Which One Is Ed?

I have finished reading The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker and have been recommending it to the few of my friends I think might read it. Pinker convinces me that violence has declined and he convinces me about the reasons it has declined. Neither my view of human nature nor of our future are the same as they were before I read the book.

The two most immediate concepts impacted for me: political correctness and the evolving sense of decency. The evolving sense of decency will take a little more work, so I'll comment on political correctness.

I have for the most part viewed what we call political correctness as an irritating interference with free expression: Who cares if I say "stewardess" or "flight attendant?" (Apparently a lot of people). I heard a slight quibble this weekend over the use of "Comanches" as a sort of a mascot for a professional organization. The organizer who liked the name because it was Texan and Native American argued that the name was being honored and not ridiculed. The politically correct objector said we should not use any racial or ethnic monikers because it promotes stereotyping. I'm not sure who wins this in the long run, but after reading Pinker's book, it occurs to me the advocate of the name may be dating himself (and me, since it sounded fine to me) whereas the PC objector may be right about where we are going in society.

When I was in high school, it was perfectly polite to make fun of homosexuals. I did not hear the word "gay" used in that sense until later. Then, I thought a perfectly good word (Like the Gay Nineties) had been ruined. Much the same about jokes about violence against women. A man would discipline his wife, much in the way of Kate in "The Taming of the Shrew." Cruelty to animals was much more acceptable when I was young, now it leads to Dahmerism.

Now, these things have changed. And violence has also plummeted. Pinker makes a connection. If he is right, good riddance to bad jokes and welcome PC. We can call the group The Fat Old White Men Pretending to be Young and Energetic Like a Band of Plains Indians Warriors.

Dano dreams about the Newt

I had been a steadfast believer that Newt Gingrich was politically dead, and even when it became apparent that he would be the next in line after Trump, Bachmann, Perry, and Cain to have a bubble that seemed to threaten Romney, I initially assumed that his bubble would burst on the basis of his massive negative political baggage. For the first time, today, I am beginning to entertain the thought the Newt may actually get nominated. There are a few reasons for this. First, the Rupert Murdoch machine seems to be for him. Fox News is treating Romney harshly and Newt with kid gloves. The Wall Street Journal editorial board seems to be pro-Gingrich. That Murdoch machine is very powerful in the R selection process. The entire Republican family gathers around Fox every night. On the other hand, I still think the R electorate is having amnesia about Newt's history. Some people say, "well, everyone knows about all that stuff." But it is hard to over estimate the stupidity of the American electorate. I think the R voters have forgotten most of it, and Newt still remains vulnerable to someone exploiting it effectively against him. Nonetheless, his lead, at the moment, is large. In Florida, the biggest state which votes in January, three polls showed him with 42%, 47% and 50% in quick succession. All those still have Cain showing up in the teens (Romney in upper teens), and if you assume that Cain withdraws or completely implodes, those figures for Newt go to about 50, 55, and 60. Now, those numbers are, quite frankly, staggering. Maybe he has a fall in his near future, but it is going to have to be a very long, large fall. Of course, when the states start voting, the states farther down the list are affected by the earlier voting states. Right now, regarding the first two, it looks like Newt in Iowa and Romney in NH, although Mitt is only slightly ahead in NH, which is a tailor-made state for him. If that's how it comes out, then it would seem that South Carolina (the other January state) and Florida will feel free to vote as they choose. Now, if Mitt somehow wins in Iowa, which seems unlikely now, and then adds a win in NH, he might stop the Newt surge and get a bandwagon effect. I guess that has to be his goal.In all the head to heads I have seen pairing Obama against Newt or Mitt, respectively, Obama does about 6 points better against Newt. That seems believable to me, and, as I have said, I do not think the other candidates have sufficiently exploited Newt's weaknesses, as of now, and so that number could get wider. Obama is running anti-Romney ads in the primary states, in effect,trying to help the non-Romneys, or, perhaps, just Gingrich. They do that sort of thing a lot in California. I have not seen it here or nationally before, but California has perfected the art of one party's candidate invading the other's primary to try to influence it. Of course, Romney is making the obvious point to the voters--Obama does not want him to be the nominee--but I am not sure the voters are sufficiently sophisticated to realize what is happening. So, a perfect storm seems to be gathering around Romney. Before today, I never wavered in my expectation that he would be the R nominee. Now, I think there is substantial doubt.

At Night, He Is Studying for an IT Career

Each year I seem to end up with one BIG BOOK. Last year it was Ian Morris and Why the West Rules--For Now. This year it is shaping up to be Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined. I could list about 50 books, for 50 years. I'm never sure when I am reading them which ones will keep coming back to visit me. Some from when I was younger include Eric Hoffer's True Believer and Gil Bailie's Violence Unveiled.

I mention these, because although there would be more famous books on my list (if I ever made this list), I don't think these books are known to most people I know.

The Better Angels of Our Natures may be a book that will give me a sense that, even without major changes in the way things are going, things may turn out better than they have been anyway. (Candide is probably on my list, also, and I have about 45 years avoiding becoming Dr. Pangloss, so you can imagine my worry about this confession.)

Wouldn't that be the damnest thing. All these years, fearing that we were becoming the worst of all possible worlds, and then one new book, and I can finally lean back and relax.

This book makes me think science is about to tell us why people do bad things to each other. Maybe, then, violence can stop. Pinker doesn't make this promise, but I'm reading between the lines. Or maybe I'm just making up new lines.

One of the many factors that Pinker credits for an improved humanity is satire. He quotes the King of Brobdingnag when he responds to Gulliver's description of English government: "I cannot but conclude the Bulk of your Natives to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth." That has long seemed an accurate description to me, but I am delighted to accept any evidence of change.

I am not sure if, like many old men, I am becoming more conservative as I age, or if there is really some hope that gradual improvement is possible in people, families, society, government, law. If I'm just getting old, I'll ask my friends to wait until after the holidays before they dump the ugly truth in my lap again.

