Deep Thought

So the news is showing us that the government is planning to give billions of dollars of tax money to the auto industry and, in return, the government will largely run the auto industry. The argument isn’t if, it is how. At the same time, a state governor is trying to coerce a bank into paying for a failed business because the bank wouldn’t give the business a loan.  We already have incredible governmental influence/control of the major financial institutions after the first of the big bailouts.

It seems that no one involved has read Hilaire Belloc’s classic The Servile State. In this book Belloc sets forth a compelling argument that laissez faire capitalism was not a natural outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution but rather the result of wholesale theft during the dissolution of the English monasteries under Henry VIII. Belloc predicted that the eventual outcome of laissez faire capitalism was a sort of rolling crisis that caused the government to intervene in the economy again and again until the only real capitalist left was the government. Then, once the government was the effective owner of all businesses and de facto controller of the economy then people would be bound to their roles in the economy (worker, manager, etc.) by the law. In the end, people are bound by the law to work as they are told to by the government in a situation worse than any serf of the Middle Ages and the best a person could hope for while trapped in this Servile State was that they could convince the government to give them a few luxuries, like cigarettes.

The Servile State was written in 1912 and was quite famous for generations. Seems like no one reads it much anymore, though.

As my long-term reader knows (hi, honey!), I never call myself a Republican. This is because I am not a Republican. Recently I have been hesitant to call myself a conservative because, well, to the average person this conjures up guys like George Bush (either one), the Governator, or other high-profile Republicans – people whom I disagree with politically. AS I have been saying since the earliest days of my blog, I am not a Democrat, nor a Republican; I am a Catholic.

To be more precise, I am generally socially very conservative and fiscally a Distributist. This makes me the virtually exact opposite of the ‘secular conservative’ section of the Republican Party that seems to hold sway. Essentially Libertarians, these secular conservatives are staunch laissez fair Capitalists and socially liberal.

The reason that fiscal conservatives and social conservatives are linked is, well, coincidence. As I have mentioned before, the drift of the Democratic Party towards ‘Acid, Amnesty and Abortion’ caused many social conservatives to be forced out of the ranks of the Democrats. Further, the population shifts of the 1960’s through 1990’s saw a change in the ‘center of gravity’ from the post-affluent New England to the economically-recovering South, leading to an increase in social conservatism overall in an area that was shifting fiscally conservative due to economic growth. Add in the desire of Republicans to start winning more elections and the republican leaders courted the increasingly-organized social conservatives that were making new groups in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

What linked these groups together was less shared objectives than a shared foe, the concept of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ played out on a national stage. The fiscal conservatives loathe the socialist economics of the Democratic Party even if they are neutral toward or even support many, if not most, Democratic social goals. The social conservatives loathe the social agenda of the Democratic Party even if they are often neutral toward or even support many of their fiscal agenda.

The alliance has been an uneasy one from the start. Because of history and patronage the leadership of the Republican Party remains overwhelmingly fiscally conservative and some are quite open in their dislike of social conservatives and their influence. Social conservatives have faced an increased sense of betrayal from the Republican Party as they continue to hope that their primary concerns will be a higher priority for the (mostly fiscal conservative) people they elect.

Personally, I doubt that this always-unlikely coalition can last. In the most recent election, after a number of fiscal conservative politicians and pundits openly opposed the religious ccandidates (Romney and Huckabee) and were usually extremely hostile to the lone religious nominee (Palin), it appears that a fair number of religiously-active (and therefore likely socially conservative voters) did not vote at all.

Hopefully a viable third party will emerge.

I am never going to be a top blogger. There are a lot of reasons for this, such as;

1) I am a political blogger who almost never writes about the ‘current events’ of politics

2) I am a religious blogger who almost never writes about the ‘current events’ of religion

3) My posts sometimes present a topic, demonstrate the societal dangers in that topic, bring up the source of those dangers, and then present no solutions

4) I sometimes have long gaps between posts. Like now.

