government intervention.
...
The new requirements require facilities to add extra bathrooms, drastically expand waiting and recovery areas, and even add larger janitor's closets, as one clinic employee told me—changes that clinics will have a heck of a time pulling off by the deadline. Under the new rule, clinics must also aquire state certification to admit patients, a process that takes 90 to 120 days, the staffer explained. Which makes it impossible for clinics to comply. And clinics that don't comply with the rules will face fines or possible closure.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Liberty and Interdependence
Anyone who glances at election results during political seasons knows that there seems to be no truth more incontrovertible than that the more people a concentrated in a geographical area, the more left-leaning they become. I'm sure there are significant exceptions to this, but on the whole urban areas are far more likely to vote for the left, while right-wingers are much more common in suburbs, small towns, and rural areas. These facts seem paradoxical at first. Small towns, where everyone knows everyone else's business and all of life is built around the community, seem to be populated by people who vote for an individualistic "get the government off my back" agenda; whereas large cities, where no one makes eye contact and countless people rush on by homeless beggars, are populated by people mostly voting for more collectivist policies.
This is probably not as paradoxical as it seems. Conservatives, at least, are not so hard to understand in this picture. It is probably just because people in small towns have already built up community and civic life that more or less works that they are skeptical of government intervention. Why should the federal government impose further mandates upon those who already take care of each other? In a small town or rural area, it is much easier to trust your neighbor, who is always close by, than the government, which is always far off. Since everyone generally knows each other, your neighbors are much less likely to be dangerous; in fact, they are likely to be quite helpful if you face an unexpected problem. Why depend on the state or federal government, which is made up of people you rarely see (if ever) and whom you have no reason to trust, when help is so close to home?
This is probably not as paradoxical as it seems. Conservatives, at least, are not so hard to understand in this picture. It is probably just because people in small towns have already built up community and civic life that more or less works that they are skeptical of government intervention. Why should the federal government impose further mandates upon those who already take care of each other? In a small town or rural area, it is much easier to trust your neighbor, who is always close by, than the government, which is always far off. Since everyone generally knows each other, your neighbors are much less likely to be dangerous; in fact, they are likely to be quite helpful if you face an unexpected problem. Why depend on the state or federal government, which is made up of people you rarely see (if ever) and whom you have no reason to trust, when help is so close to home?
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Moral Market Principles?
I'm greatly intrigued by a recent pair of blog posts on economics. One is by the progressive economist Paul Krugman, the other a response to Krugman by Austrian school economist Steven Horwitz. One of these economists argues that the market economy is essentially an amoral structure, while the other argues that morality is inseparable from economics. Try to guess which one said which!
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Natural and Supernatural Ethics
I got into an interesting discussion yesterday with a couple of friends over lunch. We were talking about what causes inequality, and specifically income inequality between men and women. My friend brought up the oft-quoted statistic that women make, on average, about 77% of what men make, and the discussion took off from there: why this inequality?
My friend took the position that the reason is structural bias, i.e. that women don't have the same options as men. By this he meant that employers don't offer as much money to hire women as they do to hire men, and there aren't as many high-paying jobs available to women as to men.
This he sees as an inherent injustice. He put it like this: "If I told you that people who preferred Pepsi to Coke made more money than people who preferred Coke to Pepsi, wouldn't that make you question the market? Of course it would, and the reason is that such a distinction (Coke vs. Pepsi) is arbitrary."
Thus the assumption here is that the male/female distinction is arbitrary, in the sense that being male or female has nothing to do with having something to contribute to the market. The conclusion is that inequality between the two groups, male and female, makes no sense, and is therefore the result of injustice.
It's interesting to think about what gives us this kind of moral intuition in today's culture. Equality between men and women has by no means been a natural belief for human beings throughout history. Similar statements can be made about things like slavery. Indeed, it's remarkable that most of the world perceives slavery as inherently unjust, when it appears that for most of human history, most civilizations found slavery quite natural.
One way to think about it is that some systems of values arise from looking at nature, and deciding that what's natural is basically right. We look at men, we look at women; we happen to notice men tend to be bigger and stronger. Naturally, then, men were meant to be that way. Naturally speaking, men are supposed to have a more prominent place in society. That's one way that humans seem to have thought about things.
An important application of this is to the question of life after death. You look around at life, and it quickly becomes quite clear that everything dies. Death is natural. So are myths that explain death, and what happens after you die. Whether you believe that your soul leaves the body and travels to the underworld, or that your soul is reincarnated, or that you just simply die and completely cease to exist, you're acknowledging that there's something quite natural about the cycle of life and death. (It'll be clear where I'm going with this in a minute.)