Dano on Newt and others

Dano reports on the Republican debate last night. I missed it. I believe I was watching a re-run of Dexter. However, I'll take Dano's report as the whole truth and comment on the debate as well. Ron Paul, may be 75, but at least he knows what he believes and sticks by it. Dano's report also, oddly, stirs some sympathy for Newt. I've heard about Fannie and Freddie and the censure and all the marriages, but at least the guy can talk. Maybe that should be a threshold requirement.

I guess I am a little surprised that Gingrich was allowed to come out of this debate completely unscathed. Out in the real world, journalists, op-ed people, and probably the other campaigns, off the record, are attacking him vigorously. At the moment, believe it or not, Newt is ahead in Iowa and nationally. It has been my prediction that this will not last. I'll stick with that, but I will say that I would like nothing better than to be wrong. If the R's actually nominated Newt--and I guess that possibility has at least to be mentioned because Iowa votes in a mere 42 days--absent some earth-shaking change, I think Obama would mop the floor with him. But, anyway, at the moment, Newt leads, and last night he got nothing but softballs from the moderator, the audience questions, and the other candidates. Romney, with one exception to be mentioned below, did his usual good job. Cain has lost his confident, happy personality and now has a little of the "deer in the highlights" look to him. I think helives in great fear of making another showing of his vast ignorance of the sorts of things that a candidate for president should know. I think his reaction is completely understandable. I also think he's toast. Now, his poll numbers still show him to be arguably in contention, but the leak, and the fall, continue. Much as I dislike Perry, every time he has the floor, I cringe that he is going to embarrass himself. I suspect most other people have the same reaction. Bachmann had a decent performance and was heard from a lot. I doubt she will survive the Iowa Caucuses, but she has a bit of a chance there. Before her drop, she did win the Ames, Iowa straw poll; she was born in Iowa; she holds office in a neighboring state; and she has campaigned very, very heavily in Iowa. Maybe she will do well enough to survive there. My bet is no. This was a "national security" debate, and so a lot was on foreign policy. Ron Paul's views on those issues are clearly out of themainstream among most Republican voters. But he certainly did nothing to try to cover that up. Rather, he defended all of his dovish (and perhaps isolationist) views very vigorously and passionately, and, I thought, quite persuasively. He seemed to have part of the audience on his side. I continue to think he will do well better than he did in '08. Also, I think everyone seems to be forgetting that his age--75--has always been considered way too old for a presidential candidate. I didn't listen to any of the post-debate spin, and I haven't read anything about it yet, so this spin is purely my own. One thing that happened that I think may have been a mistake by Romney is this: one time Paul was speaking, with passion, about one of his foreign policy positions; the TV had a split screen so that you could see Paul speaking and you could also see Romney's reaction. Romney at one point "rolled his eyes." I think that may be significant because Ithink it has the potential of really pissing off the Paul supporters. They have cult-like loyalty. Romney may not have known he was on a split screen. If Romney gets the nomination, he will need those Paul voters. I think some day he may regret that eye-rolling. Like today, for instance. Gingrich's hope is that while each other "non-Romney" had its 15 minutes and then had its bubble burst, he gets his 15 minutes so late in the game that his bubble is still there when the real voting starts! I guess it's possible. I suppose stranger things have happened. But I can't think of any at the moment.

T.S. Eliot Hope and Despair

I can't say I've understood any poem by T.S. Eliot, even after reading the explanations by the scholars. But I keep reading them, because the language traps me.

A couple of lines in Ash Wednesday:

Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears

The deceitful face of hope and of despair.

Climbing three sets of stairs, the climber first has to get past the devil with that deceitful face and then at the third landing (as I envision it) he finds,

Strength beyond hope and despair.

I have wondered about asking for "hope" or just engaging in the act of "hoping." How can we hope if we have faith. James says something like this: "Sisters and Brothers, consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds. These trials test your faith and bring you patience. Patience causes you to mature and gives you wisdom."

James doesn't say hope for something else, but have joy in the trials you have. The proper response is patience, not hope. And of course, despair is just the bad side of hope. Patience replaces despair as well as hope.

Eliot writes that despair and hope are both falsehoods worn by the devil and there is a strength that gets you past them.

I like this. If, as I suspect, God has made each of us exactly who we are, then pride and shame are false emotions; we are what God made. If, as I suspect, God has made the whole world, past and future, hope and despair are false emotions; the world will be tomorrow just what God planned.

Differently put for the more secular among us: If, as I suspect, we are each determined to be who we are by our heredity and environment, then pride and shame are false emotions; we are what the universe has made us to be. If, as I suspect, past and future are determined by the laws of the universe, hope and despair are false emotions, the world we be tomorrow exactly what it must be based on forces in motion from long in the past.

Dano thinks Romney can win in Iowa and New Hampshire

Dano is still handicapping the Republicans. I doubt he ever voted for one, but he never played for the Cowboys either and he always has an opinion about who will win. He sees Romney as a threat now in Iowa and New Hampshire.

He says:

