On the Defense of 2nd Class Citizenship

Still reading Fred Clark's "world's longest book review" of the Left Behind series (now on book 2, Tribulation Force), I appreciated this footnote.

John Howard Yoder noted that that idea of the priesthood of all believers is often misunderstood as -- or is accused of being -- an attempt to abolish the clergy. Actually, he said, the opposite is true. The priesthood of all believers requires the abolition of the category of laity.

That's interesting. It illustrates a pattern, I think. Try to abolish serfdom, declaring that everyone is a lady or gentleman, and you'll likely be accused of trying to abolish the aristocracy and to destroy all the finer things in life. Try to extend any privilege into a universal right and you'll likely be accused of attempting to destroy that which you're trying to expand while those who seek to keep it restricted, limited and tightly controlled will pose as its defenders. I wish I could think of some other example ...

The Prince, part 5 (chapter 5)

The Prince chapter 5: "The Way to Govern Cities or Dominions that, Previous to Being Occupied, Lived Under Their Own Laws."

Back in chapter 1, Machiavelli divided states into two types, republics and monarchies, then subdivided monarchies into two types, ancient and new, further subdivided those new monarchies into their own two sub-subtypes, entirely new ones or ones grafted onto existing possessions, and then, finally, made one more subdivision of those grafted-on territories into a final two sub-sub-subtypes, those previously ruled by another prince and those that were self-governing republics. This is, I think, truly a case of a picture being worth a thousand words, so a diagram is helpful.

Fundamentalists' Fragile, Fearful, Faith

Over the past several months I've been reading Fred Clark's critique of the Left Behind series, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, on Slacktivist (and don't we all wish we'd thought of that pun?). It's slow going because he has literally hundreds of posts devoted to it (and here's a handy index to all of them). I've enjoyed them for many reasons. Clark's an excellent writer (unlike LaHaye and Jenkins), often laugh-out-loud funny, and has great insights into just why these books are more of a crap-fest than any randomly chosen set of Harlequin romances. Like this:

While trying to find some way home from the airport, Rayford Steele checks his mail and finds an in-joke between the book's co-authors:

Besides a pile of the usual junk, he found a padded envelope from his home address. Irene had taken to mailing him little surprises lately, the result of a marriage book she had been urging him to read. ...

That's probably a reference to one of these books by Tim LaHaye. He's written several books on the subject, which is interesting coming from a man whose own key to marital bliss was to convince his wife to get a job 3,000 miles away.

Or this, when a doctor hanging around the airport's first-class lounge after the rapture which has caused numerous planes to crash at the airport, injuring hundreds, decides to help out--by patching up another first-class passenger who's got an owie on his head.

Nothing to do in the airport except to sit around in the "exclusive Pan-Con Club" and stare out the window watching the rescue workers and EMTs below scurry from plane crash to plane crash. It's kind of amusing for a while, seeing them set up a desperate triage there among the smoke and the broken bodies, separating the gravely wounded from those in need only of First Aid and those merely suffering from shock after the loss of their loved ones. But it gets old eventually, just sitting there, so what the heck -- why not patch up that rich guy's bleeding scalp over there?

But I've enjoyed them also because he's a Christian (although not an Real True Christian (RTC)--read his posts to get the joke), and so provides a Christian critique of the "strange 19th-century heresies that L&J peddle as biblical truth" (aka, premillennial dispensationalism). Any non-Christian (or, like me, lapsed one) could mock their version of the faith, but there's a special insightfulness that comes from someone who still believes, that the others just can't match. Another day I will probably comment on some of Clark's critique of LaHaye and Jenkins' theology, but today his critique of fundamentalism's essential fragility is what caught my eye. It's spot on.

