Humanities

Fahrenheit 451

2012-01-17T07:32:00.002-05:00

Ray Bradbury's famous dystopia ranks with 1984 and Brave New World as a crystalizing moment in Western Civilization's literary protest against Stalinism, Maoist totalitarianism, Naziism, and other related mid-twentieth-century forms of repressive governmental structures. Bradbury recalls his youthful literary personality, and the internal revulsion to intellectual oppression. Writing in 1966, he recalled writing the book almost twenty years earlier, and his learning, a few years earlier still, about Nazi who burned books:

It followed then when Hitler burned a book I felt it as keenly, please forgive me, as his killing a human, for in the long sum of history they are one and the same flesh. Mind or body, put to the oven, is a sinful practice.

Bradbury started writing Fahrenheit 451 in 1947; at that stage of development, it was a short story called "Bright Phoenix" and it would be reworked into a somewhat longer novella called "The Fireman" and finally into the novel we know today. As Bradbury was writing in 1947, Hitler was gone, but other socialist parties were still burning books, shocking him, and filling him with horror:

Of course. There was Hitler torching books in Germany in 1934; rumors of Stalin and his match people and tinderboxes.

So it was not Hitler alone, but Stalin explicitly, and perhaps Mao and others implicitly - although Mao would not fully emerge until 1949, after the basic setting of Fahrenheit 451 had taken shape. Bradbury correctly comprehended the nature of these regimes, and did so very early, long before the standard images and cliches about the Cold War would be ossified.

Pagans and Christians Agree?

2012-01-12T14:36:00.000-05:00

It is difficult to imagine many areas of agreement between the Pagans of ancient Rome and the early Christians, especially because those pagans were busy killing Christians in large numbers. Contrasts were numerous: pagans were polytheists, Christians are monotheists; pagans saw little or no connection between ethics and religion, Christians saw morality as a way of showing gratitude for unearned blessings; pagans saw human life as expendable, Christians perceived that each human life is valuable and has an innate dignity. The early Christian leader Augustine wrote around 400 A.D., sharply critiquing the Stoic philosophy which the pagan aristocracy embraced. Yet, despite the fact that Roman pagans beat, tortured, and executed Christians by the tens of thousands, there was one area of agreement.

A philosophical principle which has captivated most, if not all, human civilizations is the concept of Natural Law. This idea is appealing because of its intuitive correspondence to our usual perception of the way things are, and because it is flexible enough to adapt to almost any worldview or value system. One of the earliest expressions of Natural Law theory was given, a few decades after 100 B.C., by Cicero.

Natural Law, in its simplest form, simply indicates that somethings are good, and others are evil. It is a way of moving past opinions, beliefs, and perceptions. Rather than ask, "what do you believe is good?" Natural Law asks, "what is good?" For example, we can get move beyond a statement like "most people believe that it is good for the rich to share their wealth with the poor," to a more real statement like "it is good for the rich to share their wealth with the poor." Natural Law explores the structure of the universe.

Formulated by the pagan Cicero, it also appealed to the early Christians. The famous New Testament author Paul, writing to a group of Christians in Rome, stated that when those people,

who have no knowledge of the Law, act in accordance with it by the light of nature, they show that they have a law in themselves, for they demonstrate the effect of a law operating in their own hearts. Their own consciences endorse the existence of such a law, for there is something which condemns or commends their actions.

Paul is here saying that even if one has not had formal instruction in law, i.e., reading it from a text, there is nonetheless an internal, a priori, awareness of law

The First University

2012-01-05T15:47:00.003-05:00

Schools have been around for a long time. Archeologists have found schools dating from 2000 B.C. in the city of Ur, Abraham's hometown.

But a university is something different and more than a school. The world's first university began around the year 1088 A.D., in the city of Bologna, Italy. How and why did it start? The answer will take us a few centuries earlier, into the institutions of Medieval education.

Prior to the appearance of universities, the Middle Ages had three main educational institutions. The first of these was the cathedral school. Even the smallest villages had churches, but only larger towns and cities had cathedrals, which were organizational centers for church activity. One major function of the church in society at that time was record-keeping. Every birth, marriage, and death was carefully recorded; these were of personal interest to families, but also important legal records: they helped to determine who inherited which property. To keep these records, the institutional church across Europe needed a cadre of able scribes, people who could read and write well. Literacy rates back then weren't as high as they would be in some later centuries, so build this group of record-keepers, cathedral schools arose as a way of teaching reading and writing. Over a few centuries, this gradually contributing to an increase in literacy.

The second educational institution which existed prior to the universities was the monastery. Around Europe, monasteries formed the literary and intellectual backbone of the continent. They preserved the literary, historical, and philosophical wisdom of ancient Greece and Rome. They sharpened the academic discipline of learning the grammar of various languages: Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. A monk working in one of these monasteries would become familiar with a long list of major texts: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Cicero, Virgil, Homer, Marcus Aurelius, and many others. It is important to note that the one missing piece in the early Middle Ages was a portion of Aristotle's works. Monasteries at that time had most, but not all, of Aristotle's books. When Europe received the missing pieces of Aristotle in the High Middle Ages, it further energized intellectual life in the monasteries and later in the universities. The monasteries were also the source of commentaries: the monks had become experts in the texts of Greece and Rome - they had, after all, copied them by hand, and learned Greek and Latin grammar to a refined degree - and began to write commentaries and interpretations of them. They also began to pose sharp questions about philosophical issues. The monks learned to read, understand, and analyze various languages and grammars. This ability to do 'close reading' will be the intellectual spark which lights the fire of the universities.

Finally, law schools arose as the third major educational institution prior to the university. With the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476 A.D., there began an erosion of systematized legal thought. The first few centuries of the Early Middle Ages were dominated by local feudal lords, who often acted as judges in various matters, but without the benefit of a law code or standardized legal processes. As the Middle Ages progressed, Charlemagne formed a large empire, which in turn required a formalized legal system. Charlemagne was, of course, known as 'Karl der Grosse' or 'Karl the Great' in his own era; the name 'Charlemagne' was applied to him only by certain historians who wrote in Latin, not in Frankish, the Germanic dialect which he spoke. The rise of laws schools - part of the Carolingian Renaissance - began with the study of the laws of Rome's republic and empire. Since Karl was forming a similar empire of his own, he reasonably thought that he could model his laws of those of Rome; when Karl was crowned in 800 A.D., there hadn't been a major empire since Rome fell. The law schools fostered, first, the careful reading of Roman legal texts, second, the careful analysis, evaluation, and discussion of them, and third, the debate about which changes were necessary to update Roman law for an empire operating four centuries later.

These three educational institutions - the cathedral school, the monastery, and the law school - created a vibrant intellectual atmosphere in the Middle Ages, and set the stage for the birth of the university. In fact, the university could be interpreted as the merger of these three institutions.

Bologna, Italy, was the first city to create a university. The exact date is unclear, but we know that Bologna's university existed by 1088 A.D. at the latest. The name 'university' comes from the Latin phrase studium generale - general studies. (General studies included the study of everything, i.e., universal studies.) The structure of Bologna's university was loose, compared to modern standards. There was a 'school of the arts' into which most students first entered. The prerequisite was that one could prove mastery of the Latin language - 'mastery' construed as a reasonably large vocabulary and a basic knowledge of general. Once admitted, a student worked at the first level: the 'trivium' - studying grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Upon demonstrating mastery - the word 'mastery' is used often here, and led to the modern "Master's Degree" and complemented the use of the Latin magister for those who taught in the university - a student advanced to the second level, called 'quadrivium' and consisting of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Seeing music nestled among mathematics and observational physics (which is astronomy) gives us a clue about why Medieval music is often called "objective" in contrast to "subjective" form into which music decayed in the Renaissance era: for the Medievals, music was treated mathematically - the study of intervals and rhythms. Upon completed this second level, students could proceed, if they wished, into professional schools: law and medicine. There was no fixed timetable for progression through this system; a student attended lectures and studied until he felt ready to take an exam. If the student did well in the exam, he moved on to the next level; if he didn't, he stayed at the lower level a while longer and took the exam again.

Death, Judgment, Afterlife

2011-12-28T15:38:00.001-05:00

For students in various Humanities classes, or courses in ancient civilizations, the essay question about death, judgment, and afterlife is assigned so regularly that its predictability makes it ready material for a joke. Yet it remains a central question in modern cultures and ancient cultures.

The Egyptian concept of "maat" (transliterated into English with various spellings) is a good example. The concept is sometimes personified into a goddess of sorts, and other times treated as an abstract principle. In either case, the fiction of weighing the human heart against a feather on a balance remains a powerful metaphor, and crystalizes not only the Egyptian notion of judgment, but also that of numerous other cultures, ancient and modern.

By contrast, the New Testament offers a complex and confusing idea of judgment, which - however interpreted - is rather different from the Egyptian one. Jesus offers us a tension between his famous dictum "Do not judge, or you too will be judged" and his willingness to judge: he tell a woman caught in adultery, "Go now and leave your life of sin." Whether one agrees or disagrees with Jesus, an interpretive challenge presents itself as we seek to create some harmony out of this tension: how do we find the consistency in the apparent, but merely apparent, contradiction?

A follower of Jesus, named variously Saul and Paul, gives us a clue in a letter he wrote to early followers of Jesus living in Rome:

Now if you feel inclined to set yourself up as a judge of those who sin, let me assure you, whoever you are, that you are in no position to do so. For at whatever point you condemn others you automatically condemn yourself, since you, the judge, commit the same sins. God’s judgment, we know, is utterly impartial in its action against such evil-doers. What makes you think that you who so readily judge the sins of others, can consider yourself beyond the judgment of God?

We see here the same tension: a command not to judge, and - in the same breath - a clear judgment that some are, in fact, sinning. The determination that someone is sinning is itself a judgment. So how can we reconcile Paul's command not to judge, delivered in a bundle with a clear judgment. The irony is compressed: we are commanded not to judge those who sin. By identifying them as those who sin, has not Paul already judged them?

We can resolve the tension existing in Paul's words - and the words of Jesus - by noting a careful distinction: We are commanded not to judge people. We are left free to judge actions, indeed, encouraged to judge actions. In this distinction, not only can we resolve the internal tension within the New Testament, but we can also capture the exact nature of the different between Jesus and the Egyptian concept of maat.

If I judge a man's actions as evil, I am still prohibited from judging the man himself as evil. Here introduced is a distinction between agent and action, between the person and the what he does. If everyone who does an evil act is reckoned as evil, then all humans would be evil, because all humans, sooner or later, do the wrong thing. If all who do something right are reckoned as good, then all people will be called good, because everybody, sooner or later, does something right. Paul and Jesus are acknowledging the ethical reality that every human performs a mixture of actions - some good, some bad. We can sort out the actions, but we cannot label the individual.

Instead of sorting humanity into two groups - as the Egyptian maat does - the New Testament places all people into the same boat: morally equivocal, committed both virtuous deeds and sins. The Egyptian worldview creates two classes of humans, with the inevitable if unintended result that they will be pitted against each other; the New Testament offers a unifying notion, that all humans find themselves in the same ethical predicament - a morally ambiguous nature - and looking to the same solution - to cast themselves upon the mercy of a deity.

What History Can Tell Us, And What It Can't

2011-12-20T14:10:00.001-05:00

It is clear that religion is one of the driving forces of history; many significant events and trends are fueled by faith: the abolition of slavery in America, the right of women to vote, the environmental movement to protect the earth, freedom of speech and of the press, various forms of aid to developing countries, and international negotiating organizations seeking to avoid war. Many other examples could be added. Some of these are obviously more religious than others, but historical investigation will find that all of them originated in a worldview shaped by faith and by sacred text.

But what can history tell us about religion? We are instructed to strive ever more for a neutral objectivity - studying religion in history, and the history of religion, can be done in this way - but for someone who is the product of American popular culture, it is a foreign notion. History can describe for us those events and trends, and their emergence from a particular spiritual tradition. Indeed, history is obliged to do so. History cannot, however, evaluate truth claims made by specific religions, because those claims are sometimes about things bigger than history, beyond history, and embracing history from without. Walther Eichrodt writes that

history can say nothing about the final truth of a matter; that is, it is unable to make any claims concerning its validity for our current existence or its significance for our worldview. To the extent that historical research is able to view and to describe more precisely any event - also anything of an intellectual scope - only within a system of relations, its assertions about a historical entity always remain relative; that is, they have meaning only in relation to other entities and only in this sense command assent. To judge regarding what is true and what is false, what has an absolute claim to validity and what is worthless, continues to be reserved fundamentally to the science of values, to philosophy or to dogmatics.

History can tell us, for example, which religions lead more often to war, and which ones lead more often to peace; history can tell us which religions are inclined to expand the dignity and rights of women, and which ones are inclined to minimize women and their social roles; history can tell us which religions see an essential value in every human life, a value which demands recognition, and which religions see some human lives as worth less than others, and therefore expendable.

But history cannot tell us which religions are true, and which are false; history cannot tell us which beliefs are good, and which are evil. These determinations belong to a higher academic discipline. The historian may narrate the roles of various spiritual traditions in history, but he may not make value judgements about those traditions. Those judgements are to be made by the philosopher and the theologian.

History shows us that religion is the engine of history, that faith propels great historical movements; but history must refrain from deciding which religion is ultimately the true religion. Determining what is 'true religion' - this cannot be left in the realm of mere opinion: this is the task of rational investigation, close textual study, and academic theology.

The Era of the Castle

2011-12-13T13:13:00.001-05:00

The Middle Ages was a time of creativity and innovation - and certainly not "The Dark Ages" or reign of superstition and ignorance which old history books tell it to be. The inventiveness of scientists and rulers, of philosophers and bankers during the Medieval centuries was born of necessity. The fall of the Roman Empire (at least the western half of it) created a power vacuum, and even an environment of personal danger, until the institutions and concepts of the Middle Ages could offer a better social organization principle to replace it. Historian Irma Simonton Black sees the emergence of a safer, and intellectually more stimulating, culture symbolized in the castle,

a large stone structure surrounded by walls and topped with towers. The castle might be built up on a hill so it could be defended easily, or it might be encircled with a wide ditch, called a moat, which had to be crossed to reach its gates.

Such a structure was not a family home for the royals: it was a small village unto itself. A community which included the various crafts and skills needed to be relatively self-reliant and sometimes even isolated.

A castle was home to many people. Inside its walls, in a large central building made of stone, lived a noble, his family, and his knights. Servants and soldiers belonging to the noble lived outside in the courtyard or bailey, in a cluster of small wooden buildings. Here food was prepared, tools and arms were made and repaired. If the people who lived inside the castle walls wanted to go outside them, they crossed a drawbridge which was kept lowered by day, except in times of war.

The legal concept of 'citizenship' as we now know it arose during this time, and the technical term for citizen literally meant "one who lived inside the walls of the castle" (Bürger). Some large castles would have well over a hundred permanent residents, and thus truly be societies unto themselves. This arrangement arose from the defensive needs immediately after the fall of the Roman Empire. When the Middle Ages fully emerged, the actually need for this physical security diminished, but the castle remained as a symbol. Yet the society of those who lived in the village surrounded by the protective walls interacted with those who lived in the less secure world beyond:

Outside the castle walls lived peasants in their huts. If there was an attack, they protected themselves by fleeing over the drawbridge and inside. These peasants were known as serfs and they worked the noble's land.

Indeed, the noble was obliged, by common law and by sacred oath, to offer protection to the serfs who lived outside the walls. Here we see a truly Medieval notion: the moral and legal duty to assist in the defense of others. Although this setup may seem strange or romantic to us, "such a way of life" was

the only sensible arrangement. It came about because of events that happened hundreds of years before, when the Roman Empire collapsed.

Determined both to rescue themselves from the chaos of a power vacuum, and to build a more reasonable society than the Romans had, the people of central Europe observed first-hand the fall of the empire, and took from the old Roman structure the few ideas which were practical; abandoning other, less useful, Roman patterns, they fabricated the remainder of their new social order from their inherited Germanic traditions. (By way of explanation, most of the cultures of central and western Europe were Germanic, but not German: France is named after the Frankish dynasties, the Germanic royal families who ruled it; England's language and culture were nearly identical to those of central Europe until the invasions of 1066 A.D. and later.)

The northern tribes that settled on the Roman lands in Europe were bands of fighters who followed one leader in battle. In return, the leader or chief supported his fighting men with what he took from the people he conquered. This system of personal loyalty to a chief was the basis for a way of living called feudalism.

Feudalism sometimes has a bad image in older history books: the word 'feudal' is even sometimes used in a negative sense. In reality, the feudal system offered a vast improvement over the political structures of the Roman empire. A centralized system, the old empire was unapproachable for those living out in the countryside; the emperor gave absolute commands, and no questioning or negotiating was possible. In feudalism, a de-centralized system, a local 'lord' was approachable - you could negotiate with him, and his authority was based on negotiation with those below him and those above him: a flexible system.

In this way, feudalism was also superior to the absolute monarchies which would follow it in later centuries. An autocrat like Louis XIV would not have been possible in a feudal system.

Feudalism, or the feudal system, as it was often called, grew gradually. In the very beginning, each lord had his vassals, or followers, who lived in his castle as a kind of personal bodyguard. Maintaining his vassals was very expensive for the lord. So when his vassals wanted lands and castles of their own, the lord was glad to assign holdings to them.

In this way, the lord's vassals got their own estates, could support themselves, and so relieved the lord of significant expenses.

Demographic Grids

2011-10-30T10:22:00.000-04:00

Sorting things into categories is a simply skill we all learned quite young: I can sort a child's building by color - red, blue, yellow - or by shape - square, triangle, circle. I can sort them by both at once, creating a nine-by-nine grid. The same is true of people: we can sort by age (young, middle-aged, old), or we can sort by height (short, medium, tall); and we can sort by both at once.

This simple technique is put to interesting use in a complex situation by author Joel Rosenberg. Looking at the population of various Middle East countries, and analyzing the political and military conflicts there, he first found three categories based views of religion:

The Radicals, who say that "Islam is the answer, jihad is the way."
The Reformers, who say that "Islam is the answer, but jihad is not the way."
The Revivalists, who say that "Islam is not the answer, and jihad is not the way."

Each of the three groups above are a significant factor inside the various Islamic nations in the Middle East. But within each of them, further subdivisions can be made, leading to our nine-by-nine grid.

The Resisters are leaders of Muslim-majority countries who show little evidence of wanting serious social or ideological change of any kind. While Muslims themselves, they do not want the kind of fundamental, sweeping changes advocated by the Radicals, Reformers, or Revivalists. To the contrary, they resist change; generally speaking, their mission is to hold power for as long as possible.
The Reticent include leaders of Muslim-majority countries or territories who have leanings toward one movement or another but have not fully committed. They do the two-step, dancing for a season with one partner, then shifting to another.
The Rank-and-File, finally, comprise the vast majority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims. They do not run countries. Individually, they generally have little or no wealth or power. But they are enormously important.

We see, then, that any analysis of the Middle East which accounts for fewer than nine major categories, and presumably numerous other smaller categories, will fail to do justice to the complexity of the situation.

Understanding Islam

2011-10-29T19:36:00.002-04:00

Although we may think that the world's attention has been more directed toward Islam since the attacks of September 11, 2001, this is far from true: long before that date, the world began to consider the nature of Islam: as far back as 1979, headlines around the world announced that Americans in Iran had been taken hostage, where they would be held prisoner for over a year with no legal or diplomatic remedy. Between these two dates is a long series of bombings and attacks around the world.

In the face of this radicalism, however, author Joel Rosenberg offers a shocking opinion:

The vast majority of the 1.3 billion Muslims on the planet are not Radicals. They do not believe in waging jihad against the West. They do not condone sending their sons and daughters to be suicide bombers to kill Christians, Jews, and apostate Muslims, among others. They do not want to annihilate Judeo-Christian civilization as we know it or take over the world. They are, by and large, quiet, peaceful people. They want to raise their children in decent schools to get decent jobs and live respectable, productive, God-honoring lives.

Despite the images in the daily news of Islamic terrorists, Rosenberg is telling us that most Muslims are not fanatics who insist on following every directive in the Qur'an. This is a radically different image of Islam than that offered by, for example, U of M's Professor Ed Sareth, who writes that Islam is "fueling conflicts that could threaten humanity." Rosenberg disagrees.

Western leaders should be commended - not condemned - for affirming the peaceful nature of most Muslims. Why insult Muslims who are unengaged in jihad?

Rosenberg would side, then, with President George W. Bush's numerous comments that Muslims are peaceful friends. Bush was widely criticized in the weeks following the attacks on the World Trade Center for not voicing more anti-Islamic sentiments. But he continued to point out that millions of Muslims live peaceably in the United States; he said that our argument was not with Islam, but with terrorists. These distinctions grow more complex, however, when we remember that the difference here is between orthodox Islam, with its insistence on a literal faithfulness to the Qur'an and the physical violent jihad it entails, and nominal Muslims, who are not interested in any form of violence or terrorism at all, but rather exhibit the civil virtues that any society desires.

Critics should keep in mind that Western leaders are making these points, in part, both to build and to strengthen political and and military alliances with government leaders throughout the Muslim world who are willing to side with Western governments against the Radicals.

Cultural understanding becomes all the more complex with mixed with diplomatic agendas. Discussions of these complex interactions between religions, cultures, societies and government are necessary, while at the same time frustrating: they will, of necessity, raise more questions than they answer:

While it is certainly accurate to say that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful people, is it also true that Islam itself is an intrinsically peaceful religion? In other words, are Muslim and Western leaders accurate in asserting that Islam is a religion of peace, not a religion that calls for jihad against the infidels? Are Radicals, in fact, "hijacking" Islam and in the process "smearing" its good name? If so, how can the Radicals claim that "Islam is the answer, and jihad is the way" if there is no basis for their beliefs in the Qur'an, the guidbook for all Muslims?

The world will probably be watching the interaction between peaceful, moderate, nominal Muslims and orthodox, violent, radical Muslims for decades to come.

Moderates vs. Radicals

2011-10-11T18:49:00.000-04:00

Although the attacks on September 11, 2001 brought a new intensity to the study of Islam, the world's attention had already long been directed to the political impact of radical Muslims: the 1972 attack on the Munich Olympics and the 1979 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Iran being merely two of many examples.

One question lingers: what about the moderates? We know that there are many peaceful and friendly people in America who call themselves Muslims - people who would never dream of attacking or killing. We know that a moderate form of Islam exists in the United States. But what about in the Middle East? Is there a chance that moderates live in places like Saudi Arabia or Iran?

Joel Rosenberg, from Syracuse University, offers evidence that moderates exist, even in the Middle East:

A ferocious battle is raging for the heart and soul of the Muslim world.

One side is the theology of the Radicals, which as we have seen teachers that true Islam requires violent men to wage violent jihad against apostates and infidels in the name of Allah.

On the other side is the theology of the Reformers, which teaches that true Islam is a religion of peace, that the Qur'an is a book of peace, and that the Radicals are perverting Islam to their own fascist, power-hungry ends.

Do we believe Rosenberg? Is there a chance that moderate Muslims exist, not only in America, but also in the Middle East? Are there individuals and groups willing to depart from the militant heritage of Islamic traditions? And if they do exist there, are there enough of them to make a political difference?

The world will spend a few years pondering these questions; we don't know the answers yet, but those answers will influence the lives of millions, for good or for evil. We know that there are moderate Muslims in America. Let us hope that they exist elsewhere, and in large number.

Counterfeits Damage Economies

2011-06-02T08:18:00.003-04:00

Fake money has always been a problem, ever since the first coins were minted thousands of years ago. The legal principles and economic harms are the same today, but the technology is different. Dr. Levon A. Saryan, a materials scientist in Wisconsin, reports that

fake U.S. Trade dollars [were] recently shipped from China to a recipient near Chicago, bring[ing] into sharp focus a growing epidemic.

Counterfeits have traditionally been difficult to make and easy to detect; advances in technology, however, are reversing that situation: fake coins are now easy to make and difficult to detect:

Most of these fakes are not hard to identify in a crowd; they have certain diagnostic features that give them away. Gradually, however, the quality of these fakes has improved to the point that experts are being routinely deceived.