The most recent two polls in Iowa and NH on the R race show Gingrichwith a big lead in Iowa (32 to Romney's 19) and Romney leadingGingrich by only 2 (29-27) in New Hampshire which had long beenthought to be a Romney lock.I don't think Gingrich will do nearly as well as these polls show.After he got up in the polls, commentators all over the place--fedprobably and secretly by opposition research from the othercandidates, at least in part-- have been re-stating all of hisbaggage. The big money from Freddy Mac is one; but his wholehistory, when re-remembered, just has too much negative in it toremain viable. Multiple adulteries, marriages, a fortune he hasmade as a crony capitalist since his years as speaker; and no one hasyet even bothered to mention that he was charged with an ethicsviolation in a Republican controlled House and fined hundreds ofthousands of dollars for it.To me, it looks like this thing is going to break pretty nicely forMitt Romney as we near the real voting. Four differentchallengers--Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich--have a bubble andthen each for one reason or another is found to have somedisqualifying negative. I think the anti-Romneys latched ontoGingrich because they had been burned time and again by being seducedby candidates who are so stupid and/or ignorant (Bachmann, Perry,Cain). At least Newt is smart and can speak the language.Now, the polls still also show Cain somewhat in contention, but thatcandidacy has a leak, and I don't think that leak is reparable.I also read that while Newt has raised a fair amount of moneyrecently, he still has little or no organization on the ground inIowa. In Iowa, there almost has to be a ground game of get-out-the-voters to get people to go to those caucuses, which is more timeconsuming than just voting. I get the impression that Newt is not agood organizer. He could hire one, of course, but a certain amountof discipline must come from the candidate. One also has toremember, he has never actually run for president before--heconsidered it several times but didn't run--and he has never actuallyrun in an election in anything larger than a Congressional district.I think he likes to spout pompous ideas and sound smart, and he maynot realize that that's not enough to win the Iowa caucuses.I think Mitt senses all this; for a long time, he made no seriouscommitment to Iowa because it is a place where he seemed likely tolose, and he wanted to be able to play down a loss. Well, just inthe last few days, he has decided to go all out there for a win. Hesees the opening. Romney is thus going to go all out to finish firstin both Iowa and New Hampshire. I think he has a decent chance topull it off. If he does that, it might create a sense ofinevitability that will make him the effective nominee pretty quickly.Meanwhile, as I mentioned in the last post, I am expecting a prettygood showing for Ron Paul, not only in Iowa, but in a lot of places.It is true that, mainly because of his foreign policy ideas--that is,he dislikes war and torture--80% of the Republican electorate willprobably never vote for him. But he gets his votes--now lookinglike perhaps15 or more percent--anywhere and everywhere. He'llalways have some money. And he'll always have a lot ofvolunteers--in any state. I read that he has a good organization inIowa.

The Rise of Ron Paul

Dano in the following post discusses Gingrich's likely collapse and the benefit to Ron Paul. Ron Paul has long been my favorite Republican. In fact, I think he is better on war issues than almost all the Democrats. I am not a libertarian; far from it. A true libertarian begins with a belief in free will and I can't go there. But I also think that government largesse is distributed so unfairly that the poor may be helped if subsidies to the rich could be curbed. Anyway, as weird as Ron Paul is, I still prefer him to a Gingrich or a Romney.

Dano says:

Well, just after my last post, where I concluded that there was a good chance that Gingrich would emerge as the main alternative to Romney,Newt got hit with an avalanche of bad publicity about his work forFreddy Mac in the early 2000's. In a recent debate, a moderatorasked him what he did for Freddie Mac to earn $300,000, and Newt saidit was just advice "as a historian", that he told them they weremaking bad loans and that a bubble was looming. It turns out hewas paid $1.6M instead of $300,000, and the folks he spoke to atFreddy Mac say they remember no advice along the lines that Gingrichclaims. They said he was hired to help them state positions thatwould be Republican-friendly so that the then-Republican controlledCongress would not dismantle Freddy and Fannie.Freddy and Fannie are hated by the Tea Partiers, so when this sinksin, it is going to hurt him--pretty badly, I think. He was tryingto help Freddie survive Republican attacks, and he lied about itbesides that.It hasn't sunk in yet. The most recent polls in Iowa and N.H. showhim in a very strong second place in both, one per cent behind Cain inthe former and 2% behind Romney in the latter.So, I am back to the position that it looks like Romney if for noreason other than you can't beat someone with no one. It is 46 daysto the Iowa Caucuses, and 53 to the N.H. Primary. I don't know ifthere is even enough time for another candidate to become thenon-Romney. Now, Santorum is conservative enough to satisfy thebase and has no big flip flop problem. Jennifer Rubin in the Wapohas several times suggested that he might have an ascendency. He isalso not a bad debater. But Santorum has never been out of singledigits, mostly not even out of low single digits.Another man who warrants discussion is Ron Paul. His numbers areinching up. Now, he will never be nominated because he is out ofthe mainstream of the R party on a lot of issues, especially onforeign policy where he is a consistent dove. So, I have alwaysthought he would be irrelevant--getting his 10 per cent or maybe even15 or a little higher--never enough to win anything. Well, hisnumbers in some polls are starting to rub against 20. So, he mayfinish second in a lot of primaries; I say "a lot" because he will noteasily drop out. He has a cult-like following that keeps giving himmoney no matter what. So, he can run and run and run and run, andhe may keep finishing second a lot--might even eak out a win or twosomewhere.I'll stipulate that there is some wishful thinking here, but I amhoping he loses (he will) but he does so well that he gets pissed offand runs in the General Election as an independent or third partier.He did that before--Libertarian candidate in 1988. However, hisfollowing is much larger now. Paul believes in conspiracy theories,and is a little off balance, so I can imagine him working himself intoa lather with the idea that he was cheated out of winning by the REstablishment. If he were to do that, Obama would benefit greatly.One poll on this showed Obama beating Romney by 6 without Paul as athird partier but by 12 with Paul in the race.Paul would know that he would be hurting the R's, but I am not surethat would stop him. He dislikes the R's about as much as the D's.I have even noticed that he rarely criticizes Obama in the debates;rather, he criticizes the whole American status quo, and thus"everyone else." Now, the history of third party candidates is thatthey poll well early sometimes but their percentage usually drops byelection day, sometimes by a lot. But in the case of Paul, while hemight have some of that usual erosion, his cult-like backers aremostly going to stay with him. And they don't mind losing toomuch; they think they are on some mission which goes beyond 2012.That would be a real nightmare for the R's.Obama's prospects still look pretty decent to me, but I worry thatEurope may plunge the world into more economic distress, and it wouldbe hard to see him winning if the economy were even worse than it isnow.

