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.

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.

When did the idea of freedom become a political orphan?

Steve Chapman

September 7, 2008

This year’s Republican National Convention had a different theme for each day. Monday was “Serving a Cause Greater than Self.” Tuesday was “Service,” Wednesday was “Reform” and Thursday was “Peace.”

“We must, and we shall, set the tide running again in the cause of freedom. And this party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom. “

—Barry Goldwater, accepting the 1964 Republican presidential nomination

So what was missing? Only what used to be held up as the central ideal of the party. The heirs of Goldwater couldn’t spare a day for freedom.

Neither could the Democrats. Their daily topics this year were “One Nation,” “Renewing America’s Promise” and “Securing America’s Future.” The party proclaimed “an agenda that emphasizes the security of our nation, strong economic growth, affordable health care for all Americans, retirement security, honest government, and civil rights.” Expanding and upholding individual liberty? Not so much.

Forty-four years after Goldwater’s declaration, it’s clear that collectivism, not individualism, is the reigning creed of Republicans as well as Democrats. Individuals are not valuable and precious in their own right but as a means for those in power to achieve their grand ambitions.

You will scour the presidential nominees’ acceptance speeches in vain for any hint that your life is rightfully your own, to be lived in accordance with your beliefs and desires and no one else’s. The Founding Fathers set out to protect “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” but Barack Obama has a different idea.

The “essence of America’s promise,” he declared in Denver, is “individual responsibility and mutual responsibility”—rather than, say, individual freedom and mutual respect for rights. The “promise of America,” he said, is “the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper.”

In reality, that fundamental belief is what you might call the promise of socialism. What has set this country apart since its inception is not the notion of obligations but the notion of rights.

“All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself,” wrote the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand. “The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary co-existence of individuals.”

That idea got lost somewhere between Thomas Jefferson and John McCain. What do Republicans believe in? McCain told us Thursday: “We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law . . . We believe in the values of families, neighborhoods and communities.”

Would it be too much to mention that what sustains the American vision of those things is freedom? That without it, personal responsibility becomes hollow and service is servitude?

Apparently it would. Republicans are big on promoting freedom abroad, but in this country, the term encompasses a lot of things they don’t like—the right to a “homosexual lifestyle,” the right to protest the Iraq war, the right to privacy, the right not to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and more. Conservatives who once thought Americans had too little freedom now sometimes think they have too much.

Liberals, on the other hand, are wary of embracing freedom precisely because of its historic importance to the right. They fear it means curbing the power of a government whose reach they want to expand.

While they value many personal liberties, they have no great attachment to forms of freedom that involve buying, selling, trading and accumulating. Those, after all, can involve selfishness, and Democrats, like Republicans, don’t want to protect selfishness.

But freedom isn’t freedom without the right to pursue what you value—money or knowledge, pleasure or sacrifice, God or atheism, community or misanthropic solitude—rather than what others think you should value. It includes the right to go to hell, and the right to tell others to do the same.

The latter is a valuable prerogative that we have not yet lost. After watching the conventions, if you have the urge to use it on either of the two major parties, feel free. If he were alive, Barry Goldwater might join you.

Steve Chapman is a member of the Tribune’s editorial board. He blogs at chicagotribune.com/chapman and his e-mail address is schapman@tribune.com

Digg it!

…with an ad that communicates outright ambiguity and equivocation regarding the sanctity of individual rights?

Yo…

“When should the needs of many infringe on the rights of one?” beckons the ad. It’s response: “there is no right answer”.

Come again? Am I not understanding the definition of “freedom”, the ideal the Freedom Museum purportedly stands for? You know, freedom: the state of being lacking external coercion or compulsion. Freedom: the ability to act according to one’s will. Freedom: the opposite of collective imposition.

According to utilitarianism and other common-good analysis, fine; you’re correct – there is no fundamentally correct answer to the question. It requires an arbitrary case-by-case decision-making process. But if freedom is the bedrock – if freedom is the underlying philosophy inspiring subsequent action, there is a right answer to the question posed by the ad. When should the needs of many infringe on the rights of one? NEVER.

As Ayn Rand said in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal:

When ‘the common good’ of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.

