It’s been a hundred and fifty years since Darwin first presented his thesis. Charles Johnson has some thoughts. I may have some as well, later. Or not.
[A minute or so later]
Well, actually, I do now, in light of Lileks’ comments this morning, in which he pointed out the simplistic, stilted views of many across the political spectrum. I’ll repeat:
Really, if one wants to cling, bitterly, to the notion that a believe [sic] in lower taxes and strong foreign policy and greater individual freedom re: speech and property automatically translates to a crimpled, reductive, censorious view of pop culture, go right ahead.
Similarly, if one wants to cling, bitterly, to the notion that a concern about Islamism, and an inability to realize what an evil stupid fascist criminal George Bush is translates to a belief that the world was created by Jehovah six thousand some years ago, complete with dinosaur bones, go right ahead.
Before 911, Charles Johnson was a Democrat, and a jazz musician. Almost seven years ago, he got mugged by reality. That, combined with some scary things that were happening at a mosque near his home in Culver City resulted in a change in emphasis at his web site. Now many of the left wingnuts who read LGF stupidly assume that he’s a “right” wingnut. Yet here he is, defending science from places like the Discovery Institute, on a semi-daily basis.
I get the same idiotic treatment, much of the time. I’ve often had discussions on Usenet whereupon, when I argue that maybe it wasn’t necessarily a bad idea to remove Saddam Hussein’s boot from the neck of the Iraqi people, and that I don’t believe that George Bush personally planted the charges in the Twin Towers, I am told to go back to whatever holler I came from and play with my snakes, and am informed that my belief in a Christian God, and my lack of belief in evolution is just more evidence of my irredeemable stupidity, despite the fact neither religion or science had been on the discussion table.
I then take pleasure in informing them that I am an agnostic and for practical purposes an atheist, and that I am a firm believer in evolutionary theory, it being the best one available to explain the existing body of evidence. Whereupon, I am sometimes called a liar. Really. It’s projection, I think.
Same thing often happens here, in fact. I tell people that I’m not a Republican, and have never been, nor am I a conservative, and I’m accused of lying about my true beliefs and political affiliation.
C’est la vie. There’s no reasoning with some folks.
In any event, happy birthday to a controversial but powerful (as Dennett
[Late evening update]
Well, Iowahawk has the comment du jour:
I’m a dope-smoking atheist writer for a San Francisco lowbrow culture mag; I also enjoy seeing 7th century genocidal terrorist shitbags getting waterboarded. I really don’t see the contradiction.
As someone who generally has good things to say about Christian faith, a great argument against Creationism (from a believer’s point of view), is that to believe in creation theory you have to believe that God put all those dinosaur bones in the dirt, and carefully back-dated their carbon markings, solely in an attempt to deceive you / test your faith.
I once knew a girl who’s boyfriend asked one of his friends to try and hook up with her at a party just to see if she was the cheating type. I don’t think Christians would approve of that behavior, but creation theory implies God’s up to the exact same thing. That doesn’t seem to square with the Bible’s description of God’s personality.
Theists often us the ontological argument that because God is a perfect being then he must exist. If God did not exist then he would be imperfect, which he is not. Never mind the fact that this is a Cartesian circle of logic but one would have to assume that a perfect God would be a benevolent God as well. After all he went through he trouble making the Universe for us, our bodies, and our souls. Then, why would God go through all this trouble just to ultimately deceive us at such great lengths?
Generally, I feel that most Evolutionists are more accepting of God, the Church, and Religion. While it is generally the hard line Fundamentalists that produce the most noise in the debate. After all they even go to such lengths as out right lies about how Darwin recanted evolution on his death bed and accepted god.
I tell people that I’m not a Republican, and have never been, nor am I a conservative, and I’m accused of lying about my true beliefs and political affiliation.
You want to say that you’re not a conservative because you believe in evolution and you don’t believe in God? And, to take the other foil that you trot out, because you want to end the war on drugs? Well okay, you’re not 100% conservative. Just 90%.
As for being a Republican or a Democrat, that of course has two meanings, voter registration and political views. You’ve explained why you’re not a registered Republican — because you don’t want anyone to accuse you of being one. There is no reason to doubt that account. But as for political views, again, 90%.
And no, you’re not lying to anyone other than yourself.
I will also point out that I’ve only voted Republican once in my life.
So, I’ve never registered Republican, I essentially never vote Republican, yet, in your (apparent lack of) mind, I’m still a Republican.
Also, FWIW, I don’t believe that homosexuality is a sin. Nor am I opposed to pornography.
But I’m “conservative.”
