Question Time (Random Thoughts)

It’s Dimbleby night. I have wasted an hour watching QT. I heard scarcely anything intelligent. Perhaps I am to blame. Over the last decade I have moved so far towards the libertarian end of the spectrum that arguments between politicians as to whether Labour or the Tories have done or would do most for the NHS in Wales leave me less than cold. Putting politicians in charge of heath care has been a disaster and will continue to be so – likewise in the case of education.

The audience is ill-informed, though some show the right prejudices. Suppose we were discussing groceries or holidays. How many would stand for government virtual monopolies?

Politicians think that if they and their mates were in charge everything would be hunky-dory. Some say that health and education are too important to be left to the market. More important than food?

The government stepped into education at a time when almost every Briton was literate. The NHS was founded at a time when very many Britons paid modest subscriptions to insure themselves against injury and disease. Admittedly, this was at a time when healthcare was much less expensive. Government has been responsible for most of the increase in cost. AND we are much richer than we were in 1946. With lower taxes enabling entrepreneurs to create wealth and jobs, we would be richer still. So, governments impoverish us and they still can’t get the schools and hospitals right, even with endless expensive tinkering.

Would that they had been less ambitious, perhaps by paying the premiums for the poorest to competing private insurance companies. Competing doctors and hospitals would have helped to keep the costs down. Even a modest system like this would probably have morphed into something huge. Bureaucracies are fiercely self-protective and self-aggrandising.

I dream of a corporation setting up a mini-state and selling parcels of property to all and sundry. It would have a savagely limited constitution. Yeah, yeah, I know. I am proposing a blueprint, having railed so often against blueprints. It could happen, though. This statelet would grow in prosperity. Other states would have to compete – by deregulating. The world would be transformed – in my dreams! Some natural resources would be nice; but some relatively successful political units have next to nothing in the way of mineral deposits, oil, land, forests etc. Hong Kong doesn’t even have guano. What does Switzerland have apart from hydro-electric power? People are the most valuable resource of all: creative, energetic people.

A thousand billionaires could do it. There are surely enough of them.

Being

I have been watching David Bentley Hart again. It’s not easy. His vocabulary is at least 10% bigger than mine – and he could write a book on every word in his which is not in mine. He almost personifies erudition – and he knows it. He is not intellectually modest. He reminds me of Cassius Clay. This is why watching him is such a wonderful spectator sport. He is the Brian Lara of philosophers: a bowler who attempts to take his wicket is crushed. Witness the hapless Terry Sanderson, featured in an earlier post.

He has written a book (I have not read it yet): The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness & Bliss.

In his talk about it he says that I “should get out more”. I am, I confess, one of those who have never been astonished by the fact of existence. I have, it is true, parroted the mystery of “why there is something rather than nothing”. However, “existential surprise” is not my constant companion, my constant state of mind – so much the worse for me. But, thank you, David. It is truly astonishing that the universe exists. It is a miracle.

Water-into-wine and the raising of Lazarus are second order miracles – the very existence of water, of Lazarus’ body (only slightly less miraculous before his resurrection than after): these are miracles of the first order. Is it fanciful to say that the reactivity of carbon, only in the range 0^OC to 100 ^OC (when water is liquid), is a second order miracle?

Being, Consciousness and Bliss

Politics and Morality

Most political arguments boil down to morality. Arthur Brooks (may his sins be forgiven) recounts a family dinner at which he had made an argument for liberty and free markets, demonstrating that both theory and historical observation proved (inescapably) that free markets promote the wellbeing of the poor to a degree that no other economic system has ever even approached. His sister-in-law recounted a newspaper article which mentioned a little girl who lived with her mother in a car. The argument was over. People respond to this kind of ‘moral’ appeal.

What is the essence of free market thinking? What are the principles upon which it is based?

Private Property.

The Rule of Law.

Equality of all before the Law.

Minimal State Interference.

The concept of equality of outcome is nowhere. Free Marketeers regard the very idea as absurd. We believe in it as little as we believe in unicorns. Firstly, because it is manifestly impossible. Secondly, because almost any policy designed even to approximate to it will (of necessity) involve injustice. You can mandate equality of height only by violating equality of toes.

