The Florentines and us

"Running through the whole political writings of the Florentine philosophers and historians, we find the same belief in artificial and arbitrary alterations of the state. Machiavelli pronounces his opinion that, in spite of the corruption of Florence, a wise legislator might effect her salvation. Skill alone was needed." - J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, pp.102-3

So is it with modern day Americans. Washington is corrupt through and through, but if only we appointed the right man for the job, the system could be reformed. This conceit will fare no better for us than it did for the Florentines, though I expect our end shall not be rule by foreign power, but by division and discord.

The Church and the cognitive elite

Charles Murray's latest book, Coming Apart, has been discussed much--and deservedly so. He argues that America is increasingly divided along class lines. There is a cognitive elite, who attend the same elite universities and intermarry. On the other side of the bell curve, an underclass is abandoning the core principles which have served America so well; this portends ill, not simply for the underclass, but for American society at large.

It occurred to me that this same division isn't playing out to the same degree in Catholic society--or, if it is, I haven't noticed it. I'm specifically referring to the priests, who could form a cognitive elite of sorts, but haven't, for a variety of reasons. Obviously, since priests don't marry, there isn't going to be any breeding among Catholic elites as there is in the secular world. But there are also no elite colleges that churn out priests. Certainly, the handful of conservative Catholic universities, such as Christendom and Thomas Aquinas college, produce a higher percentage of vocations to the priesthood, but these numbers are too small to counteract the wider trend.

In some sense, this is a good thing. Priests come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and they need to if they are going to serve dioceses whose members do not belong to the cognitive elites. (Perhaps the elite priests are preaching in the superzips that Murray talks about. I travel a fair amount, so I'm exposed to a number of different priests in a given year, but I don't live in--or near--any of the superzips.) But there's a downside, too, in that, for many more intelligent Catholics, intellectually stimulating homilies can draw one to the Church. I know this because my apostate friends, who tend to be fairly bright, lament the lack of vigor in the dull sermons they've encountered.

It's unfair to priests to expect them to give a dynamic homily every Sunday; preaching is only one of the many tasks to which a priest must attend. And while Catholics like me would prefer a discussion of some finer point in Aquinas, there are many good Catholics who aren't overly intellectual in their approach to the Faith. As Peggy tells the young priest in an episode of Mad Men, "The sermon is the only part of the Mass in Engligh, and sometimes it's hard to tell." If the writers of the show have their facts straight, homilies were more intellectually robust prior to Vatican II, and most Catholics apostatized anyway.

This is all mere speculation on my part. The Church teaches that God calls His priests; we can be reasonably sure He knows what He's doing. But I can't help feel a bit nostalgic for a time when there were--more--intellectually formidable priests. Perhaps St. Ignatius could help his order reform themselves, and the Jesuits could again play that role. For the moment, the Church is blessed to have so impressive a mind as Benedict XVI to help guide Her. One hopes that there are little Ratzingers, unknown to all but their small parishes, who have a part to play in this thing yet.

A Prophet of Lost Causes

Ordinarily, I am suspicious of biographies which are written while the subject is still alive. Time is often essential to clarify a person's place in history. Yet Timothy Stanley's biography of Pat Buchanan, titled The Crusader, is a worthy exception, for two reasons. First, and sadly, most of Buchanan's work is behind him. He may write a few more books yet--including, one hopes, his memoirs--but Pat and the paleo-conservatives seem to be cursed to wander in the political wilderness for the foreseeable future.

The second reason relates to the way Americans incorporate out knowledge of history into the narrative through which we practice politics. That narrative paints one side as the forces of good and the other of evil. Buchanan is ignored because he ill fits into the rigid dogma of left and right as diametrically opposed forces. That's unfortunate, because he has much to teach us.

After two brief chapters on Buchanan's early life, the first part of the book deals with the man as a mostly loyal Republican. Probably the most curious aspect of Buchanan's early policies was his hawkishness. In 1970, "Pat sent another memo to [President Nixon] saying that he should hit the antiwar protesters more... What the masses wanted [Buchanan] said, was a 'fighting president' not a 'professional president.'" Stanley also captures Buchanan at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, where he watched Mayor Daley's police throttle protesters from atop a balcony with the writer Norman Mailer. To the latter's shouts of "Pigs! Fascists!" Buchanan returned, "Hey, you've missed one!"

