Mishegoss
Well it's almost Shabbos and I have a ton of stuff I've been meaning to post so I want to unload some of it before I go on hiatus. Make sure to read the two posts before this one; I separated them from this post because I felt they merited their own entries. (And there's a lot of my own commentary!) Anyway, here goes:
1) A statue of Darth Vader is displayed in our National Cathedral. Weird.
2) This liberal writes Ten reasons not to kill Bush. Great. Only the last one deals with the immorality of murdering a person. She does (almost) redeem herself with her last two paragraphs:
In all seriousness, I don't hate President Bush. I dislike a lot of his administration's choices, but I think he's a good man doing a difficult job. As a leader, you're always going to be hated. I am too often shocked by the vitriolic repulsion many people feel for our leader and America in general, especially because the loathing is often poorly informed. I've met people on this campus who see America as the worst human rights abuser in the world (unlike the angelic paradise of Cambodia) and people who sway liberal not because they actually know anything about issues but because it's popular.
Liberalism has to be more than a college fad or a collection of loudmouths whose idiotic comments stir headlines. The rabid dislike some people feel for a man they've never even met makes me ashamed to be a Democrat.
3) Reform Jews and Orthodox Jews agree on remarkably few matters of moral or theological importance. One striking area is embryonic stem cell research. Eric Cohen explains why they're wrong. Judaism shouldn't support the destruction of life for medical research:
In the end, the argument that such embryos are available for our use because they are leftover (“donated to IVF clinics”), because they are unwanted (“in excess of clinical need”), and because they are likely to die anyway is morally unconvincing. Human dignity does not depend on being wanted by others; and being doomed to death does not make human beings into things - otherwise, the terminally ill would be in danger of being turned into ready sources of organs. In the end, the moral question hinges on the moral standing of human embryos themselves - on what human embryos are and what we owe them. And it seems irresponsible for Judaism to seek the fruits of modern science without confronting the facts modern biology - which demonstrates, beyond reasonable doubt, that the embryo is a complete human organism from the moment of conception, with purposeful division and development from the very beginning, and with primordial limbs, organs, and beating heart tissue by age 40 days. To call such embryos “mere water” denies the biological and human reality that lies before us.
It also seems irresponsible to ignore the many references in Jewish literature and Jewish law that celebrate the dignity and mystery of developing life, and that describe the violation of G-d’s majestic creation entailed in deliberately destroying it. Even the wisest rabbi many centuries ago could not deal adequately and precisely with the moral complexity of our current biotechnology. Instead, the Jewish sages of the past can offer us moral guideposts - things to revere and things to avoid - that we must wisely apply in light of current knowledge and current circumstances. This means not only considering the act in itself - embryo destruction - but the environment in which the act will be committed, and by whom. And I think it is fair to say that most stem-cell biologists - those in the laboratories destroying embryos - don’t revere G-d and Torah the way most Orthodox Jews do. This, too, the wise Jewish citizen must remember.
While acting positively to save life is a great Jewish good, so is preserving a society that welcomes the weak and never kills the innocent. Even if embryos are not our ontological or moral equals - though the argument for such a position is hard to make on rational grounds - there are good Jewish reasons not to promote the destruction of nascent human life, precisely because it will corrode the sensibilities that make us good people - and good Jews. It is simply wrong to appeal to Jewish law on abortion, which privileges the life of the mother over the life of the unborn child, as a moral justification. Jewish law does so, after all, only in cases where the unborn child is a “pursuer” who threatens the mother’s life and health directly. With embryo research, by contrast, there is no direct conflict between an embryo and a patient, and we are not in the position of using particular embryos to save particular patients. Rather, we are proposing a speculative research project that requires the massive, ongoing destruction of human embryos. And this should make all Jews and all decent citizens shudder - not only for what it is, but for where it might lead. Where is the Jewish “fence around the law” when you need it? ...