Working with other churches is perilously ecumenical. Ecumenism -- cooperation among disparate Christian churches in recognition of our underlying unity -- is not considered a Good Thing by people like Billings, or Lahaye and Jenkins. Even the most harmless-seeming forms of cooperation, such as taking turns providing shelter through a local interfaith hospitality network or some such, are too dangerous. It's a slippery slope from there to syncretism, the collapse of absolute standards, moral relativism, one world religion,...

The fundies' white-knuckled anxiety -- their barely repressed doubts and their fear that their faith may be a house of cards that would crumble if exposed to the wider world -- seems to be spreading to other branches of the evangelical movement. That's the predictable result of adding weird mythologies to one's faith. The fundies convinced themselves that if the world is any older than 10,000 years then Jesus doesn't love them. Thus they have to avoid all exposure to science. Evangelicals are trying to convince themselves that homosexuality is a choice and that the invasion of Iraq was God's Will. Like the fundies, they have welded these ideas to the bearing walls of their faith, so that if they are not true, then nothing is true. They thus find themselves, like the fundies, having to avoid exposure to an awful lot of the real world around them.

The irony, of course, is that fundamentalists believe in an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and eternal God, yet they don't believe in a God big enough to have created a 6.5 billion year old world or to have allowed evolution by natural selection to occur over the course of billions of years. It's not just that they don't believe the science--they believe that the science and God are mutually exclusive, which makes their faith exceptionally brittle. Even worse, while they will talk about the mysteries of God, about his knowledge that surpasses human understanding, they flatly reject the mystery of God both knowing the end and allowing it to unfold naturally, rather than supernaturally, precisely because it surpasses their understanding. Their talk of mystery is just empty words because their vision of God is not truly big enough to encompass mystery.

And for that they are to be pitied, for mystery, with its attendant wonder, is one of the sublime experiences of life. As Edmund Burke wrote, sublimity inspires fear, and "[i]nfinity fills the find with that sort of delightful horror which is the truest test of the sublime." But that sort of delightful horror is a terror to the fundamentalist, who, in a fearful desperation, seeks the certainty that comes with clarity. Burke, again, provides an insight:

To make anything very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary, for a great deal of apprehension vanishes when we are able to see the full extent of any danger. Night adds to our dread of ghosts; ... Clearness, on the other hand, is not the same as beauty; it is one thing to make an idea clear, and another to make it affecting to the imagination.

And there is the great failing of fundamentalism. By emphasizing absolute clarity, so that they do not have to experience the horror of sublimity which they so fear, they have created an ideology--not a faith, which does not require clarity, whereas ideologies do--that cannot truly affect the imagination. Which is to say that it cannot truly touch the heart, or the soul, which are always and ever stirred by the imagination.

Alex Tabarrok Critiques Obamonomics

Okay, I probably shouldn't join in with the crowd that attaches President Obama's name to any and every noun/adjective, but his name just lends itself to it so well. Anyway...

Obama has plans to pressure companies with government contracts to increase wages. According to the New York Times article about 25% of Americans work for such companies, and Obama sees this as a means of lifting American incomes.

My first thought was that this was very much like Hoover encouraging companies to keep wages and prices up during the Depression, and Tabarrok's first criticism is right along that point.

At a time of 10% unemployment when real wages need to fall this is bad business cycle policy.*

But he has another, more serious, concern as well.

I am more worried, however, about the long term consequences of creating a dual labor market in which insiders with government or government-connected jobs are highly paid and secure while outsiders face high unemployment rates, low wages and part-time work without a career path...

Moreover, once an economy is in the insider-outsider equilibrium it's very difficult to get out because insiders fear that they will lose their privileges with a deregulated labor market and outsiders focus their political energy not on deregulating the labor market but on becoming insiders... Many European economies found themselves stuck in the insider-outsider equilibrium and as a result unemployment levels in places like France and Italy hovered at 9% or more for decades.

Officially, President Obama has a Council of Economic Advisers, which at this point sounds about as influential as a Council of Ethical Advisers would have been for Uncle Joe Stalin.

