Around the web today

Thucydides (aka Brad Malestein) of Contemporary History graces us with one of his rare but poignant posts. This one deals with what we should do with Iran and I couldn't agree more:

If, however, we went out tomorrow and declared war on Iran, and bombed their nuclear facilities and cities until they surrendered or were blasted into the Stone Age, the glorious struggle would be a lot less glory, and a lot more struggle. Iran would have difficulty supplying terrorists, for one. Enthusiasm for risky terrorist ventures and suicide missions would wane, since there is a difference between dying for a cause and dying for nothing. Also, rather than guessing that Iran may have nuclear weapons in ten years, we would have a better estimate: never.

Elsewhere Robert Tracy of Illustrated Ideas posts a piece by Jack Wakeland of TIA about Cindy Sheehan with which I am in substantial agreement. Here's the most relevant paragraph:

And - most of all - Cindy Sheehan's grief does not give her license to condemn American civilization. Her grief does not exempt her from being morally judged by the rest of us. There is no excuse for what she is saying. She hates America for its virtues. She's purposely acting to undermine political support for a war of necessity. She is attempting - through the political process - to impair our national defense during a shooting war. She's evil.

Finally there's some positive science news from Switzerland in this story:

Professor Hohlfeld concludes: “We have shown that fetal skin is a substitute for biological skin that can provide burned patients with a very high quality of skin in a short time with no additional grafting techniques . . . In view of the therapeutic effects of this technique along with the simplicity in application, fetal skin cells could have great potential in tissue engineering.”

Book Recommendations

I'm rather depressed by the news from Israel at the moment, and I'm losing what little respect I had for the Bush administration as it pursues an alternatively altruistic or pragmatic (so-called "realistic" -- NY Times Registration required) foreign policy.

So instead of bemoaning the present world situation, I will offer some book recommendations of books I am reading or have read in the recent past.

Readers of this blog are aware that I'm presently reading and enjoying two books. Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Bernstein's The Capitalist Manifesto. Lincoln starts off slow but builds momentum as the story enters the 1850s and the issue of slavery becomes more prominent. Bernstein tells the story of the capitalism as it should be told, from the proper philosophical perspective (Objectivism) and with numerous interesting historical facts to buttress the case for capitalism.

Like millions of other fans I have recently finished J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I enjoyed it very much. Contrary to some reviews this book is not darker in spirit than the previous books in the series. The darkest of the Potter books remains Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

The Aristotle Adventure by Burgess Laughlin traces the journey of the works of Aristotle from the initial writings through the various cultures that studied and preserved it until they came fully back to the forefront during the days of Thomas Aquinas. Adventure is written for the layman and as the name implies is a lot of fun to read. In some respects it is similar to Aristotle's Children by Richard Rubenstein, who covers some of the same ground though Rubenstein's focus is on more on how Aristotle was rediscovered than on what exactly happened during the time his works were lost. Laughlin's book is very well organized and one learns about all the difficulties in preserving a set of writings over centuries, the many heroic individuals who studied, translated, preserved, copied and commented on Aristotle and thus helped pass it to future generations and a little about all the cultures that are involved, including Greek and Latin Pagan, Christian, and Moslem. It really is told as an exciting adventure because it is argued that with Aristotle's ideas goes the fate of civilization (with which I would agree).

Finally, earlier this year I read Richard Tarnas Passion of the Western Mind. The book does an excellent job of surveying Western ideas from the ancient Greeks to the present. I particularly liked the sections on Christianity and the details of Kant's Copernican revolution, in which Kant claimed that rather than attempting to have our ideas conform to reality, we should have reality conform to our ideas. On caveat though: As a result of Tarnas's sympathy for Freudian notions, the book contains an epilogue that is so absurd as to almost negate the value of the entire book. I recommend getting the book from a library and ignoring the epilogue.

Noteworthy...

• Don Watkins of Anger Management has announced plans to create "an online magazine, Axiomatic." Axiomatic is described as "a publication for Objectivists who wish to write seriously about Objectivist topics that are inappropriate for mainstream publications, and who do not wish to write for anti-Objectivist publications. " Giving the extraordinary high quality of Don's posts, this is something to look forward to. You can read the complete announcement here.
• With the vocal conservative opposition to federally funded stem cell research, it is easy to forget that there are also elements on the left that are skeptical of this research. Jesse Reynolds of the Center for Genetics and Society, writes in TomPaine.com:

What’s perhaps most disconcerting about unrestrained enthusiasm for stem cell research are the undesirable doors it may open. Stem cells are a key component in developing technologies of human genetic engineering and enhancement. While stem cell research should be supported, we must acknowledge that it is laying the technological and social foundation for our worst nightmares of a society of “genetically enhanced” and “naturals.” In our market-based society, it is easy to see how a new technologically based eugenics could emerge.