In the second part of the book, we see Buchanan assert himself against a wayward party. Believing that the Republicans had lost their way, he ran against the incumbent George H. W. Bush in 1992, which set the stage for a more serious, but likewise abortive, attempt to secure the nomination in 1996. The disastrous Reform Party run in 2000 is recounted as well. Ever the populist, Pat longed for a return to the social cohesion of the 1950's, perceived or real. To that end, he denounced NAFTA and argued for a tariff to protect manufacturing jobs. Whether or not Buchanan's policies would have helped is a matter of debate; what is irrefutable is that fewer and fewer Americans now work in the manufacturing sector.

In 1991, Pat added a new phrase to the political lexicon: vulture capitalism. In Stanley's summation: "Socialism was dumb, but unfettered capitalism was evil... At the center of the family was a gainfully employed father." Conservatism exists to protect the family; ergo, it had a duty to restrain corporatist forces that threatened to tear families apart.

Stanley highlights other better known aspects of his political philosophy. We see Pat as an accused racist and anti-Semite for his restrictionist views on immigration and his charges that the U.S. was conducting its foreign policy at the behest of the Israel lobby. The author reminds us that there are other sides to Pat, too.

The Crusader can make for a somber read, as when Pat says: "Mr. Dole put the interest of the big banks--Citibank, Chase Manhatten, Goldman Sachs--ahead of the American people." Truly, the Republic has been rotting for quite some time.

Most depressing of all is how little Pat's influence seems to be felt in today's Republican party, the party of war and vulture capitalism. The best that can be said is that some of Buchanan's positions are shared by libertarians such as Ron Paul. Having been banned from MSNBC for heresy against the secular orthodoxy, Buchanan's influence is likely to diminish even further. One suspects that Pat understands; for as Frederick D. Wilhelmsen observed, "Christendom is honor and the fatherland and man with his back to the wall. It is the glory of lost causes and the splendor of certain defeat."

The Great Class Divide

Charles Murray, co-author of the controversial Bell Curve, examines the growing division between lower class and upper class whites in his latest book, Coming Apart. To set the stage for the incredible transformation that has occurred in the last five decades, he paints a charming picture of a largely homogeneous white culture on the eve of Kennedy's assassination. His focus on whites ensures that adequate attention is paid to our most significant cultural problem: class division. As he demonstrates in one of the books later chapters, lower class blacks, whites and Hispanics are faring roughly the same.

The first part of the book examines the new upper class. Contrary to fifty years ago, when a CEO for a company would probably live in, or at least near, the small town in which his business was based, more and more of the rich are living in neighborhoods which are comprised of other rich people. Not only are their neighbors wealthy, a significant number of them attended the same elite universities, which their children then attend. Think David Brook's Bobos in Paradise, which Murray recommends. The result is that the nation's elites, those who set government policy and exert considerable influence over the media, are now completely isolated from their fellow citizens in the lower class.

Murray turns to this lower class in the second part of his book. He argues that four qualities have made the American experiment successful: industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religiosity. So long as its citizens practice what Murray calls "the founding virtues", the project can expect to continue; once these virtues are abandoned, we have no such assurances.

Like the first son in the Gospel parable, the upper class fails to offer support for the founding virtues, but nonetheless practices them. The picture is different in the lower class: industriousness is being replaced by television and sleep; social capital is diminishing, and crime is still a concern. Marriage has been replaced by cohabitation--which data suggests is "about the same as... single parenthood" as far as the children are concerned.

The results are troubling for religiosity, too: "Despite the common belief that the working class is the most religious group... the drift from religiosity was far greater" in the lower than upper class. Surveys that rely on mere profession of belief are apt to mislead; someone who attends church services once a year is de facto secular, and is highly unlikely to participate civically as do religious members who are regular church goers.

Somewhat curiously, Murray applauds the revolution in the status of women we have achieved since the 60's. I would have liked to see him examine the role feminism has played in the trends he documents, the most disturbing of which is the growing prevalence of single mothers. The welfare state, a concomitant of the feminist revolution, has replaced fathers with the State. It is disheartening that lower class men are refusing to help raise their children, but it's not exactly surprising. As an ardent critic of our welfare system, Murray no doubt appreciates the point. But the link with feminism is sadly unexplored.

