The Objective Standard Blog

Archive for January 2007

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Calif. Bill Mandating Universal Health Insurance Is Immoral

Posted by ARI Media at 6:16 pm

Irvine, CA—On Monday Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a plan to mandate health insurance coverage to nearly all of California’s 6.5 million uninsured. Under Schwarzenegger’s plan, all Californians would be required to have insurance, including those unwilling or unable to afford it; the poorest would be subsidized.

According to Dr. Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute, “Gov. Schwarzenegger’s plan is a moral travesty, and must be rejected.

“The governor’s plan is immoral,” said Dr. Brook, “because it is based on the premise that the needs or desires of some people give them a claim on the lives and property of others. This vicious double standard turns the providers—doctors, hospitals, businesses—into the serfs of those deemed to be in need. There is no right to health coverage. The governor’s scheme, like other socialist healthcare schemes, requires wielding government force to violate the rights of untold individuals.”

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

Posted in: Health Care, Individual Rights and Law

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Writing and Understanding

Posted by Lisa VanDamme at 1:55 am

Several weeks ago, in my article “Pattern Recognition vs. Real Understanding,” I stressed the crucial connection between writing and understanding:

For the student to write explanations, in complete sentences, about every subject—whether history, literature, grammar, math, or anything else—requires that he have a true understanding of the concepts at hand. But he can often do well on multiple choice, matching, or other rote exercises with no real understanding.

Let me elaborate on this topic.

If a student’s understanding of a given idea is genuine, if he holds the idea independently and clearly sees its relationship to reality, then he can offer reasoned support for his view. In asking the students to write paragraphs and essays in every subject, we are able to emphasize this crucial aspect of thought—we demand that they give reasons for their assertions.

Far from the “every opinion is sacred” attitude learned in most all of today’s schools, our students learn that “any unsupported opinion is sacrilege.”

Several years ago, some of our older students were asked to write an essay about their opinion of school uniforms. Word about this assignment got around, and some younger students became concerned that this was a policy we were giving serious consideration. They complained to their parents, who agreed to come and discourage me from requiring uniforms.

Apparently, these 9 and 10-year-old students told their parents, “Now don’t just go in and state your opinion about school uniforms. You have to be prepared with clear reasons for your view.”

Knowing that their parents had not attended VDA, they feared this was a lesson they had not learned.

The fact that the students are universally required to support their abstract assertions means that the teacher is always able to discover how they hold those abstractions. The teacher learns not just whether the child recalls the abstract conclusion, but why he believes it is true.

Often, the child’s explanation will reveal an error in thinking. This gives the teacher an opportunity both to correct this particular error, and to point to the principle that will allow him to avoid this category of error in the future.

For example, several years ago I taught the play The Admirable Crichton, and after reading and discussing the play, I asked the students to write a description of the essence of each of the main characters.

I made an interesting discovery: they thought they understood the characters, having heard my lectures about them. But rather than giving examples to support their character analysis, many simply repeated the abstract point.

The restatements were sufficiently different from the original point that they felt like they were justifying their assertions—but in fact, they were simply saying it again, in different terms.

For example, one would assert that Ernest was self- absorbed, and then, in support of this assertion, would say, “If he had a smile on his face he was probably thinking about himself.”

Another, in support of the view that Lady Mary was “condescending,” would say, “She thought others were beneath her and not worthy of her time.”

This seemed to reflect both a failure to really understand the characters, and a failure to grasp the point that an assertion must be grounded in facts.

I had to make clear to them that what constituted proper support of their conclusions was concrete examples of the characters’ actions in the play.

I decided to illustrate this point in a memorable form. I walked into class and (making it clear that this was an exercise, and intended to prove a point), I said, “One of the teachers at this school must be fired.” Following my lead, they asked “Why?”

I responded, “Because he can’t be trusted.” Again, they said, “Why?” I replied, “Because you can never count on him.” Again, starting to get the point, they said, “Why?” and I said, “Because he is never there when you need him.”

I then asked them what was unsatisfying about my explanations, and they identified that I never in fact mentioned anything the teacher had done to warrant this evaluation.

I then applied this issue to their analysis of the characters in the play. This made it possible for them both to gain a real understanding of the characters and to learn a valuable epistemological lesson.

This lesson was only possible because of the conceptual, objective approach of the class—because I had asked them to write a clear and supported statement of their ideas.

