Secret Cancer - Progressivism 101 - Stealth Marxism


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Secret Cancer - Progressivism 101 - Stealth Marxism

One of the best philosophical presentations of Progressivism in the mainstream I have ever encountered is given in the following videos of a recent Glenn Beck show. It was aired on January 28, 2010 and is called "Egghead Hour - All You Ever Wanted To Know About Progressives."

It's in plain English and it simply rocks.

Big time.

Beck interviews his "egghead" panel:

Before continuing, let me get this out of the way. At the end of the show, each author was asked to recommend one book for the general public to read (in addition to his own, of course) to learn about the fundamental issues of this topic. Here are the 3 books they respectively recommended:

(Full disclosure: These links include my affiliate code. So if anyone goes to Amazon through them and buys something, I will make a few pennies on their purchase. Most of these books are really cheap, so I am doing this more for entrepreneurial discipline than for the money)

Beck's central idea is an intriguing one, that Progressivism is essentially Marxism by stealth. It's a secret cancer. Whereas Marxism preached revolution for kicking off the business of engineering humans by government, the Progressives preach (and practice) stealth. But the goals are essentially the same.

In terms of philosophical fundamentals, they are, too. Beck is the only mainstream TV host I know of who mentions the fundamental difference in worldview between the Progressives and our Founding Fathers. The issue is the perfectibility of man.

The government shall perfect the human race.

The Progressives (and Marxists) believe that man can be perfected and the Founding Fathers knew better, so they devised a system of checks and balances whereby power is diluted. They knew that power corrupts. The Progressives do not believe it does (at least they think it does not corrupt them).

This is about as metaphysical as it gets with respect to human nature.

As an aside, one of the issues I have with Objectivism is on this very point. It is called "moral perfection" in Objectivist debates. For as much as I analyze this issue, I can't come to any other conclusion than the following and call it truth: So long as human beings have volition, are not omnipotent, and time flows from the past to the future, perfection, moral or otherwise, is impossible. I even equate the fundamentalist Objectivists to the Progressives on this point. They want to "mold" the human personality into a perfect form. (A form they call the shots for, of course. And usually they want to mold your personality--through intimidation--not theirs.) But that is another issue for another time.

Beck mentions, as a distinguishing characteristic, that Progressives want "to progress beyond the Constitution." That is one of their hallmarks and underlies every goal they set and every policy they promote.

In other words, and here comes a political fundamental, they want social structure to be rule by despot, not rule by law. At best, they want rule by an elite class. They loathe the legal constraints the Constitution imposes on the power they can get.

Under Theodore Roosevelt, Progressives were more open about their intent. Beck's idea is that they started going undercover with Woodrow Wilson. He ran a Presidential election campaign based on staying out of WWI. Then he led the USA to enter the war a few months later. In order to gloss over the hypocrisy and keep the Progressives with the aura of high moral ground, the Progressives started billing it as "The War to End All Wars."

Thus started the Progressive double-speak as camouflage.

Here are some of the ideas and insititutions Beck discusses that the Progressives have given to America:

  • The Federal Reserve system. Thomas Jefferson is quoted on the show bashing the idea of a Central Bank and Beck outright stated that the Fed was responsible for the greatest financial disaster in USA history--due to continual contraction of the money supply before and during the Great Depression.
  • Redistribution of wealth American-style.
  • "Progressive" income tax.
  • First "nanny state" attempts at governing the personal lives of individuals, especially the Prohibition.
  • The League of Nations, which paved the way for the United Nations.

But there are many, many more that are discussed. And if you think that, maybe, Beck doesn't like Woodrew Wilson very much, here are his colorful descriptions on his show: "SOB" and "dirtbag racist." He's not too keen on John Dewey, either.

Enjoy the videos, folks. I cannot recommend them highly enough, especially if you think this stuff is boring.

It isn't.

Not by a long shot.

Think about it. President Barack Obama is a Progressive. He says so loud and clear. Don't let his common man roots fool you. He's about as politically elitist as they get.

So this stuff is alive today--very much alive--and it's everything the Tea Party movement isn't. I never thought I would see this level of philosophical clarity in mainstream politics in my lifetime.

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Michael

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Michael,

Good catch!

Fox News reran this show, along with two of Beck's other 1-hour specials, yesterday afternoon. I saw part of the show on Progressivism, and marked down Pestritto's book in particular. I expect Folsom's will be interesting, too.

Beck recently told an interviewer that he was especially proud of doing this particular show—and drawing a big viewership for it.

Whatever you think of Beck's manner (I don't mind his shtick, but it's not to everyone's taste), he is showing a hell of a lot more intellectual curiosity than most of the people doing television political commentary and discussion these days.

I didn't see the whole hour—I'll catch up on it later—but I hope he mentioned Auguste Comte alongside Karl Marx.

