The Protection Racket

If winning elections is our goal then we will lose. Our goal must be to change the game. We have had too many years of winning without change.

We have had too many years of the nanny state: The Ds want to be protected from Economic failure and the Rs want to be protected from Moral failure (generally). When in fact the state can do neither and can at best be neutral and at worst promote failure.

When the state protects out economics too much our economic muscles grow weak. When it protects our morals too much our moral muscles grow weak. Reliance on the state promotes weakness.

Palin Is Not A Racist

A new biography claims Sarah Palin had a tryst with Glen Rice in 1987. And in case you are interested Mr. Rice is Black.

The National Enquirer grabbed some details from the upcoming Joe McGinniss Sarah Palin book, and this chunk is too delightful not to share with you immediately. Apparently Palin had a fling with former Heat/Hornet/Laker Glen Rice while he was in college and while she was a sports reporter in Alaska, all the way back in 1987. Rice confirms it in the book.

Well good on her. It proves two things. One is that Palin is human. The other is that she is not a racist.

No doubt the people pushing this stuff hope it will harm Palin with the racists and moralists on the right. It is possible, but I have my doubts.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

A Culture For Libertines

I was over visiting Stacy McCain's thanks to Instapundit where there was a discussion going on about a Muslim gang that raped white women and girls - some as young as 12 - in the UK. So of course the question of culture comes up. And of course the decline in morals in the West. And how we still have a slut/madonna duality. It just seems these Muslim boys had it worse. Evidently the difference between mutual agreement and force was lost on them. Which may have had to do with their Muslim culture. Especially its attitude towards non-Muslims.

One of the commenters said:

This issue is a symptom of the degradation of the West

The double standard Re: women is not Western, it is human. Personally I prefer the "girls just wanna have fun" attitude of Western women.

Every culture has its pitfalls. I'll take ours. The range of acceptable possibilities is wider. i.e. we are more adaptable. A survival trait.

Another commenter said:

-The behavior of the Royal Family is nothing new. Such activities have been the norm for all such families ever since the first king was crowned.

And why is it so prevalent in the West? We are richer. With wealth comes the "diseases" of wealth. i.e. human nature is what it is.

I like it. But I always did like strong independent women. Rich cultures have more of them. I liked strong women so much that I married one. Twenty eight years and four children ago.

#1. An artist
#2. Fulbright Scholar - teaches American Culture at a Russian University.
#3. Electrical Engineering student - drummer and drum teacher.
#4. Chemical Engineering Student

It is possible to raise strong families without "Victorian" attitudes. Our current situation is difficult because we don't have "rules" that correspond to the current situation. Over the next 100 years - if we remain rich - we will develop the cultural tools needed. In the mean time - as in any learning situation - there is going to be a lot of wreckage. Rule of thumb: if 50% of your experiments are not failures you are not learning fast enough.

Girls who are not dependent on men are going to be more sexual generally. Girls who can control their "fertility" are going to be more promiscuous. When there are not enough suitable men around women will be more promiscuous. In America we like sending a lot of men to prison. Especially dealers in dried plants and plant extracts. This contributes to our family problems.

Ironically you find that the folks who most hate "cultural breakdown" also really like putting the hammer down on the dealers in dried plants and plant extracts. It is a wonder to behold.

Humans is some very funny animals.

Maybe some one needs to write Cultural Rules For Aristocrats. "Or How to Get By With Loose Morals In An Age Of Plenty." Exhibition vs discretion could be one of the Chapters. It is all about etiquette. Americans don't have any. Jerry Springer? The Gong Show? The $1.98 Beauty Contest? And how do you write an etiquette where people's ideas of proper decorum are so divergent?

Could this be the basis for a Right and Proper Moral Panic? I hope not. If we are lucky this will all pass before some one gets the bright idea that what we need is a law, or twenty.

It will all pass if we give culture and wealth time to work. I remember the Christmas tree bomber lamenting that his culture was losing its his hard edge in soft America so he had to act fast. Before he didn't want to act.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Government As A Moral Enterprise

David Harsanyi has a column up about the shocking lack of faith in America and all the trouble it is causing in politics. You really need to read it. But I want to excerpt a bit from his closing remarks.

...progressives regard government as a moral enterprise. And in church, you gotta have faith.

