Early Greek Lawgivers

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Jim

Yesterday, I started reading John David Lewis’ Early Greek Lawgivers, which is just 74 pages of awesomeness.  The table of contents includes:

  1. Approaching Greek Laws and Lawgivers
  2. Early Greek Order, Justice and Law
  3. The Lawgivers and his Laws
  4. Minos and Rhadamanthus of Crete
  5. Lycurgus of Sparta
  6. Solon of Athens
  7. Lesser Known Lawgivers

From the description on the back of the book:

Early Greek Lawgivers examines the men who brought laws to the early Greek city states, as an introduction both to the development of law and to basic issues in early legal practice.  The lawgiver was a man of special status, who could resolve disputes without violence, and bring a sense of order to his community by proposing comprehensive norms of ethical conduct.  He established those norms in the form of oral or written laws.

While I’m just a chapter and a half into it, I’m really enjoying its focus on fundamentals through the examination of these classical examples.  In context, while others are watching the vapid void that is the RNC and DNC, I am enjoying a fundamental examination of the nature of government and the role of law in society.

From my marginalia, I’m seeing that the key topics identified by Lewis are clearly relevant today, but unaddressed explicitly in the book as it is out of his scope.  Therefore, I am going to start a series of posts about the book with a plan for chapter by chapter commentary bringing the ideas into our current context.

This is a test and if it works out well then I may start doing more of it with other books that I am reading.  Further, it is a proof of concept for developing content for a study guide, which could supplement the enjoyment and understanding of the book; thus your thoughtful feedback is welcome.  While it should not be necessary to read the book to benefit from the posts, if you do both, then I would really like your feedback.

John David Lewis’ other books are Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens and Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History.  Before his death, Dr. Lewis was a contributing editor at The Objective Standard, which provides some of Lewis’ content online, including audio from his speech “’No Substitute for Victory’:  The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism”.  Further content is available at Dr. Lewis’ website.

Posted in Early Greek Lawgivers, History | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Clint Eastwood at the RNC, the Media Didn’t Get It?

Posted on August 31, 2012 by Jim

I am surprised by the media reaction to Clint Eastwood’s speech at the RNC.  Immediately afterwards, I noted the NBC talking heads who said that they did not get it.  Since then, there have been a number of news reports and commentaries calling it rambling and just plain weird.  Beyond bias, in this case, I find the self-proclaimed fourth estate to be either ignorant or dishonest, and the later seems more likely.  More generally, this post is really a contrast to the crap that passes for informed reporting and comment in our media.

In my opinion, Clint Eastwood gave a masterful performance at the RNC.  Eastwood was not there to give a dissertation on policy, but to offer a performance to warm up the crowd without overshadowing the headline act.  Note Eastwood’s explicit caution to the audience at the beginning to save some of that ardent applause for Romney.  Further, when invited to go into a familiar character, he overtly declined as a typical Eastwood performance would have so powerfully eviscerated the Obama Administration that he would have stolen the spotlight for the night.

As an opening act, Eastwood low keyed his performance with a Jimmy Stewart impression; think Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” with his common sense, idealism, and naiveté.  Eastwood furthered his homage my channeling Stewart’s performance in “Harvey“, where he performed opposite an invisible rabbit.  The cadence and timing used by Eastwood was a pure simple nice guy insightful Jimmy Stewart performance.

I found the symbol of the empty chair representing Obama to be evocative of the empty suit that Obama has been as President during this economic downturn.  We have seen this in Obama’s deference to congressional Democrats on policy, which is why the Democratic superdelegates (elected officials) in 2008 selected an inexperienced and weak individual to be their candidate for President.  In fact, many of the policies that are blamed on Obama were simply him following the direction set by congressional Democrats; thus, our President has been a patsy.

Further, through his use of humor in the speech, Eastwood played the role of the Shakespearean fool who could speak truth to power and explicate for the audiences’ benefit.  In the past, Washington’s political caste was well read in Shakespeare.  Perhaps, the punditry should read “King Lear” as it may not have been required in their multicultural literature courses.

Finally, I thought that Eastwood’s awe shucks folksy delivery was very effective at filling Obama with barbs while smiling.  Through his performance, it was as if Eastwood was our intimate friend joining us common folk in the jokes that we make every day about our President’s incompetence, ineffectiveness, and apparent disconnect from reality.  While Eastwood hit many of the common Obama joke themes, he stayed to official issues and did not hit upon common discussions on suspected brain damage from Obama’s past drug abuse.