Ordinarily, I’d dismiss her as yet another drop in the misanthropic, anti-consumerist, socialist well, but she’s a popular misanthropic, anti-consumerist socialist. Really popular. According to wikipedia:

Klein ranked 11th in an internet poll ^[1][2][3] of the top global intellectuals of 2005, a list of the world’s top 100 public intellectuals compiled by Prospect magazine^[4] in conjunction with Foreign Policy magazine. She was the highest ranked woman on the list.

Plus, all my lefty friends cite her as an authority source.

Check out this video:

Sounds like another name to add to the list of modern-day Ellsworth Tooheys.

Expect more on this evil and contemptuous soul…

In any case, I highly recommend Anthem for those who are interested in Rand’s fiction but unwilling to commit to the epic length of her more popular novels. At 105 pages, it’s super quick.

But moreover, it’s just different…in a refreshing way. Whereas both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are written from a 3rd person, eye-in-the-sky perspective–in true Objectivist fashion, I suppose–Anthem is written as a 1st person narrative with a sort of phenomenological approach. And, rather than contemporary realism, it’s a dystopian, sci-fi novel set in a collectivist future where the concept of “I”–through totalitarian social conditioning–has no existence. Consider it the logical extension of pure egalitarianism and socialism. Below I’ve copied one of my favorite parts:

The word “We” is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.

What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and the impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey?

But I am done with this creed of corruption.

I am done with the monster of “We,” the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame.

And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride.

This god, this one word:

“I.”

The book is in the public domain–has been since 1966–so set aside a few hours and read it now. Yes, right here! Let me know your thoughts…

‘What’d she do–donate her kidney?’

Why yes she did! In order to save an ally’s life. In order to make a larger political and moral point. In order to make some money. Err, can’t do that…

[quicktime]http://s3.amazonaws.com/reasontv-video/reasontv_video_333.mp4[/quicktime]

Hands down, the most absurd argument against organ-markets comes from UCLA’s Dr. Gabriel Danovitch, stating that money compromises what was previously an altruistic donation, that the dollar signs negate the selfless goodness of the action.

“Because they don’t care about each other…We’re going to take the caring about of it and it’s becomes a matter of paying off people.”

What is he, crazy? Pushing a form of Kantian duty as the legal standard?! Yamma-hamma. Now I don’t tow the Randian line when it comes to detesting all things Kant–she definitely threw out the baby with the bathwater in that regard–but her diagnosis of Kant’s moral philosophy is right on:

What Kant propounded was full, total, abject selflessness: he held that an action is moral only if you perform it out of a sense of duty and derive no benefit from it of any kind; neither material nor spiritual; if you derive any benefit, your action is not moral any longer.

Not the best criteria to base legislation upon.

On the other hand, maybe it does work! Courtesy of the Onion, Anonymous Philanthropist Donates 200 Human Kidneys to Hospital:

[youtube]D_5nLxZVoPo[/youtube]

UPDATE: I wish I was clever enough to think of the following title for this post: Kant get a kidney? No Wonder. It’s an article by Thomas L. Knapp that I found after the fact in Rational Review. Great stuff that goes further to make the Kant/kidney connection.

• Fidel transfers power to his brother and, thereby, saves the Cuban people from the indignity of electoral choice. Congressman Serrano’s (D-NY) first instinct is to publicly congratulate the dictator.

• Bruce Raynor, president of the union UNITE HERE!, urges legislators to vote for the Employee Free Choice Act (a misnomer of monumental proportions), and thereby, spare potential union-workers the burden of democracy. According to Raynor, “There’s no reason to subject workers to an election.”

Yikes. Since when has Ellsworth Toohey become an influential moral spokesman?

Ellsworth Toohey, for those of you unaware, is the unabashed collectivist within Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. “His” thoughts on freedom below:

The basic trouble with the modern world … is the intellectual fallacy that freedom and compulsion are opposites. To solve the gigantic problems crushing the world today, we must clarify our mental confusion. We must acquire a philosophical perspective. In essence, freedom and compulsion are one. Let me give you a simple illustration. Traffic lights restrain your freedom to cross a street whenever you wish. But this restraint gives you the freedom from being run over by a truck. If you were assigned to a job and prohibited from leaving it, it would restrain the freedom of your career. But it would give you freedom from the fear of unemployment. Whenever a new compulsion is forced upon us, we automatically gain a new freedom. The two are inseparable. Only by accepting total compulsion can we achieve total freedom.

