Who's Right About the Recession?

So who is right? Are we in a recession or is it a figment of the Republican haters imagination? Can it be both?

Maxed Out Mama has laid out a compelling arguments for the last nine months that the economy is in trouble. My 401K would support that notion. The New Jersey housing market would support that notion. The Michigan jobs market would definitely support that notion. Houston? Is there a recession her? Not so much, but people do seem to be tightening up on their discretionary spending.

Now, The Anchoress makes this point:

It’s very tiresome, isn’t it? The agendas and double-standards of the press and the willingness of the American people to accept superficial analysis and headlines. Yes, things are more expensive right now, mostly because of oil prices and the soaring food prices that are part-and-parcel of the enviro-hysteria that has America held-hostage to foreign oil (rather than independently supplied by her own resources) and is content to starve the world to burn dubiously “clean” bio fuels. I am at a loss to understand - and a little worried by - America’s willingness to be led about by the nose on these issues.

And I am coming concerned about how easily some Americans digest rank antisemitism without discomfort. That’s chilling.

Many Americans - seemingly more and more - are so busy entertaining themselves - with their flip videos, ear-buds, increasingly balkanized personal lives - that they don’t really care about the details; they just wants to plug in, tune out and (increasingly) let whoever they assign to be “Mom & Dad” in the government take care of them while they stay in their rooms, chat online and try to do as little around the house as they can.

Ouch. But you know what? She's right. That's why you guys get an economy post weekly whether you want it or not. The world is interconnected. What happens in Japan matters to us here and vice versa. Economics drive politics which cause wars or peace. So, to be ignorant and plugged in but tuned out about the truth of the numbers and policies that cause them is to be utterly unaware not only about today but the future.

The network news is not giving unbiased information. A person must have the curiosity and desire to know more. But people are so busy and distracted, they don't have the time or inclination to carve out the time to know more.

There is a real sense that the government knows everything, sees everything and will solve everything--or they should solve everything. This takes the power from the people which suits the elite political class, the academics and the media just fine. A guy who opines on "hope" and "change" has legs because the message feels good. His underlying policies will rob a person of his money, and therefore, his autonomy. So economics matters. He knows that, which is why he'd like to control it.

I don't think people realize the full extent to which their lives are controlled. My in-laws in New York cannot make certain choices, simply cannot do it, because they cannot afford them. So much of their money goes to the government--federal, state, city, county, village and on and on--and they have so little money left over, that their choices are constricted and determined. So yes, the grocery and gas prices affect them. Their anxiety increases because what little they have to spare is eaten up. And, oh, by the way, Barack Obama considers them "rich" and their tax bills will go up with him in office.

So, it's worthwhile to pay attention. It's worthwhile to pick through the news and prove for yourself whats true or not. The Anchoress is worried. Maxed Out Mama is worried. They are paying attention.

My Favorite Thinkers of the Blogosphere

There are just so many smart people out there, it's tough to whittle it down. I want you guys to be informed and illuminated by the best and brightest, though. It's not fair that I keep these amazing sources to myself.

5. Markos Moulitis--It's taken me a while, but I've seen the light. He is noble. He is good. He is what's best about blogging. He will leave a legacy we can only hope to emulate.

4. Andrew Sullivan--He sees the truth in front of his nose, fights to see it and shares the truth daily. It's a relief to have him in the blogosphere. It would be empty without him.

3. Amanda Marcotte--She is a genius. I simply don't link to her enough. Her wisdom on race is...moving.

2. Paul Krugman--An economist, a thinker, a brilliant mind unsullied by political whims. He just writes the truth. It's so disappointing that he doesn't branch out and talk about other things, too. Although, when he does, I'm always thrilled.

1. Glen Greenwald--The most succinct, articulate blogger on the web. The way he crafts a sentence puts the average blogger to shame. Read him every, single, day.

Beauty Is Truth

The things in the world that interest me are the things that have no "useful" purpose like big ideas, and imagining a future that could be, or fantasizing about technology that will clean my house, go grocery shopping and cook for me. Some "useless" things sit right in front of me. Take flowers for example. James Lileks says:

I think we’re just lucky that flowers are beautiful; it would be a strange world if flowers and most plants revolted the hell out of people the way most large insects do. Well, you can say, our aesthetic preference to flowers is simply the result of millennia of acclimation. There is no inherent beauty there; we mistake our inbred subjective reaction for an object truth. If flowers looked “hideous” in the same sense as big insects – a revulsion that’s also grounded in subjective reactions, not AGGGH THERE’S A COCKROACH ON THE DESK GET IT OFF GET IT OFF

Sorry; it was just a shadow. Anyway: we would have thought “ugly” flowers were beautiful if our species’ consciousness had evolved alongside “ugly” flowers, or perhaps we would have regarded them as neutral, the way we regard most small ordinary rocks. It’s possible another species might land on Earth on a mission
from Voltarus IV, examine our great botanical gardens, throw up en masse and leave, never to come again.

Possible.

So why are the heavens so beautiful? Why, when we look deep into space with the eyes of Hubble and other machines, does everything seem so gorgeous? It’s not as if we evolved looking at that.

It would be interesting if it turned out Keats was right: beauty is truth. Imagine that: an aesthetic standard that exists whether we do or not. The tree that blossoms in the forest with no one around to see it.

Why do flowers exist? Why do manatees exist? I have to admit to a strange fascination with those creatures. They are benign, not very beautiful but seem to be utterly peaceful and gentle. They don't have "usefulness" though--not like a cow or even a dog. Although my dog is completely useless, unless you consider cute and pooping in my office useful, which I don't.

Anyway, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? Why is it that we all find the same things beautiful? We tend to all love Halle Berry's physical attributes for example and agree that she has a beautiful face and body. We all look at Denzel Washington and think--wow, he's handsome. And I don't know why I came up with those two examples except they are the first actors to pop into my head. That, and I saw part of that movie American Gangster and boy can Denzel act. He scared me and made me feel sympathetic for him at the same time. That was a weird digression.

