Surprise, surprise: multicultural dogma and concern for “the Other” have seeped from college campuses to the highest corridors of power (again).

To wit: The first veiled female appointee in the White House, Dalia Mogahed, member of the Presidential Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Mogahed recently appeared on an Islamic television show in the UK touting her Gallup poll purporting to show that women are OK with sharia. Westerners just don’t get it, she says:

“the majority of women around the world associate gender justice, or justice for women, with sharia compliance. Whereas only a small fraction associated oppression of women with compliance with the shari`ah.”**

For the transcript, click here. There was little news coverage, except for this British article.

Imagine if a president appointed a strict Christian adviser who stated: “gender justice means obeying the Bible and church rulings on it.” Can you imagine the uproar?

The key point: Christians are not “the Other.” The dominant or majority group is held to a different standard. “Others” get a pass because “it’s an ‘Other thing,’ you just wouldn’t understand.”

Where is Western-style feminism when you need it? We don’t lack for Women’s Studies Departments that issue secular fatwas when they feel the pea of oppression through their seats in the Ivory Tower. Surely, they have something to say about treatment of women in Muslim countries? Alas, we must seek out a Yemeni feminist to criticize the appointment of Dalia Mogahed.

I can hear the comebacks: feminist critics of sharia are a minority (the abolitionists were a minority too). Or: “those uppity women need to read Dalia’s surveys and tighten their hijabs!”

**For Mogahed’s puffed-up survey results, go to “Who Speaks for Islam?” For criticism of Gallup “spin” see Jihadwatch More to the point, read the conditions under which pollsters labor in Muslim countries, given the many restrictions on women and the watching eye of government and family. Do these restrictions lend themselves to representative opinion surveys?

Postscript: Apologies to Helen Reddy: “I am Woman” is the title of her best-selling song (1972). Reddy did not have sharia on her mind.

[Originally posted at my new National Association of Scholars blog.]

Because I despise politics in general, and the two major parties in this country in particular, I go through life constantly bemused by all the weight that people put on partisan political loyalties and on adherence to the normative demarcations the parties promote. Henry Adams observed that “politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” This marshalling of hatreds is not the whole of politics, to be sure, but it is an essential element. Thus, Democrats encourage people to hate big corporations, and Republicans encourage people to hate welfare recipients.

Of course, it’s all a fraud, designed to distract people from the overriding reality of political life, which is that the state and its principal supporters are constantly screwing the rest of us, regardless of which party happens to control the presidency and the Congress. Amid all the partisan sound and fury, hardly anybody notices that political reality boils down to two “parties”: (1) those who, in one way or another, use state power to bully and live at the expense of others; and (2) those unfortunate others.

Even when politics seems to involve life-and-death issues, the partisan divisions often only obscure the overriding political realities. So, Democrats say that anti-abortion Republicans, who claim to have such tremendous concern for saving the lives of the unborn, have no interest whatever in saving the lives of those already born, such as the poor children living in the ghetto. And Republicans say that Democrats, who claim to have such tremendous concern for the poor, systematically contribute to the perpetuation of poverty by the countless taxes and regulations they load onto business owners who would otherwise be in better position to hire and train the poor and thereby to hasten their escape from poverty.

If the unborn children happen to be living in the wombs of women on whom U.S. bombs and rockets rain down in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, however, all Republican concerns for the unborn evaporate completely, as do the Democrats’ concerns for the poor children living in the selfsame bombarded villages. Both parties’ positions would seem to rest on very flexible and selective morality, if indeed either party may be said to have any moral basis at all, notwithstanding their chronic public displays of “moral” wailing and gnashing of teeth.

In any event, the parties’ principles of hatred have never passed the sniff test; indeed, they reek of hypocrisy. Thus, while railing against the “corporate rich,” the Democrats rely heavily on the financial support of Hollywood moguls and multi-millionaire trial lawyers, among other fat cats. And the Republicans, while denouncing the welfare mother who makes off with a few hundred undeserved bucks a month, vociferously support the hundreds of billions of dollars in welfare channeled to Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Electric, among many other companies, via larcenous “defense” contracts, Export-Import Bank subsidies, and countless other forms of government support for “national security” and service to “the public interest” as Republicans conceive of these nebulous, yet rhetorically useful entities.