These sham coins are not the work a few lone criminals, hiding in basements or abandoned warehouses. They are being produced in a sophisticated manner by entire factories. There are multiple such operations, including

one of the largest fake coin factories in China, the Big Tree Coin Factory in Fujian Province, owned and operated by Lin Ciyun. The presses in this factory were originally used in a U.S. Mint facility, then transferred to China in the early 1900s for their coinage production needs. Later, in the mid 1950s, the Chinese government scrapped the presses and sold them to private buyers. Mr. Lin bought at least some of the presses and now uses them to produce (by his admission) over 100,000 forged coins per month. With the assistance of a handful of expert machinists, he is able to strike coins at exactly the same pressure and technical specifications as those used in 19th century U.S. mints.

Remember, these coins are worth hundreds of dollars each. These aren't the quarters and dimes we use in everyday vending machines to buy Coke or Pepsi. These are also highly illegal, because such coinage is the legal tender of the land. These operations are, then, both damaging to the U.S. economy, and a direct serious violation of national and international law.

Nature, Nurture, and ... ?

2011-05-18T10:13:00.002-04:00

The ancient psychological debate, which aspects of our mind are primarily formed by genetics and heredity, and which aspects are mainly formed by our experience of objects and events in our environment, is being renewed by developments in the field of prenatal psychology. A recent book by Annie Murphy Paul, with the title Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives, explores how everything from our taste in music to our body weight is influenced neither by our gene pool, nor by our life experiences, but rather by our prenatal encounters.

The fact that babies can hear, and hear well, long before birth, and through an inch or two of maternal flesh, means that children are born having already heard much: music, voices, etc. Psychologists have long known that infants are able, upon birth, to recognize the voices of their mothers. But it is now clear that familiarity with, and tastes in, music are also so formed.

Separately, experiences in the womb also act as switches, turning on or off various individual genes. Thus the diet of the mother with shape the metabolism of the child. An adult's weight problem may due, not his psychology and environment, nor strictly to his genes, but rather to events which activated some of his genes, but not others, in the nine months he spend in the womb.

The field of prenatal psychology will cause much re-thinking of various sub-disciplines within traditional psychology and psychiatry.

Multiculturalism Creates Hatred

2011-05-18T09:00:00.002-04:00

In accord with the law of unintended consequences, official efforts to promote harmony and tolerance actually foster the very opposite: attempts to generate acceptance instead give rise to bigotry and hatred. Although this occurs mainly in America, we can see it in other nations too, as Anthony Daniels writes:

Of course, a large part of the problem is that patriotism in Britain has been left to the brutes: the kind of ignorant savages who tattoo a bulldog on their biceps and “Made in England” round their nipples, and who in equal measure revolt and terrorize the cheaper resorts of the Mediterranean. The intellectual’s equation of patriotism with xenophobia, and pride in past achievement with an arrogant superiority complex, has left a population demoralized and without any belief in its own nation. George Orwell saw this happening a long time ago; it has created a vacuum for the English Defence League to fill. Multiculturalism is the other side of the English Defence League coin.

In a well-meaning attempt to discourage a nasty form of nationalism, multicultural gurus have instead inhibited a healthy type of patriotism. Multiculturalism has deterred the educated classes away from a nuanced and intellectually perceptive appreciation of one's native land - which is healthy patriotism and never excludes a sincere appreciation of other nations. While the intellectual classes are embarrassed to point out anything remotely good or positive about their native land, the brutes and bigots rush in to claim superiority for the homeland over others. The growth of a healthy patriotism would have prevented the expansion of nasty nationalism. Multiculturalism

is a sentimental and harmful doctrine that turns the mind to mush, is evidence of an underlying indifference to the real lives of people, and is a provider of pseudo-work for lots of people such as community organizers.

Those who allegedly promote multiculturalism are, themselves, both ignorant of culture in general, and lacking in the desire or the ability to cure that ignorance:

Multiculturalists are seldom really interested in the culture of others. Very few of them read book in foreign languages, for example, let alone immerse themselves in the Pali scriptures or the writings of the Sufi. I don't blame them for this: it is the work of a lifetime to be able to do so, and we each have only one lifetime, to say nothing of the limitations of ability and inclination. But let us at least not pretend that our interest in other cultures extends much beyond their cuisine.

Not only does multiculturalism, then, promote a brutish form of nationalism among those who perceive themselves as "on the defensive" or "host cultures," but among those who view themselves as "immigrant cultures," it promotes a cynical view that those who claim to understand them in fact do not understand them. Those who claim to speak on behalf of an immigrant ethnic group are discounted by the majority of that group, who see the lack of cultural understanding, and exploited as dupes by a minority of that group, who see them as useful fools. Modern multiculturalism is largely an ideology of those who lack precisely that cultural understanding which they claim to promote.

The net effect is that a greater distance is created between cultural groups: instead of a coming together, more obstacles to community are created.

Obama Not Invited?

2011-04-29T10:33:00.003-04:00

The biggest wedding of the twenty-first century (so far) occurred in London on April 29, 2011, when Kate Middleton married Prince William. Pointedly, President Barack Obama was not invited. What was the cause of this snub, made more clear when the leaders of forty other nations were invited, and in light of the fact that President Ronald Reagan was invited to the last royal wedding in 1981?

Two actions by Obama seemed to have triggered the situation: first, his dismissive gesture regarding a carved bust of Sir Winston Churchill, which he returned to the English who had lent it to him to display at the White House. Second, his presentation to the Queen of England of an iPod loaded with speeches given by Obama at various events. These two diplomatic blunders were apparently enough to remove any possibility that Obama would be a guest at the royal wedding.

Diplomats around the world noted that Obama failed to extend the usual diplomatic courtesies to Prime Minister Brown's official state visits to Washington. There was no joint statement issued at the press conference, and other niceties - state dinners, photo opportunities, exchanges of symbolic gifts - were curtailed. Why direct such shabby treatment toward England? The reason is not clear, but the effects of it are: Obama was not invited to the royal wedding.

Gender Roles and Social Structures

2011-04-15T06:46:00.002-04:00

Human nature is a constant in history. From Hammurabi to Hubert Humphrey, from Babylon to Boston, people are people, and they do the things that people do: they love, they hate, they buy, they sell, they ask questions, and they answer questions. In a diverse array of constantly-changing settings, human nature is one of the fixed points.

Part of human nature is gender. Masculinity and femininity are also constants - societies have been compose of men and women since history began, and it will always be that way. But different societies construct different contexts around those two foundations.

At Yale, sociologist Stephen B. Clark concluded that "men have a natural tendency to avoid social responsibility."

Some civilizations have built social structures in such a way as to encourage men to take more responsibility.

Other civilizations have enabled men to be irresponsible (at the cost of placing greater burdens upon women).

This gives us an interpretive framework - a lens - through which we can view and understand various societies at various times. It also explains why, for example, we see trends in which the majority of responsible roles in a society are filled by one gender or another. In many high schools today, the class officers and student council reveal a clear trend: why are these roles filled largely by females? Why don't males seem to have much interest in assuming leadership roles in some circumstances? Perhaps because they've discovered that leadership is work, and they have not been trained to apply themselves to difficult tasks.

Politics, Sin, and Redemption

2011-03-28T06:26:00.002-04:00

It is a commonplace that American politics in the first decade of the twenty-first century has been sometimes nasty and polarized; equally familiar are the calls for politeness in public discourse. Yet a call for politeness does not by itself draw forth the civility it desires, and one cannot enforce courtesy via police methods. New York Times columnist David Brooks asks about origins of manners:

Civility is a tree with deep roots, and without the roots, it can’t last. So what are those roots? They are failure, sin, weakness and ignorance.

It is not our virtue or nobility which creates courtesy, but rather it is our human nature - flawed and imperfect - which gives rise to civility - or, more precisely, the awareness that because of our human nature, we need and receive grace, mercy, and forgiveness. One who is constantly aware of his flaws, further aware that his flaws are apparent to others, and who finally aware that others are forgiving his flaws and allowing him to participate in society - such a one is very inclined to respect the habits of civil behavior, knowing that civil behavior is what keeps him a part of society, and not an outcast:

Every sensible person involved in politics and public life knows that their work is laced with failure. Every column, every speech, every piece of legislation and every executive decision has its own humiliating shortcomings. There are always arguments you should have made better, implications you should have anticipated, other points of view you should have taken on board.

Because it is our very human nature which causes us to err, it is inevitable that we will do so. Truth is broader and grander than our minds can comprehend, than our words can express, and than our actions can copy, so we will necessarily fall short of it.

Moreover, even if you are at your best, your efforts will still be laced with failure. The truth is fragmentary and it’s impossible to capture all of it. There are competing goods that can never be fully reconciled. The world is more complicated than any human intelligence can comprehend.

Forgiveness often flows to us through, and is announced to us by, our fellow citizens. Forgiveness is a necessary ingredient in the culture of any political society.

But every sensible person in public life also feels redeemed by others. You may write a mediocre column or make a mediocre speech or propose a mediocre piece of legislation, but others argue with you, correct you and introduce elements you never thought of. Each of these efforts may also be flawed, but together, if the system is working well, they move things gradually forward.

The meaning of mercy is that we don't get the censure we deserve: and grace is receiving the accept we don't deserve. This is the moral economy of a society which understands that we cannot expect perfection from humans. Its dynamic is an energizing humility which encourages cooperative and respectful participation even among those who disagree with each other.

As a result, every sensible person feels a sense of gratitude for this process. We all get to live lives better than we deserve because our individual shortcomings are transmuted into communal improvement. We find meaning — and can only find meaning — in the role we play in that larger social enterprise.

Although some people in society have physical disabilities, and other have mental disabilities, we all have a moral disability. It is this recognition about both self and other which yields gracious tolerance as the best and only way to carry out the tasks of a civilization. Any other pattern - including the hypocritical politicized tolerance which is merely intolerance used as a weapon - will lead to a collapse of civilization (although not necessarily of governmental structures: leaving a government without civilization, which is the surest formula for tyranny).

So this is where civility comes from — from a sense of personal modesty and from the ensuing gratitude for the political process. Civility is the natural state for people who know how limited their own individual powers are and know, too, that they need the conversation. They are useless without the conversation.

When a society loses, individually and collectively, its humility, it is doomed to nastiness, which will chip away at civilization:

The problem is that over the past 40 years or so we have gone from a culture that reminds people of their own limitations to a culture that encourages people to think highly of themselves. The nation’s founders had a modest but realistic opinion of themselves and of the voters. They erected all sorts of institutional and social restraints to protect Americans from themselves. They admired George Washington because of the way he kept himself in check.

But over the past few decades, people have lost a sense of their own sinfulness. Children are raised amid a chorus of applause. Politics has become less about institutional restraint and more about giving voters whatever they want at that second. Joe DiMaggio didn’t ostentatiously admire his own home runs, but now athletes routinely celebrate themselves as part of the self-branding process.

So, of course, you get narcissists who believe they or members of their party possess direct access to the truth. Of course you get people who prefer monologue to dialogue. Of course you get people who detest politics because it frustrates their ability to get 100 percent of what they want. Of course you get people who gravitate toward the like-minded and loathe their political opponents. They feel no need for balance and correction.

Beneath all the other things that have contributed to polarization and the loss of civility, the most important is this: The roots of modesty have been carved away.

David Brooks points us toward modesty as an essential ingredient for a civil society. Pride goes before a fall: if we are not humble, we will be humiliated when our nation weakens itself by means of its own unkind discourse. Brooks points us toward the words of Reinhold Niebuhr:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. ... Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

Multiculturalism?

2011-02-12T16:33:00.002-05:00

The word "multiculturalism" and whatever ideas may be represented by that word have been used for a number of years to represent a path for western societies to embrace diversity. Note that this implies that there are other ways to embrace diversity - better or worse - and that other societies are apparently not expected to embrace diversity. After continuous, and tiresome, talk about multiculturalism, what has it achieved? Here must broaden our perspective and not think only of America, but other nations as well - in France, years of multiculturalism culminated in Islamic youth rioting and burning buildings and cars in various parts of Paris. In England, we see radical Muslims taking center stage and encouraging the youth to embrace violence, not dialogue. In Germany, we see Muslims rejecting any thought of engaging in society, and rather choosing to isolate themselves from the communities in which they live. In Holland, we see the assassination of Theo van Gogh in response to his filming daily life among the Muslims. In Denmark, we see freedom of speech being denied, as Islamic rioters demanded that newspapers refrain from publishing political cartoons which question the beneficence of Islam. At home in the USA, African-American leaders have begun distancing themselves from the multicultural rhetoric, finding instead that there are better ways to embrace diversity and to ensure that African-Americans are truly "at home" in our society.

British Prime Minister David Cameron explained, “We have even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run counter to our values. So when a white person holds objectionable views — racism, for example — we rightly condemn them. But when equally unacceptable views or practices have come from someone who isn’t white, we’ve been too cautious, frankly even fearful, to stand up to them.”

French President Nicholas Sarkozy said, “Of course we must all respect differences, but we do not want… a society where communities coexist side by side. If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome in France. The French national community cannot accept a change in its lifestyle, equality between men and women… freedom for little girls to go to school.”

Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, said, “We are a country which at the beginning of the 1960s actually brought guest workers to Germany now they live with us and we lied to ourselves for a while saying that they won’t stay and that they will disappear one day that is not the reality this multicultural approach saying that we live side by side and that we are happy about each other–this approach has failed. Utterly failed.”

What other approaches can realize the promise and potential of diversity? Immigrants and those who wish to obtain citizenship in a country should be willing to ask themselves why they have these desires, and if they are willing to embrace their new home's society. More than taking advantage of economic opportunities, those who come to the USA must consider the meanings of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution. The are the documents and ideas that led to the ending of slavery, and to giving women the right to vote. Those who would reject these basic human rights and civil rights, as understood by these three foundational texts of American political structure - those who would insist rather on Sharia Law and radical Islam - should not expect to be embraced in American society.

Those who insist on hatred and violence should not expect to be affirmed by the American society which rejects hatred and violence as normal methods of cultural interaction.

The end of multiculturalism comes when we cannot have, in our public institutions, an ideology which insists that women are inferior to men, and that violence is an acceptable response to those who do not embrace one's views.

Misinterpreting the Great Depression

2011-01-13T07:09:00.002-05:00

When we move from the level of concrete facts to larger interpretive generalizations, much mischief can occur. For this reason, it is important to do careful, and voluminous, work at the fact level before moving up to the meta-level. Historians can make radically mistaken conclusions in their categorical conclusions when they have failed to examine detailed evidence.

The Great Depression, which began in 1929, offers an example. A superficial acquaintance with the economic hardships of the era tempted one historian to write:

The Great Depression tested the fabric of American life as it had been seldom tested before or has since. It caused Americans to doubt their abilities and their values. It caused them to despair. But they weathered the test, and as a Nation, emerged stronger than ever, and we are all better today for their strength and their courage.

The first and last sentences of the above paragraph, despite some curious capitalization and syntax, are either supportable by data, or are emotive and constitute an interpretation of facts, and can thus be allowed. The middle two sentences, however, constitute assertions which would need to be supported by facts, and yet cannot be supported by facts.

In order to support his point, the author would need to produce evidence that (1) Americans doubted their abilities and values, (2) that the Great Depression caused this doubt, (3) that Americans despaired, and that (4) the Great Depression caused this despair. Such evidence cannot be found.

On the contrary, we can find evidence that, in the midst of hardship, despite hardship, and perhaps even because of hardship, Americans relied on their abilities and on their values. Such evidence would include the creativity and ingenuity which empowered people to survive these difficult years - creativity on a physical level, finding ways to make do with less than ideal supplies and materials, and creativity on a societal level, using the social structures of the time to offer material and emotional support to those who needed it. Americans continued to rely on their values, as evidenced by the continuance of societal norms based on cultural and moral tradition, and by continued eagerness with which they embraced the moral codes which directed individual choices and supported familial and social structures.

To be sure, individual exceptions can be found: those who perceived their abilities as insufficient, or those who doubted and even abandoned their values. But it would be necessary to show that these exceptions were measurably greater during the Great Depression than during other eras in history, and to show that such manifestations were caused by the Great Depression and didn't simply coincide with it. Even so, the number of exceptions would appear to be significant, and so the generalization would not stand.

Similarly with the notion that Americans despaired. Again, individual exceptions aside, as a categorical statement, we find insufficient supporting evidence. On the contrary, the resilience of the nation allowed for good humor, artistic creativity, and a form of hope or optimism in which people lived, loved, and worked, enjoying what could be enjoyed in the present, striving toward good moral character, forgiving their own failings and the failings of others, and establishing goals for the future. There was no general societal or national sense of despair.

What counts as evidence for all of the above? Evidence falls into different categories. Demographic and statistical evidence would count, offering information about everything from church attendance to divorce and suicide - with the usual caveat about the misuse and misinterpretation of statistics, per Mark Twain. Individual biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs - including oral histories and anecdotes - count as evidence. General histories of the era count, as do specific histories of a particular event, project, or series of developments: from accounts of agriculture to a chronicle of the development of the motion picture. Artifacts count as evidence: museums filled with machines, clothing, furniture, coins, etc., from the Great Depression.

Only a large amount of concrete specific evidence, and the analysis of this data, will confirm generalizations like those given above.

Arizona Assassin Motivated by Media?

2011-01-11T06:34:00.003-05:00

In the tragic shooting which left several people, including a nine-year-old child and federal judge, dead, and which left a member of Congress severely wounded and in the hospital, the question looms: what motivated the assassin? The shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, clearly has extreme mental health problems. In search through the remains of his life, several items shed light on his potential motives.

Obsessed with politics and the Internet expression thereof, we find that he read various websites, including the Daily Kos, a notorious hate-filled site which regularly demonizes political leaders who fail to embrace its left-wing views. The Daily Kos wrote that Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the target of Loughner's attack, had a "bull's eye" on her because she has spoken against the liberal elements in her party. Loughner was encouraged by such violent language and began plotting to assassinate her.

The Daily Kos went on to tell its readers that Gabrielle Giffords should be "targeted" in the elections because she was not embracing the left-wing agenda favored by Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the Daily Kos.

Naturally, a reader in good mental health reads the violent rhetoric as merely metaphorical, and does not take words like "target" and "bull's eye" literally. But the hate speech of the Daily Kos has a different effect on those who are already in the grip of mental illness.

Loughner, a self-proclaimed fan of Karl Marx, in his delusional state, took the left-wing rants literally. In a free society, we cannot ask the media to censor itself merely because some insane individual will use words or phrases as a pretext for violence: no, we affirm the freedom of the press. But the freedom of the press also allows us to see the Daily Kos and Markos Moulitsas for what they are: merchants of hate and violence.

What an Assassin Reads

2011-01-09T07:57:00.002-05:00

Jared Lee Loughner is, according to early reports, likely the killer of six or seven people in Arizona, including a member of congress and a federal judge. This horrifying shooting rampage took only a couple of minutes, but resulted in traumatizing loss of life.

In such cases, we often ask, what makes this person tick? There is no simple answer, and psychologists will be mulling over the question for years to come. But we have at least one partial answer in the killer's own words. He listed some of his favorite books. He was obsessed by political and social concerns, and read, and re-read, The Communist Manifesto many times.

In addition, he listed Animal Farm and Brave New World as some of his favorites.

To what extent he properly understood what he read, we do not know. But these texts were the raw material out of which he constructed whatever twisted justification he used to explain his murderous intent.

What Really Happened in Africa?

2010-12-04T16:20:00.001-05:00

By the year 600, most of Africa had embraced the Christian religion. Although more widespread in the north, Christianity was found south of the Sahara as well. It was not universally adopted, as there were many Jews in Africa, especially on the east coast, and some of the primitive pre-religious belief systems, such as animism, survived in isolated regions.

Historians disagree about what happened to Christianity after the Muslim armies swept across north Africa in the late 600's and early 700's, and dominated southern parts of the continent in the following centuries. Was Christianity totally destroyed? Did the Islamic invasions succeed in removing all traces of the faith? Most Christians met one of three fates: they were executed, they converted to Islam, or they fled. But historians debate whether or not there were some who survived and remained in the conquered territories.

The conventional historical view is that the conquest of North Africa by the Islamic Umayyad Caliphate between AD 647–709 effectively ended Christianity in Africa for several centuries. The prevailing view is that the Church at that time lacked the backbone of a monastic tradition and was still suffering from the aftermath of heresies including the so-called Donatist heresy, and this contributed to the earlier obliteration of the Church in the present day Maghreb. Some historians contrast this with the strong monastic tradition in Coptic Egypt, which is credited as a factor that allowed the Coptic Church to remain the majority faith in that country until around after the 14th century.

However, new scholarship has appeared that disputes this. There are reports that the Christian faith persisted in the region from Tripolitania (present-day western Libya) to present-day Morocco for several centuries after the completion of the Islamic conquest by 700. A Christian community is recorded in 1114 in Qal'a in central Algeria. There is also evidence of religious visits after 850 to tombs of Christians outside of the city of Carthage, and evidence of religious contacts with Christians surviving in Muslim-occupied Spain. In addition, calendar reforms adopted in Europe at this time were disseminated amongst the indigenous Christians of Tunis, which would have not been possible had there been an absence of contact with Christians in other parts of the world.

Local Christian communities came under even more pressure when the Muslim fundamentalist regimes of the Almohads and Almoravids came into power, and the record shows demands made that the local Christians of Tunis to convert to Islam. We still have reports of Christian inhabitants and a bishop in the city of Kairouan around 1150 AD - a significant report, since this city was founded by Muslims around 680 AD as their administrative center after their conquest. A letter in Church archives from the 14th century shows that there were still four bishoprics left in North Africa, admittedly a sharp decline from the over four hundred bishoprics in existence at the time of the Islamic conquest. Berber Christians continued to live in Tunis and Nefzaoua in the south of Tunisia up until the early 15th century, and the first quarter of the 15th century, we even read that the native Christians of Tunis, though much assimilated, extended their church, perhaps because the last Christians from all over the Maghreb had gathered there.

By the early 1800's, some regions of Africa persecuted Christians to the extent that these religious communities were secret churches, meeting in homes or remote locations, using codewords to identify themselves to each other and avoid police detection.

British Mistakes, American Honesty

2010-12-02T08:56:00.002-05:00

If the English had only dealt with their America colonies a little more wisely, chances are that places like New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio would still be part of the British Empire. Americans, at first, did not want independence from England: they merely wanted equal representation in parliament, and their rights as Englishmen under the Magna Carta. But instead, writes Jack Rakove (at Stanford University),

it took a peculiarly flawed process of framing bad policies and reacting to the resulting failures to convince the government of George III and Lord North that the best way to maintain the loyalty of their North American subjects was to make war on them.

Pushed toward the radical step of declaring independence, the Founding Fathers were actually, in the words of John M. Taylor (George Washington University),

two sets of leaders - an older group that led the move for independence, including Washington and the Adamses, and a younger group, including Madison and Alexander Hamilton, who came of age with it.

But both groups shared one characteristic, as Rakove sums it up:

For the revolutionaries of 1776, virtue meant the ability of citizens to subordinate private interest to public good.

This same quality can create hope in the future of any nation, including ours - as we begin the twenty-first century burdened with national government debt and outrageously high taxes, we can still find a good future, if we are willing to accept healthy cuts to government spending. We will have to set aside our "private interest" in getting something "for free" from the government - the pain of which is lessened somewhat by remembering that it isn't really "for free" if every American, from richest to poorest, is paying such high taxes - and work toward the "public good": reducing debt, reducing deficit, and reducing taxes.

History Has the Answers!

2010-12-02T06:32:00.002-05:00

In the study of famous events and people, we often come across obvious and well-known truths. It doesn't surprise us to learn that Josef Stalin was evil (remember the forty million people he killed?), or that Mother Theresa was noble (anybody want to leave a life of middle-class ease to offer care to sick people in one of the world's poorest slums - all for no pay?). No, none of that is new information.

