Mischaracterize, Misquote, and Build Strawmen…or how to win an argument no one is having

Someone asked me to comment on this USAToday article which basically chides Republicans for appreciating Ayn Rand  I am copying my comments below which address the issues in the article, but I would like you to read as much of USAToday article as you can.  It is a perfect example of how to build the classic Strawman argument.  If you are unfamiliar with the term here it is in a nutshell (quoted from that link):

A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.  To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the “straw man”), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position

If you read the article you will find one of the final arguments of the article is about a so-called Robin-Hood budget:

If you are going to propose a Robin Hood budget, you have to decide whether you are robbing from the poor to give to the rich, or robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Because you cannot do both.

What I find truly problematic about this final zinger by the article’s author (who purports to have read Rand’s novels) is that the two positions he posits (rob from rich for poor, or from poor for rich) are not ideals that anyone who adheres to Randian principles would advocate.  In fact Rand would argue that robbing from anyone for the sake of anyone was wrong.  Needless to say the rest of the article is as well thought out and researched as the above line.

Here is the post I originally gave to the person who asked me to reply to the article:

Not sure where to start on this article…Just up front, I am not a Republican nor am I an Objectivist (Rand’s philosophy)…However, this article makes some very erroneous assumptions about both groups and their philosophy. It also cannot seem to separate “Social Conservative” from Republican, while most SoCons are Repubs, not all are. In addition only about 20-30% of the Republican party is hardline SoCon (going by recent and historical voting and polling). The article also seems to be ignorant of the history of Rand and the Social Conservatives who have a very contentious relationship. It is only recently that she has become more popular among Republicans who are more concerned about economic issues over social ones. Her atheism has always been a sticking point among the two groups.As for the author’s discourse on Rand’s philosophy, it is a fundamentally flawed and immature reading of Objectivism. Objectivism is based out of the same philosophical traditions as Humanism, Skepticism, and other widely accepted philosophies. (all of which run very counter to many principle of Christianity) On the surface Objectivism seems to be based on Selfish desires and Rand is harsh in some of her writings about Altruism and Sacrifice, and as I said before she was devoutly Atheist. Does that mean that her philosophy is antithetical to Christianity?

In some areas yes, but as in many other areas of thought, there are some valuable and Christian ideals that can be taken from her philosophy. Her condemnation of Altruism and Charity were based on her belief that most people are forced into Altruism and Charity by either the church, the state, or by social standards, and that often it runs counter to a person’s self-interest. If you believe that we were granted self-will by God, then this is not much different. The core of Christianity is a personal acceptance and response to the offer of God’s salvation. Through that acceptance we should choose to be better people and be Altruistic, Charitable, Forgiving, etc. However, we should never be forced to be so by either the authorities of church or state, which was what Rand objected to. She stated in her writings that a person should be free to be Altruistic and Charitable.

The author of the article also mischaracterizes Rand’s heroes. While the heroes of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead” are “captains of industry”, every one of the heroes of her books are men (and women) who earned that position by working hard and sacrificing many things to reach the heights they achieved. It is in fact the villains of her books that are the “rich” that the author of the article so despises, the villains are the ones who are given favors and special deference by the state, not the heroes. This also ignores the fact that a number of “heroic” figures in “Atlas Shrugged” includes poets, philosophers, and even a wife and homemaker. All people who are pursuing their self-interest and not imposing their interests or values on others. Much like Christians are told to pursue Christ and live outstanding lives as examples to others.