More from Dano on the presidential race

The commentariat is more and more seeing the R race the way I did acouple of weeks ago, that is, that it was shaping up, at leasttemporarily, as Romney vs. Gingrich. Then, there was a lot of talkabout how Cain had apparently survived his sexual harassment scandal.Now, everyone seems to see Cain as mortally wounded for variousreasons. Even before that scandal, I thought he would fall by theweight of his own vast ignorance. He's doing that--he can't thinkwhat to say about Obama's Libya policy, thinks China doesn't havenuclear weapons, has never heard of the "neo-conservative" movement,etc. He really was meant only to be just a vanity candidate.Cain's numbers show him still in contention, but there is a slow leak.The national poll numbers are going to start bouncing all over theplace when the states start voting. The Iowa Caucuses are in 48days. So, the most important polls to look at for the R's are Iowapolls. The most recent one is Cain 20, Gingrich 19, Romney 14, Paul10 Bachmann 10. Perry 5, and Santorum 5. The numbers are veryfluid--60% say they may change their mind. So, anything mighthappen there. Right now, I think the most likely scenario is thatNewt wins it.Perry really is dead, by the way. His disapproval/approval numbersare horrible and reflect no chance of a resurrection.Now, some say that Gingrich will also be exposed as too moderate and aflip-flopper, and there is some chance of that. He once believed inclimate change and some aspects of what is now Obamacare. When a"conservative" has been in politics as long as he has, it isimpossible to have always had the views that satisfy 2011 TeaPartiers. So, there is that danger for him. Also, there is thatbaggage of 3 marriages, an ethics violation, and forced resignation.The R primary voters seem to have forgotten about all that.What Newt is trying to do--and it may work with the R's--is to suggestthat he represents truly apocalyptic change because of his cerebraland visionary ideas and approach. Also, Newt says he wants 7Lincoln-Douglas style debates with Obama lasting at least 3 hourseach. That wouldn't happen, of course, but by suggesting it, he iseffectively asserting that he would do well in such marathon debates;and a lot of R voters are understandably worried about whether some oftheir candidates could debate Obama without completely embarrassingthemselves. My perception is that the R's think Newt could handleObama.Going back to his apocalyptic change thing, I think the R voters dolike to see this election--or at least would like to see it--as amajor, pivotal, Manichaean struggle of good vs. evil. Gingrichplays to that feeling. Romney does not. Gingrich would like theR's to see Romney as a competent technocrat--a manager, sort of aRepublican Michael Dukakis. If he can pull that sort of appeal off,he may be forgiven his previous moderate positions more so than Romneyhas. So, my bottom line is--still probably Romney for thenomination, but this may get very interesting, particularly the Newtthing.Obama is now beating all of them 6 or more points in head to heads.I think his strategy of (very mild and subtle) "class warfare", callsfor higher taxes on the top bracket, attacking the intransigence ofthe R's in Congress, etc., is a winner. A big danger to him,though, would be if the American economy--bad as it is right now--gotworse. A Europe meltdown might cause that to happen. If theeconomy gets substantially worse in the next year, he would be very,very vulnerable. If it stays about the same, I think he pulls itout.

Should we be so afraid?

Everyone I talk to seems to have a story about a kidnapping, home invasion or murder. Channel 5 is doing a series about the drug war in Mexico spilling over the border. Some of the guys I know are buying AR-15 and AK-47 to give to their wives. People complain they can't sell their houses to escape the coming violence.

So far, though, the statistics don't bear it out. When considered in terms of murders as a percentage of the population, Brownsville is still safer than Texas or the nation as a whole. We are also safer in terms of violent crime. We are a little higher with theft, but most of us don't buy a AR-15 to fight off a GPS theft through the passenger window of the car.

Brownsville has about 4 murders per year for every 100,000 people. Of course, this is horrible if you are a loved one of a victim, but there is no way to run away from it and stay in the United States. You can go to Europe. Most of Europe have had under 1 murder for 100,000 people for years. Europe, right now, is probably the safest place homo sapiens has every been since the beginning of the species.

Rapes, robberies and assaults are also much lower in Brownsville than the rest of the country. Even auto thefts are lower: who would have guessed it. We are safer than Port Isabel and Harlingen.

We used to go to Matamoros for dinner, a haircut, the pharmacy. Now most everyone I know is afraid to go. This is not born out by the statistics, either. Tamaulipas has a rate of 9 murders per 100,000. This is twice that of Brownsville, but still less than Houston and much safer than going to DC (24 per 100,000). The Yucatan has a mere 2 murders per 100,000, almost down to European levels. A visit to the Mayan ruins may be safer than staying at home. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Apologizing to Hobbes

Maybe I owe Thomas Hobbes an apology. All these years I thought he was just a propagandist for Charles II. I thought Hobbes was wrong about human nature. He insisted we needed a strong government, a Leviathan, to control man's evil nature. Without this strong government, we would be in constant fear, in danger of violent death, "and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

This is not what I have concluded of human nature with some 35 years of talking to folks in jails, prisons, and mental hospitals. Or those people on the outside who are largely indistinguishable from those on the inside. I have tended to the argument of Rousseau that "nothing can be more gentle than man in his primitive state...." And of Kropotkin, that the natural state of man (without the Leviathan) is one of mutual aid. Differently put, people, unless society locks them in cages together like rats in a small pen, do a pretty good job of getting along. They help each other because the cooperative groups are more likely to survive. Until we have been damaged, we don't have a desire to damage other people.

I am not ready to jettison this view of human nature. But I have been reading a book by Steven Pinker that argues that when Hobbes was asking to for strong government, he had his reasons, and a good argument apart from trying to please a young king. Pinker proves quite convincingly that without strong government, in history, rates of murder have been higher. Much higher. Not uncommonly, a hundred times higher.

No wonder Hobbes was born as twins with "fear." No wonder, he wanted someone, even a silly, hedonistic Merrie Monarch, with the power to stop the violence.

Pinker has published "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined." He compares murder rates throughout the existence of our species. He looks at the level of homicides during anarchy of the hunting, gathering, and horticultural societies. He argues a five-fold decrease in murders in moving into agricultural societies. In the move from feudal territories to kingdoms, he argues a ten-fold to fifty-fold decline in the murder rates. Since World War II, he argues we have moved into a New Peace and a time of fewer civl wars, genocides, repressions by autocratic governments and terrorist attacks.

Oh Thomas, I'll be more patient with you in the future.

