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31 Jan
0

Dignity is the Foundation

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“To thrive, democratic societies require a vision for the purpose of our shared life. The answer for those of us in the West is that human dignity and flourishing—personal, social, cultural, and economic—has been the central purpose of human community and its political order.” This is the central point of a recent piece at Law & Liberty by Brent Orrell. Orrell’s essay might be considered rudimentary in the sense that it doesn’t break any new ground, but rudimentary can be exactly what is needed when basic principles have been forgotten.

The polarization of American politics and culture and the breakdown of civil discourse in favor of polemics and violence have been much discussed. Whether these problems are worse, much worse, or not worse than the norm in American history remains debatable, but no matter where one comes down on that question, such dysfunction should still be cause for concern. A civilized, stable political order is always in danger of sliding into anarchy and chaos. It requires constant vigilance and effort to preserve a free and virtuous society. What can be done to increase civil peace and concord is always a question worth asking.

Photo: Courtesy of Twitter

Orrell is obviously searching for some common ground in the midst of the current discord, and he is right to point to commitment to the dignity of the person as the key. He is well aware that there is debate about the meanings and sources of dignity, and that some diversity on these issues will remain. Christians, Buddhists, and agnostics will have different definitions and will point to different locations to find a sure grounding for dignity. But conviction about certain tenets of dignity have been common, if not universal, in western societies, and these, Orrell insists, cannot be cast off without irreparable damage. “We cannot turn other human beings into instruments of our own will or desires and still honor their dignity,” is one such tenet. Another: “We are prohibited by conscience and law from coercing or injuring other persons in our pursuit of human dignity. The human person is his or her own final good and end.” And finally: “We cannot subordinate and violate the good of one person as the means of achieving either our own good or, even worse, the good of the much vaguer concept of ‘society.’”

Christian theology supports these precepts. The Catholic Church’s Compendium of Social Doctrine places human dignity at the center of social life. “A just society can become a reality only when it is based on the respect of the transcendent dignity of the human person. The person represents the ultimate end of society, by which it is ordered to the person (no. 132).” Most Christian traditions find human dignity rooted in the creation of persons in the image of God. One of the pledges of the National Association of Evangelicals’ 2017 Justice Declaration is, “Treat every human being as a person made in God’s own image, with a life worthy of respect, protection, and care.”

The commitment to human dignity, like every other moral obligation, is tested when honoring that commitment is difficult. Opponents in the culture wars, in the political arena, and in the everyday disputes of family and community life possess intrinsic dignity and deserve to be treated accordingly. Every genocide, holocaust, and crime against humanity begins with efforts—sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant—to undermine the inherent dignity of some group, to suggest that they are not deserving of the rights that are accorded to those who are “fully human.” That’s a dangerous road, and we should avoid taking even one step down it.

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26 Jan
0

To Live is to Risk

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Fear of death is one of the primal forces that drives human action. It is universal and potent. Scripture confronts it and recognizes it. “My heart is in anguish within me, the terrors of death have fallen upon me” (Ps. 55:4). This fear is a natural, healthy, psychological mechanism, which helps us to avoid danger and reckless endeavor. It keeps us alive.

But, taken to an extreme, it can be harmful. It can lead us not merely to take reasonable measures to avoid serious threats but also to avoid activities and situations that enable genuine human flourishing. To live is to risk—even to risk death—and with no risk there is no life.

This is literally true, as every human pregnancy—the means by which new life comes into the world—carries with it risk. This risk has been minimized by advances in hygiene, prenatal care, and medical knowledge and technology, but it has not and never will be entirely eliminated. To give birth is to risk one’s own life. This makes every mother a hero, but it is a heroism that is accessible to many. Bearing a child is widely recognized as a reasonable risk, one taken on in the belief that the payoff is worthwhile, despite the fact that the outcome in some cases will be painful or even tragic.

pregnant bellyAs with pregnancy, so with societies in general. As civilization advances, risk is minimized. Even in the economic sphere, the emergence of insurance and other financial instruments has dissipated risk to a remarkable extent. Widespread wealth insulates individuals from destitution and, through charitable organizations and government institutions, insulates wider communities. In some places, the United States included, these layers of protection are so robust that the prospect of actually dying from starvation or exposure has been virtually eliminated from entire cultures. The fear of death, it would seem, recedes.