There was a direct line from Comte to Herbert Croly, and an indirect line (through popular writers like Edward Bellamy and various American college professors) to some of the other Progressives.

Robert Campbell

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Robert:

Indeed. The Bellamy track is real deep.

Similar to the Nietzsche track was in Rand as yourself, Michael and others have pointed out on another thread.

I used to read Dewey's famous common child progressivist pap at school board meetings, as a member of the board to keep folks aware that all these administrators had been instilled with that narrative.

Sadly, one of my favorite "picture in my head" Presidents had too leave the list as Teddy Roosevelt was also a rabid progressive, but he was a lot cooler than Wooden Woodrow Wilson. Yet, that cold stone statue was a vicious totalitarian statist. Imprisoning suffragettes in the Tombs of NY City with no process. Several of the women were damaged for life by disease from that entombment.

Adam

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One of the most important points Beck made, which I forgot to mention, is the way the law and the Constitution are interpreted nowadays. This is also a Progressive gift.

Beck mentioned a Harvard dean who changed this (I forgot his name--on Googling it, I get Christopher Langdell). Before this dude, lawyers, judges, etc., put emphasis on the laws themselves. After this dude, they started putting heavy emphasis on case law jurisprudence.

So no longer was the law the thing. It started becoming how this judge or that judge interpreted it. That is the standard now used for modern court decisions.

This is one surefire way of "progressing beyond the Constitution" over time.

Beck mentioned that this is one of the reasons modern Progressives are extremely picky about the subject of "precedence" whenever Supreme Court appointees are going through the Congressional approval process. The Progressives want judges who rule according to case law, not according to the Constitution itself.

Michael

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Michael:

Progressives also demand that we incorporate other countries laws into their decisions which is frankly suicidal and unconstitutional unless by reference in an international law of the sea case, etc.

There is a cadre of at least two (2) or three (3) on the court now.

Adam

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Michael,

Usually, yes, the Progressives want the Supreme Court to adhere to precedents.

We heard a lot of that in reaction to the Citizens United decision.

But there are exceptions.

I doubt that in 1954 they were all imploring the SC to stick with Plessy v. Ferguson.

Robert Campbell

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Robert,

I had to look that one up. Racial segregation as constitutional?

LOL...

No, I don't imagine that case would be a favorite in their case law attack.

Once you see the program, though, you will see that the Progressive's point is not to replace the Constitution with prior rulings tit for tat. It is far more sinister. The Progressives don't want something so organized as "take this out and put that it it's place." They don't want to keep the structure. There are two results they seek:

1. To make the Constitution unrecognizable. Beck used the example of a '67 Mustang (I think that's the right year). He said that if you had a '67 Mustang and it was only allowed to be repaired by people who were not allowed to look at the original plans, specs, repair books, etc., after a couple of hundred years of this process, you would no longer have anything at all resembling a '67 Mustang.

2. To make the Supreme Court continually overturn its own rulings, basing as much on case law and as little on the Constitution as possible. This weakens the perception of the solidity of the Constitution more than anything else.

Enter the despot or ruling elite to clean up the mess...

Michael

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I can't say that I am particularly fond of Glenn Beck. {Begin Rant} He mixes conservatism, Mormonism, and admiration of Atlas Shrugged and Objectivism. This mix,if swallowed will cause ideological indigestion.

For example, in the show in question, he emphasizes the usual religious conservative mistake of tying criticism of liberalism/progressivism to their (the liberals) belief in rationality and more specifically, to a benevolent view of human nature. This is wrong, says Beck (ignoring everything that he should have learned from Rand and his past ARI guests), because we all know from Christian doctrine that people are, at base, corruptible and tend toward evil because of Original Sin! Therefore, we need government (which he ties to the Constitution) and laws because SOMEONE has to stop people from being evil!

As Rand has pointed out, this tying of the case for limited government to the Chistian doctrine that man is evil, is a disastrous mistake, and merely opens the door for the left to claim that that proves the need for MORE government controls, not less! Beck cannot see this, letting Grand Canyon-size logical errors into his arguments. A smart liberal teacher in political science could take his argument apart in no time at all, making Beck look naive or foolish.

I am sorry if I have offended the Beck lovers, but your boy is not able to bridge that Grand Canyon! Worse, he cannot see it, and is likely to fall into it (metaphorically speaking!). {End of rant.}

That said, he is right about progressivism, and presents a case that has been discussed recently in the December 31, 2009 cover articles in National Review and also the January 25, 2010 issue of The Weekly Standard (also, its cover article). Yeah, I know, they also buy into the Original Sin Argument, but at least it was not dragged-out and displayed in the articles in such a blatant manner as Beck did!

