OK, everybody, setting aside our usual topics, here’s a question for you all:
What’s the greatest album of all time? (I originally wrote “rock album”, but let’s just make it “album”.) You only get to pick one.
All readers, even the most casual visitors, and all of you who usually stay on the sidelines, are invited to comment on this one.
We’re tuning out for the long weekend; I’m sure the world will manage to keep on going straight to hell without us for a couple of days.
Thanks as always for visiting, and please feel free to browse our endlessly fascinating archives, or to give the View a Random Post link a whirl.
On January 28th, as the ground was shifting in Egypt, our crack strategic-analysis team here at waka waka waka saw a critical opportunity for the Muslim Brotherhood, and predicted that the Ikhwan would step smartly into the breach. We wrote:
Nature abhors a vacuum, and although the newspapers have so far reported that religious groups appear not to have played much part in the uprising, anyone who has paid any attention to Egypt’s modern history will know that the principal opponent of the secular Egyptian dictatorship is, and has always been, the Muslim Brotherhood ”” the patient, hydra-headed global Islamist organization (its front groups include Hamas in Gaza, and CAIR in the US) that has been awaiting its chance in Egypt for decades (and which of course has never forgotten the execution of its chief political theorist, Sayyid Qutb, by Nasser in 1966).
The Muslim Brotherhood (or “Ikhwan’) differs from militant Islamist factions like al-Qaeda not in its goals, which are more or less the same, but only in its strategy: it has no moral or philosophical aversion to violent jihad, but considers it unnecessarily provocative, and therefore counterproductive. As such, it can make an ostentatious public display of distancing itself from terrorism, and so it is embraced by gullible Westerners ”” for whom the only imaginable threat from Islam is terrorist violence ”” as a “moderate’ Muslim organization to be supported and embraced. This suits the Ikwhan, whose avowed strategy is to sabotage secular democratic societies from within, just fine.
The Obama administration, however, which has made “outreach’ to the Muslim world a priority (even going so far as to make NASA’s “foremost’ mission helping Muslims “feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering’) clearly feels the the Muslim Brotherhood is an outfit it can do business with. We should not be surprised to see ”” in fact we should be astonished not to see ”” the Ikwhan seizing the opportunity now taking shape in Cairo, for which it has worked and waited so long. We should also not be surprised to learn that they will do so with the overt or covert support of the United States: so broad is the Brotherhood’s influence in Egypt that it is almost unimaginable that they will not take the reins, and you can be sure that Foggy Bottom and the Oval Office have already made the appropriate calculations.
At the time, this aroused skeptical indignation in some of our readers. However, five months having passed, we note this item in today’s news:
U.S. recognizes Muslim Brotherhood
As Philip K. Dick said: “Reality is what doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it.”
With a hat-tip to Bill Vallicella, here’s a heretical item from the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University, William Happer, on a topic we’ve taken up in these pages from time to time.
Well, here’s a shocker. Whoever could have imagined such a thing?
Are the Wealthiest Countries the Smartest Countries?
Actually, what’s shocking is not so much the rediscovery of the obvious truth that human capital matters — but that the story has actually been picked up by the press (it’s all over the place this morning).
Expect some push-back. This is the sort of thing, after all, that has implications.
I haven’t said much of anything about the passage of the gay-marriage bill; I haven’t really had a dog (or a God) in that particular fight. I have gay friends and I’m happy for them, but I also see it as a relatively benign symptom of a much larger process: an ever-expanding radical anti-discrimination in Western culture that, because it is ideologically absolutist, has taken the form of a lethal auto-immune disease.
Lawrence Auster makes this point very well indeed this morning:
It is sort of an ultimate proof that the concept of equality cannot be kept within rational and sane limits, as American conservatives have always believed it can be. Once equality becomes the ruling political and moral principle of a society, it will proceed over time, notwithstanding all objections to the contrary, to demand the equalization of everything. Thus that supreme statement of classical liberalism in its American incarnation, the Declaration of Independence, with its idea of an inherent equality of rights among human beings, has evolved over time into a radical egalitarian doctrine of equality of results among all human beings and the destruction of all distinctions, including the very distinctions upon which the rights were originally based. The limited idea of equality that moved the Founders, that no man by birth should be better than another under law or custom, has evolved into the cultural-Marxist idea that nothing is better than anything else.
Thus, according to the emergent understanding, to say that marriage is by definition and through all of human history between a man and a woman, is to say that marriage between a man and a woman is better than “marriage” between two people of the same sex and thus should be allowed while the latter should not be allowed. And such a position is anti-equality and therefore immoral and invalid.
Ultimately equality swallows itself, since liberals reject the idea that equality as defined by the American tradition is better than, say, Islamic law. Islam, the antithesis and mortal enemy of our tradition, must be treated as equally true and valid as our tradition, leading to the destruction of our tradition along with all of its ideas of equality, whether the classical liberal equality of rights or the modern liberal equality of sexual choice.
It is questionable whether conservatives can do anything to stop this mad progress of liberal logic to ultimate destruction. Perhaps the best we can do is continue to point out the truth about liberalism and offer an alternative vision of society, so that when the liberal system finally crashes, or when it crashes in the conscience of each individual liberal, there will be a non-liberal alternative for liberals to turn to.
Today brings another provocative essay by Victor Davis Hanson, this time on the hypocrisy of socialist elites. (I know I’ve been reposting a lot of VDH lately, but he’s been on rather a tear, I think.)
Excerpts:
This discussion is, of course, a belabored example of why and how socialists do not like socialism. Indeed, statism is not a desired outcome, but rather more a strategy for obtaining power or winning acclaim as one of the caring, by offering the narcotic of promising millions something free at the expense of others who must be seen as culpable and obligated to fund it ”” entitlements fueled by someone else’s money that enfeebled the state, but in the process extended power, influence, and money to a technocratic class of overseers who are exempt from the very system that they have advocated.
Is it true that “statism is not a desired outcome”? Well, desired by whom? The masses, or the elites? Sooner or later, when the bill comes due, even the proletariat realizes that socialism’s way of achieving equality — by beating down and taking from whatever or whoever stands too tall — just leads to an equal sharing of misery. The only way that sort of radical equality can be maintained is through a corresponding inequality of power between the masses and the elites (as discussed at length in posts, and linked posts, here and here) — and so, for the elites, statism can be a very desirable arrangement indeed, at least as long as one’s position is secure (generally an interval of finite duration).
So what is socialism? It is a sort of modern version of Louis XV’s “AprÁ¨s moi, le déluge’ ”“ an unsustainable Ponzi scheme in which elite overseers, for the duration of their own lives, enjoy power, influence, and gratuities by implementing a system that destroys the sort of wealth for others that they depend upon for themselves.
As noted above. But until the Ponzi game collapses and the floodwaters rise, everbody’s in, not just the elites:
Once the individual develops a dependency on food stamps, free medical care, subsidized housing, all sorts of disability or unemployment compensation, education credits, grants, and zero-interest loans ”” the entire American version of the European socialist breadbasket ”” then expectations for far more always keep rising, with a commensurate plethora of new justifications, usually in the realm of someone else having more than the recipient, always unjustly so. The endangered aid recipient is always seen as being pushed off a cliff in a wheel chair ”” therefore, “they’ can afford to give “me’ more; things are not “fair’; there is no “equality.’
“Equality”: the gift that keeps on giving.
Cutting back $2,500 a month in combined benefits and subsidies to $2300 a month is always seen as far more heartless and cruel than not in the first place giving someone without subsidies a mere $200 a month. For every dollar taken, two are demanded. And that creates a powerful constituency for whom the shrillest rhetoric of oppression is, well, never too shrill. Revolutions are not fueled by the very poor seeking their daily bread, but by those on entitlements that revolt at the thought of less to come. A rioting Greek today is far better off than his parents in 1973 when I first arrived in the country; and he would remain far better off even under an “austerity’ plan. But his expectations have soared geometrically with each euro received, and he now has convinced himself that not to have more is to have nothing.
History is not kind to such collective states of mind. Pay an Athenian in the fifth century BC a subsidy to go to the theater; and in the fourth century BC he is demanding such pay to vote in the assembly as well ”” and there is not to be a third century free democratic polis. Extend to a Roman in the first century BC a small grain dole, and by the late first century AD he cannot live without a big dole, free entertainment in a huge new Coliseum, and disbursements of free coined money. Let the emperor Justinian try cutting back the bloated bureaucracy in sixth century AD Constantinople and he wins the Nika riots that almost destroy a civilization from within even as it is beset by hosts of foreign enemies.