Lileks concludes and I agree:

But I suppose if you believe that, you think flowers have inherent beauty, and we’re more than chemicals and subconscious commands from the instinct gland in the bottom of your brain. You do? Me too.

I believe in inherent beauty, transcendent beauty, that is just there for our pleasure. And the pleasure is the purpose.

Love, Vulnerability and Strength--Updated

"I am a rock, I am an island. And the rock feels no pain. And an island never cries."
--Paul Simon, Simon & Garfunkel

I lay looking at the ultrasound picture stunned. The picture is not at all what I expected, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

That day, I was about 12 weeks into my pregnancy and finally had made time for an ob/gyn appointment. Don't worry, I was taking prenatals and generally doing what pregnant ladies do, but I didn't have time to go to the doctor. Plus, I knew there wasn't anything they'd do anyway. At this point, I was an intern, seeing needy patients, working on fulfilling graduation requirements. Mentally, I had to get through that first. That and my boards. Then I would think baby thoughts...or more baby thoughts. It's hard to avoid baby thoughts when you're struggling through the fog of exhaustion and nearly throwing up on patients.

So, the doc examines me. Her face shows alarm. We are friendly. She helped me through a minor health issue and we bonded. I know her enough to know that she's worried.

Doc: "You're measuring 16-18 weeks. Could your dates be off?"

Me: No way

Doc: We need you to get blood work and an ultrasound now.

I feel myself go weak. My friend had a similar situation where there was something wrong with the baby and everything grew too quickly. In an instant, I was running through birth defects, problems with me. Terror struck. I went down to the ultrasound room. The tech came in cheerful and businesslike. Of course she can't tell me what she sees. Of course I know what I'm seeing because I just took three years of radiology in school.

And I see. I see them. Them. Two of them. I lay back on the table, dizzy, and the room goes a little gray.

Driving the hour home from that appointment gave me plenty of time to consider the ramifications. This was not at all what I had expected. No wonder everything seemed to be happening so fast. The boobs, the belly, the fatigue all made more sense. Suddenly, doctoring with twin babies seemed ridiculous. How would I do that? One kid, I could see. But how could I work and nurse and care for twins? All this work for what? And the doctor told me I had to stop working at 19 weeks. Had to. No choice. Twin pregnancies are more fragile. Yes, you feel good, but look at the statistics. At that instant I felt more vulnerable than I had in a long time. Caught between my dreams and love and concern for my unborn babies, I felt small before the possibilities.

That's what happens when you choose to love and go out on a limb and take a risk. Most people don't view having children that way, but it's true. When you make the choice to have a baby, you think about the love and the expansion of your life. You imagine holding him and caring for him and loving him. The excitement. The anticipation. The romance clouds your mind.

The reality of children is that suddenly, you're more vulnerable. Suddenly, you have something to lose. Suddenly, it matters a whole lot more when a politician makes a stupid law or creates debt for the next generation. Suddenly, healing the world takes a back seat to protecting your children. Suddenly, the society's scariness comes into sharp focus.

Loving makes us vulnerable.

Withholding love doesn't make you strong though. This is one of life's paradoxes. Being a rock, being an island might spare you pain but it also isolates a person creating a brittleness of being. A person can protect herself and by doing so, limit vulnerability. It calls to mind something G.K. Chesterton said. He described a soldier, timid and afraid versus a soldier bold and engaging. Often to save his own life, the soldier has to risk it, because to try and protect it is to surely die.

Love is like that. In order to survive and thrive, a person must reach out and that makes him vulnerable. But to be alone, is to assure the hurt. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. As a parent, that uneasy balance rules life. A consuming love reveals a vulnerability. Loss of or harm to this child would cause more grief than it's possible to contemplate. It's almost crazy-making to consider. With the TV blaring on about snatched and murdered children, parents feel even more vulnerable. It could happen. It happened to them.

Still, to not have children, to not love, to not reach out is to live a fear-driven life. Fear makes a person timid. Fear makes a person weak. Fear makes a person lonely. Ultimately, it takes courage to love and to live. And the people who withdraw and avoid loving to save themselves end up doing just the opposite.

Love makes you vulnerable but it also makes you strong.

In honor of this idea, I'm sharing with you some of my favorites. Here is the great Simon & Garfunkel tune "I Am A Rock" set to my favorite Harry Potter character Severis Snape, played by the inimitable Alan Rickman who I also love. Go to the link HERE. I can't embed it. But it's worth a look.

UPDATE:

The brilliant and always beautiful Anchoress adds this when referring to the European birthrate which is declining precipitously:

I’ve realized over the years that anti-life action, abortion, euthanasia, are all failures of love, and failures to be willing to open yourself up to all the ache and beauty that love brings. People don’t mind the beauty but they don’t want the ache, so they settle for a beauty less vibrant but safer.

So, Europe is dying, but why? Author Bruce Thorton says over at The Corner:

Because, replies the author of Decline and Fall: Europe’s Slow-Motion Suicide, “children are expensive. They require you to sacrifice your time and your interests and your own comfort. If your highest good is pleasure, if your highest good is a sophisticated life, then children get in the way. Why would you spend so much money and so much energy on children if your highest good is simply material well-being? That's sort of the spiritual dimension of the problem."

“The spiritual dimension of the problem.” There are so few children in Europe, in other words, because there are so few believers.

Having children, loving in general, requires a certain amount of faith and optimism. Nihilistic despair and hopelessness starves love and leads to solitude. And when whole countries despair, whole countries die.

Risking love means risking life. And to not risk is to already die.

Degrading and Debasing the Culture

After yesterday's romp, I'm feeling morning-after guilt. There is no question that American culture is going down the shitter (witness my use of shitter as Exhibit "A"). I could have said "toilet", but no, I use a base and degrading word. What have we come to? To understand the state of the culture, it seems that one needs a fundamental understanding of the forces that drive human behavior and therefore, group behavior. (Although, and this is important, how a person acts individually and how he acts when influenced by the group dynamics can be entirely different. People can act both better and worse depending on those they associate with. A group can elevate an average man and can make an average man do things he would never do on his own.)