By the way, none of Rand’s “heroes” ask for special treatment from the state and not all of them are wealthy. Which really undercuts the article writer’s straw man argument about “Robin Hood” government. Rand looked no more favorably on rich people who took from others than she did the poor. By the way Christ did not ask for the poor to look to the state to take for them what they could not achieve themselves and the early Christians did not believe nor practice forcibly taking the wealth of others to take care of the poor, widowed, sick, and children. They considered it an honor to do so themselves and of their own free will and sacrificing greatly to give of themselves. (another position that is not in opposition to Rand’s philosophy)

So yes, there are many ways in which Rand’s Objectivism is counter to Christianity (primarily in the lack of belief of a higher power and her disgust with those who did believe), but there are many ways in which it is not in opposition (which makes it no different than most earthly philosophies). Unlike the assumptions levied by the writer of the article, Rand was not a Rich v Poor advocate. She was an advocate for people living a self-interested life untouched by the forcible hand of the Government or Church. She would be appalled (and was appalled) at the Crony Capitalism that drives the policy of both political parties.

Evil Out

Lost in Moving

I missed my chance to post this last week because of all the craziness surrounding the job and move…

Dream Theater Welcomes Mike Mangini as their new Drummer!!!

(In case you don’t know about this whole situation read this post for the roots of the situation)

Check out this documentary series that covers the Dream Theater auditions for their new drummer.  Even if you don’t know or care about DT, this is an interesting look at how a long established group of musicians replace a long cherished and founding member of a group that has been around for 25 years.

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L609JsPFmmI

Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/user/RoadrunnerRecords#p/u/0/-vaDfcKzLbY

Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/roadrunnerrecords#p/u/0/2QHMQjH17aw

Looking forward to hearing the new music coming from my favorite band.

Evil Out

A Time to Cheer?

Unless you have been living under a rock, in a cave in Pakistan, or a certain compound in Abbottabad, you have probably heard that the United States special forces killed 9/11 mastermind and all-around al-Qaeda big shot, Osama bin Laden, late last night.

Overall I guess this is a good thing.  Glad that our troops got in and out without any casualties.  Good to see bin Laden receive his earthly punishment for his part in the 9/11 attack.

However, at this point…my response was basically, meh…time to go on with my life.

A few observations:

• The wall-to-wall coverage seems out of line for the significance of this event.  Killing OBL is not the same as VE or VJ day.  During my two-hour drive to work this morning every news story NPR ran was about OBL’s death, even during the President’s inauguration they ran other stories in the news.
• The President’s speech to announce the death was one of the more poorly written and executed speeches President Obama has given.  Working the pledge of allegiance into his speech?  Really?
• Revenge does not equal Justice
• Dumping OBL’s body in the ocean?
• These “celebrations” of OBL’s death were really unbecoming of people in a First World Country.  “hey hey goodbye”?  Honestly?
• Speaking of the celebrations…chanting “Yes We Can” and “O-Ba-ma”?  Just more stuff to add to my “cult of the office of president” file.

Now that OBL is dead hopefully we can start dismantling the War-on-Terror/security/industrial complex that we have erected over the past decade…I won’t be holding my breath until the first TSA agents are fired or GITMO is closed…I prefer to live.

Evil Out

Scapegoat…Looking for a Scapegoat

Yes, I am still around…

Watching the current “Budget-pocolypse” play out in Washington is quite the spectacle.  What is the most interesting in all of the breathless media coverage about whom or what is going to be cut or furloughed is how hard each side is trying to paint the other as the reason for the looming shutdown.  Currently we have the Democrats painting the issue as one about Abortion and blaming it on the “Tea Party Wing” of the Republican caucus.  Which is an amazing statement considering the reason for all of the Tea Party activism has been over spending, not social issues.  Of course the Republicans are claiming it is the Democrats trying to play politics with the budget even though they have intentionally been playing politics with the constant Continuing Resolutions instead of repeatedly passing full budgets.  It is nice to see the “Tea Party Caucus” balking at this. 

Personally I would love to see the Federal Government shutdown for a long period of time.  When the country doesn’t fall apart while the Federal Government is reduced to core functions, I hope it will open the eyes of many to the lack of need of the Huge Bureaucratic Beast our Federal Government has become.  Not to mention I would love to see the Government spending money it actually has and not borrowing against my son, nieces’, and nephews’ futures.  I doubt that will happen, but one can dream.