Although far from being pollyannaish, Murray is more optimistic than I am about the prospect for a "civic great awakening." One of his arguments is that watching the implosion of the European model will offer a "powerful incentive to avoid going down the same road." This presupposes that the welfare state is not already so large as to ensure that we tread the same path as the Europeans--a dubious assertion.

I suspect that as America proceeds towards bankruptcy, the upper class is far more likely to cut off welfare payments than risk the diminishment of their own status--dependent as it is upon our system of crony capitalism. When Congress bailed out the banks, even though it would have been cheaper to pay off everyone's mortgage, they adumbrated the coming crisis rather nicely.

On contraception and its provision

I finally pulled myself away from Charles Murray's excellent new book, Coming Apart--which I plan on reviewing--to comment on the recent hullabaloo concerning contraception. The recent health care bill, colloquially known as Obama care, will require that employers cover the cost of contraception for employees. The American bishops of the Roman Catholic Church objected, noting that the law would require that Catholics violate their consciences.

The Catholic position on contraception is succinctly summarized in the Catechism:

Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality. These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, "every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil:

Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality. . . . The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle . . . involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality.

This position is poorly understood, even in Catholic circles, partially because it is a complicated matter and the Church's stance, though consistent, can be hard to grasp, and partially because the American bishops have done a poor job of explaining the teaching. None of this alters the fact that the Church holds that the use of contraception is immoral.

In this benighted age, in which logic and reason are rare, the argument has been bandied about that since most Catholics do not adhere to the teachings of the Church when it comes to contraception, the Church's position is unsound. This is lamentably true, but it's irrelevant to the conversation. Individual Catholics may flaunt Church teaching--though, of course, the Church may also punish her members for disobedience--but so too may Catholic institutions adopt policies in accordance with Church teaching. To refuse these institutions this right is to blatantly violate the religious freedoms enshrined in the Constitution. Whether or not the High Court sees things this way, is, as always, another matter.

There's another issue at stake, here, however, which may be more important. If the Obama administration allows a conscience exemption for Catholic institutions, it's very likely that this will be the end of the matter. The left will howl at this capitulation, but the bishops will pronounce themselves pleased. And yet, individual Catholics will still be required to violate their consciences, because private insurers cover contraception and because Medicaid does. I'm glad to see the bishops protesting the infringement of the freedom of the Church. I would like to see them do likewise when it comes to the freedoms of individual Catholics.

In regards to private insurers, the problem can be solved simply--though not, I am sad to say, easily. The reason companies provide healthcare is because of the government. During WWII, wage controls prevented companies from competing for valuable workers by paying them more money. So they sweetened the deal by offering healthcare. If healthcare was no longer provided by the employer, Catholic employees could use Catholic health insurers that did not provide contraception services. Simple, but in the present environment, practically impossible. For the time being, we must continue to violate our consciences.

The situation with Medicaid is equally hopeless, but it does allow for the illustration of a point. Our progressive age views health care as a "right". In philosophical terms, this is known as a positive right, as against the negative rights enshrined in the Constitution. (I'll not quote her here, but Ilana Mercer's latest column handles this in considerable detail, with her customary clarity and erudition.) Positive rights require something of someone else; someone must work so that someone else may receive "free health care". This is always the case with positive rights: they require that some other right be violated.

Negative rights, on the other hand, do not require such sacrifice; freedom of speech does not require that anyone give up a right. As long as we continue to speak of positive rights, there will always be a chance that religious individuals must violate their consciences in order to provide whatever the secular State demands. With or without Obamacare, Catholics will have to continue to work to provide someone else with contraception.

There are two ways out of this mess. The first is to prohibit the Government from paying for contraception with taxpayer money. This is preposterous; only a small number of Catholics care about this issue, so getting this provision through Congress is well nigh impossible. The second is to reclaim from the State that which should belong to the Church. There is no reason why Catholics should provide for the poor and the sick through the secular State. There is no reason that the Church should have allowed the State to appropriate this to itself in the first place.