‘Income equality’ is all the rage these days. Bad books are written advocating policies to advance it.

Good laws are those which encourage good behaviour, which reward the following:

Honesty.

Industry.

Self-responsibility.

In Britain today we read daily accounts of people living on benefits of many thousands of pounds per annum, money which is looted from those who do work. This does not encourage industry and self-responsibility AND it involves the unjust expropriation of the industrious and self-responsible.

For a democracy to work we need a moral electorate. The American Founders knew this very well. De Tocqueville praised American democracy; but he feared that it would be corrupted by electorates who voted themselves ever-increasing benefits. Tragically, his fears have been vindicated – not only in the US but in all Western countries. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the decline of Christianity has contributed massively to this baleful outcome.

The United States is overwhelmingly the most Christian of the Western nations. Americans also happen to be the most generous people in the world when it comes to charitable giving (both domestically and internationally). Religious Americans are the most generous of all.

An economic system which rewards honesty, creativity, hard work and self-responsibility is self-evidently superior to one which does not. Arthur Brooks (paraphrased) again: Happiness proceeds from earned success.

Free markets produce wealth in abundance; no other system comes close. Ever since the middle of the 18^th Century, we have seen this to be true. From about 1750 to about 1950 the wealth of the West grew at an astonishing rate. Since the mid-twentieth Century, welfare states have proliferated and grown and the upward trend of wealth creation has faltered (at least in the West). Christianity has declined during the same period. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Am I preaching ‘the prosperity gospel’? No, devout Christians may be uninterested in acquiring great wealth. However, it is indubitably the case that the cultural phenomena of Science and Capitalism only ever developed in the Christian West. Alas, politicised Science and Welfareism gain ground apace.

Secular Progress

I have been watching David Bentley Hart debating Terry Sanderson, a member of The National Secular Society. Hart is always worth watching. His mental prowess is astonishing, His learning is prodigious and his ‘take no prisoners’ attitude is invigorating.

All Christians must and do sorrowfully deplore wicked acts perpetrated by Christians in the past and in the present, most particularly when these acts have been ‘justified’ by reference to Scripture. Nevertheless, a fair examination of the historical record must conclude that the moral influence of Christianity has been, on balance, good. Christianity’s insistence on the intrinsic value of every human life makes it difficult (if not impossible) to justify gratuitous cruelty and rapacity. The atheist Ayn Rand asserts that every man is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others. I absolutely agree. But what is the source of this belief? It is very difficult to find candidates other than Christianity. Christ’s second commandment that we love our neighbours as ourselves is the only credible origin of ‘human rights’.

Professors of Christianity have a theological basis for human rights. The pagans do not (slavery and crucifixion); Muslims do not (slavery, persecution of unbelievers and the subjugation of women); modern ‘ideologies’ like Communism and Nazism do not (slavery, genocide etc, etc). Insofar as we have a background belief in human rights at all, we owe it to Christianity. And as Christianity declines as a cultural phenomenon, we can expect secular professions of human rights to be an increasingly flimsy protection. Indeed, we see this already.

In 2013 there were over 180,000 abortions in Britain alone, the vast majority of which were carried out without any medical justification at all. In a more morally robust age abortion was a sin and a crime for which there were NO justifications at all: not medical, nor on the grounds of rape or incest. Human rights (the right to Life itself) have not protected millions of babies from being slaughtered. As for ‘doctor assisted suicide’, the prognostications grow worse and worse.

In the debate Sanderson alleges that modern societies have grown ‘kinder’ and that our welfare states are the product of… Actually, I don’t think he completed this thought coherently.

How a materialist can, with a straight face, maintain that Evolution (which explains everything) has brought about a gentler society defeats me.

During the ancien regime aristocrats were exempt from taxation. The poor and middle classes bore the entire burden. By being cosy with the government you got immense privileges. Does this not smack of corruption?

In Britain today government employees are more highly paid than their equivalents in the private sector. They are virtually unsackable. When they retire, they get inflation-proof pensions. Corruption?

David Bentley Hart in Debate

How do you argue with this?

