This is running through my head since I was listening to a conversation on the Radio. The guest is discussing the Murdoch media, giving an example of a story that was spun in a ridiculous way to attack Gordon Brown (the last UK Prime Minister).
A woman called in sounding agitated saying (see title), and "If you know something about a story and read the NY Times coverage you just won't recognize it." A question I'd have asked her is 'what is the objective source she's been reading that gives her some basis for saying the NY Times coverages is distorted?' Granted, the NY Times is "notorious" in the sense that a large percentage (maybe around half, maybe more) incessantly says that the NY Times is notorious for distorting the news. If so many people say it then that's a sort of notoriety by definition. But we can be sure that nothing like that number of people actually reads the Times, much less reads the Times, and has access somehow to the raw facts making them qualified to make that judgement.
Obviously she is hearing a version of the news different from what is in the Times. But on what basis does she have such confidence in her version?
On what basis does anyone have confidence in their version?
How do I know what I think I know? I think my version of reality is fairly well grounded -- granted, I may be wrong about some pretty significant things, and I must always ask the question "How can I be more sure? Or perhaps find my errors and discard them?" To many people, the answer seems as simple as turning to their favorite news source and saying, "See, this is what's really happening so obviously you have it all wrong."
Does anyone have an answer? I have a few. But I've had enough exposure to the the sources I think that woman listens to to know that counterarguments to everything I might say have been given to her and repeated over and over again. No matter which side you are on, you might be able to see a valid way to get out of the mess, so I want to engage people with different versions of world political reality from mine. Mostly what both sides are doing is name-calling. Except some people are trying to discover what's really going on and report it. I really believe there are a lot of people like that, but what's my basis for saying they're here rather than there?
Please do comment.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Hayek vs Hayek vs Von Mises
Hayek was in my view not nuts enough, or at least The Road to Serfdom isn't (his views might have gotten more "fundamentalist" later). E.g. quoting The Road to Serfdom:
“The preservation of competition [is not] incompatible with an extensive system of social services — so long as the organization of these services is not designed in such a way as to make competition ineffective over wide fields. ... There is no reason why, in a society which has reached the general level of wealth ours has, the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom; that is: some minimum of food, shelter and clothing, sufficient to preserve health. Nor is there any reason why the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance in providing for those common hazards of life against which few can make adequate provision."
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Making Sense of "Liberal Fascism" Part 1
Jonah Goldberg is right on one important count. Liberals (along with most human beings, though he doesn't point that out) tend to use ideological labels without any real clarity about what they mean, simply as pejoratives. The one thing that seems to never change is the bipolar nature of our politics. Republicans may shift from being the party of "America First" (meaning, in the late 30s and very early 40s, "Leave Hitler and the problems of Europe alone) to being the most hawkish and interventionist party, ever since some time around 1950. Democrats may go from being the party of states rights to being the most prone to promote federal projects and universal national social policies.
It is as old as our nation. John C. Calhoun made a radical switch from national centralist to the most extreme of states righters as abolitionism began to grow in the North.
Goldberg declares in his introduction "Angry left-wingers shout that all those to their right ... are fascists. Meanwhile besieged conservatives sit dumbfounded by the nastiness of the slander." He then writes a 487 page specious argument to "prove" that everyone to his left is a fascist.
The book is published in 2007 when the idea of "besieged conservatives" dumbfounded by nastiness seemed and still seems comically inappropriate. To me, it appears that movement conservatives have mined the history of the left in America for tactics, both to scold the left for using them (even if it was mostly decades ago) and to make energetic use of them for the right. For example, the victimhood pose - those poor innocent besieged and dumbfounded conservatives.
The Mises Review of the Ludwig von Mises Institute is surely more hostile to government interventionism (which is almost synonymous with "fascism" as Goldberg used the word). But they do seem to have higher standards of intellectual rigour.
Their review, at http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=326
starts with "Jonah Goldberg has ruined what could have been a valuable book" and concludes "Although Liberal Fascism contains much important information, its many mistakes require that it be used with extreme caution. Jonah Goldberg should acquire a more accurate knowledge of history before he presumes to instruct others." (after several specific examples of what the reviewer calls "howlers").
Goldberg has stretched the word "fascist" so it seems to include any vision of nationwide improvement that might involve the government. For consistency he should probably include public education as a fascist institution, but since the belief in public education isn't limited to liberals that would be inconvenient. He does however give broad hints that vegetarianism and movements against cruelty to animals might be fascist -- at least they were favored by certain Nazis.