All these things are OK. After all, it is my opinion that if a blog isn’t really for the author it is no longer a blog. Sure, people my enjoy reading it, visit often, etc. if it is a blog, but (IMHO) once it is about traffic and revenue, you are really ‘private media’. So I write about theory, concepts, and (for lack of a better term) big ideas, with some debunkings of poor logic and attempts at humor tossed in.

But I am sure that at least some of my writings are good, good enough that I could join the ranks of the top bloggers if I both wanted to and worked at it. I have three sources for this belief. The first consists of the fact that I was a finalist in the weblog awards for best individual blog twice(2006 and 2007) and finished in the running each time. The second is that my blog was once in the top 250 blogs at the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem – this was when I was writing regularly. And the third is that writers I respect have singled out my posts and directed others to them. I have been linked to by scores of blogs, including Michelle Malkin, American Digest, and even a couple of Instalanches. But the first top blogger to link to me was Dean Barnett.

Now more than two years ago Dean Barnett linked to what is my most=popular post, Rednecks, White Power, and Blue States. In the end this post had over 50 in-bound links, but the guy who started it all was Dean Barnett.

I had always liked Dean’s writing (even if he was a Red Sox fan) and I was quite proud of the link he gave me and its results. In his own writing and speaking he made no secret of his cystic fibrosis so I was not too surprised when I heard that he was recently hospitalized. I was surprised, thought, to hear he had died.

I will miss his writing, but I will never forget him. To his family I offer this; remember that we cry for ourselves, for he has gone on.

I was working on a piece about the bailout plans when I found that someone had beat me to it in very eloquent terms here.

h/t to Instapundit.

2,996 is an attempt to have bloggers place a separate tribute for each of the people who were killed on September 11^th, 2001 on the internet. When I heard of the project, I signed up immediately. Not because knew anyone personally, nor because I thought it would make me a hero, but for more complicated reasons.

As a veteran I had hoped that the random assignment of victim to blogger might allow me to write about a soldier in the pentagon, letting me use a quasi-personal connection to add depth. I was not assigned a soldier; I was assigned a young woman. A young woman with a connection a bit closer than any soldier I never met. A young woman that made me struggle with this tribute for weeks.

My struggle was about the focus of this tribute. At first, I wanted to avoid any mention of me, or my vague connection to some of the victims. I thought that this would make it more centered on the tragedy. No matter how I tried, though, it just sounded flat and dull. I realized that, for me at least, this tribute is about not “just” one of the 2,996 that died, but how we were all and affected. How each of these deaths touched each of us who lived. How the murder of these innocent people was an attack on each and every one of us, an attack that did harm by removing so many good people from our midst.

My job at the time of 9/11 meant that I had business to business dealings with literally thousands of firms all over the world. While most of these clients were rather distant and impersonal, some of these connections led to friendships that last to this day. One of the firms I dealt with, if rarely, was Fred Alger Management in Tower One of the World Trade Center complex. On the 93^rd floor, Fred Alger Management was in the area of the impact, blast, and initial fire of the first plane impact.

Of the 36 employees at Fred Alger Management at that time, none survived.

For the next few weeks a great deal of my life was helping firms in the WTC complex rebuild. One of those firms was Fred Alger Management. We did everything we could, as did thousands (if not millions) of other people at hundreds of other firms.

After it was all over, I moved on to another job at another firm. In 2004 and 2005 I traveled to New York and visited Ground Zero. On a small handful of occasions I spoke of the work I did, and about the firms I worked with where everyone there that day died in the attacks. I realized last Summer that the attacks sometimes seemed more immediate to me than my own, personal, brush with death in April 2001, just a few months before.

So, back to the beginning, when I heard of 2,996 I signed up right away. I did it because I know that there are many others who feel 9/11 and its impact every day. I need to talk about it, and you probably need to listen.

