Against the Current

Is anti-Zionism a form of racism?

2012-01-31T22:48:00.000-06:00

A friend once told me that "anti-Zionists" (as opposed to anti-Semites) can be defined as: Those who think that the founding of the state of Israel was a political or legal or moral mistake.

Based on this "reasonable" definition, I am inclined to say that "anti-Zionism is racism." (Remember the infamous "Zionism is racism" UN resolution.)

Explanation: After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI Britain and France pretty much dominated the Middle East and carved out various spheres of influence. From the late inter-war period, under the auspices of the League of Nations, until the end of WWII (circa 1949) the great powers tinkered with the borders, eventually carving out what is now Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Israel. (Egypt was pretty much intact already). So all of these countries are basically "colonial" creations. In fact the colonial powers even played one family against the rest, placing the Hashemites in Jordan, Iraq and Syria. All of these were basically the outcome of statist imperialism.

Now these anti-Zionists object to the creation of the state of Israel, but not the Kingdom of Jordan, or Iraq, Syria or Lebanon (whose borders changed quite often and dramatically in this period). Question: If Israel had been created as a Moslem state like the rest of them, would the anti-Zionists be objecting now? If the answer is no, then it is the Jewish nature of Israel that is the problem and not really the circumstances of its creation.

Blundering past the tombstones of apartheid

2011-12-16T21:57:00.001-06:00

Ironic and sad that the very same brave critics of apartheid during that era now find themselves in the same position in this one.

For me the most amazing thing is how absolutely predictable all this is. Indeed I was one who predicted it, and hoped fervently to be wrong. Mandela saved the country from terrible bloodshed and dislocation. But his influence has finally faded away to nothing.

Black statism is no better than White statism and both are terrible for South Africa.

From: Lawrence Rosenbloom
Subject: Blundering past the tombstones of apartheid.

November 30, 2011 10:19 pm.

Blundering past the tombstones of apartheid.
By André Brink

South Africa is no longer the place of new hope introduced by Nelson Mandela. Over the past week, after a number of chilling premonitions, the country abruptly turned away from his footprints, preferring instead to blunder past the tombstones and debris of the apartheid era.

The adoption of the Protection of Information Bill by the African National Congress in a parliament shaken with shock and revulsion, cancelled in a single crude stroke the Freedom Charter which – even while wilfully denied for half a century – had guided the country through the murky years of D.F. Malan, Hendrik Verwoerd and the other apartheid leaders towards the new dawn brought by Mr Mandela in 1990.

It dented the proud new constitution built on a foundation of human rights admired all over the world, besmirched the legacy of Mr Mandela and Desmond Tutu, and insulted the legacy of millions who had dedicated their lives to the construction of a future built on the hope of a new beginning. It glorified the myopia, greed and selfishness of a handful of third-rate politicians focused only on their own gain and advancement.

Masquerading as legislation aimed at protecting crucial military and state intelligence, this bill is conceived in such a way as to protect the corruption that has now infested South African public life for years; and the absence of a public interest clause leaves it open to flagrant criminal abuse and self-serving manoeuvring. The vagueness and evasions that persist in the bill after extensive discussion in parliament and by the public suggest that these are not accidental problems or the results of carelessness. Rather they are part of a very deliberate strategy to develop the bill as a measure for covering up corruption and protecting political criminals – which, in due course, may make it a useful tool even in censoring public discussion and the arts, including – particularly – literature.

We should, of course, have been warned. The signs were there for anyone to see when the ANC turned the election of a new president into a mere insulting spectacle or changed their Youth League into a blunt instrument of mass entertainment, only to see how the League in its turn began to dictate ANC policy and manipulate its leadership, or when the Dalai Lama was first denied a visa and a senior minister in parliament petulantly asked: “Who is the Dalai Lama?”

It has never been a requirement for political leadership to be measured by moral integrity. And yet those leaders who have managed to leave an indelible imprint on their time have always brought more than political acumen to the exercise of their functions. Not all US presidents have been Washingtons or Lincolns. But even with their blemishes, an FDR or an Ike could leave a more lasting mark on their time than a Johnson or a Ford.

Perhaps the ANC has been too lucky, or too spoilt, for its own good. How could one expect any leader to step into the shoes of a Mandela. Still, perhaps his radiance could outlast even an ordinary successor, and Thabo Mbeki was not to be scorned (even if, admittedly, his father would have added more gravitas to the role). But Jacob Zuma? Had he not brought with him the shadow of unfinished business in the shape of allegations over a corruption scandal all might not have been as distressing as it now is.

I know that in the years before our political changeover, whenever I met the ANC leadership in exile I could always return with a profound faith in the quality of that leadership. There was always, of course, Mr Mandela. But there were others, and behind them, the shining shades of Albert Luthuli and Oliver Tambo, political leaders imbued with moral force and philosophical depth. But today? Who are the leaders in the ANC who, truly, think?

There were possibilities at an early stage but money or prudence saw them fade from view. With Mr Zuma, it seems, the streetfighters have taken over. Next year the party will be celebrating its centenary. How the mighty have fallen. How the Bright Morning Stars have tumbled into the sulphurous pit! We are back where we started when we believed we had finally freed ourselves from the blindfolds of censorship, and suspicion, and witch hunts, and restrictions on writing and speech and brave unfettered thought.

It could have been a tragedy, but regrettably our play lacks the stature that is indispensable for tragedy. There have indeed been men and women who bestrode the narrow stage like colossi. But it seems that South Africa no longer has space for real actors, only for clumsy and unfunny marionettes.

The writer has with Nadine Gordimer led a protest of South African authors against the new security legislation.

An interaction fable

2011-12-07T23:57:00.001-06:00

Tom, Dick and Harry are in aninteractive space. Tom and Dick live there, close by each other. Harry doesnot. Harry is a “friend” of both, a patron interested in the helping toorganize peaceful coexistence between Tom and Dick. Harry is powerful and rich.

Tom is industrious, but fearful,having had bad experiences in his childhood. Deep down he wants to live inpeace with Dick – indeed is keen to the possibilities for mutual gain by tradeand investment. But he is also paranoid and suspicious, needing crediblereassurances, because, although he is a well-trained and well-armed fighter, heis much smaller than Dick. Tom's ancestors have lived in this space on and offfor three thousand years. In the last hundred years they founded many small,successful economic ventures on land purchased from the local landlords, Dick’sancestors.

Dick is much less sophisticatedthan Tom and economically much poorer. He too is suspicious and paranoid. Deepdown he probably would accept a peaceful existence with Tom, but his emotionsare very much influenced by the conviction that Tom has no right being in thisspace as an equal with him. Dick is susceptible to the conviction that thisspace, having once been under the religious authority of his ancestors, cannever legitimately be ruled by any other authority. So he is much less focused on co-operation andmuch more focused on domination.

Harry does not really understandthese differences – does not want to consider them intractable. So he is veryinsistent that Tom and Dick sit down and talk with a view to coming up with apeaceful agreement on how to share this space. Because Harry is powerful, Dickpretends to go along, indeed uses the opportunity to get financial support fromHarry, but never misses an opportunity to discredit Tom so as to avoid the needto make any real progress toward such an agreement. This makes Tom all the moresuspicious and reluctant. Tom is not so good at pretending and so is seen asthe obstacle to progress.

Harry keeps on pushing thisridiculous agenda.

To simplify, Tom wants peace,real peace. Dick want domination, no matter how long it takes and how manylives it costs. What does Harry really want?

Obama and Israel again: domestic principles and foreign orientations.

2011-11-03T17:43:00.000-05:00

"Whatever the AJC and ADL say, Mr. Obama can expect topay a substantial political price in 2012 for his antagonism toward Israel andfeckless courting of its enemies."

I certainly hope so. But where will the Jews be on this?

The editorial below, by Douglas Feith, is correct as far asit goes. It fails, however, to point out that one cannot completely separate apresident's attitude towards Israel (or any other foreign society) from hisgeneral principles. Obama's position on Israel is consistent with hiscomprehensive leftist agenda - big government, pro-union, cradle to graveentitlements at home; and pro broadly anti-American groups abroad(anti-American closely translates as anti-market, anti-business). At this pointin its history Israel is a symbol of the achievements of individual diligenceand ambition in a market environment. In this it is the antithesis of everyother society in the middle east - save for the small Gulf states. Instead ofadmiration it evokes resentment and envy, not only in the middle east, butthroughout Europe and elsewhere. Obama shares in this, sympathizes with it. Hisrecord reflects that.

The American Jewish (predominantly "liberal")establishment is sadly out of date on this. They do not know how to respond tothe fact that politically Israel's support has shifted from the left to theright of American politics. They have been abandoned by their leftist allies.Some American Jews have chosen to go along and have turned on Israel. Idistinguish between criticisms of the Israeli government - which clearly shouldnot be labeled as anti-Israel as such - and criticisms of a more fundamentalnature that mask an hostility to the very existence of Israel as a nationstate. - In some cases they brazenly express that hostility.

The message of the ADL and the AJC, addressed here by Feith,is that Jews should not abandon their liberal orientation and reflexive,slavish support of the Democratic party. Rather they should use theirconsiderable power to turn Obama-like hostility into support for, or at leastacceptance of, a firm American-Israeli alliance. A glaring example is thecarefully crafted pronouncement in support of Israel by Obama at the UN - something produced as a clear response to the recent loss of a keyDemocratic/Jewish congressional district in New York. Mr. Obama felt the tug ofthe purse-strings and the swing-votes and he responded.

As Feith points out, the Israel issue was fair political gameuntil the recent shift from left to right. Now, all of a sudden, it'sinappropriate?

No! I could not disagree more. Jews should reject Obama'sentire agenda, of which the Israel-issue is only a representative part. Andthey should do so with conviction and pride.

· OPINION

· NOVEMBER2, 2011

IsraelShould Be a U.S. Campaign Issue

Major Jewish groups aretrying to shield Obama from legitimate criticism.

By DOUGLAS J.FEITH

Pro-Israel organizations have long been active in Americanpolitics, promoting friendly relations between the U.S. and Israel. Jewishgroups, in particular, have helped ensure that candidates' attitudes towardIsrael would be an important element in congressional and presidentialelections. Yet now, two venerable Jewish organizations, the American JewishCommittee (AJC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), are saying that it isimproper to do this in the case of President Obama. They have taken the initiativeto shield Mr. Obama from the political consequences of his cold treatment ofIsrael.

The AJC and ADL are jointly promoting a "national pledge forunity on Israel." Its essence is that "America's friendship withIsrael . . . has always transcended politics" and that "U.S.-Israelfriendship should never be used as a political wedge issue."

Explaining this effort, ADL chief Abraham Foxman lamented thatpresidential candidates have recently "challenged their opponents'pro-Israel bona fides" and "questioned the current administration'sforeign policy approach vis-à-vis Israel."

True, every political movement wants unity in support of thecommon cause. But since when have American supporters of Israel believed that acandidate's attitudes toward Israel should be kept out of electoral politics?Since never.

In 1984, pro-Israel groups exerted themselves to block there-election of Illinois Republican Sen. Charles Percy, the prominent chairmanof the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who was an outspoken critic of Israeland champion of U.S. engagement with the Palestine Liberation Organization.Percy lost and, in an election night interview, attributed his defeat to theIsrael lobby. Other politicians who met a similar fate include Reps. PaulFindley (R., Ill.) and Cynthia McKinney (D., Ga.).

When running against President George H.W. Bush in 1992, BillClinton took full advantage of Mr. Bush's testy relationship with Israel. Asthe New York Times reported in March 1992: "Some leaders of AmericanJewish groups predicted today that President Bush would pay in the Novemberelection for his demand that Israel freeze settlements."

One such leader spoke of the "anger and dismay in Jewishcommunities over Bush Administration policy that is increasingly perceived asone-sided and unfair against Israel," adding "I imagine it will betranslated into an unwillingness to vote for this Administration or contributefunds." By the way, the speaker was Jess Hordes, Washington director ofthe ADL.

President Obama came into office determined to distance the U.S.from Israel and to portray Israel as the impediment to Middle East peace. Heinsisted on an unprecedented Israeli settlement freeze, exceeding the demandsat that time of the Palestinian Authority itself. And he went along with thePA's refusal to renew direct negotiations with Israel, agreeing that thePalestinians could use U.S. officials to conduct indirect talks. Meanwhile heoffered "engagement" to Israel's Iranian and Syrian enemies, a vainpolicy that failed as the courted regimes rebuffed the offer and brutalizedtheir own pro-freedom demonstrators.

Mr. Obama also orchestrated a public imbroglio with Israeli PrimeMinister Benjamin Netanyahu, walking out of a White House meeting with him in2010 and refusing to be photographed with him. Quarrels between the men thisyear have been openly bitter.

This vexed Mr. Netanyahu and the Israeli public in general, whichoverwhelmingly views Mr. Obama as anti-Israel, and it antagonized not only thepresident's domestic political opponents but also many Democrats in Congress.When Mr. Netanyahu addressed Congress in May, most Democrats, including theleadership, joined in the numerous standing ovations that were obviouslyintended to contrast the affection for Israel on Capitol Hill with the badfeeling emanating from the White House.

So anyone truly intent on preserving unity among Israel's friendscould do so by building on the substantial bipartisan opposition to Mr. Obama'spolicies on Israel. Instead, the AJC and the ADL are working to protect Mr.Obama.

These organizations exist in large part to defend the Jewish statefrom unfair criticism, pressure and attacks. But they are defending PresidentObama from well-grounded charges that he has subjected Israel precisely tothat.

If the AJC and ADL want to defend Mr. Obama straightforwardly,they could do so. They might argue that his record on Israel is notunremittingly hostile. They could try to balance some of the healthy featuresof the U.S.-Israeli relationship—for example, the continuation of defensecooperation—against the bad parts. But it's not a strong argument, whichexplains why they are claiming to uphold a venerable (though previously unheardof) principle of unity that precludes criticism of a president's position on Israel.

Whatever the AJC and ADL say, Mr. Obama can expect to pay asubstantial political price in 2012 for his antagonism toward Israel andfeckless courting of its enemies.

Mr. Feith, asenior fellow at the Hudson Institute, served as under secretary of defensefrom 2001 to 2005.

Addendum to "Rosh Hashana and the Jewish Atheist"

2011-10-10T18:52:00.000-05:00

See Rosh Hashana and the Jewish Atheist.

Israel-Palestine: Some observations.

2011-09-25T00:47:00.001-05:00

Two speeches at the UN, one by each leader. Netanyahu gets 14,500 views on YouTube, Abbas gets 32,000.

Netanyahu is a politician. Those who share his presumptions will love his speech, those, like some of my friends, who don't, will hate it - especially the reference to biblical lands. I like him because, in spite of the transparent shtick, what he says has truth to it - not all of it, but enough. (And he understands how markets work a whole lot better than Bozama does.) The skeptics and the hostiles should look past the shtick and listen to the details of what he says about Israeli security. The speech is remarkable for the detail, the substance that he provides, along with the slogans. Attention to the security needs suggests that some sort of agreement is not impossible if the Abbas faction really wanted it.

His dramatic and impassioned appeals to Abbas to negotiate now, genuinely, will be seen by most as a PR attempt - but, in truth, I believe he would do it if Abbas took him up on it. He must know that there is no chance of that. There is no chance of genuine negotiations on the basis of "you look at me and tell me what you really want, and I will do the same," because what Abbas really wants, what his faction has always wanted is to undo what was done in 1948 when Israel was established. How can you negotiate about that?

If there is any hope it lies not with this ossified Palestinian leadership, but with younger, more pragmatic, leaders who reject the role that the Arab world has condemned the Palestinians to play. Apparently prime minister Fayyad is one such leader (see the link below); and it lies in the quiet business and social connections and partnerships that are developing between private Israelis and Palestinians. Let's hope that the Abbas faction (and their noxious patrons) fail in their attempt to squash such initiatives.

Salam Fayyad - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org

Salam Fayyad (Arabic: سلام فياض, Salām Fayāḍ; born 1952) is a Palestinian politician and one of two disputed Prime Ministers of the Palestinian National Authority, the matter being under political and legal dispute. His first appointment, on 15 June 2007, which was justified by President Mahmoud Ab…

A Palestinian state? What kind of state?

2011-09-17T12:05:00.002-05:00

I support the creation of a Palestinian state in a comprehensive two-state solution. More than 70% of Israelis do so as well. Not that I put much faith or value in the bureaucratic machinery of the political entity we call the nation-state for the achievement of human rights and prosperity; but given the realities of the world today, a two-state solution may be a substantial improvement.

So, what would a comprehensive two-state solution look like? There are some key ingredients that the new state of Palestine should have if it is to have a chance of peaceful coexistence with Israel. The most essential is that it should be a liberal democracy; by which I mean a state (a society) in which the rule of law prevails and not the rule of thugs and corrupt bureaucrats. This is a huge leap from where Palestinian society is now, but one senses it is one that would be welcomed by many, especially the incipient Palestinian business community. Perhaps if we turned negotiations over to the businesspeople on both sides we would have a practical solution in short-order.