But only the careful and detailed study of history can give us the deeper understanding of these thumbnail icons: what are the details of Stalin's villainy, in its historical context, which can give us a clearer understanding of Stalin, of ourselves as humans, and of the philosophical definition of "evil"? Like, what exactly did Mother Theresa do, under which circumstances, and how do those details inform us about her, about what it means to be honorable, and about how humans beings can treat each other ethically?

Only thoughtful engagement with history - the analysis of facts, texts, and people - can yield these types of insight. And here we stand on the borderline between history and philosophy: the philosopher can give us the abstract definition of virtue or vice; the historian can give us detailed examples. Both are necessary if we are to broaden our minds.

Harvard's Aram Bakshian gives us an excellent example in his comments about George Washington. Our first president was, Bakshian writes, one of those

dignified, self-disciplined figures whose very virtues makes us uncomfortable about our own inadequate selves.

Here then we have three concepts worth investigating: dignified, self-disciplined, and virtues. These generalizations need specific examples: for this purpose we study biographies of Washington and learn the details of his life. Yale's Ron Chernow gives us further raw material. He writes that Washington was a man of

unerring judgment, sterling character, rectitude, steadfast patriotism, unflagging sense of duty, and civic-mindedness.

Again a list of categorical qualities which need concrete facts to help us envision them. In addition, we begin to see why this task is important: in the early twenty-first century in which we live, exploring the characteristics of George Washington will point us toward those things which we need to survive. We need "steadfast patriotism" instead of militant nationalism. We need "civic-mindedness" instead of a list of imagined grievances from self-proclaimed victims.

As we explore Washington's writings and biography, we can escape from the prison of viewing events from the narrow perspective of the moment of time in which we happen to live, and begin to explore the richer possibilities of viewing events from a timeless perspective, as we see

an eighteenth-century gentleman living by a clear code of honor that emphasized quiet courage, dedication to duty and stern self-control rather than getting in touch with one's inner child,

as Bakshian phrases it. Only from a narrow perspective would we refer

to Washington's "repressing" or "suppressing" his feelings, as if

this behavior on Washington's part was

a pathology rather than a triumph of character over impulse.

The historical perspective approaches the eternal perspective asymptotically - from which can gain amazing insights into human nature and character. We can find models who are, while not quite perfect, worth emulating - and among their admirable traits is the manner in which they considered their own imperfections:

No one judged himself more constantly or more severely than George Washington. From an early age, he strove to make himself a better person. He was a man of powerful passions and raging ambition, but he conquered his passion and he channeled his ambition honorably. Having mastered himself, he mastered the art of command; a man with no formal military training, leading what began as an armed rabble, he created and held together the first regular America army.

Washington's stellar ability to lead emerged from his ability to first lead himself - to be good at commanding others, one must first be good at commanding one's self.

As presiding officer at the constitutional convention and then as first president, he provided gravitas and a clear, uncluttered vision.

So, then, this is our task: let's go get several biographies of George Washington, study them, and find out why he is an excellent model. Then let's imitate him.

The Man Who Avoided American Public Schools

2010-11-19T17:29:00.005-05:00

Barack Obama started school at St. Francis Roman Catholic School in Indonesia. He continued his education at Besuki Public School in Indonesia. Moving to Hawaii, he enrolled in Punahou School, a private academy. After graduating, he enrolled first in Occidental College, a private school in California. He transferred to Columbia University on the east coast, and after obtaining his bachelor's degree, he studied at Harvard Law School. He never attended an American public school, and he also chose to keep his daughters out of public schools.

George W. Bush attended public schools, as did Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Dwight Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman - an interesting mixture of liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican.

The only other modern U.S. presidents to entirely avoid public schools were John F. Kennedy and George H.W. Bush.

Augustine's Diverse Experience

2010-11-16T10:06:00.002-05:00

Augustine lived a complex life. As a young man, he explored nearly every religion known, and studied the views of various philosophers. He also committed a wide variety of unethical actions. Yet, despite this complexity, his writings are remarkably clear - he has a talent for helping his reader to understand.

Perhaps what makes Augustine so easy to follow is the passion of his own convictions. He believes that Christianity is absolute truth. He takes Christianity very seriously and expects all others too as well. There was no compromise between paganism and Christianity as he felt one was right and the other wrong. He found Christianity a clear moral guide for life. God gave him everything. And yet, he was not always so saintly. He was a thief. He had a concubine and a child out of wedlock. He admits to thoughts that were not always so clean. Augustine came across as so human. In his book, The Confessions, he revealed his many intimate and sometimes impure thoughts. Romans could relate to what he was saying because they could identify with his experiences. He was not Christian his whole life. For a long while, he followed the ways of the Manichees, a group that borrowed some elements from Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity. The Manichees believed that there were essentially two worlds, one of light, created by God, and another of evil. The fact that he struggled with inner turmoil about what was the right way, and finding peace when he finds Christianity, was a story that was very persuasive. Phillip Woollcott, a historian, noted, “Augustine had a deep sense of inner unrest to match his times, but in addition, he had the gifts to reify his own inner struggles between good and evil; and in seeking his own creative solution, he gave power and logical cohesion to the youthful church which was largely inspirational at that time.” Romans had turmoil. Would Christianity bring them peace? Augustine certainly felt it could.

Augustine had seen what would finally create peace of mind in a world filled with turmoil. His Roman audience, weary of struggle and meaninglessness, had found all those other religious systems unable to enlighten their minds, and were eager to try Augustine's faith.

The American Way

2010-11-16T08:52:00.002-05:00

Given that so much of America's culture comes from Europe (our music, literature, societal values, etc.), and that what little doesn't come from Europe comes from Africa or Asia, is there anything that is truly American? Is there anything here that didn't come from somewhere else?

Professor Allen C. Guelzo, at Gettysburg College, might have an answer:

America has always been the nations of theory, not practice; it would built around ideas (even upon a "proposition") from the moment the first idea-haunted Pilgrim stepped off onto Plymouth Rock.

America, as a nation, started with ideas. In the Old World, in Europe, the events of history were studied, and general principles were gathered by induction. In America, before we got started, we first set down, in thought and in writing, our guiding principles. Our history is a debate about those principles - what they mean and how they ought to be applied - and so we are fundamentally a nation of ideas. This trend goes all the way back to the earliest years of the founding of America. The

Puritans possessed a university-trained leadership and organized themselves found a university-trained clergy, sunk deeply in theology and medieval scholasticism.

These earliest settlers of Massachusetts wove a seamless progression of thought from academic (mathematics, logic, physics, chemistry) to sociopolitical principles organized in their founding documents. Thus Harvard University was founded six years after the Puritans founded the city of Boston; all this activity emerged from a text, the "Mayflower Compact," the central idea of which is:

Having undertaken, for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith and Honor of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the First Colony in the Northern Parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another, Covenant and Combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.

Not only had

the Puritans founded Harvard College only six years after settling Boston,

but they shortly afterward founded other colleges and universities, and Puritan leader Jonathan Edwards was the president of Princeton University after it was had already been established by an earlier generation of Puritans.

To be sure, the Puritans were far from perfect, and capable of mistakes, despite their intellectual and academic skills. The first attempt at organizing the Plymouth colony nearly destroyed it, so badly was it designed. On the other hand, the faults of the Puritans are sometimes exaggerated: they did not possess the irrational superstitious fear and loathing of alcohol which some historians attribute to them; on the contrary, they brewed beer, made wine, and consumed both regularly.

In any case, they formed the basis for the ideology of the American Revolutionaries: Locke's political treatises would not have fueled the American Revolution had not the Puritans laid the foundation for their reception. Jonathan Edward's collected works (twenty-six volumes) contain ethical treatises which led to an atmosphere in which the morality of England's imperialism was questioned.

Between the day that the Puritans founded Harvard and the day Edwards began preaching stretches an entire century in which New Englanders wrestled mightily with the impact on the intellectual world of Cartesian epistemology and Newtonian science.

The active intellectual life of America was absorbing these latest developments, sometimes faster than the countries in which they took place. But intellectual life in America would encounter a roadblock:

the revolutionary upthrust of Pragmatism at Harvard after the Civil War. Nothing could represent a more dramatic intellectual break with the moral philosophers' pursuit of truth, hard-wired into the natural order of things, than Pragmatism.

The American intellectual tradition will suffer in these decades, as reason and logic are rejected, and random passions are followed. Academic life tormented by

the fundamental premises of Pragmatism - that no truth exists apart from satisfaction, that no nation or principle is worth dying for, and that all human inequities are merely problems awaiting the application of intelligence.

The first premise reduces life to something very like hedonism; the second deny any rational contemplation of values; and the third enslaves human reason in the service of in impossible Romanticist quest for an impossible utopia.

The darkness which Pragmatism cast on the life of the American mind was lifted by two very different, but simultaneous, phenomena: first,

the rise of a neo-orthodox religious critique (especially as championed by Reinhold Niebuhr in the 1950s) and the persistence of the seriousness with which theology was conducted as an intellectual enterprise in America,

and

the emergence, in violent fashion, of the New Left in the 1960s.

These two social movements were not only different from each other, but opposed to each other. Yet together, they revealed the intellectual inadequacy of Pragmatism:

both were a puzzle to Pragmatists, because there was no reason they could see for the dogmatic outlook behind both to even exist.

These two survivals, desperately unalike in all respects except the single conviction that there is an unmistakable pattern written into human experience and history, suggest that the moral philosophers' instinct was truer than Pragmatism ever imagined, and that Americans want more from ideas than the Pragmatic assurance that ideas are merely tools for experimentation.

A nation founded on ideas doesn't mean a nation which finds itself in harmonious unity: on the contrary, the more seriously one takes ideas, the more heatedly one will debate about them.

When Jefferson asserted that "we hold these truths to be self-evident," he assumed that not only were there truths, but that everyone was compelled to acknowledge their existence. Lincoln believed that the American order was founded on a "proposition" - not an experience, and certainly not on race, blood, ethnicity, or any of the other Romantic irrationalities.

We may speak of Lincoln's objection to Pragmatism, even though he slightly antedated it. In his opposition to Pragmatism,

he denounced slavery as ethically wrong, as a violation of natural law and natural theology - and would admit to no compromise with, and no scaling back of, his Emancipation Proclamation.

More than anything, to be American is to have an idea and attempt to transform that idea into reality. It is a search to discover the way things ought to be.

Who's to Blame?

2010-11-05T09:06:00.002-04:00

The city of Rome has been attacked, besieged, and sacked many times throughout history. Human nature is such that people want to know whom to blame for their misery: around 410 A.D., Rome was sacked by Germanic tribesmen, whose superiority was such that the city was incapable of defending itself in any meaningful way. Recovering and rebuilding from this defeat, the citizens of the empire began to look for scapegoats.

Attention quickly focused on a minority group: the Christians. This new religion had been illegal for almost three hundred years, and the Roman government had invested much energy into the activities of arresting, torturing, and executing Christians. Hundreds of thousands had been killed. Gradually, however, the new religion gained some measure of tolerance in Roman society, and, in a stunning reversal of government policy, Christianity was legalized around 313 A.D. by the emperor Constantine.

Although now legal, and to some extent tolerated, the new religion was still a minority, and the pagan majority looked with suspicion upon the Christians. Less than a century after the legalization of the new faith, Rome was sacked. Were the Christians to blame? Were the old Roman gods angered by the new faith, and did they stop protecting Rome from Germanic attacks? Or did the Christians, with their pacifism, weaken Rome's military ability to defend itself?

Fueled by such prejudices, many began calling for Christianity to again be illegal, and for the government execution of Christians to resume. A dangerous time indeed!

At this point in time, Augustine wrote one of his most famous books, entitled "The City of God."

"The City of God" was written in reaction to an event where Rome was sacked. Romans questioned a God that could not protect them from foreign invaders. In 410, Alaric and the Goths invaded Rome. They raped women, burned down houses and public buildings, looted wealth from individuals and the city, and killed those who opposed them. In truth, the sack was one of several on Rome, and could have been worse. However, many believed that if Christianity was a true religion, the Christian God would have protected his followers from this tragic fate. Many Romans believed that by turning their backs on the traditional Roman Gods, the Gods were angry with them and taking it out on them. Peter Brown wrote, “In an atmosphere of public disaster, men want to know what to do. At least Augustine could tell them. The traditional pagans had accused the Christians of withdrawing from public affairs and of being potential pacifists. Augustine’s life as a bishop had been a continual refutation of this charge.” Many suggested converting back from Christianity to paganism. Augustine wrote the City of God to make an argument for staying with Christianity. In it, he argued that Goths live in the City of Man, a city of sin, death, selfishness, and ruled by a love of power. However, since this is God’s world, man should try to live in his city. This city is full of truth, virtue, selflessness, was eternal and ruled by a love of God. As long as people live in this world, the Goths cannot really hurt the Christians. For example, by living in the City of God, one does not really need wealth. They will find happiness in other ways. So a Goth taking their possessions does nothing to actually hurt them. In order to receive God’s Grace, a Christian must live in the City of God. And Augustine’s argument is very emotional, looked to the future, appealed to reason and was firm in his devotion to God and Christianity, despite these terrible events. He told people that God does not protect them from all human misery, and quoted the Bible to show lots of examples of people who had problems. He told the demoralized Romans exactly what they needed to hear. This argument appealed to many Romans, not just the scholars. It will be a reason why Christianity will continue to grow, despite such tough times, and gain even more popularity.

Ancient Declines and Modern Urban Crises

2010-11-05T08:43:00.002-04:00

Dealing with the harsh realities and desperate personal emotional pains of daily life in inner-city neighborhoods (take your pick: Philadelphia, Detroit, Los Angeles, etc.) may seem long-removed from discussions of Babylonian and Roman empires, but there are commonalities. The dynamics which cause once-flourishing cities like New Orleans and St. Louis to crumble are the same dynamics which caused Greece and Persia to lose their political and economic momentum thousands of years ago.

In all of these times and places, ancient and modern, it is to be noted that the misery was not universal. During the decline of the Roman empire, there were families who established a meaningful existence for themselves; when Greece was losing its clout, and becoming a territory of Rome, there were husbands and wives, sons and daughters, who built a happy existence for themselves, and even managed to make contributions to the lives of others in their communities.

The dynamics which cause the fall of a society, then, do not manifest themselves in every individual in that society. On the other hand, every individual in that society will, in some way, be impacted - negatively, harmfully - by those factors which are causing the fall. But those impacts will not always be of a magnitude which causes them to be devastating - hence the happy family in the midst of the decline and fall of the Roman empire. Materially, perhaps, they suffered some losses of land or property; mentally, the indignity of being later ruled by a Germanic king instead of a Roman emperor (the indignity being merely ethnic; the rights of citizenship under both being very similar).

Because many, or perhaps even most, of the factors causing societal decline begin within the family structure, we see how it is possible for those families who are not affected internally by these factors - i.e., those families not afflicted with the problems which cause both personal misery and societal decline - can on the one hand avoid the intramural grief but still be impacted inasmuch as they live within the larger society which is falling because of such problems.

Prentice Tipton, an African-American leader, identifies these ancient woes in the modern context of America's inner-urban culture:

When mothers lead the family because the fathers fail to lead - either by absenting themselves from the home or by taking a passive role - boys are deprived of the most important natural model of manliness. Growing up mainly under the supervision of women, many experience insecurity over their identity as men.

One tendency for boys growing up in such circumstances is to rebel against women who are authorities over them and become socially disruptive - irresponsible in family and work commitments, overly assertive about their manly prowess, especially in sexual areas, or leading lives characterized by violence and crime, alcoholism, and other addictions.

Another tendency for young men is to identify with the adult women who are authorities in their lives and learn to behave or react in ways that are more appropriate to women than to men. To the extent that young males take either option, they do not learn the discipline, the responsibility, and the character involved in being a man. They are left groping for manhood in a variety of socially disruptive ways.

In the later years of the Roman empire, we see the "absent father" - either physically absent, being away at war, or away watching games and sports, or away drinking and committing adultery - or emotionally absent, being preoccupied with material wealth, substance abuse, or sheer lazy indulgence - and having no meaningful interaction with his children.

We see also in falling empire those social problems catalogued as results of such absent fathers.

However, we must be careful not to over-simplify: there were many different factors leading to the fall of the Roman empire, and certainly not all of them had to do with broken family structures. Bad weather, exhausted farmland, the superiority of Germanic tribesmen, imbalance of imports and exports, etc., all belong to the long and hotly disputed list of possible causes for Rome's fall.

We can, however, safely and sadly say that these same problems are inflicting misery on young people today, thousands of years later, wherever and whenever fathers neglect their children.

Shrewd Marketing

2010-10-15T10:13:00.001-04:00

In the late 300’s and early 400’s A.D., Augustine was writing to persuade the Roman public that Christianity should be permitted as part of Roman society. Recently legalized in 313 A.D., the new religion was a minority within the empire, and faced discrimination and persecution. Around 410 A.D., when the city of Rome was attacked and heavily damaged by the Goths, many Romans believed that their city had been sacked because the old Roman gods were angry that a few Christians had been allowed to live there. Augustine’s message to the public was twofold: first, that Christianity was not responsible for the Gothic attack on Rome, and secondly, that Christianity was a reasonable system of beliefs. To support the latter claim, Augustine made use of the philosophers and writers who were respected by the educated class in Rome. He pointed out some similarities between Plato’s thought and the ideas in the New Testament.

Augustine was also able to find connections between Cicero, stoicism and Christianity. Cicero was a lawyer and politician in the tumultuous first century B.C. He was able to distinguish himself through eloquent writing and boldly argued and articulated speeches. Augustine wrote in the Confessions, “Following the usual curriculum I had already come across a book by a certain Cicero, whose language (but not his heart) almost everyone admires.” Finding connections between Cicero’s ideas and Christianity was critical in appealing to the Roman scholars because Cicero had their respect. The book of Cicero he found is called Hortentius, which is unfortunately lost to the modern world except for various quotations Augustine used in his writings. “The book changed my feelings. It altered my prayers, Lord, to be toward you yourself. It gave me different values and priorities. Suddenly every vain hope became empty to me, and I longed for the immortality of wisdom with an incredible ardour in my heart.” Augustine has a very emotional reaction to this book. It changed his perspectives completely. It gave Augustine a love of wisdom. Cicero wrote about ideas that expressed the Greek philosophy of stoicism. Stoics believe in Natural Law, universality of mankind, and a strict adherence a virtuous lifestyle. It’s not hard to see how Augustine could reconcile Stoicism and Christianity. Stoicism had gained quite a following in the Roman Empire, and linking together Christianity and stoicism appealed to a wider group of people.

Augustine had to use these sources – Plato, Stoicism, and Cicero – selectively, because, while he could point to some similarities and thereby persuade the Romans to allow Christianity, he also knew that there some points of difference: Plato’s view of women, for example, did not give them the level of dignity which they attained in the New Testament; Stoicism, despite its moral outlook, was a belief system which was comfortable with suicide and with the mass executions of Christians which the Romans had carried out prior to 313 A.D.; and Cicero, while in some ways an inspirational philosopher, was also a sleazy lawyer connected with various shady dealings, and who also glorified the political and social structure of the old Roman Republic to an extent which was neither plausible to the critical thinker nor acceptable to anyone who wished to avoid deifying the state. Augustine knew that neo-Platonism, Stoicism, and Cicero had failed to offer meaningful correctives to the problems of Roman society, but he still found it useful to refer to them in his explanations of Christianity, because such references were crucial to capturing the interest and favor of the Roman readership.

Nazi Euthanasia

2010-10-15T09:24:00.001-04:00

In October of 1939 amid the turmoil of the outbreak of war Hitler ordered widespread “mercy killing” of the sick and disabled.

Code named “Aktion T4,” the Nazi euthanasia program to eliminate “life unworthy of life” at first focused on newborns and very young children. Midwives and doctors were required to register children up to age three who showed symptoms of mental retardation, physical deformity, or other symptoms included on a questionnaire from the Reich Health Ministry.

A decision on whether to allow the child to live was then made by three medical experts solely on the basis of the questionnaire, without any examination and without reading any medical records.

Each expert placed a + mark in red pencil or - mark in blue pencil under the term “treatment” on a special form. A red plus mark meant a decision to kill the child. A blue minus sign meant a decision against killing. Three plus symbols resulted in a euthanasia warrant being issued and the transfer of the child to a ‘Children’s Specialty Department’ for death by injection or gradual starvation.

The decision had to be unanimous. In cases where the decision was not unanimous the child was kept under observation and another attempt would be made to get a unanimous decision.

The Nazi euthanasia program quickly expanded to include older disabled children and adults. Hitler's decree of October, 1939, typed on his personal stationary, enlarged “the authority of certain physicians to be designated by name in such manner that persons who, according to human judgment, are incurable can, upon a most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death.”

Questionnaires were then distributed to mental institutions, hospitals and other institutions caring for the chronically ill.

Patients had to be reported if they suffered from schizophrenia, epilepsy, senile disorders, therapy resistant paralysis and syphilitic diseases, retardation, encephalitis, Huntington’s chorea and other neurological conditions, also those who had been continuously in institutions for at least five years, or were criminally insane, or did not posses German citizenship or were not of German or related blood, including Jews, Negroes, and Gypsies.

A total of six killing centers were established including the well known psychiatric clinic at Hadamar. The euthanasia program was eventually headed by an SS man whose last name was Wirth, a notorious brute with the nickname ‘the savage.’

At Brandenburg, a former prison was converted into a killing center where the first Nazi experimental gassings took place. The gas chambers were disguised as shower rooms, but were actually hermetically sealed chambers connected by pipes to cylinders of carbon monoxide. Patients were generally drugged before being led naked into the gas chamber. Each killing center included a crematorium where the bodies were taken for disposal. Families were then falsely told the cause of death was medical such as heart failure or pneumonia.

But the huge increase in the death rate for the disabled combined with the very obvious plumes of odorous smoke over the killing centers aroused suspicion and fear. At Hadamar, for example, local children even taunted arriving busloads of patients by saying “here comes some more to be gassed.’

On August 3, 1941, a Bishop, Clemens von Galen, delivered a sermon in Münster Cathedral attacking the Nazi euthanasia program calling it “plain murder.” The sermon sent a shockwave through the Nazi leadership by publicly condemning the program and urged German Christians to “withdraw ourselves and our faithful from their (Nazi) influence so that we may not be contaminated by their thinking and their ungodly behavior.”

As a result, on August 23, Hitler suspended Aktion T4, which had accounted for nearly a hundred thousand deaths by this time.

The Nazis retaliated against the Bishop by killing three parish priests who had distributed his sermon, but left the Bishop unharmed to avoid making him into a martyr.

However, the Nazi euthanasia program quietly continued, but without the widespread gassings. Drugs and starvation were used instead and doctors were encouraged to decide in favor of death whenever euthanasia was being considered.

The use of gas chambers at the euthanasia killing centers ultimately served as training centers for the SS. They used the technical knowledge and experience gained during the euthanasia program to construct huge killing centers at Auschwitz, Treblinka and other concentration camps in an attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe. SS personnel from the euthanasia killing centers, notably Wirth, Franz Reichleitner and Franz Stangl later commanded extermination camps.

Plato's Appeal

2010-10-14T11:03:00.002-04:00

Plato's philosophy contains a number of features which made it attractive to early Christians; many, but not all, of them were neo-Platonists to various degrees. Certainly, Plato's concept of an immortal soul played well to them.

Dualism also appealed to the Christians. There are several different dualisms, or different axes of dualism, in Plato's thought: mind/body, material/idea, physical/metaphysical, and in the neo-Platonic schools, good/evil, man/god. Augustine played off of these concepts through the semi-metaphorical talk of two cities.