Although many people tend to think of Christianity these days as a backwards religion, holding on to ancient traditions in spite of modern insights, early Christianity was (and, I would argue, is) quite revolutionary on that particular question of life after death. Christians claim that death is not meant to be natural for humans. In fact, we have evidence: Jesus Christ rose from the dead!
That is the claim that early Christians brought to the society around them. And did it inform their ethics? Absolutely. As N. T. Wright (who is totally brilliant in his focus on the resurrection) has pointed out somewhere, ancient Romans knew two things about early Christians that they considered very odd. One was that they believed in resurrection from the dead. The other was that they weren't sexually promiscuous.
Promiscuous sex is another thing that appears quite natural--I don't think I need to explain that in this culture. The Romans didn't need that explained, either. But early Christians practiced a chaste lifestyle. Why? Because they believed the body was holy. They believed that body wasn't meant to be treated in such a "natural" way. They believed in something supernatural.
To tie this back to the conversation I had yesterday, it seems that modern liberal moral intuition actually has a bit of this flavor to it. Rather than surveying nature and assuming that what's natural is right, it critiques nature by appealing to something higher. It has in view some sort of eschatology, really, holding to the belief that it's our destiny as humans to be equal, self-determined, and happy.
In other words, the liberalism being espoused by my friend seems to prefer the supernatural to the natural. I can't help but admire this. Also I can't help but think that it's somewhat inherited. Surely there are echoes of early Christian thought in my friend's concern for equality. I'm not merely speaking of the way Paul declares that in Christ there is no longer male nor female (Gal. 3:28); rather, I'm speaking more of a way of thinking about ethics, based on things to come rather than things present.
But one thing that Christianity has, which I think is essential, is a claim to not only have a vision for the future, but also a vision of the future in the person of Jesus Christ. The Christian claim that Jesus was (and is) a human being who physically walked among us and was physically raised from the dead is significant, because it grounds claims about the future in something already experienced. This in turn means that ethical claims made by Christians are also (at least in theory) tied to that experience, which means we're not just taking shots in the dark.
Liberalism, if it isn't tied to anything in the way that Christianity is tied to the life of Jesus, has the problem of grounding its ethical demands in reality. Not that liberal moral claims are wrong; I'm inclined to agree that equal income between men and women would be a good thing. But finding real grounding for that might be a challenge, especially as liberalism more and more abandons religious claims about the world.
If an atheist wants to argue that we derive our ethics by trial and error, by looking at what "works"--in other words, scientifically--I will reply that this is not what liberalism truly hopes for. This is the old, Roman way of looking at the world. This is the kind of approach that leads to male dominance over women, slavery, and whatever else appears natural to those who have power (and even those that don't).
In other words, an atheist just doesn't have an argument against slavery, nor does he have a legitimate grounding for equal rights. That requires eschatology, that is, a vision of who we are meant to be in the future. And if the universe just doesn't have any purpose for us, then eschatology is meaningless.
So I find that my liberal friends are actually very religious at heart, much like the Athenians with their idol dedicated to an unknown god. And often I'd like to tell them, like Paul in front of the Areopagus, "What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you."
I wonder how they'd take that.
My friend took the position that the reason is structural bias, i.e. that women don't have the same options as men. By this he meant that employers don't offer as much money to hire women as they do to hire men, and there aren't as many high-paying jobs available to women as to men.
This he sees as an inherent injustice. He put it like this: "If I told you that people who preferred Pepsi to Coke made more money than people who preferred Coke to Pepsi, wouldn't that make you question the market? Of course it would, and the reason is that such a distinction (Coke vs. Pepsi) is arbitrary."
Thus the assumption here is that the male/female distinction is arbitrary, in the sense that being male or female has nothing to do with having something to contribute to the market. The conclusion is that inequality between the two groups, male and female, makes no sense, and is therefore the result of injustice.
It's interesting to think about what gives us this kind of moral intuition in today's culture. Equality between men and women has by no means been a natural belief for human beings throughout history. Similar statements can be made about things like slavery. Indeed, it's remarkable that most of the world perceives slavery as inherently unjust, when it appears that for most of human history, most civilizations found slavery quite natural.
One way to think about it is that some systems of values arise from looking at nature, and deciding that what's natural is basically right. We look at men, we look at women; we happen to notice men tend to be bigger and stronger. Naturally, then, men were meant to be that way. Naturally speaking, men are supposed to have a more prominent place in society. That's one way that humans seem to have thought about things.
