Why I Am Not A Conservative, continued

I tried recently to discuss some of the material in yesterday's post with a self-identified conservative.  He replied that he didn't think Goldwater's observation about liberals being "in a hurry" had anything to do with Linda Brown and the state's decision that she had to walk one mile, through a railroad switchyard, rather than attend the neighborhood school with white classmates.

My interlocutor said, further, that this should have been obvious even from the passage I quoted.  He re-pasted that quote, emphasizing the phrase "the satisfaction of economic wants".  Then he asked (this took my breath away):  "Linda going to school with her white neighbors has much of anything to do with 'economic wants,' how?"

The idea behind this question, if I understand it at all, is that Goldwater was defining liberalism as a view exclusively concerned with economic want.  Linda's wants were something other than economic, thus they didn't pertain to the liberal-versus-conservative riff he was engaged in, in that passage.

I gave the obvious answer:   people growing up together make connections with each other. They become friends, or at least get accustomed to each other, and become part of a common network. That network, in later years, has a lot to do with who gets what job. There's an old saying. "it's not what you know, it's whom you know." Segregating people from their earliest years helps ensure that the personal networks will be separate. It ensures that white people in the position to make employment decisions will think first of those whom they know best -- those they went to school with. Coercively enforced separation enforces inequality, as to economic wants. That is one reason why the expression "separate but equal" was always a lie.  That lie is what Goldwater was supporting when he called for a constitutional amendment that would undo the Brown decision. But there is a broader point here.  What the heck is an "economic want"?  A specific kind of want?  What would be a non-economic want, then?  A spiritual want?

Economics is "the study of how society allocates scarce resources and goods."

Resources are always scarce, however sacred or spiritual may be the use I want to make of them.  Land is a scarce resource, whether I want to build a factory on it, a school, or a church.  None of those three types of building is "non-economic."  Any of the three of them may be understood economically, or understood spiritually, but none of them is non-economic!  Likewise, no wants are non-economic.

Suppose the greatest want of my life is that I could pray more often.  Why can't I pray now?  Is it because my life is too hectic, and I haven't been able to set aside some time in which to focus on my gratitude to God?  If that's the problem, it is an economic problem -- I want to rearrange the use of my time, a limited resource.  How much am I willing to pay to get that extra time?  From which of my other activities am I prepared to take it.  That is the economists way of looking at such questions and, I submit, it is an essential way of looking at them.

To look down on economics, as somehow an unfitting or unspiritual study, as both Goldwater and my interlocutor seemed to do, is unserious at best and pragmatically disastrous for the society that engages in it at worse.  This may get to the heart of why I am not a conservative.

The Soul(s) of Plato

Plato seems to have had two different theories of the soul at different stages of his career. The theory advanced in the Phaedo is that the soul is a perfectly simple entity, not compounded of any parts. That is one of the reasons why 'Socrates' argues that it must be eternal -- only that which is a compound can fall apart!

The perfectly simple soul of the Phaedo must also be immaterial, because it knows the Forms, and the Forms are immaterial. A beautiful woman is embodied, but Beauty as such as not. And my soul can know Beauty, thus my soul is not as such embodied, though it seems to have been associated with a body for the last few years!

Anyway, this theory went through some changes by the time Plato wrote The Republic. There he says that the soul is divided into three part: the passions; the spirit; the intellect. Think of these as akin to Dorothy's three friends -- tinman; lion; scarecrow. Or think of them as the class structure of a city -- workers; soldiers; rulers. The point remains, Plato had begun by thinking of the soul as simple, yet here it is clearly a compound. So it presumably can dissolve at death after all?

You can reconcile these views to each other by saying that in The Republic Plato was using the word "soul" in a broader sense than he was using it in the earlier dialogue. What he calls the "intellect" in The Republic corresponds to what he meant by the "soul" in The Phaedo. So he can be taken as saying that only the intellect, the part of us that grasps the Forms, is simple and immortal. The other parts of our soul are, along with the body, dispensable upon death.

Just a Guess

A young friend of mine recently told me that about 90% of the people he meets in his "Journalism and Mass Communication" major in college are liberal, and asked me whether that was the case back in the prehistoric days when I attended college.

