Deep Thought

2011-09-11T13:49:00.000-07:00

2,996: Janice Ashley

On the 10th Anniversary

2,996 is an attempt to have bloggers place a separate tribute for each of the people who were killed on September 11^th, 2001 on the internet. When I heard of the project, I signed up immediately. Not because knew anyone personally, nor because I thought it would make me a hero, but for more complicated reasons.

Ten years later, I am posting this, again, as I try to do each year.

As a veteran I had hoped that the random assignment of victim to blogger might allow me to write about a soldier in the pentagon, letting me use a quasi-personal connection to add depth. I was not assigned a soldier; I was assigned a young woman. A young woman with a connection a bit closer than any soldier I never met. A young woman that made me struggle with this tribute for weeks.

My struggle was about the focus of this tribute. At first, I wanted to avoid any mention of me, or my vague connection to some of the victims. I thought that this would make it more centered on the tragedy. No matter how I tried, though, it just sounded flat and dull. I realized that, for me at least, this tribute is about not “just” one of the 2,996 that died, but how we were all and affected. How each of these deaths touched each of us who lived. How the murder of these innocent people was an attack on each and every one of us, an attack that did harm by removing so many good people from our midst.

My job at the time of 9/11 meant that I had business to business dealings with literally thousands of firms all over the world. While most of these clients were rather distant and impersonal, some of these connections led to friendships that last to this day. One of the firms I dealt with, if rarely, was Fred Alger Management in Tower One of the World Trade Center complex. On the 93^rd floor, Fred Alger Management was in the area of the impact, blast, and initial fire of the first plane impact.

Of the 36 employees at Fred Alger Management at that time, none survived.

For the next few weeks a great deal of my life was helping firms in the WTC complex rebuild. One of those firms was Fred Alger Management. We did everything we could, as did thousands (if not millions) of other people at hundreds of other firms.

After it was all over, I moved on to another job at another firm. In 2004 and 2005 I traveled to New York and visited Ground Zero. On a small handful of occasions I spoke of the work I did, and about the firms I worked with where everyone there that day died in the attacks. I realized last Summer that the attacks sometimes seemed more immediate to me than my own, personal, brush with death in April 2001, just a few months before.

So, back to the beginning, when I heard of 2,996 I signed up right away. I did it because I know that there are many others who feel 9/11 and its impact every day. I need to talk about it, and you probably need to listen.

The person randomly assigned to me that day was Janice Ashley, a research assistant with Fred Alger Management.

As I began my research I immediately hoped to speak to her parents. I was able to identify her mother and, with a long chain of friends-of-friends, I was given her mother’s home number. I called it, spoke to a person who identified herself as having the same name as Janice Ashley’s mother and had the same address – and insisted she was no relation.

I spent two days thinking about this as I left messages with groups Janice’s mother is or was involved in, asking for contact. I left similar messages for friends and other relatives, all asking for some personal insight into Janice and her life. I was never called. As a result, I will respect the apparent desire for her family and friends for privacy [and I hope you will, too]. As the entire world fills itself with reminders 9/11 I am sure that the Ashley family is not alone in wishing to be left in peace while they mourn their loved ones.

As a result, I know the following about Janice Ashley. She was 25 years old. She graduated from Oceanside High School in 1994. She graduated from Cornell with a degree in English. She was an artist. She had many friends. She hoped to, some day, open a florist gift shop. She had a nice smile and was pretty in a wholesome, girl-next-door way.

These little details are just that – the little, important details, the stuff you would put in a bio about a promotion to vice-president, or a quick ‘please introduce yourself” speech at a three-day seminar. Where we were, where we are, where we want to go will always be the important details. But it still somehow misses so much. It doesn’t tell us if she liked dangly earrings, or if she hated lipstick. I don’t know if she liked caramel more than fudge, or butterscotch best of all. Did she have running gags with her friends, the sort of familiar, well-worn joke that could elicit a smile with just a word and a cocked eyebrow? I don’t know. And I never will.

Janice Ashley would be 35 years old right now, if she had not been murdered. In the ten years that have elapsed since 9/11 she would have certainly met new people, made new friends, tried new things, and forgotten her keys once or twice. She didn’t get to do those things. All of the people she would have touched were prevented from doing so. All of the people she would have become close to have been robbed of a friend. Janice Ashley will never marry, she will never give her parents grandchildren, and she will never look forward to grandchildren of her own. She was denied the chance to have these things.

To the best of my knowledge, I never spoke with Janice when I called (or was called by) Fred Alger Management. Based upon what her family and friends say in other tributes and interviews, I think I would remember if I had. Much of the sorrow I feel about the death of Janice is for her family and friends, people who knew her and cared for her. But some of the sorrow I feel when I think of Janice, or of any of those killed that day, are for me and the rest of us who are still here. The attackers have denied us the chance to meet them, to learn from them, to love them. All of those people, 2,996 of them, were taken from us and we are poorer for it. I will never meet Janice when I am in New York talking to financial companies. I have no chance to see her on the street, or read about her promotion. I will never buy flowers for my wife in her store.

All of these rich, wonderful, frustrating, sometimes-boring, sometimes-sublime people have been taken from us. And we cannot get them back. The tragedy was a human one. The tragedy and the loss are ours and we are still learning just how big the loss was.

Good-bye, Janice. We all miss you.

The CNN.com tribute is here.

The legacy.com legacy is here.

2009-01-21T06:21:00.000-08:00

Who Decides? Part 2

A Reprint

originally posted 1/18/07

In my introduction to education and homeschooling I discussed my conversation with Prof. Rob Reich, who is seen as an opponent by most homeschoolers, and his view that parents should not have sole control of the education of their children. His opinion was echoed in comments by Elliot, who feels that the government should determine what is taught to all children. These two people, along with many others outside homeschooling who discuss how to ‘limit’ it, or structure it, or regulate it, etc. all seem to touch on the core topic involved without quite realizing what that core topic really is. Even Prof. Reich, with a Ph.D. in Political Science, at first didn’t realize that regulation of homeschooling is about the power of the state to control or eliminate pluralism.

Pluralism is, briefly, the concept that in a democratic society there will exist people and groups that disagree with each other and that this is OK. In deed, some argue that this disagreement is good and that the resulting dialogue can lead to discovery. Yes, multiculturalism is part of this idea of pluralism, but pluralism is more of a realpolitik acceptance of reality than an attempt to make a ‘rainbow coalition’ of enforced diversity.

In other words, pluralism is the acceptance of the fact that there are people who think electricity and automobiles are potentially sources of personal character erosion, there are other people who hope and plan for the transformation of mankind into technological creatures with little remaining attachment to their human roots, and that these two groups coexist, already, in the world. While the Amish and Transhumanist have little in common, they are both elements of American society (and world society, for that matter). I don’t know Prof. Reich that well, but I suspect that if I told him I planned to create a program that would convince the Amish that their lifestyle was backwards, mistaken, ‘wrong’, etc. he would at least be disturbed. After all, the Amish, although small, are part of what makes the world a rich, interesting place. They both reflect and raise interesting questions about the role of technology in human culture and how we can and should react to change.

At the same time, if I were to tell Elliot that ‘the State’ has guidelines that would force transhumanists to tell their kids (or, uh, whatever they consider their progeny) that posthumanist ideas are immoral, unnatural, or too fantastic to be believed, he would likewise be disturbed. While a fringe movement in as many ways as the Amish, transhumanists also raise questions about man and machine and how they can and should affect each other. The Amish and the transhumanists have radically different concepts of the nature of man and nearly-opposite views of the role of technology, views that they will likely never reconcile – and that is OK. Even if their differences in outlook and belief add nothing to the ‘greater good’ of the society around them, they are equal in their rights to hold their beliefs as they do – if we do, indeed, live in a free and pluralistic society.

I always become concerned when I hear discussion of what is good for ‘the state’ or for ‘society’, especially when discussing education. What if ‘the state’ we are talking about it, oh, Nazi Germany? Or Castro’s Cuba? Or Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge? All of these ‘states’ had clear ideas of what was good for ‘the state’ and made education a keystone in their creation of their vision of a better ‘state’, didn’t they? During the American Civil War the Confederacy had laws forbidding the teaching of literacy to slaves – once again, for the good of ‘the state’. When we look at the parents who taught their children that fascism was not perfect and Jews not inherently evil in the Austria of 1939, or the parents who teach modern Cuban children that speaking out against the ruler-for-life is not immoral, or Cambodians that insisted to their kids that a better life didn’t require the extermination of 1/3 of their fellow citizens, or the person who taught the children of slaves to read and write, we do not see someone who is working against the Good, do we?

No, what we see in these situations is people want to pass on their own values, despite what intentions or convictions ‘the state’ may have, and that the most powerful way of passing on those values is through teaching them to their own children. This is something so important, so central to the very concept of being a parent that we really can’t imagine it being separated from the very nature of parenthood. It is also the primary method that beliefs and values are passed down through generations. Groups as varied as the Assyrians and some American Indian tribes knew that the most effective way to eliminate an opposed group was to force their children to be raised in your own group. This forced assimilation was accomplished by simply taking these potential enemies while they were children and teaching them that your own ways were the best, even the only, methods and beliefs. In no more than a few generations the former opponents would vanish, absorbed into your own group and holding your own beliefs.

Remember all those feel-good examples of iconoclast parents breaking the rules to teach their kids in defiance of ‘the state’? Here’s the deal – in order to allow those sorts of heroes, you must also allow the other sort of hero – you know, the people who teach things you disagree with. Right now in Sweden, kids are being taught not to trust ‘the Jew’; in London, parents are teaching their children that Blacks are shiftless and lazy; in China kids are being told that Americans are all greedy and lazy; in San Francisco kids are being told that homosexuals are deviants; in Canada children are being taught that that Hitler fellow may have been right about a few things. You may disagree with every one of those positions (in fact, I hope you do), but if you think you can ban parent’s from teaching those things to their kids, what makes you different from the Nazi’s who wanted to ban the idea that Jews are just people? Why are you superior to the Klansmen of Indiana? In what substantial way do you differ from the faculty of Bob Jones University in 1968?

Plurality and a free society demand that for free speech to really be free, we must, and I mean must, tolerate the speech we like least. Most importantly, it means that we must allow the transmission of beliefs across the generations. You don’t like fascists? Fine, teach your kids to not like fascists, too. But does that mean that a grandson of someone who fought for the Royalists in the Spanish Civil War can’t teach his own kids that Franco was fighting for the life and future of Spain? Can he not teach them that the Falangists were the good guys and made the nation a better place?

Or, for an argument closer to home and the American homeschooling movement, can you demand that a homeschooler teach their child that evolution is “right”? If so, why? Here’s another step; a fair number of homeschoolers, especially the earliest, were radical Leftists, not Christian Fundamentalists. Can you demand that they teach their children that Capitalism is “right”? After all, Communism is a total failure as an economic system (see: the Soviet Union, pre-economic-reform China, Cuba, Cambodia, etc., etc.) and Capitalism is the system that runs the Western economy. It is obvious that those narrow-minded, doctrinaire Marxist parents are doing their kids no favors by giving them a sheltered, even blinkered, view of the world. I say that the government should demand that they be taught the truth about Communism being wrong and Capitalism being right; after all, it is in the best interests of the children…. Right?

Still not a clear example? State after state after state has passed bans on gay marriage. The concensus is obviously that the average American is opposed to gay marriage – does that mean that homeschoolers should instruct their kids that gay marriage is ‘wrong’? No? OK, then why should it teach that gay marriage is ‘right’? Because you think it is?

The list of contentious issues is a long one with these just a starting point. It is important that the contentious issues raised by opponents of homeschooling are not about math, or spelling, or handwriting.

Prof. Reich mentioned during our discussion that he was concerned that homeschooled kids could grow up so sheltered, so narrowly educated, so focused on the ideology of their own parents, that they were literally unable to interact with people from a different religion in a meaningful way (I find it telling that he discussed this in the context of religious belief, not politics or some other cultural element). He wanted to ensure that homeschooled children receive enough education about other points of view that they can interact with them. I asked him if he was aware of kids so narrowly indoctrinated and he admitted that he does not, even anecdotally. He also admitted when I asked that public school doesn’t really educate kids for this, either. I think that this attitude is more important than Prof. Reich realizes. There are no standards for comparative religion studies in the public school systems that I am aware of – why have higher standards for homeschooled kids?

The NEA’s stated opposition (well, at least in the situation mentioned) is about kids ‘not being exposed to people from a range of cultural and economic strata’ (to paraphrase). Now, I have no idea who diverse the students are in, say, Blake Elementary (with 11 students) or Russell High School, but if this exposure is so very critical (and I think that remains to be proven), then why must homeschoolers ensure it when it is so very absent from many public schools? Indeed, a great deal of the NEA’s focus in recent years seems to be beyond traditional education.

Prof. Reich’s example was not about kids unable to do enough math to make change, or unable to read well enough to fill out a job application (topics we will touch on next time), but about the cultural outlook of children and young adults. Indeed, all of these hot button topics about homeschooling are not about reading (homeschoolers are better), or writing (homeschoolers are better), or mathematics (homeschoolers are better) [again, the next article will be in academic performance, so be patient]. Nope, even the ‘socialization’ bugbear is really not the main issue. The issues, the hot buttons, all the things that get opponents of homeschooling frothed boil down to cultural outlook.

This is why many on both sides focus on evolution/creationism. Those homeschoolers who leave public schools because of evolution clearly state that they feel the public schools are being used to subvert the beliefs and values that parents want their children to develop and support. While many who want to force all children to learn evolution claim that understanding evolution is a pre-requisite for being a functional adult, let’s be honest – how many public-school educated adults (or high school seniors) can state what the definition of evolution is? [If you think that evolution is defined as “a change in allele frequency over time”, you got the question right. If not, maybe your education was lacking….]. Just as importantly, since many of the arguments for an imposed curricula is because it is for ‘the good of the child’ or ‘the good of the society’ or ‘the state’ – how important is an in-depth understanding of evolutionary theory to you?

I assume that it isn’t very important to your life at all. Unless you wish a career in evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology you really don’t have any need for an in-depth understanding of evolutionary theory. If you have a career outside of certain branches of biology, you might not need to know (or believe) anything about evolution at all. Isaac Newton developed calculus while quite ignorant of evolution, John Locke published his ideas that the legitimacy of government exists only with the consent of the governed 70 years before Darwin published The Origin of Species, the Bill of Rights for the United States was written and adopted also more than six decades before Darwin published on evolution, and the rules of logic, reason, and rational deduction were developed in ancient Greece by men who explicitly believed in the spontaneous generation of life.

In short, those ideas seen as cornerstones of democracy (natural rights, the nature of government, equality of people, etc.) and of science (rational deduction, logic, mathematics, etc.) can, have, and do, flourish even in the direct rejection of evolutionary theory. The claim that a child must be taught evolution to be a ‘good citizen’ is ludicrous and the claim that a child must have an in-depth understanding in and acceptance of evolution to be prepared for a career is only true if that child must have a career in evolutionary biology.

Is there any wonder than many homeschool advocates, even ones with degrees in biology and a deep understanding of evolutionary theory, suspect that the advocates of mandatory evolution education may have, shall we say, a deeper agenda? The public debate between the religious and secular elements of society has largely been centered around evolution since about, oh, 1859 or so. While many believers in religion accept evolution as a scientific fact in varying degrees, some (especially Fundamentalists) do not. Despite the rather broad acceptance of evolution among the general body of believers, it cannot be denied that evolution is still a primary tool of opponents of religion who attempt to portray religious belief as inherently wrong. While some proponents of demands that evolution be taught to children are honestly only interested in a well-rounded science education, to deny that some are motivated by anti-religious prejudice is, at best, naïve.

This, again, cuts to the cultural basis of this debate. While the most often stated reason homeschoolers cite for their decision to teach their own kids is to give their children a better education, over 38% cite religious reasons and over 12% state that they object to what the local/available public school teaches. These parents obviously want to control the cultural, moral, and ethical education of their children. I do not see how this can be opposed without opponents admitting that they want control of the moral, ethical, and social education of children to be taken, in whole or in part, from parents. Prof. Reich was kind enough to simply state that as his own position. Elliot simply states that parents have no such control if ‘the state’ decides that certain morals, ethics, etc. are ‘minimum requirements’.

Remember those examples of parents bucking the trends and teaching their children their own morality I gave above? This is because in any society there will be people who disagree with one another – that’s just the way it is. When those people are a minority or distrust/disagree with some element of society they will attempt to avoid it and/or replace it with their own version of it. One example from the American education experience is the Catholic school system. When Catholic immigrants began to reach America in large numbers they found that the existing public schools were anti-Catholic with explicitly anti-Catholic sentiments expressed by teachers and textbooks. This attempt by the mainstream to forcibly assimilate Catholics was met with the creation of a separate network of schools built, maintained, and funded by Catholics. These schools were opposed by the Know Nothing Party, a group that also wanted to mandate minimums in education for all children – mainly to make sure they were taught the ‘proper’ (read ‘Protestant’) version of the bible.

Do any readers wish to argue that Catholics were wrong to want to preserve their culture and beliefs in the face of this hostility? If you think that they were, what do you have to say about the history of mandatory public schools as a tool to purposefully destroy American Indian culture? After all, the intent of those who determined that American Indian children would be forbidden to speak their language and taught that their religion was superstitious nonsense had, at heart, the very best interests of those children. Did the parents of those children have any right to reject public schools and the ‘minimums’ the state had determined? To insist that they, the parents, could determine what their children should learn, thank you? According to Elliot – no, they didn’t. If ‘the state’ determines that all kids must learn that animism is silliness, irrationality, and superstitious; well, that’s a minimum to get by in the modern world, isn’t it? And Prof. Reich with his concern that parent’s not be allowed to completely determine what their children learn is just a few steps back, in my opinion.

How about today, when public school curricula actively promote stances that conflict directly with Catholic beliefs? If parents concerned with these issues can send their kids to Catholic schools, why not homeschool them? The Amish won a long court battle that allows them to have their own schools so that their children can be taught as their parents wish – including not following the compulsory education laws. Why are the legitimate desires of the Amish to pass on their beliefs and culture worthy of being honored, but not homeschooling parents who happen to be, say, pagans?

This desire to strip parents of their authority over their children or to claim that the interests of ‘the state’ trump the interests of parents in their own children are, at heart, anti-democratic. The essence of democracy is that each person is inherently valuable and all are equal before the law. The natural rights that we pre-suppose when we discuss democracy include the rights to think, speak, and believe as we wish. Our children are, ultimately, the most powerful agent of change that exists in any society, especially in a democracy. After all, our children will continue to work, vote, and act within a democracy long after we are dead. People do not work hard to pass on frivolities to their children, and they do not sacrifice their time, money, and opportunities to educate their kids in things that they, the parents themselves, find unimportant. Homeschoolers do what they do not only to provide a superior education for their children, but to attempt to preserve and spread their own beliefs – in effect, to preserve their own culture.

Limiting this ability is, in the end, limiting the speech and beliefs of the parents in a very critical manner. Prof. Reich is stating, implicitly, that parents do not have an unfettered right to exercise their beliefs or to express in speech their heart-felt thoughts. Elliot is saying that ‘the state’ (which is, after all, the people in a democracy) trumps the desires of its citizens. In each case, the underlying statement is ‘you can believe whatever you like, I guess, but don’t expect us to allow you to promulgate it’.

In many ways, the desire to determine what homeschoolers can and cannot, must and must not, teach their children is just a shade of the Know Nothings and the Indian Office. It is someone determining that they know best, or at least better. It is the belief that someone, either yourself or an ‘expert’, is better/smarter/better educated/more ‘mainstream’ than a parent and that you need to intervene in how they raise their child – for the good of the children, of course! Eventually, with enough education, you can finally get the population all thinking the right things, believing the right truths, and acting in the proper manner….

You ever read Brave New World?

2009-01-21T06:14:00.000-08:00

Who Decides? Part 1

A Reprint from my other blog experiment

Originally Posted 1/18/2007

Just last week the Religion & Ethics Newsweekly program on PBS had a segment on homeschooling. As you might expect from that paragon of not-being-Leftist-no-matter-what-content-we-actually-show called PBS, it was terribly narrow in its focus, skewing the presentation into a very anti-homeschooling stance.

As usual, the focus of the report by the mainstream media was on two areas – 1) they’re crazy! And, 2) they are making their kids crazy, too! No matter how many homeschooled kids are Liberal and go to Evergreen State College (a rookery for the far Left), no matter how many homeschool magazines and blogs discuss evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology so that parents can discuss it with and teach it to their homeschooled kids, no mater how many homeschooling parents have a degree in biology or are professionals in fields such as Cell and Developmental Biology, and no matter how many homeschooled kids go on to be accepted at a major university to study biology, the money quote for any, and I mean any, mainstream media discussion of homeschooling is where a parent avows “we don’t teach evolution” and at least one child chimes in with “I don’t believe evolution”.

This is obviously meant to paint homeschooling in a negative light.

The program also refers to homeschoolers’ higher performance in reading, math, college GPA, SAT and ACT scores, but quotes Prof. Reich of Stanford (a professor of Political Science and Education) as, well, dismissing them. I was intrigued by this, did some research, and spoke with Prof. Reich via phone. Mr. Reich was very generous with his time and opinions, especially since I caught him with an unsolicited phone call on a national holiday. In short, I believe that this particular article and several others I have found that quote Mr. Reich do a poor job of explaining his objections.

In the almost 20 minutes that we spoke, Mr. Reich explained that he felt that current measures of homeschoolers’ performance are lacking for a simple reason – we don’t know how many kids are homeschooled. Therefore, we have no real idea what percentage take the ACT, go to college, etc. He even rejects the fact that homeschoolers perform substantially better on the ACT over traditionally schooled students because we have no idea what percentage of homeschoolers take the test – although he did admit that the self-selection to skew the results so much would need to be severe.

Personally, I find this a bit tough to swallow. After all, the ACT is administered to more than 50% of high school graduates in only 25 states, meaning that the ACT average for traditionally educated students is heavily self-selected, too. If the SAT or ACT was a universally-administered test for traditionally-educated students, but not for homeschoolers, he might have a point. As it is, he seems to accept the self-selected ACT scores for one group and to dismiss the self-selected scores of the other.

He went on to state that most information about homeschooling is anecdotal; that for every ‘a homeschooler won the national spelling bee’ story there is an ‘a homeschooler was kept at home to hide abuse’ story, and neither type of tale really told the entire story. He wants, he says, comprehensive data on all homeschoolers, akin to a drivers license for drivers.

With just a touch of prompting he elaborated that his true concern is that some homeschooled kids will grow up so isolated from outside influences that they will be unable to interact with other citizens with different beliefs which is, he states, a problem. In a pluralistic society like the modern world, I would tend to agree that such person could be a problem. When I asked if he knew of any homeschooled people with such narrow outlooks, he admitted he only really knew of… anecdotes.

During our discussion he was adamant that he felt parents have a right to pass on their own beliefs to their children, but was worried that they would not make their children aware of alternatives. At the end, I asked if a fair summary of his concern is,

“Who determines what homeschooled children are taught?”

He demurred, stating he felt a better summary would be.

“Parents should not have unchecked authority over their children’s education, nor should the government.”

Since I did catch him with a surprise call and a pop quiz, I will gently point out that he probably did not realize that his position is, indeed, a discussion of who determines what homeschooled children are taught.

Indeed, in my experience the entire debate about homeschooling always gets down to that bedrock question – who has the authority to determine how children are educated and what they learn?

2009-01-07T06:20:00.000-08:00

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety-Jig

Well, a little over a year ago I was very excited about this blog; I had been a Weblog Awards finalist 2 years in a row, my readership was up, links were thick, and I was posting regularly. So, on the advice of someone prominent in the blogging community, I got my own domain, switched to Word Press, and 'moved into the big leagues'.

Sure. My readership level did increase, but my writing frequency, length and quality all went down. I realize now that if I ever move to the 'big time' (whatever that is) I will be dragged there. This blog is something fun, not a job. When I treated like a job, it suffered.

So, once again, here I am. I will be re-posting the things from my brief experiment I like here and adding new content.

2006-12-18T07:46:00.001-08:00

A Short Note - Update

Deep Thought and the Airborne Philosophy Squad (Aristotlean) are in the process of moving. Not to a new house, like last time, but to a new location. That’s right, I bit the bullet and got my own domain and am switching to Word Press!

2006-12-18T07:36:00.000-08:00

Quo Vadis?

As the comments for my recent post on political and religious socialization show, many people are still convinced that they world is becoming a secular one. I have received emails echoing the conventional wisdom that religion is on the way out and that non-believers are destined to rule. Even amongst many researchers and pundits who see the future as one that will be increasingly Christian, they focus on the Southern hemisphere and the growing trend of southern Muslims converting to Christianity. They almost to a man ‘write off’ Europe as being, eventually, all secular, all the time.

A few people, though, don’t agree, mainly some demographers and sociologists that are specifically watching trends in religion in Europe. As I have mentioned before and will again, religious women have more children, overall, than secular women. Again, the more devout a particular woman is, the fertility continues to increase. I will also repeat that children of religious people (especially religious mothers) are quite likely to be religious themselves. In the end, the argument over whether Future Europe will be religious or secular boils down to two questions: first, are religious women having more children in great enough numbers to be meaningful in the near-term (in this case, 100 years); and, will enough of these children of the religious stay religious?

Let me introduce you to Eric Kaufmann, a professor with Birkbeck University of London. Mr. Kaufmann is a demographer researching, among other things, religion in Europe. While everyone from me to Mark Steyn seems to be pointing out that religious women are certainly having enough children to overcome the moribund fertility of the secular, Mr. Kaufman is focusing on the second question by researching the combined effects of fertility and apostasy on future generations in Europe. His results are very interesting. While he does agree with the conventional wisdom that Europe is still becoming more secular, he points out that this is a trend that will end. By about 2035 Europe will be as secular as it will ever be, at about 55% non-religious (this is also, I would like to point out, almost exactly when world population will peak). After that, the secular population will begin to literally die off, leaving the religious. In the end, Mr. Kaufmann predicts, the Europe of 2100 will have a population more religious than the Europe of 2000. He points out that it will be a much more socially and politically Conservative continent, as well.

Just to recap; demographers predict that the Southern Hemisphere will continue to become more religious. Current research shows that Europe will become more secular for 30 or so more years, then rapidly reverse and end up more religious than they are now.

2006-12-14T11:28:00.000-08:00

Words You Just Don’t Hear Anymore

2006-12-13T11:25:00.000-08:00

Kids Today, with their Music and their Haircuts!

During my discussions of fertility, birth rates, population decline, and the future, I have been fairly direct in my conclusions – the future population of the Earth will be smaller and more religious. I have had a surprising number of people counter that religious and political beliefs are not a matter of parentage, but of ideology. As one person stated ‘just because your parents are religious and Conservative doesn’t mean you will be’. Granted, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that some people from religious homes grow up to be atheists. And some people raised atheists become religious.

Statistically, however, the children of parents with ‘identifiable beliefs’ (i.e., they have an opinion on politics or religion strong enough to express it) are most likely to share their parents’ beliefs when they reach adulthood. The development of your political and religious outlook, called political socialization and religious socialization respectively, has been studied, especially in the last 25 years or so, and shows that most adults reflect the religious and political attitudes of their parents. The various ‘socialization factors’ that lead to our ideological development include family, school, peer groups, major events, workplace, marriage, etc. By far the most critical factor is the family, especially since the vast majority of political and religious beliefs are developed in childhood. Even the second most influential element, school, pales in comparison, even when attempts are made to directly influence political outlook with concerted school efforts. Indeed, researchers are coming to suspect that the main influence of school is as an environment where children learn the skills needed to promote and defend the beliefs developed at home. Thus, while major changes in life (leaving home for college, entering the military, marriage and parenthood) can cause something called ‘resocialization’, or seemingly-dramatic changes is behavior and outlook, the large majority of adults mirror the political and religious beliefs of their parents. Research also indicates that, for children of Conservatives or Liberals, the majority of those who do not mirror family beliefs become moderates, not members of the opposite extreme.

