Month: October 2024

Someone once said words to the effect that you can pass any law you like, but understand that it can be enforced by your worst enemy.

This is perhaps the most vile thing I’ve seen bragged about by an elected official.

This is what a Kamala Harris presidency would be.

My answer to” “Why do many people still believe in communism even though it has been proven throughout history that it does not work?”

Because the idea is beautiful. Everyone equal. No one wants for anything. “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.” Who can’t get behind that?

I see in several of the previous answers the standard objection of “That wasn’t REAL Communism!!” Except Marx himself explained the process: violent revolution by the workers who seize the “means of production,” followed by Socialism – “dictatorship of the Proletariat” – as necessary intermediate steps towards eventual Utopia.

It’s that “dictatorship of the Proletariat” where everything – always – goes to hell. It’s the Underpant Gnomes theory of politics. What Marx neglected to recognize was human nature – when you put that much power into the hands of a very few people, the people who wield that power tend to be the ones you’d rather not. To achieve that power they have to be most probably sociopaths. And to maintain that power, they will be more than willing to kill anyone who threatens that power.

It became apparent by the 1960’s that there was a major problem with Marx’s theory. Philosopher Stephen Hicks in a lecture on Postmodernism explained:

(A)ll Postmodernists, to a man and woman, are Socialists, and fairly far Left Socialist. And that’s a problem because if you would start from Subjectivism, you would expect people to be making commitments all over the map. Instead what we find is that the commitments are narrowly directed to one part of the political spectrum, and so there’s got to be another factor here to explain this.

Now, another part of the problem (is) that Socialism has traditionally been defended on Modernist grounds. The claim was that Socialism was provable by the evidence, by logic. So what you have then is a shift, a major shift in strategy from Modernist epistemological groundings for Socialism, to Socialism being part of this highly relativistic Postmodern strategy. The question is, why is this the case?

Since Socialism was put forth on Modernist grounds, this meant that it made, in effect, a number of core assertions, or key propositions that it thought would be provable by evidence and logic. If you asks Socialists to defend Socialism they will typically offer two strands of argument. One is a more moral strand. They will argue a pair of theses, one that Capitalism is deeply immoral, and then there are a number of reasons why it is immoral: It is exploitative, the rich get rich off the backs of the poor – they enslave them, it’s warlike as part of its imperialistic mission and so forth. Socialism by contrast is humane, it’s peaceful, everybody gets a share, everyone shares, it’s cooperative, as opposed to the brutal competition that’s characteristic of Capitalism. That’s the first two.
The Economic wing of argument is that Capitalism ultimately is unproductive. It’s doing pretty good so far, but because of its internal contradictions and problems it will ultimately collapse. It will sow the seeds of its own destruction. Socialist economies by contrast will be more productive, and they will usher in a new era of prosperity.

Now this then means that Socialism has made some definite theses that can then be tested against the evidence, and be given logical scrutiny. The problem then is that every single one of these claims has been extensively refuted both in theory and in practice. We’ve had over a hundred years of Socialist argumentation, several Socialist experiments, and in each case they reached dismal failure. And it’s brutal, at least from our perspective, how thoroughly Socialism has been discredited. In theory, if you focus on the free-market economists, people like Mises, Hayek and Friedman, have made the case. They’ve shown how markets are more efficient, and they’ve shown conversely how Socialist Command economies are bound to fail, necessarily. They have to. Distinguished Socialists such as Robert Heilbroner have conceded, in print, that that debate is over, and that Mises and Hayek won.

In theory the political debate is a little bit more up for grabs, but the leading thesis, I think at least in my reading, is that some form of liberalism is the leading contender. That if you’re going to protect human rights in some broad form, you’ve got to have some form of liberalism, whether it’s a more conservative version or a more communitarian version or a more libertarian version, that’s where the debate is. It’s all shifted to there. The empirical evidence has been much harder on Socialism than the theoretical debate. Economically in practice every single Socialistic country has failed, and failed dismally, and in practice every country that is by and large Capitalist has become prosperous, and increasingly prosperous, and there’s no end in sight here.

Politically, in practice, every single Capitalistic country has a good record on human rights issues, in respecting rights and freedoms, by and large making it possible for people to put together meaningful, fruitful lives. Socialism has, time and time again, proved to be more brutal than the worst dictatorships in history. Every Socialist regime has collapsed into dictatorship, and starts killing people on an unprecedented scale. Every single one produces dissident writers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Nien Cheng who document from a first-hand perspective what exactly goes on.

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(W)hat kind of a psychological impact the sum total of this, the refutation in theory, in practice, in politics and economics must have had on a Socialist, a True Believer Socialist? By the 1960’s there had been over a hundred years of argumentation in economics and in politics, and the Socialists could sense that they were losing. By the 1960’s it was clear that the great Socialist experiments were failing nastily. So put yourself in the shoes of a smart, more or less open-to-the-evidence Socialist, and you’re confronted with all of this data. How do you react? You’ve got a deep commitment to Socialism, you feel that it’s true, you WANT it to be true. You’ve pinned all of your dreams of a peaceful and a prosperous society on Socialism, and all of your hopes for curing any ills that you see in current society.

