All references indicate a problem of semantics with the word "intentionality", but consciousness must be consciousness of something. There are two stages of "intentionality": that which occurs at birth, and that which comes after consciousness of being conscious.
"But here [in the semantics] the difficulty lies partly in the fact that the relevant use of cognate terms is simply not that found in common speech (as when we speak of doing something ‘intentionally’)." http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consci…
This problem in semantics is better explained this way: "Every intentional state is mental, but not every conscious mental state is intentional. For example, one may have feelings of anxiety that do not have any intentional content. http://science.jrank.org/pages/9796/Inte…
"Philosopher Franz Brentano has suggested intentionality or aboutness (that consciousness is about something). However, within the philosophy of mind there is no consensus on whether intentionality is a requirement for consciousness." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousne…
That "consciousness is about something" can be explained if you consider that any 'intentionality' (of any semantic persuasion) absolutely requires consciousness---after we become conscious of it:
"Concepts and, therefore, language are primarily a tool of cognition—not of communication, as is usually assumed. Communication is merely the consequence, not the cause nor the primary purpose of concept-formation—a crucial consequence, of invaluable importance to men, but still only a consequence. Cognition precedes communication............."
Ayn Rand http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/langua…
Cognition precedes intentionality, because without consciousness one cannot have any intentions, no matter which semantic definition you use.
The question seems to be this:
Does some 'intention' of mind cause consciousness?
But it can only be answered by acknowledging that the brain is hard-wired at birth to 'intentionally' seek objects of cognition, just as the lungs are hard-wired to seek oxygen and the liver is hard-wired to strain the blood stream.
But there is the matter of retaining intentionality after one become conscious of being conscious. Drugs and alcohol are only two of the means people use to try to eliminate their own intentionality.
But it still comes down to which semantic definition you use. "...within the philosophy of mind there is no consensus on whether intentionality is a requirement for consciousness." I think we can see that at birth there can be no intention that requires a reasoned purpose for it, but only one that is hard-wired. Because "Concepts and, therefore, language are primarily a tool of cognition—", it is at that point that it would seem we can choose to maintain our individual, purposeful "intentionality" or let it go.
"Knowledge then seems to me to be nothing but the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our Ideas. In this alone it consists. [Essay IV i 2] " http://www.philosophypages.com/locke/g04…
For some philosophers, "idea" is that which is in the mind as a condition of sensation, or "the given". "Given, The: Whatever is immediately present to the mind before it has been elaborated by inference, interpretation or construction." http://www.ditext.com/runes/g.html
In other words, for those philosophers, if you sense that your hand is touching something, there is the "idea" that something exists which your hand is touching. But whether or not you call that an "idea", I know of no philosopher who doesn't also call it "the given".
Locke meant more than this. Locke meant by "perception" something that is defined in the mind beyond the mere point of the given; it had to be elaborated by inference, interpretation or construction, (induction; deduction; conceptualization).
This is easy to acknowledge when you read his words again: perception is the connection and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our Ideas. The mind's acknowledgment of "the given" will neither agree nor disagree with either previous nor future events of what is "given" to us to perceive. But a perception is the acknowledgment of the given; acknowledgment requires a correspondence between "ideas"; ideas must be that which is "elaborated by inference, interpretation or construction", because without those, ideas would remain only as perceptions about which we know nothing except that they exist.
Ayn Rand, a Lockean herself, put it this way: "A “perception” is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism, which gives it the ability to be aware, not of single stimuli [the given], but of entities, of things....A percept is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism. It is in the form of percepts that man grasps the evidence of his senses and apprehends reality. When we speak of “direct perception” or “direct awareness,” we mean the perceptual level. Percepts, not sensations, are the given, the self-evident. The knowledge of sensations as components of percepts is not direct, it is acquired by man much later: it is a scientific, conceptual discovery." http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/percep…
Locke, therefore, meant that perceptions were separate from sensations, and as far as "knowledge" of them was concerned, we have that only when we perceive that one idea is connected to another, at which time we also see that it either agrees or disagrees with the others. If it disagrees, it or one or more of the others is "repugnant", or contrary.
Perception is not the simple acknowledgment that we have had a sensation of "the given". An infant is "given" many things at birth, and his mind is in terrible turmoil attempting to determine the nature of his new world. He must determine that "mother is good"; "food is good"; "dirty diapers are bad", etc. But even then, until he gains a language by which to identify these things, they are still nothing more than "the given". He doesn't have the conception of a dirty diaper; he only knows that something happened to him and he doesn't feel good after that, and until he is taken care of.
So for Locke, "perception" is acknowledgment--of one idea or concept either agreeing with or disagreeing with other ideas, whether conceptual or not. An infant without a language can still determine that one thing is contrary to another (such as his mother makes him happy, then she makes him sad or angry, and he must eventually learn how one person can do both.)
So the key to "perception" in the language of Locke is to understand that it means the acknowledgment of at least a pair of "ideas" which will be either in agreement with each other, or "repugnant" to each other.
It is only from the perception of like/unlike ideas that we can come to have "knowledge", because what is not "knowledge" is literally "unacknowledged" and must be greater than "the given".
The life of Man must be defined as unalienably self-sovereign.