On most issues, Orthodox Judaism is a beacon of moral wisdom. And personally, I wish I lived up to the standards of everyday holiness embodied by many Orthodox Jews. But on the stem-cell question, the conscience of Judaism has been misguided. And when it comes to the Castle-DeGette bill, Jews seem to have forgotten even the minimal liberal wisdom of tolerance - the wisdom of not trampling on the moral opinions of their fellow citizens, like pro-life Christians, who believe embryo destruction is not only evil but the gravest evil. As Jews, don’t we owe our fellow citizens the minimal decency of not asking them to pay for the activity that most offends them? (The Bush policy that the Orthodox Union seeks to overturn, one must remember, does not fund embryo research or ban embryo research; its practical effect is ultimately neutral.) As Jews, don’t we know what it is like to have our own deepest principles and practices trampled upon by the state? And as Jews, are we really so sure that medical progress justifies or requires the full-scale dehumanization of early human life? Have we forgotten not only the words but also the spirit of Ecclesiastes: “As thou knowest not what is the way of the wind, Nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child; Even so thou knowest not the work of G-d Who doeth all things”?
4) An oldie but a goodie (in a depressing way): John Derbyshire's Unpleasant Truths. Worried that conservatives were becoming too optimistic, the famously pessimistic Derbyshire felt it necessary to inject some bad news into the collective conservative bloodstream. Why? "A conservative ought to be a pessimist, at least about human nature, human society, and the prospects for improving them. The facile cheeriness of the lefty world-perfecters are not for us, with their New Soviet Man, their Socialist Spiritual Civilization, their City of the Sun, their coming reign of peace, justice, and absolute equality."
Indeed, his list is depressing. A taste:
-Most of us will die in poverty.
-Quality health care for all is not possible.
-Pop culture is filth. (see below)
-The environment is collapsing.
-Science has stopped.
-Socialism is popular. (Practically all of the Socialist Party platform on which Norman Thomas ran in 1928 has been implemented. Thomas himself noticed this as far back as 1962, exulting that: "The difference between Democrats and Republicans is: Democrats have accepted some ideas of Socialism cheerfully, while Republicans have accepted them reluctantly.")
-Conservatism is dead. (No genuinely conservative policy will ever be enacted, ever again, by any U.S. government or the government of any important state. Great masses of ordinary Americans believe that "conservative" means "repressed fundamentalist freak." Why would they not believe this? Every medium of mass entertainment and mass information has been preaching it to them, over and over and over, for twenty years. The Ronald Reagan of 1980, if he were to stride onto the national stage today, would be unelectable. Calvin Coolidge would be laughed out of public life, if by some bizarre accident he were permitted to wander into it. Even when large majorities of Americans favor a conservative policy, nothing will be done to implement it.)
-Nothing will be done about immigration.
-Only Anglo-Saxon countries can do democracy. (The natural state of human society is despotism. If you tally up all the human lives that have ever been lived on this planet under organized systems of government, no more than five per cent were lived under consensual systems. Even to get up to five per cent, you have to include places like ancient Athens and Tudor England, which wouldn't pass muster as "democratic" by modern standards. In the last couple of centuries, practically all consensual systems have been Anglo-Saxon. Other cultures can fake it for a few decades, as France, Germany, and Japan are currently doing, but their hearts aren't really in it and they will swoon gratefully into the arms of a fascist dictator when one comes along.)
-China will get stronger and richer, without moving one inch closer to constitutional government.
-Taiwan will be re-united with the Motherland....by some combination of economic carrot and military stick. (The U.S. will grumble ineffectually, up to the point where the Chinese ambassador loses his patience and asks the U.S. Secretary of State point-blank: "How many cities are you willing to lose over this? We ourselves are willing to lose three or four." Then we will stop grumbling.)
-Something inconceivably horrible will happen in the Middle East. (Probably the following: The Arabs will commit some huge, gross atrocity against Israel. Surviving Israelis will respond by massacring the Palestinian Arabs, and perhaps erasing a couple of Arab capitals. 100 years of peace in the Middle East will follow.)
-The four horsemen of the Apocalypse are saddled up and ready to ride. (Just to remind you, their names are: War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. No. 4 will presumably always be with us, but at least we have got Nos. 1, 2, and 3 pretty much fenced off in sub-Saharan Africa, right? The chance that you or me, or your kids or mine, will die in a genuine mass-mobilization-type, carriers-going-down-with-all-hands-type, flattened-cities-type war, or from starvation, or in some horrid medieval-type, communal-grave-type, 1918-flu-type plague, is actuarially insignificant, right? Well, believe it if you like, but your belief has no foundation more substantial than wishful thinking. History suggests that it is most likely false.)
