The St. Croix Review speaks for middle America, and brings you essays from patriotic Americans.
Mark W. Hendrickson is a faculty member, economist, and contributing scholar with the Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania. This article is from V & V, a website publication of the Center for Vision & Values.
Gold has opened 2008 with a bang. The price of the yellow metal has soared to all-time nominal highs, surpassing $900 per ounce. "So what?" you may ask. "Unless one works for a mining company or a jeweler, gold is a trivial or nonexistent factor in one's life." True. But do you use dollars for your money? If so, then you ought to be concerned about the rising price of gold (POG).
Gold is sometimes known as an inflation barometer. I prefer to characterize it as the most reliable indicator of confidence in our currency. When confidence in the U.S. dollar is high and people desire to hold dollars, then POG is low in dollar terms. Conversely, when confidence in the dollar is low and people's desire to hold dollars has ebbed, then POG is high in dollar terms.
Why is gold a reliable monetary indicator? Historically, gold emerged as the preferred choice of money in countries around the world. Because of the painful hyperinflation of the Continental currency during the Revolutionary War, our Founding Fathers made the U.S. dollar a fixed quantity of gold. Indeed, that was the case for most of our history; thus, the saying as late as in the mid-1900s that "the dollar is as good as gold."
From our everyday perspective, in which we habitually express economic value in terms of dollars, gold appears to fluctuate greatly in value. This, however, is an illusion, comparable to the illusion that the sun orbits the earth. If we change our frame of reference from the dollar to gold, we note that gold has maintained roughly the same purchasing power for centuries, and it is paper money that fluctuates wildly in value. Federal Reserve Notes, for example, have less than five percent of the purchasing power they had when introduced in 1914; yet, in not too many years, we will look back longingly on paying "only" three Federal Reserve Notes for a gallon of gas.
POG is telling us in no uncertain terms that confidence in the dollar is falling. U.S. policymakers decided to sacrifice the dollar to keep the financial markets from grinding to a halt. Even before that crisis emerged, the demise of the Federal Reserve Note could be foretold. Americans are drowning in debt. Individuals and corporations hold record amounts of debt, but the greatest debtor of all is Uncle Sam. Only the naive would think that Uncle Sam can indefinitely finance his $9 trillion of officially acknowledged debt, his other trillions of off-budget debt, and the tens of trillions of unfunded liabilities for Medicare, Social Security, etc. The only viable political option is to have the Fed inflate the money supply, thereby reducing the exchange value of each currency unit, and repay creditors with cheapened dollars.
Our overall financial weakness, combined with vigorous economic growth in other countries and the consequent ongoing shrinkage of the U.S. share of global GDP, mean that the dollar's days as the global reserve currency are numbered. POG will rise even higher as this process unfolds.
In addition to the overwhelming economic factors working against our fiat dollar, there are geopolitical factors, too. Although the rest of the world's people love to criticize the United States, they like the stability of a Pax Americana. If the United States can maintain order in the world, global business benefits. On the other hand, when the United States appears to be losing control, confidence in our currency swoons in lockstep with confidence in our power.
The last time POG exceeded $800 per ounce, Iran had taken American hostages, the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, and the United States appeared impotent. By contrast, seven years ago -- in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Communist Bloc, and before 9/11 -- the United States was regarded as the unchallenged, largely benevolent superpower; confidence in our currency was very high, and gold sold for under $300 per ounce. Now, with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto threatening to unravel nuclear-armed Pakistan; Russia and China acting to spite and discomfit us any way they can, and tensions with Iran mounting, there is diminishing confidence in the U.S. ability to maintain a peaceful global order. Consequently, investors around the world are exchanging dollars for gold.
The current high POG indicates that these are challenging times for our country, both economically and geopolitically. If the two major parties cannot set aside their endless bickering and unite to address the major challenges facing our country, the dollar will sink more and gold will continue to rise. Let us pray that this doesn't happen. *
"If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner." H. L. Mencken
Dr. Hans F. Sennholz, former chairman of the Department of Economics at Grove City College, died June 23, 2007. Dr. Sennholz was a master teacher, incisive writer, gifted public lecturer and a friend of liberty. "The Origins of Money" first appeared in 2000 in a collection of essays published by Grove City College and is entitled, "Is Capitalism Morally Bankrupt?" This article is reprinted from Vision & Values, a publication of Grove City College, in Grove City, Pennsylvania.
Money owes its existence to the God-given inequalities of men. These inequalities lead men to cooperate with each other and engage in what economists call the "division of labor." The division of labor or specialization develops when men concentrate on what they do best and trade the product of their labor for other goods needed to sustain and enhance their lives. For example, a teacher who specializes in rendering educational services instructs young pupils. Obviously the teacher needs food, clothing, shelter, and hundreds of other economic goods to sustain his life and make him comfortable. But instead of single-handedly manufacturing them all, he specializes in rendering instructional services. How do the parents of his pupils pay for the instructional services? They could pay him by directly offering surplus goods they produce. The pupil whose father is a baker could supply bread; the farmer's daughter could bring farm produce. In fact, in early times schoolmasters were often paid "in kind." They engaged in direct exchange or bartering. While barter is a useful method of exchange, it is also very cumbersome and unsatisfactory in many respects. Suppose that our teacher needs a pocket watch, but the watchmaker has no children.
These predicaments that present themselves in a barter economy arise because the wants of the buyers and sellers do not complement each other. In order for barter to work well, one party to the trade must want exactly what the other party has to offer, and vice versa. One can easily see that barter, because of its serious limitations, points up the need of an intermediate good that is readily acceptable and marketable everywhere and at any time. Returning to our example, assume there was some valuable good which our schoolmaster would accept and in turn could use to purchase exactly the goods he wanted. Furthermore, if this same good could then be used by the merchant to purchase other goods, then that economic good used over and over again would be functioning as a medium or means of exchange. Money, then, is the "most marketable good" in the sense that it is willingly accepted in exchange because it can be easily exchanged again by its current owner.
Our example clearly indicates that the selection of a certain good as money is a natural result of human economic activity. At the dawn of civilization, cattle were the most marketable commodity for many peoples. Although it seems strange to modern man, they were readily saleable and hence a natural money. Among the nomadic tribes of North and South America, other commodities that were acceptable to the largest number of people served as money, such as furs, animal skins or pelts, quills made of animal hair, articles made of feathers, wood or stone, tanning materials, medicinal plants and medicines. However, with the rise of towns and cities, pieces of metal gradually replaced cattle and other goods as money. There is no particular mystery about metals serving as media of exchange. They could be transported, divided and carried by a person, and small amounts of them were valuable. All these characteristics made metals the most saleable commodities and the natural monies of man. In many places copper, iron, silver, and gold became the most saleable goods and the most popular means of exchange.
In short, various goods with general usefulness and great marketability assumed the function of money. Although it differed in various locations, the money-character of certain commodities must be traced back to this usefulness and marketability. Neither prince or principality, nor law nor decree was ever needed to create money.
Money in the form of coinage first made its appearance in the 7th century B.C. Greek merchants in Lydia began to standardize the pieces of metal used in trade in order to eliminate the labor that was necessary to test and weigh raw metals at the time of each transaction. For centuries, these standardized pieces of metal were used, though they existed in many shapes and sizes. Authenticity was established by afffixing the stamp of certain well-known mercantile families to the pieces of metal.
Political intervention has plagued the coinage system ever since. Guided by innate baser human inclinations and predilections, government leaders of all ages have been drawn to the mints. To pay for military expenses, mercenaries, arms and equipment, they struck coins on which they made large profits by charging a large difference between the value of the bullion used and the face value of the coin. The difference is called "seigniorage." They also discovered that their monopoly over the mint could be used to obtain additional revenue through coin debasement. Claiming authority over the mint in order to supervise the true weight and purity of the coinage, they themselves yielded to the temptation to debase the coins. After all, there was no higher authority that could restrain the malefactors.
Throughout the ages, one of the problems businessmen coped with was the safe transfer of money from one location to another. Roaming gangs of robber barons, brigands, and thieves made it almost impossible to send quantities of coins to distant locations. These dangers and difficulties were largely overcome by the development and use of bills of exchange and other paper instruments, which were the forerunners of modern paper money. In the ancient world, crude papyrus notes and clay tables functioned as promises to pay precious metals on demand. In modern times, the early goldsmiths began to issue paper receipts -- later called bank notes for gold and silver deposited with them for safekeeping.
Unfortunately, as people grew accustomed to paper money as a substitute for gold and silver, government soon claimed the sovereign right to regulate and even monopolize the issuance of money substitutes. What began as an avenue of escape from coin debasement was to become an important means of debasement and depreciation by government. In this country, government took an early step toward full government control of money substitutes during the pre-constitutional period and again during the Civil War. At first state governments and later also the federal government passed legal tender acts. These laws required citizens to accept governmentally issued money in exchange for valuable goods and services no matter how much the paper substitutes had depreciated.
In its first phase, inflation of the money supply by government triggers economic booms that bring excitement and opportunity. It triggers bull markets on Wall Street, promising increase and fortune to millions of investors. It stirs businessmen who may profit from soaring demand and rising prices. Newly created money exhilarates bankers as it generates bigger deposits, bigger loans, and bigger balance sheets. It energizers labor unions that deliver marvelous pay boosts to their grateful members. Lastly, inflation whether slow and gradual or rapid, makes politicians the happiest of all. Inflation erases part of the past government debt because government can pay back those who lent it money with dollars which are worth less than before. In summary, the first phase of inflation is like drug addiction, creating euphoria that takes hold of its victims and transports them into a "never-never land."
The American people have come to accept inflation, especially the first stage of it, as a way of life that refreshes, creates, and enables. But unfortunately, as inflation continues, it reveals some undesirable characteristics. Inflation, as it nears the end of its jubilant first phase, begins to raise the costs of living and simultaneously lowers the standard of living for many citizens. Of course, at this point the federal government, which is conducting the inflation, seeks again and again to eliminate the results of its policies. Politicians and officials try to talk down the consumer price index by threatening large visible businesses that propose price increases. Some officials even "declare war" on inflation.
But such efforts, short of a legal freeze on prices, have little effect. The prices of goods must rise when more money enters the cash holdings of the people. This is so because people tend to spend more when they receive more. But, to return to the point, how do levels of living decline for many citizens in the second phase of inflation?
1. Creditors lose and debtors win. A creditor is one who is owed money, and, of course, a debtor owes money. In a period of unanticipated inflation, a creditor is hurt because he lends dollars with a certain purchasing power. When he is repaid six or twelve months later, the dollars he receives in repayment have less purchasing power than those that he lent. Therefore, he is worse off than if there had been no inflation.
2. Fixed income recipients lose. Pensioners and retirees depend for their monthly income, in whole or in part, upon payments that are usually fixed at a certain number of dollars. When, due to inflation, the dollars depreciate each and every month, the fixed income, though nominally the same, will buy less and less. It is sometimes said that inflation is kind of a "hidden tax" upon such recipients.
