RoR: Forum

Bill,

You've put a lot of work into your reply. I appreciate that, but personally I use principles to save time (and to save wear on my keyboard.) There are infinite facts in the universe, so there must be a reason why a specific subset is printed in a specific publication. The usual argument for printing statistics is to justify treating people not as individuals, but as instances of some sub-category. In reality, there are very few contexts in which it is appropriate to treat people as instances of a category instead of as individuals. And none of those contexts are in politics, or anywhere in philosophy. Thus I know - from principles - that any and every proposal to treat people differently on the basis of happenstances outside their control, such as where they were born and brought up, is a wrong. And there are concepts for the specific wrong of treating people as instances of collective categories instead of as individuals - collectivism - and for doing so on the basis of happenstance of heritage or ancestry or ethnic origin - racism.

I can't think of ANY non-racist reason for considering those specific statistics "interesting" or in any way relevant to the treatment of individuals. The fact that the two Mexican immigrant technicians mentioned at the start of my article were born in a country in which few individuals are schooled beyond the primary grades, tells me nothing about their character. The fact that they educated themselves to the point where they outperform university-trained chemists does tell me something important, interesting, relevant. The statistics don't.

Post 41

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 4:36am

Yeah- for goodness sake Reed! It's descriptive bloody statistics, it's climate data. From your casual indictments one is forced to choose between debasing the potency of the terms "collectivism" and "racism" or debasing he who perverts these damnations.

And Scott. Scott! Is Jason the only one doing a double take here or what? You want institutionalised ideology! You want philosophy nationalised? You want state enforced assimilation? Force a language on people? But these things are an anathema to capitalism! Liberty doesn't require, and cannot endure, statism to "rescue it." Good government is very much smaller than you have in mind, and it's up to we private individuals to spread and maintain the enlightenment and to pick up the tab for doing the job.

In this revolutionary duty we are constantly failing to even make a peep let alone set the agenda. It's a great disappointment to me.

(Edited by Rick Giles on 11/22, 4:41am)

Post 42

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 5:17am

There are a whole bunch of different types of people who subscribe to Navigator. I suspect a big chunk of subscribers are business people. Business people use statistics for marketing and development. Nothing racist about that. Speculation is easy, being right about it ain't so easy.

I'd have to see a clear and long line of racist agenda in Navigator or coming from TOC for me to accept there's anything negative associated with those statistics.

Post 43

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 5:28am

Jason:

"Of course ideas play a very important role. More importantly though, if our aim is to promote an individualist society we cannot start out with state indoctrination. Free market capitalism and limited government fosters an environment of responsibility and rational thought. It promotes and rewards individual productive action. Promoting a standard collective ideology is promoting collectivism and conformity which is in stark opposition to individualism."

Not all standardization is evil. Henry Ford's assembly line could never have worked--and in fact, it worked precisely because workers could be trained to do a relatively limited job, and they could be trained and replaced easily. Evil collectivism, or progress?

Similarly, all laws which seek to treat all individuals the same I guess are evil collectivism as well in your book?

Standardized tests infringe on individualism, so they shouldn't be used? But what if the number of persons to be tested and the time available make a standardized test the only option? Still evil collectivism?

Obviously, our first disagreement is that not all standardization or aggregation is evil collectivism.

Second, I dispute that the "free market of ideas" resulting in widespread adoption is correct. If we are going to have teeming masses of partially-educated people, I would rather live with a teeming mass of people who hold Objectivist ideals uncritically than a teeming mass of quasi-socialist Marxists mystics who hold their ideas on the same basis.

Is it ideal? No. Just like every Objectivist, I want the perfect Objectivst world. That aint happening any time soon, and it will never happen if we agree to have bad ideas aggressively taught in our schools (public and private) and combat them with...nothing.