In a recent article in American Thinker, Bruce Walker wrote this piece of politically conservative observation:
"Seventy-five years ago this month, one of the most insidious laws in human history came into effect in Nazi Germany. The innocent sounding name was The Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring. It was the ghastly pinnacle of an unholy theory of human eugenics. Darwinism -- not the Theory of Evolution, per se, but the sinister notion that natural selection made God superfluous -- liberated man from his obligation to treat fellow men as special creatures in a divinely ordered universe."
While Walker is correct in calling the law "insidious," and "the ghastly pinnacle" of eugenics, he demonstrates what is wrong with conservative epistemology, namely, the inability to see that political and social values and the virtues required to attain them must be values and virtues proper to Man--not to a God who is unattainable in life.
Men are never "liberated" from their "obligation to treat fellow men" as endowed with self-sovereignty. Whether or not God is "superfluous" can never be allowed to be part of the equation. The most avid atheists are often the most avid defenders of human rights, and they see no "divine" order in the universe.
What they see is the equality of creatures born with the unalienable right to life and liberty. The necessity of saying "liberty" ought to be superfluous itself, since the right to life necessitates the liberty necessary to live life as the rational animal. It is entirely superfluous to say "and the pursuit of happiness," for the same rationale. However, it has come in handy in certain arguments with people who forget that the right to pursue one's happiness necessitates the liberty to achieve it.
It ought to be enough to simply say, "Until a man violates the rights--equal to his own, of other men--he has the right to libertarian life." Libertarian in this sense does not include the right to violate the rights of other men, which are equal in value by virtue of their unalienablity by right of birth.
Libertarian means specifically the ability to act with all the unalienable rights of birth with which Man is endowed by the nature of his metaphysical existence. That existence is defined as "the rational animal."
It can only be when a man has violated the equal rights of others that justice may require forfeiture of his libertarianism for a time, e.g., jail or prison or probation. In some cases of gross violation justice has required he forfeit his very life.
America's Founders were mostly Deists, no matter which denomination they attended. It was politically incorrect for public leaders not to attend a regular denomination such as Baptist or Episcopal, but there were some like Thomas Paine who managed to evade without even that constraint on his freedom. He had to flee America for France, literally for his safety and probably his life, in order to remove that constraint, until President Jefferson invited him back with a guarantee of his safety.
It is important to note America's Deist beginings because those Deists were more dedicated to worshiping God than were most of the commoners who followed established denominations. There is one and only reason for being able to say this: the Deists themselves said their devotion to the virtue of Reason and to the Rule of Law was precisely because they believed it was God himself who had endowed Man with that virtue.
Then He stepped back and allowed the nature he had created to run its course. A form of Darwinism one to two centuries before Darwin was born was part of the metaphysics of Deism. They believed God was superfluous only because He was willing to let the Reason He had provided them rule the affairs of the Men He had created as rational creatures.
Libertarian action translates into the value of being both free of coercion from others, and is non-coercion of others, for the purpose of furthering the pursuit of human life as well as one's own, through the virtue of Reason.
Yet, "when one speaks of a man's right to exist for his own sake, for his own rational self-interest, most people assume automatically that this means his right to sacrifice others." Ayn Rand; The Virtue of Selfishness: The Objectivist Ethics
The Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring was ghastly because it used the power of government to choose the criteria set by a leader with a criminal mind, criteria for the sacrifice of others. Clearly Hitler's was not "rational" self-interest. Rational self-interest cannot be coercive or it is self-defeating and therefor non-rational.
But conservatives do not see that such men--Mao Tse Tung, Hitler, Mugabe, Stalin, Pol Pot--care nothing about whether or not God is superfluous. The only thing such men have ever cared about is power, and that is the power to control.
If it is insidious to find God superfluous, then America's Deists were insidious. Since that is not a word that can be used to describe them, Mr. Walker uses a "package deal" consisting of tying together the concepts of Hitler's policies with a disregard for God, as if God was anywhere in Hitler's thoughts. Corrupting or ignoring a "divinely ordered universe" was never a consideration for Hitler.
If Hitler had a devout belief in God, he would have continued his policies, believing as do Islamicists that what they do is in the name of God.
Neither Hitler nor the world's current Islamicists believe they are liberated from any obligation to "treat fellow men as special creatures in a divinely ordered universe." As a matter of fact, Islamicists believe that to continue the "divinely ordered universe" of Allah it is moral to martyr one's self in the destruction of those who actually see Allah--but not necessarily the Judeo-Christian God--as superfluous.
A supernatural God is superfluous for anyone who calls him or herself a naturalist, because in the cosmic scheme of the laws of nature, "nature's god" did not create existence.
The only "sinister notion" in natural selection is in the motives of men who refuse to accept individual sovereignty as the right of every human being, the selection by nature's god of the species of Man to be the one to obtain the virtue of rationality.
Last Saturday I wrote that the politics of Original Intent that were practiced by Senator Barry Goldwater in his race for the Republican nomination of 1964, are not the politics of Washington as we know it today. Originalism is not respected by those who see necessity in specific government programs which defy strict Constitutionalism.