Yet it remains. In the face of medical advances that have eradicated deadly diseases, new contagions rear up. In the face of safety advances making travel ever less risky, automobile and aviation accidents nonetheless continue to bring lives to an untimely end. Natural disasters continue to elude human control and strike with stunning suddenness and ferocity. To live is to encounter risk. It is an inescapable part of human experience.

Recognizing risk and integrating it into life is one facet of the maturation process. A reckless disregard for danger is not healthy, nor is a desperate obsession with avoiding it. Prudent people of different backgrounds and personalities will display different levels of risk tolerance, but all responsible, reasonable adults find a happy medium, which permits them to pursue the good in responsible, reasonable ways.

The idea that risk can be eliminated entirely is utopian, and therefore is itself a dangerous delusion. Government, the medical profession, central banks, the church—none of them is going to make all dangers and difficulties disappear so that our lives can be free of risk. God could do it, but he won’t (a theological explanation for another day). We’re stuck with it.

And that’s not altogether a bad thing. Confronting and managing risk is one of the things that infuses life with meaning and drama. Thus a paradox: an inordinate preoccupation with evading  death saps the life from human existence, so that avoidance of dying becomes itself a kind of death.

As J. R. R. Tolkien wrote through the words of one of his characters, “It’s a dangerous business … going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” It is dangerous to step out our doors, to travel to other places, to encounter other human beings. But it is also what makes life worth living.

 

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11 Jan
0

Derrick Bell and Critical Race Theory

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Derrick Bell can be said to be the creator of critical race theory (CRT).  As an academic discipline, it is rather new, but it is similar to prior assessments of race in America. The basic premise of the theory is that society is divided between oppressors (whites) and victims (blacks). As such, it follows the framework of dialectical analysis struggle created by G. W. F. Hegel and further developed by Karl Marx.

The difference is that classic Marxist analysis focuses on social class as the foundational unit for social hierarchies, with other elements forming a superstructure of epiphenomena that includes race. To understand oppression, classic Marxism enjoins the use of no other reality but social class. In the racialist neo-Marxist framework of CRT, however, race is not reducible to class, although some CRT identifies the oppressor/victim dichotomy along class lines. Thus, alienation, antagonism, and oppression are presented within various basic models that supplant social class.

Again, not all CRT advocates understand race as a substitute for class. They might focus on class as a particularly powerful oppressive phenomenon arising from the struggles of race but they remain committed to the basic classical Marxist reading of history. Although it is not completely clear, Black Lives Matter seems to reject the notion that race is not reducible to class. That is why some of its founders present the struggle of race as a “front” among other fronts. For its founders, gender is yet another front. This language can only make sense if both race and gender oppressions arise from more foundational realities.

We must remember that the notion of a united front comes from Lenin, who understood the importance of a war against capitalism that encompasses various struggles against the multiple expressions of oppression birthed from the antagonisms of class.

In the contention of CRT, America is an inherently and permanently racist society, whose very foundation is based on racial oppression. Race, not class, gave rise to class stratification and the alienation of “inferior” races. Consequently, America’s political, social, and legal systems are by definition racist and unjust. They are not valid and must be replaced.

As Emory University professor Dorothy Brown puts it, critical race theory “seeks to highlight the ways in which the law is not neutral and objective but designed to support white supremacy and the subordination of people of color.” By design, the legal structure of the nation is racist and CRT consists of finding the multiple tentacles of that monster. It tirelessly offers a litany of oppressions with the a priori belief that every aspect of the law is tainted with racism, even if it seems to be balanced and race-blind. In this view, it is inherently racist and it has built a life of its own that revolves around newer oppressions.

A logical derivative of this premise, according to CRT, is that it is unjust to offer allegiance to such a system and that members of “oppressed” racial groups have an obligation to be selective in terms of what they choose to accept as law. They are entitled to determine for themselves which laws and traditions have validity and are worth observing. They possess racial epistemic insight that arises from being members of the oppressed group.

Just as, in classic Marxism, the worker or proletarian is the only one capable of gaining class consciousness and insight into his oppression, in CRT the racial victim, although part of the universe being discussed, must be the one deciding what is true and what is false. The very notion of objectivity, which demands distance between the universe being observed and the examiner, is a form of oppression that demands that the racial victim surrender his privileged epistemic position.

Further, CRT holds that because racism is so deeply ingrained in the American character, classical liberal ideals such as equality, freedom, meritocracy, and justice are essentially nothing more than empty words that fail to properly oppose the structural inequities that pervade American society. Instead, these ideas are themselves instruments of racial oppression. Thus, a number of reforms, such as racial preferences in education and employment, are necessary as a means of countering the permanent bigotry of white people who, as Bell put it, seek to “achieve a measure of social stability through their unspoken pact to keep blacks on the bottom.”