However, the case that it is Auguste Comte, probably as much or more than Marx, that is the ideological force behind modern liberalism, was presented in much greater detail in a largely ignored 1995 book, The Positivist Republic: Auguste Comte and the Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1920,(Pennsylvania State University Press).

Edited by Jerry Biggers
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I just cannot pass this up...

Yes, the age old conundrum - to spit or swallow....

"This mix,if swallowed will cause ideological indigestion."

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Jerry,

At this distance and in this context, I am inclined to give far less weight to the Original Sin thing than I would have before.

I do not believe in Original Sin. But I don't think any of the "morally perfect" human beings that have come out of Objectivism over the years have properly answered that issue qua conceptual referent, either.

So I don't really see the Objectivist argument annulling the good Beck is doing in the cause of liberty, especially in identifying the philosophical fundamental issue regarding human nature. Even if he believes in Original Sin.

More on this later. I have to run right now.

Michael

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Jerry,

At this distance and in this context, I am inclined to give far less weight to the Original Sin thing than I would have before.

I do not believe in Original Sin. But I don't think any of the "morally perfect" human beings that have come out of Objectivism over the years have properly answered that issue qua conceptual referent, either.

So I don't really see the Objectivist argument annulling the good Beck is doing in the cause of liberty, especially in identifying the philosophical fundamental issue regarding human nature. Even if he believes in Original Sin.

More on this later. I have to run right now.

Michael

I confess that I find Glenn Beck's manner of presentation (too excitable, too emotional) rather grating. And and then there's that blackboard, which strikes me as too retrograde and seems rather condescending. It reminds me of bullying and pretentious high school teachers, a la the movie, "Mr. Woodcock". But, other people must like it, or he wouldn't be as popular as he is.

I still regard Rand's critique of the Original Sin argument to be sound. However, Greg Nyquist has raised some interesting points about the Objectivist view of human nature. Questions, but not answers, and I don't think that he has proved the Objectivist position (which really is consistent with, or a restatement of, the Classical Liberal position of the 18th-19th centuries) to be invalid.

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However, the case that it is Auguste Comte, probably as much or more than Marx, that is the ideological force behind modern liberalism, was presented in much greater detail in a largely ignored 1995 book, The Positivist Republic: Auguste Comte and the Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1920,(Pennsylvania State University Press).

Jerry,

I bought the hardcover version of the Harp book from a remainder catalog and found it most enlightening. It's in the references to my article on Rand, Comte, and altruism.

The prose is rather dry but quite readable.

The paperback is still in print, in case Michael wants to post another link to amazon.com.

Robert Campbell

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Secret Cancer - Progressivism 101 - Stealth Marxism

The Progressives (and Marxists) believe that man can be perfected and the Founding Fathers knew better, so they devised a system of checks and balances whereby power is diluted. They knew that power corrupts. The Progressives do not believe it does (at least they think it does not corrupt them).

This is about as metaphysical as it gets with respect to human nature.

The Founding Fathers believed that power corrupts, and they provided for not only checks and balances, but also an explicit recognition of a number of individual rights/liberties.

The Progressives (aka liberals) believe that FREEDOM corrupts -- specifically, economic freedom. Thus, they want to heavily regulate economic activity, including discrimination in employment, housing, "public accommodations," etc.

The Reactionaries (aka conservatives) ALSO believe that freedom corrupts -- specifically, social freedom. Thus, they want laws against "victimless crimes" and immoral acts that violate no one's individual liberty.

Rand talked about this in "Censorship: Local and Express" in The Ayn Rand Letter, and it was reprinted in Philosophy, Who Needs It. She said that the metaphysics of the liberals and conservatives determined their politics. Whatever they regarded as metaphysically unimportant, they were willing to allow to be free; but whatever they thought was metaphysically significant, they wanted government to control it.

Personally, I don't think that this entirely, perhaps even mostly, explains their politics and what controls they favor. I think that they instead want to control whatever they think is dangerous to their values. Liberals think economic freedom threatens their values. Conservatives think social freedom threatens their values. Consistent statists think both kinds of freedom threaten their values.

In contrast, Libertarians and Objectivists think NEITHER kind of freedom threatens their values. Instead, Libertarians and Objectivists think that only initiation of force threatens their values, and that is why they, like the Founding Fathers, want minimal government, to protect their rights against such force.

So, I really do think that politics is directly derived from ethics, and not, as Rand argued in 1973, from one's metaphysics (nor, as Perkins argued last year, from one's epistemology). True, it's in the metaphysical nature of power that it is a dangerous thing when not constrained to proper use -- but in the final analysis, it is the issue of proper use, which is a moral issue, that determines how one wants to use or abuse power.

REB

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One of the most important points Beck made, which I forgot to mention, is the way the law and the Constitution are interpreted nowadays. This is also a Progressive gift.