3. Savings in money form are lost. Before the age of inflation, those who restricted their present consumption and saved would put their savings into a bank account without much fear it would be lost. Moreover, interest income would most certainly be produced from such thrift. However, in an inflationary period, savers who save in the form of money or claims to money, such as a $500 savings deposit account, find that with the passage of time, the savings are eroded. True, at the end of six months or twelve months they are free to withdraw their savings of $500 from the deposit account plus interest. However, those $500 may purchase 10 percent or 15 percent fewer goods, because the inflation has depreciated their savings and the interest likely will not even cover this loss of value.
As inflation continues doing harm to creditors, fixed income recipients and savers -- in other words, to the middle class -- three possible things can happen in the final phase: (1) runaway inflation (2) the quack cure of price controls or (3) true moderation in fiscal and monetary policy.
In our own American history the worst runaway paper money inflation was the Continental dollar inflation that resulted when the Continental Congress printed the bills in profusion from 1775 to 1781. The effects of such monetary irresponsibility were seen in the contrast between hard money (gold or silver) prices and paper money prices of the same good in that era. In 1781, one could buy a bushel of wheat for six shillings in hard money. However, if one were paying in Continental currency (paper), one would have to pay 600 shillings per bushel. When such inflation occurs, citizens engage in a "flight to real values," which is to say that they prefer anything to the paper money.
Two modern European inflations demonstrate how inflation follows its complete destructive course: the German inflation of 1914 to 1923 and the French inflation during the Revolution of 1789. In both cases the currency was completely destroyed. At its end, German workers sought payment daily or twice daily in order to enable their wives to make immediate purchases of real goods before the paper money depreciated further! Likewise, the French "assignat" inflation reduced a Frenchman's entire savings to an amount that was barely enough to buy a meal.
Another step often taken as inflation rages into its final phase is the imposition of price controls by the state. The rapidly rising prices that accompany monetary inflation are the target of such controls. Prices are "going up too fast," say the politicians. "Let's make price increases illegal," they say. The use of price controls is a quack cure. Meanwhile, the true cause of rising prices -- monetary expansion made necessary by deficit spending -- is not being dealt with.
A third option is for the citizenry and their government to practice moderation. The real cure for monetary inflation is to deal with its true cause: excessive spending financed by red ink fiscal policy. Such restraint takes economic understanding in an age when government deficits, financed by newly created money and credit, have become so common.
Ultimately, however, the question of inflation versus sound money is a moral one. At its root, inflation is politically immoral and dishonest. A dedication to inflation transgresses the immutable principles of justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation. It generates economic, social and political conflict. When inflation runs rampant, economic life is bound to deteriorate, the levels of living must tumble, democratic institutions crumble, and the civility of social life wears away.
In the end, inflation repeals all principles of virtue. *
"In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant." --Charles de Gaulle
Roy Spencer is a research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama. This article is reprinted with permission from Tech Central Station, which is a web site "where free markets meet Technology."
Dear Mr. Gore:
I have just seen your new movie, An Inconvenient Truth, about the threat that global warming presents to humanity. I think you did a very good job of explaining global warming theory, and your presentation was effective. Please convey my compliments to your good friend, Laurie David, for a job well done.
As a climate scientist myself -- you might remember me, I'm the one you mistook for your "good friend," UK scientist Phil Jones during my congressional testimony some years back -- I have a few questions that occurred to me while watching the movie.
1) Why did you make it look like hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, floods, droughts, and ice calving off of glaciers and falling into the ocean, are only recent phenomena associated with global warming? You surely know that hurricane experts have been warning Congress for many years that the natural cycle in hurricanes would return some day, and that our built-up coastlines were ripe for a disaster (like Katrina, which you highlighted in the movie). And as long as snow continues to fall on glaciers, they will continue to flow downhill toward the sea. Yet you made it look as though these things wouldn't happen if it weren't for global warming. Also, since there are virtually no measures of severe weather showing a recent increase, I assume those graphs you showed actually represented damage increases, which are well known to be simply due to greater population and wealth. Is that right?
2) Why did you make it sound as if all scientists agree that climate change is man-made and not natural? You mentioned a recent literature review study that supposedly found no peer-reviewed articles that attributed climate change to natural causes (a non-repeatable study which has since been refuted. I have a number of such articles in my office!) You also mentioned how important it is to listen to scientists when they warn us, yet surely you know that almost all past scientific predictions of gloom and doom have been wrong. How can we trust scientists' predictions now?
3) I know you still must feel bad about the last presidential election being stolen from you, but why did you have to make fun of Republican presidents (Reagan; both Bushes) for their views on global warming? The points you made in the movie might have had wider appeal if you did not alienate so many moviegoers in this manner.
4) Your presentation showing the past 650,000 years of atmospheric temperature and carbon dioxide reconstructions from ice cores was very effective. But I assume you know that some scientists view the CO2 increases as the result of, rather than the cause of, past temperature increases. It seems unlikely that CO2 variations have been the dominant cause of climate change for hundreds of thousands of years. And now that there is a new source of carbon dioxide emissions (people), those old relationships are probably not valid anymore. Why did you give no hint of these alternative views?
5) When you recounted your 6-year-old son's tragic accident that nearly killed him, I thought that you were going to make the point that, if you had lived in a poor country like China or India, your son probably would have died. But then you later held up these countries as model examples for their low greenhouse gas emissions, without mentioning that the only reason their emissions were so low was because people in those countries are so poor. I'm confused, do you really want us to live like the poor people in India and China?
6) There seems to be a lot of recent concern that more polar bears are drowning these days because of disappearing sea ice. I assume you know that polar bears have always migrated to land in late summer when sea ice naturally melts back, and then return to the ice when it refreezes. Also, if this were really happening, why did the movie have to use a computer-generated animation of the poor polar bear swimming around looking for ice? Haven't there been any actual observations of this happening? Also, temperature measurements in the arctic suggest that it was just as warm there in the 1930s, before most greenhouse gas emissions. Don't you ever wonder whether sea ice concentrations back then were low, too?
7) Why did you make it sound as though simply signing on to the Kyoto Protocol to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions would be such a big step forward, when we already know it will have no measurable effect on global temperatures anyway? And even though it represents such a small emission reduction, the economic pain Kyoto causes means that almost no developed country will be meeting its emission reductions commitments under that treaty, as we are now witnessing in Europe.
8) At the end of the movie, you made it sound as if we can mostly fix the global warming problem by conserving energy; you even claimed we can reduce our carbon emissions to zero. But I'm sure you know that this will only be possible with major technological advancements, including a probable return to nuclear power as an energy source. Why did you not mention this need for technological advancement and nuclear power? Is it because that would support the current (Republican) Administration's view?
Mr. Gore, I think we can both agree that if it were relatively easy for mankind to stop emitting so much carbon dioxide, that we should do so. You are a very smart person, so I can't understand why you left so many important points unmentioned, and you made it sound so easy.
I wish you well in these efforts, and I hope that humanity will make the right choices based upon all of the information we have on the subject of global warming. I agree with you that global warming is indeed a "moral issue," and if we are to avoid doing more harm than good with misguided governmental policies, we will need more politicians to be educated on the issue.
Your "Good Friend,"
Dr. Roy W. Spencer
"I wished for the empire of the world, and, to ensure it, unlimited power was necessary to me." --Napoleon, March 12, 1816
Roy Spencer is a research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama. This text was given as testimony on March 19, 2007, before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the U.S. House of Representatives. The reader may find the accompanying references (very lengthy), resume, and charts on the internet.
I would like to thank the Chairman and the Committee for the opportunity to provide my perspective on the subject of political interference in government-funded science, as well as on the science of global warming.
I have been performing NASA-sponsored research for the last twenty-two years. Prior to my current position as a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, I was Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. I am also the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-E flying on NASA's Earth-observation satellite Aqua.
During my fifteen years as a NASA employee, I was well aware that any interaction between scientists and the press was to be coordinated through NASA management and public affairs. Understandably, NASA managers do not appreciate first reading of their scientists' opinions in the morning newspaper. I understood that my position as a NASA employee was a privilege, not a right, and that there were rules I was expected to abide by. Partly because of those limits on what I could and couldn't say to the press on the subject of global warming, I voluntarily resigned from the government in the fall of 2001.
Some level of political influence on government-funded climate science has always existed, and likely always will exist. The influence began many years ago when the government climate research programs were first established. For instance, I once heard a high-level government official say that his success at helping to formulate the Montreal Protocol restricting the manufacture of ozone-depleting chemicals was an example of the kind of success that global warming research could achieve to help restrict fossil fuel use. This is clearly a case of political and policy biases driving a scientific research agenda.
On the individual scientist level, if a government scientist wants to issue a press release addressing the theoretical possibility of catastrophic climate change in the future, and entitles it, "Global Warming to Be Much Worse than Previously Thought," should the scientist's supervisors have the authority to intervene if they believe the title of the press release cannot be justified by the research? What if the title reads, "Global Warming Could Destroy Most of Humanity in the Next Five Years"? Could managers intervene then? At some point, the agency for which the government scientist works must bear some responsibility for what that scientist, in his official capacity, says to the public and press. Managers cannot simply give blanket approval to whatever the scientist wants to say just to avoid the impression of "muzzling the science." This is one reason why agencies like NASA and NOAA need to retain some level of control over how their employees portray their science to the public.
Political influences on climate research have long pervaded the whole system. Both government-funding managers and scientists realize that science programs, research funding, and careers depend upon global warming remaining a serious threat. There seems to be an unspoken pressure on climate scientists to find new ways in which mankind might be causing a climate catastrophe -- yet no emphasis at all on finding possible climate stabilizing mechanisms.
Even the climate researchers themselves have biases that influence the direction they take their research. In psychology this is called "confirmation bias" (Klayman and Ha, 1987), and in my experience this is not the exception, but the rule. Researchers tend to be more accepting of data that confirms their preconceived notions or political or societal predilections. After all, what scientist would not want to be the one to discover an impending environmental disaster that awaits humanity to "save the Earth"? Or, if one believes that modern technology is inherently evil, would not one then want to find sufficient evidence to put the fossil fuel industry out of business? If one has socialistic tendencies, then carbon permit trading provides an excellent mechanism for a redistribution of wealth from the richer countries to the poorer countries.
In my own case, I would rather be the researcher who discovers that global warming will be relatively benign -- after all, what sane person could wish catastrophic global warming upon humanity for selfish political or social engineering reasons?
Bias in the expectation of policy outcomes was even shown in this committee's last hearing on this subject. On January 30, 2007, Rick Piltz, the Director of Climate Science Watch Government Accountability Project, told this committee:
Climate Science Watch engages in investigation, communication, and reform advocacy aimed at holding public officials accountable for using climate research with integrity and effectiveness in addressing the challenge of global climate change. (emphasis added)
"Reform advocacy" and the phrase "addressing the challenge of global climate change" clearly presume that climate change is "a challenge" worthy of great worry and strong policy action. But based upon my own experience, it would have been at least as appropriate to have a separate advocacy group "addressing the challenge of unwarranted exaggeration of global climate change."