Now, for advocates of CRT these changes, although necessary, are not going to reform a system that is irreformable. They simply pave the way for the complete transformation of the system and its ultimate demise and substitution. The falsity of critical race theory is not in its general observations of injustice but in the way it frames the entire question of racism in America. This is exactly why the theory ultimately fails.

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11 Jan
0

Resolutions are Better than Revolutions

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With the New Year, come the New Year’s resolutions. Although the unlikelihood of persevering in such resolutions is so widely acknowledged that the whole idea has become a parody for some, the essential concept remains sound and beneficial. It is one expression of the impulse to reform.

The custom of the New Year’s resolution reflects the fact that we are in continuous need of reassessment and improvement. Striving to become a better, more mature, more charitable person involves a constant process of ascertaining weaknesses and failings, the creation of a plan to address them, and action to put that plan into effect. In various Christian traditions, the seasons of Advent and Lent, the church revival, or the spiritual retreat also serves this purpose.

What is true at the personal level is also true at the societal level. Like individuals, cultures need reform. The cycle of corruption and reform is inherent in the human experience. In the history of Western religion, the “Reformation” and the “Counter-Reformation” were watershed events. But even before the dissolution of Catholic Europe, there were the Cluniac reforms, the Hildebrandine reforms, and many others. Contemporary American social and political life is still stamped by reform movements that arose in the late nineteenth century, such as populism and progressivism. The civil rights movement in the postwar era is properly seen as yet another reform movement in American history.

There are many different ways to approach and effect reform, as these examples indicate. There is also an extreme version of reform, which doesn’t really reform at all: revolution. Proponents of revolution declare that incremental reform is inadequate and that what is necessary for the given context is a complete overturning of the status quo. The existing system must be razed and a new one built from the ground up.

Revolution can be justified in rare cases, but in almost every instance—as history bears out—it is a rash, dangerous, and destructive path to take in an attempt to improve society. Revolution assumes that there is nothing salvageable in a given cultural or political or economic structure. It is intrinsically arrogant, believing that all that came before is corrupt, tainted, without merit, and that what is built anew will be superior.

Maximilien Robespierre, the architect of the French Revolution’s descent into terror, exemplifies the ideology of revolution. When the aim is pure, any means are justified. “In order to arrive at the peaceful reign of constitutional laws,” he declared in 1794, “we must finish the war of liberty against tyranny and safely cross through the storms of the revolution: that is the goal of the revolutionary system which you have put in order.” A regime of the rule of law, respecting individual rights, is, of course, the goal, the revolutionary insists; but transforming society so corrupt into such an ideal regime will in the meantime necessitate extraordinary measures. Suppression of liberty is permissible, even necessary, so long as the destination is greater liberty. “Terror is nothing but prompt, severe, inflexible justice; it is, therefore, an emanation of virtue,” Robespierre concluded. “It is less a special principle than a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country’s most pressing needs.” Thus the tyrant has always justified trampling the rights of others. In the name of the people, some people must be sacrificed.

Revolution is not the way of the reformer, who does the hard work of discerning what is good, bad, and indifferent amid the current circumstances, recognizes that solutions cannot be accomplished in a day, and sets about trying to improve whatever discrete and manageable bit of the world’s problems appears to be most tractable or urgent.

We all want a better world. It’s more likely to come about through building up than tearing down, and it’s more likely to come about by focusing on what each of us has the most control over—ourselves.

Resolutions, yes. Revolutions, no.

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08 Jan
0

Expanding Educational Freedom

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As students begin returning to formal learning after their Christmas break, the debate continues about whether schooling should be online, in-person, or some mixture of the two. Different people prefer different approaches, and there’s no reason this diversity cannot be accommodated. The experience of 2020 highlighted the value of educational freedom, which should continue to expand this year and beyond.

American parents and students have always been a diverse lot. They have been wealthy bluebloods, middle-class bourgeoisie, and impoverished immigrants. They have been Asian, Hispanic, and African American. They have been Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and agnostic. They have been rural Texans, suburban Californians, and urban New Yorkers. They have been people of widely varying backgrounds and aspirations, for whom different kinds and levels of academic training were desirable and appropriate.

