GZM Organizer Responds to Greg Gutfield

Greg Gutfield proposes to build a bar catering to homosexuals across from the planned Islamic center. The GZM camp's response shoots the irony meter off the scale:

@greggutfeld You're free to open whatever you like. If you won't consider the sensibilities of Muslims, you're not going to build dialog

Uh, huh. Now I have heard effing everything. "Tone deaf," as the phrase has come to be used, doesn't being to describe the lack of self-awareness represented by this remark. But then, I don't believe the author of that statement really is quite so blind. It's just the usual Progressive tactic of "freedom for me but not for thee."

In any case, there's a deeper error here. Why should the goal be to "build dialog"? This two-word phrase reeks of a pair of standard postmodern mistakes.

It suggests there's no such thing as truth (an essential aspect of postmodernism). There are only "narratives." This is especially so, advocates claim, in ethics. No one can know what's right or wrong because those concepts don't have any objective meaning. So, we should all play nice and the best way to do that is to talk a lot, condemning no one and nothing — including even a barbaric religion whose tenets lead to jihad, jizya, and honor killings.

Notice that, despite believing no one can know anything or prove one thing is better than another, postmodernists never hesitate to suggest their views are correct and their recommendations are to be preferred. Those are the contradictions in any skeptical, subjectivist viewpoint and no amount of clever intellectual gyrations will ever erase them.

False Alternative #493: Minds Open or Closed

Ayn Rand on the issue of an 'open' mind.

"[There is a] dangerous little catch phrase which advises you to keep an 'open mind.' This is a very ambiguous term—as demonstrated by a man who once accused a famous politician of having 'a wide open mind.'

That term is an anti-concept: it is usually taken to mean an objective, unbiased approach to ideas, but it is used as a call for perpetual skepticism, for holding no firm convictions and granting plausibility to anything.

A 'closed mind' is usually taken to mean the attitude of a man impervious to ideas, arguments, facts and logic, who clings stubbornly to some mixture of unwarranted assumptions, fashionable catch phrases, tribal prejudices—and emotions.

But this is not a 'closed' mind, it is a passive one. It is a mind that has dispensed with (or never acquired) the practice of thinking or judging, and feels threatened by any request to consider anything."

Ayn Rand, Philosophy, Who Needs It

Or, as I like to put it, an open mind is like an open trash can. People put garbage in it.

David Benatar: Your Life Is Worth Less...

...than you think it is.

Peter Singer, the well-known ethicist and animal rights philosopher (feel free to put the scare quotes wherever you want), has an essay on David Benatar's book, Better Never to Have Been* giving serious thought to whether or not human life is pretty much worthless.

Benatar also argues that human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states.

If we think that this is a tolerable state of affairs it is because we are, in Benatar’s view, victims of the illusion of pollyannaism. This illusion may have evolved because it helped our ancestors survive, but it is an illusion nonetheless. If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone.

There were times when personal confessions of the utter emptiness of one's life were confined to late-nite conversations in bars or Russian plays. Nowadays, it's just about mainstream moral philosophy. (Singer is a professor of philosophy at Princeton. Benatar is identified as "a South African philosopher.")

I suppose the only worthwhile response to this that doesn't consume more time than it's worth is simply to say: "Speak for yourself, pal." But it might be of some value to add: "Dr. Benatar, if you believe you shouldn't inflict your life on anyone, I can't help but agree. Feel free to excuse yourself from the table anytime."

Such is the (literal and figurative) dead end of Kantian utilitarianism.

[Hat tip: Newsreal.]


*[Here is the Amazon Product Description of Benatar's book:

Most people believe that they were either benefited or at least not harmed by being brought into existence. Thus, if they ever do reflect on whether they should bring others into existence---rather than having children without even thinking about whether they should---they presume that they do them no harm. Better Never to Have Been challenges these assumptions.

David Benatar argues that coming into existence is always a serious harm. Although the good things in one's life make one's life go better than it otherwise would have gone, one could not have been deprived by their absence if one had not existed. Those who never exist cannot be deprived.