There is a way to reduce the impact of such biases in government-funded climate research programs. Years ago, the Department of Defense recognized the dangers of "group-think" and "tunnel-vision" when developing new defense systems. They formally instituted a "Red Team" approach where people are tasked with finding holes in the prevailing wisdom and consensus of how things should work. In my opinion, a Red Team approach to government funding of global warming research, especially in the climate-modeling arena, would be very valuable.
So, rather than trying to eliminate political influence on the direction of government-funded research, this committee could help to at least balance those influences. After all, the science doesn't care what the answer is to the question of how much warming will occur in the future. And in my experience, the taxpayers would welcome a less biased approach to the spending of their money.
This committee now has the unique opportunity to help level the playing field for the scientific minority, and make sure that research programs are not biased by desired political outcomes. If only because scientists are human, political influence and biases will always exist in scientific research. But this committee can help by making sure that government is not contributing to the problem.
Even though globally-averaged temperatures in recent decades have been unusually warm, there is no compelling evidence that they are either unprecedented in the last 1,000 years, or attributable to human greenhouse gas emissions. Given the extreme cost to humanity (especially the poor) that most economists claim will result from the restricting or otherwise penalizing the use of fossil fuels, a guiding principle for accepting claims of catastrophic global warming should be: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Let us examine whether such extraordinary and compelling evidence exists.
In June 2006, a National Research Council report (NRC, 2006) requested by Congress, examined claims that globally averaged temperature are warmer now than anytime in the last 1,000 years. That panel concluded that high confidence could only be given to the statement that we are now the warmest in 400 years -- not 1,000 years. We should be thankful for this, since much of the last 400 years was enveloped in the "Little Ice Age" -- a period that was particularly harmful to mankind.
Furthermore, actual temperature measurements (not proxies) in Greenland boreholes reveal the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) to be warmer than today.
Since the temperature signal tends to get smoothed with depth (age), it can be safely assumed that temperature "spikes" were also superimposed on the MWP warm "dome." These spikes would make our current warmth seem even less noteworthy by comparison.
In summary, the evidence for today's global warmth being unusual for interglacial conditions is neither extraordinary nor compelling.
Some have found it effective to use the close relationship between ice core-inferred temperatures and carbon dioxide variations to imply that we will see similar relationships from anthropogenic CO2 emissions. But this interpretation of ice core data is, at best, controversial. If indeed these measurements are what they are claimed to be (estimates of global temperature and carbon dioxide concentrations), then virtually all of the evidence points to the temperature changes leading the carbon dioxide changes -- not the other way around -- by at least 100 years. The Earth's carbon dioxide budget is still poorly understood, with huge sources and sinks of carbon in the oceans and land, and so it is entirely possible that the carbon dioxide changes were the result of biogeochemical changes resulting from the temperature changes. Since the cause-and-effect relationships in these ice core records appear to be the reverse of what we expect with anthropogenic global warming, I believe that ice cores should not be used to promote any quantitative estimates of how much warming a given amount of extra carbon dioxide will "cause."
Nevertheless, it is indeed possible to construct a possible scenario of radiative forcing wherein carbon dioxide causes the warming we have seen over the last few decades (Hansen et al., 2005). But this in no way constitutes extraordinary and compelling evidence that greenhouse gas changes caused the warming -- it is merely one possible explanation. A small decrease in low-level cloudiness or a small increase in high level cloudiness -- too small to be reliably measured with current satellite technology -- could also explain our current warmth. Detailed estimation of radiative imbalances from a wide variety of manmade greenhouse gases and aerosols, as in Hansen et al., (2005), are popular activities, but those radiative imbalances are theoretically calculated, not measured. They are still too small to be reliably measured with our satellite systems. What we do know is that substantial natural fluctuations in the Earth's radiation budget do occur which are much more abrupt and larger than those due to manmade greenhouse gases (Wielicki et al., 2002; Chen et al., 2002). It seems that since science can measure atmospheric carbon dioxide changes much more accurately than small variations in global cloud amounts and other natural processes, science then tends to ignore the possibility that recently global warming could be more due to natural causes than manmade ones.
It is often stated (usually with grave concern) that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are higher now than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years (or more). But objectively, one must ask: So what? Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are extremely low, and even two or three times an extremely small number is still an extremely small number. The fact that carbon dioxide concentrations could "double" in this century might sound scary, but we need to first examine what processes determine Earth's natural greenhouse effect.
To understand what effect anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions might have on global climate, we must first understand what causes the Earth's natural greenhouse effect. The atmosphere's greenhouse effect is mostly due to water vapor and clouds. Many climate modelers and researchers suggest that there is some sort of "delicate balance" between the sunlight that the Earth absorbs (energy in), and the greenhouse-influenced infrared radiation that the Earth emits to outer space (energy out), but this "delicate balance" view has no observational support, and reflects too simplistic a view of the role of weather in the climate system.
It is grossly misleading to say that the Earth's surface temperature is the "result" of a balance between absorbed sunlight and emitted infrared light, as it confuses cause and effect. Sunlight is what causes (energizes) our weather, but it is the weather that then largely "decides" how much greenhouse effect there will be. Simply put, the greenhouse effect is mostly the result of surface temperature-driven weather; it is not the cause of weather and surface temperatures.
While such conceptual distinctions are not important if the climate models contain the correct physics, it is our conceptual view that determines what physical processes we decide to include in a climate model. So, it is more than a little ironic that the atmospheric process which likely has the single strongest control over climate is the one that is understood the least: precipitation.
It seems that even many climate modelers do not realize that precipitation systems either directly or indirectly determine most of the Earth's greenhouse effect. Changes in precipitation efficiency, while poorly understood, are known to have a controlling effect on climate (Renno et al., 1994). As tropospheric air is continuously recycled through rain and snow systems, precipitation processes remove excess water vapor, and the air flowing out of them contains varying amounts of water vapor and clouds: the dominant contributors to the natural greenhouse effect. For example, the dry air sinking over the world's deserts was dehumidified in precipitation systems. Similarly, the dry air that rapidly cools in wintertime high-pressure areas was dehumidified by rain or snow systems. Deep layers of water vapor in the vicinity of precipitation systems might locally enhance greenhouse warming, but this extra heating helps maintain the circulation -- which then removes water vapor.
And the role of precipitation systems on the Earth energy budget does not end there. The change of tropospheric temperature with height is also under the control of these systems, and that vertical temperature structure affects cloud formation elsewhere. For instance, air sinking in response to the heat release in precipitation systems helps create a temperature inversion on top of the boundary layer, underneath which vast expanses of marine stratus and stratocumulus clouds form. These clouds have strong cooling effects on the climate system, and any change in them with warming is thus partly controlled by precipitation system changes. Modelers agree that changes in these low-level cloud decks with warming is still an open question; what I am pointing out is that precipitation systems are integral to the maintenance of those cloud decks.
Precipitation systems are indeed nature's "air conditioner." Since weather processes have control over the greenhouse effect, it is reasonable to assume that the relative stability that globally-averaged temperatures exhibit over many years is due to natural negative feedbacks in the system which are, quite likely, traceable to precipitation systems. Since climate models have a history of temperature drift, it is clear that they have not contained all of the temperature-stabilizing influences that exist in nature. And the stronger those stabilizing influences, the less warming we can expect from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
It is certainly true that (1) greenhouse gases warm the lower atmosphere, (2) carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and so (3) increasing carbon dioxide concentrations can be expected to warm the surface. But one must ask: To what extent?
Climate modelers know that the direct surface warming effects of even a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations would be very small -- only about 1 deg. F, probably sometime late in this century. The greatest concern, then, centers around the positive feedbacks exhibited by climate models which amplify this small warming tendency. But just how realistic are these positive feedbacks? The latest published comparison of the sensitivity of climate models to changes in radiation reveal that all climate models tested are more sensitive than our best available radiation budget satellite data suggest (Forster and Taylor, 2006). Taken at face value, this means that all the models produce too much global warming.
Most researchers who believe in substantial levels of global warming claim that water vapor feedback is surely positive and strong. They invariably appeal to the fact that a warming tendency from the extra carbon dioxide will cause more water vapor to be evaporated from the surface, thus amplifying the warming. But again we see a lack of understanding of what maintains tropospheric water vapor levels. While abundant amounts of water vapor are being continuously evaporated from the Earth's surface, it is precipitation systems that determine how much of that water vapor is allowed to remain in the atmosphere -- not the evaporation rate. This, then, is one example of researchers' bias toward an emphasis on warming processes (water vapor addition), but not cooling processes (water vapor removal). The fact that warmer air masses have more water vapor is simply the result of the greater amounts of solar heating that those air masses were exposed to; it is not evidence for positive water vapor feedback in response to increasing carbon dioxide levels.
I also see widespread bias in the way researchers talk about the Earth's greenhouse effect, i.e. that it "keeps the Earth habitably warm." They totally ignore the fact that at least 60 percent of the surface warming that the greenhouse effect "tries" to cause never happens because of the cooling effects of weather (evaporation, convection, cloud formation, etc.; see Manabe and Strickler, 1964). Thus, it is quantitatively more accurate to say that "the cooling effects of weather keep the Earth habitably cool," than it is to say, "The greenhouse effect keeps the Earth habitably warm." So again, we see a "warm" bias in the way many climate researchers talk about climate change.
Climate models are usually validated by comparing their average behavior, such as the monthly average temperature at different locations, to observations of the real climate system. But recently, it has been persuasively argued that meaningful validation of climate models in the context of their feedbacks can only be made by comparing the instantaneous relationships in climate models and observations (Aries and Rossow, 2003; Stephens, 2005). For instance, daily changes in clouds, radiation, and temperature can be measured by satellites during interannual variations in the climate system. This makes physical sense, since it is at daily time scales where most weather action takes place.
At the University of Alabama in Huntsville, we have begun doing just that, and we have documented a negative feedback due to changes in precipitation systems (Spencer et al., 2007, now in peer review for publication). As rain system activity and tropospheric warmth reach peak levels during tropical intraseasonal oscillations (ISOs), we measured an increase in outgoing infrared radiation that was traced to a decrease in cirrus cloudiness. This evidence, at least at the intraseasonal time scale of the ISO, supports Lindzen's Controversial "infrared iris" hypothesis of climate stabilization (Lindzen et al., 2001).
Government agencies and their managers have a long history of requiring employees to coordinate research results with management and public affairs officials before talking to the press. As a NASA employee of fifteen years I accepted this as part of my responsibility to support NASA's mission as a "team player" in support of overarching agency goals, and I believe there are good reasons for maintaining such a practice.
A much bigger political influence problem is the governmental bias towards a specific type of climate research that supports specific political or policy outcomes. This research is almost always biased toward the finding of climate destabilizing mechanisms, rather than climate stabilizing mechanisms. Because it takes a higher level of complexity in any physical system to produce self-regulation and stabilization, such findings do not naturally flow out of the existing research. An active effort, analogous to the Department of Defense "Red Team" approach, could be utilized to alleviate this inequity. Given the immense cost (especially to the poor) of proposed carbon control policies that most economists foresee, it is not helpful for tax dollars to be funneled in a research direction that unfairly favors certain political or policy outcomes.