Social Security started out as a few dollars a month to the elderly, in their last two or three years of life, to ensure that they could feed themselves without the indignity of borrowing from their children. It has morphed into someone living well for twenty years on far more money taken than was put in ”” or a young family with a dyslexic child on “disability’ for life. To cut any for the latter would cause far more riot and mayhem than not to have given the former anything in the first place ”” despite the fact that the 21st century recipient was far less needy and got far more than the early 20th century recipient who needed more and got less.
What stops socialism?
Oooh, I know, I know!! (waving hand in air)
— Reactionary blog posts?
I fear bankruptcy alone.
Oh.
Well, we’ll soon have a chance to find out.
Who are socialists?
There are none. Only technocratic overseers who wish to give someone else’s money to others as a means of winning capitalist-style lifestyles and power for themselves ”” in a penultimate cycle of unsustainable spending. When this latest attempt at statism is over, Barack Obama will enjoy a sort of Clintonism, a globe-trotting post officium lifestyle of multimillion dollar honoraria to fund a lifestyle analogous to “two Americas’ John Edwards, “earth in the balance’ Al Gore, a tax-exempt yachting John Kerry, a revolving-door Citibank grandee like Peter Orszag, or a socialist Strauss-Kahn in $20,000 suits doling out billions to the “poor.’
That is just the way it has been and will always be.
Not entirely correct, I think: there are plenty of other sorts of socialists out there, including a great many who have no illusions of ascending to robber-baron lifestyles, but who simply feel themselves on the outside of the charmed circle: unable, or constitutionally disinclined, to rise even to comfortable mediocrity by their own efforts in a free society. What Dr. Hanson describes just above is greed, and lust for power, which does a good job of accounting for the Kerries and Gores and Strauss-Kahns of the world — but he overlooks a more widespread, and historically far more formidable, force, the same one that “Theodore Dalrymple” focused on in his recent presentation: resentment.
Read the rest here.
Anthony Daniels, who writes as “Theodore Dalrymple”, gave a talk a few weeks ago at the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society, in Bodrum, Turkey. (The P.F.S. looks like an interesting outfit, by the way, if you have libertarian sympathies, and for this meeting they fielded an impressive lineup of speakers.)
In Dr. Daniels’s address he proposed a little “thought experiment”:
Let us suppose that one wanted, for whatever reason, to erect or create a society in which a bureaucratic government arrogated to itself ever-more power to regulate and control a population, but to do so without the more obvious accoutrements of a tyranny, indeed to do it with the consent and even at the request of the population itself. The espousal of what kind of ideal would be propitious to the erection or creation of such a society?
What impossible dream, what chimerical aim, desired by all but impossible to achieve, would do the job? What hoped-for change could keep us happily chasing rainbows from generation to generation, all the while surrendering more and more of our liberty and property to a monstrous and ever-expanding State?
It’s not hard to think of possibilities here, and plenty are already in play. Controlling the climate is one. The elimination of various “achievement gaps” is another. Improving strength and harmony through Diversity is yet another.
Dr. Daniels’s choice? One that you might not have thought of as eternally beyond our reach: equality of opportunity.
I trust it will be obvious by now that equality of opportunity is precisely such an ideal. The very impossibility of it, the very fact that it is a mirage that recedes as one tries to approach it as it shimmers in the distance, is an advantage, not a disadvantage: for the failure to attain the goal justifies ever-greater and more vigorous attempts to do so. Moreover, it is clear that the nature of the goal itself justifies interference in the lives of citizens down to the very last detail; for there is literally nothing that anyone can do in the bosom of his family that does not affect the life-chances of his children, or those of other children by comparison with his. And the greater the failure of each successive politico-bureaucratic interference, the greater the locus standi for yet further interference. This is a world in which nothing succeeds like failure.
Of course we all will agree that there is much, in coarse terms, that a society can and should do to make opportunity more equal — and of course much has already been done, from the abolition of slavery, through the Civil Rights movement, to various feminist reforms of more recent decades, and so on. But the point is that if the goal is absolute — not just improved equality of opportunity, but complete equality of opportunity — it is also impossible, and so becomes a perfect foundation for totalitarianism. Big Brother had East Asia to war against in perpetuity; we can have inequality. Either will do.
See if you think he makes his case. Transcript and video here.
In case you’ve never seen it, here’s some of the best martial-arts choreography ever filmed: Jackie Chan and Ken Lo giving it hell in Drunken Master II.
There’s a good deal of disagreement out there about whether we should be getting out of Afghanistan. The prospects are bad either way.
A while back, after I’d finally emerged from the herd-minded and thoughtless liberalism of my youth, I became sympathetic to neoconservative optimism about remaking the world in America’s image. I imagined right along with the neocons that the blessings of our modern Western civilization were desired by all people everywhere, and that the scaffolding upon which America was erected was universally adaptable.
Well, having devoted much of the last ten years to reading history, attending carefully to the national debate, and studying Islam, my views have, as they say, ‘evolved’, and I’d no longer describe myself as anything resembling a neocon. In particular, I’m thoroughly convinced that our nation-building projects in tribal Muslim snake-pits are a fool’s errand, however worthy our motive — and that to waste ourselves in such noble folly is a luxury we no longer can afford, if indeed we ever could. As Mark Steyn reminds us, we no longer prosecute wars with the aim of “winning” — and our foreign policy, like our immigration policy, has twisted itself into a bizarre syndrome combining guilty self-abnegation with limitless global commitment. (Indeed, Anglo-European civilization as a whole — the extraordinary creative force that brought into existence the modern world, and that is still essential for its maintenance — seems nowadays like a new member of AA, sheepishly “making amends”, far less concerned about advancing its native people’s interests than about atoning for them.)
We simply can’t carry on like this any more.
John Derbyshire summed up well enough in his weekly podcast on Friday:
In the beginning, Afghanistan was a punitive expedition ”” fully justified, since the government of the country had offered friendly hospitality to a group that planned the 9/11 attacks on us. With 10,000 troops we took down the government, chased them into the back country, killed a lot of them and broke their stuff. Mission accomplished. If we had left at that point the Taliban would soon have come back, but with a new attitude to harboring American enemies. Or if not, another six month campaign, another ten thousand guys, lather, rinse, repeat until they got the message.
Instead we got those ten years, those half trillion dollars, those sixteen hundred lives. What a stupid waste.
Admittedly, some knowledgeable parties say that we’ve been making “real progress”, and I don’t doubt that in many ways we have. But our progress in Afghanistan is the sort of progress you might make bailing seawater out of a hole you’ve dug at the beach. Unless we want to work that God-forsaken hole forever, at ruinous expense, we need to go.
But what about our “sunk costs”? Given that we’ve invested so deeply in this mission, and that so many have sacrificed so much — how can we not “stay the course”?
Rather than answer that question myself, I’ll leave you with a little story from Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson:
A Transcaucasian Kurd (a nomadic Moslem living in Kurdistan) once set foot out of his village to do some business in a neighboring town. On the way, he noticed in the marketplace a fruiterer’s shop displaying handsomely arranged fruit, among which was one “fruit”, the color and form of which particularly took the Kurd’s fancy. Although he had almost no money with him, upon inquiring about the price of the beautiful “fruit”, he found it was not at all expensive, and so he was able, with his last two cents, to buy a whole pound.
Later in the day, having concluded his business in the nearby town, and on his way home by foot at sunset, he sat down by the side of the road and took from his provision bag some bread and the attractive “fruit” and began to eat. But — horror of horrors — very soon everything inside of him began to burn. But in spite of this he kept eating.
In time, there came along the same road a fellow villager who, seeing that the face of the Kurd was aflame, that his eyes were streaming with tears, and that in spite of this he continued to eat what were in reality red pepper pods, the villager said to him: “What are you doing, you Jericho jackass? You’ll be burnt alive! Stop eating that extraordinary product, so unaccustomed for your nature.”
But the Kurd replied: “No, for nothing on Earth will I stop. Did I not pay my last two cents for them? Even if my soul departs from my body I shall still go on eating!”
Whereupon the resolute Kurd ”” it must of course be assumed that he was such ”” did not stop but continued eating his red pepper pods.
Our friend The Stiletto has linked to a sad and instructive item, by the daughter of the feminist icon Alice Walker. The Stiletto excerpts the following passages:
[M]y mum taught me that children enslave women. I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale. ”¦
My mother’s feminist principles coloured every aspect of my life. As a little girl, I wasn’t even allowed to play with dolls or stuffed toys in case they brought out a maternal instinct. It was drummed into me that being a mother, raising children and running a home were a form of slavery. Having a career, travelling the world and being independent were what really mattered according to her. ”¦
Ironically, my mother regards herself as a hugely maternal woman. Believing that women are suppressed, she has campaigned for their rights around the world and set up organisations to aid women abandoned in Africa – offering herself up as a mother figure.