Me: Islam makes people do bad things. People do bad things and then justify the bad things by appeal to Islam. Examples proliferate by the hour: Boko Haram, IS, Hamas, Hezbollah, The Iranian Islamic Republic, Murder of journalists in Paris. Islam is a bad ideology. Since 9/11 there have been upwards of 24,000 Islamist attacks.

Him: But Christians have done bad things in the past, the Inquisition and the Crusades (and clerical child abuse). Duh?

Me: I am against Nazi ideology: it led to the holocaust.

Him: But Christians have done bad things in the past, the Inquisition and the Crusades (and clerical child abuse). Duh?

Me: I am against Communism: it led to the murder of tens/hundreds of millions.

Him: But Christians have done bad things in the past, the Inquisition and the Crusades (and clerical child abuse). Duh?

Me: You are a Christian?

Him: Yes.

Me: So you are in favour of the Inquisition and the Crusades (and clerical child abuse)?

Him: Obviously not.

Me: But these evils were perpetrated by Christians.

What he does not say: Christianity does not sanction violence and abuse; those who claim it does are distorting Christian teaching.

His position is incoherent. It boils down to this: No ideology can be criticised because all ideologies are imperfect. Nazism cannot be criticised because democrats are not perfect. Aztec human sacrifice cannot be condemned because Shintoism was violent. Pol Pot was a murdering bastard – but Pinochet killed a lot of Chileans. Islam is an intolerant violent ideology – but Christians had the Inquisition and did bad things during the Crusades (and some priests have been paedophiles). There is not even the pretence of logic. There is not even a name for this fallacy; it is so self-evidently fallacious. Henceforth we shall call it the ‘total bollocks fallacy’. TBF is also evident in the politico-economic realm. If I point out that Socialism depends upon coercion and violence (self-evidently true), TBF refutes me by saying that some ‘entrepreneurs’ got rich by getting into bed with governments – puhleeze!

People do bad things. Only Christianity has a satisfactory explanation – Original Sin. I want to be allowed to say that some ideologies promote bad behaviour. TBF says, ‘No, every ideology is defective’. Apparently, this means that no comparison is allowed. I am not allowed even to think about comparisons.

He is a cradle Catholic – studied for the priesthood. I am a late convert; I want every human being to be a Catholic. He doesn’t. Wow! All Socialists want universal Socialism. All Muslims want universal Islam. With friends like him…

To return to my original assertion: Islam is a bad ideology because it leads to evil actions. Defenders of Islam, naturally, wish to say that Islam does not justify evil actions. But it does!

We are lucky to have, on the Christian side, Robert Spencer, David Wood, Jay Smith and others who know the Islamic texts very well. One of the things they point out is that Islamic texts are x% theology and y% condemnation of kaffirs, unbelievers, us. Y is a lot bigger than X.

What do Islam and Catholicism have in common? Some important stuff: monotheism, for example. Catholics surely should be allowed to maintain that Catholicism is superior. Muslims do maintain that Islam is superior. My friend happily maintains that theism is superior to materialism.

Evil Capitalists

Everywhere you look you find people denouncing Capitalism. Some do it on the grounds that it is allegedly full of ‘contradictions’ which cause booms and busts. It is difficult to be polite about their intelligence. Let’s be kind and blame their education – their miseducation. Ever since Hayek we have known what causes booms and busts. He and the other Austrians spell it out very clearly.

What follows is my summary of the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle.

When governments manipulate credit with a view to stimulating economic activity, it works for a while because investors receive a misleading signal: money is cheap; we can confidently invest in long term projects. They borrow.

If money were cheap because consumers are consuming less and saving more, this would be OK. But consumers are getting the same misleading signal. They borrow. They buy champagne and caviar and houses and holidays with the cheap money. These goodies suck resources from the economy: labour, energy and raw materials. So consumers and investors are competing for the same resources. Economics is about scarce resources.

Investment requires savings – or should. If I save I can invest in your enterprise. I can’t indulge my lust for lollipops and put the same money into a bank which will advance you what you need to build your workshop. Cheap money conjured out of thin air by governments and the banking system is like the froth on your pint; it is based upon a lie – the lie that we can get rich by doing arithmetic.