There are a lot of Progressives who claim to be conservatives. You know. The kind claiming to belong to the One True Culture Club. (Its a joke son)

H/T Instapundit

A Decline In Morals

I'm having an interesting discussion at Moral Authority about the homosexual plot to destroy American values and take down American civilization.

That is not the first time American civilization took the short road to decline. Marriages were once decided on the basis of economic interests and personalities mostly by parents. And then by 1830 or so romance was all the rage and parents had lost much of their say in the matter. Would America ever be the same?

Between 1708/9, when Samuel Gerrish courted Mary Sewall, and 1835, when Theodore Weld courted Angelina Grimke, the rituals of courtship underwent profound changes. Parental influence and involvement in the selection of their children's marriage partner visibly declined. Young women and men were increasingly free to pick or reject a spouse with little parental interference. At the same time that courtship grew freer, however, marriage became an increasingly difficult transition point, particularly for women, and more and more women elected not to marry at all.

In seventeenth and early eighteenth century New England, courtship was not simply a personal, private matter. The law gave parents "the care and power...for the disposing of their Children in Marriage" and it was expected that they would take an active role overseeing their child's choice of a spouse. A father in Puritan New England had a legal right to determine which men would be allowed to court his daughters and a legal responsibility to give or withhold his consent from a child's marriage. A young man who courted a woman without her father's permission might be sued for inveigling the woman's affections.

Parental involvement in courtship was expected because marriage was not merely an emotional relationship between individuals but also a property arrangement among families. A young man was expected to bring land or some other form of property to a marriage while a young woman was expected to bring a dowry worth about half as much.

As you can see we have never recovered. Decisions that were once made rationally are now consummated based on half-witted ideas like romance.

The Puritans had the right idea

Puritan New Englanders, in sharp contrast, did not regard love as a necessary precondition for marriage. Indeed, they associated romantic love with immaturity and impermanence. True love, the Puritans believed, would appear following marriage. A proper marriage, in their view, was based not on love and affection, but on rational considerations of property, compatibility, and religious piety. Thus, it was considered acceptable for a young man to pursue "a goodly lass with aboundation of money," so long as he could eventually love his wife-to-be.

Giving up the strict rules has lead to ruination.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, parental influence over the choice of a spouse had sharply declined. One indication of a decline in parental control was a sudden upsurge in the mid-eighteenth century the number of brides who were pregnant when they got married. In the seventeenth century, fathers--supported by local churches and courts--exercised close control over their childrens' sexual behavior and kept sexual intercourse prior to marriage at extremely low levels. The percentage of women who bore a first child less than eight-and-a half months after marriage was below ten percent. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the figure had shot up to over forty percent.

So as I stated in a comment to Moral Authority in response to this comment:

The legitimizing of homosexuality is one lynchpin in a program to undercut Western sexual morality, and to disrupt the legal and social constraints that give weight, strength, and stability to the family unit.

Dude,

You are not going to get that toothpaste back into the tube. The horse has left the barn. The culture has changed.

Western sexual morality as you think you remember it (I saw a study once that in the US in the 1700s about 1/3 of the brides were already knocked up - true? I haven't cross checked - [see above]) is gone.

You want to do something about Western morality? Forget gays. The bigger hole is adultery and divorce. If we could bring back stoning for adultery and 40 lashes for fornication we might get somewhere. It all started going bad long before women got the vote. But it didn't help.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Moral Authority

In condemning homosexuality Robert Knight, makes an interesting point.

This is no small disagreement. Conservatism, if it means anything, reflects the understanding that, as Russell Kirk said, "there exists a transcendent moral order, to which we ought to try to conform the ways of society ... such convictions may take the form of belief in 'natural law' or may assume some other expression; but with few exceptions conservatives recognize the need for enduring moral authority."

Assume for a minute that fighting homosexuality has some useful purpose (I don't think so) where is this moral authority to be found? In government? The most corruptible and corrupt of our institutions? I don't think so.

And yet my conservative friends are quick to wield the fasces (the power of government) against what ever violates their rigid sense of order. Forgetting altogether that Liberty is a rather disorderly place to live.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it. - Thomas Jefferson

H/T Eric of Classical Values via e-mail.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

The Immoral Nation

There has been a lot of back and forth at the places I post (Classical Values and Power and Control) about America becoming an immoral nation. So I have to asks a question of my readers and especially those commenting on my various posts. What can make America the moral nation that so many seem to crave?