The politics of pragmatism has become the standard, practiced by both Republicans and Democrats. Pragmatic politics sees necessity as the trump card, whether or not American supreme law supports it. I do not deny that many things are "necessary," and can be implemented by governments without reverting to any form of collectivism.
But in order to implement necessary policies and programs that are pragmatic rather than Constitutional, the Constitution must be changed. That is what the Founders said. That is the mechanism the Founders gave us in the Law. What is so hard for pragmatists to understand about that mechanism?
Bush the Pragmatic decided an Iraq without Saddam Hussein would be better than a Middle East that remained inclusive of him. He started an unnecessary war, a divisive war, a war based on perfectly incompetent intelligence reports.
Bush the Pragmatic decided that limiting the individual sovereignty of Americans through the coercive, and therefor mis-named "Patriot Act", was a better means of advancing the "common" good rather than the Constitutionally provided-for "individual" good.
("We, the People," meant specifically "We, the Individuals collectively called 'the People.'" Among others of the Founders who wrote or spoke of such individual sovereignty, we have these words of Jefferson:
("We think experience has proved it safer for the mass of individuals composing the society [i.e., all the individuals collectively] to reserve to themselves personally the exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent and to delegate those to which they are not competent to deputies named and removable for unfaithful conduct by themselves immediately." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816.)
Bush the Pragmatic decided it was better to save the "Barney Frank Democrats" who led us down this thorn-and-shard-laden housing financing debacle. That debacle led to the "me too" attitude of banks that had been allowed to become "too big to allow to fail"; the hands-out attitude of the Motor City who couldn't keep up with the smarter looking and better selling cars made by the Asians and Europeans. There is a one year waiting list in the U.S. for the Nano Car manufactured by the Indian company the Tata Group.
And of course, there are the "me too hands" held out for Federal funding by the states and cities across America.
Bush the Pragmatic, who never opted for the "redistribution of wealth", opened the door for the wealth redistributing Obama the Pragmatic.
It appears that many local governments are going to get their palms greased.
It is, of course, pragmatic to destroy the capital value upon which this nation was built, and to destroy that very wealth by taking from those who have it and giving it to those who do not--so that those who do not get some of it whether or not they know how to create more wealth with it so it can be redistributed again; or whether they merely know how to spend it before coming looking for more to be redistributed in their direction.
Either way, pragmatic redistribution "stimulates" the economy, like a cattle prod "stimulates" a cow, with a sting worse than Muhammad Ali's fist to your face. The purpose of the sub-prime lending was to make the Democrats look good through the stimulation of the economy by lending. The "sting" was that those to whom sub-prime loans were given could not afford them or they would not have needed sub-prime rates.
Though Obama stated that his team members share his "'pragmatism about the use of power' in foreign policy," Dr. Tara Smith, speaking for the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, said Democratics and Republican presidents disagree vehemently about foreign policy and "all manner of moral and political issues, [and] that the way forward is always through moderation and compromise. [But] pragmatism, from either the Left or the Right, is inherently self-destructive and a threat to Americans." [emphasis added] CapMag.Com
What makes for pragmatic politics? In these times when non-Originalism is the order of the day, "anything that goes" and which seems to fill a need is pragmatic. Non-Originalism is the idea that no written Constitution can anticipate all the methods by which government could use--after the law was written--to oppress people, so it is sometimes necessary for judges to make decisions based on other laws with similar intents, and the precedents set by interpretation of those laws.
Judge Robert Bork was nominated to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan. Bork is a an Originalist. His nomination was scuttled by Democrats who didn't like his former involvement in Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre," nor by some of his controversial opinons.
(Neither do I. But, putting that aside,) his case, in part, for Originalism is solid as rock: "If the Constitution is law, then presumably, like all other law, the meaning the lawmakers intended is as binding upon judges as it is upon legislatures and executives. There is no other sense in which the Constitution can be what article VI proclaims it to be: Law....
"This means, of course, that a judge, no matter on what court he sits, may never create new constitutional rights or destroy old ones." [citation]
"Pragmatism is about how well things work in practice, not how they should work in theory. [But] we present evidence that non-originalist judicial decision making has, in fact, done a good job of enhancing social welfare, as measured by popular ap-proval of the Court’s decisions. " [emphais added]THERE IS NOTHING PRAGMATIC ABOUT ORIGINALISMDavid S. Law & David McGowan
This "good job" measurement is pragmatism defined. But Goldwater, the Conservative's hero of Heros said this in the long, honorable tradition of Originalism:
"I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible." [emphasis added] Barry Goldwater Quotes
This policy is the measurement of someone who believes in a nation of laws, as Bork spoke about, not of a nation of men who proceed to find things that are necessary--as the bailouts may have been, but which are un-Constitutional.
Respecting the Constitutional individual sovereignty of each member of "We, the People" would preclude taking from he who has in order to give to he who has not. Such redistribution is neither in the letter of the law, nor in the spirit of the law. Pragmatism is not about law; it about results irrespective of law.
One of the problems I have with other authors' definitions of "naturalism" is that I often see what appears to be mistakes, albeit sometimes they are small. But they become untenable with the larger context of that author's message, because until the mistake is fixed, the reader (me in this case) doesn't know what to make of it. So I write to the author and I ask for clarification.