What is lost during all of this hand-wringing, finger-pointing, and scapegoating is the simple fact of where the blame for this whole “crisis” belongs.  The fact is that it was the last congress, controlled entirely by the Democrats, that willing made a decision to forgo doing its’ Constitutional duty and passing a budget.  So remember as the current debate rages over abortion, draconian spending cuts, and continuing resolutions , it was an intentional act by the leaders of the last congress to force this debate onto this congress during this election year.

Scapegoating is the art of knowing when and whom to blame…let’s see if this blatantly political scapegoating act by the Democrat Leadership works.

Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut…

I make no bones about my Libertarian leanings and feel proud of the long philosophical road that has led from the classical liberal to the modern libertarian.  Along this road are many great minds from Fredric Bastiat to Thomas Jefferson to Rose Wilder Lane to Ayn Rand.  Since I am an ‘organically grown’ libertarian who came to the party after my own reading and self-discovery and was never truly indoctrinated into it, I occasionally encounter great liberal/libertarian thinkers, like my recent discovery of Isabel Paterson author of God of the Machine, whom I was unfamiliar with.  So while reading over at Reason.com, I encountered this article about a Progressive Lawyer smearing a Libertarian “grandfather”.  The man is someone who I was vaguely familiar with as a contemporary of Darwin, Herbert Spencer.  You might know him as the man credited with coining the term “survival of the fittest”.  I was, however, unaware of his bona-fides as a great classic liberal/libertarian thinker. 

Needless to say he is an interesting man, here is the opening of his wiki article:

Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era.

Spencer developed an all-embracing conception of evolution as the progressive development of the physical world, biological organisms, the human mind, and human culture and societies. As a polymath, he contributed to a wide range of subjects, including ethics, religion, anthropology, economics, political theory, philosophy, biology, sociology, and psychology. During his lifetime he achieved tremendous authority, mainly in English-speaking academia. In 1902 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Indeed, in the United Kingdom and the United States at “one time Spencer’s disciples had not blushed to compare him with Aristotle!”

He is best known for coining the concept “survival of the fittest”, which he did in Principles of Biology (1864), after reading Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. This term strongly suggests natural selection, yet as Spencer extended evolution into realms of sociology and ethics, he also made use of Lamarckism.

He has also written many fascinating books, you can follow this link to Google Books to read his works for free. 

Just thought I would share my discovery with you.

Evil Out

Through the Looking Glass

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean —neither more or less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can makewords mean so many different things.”

 In one of several lawsuits against “Obama-care” a Florida judge is allowing the case to proceed from the State against the Federal Government to overturn the law.  One of the major reasons the judge cited to allow the case to go forward was the flawed claim by the Government that the money charged to a person for not buying the mandated insurance is in fact allowed under the Congress’ taxing power, when the law clearly stated it is a “penalty”.  The judge quoted the section of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass above in order to deride the Congress for their doublespeak.  Here is the quote from the judge (emphasis is mine):

Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing, after which the defenders of that legislation take an “Alice-in-Wonderland” tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely, thereby circumventing the safeguard that exists to keep their broad power in check. If Congress intended for the penalty to be a tax, it should go back and make that intent clear (for example, by calling it a tax, relying on Congress’s Constitutional taxing power, allowing it to be collected and enforced as a tax, or identifying revenue to be raised) so it can be “scrutinized” as a tax and Congress can accordingly be held accountable. They cannot, however, use a different linguistic with a perhaps secret understanding between themselves that the word, in fact, means something else entirely.

I think the “Obama-care” bill is in real trouble in the courts and am closely following the rulings as they come down.  I just hope more of them take the Congress to task for their double dealings and the politi-speak that was used to pass this bill.