Beck mentioned a Harvard dean who changed this (I forgot his name--on Googling it, I get Christopher Langdell). Before this dude, lawyers, judges, etc., put emphasis on the laws themselves. After this dude, they started putting heavy emphasis on case law jurisprudence.

So no longer was the law the thing. It started becoming how this judge or that judge interpreted it. That is the standard now used for modern court decisions.

This is one surefire way of "progressing beyond the Constitution" over time.

Beck mentioned that this is one of the reasons modern Progressives are extremely picky about the subject of "precedence" whenever Supreme Court appointees are going through the Congressional approval process. The Progressives want judges who rule according to case law, not according to the Constitution itself.

Michael

Langdell was an important influence on the modern law school--in a sense he made it--but he's not responsible for the importance of case law in legal education. Identifying what the law is by using previously decided cases goes back to late medieval times; and most of the basic law of contracts and torts derives not from legislation but from case law--and if the legislation exists very often it's a restatement of currently accepted case law. More often than not, legislation was a means to correct or modify law as decided by the courts up through the early twentieth century. But if you want to blame someone for "case law", blame Bracton, who goes back to the 14th century, IIRC (my references are on another floor of the house).

In fact, one might argue that the idea of statutes being more important than case law and precedents is a nontraditional, "progressive" idea.

Nor is the use of cases to modify the Constitution strictly speaking a progressive idea; it started with John Marshall--who was a backer of centralized government and the power of the state, so one might consider him a forerunner of the Progressives.

Moreover, to implement the Progressive agenda, it was often necessary to overrule prior precedents. See the history of the "Due Process" clause for the most important examples of this.

The contribution of the Progressives was simply this: the idea that the Constitution is a flexible thing, and its application can change over time as circumstances change, and that the court is not obliged to accept the legislation passed by the legislature as a final statement of the legal situation (until of course the legislature passed newer laws overruling or changing the previous laws), but can impose its own view on the statutes as written by the legislature. IOW, the Progressives viewed the courts as an especially powerful form of legislature.

Jeffrey S.

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Jeff, you mean this line of thought right?

"The Living Constitution is a concept in American constitutional interpretation which claims that the Constitution has a dynamic meaning. The idea is associated with views that contemporaneous society should be taken into account when interpreting key constitutional phrases.[1]"

Adam

Post Script: "Applying a living constitution One application of the Living Constitution framework is seen in the Supreme Court's reference to "evolving standards of decency" under the 8th Amendment. This was seen in the 1958 Supreme Court case of Trop v. Dulles:[15]

[T]he words of the [Eighth] Amendment are not precise, and that their scope is not static. The Amendment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society. While the Court was referring in Trop only to the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, the underlying conception - namely, that the Constitution is written in broad terms, and that the Court's interpretation of those terms should reflect current societal conditions - is the heart of the "living Constitution" doctrine.[16] "

Edited by Selene
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Well, I watched the January 28 show and did not see anything in there about Eggheads. I must have misunderstood what you wrote. I had no problem understand Glenn Beck, though. I found it highly ironic that he criticized the President as arrogant and condescending. Glenn Beck's delivery is sarcastic and repetitive. He hammers his points home over and over, repeating the repetitions. It is the crudest way to build suspense for the punchline.

Glenn Beck was also materially wrong on the role of the Federal Reserve. It does not regulate banks. As chair of the New York Fed, it was not Ben Bernanke's job to monitor Goldman-Sachs. Other federal regulators were supposed to be doing that. They would be the ones rightfully charged with failure to perform. Of course, that assumes that such regulation could work, which, metaphysically, it cannot. So, Glenn Beck blamed the wrong people for not doing what was impossible to achieve.

Glenn Beck was also materially incorrect about federal student loans. They are Sallie Mae, not Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

I agree that the President's plan to make college affordable and forgive loans for government employees is doomed. It simply will not work. I doubt that the government can actually absorb that many new staffers. However, Glenn Beck switched between Harvard's $250,000 and the "average" of $27,000. Also, I question his statistic that the median government income is $64,000 per annum, as the military is a huge fraction of that payroll and they make much less than the norms, and even the president's salary is capped at $400,000 plus extras. At top General Service employee makes $129,000 and to earn $64,000, an employee must be a GS-12. (http://www.fedjobs.com/pay/pay.html)

See also here for government attorneys at the DoJ: http://www.justice.gov/oarm/arm/hp/hpsalary.htm

I agree that the President's goal to double exports in the next five years is unreal. However, Glenn Beck apparently does not know that America's chief export is military hardware. So, we can double those, ominously enough. Speaking of college, that is an other export. We bring foreign students here. They pay tremendous tuition rates. It is good business. America's universities lead the world in graduate to post doctoral education because they are competitive. Other nations like Japan, France and Germany have unified systems that lack deep diversity.