No wonder he can speak of "smiley face" fascism, and put a cute smiley button on the cover with a Hitler moustache. He seems not to understand what has made fascism (and Nazism and Stalinism which he coyly stays away from) seem like an abomination to most people. The fact that some liberals have also been too loose in their use of words like "fascist" should not excuse this.
I should make it clear that I am not in the business of determining the true definition of fascism, or essence of fascism. We tend (due, I think, to the structure of our minds) to think that where there is a word, there must be a true meaning of that word. This does not serve us well in the overwhelmingly complex and open-ended world that we live in.
At least if we want to understand what people are saying, we have to accept, for the moment at least, what they mean by words they use -- even, perhaps, how they use a word in a particular context. When the Marines are "looking for a few good men", they don't mean five or six.
Ultimately, if there is any point in talking about, or listening to someone talk about Fascism, aside from trying to describe and analyze some historical events, then we must try to understand what they mean by it. I said "talking about, or listening" but in fact I seen no reason to talk about fascism, because it means too many different things to too many people. And when I hear someone else talking about Fascism, I at best take it with a grain of salt, as their definition of, or more likely their associations with the word are likely to be fuzzy, so generally the use of the word "Fascist" makes me doubt the clarity of the speaker's thinking, or worse, makes me suspect the speaker just uses labels to paint somebody else's philosophy or actions as evil.
What you will do, by calling someone or something Fascist, if the namecalling sticks, is to associate the person or entity with whatever the listener thinks of as fascism". In that spirit, I would like to explore the "meanings" of fascism in the people's minds.
What Goldberg does, basically, is to give "Fascism" a much broader meaning that what people think of when they hear the word, then announce that liberals are fascists, without any attempt to change what people think of when they hear the word.
I want to examine the qualities of fascism neglected by Goldberg, but which will affect what people hear when they hear that "Liberals are Fascists". Maybe few people can articulate these qualities (which is why Goldberg's book is effective) but if they were to analyze all the impressions they have gotten from books and movies, these things would show up
It is as old as our nation. John C. Calhoun made a radical switch from national centralist to the most extreme of states righters as abolitionism began to grow in the North.
Goldberg declares in his introduction "Angry left-wingers shout that all those to their right ... are fascists. Meanwhile besieged conservatives sit dumbfounded by the nastiness of the slander." He then writes a 487 page specious argument to "prove" that everyone to his left is a fascist.
The book is published in 2007 when the idea of "besieged conservatives" dumbfounded by nastiness seemed and still seems comically inappropriate. To me, it appears that movement conservatives have mined the history of the left in America for tactics, both to scold the left for using them (even if it was mostly decades ago) and to make energetic use of them for the right. For example, the victimhood pose - those poor innocent besieged and dumbfounded conservatives.
The Mises Review of the Ludwig von Mises Institute is surely more hostile to government interventionism (which is almost synonymous with "fascism" as Goldberg used the word). But they do seem to have higher standards of intellectual rigour.
Their review, at http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=326
starts with "Jonah Goldberg has ruined what could have been a valuable book" and concludes "Although Liberal Fascism contains much important information, its many mistakes require that it be used with extreme caution. Jonah Goldberg should acquire a more accurate knowledge of history before he presumes to instruct others." (after several specific examples of what the reviewer calls "howlers").
Goldberg has stretched the word "fascist" so it seems to include any vision of nationwide improvement that might involve the government. For consistency he should probably include public education as a fascist institution, but since the belief in public education isn't limited to liberals that would be inconvenient. He does however give broad hints that vegetarianism and movements against cruelty to animals might be fascist -- at least they were favored by certain Nazis.
No wonder he can speak of "smiley face" fascism, and put a cute smiley button on the cover with a Hitler moustache. He seems not to understand what has made fascism (and Nazism and Stalinism which he coyly stays away from) seem like an abomination to most people. The fact that some liberals have also been too loose in their use of words like "fascist" should not excuse this.
I should make it clear that I am not in the business of determining the true definition of fascism, or essence of fascism. We tend (due, I think, to the structure of our minds) to think that where there is a word, there must be a true meaning of that word. This does not serve us well in the overwhelmingly complex and open-ended world that we live in.
At least if we want to understand what people are saying, we have to accept, for the moment at least, what they mean by words they use -- even, perhaps, how they use a word in a particular context. When the Marines are "looking for a few good men", they don't mean five or six.