Notice, too, that although ordinary Democrats and Republicans often harbor intense mutual hatreds, the party leaders in Congress rub shoulders quite amiably as a rule. Regardless of which party has control, the loyal opposition can always be counted on to remain ever so loyal and ready to cut a deal. And why not? These ostensible political opponents are engaged in a process of plunder from which the bigwigs in both parties can expect to profit, whatever the ebb and flow of party politics. At bottom, the United States has a one-party state, cleverly designed to disguise the country’s true class division and to divert the masses from a recognition that unless you are a political insider connected with one of the major parties, you almost certainly will be ripped off on balance. Such exploitation, after all, is precisely what the state and the political parties that operate it are for.

Yet, rather than hating the predatory state, the masses have been conditioned to love this blood-soaked beast and even, if called upon, to lay down their lives and the lives of their children on its behalf. From my vantage point on the outside, peering in, I am perpetually mystified that so many people are taken in by the phony claims and obscurantist party rhetoric. As the song says, “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,” but unlike the fellow in the song, I am not “stuck in the middle.” Instead, I float above all of this wasted emotion, looking down on it with disgust and sadness. Moreover, as an economist, I am compelled to regret such an enormously inefficient allocation of hatred.

James Montanye’s recent posting on reciprocal rights theory and altruism provides the standard evolutionary biological (evo-devo) view, but as such fails to explain pure altruism or “radical altruism” and is inadequate to defend any consistent system of political economy and morality, including natural law and natural rights, individual liberty and the rule of law. As the analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga has shown in his book, Warrant and Proper Function, the evo-devo, naturalist, reductionist attempt to explain morality, free will and reason is self-refuting. In this regard, here also is Plantinga’s essay, “Naturalism Defeated.”

In effect, Montanye’s claim that “Politics, both for better and for worse, is an expression of biology” is fundamentally flawed as are all materialistic, determinist models (e.g., Hobbes, Hume, Marx, Darwin, Freud, Skinner, etc.).

1. If all human action is based solely on self-interest, then choosing pure sacrifice vs. pure narcissism ends up in an unworkable dilemma since they both cannot be “fit” for survival. The man who seeks to pet a tiger is not as “fit” as a man who runs away. But in choosing, the man can make a gigantic multiplicity of choices that can also avoid his being eaten, but since only one choice is true, the probability that he will choose false assessments of reality is virtually assured. He may decide that the tiger is a ghost and run away or that the sky is green and run away or that there are witches in the trees and run away or that two plus two is five and run away, etc., etc. The probability of his choosing the truth is virtually non-existent, and the evo-devo theorist fails because in assuming that all brain states make selections solely based of “fitness,” he rules out the existence of reason and free will in the process. Such evo-devo reductionist scenarios end up as speculative “just so stories” that do not explain at all but instead conform to a naturalist ideological presupposition.

2. In addition, if all of human behavior is simply matter in motion, determined mechanically and materialistically by “fitness” as somehow programmed by the laws of physics, then no thought, including the theory of evolutionary biology itself, can be known to be true or not. Indeed, no free will to infer and make arguments can exist since all human thought is merely bio-chemical reactions determined genetically. Such reductionism refutes itself because all human inferences (including those Montanye has made here) assume as pre-conditions the properly basic knowledge that his mind, free will and other minds do exist, refuting his very theory. Hence, all human inferences necessarily first assume a metaphysical dualism (substance dualism) which means that evo-devo alone cannot explain reality.

3. Moreover, if morality is based solely on reciprocity, then no objective standard exists to determine what is or is not moral other than subjective self-interest. The evo-devo advocate then tries to conflate the “is” with the “ought” but ends up in an unworkable dilemma. As such, if someone believes that using invasive violence against another (e.g., murder, theft, rape, etc.) can advance one’s own interest and the chance of being caught is slim to non-existent, then morality (“fitness”) for this person equals aggression against the innocent because all morality is merely subjective and situational. For the evo-devo advocate, the man “is” capable of doing harm to benefit himself and necessarily “ought” to do so since only “fitness” applies. Hence, Nazi ethics would be equivalent to Thomist or Jeffersonian ethics, depending upon the situation because “fitness” assumes that there is no objective standard and that all brain states and truth are subjective. Indeed, this is the dilemma that all utilitarian-rights theorists have in trying to achieve a standard for morality and explains the historical decline of classical liberal thought which once abandoning natural law theory was left clinging to the shifting sands of moral subjectivism. Interestingly enough, since radical altruism has been considered the highest standard for human behavior in societies worldwide since the dawn of mankind, this powerful evidence for natural law suggests that self-interested “fitness” cannot explain morality.