But, while she has taken care of daughters all over the world and is hugely revered for her public work and service, my childhood tells a very different story. I came very low down in her priorities – after work, political integrity, self-fulfilment, friendships, spiritual life, fame and travel.
According to the strident feminist ideology of the Seventies, women were sisters first, and my mother chose to see me as a sister rather than a daughter. From the age of 13, I spent days at a time alone while my mother retreated to her writing studio – some 100 miles away. I was left with money to buy my own meals and lived on a diet of fast food. ”¦
I was very lonely and, with my mother’s knowledge, started having sex at 13. I guess it was a relief for my mother as it meant I was less demanding. And she felt that being sexually active was empowering for me because it meant I was in control of my body. ”¦
As a child, I was terribly confused, because while I was being fed a strong feminist message, I actually yearned for a traditional mother. My father’s second wife, Judy, was a loving, maternal homemaker with five children she doted on.
There was always food in the fridge and she did all the things my mother didn’t, such as attending their school events, taking endless photos and telling her children at every opportunity how wonderful they were.
My mother was the polar opposite. She never came to a single school event, she didn’t buy me any clothes, she didn’t even help me buy my first bra – a friend was paid to go shopping with me.
The Stiletto concludes:
Rebecca Walker says “I my own woman and I have discovered what really matters – a happy family.’ She is the mother of 3½-year old son Tenzin and has been trying to give him a sibling for the past two years, but realizes she discovered the joys of motherhood too late to make a second pregnancy easily achievable.
I haven’t linked over to The Stiletto’s place often enough lately, but her blog — conservative commentary from a spirited female perspective — is excellent, and entertaining too. For a link to the rest of the Rebecca Walker interview, and much more, do pay her a visit.
Here, for once, is a sensible piece of legislation. It has no chance of passing.
If you’re going to be in Gotham on Saturday, July 30th, you should get yourself over to Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Bandshell (conveniently located just 250 yards from waka waka waka‘s New York command center) for what bids fair to be an outstanding evening’s entertainment.
The headliner, Malcolm Rebennack Jr. (A.K.A “Dr. John“), is a national treasure, and needs no introduction. The opening act, however, is someone you may not have heard of, unless you’re a fan of the Washington, D.C. musical subgenre known as “go-go”: the unspeakably funky Chuck Brown, now 74 years old.
I was fortunate enough to do some recording work with Chuck Brown back in 1985, and together we confected a bouncy little single called “Sho Yuh Right”. (I found out later that producer Maxx Kidd had listed me on the credits as “The Mighty Malcolm”, which pleased me no end.) You can enjoy it here.
(Technical note: this track contains high levels of what is known, in the arcane patois of the trained music-biz professional, as “stank”.)
Lawrence Auster has put up two links today that I think deserve reposting here.
In the first, Mark Steyn addresses our nation’s modern, self-abnegating approach to war:
Transnational do-gooding is political correctness on tour. It takes the relativist assumptions of the multiculti varsity and applies them geopolitically: The white man’s burden meets liberal guilt. No wealthy developed nation should have a national interest, because a national interest is a selfish interest. Afghanistan started out selfishly ”” a daringly original military campaign, brilliantly executed, to remove your enemies from power and kill as many of the bad guys as possible. Then America sobered up and gradually brought a freakish exception into compliance with the rule. In Libya as in Kosovo, war is legitimate only if you have no conceivable national interest in whatever conflict you’re fighting. The fact that you have no stake in it justifies your getting into it. The principal rationale is that there’s no rationale, and who could object to that? Applied globally, political correctness obliges us to forswear sovereignty.
In the second, Walter Williams reminds us that racism is alive and well in America.
As a follow-on to our breezy review of the Foreign Relations Committee’s report, here’s a serious assessment of what the endgame in Afghanistan might look like, from STRATFOR’s George Friedman.
The gist:
The United States was always aware of the limits of Pakistani assistance. The United States accepted this publicly because it made Pakistan appear to be an ally at a time when the United States was under attack for unilateralism. It accepted it privately as well because it did not want to see Pakistan destabilize. The Pakistanis were aware of the limits of American tolerance, so a game was played out.
That game is now breaking down, not because the United States raided Pakistan and killed bin Laden but because it is becoming apparent to Pakistan that the United States will, sooner or later, be dramatically drawing down its forces in Afghanistan. This drawdown creates three facts. First, Pakistan will be facing the future on its western border with Afghanistan without an American force to support it. Pakistan does not want to alienate the Taliban, and not just for ideological reasons. It also expects the Taliban to govern Afghanistan in due course. India aside, Pakistan needs to maintain its ties to the Taliban in order to maintain its influence in Afghanistan and guard its western flank. Being cooperative with the United States is less important. Second, Pakistan is aware that as the United States draws down, it will need Pakistan to cover its withdrawal strategically. Afghanistan is not Iraq, and as the U.S. force draws down, it will be in greater danger. The U.S. needs Pakistani influence. Finally, there will be a negotiation with the Taliban, and elements of Pakistan, particularly the ISI, will be the intermediary.
The Pakistanis are preparing for the American drawdown. Publicly, it is important for them to appear as independent and even hostile to the Americans as possible in order to maintain their domestic credibility. Up to now, they have appeared to various factions in Pakistan as American lackeys. If the United States is leaving, the Pakistanis can’t afford to appear that way anymore. There are genuine issues separating the two countries, but in the end, the show is as important as the issues. U.S. accusations that the government has not cooperated with the United States in fighting Islamists are exactly what the Pakistani establishment needs in order to move to the next phase. Publicly arresting CIA sources who aided the United States in capturing bin Laden also enhances this new image.
From the American point of view, the war in Afghanistan ”” and elsewhere ”” has not been a failure. There have been no more attacks on the United States on the order of 9/11, and that has not been for al Qaeda’s lack of trying. U.S. intelligence and security services, fumbling in the early days, achieved a remarkable success, and that was aided by the massive disruption of al Qaeda by U.S. military operations. The measure of military success is simple. If the enemy was unable to strike, the military effort was a success. Obviously, there is no guarantee that al Qaeda will not regenerate or that another group will not emerge, but a continued presence in Afghanistan at this point doesn’t affect that. This is particularly true as franchise operations like the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula begin to overtake the old apex leadership in terms of both operational innovation in transnational efforts and the ideological underpinnings of those attacks.
In the end, the United States will leave Afghanistan (with the possible exception of some residual special operations forces). Pakistan will draw Afghanistan back into its sphere of influence. Pakistan will need American support against India (since China does not have the force needed to support Pakistan over the Himalayas nor the navy to protect Pakistan’s coast). The United States will need Pakistan to do the basic work of preventing an intercontinental al Qaeda from forming again. Reflecting on the past 10 years, Pakistan will see that as being in its national interest. The United States will use Pakistan to balance India while retaining close ties to India.
A play will be acted out like the New Zealand Haka, with both sides making terrible sounds and frightening gestures at each other. But now that the counterinsurgency concept is being discarded, from all indications, and a fresh military analysis is under way, the script is being rewritten and we can begin to see the end shaping up. The United States is furious at Pakistan for its willingness to protect American enemies. Pakistan is furious at the United States for conducting attacks on its sovereign territory. In the end it doesn’t matter. They need each other. In the affairs of nations, like and dislike are not meaningful categories, and bullying and treachery are not blocks to cooperation. The two countries need each other more than they need to punish each other. Great friendships among nations are built on less.
Here’s a sad item about central California — a lament, perhaps, or something approaching the final draft of an obituary — from Victor Davis Hanson.
Recently the Senate Foreign Relations Committee produced a report on how things are going in Afghanistan, and I’ve given it a careful going-over. Despite my natural optimism, I’ll confess it’s left me a little chopfallen.
I’ve excerpted a few snippets below:
Foreign aid, when misspent, can fuel corruption, distort labor and goods markets, undermine the host government’s ability to exert control over resources, and contribute to insecurity. According to the World Bank, an estimated 97 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product (GDP) is derived from spending related to the international military and donor community presence.
Real progress, if you ask me. Why, I think it was as high as 98 percent just a few years back.
The administration is understandably anxious for immediate results to demonstrate to Afghans and Americans alike that we are making progress.
Worth repeating, that one: the United States of America is “understandably anxious” to demonstrate to the Afghans that they’re getting our money’s worth.
However, insecurity, abject poverty, weak indigenous capacity, and widespread corruption create challenges for spending money.
Well, spending the taxpayer’s money is always a hard job, even under the best of circumstances. And the problem here is that we have to spend so much of it.