I didn't have intimate knowledge of our Communications Dept. at Marist, since I was a poli-sci major with a pre-law focus. But I did know some of them, and I had to tell my young friend that, yes, they were probably to the left of the campus average, however exactly one would go about measuring or defining the scale.

He asked whether I had any thoughts on why this is so. The best I could do was this:

I suspect that the characteristics that go by the label "liberal" in the US are, largely, characteristics psychologically associated with the love of words, word-play, compositional skill, etc.

I also suspect that "conservatism" tends to be psychologically associated with the love of numbers, calculation, and and keen sense of spatial relations.

I have no real good evidence for any of that, its just a hunch based on personal experience.

If there's anything to it, one would expect budding journalists to be "liberals," except possibly those who wanted to specialize in financial and/or science journalism, who might be numbers-people, and thus "conservatives."

This sort of psychological (neurological) clustering may, indeed, be at the bottom of what the words mean.

Mike Huckabee again

I think, frankly, that it's refreshing to find a conservative Republican who can talk like this:

"You know, I've never hated the Clintons. I still don't, I have great respect for them. He made a lot of mistakes — a lot of personal ones — but you know something that I think should not be forgotten. There's two things about Bill Clinton I tell Republicans, it drives them nuts, but here it is.

"Number one, don't get it lost on you that a kid out of a very small, Southern rural state aspired to be President of the United States. This kid came from a dysfunctional family — alcoholic abusive father. And yet he didn't just aspire, he was elected president of the United States not once, but twice. That is an affirmation of the system. And it's a wonderful testament to give to every kid in America that no matter where you've come from, you've got an opportunity to do something extraordinary.

"The second thing, and this'll really wrangle, again, some of my Republican colleagues. Bill Clinton and Hillary went through some horrible experiences in their marriage, because of some of the reckless behavior that he has admitted he had. I'm not defending him on that — it's indefensible. But they kept their marriage together. And a lot of the Republicans who have condemned them, and who talk about their platform of family values, interestingly didn't keep their own families together."

Mike Huckabee

The old primary season in Presidential politics is dead. There was a time when casual readers of newspapers started following the campaign as the New Hampshire primary neared in February, and for a series of Tuesdays, lasting sometimes into June, the field of pretenders in each party, or at least the one without an incumbent, would be gradually winnowed to one nominee presumptive.

That's all dead because everybody wanted to be first. The primaries now will all take place at essentially the same time, which of course eliminates any winnowing value. The winnowing will take place before hand.

This, in turn, has meant that key events in our electoral calender are taking place now, and that the Ames straw poll among Republicans this weekend was one of them. I regret this everlasting-campaign, but I have no suggestion as to what to do about it.

Giuliani, McCain, and Fred Thompson sat this one out, though they each received some votes anyway. For the record, among the three well-known non-participants, the "winner" was Mr. Thompson, with 1.4% of the votes cast, or 203 votes.

Over-all, of course, the winner without quotation marks was Mitt Romney, with 31.6%, which is roughly what George W. Bush received eight years ago. But Romney's showing was no surprise, and it's the element of surprise that makes news.

The news coming out of Ames, accordingly, is the second-place showing of Mike Huckabee, with 18.1%. Here are all the numbers, with some analysis about the new hierarchy, if you will, or pecking order, this has established:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20070813/cm_thenation/45222461

Theories about Libby

President Bush commuted Scooter Libby's sentence. Why? I don't know.

There are various theories about it though. If you, dear reader, want to give them detailed consideration, you might start here.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-talk/2007/07/july_8_democrats_advance_new_t.html?hpid=topnews

Plastic into Oil

"Just one word, Benjamin. Plastics."

That line from The Graduate has acquired new meaning in recent days, as a start-up company has claimed to have invented a gizmo involving high-frequency microwaves that will turn plastics into 20% diesel oil and 80% combustible gas. To learn more, see their SEC filings.

http://www.globalresourcecorp.com/Investor%20Relations%20SEC%20Filings.html

The Hawk-10, as they call it, is so far a very rudimentary non-market-ready thing, but the idea is both to reduce the amount of trash in landfills and numbers of abandoned junk piles, as well as to a lessor extent, provide some diesel oil.

