The 100 Things Every 20-Something Needs to Realize

From Elite Daily, "If you don’t work to improve yourself every day then you are wasting your life" (via Instapundit).

Camus and Sartre Friendship Troubled by Ideological Feud

At Der Spiegel, "Philosophical Differences: The Falling-Out of Camus and Sartre":

Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, two of the most important minds of the 20th century, were closely entwined throughout their careers. On the centenary of Camus' birth, SPIEGEL looks back at their famous friendship and the ideological feud that ultimately unraveled it.

What is a famous man? Albert Camus wrote in his diary in 1946 that it was "someone whose first name doesn't matter." That certainly applies to Camus, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday on Nov. 7, and it can also be said of his great adversary Jean-Paul Sartre, who was eight years older than him, yet outlived him by 20 years.

Camus and Sartre were the intellectual stars of Paris during the postwar years: the existentialists, the Mandarins and the literary vanguard. They became iconic figures of the ideological conflicts of the second half of the 20th century. Their rivalry shaped intellectual debates in France and around the world.

Camus and Sartre's falling-out in the summer of 1952, which was played out in full view of the public, was a signal, a political watershed. The rupture, in the midst of the Cold War, split the camps. For decades, people would say: Sartre or Camus? Should we hope for a better world in the distant future at the price of accepting state terror? The revolutionary mass politics espoused by Sartre in the name of Marxism would seem to contain this tradeoff. Or should we refuse to sacrifice people for an ideal, as Camus' humanist principles required?

Camus and Sartre basically stood in each other's way right from the beginning. They were both storytellers, playwrights and essayists, literature and theater critics, philosophers and editors in chief. They had the same publisher. They both were awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Camus felt overwhelming gratitude when he accepted his award in 1957. Sartre loftily declined the designation in 1964 - making sure to underscore that he was not insulted "because Camus had received it before me," as he said at the time.

The Company of Women

And there was another -- at first glance unremarkable -- commonality. Both preferred the company of women to that of men. "Why women?" Camus wondered in his diary in 1951. His answer: "I cannot stand the company of men. They flatter or they judge. I can stand neither of the two." Back in 1940, Sartre used nearly the same choice of words in his diary when noting that he "gets horribly bored in the company of men," yet "it's very rare for the company of women not to entertain me."

They were long seen as friends and allies. But Camus could not hide that he felt a growing sense of distance from the clique of Parisian intellectuals surrounding Sartre and his companion, Simone de Beauvoir. No matter how much he debated with the others, and spent long nights drinking, dancing and seducing, he remained the wistful loner.

Sartre was envious of the idolized and good-looking French Algerian, the "street urchin from Algiers," as he later called him. Sartre saw himself as a child of the French bourgeoisie -- and he strove to break its bonds as demonstratively as possible. By contrast, Camus was proud of his humble origins and never denied his roots.

The two ambitious men met personally for the first time in the midst of the war, in occupied Paris during the summer of 1943. Camus introduced himself on the occasion of the premiere of Sartre's play "The Flies." At the time, a small group of artists and philosophers met regularly in private homes and in the cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the heart of Paris. But rivalries soon surfaced, long before the public was privy to any intellectual competition. The conflict, no surprise, often had to do with women.

Sartre once asked himself if he didn't seek out women's company "to free myself from the burden of my ugliness." In early 1944, he wrote a letter to his lifelong companion de Beauvoir, informing her of his victory over ladies' man Camus. It had to do with a certain Tania, whose sister put in a good word for him: "What are you thinking, running after Camus? What do you want from him?" he'd had the sister tell her. He, Sartre, was so much better, she'd said, and such a nice man.

Continue reading.

Video c/o The Libertarian.

I Picked Up Some Moose Drool

After beer tasting last week, I decided to quit procrastinating on diversifying my repertoire.

Here's the Moose Drool six-pack below. I haven't tried it yet. I also picked up a pack of the Rasputin Stout. Had some with dinner last night. Oh boy, is that good beer!

I'll update when I sample these puppies. The alcohol content much higher than domestic light beers (the Rasputin's at 9% ABV), so it might be next weekend until I have some more. Otherwise, I'll fall asleep too early in the evening.

Beer Tasting!