Click here to sign up for the VanDamme Academy’s free, weekly e-newsletter: “Pedagogically Correct.” Every week, you will be sent a new article about the principles of teaching employed at VanDamme Academy, along with stories about the results they are achieving.

Posted in: Education

Tuesday, January 9, 2007

Letter from TOS Reader Burgess Laughlin

Posted by TOS Admin at 4:55 pm

To the Editor:

Various TOS articles by Dr. John Lewis have helped me identify the essential nature of the current “War on Terrorism.”

One shouldn’t be surprised that an entity’s actions follow from the entity’s nature. As a political entity, the USA is a welfare state. It is taking various actions—military and economic—against individual Islamic terrorists and for “democratic” Muslims.

Just as the welfare bureaucracy of the USA endlessly drains the resources of productive citizens, all in the name of altruism, so the “War on Terrorism” is endlessly draining the resources (and lives) of the USA, all in the name of altruism.

All three essentials are in place in both cases: taxing productive people; altruistic motives; and a perpetual program that, by its very nature, can never be completed.

Sadly, I can also now see that the war (the action) won’t change until the USA welfare state (the entity) changes. Actions follow from the nature of the entity.

Thank you, Dr. Lewis.

Burgess Laughlin
 

John Lewis Replies:

Dear Burgess,

Thanks! I certainly agree with this.

I note, for one particular among many, how our welfare state identity affects immigration policy: The welfare state makes every new person an enemy. This was inevitable, once we abandoned freedom and capitalism in favor of slavery and socialism (to whatever degree we have adopted those characteristics). It is also fascinating that while the altruism of the welfare state considers every potential producer to be an enemy, it pretends that every enemy is a potential friend.

The good news here is that the identity of the United States is not metaphysically given; it is the product of the ideas and actions of the individuals in it. We have the political result that we do because American philosophy has collapsed. Our identity has been shaped by philosophy—for better or for worse. The American identity—specifically, its character—is the product of the moral values adopted by individuals, starting with the Founders and leading into the present day. Just as an individual’s character is, as Dr. Peikoff identified, a man’s nature or identity insofar as it is shaped by the moral values he accepts and automatizes, so it is with America.

We can, of course, adopt better ideas and act on them. The result will be a renewal of the American character as it existed at the Founding, and a Renaissance as has never been seen in history. You, Burgess, and all the other readers of TOS are part of that Renaissance.

Cheers,
John

Posted in: History, Individual Rights and Law, Philosophy

Monday, January 8, 2007

‘No Substitute for Victory’: Replies to Criticisms

Posted by John David Lewis at 7:34 pm

Regarding my article “No Substitute for Victory”: The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism in The Objective Standard, readers have brought up several questions that I’d like to answer. Among them are two of great importance: (1) Isn’t the enemy stateless, i.e., without the kind of centralized political state that controlled Japan? and (2) Can religion and state be separated in Islam, which is a social-political-legal system as much as it is a religion?

I will address these issues, and others, at length in a reply to readers’ comments in the forthcoming issue of The Objective Standard. But I wish to give a brief answer here in advance.

The power of a policy that states the goal of the war as eliminating State Islam is that it identifies the enemy precisely: those who use force to impose Islam politically. It states exactly what we want from the enemy: an end to his use of force. It has a successful historical precedent. It is also fully consistent with the requirements of individual rights and freedom; it does not ask us to win at the price of losing our liberty. It leads directly to a clear strategy to achieve the policy.

This policy would imply several things. First, with the stated goal as the elimination of the threat—and not a better way of life for foreign populations—we could install a ruler over Iraq, akin to the Shah in Iran, and tell him to do what is needed to control the violence—but never, ever, to attack America or threaten American interests. We are in a mess in Iraq because we took on the task of bringing freedom and prosperity to Iraqis—which never should have been our goal. Altruism led us into such a sacrifice. If we remove an enemy and the country falls into civil war, that is better than their building nuclear bombs.

Second, since political Islam—meaning, wherever Islam has achieved actual political power—would be the target, Iran would be first on the list, the goal being the elimination of the theocratic government and the installation of an America-friendly ruler. (The Saudis, given their support for Islamic law across the world, would be second on the list—and would fall into line after the example of Iran, or could be replaced.) On this policy, we would never have ended Iran’s strongest regional opponent (Saddam Hussein) and tried to free his country without dealing first with the main threat next door.

