Month: August 2012

Deterrence Will Not Work Against Iran

Charles Krauthammer gives three reasons:

(1) The nature of the regime.

Did the Soviet Union in its 70 years ever deploy a suicide bomber? For Iran, as for other jihadists, suicide bombing is routine. Hence the trail of self-immolation, from the 1983 Marine barracks attack in Beirut to the Bulgaria bombing of July 2012.  Iran’s clerical regime rules in the name of a fundamentalist religion for whom the hereafter offers the ultimate rewards. For Soviet communists — thoroughly, militantly atheistic — such thinking was an opiate-laced fairy tale.

For all its global aspirations, the Soviet Union was intensely nationalist. The Islamic Republic sees itself as an instrument of its own brand of Shiite millenarianism — the messianic return of the “hidden Imam.”

It’s one thing to live in a state of mutual assured destruction with Stalin or Brezhnev, leaders of a philosophically materialist, historically grounded, deeply here-and-now regime. It’s quite another to be in a situation of mutual destruction with apocalyptic clerics who believe in the imminent advent of the Mahdi, the supremacy of the afterlife and holy war as the ultimate avenue to achieving it.

The classic formulation comes from Tehran’s fellow (and rival Sunni) jihadist al-Qaeda: “You love life and we love death.” Try deterring that.

(2) The nature of the grievance.

The Soviet quarrel with America was ideological. Iran’s quarrel with Israel is existential. The Soviets never proclaimed a desire to annihilate the American people. For Iran, the very existence of a Jewish state on Muslim land is a crime, an abomination, a cancer with which no negotiation, no coexistence, no accommodation is possible.

(3) The nature of the target.

America is a nation of 300 million; Israel, 8 million. America is a continental nation; Israel, a speck on the map, at one point eight miles wide. Israel is a “one-bomb country.” Its territory is so tiny, its population so concentrated that, as Iran’s former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has famously said, “Application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.” A tiny nuclear arsenal would do the job.

In U.S.-Soviet deterrence, both sides knew that a nuclear war would destroy them mutually. The mullahs have thought the unthinkable to a different conclusion. They know about the Israeli arsenal. They also know, as Rafsanjani said, that in any exchange Israel would be destroyed instantly and forever, whereas the ummah — the Muslim world of 1.8 billion people whose redemption is the ultimate purpose of the Iranian revolution — would survive damaged but almost entirely intact.

Montaigne on Why Language Matters

Allan J. writes,

You often speak of the importance of using language responsibly, i.e. not like a librul.
So I thought you would enjoy this:

“Our understanding is conducted solely by means of the word: anyone who falsifies it betrays public society. It is the only tool by which we communicate our wishes and our thoughts; it is our soul’s interpreter: if we lack that, we can no longer hold together; we can no longer know each other. When words deceive us, it breaks all intercourse and loosens the bonds of our polity.” – Montaigne

Montaigne's point is mine.  Language matters.  It deserves respect as the vehicle and enabler of our thoughts and — to change the metaphor — the common currency for the exchange of ideas.  To tamper with the accepted meanings of words in order  to secure argumentative or political advantage is a form of cheating.  Wittgenstein likened languages to games.  But games have rules, and we cannot tolerate those who change the rules mid-game.  We must demand of our opponents that they use language responsibly, and engage us on the common terrain of accepted usage.

The violation of accepted usage is a common ploy of contemporary liberals.  Some examples: 

Minimal ID requirements are said to disenfranchise certain classes of voters.  The common sense requirements amount to voter suppression.  They are described absurdly as an onerous barrier to voting."
Onerous?  Barrier?  In Pennsylvania a photo ID can be had free of charge.  In Arizona it costs a paltry $12 and is good for 12 years.  If you are 65 or older, or on SS disability, it is free.

People who insist on the rule of law with respect to immigation are called xenophobic.  And then there are the cheaply-fabricated  neologistic  '-phobe' compounds.  One who rationally articulates a principled position against same-sex marriage is dismissed as homophobic.  One who draws attention to the threat of radical Islam is denounced as Islamophobic.

The sheer stupidity of these mendacious coinages ought to disgust anyone who can think straight.  A phobia is an irrational fear.  But the proponents of traditional marriage have no fear of homosexuals or their practices, let alone an irrational fear of them.  And those alive to the threat of radical Islam may be said to fear it, but the fear is rational.

Liberals can't seem to distinguish dissent from hate.  So they think that if you dissent from liberal positions, then you hate liberals.  How stupid can a liberal be?  "You disagree with liberal ideas, therefore you are a hater!"   Even worse: "You differ with a black liberal's ideas, therefore you are a hater and a racist!"

'Unilateral.'  John Nichols of the The Nation appeared on the hard-Left show, "Democracy Now," on the morning of 2 September 2004. Like many libs and lefties, he misused 'unilateral' to mean 'without United Nations   support.' In this sense, coalition operations against Saddam Hussein's regime were 'unilateral' despite the the fact that said operations were precisely those of a coalition of some thirty countries.  The same willful mistake was made by his boss Victor Navasky on 17 July 2005 while being
interviewed by David Frum on C-Span 2.

There are plenty more examples, e.g., 'white Hispanic.'   When Republicans had control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, Dems whined about a 'one-party system.'  Exercise for the reader: find more examples of liberal misuse of language.

Ron Radosh on Woody Guthrie at 100

A very good piece that ends like this:

Poor Woody Guthrie. He never expected to see the day when the newsmen, the photographers, the media as a whole would proclaim singers like Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello, and Ry Cooder geniuses because they are leftists, and although like all good millionaires and billionaires, they use their money as Bruce Springsteen does — to buy homes all over the world and race horses for his daughter to compete with. If Woody was alive, he at least would be honest, and would have squandered his money and given it to the CPUSA.

So go and honor Woody — he was in so many ways a bard of those who were dispossessed and down under in the years of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, and in his best works, he echoed their concerns and their lives. In his worst, he became a prisoner of the Communist movement he joined, who forced him to adopt political correctness on behalf of evil causes, and to write songs on their behalf better forgotten.

Remember this if you’re attending any of the concerts coming up. And if Tom Morello sings and I’m there, I’ll remain sitting, won’t applaud, and if you hear someone booing, it might just be me.

Beating the Dead Horse of the Thin Theory Some More

It is obviously true that something exists.  This is not only true, but known with certainty to be true:  I think, therefore I exist, therefore something exists.  That is my Grand Datum, my datanic starting point.  Things exist! 

Now it seems perfectly clear to me that 'Something exists' cannot be translated adequately as 'Something is self-identical' employing just the resources of modern predicate logic (MPL), i.e., first-order predicate logic  with identity.    But it seems perfectly clear to van Inwagen that it can.  See my preceding post on this topic. So one of us is wrong, and if it is me, I'd like to know exactly why.  Let me add that 'Something is self-identical' is the prime candidate for such a thin translation.  If there is a thin translation, this is it.  Van Inwagen comes into the discussion only as a representative of the thin theory, albeit as the 'dean' of the thin theorists.

Consider the following formula in first-order predicate logic with identity that van Inwagen thinks adequately translates 'There are objects' and 'Something exists':

1. (∃x) (x = x).

It seems to me that there is nothing in this formula but syntax: there are no nonlogical expressions, no content expressions, no expressions like 'Socrates' or 'cat' or placeholders for such expressions such as  'a' and 'C.'  The parentheses can be dropped, and van Inwagen writes the formula without them. This leaves us with '∃,' three bound occurrences of the variable 'x,' and the identity sign '=.' 

Now here is my main question:  How can the extralogical and extrasyntactical fact that something exists be a matter of pure logical syntax?  How can this fact be expressed by a string of merely syntactical symbols: '∃,' 'x,' '='?

It is not a logical truth that something exists; it is a matter of extralogical fact.  There's this bloody world out there and it certainly wasn't sired by the laws of logic.  Logically, there might not have been anything at all.  It is true, but logically contingent, that something exists.  Compare (1) with the universal quantification

2. (x)(x =x).

If (1) translates 'Something exists,' then (2) translates 'Everything exists.'  But (2) is a logical truth, and its negation a contradiction.  Since (1) follows from (2), (1) is a logical truth as well.  But (1) is not a logical truth as we have just seen.  We face an aporetic triad:

a. '(x)(x =x)' is logically true.
b. '(∃x) (x = x)' follows from '(x)(x = x).'
c. '(∃x) (x = x)' adequately translates 'Something exists.'

Each limb is plausible, but they cannot all be true.   The truth of any two linbs entails the falsehood of the remaining one. For example, the first two entail that '(∃x) (x = x)' is logically true. But then (c) is false:  One sentence cannot be an adequate translation of a second if the first fails to preserve the modal status of the second.  To repeat myself: 'Something exists' is logically contingent whereas the canonical  translation is logically necessary.

Now which of the limbs shall we reject?  It is obvious to me that the third limb must be rejected, pace van Inwagen.

Now consider 'Everything exists.'  Can it be translated adequately as '(x)(x = x)'?  Obviously not.  The latter is a formal-logical truth. and its negation is a formal-logical contradiction.  But the negation of 'Everything exists' — 'Something does not exist' — is not a formal logical contradiction.  Therefore, 'Everything exists' is not a formal-logical truth.  And because it is not, it cannot be given the canonical translation.