Such a state would necessarily entail the acceptance of the existence of the Jewish state of Israel as legitimate. In an ideal world there would not be Muslim states, Jewish states or Christian states. In fact, in an ideal world there would probably not be states. We would all be free "citizens" of a peaceful world, free to practice whatever religion or lack thereof we chose as long as we allowed the same to all others. In a substantially less ideal world, but one better than we have, states would all be officially secular and religion would be a private matter. But this is not the reality of the Middle East today (nor has it ever been). In fact the "Jewish" state of Israel is probably the closest to a secular liberal democracy existing in the region. The "Jewish" aspect is an ill-defined cultural and ethnic aspect of Israeli society that comes from the history of its peoples and is essential in defining their individual identities, their values, their literature, their language, the tacit presuppositions by which they live their lives. The same dynamic is at work in the "Muslim" countries. The tension that this presents for Israel as a liberal society is real, and it is a tension that is continually been confronted and resolved in different ways. But the Jewish character of the society is not-negotiable. To demand that Israel give up its "religious" identity in favor of a secular state encompassing all peoples of the region (Muslim and Christian) is a disingenuous demand for cultural and most probably physical suicide.

So, if we are taking about a two-state solution, in the current context, we are talking about a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian one (in which predictably Muslim culture and values and laws will be prominent) - two states coexisting with mutual acceptance and respect.

Is this what the current initiative to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state in some forum of the United Nations portends? Not even its most ardent and charitable supporters would claim this. I confess I don't know exactly what the motivation for this high-profile initiative is, but I know it is certainly not about establishing the kind of co-existence described above. It certainly contains no change in the official and de facto position on Israel as an illegitimate occupier of Arab land. (I am not talking about the so-called occupied territories, I am talking about the whole of Israel.) It is clearly not about peace, co-existence and co-operation. It is not really about power to the Palestinian people either. Their miserable lot will not change. It seems to be about leverage of some kind. It is most probably about political leverage for the cynical and corrupt Palestinian leadership. They, in uneasy partnership with the principle jihadi groups, like Hamas, would most probably use such state recognition to try to further isolate Israel and in the process obtain international aid and support for their corrupt (or extremist) organizations. In other words it is really a strategic step in the 63 year old war to undo what happened in 1948.

I have blogged before about the sorry state of the Palestinians and how they have been used as pawns by their leaders and other leaders in the region - condemned to inter-generational refugee-status in a poverty-stricken, terror-sponsoring, welfare-state in which any economic initiative is stifled and any constructive cooperation with Israelis discouraged (for example here). Changing the official status of this territory to a "state" will not improve their situation. It could conceivably make it worse if it leads to an escalation of hostilities.

So, should the U.S. veto the initiative in the UN? As bad as this will look, I would still probably say yes, it should. But my purpose is not so much to urge this, as to confront the ill-considered rush of support for the initiative (including by many American Jews). This is yet another example of how Israel is struggling in the public relations war. After all, why should we deny the Palestinians a state when Israel has one? What well-meaning thoughtful person could be against that?

But, of course, as I am trying to show, things are not what they seem. Not all "states" are alike. What if we added the qualifier "terrorist" to the state that the Palestinians are seeking? We would no doubt be accused of shameless provocation. OK, but can we use the qualifier "peaceful" instead? How about "all-inclusive"? Are there no conditions to be demanded for support? Whether or not the U.S. vetoes the proposal is ultimately less important than establishing an accurate realization of what is really going on here.

Peter Lewin Interview

2011-08-30T23:58:00.004-05:00

| Peter Klein |

Adrián Ravier has put together a nice collection of Spanish-language interviews with economists of the Austrian school (volume 1, volume 2). The leading modern figures are all included: Mises, Hayek, Machlup, Lachmann, Rothbard, Kirzner, fellow travelers such as Buchanan and Shackle, and contemporary Austrians such as Garrison, Block, Hoppe, Higgs, Ebeling, Salerno, Boettke, and more.

Guest blogger Peter Lewin’s interview is coming out in a third volume, to be published later this year, and Adrián has given me permission to post the English version here. You’ll find Peter’s intellectual odyssey very interesting!

The Third Way

2011-07-30T23:15:00.035-05:00

Many, if not most, people readingthis will already know everything I am going to say. I am writing it, however,for those, however many, who have never heard it. They constitute the majority among the population at large and,more significantly, the majority among the population who think at all aboutpolitical affairs. I am frustrated by how often I encounter these immovable presuppositions,so I am offering this in a modest effort to change some, maybe just a few,minds.

What has become the conventionalwisdom, the common mode of thinking, imagines a political spectrum withthe liberals on the one end (the left) and the conservatives on the other (theright). Anyone on either end is usually labeled an extremist, which means youdon’t have to listen to them. This is true for both extremes, but it isespecially true for the right, hence such terms as “hard right.” As a generalrule the left end of the spectrum is more urbane, sophisticated, eloquent andeducated. The right wing is often shrill, crass, repetitive, uninformed andtransparently stupid. Like all generalizations these are not truecharacterizations of everyone who fits the label. Just impressions. The peoplesomewhere in the middle to the slight right or left of the center are regarded(regard themselves) as the reasonable and normal majority. They vilify anddemonize the extreme right and patronizingly dismiss the extreme left (who areto be admired for their idealism but discounted for their lack of realism).Perhaps you recognize this story.

This traditional dimension fromliberal to conservative that I just described is deficient. It neglects to break down theliberal or conservative mindsets along two relevant sub-dimensions, socialaffairs and fiscal affairs. The following pictures will help illustrate.

Figure 1 below illustrates thetraditional political spectrum.

Figure 1 - The Traditional Spectrum – Social and Fiscal
Left-wing liberal	Right wing conservative

Some clear issues divide thetraditional left and right on the question of limiting or using the power ofthe government, the state. For example, the left believes in free speech, is pro-choice,supports recognizing gay marriage and liberalizing immigration and perhapsdecriminalizing drugs. The right vigorously opposes these advocating statepower to restrict these choices. But there are other issues that divide them on thebasis of whose state-sponsored agenda should be implemented. On the left wehave anyone who wants to use the state to achieve a “liberal” social agenda(income redistribution, entitlement programs, socialized health-care, consumerregulation). On the right we have anyone who opposes these programs in thename of fiscal prudence, and maybe some other reasons, but who believes in using the state to achieve otheragenda items like a strong defense, wholesome family values, a prominent rolefor religion and so on. Where do we put someone who opposes both of theseagendas on the basis that they involve unwarranted, dangerous and inefficient uses of thestate? There is no place for them in this spectrum.

Figure 1 is a one dimensionalspectrum. it combines fiscal and social issues. So it mixes the issues. In Figure 2 we introduce a distinctionbetween fiscal and social issues

Figure 2 - The Third Way – breaking it down
	Fiscal
Social		Liberal	Conservative
	Conservative	( Spindrift for socially conservative issues?)	Right wing conservative
	Liberal	Left-wing liberal	Libertarian – Classical Liberal

The traditional spectrum portrayedin Figure 1 now lies across the diagonal of Figure 2 from bottom left (left-wing liberal) to top right (right-wing conservative). The mostsignificant additional information is provided by the third alternative tothese two, namely the Libertarian or Classical Liberal in thebottom right cell. This characterizes my own perspective. It puzzles people.When I talk to traditional left-wing liberals they want to put me in the topright and are, therefore, puzzled by my support for gay marriage,decriminalization of drugs and liberalization of immigration. When I talk to right-wingconservatives they want to put me in the bottom left and are therefore puzzledby my support for limiting government spending, deregulation of business, alimited military and freedom of religion. They are confused because they are thinking in terms of a constrainingspectrum.

But once understood, the expanded framework is verysimple. It is based on the key question of the appropriate role of power, henceof the state. In fact "liberal" as commonly used is a distortion of its original meaning. Originally “liberal” meant someone who believed inindividual liberty and supported policies to guarantee it especially limitinggovernment power. It retains much of that meaning in European politicaldiscourse. I am not sure what “conservative” means in this context, but theother end of the spectrum is anyone who supports using the state for theirsocial agenda whatever it is, so we can them the a “statist.” So if we were tore-collapse Figure 2 into a one dimensional spectrum we would get the picture depictedin Figure 3

Figure 3 – A better conceptualization
Classical Liberal	Statist

Thisis how I think of it. The statists are dangerous because they either supportthe use of state power for their agendas and don’t care about freedom (likefascists, Nazis, Soviets, etc.) or else they are naïve in thinking they can usethe state for noble ends and still preserve individual freedom (like democraticsocialists, some anti-poverty activists, most environmentalists, etc.). Theytend to underestimate the power for good of the free market and overestimate thepower for good of the state. Much of what I and like-minded friends andcolleagues are trying to do is to shift the debate to this spectrum.

School Vouchers - Ivry Man (IM) asks Dr. Know (DK) for Guidance

2011-07-11T01:17:00.005-05:00

Ivryman finds himself in the park and, as expected, sees Dr. Know seated on hisusual bench looking agitated.

IM.	Dr. Know, how are you? I was hoping to see you here. It has been too long since we spoke.
DK.	[Warm smile] Indeed it has my dear friend. The responsibility for this lies with the guy who writes this dialogue. Apparently he has been very busy with other things and could not find the time to bother with the likes of us. Who am I to argue with that?
IM.	As you said the last time we met. But you seemed to be a bit preoccupied a moment ago. Is something worrying you?
DK.	How perceptive you are. Yes, in truth, I am very frustrated. For years I have been arguing the case for school vouchers – of course I am not alone in this – yet such little progress has been made. Support is growing, especially among low income families in the worst school districts in the United States, but the educational establishment is very powerfully against them; even now when the current president has a real opportunity to get behind them, he refuses to do so.
IM.	I see you are upset. I am not sure I understand this issue very well. My intuition tells me that vouchers are a threat to the whole idea of public education and all it stands for. But perhaps you can help me understand better.
DK.	Indeed. I will be happy to. After all, that must be the reason that this dialogue is being written, right?
IM.	I am not sure I understand.
DK.	Never mind. Actually your intuition is shared by many people. One might say it is the conventional wisdom. Although the public school system is only about 150 years old, the notion of public schooling runs very deep in the American psyche. Many believe it is a key, indispensible element of American democracy.
IM.	Yes. How are they wrong?
DK.	They are tragically wrong. While public schooling may have been a good experience for many children, for the majority of children today it is at best very mediocre and mostly a disaster. The public school experiment is a failure. In terms of its own goals and principles it has failed. It is time we disabused ourselves of mindless prejudices in its favor and started to look hard at the facts and at the logic.
IM.	I am sure you can elaborate for me.
DK.	I’ll try. The goals of public schooling as an ideal are probably noble, admirable. To provide every American child with certain minimal educational opportunities – who can argue with that? It is seen as a way to implement basic democratic principles, allowing children of poor families, as well as of middle class and rich families, access to that great solvent of American society, education – and thereby to break down persistent and dysfunctional racial, ethnic and economic barriers.
IM.	Yes, indeed!
DK.	Actually the original impetus for the public school system was not so noble. It was basically a question of Protestant paranoia over Catholic private education and an attempt to negate the subversive progress of the latter. But this not so relevant now.
	The voucher system I have in mind is one that would provide parents a choice of where to send their children to school by providing them with the equivalent in vouchers (or tax credits, or some such refund scheme) of the cost to the taxpayer of educating their children in the public schools. So it is not an argument for getting the state out of the business of subsidizing education. It is an argument for getting the state out of the business of producing education. Or, since I could imagine a dual system (such as we have in higher education), it would remove the monopoly of the state in producing education. A voucher system would closely resemble the GI bill.
IM.	Yes I follow that.
DK.	Note, vouchers or tuition credits or something similar is provided rather than cash because of the standard liberal objection that parents can’t be trusted to use the money for education rather than booze or drugs. Liberal love humanity, it’s just people they have contempt for.
IM.	Nice Dr. Know. Now that you have that off your chest, what are the objections to vouchers?
DK.	It seems to me there are two main arguments against vouchers, the "church-state separation argument" and the "social responsibility argument".
IM.	I am more interested in the second.
DK.	Mostly the reluctance to even consider vouchers seems to come from the conviction that a voucher system will be harmful to the cause of "social equality" (as I mentioned a moment ago). There is the perception that vouchers will destroy the public school system and that this will exacerbate or perpetuate poverty..
	This is a very bad argument. It is now pretty much undeniable that, as I asserted earlier, the public school systems are, in general, failing in their overall mission to provide all elements of the population with at least an "adequate" education. The public school system as an institution is supposed to advance the aims of "equality of opportunity" for all Americans regardless of gender, race, national origin or other educationally irrelevant characteristics and of provide opportunities for those who have different learning styles and approaches as well. It has been thought that schools that were segregated by ethnic group could not deliver on these aims and so the aim of desegregation has evolved along with our national educational policy.
IM.	Yes you pretty much said as much already. So what is the reality?
DK.	If you will be patient I will get to that soon enough.
IM.	A thousand pardons Dr. Know.
DK.	Very well. As it stands now, seen in the light of these aspirations, I believe we should be bitterly disappointed. There are some very good public schools, even some superlative ones. These are few in number and they are located primarily in the affluent suburban areas. They are attended mainly by children from upper income families, mostly white. But, most of our public schools are substandard, overcrowded and bureaucratic. Many of those in the inner-cities are downright dangerous - they are breeding grounds for the drug-traffic, for teenage-pregnancy, for gang-warfare and much else besides. And they do not educate the children who attend them, who are mostly poor and from minority families. The worst nightmares of those who oppose segregated schools are fulfilled by the public school system as it now operates. At best we have institutionalized mediocrity. At worst we have exacerbated the cycle of poverty and deprivation. It is no exaggeration to say that the public school system is perpetuating and exacerbating the very problems it was apparently designed to solve!
IM.	So how would vouchers solve this?
DK.	Well. Vouchers would provide at least the potential of a way out for some, maybe many, maybe most families. That is why, I believe, many families and leaders from minority communities are now actively and vigorously supporting them. As I said earlier, the proposal I am considering, and which all leaders in the field of education should actively support, is one which provides to parents the equivalent of the cost of educating their children in the public schools. At least this way parents would have a choice and schools would start to be accountable to them.
IM.	I think I see where this is going.
DK.	Well, there are two usual objection at this stage. One, those parents who could afford to "top up" (add to) the value of the voucher would take their kids to private schools in the more affluent areas, and this would exacerbate inequality. Two, even the poorer parents armed with a voucher will pull their kids out of the public schools, so the public school system would collapse. There would be nowhere for some kids to go, especially those with special learning needs.
IM.	And what do you say to that? You have an answer I am sure.
DK.	In answer to the first objection: I wonder how much more segregated the system could become than it is now. I suspect actually that with a voucher system schools would become less segregated, not more segregated, as kids from the poorer neighborhoods take their vouchers to schools of their choice. In any case, it is one more spurious argument in favor of the sacrifice of individual economic and social advancement in the name of equality – as Milton Friedman pointed out; those who try to achieve equality by sacrificing freedom of choice end up sacrificing both.
IM.	Aha! And what about the second objection, precipitating the collapse of the public system?
DK.	If the public school system is that fragile that, at the earliest opportunity, its clients would abandon it for preferred alternatives, one might wonder why it is indeed worth saving at all. To the supporters of public schools as an ideal in itself, I would ask how bad do the public schools have to get before you will consider that perhaps they are not worth saving? There are currently a variety of private scholarship programs that provide 50% of the tuition of private schooling for the child, the other 50% being provided by the parents. Parents are invited to apply. The programs are incredibly oversubscribed – by many hundred percent. In other words, hundreds of thousands of families, many of them very poor, are prepared to pay 50% of a private school tuition in preference to the “free” education their kids could get in the public schools. What does that tell you about the value to them of each of these alternatives? This is not hypothetical, this is fact!
	Of course “free” public schooling is not really free. Right now the state and local governments are spending a fortune per child in the public schools, actually much more than is generally known and much more than in the private schools!! The sums are actually breathtaking, and the worst school districts are spending the most! All or most of this money would be available for vouchers, implying a substantial sum in the hands of parents when choosing among educational options for their children. This makes the schools accountable to parents – not to administrators, to unions or to government committees.
IM.	Yes, but what about those who are left in the dysfunctional public school system, and what about those kids with special needs?
DK.	I thought you might say that. And it brings me to perhaps the most important point of all – pay careful attention to what I am now going to say.
IM.	Yes sir, Dr. Know. You know I will!
DK.	When schools are accountable to parents, who have many thousands of dollars of potential revenue for the them, the extent and type of response that might develop is literally unimaginable. The variety of schools of many types, sizes, qualities and specialties (including those for special needs children) is likely to be very large. There is likely to be a high degree of innovation in educational styles (responding to parents who have different opinions and desires in relation to aspects of educational philosophy), and a high degree of dynamism in educational development. Schools will most likely be smaller, safer and more enjoyable. There will be fewer administrators per child, more (and better-performing) teachers per child.
	Educational experts don’t like this at all. They have all sorts of objections based on their own visions of how they think an educational system should be structured, based on their “expert” knowledge. So they are willing to denounce and condemn the very idea of a state- or nation-wide voucher system on the basis that, for example, it might imply the segregation, rather than main-streaming of special-needs kids, or the teaching of subjects not to their liking, etc. The arrogance of this amazes me. Because of their ideological commitments, these people are prepared to sanction the holding of our children hostage in failing American schools and foreclose fantastic opportunities for them in order to be able to try to achieve the doubtful benefits of their visions – many of which have already been tested and found wanting.
IM.	But what if these experts are right about their arguments for a good educational system for all and the deprivation of some?
DK.	Even if there were any merit to the very dubious argument that unfortunate minorities like special-needs families, or kids of dysfunctional parents, or who knows-what, would suffer as a result the introduction of a comprehensive voucher program, it does not follow that one should sacrifice the considerable benefits of the majority in order to preserve the status quo for the special minority. Surely not! A better argument would be to accept vouchers with the proviso that this apparent shortcoming be attended to if necessary by special provisions.
IM.	Hmm! So are you telling me that but for the opposition of these educational elites, the facts and your logic would prevail?
DK.	Sadly no. If it were just the opposition of the educational elites, who are, to be sure, powerful, I believe the arguments for choice in education would have prevailed long ago. It is, rather, overwhelmingly the power of the teachers’ unions that stand against rationality, progress and real reform in education. The teachers’ unions are self-serving, politically very powerful, unmovable bureaucracies. They are in bed with many parts of the executive and Congress. Introducing choice in education would remove protection for bad teachers, would spotlight unnecessary administrative positions and would take away educational decisions from the bureaucracy and put them in the hands of parents. The survival of the unions is threatened by vouchers and they are able and willing to use whatever opportunistic means they can to oppose them. Their opposition is not a principled one! It is based on their vested interest. In my book what they are doing to America’s youth is basically criminal. Yet, thus far they have been able to hide the consequences of their actions from most of us.
	Recently, however, the realization has dawned on parents in the most miserable school districts – in Wisconsin, in DC, in Florida and some other places. And there is a growing groundswell in favor of parental choice in education. This is a non-partisan, non-class issue. Poor minority families are rising up against the teachers’ unions. The outrage is growing. It is heartening, but also frustrating. These are low-income minority families appealing for the right to send their kids to charter schools or voucher-accepting private schools of their choice. The president has a real opportunity to do something really different – to bring real and beneficial change now. But, so far, he has not had the courage to oppose the teachers’ unions and I doubt he, or any other president, ever will. If a breakthrough comes it will probably be in the courts and maybe also in the Congress. It is long overdue.
IM.	What about the church-state separation argument?
DK.	It’s really hard to know if this is a genuine argument, a real worry, or simply another strategy. Many who oppose vouchers assert that they violate the constitutional separation of church and state "because state money can be used for religious education." I believe the logic is faulty. Right now the state is involved in the choice that parents make regarding their children’s religious education. That is because the state makes the price of a non-religious education much cheaper, at the margin, than a religious one. An education containing, or based on, a religious tradition has to be obtained in a private school. This implies that those parents who choose this option end up paying twice. Once, through their taxes, for the public school they don’t use, and again, from their after tax income for the private tuition. Saying that the state is uninvolved adopts the myth that an education that is devoid of religious content is somehow to be considered "neutral". It is not neutral. It discriminates against those who, at equal prices, would have chosen a positive religious content. It discriminates against those who would rather have their tax money educate children in a religion of their parents’ choice. Can a case not be made that the only neutral situation is one that gives the parents a choice, that is to say, is non-coercive with regard to both imposing or depriving religious content?
	In any case, as a practical, legal matter, the argument seems to be wrong. A number of current supreme court decisions indicate that, as does the fact that under the GI bill veterans can choose religiously based universities. The money goes to the parents, not to the schools. And then the parents decide. There is no violation of church-state separation. These are private choices.
IM.	Is that it?
DK.	Pretty much. I would finally add this. Apart from anything else, as a fundamental moral question, on what basis can one support the denial of educational choice to parents?
IM.	So every argument to the contrary you consider to be soundly refuted. Are there any valid arguments against vouchers?
DK.	Yes, indeed, there is one. But it comes not from those who support the public school system. It comes rather from those who oppose any kind of government involvement in education, it comes from those who regard vouchers, or any educational subsidies, as dangerous insofar as they may extend the power of government over the private education sector. Schools qualifying for vouchers would be state-certified thus extending state discretion. This has obvious potential for abuse. One could hardly think of anything more dangerous than giving power over education to powerful governments. The power to command huge resources for the education of young minds is indeed an awesome and dangerous power that one should keep out of the hands of potentially opportunistic bureaucrats. And vouchers would extend this power over private schools who chose to accept the vouchers. We can already see the corrupting influence of this type of thing in our higher educational systems – in the runaway tuition costs and in the state discretion over aspects of the curriculum that they fund.
	I have no argument against this objection. I accept it. I too am against the involvement of government in education at any level. I firmly believe that educational quality and achievement at all levels would be better without it. But my strong advocacy of vouchers is based on the judgment that a comprehensive voucher system would be infinitely better than what we now have, infinitely better. And the probability of achieving a comprehensive voucher system (or even an expanding piecemeal one) that would bring so much benefit to so many children being introduced soon, is so much higher than the probability of achieving a more ideal (from my point of view) system. So my argument is also a strategic one. I judge the benefits of subsidized parental choice to be worth the risk of its very really pitfalls and dangers. I would hope that if ever there were a comprehensive scaling back of the size of the state at all levels, education would be included, whenever such a remote possibility ever arrives.
	I strongly prefer parental choice to what we have now because I believe that, in general, parents want the best for their children and that competition through the educational market will work to give it to them. But even if, as you hear this, my dear friend, you have lingering doubts, ask yourself "how could it be worse than it is now?!!" How could it be worse?! The standard to hold any proposed alternative to is not perfection, it is relative improvement. I don’t see how giving parents of children a choice between schools could make them (their children) worse off.
IM.	As usual Dr. Know, this has been a most enlightening discussion. But I have a few questions for you on another subject if you don’t mind.
DK.	Ah, I wish I could. Unfortunately that will have to wait for our next meeting. So good to see you. Until next time.