An important application of this is to the question of life after death. You look around at life, and it quickly becomes quite clear that everything dies. Death is natural. So are myths that explain death, and what happens after you die. Whether you believe that your soul leaves the body and travels to the underworld, or that your soul is reincarnated, or that you just simply die and completely cease to exist, you're acknowledging that there's something quite natural about the cycle of life and death. (It'll be clear where I'm going with this in a minute.)
Although many people tend to think of Christianity these days as a backwards religion, holding on to ancient traditions in spite of modern insights, early Christianity was (and, I would argue, is) quite revolutionary on that particular question of life after death. Christians claim that death is not meant to be natural for humans. In fact, we have evidence: Jesus Christ rose from the dead!
That is the claim that early Christians brought to the society around them. And did it inform their ethics? Absolutely. As N. T. Wright (who is totally brilliant in his focus on the resurrection) has pointed out somewhere, ancient Romans knew two things about early Christians that they considered very odd. One was that they believed in resurrection from the dead. The other was that they weren't sexually promiscuous.
Promiscuous sex is another thing that appears quite natural--I don't think I need to explain that in this culture. The Romans didn't need that explained, either. But early Christians practiced a chaste lifestyle. Why? Because they believed the body was holy. They believed that body wasn't meant to be treated in such a "natural" way. They believed in something supernatural.
To tie this back to the conversation I had yesterday, it seems that modern liberal moral intuition actually has a bit of this flavor to it. Rather than surveying nature and assuming that what's natural is right, it critiques nature by appealing to something higher. It has in view some sort of eschatology, really, holding to the belief that it's our destiny as humans to be equal, self-determined, and happy.
In other words, the liberalism being espoused by my friend seems to prefer the supernatural to the natural. I can't help but admire this. Also I can't help but think that it's somewhat inherited. Surely there are echoes of early Christian thought in my friend's concern for equality. I'm not merely speaking of the way Paul declares that in Christ there is no longer male nor female (Gal. 3:28); rather, I'm speaking more of a way of thinking about ethics, based on things to come rather than things present.
But one thing that Christianity has, which I think is essential, is a claim to not only have a vision for the future, but also a vision of the future in the person of Jesus Christ. The Christian claim that Jesus was (and is) a human being who physically walked among us and was physically raised from the dead is significant, because it grounds claims about the future in something already experienced. This in turn means that ethical claims made by Christians are also (at least in theory) tied to that experience, which means we're not just taking shots in the dark.
Liberalism, if it isn't tied to anything in the way that Christianity is tied to the life of Jesus, has the problem of grounding its ethical demands in reality. Not that liberal moral claims are wrong; I'm inclined to agree that equal income between men and women would be a good thing. But finding real grounding for that might be a challenge, especially as liberalism more and more abandons religious claims about the world.
If an atheist wants to argue that we derive our ethics by trial and error, by looking at what "works"--in other words, scientifically--I will reply that this is not what liberalism truly hopes for. This is the old, Roman way of looking at the world. This is the kind of approach that leads to male dominance over women, slavery, and whatever else appears natural to those who have power (and even those that don't).
In other words, an atheist just doesn't have an argument against slavery, nor does he have a legitimate grounding for equal rights. That requires eschatology, that is, a vision of who we are meant to be in the future. And if the universe just doesn't have any purpose for us, then eschatology is meaningless.
So I find that my liberal friends are actually very religious at heart, much like the Athenians with their idol dedicated to an unknown god. And often I'd like to tell them, like Paul in front of the Areopagus, "What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you."
I wonder how they'd take that.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Big business conservatism? No way.
I really appreciate this article written by Jonah Goldberg, which discusses why "big business" does not equal "conservative."
In fact, the interesting bit of information he opens up with is how much big business seems to support the Democrats: "It's worth remembering that Obama was the preferred candidate of Wall Street, and the industry gave to Democrats by a 2-1 margin at the beginning of last year."
Yet, as Goldberg points out, the generally left-leaning newspapers would rather focus on whatever support big businesses are giving Republicans. What they fail to highlight in stories with headlines like "Wall Street shifting toward Republicans" is that Wall Street is still giving a majority of their political contributions to Democrats, despite whatever gains Republicans have made.
In casual political conversation, it's almost a given that Republicans are in line with big business while Democrats are trying to protect the little guy from those big evil corporations. Could it be that big evil corporations had a change of heart last year and decided to support the liberals in office?
I doubt it. Here's Goldberg's take on things:
The scary thing is that sometimes politics can actually feed the desires of powerful companies to maximize profit. And in our day, this is how "progressive" policies end up actually working. By being overly involved with which businesses are profitable or unprofitable, the government is actually favoring the powerful, not the little guy.