There is some evidence that Liberals/Mainline Religious families have lower rates of positive socialization (i.e., their kids are more likely to not be Liberals than Conservative children are to not be Conservatives). This seems to be especially true of Mainline Religious families who may have Liberal children, but those children are less likely to be religious. The biggest problem for Mainline Protestants and religious socialization is that Mainline Protestants are usually intermittent church-goers, and thus their children are less likely to be religious.

In brief: Liberals are likely to have Liberals kids and Conservatives are likely to have Conservative kids, but a higher percentage of Conservatives’ kids are like their parents. Devout parents tend to have devout kids, but lukewarm parents tend to have unchurched kids. Got it? OK.

Let us draw some conclusions. Given identical populations and birthrates, over time there would be a tendency of a group to slowly become more Conservative, since Conservatives have a slightly higher positive political socialization. Concurrently the level of religious participation would tend to sort out into devout and unchurched with fewer and fewer ‘sometimes’ attendees.

This leads to the second argument that I tend to hear: ‘If socialization patterns favor Conservatism’, I am asked, ‘why the dominance of Liberal ideas in the 20^th Century?’ The answer to this lies in another element of political socialization – major political events. Let’s skip the potentially-huge discussion of if the Democrats were really Liberal (as we currently use the term) pre-WWII and focus on a few events [This also allows me to skip the discussion of ethnic alignment with political party and its decline, etc.]. The first is the Great Depression. This led to a slight preference towards Democrats because of their support of social welfare programs. This tendency was reversing itself when the next political event came along, Vietnam. Opposition to the draft led many young adults to become Liberals. In both cases, major events led to a slight increase in political socialization towards the Left.

However, even with these major events, and supporting events like Watergate, there was never a dominance of either Democratic Party or Liberal/Leftist influence in America. The nation leaned Right from 1900 to 1930 and even with the landslide Democratic victories in 1930 and 1932 a coalition of Conservative Democrats allied with Republicans regained dominance of both houses of Congress by 1937 and maintained that dominance for almost 40 years. Even the post-Watergate presidential election of 1976 was amazingly close, with less than a 2% difference in the winners. Ronald Reagan’s historic landslides and the Republican Revolution of the ‘90’sshow that even when baby-boomers were in their most politically-active phase that Conservatism was very strong in America, as it remains today.

To put it another way, there was no dominance of Liberal ideas in the 20^th Century. In my opinion, the late 19^th and early- to mid- 20^th Centuries are remarkable for the (relatively limited) levels of success Liberal/Left ideas actually enjoyed.

Besides, the growth of Socialism, Communism, major wars, and political scandals and their cumulative bolstering of the Left all pale in comparison to the effects of demographic shift in the last 40 years.

The facts are clear – Liberals have fewer children than Conservatives. Much more directly, the devoutly religious have many more children than the non-religious, and the impact of religiosity on fertility seems to be growing over time. A study out of Australia illustrates how the impact of this cannot be understated. The study tracked a group of women from age 30 to age 40. It found that 22% were childless, 16% had one child, 35% had two children, 20% had three children, and 7% had more than three children. This means that 27% of the women accounted for more than 50% of the children. When the demographic, economic, and social factors were examined, the researchers found some interesting facts; women who had not cohabitated before marriage were more than 2.5 times more likely to have 3 or more children than women who had; women who had not planned their first child were over 1.5 times as likely to have 3 or more children than women who planned their first child; Catholic women were over 1.5 times more likely to have 3 or more children than non-Catholics. Toss in that starting young and having more than one child before being 28 also increased the chances of a woman have more than 3 kids, and you see a clear pattern - Catholic women who marry young and start having children early are having much more impact on the future than their own numbers indicate.

Using the generic “80% of children share their parents’ political and religious affiliation” (instead of the ‘97% of the children of very devout homeschooling Conservatives share their parents’ values’) that means that about 40% of the next generation will behave in a similar fashion, representing a 50% growth in relative numbers in a single generation. With Australia’s TFR of about 1.6 these political and social impacts will come faster than they will in America with its higher TFR and immigration, but those changes will be reflected in every nation with a negative TFR.

In the end, I stand by my position, which is: the demographic shift we are currently experiencing will lead to population that is increasingly religious and Conservative.

2006-12-13T05:20:00.001-08:00

Weblog Awards, Again

Hello, and good day. The voting for the Weblog Awards is going to end on the 15^th of this month, so I encourage you all to go and vote. As someone who routinely reads American Princess and likes most of the blogs I am up against, I can only say (like Holy Mama) – despite the excellent competition, why do I want to know how badly I am doing? Oh, and thanks to Where I Stand for the nod. I think.

2006-12-07T05:19:00.000-08:00

Japan and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Life

In June of this year Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare released their findings on total fertility rate for 2005, a number that has not been revised since. The confirmed TFR for 2005 was 1.25. This is lower than the previous year (1.29 in 2004) and quite lower than had been predicted in 2000 (in 2000 the prediction was that in 2005 Japan’s TFR would be about 1.4, as can be seen in the World Factbook). As I have discussed before, TFR’s throughout the world are dropping faster than predicted, even predictions from just a few years ago. The result is that Japan’s population began dropping last year, two years before demographers had thought possible – and their predictions were made in 2000.

How surprising is this change? As recently as 2002 the Japanese National Institute of Population and Social Security Research announced that the lowest possible TFR in Japan was 1.3 (which would be reached in 2007) and that the TFR would rebound to 1.39 by 2035 and remain stable there indefinitely. This theory is now, obviously, discarded.

Attempts by the Japanese government to increase the rate of childbirth have all failed, although they continue to introduce new plans. These economic incentives, ranging from cash payments to parents, more day-care centers open longer, more parental leave, legal certainty that a mother would get her job back, etc., all failed. Indeed, as I mentioned above, the TFR fell faster than predicted after these programs were put in place. The programs also included steps to ‘increase awareness of the importance and value of children’; during the last fifteen years child abuse, sometime horrific, has steadily risen in Japan. Whether this is an actual increase or just better reporting is immaterial – in either case, a nation with fewer and fewer children continues to struggle with abuse in the face of both how few children there are and when government programs spend millions to promote their value.

Other stats look just as bad for Japan’s future. As the population declines the number of households is increasing. In a country with so few children, this means more and more Japanese of all ages are living alone. The declining number of workers and the allure of Chinese markets, which is draining some of Japan’s entrepreneurs, have caused a shortage of workers in Japan; yet in 2004 unemployment was the highest it has ever been since records were kept. Unemployment figures in Japan only account for people looking for work (stay-at-home mothers, for example, are not counted as unemployed), so this record level of unemployment masks the phenomenon of Hikikomori.

Hikikomori (which translates to “pulling away”) are young people from the ages of about 15 to as old as 30 who simply never leave their parents’ home and, almost always, rarely leave their own room. The usually eat alone in their rooms, rarely speak to even their parents, and the majority seem to only leave their rooms at night, when everyone else is asleep. This behavior is so common that the Ministry of Health limits the term ‘hikikomori’ to people who exhibit such behavior for more than six months. In some cases, hikikomori have not left their rooms for 15 years or more. While female hikikomori are underreported (Japanese culture tends to spotlight male behavior) there is some evidence that hikikomori are abour 60%/40% male/female. Estimates for total numbers are tough, due to a social stigma that causes many parents to simply not mention that their child is a voluntary shut-it. The best guess, though, seems to be that about 1 million young Japanese are hikikomori. This is equal to about 1.5% of all Japanese of working age, or about 5% of all Japanese between 15 and 35.

There has been discussion about suicide in Japan for decades, but it is getting worse. The overall rate is more than three and a half times the rate of the United States (which has a high rate, itself) and suicide is the leading cause of death for Japanese between the ages of 25 and 39. Since 1998 at least 30,000 Japanese have committed suicide every year; that’s almost one suicide every 15 minutes, all day, every day. Suicide rates are increasing across the board, including suicides among elementary school-aged children and murder-suicides where a parent kills their own child before committing suicide. Now people even join internet ‘suicide clubs’ where they can learn how to commit suicide and work with others on their plans. As a result, group suicides are a growing trend in Japan.

Another growing trend in Japan is the sexless marriage. This is common enough that it even has a slang term; ‘Narita ED’. Narita ED seems to cover all age groups equally, indicating that it is related to culture, not age, In a survey of Japanese married couples of all ages it was found that about 1/3 were chaste with another ¼ having sex less than 5 times a year. More and more single Japanese are both declining intercourse and marriage, fearing a ‘disruption’ to their lives. This has led to the average age at marriage being 27.8 years (women) and 29.6 years (men) with the average woman giving birth to her first (and increasingly only) child at 28.9 years of age. It also means that the average number of marriages per 1,000 people is down to 5.7, an all-time low.

So what the heck is going on? Most researchers point to the flat Japanese economy and intone that ‘the long-stagnant Japanese economy is driving people to despair’. I say this is bunk. The Japanese economy began rebounding in 2003 and showed very strong growth through the middle of 2005 – hindered by a lack of skilled workers! As the Japanese economy rebounds unemployment is dropping (although slower than anticipated). If one of the prime reasons for suicide is lack of economic opportunity, why are workers killing themselves in greater numbers as their prospects improve? This makes no sense. The ennui that leads to the statistics we see above comes from more than just the economy. More importantly, high rates of suicide and the hikikomori phenomenon began when Japan was going gangbusters, making it unlikely that a poor economy is, or was, the culprit.

So what is it that is taking the once-vibrant Japanese culture from being aggressively expansionist to apathetically self-destructive in the course of a mere 60 years? I have a vague inkling of a theory. As I mentioned earlier, religion is good for you. Religious societies tend to be happier, more fully employed, higher earning, and have more children. They also have lower rates of depression and suicide. Japan is perhaps the most secular Western society on Earth, removing the positive effects of religion from its population. Also, it appears that there is some correlation between suicides and projected population growth. This could mean that despair means fewer children, fewer children in a society lead to suicides, or that both are symptoms of something else. In any case, the positive effects of religion are absent from Japan. At the same time, Japan’s embrace of what they perceived as Western values after WWII led to it becoming in some ways the epitome of Western materialist and postmaterialist aims.

I believe that Japan is showing us nothing more, and nothing less, than the ultimate result of a materialist, secular nation. The rejection of religion and mysticism, the detachment of morals and values from absolute claims, and the embrace of the government as surrogate family are all seen in Japan. The resulting society is the goal of any number of Western thinkers.

In short, I think Japan is a warning.

2006-12-06T04:14:00.000-08:00

That's Kinda' Flattering

It seems I am in the running for a Weblog Award. Its for the 'Best of the Top 1001-1750' award, but to even be mentioned with the blogs on the list is really flattering.

2006-12-04T09:50:00.001-08:00

Inadvertently Funny

Usually people are much funnier when they are not trying to be than when they are. Want an example? Go to this link to Echidne’s archive, scroll down to the entry titled “Want a Headache?”, read it, then check the comments.

Well, it made me laugh.

2006-12-04T05:21:00.000-08:00

Quote of the Month

"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions."
-G.K. Chesterton

2006-11-30T06:04:00.000-08:00

Bad for Kids

Outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins, a biologist and proponent of evolutionary theory, not so long ago embarked on a new venture; a series of videos where he openly attacked religion. Called The Root of All Evil, Dawkins claims in these films that religion is inherently evil because it is not rational and, further, claims religion is responsible for many, if not most, ills of society. He calls teaching children religion a form of child abuse and obviously wants to ban it in ‘the best interests of children’. Let us look beyond the fact that Dawkins admits he knows virtually nothing of theology. Let us ignore the fact that the BBC would blanche at the mere idea of allowing a fiction story portray Catholics or Baptists as being correct and condemning those with differing beliefs as being in a ‘permanent state of infancy’, but have no problem producing and airing an atheist’s blatant attack on all religious believers, everywhere. Let us even overlook how Dawkins’, a self-proclaimed rationalist with advanced degrees in biology and zoology, can be so concerned with overpopulation in face of the evidence that it is not, and never has been, a true concern (see the rest of this blog).

Instead of looking at his hypocrisy (he mocks people whom criticize biology without understanding it, but refuses to study the theology he, in turn, criticizes), his prejudice (his assumption that believers are inherently inferior is quite obvious, and often admitted), or his use of mass media to denigrate a majority of the world. No, let us instead focus on… children. Dawkins claims that it is ‘bad’ to raise children in a religious atmosphere. Let’s do what he would like and – look at the scientific evidence.

There have been a lot of studies into religious people vs. non-religious people. Since it can be really hard to figure out who really has faith and who doesn’t, statisticians (and other researchers) usually use the shorthand of measuring how often a person or family attends church, synagogue, or temple and calling people who go at least once a week ‘religious’. Sure, this may not be perfect, but statistically it seems accurate. What do these studies show? Are religious people, as Dawkins claims, infantilized by their beliefs?

Overwhelmingly, being religious is good for you. Regular church attendance leads to lower blood pressure, less anxiety and depression, a stronger immune system, and are less likely to commit suicide, all contributing to religious people having a mortality rate about 25% lower than people who do not attend worship regularly with the end result that religious people outlive the non-religious by, on average, seven years. Not only do religious people live longer, they are healthier and happier, leading to a higher quality of life! Indeed, the correlation of church attendance and happiness is pretty strong, and diverse. People who regularly attend church are more likely to have strong, lasting marriages where both members are happy.

Scientific research seems to point toward a result that surprises religious people not at all; they are healthier, happier, and live longer than non-religious people. Heck, religious people make more money and the sex is better, too! It should be obvious, then, that a rational person, looking only at the scientific literature, should advocate for more religion in peoples’ lives. Not only is it good for them as individuals and families, it is good for society as a whole – after all, healthier, happier, wealthier people need less of the services governments provide these days.

But I was speaking pretty specifically about kids, wasn’t I? And while we hope each and every child grows up to be an adult (and also, we hope, benefit from the advantages of being religious), they are kids first. Does religion affect kids, too? Yes, it does.

Research shows that even low levels of religious life make adolescents less likely to use alcohol, drugs, tobacco, engage in criminal activity, become suspended from school, run away from home, engage in sexual activity, or require emotional counseling. Religious children (again, even at low levels of church attendance) are less likely to drive drunk or engage in casual vandalism. Church attendance improves school attendance, work activity, and homework completion. It even improves their chances of escaping childhood poverty. As religious faith and participation increases, the positive effect on children also increases. At the other end, just having a mother that attends church regularly also improves the odds of adolescents not engaging in self-destructive behavior. Religious children grow up to have more education.

To sum up; scientific research shows that religious people are healthier, happier, wealthier, and live longer. Religious children are happier, less prone to depression, more likely to get an education and escape poverty, and better at avoiding self-destructive behavior. These things are all positives for children. For Dawkins to oppose religion as ‘child abuse’ is to place his prejudices above the actual welfare of children.

2006-11-28T09:34:00.000-08:00

Advancing the Aims of the Patriarchy

As my frequent readers know (Hi, mom!) I am a devout Catholic with four sons at home, and my wife, Deeper Thought (a stay-at-home mom), and I want 2-4 more children. Thus, I am the Patriarchy, and I am proud of it. Well, today I received confirmation that the socialization of my home-schooled sons is going just fine when my second-oldest came in from playing and announced,

“I am mad! My brothers won’t play ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ with me!”

I think Deeper thought is still laughing.

2006-11-27T09:40:00.000-08:00

The Tides of Time

Let us look to history and see what we can learn about the Catholic Church, its struggles and stumbles, its enemies, and the results.

The Roman Empire opposed Christianity and attempted to suppress it many times, most famously under Nero. Christianity was illegal from the time of Nero until the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of Rome. In the end, the greatest empire on Earth became Christian, rather than wiping it out.

The Nazi’s and Italian Fascists opposed the Catholic Church. Both regimes fell in just a few short decades.

The Soviet Union and other Communist States all opposed the Church, often strongly and with tactics that may seem oddly – contemporary. Despite these attacks, the Catholic Church prevailed and was a direct participant in the overthrow of the Soviet Union and its client states.

The French Revolution attempted to suppress the Church and even it calendar. Attempts to suppress the Church were common in many new Republics of Europe at that time, some of which continued into the 20^th Century.

As can be seen from this short list, the opponents of the Church include some of the greatest empires that have ever exited; nations with seemingly-unstoppable military might, political power, and the will to annihilate the Catholic Church. In each case the Church triumphed over or outlived their opponent, or both.

There has been some noise for a few decades that the Second Vatican Council marked a huge change for the Catholic Church; that if the Church survives the modern era, Vatican II will forever alter its nature in such a way that it will a completely new entity. You can hear this from the Right and the Left within the Church. Of course, there were a few other ecumenical councils that resulted in turbulence; the Church survived all of these other councils and, after a generation or two, continued on, dogma unchanged. While it is important that Catholic remain faithful to the Magisterium and uphold orthodoxy of worship, the doctrines of the Church, and Tradition, we must remember – we aren’t the first to deal with issues such as these.

From heretics like the Arians and Gnostics, political foes like the Soviet Union, military foes like the Caliphate, ideological foes like Dawkins, and even internal dissent and schism, the Church has already seen it. Seen it, weathered it, and persevered. The tides of time may ebb and flow, but the Rock shall always remain.

2006-11-27T07:01:00.000-08:00

Thankful

As is usual, I did not write over the holiday weekend. While I plan for this to be the last weekend that I go on hiatus for a holiday, it was still a fact. So today I will post a short, incomplete list of those things that I am thankful for:

My Faith – I came to the Catholic Church relatively late in life. God is now the pivot of my life and my faith and His Church its foundation.

My Family – My wife and children are the greatest gifts I will ever receive. What I do in life, I do for them and my parents.

My Gifts – I have certain talents. Limited as they are, I am glad to have them and to be able to use them.

My Freedom – I have been in countries where you are not free to speak, or travel, or worship as you wish. I know people that have lived under conditions ranging from censorship to dictatorship. I am profoundly thankful to live in a free nation.

2006-11-20T04:10:00.000-08:00

Is SNL Getting Funny again?

Maybe.

H/T to Hot Air

2006-11-16T09:15:00.000-08:00

Those Who Cannot Look in the Mirror

If you haven’t noticed, I tend to write about population and demographics from time to time. I am not alone, of course; there are a number of Conservative and Moderate people discussing birth rates and such out there. There is also a strain of commentary on Liberal blogs - especially Feminist blogs, mainly mocking Conservatives that want kids.

I have noted again and again that these Feminists seem to think that Conservatives are racists. I have covered many of the ways that the facts of racial violence show that these stereotypes are wrong, but this lumping of “Conservatives are racist” and “wanting large families is about racial supremacy” stuff is getting so ludicrous that I figured I’d take a look.

First, we find that our erstwhile source of all things Feminist - as long as they are radical things - Amanda at Pandagon points out that not only are people who want large families racist… they are genocidal (actually, see ascribes a genocidal motive to all those who oppose abortion, but we‘ll help her out by focusing on just proponents of large families). Reading the comments on Amanda’s post will reveal an echo-chamber of people more than willing to proclaim that all who want large families are racist, genocidal, and (by strong implication) fascist. They also refer to a commenter who posted that he was interested in ‘preserving his own culture’ as a ‘racist misogynist’ whom the moderator called on the others to ignore. Now, far be it from me to claim that Liberals/Feminists must act a certain way, but - isn’t this commenter right to value his own culture?

I visited a number of quiver full sites online. You can see many of them for yourself and a search can find you more. I searched pretty carefully and I found that these sites have quite a bit in common; they tend to advocate large families (no surprise), they love kids (no surprise), and they don’t talk about race. At all. The only reference I found at all related to race was one mention of a speech by Teddy Roosevelt when Teddy, not the author, spoke of declining fertility in White women in the early 1900’s. That’s it. I do admit, if you google ‘+quiver full +supremacy’ and look at the religious/quiver full sites that result, there is a discussion of supremacy. But it is the Supremacy of Christ, not a race.

Some of the “Progressive” sites you find, though, do speak of race. An article in The Nation(not the most Right-leaning of papers, of course) speaks of the quiver full movement and, as it does so, mentions race twice; first by claiming that “race suicide” is a subtext to the quiver full movement (with no citation, naturally); and, once again, a reference to a quote by Teddy Roosevelt about White birth rates over a century ago. From this article you get the Pandagon bit, mentioned above, and a few related posts from the Left side of the blogs, all claiming having many children for religious reasons is racist, almost all pointing to the Nation article or to Amanda’s post. Some even claim being pro-large families at all is evil. There is also a Newsweek article on the quiver full movement, but it makes no leaps as far as racial motivations.

The quiver full movement almost completely dismisses the Leftist claims that they are racist, only pausing occasionally to point out that Christianity has a lot of non-White members and that the quiver full movement calls on all Christians to have children as a blessing of God.

While we have some fairly prominent Feminist bloggers making the charge that wanting a large family is racist, even genocidal, the movement they point to this time is pretty obviously race-blind. Pandagon and the other Feminist blogs like to paint the Catholic Church as racist, but of course, the Church is very multi-ethnic and always has been. So where is this hateful accusation coming from? Well, I have a theory.

It is, in short, projection. The Left, always quick to dodge reality when it suits them, is projecting their own biases onto their ideological opponents. I’ve already gone into detail about how people in the North and West deride Southerners as racist bigots when, in fact, the North and West have much higher rates of race-motivated crime. I have also discussed how Liberals denounce Conservatives as racist and discriminatory despite the fact that studies show Conservatives to be race-blind while Liberals favor Whites over minorities. In both cases, Liberals accuse others of the actions that Liberals, themselves, exhibit. They cling to these notions of how ‘the other’ acts despite the evidence to the contrary. So why is Amanda of Pandagon and her comrades so eager to point to the Right and claim that people who refuse to use contraception are genocidal? That’s a rather simple one, really.

Its because the origins of modern contraception use, especially the founding of Planned Parenthood and the development of the birth control pill, were covertly and overtly racist and genocidal, with a strong underpinning of elitism thrown in. The founder of Planned Parenthood and primary source of funds for the research that culminated in the birth control pill was Margaret Sanger. Ms. Sanger’s support of eugenics is widely known, as are the many statements she made disparaging the mentally ill, the retarded, and the ‘unfit’, Of course, she also said the same things about Blacks and the poor, too. While some try to distance Ms. Sanger from the horrors of Nazi Germany, they have great trouble doing so since her support of Fascists was fairly evident. Her defenders are in the rather uncomfortable position of admitting that she worked closely with, supported, and was supported by racists and fascists, she made a lot of comments that might seem racist or fascist, but you can’t pin her down to a definitively racist or fascist quote. That’s pretty shaky. She hoped that incentives would work to reduce the population of ‘undesirables’, but advocated coercion and force if incentives failed. Showing that she certainly believed that she and other experts knew what was best for everyone and was willing to use force to impose it.

“OK,” you say, “Sanger was a eugenicists and, possibly, a racist and, maybe, a support of fascism. So what? That was years ago!”

Really? Who is the primary focus of Planned Parenthood today? The same groups Sanger targeted - minorities and the poor. Analysts noted in the 1980’s that Planned Parenthood focused its efforts on poor urban minority areas, resulting in 33% of abortions being performed on minority women who made up less than 20% of the total population. Contemporary advocates of contraception and abortion continue to see these two things as means of eliminating the poor, the ignorant and the unhealthy - and these same advocates are intimately involved in groups that advocate policies of government-promoted and funded contraception and abortion. A list of proponents of eugenics reveals a broad group, to be sure, but a group with a bias toward the Left with some rather prominent names as large boosters of contraception and family planning

The end result is that we see that the birth of the ‘family planning’ movement was in the midst of Liberal eugenicists. Planned Parenthood and related groups flourished under the umbrella of eugenics and ‘racial improvement’. Abortion was as much a part of the eugenicists’ arsenal as forced sterilization (and, often, more prominent). To this day groups that advocate ‘family planning’ specifically target the poor and minorities, resulting in a much higher incidence of abortions in those same groups. Call it what you will, but the end result of contemporary family planning is virtually identical to the planned results of the eugenics movements of the pre-WWII era.

Access to abortion and contraception combined with the attitude that children are a financial burden has resulted in plummeting birthrates in North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Asia, and North Africa with indicators that the rest of Africa will rapidly join in. In a number of countries abortion is being used to eliminate women before they are even born. All these facts reveal why Feminists must denigrate women who want large families. For if they were to admit the possibility of merit in large families, they must examine the consequences of their own attitudes and actions. Such an examination would reveal that, regardless of their stated motives, the end results of Feminists’ advocacy for ‘family planning’ are indistinguishable from the hopes and dreams of the ‘racial hygienists’ of the late 1800’s.

2006-11-14T07:28:00.000-08:00

Endorsed by the Left

The Progressives of the blogosphere at the Daily Kos are, it seems, in agreement that America is a horrible, horrible place to live because it is a fascist theocracy. There is, however, a wonderful land of equity, justice, Leftist politics, and peace – The actual fascist theocracy of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

I hear that Kos may get an invitation to the groundbreaking ceremony for the Khomeini Memorial Peaceful Nuclear Research Facility for Hastening the Destruction of Israel™.

2006-11-10T09:08:00.000-08:00

The Newest Phase of Feminism

Making fun of little girls.

My personal favorite is the repeated assertions by the bloggers and many of their commenters that mocking a crying 8-year old child is OK because she is dressed funny, carries a doll, and has a Conservative father is not only acceptable, but actively funny. The internal inconsistencies just keep coming.

2006-11-09T06:29:00.000-08:00

I am an American!

Anchoress brought up a subject that I have touched on before – American Culture. I talk about American culture fairly often, a trait begun by a chance encounter in 1985. A friend of a friend invited me to dinner with a small group. This was a pleasant gesture, since they were all mid-20’s grad students and I was an 18 year-old soldier. We had a nice afternoon of seafood with more people joining the circle as the evening went on, including the boyfriend of the girl who had invited me, a Frenchman in his mid-30’s who taught at the college the others attended. It was only a few minutes after he arrived that I heard his reply to a statement I had not heard,

“Of course, there is no such thing as American culture, let alone cuisine.”

This elicited a chorus of nods and muttered agreement from the students – and my ire. I immediately interrupted,

“What about baseball and football?” I asked.

“You cannot win cricket or soccer, so you play easier games.”

“Baked beans, scrapple, corn bread, and hush puppies are certainly American!” I argued.

“And no civilized person can eat any of them.”

“OK, you made me do it – jazz!” I said.

He shut up. I had met this man before, but that time he had been complaining about Europe – how expensive everything was, how hard it was to get a good job, the cars were small, taxes were high, etc. Yet he was more than willing to criticize the nation that he found warm, welcoming, and fruitful. Infuriatingly, the other Americans with me had just sat there, agreeing with him. Including a woman pursuing a master’s in American History!

Since then, I have been a proponent of the simple fact that America does have a unique culture and it does have unique, if obscure, cuisine. Anchoress points to a very clear element of American culture; cartoons. Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, and the like are very much a part of the American psyche. This is largely because of the American media culture; America produces a vast number of feature-length films each year and Hollywood has dominated world cinema since the 1920’s. Some people even claim that it is wrong to call American movies ‘foreign films’ in any English-speaking market, since they are the dominant films in all such areas. American films also dominate most non-English markets. Even in nations with a strong local cinema, like Italy or France, film makers are relying on government subsidies (sometimes large ones) to make films and use quotas to limit the number of American productions that can be seen in theaters or on television, yet are still seeing American movies strip away hundreds of millions of euros in revenue from their local markets. Despite the sneers you sometimes hear that Americans only like explosions, not real film, it appears the rest of the world trusts our opinions; films that do well in America are eagerly anticipated overseas because they trust our taste in movies.

So the various regional identities of America (Northeast, Mid-West, South, California) are tied together with movies and TV; and this obviously viable culture (witness the popularity of not just our films but our TV overseas) means that non-Americans find it rich and valuable, too.

Our music is also a world-wide constant, with everything from jazz, rock, and rap being the obvious choices. But American music like Gospel, the Blues, Country, and even various forms of Folk music are widely heard and often wildly popular overseas. I’ve heard Australian Country (pretty good) and South African Country (also pretty good), French Rap (didn’t care for it) and Hebrew Rap (not too bad), and who can forget the Red Elvises?

Popular fashion is also often dominated by American trends, especially on the street. American clothes, especially American trademarks, are immensely popular everywhere, and the American ‘urban style’ is widely copied in Europe. Nikes, hoodies, and such are everywhere, but so are cowboy boots.