Upon which he rises and ambles off in the direction of thelibrary.

Somewhere over the rainbow!

2011-07-08T12:42:00.002-05:00

I am guest-blogging on Organizations and Markets.

Here is my latest post:

I am envious. My brother in law and my nephew are in the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. He is sending short reports via his Blackberry. His descriptions are graphic — he is awe-stricken. Sounds incredible, beyond imagination — to those of us veteran Africans used to having to search hard for game on our game park safaris. In the Serengeti there is game in exaggerated profusion. Lions, leopards, and cheetah virtually next to each other. Huge migrations of herds, hundreds of thousands strong. A trip for a lifetime. I should live so long.

It seems clear that this wonder of nature (a giant crater-bubble full of wild life) would not exist in the absence of the revenue from international tourism. Though government managed, it is subject to vigorous competition from other game parks in that part of Africa. The area is the traditional homeland of the legendary Masai tribe, who have a cattle-based economy. Population growth, technological change, and the pace of modernity threatened to destroy their world. Now they seem to be flourishing. The Masai have turned out to be successful entrepreneurs! I wonder if this is an instance of Ostrom’s successful local initiatives.

More generally, the preservation of wild-life in Africa has turned on the successful management of a plethora of wild-life game parks (many of them quite small relatively speaking), some having the status of super luxury hotels. There is an irony in there somewhere. (I wonder what it is like to have to manage a wild-life park as a business firm).

Of course most of the environmentalists never tell you about the preservation successes of market competition.

The Truth lies in the Middle??

2011-06-22T22:45:00.001-05:00

I just watched a movie that made me feel very uncomfortable.

Its called Defamation and you can find information about it here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1377278/. It is available in various forms on the internet (for free). I watched it on Netflix.

Although it is fairly recent, I would think that more people would have heard about it. I think I know why there is a strong avoidance impulse connected to it. It takes aim at some staple Jewish communal motifs connected to anti-semitism and at a prominent Jewish organization and its leader, the ADF (Anti-defamation League). But this is no simple-minded propaganda piece. It touches some sensitive nerves. It made me want to look away. Although it seems to have been carefully edited to support the author-film-maker's point of view, I found it hard to dismiss - and some of it was downright embarrassing. Maybe you will have a different reaction and a more critical appraisal. Let me know.

The film-maker's name is Yoav Shamir and he is a young Israeli who traveled to the U.S. and Eastern Europe (with a group of teenage Israeli, on a Holocaust memorial trip) to shoot this movie.

I don't want to say too much. Maybe you will want to watch it and you should make up your own minds. I will just say this:

I have emphasized that just because a particular statement or position critical of Israel may not be anti-Semitic it does not mean that it isn't - and I do think that Melshheimer and Walt, Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chosky and company - if not antisemitic are, at least, unconscionably opportunistic and biased in their approach (and at least two on the list are also seriously troubled).

But having said this, and having watched this movie, it also seems to me to be true that the notion of antisemitism can be and has been abused. This is very upsetting. (It is reminiscent of the refusal by many black Americans to give up the mantle of victimhood.) It is productive of its own insidious form of racism - against non-Jews (you see this in the movie).

The most disturbing idea is the exploitation of the Holocaust in this context. There is, unfortunately, an element of truth in Finkelstein's notion of a "Holocaust industry". This exploitation cheapens and desecrates the suffering of the victims and the enormity of the crimes against them. When it comes to the Holocaust, the events speak for themselves and the hype is distracting, sacrilegious noise.

I am in favor of the Holocaust memorial trips for teenagers and others (the "march of the living"). We need to remember and the world needs to know. But we need to be really careful to guard against the temptation to manipulate emotions into conformity with the communal slogans putting the Holocaust behind every anti-Jewish slur.

Finally, it seems clear to me that many Jews need (economically or emotionally) antisemitism to continue to be a perceived threat. Many are thus inclined to see antisemitism in every criticism of Israel or of individual Jews. Trivial events, and crazy outliers, are highlighted out of proportion and ultimately this leads to a loss of credibility and respect. This is particularly true in the context of the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Double standards invoked against Israel can be tackled on their own merits (or lack thereof) - one does not need the Holocaust for this.

Does it need to be said that we need to keep a strong and critical sense of reality in our pursuit of the truth no matter what our personal affiliations?

The Power of Presuppositions

2011-06-15T12:06:00.006-05:00

We probably all know this – that presuppositions often prevent clarity of thought and action. Yet when I encounter these presuppositions I am often surprised anew – even by the same cases over and over again. Here are some examples.

1. Consider this simple riddle: “Brothers and sisters have I none; this man’s father is my father’s son”. Who is “this man”?

Most people, upon hearing this, quickly assume that the answer is “I” – that I am this man. My late father-in-law could not be budged from this. Pushing him, I discovered that he began by assuming that the quote is from someone looking in the mirror – which means, if you are saying the quote, you are looking at yourself. I tried to point out that in this case the quote is contradictory or nonsense – it implies that you are your own father and son. I could never convince him.

But the solution is beyond simple, it is trivial. Let’s use the kind of math everyone can follow:

This man = X

This man’s father, X’s father = Y

Re-forming the quote: “X has no brothers and sisters; Y is X’s father. Y is my father’s son”.

So I am Y, X’s father and X is my son.

Answer: X, this man, is my son.

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2. More significant: I frequently put the following multiple choice question on my economics exams, even at a fairly advanced level.

"What is the effect of imposing a minimum wage in an economy at a level below the already existing (uniform) market wage”?

a. The average wage will rise

b. The average wage will fall

c. The average wage will be unaffected

d. It is impossible to tell.

This is a question anyone, including anyone with absolutely no economics training whatsoever, should be able to answer correctly. But presuppositions get in the way.

Most people go immediately to option b. “The average wage will fall”. In a class of 21 bright high school seniors that I just taught this semester, everyone picked this option, in spite of repeated explanation of this very case in class over the preceding weeks. The mental barrier is formidable.

Here is what is going on: people’s intuition is to assume that laws imposed by government are more important than the spontaneous, hidden workings of the market place – aka, the private decisions of buyers competing with buyers and sellers competing with sellers. When people hear that in the question the government imposes a minimum wage lower than the wage currently paid, their minds immediately translate this as “permission” to pay a lower wage and they see no constraints against doing so. Its almost as if employers of labor operate in a vacuum and this new minimum wage law now allows them to pay less than they were paying – because, we all know after all, that they pay a little as they can.

Of course, the correct answer, again trivially, is option c. “The average wage will be unaffected”. It is a “minimum” wage law; not a “maximum” wage law. It does not prevent employers from paying more than the minimum, which, by assumption, they are already doing. Yet most people cannot see it. [Notice how the simple meaning of the words is missed.]

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3. More topical: “Tax-breaks” for the oil companies.

The politicians are much exercised about (see a political opportunity in) the question of repealing tax-breaks currently in place for the oil companies.

This resonates with much of the public, because they hate having to pay such high prices for gasoline – it really bites. The most common initial reaction is to welcome the initiative to repeal the tax-breaks.

As I understand it, two things are going on here – punish the oil companies and bring down prices. People are angry with the oil companies. They see prices going up and oil company profits going up. So they think if the tax-breaks are removed that will hurt oil company profits. They are right about that. They also seem to think that it will cause oil and gas prices to fall. They are completely wrong about that – I can’t even see how they get there. But when I point out that removing the tax-breaks will force prices even higher I am mostly met by blank stares. Some sort of presumption is getting in the way.

Let’s be clear about one thing, removing a tax-break is just another way of imposing a tax. Imposing a tax clearly leads to higher prices paid by the buyer (and lower prices received by the seller). Money is taken out of production by the government. The amount supplied at any price goes down, so prices will rise for any given amount demanded. Not rocket science.

It is also relevant to point out, as I always do, mostly to no avail, that companies do not pay taxes in any meaningful sense. A tax imposed on a company is actually “paid” by the customers, workers, suppliers and others connected with the company. The ones who probably pay the least are the fat-cat executives whom the politicians love to scapegoat and the public loves to punish. It’s all a grand and harmful illusion signifying destruction of value.

It probably all boils down to the power of language to shape thought. Wittgenstein would be proud.

A difference in philosophy? I don't think so.

2011-06-15T00:09:00.004-05:00

Not everyone who opposes rational and responsible economic policy can be stupid, and not even the majority can. But they can be, and I think they are, ignorant. Their ignorance is protected by their hard-held presuppositions. This enables them to dismiss any deviant views as "extreme," as "cooky". I have people tell me I am wrong who cannot tell me why. I have people tell me it is a "difference in philosophy". But actually it isn't. It is a difference in understanding of how reality works. It is a difference in models of reality. A shared understanding of reality would produce an agreement on economic policy. Disagreements over economic policy come not from wanting different things, they come from wanting the same things (peace, prosperity and individual freedom) but disagreeing on how to get there. I don't think it is helpful or accurate to call that a difference in philosophy. To do so is to cut off debate, to suggest there are unbridgeable differences, when actually what it means is "I don't want to seriously consider what you have to say".

When it comes to macroeconomic policy, it would seem that it takes an economic earthquake to shake the belief in government job-creation. No amount of argument can do the trick. Does this mean more mindless inflationary stimulus is around the corner? Let's hope not.

Israel v. Palestine. Will we ever have clarity on this?

2011-05-28T20:03:00.000-05:00

Melanie Phillips is always "in your face" confrontational

Here she takes the fight to the British PM, who has been tagged in the media as anti-Jewish. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. And this piece is a little too hot for my taste - weakening the case, for example, by using phrases like Jewish "rightful inheritance". Ancestral homeland appeals mean nothing to the "left" and are already conceded by the "right" (at least in the U.S.). The essence of Phillips's argument, concerning the current situation, and concerning the historical background, is correct. And the latter is better supported by noting a few basic points.

1. In the period leading up to 1948 there was considerable support among the Arab residents of Palestine for Jewish immigration. Why? Because it led to profitable land sales (and increased the value of land owned) and because it led to increased employment and economic growth in the region. The Zionist appeal to the Arab population was precisely along these grounds touting peaceful and mutually advantageous coexistence. It is important to note that the sole basis of the steady Jewish immigration during the period of the Yishuv in the late 19th and early 20th century, was the voluntary and profitable sale of land to the Jewish immigrants, something practiced even by those Arab leaders who in public condemned the immigration, while, in private, profiting from it.

2. This general attitude became increasing undermined over time by extremist right wing Arab leaders, the most notorious of whom was Haj Amin, the grand Mufti of Jerusalem, one-time confidant of Hitler, who authored and broadcast a series of genocidal radio broadcasts in Arabic from Berlin. He became the most important Arab leader (of the AHC - the Arab Higher Committee), successfully and tragically drowning out (and violently suppressing) substantial Arab opposition to him. Under his leadership the Arab residents became increasing violent in their protests against the proposed partition of Palestine into two states - a Jewish and a Palestinian state (sound familiar?).

3. This violence was directed not only at the Jews, but also at the British occupiers of Palestine. The British response was to move more closely to the Arabs' position. Whether this was anti-Semitism, as it clearly was in some notable individual cases (for example Prime Minister Bevin), or whether it was expediency - not wishing to commit to resources and effort to confront the Arabs - is less important than that it meant the abandonment of the British commitment to the Jewish project of peaceful immigration and, in the more urgent situation, to the saving of countless Jewish lives. Either way the record is shameful, but perhaps understandably political.

4. Mr. Cameron is consciously or unconsciously echoing this performance.

Perhaps that is how Ms. Phillips might have argued.

PS. For source material on the above see Ephraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed Yale University Press, 2011.

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From: lawrence rosenbloom [mailto:lawrence.rosenbloom@gmail.com]

Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2011 4:10 PM

Subject: Open letter to David Cameron. Worth a read

About Melanie

Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author. She is best known for her controversial column about political and social issues which currently appears in the Daily Mail. Awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism in 1996, she is the author of All Must Have Prizes, an acclaimed study of Britain's educational and moral crisis, which provoked the fury of educationists and the delight and relief of parents.

An open letter to the Rt. Hon. David Cameron MP

May 2011

Dear Prime Minister,

I was interested to read that, when you met Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, you said:

‘Britain is a good friend of Israel and our support for Israel and Israel's security is something I have described in the past, and will do so again, as unshakeable.’ I wonder, therefore, if you make a habit of threatening your friends? For you also said that unless Israel ‘engages seriously in a meaningful peace process’ with the Palestinian Authority, the more likely it is that Britain will endorse the ‘State of Palestine’ for which the PA is expected to seek recognition at the UN in September. This is not the behaviour of a friend so much as the kind of intimidation that is more reminiscent of a Mafia protection racket.

First of all, you have incomprehensibly decided to pressurise the victim in this conflict to make peace with her aggressor, even though the victim is the one party that constantly tries to make peace while the aggressor does not. It is the PA which has refused to negotiate with Israel, not the other way round, on the spurious grounds that Israeli expansion of Jewish homes beyond the ‘Green Line’ is a bar to negotiations

I wonder whether you might explain to both Britain and the Jewish people why you do not insist that Mr Abbas ‘engages seriously in a meaningful peace process’ by unambiguously renouncing – in both English and Arabic – his repeated assertions that his people will never accept Israel as a Jewish state, the casus belli of the entire conflict?

I wonder also if you might explain to both Britain and the Jewish people why you implicitly endorse the racist ethnic cleansing inherent in the putative ‘State of Palestine’ which the PA says it will declare – a state in which Mr Abbas has repeatedly declared that not one Jew will be allowed to live -- but which you have now threatened to support? I’m sure the British people in particular would be interested to know when you decided that racism and ethnic cleansing were part of your modernising programme for the Conservative Party.

Next, I wonder if you might clarify for us exactly why the British government has welcomed the alliance entered into between Hamas and Mr Abbas’s Fatah, and why you believe that this will advance the cause of peace. As you know, your government still regards Hamas as a terrorist organisation. More than that, Hamas is explicitly committed to the destruction of Israel and the genocide of the Jews, a platform from which is has explicitly stated this week that it will not resile. And as you know, following the killing of Osama bin Laden the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, condemned the ‘assassination of a Muslim holy warrior’ -- while for their part the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the terrorist department of the Fatah organisation that you do not appear to think is an obstacle to peace, called bin Laden’s death ‘a catastrophe’ and vowed to step up the jihad to establish the dominance of Islam in the world.

I’m sure we are all agog to learn why you, a Conservative Prime Minister and the supposed ally of America in the defence of the free world, have chosen not only to applaud and promote a coalition which includes genocide fanatics who are in bed with both al Qaeda and Iran, but why you are also threatening their victim, Israel, that Britain will endorse a state run by this genocidal coalition unless Israel itself enters into negotiations with it. To carry on with the Mafia analogy, this is akin to threatening someone that if they do not put a gun in their mouth and pull the trigger you will set the Mob on them to achieve the same result.

I’d be grateful if you could explain to us why you support the killing of the leader of al Qaeda, as well as sanctions against Iran on the grounds that both represent an unconscionable threat to the free world, and yet at the same time demand of Israel that it makes concessions to a coalition made up of the allies of Iran and al Qaeda. I’m sure we’d all like to know, if this is how you treat your ‘friends’, how you would treat your enemies.

I realise, Prime Minister, that before you achieved high office your knowledge of and interest in foreign affairs was hovering around the zero mark. As a result, it is likely that your only knowledge of the Middle East comes from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which has a history of virulent antagonism towards the Jewish people. I would also expect, however, that you have an eye to your own place in history, and that you would probably like to be viewed by future generations as the British Prime Minister who stood shoulder to shoulder with the victims of genocidal aggression against their destroyers, rather than the other way round.

If you are to get this the right way round and thus avoid such posthumous infamy, it is vital that you come to realise the key point about the Middle East impasse. To arrive at a solution, it is imperative first of all correctly to identify the problem. The problem in the Middle East is not the absence of a state of Palestine. Were that the case, the problem would have been resolved when such a state was first mooted long before World War Two. The problem is instead that the Arabs wish to destroy the State of Israel. The solution, therefore, is to stop them from continuing to try to do so. And to achieve that, it is essential that the west stop rewarding them for their attempts.

For the single most important reason for the never-ending nature of the Middle East impasse is that, uniquely, for more than nine decades the west has rewarded the Arab aggressors and punished their Jewish victims. And from the start, the western leader of this infernal process, I’m afraid to say, was Britain.

It was the British who, out of sheer breathtaking malice against the Jewish people, first incited the (hitherto mainly benignly disposed) Arabs against the Jews returning to their ancestral homeland in Palestine in the early years of the 20th century. It was the British who set out to undermine and reverse their own government’s policy to re-establish the Jewish national home in the land of Israel. It was the British who reneged on their internationally binding treaty obligation to settle the Jews throughout Palestine – including the areas currently known as the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza – with the result that they kept out desperate Jews trying to flee Nazi Europe, causing thousands to be murdered in the Holocaust. At the same time, they encouraged Arab immigration from neighbouring countries and turned a blind eye to the pogroms carried out by these Arab newcomers against the Jews whose land it was supposed to be –thus laying the groundwork for the false claim that the Arabs were the rightful inheritors of the land. And all the time, the British cloaked this vicious treachery in the honeyed fiction that they were the true friends of the Jewish people and had their interests at heart.

The history of the British in this terrible conflict between Jew and Arab is not merely a chronicle of the utmost perfidy and malevolent Judeophobic bigotry. It is also directly responsible for the continuation of the conflict to this day. For Arab aggression against the Jews has been rewarded and encouraged from the start, by robbing the Jews of their rightful inheritance and giving great chunks of it to their aggressors. But if aggressors are rewarded, the inevitable result is more aggression until they achieve their final terrible aim.

And that very same process is in evidence today, with Britain’s grotesque endorsement this week of the coalition for genocide and your government's unconscionable pressure upon Israel to negotiate its own destruction with its mortal enemies. Prime Minister, the virus of Judeophobia is now rampant once again throughout Europe – let alone in the Arab and Muslim world. And the fuel for this fire is the set of genocidal falsehoods about the Arab and Muslim war of extermination against Israel, a Big lie which has turned victim into aggressor and vice versa. Appallingly, the British government is helping stoke this vile inferno by endorsing many of these falsehoods -- and now, worse still, by actually promoting the coalition of genocide and turning the screw on its victim. The similarities with the 1930s and 1940s are uncanny and horrifying – similarities not just with what was allowed to develop in Europe, but also what happened in Palestine itself, the source of today’s terrible impasse.

Prime Minister, if you are not very careful indeed history will judge that you re-established a direct line back to the malevolence of the British in Palestine; back to that terrible time when Britain so foully betrayed the Jewish people and became a party to genocide; back to the approach which gave genocidal fanatics hope that victory was within their grasp. To stand up against all this -- the defining madness of our times -- would demand of you, I know full well, the utmost statesmanship and moral courage. But the alternative is to earn the contempt of decent people everywhere and the scorn of posterity. The choice, Prime Minister, is yours.

Sincerely,

Melanie Phillips

Immigration at a price?

2011-05-04T16:56:00.000-05:00

Gary Becker has just published a short monograph for the IEA entitled The Challenge of Immigration: A Radical Solution (see also here). Like most of Becker’s proposals it has a penetrating simplicity and compelling logic to it. I want to consider it briefly (for my earlier assessment of the immigration issue see here).

Here is the Executive Summary:

Despite substantial economic growth in underdeveloped countries, there are still huge differences in wage levels between poorer and richer countries.
Low fertility, especially in Europe, is also likely to lead to pressures that will encourage migration in future decades.
Net migration has grown dramatically in recent years. In 1980, net migration to the UK was approximately zero and by 2005 the figure was 190,000 per annum. In the same period net migration to the USA more or less doubled to 1.1 million per annum.
There were very substantial migration flows in the late nineteenth century but the USA imposed restrictions from the 1920s onwards. Those restrictions are onerous and involve bureaucratic controls.
Given the extent of welfare states in countries with higher incomes, it would be difficult to go back to a policy of free migration.
There would be many advantages to a policy of charging immigrants a fee. If a fee of (say) $50,000 were charged, it would ensure that economically active migrants who had a real commitment to the country were most attracted. This fee could be used to lower other taxes.
Charging a fee would be a much more efficient way of controlling economic migration than the use of quotas and other bureaucratic systems of control.
Even a fee of $50,000 would allow people on relatively low earnings to enter the USA if there were skill shortages. Given the level of wage differentials, such a fee could be paid back in a few years or in a decade or so.
Certain categories of migrant might be allowed to benefit from a loans system to enable them to pay the fee over a period of years. This could operate rather like a student loans system in higher education.
One advantage of using a fee rather than administrative controls would be that illegal immigrants would have a strong incentive to regularize their status – and would be allowed to do so legally. Such people would have to pay the required fee but would then be free to choose much more remunerative occupations. As such, the use of the price mechanism in migration policy could alleviate the scourge of illegal immigration.

My general reaction to this proposal was quite negative for a few reasons.

It appears to solidify the role of government in “centrally planning” the immigration market. Any kind of central planning smells bad – incentive and knowledge problems – abuse, corruption, unavoidable errors of judgment, etc. It also means that government officials get to decide how many immigrants is the “right” number, rather than leaving this to the market.
The immigration fee would be paid to the government and would become a source of revenue for it. Becker suggests that this revenue (which could be substantial) could be put toward the budget deficit and obviate the need for some taxes going forward. This argument is surprisingly naïve. It is almost certain that the government will simply expand its commitments to include the revenue. In other words it will simply fuel the expansion of government. This is a proposal for expanding government revenue, not one for simply redistributing the way that revenue is used, as is the case with vouchers.
The proposal is basically a mechanism for allocating immigrants between the legal and illegal categories. The higher the fee, the more likely it is to deter legal migration, leaving the potential migration two, not one, options; not to migrate or to migrate illegally.
Becker suggests a government funded, or supported, loan program for lower income immigrants to be able to pay the fee. (At $50,000, even low income earners would be able to pay this loan in a few years.) Who needs another government loan program? Most certainly this would turn into a dei facto subsidy.

Further thought, however, has inclined me more in favor of the proposal for the following reasons (referring to the list above).

The role of government will be diminished. So while it is clearly not ideal it does reduce the necessary bureaucracy and its scope of decision making. Responses to the level of the immigration fee set could be made public and as a way to use “market data” to adjust the number of immigrants admitted. I still don’t like this at all; but I have to concede it is a lot better than what we have.
Expanding government revenue by this proposal remains a big problem for me. This could be made much more palatable with a more detailed circumscribing of the use of this money; keeping it out of general revenue. Maybe it could be used for a comprehensive education voucher program. [In the high welfare states, like California, they would want use this money to pay for health-care and education of immigrants. I would resist this, since immigrants are likely to pay for them themselves in their taxes.]
The proposal definitely creates a mechanism by which illegal immigrants could regularize their status. It seems it would also avoid the thorny question of amnesty and the moral qualms surrounding it. At $50,000 it is likely to all but remove the illegal immigration problem.
One need not have government involved in any loan program. If immigration were economically profitable private companies would fund loans for the fee.

So, all in all, it seems to me this proposal would be a vast improvement over what we have. It is clearly much more politically palatable and likely than more the more radical changes that many of us would like to see along classical liberal lines. Would it foreclose such changes completely? Is it worth taking that risk? Though my heart is not in it, I would have to say yes. What do you think?

The case for climate change policy is slowly unraveling

2011-04-21T16:14:00.000-05:00

The case for climate change policy is slowly unraveling, even as the climate alarmists continue to dominate the policy agenda. They have made up their minds and don't want to be confused by facts and logic. I say climate change POLICY (rather than global warming as a phenomenon) because, even if we grant the case for global warming (which has by no means been scientifically made), there are still three other questions that we need to answer clearly in the affirmative before we have a case for global warming POLICY. As I have explained here:

In order to make a case for government policy to mitigate Global Warming all of the following questions have to be answered in the affirmative:
Is the global climate warming?
If yes, is this (partially) caused by CO2 emissions?
If yes, is there anything we can do to significantly slow this down or even reverse global warming?
If yes, is it worth the effort?

Each of these questions poses a tough burden to meet, appropriately so before we embark on policies that will disrupt hundreds of thousands of lives (read the blog). I would now add an important fifth challenge.

5. Can we answer #4 above definitively?

This is another way of saying, do we really know what the hell we are doing?

Have a look at this op-ed from today's WSJ for a dose of humility in this regard.

REVIEW & OUTLOOK
APRIL 21, 2011
Climate Refugees, Not Found
Discredited by reality, the U.N.'s prophecies go missing.

In 2005, the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) published a color-coded map under the headline "Fifty million climate refugees by 2010." The primary source for the prediction was a 2005 paper by environmental scientist Norman Myers.

Six years later, this flood of refugees is nowhere to be found, global average temperatures are about where they were when the prediction was made—and the U.N. has done a vanishing act of its own, wiping the inconvenient map from its servers.

The map, which can still be found elsewhere on the Web, disappeared from the program's site sometime after April 11, when Gavin Atkins asked on AsianCorrespondent.com: "What happened to the climate refugees?" It's now 2011 and, as Mr. Atkins points out, many of the locales that the map identified as likely sources of climate refugees are "not only not losing people, they are actually among the fastest growing regions in the world."

The program's spokesman tells us the map vanished because "it's not a UNEP prediction. . . . that graphic did not represent UNEP views and was an oversimplification of UNEP views." He added that the program would like to publish a clarification, now that journalists are "making hay of it," except that the staffers able to do so are "all on holiday for Easter."

The climate-refugee prediction isn't the first global warming-related claim that has turned out to be laughable, and everyone can make mistakes. More troubling is the impulse among some advocates of global warming alarmism to assert in the face of contrary evidence that they never said what they definitely said before the evidence went against them.

These columns have asked for some time how anyone can still manage to take the U.N.-led climate crowd seriously. Maybe the more pertinent question is whether the climateers have ever taken the public's intelligence seriously.
Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Illegal Drugs - Ivry Man (IM) asks Dr. Know (DK) for Guidance

2011-03-05T23:22:00.001-06:00

Ivry man finds himself in the park and, as expected, sees Dr. Know seated on his usual bench looking absent minded.

IM. Dr. Know, how are you? It’s been quite a while since we spoke.

DK. [Warm smile] Indeed it has my dear friend. The responsibility for this lies with the guy who writes this dialogue. Apparently he has been very busy with other things and could not find the time to bother with the likes of us. Who am I to argue with that?

IM. [Looking confused] I am not sure I understand.

DK. Never mind. The fact that we are here must mean that there is something bothering you. Did you want to speak to me about something?

IM. [Serious] Yes, indeed. I just read this morning about two Americans who were killed in this drug-war that is going on in Mexico. It doesn’t seem as if the Mexican government is doing enough to keep its citizens, and now ours, safe, and to stamp out this drug epidemic.

DK. [Looking thoughtful] Maybe we should look at this a little more carefully. What do you suppose this “war” is all about?

IM. Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? These drugs are addictive, people are prepared to pay lots of money for them even though they shouldn’t have them, and so unscrupulous criminals have made a very big business out of it and are willing to go to war to defend that business. We have to do what it takes to put them out of business – step up to the plate!

DK. Well now let me get this straight. There are some people who want these drugs very badly and there are other people who want to sell to them. So what’s the problem exactly?

IM. [Exasperated]Are you deliberately being stupid? The problem is that we can’t simply allow people to sell and buy these very bad substances.

DK. And why is that?

IM. What is the matter with you? Don’t you think addictive drugs are terrible?

DK. Well yes, as a matter of fact I do. I think they are a curse. I can say nothing good about them. I am talking about hard drugs like heroine, crack, acid, etc. and various concoctions of over-the-counter stuff as well. I think cocaine is probably borderline and I think marijuana is pretty harmless.

IM. How can you say that? Surely you know that marijuana is a gateway drug, a stepping stone to harder stuff. If you open the flood gates, what then? [Dr. Know grimaces at the mixed metaphors]

DK. As a matter of fact my dear Ivrey, I think that is completely false. I see no hard evidence that marijuana is itself addictive or leads to addiction of other substances. Nor do I see any credible evidence that it is unhealthy. Excess pot is surely less harmful than excess alcohol and alcohol can be dangerously addictive. And pot is certainly no more harmful than garden variety tobacco found in cigarettes, pipes and cigars. And we know that it has certain beneficial medicinal uses, for example in the treatment of pain and nausea. For the life of me I cannot even begin to understand why this stuff is illegal. We could save a lot of law enforcement dollars on this one.

IM. [Looking peeved] Well I can see I am not going to win this one. You do admit though that those other things are very bad?

DK. [Looking earnest] Indeed I do. Very bad.

IM. [Indignant] So, at least for the hard stuff, prohibit it?

DK. No, my friend. This is an imperfect world. There are lots of dangerous temptations in it. Being a free person means having to make hard choices and bearing the consequences of one’s actions. We cannot, and do not try, to protect people from all that is bad in the world particularly when it is the result of their own bad choices. Who are we to decided for people what is good for them and what not? Should we prohibit the eating of red meat for everyone who has high cholesterol? We tried prohibiting the purchase and sale of alcohol and you know where that led. Isn’t this exactly the same as “Prohibition?”

How long has this “drug-war” been going on? At least 30 years. Every successive administration, Republican or Democrat, pledges renewed efforts to control the sale and use of hard drugs; yet they are still with us, in the inner cities and in the affluent suburbs. The drug-war has not been won, cannot be won, and costs more and more in terms of dollars, corruption and human lives with each passing moment.

IM. [Incredulous] So what are you suggesting, that we just turn a blind eye to users and pushers?

DK. Think about it Ivrey. How could the harms and suffering of allowing free sale and use even begin to compare with the mounting costs of this war? I doubt we could accurately assess this cost. In addition to dollar expenditures and loss of life and limb (over twenty thousand people killed in Mexico alone since the war moved there from Colombia, many of them uninvolved innocents) we have to add the devastating loss of freedom and privacy as drug-enforcement thugs knock down doors and strip-search suspects, the costs of incarcerating hundreds of thousands of perpetrators, and the incredible degree of police corruption caused by the drug-enforcement situation.

IM. What do you mean?

DK There is probably not a single urban police force in this country (and certainly not in Mexico) that is not seriously infiltrated by cops in the pay of drug-lords. How can local government (or even the federal government) compete with the kind of money the drug trade offers? And for what?

Even more important, this is not something that should be a preoccupation of our secretary of state and an important aspect of our foreign policy as we lean very heavily on foreign governments to bear the brunt of this war. The demand for drugs in the U.S. and our attempt to stamp out the trade has resulted in major destruction to the economies of other countries, like Colombia and Afghanistan and now, to an even greater degree, Mexico. We, the U.S., have destroyed civil society and peaceful living in northern Mexico. We have made them pay dearly for our “problem.”

IM. [Red in the face] I just can’t believe you would allow people to be abused by these criminals without even trying to protect them.

DK. [Sad, concerned] If there were any likelihood of winning this war or even confining it to a low boil, one might make an argument for persisting; but after thirty years of war it is definitely time to declare defeat and choose the lesser evil – allow people to decide what to buy and ingest as long as they do it peacefully. And if you want to try and persuade them to make better choices, to “educate” them, that is your choice, with your dollar. Even if we used a fraction of the tax-payer dollars we now spend on enforcement for this educative effort, it would probably be more effective and sensible that this senseless “war.”

Don’t you see Ivrey, if you criminalize something you attract people with a comparative advantage in being criminals. That is why there is so much horrifying violence. If it were decriminalized the violence would be unnecessary. The price would fall. Even low income addicts probably wouldn’t have to rob people to get their fix as often as now. The trade would be visible, like alcohol.

IM. Don’t you think this will result in a huge increase in experimentation and addiction, especially among our vulnerable children?

DK. So dramatic. No I don’t actually. My best guess is that in the beginning there will be some spike in use and abuse, but in a short time this will smooth out. In the end we may actually have fewer users. But even if the number of users goes up this is no reason to persist with this craziness. And our children are already highly exposed to all manner of addictive substances, wherever they are.

IM. I should have known I was getting into trouble. So what is your specific proposal?

DK. I propose officially decriminalizing the production and sale of all addictive substances and letting people make up their own minds. I suppose this is a non-starter. Then at least we can do this de-facto by putting drug-enforcement way behind the back-burner to where it is basically invisible.

IM. [looking thoughtful] It would take a lot of persuading to get to that point.

DK. Well that is why we are here you know (no pun intended). Our author decided to write this dialogue to do his little bit, just like he said he would when we last met (see here).

IM. Well I hope to see you again soon. I see you looking at your watch. But I wonder if your argument about addictive drugs would not apply equally to prescription drugs (pharmaceuticals)?

DK. As a matter of fact it would, and that will be the subject of our next discussion. Always a pleasure my good friend.

He rises and ambles off in the direction of … .

Immigration is an essential ingredient in American economic growth.

2011-02-28T14:07:00.000-06:00

Within the space of 235 years (a blink of an eye in historical time) the United States of America has gone from an ex-colonial backwater to the greatest economic powerhouse in history. Its population has grown from about 3 million to over 300 million over this period. A sizable portion of this growth has come from immigration. The proportion of the foreign born (legal and illegal) has rarely been below 10% and has frequently been in the region of 20%. At any point in time a large proportion of working Americans were either born elsewhere, had parents who were born elsewhere, or had grandparents who were born elsewhere. This is an incredibly dynamic picture, a veritable demographic churning, with amazing cultural and economic implications.

Judging by my own experience and observations, there is a subtle inter-generational shift in cultural identity. Only by the third generation do people feel completely assimilated into the local culture. The immigrants never quite "make-it." I think of myself very much as an American. But I am frequently conscious that my accent and my experience causes me to stand out a bit - not in a bad way, but it is noticeable. Many of my fellow immigrants feel this to a greater extent. It makes for cultural tensions, but also for an exciting dynamism, an infusion of cultural DNA into to social gene pool. My children are American. But even they, as children of South African immigrants, carry an extra bit of background baggage. They feel just a little bit different, in possession of something unique (the tacit and conscious knowledge of another culture). You see this most clearly in the way they gravitate to other first generation Americans in their social circles. By the third generation the children are full Americans. Their grandparents might as well be from another planet.

This pattern is repeated over again in each generation of America's population. It has been a necessary part of the ongoing vitality of the American experience, including its entrepreneurial component. Without it American exceptionalism, and the rate of value-creation, of economic growth, will not be sustained.

Illegal immigration is not a problem. It is an opportunity.

We are America

2011-02-07T22:17:00.000-06:00

President Obama told business leaders Monday, "I want to be clear: Even as we make America the best place on earth to do business, businesses also have a responsibility to America... As we work with you to make America a better place to do business, ask yourselves what you can do for America. Ask yourselves what you can do to hire American workers, to support the American economy, and to invest in this nation."

This is really annoying - he just doesn't get it. And the businessmen he was speaking do, don't either. They just want to make a deal that will let them run their businesses and make profits. In this speech to the US Chamber of Commerce Obama echoed John F. Kennedy's famous inaugural speech about not asking what your country can do for you but, rather, what you can do for your country.

This gets it exactly wrong!! A system that depends on individual duty and sacrifice to function properly, is likely to malfunction badly, and to be abused by the worst elements of society. This Adam Smith already knew, and this, Milton Friedman already made crystal clear in his 1962 classic Capitalism and Freedom. In the first sentences of the Introduction he writes as follows:

In a much quoted passage in his inaugural address, President Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. The paternalistic "what your country can do for you" implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man's belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny. The organismic, "what you can do for your 'country" implies the government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary.
To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshiped and served. He recognizes no national goal except as it is the consensus of the goals that the citizens severally serve. He recognizes no national purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive.
The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather "What can I and my compatriots do through government" to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect?

This should be required reading at the White House.

Walking the tightrope between left and right.

2011-01-18T21:26:00.000-06:00

Today’s editorial in the WSJ by the president of the United States can be understood on at least two levels.

On one level it is an exercise in reasoned persuasion, on the basis of sound evidence and logic, to move the economic policy in a more sensible direction. If this is the intention, it must be judged an abysmal failure. As my annotations at the link below suggest, the reasoning is faulty, the assertions are vague and unsupported - the rhetoric reads like something out of Orwell's 1984 - "newspeak" - terms that mean the very opposite of what they say.

On a second level, this is a rhetorical play – a big one. I have said for a while that one of my biggest fears is that Obama will reinvent himself as a candidate of the “moderate middle” regain the support of the “moderates” and independents and win reelection in 2012. Is seems to me this editorial is all about that reelection. All form and no substance, it is an attempt to appeal to those who are worried about his commitment to a healthy economy. It is an attempt to allay these fears while not alienating the anti-business crowd too much. He is cleverly walking a tightrope, looking right and left and hoping not to fall.

Will it work?

You can find the editorial, together with my annotations, at the link below.
Click here.

You cannot replace God with Science - don't try.

2011-01-09T01:32:00.000-06:00

Sam Harris is at it again. For those who don't know him, Harris is an American neuroscientist best known for his critical work on religion. In his books The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation he provides devastating critiques of traditional religious beliefs. Though not new, his arguments are candid and compelling - at least to me. Reading his work (like the work of his fellow "New Atheists," Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett) leaves me wondering about two "mysteries" of life.

Mystery number 1 is how on earth reasonable people can believe the types of things claimed by the teachings of the traditional religions. I am talking factual things, not moral truths, like the stories of creation, revelation, miracles, etc. when the evidence and common sense is so compellingly against such things. I suppose I don't really expect to get a satisfying answer to this question. The explanation probably lies in the cognitive-emotional makeup of human beings. Which begs the question, why do some believe so fervently and others think that it is all nonsense and superstition? Leave that aside.

Mystery number 2 arises out of the realization that while the "answers" given by traditional religion may be patently unsatisfactory, or, actually, not really answers at all, no good answers to the "big" questions exist. There are many things in heaven and on earth that remain unknown, and perhaps unknowable. The ratio of what we know to what we don't know about what there is to know, might be pathetically low. This would not be surprising to me. And about the really "big" questions I imagine there can never be an answer. "How was the universe created?" or more accurately, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" or more mundanely, "From where does matter come?" are questions that tease us but whose coherence may be in doubt. They suggest some sort of transcendent infinite regress. I am content to say "I don't know, nobody knows, we will probably never know."

So much for the New Atheism. But Harris is not content to confine his argument to a penetrating critique of pretended knowledge. He also wants to attack the morality of religion. On some of this I find his arguments quite reasonable. Some religious teachings strike us "reasonable" folks as simply medieval. However, as I have explained before, here, what Harris fails to realize is that this kind of criticism, criticism of moral values, is of a whole different category from criticism of factual beliefs. Morals belong to the world of tastes and values informing us about how the world ought to be; factual beliefs belong to the world of facts informing us about how the world is. These are categorically different. As the British philosopher David Hume taught us, you cannot get an "ought" from an "is." You cannot decide how things ought to be simply by looking at how they are. Matters of value are different from matters of fact. "Harry is a thief" may be a fact. "Harry ought to be punished" is not. And the second sentence does not follow from the first without the insertion of some personal judgment.

Roughly the last third of The End of Faith is devoted to the futile exercise of trying to deduce morals from "scientific" facts. And now Harris has written a whole new book on this: The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. Notice the subtitle. It is a straight-out denial of Hume's distinction between facts and values. How does he do it? With a very clumsy slight of hand, that is how.

He begins by equating morality to that which fosters "well-being" - since deep down everyone believes that we should be concerned about well-being. Hence if you find the scientific determinants of well-being you can find a scientific basis for morality! QED. One can use the objective filter of science to determine what is moral and what is not on the basis of the affect of various behaviors on well-being. Simply examine the states of people's brains under different conditions to find out what makes them "happy" and you can write the book on a scientific morality - as he perceives himself to have done.

It is clear from his references and sources, that in addition to work on neuroscience, Harris relies on work in what has been called Behavioral Economics. This includes recent work on so-called "happiness research" and the "new paternalism." Using laboratory methods (simulated realities with volunteers) these researchers claim to be able to discern enduring truths about human perception and decision-making. Maybe they can. Its what follows that is often problematic in the extreme. For example, from the observation that people often seem to make what the experimenter knows to be irrational decisions - because they are inconsistent (dependent on the way the decision problem is framed) or because they are clearly against the subjects' self interest, these behavioral economists would like to make paternalistic laws to guide people in their own interests to make "better" decisions. Science has become God and he wants to put Big Brother in charge. (see for example here.)

Harris's project is flawed before it gets started - it has two major flaws. 1. "well-being" is an amorphous, non-scientific concept. It is a futile attempt to objectify the subjective. We don't know and cannot know what it is that people "really want." To presume we do is to court extreme dangers of moral coercion; depriving people of moral autonomy. 2. Even if we could somehow determine what well-being is for each and every human being, we cannot assume that what enhances well-being is automatically moral. This is to illegitimately ignore the fact-value distinction. I mean one can make this assertion - that morality is simply the enhancement of well-being - but it is a lame assertion based simply on itself and nothing else but the belief that everyone would agree with it. I don't.

What supreme irony! To start a project aimed at dethroning dogmatic belief systems only to end up peddling another - one just as dangerous.

The essence of the matter

2010-12-28T15:16:00.000-06:00

Have you wondered why economists seem so divided over on their interpretations of the current economic crisis? Here is my attempt to boil it down.

Keynesians and Classicals (of various kinds) agree on one key point; there is currently a serious lack of confidence in the economy that is inhibiting private business investment expenditures. What sharply divides them are views as to what caused this crisis of confidence and what needs to be done to fix it.

Keynesians think that the market failed because of lack of regulation in a dynamic innovative environment. Those with Classical inclinations believe that exactly the opposite is true; that it was ill-conceived regulatory initiatives like the concerted push to expand home ownership in America, underwritten by FANNIE MAE and FREDDIE MAC, and facilitated by easy money, that caused a housing bubble and runaway financial asset expansion. The latter was seriously aggravated by a cartel of rating agencies indirectly created by government licensing requirements and operating with serious conflicts of interest.

Keynesians think that more government-Fed-financed stimulus is needed, and that higher taxes don't matter. Those who believe in the market believe that permanent significant tax reductions (comprehensive tax reform) and a commitment to fiscal responsibility at the various levels of government is what is needed. This will entail credibly limiting the power of the Fed as well.

Look not to Israel, the Arab states or the U.S. for a solution - look to the United Nations!

2010-12-07T12:05:00.000-06:00

See the pdf file at this link

click here

- an article from Commentary magazine, current issue, by Michael Bernstam.

I found this article amazing in its simplicity. It seems so obvious to me after reading it that I marvel that anyone carefully contemplating the Israel-Palestinian conflict could fail to consider the role of UNRWA. But you never hear a word about it.

If Bernstam is right, then UNRWA must stand as the most perniciously destructive and counterproductive of the agencies of the UN. The "achievements" of the UN in the world have been rightly criticized and even vilified. But this must be the worst of them. It is a case mostly of unintended harms, but that is no mitigation to those millions whose lives it has affected.

Those who rise to condemn Israel pointing to the injustice of the displacement in 1949 of the Arabs whose descendants became today's Palestinians, should read this article carefully and consider the balancing of evils over the years that have attended all of the many refugees from that awful period in history. Absent the dependency enabling (nay producing) role of UNRWA, the refugee status of the Palestinians would not have endured. In the meantime, UNRWA has evolved into a Palestinian controlled, terrorist sponsoring, paramilitary organization that is also an all-encompassing welfare state perpetuating refugeeism. Remember, this is an agency of the United Nations.! And, as such, it receives most of its financing from the taxpayers of the United States!

What this article tells me (and I do not discount the possibility that I am naïve about some of it) is that while we correctly report, analyze and condemn current injustices on both sides of the issue - being the predictable result of political opportunism and the racism of fundamentalists and ultra-nationalists - the foundationally pathological structure of the Palestinian situation is at the root of it. If this is not fixed the problem quite simply will never go away and will probably get steadily worse. Yet, if Bernstam is correct, the solution he offers, the abolition of UNRWA, is the obvious fix.