On the Home Page of the Secular Web, a naturalistic and humanistic website, Paul Draper is quoted as saying that naturalism is "the hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system, which means that nothing that is not part of the natural world affects it." The conclusion is then made that, "Thus, 'naturalism implies that there are no supernatural entities."
Well, no it does not imply that, not as written.
To say "nothing that is not part of the natural world" leaves open the possibility, for anyone who thinks there is more than the natural world, of a thing that exists that is more than the natural world--like God. Mr. Draper leaves an open hole. I would have thought that leaving open such holes are mistakes of epistemology--or simply a gaffe of grammar or syntax, or even one of thinking faster than the pen can write.
It seems untenable with the larger message to leave such a hole.
So I wrote to Mr. Draper and asked him about the it. It seems it not a hole in his opinion, and is intentional and correct by his metrics of naturalism. It is a question, not of epistemology, in his mind, but of metaphysics.
"The statement," replied Draper, "that the universe is a closed system does imply that there are no supernatural entities because a supernatural entity is defined as a non-natural entity that AFFECTS THE NATURAL WORLD. Thus, naturalism as defined in the quoted passage rules out supernatural entities but does not rule in or out non-natural entities." [emphasis his]
The supernatural is defined as non-natural, yet this published naturalist author concedes that the non-natural may exist? And, isn't Draper's idea that no supernatural entities exist exactly what I said was implied?
Mr. Draper is an educated man and qualified as far as his peers are concerned, I'm certain, to be held in esteem, to be a published author, and to be the editor of Philo, "published biannually at the Center for Inquiry with assistance from Purdue University," reads the home page of the online magazine, concluding with: "Philo is the publication of the Society of Humanist Philosophers."
Interestingly, I found nothing in the Google search engine for the Society, except an ancient reference to Philo before Draper was Editor; and the remark in Wikipedia that it is a program of the Council for Secular Humanism.
The Council is responsible for many things. Originally called the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism, it was begun by Paul Kurtz a naturalist humanist. "The council acts as an umbrella organization for a number of other groups, such as the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, Secular Organizations for Sobriety, African Americans for Humanism, and provides support for Center for Inquiry - On Campus. It also publishes several magazines and newsletters, including Free Inquiry," states Wikipedia.
Kurtz calls his form of humanistic naturalism "philosophical." Michael Friedman of the American Philosophical Association says this "philosophical" form "has reached the end of its useful life."
I am not a humanist of any sort. www.jcn.com/humanism.html lists 8 sorts. About secular humanism it says it is "an outgrowth of 18th century enlightenment rationalism and 19th century freethought." That ought to say something to those who understand rationalism. And freethought explains the slippery language used by humanists and by scientific and philosophical naturalists. While elevating science and reason, freethought does so at the cost of a rational metaphysics.
The website for the Council supports most of what Wiki states about it, and also makes this declaration:
"Secular humanists reject supernatural and authoritarian beliefs. They affirm that we must take responsibility for our own lives and the communities and world in which we live. Secular humanism emphasizes reason and scientific inquiry, individual freedom and responsibility, human values and compassion, and the need for tolerance and cooperation." [emphasis added]
Gee. I just wrote about this on Tuesday. It's kind of strange, sometimes, how the world goes around. The subjects that secular humanism "emphasizes"--reason, science, individualism, responsibility, human values, and compassion--are defined by that movement very differently from Metaphysical Naturalism. But what does it have to do with Paul Draper's differentiation between "supernatural" and "non-natural" entities?
To begin with, this: I never seem to be able to get answers from naturalists like Mr. Draper that make much sense to me. It all seems gray, undifferentiated by any substantiality, or it seems like metaphysical double-speak that goes round and round, stopping only long enough to get in the phrases "tolerance," "compassion," and a few others with similiar altruistic connotations--and they do mean it altruistically as I will show; there is nothing about justice connected to their phrases for "cooperation".
When I answered Tom Clark's critique of my comments to him about naturalism, he did not come back with analyses about what I had written. Apparently he couldn't match me logic for logic. Instead, he wrote, among other things:
"Ok, many thanks for these clarifications, most interesting. It would be nice if all [Ayn] Rand’s acolytes examined her philosophy as assiduously as do you, ending up with more nuanced conclusions about the legitimacy of compassion and limits of egoism."[emphasis added]
My "nuanced conclusions" on those subjects were that compassion was worthless in the wrong circumstances, and that there are no limits to egoism when defined as "rational egoism."
Clark is a dedicated humanist, and some of the contributors to his site also contribute to Philo. It seems, from the other things Clark wrote me, that humanists cannot accept egoism because they exalt altrusim.
"There are two errors," he writes about my ideas, "in addition to thinking we’re ultimately self-made. One is to suppose that in empirical fact we are merely self-interested creatures. But we aren’t; there are many altruistic bones in our body. Second, it’s to commit the naturalistic fallacy of arguing that if we are selfish by nature, that means we should be selfish. But there is no direct implication from a natural is to an ethical ought."
Humanists take issue with Rand's clear disdain of altruism. I accept her disdain completely, because she did not allow the definition to become watered down by humanistic definitions that make it seem as if "altruism" is merely being human to one another. Rand fiercely upheld Compte's definition; after all, it was Compte who coined the word.