Of course, American cuisine is rich, varied, subtle – and ignored outside America. Heck, its ignored in American commercial cooking – you know, McDonald’s, Applebee’s, Chili’s, etc. The traditional American foods, like sweet potato pie and fritters, are only cooked at home, usually. The mainstream commercial kitchens produce things that, while American, lack the richness and subtlety of things like key lime pie (the real stuff) or seasoned collards with a plate of hoppin’ john. The commercial food of America is burgers, hot dogs, French fries, and milk shakes. Although good, these are rather blunt dishes. They are despised by others… yet, they are also stunningly popular with a new McDonald’s opening all the time – in France. American fast food is coming to dominate French daily casual lunches in urban areas, and American fast food is also beginning to spread in England, Russia, and Brazil and already dominates the casual daily food market of a stunning number of countries. Overall, McDonald’s are present in over 100 countries. Interestingly, Thomas Friedman has pointed out in his Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention that no two nations with McDonald’s have gone to war with each other. Anthropologists have pointed out that the culture imported by McDonald’s in Asia has led to a number of improvements in food service ranging from faster service to cleaner bathrooms.

I will do no more than mention (and link) the world’s favorite soft-drink, Coca-Cola.

So American television, movies, music, clothing, and food are everywhere, found in virtually every nation on Earth, popular in the majority of them, and dominating in many, especially in Western and Asian nations. So it seems that not only does America have a culture, but it has a culture that is being adopted by non-Americans at an amazing rate. Some say at a frightening rate. While many decry the ‘Americanization’ of the globe, there is an element of this spread I haven’t mentioned yet. The spread of the English language.

There are some who call the spread of English language hegemony and liken it to the loss of identity of people who adopt it, regardless of their reasons. The French are well-known (well, to me and other wonks like me, at least) for trying to strictly limit the use of English in an attempt to stop the spread of the language. Despite their sometimes-extreme opposition to English, the language continues to spread.

So far from having no culture, America has a rich, vibrant, varied culture. The world flocks to our movies and televisions, listens to and sings our music, wears our fashions, and speaks our language, all because they find it rich, welcoming, and valuable. So the next time you hear someone, especially an American, say ‘there is no such thing as American culture’, ask them these simple questions,

“Which is your favorite, Coke or Pepsi? Hot dogs or hamburgers?” Rock or rap? Star Wars or Star Trek?”

I’m sure you can think of your own.

2006-11-07T09:09:00.000-08:00

Those Who Will Not See

I have been reading Bitch PhD for, oh, about 2 years now, almost since she started blogging. Someone mentioned that she had posted about a letter issued by the Vatican and I dropped by. I disagree with a fair amount of what she argues for, and admittedly just don’t understand why she is so darn angry about some things, so is one of a group of leftist/feminist/gay blogs that I drop in on once a week or so to make sure I am not soley reading opinions that match mine.

Dr. B, as she is sometimes called, is in many ways a fairly standard feminist blogger. She acknowledges that children are so much a part of life as to be inevitable and, thus, kids and parents need societal support. This is a nice contrast to some who feel that kids are solely a choice and, well, too bad if you need help, sucker! She is married and has a child. She has tried to avoid the mommy wars, but not always in what I consider the right direction as it were.

Let me be very clear at the beginning; I find Dr. B to be morally reprehensible. This is not hyperbole, I am not exaggerating to be snarky. Her narcissistic demands coupled with her insistence that all her troubles can be laid at the feet of ‘patriarchal society’ are not just distasteful, they are evidence that her life, her words, and her ideology are perfect examples of the damage “mainstream” feminism is doing to men, women, and society.

As her blog reveals, she has been pursuing a career in academe for some time while her husband stayed home to raise their child. She spent a fair amount of time insisting that this mutual decision of her and her husband was agreeable to both and that it was best for them. OK, I know a fair number of people online with a similar arrangement, and members of my own extended family were doing similar things in the ‘70’s. I thought it was a bit ironic of her to refer as often as she did to the housework she used to do, years back, but what the heck.

In a recent post this is revealed to be, well, not as clearly a mutual decision as she may have portrayed. She makes it very clear that she refused her husband’s proposal for some time. Was she unsure if she loved him? No, that doesn’t seem to be the reason. Was she unsure that he was the ‘right guy’? That’s a bit more unclear, but it doesn’t seem to have been the reason she delayed accepting his proposal and then insisted on cohabitating before marriage. No, her stated reason for deferring accepting her husband’s proposal and for living together before marriage are to… make sure she could ‘have it all’ – a career, a marriage, kids, the freedom to do whatever she wanted, etc.

She also insisted that her fiancé formally promise to support her in getting her PhD, no matter what. She insisted that he quit his (well-loved) job if he wanted children. She insisted that, if he wanted kids, he must be the primary caregiver/full-time parent. And if he wanted to keep their kids out of daycare (which she knew he did) he must be the one to stay home.

She also insists this wasn’t extortion. A casual reading of her blog will reveal that if she heard of a man making such demands of a potential wife, she would label it patriarchal sexism, and inherently oppressive. But just as some people will always view White men as oppressors and Black men as oppressed, regardless of the facts, it seems that making absolute demands of your spouse is a mutual agreement if you are a woman, and oppression if you are a man.

[Yes, I am not only aware that marriages usually have absolute demands from both spouses, I have given and received them. I just don’t call them ‘mutual agreements’ or ‘oppression’. I call them ‘marriage’ and ‘living with your spouse, who is, after all, different’].

So, her husband agreed to her demands, abandoned his well-loved career, and settled in as a house-husband. The post I linked above goes into detail, but the short version is – beginning-track academics don’t make very much money (which was not, I hope, a surprise to anyone involved). Her husband worked very hard to be frugal, was not quite the housekeeper he hoped, and she was irritated and upset about these things. Making him resentful. The big surprise was, of course, that while she had made all of these absolute demands that she be allowed to get a PhD, and that he follow her career wherever it might lead, in the end… she didn’t like the demands her career made of her.

That’s right. She carefully considered what her husband must be willing to do, clearly set forth what she expected him to do in the form of absolute statements, and proceeded to move their life down the path that her demands placed before her family – without being sure that she was willing to do the very things she demanded of her husband and child. Eventually, she decided she and her husband would look for work. She was a starting academic, he has a decade of specialized experience. To no one’s surprise (I hope) he got a new job first, and it pays well. She has now moved into the role of full-time mom.

As a stay-at-home mom, she is quickly discovering just how important stay-at-home moms actually are. She now realizes that a ‘professional mother’ is everything from teacher to medical aide. That stay-at-home moms support schools, are the driving force of charities, care for the sick and elderly, are the backbone of many grassroots political actions, etc., etc. In short, she is being forced to realize how valuable and critical stay-at-home mothers really are.

Don’t worry, though. I see no growing admiration of how hard her husband worked when he was in her shoes, just a smoldering resentment that he doesn’t do more around the house (just like she resented him not doing everything when he was the stay-at-home parent and she was busy working). She is very quick to insist that she is not a ‘lady-who-lunches’ - and then tacitly admits that the existence of social groups like ladies’ clubs, bridge clubs, and such make social networking more efficient, allowing women to do all of those roles with better communication. And never mind the recreation and social aspects of these support groups she disdains!

She moves on to argue that society does stay-at-homes moms a grave disservice; they are not recognized for the vast amounts of unpaid work that they do, and their economic insecurity is ignored. She is right on both counts, of course. The problem is, both of these areas of neglect can be laid at the feet of second-wave feminism. While Dr. B blames “society”, this change is recent. Betty Friedan was very vocal about disparaging the work done by stay-at-home moms and the mommy wars are largely fought between feminists who count the work of stay-at-home moms as valueless and those moms, who know better. The oh-so-despised 1950’s are chock-a-block full of open admissions that the lives of stay-at-home moms were packed with difficult, yet rewarding, work. Remember all those labor-saving devices? The advertisements portraying stay-at-home moms as busy, yet vibrant, as they did the essential work of caring for the family? Sure, the corporations were branding products, but not in a vacuum – the hard work and social contributions of professional mothers was widely accepted and acknowledged as part of society.

Not so any more. Now mothers are told that their work is valueless, primarily because they do not earn a wage. Dr. B wants to fix this by… well, adding them to Social Security [I agree – if we have social security, stay-at-home mothers should be a part of it, and not just because their husbands worked]. And ‘changing society to value stay-at-home mothers’. She rejects the Conservative methods as ‘lip service’, but has no real concrete statement of what she would do.

She explicitly rejects the concepts that being a stay-at-home mother is about creating a better quality of life to the mother and family, or that being a stay-at-home mom can bring a better balance to life. Not because these statements aren’t, or can’t be, true, but because she finds them… too “inward and nuclear”. Never mind that quality of life and life balance are about inner well-being and the well-being of the nuclear family.

She also decries the economic exposure of stay-at-home mothers. They are one divorce or death away from penury, after all. Of course, these issues aren’t new – this has always been true. Society responded with social answers - marriage was seen as a Big Deal and all parties were very careful before they entered into marriage. Marriage was seen as a life-long commitment, reducing a woman’s exposure. The extended family would provide assistance to the widow and orphan. Indeed, most or the elements of ‘patriarchal oppression’ that feminists decry were about ensuring familial stability to protect the most vulnerable members of society – women and children.

She goes on in her posts to claim that she is a victim of a society that has not ‘advanced’ enough. She is, she seems to think, ‘stuck’ at home because society doesn’t… something. Here is a quote:

“Here I am, twenty years later, in a position not unlike [a non-traditional student she knew as an undergrad]. Not because I've married someone like she did; but because whether or not my own personal husband insists on those expectations, my own personal society does. It's okay for me to have a career--as long as my house is clean, I spend a lot of time with my kid, I give up control over where I live, I accept economic dependence (on my husband or on the Bank of America), and I live with the depression that's surely partly the result of all these "choices."

Let’s take a look at this lament, shall we? She is a stay-at-home mom, economically dependent upon her husband. She blames society because ‘society’ requires her to have a clean house (no, that is you and your family), as long as she spends a lot of time with her child (God, what a burden! Society sure is cruel), she gives up control of where she lives (well, that is, based upon her writings, a function of the careers chosen by her and her husband), and she is economically dependent upon her husband (which is why marriage exists, to allow a team of people to raise children). She makes it clear she thinks these decisions were imposed on her by society and she is depressed by this lack of control over her own life.

Pardon me while I fail to agree with this wave of self-pity. I am not sure of Dr. B’s academic discipline, but it obviously isn’t Business, and Engineering branch, etc. When she chose a doctorate in Humanities and a career in academe, she must have known that these freely-chosen paths, made by her alone and stated to her then-boyfriend as imperatives, required that she go where the limited-number of jobs are. And she must have also known, very clearly, that people starting out in academia make very little money for quite some time. Two years of posts by Dr. B paint a picture of society disapproving of her choice in education and career, including the one I linked to above. For her to now claim ‘society forced me to take a career path that I now realize, about 20 years after starting down it, that I don’t like’ is the depths of hypocrisy. Worse, she neglects the sacrifices made for her by her husband and now demeans the work he has taken up to support her by seeing his hard work for her as oppressive! She is so busy pointing her finger in blame at faceless society that she forgets that her own ambitions, her own choices, her own demands, and her own failures are the cause of her being where she is – a stay-at-home mom with a husband providing more economic support for their family than she could while she spends her days with their child.

So we come back full circle to the core of the second-wave feminist argument, such as it is. That core is that the work of stay-at-home moms – although critical to society, although central to the family, although beneficial to children – is worthless compared to having A Career. A woman with A Career is complete, they say, a woman who just stays home is not, they say. Men who stay home while their wives work are cool, women who stay home while their husbands work are fools, they say. That self-same husband, working to support his family, is an oppressor, they say.

“But Deep,” you say “While Dr. B is narcissistic and hypocritical, she’s hardly ‘morally reprehensible’. Why did you say something so harsh earlier?”

Dr. B’s morals are well-advertised on her blog, and they are reprehensible. She believes in an open marriage, meaning that she has regular sexual partners other than her husband, and engages in casual sex when available. Her husband (who gave up his career and working life to support her in her education and career) is expected to support her in her escapades. She sometimes takes her young child with her on her overnight-or-longer liaisons with lovers. Why does she do this? Well, the usual excuse of ‘who can have sex with just one person for more than, like, a week?’ is in play. But she also argues that since her husband annoys her (because he is familiar) she can ‘work out’ her issues with her husband by being with other men. That’s right, she doesn’t stop yelling at her husband’s annoying habits through working with him, or compromise, she does it by sleeping around.

This makes me wonder why Dr. B ever married. It isn’t for economic security (she is angered by the very thought), or for an exclusive relationship. It wasn’t for children (she states, quite clearly, that she was fine without them, but her husband wanted them). It wasn’t for family connections (they live far from their families, she kept her maiden name their child has her last name, not his). She wouldn’t compromise on her education goals (she made him agree to support her PhD work, even if it meant living apart) or her career goals, or her demands in regard to having and rearing children. As far as I can tell, for her marriage is a tax break.

Indeed, I worry about her husband. Here is a man who gave up a career he loved for his wife’s ambitions. He worked hard as a stay-at-home dad while his wife made too little and the debt was piling up. He supports his wife’s affairs (and has some of his own, I assume), even when she takes their child. She kept her name, and gave it to their child. When, after 20 years, his wife decided she doesn’t really want the career he gave up so much for, he jumped back into the labor market and is making more than she did. Her reaction is often resentment – she resented that he wasn’t a better housekeeper, she resents that he doesn’t do more housekeeping now (a nice double-standard), she resents that he is supporting her! I assume he reads her blog, so this is probably well known to him.

Yes, she expresses admiration for him on her blog and, yes, I know that any marriage is complex and dynamic. I know that the years of schooling she went through and the beginnings of her career certainly had a dynamic home life swirling around them. All givens. But her extreme focus on what she wants, her career, and her desires are disrespectful of him to a high degree. Her need to be in relationships with others in order to make her relationship with him ‘work’ is devaluing to him. If I were to go to Feministe or Pandagon and describe Dr. B’s relationship with the genders reversed, I am quite confident that those feminists would say that Dr, B’s husband was being oppressed and that he should leave.

Of course, your next question is, why does anyone care? Dr. B’s blog is read by about 3,500 people per day, a healthy number, and she is fairly well-regarded by feminist bloggers, meaning that her ideas have a broad audience. She is generally seen as a ‘moderate’ feminist. I just want to point out how very messed up this moderate feminist is, how contradictory her life is, and how profoundly unhappy she obviously is. While feminists point to my wife and call her a ‘house negro’ or a ‘Serena Joy’ for choosing to be a professional mother, this particular feminist is in a tough position; her husband has completely supported her positions on a non-traditional marriage, a non-traditional working arrangement, and her choices of high-education and a career. After all this, she discovered that she wasn’t happy with her career and, due to the various choices her and her husband made over the years, she is now a stay-at-home mom. Despite her realization that stay-at-home moms can have rich, intellectually-demanding lives with a major positive impact on not just their family, but the community and society, she continues to reject it as less-valuable than a career. I have no idea how she can intellectually support this. It is important that we see this, recognize this, and repeat the intellectual bankruptcy of feminism.

2006-11-02T07:24:00.000-08:00

Quote of the Month

"For centuries now its been understood that if enough diplomats go to enough parties, everything will come out right in the end."

- from The Brass God by Keith Laumer

2006-10-31T09:19:00.000-08:00

The Lowest of the Low

I have been talking about demographics for a long time, and see that it seems to be a topic of growing interest in the world. Why? Since at least 1970 all projections from the UN on future population growth have been too high, including projections of peak population. When I first wrote about demographics in 2004 the average global TFR was 2.78, in 2005 it was about 2.65, now it is no higher than 2.59. If the current rate of descent slows to half of what we have seen over the last 3 years (which, I might add, is unlikely – it will probably stay the same or even increase) then global TFR will hit 2.3 in 2010. This is an important number because the replacement birthrate for the developing world is 2.4, sort of a symbolic number. And, of course, at that rate the world’s average TFR will hit 2.0 – sub-replacement for everyone – by 2016.

I see comments online everywhere from Amazon book reviews to other blogs to my email account arguing “So what? With increases in food productions, efficiency, and automation if the population drops the world will be better off! Less pollution, everyone left will be well-off. Sounds great!” And I must admit, in the long run this might be the case. But that will be a very long-run scenario. In the meantime, there will be a severe shortage of everything from highly-skilled workers (the engineers and programmers needed to invent, design, create, deploy, and maintain all that automation the rosy scenario counts on) to unskilled labor (who keep things going until the automation is in place and, I hate to point out, have been, are, and always will be needed). A particular crisis will occur in the earliest years. This is because of ‘population momentum’ – the much larger previous generations that decided to have very few kids are getting old, now. They need doctors, nurses, pharmacists, gardeners, aides, etc. just to care for them. Just as importantly, in most developed nations they expect to enjoy pensions and social security benefits. Yet these programs are paid for by taxes on people working right now. Since the current generation is smaller than the retiree’s generation, they have to pay for their own livelihood and the benefits of retirees. This will become a serious issue in Japan and Europe in about, oh, now. Japan has had problems finding enough workers since the late 1980’s due to population decline, and the problem of not enough people for existing jobs is spreading. The EU and Japan are already in serious discussions about what they can do to reduce the social and economic impact of rapid population decline – and it is almost certainly too late. The only solutions they can see are to increase retirement age, increase public spending on geriatric research (who is going to pay the taxes for that?), use more elderly workers, and use more immigrants.

Which brings us to immigration. Not only various on-line commenters look to immigration as the magic bullet, but so do most think-tanks and UN groups. Unfortunately, the developing world doesn’t look like a magic bullet for the problem of decreasing population. Beyond the issues of political instability which I have covered before, there may not be enough immigrants! The largest population with sub-replacement fertility is not in Europe, it is in Asia, with a TFR of about 1.7 for China and 1.3 for South Korea, with the rest of the Asian Tigers also below replacement, giving East Asia an overall TFR of 1.5. China is aware of the potential impact of declining population and they recently discussed a plan to shift their economy from manufacturing to a service-based economy. Even India, which still has above-replacement fertility, has a rapidly-dropping TFR (from 5.4 in 1975 to 2.7 now to an estimated 2.1 overall by 2011, and continuing to drop after that).

In short, Asia will have a greater total need for manpower than Europe. Japan and Europe cannot look to Asia to solve their looming problem. Australia and Oceania have an aggregate TFR of 2.1, just barely replacement – and dropping. The TFR of South America as a whole is 2.4, which is just barely above replacement level for the developing world and, you guessed it – its dropping. So South America is out, too.

The only place in the world with large numbers of nations with above-replacement fertility is sub-Saharan Africa. Ignoring concerns about education and skills, forgetting any questions of cultural assimilation, politics, or racial strife, there still remains the same bugbear – the TFRs of sub-Saharan Africa are dropping, and dropping faster than anyone believed possible just 5 years ago. While the UN estimated that Kenya’s TFR was 6.2 in 1990, more accurate research shows that it was actually “only” 5.4. Much more of a shock to demographers, however, was the amazing TFR drop from about 5.2 in 1995 to less than 3.7 today; in other words, the nation once seen as ‘a population nightmare’ has experienced a drop in TFR of 60% in 15 years. This is an unforeseen drop in population growth that is spread throughout the region (although not quite so dramatic as Kenya in most cases). Overall, sub-Saharan Africa’s TFR has been dropping by 20% per decade and, researchers predict, will continue to do so for at least 20 more years.

The truly stunning thing about the 60% drop in fertility in Kenya, or the 60% drop in TFR in Tunisia, is that these two nations are poor. The majority of women in them are poor, and many are illiterate. These were seen as barriers to reducing TFRs; the campaigns against overpopulation that began in the 1960’s focused on education and wealth as the tools that ‘allowed’ women to have fewer children. The last 25 years, however, have shown that all of our theories on what keeps TFR high (high mortality rates, low life expectancy, illiteracy, poverty) are wrong, or at least no longer valid.

Because of the declines in births much of the attempts to generate new demographic theories are focused on what is called “Lowest-low Fertility”, which means ‘any TFR of 1.3 or lower’. Currently there are no less than 16 nations with lowest-low fertility (including Russia, Spain, Italy, Poland, South Korea, and Ukraine) and at least another dozen between 1.4 and 1.31 with TFR’s trending down (including Japan, Germany, Bulgaria, Austria, Greece, and Hungary). Since there are so many industrialized nations already in this range and so many more nations set to enter it – with the trend repeating itself throughout the world – researchers are focusing on understanding it. This is seen in urgent terms for very practical reasons; nations want the trends to stop. A nation with a TFR of 1.3 faces the prospect that each new generation will be only half the size of the one before, and its population as a whole will be halved every 45 years. A nation with a TFR of 1.0 will face a 50% reduction in population every 30 years.

Lowest-low fertility was seen as an aberration, the result of major wars, famines, and plagues, until about 1993 when lowest-low fertility became the norm in some European nations. Since then, it has spread and continues to do so. Unfortunately, so far all the theories boil down to “women are waiting longer to have kids, it is not a big deal”. Unfortunately, this does not explain how lowest-low fertility is not just persisting, but going lower and spreading. If it truly were a matter of tempo only, then at some point the TFRs would go back up and stay up. Instead, any positive gains are not just temporary, but offset by larger losses soon after. Another theory is that the absence of day care in causing women to delay having children. This ludicrous claim may have much to do with the concerns of Social Democrats in Germany, but little to do with the TFR of 0.8 seen in Hong Kong – with virtually no day care, or the rapid decline of birthrates in nations with universal day care; the existence of either would cast a shadow over the theory, the existence of both dooms it. More importantly, research in the last 5 years shows that delaying having a first child doesn’t ‘push back’ TFR to another year – it reduces it. Put simply, the very logical idea that waiting longer to have any children means that you will have fewer children has been proven true in the field.

The best that some researchers hope for is; if there is massive social spending on programs like high-quality day care, if parents are given generous amounts of (paid) paternity and maternity leave, if there are tax breaks and cash incentives provided to parents, and if single mothers are paid full-time wages for part-time work, TFRs may recover to be as high as those in Sweden - a blistering TFR of 1.66. In short, if we adhere to the existing demographic concepts and Liberal social paradigms we can drag out the halving of population from 45 years to 55 years, and only at the cost of our economies.

So, to sum up; in a world where human population has been increasing since before the invention of written language, a decreasing population will almost certainly be a fact within our own lifetimes. The nations that are on the ‘leading edge’ of population reduction cannot depend upon immigration to soften the hammer-blows of decreased numbers of workers and increased numbers of elderly. Average Muslim birthrates are starting to slowly match secular birth rates. There seems to be no way to purposefully increase TFRs through governmental action. There is no theory to explain what is happening nor to predict what will happen next.

2006-10-30T05:57:00.000-08:00

Joel Stein Just Doesn’t Get It

I cannot believe that I had not stumbled on this before today (of course, 4 family birthdays in the last 12 days of October does keep the Casa de Pensamientos Profundas busy). It seems the ever-juvenile Joel Stein has, I supposed, decided to add a little gravitas to his commentary by ‘trying Jesus’. How did he do? Let’s find out.

We start off with his admission that he had never gone to a church before except to go to weddings or to attempt to “hook up” with a girl. His statement that God would be fine with his attempts to use a church as an entry to fornication ‘because God knows how hot she was’ really sets the tone.

BTW: Jenny Hodge, I am sorry that Joel embarrassed you in such a crass, adolescent manner. In addition to giving the appearance of only having been interested in you because you were ‘hot’, he seems to have no concern for your feelings now, either. I hope that you have, in the interim of seeing Joel then and his writing now, found a decent man who appreciates you for who you are.

Joel, who describes himself as an “atheist Jew” (an oxymoron) decided to go to the Covenant Presbyterian Church of Austin, TX to see a college chum who is now a pastor there. The main point, so to speak, of this piece was whether or not to take communion, a decision he attempts to make funny.

Where to start? My first point is his attempt to joke about confusing the Kyrie prayer (which is usually sung) and the song by Mr. Mister almost made it to funny but, for me at least, it was ruined by his attempt to use the word ‘hermeneutics’. Joel, a little hint; reading the dictionary is not a recipe for top-notch humor.

Joel goes on to compare Communion – the center point of worship for the vast majority of Christians – to a ‘spiritual Power Bar’ and references the taking of Communion as ‘sharing a snack’ ‘buffet style’. To his credit, he does wonder if his ‘traipsing through as a tourist’ would offend his hosts, or cheapen the experience. Unfortunately, this concern is lost amidst a wash of attempted humor and a comparison of himself to James Joyce. More bizarrely, this ‘atheist Jew’ was just as concerned with breaking the Yom Kippur fast with Christian Communion!

I think Joel needs to make up his mind.

In the end, this article is literally nothing. Joel Stein takes what could have been an interesting experience – an obviously conflicted man who self-identifies as both an atheist and a Jew pondering partaking in Christian Communion - and produces as mess of failed attempts at humor and borderline-offensive wisecracks that I doubt would pass muster at the typical college broadsheet.

For those who are interested: Covenant Presbyterian appears to be a PC(USA) congregation, so Joel’s participation is accepted by them. The PC(USA) Communion is not seen as valid by Catholic or Orthodox Churches, so it is neither here nor there for members of those faiths.

Also, the Anchoress has a good analysis of some of Mr. Stein’s article that I gave a miss.

H/T to the Achoress.

Edited for spelling and punctuation

2006-10-27T06:46:00.000-07:00

Andrew Sullivan is Also a Poor Theologian

Welcome to readers from Hugh Hewitt.

Disclaimer: I haven’t read the book The Conservative Soul yet. I will do so ASAP and give a full review. This is in response to Andrew Sullivan’s interview with Hugh Hewitt (transcript).

Andrew Sullivan is out flogging his book the Conservative Soul, linked above. While doing the usual radio-show circuit, he dropped in with Hugh Hewitt. I know some people don’t like Hugh’s style – a position I flat out don’t understand. Of course, I read Gorgias for pleasure, so I am obviously mental.

Anyway, in the interview Hugh asked very simple, very direct questions. Mr. Sullivan seemed, shall we say, off-put by this and became defensive. Mr. Hewitt has comments on Mr. Sullivan’s understanding on constitutional law here, but my training is in Catholic Theology so I will take a look at what Mr. Sullivan said about the Church.

The first thing that struck me is that Mr. Sullivan is what I sometimes call a ‘Two-er”. He refers to the Second Vatican Council as the ‘Second council’. This is splitting hairs, but the real second council was the First Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D. The Second Vatican Council was actually the 21^st Council. I find that people who base their Catholicism on a rather personal reading of Vatican II refer to it as if it were virtually the only council. There are four other ecumenical councils of the Catholic Church besides the Second Vatican that can be called ‘the second’. This is a strong hint to me that Mr. Sullivan knows very little, if anything, about any council but Nicea and Vatican II.

Of course, a deep understanding of all of the councils is not a requirement. Good catechesis teaches you all you need to know to be a faithful Catholic. So what did Mr. Sullivan say? Here are some examples.

The first is a quote attributed to pg. 46 of The Conservative Soul, a quote that Mr. Sullivan does not reject, “ …to take a very basic issue, like the matter of conscience. For many non-fundamentalistic Christians, conscience is the ultimate arbiter of what they believe. In fact, the right to believe only what one’s own conscience can assent to was at the root of the Reformation…long defined such denominations as the Baptists. The Catholic hierarchy long resisted such an idea until the Second Vatican Council, when it was endorsed, along with religious freedom, and an acceptance of religious pluralism.” [spelling edited]

I have no idea why ‘fundamentalistic’ was used instead of the simpler ‘fundamental’ or even ‘fundamentalist’, but whatever. As for Mr. Sullivan’s claims about what Vatican II taught, my initial response was, literally, “The Hell? Where did he get this?” I re-read it carefully and went back to my cool reference “Documents of the Second Vatican Council” and took a look. Guess what? He doesn’t understand what it says. Indeed, I don’t think he’s read it.

