American conservatism vs. European liberalism

A couple days ago I stumbled onto an article from the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank. Unlike many other consevative sites, Claremont is usually pretty solid in its analysis, even if I disagree with it. This article, though, both amused and enraged me. The author, Gerard Alexander, is a professor of politics at the University of Virginia.

It begins, like so much conservative "analysis," with a generalization unsupported by evidence, namely that

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, country after country abandoned socialism for free markets, embracing such Reaganite themes as incentives, individualism, and responsibility.

I like that adjective, "Reaganite." What better way to claim the high ground than by hitching your wagon to ideals that almost everyone supports and then claiming that your guys came up with it? So incentives, individualism, and responsibility didn't exist before Reagan? Silly me, here I thought all along that these were the hallmarks of liberal democracy.

But still, American conservatives are so lonely. How tragic.

Alexander begins by analyzing economic policy, namely the difference between the American belief in markets and the European belief in state involvement. He notes, for exampel that "most Western Europeans fear that markets will fail to meet their needs and satisfy their interests." Do most Western Europeans indeed think this? No support is given for this assertion. And if they think this, are they wrong? The presumption on Alexander's part is that they are, and to demonstrate the debilitating influence of government policies on economic performance, he claims that

A recent study by two Swedish economists found that if the United Kingdom, France, or Italy suddenly were admitted to the American union, any one of them would rank as the 5th poorest of the 50 states, ahead only of West Virginia, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Montana. Ireland, the second richest E.U. country, would be the 13th poorest state; Sweden the 6th poorest. The study found that 40% of all Swedish households would classify as low-income by American standards.

But do most Swedes consider themselves poor? Sweden has one of the highest standards of living in the world, and its population is certainly better served by the welfare state than the poor of the states mentioned by Alexander. Moreover, economic inequality in Sweden is lower, which reveals the folly of using per-capita income to evaluate how rich or poor Swedes are relative to West Virginians. A more detailed analysis of the comparison between Sweden and the U.S. can be found here; Alexander leaves out the complications of this analysis.

The foreign policy comparison comes next. See, according to Alexander (and who else?) American conservatives believe that "although international conflicts may arise from uncertainty, misunderstanding, and mutual threats, they usually result from simple predation, power-hunger, and hatred." Of course, Alexander doesn't bother trying to show whethre his assertion of American conservatives' beliefs, or those beliefs themselves have any resemblance to the truth. Now Europeans, says Alexander, "Instead ... insist on seeing misperception, insecurity, and pride as the root of most international conflicts, which accordingly are best defused by reassurance and the careful avoidance of confrontation, ultimatums, and threats."

Again, is this true? Do Europeans really see the world this way? There is no evidence in support of this assertion. Of course, both ways of approaching the problem are limited; a combination of the two is what's really in order, with the balance sometimes falling on one side, sometimes on the other. But Alexander's article gives no indication of the possibility of compromise between these two world views.

Alexander also makes profitable use of the mythical hard-soft distinction that supposedly exists in American politics and between America and Europe. See, Democrats are the "mommy" party and Republicans are the "daddy" party; the obvious implication being, of course, that the "daddy" party, which supposedly "tries to toughen citizens to cope with life's ordeals" is the superior one. That the "mommy" part is just full of effete coddlers is the unstated but implied subtext of Alexander's analysis. Never mind that business in the Constitution's preamble about promoting the general welfare. Those founder guys didn't really mean that.

The evil specter of secularism loomes large in Alexander's article, and although he does not link it directly to his previous points, the linkage is again implied. First point out the features of European states you find undesirable and then mention, in passing, how awfully secular Europeans are. Better yet, invert the exceptionalism equation to show that Europeans are abnormally secular and imply that this is a negative rather than a positiv thing (something that would never fly where American exceptionalism is concerned.)

