"Extremism" Redux

David Limbaugh' latest column is twice as interesting as he means it to be.

First, as he intends, Limbaugh opens his piece with an interesting point. The left is, as usual, attacking its opponents as "extremists."

With the advent of the tea party movement and President Obama's recent "shellacking," the left's long-established effort to marginalize mainstream conservative Americans as fringe extremists has reached a new stage of desperation.

For at least the past half-century, the dominant media culture has portrayed minority liberalism as mainstream and conservatives as shrill malcontents. From the time I started paying attention to politics as a young kid, liberals have been demonizing conservatives as reactionary throwback Neanderthal knuckle-dragging, warmongering extremists.

True enough, but have the conservatives learned anything in that last half-century? From the looks of things, no. Here is Limbaugh's unintentionally interesting close:

Yes, tea partyers are extremists because they refuse to compromise on our national solvency or to conspire with statists in converting America into a European-style socialist nation.

In the run-up to the 2012 elections, we're going to see a growing intensity in the liberals' frantic and fraudulent effort to depict tea partyers, Sarah Palin and other real conservatives as extremists.

As this scenario inevitably plays out, we must remember that adherence to a fixed set of tried-and-true principles, otherwise known as America's founding ideals, is hardly extremism. Besides, to quote the victim of the "Daisy" ad, "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

Setting aside the small matter of whether the vacuous, but opportunistic Sarah Palin deserves to be counted as a defender of capitalism, are defenders of America's founding ideals extremists or not? Limbaugh's answer seems to depend on who is asking the question.

That is hardly the kind of answer that will render a smear ineffective, and it indicates acceptance, on some level, of the very premise behind the charge, which is that sticking to one's guns is somehow, as Limbaugh himself puts it, "dogmatic." But then, in the eyes of subjectivist leftists and religionist conservatives alike, any claim to certainty is fraudulent because they can't conceive of a rational process of reaching certainty. Running scared in the face of a charge of "extremism," as conservatives have done for decades, is a as much a confession of ideological impotence as the charge is of intellectual bankruptcy.

Limbaugh would have done far better to replace those last two, wishy-washy paragraphs with something like the following:

If an uncompromising stand is to be smeared as "extremism," then that smear is directed at any devotion to values, any loyalty to principles, any profound conviction, any consistency, any steadfastness, any passion, any dedication to an unbreached, inviolate truth -- any man of integrity. (From "'Extremism' or The Art of Smearing", Chapter 17 of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal)

But such a close would require Limbaugh to understand unequivocally first, that the political principle that most urgently needs defending today to preserve our nation is that the only proper purpose of government is the defense of individual rights, and second, that extremism in its defense isn't just "no vice," but is a great virtue.

-- CAV

On Leave at Google

Via John Cook, I found an interesting blog post by Matt Welsh, a Harvard University professor of computer science. Welsh compares what he imagined academic life would be like with what it actually is like. Probably the most interesting connections he makes pertain to the kind of skill set and the level of commitment success requires:

To be sure, there are some great things about this job. To first approximation you are your own boss, and even when it comes to teaching you typically have a tremendous amount of freedom. It has often been said that being a prof is like running your own startup -- you have to hire the staff (the students), raise the money (grant proposals), and of course come up with the big ideas and execute on them. But you also have to do a lot of marketing (writing papers and giving talks), and sit on a gazillion stupid committees that eat up your time. This post is mostly for grad students who think they want to be profs one day. A few surprises and lessons from my time in the job... [bold added]

But don't take his word for it: Observe what he does with this knowledge. The note about the author in the sidebar of Welsh's blog ends as follows: "He is currently on leave at Google." Since that post was dated May 24 of this year, I became curious and immediately learned that Welsh made the change permanent in November. He gives as a reason for leaving his tenured post at Harvard one of the very things he noted was missing from his days as an academic, "I get to hack all day...."

Also noteworthy about the earlier post on academia was his comment that, "Students are the coin of the realm." Welsh doesn't focus on the problems that fact can cause, but taken together with them, his words should serve as a wake-up call to anyone pursuing an advanced degree.

Love of the work is what motivates many to pursue a career in academia, but it is clear that academia is not necessarily the best place to do the work.

-- CAV

11-24-10 Hodgepodge

Happy Thanksgiving!

This Thanksgiving holiday will be a busy one for me, so this will be my last post until Monday. I'll likely be slow about getting to email and comments over that time, too.

What Political Correctness Achieves

There is an interesting article by Frank Furedi about standing up for what he calls "courage and conviction." I disagree with much of it, particularly his tendency to equate morality and altruism at the moral level -- and benevolence and altruism at the emotional. At the same time, I think he does make a valuable connection between politically-correct terminology and personal sovereignty (as well as between government-enforced "good" actions and personal sovereignty):

This displacement of public virtue happens in all sorts of ways. Just this morning, for instance, I heard yet another plea for volunteering -- I almost felt like throwing up, I've heard it so many times. Now call me old-fashioned, but when I was young you volunteered because you believed in something. You wanted to help people; you wanted, for instance, to give blood. You didn't do volunteering because it looked good on your CV. So, while volunteering certainly has a virtuous potential, it has been turned into a process that you adhere to much in the way that you clock on to a job.

And, later:

... While she was in hospital, I used to go to visit her all the time. And the very first time I went to visit her, I introduced myself to the nurse: "I'm Frank Furedi, I'm Clara's son." The woman looked up at me and said, "You mean you're her 'carer.'" "No, her son," I responded. But she was insistent: "No, you are her carer."

It was very interesting that she used the word carer. [And it was obscene that this "nurse" insisted on it. --ed] This kind of terminology displaces the idea that there's some kind of spontaneous and informal relationship with a bureaucratic typology. It reminds me of the way in which very elementary forms of compassion, of human interaction, have been pretty much blocked out altogether. [format edits]

Of this, Furedi says that, "[V]ery elementary forms of compassion, of human interaction, have been pretty much blocked out altogether." Furthermore, he notes that, "[W]e need a change in cultural attitudes towards the public." In both respects, Furedi is on the right track, but the really important point is that there really is no such thing as a "public."

We are all individuals, and this is what all the cultural and political pressure to help "others" -- or to concede even word choices to bureaucrats -- is meant to make us forget. And many people in the West have forgotten this on several levels. I wonder how many people would feel angry, or even indignant, about what the nurse said above, as opposed to summarily dismissing it as typical bureaucratic behavior. The fact that it's "typical" at all is cause for alarm.

Changes in cultural attitudes must necessarily start with individuals, who must once again come to regard their own lives as sacred.

I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire. For in the temple of his spirit, each man is alone. Let each man keep his temple untouched and undefiled. Then let him join hands with others if he wishes, but only beyond his holy threshold. -- Ayn Rand in Anthem

When more people start thinking in such terms, the "public" will stop being kicked around, because the "public" will stop taking such treatment lying down.

