Restoring Capitalism

Star Parker, one of the fine African-American conservative women on the political landscape, has recently written an article on the need to restore capitalism rather than continue to look to government. She is responding to the recent economic speeches made by President Obama. Here is the meat of what she had to say.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the current economic recovery "is one of the weakest on record, averaging 2 percent. Growth in the fourth quarter of 2012 was .4 percent. It rose to a still anemic 1.8 percent in the first quarter, but most economists are predicting even slower growth in the second quarter."
Yet, the president has no doubt that his policies are right. He ticks off the litany of big government programs that allegedly saved us from economic depression. And, with a slight nod that economic reality is not as rosy as he paints it, he concedes, "We're not there yet."
Perhaps it's again worth recalling the $831 billion stimulus package in 2009 that supposedly would keep unemployment below 8 percent. As unemployment galloped past 10 percent, never was there a hint of doubt from the president that his policies were right.
We're just "not there yet."
Now the president tells us we have to keep big, activist government going to save America's languishing middle class.
But the facts are that the middle class has fared poorly under big government.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, median household income -- $51,761 -- remains way below where it was before the recession started -- $56,289 - and where it was when it began -- $54, 218.
But, perhaps most notable in the president's remarks is what he did not say.
A magnificent economic miracle has occurred during this presidency. But the president did not find it worth mentioning because it has nothing to do with government.
Breakthroughs in technology have produced a boom in American energy production. American oil production is up 37 percent over the last two years, reversing 20 years of decline.
As of last March, the United States has become the largest oil producer in the world. Oil imports have dropped to 36 percent of our total oil consumption, down from 60 percent in 2006 and the lowest level since 1987.
No government planner could have ever dreamed of this type of miracle. It was not many years ago we were hearing about the world running out of oil.
According to Mr. Obama we are really dealing with different visions of how the world works. And he's right.

Her concern is that the President is hard-wired toward Big Government, and therefore to paint capitalism in a harsh and cold way. However, as the new American oil boom attests, it is freedom and capitalism that releases the human spirit, taps human creativity and produces prosperity that could never come from any government planner. To her way of thinking, few things are harsher than a stalled economy. What happens, of course, is that people in a stalled economic want to work and can't.

Climate Warming Faster?

Morita Noon wrote an article about a recent Senate hearing on climate change. I did not simply link the article because of some polemical comments that I did not find helpful. However, her article contains some information that I find helpful. The main point is that the notion that the past ten years have seen faster global warming than previously predicted is highly debatable. If you have an open mind.

She has pointed out that President Obama during a November 2012, press conference, said: “What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing—faster than was predicted even ten years ago.” Then at a Chicago fundraiser on May 29: “We also know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or 10 years ago.”

The hearing: “Climate Change: It’s Happening Now” was held on Thursday, July 18, by the Environment and Public Works Committee—chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). Because Democrats control the Senate, they get more witnesses at a hearing than Republicans. Thursday’s hearing had two panels. Each had three experts (invited by the Democrats) who supported the “alarmist’ position on global warming held by most Democrats and two (invited by the Republicans) who could be called “skeptics.”
During the Q & A time with the first panel—which included the Democrat’s star: Heidi Cullen of Weather Channel fame, Ranking Member Senator David Vitter (R-LA) asked: “Can any witnesses say they agree with Obama’s statement that warming has accelerated during the past 10 years?” After an awkward (to say the least) silence, Cullen tried to change the subject by saying that we need to be looking at longer time periods then ten years and then, ultimately, acknowledged that the warming has slowed, not accelerated. A few minutes later, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) made sure no one missed the point. He repeated Obama’s claim and then asked: “Do any of you support that quote?” Again, silence.
Even the witnesses brought in by the Democrats couldn’t support Obama’s false data. But, there were other interesting aspects of the nearly four-hour-long hearing.
Chairman Boxer, in her opening statement, proclaimed: “Predictions of climate change are coming true right before our eyes.” She added, “We can look out the window and see the evidence of climate change mounting around us.”