Here is part of what Gaudium et Spes (the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World) says about conscience:

“In the depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he does not impose upon himself, but which holds him to obedience. Always summoning him to love good and avoid evil, the voice of conscience when necessary speaks to his heart: do this, shun that.” [section 16]

This means that a properly-formed conscience is actually an innate awareness and affinity for God’s laws. In other words, there are objective moral laws and a properly-formed conscience is an innate understanding of these unchanging truths. Section 16 also includes this,

“Hence the more right conscience holds sway, the more persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and strive to be guided by the objective norms of morality. Conscience frequently errs from invincible ignorance without losing its dignity. The same cannot be said for a man who cares but little for truth and goodness, or for a conscience which by degrees grows practically sightless as a result of habitual sin.” [emphasis added]

In short, this tells us that a properly-formed conscience leads us to turn away from our own personal preferences in favor of objective moral truth. However, it also warns us that people who prefer personal choice or people who habitually sin (break the objective moral laws routinely) have a poorly-formed, or even non-existent conscience, making them blind to the truth.

In section 87, while dicussing birth control, Gaudium et Spes states,

“But since the judgment of the parents presupposes a rightly formed conscience, it is of the utmost importance that the way be open for everyone to develop a correct and genuinely human responsibility… … sometimes this [the development of a rightly-formed conscience] requires… …at least a complete moral training.” [emphasis added]

So, without proper moral training, we do not have a rightly-formed conscience, which limits our moral judgment.

Section 50 states,

“…[the faithful] must always be governed according to a conscience dutifully conformed to the divine law itself, and should be submissive toward the Church's teaching office, which authentically interprets that law in the light of the Gospel.”

This tells us that the Church does, indeed, have the ability to interpret what the objective moral laws are, how they relate to our lives and – yes – that when our conscience conflicts with the dogma of the Church, that our conscience is poorly-formed.

Dignitatus Humanae (On Religious Freedom) section 14 says this,

“In the formation of their consciences, the Christian faithful ought carefully to attend to the sacred and certain doctrine of the Church… For the Church is, by the will of Christ, the teacher of the truth. It is her duty to give utterance to, and authoritatively to teach, that truth which is Christ Himself, and also to declare and confirm by her authority those principles of the moral order which have their origins in human nature itself.” [emphasis added]

This shows that the Church teaches truth and that the proper formation of conscience requires that we listen to the Church as the official teacher of truth empowered by Christ Himself.

Section 43 of Gaudium et Spes goes on with this.

“Laymen should also know that it is generally the function of their well-formed Christian conscience to see that the divine law is inscribed in the life of the earthly city; from priests they may look for spiritual light and nourishment…. .. Rather, enlightened by Christian wisdom and giving close attention to the teaching authority of the Church… let the layman take on his own distinctive role.”

This means that the conscience must adhere as closely as possible to the teachings, or doctrines, of the Church and must be expressed in the world. In short, you have to give great weight to things like the doctrine of priestly celibacy, tithing, etc. and you must make your beliefs part or your words and deeds, not just your church-going.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us in section 1778 that

“Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed.”

And in section 1792 the Catechism tells us.

“Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one's passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church's authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct.” [emphasis added].

This is, in my opinion, all very, very clear. Mr. Sullivan has it almost completely backward. He states indirectly and not-so-indirectly that as a Catholic one’s conscience is supreme, then the Church. But the Catholic teaching from the Second Vatican Council (which he refers to as evidence that he is right) states very clearly that the conscience must be formed according to the teachings of the Church, not vice-versa. The catechism (written after Vatican II) warns us very directly that rejection of the Church’s authority and teaching can be ‘sources of errors in judgment in moral conduct”, i.e., a poorly-formed conscience. Most importantly, the idea of ‘an autonomy of conscience’, something obviously central to Mr. Sullivan’s interpretation of Christianity, is directly refuted!

All this might explain some more of the interview Mr. Sullivan gave [AS is Andrew Sullivan, HH is Hugh Hewitt],

HH: Let me try this a separate way. If, in fact, a Catholic is in a state of mortal sin, as the Church defines mortal sin, may they receive communion?

AS: I think that’s a very hard…no, they should not, if they sincerely believe that they are in a state of mortal sin, yes.

HH: And if the Church has a teaching about what moral sin is, and it is sufficiently clear, and it’s in the Catechism, and you reject that definition, or a Catholic rejects that definition, does that empower them to receive communion?

AS: I think that’s up to the individual….

Wow. Let’s start at the top on this one.

In section 1849 of the Catechism sin is defined,

“Sin is an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity. It has been defined as "an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law” [emphasis added]

And in 1856 it goes on with this,

“Mortal sin, by attacking the vital principle within us - that is, charity - necessitates a new initiative of God's mercy and a conversion of heart which is normally accomplished within the setting of the sacrament of reconciliation: When the will sets itself upon something that is of its nature incompatible with the charity that orients man toward his ultimate end, then the sin is mortal by its very object . . . whether it contradicts the love of God, such as blasphemy or perjury, or the love of neighbor, such as homicide or adultery. . . . But when the sinner's will is set upon something that of its nature involves a disorder, but is not opposed to the love of God and neighbor, such as thoughtless chatter or immoderate laughter and the like, such sins are venial.” [emphasis added]

And 1857 defines the pre-conditions for a sin to be mortal,

“For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: "Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent."^”

What this means is that sin is a failure of conscience in the face of desire and will. In other words – mortal sin is something you wanted to do it, you liked doing it, and your conscience didn’t bother you enough to keep you from doing it. For Mr. Sullivan to claim that the determination of who is in mortal sin should be the sole discretion of the sinner is not even wrong.

There is a lot more in the interview that just screams ‘I read the cliff notes of Vatican II’, but I am going to wait until I read the book to continue.

Note to my readers; I am well aware that there are vast numbers of Christians that adhere to the idea that one’s own conscience is the ultimate arbiter between Man and Christ. The thing is, most of them don’t claim to be Catholic. Mr. Sullivan does claim to be Catholic. The trickiest part of claiming to be Catholic, though, is that there is actually a definition. Mr. Sullivan doesn’t seem to match it.

2006-10-26T03:51:00.000-07:00

How do I Become a Distributist?

If you are interested in Distributionism as a way of life, there are a few things you need to do. The first is to remember something another commentator said, “…distributists are by definition doers, not talkers…” As much as I may bloviate about Distributionism, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so actions are key.

The first action is simple; pay down your debt. Statistically, I am on firm ground when I assume you have debt. This debt is a form of pressure on you and your family that limits your freedom of choice. You and your spouse may want to simplify your lives and change jobs, but too much debt may prevent that from happening. There are many reputable guides to paying down debt available, please take advantage of them.

The next is to start saving money. Once again, statistics tell me I am safe to assume you do not have enough money in savings, so start putting it away. Related to these two, very closely, is the third step. Start living more frugally. This will increase your ability to pay down debt and increase savings.

“But Deep,” I hear, “I am already living on the edge! I can’t get blood from a turnip. And is saving money and paying debt really doing anything?”

I know from personal experience that there are times when you can’t do these three things – the debt is because of accident or illness that lingers, the savings are paying for food, and you are already so frugal the churchmice are bringing you food. I know. But – that won’t last forever! After it ends, hop to it or you will be back there again. The goal of Distributionism is to keep you from being there ever again, after all.

And being frugal, saving money, and eliminating debt is certainly ‘doing something’. It is allowing you freedom to choose to live as you want to live, to be independent, and to prepare for the things that will come up that no one can ever prepare for. Eventually you will be debt-free, have a comfortable amount of savings, and you will be able to redefine what ‘frugal’ means for you.

The next thing is to plan; plan for the future. Most people today have no idea how to be self-sufficient. I don’t just mean survival skills, or how to camp, I mean – run your own business, be a freelance contractor and never worry about work, be a tradesman. You know, practical, real-world skills that allow you to be independently employed. One popular option has always been what is maybe the simplest one – be a self-sufficient farmer. But never forget a maxim I learned in the Army: important things are simple, but simple things are hard. I grew up in the tall corn and I can tell you that homesteading is work, brother. It is also something anyone can do, if they have the right basic skills, patience, and a temperament that isn’t opposed to it. Especially if you can own the land outright being self-sufficient can require a surprisingly small amount of land.

Other options are the trades; one example is plumbers; they make a decent wage and future prospects for future employment. Or metalworking. Tons of jobs allow you to be a contractor. Including computer programming, web design, even management consulting. Start getting the education and contacts (and tools) you will need to work for yourself. Landscaping, photographer – somehow you need to have a plan to be either your own boss or an independent contractor with no fear of a dearth or work.

So you are saving and planning and training. I must admit, it can be hard to stick to such dry pursuits for an abstract, even if the abstract is the freedom of self-sufficiency. So in the meantime you can start doing other things in the Distributionist mold like:

Switch to a credit union instead of a bank; Shop at your local farmer’s market, join a consumers’ coop, and patronize locally-owned stores, all as much as possible; plant a vegetable and herb garden, even in the city; work with and/or donate to local charities; learn how to minimize your taxes legally; write to your local politicians about the issues of Distributionism (lower taxes on small business owners, fewer intrusive business regulations, lower or no farm subsidies) – or visit them for the same reasons!; meet your neighbors – no, the ones on the other side of the people next to you, too; teach your kids about economics, and saving, and make sure they have real-world job skills.

Never forget – this isn’t the perfect plan and Distributionism isn’t a guide to utopia. This will take time, there will be setbacks, and you may fail before you pull it off. The key is to stay focused on the goal – independence.

Addendum: Folks, this post is light on links, which is not usual for me. I struggled more in writing this than usual because I was afraid of sounding like I am telling people how they should live, or criticising people who don't do these things. This is my opinion, based on my research, of how to start putting Distributionism into practice. I am certain that there are plenty of Distributists who disagree with me on points, let alone people who don't agree with Distributivist concepts! This post is no more than a response to the hypothetical question 'how would you start?' Please take it as such.

2006-10-24T10:42:00.000-07:00

Meanings of Words

This morning I heard Jackie Northam on NPR slip from journalism into opinion (not that uncommon on NPR) as she explained that what is going on in Iraq must be called a ‘civil war’ because, well, Webster defines it as “a war between geographical or political factions of the same country“ [Please note: I am using a transcription of what she said on the air, not the actual quote from the online Webster’s] and she (and the experts she likes) thinks it fits. Of course, she points to the Shi’a, the Sunni, and the Kurds and the factions fighting this ‘civil war’.

Big problem already, isn’t there? After all, Shi’a and Sunni are not geographically- or politically- defined, are they? They are religious groups, or “sects”, meaning that violence between such groups should be described as ‘sectarian violence’ – the very phrase dismissed by Miss Northam in an offhand manner in the radio piece I linked to, above. The Kurds are also not involved in the waves of violence we hear so much about – the geographically and politically (and racially) identified Kurdish regions are wonderfully violence-free.

In short, Miss Northam proves that she is capable of reading a dictionary, but also shows that she has trouble understanding the meanings of the definitions she finds. By her own statements of what 'civil war' means and her own description of who is doing the fighting, Iraq is suffering not from a civil war, but from sectarian violence. Her piece descends from journalism into unannounced opinion-spouting in a fairly-blatant attempt to paint anyone who doesn't call it a civil war as being dishonest.

I don’t even need to get into the definition of ‘foreigner’ and how it relates to the definition of ‘civil war’ that she uses in this context to render this piece moot.

2006-10-23T10:10:00.000-07:00

Once More Around the Floor

Blogodidact has been kind enough to keep the conversation going. Once again, I will look at his posts and respond, hoping to add more clarity to my views on Distributionism and to answer his questions. Let’s begin.

Van is concerned about government programs and was originally concerned that my comments about things like tax breaks were endorsements of taxes in the first place. This seems to be cleared up now; personally I support the need for minimal taxes only to allow the government to do what the government only can do – a patent office, the military, foreign diplomacy, etc. I even support the FDA – to a point. Originally, the FDA was just an oversight group to investigate and prosecute fraud in medicines and foods. Fraud is criminal and some medicine manufacturers and food producers were ‘getting by’ through producing in one state and shipping to another, allowing them to defraud consumers. If the FDA had limited itself to assisting local police by investigating interstate fraud, it would be a fine (if very small) group. Its current size, cost, and powers, though, are pretty far gone.

Back to the topic at hand, the desire of Distributionists to eliminate all but absolutely necessary organizations and regulations at every level of government in pursuit of the ideal of subsidiarity seems to be clear, finally. I apologize for any confusion!

My discussion of wage slavery seems to have gotten Van, well, lathered up. My intent was not to upset him (or anyone else). But I am going to take a side trip to both explain what I meant and comment on Van’s response. Walk with me for a minute.

As I have mentioned before, my childhood is memorable for a long phase of deep poverty. I don’t mean ‘one year I got socks for Christmas instead of air jordans and it ruined my childhood’ poor, I mean ‘one year I got a bowl of hot stew for Christmas, and it was the first food I had eaten in 4 days’ poor. In the years since I have fought my way up out of poverty to a upper-middle-class life. This was through hard work, luck, and sheer endurance. I have had some serious setbacks over the years and have done everything from work 40 hours a week while taking an 18 credit course load at college to working two jobs. I’ve scraped grease in a sub-basement and I’ve made $5 million sales presentations on Wall Street. I’ve been paid salary, hourly, and commission-only. I’ve had friends and family help out when I needed it, and I’ve had no one at all to turn to when I needed it. I sympathize and empathize with all that Van wrote of his own struggles.

In my travels through life, I have, naturally, met a lot of people. There are two sorts in particular that apply to the discussion at hand about poverty, job skills, and such. [Warning – broad generalizations follow] The first is one I have met most commonly in two places – academia and the white collar world. They feel that poverty is largely an inescapable trap. They point to studies that show the life-long effects of poverty. They talk about the statistics of childhood poverty and how it is ameliorated by ‘transfer spending’ in places like Sweden. They are passionate about the effects of poverty on families and society. They insist that Something Must Be Done and want to create as many safety nets and programs as possible to eliminate poverty. In my experience, the majority of these people have never been in poverty. Oh, sure, they had ramen 3 times a week in grad school, and their entry-level jobs were only about $25,000 a year when they started their career. But they had mom, dad, and student loans to get them by in college and credit cards until they got that raise and a mortgage. They think paying taxes to make sure a kid doesn’t go to bed hungry is a pretty good deal. They, you know, worry about money – but they have never been unable to sleep for three days wondering how they will feed the kids for another meal with no idea where next week’s rent is coming from.

The other sort I usually find in ‘blue-collar’ jobs and middle management. They’ve struggled, they’ve been poor. They worked hard, they got through, they made it. They want to know why everyone else can’t. After all, they didn’t have mom and dad paying for school, they did it themselves. They are ticked off and know that things would have been a lot easier without the taxes being sucked out of their checks for programs that they either never qualified for, weren’t there to help them, or simply didn’t apply – let alone those programs that are a sheer waste of tax monies. They have largely been successful at all they have tried with no true setbacks – no crippling car accidents, no bolts out of the blue, just the grind of making Horatio Alger a prophet. They are damn decent people who think the best way to eliminate the poor is to get Uncle Sam’s hand out of our pockets and get the Hell out of their way as they Make It.

Want to hear the tough part? Distributionists think they are both almost completely right. The keys to escaping poverty are simple and self-evident – hard work and thrift. From the 19^th Century Papal encyclical Rerum Novarum to Chesterbelloc to Schumacher the keys to self-sufficiency have been stated clearly: hard work and thrift. Distributionism is based on hard work and thrift and will always be so. Subsidiarity is about getting as many hands out of your pocket, as many rules out of your life, and as many people you report to out of your life as possible. But we can’t forget reality, and the reality is that things happen. We are human, not super-human. People make bad decisions; conditions change; accidents happen; people you have never met will always impact on your life. There are many things that can cast a person into poverty, and many of them are beyond our control. From cancer to a drunk driver, fraud to disabled children, life is hard and it always will be.

Blogodidact insists, again, that Capitalism is not about happiness, but is only about commerce, production, etc. At best, he concedes, it is a forecasting tool for predicting bad policy. To a Distributivist this is like claiming that the law is only about punishing criminals or that politics is only about power. To clarify terms, as Van tries, let me clarify two terms. To a Distributionist ‘Capitalism’ means “an economic system with ownership and control of capital in private hands” tied up with the concepts of private property, the rule of law, etc. while ‘laissez-faire Capitalism’ refers to ‘the error of trying to isolate economic activity from other facets of life with the expectation that the pursuit of profit divorced from ethics will somehow lead to ethical situations’. Capitalism is a group of ideas and processes within the economic areas of our lives. It must be conceded that Capitalism is intimately dependent upon our legal ideas of private property and our ethical ideas of the goal of jurisprudence and the nature of human rights. How is it possible to concede that Capitalism is dependent upon legal and ethical concepts, and then claim that it must be pursued independently of ethics?

Chesterton and Belloc both pointed out that the “failure” of Capitalism in the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries was the attempt to divorce economic activity from ethical considerations – this is what I and many current Distributivists mean when they cite ‘laissez-faire Capitalism’. Chesterton and Belloc called it a failure because people instinctively realize that moral and ethical considerations must be a part of every aspect of human life, including economics. The divorcement of these ideas in laissez-faire Capitalism led to mass discontent and a yearning for more ethics in economics. Into this hole stepped Marx and the later Communists and Socialists. Their focus on ‘justice’ and ‘equality’ is a naked appeal to the ethical impulse in Man, and it obviously worked! No matter how horrific all Communists nations have been/are, no matter how badly the economies of Socialist nations wallow, people are still drawn to them because of the overwhelming desire for ethics within economics. Despite this, Objectivists, many Libertarians, and others of the same school continue to insist that ethical considerations are at best secondary within economics. These same folks also continue to wonder what the appeal of Socialism might be.

Distributionism points out that Socialism/Communism misses the mark by a much wider margin than laissez-faire Capitalism. The attempt to impose perfect justice and perfect equality by mandate leads not to justice, or freedom, or even economic improvement – it only leads to greater and greater centralized governmental and economic power. Eventually all centralized governmental and economic power is abused. Thus, Socialism and Communism lead, inevitably, to the effective servitude of workers to the state/an oligopoly.

Instead, Distributionism advances an ethical solution to the ‘problem’ of laissez-faire Capitalism that is, at its heart… Capitalist. Instead of mandated giving (taxes, fees, etc) and government programs, Distributism proposes private organizations and cooperatives and voluntary organizations. If the Guild of Carpenters is more efficient (i.e., they actually take care of their members, have a solid reputation with customers, provide the training they promise, etc) than the International Carpenters’ Guild – the International Carpenters’ Guild will go away and the Guild of Carpenters will thrive – until an even better professional organization comes along. If the Delaware County Seed Coop has negotiated better prices with a distributor for the last five years and is reducing operating costs for its members better than the Farmer’s Coop of Delaware, guess which will have more members? This goes for consumer coops, industrial coops, etc. All along the line, the goal of Distributionism is twofold – get the government (etc.) out of economics and ethics as much as possible and use the market itself to include ethics in the economy in a vibrant, competitive, voluntary manner.

Let me give you a small, personal example. My family belongs to a small consumer coop that purchases raw milk for its members directly from a dairy. We include distribution costs in our prices and we do not negotiate for reductions based on volume (not enough volume yet!). Our price for organic raw whole milk is lower than the same product at the local store; we know the producer (and the cows, and the dog that guards the cows) and can check quality personally any time. The producer is making about 30% more by eliminating the distributors and other middlemen. We are saving about 10% by doing the same. If another dairy with similar quality, quality controls, access, etc. came along with 15% savings over local stores, we would (naturally) switch suppliers (or coops!). As a matter of fact, we should be able to do so right now… except for a state law that makes it illegal for dairies in this state to sell raw milk for human consumption. Indeed, we could eliminate a great deal of our internal distribution costs if it weren’t for a law that gives the advantage to large corporate farms or corporate-processed supplies over small farmers.

So the coop works now (the supplier makes more profit, we pay lower costs) and would work even better if it weren’t for intrusive laws that favor large firms over small ones. If there were a different, more efficient/cheaper supplier available, the coop would adapt or wither away. That, baby, is Distributionism at its Capitalist best.

Within the industrial realm the preferred ‘tool’ is also a coop. The largest, most famous example is Mondragon in Sapin. Mondragon is the seventh largest corporation in Spain and has operations in over a dozen countries. With sales of almost 12 billion Euros and a workforce of almost 80,000 people (full and part-time) it is a good-sized company. With business offerings ranging from engineering consultants to brake drum manufacturing to fresh beef, they are well diversified. But how are they different from a well-diversified corporation that isn’t a cooperative? After the probationary period (six months to one year, typically), similar to an apprenticeship, workers become full members of the coop; in effect, they become part owners. Members receive shares in the cooperative (like shares in any company), but shares are only open to employees - no outside ownership exists. Every year a portion of the profits is distributed to shareholders. Typically employees receive a salary and one or more shares when they become full members. Raises and promotions may come in the form of wage increases, more shares, or a combination of both. In Mondragon the shareholders in local ventures (auto plants, dairy farms, etc.) elect spokesmen to an cooperative assembly, who then elect a board. This board then manages the corporation.

In short, it looks and acts like a corporation – but all the owners are workers and only the workers are owners. Unions are allowed but superfluous; after all, the guys on the assembly line, their supervisors, and the managers are all also the owners. If they want a pay raise, they don’t need to strike – they just tell their representative who passes it up the chain. They have all the financial data and know if their operation can afford to give them a pay raise and will elect different representatives if they are lied to. More importantly, if their wages aren’t raised any increase in profits is reflected in the payments of their share profits, too. In Mondragon’s case some profits are diverted from share payments (by the decision of the owners/workers) to run a multi-campus university. Members of the coop can attend at no cost or a reduced cost, and non-members can attend at costs lower than average. It is accredited and graduates are encouraged to attempt to join Mondragon, but it is not required. Since the goal is to create real-world skills and the oversight is by people working in business, not life-long academics, the schools have a good reputation amongst businesses.

Mondragon also provides internal health insurance where needed, pensions, etc. They adjust salaries to reflect local taxes and state-provided benefits to provide comparable compensation while keeping profits high. They also invest in research and development and maintain a strategic reserve of capital.

When it comes to support of Capitalism the Mondragon Faq has this entry:

“Do you consider co-operativism to be an alternative to the capitalist production system?
We have no pretensions in this area. We simply believe that we have developed a way of making companies more human and participatory. It is an approach that, furthermore, fits in well with the latest and most advanced management models, which tend to place more value on workers themselves as the principal asset and source of competitive advantage of modern companies”

I think this is a great example of how a company based on Distributivist ideals can flourish in the ‘real world’. Mondragon’s diversification and expansion to nations like Turkey and China combined with its 13% growth in sales in 2005 seems to bear this out.

Does this eliminate risk? Hell, no. If there are no profits, shares received no dividends and some workers end up less-well-payed than employees of ‘standard’ corporations. Cooperatives can fail completely, just like other corporations. The difference is that the worker/owners decide for themselves what social safety nets they want, fund them themselves, and do so not like an exclusive union (which wants all it can wring from “Management”) but as part-owners, resulting in sensible plans that give you pensions, health care, and profits all together. If health care gets pricey, the owners look for a more affordable plan – or buy some clinics! Instead of eliminating risks, the goal is to spread out and share the risks voluntarily, keeping compulsion and government regulation out of the picture. The effect of tying ethics to the market is not only providing solutions to the potential ‘disappointment and ruin’ but allowing market forces to make those solutions more efficient and more targeted by keeping the government out of providing them.

Van and I do seem to have friction about corporations. Van seems to at once glamorize them (“[corporations are] an organization that has yet to be improved upon for most practical purposes.”) and point out that they can be (and usually are) terribly inefficient. I particularly like his point that the collaboration of many small firms and individuals seems to be very efficient at making a particular project. Such ‘project management’ ventures are becoming much more common and effective. Yet for all of Van’s admiration for the Really Large Corporation, how much of it is misplaced? After all, a great deal of the success of a particular corporation can rest largely on… where it was incorporated. Need a corporation to dodge taxes? File in Delaware, and then never do business there! Want your shareholders to be anonymous? File in Nevada, which has no disclosure laws! In the end, corporations are legal fictions, an abstract concept in constant flux that is evolving as we speak. LLCs, large sole proprietorships, cooperatives – these and many other structures can do many of the same things, often better. More critically, what we have seen time and again through recent history is that large corporations use their economic might in coercive ways. Van wrote this:

“As long as the Corp gains NO legislative/regulatory political power, and uses no PHYSICAL force; and threatening to no longer do business with a company, or convince other members of their supply chain to not do business with their company DOES NOT qualify as Physical Force – it is negotiation, though hardball, true, it is still a legitimate part of the process of making agreements.”

Really, Van? So when Standard Oil told oil suppliers that they would take the payment Standard Oil offered (below market rate) or no one would ship their oil to a competitor, there was no coercion? When Standard Oil told the railroads that all Standard Oil shipments would get a below-market shipping rate and that Standard Oil’s competitors would pay 20% above the market or the railroads would pay triple for oil and railroad track – if there was any available - there was no coercion? Van asked:

“What is the principled difference between such hardball tactics on the part of Corporations, and your trying to wheel and deal at the local service station by saying “Look I’ll let you put a set of your top tires on both my and my wife’s car, but if I do, I want you to throw in a alignment check and road hazard on all the tires of both cars, for free, other I’m taking my business across the street to Big Bob’s place and you and your mechanics will not see any more of our regular business”?”

Here’s the difference; a large corporation can do this;

“Here’s the deal – you are going to sell my tires with a road hazard kit and an alignment check. You are going to sell my competitor’s tires with an additional 10% markup. If you do, you pay rate on electricity, lubricants, and windshield wipers. If you don’t, you pay triple for lubricants and windshield wipers and quintuple for electricity – unless there is a blackout.”

That is a big difference. What happens with a powerful enough corporation is that you are no longer capable of voting with your feet. In these cases the corporations can eliminate existing competitors and then raise the market entry costs to prevent new competitors, and then cascade into other markets. The coercion comes not from physical violence (or its threat) or governmental regulation, but it is real nonetheless.

I do not think that such behavior is inevitable. Indeed, it has been more rare than you might expect – but we have no way of knowing if that would be the case in the absence of anti-trust laws. So let us assume a simple thing – I am wrong. Large corporations never become coercive, and preventing competition is not bad. Let’s just talk about another – diseconomies of scale.

Now, everyone learns about economies of scale in Econ 101. And Econ 105. And, heck, most of Econ. You don’t hear about diseconomies of scale quite so much. In effect, economies of scale means that as you make more of something, the cheaper it is per unit to make it – so, the larger the firm, the more efficient it is. Diseconomies of scale is the opposite; beyond a certain point the per-unit costs of producing something go up – so, beyond a certain size, the larger the firm, the less efficient it is. The threshold seems to be primarily related to two factors; initial required capital; and ongoing capital requirements. Like Van, I have worked at firms small and large, and Very Large, and I prefer the small ones.

For the record, my opposition to large firms is one of ethics and efficiency. I don’t want more laws to control anybody. The preference for smaller firms, although shared by all Distributists, obviously isn’t an impediment to the creation of something like Mondragon. Indeed, if cooperative-based corporations working as a conglomerate or consortium became the world’s largest corporation, I’d have no problem with that.

If it was still ethical and efficient, that is.

In the end, all is as Van said – same words, different meaning. Most disagreements between Distributists and other Capitalists are like that, it seems. But my thanks to Blogodidact for forcing me to be more clear and more detailed. Good luck with work (I, too, am in IT). And as for the Kant, Hegel, Hume, etc. I suggest 2 beers, hot shower, two beers, read James J. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest.

2006-10-20T09:44:00.000-07:00

Living a Happier, Healthier Life

Everyone has different goals. Some want to be rock stars, some famous actors. Some people want to win a blue ribbon at the state fair, some want to get rich and retire early. Some want to be politicians, some want a link from Instapundit. But virtually everyone wants to live longer, be healthier, and be happier while they are doing it. So how do we go about living a healthier, happier life?

Turns out there are some simple things we can do. First, get married and stay married. The Center for Health Statistics shows that married people are healthier than unmarried people. Married people are also happier and more financially secure. This comparison was true for people who had never married, were divorced, and even people who were only cohabitating; its not the living together, or even sharing responsibilities and bank accounts, it seems, it’s the fact of being married that matters here.