However, by coming into existence one does suffer quite serious harms that could not have befallen one had one not come into existence. Drawing on the relevant psychological literature, the author shows that there are a number of well-documented features of human psychology that explain why people systematically overestimate the quality of their lives and why they are thus resistant to the suggestion that they were seriously harmed by being brought into existence.

The author then argues for the 'anti-natal' view---that it is always wrong to have children---and he shows that combining the anti-natal view with common pro-choice views about foetal moral status yield a "pro-death" view about abortion (at the earlier stages of gestation). Anti-natalism also implies that it would be better if humanity became extinct. Although counter-intuitive for many, that implication is defended, not least by showing that it solves many conundrums of moral theory about population.]

'Nuff said.

Beware Obama's Scyth

I was going to write an essay on Obama's recent idiotic remark that "[A]t a certain point you've made enough money." Before I could get around to it, I discovered that Ralph Reiland writing at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review has said about everything I was going to say. The whole (short) article is worthwhile, but here is — Obama should excuse the expression — the money quote:

[S]hould the central committee of White House czars decide how much of Ben [Roethlisberger's] $25 million was due to the lucky inheritance of a good throwing arm and how much was "fairly earned" for hard work?
...
So who decides when we've "made enough money"? Should we tell Julia Roberts not to make another movie, tell her she's "made enough"? Should the czars tell Tiger Woods that he's way past that "certain point" when he's earned "enough," unless he wants to play for free or donate 100 percent of the winnings to the needs of the collective?

Egalitarianism is one of the ugliest aspects of Progressivism and Obama embraces it wholeheartedly. Tall poppies everywhere, beware. The crab bucket mentality is now government policy.

David Brooks Reaches A New Gray

David Brooks' reasoning powers have long been pretty much kaput. But now he has really outdone himself.

After noting several stark differences between the hippies of New Left of the 60s and the Tea Party movement activists, such as "One was on the left, the other is on the right. One was bohemian, the other is bourgeois. One was motivated by war, and the other is motivated by runaway federal spending. One went to Woodstock, the other is more likely to go to Wal-Mart." he immediately turns around and says "But the similarities are more striking than the differences."

Uh, it would be hard to find a starker difference than 'one favors liberty, the other collective slavery.'

His reasons only make his position look more ridiculous. Scattered among lesser gems is this 40 carat whopper:

"The core commonality is this: Members of both movements believe in what you might call mass innocence.

Both movements are built on the assumption that the people are pure and virtuous and that evil is introduced into society by corrupt elites and rotten authority structures."

"Because of this assumption, members of both movements go in big for conspiracy theories."

Right. It's just a conspiracy theory that Federal spending is out of control far beyond already horrendous historical norms. It's just a wacky theory that the Feds have already nationalized two-thirds of the auto industry. It's delusional to believe they already corrupted the financial markets with bailouts, stimuli, and interfering in executive compensation issues. A person is mentally askew if he believes they're trying to complete their control over all health care and insurance.

Still, set all that aside. What's most interesting here is that his brain is so awash with pragmatic, middle-of-the-road mush he would simply wash away the clear black-and-white differences between the 60's New Left and the '10s New Right to declare the Tea Party movement morally suspect.

And why? Because the latter wants radical change (in this case in the direction of freedom), just like the New Left did in the '60s (in the direction of statism). In short, what they have in common is a passionate – and more or less consistent — attachment to a philosophy. To a Pragmatist, such a thing is anathema regardless of the actual content of the philosophy.

And how does he defend this position? By invoking an all-too-common conservative notion that is both misanthropic and inherently self-contradictory:

Conservatism is built on the idea of original sin — on the assumption of human fallibility and uncertainty. To remedy our fallen condition, conservatives believe in civilization — in social structures, permanent institutions and just authorities, which embody the accumulated wisdom of the ages...

The doctrine of original sin is not equivalent to a belief that humans are fallible or lack omniscience. It's the belief that we are innately evil, or (in weaker versions) that humans have an in-built tendency toward evil.