"For Comte Altruism meant the [ ] eradication of self-centered desire, and a life devoted to the good of others; more particularly, selfless love..." [emphasis added]http://www.ditext.com/runes/a.html Devotion to the good of others when coupled with selfless love--a contradiction in terms--is duty, andduty has nothing to do with rational compassion, yet such irrational duty is the field of secular and other forms of humanism.
I replied to Clark that "'to commit the naturalistic fallacy of arguing that if we are selfish by nature, that means we should be selfish,' is the definition of 'logical' egoism," not rational egoism which Rand knew was the necessary form of egoism for man to lead a rational life.http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/egoism.htm
Which leads us to the rationality of humanists and scientific and philosophical naturalists. Every concept has only one antonym, though many words are connected to more than one concept, so you must choose your concept carefully. Sometimes, depending on the way a dictionary has separated concepts, the differences are unclear. Definition 2) may seem to one's logic to be the same as 3). Such differences are subtle and sometimes not even legitimate.
But if the ontological concept of "natural" has the antonym of "not-natural", then "supernatural" must be a sub-set of "not-natural." Mr. Draper does not see it that way.
"I define a 'natural entity'," he wrote, "as an entity that is either physical or that is causally or ontologically reducible to physical entities. Skyscrapers, for example, are natural entities by this technical definition. There are, of course, other senses of the word 'natural' in ordinary language."
So far I agree, but then he went on: "Non-natural entities by my definition are entities that are not physical and are not reducible to physical entities. Perhaps abstract objects are non-natural, but that's debatable."
Since abstract objects are concepts of human thought rather than Platonic Forms, and since thought is natural, I would refuse to debate it. He does not make clear what any other objects are that he might define as "not physical and not reducible to physical entities."
"The supernatural is a subcategory of the non-natural", he continued, a complete reversal of my Metaphysical Naturalist position. "If there were any supernatural entities, then they would be entities that, in spite of not being natural, nevertheless affect natural entities."
The way I see it, God, if He exists, is natural, not supernatural. Why should we see Him as anything other than natural? We see Him as supernatural because then we do not find ourselves able to have empirical evidence of God, and we do not want empirical evidence, except perhaps for the indirect kind. Ronald Reagan's comparison of the physical world to a dinner table laden with food--that had no chef--comes to mind. The physical world "revealed" to our senses are all the evidence that supernaturalists say we can ever have, unless they are also of the opinion that revealed revelations e.g. Paul's experience on the road to Damascus, are possible.
However, Mr Draper tells me, "For while we have empirical evidence that the natural world is closed (our success in discovering natural causes of natural entities), it would be idle metaphysical speculation to claim that no non-natural entities exist."
From this we can infer than Mr. Draper knows of no non-natural entities, yet insists that the category must remain an open one in order not to "idly speculate" that the category is empty of entities!
This is the road that humanism plows, one of metaphysical mud and muck from which no logic can be ascertained except that of definitions with no clear denotations; and capitulation to the idea that clarity is egoistical and egoism must be "logical" rather than "rational" and therefor must be rejected (despite a very big difference between them); that egoism is the opposite of altrusim (which it is) and, that altruism is the metaphysical mud and muck that humanists prefer in their metaphysics over any form of egoism.
They do, after all, accuse Rand of being "black and white," "too concrete," and even "irrational."
Objectivists "strike me as being pretty irrational when it comes to ideas about the self and free will," Clark wrote to me, "and it seems to me this irrationality supports a morally objectionable radical individualism, see my critique here."
I will let his critique stand on its own, and see whether or not I can pull my feet out of humanism's muck without losing my shoes. If the category "non-natural entities" is an empty category, yet it contains a sub-category (supernatural,) then I can walk on water.
An interview with Dr. Yaron Brook titled "Who Is To Blame?" has been published on Newsweek's Web site. Newsweek accepts comments from readers. It ends with this classic Rand-fan fantasy exchange:
Newsweek: With free markets now in disrepute, what's going to happen to the popularity of Ayn Rand's most famous book, "Atlas Shrugged"?
Brook: I think it's going to go up dramatically. I think it already has. [People] are saying, "We're heading toward socialism, we're heading toward more regulation." "Atlas Shrugged" is coming true. How do we get out? How do we escape? Unfortunately, there is no escape. Businessmen are panicking, and I think they should be panicking. Many of them understand that this was not a crisis of free markets. There was no free market to fail. What we have is a regulated market, and the regulated market has failed.
"It is with a sense of great pride and joy that I join with thousands around the nation in congratulating Chuck Colson on his reception of the Presidential Citizen’s Medal presented to Chuck at the Oval Office today by President Bush.
"It is important to remember that the ministry that Chuck founded some 35 years ago is noteworthy not only because it has assisted in countless men and women to transform their lives through the power of a right relationship with Christ, or that this ministry is staff by a veritable army of volunteers who visit prisons and in other ways help to mend broken families with God’s love.What is most noteworthy is that all of this came from one man’s surrender to the call of Christ to turn from his sins and accept the Gospel of redemption.