Give it up. You’re just making yourself look more like an idiot than usual.
I will also point out that I’ve only voted Republican once in my life.
But on some other self-documented occasions, you stayed home and said that you wanted the Republican to win.
I essentially never vote Republican, yet, in your (apparent lack of) mind, I’m still a Republican.
Your views are 90% Republican regardless of who you don’t vote for.
I don’t believe that homosexuality is a sin.
Undoubtedly you don’t think that mixed marriage is a sin either. Probably you support the 19th Amendment too. However, the line between liberals and conservatives has moved past all three of these yes-no questions. That is, gay rights is still an issue, but there is a little more to it than whether gays will all burn in hell.
But I’m “conservative.”
No, just 90%.
Your views are 90% Republican regardless of who you don’t vote for.
Jim, I will simply say briefly, but accurately, that you are entirely full of shit. You also, unwittingly, make the point of my post about the idiocy of people like you, quite graphically. Do you get a thrill out of being this site’s prime ass hat?
I was thrilled to see the Republicans lose in 2006. They fully deserved to. It was an emotion tempered only by the fact that the Democrats won, which was a national tragedy.
I just wish Jim would admit he’s a Communist of the Stalin type. All Jim wants to do is see anyone, who disagrees with him on any subject, hauled off to the gulags. What say you, comrade, will you finally admit the truth, Jim?
I just wish Jim would admit he’s a Communist
No, Leland, I cannot agree with the Communists. A Communist would say that waterboarding isn’t torture.
It was an emotion tempered only by the fact that the Democrats won, which was a national tragedy.
I should add that, based on the fact that the approval ratings of the Congress are at an all-time low, and lower than those of George Bush, the American people seem to agree with me. But they’ll still reelect their own Congressman.
A Communist would say that waterboarding isn’t torture.
OK, so you’re only 90% communist.
OK, so you’re only 90% communist.
No, actually I’m 0% Communist. I told you what I was: A July 4th American. And as you have said, you’re a September 11th American.
You’re at least as much of a communist as I am a Republican. Or a conservative.
It seems clear that arguing by attempting to slap labels on each other is futile and ineffective. That’s because these labels don’t have clear and universally accepted definitions. Everyone assumes that “conservative” or “Republican” or “liberal” or “Democrat” stands for a long list of specific beliefs and attitudes, but ask a dozen people what those specifics are and you’ll get a dozen different lists.
This isn’t just limited to overtly political labels — as anyone who has been denounced as “inauthentically black” or “not a real feminist” can tell you.
What Rand was originally trying to say, I think, is that this sort of reasoning is invalid:
1. You just said you believe in low taxes and strong foreign policy.
2. I recognize those as being items on my mental list of What Republicans Believe. Therefore, you must be a Republican.
3. That means you believe everything else on that list.
4. Belief that the Earth is only six thousand years old is another of those items, so you must believe that too.
5. You are an ignorant, anti-science religious fanatic!
Of course, the same sort of reasoning is just as invalid when it’s used to get from “You think evolution is valid” to “You support abortion and gay marriage.”
Short version of all this: Stereotypes don’t work, and relying on them makes you look foolish.
Jim, if Rand is 90% Republican, then you should be able to name the top 10 issues facing the nation this November where Republicans and Democrats disagree on the nature of or solution to the problem, summarize the Republican and Democratic points of view, and then show that Rand agrees with the Republicans on 9 of them.
Can you? If not, please STFU. Wild theories without a lick of evidence to back them up don’t belong on a site with at least a part-time devotion to an engineering view of reality, in which theory and perception don’t mean squat in the absence of hard data.
My boss (up until recently when I called him out on it) every single day referred to Republicans as “morons”, and blasted Bush for being evil, stupid, a chimp, a robot, etc. He cannot, nor can any of the guys I work with, talk about political issues without bile and venom and ad hominem attacks against anyone who dares to disagree with them. Strangely they think they are on the side of compassion, caring and love. Yet they do not display it in their personal life.
I have a right-wing friend who is the same. Every day “liberals this, liberals that” I barely talk to him anymore, I have better things to do than listen to that.
I don’t know why people can’t talk about issues.
I don’t know why people have to pigeonhole others they disagree with, what does that have to do with their arguments?
To his credit my boss finally stopped the daily hate speech. I didn’t think he could. But he still goes on about how people he doesn’t like and are old and infirm really died and have been replaced by robots. Sometimes I think he means it.
“I don’t know why people have to pigeonhole others they disagree with, what does that have to do with their arguments?”