Plato also had another theory that Augustine argued in his famous work, The City of God. Here he argued that the two worlds exist concurrently. The city of earth is corrupt, full of self-love and sinners. But the city of God, which exists on earth, is a city of good, god-fearing people who love humanity. The link between Plato and Augustine is unmistakable. “Yet there are no more than two kinds of human society, which we may justly call two cities, according to the language of our Scriptures. The one consists of those who wish to live after the flesh, the other of those who wish to live after the spirit; and when they several achieve what they wish they live in peace, each after their kind,” writes Augustine, espousing a Christian dualistic theory of humanity, which was very similar to Plato’s view. Augustine was the one who made the connection clear to the Platonists. “As a Christian theologian, he puts to grateful use the Platonic concepts of ‘spiritual substance,” of evil as the privation of the good, of intuition as the basic mode of knowledge and the duality of body-soul,” writes Albert Outler. Because Augustine is able to make such a close tie between Platonic philosophy and Christianity, he made Christianity more appealing, especially to the Platonist.

Coming to America

2010-10-14T08:16:00.003-04:00

The earliest German immigration to American came in the form of individual Germans among the Dutch who, in 1620, settled New Amsterdam - which later became New York. They were predominately from peasant backgrounds or were people who had worked in cottage industries. Some were also soldiers of the Dutch West Indies Company, carrying on an already long tradition of German mercenary soldiers. Later, in the seventeenth century, William Penn made a tour of German in 1677 to recruit immigrants for his colony of Pennsylvania. Religious toleration in Pennsylvania was a special attraction to those Germans whose religion differed from that of their respective established churches in their regions of Germany. Pennsylvania thus attracted the first sizable German communities in America, largely from the Rhineland region.

A Small-Town Boy in the Big City

2010-10-11T10:24:00.002-04:00

Augustine's amazing intelligence and education allowed him to produce books which are still standards in philosophy and logic. Although he wrote them over a thousand years ago, some of his personal experiences seem very modern. Going off to the university is still a major turning-point in a person's life.

Augustine’s education also gave him a more cosmopolitan viewpoint. At fifteen, he was sent to Carthage, a big city with theaters, universities, intellectuals, and, in his opinion, great temptations. He wrote, in Confessions, his dynamic autobiography, “I came to Carthage and all around me hissed a cauldron of illicit loves.” Augustine even got caught up in a more worldly and sinful lifestyle. He was in close contact with a lot of different groups of people and many different religious groups. This experience would prove invaluable in appealing to different groups and understanding their viewpoints.

Technically, Carthage had schools, not universities, because the first universities wouldn't appear for another five hundred years. But Augustine's experience was one which reflects the universal human nature.

Arabic Philosophy

2010-10-11T10:19:00.002-04:00

When we study Scholastic philosophers of the Middle Ages, and learn that they laid the rational foundations for modern physics and chemistry, we learn about intellectual giants like Abelard and Ockham, and how they pushed the limits of logic to include innovative forms of argumentation.

Philosophers like Abelard and Aquinas did not work in isolation. They were in dialogue with Arabic philosophers. Despite political and religious tensions between the Europeans and empires of the Near East, the philosophers corresponded. Neither side had any difficulty in simultaneously calling the other "godless heretical infidels" and yet respecting the intellectual and academic accomplishments of the other.

The beginnings of Arabic philosophy came with the translation of large numbers of philosophical works into Arabic from Greek. The works were primarily those of Aristotle, Plato, and the later Neo-Platonists. Curiously, many of these works were translated by Christian Arabs, at the end of era of Arabic Christianity and the beginning of the era of the hegemony of Islam in Arabic culture. We need to remember that, prior to the Islamic invasions, Christianity was the most popular religion in the Arabic regions, as well as in non-Arab territories like Persia. Arab philosophers were confronted with the divergent lines of thought represented by Aristotle and the Neo-Platonists. Presented with these two different perspectives, the early Arabic philosophers had to choose one, or the other, or try to harmonize both.

One of the earliest Arabic philosophers was Al-Kindi (who died around the year 870 A.D.). Al-Kindi, like the Islamic philosophers who followed him, sought to harmonize a rational philosophical system with the teachings Islam. His teachers, and the authors of many of the books he studied, were Christians. He wanted the tradition of philosophy to continue under Islamic rule.

He was followed by Al-Farabi, who based his thought primarily on Plato's Laws and Republic. Al-Farabi, who was either a Turk or a Persian, and therefore not an Arab, represents a quite developed system of philosophical terminology; he died around 950 A.D. His teachers were Christians, and therefore he was exposed to Greek philosophy, which was less tolerated in purely Islamic circles. He carefully distinguished between philosophy and theology, and placed philosophy in the service of theology. He introduced formalized logic into the Arabic world, and began producing arguments for the existence of God, which were strikingly similar to Thomistic arguments for the same. Like Aquinas (who was familiar with Al-Farabi's works) and his followers, so Al-Farabi and his followers were often mis-understood in their arguments for the existence of God. Neither the Islamic nor the Thomist philosophers were trying to prove the existence of God, even though they wrote "proofs". Much rather, because both were surrounded by a community of their respective faiths, each group took the existence of God as something which did not need to be proved. Why, then, write such proofs? The "proof for the existence of God" was a literary form for philosophical discourse; by writing such a proof, a philosopher could exhibit his skill, demonstrate the particular kind or argumentation which he thought to be most powerful, and en passant make certain assertions about other issues in philosophy. Thus, many Aristotelian arguments for God (Islamic or Thomist) were written as a way to make assertions about physics and metaphysics. Scholars debate whether he grew up in Turkey or in Persia, but in either case, Al-Farabi's native land still offered him more intellectual freedom at the time, because it was on the fringe of the Islamic region, and not yet as thoroughly dominated by Muslim control.

The high points of Arabic thought began with Avicenna (Abu Ali ibn-Sina), who based himself upon Aristotle, but strove to either further refine or change Aristotle's system in order to harmonize it with some of the teachings of Islam. It is an interpretive question whether Avicenna's work is a natural development of Aristotle's system, and thus represents an internal and organic application of the system to itself, or whether Avicenna subjected the Aristotelian system to the external pressures of Islamic orthodoxy and so introduced additions to the system which were not inherent to the organic whole of the system itself. In either case, Avicenna replaced Aristotle's two-fold basis (matter and form) for metaphysics with a three-fold basis (matter, form, and being). According to Avicenna, God (qua necessary Being) provides the underlying support for the ongoing process of these three constituents; hence, the existence of the world depends on God. Avicenna was deeply influential in the work of Aquinas; Avicenna's impact is evident in the Thomistic doctrine of God as the underlying support for the existence of the world. Avicenna also indicated that the fundamental metaphysical distinction between necessity and contingency was parallel to, and based upon, the distinction between existence and essence. Avicenna's distinction of existence and essence again shows both how he studied Aristotle and how he modified Aristotle's system - cf. Aristotle's distinction between accident and essence. Avicenna has had an influence on the development of modern formal logic, which works with such modalities. Quite notable is his assertion that the mind necessarily apprehends the idea of being, although it is normally acquired through experience; but even without experience, he says, the mind would have this idea: here he is quite ahead of his time, anticipating themes which would occupy modern philosophers. Avicenna distinguished between two kinds of necessity: contingent beings were not necessary of themselves, but necessary as the result of a determining cause; truly necessary beings were necessary of themselves. Avicenna lived from 980 until 1037.

This most productive period of Islamic thought continued with Averroes (ibn-Rushd), who lived from 1126 until 1198. Averroes represented an attempt to return to a purer form of Aristotelianism, in contrast to the modified Aristotelianism of Avicenna. Averroes also marked the beginning of the decline of Arabic philosophy, as Muslim control of cultural life became complete.

The Islamic philosophers of the Middle Ages bore a strong resemblance to their Christian European counterparts, which whom they exchanged information. The era of Arab philosophy came to an end as Islam made further inroads and eventually eliminated the tradition of philosophical reflection.

An Educated Spokesman

2010-10-06T12:49:00.001-04:00

Augustine had a classical education that made him an acceptable ambassador of Christianity to the intellectual classes. His parents had to sacrifice to get their son, who was obviously gifted, into schools that studied in a classical manner. His education was very traditional, and tedious in the area of liberal arts. His education emphasized Latin and the philosophies of the classical Latin scholars. He read the writings of Virgil many times and cried when he read about Dido’s fate as she lamented for Aeneas. He read Cicero, not only for his impressive ideas, but to better grasp the Latin language and his use of rhetoric. Peter Brown, an author of a biography on Augustine, said, “The great advantage of the education Augustine received was that, within its narrow limits, it was perfectionist. The aim was to measure up to the timeless perfection of an ancient classic.” Augustine was taught to believe that the classical scholars never made mistakes. Every word had significance. He applied this careful reading and studying to Christianity as well. His education would have also involved the study of rhetoric. He was very good at not only speaking, but at convincing others that his viewpoint was right. It taught him to dynamically express himself, which was a great gift, and helped him to appeal to many kinds of people. Augustine, although proficient in Latin, struggled when it came to the Greek language. Eventually, he started to read Greek philosophers’ works, but mostly in a Latin translation. However, his knowledge of both Latin and Greek classical ideas was useful in his writings, teaching, and dialogues with people in Rome. Thus, Augustine was able to present Christianity in a way that appealed to the classical scholars of his day.

When is a Public School Not a Public School?

2010-10-06T07:49:00.002-04:00

For most of our history, American children have been educated in three ways: private schools, home schooling, or public schools. Recently, a fourth option has become available: charter schools.

Over the last decade or two, charter schools have grown in popularity, but they remain controversial. They funded by taxpayer dollars, but managed by private entities. Ironically, they have been criticized both for being "private schools in disguise" and "public schools in disguise."

Being fueled by government money, they have been required by courts to refrain from any religious instruction or organized religious activity. Regular supervision by litigation-minded public interest groups has enforced those court orders - with one exception.

While keeping charter schools scrupulously free of Judeo-Christian spirituality, this scrutiny has overlooked a growing number of charter schools which are allegedly centered around Middle Eastern culture, but which are in fact functioning as vehicles of Islamic instruction.

Muslim leader Fethullah Güllen has organized a network of approximately 100 charter schools, instructing almost 35,000 students, with an emphasis on Turkish culture. It is notoriously difficult to determine where culture ends and religion begins.

Some critics have noted that the Turkish charter schools have imported not only their teachers, but in some cases also other employees. It will take some work to show that this is educationally or economically necessary.

Most questions center around Friday prayer services offered in the Islamic charter schools. Just as in a public school, students are allowed to gather for prayer during non-instructional time. But if the services are led and organized by school employees, that would seem to be a violation of standard policy.

Time Magazine Reporter Visits Brighton

2010-09-29T09:16:00.002-04:00

[Excerpts from an article written by Joe Klein for Time Magazine] Jason Pless, a deputy police chief in one of Detroit's exurbs, thinks of himself as pretty careful and cautious person: "Politically, financially, every which way. But I guess you'd have to say I'm underwater. We bought our house for $148,000, took a mortgage for $100,000. And I think I might be able to sell it for $80,000 now."

We're at a restaurant in Brighton, Mich., 40 miles from the center of Detroit, having brunch. There are 10 of us at the table — a group of cops, firefighters, emergency responders and a few lawyers put together by Kevin Gentry, a deputy fire chief and adjunct law professor at Michigan State — and all but one of them think that their mortgages now surpass the value of their homes.

They have stories about friends and neighbors gaming the system. They are angry about the Obama Administration's giving aid to people facing foreclosure while they're playing by the rules and struggling. A lawyer named Carla Testani tells a story about a neighbor who had a brief, scheduled layoff and was able to parlay that into mortgage-rate relief from the government. "It was like she got a raise. She bought her kids a swing set." And Pless, the deputy police chief, is infuriated by his neighbors, some of whom were friends of his, who are just walking away from their mortgages — which means the banks will foreclose on their homes and lower his property's value. "It's immoral," he says. "But where's the payback? I hope the banks hunt them down."

People are freaked out. They're frustrated and anxious. They're not too thrilled with Barack Obama's policies, and the anti-incumbent, anti-Establishment mood is palpable. They can diagnose the problems, but they don't have any strong ideas about solutions. Most of the people at brunch say the government is spending too much.

Even devoted Obama supporters are frustrated with the President. "After he didn't get a single Republican vote on the stimulus package, why did he spend all year trying to get Republican votes for health care?" asks John McGraw, the former president of a small division of a power-tool company that was closed down by its European owners. "He's a smart guy. Didn't he understand what he was facing?"

McGraw has been laid off for 17 months. His wife Sally, a clerical worker, has held five jobs in the past two years and was laid off from four of them. "I've sent out maybe 4,000 to 5,000 resumes, all over the world," McGraw told me. "This is my full-time job. I do it seven days a week. I've got 2,300 rejection letters sitting in my computer; the rest didn't even bother to respond. I understand. I'm 61. They can hire someone 20 years younger than me for less money... But you wonder where this country is going. You wonder how the kids will find jobs and buy houses." Illinois is in a fiscal crisis; its deficit is nearly half the size of its budget, largely because of pension and health obligations to public employees. Taxes keep rising to close that gap. "I could go to work three days a week at Walmart, and my salary would just about cover my tax bill," McGraw says. "With all these jobs going overseas, you wonder how anybody who isn't a genius nuclear physicist is going to find work. I can't believe we're letting this happen to our country."

Introspection seems the order of the day. When you scratch just a bit beneath the surface, people stop lacerating politicians and start talking about American values. "You've got to figure that our parents wouldn't have walked away from a mortgage," Pless says. "I'm not walking away from mine. But people I know well, friends, are taking a hike, and I wonder, What has happened to us as people?"

Privacy, Anyone?

2010-09-27T11:16:00.005-04:00

The Obama administration is developing plans that would require all Internet-based communication services - such as encrypted BlackBerry e-mail, Facebook, and Skype - to be capable of complying with federal wiretap orders, according to a report published Monday.

National security officials and federal law enforcement argue their ability to eavesdrop on terror suspects is increasingly "going dark," as more communication takes place via Internet services, rather than by traditional telephone.

The bill, which Obama plans to deliver to Congress next year, would require communication service providers be technically capable of intercepting and decrypting messages, raising serious privacy concerns, the Times said.

The proposal has "huge implications" and poses a test to the "fundamental elements of the Internet revolution," vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, James Dempsey, told the Times.

"They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function," he was quoted as saying.

Officials contend, however, that without new regulations their ability to prevent attacks could be hindered.

"We're not talking expanding authority," FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni told the Times. "We're talking about preserving our ability to execute our existing authority in order to protect the public safety and national security."

Internet and phone networks are already required to have eavesdropping abilities thanks to a Clinton administration law called the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act, but the mandate does not apply to communication service providers - like Research in Motion, maker of BlackBerry devices.

Essentially, this move is the Obama administration's attempt to bring the Clinton-era "Carnivore" program up-to-date. In 1994, the main source of such data was email. Now we have cell phone texting and other data transmission protocols which do not fall under the email heading.

Questions About Augustine

2010-09-21T09:36:00.000-04:00

Augustine is a Christian philosopher from the late fourth and early fifth centuries. He was born in North Africa and had a childhood that was full of mischief and trouble. After being baptized, around the age of thirty-three, his life took off in a different direction. He rose up through the hierarchy of the church culminating in his being appointed bishop of Hippo, a north African town. When Rome was sacked in 410 AD, Augustine eloquently argued as why Christians should remain faithful and not turn their backs on God, even when life turned very bleak and dark. His ideas, expressed in his two famous works, Confessions and City of God, had immense influence on medieval thinking and later Protestantism. Some of his controversial ideas include the doctrine of predestination, based on his interpretations of Paul’s writings, and original sin. Augustine was said to have a foot in both the Classical and medieval worlds. While he lived during the decline of the Roman Empire, his philosophies are often considered part of medieval thinking, and beyond. Why do so many historians, theologians and philosophers refer to Augustine as a transitional figure? What aspects of his life and ideas make him both a Classical and a Medieval figure? How is he both a product of the past, and original in his conclusions?

Bonhoeffer

2010-09-20T08:26:00.002-04:00

Although several books have been written about the life and work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he continues to fascinate both the public and the scholars. Eric Metaxas recently released his biography of Bonhoeffer, attracting both attention and praise. Review the book, S.T. Karnick writes:

The too-brief life of the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been the subject of much film and literary interest in recent year, and Eric Metaxas's insightful biography of this heroic figure helps us understand why. Bonhoeffer's life vividly demonstrated the natural and indeed inevitable tensions between the individual and the modern state, and it pointed toward a response based firmly in Christian thought.

Bonhoeffer is, of course, fascinating because he was part of the heroic German resistance movement which undermined Hitler's power, slowed the Nazi military advances, and saved the lives of thousands of Jews. But beyond that, Bonhoeffer is of interest because he represents the general concept of an individual human being in the face of modern statism. He specifically resisted Hitler's Naziism, but shows us also how one would resist Stalin's Leninism, Mao's Marxism, or Castro's Communism - and, less obviously, any government which absorbs more and more of the society into itself. Karnich continues:

There are two powerful presences throughout the book: Bonhoeffer himself and Adolf Hitler, as the two head for the great confrontation in which the theologian engaged in an ambitious conspiracy to kill the Führer and topple his regime. Metaxas's book make the reader acutely aware that the same nation that produced Hitler engendered this heroic opponent and many other of similar integrity.

The great irony is that one of history's most cruel dictators took power in a country which gave birth to so many defenders of freedom. Unlike Russia or China, which had no long-standing tradition of liberty, or of valuing the dignity of every individual human being, Germany's philosophical and literary heritage had boldly stated the worth of every person and every life. Hitler's militarism, his genocide, and his assault on society's freedom were a direct violation of the traditional German ethic - the ethic which gave birth to large resistance movement.

His family's unusual religious life was a huge formative influence on Bonhoeffer. The Bonhoeffers seldom attended church, Metaxas writes, but their "daily life was filled with Bible reading and hymn singing, all of it led by Frau Bonhoeffer." In addition, the children learned that a real love of God must be manifested in one's actions. "Exhibiting selflessness, expressing generosity, and helping others were central to the family culture."

Only a child raised in such a family could become an adult brave enough to face Hitler. Only a person formed by this lifestyle would have the nerve to oppose the Nazis.

Bonhoeffer went on to study theology at Berlin University, earning his doctorate in 1927, at age 21. The theological faculty was then dominated by proponents of the "historical-critical method." They had concluded "that the miracles [the Bible] described never happened, and that the Gospel of John never happened," Metaxas notes. Bonhoeffer courageously refused to accept their thinking, arguing against them politely but confidently, "on positive theological grounds," as a fellow student described it.

The intellectual honesty and integrity which Bonhoeffer demonstrated as a student would fuel his opposition to the Nazi government. At the university, Bonhoeffer's opponents had to at least respect his brilliance and genius, but the Gestapo would not care about his intelligence.

Ancient Causes, Today's Effects

2010-09-14T08:24:00.002-04:00

Harvard Sociologist Thomas Sowell reviews the contributions made by Americans of German heritage. Millions of people in the United States trace a part of their heritage back to Switzerland, Austria, or some other German-speaking land. Although less than half of our population (approximately fifty million people identify their ancestry as "mostly German," according to the Census Bureau), they represent an extremely large percentage of our Nobel Prize winners, Pulitzer Prize winner, and leading scientists. Why would this one ethnic group produce most of America's technological innovators, physicists, chemists, engineers - but also poets and composers? As a sociologist, Sowell speculates that it comes from the roots of this culture:

A very substantial portion of the German immigration to America occurred when there was no Germany. It was not until 1871 that Prussia, Bavaria, Baden, Mecklenburg, Hesse, and other Germanic states were united by Bismarck to form the nation of Germany. However, the German language is recorded as far back as 750 A.D. and Germanic peoples - who do not include the Huns - as far back as the first century B.C.

It can be noted that the Goths, a Germanic group, left extensive written documents as far back as the 380's A.D. (The Huns from Asia invaded Germanic regions.) Sowell's point, however, is that there is a rich and ancient linguistic and cultural heritage at work:

In the early days of the Roman Empire, the Germans were among the barbarian warriors on the northern frontier described by Julius Caesar. Over the centuries, through the shifting fortunes of war and politics, as well as migrations, some Germanic people acquired the civilization of the Romans, and ultimately influence in the Roman Empire. In the later empire, German soldiers replaced Romans in the Roman legions, which were not often commanded by German generals, who were sometimes de facto rulers behind figurehead Roman emperors. At the same time, other German peoples on the northern frontiers of the empire continued to be a major menace to its existence. Many of the great battles in the declining phase of the Roman Empire were battles of Germans against other Germans. Within the empire, Germans were never fully accepted or fully assimilated. Intermarriage between Romans and Germans was forbidden. The Roman aristocracy referred to Germans as "blond barbarians" and denounced them for "the nauseating stink of the bodies and clothing." To some extent, Germans themselves were apologetic about their racial origins. For example, a tombstone among the Germans buried in Gaul referred to their ancestry as "part of the stain that baptism has washed away." Other Germans simply returned the resentment and hatred that Romans felt toward them.

While Sowell's interpretation of the inscription can be disputed - it was more probably the common imperfections of human nature which were "washed away," not the peculiar ethnicity - his broader point is valid: the Germans made to feel inferior and ashamed. Roman arrogance left a collective emotional wound which would take centuries to heal, if indeed it ever did heal.

More than a thousand years of history - and the evolution of language, culture, and peoples - elapsed between these early Germans and the people who began immigrating to colonial America. Modern Germany - even before it became a nation - was in the forefront of Western civilization in science, the arts, music, literature, and philosophy. It was the home of Goethe, Beethoven, Kant, and Leibniz. Technology and craftsmanship were German hallmarks. Zeiss and Voigtlander were renowned names in optics long before they (and other German names) became famous in the later era of photography.

Was it the anguish of Roman racism and hatred which drove the Germans to excel? Did they bring that focused perseverance with them to America, and thereby create America's leading role in technological progress and scientific discovery?

Germans, once disdained as inferior barbarians by the Romans, now easily surpassed Italy, where "the glory that was Rome" had become only a memory and a bitter mockery of Italian weakness, disunity, and lagging technology and economy. In a still later era, the German ancestry that some had felt ashamed of in Roman times was to become an object of fanatical worship under Hitler and the Nazis.

The Roman geo-political dominance during the first century A.D. served only as a painful contrast during the Middle Ages, when Germany took the lead in technology and culture. One need only think of Gutenberg and his printing press, Kepler and his orbits, the Fugger family and their economic conquest of the Medici, Luther and his destruction of the Papal monopoly, and other such examples, to see how the early Roman hegemony gave way to Germanic inventiveness. It was this creativity which came to America:

Emigration from the German states (and later the German nation) ebbed and flowed with historic event.

The earliest documented German presence in North America is probably the families who came to New York around 1620. There were almost certainly earlier Germans here (probably sailors), but written evidence has been lost. A steady stream of Austrians and Swiss followed as well, but in every decade, the reasons changed.

The German states of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were separately ruled by petty princes and were in a state of turmoil. The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation had created religious refugees in both Catholic and Protestant German states, and the Thirty Years' War disrupted their economies, as well as reduced the total German population by about one-third. A sever winter in 1708-09 destroyed the German wine industry for years to come. In short, the domestic problems that often stimulate emigration were present in the German state. However, there were also restrictions and prohibitions on emigration, which led to much internal migration instead.

The three classic causes of emigration (politics, economics, and religion) led some of the most skilled and talented people to bring Germanic creativity and innovation to America.

The Five Parts of Freedom

2010-09-02T14:57:00.002-04:00

The U.S. economic system of free enterprise operates according to five main principles: the freedom to choose our businesses, the right to private property, the profit motive, competition, and consumer sovereignty.

Freedom to Choose Our Businesses: In this country, the decision whether or not you should go into computer services or any other kind of enterprise (business) is basically yours alone to make. You will decide what fees to charge and what hours to work. Certain laws prohibit you from cheating or harming your customers or other people. But, in general, you will be left alone to run your business as you see fit.

Right to Private Property: Private property is a piece of land, a home, or a car owned by an individual, a family, or a group. It differs from a public building, or public property, such as the city hall, a park, or a highway, all of which provide a government service for all citizens. In the U.S. economic system, people's right to buy and sell private property is guaranteed by law. People must use the property in safe and reasonable ways, of course. In setting up computer systems for your customers, for example, you do not have the right to interfere with the electrical, telephone, or computer systems of other people.