I can see why he appeals to conservatives who watch him on television. He gratifies their hatreds and fears and it all streams past too quickly to analyze. I will never watch another Glenn Beck again.

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Well, I watched the January 28 show and did not see anything in there about Eggheads. I must have misunderstood what you wrote. I had no problem understand Glenn Beck, though. I found it highly ironic that he criticized the President as arrogant and condescending. Glenn Beck's delivery is sarcastic and repetitive. He hammers his points home over and over, repeating the repetitions. It is the crudest way to build suspense for the punchline.

Michael,

I notice the size of Beck's audience and I notice the size of yours.

:)

One communication principle I notice is that Beck does not talk down to his audience. On the contrary, he is on a "let's take this journey together" wave-length.

Something to think about if you want to think about it. You tend to talk down to the reader.

I can see why he appeals to conservatives who watch him on television. He gratifies their hatreds and fears and it all streams past too quickly to analyze. I will never watch another Glenn Beck again.

I believe you missed the point in your other criticisms (a couple of which I found to inaccurately present what Beck said), but I don't feel like addressing them. This last comment, though, is a presumption that needs to be challenged.

You insinuate that Beck only appeals to conservatives. Boy did you get that wrong. That's a false dichotomy waiting to happen. Beck's appeal is not partisan politics.

He bashes both conservatives and liberals.

You know who watches Glenn Beck? Common everyday hard-working self-responsible men and women--the very ones Ayn Rand learned to appreciate when she was on the campaign trail for Wendell Willkie.

Think of the jurors who Roark chose for his trial.

Some people think that speaking to those folks is important when freedom is threatened. Others don't.

Beck does. And he does it well. His ratings prove it.

I admire the guy.

Michael

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I think the issue of "perfectibility of man" is complicated by a certain unmentioned elephant in the room;

"Perfection according to what standard?"

A perfect man by Christian standards would be considered imperfect by Objectivist standards and vice versa.

This simple fact makes it much harder to compare various philosophies on the issue.

I believe that humans can be perfect according to Objectivist morality. But Christian morality? By definition humans are imperfectible if your standard of perfection is the Christian standard.

These days, a lot of media seems to define "human imperfectibility" as "imperfect by any standard or code of ethics," which would logically imply that humans are inherently hypocritical. The video game BioShock takes this position.

Needless to say, I disagree with that proposition.

As for whether or not Progressivism is Marxism By Stealth, I have to make a few comments. Two essential features of Marxism are the Labour Theory of Value and Historical Materialism. Most progressives these days don't believe in either.

The issue of man's perfectibility is inessential to Marxism and Progressivism because other ideologies share it as well.

Also, belief that man is perfectible does not necessarily conflict with belief that power corrupts. The idea of man as perfectible simply means they CAN be perfect. It does not mean they WILL be, nor does it mean they cannot be influenced. It simply means human corruption is not inevitable.

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I confess that I find Glenn Beck's manner of presentation (too excitable, too emotional) rather grating. And and then there's that blackboard, which strikes me as too retrograde and seems rather condescending. It reminds me of bullying and pretentious high school teachers, a la the movie, "Mr. Woodcock". But, other people must like it, or he wouldn't be as popular as he is.

Jerry,

I don't feel uncomfortable with the blackboard. But I can see where an intellectual might find it condescending. Nor am I uncomfortable with the emotional approach. Frankly, I find it entertaining.

On the condescending part, if you look past the blackboard, Beck is anything but condescending. Liberal critics bash him because of his everyman approach. Beck's starting promise goes something like this: "You and I are honest. We know each other. We are not like those crooks in Washington out to screw us."

I made that up, but it could very well be an exact quote.

In other words, Beck starts by presuming a high moral quality in the viewer. Liberals who like to talk down to folks hate this approach. They just hate it. They want high moral quality to belong to an elite, not available to anyone who chooses.

I still regard Rand's critique of the Original Sin argument to be sound. However, Greg Nyquist has raised some interesting points about the Objectivist view of human nature. Questions, but not answers, and I don't think that he has proved the Objectivist position (which really is consistent with, or a restatement of, the Classical Liberal position of the 18th-19th centuries) to be invalid.

I, too find Rand's critique of Original Sin basically correct. It needed to be challenged and I am grateful she did.

But if you want to know the truth, I don't believe many people, at least the ones in Beck's audience, truly believe in Original Sin in the meaning Rand challenged--as in a newborn baby has already sinned at birth. They give an insinuated sanction to this concept at church, but in their hearts they brush it aside because it doesn't make any sense to them. That's one of the reasons I don't find this issue to be all that important within this context. (It is important in other contexts.)

You are right to cite Nyquist. He is the one who started me off thinking about the limitations of the Objectivist view of human nature. I find a lot wrong in his writing, but that part is to his credit. With one caveat. The Objectivist view is not wrong. It is incomplete. Man is a volitional being with a conceptual mind. That is the Objectivist view and that is human nature. (Objectivism falls short on the prewiring.)

