P. Z. Meyes Leftist Atheist Idiot

Evidently the Leftatheopath P. Z. Meyers thinks the death of Robin Williams is "a wealthy white man" whose death "drag us away from the depressing news about brown people".

If this doesn't say something about the utter derangement of the Politically Correct mind then I don't know what does.

And on the racism of the police and justice system he is wrong. Blacks are vastly under represented in prison relative to their arrest rate.

Nicaragua and Left-wing Delusions

Dennis Prager likes to say; "being on the left means never having to say you're sorry". Indeed this is true. And one prominent example was the Leftwing intelligencer's amazing proclivity for ignoring the crimes of socialist dictatorships be it Slalin's or Mao's. During the 80's the Left were more likely to denounce Reagan than the Soviet dictator Brezhnev proving their utter moral bankruptcy.

Another rallying point for the Left's hatred of Reagan was the Sandinistas' victory in 1979 in Nicaragua. The U.S.' principle fear was that this victory, amidst cold war tensions, would set off a domino effect of collapsing governments on the pro-American side. The writer and intellectual Paul Berman - who's writings on the roots of Islamic fundamentalism are well worth consulting - who is on the Left has long been one willing to tell the truth about what the Sandinistas were really like.

His letter to the socialist mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, is well worth a read. He pops the bubble of starry-eyed leftism with its greater attraction to idealism than the actual facts on the ground and the real flesh and blood individuals who are experiencing the consequences of their delusional naivety.

The inability to see the reality of political oppression in Nicaragua stemmed from a well-known toxic by-product of a certain kind of political idealism, which is smug arrogance: an old story. The foreign visitors believed sincerely in the superiority of their own ideas, they trembled with indignation at the policies of the Reagan Administration, and their beliefs and their indignation joined together like two cymbals to drown out the whispered anguish of the poor and the persecuted. 

The foreign visitors never noticed that Sandinista claims to democratic socialism were a deception. They never recognized that authentic Sandinista doctrine was a leafy Central American variation on Cuban ideology, military uniforms and top-down obedience and all, which itself traced back to the ice floes of the Soviet tundra. And the visitors never appreciated that, in towns like Masaya, a great many people ended up afraid of foreign visitors—afraid of the wealthy university-educated adventurers from abroad who, in the eyes of ordinary Nicaraguans, were agents of the Sandinista government, no different from the Bulgarian, East German, Cuban and Russian advisors.

Or maybe the well-meaning visitors lacked for political imagination. Maybe the visitors were unable to recognize that even something as splendid as a health campaign may contain, on its underside, political aspects that are bound, in the long run, to undo any progress in public health or any other social service and reform. It was Masaya's health program that seems to have impressed you especially. But, Mr. de Blasio, what sort of health program would you expect from a government that sometimes chose to deny food rations to its critics? You were impressed by Masaya's health outreach program in 1988, and I do not doubt that you saw many impressive efforts. But were you aware that, in 1988, still another insurrection, or almost-insurrection, against the Sandinistas got underway? Or aware that an overwhelming majority of Nicaragua's doctors fled the country? Or aware that Nicaragua's health reforms depended massively on foreign doctors, who were never going to stay for long?

Race and the Free Market II

How many times have we heard that capitalism only benefits rich, white people? Or that Britain's early wealth was built off slavery? How many people know about John Bright? Britain's free trade champion, loved by Lincoln, advocate for the poor victims of Britain's protectionist Corn Laws, and was the leading British opponent of American slavery

Last post I mentioned how the classical liberal was compelled by ideology to reject exclusionary race policies in Australia. Along with many Christian activists the principles of classical liberalism was also opposed to slavery. Adam Smith makes his economic case against it in The Wealth of Nations. Specifically, that slavery is economically inefficient because the slaves have no incentive to work hard or innovate since they can not keep anything for themselves. Smith also morally condemns slavery and derides the owners of slaves in both TWN and The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

