Pointlessness: None Dare…pp. 37-40

 Ok, so the search for a pdf version that has page numbers continues. Every place that hosts a pdf of this book is using the same version. I could get a kindle/epub version but I’ll be damned if I’m forking over a dime to the John Birch Society or whatever white supremacist/sovereign citizen group that is selling it. I didn’t pay for the Turner Diaries and I am not paying for this. What I am going to do is just work of the page that the PDF itself (not the book) says that I am on. The PDF pages are longer so that’s why we are back to page 37, it’s all very confusing and if I hadn’t run up about twenty bucks in late fees we’d still have the paper copy. Anyway, on with the post.

I would never accept a paper from a student that was written like Allen’s unfortunately influential book. It’s just too scattered, it raises points just to forget about them, and uses discredited sources. However, that is all the point of the book. We ended last week discussing the breakup of Standard Oil into 34 separate companies by the US government under the Sherman Anti-trust Act. I had begun looking into this story, because Allen claims that this was the design of people like JP Morgan as a way to “compound their wealth tax-free while their competitors had to face a graduated income tax which made it difficult to amass capital.” 

I wanted to look into this, dear reader believe me I did because it seemed like this was going to be a thread that would run through the rest of the work. Or, at the very least, Allen would have to explain how this would work. How did Rockefeller escape the graduated income tax? Allen is implying that the breakup would have pushed his income down so that the higher tax would no longer apply to him, but that only occurs if he loses control of the 34 companies. If that’s the case, he loses all the money and the influence; if it’s not the case then the breakup was useless and doesn’t give Allen a leg to stand on with regard to the point he’s making. What happened was the Rockefeller’s quarter ownership in the stock (he had been retired) was key. The stock prices doubled and Rockefeller became the richest man in the world. He didn’t however escape the income tax like Allen thinks he did, so I want to hear how he thinks this plan was a success…but then he drops it. he drops it so fast and so suddenly that I checked to see if the PDF was corrupted. Allen makes a passing comment about the Reece committee which I discussed awhile back and then that’s it. 

The very next thing he begins talking about is Woodrow Wilson and WWI. Now, one common thread in all of the conspiracy literature, and I’ve discussed that it might actually be because of this book, is the idea that the debt is the tool of the conspiracy. I’ve discussed why this is stupid (short answer: because the banks don’t repossess countries like they would your car), but they cannot let it go. 

So here is the story Allen is going to tell. President Wilson runs a campaign of staying out of the problems in Europe in 1916. Allen is correct about that, Dan Carlin’s excellent podcast series on WWI discusses this, and this is where I get my information on the Great War. The causes of the war were many, and I would direct readers to the book “Why Nations go to War” by Stoessinger for a much better breakdown of the causes of WWI than I can give. We know the story though, Gavrilo Princep assassinates Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, and then WWI starts. 

That’s the story I was told in high school and it’s about as accurate as describing gravity as “things fall.” The assassination story is the one that Allen is betting that is all that anyone reading Allen’s book remembers. Ignoring the centuries of mistrust and animosity in Serbia towards what was, at the time, the Austro-Hungarian Empire; ignoring the rise of Prussian militarism, ignoring the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Tsars, and just the general political tension in Europe…if we do all of that the WWI story is pretty simple. 

Allen calls the assassination an “incident providing an excuse for starting a chain reaction.”

“An excuse,” I don’t know what that means, but if we excise it from the sentence, the sentence is more accurate than not. WWI was going to happen, and if Stoessinger is correct (I have no reason to believe he isn’t) the Germans were marching eventually–whether the archduke lives or not. The assassination was convenient for those that wanted war, but even the Kaiser couldn’t settle his own people once that first domino fell. Allen claims that while the sun was still not setting on the British empire the Germans were becoming quite the international businessmen and England couldn’t have that. So, is this why WWI started? Allen won’t say. He just likes to imply and he does so because if he says that England started WWI and blamed it on the Germans, then he’s got to figure out how to explain why Germany invaded the declared neutral country of Belgium on August 4th of 1914. He can’t do that, but like all ultra-right-wing conspiracy theorists, he feels a need to make Germany the victim. 

For all that Allen gets wrong here, he gets a few things right. First, is the seeming coin flip of a decision by Wilson to ramp up support for US involvement in the war. He wins the 1916 election on “no war” but then a year later he’s asking Congress for a declaration of war. It began as a preparation, but then a few things happened that Allen is happy to gloss over: the Zimmerman telegram wherein Germany asks for Mexico to invade the US and gets caught by the British. The second is that German U-boats begin sinking American merchant ships. 