Writers May Need to Aspire to More

On the one hand, I am happy to see a writer rise from the ranks of Internet punditry to find employment with a newspaper. On the other hand, this just reminds me that newspapers are getting killed. (I once had, thanks to a good friend, a brief, but interesting email exchange with a comedy writer who had his own column shortly before I contacted him.)

I find the following take on the plight of the papers interesting:

[Michael] Nielsen argues that newspapers are locked into their current business models because they have been so successful. Any small changes will make their businesses less profitable. I don't know enough about the newspaper industry to say whether Nielsen is right, though I find his argument plausible. (His article is entitled Is scientific publishing about to be disrupted? However, it is about much more than scientific publishing.)

No bright ideas from me, but you don't get such ideas by not looking at a problem from as many angles as you can.

NFL Parity Visualized

With the holiday comes football. I'm scrambling to set fantasy team lineups for three teams, all of which have identical, barely-over-.500 records, and yet are in the thick of the playoff hunt. In the process of gathering information, I ran into the below graphic.


Basically, you can pick any NFL victory and find a daisy chain of other results "proving" indirectly that the losing team is better than the winning team.

-- CAV

"Security" vs. Freedom

Thomas Sowell notes that Israel manages to achieve excellent airline security without violating air passengers -- along the way to discussing how full-body x-rays and pat-downs illustrate the Obama Administration's contempt for freedom and the American people:

If anything good comes out of the airport "security" outrages, it may be in opening the eyes of more people to the utter contempt that this administration has for the American people.

Those who made excuses for all of candidate Barack Obama's long years of alliances with people who expressed their contempt for this country, and when as president he appointed people with a record of antipathy to American interests and values, may finally get it when they feel some stranger's hand in their crotch.

As for the excuse of "security," this is one of the least security-minded administrations we have had. When hundreds of illegal immigrants from terrorist-sponsoring countries were captured crossing the border from Mexico -- and then released on their own recognizance within the United States, that tells you all you need to know about this administration's concern for security.

I was in grad school shortly after the atrocities of September 11, 2001. I recall half-joking afterwards with an Objectivist friend that we'd know we were losing when the a new bureaucracy was created to deal with the threat of terrorism. That joke very quickly came to pass.

More incredible is this airline security situation. I was involved with a campus Objectivist club back then, and soon after the atrocities, we learned that an ARI speaker would be in the area. So we took advantage of that fact and worked with a local Objectivist group to set up a lecture on my campus. Someone I know from that group joked about having campus security frisk everyone on the way in to the lecture. Now, less than a decade later, that, too, has pretty much come to pass.

I hope Sowell is right.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Minor edit.

Correct Diagnosis, ...

... Wrong Cure

Via Glenn Reynolds is an article in the Washington Post by entrepreneur Morris Panner that discusses how regulations are crippling the economy through diversion of talent away from the (metaphysical) problem of innovation, and towards the man-made one of getting around regulations.

I reproduce Reynolds's quote from that article:

As a Democrat whose politics are undeniably liberal on social issues, I lamented the outcome of the midterm elections. But as an entrepreneur with two software start-ups under my belt, I couldn't help but celebrate -- and more than a little. As the fall campaigns wore on, I had found myself listening closely to the Tea Party, nursing the hope that its message would push both major parties to change the way they do business.

To understand my motivation, pick up the November issue of Washingtonian magazine. The annual Salary Survey notes on Page 81 that top trade association leaders (industry lobbyists) make multimillion-dollar salaries to "keep tabs on what the federal government was doing or might do."

These outsize earnings are symptomatic of a disease that is slowly killing the American economy. We are creating so much regulation -- over tax policy, health care, financial activity -- that smart people have figured out that they can get rich faster and more easily by manipulating rules on behalf of existing corporations than by creating net new activity and wealth. Gamesmanship pays better than entrepreneurship.

Too bad that that's not the half of it -- although it does mention one of many facets of the problem.

The financial burden of regulation is grossly underappreciated by almost everyone, as I noted some time ago.

The silent killer in this story is federal regulation of the economy. Its estimated annual cost of $1.75 trillion is about two-thirds that of the tax burden. Sam and Karen, although fictional, are based in part on averages obtained from a recent report (PDF) prepared for the Small Business Administration on the impact of federal regulations on the United States economy. Notably omitted from the report are the additional costs of state and local regulations, as well as snowballing effects, such as lost opportunities and a slower pace of innovation.

And I'd call for a different long-term solution than Panner does: "It is up to us, the voting public, to consistently demand that politicians take steps to dismantle the state regulatory apparatus, and hold them to their word at each election cycle."

-- CAV

11-20-10 Hodgepodge

De-Listings

Update: A reader emails me with the question of whether the Hsiehs' recent post on this matter was a factor in my decision, noting that its time stamp appears to be hours before this one. No, it was not, and at least when I made my rounds before I started this post, it was not available on the web. That said, I haven't read it yet, either.

Second Update: After reading the post above, my concerns regarding the Hsiehs no longer apply. I am adding both of their blogs, which I enjoy, back to the blogroll. I will also re-list both TOS and Principles in Practice. Speed is often, but not always, a virtue in blogging, and I acted in unnecessary haste yesterday. That lesson learned, I apologize to the Hsiehs and Craig Biddle for this post, to my readers for two retractions in a month, and to my old friend Dismuke: Had I remembered his advice from early on, none of this would have happened. (I do remain concerned about the "Justice" essay.) Finally, I will start acting on that advice now and warn that I will almost certainly reject any further comments about the Peikoff-McCaskey mess.

The following has been my longstanding policy regarding links to subject matter external to this blog:

Links from this site to others are strictly for my own convenience. The fact that I have provided a link to another site does not in any way imply an endorsement of that site or a guarantee that its content will remain unaltered after the time I provided the link.

Even so, I occasionally remove links that I think could reasonably be taken as endorsements of sites that promote major factual, theoretical, or philosophical positions I judge as wrong.

I have done this today.

Due to my own very serious reservations about Craig Biddle's "Justice for John P. McCaskey," I have removed links to The Objective Standard, Principles in Practice, and the blogs of two other individuals who have expressed agreement with and have promoted that essay. My reservations go beyond the primary one I expressed when I retracted my own support for that essay more than two weeks ago. However, I will not elaborate further on those reservations at this time.

Update: A reader emails me with the question of whether the Hsiehs' recent post on this matter was a factor in my decision, noting that its time stamp appears to be hours before this one. No, it was not, and at least when I made my rounds before I started this post, it was not available on the web. That said, I haven't read it yet, either.

Second Update: After reading the post above, my concerns regarding the Hsiehs no longer apply. I am adding both of their blogs, which I enjoy, back to the blogroll. I will also re-list both TOS and Principles in Practice. Speed is often, but not always, a virtue in blogging, and I acted in unnecessary haste yesterday. That lesson learned, I apologize to the Hsiehs and Craig Biddle for this post, to my readers for two retractions in a month, and to my old friend Dismuke: Had I remembered his advice from early on, none of this would have happened. (I do remain concerned about the "Justice" essay.) Finally, I will start acting on that advice now and warn that I will almost certainly reject any further comments about the Peikoff-McCaskey mess.