Can government make people moral?

If so why did we give up on all the goodness that alcohol prohibition was responsible for?

OK. Scratch that. It seems that when government gets involved in the morality business it only makes things worse.

America is a mainly Christian church going nation - so can churches make people moral?

If so why are so many people who have had church weddings divorced? Why are there so many children of divorce from parents married in church?

===

OK. Government can't make people moral and churches are failing at the job as well.

Any one care to suggest fall back position?

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Makers Vs Takers

I just learned from Duane J. Oldsen about a book by Jane Jacobs, Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politicswhich was published in 1992. It is a fascinating look at the two major systems of morality that we find in the world. Commercial Morality and Guardian (Political) Morality. Or what I like to call Makers vs Takers. The two are complimentary (neither does well without the other) and yet stand in opposition to each other. Things get really nasty when the spheres of influence are mixed without consideration for consequences.

Let me start with a couple of references. First The Wiki which provides a short look at the major points. Second is this pdf which is much more detailed with many excerpts from the book. However, I must caution that it is somewhat hard to read due to the many typos.

I want to start first with a table of contrasting moral precepts. Which I have modified slightly from the wiki to make the contrasts a little clearer.

Moral Precepts for Systems of Survival

Guardian System	Commercial System
Shun trading	Shun force
Take	Earn
Be obedient and disciplined	Be efficient
Adhere to tradition	Be open to inventiveness and novelty
Respect hierarchy	Use initiative and enterprise
Be loyal	Come to voluntary agreements
Take vengeance	Respect contracts
Deceive for the sake of the task	Dissent for the sake of the task
Make rich use of leisure	Be industrious
Be ostentatious	Be thrifty
Dispense largess	Invest for productive purposes
Be exclusive	Collaborate easily with strangers and aliens
Show fortitude	Promote comfort and convenience
Be fatalistic	Be optimistic
Treasure honor	Be honest

I think the commercial class is rather self explanatory but the political/guardian class needs some explanation. In the American system the political class is supposed to provide oversight to the warrior class in order that those in the warrior class are kept within their proper bounds and operate with the maximum of efficiency and the minimum of corruption in their own sphere. This is their prime function. Their motives are most closely aligned with the warrior class since the political class are by definition takers. However, they are also entrusted with seeing that the commercial class is kept honest as well. This explains why we have two systems of courts. The check on the political class is that they are watched by the civilian courts and civilian prosecutors. They are also checked by being elected by the civilian population.

Science and its handmaiden engineering are inherently a commercial endeavors only more so. They depend on a level of honesty not often found in ordinary commerce. They must not be just accommodating of truth but ruthless about it. The check on science and engineering is replication of the work. It is not true science until some one can repeat the experiment and get the same result within the margin of error. Of course there is continuous effort to reduce the margin of error. That leads to economy both in engineering and science.

Well that is a nice short over view. Let's look at how the systems can fail. The number one failure within the warrior class is a failure of loyalty. In the true warrior loyalty is bidirectional. It comprises loyalty to subordinates, equals, and superiors. The reason loyalty is so important is that all warfare is based on deception. Commerce is dependent on honesty above all. Honest measures, truth in advertising, and the fitness of the goods for the purposes contracted. The good working of both systems is most ensured by promoting excellence, in people, in goods, and in services. And to make it all work the two systems must be kept as separate as possible. The peace keepers (soldiers, police) will demand loyalty from the political class and the businessmen will demand honesty from the political class and each must be satisfied in its own sphere.

I have been going on and on and you can probably see for yourself many avenues for corruption and the misuse of one system by the other and most easily the misuse of both systems by the political class who are in charge of keeping both honest. So let me end with a number of quotes from the Jacobs book extracted from the above pdf.