I joined some of my colleagues yesterday for a "Faculty Guided Beer Tasting & Reading" event, one in the "Know Your College, Know Your Colleagues" series sponsored by my department and the faculty union.

Presenting was Professor Matthew Lawrence, the author of Philosophy on Tap: Pint-Sized Puzzles for the Pub Philosopher. He's got a book page with his biographical information. And he's got an interview at the Huffington Post, "Interview with a Philosopher: On Beer and Thought."

We tasted five beers. Here's Matt's slide for Weihenstephaner Hefe Weissbier, a German hefeweizen.

Here's the beer list on the host's refrigerator:

In addition to Weihenstephaner, we tasted Boulevard Brewing Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale (Kansas City); Fuller's ESB (London): Alesmith Horny Devil Belgian Strong Ale (San Diego); and Left Coast Brewing Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout (Fort Bragg).

Here's the Rasputin Stout:

Matt recommended Hi-Time Wine Cellars in Costa Mesa for its wide selection of beers. I asked about picking up some of that Rasputin Stout for myself. Excellent beer. Shoot, they were all good.

Check the links for the beer pages and enjoy.

I'll see you at the pub!

The Fruits of Capitalism Are All Around Us

At the Objective Standard:

These are shocking statistics: Among Americans ages 18-29, people tend to have a negative view of capitalism and a positive view of socialism.

As Pew reported in 2011, people in this age group saw capitalism negatively by a margin of 47 to 46 percent, and they saw socialism positively by a margin of 49 to 43 percent. This is despite the fact that, to the degree governments have allowed it to exist, capitalism has brought the people of the civilized world vastly more wealth and vastly better and longer life—and despite the fact that socialist governments have slaughtered scores of millions of people.

Overall, people saw capitalism positively only by a margin of 50 to 40 percent. Why does the greatest force for human advancement in the history of the world get such mixed marks among its beneficiaries?

Today many people confuse capitalism with the cronyism of bank bailouts, corporate welfare, and special government privileges forcibly limiting competition. But such schemes are utterly contrary to capitalism, and it is illogical and unjust to blame capitalism for programs it explicitly opposes. Capitalism is the political-economic system of individual rights and free markets. Under capitalism, government protects individuals’ rights to control their own property and interact with others voluntarily. Capitalism forbids fraud, theft, government bailouts, and force of every kind.

When people think of capitalism, they should not think of bank bailouts or the like; rather, they should think of the relatively free aspects of our society and markets, such as freedom of speech, freedom of association, and the relative freedom of the computer industry that has brought us such wonders as remarkably inexpensive yet high-quality laptops, Androids, and iPhones.

Another illustrative example is the modern grocery store. Although the government interferes with the operation of such stores in myriad ways ranging from wage controls to taxation to antitrust actions to food subsidies, in large part grocery stores operate freely, in accordance with the best judgment of their owners and managers. The result is that anyone in the civilized world can quickly and easily purchase goods—including myriad varieties of fresh produce—imported from around the world.

Continue reading.

Young people take prosperity and abundance for granted, and they've been taught by the culture and educational institutions that economic inequality is evil. Hence, they have no appreciation of the moral superiority of markets, and the freedom that underwrites them. This is what conservatives and libertarians have to work against. But I see signs of greater awareness among young people as the disasters of the current anti-market administration are spreading.

About the Uses and Abuses of Paternalism

Folks might find this interesting, for while government imposes decisions on the individual "because it's good for them" all the time, there's something extra freakish (totalitarian) to this.

From Cass Sunstein, Obama's former Czar of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, at the New York Review, "It’s For Your Own Good!":

In the United States, as in many other countries, obesity is a serious problem. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to do something about it. Influenced by many experts, he believes that soda is a contributing factor to increasing obesity rates and that large portion sizes are making the problem worse. In 2012, he proposed to ban the sale of sweetened drinks in containers larger than sixteen ounces at restaurants, delis, theaters, stadiums, and food courts. The New York City Board of Health approved the ban.

Many people were outraged by what they saw as an egregious illustration of the nanny state in action. Why shouldn’t people be allowed to choose a large bottle of Coca-Cola? The American Beverage Association responded with a vivid advertisement, depicting Mayor Bloomberg in a (scary) nanny outfit.