Inevitably, as it apparently must in every conservative critique, the elites are next to come under attack. That's right, public expression is "monopolized by a collusive journalistic, intellectual, and Eurocratic elite," according to that sage and epitome of integrity William Kristol. Again, no evidence is provided for this alleged monopoly; in any case, the underlying assumption is that the elites are necessarily the bad guys. No attempt is made to examine the content of the critique of those elites. Of course, according to Kristol, salvation can only come from a European Newt Gingrich.

Alexander concludes his article with the suggestion that American conservatives evangelize their free-market principles to Europe (although he bemoans the unlikelyhood of a "values revival"). He finally suggests that American liberals have more in common with American conservatives than with liberals abroad, since by international standards Democrats are not particularly leftist. But no rational comparison of what American conservatives stand for today (a demand that a particular religion be endorsed by the state, the elimination of regulations for favored industries, the subjection of individual rights to the demands of the majority) with the tenets of liberalism (whether classical or modern) could possibly lead anyone to make that claim seriously.

I have |-|4><0|2ed your interweb!

Know me and despair!!!1!

"In Pennsylvania, It Was Religion vs. Science, Pastor vs. Ph.D., Evolution vs. the Half-Fish"

Of course, I forgot to mention the most important thing. The Times has been running stories on the Dover lawsuit, which originated when a group of brave parents decided that science, not creationism in the disguise of intelligent design, should be taught in the classroom. The details of the trial, though, are not what interest me here; rather, it's the Times' coverage of the issue.

I realize that the Times has caught flak before for being the bastion of liberalism in journalism, and that they have been doing their best to present, "both sides of the debate." But there is only one side of the debate here that has any science behind it; that's the side of evolution. The Times reporters have, in my opinion, gone far out of their way to present this as a genuine controversy when in fact it is nothing of the sort.

Reporting on issues of faith is always a delicate matter, but in this case a correct presentation of the facts far overrides the necessity to be evenhanded. In order to represent the true balance of opinion in the Dover trial, the Times would have had to publish a paragraph presenting the views of the defendants (the creationist school board) and devote the rest of the article to explaining just how wrong they are.

And that's key here: they are wrong. ID is nothing but a trojan horse (attribution: Barbara Forrest) for creationism, and the press has the responsibility to report it as such, as well as present all the information, compiled by people like Forrest and Eugenie Scott (of the National Center for Science Education) that supports this contention. It should be blindingly obvious to anyone reading an article on the Dover trial which side has science on its side, but the way the articles are written currently, you'd get the impression that there was a balance between the two sides.

I am reminded of David Hume's argument about opposing testimonies. Hume viewed testimony as a vector (although I do not know whether he had that terminology available to him) with a magnitude and an affirmative or negative direction. When you wanted to know whose testimony was more convincing, you just added the pro and con arguments and looked at which one was left over, and how much. If you add the pro and con arguments for evolution, you get on the one side (con) a small group of people holding a little arrow-sign pointing in one direction and on the other hand, you have pretty much the entire scientific community of all the civilized nations carrying a gigantic arrow that winds 3 times around the earth. You do the math.

I Suck

So I wanted to blog about a couple of things and I bookmarked them, but since they were articles in the New York Times online edition, they have been archived. So sad. The gist, though, may be conveyed:

"Buying of News by Bush Aides Is Ruled Illegal"

Everyone remembers (or ought to remember) Armstrong Williams, a shill for this administration who was paid to trump up No Child Left Behind while posing as an independent pundit. That arrangment has been ruled illegal. Not much to say about it other than, thank fucking God, it's about time.

"Options Open, Top Graduates Line Up to Teach to the Poor"

This article referred to graduates of prestigious universities who go on to do Teach for America. This is a wonderful thing on the part of those who do it. They get paid bubkis and teach in some of the worst schools in the nation; these are the kind of people who deserve the utmost in praise and recognition.

The sad thing, however, is that most of them don't last. They do their two years, and they are on their way. And that's a damn shame, because these are some of the most talented, enthusiastic people you could possibly hope to have in the classroom. The problem is, they can't make a living teaching, so they don't. Instead of putting resources into retaining these wonderful people, who really do want to be there, we, as a society, value their service at roughly the same level that we would value a janitor's.