Weekend Reading

"To an ethical subjectivist, everyone's desires are equally valid, and one must acquiesce to others' demands in the name of fairness." -- Don & Bernice Richmond in "The Evil of Compromise," originally at The Naples Daily News (via HBL)

"At the very least, the public should know the consequences if the EPA has its way." -- Paul Saunders in "EPA ozone targets will hurt job creation in Lehigh Valley, New Jersey," at The Lehigh Valley Express-Times (via HBL)

Harriman Blogs

Via Burgess Laughlin, I see that David Harriman is discussing some of the criticisms of his book, The Logical Leap.

From the Vault

Writing about barbecue last year, I made the following point:

Man is an integrated being of mind and body, and mere physical survival is not the same thing as living a life proper to man. Pleasurable activities like sex -- including some that are risky or dangerous if performed carelessly or to excess -- are necessary to an enjoyable, properly human, life.

Also, amusement ensues in the comments.

Art and a Movie

"I am just back from seeing the new Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner romantic flick, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. The movie was light, fun, and a not terribly-original, but enjoyable take on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. -- Michael Randall

-- CAV

Updates

11-21-10: Added update to first section.
11-21-10: Added second update to first section.

Sweetness

Reading the following got a good laugh out of me, and then got me interested in learning some more about Walter Payton.

Sure, Leaf and Russell were bigger busts. [Rusty] Lisch, after all, was a fourth-round pick who had backed up Joe Montana at Notre Dame. But if you have one game you need to lose, and you require a quarterback to take you there, Lisch is -- hands down -- the man you want. In 115 career attempts he threw one touchdown and 11 interceptions. That one touchdown came in St. Louis on Oct. 9, 1983. The pass traveled a single yard, to tight end Doug Marsh. With Neil O'Donoghue's extra point, the Redskins' lead was cut to 31-14 -- late in the contest.

One year later, with Jim McMahon and Steve Fuller hurt, Lisch started a game for the Bears against Green Bay. He played so poorly that Mike Ditka pulled him. For Walter Payton.

I don't think I saw that game, but I remember hearing about it, and you can see Payton playing quarterback in this game on YouTube. He tosses one in for a touchdown around the eight minute mark, although that contest turned out to be a losing effort.

More worthwhile is the below highlight reel. I recommend muting once you reach the start of the "Super Bowl Shuffle" and advancing to the one minute mark for the football.

As I've noted before, lots of work goes into making something this demanding look easy, and Payton's running was no exception:

One part of Payton's conditioning regimen took on mythic proportions in the football world. For several months before the start of each N.F.L. season, he would run up a steep hill near his Illinois home about 20 times a day. Sometimes he would bring along teammates or local college players. "I enjoy seeing them try it once or twice, and then vomit," he said.

And Payton brought his mind to bear on the game as well:

One of Payton's signature maneuvers was the "stutter-step," a high-stepping, irregularly paced run. He developed this as a way to distract his pursuers during long runs, saying that it startled them into thinking and gave him some advantage over players who were actually faster runners. In his autobiography, he likened the stutter step to a kind of "option play": when he was stutter-stepping, defenders would have to commit to a pursuit angle based upon whether they thought he would accelerate after the stutter-step, or cut[. H]e would read this angle and do the opposite of what the defender had committed to.

In my reading, I was surprised to learn that, despite his impressive contracts as a player, and his untimely demise, Payton made far more money as a businessman after his playing career came to a close.

To millions of fans in Chicago and around the world he was known affectionately as "Sweetness," the name he earned for the way he both played on the field and carried himself off it. Payton was successful in business as well as sports; he had interests in restaurants, real estate, banking, construction, and, particularly, auto racing.

Wikipedia elaborates more on the nickname:

The nickname's origin was ambiguous: it is variously said to have stemmed from his personality, from his athletic grace, or as an ironic description of his aggressive playing style.

Regarding this aggressiveness, New York Times states more than once that Payton was unapologetic for it.

The sparks flew when Payton carried the ball. He was aggressive rather than graceful. He ran with power and would never go out of bounds if he could pound out an extra yard or two. He excused the way he punished tacklers by saying: "What about the pain they've dealt out to me? Pain is expected in this game."

What a refreshing thing to hear by contrast to some of the choir-boys who take the field today!

All I knew about Walter Payton as I was growing up was his prowess as a football player, but even that I didn't fully appreciate back then. So I'm glad I took out a few extra minutes this morning to learn more about the man. The sports media pay lots of misguided lip-service to the idea of sacrifice, so I naturally grow leery when I hear great athletes such as Payton lauded as great human beings. In this case, though, I think some more time down the road learning about Walter Payton will be well spent.

-- CAV

A Light-Nanosecond

John Cook takes an entertaining look at three rules of thumb. Call them "nanocentury," "light-nanosecond," and "the one seventy-secondth rule of investing."

My favorite of these was the light-nanosecond, because it came with the above video of one of my favorite figures from computer science, Grace Hopper, explaining it to David Letterman.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Minor edit.

Misplaced Gratitude

Warren Buffett pens a "thank you" letter to his Uncle Sam for "saving" us all from the housing bubble.

You have been criticized, Uncle Sam, for some of the earlier decisions that got us in this mess -- most prominently, for not battling the rot building up in the housing market. But then few of your critics saw matters clearly either. In truth, almost all of the country became possessed by the idea that home prices could never fall significantly.

Not only did Uncle Sam "not battle" the rot, he caused it, by encouraging Americans (bankers in particular) to assume financial risks (particularly in real estate) they shouldn't have taken.

One wonders whether Mr. Buffett would feel the same level of gratitude had an uncle set his house ablaze while he was inside it, and then "rescued" him from the inferno.

-- CAV

PS: I must add that, in terms of preventing a financial collapse, I am far less optimistic than Buffett seems to be that the government has done even this much.

Updates

Today: Added a PS.

Unlikely Inspiration

As a fantasy football "manager," I end up checking on news about the bad teams that happen to have some of my good players. In the process, I occasionally get perverse entertainment from reading local sportswriters unload on poor teams after months of having to witness -- and write about -- futility on a regular basis.

So it was that learned last week about "Bengal Moments" and the following humorously-put question about the improving Detroit Lions:

[T]he Bills need this victory desperately. It might be their best shot to avoid the second 0-16 season in NFL history. The Lions were bad enough to make 0-16 happen once. Are they good enough to help make 0-16 happen again?

The answer was, "no," fortunately for the Buffalo Bills, who have had more than their share of close losses this season.

But within the article about the Detroit Lions was something worth remembering for the tough times that go along with getting back on track, and other difficult endeavors. Michael Rosenberg opens his column for the Detroit Free Press with the following:

The Lions are the best darn 2-6 team in the NFL. I don't mean that as an insult. It's true. The Lions are like most teams that are learning how to win -- the improvement comes before the victories.

"The improvement comes before the victories." I find this quote instructive on a personal level, as well as relevant in terms of the fledgling intellectual movement of which I am a part. Regarding the latter, I'll hand the ball off to Amit Ghate, who has some insightful things to say about the importance of good personnel decisions, as well as the long-term benefits of learning even unpleasant information.