Profit Motive: The main reason why you or any enterprising person organizes a business is to make money. You do this by earning more money than you spend. The amount of money left over after subtracting your business expenses from your business income is known as your profit. In the free enterprise system, business firms try hard to keep costs down and increase their income from sales. The better they succeed at this, the higher are their profits. Economists describe the efforts by business firms to earn the greatest profits as the profit motive.

Competition: Just as you are free to start a computer business, so is everyone else. The rivalry between sellers in the same field for consumers' dollars is called competition. If your business is profitable, it is likely that others will enter the same business hoping to be as successful as you are. They will be competing with you for the same customers. To win a share of the computer business, other sellers may try to offer more and better services, or services at lower prices. Because of the pressure of competition, business firms must constantly try to provide the best services and create the best products at the lowest possible prices.

Consumer Sovereignty: In the end, it is the customers, or consumers, who determine whether any business succeeds or fails. In the U.S. free enterprise economy, consumers are said to have sovereignty-the power or freedom to have final say. Consumers are free to spend their money for Product X or for Product Y. If they prefer Y over X, then the company making X may lose money, go out of business, or decide to manufacture something else (perhaps Product Z). Thus, how consumers choose to spend their dollars causes business firms of all kinds to produce certain goods and services and not others.

The Nazis vs. the Scouts

2010-09-02T12:00:00.002-04:00

After Adolf Hitler seized political power in Germany in early 1933, he began to transform many areas of daily life. Within a few years, practically every normal activity in life had been in some way impacted by the Nazi government. The German people were being re-programmed to allow Hitler to have total control.

Among the many organizations targeted was the Boy Scouts. By the mid-1930's, all traces of the Scouting organization had disappeared. Why? The Nazis would not tolerate the Scouts; the reasons for this are several.

First, Scouting is an international organization. Every year, Scouts from many different nations gather at large festivals: Poland, Hungary, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, France, Holland, Luxembourg, Finland, etc. Scouts observe a total equality between nations, and cooperate in their wilderness adventures as partners. Hitler would not allow an organization which would teach young people to form constructive plans with people from other countries; the Nazis could not tolerate a spiritual of peaceful cooperation.

Second, the Scouts take an oath to "help other people at all times," the laws of Scouting state that an individual should strive to be "kind, courteous, friendly, helpful, and cheerful." But Hitler wanted young people to be aggressive, hostile, and violent.

Finally, the Scouts promise to do their "duty to God" and be "reverent." But the Nazis wanted to remove all forms of faith and religion from German society, making the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler into the highest authorities. The Nazis knew that any form of faith in God would undermine the total control of their party, and would undermine the hatred and oppression which Hitler wanted to spread through the nation.

In order for Hitler to eventually plan the Holocaust and launch brutal wars against most of the neighboring countries, he first had to reshape the beliefs of the German people, and that meant getting rid of the Scouts.

Hobbes and His Times

2010-08-23T06:12:00.002-04:00

Perhaps we can understand how Hobbes arrived at his philosophical views, if we remember the events through which he lived. His life and times were tumultuous: arguments between king and parliament; civil wars in England; wars in Europe; Islamic attacks on Europe from the outside. His view of human nature: people are selfish and violent. Hobbes lived through years of physical violence and political power struggles. From this, he may have concluded that humans are essentially barbaric.

Hobbes sided with Charles I against Parliament; translated Homer’s books into English; spoke with Descartes and Galileo about science; spent a few years in Paris; and was friend and teacher of Charles II. His books were misunderstood to be anti-royal or anti-Anglican. He had, in any case, a long and eventful life. He was energetic and productive.

One of his summarizing texts states that human nature has three laws: we seek peace to preserve our lives; we mutually give up rights to preserve peace; we must keep the contracts we make. These lay the foundation for this political and social systems of absolutism: having made a "social contract" in order to secure peace and preserve our lives, we are morally bound to obey royal authority, having traded away our rights.

Rousseau Revisited

2010-08-23T05:59:00.002-04:00

He might not have been so radical had he not lived under absolutist monarch; he suffered from painful childhood. Extensively but unevenly educated, he was certainly intelligent, but unable to have healthy long-lasting marriage, instead had many bastards by many women; he was rather argumentative, always getting into fights, even with his friends and supporters. He believed that the natural and savage state of humanity is good, giving birth to the Romantic notion of the "noble savage"; technology and society lead to idleness for the upper class, inequality, and powerful government domination. He wrote that civilization has a corrupting influence; family is better than government. He flirts with an almost-communist view of property. Although he glorifies the natural state of humans, he also points out that they are without morality; Rousseau wrote that we need a good structure for a new type of society. He reasoned that people freely join society for the common good; this produces good men. After Rousseau’s death, his book will partially motivate the French Revolution. Born to a protestant family, he later becomes Roman Catholic, and eventually invents his own religion. Believing that people are naturally good, and that society corrupts them, he could not remain with any form of Christianity. Although he saw the power of social structures as harmful, which would imply something like libertarianism or anarchism, he paradoxically felt the need for a very powerful government to "force people to be free," because he foresaw that not everyone would willingly sign up for his projected destruction of current societal structures. He thought that people live best in small agricultural communities. The individual wills of people are joined together in a structure, creating a "general will": laws express general will, and any form of government is fine, if people consent. Rousseau thought that society causes oppression and inequality, and creates false codes of morality, because it is not representing the general will. Oddly, Rousseau felt that advancement in art and science is bad, because knowledge strengthens government against the individual, resulting in corruption and jealousy. Rousseau leads to Romanticism – passion over reason. Is Rousseau a Romantic? Does he side with passion or reason?

Abortion and Economics

2010-07-22T06:08:00.003-04:00

Conventional wisdom, until now, has implied that the number of abortions would increase as unemployment increases: in a bad economy, people would want fewer children. But statisticians have been surprised by a different trend.

The number of abortions performed in Michigan decreased in 2009, according to recently released statistics from the Michigan Department of Community Health. The report from the Michigan Department of Community Health states that 22,357 abortions were performed in Michigan during 2009 compared to 25,970 Michigan abortions reported in 2008, a drop of 13.9 percent or 3,613 abortions. Since 1987, there has been a 54.4 percent decrease in the number of abortions performed in Michigan annually. Abortions in Michigan have decreased in four of the last six years and the number of abortions performed in 2009 represents the lowest annual total of reported abortions in Michigan since abortion providers were required to start reporting information in 1979.

Why this result? Various explanations have been proposed: during a difficult economy, people's minds may turn more toward home and family, and children may be more desirable, even if they represent a cost. On the other hand, some see racial explanations: abortion is an industry in which white, middle-age male surgeons make money primarily from young African-American females, and Obama presidency has given Black hopes a new impetus. A third possible explanation is that the next generation of ultrasound technology enables mothers to see their children much more clearly than the older, fuzzy, black-and-white images of early ultrasound equipment, and these newer images may influence the decisions of mothers. Finally, in difficult economic times, children, though initially expensive, may represent security for the parents, as pension funds and Social Security start to crumble.

Right to Life of Michigan President Barbara Listing said, "We are extremely grateful for the continuing decrease in Michigan abortions despite the hard economic times we've faced in Michigan. The fact that fewer mothers are having abortions in Michigan shows more and more women are coming to the realization that abortion is not the answer for an unplanned pregnancy."

In any case, increased birth rates historically predict economic recoveries. A lower abortion rate may be the harbinger of higher birth rates, but not necessarily.

Recently released polls from CBS and Gallup show our nation is turning its back on the idea that abortion is the solution to unplanned pregnancy. A CBS poll, conducted in April of 2010 found that 61 percent of Americans favor either stricter limits on abortion (38 percent) or that abortion should not be permitted (23 percent). A Gallup poll, released in May 2010, found that a plurality of Americans consider themselves "pro-life." For two years in a row, more Americans have called themselves "pro-life" than "pro-choice."

It will be important to watch this trend over the long-term. In the old Soviet Union, for example, prolonged economic hardship led to sustained higher abortion rates. How long will the current American economic malaise last? And what will it mean for abortion trends?

Good and Evil

2010-07-21T05:52:00.002-04:00

In this information age in which we live, reports of events around the world arrive constantly via computer, radio, and TV - not to mention actual newspapers. How are we, as individual human beings, to make sense of it all? We use rational categories in our thinking: sports, business and economics, politics, etc., to organize what we know about the world. These binary opposites reveal the structure of reality to us. Two of the most useful, but also the most controversial, categories are good and evil. A well-known journalist reminds us that

Evil exists. It is real, and it means to harm us. When you work in the news business, you deal with the ugly side of life. Every day across your desk comes story after story about man's inhumanity to man, from mass murderers to child molesters to mothers who drown their children to husbands who murder their pregnant wives. These stories push the limits of our ability to imagine man's potential for depravity, and yet they are horrifically true.

Because these events are so repulsive, troubling, and shocking, we want to imagine that there is some explanation for them - we don't want to accept the reality that evil is alive and well and roaming through our world. Denial is for more comfortable.

But if we acknowledge the painful fact there are evil actions, we can then enjoy the clear knowledge that there are also good actions, and we begin to see the rational structure of the universe: artists reveal the beauty of goodness and the ugliness of evil in their poetry, music, and painting; philosophers patiently untangle the details of good and evil; religious leaders seek the source of the distinction between good and evil; governments work to discourage evil and clear the path for good; parents teach their children about good and evil.

James Madison, explaining the structure of the Constitution, wrote that

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Historically, when evil has run amok on a large scale, we see principles at work: first, totalitarian governments are the breeding ground for evil, because even if you give power to a political structure with the best intentions, it creates the opportunity for abuse, and sooner or later, someone will use that opportunity. Second, the most horrifying examples of evil are not insane, although we are tempted to call them that: the genocides of Nazi Germany, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Stalin's Soviet Union, and Ortega's Nicaragua were not insane, but rather quite rationally organized. Third, if we fail to confront evil, and try instead to appease it, it will merely grow: one need merely mention the name Neville Chamberlain.

Learning from India

2010-07-13T15:04:00.003-04:00

If you think that India is an economically stagnant backwater, think again. Many of us have outdated images of the Indian economy as a nightmare of third-world inefficiency.

Such images were, at one time prior to 1991, true. But the political leaders of India, like Manmohan Singh and Narasimha Rao, created a financial revolution by deregulating markets and industries, and by lowering taxes and simplifying tax codes. The result has been a power surge in Indian businesses, creating millions of upwardly-mobile jobs for people who previously had dead-end employment at the bottom of the service sector.

By any measure, the country of India has improved its monetary well-being.

Can America learn from this? Over the last twelve months, starting in mid-2009, the federal government has issued a long series of bad decisions, and has, by means of inane economic policies, created a toxic environment for economic growth. Can the USA save its economy from the ineptitude of its current leaders, both in Congress and in the White House?

Yes, we can, if we learn from India. America needs economic wisdom, not from Washington, but perhaps from Mumbai and New Delhi.

Education and Politics

2010-06-16T09:13:00.003-04:00

Is there a correlation between how much you know and how you vote? This is a simple question, but the process of trying to answer it is complex, because there are so many variables on both sides of the equation. But there are some interesting trends, although it is not clear what, exactly they mean. The November 20, 2000 issue of U.S. News and World Report contained the following election results:

Of those who failed to complete high school, 59% voted for Al Gore, while only 39% voted for George W. Bush.

Of those who graduated from high school, but had no further education, 48% voted for Gore, and 49% for Bush.

Of those who had attended college, but did not complete a four- or five-year degree, 45% voted for Gore, and 51% for Bush.

Of those who completed a degree (bachelor's or equivalent), the same numbers held.

In 2004, after Bush had been in office for four years, and had a chance to demonstrate how he would conduct himself in office, CNN noted a similar pattern when the voters went to the polls in November of that year:

Of those who failed to graduate from high school, 50% voted for John Kerry, while 49% voted for Bush.

Of those who graduated from high school, but did not go to a college or university, 47% voted for Kerry, and 52% voted for Bush.

Of those who attended college, but did not graduate, 46% voted for Kerry, and 54% for Bush.

Of those who graduated from college, the ratios remained the same.

Finally, four years later, in 2008, the CNN data shows a continuation of the trend:

Of those who failed to graduate from high school, 63% voted for Obama, and 35% for McCain.

Of those who graduated from high school, but did not attend college, 52% voted for Obama and 46% for McCain.

Among those who attended a college or university, but did not graduate, 51% voted for Obama, and 47% for McCain.

Finally, among those who graduated from a college or university, 50% voted for Obama and 48% for McCain.

Placed in the form of a table or chart, these numbers reveal a clear tendency.

Squanto

2010-06-14T13:54:00.001-04:00

Most of us know the story of the first Thanksgiving - at least, we know the Pilgrim version. But how many of us know the Indian viewpoint? It centers around a Native American named Squanto

Historical accounts of Squanto's life vary, but historians believe that around 1608 - more than a decade before the Pilgrims landed in the New World - a group of English traders, led by a Captain Hunt, sailed to what is today Plymouth, Massachusetts. When the trusting Wampanoag Indians came out to trade, Hunt took them prisoner, transported them to Spain, and sold them into slavery. One of the captured Indians was a boy named Squanto.

The church, in its opposition to slavery, would purchase slaves, educate them, and set them free. Squanto was bought by a well-meaning Spanish monk, who treated him well and taught him the Christian faith - Squanto was probably the first Native American to read and write English, or any language. Squanto eventually made his way to England and worked in the stable of a man named John Slaney. Slaney sympathized with Squanto's desire to return home, and he promised to put the Indian on the first vessel bound for America.

It wasn't until 1619-ten years after Squanto was first kidnapped - that a ship was found. Finally, after a decade of exile and heartbreak, Squanto was on his way home.

But when he arrived in Massachusetts, more heartbreak awaited him. An epidemic had wiped out Squanto's entire village.

We can only imagine what must have gone through Squanto's mind. He had returned home, only to find his loved ones dead. He dwelt utterly alone in the wilderness: no friends, no family.

But Squanto lived on, and soon found a new community: a shipload of English families arrived and settled on the very land once occupied by Squanto's people. Squanto went to meet them, greeting the startled Pilgrims in English.

According to the diary of Pilgrim Governor William Bradford, Squanto "became a special instrument sent of God for [our] good ... He showed [us] how to plant [our] corn, where to take fish and to procure other commodities ... and was also [our] pilot to bring [us] to unknown places for [our] profit, and never left [us] till he died." Squanto literally saved the lives of the settlers, and they provided him with a community. How amazed the Englishmen were, to find an "Indian" who spoke and even read their language!

Long afterward, when Squanto lay dying of a fever, Bradford wrote that their Indian friend "desir[ed] the Governor to pray for him ..." Squanto bequeathed his possessions to his English friends "as remembrances of his love." He had adopted them as his new community, and they had adopted him as their guide.

Who's Dangerous? Who's Safe?

2010-06-08T05:37:00.002-04:00

We often try to situate ourselves among people whom we consider to be safe - and we usually avoid dangerous people. Happily, and contrary to the image of America as a crime-ridden society, violent crime is statistically down over the last few years, especially for those living in middle-class, mid-western suburbs. But who is dangerous? Stereotypes can be misleading. Consider the following:

From 1976 to 2005, 18- to 24-year-olds – both male and more gentle females – committed homicide at a rate of 29.9 per 100,000. Twenty-five- to 35-year-olds committed homicides at a rate of 15.8 per 100,000. The murder rate for the general population includes both males and females. Inasmuch as males commit nearly 90 percent of all murders, the rate for males in those age groups is probably nearly double the male/female combined rates, which translates to about 30 to 55 murderers per 100,000 males aged 18 to 35. This gives us a baseline murder rate. Can we find demographic subgroups in which the murder rate is either significantly higher, or significantly lower, than this baseline rate?

The homicide rate among veterans of these wars 7.6 per 100,000 – or about one-third the homicide rate for their age group (18 to 35) in the general population of both sexes. But given the gender skew, the homicide rate among veterans is actually about one-tenth of the national average. The marks them as a safe group - perhaps because of strong respect for law and order.

On the other hand, the strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison is that he was raised by a single parent. By 1996, 70 percent of inmates in state juvenile detention centers serving long-term sentences were raised by single mothers. Seventy percent of teenage births, dropouts, suicides, runaways, juvenile delinquents and child murderers involve children raised by single mothers. Girls raised without fathers are more sexually promiscuous and more likely to end up divorced.

A 1990 study by the Progressive Policy Institute showed that, after controlling for single motherhood, the difference in black and white crime disappeared.

A study cited in the Village Voice found that children brought up in single-mother homes "are five times more likely to commit suicide, nine times more likely to drop out of high school, 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape (for the boys), 20 times more likely to end up in prison, and 32 times more likely to run away from home."

Many of these studies are from the '90s, when the percentage of teenagers raised by single parents was lower than it is today. In 1990, 28 percent of children under 18 were being raised in one-parent homes – mother or father, divorced or never-married. By 2005, more than one-third of all babies born in the U.S. were illegitimate.

That's a lot of social problems in the pipeline. Who's safe? Who's dangerous?

Charles H. Wright

2010-06-04T07:20:00.002-04:00

Historians are familiar with Dr. Wright's name: he was a leading medical practitioner in Detroit, and a strong voice in the civil rights movement. And, as an African-American, he opposed what he called the "federal encroachment on private practice of medicine" - that is, he opposed the types of programs which are being forced onto the American public, against the will of the voters, by Senator Harry Reid, Congresswoman Pelosi, and President Obama.

Dr. Wright saw the government's attempt to regulate, manage, and fund the health care system as the direct result of racism. He argued that those who desired the government to limit the freedom of both patients and medical professionals would not desire such intervention if society and the medical system were free of racism: federal control of health care was desired to counteract the effects of unjust discrimination.

In an open and published letter to the AMA, Dr. Wright urged the organization to direct its attention to the issue of equality in the medical system. Achievement of racial equality, he concluded, would bring the additional benefit of ending legislative attempts to allow the federal government to control both patients and medical professionals: the blossoming of civil rights "will make the government's efforts unattractive and unnecessary" in Wright's words.

As an African-American, Dr. Wright worked for the civil rights of citizens to vote, to speak freely, and to exercise their economic choices; as a physician, he worked for the rights of patients and health care professionals to make decisions without government regulation or management.

A Perfect World?

2010-05-05T09:51:00.002-04:00

Students of history are familiar with Utopians from Rousseau to Marx to Kropotkin. In various ways, they all envision the perfecting of human society, humans individually, and world as we know it. From these noble ideals and desires arise the very opposite - misery, suffering, and injustice. Utopian plans inevitably crash, because their basic assumptions ignore the simply fact that the world and humans, collectively and individually, are neither perfect nor perfectible. A 1992 report from the Excellence in Broadcasting Network describes more recent forms of Utopian thinking:

There is a common bond which spiritually unites these people, which is that attitude of cultural radicalism carried over from the 1960's. Theirs is an anti-American credo, which abhors American political and governmental institutions and this nation's capitalistic economy. Their value system is at war with the Judeo-Christian tradition upon which this country was founded and is centered in secular humanism and moral relativism.

Note the connections with Marx, inasmuch as modern Utopians are "anti-capitalistic", and the connections with Rousseau, inasmuch as they desire to destroy our culture and replace it with their envisioned ideal culture. Observe also the desire to destroy humanism, as we know it in Erasmus and T.S. Elliot, as we see it in Da Vinci and Michelangelo, as we hear it in Bach and Haydn - to be replaced by their idealized "secular humanism," a world view of mechanized determinism which denies that humans can make meaningful or significant choices in life.

Theirs is the me generation, which seeks immediate gratification, presumably because there is no spiritual tomorrow. Their God is not spiritual or personal. Their God is in every fiber of nature and is impersonal. He is just as much a part of the plant and animal kingdom as He is a part of the human soul; thus, their pantheistic devotion to animals and the environment. Their God did not give them dominion over nature and the animal kingdom, positioning them at the top rung on the hierarchy of creation.

If one regards all of nature as God, one is then obliged to view a human being as nothing special. Despite their talk of "human rights," Utopians essentially believe that a human is no more special than a flower or a fish.

As their emphasis is on this world, they cling to the belief that man is morally perfectible and that Utopia on earth is achievable.

In various forms, this drive toward Utopia needs the coercive force of an authoritative government to accomplish its social engineering. These idealists believe that, if only everyone will cooperate with their plans, a perfect society is right around the corner. Yet not everyone will cooperate, and they feel themselves justified in forcing compliance from those unwilling citizens who cling to their personal freedom. Surely, the Utopians think, it is worth it to temporarily remove the rights of a few people in order to create a perfect society for everyone. From this seemingly innocent sentiment, it is but a few short steps to using the guillotine to execute thousands of French women and children, because they didn't seem enthusiastic enough about the latest instructions from the revolutionary government. Thus ever ends Utopian hopes.

Dewey and Your School

2010-05-04T07:34:00.002-04:00

The American educational system has been deeply influenced by John Dewey and his followers. Prior to Dewey, teachers had traditionally viewed education as having two major components: "knowing that" (information) and "knowing how to" (skills). Dewey rejected both of these.

Instead, he asserted that the major purposes of education were clustered around the concept of becoming a member of the community. He wrote: "What nutrition and reproduction are to physiological life, education is to social life."

The impact, then, of Dewey's popularity was to de-emphasize a teacher's concern for curriculum ("knowing that" and "knowing how to"), and instead emphasize those aspects of education which are social in nature. The direct result is that American high schools have clubs and sports teams, counselors and student councils, and classes about health and parenting.

It is difficult for us, living in the twenty-first century, to imagine a time when the average American high school had none of these things - so deep is Dewey's influence on our educational institutions.

But how do we evaluate Dewey's contribution? Has it been good or bad? Critics note that since Dewey's time, American students have mastered fewer and fewer of the core concepts of higher mathematics, fewer of the central works of world literature, and fewer foreign languages. In the words of a 1991 report from the Excellence in Broadcast Network, schools are teaching students about condoms and recycling

instead of Aristotle. We're not teaching anything else very well. Our kids get lower scores on math and English tests every year. As a result, kids from backwater European and Asian countries are outperforming our kids left and right in school because we're hung up on teaching feel-good history and worthless social gobbledygook.

That was twenty years ago. In which direction have we gone since then? Have American schools continued to do the jobs of parents and neighborhoods, or have they returned to serious education? During the typical school day, is learning interrupted by forays into counseling, peer relationships, sexuality, relationships, environmentalism, etc.?

Dewey's influence caused the schools to perform the tasks of parents and neighborhoods, which meant first that parents and neighborhoods had nothing to do (the schools having taken over their roles), and second that the schools weren't doing much educating (because they were busy raising children instead of instructing students).

The question for education in the twenty-first century, then, is this: are we moving further into Dewey's influence, or beginning to escape from it?

Sneak Attack!

2010-04-16T06:45:00.002-04:00

In the complex web of society, religion, and culture, we are now seeing damaging attacks on the Christian faith. Assaults on organized religions are nothing new in the history of the world, but they take different forms in different epochs.

We are writing not about the obvious attacks taking place in various parts of Asia and Africa in which churches are being firebombed and individual Christians tortured or killed, nor about the verbal offensives by militant atheists who pile insult after insult upon Christians. These types of attacks, while sadly all too numerous, are obvious, and need little comment: the atheists who protest against a Christian organization like the Salvation Army, which simply distributes food and clothing to the poor, offer their own confutation to the thoughtful observer.

The less obvious, and therefore more dangerous, attacks upon Christianity come now from those who have labeled themselves Christians and present themselves as representatives of that faith, for the very purpose of discrediting it. This is reminiscent of the "mole" or "double-agent" from the spy novels of the Cold War era.

Specifically, in recent days, newspaper and TV coverage has featured two groups: Reverend Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church, and the Hutaree Militia. These two organizations share two characteristics: first, neither of them is Christian, and second, both of them claim to be Christian.

By identifying themselves as Christian, and then behaving badly, these two units succeed in doing damage to the public's understanding of what Christianity is. This type of subterfuge can do more damage than the direct physical violence of atheists and Sudanese Muslims.