Finally, consider 'Nothing exists.'  This is false, but logically contingent: there is no formal-logical necessity that something exist.  One cannot infer the existence of anything (or at least anything concrete) from the principles of formal logic alone.  The canonical translation of 'Nothing exists,' however — (x)~(x = x)' -  is not contingently false, but logically false.  Therefore, 'Nothing exists' cannot be translated adequately as 'Everything is not self-identical.'

Van Inwagen and his master Quine are simply mistaken when they maintain that existence is what 'existential' quantification expresses. 

The ‘You Didn’t Build That’ Speech Revisited: Wieseltier Says Romney and Ryan are Lying

In His Grief and Ours: Paul Ryan's Nasty Ideal of Self-Reliance, Leon Wieseltier taxes Ryan and Mitt Romney with a simple lie (emphasis added):

It is no wonder that Ryan, and of course Romney, set out immediately to distort the president’s “you didn’t build that speech” in Roanoke, because in complicating the causes of economic achievement, and in giving a more correct picture of the conditions of entrepreneurial activity, Obama punctured the radical individualist mythology, the wild self-worship, at the heart of the conservative idea of capitalism. An honest reading of the speech shows that Romney and Ryan and their apologists are simply lying about it. The businessman builds his business, but he does not build the bridge without which he could not build his business. That is all. Is it everything? Surely it takes nothing away from the businessman, who retains his reason for his pride in his business. But it is not capitalist pride that Romney and Ryan are defending, it is capitalist pridefulness.

Here is the key passage from Obama's speech (emphasis added):

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

What is the antecedent of the pronoun 'that' in the fifth sentence?  The general rule, one admitting of exceptions, is that the antecedent of a pronoun is the noun or noun phrase immediately preceding it in the context in question.  By that rule 'business' is the antecedent of 'that'  and Obama is saying that business owners did not build their businesses.  But since the rule allows exceptions, the context permits a   charitable reading: 'If you've got a business, you didn't build the roads and bridges and other infrastructuire without which your business would have been impossible.'

So there are two readings of Obama's words.  Both are permitted by the words themselves, but one is uncharitable and the other charitable.  On the first what he is saying is plainly false: no business person built his business.  On the second, what he is saying is trivially true and disputed by no one, namely, that no business could be built without various infrastructure already being in place. 

On either reading, there is a serious problem for Obama and his apologists.  Either Obama is is saying something that everyone, including Obama, knows is false, in which case he is lying, or he is saying something that goes without saying, something disputed by no one.  On the second reading Obama is commiting a straw man fallacy: he is portraying his opponents as holding a position that none of them holds. 

So if we are going to be charitable, then we ought to tax the president with a straw man fallacy.  But there is worse to come.  Behind the latter fallacy is a fallacy of false alternative.  Obama assumes, without justification, that if you didn't build the infrastructure without which your business could not exist, then government built it.  Or, to put it in the form of a disjunction: Either you as an individual built the the roads and bridges and tools or government built them for you.  But that is a false alternative.  Not everything that arises collectively is brought about by the government.  Obama confuses government with society.  Only some of what we achieve collectively is achieved by government agency.

Uncharitably read, Obama is lying.  Charitably read, his claim is doubly fallacious and doubly false.  It is false that conservatives maintain a rugged individualism according to which each of us creates himself ex nihilo.  And it is false that what is achieved collectively is achieved by government agency.

Now did Romney and Ryan lie about Obama's message?  No.  They interpreted his words in a way that the English language permits.  Their interpretation, of course, is uncharitable in the extreme.  After all, no one really believes that business people pull themselves up out of nothing by their own bootstraps. 

Is Wieseltier lying about Romney and Ryan? No, he is is just being stupid by failing to make an elementary distinction between sentence meaning and speaker's meaning.

Obama's gaffe will be and ought to be exploited to the hilt by the Republicans.  Politics is not dispassionate inquiry but war conducted by other means. 

Obama must be defeated.  Four more years of his collectivism  may harm the country irreparably.

Lanzetta Responds re: Kerouac

This is Danny Lanzetta. I saw your blog posting in response to my piece in the Huffington Post last week, "In Defense of Jack Kerouac…" Thanks for reading.
 
In your reaction, you wrote of my link to that famous OTR passage: "Lanzetta seems to be suggesting that this is a particularly bad specimen of  Kerouac's scrivening."
 