Dano's thoughts on the presidential race

My friend Dano has been sending me regular observations about the progress
of the presidential race. I think it is good stuff and I asked him for
permission to pass it on. Here it is:

Ok, I have had a few more days of the Cain scandal to absorb, and we just had another R debate; and last night we had all those ballot referenda in Ohio, Mississippi, Maine, etc.; so here are my thoughts: Perry had a big gaffe tonight and is dead because he said he was going to close 3 cabinet level agencies, and he could only remember two of them. The way he did it made it stick out like a sore thumb. It was painful to watch, even for someone who wishes him ill--such as myself. I honestly really felt sorry for the dumb-ass. It is being mentioned by commentators as one of the worst debate moments of alltime. He actually had a good debate otherwise, and later he did remember the third agency (it was Energy). Nonetheless, he is toast. He may have been anyway, but he is now. It will be an internet laughing stock type of moment.Romney did his usual competent performance, and so I assume nothing has changed for him. About 25% of the R party are for him and about 75% are pretty strongly against him.Cain avoided any further damage from his scandal and otherwise had a good night. Nonetheless, I still think he is a dead man walking. It is obvious that the scandal has enormous potential for story after story after story and detail after detail, and "drip, drip, drip. "Eventually, it will occur to the R voters that that is an unacceptable situation for a nominee, even aside from his other shortcomings, which are major. I noticed tonight that the other candidates no longer feel the need to attack him, as they did vigorously a month ago. They know it, too. The problem for them is that Cain may hang on to 20% or thereabouts ofthe vote nationally, and in Iowa--the first to vote--too long for them to gather up the residue of his eventual collapse. In other words, he may not fall fast enough to help any of the others. NYT columnist Charles Blow (a black liberal) gave a reason for this: the conservatives like what he says about race; Cain says that most blacks have been "brainwashed" to stay on the "Democratic plantation." He says that people who do not have jobs have only themselves to blame. By being for him and knowing that he says such things, he exonerates alot of typical arch-conservatives of a lifetime of racism. So, they love him and will not abandon him easily. This creates the possibility that he may stay as the number two to Romney long enough that no one else can ever reach that spot in time to stop Romney.The next in line for the anti-Romney, at this point, is clearly Gingrich. He has had all good debate performances. He does not attack the other R's, and so no one ever sees the mean side of him except when he attacks Obama, which they like, of course. His is gradually coming up in all polls. I think there is a chance that--especially if the Cain collapse speeds up--he may end up the main opponent to Romney. He'd probably still lose; people will remember his three marriages and the nasty circumstances of his two divorces (Romney made a point tonight, with Newt standing next to him, that he had been married to only one woman--an accomplishment for a Morman, I suppose--for more than 40 years). So, it still looks like Romney to me. But I would like to see it devolve to a Romney-Gingrich race just for the fun of it. Cain is never going to get that nomination, and he now is just standing in theway of others who might have a chance to knock off Romney. As for Obama, things look better for him. The ballot initiatives in Ohio, Maine, and, incredibly, Mississippi, look good for him, and there is mounting evidence that the tea-soaked R's have over-played their hand since the 2010 election. Particularly in several swing states--Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida, as major examples--the 2010 elections created R governors and legislatures that are now patently unpopular in those states, and this phenomenon will help Obama to win those states. The Occupy Movement and other studies and articles have educated the electorate--particularly the independents--on the fact that the gap between rich and the middle class in this countryhas risen very dramatically since the Reagan election in 1980. An absolute majority of the country polls that R policies are designed to favor the rich. Also, the majority of both the independent and moderate voters have now been convinced that the R's are intentionally sabotaging the economy to help their election chances against Obama. This creates an atmosphere in which Obama can win. It creates a situation where he can make the opponents the main issue instead of himself--which he needs to do because he has been no great success. But as things stand now, he is the favorite against any R nominee. I don't know if he even deserves to be the beneficiary of these sentiments, given his choice of Geitner as Treasury Sec. and his relatively soft on Wall Street administration, but he is the one who is in position to benefit from it, if he plays his cards right. One danger is that a lot of the people on the left will conclude that he is not part of the solution, but rather part of the problem, and will stay home. We will see.

Joe Krause for Congress

The Good, the bad and the ugly are all lining up to run for Congress from South Texas. I'm informed by someone who should know that Cameron County will pretty well have its own Congressional district, with the county intact and a little chunk of Willancy and Hidalgo in the district. This will come about for several reasons. The Republicans with about 2/3 of the House of Representatives seats will want it, because they can isolate a lot of the Democratic (their euphemism for Hispanic) votes in one district. The Cameron County movers and shakers want it because so many look in the mirror and see a Congressman, rather like looking at the picture of Dorian Gray.

Nueces voted almost completely on racist lines this election. Hispanics lost whether running as Democrats as Republicans with the Republicans voting in high numbers. Whether Farenthold can be elected again out of Corpus Christi is questionable (apparently he's even too weird for the teabaggers). But Cameron County will almost certainly elect someone besides Farenthold and in a presidential election year, almost certainly a Democrat.

As these things go, the worst rise to the top, because they are willing to do things, say things and accept money from groups that will nauseate the slightly less-awful candidate. It is to be accepted that the Democratic candidate will be semi-literate and wildly unqualified for the job, but cunning and ruthless in getting a vote or a contribution. We can expect someone with long experience in squeezing vendors for contributions and digging up and slinging the most mud, real or invented. The campaign will be slick and professional and the candidate will only be in public with air-brushing or on television with someone who can read reading the commercials.

Then, I'll almost inevitably vote for this cretin. If it looks like he could lose to a Republican, I might even give a little money if I happen to have some.

That is why I think Joe Krause should run for Congress as a Catholic Candidate to give me a choice. I would support Dorothy Day if she would move here and run, but since that won't happen, Joe is my next best choice.

Defining the Catholic platform is pretty easy because Leo XIII and others wrote it. Then Dorothy Day wrote a lot about it as it applies to United States issues of the 20th Century. (see the enclosure link for other links to the writings of Dorothy Day). Joe lives it. The quote by Pope Paul VI,"If you want peace, work for justice" is the theme of the campaign. Valley Interfaith is the kitchen cabinet. We look to GK Chesterton, Hillaire Belloc and John Ruskin for guidance.