The person randomly assigned to me that day was Janice Ashley, a research assistant with Fred Alger Management.

As I began my research I immediately hoped to speak to her parents. I was able to identify her mother and, with a long chain of friends-of-friends, I was given her mother’s home number. I called it, spoke to a person who identified herself as having the same name as Janice Ashley’s mother and had the same address – and insisted she was no relation.

I spent two days thinking about this as I left messages with groups Janice’s mother is or was involved in, asking for contact. I left similar messages for friends and other relatives, all asking for some personal insight into Janice and her life. I was never called. As a result, I will respect the apparent desire for her family and friends for privacy [and I hope you will, too]. As the entire world fills itself with reminders 9/11 I am sure that the Ashley family is not alone in wishing to be left in peace while they mourn their loved ones.

As a result, I know the following about Janice Ashley. She was 25 years old. She graduated from Oceanside High School in 1994. She graduated from Cornell with a degree in English. She was an artist. She had many friends. She hoped to, some day, open a florist gift shop. She had a nice smile and was pretty in a wholesome, girl-next-door way.

These little details are just that – the little, important details, the stuff you would put in a bio about a promotion to vice-president, or a quick ‘please introduce yourself” speech at a three-day seminar. Where we were, where we are, where we want to go will always be the important details. But it still somehow misses so much. It doesn’t tell us if she liked dangly earrings, or if she hated lipstick. I don’t know if she liked caramel more than fudge, or butterscotch best of all. Did she have running gags with her friends, the sort of familiar, well-worn joke that could elicit a smile with just a word and a cocked eyebrow? I don’t know. And I never will.

Janice Ashley would be 30 years old right now, if she had not been murdered. In the five years that have elapsed since 9/11 she would have certainly met new people, made new friends, tried new things, and forgotten her keys once or twice. She didn’t get to do those things. All of the people she would have touched were prevented from doing so. All of the people she would have become close to have been robbed of a friend. Janice Ashley will never marry, she will never give her parents grandchildren, and she will never look forward to grandchildren of her own. She was denied the chance to have these things.

To the best of my knowledge, I never spoke with Janice when I called (or was called by) Fred Alger Management. Based upon what her family and friends say in other tributes and interviews, I think I would remember if I had. Much of the sorrow I feel about the death of Janice is for her family and friends, people who knew her and cared for her. But some of the sorrow I feel when I think of Janice, or of any of those killed that day, are for me and the rest of us who are still here. The attackers have denied us the chance to meet them, to learn from them, to love them. All of those people, 2,996 of them, were taken from us and we are poorer for it. I will never meet Janice when I am in New York talking to financial companies. I have no chance to see her on the street, or read about her promotion. I will never buy flowers for my wife in her store.

All of these rich, wonderful, frustrating, sometimes-boring, sometimes-sublime people have been taken from us. And we cannot get them back. The tragedy was a human one. The tragedy and the loss are ours and we are still learning just how big the loss was.

Good-bye, Janice. We all miss you.

The Wall of Americans tribute to Janice Ashley is here.

Chez Diva’s tribute is here.

The CNN.com tribute is here.

The legacy.com legacy is here.

The september11victims.com tribute is here.

A picture of the United in Memory quilt section for Janice can be seen here.

The blog is getting cleaned up and updated! yay!

The vaccination controversy has bubbled into the blogosphere via McCain and his comments supporting anti-vaccination parents recently. While the usual raft of ‘freethinkers’ and ‘skeptics’ were to be expected, there was also some serious negative attention paid by McArdle and Reynolds. With McArdle deliberately calling parents who refuse vaccinations ‘sociopaths’ amd Reynolds being marginally more kind, but still quite negative overall, I had to throw in my two cents.