Third, with such openly stated goals, the way would be clear for other governments to clean house. They’d be less inclined to compromise between Islamic Totalitarians and us, since they’d want to avoid our wrath at all costs. The demonstration of resolve in war is very effective; recall Sherman’s burning of Atlanta (which collapsed the southern will to fight) and the atomic bombs we dropped on Japan (which made it clear to the Japanese leadership that we had and would use them).

To answer another persistent point, we may not, in my opinion, need to use nuclear weapons in the Middle East (although I am not a military tactician). But we do need to demonstrate the will to remove an Islamic government that we deem a threat, without apologizing every time a civilian is hurt. This demonstration would sweep across borders and be seen by every government in the world. It would show that while Islam might be stateless, we recognize that Islamic dictatorships are not, and that to side with such a state is to become a target of the most powerful military in the world.

Islam itself is stateless; it respects no borders. It was designed precisely to unite all those who submit to Allah, regardless of where they live and what tribe they belong to. We have to adopt the same attitude, only with freedom and individual rights as our uniting ideals. By defining the enemy as Islamic Totalitarianism—government imposition of Islamic Law— we exempt no such state from our reach and yet enable every state to avoid the title and our wrath.

As to the claim that Islam, practiced literally, cannot be separated from politics, this is, in my judgment, true. (I see Islam as descending from common roots with Zoroastrianism, the ideology of Ahuramazda, and Manichaeism in the Near East. I wrote a short piece on this at Principles in Practice titled “Notes on the Near Eastern Legacy of Islam.”) Islam is not a religion that can be separated from state; it is an all-encompassing way of life. But it is not true that unserious Muslims cannot live under non-Muslim laws; the majority in western countries do—they compromise Islamic law to obey the laws of civilized society.

Identifying the enemy as Islamic Totalitarianism would enable us to end attempts to import Islamic Law into our own country, and it would empower our allies to end such attempts in their own countries. It would enable individual Muslims to comply with our demands, and it would expose those who refuse. It would also demonstrate the failure of Islam as a political movement, and thus challenge the premise, in the minds of many, that the Islamic Totalitarians are some kind of misguided idealists, right in principle but going too far.

As to the issue of realism: There can be no realistic discussion of a proper “strategy” (a means to attain policy ends) without a proper statement of the end that the strategy is intended to achieve. There is nothing more un-realistic than trying to create a plan without knowing where we are going—or assuming that no plan is possible since reality is “really” always in flux. The realism that we need is the recognition that those supporting Political Islam—rule by Islamic Law—are the real enemy. I’ll gladly listen to anyone who has a different strategy for eliminating Islam as a political power and ending the threat it poses to us—but I’ve not yet heard anyone offer such a strategy.

Posted in: Foreign Policy and War, Religion

Thursday, January 4, 2007

Pedagogically Correct

Posted by Lisa VanDamme at 3:35 pm

Many people understand that education is in desperate need of reform, but few recognize how radical the reform must be.

What is needed is not a bigger education budget, a stronger teacher’s union, smaller class sizes, or more rigorous testing procedures.

But neither is the solution simply a renewed spirit of intellectualism and mental rigor, or a return to the traditional curriculum of Western civilization and literary classics, or the expulsion of politically correctness from the classroom.

What is needed is a basic, pedagogical revolution—a revolution in the selection of content taught to students, and the method by which that content is presented.

This revolution entails a ruthlessly stripped-down curriculum that includes only that which is indispensable to the child’s basic intellectual development, ridding education of non-essential content that distracts from and dilutes the core material. It entails a vigilant commitment to ensuring that students have a real, grounded, independent grasp of everything they are taught, and are never merely parroting the teacher. It entails a presentation of the material that is always integrated around a definite purpose, with each piece related clearly to the whole, and constant encouragement of the students to seek connections of their own. It entails a continual effort to properly motivate the students, demonstrating the personal value to their own lives of the knowledge they are working to acquire.

Our goal at VanDamme Academy, the proper goal of education, is to foster the conceptual development of the child—to instill in him the knowledge and cognitive powers needed for mature life. Our goal is to take the whole of human knowledge, select that which is essential to the child’s conceptual development, present it in a way that allows the student to clearly grasp both the material itself and its value to his life, and thereby supply him with both with crucial knowledge and the rational thinking skills that will enable him to acquire real knowledge forever after.