Where Original Sin really gets it wrong is that sin--which is an ethical concern--is something we choose to do. A newborn cannot choose anything on that level.

But Rand's idea of being a morally perfect person, ironically, leaves out the same thing: volition. There is no way to ensure that you will always make the correct choices, moral or otherwise, without destroying (or ignoring) the capacity to choose altogether. If you make a system that molds people so that they only choose one way, they are not choosing anymore. They are merely reacting in a certain manner, like a Pavlovian conditioning reaction.

In another discussion on moral perfection a while back, I mentioned that we can make single morally perfect choices, one after another, but not collective one-size-fits-all ones. In other words, we make a choice and judge it. Then make another and judge it. And so on. There are no guarantees that all of our choices will be "morally perfect." Our volition (or will or soul or whatever you want to call it) certainly cannot guarantee that.

There is no way to lump all choices into the same moral category. There are too many factors involved: external context, development, health (including biological mental health), emotional excesses, etc. Not to mention an attack of plain old dumbassedness that we are all subject to at times.

We can put top value on doing the right thing and using that as a standard. Thus we can correct our wrong choices by that kind of standard and choose differently in the future. But that does not make our wrong choices in the past "morally perfect."

The weird thing about Objectivism is that the morally perfect robot and the free agent with autonomous volition are both present in the literature. This is one of the reasons I believe that this issue is constantly debated in Objectivst discussions with no resolution ever in sight. It always comes back around and around and around.

Let me say clearly that I am in total agreement with the conceptually volitional mind part in Objectivism. But not the other part.

So my focus with Beck is with respect to the morally perfect robot--especially the part where Rand says she can program all of her subconscious premises and emotions. The idea is that if you learn the correct philosophy, you can program your subconscious with it and become a morally perfect human being. Thus man is perfectible if only he would submit himself to an external orientation (like Rand's philosophy, for instance).

This is very similar to the social view of the Progressives, that man is perfectible if only he were submitted to external orientation.

The issue is the same. The perspective and method are different.

In the first case you are seduced into handing over your volition (which I call "independent thinking") to a set of ethical rules and in the other you are forced to.

The point that needs to be challenged is that no one is in a position to devise the so-called moral perfection of another human being. Not on a personal level. Principles to guide you are one thing. Eliminating choice is another. That's a control issue and Beck challenges it well.

Most people in his audience are Christians, so they understand this easily within the context of Original Sin. Between combating the idea of Original Sin as most hard-working Americans understand it and the idea that some people are entitled to morally mold other people, I believe it is wise to start with the control issue. Belief in God is something that pertains to a person and his conscience. Being controlled by another person is not just that, since another person is involved.

I don't think you are going to convince many Christians of the second by denying the first. But I do believe that if you convince a Christian of the correctness of the second (i.e., he should never surrender his capacity to choose his moral values to anyone), he is far better prepared to examine the first (i.e., Original Sin) than he was before.

I see Beck's challenge to his "common decent person" audience regarding the perfectibility of man versus individual responsibility in this light. It's not a perfect message in terms of being the final intellectual stop. But it is a perfect message for his audience at this point in time for standing up to--and blowing the covers off of--the Progressive threat to freedom.

Michael

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I have all the audience I need right here, but if size matters then the President wins.

Michael,

This is one of the reasons I like you, your good nature.

But, given your observation, why do you think the President is afraid of Beck? I hear his name comes up all the time among President Obama's people.

I know my name doesn't come up over in those parts...

:)

Michael

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I believe that humans can be perfect according to Objectivist morality. But Christian morality? By definition humans are imperfectible if your standard of perfection is the Christian standard.

These days, a lot of media seems to define "human imperfectibility" as "imperfect by any standard or code of ethics," which would logically imply that humans are inherently hypocritical. The video game BioShock takes this position.

Andrew,

This is a logical trap that has no real referent in reality. It's one of the reasons I don't like the term "morally perfect." A human being is not a value judgment according to an outside standard. A human being is an end in itself.

Morals are made to guide human action. Humans are not made to be slaves to morals.

When we judge a person based on the sum of his/her acts and intents, we can call that person a good or evil person. But how can we judge him or her to be a morally perfect person? We would have to be omnipotent and mind readers to boot to do that. And then, supposing you could do that. If you find one tiny little blemish, one little white lie, or one little thoughtless unfair act, boom. There goes virtue for all eternity.

I say that's crap.

And how about judging ourselves as morally perfect? I'm not talking about judging this act as morally perfect or that act as morally perfect. I mean your entire mind, conscious and subconscious. I don't like the idea of constantly being on guard against having a "wrong" morally imperfect thought. That's a sure one-way ticket to a major case of guilt feelings. Or depression. Or delusion.