Off the bat, I am not anti-vaccination, per se. The Airborne Philosophy Squad (Aristotlean) all have vaccinations against measles, mumps, polio, whooping cough, and other life-threatening diseases. But they do not need a vaccination vs. Hepatitis B, so they do not have one. The odds of chicken pox being lethal are vanishingly small, natural immunity from actually contracting chickenpox lasts much longer (thus reducing the odds of developing shingles later in life) so they don’t have that, either.

Does that make me a sociopath (per McArdle)? Am I ‘marginally educated’ (per Dr. George Milonas)? Am I stupid (per Reynolds)?

Of course, I do not agree with any of these assessments of my decision making. But I am also, perhaps, a bit more aware of what is actually going on with the many people like me that choose to avoid vaccines unless we decide they are truly needed. It’s a little something called risk assessment.

Parents do not have the time or access to carefully evaluate the scientific merits of various claims and counter-claims made by people with the medical establishment and their critics. As a matter of fact, parents that did that the time to do so wouldn’t have much time left to parent. Indeed, the details of medical research are so large and complicated that doctors cannot keep track of everything; why else would groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics feel the need to issue summaries for doctors to use as a sort of ‘cheat sheet’ of current medical knowledge?

Supporters of ‘vaccinate according to the AAP vaccine schedule or you are a Bad Parent’ are doing so because they conclude that doctors and medical claims from doctors are knowledge-based assessments – meaning a belief that the things told to us by research papers and medical professionals are only objective statements of fact. This is the largely-traditional view that medical research and doctors are objective sources of fact that are very cautious in their determination of fact.

Unfortunately, many people have serious problems viewing medical statements as objectively true. Thalidomide is often seen as an initial hammer-blow to the image of the doctor as being the most trustworthy of professions. After all, a widely-prescribed drug had truly horrific effects upon the most vulnerable people in society. As a result, the FDA’s ability to oversee drug safety was increased.

Of course, since then the widely-prescribed Vioxx was withdrawn for causing long-term heart damage; its successor, Prexige, was withdrawn from the market for causing liver damage. Both of these drugs were the subject of medical research, risk assessment, and testing trials before being approved by a number of governmental drug safety review groups around the world. Other drugs approved as ‘safe’ and later withdrawn include the combo called Fen-phen, cerivastatin, indoprofen, Raxar, Raplon, and a host of other drugs have all been approved for use within the last 20 years (usually much more recently), prescribed, and then withdrawn due to serious, often lethal, side effects. And, just to really ice the cake, as the vaccination/anti-vaccination debate was really getting into full swing in the late 1990’s the FDA (and others) approved RotaShield, a vaccine that was withdrawn because of its potentially serious side-effects.

I haven’t even discussed how Thiomerisol has been approved as safe, then withdrawn as potentially dangerous, and then re-approved as safe during the debate over how dangerous it may or may not be as an element of many vaccines.There is also the issue of whether transfats are good for you (as consumers were told for decades) or bad for you (as initial and current research state); what a healthy diet really consists of; whether beta carotene should be used as a supplement or not; indeed, the number of times medical professionals and groups (not to mention agencies like the FDA) have made claims to objective truth only to reverse themselves in the face of new evidence are legion.

As a result, no one should be surprised that the small but certainly non-zero chance that a drug prescribed by your doctor after many research papers and the FDA pronounce it safe has led a fair number of people to conclude that medical claims are not knowledge-based but are, instead, authority-based assessments – meaning claims that are evaluated by your trust of the people or groups making them. In short, the repeated failures of medical claims to represent objective truths force parents to evaluate all medical claims as subjective, not objective; this includes the claims of no link between vaccinations and autism.

Do some parents go overboard? Absolutely; of course, so do some medical professionals. But for the majority of parents  the decision to forgo as many vaccinations as they consider prudent is, indeed, a rational decision.

Will Wilkinson, whom we last touched on about his statements about prostitution, has tried to issue a rebuttal of my most recent post. Since Will has taken the time to respond to me, I will respond to his comments, as well. Let us start where he does.