I believe that there is good theoretical and observational support for the view that how precipitation systems respond to warming is the largest source of uncertainty in global warming predictions by climate models. There is good reason to believe that the models still do not contain one or more negative feedbacks related to cloud and precipitation changes associated with warming. Therefore, it is imperative that critical tests of model processes with satellite observations be carried out before warming predictions from those models be given much credence. Only through a large dose of either faith or ignorance can one believe current climate models' predictions of global warming. *
"In reality there is perhaps no one of our natural Passions so hard to subdue as Pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will now and then peek out and show itself." --Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Martin teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. You may contact Thomas Martin at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
I found the following student writing assignment on the teacher's desk in the classroom in which I am teaching Introduction to Ethics at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
Expository Writing II/ENG 102 Fall 2007/Gender Identity Short Essay
This essay calls for you to examine your gender identity. Please address all three of the bulleted questions below in a 2-4 page typed essay with 1-inch margins. While I do not want you to include a title page or cite external sources, you may give your essay an intriguing title.
* Do you think of yourself as masculine, feminine, or a combination? Why?
* Would you like to be more masculine or more feminine? Why?
* How would your life change if you woke up tomorrow as the opposite sex?
How the times have changed! When I was a freshman, taking the equivalent of English 102, gender was a grammatical term used since the 14th century to refer to nouns designated as masculine, feminine, or neuter in various languages of the Western world. We did not learn to write by answering questions that belong in a women's studies program or a sociology class, but by answering questions about the characters and ideas in the literature of James Baldwin, Thomas Wolfe, Shakespeare, Richard Wright, Hemingway, and Melville, to mention but a few. It was English, after all, and we had more to do than wonder what we might think, and do with -- and to -- ourselves if we happened to wake up one morning as a member of the opposite sex.
Then again, in 1971, I would not have been able to answer the questions these students at UNK are being asked to answer for the simple reason that the updated idea of "gender" was still being constructed by some members of the feminist movement on the theory that human nature is epicene, that is, lacking the characteristic of either sex.
Here is how it works. We start out as neuters because masculinity and femininity are not the inherent characteristics of males and females. They are social constructs determined by the expectations and norms of the culture or society in which a person is socialized.
Parents may socialize a biological boy (XY chromosomes) into a traditional masculine role, which includes the gender characteristics of being dominant, courageous, and aggressive. Likewise, parents may socialize a biological girl (XX chromosomes) into the traditional feminine role, including the characteristics of being submissive, timid, and sensitive. In other words, boys are made to play masculine roles by a patriarchal society which forces them to play with guns and build roads with imitation bulldozers [phallic symbols?], while girls are made to be feminine by playing with Barbie dolls and pretending to cook pies in play ovens. Gender roles are like parts actors play and, therefore, may be changed like costumes. Switch the toys and the overly aggressive boy, recklessly dominating the earth with his bulldozer in the confines of a sandbox, will be neutralized by combing a Barbie doll's hair and thoughtfully coordinating outfits while playing house. Believe this if you will, but we must remember, for fear of being heretical, that sex is what a person is by nature, and gender is what one is by the circumstances of environment.
Listen to Nancy Hirschmann, in The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom, explain how human relationships are shaped:
The idea of a social construct is that human beings and their world are in no sense given or natural but the product of historical configurations of relationships. Our desires, preferences, beliefs, values -- indeed, the way in which we see the world and define reality -- are all shaped by the particular constellation of personal and institutional social relationships that constitute our individual and collective identities.
Obviously, human beings are "shaped" by relationships with other human beings, their families and their communities in which they are raised. However, if there are no "given" or "natural" relationships, then the shape a person has is initially indeterminate. A person is but a lump of clay, forced from dust into his/her shape by the forces of circumstance being applied. Put the child -- having no gender role as of yet -- in a sandbox with a miniature bulldozer, dump truck, shovel and pick and it plays, as we have said, the dominate masculine role; place it in front of a doll house with a well-endowed Barbie doll, barrettes, combs, and assortment of clothes, and it plays the submissive feminine role. This is why we have a number of gender roles, some of which are characteristic of the opposite sex. One must remember that sex is what we are biologically; gender is what we become socially. Gender identity is our own sense of conviction of our maleness or femaleness, while our gender role is the cultural stereotype of what is masculine and what is feminine.
[Anyone who has been a child or had children -- or been around long enough to enjoy grandchildren -- might notice that not all children adhere to the role-engendering transformation of the sandbox and dollhouse. This, however, simply shows the force of the complexities emanating from children that permits them to avoid the conditioning of circumstances. Oh, well.]
It is also important to note, that when Hirschmann professes that human beings and their world are in no sense given or natural she has stated a given. Here is Hirschmann's given: there are no givens or inherent natures in the world.
Hirschmann's fallacy is the basis of feminist ideology: there are no given or natural female and male desires, preferences, beliefs, or values. Her philosophy reminds one of Karl Marx, who also thinks man does not have an inherent nature but is a soulless creature shaped by his material needs. The economic systems of his place and time define human relationships in an antagonistic power struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed. These are the opening of lines of the Communist Manifesto:
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
History moves forward by the power struggles manifested in relationships between human beings created by an economic system that contains their own seeds of destruction. In the economic power struggle, the roles are determined by the means of production -- in feudalism, the lord and the serf; in capitalism, the bourgeois and the proletarian -- necessarily moving toward the era of socialism which eliminates the private property fostering individualism. The next stage of human development after socialism is Communism, a utopian society where the oppressive opposing forces created by the economic means of production will cease to exist as humanity gels into a classless, genderless Itdom.
Here is the shape of the family in the "social construct" of a capitalist society according Marx:
The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour . . . . The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.
We have all been constructed by society. It is heretical for the modern student to think otherwise (that it is human beings who create society). Fortunately, it is not my fault that I am a bourgeois sexist who treats my wife as a submissive domestic worker, an instrument. I am simply a social construct whose "gender role" is unconsciously enforced by the capitalist economic system.
Oh, well.
Back to the Gender Identity questions from English 102:
* Do you think of yourself as masculine, feminine, or a combination? Why?
* Would you like to be more masculine or more feminine? Why?
* How would your life change if you woke up tomorrow as the opposite sex?
It is good the student does not have to cite external sources or even look to his own family as an example to answer these questions because this would only create confusion in his mind. The word "feminine" is from the Latin femina, which means characteristics unique to women; the word "masculine" is from the Latin masculinus, which means characteristics unique to men. [The thought police need to correct the dictionary before the next generations of students are given this writing assignment.]
In this respect, being female or male is by definition an accidental biological quality, like being a particular race or having a particular color of eyes, neither of which has anything to do with what a person thinks.
Inherent in the Gender Identity question is Hirschmann's law: human beings and their world are in no sense given or natural. This is why the question asks students to separate themselves, as it were from themselves, by asking "Do you think of yourself as . . . ?" So, does one have a self one thinks of oneself as?
Let's pretend.
Ask the student reading Hamlet to think of himself as Hamlet, then ask him to think of himself as Ophelia, and then have him play the role of each. We could do scenes in class in which all the girls take turns at playing Hamlet and all the boys take turns at playing Ophelia. In all of this the students are acting the part, but none of them really is Hamlet or Ophelia.
Imagine for a moment a play in which the actors become the characters they played on stage, off stage, and you will have an idea of what Hirshmann is about in claiming that human beings and their world are in no sense given or natural, but [their] desires, preferences, beliefs, values -- indeed, the way in which [they] see the world and define reality are only social constructs playing the parts, gender roles, which have been constructed for them.
Implicit in the idea of the social construct of gender roles is that while a person at birth is male or female, as distinguished by the genitalia, a person's birth gender is neuter, as in no sense given or natural. Oh, that Hamlet's uncle or mother would have remained a neuter!
So now, we can ask the students this question: Do you think of yourself as a father or do you think of yourself as a mother?
Given that being a father is not a matter of one's given biological nature but of playing the dominant, courageous and aggressive gender role, and being a mother is not a matter of one's given biological nature, but of playing the submissive, timid and sensitive gender role, then a women can be a gender-role father to her son and a man can be a gender-role mother to his daughter.
This results in a pretend world in which no one is true to his being and everyone is playing at being something which is not given or natural. We are now left with the feminist ideologues' idea of emasculated men and effete women in a world in no sense natural or given in which they are trying to engineer children and students after a nihilistic vision of sameness in preparation for neuterdom.
In 2008, I would not be able to answer the gender identity questions (which would never have been asked of me in 1971) because I do not have a gender. Furthermore, I do not think of myself as masculine, feminine, or some combination of the two, which means I cannot think of myself as wanting to be more masculine or feminine. Finally, I cannot think of how my life would change if I woke up as a member of the opposite sex because I am what I am -- complex -- and that is a given. *
"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." --G. K. Chesterton
Dear Editor:
In the December, 2007, issue, Herbert London stands firm, but Allan Brownfield gets caught in the "conservatism" web. As Gerhart Niemeyer saw, such terms suffer from illusive meanings and thus warrant only "secondary importance."1 Mr. Brownfield's "conservative" authorities (no less than Modern Age's) reveal not only America's generation gap but also an unavoidable conservative gap. (His reference to Burke recalls our own exchange earlier this year, reflecting, in my opinion, a serious misreading of the great Whig that deserves correction. The same occurs Modern Age's 50th anniversary issue -- a "conservative" symposium.) Some conservatives are more "conservative" than others, which is why the term is less helpful than a Burkean argument based on specific facts and circumstances, not abstractions, etc. What follows, in hopes your esteemed advisors are open to what M. E. Bradford might term "the critical imperative" regarding Mr. Brownfield's query, "Where does conservatism go from here?" is an adaptation of my comments to Modern Age editors.
Mr. Brownfield seems to be in the ranks of those who voted for G. W. Bush only to become disenchanted. In part, I join them, with regard to excessive spending and over-reaching "compassionate" programs hoping to charm the opposite Party and the women's vote (on which more below). Analyzing the situation in terms of "conservatism," however, is like arguing for ordered freedoms in terms of Tom Brady's passing stats. It is not "conservatism" to consider "inevitable" the gross revisionism undermining various areas of our heritage, etc. (e.g., shaming the justified 1942 relocation; neglect of Booker T. Washington vi-a-vis Martin Luther King Jr; the true fault for Wounded Knee and Sand Creek; true history, military and general; the cancer of public coeducation; shrill-voiced "judges'' and cops, etc.)
No frontline conservative is tackling the most basic aspect of society -- right order of the sexes -- deserving more than catering gallantly to the ladies. One "conservative" now delegates to women the management of Burke's "little platoons," a sales pitch intelligent women and Burke might question. As he wrote to the Duke of Portland on candidates, "Oldish men are not more fit to court the people than the Ladies -- nor is it very becoming . . ." (Sept. 3, 1780) His "little platoons" were instead local institutions and myriad human arrangements involving both men and women for which he quite often emphasized the importance of "manly" leadership not, in all honesty, to be expected from women, who work with their own womanly gifts. Of course the latter manage superbly in organizations, groups, etc., but understanding the complementarity of the sexes remains the key to civil society.