In preparation for the hearing, the Minority—led by Vitter—produced an important report: “Critical Thinking on Climate Change: Questions to Consider Before Taking Regulatory Action and Implementing Economic Policies.” The 21-page report’s introduction states: “Over nearly four decades, numerous predictions have had adequate time to come to fruition, providing an opportunity to analyze and compare them to
today’s statistics. … This report posits that as the developing world has greatly expanded its use of fossil energy and CO2 emissions have increased, then the predictions and claims regarding human influence on climate patterns should be apparent and easily proven.” The remaining 19 pages are filled with predictions and claims—including Obama’s—that are false or foolish, such as Former Vice President Al Gore’s on December 13, 2008: “The entire north polar ice cap will be gone in 5 years.” And a 1989 statement from the Associated Press: “Using computer models, researchers conclude that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide by two degrees by 2010.” Each set of predictions and claims is countered by “The Latest Science.” Reading the report, you’ll find that the claims often contradict the data.
Back to Boxer. She starts with dramatic predictions about heat waves, tropical storms and hurricanes—which will be more frequent and intense.
The first witness was Cullen, Chief Climatologist at Climate Central—who continued with the “extreme weather events” theme: “The impacts of human-caused climate change are being observed right here and right now in our own backyards and neighborhoods.” She said that warming is happening very, very quickly and that it is expected to accelerate. She talked about extremes seen every day:

• More heavy downpours, (a non-meteorological term)
• More heat extremes,
• Increase in hurricane activity,
• Increase in flood magnitude, and
• Southwest increase in droughts and wildfires.

While Boxer and Cullen set the stage, as witnesses number 9 and 10, Roger Pielke, Jr., and Roy Spencer provided the final act in Thursday’s theater.
Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado and the author of Climate Fix, started with seven “take-home points” that totally eviscerated Boxer and Cullen’s “extreme weather” claims. Showing a series of charts and graphs that can be found in his written testimony, Pielke convincingly proved: “It is misleading, and just plain incorrect, to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally. It is further incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases.” The fact of the matter is (From Pielke’s testimony):

• Globally, weather-related losses have not increased since 1990 as a proportion of GDP (they have actually decreased by about 25%).
• Insured catastrophe losses have not increased as a proportion of GDP since 1960.
• Hurricanes have not increased in the US in frequency, intensity or normalized damage since at least 1900.
• There are no significant trends (up or down) in global tropical cyclone landfalls since 1970 (when data allows for a comprehensive perspective), or the overall number of cyclones.
• Floods have not increased in the US in frequency or intensity since at least 1950.
• Tornadoes have not increased in frequency, intensity or normalized damage since 1950, and there is some evidence to suggest that they have actually declined.
• Drought has, for the most part, become shorter, less frequent, and has been covering a smaller portion of the US over the past century.

Pielke’s comments are all the more noteworthy when you realize that he generally believes that humans are influencing the climate system “in profound ways.”
Last, but surely not least, was Roy Spencer who holds a Ph.D. in Meteorology and has spent his entire career in research—specifically satellite information retrieval techniques and global temperature monitoring. Spencer has served NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center as Senior Scientist for Climate Studies. He agrees with Pielke—and every other panelist that at least some of the recent warming is human-caused: “We probably are having some influence, but it is impossible to know with any level of certainty how much influence.”
Spencer tore apart the oft-quoted figure that 97% of scientists support the global warming consensus. He explained that it’s actually 97% of the published papers that acknowledge some human influence—which is “therefore rather innocuous, since it probably includes all of the global warming ‘skeptics’ I know of who are actively working in the field. Skeptics generally are skeptical of the view that recent warming is all human-caused, and/or that it is of a sufficient magnitude to warrant immediate action given the cost of energy policies to the poor. They do not claim humans have no impact on climate whatsoever.”
Why is Spencer “skeptical?” For many reasons, but one involves data he showed covering the Roman Warm Period, the Medieval Warm Period and the Modern Warm Period. He said: “While today’s hearing is entitled “Climate Change; It’s Happening Now,” it couldhave been entitled “Climate Change: It’s Happened Before.” He explained: “The last 2000 years of proxy reconstructed temperature variations for the Northern Hemisphere shows that the Modern Warm Period (today) is not significantly different from the Medieval Warm Period of ~1000 years ago, or the Roman Warm Period of ~2000 years ago.
Spencer also demonstrated the failure of the computer model predictions upon which the IPCC based their projections of global warming. He offered a chart demonstrating the 73 models used and their predictions vs. the actual temperature measurement from two satellite datasets and four weather balloon datasets. “The level of disagreement between models and observations is quite striking.” Spencer pointed out: “The magnitude of global-average atmospheric warming between 1997 and 2012 is only about 50% that predicted by the climate models. …The level of warming in the most recent 15-year period is not significantly different from zero, despite this being the period of greatest greenhouse gas concentration. This is in stark contrast to claims that warming is ‘accelerating.’” He concludes: “It is time for scientists to entertain the possibility that there is something wrong with the assumptions built into their climate models. …and so far their error rate should preclude their use for predicting future climate change.”
Spencer’s testimony mentioned the “cost of energy policies to the poor”—which brings up another interesting contrast presented at Thursday’s hearing: the economics.