Evil Out

Awash in a Sea of Muck

Great article from the NY Daily News titled, Drowning in Law: A Flood of Statutes, Rules, and Regulations is Killing the American Spirit.  Here is a quote from the beginning of the article: 

,,,the land of opportunity is more like legal quicksand. Small business owners face legal challenges at every step. Municipalities requires multiple and often nonsensical forms to do business. Labor laws expose them to legal threats by any disgruntled employee. Mandates to provide costly employment benefits impose high hurdles to hiring new employees. Well-meaning but impossibly complex laws impose requirements to prevent consumer fraud, provide disability access, prevent hiring illegal immigrants, display warnings and notices and prevent scores of other potential evils. The tax code is incomprehensible.

 

It continues and outlines some of the ways the always expanding, never shrinking Government (at all levels) is slowly crowding out the ability of people to make a (legal) living.  Here is one of the closing paragraphs:

 

The fatal flaw of the modern state is that it doesn’t honor the human element of all accomplishment. Rules don’t make things happen. Only people do, making fresh choices in response to the infinite complexities of daily challenges.

 

The article ends with a call to start freeing workers and businesses from the tangled web of Government that is restraining it:

 

The core principle of this overhaul should be this: Restore free choice at every level of responsibility.For example, let all public schools operate with the same freedoms, and accountability, as charter schools. Give officials the responsibility to balance different interests – not be forced by legal threats to give away scarce common resources to whoever threatens a lawsuit. Make public employees accountable for failure – but at the same time, stop telling them how to do their jobs.A great streamlining would re-invigorate democracy. Cleaning out old mandates and entitlements would allow political leaders to make choices to meet today’s needs. Radically simplifying law would allow people, including members of Congress, to actually understand it.

 

It is good to see more people waking up to the strangle hold that Government has on our lives.  I wish the article went further in condemning the long arm of the Government, but even the call to reform the notion that Government needs to have its’ hand in everything is a tough sell.  Too many people see the Government as the method to enforce or restrict activities that they feel need controlled.  For example, I read this article today calling for the Government to do more to restrict “noise” in our lives.  The language of those calling for more rules and regulations to restrict noise is the same language of those who have created smoking bans, trans-fat bans, salt bans, helmet laws, seatbelt laws, etc…it is to protect the public from themselves…

I am hopeful that more people will wake up and push back against the ever-expanding hand of Government, but so far that hope has proved elusive.  Even the author of the article can’t quite bring himself to call for a complete severing of the encroaching hand of Government as he states:

 

A crowded society requires regulatory red lights and green lights.

 

There is hope though, his next sentence is a step in the right direction:

 

The goal is to pull law back so it provides a framework for free choice, not a software program that tries to dictate daily choices.

 

Free Choice is a great place to start.

 

Evil Out

Pres gets an ‘F’ for Education Reform

Great video about the wrong direction the current administration’s educations reforms are heading.  Look at the two charts in the video very closely if you really think that money and understaffing are the issues facing our schools today. 

 

School choice and vouchers may not be a panacea, but if you think that giving students a myriad of choices in education doesn’t help, look at our post-secondary education system in this country.  Almost every technical school, college, and university in America is supported by some level of Government subsidies.  Students are presented with thousands of choices from the most elite to the most basic, from technical and vocational professions to teachers and scientists.  There is no reason a similar system could not be provided for in the secondary and primary school system.

Evil Out

Slash and Burn

There is much noise being made by the candidates and activists this election cycle about cutting Government spending.  However, there seem to be few details about what programs to cut or as in the case of the GOP Pledge just flat out ignoring the biggest areas of the budget.  Well the folks over at Reason Magazine put together a nice little list of 14 items that could be cut and while not a comprehensive list of all programs that need work it is a nice start.  Here are the 14 items, read the article to get details and numbers:

1. Overhaul Medicaid
2. Bring the Troops Home
3. Erase Federal Education Spending
4. Slash State Budgets
5. End Defined-Benefit Pensions
6. Declare Defeat in the Drug War
7. Cancel the Federal Communications Commission
8. Uproot Agricultural Subsidies
9. Unplug the Department of Energy
10. Dismantle Davis-Bacon
11. Repeal the Stimulus
12. Spend Highway Funds on Highways
13. Privatize Public Lands
14. End (or at least Audit) the Fed