To get to the heart of our cultural phenomena, I'm going to wax philosophical for a moment and talk about energy. There is only one energy around in the world and that energy is loving and creative. When people throw the term around "negative energy", it's kind of a misnomer. The negative energy spoken of is simply a lack of energy, period. When one is drained by something or someone, the situation or person is sucking the positive away, trying to fill the void. That is, they are trying to take a positive to fill up the emptiness.

Energy can be applied in a negative way, but it is a positive force used for negative reasons. For example, the energy used to hurt or harm can be applied to heal and help. It's the same creative force applied differently. What made some world tyrants so formidable is that they took their essential positive gifts--oration, persuasion, influence--and applied them negatively. They created chaos and used their energy as a force for destruction.

The problem in the culture today is not lack of energy, talent, creative force, or any of the other raw material to create greatness and beauty. The problem in our culture is the energy is so wasted and misapplied. For example, and I've talked about this before, children are treated as the latest fashion accessory, the cherry on the top of a good career or the reward to wear like the latest Gucci purse after years dedicated to self-aggrandizement. Cassy Fiano notes the latest Hollywood ode to narcissism:

Tina Fey's movie "Baby Mama" illustrates an epidemic to me. Her character "wants a baby more than anything else", so she finds a way to go out and get one. Nevermind that she's not even dating anyone, so they kid will have literally no father figure in his or her life. Nevermind that an adoption agency turned her down. She wants a baby, damn it, so she's gonna get one by whatever means necessary. She finds a woman to be a surrogate so she can have her baby.

A woman's creative energy, the ability to mother, is a powerful force of nature. It is primal, spiritual and a life force, and it has been diminished and debased. This creative energy, that I believe is a direct conduit to God, has been distanced, merchandised and cut off from the natural bonding that occurs between a man and a woman. The highest creative force has been emptied of value.

Cassy also notes how sexual energy (what is more innately creative than the energy that manifests a new life?) has been warped and applied to children. I, too, have lamented this modern development. By objectifying children, young girls, the girls are stripped of their innocence and childhood, forced into an adult realm where they are neither sophisticated enough nor able to fend off the inevitable advances of boys and men stimulated by the visual. Cassy says:

Popular tween store Limited Too is a must-stop at the mall for girls between the ages of, say, 7 and 15, features bras and assorted panties -- from bikini bottoms to boy-cut shorts to thongs -- for little girls. Camisoles feature plunging necklines, skirts are short, and all the clothes in the store follow the fashions of celebrities like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton.

The energy required to create bras and camisoles for a seven year old could surely be put to better use, no?

Hollywood and fashion change agents face the same old question: Do they reflect the culture or do they create it? There is a symbiotic relationship between art and the culture at large, to be sure. But, the desire by the marketeers to elevate the base and promote the degrading has reached a fevered pitch in recent years.

The new "normal" is abnormal and devoid of beauty, meaning, and light. Empty nihilism is promoted and extolled. After years of bravery and valor and courage and honor, there has yet to be one movie highlighting the good of American soldiers. After years of turning the African AIDs tragedy around, there is yet to be one story of hope and life. After the millions of lives saved through medicine, every movie frames the people working to change the world for the positive as greedy and wrong.

There is much that is right in America, but you won't see it. This bias reinforces the base and degrading because the good and the beautiful will never be elevated. And so yes, the culture has degraded, but instead of fighting the tide, those who vent their cynicism, feed it with their creations.

The energy spent to destroy, could be spent to build. Unfortunately, destruction seems to be the goal.

On Waterboarding

Does anyone really question whether waterboarding is torture? Read this and see what you think and then come back.

This really doesn't address the question, does it? Waterboarding doesn't leave a physical mark, it won't kill a person, and it works effectively. It is coercive. The person feels like he will die and will spill the beans, if he has any, quickly. To me, it's torture.

The question, though is this: Is torture worth it to prevent further catastrophe? If you caught an operative who knew the placement of a dirty bomb set to go off in a city, would you waterboard him? I would. Without guilt. I'd have some anxiety though.

It becomes a question of how accurate your information is about the dude you're about to torture. Torture in the hands of the sadistic and paranoid is one person's pain for another person's pleasure. That is wrong. And everyone advocating for no torture (which means only America or the Western countries don't torture, because we know Al Qaeda tortures and waterboarding is the least of their techniques) envisions some sinister government operative pulling out his briefcase of horror, chuckling in delight. This is a worrisome picture, indeed.

An act of torture to prevent the deaths of soldiers or citizens is not immoral. To do nothing, to let people die in the name of a principle is to put the principle--torture is wrong--above life itself. The life a scumbag terrorist is not valued over the lives of scores or hundreds or thousands of free people.

That's the uncomfortable truth under all the babbling about whether torture is wrong or not. Of course it's wrong. Mass murder is wrong, too. Those against the use of torture in all cases seem to be willing to detach themselves from the consequences of their actions. Nope, they're not responsible for the murder, when the murderer is sitting there with the information and they could stop it.

In a free country, we're all responsible. I think citizens have come to that uncomfortable place. You don't hear people lamenting a terrorist getting waterboarded to prevent death. Ok, maybe some at the fringes lament it, but most people are pragmatic. We're at war with an enemy who has no regard for life. So, he can forfeit his, if necessary, to preserve the lives of those who value it. Or, he can just bear the psychological scars inherent in being waterboarded. Add the trauma to the rest of his demented psyche.

It Doesn't Take Much To Change A Life

Have you read the stories where an elementary school teacher took an interest in a child, maybe told him once that he was smart and had a future and that was all it took? The child clung to those words and believed them and made them real in his life. The words and the love behind them literally changed the world for that person.

It doesn't take much to change a life.

A kind word, a word fitly spoken can be like rain on the seed of possibility for a person. But it takes love and awareness and the ability to see outside ourselves to give those words. And, it takes the same to receive them.

Recently, I've reconnected with some friends who have challenged me to examine my beliefs about myself and my world view. I've had the perfect friend-storm recently. And they have showered me with healing words, but I had to be ready for them.