Ultimately, if there is any point in talking about, or listening to someone talk about Fascism, aside from trying to describe and analyze some historical events, then we must try to understand what they mean by it. I said "talking about, or listening" but in fact I seen no reason to talk about fascism, because it means too many different things to too many people. And when I hear someone else talking about Fascism, I at best take it with a grain of salt, as their definition of, or more likely their associations with the word are likely to be fuzzy, so generally the use of the word "Fascist" makes me doubt the clarity of the speaker's thinking, or worse, makes me suspect the speaker just uses labels to paint somebody else's philosophy or actions as evil.
What you will do, by calling someone or something Fascist, if the namecalling sticks, is to associate the person or entity with whatever the listener thinks of as fascism". In that spirit, I would like to explore the "meanings" of fascism in the people's minds.
What Goldberg does, basically, is to give "Fascism" a much broader meaning that what people think of when they hear the word, then announce that liberals are fascists, without any attempt to change what people think of when they hear the word.
I want to examine the qualities of fascism neglected by Goldberg, but which will affect what people hear when they hear that "Liberals are Fascists". Maybe few people can articulate these qualities (which is why Goldberg's book is effective) but if they were to analyze all the impressions they have gotten from books and movies, these things would show up
- Ideological absolutism:
- National or Racial Exclusivity: and a messianic sense of the nation's mission or fate which excludes, or may include the conquering /exterminating of other states, ethnicities, classes, or other excluded groupings.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Is "Radical Center" an Oxymoron?
In an era of eXtreme sports and politics, the center is often derided as lukewarm, as we even get Jonah Goldberg claiming absurdly that only extremists can build a bridge. Some fed-up non-extremists are calling for a "radical center" movement. Why do we want it to all come down to one side or the other. "You're either with us or against us. You're part of the problem or part of the solution. Only yellow lines and dead armadillos in the center of the road".
The feeling of belonging to one or another side of a momentous conflict is so seductive and feels so natural and right. I think it is a sort of feeling of "coming home" and being "at home". This must reflect in some way the tens of thousands of years prior to settled human life. It is so comfortable to feel one belongs to the Donkey Clan with its long history of standing up to (and sometimes dominating) the Elephant Clan -- or vice versa belonging to the Elephant Clan etc.
The feeling of belonging to one or another side of a momentous conflict is so seductive and feels so natural and right. I think it is a sort of feeling of "coming home" and being "at home". This must reflect in some way the tens of thousands of years prior to settled human life. It is so comfortable to feel one belongs to the Donkey Clan with its long history of standing up to (and sometimes dominating) the Elephant Clan -- or vice versa belonging to the Elephant Clan etc.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
"Unreported Soros Event Aims to Remake Entire Global Economy" says Media Research Center
The Media Research Center (MRC) article titled "Unreported Soros Event Aims to Remake Entire Global Economy" starts off with:
The MRC provides a pointer to the event website:
The MRC describes its purpose as "to bring balance to the news media... and neutralize [the impact of "liberal bias"] on the American political scene.
Why then does the MRC deliberately present a yearly conference as the launching of the New World Order?
Soros gave his opinion, in strong terms granted, that the worst worldwide recession in several decades revealed a need for a reorganization of the global financial system.
But it goes way beyond spin to say, as MRC does that he "wanted to reorganize the entire global economic system." and "In two short weeks, he is going to start and no one seems to have noticed."
Why is this event "unreported"? Because it is a conference of 200 mostly academic economists, with no apparent representation by actual world leaders, which is going to generate a lot of presentations world leaders, if they take the time, may or may not find persuasive.
George Soros has taken some bold actions, but to spread the fear that he can "reorganize the global financial system" goes way way beyond bias. It is systematic misrepresentation.
In the 1980s, the supposedly "left wing" Soros set up organizations in the ex Warsaw pact countries to assist them in making the transition to personal freedom and free trade. He named the central organization of all those he set up after Karl Popper's book title "The Open Society and its Enemies". Soros is deeply indebted to Popper, who in the 1940s joined with Friedrich Hayek and other intellectuals in warning against totalitarian systems -- explicitly naming the Soviet Union in this class, as well as Nazi Germany.
Soros believes the financial system, like our highway system needs a system of rules to avoid spinning out of control. After the great Ponzi scheme-like bubble that ended in the 2008 crash, why do so many people start yelling "Marxist" whenever they hear this?
If the financial system can be reformed in a useful way the reform would have to be international in scope. Otherwise those who want to profit from financial bubbles can simply shop for the country with the loosest regulations. We can go crazy when an international group talks about trying to harmonize the various currencies and have some rules to keep speculation from turning into con-artistry, but the financial system is international and there's no escaping that.