In a just system, powerful people should not be able to gain financially from laws passed by Congress. Markets should be driven by what consumers want, not by what politicians want, especially politicians who are driven by pressure from wealthy political supporters.
This is why it would be so wonderful to have genuine conservatives in government, who believed not in big business, but in free markets. That means restrained government--not "small" government, as many conservatives would put it, but simply disciplined government that didn't use its power to play favorites.
But chances of that appear dismal, as even Goldberg admits: "For years, the GOP defended big business in the spirit of free enterprise while businesses never showed much interest in the principle themselves."
It's no wonder Americans get so apathetic about politics. For all of our conversations about basic political ideology, neither party actually seems to represent the ideology to which is pays lip service.
Yet I do think our conversations about such things are important, because we do have power over politicians in this country. At some point they will listen, because they want votes. See? Politicians are just like businesses, really. Just as you can always count on businesses to desire maximum profit, so you can always count on politicians to want to win elections.
The question is whether the American people, consumers both of goods provided by business and of government provided by politicians, will be able to restrain these desires for profit and power. This means taking responsibility for what we value, both in what we buy and in what political opinions we hold.
Of course, it's easy to get cynical about that, too. Can we really expect Americans as a people to take more responsibility for our values as consumers and as voters? But we can't afford to ask that question. We really don't have an option; American democracy depends on taking this responsibility on ourselves.
To me, this is fundamentally what being a conservative is all about: I think that society should be structured so that people are capable of being independent--not independent from one another, but independent from ruling elites.
From that point of view, it's sheer nonsense to suppose that conservatism is anything like "pro-big business." Big businesses are powerful elites that need to be restrained from exercising too much authority over people. But on the other hand, it is natural to restrain big government for the same reason.
My only question is whether your average, everyday Democrat would disagree with me. Being surrounded by liberals in the academy, I know there are plenty of elitist liberals out there who genuinely believe in meritocracy--which of course means they should run the country because they're so smart.
But I'd like to think that most Americans do value independence from any sort of aristocracy, whether it's based on how rich you are or how smart you are. I just wonder, then, what leads people to vote for such flaming liberals like Barack Obama.
Oh well. Some things I will never understand. At least I have enough freedom to blog about them.
In fact, the interesting bit of information he opens up with is how much big business seems to support the Democrats: "It's worth remembering that Obama was the preferred candidate of Wall Street, and the industry gave to Democrats by a 2-1 margin at the beginning of last year."
Yet, as Goldberg points out, the generally left-leaning newspapers would rather focus on whatever support big businesses are giving Republicans. What they fail to highlight in stories with headlines like "Wall Street shifting toward Republicans" is that Wall Street is still giving a majority of their political contributions to Democrats, despite whatever gains Republicans have made.
In casual political conversation, it's almost a given that Republicans are in line with big business while Democrats are trying to protect the little guy from those big evil corporations. Could it be that big evil corporations had a change of heart last year and decided to support the liberals in office?
I doubt it. Here's Goldberg's take on things:
The lesson here is fairly simple: Big business is not "right wing," it's vampiric. It will pursue any opportunity to make a big profit at little risk. Getting in bed with politicians is increasingly the safest investment for these "crony capitalists."It's all about profit. Would anyone seriously be surprised to hear that?
The scary thing is that sometimes politics can actually feed the desires of powerful companies to maximize profit. And in our day, this is how "progressive" policies end up actually working. By being overly involved with which businesses are profitable or unprofitable, the government is actually favoring the powerful, not the little guy.
In a just system, powerful people should not be able to gain financially from laws passed by Congress. Markets should be driven by what consumers want, not by what politicians want, especially politicians who are driven by pressure from wealthy political supporters.
This is why it would be so wonderful to have genuine conservatives in government, who believed not in big business, but in free markets. That means restrained government--not "small" government, as many conservatives would put it, but simply disciplined government that didn't use its power to play favorites.
But chances of that appear dismal, as even Goldberg admits: "For years, the GOP defended big business in the spirit of free enterprise while businesses never showed much interest in the principle themselves."
It's no wonder Americans get so apathetic about politics. For all of our conversations about basic political ideology, neither party actually seems to represent the ideology to which is pays lip service.
Yet I do think our conversations about such things are important, because we do have power over politicians in this country. At some point they will listen, because they want votes. See? Politicians are just like businesses, really. Just as you can always count on businesses to desire maximum profit, so you can always count on politicians to want to win elections.