I believe that every child should get as much schooling as possible, and at a minimum, until about 8th grade. I do not think public schools do anything very well, especially not in the last 10 years or so. I support private schools. I am also skeptical that you are going to end up with a more educated populace if you suddenly end all public schooling and tax subsidies to schooling. Uneducated parents do not see the value of schooling to begin with. They are not likely to educate their children, even if they could afford to do so. And by the time the child to old enough to really understand its value, the kid is too old. But this is another can of worms entirely.

Post 44

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 6:29am

Adam,

Thank you for the consciousness raising.

For some years now, I have had a plank in my political platform calling for the unification of Mexico and the United States. The southern border of Mexico would be easier to defend than is the southern border of Texas. A possible name for the new country would be the Federated States of America. Meanwhile, I hope we will work with President Fox to maximize the free flow of labor and property titles between our two countries.

There is a wonderful book pertinent to the discussion on this thread. It is called Ethnic America, and its author is Thomas Sowell.

Stephen

Post 45

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 6:45am

Rick

"In this revolutionary duty we are constantly failing to even make a peep let alone set the agenda. It's a great disappointment to me."

In this, you are absolutely correct. We are losing, and badly. We will never win with the current strategy.

How are we going to instill pro-capitalist, pro-democracy ideals in people who believe their opposites?

Somehow. Disconnect.

How are private citizens who support liberty to influence insular neighbors who share neither church, language, social group, employment?

Through the...somehow. Disconnect.

For goodness's sake, I'm not advocating indoctrination camps or the Hilter Youth. I'm saying that, if we are teaching something, and requiring something, let's require assimilation and let's teach ideas which support the direction we want to move in.

Ideas are too important to leave to whim, on the fanciful notion that an economically prosperous nation will automatically instill respect for capitalism. It doesn't and never has, so forget about it. A democractic nation will impress new Americans so they will learn to revere our COnstitution? Is not happening. Forget it.

Post 46

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 8:14am

Scott --

After that last post I'm not sure if you are capable of thinking in terms of principle or keeping a conversation on topic. Standardization of assembly lines has nothing to do with what we were discussing. Nor does standardized laws. Standardized and forcefully promoted state ideology is an entirely different animal and I really do hope you understand the vast differences involved in these entirely different topics which you frivolously and haphazardly toss together.

What on earth were you trying to prove with that line of argument? And is this the argument you put forward for promoting totalitarian indoctrination programs and forced education? That it makes you feel more comfortable if everyone else thinks like you even if the method is distasteful? Using government to promote what you think other people ought to be doing and thinking is not an Objectivst position and can never be reconciled with Objectivist ideology.

- Jason

Post 47

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 8:23am

Teresa - you write, "I suspect a big chunk of subscribers are business people. Business people use statistics for marketing and development. Nothing racist about that."

So business people subscribe to TOC publications for marketing and development. (What do they subscribe to for philosophy? Bloomberg?) And if you believe what you just wrote, Madam, you will believe anything.

Post 48

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 8:33am

Let's go back to Post 0 and Post 11.

Adam Reed started out by by saying that in one case of his personal experience, he knew of self-educated Mexican immigrants who are better at their jobs than university trained Americans. One of these credentialed slackers gets twice the wages of the autodidacts. Reed juxtaposed that with an Objectivist Center "Soundings" from November 2004. That Soundings included a list of statistics about Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. Reed condemned the litany of figures, calling it racist propaganda.

Ed Hudgins replied. He pointed out that Adam Reed has been known to be wrong. Ed Hudgins also listed many works from the Objectivist Center, including his own, that denounce racism, tout individualism, and even praise immigrants. He then invited us to beat Adam up (verbally) for his amusement.