On Agriculture

...agriculture can be operated under either guardian or commercial ways. Wherever in the world a clamor arises for land to be divided and given to its workers, the system being attacked is the guardian type of agriculture. {But}...it's basically a commercial activity.... ...when agriculture is operated in accordance with commercial precepts, placing value on voluntary agreement, thrift, productive investment, efficiency, and openness to innovations, it is much more productive than guardian-run agriculture. worker for worker, it supports its people better. Guardian ways are a drag on agriculture. ...the work's natural demands..for commercial morality. It innately requires thrift: the farmer must deliberately set seeds and breeding stock aside, even if it means going on short rations. It also requires industriousness, much unremitting drudgery day after day after day, especially before machines lightened the work. ...trading or bartering is almost invariably associated with agriculture and animal breeding. Farm households everywhere struggle to get something to market if they possibly can. This is true even when members of the household spin, weave, and practice other crafts. For a household to produce food and fibers for itself and for nobody else, and therefore by definition also supply itself with all its other needs, too -- since it isn't buying or bartering -- is so impractical it's uncommon. So impractical it's a guaranteed recipe for poverty. [Agriculture is]...an economic activity that is functionally and morally commercial [and] has historically been skewed to conform to the contradictory values and morals of guardian landowners. Rulers long ago became preoccupied with agriculture because it meshed with their preoccupations with territory. Tradition has perpetuated the fixation. Any ostensible reason for maintaining the tradition will do. ...once guardian largesse and controls are in place, any attempt to abandon them becomes disruptive.... ...nobody knows what agriculture would be like if it were restored fully and truly to the commercial syndrome and its workings, and everybody is afraid to find out.

Casts of Mind

...we're qualitatively different from other animals as ecological presences. But why? ... Trade! Trade pays no attention to ecosystem unit boundaries. It skips over them as it pleases, transferring surplus energy from this and that ecosystem unit into other ecosystem units. ...it's logical for guardian-minded people to identify a given territorial unit by the range of its top predator -- its prince. However, in the real ecosystems of the real world, obscure creatures can identify ecological units more tellingly than animals at the top of the food chain. ... If you care about putting scientific learning to constructive use...then you need guardian-minded ecologists.... And you have to take them with their habits -- fixation on territories and territorial princes, bureaucratic ways of bringing order to reality, and all. ... If something is a large, important truth, many entirely different avenues should lead to it.... Education does not guarantee a cast of mind appropriate to the training. [Referring to a team of researchers] At the institute, [they]...no doubt sincerely thought they were engaging in free intellectual inquiry. Yet their guardian assumptions, their guardian cast of mind, governed the root questions they were putting to themselves.

Military Engineers vs Civilian Engineers

Engineers working in the military-industrial complex are skillful at designing ingenious products but...they fail to combine this skill with thrift of means. ...trained incompetence...it has corrupted the abilities of most of the country's best and brightest engineers over the span of the past forty years. ...lack of cost discipline...has side effects outside the military-industrial complex. ...between 1980 and 1988, our share of machine tool markets dropped from eighteen percent to seven percent. ... American engineers have...remained marvelous at inventing in fields that can afford to support such work. ...the trouble comes from inability to produce the inventions at affordable costs and with competitive efficiency. then, even though invention has given us a head start, we lose out to Italians, Germans, Japanese, and others.... ... Pentagon contracts in the aggregate are enormous. ...engineers laid off from military work will have a 'lethal effect' in civilian production because of their lopsided experience in disregarding costs.

Mixing Guardian Work and Work for Commerce

Plato said mingling kinds of work or meddling with other people's tasks was 'the greatest wickedness,' did the ,most harm' to the community, and was the very incarnation of injustice.

Fair Competition

Fair and square competition is moral in the commercial syndrome. Not in the guardian syndrome, where largesse and loyalty take priority.

The Great Misunderstanding

Francis Bacon: The increase of any state must be upon the foreigner (for whatever is somewhere gained is somewhere lost). ... People with guardian casts of mind tend to carry zero-sum thinking with them into their attempts to understand all kinds of gains and losses.

Kind of opens the mind and shakes out the cobwebs don't it?

Cross Posted at Classical Values

A Wasting Asset

Why do some "ladies" get paid thousands an hour for sex services? Supply and demand.

It is not just about sex. It is also a social occasion. You might actually want to have a conversation with the lady between "jumps".

Now how many upper middle class well educated good looking ladies do you find who are willing to have sex for money? Well, you find more of them if you are willing to pay more money.

Some one who can do a discounted cash flow on a wasting asset is going to be a rarer find than a lady who can barely balance her checkbook.

Prompted by a discussion of the Spitzer case at The Volokh Conspiracy

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Dept. Of Human Relations

Best comment so far on the Spitzer affair comes from a commenter at The Deal Breaker.

You don't pay hookers for sex. You pay them so that they will leave when you are done.

and might I add "keep quiet about it"?