The concept of "sin" (actions which violate a moral law) is closely related to that of "evil." But the concepts of good and evil can only be meaningful when one has a choice. Alleging we are born evil, therefore, entails a contradiction.

So, basing one's advocacy of "permanent institutions and just authorities, which embody the accumulated wisdom of the ages" is illogical (not to mention ahistorical, considering how often that alleged wisdom has been wrong).

Folks, this is the inevitable mental and moral dead end of living by the philosophy of Pragmatism. It makes you dumb.

Happy Thanksgiving, and A Word of Thanks to Producers Everywhere

My sincere and deep gratitude to all the productive people in the world, and to those who protect their efforts.

I thank you for making the effort to stir a brain cell and a muscle fiber to create all the goods and services I use and enjoy.

I regret that I can do so little to keep the parasites from your wallet, your body, and your soul, as well as those you cherish. But, for what it's worth, I'm extremely grateful and vow to continue doing what I can for as long as possible.

Once again, thanks.

Respectfully,
Jeff Perren

Goldberg On Obama's "Pragmatism"

Jonah Goldberg reinforces his growing credentials as a younger Thomas Sowell. He writes and thinks clearly, but pulls no punches, always calling a silly spade a spade without lapsing into caricature or exaggeration.

Obama himself insists that he's guided by nothing other than a cool-headed pragmatism. Indeed, Obama has a grating habit of describing any position not his own as "ideological," as if his is the only sober, practical understanding of the problems we face. Just days before he was inaugurated, he gave a speech in Baltimore in which he proclaimed, "What is required is a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives -- from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry -- an appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels."

So ideologues -- i.e. millions of Americans who disagree with his policies on principle -- belong in a list along with bigots and dim bulbs. At home, this attitude has allowed him to dismiss opponents of socialized medicine and the government takeover of various industries as "ideologues," and critics of trillions in debt-fueled spending as small-minded cranks.
...
Hence, according to the Obama administration, it's foolishly ideological to resist the United Nation's accommodation of tyrants and fanatics, while it is "pragmatic" to placate human rights abusers. It is ideological to show disdain for Venezuela's would-be dictator Hugo Chavez; it is "pragmatic" to stamp as "democratic" his effort to overthrow term limits. It is ideological to sustain sanctions against Burma and Sudan; it's pragmatic to revisit them, even if it disheartens human rights activists across the ideological spectrum. American exceptionalism is ideological, while seeing America as just another nation is realistic.

What Goldberg doesn't point out is that this attack against "ideology" is just one more tool in the toolkit for Progressives - by nature subjectivists and statists - to disarm any thinking person and to insulate their views from criticism.

Unfortunately, their tactic is working too well, since most Americans do not recoil in horror - as they should - from the label "pragmatist." They do this because they view it as synonymous with "practical," and that because Progressive education in public schools for the past 100 years has totally muddied the issue, as Dewey intended. They need to learn that Pragmatism is the most impractical, and not coincidentally most immoral, philosophy around.

How Progressives Debate

A not-so-imaginary scenario:

Proposition: Less freedom correlates with lower prosperity.

Laissez-Faire Advocate: "FDR's policies lengthened the Depression."

Progressive: "You can't know that. You weren't there."

(Get that? You didn't personally experience it, therefore you can't be sure.)

Laissez-Faire Advocate: "I was there in the 1960s and 1970s. I know what life was like then."

Progressive: "You can hardly be objective about it then."

(Heads I win; tails you lose. If you're personally affected by anything, you can't separate your reaction from the facts that occasioned it. Warmed-over Kant, anyone?)

Laissez-Faire Advocate: "Look at China during Mao and after."

Progressive: "See. It is possible for coercion to lead to prosperity."

Laissez-Faire Advocate: "Ok. Consider East Germany before reunification with West Germany and afterward."

Progressive: "Germany isn't a pure laissez-faire system and never has been."


Wow. And, yet, Progressives feel (I use the word deliberately) perfectly confident rattling off statistics about the results of FDR's policies, debating the Johnson-Reagan era, pronouncing on the economic systems of foreign countries, etc.