Some of the positions:

No death penalty. In fact, pro-life from conception to the grave, so
no abortion and no euthanasia either. Prisons will become rare as well
because punishment will no longer be a moral or legal basis for regulating
society. Inmates, felons and illegal aliens should get the vote.

A living wage based on universal ownership of property, guilds and other
protections. Capitalism is replaced by Distributism. Every child
upon conception will be given his or her fair share of the national bounty, so
every child becomes a financial boon for the mother, who of course has her own
share of the national bounty.

Profit is made up of unfairly withheld wages. As Ruskin says, the responsibility of the businessman is to bring prosperity to the community. The responsibility of the lawyer is to bring justice to the community. The responsibility of the doctor is to bring health to the community.

Accumulated wealth is a form of violence. And shows a lack of faith. Anyone who accepts stewardship over wealth or power must also accept personal poverty and precarity.

No usury. All debts are cancelled every seven years. All property is redistributed equally every fifty years. (We're way overdue, so we can start that now).

No borders. Borders are a form of violence created to allow the
wealthy to protect their wealth. Strangers are welcome.

No wars, no nuclear weapons.

Quick, tell me Solomon Ortiz' and Blake Farenthold's campaign slogans. Now tell me Joe's wouldn't be better. Run Joe Run.

Political Corruption

Every corrupt politician's favorite rant is against political corruption. As a rule, the more corrupt the more ranting.

It is hard to imagine a political scene without corruption. Willie Stark (when setting up an opponent's suicide) in All the King's Men, said, "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something."

Politicians who steal are as common as junkies with bindles. Deuteronomy and Timothy both warn us not to muzzle the ox that grinds the grain. I've heard insiders use this as the justification for allowing a little corruption. A popular saying in Austin about Texas lobbyists, is that if you can't take their money, screw their women, drink their whiskey and still vote against them, you don't belong in the legislature.

One method is to get the million dollar cash bond from the drug dealer, knowing he will jump bond. The county gets the money, and this improves everyone's (politician's) living conditions and patronage, and who cares about the drug dealer anyway. He won't come back.

Another form of this corruption is to cruise the poor area of town and find cars that were too expensive for the house. Go ask the homeowner if anyone claims the car and often they'll say "no." Then the District Attorney's office has a lot of cool cars for undercover operations or resale. It is also a way to get houses, cash, heavy gold chains and Scarface posters.

I can't muster much outrage anymore. After a while, neither could Lincoln Steffens, who made it his career. I've often suspected that the small bribes in the Mexico I visited in the 1960's and 70's were less harmful than the high cost of entering the legal system in the United States that excluded so many people (then and now).

I don't believe Robert Penn Warren was much outraged either. Another quote from All the King's Men:

Process as process is neither morally good nor morally bad. We
may judge results, but not process. The morally bad agent may perform the
deed which is good. The morally good agent may perform the deed which is
bad. Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get the power to do good.

More Ian Morris: It's not who wins, but whether the game matters.

Daniel Bell's book, the End of Ideology, was popular when I was young. The general idea was that prosperity and technilogical advances had made all this left-right ideology unnecessary and beside the point. Then, every one got excited about politics in the sixties and I decided that Bell must have been wrong.

Morris' book (which I have now finished) makes me wonder if maybe Bell was right, after all. I would miss celebrating the 19th Century radicals like Debs and Haywood, but if the pie is growing as fast as Morris believes, worrying about politics is a waste of everyone's time. We should all just make sure that as many of us as possible have the most advanced technology available and scarcities will disappear. The idea would not be to find a fair distribution of property for the poor, but just make sure everyone could get his or her hands on the lastest computer to be implanted in the brain or gene modifier or energy producer or super grains; then the meaning of "poor" evaporates.

Hey, I'm tired of politics anyway, so this will be fine with me.

Morris ends his book with a Kipling poem. Just like David Allen Coe's perfect country and western song with drunks and prisons and trains in it, a great history should end with a Kipling poem. Maybe it should have started with a poem by Robert Service, but I was thrilled to get to then end and find, "Oh, East is east and West is west..."

Ian Morris: Why the West Rules-for Now

Ian Morris gives little examples of alternative history. What if, the Chinese had burned the Royal Navy, killed Admiral Nelson, sacked every town along the south coast of England made Queen Victoria a subject?

He then goes on to show why this could not have happened.

I like alternative histories as science fiction. You know, what if the South had won the civil war? What if the Greeks had lost to the Persians at Thermopylae? What if, the Germans had killed Hitler early in the war?-- that sort of thing.

I also like Morris' explanations about why everything became what it had to become, because of "maps, not chaps." He says, "Once we recognize that chaps (in large groups and in the new broader sense of the word) are all much the same, I will argue, all that is left is maps." His larger sense of the word "chaps" includes women, lower-class men and children.

Morris is an archaelogist and ancient historian, specializing in the classical Mediterranean of the first millennium BCE, so he takes his discussion further back in time than the modern historians. He offers a broad approach, "combining the historian's focus on context, the archaelogist's awareness of the deep past, and the social scientist's comparative methods." He got help from botanists, zoologists, chemists, geologists and other specialists. I think he might have also tossed in a philosopher, say Derk Pereboom, and a Neuroscientist, maybe Antonio Damasio, but nonetheless the result is extraordinary.

I have not yet reached the punchline, that is the part about "for Now." The book appears to be about 600 pages long. I'm reading it on the Kindle, so I don't know for sure, but it must be a hefty tome in hardback. Morris makes a joke about the length by quoting Samuel Johnson on Paradise Lost, "None ever wished it longer than it is."

So far, his book is for me like those of Jared Diamond (who he discusses), I hope just keeps going on.

Dr. Pangloss and the best of all possible worlds.

I have been reading a book by Ian Morris called Why the West Rules--For Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future. I would usually want to finish a book, before making a comment, but this one is long and it is a keeper. It is a wonderful book; every page causes me to wonder about something. And it may be one of those sea change books that causes everything to look different once it is read. (I know, that sea change metaphor is hackneyed. The phrase always brings to mind for me, "Full fathom five thy father lies/ of his bones are coral made/ Those are pearls that were his eyes/ Nothing of him does fade/ but doth suffer a sea-change/ Into something rich and strange." So I keep using it.)