Two years ago, George Soros said he wanted to reorganize the entire global economic system. In two short weeks, he is going to start - and no one seems to have noticed.
On April 8, a group he's funded with $50 million is holding a major economic conference and Soros's goal for such an event is to "establish new international rules" and "reform the currency system." It's all according to a plan laid out in a Nov. 4, 2009, Soros op-ed calling for "a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order."
The MRC provides a pointer to the event website:
http://ineteconomics.org/initiatives/conferences/bretton-woodswhere INET (the Soros organization in charge of it) bills it as simply one in a series of international conferences.
The MRC describes its purpose as "to bring balance to the news media... and neutralize [the impact of "liberal bias"] on the American political scene.
Why then does the MRC deliberately present a yearly conference as the launching of the New World Order?
Soros gave his opinion, in strong terms granted, that the worst worldwide recession in several decades revealed a need for a reorganization of the global financial system.
But it goes way beyond spin to say, as MRC does that he "wanted to reorganize the entire global economic system." and "In two short weeks, he is going to start and no one seems to have noticed."
Why is this event "unreported"? Because it is a conference of 200 mostly academic economists, with no apparent representation by actual world leaders, which is going to generate a lot of presentations world leaders, if they take the time, may or may not find persuasive.
George Soros has taken some bold actions, but to spread the fear that he can "reorganize the global financial system" goes way way beyond bias. It is systematic misrepresentation.
In the 1980s, the supposedly "left wing" Soros set up organizations in the ex Warsaw pact countries to assist them in making the transition to personal freedom and free trade. He named the central organization of all those he set up after Karl Popper's book title "The Open Society and its Enemies". Soros is deeply indebted to Popper, who in the 1940s joined with Friedrich Hayek and other intellectuals in warning against totalitarian systems -- explicitly naming the Soviet Union in this class, as well as Nazi Germany.
Soros believes the financial system, like our highway system needs a system of rules to avoid spinning out of control. After the great Ponzi scheme-like bubble that ended in the 2008 crash, why do so many people start yelling "Marxist" whenever they hear this?
If the financial system can be reformed in a useful way the reform would have to be international in scope. Otherwise those who want to profit from financial bubbles can simply shop for the country with the loosest regulations. We can go crazy when an international group talks about trying to harmonize the various currencies and have some rules to keep speculation from turning into con-artistry, but the financial system is international and there's no escaping that.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
The Trouble with "The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend", Historic Examples
Arthur Zimmerman, German Foreign Secretary in the 2nd half of World War I might serve as the "poster boy" for troubles with the principal that "The enemy of my enemy if my friend". By inviting Mexico, via telegram, to "enter into an alliance with Germany against the United States in exchange for which she would regain 'her lost territory in Texas...'", he helped to finally bring the U.S. into the conflict. He then played a major role in helping Lenin and a trainload of his followers reach an increasingly unstable Russia, where they did, just as he hoped, push Russia over the brink, practically eliminating the Axis' Eastern front.
Germany lost the war anyway, and Soviet Russia remained its biggest problem throughout most of the rest of the century.
But it took the Cold War to show just how much destruction could be wreaked by this principle. In summary, by cultivating a motley assortment of backward nations as allies against the USSR, we either spread misery, or at least made the U.S. appear responsible for the misery of much of Latin America, the Near East, and Southeast Asia, and saddled countless poor nations with no experience of democracy with far greater powers of destruction than they could ever have developed for themselves.
[to be continues?]
Germany lost the war anyway, and Soviet Russia remained its biggest problem throughout most of the rest of the century.
But it took the Cold War to show just how much destruction could be wreaked by this principle. In summary, by cultivating a motley assortment of backward nations as allies against the USSR, we either spread misery, or at least made the U.S. appear responsible for the misery of much of Latin America, the Near East, and Southeast Asia, and saddled countless poor nations with no experience of democracy with far greater powers of destruction than they could ever have developed for themselves.
[to be continues?]
The Image of Nazism in the Minds of My Generation
My generation (Baby Boomers) was brought up, in the 50s and early 60s, pretty largely on the mythos of World War II movies.
The bad guys in that conflict were presented as a lot of extremely uptight looking guys whose every aspect or act screamed precision -- their hair, their uniforms, their way of speech, constantly affirming their obedience and reverence for the chain of command with "Yes Sir!"s,"Heil Hitler!"s, and elaborate and precise salutes, and scurrying around obeying orders like machines.