High staff turnover, pressure from the military, imbalances between military and civilian resources, unpredictable funding levels from Congress, and changing political timelines have further complicated efforts. Pressure to achieve rapid results puts our civilians under enormous strain to spend money quickly.
Right: we need to get rid of the stuff as fast as we can.
We need to take a closer look at how we are spending money in Afghanistan and the impact it is having on the Afghan state.
Oh, I don’t know. Is that really necessary?
The U.S. Government relies heavily on contractors in Afghanistan, but multiple reports and the recent crisis at Kabul Bank have raised alarms about the lack of robust oversight.
Bit of a shock, that.
Most U.S. aid bypasses the Afghan Government in favor of international firms. This practice can weaken the ability of the Afghan state to execute its budget, lead to redundant and unsustainable donor projects, and fuel corruption. The United States has committed to funding more aid directly through the Afghan Government, but stronger measures must first be taken to ensure greater accountability of our funds. The U.S. strategy is focused on building the capacity of Afghan institutions to deliver basic services. The State Department and USAID are currently spending approximately $1.25 billion on such efforts. But our overreliance on international technical advisors to build Afghan capacity may undermine these efforts. Our aid projects need to focus more on sustainability so that Afghans can absorb our programs when donor funds recede.
Yes, well, that should be easy enough if we really put our minds to it; we just need to get that remaining sliver of GDP — what was it again, 97%? — sorted out.
The goal of our assistance in Afghanistanis to create the conditions for a more stable, democratic government capable of resisting attempts by Al Qaeda and other insurgent groups from returning and establishing safe havens from which to launch attacks on the U.S. homeland.
…and teaching pigs to fly.
As we begin the transition process to Afghan-led security and as our civilians absorb more tasks from the military, our civilian assistance strategy must focus on what is necessary, achievable, and sustainable.
Which is to say, nothing.
While the U.S. Government will continue to support the government and people of Afghanistan with foreign assistance after our troops come home, in the words of USAID Administrator Shah, we must provide assistance ”˜”˜in a way that allows our efforts to be replaced over time by efficient local governments, thriving civil societies and vibrant private sectors.’’
Got it: “efficient local governments, thriving civil societies and vibrant [vibrant!!] private sectors.” Check.
This next is my favorite part, I think:
Today, the focus of U.S. assistance in Afghanistan is to build the capacity of Afghan institutions and promote economic development in order to create jobs and weaken popular support for the insurgency. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has argued that this approach is ”˜”˜far from an exercise in nation-building’’ because it aims ”˜”˜to achieve realistic progress in critical areas’’ and is aligned with our security objectives.
Let’s see: creating “efficient local governments, thriving civil societies and vibrant private sectors.” Building the capacity of Afghan institutions, promoting economic development, and creating jobs. Yep, that sounds pretty far from “nation-building”, all right. And “realistic”, too! (After all, promoting economic development and creating jobs is exactly what this administration specializes in.)
And the logic’s iron-clad: this can’t possibly be “an exercise in nation-building”, because it’s “aligned with our security objectives.”
Well, great so far. But how are we getting it all done?
To accomplish this mission, the State Department and USAID dramatically increased the number of civilians on the ground in Afghanistan from 531 civilians in January 2009 to about 1,300 today,with approximately 920 in Kabul and 380 in the field. The number of civilians is expected to peak at roughly 1,450 by mid-2014, according to Embassy officials. But overall funding levels peaked in 2010. This means that the Embassy will have more civilians in the field with fewer resources in 2014, just as the security transition is in full swing. Safely maintaining civilians in Afghanistan is costly. According to senior Embassy officials, each U.S. civilian costs about half a million dollars.
Wow, that’s pretty expensive! But given that it includes all the security costs, etc., it’s not really so bad, I guess.
Oh, wait…
This figure covers training, salaries, and travel expenses but excludes security costs covered by the military, which civilians will have to absorb as we begin drawing down troops. It also excludes the cost of emergency protection details (EPD) that transport our civilians in theatre. An EPD for an Ambassador in Kabul, for instance, can cost approximately $8 million a year.
Oh.
Well, okay, okay: yes, we’re spending a lot of money over there, but we have every reason to believe it’s going to be well worth it in the long run:
Our stabilization strategy assumes that short-term aid promotes stability in counterinsurgency (COIN) operations and ”˜”˜wins hearts and minds’’ by improving security, enhancing the legitimacy and reach of the central government, and drawing support away from the Taliban. It presumes that the international community and the Afghan Government have shared objectives when it comes to promoting longer term development, good governance, and the rule of law.
Right! There you are.
These assumptions may not be correct.
Oh.
In March 2010, a conference at Wilton Park in the United Kingdom brought together leading experts on the role of development in counterinsurgency. The conference report found ”˜”˜a surprisingly weak evidence base for the effectiveness of aid in promoting stabilization and security objectives’’ in Afghanistan.
Administrator Shah agrees that ”˜”˜we must strive to uncover the true drivers of instability in a region, based . . . on local perspectives. . . What we’ve found is that it is generally not the case that a lack of schools or roads drives conflict. Often the situation is far subtler, having to do with local power dynamics or long-held grudges.
Our aid strategy cannot assume that poverty or unemployment alone fuel the insurgency. For example, according to the World Bank, poverty rates in the insurgency-plagued Helmand and Kandahar provinces are less than 30 percent. By contrast, in the more peaceful central and northern provinces, poverty rates run from between 42 and 58 percent in Bamyan and Ghor to upward of 58 percent in Balk province. In a recent study of the drivers of political violence, USAID found limited evidence linking poverty and low education to support for radical groups.’’
Doh!!!
Security and governance matter. Development spending can strengthen the government and weaken insurgents in areas that are secure and enjoy good governance.
Well, no worries, then — because as we all know, most of Afghanistan is secure, and enjoys good governance.
It can also have the opposite effect when security and governance are poor or absent. As historian Mark Moyar observes:
. . . the United States spent more than $100 million repairing and upgrading the Kajaki hydropower plant to provide electricity to Helmand and Kandahar provinces, but last year half of its electricity went into areas where the insurgents control the electric grid, enabling the Taliban to issue electric bills to consumers and send out collection agents with medieval instruments of torture to ensure prompt payment. The consumers in these places use the power for the irrigation of fields that grow poppies, whichin turn fuel the opium trade from which the Taliban derive much of their funding.
Whoops!
Afghanistan is not Iraq, which had a functioning state and robust government and civil society institutions. After the fall of the Taliban, we were faced with the challenge of building a democratic style government and modern economy.
That’s all fine, just as long as we aren’t doing any of that “nation-building”.
The U.S. effort began in earnest in 2009, when the administration and Congress recognized the need for properly resourcing the civilian effort. Ongoing development aid will be needed for the foreseeable future to help Afghanistan become stable.
No problem there! We’re pretty flush these days.
Given the emphasis on annual budget cycles in Washington and the lack of a multiyear authorization for Afghanistan that could provide a roadmap for future funding, the administration is again under pressure to demonstrate quick results to Congress. Many in Congress are fixated on ”˜”˜burn rates,’’ or how fast the money is spent and how much money is left in the ”˜”˜pipeline.’’ This results in undue emphasis at USAID and the State Department on getting money out the door to ensure future appropriations at significant levels. Political pressures create perverse incentives to spend money even when the conditions are not right.
Boy, if only we didn’t have to worry about those darn “political pressures”, we could really do this thing up right. Makes you wish we were more like China!
But don’t despair: at least we’re getting something done with the money we do spend. We’ve got our top people on the job over there, after all…
In addition to the risk of contractor fraud, the use of large numbers of contractors raises other significant opportunities for waste and mismanagement. By contracting with U.S. and international contractors at western prices (the ”˜”˜primes’’), donor funds can be lost to corruption through multiple subcontractors over which the U.S. Government has little to no control (the ”˜”˜subs’’). Projects may be built at costs substantially less than the amount originally paid, using substandard materials and methods. Poor security conditions and a lack of contracting officers overseeing contactor performance could deter site visits to confirm whether the project was properly built, or even built at all. Afghanistan is littered with abandoned or half-built structures.
In 2010, massive fraud was uncovered at Kabul Bank, including loans totaling $900 million to shareholders at the Bank,which is nearly 5 percent of Afghanistan’s current Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Fraud of this scale resulted from failures at every level, including internal bank control; Kabul Bank’s auditors””A.F.Ferguson & Co., a Pakistani affiliate of Pricewaterhouse Coopers; Afghanistan’s Central Bank; the Central Bank’s advisors, Deloitte, under a USAID contract; the political establishment; and USAID. At the time, USAID had only one contracting officer’s technical representative overseeing the $92 million contract with Deloitte to provide technical assistance to the Central Bank. An investigation undertaken by the USAID Office of Inspector General determined that Deloitte knew or should have known that there were serious problems at Kabul Bank and failed to alert USAID officials in Kabul.
