Shots Across the Bow

Pulp fiction my ass! From Samizdata comes the following quote:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

Sir Alex Frazer Tytler

I first came across this idea in a pulp science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein that my teachers said would rot my brain, cause me to waste my god given talents, and cause hair to grow on my palms.

So they got one out of three right!*grin*

Darwin and Ethics This little puppy is right up my alley! The ubiquitous Glenn Reynolds links to an argument by Ananda Gupta which critiques a piece by Benjamin Wiker in NRO (all these links!) which reviews the PBS show Monkey Trial. His critique is off base because he fails to see the contradiction inherent in Darwin's own defense of the quotes he claims are taken out of context. This could get confusing, but I'll try to keep things organized.

My first problem is that he accuses Wiker of quoting Darwin out of context to support his thesis. In truth, as Wiker's article makes very clear, the author of the textbook which John Scopes used to teach evolution, George William Hunter is the source of the ideas he finds abhorrant. Wiker then provides quotes from The Descent of Man to corroborate Hunter's ideas, and show how they derive directly from Darwin.

Ananda's first example:

"The 'most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring.'"

Darwin does say that. In the next sentence, he says:

"Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is concerned there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, etc., than through natural selection; though to this latter agency may be safely attributed the social instincts, which afforded the basis for the development of the moral sense."

OK, so Darwin tried to tone down the implications, but let's look a little closer. If natural selection provides the basis for the social instincts, and those socal instincts provide the basis for the moral sense, then natural selection does provide the ultimate proving ground for our moral sense. If that sense provides us with a fitness edge, then we will survive and prosper. If not, we will fail.
Second, Darwin never took the full implications of his theories to heart. Religion has no foundation in a world derived strictly from natural selection. Darwin assumes that there are qualities which separate man from the animals, that 'highest part' which is not amenable to natural selection. What he fails to examine is how behaviors which are readily shown to be contra-survival actually provide a net benefit.

Ananda's next example:

"'We civilized men,' Darwin declared, 'do our utmost to check the [natural] process of elimination [by natural selection]; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.'"

In the very next paragraph of the Descent of Man, Darwin says:

"The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil."

So, in other words, if we were to act according to our baser desires and neglect the helpless for eugenic purposes, we would be "deteriorating" the "noblest part of our nature."

Again, Darwin provides a moral argument for ignoring the dictates of natural selection without providing ANY sound biological foundation. Again, he wants to have his cake and eat it too. We are just animals, but we are other than animals. He never explains the contradiction, and neither does Ananda.

This contradiction is at the heart of Wiker's review of the movie, and the book which Scopes used to teach evolution. It is interesting that Ananda omits discussion of the most damning Of Wiker's Darwin citations:

"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes [that is, the ones which look most like the savages in structure] . . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope…the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla."

Go ahead, place that into a favorable context.

Ananda's diatribe only examines part of the story, and rejects truths which he finds unpalatable. Darwinism is a racist philosophy at its very roots, and trying to extirpate the racism only leads to the contradictions I've demonstrated above. If evolution through natural selection is the only biological mechanism at work, then racism is the natural state of man. On the other hand, viewing natural selection as a partial theory gives us the ability to determine why co-operative modes of evolution also work. As Darwin himself noted, even though we breed badly, we still thrive. It is evident that evolution has a driver to compliment natural selection. Instead of railing at people who expose the short comings of natural selection, our time would be better spent trying to understand and codify this other driver.

UPDATE In the first publishing of this piece, I referred to Ananda as 'she' when in fact I have just been informed that Ananda is a male name. I apologize for the error.

And they are our friends? Continuing on a theme here, this story exposes the Saudi idea of justice.

Strange bedfellows This article from the Manila Times provides more glimmers of a potential link between Islamic fundamentalists and Timothy McVeigh.

Although Philippine authorities advised American authorities of the alliance between the Abu Sayyaf, Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida, and American neo-nazis, the US appeared to ignore the warnings; until Sept. 11. ......

And more...

But even before that, in 1993, when the Abu Sayyaf was in its infancy, the same group met with Nichols and another American—believed to have been executed Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh—at a Dole labeling plant near General Santos City.

Another article published in the Indianapolis Star gives further detail on possible connections.

If there was a legitimate connection between the Oklahoma City bombing and Al Qaida, then things are even worse than they appear. On the other hand, how many home grown neo-nazis really rejoiced, seeing the Pentagon and the WTC trashed? My guess is that the enormity of the act alienated all but the most hard core members, and has limited whatever co-operation previously existed.

Crossroads I had no use for Kid Rock. I don't like his music, and I'm not a fan of hip-hop.
But I just watched a show on CMT (Country Music Television for the uninitiated) which featured Kid Rock performing onstage with Hank Williams Jr, and I have to say that young man is an outstanding musician.

Where most so-called 'artists' have only one sound, the real musicians master them all. They find the rythym beneath the beat, the melody behind the notes, and the song behind the words. It doesn't matter whether the genre is pop, rock, funk, country, or bluegrass. A musician always finds the song and lets it sing. An even better musician finds himself within the song, and lets that sing as well.

Kid Rock has that talent. He sang Hank's songs and made them his own, without compromising the emotions of the originals. He transcended the barriers of hip hop and country, and gave a performance which was true to both, because it was true to his heart.

I still don't like his music, but he is one hell of a musician.

At last! I've found somebody who agrees with Glenn Reynolds on the 'slippery slope' argument!

Dressed in white and with his hair swept up in a small knot, Rael said fears of the human cloning producing "a monster" or "Frankenstein" were unfounded because faulty cells would be discarded in the Clonaid process.