The question is whether the American people, consumers both of goods provided by business and of government provided by politicians, will be able to restrain these desires for profit and power. This means taking responsibility for what we value, both in what we buy and in what political opinions we hold.
Of course, it's easy to get cynical about that, too. Can we really expect Americans as a people to take more responsibility for our values as consumers and as voters? But we can't afford to ask that question. We really don't have an option; American democracy depends on taking this responsibility on ourselves.
To me, this is fundamentally what being a conservative is all about: I think that society should be structured so that people are capable of being independent--not independent from one another, but independent from ruling elites.
From that point of view, it's sheer nonsense to suppose that conservatism is anything like "pro-big business." Big businesses are powerful elites that need to be restrained from exercising too much authority over people. But on the other hand, it is natural to restrain big government for the same reason.
My only question is whether your average, everyday Democrat would disagree with me. Being surrounded by liberals in the academy, I know there are plenty of elitist liberals out there who genuinely believe in meritocracy--which of course means they should run the country because they're so smart.
But I'd like to think that most Americans do value independence from any sort of aristocracy, whether it's based on how rich you are or how smart you are. I just wonder, then, what leads people to vote for such flaming liberals like Barack Obama.
Oh well. Some things I will never understand. At least I have enough freedom to blog about them.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Follow-up to previous post
Josh Schrei over at the Huffington Post has written a good article about the same study I blogged about last night. I thought his main point was very insightful:
Kanazawa's study, implemented anywhere else but the modern western world and in any other time period, would have drawn drastically different results. One simply cannot make the conclusions his team does without consideration of the cultural, environmental, and historical landscape.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
That's what I call "bias"
A friend posted this article on facebook:
Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ
This article is a classic example of headlines being completely misleading. First, the difference in average IQ was hardly astronomical, as the article admits:
Second, the definitions of "liberal" and "conservative" used in the study had almost nothing to do with the actual meanings of those words in common American political discourse.
Also, I don't see any evidence from the article that atheism, more than religion, could be at all connected with caring about strangers, which is supposedly a "liberal" trait. There doesn't seem to be any comparison between intelligent religious people and intelligent atheists.
Isn't it possible that among people with higher IQs, the religious people are actually more "liberal" than the atheists? I mean, of course, that they would care more about providing resources to perfect strangers. I don't think this is an unreasonable hypothesis; church-goers give on average a higher percentage of their income to charity (though still not enough).
Similarly, no comparison was made between intelligent atheist men and intelligent religious men on the subject of sexual exclusivity. Even though intelligence might curb sexual promiscuity among men, who says atheism does? Everyday experience would suggest quite the opposite.
The conflation of these three concepts, atheism, "liberalism," and male sexual exclusivity, together with the attribute of intelligence, is simply an editorial decision made by CNN in choosing a headline. It appears to have little or no grounding in reality.
So does anyone still wonder why people complain about media bias in reporting? You can talk all you want about how objectively the facts were laid out in your article, but that's not all there is to journalism. Presentation matters.
Headlines especially are crucial in shaping people's opinions. Even when people actually read the article (which is by no means 100% of the time!) the headline always leaves a certain impression, and perhaps even skews one's interpretation of the facts laid out in the article.
I can hardly believe that journalists for a network like CNN are so oblivious as to not realize this. Thus I can only conclude that they are intentionally naming their headlines in a manipulative way, and that is what makes me cynical about news media.
Besides this, I get really tired of interpretations of religion like the one presented in this article:
In fact, for 2000 years Christianity has in many ways been dispelling this kind of primitive paranoia Kanazawa is describing. By proclaiming that the One True God is not only sovereign but also loving and rational, Christianity practically paved the way for the modern era, one in which people don't have an inherent fear of nature but rather faith that nature can be mastered.
One might refer to this article for more insight on that topic.
Anyway, as a conservative religious man who also happens to be a PhD student in mathematics, I can assure you, you shouldn't believe every headline you read.
Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ
This article is a classic example of headlines being completely misleading. First, the difference in average IQ was hardly astronomical, as the article admits:
The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning -- on the order of 6 to 11 points -- and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say.What would we do without experts? We'd never be able to tell that not all religious people are idiots!
Second, the definitions of "liberal" and "conservative" used in the study had almost nothing to do with the actual meanings of those words in common American political discourse.
The study takes the American view of liberal vs. conservative. It defines "liberal" in terms of concern for genetically nonrelated people and support for private resources that help those people. It does not look at other factors that play into American political beliefs, such as abortion, gun control and gay rights.In other words, the study doesn't take into account what it actually means to be, you know, conservative. Or liberal, for that matter.