Perhaps, the pundits are too “smart” for such vulgar talk and do not understand its import; then again, they may just be dishonest in their professional conduct.

Posted in Election, Political Discussions, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Our Racist Public Schools

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Jim

While Democrats are quick on the trigger with fallacious rhetorical partisan charges of racism against critics of President Obama, their silence is deafening when it comes to actually racist government policies.   Previously, I mentioned the Obama Administration filing a petition in favor of racial discrimination related to the upcoming Supreme Court case Fisher v. University of Texas.  Now, the Democratic Obama Administration and the Republican McDonnell Administration in Virginia have agreed that 78% of white students and only 57% of the state’s black students will be proficient at math in 2017.  The issue is not so much whether the concrete number is 57 versus 60 versus 78, but the principle that race should be the basis for measuring school performance.

OK, so what does it mean that there are different racial targets measuring our public schools’ failure to teach our children?  Remember their measures are intended to be federal incentives to local schools.  If the black student cohort is on target with their substandard proficiency, should individual black students be denied individual remediation in favor of refocusing funding to another racial cohort that is performing better in absolute terms but below its particular higher racial target?

To be clear, instead of targeting individual students for improvement based upon their own personal development, this is a policy of allocating government spending between racial groups based upon a plan to tolerate higher failure rates for black and Hispanic students.  If your kid goes to public school, they are not treated as an individual, but a data point valued or devalued by government schools based upon your child’s race.  Is that really what your child, any child, deserves in their education?

While this policy sounds insane and anti-American, race policy is the primary cause for federal involvement in education; if you want to end racist government policies in education, then it is necessary to eliminate federal funding for local education.  In the past, Democrat policies of compelling racial segregation in public schools led to an absolute need for the federal government to intervene to protect the individual rights of those individuals denied equal protection of the law based upon government enforced racial discrimination.  However, after 60 years, we no longer require the current level of federal intervention in education to overturn segregation and redress prior racial discrimination, but our failure to update corrective policies after success has resulted in the federal government using federal spending to promote racist policies, such as Virginia’s racial targets for student proficiency.

Are such policies racist?  In the context of these race based educational proficiency targets, consider what Ayn Rand wrote about racism, via Lexicon:

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry…Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control…Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination. [“Racism”, The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 126].

The current government presumption that educational achievement should be measured in racial cohorts presumes that race is relevant in cognitive ability; otherwise, why are blacks and Hispanics held to a lower standard?  Hardly consistent with President George W. Bush’s promise to defeat the soft bigotry of low expectations.

While there is not currently widespread official government enforced racial segregation in education for the federal government to correct, there are likely other relevant federal issues not related to race that influence student performance.

  • Does the federal government have a role is prosecuting the widespread and persistent financial and political corruption in public schools, see documentary “The Cartel”?
  • How does the federal emphasis on funding for special education create incentives for schools to cripple students intellectually?
  • How does the failure to create a viable framework for legal immigration impact student performance?
  • How does the federal culture of non-productive welfare impact student performance?
  • How do federal drug prohibition and the criminal treatment of drug using parents impact student performance?
  • How does the joblessness created by federal regulation of labor, industry, and finance impact student performance?
  • How do mandatory federal education regulations and reporting requirements push funding out of the classroom and into administrative expenses?

Posted in Education, President, Quotes | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

6 Causes of India’s Mega-Blackout, Lessons for US

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Jim

At the end of July 2012, India experienced an electrical blackout that affected more than half of that country.  This event raised serious concerns about India’s ability to sustain its economic growth.  Given the rhetorical attacks against capitalism and selfishness led by President Obama, this Indian blackout offers evidence for the consequences of a life without capital, as accepted without principles by American Pragmatist politicians.

Political Causes of Failure

Based upon reporting in the Washington Post, there are 6 political causes of the Indian blackout that should be familiar to Americans:

  1. The legacy infrastructure requires significant capital investment and expansion.
  2. Government officials create debilitating obstructions with their systemic corruption.
  3. Public institutions perform badly due to ineffective management, and operate within political constraints that prevent reasonable actions.
  4. Weak law enforcement fails to protect property rights.
  5. The regulatory burden is stifling industry, including arbitrary environmental regulation that starves producers of resources.
  6. The prices have lost their connection to reality due to political manipulation, including subsidies, free electricity for farmers, and price controls.

Source: Simon Denyer and Rama Lakshmi, “Power Fails in Half of India”, Washington Post, 8/1/2012, A1.