I highly recommend you read this article.

Income inequality is NOT a bad thing.

2010-12-05T18:16:00.000-06:00

In light of the current debate in the Congress about extending tax cuts for the "rich," I feel compelled to revisit the question of economic inequality.

Perhaps the most stubbornly persistent idea embraced by American "liberals" (statists) is the idea that the rich ought to pay more tax (meaning a higher proportion of their income) because income inequality is a bad thing. This idea is widespread. It has achieved the status of a self-evident truth. And yet when one examines it carefully one sees that the belief is not only illogical, it is also unworthy.

At the most practical level it is just silly - though dangerously so. There is no reason to believe that target-taxing people who earn more than $250,000 a year will help anyone at all. The argument is that government needs that revenue to prevent the deficit from getting any worse. And, after all, the "rich" can afford it. This kind of reasoning comes from economic ignorance (notwithstanding the fact that many of the people who are making it should know better). It comes from focusing on the short-term-direct effects of any policy and ignores the longer-term-widespread effects. The deficit is the result of a shortfall of tax-revenue against expenditure. But taxes affect behavior. A lower tax rate may actually boost revenue if it encourages economic activity. This is not just a theoretical possibility; there are many historical examples of this. So, if its just the deficit that is the problem, it is by no means clear that soaking the rich will help and may likely hurt. There is nothing that helps cure government deficits more than vigorous private-sector economic activity which generates lots of tax revenue, and low levels of taxation are crucial for this in the long term.

Of course the best way to reduce the deficit is to cut government expenditure - but that is a subject for another blog.

If, alternatively, the liberals are concerned about jobs (especially for the poor and for minorities) they should understand that it is only the rich who create jobs. Government jobs depend parasitically on value created in the private sector; government does not create much value itself. Its role is to create conditions that allow for the creation of value by productive, entrepreneurial activity. Without the rich there are no jobs. Without the rich there is no economic growth. If you tax the rich you tax the desire to become rich and create jobs.

So, at a practical level, the policy is ill-advised. Liberals reading this will roll their eyes. "We have heard this before from the likes of Ronald Reagan - it is 'trickle down' economics and it is nonsense. The rich don't spend their money on creating jobs, they save it and the money does not trickle down to the poor." Again, economic illiteracy. Those making that argument could not possibly really believe what they are saying. If they did why would they stop short of advocating the complete elimination of all income inequality? Why not raise income taxes on the rich sufficient to erase all income gaps? Contemplating that, they will realize that this would be disastrous, that it would most probably destroy the economy by killing golden egg-laying goose. But somehow mild income leveling has no bad effects on the goose? Listen guys, we know that 'trickle down' must work. Even if the rich save their income, that money comes back into the economy through the capital market (at least it will when it starts working again!). Its not really 'trickle down.' Its 'spread it around.' Taxes shrink the pie, tax-cuts expand it. Its not a zero-sum game and its not rocket science. You can't simply take taxes from the rich and give them to the poor (which rarely actually happens anyway) without destroying economic value.

Yet, having said all this, I suspect that deep down the intelligent liberal knows it already. I suspect that this is not what its really about. We have had upwards of forty years of the war on poverty and there is apparently no victory in sight. If you add up all of the money extracted by taxes for so-called poverty programs, and divide it by the number of people classified as "poor," there should not be any poor people left. Contributions are more than adequate to ensure no poverty. Why are the poor not getting "their" money? Why indeed? Poverty in America is actually less of a condition than an industry employing millions of parasitical bureaucrats with a vested interest in its perpetuation. [Many of them are sincere - they know not what they do.]

No, I suspect the real reason behind the desire to sock it to the rich with a big tax stick, is the powerful visceral appeal of the act of reducing income inequality. Inequality has taken on a life of its own as a bogey man. Its not really poverty that is the problem in liberal eyes, it is inequality. Sans poverty, inequality would still be problem for them. If somehow the poorest person in America earned a million dollars annually and the richest earned a billion, this would still be a problem for them. If the rich billionaires were small in number yet owned a large proportion of the wealth, and the millionaires were large in number yet owned a proportion less than their numbers in the population, this would still be a problem for them. I think they will admit this. Inequality, in and of itself, is a problem for them.

Now, why should this be so? Oh, they have ready answers. But, though they may dress it up in all manner of respectable rhetoric like "the dangers of relative deprivation," in the end it comes down to just two basic and very base emotions - resentment and envy! That is what it is really about. The liberal mind hates all inequalities. It cannot abide "gaps." Its policy motivations are all about the eradication of gaps. There is a deep-seated resentment of the acquisition of riches. There is a barely acknowledged envy of the rich. How much is resentment and how much envy, who knows? I suspect the intellectuals are more resentful and the liberals who are poor are more envious, it doesn't matter much. Both are equally unworthy.

Think about it. What are the values we try to inculcate in our children? Generosity, sharing, joy for the good-fortune of others. And what values do we condemn in them? Resentment, envy, and the inability to rejoice in (or at least respect) the achievements of others. Yet when it comes to the fashioning of economic and social policy we somehow think its ok to reverse these values and extol the benefits of enforced equality, elevating resentment and envy to national virtues. Echoing Adam Smith, how can what are vices of private behavior become virtues when practiced by government?

Poverty is bad. Income inequality is not. It is a necessary outcome of a free society in which people make different lifestyle choices and encounter different odds. To be sure, all free people should be equal in the eyes of the law, they should be equally subject to the rule of law, but they should not be made to be equal in results when they violate no law.

After Keynes: Rediscovering Hayek.

2010-11-29T14:04:00.000-06:00

About two years ago in my blog I predicted that sooner or later the pendulum would swing back against the Keynesian resurgence as disillusionment with its policy failures mounted up. This is now happening - in Europe and elsewhere. The one glaring exception is the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System of the United States (aka. Ben Bernanke).

See this interesting article in Newsweek.

A Return to Economist Friedrich Hayek's Ideas - Newsweek

PL.

Considerations on market stability and the world of finance

2010-10-29T23:28:00.000-05:00

David Prychitko has written a very interesting article, just published in the latest issue of the Review of Austrian Economics. It is a timely consideration of the ideas of a prominent Keynesian, Hyman Minsky, on the question of the alleged inherent instability of the financial system (actually all capitalist financial systems).

Minsky was a devoted Keynesian, but an imaginative one. He extends and deepens Keynes’s ideas, making them more plausible and intuitive. His main instrument is a very useful taxonomy of types of finance. There are three types, hedge finance, speculative finance and Ponzi finance. They escalate in degree of risk. When the revenue stream from an investment is confidently expected to pay all expenditure streams at every moment in the future we have hedge finance. With speculative finance there are some holes; near-term expenditures may exceed revenues, the hope being that in the longer term, revenues and capital gains will redress the balance. Ponzi finance is a situation in which in which interest on the debt actually exceeds revenue flows. (In passing we could note that this is a nice framework not only for analyzing the behavior of individuals, but also, even more relevantly, of the state.)

Minsky’s story uses this taxonomy to explain how a cycle is composed of the progression of economic agents from hedge finance to Ponzi finance before an inevitable collapse. He claims that the take off from hedge to speculative finance is inevitable, the Minsky-moment at which the start of the boom occurs. Prychitko, while giving us an appreciation of Minsky’s work, criticizes him for not providing an explanation of the genesis of this progression from tranquil business as usual to escalating speculative positions. Of course the Austrian explanation is the credit cycle ignited by what is so charmingly referred to today as “quantitative easing” by the central bank. For the rest you need to read this wonderful article which provides Austrians with a welcome window into the other world.

I would like to add a note on one aspect of this fundamental debate with the Keynesians. Prychitko claims that Minsky has no explanation of the Minsky-moment and implies, I think, that without such an explanation we are at a loss to understand how any cycle would occur. Why would entrepreneurs ever abandon their commitment to hedge finance? What provokes them to take on more risk to the point of financial meltdown? I think this is basically correct. But I want to guard against the possible conclusion that what is being claimed is that, absent governmental monetary mismanagement, no cycles would ever occur.

Of course Keynes’s explanation (surely implicit in Minsky) is rooted in casual social psychology. Entrepreneurs display “animal spirits” and are susceptible to waves of optimism and pessimism. There is “herding.” Asset values, being inherently subjective, very sensitive to projected future revenues, are subject to large, unpredictable, connected swings. So the explanation of the Minsky-moment is that eventually financial tranquility is bound to be disturbed by a contagion of unrealistic optimistic expectations. And the rest is history.

My own take on this is as follows: I think there is an element of truth in what Keynes says. I think, even in the absence of monetary mismanagement, there would be cycles. In fact, cycles are part of the experimental, evolutionary nature of the market process. All action is based on expectations. The epistemological basis of some expectations is more solid than others. In the realm of business investment, particularly in an environment of innovation and rapid change, the knowledge-base is quite tenuous. Entrepreneurs pit their conflicting expectations against each other. Most of them (and maybe all of them) will be wrong. Hence, where the investment environment invites imaginative visions (for example the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the 1990s) we are bound to get a clustering of errors. It is inherent in the market process.

There are a number of reasons why the “people should know better” argument doesn’t work against this. Firstly, even though it may be perfectly clear that asset values are unrealistically high, and must eventually be corrected, investors do not know when this correction will come and are anxious to ride the boom as long as they can. There is a kind of brinkmanship. That this occurs is, I think, undeniable. Second, one could argue that memory is fatally selective. We remember the more recent past better than the more distant, especially when the latter belongs to previous generations. So, for example, the discrediting of Keynesian ideas is not remembered as well by the current generation as by those who lived through the 1970’s and early 1980’s. Third, there is the “each episode is unique” syndrome (a kind of pop “historicist” anti-Mengerian approach); this is a “new economy” in which the old rules don’t apply. And there may be other, similar arguments. I think it not implausible to suggest that the “dark forces of time and ignorance” do make for a world of unavoidable turbulence.

So what? Well the power of the Austrian argument derives not from asserting that without government mismanagement cycles could be avoided; it comes rather from the anti-utopian argument that this world is not perfect. It is extremely complex, it churns, it surges, and it progresses. The trick is to allow it to play out and not think you can achieve smooth sailing by interfering with it. Striving for the impossible produces highly exaggerated cycles and messes up the ability of the process to filter information, to sift the viable projects from the others. Absent government mismanagement, the boom comes to a natural end because the waves of optimistic investment put an increasing strain on the supply of loanable funds and push up interest rates. The most insane thing you can do is attempt to prolong the boom by trying to keep down the cost of increasingly scarce credit.

But this is the view of someone who believes that the market process is inherently stable. Cycles will occur, but the financial markets, if unencumbered, can accommodate them. Cycles are mitigated by the homeostatic properties of the market, which work fast enough to correct any run-away waves of optimism and pessimism, to prevent social dysfunction or collapse.

The Keynesians quite simply do not believe this. They believe that the market system is inherently unstable, that herding behaviors, if not checked by enlightened leadership, could result in financial and social collapse, in disaster and catastrophe.

[At least that is the story. It’s hard to know how sincere this is and to what extent it is just a pretext for the desire to engage in large scale Robin-Hood-type income distribution. In addition, it totally ignores the unrealism of assuming that government leadership has the ability (knowledge) to, and can be trusted to, do the job. That is, it ignores the incentive and knowledge problems that economic policy must face. It asserts market failure but ignores government failure.]

As a theoretical matter, the stability of the market system cannot be proved. Stability (and convergence) rests (among other things) on the speed with which the undeniable homeostatic forces (like price flexibility) work relative to the speed of other changes. We have no robust theory of behavior in disequilibrium and without one we cannot prove the stability of a system of interconnected markets. The confident assertion that the market system is not inherently unstable (which I do firmly believe) derives from a particular understanding of how markets work plus a particular reading of history. Theoretically the world need not work the way it does. It could be closer to the one envisioned by Keynes, but it isn’t.

The absence of a knock-down argument (theoretical or empirical – history does not speak with one voice) is the reason I even have to write something like this; it is the reason discredited ideas get recycled. It makes our jobs much more difficult. But I guess there is an upside to that.

Can Israel be Jewish and a Liberal Democracy?

2010-10-25T21:17:00.000-05:00

The article linked below is not a very good defense of Israel as a Jewish state. I think it can be stated much more simply.

Is the idea of an official religion for a nation-state consistent with pure liberal democracy (libertarian values)?

I think the answer is definitely "no." (Of course, the whole idea of a nation-state may not be consistent with this ideal anyway. Libertarians don't like the idea of any collectives, like "nation." But they exist nevertheless.) Hence America, and some other liberal democracies, strive mightily to strike a neutral position on religion - making it a matter of private choice and practice as long as their adherents do not act coercively.

But this option is simply not on the table in the Middle East. Without exception every nation-state in the Middle East has an official religion, and except for Israel it is Islam. And, in every respect, without exception, Israel is closer to the liberal democratic ideal than any of its neighbors and enemies - the gap is enormous. To push a "peace-process" that results in a single, secular Israel-Palestinian state, is, as a practical matter, to place all of the Jews in Israel, (and many around the world) in grave danger.

There is ample evidence to indicate that this is no mere pretext. It is an essential part of Israel's character (as a nation, a set of institutional and cultural practices) that it has been, and continues to be, a safe-haven and a guardian for Jews everywhere. The vast majority of Jews now living in Israel came there, or descend from relatives who came there, from places where they were persecuted, often fleeing for their very lives. This is not a mere donning of the posture of victimhood, so common among other minorities, for political reasons. Israel asks for nothing except to be left alone in its tiny piece of real estate. It can fend for itself. It needs no "affirmative action."

Before we self-righteously push for a "peace-process" that results in a secular, Israel-Palestine, or even a secular Israel, we should demand the secularization and democratization of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the rest of them.

Douglas J. Feith: Can Israel Be Jewish and Democratic? - WSJ.com

In The Wall Street Journal, Douglas J. Feith of the Hudson Institute writes that many nations have laws and practices that recognize their majority group's history, language or religion while also protecting the rights of minorities.

Israel-Palestine - the key is economic, the barrier is religious.

2010-10-09T17:14:00.000-05:00

The Israeli-Palestinian talks seem destined to collapse. The ostensible reason for the collapse is Israel's refusal to block the resumption of construction of "settlements" on the West Bank and in east Jerusalem. But I seriously doubt that this is the case. This is not the essence of the differences between Israel and the Palestinians.

As I have stated many times, Israel did not create the Palestinian problem and Israel cannot solve it. The essence of the problem is the existence of a Jewish state in the heart of the Middle East. Israel is an affront, an unacceptable insult, to both Arab national aspirations/self esteem and religious precepts (it is a Muslim imperative that no infidel may rule land once ruled by a Muslim governmental authority). In the last few decades it is the latter that has become much more important. But both are really smokescreens in the service of realpolitik. The Arab dictators of the area, and Arab and Muslim dictators further afield, use the "Palestinian cause" to deflect attention away from their own corruption and despotic rule - for their failure to modernize and liberalize their economies. The Palestinians are pawns in the hands of outside rulers who are dictators, religious fanatics, or both. The Saudis top the list. A true peace with Israel would deprive them of this.

Of course, it does not help matters that Israel is so monumentally successful and a democracy to boot. For those convinced that Israel is the problem, this simply multiplies the insults by widening the economic and cultural-political gap. By a curious stretch of logic, if Israelis are doing so well it must be because the Palestinians are suffering so much.

But, not all Palestinians are so bitter or so naive. Many see in Israel a mirror of their own possibilities, and the West Bank economy is now growing rapidly, in part owing to employment supplied by the expanding settlements.

For the record: I condemn the use of public money for the construction of any private buildings or settlements wherever they may be - in Palestine or in New Jersey. And I condemn the religious fanaticism that claims land on the basis of a biblical promise and uses political power to divert funds to its cause. There should be no doubt where I stand on this. But, as I understand it, these are not the central objections to the settlements by those who blame Israel. Rather they see any Jewish settlement as a form of "occupation" and seem to think that if only the "occupation" could be ended, peace could be achieved. This view is as dangerous as it is wrong.

The settlements are a mixed bag. I don't know how much state funding lies behind them, but all-in-all the settlers constitute a population of about 300,000 - a tiny minority among the 2.5 million Palestinians. By all accounts they are industrious and productive. If they are financed by the Israeli taxpayer (or international Jewish donations) they are a gift to both the settlers and the Palestinians. In any future Palestinian state, a peaceful neighbor with Israel, the status of Jewish people living there will have to be determined. Will Jews be able to live as peacefully in Palestine as the million Arab Israelis do in Israel. If not, why not? And if not, then that is no real peace. Assuming they are, and depending where the borders are drawn, the settlements would indeed be valuable economic models for the new state. A rational approach to real peace would not be to walk out of peace talks on this account.