I note that Ed Hudgins never explained the purpose of the statistics, except to say that they would "stimulate thought or discussion." He attacked Adam Reed personally, calling him intellectually dishonest. He also brought up a couple of times that Adam stepped on his own shoe laces. Of course, Adam struck back first by putting Objectivist in quotes and calling this Soundings report scandal and treason. So, Hudgins's reply was a quid pro quo.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Hudgins waved his hands and backpeddled. The Objectivist Center could -- and apparantly does -- regularly publish individualist tracts. A million of them would not explain this one away. Ed Hudgins did not even try. He did not cite a single example of OC writings that would put the piece in question into an appropriate context. I do not mean his praise for Italian immigrants. I mean the OC's efforts to capitalize on Hispanic culture in order to promote individualism.

Here is one:

Mexico has a long tradition of making money for profit. Through the entire 19th century, Mexican 8-Reales coins ("Spanish silver dollars") were an international trade medium, especially for the orient. Merchants from all over the world bought these coins from the Mexican Mint ("Casa de Moneda") by the ton. The US Mint attempted to compete with its own "Trade Dollars" and fell flat. Mexico's coins were recognized as superior. In fact, Mexican coins circulated as legal tender in the USA until 1854. Also, many US private ("wildcat") banks pictured Spanish and Mexican coins on their notes. (See: http://scoan.oldnote.org/ for pictures and facts.) That commerce could have made a private enterprise rich. What happened to the profits from the Casa de Moneda? Were they looted? Perhaps those profits kept taxes low in Mexico. In our time, the Mexican government has continued to strike bullion gold and silver coins for sale at home and abroad. This mitigates the effects of inflation on the domestic market. Even nominally "poor" people buy silver and gold for savings, eschewing banks. Millions of patriotic Americans, distrustful of Federal Reserve Notes, own Mexican gold and silver coins.

But the Objectivist Center never said that -- or anything like that. The OC does not understand Mexico or Mexicans, perhaps because they are so far from Washington DC.

Post 49

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 8:35am

Adam,

Would you view it as racist to publish statistics on how many black children come from families without a father, or the relative percentages of college graduates among various ethnic groups - asian, caucasian, black, hispanic?

Is your objection to each of these and to the Mexican examples, i) that they are factually incorrect, or ii) that -facts- are racist and should be suppressed or not mentioned?

Are you a multiculturalist who believes it is wrong to state that some cultures (as opposed to races) are inferior?

Post 50

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 8:57am

Bill Nevin,

Thank you for your fact-packed posts #14 and #34 and the careful reasoning in them. Unlike many posters who are only comfortable on the level of abstraction, you provide a great deal of actual, detailed information on immigration and some of the issues surrounding it.

If more Objectivists wrote this way, they

(i) could be published widely,
(ii) could reach and communicate with all manner of people,
(iii) would not have to waste time in an ingrown manner arguing endlessly with each other.

But then again, who wants to change the world?
(Edited by Philip Coates
on 11/22, 9:09am)

Post 51

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 9:26am

Scott,
I, once again, applaud your focus on the real world as we actually encounter it -- while keeping one eye on the future we strive to create.

Post 52

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 9:32am

Jeff??? Did you read all of Scott's posts in this thread?

- Jason

Post 53

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 10:30am

Jason,
Yes, I did. And though I disagree with some of them I still think his head and heart are in the right place. It's very easy to sit around and project the ideal world -- much harder to get out and live in the one we have without becoming what we despise. That takes enormous integrity, which I believe Scott has.

As to the particulars, no I don't think it's ideal to advocate that the government educate individuals in proper citizenship. But so long as public education exists, should we completely abandon the field to those whose ideas are destroying us? I take Scott to be saying we should engage in the messy business of living as best we can, while we work toward the kind of society we want. It's not enough to say "well, yes, but if all educational systems were privatized tomorrow, the market would sort it all out." Maybe it would, but that option isn't on the table just yet.

This is akin to a point Jordan made very well some weeks or months ago.

Post 54

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 10:49am

Jason:

"After that last post I'm not sure if you are capable of thinking in terms of principle or keeping a conversation on topic."

I'm not terribly bright, but I think you might strongly disagree with me. This is only a feeling I get. Call it an intuition. (OK, that was a joke).