It's mindboggling, really. If you pay people McDonald's wages, you get a McDonald's education. It's really simple, and yet it's as though none of our elected officials have grasped it (or, if they have, they certainly haven't said so publicly). No, instead it's much easier to make yourself out to be the tough-guy by facing down those evil teachers' unions.

Soccer Game Canceled Again

My intramural game has been canceled once more; the first time it was because of rain, the second time because our opponents withdrew from the league. I wonder when we'll finally get to play...

WebCT

If you go to college, you might have noticed that a lot of schools these days are using a course-management system called WebCT. It's basically a system that allows the instructor to set up and manage the students in his class, assign them homework, grade them online, etc. As a GSI, I have to use this system, and it sucks.

Using WebCT is essentially adding a complicated, expensive software layer on top of a process that should be relatively straightforward - handing in assignments. All its fancy bells and whistles (it can graph the grades for an assignment, for example) are, for the most part, totally useless. The worst part is that students submit their assignment online, then I have to print the assignment out, grade it, and hand it back. Super. Instead of each student taking 2 minutes to print his or her own assignment, I have to take half an hour to do it (at the university's expense, of course).

I don't mind WebCT as a way of putting information online so that students can download it, but this nonsense is way too much.

Oh well... might as well go eat cookies at the colloqium now that my game is off.

Weekend Excitement

The quizbowl tournament that I was planning to go to this coming weekend has been postponed until next weekend (the 15th). Perhaps this will mean that the people I wanted to play with at Harvard (some old high-school friends of mine) will be free.

Waterfire

Kathryn and I went to Waterfire this weekend. For those not in the know (aparently anyone not living in Providence) Waterfire is an event where they take some wood, put it in stationary braziers that sit in the water (water being the Providence river) and... get ready for this... light it on fire! While ambient music plays in the background! Well, shit. I personally thought that it was going to involve these brazieres actually floating down the river while on fire, which I guess might have been marginally more entertaining. Well, there was also the guy who was twirling burning chains and some other street entertainers, probably a rarity in most American cities. Not quite so impressive if you were just in Barcelona and saw the best of what street entertainment can offer on Las Ramblas.

But that wasn't the highlight of the weekend. No, not by any means. The highlight was... drumroll...

David Lynch Speaking About Trascendental Meditation

Damn, was this bizarre. I went hoping to hear David Lynch talk about his movies, but it turned out to be a crapfest of Hollywood proportions. We were treated to Lynch's rambling discourses on the various benefits of transcendental meditation (including its potential to bring world peace), as well as spiels from a Fred Travis and John Hagelin, both "researchers" at the Maharishi University of Management (how's that for a triple oxymoron?). Ok, Hagelin actually got a legitimate Ph.D. in physics from Harvard, but it's not clear whether he's done anything useful since. Oh, wait, I knew I had heard that name before. First, Hagelin was in a movie called What the Bleep Do We Know?, which I have on good authority (my girlfriend's) sucked gigantic ass if you knew anything about physics at all. Also, he was the Natural Law part's presidential candidate in 2000 (didn't make it to the 2004 ticket? aw...). Travis is a neuroscientist (or so he claims, it's hard to independently verify these things) who did a demonstration which purported to show a synchronicity in brain function when a volunteer student (whom he brought with him) was undergoing TM. Ok, fine, I'll take the demo at face value. But as regards claims of unified fields and potential for world peace... well, I'm a sceptic.