"Here’s some of what Chuck had to say on the Prison Fellowship site: 'Whatever good I may have done is because God saw fit to reach into the depths of Watergate and convert a broken sinner,” said Colson. “Everything that has been accomplished these past 35 years has been by God’s grace and sovereign design.'"
This is the same Chuck Colson who, it was reported just yesterday, said of Mormons: "Mormonism either affirms historic Christianity, or it doesn't. Since it doesn't, it can't call itself Christianity -- a fact that all the good will and public relations in Utah can't change."
Remember, President George H. Bush is the first Moral Majority President* to be elected, and I thank his God that he will probably be the last. It is deplorable that such an honor should be bestowed--by a President, no less--upon a man with such a distorted view of another religion. The Coptic sect of Christianity does not affirm the historic Christianity, either, since from its inception it was not part of the Holy Roman Church. Would Colson say the same about the Coptics?
Wikipedia has this to say about the Coptic Church: "The Church belongs to the Oriental Orthodox family of churches, which has been a distinct church body since the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, when it took a different position over Christological theology from that of the Eastern Orthodox and Western churches, then still in union. The precise differences in theology that caused the split are still disputed, highly technical and mainly concerned with the Nature of Christ. The foundational roots of the Church are based in Egypt but it has a worldwide following."
*The Moral Majority rose to power on the coat tails of Ronald Reagan; Reagan was not connected to the MM in any way other than that of having its support. But for a different--and opposing--view of the strength and power of evangelical American, see this article in "Mother Jones".
I have a list of twenty two blogs I try to scan daily, but the demands of writing my own blog, of trying to get a distance-based academy organized, working a daily job, and attending AA meetings and doing AA service work does not give me much time for the other blogs. I have to pick and choose. Some days I find nothing worthwhile; other days, like today, I found something I like--the blog that teaches me something.
It was on the Acton Institute Power Blog, named after Lord Acton who "made the history of liberty his life's work; indeed, he considered political liberty the essential condition and guardian of religious liberty."
What was it I learned? That Catholics have used the common good "as an excuse for more government involvement in peoples’ lives and the installing of socialistic, 'spread the wealth' programs."Dr. William Luckey
I dashed off a comment at the end of his blog. In the "Academy Blogger" I have debated the issue of "altruism" as being (originally) the Catholic version of the "eradication of self-centered desire, and a life devoted to the good of others; more particularly, selfless love and devotion to Society. In brief, it involved the self-abnegating love of Catholic Christianity redirected towards Humanity conceived as an ideal unity." [emphasis added] see "altruism" http://www.ditext.com/runes/a.html
The common good is therefor altruistic, requiring a lowestcommon denominator of the ego, common from one man to the next, a place where one must relegate his/her ego in order to eradicate self-interest, rational though it may be, or not; and where the common good is attained by devoting one's self selflessly--as if that is not an incomprehensible contradiction--in an act of totally "eradicating" the self.
This is most certainly not the same as what our Founders meant by the "general Welfare," when they wrote that phrase in the Constitution; it is the opposite. The "general Welfare" is the protection of the sovereignty of the individual, sovereignty composed of all the powers not delegated to nor prohibited to the Federal government or the governments of the "several States." Whatever is left over, (and almost everything was "left over" until the administration of FDR's "New Deal",) is necessary for the operation of a free individual.
The "general Welfare" is justice in the political arena, which includes economics. The "common good" has become the language used to hide the injustice of imposed altruism.
Anything imposed against what is just, is coercion; anything imposed to insure justice, is not coerced. Each of these ideas is what it is by definition. You could turn each statement around and make the same arguments: Coercion is that which is unjustly imposed; coercion is not that which is justly imposed.
What is justly imposed must, by the same definition, take only as little from an individual's sovereignty as is needed for the "common sovereignty," i.e., government instituted of, by, and for the governed themselves.
It is true that there must be coerced "common good" among people who are not willing to abnegate their egos to society. The best of the recent examples of an uncoerced person was Mother Theresa, who we now know abnegated her ego to the will of a God who she thought, for twelve years, had deserted her. That, aside from the willingness of Jesus to be crucified for all others in the human race, is as altruistic as one can be and not be coerced.
But going that distance is much more than Dr. Luckey is talking about. "This [coerced] version of the common good is the foundation for some people’s idea of distributive justice, but actually it is based on the 'Robin Hood fallacy' of robbing from the rich and giving to the poor." [emphasis added]
What is distributive justice? "[T]he first relatively simple principle of distributive justice examined is strict egalitarianism, which advocates the allocation of equal material goods to all members of society."[emphasis added] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [see also No Justice in "Luck Egalitarianism" ]
How does Dr. Luckey know it is the Robin Hood syndrome? Merely "by reading Aristotle and St. Thomas. Both of those great thinkers say that government must rule for the common good, but both of them oppose 'common good' to the 'particular' or 'private' good. . . nowhere in Aristotle or St. Thomas does it say that the common good is the exclusive or even main province of the government. They merely give a negative prohibition that the state cannot make laws which are good for only one segment of society." [emphasis added]
One segment of society is exactly what distributive justice is about: the use of coercion to force altruism on those who have, for the benefit of those who have not.
Ayn Rand made an unwitting error in her Playboy interview of 1964. But her error was in not being able to see the future, and the rise of a popular Marxist like Barak Obama.