"...I really do hope you understand the vast differences involved in these entirely different topics which you frivolously and haphazardly toss together."

Why don't you explain it to me? Seriously. HOW is it different? And please4, speak in terms of principles, and maybe I'll catch on to how its done.

"What on earth were you trying to prove with that line of argument? And is this the argument you put forward for promoting totalitarian indoctrination programs and forced education? That it makes you feel more comfortable if everyone else thinks like you even if the method is distasteful? Using government to promote what you think other people ought to be doing and thinking is not an Objectivst position and can never be reconciled with Objectivist ideology."

More unsupported supposition. Did I really support totalitarian indoctrination? Forced education? I am beginning to think that you are incapable of thinking in context. Or maybe reading or something.

I understand your dogmatic position. Until someone initiates force, I am not allowed to do anything about it. I get it. In the meantime, the world goes to hell in a handbasket, and my hands are tied because you can only focus on a clear initiation of force that meets you still-unstated and evidently very narrow definition?

There are any number of compelling reasons for my position. There are numbers of bad things that will happen when a nation has no cultural identity--or a fractured national identity, where one side reveres life and progress and the other reveres death and stagnation in the name of equality. I do not want to repeat myself.

Here's the nutshell. It is not initiation of force to set requirements for people who want to come to our country. There are compelling reasons for us to want to fight a culture of irrationality, whether it comes from within or outside our borders. Sticking your head in the sand and pretending irrationality is not being taught and spread does not make it disappear. Sticking your head in the sand and believing that good ideas will win out over bad ones automatically is rubbish. Ignoring the fact that socialist propaganda was widespread through this nation's industrialization, while helpful to the hypothesis that a capitalist nation wil automatically create reverence for freedom and capitalism, is nonetheless untrue and dangerous.

I understand. It is your position that it is a government initiation of force to ask new Americans to actually be American. I do not. I also understand that because you hold this view, you want me to define a clear cut initiaiton of force based on speaking another language or walking down the street with funny clothes. 'Aint gonna happen. But there are plenty of previous-stated reasons for implementing pro-reason education, and assimilation of new populations.

Post 55

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 12:08pm

Scott, let me go back and quote you so that we can keep on topic and so that I can give you conrete examples of why I dislike your posts so much and why I am reacting so harshly to them. You've hit upon one of my major political pet peaves.

"How are we going to instill pro-capitalist, pro-democracy ideals in people who believe their opposites?

Somehow. Disconnect."

"How are private citizens who support liberty to influence insular neighbors who share neither church, language, social group, employment?

Through the...somehow. Disconnect."

I honestly don't care if people want to live seperate "insular" lives. They can worship whatever they want and they can speak whatever langauge they want. Why do you think the state should take action to modify this? The government should not be a judge of ideology, it should not be concerned with the language people speak or their cultural or religous background. People should only become a concern of the government if there is evidence that they pose a threat or have initiated force against other citizens. Far from being dogmatic this is a very important practical limitation of government action. I am not after an Objectivist utopia of universal shared beliefs. This is not a practical goal.   My goal is free market capitalism and limited government. A government which is not concerned with preserving or pushing culture but only with protecting my rights.

The only loyalty oath I would require of new citizens should be someting like the following -- "I pledge to respect the rights of all other citizens of the United States.". An education as to what rights are and why rights should be respected is the only education people need in order take such an oath. This is an education about the fundamental legal obligations in a free society.

Regarding immigration let me clarify my own view on this. Of course we cannot have open immigration while we still have a welfare state.  I am also in favor of closing the U.S. for immigration during periods in which the U.S. is at war or when there is a evidence of a threat to the country's citizens.

"Did I really support totalitarian indoctrination? Forced education? I am beginning to think that you are incapable of thinking in context. Or maybe reading or something."