I went back and looked at the passage in question. Your reading of it could not be more correct. That is absolutely what I wrote. However, it is not what I meant. My point was supposed to be that Kerouac's "madness" sometimes led to the most beautiful and ecstatic writing one could ever read (thus, the link), while at other times it led to the mess that became his personal life (such as his terrible treatment of his daughter, Jan). After countless proofreadings and going through my piece with a fine-toothed comb, I simply missed the way that sentence read. A simple adjective, appropriately placed, could've saved me. Alas, I missed it. I apologize for the confusion.
 
I'd be grateful if you could pass along my apologies to your readers. Luckily, it was only a case of bad writing (my own) and not what would be an egregious denouncement of one of the most beautiful sentences ever put to paper.
 
Thanks again.
 
Well, Danny, there is certainly no need to apologize.  If you had meant that the famous OTR passage was the sort of purple prose an over-excited sophomore might write, that would have been a defensible claim.  But I am glad that is not what you meant.  In any case, it is very easy for a writer to fail to say what he means.
 
I must say I was very impressed at your willingness to accept criticism. 

Alypius and the Gladiators

The 28th of August is the Feast of St. Augustine in the Roman Catholic liturgy.  The following post from three years ago bears up well:

At the time of the Nicholas Berg beheading by al-Qaeda terrorists, a correspondent wrote to say that he watched the video only up to the point where the knife was applied to the neck, but refused to view the severing. He did right, for reasons given in Book Six, Chapter Eight of Augustine’s Confessions.


GladiatorAlypius was a student of Augustine, first in their hometown of Thagaste, and later in Carthage. In the previous chapter, Augustine writes that in “the maelstrom of Carthaginian customs” Alypius was “sucked down into a madness for the circus.” Later, when Alypius preceded Augustine to Rome to study law, some friends persuaded him against his will to attend a gladiatorial show. Alypius thought he could observe the scene calmly and resist the temptation to blood lust. But he was wrong. When a gladiator fell in combat, and a mighty roar went up from the crowd, Alypius, overcome by curiosity, opened his eyes, drank in the sight, “…and was wounded more deeply in his soul than the man whom he desired to look at was wounded in his body.” Augustine continues:

As he saw that blood, he drank in savageness at the same time. He did not turn away, but fixed his sight on it, and drank in madness without knowing it. He took delight in that evil struggle, and became drunk on blood and pleasure. He was no longer the man who entered
there, but only one of the crowd that he had joined, and a true comrade of those who had brought him there. (Tr. J. K. Ryan)

In our decadent culture, we are not yet at the nadir of Roman brutality. But we are at the point where vast numbers of people find entertainment in, and see nothing wrong with, blood lust by itself or in permutation with sexual lust. For such people, and the legal sophists who misuse the First Amendment, the story of Alypius and the Gladiators can mean nothing.

To borrow a line from a 1997 Dylan song, “It's not dark yet, but it’s gettin’ there.”

I Was Forced to Show My Papers!

Voting this morning in the AZ state primary I was put in mind of an old post from a couple of years ago that bears reposting and editing:


AZThings are really getting bad here in the fascist state of Arizona.  Why just this morning I was forced to show ID when I went to vote.  I strolled into the polling place looking a fright after several hours of hiking.  I introduced myself as 'King Blog' but that cut no ice with the  old ladies who 'manned' the place.  They asked to see my driver's license! What chutzpah!  What bigotry!  A bunch of damned Nazis, if you want my opinion.  What if I forgot it, or never had one? Then the Nazi bastards would have disenfranchised me!  The very act of requesting ID is an act of

 disenfrachisement and intimidation.  Besides, it prevents me from voting twice, which I have a right to do. 

I should have adapted a line from B. Traven's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  Papers?  I don't need no stinkin' papers!  I'm a human being.  You just hate me because I smell like I spent the night under a bridge.  I have the right to do whatever I want, wherever I want, and vote wherever I want and as many times as I want.
You Anglo bastards are raaacists because my skin isn't lily-white like yours and because my name ends in a vowel.

I'm gettin' the hell out of this rattlesnake-infested inferno of gun-totin' yahoos, rednecked racists, and xenophobic immigrant-bashers.  I'm going where a man can be free.  I'm headed for Castro's island paradise.  "Live free or die," as I always say.

2016: Obama’s America is a Must-See

Even-handed and extremely well-produced, 2016 exposes the anti-colonialist ideology that animates Obama's policy decisions.

According to NPR, "so far, 2016 has made more than nine million dollars. It's already the sixth highest grossing political documentary of all time."  It is even doing well in liberal New York City.  I saw it at 1:30 PM today, Monday, in a Mesa, Arizona, theater that was almost full.  That give me hope that change will come.

Here is a review.