-The next version of MicroSoft Windows will be even buggier and more counterintuitive than the last.
-Poverty and hardship build character; prosperity and security destroy it. (Generally true, but not always.)
-The U.S. constitution is incompatible with a war on terrorism. (It is absurdly easy to commit a terrorist act in the U.S.A. This state of affairs could be changed only by abandoning key constitutional protections. We shall be very reluctant to do this; but if deaths from terrorism reach a certain number, we shall do it anyway. That number has either seven or eight digits.)
-Justice is dead. (As the last of the generation of judges who actually believe in the law heads into retirement, the administration of justice will be divvied up between avaricious trial lawyers and ideology-addled graduates of lefty law schools. Their morale destroyed by "brutality" and "profiling" hysteria, police forces will sink into corruption and paper-pushing. Ambitious public prosecutors will concentrate on framing up law-abiding citizens with "hate crime," "corporate corruption," "dangerous product" (guns, fast food) or "child abuse" charges. Actual crime - murder, rape, robbery, burglary, and assault - will skyrocket, but it will be illegal to talk about it.)
I'm a bit of an optimist myself, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that I believe in a just and loving G-d. And I don't agree with many of his propositions. I think some conservate policies will be enacted and that the size of government will eventually shrink (though not to a huge degree). I believe that democracy is possible elsewhere. Science will continue (though, in some cases, for the worse). China will eventually become more democratic (though I'm not sure about Taiwan's independence). Something terrible will likely happen in the Middle East, but I don't believe that Israel will use its nuclear weapons or "erase" Muslim capitals. I think we will make progress in the areas of disease, famine, hunger, poverty, etc. though we won't ever eliminate them entirely. Justice will be revived. There is hope!
In any case, the way Derbyshire ends his depressing list is priceless: "We are living in a golden age. The past was pretty awful; the future will be far worse. Enjoy!"
5) And, the same man who famously opined "pop culture is filth" is rethinking his position. When John Derbyshire's son asked him, "Dad, was Trajan a good emperor?" because he was playing "Age of Empires" (a great game), he realized that not all pop culture is bad. Of course, reading Steven Johnson’s book Everything Bad is Good for You also helped. Ultimately, he doesn't think that Johnson is right about everything, but the argument has some validity. Derbyshire [emphasis in the original]:
Everything Bad is one of those books that you feel a bit suspicious of because it tells the lazy man what he is glad to hear. (Here’s the classic in that particular genre.) If you are a parent, you know all too well that preventing kids from spending every minute of their free time in front of a flickering screen (computer or TV) demands constant vigilance and effort. A lot of people will take Steven Johnson’s message as: “Hey, you don’t have to bother!” In fact he is much more thoughtful than that, and wants kids to do some book reading in among their gaming and TV-watching.
And I think he is probably correct, on balance, when he writes: “The culture is getting more intellectually demanding, not less.” As I was passing through my son’s room on the way to my study, the lad tried to draw me in to Age of Empires. “Look, Dad - see this here? It’s a ballista. Watch me hit that Carthaginian…” Blimey, I didn’t know about ballistas and Carthaginians at age nine.
Nor is it just incidental facts these kids are acquiring. As Johnson writes, they know how to program a VCR not because they’ve memorized the instructions for every model on the market: “They know how to program a VCR because they’ve learned general rules for probing and exploring a piece of technology, rules that come in handy no matter what model VCR you put in front of them.” That is right. The kids aren’t just getting facts, nor even merely skills: They are getting meta-skills. My wife bought me this new cellphone three months ago, and I’ve only just figured out how to store names in the directory. When I lent the thing to my 12-year-old daughter for a school day trip, she racked up $20 of Instant Messaging charges. I don’t even know what Instant Messaging is, and have no clue how to do it on my cellphone. Computer games? I have never advanced beyond Freecell, and am not very good at that.