Here :

"We ought to do everything we can to combat bad thinking, whether it comes from the product of our schools, or whether it comes from the product of someone else's bad schools or complete lack of education." (This was in answer to my question about your assertion that the state should employ an "invasive and culture breaking assimilation system")

And here :

"But you know what cracks me up about "Objectivists?" They cannot even conceive of a government performing a valid function, even though Ayn said that government do have legitimate functions. They cannot ABIDE the idea that "teaching" everyone priciples that freedom relies upon isn't collectivism--it is doing them a favor--doing everyone a favor. Doing something as a group is not collectivism. "

And here :

"For goodness's sake, I'm not advocating indoctrination camps or the Hilter Youth. I'm saying that, if we are teaching something, and requiring something, let's require assimilation and let's teach ideas which support the direction we want to move in. " (Note that you are saying that we should use government power to push in this direction.)

Time and time again in this thread you have concerned yourself with what people ought to being doing and you wish to use government power to modify their bad ideas. I consider this to be totalitarianism. I am all for pushing ideas and attacking bad ideas just as I am doing right now on this thread. However I would never suggest that my ideology should be the official doctrine of the state and that cultural assimilation should viewed as a requirement. I would never support paying taxes for ideological education even if it meant that every student would be getting an Objectivist education. That is impractical and while that viewpoint is held by both the right and the left in American politics to some extent and in certain areas (based upon collectivist notions) it happens to be their main error and it is the thing that I dislike most about both liberal and conservative political agendas.   If we are principled we should not try to pragmatically use the current system for our own ends. The only requirement I can ask of my fellow citizens is that they respect my rights. If they live up to that requirement I have no right to force them to do anything.

- Jason

(Edited by Jason Quintana on 11/22, 12:24pm)

Post 56

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 1:52pm

Phil,

Thanks for the kind words.

Adam,

I'm surprised you live near Torrance rather than South Central L.A. I imagine your total housing costs would be a lot lower in the South Central area. Of course, the FBI has compiled statistics that would tend to indicate someone of your own ethnic persuasion (or your wife's) might not be too safe anywhere around South Central because, in part, of violent youth gangs. But I would expect you properly to reject such data as illegitimate. Those statistics classify people as instances of a sub-category on the basis of happenstances outside their control, such as where they are being raised, instead of on what really matters: their characters as individuals.

And since you like principles so much, here is one: there is no first world country in the world today that shares a direct land border with a third world country. Wait a minute, that's not a principle, is it? Because there is a counterexample: the industrialized, semi-free United States shares a border with impoverished, historically less free Mexico. But that is the only major counterexample to that particular putative principle. The only remotely similar situations in living memory are the borders between Israel and its Arab neighbors and the border that the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong shared with Communist China. Even those borders were (and, in Israel's case, are) fraught with political problems. For example, the Reds eventually extracted concessions from the Brits that they would patrol their side aggressively to reduce escapes and would stop allowing escapees to remain free.

But the Hong Kong/Chinese border was only a few dozen miles long, and the Israeli border is heavily patrolled for military reasons. The US/Mexico border stretches for thousands of miles, including densely populated urban centers, sparsely populated farmland and ranches, and mile after mile of uninhabited desert and arid mountain terrain. Its length makes it impossible to patrol thoroughly. The natural impedance of this junction is too low to prevent a steady influx of migrants and immigrants.

Some come here, get jobs, pay their own way, and develop an articulate love of individual liberty and the best of the American tradition of self-government. No one is worried about these immigrants, except that there are not enough of them.

Many come here, get jobs, and pay their own way, but retain worldviews (Catholic mysticism, bureaucratic socialism, a habit of alternately despairing and winking at endemic political corruption and police malfeasance,) that are far removed from those of successful societies based on reason and individual rights. No reasonable person objects to these immigrants as individuals. But the devil is in the aggregate statistics. It is the sheer number of these individuals that is seen as the problem. They influence voting outcomes and serve as pawns for corrupt political machines. How are they or their children to develop responsible political beliefs in a country where the government schools are devoted to Leftism, pomo wankerism, hatred of America, ethnic Balkanization, and a culture of bureaucratic incompetence?