The most disappointing thing, though, was David Lynch. I am a big fan of his movies and I'd always thought that someone who could make a movie like Mullholland Drive would be an intensely cerebral, intellectual person who wouldn't put up with any of this nonsense. He seemed genuinely nice and pleased to be there, but it was disappointing to discover that he appears to be an essentially empty vessel as far as being able to intellectually analyze his own work. His answers to every question were rambling and almost always wound back to him talking about TM (incidentally, he has started a foundation that uses TM as a way to promote world peace... yeah...). It made me think a little of what I'd read about Bobby Fischer - that he was essentially a chess idiot savant, a brilliant player whose total inability to do anything else worth mentioning (including conducting himself like a decent human being) ultimately caused his downfall. The same seems to be the case with Lynch - he appears to me like a man who operates on a purely intuitive level, with no preconceived theory of what he's doing. You might say this is a good thing, but to me it was deeply disappointing.

I thought back afterwards to the only other time I went to see a director speak in person. I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Darren Aronofsky, and no contrast could be more marked between two filmmakers than between Aronofsky and Lynch. Where Lynch couldn't focus on a single idea long enough to express it with any coherence, Aronofsky was incredibly on top of things. He gave detailed answers to all the questions that were asked of him, and he really sounded like someone who knew his own work inside and out. It was deeply impressive, in the same way that Lynch's performance was deeply disappointing.

I want to give Lynch the benefit of the doubt here. I want to think that he is just some poor sap who is being used by these TM folks for their own purposes (whatever those are), and it certainly appeared that way from the talk. It's too bad really, to see a person one admires have the pedestal cut out from under him. I will still go to Lynch's movies, though. They rock.

Research

I talked to Leon Cooper today. Cooper is Brown's resident Nobel Laureate; got his prize for the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory of superconductivity. Now he does research in neuroscience, applying analytic methods from physics to biological problems. He was very nice and even loaned me a copy of his book, The Theory of Cortical Plasticity. I am sure this will be an exciting, edge-of-the-seat read.

Quiz Bowl update

This weekend, I took a trip out to Boston with some other Brown folks to play in Brandeis' mirror of Georgia Tech's annual Heinrich Bowl tournament. Playing on some horrible, awful questions, we took third, losing two really close games to Harvard, one close game to Yale, and one to Williams B, in which we negged ourselves into oblivion. How sad.

Come October 8th, I'm going out to Harvard to play in the WIT mirror there. That should be fun, because the questions will not suck gigantic ass.

A Little Philosophy

It always happens this way. Walking home from work or class, I'm always talking to myself and hashing out thoughts in my head, but when I finally get down to writing them, I always forget what I'm going to say. So to get the juices going, and perhaps remember what I was originally planning to write about, I'm going to look at some philosophy.

Recently, I discovered an interesting blog called The Conservative Philosopher. As someone with some interest in philosophy, I wondered, "just what is this 'conservative philosophy' and how can I profit from it?" Well, except that last part, anyway. The first question, however, is answered in one of the first posts, "Three Concepts of Conservatism." Unfortunately, this blog does not appear to feature TracBack links, so I will quote the relevant sections here.

The first is moral-epistemic; it has to do with how one reasons one’s way to moral judgments. In deliberations, the conservative attempts to discover the moral judgment that best coheres with the largest and most coherent set of moral judgments that he already shares with typical members of his society, presumably including his interlocutor in debate. In other words, he applies common, old wisdom to new circumstances. In this sense, I think most people are conservative. By contrast, the progressive (the liberal, the leftist, or what have you) attempts to substitute the very different set of values that he prefers for the set traditionally accepted by typical members of his society. He rejects common, old wisdom as at best a mistake or at worst a hoodwinking effected by people in power or by arbitrary economic forces. The progressive wants society to be radically different, and since he therefore cannot very well argue that his view is most coherent with tradition, he develops an abstract and novel ethical theory or chooses to follow Marx’s incoherent advice to say that morality is all a hoodwinking but leftist morality is the real McCoy