It would be nice to have an honest debate with a Progressive. But since their philosophy can only be supported by distortion, cherry-picking data, false alternatives, or outright lies, I'm not holding my breath.

Woody Allen, The Anti's Darling

Woody Allen released a new film a few months ago, Vicky Christine Barcelona. I haven't seen it and don't intend to; every Woody Allen film I have seen — about a half dozen or so, more in parts — has been pointless, plotless, and not particularly funny or interesting. But I have to give the filmmaker credit where it's due. He is one of the cleverest guys around.

He's made a healthy living doing what he wants for more than 40 years now by producing pointless, plotless, and not particularly funny or interesting films. They usually star very dishy damsels, too. Not bad for a guy who's not insightful, handsome, or talented. (Except as a musician. He does play a mean clarinet.)

This latest incarnation, an unadmitted rip-off of Henry James' Wings of the Dove, shows every sign of being more of the same. That is no doubt why he's the darling of the Anti crowd. Since anything with a hint of moral or mental health (not to mention a movie with an actual story) is anathema to them, Allen is their perfect artist.

That's the only possible explanation for why he continues to get the funds to make films. They've never made much money. (I used to work for Orion Pictures, his long-time distributor before they folded; I know first hand.) They make even less now. Yet, he continues every couple of years to make another. He's 72. If the gravy train stopped now he could still call his career a big success.

He's not likely to have to worry. Producers have demonstrated for decades now that they're willing to finance a film that a moment's thought would make obvious will certainly bomb. They will, provided it projects their putrid view of life, of course. Allen's dove-tails nicely with their own.

As an LA Times reporter put it: "This is, after all, Woody Allen's universe, no matter what continent it takes place on, or how many laughs are to be had. Nobody gets what he or she wants."

So, he continues to get the cash, year in year out. And why not? His philosophy is perfect for the Anti(s). "There is no plan or agenda to it or anything. It's luck. It's random. ... My way of coping with the horrors of existence is to put my nose to the grindstone and work and not look up."

Well, everyone has his method, I suppose. The backers' one consists of financing Allen's work. A rich Anti has to do something with all that dough, after all. Where better to park it for a nice tax loss than in "biting nihilistic satire-dramas that examine whether evil ever gets punished."

Apparently evil doesn't, not often enough since the world continues to be inflicted with Woody Allen films.

Progressives and Human Nature

A random thought.

Odd how Progressives point to Ponzi-scheme scam artists like Madoff and say: "human nature!" "Must be constrained!" Yet, when someone works hard for years, takes risks, exercises creativity, and makes himself and thousands of others rich without fraud or so much as wanting government favors, no such inclusion in the nature of humans is announced. The only response is: "They can afford higher taxes."

That sounds a lot like "Heads I win, tails you lose."

Pragmatism and the New Slavery

The rallying cry of the new meddlers is that it's a sin to be an 'ideologue'. They claim this leads to dogmatism, ignoring facts in favor of 'ideology'. Naturally, they give no examples, i.e. fail to cite any facts, to support their contention.

In fact, by this normative prescription, they mean one should have no guiding philosophy, other than their own, of course: the philosophy of Pragmatism. I.e., anything goes, so long as it 'works'. How we are to even guess what might 'work' in advance of actually trying it without some kind of guiding philosophy (since we obviously can not try contradictory policies at the same time, try as Washington will), they do not say. What they do say is that Pragmatism isn't a philosophy. Dewey, one of its inventors and a lifelong professor of philosophy, would be very surprised to hear it.

Look to history, the more rational among them will advise. It remains unexplained how or what lessons we're to draw from past experience without a consistent set of basic views to interpret the data. As if "X more liquidity," "Y lower interest rate," and "Z lower home prices" came tagged with what those data points represent in terms of desirable values and how they're to be achieved. As if, "higher income" were somehow an invariably desirable end-in-itself for everyone but 'the rich', regardless of how any particular person gained it.