As each of the Senators gave his or her opening statements, the Democrats—who claim to be the champions of the poor—never mentioned the cost, and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) exclaimed: “To save the planet will be expensive!” He proposed: “serious legislation to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions” and called for “bold action,” saying: “the US must lead the world.” He’s introduced legislation for a tax on carbon. (Realize that the same week the hearing was held, Australia’s new Prime Minister announced that he “will ‘terminate’ the country's carbon tax early ‘to help cost of living pressures for families and to reduce costs for small business.”)
Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) addressed “the President’s intent to pursue a costly regulatory roll out” which he said: “demands proof of sound science as well as transparency.”

Diana Furchtgott-Roth has been chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, chief of staff at the Council of Economic Advisers, Deputy Executive Secretary of the Domestic Policy Council under President George H.W. Bush, and an economist on the staff of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. She said, “They don’t seem to be interested in whether or not climate change is really occurring. They are not interested in facts. They want a carbon tax because it will give them unlimited power and unlimited power means unlimited campaign contributions.” Furchtgott-Roth pointed out how a carbon tax would hurt the economy and how the expensive proposed solutions would disproportionately affect low-income Americans. A chart she presented shows, based on Department of Labor data, that “those in the lowest fifth of the income distribution spend an average of 24 percent of income on energy, compared to 10 percent of the income for those in the middle fifth, and 4 percent of income for those in the top fifth.” She presented several less costly options for climate change mitigation—if greenhouse gasses are really the problem—but felt they fell on deaf ears.

Lee Harris, Civilization and its Enemies: A Review

           The book by Lee Harris, Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History (Free Press: New York, 2004) is well worth reading, whether you are on the political Left or Right, for both will experience some challenges. Granted, the person on the Left will likely experience more disagreement with the thrust of the book, but the person on the political Right may well need to re-think some positions in a post 9-11 world.

            If you have any interest in understanding Hegel better, this book is worth the time and energy to read. He takes you through many philosophers like Kant and Locke as well.  

From the preface: 

Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe....They forget that in time of danger, in the face of the enemy, they must trust and confide in each other, or perish....They forget, in short, that there has ever been a category of human experience called the enemy.

"That, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary. An enemy was just a friend we hadn't done enough for yet. Or perhaps there had been a misunderstanding, or an oversight on our part -- something that we could correct....

 

Like Walter Bagehot, Harris makes the argument that civilization's success can set it up for downfall. Sustained peace and prosperity leads to complacency, and the members of a successful civilization are apt to forget that the natural state of people in the world is neither peaceful nor prosperous.

Harris does for politics what Frederick Turner, in works such as Beauty: The Value of Values and The Culture of Hope, did for aesthetics. Like Turner, Harris argues for the importance and necessity of shame in shaping our cultural values. Like Turner, Harris creates a kind of counter-myth to challenge the classical, non-partisan liberal ideology that has dominated the West since the triumph of the Enlightenment. Harris deals with the origins of leadership, the importance of team spirit, the evolution of tolerance, along with many other forces that have shaped our current liberal democratic societies.