The second thing Allen gets superficially right is the sinking of The Lusitania, which had been sunk in 1915 and was used as an excuse for American entry into the war. This is roughly correct though it took two years for Americans to remember that they were angry about it (which is not our style), the Zimmerman telegram and the sinking of other merchant ships were really the triggers here. The Lusitania was carrying weapons intended for England, but if Morgan et. al was selling them, I couldn’t find confirmation. Either way, none of this matters, as Allen refers to the submarine war as a phony issue. What is phony? That it happened, that people died, or that their deaths were important. I’m thinking that is the latter, because Allen and his type believe that everyone is part of the conspiracy. Their deaths only matter in proving the point of the conspiracy theorists other than that: Allen doesn’t care about them at all. 

This whole diatribe on WWI is about setting up the debt that allowed people like Morgan to buy the world. The problem for this theory and all others like it is the question of “why do this when they already had the world?” If Morgan/Rockefeller were so rich and so powerful that they could A) set up a legal system to break up their businesses to avoid taxes, b) assassinate a royal and his wife in order to offer up an excuse for European countries to begin a war that c) they will fake a new type of warfare (submarine warfare) in order to drag the US into it, in order to create a debt which they will then use to own the country–then they don’t have to actually own the country. This entire plan requires that they already have the money, influence, and power–that is the seeming goal of the end of the plan. Why do all of this just to end up back where you started? For fun I guess. 

Ten Books…Part V

Our fourth capter, and fifth post is a little difficult for me to criticize as in depth as the previous three. This chapter deals with Discourses on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality Among Men by Jean-Jacques Rosseau. I must confess that I have not read the book, I understand Rosseau’s point but without being as well versed in the philosopher’s work as the previous three I cannot offer the same trouncing that I have earlier. That being said, it doesn’t mean I will skip this chapter as Wiker faithfully gets somethings wrong.

Rosseau is famous for his idea of the “Noble Savage.” The New World natives were objects of curiosity among the academic Europeans and were given some mythological aspects ranging from the benign (Rosseau’s for example) to the bellicose (cannibalistic barbarians). These weren’t based on any serious study. Anyway Rosseau claimed that the Noble Savage existing in his peaceful state of nature could not exhibit any kind of immorality because the savage knew no morality to break.

Wiker takes this idea to task. He states that this is inconceivable because a person can still steal and murder which of course are immoral, it doesn’t matter whether or not a civilization has granted a moral code to follow. We all have consciences innate to us (even though Wiker apparently rejects the concept of innate ideas) so civilization does not matter. As “proof” of this he again points out one of his objections to Hobbes: that since archaeology and anthropology weren’t even in their infancies it is impossible to make any claims about states of nature ergo Rosseau cannot be correct. Again, he misses the point about hypothetical thought experiments even though Wiker points out that this is a thought experiment.

This sort of counter argument is wrong, so wrong in fact that I wouldn’t accept it from one of my students much less a PhD. We don’t need the correct and fully developed scientific discipline to form a hypothesis, we can use the principles of reason to build a theory and then test them later when the science is developed. If this weren’t the case than I suppose we can throw it the ideas of Democritus and Leucippus who developed atomic theory long before any “atom” was formed. Building theories and hypotheses are how sciences are developed, not the other way around.

What Wiker is saying in regards to morality and the conscience, is that these developments are independent of civilization. For example, we don’t need a society in order to be moral/immoral and no matter what society we live in any and all morality is the same. This would not only be independent of geographical location and political affiliation but also free of any chronological fetters. This is prima facie untrue. Our morals have developed through societal development. Slavery is the perfect example of this, it used to be quite acceptable to own slaves a thousand years ago. Women used to be regarded as no more than chattle, (note the use of the generic pronoun) used as bargaining chips to unite kingdomes, families, and property in marriage. We have since cast off these ideas as being arcane and immoral.

My next problem with the Rosseau chapter is in Wiker’s claim that Rosseau is the father of Communism. He isn’t claiming that Marx should be ignored for his role (we discuss Marx in the next chapter) bu that if it weren’t for Rosseau we wouldn’t have had Marx and Engels. This is claimed because Rosseau was the first to say that the establishment of private property was the first step to the development of society. The first time that a man staked out an area and claimed ownership was detrimental according to Rosseau and if someone had removed the stakes (to deny ownership) it would have been a great boon to society. Wiker adds to this an act of murder, that Rosseau would have preferred those stakes to be driven into the heart of the man who planted them then takes that addition using it to prove that Rosseau advocated violent overthrow.