Some must save before anyone can invest.

If our money were sound… Start again. When our money was sound, when it was based on precious metals (precious because we agreed to compute the value of everything in terms of gold and silver), saved money could be converted (by mixing in creativity and hard work) into products which were useful and desirable. In less than 300 years our ability to create products (wealth) spiralled upwards and upwards in the most virtuous economic circle the world had ever enjoyed. Poor people drove cars! The petrol for these cars became cheaper and cheaper – thanks to men like Rockefeller. Cars themselves became cheaper – thanks to men like Ford. It was a miracle! We didn’t understand what was going on. It was too new for us to get our heads around. Dyspeptics like Marx told themselves and the rest of us that all this unprecedented prosperity was based on the exploitation of workers – the same workers whose lives (in material terms) were getting better by the decade. Incidentally, a decade was the time it took for the price of kerosene (or paraffin) to be cut by 90% – thanks to John D Rockefeller. We did not give Rockefeller and Ford their due. The Devil bade us listen to Marx. We did and then to Keynes.

The meteoric rise of western economies has slowed and occasionally flat lined, thanks to governments too much influenced by Marx and the baleful JM Keynes. Fortunately, the economies of India and China and much of southeast Asia have adopted increasingly free markets. As a result, abject poverty has declined since 1970 by EIGHTY PER CENT. When did you ever hear a leftist rejoice in this statistic – when? What do they actually want – an end to poverty or an end to wealth? It’s a good question. They advise us to sabotage our industries by adopting inefficient technologies and abandoning efficient technologies. When wealth is reduced, who suffers most, those who have a lot or those who don’t?

Poverty is bad. Wealth is good. The cure for poverty is wealth – and we know how wealth is created. The obvious analogy is sickness and health. Doctors and other health professionals strive to promote health and reduce sickness. Do they ever suggest that health/sickness is a zero sum game, that to reduce the sickness of A we should reduce the health of B?

Do you have any leftist/socialist friends? Ask them what they want. Listen carefully. Do they mention increased well-being for the poor; or do they launch into demands for greater equality? I’d love to hear your feedback. Wilkinson and Pickett and Thomas Picketty denounce inequality of income. They have no interest in reducing poverty. Read their books. Those who applaud them are likewise uninterested in creating wealth, the only antidote to poverty.

And another thing…

These dimwits hate capitalism and capitalists – their myopic picture of capitalism, derived apparently from the game Monopoly. This absurd game can bankrupt me if I land on Park Lane and you have built two hotels on it. Please explain how this in any way corresponds to the real world. I always found it unutterably boring – and now I know why.

They have one picture of capitalists – fat men with waistcoats and white moustaches. They meet real capitalists every day of their lives – but fail to identify them as capitalists. Their own butcher, for example (who may or may not be a nice man), qualifies as a capitalist because he has used his resources (a legacy or savings or borrowings) to create wealth in his community, at the same time providing work for an apprentice or two. Wicked capitalist! Excuse me? The baker and the candlestick maker do not (per se) get rich at the expense of others. They get rich(ish) by getting up at 5:00 am – as do the newsagent, the taxi driver and the takeaway owner. I have been well served by all the latter in the last week. I do not resent their success (such as it is) for one second.

You may not have the nous or the energy to be an entrepreneur. Perhaps you are a saint, the noblest metier of all. Do not presume (whoever or whatever you are) to sneer at those whose efforts and sacrifices give us practically all the material benefits we enjoy. If they benefit from their efforts and sacrifices – get down on your knees and give thanks that (even in this fallen world) attention to our own needs and wants can actually benefit our neighbours.

Adam Smith and JD Rockefeller are not likely to be granted canonisation any day soon. I dream of a pope who will create another category of super blessed – the material blessers of humanity. I am sorry to say that it ain’t going to be the current Holy Father.