The first part of this paragraph appears not just uncontroversial, but a truism. Of course, all people to some degree apply "old wisdom" to new circumstances. It's just that sometimes the old wisdom is inadequate and then we begin looking for something better. The more interesting part of this paragraph is the characterization of "leftists." Apparently, the progressive wants society to be radically different; not just different, mind you, but radically so. I find this characterization quite interesting. It sounds as though all self-titled progressives (whoever they might be and to whatever extent their agenda has anything in common with progress) want to tear down the existing society and install one that more closely resembles whatever abstract ideal they are devoted to. Moreover, if one is to characterize oneself as a liberal within the confines of this definition, one apparently only has two choices: novel ethical theories or Marxian claims about hoodwinking. This sets up a somewhat bizzare false dichotomy that fails to reflect the diverse attitudes all the different types of self-described liberals out there (myself included). While it is certainly true that many self-described liberals of the past (and present) have invented novel ethical theories, so have many self-described conservatives. It doesn't follow from this that one cannot be a liberal without a novel ethical theory or a rejection of Marx's claims.

Here's where it gets good:

So, the conservative sees that abstract ethical theories are at best redundant or empty (e.g., Kantianism) or at worst false (e.g., strict utilitarianism or Rawlsianism). The progressive clings to false ethical theories (e.g., Rawlsianism) on skimpy evidence and decides that the ordinary and obvious moral judgments are false. Why? When I ask progressives, one reply I often receive is that at least their favored theory is a simple rule or theory, whereas traditional moral judgments are a merely a hodge-podge devoid of rhyme or reason and therefore not to be trusted. The conservative is mystified by this response. Is there some flaw in the way we have been deciding what is the right thing to do for centuries such that a simple rule or abstract theory can remedy it? Is there any basis from which one could argue that our cherished values are so contemptible? The conservative thinks not.

How interesting. The obvious questions that arise here are: in what sense is Kantianism empty and how is it that Rawlsianism is wrong? Is there evidence to support either of these views? If there is, Jim Ryan, the author, does not present any. Which "ordinary and obvious" moral judgements is he talking about? I would bet that once they were presented, plenty of evidence would emerge that many of these judgements are neither ordinary nor obvious, but of course it is impossible to say since Ryan doesn't provide us with any examples. By presupposing the question (that liberals believe in false ethical theories), Ryan decides the argument in his favor. The last two questions are just strange: for example, people thought for centuries that slavery was just fine and then, lo and behold, moral opposition emerged and it turned out that the values that upheld slavery did in fact seem contemptible.

I will skip over the next paragraph because it's not very interesting. Ryan basically writes that the conservative finds himself less persuaded by arguments to revise standards for moral judgements. No arguments there.

The third paragraph is more presupposition and bad reasoning:

The third concept of conservatism concerns one’s character, habits or psychological dispositions. The conservative doesn’t seek new ways of life. The old ways are immeasurably rich in opportunities for good lives, and he is so eagerly devoted to making his life an example of a traditionally good life that the new either never occurs to him or seems bland and unappealing for being unknown and not much better than a random shot in the dark at good life. Even if the conservative, due to his character flaws or to bad luck, fails to thrive in the traditional ways, he will not succumb to the temptation to spiteful envy or to blaming his failure to thrive on powerful people or “the system.”

The word "good" is extremely loaded in this case. Who is the judge of the "good life?" It seems from this paragraph that Ryan sets up the conservative as the judge. In other words: the conservative is attached to tradition because it provides opportunity for leading the good life and the good life is... drumroll... that which is based on tradition. And this is philosophy? The coservative according to Ryan, "recognizes the enormous potential for evil posed by neglect or change of these traditional ways." But does he recognize the enormous potential for evil posed by the maintenance of the traditional ways? Well, Ryan says,

This is not to deny that only the reactionary or the dullest of conservative is unmoved by clear and obvious evidence of a substantial defect in the traditional ways, as for example when it became undeniable that slavery was deeply immoral. And it is not to deny that the conservative will partake of debate in the forum. He sees the debate as the attempt to discern how to apply traditional values to present situations.