[Editor's note: me speaking again] The rest of the article, of course, is great. And pop culture isn't *all* bad. Most of it, however, is still filth.
1) A statue of Darth Vader is displayed in our National Cathedral. Weird.
2) This liberal writes Ten reasons not to kill Bush. Great. Only the last one deals with the immorality of murdering a person. She does (almost) redeem herself with her last two paragraphs:
In all seriousness, I don't hate President Bush. I dislike a lot of his administration's choices, but I think he's a good man doing a difficult job. As a leader, you're always going to be hated. I am too often shocked by the vitriolic repulsion many people feel for our leader and America in general, especially because the loathing is often poorly informed. I've met people on this campus who see America as the worst human rights abuser in the world (unlike the angelic paradise of Cambodia) and people who sway liberal not because they actually know anything about issues but because it's popular.
Liberalism has to be more than a college fad or a collection of loudmouths whose idiotic comments stir headlines. The rabid dislike some people feel for a man they've never even met makes me ashamed to be a Democrat.
3) Reform Jews and Orthodox Jews agree on remarkably few matters of moral or theological importance. One striking area is embryonic stem cell research. Eric Cohen explains why they're wrong. Judaism shouldn't support the destruction of life for medical research:
In the end, the argument that such embryos are available for our use because they are leftover (“donated to IVF clinics”), because they are unwanted (“in excess of clinical need”), and because they are likely to die anyway is morally unconvincing. Human dignity does not depend on being wanted by others; and being doomed to death does not make human beings into things - otherwise, the terminally ill would be in danger of being turned into ready sources of organs. In the end, the moral question hinges on the moral standing of human embryos themselves - on what human embryos are and what we owe them. And it seems irresponsible for Judaism to seek the fruits of modern science without confronting the facts modern biology - which demonstrates, beyond reasonable doubt, that the embryo is a complete human organism from the moment of conception, with purposeful division and development from the very beginning, and with primordial limbs, organs, and beating heart tissue by age 40 days. To call such embryos “mere water” denies the biological and human reality that lies before us.
It also seems irresponsible to ignore the many references in Jewish literature and Jewish law that celebrate the dignity and mystery of developing life, and that describe the violation of G-d’s majestic creation entailed in deliberately destroying it. Even the wisest rabbi many centuries ago could not deal adequately and precisely with the moral complexity of our current biotechnology. Instead, the Jewish sages of the past can offer us moral guideposts - things to revere and things to avoid - that we must wisely apply in light of current knowledge and current circumstances. This means not only considering the act in itself - embryo destruction - but the environment in which the act will be committed, and by whom. And I think it is fair to say that most stem-cell biologists - those in the laboratories destroying embryos - don’t revere G-d and Torah the way most Orthodox Jews do. This, too, the wise Jewish citizen must remember.
While acting positively to save life is a great Jewish good, so is preserving a society that welcomes the weak and never kills the innocent. Even if embryos are not our ontological or moral equals - though the argument for such a position is hard to make on rational grounds - there are good Jewish reasons not to promote the destruction of nascent human life, precisely because it will corrode the sensibilities that make us good people - and good Jews. It is simply wrong to appeal to Jewish law on abortion, which privileges the life of the mother over the life of the unborn child, as a moral justification. Jewish law does so, after all, only in cases where the unborn child is a “pursuer” who threatens the mother’s life and health directly. With embryo research, by contrast, there is no direct conflict between an embryo and a patient, and we are not in the position of using particular embryos to save particular patients. Rather, we are proposing a speculative research project that requires the massive, ongoing destruction of human embryos. And this should make all Jews and all decent citizens shudder - not only for what it is, but for where it might lead. Where is the Jewish “fence around the law” when you need it? ...