Another way to improve your life is to be religious. Religion has a demonstrably positive effect on people’s lives, making them statistically healthier and happier. Indeed, some research shows that religious people live 30% longer than the non-religious – all while being healthier and happier, remember!

In fact, some of the biggest boosts to happiness of women in particular are staying at home, having the husband as primary breadwinner, and having a traditional outlook on gender roles.

When you read these articles, please note that the results are the same across races and income levels and that the effects of marriage on financial status start after marriage, not before (i.e., poor people improve their lot after marriage as much as people who were already wealthy when they married).

How else can we improve our happiness? Well, Conservatives are happier than Liberals.

Let’s put this all together, shall we? If you want to maximize your pursuit of happiness, you will be; Married; Parents; Religious; Live Outside an Urban Area; a Stay at Home Wife or her Spouse; Conservative; in the Sunbelt. In other words – traditional religious Conservative nuclear families in the South are (statistically) the happiest.

Who could’ve guessed that?

2006-10-18T05:23:00.001-07:00

Is Star Trek a Utopian Communist Fantasy?

The atmosphere at the Deep Thought blog has been a little solemn recently so I decided to lighten things up a bit by dragging out a debate I have been having for at least 25 years – is Star Trek escapist fantasy where the Federation (i.e., the heroes of the show) represents the US, or is it escapist fantasy where the Federation represents Communism?

I have been watching Star Trek since I was a wee lad and I remember standing in line to see Star Trek, the Motion Picture when it came out. My father hated the show and called it 'a crypto-communist fable'. I thought he was loony, but after I joined the army and The Next Generation came out, my fondness for the show began to wane. My first complaint was that the writers had no idea how real military forces work. Then I, too, began questioning the politics expressed by the characters. Finally, I stopped watching it altogether and want my own children to wait until they are at least 14 before they do so. Why? I think it is a not-so-subtle endorsement of Socialism, maybe Communism.

While there are a number of bits about this on the web, and in many ways it does seem rather silly, it is a question worth reviewing. Why? Well, Star Trek has had quite an impact on society. The Star Trek franchise has impacted the design of technology, the shows continue to have a large presence in video games, and over the course of the franchise it has earned a total of no less than $6 billion dollars worldwide. Catchphrases from Star Trek are still common in English today and the primary characters (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Picard) are global cultural icons.

That is a pretty big impact for a bunch of shows pitched as ‘Wagon Train in space’!

One of the first things to remember is, of course, that Star Trek is a show. It had many writers, and directors and it has continued long after the death of its creator. This means that there is some ambiguity. In some episodes (The Omega Glory) Kirk obviously fights for American democracy against Chinese Communist rule. Of course, that episode also shows surviving American descendents as howling barbarians attacking the more civilized Chinese Communists that had conquered the world. While there is some argument that in the original series the Klingons represented the Communists, the Klingons also were expanding their empire in order to dominate trade.

That, of course, brings us to a cornerstone of Communism. Yes, Communism is an ideology and yes, it is a political philosophy. But first and foremost Communism is an economic system. So let’s talk about money in Star Trek. First of all, we know that it exists outside the Federation. Quark from Deep Space Nine and the rest of the Ferengi are the obvious example of this; they buy and sell things, are obsessed with gaining wealth, and use precious metals as a medium of exchange. Other aliens use money and when dealing with them the Federation and people in Star Fleet sometimes use money or refer to accounts. So money is out there and the Federation uses it when dealing with ‘foreign’ cultures.

Interanlly, however, we are told repeatedly that there is no money within the Federation. There seems to be a limit on high-energy activities (like replicator or transporter use for private reasons), but everyone from Ferengis to Picard informs the viewer that members of the Federation do not have or use money and have not since the late 2100’s. Going even farther, Picard tells us quite clearly that members of the Federation do not even have possessions! In the same incident it becomes obvious that Picard, a well-read and highly-educated man with a strong background in diplomacy (we are told through various episodes) is puzzled by the very concept of financial investments. Instead, a number of characters tell us that people in the Federation work not to accumulate wealth or possessions but to ‘better themselves and humanity’. The few instances of purchases we do see within the Federation in the original series (and its related movies) are all… smuggling. So it seems that the use of money within the Federation did exist, at least in the ‘bad old days’ of Kirk and Scotty, but it was illegal.

Was this just various writers making Star Trek ‘exotic’? Almost certainly not. Ronald Moore, a writer and producer for the Star Trek franchise from the ‘80’s to the ‘00’s said that Roddenberry himself had insisted that the Federation did not have any money, credits – nothing like cash at all, ever. The Ferengi, an invention of Roddenberry, are a not-disguised-at-all mockery of Capitalists and portray businessmen and entrepreneurs as vicious, lying, stealing, cowardly barbarians without morals or scruples at all. The Ferengi/Capitalists are portrayed as Neaderthal-like misogynists Roddenberry originally envisioned the Ferengi as the main villains of Star Trek: The Next Generation to replace the Klingons from the original series, but the other writers and producers saw them as a laughable stereotype instead of a menace and changed them greatly.

So Roddenberry’s personal vision of the future was a world with no money, no possessions, and work was done for the good of mankind as much as for personal satisfaction. That sounds like a fantasy Communisy/Socialist utopia to me. Writers at the Socialist Review agree, lamenting only that Star Trek isn’t quite Socialist enough.

Star Trek also resembles Communism in its open hostility to religion. The religions of the aliens in Star Trek are almost all fakes, shams, or frauds. The Bajorans, Edo, Betans, Triangulans, worship mis-identified aliens, machines, or alien machines. Closer to home, the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Mayans, and Incans also worshipped aliens. Star Trek writer David Gerrold once explained that the Roddenberry would “When in doubt, have Kirk fight God!”. It is clearly stated a few times that rational races leave religion behind, that people and races capable of critical thought are atheists. In at least one case in Star Trek religion was genetically engineered into a race to allow total control by alien masters, preventing the religious from ‘freeing’ themselves from their ‘slavery’. While some people point to the episode ‘Bread and Circuses’ and say that it has a positive treatment of Christianity, I must disagree – although there is an oblique reference to Christ, He is portrayed as just another historical parallel, no different than a bland copy of a Roman emperor, and the Christian Church has had no true influence on this alien world in the 1,950+ years since His (presumed) life, death, and rebirth. This episode paints Jesus as just another historical episode and nothing more.

Roddenberry was an active and outspoken atheist, as is the head writer for the franchise since Roddenberry’s death, Brannon Braga. We should be surprised that the shows were not/are not much more obviously anti-religion. In the end, we see no Christians, no Mormons, and no Zoroastrians. Starfleet has no chaplains, the only Federation chapel we see is a Spartan, non-denominational affair. Although Nazis are seen in a few episodes, there are no Jews. Those few religious people we see are aliens, at best practicing their ‘quaint’, cultural worship of mythological beings seen as socially constructive fiction, but usually believers are shown as the mindless and/or violent pawns of supercomputers or aliens. Despite the careful inclusion of people obviously Russian, Scottish, African, Irish, etc., we never see someone cross themselves, carrying a prayer rug, or saying ‘Oy vey!’ While Chakotay on Voyager was ostensibly a Native American and followed traditional religious practices, in reality what was shown on screen was a mish-mash of various Native American rituals and beliefs with more in common with New Age practices than actual religion.

Roddenberry was a staunch progressive and firmly believed that the history of mankind in one of marching from a dark, unenlightened past toward a brighter, more enlightened future. Of course, this meant that the future he envisioned looked as he felt it should. It did not take long for the high ideals of the Federation to dissolve into moral relativism. The Prime Directive leads the Federation to sometimes ignore the destruction of an inhabited planet, dooming its billions of people to death unless they could be kept ignorant of space travel. This is supposedly to protect other civilizations from the Federation and to prevent the Federation from being too involved in other cultures. Of course, this ignores that fact that there is a standing order for procedures on destroying all life on an inhabited world merely for being a threat to the Federation! On the other hand, Federation officers had no problems with erasing the memories of others, or to radically change societies that they simply did not like all that much, including primitive societies fighting enemies of the Federation, societies with treaties the officer in question didn’t like, and, of course, religious societies. Picard, the captain that initially refused to save the inhabitants of an entire planet rather than violate the Prime Directive had earlier broken that same law to save a single member of his own crew. Kirk will sometimes risk his ship to save others, sometimes will violate treaties and plunge a system into interplanetary war because he doesn’t like their version of peace. All in all, Star Trek is a sea of moral relativism. Things are bad because the writers say so; things are good because the writers say so. The good things are almost invariably Liberal Socialist ideas, the bad things are almost always Conservative or Capitalist things.

There are other little things that point to a Socialist utopia as the heart of Star Trek. All space vehicles within the Federation are Federation (i.e., government-owned) vessels. Federation citizens can be (and are) punished for violating Federation law when they are outside the Federation and its jurisdiction. There is ample evidence that all communications are controlled by the Federation and that only high-ranking Star Fleet officers have access to encrypted communications. You never see independent journalists. The only corporations mentioned are beyond the Federation’s borders, and we never, ever see a brand name, logo, or corporate emblem. Scientific achievements are either ‘for the good of humanity’ (i.e., no patents or fees) or criminal (in other words, getting something for your research other than praise is illegal and/or immoral in the Federation). Star Fleet has tremendous power and influence, including being easily capable of a bloodless coup, controlling all shown research, exploration, and colonization. And being able to try civilians for breaking the law.

So, in the end, the United Federation of Planets (the Federation) looks like a highly-militarized society with central control of research, development, exploration, colonization, manufacture, and communications. Federation citizens do not earn pay, have investments, run their own businesses, or have any personal possessions beyond a few mementos – they certainly have no money. Religions beyond a vague spirituality expressed by very few people, Federation citizens are, at most, agnostic and are generally atheist. Although there seems to be an elected parliamentary body, virtually all local and regional decisions are made by Star Fleet and the majority of Federation-wide laws seems to be Star Fleet directives. Individual ship commanders in Star Fleet have the ability to either abandon non-Federation races to whatever fate they may face if they are ‘too primitive’ to be worthy of help. Conversely, these same ship captains my unilaterally decide to exterminate all life on a planet if it is deemed dangerous to the Federation. All with no appeal to any elected, or even civilian, person or body. Yet the society is portrayed as happy, even perfect, to such an extent that a mere 15-30 minutes of discussion was enough to convince Samuel Clemens, one of the most hard-bitten cynics in history, that it was a worthy aspiration for all of mankind.

In my opinion, the underpinning of Star Trek is a Socialist utopia, a vision of the world that Gene Roddenberry thought would be the pinnacle of human achievement. Roddenberry was open about his hopes that Star Trek would influence people toward favoring what he favored, so I also believe that these Communist fantasies were stated purposefully to convince the viewers that Roddenberry (and later writers) were right. What should we do about this? That’s easy – ignore them. There is so much top-notch science fiction out now that we can vote with our feet for things that we enjoy that we don’t find offensive.

Note: More Star Trek 'Motivational' posters can be found here.

2006-10-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

Hello, Blogodidact!

The excellent Blogodidact and I have been discussing Distributionism back and forth for a little while, a process I hope we can continue. So far Van (as I call him in my head) has revealed to me that I did a lousy job at explaining where I was pointing my suggestions, how I expect Distributionism to work, and whom I expect to take the lead. Learning how badly I explained all of that was rather humbling. So let me take Van’s points from his blog entry here and respond to them. We’ll start with his analysis of my suggestions on promoting Distributionism.

“Tax credits & Gov sponsored job training. For a State to have enough largess in their tax base to spare on social engineering (tax breaks) implies Income Tax, which to my mind is one of the big three (Income Tax, Federal Reserve System, Welfare & regulatory systems) physical realities behind all that has fallen in our nation today.”

I agree with Van; I have serious issues with the income tax, I think the welfare system is a self-perpetuating bureaucracy of dependence, and most regulatory agencies no longer exist for legitimate purposes but rather to expand their own power. Unfortunately, such a world is the one we live in. We have excessive taxes to the point that the government can do such things as, say, the Civilian Marksmanship Program, or 50 different homeless assistance programs that often all fund the same groups – only multiplying the overhead, not the results. Or, as an earlier article of mine showed, even welfare programs that are highly praised by the MSM and both sides of the aisle in Congress like Head Start are so inefficient that their administrative overhead is about 70%, making them criminally wasteful. This shows that the America government, a nation with very low taxes by Western standards, is wasting a tremendous amount of tax money.

Unfortunately, unless there is a massive change that comes as a total surprise to me, we will not be able to change this overnight. Instead, we will need to chip away at the existing structure until it is more just (read: we get to keep our own money) and efficient (read: they don’t waste our money). Therefore, I think that supporters of Distributionism (as well as our allies in the realms of Libertarians, Objectivists, and fiscal Conservatives) should push for serious tax breaks for small business owners, even to make small businesses tax-free. I feel the same way about job training; federal job training has been around for a long time and will not vanish overnight. I say we use this training (which is, after all, our own money) to become self-sufficient.

I have been told by others that ‘working the system’ this way is a capitulation, a tacit acceptance of the current system. I disagree (of course!). My goal is to transform the system by working within it. I want to encourage more entrepreneurs; we live in a society with progressive income taxes; I think a strong political case can be made to reduce or even eliminate taxes on small businesses. I think this is a win-win situation; taxes go down and more entrepreneurs are born.

“ “Microloans to such organizations could be subsidized by government agencies” is just a cloaked method of socialist redistributionism.”

OK, I admit it. This is obviously an encouragement of Socialism…. Well, out of context. What I said was “Microloans to such organizations could be subsidized by government agencies for a strictly limited time to encourage transition”, meaning that for a period of, say, 5 years microloans would be guaranteed in a manner similar to VA home loans or student loans; no tax money spent, just a government payment to private creditors in the case of default, then the debtors owes the government. I ws really unclear about the details of this, so I apologize. I am not talking about the federal government giving people cash, I am suggesting federal guarantee of small loans for a period not to exceed 5 years in lieu of collateral for some types of small business.

This is still egregious to Objectivists and most Libertarians, but again – let’s game the system. I am paying too much in taxes. The government is braying that ‘small businesses are the motors of growth’. OK, let’s see you actually support that while I wear down the taxes you keep collecting.

The next one is larger, so I will break it up a bit.

““I was surprised when Fr. Neuhaus, whom I normally find to have a very informed opinion, dismisses Distributionism as not having anything to which to attach policies or platforms in the political arena. America has; a Small Business Administration that promotes small business; farm co-ops, credit unions, consumer co-ops, and business co-ops like ACE hardware on almost every corner; a history where the Grange movement held strong, if brief, political influence over national politics; a growing concern over the impact of large enterprises like Wal-Mart and Microsoft of the well-being of the average person; and a rather large (and growing) government job training program.” Which I take to mean that having a Small Business Administration, government sponsored jobs training and a growing concern over a growing Wal-Mart, are signs of optimism and hopeful solutions in the making; but I emphatically believe that these are not part of a solution, they are instead part of the problem! Anytime that Government steps out of its role of ensuring that rights are not infringed, upholding law and order, and defending the interests of the Nation, moral and physical disaster is in the making.”

Well, my point was to refute Fr. Neuhaus, not support anything in particular. I was pointing to these various things as proof that topics like small business, large corporation, cooperative business, etc. are proven political topics. I didn’t mean this section to support any particular government program or refute it – just show the political impact of some ideas.

Van goes on:

“I also have my doubts about a wider scope being attributed to an economic policy, than is proper to its function. The Goal of Economics is not happiness, but production; it is philosophy and ethics that point towards happiness. Economics should of course be compatible with, even complimentary to the goals of philosophy - which as Aristotle says, is happiness – but Happiness is not the goal of Economics, producing, distributing and managing wealth, is the goal of Economics. “Their goal is to create a community where the members avoid the excesses of materialism”, but I think that the only defense against materialism is an education which better teaches what is truly valuable in life, and that again is the job of philosophy, not of economics.”

Bingo! Proof that I was opaque. The core concept of Pope Leo, Belloc, Chesterton, Schumacher, Penty, and other Distributivist thinkers is that the separation of economics from ethics and philosophy is a critical error that leads to a decline in ethics, a divorcement of philosophy from practical concerns and, ultimately, economic disruption, all of which will culminate in an unethical, unjust society of poor people ruled by a corrupt oligarchy. Saying that economics is about production only is like saying that the law is about winning court cases, not about justice. Or that politics is about power, not leadership. Yes, stripped of context, economics is about nothing but production, law is about winning and losing decisions, and politics is about power. But this divorcement of ethics and philosophy from the basics of life is exactly what the underlying problem is.

Communism, Socialism, etc. did not spring from a vacuum. They sprang from an understanding, conscious or not, that economics cannot be divorced from ethics and philosophy. Likewise, Capitalism and Democracy are usually mentioned together because people recognize that the freedoms and justice that are part of the best democracies allow Capitalism to exist – and vice versa. The 20th Century was a century of warfare between different concepts of economics/ethics/justice competing one with another. Classical Fascism, Communism, Socialism, and Democracy/Capitalism are all defined not solely by their ethics, nor their philosophy, nor their economics, but by all three as a whole. This is because these things are a whole within a society.

Chesterton, Belloc and the other early leaders of Distributionism rejected Communism and Socialism as inherently unjust. Indeed, they felt that the injustice of such systems was self-evident. Their insight was into why such inherently unjust systems not only had adherents but were actually competing with Capitalism and Democracy. This insight is, like many deep insights, both simple and profound. It is this – laissez-faire/’pure market’ Capitalism rejects ethics and philosophy; this rejection leads to injustice; therefore, laissez-faire Capitalism must be rejected.

Their answer was not abolishment of ownership (Communism), nor state ownership of capital (Socialism), nor strict governmental regulations that supported and controlled Capitalism (Fascism, at least as it was defined by them). Their answer was the engagement of the most important element of economics – the individual. The goal of Distributionism is moderation of Capitalism by many individual Capitalists.

Van again, in the same vein:

““Their goal is to create a community where the members avoid the excesses of materialism”, but I think that the only defense against materialism is an education which better teaches what is truly valuable in life, and that again is the job of philosophy, not of economics.”

But the goal of a society, any society, must be achieved within the realms of economics, and ethics, and philosophy, showing that they cannot be separated.

Van then jumps around a bit (just like I tend to do!), so I will break it up a bit more:

““Deal as directly as possible with the producer/end user” … is of course a wise policy when it saves time and effort to do so, but there are many middlemen that do give significant savings in time and effort, and so are worthwhile. Super markets are an excellent example of middlemen being valuable services provided to consumers. Most Mom & Pop stores are not. Wal-Mart is a time saver, visiting all the mom & Pop stores you would need to in order to quickly pickup the products that can be found at a single Wal-Mart, would be a massive time waster, and the expense would more than likely be higher. I n fairness, Deep Thought does say that if middlemen are adding value, then use them – my reaction may be more to an overall tone I perceive (especially concerning expanding corporations and Wal-Mart) which makes me rise to imaginary bait, than a direct quote by Deep Thought on this. I see Corporate consolidation as usually being a good thing; the reason it is done is to increase productive efficiency and profits; and if it is done poorly, it too will collapse or be broken up, so that eventually the frozen productivity that had been locked up in inefficiency and waste, can be thawed & released from its parts once again, back into the wider economy.”

Whew. OK, I will admit it – I don’t like large corporations. But the reasons aren’t aesthetic, they are ethical and economic. In many markets once a corporation hits a certain threshold of market share it can use its strength within the market to affect the barriers of entry to a market upward, increase the sunk costs of potential competitors, and use predatory pricing to drive out existing competitors. Additionally, high levels of market penetration allow firms to impose artificial switching costs, even artificial transactions costs, to shelter themselves from the ‘free’ in free market. If am opposed to Socialism, I must also oppose such corporate-driven market controls, too. And if a corporation is large enough, it can enter new markets and use its economic resources to do the same to more and more fields of transaction. Think this is loopy? Look at Standard Oil; in the 1880’s began a decades-long practice of coercing shippers to give them discounts and to increase shipping prices for competitors. Soon their control of transportation allowed them to literally dictate oil prices to oil producers in America, demand further discounts on their own shipping costs and ‘rebates’ (i.e., kickbacks) from the artificially-high shipping costs they demanded for their competitors, and other such actions. Using this clout, they also gained very effective control of steel production and, eventually, railroads. This was an especially good idea – by controlling the steel industry, Standard controlled the cost of railroad tracks and cars. By controlling oil, they controlled the cost of fuel and lubricants of the railroads. When they moved into the railroad business it was a foregone conclusion that they would dominate it shortly.

Analysis by economists then and now agree; Standard Oil began as more efficient than its competitors, which allowed it its initial rapid gains. Once it reached its height, however, its efficiency began to drop. In the end it was less efficient than its (few remaining) competitors (or, in some ways, no more efficient than the others). But it retained its dominance for some time because of its power over entry costs, sunk costs, transition costs, etc. and its continued ability to artificially set prices within a number of markets. After the retirement of some of the leaders of the Standard Oil trusts many of these practices were abandoned. By the time laws had been passed and litigation begun the effects of actual competition were seen – Standard Oil’s share of most of its markets had tumbled very badly within 30 years of its founding.

But if its directors had continued the practices of its founders there is little evidence that Standard Oil’s coercive control of at least 3 major markets would not have continued without government interference.

So, I have no problems with a monopoly of efficiency – after all, a more efficient competitor will eventually come along. But I have issues with coercive monopolies. I have yet to meet a Conservative who likes coercive monopolies, but I also rarely find a Conservative who will admit that large firms can establish a coercive monopoly almost as easily as a government can. The result? I prefer small firms to large ones.

I have no problem with Wal-Mart as Wal-Mart. I sop there, I see nothing wrong with them in general. I also have no problem with communities that try to bar them with zoning laws (their own loss, after all. If they want to drive out jobs and low prices, that is their choice). I also think that Wal-Mart has provided more monetary benefit to low-income Americans with low prices than welfare programs have with grants, etc.

But Wal-Mart is not a silver bullet that ‘proves’ that massive consolidation is ‘the answer’. Wal-mart’s size and efficiency has proven amazing in the US and many markets, but it has also failed. Wal-mart’s entry into Germany was a shock to some since they failed to succeed there as was expected. This is because Germany already had a number of players in its robust discount retail market. Some argue that this indicates that Wal-Mart’s success in the US has more to do with barriers to entry and Wal-Mart-imposed transition costs than with real efficiency, but I think we don’t have enough data about that yet. Much more interesting to me are Wal-Mart’s failure in China and South Korea. In both cases Wal-Mart failed due to a number of factors including poor marketing, but also because of their inability to compete with small businesses in the same space. Indeed, as one commentator pointed out - on a global scale, Wal-Mart is a regional business. I would add that the market has shown that Wal-Mart can’t compete with smaller competitors outside of the shelter of American barriers to entry into its market.

And just to carry this side-trip a bit further, Wal-Mart is starting to face real competition in the US, too. Dollar store chains are really eating into Wal-Mart’s market share not just by meeting or beating the pricing but because many consumers are showing a preference for smaller stores closer to where they live instead of very large stores further away. Add in the suspicion of some economists that some of Wal-Mart’s efficiencies of price may be an ‘artifact’ of the transition of manufacturing to the Third World and I suspect that Wal-Mart is much more of a fad than many believe. Not because it is ‘evil’, but because it will lose to smaller, more agile companies relatively soon.

Let’s go on with Van:

““All men have a right to private property, just compensation for their goods and labor, and to enter into business agreements of their own free will” Unfortunately I do not see that this will protect property rights and ensure fairness, but instead only serve as a mandate for those people in power, to demand that their constituency have property, then some property, then some minimum amount of property, then an increased amount of property - and agitate to get government programs established to distribute it. Property Rights are not to be violated, but they aren’t to be awarded either, they flow from the nature of being human, they are not bestowed or granted.”

Wow. I was misunderstood. This is not meant to mean ‘everyone gets 40 acres and a mule’, but rather ‘confiscation of land by the government is a violation of a person’s rights’. This is not for land redistribution schemes, but against Socialism and Communism. This was taken from Rerum Novarum, a response to the Communist Manifesto and related work in addition to being a statement of rights and principles.

And more:

““, a man who produces goods or commodities must be paid a just amount for those items.” No, he must be paid what someone is willing to spend and which he is willing to accept – nothing more. More means waste, regulations, and agencies and bureaucratic regulatory law.”

This is a statement of ethics, not regulation. This is against the concept of ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need’. It is also a moral and ethical guideline for employers and workmen. As with ‘the right to freely enter into contracts’ it means there cannot be any coercion in the setting or payment of wages or in the pricing of goods.

Here Van gets into some interesting territory:

“Deep Thought makes a reference to “Wage Slavery”, and that is a term that just gets my hackles up. It has its most common origins as a Marxist concept, intended to obscure the fact that the employer/employee relationship is freely kept and for mutual benefit. A so called “living Wage” cannot be the goal of a business. A desirable product at the most appropriate cost is all that can be expected. If the people working at such jobs need more, they must find other sources of income, or put another way, if they are only able to produce ¾ of what they need as income from their job, then they need to seek the remaining ¼ elsewhere and probably should be looking for ways – new skills, education, to make possible a change of their main productive skill.”

My definition of ‘wage slavery’ is less like Marx and more like Belloc. Let me quote Robert Nisbit and his comments on this;

“Hilaire Belloc defines the servile state as "that arrangement of society in which so considerable a number of families and individuals are constrained by positive law to labor for the advantage of other families and individuals as to stamp the whole community with the mark of such labor." "Given the debasement of the language of politics in our time, there are of course many who describe this condition as progress, or as a higher freedom and democracy or as humanitarianism. But the harsh fact remains: a steadily enlarging number of families and individuals in the United States, and other Western countries, are in the position of being constrained by law, beginning with the progressive income tax but extending to numerous other areas of legal requirement, to labor, not for themselves, but, in Belloc's words, 'for the advantage of other families and individuals,' those who do not work and who enjoy what is called welfare in one or other of its by now diverse forms."”

That is one way to describe part of what I mean by wage slavery. Here is a more personal one.

“Through a combination of governmental regulations/laws and predatory practices we have a resulting group of people who do not have the skills or education to be employed in a self-sufficient manner, resulting in them being constrained to labor for an amount too small to support themselves and lacking the time, resources, or opportunity to avail themselves of the means to exit this condition.”

Face it – public schools suck. They are more and more divorced from providing a practical education while they continue to tighten their focus on indoctrination. The result is a populace less and less able to actually become entrepreneurs, forcing them into a spiral of jobs that pay too little for them to live one, resulting in debt resulting in…. Well, you get the idea. The end result is an entire class of people who cannot do that most basic of things – be self-sufficient. Communists recognized this, called those people the Proletariat, and said the answer was to destroy the government and share everything equally. Somehow. The Socialists say the answer is to take things from those who have it and give it to those who don’t. Fascists said the answer was to use government regulations to prevent it from happening. Objectivists say that, well, that’s what happens to the non-demi-gods. Libertarians say get rid of all those regulations and things will sort themselves out, eventually.

Distributivists say work together, voluntarily, to get people out of that trap while also getting rid of the lousy laws that started the whole mess. This is just a piece of the puzzle, of course. I’ll talk about more of it as we go and in the near future.

But I must say, Van is a bit, uh, blithe about the whole idea of ‘if your job only earns you ¾ of what you need to live, get another job for the additional ¼ and look for the skills to get you out of it’. Ya’ think? Of course, where they are to find the time for further education while working at least 1 ½ jobs can be a bit of a puzzler, I suspect.

Another topic from Van:

“Deep Thought supports the creation of Guilds, he raises most of the objections I would raise at such organizations, but I don’t see that they are as easily solved and dismissed as he thinks possible. One key concern of mine, is that If the workers of Guilds are allowed to set prices, that means that prices will be artificially high, such as Detroit's automakers were in the 70’s, and then soon some one, such as Japan, will come along and see that costs are indeed too high, and they will take that opportunity to do better work for less cost, and once that happens those workers and Guilds are going to be seen as Fat fast, and then cut off ASAP.”