As Paul A. Rahe recently argued:

In the 1930s, the majority of the bishops, priests, and nuns sold their souls to the devil, and they did so with the best of intentions. In their concern for the suffering of those out of work and destitute, they wholeheartedly embraced the New Deal. They gloried in the fact that Franklin Delano Roosevelt made Frances Perkins – a devout Anglo-Catholic laywoman who belonged to the Episcopalian Church but retreated on occasion to a Catholic convent – Secretary of Labor and the first member of her sex to be awarded a cabinet post. And they welcomed Social Security – which was her handiwork. They did not stop to ponder whether public provision in this regard would subvert the moral principle that children are responsible for the well-being of their parents. They did not stop to consider whether this measure would reduce the incentives for procreation and nourish the temptation to think of sexual intercourse as an indoor sport. They did not stop to think.

In a sense then, Obama's overreach has been useful. It has clarified a deep incongruity in Church policy. It also allows a chance to stake out a position more in tune with the full spectrum of Church teaching. For while the sick ought to be cured if possible, fertility is not a disease. The Church understands this, which is why her bishops should understand why it is unwise to allow the State to continue to play doctor.

Degraded by wealth

The blogger Roissy has a very good piece in which he claims that prosperity is to blame for many of our current problems. He quotes a commentator, who goes by the name of Jason Malloy:

[S]ome people are oriented towards higher investment reproduction and this entails higher cognitive ability, long term goals about education and career, later first intercourse, fewer and more stable relationships, reproduction within secure pairbond, and mate selection biased towards reliability and parenting qualities. Other people are oriented towards lower investment reproduction and this entails lower cognitive ability, few long term goals, early first intercourse, more sex partners and less stable relationships, reproduction outside of pairbond, and mate selection biased towards “sexy” qualities (looks, charm, creativity, athleticism).

This is essentially the premise of the vastly underrated film Idiocracy. It's not really necessary to get into the whole nature versus nurture debate. Even if the genes Susie Joe Underclass passes on to his many children aren't entirely responsible for the many grand-children they sire her out of wedlock, it's not as if there's an environmental factor to counter-balance the lower investment reproduction mommy and daddies taught them. Whether it's nature or nurture, or a mix of both, the kids are not alright.

The reasons for these trends, in other words, are less important than the trend itself, namely, that there is an ever growing underclass that makes poor reproductive--and other--decisions. As Charles Murray has noted, this has portends ill for the republic. The elites are barely cognizant of this underclass, and thus possess no awareness of how to alleviate the many problems faced by this growing segment of the population.

Prosperity has ensured that the underclass can continue to make poor choices to a far greater extent than previous generations could. This is not to imply that the drop in the infant mortality rate, for instance, is to be regretted, only that prosperity has birthed attendant ills. It does no one any good to ignore these ills simply because they came about because of a positive development. Nor is it classist or racist or anything of the kind to comment on a readily apparent phenomenon. Ignoring the underclass, or calling them by a nicer sounding name, doesn't alter their predicament in the slightest.

Back to Roissy. His key sentence is probably this one:

Individualism and freedom of thought are the enemies of the very values and morality which gave birth to them and elevated them to primacy among advanced nations.

It's very tempting for a libertarian to try to disown this conclusion. But I think he's essentially correct. And yet, since individualism and freedom are the sin qua non of libertarianism, is my political philosophy not discredited?

I would say this is true only to an extent. Libertarianism is insufficient to instill virtue, but it does allow the furthest and freest expression thereof, as well as, it must be said, vice. If the people are good, they will use their freedom well. Individualism does not preclude working for the common good. If the people are not good, they will use their freedom for ill. This is why it's so important to focus on instilling virtue, rather than trying to devise a system of government without reforming the people.

Moreover, if libertarianism is discredited, so too are conservatism and liberalism. The former is only valuable if the institutions and traditions of the culture are worthy of conserving. Yet the entire problem stems from the fact that there are no institutions which have served to instill virtue in the underclass. If haphazard reproduction is an institution, it needs to be reformed, not conserved. Liberalism, too fails, because while its social safety net may have buttressed the position of the poor--and even this is debatable--they have done nothing to reform the habits of those same people.

The regrettable conclusion seems to be that most of us are unworthy of freedom; perhaps that is why we seek to give it away so easily. One may salvage things some with the well known quote from John Adams: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Which begs two important questions. First, what kind of government is best suited for a nation such as ours, burdened with a vast underclass that makes poor use of freedom? And second, what can be done to instill virtue in said underclass?