It's strange. These friends have been here all along. The love was all around and untapped. We have to open ourselves up to the rain. For a seed to grow, it has to break open and accept the nutrition. Growth isn't a solitary process.

So here's another post to encourage you to open up, engage, and let the love flow in. For me, it has happened by being more proactive about letting the love flow out. Giving sweet, loving words costs nothing, but they can mean everything.

It doesn't take much to change a life.

On The "Moral Instinct"

Scientists work feverishly to unravel the mysteries of the mind and they are many. In The Time's Magazine this week, Stephen Pinker writes about what motivates man's moral decisions. He calls it the "moral instinct". Instinct implies that men are born encoded with morality--it's instinctual. Perhaps. My thought is that man is born with the bias toward morality.

So there are five factors that appear to be encoded to people's moral sense no matter where they live in the world:

When anthropologists like Richard Shweder and Alan Fiske survey moral concerns across the globe, they find that a few themes keep popping up from amid the diversity. People everywhere, at least in some circumstances and with certain other folks in mind, think it’s bad to harm others and good to help them. They have a sense of fairness: that one should reciprocate favors, reward benefactors and punish cheaters. They value loyalty to a group, sharing and solidarity among its members and conformity to its norms. They believe that it is right to defer to legitimate authorities and to respect people with high status. And they exalt purity, cleanliness and sanctity while loathing defilement, contamination and carnality.

The exact number of themes depends on whether you’re a lumper or a splitter, but Haidt counts five — harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity — and suggests that they are the primary colors of our moral sense. Not only do they keep reappearing in cross-cultural surveys, but each one tugs on the moral intuitions of people in our own culture.

So every culture exhibits these traits to one extent or another. However, buried in the midst of the article is this fascinating tid-bit:

The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres. In a large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five. It’s not surprising that each side thinks it is driven by lofty ethical values and that the other side is base and unprincipled.

So, Republicans do value a broad-based morality after all. Well, according to the writer, not so fast. Morality, even Hitler's, is relative and can be understood:

At the very least, the science tells us that even when our adversaries’ agenda is most baffling, they may not be amoral psychopaths but in the throes of a moral mind-set that appears to them to be every bit as mandatory and universal as ours does to us. Of course, some adversaries really are psychopaths, and others are so poisoned by a punitive moralization that they are beyond the pale of reason. (The actor Will Smith had many historians on his side when he recently speculated to the press that Hitler thought he was acting morally.) But in any conflict in which a meeting of the minds is not completely hopeless, a recognition that the other guy is acting from moral rather than venal reasons can be a first patch of common ground. One side can acknowledge the other’s concern for community or stability or fairness or dignity, even while arguing that some other value should trump it in that instance. With affirmative action, for example, the opponents can be seen as arguing from a sense of fairness, not racism, and the defenders can be seen as acting from a concern with community, not bureaucratic power. Liberals can ratify conservatives’ concern with families while noting that gay marriage is perfectly consistent with that concern.

So there is no objective right or wrong, morality is subjective. What Pinker fails to acknowledge is how to come to a moral decision when both parties feel morally correct. Clearly, there are psychopaths, clearly. But maybe the psychopath believes he's being moral--how many serial killers exact their form of "justice" on prostitutes? And who are you to say he's wrong?

Who is any man to decide, indeed? The whole article is worth reading, but like most things scientific, don't expect any answers to the big questions. Expect more questions.

Finding God Through The Big Screen

The new televangelism isn't sending money to Joel Osteen, it's sending it to the makers of the technology that brings us Joel Osteen. Instead of worshiping the image or the worshiping the image's message, worship the thing. Attribute spiritual meaning to material things. It's safer. There is no harm done. So says Blunt Instrument writer John Birmingham:

The two incidents were unrelated, and yet simple timing and a thematic unity balanced them perfectly against each other. In Khartoum you've got the machinery of a state, powered by Sharia Law, initially threatening to lash a woman for, let's face it, utter fracking nonsense. Now released, after enormous pressure from the West, including Muslim politicians from the UK, she was very much a victim of stupid, unthinking, religious bigotry, which brings us to...

...Sydney, where I'm going to take a punt and guess that you've got a couple of morons, inspired by the increasing bitterness of a campaign against the building of an Islamic school at Camden, who've done three minutes of wiki-research on Islamic religious practice before heading off to the butcher to craft their elegant statement on faith and civil society. Either that or a couple of liberal party campaign workers were just getting in a bit of practice.

Well, a pox on all their houses, I say. Soulless, postmodern materialism might be all soulless and po-mo and materialistic. Not to mention really, really expensive. But I don't think anybody's going to strap on a bomb belt, or climb into their white hooded sheet for a little lynch-o-rama cross-burning action, just because somebody else insulted their Bravia, or defamed the prophet Jimmy Choo, or failed to show the requisite level of appreciation for the awesome righteousness of a shiny new Lexus LF-A.

And I don't see the materialistic people jumping to defend anyone or anything. They are so numbed that they don't have the energy to even defend their stuff.

It's fuzzy thinking like this that makes me more than a little nervous for Western civilization. A person has to believe that something is worth defending. A flat-screen TV might not be enough motivation. Then again, for some, it might be.

Secular societies filled with narcissistic recliner dwelling potatoes might not blow anyone else up, but I fear they won't have the energy to defend themselves or their freedom to sit like a lump, either. Like marijuana (which I think should be legalized, by the way), the religion of the Big TV is passive. It won't hurt anyone (although that's debatable, too), but it won't help anyone, either.

Yes, the religious nuts are exasperating, but the materialistic consumer devoid of any belief or mission, seems awfully ripe for exploitation.

The Death Penalty: Data Backs Common Sense

You know how everyone intuitively understands that the death penalty stops some (not all) criminals? Among friends, I've had discussions where people wonder why anyone would commit a murder in Texas. Criminals seem absolutely terrified of being extradited to Texas for good reason. In Texas, they get killed, good and dead.

You know how all the pointy heads said that the death penalty isn't a deterrent it's just society's blood-thirsty need for vengeance? And you know how you thought to yourself, whatever, that scum-sucking psycho murderer rapist has zero chance of hurting anyone else and maybe some other scum will think twice.