-- CAV

Promising Signs

RealClear Politics depicts the pie chart of post-election polling results at right, and I hope the GOP will heed it. The question:

As you know, as a result of the election which was held earlier this month, the Republicans will control the U.S. House of Representatives. Do you think the Republican victories in the House races are more of a mandate for Republican policies or more a rejection of Democratic policies?

The blue portion of the chart, clocking in at nearly three quarters of those polled, corresponds to the answer, "rejection of Democratic policies." "Republican mandate" is less than a fifth.

Even better, yesterday brought news from Politico that several Tea Party and allied groups are holding the GOP's feet to the fire:

In a letter to be released Monday, the group GOProud and leaders from groups like the Tea Party Patriots and the New American Patriots, will urge Republicans in the House and Senate to keep their focus on shrinking the government.

"On behalf of limited-government conservatives everywhere, we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the Tea Party movement," they write to presumptive House Speaker John Boehner and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell in an advance copy provided to POLITICO. "This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue."

While I have expressed misgivings about the explicit "principles" of many Tea Partiers, I am cautiously optimistic after reading the rest of the article that these groups, at least, are focused on reducing the size of the government. (This is not ideal: it's the scope of government that is the real problem. However, in today's context, it's good news.)

-- CAV

Get What You Need

Reader Dismuke forwards a link to an incredible story about a trendy grocery whose over-priced and under-stocked business failed -- and then blamed its former customers in a "farewell" note!

I reproduce the whole thing (minus the name of the store) below:

We featured local, high quality foods both raw and prepared. Unfortunately our products were expensive both at our cost and because we had a storefront to maintain at your cost as well. In some parts of the world people are accustomed to spending a higher percentage of their income on food, but in America we suffer from sticker shock because of Wal Mart [sic] and other discount vendors.

The reality is we pay for what we eat. Some are informed enough to know what that statement means. For those that don't I am not going to elaborate here[. T]here is plenty of information out there if you are looking.

[Name of Store] wants to say we had few customers that understood customer loyalty and its importance to our business. Thank you for those that came in regularly and bought what we had though it may not have been exactly what they wanted. If you came in only for baguettes, the occasional piece of cheese, the occasional dinner, or something specific you were very disappointed we did not have, you can not tell yourself you were a supporter of our market. We hope that people that say they support small local businesses actually do support small local businesses. You may not always get what you want but you will get what you need.

Thanks to our patrons and we are sorry we couldn't educate more people in the time we needed to for such a business to work.

This is one of the most striking examples of non-objective communication I have seen in a long time. Setting aside the whole issue of what its author could have possibly imagined accomplishing by posting it on the company website, this note offends on multiple levels.

Particularly egregious is the substitution of the following (in turns) for rational argument: presumption (The choice to save money could not possibly be good, a potential customer's full context be damned.), unearned guilt (If you don't agree with what I take to be true, you must be lazy.), and intimidation (If you took your business elsewhere at any time or for any reason, you obviously didn't really support our store.).

Overall, I'd characterize this note as essentially an argument from intimidation, to the extent that there is an attempt to extort agreement. What is really striking to me is its multi-pronged attack in that regard.

This indirectly reminds me of a paper I once heard critiqued in a class that, at some point, claimed something like, "There are two ways of dealing with other men: force and reason." This claim isn't true, as the lecturer rightly noted and as the above example eloquently shows. There are, in fact, numerous non-rational ways which don't involve force that people can and do use to attempt to deal with each other. Learn to recognize them as the warning flags that they are, and act accordingly.

Fortunately for this store's former customers, they are already in the process of adjusting their shopping habits: This note may not have been what this store's old customers wanted to hear, but it was, in a manner of speaking, what they needed to hear.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a misquote: The phrase, "force and persuasion," has been corrected to read, "force and reason." My thanks to the commenter who called me out on my analysis of the incorrect quotation.

Error Carried Forward

"What Mr. Chase didn't know about coffee, Mr. Sanborn didn't know, either."

The above quote is what I remember of a play on an old advertising slogan used by Chase and Sanborn coffee that I believe I saw as a boy in one of my parents' Mad magazines.

I was reminded of that joke about twenty years ago during Navy training in the northeast, when I had some particularly bad coffee. And I was reminded of it again over the weekend, when I read the following (via Randex):

[Whittaker] Chambers thought that [Ayn] Rand was laboring in the ideological swamps. Rand's thought was that capitalism rather than central planning would lead to the highest state of existence. Many forget but Karl Marx, like Rand, desired for man to live in an atomistic paradise free from the pains of religion and the deep-seated community of family and man's social and political nature. Marxists, however, remained stuck in the unworkability of their system. Rand articulates in Atlas Shrugged, the novel Chambers famously criticized, that man delivers himself through his labor and intellect from the burdens of his nature.

The free market for Rand is not merely a process whereby the variegated interests and desires of man can be peacefully channeled; rather, the market allows man to be a superman. One becomes the ideal man, as articulated by Rand, by being able to remove one's self from the bonds and needs of others. Rand's vision of man consists here in the replacement of love, sacrifice, and humility with a rational and atomistic egoism that defines man. Chambers argues that man defined purely atomistically, unable to know the love of God and man, slowly begins to organize the world against man. He is cut off from his being. [format edits]

Or: What Mr. Chambers didn't know about Objectivism, Mr. Reinsch, doesn't know, either.

The above excerpt comes a magazine interview of Richard M. Reinsch, who has written a biography of Chambers. Unfortunately, if you want an objective assessment of Chambers as an intellectual, I doubt you'll find one there, since it would appear that Reinsch's grasp of Ayn Rand's ideas appears to be informed entirely by Chambers, whose "review" of Atlas Shrugged is a tour de force of ignorance and dishonesty.

The best that one could hope for is that when Reinsch says something like, "Rand's thought was, " during the interview that he really means, "Rand, in Chambers' eyes, thought that," because what he claims Rand thought is not even wrong.

The whole idea that Rand claims that "man delivers himself ... from the burdens of his nature" is perhaps the most ludicrous here. Rand referred to Objectivism as "a philosophy for living on this earth" for a reason, part of which was that she hoped it would enable man to reach his potential by fully understanding -- and living in accordance with -- his nature. As for capitalism, it is merely the political system best suited for man to achieve this potential within a social context. Such a man would no more be a "superman" than a championship greyhound would be a "superpup."

There are other things wrong here. Implying that the ideas of Rand and Karl Marx are essentially the same based on some superficial similarities is a good example.

But don't take my word for it. If curiosity about Ayn Rand somehow leads you to Whittaker Chambers, read her books for yourself and make up your own mind. You will see that that is all she asks of anyone, in stark contrast to Karl Marx and Jesus Christ -- and quite to the contrary of the make-believe character of the same name pilloried by Whittaker Chambers and his legions of sycophants.