Then there are those who explicitly game the system by collecting welfare and/or housing subsidies, and those with diseases or injuries who make a quick run for the border to pick up some free ER care. And there are those who commit armed robbery, home invasions, auto theft, the transportation and pimping out of underage prostitutes. As I have made clear, the ones responsible for this are not the totality of immigration. They are far from being the majority. But they are a large enough minority that they have created real burdens on our society.

For example, Madeleine Cosman has documented the number of hospitals in California alone that have closed their doors due to the financial bleeding caused by EMTALA. These financial problems would be manageable without the number of illegal aliens we have. She has also documented the existence of ambulance services in Mexico in which Mexican officials conspire with those needing medical care to sneak them over the border for unpaid care on our side.

If there are those who are otherwise Objectivists but who have faltered on the issue of open borders, I suggest that it is not from malevolence but from despair. They simply don't see a way around these problems with the borders remaining as open as they are now.

So to recap, I am with you in principle on the question of open borders. But there is some real work to do to explain how they can be reconciled with a reduction in the problems we are having. It would be great if you could write some concrete suggestions for how to improve the situation we are in. Or to suggest a rosier path by which to move this country towards an Objectivist future. If you could do either while taking into account the fact of a massive continuing influx of uneducated third world people, it would do far more for our cause than for you merely to issue postdated charges of subliminal racism against TOC.

Nothing I have written here it to be construed as conceding your position that TOC is against open borders.

And I still can't figure out what your anecdote of the two technicians has to do with this discussion. Talented, productive people are not at issue here.

-Bill

(Edited for run-on sentence. -B.)

(Edited by William A. Nevin III on 11/22, 2:07pm)

Post 57

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 2:34pm

Jason,
There's much to recommend your goals, but you still need to (at least try to) answer two difficult questions.

1. How do you intend to get there?
2. What should be done now and for the next X (dozen, hundred?) years while we are on our way there?

You've said what should not be done. Now make some suggestions about what should.

I believe you have it in you to make useful suggestions in this area.

Post 58

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 3:07pm

DeSalvo's talk of "assimilation" and "Americanism" makes me a bit uncomfortable, since giving the government the power to define and promote/impose those things is a dangerous proposition. But I am as adamantly opposed to unconditional immigration as I think he is.

When new immigrants come into a country that practices democracy, the newcomers acquire the power to vote, which gives them the power to initiate force. The citizens of a relatively free country are therefore well within their rights to defend themselves by restricting the flow of immigration, particularly from countries that breed terrorists and/or hostility to individual rights. Getting rid of government benefits would help discourage poor, unskilled, unproductive people from coming into the country and living off our tax dollars, but schools, healthcare, and charity will not be completely turned over to the private sector anytime soon. Even if the perverse economic incentives were fixed, existing cultural and ideological threats, such as Islamic fundamentalists, would render open immigration a danger to the rights and freedoms we hold dear.

Anyone who would advocate totally wide open borders for Israel, for France, or for the United States would not be doing so for the benefit of those countries' citizens. Muslim radicals know that if immigration and demographic trends continue, Western Europe will become majority Muslim within just few generations, and they have not been shy in declaring that they aim to impose Islamic law throughout the West.

It's hard to think of a policy that would more fundamentally threaten our way of life than wide open borders. In a world where voting was not tantmount to extortion, in world where racial identity was not used as a club, in a world where there were no hostile countries whose dominant cultures were incompatible with individual freedom, then borders would not need to be defended. But to take an ideal out of its proper context and try to apply it in today's world -- a world that would use our concept of freedom in one particular area to deprive us of freedom in virtually all other areas -- is not only NOT a requirement for Objectivist purity, but it violates the essential epistemological principle of context keeping and violates the core of the Objectivist ethic: self-interest.

(Edited by Scott77 on 11/22, 3:12pm)

Post 59

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 3:53pm