In Plato’s The Republic, Socrates is presented with the story of “The Ring of Gyges” in which Glaucon asks whether objective morality exists or self-interest is the only standard. Socrates responds by refuting subjectivism as the basis for morality. In this regard, here is a video that discusses why the subjective/utilitarian theory of morality is incoherent, self-refuting, and in fact the basis for all of the tyrannies in history.

And C.S. Lewis’s superb book The Abolition of Man (also available free online here) is highly recommended in refuting subjectivism in aesthetics, epistemology, and moral ethics.

The Man in the Moon issued a statement protesting the naming of U.S. President Barack Obama as this year’s recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize on the same day as the unprovoked missile attack against his unarmed, peaceful nether-regions.

On Earth, others similarly questioned the designation, citing continuing U.S. involvement in conflicts around the globe, including a possible escalation in Afghanistan and into Iran.

There are also increasing questions as whether the technology tested in the bombing of the moon — ostensibly to find deeply buried ice in its craters — is not suspiciously similar to the Pentagon’s recently-approved Massive Penetrator Ordnance said to be “ideally suited to hit deeply buried nuclear facilities such as Natanz or Qom in Iran:”

The Man in the Moon concluded his statement by urging all Earthlings to take heed of his example: “Today me, tomorrow Iran?”

*****
See also Twilight War: The Folly of U.S. Space Dominance

I rarely agree with Lou Dobbs but am gladdened to find out that he has adopted a radical Ron Paulian stand on foreign policy. He is promoting a petition to bring home all U.S. troops from overseas. This is a hopeful sign that some elements on the right are beginning to question Obama’s wars. You can sign the petition on his website here.

Under the Age of Obama, as some conservatives like George Will begin to question how much these open-ended foreign occupations serve US interests, and the left is stuck with a president pushing for a war that many of them had opposed, the rationales behind continuing US imperialism are beginning to shift again. Now Code Pink, one of the most reliably antiwar activist groups on the left, is rethinking its positions on withdrawing from Afghanistan. The new reason to stay is a reason we heard a lot in 2002 but not much since then: That the US must protect women from the Islamist theocrats. With a humanitarian veneer, the US killing must continue, as was the rationale behind Clinton’s killing spree in Serbia. Whereas under Republican “national security” wars, the argument is: We must shed innocent foreign blood to protect Americans; under Democratic “humanitarian” wars, the argument is: Americans must sacrifice for the good of foreigners. In truth, all such wars are incredibly costly for all peoples involved. And now the leftist argument will be: Americans must continue to perish and bomb and kill Afghans to protect a greater number of Afghans in the long run. Let us hope this poisonous reasoning doesn’t come to dominate the left, for with most of the right still happily on board with the war on terror, such a political dynamic could spell horror for Iran and God knows who else. For more on the nationalist and internationalist arguments for war (and for peace) see my talk “The Shifting Rationales for Empire.”

President Obama’s commitment to use the compulsions of regulation, tax policy, and individual mandates to “spread the wealth” prompts thinking men and women of good virtue to wonder anew whether Karl Marx and his acolytes were right about communism’s inevitability.

Economic theory predicts that collectivist policies of the sort now being advanced are inherently destructive; Ludwig von Mises early treatise on Socialism (1922) remains both timely and instructive in this regard. Twentieth century history richly confirms the predictions by Mises and others. How is it, then, that Mankind can deconstruct the atom and yet remain unable to grasp and retain the simplest insights of economics and history? The answer, it seems, lies not in our political stars, but in our genes.

Evolution has predisposed Mankind for numerous behavioral tendencies that foster survival and reproduction. Every predisposition benefits individuals privately; evolution could not have selected for them otherwise. Many are publically beneficial as well. But some are not, and therein lies the indelible rub.