Because it’s easier. If you can label someone as a wingnut or a communist, you don’t have to actually listen to what they say, think about it, and possibly even realize that they might actually have some valid points to make.
Jim, if Rand is 90% Republican, then you should be able to name the top 10 issues facing the nation this November where Republicans and Democrats disagree on the nature of or solution to the problem, summarize the Republican and Democratic points of view, and then show that Rand agrees with the Republicans on 9 of them.
The issues in contention this November would start with taxes, health care, the Iraq war, the price of gas, illegal immigration, Supreme Court nominations, and global warming. There is no need to quiz me about Republican and Democratic points of view, since Rand has already said that he agrees with Fred Thompson and disagrees with Barack Obama on all of these issues and many others. Thompson was notably praised as the “only real conservative” who was a major Republican candidate for President.
Every day “liberals this, liberals that” I barely talk to him anymore, I have better things to do than listen to that.
Is he also adamant that he isn’t right-wing and that he’s against the blanket use of labels?
Thompson was notably praised as the “only real conservative” who was a major Republican candidate for President.
Yes, which is why he disagrees with many Republicans on many issues. And I know that I’m not going to get a libertarian, so Thompson was the best I was going to do. That doesn’t make me a conservative.
And I know that I’m not going to get a libertarian
Actually, on two of the major campaign issues of the year, the Iraq war and illegal immigration, you don’t even want one.
Well, all I can say is, welcome!
Welcome to the world of the conservative and the Christian.
Personally, I’m wide open to whatever way the world, life and human beings came into existence. I do believe that the moral part of us, the knowledge of right and wrong and the guilt we feel when we do wrong, is implanted and not of natural origin. It just isn’t natural. No amount of word-bending and idea-wrinkling can account for the fact that, as far back as we can go in history, we’ve always had a list of right and wrong that has remained relatively unchanged. Lying, stealing, murdering, coveting, etc etc. It’s a part of every society whose writings we can read. MOrality is the one thing that does NOT evolve, in any observable way. There was never a time when stealing was “sort of” wrong, gradually going from right to wrong. LIkewise for murder. You can argue about whether an act meets or does not meet a definition; you cannot argue that murder, by definition, has ever been anything but wrong.
As for the rest, the broad array of possibilities about the biblical language (myth, exaggeration, rhetorical flourish, literal statement) is too much for me to hang my hat on literal stories of the beginning of earth and life and men. I hope, in this life or the next, that I will someday know, but I doubt I”ll think it important when I finally do.
But welcome to our world, where leftist wackoes call you names and insult you and say they hope you die. Happens to us all the time. You can’t approach life intelligently and expect the left to approve of you. Their approval comes only when you toe the line on every issue.
There is no need to quiz me about Republican and Democratic points of view
Yes there is, because if you can’t forthrightly summarize those views, and demonstrate that Rand agrees with one side 9 out of 10 times, then you’re just bullshitting. You can’t just wave your hands airily and say “it’s obvious!” which is what you’re doing when you say crap like Rand has already said that he agrees with Fred Thompson and disagrees with Barack Obama on all of these issues and many others. Give me a break. I am sure that Rand agrees or disagrees with certain propositions that may or may not have been stated by Thompson and Obama. The notion that he agrees or disagrees with every sentence one or the other person says is ludicrous. He’s not a mindless robot.
I think you’re just bullshitting. That’s why you are avoiding stating the two points of view, and showing how Rand agrees with one or the other. I don’t think you can, and you know it, and you also know that as soon as you try the poverty of your logic will become apparent, and you’ll look like an ass.
Disagree? Make your case, forthrightly and with facts. Stop making airy general totally unproveable statements and get down to specifics.
Yes there is, because if you can’t forthrightly summarize those views, and demonstrate that Rand agrees with one side 9 out of 10 times, then you’re just bullshitting.
I listed 7 of the major issues of the election campaign this year, including at least the top four. Rand openly says that agrees with Thompson, the conservative Republican, on all of them, and disagrees with Barack Obama, the liberal Democrat, on all of them. The demonstration is right there in front of you.
Why are you demanding that I spell out the obvious? Obama wants the US to get out of Iraq. Thompson, McCain, and Simberg don’t. Obama wants universal health care. Thompson, McCain, and Simberg don’t. Thompson, McCain, and Simberg want to extend or amplify the Bush tax cuts. Obama doesn’t. Obama supports “shamnesty”. Thompson and Simberg are against it, and McCain has taken both sides. Etc.
It’s implausible that you don’t already know all of this. You’re just trying to quiz people to brush away the point.