This is the ambition upon which VanDamme Academy was founded, and we believe we have made unequaled progress in its achievement—though we still have much to discover and improve.

It is with this spirit that we proudly announce that we are converting our email list into a new, free, weekly e-newsletter: “Pedagogically Correct.” Every week, we will send you a new article about the principles of teaching that we employ at VanDamme Academy, and relay stories about the results we are achieving.

We encourage you to foward Pedagogically Correct to friends, post its contents on your ‘blog, or do anything else you can think of to spread the word about VanDamme Academy and our unique educational philosophy.

Posted in: Education

Thursday, January 4, 2007

The Imperative of Lecturing

Posted by Lisa VanDamme at 3:33 pm

Every class in elementary and junior high school should be in a lecture format. The teacher must be an authority on the subject, he must grasp its basic purpose, he must carefully define the knowledge to be conveyed by reference to that purpose, and he must present that knowledge in a hierarchical, integrated, and engaging form.

When I teach a literature class, I go in to each class armed with an understanding of the value of studying literature, and the knowledge that this value is derived primarily from an appreciation of the novel’s plot, an understanding of the basic nature of the characters, and a clear grasp of the novel’s theme.

These broad goals then guide me in defining the goal of any particular class. If I am teaching Sinclair Lewis’s novel Arrowsmith, for example, I might give one class about the idealistic characters and in what way they are doomed to suffering in the world, another about those who abandon their ideals and achieve practical “success,” another about the basic moral/practical dichotomy this implies, and another contrasting this view with that of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.

In each class, I would set out to convey a definite point about the novel, and to methodically lead the students to a clear understanding of the principle through the events of the novel. I would not conduct the class as question-and-answer, back-and-forth, bull session.

This is a notable contrast to most literature classes today. English teachers often select novels that are disintegrated and purposeless, and therefore have no single, objective interpretation. And even if they teach a good work of literature, with a definite theme, they allow students to take charge of the class, treating every one of their arbitrarily held, sometimes unintelligible, and often contradictory interpretations as sacred.

Several years ago I visited an English class at a reputable college prep school in my area, in which the students were reading Macbeth. The class had a “seminar” format, with the chairs in a circle, and the teacher treated as just one of the student’s peers.

This teacher explained to me that the class is “student driven.” He doesn’t give reading assignments, but instead defines “reading goals.” He does not lecture to the class, but assigns each student a section of the play, asks them to prepare a presentation, and listens without comment as they discuss their interpretation with the class.

Other teachers commit the same error in a less flagrant form. A method often used by well-meaning teachers that encourages subjectivism is the overuse of questions and answers. Some teachers go in to class with a definite, objective end in mind, but either in the name of promoting independent thought in the students or of making the class lively and engaging, they think that the steps toward this end have to be elicited from the students.

Many teachers will, for example, introduce a new topic of history, and rather than presenting the relevant facts and integrating them into abstract conclusions, they will ask the students to guess— both the facts and the conclusions. For example, in discussing the founding of Jamestown, such a teacher might ask, “How big do you think the original settlement was?” or “What sort of governing body do you think they established?”

It is appropriate, once in a while, to ask the students to guess the answer to a factual question, particularly when they will be surprised by the right answer. And it is appropriate to ask abstract questions that clearly draw upon their prior knowledge and that they therefore have the context to answer. But to routinely play a guessing game as part of the basic format of the class promotes a subjective, anything-goes view of knowledge on the part of students. Students habituate the idea that knowledge is not the product of a scrupulous and methodical process of integrating the facts of reality, but instead comes from randomly throwing out groundless views.

This does not promote intellectual independence and enthusiasm; it promotes intellectual unseriousness and eventually boredom. Questioning of the students should be secondary to the teacher’s directed, purposeful, positive presentation of a clearly defined body of knowledge. For every class, the teacher should seek to convey definite knowledge, presenting the essential facts and integrating those facts into abstract conclusions, thereby leading the students to a clear understanding while also modeling rational thought.

This does not entail passivity on the part of the students. On the contrary, they will be engaged in answering questions when appropriate, asking questions that occur to them, making connections with other relevant items of their knowledge, and following the logical progression laid about by the teacher—which itself is an active and independent process.