Also, I don't see any evidence from the article that atheism, more than religion, could be at all connected with caring about strangers, which is supposedly a "liberal" trait. There doesn't seem to be any comparison between intelligent religious people and intelligent atheists.
Isn't it possible that among people with higher IQs, the religious people are actually more "liberal" than the atheists? I mean, of course, that they would care more about providing resources to perfect strangers. I don't think this is an unreasonable hypothesis; church-goers give on average a higher percentage of their income to charity (though still not enough).
Similarly, no comparison was made between intelligent atheist men and intelligent religious men on the subject of sexual exclusivity. Even though intelligence might curb sexual promiscuity among men, who says atheism does? Everyday experience would suggest quite the opposite.
The conflation of these three concepts, atheism, "liberalism," and male sexual exclusivity, together with the attribute of intelligence, is simply an editorial decision made by CNN in choosing a headline. It appears to have little or no grounding in reality.
So does anyone still wonder why people complain about media bias in reporting? You can talk all you want about how objectively the facts were laid out in your article, but that's not all there is to journalism. Presentation matters.
Headlines especially are crucial in shaping people's opinions. Even when people actually read the article (which is by no means 100% of the time!) the headline always leaves a certain impression, and perhaps even skews one's interpretation of the facts laid out in the article.
I can hardly believe that journalists for a network like CNN are so oblivious as to not realize this. Thus I can only conclude that they are intentionally naming their headlines in a manipulative way, and that is what makes me cynical about news media.
Besides this, I get really tired of interpretations of religion like the one presented in this article:
Yeah, you know, it's really the paranoia that keeps me going to church every Sunday. It's as if researchers like this have never actually met anyone who's religious.Religion, the current theory goes, did not help people survive or reproduce necessarily, but goes along the lines of helping people to be paranoid, Kanazawa said. Assuming that, for example, a noise in the distance is a signal of a threat helped early humans to prepare in case of danger.
"It helps life to be paranoid, and because humans are paranoid, they become more religious, and they see the hands of God everywhere," Kanazawa said.
In fact, for 2000 years Christianity has in many ways been dispelling this kind of primitive paranoia Kanazawa is describing. By proclaiming that the One True God is not only sovereign but also loving and rational, Christianity practically paved the way for the modern era, one in which people don't have an inherent fear of nature but rather faith that nature can be mastered.
One might refer to this article for more insight on that topic.
Anyway, as a conservative religious man who also happens to be a PhD student in mathematics, I can assure you, you shouldn't believe every headline you read.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Thomas Sowell on Fairness
Thomas Sowell recently wrote a four-part series on "The Fallacy of 'Fairness,'" which you can read here, here, here, and here.Being already quite familiar with much of Sowell's work, nothing I read was that surprising. I have always enjoyed Sowell's contrarian nature, his common-sense debunking of starry-eyed liberal optimism, and his extensive knowledge of economics that he brings to bear on current issues.
However, Sowell deserves a good critique, coming not from the Left but from someone who is at least moderately conservative in outlook. He certainly has his points, which I don't mind agreeing with, but what ties all of his arguments together is a philosophy of individualism that I fundamentally disagree with.
First, the points I don't mind agreeing with. Sowell is right to point out that equality of treatment does not necessarily lead to equality of results, and probably never could:
Some years ago, for example, there was a big outcry that various mental tests used for college admissions or for employment were biased and "unfair" to many individuals or groups. Fortunately there was one voice of sanity-- David Riesman, I believe-- who said: "The tests are not unfair. LIFE is unfair and the tests measure the results."This is absolutely correct, and Sowell is extremely good at conjuring up numerous examples along these same lines to demonstrate his point.
Sowell is right to criticize the overeager Left for wanting to pull the "discrimination card" all too often.
Creating a difference that would not exist otherwise is discrimination, and something can be done about that. But, in recent times, virtually any disparity in outcomes is almost automatically blamed on discrimination, despite the incredible range of other reasons for disparities between individuals and groups.Perhaps the best thing about Sowell is that he really is firm on saying it isn't your fault if you were raised in a poor neighborhood or a broken home; likewise it isn't your virtue if you were raised in a rich family with two parents. Circumstances are inherited, and there's nothing you can do about that. And the same goes for natural ability.
So before one makes a shallow argument against Sowell as just another conservative with prejudices against people he thinks are lazy, one should really look carefully at what he is saying. He is not saying that a person's misfortunes are all his own fault; far from it. He simply objects to innocent people having to pay to correct misfortunes they had no part in causing.Mixed up with the question of fairness to individuals and groups has been the explosive question of whether individuals and groups have the innate ability to perform at the same levels, if they are all treated alike or even given the same objective opportunities.