On most issues, Orthodox Judaism is a beacon of moral wisdom. And personally, I wish I lived up to the standards of everyday holiness embodied by many Orthodox Jews. But on the stem-cell question, the conscience of Judaism has been misguided. And when it comes to the Castle-DeGette bill, Jews seem to have forgotten even the minimal liberal wisdom of tolerance - the wisdom of not trampling on the moral opinions of their fellow citizens, like pro-life Christians, who believe embryo destruction is not only evil but the gravest evil. As Jews, don’t we owe our fellow citizens the minimal decency of not asking them to pay for the activity that most offends them? (The Bush policy that the Orthodox Union seeks to overturn, one must remember, does not fund embryo research or ban embryo research; its practical effect is ultimately neutral.) As Jews, don’t we know what it is like to have our own deepest principles and practices trampled upon by the state? And as Jews, are we really so sure that medical progress justifies or requires the full-scale dehumanization of early human life? Have we forgotten not only the words but also the spirit of Ecclesiastes: “As thou knowest not what is the way of the wind, Nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child; Even so thou knowest not the work of G-d Who doeth all things”?
4) An oldie but a goodie (in a depressing way): John Derbyshire's Unpleasant Truths. Worried that conservatives were becoming too optimistic, the famously pessimistic Derbyshire felt it necessary to inject some bad news into the collective conservative bloodstream. Why? "A conservative ought to be a pessimist, at least about human nature, human society, and the prospects for improving them. The facile cheeriness of the lefty world-perfecters are not for us, with their New Soviet Man, their Socialist Spiritual Civilization, their City of the Sun, their coming reign of peace, justice, and absolute equality."
Indeed, his list is depressing. A taste:
-Most of us will die in poverty.
-Quality health care for all is not possible.
-Pop culture is filth. (see below)
-The environment is collapsing.
-Science has stopped.
-Socialism is popular. (Practically all of the Socialist Party platform on which Norman Thomas ran in 1928 has been implemented. Thomas himself noticed this as far back as 1962, exulting that: "The difference between Democrats and Republicans is: Democrats have accepted some ideas of Socialism cheerfully, while Republicans have accepted them reluctantly.")
-Conservatism is dead. (No genuinely conservative policy will ever be enacted, ever again, by any U.S. government or the government of any important state. Great masses of ordinary Americans believe that "conservative" means "repressed fundamentalist freak." Why would they not believe this? Every medium of mass entertainment and mass information has been preaching it to them, over and over and over, for twenty years. The Ronald Reagan of 1980, if he were to stride onto the national stage today, would be unelectable. Calvin Coolidge would be laughed out of public life, if by some bizarre accident he were permitted to wander into it. Even when large majorities of Americans favor a conservative policy, nothing will be done to implement it.)
-Nothing will be done about immigration.
-Only Anglo-Saxon countries can do democracy. (The natural state of human society is despotism. If you tally up all the human lives that have ever been lived on this planet under organized systems of government, no more than five per cent were lived under consensual systems. Even to get up to five per cent, you have to include places like ancient Athens and Tudor England, which wouldn't pass muster as "democratic" by modern standards. In the last couple of centuries, practically all consensual systems have been Anglo-Saxon. Other cultures can fake it for a few decades, as France, Germany, and Japan are currently doing, but their hearts aren't really in it and they will swoon gratefully into the arms of a fascist dictator when one comes along.)
-China will get stronger and richer, without moving one inch closer to constitutional government.
-Taiwan will be re-united with the Motherland....by some combination of economic carrot and military stick. (The U.S. will grumble ineffectually, up to the point where the Chinese ambassador loses his patience and asks the U.S. Secretary of State point-blank: "How many cities are you willing to lose over this? We ourselves are willing to lose three or four." Then we will stop grumbling.)
-Something inconceivably horrible will happen in the Middle East. (Probably the following: The Arabs will commit some huge, gross atrocity against Israel. Surviving Israelis will respond by massacring the Palestinian Arabs, and perhaps erasing a couple of Arab capitals. 100 years of peace in the Middle East will follow.)
-The four horsemen of the Apocalypse are saddled up and ready to ride. (Just to remind you, their names are: War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. No. 4 will presumably always be with us, but at least we have got Nos. 1, 2, and 3 pretty much fenced off in sub-Saharan Africa, right? The chance that you or me, or your kids or mine, will die in a genuine mass-mobilization-type, carriers-going-down-with-all-hands-type, flattened-cities-type war, or from starvation, or in some horrid medieval-type, communal-grave-type, 1918-flu-type plague, is actuarially insignificant, right? Well, believe it if you like, but your belief has no foundation more substantial than wishful thinking. History suggests that it is most likely false.)