The record of the American education system in meeting the diverse needs of this diverse clientele has been mixed. In the early days of the nation, those who had the means to pay enjoyed a variety of educational options, from boarding schools to private tutors. The rise of the public school (funded by taxpayers) provided greater opportunity for children of poor parents, but it also permitted unitary control by ideologues at the local, state, and national levels, giving rise to increasing uniformity at the expense of the preferences of parents. Minority students of all kinds—learning-style minorities; vocational minorities; racial minorities, religious minorities—found themselves at the mercy of majority or elite opinion.

Happy mixed family is having a nice day in the parkThis problem has been countered, more or less successfully at various times and places, by the development of alternative schooling options. Religious schools, homeschooling, and charter schools are among the options that have preserved a modicum of freedom within American education. But these and other alternatives have often struggled to find a level playing field, as the legal environment has ranged from favoring public schools (by providing full taxpayer funding) to actively discouraging nonpublic options (by, for example, burdening homeschooling with red tape or strictly limiting charter school numbers).

Despite continuous efforts to make education monochromatic, freedom keeps breaking out, as it did in 2020. In many locales, public schools were closed to in-person learning while private schools remained open. Parents voted with their feet, and in places such as Massachusetts, Catholic schools enjoyed an enrollment boom. All across the country, where in-person options were not available or preferred, parents created “pods” or “micro-schools” as a way to make virtual learning more effective and efficient. Many parents opted to pull out of institutional schooling altogether and transfer their children into homeschooling.

The educational upheaval caused by COVID-19 has had a detrimental effect on many students and teachers. But it has also revealed a pluralism that had been to some extent suppressed by the dominance of public schooling. Parents have differing expectations for what education can and should accomplish. They have varying views of academic excellence, of the priority and value of extracurricular activities, and of what is most important about the physical environment (including differing levels of disease-risk tolerance). Students have different learning styles, affinities, and interests. Forcing all of these constituencies into a single mold, the character of which is dictated from above—sometimes far above—was never a good idea.    Given the right to make choices, parents and students will surely make mistakes.  Educational freedom will have its drawbacks.  A world in which all schools are perfect and all students reach their full intellectual potential is a utopian dream.  But freedom is better than the alternative.  As Walter Williams said with respect to the benefits of choice in education, “Any government-created and -protected monopoly is harmful to the best interests of consumers.  Competition always produces a superior and lower-cost product than government monopolies.”

Educational freedom empowers parents, improves schools, and benefits students.  May we have more of it in 2021.

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14 Dec
0

Diversity is Diverse

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In many parts of American society, diversity has become the holy grail. It is the achievement to be pursued above all others. Educational, economic, and cultural success either take lower priority or are in fact measured by it. California now requires corporate boards to reflect it.

In the mad rush to attain it, a question arises. What is it?

The Independent Institute’s commentary on the California measure explains the prevailing assumption concerning the meaning of diversity. Above all else, it means racial or ethnic distinction. Leaving aside the enormous problem of racial definition, this is a highly restrictive view of diversity—yet it dominates the arena as though it is self-evidently the most important kind of human difference to recognize. Somewhat lower in priority but also popular as criteria of diversity are differences in gender and sexual orientation. That’s usually about as far as the diversity agenda goes.

The arguments for promoting these forms of diversity normally run along two tracks. One is the claim that diversity enhances the performance or authenticity or excellence of the organization in question by bringing a variety of voices and perspectives to the table. The other is that there is an obligation in justice to provide opportunity for members all groups. Both ideas are captured in the words of one lawmaker advocating the California measure, who asserted that it will ensure that “all of California’s corporate boards will better reflect the diversity of our state.”

Both of these rationales are generally defensible at the level of principle. The management of institutions is improved by taking into account a number of perspectives. People should have the opportunity to advance and succeed regardless of their background or personal characteristics (assuming that those characteristics don’t inherently disqualify them from the activity in question).