*Brad DeLong disagrees with this point, arguing that instead demand needs to rise. Of course cost and demand are pretty closely related, eh?

Unclear on the Concept

I have to share this, from my brother's blog.

On State Street today [in Ann Arbor], I encountered a couple folks holding up one of those Obama-with-the-Hitler-moustache posters. Our 7-second conversation went something like this:

Me: "Aren't you afraid of being arrested?"
Him: [utterly confused look] "Arrested? No, I'm not afraid of being arrested."
Me: "Guess he's not much of a Hitler, then, is he?"
Him: [utterly confused look persists - he still hasn't taken my point]

Coincidentally, I encountered this Mark Twain-attributed quotation not five minutes later:

“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

I don't believe all conservatives are stupid, or that all stupid people are conservatives, but I do believe there's a strong correlation between stupidity and a certain type of conservative.

The Death of Positive Liberty

My other blog, Positive Liberty, is dead. Jason Kuznicki, the blog's real owner and administrator, has had continuing problems with domain host IPower, which included a major crash that destroyed years worth of posts (most of which has been recovered through the tech savvy of Jason's brother-in-law). The latest, and most severe problem, was IPower failing to automatically charge Jason's credit card for re-registering the domain site and failing to notify him that it hadn't, allowing professional domain hijackers to steal the site.

Jason, understandably, is tired of fighting these battles, and has accepted an invitation to join the League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

Although I only blogged at Positive Liberty for about a year and a half, I will greatly miss my colleagues there and a great many of our regular commentors. I have offered to take on the role of blog administrator, if my colleagues want to continue together, and will announce it here if they agree. However we have lost the positiveliberty.com domain, and have probably lost the irreplaceable Jason Kuznicki as well.

Please keep in touch.

The Prince, part 4 (chapter 4)

The Prince chapter 4: "Why the Kingdom of Darius, Occupied by Alexander, Did Not Rebel Against the Successors of the Latter After His Death

The best thing about approaching The Prince this way is that it forces me to slow down and think about what it means. If I were reading straight through, I might do just that--read straight through. But by focusing on each chapter individually, I slow down and take more time to think about it before I move on. And writing about each one helps tremendously, too, because as E.M. Forster is supposed to have said, "How can I know what I think until I see what I write?" Any good scholar can agree with this sentiment, I am sure (and may eternal damnation be the lot of those who don't, for they are a scourge upon society). Which is to say, that taking time to write about these chapters requires that I think about them, in order to put my thoughts together at least semi-coherently, and if only I had time to do so with everything I read, I would be a much more well-educated person.

Anyway....on to ol' Nick.

The Prince, part 3 (chapter 3)

Chapter 3: Of Mixed Monarchies

By “mixed” monarchies, Machiavelli means those that are composed of possessions accumulated at different times, so that they do not have a long tradition of unity. They are very problematic, he says, because “men change masters willingly, hoping to better themselves.” This may, at first blush, seem to contradict his thoughts on how unwilling people are to upset the settled tradition of a hereditary family, but the difference is in the lack of tradition in these new possessions. If there is no tradition to cling to, and the new Prince is unsatisfactory, there is every incentive to revolt, in the hope of achieving a better condition. They “deceive themselves,” however, and usually go “from bad to worse.” These sentiments are strikingly reminiscent of Burke, who would surely sympathize.

Holding Conquered Provinces
But even though those who rebel may be deceiving themselves about their chances of bettering their lot, Machiavelli is not writing to them—they are not the subject of their advice. It is the Prince whom he is warning here.

The Prince, part 2 (Chapters 1 and 2)

The Prince, chapters 1 and 2.

I'll begin my discussion of The Prince by covering two chapters, because they are so very short. Most weeks I'll likely cover only one, so that these posts don't become egregiously long and rambling.