But self-interested industries were not the only source of ridicule. Jon Stewart is a comedian, but he was hardly amused. A representative remark from one of his commentaries: “No!…I love this idea you have of banning sodas larger than 16 ounces. It combines the draconian government overreach people love with the probable lack of results they expect.”

Many Americans abhor paternalism. They think that people should be able to go their own way, even if they end up in a ditch. When they run risks, even foolish ones, it isn’t anybody’s business that they do. In this respect, a significant strand in American culture appears to endorse the central argument of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. In his great essay, Mill insisted that as a general rule, government cannot legitimately coerce people if its only goal is to protect people from themselves. Mill contended that

the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or mental, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.

A lot of Americans agree. In recent decades, intense controversies have erupted over apparently sensible (and lifesaving) laws requiring people to buckle their seatbelts. When states require motorcyclists to wear helmets, numerous people object. The United States is facing a series of serious disputes about the boundaries of paternalism. The most obvious example is the “individual mandate” in the Affordable Care Act, upheld by the Supreme Court by a 5–4 vote, but still opposed by many critics, who seek to portray it as a form of unacceptable paternalism. There are related controversies over anti-smoking initiatives and the “food police,” allegedly responsible for recent efforts to reduce the risks associated with obesity and unhealthy eating, including nutrition guidelines for school lunches.

Mill offered a number of independent justifications for his famous harm principle, but one of his most important claims is that individuals are in the best position to know what is good for them. In Mill’s view, the problem with outsiders, including government officials, is that they lack the necessary information. Mill insists that the individual “is the person most interested in his own well-being,” and the “ordinary man or woman has means of knowledge immeasurably surpassing those that can be possessed by any one else.”

When society seeks to overrule the individual’s judgment, Mill wrote, it does so on the basis of “general presumptions,” and these “may be altogether wrong, and even if right, are as likely as not to be misapplied to individual cases.” If the goal is to ensure that people’s lives go well, Mill contends that the best solution is for public officials to allow people to find their own path. Here, then, is an enduring argument, instrumental in character, on behalf of free markets and free choice in countless situations, including those in which human beings choose to run risks that may not turn out so well.

Mill’s claim has a great deal of intuitive appeal. But is it right? That is largely an empirical question, and it cannot be adequately answered by introspection and intuition. In recent decades, some of the most important research in social science, coming from psychologists and behavioral economists, has been trying to answer it. That research is having a significant influence on public officials throughout the world. Many believe that behavioral findings are cutting away at some of the foundations of Mill’s harm principle, because they show that people make a lot of mistakes, and that those mistakes can prove extremely damaging.

For example, many of us show “present bias”: we tend to focus on today and neglect tomorrow. For some people, the future is a foreign country, populated by strangers. Many of us procrastinate and fail to take steps that would impose small short-term costs but produce large long-term gains. People may, for example, delay enrolling in a retirement plan, starting to diet or exercise, ceasing to smoke, going to the doctor, or using some valuable, cost-saving technology. Present bias can ensure serious long-term harm, including not merely economic losses but illness and premature death as well.

People also have a lot of trouble dealing with probability. In some of the most influential work in the last half-century of social science, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed that in assessing probabilities, human beings tend to use mental shortcuts, or “heuristics,” that generally work well, but that can also get us into trouble. An example is the “availability heuristic.” When people use it, their judgments about probability—of a terrorist attack, an environmental disaster, a hurricane, a crime—are affected by whether a recent event comes readily to mind. If an event is cognitively “available”—for example, if people have recently suffered damage from a hurricane—they might well overestimate the risk. If they can recall few or no examples of harm, they might well underestimate the risk.

A great deal of research finds that most people are unrealistically optimistic, in the sense that their own predictions about their behavior and their prospects are skewed in the optimistic direction.6 In one study, over 80 percent of drivers were found to believe that they were safer and more skillful than the median driver. Many smokers have an accurate sense of the statistical risks, but some smokers have been found to believe that they personally are less likely to face lung cancer and heart disease than the average nonsmoker. Optimism is far from the worst of human characteristics, but if people are unrealistically optimistic, they may decline to take sensible precautions against real risks. Contrary to Mill, outsiders may be in a much better position to know the probabilities than people who are making choices for themselves.