Now this is a moment of truth for anyone who has experienced the agony of a deeply cherished hypothesis run aground on the rocks of reality. What do you do? Do you abandon your theory and go with the facts, or do you try to find a way to maintain your theory and your belief in it?

I think in the 1960’s the academic Left was facing the same dilemma that religious thinkers were facing in the late 1700’s. In both cases the evidence was overwhelmingly against them. During the Enlightenment, religion’s natural theology arguments were widely seen as being full of holes, and science was rapidly filling the gap. It was giving naturalistic and opposite explanations for the kinds of things that religion had traditionally explained. Religion was in danger of being laughed out of intellectual debate. By the 1960’s the Left’s arguments for the fruitfulness and decency of Socialism were failing in theory and practice, and Capitalism was rapidly increasing everyone’s standard of living and showing itself respectful of human freedoms.

By the late 1700’s religious thinkers had a choice – accept evidence and logic as the ultimate court of appeals, and thereby reject their deeply held religious ideals, or – and here’s the strategy – you can reject the idea that logic and evidence are the ultimate court of appeal.

“I had to deny knowledge” wrote Kant in The Critique, “in order to make room for faith.” “Faith,” writes Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling, “requires the crucifixion of reason.” And so they proceeded to do that, and glorify the irrational.

The Left thinkers of the 1960’s faced the same choice. Confronted by the continuing flourishing of Capitalism and the continued poverty and brutality (of Socialism), they decided, like Kant, to limit reason, to try to crucify it. And so Heidigger coming along and exalting feeling over reason is a godsend. Kuhn‘s theory-laden paradigms, Quine‘s pragmatic and internalist account of language and logic do the same thing.

So the idea here is that the dominance in the Academy of skeptical and irrationalist epistemologies provides the academic Left with a new strategy. Confronted by ruthless logic, harsh evidence, they have a solution: “That’s only logic and evidence. Logic and evidence are subjective. You can’t really PROVE anything. FEELINGS are deeper than logic, and my feelings say Socialism.”

That’s my second hypothesis about the origins of Postmodernism. I call it the Kierkegaardian hypothesis, that Postmodernism is the crisis of faith of the academic Left. Its epistemology justifies taking a personal leap of faith in continuing to believe your Socialist ideals.

Communism is no longer an economic theory. It has failed utterly at that. It’s now a religion. And it’s proselytized in our education systems.

I have neglected this site for quite a while, and thought it would be a good idea to post something, so here are a couple of my answers to questions posted at Quora:

What, in your opinion, are the most fundamental features that characterize left and right wing ideologies?

Thomas Sowell wrote an entire book on this topic, entitled A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. I strongly recommend this book.

Going back as far as Aristotle and Plato, Professor Sowell explains that a social vision “is our sense of how the world works.” It has been described, he says, “as a ‘pre-analytic cognitive act.’ It is what we sense or feel before we have constructed any systematic reasoning that could be called a theory, much less deduced any specific consequences as a hypothesis to be tested against evidence.” Visions are crucial, because they are “the foundations on which theories are built.” BUT: “The final structure depends not only on the foundation, but also on how carefully and consistently the framework of theory is constructed and how well buttressed it is with hard facts.”

The two visions he calls the Constrained and Unconstrained. The Constrained vision is one that – at the extreme – sees the nature of Man as unchanging. Humanity has flaws and is not “fixable.” We have to live with what we were born with and hopefully train ourselves to be better, knowing that our actual nature is always there. The Unconstrained vision, Sowell says (quoting William Godwin from his 1793 book Enquiry Concerning Political Justice) is one in which “man (is) capable of directly feeling other people’s needs as more important than his own, and therefore of consistently acting impartially, even when his own interests or those of his family were involved.” In short, humanity can be perfected.

Those of the Constrained vision understand that some people can be right bastards, and a few downright evil. Best to do whatever is possible to keep those people from being able to do bad things should they reach the levers of power.

Those of the Unconstrained vision believe that we can achieve Utopia, we just have to put the RIGHT PEOPLE in charge to lead us to that promised land.

Earlier someone asked what the Republican End Game for the United States was. Charles Tips answered, I think accurately, that the Republicans don’t have an “endgame” in mind. The so-called “Right Wing” is happy with things now and the progress we have made and are continuing to make. The “Progressive” Left, on the other hand, has a goal, and that goal is Utopic. The Left is never happy, because they have not yet achieved that Utopia. And as someone observed, Utopia is always just one more mass murder away.

Always.

How can I force the Trump voters in my city to give up their guns?

Well, Caleb, there’s an essay floating around out there you probably ought to read. It’s called “Why the Gun is Civilization” and it’s written by a gentleman by the name of Marko Kloos. Marko is a first-generation immigrant to the US. You can read the essay here, but here’s the opening:

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

Now, look at your question: “How can I force the Trump voters in my city to give up their guns?”

You can’t. That’s why they own guns. You have to REASON with them, and you’ve already acknowledged that reason isn’t an option for you. Because they have reasoned that if you’re willing to use force to disarm them, you’re willing to use force to do a lot worse. And they want the ability to say “NO” and make it stick.