But even more of note is the story of John Bright. Bright was a champion of free trade, leading opponents of the early 19th century British Corn Laws that sort to protect British cereal produces from foreign sources.  Such protection benefited the wealthy cereal producing Aristocracy by imposing steep import duties that increased their profits and power but made bread more expensive for the masses. These laws were said to be the last remnants of British mercantilism before its passageway into full capitalism. In a display of just how motivated for the poor Bright was, here are the words of fellow Corn Law fighter Richard Cobden to Bright on the death of his first wife

There are thousands of homes in England at this moment where wives, mothers and children are dying of hunger. Now, when the first paroxysm of your grief is past I would advise you to come with me, and we will never rest till the Corn Law is repealed.

Such should demolish the mendacious claim that capitalists only care about the rich, likewise Adam Smith's TWN's title is dedicated mostly to the poor. Smith writes

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.

Bright not only fought for economic freedom, he was also the leading British champion against American slavery. Biographer Bill Cash writes

Bright was the leading advocate in Britain against slavery throughout the American Civil War and who was highly esteemed by Abraham Lincoln for his advocacy in the run up to the Emancipation Proclamation – which had its 150th anniversary on 1 January, 2013.

Bright was also a huge intellectual and motivational influence on Abraham Lincoln and it was Bright more than anyone that prevented war between Britain and the US during the Civil War. I'll let Cash tell the rest of the story

It was testimony to Bright’s influence that Shuyler Colfax (who, as those who have watched the film will have seen for themselves voted for the constitutional amendment in 1865) and Henry Janney – both of whom were confidants of Lincoln – wrote to Bright after the assassination telling him that his portrait and only his portrait was in President Lincoln’s reception room. Lincoln had sent two portraits of himself to Bright, and of the two portraits hanging in Lincoln’s own office, one was of Bright...

...In 1863, Bright defeated a resolution in the House of Commons for an alliance between Britain, the Emperor Napoleon II of France, and the southern Confederate states against the North, as well as ditching the £16 million support raised in England to support the South – the equivalent today of $1.7 billion (estimated by reference to the UK retail price index) – with the British Navy ruling the waves, this undoubtedly would have tipped the balance against the North, particularly given the support of Prime Minister Palmerston, Gladstone and Russell for the South at that time.

So Britain's greatest champion for a free economy was also Britain's greatest enemy of American slavery. Hardly something you would expect to be true if the early capitalist industrial countries were built on the backs of slaves or that capitalism only served the rich few.

Mary Midgley the Maverick

Mary Midgley was one of the pioneer female philosophers of the 20th century. A long time scourge of Richard Dawkins and his simplistic reductionist form of evolution, she accepts human beings with all their lived experiences, dreams, hopes, and values, without deconstructing them into physical and chemical parts.

But what I find particularly interesting is she echoes Einstein and C. S. Lewis' sentiments on materialistic reductionism - that the physical universe is insufficient to supply our own thoughts with the reasons for the conclusions we draw doing science or any other investigative activity. She says in Science as Saviour: A Modern Myth and its Meaning (1992);

As may be plain, this topic is essentially the one which caused Einstein often to remark that the really surprising thing about science is that it works at all. Puzzlement does not arise out of some eccentric and optional religious enquiry, but out of the simple observation that the laws of thought turn out to be the laws of things. (14)

She was also, like Thomas Nagel, somewhat of a believer in the Aristotelian notion of teleology as pervasive throughout the universe and the antidote to the Cartesian rift between mind and nature;

Some people are therefore now beginning to suspect that the mind/matter rift may be better dealt with differently – perhaps in the way that Spinoza proposed, by not letting it arise in the first place. Perhaps there are not two radically different kinds of stuff, mind and matter, but just one great world-stuff which has both mental and physical attributes, that can then quite properly be viewed without contradiction from both these angles. Then it would not be surprising if a single tendency, or conatus, runs through the whole, so that our kind of conscious purposiveness is only one part of the goal-directedness of nature.