They give no guidance about what values we ought to pursue in deciding public policy. They simply assume that them's that gots should give to them that ain't. More accurately, the issues of rights and justice never come up. Dictatorial power is the only valid means and maximizing the bank balance of "the little guy" the only valid end. But, of course, there's no philosophy implied in any of that. Sorry, guys, discussions of public policy and economics are inescapably suffused with philosophy, in particular questions of ethics.

Some of them get quite emotional about it, too, for people who apparently want to keep passion out of arguments for fear it will lead to dogmatism. I speculate they secretly know that giving free reign to their own emotions would eliminate any personal objectivity. If so, I take them at their word. If they intend to make a statement about human nature in general, well, that sounds a lot like ideology philosophy to me.

That's the excuse for the advocacy of pragmatism, of course. That anyone who adheres to a broad, coherent set of principles must necessarily be willfully blind to any facts that would tend to undermine it. But my guess is that the underlying motivation — yes, I'm no doubt being paranoid here — is that it helps to stifle all reasonable dissent.

Raise a principled objection? You're being rigid. Argue on the basis of a general idea. You're refusing to look at facts which throw doubt on your position. Try to explain how those putatively undermining facts don't actually undercut your case? You're an idealogue. Debate over.

Little noticed here is how rigid, fact-averse, and ideological the opponent is himself being. Let's take their idea serious for a moment, though, to see where it leads.

Two physicists are debating whether Einstein's General Relativity is solid as it stands or needs modification to fit newly discovered data. (That's actually happened a few times over the past 90 years.)

One of them uses an experimental result that apparently casts doubt on a general physical principle (such as the conservation of energy) to argue his case. The other points out the violation of this rock-solid principle. "You're being rigid and ignoring any data that doesn't suit your theory," the pragmatist physicist claims.

A week later, someone shows how the experimental result was either a mistake or actually supports General Relativity. Of course, there is some quark-sized probability that the conservation of energy principle has exceptions. But such a well-grounded and explanatory law would need some serious data to raise reasonable suspicions. A few years of Bush parroting the sounds "free market, free market, free market" while acting like the Progressive Herbert Hoover just doesn't cut it. And, even then, exceptions don't disprove the more general rule, they strengthen it. Otherwise, why would we call them "exceptions?"

But then, this is in Physics. In political discussions, the objector would cling to the fact and discard the principle of conservation. Physics, you see, allows for general rules. Political economy, since it studies human choices and actions, can play it deuces wild.

At this point, a pragmatist will raise the straw man of "Government has a place in society, get over it." This prescription conveniently ignores the fact that only a very small percentage of even libertarian anarchists would deny this obvious point. The issue is whether government should be limited to the protection of individual rights, or be encouraged to go beyond that to attempt to engineer certain 'desirable' social outcomes.

As a result of this, dare I say it, philosophy, we see praise heaped on FDR not necessarily for what he did right or wrong, but simply for being willing to engage in "bold, persistent experimentation." Those same voices are encouraging Obama to do the same, which is about like paying a junkie to take heroin, and will have similar results.

A Ramble on Gratitude

I just finished eating an apple off the tree in my backyard, the fruit, literally, of my labor. I'm grateful to live in a country that still permits that possibility. It's hard to say how much longer that will last. Perhaps a generation or two, perhaps ten generations and beyond. Much depends on this election, though not so much on who gets elected.

Let me explain...

Neither candidate is a big supporter of genuine individual freedom — free markets and free minds. Both have supported cap-and-trade proposals, both have declared their allegiance in one form or another with the forces that seek to turn the U.S. into Sweden.

Still, there are substantial differences and many of them lie beyond the realm of specific policy proposals.

Rightly or wrongly, mostly the latter, John McCain is associated with capitalism. That's laughable considering his first reaction to the financial meltdown was to blame the "greed on Wall Street." Having just finished a very long article on the history of Fannie Mae's role in the debacle, I know that's mostly nonsense.