Fraud?? At the Kabul Bank???
Oy… So how do we pay out all this money, anyway? Straight to the government, or what?
ON-BUDGET VERSUS OFF-BUDGET FUNDING
Most international donors, including the United States, channel much of their aid ”˜”˜off-budget,’’ meaning it does not go through the Afghan Government. Off-budget funding is appealing because it provides more financial and programmatic control to the donor, which is important in an environment where there are significant concerns about weak government capacity and corruption.
Oh. Well, okay, if that’s what works best.
However, off-budget funding has significant downsides.
Uh-oh…
It can weaken the ability of the Afghan state to control resources, which results in donor duplication, and can fuel corruption. It has also led to the creation of thousands of donor-driven projects without any plan for sustaining them, including 16,000 CERP projects funded by the military at a cost of over $2 billion. As USAID notes, there is a daily tension between ”˜”˜building capacity in the Afghan Government, putting U.S. taxpayer money on-budget, and ensuring that urgent [Afghan] government functions happen.’’
Ultimately, the Afghan Government must be a genuine partner for our assistance efforts to succeed. It cannot be held accountable for processes over which it has little to no control. Thus, the U.S. Government is working to meet its Kabul Conference commitment to fund up to 50 percent of our aid ”˜”˜on-budget’’ by FY 2012 from approximately 21 percent in FY 2009, 35 percent in FY 2010, and 37”“45 percent in FY 2011.
“Pay to the order of… is that K-A-R-Z-A-I?”
According to the London and Kabul conference communiques, delivering aid through the Afghan Government is ”˜”˜conditioned on the Government’s progress in further strengthening public financial management systems, reducing corruption, improving budget execution, developing a financial strategy and Government capacity towards the goal.’’ For instance, the Afghan Government committed at the Kabul Conference to pass an improved Audit Law as part of its effort to improve public financial management. This is also an Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF) benchmark.
Good. Hold their feet to the fire. Keep ’em honest. Show ’em we mean business. Let’s have some US-style transparency and accountability!
Yet the U.S. Treasury Department and many at Embassy Kabul believe that the Audit Law passed by the government is insufficient and does not meet the Afghan obligation under the ARTF benchmark.
Hmpf. Well, so be it, then. We U.S. taxpayers won’t fork over a red cent till they straighten up and fly right!
Failure to meet the benchmark would mean that for the first time, a certain amount of funds””approximately $17 million””would not be disbursed to the Afghan Government, sending a signal that these commitments matter.
Exactly. A little tough love. That’ll get ’em in line.
However, the U.S. Government’s current position is to accept the deficient Audit Law, despite strong internal opposition, in order to avoid a confrontation with the Afghan Government.
Oh.
Well, yes, I suppose we can’t have that.
Anyway, you get the idea, readers. There’s lots more here.
In short, and all kidding aside: it’s time to go.
Here’s a pungent partisan punchline, from a president who could actually tell a joke.
If you’re curious about the “go meatless” movement, then get a load of this.
We note with sorrow the death of Clarence Clemons, soul of the E Street Band for forty years, who died Saturday after suffering a devastating stroke. His death will leave an awfully big hole in a great many hearts.
I got to know Clarence more than thirty years ago, when the E Street Band moved into Power Stations Studios in the spring of 1979 to begin work on the album The River. (At the time I was about six months into my eight-year stint there, and was still working as an electronic-maintenance tech, waiting for an opening in the recording staff.) The band camped out at the studio for more than a year, spending long hours every weekday recording, in all, 50 songs or so; by the end it felt as if the studio staff and the band (Bruce, the six sidemen, and the roadies, Doug and Mike) had become a big extended family.
As I remember it, on a typical day the band would filter in sometime in the late afternoon, to be on hand if they were needed for a take. Meanwhile, Bruce would prowl the studio, guitar in hand, writing or fine-tuning the day’s song. Often there’d be nothing to record until late in the evening, which meant long, restless hours for the players. Clarence liked to come back and hang out with us techs back in the maintenance shop, where the radio was always on, and where he could enjoy little recreational indulgences away from the watchful eye of the Boss. We were rather protective of our little geek-sanctum back there, but Clarence was always welcome.
Everything about Clarence Clemons was big: his Brobdingagian frame, his great, booming laugh, his dinner-plate-sized hands, his trademark thundering sound, and above all his enormous love of life, and his warm, generous heart. Though I hadn’t seen him for many years, it grieves me — as it does millions of others, all round the world — to hear that he is gone.
My friend and colleague, the extravagantly gifted software engineer, globe-trotting bon vivant, and intrepid adventurer Yaniv Sarig, has sent me a outrageously funny item that will, I’m afraid, only evoke incapacitating hilarity in those of you who know a thing or two about programming.
But it’s too good not to share, so here it is. I hope some of you out there enjoy it.
Yesterday the Times‘s Nicholas Kristof posted a risibly bird-brained column entitled Our Lefty Military. In it he lauds the U.S. armed forces as a socialist paradigm, comparing them in glowing terms to the morally inferior “gimme” mentality of the private sector.
We read:
The United States armed forces knit together whites, blacks, Asians and Hispanics from diverse backgrounds, invests in their education and training, provides them with excellent health care and child care. And it does all this with minimal income gaps: A senior general earns about 10 times what a private makes, while, by my calculation, C.E.O.’s at major companies earn about 300 times as much as those cleaning their offices. That’s right: the military ethos can sound pretty lefty.
…And while the ethic of business is often “Gimme,’ the military inculcates an ideal of public service that runs deep.
That’s all very nice, though I’ll confess I’ve never imagined “knitting” to be an important military function. (I guess that just shows I’m behind the times; at the very least, I’m obviously behind the Times.) On the other hand, the military also tells all its members, with the full force of law, when to eat and sleep, what they will do each and every day, what they can and cannot say, what they will wear, where they will live, and much much more. If the participants don’t like it, that’s too bad; they can’t leave until their term of service is over. Nicholas Kristof may wish that the whole nation were more like that, but I don’t.
Mr. Kristof quotes Wesley Clark, offering a dazzlingly moronic assessment:
“It’s the purest application of socialism there is,’ Wesley Clark, the retired four-star general and former supreme allied commander of NATO forces in Europe, told me. And he was only partly joking.
“Only partly”, indeed. What Mr. Kristof and General Clark overlook, in their wistful longings — and this is the equivalent of a botanist overlooking a mature sequoia in his driveway — is that the military is a fully taxpayer-funded agency of the U.S. government, created and maintained solely (ostensibly at least), for a specific, vitally important purpose. It is not, and cannot be, “socialist”, because socialism refers to a economic system of national government in which the State controls the means of production and the flow of capital (i.e., the source of the funding for agencies like the military, which produce nothing, create no wealth, and exist only as debits — really big ones — on the national balance sheet). Socialism has nothing whatsoever to do with how government agencies themselves are managed — and certainly not, for God’s sake, with Army pay-grade differentials. If we now have a “lefty” military that imagines its mission is to be a community-outreach/public-assistance program instead of a maximally effective strategic and tactical force, that is simply a symptom of political ideology gone off the rails at the highest levels of government, not any brief for the alleged blessings, or practical feasibility, of socialism.
That this sort of applesauce (I’m reminded also of Tom Friedman’s wishing, in his own columns, that we could be more like China) can be published, with a straight face, by our nation’s newspaper of record makes it awfully hard to keep one’s spirits up.
Read it all here.
Here’s a salient item from John McCreary at NightWatch:
Israel: On 19 June the Defense Forces will begin a nationwide civil defense exercise, called Turning Point 5, that will include the largest simulation of missile interceptions ever held by the air force, The Jerusalem Post reported.
The exercise will involve all the air force’s missile defense systems — David’s Sling, Iron Dome and Arrow. Hundreds of “missiles” will be fired, in simulation, into Israel from Iran, Gaza, Syria and Lebanon.
The week-long drill will test the responses of the Home Front Command, the Israel Police, the Defense Ministry’s National Emergency Administration and other emergency services to a large scale missile attack. Eighty municipalities and local authorities will participate.
Comment: This will be a high cost war preparation precisely because it involves large distortions to normality by civil sectors of the economy. These are not opportunity costs.
In considering civil defense drills in Israel, there are only two scenarios: Israel attacks and prepares the home front for retaliation or Israel expects to be attacked. The confusion and disarray in Arab states tends to rule out the existence of any threat from Arab or Muslim states that would justify a civil defense exercise of this size and cost.