Predispositions that are both privately and publically beneficial are those that foster cooperation, reciprocity, and trust among individuals. Biologists term this class of behaviors ‘reciprocal altruism.’ The propensity for reciprocal altruism underlies all of mankind’s innate civilizing virtues, including the golden and silver rules of moral conduct, categorical imperatives of ethical behavior, concepts of fairness and justice, and the intuitive sense of natural law (without which the ‘rule of law’ concept would be empty). Reciprocal altruism grounds Max Weber’s ‘Protestant ethic’ and Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand,’ and it is the source of value in Smith’s moral sentiment of “approbation and esteem.”

Also embedded within reciprocal altruism, however, is a socially destructive predisposition that the biologist Matt Ridley labels “parasitism of reciprocity.” He describes this as:

“a human invention to exploit our pre-existing natures, our innate respect for
generosity and disrespect for those who would not share. And why would we
have such an instinct? Because to be known as intolerant of and punitive towards
stinginess is an effective way to police a system of reciprocity, to extort your share
of others’ good fortune.” The Origins of Virtue (1997), pp. 123-24

Reciprocal altruism fosters social cohesion and wealth-creation through cooperation, voluntary exchange, and the division of labor. Parasitism of reciprocity, by contrast, promotes only redistribution and consumption. It exhorts reciprocity without cooperation, engenders envy, stimulates free-riding, and dulls private incentives to produce.

The law ordinarily restrains individuals from indulging this and other publically detrimental instincts. Where the law is weak or silent, parasitism is suppressed, and cooperation is re-encouraged, through the spontaneous social devices of shunning, excommunication, and occasional violence.

The modern State unfortunately inclines toward indulging parasitism on behalf of its citizens. Neo-liberal politicians project their own parasitic predispositions into feckless legislation geared toward producing conditions that the Nobelist F.A. Hayek pejoratively titled The Mirage of Social Justice (1973). (Classical liberals, by definition, foster social justice by promoting instead the productive virtues of cooperation, reciprocity, and trust.) Cynical politicians of every stripe benefit privately by demagoging resonant collectivist issues in pursuit of electoral support and side payments. Voters, in turn, are encouraged to abuse the democratic process by exercising their own parasitic instincts without regard for the predictably detrimental public consequences.

Individuals are intrinsically parasitic. Mankind, however, is not collectivistic by nature. Asked once to comment on communism’s merits, the distinguished behavioral biologist E.O. Wilson is reliably quoted as having replied simply, “Wonderful theory. Wrong species.” The leveling instinct that we generously characterize as an expression of public morality is essentially a manifestation of private selfishness. Hence the enduring political appeal of collectivist policies despite their predictable public failure.

Classical liberalism once constrained parasitic instincts by limiting the State’s power to take and redistribute property rights. Conversely, it promoted reciprocal altruism’s beneficial public virtues by defining and protecting every individual’s right to associate freely, to enter into voluntary relationships and commitments, to expect that agreements would be kept, and to trust that arbitrary and odious public burdens could not be imposed without voluntary consent.

Politics, both for better and for worse, is an expression of biology. Mankind’s inherent nature has not varied perceptibly over the last century. Our politics, however, have completed regular cycles of production and parasitism. We have re-entered that phase in which politicians eagerly indulge one of Mankind’s most destructive behavioral instincts. We must pay careful attention to the better angels of our nature at this juncture lest the light of national prosperity be dimmed.

A fascinating and frustrating exchange. Smith is exactly right that mandatory insurance without a public option is hardly a victory for the American people:

Over the last ten years health care costs in America have skyrocketed. Regular folks cannot afford it. So, they tax the system by not getting preventative medicine. They go to the emergency room in the last case and we all wind up paying for it. As the costs have gone up, the insurance industry’s profits, on average, have gone up more than 350%. And it is the insurance companies which have paid, and who have contributed to Senators and Congressmen on both sides of the aisle to the point where now we cannot get what all concerned on Capitol Hill seem to believe and more 60% of Americans say they would support, which is a public option. This has been an enormous win for the health-care industry, that is an unquestioned fact. But I wonder, what happens to the American people when we come out with legislation now which requires everyone to have health care insurance — or many more people — but does not give a public option? Therefore millions more people will have to buy insurance from the very corporations that are overcharging us, and whose profits have gone up 350 percent in the last ten years. It seems like we the people are the ones getting the shaft here.