What were we told (by example) to do with this vision? Blow it up! Blow up everything in sight! Mow them down! And who was doing all this blowing up and mowing down, but a bunch of rather slovenly, loose-natured guys, with their uniforms rumpled or half-discarded and usually needing a shave and washing-up. Their leaders, all the way to the top of the field command, were generally shown living by a general directive (blow up and mow down), but otherwise, often displaying creativity; not visibly answerable to anyone; often disobeying the letter of command while obeying its spirit, and the general directive. Often, too, the "enemy" was shown with rigid obedience as their Achilles heel.
These movie Nazis were a caricature of authoritarianism, structure, and obedience. Ruthlessness was a somewhat less prominent feature, and sometimes we were ruthless ourselves (though with a certain etiquette about our ruthlessness that the Nazis lacked). Mostly, these mythical visions did not look at what really caused the Germany of the 30s and early 40s to act in such a bizarre and awful way; the structure of the sickness and/or evil that spread through and seized that society. When we did pay attention to other aspects of the "enemy" society, besides their machineline precision, the aspects stressed were extreme ruthlessness and racism.
What narrative could be better calculated to raise a generation like mine? One which celebrated rebellion, and had a simplistic revulsion towards authority and obedience; wanted to, symbolically at least, blow up structure and authority; show ourselves the antitheses of Nazis by acting imaginatively and often anarchically.
There were other ways of reacting to the mythos that we were shown, which could be gone into and rationalized. Obviously some were reacting in different ways than that described, like joining ROTC and/or being obsessed with anti-Communism, or wearing suits and striving for material success -- but there is surely a plausible relation of cause and effect between the narrative and the anarchic side of my generation.
While we were being taught this mythos of rigid Nazism and the virtue of blowing it up, we were also being taught (more overtly) to revere the flag; to stand up and put our hands over our hearts when the national anthem is played; to wear neat clothes and neat haircuts; to stay in line, elect leaders, and often obey them, once elected. We formed teams and played by rules. But all this, when examined closely, could be reasonably interpreted as just a milder, or more subtle version of the mythos of Nazism that we were presented with, and a large portion of my generation saw it in just that way.
The bad guys in that conflict were presented as a lot of extremely uptight looking guys whose every aspect or act screamed precision -- their hair, their uniforms, their way of speech, constantly affirming their obedience and reverence for the chain of command with "Yes Sir!"s,"Heil Hitler!"s, and elaborate and precise salutes, and scurrying around obeying orders like machines.
What were we told (by example) to do with this vision? Blow it up! Blow up everything in sight! Mow them down! And who was doing all this blowing up and mowing down, but a bunch of rather slovenly, loose-natured guys, with their uniforms rumpled or half-discarded and usually needing a shave and washing-up. Their leaders, all the way to the top of the field command, were generally shown living by a general directive (blow up and mow down), but otherwise, often displaying creativity; not visibly answerable to anyone; often disobeying the letter of command while obeying its spirit, and the general directive. Often, too, the "enemy" was shown with rigid obedience as their Achilles heel.
These movie Nazis were a caricature of authoritarianism, structure, and obedience. Ruthlessness was a somewhat less prominent feature, and sometimes we were ruthless ourselves (though with a certain etiquette about our ruthlessness that the Nazis lacked). Mostly, these mythical visions did not look at what really caused the Germany of the 30s and early 40s to act in such a bizarre and awful way; the structure of the sickness and/or evil that spread through and seized that society. When we did pay attention to other aspects of the "enemy" society, besides their machineline precision, the aspects stressed were extreme ruthlessness and racism.
What narrative could be better calculated to raise a generation like mine? One which celebrated rebellion, and had a simplistic revulsion towards authority and obedience; wanted to, symbolically at least, blow up structure and authority; show ourselves the antitheses of Nazis by acting imaginatively and often anarchically.
There were other ways of reacting to the mythos that we were shown, which could be gone into and rationalized. Obviously some were reacting in different ways than that described, like joining ROTC and/or being obsessed with anti-Communism, or wearing suits and striving for material success -- but there is surely a plausible relation of cause and effect between the narrative and the anarchic side of my generation.
While we were being taught this mythos of rigid Nazism and the virtue of blowing it up, we were also being taught (more overtly) to revere the flag; to stand up and put our hands over our hearts when the national anthem is played; to wear neat clothes and neat haircuts; to stay in line, elect leaders, and often obey them, once elected. We formed teams and played by rules. But all this, when examined closely, could be reasonably interpreted as just a milder, or more subtle version of the mythos of Nazism that we were presented with, and a large portion of my generation saw it in just that way.
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What does it mean that this book is #8 Amazon bestseller today 2/18/2011?