Moral Relativism Wins

The New York Times has a bit up on the Canon (Culture) Wars and how they have affected academia. It centers around a discussion of Alan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind.

Today it’s generally agreed that the multiculturalists won the canon wars. Reading lists were broadened to include more works by women and minority writers, and most scholars consider that a positive development. Yet 20 years later, there’s a more complicated sense of the costs and benefits of those transformations. Here, the lines aren’t drawn between right and left in the traditional political sense, but between those who defend the idea of a distinct body of knowledge and texts that students should master and those who focus more on modes of inquiry and interpretation. However polarizing Bloom may have been, many of the issues he raised still resonate — especially when it comes to the place of the humanities on campus and in the culture.

Here comes the punch line. And on the first page too!

All this reflects what the philosopher Martha Nussbaum today describes as a “loss of respect for the humanities as essential ingredients of democracy.” Nussbaum, who panned Bloom’s book in The New York Review in 1987, teaches at the University of Chicago, which like Columbia has retained a Western-based core curriculum requirement for undergraduates. But on some campuses, “the main area of conflict is trying to make sure that the humanities get adequate funding from the central administration,” Nussbaum wrote in an e-mail message, adding, “Our nation, like most nations of the world, is devaluing the humanities vis-à-vis science and technology, so constant vigilance is required lest these disciplines be cut.” Louis Menand, a Harvard English professor and New Yorker staff writer who serves on Harvard’s curriculum reform committee, concurs: “The big question for humanists is, How do we explain why what we do is important for people who aren’t humanists? That’s been tough, really tough.”

The Professor is complaining that the people think the Humanities have no relevance. If she is a liberal she should be cheering that moral relativism has won. If no judgments can be made no need to teach judgment, eh? I guess the downside of that bothers the Professor. Isn't it ironic, just a bit, don't ya think?

Bloom was wrong about Rock 'n Roll though.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

American Morality

Eric at Classical Values is discussing Clayton Cramers's piece on the prevalence of abortion before Roe. His conclusion about abortion is that it may actually be happening at a lower rate since Roe.

His most important point is his conclusion.

If you have to arrest and try your own citizens for a crime on a massive scale (as would be necessary to enforce a general ban on abortion), it is usually a bad indicator for the moral health of your society.

I wonder when we are going to apply this kind of thinking to drug prohibition? I look forward to a return of American morality.

Cross Posted at Classical Values and at The Astute Bloggers

Civilized Behavior

I was reading a post at The Volokh Conspiracy about step-father, step daughter incest. A commenter noted that 5,000 years of civilization proves that this is a bad idea. Actually it doesn't. Here is my comment on why:

Did some one mention 5,000 years of civilization?

It was not uncommon for Pharoahs of Egypt to marry their biological sisters.

I don't think that bears on the current issue in the 21st Century, but one must remember that civilized people have had some strange ideas from time to time.

In the ME first cousin marriages are not uncommon. I don't know about uncle/niece marriages. Of course there are many who say the ME is uncivilized and I might tend to agree.

Policing Morality

In a discussion at The Captain's Quarters the policing of morality came up. Naturally I had to chime in.

We have whole departments of government dedicated to policing morality.

Ever hear of the DEA? The Federal Government spends at minimum $20 bn a year policing people's drug habits. Is it working? The price of heroin on a cost/purity basis has declined by a factor of 600 in the last 40 years. A packet of 2 - 5% pure heroin used to cost on the order of $40. Now you get 80 to 95% pure heroin for around $4. A real success story for the morality police.

Pot - one of the least dangerous drugs known to man, including alcohol, tobacco, and aspirin - has seen a significant price rise over the same time period. Another roaring success.

Less dangerous drugs - more expensive. More dangerous drugs - less expensive. Another roaring success.

Did I mention financing criminals and terrorists?

Why don't we stop this madness? I blame drugs - the mere mention of which makes people stupid.

Faith Based Sex Education

Well Bush is off on one of his moral crusades to get abstinence only sex education more funds. A nice quote from the article:

Teaching only about abstinence means students will be less able to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, say supporters of comprehensive sexual education.

``The only 100 percent way to avoid a car collision is not to drive, but the federal government sure does a lot of advocacy for safety belts,'' said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a group that promotes education about birth control and condom use.

On top of that it seems that no one knows which approach is best. All Bush can say is that people desire the programs. It is stuff like this that made me vote for Obama.