What can I say in the face of such expertise?*grin*

How the mighty have fallen! The British Navy, once the most feared and respected force on the seas, can't even find their way to the right beach.

I guess the sun has set after all.

Big Brother....and then some Richard Eaton has developed software that will record every keystroke, every e-mail, activate your webcam, send all this information to a remote monitor, all without your knowledge or consent, and for the low low price of $99. And he claims to be a privacy advocate.

What's the value of 30 pieces of silver when adjusted for inflation?

Campaign Finance Deform David Broder has a good article in the Boston Globe on the details of the Campaign Finance reform bill being considered in the Senate.

My biggest concern comes from the bill's limitations on issue ads prior to primaries and elections. This is an incredibly broad prohibition which could effectively silence grass roots organizations. I don't see how this provision could get past the first Amendment considerations.

The Trial of Russell Yates is about to begin. Russell Yates has stood by his wife throughout the whole affair. He has staunchly defended her in public, and in the press. He has refused to condemn her, and advertises for her defense fund on a website he created to show pictures of his children. As the trial gets underway, I wonder if her other defenders will stand by him as faithfully.

There are already rumblings within feminist organizations that the murders were actually Russell's fault, and that he was a domineering and abusive husband.

Patricia Ireland has instructed us that Yates was, like other victimized American women, "imprisoned at home with their children."

While feminists have been stepping forward to suggest that all stay-at-home mothers live perched on the edge of child murder, no one seems to have noted the culpability of the father in this tragedy. Who would continue to have children with a woman who goes crazier with each birth? Even if he did not suspect his wife of being capable of murder, what conscientious father would leave a suicidal woman alone with his five children? Suppose she had cut her throat in front of them? (She had tried.) If these were anyone's children but his own, wouldn't he be found at least civilly liable for reckless endangerment?

LA Daily News

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Russell Yates: Accomplice to Murder I think the Andrea Yates story is a fairly harsh condemnation of an extreme Christian culture in which the woman submits completely to the husband and becomes little more than a baby factory.

Russell Yates is trying to spin this story as a condemnation of her psychiatric care, and while I'm sure their is some culpability there I think the bulk of the blame lays with him and his wife.

So much so that I think he should be charged as some sort of criminal accessory.

If the insanity defense begins to fail, how long before the defense begins to echo these arguments?

A second thought On the drive back home from the funeral, I had another thought on Christianity, one that I’ve never seen explored before. It occurred to me that the pivotal event in the New Testament, the Crucifixion, is presaged in the Old Testament, when Abraham is asked to sacrifice his only son. God stops Abraham, but carries through on sacrificing his Son. Apparently God won’t ask us to do anything he wouldn’t do Himself.

Update A few friends of non-Catholic-but-still-Christian faith have told me that this comparison is a staple of Sunday school. Which makes me wonder if the Jesuits who taught me were really as brilliant as they said they were.

Or maybe I just slept through that part.

I spent the last few days at my grandfather’s funeral, and it gave me a different perspective on religion in general and Catholicism.

I was raised as a Catholic, but I’ve moved away from the church over some doctrinal issues. In fact, I haven’t been to Mass in over 15 years. I thought that Mass represented all that was wrong with the Catholic Church; every week we went through the numbing repetition of the same rituals. The priest said the same things, and we always replied with the same things. Stand up, sit down, stand again, kneel, genuflect, and make the Sign of the Cross.

All just empty ritual, designed to bring comfort through conformity.

But during the funeral, I began to see things differently. Maybe it’s all the New Age mumbo jumbo that permeates our culture now, but I began to see these rites as an invocation. In pagan terms, we were all involved in casting a spell, petitioning for a boon from our God. That’s when it struck me that, despite their attempts to downplay it, the Catholic Church still practices magic. We talk to our God through sacred ceremonies, and ask that he do our bidding. Kind of presumptuous when you think about it, but since He made the rules, who are we to question?

Seen in this new light, the chants, the responses, the rituals, even the positioning of our bodies take on a new significance, and become integral to the Mass, rather than empty motions.

I think the Catholic Church, particularly in America made a grave mistake in trying to remove the supernatural from religion. Religion is primarily of the spirit anyway; to remove or intellectualize the mysticism robs it of its power. Perhaps this is at the root of younger peoples dissatisfaction with established religions, and their acceptance of New Age cults and paganism. They are looking for something that connects with their spirit.

I'm Back! Unfortunately, work has piled up in my absence, so I'll be a little slower than usual.

I'll be gone for a few days I won't be publishing again until Saturday or Sunday. My grandfather died this morning, and I will be travelling to Memphis for the funeral. He was 91, and on his birthday last year, he told us he hoped it was his last one. He died in his sleep, at home, in his own bed, surrounded by family.

I hope I'm that lucky.

State's Rights or Slavery? William Sulik contests the idea that the War Between the States was not fought over slavery.

But that's not my immediate concern. My main point is I can never get over the number of so-called libertarians who will defend the confederacy and states rights, all of which were argued so that a government could maintain a system of laws whereby one man could enslave another man. Please, you can argue all that other stuff, just don't defend the right of the government to defend slavery and try to call yourself a libertarian. You don't love liberty.

No sir. State sovereignty was an issue long before slavery became an issue. Remember, nullification was raised as an issue over tariffs, not the slave trade, and it was a very close fight. The Union chose to portray slavery as the issue driving secession, as it gave them a semblence of the moral high ground. As long as the fight was about slavery, Lincoln could keep support for the war. When the issue drifted to State sovereignty, the war lost support. Slavery was an issue, and an important one, but it was not the proximate cause.