Mr. Brownfield quotes David Brooks on Burke's "modern conservatism" -- reliance on tradition and settled ways -- to show how President Bush has erred trying to pacify Iraq, the latter obviously being a huge undertaking. With other conservatives, they scorn this as a Bushian misstep, forgetting our successful 1940s efforts in Japan and Germany, also huge undertakings. More on this below.
I'll touch on two aspects -- conservative avoidance of feminism, and the Iraq venture -- to offer more robust lessons, e.g., from Burke. As mentioned, I agree that President Bush's administration leaves a lot to be desired but for different reasons than Mr. Brownfeld's authorities, none of whom mention the co-ed military and service academies, sending young mothers or girls in general to fight our war; Dewey, unions and the Department of Education; Titles VII and IX as to sex; etc., all of which need confronting. Edmund Burke put it well, writing passionately of the French mob's treatment of Marie Antoinette, with resonance for the experience of American female soldiers caught in combat:
Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. -- But the age of chivalry is gone. -- That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. . . . The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone!
And Adam Smith, too, on:
. . . violation of these exact decorums which ought to be observed in the conservation of the two sexes. . . . They are generally violations of a pretty plain rule, and at least in one of the sexes, tend to bring ignominy upon the person who has been guilty of them, and consequently to be attended in the scrupulous with some degree of shame and contrition of mind.
David Brooks's deferring to Burke for "suspicion of radical change" is on target until he uses it to criticize our Iraq project, while neglecting the "radical changes" our government attempted in the 1960s-1980s concerning the human sexes. The Iraq project is not over and needs support, not back-biting (see below); the sexual experiment, too, is far from resolved and needs Burkean correction!
Another example of "where conservatism might go from here" is being offered in Fresno, where a jury composed of 11 women and one man came up with an irrational, unjust verdict rashly awarding $19+ million in damages against the university for firing a female coach for just cause. Opinion, of course, is divided, which only reflects the stark division that men have caused since Tocquevillian days when men and women were stronger and more orderly. The coach's conduct was considered "bizarre" by many, characterized by drugs, sex, and "provocative and cleavage baring game-time dress," making her, in the Fresno Bee's opinion, the "loser" (hardly a preponderance of evidence in her favor!) yet the jurors awarded her millions. It suggests a miscarriage of justice, with many letter writers seeing it as another O. J. Simpson case, when the jury also was mostly female. For the more objective men and women, it is apparent that if this is "sex equality," we should go back to discriminating as to sex! If Mr. Brownfield wants to know "where conservatism goes from here," he'll have to deal with this issue.
In complaining of Bush's efforts in Iraq, etc., Mr. Brownfield's authorities resort to debatable precedents. Mr. Brooks' version of Burke ignores the full context of Burke's thought (discussed in part below), which suggests a manlier warrior spirit than some conservatives possess today. A true conservative would gut it out to support those who are serving in Iraq until the task is done, then assess the experience intelligently. As for deferring to Eisenhower for a more cautious, conservative strategy against our efforts in Iraq, one can't ignore that D-Day was no predetermined romp, and later if he had supported Eden in the Suez, who knows, terrorists might have gotten a different message and abstained from 1990s terrorism and 9/11, etc. Reagan at least put up a fight, as did the Thatcher government, and Muslims got the message. Clinton's halfhearted efforts in the Balkans also might have encouraged 9/11, etc. Some conservatives seem to have an inbuilt animus against fighting wars, which is probably natural but inevitably unrealistic. A man and a country must know how and when to fight, and current protestors are out of their league.
As for Edmund Burke's thought on the subject, consider his comments on Britain's 1797 militia being limited to home defense despite the threat from the new republican France:
I think I see nothing short of the total and inevitable ruin of the Kingdom, even in the means that seem to be provided for its safety. When I see an Army, amounting, as I hear, in both Kingdoms to 150,000 Men, who, by the very terms and conditions of their Service, cannot strike a blow at any Enemy, I see already a fatal determination of the War. What has an enemy to fear from a Nation who confines herself to an inert, passive, domestic defense? By continually threatening, tho' without ever striking a blow, and by the demonstration of the smallest forces, they can ruin you in your resources of revenue and of Credit. This is matter of demonstration, if not of intuitive certainty. To say that this is more agreeable to the People, is to say nothing, when the question is concerning, not their humour, but their existence.2
Iraq is no Vietnam, where the threat was remote, whereas Bin Laden, al Qaeda, Saddam, militant Islam, etc., actually threaten our neighborhoods.
Brooks sees that, rather than docile acceptance of ideologies, Burke strongly resisted innovations to the end, exemplified by his well-known advice about resisting evil -- needing only good men to take action, etc. One wishes Brooks saw feminism for the false ideology it is! The problem with too many conservatives (even the older ones!) is that they haven't studied feminism enough to realize that its premises are wrong, dishonest, and inevitably asocial and evil -- the essence of false ideology that Burke would have resisted. Please let me elaborate.
Frankly, it seems inevitably to reflect a younger group not as attuned to full immersion as the former thinkers. I blame co-education and, despite being ignored by the symposium, the inroads from decades of Titles VII and IX. Among other results, the Fresno jury coupled with the O. J. jury, the ugly disharmony and artlessness nationwide should be a wake-up call! As Anthony Esolen puts the call, "modern men and women should clear their heads, admit their follies, and learn to live with one another in as much harmony as a fallen world will admit." (More on my "call" below.) Would Burke's "good men" be so "suspicious of rapid reform" and fearful of "lamentable conclusions" as simply to do nothing, nor even say nothing?
Messrs. Brownfield and Brooks use their slant on Burkean "prudence" to argue against our effort in Iraq, while others are using it for other reasons, e.g., to accept laws banning "sex discrimination." In both cases, the premises are wrong.
Perhaps it boils down to accuracy of perception. When conservatives, whether thinking of Iraq or any other issue, quote Burke on:
. . . the science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori . . . it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society or on building it up again without having models of approved utility before his eyes.
They're unaware that Burke is not advising inaction but rather manly wisdom to do what is right, requiring thought, study, debate, honesty, knowledge. The above passage is the crux of the matter. Are conservatives assuming that what we have now is the "edifice" deserving prudent protection? If so, this is our difference, since I believe the better case can be made for pre-1950s America as the edifice worth protecting, with its virile roots still existing. Those who dismiss this as "the day before yesterday," or "an earlier system" are not Burkean! Nor is that earlier era passe because of a supposed finality of the "women's revolution," when it was only a feminist "revolution" and, being a false ideology, spurious. (Truly, a masquerade. In all of history there has never been a matriarchy, so how in a few years one now?) From their remarks, surprisingly, many conservatives appear to have been feminized, or taken in by what Burke would call feminist Jacobins.
Some conservatives rely on a passage from Burke's 1791 Thoughts on French Affairs in which he writes of being "perverse and obstinate" against a "mighty current in human affairs" obeying "the decrees of Providence," thinking this shows that Burke, "without abandoning his criticism of abstract ideology . . . now understood the irresistible character of social forces when they move toward institutional and cultural change." With such a general mindset apparently, they surrender to feminism, thinking that Burke accepted a halfway position between the right and the wrong.
However, they're ignoring the full testimony, as aptly presented not only by Burke but also by a St. Croix Review fan, Russell Kirk. Although Burke was "deeply discouraged" in 1791, seeing the dangers in France still being ignored by most despite his dogged warnings, he nevertheless continued to encourage resistance, not docile surrender as apparently some conservatives favor. In his 1795 letter to William Elliot, Burke wrote, urging men:
. . . to assert the honor of the ancient law and to defend the temple of their forefathers with as ardent a spirit as can inspire any innovator to destroy the monuments of the piety and the glory of ancient ages. . . . It is not a hazarded assertion, it is a great truth, that when once things are gone out of their ordinary course, it is by acts out of the ordinary course they can alone be reestablished. . . . I would persuade a resistance both to the corruption and to the reformation that prevails. It will not be the weaker, but much the stronger, for combating both together. A victory over real corruptions would enable us to baffle the spurious and pretended reformations. I would not wish to excite . . . that kind of evil spirit . . . to rectify the disorders of the earth. No! I would add my voice with better, and, I trust, more potent charms, to draw down justice and wisdom and fortitude from heaven, for the correction of human vice, and the recalling of human error from the devious ways into which it has been betrayed.3
As Kirk realized, despite Leo Strauss's misinterpreting it to show Burke's capitulation to "progress," in his "Thoughts" he was actually:
. . . endeavoring to be a Providential instrument of (resistance to the French Revolution). Strauss scarcely seems to be aware that Burke was demanding . . . an assault "with guns blazing" on revolutionary France; Burke was the "last-ditch resistance." Like Cato at Utica, Burke would not have chosen to survive the triumph of the enemies of freedom.4
As Kirk put it, with cogence for American males nagging about Iraq or trying to justify the abstraction of "women's equality," "one does not volunteer to be an instrument of a retributory Providence against one's own country." Much like "conservatives" in America today, the English resisted Burke's urgings until too late and became involved in two decades of destruction.
. . . at that hour, imagination and conviction were lacking in the English government and among the allies generally, and the opportunity was lost.5
The fact that neither Burke nor, years later, Russell Kirk (to my knowledge) said anything about feminism, suggests that its transience renders it neither a credible factor nor an edifice needing defending. For them the edifice was based on religion and settled folkways. The suffragettes came in the 19th century but were mostly disgruntled women and not mainstream women, any more than the Friedan/Greer modern manifestations of feminism were after the 1950s. Knowledge of the slapdash 1964 legislation and the minimal feminist rhetoric up to then and even later should dispel any honest thought of a settled "revolution"; and the growing dysfunction from Titles VII and IX (e.g., rogue female juries and leftward voting pattern) only shows the weakness of such innovations -- spurious innovations that true Burkeans would resist manfully.
Thus it is surprising and disappointing that scholars who should be more knowledgeable now surrender to an "edifice" or "revolution" that is mere puff and huff and has never been established for a free people. Again, since in all of history there has never been a matriarchy, those who assume one now are misguided. The evidence is ample that men and women are still different and destined for complementary roles despite current pretense of "my fair ladies" being used by political men or editors to get votes and power, or sell more books.
To think now that experts on "American Conservatism" don't fully understand Edmund Burke or feminism is not reassuring. The reality cries out for attention on TV, the radio, in the corridors of power. How would Burke or Kirk deal with stunning TV belles nightly portraying severely dishonest male roles contrasting starkly with more honest beauties a la Audrey Hepburn or Mona Lisa? Listen to the Voices!