Race and the Free Market

With the fiasco surrounding L.A. Clipper’s owner Donald Sterling’s racist remarks uttered in private to his mistress it seems when race is involved proper due attention to important moral considerations goes out the window. His statements were deeply asinine but they were done in private. And it is troubling to think that the media that reported on this and those that leapt to condemn him seem to see no moral dilemma in reporting the private words of a man without his knowledge. Who hasn't said something in private that they would be deeply embarrassed if it was broadcast publicly? I could guarantee the editors at these newspapers have skeletons of their own they wouldn't want revealed.

I for one wouldn’t care if Barack Obama was deeply racist against whites in his personal life and said all sorts of vile things about whites in private. What matters to me are the man’s policies because he is important as the President of the United States, and it is his actions as the President of the United States that matters. Same with Sterling, as David Henderson points out, the market imposes costs on racists so there is every incentive for them to treat everyone fairly.

"What I find interesting about the case of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling is how well it illustrates Gary Becker's insights on the economics of discrimination. Becker pointed out that the market makes people "pay" for discriminating on racial grounds. The white person who refuses to hire a black person who is more productive than a white employee (assuming the same wage for each) will find himself doing less well economically than if he hired the black person. Linda Gorman, in her article on Discrimination in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, lays out this insight nicely.

How does that apply here? Well, it seems fairly obvious that Donald Sterling is a racist. But you couldn't tell that by looking at the race of the players whom he has paid big bucks to hire. So, however foolish he might have been--tip for budding racists: don't make racist comments to a young lover whom it's clear you don't trust, and, even better, DON'T GO CHEATING ON YOUR WIFE--he was not so foolish as to try to win basketball games with an all-white roster. Indeed, take a look at the Clippers' payroll. The top 3 players alone made in salary this season a total of over $46 million while the payroll for the whole 18-person roster was $73 million. And guess what race these top 3 are.

In other words, the market disciplined Donald Sterling. In hiring players, he didn't discriminate against black men. Doing so would have been too costly."

 

I might also add that Sterling employs a black coach even though the majority of the coaches in the NBA are white. 

It's often heard that the American Tea Party with its emphasis on small government is racist, and in Australia those that object to welfare benefits for Aboriginals - no matter how ineffectual - are likewise denounced. But this belies the historical examples of who was on the right sight of the moral debate over race back during an era when racism was politically accepted. I don't think its a coincidence that many of the classical liberals of the past were also opposed to slavery and other racist policies. Take Australia's very own Bruce Smith, for example. Smith was a businessman, barrister and politician in the NSW parliament, he was also a follower of Adam Smith and wrote a defence of his principles in a work called Liberty and Liberalism in 1887. He was against high taxation, favoured free trade when it was less fashionable to do so, and believed the government should not interfere unnecessarily into the private property of its citizens.

Bruce Smith is also famous for being one of the most vociferous opponents of the White Australia Policy and thought women were deserving of equal pay. Being a former employer and a free marketeer, he believed that everyone should have equal opportunities and that labor should be able to cross borders as easily as goods. So the same person was both Australia's standout classical liberal and standout opponent of the WAP. 

Certainly not all the proponents of free trade were as opposed to WAP as Smith. Some, like William McMillan, believed not excluding certain races was a threat to "...the purity of our race and the future of our nation" (quoted in Nicholas Dyrenfurth, 2009; 254). But having said this, as Nicholas Dyrenfurth points out, he was pressured to justify his racism and to invent dire consequences for breaking white Australia taboos by his adherence to free trade principles. Dyrenfurth writes

"...McMillan appears to have worried more than any other member of the federal parliament that what Australians were doing in their immigration policiy could not easily be tallied with the ideal of open borders he advocated in connection with goods." (Ibid)

There's certainly plenty of evidence that Australia and the other English-speaking nations at the time were filled with racist sentiments - and just about every other nation on the planet for that matter - but to reiterate Henderson's point, the institutions that were at play in those countries were heavy restraints against all forms of racism.