Emphasizing these and related behavioral findings, many people have been arguing for a new form of paternalism, one that preserves freedom of choice, but that also steers citizens in directions that will make their lives go better by their own lights. (Full disclosure: the behavioral economist Richard Thaler and I have argued on behalf of what we call libertarian paternalism, known less formally as “nudges.") For example, cell phones, computers, privacy agreements, mortgages, and rental car contracts come with default rules that specify what happens if people do nothing at all to protect themselves. Default rules are a classic nudge, and they matter because doing nothing is exactly what people will often do. Many employees have not signed up for 401(k) plans, even when it seems clearly in their interest to do so. A promising response, successfully increasing participation and strongly promoted by President Obama, is to establish a default rule in favor of enrollment, so that employees will benefit from retirement plans unless they opt out. In many situations, default rates have large effects on outcomes, indeed larger than significant economic incentives.

Default rules are merely one kind of “choice architecture,” a phrase that may refer to the design of grocery stores, for example, so that the fresh vegetables are prominent; the order in which items are listed on a restaurant menu; visible official warnings; public education campaigns; the layout of websites; and a range of other influences on people’s choices. Such examples suggest that mildly paternalistic approaches can use choice architecture in order to improve outcomes for large numbers of people without forcing anyone to do anything.

In the United States, behavioral findings have played an unmistakable part in recent regulations involving retirement savings, fuel economy, energy efficiency, environmental protection, health care, and obesity. In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister David Cameron has created a Behavioural Insights Team, sometimes known as the Nudge Unit, with the specific goal of incorporating an understanding of human behavior into policy initiatives. In short, behavioral economics is having a large impact all over the world, and the emphasis on human error is raising legitimate questions about the uses and limits of paternalism.

RTWT.

First Rule of Defeating Leftists: Don't Call Them 'Liberals'

I'm 41 posted an excellent entry the other day, "The Blogger’s Rules For Defeating Liberals."

However, I cringed with all the references to "liberals." These goons are not "liberal." They're progressive collectivists (as the most hardened of them self-identify) or, frankly, simply radical leftists.

Zilla has more:

I can’t stand to see them called “liberals” because there is nothing “liberal” about them. Words matter, as they say. Call ‘em what they really are: LEFTISTS. The edit to the [blog] title is from me, because I don’t want to see the freaks called by their preferred misnomer at any place that I have editorial control over.

When referring to "liberals," the proper meaning makes reference to those early thinkers evoking the ideology of individual liberty and limited government, most importantly John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and Adam Smith. The Democrat Party until roughly John F. Kennedy espoused a form of "modern liberalism" that by default drew on America's constitutional foundations in liberty but increasingly sought an expanded role for the state in promoting economic equality and social welfare. Yet, the left today is almost completely unrecognizable from the Cold War liberalism of Kennedy and Harry Truman. Today's left is a quasi-Marxist, state-collectivist ideological apparatus, intent to delegitimize private property and wealth accumulation and to elevate extreme ethnic tribalism as the blunt cudgel of radical redistributionist class warfare. President Obama is the chief class warrior and national divider in this mode, the perfect vessel of the vengeful fever swamp ghouls of the Democrat Party.

Zilla might not even be this charitable, although that's the pretty well-understood ideological bastardization of "liberalism" over the last couple of generations. Today's leftists are the Orwellian zombies who spout tolerance but practice extreme racism, anti-Semitism and viewpoint intolerance. These ghouls preach "peace" and "respect" as the highest principles but instead practice union thuggery and anti-speech bullying and lawfare as standard operating procedures. And more than ever, the left phantasmagorically operates under a false consciousness of objective lies as progressive truth. The "tent trutherism" coming out of Lansing is just the latest manifestation, but President Obama's 2012 campaign will perhaps be remembered by traditional historians as the most dishonest (and morally reprobate) in post-modern history, marked especially by a media empire in service to state power, with journalists effectively functioning as party apparatchiks for the endlessly voracious tax-and-spend regime of the soul-crushing collectivist machine.

That's why people should simply refuse to call these people "liberals." They are precisely the opposite of the great classical liberals, and are indeed the very kinds of tyrants for which the latter developed theories to frustrate, prevent, and destroy.

Coping With Existential Angst

I think Robert Stacy McCain is much too modest, but if you're going to emulate someone, you'd hardly choose better than AoSHQ.

See: "The Neitzschean Existential Angst of Blogging in the Same Sphere as Ace."

Newsweek's 1957 Review of 'Atlas Shrugged'

From Cary Schneider and Sue Horton, at the Los Angeles Times, "Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged': What the critics had to say in 1957."

Newsweek

Gigantic, relentless, often fantastic, this book is definitely not one to be swallowed whole. Throughout its 1,168 pages, Miss Rand never cracks a smile. Conversations deteriorate into monologues as one character after another laboriously declaims his set of values. One speech, the core of the book, spreads across 60 closely written pages. Yet once the reader enters this stark, strange world, he will likely stay with it, borne along by its story and its eloquent flow of ideas.

There's a whole bunch of reviews there as well, from people you haven't heard of unless you're a real literary person. Most of them are not very favorable. Even Whittaker Chambers, at National Review, sniffed at it.

BONUS: At American Glob, "Liberals Don’t Get Ayn Rand."

Paul Ryan Has Ear of Washington's Conservative Establishment

Well, you would think so.

At the New York Times, "Conservative Elite in Capital Pay Heed to Ryan as Thinker":

WASHINGTON — With the debate over the federal deficit roiling last year, David Smick, a financial market consultant, held a dinner for a bipartisan group of connected budget thinkers at his expansive home here.

At the table were members of the city’s conservative policy elite, including Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, and William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard.

But that evening, none drew more attention than a relatively new member of that best-of class: Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin and now Mitt Romney’s running mate, who spoke passionately about the threat posed by the national debt and the radical actions needed to rein it in.

“I thought, ‘This is the one guy in Washington paying attention,’ ” said Niall Ferguson, the Harvard economic historian and commentator, who spent some of the rest of that evening, along with Mr. Kristol, trying to persuade Mr. Ryan to run for president.

Much has been written about Mr. Ryan’s intellectual influences: canonical conservative thinkers like Friedrich von Hayek, the Austrian economist, and Ayn Rand, the novelist and philosopher. Mr. Ryan’s enthusiasm for them dates at least to his days as a precocious undergraduate at Miami University in Ohio.

But since first coming to Washington in the early 1990s, Mr. Ryan has been closely tied to an intellectual world more concerned with the political agenda of low taxes, light regulations and small government than philosophical ruminations on work and freedom.

And since his emergence as the key Congressional Republican on the budget issue, Mr. Ryan has become a particular favorite of — and powerful influence on — the intellectuals, economists, writers and policy makers who are at the heart of Washington’s conservative establishment.

Mr. Ryan “is the good think-tanker-as-politician,” said Stuart Butler, the director of the Center for Policy Innovation at the Heritage Foundation, a right-of-center research institution. “When I’m having a discussion with Ryan, I’m talking to someone who knows the material as well as, if not better than, I do.”

More on that top link.

And following-up on yesterday, TMZ has this, "Paul Ryan - THE TOPLESS PHOTO."

RELATED: The deranged progs have been trying to smear Ryan as a slavish Ayn Rand follower, but the Objectivist Standard, a major outlet for Objectivist philosophy, issued a major corrective, "Paul Ryan Rejects Ayn Rand’s Ideas—In Word and Deed."

So much for the "reality-based" idiots.

The Violent Ideology of Revolutionary Theorist Slavoj Žižek

There's no pullout quotes at John Gray's essay, at the New York Review, "The Violent Visions of Slavoj Žižek." Read it all at the link.

Žižek thinks both Hitler and Stalin were pantywaists, although he says both Mao and Pol Pot were on the right track. At the piece he's pictured with a poster of Joseph Stalin above his bed, although he calls himself a Leninist, as Lenin proclaimed violence and terror as essential to the revolutionary project. In other words, the guy's all over the place, blatantly obscene ideologically (especially on the Jews), and a hero for the contemporary radical left --- which figures.

PREVIOUSLY: "Lady Gaga Attracts Marxist Philosopher Slavoj Žižek (and Vice Versa)."

PHOTO CREDIT: Wikimedia Commons.