Morris quotes Voltaire: "'All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds,' says Dr. Pangloss-again, and again, and again--in Voltaire's eighteenth-century comic classic Candide. Despite
contracting syphilis, losing an eye and an ear, and being enslaved, hanged, and caught in not one but two earthquakes, Pangloss sticks to his story. Pangloss, of course, was Voltaire's little joke, poking fun at the silliness of contemporary philosophy, but history has thrown up plenty of real-life versions."

I read an English translation of Candide, Or Optimism, I think as assigned reading, in high school and enjoyed the joke and was completely persuaded that Pangloss and Leibniz (who I did not, and have not, read) must have been complete idiots.

Now, because of Morris' book, it occurs to me that Dr. Pangloss may have been right, not about the optimism part, but because this is the best of all possible worlds, because it is the only possible world. This also, makes it the worst of all possible worlds, of course, but if everything had to turn out the way it does, there may be no reason with Dr. Pangloss to rejoice in the awful things going on around us, but there is little reason to be suprised or disappointed, either.

Free Will and St. Augustine: Liberum Arbitrium

I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words, "Man can indeed
do what he wants, but he cannot want what he wants," accompany me in
all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others,
even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free
will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and
judging individuals, and from losing good humor. Albert
Einstein 1932.

A great deal of my free-pondering time has been devoted to the question of free will. I know this may not seem a question that matters in every day life, but I think it does. If there is no free will, the criminal justice system is founded on a false premise. If no one, when we look hard enough, acts intentionally or knowingly, but only as they must based on determinism, there is no basis for the mens rea that is usually required for punishment. Punishment itself is undermined. The whole federal guideline scheme based on "just deserts" is wrong. Criminal defense work apart, rejection of free will impacts how we interact with other folks in day to day life.

An anonymous comment to my last blog on "free will" refers to a Catholic Encyclopedia entry that affirms "free will." I take this response seriously. A great deal of my understanding of "free will" comes from Augustine, Aquinas and other Scholastics, and Pascal. However, I am persuaded none of these would embrace the modern concept of "free will" as we use the term and as we wield the term, as if it were a bludgeon, to kill our fellows. I say this in a quite literal since; a juror to whom I spoke after the verdict, justified his decision to kill with the term "free will."

The usual translation of "LIBERUM ARBITRIUM" into English is "free will." However, when Augustine writes of liberum arbitrium, he describes something very different from the excuse we today use to imprison and execute each other in the penal system. Augustine discusses liberum arbitrium in the Book V of "The City of God." Augustine leaves no doubt that the will or power of God determines everything in the world and that God knows what the future will be before hand. Augustine even reconciles himself with those who call it "fate." "If anyone attributes their existence to fate, because he calls the will or the power of God itself by the name of fate, let him keep his opinion, but correct his language."

Augustine discusses the twins, Esau and Jacob, to show that astrology cannot be true. (My translation calls the astrologists "mathematicians.") They were born at the same time, but had completely different predetermined lives. Our question though is why one son was loved by his mother (and God), and the other was not, and whether either Esau or Jacob had any control over the outcome of their lives?

Augustine tells of those who believe in determinism, that is, those who believe those who believe fate is "the whole connection and train of causes which makes everything become what it does become" are not in disagreement with him, but merely in a verbal controversy, "since they attribute the s0-called order and connection of causes to the will and power of God most high, who is mostly rightly and most truly believed to know all things before they come to pass and to leave nothing unordained...."

Augustine qoutes verses of Annaeus Seneca, "The Fates do lead the man that follows willing: But the man that is unwilling, him they drag."

So then, if "the order and connection of causes" leaves nothing unordained, what room is there for Augustine for this thing, Liberum Arbitrium? To begin with, this word "will" which in Latin is "voluntas" and not "arbitrium" should probably be "decision" or "judgment" or "discernment." (Look at the franciscan-archive. org linked under the title).

God's will is something different, but in the Augustine writings regarding man, substitute the word "decision" for "will."

God creates the will of man. Augustine, says, "In His supreme will resides the power which acts on the wills of all created spirits, helping the good, judging the evil, controlling all, granting power to some, not granting it to others."

And, "Wherefore our wills also have just so much power as God willed and foreknew that they should have...."

Our decisions are ruled by necessity, according to Augustine. "But if we define necessity to be that according to which we say that it is necessary that anything be of such or such a nature, or be done in such and such a manner, I know not why we should have any dread of that necessity taking away the freedom of our will."

So, I don't believe Augustine or the Church embrace what we today call "free will." Pascal devotes "Provincial Letters" to this argument and makes it much better than I can.

Thoughts About Free Will

The first exposure I had to the determinism-free will discussion was in elementary school when we attended the Calvary Baptist Church in McAllen, Texas. The argument was if God knows everything and is all-powerful, he knows ahead of time what we will do and he made us that way, so we can't really be making choices. Differently put, no one really chooses the next step in life if it has already been decided by an omnipotent, omniscient God.

As a little boy, intuitively, I thought I was making choices, but I also had a strong sense I was being tossed around by powers far greater than me.

Although Baptists tend to believe in Free Will, there has long been a Calvinist contingent among the Baptists:
"...the earliest Baptists were not Calvinists, even though they had their beginnings in a Calvinistic environment. It was a quarter of a century before Calvinist views appeared in Baptist life. Even then, for a considerable period of time there were two different groups of Baptists in England, General Baptists (non-Calvinistic) and Particular Baptists (Calvinistic). Later (1891) the two groups merged, but many congregations on both sides were suspicious of the merger and remained separate. In America, the first Baptist church (FBC of Providence, Rhode Island) had both Calvinists and non-Calvinists in its membership."

The big issue is whether God picked those who were going to hell and those going to heaven before birth.

We are long since Catholic converts, but that does not really resolve the issue, even though the Catechism now state,

"Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts."