“This post by one “Deep Thought” is a brilliant example [of being reductionist    about human love]:

This isn’t rocket science; men with easy access to prostitution or to promiscuous women have little incentive to marry. Suddenly there is nothing to offset their legal and financial obligations as a husband – so why take on the obligation? Women who are promiscuous face disease, pregnancy, and emotional trauma – all of them reduce their ability to be a valuable wife.

This probably helps explain what’s going on with prostitution bans, but is it supposed to be a moral reason to endorse them?”

OK, I appreciate his admission that my theory seems valid. After all, if I didn’t think it was valid, I’d have a different one! But his question reveals a lot about what I find wrong with his piece, as I will explain below.

Will goes on to make a semi-funny statement about what the value judgments involved in marriage are like on Planet Dim, then writes this;

“Maybe this tells us something about the great romance of being the mother of Deep Thought’s four children, but for my part, I share my life with Kerry because she is brilliant and exciting and we mesh in so many ways and I love her.”

What this has to do with anything is your guess. Since he seems to be implying that he loves his wife and I do not love mine, let us dismiss it as rather lame ad hominem. This theme continues;

“It gets even more obsessively biological. This is, sensibly enough I suppose, written by a Catholic guy with a theology degree who attends Latin mass and thinks “the Patriarchy, when controlled by Judeo-Christian morality, is a protector of and advocate for women.””

What does my degree, religion, or place of worship have to do with the validity of my theorem? Why, absolutely nothing! Will is not responding to my theory (which he started by admitting sounds valid) but in attempting to discredit me by painting me s a fringe figure. This is a classic ad hominem and tells me Will is reacting emotionally, not actually thinking. As Socrates might say “OK, I am a Catholic – so, what’s wrong with my theory?”

Will quotes me some more, with his own commentary;

““bans on prostitution exist not just to avoid the exploitation of sex workers; they are in place not just because the majority of world religions declare them immoral; they were passed not solely to fight the spread of disease; they were written with more than the goal of reducing the numbers of poor, fatherless children. No, they are there to protect the future.”

Again, I can see the explanatory power here. But to think that this has justificatory power is simply grotesque. This is to reduce individual human beings to tokens of a biological type, to reduce the purpose of an individual human life to a link in a biological chain there is no moral value in forging.”

OK, remember back when Will asked this question?

“This probably helps explain what’s going on with prostitution bans, but is it supposed to be a moral reason to endorse them?”

When he asked this question, he seems to have forgotten that I had written the rather long section he quotes here; I specifically state that this theoretical societal motive I propose is not a moral one! Further, I specifically mention that this motive does not exist alone! Will read this, quoted this, and seems to not understand what it means.

You see, my theory is that societies do not treat individuals as important – they treat the society in which they exist as important. The pro-natalist position of modern Japan is because of the terrifyingly low birth rates of that country. The pro-natalist policies of Nazi Germany were to swamp the world with ubermensch. They are similar social pressure with radically different motivations and very different moral implications.

Societies that want to survive think about the future, and almost always in a far-less-than-conscious manner. The Victorian prohibitions on adultery and prostitution were odd in that the general society discussed the reasoning behind them (a quick summary of which I had in my original piece and was quoted by Will).

Up until this point, I assumed Will simply misunderstood me. OK, the ad hominem attacks were slanting me toward the conclusion that on an emotional level he didn’t like me shooting down his theory. Then came this little tidbit in his concluding paragraph;

“Our duty is to treat one another as free and equal persons, as ends in themselves, which means we are duty-bound not to use people and their lives for purposes not their own. We treat people with the respect they deserve.”

I agree whole-heartedly. But Will was just arguing to allow prostitution to be legal. If there is any situation that treats a human being as a means rather than an end in themselves, is it not prostitution?