5 Ways Liberalism Destroys Virtue

Well, as always, I like to say "progressivism," but see John Hawkins, at Right Wing News:

The more completely a person, group, or organization embraces liberalism, the less virtuous it becomes. It’s almost like a mental sickness in that respect. People or groups who are lightly infected can soldier on without having it eat them alive. However, the deeper the sickness goes, the more it changes them. Eventually the liberal disease inside of people can grow so much that it warps their morals, their religious beliefs, and their way of thinking until they can no longer tell right and wrong. This destruction of virtue is a natural consequence of the fundamental beliefs that go along with liberalism.

And that reminds me: "The Left's Celebration of Nihilism," and some of those real life examples.

The Left's Celebration of Nihilism

One of the biggest, longest knee-slappers of the progressive idiots at Lawyers, Gun and Money, and elsewhere, is their supposed superior "knowledge" of nihilism. The dolt "Malaclypse" especially loves to hammer the point about how "the dumb Donalde" doesn't even know what nihilism means! Doh! The problem? Well, the idiots themselves don't actually know what it means, can't describe or explain it, and only object to the term because it must apparently hit close to home, or something.

Anyway, I'm getting a kick out of Lawrence Auster's discussion of the topic, at View From the Right, "BENEATH LIBERALS’ SELF-CELEBRATION, THE DESPAIR OF NIHILISM." It's a response to comments, so click the link for the whole context, but this part is good:

...Mr. Hechtman makes a good point. But I should have made clear that when I speak of liberals’ despair, I do not mean that they are consciously, literally in despair. Of course, on the level of their conscious experience, they are full of themselves and their “wonderful” existence. They are soaring in an afflatus of triumph. They are in a state of ecstatic disbelief that Tony Blair’s pledge fifteen years ago to “sweep away those forces of conservatism” has come true, so fast and so thoroughly.

But just beneath their surface joy, there is ever-increasing disturbance. How do we know this? Consider the fact that the more power liberals enjoy over society, and the more conservatives surrender to the liberal agenda (e.g. on the issue of homosexuals in the military), the angrier the liberals become, the fuller of fear and loathing of conservatives they become, the more they feel that conservatives threaten them, and the more they want to silence, suppress, and punish conservatives.

What explains this ever-growing turbulence and hatred in the souls of liberals, at the very moment of their world-historic triumph? It is the fact that their entire existence is based on rebellion against the order of being, or, more simply, against God. As a result, the more power and fulfillment they have, the more they are divided from the order of being, and the more the tension within them grows. Therefore they feel increasingly threatened by—and are compulsively driven to crush—any remaining sign of the Truth which they have apparently defeated. In their minds, it is conservatives that symbolize belief in the hated God and the hated order of being. So it is conservatives (or rather the fantasy demonized image they have of conservatives) that the liberals must destroy.

If this explanation sounds implausible to you, ask yourself why, if liberals are so happy and victorious, they are becoming more fearful, hate-filled, and tyrannical, instead of enjoying and relaxing in their triumph?

Back at the post it goes on like that, and then Auster replies to one more commenter:

Also, to avoid misunderstanding, when I speak of nihilism, I do not use it in the conventional, incorrect sense of “not believing in anything.” There is no human being who does not believe in anything. If “not believing in anything” is the definition of nihilism, then there is no such thing as nihilism. No. Nihilism is the denial of objective moral truth. Our contemporary nihilists believe in and enjoy all kinds of things, but they don’t believe that there’s any objective moral truth backing up the things they believe in.

I'll bet good money that freak leftist B.J. Keefe would blow this off as some "Greater Wingnuttia" hysteria. See, for example:

I was not typing "Blargh" in response to your effort to twist the definition of nihilism to fit your own preconceived notions. It was in response to everything else.

Oh, and don't miss the rest of the commentary at Auster's.

BONUS: When called out in the past on the "meaning" of nihilism, I almost always link to the definition at Dictionary.com, especially "1. a complete denial of all established authority and institutions" and "3. a revolutionary doctrine of destruction for its own sake..." And some real life examples here.

EXTRA: "Navigating Past Nihilism."

The 'God Particle' and God

From Dennis Prager, at National Review:

They found the “God particle.”

That was the headline splashed all over America’s news media. It turns out that the name actually derives from substituting “God particle” for “goddamn particle,” the original name some scientists had given the elusive particle. But the media adopted the former nomenclature.

Why?

Because otherwise the bulk of humanity would not pay attention.