Sincerely,
W. Edward Cynoweth
[Mr. Chynoweth would like to correct the record: he is a retired deputy D.A. for Tulare County, CA, and not for San Francisco]
P.S. Drawing again on our exchange last to clarify Messrs. Brownfield & Brooks's views on "the Burkean conservative," some further examples of Burke's "prudence" or "satisfaction with obtaining what is possible, in a bite-sized and gradual manner if necessary," gleaned from Peter Stanlis's Edmund Burke: The Enlightenment and Revolution [Burke's words appear within quotation marks] :
. . . prudence has both a negative and positive character (p. 90) . . . According to Burke, in reforming abuses in society a temperate man will be moderate in his expectations and actions. Such moderation is not to be confused with cowardly equivocation; quite the contrary, it takes bold moral courage to be temperate in the face of popular pressure to be extreme. . . . "The impetuous desire of an unthinking public will endure no course, but what conducts to splendid and perilous extremes. Then to dare to be fearful, when all about you are full of presumption and confidence, and when those who are bold at the hazard of others would punish your caution and disaffection, is to show a mind prepared for its trial; it discovers, in the midst of general levity, a self-possession and collected character, which, sooner or later, bids to attract every thing to it, as to a centre." (p. 91)
If this passage were not enough to acquit Burke of being through prudence an unscrupulous calculator, conniver, or moral coward, Burke's whole practical political career is the best answer to such a misrepresentation. . . Goldsmith's line is literally true; Burke was "too fond of the right to pursue the expedient." Because of his refusal to be corrupted by the crown, Burke spent most of his political career with the loyal opposition. (pp. 91-92)
When rulers violated the principles of Natural Law or the constitutional laws that defined their power, they were in revolution, and the revolt of subjects against the arbitrary will of such tyrannical rulers in order to restore their natural and constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, was really a counterrevolution on traditional grounds. (p. 203)
Although Burke believed that obedience to a duly constituted government was the normal duty of every subject and citizen, he clearly did not defend every established regime out of reverence for the status quo, without regard to how the regime used or abused its political power. . . . Therefore, rulers are held strictly accountable, and when they abuse their power by violating Natural Law and the constitutional rights of their subjects, and reject reforms that would end their abuse, they should be resisted by every available means, including rebellion. In October 1789, Burke wrote to his young French friend M. Depont: "A positively Vicious and abusive Government ought to be chang'd, and if necessary, by Violence, if it cannot be, (as sometimes is the case) Reformed." On the level of abstract principle, Burke agreed with Jefferson that resistance to tyrants is obedience to God. (p. 204)
As for the East India Company:
"I therefore conclude . . . that this body, being totally perverted from the purposes of its institution, is utterly incorrigible, and because they are incorrigible, both in conduct and constitution, power ought to be taken out of their hands, -- just on the same principles on which have been made all the changes and revolutions of government that have taken place since the beginning of the world."
Burke advocated rescinding the charter of the East India Company, not only because it had forfeited its trust, but for justice to the people of India. British misrule in India was to Burke a classic instance of the just principle that rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God. (p. 206)
Aside from prudence's "purely social character" of "decorum, tact, and reserve," and checking "raw impulses and barbarous instincts, undisciplined emotions, and even bad taste," ". . . the soul of good manners, which acted as a supplement to ethics and civility in politics":
. . . Burke also stated that there was a "higher order" of prudence as a moral virtue, which transcended mere intellectual calculation. In times of great social and political crisis, the higher order of prudence required of a statesman the courage of a martyr, to resist single-handedly, if necessary, any currently popular political concept or project that would vitiate the basic norms of society, the constitutional restraints on political power that safeguarded life, liberty, and property. (p. 211)
The distinction seems clear. He advised gradualism in reform projects but he distinguished mere reform from resisting or rolling back revolution that violated the norms of society, which I contend the 20th century legislation tampering with long established social/sexual arrangements did. (George Gilder refers to them as our "sexual constitution.") And the nefarious results are piling up. Again, whether one agrees will depend on how one sees the issues of "rights." One either sees the danger or one doesn't. Personally, I believe that American husbands, brothers, and sons have strayed too far from the 19th century wisdom of those like Dicey who considered the principles of self-government more important than the more recent ideas (Jacobinic, revolutionary, unnatural) of "rights" and "equality."
P.P.S. G. K. Chesterton also reminds us that:
. . . government is only one side of life. The other half is called society, in which women are admittedly dominant. And they have always been ready to maintain that their kingdom is better than ours because (in the logical and legal sense) it is not governed at all. . . . A snub from a duchess or a slanging from a fish-wife are much more likely to put things straight. So, at least, rang the ancient female challenge down the ages until the recent capitulation. So streamed the red standard of the higher anarchy until Miss Pankhurst hoisted the white flag.6
G.K. Chesterton's assessment again, "appealing to the cold facts of history":
. . . the freedom of the autocrat appears to be necessary to her. . . . Almost every despotic or oligarchic state has admitted women to its privileges. Scarcely one democratic state has ever admitted them to its rights. The reason is very simple: That something female is endangered much more by the violence of the crowd. In short, one Pankhurst is an exception, but a thousand Pankhursts are a nightmare, a Bacchic orgy, a Witches Sabbath. For in all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd . . .
The huge fundamental function upon which all anthropology turns, that of sex and childbirth, has never been inside the political state, but always outside of it. The state concerned itself with the trivial question of killing people, but wisely left alone the whole business of getting them born. . . . You need not strangle a man if you can silence him. The branded shoulder is less effective and final than the cold shoulder; and you need not trouble to lock a man in when you can lock him out.7
"No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session." --Judge Gideon Tucker
1 William S. Miller, "Gerhart Niemeyer: His Principles of Conservatism," Modern Age, Summer, 2007.
2 "Letter to George Canning," 3/1/1797 (Shortly before his death) Selected Letters, p. 356, (Chicago U.).
3 The Best of Burke, edited by Peter Stanlis (Regnery), p. 661.
4 Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered (Sherwood Sugden), p. 185.
5 Ibid. p. 190.
6 What's Wrong With the World, "The Higher Anarchy," Collected Works, Vol. IV, Ignatius Press, pp. 141-2.
7 "The Higher Anarchy," "The Queen & the Suffragettes," What's Wrong With the World (Ignatius), Vol. IV, pp. 142, 146.
Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. He is author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004) and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007).
I discovered William F. Buckley, Jr. in the late 1980s as an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh, where I was a pre-med student preparing for a career in organ transplantation. I was bitten by the political bug. It was a consequence of the times: the Reagan years, the end of the Cold War, tumultuous changes in the world. I soon found myself blowing off my Genetics exam to feed a growing obsession with politics, reading every newspaper I could get my hands on, and digging through microfiche to satiate a newfound infatuation with the Cold War.
I was also discovering I was a conservative. And it was that growing ideological realization that prompted me one day to ask my father where I could go to find a conservative magazine. Did such a publication exist? He responded without hesitation: "Buckley's magazine." I replied, "Buckley's magazine? What's that?" My dad answered: National Review.
I hopped in the car and headed to Walden Books at Clearview Mall in Butler, Pennsylvania. I found it -- National Review. I couldn't put it down. There was nothing else like it -- nothing. The quality of the writing, the material, the insights, the intellect, the logic, the common-sense thinking combined with erudition, the overall smartness. I read it cover to cover, including the articles I didn't understand. I allowed the thing to teach me. "Malcolm Muggeridge, who's he?" I read and learned. I was enthralled.
That magazine led me in the direction of an entirely different field of study, to where I ended up a professor teaching and writing about those very issues and ideas.
Yet, Buckley impacted me more than that, even though I never met the man. I recall one day almost 10 years ago when I was meeting with Lee Edwards, another leader of the conservative movement, who was at Grove City College to do research for a history of the college. I told Lee about the book I wanted to write on Reagan and the end of the Cold War, and how I needed some funding to be able to go to the Reagan Library to do research. Lee suggested I put together a brief proposal, noting his endorsement, and send it to a small, under-the-radar foundation begun by Buckley to support projects like these by young conservative academics. I did just that, and received a check shortly thereafter. It ultimately led to two books on Reagan, God and Ronald Reagan and The Crusader. When I sent Buckley a copy of the manuscript for the first book, he responded with a short note, dated May 22, 2002, offering a nugget of advice on where to publish the work before closing, "I'm glad the little foundation was helpful in getting this done."
He was helpful in a yet deeper way. Though I do not want to overstate this, I can honestly say that Buckley, and more specifically, his magazine, had a profound effect on me spiritually. When I began reading National Review I was an agnostic, having abandoned the faith of my upbringing. Like many young folks at major secular universities, especially in the hard sciences, I had forsaken the God of Scripture for the idols of evolution, secularism, nihilism, and all the wasteful, destructive idiocy that saturates the tragic insanity of modern academia. I had come to National Review through an interest in politics, but soon discerned that these brilliant writers, whom I respected so much, just happened to be Christians who seamlessly integrated their religion into their politics -- faith with reason, Christianity with conservatism. They fit beautifully. This set me on a path to the Christian faith. I will not proclaim that William F. Buckley, Jr. and National Review "saved my soul," but they no doubt led me in the right direction.
Lastly, on a slightly bitter note, I'm offended -- but not surprised -- by the conservative outlets who have barely acknowledged Buckley's death. They are sadly symptomatic of a culture that lives strictly in the here and now, where only something new is deemed newsworthy, and only then for a few minutes. Do these conservatives not know that they stand not only Buckley's shoulders but in his shadow? He was their forerunner, the voice in the wilderness long before their existence was considered tolerable let alone possible. He never made the mistake of being defined by the moment, which is why he was the quintessential conservative.
William F. Buckley, Jr. and the movement he founded transcended a single news cycle and even a single generation. He stood astride America yelling "stop" for over 50 years. Now, let us pause to honor him with his due respect. *
"All that the law can do is to shape things so that no injustice shall be done by one to the other, and that each man shall be given the first chance to show the stuff that is in him." --Theodore Roosevelt
There is a lot of talk about education, but the word is not defined properly. The popular understanding of education is development of a skill. You need knowledge, or skill, to become an electrician, lawyer, or physician. Education in the broadest sense is an understanding of life, what we can honestly believe, a grip on fundamentals. Everyone searches for this but few find it, or find it differently; some become Republicans or Democrats or Socialists or blends of each. Most are happy keeping the faith of their fathers, leave the problem to others, concentrate on money, or athletics, or entertainment, or conclude someone else can pursue lofty goals and it is enough to marry and have wonderful children. So it is, but it would be pleasant and beneficial to ourselves and to others if we gave some time to education in the broadest sense.
My parents had a sixth grade education and were honest. My father believed preachers formed a starving profession of hypocrites -- before I decided to be one. He became mellow with the passing of time. I don't know if others can appreciate the turmoil I had in a theological seminary keeping my honesty in an environment of dogmatic theology. Students had to lead in devotions and one of my first sermons was based on the text, "The word of God is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword." I was of the opinion men wrote the Bible, looking for God, and I even had the notion they could be wrong. Some of the Psalms are, unless you are beastly. I was not as extreme as it sounds because many of our professors were of a similar point of view, though they were discreet. We had studied Biblical scholarship and knew not only the Scriptures but how they were written. We also studied church history that had a lot to say about heresy, the blessings of it on many occasions and how the church institution had to learn and change.
Reading more than theology and church history, I discovered in 1945 The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant, and that changed my life. Within twelve months I was on my way to the United States. I was 22 at the time and knew I was a misfit, as Australia did not have a large enough population to include odd clerics. The United States, on the other hand, had a large population. I gambled I could find a home in this country.