Enlightened thinking demands a clear definition of what "Christianity" is, and subsequently the ability to distinguish between which groups are Christian and which groups merely claim to be. Although defining Christianity is a complex topic, there is at least a simple beginning to that complexity: the only possible starting point for any proposed definition is the text of the New Testament.

Exactly as Judaism is defined by the Tanakh (and Talmud), and exactly as Islam is defined by the Qur'an (and Hadith), so also Christianity is defined by the New Testament (and Tanakh). Admittedly, there are competing interpretations of the New Testament, and the analysis of some details becomes quite complex.

But this much is clear: anything which directly contradicts the New Testament cannot be textually authentic Christianity.

The "Reverend" Fred Phelps and his "church" (the quotation marks reminding us that he is not a Reverend, and his organization is not a church) proclaim, among other things, that "God hates" certain groups of people. Yet the text of the New Testament is tells us that God never hates any human being, and that He, in fact, loves every human being.

The Hutaree group claims that they are morally obliged by God to attack and kill policemen. Yet the New Testament is a consistently pacifistic document, in which Jesus consistently declines to engage in any form of physical violence, and proclaims that His organization is not one supported by military force, but rather by spiritual concepts.

The imperative for the current day is this: to ignore the self-classification of institutions, and ask rather, what they may really be. Merely because a group labels itself as Christian doesn't mean that it actually is, and a group which does not so identify itself may actually be.

Economics + Environment + Transportation = Railroad

2010-03-08T07:44:00.005-05:00

In recent months and years, newspapers and politicians have discussed expanding America's railroad system. From streetcars and trolleys inside cities, to commuter rail lines linking nearby towns, to long-distance service across the nation, trains seem to offer a cornucopia of benefits: short-term job booms as lines and stations are built, long-term job growth in railroad employees and ancillary businesses (selling newspapers and coffee at the train station), lower transportation costs for all sorts of businesses shipping everything from raw materials to finished products, the most efficient use of fuel possible, less environmental impact, de-congestion of freeway and major roads, less wear-and-tear on those roads, and the ability to do business while traveling instead of having both hands and the wheel and eyes on the road.

There is no doubt that improving and expanding our rail system would be an advantage for our country.

An improperly conceived rail system, however, can turn into a economic failure - and consume endless infrastructure dollars without creating the promised conveniences to the business community.

To reap the harvest promised by railroad expansion, we must observe the following principle:

Any economically feasible or sustainable passenger rail system relies upon the physical infrastructure and economic momentum provided by moving large amounts of freight via train.

We must make sure that we focus first on increasing tonnage, which is where the real money is. Every diesel truck rolling on our interstate highways contains freight which could be on a train. Moving some of that cargo to railroads will create the volume business which will pay for further increase in physical infrastructure. Moving that cargo to rail will also save fuel, reduce environmental impact, and keep the roads in better condition. Businesses will want to move more cargo by rail because it will cost them less.

What about jobs? For each hundred tons of freight moved from diesel truck to railroad, the number of trucking jobs lost will be slightly larger than the number of rail jobs created. Won't that create unemployment? No. And here's why:

As we move cargo from truck to train, we can also reduce the amount of money which the federal government uses to subsidize the trucking industry. (Yes, trucking is federally subsidized: the road taxes paid by trucks do not offset the disproportionate wear-and-tear they put on the roads; as less freight moves down the freeways, those interstates will need to be re-surfaced less often.)

Fewer federal subsidies to the trucking industry will lead to fewer tax increases; fewer tax increases leads to more business, creating employment for any former trucking workers who might not get rail jobs.

It is not feasible to maintain and build medium-range or long-range rail lines mainly for passenger travel. Tickets sales won't even begin to cover the costs. Even with strong freight tonnage on the rails, passenger rail is often not profitable, and needs to supported by the cargo revenues or by tax breaks for rail companies.

The bottom line: we need to encourage (via gradual reductions in federal subsidies for the trucking industry) more freight to move by rail; only then can we build the physical infrastructure and maintain the economic momentum to provide good passenger service, and only then can we reap those many benefits which a good rail system offers.

International Evaluations of Obama

2010-02-13T16:08:00.002-05:00

A recent article in The Atlantic Times gives a European perspective on President Obama. Reporter Peter H. Koepf writes:

The party is over. Great hopes have turned into serious doubts. Those who welcomed Barack Obama as a messiah a year ago have now been forced to admit that the 44th president of the United States is only human. His lofty visions have become far distant goals. The president, who formulated grand designs in an almost fundamentalist fashion, is operating – when he operates at all – as a pragmatist.

The article is entitled "Rude Awakening" and comes in the wake of comments by France's president Sarkozy, Germany's chancellor Merkel, and England's prime minister Gordon Brown, all of whom have been less than cheerful about Obama's international impact.

If not among the leaders of Europe, Obama had some fans among the media of those countries. But now, even the news reporters aren't very enthusiastic:

Now his fans are deserting their former icon. The “post-polarization candidate” (New York Times) has become a polarizing president. “Renunciation of the Savior” was the headline in Munich’s daily Süddeutsche Zeitung – a reference to falling support for Obama in the US.

It might have been worth enduring the contempt of Europe if it meant achieving good diplomatic relations with countries in other parts of the world: but in the Mid-East, Africa, Asia, and South America, government leaders are equally cool toward Obama.

In Germany, too, those who were most enthusiastic about Obama last year are now voicing the loudest criticism. The president’s former supporters are forced to realize that even with this leader, war – and nuclear weapons – are not about to disappear from the face of the Earth. Nor will the world become a fairer place.

Obama has done a lot of traveling during his first year as president; but these trips have only served to show various nations who he really is: instead of the diplomat creating international harmony, he has revealed himself to be, in some cases, abrasive and uncultured, and in other cases, capable of being unwittingly exploited by local rulers who wish to continue ignoring human rights and directing aggression toward neighboring countries. His diplomatic trips have not had the desired effect: the more other nations understand Obama, the less they are inclined to operate diplomatically with the United States. Obama fared best when other nations knew the image of him created by the American media: that image, because it was very inaccurate, created considerable popularity for Obama. Prior to his election, thousands of Europeans expressed a favorable opinion of him. Now, however, he is not welcome:

Obama’s speech in Oslo may have been the turning point. When the president accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in December, he said: “We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes.” Since then, not even the Germans have loved the American president quite so much.

Can The United States regain its image and diplomatic stature among the European nations? Perhaps. In any case, we cannot blame the current fiasco entirely on Obama: clearly, actions by the current Congress, and words from the current Secretary of State, have also earned international censure. Although Obama's bumbling and dithering haven't helped, he alone is only part of our problem. The cure will be change on a bigger scale than merely the White House.

Tired of Statistics?

2010-02-09T07:53:00.002-05:00

For a century or more, writers and speakers have developed the habit of using statistics to support their views. This becomes clear if we compare, for example, a political speech given in 2010 with one given in 1510. This mathematical trend has been popular because it gives the appearance of being scientific and rational.

Reflective listeners and readers, however, have long realized that statistics are subject to manipulation and misinterpretation. One need only recall the primary lesson that correlation does not imply causation, or recall Mark Twain's quip about statistics, to understand why the numerals which adorn political texts need either to be carefully examined, or to be ignored.

We understand that quantitative analysis is important, and should be done, but we border on the absurd when a report is released by the Treasury Department, and it is immediately combed by various political parties, who harvest whatever numbers appear to support their agendas.

Is there an alternative?

Researchers hoping to escape the statistical madness have focused on a method of qualitative analysis. This type of investigation has long been used in situations where a statistical approach isn't possible: it has been used by the United States Air Force in debriefing crewmen after missions, by the FAA after crashes, by physicians in case studies, and by police detectives. When studying a single event or a unique case (N=1), statistical approaches are usually meaningless.

This type of qualitative analysis is now being transferred from situations in which statistical analysis is impossible to situations in which statistical analysis is unhelpful. In certain branches of medicine and economics, for example, quantitative analysis yields results which are ambiguous or misleading. Qualitative analysis, by contrast, can yield more understanding of the situation's dynamics.

So, in some situations, we can avoid statistics and get a better insight of the matter at hand!

Economics in 1967 and in 2010

2010-01-07T08:00:00.002-05:00

The past is always instructive to those of us who are dealing with the problems of the present and future. In 1967, the governor of California wrote the following:

For many years now, you and I have been shushed like children and told there are no simple answers to the complex problems which are beyond our comprehension.

Well, the truth is, there are simple answers; they just are not easy ones. The time has come for us to decide whether, collectively, we can afford everything and anything we think of simply because we think of it. The time has come to run a check to see if all the services government provides were in answer to demands or were just goodies dreamed up for our supposed betterment. The time has come to match outgo to income, instead of always doing it the other way around.

In 2010, we will see the U.S. economy continue to struggle, and it will be made worse by the tax increases for every citizen in our country. The current trends in both Congress and the White House will raise the amount of tax paid by every individual in this country, even by the poorest.

What we need now is lower taxes for every American, meaning that the current leaders in Washington will need to stop thinking of new ways to spend money. Any expansion of government programs is a crushing burden to wage-earners who can least afford it.

Want to Read More about Hebrew Literature?

2009-11-06T14:59:00.002-05:00

The poetry of the Hebrews has a structure which is both complex and subtle.

Robert Lowth published his Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews in 1787. The book remain in print today. Lowth was educated as a classicist, and explains Hebrew poetry by constant reference to Greek and Latin poetry, thoroughly comparing and contrasting the Classical and Sacred literary forms. He advanced the thesis, never serious doubted since then, that almost all Hebrew poetry is formed in parallelisms, couplets of parallel structure. Lowth was an Anglican Bishop.

George Buchanan Gray wrote The Forms of Hebrew Poetry in 1915. It also remains available in modern reprints. Gray refined Lowth's classifications, and developed ingenious readings of texts which had been previously been seen as corrupt and readable only with major emendations; Gray deduced principles of Semitic poetry which allowed these texts to be sensibly read without emendation. Gray was a Non-Conformist clergyman.

Obama Opposes Release of Terrorist

2009-08-20T15:32:00.002-04:00

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison recently. The move was called "compassionate" by Scottish officials, because he has only a few weeks to live with terminal cancer.

When he landed in Libya, according to newspapers, "thousands were on hand to greet him warmly when his plane from Scotland touched down at a military airport in Tripoli. There was a festive atmosphere with some wearing t-shirts with al-Megrahi's picture. Others waved Libyan and Scottish flags while Libyan songs blared."

In 2001, the terrorist was convicted of the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 which killed 270 people. He has been considered a hero in Libya, which is 97% Islamic.

President Obama released an official statement, saying that the decision to free terminally ill Abdel Baset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds was a mistake and warned Libya not to give him a hero's welcome. The White House declared it "deeply" regretted the Scottish decision. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday the United States disagreed with the decision to free al-Megrahi.

We continue to believe that Megrahi should serve out his sentence in Scotland," Gibbs said. "On this day, we extend our deepest sympathies to the families who live every day with the loss of their loved ones."

Victory for Free Speech at UCLA

2009-06-13T19:33:00.002-04:00

The administration of UCLA upheld a student's free speech rights, and overruled lower-level administrators, regarding a graduation ceremony.

At a ceremony for students receiving graduate degrees in molecular biology (not the mass graduation for four-year degrees), students were permitted to write a brief statement, which they would read when receiving their diplomas. All manner of diverse opinions were allowed, except one: any reference to Christianity was prohibited by the administrators. At least one student, Christina Popa, had wished to make such a reference, and that student, supported by her professors, appealed to the university's upper-level administrators, who pointed out the obvious discrimination in allowing every variant of religious and political views to be expressed, and then singling out one religion and forbidding any mention of it.

Thankfully, a courageous stand by students and professors in the molecular biology department withstood an attempt by administrators to steamroller the first amendment.

Murder at the Holocaust Museum

2009-06-11T12:35:00.004-04:00

Within recent days, we have been shocked and horrified by the murders perpetrated at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. What is the profile of this madman, James Von Brunn, who would take human lives in this most serious place?

The killer was apparently filled with hatred toward President George W. Bush; he accused Bush of favoring Jews, and decried Bush's views about the Middle East. He asserted that Bush, not al-Qa'ida, had carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Rejoicing that Bush was finally out of office, he was emboldened by the election results, and finally carried out these shootings.

In his remarks, he specifically stated that he hated "conservatives and neo-conservatives." He noted that many of the leaders of the neo-conservative movement were Jews.

The lesson - people filled with irrational, passionate hatred will eventually take actions: horrifying actions. James von Brunn was clear in his speaking and writing: he had a intense hostility toward George W. Bush and toward the neo-conservative movement in American politics. We now know where such hatred leads.

Student Sues Teacher and Wins

2009-06-11T12:22:00.002-04:00

A federal judge ruled in favor of a student in Santa Ana, California. The student alleged that the teacher had violated the first amendment's guarantees of "free exercise" of religion, and freedom of speech.

The teacher, James Corbett, had made comments insulting and denigrating the beliefs of various students in his history class. Corbett told the students that any doubting or skepticism about Darwinism was "superstitious nonsense." Instead of admitting that increasing numbers of professors in the science departments of the world's universities are less inclined to accept the teachings of Darwinism, and asking if there is sufficient evidence for, Corbett rather simply accused the biology, physics, and chemistry department of being unable to "see the truth", and dismissed their questions about evidence as "religious nonsense."

The judge opined that the teacher had favored "anti-religion over religion," violating the right to "free exercise" of Muslims, Jews, Christians, and nearly everyone else. Instead, the teacher's duty is to create "expansive discussion even if a given topic may be offensive to a particular religion."

In short, the teacher's job is to create a free discussion, even about offensive topics; but the teacher may not conduct an anti-religious tirade.

Terrorist Killing in U.S.

2009-06-11T08:49:00.004-04:00

Since the attack on the World Trade Center, we have been relatively safe in America; most of the terrorist plots to kill people here were stopped before they could be carried out.

Until June 2 of this year, that is.

The Associated Press reports as follows:

A Muslim convert "with political and religious motives" shot two uniformed soldiers outside an Arkansas military recruiting center Monday, killing one and wounding the other, authorities said.

Police arrested Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, 23, on a nearby interstate shortly after the bloodshed at the Army-Navy Career Center in a shopping center in west Little Rock. Three guns were found in his SUV, they said. Investigators say that he appears to have been "passionate about Islam."

He will be charged with first-degree murder, plus 15 counts of committing a terrorist act, authorities said.

The terrorist struck without warning.

"He saw them standing there and drove up and shot them," he said.

A Different Worldview

2009-05-29T07:34:00.002-04:00

We try to understand events which seem strange to us, especially when they are part of a cultural fabric in some other part of the world, because we are trying to understand the underlying idea of life. The specific events are interesting, but more important is the cohesive worldview of which they are all a seamless part:

* Two high-profile cases within the last year in Saudi Arabia speak volumes. In the first, a brother killed his sister, named Fatima, because she had become a Christian. In the second case, a father cut out his daughter's tongue to prevent her from discussing Christianity; finding this insufficient, he then burned her death. In both cases, there was no legal action against the killers, in part, because they were male relatives of the victims, and in part, because they were motivated my anti-Christian hatred. In a final layer of shocking detail, the father in the second killing was a high-ranking official in the Saudi government, whose career in "The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice" was helped, rather than hurt, by the killing. To be sure, these were not the only two cases of Christians being murdered because of their beliefs, but they are two cases that were leaked out to the free press in western countries.

* During President Obama's recent visit to Saudi Arabia, he bowed to the king, something never before done by the leader of a free nation. Normally, when heads of state visit each other, they do so as equals, and therefore they do not bow. During the preceding eight years, when President George W. Bush visited Saudi Arabia, he did not bow to the king; President Bush and the king are personal friends, and the Bush family and the Saudi royal family are friends. Obama's action has been interpreted variously; there is no clear consensus about what he was intending by this violation of protocol.

* President Obama issued an invitation to the leaders of Iran to open diplomatic discussions; the Iranian government has indicated that it is not interested in negotiating about nuclear weapons, or its regional ambitions regarding Iraq.

* Obama also issued an invitation, asking to speak with "moderate" elements of the Taliban. A Taliban spokesman replied, in a press release, that "there are no moderate Taliban."

* The five prisoners who had been the support team for the nineteen terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks have issued a statement in court; delivered by their lawyer, and released by the judge, their statement says that they are dedicated to "kill all infidels, including Christians, Jews, and atheists;" that they consider themselves "terrorists to the bone;" and that the 9/11 attacks are "a badge of honor in our religion." Although we can dismiss these five men as merely extremists, and not representative of a larger group, we must remember that they are still celebrated in posters, T-shirts, and bumper stickers in Arab world; we must remember the spontaneous celebrations in the streets of the Middle East on 9/11. This is indicative of something larger.

Poetry Captures Reality

2009-04-11T11:26:00.002-04:00

One of poetry's several merits is its ability to crystallize a truth in a single group of words. In response to a horrifying tragedy, Haley Patail wrote about a murderer, "When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail," encapsulating an insight into the criminal mind.

Writing about the deceased victim and a funeral, she wrote, "I would go and give words to the dust-heavy air if it would change something, I would pretend that I know how to kneel in pews if it would make me feel right about this." The poet has recognized two spiritual truths here: that our songs and prayers do not change the fact that our loved ones have gone into the next life, that we bitterly grieve because we miss them; funerals are for the living, not for the dead - to remind the living about God and the afterlife - a reminder which will neither bring the deceased back into this life, nor ease our mourning, but a reminder which centers and stabilizes us by placing the events into a global, objective, and neutral frame of reference. By stating that our spiritual meditations neither "change something" nor make us "feel right about this," the poet has communicated these two truths in an efficient economy of words.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once made a comment to the effect that, if one wants to investigate eternal truths, poetry can often do a better job than philosophy.

Sometimes, Bigger is Better

2009-04-11T09:15:00.002-04:00

Robert Kennedy was a major figure in the politics of the 1960's. His speeches and actions, as Attorney General of the United States, and later as a candidate in the primary elections, have been much studied and discussed.

One of nine children, Robert Kennedy was the father of eleven. He was tremendously popular in the press, in part because of this family image. Many of his eight brothers and sisters have earned their own fame in American politics, as have his children, and his numerous nieces and nephews.

The popularity of the Kennedy family stands as a paradox, given the hatred directed toward large families by much of the current media culture. Forty years after the emergence of the Kennedy political profile, the family remains influential in partisan government, but American culture has abandoned its respect for having children.

Statisticians, however, are not surprised by the success of the Kennedy clan. It has been shown that there is a strong correlation between large families and various indicators of success: the more children born to a married couple, the more likely those children are to earn good grades in school, do well on standardized tests, and to not commit crimes; further, those children will do better at the university, and are more likely to rise to positions of leadership in their communities and careers.

These are averages, of course. Exceptions do exist. But the general trend is undeniable, and not too surprising: to manage a large family, parents will need to be intelligent and organized, and the children will likely have these traits also.

Contrary to stereotypes in the electronic media, higher education levels among the parents also lead to larger families: married couples with college educations will likely have more children than those with less education.

Ever since Thomas Malthus wrote about population, it has been clear that sustainable, renewable, and environmentally responsible resources on planet earth can support world populations many times larger than the current six or seven billion. Overpopulation, which was considered a threat in the 1960's and 1970's, is not a danger.

Which leads us to a mystery: why, then, is there such antipathy toward families who have more than two or three children? This is a field for research. Although sociologists have advanced a number of theories, there is no clear cause for this irrational hatred - or, perhaps there is a clear cause, but nobody has yet discovered it.

Is Obama Black, or Simply African-American?

2009-04-08T07:47:00.002-04:00

America's obsession with racial politics is fanned daily by the press. An unending stream of articles continues to examine Obama's status from the perspective of his skin color.

A recent variation on this theme is to examine the quality of Obama's "blackness": in Detroit, a survey received responses like: "He is not black enough" or "That is what you get, when you have a mixed child raised by a white mother."

These responses point to a painful and divisive topic within American society: at the intersection of race and culture, the situation of mixed-race children is highlighted to an uncomfortable degree.

Obama, like Alicia Keyes and Halle Berry, is the result of a brief marriage between a Black man and white mother; after the marriage disolved, he was raised by his mother. Young Barack did not grow up in the "hood" of Harlem, Watts, or Detroit. He grew up in a middle-class, college-educated, white extended family. He may be African-American, but Detroiters are wondering if he's Black.

And not only Detroiters. Black Entertainment Television's Jeff Johnson notes that there's a difference between "Obama the president" and "Obama the personality," saying, "he's my president, and not my homie."

Obama's life has hardly been that of a "homie": a private prep school in Hawaii from fifth grade until his senior year in high school; before that, a paradoxical mix of private Roman-Catholic elementary schools and a Madrasah in Indonesia. His life experience places him far outside the mainstream of African-Americans. He spent no significant amount of time in the continental United States until after graduating from high school; after that, he was at Columbia University and Harvard Law School.

Obama's mother is from Kansas, and studied Anthropology and Russian at the University of Hawaii and the University of Washington. Obama's father was separated from his mother long before the couple's actual divorce, and so young Barack had no formative influence from his African father as a child.

Americans continue to try to understand their new president: is he Black? is he African-American? is he Hawaiian-Kenyan-Indonesian?

How does he view the African-American culture, if he grew up in an white extended family, away from the major Black urban centers? How does he understand American society, if he grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia?

Race Numbers

2009-04-04T12:06:00.002-04:00

No, this isn't about NASCAR. The numbers mentioned are statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, reflecting the population of the Ann Arbor area:

74.68% White
8.83% Black or African American
0.29% Native American
11.9% Asian
0.04% Pacific Islander
1.21% from other races
3.05% from two or more races

These numbers are based on the census from the year 2000, revised according to subsequent surveys and calculations.

Various Forms of Slavery

2009-03-20T07:52:00.002-04:00

As Americans, we read the word "slavery" through the lens of our own experience - and very harsh experience it is. Slavery as practiced in Western hemisphere until 1863 was one of the most brutal forms of this social institution.

When we read ancient texts, it is important to remember that translators are often perplexed when deciding to render a given vocabulary word into English as "slave" or "servant" - the difference to our eyes being great, but in earlier eras of history, a much more subtle distinction.

In some ancient cultures (notably Rome), these people were given authority within households and businesses; they were educated, wrote books, and made important decisions.

In certain phases of Egyptian and Babylonian history, slavery was more cruel, and slaves were treated like working animals. Moses took a great step forward when he limited slavery to seven years. Prior to that, slavery was lifelong, and, in a majority of cases, it would continue to be lifelong in all societies except the Hebrews.

So read carefully when you see words like "slave" or "servant" and realize that a variety of circumstances can hide behind these terms.

Alphabetizing!

2009-03-20T07:47:00.002-04:00

When small children learn their ABC's, they don't realize that they are paying homage to a major turning-point in the history of civilization.

The alphabet represents progress, because earlier writing forms (hieroglyphs, cuneiform) took longer to learn, longer to write, and longer to read. Before the alphabet, very few people could read or write, because it took so long to learn how to read and write; and very little reading and writing was done, because it took so long. After the invention of the alphabet, more people could read and write, and more information was recorded in writing. The alphabet is a Semitic invention.

The term "Semitic", we remember, includes a range of groups including Arabs, Hebrews, Egyptians, Babylonians, Syrians, and Ethiopians, to name a few.

Not Semitic are Persians, Hindus, Hittites, and the European language families.

So the rise of the alphabet highlights the importance of Semitic cultures in the ancient world.

Denying the Holocaust

2009-02-28T15:11:00.002-05:00

Some facts about the history of the twentieth century are clear to everybody: one of these is that millions of innocent men, women, and children died in the event which we usually call "the Holocaust" or Shoah. Yet, despite the manifest documentation about the Holocaust, there are Holocaust deniers, or those who insist that it never happened.