-- CAV

11-13-10 Hodgepodge

Official Statements

The Ayn Rand Institute has published a letter to supporters regarding the circumstances of the resignation of John McCaskey from its Board of Directors.

In addition, Leonard Peikoff, who founded ARI and is its most important supporter, has posted his own statement about the dispute that led to his judgment that John McCaskey was not qualified to sit on the Board of Directors for ARI.

Weekend Reading

"If you walked down to the U.S. Mint and started burning greenbacks, the Secret Service could arrest you. But when the Federal Reserve destroys the value of our currency, it's heralded as sound economic policy." -- Jonathan Hoenig in "Fed Plan Leaves Dollar at Risk, " at SmartMoney

"Disagreeing over money is one thing, but fighting over money is always a mistake." -- Michael Hurd in "Money and Marriage," at DrHurd.com

The Coming War on Bacon

One casualty in the long-brewing government war on salt may soon be the flavor of ham and bacon:

For normal, healthy people who eat in moderation, these new regulations just serve to ruin good food and raise the risk of food poisoning and contamination. The nanny state faction has no part of choice -- I remember listening to a Republican-appointed Surgeon General rant about the dangers of soda pop -- but is unanimous in its belief that citizens are too stupid to take care of themselves.

This is just the latest of many attempts to excuse the state issuing orders to individuals on the basis that scientific findings somehow justify them.

Tip for Game Show Producers

Don't use puzzles that too closely resemble what might commonly bubble to the surface of a contestant's mind.

-- CAV

Bumbles

Today, I had a mind to post a few of the more interesting photos from a trip to Europe I took about a decade ago. There was a conference in Belgium, after which I took off an extra week to make up for a regret from my previous trip there as a college student: I never made it to England that whole semester!

In the process of going through the photos, I came across the one at right of a storefront in London. I snapped it because one of the several pet names I already had at the time for the future Mrs. Van Horn was, "Bumblebee," so, of course, the name of the store reminded me of her. I chuckled and took the shot.

Needless to say, I decided to include the shot with this morning's post and tried to coax Bumbles over to take a look. I mentioned what I was thinking about posting today.

"You've already done that," she said.

"Oh," I replied, recovering from the mental somersault of having a rug yanked from under me. My wife, unlike many other people, usually isn't one to revel in familiar old yarns, so she will sometimes put the kibosh on old material.

That, in a nutshell, exemplifies what looks at first like a small downside to being with someone this long: It takes more effort to feel clever, because the chances are pretty good that Bumbles has already heard whatever old story I have a notion to tell.

In fact, this really isn't a downside: I am often amazed at how well she remembers some of my old stories, and one day, I made a mental connection about that fact. How easy is it to remember something that isn't important to you?

Exactly.

The minor inconvenience of my wife's not liking rehashes is more than offset by the knowledge of what it means that she remembers so much about me.

Nevertheless, I checked the blog for whether I posted on my trips to Brugge (aka Bruges) and London and came up empty, at least in terms of photographs. It could well be that I thought about posting on that trip in the past, but didn't do so. Indeed, this seems likely, as most of the photos brought back good memories, but were not really that great.

So, although some or all of these may or may not be lurking around my blog somewhere already, I'll toss up a few of the better photos from that trip, anyway.

Probably the best of the lot is the early morning shot (at the right) of a canal, taken from a bridge in Brugge. (Click to enlarge.)

I walked by that thing on a daily basis and kept imagining how pretty it would be without a bunch of water traffic and tourists blocking the view, so I woke up early one morning and got that shot. As I noted after another such photo shoot, there's nothing like the magnificent feeling of having a whole town to oneself.

The four below are probably the ones I like best apart from any memories they trigger.

Clockwise from top left, these are: (1) A cottage on the side of the canal above that, if memory serves, was just off to the left of the foreground of that shot; (2) An early morning shot of Wijngaardstraat ("Vineyard Street," according to Google Translate) in Brugge; (3) Some giant lily pads in a green house at Kew Gardens in London; and (4) An obligatory street scene shot from London.

With that, I'll close with one more memory from the trip. Bumbles and I got engaged ten years ago this month: This trip was a few months before that, while we were still dating. While in Brugge, I was looking around one day for a small gift for her, and happened upon a wood carving of Donald Duck that I thought both of us would like. She's a Disney fan, and the carving was done in a primitive way that made me imagine a Donald Duck-worshiping tribe somewhere in the jungle.

I considered buying one carving for each of us at first, but had this funny feeling that that would be unnecessary. We have that carving on a shelf in our living room to this day.

-- CAV

Occupational Extremes

"Whatever he was -- that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love -- he was not man." -- Ayn Rand

At one time or another, almost everyone fantasizes about winning the lottery -- or at least landing an easy, lucrative job. A little daydreaming from time to time is harmless enough, but at some point, it can be useful to ask, "What is it really like for those living out such a fantasy?"

Reality has answers, two examples of which I found at The Endeavor, a blog I recently learned about from Snedcat. His comment on a recent post here reminded me to stop by and take a look around, which I did recently.

Blogger John C. Cook makes quick work of the lottery winners:

Here's an example of how observation and intervention differ. Lottery winners often go bankrupt within a couple years of receiving their prize. If you suddenly make someone a millionaire, they're not a typical millionaire.

That's not to say that winning the lottery can't make things easier, of course, but Cook's earlier point about the "direction of causality" is well taken. Or, as my favorite social commentator might have put it, the money won't pinch hit for someone not having (or acquiring) knowledge of how to use it. And then, all the old problems the money was supposed to have solved come roaring back with a vengeance.

More interesting is what can happen to someone who gets a sinecure.

Despite having no work or research experience outside of MIT, I was regularly advertised to clients as an expert with seemingly years of topical experience relevant to the case. We were so good at rephrasing our credentials that even I was surprised to find in each of my cases, even my very first case, that I was the most senior consultant on the team.

I quickly found out why so little had been invested in developing my Excel-craft. Analytical skills were overrated, for the simple reason that clients usually didn't know why they had hired us. They sent us vague requests for proposal, we returned vague case proposals, and by the time we were hired, no one was the wiser as to why exactly we were there.

I got the feeling that our clients were simply trying to mimic successful businesses, and that as consultants, our earnings came from having the luck of being included in an elaborate cargo-cult ritual. In any case it fell to us to decide for ourselves what question we had been hired to answer, and as a matter of convenience, we elected to answer questions that we had already answered in the course of previous cases -- no sense in doing new work when old work will do. The toolkit I brought with me from MIT was absolute overkill in this environment. Most of my day was spent thinking up and writing PowerPoint slides. Sometimes, I didn’t even need to write them -- we had a service in India that could put together pretty good copy if you provided them with a sketch and some instructions.

Oddly enough, there was something absent from this real-life fantasy:

It took roughly three months before BCG disproved my "burn-out proof" theory. Putting together PowerPoint slides was easy, the hours were lenient, and the fifth day of every week usually consist[ed] of a leisurely day away from the client site. By all accounts, I should have been coasting through my tasks.