The key to Guilds are that they directly involve workers AND supervisors AND owners. Indeed, the ‘classic’ guild is really a consortium of tradesmen/owners that are self-employed. Larger shops also include representatives for employees, all of whom usually are independent contractors, capable of being independent, or are in training to be independent. Even when it is comprised of large shops with many employees and few owners, remember – the owners and managers are part of it, too.

Usually Distributivists admit that Guild are not a universal solution (I am one of them), but are primarily for the trades and professions. However, I have less general objection to unions than Blogodidact. My specific complaint is with mandatory unions. If the UAW, Teamsters, etc. were not mandatory unions, they would have A) never had the power that they had and B) ceased to exist when they began abusing their powers. I’ve worked in mandatory union shops and I can testify – they are hellish. I have also worked in voluntary union shops and they were much, much better. When you can join any union, no union, or drop out of a union when you wish it means that the unions are forced to do what they are designed to do – help workers. If they do a lousy job, people leave them. If they try to wring concessions from management that makes the business less competitive, they are going to go away pretty quickly when the other unions and the independents oppose them.

Therefore, I see Guilds as also being voluntary out of necessity. I stated the historic results of mandatory Guilds – they were worse than unions in the long term. Where they do work, Guilds work like a combination consortium and brand; they allow many small businesses to pool resources to gain the economies of scale and provide a familiar guarantee of quality to consumers. Mutual agreements on pricing and quality within the Guilds will therefore be aimed at being competitive out of sheer necessity.

Van then hits two points quickly, which I will combine:

“A lender may charge reasonable fees for a loan or for exchanging money. A lender may charge a reasonable penalty for a late payment.”

And

“…argue that interest rates should be extremely low (on the order of 1-2% at most) and, especially for home loans, others argue that no interest is acceptable at all, only fees.”

And then comments:

“…Deep Thought promotes Distributionism as more of an ethical practice, which if emulated (aside from the concerns above) would be for the most part a positive step, certainly an improvement over the state of our current mixed economy.”

Exactly. The comments on things like interest rates, types of loans, cooperatives, etc. are guidelines for Distributionists to follow voluntarily. This is about Distributionists working with each other to build a better way of life by remembering that economics and ethics and philosophy can’t be separated.

Van then goes on and, well, confuses me a little bit. He writes this:

““Laissez-faire Capitalism is an argument that “Selfish, unjust actions lead to altruistic, just results… eventually.” This is typical of conservative views, which I think undermines us in so many ways. Being able to do what you see fit because it is right to be able to – that will produce the most wealth and value in the end, but that is a non-essential side effect, and ignores the fact that it will inevitably bring disappointment and ruin to many people as well. It is that ignored last part, which those demagogues lurking out there, looking for an in, will inevitably use in an attempt to cast the first part as 'an unmet promise', a tool, to put governmental power into their hands to “do good’.”

Which is dead on, and the main focus of Distributivist thinkers. But he follows it immediately with this:

““…It goes on to point to the continued failings of unfettered Capitalism and the need to always remember the inherent worth of the individual and the need for solidarity.” What failures are they? When?”

Uh…. The ones you just mentioned. Van just wrote that laissez-faire Capitalism “…ignores the fact that it will inevitably bring disappointment and ruin to many people, as well” and that this empowers demagogues to take advantage of that to undermine the rights and freedoms of people. That is what Belloc was discussing in the Servile State, Chesterton in What’s Wrong with the World, etc.

Van then concludes:

“There is, admittedly, a harshness associated with capitalism, a harshness which I am in the process of experiencing a taste of it myself at the moment – our CIO has been sacked, our projects restructured, and I’ve got to learn and become proficient in a new programming language lickety-split, or I’ll be out the door as well.It is harsh, life is harsh – Black & White is harsh and it is only through the painfully slow process of earning and saving your wealth that we are able to soften the edges a bit and provide some cushion and comfort for ourselves. As I see it, any attempt at artificially creating that cushioning through the power of governments ability to rob Peter to pay for collective Paul, or even worse, to force Peter or Paul to act against what their own judgment tells them they should do - will be doing no one any favors in the end. If we want our Ends to be Just, our means must be Just, anything else is necessarily using the Ends to justify the Means, and that will most certainly be a bitter end for all.” [emphasis mine –DT]

This is great stuff. Great stuff. This is the point of Distributionism. Capitalism is the best economic system we have figured out so far, but when its ends are divorced from its means, when its processes of production are isolated from ethics and philosophy, then you have laissez-faire Capitalism. Laissez-faire Capitalism has long term good results that have short-term victims. The goal of Distributionism is to use the voluntary actions of individuals to ameliorate these negative effects in a manner that not only remains Capitalist, but has competitive advantages.

Van and I seem to share a problem – we can’t be brief! But I hope that now he and I will do a bit less talking past each other and more actual discussion on this topic.

I’ll add more detail next time to exactly how I propose to make Distributionism work and why.

note: fixed a bad link

2006-10-02T11:24:00.000-07:00

A Reply

Blogodidact, whom I normally read regularly (see my blogroll) seems to have really missed what I was talking about in my Primer of Distributionism. BD seems, somehow, to believe that Distributionism (and/or I) think money is the root of all evil, or that I believe that there is a finite amount of wealth so it must be taken from those who have it to get some for those who don’t. He also seems to think that I have some idea about ‘too much’ money, or profit, or something. All I can say is – either I wrote very badly or he jumped to conclusions. Also, I can definitively say he has missed just a few of my blog posts from the past.

The Catholic Church, Distributivist theorists, and I all agree – money is not the root of all evil. Indeed, I know that BD did not read Rerum Novarum where he would have seen that the Catholic Church officially promotes the ownership of private property as a Good Thing. It also promotes hard work, thriftiness, and being able to quit when you darn well please. The Catholic Church, Distributivists, and I also speak about the great boon of private property is that it generates more wealth than public property or collective property. This is a dead giveaway that none of the people on that list think that economics is a zero-sum game.

Just to be clear, we are all certain that economics is not a zero-sum game.

I did mention ‘too much money’ once – in the context that there is no such thing and that the Catholic Church and Distributivists oppose the redistribution of money, land, or other capital! I do not know how I placed such a clear statement into my work and BD missed it.

BD also spends quite a bit of time taking me to task for opposing the moneylender and the middleman. I hope he can go back to my writings and see what I really said – avoid high interest rates (that’s just good business) and prefer actual partial ownership over ‘pure’ lending. If you share the risks you are both more likely to make ‘good’ loans (i.e., profit-earning), you are less likely to invest in a lousy idea (always embarrassing). And as a businessman myself, I can tell you this – avoiding middlemen is good business! They usually add overhead, complications, time, and (often) make resolving problems more difficult. If your value-added reseller is adding enough value to overcome their cost, bully for you! But I bet they aren’t.

Let me sum up a bit: the goal of Distributionism is to encourage actual investment over ‘pure’ loans; to avoid high interest rates on loans you acquire; avoid middlemen when possible to reduce costs; to prefer cooperative ventures (like credit unions) where you are a part-owner of the services you use over ‘pure’ third party services (like banks); prefer professional associations like guilds over unions; oppose all mandatory membership associations; minimize the power of central governments; and state governments; and county governments; and local governments; prefer suppliers and vendors that you have a personal relationship with over impersonal ones; build more personal relationships with businesses. This is all just sound business, folks!

Just to be clear again, I stand by my assertion that you should avoid high interest rates on loans.

BD wrote this,
“Property that is private property is cared for, is improved, and also serves to establish value and regard amongst (rational) individuals in a society. Respect for your own property, requires a reciprocal respect for others property, else how could anyone manage to keep property private, unless all agreed to respect another’s claim to their own property? A society whose economy is based on money requires a society that understands and respects the rule of law”

This is almost a better paraphrase of Catholic social teaching on private property than the one I wrote – so why is he using it in an attempt to refute what I wrote? Beats me.

His emphasis on avoiding government regulation and his charges that Distributionism wants such laws lead me to a simple conclusion – he skimmed what I wrote. Otherwise, how do I understand that I spent so much time explaining subsidiarity (that you should avoid as much government regulation as possible) and he didn’t get it?

As I said again and again, Distributionism isn’t about getting rid of Capitalism, it is about making as many Capitalists as possible. It rejects redistribution of wealth in favor of distribution if capitalists – in hopes of a world so chock-a-block full of Capitalists there is no room for silliness like Socialism anymore.

2006-09-27T11:37:00.000-07:00

A World of Artisans: Distributionism as an Economic Third Way

This is the fourth in a series of articles about Distributionism. You can read the earlier pieces here, here and here.

I will attempt to draw the various ideas together to show not just how to encourage Distributionism, but what I think a Distributivist society would look like and some of the effects I think it would have on other societies. To make this as clear as possible I will attempt to do this in a single post, so I apologize in advance for its length.

In the views of Distributivist thinkers (and in my own opinion) Fascism, Communism, Socialism, and laissez-faire Capitalism all result from the same mistake. And that mistake is to misapprehend the goal of economic activity. For laissez-faire Capitalists, the error is thinking that the goal is to maximize profits with the goal of accumulating the greatest possible capital; for Communists the goal is transformation of Mankind into a new sort of person with a different nature; for Fascists the goal is social order and stability; for Socialists the goal is perfect equality of outcome (which they mistake for justice). Belloc and Chesterton point out where these errors can lead, and history has shown them to be pretty accurate. In every case the essential needs of Man are in at least some ways neglected, leading to unhappiness, abuse, and, eventually, tyranny.

The real answer is surprising in its simplicity; the goal of economic activity is the same as the goal of society. The goal is happiness. In ‘The Outline of Sanity ‘Chesterton wrote,
“There is no obligation on us to be richer, or busier, or more efficient, or more productive, or more progressive, or in any way worldlier or wealthier, if it does not make us happier”

We seek happiness in society through friendship, family, the development of character, and the improvement of our fellow man. We seek happiness through economics by acquiring the essentials of stability, the leisure of self-improvement and beauty, and the improvement of our fellow man. As the principle of solidarity points out, society and economics cannot be divorced from one another. This means that we must engage in economics with our neighbors and cannot forget that we are as dependent upon them as they are upon us. The principle of subsidiarity points out that, just as the most important element of society is the smallest and closest (the family), so our economics should look to smaller, closer ventures to maximize happiness.

There can be no true happiness in the absence of security. The first goal of society is security (from outside invaders, from crime, from abuses of rights) and the first goal of economics should be security (from hunger, homelessness, and exploitation). But just as a society that does not need to fear crime is not necessarily fair or open, a society where all are fed is not necessarily just or free. Security is the foundation, not the end, and this must always be kept in mind.

Many Distributionists argue that concentration of capital into the hands of too few people leads to a decline in liberty that can lead to a state resembling slavery for those who lack capital. The proposed solution is to strive to distribute capital as much as possible (hence Distributionism) so that most, if not all, families are capable of self-sufficiency. This leaves a wide range of possibilities; farmers that have enough land to provide for themselves both directly and through the sale of ‘excess’ produce; skilled tradesmen with their own tools and enough skill that they can be either self-employed or find employment both readily available and their jobs portable (such as a carpenter or computer programmer); factory workers who are part-owners of their factory with sufficient equity that they are involved in issues of capital expenditures and share the reqards and risks of production; retail employee/owners who make cooperative purchases of stock, participate in sales, and either lease or co-own their facility.

As you can see, the ideas of self-sufficiency, solidarity, subsidiarity, an aversion to wage slavery, and social justice tend to point along a particular path, one that rejects Communism, Socialism, and Fascism and is opposed to corporate consolidation and monopolies. The result, where as many people as possible are professionals that own all the tools required for their work and deal as directly as possible with each other, could be called a world of artisans.

A world of artisans would nullify the tendencies of industrial and post-industrial nations to slip into authoritarianism, regardless of their ‘flavor’. The economic displacement of both industrialization and the transformation to post-industrialism creates feelings of fear and insecurity amongst many people who are incapable of self-sufficiency do to a lack of personal capital; they need wages to live and are incapable of generating them without access to someone else’s capital. Changes in the structure are coming that means that they are unsure of continuing access to capital. A simple example is a worker at an auto-plant. He cannot make cars himself; he owns none of the tools, materials, or facilities to make cars himself; his skills are specialized to the point that no other employment but car-making affords him the potential of a living wage. As plants are closed or moved, he is (naturally) afraid of losing his home, even of losing his life to hunger.

Capitalist economies will always lead to some level of insecurity; it is their nature. The feelings of fear created by those lacking capital will be utilized by those who desire change. They may be Machiavellian, they may be benign, but someone will harness the insecurities to effect change. If the desire is to do away with the insecurities of Capitalism altogether, the goal of change will be Communism. If the goal is to use the power of the central government to take capital from one group and give it to another to ameliorate insecurity, the goal is Socialism. If the goal is to make Capitalism more efficient in the desire to accelerate economic growth and reduce insecurity through expansion, the goal is laissez-faire Capitalism in its ‘purest’ form. If the goal is to stabilize society while maintaining Capitalism (and the largest Capitalists), the goal is Fascism.

I am aware that some will argue with my definitions, above. These are my own very broadly-brushed opinions, nit an in-depth analysis of political methods other than Distributionism.
Distributionism argues that Communism and Socialism are wrong (and lead to oppression) because they make the mistake of blaming Capitalism. They further argue that Fascisms and ‘invisible handers’ are similarly wrong for blaming people. You cannot reject economics, nor reject people – you must integrate them. This is done by making as many people as possible independent economic actors – in other words, capitalists.

But how do we get there?

As I mentioned in Part II, the shift to Distributionism cannot be coerced or via ‘negative’ means. You cannot seize land from those that have ‘too much’ and give it to those who have ‘too little’; who would decide? Who would enforce such decisions? Both obviously require – a massive, powerful central government, the very antithesis of Distributivist thought. Likewise, imposing higher taxes on people earning ‘too much’ and giving this money to those earning ‘too little’ result in the same formula – injustice enacted by remote, faceless entities. In addition to leading to resentment (from all sides as to what is ‘just’), alienation (of different groups from one another), dependency (of those who gain with no effort), and lawlessness (by those wishing to either avoid being taxed or who wish to profit unjustly) the power of the central government will continue to expand at the expense of local leadership, the family, and the individual.

The path must be positive. Some steps are relatively obvious and even partially in place. Small businesses should be encouraged with tax breaks and loans. Similarly, cooperatives, credit unions, and similar solidarity groups should also receive tax breaks. Microloans to such organizations could be subsidized by government agencies for a strictly limited time to encourage transition. The removal of farm subsidies and their replacement with tax incentives would go a long way toward creating Distributionist farms. Local, regional, state, etc. funding for training, especially in trades and professions, would encourage the creation of more artisans. Laws that encourage guilds should also be created.

And here we come to another key element in early Distributionist thought; the guild. Similar to unions, similar to professional associations, and similar to consortiums, guilds are still unique. The European guilds of the medieval period are, as noted in the link, the source of most modern concepts of intellectual property, business ethics, trade, and social security. The were formed by members of the same or closely-related trades or professions, generally as independent, self-employed artisans and professionals working together for their own greater good. They set standards of education for their members (and prospective members), codes of conduct, quality standards for products, even rules for contents, size of products, etc. Virtually all of them also organized funds and systems to care for the widows and orphans of members, for members no longer able to work due to disability, and the retired/elderly members of the guild.

Historically a number of guilds negotiated exclusive contracts with cities, preventing non-guild members from practicing their professions there. This eventually led to their concentration in such cities and, ultimately, their downfall as they became isolated and hidebound fraternal institutions. Their counterparts outside the cities often refused to join organizations they saw as urban and both were more able to change quickly and, interestingly, were easier prey for large capital concerns who wished to consolidate. Distributionist thought is to learn from history and employ the best of guilds while rejecting their tendencies to become focused on defending exclusive territories and protecting trade secrets. Under this model Guilds are to have an almost dual nature; internal and external. Internally they act like fraternal societies and professional boards/consortiums. They ensure training and performance standards, enforce ethics, provide insurance services for members, manage pensions and trusts, engage in cooperative enterprises with other guilds, etc. Externally, they are almost like a brand. Consumers that deal with members of, for example, the baker’s guild know that they can trust the contents of the baker’s goods, his level of training, the standards of cleanliness of the bakery, his business ethics, etc.

Guilds differ from unions in a very important element – all levels of the profession or trade are in the same organization. While unions tend to pit employee against employer, guilds force them to work together. Since guild members have the skills, tools, and other capital needed to make them ‘portable’ (they can work for themselves or another master of their profession with ease) there is less insecurity on the part of wage earners. Employers within the guild ‘worked their way up’ through the guild and are very clearly aligned with their workers in the joint venture of success for all members of the guild. Since many guilds historically had rules on the election of guild members to local leadership councils and guild assemblies, the voice of the employed has as much weight as the voice of employers in large decisions, as well. The preferred management of Guilds is at the level of individual self-employed worker, then small shops, then a neighborhood, etc. The involvement of workers ensures such things as a living wage, decent social benefits, and a voice in larger decisions. The non-exclusive nature of a guild means that guilds that become corrupt, exclusive, coercive, etc. will simply have their members melt away/ It is almost like the Wobblies, but with the managers and owners involved, too!

More seriously, the Guild system is a microcosm of Distributionism; the line between employer and employee is virtually eliminated since the employee has the means to become self-employed or an employer himself; the organization is founded on the principles of solidarity, subsidiarity, and justice. The goal of guilds is not to erase Capitalism (which was the goal of many early trade unionists), but to embrace it, to take the best of Capitalism and share it through the free actions of voluntary members. At the same time, guilds share the risks and dangers of Capitalism and ameliorate them through acting with and for each other. Their goal is to create a community where the members avoid the excesses of materialism through close association with their peers, a focus on the needs of their community, and a desire to contribute to the society that makes their success possible. These voluntary organizations succeeded not by rejecting Capitalism, but by sharing the Capitalism, the risks and insecurities as much as, or even more than, the rewards. This is an emulation of civilization itself; the protection of society by sharing risks and hardship is the cornerstone of the advance from barbarism. The voluntary sharing of the benefits of security is the cornerstone of a just civilization.

I can almost hear you now,
“Hold it!” you say, “Deep, you aren’t describing Distributionism as a ‘Third Way’, are you?”

No, I’m not. Mainly because I don’t think that it is a third way. Communism has always been a pipe-dream of people whose arguments begin and end with ‘once we change Man’s essential nature…”; Socialism is an argument that concludes “…and thus we will give Man more freedom by carefully controlling him.”; Fascism is an argument that “We know what is best for you!”; Laissez-faire Capitalism is an argument that “Selfish, unjust actions lead to altruistic, just results… eventually.” Distributionism rejects Communism, Socialism, and Fascism as unjust and immoral in their very conceptualization. It also rejects laissez-faire Capitalism as a wrong-headed attempt to separate ends from means. So, in the end, it is not a Third Way, it is simply the acknowledgement that Capitalism is the best known economic system, and that very minor, voluntary controls can prevent Capitalism from becoming a tool for injustice.

Since Distributivist writers and thinkers spend a lot of time explaining what is wrong with the world, and what Distributionism is against, it has been argued that Distributionism is no more than a reaction, a denial, a ‘no’. In short, it is impractical, even evil. The arguments against Distributionism range from ‘it prohibits international trade’ to ‘it cannot compete with huge multinationals’ to ‘it has no political platform for politicians to use in advocating it’. I find the concept that Distributivist are against international trade when virtually all of them point to the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation as an example not only of international trade, but successful competition with huge multinationals. Or that small firms cannot compete with large ones when small ‘mom and pop’ shops have successfully limited WalMart in China and carved out serious market share in America in recent years. I must also confess that I was surprised when Fr. Neuhaus, whom I normally find to have a very informed opinion, dismisses Distributionism as not having anything to which to attach policies or platforms in the political arena. America has; a Small Business Administration that promotes small business; farm co-ops, credit unions, consumer co-ops, and business co-ops like ACE hardware on almost every corner; a history where the Grange movement held strong, if brief, political influence over national politics; a growing concern over the impact of large enterprises like Wal-Mart and Microsoft of the well-being of the average person; and a rather large (and growing) government job training program. With all respect to Fr. Neuhaus, but I suspect his obliviousness to possible political planks supporting Distributionism may have more to do with his own ignorance of Distributionism, politics and American business than any weakness of Distributionist thought.

Indeed, it would be a rather simple matter to craft political positions that would have a broad appeal and promote Distributionism in a non-coercive manner. As I mentioned earlier, tax breaks for small businesses would be well-received by many. Pointing out that the vast majority of new jobs in America are generated by small businesses would go a long way to making it more popular. Tax incentives for co-ops would face similar approval across a broad segment of society, and it would be a simple matter to increase support for credit unions and similar activities. Reduction of levies and tariffs for small business and co-ops would also help. An increase in awareness of the value of trades would be of great benefit, too.

That seems pretty simple, really; the engine of job growth in America (and the world) is small business; tradesmen are critical for small business; co-ops of all sorts are efficient, competitive organizations that provide solid business benefits to their participants. I am not sure what Fr. Neuhaus and his fellow detractors are missing, but these seem easy sells as political positions. Conservatives can focus on tax relief for business owners and job creation, Liberals can focus on job creation and tax relief for students, blue collar workers, and mom & pop shops. Both can appeal to farmers and rural voters by supporting co-ops.

Seems like a win-win to me.

Next time: more on Distributionism, but on a more personal level.

2006-09-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

Comments

A recent blog update seems to have wiped out comments - I hope to have them restored in a few days.

2006-09-21T05:23:00.000-07:00

A Primer on Distributionism II: More Details on What It Is

This is the third in a series of articles about Distributionism. You can read the earlier pieces here and here.

In the previous piece A Primer on Distributionism I listed a number of concepts that are either generally accepted by Distributist writers as essential to the concept or ideas that are in dispute that I support as part of Distributionism. I’d like to go into each of those points in greater detail.

1. All men have a right to private property, just compensation for their goods and labor, and to enter into business agreements of their own free will:

In Rerum Novarum Pope Leo XIII anticipated the idea of ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ which is, simply – things owned by everyone (like communal farms, fisheries, etc.) are depleted because no one is responsible for them and, more critically, no one sees them as critical to their own future or the future of their family. Private property is, overall, better cared for and developed than communal property. It is also generally more productive, creating a larger surplus. These are the basic reasons to approve of and promote private property.
Another reason to promote private property is justice; a man is entitled to appropriate compensation for his work. Whether a laborer or a highly-specialized technician, wages should be appropriate and just. This means a living wage is to be paid except in unusual circumstances (a part-time job, for example, may be exempt from the requirement of a living wage). For the compensation to be just, the wage earner must be free to spend his wages as he wishes (within the bounds of moral law, of course) and if he is frugal, hard-working, etc. and accumulates capital, it is his to keep.
Similarly, a man who produces goods or commodities must be paid a just amount for those items. This actually may not generate a living wage, but as long as the payment is just, that is acceptable. The concern here is the use of price controls and tariffs to push the margins of producers so low they can no longer afford to produce and sell their goods.
One of the elements I find most important is the fact that business agreements, including employment, must be made of free will. While this is often pointed out as meaning that a starving man cannot be forced to sign a lousy deal, it has broader implications. A mandatory-union shop, for example, might be seen as an imposition of coercion. While Catholic social teaching is very clear that people have a right to join organizations such as trade unions, it also states that people must also be free to avoid them, as well.

2. Private ownership of property and work are good for the individual and society as a whole:

This is simply the argument that being productive is good for the person doing it. More critically, it points out that the goal of being productive is not just for one’s own benefit, but for the benefit of of the family, community and, thereby, society as a whole.

3. Responsibility and decision-making should be ‘pushed down’ as low as possible; private organizations are better at getting things done than governments; the more local, the better:

This is the most direct implication (and application!) of the concept of subsidiarity. While I have made arguments (see the early articles linked at the top) that this is a practical issue because of efficiency, it is more critically an issue of justice. People have a right to determine their own destinies and should be given every opportunity to do so as long as the ‘greater good’ is not at risk. This is an extension of the concept that people need to do things of their own free will – the more removed the decision making is from the person affected, the more of an imposition on there free will is involved. Same with private groups being preferable to governmental groups and local being preferable to distant – it grants greater autonomy to the individual as well as providing the best and most direct benefit to the individual’s immediate community.
This can be taken too far! There is a need for, as an example, a national military. And I don’t think too many people would disagree with me when I state a military force should be under the control of a legitimate government, not private owners. While people should look for local solutions, this does not mean that there is a prohibition on distant opportunities. If you are a businessman and the only source for widgets is on the other side of the world, go ahead and buy them. You might want to mention to local entrepreneurs, however, your need for widgets! The statement is that local and smaller are better, not that large and distant are evil.

4. All families should be as self-sufficient as possible:

There are a number of reasons for this. First of all, of course, is the fact that self-sufficient families do not go hungry. They may not have 3 cars and a boat, but they are also spared the fear of insecurity. It also means that the members of the family have fewer constraints on their free will; if they do not have to worry about the necessities of life they are less likely to be exploited by others. Self-sufficiency is likely to lead to more free time that can be spent on education, art, music, and the other things that make life richer. The idea that every family becoming self-sufficient would lead to a truly just, equal, and happy society with an absence of poverty, is the heart of early Distributivist thought and is still the cornerstone of Distributionism’s plans and goals. G. K. Chesterton summed it up in a single quote, “The problem with Capitalism is not too much Capitalism, but too few Capitalists
The preferred method of being self-sufficient is to own your own business. For early Distributivists this goal meant that they were agrarians and felt each family should have enough land to grown their own food and generate enough income to meet their other needs. Later Distributists argued that the head of each family should have the tools and training to be an independent tradesman (such as a carpenter), and current Distributists acknowledge that certain professions, such as computer programmer, have the potential to meet this goal through specialized skills and knowledge alone.

5. Coops and Guilds are preferred over corporations and unions. This also means credit unions are to be preferred over banks:

Just as with the preference for local over remote and private over governmental, Distributionism has a preference for coops and guilds to corporations and unions. Where corporations are legal individuals that have owners and employees, coops are employee-owned, meaning there is no differentiation between capitalist and laborer. Consumer coops allow many individuals to act as a community and gain all the advantages of scale by buying in bulk as a community. While unions are the sole domain of employees, pitting the employed against the employer, guilds are ‘vertical’ organizations that include managers, employers, and employees together, erasing the differences between the various people. While a bank is a private or corporate venture aimed at maximizing profits for owners, credit unions are, essentially, coops aimed at maximizing utility of the owner/users. In each case the goal is to provide maximum benefits overall to all participants (who are usually co-owners or have a vested interest in the venture), not maximize profits for a limited group of owners (who are often completely divorced from the actions of the venture other than the collection of profits).
Another point in favor of coops and credit unions is that the employee-owners/customer-owners are local, not remote, the vast majority of the time. Coops are employees working with and for each other; farm coops are local or regional farmers pooling resources and sharing production; consumer coops are local to regional people working together to get better prices, better quality, difficult to obtain goods, or some combination. In all cases people are drawn together, not separated, by work and commerce.

6. Deal as directly as possible with the producer/end user:

Closely related to all of the above, avoiding middlemen is a goal of Distributionism. In many cases middlemen add no value to goods or services, they simply add costs. There are even cases where middlemen use their access to resources to artificially control markets. In addition to these ‘negative’ reasons, there are good positive reasons; direct sales allows for the development of a personal relationship between buyer and seller/supplier and consumer/etc. Even if the widget factory is in Ghana and your sprocket shop is in Seattle, there is a chance that a direct sales relationship can build community through commerce.

7. Government welfare programs are to be eliminated or at least reduced with elimination the goal:

Government welfare is in some ways the antithesis of Distributionism. Welfare programs are funded by taxes [which take away from the just earnings of workers and add to the costs of all communities], are administered by bureaucrats [remote, unconnected government agencies with no real interest in either those taxed or those receiving benefits], have no real hope of meeting the actual needs of recipients [those same distant bureaucrats must come up with a generic, one size fits all plan, attempt to implement it on a grand scale, and are further constrained at all times by political issues], and actively degrade communities [non-recipients assume recipients are OK; the recipients are alienated from others by being marked as ‘different’ with no human compassion associated, etc].
Distributionism would repeal all such programs as could be repealed without harm immediately and push the rest as far down the ladder (state, county, local government, etc.) as possible and begin phasing the remainder out. Charity should be a matter for communities, not bureaucracies.