"Collectivism," she said, "as an intellectual power and a moral ideal, is dead."
But in the very next breath she was absolutely correct, and she is still correct to this day; "But freedom and individualism, and their political expression, capitalism," she continued, "have not yet been discovered."
Forty-eight years later, her second statement is still correct, and that is why collectivism was allowed to remain alive: the world has still not "discovered" the nature and the source of capital.
Do Americans Understand the Concept of Capitalism?
Twenty years ago or so products from China started showing up on American shelves. Things like pot holders, and cheap little ceramic statues.
I'm old enough to remember when the same thing happened with Japanese items, but it was cheap transistor radios and other electronics, remarkable in that the Japanese industry would revolutionize the way electronics were designed, manufactured, and marketed. Look at the percentage of the electronics market they own in the U.S.--almost all of it. There are no TVs made in America, the last time I checked.
But it doesn't matter me that the Japanese have done so well. They are our political friends; we helped rebuild their nation after WWII.
But the revolution came to Japan first, not America. Americans refused to listen to W. Edwards Deming, widely credited with improving production in the United States during World War II, but laughed at--by Americans after the wa--because of American egotism: American manufacturing had proven itself during war-time production, and now it was king.
Japanese was not king, it barely existed. The Japanese were hurting economically, and being the smart people they are, they knew that quality goods would sell if they only manufactured them inexpensively enough. America laughed at those early Japanese products because we thought quality meant expensive, but we bought them because they worked--and because they were inexpensive.
As for the Chinese products America began to see two decades ago, I was incensed to see them in our stores, on our shelves, competing with products made in free nations. Anything that had a tag that said "Made in China" I put back, and bought more expensively--when there was a choice.
The world has changed. No longer can you just put back things "Made in China" because so much of what is for sale is made there. Thousands of dogs and cats died a year ago because of tainted food products; the year before that it was children's toys painted with lead. After the pet food scandal, the very same scandal erupted in China itself, with the tainting chemical being in infant formula.
The Chinese industrial revolution is filled with unethical practices, but with fear of the government: the man who owned the toy factory that used lead-based paint committed suicide because it was more honorable to him than being put to death by the Chinese government for his "mistake."
"You may remember when the world was divided between communism and capitalism, and when the Chinese were communists. The Chinese still call themselves communists, but now they’re also capitalists," writes Robert B. Reich, the twenty-second United States Secretary of Labor, serving under President Bill Clinton. http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0110-42.htm
But saying China is capitalist is like saying America is socialist--true, yet not true. The bigger truth is, we are becoming more like a socialist nation than the Pilgrims could have imagined; they gave up communism in the spring of 1623.
Gus Van Horn quoted The New Republic: "It's too bad for many reasons that, 'this nominally communist country now [only] seems more capitalist than Wall Street'" [italic added by Van Horn] He then added his own observation:
"The people [of China] have come to expect the fruits of capitalism (e.g., high wages and a good standard of living) while remaining ignorant of the nature of capitalism. True, they may blame the government when things turn sour, but this will likely be for the wrong reasons. Anyone who expects a government to be able to turn things around by any means other than simply protecting individual rights will be repeatedly disappointed.A blind rebellion is unlikely to result in China ending up free. Worse, capitalism will get the blame for the uneven and unsustainable growth pattern that has resulted from foolhardy attempts at central planning on both sides of the Pacific." [emphasis added]http://www.objectivismonline.net/
Unfortunately, what Van Horn forgets to say is that most Americans are ignorant of the nature and the source of capitalism.
"The gap between China’s rich and poor is turning into a chasm," writes Reich. "China’s innovators, investors, and captains of industry are richly rewarded. They live in luxury housing developments whose streets are lined with McMansions. The feed in fancy restaurants, and relax in five-star hotels and resorts. China’s poor live in a different world. Mao Tse Tung would turn in his grave.
"Capitalism has won hands down. The real dividing line is no longer economic. It’s political. And that divide is between democracy and authoritarianism. China is a capitalist economy with an authoritarian government." http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0110-42.htm
In the sense that the use of capital exists in China and that its users are allowed to profit, it may be called capitalist. But in the sense that politics is the dividing line, America is becoming more like a socialist nation every day.
"Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned," wrote Ayn Rand. http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/capitalism.html Private ownership means private decisions about the use of the property, and money is property because it was created by the minds and labor of those who earned it, not by the government that printed it.
But soon we are to see "the shared presumption that the way forward is always through moderation and compromise." http://www.aynrand.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=43221&em_id=46243.0 And we will see it in the way Americans handle the incoming administration of Barak Obama and the Democratically-controlled Congress.
Rights, as in property rights, as in money being property, are not something to compromise on. Compromising on rights turns them into privileges that are "allowed" by the government only to the point that we as Citizens allow; or so we thought. The overwhelming majority of Americans told the Congress not to use our money to bail out Wall Street's economic mess in the mortgage industry. They failed to listen. We did not vote the bums out of office, we increased the majority of the greater of the two sets of bums, the set which is more dangerous because they don't even give lip service to the free market as do the Republicans.