The anti-Calvinist protestants accuse Calvin of having cribbed from the Catholic St. Augustine for a reliance on determinism. And The New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia (cited in the link) discusses the issue as far from settled. I discussed Pascal's falling out of favor with the powers of his day because of a Catholic belief in determinism.

Mostly now, people talk about biological and psychological determinism, but I think it is largely the same discussion as God's determinism.

My first exposure to this type of determinism was when I read Walden Two by B.F. Skinner when I was still in High School. I kept the intuition that I was making free choices, but I could not find an strong argument against Skinner's determinism.

In the decades since, I have seen little evidence that people have choice in life. At most, we have an illusion that we are making a choice, but that choice is determined by prior causes. Recently, I read Living Without Free Will by Derk Pereboom. He makes the case for "Hard Determinism" and "Hard Incompatibilism." That is, factors beyond our control produce all of our actions and this fact is incompatible with a belief we are praiseworthy or blameworthy for our actions.

If this is true (and Pereboom argues it as scientific fact), the implications for life and society are huge. For starters, it demonstrates our criminal justice system is based on a false premise.

Ice Will Suffice

I was recently sitting with a friend watching the river.  We were discussing how the world would end, or probably more accurately, how human beings would die out.

He urged, (correctly, I think) that it was inevitable we would blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons and the only question is when.  I suggested, that although I have a prejudice in favor of people over other species, this might leave a pleasant enough world for smaller creatures.   Chernobyl might be the pattern.  The horses and cows died and the human beings left or died. But the lynx and the eagle owl may have made a comeback after homo sapiens left their habitat.  Studies have shown plants like soy and certain rodents have evolved a tolerance for the radiation.  So the large animals may all died, but plants and smaller animals may thrive.

But I don't think we will be around long enough for the nuclear destruction.  The frogs are all dying.  Apparently a species of frog that lived with a certain fungus was shipped around the world for scientific experiments.  The fungus was fatal to other types of frogs and now all of the frogs are dying, all over the world.

There have been five mass extinctions before.  A mass extinction is defined to mean half the species on earth have died.  Now most of the scientists believe we are in mass extinction event number six.  It may have begun only in the last few decades or it may have begun 50,000 years ago.  A book called Twilight of the Mammoths by Paul S. Martin describes all the great animals in North America when human beings showed up.  These include mastodons (a type of big elephant), gomphotheres (an elephant with a mouth like a shovel), four species of mammoths (hairy elephants), ground sloths, a glyptodon (sort of a living PT Cruiser with a mace for a tail), giant armadillos, giant beavers, giant peccaries, dwarf antelopes, native camels and horses, saber-toothed and dirk-tooth cats and an American subspecies of the lion.  So maybe the frogs are almost an afterthought.

The problem, of course, if you are fond of certain human beings is that in these extinctions the big creatures tend to go, and we are a big creature.  The earliest extinction lost a number of different types of trilobites and they are all gone now.  It may be the sharks ate the rest of them.  I don't understand this web of life that includes the frogs and how they help hold the whole together, but I imagine that without the frogs to eat the bugs, the bugs will eat our food and us.  Also, it seems somewhat like the canary who dies in the cave before the miners start dying.  The frogs dying may just be a signal the hole we are digging is filling with poisonous gases.

Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus

Kindle books was giving away a Frankenstein novel for free and since I did not know if my debit card was exhausted or not, I opted to download and read it rather than various recommended best sellers.  Especially for free, it was worth the purchase.  And never before have I been more wrong about what I thought I knew about a book.

I thought I had read it before, but when I read it this time, since I did not recognize it all, maybe I never did.  I was relying on snippets of a dozen bad movies for my recollection of the book.

Did you know there is no Igor?    And Dr. Frankenstein is not an evil genius doctor at all, but a young college student who became over enthusiastic about his studies.  And the scene is set in cheery Geneva, Switzerland, not in some Eastern European castle.  And Victor Frankenstein does not flip a switch to turn on his creation, because he is still lighting up his studies with candles.  Nor were there batteries that could hold the lightning for animating the creature.  And Victor's Creation proves to be very intelligent.  He educates himself so he can persuade others about his point of view.

The book is published in 1818.  Mary Shelley had run away to Geneva with her then boyfriend, Percy Shelley, because if the creditors caught him in England, they would throw him in a debtor's prison.  They  had already scandalized society because Mary was pregnant and Percy was married to Harriet.  Harriet later conveniently drown herself so Mary and Percy could marry.  Mary became pregnant when she was 16 and Percy was 20.  If this had happened today in Texas, Percy would probably be prosecuted for Rape of a Child.

At any rate, Mary and her stepsister Claire Clairmont and Percy and Lord Byron and John William Polidori all stayed for a while at Lord Byron's house on Lake Geneva.  They were all telling ghost stories and out of that came Mary's Frankenstein.  Polidori wrote the first vampire story to be published in English.  Mary was 20 years old.

The title actually refers to the young student, Victor, and not his creation.  Victor is The Modern Prometheus.  That is, he steals fire from the gods, gives it to men and ends up being punished for eternity by having his liver eaten by an eagle, only to have it grow back and eaten again the next day.  Victor creates life out of dead material.  He has an understanding of watching the frog's leg jump and throw off a spark when it is touched with a scalpel.  By giving man this fire, he has to watch as the run away creation kills everyone he loves.

Mary grew up and hung around with the best poets and philosophers of the time, so it is not surprising she used Luigi Galvani's experiments as the basis for bring the creature to life.  Galvani thought animals were the source of the electricity.

Mary includes in her story, a false confession, a religious persecution of a muslim and the unintended consequences of the well-meaning scientist.  This all seems up to date.  Victor's creation wants a wife.  Victor won't create one because he fears the offspring will be so much superior to people, they will soon replace people. 

I suppose the genetic engineers are far enough along they could produce a creature bigger, stronger and smarter than people by tinkering with certain human genes.  Maybe this should be required reading. 

One thing I think Mary misjudged is that any creation could be so grotesque, no one would ever be able to look at it.  But Mary was just 20 and hadn't learned yet that we can get used to about anything.