To make a long story short, I found myself in the graduate department of Philosophy of Columbia University where I received a Ph.D. in intellectual history. My doctoral thesis was a comparison of Jacques Maritain and Henri Bergson. Maritain was a Protestant who became a conservative Catholic and Bergson was a Jew who became a simple Christian. All of this in a secular university! Religion was presented with sympathy and clarity. Bergson was killed as a Jew during World War II. Led to the scaffold, he wrote his name "Henri Bergson, Jew."
Another interesting detail. One of my interests at Columbia was 14th century logic. Though it is not well known that logic overturned what was called the realism of the Middle Age and began the empirical world. Realism was the doctrine that general terms have or describe real existence. I chose Nominalism, the name of the modern point of view that only individuals exist. I wanted to write a thesis on the nature of connections as presented in 14th century logic but Professor Herbert Schneider, my favorite professor, urged me to stay in the field of religion!
If you want to be educated you will have to do it yourself. There is no way you can get an education in a university, any university, because you cannot spend your life in school. Also, professors spend their lives with children and you must be an adult. An argument can be made that professors do not make intelligent company because they do not combine practice and learning.
You need history books. A splendid series I have used most of my adult life is The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant, in eleven volumes, some of them up to a thousand pages. Don't worry about the size; you have the rest of your life to browse. An interesting detail: when Will and Ariel were married, she came to the church on her skates. They were nice people. A good many years ago I helped a lady, doing what I do not remember. She had no money, and I didn't ask for any, but she gave me forty volumes of the history of the United States! That series is 100 years out of print, but there are histories of all kinds, easily available, which will lead to your education.
Education is the search to find ourselves. This is important in a world that concentrates on social action with unclear presuppositions. Values are back to front. *
[J]udges, therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests; they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men." --John Adams
The quotes following each article have been gathered by The Federalist Patriot at: http://FederalistPatriot.US/services.asp.
A Day of Reckoning, by Patrick J. Buchanan. St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10010, ISBN 0-312-37696-0, $25.95.
Patrick J. Buchanan has written Day of Reckoning in the hope that it will be used in the upcoming presidential elections. Less than 300 pages, it is easy to read. You should read the book because he is writing intelligently about the United States today, her problems, and her needs. Our future will be decided by our reactions to the problems discussed.
We were founded as a Christian nation, under God. Our coins still say "In God we trust," but that is a relic of the past. We believe in money, success, sex, and whatever may be popular. Prayer is out, as are the Ten Commandments. Anything of our Christian heritage is ruled unconstitutional. The U.S. Constitution says there will be no establishment of religion, meaning that no church may receive financial support from the government. An expression of our Christian faith has nothing to do with the establishment of religion. The practical meaning of the refusal to express our faith means there will be no expression of faith. We are commanded to be a secular society with no definite faith.
Though we are not clear in understanding what we believe, we evangelize the world for others to be as we are. They do not believe we have the right to tell them what to believe and how to govern themselves. Washington and Hamilton thought we should be a self-sufficient country and avoid foreign entanglements.
We are committed to a Pax Americana, committed to the defense of Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Pakistan, Australia, Latin America, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, anyone in Europe, and anyone else we support. Absurd!
We have lost the friendship we have had in recent years with Russia. That the two greatest nuclear powers of the world are critical of each other is worse than tragic. NATO has been planted on Russia's doorstep. U.S. bases have been planted in former Soviet republics. We have interfered in the elections of Kiev, Tbilisi, Minsk, and have bombed Serbia. Fifty-eight percent of Russian citizens look on America with hostility. President Putin lashed out at us saying we are re-igniting the Cold War: "We have the right to ask against whom is this expansion directed." There can be no denial these movements have been directed against Russia. We can understand why some countries will look to a leader they can trust, and want to keep for many years, who will save their country, someone who will protect them from the whims of aggressors.
We are not a democracy but a republic and the difference is important. A republic is more temperate, slower to act, and only after considerable discussion with complicated divisions of authority. Democracy looks for unanimity of opinion and action. A republic is interested in the internal affairs of the country and goes with the least amount of foreign affairs. Let each be committed to its own affairs.
On March 23, 2005, President Bush chaired a summit with President Fox of Mexico and Prime Minister Martin of Canada to form a Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. The idea was to weld the three countries with steel railways and concrete highways as such highways united the United States. The notion is without merit because it would attempt to unite nations of different personalities. The personality of a country is formed by its history that in turn forms local and national habits. Americans are a unique people dominated by daring ventures. Canadians are cautious. Mexicans are lethargic. Each is best left alone.
Pat Buchanan has the unpopular notion that free trade is an error. In 2006 we had a trade deficit of $233 billion with China. Advocates of free trade say this is a Chinese subsidy for American consumers. So it is, but we sell the family estate so we can live the high life in the city. In a healthy society, production comes before consumption. What matters in the long run is not who consumes the apples but who owns the orchard. In 1994 China devalued her currency by 45 percent for domestic products while doubling the cost of imported goods.
In 2006 our trade deficit was $764 billion. The deficit in goods was $836 billion. In manufactures $536 billion. The trade deficit in autos and trucks $145 billion. The trade deficit with China was $233 billion, with Japan $88 billion, with Mexico $60 billion. In 1943-44, at the height of World War II, 40 percent of U.S. jobs were in manufacturing. Today it is ten percent. We are shipping our manufactures overseas.
As a result of our deficits huge wealth has grown up overseas, huge capital funds owned by other governments. By mid-2007 they amounted to $5.4 trillion: China $1.3 trillion, Japan $900 million, Russia $315 billion, Kuwait $500 billion, United Arab Emirates about $1 trillion. Rather than put this money in U.S. assets at 4 to 5 percent they are invested around the world. Sadly, the world is constantly at war, and war is fought not only by arms, but with money.
We could go on and on about this, but to no purpose. The problem is to know what to do about it .The fundamental problem is to preserve our wealth by manufacturing. It may not be the whole answer, but we could begin with the practice of our Founding Fathers at the beginning of our history. After all, the country is always at a new beginning. The Founding Fathers taxed imports to pay for the cost of government and all exports were tax exempt, benefiting local industry. That is what is done to us and we must do as we are done to.
--Angus MacDonald
America Challenged: Issues Foreign and Domestic, by Dwight D. Murphey, Council for Social and Economic Studies, PO Box 34070, Washington DC, 20043, ISBN 0-930690-60-5, pp. 124.
Dwight Murphey is a follower of Pat Buchanan, in this book he refers to most of the books Buchanan has written, and his views supplement those of Buchanan. Thus this book, which is composed of thoughtful reviews of other books, takes on a pessimistic, siege mentality. He questions the viability of the free markets, and sees the world, and the United States, becoming even further polarized than it is now, between the very wealthy and the masses of unemployed poor. The polarization is exacerbated along racial and tribal divisions, multiplying the quantity of hatred in the world.
Murphey sees the infusion of different ethnicities into the U.S. as a contagion that will undermine our shared identity and traditions. There is an intellectual elite ensconced in positions of power, seeking to undermine every institution we conservatives hold dear, and they are making great progress.
He seems to take grim satisfaction in playing Cassandra, believing the genius and drive that has brought America to its present level of prosperity has been spent. Our accumulated cultural accomplishments are headed for the ash heap. We may have been able to put a man on the moon, (to what purpose, really?) but don't look for us to able rise above racial animosity, class warfare, and economic decline by mid-century. This book is not about solutions, only problems, which is a bit ironic really, in that Dr. Murphey would seem to be defending Western culture and American traditions, yet he himself is devoid of the can-do spirit that has typified American culture up to this point.
The problems Dwight Murphey focuses on are real and troubling. Any conservative would agree that these issues do constitute significant challenges that need attending to.
He traces the alienation and hatred of the "modern intellectual" back to Rousseau, who was one of the first to place himself outside civilization and attack it. Today Leftist intellectuals seek allies among the disaffected and unassimilated. Grievances are cultivated, differences are exaggerated, resentments intensified, antagonisms driven ever deeper among third world immigrants, non-white ethnic groups, and feminists. The white race is the oppressor and everyone else is a victim. The Left hates America and aims to destroy it. Not only America but Western culture too is under attack: its history, symbols, norms, folkways, religious beliefs, and heroes. The Left is only too happy to use mass immigration as a means to bring down Western culture by turning new arrivals against our culture and discouraging assimilation.
Despite the fact that slavery, bonded labor and serfdom have been largely done away with, and that Western culture has been the instigator of the demise of these exploitive systems, and the impetus for a new freedom, it is Western culture that is blamed for continuing hardships. Under the influence of multiculturalism and political correctness every race and ethnic group (along with women too) is encouraged to castigate the Caucasians, but the Caucasians dare not defend themselves.
The perils of mass immigration are well examined by Dwight Murphey: the criminal gangs, the drain on health care and social systems, the formation of unassimilated areas that threaten to become permanent, balkanized, divisions. He points out that those who argue that illegal immigrants are performing an economic benefit to the country are unmindful that these immigrants, forced to live in the shadows, are exploited, and are the ready-made victims the Left uses to condemn America.
As shown by recent events -- Hillary Clinton coming to grief in a debate when she favored giving drivers' licenses to illegal immigrants, and the rejection of President Bush's comprehensive immigration plan last summer by an outraged public that perceived amnesty and half measures -- the American people of both parties are unsatisfied with the status quo. Illegal immigration weighs on the minds of ordinary Americans, Democrats and Republicans. We want solutions and will be hard on politicians who ignore the problem. There is talk, at least on the Republican side of the debate, on the need to control the borders, and to penalize employers of illegal immigrants. There is also concern expressed about the need for assimilating the immigrants that are here -- these are hopeful signs.
The Leftist intellectuals are a scourge, no question about it. They have infiltrated the public school systems, the universities, the law schools, and the judiciary. They have a home in the Democratic Party, in the media (except Fox News, talk radio, and important conservative blogs) and the entertainment industry. They have marched through the cultural institutions of the country, and yet, can we say that they have captured the hearts of ordinary Americans? Dwight Murphy writes, in one of the very few positive statements in the entire book, that: "The alienated subculture's main enemy hasn't come from an opposing ideology, but from the fact that the mass of humanity simply goes about its life." And so we do, because when it comes down to accepting the spiteful ideas of the Left, when they are revealed without subterfuge in the light of day, the decent, average, American recoils.
By the way, Dwight Murphey, writes "There has been little intellectual defense of the mainstream society of the modern West." Didn't Ronald Reagan formulate an ideological answer to the Left, and didn't he lead a powerful and effective movement, along with Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II? We will have to oppose the Left longer it seems than it took to defeat the Soviet Union, much longer. Opposing the Left is the purpose of the St. Croix Review.
Dwight Murphey describes his work as "ideologically non-conformist analysis," and so it is. He uses the very terms the Left does when criticizing the Bush administration's foreign policy. He writes of our "moral presumptuousness" and "messianic" preening. He believes we have unfairly branded Osama bin Laden a "fanatic" and that we "fail to come to grips in any serious way with the grievances he articulates. . . ." What about bin Laden's own presumption? He presumes to speak for all Muslims yet he has declared a vast number of fellow Muslims apostates, and al Qeada has murdered many more Muslims than Westerners, in many nations. Al Qeada has killed innocent women and children, and those who would not conform to his version of Islam, in the most barbarous manner. Dwight Murphey takes bin Laden's flimsy pretexts too seriously.