Harris interprets and synthesizes the work of a wide range of political philosophers, but the heart of the book focuses on a handful of Hegel's observations on the origins of civilization. Now, I've always found Hegel to be obscure and convoulted, so I can't speak to the accuracy of Harris' interpretation, but it seemed to me that, through Hegel, Harris gets to the unpleasant truth about our civilization. As members in good standing of enlightened societies, we repress the fact that our liberal democracies (and civilization in general) were formed through illiberal methods.

Harris faces up to a truth that most civilized people try to ignore, namely that they may have enemies who, for no reason that would motivate one of Adam Smith's rational actors, want to kill them. Ignoring the enemy won't make them go away, Harris argues, but neither will pretending that they really aren't enemies. There are some conflicts in this world that cannot be "worked out," no matter what we'd like to think.

Throughout the book Harris makes the case for accepting and encouraging the genuine good that can come out of a messy reality, rather than trying to force reality to conform to transcendent ideals. We in the West often forget, Harris argues, that our society is better--that is more just and more moral--than any that has ever existed in human history. It is ridiculous, Harris suggests, to judge a country like America harshly because it doesn't live up to the unachievable criteria of idealists.

 

"Our first task is therefore to try to grasp what the concept of the enemy really means. The enemy is someone who is willing to die in order to kill you. And while it is true that the enemy always hates us for a reason, it is his reason, and not ours."

 

Because Americans are so highly civilized, Harris maintains, they "forget" the realpolitik truths of enmity and barbarianism, and he has come to sound the alarm. Western "liberal left" intellectuals mislead, Harris says, by mistakenly dignifying al-Qaeda as political activists instead of dismissing them as a gang of ruthless "fantasists" who don't share any of our assumptions about how the world should work.

Harris argues that terrorists struck against the U.S. not so much to wage war as to act out the histrionic script of a fantasy ideology in which religious zealotry enforces the kind of cruel tribal conformity that daring Greek and Roman thinkers long ago challenged. Though this ideology is astonishingly disconnected from economic and political realities, Harris warns that it holds real-world peril for the residents of a cosmopolitan civilization premised on freedom and tolerance. Indeed, Harris perceives profound peril for sophisticated intellectuals addicted to their own fantasies incubated not in religious fervor but rather in amnesiac utopianism. Many may complain that Harris demonizes foes he has not fully understood, but others will welcome his vigorous if contentious voice in a critically important policy debate.

The first chapter offers a stimulating interpretation of the motivation of the perpetrators of 9/11; the attack was less a means to an end (e.g., strike terror in the US population as a means to cause US withdrawal from the Middle East), than a theatrical demonstration, for the benefit of other Muslims, that Allah favors the triumph of Islam and the fall of the Great Satan. "Fantasy ideologies" are able to thrive because of the decline of political realism in states whose existence and wealth has not been earned by their own effort, but are (ironically) protected by the current international order.

Modern civilization has forgotten how it became civilized in the first place; it isn't knowledgeable of the long period of cultural evolution involved; and it doesn't remember the tremendous amount of labor, cultural and intellectual, that went into the development of civil society. Moreover, modern civilization has forgotten about a category called "the enemy." This concept of the enemy -- someone who is willing to die to kill another -- had been discarded from our moral and political discourse. And that fact, according to Harris, has left modern civilization vulnerable to attack by those who are the enemy of civilized society.

This is an interesting thesis and, at first glance, may appear to be an implausible explanation for the 9/11 tragedy which was, according to the author, an end in itself and not a means to some other political or social end. Many contemporary observers may find this latter statement problematic since we are so accustomed to thinking in terms of warfare as a means to an end. Harris suggests that our ordinary understanding about what wars are and why they are fought is not applicable to the current conflict with terrorism. The nature of the game, so to speak, has changed and so has the enemy, and 9/11 was a manifestation of that change.

So, who is this enemy and what is his intent? How did civilization get itself into this situation where it became so vulnerable to this enemy? What is the historical backdrop? What were the social and cultural influences? Who or what is really responsible? What can modern civilization do, if anything, to protect itself? Harris's discussion of these questions takes the reader on a tour through the development of civilization from antiquity to the present day, forming the framework with which he analyzes our current dilemma and providing a rationale for his conclusions.