As far as I can tell from Will’s response to my article, he believes,

1.      My theory seems valid

2.      My theory has strong explanatory power

3.      I am Catholic

4.      People should be an end in themselves, not a means, unless they are prostitutes

On a personal note: Will, you didn’t bother to ask me or my wife, Deeper Thought, about our relationship before you formed an opinion. To satisfy your obvious curiosity – yes, we are very much in love. Indeed, I think the presence of 4 children underscores our devotion to one another. And, yes, there were value judgments made by both of us before I proposed and before she accepted. Just like with you and your ‘brilliant, exciting, compatible’ wife, Kerry.

In the recent brouhaha over Gov Spitzer, there has been a discussion of whether prostitution should be legal or not. A fair number of people are saying “well, of course it should be legal!” But I think that their arguments are flawed because their premises are flawed.

Megan McArdle, for example, thinks that prostitution is illegal because of, well, an ‘ick factor’, I guess;

“Revulsion against sex work isn’t unique to female prostitutes. We’re also repulsed by men who sell themselves to women, even though there’s a general cultural assumption that a healthy man wants to have sex with nearly every female he sees. Something about sex work violates a deep belief–whether cultural or hard wired I don’t know–that sex should only be traded for affection.”

Will Wilkinson echoes Ross Douthat with the claim that the question boils down to this;

“[R]enting out your body to satisfy another person’s sexual needs is a form of self-inflicted violence serious enough to merit legal sanction …”

Kerry Howley at Reason magazine sorta’ mocks the whole idea with the quote;

“This whole tradition–the idea that women need be preserved in glass so as not to “ruin” themselves, lest they diminish their sexual value by “giving it away”–restricts the lived autonomy of women in ways I can’t even begin to articulate. None of the slut-shaming makes sense unless you assume women live to give themselves to men in their purest possible form.”

Now, I expect the usual suspects to miss this point entirely, but I tend to forget that libertarians also forget that social and cultural norms exist for a reason other than ‘oppress people’. All of their assumptions about why prostitution are illegal assume it is to oppress women, control women, or because of, well, heck – even they aren’t sure!

Here’s the deal, folks – prostitution is illegal for the same reason marriage is a heterosexual phenomena – its about families. Women face social and cultural pressure to maintain sex within the bonds of marriage for the same reason men face social and cultural pressure to remain faithful to their wives – families.

This isn’t rocket science; men with easy access to prostitution or to promiscuous woen have little incentive to marry. Suddenly there is nothing to offset their legal and financial obligations as a husband – so why take on the obligation? Women who are promiscuous face disease, pregnancy, and emotional trauma – all of them reduce their ability to be a valuable wife

[As an aside, I am sick to death of reading feminist blogs talking about how men must have certain attitudes and outlooks if they are to be ‘acceptable’ to women a post or two after they decry the standards men set for women]

Why is society so concerned about the family that up until recently prostitution and adultery were illegal everywhere in the West and divorce was so darned hard? Let me take another side trek.

In 1993 I read a book called The Children of Men. Powerful book with a powerful message. Of course, the movie loosely based upon that book changed the message. Not much of a surprise, really. You see, the book’s message is this; the future belongs to those who show up. If you don’t have kids, you have no stake in the future. If you have kids, you not only have a stake in the future, you can influence it in ways almost impossible to duplicate without kids.

Ancient cultures knew this, as did, say, the Victorians. They also understand that stable families are best for the men, women, and children involved in them. So cultural and social pressures that encourage marriage, childbirth and strong socialization of children while discouraging promiscuity, prostitution, and divorce are stronger and survive as cultures longer than do other societies.

In other words, bans on prostitution exist not just to avoid the exploitation of sex workers; they are in place not just because the majority of world religions declare them immoral; they were passed not solely to fight the spread of disease; they were written with more than the goal of reducing the numbers of poor, fatherless children. No, they are there to protect the future.

Hello, all. Comments are disabled while I get a handle on spam. And you will notice some real changes in the blog over the next few days as I refocus on the original goal of this blog. Stay tuned!