Politics as team sport

We've been forced to endure a lot of invective to the tune that we are now more divided than ever. This is dubious, insofar as the division within a nation is a difficult thing to quantify. In any event, it seems to presuppose that the two parties to the division have radically different views which render compromise impossible. And the paucity of government action at the federal level--no budget for two and a half years, just continuing resolutions to make sure the State doesn't shut down--would seem to give credence to this theory. Yet when it comes to Congress, one should be careful about confusing cowardice for principle. Our representatives are reluctant to do anything which might lessen their chances of reelection. So punting has become the pastime of Washington.

To the contrary, I think the division stems from an essential agreement about the way government is run. This sounds paradoxical, but it should not be surprising that vehemence and vitriol tend to increase as difference diminishes. Partisan politics is like sports: one roots for one's team and against the other. Yet it is clear that the much vaunted difference between the teams dissipates rather quickly once a new team wins the electoral game. Bush II was supposed to slash government, but he gave us No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, and deficits as far as the eye could see. Obama was supposed to overturn those Bush policies liberals found so troublesome. But instead of reversing the Patriot Act, he expanded its powers under the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. True, the war in Iraq sort of ended, albeit after three years. But with our soldiers still mired in the region--many of them in Kuwait--it's hardly unthinkable that we shall find ourselves obligated to go to war in Iraq for a third time in as many decades. Moreover, Obama expanded the war in Afghanistan, and launched a few more besides.

If Obama governs like Bush, and Bush like Obama, it clearly doesn't matter who runs the country: we shall continue spending far more than we can afford, adding to the debt, and starting more foolish wars that are neither affordable nor advisable. Disgusted withdrawal is a sensible option, but it's one many are unlikely to take because of the ingrained views both sides share about voting: that it somehow matters and that it is the way responsible and civilized people work out their conflicts. This is rank nonsense, but it's not especially pernicious in and of itself: voters tend to be engaged citizens, which renders them valuable outside the electoral process. Where it becomes pernicious is in the degradation of our national discourse. With no actual differences between the way the parties govern, differences must be invented. So Obama is a secret Muslim communist, and Newt Romney will turn out pregnant women and minorities to die in the streets should he obtain power. Absurdities, all.

This same nonsense has manifested itself in the search for the Republican nominee to oppose Obama. Having passed over the only candidate who has presented a plan to reduce our deficit within a single term--because he has dared suggest that the military wastes money and thus should see its budget cut, and because he doesn't pine to start a war with Iran--the GOP finds itself confronted with a demagogue and a charlatan: Newt Romney. Both candidates have previously staked out positions contrary to those they now espouse, which is to say that both are unprincipled moderates who will now say almost anything to get elected. The difference then, is one of style, not of substance. The primary process has devolved into teens squabbling over whether Team Edward is better than Team Jacob.

(I've gone link happy in this post, but I'll refrain from linking to any specific examples of the asinine arguments over whether Romney or Gingrich is the true conservative. Find a piece that takes a position, and the comment thread will brim over with opposition. The short answer, of course, is that neither candidate will do anything to reduce Federal spending, but don't think that will prevent Republicans from bickering like school children over the matter.)

The most interesting aspect of the right's new found love of Newt is that it is actually a manifestation of politics as a team sport. If Obama supports something, it must be bad. No thinking necessary. Similarly, if establishment Republicans--who are seen as complicit, but are still reliably reelected by the rank and file--and the media oppose Gingrich, that must mean they fear him, and that must make him good. Yet sometimes, the enemy of my enemy is still my enemy. Comprehending this has proven a bit difficult for the base, hence the otherwise inexplicable support for the consummate Washington insider.

Why Not Newt

I read a good number of books. Arguably the most important I've read in the last several years was After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre. I cannot summarize it here, but the main thrust of the book is a critique of the moral philosophy of the Enlightenment, which attempted to derive rules for good living based on reason, with a suggestion that we return to the ethical approach of Aristotle, that is, one which emphasizes virtues.

I often find myself returning to MacIntyre's approach. For instance, those of us who follow politics might attempt to come up with rules--term limits, limits on the money a campaign can spend, etc.---to try to cajole Congress into better serving the interests of the people. There is some value in this approach, but our best laid plans falter if those we seek to restrain circumvent our rules. In short, and as per MacIntyre, the best way to ensure our government is honorable and virtuous is to elect men who are honorable and virtuous.