Physicists went nuts. And no one can blame them. For decades, they have searched for the particle that may explain why there is any mass in the universe. And 10 billion dollars was spent on the machine that probably proved its existence.

Without any disrespect to the enormous intellectual achievement of these scientists, let me state that I identify with the mass of humanity that doesn’t really care about the existence of the Higgs boson.

Those scientists and science writers who have likened this discovery to the discovery of DNA are wrong. If significance means relevance to the human condition, the discovery of DNA merited a ten out of ten and the Higgs boson might merit a two.

This does not mean that the search was either a waste of time or money. Both the time and money invested were necessary because satiating our curiosity about the natural world is one of the noblest ambitions of the human race.

But scientific discovery and meaning are not necessarily related. As one of the leading physicists of our time, Steven Weinberg, has written, “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”

And pointlessness is the point. The discovery of the Higgs boson brings us no closer to understanding why there is a universe, not to mention whether life has meaning. In fact, no scientific discovery ever made will ever explain why there is existence. Nor will it render good and evil anything more than subjective opinion, or explain why human beings have consciousness or anything else that truly matters.

The only thing that can explain existence and answer these other questions is God or some other similar metaphysical belief.

Continue reading.

CNN's Suzanne Malveaux Slobbers Over 'Former GOP Prodigy' Jonathan Krohn

I tweeted Johnathan Krohn during the segment:

Dude! @JonathanLKrohn, man at least try to have a compelling reason for spinelessly abandoning core values you were raised with. #DUH@CNN
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) July 9, 2012

And it's not just Suzanne Malveaux who's been slobbering over the kid. And that's the thing: he's just a child. One of the more absurd memes I read last week was how Krohn was challenging the notion that people get more conservative as they get older. I'm like, right, he's a freakin' a teenager! And besides, I've read the book. It's good. No one writes about something like that, conservatism, without having a deep-seated moral sense of what it's all about. What's so amazing is how transparently dishonest Krohn's transformation has been. He's been arguing that he essentially parroted conservative talking points when he was 13 years old. But anyone who's seen the CPAC clip recognized a true child prodigy who could really walk the walk. And Krohn loved the adulation. Now he's getting it from the other side, as you can see from his Twitter feed. He's mainlining the stuff. He's getting ready for college and he's probably been bullied by his progressive peers, because that's what they do. He frankly caved to the abuse. I won't be surprised if he ODs sometime in the future, or announces he's getting married to a longtime homosexual partner. There's frankly something wrong with the guy at this point and his second 15 minutes will be up shortly.

FWIW, see Krohn's piece at Salon: "I was a right-wing child star."

What is the Higgs Boson?

It's one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs in generations, for one thing. But what is it? Well, it's a hypothesis in theoretical physics that explains the origins of mass in atomic particles that have mass. Here's the brief explanation at the Los Angeles Times:

Quantum theory says that the universe is made of two types of elementary particles, fermions and bosons. Fermions are matter, like the electron or the proton. Bosons are energy and can transmit forces, like the photon. In 1964, two groups of three theorists each proposed that the universe is pervaded by a molasses-like field, now called the Higgs field. As fermions pass through the field, they acquire mass. Without the field, the universe would literally fall apart; even atoms would no longer exists.

The piece continues:

One of the physicists, Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh, predicted that if this field were hit by the right amount of energy, it would produce a unique particle, which came to be known as the Higgs boson. Higgs was present at the CERN announcement Wednesday and said afterward that, "For me, it is an incredible thing that has happened in my lifetime."

And at the video is Professor Higgs:

See also Instapundit: "CATCHING YOU UP ON the Higgs Boson."

And especially, "WHY THE HIGGS-PARTICLES IS SO IMPORTANT!"

BONUS: At the Economist, "The Higgs boson: Science’s great leap forward."

Why Colleges Don't Teach the Federalist Papers

Bruce Kesler has Peter Berkowitz's essay at Maggie's Farm.

It's behind the subscription wall but check the top result at Google ("one day free pass") or Memeorandum.

And here's a key passage:

It would be difficult to overstate the significance of The Federalist for understanding the principles of American government and the challenges that liberal democracies confront early in the second decade of the 21st century. Yet despite the lip service they pay to liberal education, our leading universities can't be bothered to require students to study The Federalist—or, worse, they oppose such requirements on moral, political or pedagogical grounds. Small wonder it took so long for progressives to realize that arguments about the constitutionality of ObamaCare are indeed serious.