If there is any hope for real peace, I believe it will have to be based on shared economic interests. The Palestinians constitute a huge labor force and a huge potential local market for both Israel and future Palestinian industry. Israeli ingenuity and technology could prove invaluable. There is an unlimited potential for mutual advantage - a substantial "peace dividend." But for this to even have a chance, religious fanaticism on both sides will have to be controlled.

Economic prosperity depends largely on economic freedom. As China and the thriving economies of the UAE illustrate, a large measure of economic freedom can exist within a politically restrictive state. Private property, honoring of contracts, the absence of price controls and oppressive economic regulation, a stable financial system, etc. are all necessary for economic growth. Political freedom, though not necessary, is also helpful in this regard. Of course, freedom is an overriding end in itself. Economic growth is of little use if the options available to consumers are severely limited, if what they can read and say are restricted. And that is why oppressive states that experience economic growth also experience tremendous pressure for political liberalization. The prime example of this is Chile.

In fact economic growth does best in liberal democracies - economies that are "democratic" in the broader sense of that word - not just politically in the sense of being able to elect representatives, but democratic in the sense of being open, free societies whose citizens possess what we understand as civil liberties, among which the most important is freedom of speech. And these liberal democracies are also secular societies, where religion is a private matter and everyone is free to practice her/his religion as long as s/he does not attempt to forcibly impose it on anyone else. There is no official religion and religious precepts ideally do not govern public life - have no expression in law.

All of the states in the Middle East have official religions. The case of Israel is ambiguous. It is the freest society in the region (and one of the freest in the world) and it affords its citizens many civil liberties. But on the matter of religion, there are violations of basic individual freedoms. The law-of-return discriminates in favor of Jews in matters of citizenship, and certain civil functions are monopolized by religious authorities - owing to the power of the orthodox Jewish political parties in the proportional representation system of election. So, marriage and funeral ceremonies must be performed by the recognized religious authorities - in the case of Jews this is the orthodox Jewish establishment; and intermarriage is effectively ruled out - interfaith couples have to leave Israel to marry!

On its face this is unacceptable to anyone who believes in civil liberties - which includes most Jews worldwide. But the politics of the situation has proven to be an immovable barrier to its reform. Breaking the monopoly of the religious right-wing to make room for more liberal denominations and, importantly, to allow for civil marriages, has been impossible. This disturbs me, but I am even more worried about another trend and what it may portend.

Israeli demographics tracks world trends. The piously religious families are the ones having lots of babies, while the secular liberals have very few. This trend will, not so gradually, erode the secular liberal component of Israeli society. In addition the worldwide renaissance in fundamentalism has affected Israeli youth as well. Religious identification in Israel is at an all time high. And because of the right-wing religious monopoly this means right-wing religious affiliation. Israelis living abroad in North America often affiliate Conservative of Reform, but no such alternative exists in Israel (these movements are tiny in Israel).

The religious population in Israel has posed numerous challenges, most of which have been successfully met by palatable compromises. Most mundanely, the religious communities receive huge subsidies so that their young men may study in Yeshivot. They also receive exemption from army service - though it is true that more and more soldiers are in fact religiously observant - it is only the anti-Zionist branches of the religious right to whom this exemption mostly applies. Jewish religious holidays are national holidays - but for most Israelis this means a day at the beach or out with the family. There have been political initiatives to try to ban such activities, most especially the driving of cars during holy days, but to date Israeli law has has upheld the principle of individual civil liberty in this regard. With increasing political power going to the religious establishments who knows how this will play out in the future?

So, projecting both the demographic and cultural trends one sees an increasing right-wing religious influence that could prove inimical to both Israel's own economic development and to the prospects of a spontaneously developing peace. Leaving it to the religious fanatics on both sides, it is easy to see, would mean continual hostility as the conflicting claims of each in matters of belief and land are simply irreconcilable. The religious constituent in Israel is the most belligerent when it comes to foreign policy.

True, a Jewish theocracy is likely to be more tolerant than a Muslim one - but were I a Muslim I would prefer neither, and moderate Muslims clearly will not and should not accept either. Both Jews and Muslims have rich histories of pragmatic commercial achievement and it is this, rather than their respective religions, that holds the greatest hope for a spontaneous evolution of peaceful coexistence. Once substantial trade and economic interaction exists the official recognition will follow. But for that to happen religious fervor on both sides must be constrained.

I don't know how strong the current momentum for mutually advantageous economic development is, but this clearly should be a conscious component of any intelligent understanding of the situation and any sensible foreign policy toward it.

Peter Lewin's thought for the day - remembering history

2010-09-26T12:33:00.000-05:00

The reason why we (collectively) don't learn from history is that we don't live long enough to remember it.

Those alive today who are old enough to have actually experienced, as thinking adults, the Carter, Reagan,Thatcher administrations and the ascendancy of the ideas of Friederich Hayek and Milton Friedman - leading to the widespread discrediting of Keynesian economics - are in the ineffective minority. The knowledge that counts for economic policy is very much based on actual experience (you had to live through it); it is tacit in nature, very difficult to transmit to someone who did not share the experience. Written history is a pale substitute for the real thing, and it frequently distorts.

So, every generation seems doomed to find out for itself what it should not do by doing it again - just like every child in the process of growing up.

Some quotes from the NYRB

2010-09-14T22:32:00.000-05:00

Paging through my latest copy of the NYRB I came across these two quotes.

The first is from an article by Tony Judt - maybe one of his last before his recent death on August 6. Judt was a widely read and very popular historian and commentator who first came to my attention because of his writings on Israel. Though he lived for a time in Israel he became openly hostile to the whole idea of a Jewish state and was one of the first of the now legion leftist intellectuals calling for the dismantling of the Jewish state in favor of a single Israel-Palestine. Of course he must have realized what this would imply for the Jewish minority who lived in such a state - if any remained.

Interestingly, his position on America and the world was equally provocative. He was clearly an uncompromising opponent of anything that smacks of Capitalism. What strikes me about this quote, and I realize it is only one quote, is its sheer incoherence and the abysmal ignorance it reveals. Clearly Judt was never burdened with the education of even the most basic of economic principles. He does not know how markets work (clearly does not want to know) deriving satisfaction from unselfconsciously and arrogantly spewing these meaningless ideological phrases to the tumultuous applause of his sycophantic audience.

Judt is now gone. He was notable, but he was not unique. His kind abound. They are revered as intellectuals, as insightful interpreters of current trends and events. But, in truth, many of them are very, very ignorant.

Today, we can still hear sputtering echoes of the attempt to reignite the cold war around a crusade against “Islamo-fascism.” But the true mental captivity of our time lies elsewhere. Our contemporary faith in “the market” rigorously tracks its radical nineteenth-century doppelgänger—the unquestioning belief in necessity, progress, and History. Just as the hapless British Labour chancellor in 1929–1931, Philip Snowden, threw up his hands in the face of the Depression and declared that there was no point opposing the ineluctable laws of capitalism, so Europe’s leaders today scuttle into budgetary austerity to appease “the markets.”

But “the market”—like “dialectical materialism”—is just an abstraction: at once ultra-rational (its argument trumps all) and the acme of unreason (it is not open to question). It has its true believers—mediocre thinkers by contrast with the founding fathers, but influential withal; its fellow travelers—who may privately doubt the claims of the dogma but see no alternative to preaching it; and its victims, many of whom in the US especially have dutifully swallowed their pill and proudly proclaim the virtues of a doctrine whose benefits they will never see.

Above all, the thrall in which an ideology holds a people is best measured by their collective inability to imagine alternatives. We know perfectly well that untrammeled faith in unregulated markets kills: the rigid application of what was until recently the “Washington consensus” in vulnerable developing countries—with its emphasis on tight fiscal policy, privatization, low tariffs, and deregulation—has destroyed millions of livelihoods. Meanwhile, the stringent “commercial terms” on which vital pharmaceuticals are made available has drastically reduced life expectancy in many places. But in Margaret Thatcher’s deathless phrase, “there is no alternative.”

The second quote illustrates this as well. It is from an article by Arnold Relman commenting on an analysis of Obamacare by John Weinberg. My temptation is to just say, "what an idiot" and move on; but this stuff is taken seriously by apparently intelligent people. Like his suggestion that when we start treating health care as a right rather than as a business, like other countries do, we will be able to control costs. Yes, and the world is flat.

Wennberg’s painstaking documentation of overuse as a cause of excessive costs greatly helps our understanding of the US health care problem because it shows that costs could be controlled by eliminating unnecessary care, without rationing medically appropriate services. The clear implication of his work is that we could afford good care for all if we made our medical system more efficient and less wasteful.

What he does not emphasize is that to produce such change will require elimination of the economic forces that have made medical care a commodity in trade instead of a social service, and have transformed our health care system into a profit-seeking industry. Until we join other advanced countries in treating medical care as a right and not a business, we will have to wait for control of health costs.

Skip the lectures on Israel's ‘risks for peace’

2010-08-20T15:01:00.000-05:00

In the 62 years since this homeland was founded on one-sixth of 1 percent of the land of what is carelessly and inaccurately called "the Arab world," Israelis have never known an hour of real peace. Patronizing American lectures on the reality of risks and the desirableness of peace, which once were merely fatuous, are now obscene.

HT: Lawrence Rosenbloom.

Jewish World Review August 19, 2010/ 9 Elul, 5770

Skip the lectures on Israel's ‘risks for peace’

By George Will

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | JERUSALEM ---

In the intifada that began in 2000, Palestinian terrorism killed more than 1,000 Israelis. As a portion of U.S. population, that would be 42,000, approaching the toll of America's eight years in Vietnam. During the onslaught, which began 10 Septembers ago, Israeli parents sending two children to a school would put them on separate buses to decrease the chance that neither would return for dinner. Surely most Americans can imagine, even if their tone-deaf leaders cannot, how grating it is when those leaders lecture Israel on the need to take "risks for peace."

During Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's July visit to Washington, Barack Obama praised him as "willing to take risks for peace." There was a time when that meant swapping "land for peace" -- Israel sacrificing something tangible and irrecoverable, strategic depth, in exchange for something intangible and perishable, promises of diplomatic normality.

Strategic depth matters in a nation where almost everyone is or has been a soldier, so society cannot function for long with the nation fully mobilized. Also, before the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel within the borders established by the 1949 armistice was in one place just nine miles wide, a fact that moved George W. Bush to say: In Texas we have driveways that long. Israel exchanged a lot of land to achieve a chilly peace with Egypt, yielding the Sinai, which is almost three times larger than Israel and was 89 percent of the land captured in the process of repelling the 1967 aggression.

The intifada was launched by the late Yasser Arafat -- terrorist and Nobel Peace Prize winner -- after the July 2000 Camp David meeting, during which then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to cede control of all of Gaza and more than 90 percent of the West Bank, with small swaps of land to accommodate the growth of Jerusalem suburbs just across the 1949 armistice line.

Israelis are famously fractious, but the intifada produced among them a consensus that the most any government of theirs could offer without forfeiting domestic support is less than any Palestinian interlocutor would demand. Furthermore, the intifada was part of a pattern. As in 1936 and 1947, talk about partition prompted Arab violence.

In 1936, when the British administered Palestine, the Peel Commission concluded that there was "an irrepressible conflict" -- a phrase coined by an American historian to describe the U.S. Civil War -- "between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country." And: "Neither of the two national ideals permits" a combination "in the service of a single state." The commission recommended "a surgical operation" -- partition. What followed was the Arab Revolt of 1936 to 1939.

On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations recommended a partition plan. Israel accepted the recommendation. On Nov. 30, Israel was attacked.

Palestine has a seemingly limitless capacity for eliciting nonsense from afar, as it did recently when British Prime Minister David Cameron referred to Gaza as a "prison camp." In a sense it is, but not in the sense Cameron intended. His implication was that Israel is the cruel imprisoner. Gaza's actual misfortune is to be under the iron fist of Hamas, a terrorist organization.

In May, a flotilla launched from Turkey approached Gaza in order to provoke a confrontation with Israel, which, like Egypt, administers a blockade to prevent arms from reaching Hamas. The flotilla's pretense was humanitarian relief for Gaza -- where the infant mortality rate is lower and life expectancy is higher than in Turkey.

Israelis younger than 50 have no memory of their nation within the 1967 borders set by the 1949 armistice that ended the War of Independence. The rest of the world seems to have no memory at all concerning the intersecting histories of Palestine and the Jewish people.

The creation of Israel did not involve the destruction of a Palestinian state, there having been no such state since the Romans arrived. And if the Jewish percentage of the world's population were today what it was when the Romans ruled Palestine, there would be 200 million Jews. After a uniquely hazardous passage through two millennia without a homeland, there are 13 million Jews.

The policy reaction by our government to the economic downturn is like a wealthy man going broke to impress his fleeting girlfriend.

2010-08-19T13:13:00.000-05:00

From my friend Alan Imberman:

The policy reaction by our government to the economic downturn is like a wealthy man going broke to impress his fleeting girlfriend. The man (i.e. our government) sees the woman (i.e. economy) is no longer interested and decides to lavish her with gifts. This excites the girl for a few months but she knows he can not keep spending at this rate and the gifts will soon disappear. The wealthy man does end up going broke but not until he puts himself into a massive amount of debt exhausting all his options to keep the woman by his side. Now the man, once wealthy and powerful is weak and the woman has moved on. Her lifestyle is not as lavish as before but she realizes that she is happy just living within her means. In the end, the two would have been better had they faced the music and let the relationship end abruptly when signs pointed to an end.

From all the rumors flying out of Washington, it sounds like our government has decided that it needs to shower the economy with more gifts to keep it steady. This will just cause a repeat of what already happened but with more unintended consequences as many including the author below explained.

Good time to be a stock picker. Bad time to be just about anyone else.

Look at it the other way

2010-08-16T10:59:00.001-05:00

Most readers will be familiar with the claim, recently circulating in the media, that Israel’s recalcitrance in the conflict with the Palestinians, is something that compromises American foreign policy and endangers the lives of American soldiers and diplomats. Most simply it is claimed that our alliance with Israel is a foreign policy liability, something inflicted on us by the excessive power of the “Israel Lobby.” This is a refrain that is eagerly embraced by anti-Semites (both polite and crude), and something that has lately also appealed to more rational, objective thinkers, many of them Jewish. It is a seductive idea, but it is also insidiously subversive of careful, rational thought. To argue that somehow Americans would be safer if America abandoned Israel seems to me like a desperate stretch – one for which little supporting evidence can be found. And in the bigger perspective Israel and America (their citizens) share common norms and values worth preserving and defending and these critics sometimes forget that.

The question of optimal American foreign policy is another matter. Foreign aid, drawn from taxpayer money, deserves to be carefully and critically examined all round. I am not knowledgeable on foreign policy, but I suspect a lot depends on one’s perception of the real dangers to American citizens. So, I am not defending any particular level or configuration of support nation to nation. I want here to make a different point.

I want to suggest that maybe the direction of causation goes the other way, namely, that America’s foreign policy actions may be hurting Israel. There is much evidence to suggest that American foreign policy incursions, whatever their motivations, tend to end up counterproductive and cause a huge amount of collateral damage – some obvious, some hidden. These wars in pursuit of “democratic” ideals and pre-emptive neutralization of foreign threats, arguably make things worse by impoverishing economies and radicalizing insurgents. They are cases of overreach. In so doing they may provide additional support for those in Israel’s neighborhood who are working toward her destruction.

Israel’s position is very different from America’s. America is huge and remote from its enemies. Even the internal terrorist threats, while very emotionally unsettling and potentially disruptive, are not existential threats. The American nation state and civilization is not yet threatened by them. Tempered vigilance would seem to be the correct response. Israel, on the other hand, is tiny and in very close proximity to powerful organizations that proclaim their credible intention to destroy her – to destroy the Jewish state and establish a Muslim state in its place. Israel is in the middle of a neighborhood that religious Muslims regard as reserved for Muslim rule. Sixty years of history has proven that efforts at placating these organizations are futile. It is not what Israel does, it is what Israel is, that matters to them. When American foreign policy alienates potentially moderate Muslim allies, this gives succor to Hamas and Hezbollah and other radical groups working in the area.

For this reason it is probably not surprising that Israelis were secretly (and some openly) ambivalent about the American invasion of Iraq– fearing the absence of a viable exit strategy and the occurrence of many undesirable unintended consequences. [For an explanation of why war is a likely to produce unintended consequences see here.] And this is something that may make Israel’s very real perpetual struggle to survive just that much more difficult. The Afghanistan war may be even more disastrous in the long run– leaving the country much worse off, potentially beyond remediation. From Israel’s perspective a smaller, more focused, more efficient American footprint in the world would probably be preferable. From America’s perspective a foreign policy aimed at doing what is realistic and is necessary to keep America safe should be the focus. America’s foreign policy critics should focus on this, not on the alliance with Israel.