You wrote that if humans are imperfect according to any code of ethics, this would "imply that humans are inherently hypocritical." This is exactly where the standard doesn't make sense to me and the logical trap snaps shut on the victim.

How about saying that humans inherently have the capacity to act hypocritically and the capacity to act with integrity? Would you disagree with that?

The potential to act hypocritically and with integrity are both inherent to having volition. That's what "free will" means. That you decide. Not that another person or a moral code decides.

And I assure you that there is no one decision you make for an entire lifetime, then it's done. Even when you embark on a course, you have to decide to continue on it every time you travel.

We can know what a morally perfect act would be within a specific context. Even a situation where strong temptation exists (like power, for instance). But we cannot guarantee that we will always make a choice to act in the morally perfect way every time we encounter that context. Especially when the emotional charge from the temptation is overwhelming (like power, for instance). That would remove the idea of virtue and make us robots.

We can stray from a course. That part is inherent to being human and acting. But we also can know what the proper course is, so we can right ourselves when we get off course. That is much more of what virtue is about than never straying at all.

I do not consider this reality to mean that we are "inherently hypocrites." I do consider this reality to mean that "inherently hypocrite" is a meaningless term when judging the setting of a course and following it.

A hypocrite is a person who constantly says he is on one course when he isn't. It's not a person whose automation in following a course broke down for a moment.

Ethics involves choice more than automation. We can automate much in making a choice, but not the need to make the choice itself. We always have to be able to correct a "morally imperfect" choice. Otherwise ethics means nothing once you have embarked (or "programmed yourself" to use a term I do not like).

Biology even helps us. We already have all the automation we need in our automatic course-setter for straying, our conscience. It will tell us when we have done a no-no according to a deep premise. That little voice starts blabbering at us and if we ignore it, the guilt feelings come.

I do not want to automate my conscience out of existence. It's the only thing that guided me during some very dark times in my life--in fact, in times when I did use the "morally perfect human" standard. Having been such a very "morally imperfect human" back then, the logical solution was suicide in order to remove my irredeemable self from a wretched existence. Thank goodness I ultimately saw through that standard!

I consider myself to be a fairly good judge of character. I look for the good in people. I look at the sum of what they do and how they act and I judge that. I do not look for the perfect and imperfect according to any particular ideology, waiting for the chance to pounce on any act of moral imperfection so I can denounce it, not even (and especially) with respect to Objectivism.

This has led me to come to my own conclusions. For example, I consider bullying much worse than altruism, although you will not read that ordinal evaluation in the literature. In fact, I consider this to be an issue deeper than comparison. I believe that if no bullying is present, altruism as an ideology loses its bite altogether. I don't even mind if I act altruistically once in a while. It often makes me feel good to help others and I don't mind saying that I consider it to be a virtue when I do. According to Objectivism, that would be morally imperfect.

Hell, who knows? Maybe it is from the way some people interpret Objectivism. I don't care, though. My point is that I decide. It's my life. I decide. I still use Objectivism as my main compass. But as a primary, my life means a hell of a lot more to me than some kind of plastic material to mold into an Objectivist image and blueprint of perfection.

My life is an end in itself. Not a means to an Objectivist end.

To reiterate a point I made in an earlier post, both are present in Objectivist literature. Nowadays I choose one over the other rather than what I used to do: try to rationalize their coexistence. I got hurt bad doing that.

Anyway, on another issue, you need to check the premise that the perfectibility of man is inessential to Marxism. The whole idea of dictatorship of the Proletariat is to impose the Marxist ideology on people by force until they do it by themselves. In other words, until they are "perfect" according to Marxist ideology.

Michael

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MSK--

Maybe it would be better to better define what Christianity means by the term 'Original sin', which is a rather unfortunate term. It means that we are born with a tendency to sin--that we are fallible, imperfect beings who can make wrong choices. In Buddhism, the same concept is denoted by the term "ignorance". It's not so much any specific act as an overall tendency. The Christian twist on this idea--I am tempted to say the Christian perversion of this idea--is that we are guaranteed to make wrong choices--that the tendency is so strong that in the natural state of affairs everything we choose will have some element of wrong choice included in it--and that to defeat that tendency, we have to depend on divine intervention ("grace") because we can not overcome the tendency on our own--and there is no guarantee that this divine intervention will ever come; and therefore every human endeavor must be viewed as a probable failure. But that is a specifically Christian idea--every other religion teaches that either divine intervention is not necessary or that if you ask for it, divine help will always be given. To borrow the Randian terms, Christianity adheres to the malevolent universe premise and everyone else adheres to the benevolent universe premise. We Jews speak of it in terms of the two influences, the evil and the good influences, or the two souls, which can be referred to as the "animal" soul (because we share it with animals) and is the basis of the evil influence, and the "human" soul, which is the basis of the good influence: both are equal, but with effort the human soul can dominate the animal soul. (That's a very barebones explanation--the full details would require explaining the five souls that humans are supposed to have.)(And there are of course individual Christians and some Christian schools of thought that either outright believe that help will always be given, or that push things as far in that direction as they can go without directly challenging orthodox teaching. But the essential idea remains in all forms of Christianity, no matter how hard some Christians attempt to dilute it.) Christianity also tends to get sex mixed inextricably with the concept, making it even worse. The ultimate of that tendency is the idea of the Virgin Mary as the "Immaculate Conception"--meaning she was the only person other than Jesus who was born without original sin. And of course her chief qualification for being Jesus's mother is her virginity, which implies that any sort of sex is a form of sinfulness.