I fail to see what's wrong with with producing "genetically enhanced" individuals -- what exactly does Mr. Reynolds have against producing smarter, stronger and healthier individuals? Most of the false arguments in Reynolds's article are addressed in another essay at TomPaine.com by Susan Frank. She concludes appropriately, though naively:


The critics of life-saving stem cell research technologies use false claims, an anti-technology bias and an alarmist view of sensibly and ethically practiced medical research. Instead, progressives and conservatives should join together and affirm that embryonic stem cell research holds great promise for those suffering from diseases; thank responsible and ethical scientists for their tireless efforts; and hope that, someday soon, cures will be discovered.


I think Ms. Frank is naive because both conservatives and progressives have inherent ideological anti-science and anti-technology biases that cannot be easily overcome. Conservatives, to the extent that they are religious, will continue to appease religious opposition to scientific advance. Progressives, having some decades ago left their nominal pro-science attitude behind, are now opposed to any technological advance that will, in their mind, yield profits to corporations or affect the environment in any way at all.

• Cox and Forkum's take on the Israeli Disengagement.
  
  
  
  I couldn't express it better myself.
• Finally, the Ayn Rand Institute has announced the title of Yaron Brook's September 12 lecture that I mentioned here. It is entitled "Neo-Conservatives Vs. America: A Critique of U.S. Foreign Policy Since 9/11." I have heard a version of this talk on C-Span Radio this past weekend and he makes a good critique of the Neo-Conservative approach to foreign policy. I remember when I first got disillusioned with the Neo-Cons. I was listening to the Dennis Prager show. Prager had as his guest Bruce Herschensohn. This was after 9/11 but before the recent Iraq war. Herschensohn was discussing his foreign policy views and in addition to supporting the coming war on Iraq was, to my great surprise, going on about how the United States had a mission to actively liberate countries around the world. Prager agreed. I don't. The United States foreign policy should be focused on protecting its national interest as derived from its domestic policy, which ought to be laissez faire capitalism. We may support allies but our foreign policy ought not to be altruistic. For details see Peter Schwartz's recent monograph.
  

What's on the web today

Daniel Pipes writes the truth about Israel's Gaza withdrawal in his column entitled appropriately [The Gaza Withdrawal:] A Democracy Killing Itself. What Israel is doing here is quite sad and the repercussions will unfortunately be as bad or worse as the results of previous appeasements, whether by Israel or other countries.

Lincoln on Slavery

More from Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln. Not surprisingly, Lincoln is at his best when he discusses the issue of slavery such in the fascinating reasoning below written sometime in the early 1850s in a private memorandum to himself.

"If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B., why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A.?--You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly?--You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. But, say you, it is a question of interest; and if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you."

Lincoln on free trade and the role of government

I'm continuing with my reading of Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln. I'll have something positive to say about Lincoln in the next post but let me first get this out of the way. Sadly, Lincoln did not appear to have a clear understanding of the benefits of free trade and rather thought tariffs served a useful purpose as the following passage from the book illustrates.
From p.88 (emphasis in original):

"To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government." How could a government effect this? One remedy would be to "as far as possible, drive useless labour and idleness our of existence." For example, "Iron & every thing made of iron, can be produced in sufficient abundance, [and] with as little labour, in the United States, as anywhere else in the world; therefore, all labour done in bringing iron and it's fabrics from a foreign country to the United States is useless labor."...
Universal idleness should speedily result in universal ruin; ... and useless labour is, in this respect the same as idleness." Therefore, reasoned Lincoln, to abandon the protective tariff "must result in the increase of both useless labour, and idleness."

Lincoln seems not to have quite grasped how markets work. I claim to be no expert on this but I do understand this much. If a tariff has been imposed on imports, it is because the import is cheaper than the domestic manufacturer. If the imported items were consistently more expensive than the domestic ones, there would be no need for tariffs; the imports couldn't compete. But the very fact that the import may be cheaper than the domestic product serves to illustrate that Lincoln is wrong in his assumption that it makes no difference where the product is manufactured. If the import is cheaper then the foreign company is more efficient than the domestic and a cheaper alternative is provided to the domestic consumers of the product, some of whom may be businesses themselves that employ other people. Thus I don't see a danger of "idleness" when tariffs are abandoned. Instead, I see a tax that hurts both individuals in both countries. Of course, fundamentally if two individuals (or companies) have decided to trade with one another between two countries not at war with each other, no government ought to interfere. Any interference, such as tariffs, import quotas and the like would be a violation of their right to property.

In a separate passage on p. 115, Sandburg writes of Lincoln:

He wrote of the legitimate object of government being "to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves," such as "Making and maintaining roads and bridges, and the like; providing for the helpless young and afflicted; common schools; and disposing of deceased men's property." Military and civil departments were necessary . "If some men will kill, or beat, or constrain others, or despoil them of property, by force, fraud, or noncompliance with contracts, it is a common object with peaceful and just men to prevent it."

By the laissez faire standards of Objectivism this passage reflects badly on Lincoln and seems to provide the altruistic justification for all sorts of improper government functions. Still, I doubt his views were particularly revolutionary for his day and they are still a far cry from today's welfare state liberals and conservatives. In his own mind Lincoln did not seem to want expand government too much but ideas have consequences and the ideas the Lincoln supports in the above passages clearly point to a much more interventionist government.