Jim Harris–
quote him then. If it’s so obvious, quote him.
Take five goddamn minutes to cut and paste.
Or admit you are a troll and shut the hell up.
I myself am more libertarian than conservative. Because we have a two party system, I have to vote for the lesser of two evils, from my point of few. Both of our candidates are in favor of more intrusive government. But I have to vote for one–and not voting is effectively the same as voting. But it doesn’t mean that I will agree even most of the time with the one I vote for.
If it’s so obvious, quote him.
“Pejman has a long endorsement of Fred Thompson. I agree with most of it. If I were a Republican, he’d get my vote.”
http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/010243.html
Good for you, Jim! Except you fail, because he says he won’t vote for Thompson.
Now make a list backed by quotes and you’ll be worth reading.
There’s no chance that Jim will take the trouble to be honest; liars never do. Any real list of issues would include all the social-conservative positions that Rand, like other libertarians, don’t agree with, which would push his overall conservative quotient below 50%.
Now make a list backed by quotes and you’ll be worth reading.
I’m having trouble imagining anything that could make Jim Harris worth reading. It’s certainly never happened in the history of this blog.
Please stop feeding the troll, folks.
Well, maybe Jim can’t be bothered, but I’ll make a list for myself.
Things I support:
LEGISLATIVELY enacted gay marriage
RESTRICTIONS on abortion (much more so than now)
teaching evolution in schools
giving money to deserving poor people
Things I oppose:
Constitutional amendments forbidding gay marriage
Gay marriage legalized through judicial fiat
Making abortion illegal
forbidding the teaching of creation in private schools
welfare
I imagine Simberg’s list is similar.
I do have to say that I find it more than a little amusing that Jim Harris attempts to prove that I’m really a Republican by quoting me saying that I won’t be voting for Fred Thompson because I’m not a Republican.
I would find it really interesting to read Rand’s list, not because I want to criticize or categorize you, Rand, but because I read your writings&rantings every day and yet I still am not sure of what you what you would say if you made a list.
–on a different topic–
I’m still puzzled by the libertarian position on legislatively enacted rights vs getting rights through judicial fiat. Why would a libertarian prefer that an individual’s rights depend on majority support? We wouldn’t want free speech to depend on majority support, so why gay marriage or abortion? Expanding rights through judicial fiat *might* just mean that a judge interpreted a law more fairly than than the biased or bigoted but generally good decent people who [voted for the politicians who] passed the law in the first place.
A well known problem with democracies is that the rights of the minority can be trampled, and since democracy is “the worst system except for all the alternatives”, having relatively unbiased judicial review seems like a helpful addition if not taken to dictatorial extremes. Having judges who only expand rights (including gun ownership rights) seems like a good way to avoid those dictatorial extremes and edge a little closer to the libertarian ideal.
(Gabrial, my comment isn’t necessarily directed at you – I’m referring to a thread from a few days ago with Rand.)
Robert, my asnwer as far as gay marriage goes is that marriage, understood between a man and a woman, predates our Constitution by something like 7000 years.
There are some really big cultural questions that are kind of just “because”. For example, why monogamy and not polygamy? What about incest between consenting adults? Why are children raised by their families and not in giant state orphanages? Things of that sort. Big questions that define our culture, and other cultures may answer them differently.
It is OUR culture. If a significant majority of the citizenry thinks that the conept of marriage needs a radical overhaul, I may agree or disagree, but it’s a little different when a handful of judges decides for everyone.
I am VERY concerned with judicial overreach. The Supreme Court is not given supremacy over our laws by the Constitution–this is clear in the text and in the writings of the Founding Fathers. We have CEDED to them, for lack of thinking of anything better to do.
A Supreme Court in Nevada a while ago ordered the legislature to pass the governor’s budget, in clear violation of separation of powers–by ruling that the PREAMBLE to the State constitution overrode an AMENDMENT. Judges should not be able to throw out constitutional amendments they don’t like or usurp the powers of the other two branches.
I’m a dope-smoking atheist writer for a San Francisco lowbrow culture mag; I also enjoy seeing 7th century genocidal terrorist shitbags getting waterboarded.
I really don’t see the contradiction.
Gabriel, it just doesn’t seem libertarian (and perhaps you aren’t one – no offense!) to worry about “OUR” culture — that’s what liberals and collectivists (like me!) do.
Yes, I would expect libertarians to be in favor of legalized consensual polygamy (what business is it of the government)? Same for incest between consenting adults. As for children, once again, why should government intrude, particularly if the children aren’t being hurt?