Dwight Murphey is on more solid ground when he reviews Amy Chua's World on Fire: Worldwide Ethnic Conflict and Its Implications for the United States (Anchor Books, 2004). Chau describes dozens of nations governed by ethnic or racial minorities who enjoy all the economic benefits while the majority are impoverished and powerless: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Burma, Burundi . . . India, Indonesia, Israel, . . . Panama, Philippines, Poland . . . Romania, Russia, Rwanda . . . etc. All these nations are torn by ethnic hatreds within their borders and or with neighbors. Chua and Murphey believe with justification that U.S. policy-makers have been ignorant of the histories and internal dynamics of other nations, and blundering where we have intervened (Somalia). Whether the U.S. would have been better off not invading Iraq should be debated. We need to remind ourselves of our limitations, and a little humility would be wise.
But Chua and Murphey contend that "exporting free market democracy breeds ethnic hatred and global instability." It is one thing to say that the United States should not intervene in the internal affairs of other nations except under compelling circumstances of national security, but to say that we should abandon our ideals is nonsense. In one place he writes that slavery, bonded labor, serfdom, and peonage have been done away with by Western culture, to the benefit of all, and in another he writes that it is none of our concern whether much of the world remains tribal, racist, tyrannical, and impoverished.
Dwight Murphey does acknowledge that the United States is an open society and "exceedingly vulnerable" to asymmetrical attack that could produce "hundreds of thousands, if not millions of casualties, as well as social and economic chaos," but he thinks we are "morally presumptuous" and "messianic" when we seek to lessen the frustration and misery in the world in a way that has worked for us: with free enterprise and the rule of law. The United States is threatened by the outer world's chaos, the way forward is uncertain and perilous, and Dwight Murphey is a little presumptuous in his criticism.
Dwight Murphey and Pat Buchanan distrust free markets. He quotes Buchanan approvingly: ". . . Buchanan calls the rage for globalization and free trade a form of 'neo-Marxist ideology,' since it posits 'that economics rules the world.'" To compare the system of thought that evolved into the liquidation of class enemies (mass murder), that practiced totalitarian control of the economy, and that sought world domination through armed conflict with free markets is crazy.
And here we come to the nub of the matter: Pat Buchanan and Dwight Murphey believe in Fortress America, and that we should turn our backs on a corrupt and irredeemable world. Logically if one disbelieves in free trade, why would our navy have to defend the sea-lanes from pirates, why would we have to defend South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan? There will always be in India "one million applicants for nine thousand technical jobs," and when the Indians can't find jobs in India they will take away jobs from Americans. Buchanan and Murphey believe that ordinary Americans cannot compete in an increasingly globalized economy, and so they favor government protection of U.S. industry. They take the view that if India and China get wealthier, we get must necessarily get poorer. When it comes to the economy they lack faith in the intelligence and motivation of the American people. They distrust free choice, even though it has been the operation of a capitalistic, free enterprise system (with some regulation) that has created unparalleled wealth and prosperity for Americans.
Isn't it better to believe that the world is better off with more free choices than fewer, with more wealth spread throughout, and fewer blood feuds, less tribalism, ethnic hatred, and religious animosity? America must take the steps necessary to defend itself, while at the same time not antagonizing the rest of the world -- this is not a simple matter. But turning our backs on the nations of the earth is not a solution.
--Barry MacDonald
Diana Sheets has a Ph.D. in European History, and is a Research Scholar in the English and History Departments at the University of Illinois. She has written two novels, The Cusp of Dreams and American Suite. She writes her own literary and political blog: www.LiteraryGulag.com
Those of us who desire to write the great American novel today are imprisoned within the Literary Gulag. We are the Defectors. As such, we refuse to embrace social causes oozing with "virtue." We look out upon the world to describe its circumstances. Outside our Gulag, however, the literary establishment has abandoned social realism for an interior realm saturated with social justice. These "virtue" seekers create stories about women and children and the socially disadvantaged. They condemn violence and erase "real" men from their fiction. The feminized readers of these tales cry. They imbibe the moral outrage convinced that they, too, will become "virtuous." This is the dismal state of fiction these days as innovation, truth, and excellence have been relegated to the Literary Gulag while the establishment extols its self-righteous "virtuosity."
For the Greeks, the word arete translates as both excellence and virtue with the implied search for truth. Plato, concerned with living the good life, noted that only under special circumstances are individuals able to tame their unruly appetites to devote their lives to the search for truth. Aristotle saw happiness as that "activity of the soul expressing virtue." For Zeno, virtue was the sole constituent of happiness. Birth, beauty, honors, and riches were secondary to virtue. (Darrin M. McMahon, Happiness, Grove).
Where would we find this Greek notion of virtue in literature today? Is it evident in Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and celebrated by the literati? Middlesex presents the story of a hermaphrodite of Greek heritage, Callie, a girl who at fourteen becomes Cal, the man. Might virtue be found in Jason Goodwin's The Snake Stone (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), a novel that has as its gumshoe, Investigator Yashim, a eunuch who solves mysteries in historic Istanbul? Never mind the story's Orientalist flavor, its metrosexual guile, its risque decadence implied by the surgical removal of testes-all the better for women to identify with the neutered, "sensitive" male. For the feminized readers of Middlesex and The Snake Stone, these novels achieve "virtue" by celebrating marginalized boys and men whom they may nurture as their own.
As we travel across the historical timeline from the ancient Greeks to our American Founders, the emphasis on virtue continues. The Founders placed great stock on character. Our revolutionary leaders were self-conscious and self-made. They embraced power and its institutions, though favoring a meritocracy that eschewed the aristocratic privilege of inheritance associated with "old" Europe. Disinterestedness in the pursuit of the greater public good was the sacrifice they saw as necessary for inspired leadership. Their beliefs were based on Enlightenment principles that advanced our nation and its polity. Virtue, in pursuit of excellence, lay at the foundation of these core values. For as John Adams noted, "public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics." A republic lasts, he argued, only so long as:
. . . a positive Passion for the public good, the public Interest . . . [is] established in the Minds of the People. . . . Superior to all private Passions. (Gordon S. Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, Penguin)
However, what happens to the principles of the Founders when they are presented within a contemporary literary context? Consider M. T. Anderson's The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party (Candlewick). It received the 2006 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. This historical novel is beautifully written and deftly plotted. It is a coming-of-age story that features a black youth, Octavian, who is raised in the home of enlightened philosophers on the eve of the American Revolution. Both the boy and his mother, an African priestess, are the subjects of experiments to demonstrate the genetic inferiority of Africans. The American Revolution breaks out. The African princess dies after she is given a vaccination at the Pox Party. Octavian runs away, eventually joining the Patriot cause as a musical performer. He is caught and brought back to the household where he is held captive until one of the instructors frees him. That is the story summary.
It is unlikely that Anderson's novel could have won the National Book Award except for its unremitting focus on social justice. The history of the American Revolution is presented against the backdrop of slavery, racism, human rights violations, and the ravages of war. The hypocrisy of the enlightenment and its neoclassical values is inferred as we witness Octavian's struggle to become free. The complex narrative style of the novel is ultimately overlooked by the critics because of the pious implications of the story -- the triumph of "virtue" over racial prejudice and white, male power. How else to explain the award of the National Book Award to one of the most "elitist" stories conceived for a young audience in years, except that it lays waste to the values of the Founders in an effort to ensure the ascendancy of social justice.
Today, the neoclassical ideals founded on virtue that form the basis of our character have been replaced by the relativistic values of a Godless civilization. "Lifestyle," the culminations of these values, is navigated by a protean Self, the arbiter and actuator of its own moral realm. (James Davison Hunter, The Death of Character, Basic). Literary fiction reflects these contemporary mores. It has become relativistic and solipsistic, donning the vestments of social justice at the expense of virtuous truths. It celebrates consciousness and interior thought while denigrating the discomforting landscape of the real. Not surprisingly, plot-driven stories with dialogue and violence are never the recipients of major literary awards.
This brings us to the realm of science. Since the time of Darwin, scientists have sought to examine "altruistic" and "cooperative behavior." The dispassionate language they employ reflects their research based on probabilistic reasoning founded on principles derived from the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. They pose the question, "Is altruistic behavior independent of self-interest or does it occur in order to serve the interest of the community by means of genetic advantage conferred to members of the tribe?" Recent studies in Game Theory suggest that human motivations are selfish and that cooperative behavior has been employed in order to further the individual and group prospects for survival.
Enter Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist whose discipline straddles the divide between the sciences and the humanities. He has argued in his book The Happiness Hypothesis (Basic), as well as a number of scientific publications, that our moral decisions are based on primitive emotional behavior developed prior to language and reasoned judgment. Consequently, rational analysis based on evidence is considered after we have already arrived at the emotional outlook that dictates our actions. As a scientist, he suggests that our motives are selfish, though he asserts that they are guided by moral norms.
Haidt questions the liberal assumptions that underlie the values of modern Western civilization. By his account, our society places emphasis on two tenets: 1) Do No Physical Harm (protect your kin and those most vulnerable) and 2) Do As You Would Have Done Unto You (reciprocity/fairness). However, he notes that traditional cultures rely on a much more elaborate and nuanced moral calculus that also includes 3) Respect for Authority (deference), 4) Purity and Sanctity (social and spiritual rituals that restrain excess), and 5) Loyalty to the In-Group (reward cooperators, punish defectors). Haidt suggests this traditional framework provides a far more comprehensive moral framework with which to deter selfishness and integrate members.
The implications of Haidt's argument are staggering. Modern Western society's reliance on "Do no Harm" and "Fairness" now forms the basis for our selection of literary stories. If we apply Haidt's analysis to consider the novels favored by publishers, literary critics, and the academic community we discover that this community rewards fiction that lays claim to "virtue" and consistently rejects stories that describe the discomforting circumstances of our reality except when these depictions present the triumph of social justice against the claims of "hegemony." These three "virtue" clusters -- publishers, literary critics, and the academic community -- constitute the in-group. This in-group dictates the narrow selection criteria for literary fiction: a subjective world residing entirely within the minds of the characters, an impassioned advocacy for the disadvantaged though necessarily presented in a manner devoid of economic and social realism, and a denunciation within these stories of masculine aggression in favor of idealized femininity and perpetual childhood. At no stage does the in-group acknowledge the corruption of the selection process or the cant of its espousal of diversity while systematically excluding all perspectives that challenge this orthodoxy.
How could it? To do so would necessitate a seismic rupture within the publishing, literary, and academic realm that would give rise to freedom.
The solution is as apparent as the light of reason. Embrace the neoclassical values of excellence directed toward the pursuit of truth, that which our forefathers referred to as virtue. Pursue this cause with the intent of the Founders, applying their disinterested scrutiny so that we might, once again, strive for exalted standards. Acknowledge science and the less than virtuous motivations that influence our actions but temper this understanding with morality shaped by character and driven to revitalize civilization. Celebrate writers of talent and inspiration who dare to describe in realistic detail the world in which we live so that our society may comprehend its failings, endeavor to improve, and aspire to all that is most noble. *
"Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness." --Samuel Adams