Turns out, conventional wisdom was right.

According to roughly a dozen recent studies, executions save lives. For each inmate put to death, the studies say, 3 to 18 murders are prevented.

The effect is most pronounced, according to some studies, in Texas and other states that execute condemned inmates relatively often and relatively quickly.

The studies, performed by economists in the past decade, compare the number of executions in different jurisdictions with homicide rates over time — while trying to eliminate the effects of crime rates, conviction rates and other factors — and say that murder rates tend to fall as executions rise. One influential study looked at 3,054 counties over two decades.

“I personally am opposed to the death penalty,” said H. Naci Mocan, an economist at Louisiana State University and an author of a study finding that each execution saves five lives. “But my research shows that there is a deterrent effect.”

I know. Shocking. But still, it's nice to have data back up common sense.

Selling A Kidney: Utilitarianism and Health

Sell a kidney is the "radical" idea to save people who need kidney transplants, reports the Wall Street Journal. It's an interesting, if not very original, idea. It's also fairly easy to predict the consequences of allowing kidney sales because it's what already happens with sales of other, um, body parts and by-products:

1. College students would have another income stream besides plasma donation, sperm donation, egg donation, biopsy donation (medical experiments), psychology experiments, etc. As it is, their youth, vitality, idealism, and ignorance get exploited to help the world.
2. Poor people would sell kidneys to make money.
3. The market would have more kidneys.
   
4. Less sick people will die.
   
5. More people will die when they get older and their own ill health kicks in and they only have one kidney.
6. There will be a backlash.
7. People will stop donating and/or selling kidneys.

Number 7 will happen a generation or so from now. Maybe. One doctor is all for creating a free market kidney solution. His friend thinks it's a bad idea:

Among his opponents on the issue is a friend and colleague, Francis Delmonico. A Harvard University professor who has played a central role in shaping national transplant policy, the 62-year-old physician has several objections to organ sales. He fears such a system would attract the poor, vulnerable and unhealthy, and that altruistic donations might wither away.

"Payments eventually result in the exploitation of the individual," says Dr. Delmonico, who also worries about encouraging black-market sales both here and in developing countries. "It's the poor person who sells."

This would be my position. One might object, but you don't have a kidney problem. True enough. But I worry about the exploitation of people and to me, that seems inevitable. The greater concern, and it's one seldom looked at, is the effect that creating an organ market will have on society as a whole. To me, it will make the moral boundaries even more ambiguous.

Selling organs will commoditize (if that's a word) life.

Courting Killer: Columbia Was Chosen For A Reason

It now seems that Ahmadinejad chose Columbia (they didn't invite him) because of Columbia's storied past. Columbia invited Hitler's envoy. This was what then President Butler said:

In response, President Butler harrumphed something about how Columbia "does not ask what a man's opinions may be but only whether he is intelligent, honest, and well-mannered in their presentation and discussion. There is no subject which a company of scholars such as that assembled on Morningside Heights, is not prepared to have presented to it by a man or woman of high intelligence and good manners, and to hear fully discussed and debated." When the "well-mannered" Herr Luther made his appearance on Morningside Heights, it seems only to have whetted the Nazi lust — and to have established a precedent for abasement. It turned out that the only kind of intercourse the Nazis understood was the kind conducted by General Eisenhower, who not only liberated Europe but went on to Morningside Heights, where he brought great distinction to the presidency of the University.

Columbia's modern president shows the same kind of moral obtuseness and it's astounding. Because Ahmadinejad spits his venom at a common enemy, George Bush, a good portion of the Left don't mind that the poison would ultimately kill them, too.

This is where consuming hatred gets a person: the line between rage and suicide blends. Would Dean Coatsworth rather die than honor his own country? If Ahmadinejad has his way, everything Western, American, Israeli, Jewish and Democratic will give way to Sharia and death squads and extermination. Dean Coatsworth would not be spared this fate, his lofty ideals notwithstanding. Back to a quoted Jeff Goldstein post of yor:

And so we have Islamic fascists exploiting the postmodern rhetorical assumptions of a western socialist / progressivist left in order to bring about the spread of totalitarianism.

Goldstein says today:

"Of course we’d invite Hitler to speak”
So says the Dean of Columbia. Sadly, no follow-up question asking how he might react should der Fuhrer get a little tipsy at the post-speech cocktail party and order his band of traveling storm troopers to stuff a dozen or so gypsies, a gay couple, and 6 million Jews into one of the caterer’s mobile convection ovens.

Which is a shame, really, because I think there’s half a chance we’d have been treated to a bit about “respecting cultural differences.

It is doubtless that Ahmadinejad knows Columbia's history. He chose Columbia for a reason. He knows our history even if the scholars choose to forget theirs. These Western elites don't mind being played for fools. Again. That's why I don't call them Useful Idiots. They are worse than useful because they are not idiots. They are intelligent. They know the game and they have chosen a side and they don't stand for freedom, no matter how they spin it. They stand for oppression and extermination. Anyone with any sense will revile them. Men like Dean Coatsworth are disgusting human beings.

P.S. This is the same institution who wouldn't allow the Minutemen to engage in the free exchange of ideas. Some ideas are more "correct" than others.

Brian DePalma, Hollywood "Realism" and The Negative Spirit UPDATED

A slew of anti-American, anti-military, anti-Iraq mission films will be coming out and one in particular, the Brian De Palma directed Redacted shocked the Venice film festival attendees. The story portrays the rape and murder of a 14 year old Iraqi girl and then murder of her family at the hands of U.S. soldiers. This is a true story. It is a horrible story. It is a shameful story.

And it is one story.

Iraq overflows with stories. So much so that I remember Michael Yon writing about being overwhelmed with the information he has to process every day while embedded with various groups of soldiers. So a writer must choose his stories. The stories chosen reveal as much about the journalist, writer or director as they reveal about the subject.

In the sea of Iraq war stories, Brian De Palma swims into a particularly diseased water. He could swim all year. He chooses to swim during the red tide.