With this in mind, we can examine Newt Gingrich, and the recent interview of one of his ex-wives. Now, many of the Republicans are insisting that this is a past transgression, and therefore irrelevant in determining whether or not Gingrich is qualified to be president. Yet while the story is an old one, it's hardly immaterial in helping qualify the character of the prospective nominee, for two reasons.

First, it's imperative that a candidate be virtuous if we wish him to govern well. So much of the focus of the campaign revolves around the debates--whether candidate A handled a tough question well, etc. Yet possessing the skill to speak extemporaneously does not necessarily make a good president. Coolidge was famously laconic, but that didn't prevent him from being an exceptional president. Similarly, Obama's ability to charm the masses has failed to translate into executive ability. Moreover, one may say all of the right things, but then govern differently when one obtains power. Sniffing out the sophists ought to be the most important task of the political process.

Second, Gingrich's adultery represents more than a lapse: it exposes a pattern of vice. There is a grave difference between sin and living in a state of it. Gingrich did not make a solitary mistake: he chose a degenerate lifestyle for a prolonged period of time. And he did so while the Republican Congress was hounding the President for the exact same behavior. As Evelyn Waugh has Julia express it in Brideshead Revisited, Gingrich was:

Living in sin, with sin, by sin, for sin, every hour, every day, year in, year out. Waking up with sin in the morning, seeing curtains drawn on sin, bathing in it, dressing it, clipping diamonds to it, feeding it, showing it around, giving it a good time, putting it to sleep at night with a tablet of Dial if it’s fretful.

As Aristotle understood, habituation with sin mars one's character. Just as a man who practices acts of courage becomes courageous, a man who practices infidelity becomes unfaithful. Virtue can, in time, be restored, but without further information, voters should be suspicious of Gingrich's virtue. He may be as unfaithful to his constituents as he was to his wife. We cannot hazard a test.

Gingrich claims to have repented. This is between him and his God. I do not wish him ill, nor do I begrudge him the forgiveness and grace of the Almighty. But while he may still play a role in the conservative movement, conservatives cannot, in good conscience, support someone who has reveals himself to be so lacking in virtue for such an important office. Were he an honorable man, Gingrich would have stepped aside. There is still time to practice honor, by behaving honorably this time.

Irrationality begets the same

There are too many contradictions in US foreign policy to tease out in a single post, but as the drum beats ever louder for war with Iran, I wanted to take the opportunity to examine at least some of them.

During the Cold War, the United States operated under a paradigm of mutually assured destruction. While those who ran the Soviet Union weren't concerned with the deaths of the proletariat in whose name they were ostensibly ruling--and who they were actually murdering by the millions--the leaders weren't too keen on suffering bodily harm to themselves.

Since nuking the United States would produce a retaliatory strike, the Russians were disinclined to exercise that option, however much they loathed us capitalist pigs. The two great powers managed to muddle through without the war turning hot.

The same logic ought to apply in our war against Islamic extremism--or terrorism, or Al-Qaeda, or whoever it is we're supposed to be fighting. But it does not, we are told, because the enemy is inherently irrational; he longs for death and therefore will not be disinclined to wipe Israel and the US off the map.

Now it is true that some people--suicide bombers, for instance--value other things more than their own lives. Since suicide bombing has been a weapon on the arsenal of the terrorists, it seems to follow that Islamic leaders would have no problem bombing some part of the Great Satan.

Yet this argument only make sense if we assume that the terrorists act only to inhibit the enemy, rather than to further some other goal. But the head terrorist himself, Osama bin Laden, has stated that such goals do exist. The aim of Islamic terrorism is not to destroy the west so much as it is to bleed and bankrupt the United States, forcing it to relinquish its presence in the Arabian world. Ironically then, U.S. military policy has proven indispensable in advancing bin Laden's objectives.

The argument that the terrorist hates us for our freedoms is imbecilic, but it is requisite for our foreign policy. If the terrorist has real objectives, he is at least partially rational. We are then faced with a decision to fight to thwart these aims or abjure them and refuse to fight. Only if the terrorists are totally consumed with hate are the wars essential.

Or are they? Are they not then even more futile than if our enemy were partially rational? If we assume that the leaders of Iran, let us say, cannot be reasoned with, this implies that they will answer only to force. Yet this is the very thing which they most desire. Those who wish to avoid another war are deemed appeasers, yet, in another irony, if Iran wants a civilization conflict, the warmongers are the real appeasers.