Cook calls the following quote from that story the best explanation for burnout he has ever seen: "... burning out isn't just about work load, it's about work load being greater than the motivation to do work."

Money represents stored value from past work. In the case of a lottery win or a sinecure, there is little or no causal connection between one's own mind and effort, and the money. The momentum of success is replaced by inertia, and one wakes up one day to find himself in a prison, albeit a well-fed one, if he is lucky.

Plainly, money and leisure aren't everything. Happily, there is a better alternative, doing work you love:

First, the tiny company spent a small fortune sending staff to beer festivals across the country. Second, they humored [their then-new brewmaster, Tomme] Arthur.

"Everything he wanted to do, they've backed up," said Tom Nickel, then Arthur's assistant and now owner of O'Brien's Pub in Kearny Mesa.

Arthur wanted to create sour beers with cherries and wild yeasts; unfiltered farmhouse ales; deep, spicy abbey ales. In 2006, the Marsaglias, Arthur and a fourth partner, Jim Comstock, opened Port/Lost Abbey in San Marcos. There, Arthur bottles his work -- the brewpubs' beers are only available on tap.

But in brewery or brewpubs, the Marsaglias urge brewers to experiment and create.

"That's the only way you can be passionate about something," Vince said. "Otherwise, it'd be 'I'm coming to work today' instead of 'I'm going to make my beer today.'"

The good news is that, unlike in the case of winning a lottery, this kind of "jackpot," or something like it, is within reach of almost everyone. The bad news is that realizing as much of it as possible takes effort in many different areas (outside the area of one's passion), some of which can be hard for certain individuals. For example, even knowing what one is passionate about can be hard, especially if introspection isn't one's strong suit, and that can change over time. Many people tragically die not knowing their passions.

Eden isn't just a myth. It's a denial of man's nature as a living being, and particularly of the nature of values and the role they play in life. To dream of Eden or anything like it for very long is really to substitute mere fantasy for genuine aspiration.

-- CAV

Overreaching and Reform

I'm in the middle of a long article at City Journal about the latest wave of urban "reform." The gist of Steven Malanga's argument seems to be that this wave is one of self-reliance, at least in the sense of cities not necessarily looking for federal aid to solve all their problems.

But don't click through in the hopes of learning about a pro-capitalist wave, or finding an argument in favor of laissez-faire capitalism: It is clear that, with the example he gives of a mayor improving "the delivery of public services," that Malanga is writing from a mixed economy perspective.

That's too bad, because I suspect that many, if not most of the problems faced by crumbling cities like Detroit are due to government interference in the economy, and that would make for a fascinating article. At the very least, a pro-capitalist perspective would clarify an article like this on many levels, and allow a more profitable examination of its subject matter.

The following two paragraphs struck me as a good example:

The out-of-control corruption brought in response a reform era led by progressives, like Theodore Roosevelt, who argued that modern scientific principles and ideas of efficiency, not smoky backroom deals, should direct city policy. For instance, as president of the New York City Board of Police Commissioners from 1895 to 1897, Roosevelt revamped the city's police department, considered among the most crooked in America, by changing hiring procedures to favor the most qualified candidates rather than the politically connected.

However, some voters, not without reason, saw the progressives as cold, distant elites, uninterested in neighborhood issues. And the reformers occasionally overreached, as with their support of Prohibition. As a result, progressives -- New York City mayor Seth Low, who governed in 1902, is a good example -- were sometimes turned out of office as the public's zeal for reform waned. So the old-style ethnic political machines held on to some measure of influence in many American cities through the first half of the twentieth century. And cities that remained in thrall to the machines weren't ready to confront the economic and social changes that swept the nation during the 1960s. [minor format edits]

Immediately, the pro-capitalist will get a sense of history repeating itself when he reads of the Progressives making city government more "efficient." (Is the current wave of reform all that different in any important way?) And, while Progressives may indeed have resembled many of today's leftists in terms of possessing an air of aloofness and condescension, was a lack of interest in "neighborhood issues" really the source of their downfall? (Did Americans want even more government in their daily lives, or less? Would more such "interest" be properly seen as the meddling it would have been?)

As for "support of Prohibition" being seen as overreaching, this makes sense only if voters indeed wanted more involvement in their affairs, but just weren't ready for that much more of it (or they indulged in the "dictator fantasy" and somehow expected that area of their lives to remain exempt). To the point, a consistent advocate of government protection of individual rights would see support of Prohibition for what it was: simply another flavor of support for government meddling in the economy (and thus, meddling in the daily affairs of individual Americans). In terms of violating individual rights, Prohibition was actually worse than the corruption of the day, because it was an official government policy.

Thus, Malanga classifies anti-corruption efforts, legitimate efforts to reform city government (like instituting merit-based promotions for policemen), Progressive policies in favor of greater efficiency in the delivery of public services (legitimate or not), and support of Prohibition (which violates individual rights) under a non-essential similarity, "reform" (i.e., change from a status quo vaguely described as corrupt), rather than by looking more closely at whether these changes represented movement in the direction of better government protection of individual rights. And this makes his criticism of the Progressives fall flat (and sound like a typical, hollow conservative criticism about change of any kind), at least so far: that some wanted to "reform" things too rapidly. That's what Malanga seems to mean by "overreach" here. (There also remains the pregnant question of why "the public's zeal for reform waned.")

In fact, if that wave of reform were even good on balance, support for Prohibition would have been a major contradiction. It may well have been that Americans also favored such government controls, but weren't ready to accept that much government control of their lives then -- and in that sense, some of these politicians were overreaching. But in terms of reforming urban politics for the better, such politicians actually represented a step backward.

This may seem like a minor point, but it is important in the ongoing debate about the role of government in American society in two ways. First, there is the fact that in our current culture, it will be very difficult to make meaningful progress towards reducing government down to its proper scope. There is a legitimate concern along the way about what reforms we can accomplish at any given time. Second, many people recognize this on some level, but do not understand that the cause of this problem lies in the kinds of (changeable) political ideas that permeate our culture. Many such people will warn against "going too far," not just in terms of seeking a given reform too early, but even of floating the idea for it or making an uncompromising stand for freedom. I'm not sure whether the second applies to Malanga, but I have seen such a notion before, and it is one for advocates of freedom to be vigilant about.

-- CAV

Freedom Has a Pulse

There are some encouraging signs that efforts to stop ObamaCare have a real chance of success. Among those signs is an article by Ilya Somin (HT: Glenn Reynolds) on the status of legal efforts by many states against the federal takeover of medicine. I regard this as a long shot, and as a stopgap effort at best, however.

The judges considering the Florida and Virginia cases have both issued rulings rejecting the federal government's motions to dismiss the suits and indicating that the mandate can't be upheld based on current Supreme Court precedent. By contrast, Michigan district Judge George Caram Steeh wrote a decision concluding that the mandate is constitutional. But even he agreed that the case raises an "issue of first impression."