9. Usury is to be avoided:

“Usury” means “interest on loaned money, or excessive interest”. Traditionally, charging interest on money loaned to another was seen as taking advantage of another person, if not downright theft. It was almost universally condemned in the West until the Reformation and still has detractors. St. Thomas Aquinas argues that charging interest for a loan is the same as charging a person for a thing (after all, you must pay back the principle) and charging for the use of a thing, too; like selling a man a cake and then charging him additionally for each bite he takes.
The Catholic position on usury is, bluntly, very complex. A number of theologians have approached the idea of interest on loans from a variety of viewpoints for, essentially, 2,000 years. Although there is disagreement on particulars (how much interest is ‘excessive’?) the basic ideas of just lending are fairly well defined. I will start with what is allowed.
A lender may charge reasonable fees for a loan or for exchanging money. A lender may charge a reasonable penalty for a late payment. Interest that is profit-based (i.e., the ‘loan’ is to purchase a share in a venture) is acceptable, especially if there is an ‘upper cap’ to the earned interest. Investment into public funds (like savings bonds, or t-bills) is acceptable. Loans where the lender shares in risk allow the lender to charge reasonable interest.
What is not allowed is to charge unreasonable interest in any form of loan. You may not charge interest on fee amounts or penalties. The more secure the loan, the less you may charge. If there is collateral held ‘in pledge’ you may not charge interest. You may not charge interest if the borrower is driven to a lender by necessity.
The preferred manner of lending money that earns interest has always been for a productive venture where the lender shares the risk, such as buying a share in a new business. In this model interest is a share of profits, not a fee for the use of money. The modern stock market is seen by some as a violation of this, however, because investors often buy and sell stocks so rapidly that there is, effectively, very little shared risk. Under the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, the ‘best’ loan for interest would be a joint venture of local or regional investors (or global investors with shared values and a personal relationship) for a productive venture (a farm or factory, real estate development, mine, etc.) where the investors receive a fixed portion of net profits as interest and all share in the risk so that if the venture struggles they earn no interest and if it fails they do not regain their capital. Also, if there is a primary investor/owner, he should have the option of ‘buying out’ shareholders by repaying them their full initial investment.. Similarly, interest-earning investments into public bonds, t-bills, and similar instruments is generally acceptable under the concept that the investment is funding the community as a whole. Certain cases (such as a municipal bond to fund the construction of a casino, or for a privately owned ballpark) are more problematic and require individual scrutiny.
The strongest debate on interest/usury is on loans for consumption. The primary examples of these sorts of loans are form family homes and cars. While homes increase in value, a person’s home does so so slowly (in general) and the need for a home is so great that the increase in value is certainly not the primary reason for investing – that reason is to live there. A car decreases in value over time and is certainly not a productive purchase on its own (with a few exceptions). In almost all cases the lender has provisions to seize the home or car if payments are not made, making their risk very low; in the case of home loans, their risk can often be zero. Many theologians and ethicists that examine such loans argue that interest rates should be extremely low (on the order of 1-2% at most) and, especially for home loans, others argue that no interest is acceptable at all, only fees.
The most despised form of loan with interest is for necessities or passions. These are the use of credit cards to buy groceries, or a loan to a gambler. Their impaired will often leads such borrowers to ‘ruinous circumstances’, situations that usurious loans only make worse.

10. The key to developing Distributionism is positive reinforcement:

Based as it is upon justice and the exercise of free will, Distributionism cannot be imposed. Some advocates of Distributionism argue that land should be seized and reapportioned equally; others want strong taxes on corporations and the wealthy with the tac receipts given to the poor. Both are against the core concepts of private property and free exercise of the will, respectively. Further, such actions would only break down or remove any feelings of solidarity between those who have their property and wages taken from them and those that receive them from no inherent virtue. Lastly, such actions would, by necessity, have to be performed by a national government, violating the spirit of subsidiarity. No, if you believe, as I do, that Distributionism is a more-just system, it must be encouraged by just means. My next piece will discuss my ideas on how to do this in greater detail.

And what may be the most important point of this primer-

There is no utopia:

No earthly system is perfect, nor will there ever be one. Distributionism is not a ‘magic bullet’ that will cause the world to spontaneously break into universal peace, the immediate cessation of crime, or the permanent elimination of want and fear. It is an attempt to dampen the harmful excesses of laissez-faire Capitalism without resorting to plans that require the violation of human rights (Socialism) or the conjectured alteration of basic human nature (Communism), all while avoiding the tendency powerful central governments have of deciding that they know what is best for their citizens (Fascism).
The tendencies of societies to shift to predatory Capitalism, confiscatory Socialism, authoritarian Fascism, or dictatorial Communism should be obvious. Forging a Distributionist society will take time, effort, and some pain. Mistakes will be made, adjustments will be needed, and results will vary.
The thing to remember is that the core ideas of Distributionism are the ones that matter; justice, solidarity, subsidiarity, and personal responsibility are the key elements. The details of how to reach a society that embodies those principles will certainly change over time.

Next time I will discuss my ideas on how to build a Distributionist society and what it would look like.

2006-09-18T19:07:00.000-07:00

Indeed, I do support His Holiness. The fact that the media are repeating his quote of an ancient source as if he said it, and that this is an excuse for Muslims to threaten assassination, burn churches, and murder innocent people tells me that Pope Benedict's topic, Faith and Reason are united, and both reject "holy war", struck a nerve.

2006-09-13T10:42:00.000-07:00

A Primer on Distributionism: The Origin, Influence, and Basic Ideas of Distributionism

As I mentioned in We’re all in this Together, Catholic social teaching rejects Communism as denying individual rights (or even individuality). This teaching also rejects Socialism for treating people as merely means to the end of production while also restricting their autonomy. And it further rejects laissez-faire capitalism as treating people as means to the end of profit and removing moral decisions from the economic sphere. This rejection of the Left’s Communism/Socialism and the Right’s unfettered Capitalism is why a number of economists and Catholic thinkers from the 1880 to today have used Catholic teachings in an attempt to build a Third Way.

Modern Catholic social teaching really began with the encyclical Rerum Novarum (Of New Things) by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. A response (as all good theology is a response to questions or problems) to the failures of Capitalism and spreading revolutions of anarchy, Communism and Socialism, Rerum Novarum was immediately seen as a new way of looking at the world of work and money. It was hugely influential within the Church and beyond. In 1931 Pope Pius XI released Quadragesimo Anno (Forty Years After) a more detailed discussion of the idea of subsidiarity that was first expressed forty years previously in Rerum Novarum. Pope Pius XI gave a more detailed ‘map’ of how subsidiarity could be used to create labor structures akin to guilds, expressed a deeper definition of subsidiarity in government and organizations, and reiterated that the chief duty of both is to protect the sick and the poor. In 1961 Pope John XXIII released the encyclical Mater et Magistra (Mother and Teacher). Mater et Magistra continued to stress the dignity of the person, the need for justice in all human interactions, the inability of material goods to provide people with fulfillment, and repeated the emphasis on subsidiarity and solidarity. Most recently Pope John Paul II released Centesimus Annus (Hundredth Year) which pointed to the fall of the Soviet Union and how Rerum Novarum had predicted the results of the implementation of Socialism more than 20 years before the Societ Union was founded. It goes on to point to the continued failings of unfettered Capitalism and the need to always remember the inherent worth of the individual and the need for solidarity. Centesimus Annus also points out that skills and ability have taken an even greater prominence than they had in the late 1800’s (when Rerum Novarum was issued) or the mid-1900’s (when Mater et Magistra was issued). This completes the transisiton from Rerum Novarum, which mentions all three but focused on land as the center of economic life through Mater et Magistra that acknowledged the then-central role of monetary capital, to the current day when knowledge had taken the center place. This not only reflects the changes in society and economics from the various times, but also the flexibility and applicability of the core tenets of Catholic social teachings – they are, literally, timeless.

This emphasis on the Papal source of the Third Way may seem a little, well, inward-looking. Most modern people think of papal encyclicals (if they are aware of them at all) as theologians talking to each other, or the Pope giving orders to the bishops. The impact of these works, however, was and is profound. Rerum Novarum in particular has had a tremendous impact on economic and political thought for 115 years. As David Boyle very succinctly points out, Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical was the font for the revival of the British Liberal party and movement, became an influential economic force and, very recently, His Holiiness' concept of subsidiarity is now a critical element of the European Union’s constitution. The various political parties in Europe and South America that call themselves Christian Democrats or Christian Social Unionists acknowledge Rerum Novarum as their ‘founding document’ and use Catholic social teachings as one of the bases for their political platforms; the current Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, is a Christian Democrat. Obviously, Catholic social thought is very influential right now.

The transition from Catholic theory to political party had a few intermediary steps, of course. Since we live in an imperfect world there were some missteps on the way, too. The primary initial theorists of what became Distributism (also called Distributivism and, my favorite, Distributionism) were Hillaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton. These two men, both prolific writers and keen thinkers, were wrestling with the problems of their age (and ours); the necessity of people to live with dignity in a world gripped by violent struggles between ideologies. The effects of the Industrial Revolution and the growth of Socialism were the key stressors of their day, so they turned their faculties toward solving the problems of Socialism and Capitalism.

Although largely forgotten today (I suspect because they were neither to the Right or the Left) both men had huge influence in their time. Belloc was nicknamed “Old Thunder” and was considered a formidable opponent in an argument by such men as George Bernard Shaw. In his first year at Oxford he was so appalled at the poor showing of one half of a debate that he spontaneously rose from the audience, launched into an impromptu attack, and won the debate. After Oxford he became a writer and a Minister of Parliament. Later in life he was the editor of the Eye Witness which he took to a weekly readership of 100,000 by attracting writers such as Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. He was one of the earliest voices to warn of Hitler and Fascism.

G. K. Chesterton was the equal to Belloc intellectually and a better writer in many ways. The influence of his writings are, to me at least, shocking for a man virtually ignored today; Chesterton’s book The Everlasting Man was a key element in C.S. Lewis’ conversion to Christianity; his novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill inspired Michael Collins into striving for Irish freedom and thus contributed to Irish independence; a newspaper essay Chesterton wrote had an energizing effect on an British citizen of Indian birth that helped galvanize this man who was grappling with racism in South Africa as he transformed from an apolitical professional into a professional politician – a man named Gandhi. During his life Chesterton was famous for his debates with other thinkers, writers, and speakers of his day. Like Belloc, he was so skillful at debate, so prepared with facts, and so organized in his approach that he rarely lost. Unlike Belloc, Chesterton was so jovial and good natured in debate that he was warmly regarded by virtually everyone, even those he trounced in a public forum. With all of this, it is hard to believe that today, not 80 years from his death, Chesterton is an enigma while men that he soundly defeated at debate, such as Clarence Darrow, are still household names.

Belloc and Chesterton entered into a very fruitful collaboration, jokingly called chesterbelloc, concerning their outlooks and suggested solutions for what they felt was wrong with the world. Belloc’s works Essay on the Restoration of Property, The Crisis of Civilization and The Servile State and Chesterton’s What’s Wrong with the World, Utopia of Usurers, and The Outline of Sanity, all combined with their numerous essays evolved into the basics of Distributionism. Additional input by many others, including the former guild socialist Arthur Penty and Catholic priest Vincent McNabb broadened the scope and reach of Distributionist thought. The impact of Distributist thought never really ended, even after the death of its founders. Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement embraced Distributionism, especially as a means of self-sufficiency. E. F. Schumacher, creator of such ideas as appropriate technology and author of the hugely influential Small is Beautiful, claimed he owed a huge debt to early Distributists and was so compelled by Catholic social teachings and Distributionism that he converted to Catholicism. The impact of Small is Beautiful on the early ecology and environmentalism movement shows a lineage from Chesterton to the modern Simple Living and Sustainable Development movements. Indeed, the current “Crunchy Con” idea is really just a form of Distributionism with a shorter bibliography and more faith in laissez-faire.

Now that I have spent so much time talking about where Distributionism comes from, the impact it has had, and the people involved in it we move one to…

…what in the heck is it, really?

The discussion about what Distributionism is and isn’t, as well as how to accomplish it (and how not too) is still going on. Just like any other politico-economic idea, growth over time is probably a sign of vigor. But there are certain ideas that are core to the idea of Distributionism:

1. All men have a right to private property, to just compensation for their goods and labor, and to enter into business agreements – including employment – of their own free will.

2. aPrivate ownership of property and work (whether physical, artistic, or intellectual) are good both for the individual and society as a whole.

3. That responsibility and decision-making should be ‘pushed down’ as low as possible; the federal government is less efficient at and less capable of making good decisions than the state government, the state less so than the county, etc. down to the family itself.

4. Closely related to #3; private organizations are better at getting things done than governments; smaller groups are generally better than larger; individuals and families over all are the best.

5. The more local, the better.

6. All families should be as self-sufficient as possible.

7. Coops and Guilds are preferred over corporations and unions. This also means credit unions are to be preferred over banks.

8. When engaged in business-to-business ventures, avoid middle-men and deal as directly as possible with the end client/end user.

9. Government welfare programs are to be eliminated whenever possible, reduced or avoided otherwise.

10. There is no utopia, and there never will be.

Some points that I believe are Distributist, but some others do not:

A. Usury is to be avoided.

B. The key to developing Distributionism is positive reinforcement.

In the next article, I will go over each of these points in greater detail and try to draw the various strands together into a larger whole.

2006-09-10T20:32:00.001-07:00

2,996: Janice Ashley

Of the 36 employees at Fred Alger Management at that time, none survived.

The person randomly assigned to me that day was Janice Ashley, a research assistant with Fred Alger Management.

Janice Ashley would be 30 years old right now, if she had not been murdered. In the five years that have elapsed since 9/11 she would have certainly met new people, made new friends, tried new things, and forgotten her keys once or twice. She didn’t get to do those things. All of the people she would have touched were prevented from doing so. All of the people she would have become close to have been robbed of a friend. Janice Ashley will never marry, she will never give her parents grandchildren, and she will never look forward to grandchildren of her own. She was denied the chance to have these things.

Good-bye, Janice. We all miss you.

The Wall of Americans tribute to Janice Ashley is here.

Chez Diva’s tribute is here.

The CNN.com tribute is here.

The legacy.com legacy is here.

The september11victims.com tribute is here.

A picture of the United in Memory quilt section for Janice can be seen here.

2006-09-07T05:10:00.000-07:00

A Quick Interlude

I am going to briefly interrupt the most recent series on Social Justice to, well, point and laugh. I have been known to pickup the local "Indy Media" rag from time to time, in whatever city I happen to be in, to look for good food (why are there so many food reviews in those things?!). I tend to ignore the political article which all seem to be very urgent! About a problem! A big problem!! With the local zoning board! That thinks our local performance art theater may be unsafe! And they want us to spend money on a fire system! And the poor kids don't have to pay admission, so we don’t have the money!! These articles tend to boil down to "The Man is keeping us down, man", which is cool, if a bit too ZNet for me.

Today, though, someone placed one such piece on their blog’s ‘obligatory reading’ post and I dropped by. I found this. It is the typical “White male conservatives sure are evil, aren’t they?” rant, complete with jabs at the ‘male hegemony’ and ‘Jim Crow laws’ pandering to the guilt-ridden middle-class urban White crowd that tends to read these things. But I only got to that stuff after I stopped laughing at the huge errors in the first four paragraphs or so. If you need a laugh or (heaven forbid!) believe the stuff he wrote, let me give you some details.

The author, a Bob Geary, starts with this paragraph:

“Is there an example in American history of the police reacting to a radical threat and not making things worse? From the abolitionists to the anarchists to the communists, and in more recent memory from the Black Liberation Army to the Symbionese Liberation Army to the Weather Underground, we've never lacked for a few revolutionaries willing to kill people and blow up buildings to make their point about how corrupt the country was. After which, the inevitable government crackdown--carried out to the applause of a grateful, fearful nation--did far more damage than the revolutionaries ever could've, making their point about corruption for them.”

Bob seems to think that the Weather Underground (most of whom blew themselves to kingdom come by accident while the majority of the survivors suffer mightily as – tenured professors at prestigious universities) and the SLA (whose revolutionary activities were comprised mainly of robbing banks, taking drugs, and kidnapping people – but they were wearing berets!) are great examples of how the police over-reacted with, I guess, investigations into other groups that used the same language and were comprised of the same sorts as the Weathermen and SLA members. Oooh! Chilling!

More importantly, he seems to have completely forgotten something. White Supremacists and the various Militia groups. Once a source of great apprehension (especially for the Left, who seemed really worried about *Right-wing* militants compared to the Left-wing militants they support, like Che). These groups were quietly investigated, evidence was compiled, and the ones that were engaged in or planning illegal or violent activities were steadily arrested and shipped off to the hoosegaw. No over-reaction, no massive shootouts. Oh, sure, a stand-off or two (like the Montana Feemen), but nothing too serious. Today, the militias are jokes and groups like White Aryan Resistance are more interested in selling music than with the violent overthrow of the ZOG.

Bob doesn’t seem to realize this. Maybe he’s too young to remember all of those news reports on the Militias in the ‘90’s.

But wait! After this we get to the real howler:

“The worst radical threat in U.S. history, though, is the one the government did almost nothing about. The KKK lynched people by the hundreds, burned buildings and churches, and generally terrorized America for decades in the 19th and 20th centuries. At its peak in 1925, it claimed 4 million members, and 30,000 marched proudly in Washington, in a show of how clueless your government can be about who's dangerous and who isn't.
The KKK wasn't stopped by the police or prosecutors, as an important new exhibit in Raleigh makes clear. Civil rights leaders and ordinary people are what brought it to its knees.”

Really, Bob? So the destruction of the first Klan in the 1860’s-1870’s had nothing to do with the so-called “Ku Klux Klan Act” law and President Grant’s use of federal troops? Not to mention the various Southern leaders and politicians who denounced it a scant 2 years after its founding and persecuted its members after they turned to violence? Aren’t you aware, Bob, that the police and politicians of Alabama were so successful at stamping out the second Klan that by 1930, barely 15 years after the founding of the second Klan, it was virtually non-existent in that state? Are you also aware of the major success of police and politicians throughout the 1930’s and 1940’s that reduced the Klan to such lows that they were barely able to claim 5,000 members in 1960? And that governmental program you mention, COINTELPRO – didn’t you know that it was hugely successful in infiltrating and destroying the KKK in the 1970’s?

I guess Bob is totally ignorant of the great success the federal government has had in stopping terrorism in the US, including the very violent Aryan Nations, SLA, KKK, and Weathermen – even though he mentions them specifically.

Its errors like these that keep me from reading the political opinions in the Indy Media.

h/t to Coturnix

2006-09-06T05:31:00.000-07:00

We're All in this Together: Basic Concepts of Catholic Social Justice

This is a continuation of the series that began with The Efficiencies of Charity

We are going to change tacks just a bit after the last post on the efficiencies of the local over the national and talk about Solidarity as a core concept of social justice. A Catholic concept for many years, Socialist tried to co-opt the meaning of solidarity to mean ‘the working classes banded together against the rich’. In reality, solidarity means “the distribution of goods and remuneration for work”, or (more directly) ‘earning a wage and being able to buy things’. It also ‘presupposes the effort for a more just social order’, or ‘the wages should be just and the prices of goods should be just’. Much more importantly than material goods, however, solidarity means friendship and social charity – caring for your fellow men as individuals and working together as a family at the same time. It means not just the poor cooperating with the poor, but with the rich as well – employees and employers banding together to make the workplace a better place. Indeed, at its heart, the concept of solidarity is a rejection of class – there are no rich, no poor, no employer or employee as classes; just people who happen to do different things, but who share the same needs.

Solidarity is the realization that no one in any society is alone. The factory owner depends upon the metal worker who makes the forms for the product being made; the metal worker depends upon the toolmaker, who depends upon the smelter, to the miner, who uses the machines made in the owner’s factory. Just like a family, society is a web of interdependencies. When this is forgotten, the result is tension, strife, and misunderstanding. This aspect of Catholic solidarity was explicitly referenced in Poland (a very Catholic nation) when the movement for justice that arose among the working men of the factories named itself ‘Solidarity’. It is also important to note that solidarity is more about the spiritual and emotional than it is about the material. The goal is justice, not wealth (although greater wealth is often a side effect).

This is a direct contradiction of many ideologies that are seen as ‘Right Wing’; Libertarians and Objectivists, in particular, reject this notion. This admission of the fact of inter-connectedness directly opposes their beliefs (‘there is no society, just individuals’ for Libertarians and ‘there are a few demi-gods that everyone else mooches from’ for Objectivists) that they must either reject it or reject their own beliefs. Yet it is not Leftist, either. There is no compulsion in solidarity and, more critically, no collectivization. Ideas such as compulsory union membership or the seizure of land to make collective farms are alien to this vision of solidarity. It is a voluntary union, a decision made by choice, that forges the friendship that is the core of solidarity.

Another key concept in Catholic social justice is Subsidiarity. Subsidiarity is defined as the principle that "a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co- ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 1883). The OED defines it to mean “the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks that cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate, local level”. In other words – the smaller and more local, the better. This is a moral choice for two reasons. The first reason, as we saw in the Efficiencies of Charity, is that local efforts are both more likely to be appropriate (charity reaches those in need, business plans match the local economy, etc.) and more efficient (less is wasted on administration, distribution, etc.). This is a moral impetus to local control because it means that there is less waste and wasted effort. The second, more important, moral reason is that the loss of personal autonomy can be dehumanizing. When people have less control of their own lives theologians call this an ‘impairment of the will’. Our sense of worth (when we are mentally and spiritually healthy) comes not from material things, but from the choices we make. The exercise of free will is the motor for our choice. When our choices are constrained, we lose some free will. Although there will always be constraints on will and action, those imposed by others for reasons other than moral ones are the most deleterious to the will. This means that impairment of the will can lead to feelings of disconnection from others, depression, and despair. While efficiency alone is a compelling argument for subsidiarity, the addition of the moral pressure to avoid impairment of the will makes it the standard of the Catholic Church.

Catholic social teaching also emphasizes that people have a right to private property (Catechism, para. 2402), but cautions that this comes with responsibilities. As stewards of the earth, owners of property have a responsibility to properly manage their property so that it not only secures them and their families from poverty and violence, but also so that the rights and well being of others are not harmed. Indeed, the Church teaches that property is ‘to be made fruitful’ so that after the owner’s first duty (to his own family) is met, the products of property can be freely shared with others, especially the sick and the poor. Indeed, the catechism states that waste and excessive expense are immoral and that willfully damaging one’s own property in a way that makes it less fruitful is ‘contrary to moral law’ and requires that reparation be made to the community (Catechism, para. 2409).

The inevitable conclusion of the ideas of solidarity, subsidiarity, and the right to private property while recognizing the social responsibilities of ownership is the rejection of Communism and Socialism. Communism denies the existence of private property, making people dependent upon others for their livelihood, denying them the security of property, and reducing them to means of the end of production. Socialism uses central planning and ‘the state’ to make economic decisions for all, removing their free will and denying them security and property.

However, another inevitable conclusion is the rejection of laissez-faire capitalism or ‘pure market’ economics. The strict individualism of laissez-faire capitalism rejects the idea of solidarity and the primacy of ‘the market’ reduces humans to means of the end of profit. In both cases things (either goods or profits) are placed in a position of greater importance than people, a clearly immoral position.

Clearly, Catholic Social Justice rejects Communism/Socialism and free-market Capitalism. As a result of this, the Catholic Church’s teachings on moral economic activity is sometimes called a “Third Way”, or an alternative to the two competing paradigms of political economics of the last 150+ years.

In the next article I will discuss this ‘Third Way’, what it would look like, and where its being used today.

2006-08-31T07:36:00.000-07:00

The Efficiencies of Charity

I have been planning a series of posts for about 2 weeks now explaining a concept called Distributionism. As I was casting about for a good topic to illustrate the core ideas underlying Distributionism, I came across an article by Naomi Klein. While the article as a whole is a joke (the U.S. is going broke? That girl needs to look up the term ‘ratio’), her mockery of the idea of the private sector being more efficient than government (indeed, she assumes her readers will laugh hysterically at the idea) got me to thinking.

Who in their right mind thinks the government is more efficient at anything?

Let’s take a look at a ‘darling program’, one of those programs that every single senators and congressmen feels they absolutely have to vote for. A program so beloved that not voting for it can haunt your political career for decades. The one I will pick is…. Head Start.

Head Start was begun in 1965 as part of LBJ’s Great Society plan, particularly the War on Poverty. The goal was to get kids ready for school before they began, especially poor kids. It provides early education and a meal to kids and has done so for over 40 years. It began as an eight week Summer program, but now ranges from pre-natal care to health screening and pre-school education that can last all year.

I am not going to go into the debate over the effectiveness of Head Start, or the necessity of Head Start, or any of the other controversies surrounding this program. No, I am going to focus on something a little different. Is it the best use of our money? Let’s assume that pre-school education works, and that kids that get at least one decent meal per day during the week have fewer health and education issues, and that being socialized into pre-school is not detrimental to behavior. Fine, let’s assume these are all true. Is there a better way to do these things?

The majority of Head Start participants are 3-5 years of age and only participate during the school year, usually in the mornings. There is also a program called Early Head Start that covers prom pregnant women to the time that the young children are eligible for Head Start. Nailing down the precise per-child price of head start is tough (for example, the Wikipedia entry I linked above states that the cost is about $7,200 per child when the count of participants and budget in the same entry actually indicates that it is closer to $7,600 per child), but it can be found. The Administration for Children and Families states that Early Head Start costs more than $10,500 per child while Head Start proper is $7, 543 per child (don’t trust their total – do the math for yourself). Of their budget of about $6.6 billion dollars they claim that about #233 million goes to research, development, and administration, meaning that about 3% of their budget goes to overhead.

That seems pretty efficient, doesn’t it? I mean, that rivals Feed the Children, one of the largest charity organizations on Earth. Like Head Start, Feed the Children focuses on feeding hungry kids (obviously) but also provides basic education, health screenings and basic services, and even pre-natal care. These two very similar organizations provides similar benefits and Feed the Children is rightly praised for having merely a 3% overhead. It seems that government can be as efficient as the private sector (well, charity sector) after all, right?

Don’t make me laugh. First of all, the Office of Management and Budget admits that the Head Start Budget is structured in such a way that ‘all administrative overheads cannot be determined’. In other words, the Department of Health and Human Services and Administration for Children and Families do all of the actual administration out of their own budgets to effectively hide the real cost of running and managing Head Start. This means that the 3% overhead seen as budget line items is in addition to the salaries paid to all the of the civil servants that run Head Start as part of their daily routine at HHS and ACF. The listed overhead also does not include the costs of developing training guidelines for the Head Start teachers (that is part of the budget of the Department of Education), printing up the guidelines, programs, handouts, training requirements, etc. associated with the program(also the Dept. of Ed.). Also stashed in there is more overhead – internal administrators. While the ACF lists 213,000 paid Head Start staff members, there are only about 50,000 paid Head Start teachers, meaning that the other 160,000+ staffers are administrators, clerks, etc. The complaints about the (relatively) low pay of the teachers also indicates that these staffers are probably better paid. Heck, if they are only paid an average of $25,000 a year, that means the admin salary overhead is about $4 billion a year, or about 58% of the total budget!

Don’t forget the 10,000 plus local, county, and state administrators of local Head Start programs (all of whom receive their salary from either the local government or local school district) as well as the fact that Head Start happens in local schoolrooms, often adding to local administration costs. Another key aspect of the local Head Start programs are the many volunteers involved in the process. Indeed, unpaid local volunteers outnumber paid dedicated Head Start staffers by more than a factor of 6. This means the relatively low costs of Head Start are subsidized by over 1.2 million unpaid volunteers.

Those local operations are very interesting. The ACF report lists the budget and enrollment levels, and in some cases the racial makeup of Head Start. The majority of poor in America are White, yet Head Start enrollment is less than 30% White. The majority of poor in America are rural, but the majority of Head Start participants are urban (see the above links). If Head Start were actually serving those in greatest need, it should look rural and White; instead, it is urban and Black.