It’s unclear to me how we arrived at this point, other than Wiker’s imagination. The whole chapter while superficially about Rosseau’s theory is really an attack of Marx’s theory. Wiker’s whole assertion against the state of nature isn’t sufficient to disprove anything wrong since he claims it a myth while ironically referring back to the Genesis account of Eden where the sciences of archaeology and anthropology were even less developed at the time of its writing. The only other attacks on Rosseau are ad hominem regarding is marital status and his lack of child rearing.

Wiker is only successful here at ignoring his chosen subject in favor of his obvious hate of any socialist theories and his devotion to the institution of marriage which has changed so severely over the ages that in order to be consistent he would have to reject either earlier manifestations as being immoral or the current one.

Technorati Tags: philosophy, 10 books that screwed up the world, Wiker

State of Nature: 10 Books…Part IV

Continuing to the next chapter in our series we come to The Leviathan and Thomas Hobbes. Since our author has ceased separating criticisms of the books from ad hominem attacks on the authors I guess we have to deal with the chapters like this.

I should note that each chapter begins with an out of context quote from each work. Chapter 3 begins with this: “Every man has a right to every thing.” Launching right an estimation that Hobbes believed that the idea of a conscience is foreign. That we learn morality, justice, and social behaviour. Well for once Wiker is correct. Instead of capitalizing on being right, Wiker decides that he must now be wrong claiming that Hobbes is the father of the idea that we have the right to whatever we want however, “morally degraded, vile, or trivial it may be.” This judgment of course needs a moral code to be valid and since we haven’t established a universal moral theory we can just throw it out as being non-sensical.

In an all too familiar pattern of writing, Wiker again puts the cart before the horse. He correctly tries to get us to imagine that we are in Hobbes’ state of nature. However he goes about it the wrong way. We wouldn’t just wake up and find ourselves free of conscience and morality. That’s not what Hobbes was saying. The state of nature is the original state of man i.e. without government or law. It’s not the disappearance of conscience. It’s the state that Hobbes believed preceded society and government. Instead of waking up without the constraints of morality Wiker should have said “wake up and suddenly there are no laws, no justice, and no official punishment…” This would be more in line with Hobbes thinking.

Thomas Hobbes, by all accounts, was an extremely arrogant individual. He believed that he squared the circle, though offered no proof of it. Hobbes believed that at our core we are selfish seeking to value as good, what benefits us and as bad what harms us. The state of nature is the situation wherein people act how they want to without regard of the consequences.

When I teach Hobbes I use one of two examples: either a desert island with a limited supply of coconuts or a hill with a well on it (with terribly drawn stick figure examples). I use it to show how people behave when a necessary commodity is needed by too many people than it can support. Without fear of punishment and the threat of starvation people will fight for that supply. Wiker apparently doesn’t think that this is the case. He believes that people will sit down and rationally discuss why person A should give the last of his water to person B.

Hobbes writes the state of nature as a theoritical exercise, but he personally saw the effects of a collapse of government. When Cromwell executed the King of England plunging the nation into civil war, Hobbes witnessed first hand what happens. It wasn’t a sit down and talk about it kind of situation. We have seen it as well in the LA riots from the early 90s and more recently after the breaking of the levees in New Orleans. When the law fails there are individuals that seek to take advantage of the situation.

It puzzles me that Wiker doesn’t understand this. He acknowledges that it is a story, but then he points out that Hobbes couldn’t have known the origins of man because archaeology “wasn’t even in its infancy.” I must assume then that calling the State of Nature a “tall tale” is meant to deride the theory altogether.

That “right to every thing” that Wiker finds so abhorrent exists in the state of nature until the formation of the sovereign (government). A fact, and such a pivotal portion of the Leviathan, that to omit it’s discussion from the chapter reveals either incomptence or willful deception on the part of the author. The discussion continues to describe the rights as nothing more than desires. Wiker then ticks off a list of “rights” that he finds in line with Hobbes and counter to his own beliefs, “Mary has a right to marry Susan is merely a way to say Mary has a desire to marry Susan.” It goes downhill from there listing pornography and abortion as the next rights=desires.

Hobbes’ writing is extremely formal and almost in what we would call “legalese.” Luckily for us Wiker has listed what he feels is Hobbes reasoning, both hidden and open. Among these hidden portions of his reasoning is again the false charge of Atheism. Was Hobbes an atheist? Probably not, since the ethical code we can abide by for our day to day living is a little something called the “golden rule.” Religion isn’t really addressed in any negative light in the Leviathan. I, in my lectures, do not talk about Hobbes view on religion or god since it isn’t anything new or groundbreaking.