From George Will in Jerusalem

2010-08-12T15:23:00.000-05:00

HT: Lawrence Rosenbloom:

Jewish World Review August 12, 2010/ 2 Elul, 5770

Israel's anti-Obama

By George Will

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com/

JERUSALEM — Two photographs adorn the office of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Together they illuminate a portentous fact: No two leaders of democracies are less alike — in life experiences, temperaments and political philosophies — than Netanyahu, the former commando and fierce nationalist, and Barack Obama, the former professor and post-nationalist.

One photograph is of Theodor Herzl, born 150 years ago. Dismayed by the eruption of anti-Semitism in France during the Dreyfus Affair at the end of the 19th century, Herzl became Zionism's founding father. Long before the Holocaust, he concluded that Jews could find safety only in a national homeland.

The other photograph is of Winston Churchill, who considered himself "one of the authors" of Britain's embrace of Zionism. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 stated: "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Beginning in 1923, Britain would govern Palestine under a League of Nations mandate.

Netanyahu, his focus firmly on Iran, honors Churchill because he did not flinch from facts about gathering storms. Obama returned to the British Embassy in Washington the bust of Churchill that was in the Oval Office when he got there.

Obama's 2009 speech in Cairo, courting the Arab world, may have had measurable benefits, although the metric proving this remains mysterious. The speech — made during a trip when Obama visited Cairo and Riyadh but not here — certainly subtracted from his standing in Israel. In it, he acknowledged Israel as, in part, a response to Jewish suffering in the Holocaust. Then, with what many Israelis considered a deeply offensive exercise of moral equivalence, he said: "On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people — Muslims and Christians — have suffered in pursuit of a homeland."

"On the other hand"? "I," says Moshe Yaalon, "was shocked by the Cairo speech," which he thinks proved that "this White House is very different." Yaalon, former head of military intelligence and chief of the general staff, currently strategic affairs minister, tartly asks, "If Palestinians are victims, who are the victimizers?"

The Cairo speech came 10 months after Obama's Berlin speech, in which he declared himself a "citizen of the world." That was an oxymoronic boast, given that citizenship connotes allegiance to a particular polity, its laws and political processes. But the boast resonated in Europe.

The European Union was born from the flight of Europe's elites from what terrifies them — Europeans. The first Thirty Years' War ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia, which ratified the system of nation-states. The second Thirty Years' War, which ended in 1945, convinced European elites that the continent's nearly fatal disease was nationalism, the cure for which must be the steady attenuation of nationalities. Hence the high value placed on "pooling" sovereignty, never mind the cost in diminished self-government.

Israel, with its deep sense of nationhood, is beyond unintelligible to such Europeans; it is a stench in their nostrils. Transnational progressivism is, as much as welfare state social democracy, an element of European politics that American progressives will emulate as much as American politics will permit. It is perverse that the European Union, a semi-fictional political entity, serves — with the United States, the reliably anti-Israel United Nations and Russia — as part of the "quartet" that supposedly will broker peace in our time between Israel and the Palestinians.

Arguably the most left-wing administration in American history is trying to knead and soften the most right-wing coalition in Israel's history. The former shows no understanding of the latter, which thinks it understands the former all too well.

The prime minister honors Churchill, who spoke of "the confirmed unteachability of mankind." Nevertheless, a display case in Netanyahu's office could teach the Obama administration something about this leader. It contains a small signet stone that was part of a ring found near the Western Wall. It is about 2,800 years old — 200 years younger than Jerusalem's role as the Jewish people's capital. The ring was the seal of a Jewish official, whose name is inscribed on it: Netanyahu.

No one is less a transnational progressive, less a post-nationalist, than Binyamin Netanyahu, whose first name is that of a son of Jacob, who lived perhaps 4,000 years ago. Netanyahu, whom no one ever called cuddly, once said to a U.S. diplomat 10 words that should warn U.S. policymakers who hope to make Netanyahu malleable: "You live in Chevy Chase. Don't play with our future."

Its bad economic policy stupid!

2010-08-12T12:06:00.000-05:00

From Pete Boettke (at Coordination Problem):

Bottom line, it is policy that is causing the slow adjustment of the market to changing circumstances, not market forces themselves. All readers must remember Adam Smith's words:

The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations.

When this doesn't happen, we need to ask about the thousands of impertinent obstructions that are incumbering the adjustment path.

Some of the most powerful and important ideas are the simple ones.

2010-08-01T00:11:00.001-05:00

Watch this short video, its mandatory.

The Broken Window Fallacy

Thinking about the belief in God.

2010-07-25T10:07:00.000-05:00

Most people I know, in my rather special little community, believe in God - the supernatural variety, "old man in the sky" type god.

People who are otherwise arch-skeptics believe that the scriptures were "revealed" at Sinai in front of millions of witnesses by a supernatural god who expects us to sing his praises every day, at appointed times, and cares what we eat, or what we do between the sheets. Not to mention that since he created us, and knows all things large and small, and moreover knows what will happen in time to come, therefore also knows exactly what we will choose to eat and everything else; suggesting that it is not really our choice - we have been created to make the very choices we do. Yet we are judged by him for doing so? And if he created everything that exists, he also created evil. So how does this square with his being the perfect, "all-good" creator of the universe; implying that evil is either imagined or God is not all-good and/or all-powerful. It all seems very silly.

Of course, these are familiar well-rehearsed arguments for which no answer exists - the problems of free-will and of evil (theodicy). What surprises me is how they are so routinely ignored by so many including our media commentators of varying degrees of intelligence and erudition. An example: Dennis Praeger, arguing with Sam Harris, when challenged to justify his beliefs (in creation and revelation) answers, in effect, that he believes because he sees no viable alternative explanation for the world as we know it (a variant of the argument from order), and that, in any case, religious people are generally more moral than non-believers. I think this may take the record for the number of implicitly false syllogisms, and circular arguments, contained in a short space. Most of this stuff is just noise. But people eat it up.

Sam Harris, for his part, making the atheist's argument, makes some errors as well, that unnecessarily polarize the discussion. While his analysis of, and denunciation of, most of organized religion is compelling (at least to me), he then comes to the alternative - which is some sort of scientifically designed morality and this collapses quickly under its own weight. Let me try and explain.

I am not a philosopher, nor a theologian, but it seems to me that both those arguing for and those arguing against the belief in God make two crucial errors, namely, the pretense of knowledge and the violation of Hume's fork.

On the matter of the pretense of knowledge it seems to me foolish to deny that there are many things in this universe that we do not know, and may never know. With the science we have we can speculate about the beginning of the universe, and come up with a more or less satisfying explanation, but in the end we cannot answer the question "how was matter created?" Similar questions come to mind: "What was there before the Big Bang?" "What was there before time?" Indeed these questions do not even appear self-evidently coherent. Physics becomes metaphysics. Why should it be surprising to find out that we human-beings, even being the marvelous creatures we are, are probably very limited in what we can perceive? After all, we have only five physical senses. How many other dimensions of perception might there be? Likewise we cannot simply rule out what appears to us to be in the realm of the supernatural, or the extra-sensory. In many respects we are bound to respond simply "we do not know." (This is probably the only thing on which Bill Maher and I agree.)

The religious think they provide an answer when they say "God created the universe." A superior, indeed perfect intelligence, created these things beyond our perception and understanding. Well, what does this mean? Why do they think this is an answer? It merely provides a story with no explanation of its own. Who created God? I might as well say "its all magic." What I am actually saying when I say God created the universe is "I don't know how the universe came to be or even what that means." The religious person has no more knowledge than the pretentious scientist.

We should note in passing that belief in creation does not get us to revelation and acceptance of all the commandments allegedly revealed thereby. This requires another giant fantastical leap.

On the matter of the second crucial error, the violation of Hume's fork, David Hume argued, (for me decisively) that there are two unbridgeable realms of human discourse - the moral and the factual - the ethical and the scientific. The latter, the factual-scientific realm, concerns what is. The world is round. My weight has increased in recent years. Spain won the world cup in 2010. These are factual matters about which scientific investigation can be made. To be sure, subjective perception is still required on the way to a consensus - there is no escaping this. But, in the normal meaning of the word, these are matters of objective truth or falsity. They can be verified or (sometimes only) falsified.

The former type of discourse - the moral-ethical - is another matter completely. This concerns what ought to be (as opposed to what is) and, as Hume pithily put it, you cannot get an "ought" from an "is." "Ought" implies personal valuation and this is not a matter of verification. Good and bad, morally speaking, are not matters subject to scientific investigation. They are rather matters of personal valuation, matters of taste or moral belief. This is a type of "knowledge" completely different from factual knowledge.

To be sure, moral precepts, rules of conduct, etc. can and are influenced by facts, by circumstances. Some rules are judged good or bad in terms of their contribution to some other more ultimate good or bad. But the most ultimate, the most fundamental, values are good or bad in themselves - just because they are. It is a matter of "faith." I cannot prove that torture is bad by any scientific investigation (though I may prove that it is ineffective, which is another matter). I cannot prove that individual freedom is good, that slavery is bad. But I certainly believe they are with every fiber of my being.

Now both Harris and Praeger deny Hume's fork. Praeger believes good and bad are in the same realm as scientifically true and untrue. They are subject to God's rules in the same way that physical laws are. Its simple. If God wants it, it is good. If God does not want it, it is evil and we can investigate this in the scripture. (Problem: as Harris points out; how do you know which scripture is the valid one?).

Harris believes that we can use logic and fact to fashion a superior morality - that we can derive morals from science and logic.

Both are wrong.

The truth is more simple and less polarizing.

One: We don't know many things. We should loudly proclaim this.
How was the world created?
I don't know and nor do you?

Two: We all employ a type of "faith" to decide how to behave.
The religious seem to think that this is more arbitrary than asserting some kind of revelation - that a morality based on a revealed scripture is less subjective than resort to individual conscience.
Newsflash: Conscience is all we have in matters of morality. For some their conscience tells them to obey the revealed word, for others it tells them the revealed word is sometimes contrary to morality. You have to decide what you really believe. And, belief is not a matter of simple choice. Sometimes I wish I could believe in a system of revealed laws proclaimed by an infallible leader and savior. I can pretend that I do, but I cannot simply choose to. You can't believe what you don't believe. And what you do believe about morality, about good and bad, is always a matter of individual "faith."

Americans, being pragmatic, have sometimes unconsciously taken this realization and molded it into organized religion. The rules, rituals, festivals, and aesthetics of received religion have been retained, but their significance has morphed from the literal into the symbolic in the service of community coherence - the practice of compassion, charity, celebration, and comfort. Revelation itself is seen as a symbol for some sort of "inner revelation" - the conscience talking to us.

This approach creates a wide tent. Is it wide enough to accommodate the likes of both Harris and Praeger?

For similar musings see here and here.

And now the union card.

2010-07-08T12:15:00.000-05:00

"I told you so"s are obnoxious. But I can't resist.

Among the posts in this blog's archives are numerous warnings and predictions about just how bad a president candidate Obama would be. I worried about many things, including what has now become Obamacare, Obama financial reform, Obama foreign policy all of which have made Americans poorer and more vulnerable.

I also warned about Obama's agenda to increase the power of labor unions. Mostly this escaped the radar, even of many of his critics, but it is now apparent that this is a major part of his social reform agenda and an incredibly dangerous one.

Obama, as a senator, was an enthusiastic supporter of a bill, still pending, to scrap the secret ballot requirement for union organization - effectively making it easier for union organizers to intimidate workers into agreeing to the formation of a union. His presidency thus far has shown how far he is willing to go to support existing unions and encourage new ones (see here for the latest on this) - most egregiously his support of the powerful teachers unions that are responsible for the high cost and low quality of America's failing public education system. To support their extravagant benefits and yearly wage-increases, the teachers' unions are holding America's children hostage in failing, dangerous schools.

Union support goes hand in hand with the Obama administration's alliance with workers in the public sector at all levels of government. The extent of unionization in the American economy is relatively low, by comparison to other industrialized economies, and many of our unions are in the public sector. We all know that unemployment remains very high at around 10% - 15 million unemployed people, and many more who have given up looking for jobs. What many may not know is that employment in the public sector has gone up and so have wage levels. While the rest of the economy struggles to maintain employment and earnings levels, government workers expand in numbers and receive higher wages. The only way this can happen is by increasing taxes (now or in the future) to pay for them. Increased union formation would add fuel to this destructive process.

You might be tempted to ask, "What's wrong with union's? Don't they help workers?" There is a robust mythology surrounding the union mystique - folklore, nostalgia, loyalty and so on. But the sad truth is that unions are an economic curse. They are, in effect, legal labor monopolies that force the employers in an industry to deal only with the union - to employ only union members - and thereby to protect union members from competition for jobs. Unions are able to benefit their members by raising their wages and reducing the number of workers employed. They increase the cost of the payroll, reduce profits and investment in the industry, raise product prices and reduce wages elsewhere. Union members gain at the expense of non-union workers, and the rest of society.

This kind of monopoly power in the hands of any corporation would be greeted with righteous condemnation, but, somehow, in the hands of unions it is often regarded as justified. One explanation is that unions support workers who are relatively powerless compared to corporations. This assertion betrays a lack of understanding of how markets and competition work to protect all parties. But, even taken on its face, if this were ever relevant in the past, it is not relevant now. Current unions do not, for the most part, contain "powerless" blue-collar workers. Instead they are made up of professionals - articulate, educated, affluent - like teachers, pilots, health-care workers, skilled craftsmen, civil servants and so on. And the businesses that suffer (directly and indirectly) most from their successes are not the large powerful corporations, but rather the small businesses that are the economic backbone of the American economy, the engines of thrift and innovation.

Union power subverts creative economic activity. It is predicated on special protections from competition and it results in a stultifying and often violent bureaucracy. Historically it has been responsible for the crippling of whole economies, in Britain, in Israel and in many European countries. Add this to the list of horrors that this administration has unleashed upon us. How long will this nightmare endure?

July fourth and the danger within.

2010-07-04T00:55:00.000-05:00

This July Fourth I rededicate myself to the idea and the cause of Freedom.

The Founding Father's were not paragons of virtue, they were fallible human beings. But they were remarkable human beings, to a man (and the odd woman, like Abigail Adams), the likes of which we are not likely to see among the ranks of politicians ever again. They knew exactly what they were doing and they even anticipated the greatness to which it might lead and the obstacles along the way. They faced grave risks to their persons should they fail and uncertain rewards should they succeed. They believed in what they were doing and that is why they did it.

Their actions and their achievements are all the more remarkable considering that they were breaking new ground at every turn. The United States of America is the longest surviving republic in history. The ideas upon which it was founded, though widely circulating at the time, were revolutionary. The idea that individuals could and should be masters of themselves, and their property, and beholden to none save those to whom they voluntary chose to be, was explosively subversive to the prevailing political order everywhere. The truths they articulated were by no means "self-evident" to the monarchs of Europe, or to dynastic rulers and dictators anywhere. That they seem self-evident to us, indeed, that we so dangerously take them for granted, is in no small measure due to that Revolutionary generation and its achievements.

Yet, as we often hear, and as Thomas Jefferson said, "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance" and we have not been vigilant enough. I think that Jefferson (and his compatriots) understood clearly that the threat to liberty, to individual freedom, comes not so much from external dangers as great at they may be, and, indeed are today. Rather, the real and essential danger comes from inside our own society. The challenge we face is the inculcation anew in each generation of the importance of individual liberty and private property and of the need to safeguard these principles from corruption. Societies based on some form of representative democracy are always in grave danger of gradually imploding as interest groups and coalitions seek to use the political system to cannibalize the fruits of the remarkable value creation that individual freedom brings with it. And the only real safeguard against this is a set of constitutionalized principles beyond the reach of political process.

Only if we succeed in preserving individual liberty through vigorous dedicated efforts will we be able to counter those more obvious threats to freedom that come from those who violently denounce us and our values and vow to destroy us by any means no matter how vile. America is strong because it is free, it is not free because it is strong. Freedom leads to material and spiritual riches that provide the wherewithal for a principled defense. We need to be ready to defend freedom at home as well as abroad.
America has succeeded remarkably well in this, all things considered, resisting implosion in spite of grave challenges, so far. Once again we find ourselves, our core principles, facing a formidable challenge in the form of an overreaching government. Can we, will we, pull back and go some ways to reverse the damage. I know we can and I believe we will.

Happy Holiday, Yours in Freedom.

Missed opportunity?

2010-06-29T12:17:00.001-05:00

OK, so now the question of whether Bradley made a big mistake by putting Clark in has to be considered.

I mean why start with an experimental lineup, why start with such a gamble in arguably the most important match of the tournament up till that point; especially when the U.S. had such a great draw and could plausibly have made it all the way to the semi-finals? Just a year ago they made it to the finals of the Confederation Cup after beating Spain and this was a much easier draw.

Feilhaber galvanized the team when he came in. But by then they were already 1-0 down and could never recover. Might have been a great opportunity lost - an opportunity to capitalize on the growing interest in the sport in this country.

It may cost him his job. If so, a pity, he has taken the team a long way in the short time he has been there.