Judicial Murder

By way of introduction:
It is interesting to note that opponents of abortion (the faction that has all the arguments on its side) are not always dogmatic opponents of capital punishment. There are cogent arguments on both sides in this debate – not least is the argument that capital punishment is irrevocable and that mistakes can be and have been made.
Still by way of introduction:
What should be the blogger’s rule when reporting an argument? First, be accurate – do not misrepresent your opponent’s position. Second, if your opponent admits defeat, do not gloat.

In the course of a long, enjoyable and good natured conversation the other night, the subject of capital punishment came up. My interlocutor opined that when the state takes a life, it is as much murder as when an individual kills. We agreed that an individual commits no murder when he kills in self-defence. We even agreed that a lowly soldier, compelled to fight by his superiors, is not a common murderer.

What, I wanted to know, is the alternative? Should there be no sanction against murder? Obviously not, we agreed. Deprivation of liberty (aka imprisonment)? Yes, apparently.

But, since we are talking principle here, why, since kidnapping by an individual is agreed to be criminal, should kidnapping by the state be any more justified than killing by the state? For sure, killing is more final and mistakes are possible. Nevertheless, it seems to me, in principle, ‘judicial kidnapping’ cannot be any more or less acceptable than ‘judicial murder’.

Is it true that anything which is verboten to the individual is verboten to the state? If so, taxation should be disallowed – and so should imprisonment. But, we need armies and courts and police forces! So, we need taxation. We cannot allow murderers to roam free. So, we need imprisonment and perhaps executions. The argument from finality and mistakes still stands. However, the argument which equates ‘judicial murder’ with ‘individual murder’ is exposed as being without principle.

A man accused of murder is allowed to defend himself on many grounds. It was an accident. It was self-defence. I was not in my right mind. The ‘judicial murder’ theorists allow society no defence whatsoever.

The argument from squeamishness is powerful. Could you throw the switch, pull the lever, shout ‘Fire’? There are circumstances in which I could. It is clearly the case that some murders are worse than others – just as some rapes are worse than others, though some feminists deny the latter. Could you sever a baby’s spinal cord as it emerges from the birth canal, or even minutes later? Could you vacuum it out from the safety of the womb? The executioner can claim that the murderer deserved his fate. The abortionist can make no such claim.

I have always believed that proponents of abortion are sentimental. The murder of a happy healthy child, in daylight, would revolt any and all of them. Abortion usually takes place in the dark. Even most pro-abortionists agree that Kermit Gosnell was egregiously evil. He is serving time. I could throw the switch on him.

Society and the State:

Careful readers will have noticed that I have used ‘society’ and ‘the state’ in this posting and that I have not distinguished between them. This makes me very uncomfortable. The best argument for the state’s existence is ‘the social contract’. It is not a very good one. Show me my signature on this august document!

Earnest defenders of capitalism (or the free market) are nearly always earnest defenders of ‘the rule of law’. Whence the rule of law? In England and the USA (as well as the other Anglophone nations) we have the sublime tradition of Common Law. Most of us never think about it. Daniel Hannan is eloquent in his praise of it. In our tradition, the ‘law of the land' is not the king’s law. It emerges organically from below – from cases not from statutes. Statute law also exists; and we have Parliament to protect us from its excesses – sometimes.

Obviously, Terry Wogan is the greatest living Irishman (with Gerard Casey a close second) – may their sins be forgiven. The greatest Irishman of all time was Edmund Burke, who attacked the French Revolution and defended the American one. He served as a Westminster MP (as a Whig) and is rightly regarded as the founder of modern conservatism. I am daringly going to summarise his philosophy as: Perfection is not possible; Improvement is.

Burke was an Anglican, though his mother was born a Catholic and his father converted. One of his most famous phrases was ‘the little platoons’ – To love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.

Loving the little platoons must make us fear and distrust the state. ‘The greater the state, the smaller the citizen’, says Dennis Prager and he is right. The state is a Moloch, which frequently devours the little platoons.

So, here am I, conflating society and the state. Shame on me! The state very imperfectly represents society. This is a melancholy truth. Life is full of melancholy truths.

Libertarians (some call themselves anarcho-capitalists) have creative ideas about how law can exist without the state. Gerard Casey is an excellent exemplar. But we are not there yet.

I have gone on too long. God bless!