Recently, the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, Prof. Joseph Ratzinger, took strong measures against an employee of his church who made remarks which seemed to deny the existence of the Holocaust. Ratzinger, also known as Benedict XVI, would not allow any statements which compromise the historically documented facts. The employee disciplined by Ratzinger, Richard Williamson, is facing stronger measures from different national governments in Europe, who classify Holocaust denial as fraud punishable by law.

This is in contrast to the government of Iran, which promotes Holocaust denial. The current president of Iran, members of its government, and professors appointed to its universities persistently spread the notion that there simply was no Holocaust - that it never happened. Such a view can be accepted only by those who have left all rational thought behind. Yet it remains the officially stated position of the Iranian government.

Sex, Anyone?

2009-01-20T08:14:00.002-05:00

Human sexuality is always fascinating, yet often we rely on vague impressions rather than scientific observation and systematic data. When we look at the facts, we find that some of our perceptions are rather inaccurate.

In the first comprehensive global study of sexual behavior, British researchers found that people aren’t losing their virginity at ever younger ages, and that married people have the most sex.

Professor Wellings of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicines and her colleagues analyzed data from 59 countries. Wellings said she was surprised by some of the survey’s results: "We did have some of our preconceptions dashed." Experts say the study will be useful in dispelling popular myths about sexual behavior.

The study also found that contrary to popular belief, sexual activity is not starting earlier. Nearly everywhere, men and women have their first sexual experiences in their late teens — from 15 to 19 years old — with generally younger ages for women than for men, especially in developing countries. That is no younger than 10 years ago. In every country, teens are choosing keep their virginity longer. This surprised researchers, because the common media image presented to the public is that of young people failing to keep their virginity. "There's a big disconnect here," commented one scientist, "between real life on the one hand, and the world of TV and movies on the other hand."

Researchers also found that married people have the most sex, reporting engaging in sexual activity in the previous four weeks more frequently than single people. There has also been a gradual shift to delay marriage, even in developing countries. Married people also report greater satisfaction in their sexual activity, both physical and emotional.

A follow-up study, conducted by sociology professor Armour at Ohio State University, explains why some of these surprising trends are taking place: Teens who lose their virginity earlier than their peers are more likely to steal, destroy property, shoplift or sell drugs than their virgin counterparts. The study, reported in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, found that those who had sex early were 26 percent more likely to be in trouble than those who waited, even years after their sexual debut and well into early adulthood. Those who had sex later had delinquency scores 20 percent lower than their peers. Waiting had a protective effect.

"Students in high school and college are watching their peers and learning," said a researcher. "They see what happens to others choose to keep their virginity a while longer, because they don't want to endure those same negative consequences."

Allowed to Live?

2009-01-19T08:39:00.003-05:00

In November 2008, voters in Michigan pondered a vote about stem-cell research. Now, there are almost no moral or ethical objections to research which attempts to derive medical benefits from those stem-cells which are harvested from a patient's blood, skin, or bone marrow; and there is little argument against stem-cells derived from umbilical cords.

Very controversial, however, are those stem-cells obtained by killing a fetus (an unborn child). This was at the core of the Michigan vote.

In press coverage leading up to the election, a local newspaper quoted the supervisor of a research lab who commented that "these are embryos that would have within them genes for specific diseases so it would be unethical to donate them to use reproductively." In brief, she was saying that it would be unethical to allow these children to live.

The example was given of Alzheimer's, and genes which may either predispose individuals toward it, or cause it. The implication is this: if we know that a child has a tendency to develop Alzheimer's Disease, it is our moral duty to prevent such a child from being born.

Consider, then, some of the people who have led productive lives until they developed the disease (the average age of onset is approximately 65 years): Rita Hayworth (actress), Harold Wilson (Prime Minister of Britain), Iris Murdoch (novelist), Ferenc Puskas (soccer star), and Terry Pratchett (novelist), to name only a few.

We are being told, then, that society should have prevented the above-named individuals from being born; and that society failed, that society committed an unethical act, in allowing them to be born. This is the inescapable logical conclusion of the quote, given in the media, by a researcher.

As if to somehow soften this moral harshness, the newspaper article gratuitously added that one of the researchers in this lab attend a Roman Catholic high school, as if that fact were in any way relevant to matter at hand.

How Did We Get to This Point?

2008-12-21T20:10:00.004-05:00

In the 1980's America enjoyed its best-ever economic cycles; by 2008, we are facing substantial economic difficulties. How did this happen? Two factors seemed to have injured our economy: government regulation of free markets, and government spending. [Note: this post was greatly influenced Lara Khadr, who wrote and posted a text making some of the same or similar points. I have shamelessly stolen both ideas and actual paragraphs of text from her posting. Lara did, at some points, take a very different view of things, so no assumptions about her convictions should be taken from this post. Whatever is worthy about this post is probably her thinking, whatever is deficient about it is probably mine.]

Ronald Reagan is simultaneously considered one of the greatest and most controversial presidents in United States history. His presidency was marked by many political transformations, especially in the realm of economics. The economic doctrine Reagan adopted during his presidency, commonly referred to as “Reaganomics,” contributed to an era of Great Expansion in the mid-1980s. However, some argue that the effects of economic expansion, and the long-term growth that Reagan had envisioned, were undermined by later fiscal and monetary policy decisions made after Reagan left office.

Ronald Reagan’s economic program consisted of four major pillars: reduce the rate of growth of federal spending, carry on with deregulation, attain a low stable growth of money supply, and reduce tax rates. The goal of Reaganomics was to reduce government interference with the economy and develop an entrepreneurial-based self-sufficient market. His goals and the pillars that outlined his program embraced the principles of supply-side economics that gained popularity during the 1970’s and 1980’s. Supply-side economics focused more on creating supplies versus worrying about demand. Reductions in taxes did this, as more businesses could afford to open and they would increase productivity. An increase in productivity brought more jobs and reduced unemployment that had reached a record high at the time Reagan initially took office.

Reagan used deregulation to ease inflation, which was also very high at the time, by lowering the cost to start a business. Prices were reduced and as a result, competition increased, in the trucking, airline, railroad, and telecommunications industries. Growth in prosperity in these industries spread to other industries, as transportation and telecommunications are central to society.

By deregulating the communications industry, there was a burst in technological innovation, which helped the United States become competitive on an international level in that arena. This correlated perfectly with the technological revolution of the 1980’s, as personal computers and video games burst in popularity. A further conversation on deregulation and its possible effects is beyond the scope of this paper, and the aspects of it that pertain directly to supply-side economics have been discussed.

As a result of the implementation of Reaganomics, the 1980’s saw a tremendous growth in jobs and businesses, and a reduction in inflation in a short period of time. Tax cuts helped bring 19.3 million jobs during the decade, with the majority of them being highly paid. The unemployment rate fell from 10.8 percent in 1981 to 5.3 percent in 1989. When Reagan first entered office in 1981, the United States was in the worst recession the country had seen since the Great Depression. By 1982, the recession was alleviated, and the country entered a period of sustained economic growth.

In early 1983, economists saw the first signs that the economy was recovering. It would soon take-off with dramatic force. Lasting 93 consecutive months, it was the biggest peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history.

The background of Reaganomics can be traced back to post-war economies, a vague term that roughly describes the economies of the 1950’s and 1960’s, which leaned towards the Keynesian theory. This “demand-side” theory, presented by British economist John Maynard Keynes in his 1936 book The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, focuses on short-term economic fluctuations due to the belief that unemployment results from insufficient demand for goods and services. Keynes ultimately believed that government action could directly influence demand for goods and services by altering tax policies and expenditures.

The 1970’s brought an increase in the popularity of supply-side economics, which greatly challenged Keynesian theory and was a term that Reaganomics would make a household name. Jack Kemp, a New York representative and an intern in California for then-governor Ronald Reagan’s staff, was an adamant proponent of supply-side economics. He believed that growth allowed social problems “to take care of themselves.” In his opinion, tax reduction was a key to economic growth and could be done by affecting supply-side incentives. In 1977, Kemp and Delaware senator William Roth introduced the Kemp-Roth Tax Reduction Bill, calling for a 30% reduction in personal income rates over a three-year phase. Due to large inflation accompanied by stagflation at the time, there was large public support for the bill. Although the tax cut did not pass, it was influential due to new intellectual ideas appearing at the time.

University of Southern California professor Arthur Laffer, along with Columbia University’s Robert Mundell popularized their idea of ongoing and informal supply-side economics with politicians and journalists. Laffer is probably famous for introducing the Laffer curve, which emphasized tax reduction as a solution to economic issues. The curve starts at zero tax, but then shows an upside-parabolic curve to demonstrate that up until a certain point (the absolute maximum on the curve) an increase in tax rates will result in an increase in revenue. After this point, an increase in tax will hurt revenue. Despite sharp criticism from Keynesian economists, supply-side was given serious thought in various places. Joint Election Committee (JEC) chairman Lloyd Bensen liked supply-side economics, saying that it was “the start of a new era of economic thinking.” It provided policy makers with a novel way to envision the country’s economic problems versus the conventional way of aggregating demand in post-war America.

The nation first saw an outline of Reaganomics in August of 1979, when Martin Anderson, Reagan’s chief domestic policy advisor, drafted the Reagan for President Campaign’s “Policy Memorandum No. 1.” The plan included suggestions for the economy such as across-the-board tax cuts of at least three years duration accompanied by an indexation of federal income tax brackets. There would also be a reduction in rate of increase in federal spending, vigorous deregulation, and a strict monetary policy to deal with inflation. Reagan would attempt to implement these principles throughout his presidency, and would introduce acts, bills, reforms that would have long-term effects, reducing debt and deficit numbers even after he left the presidency.

In 1981, Reagan made two influential policy decisions that would increase investment by Americans over a long period of time. A general reduction in tax rates, one of the major pillars of Reaganomics, yields great feedback in terms of faster economic growth, a larger tax base, and larger tax revenues.

Reagan introduced a tax-cut bill in 1981 that established tax deductions for Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) that resulted in 12 million taxpayers contributing $28.3 billion towards their retirement. In addition, his administration established a principle that employees could have a tax-free income if matched by employers and channeled into their retirement accounts. As a result, the number of Americans with 401k plans increased. By implementing such policies, a massive class of small investors were created that were previously non-existent.

Not only did this new wave of investors create jobs by fueling business growth, but they also pro-actively addressed concerns about the ability of major employers to fund the retirement of the “baby-boomer” generation.

The economic growth, initiated by Reagan, was threatened, however by Congressional actions. Congress did not prepare itself properly for the outcomes of Reagan’s economic doctrines, as government spending increased. For example, Congress resisted cuts in domestic spending, and did not reform basic entitlement plans, which provide unearned payments to individuals. Increased spending in these programs, which include Medicare and Social Security, caused problems for Congress controlling the exact size of budget deficit and surplus. According to the White House’s website, the federal gross debt as a percentage of GDP rose when Congress acted by increasing spending (and therefore increasing both the deficit and the debt). With more businesses opening during Reagan’s presidency and a growing, aging population that relies on the benefits of Social Security and Medicare, federal spending has only increased at a pace far faster than domestic output has increased. Given the spending plans put forth in the mid-1990’s, the government can barely afford to sustain many of its programs. Because the experience of the 1980’s shows that higher taxes will hurt any potential economic growth, Congress must enact disciplined spending cuts.

To maintain sustainable economic growth, not only must Congress consistently reduce federal spending, but there must also be a supply of quality opportunities for new capital investment. During the 1990’s, the Clinton administration introduced policies centered on Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac; these policies diluted the quality of investment opportunities, and eventually culminated in the 2007/2008 “housing bubble.” Reagan’s deregulated mortgage market had allowed lending institutions to loan money to customers who were most likely to repay. Clinton’s policies forced the lenders to loan money to those identified as unlikely to repay. Clinton’s regulation of the market in the 1990’s created massive defaults in 2007 and 2008.

In conclusion, former President Ronald Reagan slashed tax rates by introducing bills in the early 1980’s that increased American investment and productivity. However, Congress did not make the necessary adjustments needed: spending cuts, and sustained deregulation of the mortgage market.

The lesson: free markets aren't free if the government is regulating them, and if the government is spending lots of money, it either creates debt which slows the economy, or it raises tax rates which slow the economy.

When the News is Too Complicated for the News Media

2008-11-16T08:52:00.002-05:00

The economy is big news right now. We’re all absorbing as much of it as we can, but is it helping ... or hurting?

According to Poynter Institute Media Business Analyst Rick Edmonds, most newsrooms are doing their best to cover the ever-changing economic story, but it's so complex, it's almost a losing battle.

"Local reporters and certainly national reporters can definitely handle the 'how it's impacting individuals' angle," he says. "But let’s face it, trying to explain complicated financial economic terms is a losing game."

Realize that, if you have experience in the business world, or have a master's degree, you may well be able to understand the situation better than the reporter on your TV screen. Grab a book on economics or investing from your local library, and soon you'll be pointing out the flaws in the TV news.

Add on the fact that news is ratings-driven, and colorful words and dramatic headlines are the norm.

"It's a practice that has crept into coverage over the last decade," says Edmonds. "When there is a big story, ratings go up. You can’t just say, 'we're reporting on the war in Iraq,' you have to have a title for your coverage."

So what should consumers do to keep up-to-date on financial news?

"Having access to professionals in the financial industry is your best bet," says Edmonds.

Remember, the people on TV weren't hired for their understanding of complex economics. They were hired because they look good, and can use their voices in impressive ways. Get yourself an ECON 101 textbook, or a FINANCE 101 textbook, and ten minutes of reading will tell you more than a week's worth of the evening news on TV.

Helping

2008-09-19T13:37:00.008-04:00

On December 26, 2004, a tsunami struck several different countries in and around the Indian Ocean. Many different governments sent help; the U.S. government sent more aid than any other government.

President Bush sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. The largest ships in the fleet, aircraft carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. The U.S. military saved thousands of lives in the days following the tsunami.

But, although the U.S. government sent more aid than any other government, there was another source of help which was much larger still. The charities in America sent billions of dollars in food, medicine, and supplies. In addition, the charities funded teams of nurses and doctors to set up hospitals, and teams of builders to remove rubble and start rebuilding.

The private charitable organizations in America not only sent more aid than the U.S. government, they sent more aid than all the governments of the world combined!

Which shows that, in offering significant help and making progress, private sector charity trumps government programs.

Not Building an Empire

2008-09-19T13:37:00.007-04:00

One constant feature of human nature is the desire to take over and rule large amounts of territory. Whether in ancient history (Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Cyrus of Persia, etc.), or in modern history (Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Napoleon), people want to build empires.

By contrast, there are those armies who defeat their enemies, and yet allow those enemies to keep their land afterward: nations which do aim to absorb their enemies, but rather to turn their enemies into friends. In the modern world, there is one such nation: the United States.

After two world wars, we returned all conquered lands to their own nations. After Operation Desert Storm, we returned all territory. We are preparing now to return Iraq to the Iraqis.

Colin Powell, former secretary of state, said, "Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return."

Keeping the Peace

2008-09-18T13:40:00.002-04:00

In late 1814 and early 1815, Napoleon's career was coming to an end, and Europe had suffered twenty-five years of nearly continuous chaos and bloodshed: first, the ten years of the French Revolution (1789 - 1799), and then Napoleon's dictatorship. France had conducted wars against, or involving, nearly all of Europe. The misery was wide-spread.

The leaders of European nations gathered at the Congress of Vienna to answer the question, how can we keep Europe safe and peaceful. The conference was organized and lead by Metternich. The starting point for discussion was the Treaty of Paris, first signed in 1814; during the conference, Napoleon attempted his comeback, and when that failed, a second Treaty of Paris was issued in 1815. The Bourbon absolutist monarchy was reinstated, and France lost the territory which had stolen from other nations after 1789.

It was clear that Europe would assume a new shape on the map, and a new political tone, especially because Napoleon had also officially ended the Holy Roman Empire. The Congress of Vienna wanted to ensure that Europe's new layout would lead to peace and stability.

The official dates of the conference were from November 1, 1814 until June 8, 1815.

England was represented by Castlereagh and Wellington; Napoleon gave England two of its greatest heros, Wellington and Nelson, and Wellington also was immortalized in the famous beef recipe. Wellington's real name was Arthur Wellesley, but he was called Wellington because he was the Duke of Wellington.

Metternich represented Austria, and Prussia was represented by Hardenberg and Humboldt. Alexander I represented Russia. Talleyrand represented France, and almost single-handedly saved his country, because the other nations wanted to punish it for the twenty-five years of butchery it caused. Talleyrand persuaded the other leaders that they would have nothing to gain by devastating France, but that if they left the country intact, it would benefit all of Europe.

Do You Exist? Do I?

2008-09-17T12:42:00.006-04:00

Only a philosopher would spend time trying to answer the question, "do I exist?"

It's not that philosophers are worried about the answer. They know that they exist. But given that the answer is automatically "yes", how do we prove that answer? It's not enough to answer a question - you must offer evidence to support that answer. What evidence can you offer in order to convince me that you exist?

Descartes and Augustine share not only the argument Cogito ergo sum - in Augustine Si fallor, sum - but also the corollary argument claiming to prove that the mind (Augustine) or, as Descartes puts it, this I, is not any kind of body. "I could suppose I had no body," wrote Descartes, "but not that I was not", and inferred that "this I" is not a body. Augustine says "The mind knows itself to think", and "it knows its own substance": hence "it is certain of being that alone, which alone it is certain of being." Augustine is not here explicitly offering an argument in the first person, as Descartes is. The first-person character of Descartes's argument means that each person must administer it to himself in the first person; and the assent to Augustine's various propositions will equally be made, if at all, by appropriating them in the first person. In these writers there is the assumption that when one says "I" or "the mind", one is naming something such that the knowledge of its existence, which is a knowledge of itself as thinking in all the various modes, determines what it is that is known to exist.

But Descartes recognized that his use of this form of argument is quite different from Augustine's: "I do indeed find that Augustine does use it to prove the certainty of our existence. He goes on to show that there is a certain likeness of the Trinity in us, in that we exist, we know that we exist, and we love the existence and the knowledge we have. I, on the other hand, use the argument to show that this I that is thinking is an immaterial substance with no bodily element. These are two very different things."

Augustine's purpose in the larger context is to establish the continuing goodness of the world following the fall. To this end, Augustine argues that "we recognize in ourselves ... an image of God, that is of the Supreme trinity. It is not an adequate image, but a very distant parallel." And this premise leads to the conclusion that "we are human beings, created in our Creator's image." Thus, for Augustine, "Self-certainty thus leads self-consciousness back to the inner consciousness of God, which is found to be more essential to consciousness than itself. For the si fallor, sum does not aim at the ego, nor does it come to a half in the res cogitans, seeing as the interior intimo meo transports it, as a derived image, toward the original exemplar. The si fallor, sum remains the simply, though first, moment of a path that, in two other more rich moments (knowing one's Being and loving it), disappropriates the mind from itself by the movement of reappropriating it to its original, God. The si fallor, sum does not assure the mind of having its principle in itself, since it does not grant it Being in itself nor saying itself by itself (like substance). On the contrary, si fallor sum forbids the mind to remain in itself, exiled from its truth, in order to send it back to the infinite original. The mind is retrieved only insofar as it is exceeded.

Descartes wants to show that "by means of the certainty of Being that thought secures for what from now on becomes an ego" that the I is an immaterial substance: "What is at stake, then, is not found simply in the connection of thought and existence, however certain this connection might be. That the mind thinks, therefore that it is insofar as it thinks – this belongs to an inference that is if not banal ... at least quite commonplace. What is peculiar to Descartes consists, as he so lucidly indicates, in interpreting the certain and necessary connection of the cogitatio and existence as establishing a substance, and moreover a substance that plays the role of first principle."

We may conclude that, despite the rather different goals of their writings, Augustine anticipated Descartes by over a thousand years, and even anticipated Anselm by five hundred years, in composing what amounts to an a priori argument directed against radical skepticism. For, although Augustine's argument makes reference to sensation, the structure of his argument is essentially a priori.

The Mind or The Brain?

2008-09-16T14:17:00.003-04:00

Modem philosophy of science has been devoted largely to the formal and systematic description of the successful practices of working scientists. The philosopher does not try to dictate how scientific inquiry and argument ought to be conducted. Instead he tries to enumerate the principles and practices that have contributed to good science. The philosopher has devoted the most attention to analyzing the methodological peculiarities of the physical sciences. The analysis has helped to clarify the nature of confirmation, the logical structure of scientific theories, the formal properties of statements that express laws and the question of whether theoretical entities actually exist.

It is only rather recently that philosophers have become seriously interested in the methodological tenets of psychology. Psychological explanations of behavior refer liberally to the mind and to states, operations and processes of the mind. The philosophical difficulty comes in stating in unambiguous language what such references imply.

Traditional philosophies of mind can be divided into two broad categories: dualist theories and materialist theories. In the dualist approach the mind is a nonphysical substance. In materialist theories the mental is not distinct from the physical; indeed, all mental states, properties, processes and operations are in principle identical with physical states, properties, processes and operations. Some materialists, known as behaviorists, maintain that all talk of mental causes can be eliminated from the language of psychology in favor of talk of environmental stimuli and behavioral responses. Other materialists, the identity theorists, contend that there are mental causes and that they are identical with neurophysiological events in the brain.

In the past fifteen years a philosophy of mind called functionalism that is neither dualist nor materialist has emerged from philosophical reflection on developments in artificial intelligence, computational theory, linguistics, cybernetics and psychology. All these fields, which are collectively known as the cognitive sciences, have in common a certain level of abstraction and a concern with systems that process information. Functionalism, which seeks to provide a philosophical account of this level of abstraction, recognizes the possibility that systems as diverse as human beings, calculating machines and disembodied spirits could all have mental states. In the functionalist view the psychology of a system depends not on the stuff it is made of (living cells, metal or spiritual energy) but on how the stuff is put together. Functionalism is a difficult concept, and one way of coming to grips with it is to review the deficiencies of the dualist and materialist philosophies of mind it aims to displace.

Gettin' Sneaky

2008-09-10T08:10:00.002-04:00

Samuel Adams was a man of courage and integrity. As one of our founding fathers, not only does our nation owe its existence to him and his colleagues, but the world owes its concepts of modern freedom and democracy to this same group.

His contribution was to organize in Massachusetts the local committees of correspondence. After he had formed the first one in Boston during 1772, some eighty towns in the colony speedily set up similar organizations. Their chief function was to spread the spirit of resistance by exchanging letters and thus keep alive opposition to British policy. One critic referred to the committees as "the foulest, subtlest, and most venomous serpent ever issued from the egg of sedition."

Inter-colonial committees of correspondence were the next logical step. Virginia led the way in 1773 by creating such a body as a standing committee of the House of Burgesses. Within a short time, every colony had established a central committee through which it could exchange ideas and information with other colonies. These inter-colonial groups were supremely significant in stimulating and disseminating sentiment in favor of united action. They evolved directly into the first American congresses.

So, if you have liberty, if you enjoy both civil rights and human rights, if you are to express opinions and beliefs freely, if you able to make some decisions about your own life ... thank this group of sneaky note-writers!

The Movie Director, the Football Coach, and the Boy Scouts

2008-07-31T20:01:00.002-04:00

A controversial motion picture producer, Michael Moore, is lover by some, hated by others, and probably misunderstood by many. A lifetime member of the NRA, an Eagle Scout, and an active supporter of the Scouting Movement, he refuses to be painted into narrow category of "left-wing" or "right-wing".

A University of Michigan football coach has a demanding job, especially if he wants to claim a national title. He has very little free time, and has to make his choices carefully, because the actions of the head coach will reflect on the U of M. Yet Fielding Yost spent a great deal of time and effort promoting the Boy Scouts, with the approval of U of M's president.

Two very different high-profile people, but one common goal: to ensure that young people in America have the opportunity to be involved in the Scouting Movement.

Bill Clinton - liberal, conservative, or other?

2008-07-31T16:28:00.002-04:00

The Clinton presidency is generally seen as "liberal" - being sandwiched between the two Bush presidencies - but, as we have learned, those words "liberal" and "conservative" can be misleading.