The Importance of Price

The Post’s report included a particularly relevant quote from JPMorgan economist Sajjid Chinoy, “When you don’t have economically viable pricing, you will not have economically viable power generation.”

Let’s consider that quote from Chinoy and the list of political causes in the context of M. Northrup Buechner’s observation:

There is no market where nonobjective prices are the rule, a market where a rational grasp of the facts is consistently absent.  In the modern world, such a market could not survive.  If businessmen always set the price too high, no one would buy.  If they always set the price too low, rational buyers would purchase all their goods and they would have nothing to sell.  Nonobjective prices, that is, prices independent of the cost of production and/or the value to customers and/or the competitive conditions of the market, are self-eliminating.  They eliminate the businessmen who set such prices.  — Objective Economics, pp. 144-5.

When government breaks the bounds of its legitimate purpose (the protection of individual rights by subordinating retaliatory force to objective law) and acts in the economy to direct business enterprises, the same consequences of nonobjective prices applies to it; in the long run, guns, statutes, and regulations do not invalidate that causation.  Thus, the problem for India is more than maintaining its growth trajectory; it is the risk of economic decay, losing the improvements to the quality of their lives, and the consequences of weakening the government.

Lesson for Selfish Citizens

For the US, these political causes of the Indian blackout exist within the American political system, because we confuse the idea that “we must do something” with “government must do something” to the destruction of our freedom of association.  Given the relative strength and dynamism of the American economy, we can miss the evident costs of this error; however, in examining other countries, the consequences are more obviously evident.

The lessons from India’s blackout should raise several questions related to government intervention in the electric utility industry:

  1. Where will the capital come from to repair and extend our infrastructure if the producers are subject to government limiting their profit?
  2. Can producers produce if they are burdened with pre-emption, direction, regulation, and control from government officials that have political agendas?
  3. As the existing regulatory burden brings existing power plants offline, from where will the lost production capacity come?
  4. As nuclear plants are being decommissioned in Japan and Germany, how will increased demand for alternatives impact international fuel prices for energy production?
  5. Given the poor performance of promises from politicians, can we trust them to deliver electricity, or would we be smarter to trust in those selfish businessmen, who will bankrupt if they fail?

Instead of new promises of government reform to alleviate the failures from past government policies, both America and India need to refocus government on protecting individual rights and liberate businessmen to produce the values that improve the quality of our lives.

Posted in Economics | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Republican Cheap Shot Biden’s ‘put y’all back in chains’ Comment, and Miss the Real Racist Obama Policy

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Jim

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Republicans, and their echoes, were all atwitter about Vice President Joe Biden telling a racially mixed audience at a rally that the Republican ticket wanted to ‘put y’all back in chains’.   While the Republican charges that such language is racially divisive give the Democrats just desserts for similar unjustified statements that they have made against Republicans in the past, it is all just bogus hot air that does not amount to anything of substance.

In contrast, on Monday, the Obama Administration filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas, upon which the Republicans have been silent.  In the case, Abigail Fisher claims that the university’s race based admissions policy discriminated against her and violated her constitutional rights.  According to the Obama Administration, the government has an interest in race based recruitment that is more important than Fisher’s claim of an individual right to not be subject to racial discrimination by her state government.  In this case, President Obama stands arm in arm with George Wallace barring admittance by saying that a state should use race as a determining factor in college admissions.

On a case of actual government discriminating against an individual based upon race, the Republicans have been silent on the Obama Administration’s brief.  What is the Romney position on race based admission policies for government colleges and universities?  Does the Republican team support the 14th Amendment to the Constitution?  Or do they stand with the Ron Paul neo-confederates that oppose the federal government protecting the individual rights of citizens from abuse by state governments?

I intend a future post on Fisher v. University of Texas, which is why I have the material handy on my desk.  Today, I wanted to call attention to the Republican demagoguery against VP Biden and their lack of comment on the Obama Administration endorsing racial discrimination by state governments.

The point today is that the Republicans are blowing smoke when they could be talking about changing government policies to protect the individual rights of actual people harmed by racist government policies.

Extra point:  I note that Gary Johnson is also silent on the Obama Administration brief in support of racial discrimination by a state government; either, he remains disconnected from the real policy debate or remains silent because his Libertarian Party is filthy with neo-confederates, who hate the 14th Amendment for extending Bill of Rights protections against abuse of individual rights by state governments.

Posted in Election, The Courts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment