Kvaal:

The problem that we have is that families are cutting back to just the necessities. So they’re reducing their spending. Businesses are then cutting back on their employees; they’re cutting back on their own investments. That leads to families pulling back more. So you have a vicious cycle where the economy is producing far less than it’s capable of producing. And what we need to do is aggressively step in now and cut off that vicious cycle. And the only actor capable of doing that is the government.

[...]

Reidl:

…The basis for that statement is that: consumer spending is down, therefore demand is down. But the whole concern about consumer spending assumes that consumer spending is the only spending in the economy. The result is: if I’m not consuming money, I’m saving it and if I’m saving it, I’m using it to pay down debt, or invest it, or put it in the bank. Well, that all gets spent too because banks lend out the money to other people to spend. When you pay down debt and when you invest it, that gets spent as well. So the idea that: if people aren’t spending money, they’re saving it – that somehow that’s leaking out of the economy and needs to be replenished by the government, I don’t agree with because people aren’t storing their savings in mattresses. They’re paying down debt, investing it, or giving it to banks who lend to others to spend.

From my twin brother, whose artwork I’ve previously mentioned here:

Shortly, Nicky Cheese will have his own tee-shirt. And, yes, I totally warrant one.

Get ‘em while they’re hot! And when they’re available… I’m told a month tops. Joy!

With good reason. Female circumcision is a disgusting act – detestable, brutal, and monstrous – even by barbarian standards.

From today’s Washington Post, readers get an anecdote of the practice followed by the quote of a proud supporter, the latter revealing the intellectual origin of said evil.

Yeah… it’s called unconditional blind faith.

Sheelan Anwar Omer, a shy 7-year-old Kurdish girl, bounded into her neighbor’s house with an ear-to-ear smile, looking for the party her mother had promised.

There was no celebration. Instead, a local woman quickly locked a rusty red door behind Sheelan, who looked bewildered when her mother ordered the girl to remove her underpants. Sheelan began to whimper, then tremble, while the women pushed apart her legs and a midwife raised a stainless-steel razor blade in the air. “I do this in the name of Allah!” she intoned.

As the midwife sliced off part of Sheelan’s genitals, the girl let out a high-pitched wail heard throughout the neighborhood. As she carried the sobbing child back home, Sheelan’s mother smiled with pride.

“This is the practice of the Kurdish people for as long as anyone can remember,” said the mother, Aisha Hameed, 30, a housewife in this ethnically mixed town about 100 miles north of Baghdad. “We don’t know why we do it, but we will never stop because Islam and our elders require it.” [emphasis mine]

Dumbed-down version here:

The right to work, for example, is fundamentally different from the right (entitlement) to a job; the right to marry does not entitle me to a spouse; the right to free speech does not entitle me to an audience.

Whole thing here, which I really, really recommend, especially for those of you who want to get the historical basis and, moreover, hear a contemporary defense (via Cass Sunstein… blech).

H/T: Hit & Run

I got it in the mail a couple weeks ago and, on my trip to DC last weekend, had a chance to go through all the articles. My overall impression is quite positive, especially the articles that have more abstract, pure-philosophy content, one of which I’ll comment on briefly.

Glancing at the abstract, as you can guess, I was immediately attracted to “The Mystical Ethics of the New Atheists” by Alan Germani, a moral dissection of prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and others that, within the last few years, have helped push atheism into the pseudo-intellectual mainstream.

Now, call me reactionary but I’ve always been less than impressed with this bunch. That’s not to dismiss their intellectual contributions – they’ve launched a movement, and, in doing so, have gotten people to question their beliefs and adopt mindsets more receptive to critical thinking. All very good stuff. But, come on, it’s not like they’re real, heavy hitting philosophers. They – at least in the genre in question – tackle the easy questions: faith, religion, the supernatural, evidence, science, etc. It’s like being in Philo 101.

So what about morality and the human condition? As Germani reveals, their skepticism is limited to naturalistic empiricism. But, in the rare instance that they go beyond the causal explanation of our the moral impulse, moving past the anthropological is for the philosophical ought - New Atheists hardly do… – the answer almost inevitably turns out to have as much rational footing as they dogma they so vehemently contest. Morality guided by an “innate conscience”, “intuition”, and a “moral Zeitgeist”? These are the foundations for moral behavior within the New Atheist paradigm?

Behind the obfuscating titles that pass for moral compasses these days, however, is mere subjectivism, a wish-washy, arbitrary, non-objective consensus (that – not to get into it – ends up pushing altruism and self-sacrifice when all is said and done).

Focusing on the last compass mentioned but applicable to all, Germani gives the following thoughts, which for me get to the heart of the matter: 

But Dawkins’s theory of the “moral Zeitgeist” clearly does not solve the problem of how to validate moral ideas by reference to reality; it just treats collective opinion as though it were objective fact. That a changing moral consensus exists and that most people unthinkingly absorb their moral views through social osmosis does not mean that the consensus is correct or that people should acquire their moral views this way. Although Dawkins acknowledges that we can and must judge the contents of the Bible by reference to an independent moral standard, he fails to recognize that we can and must judge the social consensus by reference to the same.

Any attempt to ground morality in social consensus—whether of Dennett’s “we democratically agree on it” variety or of Dawkins’s “mysteriously shifting” variety—is hopelessly non-objective. Either the consensus is always right, or it can be wrong. If it is always right, then morality is subjective and simple: Morality equals popular opinion, whatever that happens to be at the time. If this is the case, there are no objective moral principles; there are only ever-changing social policies. If this is the case, the New Atheists have no grounds on which to condemn the inhuman religiosity of the Middle Ages, for its crimes were moral by the standards of the then-contemporary “Zeitgeist.”