The list includes a wide array of items that the Federal Government spends money on.  A good list, but it still lacks a few things like Reforming Social Security and Medicare.  Unless you are a real libertarian or states-rights advocate there is probably at least one or two items on that list that you would have trouble cutting or reforming.  There is the crux of our spending problem with Government.  All of those programs (with the exception of military spending) are dubious expansions of Federal power, but they have become ingrained into our culture in ways that will make them difficult to cut.   Yet cuts will need to be made, across the Government.  Many on the left like to talk about how we need to raise revenue with tax increases, but as we have seen over the years (and outlined in this post of mine) spending is where the real problem is.  It has grown faster than revenues no matter whether we tax more or tax less. 

Time to take a hatchet and flame to the forest of Government spending.  It is past time to Slash and Burn the Federal Budget.

Then maybe we will see green shoots of real economic and personal freedom sprouting from the ashes.

Evil Out

Does School “Choice” Work?

Much shorter and to the point post today. I read an article titled, Does School Choice “Work”?  It is a rather long and involved article about the current state of the school choice movement and how many of the current choice programs around the country have not  performed as well as advocates had hoped.  Here is a quote from the end of the article that gives you a taste of the tone:

It would seem, then, that school choice “works” in some respects and in some instances — but that choice alone could never work as well as many of its champions have expected, and promised. It is time for those who would like to transform America’s schools to let go of the dream that choice by itself is any kind of “solution.” The goal ought to be a much more serious agenda of school deregulation and re-invention.

While the article focuses on whether the programs it cites are performing better than the current public schools, it never truly addresses the fact the programs that it is discussing are not the kind of open systems that school choice advocates dream of.  Charter schools, publicly funded and regulated but privately run institutions, and limited voucher programs, that offer choice to a small number of students in a district, are not the same as a full voucher system where each child and their parents would have full control of where they went to school (public, private, or charter) and the money would follow the student.

A robust market in schools would produce winners and losers, some schools would not live up to the promises they make and some would do very well, but the current situation is one where at best most schools are aiming for “good enough” with no reasons to improve.  Creating a freer market for schools would do exactly what that last line in the quote above advocated:   The goal ought to be a much more serious agenda of school deregulation and re-invention.

Re-invention will not happen if there is no pressure for the current system to change.  Charter schools and limited voucher programs don’t provide sufficient pressure on the current public system to force changes.  The numbers being lost to those programs are not that different from the losses that large districts face with parents fleeing to smaller districts.  If parental flight hasn’t forced districts to change, then why would a trickle of students to charters and limited vouchers?

Deregulation will not happen as long as there are large, powerful, and  politically connected interest groups (ie teachers unions and the like) that make their money and gain political capital from the current heavily regulated system.  The kind of programs that you might see in a deregulated market; expanded apprenticeship programs for students with specific career goals, bringing in “unlicensed” teachers from other career fields, technical schools for those students who have no interest in college, narrowly focused art or science schools for those students who do not need/want a broad “liberal arts” education, year round schooling, core studies (ie math, reading, and writing) only schools, and many other ideas; will never be given their full ability to flourish when there is no pressure for the current highly regulated system to change.

I think in general the author of the article is on to something.  I just think he reached the wrong conclusion with the set of data he was examining.  The question is not whether these limited efforts at choice “work” (which most studies base on test scores) but whether there has been “choice” at all.  Even if it is shown that voucher programs and choice initiatives do not improve the aggregate scores of children (ie not “working”) the author’s goals of deregulation and re-invention will not happen on a wide scale without some form of outside pressure.  A full voucher system with no strings attached money is one of the few ways to provide that pressure and probably the least destructive. 

So the answer to the question of Does School Choice Work?  Is a clarion, “We don’t know we haven’t really given it a try.”

Evil Out