De Palma's choice, really all of Hollywood's choice, is to judge the military, judge the Iraq mission and judge America with a "realistic" eye. This is an interesting perspective. Other "realities" include soldiers who sacrifice themselves, soldiers who save babies, soldiers who save dogs, soldiers who befriend former enemies. The war is a complex tapestry, all of it real, some ugly and some beautiful. The Left sees the ugly and believes they see the truth. But while it may be real, it can't be said that it's true, because truth is a whole picture--the good and the evil.

It is especially easy to see the evil. It takes no special gift to portray the wretched and shocking and call it art. The Anchoress says:

Mostly this “offensive” art seems juvenile to me - it feels like the sort of stuff you come up with when you’re 14, or at least the stuff I would have come up with when I was 14. Daring? No. It’s actually as safe as denouncing Bush, because Christians do not riot or separate heads from bodies simply because someone drew a picture. This stuff is not edgy, just rather pedestrian.

It's safe depicting those who protect you because you feel safe in the comforting arms of democracy and artistic freedom. No government agent will take your art and destroy it. No jack boot will be at your back.

Along these lines, I was reading G. K. Chesterton today. This time Heretics. Again, I'm delighting in his humorous skewering of modern thought. The progressives are nothing if not predictable. Chesterton wrote Heretics in 1905 and his arguments are as fresh during this murky post-modern mushy headedness today as they were then. Chapter two is titled The Negative Spirit. Does anything so describe Western Leftists as a "negative spirit"? No. Chesterton says this:

The tradition of calling a spade a spade starts very early in our literature and comes down very late. But the truth is that the ordinary honest man, whatever vague account he may have given of his feelings, was not either disgusted or een annoyed at the candour of the moderns. What disgusted him, and very justly, was not the presence of a clear realism, but the absence of a clear idealism.

It's not the realism of De Palma's film that will be objectionable, for the facts he presents may well be the real ones (that remains to be demonstrated, however; Hollywood and the media in general excels at sins of omission). What I already object to, without having seen the film, is that in the totality of truth portraying only one factual story becomes, in essence, a lie.

Hollywood and a huge segment of the media seem determined not to see the truth but to see one reality. It is a narrative and parts of it are real, but it's not the truth. The truth is revealed by seeing the whole not just one small part.

If Hollywood and the media want to be viewed with respect again, perhaps they would consider telling the whole truth.



UPDATE: Roger Simon weighs in:

So why would DePalma choose to tell this story now?

Propaganda, of course. But there's a bit more. We are all creatures of our times and of our great successes. This is perfectly human. DePalma, quintessentially a man of my generation, equates Iraq with Vietnam not just because he may think they are the same (ridiculous as that is) but because Vietnam made him the man he is today. In other words, he was able to live a fantastic Hollywood life (even with the normal vicissitudes),including the fancy houses, cars, women, etc., by being a "groovy" man of his generation - militantly opposed to Vietnam War and for all traditional PC things. Why change? Indeed, why not drill down further into the old well when things aren't as they once were. Why think about the specifics of the current situation or about history? They would only disrupt personal progress.

There are many films, real and truthful, that haven't been made.

Glenn Reynolds comments:

HOW ABOUT A MOVIE WHERE HOLLYWOOD FILMMAKERS TAKE MONEY FROM AMERICA'S ENEMIES TO UNDERMINE MORALE? It wouldn't be any more dishonest than Brian de Palma's latest.

The truth? Hollywood can't handle the truth! How ironic that Jack Nicholson's A Few Good Men character displayed the sneering contempt of a corrupt military commander when the character more rightly embodies Hollywood's contempt for all things moral and military.

G.K. Chesterton's Modern Thoughts: Part I The Candid Friend & Traitor

Around six months ago, the Anchoress made the recommendation to get to know G.K. Chesterton. Taking her advice, I've been slowly, very slowly, reading and digesting his seminal work: Orthodoxy. It is such a rich meal, that I've taken to using a hi-lighter on the most incisive points and it's a hardcover book; besmirching a hardcover, something I never usually do. There is so much to be recommended from each chapter that it's difficult to know where to start.

The most surprising part of Chesterton's takes is their timeliness. The man died in 1936, was born in 1874 and his writing is proof of Solomon's wisdom that "there's nothing new under the sun". Orthodoxy was published in 1908 as a companion to his 1905 work Heretics, which I have yet to read.

Anyway, to honor both Chesterton and the fine writer, The Anchoress, who pointed me in his direction, and to bring some of his ideas to my audience I decided to do a daily bit this week on Chesterton's wisdom as it applies today, starting with "The Candid Friend" from Chapter Five.

The Candid Friend, the world is full of them these days. Chesterton called them the "anti-patriot":

I venture to say that what is bad in the candid friend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back--his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. This is certainly, I think what makes a certain sort of anti-patriot irritating to healthy citizens.

...the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all. And he may be said, without rhetoric, to be a traitor; for he is using that ugly knowledge, which was allowed him to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it. Because he is allowed to be pessimistic as a military adviser, he is being pessimistic as a recruiting sergeant. Just in the same way the pessimist (who is the cosmic anti-patriot) uses the freedom that life allows to her counselors to lure away the people from her flag.

The evil of the pessimist is, then, not that he chastises gods and men, but that he does not love what he chastises--he has not this primary and supernatural loyalty to things.

This at least had come to be my position about all that was called optimism, pessimism, and improvement. Before any cosmic act of reform, we must have a cosmic oath of allegiance.

We all know someone who has offered their opinion for your own good and it hasn't felt beneficial at all. We all know someone from whom we dread hearing the phrase, "to be honest...". There are those I've dreaded in my life that way, and I have, if I'm honest with myself, at times, been that uncandid person to be dreaded. Honesty only works when deep allegiance, devotion and love forms the foundation.

To bring Chesterton's ideas forward: The problem with some of our leaders these days (those who greatly desire illegal immigration reform or to abandon our world-wide fight for freedom from suicidal and homicidal ideologies and those infected by them) is that these people offer their honest opinion but one suspects that they not only lack allegiance they lack love and devotion to the ideas and country that provides them the opportunity to express their "honesty." They are ungrateful pessimists.