Moreover, it becomes impossible to levy criticism against foreign policy in respect to the allegedly irrational countries. Republicans have been claiming that Obama is showing weakness in front of Iran. The implication is that Iran would cease to agitate if confronted with strength, but this argument only makes sense if Iran is behaving with some modicum of rationality. Yet this alleged irrationality is the whole reason weakness is being decried; it's not as if any Americans fulminated when, say, Israel obtained nuclear weapons.

This illustrates that one cannot assume irrationality among others without falling into hopeless contradictions. Unless we have incontrovertible evidence that Iran's leaders are irrational--and I don't see how we could ever know this with any degree of certainty--it behooves us to treat them as at least passably rational beings. This would have the effect of returning our own policy into the realm of rationality, which would be a pleasant change indeed.

2012 Reading List

I read a fair number of books. This year, I'll use this post to keep track of books I've read as well as those which I'm currently reading. This is partially because I'm curious to know how many books I read in a given year, and partially on the remote chance that someone is interested on my take regarding a particular tome.

At the end of the year, I'll try to give a bit of feedback regarding each book--at a minimum, something like this.

Read
Bourgeois Virtues - Deirdre McCloskey
Deer Hunting with Jesus - Joe Bageant

Bourgeois Dignity - Deirdre McCloskey

Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail '72 - Hunter S. Thompson

Conscientious Objections - Neil Postman

The Golden Bough - James Frazer (the one volume abridgement)

Coming Apart - Charles Murray

The Crusader – Timothy Stanley

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

The Merry Wives of Windsor - Shakespeare

A Treatise of Human Nature - David Hume

Conceived in Liberty vol. I - Murray Rothbard

Elizabeth I - Paul Johnson
Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana - Umberto Eco
Thank You, Jeeves! - P. G. Wodehouse
The Bell Curve - Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray
Jesus: A Biography From a Believer - Paul Johnson
Sophist - Plato
Renaissance in Italy: The Age of the Despots - John Addington Symonds
Technopoly - Neil Postman
The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe
Statesman - Plato
Renaissance in Italy: The Revival of Learning - John Addington Symonds
Eating the Dinosaur - Chuck Klosterman
Bowling Alone - Robert Putnam
Renaissance in Italy: The Fine Arts - John Addington Symonds
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism - Max Weber
2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
Evelyn Waugh: The Early Years, 1903-1939 - Martin Stannard
Introduction to Moral Theology - Romanus Cessario, O.P.
A Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin 
Not Taco Bell Material - Adam Carolla
Evelyn Waugh: The Later Years, 1939-1966 - Martin Stannard
A Clash of Kings - George R. R. Martin
The Theory of Education in the United States - Albert Jay Nock
Renaissance in Italy: Italian Literature (I-II) - John Addington Symonds
Bobos in Paradise - David Brooks
Truth and Tolerance - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
A Storm of Swords - George R. R. Martin
Renaissance in Italy: The Catholic Reaction (I-II) - John Addington Symonds
Marriage: The Rock on Which the Family is Built - William E. May
A Feast for Crows - George R. R. Martin
The Papacy - Paul Johnson
Parmenides - Plato
A History of Ancient Greek Literature - Gilbert Murray
In the Beginning... Was the Command Line - Neal Stephenson
A Dance with Dragons - George R. R. Martin
The Church Impotent - Leon Podles
Popular Crime - Bill James
Bad Religion - Ross Douthat
The Cambridge Medieval History vol. II
The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco
The Praise of Folly - Erasmus
The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma - Henry Adams
Glittering Images - Camile Paglia
Back to Blood - Tom Wolfe
One for the Books - Joe Queenan
The Complete Joy of Homebrewing - Charles Papazian
The Crisis of Western Education - Christopher Dawson
Napoleon - Emil Ludwig
The Revolt of the Elites - Christopher Lasch
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Into the Cannibal's Pot - Ilana Mercer
A World Lit Only by Fire - William Manchester

The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909-1950 - T. S. Eliot
The Story of Philosophy - Will Durant
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
The History - Herodotus
Lives of the Eminent Philosophers (I-II) - Diogenes Laertius
Reamde - Neal Stephenson
Family and Civilization - Carle Zimmerman