A national civil defense exercise in preparation for an Israeli attack is never held close to the time of an attack. This exercise does not mean that Israel has decided to attack anyone, such as Iran, but it means that it might and Israel has begun taking the appropriate long term, prudent preparations and precautions. High civilian costs of military-related activities are always a hallmark of real war preparations.
See also this.
When even Jim Cramer is somber about the market, things can’t be good. In a post published today, Mr. Cramer outlines what he thinks “Armageddon” would look like, should it come to pass:
Throw in the towel and buy lower and later if you think the worst is coming. Or stay the course. At this point, the choice is yours, and I don’t want to make it for you. I did it last time and didn’t get much credit for it, even though I was right, and even that is being disputed, although I don’t know how that can be. I tire of criticism, so let me lay it out. You decide whether you want the pain.
Here’s the worst-case scenario:
1. Greece defaults. Presumably that reveals all of the credit default weaknesses where banks and insurers, chiefly in Europe, go belly-up. So do Portugal and Ireland. Spain, too. We get a Latin American moment where huge amounts of debts are canceled and reissued in the form of bonds that nobody wants, but at least the hit is taken.
2. The hit wipes out a huge number of foreign banks which, we discover, had insured the government paper and the bank paper that went under. We have the equivalent of Lehman, Bear, AIG, Fannie, Freddie. Washington Mutual and Wachovia. Throw in a Citigroup(C_). These banks are closed or merged by the surviving countries’ financial institutions.
3. Huge layoffs occur, and Europe is thrown into a great recession. Companies with decent balance sheets that have decent yields become accidental high-yielders and become attractive, because companies have much better balance sheets than governments do.
4. The recession pulls down the U.S. because of the tie-ins and the collapse of at least two or three banks that have hidden exposure to Europe. We learn about it too late. These banks are merged with healthy banks that raised a lot of capital. But the stocks get hammered close to 2008-2009 lows.
5. Big layoffs happen here because of Europe. Our economy wasn’t growing anyway. We’re sinking under the weight of higher commodity prices and Washington dithering and a president who hasn’t succeeded in creating a lot of jobs.
6. Money goes, again, from risky stocks into higher-yielding companies that weren’t higher yielding that long ago. Safety stocks rally because commodities collapse and their margins widen. This move happens on the way down.
7. New leadership emerges that is basically of the Coca-Cola(KO)-Pepsi(PEP) variety, as all industrials are hammered back to accidental high-yield levels. These stocks, along with the knock-offs and the pharmas, don’t need growth. They are winners.
8. China stops tightening because commodities have collapsed and wage inflation ends. That stems the decline in the likes of Caterpillar(CAT) and United Technologies(UTX).
9. Many companies fall back to their cash levels. .The companies buy back their stock, but they were buying at the highs so it doesn’t matter.
10. People leave the market in droves and stocks go to P/Es of 10 or lower, but it turns out the earnings aren’t there, so the P/Es are actually about 14-15, which is historic norm territory.
11. We get close to a 63% pullback of the entire run of 6000 Dow run. Let’s say we touch 7500 on the Dow. There are bargains galore. No one wants them.
12. We bottom out at levels that aren’t as bad as 2009 but are really bad, and people have had it with the market. We bottom because sellers are exhausted and earnings turn out to be bad but not terrible.
You can read the rest here.
I’m reminded of the generic Jewish telegram:
START WORRYING. DETAILS TO FOLLOW.
If you haven’t already seen photographs, here is what happened in Vancouver when the Canucks lost the Stanley cup to Boston last night (after taking the first two games of the series).
HT: Lawrence Auster.
Here are a trio of reviews of Byron Roth’s book The Perils of Diversity: by Fjordman, Steve Sailer, and Richard Lynn.
Here’s Stanley Kurtz, writing at the Corner:
Although it’s too soon to fully understand what they mean, there are important developments in Egypt today in the run-up to this fall’s election. First, a major coalition of parties has formed that includes not only the Muslim Brotherhood, but two key liberal parties, Wafd and Ghad. The coalition also includes a left leaning Nasserist (Arab nationalist) party, Karama, and the socialist Tagammu party. At the same time, a there is talk of yet another coalition of liberal and socialist parties forming to oppose the first coalition, given that it seems to be dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
What is going on here? We can only speculate at this point, but it looks as though the strength of the Muslim Brotherhood has allowed it to coopt the core of its opposition. This assures weak non-Islamist parties of some representation, while also providing the Brotherhood with protection against backlash from the military or the United States, should it dominate the coming election. Yet the new coalition likely puts the Brotherhood in position to control an only nominally diverse parliament.
Many of the most prominent leftist and Nasserist parties are already in the Brotherhood-dominated coalition. That would leave a second, more purely secular coalition weak. On the other hand, if non-Islamist Egyptians are alarmed by the Brotherhood’s rising power, they could turn a possible counter-coalition into a significant force.
For now, however, it seems as though the Muslim Brotherhood has moved to coopt its opposition, and therefore has an excellent chance of exercising de facto control over the new parliament, with appropriate cover. The one thing that brings together Egypt’s liberals, leftists, and Islamists is foreign policy. So expect a Brotherhood-dominated coalition to be less than entirely friendly to the United States and Israel.
One of the only positive developments here is that the start of actual party maneuvering may force the Western press to start talking openly about socialist and Arab-nationalist parties. The media’s current characterization of nearly all non-Islamist groups as “secular liberals’ is deeply misleading.
And here’s another perspicacious observer, writing as the Egyptian “revolution” unfolded, back on January 28th:
The implosion of the senescent Mubarak dictatorship will create a power vacuum in the region’s most populous (and overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim) nation. The US, seeing that Mubarak is no longer the “strong horse’, has now conspicuously withdrawn its support for him, and has made public statements asserting the “universal human rights’ of the protestors now rioting in the streets, and expressing its optimism about democracy in general ”” despite what democracy can be expected to lead to in situations like this.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and although the newspapers have so far reported that religious groups appear not to have played much part in the uprising, anyone who has paid any attention to Egypt’s modern history will know that the principal opponent of the secular Egyptian dictatorship is, and has always been, the Muslim Brotherhood ”” the patient, hydra-headed global Islamist organization (its front groups include Hamas in Gaza, and CAIR in the US) that has been awaiting its chance in Egypt for decades (and which of course has never forgotten the execution of its chief political theorist, Sayyid Qutb, by Nasser in 1966).
The Muslim Brotherhood (or “Ikhwan’) differs from militant Islamist factions like al-Qaeda not in its goals, which are more or less the same, but only in its strategy: it has no moral or philosophical aversion to violent jihad, but considers it unnecessarily provocative, and therefore counterproductive. As such, it can make an ostentatious public display of distancing itself from terrorism, and so it is embraced by gullible Westerners ”” for whom the only imaginable threat from Islam is terrorist violence ”” as a “moderate’ Muslim organization to be supported and embraced. This suits the Ikwhan, whose avowed strategy is to sabotage secular democratic societies from within, just fine.
… We should not be surprised to see ”” in fact we should be astonished not to see ”” the Ikwhan seizing the opportunity now taking shape in Cairo, for which it has worked and waited so long.
…“Democracy’ there may be, briefly, in the wake of Mubarak’s fall; but anything resembling a secular, West-friendly democracy will be short-lived indeed, if it comes to pass at all.
Sam Harris has been addressing the question of free will in a series of short posts (we’ve already commented on the first two, here and very briefly here).
Dr. Harris is forthrightly skeptical that free will, as popularly conceived, exists. He seemed concerned, in the first of his posts, to make some sort of case for moral responsibility nevertheless, but it was a pretty half-hearted effort, and he didn’t pull it off. In the second post he didn’t really even try. He has now published a third item in the series, and it says nothing whatsoever about morality, focusing instead on buttressing his argument that our subjective sense of uncaused agency is an illusion.
As I’ve said before, I agree (though I don’t think that it matters in any meaningful way, in part because I think our familiar notion of “free”, original agency is incoherent).
Dr. Harris reminds us that while we can do as we choose, the choosing itself is opaque to introspection. We enter a deliberative state, and our decision simply appears. He quotes Einstein:
Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said: Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will (Man can do what he will, but he cannot will what he wills).
All correct, I think. Where then, does that leave consciousness? Experimental observation has shown that decisions seem to become accessible to conscious awareness only some time after they are made; the simplest account, then, would seem to be that consciousness is quite unnecessary for deliberation and decision-making. (Indeed, were it not for the lethal objection raised by Titus Rivas, Daniel Dennett, and others, and discussed here, I’d say that pure epiphenomenalism — the idea that consciousness has no causal effect on anything at all, and is just a spectator along for the ride — is the simplest and best account of what’s going on.)