For an objective moral code, one should take a look at… Yeah, you know where I’m going with this, so I’ll spare you. But, really, get your copy of the journal today. It’s free.

Italy is bailing out the cheese industry.

The religious tradition of saying grace before meals becomes especially popular around the holidays, when we all are reminded of how fortunate we are to have an abundance of life-sustaining goods and services at our disposal. But there is a grave injustice involved in this tradition. It is the injustice of thanking an alleged God for the productive accomplishments of actual men.

Where do the ideas, principles, constitutions, governments, and laws that protect our rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness come from? What is the source of the meals, medicines, homes, automobiles, and fighter jets that keep us alive and enable us to flourish? Who is responsible for our freedom, prosperity, and well-being?

Is freedom a gift from God? It is not. Freedom, the absence of physical coercion, is a political condition resulting from the rational, principled thought and action of men—men such as Aristotle, John Locke, the Founding Fathers, Frederick Douglass, and American soldiers.

Did God make the ambrosia that melts in your mouth, or the asthma medicine that keeps your child alive, or the plush recliner in which you relax, or the big-screen TV on which you watch your favorite show? Did God create the jetliners that bring friends and family from afar, or the stealth bombers that keep the barbarians at bay, or the music that warms your heart and fuels your soul?

Since God is responsible for none of the goods on which human life and happiness depend, why thank him for any such goods? More to the point: Why not thank those who actually are responsible for them? What would a just man do?

Justice is the virtue of judging people rationally—according to what they say, do, and produce—and treating them accordingly, granting to each man that which he deserves. If someone spends the day preparing a wonderful meal, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked for doing so. If someone provides his family with a warm, safe, comfortable home, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked for providing it. If a policeman or fireman or doctor saves someone’s life, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked. If a loving spouse or child or parent or friend provides you with great joy, justice demands that he, not God, be acknowledged accordingly. If a philosopher discovers the principles on which freedom depends—and if others put those principles into practice—justice demands that they, not God, be given credit.

To say grace is to give credit where none is due—and, worse, it is to withhold credit where it is due. To say grace is to commit an act of injustice.

Rational, productive people—whether philosophers, scientists, inventors, artists, businessmen, military strategists, friends, family, or yourself—are who deserve to be thanked for the goods on which your life, liberty, and happiness depend. This holiday season—and from now on—don’t say grace; say justice. Thank or acknowledge the people who actually provide the goods. Some of them may be sitting right there at the table with you. And if you find yourself at a table where people insist on saying grace, politely insist on saying justice when they’re through. It’s the right thing to do.

Jim Edgar, former Governor of Illinois, and Bill Daley, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, came together today with Illinois civic and business leaders and the Bill & Melinda Gates and Joyce foundations to launch Advance Illinois, a bipartisan effort to push toward improved public education in Illinois.

Illinois public education stinks. The organization recognizes this. Good. That’s the first step:

…22 percent of high school students are college-ready across the four ACT testing areas, and fewer than 30 percent of Illinois students demonstrate proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, placing the state at or below national averages in all areas and at all grade levels.

So what exactly are the strategies, the particular tactics, to this end? What is their plan to improve public education?

<Crickets>

Yeah… that’s hard to tell. Really hard. Arguably painful. I mean, watch this story from Monday’s Chicago Tonight. Tell me if you can figure out what their plan is. Chicago Tonight spends over five minutes on the story and all they come up with is a “listening tour”, whatever that means.

You will notice, however – taking a page out of the Obama playbook – that a big part of their solution is “Change”.

Yes, “Change”. Throughout the broadcast, in fact, viewers hear the word “change” 13 times. 13 times!

Like the Obama campaign, “Change” for Advance Illinois remains undefined and thereby, utterly meaningless. That’s okay though. People just want “Change”. Me? I’d rather they be feeding me some more of that “Same”; at least it’d be honest.

Aldermen have approved Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s $6.2 billion budget amid worries over the economy.

The budget, approved 49-1 on Wednesday, calls for as many as 635 layoffs, selling city assets and new fees and taxes.

It requires the hiring of fewer police officers, but stipulates that no officers or firefighters will lose their jobs. The city also won’t fill 1,600 vacant positions.

Yet, it’s $300,000 more than last year’s budget…

More! What up with that?

My guess is dishonesty on the part of the city and journalistic laziness on the part of the AP.

Still, one alderman – my old one, in fact – voted against it. Hot damn! Was it because the alderman in question pierced through the charade, the misrepresentation, and wanted to stand up for the taxpayer? No. No, he was protesting the severity of the “cuts”.

Alderman Billy Ocasio cast the lone dissenting vote. He says most of the layoffs affect “people who do the work and get paid the least.”

Blech.

The season six winner of “The Bachelor”… Mary Delgado — who was arrested last year for allegedly punching her fiance, “Bachelor” Byron Velvick — was busted again on Saturday night for public intoxication, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct at Lorina’s Cantina in Del Rio, Texas.

We’re told the Cantina called the cops because Delgado refused to leave the bar, saying it was her “constitutional right” to stay as long as she wanted. [emphasis mine]

Golden.

What an utterly warped understanding of rights – that negates the property owner’s rights entirely, replacing them with a fictitious (and seemingly unconditional) set of patron rights.

We need a term for it. Let’s call it pulling-an-Adbusters. It appears to be the foundation for their moral code… and quickly moving outward.