Intellectuals have swung from one side of this question at the beginning of the 20th century to the opposite side at the end. Both those who said that achievement differences among races and classes were due to genes, in the early years of the 20th century, and those who said that these differences were due to discrimination, in the later years, ignored the old statisticians' warnings that correlation is not causation.
Finally, Sowell gets to the heart of the matter, which is the problem of misdiagnosing society's condition:
It is certainly a great misfortune to be born into families or communities whose values make educational or economic success less likely. But to have intellectuals and others come along and misstate the problem does not help to produce better results, even if it produces a better image.Here I still very much agree with Sowell. For instance, I have seen first hand how many students in lower income neighborhoods are unable to succeed, not simply because they are poor, but because studying is not a cultural good for them. I suppose innate ability might occasionally have something to do with it, but as there is absolutely nothing we can do about innate ability, we ought to focus on what we can do, which is try to teach the value of learning. But to do this is to admit that there's something wrong with the culture in which these kids have grown up, which is potentially a difficult admission in today's politically correct climate.
However, here's where I part with Sowell. He says,
Political correctness may make it hard for anyone to challenge the image of helpless victims of an evil society. But those who are lagging do not need a better public relations image. They need the ability to produce better results for themselves-- and a romantic image is an obstacle to directing their efforts toward developing that ability.I've added emphasis to this statement to clarify what I think is wrong with Sowell's philosophy. I do not think life is fundamentally about what each of us can do individually. Our collective identity also has meaning.
That's not to say I'm a "collectivist," which is what the Right often accuses the Left of being. No, indeed, I think the false rhetoric of the Left comes out of the same individualist mindset that plagues the Right.
Think about it. Instead of appealing to our sense of corporate identity as Americans to help less fortunate groups of people, the Left more often cries "injustice" as if certain individuals had been personally wronged. As Americans, we can't help but be outraged at personal injustice. So the Left basically keeps lying to us and telling us it's still all our fault--we're still discriminating against minorities, etc.
The tragedy is that there would be no need for this kind of rhetoric if we had more of a collective sense of success and failure. This is a fundamental question we should ask ourselves: How do we measure the success of our culture? Is it in the ability of individuals to have upward social mobility? Despite what many on the Left seem to say, I do believe America wins in that category.
Yet where we fail is to deal with the philosophical question of how we ought to truly measure success, and I'm not sure it should be limited to the success of individuals. Anyone who has ever been on a sports team or something similar (for me it was drum line in high school) knows what it means to succeed or fail as a team. "You're only as strong as your weakest link" was what I always heard. It doesn't matter how good your best player is; what matters is whether the group as a whole succeeds.
Along with this question of how we measure success comes the question, who is "we"? We know to be responsible for certain people in our lives--our family, our close friends, and if we are Christians, members of the church (many equivalents exist for other faiths). But what does it mean that we're all Americans? Does that mean we're responsible for one another? Are we in any sense a family? These are tricky questions.
I am certainly far from suggesting that we all ought to be by law responsible for one another in every way. Certainly there are limits to this idea. But I think conservatives do wrong to keep insisting that America is strong because it lets every man be an island.
Doubtless conservatives will tell me yes, we agree that it is good and right to care about others, but we believe that should left up to the individual, you see, for it is a greater moral good when it is not coerced by the government. There is a certain ring of moral truth in that, but on the other hand, at some point shouldn't all societies have ways of enforcing some sort of moral standard of caring about other people?
To be sure, no one is so omniscient as to know how to balance individual freedom with collective identity. Maybe in the Kingdom of God we somehow see both perfectly. After all, God is Trinity, and while each person in the Trinity is genuinely individual, yet the Trinity is a perfect collective, since the Trinity is One God. Maybe our failure to understand that paradox also leads to our failure to have a just political order.
But my point is that conservatives can't make a coherent political ideology out of pure individualism. It doesn't work, and it's immoral. Sowell's purist version of fairness as treating everyone exactly equally is not the ideal. When someone in your family is in trouble, you don't treat that person the same as everyone else; you go out of your way to help him.
Likewise, in any society that views itself in at least somewhat familial terms, certain people will be treated "unfairly" precisely because they are in need. Of course there are limits to this, but that doesn't mean we just throw out the whole idea of collective responsibility.
And if Sowell insists on throwing out the idea of collective responsibility, then I wonder if he is all that different from the intellectuals he is always criticizing. After all, like them, he seems willing to put abstract ideas before flesh and blood human beings.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Media Discrepancies
Compare these two headlines:
The discrepancy may not be all media bias, though. It's interesting to compare the different questions that were asked in these polls.