We are given the briefest summary of how Hobbes believed we formed government. Yet it is thrown aside for some editorializing on how wrong it is that government is artificial and “at best a necessary evil.” We are not bound by love according to Wiker, but by the law. Is this wrong? I doubt it, I don’t love my neighbors, I don’t know my neighbors. THey don’t know me, they don’t love me. Society isn’t drawn together by mutual love. Even in the Old Testament it wasn’t love that drew the Jews together it was a common heritage and divine fiat.

But that isn’t the deep problem. It’s in the failure of Wiker to understand why every person has a right to every thing. Hobbes never said that every person would kill, rob, and rape in the state of nature. He said that some people would, some are greedy, wrathful, and vainglorious. Since those people exist, the rest of us must be prepared to defend ourselves against them. This is what allows us to use the two virtues of war: force and fraud.

It’s not because we are without conscience or morality. It’s because if we don’t trick or destroy those coming to rob, rape, and kill us they will be successful. Would Wiker believe that we do not have the right to defend ourselves, or would he believe that it is merely a desire?

Technorati Tags: philosophy, ten books that screwed up the world, wiker

10 Books…Part II: Defending Rene Descartes

I’ve never written those last three words together as an idea before. Damn you Wiker for making me do this. My hate for Descartes’ writing is documented and now Wiker is making me read something in which I have to defend the Frenchman.

It’s not that Wiker doesn’t like Descartes, if that were the case we wouldn’t have this chapter as a post. It’s that Wiker fundamentally misunderstands several key features of Descartes’ philosophy: something incomprehensible to me as the man possesses a PhD in Philosophy. You can escape certain philosophers even with a doctorate in the subject but there are some that are so essential to the history of ideas that you must know them and Descartes is one of these canonical people. Enough intro let’s get down to it:

Wiker claims that skepticism is a “kind of intellectual disease that arises out of those who are well read and well fed.” I won’t disagree that those who are educated and satiated will make up more of the skeptics than the hungry and stupid but “a kind of intellectual disease?” I suppose in Wiker’s world view someone who questions anything must have a disease, but in my opinion that questioning is essential to the development of culture, society, and ideas. Questioning leads to progress, but I suppose that things like medicine, scientific theories, and mathematical inquiry are all results of a disease. Jackass.

Along with that we are given the explanation of Descartes method of doubting. The book Wiker is tackling is Discourse on Method, and the Cartesian doubt is that method. Descartes developed this method because he wanted to find a source of knowledge that would be the foundation of all subsequent knowledge. Wiker asserts that this was to get around skepticism, which isn’t a false claim but it doesn’t go far enough. Descartes wanted to end skepticism as well as put an end to the debate between the Continental Idealists and the British Empiricists.

The doubting is not meant to be taken literally, as Wiker fundamentally misunderstands. Our author says that one merely needs to run into a tree to comprehend the reality of the outside world. Descartes would agree, but Descartes would also ask for a basis of knowledge on sense perception since it is notoriously unreliable. Again, Descartes was not actually doubting the existence of the external world but merely seeking a way to prove it through reason. For Wiker to make this mistake is unbelievable and for him to actually use Descartes’ death as proof of how he was wrong (Descartes died of a viral infection) is unconscionable.

Furthermore, Wiker continues by explaining how Descartes’ book is the basis for substance dualism, the idea that we inhabit two forms one mental and one physical. In order to attack this he explains that the phrase “cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am)” contains the word “ego” Latin for “I.” This means that Descartes was being arrogant because Wiker uses the fallacy of false equivalence to make us draw connection between “ego” in Latin and “egotistical” in the common parlance.

While I don’t agree with dualism, I again have to something against my beliefs and defend it against Wiker. Dualism is not braggadacio, nor is it a form of philosophical schizophrenia in which we are one day a robot (physical) and the next day a god (spiritual) as our author contends. They operate concurrently and although the interaction problem still exists Wiker pretends that Descartes never mentioned anything about it deciding instead that it’s far easier to use the strawman of an alternating existence.

The most eggregious problem in this chapter is Wiker’s assault on Descartes’ proof of god’s existence. Descartes claimed that since God is the most perfect being imaginable, the idea for him had to come from somewhere outside of himself. The only source of that knowledge, of which Descartes could have no first hand experience could be God himself, therfore God must exist. It’s a notoriously weak argument and for the most part is stolen from St. Anselm whom Descartes claimed he never heard of.