Let’s look again at the core of Head Start; pre-school education and a decent meal. The effects (and duration of the effects) of Head Start education are hotly debated, let’s look at costs alone. The majority of Head Start participants are enrolled only during the school year, and only for part of the day. For the sake of being conservative, I will base all of the following numbers on a year round partial day schedule to cover the fact that some kids are in Head Start year round or all day, or both, but trying to keep it as middle-of-the-road as possible. The actual cost per child varies from over $10,000 to as little as a bit over $7,500, so we will use $7,500, as well. Since Head Start is overwhelmingly a weekday program, we will assume that kids attend about 250 days a year. This means that Head Start costs no less than $30 per day per child. While you may think this doesn’t sound too bad, let me remind you – this is to provide basic instruction in letters and numbers (similar to Sesame Street) and to provide a meal and a snack. Looked at that way, its pretty darn steep a price to pay. After all, 3% of the budget goes to overhead like research and program review, about58% goes to administration overhead, and the salaries of the actual teachers comes to an additional 7%, chewing up almost 70%, meaning that the books, construction paper, apples, and juice boxes are being purchased with less than $9.60 per child.

And that $9.50 a day or so is still no bargain! I don’t know about you, but I am a homeschooling Dad with 4 kids at home. Homeschooling my pre-schoolers costs us less than $400/year and Deeper Thought can feed the Airborne Philosophy Squad for less than $3.00 per kid per meal, snacks in between included. We do not have the government’s advantage of A) buying in huge bulk and B) not paying sales tax on our purchases. That means that our year-round daily cost for one meal tops out at about $4.00 per meal, less than half of the Head Start per meal cost. Another point to remember – the numbers above are a generous minimum! If I start using the highest numbers for Early Head Start, that meal, those snacks, and finger paints start edging up on $20 per day per child. This tells me that there is much more waste, overhead, and inefficiency lurking in Head Start, probably to the tune of an additional $5-$15 per child per day.

So while my family can certainly do better, can other institutions do better? Absolutely. Let’s talk about Feed the Children, a group I mentioned above. Feed the Children works to provide roughly the same services as Head Start, albeit all over the world. They openly publish independent audits of their organization that shows where and how the money they receive is spent. Their calculated over head comes to 11%, meaning that for every $30 they spend on a kid, that child receives about $26.70 in food, goods, or education. In fact, what Feed the Children states is that they will feed an American child for a grand total of about $0.25 a day, or roughly 1/40 the cost of Head Start. This level of efficiency allows Feed the Children to provide services world-wide, including disaster relief, and to serve many more kids with much less cash than Head Start.

And Feed the Children is considered to be fairly inefficient, as charities go. Their creation of their own distribution network means that other charities, like Save the Children, with a mission very similar to Feed the Children, but with a greater emphasis on education and health, has an overall efficiency of about 91%, roughly 3% less overhead than Feed the Children. Of course, all national and international charities pale in comparison with that bulwark of American charity – the local church. It is estimated that local churches and parishes, be they Baptist, Catholic, or Lutheran, have a nearly 98% efficiency. Indeed, many churches try to create an endowment that covers all salaries and taxes so that charity donations are 100% to charity. Additionally, such local charity functions as gathering donations of clothing or food are 100% efficient. As a matter of fact, Head Start can chalk up what little efficiency it does have to local action; after all, if they had to pay all those local volunteers even one-fourth what they pay their teachers, it would come to an additional $6 billion a year in their salaries alone.

As we can see, private organizations are more efficient than government organizations. More importantly, local organizations are more efficient than global or national organizations. In this case, if the $6+ billion of the Head Start program were instead used by a group like Feed the Children even if the efficiency of that organization was cut in half the number of children receiving education and food would grow by no less than 150%, all at no increase in costs. This is a key element in Catholic teachings on social justice and society; the concept that local is better.

Next time I will be discussing the ideas of Subsidiarity and Solidarity.

NOTE: Deeper Thought informed me that $3.00 per child per day is actually the ceiling of what she spends, including our forays into fast food.

2006-08-29T03:33:00.000-07:00

Still Moving In

Again, sorry for the light posting, but Deeper Thought, the Airborne Philosophy Squad and I are still moving into the new Casa de Pensamientos Profundos. In the meantime, here are a few more interesting facts about Red vs. Blue/Southern vs. Northern states.

I received another hostile email recently, this time with a northern writer (well, so he claimed, at least) going on and on about Southerners, and not in a good way. Since he used the word 'inbred' four times I figured, what the heck - I'll check out the laws. Some states permit marriage between first cousins, some do not. Here are a few of the states that forbid marriage between first cousins:
Arkansas
Kentucky
Louisiana (unless one or both are adopted)
Mississippi (unless one or both are adopted)
Texas
West Virginia (again, unless one or both are adopted)

For a little balance, here are a few states that permit first cousins to marry, without restrictions:
California
Connecticut
Maryland
Massachusetts
New Jersey
New York
Rhode Island
Vermont

Once again we have a situation where the facts on the ground don't seem to match the stereotype.

2006-08-15T07:17:00.000-07:00

Worth Fighting For

"Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don't understand civilization, and wouldn't like it if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing, and who don't appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is something that just exists and that all they have to do is enjoy what they can understand of it-- luxuries, a high standard of living and easy work for high pay... Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have a government for?
"And now, the hitchhikers think they know more about the car than the people who designed it, so they're going to seize control.”

My interest in politics has an unusual beginning. Sure, many people become interested by reading, but the book that fired my interest was the one I quoted above, a book called Space Viking by H. Beam Piper. Piper was a science fiction author who, like most do, used scifi to explore not the future, but the world we live in now. In other works Piper explored the nature of racism (Little Fuzzy), colonialism (Uller Uprising), and political transformation (Lord Kalvan). The focus of Space Viking was both more broad and more critical – civilization itself.

The dictionary definition of civilization is a rather bland focus on things. Conveniences, art, records, etc. This is also misleading; these things, and the wealth and leisure to create them, are byproducts of civilization. Civilization is shared values that lead to individual and community action that further the weal of the community and continues the propagation of those same values. The particulars of those shared values and the actions they lead to create the tenor of the civilization. Values which do not further the weal of the community cause that community to collapse – thus, they are not civilized. As the community as a whole prospers, individuals and groups within it gain the wealth and leisure to generate records, art, science, conveniences; all the things the dictionary identifies as civilization.

The world has seen a bewildering variety of civilizations; the Mayans, the Mongols, the Beaker People, the Egyptians. Some have been violent against outsiders, some have been inclusive, some have been both at once. Some have succeeded, most have faded or failed. Those that have succeeded can be said to be ‘better’ or ‘more successful’; after all, the goal of civilization is to improve the lot of the community and continue the core values that create the community in the first place.

The values of a civilization also allow one civilization to ‘judge’ another; if group action, communal living, a rejection of the individual, and selflessness toward the group work very well for one civilization, its members would rightly reject a different civilization that is highly individualistic and that touts the individual as so much more important than the group that the group should suffers as a whole before the individual. And, of course, vice-versa. The resulting ‘culture shock’ or ‘clash of civilizations’ can be resolved in a number of ways. Members of one side, the other, or both may drift between the civilizations; they may learn to co-exist; or, likely, they will attempt to absorb/eliminate each other, sometimes by force. Those civilizations that can coexist usually do so because they have a majority of similar core values and those values that differ do not result in direct conflict.

What are the core values of Western civilization?

The concept of natural law as defined by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas
Human life is seen as inherently valuable, leading to a rejection of murder, suicide, and euthanasia
A devotion to the nuclear family
A focus on personal responsibility, personal honor, and personal shame
That idea that the freedom of the individual is a right that is important for its own sake and benefits the community
The idea that personal property is a right that is important for its own sake and benefits the community
Belief in the rule of law

The basis of the conceptualization of Western natural law is Greek philosophy (especially Aristotle) while Western ideas of codified law and property right are Roman. The evolution of these ideas over time is largely the result of philosophers, theologians, and statesmen working within the Catholic paradigm, which directly and explicitly refers to Aristotlean and Jewish concepts of rights, laws, and society. The result is that Western civilization is called a Judeo-Christian civilization with strong Greco-Roman roots. These core beliefs are, thus, essentially Christian beliefs.

The idea that human life is valuable in and of itself combined with the idea that all rights are natural (meaning inalienable) leads to Western civilization having a tendency to grant more freedom and rights to the individuals within it. The rule of law means that no one is above or beyond the law, a belief that condemns corruption, nepotism, and tyranny, making governments more efficient, accountable, and prone to respect the rights of its people.

One of the strengths of Western civilization is its focus on personal responsibility, property rights, and individual freedom. Combined with the legal position that all are equal before the law and the theological position that all are equal before God, the result is a drive to succeed and the common belief that any person may achieve personal fulfillment. This is the core of the American Dream – to live free. This also means that personal wealth or power is not the only measure of success; indeed, the goal of many who first came to America was not great wealth, but simply the lack of financial obligation to a noble class. If an individual in Western civilization defines his own success by other criteria, they are free to do so.

In addition to driving individuals to excel, these values of freedom, personal responsibility, and property rights also mean that ‘outsiders’ are welcomed as long as they accept the rule of law. This allows Western civilization to tolerate non-Western enclaves within their own societies and to dynamically interact with other civilizations in their own areas with a minimum of conflict.

The dedication to the nuclear family has historically led to a division of labor amongst men and women, usually as a result of nothing more than societal norms. As has been noted by researchers, societies with a dedication to the nuclear family and a sex-based division of labor (generally referred to as ‘patriarchal societies’ by modern academics) have strong advantages in economic and political growth over time. The tendency of such societies to value large, stable families (and the resulting stable societies and economic growth) can cause this trend to be maximized over time, resulting in such civilizations having immense long-term advantages over civilizations that do not share these traits.

Indeed, history has shown these values to be so powerful individually that they were referred to not as ‘values’ (more of a squishy, modern term that implies ‘I like brand x’) but as ‘virtues’ (meaning ‘something inherently good’). History has also shown that, when combined, these virtues create civilizations that both improve the weal of the people within it and spread their virtues in an unequaled manner. The Greeks embraced many of these virtues and in addition to their city-states being economic, political, and military powerhouses of their day, their influence is still strong over 2,500 years later. Roman society adopted many Greek virtues and added their own laws and virtues, creating a more stable and more expansionist civilization. The Roman Empire was so successful that the majority of Western social details (parliaments, military structure, language, laws, titles, etc.) are still modeled on their structures right now.

Of course, Sparta and Athens fell into decline until they became merely places where great ideas once came from. The Roman Empire likewise declined and fell before waves of barbarians. Will Western Civilization also decline and fall? Probably, almost certainly.

But why?

The key is what happened to Rome. With its huge territories, vast wealth, and incredible influence, only one thing could bring down Rome. Barbarians. But I don’t mean the Visigoths and the Vandals. Those wandering tribes were just other, formerly weaker, civilizations that took advantage of Rome’s weakness. No, I use ‘barbarians’ as the late Greek philosophers meant it – ‘those who reject civilization’.

The Greeks were sophisticated enough, and world travelers enough, to know that people that didn’t speak Greek and didn’t have triremes were just as smart and cunning as they, themselves, were. Thus ‘barbarian’ came to mean those people who rejected weal, who wanted the benefits of civilization without participating in the virtues that produced them. “Values” that are not virtues are vices (from the Latin word that means ‘defect’) and those that hold them are vicious (which means ‘vice ridden’). The absence of good is not nothing, it is evil. Likewise, the absence of virtue is not neutrality, it is vice.

Individuals that strive for and hold fast to virtues are said (well, were once said) to have a good character and such people were also once praised for their virtue. This is because there was a broad recognition that individuals of character were the driving force of civilization – they are the ones who improve the weal of all and spread the ideals that make that weal possible. These “pillars of society” are, indeed, the pillars of society. People who lacked the virtues were not considered to have no character, they were considered to have a bad character, to actively degrade the society they were in.

I hate to belabor this point, but it is critical. Our ancestors, the much-derided Victorians and Gilded Age members, those “repressed” people with their rather extensive families and quite direct letters recognized that the core virtues of Western civilization had made the West prosperous and secure. They also recognized that the rejection of those virtues would lead, inevitably, to the decline of their prosperity and security. In short, they knew what was good for them and their children and praised it while rejecting what the recognized as damaging to their future.

Over time, however, upholding the virtues that underpin civilization always seems to fall out of favor. It happened in Greece, Rome, the Persian Empire, Han China, Imperial Japan, and many others. It does so for two reasons. First, civilization becomes so ubiquitous that it seems to be the natural state. Prosperity and security have been had for so long that many people come to believe not only that they will not go away, but that they can not go away. The even more compelling reason is – virtue is difficult to cultivate. It takes self-discipline, self-denial, and strength. After a good character is developed individuals realize that virtue is, literally, its own reward; but until then, it’s a tough row to hoe. It seems far easier to ignore self-denial and self-control and just, well, indulge in just a little vice.

This can go on, sometimes for quite some time, because so many other people remain virtuous. The fact that some people are corrupt and are overcharging the government for work is not critical when it is one contractor out of a thousand honest ones. People who deceive charities and receive things that they do not need do not make a big difference when they are few in number and there are many donors to the charity.

Once those little vices are commonplace, however, more and more vices and more and more extreme vices become acceptable. Eventually, virtues are ignored or mocked and the foundation that civilization rests on begins to dissolve. Soon, the majority of the contractors are corrupt because the honest ones can’t compete with the widespread cheating and bribes. Charities have fewer donors and worry more and more that the truly needy are competing with the dishonest. The warning signs of such decline are easily observed; the Greeks decried the loss of virtue, as did the Romans – the prophets of doom were sometimes heeded, especially early, and virtue was returned to esteem. Over time, however, the erosion of character advanced further and further until it was too late..

Within any society there are people that reject character. These are the barbarians that H. Beam Piper wrote about in language more modern than St. Thomas. The barbarians that mock the virtues that built the society they live in and believe that their rejection makes them the ones most qualified to control the society. Where the virtues of temperance and prudence lead people of character to realize that no endeavor, even government or society, can ever be perfect, the vice-ridden love utopian visions of what might be, if they were just in charge. Where the just realize that any worthy endeavor is full of frequent struggle and occasional failure, the barbarian sees struggle as weakness and failure and condemnation. Where the courageous realize that a worthy cause makes a worthy struggle, barbarians want an easy path and condemn all suffering as evil. Where people of character realize that there are sometimes things worth killing for and certainly things worth dying for, the barbarian declares their rejection of civilization by saying nothing is worth dying for or their moral cowardice by declaring that nothing is worth killing or dying for.

What’s that you say? Why does the declaration that there is nothing worth dying for and nothing worth killing for prove that you are a moral coward, you ask? That’s actually pretty simple, I reply. Think of it this way – if someone were to attack you child with the intent to cart them off and torture them to death and the only way you could stop them was to kill them, would you? If you were the sonderkommando in Auschwitz, would you have risen up in rebellion in the face of certain death? As a prisoner of war in Bosnia, would you have participated in the torture of fellow prisoners, or refused and been killed? When the Nazis were attacking Europe, would you have enlisted, or not?

I am drawing a difference here between pacifists who choose death before violence and the barbarian. A rejection of violence in all circumstances, which is the implicit statement that nothing is worth the life of another, while accepting death means that you have decided to value some ideal, ideology, or the lives of others more than you value your own life. To accept the potential of killing without accepting the potential of your own self-sacrifice may mean that you value your life above the lives of others, or that you believe that there are ideals, or causes, that have a higher value than the lives of others, but not higher than the value of your own life. People who declare that neither is acceptable have no ideals worth sacrificing for and have no value on their life or the lives of others. They have literally nothing that they value highly; they have refused to make a moral choice. They are moral cowards. This refusal to decide is a de facto rejection of prudence, justice, and temperance as well as courage. A prudent man realizes a decision must be made; justice demands that some choices are right and that some are wrong; the temperate man realizes that the desires to avoid error and upsetting others are not as import and the need to take some action.

The refusal to make moral choices leads to a slippery, sneaky sort of attack on civilization. While building civilization requires moral choices, sometimes critical ones, the moral coward decries all decisions as immoral, or states that decisions cannot be made. No war is worth waging, no enemy worth fighting. Their refusal of justice means that when conflict does arise they decide whom they support not by actions, or moral grounds, or evidence, but by emotion. Their refusal of prudence means that they are easily manipulated through their emotions and allow their emotions to override their reason. And their refusal of temperance means that they become extreme in the reactions to conflict.

Thus you have; peace activists who support suicide bombers; pacifists that declare indiscriminate bombing an acceptable tactic by one force (their emotional favorites) while controlled counter attacks are decried as evil (by their emotional opponents); Students for Peace and Justice that wave toy assault rifles as they accuse the elected leaders of a democratic nation of being butchers for attacking the unelected heads of a terror organization that purposefully kills children.

These barbarians see no dichotomy between their words, or their actions. They have made no moral choice, only an emotional one, leaving them free to say and do pretty much as they please as long as they ‘stay true to themselves’ (i.e., feel good about what they are doing). These barbarians go further, however, by rejecting people who do make moral decisions that affect their emotions in a negative way. Since they are emotional, not moral, anything that impinges on their fun is ‘bad’. Since civilization is largely about controlling impulses that can harm society and rewarding impulses that are beneficial to society, they spend a lot of time upset with civilization. And with those who make moral choices.

They demand that others not judge them (i.e., reach moral conclusions about them), nor take away their freedom (i.e., impose limits on their behavior, regardless of its moral dimensions). At the same time, they try to impose their emotional rules on moral players. Any failure by someone who upholds morals is seen as horrific, even though they do not share in the morals. While prudence and justice requires that we understand that no one is perfect, and that anyone can fail, the barbarians point to any stumble as “proof” that virtues are worthless, or that the people who value them are hypocrites, or both.

As a result, the barbarians are held to the lowest standards (‘staying true to themselves’) while civilization and its defenders are held to an impossibly high one. They uphold the cruel and unjust while opposing those who seek justice. They elevate their petty desires over the needs of society. And all the while they deny that they or their actions can be judged as anything but good, regardless of the consequences, all while claiming to seek ‘justice’.

This attitude is so dangerous because it plays upon the emotions so well. Why? Because it is so similar to the attitudes of a child. A young child has not yet formed a good character; they lack prudence as they lack experience. Children lack temperance because they are just learning their desires. Children lack justice for they have yet to be taught empathy. And children lack courage because they have not yet been taught to face their fear. This is natural and part of life; it is the duty of parents and society to instill virtues into children so that they may mature into adults. It is also natural for mature adults to indulge children as they learn, to be gentle as they learn the parameters of civilization.

But these barbarians refuse to change, they have rejected maturity. The natural inclination of adults to indulge children is abused and twisted by the demands of adults that they not only be allowed to keep the attitude of children, but that others find them praiseworthy for doing so. As a society, we seem to have forgotten that adults cannot be allowed to act like children without consequences.

This trend is going on throughout the West; in France the young riot because they do not want the guaranteed employment laws to change – even if those laws mean many of them will remain unemployed and on the government dole. The French government responded by doing as the rioting children asked. The German government announces so many people are retiring early while others simply don’t work, forcing them to cut unemployment benefits and the German people stage riots demanding the right not to work – even if it means bankrupting the nation. The most recent May Day marches in Europe were focused on amazing demands; free housing, free transportation, free internet access, free downloads of pirated movies and music, and a 4 day work week - all while being guaranteed that they never need to work (generous, life-long unemployment benefits with no requirement to work) and (if they have a job) cannot be fired. Rather than being met with derisive laughter, these ideas are upheld by some as the ultimate goal of government and society.

At the same time, I fear that derisive laughter is the only negative response. While the goal of the barbarians is to enjoy civilization without the burden of maintaining it (well, except for the anarchists; or the primitivists) the result is the same; the degradation of civilization. Just as the welfare states of Europe are collapsing under the weight of non-productive people, so can civilization itself collapse under the weight of those who won’t contribute – regardless of their desires. The Roman elites who refused to serve in the legions did not make their decision in hopes of destroying Rome, they made their decision so they could remain in Rome and live well without worrying about hard work, self-sacrifice, the demands of military duty, or their civic responsibilities. The end result was still the destruction of Rome. When the Roman government demanded military service regardless of the desires of their people, Rome grew. When the government no longer demanded it, but society still pressured the elite to serve, Rome was maintained. When it was no longer ‘fashionable’ for men to do so, Rome declined, rapidly.

So we must stand up to the barbarians. We must judge their words and their actions, and they must pay consequences for their words and actions if they are deserved. We must reject moral equivalency and moral cowardice. We must continue to believe, say, and act upon the fact that some things are good, and others are evil. We must continue to uphold the family, personal responsibility, honor, shame, freedom, personal property, and the rule of law. We cannot do so quietly, nor secretly.

If we do not, we are letting the hitchhiker take the wheel.

2006-08-08T09:24:00.000-07:00

More on Hate Crimes in the US

My post titled Rednecks, White Power, and Blue States has generated quite a bit of a stir (well, not as much as if I’d put a puppy in a blender, but pretty good for me) and a bit of a backlash. There are two main pushbacks that I have detected. The first is “Well, see, Southern racist cops don’t *report* hate crimes, ‘cuz they’re, you know, Southern racist cops. Like in Gator. Or White Lightning.” The other one is, in short “go to Hell, you mouth-breather!”

Thankfully, the first is much more common than the second.

Let’s take a look at that first claim, then, and see if it might be true. Personally, I suspect that the FBI pays a bit more attention to racism and hate crimes in the South (after all, they also went to public schools where they learned that the words to “Southern Man” were as true as the gospel), but they might be getting fooled by all those cracker sheriffs, might’nt they?

I spoke with the Public Affairs Office of the FBI in Atlanta concerning the compilation of hate crime statistics for their own annual reports (which are my main source of information). They were very open in explaining how their statistics are gathered – in the same way that rape, murder, and other crime statistics are gathered, through the Criminal Justice Information System. They were very clear that they have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the statistics and that years of use have found no holes or discrepancies. Remember, the police anywhere hiding racially-motivated crimes would be a violation of the Civil Rights Act and would result in an FBI investigation for denial of civil rights.

But, again, what if they are being lied to? Or, horrors! What if they are in on “it”? How would we know? Well, in 2000 the reporting of hate crimes became very visible/politicized with a series of reports and outside scrutiny. The result has been a strengthening of federal hate crime laws and an increased scrutiny on the reporting of hate crimes at all levels.

How do others view the reports? Beginning in 2001 CAIR focused upon anti-Arab hate crimes and has been pretty relentless ever since. They have had few complaints, especially since 2002. And the Southern Poverty Law Center has been attacking the FBI for years, saying that hate crimes are terribly under-reported. But when I spoke with the PAO for the SPLC he admitted that the SPLC does no investigations of its own, has no researchers looking into hate crimes in any direct way, and bases its assumptions on what they ‘feel to be true’ (not a direct quote).

The ADL and ACLU declined to comment on the FBI’s hate crime statistics (in both cases the Georgia chapters declined and the national offices did not call back). I could find no references to either group complaining about the recent reporting, however, so we will put them in the ‘neutral’ column.

We will now cast out eyes further afield, all the way to Israel and the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism. While not nearly as detailed in its analysis of American anti-Semitism as the FBI report, the Stephen Roth Institute report for America in 2004 seems to be a very close match to what other groups are reporting. While the Stephen Roth Institute does its own, independent, research, I was unable to confirm that they don’t just get their hate crime data from the FBI, so this is (at least right now) only evidence that independent organizations investigating hate crimes trust the FBI data. Considering the fact, though, that they are specifically looking for hate crimes and have experience in discovering these crimes for themselves in nations that don’t have central reporting, this is certainly a tick mark in favor of the statistics.

In short, high-profile groups that oppose hate crimes either have no problem with the numbers, no way to refute the numbers in a credible manner, or actively use them. These groups, plus the NAACP, the Southern Leadership Council, and many others all look for hate crimes in the South and have literally billions of dollars for locating, identifying, and exposing ‘hidden’ hate crimes. Combined with local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies that have everything to lose by covering up hate crimes, and I think the numbers are pretty trustworthy.

What about all those racist cracker cops in the South, anyway? I mean, they just might be able to pull off hiding all sorts of things, just like in Mississippi Burning, right?

Let us look now on Atlanta, the city closest to my own home. With a population that is over 60% Black, Atlanta is the only large city in America with an uninterrupted string of Black mayors for over 30 years. Atlanta is over 61% Black, about 33% White, about 4.5% Hispanic, and the rest divided amongst Asians, Native Americans, and other races. The Atlanta Metro also has a rather large Gay community, especially in the suburban enclaves in De Kalb and Fulton counties. The Atlanta Police Department is headed by a a Black man; indeed, 4 of the last five police chiefs have been Black, including a Black woman chief. The force is about 60% Black, a close reflection of the population. Do you expect me to believe that a Black cop in a majority Black town with a Black lieutenant that reports to a Black police chief that works for a Black mayor… is going to hush up a hate crime against a Black citizen? If you do, you will be disappointed.

The city of St. Paul, capitol of Minnesota, is (according to the census) about 11.7% Black. In contrast, the St. Paul Police Department is only about 5.7% Black (according to the St. Paul PD Public Affairs Office, a polite group of people). The St. Paul PD is further 3% Asian (the city is 12.3% Asian), 4.3% Hispanic (the city is 7.9% Hispanic), and 0.9% American Indian (the city is 1.1% American Indian). The rest of the sworn officers are White, making the police force for a city that is about 67% White a full about 86% White. The PAO that I spoke to, however, assured me that although he had never run the numbers (he gave me raw numbers, not percentages) he was sure that the PD was a close reflection of the city's ethnic distribution. When I asked him what percentage of St. Paul was White, he said "about 85%, I suppose", a guess reflecting the police force, not the city. As can be seen, Hispanics are under-represented by about 40%, Blacks are under-represented by about 50% and Asians are under-represented by about 75% on the SPPD.

Which town do you think is more likely to hide a hate crime?

Note: on 8/10/06 this post was edited for grammar, clarity, and to add an approved quote. No numbers or links were changed.

2006-08-03T10:12:00.000-07:00

Really Old

Well, for the internet, this is old. But every time I think of it, I have to laugh. After a full month of me sniggering about this last night my wife demanded that I blog about it. I suspect she wants me to get it out of my system.

A few months ago one of the silliest exchanges between Right/Left bloggers occurred. Amanda at Pandagon touted her cat as a model of gender equality while curved laundry baskets (which make it easier to brace the basket against the body with one hand) are Tools of the Patriarchy. OK, that’s a little hokey, especially when she segues into ‘ergonomic laundry basket as symbol of pro-life oppression of women’. In typical fashion, Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom weighed in with a satirical ‘poem’ so chock-full of lefty/feminist buzzwords that it clunks along like Amanda’s original argument. Not a comedy goldmine, sure, but a nice mockery of Amanda’s usual attempts at symbolic allegory.

There were positive and negative replies, of course. A lot of Jeff’s comments are positive, PZ Myers weighed in against it with all the literary skills of a biologist, and Chris Clarke wrote a poem mocking Jeff. There was the usual ‘righties like Jeff’s poem, lefties like Chris’ poem’ blather, and then….

Then happened that thing that still makes me chuckle every time of think of it. Every. Damn. Time.

Amanda wrote about the exchange and declared Chris the superior poet (no surprise) and then typed this gem;

“…there is a bit of tension evident in [Jeff’s follow up], no doubt caused by the confusion that arises when one feels emasculated because you have been out-poetryed by a sensitive left wing feminist man.” (emphasis added. lousy grammar, although it looks like my work, in the original)

No, she really wrote that. I posted a reply to this at Pandagon, but it didn’t make it past moderation. This concept, that a conservative man (heck, any man) would feel emasculated by a poem is just so far removed from reality that I marvel at the fantasy world the writer must live in. As a guy who gets up for work each morning, labors to feed, clothe, and shelter a family, and tries hard to squeeze in some reading and writing for pleasure each week; when I looked at Clarke’s poem my reaction was not “oooooh, Jeff is going to feel that in the morning!”, it was “Looks like Clarke is between jobs”. I suspect that the VAST majority of men anywhere in the world would feel the same way.

So my laughter is not from some deep insight, nor some profound reflection. It comes from the simple wondering thought,

“I wonder what color the sky is in her world?”