When Harry Reid declared that America had lost in Iraq many reacted, rightly, with revulsion. Underneath his candidness is cruelty to the soldier, to the patriot, to the idea of freedom. This is not George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson declaring defeat. Their devotion to our nation is not questioned. A man's opinion or idea can be more carefully considered if one is confident that his opinion or criticism comes from love of country. America's leaders these days seem consumed with an irrational love--for themselves.

It's not just lack of love of country. There are too many Americans these days afraid to be a patriot for fear that it makes them somehow love the world's diverse inhabitants and ideas less. But one thing isn't connected to the other unless you are a dedicated multi-culturalist, in which case, the only love possible is to love everyone equally which just as easily means to love no one.

Environmentalists, Code Pink, actors, musicians, Leftist Democrats, the MSM. You name them, their criticism will be taken in a better spirit when they demonstrate their patriotism first. Why, yes, I question their patriotism.

Create or Kill

Every day we have the choice: create or kill. As the psycho who cruelly murdered those V-Tech students demonstrates, one person possesses a lot of power to destroy, if his mind is intent on it. This same person could have used his power to build, create and make the world a better place. Too often, we go through life, living like we don't have a choice. We always have a choice.

Enjoy this amazing ice skating. These skaters have created something beautiful and lasting.

Would You Kill Bambi? I Mean Knute?

Knute is a polar bear and if animal rights activists get their way, they'll go pro-choice on his soft, white, fuzzy butt. Knute isn't being raised by the "right" kind of family. His adoptive family is a different race, I mean species, and that's just not normal. His mother didn't want him, and when the abortion (okay food and love) failed, the activists say, "Kill 'im". Death is better than the pathetic, limited, deprived life at a zoo. It's like a life sentence, man! That's way worse than the death penalty.

Well, Knute wouldn't be the first adopted kid to survive, a bit scarred maybe, a bit weird possibly, but okay and at least, alive. And he could have a future as a "stud". How bad is that?

Orthodoxy

I thought I'd let you all in on what I'm reading right now. I have read C.S. Lewis, his book Mere Christianity is a must. I have read Tolkien (and am disturbingly nerdy about it--just ask my family), but had never read his mentor, either. The man who influenced them must have been a giant, right?

Bigger than giant. The Anchoress referenced G.K. Chesterton for the umpteenth time and I thought to myself, I gotta finally read this, I'm sick of being out of the loop.

Thirteen pages in and he had more money quotes than I could high-light. My faith is renewing with each paragraph. I have his other books coming in the mail, too. I eagerly anticipate reading them! I'll include the links to them all. By the way, he is immensely entertaining to read and while the topics are chewy, his prose goes down easy. You'll enjoy him, I promise.






I haven't bought this last one yet, but I'm going to soon. He was prolific. It's going to take me a while to get through his works.

Dr. Sanity On Compassion And Truth

Dr. Sanity starts her post today with a paradox:

Epimenides' Paradox, sometimes called "The Cretan Paradox" or "The Liar's Paradox, typically goes as follows: Epimenides, a Cretan, made the statement: "All Cretans are liars." Is his statement true?

She ends her post with another paradox:

Compassion is not sitting around, crying and hugging them as they avoid the truth; it is bringing them to that truth, and standing with them in all their pain as they confront it.

Sometimes all you can do is ally yourself with the truth, and make a committment to uncover it, no matter what unpleasantness it leads to.

There are some serious betrayals of all that this country stands for going on right now. The contradictory discourses that confront the American public daily in the media and from the left has made them confused and uncertain as to who to believe; and what is true. Enemy propaganda is presented as absolute fact. Anything the current administration says or does is angrily disputed and called lies.

The public is being manipulated by those they trusted to bring them the truth; but who instead resort to postmodern rhetoric with its neverending cycle of paradoxical accusations and hysteria.

In order to return to psychological health, the lies and distortions that support and encourage these betrayals need to be confronted and exposed, and a committment to objective reality and truth reaffirmed.

A 21st century postmodernist, who believe that the dictums of postmodernism are absolutely true, makes the statement that "all truth is relative". Why should we bother to listen to anything he says?

In between, she has many great points. Go read them.

A thought occurs to me reading her post. "All truth is relative" is an especially seductive philosophy because it lets everyone, including the person saying it, off the hook. How often do people excuse their own injurious, unethical and immoral behavior with statements like, 'If you'd been through, what I went through, you'd understand", or "It's not a simple as it looks", or "Don't judge me until you've walked a mile in my shoes." There are many more rationalizations we all make for our less than ideal behavior. To read an excellent example of my own, go here.

And, we all know the "ideal" behavior don't we? Even those who haven't darkened a church's door know, intuitively, that taking a hatchet to their brother's skull because he said something mean is wrong. Everyone intuitively knows that it is wrong to sleep with his best friend's wife. Everyone knows it's wrong to steal.

Even in matters far less grave, people are innately attached to the truth. Everyone knows that eating that last two dozen cookies probably isn't good for health. Everyone knows that those cheese nachos, six-pack of coke and sitting on the couch watching TV for eight hours isn't good for waistline. Everyone knows that unprotected sex can lead to babies, STDs and everything else.

Our whole jury system works based on what a "reasonable person" knows. There is a body of truth that we hold self evident and no Divine inspiration or text needed to impart it. We all only get squishy on the truth, when the truth isn't convenient for us individually. We all do this to our own detriment. When we ignore the truth and try to justify our own unhelpful and bad beliefs, thoughts, emotions and actions we hurt ourselves and usually, we hurt someone else. Some would say that by hurting ourselves we harm others.

The most sane, rational people live truthfully and speak the truth and defend the truth. And yet, the Left consistently wants to paint anyone with an attachment to the truth as Bible-thumping Christofascist unhinged from "reality". Reality is, in that backward philosophy, what that person is personally experiencing and justifies any action (usually destructive to society) the person or group want to take.

Leaving behind the "all truth is relative" mantra means leaving behind the circular and maddeningly unreasonable reasoning. Attaching firmly to the truth and having the truth inform and guide one's fate, and that truth includes the humility of admitting to not knowing everything, but to knowing this much is true, confers sanity and a sound mind and freedom.