I do, but McCain doesn't. His lack of knowledge, and even more so his lack of understanding of free market economics in general, gives him the barest squeak of a pass. You can't be truly evil unless you understand that what you're advocating will lead to harmful outcomes.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, is — with complete justice — associated with socialism. He's clever enough to realize that saying so out loud in public doesn't win elections and, above all, he wants to win. But he actually has worse attributes.

I believe him when he says he isn't "ideological." That came out clearly even when he was promising to make efforts to bankrupt the coal industry.

[As an aside, pause on that for a second. When was the last time you actually heard a Presidential candidate gleefully declare he wanted to shut down an entire industry, one that supplies the fuel for 48% of the country's electricity?

Maybe Ralph Nader, never a real candidate in my view, or when Norman Thomas ran six times on the Socialist Party of America ticket during the Red Decades. (He is semi-famous, by the way, for having said, "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened." Prescient, eh?)]

Anyway, getting back to Obama's pragmatic nature, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one. As a typical post-modern pseudo-intellectual, he has clearly absorbed the teachings of his mentors well. He lives in a Heraclitean universe where there are no fixed facts or cause-effect relationships, as John Dewey preached. He has no moral principles that can't be washed away with a mild soap, as everyone from Hume to Harman has argued to be the only rational position.

Still, he may not be for anything much, but he definitely knows what he's against — everything that made America the exceptional country it became: love of reason, individual freedom, productivity and property rights. That makes him the very prototype of an Anti.

Contrast that with John McCain, who knows that he is against the evils that Obama represents, even when he can't explain very well why. He is for all the things that the Anti(s) are trying to destroy, even when his defense is weak and contradictory.

So, even though the man himself — whoever gets elected — may do massive harm or modest depending on many counterbalancing constraints and pressures — the American people today choose (at least for a time) which philosophy they side with more, by choosing the symbol representing it. By so doing, they select which fate to favor. I'm grateful to live in a country where that is how people choose politicians. I hope to be grateful for their choice tomorrow, because it's that philosophy — much more than the symbol — that will determine what happens over the next four or 40 years.

In the meantime, my plans on this election day consist of consuming a little Parker and Veatch's Logic As a Human Instrument for lunch and maybe solving a differential equation for dessert. It's important to remind myself in these times that the universe is still open to reason, even when the culture gives me reason to doubt. Later, maybe I'll sup on a few Federalist Papers as an apéritif before a filling late-night supper of Cossacks In Paris by Jeffrey Perren.

Connections, Diagnosing Contemporary Society

Culture today is infected with a virus. And just like many viral diseases, the symptoms can be all over the map, making it difficult to diagnose the underlying problem.

The difficulty is even greater in this case because the disease has no name, even though the symptoms are widely recognized by people with no education or training whatever. The man in the street, on all points of the political compass, is fully familiar with the symptoms. Sometimes he even glimpses the underlying disease. Some may embrace it; others are repelled. But everyone who isn't completely brain dead knows the temperature.

To give an example, take the movie critic who praises an obscure 1941 film noir piece like Moon Tide with Ida Lupino — a film about two highly dysfunctional wharf rats having a drunken love affair in a dilapidated fish bait shack. That quasi-intellectual praised it, not on the basis that it's a dramatic, well-made depiction of how low humans can sink if they're not careful, but because "it's bizarre."

The odds are about 90-10 that the film critic is also an Obama supporter. Yet, what has an interest in old movies about losers got to do with a man and a campaign that is about as far from losing right now as one can have nightmares over?

Consider another example. Those on the far left of the political spectrum absolutely drool over Africa. It's their favorite country, at least the parts that are wholly diseased in every sense of the word. (The few healthy parts, they ignore.) They worry about the genocide in Darfur, yet ignore jihadist incursions in Somalia.

The Lefties are intensely interested in helping the diseased and downtrodden there, but are largely indifferent to similarly distressed people in Basque, so their compassion rings hollow. These same concerned citizens are the most vocal proponents of environmentalism. But what has genocide and health crises to do with clean air and a changing climate?

Or, still one more example, a longish one.