But why, then, does consciousness even matter? Harris wonders too. He talks about “the very reason why people believe in free will in the first place: the feeling of conscious agency”:
People feel that they are the authors of their thoughts and actions, and this is the only reason why there seems to be a problem of free will worth talking about.
Each of us has many organs in addition to a brain that make unconscious “decisions” — but these are not events for which anyone feels responsible. Are you producing red blood cells and digestive enzymes at this moment? Your body is, of course, but if it “decided” to do otherwise, you would be the victim of these changes, rather than their autonomous cause. To say that I am “responsible” for everything that goes on inside my skin because it’s all “me”, is to make a claim that bears no relationship to the feelings of agency and moral responsibility that make the idea of free will an enduring problem for philosophy.
Our subjective experience having led us to a chimerical notion of what it means to be “free”, we then imagine that a choice must be conscious to be “free”, and that the choices of which we are conscious are “free”. Wrong all round, it seems.
Why, then, bother about consciousness at all, if it isn’t the seat of free agency? The answer is that consciousness matters because it is all there is to our subjective existence — and because even if our preferences and deliberations only present themselves to conscious awareness after the fact, they can still lead us to practices, to studies, to efforts of the attention, that enhance and deepen our conscious experience and the subjective enjoyment of our lives. Consciousness is what brings us into existence as loci of subjective experience.
As Gurdjieff said:
Life is real only then: when “I am.”
Yesterday, June 12th, the lovely Nina and I celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary.
Given that so many marriages fall apart these days, that’s a pretty good streak — and as the years lengthen, I’m asked from time to time just how we’ve managed it. I’ve given it a lot of thought.
There are of course all the obvious tips: don’t marry for the wrong reasons; be slow to anger and quick to forgive; stand up for the things that really matter to you and give way cheerfully on everything else; and so on. There are other things, too, that are less obvious, that you learn over time. And there’s luck involved as well, no question: people change as they grow older, and sometimes the two who stood at the altar deeply in love simply aren’t around any more, twenty years later. There’s lots and lots more — I could probably write a book about it.
But a couple of years ago something occurred to me that I think is a very important part of why Nina and I are still so happy together after all this time — and once it struck me, I began to think that it’s probably an essential component of any long and happy marriage. This is going to sound flippant, but it isn’t: I’m 100% serious about this one, and if you think about it, you’ll understand why it makes such a difference.
Here it is:
We’ve always agreed, I think entirely without exception, about whether so-and-so is an asshole.
There are few surer ways to mark oneself as a moral leper these days than to be a “nativist”: to imagine that over time the particular inhabitants of a place form a naturally balanced community, with an organic harmony that the mass importation of aliens is likely to disrupt, often with catastrophic results. To harbor such thoughts in this brave new world is to be a xenophobe, a bigot, a hate-filled “right-wing extremist”. It is double-plus-ungood; it is crimethink.
In case you have any lingering doubts, have a look here.
Here’s an item I’m still trying to get my head round:
Hebrew University has just awarded a research prize to a graduate student’s essay in which she claims that Israeli soldiers are “racists for not raping Arab women.’
Have a look.
Poking around the other day at a second-hand bookseller’s in the West Village, I came upon a curious little self-published volume in a stained leather binding, cracked and brittle with age. Opening it with the greatest care, I discovered it to be a book of verse, and after reading a few entries with growing excitement, I realized that I held in my hand the work of an undiscovered genius. The proprietor being distracted by a mousy coed haggling over a rare first edition by Valerie Solanas, I slapped down the sticker price and scuttled out the door.
When I got the book home, I looked for clues to the author’s name, but sadly the hand-stenciled title page had almost faded away; as far as I could make out it appeared to be something like “Maxwell Poldark”. A rudely sketched portrait on the frontispiece revealed a haunted-looking man in late middle age, with a broad forehead beneath a receding hairline, a square jaw framed by drooping jowls, a strangely flattened nose, and the sunken eyes of a bibulous insomniac. Alas, a lengthy Google search turned up nothing.
I have since made discreet inquiries amongst my international network of scholars, literary critics, collectors, and connoisseurs, and my initial impression — that this “Poldark” is a hitherto unknown bard of sublime gifts, and that the slim volume now in my possession is a major discovery of immense literary importance — has been amply confirmed. I shall not publish its contents in full before my negotiations with various libraries, academic institutions, and private collectors are complete, but it would be churlish of me not to offer at least a small sample to our loyal readers. Here, then, is an offering randomly selected — and indeed, I have reason to believe that the long-forgotten verse here presented may in fact have served as the model for one far better known, and of far humbler quality.
Drinks
I shall not see, I dare to think
A poem lovely as a drink.A drink whose level settles south,
Whilst flowing t’ward my thirsty mouth;A drink that looks at me all night,
And puts my troubled thoughts to flight;A drink that may, in summer, be
A frosty beer, or G&T;Upon whose bosom tinkles ice
And rests a lovely lemon slice.Poems are made by Hallmark, Inc.
But I’ll just make myself a drink.
Here I am working late again — so for this evening, just a link. It’s a good one, though: a collection of vintage Tom Lehrer videos.
Here.
Ah, the Green Revolution. Noblest of causes, worth every imaginable sacrifice. Yet what a wellspring of virtuous, practical, and best of all, economy-boosting innovations saving the planet has turned out to be! The Chevy Volt. Cap’n’Trade. Biofuels. Chinese light-bulbs. Wind-turbines.
Regarding the latter, the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley comments here.
Here’s the great Luther Allison, performing Living in the House of the Blues just a few months before his untimely death in 1997.
What’s that? Did you say you want some more? Well OK, here’s some more.
Things look gloomy for the US economy these days. Job numbers are way down. The markets are sagging.
A while back President Obama instructed American businesses to “step up” and resume hiring. That ought to have disposed of the problem at once, but for some reason compliance has been spotty. A report from the Small Business Administration, The Impact of Regulatory Costs on Small Firms, may help to explain this mutinous insubordination.
We read:
The annual cost of federal regulations in the United States increased to more than $1.75 trillion in 2008. Had every U.S. household paid an equal share of the federal regulatory burden, each would have owed $15,586 in 2008. By comparison, the federal regulatory burden exceeds by 50 percent private spending on health care, which equaled $10,500 per household in 2008. While all citizens and businesses pay some portion of these costs, the distribution of the burden of regulations is quite uneven. The portion of regulatory costs that falls initially on businesses was $8,086 per employee in 2008. Small businesses, defined as firms employing fewer than 20 employees, bear the largest burden of federal regulations. As of 2008, small businesses face an annual regulatory cost of $10,585 per employee, which is 36 percent higher than the regulatory cost facing large firms (defined as firms with 500 or more employees).
When you add to this the unpredictable accretion of new costs and regulatory burdens forthcoming under Obamacare and other pending government initiatives, the reluctance of businesses to make new commitments — especially the small businesses that make up such a large proportion of the US job market, and upon whom the weight of government regulation falls most heavily — is easy to understand.
I had prepared another thousand words on this important topic, but instead, here’s this:
San Francisco is considering a ban on circumcision. In support of this initiative, prepuce protectionists in the City by the Bay have published a comic book that may look eerily familiar to European immigrants of a certain age. It has attracted considerable attention, and rightly so.
Here.
Reader JK sends along this gem from H.L. Mencken. I reproduce it in full, with highlights bolded.
H.L.MENCKEN
1524 HOLLINS ST.
BALTIMOREDecember 2nd 1927
Dear Charles:-
A few notes:
1. I bought some brown shoes six or eight years ago, and have worn them off and on ever since. I have also taken to brown oxfords.
2. I have now seen about twelve movies, four or five of them to the end. I liked them all pretty well, but am not tempted to go back.
3. My favorite drinks, in order, are: beer in any form, Moselle, Burgundy, Chianti, gin and ginger-beer, and rye whiskey. I use Swedish punch only as a cocktail flavor. I dislike Scotch, and seldom drink it. It makes me vaguely uneasy. I also dislike Rhine wine, save the very best. I never have a head-ache from drink. It fetches me by giving me pains in the legs. When I get stewed I go to sleep, even in the presence of women and clergymen.
4. Curiously enough, I greatly dislike the common American dirty stories, and avoid the men who tell them habitually. They seem dull to me. I love the obscene, but it must have wit in it.
5. As for politics, I always go to national conventions, and have missed very few in 28 years.
6. Of my inventions I am vainest of Bible Belt, booboisie, smuthound and Boobus americanus.
7. I have been in the Johns Hopkins Hospital but once, and then it was for medicine, not for surgery. I think all of the Baltimore hospitals are good, but prefer those run by nuns.