The Seattle PI cites an Angus Reid Public Opinion national survey:
Got that? The question was, would you support banning abortion coverage.
Now let's look at the Quinnipiac University poll cited by LifeNews.com:
Whereas the previous question asked whether you support banning abortion coverage, this one asked whether you support allowing abortions to be paid for.
It's hard to say what the outcomes of these two polls really mean. Why would Americans be evenly split on banning abortion coverage, but overwhelming opposed to allowing abortions to be paid for?
One hypothesis might be that the Quinnipiac question was more explicit in stating that the government would actually be paying for abortions. Perhaps a respondent who doesn't quite understand what's going on would think that banning coverage for abortions would somehow put a restriction on abortion, rather than simply prevent public funds from paying for abortions.
Or perhaps it never occurred to some people that public insurance coverage for abortions means the government pays for abortions, i.e. our taxes pay for abortions.
Or maybe people just find it hard to support a ban on paying for abortions, because supporting a ban makes it sound like you're against the status quo. "Just leave it alone" might just sum up the majority opinion on this issue.
The most frustrating possibility, of course, is that it's all a matter of media bias. I take small comfort in knowing that the best a left-leaning newspaper like the Seattle PI can do is find a poll suggesting Americans are "divided" on this issue.
That saddest thing of all is to see how "liberals" continue to hamper discussion on this issue, quoting opinions like "There is no point in reopening a debate about abortion in the U.S. right now." It seems the Left wants more than anything to protect the status quo on abortion and silence opposition. That's not very liberal, in the truest sense of the word.
- Poll: 67 Percent of Americans Oppose Funding Abortion in Health Care Bill
- Americans evenly split on abortion health coverage
The discrepancy may not be all media bias, though. It's interesting to compare the different questions that were asked in these polls.
The Seattle PI cites an Angus Reid Public Opinion national survey:
The poll found that 44 percent of Americans support banning abortion coverage through insurance plans subsidized by the government: 42 percent disagree, and 14 percent told Reid they are not sure.
Got that? The question was, would you support banning abortion coverage.
Now let's look at the Quinnipiac University poll cited by LifeNews.com:
The new survey asked: "Do you support or oppose allowing abortions to be paid for by public funds under a health care reform bill?"
Whereas the previous question asked whether you support banning abortion coverage, this one asked whether you support allowing abortions to be paid for.
It's hard to say what the outcomes of these two polls really mean. Why would Americans be evenly split on banning abortion coverage, but overwhelming opposed to allowing abortions to be paid for?
One hypothesis might be that the Quinnipiac question was more explicit in stating that the government would actually be paying for abortions. Perhaps a respondent who doesn't quite understand what's going on would think that banning coverage for abortions would somehow put a restriction on abortion, rather than simply prevent public funds from paying for abortions.
Or perhaps it never occurred to some people that public insurance coverage for abortions means the government pays for abortions, i.e. our taxes pay for abortions.
Or maybe people just find it hard to support a ban on paying for abortions, because supporting a ban makes it sound like you're against the status quo. "Just leave it alone" might just sum up the majority opinion on this issue.
The most frustrating possibility, of course, is that it's all a matter of media bias. I take small comfort in knowing that the best a left-leaning newspaper like the Seattle PI can do is find a poll suggesting Americans are "divided" on this issue.
That saddest thing of all is to see how "liberals" continue to hamper discussion on this issue, quoting opinions like "There is no point in reopening a debate about abortion in the U.S. right now." It seems the Left wants more than anything to protect the status quo on abortion and silence opposition. That's not very liberal, in the truest sense of the word.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Two can play that game...
So MoveOn.org did a video with a bunch of celebrities attempting to make fun of conservative critiques of the public health insurance option.
But conservatives can play that game, too, it seems. Here's a video from Catholic Vote Action:
I don't know where this one is from, but I might as well throw it in the mix:
A lot of times I wince when conservatives try to outwit liberal satire, but in this case, the liberal video was so bad it made the conservative videos hilarious. Thanks, Alexa.
I'm most disappointed in Will Ferrell's performances. At least when he impersonates Bush, it's funny.
But conservatives can play that game, too, it seems. Here's a video from Catholic Vote Action:
I don't know where this one is from, but I might as well throw it in the mix:
A lot of times I wince when conservatives try to outwit liberal satire, but in this case, the liberal video was so bad it made the conservative videos hilarious. Thanks, Alexa.
I'm most disappointed in Will Ferrell's performances. At least when he impersonates Bush, it's funny.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)