Consider people who think that Oprah Winfrey is a literary critic of unsurpassed acuity. They will happily investigate (and often buy) anything she recommends, such as the — thanks in part to her — best-selling "A New Earth," by Eckhart Tolle.

For those blissfully unfamiliar with this tripe, the book is a standard mish-mash of 70s New Age nonsense, a derivative of that era's Eastern mysticism as it became popular in America during that period. [Blurb from the book jacket: "In A New Earth Eckhart shows how transcending our ego-based state of consciousness is not only essential to personal happiness, but also the key to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world." The book was first published in 2005.]

These same fans — of both Oprah and the book — form a demographic encompassing housewives, university professors, TV actors, and dozens more groups. They eagerly campaign for Barack Obama, endure icy cold mornings to watch 25-mile Breast Cancer Awareness jogging marathons in person, and think a Japanese statue of a teenage boy twirling a lasso made of semen ejected from his tumescent member probably is worth $15 million. Or, at least, they find no objection to the work or the price tag, even if it isn't their particular cup of, er, tea. [Warning: Link not safe for work. I just couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.]

Yet what could that book, Obama's politics, and that statue have in common? What links all these seemingly disparate phenomenon?

At first glance, the average conservative — or anyone of any social or political persuasion who still hasn't completely lost his mind — would just declare: "Well, all you're describing is the now-too-familiar standard liberal, or a caricature of one."

Well, first of all, I'm not making any of these examples up, so there's no caricature involved. There not only are such people, there are a whole lot of them. About 10% of the adult population in America, at least. More than 20 million people is hardly an esoteric splinter group.

More importantly, one still has to ask the central question: "Ok, fine. They're liberals. But what has their social outlook or voting preference got to do with all those other things? Or, stronger still, what has any one of them to do with any of the others?"

In an important sense, the answer is: nothing.

What they have in common doesn't become clear until you ask not what binds them together, but what are they all a reaction against. The answer is: life. Or, more accurately, anything and everything that makes human flourishing possible — reason, egoism, individual rights, and the pursuit of material, intellectual, and emotional well-being.

The group of people I've been describing are the Anti(s).

Of course, they don't accept this evaluation. They argue that reason destroys human relationships, or the ego is the source of brutality and war, or that 'too much' freedom leads to indifference to the downtrodden and the dominance of rich, evil men, etc. But the evidence that all this puke is destructive is overwhelming and obvious, nonetheless. The more honest Anti(s) not only admit this, they celebrate it.

[Note: Many use the term "nihilist" to describe them. I don't, since that word has a somewhat different meaning. Nihilism, in one form, is the doctrine that objective values do not exist. The two are related, but they're not the same thing. Hence, there being no word to describe what I mean as I said above, I had to invent one. More on nihilism another day.]

None of this is new, of course. These characters — such as that shyster pseudo-sculptor who takes in rich bubbleheads willing to pay $15 really big ones for something worse than trash, or the (apparently) sincere yet insane author of that execrable book — are only the latest incarnation of creatures who have been walking the land of the once-free since the early 19th century. It was during that period that the U.S. saw the rise of dozens of irrationalist cults. The '60s didn't invent the thing, it just made it commercially popular with the masses.

But new or not, this philosophy and its adherents are the chief villains responsible for all the different forms of destruction we see today — in the arts, in education, in politics, and in life in general. It and they are poisoning everything not firmly protected by a healthy philosophical shield. It's past time their influence came to an end.

I'm not suggesting there's anything particularly deep or insightful about this analysis. I just think it's a good idea to have a name — even a bad one — for the thing one wants to fight. I admit, being anti-Anti sounds a little silly, but the phrase "pro-life" had already been co-opted.

Anyway, the important thing is to identify instances of Anti, expose their nature, and mock them mercilessly, then present a positive alternative. The hope is that, over time, the result will be fewer of the first and more of the second. Considering how fast and how far things have retrogressed in the past 40 years, the opposite is a little too scary to contemplate.

After the election, I plan to write a lot more on the subject. But, then, come to think of it, writing about the Presidential campaign is already an example of fighting the Anti and proposing something better.