-The next version of MicroSoft Windows will be even buggier and more counterintuitive than the last.
-Poverty and hardship build character; prosperity and security destroy it. (Generally true, but not always.)
-The U.S. constitution is incompatible with a war on terrorism. (It is absurdly easy to commit a terrorist act in the U.S.A. This state of affairs could be changed only by abandoning key constitutional protections. We shall be very reluctant to do this; but if deaths from terrorism reach a certain number, we shall do it anyway. That number has either seven or eight digits.)
-Justice is dead. (As the last of the generation of judges who actually believe in the law heads into retirement, the administration of justice will be divvied up between avaricious trial lawyers and ideology-addled graduates of lefty law schools. Their morale destroyed by "brutality" and "profiling" hysteria, police forces will sink into corruption and paper-pushing. Ambitious public prosecutors will concentrate on framing up law-abiding citizens with "hate crime," "corporate corruption," "dangerous product" (guns, fast food) or "child abuse" charges. Actual crime - murder, rape, robbery, burglary, and assault - will skyrocket, but it will be illegal to talk about it.)
I'm a bit of an optimist myself, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that I believe in a just and loving G-d. And I don't agree with many of his propositions. I think some conservate policies will be enacted and that the size of government will eventually shrink (though not to a huge degree). I believe that democracy is possible elsewhere. Science will continue (though, in some cases, for the worse). China will eventually become more democratic (though I'm not sure about Taiwan's independence). Something terrible will likely happen in the Middle East, but I don't believe that Israel will use its nuclear weapons or "erase" Muslim capitals. I think we will make progress in the areas of disease, famine, hunger, poverty, etc. though we won't ever eliminate them entirely. Justice will be revived. There is hope!
In any case, the way Derbyshire ends his depressing list is priceless: "We are living in a golden age. The past was pretty awful; the future will be far worse. Enjoy!"
5) And, the same man who famously opined "pop culture is filth" is rethinking his position. When John Derbyshire's son asked him, "Dad, was Trajan a good emperor?" because he was playing "Age of Empires" (a great game), he realized that not all pop culture is bad. Of course, reading Steven Johnson’s book Everything Bad is Good for You also helped. Ultimately, he doesn't think that Johnson is right about everything, but the argument has some validity. Derbyshire [emphasis in the original]:
Everything Bad is one of those books that you feel a bit suspicious of because it tells the lazy man what he is glad to hear. (Here’s the classic in that particular genre.) If you are a parent, you know all too well that preventing kids from spending every minute of their free time in front of a flickering screen (computer or TV) demands constant vigilance and effort. A lot of people will take Steven Johnson’s message as: “Hey, you don’t have to bother!” In fact he is much more thoughtful than that, and wants kids to do some book reading in among their gaming and TV-watching.
And I think he is probably correct, on balance, when he writes: “The culture is getting more intellectually demanding, not less.” As I was passing through my son’s room on the way to my study, the lad tried to draw me in to Age of Empires. “Look, Dad - see this here? It’s a ballista. Watch me hit that Carthaginian…” Blimey, I didn’t know about ballistas and Carthaginians at age nine.
Nor is it just incidental facts these kids are acquiring. As Johnson writes, they know how to program a VCR not because they’ve memorized the instructions for every model on the market: “They know how to program a VCR because they’ve learned general rules for probing and exploring a piece of technology, rules that come in handy no matter what model VCR you put in front of them.” That is right. The kids aren’t just getting facts, nor even merely skills: They are getting meta-skills. My wife bought me this new cellphone three months ago, and I’ve only just figured out how to store names in the directory. When I lent the thing to my 12-year-old daughter for a school day trip, she racked up $20 of Instant Messaging charges. I don’t even know what Instant Messaging is, and have no clue how to do it on my cellphone. Computer games? I have never advanced beyond Freecell, and am not very good at that.
[Editor's note: me speaking again] The rest of the article, of course, is great. And pop culture isn't *all* bad. Most of it, however, is still filth.