Getting Real--Taking On Postmodernism's Mushy Headedness

Over the weekend Dr. Pat Santy and my blog-friend MaxedOutMama wrote compelling pieces on the nature of reality. (Please read both!) I can hear the collective sigh, but snap to, people! This is important. The real divide worldwide is philosophical. The war we wage is a war of ideas. There are reasons why Bush went to war and there are feelings why Democrats and progressives fight it.

Let's make this argument practical. Today in England, these topics are being debated not in abstract but concretely. Who deserves to die without choice is the question. Answer: 1) euthanasia for newborns who are sick or disabled and 2) Saddam Hussein's life should be spared. The first argument involves arguments about having a "useful life". The second argument involves a morally-superior sounding "humanitarianism". But whose life is worth less? A raping, murdering despot or an innocent, disabled child?

So the overall topic is important: what is real? The two sides of the divide are: what I experience is the only real thing or there is universal experience that is real. Dr. Santy says:

Well, let me tell you that this particular philosophical problem is not abstract at all, but one which pops up all the time in current discussions--even on this blog. How you deal with the concept of universals turns out to be extremely important, particularly in rational discourse, where objective reality and truth are necessary.

Consider this: if there is no way to account for generalizations or universals through empirical experience, then all such attributions may be considered subjective and hence, invalid.

In this word of subjectivity, my experience with gravity is as valid is say, Albert Einstein's. I say gravity is my friend and I don't fall down, I simply float. Albert sees me walking on the ground and says, Melissa, dear, you're planted to the earth. I reply, "That's what you think. You just don't get my reality." Does this conversation sound insane? Well, it is unless you don't believe in any universalities. When everyone's experience is "real", what is reality?

MaxedOutMama points out the logical ends of this thinking:

It follows also that no argument can be settled by recourse to reason or law, which leaves all arguments to be settled only by force. Seriously. Think about it. All law depends upon the ability to create abstract definitional categories, and then to assign individual behaviors or actions as being within the category or outside of it. A law as simple as the laws mandating that establishments that sell food require shirts and shoes on their customers cannot be enforced if the definition of "shirt" or "shoe" is considered infinitely malleable.

I believe this is the reason for the extreme left's love affair with dictators; unconsciously they know that in their epistemological view of the world, only a dictator can bring peace, because only a dictator can enforce law. [my emphasis, -ed.]

She states further:

This, of course, is the reason why so many of these leftists have fallen in love with Islamacist terrorism, even while they excoriate the evils of Judeo-Christian religion. To a person who does believe in universals, it is puzzling beyond belief that the same person can excoriate one religion and exalt a sect of another. But leftists recognize their counterparts quite accurately; it is the universality of the concepts and laws in the Judeo-Christian tradition that they resent (because they perceive them as a direct impairment on their individual lives), whereas the credo of the Islamicist terrorists is very simple. Quite literally, those who are taught in this tradition are told that anyone who does not believe what they (the terrorist) believes is an enemy of God and should be killed. Children raised in this belief system make admirable footsoldiers, and are the world's quintessential "useful idiots".

Mama is on a roll and continues:

To restate this, if your entire world is defined by yourself, disagreement is an attack upon your entire world. Disagreement is experienced as a literal attack, equivalent in psychic shock to someone busting down your door in the middle of the night and beating you within your own home.

The deep insecurity engendered by questioning the worldview of those who don't believe in universality and objectivity generates a strong defensive response beginning as fear, which is expressed as anger and then restated to the self as contempt. But the contempt does not adequately reddress the fear, and inevitably mutates into a fixed rage against the opponent. Human beings filled with rage inevitably hate.

Jeff Goldstein, back in the day, has taken on postmodernism and skewered it over and over. He says here in a post titled "Life and Death: Western guilt blinds us to the nature of Islamic extremism":

This is an interesting phenomenon, and one I’ve noted before. Specifically, a medievalist, pre-modern mindset like the ine animating the Islamofascist movement is, ironically, quite adept at using postmodern observations about the nature of truth to sustain a rhetorical advantage over the West. And it does so by playing to the West’s arrogance—its idea that, because it has embraced the tenet of multiculturalism, it is somehow showing itself to be tolerant and nuanced in its dealings with the Other.

But recent history has shown us that all this Western “understanding” is a ruse. Instead, it is a mindset that pretends to an understanding by deferring to the Other, a maneuver that serves only to undermine Enlightenment principles and ideas of universal rights while simultaneously giving control of the identity narrative to groups it purports to “understand”, who are then able to use that control to affect victim status, define and shame their enemies, and bracket out unfriendly criticisms.

But this only works because the premises have been accepted by many in the western intelligensia, and have, from there, made their way into public and social policy. I have noted time and again how this process proceeds from (or is reinforced by) the acceptance of certain linguistic assumptions—precisely those favored by political and social movements that are collectivist in nature.

And so we have Islamic fascists exploiting the postmodern rhetorical assumptions of a western socialist / progressivist left in order to bring about the spread of totalitarianism.

I made this huge, because this is the crux of the matter. The John Kerry's and Teddy Kennedy's of the world aid and abet this march to submission either overtly (sending love letters via the KGB) or covertly (cooing reassuringly that "America must be willing to redeploy and step out of the way."). The end result is the same: by embracing a multicultural, every reality is as valid as every other reality philosophy, they've embraced a totalitarianism that wishes to enslave them. It is suicide and to them, it is defined as liberty.

It really comes down to foregoing reality to listen the sticky, honey hued rhetoric that promises to reduce harm and help more by walking away. When any aggressive act is viewed as a loss, then actually losing has no reality. We haven't lost in Iraq, but to the left, going to Iraq was a loss at the outset. They cannot even entertain what a true loss will mean. Actually, to them losing, retreating, would be winning.

Jeff is right: the language is being butchered at the altar of self which ironically, embraces collectivism. The war we fight is against this thinking. Once that war is won, Iraq and obliterating Islamofascism will be simply one of applying the undivided will to win.