Jeffrey S.

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Jeff,

Two points. The first is that I do not know anyone named "Christianity." What I discuss above is how modern mainstream Christians understand Original Sin. I don't think their understanding corresponds to what Rand attacked, nor to how "Christianity" defines it. In fact, I believe their understanding is more in the area of intellectual mush than evil idea.

The second point is your own understanding of Original Sin. I'm surprised that you, being Jewish, have not expressed familiarity with what I am about to say.

As I have heard the Christian doctrine explained to me by Christian scholars, the first man, Adam, committed the only sin available to him back then. He disobeyed God. He ate from the tree of knowledge after being told that he was not to do that. He accepted the authority of his own free will over God's authority. So he got punished and since we are Adam's progeny, we continue liable to God for that sin.

In ancient times, God (Jehovah) used to accept atonement for this sin through animal sacrifices. But in a monumental expression of God's love for His creation, He decided to give man an out. He sent His Son to take the place of the animals.

That's why Jesus was crucified and that's why the animal sacrifices ended. It was a literal human sacrifice as a tribute to God in the sense an animal sacrifice used to be. And the way the sacrifice works is that it is a prop for you to hand over your free will to God. You accept Jesus in you heart as recognition of God's authority added to an intent to commit the sin of renouncing His authority no more.

That's the mythology. Original Sin is the Inherited Sin of disobedience. Being saved is agreeing to obey God once more.

To finalize the myth, the reason man continues being a sinner, even if he accepts Jesus, is that once Adam separated himself from God's authority, he opened himself to all kinds of sin.

God decided to not reverse that part for man's existence on earth. His only interest is in reestablishing His authority within man's free will. He keeps tabs on this by being the only agent (often through His Son) that can dispense forgiveness, over and over and over with each new sin. However, the state of sinless grace will be reestablished in Heaven for those who get there.

That's not exactly the idea that Rand combated, but that's how "Christianity" defines Original Sin. At least that is how I have read it in a few places and how it has been explained to me by scholars.

As I said, I don't believe most Christians understand Original Sin in the manner Rand understood it. And I don't believe they understand it in the Christian mythology manner, either.

I believe they keep it as a kind of floating abstraction in their souls.

Michael

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Good post.

Even though the "fruit of the tree of knowledge" is metaphorical, it is, as you clearly understand, a separation of the individual mind from God's complete authority.

However, the Eden was "perfect". In fact, there are parts of the testaments wherein God walks and chats with Adam.

Aquinas put it thusly:

"WE MUST NOW CONSIDER THE ESSENCE OF ORIGINAL sin. There are four questions asked concerning it. 1. Whether original sin is a habit. 2. Whether original sin is one only, in any one man. 3. Whether original sin is desire. 4. Whether original sin is equally in all men. Aquinas

I answer: there are two things in original sin.

One is the lack of original justice.

The other is the relation of this lack to the sin of our first parent, from whom it is inherited through our corrupt origin.

Now original sin cannot be greater or less in respect of the lack of original justice, since the whole gift of original justice has been taken away.

Privations do not admit of more and less when they deprive us of something altogether, as we said of death and darkness in Q. 73, Art. 2. Nor can original sin be greater or less in respect of its relation to its origin.

Everyone bears the same relation to the first beginning of the corrupt origin from which sin derives its guilt, and relations do not admit of greater and less. It is plain, then, that original sin cannot be greater in one man than in another. On the first point: since man has lost the control of original justice which once kept all the powers of his soul in order, each power tends to follow its own natural movement, and to follow it more vehemently the stronger it is. Now some powers of the soul may be stronger in one man than in another, because bodily characteristics vary.

That one man should be more subject to desire than another is not therefore the consequence of original sin, since all are equally deprived of the control of original justice, and the lower parts of the soul are equally left to themselves 125in all men. It is due to the different dispositions of their powers, as we have said."

Since we all have our own internal doubts, this premise can be completely invasive.

Adam[not the original lol]

Edited by Selene
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