By itself, you might well say, "big deal" to this bit of news. There are lots of companies founded on bright ideas which, for a variety of reasons, never come to fruition. In this case, the bright idea has some irony to it. Taking the crude oil, turning some of it into plastics, then when its life as a kitchen utensil is done and its ready for a landfill, turning some of it into diesel oil, losing ground to the law of entropy at each stage, sounds like an expensive way to get some oil.

Wouldn't it almost always be easier to recycle something plastic into something else plastic, rather than recycle the plastic itself into oil?

The only reason this came to my attention is because some right wingnuts have decided that this is yet more proof of a liberal media conspiracy. The Hawk-10, you see, hasn't been getting blaring head-lines, which proves that the press doesn't want good news, only wants to spread environmental alarmism etc.

http://newsbusters.org/node/13842

Sure it does. And my trip to Dublin last month proves that I'm an overgrown leprechaun.

Sur'en I'm a wishing the top o' the mornin to all the wingnuts, an' normal folk too.

Royce on the Speaker

Continuing the thought from Thursday's entry, and Cicily's comment....

The great philosopher Josiah Royce once invoked Lenthall's behavior on that fateful day in 1642 as a paradigm of morality.

In Royce's book, The Philosophy of Loyalty (1908) we can read the following:

"Now, I myself have for years used in my own classes, as an illustration of the personal worth and beauty of loyalty, an incident of English history, which has often been cited as a precedent in discussions of the constitutional privileges of the House of Commons, but which I think has not been sufficiently noticed by moralists. Let me set that incident now before your imagination. Thus, I say, do the loyal bear themselves: In January 1642, just before the outbreak of hostilities between King Charles I and the Commons, the King resolved to arrest certain leaders of the opposition party in Parliament....Then, having placed his guards at the doors, he entered, went up to the Speaker, and naming the members whom he desired to arrest, demanded, 'Mr. Speaker, do you espy these persons in the House?'"

I skip past the reply, which Royce quotes as I quoted it Thursday. I skip also past the dramatic flourishes he adds. The question my readers will want answered perhaps is: why was this moment paradigmatic for a philosophy of loyalty? Presumably if Lenthall had said, "Ah, yes, you want the four fellows cowering in the northeastern corner of this Chamber, your Majesty," that would go down in pro-monarchical books to this day as an act of loyalty too. It was a choice among loyalties. But what specifically impressed Royce? Skip along in his text a bit with me to find out.

He wrote, "I want you to view the act merely as an instance of a supremely worthy personal attitude. The beautiful union of formal humility (when the speaker fell on his knee before the King) with unconquerable self-assertion (wshen the reply rang with so clear a note of lawful defiance); the willing and complete identification of his whole self with his cause (when the Speaker declared that he had no eye or tongue except as his office gave them to him), -- these are characteristics typical of a loyal attitude. The Speaker's words were at once ingenious and obvious."

You get the idea. I'll stop now. Moving as Royce's talk of loyalty is, there are obvious objections to a moral philosophy of loyalty -- problems of which, I should say, he was aware, and which he addressed.

Speaker of the House

Why is the presiding officer in the House of Representatives called the Speaker? and not (as in the Senate) the President or President pro tem, or (as in committees on both sides) the chairman, chairwoman, or chair?

Why "Speaker"?

I've heard that this is the case throughout the English-speaking world. Countries that used to be England's colonies have bicameral assemblies. One of those chambers is more "popular" than the other -- more frequent elections and all that. The popular assembly is presided over, in each case, by a Speaker. Why?

I half-believe that the practice dates to -- or at least was cemented by -- an event in 1642. Tensions were rising between the high-Church King and the low-Church House of Commons. Charles I and armed servants of his entered the House of Commons in hopes of arresting some MPs that he considered especially incendiary.

In those days, there weren't any cable news shows, and Charles didn't necessarily know what a particular MP looked like. He was the guy who had signed such-and-such a pamphlet, that was all. So the King walked up to the presiding officer, William Lenthall, and asked that Lenthall point out the perps he wanted.

Lenthall replied,: "May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here."

Soon, England was at war with itself, and in due course, Parliament had King Charles executed.

This story explains why no subsequent monarch has set foot in the House of Commons.

But does it also really explain why people with the same function as Lenthall are called the Speaker? What title did Lenthall himself, or his precursors, have?