Chapter 1: How Many Kinds Of Principalities There Are, And By What Means They Are Acquired
The first chapter of The Prince threw me for a loop the first time I read it. It's only four sentences long, and says nothing substantive--it just notes that a) all states are either republics or principalities, b) principalities are either hereditary or new, c) new principalities are either brand new, or they are new possession annexed to an existing hereditary principality, and d) these acquired possessions are either used to living under a prince or they are used to being a republic.

I found this confusing because it just seemed like a ever-expanding list of types of states. But the second time I read it I realized that it is actually a nested list, and with each step he goes deeper, making finer distinctions, so that the reader understands that all principalities are not alike, nor even are all new principalities alike, and implicitly noting that the differences between them are important. This is, after all, a work of practical theory. No airy, wishful, handwaving here, he is telling us that to properly manage a principality, you need to understand the details of what type of state it is. And note also that republics are discarded after the first distinction. This work is not meant for the governor of a republic, which should be a warning to all those who casually believe that Machiavelli is writing about leadership in general. There are lessons to be learned here, but they may not apply to our contemporary democracies.

Chapter 2: Concerning Hereditary Principalities
Machiavelli works himself up to a whole five sentences in this chapter, the sum total of his argument being that it is easier for a Prince to hold onto a hereditary state than a newly acquired one, because the people are already accustomed to his family's rule. Barring an "extraordinary and excessive force" from outside--i.e., Germany marching into Poland--all a hereditary Prince has to do is not mess with the country's traditions and avoid "extraordinary vices [that] cause him to be hated." The later is probably easier said than done, as those born to wealth and power often seem naturally inclined to extraordinary vices. Never actually having been constrained, they lack the common person's intuitive understanding of social propriety (I'm looking at you, Charlie Sheen).

"Extraordinary" is a key qualifier here, I think. He doesn't expect Princes to lack vice, and the chapter can be read to say that tradition and custom are strong enough that the Prince's subjects will allow some, perhaps considerable, degree of self-indulgence, rather than engage in the effort and risks of a revolt. The attachment to tradition does seem to be a major factor in human behavior, both social and political. From the family that gets together every Christmas despite not really liking each other all that much, to the continuing support for now-politically powerless royal families, as in, for example, Britain, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

I, too, believe in the value of tradition. A tradition shouldn't be overthrown lightly because it's quite plausible that its longevity is closely related to its utility. Of course tradition should not be fetishized, either. It's not beyond the bounds of reason that a particular tradition could have disutility, and is only clung to through superstition. And it's more than a little probable that some traditions' utility accrues only to a subset of the population, while creating disutility for the rest. Nevertheless, some people will fetishize tradition, a fact that an adept political analyst will not ignore.

There is also a veiled warning to those who try to take new possessions. The hereditary Prince, he notes, has "less necessity to offend," the subjects, meaning that an invading Prince must of necessity, cause offense. And how could it not be so? And yet time after time invaders seem to be surprised that their actions--waging war, blowing things up, disrupting the economy, changing the political institutions--cause offense (we're all looking at you, Dick Cheney).

Next Week:Chapter 3

The Prince, Part 1

For a number of reasons I have been stimulated to re-read Machiavelli’s The Prince, which I have read twice, but only when I was much younger, with less education and less experience than I now have, and, in both cases, read hurriedly. And it is my experience that a worthwhile book requires several readings, separated in time with other relevant reading in between to provide greater context and connectivity, to be even reasonably well understood.

It is a relatively short work, so it seemed appropriate to blog my way through it, to share my thoughts with others and to get their thoughts in return. I will not make an attempt at exhaustive explication, detailed analysis, or thorough and original interpretation, but will, a chapter or two at a time, comment on what happens to strike me as I am reading. It would be lovely to make this a weekly event—and who couldn’t get amped for Prince Mondays?!—but being both busy and bipolar, please don’t hold your breath in anticipation. However, if you’re at all interested, read on for the first installment, in which I give a backgrounder on our author, Nicollo Machiavelli.