One of the most interesting of his discussions has to do with what Harris calls "fantasy ideology" and the related "transformative belief." He also points out the difference between abstract reasoning and concrete reasoning and discusses the "fanaticism" of abstract thought, important elements in the presentation of his argument. One could also call it “intellectual insanity.” Modern intellectuals are particularly susceptible to this type of thinking, which eventually leads them into the irrational abyss of moral and cultural relativism, epistemological subjectivism, metaphysical idealism, abnormal focus on politics, and idolization of science.

Harris does more, of course, than just provide us with the historical background and intellectual underpinnings that have led to our present situation. He deals with the practical matter of our current conflict with "the enemy," giving us his prescriptions about how we should meet and confront the problem in the very real context within which we have to deal with it. Many intellectuals, especially those in the academic enterprise, will recoil at some of his suggestions.

But the problem we face today, the author says, is this: "The ideals that our intellectuals have been instilling in us are utopian ideals, designed for men and women who know no enemy and who do not need to take precautions against him." These utopian ideals are dangerous because they are out of touch with the situation as it really is. The new enemy of civilization does not play his "war" game according to the rules we are used to; indeed, as far as he is concerned there are no rules at all. Our intellectuals and those who influence our social and political policies must come to realize this. Our old categories of thought and analysis will no longer suffice. And this brings Harris to what may be his most controversial conclusion as far as the academic intellectuals are concerned.

Only the United States can play the sovereign in today's world. And if the use of force is necessary to defend civilization, then America will have to use it. At the same time Harris realizes the responsibilities involved in this type of action and points out the necessity, and dilemma, of being ruthless in the defense of civilization while not succumbing to ruthlessness itself. However, because it has produced, over a long period of time and through many sociopolitical conflicts, a practical design for solving and settling problems without resorting to massive ruthlessness, the United States is the only nation that can do the job required if civilization is to be defended and the enemy defeated.

Bad Samaritan

Psychologists say that how you perceive strangers is a microcosm of how you perceive the world. If you believe that most people are intrinsically unethical and that they would put the screws to you if given a chance, then you are much more likely to put the screws to someone else.

For example, suppose you find a wallet. I am thinking of the case of Los Angeles-based writer Andrew Cohn, who was cleaning up after a backyard party and found a wallet on the ground with $40 in it. “I’d just spent $500 on the party,” says Cohn. “I figured the money was the girl’s contribution.” He kept the money and left the wallet, with ID and credit cards, on the ground. How did Cohn justify his actions? Well, he says, “If you expect someone’s going to return your wallet with all the cash, you’re probably a little delusional.” Davy Rothbart, who edits a magazine called Found, which features photos of lost objects, agrees with Cohn. “Really good Samaritans, if they find a wallet, they return it intact,” he says. “Some people find a wallet, take the money, but return the important stuff. That’s not evil.”

For another example, suppose you find a cell phone. The Defense Department analyst Ashton Giese was on his way home when he inadvertently dropped his cell phone on a Washington, D.C., street. When he discovered that his electronic life was missing, he frantically began dialing the cell’s number from another phone. He did not even know what time it was because, like many 21st-century people, he kept time with his phone rather than a watch. Finally, a voice answered. “Yeah, I got your phone,” said the voice. “But what’s it worth to you?” “Twenty bucks,” said a frantic Giese. He had no other cash on him at the time. “My phone is my life,” he says. “If I’d needed to, I would have paid a lot more.”

We might call such people “Bad Samaritans,” for they focus primarily on maximizing their reward or, in some sense, recouping something of what they believe society owes them.

I now come to my final example. Suppose you find someone battered on the side of the road. You might hurry past to your destination. You might look a bit closer, decide that this is not your problem, and move on past. Of course, you might do the old-fashioned thing of making time for the stranger who hurts. You might opt for some face-to-face time with the stranger. If you start doing that, you might slowly become a person who knows no strangers. You know only neighbors.

In fact, people who see strangers as outsiders, as enemies or as something less than themselves, will default to treating them that way, rather than as equals, or, to use Jesus’ term, as “neighbors.”

You might want to read Luke 10:29-37, prayerfully considering how “merciful” we are in our lives.