The masterpiece of American political thought originated as a series of newspaper articles published under the pseudonym Publius in New York between October 1787 and August 1788 by framers Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison. The aim was to make the case for ratification of the new constitution, which had been agreed to in September 1787 by delegates to the federal convention meeting in Philadelphia over four months of remarkable discussion, debate and deliberation about self-government.

By the end of 1788, a total of 85 essays had been gathered in two volumes under the title The Federalist. Written at a brisk clip and with the crucial vote in New York hanging in the balance, the essays formed a treatise on constitutional self-government for the ages.

The Federalist deals with the reasons for preserving the union, the inefficacy of the existing federal government under the Articles of Confederation, and the conformity of the new constitution to the principles of liberty and consent. It covers war and peace, foreign affairs, commerce, taxation, federalism and the separation of powers. It provides a detailed examination of the chief features of the legislative, executive and judicial branches. It advances its case by restatement and refutation of the leading criticisms of the new constitution. It displays a level of learning, political acumen and public-spiritedness to which contemporary scholars, journalists and politicians can but aspire. And to this day it stands as an unsurpassed source of insight into the Constitution's text, structure and purposes.

At Harvard, at least, all undergraduate political-science majors will receive perfunctory exposure to a few Federalist essays in a mandatory course their sophomore year. But at Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Berkeley, political-science majors can receive their degrees without encountering the single surest analysis of the problems that the Constitution was intended to solve and the manner in which it was intended to operate.

Most astonishing and most revealing is the neglect of The Federalist by graduate schools and law schools. The political science departments at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Berkeley—which set the tone for higher education throughout the nation and train many of the next generation's professors—do not require candidates for the Ph.D. to study The Federalist. And these universities' law schools (Princeton has no law school), which produce many of the nation's leading members of the bar and bench, do not require their students to read, let alone master, The Federalist's major ideas and main lines of thought.

I teach Federalists 10 and 51 every semester, as they are included in my textbook (and any decent introductory American government text should have them, really). I also bought a paperback copy of The Federalist Papers when I was an undergraduate. It seemed like a cool thing to do.

Hey, there's also an excellent introductory text focusing on James Madison's contributions, Republic at Risk: Self Interest in American Politics.

Also at Power Line, "Papers? We Don't Need No Stinking [Federalist] Papers!"

Is It Ethical to Have Children?

My wife looked at me cross-eyed when I asked her if it was moral to have children. I think it's a stupid question too, but then again, it's a big area of scholarly concern.

See The New Yorker, "The Case Against Kids."

The Norway Attacks at 'The Big Picture'

An amazing photo-essay, at Boston Globe's, "The Big Picture."

Also, at New York Times, "Norway Displays Unity at Attack Victim’s Funeral."

Steve Wynn: 'It's Obama That's Responsible for This Fear in America...'

I was just over on the North end of the Las Vegas Strip last week, and the Wynn properties looked fabulous. We haven't stayed there yet, but we will. They send us invitations for multi-night stays, but the schedule hasn't worked out so far. But listening to Wynn's conference call makes me want to speed it up. Business people know what it's like to create jobs, and in Las Vegas you see it first hand. People are working. They are bustling and making good money. Democrats want to kill it, and Wynn says business owners are waiting it out.

Joe Weisenthal has the commentary, "Wynn CEO Goes On Epic Anti-Obama Rant On Company Conference Call." And the full transcript's at Seeking Alpha, "Wynn Resorts' CEO Discusses Q2 2011 Results - Earnings Call Transcript":

Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America. You bet. And until we change the tempo and the conversation from Washington, it's not going to change. And those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don't want to say that. They'll say, "Oh God, don't be attacking Obama." Well, this is Obama's deal, and it's Obama that's responsible for this fear in America. The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution, and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don't invest or holding too much money. We haven't heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody's afraid of the government, and there's no need to soft peddling it, it's the truth. It is the truth. And that's true of Democratic businessman and Republican businessman, and I am a Democratic businessman and I support Harry Reid. I support Democrats and Republicans. And I'm telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he's gone, everybody's going to be sitting on their thumbs.