In the November 4th vote, Americans "presumed the way forward" was to compromise on their rights. This demonstrates we, as a nation, no longer understand the nature of how capital is created.
"The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve 'the common good', wrote Rand. "It is true that capitalism does[achieve the "common good"]—if that catch-phrase has any meaning—but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice. What Is Capitalism?Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal 20
Americans voted in the most liberal legislator of our times, one who will not even acknowledge that associating with people who hate America and/or committed crimes against it is anything to own up to.
Clearly Americans do not understand the justice in capitalism, or we would not, year after year, treat our right to control our own property as a privilege granted by the government and as something we can allow to be compromised into obscurity.
"[T]here is something particularly galling and repugnant about people who have felt the sting of discrimination, turn around and step on another minority. What happened at the ballot box feels like a personal betrayal and the hijacking of history.
"To the Mormons who bankrolled the bigotry, religious discrimination is awful, as long as it is happening to them. For the black people who voted for Proposition 8, the civil rights movement was about emancipating black people - and no one else seems to matter. These solipsistic individuals and their prejudiced pastors appear to lack an ember of empathy and have turned freedom into a private fiefdom.
"The civil rights movement was much larger than the plight of black people, just as the fight for religious freedom is bigger than Mormons. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream that all people are equal under the law and should be judged by the content of their character. Barack Obama largely embodied this universally appealing message and this is why he made history.
"There is a lot of blame to go around for the failure of Proposition 8 and the first step to healing and moving forward is honesty. Let's not pretend that the repudiation of Martin Luther King Jr's dream by African American voters did not hurt more than, say, rejection by white evangelicals. It did."Wayne Besen - Daily Commentary
The Purpose of Judges, and the Constitution
"The most fundamental question a Supreme Court justice must answer is what in fact do the individual’s rights to life, liberty, property, and happiness include? Only then can he determine if a certain law or government action is securing or violating those rights. But no justice asks this question anymore because none believes it objectively answerable.
"Instead, and broadly speaking, judicial conservatives ask what privileges did American society at the time of ratification grant the individual. So when modern legislators make criminal offenses out of abortion, contraception, homosexuality, and other acts said to be frowned upon centuries ago, conservative judges feel duty-bound to stand aside and do nothing. To conservatives, it’s meaningless to ask whether the right to liberty in fact includes the right to use contraception (a question 18th-century Americans may have answered incorrectly). The only question is whether society at that time meant to permit this action.
"John McCain [ ] pledged to appoint judges in this conservative mold.
"Judicial liberals reject this worship of bygone days. Instead, liberals see constitutional values evolving like a motion picture, constantly updating to reflect current social mores. So when Congress declares federal dominion over every nut, bolt, and button of American industry, liberal judges feel duty-bound to stand aside and do nothing--not because earlier Americans intended to allow such controls, but because modern Americans want them. To liberals, it’s meaningless to ask whether the right to liberty in fact includes freedom of trade and contract (a question that a majority of Americans may be answering incorrectly today). The only question is whether the “will” of today’s society favors permitting such actions.
"Barack Obama has pledged to appoint judges in this liberal mold.
"But conservatives and liberals are both wrong about rights. It cannot be true that rights come from society. The very concept of a right identifies the actions you can take without anyone’s permission. Rights are not social privileges but objective facts, identifying the freedoms we need to live our lives--whether a majority in society agree or not. This is why the Founding Fathers dedicated their new government to the protection of each individual’s already-existing rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
"Thus, the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments forbid the government to deprive you of “life, liberty, or property” (except when you have violated someone else’s rights, and even here the government must follow due process, such as holding a trial). The Ninth Amendment safeguards all “rights” not listed elsewhere. These principles encompass all the innumerable actions required for your survival and happiness over a lifetime--the right to make a contract, earn a profit, build a house, make a friend, speak your mind, and so on.
murdering his father and another man appeared in court on Monday. Police say the boy confessed to shooting the two men with a .22-caliber gun, but his defense attorneys told reporters that "there could have been improper interview techniques done." What's the "proper" way to interrogate a kid?
"With kid gloves. Based on the principle that juvenile suspects may not fully comprehend a Miranda warning, most states mandate some form of added protection for children under the age of 16. In at least 20 states, police must notify the child's guardian before questioning; and in at least 13 states, either a parent or an attorney must be present.
"Under Arizona law, the state carries the "burden of proof" in juvenile interrogation cases. That is, there's a presumption that the child's statements were made involuntarily unless a preponderance of evidence indicates otherwise. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled in State v. Jimenez that in determining whether a confession was voluntary (and therefore admissible), a court should evaluate the child's age, education, background, and intelligence, plus whether the child's parents were present, whether he was in good mental and physical health during the interrogations, and whether he has a mental illness.
"There's evidence to suggest that juvenile suspects are more likely than adults to make a false confession. A 2004 study of 326 exoneration cases found that 13 percent of adults had falsely confessed, compared with 44 percent of suspects under 18 years old.
"Law-enforcement officers are often trained to conduct interrogations using the Reid Technique, which involves direct confrontation, physical gestures to appear concerned, and preventing the accused from denying the crime outright. Practitioners are encouraged to use the same methods for children as for adults. This helps explain why children are more likely to offer up false confessions." Slate.Com
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