Wiker’s assertion is that this implies that god is a product of our own ego. That we thought Him into existence as so many other atheists would claim (I don’t need it pointed out to me: Wiker is actually making the claim that a man who attempted to prove God existed was an atheist). What Wiker is doing is putting the cart before the horse. Descartes said that the idea of God came from God, not that the idea of God begat God. Adding to this insurmountable list of philosophical errors Wiker then uses the Perfect Island argument of Guanilon against Descartes and thinks this counters anything. The perfect Island argument doesn’t work because God is an innate idea according to Descartes, not a secondary idea. THis means that it has to be the source and all other things rest on innate ideas.

I must repeat I hate Descartes’ philosophy, but I won’t sit and abide some jackass who ought to know better attacking him incorrectly. It just makes the rest of us look bad. So far we have Wiker with two false accusations of atheism, two complete misunderstandings of philosophically landmark works.

Next time we see what happens when you only read half of a work (Thomas Hobbes and the Leviathan).

Technorati Tags: philosophy, ten books that screwed up the world and five others that didn’t help, wiker

Nothing Lasts Forever

The greatest Christmas movie of all time, Die Hard, has a unique fact that most people don’t know. That fact is that the movie is based on a book by Roderick Thorp called “Nothing Lasts Forever.” One of the most iconic action movies could never win best original screenplay.

That being said, I just finished the book. It is not a work of great literary acumen, it’s an airport book. Better than average but nothing really worth too much delving into. Since most people are familiar with the movie Die Hard I’ll spare a long winded synopsis and just compress it to a sentence. Joseph Leland, a former detective and current law enforcement consultant, is visiting his daughter in Los Angeles for her company’s Christmas party when a group of terrorists take over the building; Leland who with his professional training decides to fight back as it becomes apparent that the terrorists are not asking for ransom.

That is essentially the plot of the book/movie. Normally movies adapted from books are weaker than the book. Here, the changes made are improvements across the board. This is because every change that the screenwriters and producers made for the movie separate it from being a generic action story (keep in mind that Die Hard was completely original for its time).

Our hero, Joseph Leland, is a professional security consultant…think Wesley Snipes in Passenger 57. While Leland might be older his job is to fight against terrorist organizations. John McClain, is a normal police detective who was just caught up in the situation. It makes a considerable difference as Die Hard gets you to identify with the main character.

Our villain in the book, Anton Gruber, has taken over the Klaxon Oil building because he is an East German Socialist trying to strike against capitalism. This makes him idealistic and with a purpose greater than him. The issue here is that while his motive is made perfectly clear he is also a sociopath who enjoys shooting his hostages. It’s a bit too over the top. Also his objective appears to be breaching the safe so he can throw the money in it into the street which the corporation apparently wouldn’t have insured. To do this he takes an awful lot of time, equipment, and personnel. In fact, it’s too much as a simple off hours burglary would suffice.

Hans Gruber from the movie, only appears to have this motive. His real motive is to steal the bearer bonds from the building, he is a thief. Removing the sociopathic tendencies from the character works better because he is more likeable but at the same time he comes across as more dangerous. We want McClain to beat him but we aren’t repulsed by the villain either.

Another aspect of the movie that is superior is McClain’s relation to the officials outside the building. The movie did an excellent job of establishing that the LAPD command were by-the-book and how Gruber’s knowledge of that book led to the standoff. It also worked better because McClain was at odds specifically because he was an X factor the book didn’t anticipate. In the novel, Leland wrote the book. He could anticipate the Official response but he does nothing with it. The terrorists, while heavily equipped, are given no explanation other than their firepower as to how they hold off the police. The hostages aren’t exactly used as shields and only the possibility of that seems to exist.

The role of the media in the novel acts as a deus ex machina conveniently filling plot holes where necessary. The movie again wins, with it’s criticism of the media going too far (interviewing the McClain children for example).

Where the novel does possess an advantage is in the anguish of Leland as the night goes on. We see the physical damage in the movie, but the Thorp does a good job explaing the psychological aspect of Leland’s struggle. He is tired, hurt, and afraid. We don’t see the fear or self-doubt in McClain.

At first I didn’t like the way the book made out Klaxon oil to be an exploitative company whose money is being made selling guns to Chile. Yet upon further rumination it makes more sense. The more Leland kills the terrorists the more the hero/villain line gets blurry. Is Leland defending innocent people or is he defending a ruthless corporation? Even he doubts whether the motive of Gruber is bad. It would have worked so much better if Gruber wasn’t portrayed as psychotic, so it’s too bad because that would have made things a great deal more interesting.

Technorati Tags: die hard, thorp, movie adaptations