8. I changed my collar to a lower level two years ago.
9. I never use mullen on my hair. Nothing but soap and water ever touches it. George has gone gray greasing his hair.
10. I believe in marriage, and have whooped it up for years. It is the best solution, not only of the sex question, but also of the living question. I mean for the normal man. My own life has been too irregular for it: I have been to much engrossed in other things. But any plausible gal who really made up her mind to it could probably fetch me, even today. If I ever marry, it will be on a sudden impulse, as a man shoots himself. I’ll regret it bitterly for about a month, and then settle down contentedly.
11. I believe in and advocate monogamy. Adultery is hitting below the belt. If I ever married the very fact that the woman was my wife would be sufficient to convince me that she was superior to all other women. My vanity is excessive. Wherever I sit is the head of the table. This fact makes me careless of ordinary politeness. I don’t like to be made much of. Such things please only persons who are doubtful about their position. I was sure of mine, such as it is, at the age of 12.
12. Pilsner should be in Roman type, and begin with a capital.
13. I usually lie to women. They expect it, and it is pleasant to watch them trying to detect it. They seldom succeed. Women have a hard time in this world. Telling them the truth would be too cruel.
14. I am completely devoid of religious feeling. All religions seem ridiculous to me, and in bad taste. I do not believe in the immortality of the soul, nor in the soul. Ecclesiastics seem to me to be simply men who get their livings by false pretenses. Like all rogues, they are occasionally very amusing.
15. I can’t get rid of certain superstitions, and suspect that there must be some logical basis for them. My mother and father both died on the 13th.
16. I am always in trouble around Christmas, and usually about a woman. The fact makes me dread the season.
17. I have another superstition: that all men who try to injure me die. I happens almost invariably. Of the six bitterest enemies I had two years ago, five are dead, all suddenly and unexpectedly.
18. My belief is that happiness is necessarily transient. The natural state of a reflective man is one of depression. The world is a botch. Women can make men perfectly happy, but they seldom know how to do it. They make too much effort: they overlook the powerful effect of simple amiability. Women are also the cause of the worst kind of unhappines
19. I have little belief in human progress. The human race is incurably idiotic. It will never be happy.
20. I believe the United States will blow up within a century. [Sixteen years to go — MP]
21. Being an American seems amusing to me, but not exhilirating. But I am very proud of the fact that I am a native and citizen of the Maryland Free State. I like to believe that I have had a hand in keeping it free.
22. I hope to write at least one good book before I die. Those that I have done are all transient and trivial: they will be forgotten in 25 years. I have ideas for five good books, but shall be content if I manage to write one.
23. I live pretty well, but am careful about money, and greatly dislike extravagant persons. I believe that it is discreditable to be needy. Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn.
24. Most people regard me as very energetic. I am actually very lazy, and never work when I don’t want to. On most days I take a nap. I also take frequent short holidays. But I dislike long ones.
25. I drink exactly as much as I want, and one drink more.
26. I never lecture, not because I am a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures, and don’t want to meet them. So with the fools who go to public dinners.
27. I have been reported engaged during the past year to six women. It consoles me to reflect that all were charming, and that all save five were beautiful. The total net worth ran to $2500.
28. I dislike receiving presents, and never accept them if I can get out of it. But I like giving them to women and children. Many a worthy gal has lost a handsome beau by giving me something nifty.
29. My apologies for inflicting so long a letter upon you.
Yours,
(Signed, ‘Mencken’)
Here’s some common sense about taxes and the welfare state, from William Voegeli.
We’re still up in Cape Cod, very busy the past few days with chores and domestic duties as we get ready to head back to Gotham. I’ve got nothing new to offer tonight, so I thought I’d repost an old item (something I don’t think I’ve ever done before): a favorite Wellfleet-themed entry from three years ago.
Here.
Because I’ve been away on vacation since the middle of last week, and am somewhat out of touch, I missed some very bad news out of Pakistan: the disappearance of the outstanding Asia Times Pakistani bureau chief, Syed Saleem Shahzad. It is now revealed to be murder, by agents unknown.
NightWatch’s John McCreary comments:
Pakistan: Special comment: On 31 May, the body of Asia Times on Line’s Pakistan bureau chief Syed Saleem Shahzad was found near Gujarat, about 93 miles from Islamabad. He had been missing for several days. He was kidnapped, beaten and tortured, according to the police. Some observers have opined that his exposure of al Qaida or Pakistani Taliban infiltration of the Pakistan armed forces, the Navy in particular, prompted retaliation by Pakistani intelligence. No group has claimed responsibility for the murder.
Shahzad had sources on Afghanistan and Pakistan unlike any other journalists reporting on these countries. His insights were challenging and deserved careful consideration. His explanations always were thought-provoking. His predictions were spot on. He was one of the best analysts reporting on Pakistan.
According to the BBC, “human rights groups recently called Pakistan the most dangerous place in the world for journalists to operate, saying they were under threat from Islamist militants but also Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies.”
We have followed Mr. Shahzad’s reporting for some time now. To readers in the West he was an incomparable resource, and his murder will, as his assassins intended, close one of the few remaining windows into Pakistan’s dark and dangerous interior.
In a new article, Sam Harris argues that common notions of free will are incoherent, and are almost certainly at odds with reality.
The problem is that no account of causality leaves room for free will — thoughts, moods, and desires of every sort simply spring into view — and move us, or fail to move us, for reasons that are, from a subjective point of view, perfectly inscrutable. Why did I use the term “inscrutable” in the previous sentence? I must confess that I do not know. Was I free to do otherwise? What could such a claim possibly mean? Why, after all, didn’t the word “opaque” come to mind? Well, it just didn’t — and now that it vies for a place on the page, I find that I am still partial to my original choice. Am I free with respect to this preference? Am I free to feel that “opaque” is the better word, when I just do not feel that it is the better word? Am I free to change my mind? Of course not. It can only change me.
There is a distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions, of course, but it does nothing to support the common idea of free will (nor does it depend upon it). The former are associated with felt intentions (desires, goals, expectations, etc.) while the latter are not. All of the conventional distinctions we like to make between degrees of intent — from the bizarre neurological complaint of alien hand syndrome to the premeditated actions of a sniper — can be maintained: for they simply describe what else was arising in the mind at the time an action occurred. A voluntary action is accompanied by the felt intention to carry it out, while an involuntary action isn’t. Where our intentions themselves come from, however, and what determines their character in every instant, remains perfectly mysterious in subjective terms. Our sense of free will arises from a failure to appreciate this fact: we do not know what we will intend to do until the intention itself arises. To see this is to realize that you are not the author of your thoughts and actions in the way that people generally suppose.
Good so far. Next, he acknowledges the concern this raises regarding moral responsibility:
The great worry is that any honest discussion of the underlying causes of human behavior seems to erode the notion of moral responsibility. If we view people as neuronal weather patterns, how can we coherently speak about morality? And if we remain committed to seeing people as people, some who can be reasoned with and some who cannot, it seems that we must find some notion of personal responsibility that fits the facts.
Happily, we can.
Really? It’s no easy trick, that.
Well, after reading the rest of Dr. Harris’s essay I have to say don’t think he pulls it off; the argument he puts forward leaves very little room indeed for anything most people would recognize as moral responsibility. As Daniel Dennett said somewhere in one of his books on the subject, “if you make yourself small enough, you can externalize everything” — and Dr. Harris seems to be making the domain of responsible human agency very small indeed. He gives specific examples in which responsibility is mitigated by 1) extreme youth, 2) youth + parental abuse, 3) passion + parental abuse, 4) psychopathy, and 5) brain disease; he also tosses in “bad genes, bad parents, bad ideas, and bad luck”. He does offer a sop at the end; a glimpse of what actual blameworthiness might look like:
If, after weeks of deliberation, library research, and debate with your friends, you still decide to kill the king — well, then killing the king really reflects the sort of person you are.
But given what he has just finished telling us about the inscrutable neural processes that underlie even our preferences, valuations, and volitional acts, it’s hard to see why he would see any of the above as conferring “real” responsibility (as opposed to ascribed responsibility, which is, I think, the best we can do, and is in fact quite good enough).
Now he may be quite right about this: there may be an awful lot less “could have done otherwise” in our actions than we’d like to think, and indeed I’d say it’s neither incoherent nor indefensible to assert that there is actually none at all. But the hard job is to make that compatible with a meaningful and satisfying concept of moral responsibility — and I can’t see that Dr. Harris has managed that here, or even given it much of a try.
Am I missing something? Perhaps I am. Read the whole thing here.
Big news for Wolverines fans: Tressel’s out at Ohio State. Story here.