But of course, while Ryan pays lip service to the slavery argument, he forgets that slavery, at the time when it was facing its final challenge, was not perceived to be undeniably wrong, and not only reactionary or dull conservatives held that slavery was a morally acceptable institution. Support for slavery was quite a mainstream position in many parts of the USA prior to the Civil War, and was held by many otherwise intelligent people. Only radical measures resulted in its abolition.

Overall, this sample of so-called conservative philosophy is deeply unimpressive. Tomorrow, I intend to cover another article linked from the same site to showcase the quality of thought that apparently passes for philosophy in some circles.

Back To School

Yesterday was the first day of the spring semester for Berkeley students, so I thought I'd post some appropriate thoughts regarding school-related issues. Specifically, about that horse's ass of a company, Educational Testing Services (ETS).

Like any student who is interested in attending graduate school, I had to take the various mandated ETS tests; for me it was the general GRE and the physics subject test GRE. During this process, I was struck by the callousness and disregard with which ETS implicitly treats its customers, that is, the students. If a for-profit business that did not have a complete and total monopoly of the market treated its customers that way, it would flame out. Instead, ETS is wildly successful, even spinning off one of its operations as a for-profit in 1996. I also read somewhere that ETS had a $30 million operating profit this year, but I cannot confirm this via Google.

The most galling aspect of the whole ETS system is the long wait between being able to take the subject tests, combined with idiotic (for the students) registration policies as well as insanely high costs. Consider this: taking the subject test will run you $130. For physics, despite the fact that the test has been in effect for decades, a total of 4(!) tests are publicly available, and the book in which they are published is no longer even in print, meaning that everyone has to copy their test from someone else who was lucky enough to get it beforehand. You must register for the test something like 4 or5 weeks in advance, otherwise you must take the test as a standby and pay an additional $35. What's more, the first subject test is held in the middle of November. Now, as everyone knows, the middle of November is probably the worst possible time to have to take a major test because at that time you're mired in schoolwork. In order to study for the test, I had to take a week to do nothing but that, leaving me with a lot of catching up to do afterwards.

Sound like fun? It gets better. The next test date for the subject GRE is mid-December. However, by the time you will have taken the November test, it will be too late to sign up for the December one, so you have to do it standby and pay more money. If you sign up for the December one well in advance but then find out you did well on the November test (which, incidentally, you can only do by calling and paying another $10), and therefore decide to cancel your registration, you will be assessed $60. If this is not the best extortion racket around, I don't know what is.

Nothing can justify this kind of treatment. There is only one reasonable explanation for these policies, and that is that ETS is determined to milk every fucking cent from well-meaning, hardworking students who just want to go on with their education. Why does it take 4 weeks to get my results that I then have to call for and pay extra money to hear? It's a goddamn Scantron, people! An industrial-grade reader machine can process thousands of those an hour. Even if ETS gets 50,000 subject tests for every date, they could still run them within a week and have the results available the week after that. Why the registration restrictions that, combined with the staggered tests, result in depriving you of your hard-earned money either way? Why the lack of official testing materials, despite their widespread availability? And finally, why the insanely high cost of testing, when the SAT costs about 3 times less ($41.50 for the general, and the subject SAT costs even less ($17 basic registration fee + $8 per test, except for the language with listening test which is $18).

The explanation, of course, is simple. Unlike the College Board, ETS has no competitors and a bound market which cannot forego its services. Prospective grad students can't just opt out of the GRE or turn to an alternative test, and therefore ETS can afford to treat us, to put it bluntly, like shit, wringing every last possible dollar from students. Furthermore, because the grad school constituency is nowhere near the size of the undergraduate one, no institution will stand up to speak in our favor, like UC did regarding the SAT, which, incidentally, showed exactly what kind of pressure a high-profile institution can exert on testing companies.

It's tragic and it's unfair. We deserve to be treated better. All of the factors outlined above might be excusable on their own, but combined, they are obviously calculated to extort the largest amount of money possible from students. Will anyone stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves? I doubt it.