I'd love further explication from some wise reader of this humble blog.

Wolfowitz scandal: Who Should Care?

I'm just trying to think my way into this one. Just getting my feet wet.

As regular readers know, I don't believe in sovereignty. Sometimes when I say so, people reply, "ah, you must be pushing world government, then." Or harsher words with that implication.

Why do they say that? Chiefly because the word "sovereignty" is nowadays often used to imply "the sovereignty of nations." The antithesis of sovereignty, then, is international organization and law.

But no, I reply when the question arises. I reject that antithesis. International organizations come about through agreements among and to serve the ends of the national governments involved. The same issues of command-and-control or hierarchy, the issues of unearned privilege, are at stake in the one case as in the other. We as humans have to think our way toward better ways of relating to one another than those implied in the myth of sovereignty, and this requires a rejection both of nationalism and of internationalism.

The Bretton Woods organizations in particular (the IMF and the World Bank) have outlived any utility they may once have had by anybody's measure, and they should close up shop.

It is with these biases that I look rather gingerly at the scandal that seems for the moment to have immobilized one of those institutions, the World Bank. Its president, Paul Wolfowitz, has come under fire for showing favoritism to a particular staffer, Shaha Raza, allegedly due to their romantic relationship.
As usual, the basics are at wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaha_Ali_Riza

There is no principled difference between romantic cronyism and the more traditional all-guys-who are-golfing-buddies sort of cronyism. In either case, such favoritism is inevitably because human beings are hard-wired for dealing with each other, with a small group of acquaintances, rather than with masses and big abstractions. This means that organizations devoted to serving the masses and big abstractions, but nonetheless composed entirely of human beings, rather than robots, are in a biologically determined bind from the start.

What this leads to is an endless trench warfare in which factions profess enduring commitment to the masses and the big abstractions, while using the other factions' scandals as ammunition to advance their own aims. I haven't quite psyched out the hows of this in the Wolfowitz/Raza matter, but I'm pretty sure (a priori, if you will) that this is what is happening.

Which is to say, again, that we need to move toward less absurd and inherently hypocritical ways of dealing with each other than the ways that the latest contre temps would seem to embody.

Here, for those of you who may enjoy bureaucratese, is the URL for an official inquiry. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:21297732~pagePK:64257043~piPK:437376~theSitePK:4607,00.html

A Cheer for Bloomberg News

Does information really "want to be free"? Of course not. A piece of information isn't a wanting or doing sort of creature.

Anthropomorphism aside, is there some natural tendency in the world, now that the world has an internet (and wireless access yet!) toward the ever-wider spread of what had been secret?

There is a historical tendency here, but it isn't inherent in technology. The tendency is one that Adam Smith would have understood quite well. If there is a demand for information (a demand in the market sense, a demand that will express itself in the payment of money), then someone will seek to supply it. The greater that demand, supply being constant, the greater the price. If we also assume constant costs, then the increase in price will make for a greater profit.

As you can see, there are a lot of assumptions involved in that reasoning. Still, private and corporate espionage both long predated the internet. What information "wants" is to be bought and sold. Free in the sense of "liberated," not "free" in the sense of "gifted."

But then there are the structures of power. And they haven't changed all that much of late. I doubt I'll get into any conspiracy theorists' hall of fame if I make the general observation that governments like to keep secrets, and they like to enable their private sector cronies to keep secrets as well. These are the would-be prisons whence information has to be liberated in order to be (freely) bought and sold.

These thoughts didn't drop down into my head out of the blue. They've come to me now because of the ongoing Northwest Airlines bankruptcy proceedings. Bloomberg News and its counsels, to their undying credit, are fighting the good fight here, trying to obtain and make public information about who owns what claims against the company in the context of that reorganization.

The issue is whether certain Wall Street speculators can use court orders -- and, thus, governmental power -- to keep certain secrets "under seal" that have a good deal of relevance to Main Street USA -- to the future of an important company within a very high-visibility and troubled industry. A ruling Friday went the way Bloomberg News wanted. It now appears that the speculators will have to disclose.

We should mark this as a small victory for the liberation of data. Information doesn't want anything, but those of us who are wanting beings should want this sort of information to be available.