And yet, mandatory insurance with a public option is also a disaster. A “public option,” subsidized by the general population, may indeed crowd out and destroy what’s left of market insurance, as some people fear. Why would he defend such a plan? He, like his liberal counterparts at MSNBC, are right to note that mandatory insurance is pure corporatism if there’s no public plan; but it’s socialism with such a plan and that’s also bad. The only true solution is the free market, which we don’t have. I must admit, I find it bizarre to see Smith take this position, although it does fall in line with Fox News’s generally pro-state bias. Perhaps this is a way of criticizing Obama in what he will likely sign — from the left — while still supporting more government intervention?

The great city has been spared the unpredictable chaos of hosting the Olympics, as many Chicagoans hoped would be the case. Much of the media is fixated on the conservative reaction to Obama’s failure to bring the 2016 games to the home of his native political machine, but regular residents have dodged a huge price-tag. In this as in so much else, the failure of the president is actually a victory for the American people.

Despite all of the smiley faces that journalists for the mainstream news media continue to paste on their reports about recent economic developments, the official unemployment rate now verges on 10 percent, and various economic indicators signal a discouraging prospect for the near-term future. Republican partisans, willing to grasp and exploit any passing news that seems to discredit the ruling Democrats, trumpet the conclusion that “the stimulus has failed.” I don’t dispute that it has failed and that it will continue to do so, but my reasons for this judgment have nothing to do with partisanship, inasmuch as I loathe both parties equally — indeed, I don’t regard them as two parties at all, but only as two wings of a predatory one-party state. In any event, though, there’s trouble in River City, and the politicians have naturally decided that “something must be done,”  lest the peasants grow dangerously restive.

Whence cometh a good deal of talk about “more stimulus,” although administration spokespersons such as Larry Summers are quick to distance themselves from this phraseology, if not from the substance it denotes.  So, what exactly do our glorious rulers have in mind? According to the Wall Street Journal,

Obama administration economists said they would like the enhanced unemployment-insurance program to extend beyond its Dec. 31 expiration date. They also want to maintain a program that offers tax credits to pay 65% of the cost of health insurance policies under the COBRA program, which allows laid-off workers to purchase the health plans they had through their previous employer.

White House officials said they also are examining whether to extend a soon-to-expire tax credit for first-time homebuyers, but that provision faces a stiffer headwind.

If these ideas are the best ones that the administration’s economic geniuses can come up with, the economy is heading for even rougher waters.

To understand why, recall that lesson one in public-policy economics is this:  if you want less of something, tax it; if you want more of something, subsidize it. Extending the term of unemployment-insurance benefits and offering tax credits to cover 65 percent of the cost of maintaining health-insurance coverage for the jobless in effect subsize unemployment: these measures lower the cost of remaining unemployed by reducing the employment benefits the unemployed forgo. Hence, unemployed people will search for new jobs less actively, and they will be more likely to turn down a job offer that does not provide the same compensation they received in their previous jobs. Thus, these measures will keep the unemployment rate higher than it otherwise would have been, magnifying and prolonging the recession.

Political realists might also note that the continuation of high unemployment will increase the demand for government rescues of various sorts. In this way, the government gets, as it were, just what it (which is to say, the taxpayers) pays for, namely, continued excuses for its bulked-up spending (i.e., vote buying). So, before you accuse administration officials of contemplating the adoption of crazy policies, consider that these politicians may actually be crazy like a fox.

Extension of the tax-credit for first-time homebuyers is a looney idea for somewhat different reasons. To understand this measure’s perniciousness, recall that our present economic difficulties spring in large part from the de facto subsidies that various public policies created during the earlier years of this decade for home purchases by people who, absent those subsidies, could not afford to repay the requisite mortgage loans. Now, while the economy is still deep in the quicksand of millions of mortgages in delinquency or default, with many others likely to be in such trouble soon, the government is considering the extension of a measure that — strange to say — again tempts people who cannot afford the mortgage payments on a home purchase to go ahead and purchase it nevertheless. By such “caring” policies, the government lures people who cannot swim into waters much too deep for them to stand in, with predictable results looming not far in the future.

Again, however, the government may simply be seeking to keep the economy in trouble as long as it can do so, because as long as the troubles continue, the demand for the government’s salvation will remain at its present elevated level. Think of the policies the administration is now contemplating as parts of a perpetual-motion machine for government spending and the willful distortion of market pricing and resource allocation. And who can possibly object, unless it be a taxpayer or someone with an interest in the creation of wealth in this country? In politics, of course, such old-fashioned naysayers count for practically nothing.