I read the John Galt speech, 50+ pages of Objectivist philosophy, found in part III, chapter VII of Atlas Shrugged. Pretty brutal. Although, I suppose compared to other philosophical treaties — like say, anything by Kant — it’s a breeze. Ugh, Kant. The mere thought… Yes, make that a lovely, cool breeze on a dewy, warm, summer day.

2 hrs though? Yeah, I’m a slow reader. But not bad considering it took two years to write the section.

“I knew it was going to be the hardest chapter in the book,” she told an interviewer in 1961. “I underestimated. I thought, with a feeling of dread, that it would take at least three months. Well, it took two years.” Rand began outlining the speech on July 29, 1953; it was not completed until October 13, 1955.

Anyways, news. The purpose of this post. Atlasphere just put up an interview with John Aglialoro, executive producer of the upcoming Atlas Shrugged film. Of the noteworthy:

• Angelina Jolie, while still very interested in playing Dagney Taggart, has not signed a contract. Says Aglialoro, “We have a letter of intent.”
• Rumors of a trilogy are gone. “It will be one movie, lasting roughly 2½ hours.”
• Filming date: “Fourth quarter of 2008 or 1st quarter of 2009″
• Open in theaters: “Probably you’re talking about the Fall of 2009″
• Setting: “It will be set in modern-day American.”
• Budget: $70 million
• Expected response: “I think the extreme right and the extreme left will unite in a rare unity to denounce the movie and its philosophic message.”

Ha. That sounds about right. I’m no Randian, but I’m already excited.

That all changed a couple weeks ago at the “Save Lincoln Square” rally. Its value was confirmed when, last week, affected business owners received word that Alderman Schulter was backing down considerably — three-fourths of the parcels in question came off the list. The “involuntary acquisition” list. Alright!

As Richard mentioned last week, it’s not a complete victory. But hey, I’m pumped! We’re pumped! Let’s recognize the power of grassroots activism. By calling out Alderman Schulter and the powers-that-be, by revealing the unjust government seizure for what it was, by causing a big ruckus and drawing the attention of local media and bloggers, a community overcame authoritarian compulsion and defended what the government had no right to offend — their property.

It’s empowering. And we’re not going to stop. We’re not going to back down. Because, let’s face it, that’s what they want us to do. To sit back and passively take it without question, without making a stir.

A similar situation plays out in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, which — if you weren’t aware — celebrated its 50th anniversary in October. At the risk of losing your attention span, I’ve quoted it below:

“Mr. Rearden,” said the man, “the government needs your Metal. You have to sell it to us, because surely you realize that the government’s plans cannot be held up by the matter of your consent.”

“A sale,” said Rearden, slowly, “requires the seller’s consent.” He got up and walked to the window. “I’ll tell you what you can do.” He pointed to the siding where ingots of Rearden Metal were being loaded onto freight cars. “There’s Rearden Metal. Drive down there with your trucks — like any other looter, but without his risk, because I won’t shoot you, as you know I can’t — take as much of the Metal as you wish and go. Don’t try to send me payment — I won’t accept it. Don’t print out a check to me. It won’t be cashed. If you want that Metal, you have the guns to seize it. Go ahead.”

“Good God, Mr. Rearden, what would the public think!”

It was an instinctive, involuntary cry. The muscles of Rearden’s face moved briefly in a soundless laughter. Both of them had understood the implications of that cry. Rearden said evenly, in the grave, unrestrained tone of finality, “You need my help to make it look like a sale — like a safe, just, moral transaction. I will not help you.”

The man did not argue. He rose to leave. He said only, “You will regret the stand you’ve taken, Mr. Rearden.”

“I don’t think so,” said Rearden.

He knew that the incident was not ended. He knew also that the secrecy of Project X was not the main reason why these people feared to make the issue public. He knew that he felt an odd, joyous, light-hearted self-confidence. He knew that these were the right steps down the trail he had glimpsed.

The City of Chicago will continue its attempt to acquire the remaining properties on the “involuntary acquisition” list. And it will continue to try and use eminent domain in the future, on other properties in other neighborhoods. As it turns out, much sooner than later.

In the words of my hero Andrew WK, “Never let down”.