Yet the acceptance of these ideas in principle leaves open expansive areas of debate as to how they are to be applied in practice—and this is what most diversity professionals and activists and their enablers either fail to appreciate or willfully dismiss. Why, exactly, is race the chief marker of diversity? Any argument in favor of it can be answered by counterexamples. Race must be the criterion, many say, because black Americans have been systematically discriminated against and are therefore underrepresented. It’s a well-documented fact that political conservatives have been discriminated against systematically in the nation’s most prestigious universities and that their numbers are consequently vanishingly small at those places. In most departments, (racial) minority faculty outnumber conservative faculty. Yet concerted efforts to recruit minorities continue, while there is no admission that the lack of conservatives is even a problem.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fstateofformation.org%2F2016%2F08%2Freligious-identity-and-inclusion%2F&psig=AOvVaw1szv6wPhRTfOq-eB1plQUa&ust=1607732055587000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=2ahUKEwiTt-fh0sTtAhUovFkKHRVjDWIQr4kDegUIARCDAQ

Photo Credit:State of Formation

Religious identity is another neglected category. California’s corporate boards will contain more blacks and Hispanics, but that does that mean that they will ipso facto “better reflect the diversity” of the state? They will do so only if it is conceded that racial diversity alone is the kind of diversity that matters. Will the boards better reflect the religious diversity of the state? Will the number of board members of each company match the percentages of Californians who identify as evangelical Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, Mormon, atheist? Does anyone care? Again, according to the rationales supporting racial diversity, they should. All of these religious groups have been discriminated against, sometimes viciously so, at one time or another over the course of American history. On that ground, we should be sensitive to their representation in the higher echelons of society. Religious belief is an extraordinarily powerful source of meaning and shaper of worldview. So, if we’re looking for diversity of opinion, surely religion ought to be taken into account.

Innumerable other sources of diversity could be adduced: profession, temperament, interest, economic class, education, geography, and so on. All of them are important, yet virtually none of them ever matter when we are bean-counting for diversity. As a result, in many sectors of American life, there is ironically decreasingdiversity. When a student, raised in the suburbs of New York by wealthy parents and educated at prestigious private schools—who happens to have some African blood—is admitted to Harvard, the university’s diversity has not increased. Admission of the son of a poor Pentecostal preacher from eastern Tennessee, on the other hand, would do the trick. Yet, in the eyes of the diversity industry, one is “black” and the other is “white” and that’s all you need to know.

The problem, then, is not a concern for diversity per se, but the reductionism of the ideology of diversity that has come to dominate the field. It turns out that champions of diversity don’t celebrate diversity fulsomely enough. There are diverse ways of being diverse. When one way trumps all others, the cause of diversity culminates in the triumph of conformity.

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13 Dec
0

Our Debt to Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams

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The passing of the great Walter E. Williams is a sad moment for the intellectual life of the nation. He was a towering voice of sanity and courage in a sea of conformity. His voice joined with Thomas Sowell, challenged the shibboleths that pass as tokens of authenticity but are mere instruments of control. They pointed toward a different understanding of race in America and proposed a different vision of what it means to be black in America. Today’s realities of race in America impose on us a new set of commitments. Such commitments represent a departure from the one-dimensional explanations of the liberal/radical racial narrative. The departure is not simply methodological but foundational, not incremental but reconstructive. The thought of Thomas S. Kuhn on the appearance of scientific revolutions can enlighten our discussion here.

In his Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn tells us that scientists routinely operate within paradigms providing certain assumptions about the nature of the world. These assumptions retain an element of arbitrariness enabling the practitioners to suppress ideas inconsistent with the paradigm. In effect, ‘normal science research is directed to the articulation of those phenomena and theories that the paradigm already supplies.’[1] The arbitrariness, however, also serves as a catapult for change once a given set of assumptions moves at least some practitioners to reevaluate their commitment to the assumptions.[2]

The momentous episodes where a new set of commitments appear is what Kuhn calls scientific revolutions. These episodes necessitate ‘the community’s rejection of time-honored scientific theory in favor of another incompatible with it.’ They offer the opportunity to reframe at the level of metareality the change that takes place at the conceptual level. Since the assumptions of normal science are constructs of the mind to interpret reality and not a reality in itself, reframing allows us to renew our minds and look at reality differently.[3] ‘To reframe, then, means to change the conceptual and/or emotional setting or viewpoint in relation to which a situation is experienced and to place it in another frame which fits the ‘facts’ of the same concrete situation equally well or better, and thereby changes its entire meaning.’[4]

We are at the crossroads of a great opportunity to reframe the racial debate. A generation invested heavily in the paradigm of eternal victimhood is slowly fading not by the appropriation of a new paradigm but simply because of age. Most black intellectuals still cling to the old paradigm, unwilling or unable to shift. Yet, a new generation of blacks not stained by the scorch of segregation and more interested in universalism is emerging. The possibility of challenging the theory instead of simply elaborating on and reformulating it is real.[5]