Our laws set up a freer society than most, but I would think (and please correct me if I’m wrong) that a libertarian would value an expansion of rights over the details of whether that expansion came from a court or a legislature. I thought libertarians had the goal of limiting government intrusiveness. If a legislature wants to intrude, and a court wants keep government from intruding, I don’t understand why a libertarian would favor the legislature.
Rand recently pointed out to me that our rights our ultimately backed by our guns. That’s the clearest sign to me that to libertarians, and to Rand, whatever category you put him in, rights are more important than the particular process that creates those rights.
Just to clarify: I didn’t mean incest with children! I was saying that libertarians wouldn’t want the government to intrude on the choice to have orphans live in an orphanage versus raising them with their surviving family.
Jim Harris wrote:
> I told you what I was: A July 4th American.
A July 4th American? Is that like a Christmas-and-Easter Christian?
At least you picked a good time of year to be American for a day.
Mike
Well, Robert, maybe I’m just not a good libertarian. But here goes.
Our culture preexisted our government. American culture is the result of millions of more-or-less free choices made every day by individuals. Social engineering against the will of most people is no business of government.
Legislatures and governors are accountable in ways that judges are not. In addition, the judicial branch has little power to enforce its decrees directly. When the judges overreach, eventually we will stop listening to them, and this will have terrible consequences–we will start settling things in other ways. Remember Bush v. Gore. In Africa that kind of thing ends with the soldiers loyal to the rival candidates shooting things out.
Libertarianism is not about everybody doing whatever the hell they want whenever. It’s about leaving people to make their own decisions, because in most cases ordinary people will be more effective and less intrusive on the rights of others.
If there was the same sort of terrible social disapproval directed against unwed mothers today that there used to be, I would be all right with that. If the government put unwed mothers in jail, I would not.
Gabriel, what you call “social engineering”, I call freedom from government.
Uh oh.
Rand, I think reading your blog is turning me into a libertarian! Thanks a whole lot. First I learn what “elephant felching” means, and now this. Oy.
Robert, it depends on what you are talking about, doesn’t it?
Sometimes the government should intrude–the massive Southern conspiracy to ignore the civil rights of black people is a case in point. And sometimes it shouldn’t. And sometimes the method of the intrusion is just as important as the fact of the intrusion.
“And sometimes the method of the intrusion is just as important as the fact of the intrusion.”
I wish more people would see this crucial point (although many here probably do), “how” can be so much more important than “what”.
Pardon me, I have not been here before. The coversation starts with God and ends with government. Are you looking for physical proof of God? There is not any. Is there phyisical proof that God does not exist, no. Government exist’s , it must be God.
Having judges who only expand rights (including gun ownership rights) seems like a good way to avoid those dictatorial extremes and edge a little closer to the libertarian ideal.
The 9th amendment (and I will keep pounding that nail) suggests that judges shouldn’t be expanding rights since those rights are presumed to already exist. Instead they should force the government to prove the need for any law that restricts rights or be struck down.
Liberty of free citizen should be the presumption.
I’m still puzzled by the libertarian position on legislatively enacted rights vs getting rights through judicial fiat. Why would a libertarian prefer that an individual’s rights depend on majority support?
Robert, you are a victim of the left’s sneaky redefinition of the word “right” to include a “right” to demand something from others, as opposed to the good old classical liberal Hayekian (i.e. “libertarian”) right to be free of the demands of others.
It’s only the latter that the libertarian considers a right, meaning something that should be a bedrock principle of society, not subject to the whims of the majority. All such rights are negative, the absence of force from the majority compelling you to do this or that, and indeed they are often protected by judicial (i.e. nondemocratic) means.
Since the left’s “rights” to have things given to you by the majority (health care, jobs from which you can’t be fired, minimum wages, whatever legal benefits flow from having a state-sanctioned marriage, et cetera) are all things that can and do imply compulsion and restraint on the liberty of individuals, they are antithetical to what the libertarian considers true rights.
That means, to the extent these things should happen at all, they should happen only by a decision of the majority (and they should not happen even in this case to the extent they infringe on the true rights of the individual).
What Carl Pham said.
A right that someone else has to pay for is a violation of HIS rights.
I have the right to bear arms, but not to demand a free gun from the taxpayers. I have the right to a free press, but not to publish at taxpayer expense. Etc, etc.
To paraphrase Jefferson, does it pick someone’s pocket or break someone’s leg? If it does, it’s no right.
Doesn’t help with things like polygamy, consensual adult incest, or gay marriage, though.
Hey Jim, where’s your list backed by quotes?
Don’t have it? Well, your consolation prize is a troll hat.