In the most recent of the three rulings, Florida federal District Court Judge Roger Vinson wrote that the government's claim that the mandate is clearly authorized by existing Supreme Court precedent is "not even a close call." He points out that "[t]he power that the individual mandate seeks to harness is simply without prior precedent," because no previous Supreme Court decision ever authorized Congress to force ordinary citizens to buy products they did not want. [links dropped]

According to the Free Online Law Dictionary, an "issue of first impression" is, "a legal issue which has never been decided by an appeals court and, therefore, there is no precedent for the court to follow."

And later on:

The federal government also argues that the mandate is authorized by the Necessary and Proper Clause, which gives Congress the power to "make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution" other powers Congress is granted by the Constitution.

Even if the mandate is "necessary," it is not "proper" under our constitutional system of limited federal authority. If the Clause allows Congress to adopt the individual mandate, the same logic would justify almost any other requirement Congress might impose on individuals, thereby gutting the principle of limited federal power. [links dropped]

There is further cause for optimism regarding legislative means to head off this catastrophe over at We Stand FIRM, which quotes an article about that line of attack by David Catron:

In addition to the power of the purse, the new House majority will also have subpoena power that can be used to delay implementation.

They can hold numerous and protracted public hearings, while demanding all manner of documentation from the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). They can summon HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to answer questions about her 2009 gag order to insurance companies and her growing reputation as an enemy of the First Amendment.

It would also be instructive to hear CMS administrator Donald Berwick to elaborate on statements like, "Any healthcare funding plan that is just... must redistribute wealth."

That's a start, but I agree that only principled opposition can take us from winning some of these battles to winning the war for renewed government protection of individual rights in the field of medicine.

-- CAV

Strangled by the Ivy?

It's a couple of years old, but its author has clearly overcome many of the very limitations he describes about his educational background. Among these limitations are: a sense of entitlement, an inability to relate to ordinary people, a lack of passion, little persistence in the face of difficulty, intellectual docility, social conformity, and a grasp of the concept "solitude" that is tenuous at best (along with any appreciation of its merits).

No. We're not ripping the public schools again. We're ripping the Ivy league.

[T]he world that produced John Kerry and George Bush is indeed giving us our next generation of leaders. The kid who's loading up on AP courses junior year or editing three campus publications while double-majoring, the kid whom everyone wants at their college or law school but no one wants in their classroom, the kid who doesn't have a minute to breathe, let alone think, will soon be running a corporation or an institution or a government. She will have many achievements but little experience, great success but no vision. The disadvantage of an elite education is that it's given us the elite we have, and the elite we're going to have.

The article is very long, but makes many worthwhile points. My main criticism of it is that it overestimates the power of entrenched cultural institutions and underestimates the power of philosophical ideas. However, given the mutually reinforcing effects of these two things on one another, such errors are quite understandable.

That said, does it not make sense that the many limitations of an elite academic background would be most pronounced in the very places from which bad philosophical ideas have been transmitted to the culture? The great value of this article is that it provides an insider's perspective of the problem.

-- CAV

11-6-10 Hodgepodge

Lies, Damned Lies, and ... Medical Research?

Years ago, in our lab's journal club, a colleague presented a curiously-titled 2005 paper by one John Ioannidis, "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False." Insufficiently intrigued by the presentation and too busy at the time to read it or follow up on it, I all but forgot about the paper.

But Ioannidis hasn't gone away. He is now getting attention in the popular press for this work and a companion paper, "Contradicted and Initially Stronger Effects in Highly Cited Clinical Research" (PDF). The first of these papers is a mathematical model of a suspicion I have had for some time about certain areas of research and the second takes a look at the research literature as a check.

The Atlantic presents the above work for a lay audience. It's long, but worth thinking about.

Ioannidis was putting his contentions to the test not against run-of-the-mill research, or even merely well-accepted research, but against the absolute tip of the research pyramid. Of the 49 articles, 45 claimed to have uncovered effective interventions. Thirty-four of these claims had been retested, and 14 of these, or 41 percent, had been convincingly shown to be wrong or significantly exaggerated. If between a third and a half of the most acclaimed research in medicine was proving untrustworthy, the scope and impact of the problem were undeniable. That article was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

This being science, Ioannidis is not being taken at his word. For example, two authors argued in 2007 that Ioannidis's analysis is suspect.

We agree with the paper's conclusions and recommendations that many medical research findings are less definitive than readers suspect, that P-values are widely misinterpreted, that bias of various forms is widespread, that multiple approaches are needed to prevent the literature from being systematically biased and the need for more data on the prevalence of false claims. But calculating the unreliability of the medical research literature, in whole or in part, requires more empirical evidence and different inferential models than were used. The claim that "most research findings are false for most research designs and for most fields" must be considered as yet unproven.

Ioannidis has since answered them. The debate goes on, but the point is well taken.

Weekend Reading

"Don't forget who put you in office and why -- namely, the independent-minded Tea Party voters." -- Paul Hsieh in "GOP: Dance With The One Who Brung You" at Pajamas Media

"... [M]y message to conservatives this time is, 'I've given you a Republican voter... if you can keep me.'" -- Jared Rhodes in "A Republican Voter ..." at the web site of the Lucidicus Project (HT: Amit Ghate)

"What really frightens me -- as both an investor and a citizen of the [planet] -- is 'eco-horror,' a genre of storytelling now seen in fine art galleries, movie theaters and basic cable. Right now, there's a prime example on display inside the Museum of London." -- Jonathan Hoenig in "Forget Halloween: It's the Greens that Scare Me" at SmartMoney

Comment of the Week

A fellow blogger makes an important clarification.

"[T]he fact of morally condemning in and of itself is not sufficient to obligate explanation." -- Kendall J

What if ...


... you really needed to move an enormous generator?

-- CAV

City Walks: Boston

About a year ago, I wondered aloud about how I might occasionally shake up my routine in such a way as to enjoy the heightened awareness and enjoyment of life I have noticed in the past with such interruptions. Among the ideas I had at the time was, "putting together a list of minor things I'd like to do or places I'd like to see ... and perhaps promising myself to do one of them each month on a morning."

I never got around to putting very many items on the list, but my wife basically handed one to me the other day in the form of a small surprise gift, a deck of cards called City Walks: Boston. The product description on the back of the box is as follows:

Skip the dull tour guides, ditch those unruly maps, and experience Boston like a native -- on foot! Whether you're a first-time visitor or just want to discover new terrain, City Walks: Boston will give you an intimate view of the city. Each card in this deck outlines a self-guided walking adventure, with a detailed map on one side and insider information on the other. From historical monuments like Paul Revere's house and the Bunker Hill Monument, to the academic enclaves of Cambridge, the palaces of Beacon Hill, and the locals' favorite places to eat, drink, stop, shop, rest, walk, and play. Pick any card and start exploring Boston!

I'll probably shuffle the deck and use it this way any time I don't already have a place I want to explore. Also, I'll save obvious winners for both of us to do, and pick again on days I'll be exploring on my own.

I'm looking forward to this, and, if this sounds good to anyone who lives in or near a "walkable" city (or plans to visit one), there's a whole line of such decks of cards at Chronicle Books.