Click here to sign up for the VanDamme Academy’s free, weekly e-newsletter: "Pedagogically Correct." Every week, you will be sent a new article about the principles of teaching employed at VanDamme Academy, along with stories about the results they are achieving.

Posted in: Education

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

America’s Sanction of its Enemies

Posted by John David Lewis at 3:02 pm

On March 1, 1973, eight Palestinian Black September killers stormed the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum during a send-off party for American Charges d’Affairs George C. Moore. They took Moore, U.S. Ambassador Cleo A. Noel, Jr., Belgian Charges d’Affairs Guy Eid, and two other diplomats hostage. They demanded the release of PLO and Baader-Meinhof Gang killers, including Robert F. Kennedy’s Palestinian assassin Sirhan Sirhan, and Black September commander Muhammed Awadh (aka Abu Daud). The real reason for the attacks was not merely to facilitate the release of their terrorist cohorts, but to strike at the U.S., in order to end U.S. attempts to mediate in the region.

The next day, after President Nixon and other leaders announced their refusal to negotiate with the terrorists, Moore, Noel, and Eid were taken to the basement of the embassy, lined up against a wall, and machine-gunned to death—the killers firing first at their feet and legs and gradually moving upward in order to extend their suffering.

Yasir Arafat denied involvement. He hid behind the ruse that Black September was a group that had broken away from his own Al Fatah organization. Western leaders did not challenge Arafat’s assertion. Rather, they granted him political respectability and touted him as a man dedicated to peace. He visited the White House regularly, and even received the Nobel Peace Prize. He smiled in public while he orchestrated more attacks on Americans. For over thirty years, seven American administrations and myriad State Department employees accepted Arafat’s lies and denied his murderous nature.

In May of 2006, a State Department historian released a 33-year-old memo that confirmed Arafat’s direct involvement in every aspect of the attack in Khartoum, including the specific order to kill the American Ambassador. The memo ends: “The emergence of the United States as a primary fedayeen target indicates a serious threat of further incidents similar to that which occurred in Khartoum.”

Arafat’s actions were nothing less than an act of war against America—and we have known about it for over three decades. American officials, however, chose to evade this knowledge and let Arafat get away with murder. They found this easier than to face the threat and do something about it.

The big story here is not Arafat’s thuggish nature, nor even his attacks; thugs are plentiful in warlord societies, and similar attacks have continued for decades. The big story is the role of Americans (and Europeans) in keeping Arafat in power despite their knowledge of who he was and what he did. American officials evaded the identity of this enemy, granted him the status of a political leader, and empowered him. It was the sanction of the United States that put him on the world’s stage—rather than into the obscure, early grave he deserved.

Without America’s help, Arafat had nothing. America is strong precisely because Americans are in general rational, productive, and free; the Palestinians are weak precisely because they do not value rationality, productivity, or freedom. The only weapon that the Palestinian leadership can hold over America is its claim to an altruistic moral high ground because of the self-created, debased condition of the Palestinian people. This weapon cannot work without our sanction.

Ayn Rand called such sanction “the sanction of the victim”; it entails placing one’s virtues in the service of one’s own destroyers by granting an undeserved moral status to one’s enemies. As philosopher Leonard Peikoff wrote, the sanction of the victim means:

a man’s willingness to embrace his exploiters, to pay them ransom for his virtues, to condone and help perpetuate the ethical code which feeds off those virtues, which expects them and counts on them at the very moment it is damning them as sin and condemning their exponents to hellfire. (Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p.333)

This accurately describes the relationship between the United States and Middle Eastern dictators such as Arafat. American leaders have (literally) embraced such thugs, treated them as legitimate leaders, and paid them ransom to boot—all while these same thugs have condemned and attacked us. The more they have attacked, the more we have appeased, and the more we have granted them a stature they could not otherwise have achieved.

Those who sanctioned Arafat actually protected him and his ilk. They were afraid to condemn him because they were, on some level, ashamed to proclaim their own goodness. It is high time that Americans reverse this pathetic, suicidal policy, recognize our moral superiority, withdraw support for our enemies, and call for our government to destroy those who seek our destruction.

Thanks to Caroline Glick for her report on the attack and the memo: “With the quiet release of a 33-year-old US State Department cable, a good chunk of the edifice of the longest-running big lie was destroyed.” For a chronology of attacks against Americans, click here.

Posted in: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Foreign Policy and War