Yes, ceasing to agree with the liberal radical consensus has its perils. As in normal science, to work under different premises is to cease to be a member of the community: ‘Work under the paradigm can be conducted in no other way, and to desert the paradigm is to cease practicing the science it defines.’ But we are no longer in the time when the entire spectrum of scholars operating outside of the paradigm consisted of two men, Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams. Their desertion, I submit, was the ‘pivot about which scientific revolutions turn.’[6] We are at the crossroads of the dawning of a new era where a growing sense that the existing ideologies of race and its messiahs cannot meet the needs of a community whose problems are precisely the result of an environment they created.[7]

‘Discovery commences with the awareness of anomaly, i.e., with the recognition that nature has somehow violated the paradigm-induced expectations that govern normal science.’[8] Sowell and Williams opened the eyes of a generation to the puzzling reality of the failure of the liberal/radical paradigm to effect real change. It is precisely the appearance of certain puzzles that creates the opportunity for qualitative leaps. As those operating within a given paradigm often insulate themselves from socially important problems not reducible to the assumptions of the system, they unwittingly open the opportunity to challenge the very assumptions giving life to normal science by the discovery of ‘pockets of apparent disorder.’[9] These pockets, unanswerable by the accepted assumptions, can provoke a scientific revolution.

Those operating within the model indeed assume a sense of authority over a set of rules they impose as binding on all. As these are, again, arbitrary and political, they cannot prevent some from not abiding by them. ‘Normal science can proceed without rules’ says Kuhn, ‘only so long as the relevant scientific community accepts without question the particular problem-solutions already achieved.’[10] Failure of the rules to explain reality and offer solutions is the necessary prelude to the search for new rules, new foundational assumptions.

Before us, we have three options. The first is to adhere to the old paradigm of victimhood and adopt its reactionary resistance. The second is to intellectually reject the old paradigm but accept its practical application by concluding that there are no real alternatives. That is the road already traveled. Then there is the possibility of the emergence of a new paradigm with new rules and new expectations. We dare to hope that the last alternative has already been conceived in the minds of a few such as Sowell and Williams who were from the start not committed to the fundamental assumptions of racialism. There is now an opportunity to renew our minds and finally see anew:

Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. Even more important, during revolutions scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before. It is rather as if the professional community had been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well.[11]

 

[1] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 24.

[2] Ibid, pp. 5-6.

[3] See Watzlawick, et. al., Change, p. 97.

[4] Ibid, p. 95.

[5] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 33.

[6] Ibid, p. 34.

[7] Ibid, p. 92.

[8] Ibid, p. 52.

[9] Ibid, p. 42.

[10] Ibid, p. 48.

[11] Ibid, p. 111.

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11 Dec
0

The Transfer of Power Tends to Corrupt

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With the news last week that the final battleground states are certifying the presidential election and the General Services Administration is releasing funds for a transition to a new Biden Administration, it appears that the United States will once again witness a peaceful passing of power from one executive to another. It’s an experience that we take for granted, but we shouldn’t. Deference to the outcomes of free elections by both sides of a bitterly fought contest is not the norm in human history. But ever since John Adams set the precedent, it has been the practice in this country—one more blessing of life in America.

Throughout history, there has been wide variation in the way transitions of power take place. Where kings and emperors have ruled, family dynasties have been common. The problem of handing power to offspring without regard to competence is well-publicized, but even the apparent advantage of this arrangement—a clear line of succession—doesn’t guarantee a seamless transition of power. Where there is no heir or when multiple heirs lay claim to the throne, violence is commonly the result, as the world’s many “wars of succession” demonstrate.

The scramble for power can send an entire nation or even civilization into unrest. The repeated bloodbaths accompanying struggles for supremacy in the Roman Empire became known collectively as the “Crisis of the Third Century.” Closer to our own time, struggles for power within the Politburo in the Soviet Union during the twentieth century resulted in frequent “purges”: exiles, imprisonments, and assassinations. The rise of democracy has alleviated but not eliminated the problem. Many popularly elected African leaders have refused to relinquish power, resorting to constitutional legerdemain, electoral abuses, or outright suppression of safeguards of democracy such as free speech and assembly. The recent history of Venezuela provides a similar case.

The importance of orderly transitions of power is indicated in a small way by the reaction of the stock market to the news that the Trump Administration was taking steps toward a presidential transition. Stocks did not soar on the expectation that a President Biden would be especially friendly to business. Instead, they rose because order and confidence themselves are “good for business,” while chaos and uncertainty are not.

This points to the central reason that the steady passing of governmental control from one regime to another is a blessing: it promotes the common good. The common good is the set of conditions necessary for people to reach fulfillment more easily. Civil peace is one of the principal elements of the common good. Without public order, it is difficult if not impossible to have a stable family life, to pursue learning, to build cultural institutions, to form and maintain businesses, or to enjoy the freedom of religious practice.

As recent events demonstrate, the United States is not immune to the plague of violence and civil unrest. But it does have an exemplary record of free elections followed by peaceful transfers of power. The American system—albeit weakened by mistrust, corruption, and disrespect for the rule of law—endures. Even when we aren’t excited about an incoming administration, we can be grateful that the transition does not provoke widespread rioting, a collapse of governmental functions, or civil war. After the election of 1800, a political battle as ugly as any in American history, the victor sought to remind the nation’s citizens of their common aspirations. The words of Thomas Jefferson’s First Inaugural are as fitting now as they were 220 years ago: “During the contest of opinion through which we have passed, the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely, and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good.”

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10 Dec
0

Ideas without Roots

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It is in the assumptions we carry to the great questions of our time that lies the determination of any course of action. These assumptions begin in the unconscious mind and move from there to the inclinations that inform our world views and our ideological commitments.

Oftentimes, these antecedent factors impinging on our commitments are unspecified when we offer policy solutions and other political courses of action. These presuppositions are so ingrained that at times we cannot understand why others fail to agree with our specific responses. The task is for us to be aware of them and able to offer sound justifications for these presuppositions. The lure of articulated ideology however seems too powerful and aimed at action, not a reflection. That is why the idea that orthopraxis precedes orthodoxy is common, especially on the left. Most people never choose the route of deeper reflection due to the lack of awareness that these questions are even important. They never even agree that their interpretive prism is tainted with a thin layer of presuppositions, preferring instead to attack those who point out the importance of that journey. These critics are said to be invested in “turning back the clock” or “impeding progress.”

When I was a communist, I learned the ideology first by osmosis and then by catechetical instruction. I questioned why others did not agree with what seemed so obvious to me. I suffered from the utopian syndrome, a condition of ecstatic wonder at having found the ultimate answer to everything. The premises were a given, not needing to be questioned. As the authors of the book Change tell us about the syndrome, “What we mean by this is that the individual (or, for that matter, a group or a whole society), when trying to order his world in accordance with his premise and seeing his attempt fail, will typically not examine the premise for any absurd or unrealistic elements of its own, or will, as we have seen, blame outside factors (e.g., society) or his own ineptitude. The idea that the fault might lie with the premises is unbearable, for the premises are the truth, are reality.”[1]

In today’s academic world, students are often taught to tint their interpretive prism with thick ideology but seldom to question why they should hold these views. The premises become axioms that serve as a matrix of understanding needing to be followed, not questioned. Questioning them, in and of itself, is seen as a lack of insight.

What is the main presupposition or assumption of our time? I believe that it is that we move in a dialectical world of antagonisms caused by oppressive forces in a perennial struggle with each other. That struggle results in the alienation of some from the dominant institutions. That basically explains everything, and our only task is to determine to which alienated (or alienating) group we belong.

This concept of alienation was developed especially by the Prussian thinker G. W. F. Hegel. Alienation suffused Hegel’s whole philosophical project but was especially present in three of his books, The Phenomenology of Spirit, Science of Logic, and the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences. Hegel’s concept of alienation referred mostly to a spiritual quest within the self—where a man tries to align his consciousness with his being. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel distinguishes between ‘alienation as estrangement’ and ‘alienation as externalization.’ Man finds himself alienated from his own consciousness and then from the institutions to which he belongs but does not adhere to in his consciousness. In his seemly pantheistic vision, Hegel saw all of existence as a theology, where God experiences a sort of cosmic self-development. In his quest for self-understanding, God expresses himself in material things such as humans and history. All of material reality is an epiphenomenon of Spirit.

Karl Marx takes the general idea of alienation in Hegel and deprives it of spirituality. In that “demystification” of alienation, Marx is aided by his embrace of the concept of alienation as he found it in another Prussian thinker, Wilhelm Feuerbach.

Especially in his books The Essence of Christianity and The Essence of Religion, Feuerbach understood alienation as man’s quest for meaning and ultimate peace in the creation of the idea of God to which he transfers his fears and his hopes. Man wants to be healthy but gets sick, wants to be happy but finds himself sad, wants to be free but is enslaved everywhere, wants to live forever but dies. Thus, man creates the idea of God as the source of all these goods escaping him and alienates himself from the reality of his existence, which in reality is exhausted within the material world.

In Marx, alienation takes on a materialistic vision of inexorable antagonistic entanglements whose resolution necessitates a violent upheaval. What we need is not a spiritual awakening but the rejection of false consciousness to realize that in the here and now there are forces that oppress some and benefit others. Spirit is merely an epiphenomenon of the forces present in material history—the superstructure (culture, ideas, art, religion, theology) arises from the structure (politics, economics, social class). Violence becomes the instrumental cause for human advancement as a man struggles to eliminate his estrangement from reality. As those in power will never surrender their privileges, the only way to eliminate alienation is by forcing the powerful out of their privileges. We see here the transition from a purely spiritual self-alienation in Hegel to a worldly alienation of man from his environment in Marx.

In Marx’s view, alienation is found in the world, not in the spirit. It is within the antagonistic forces in the structures of society that man is separated from his true self by force. It is only by force that he can shatter these forces and move forward to a higher state of human existence. The capitalist system represented the highest alienating force in human history due to the dramatic difference of that system from previous alienating and oppressive powers.

All of life is informed by a constant battle for conquering power to change the alienating structures of society. This battle does not depend on the human will but is instead a reality of existence; thus, science is possible, according to Marx. That is why he called his system scientific dialectical materialism.

It is easy to see here that there are a number of presuppositions concerning the nature of man, the nature of social interaction, and the nature of existence itself in the ideas that prevail in our time. But we seldom question these presuppositions when speaking of “oppression” or “social justice” as taught and understood within the halls of academic knowledge. These people are presented as oppressed tokens of groups in need of liberation from an oppressive capitalist system that feeds on the perpetuation of alienation.

I learned my Marxism at home, my father being a sophisticated Marxist who studied the ideology intently. The great writers were always there for me to read—Gramsci, Marx, Lenin, Mao, Trotsky, Bakunin, Kropotkin. The interpretation, however, was provided by my father, by the party, and by Cuban newspapers, articles, and books. I never knew that there could even be an alternative viewpoint that was any other than propaganda.

When I discovered that there was in effect an alternative view, it was as if scales fell from my eyes and a completely new world appeared, one that threatened my consciousness with fearful new thoughts and an exciting opportunity that made sense to take. I’m still on that journey.

The possibility of that journey is sadly foreclosed in many of our halls of learning, as the ethos of our culture has closed itself to glimpsing new ideas beyond the ones based on Marxist presuppositions.

[1] Wtzlawick et al., Change Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution (New York: W.W. Norton, 1974 1st Edition) p. 54.

 

 

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10 Dec
0

Remembering Walter Williams

by in News

The world has lost a voice for logic, liberty, and love of the U.S. Constitution. Economist Walter Williams died December 2 at the age of 84.

Williams worked his way out of grinding poverty in the Philadelphia housing projects to chair George Mason University’s economics department, author 10 books, and more than 150 publications, and become one of the most recognized commentators of the last four decades. Williams spread his message of racial equality, the dignity of work, and the morality of capitalism through his syndicated newspaper column, PBS documentaries, and frequent radio and TV appearances. He is survived by his daughter, Devyn.

Walter Edward Williams was born on March 31, 1936, in Philadelphia. His father abandoned the family, leaving his wife, Catherine, to raise their three-year-old son and two-year-old daughter. Catherine took intermittent work as a domestic servant while living in the Richard Allen housing projects of Philadelphia, where Williams grew up at the same time as Bill Cosby. His mother encouraged her children’s intellectual development by taking them to museums, art galleries, and libraries.

Williams, who described himself as a “troublemaker,” began working honest jobs as a shoe-shine boy, in mail departments, and in commercial deliveries from a young age – too young for the law. The Labor Department ejected a 15-year-old Williams from a sewing job for working while underage. Despite its dubious legality, Williams credited his young work history for instilling the drive and habits that would take him to the heights of his profession.

He would be drafted into the Army in the 1950s. (“My labor services were confiscated by the U.S. government,” Williams quipped.) He was stationed in Georgia, where he first encountered racial segregation and where he first began to speak out publicly, eventually writing letters to President John F. Kennedy. He rebelled against the typical practice of assigning blacks second-class jobs: When ordered to paint a truck, he painted the entire truck – including the headlights. After an unrelated incident, he would successfully defend himself from court-martial while acting as his own counsel.

Read the full Acton article

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