-- CAV

A Very Deep Well

A couple of years ago, upon re-reading The Art of Non-Fiction, I posted about my amazement at Ayn Rand's ability to see the relationship between philosophical issues one would not ordinarily see as related, and then apply such connections to the craft of writing. In particular, I was impressed with the connection she drew between a common implicit premise, determinism, and a common writing mistake that can basically cripple a writer.

I'm making my way through the book again -- and it's happening again! Things I missed the first couple of times are leaping at me from the page this time around. Here's just one example, which I encountered yesterday while waiting at the doctor's office:

It is improper to address yourself to a faulty psycho-epistemology. Devising a rational method to address the irrational is a contradiction. If some of your readers are irrational, there are no principles by which to decide what they will choose to hear, what they will not, and what connections they will make. Neither you nor the evader can predict what he will miss and what he will integrate. That is in the nature of irrationality.

... Do not make allowances for readers' mental weaknesses. For example, do not tell yourself: "I'm saying something new or antagonistic -- how can I prevent their minds from closing? How can I soften the blow?" If you ask such questions, you will only paralyze your own mind by attempting the impossible. You cannot reach a mind that chooses to be closed or is so incapacitated that even if, momentarily, it wanted to integrate properly, it could not. Such a mind lacks the capacity of full focus, and is the proper concern only of a psychotherapist. In all dealings with people, you have to deal with their conscious minds. [link added]

I first became aware of this kind of issue during a difficult time in my life many years ago, but was recently reminded of it when answering a comment.

[They] would sit around and listen to the words that left my mouth, ignoring their context and assigning their own politically correct meanings to the individual words. Then, when I said something they deemed sufficiently outrageous (i.e., thought they could get away with as an excuse to attack me), they'd all pounce on me.

For example, I once had the temerity to use the term "girl" to describe a woman I was interested in dating. The whole hour-long session was then wasted as it morphed into an attack on me for being insensitive! I spoke about this with a few female friends of mine later, all of whom agreed that what I'd said was not unreasonable, and that the group was completely out of bounds.

Clearly, communication in such a circumstance was impossible. (And if I had tried, I am sure they would have found another "reason" to indulge in their favorite sport.) I found better ways to make use of my time.

And if walking on such eggshells is hard to do in normal conversation, imagine the kind of mental paralysis attempting to do the same thing while writing could cause!

And ditto for evaluating criticism of one's published work. (I don't know whether Rand gets around to this.) Is such criticism objective? Is it worth taking into account?

That last question just occurred to me. I already run finished work by my wife before submitting it for publication as a check on how well I have communicated something for a general audience. I now have a standing order to myself to check any significant criticism my work may receive in the same way -- just as I did the puzzling "reviews" I received for the single word that left my lips way back when.

A German physicist once said, "A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out." This is a rather harsh and misanthropic way of putting my point, which I would render in the following, more positive way: "A book is like an investment: The better-prepared you are to make it, the more likely it will be to pay off well."

-- CAV

From Tabula Rasa to the NFL

The movie, The Blind Side describes how Michael Oher overcame -- with the help of a family that became aware of his plight -- a poverty-stricken, rudderless, and itinerant childhood to become a professional football player.

The benevolent aspect of this movie is heart-warming, but for the film really doesn't do justice to just how badly-off Oher really was. This isn't for lack of trying: I think it would have required a very different focus and a very different movie to pull that off. But an old article in the New York Times, "The Ballad of Big Mike," gives us a better idea. Things began to improve for Oher when he was enrolled in a private school, but his starting point looked hopeless.

The boy, now 16, had a measured I.Q. of 80, which put him in mankind's ninth percentile. An aptitude test he took in eighth grade measured his "ability to learn" and placed him in the sixth percentile.

And why?

In his first nine years of school, Michael Oher was enrolled in 11 different institutions, and that included a gap of 18 months, around age 10, when he apparently did not attend school at all. Either that or the public schools were so indifferent to his presence that they neglected to register it formally. Not that Oher actually showed up at the schools where he was enrolled. Even when he received credit for attending, he was sensationally absent: 46 days of a single term of his first-grade year, for instance. His first first-grade year, that is; Michael Oher repeated first grade. He repeated second grade, too. And yet the school system presented these early years as the most accomplished of his academic career. They claimed that right through the fourth grade he was performing at "grade level." How could they know when, according to these transcripts, he hadn't even attended the third grade?

It will come as no surprise that, except for failing first and second grades, Oher was the "beneficiary" of an unwritten policy of social promotion.

The above situation stemmed partly from and exacerbated the additional lack of guidance consequent to the fact that Oher completely lacked a stable home environment during all those years. Oher had an incredible amount of catching up to do.

If there was a less promising academic record, [principal Steve] Simpson hadn't seen it. Simpson guessed, rightly, that the Briarcrest Christian School hadn't seen anything like Michael Oher either. Simpson and others in the Briarcrest community would eventually learn that Michael's father had been shot and killed and tossed off a bridge, that his mother was addicted to crack cocaine and that his life experience was so narrow that he might as well have spent his first 16 years inside a closet...

But Big Mike wasn't like Steven. Steven had a father and a bed and a decent school transcript. He could cope with a conversation. Big Mike, in company, seemed as lost as a Martian stumbling out of a crash landing. Simpson had tried to shake his hand. "He didn't know how to do it," he says. "I had to show him how to shake hands." Every question Simpson put to Big Mike elicited a barely audible mumble. "I don't know if 'docile' is the right word," Simpson says.

This "docility" comes up multiple times, including on the football field, where Oher's play is also, at first, reflective of his lack of exposure to broad life experiences and lack of a value-hierarchy. In one game, he is flummoxed by the taunts of a much smaller player -- until a play call gives him a chance to pick up and carry his tormentor off the field and almost to his team bus!

And later, when Oher is busy catching up:

Still, in spite of these presumed defects, [tutor Sue] Mitchell was relentless and effusive -- the sort of woman who wants everything to be just great between her and the rest of the world but, if it isn't, can adjust and go to war. And that's what she did. She worked five nights a week, four hours each night, free, to help get Michael Oher into Ole Miss, her alma mater. The Tuohy family looked on with interest. "There were days when he was just overwhelmed," says Collins, who saw the academic drama unfold both at school and at home. "He'd just close his book and say, 'I'm done.'" When he did this, Mitchell opened the book for him. She didn't care much about football, but she fairly quickly became attached to Michael. There was just something about him that made you want to help him. He tried so hard and for so little return. "One night it wasn't going so well, and I got frustrated,"Mitchell says, "and he said to me, 'Miss Sue, you have to remember I've only been going to school for two years.'"

It is a testament to the human spirit that Oher and those who took an interest in him eventually succeeded. This case is also an eloquent demonstration of the spiral theory of learning, namely that past experience is crucial to future development. Near the end, we learn that, by college, "his I.Q. test score had risen between 20 and 30 points."

Whatever I.Q. tests measure, it is heartening that -- although there is no way Oher will be able to replace all those lost years -- they did not permanently or completely ruin him.

-- CAV