During his first term in office - long before the Lewinsky scandal which made him famous - Bill Clinton signed into law the bill known as the "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA), which is the strongest statement to date against homosexual marriage, and which prevents any attempt at diverting federal benefits away from traditional marriages and toward same-sex legal unions.

Now, this may surprise those who see Clinton as a liberal. But Clinton's chief of staff and other close advisers directed him to do this in the same way that they directed him to his other political actions: they kept a close eye on the majority opinion among the electorate. With over 80% of the voters opposed to federal benefits being used to create this novel legal category, Clinton knew that his political future would depend on his following their lead.

Is Clinton a liberal? Perhaps. But perhaps he was simply following the direction set by the democratic process. Which raises a second question: should a president in a democratic society be a "leader" or a "follower"? Although we call him a "leader," we paradoxically expect him to "follow" the majority of the voters.

In either case, Clinton's 1996 support for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) stands as one of the strongest political moves to date against the "gay marriage" movement.

The Greeks Unite in the Struggle Against the Persians

2008-07-12T19:04:00.002-04:00

Most of the Greek city-states developed similarly to Athens. Around the year 500 BC, all of Greece felt itself threatened by something external, by a powerful enemy in the east: Persia. The Persians were an equestrian nation, which came out of the rough highlands of the area we today call Iran. They ruled an empire which stretched from India to the Mediterranean coast, and which encompassed the ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Egypt. One can truly speak of a world empire in this case.

The Persian emperor (or "king of kings") allowed the subjugated nations to have their religions and customs, but they had to pay tribute (money) regularly, and supply soldiers when the Persian king demanded this of them. In the assembled army, the empire because visible in its expanse, and in successful campaigns, the invincibility of the king showed itself. Because of the great distances and the limited opportunities for direct control, the emperor placed his representatives to rule the individual regions; they were called "satraps" or "tyrants" or governors.

Naturally, the Persian king could not tolerate it, if parts of his kingdom would attempt to gain their independence. But exactly this is what the Greek cities in Asia Minor did, in his opinion, when they undertook a rebellion in 500 BC under the leadership of Miletus. In 494 BC, Miletus was destroyed on his orders.

The Athenians had supported the rebellion. The Persian king Darius sent therefore, in 490 BC, a rather small army across the sea in the direction of Greece. The Athenians didn't want to subjugate themselves, and decided to fight.

In the battle of Marathon, an Athenian army defeated the Persians. A military tactic, not practiced by the Persians, played a decisive role: the Athenians fought as heavily-armed foot soldiers, as "hoplites", and appeared thereby in closed ranks, as a "phalanx". The hoplites, formed in several rows, one after another, were "fired up" by means of music, and followed orders as a unit. If the man in front fell, the one behind him had to step forth immediately. Each one had to rely on the other.

The Persian were not content to be defeated at Marathon. Xerxes, the son of Darius, in 480 BC, undertook for this reason better-prepared attack on all of Greece, with perhaps 100,000 soldiers and approximately 1000 ships.

Many states in northern and middle Greece subjugated themselves, either under threat of force, or voluntarily, but not a confederation led by Sparta and including Athens with its fleet of 200 new battle ships. Sparta was, at that time, the most powerful city-state in Greece, and determined to resist unconditionally.

The first attempt to stop the Persian, at Thermopyle, a narrow pass between the mountains and the sea, gained for 300 Spartans a heroic death, but didn't succeed. The path toward Athens was now open to the Persians. There, the inhabitants left the city, and they hoped for a victory by the fleet. The Persians entered Athens, plundered it, and destroyed the more important temples. They considered this to be revenge for a similar deed by the rebellious Greeks in Asia Minor.

But the war was decided in two large battles. First, the Greeks defeated, with luck and skill, the numerically superior Persian fleet in the straights near the island of Salamis. And in 479 BC, the Persian army was devastatingly defeated by the Spartans and some allies at Plataea. A confederation of Greek city-states had thereby defended its own independence against an empire which appeared incredibly powerful.

In Greece, the opinion now spread about the Persians, that they were not only different than the Greeks, but rather by nature inferior humans. These "Barbarians" were seen as enemies, whom one simultaneously despised and feared. The Greek word "barbar" had, until then, designated someone who did not speak Greek and was thereby unintelligible. After the Greeks used this word on the Persians, it took on the negative connotation which it still has today.

Caught!

2008-05-14T06:57:00.003-04:00

As "green" politics becomes an ever bigger force in world politics, various countries using, or abusing, environmental information as part of their rhetoric and public relations campaigns.

Mainland Communist China (in contrast to Formosa Taiwan China) has long had a rather poor record in its treatment of the planet. Dumping chemicals of all sorts into rivers and burning high-sulfur coal have been standard practices in the twenty-first century, despite the global focus on clean air and clean water.

In an effort to improve its image, the Chinese government released several photos. One showed a tiger, belonging to a species thought already extinct, roaming through the woods in China. Another showed a large herd of endangered Tibetan antelopes grazing peacefully in a prairie. These pictures were designed to reassure the international community that China was making progress in learning to protect the environment, and would soon "catch up" to Europe and North America.

The problem? University students analyzed the images, and determined that they were fake! Chinese intelligence agencies had done a "cut-and-paste" job, placing old photos of these long-dead animals into images of their former habitats.

True Dialogue

2008-04-14T12:02:00.002-04:00

In our diverse and multi-cultural society, how does a Muslim carry on a dialogue with a Jew? Or a Republican with a Democrat? Or a Pro-Lifer with a Pro-Abortionist?

There are ways for people, who have profound disagreements and even conflicts, to engage in civil and polite discussion. This is much more like to preserve peace than angry confrontations and name-calling.

How do we engage in civil dialogue?

First, whatever your personal opinion, remember that there are such things as right and wrong interpretations of historical texts, political texts, or biblical texts. A text - a piece of writing - can't have any random meaning. There is a set of meanings it can have, and a set of meanings it can't have. There are actual historical facts to which texts do or do not correspond, and true and false propositions, true and false statements, about the relationship between the story and reality. Consequently, we become upset with someone we suspect of lying, intentionally trying to obscure the facts, unduly disrupting the conversation, or doing anything that seems contrary to the spirit of truth-telling.

Second, remember that there are things called objective moral truths. We might disagree about what they are, or we might not even know what they are, but they are there. In our dialogues, we are not just courteous; we try to be responsible and fair in our interpretations of what the other is saying. We don't deliberately mis-understand or twist the other's words to make the opposing viewpoint seem stupid or illogical. We do not abide anyone who fails to respect the intentions of another. It is not permissible to treat anyone in the circle as anything less than an autonomous end-in-himself. We must attribute the best possible meaning and intentions to our opponent's words. Only this way, only by means of moral standards, is a dialogue possible.

Third, our efforts at conversation should begin with introductions, work slowly into the subtly submerged tensions between us, eventually get around to stating our disagreements, and then build toward a resolution in which we could agree on some matters, and agree to disagree about others. In this way, we can forge a consensus, even a community. It is an aesthetic idea; an artistic whole of different voices blended together. We want people to air their differences, but we do not permit disruption for disruption's sake. Radical intrusions serve, somehow, the ends of the group, the good of the whole. We orchestrate seemingly random sounds into the melody pursued by the rest.

The Dalai Lama

2008-04-13T08:32:00.002-04:00

The Dalai Lama is a religious leader for most of the world's Buddhists; he is also a political symbol. Coming from Tibet, the center of world Buddhism, his very presence reminds people of the harsh manner in which the Chinese army took over Tibet, and, under the leadership of Maoist Chinese Communism, brutally attempted - and still attempts today - to enforce atheism on that country's population.

How is the Dalai Lama received in the United States, when he comes to visit? He is enthusiastically welcomed by Republicans and Conservative Christian groups, because he embodies the issue of religious freedom: these groups believe that the Tibetan Buddhists should be allowed to engage in their faith, just as the U.S. Constitution gives Americans the right to "free exercise" of their religions. Presidents like Bush and Reagan have warmly greeted him in the White House. Churches of various types have invited him as a guest speaker.

Make no mistake, there are important differences between Christians and Buddhists, and the two belief systems will never agree on spiritual questions about what happens to the human soul after death; but they also see that they have some things in common, and can speak together in a friendly and peaceful manner.

Democrats and liberals, however, are not so eager to welcome the Dalai Lama to the United States. These political groups fear that, if we show hospitality to the Dalai Lama, we might irritate the Chinese government, which still wants to enforce atheism on Tibet, and does not want Tibet or its Buddhists to have any political freedom. So you won't see them on TV, smiling and shaking hands with the Dalai Lama.

Is it not ironic, that the Christians, who speak most firmly against the religious beliefs of the Dalai Lama, are the ones who show him the most hospitality and friendship? It is truly an amazing form of tolerance, to be friends with the person whose beliefs you oppose.

Further irony is found in the lack of warmth from the Democrats and liberals; one would expect them to embrace anyone who publicly proclaims a belief system which is opposed to Christianity.

Federal Courts Say “Merry Christmas!”

2008-04-07T07:25:00.002-04:00

School districts may not ban teachers and students from saying “Merry Christmas.” The Supreme Court has stated that teachers and students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” [Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969) (holding that the wearing of armbands by students to show disapproval of Vietnam hostilities was constitutionally protected speech).]

Under the direction of President Clinton, U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley issued guidelines concerning religious discussion of students, which stated, “Students therefore have the same right to engage in . . . religious discussion during the school day as they do to engage in other comparable activity.” [U.S. Dept. of Educ., Religious Expression in Public Schools, Archived Information, Guidelines, available at http://www.ed.gov/Speeches/08-1995/religion.html (last modified Jan. 26, 2000).]

Teachers also have the right to greet students with the words “Merry Christmas,” in spite of their role as agents of the state. In order to violate the Establishment Clause, a teacher would have to use her authority to promote religion to impressionable youth. [School Dist. of Abington v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963).] Saying a simple greeting that people commonly use in December does not rise to a state endorsement of religion.

Additional precedents confirmed by Supreme Court rulings: The Constitution protects all speech, including religious speech in public schools; the first amendment protects religious speech; the first amendment’s establishment clause does not require school officials to suppress seasonal religious expression; school officials may call a school break “Christmas” vacation; public school officials; public schools may have students sing religious Christmas carols; public schools may close on religious holidays, such as Christmas and Good Friday; publicly acknowledging Christmas does not require public officials to recognize all religious holidays; free speech includes the right to say “Merry Christmas!”; Students may study the religious origins of Christmas and read the biblical accounts of the birth of Christ in public schools; public schools may exhibit religious symbols; students have a constitutional right to be exempt from activities with a religious content; the constitution protects religious speech; students have a constitutional right to express their faith and religious ideas in a public school; students have the right to distribute religious materials such as Christmas cards containing Bible verses in public schools; students have the right to express religious viewpoints in schools assignments, reading materials, and clothing.

Rest In Peace?

2008-04-06T09:42:00.002-04:00

In the war-torn country of Sudan, even when you're dead, you're still in trouble!

In the on-going genocidal civil war in that region, the Islamic army, in its attempt to exterminate all traces of the Christian faith, has appropriate the graveyards in which Christians are buried, and is using them as used car lots. The cemeteries in which Muslim are buried are protected by those same armies. So if you want a good deal on a two-year-old Chevy, simply follow the herse after the funeral!

Kierkegaard: a Comedian?

2008-04-03T07:20:00.002-04:00

Soren Kierkegaard is generally considered to be the first existentialist, and the father of existentialism. Professor C. Stephen Evans (from Yale) offers these comments about him:

Kierkegaard ... wants to claim that there is an essential connection between humor and religious life ... Kierkegaard holds that the highest and deepest kind of humor is rooted in a life-view which is recognizably religious, and that all humor is at bottom made possible by those very features of human life which make the religious life possible.

Kierkegaard was a Lutheran pastor who lived in Denmark, and did most of his writing in the 1840's. Evans continues:

To understand Kierkegaard's claims here one must try to understand the place of humor in his theory of the stages or spheres of existence ... there are three stages or spheres of existence. The aesthetic life is the natural or immediate kind of life in which everyone begins, where one simply attempts to satisfy one's natural desires or urges. The aesthete lives for the moment. The ethical life is the life in which one grasps the significance of the eternal and by ethical resolve attempts to transcend one's natural desires and create a unified life. The religious life is the life in which one recognizes impossibility of actualizing the eternal through positive action and instead one attempts to grasp it through repentance and suffering.

In short, the third stage is the stage in which you figure out that the second stage is impossible! The options here for irony and humor should be self-evident. As Evans phrases it:

Irony constitutes the boundary between the aesthetic and the ethical, while humor constitutes the boundary between the ethical and the religious.

Because a sense of ethical outrage, even if hidden, motivates irony, it carries one from the aesthetic phase to the ethical phase; when one finally realizes the absurdity of being, on the one hand, obliged to always act ethically, and being, on the other hand, incapable of always acting ethically, it is then humor which allows one to transcend the ethical phase and enter the religious phase. It is in this absurdity and humor that Kierkegaard's Lutheranism shows itself. Professor Evans puts it this way:

... forgiveness which is offered freely ... makes it possible for the earnest individual to smile at the contradiction between his life and the ideal he sees in Christ.

Cultural Understandings and Mis-Understandings

2008-04-01T08:50:00.003-04:00

The history of interactions between Muslims and the other cultures of the world is one of painful conflicts. In some cases, these conflicts have been based on accurate mutual perceptions: when Islam looks at other world cultures and accuses them of lowering their moral standards, Islam is correct. When Islam has made the assessment that the Judeo-Christian religious tradition is incompatible with the core teachings of Islam, because Islam rejects the concept of a God who loves and forgives unconditionally, Islam is correct in that assessment.

Sometimes conflicts are based on actual disagreements, such as the two listed above. Muslims are correct that other world cultures have lowered their moral standards: when one considers alcohol abuse, other forms of drug abuse, tobacco use, premarital sex, and other forms of inappropriate sexual activity, it is clear that there is a moral gap between Islam and the rest of the world. Muslims are correct when they judge that other religions are incompatible with their own: the Judeo-Christian tradition teaches that humans cannot merit or earn God's favor or forgiveness, but rather that He gives it freely and unconditional to those who do not deserve it; a Muslim cannot accept that view of God.

But sometimes conflicts are based, not on real differences, but on perceived differences. Mis-perceptions can create the impression of disagreements, even when there are none. Four examples: Muslims sometimes perceive Christians as polytheists, because of the concept of the Trinity; but in fact, Christians are as monotheistic as Muslims, and core of the concept of the Trinity is monotheistic. Muslims sometimes perceive that there cannot be a father-son relationship between God the Father and God the Son; yet in the Qur'an and other Muslim writings, paternal and filial language is used to describe Allah's spiritual fatherhood. Muslims sometimes perceive the execution of Jesus as unbelievable; but the historical record of Roman rule in the province of Judea makes such an execution entirely in keeping with the rule of Roman governor like Pilate. Muslims sometimes perceive the written records of non-Islamic cultures as unreliable; but the historical records of the ancient world are verifiable and have shown themselves to be at least as accurate as Islamic histories.

There are enough real differences between Islam and the rest of the world to create problems; the situation is complicated by fictional differences as well.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

2008-03-27T15:48:00.002-04:00

In 1837, Emerson wrote this poem, entitled "Concord Hymn", for a ceremony dedicating a monument at the site of the battle.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood;
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps,
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream that seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We place with joy a votive stone,
That memory may their deeds redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

O Thou who made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free, -
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raised to them and Thee.

Emerson's work is often considered to be an example of Romanticism, but this is debatable, to the extent that one must clearly define what, and does not, constitute Romanticist art. Emerson did share, with Richard Wagner and some other extreme European Romanticists, a belief in vegetarianism. In any case, Emerson was a strong advocate for the abolition of slavery in America. Emerson was very religious, but held some unusual views of religious activity: "Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings." Religion is usually construed to center around the scientific investigation of sacred texts: religion is essentially reading. But for Emerson, reading was an auxiliary activity for the scholar: direct experience of God was possible, desirable, and preferable. It is this type of thought which has earned the label "transcendental" for Emerson. Emerson's exact religious views are difficult to categorize: Christianity and Unitarianism are usually considered opposites, and he seems to be neither. But his passionate belief in God motivated his abolitionist views: "The broad ethics of Jesus were quickly narrowed to village theologies, which preach an election or favoritism." Emerson sees himself as adhering to the real ethics of Jesus, not what he takes to be a commonly-accepted but distorted version of those ethics
.

I Hate You, You Hate Me, We're a Happy Family ...

2008-03-24T08:46:00.002-04:00

No, it's not the Barney show. But it was broadcast around the world on satellite TV. The May 7, 2002, episode of the "Muslim Woman" show, filmed in studios located in Saudi Arabia, featured an example of what the program's producers considered to be good parenting. A three-year-old girl was interviewed by the program's hostess, to demonstrate her mother's good teaching.

In response to questions, the girl said that "Jews are apes and pigs, because it says so in the Koran."

This same show was part of a larger fund-raising telethon which gathered $109 million, money donated to support the families of suicide bombers. One of the telethon's hosts declared, " I am against America forever. My hatred of America is great."

One might be tempted to think that these kinds of statements are examples of the post 9/11 atmosphere in the Middle East. But long before the attacks of September 11, 2001, this kind of propaganda was being generated.

In 1979, Iran's Shah, who had favored an open and free society, was overthrown by the Islamic leader Ayatollah Khomeini, who promptly shut down the universities (where discussion and debate could take place), and returned women to a confined existence in which they must wear veils and are denied education. Khomeini began a propaganda campaign against Jews and Americans, stirring up hate. But he did more than talk. His army captured sixty-three American civilians and held them hostage for over a year.

On November 20 of the same year, in Mecca, in the Great Mosque which is a very important shrine in the Islamic faith, a group of two thousand radicals held thousands of pilgrims hostage. After two weeks of fighting, the Saudi government, aided by the French intelligence agency, and armed with blueprints of the complex of buildings surrounding the Great Mosque, finally rescued the hostages. Who provided the blueprints? An engineering company operated by Osama bin Laden.

The attack in the Great Mosque emphasized an internal tension in Saudi government and society: the moderate royal family against the radical Wahhabi Muslim leaders. These two groups had worked together, despite differences, as long as the royal family could convince Wahhabi leaders that it would support their political and social views. In 1973, the Saudi royal family funded the "World Assembly of Muslim Youth" which proclaimed that "Jews are the source of all conflicts of the world." The groups further fueled the view that the Shiite Muslims are inferior to the Sunni Muslims, and that "Muslims, Christians, and Christians cannot live together." Although the Saudi royal family found these views personally distasteful, they funded them in order to maintain political coalition which supported their rule. It was this coalition which threatened to fracture after the gunfight at the Great Mosque.

The coalition was saved by the fact that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on December 26, 1979. The royal family and the Wahhabi temporarily put aside their disagreements, so that they could work together to keep Afghanistan in the hands of the Muslim leaders. Nothing unites people like a common enemy!

As part of a larger strategy to keep Afghanistan in Islamic hands, the coalition also funded radical Muslim organizations in Pakistan, because it neighbors Afghanistan.

From these efforts, a series of training camps would arise in Afghanistan and Pakistan. From these camps would come the organization which would eventually kill over three thousand civilians on September 11, 2001.

A Recipe for Success in Life

2008-03-16T06:15:00.002-04:00

Many people function on a daily basis - whether they consciously express it to themselves or not - on the following principle: "figure out what you want, and figure out how to get it." This may seem like common sense; it may seem like the logical way to approach life. However, it will ultimately lead to a sense of meaninglessness and depression.

A more effective way to view one's existence is to ask: "what do other people want or need, and how can I help them get it?" This is a much more satisfying way to live.

The World Economy 2008: Factoids

2008-03-05T10:46:00.000-05:00

Sun Microsystems, one of the world's leading computer research and development firms, was founded by Andreas von Bechtolsheim, who went on to provide the capital for the launching of Google. Bechtolsheim was born in Germany and studied at the University of Munich.

The global creativity index was created to measure how well different nations create new technology and business opportunities. The current leaders are Finland, Sweden, the USA, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, and Germany.

Airbus is now the world's leading manufacturer of aircraft, and Hamburg, Germany, is now the leading aircraft-production city in the world.

Waiting for the Right Time

2008-02-06T16:14:00.000-05:00

The Centers for Disease Control reported in August 2006 that fewer U.S. high school students are having sex, and the ones who do are less likely to have multiple partners, reports ABC news. In a 2005 survey, 46.8 percent of students said they engaged in sexual intercourse, which is down from 54.1 percent in 1991.

Figures for 2007 indicate that more students are waiting until marriage for sexual intercourse; the reasons seem to be split: some because of fear pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections, others because they intend to have a satisfying and successful marriage based on mutual respect.

God, Money, Education, and Love

2008-02-06T07:21:00.000-05:00

Most people who are marrired, or who are going to be married one day, don't want to be divorced. But how can you improve your chances of having a successful marriage?

Researchers investigating marriage and divorce have stumbled upon a peculiar phenomenon. Couples who attend church together are more likely to stay together than couples who attend separately. Edna Brown, a former psychology research fellow in U-M’s Institute for Social Research now at the University of Tennessee, led a team as part of the Early Years of Marriage project, which has followed 373 couples since 1986.

Remarkably, though there’s a distinct difference between couples who do and do not attend church together, the study found no difference in divorce rates between those individuals who attend church regularly and those who never do. A couple’s marital stability, in short, seems to depend less on whether each individual worships in church or not, and more on whether they do so together as a couple.

What else contributes to remaining married? For women, the likelihood of staying hitched increases with education level. For men, income is decisive: the more they earn, the less likely they are to divorce.

Spinning a Coin?

2008-01-06T18:15:00.001-05:00

It's always important to keep our eyes open for "spin" when we talk about history. People tell historical narratives with a spin, with a slant or bias designed to advance their agendas and promote their viewpoints. But sometimes it's not so obvious. Let's take an example from the seemingly innocent topic of the history of American coins.

If we consider the four most commonly used coins (quarter, dime, nickel, cent), and we look at whose picture shows up on them over the years, we might see a trend: in 1950 all four contained the portraits of men. In 1960 and 1970, all four carried the images of men. By 1980, we see the introduction of a new coin: the one dollar coin carrying the image of Susan B. Anthony. By the year 2000, we find a coin bearing the image of Sacajawea, who is not only a woman, but a Native American as well! This narrative shows progress - we've gone from all men, to including women and Indians.

The above paragraph is a narrative, carefully designed to make the "old days" look narrow-minded and bigoted, and present the current time segment as more progressive. The problem is, it's not true. But most readers don't know that, and don't detect the "spin" or bias woven into the narrative.

A more complete version of the story would tell you that only women were pictured on commonly used coins until 1909: Abraham Lincoln was the first male portrayed on a coin when the penny began carrying his image in that year. Not only did coins carry the images of women, but many of them were Native Americans.

Adding those missing facts makes the story look quite different. Now, most people don't really care a whole lot about whose picture is on a coin, but this example of how the story is told is a good example of why we need to be skeptical of anybody's version of history.

Opinion Makers

2007-12-22T21:25:00.000-05:00

Regularly, celebrities voice their opinions on social and political issues. Movie stars, popular singers, and professional athletes tell us whom we should vote for, and what we should think about cultural questions. But who are these people? Why are they qualified to tell us what to think?

Well, let's look at some examples. Exactly how much education do these self-appointed "experts" have?

BARBARA STREISAND - no education after graduating from high school
CHER - finished 8th grade, never attended high school
MARTIN SHEEN - flunked entrance exam for Dayton University
JESSICA LANGE - attended college for the first week of her freshman year, but failed to finish a semester
ALEC BALDWIN - dropped out of college
JULIA ROBERTS - no education after graduating from high school
SEAN PENN - no education after graduating from high school
ED ASNER - no education after graduating from high school
MIKE FARRELL - no education after graduating from high school
GEORGE CLOONEY - dropped out of college
SUSAN SARANDON - B.A. in drama

Those listed above have not only told Americans what to think about politics and politicians, but have even ventured to call their political opponents "stupid"!