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How to Judge Actions
IF YOU ARE a philosopher like Aristotle or maybe a legislator in the business of judging the actions of lesser mortals, you need a template, a measure, by which to rule and hand out honors and punishments.
To do this you probably need to be able to "distinguish between the voluntary and the involuntary" action. Sometimes, of course, you have to do something, such as throw goods overboard in a storm, that you would normally never do voluntarily. And sometimes you would face death rather than voluntarily do something evil.
But what about things done by reason of ignorance? Obviously, says Aristotle, everything "done by reason of ignorance is not voluntary". Now he makes a fine distinction. Suppose you do something in ignorance that you would presumably not do voluntarily. If you repent of your action, your action is "involuntary." If you do not repent, your action is "not voluntary."
So, says Aristotle, if you throw a pointed spear at a friend, thinking that your spear "had a button on it", your action would be involuntary, since you would surely repent of your action. That is action in ignorance that is involuntary. It is hard to think of an action in ignorance that is "not voluntary," i.e., not repented. Suppose you threw a pointed spear at an enemy thinking it had a button on it. Would you regret the action when the poor chap fell down dead? If you didn't regret, the action in ignorance would be "not voluntary." Perhaps a better example would be Candidate Romney saying that he doesn't worry about the "very poor." Everyone thinks that this is a stunning error, because conservatives do too worry about the poor. But if the struggling middle--the folks that Romney says he does worry about--were to wake up and say to themselves, "Wow, finally a politician that cares about us and not the bloody poor!" then Romney would not repent of the action in ignorance. So that would be action in ignorance that is "not voluntary."
But Aristotle is not yet done. He does not want to admit that actions due to anger or appetite could be involuntary. The "wicked man is ignorant of what he ought to do" but that does not make his ignorance involuntary. Actions done in ignorance but where "the moving principle is in the agent himself" are voluntary. Thus we could say that the liberal welfare state policies that have cratered the working class are voluntary. Liberals may have been ignorant of the specific consequences of their policies, but they cannot hide from the results. It is evil to encourage people to exchange their birthright for a mess of pottage. Period.
| perm | comment(0) | 
| 02/03/12 1:15 pm ET
No Sex, We're Japanese?
GLENN REYNOLDS at Instapundit has two fascinating looks at sex and marriage in Japan. There's a poll out that says the Japanese are uninterested in sex.
The survey, conducted by the Japan Family Planning Association, found that 36% of males aged 16 to 19 said that they had “no interest” in or even “despised” sex. That’s almost a 19% increase since the survey was last conducted in 2008.Hold on, says an emailer to Glenn. The real problem is the three lost decades in Japan since the meltdown in the 1990s.
If that’s not bad enough, The Wall Street Journal reports that a whopping 59% of female respondents aged 16 to 19 said they were uninterested in or averse to sex, a near 12% increase since 2008.
The statistics you link to miss the point. Young Japanese guys are as horny and desperate to get laid as any guys in the world. Probably more so, since only young Arabs get less actual sex. Japanese girls are as eager to find an alpha male boyfriend as any other nationality. Japan still produces the most prolific and extraordinary porn in the world. Someone is watching it.And, of course, our Japanese friends have been patiently doing Keynesian economics now for three decades in a conventional attempt to get out of their economic doldrums. They have little to show for it.
Unfortunately, three lost economic decades has resulted in a plethora of un- or under-employed young beta men, without real jobs or prospects of success, and young women who look at these prospective suitors and despair.
This helps put Mitt Romney's bonehead comment about not worrying about the very poor in context. The Democratic Party is an over-under party, a combination of the top 20 percent in their tenured sinecures and the bottom 20 percent in their lifetime benefits. The Republican Party is the party for the people in the middle, the people without benefits and without government sinecures.
The Republican Party better pay attention to the tragic situation of ordinary young people in Japan. Because we must not let that happen here. So it's good that Mitt Romney is paying attention.
| perm | comment(0) | | 02/02/12 12:33 pm ET
Romney's "Gaffes"
FIRST WE LEARNED that Mitt Romney enjoyed firing people. Yeah, I know the context was that he enjoyed firing insurance companies, but coming from the private equity guy at Bain Capital, it was a bit jarring. Now "foot-in-mouth" Mitt has dropped another one. He says he's not worried about the very poor. "I’m in this race because I care about Americans," Romney said. "I’m not concerned about...
| perm | comment(1) | | 02/01/12 1:39 pm ET
End of Mitt Milquetoast
THE REPUBLICAN voters, the pollsters tell us, are interested in one thing: a candidate that can beat Barack Obama. Presumably that's why we fell in love with Newt Gingrich for half an hour when he beat up the media and liberals in the debates before the South Carolina primary. The Romney campaign learned something from South Carolina and we learned something about the Romneyites. To get back...
| perm | comment(0) | | 01/31/12 10:10 am ET
Leaders Must Be Winners
WHY ARE LEADERS such cowards? Why do they duck the hard decisions for decades? Why is Jerry Brown, in his 70s, unwilling to stand up to the unions in California? Steven Greenhut: Many of us had hoped that Brown, who no longer seeks higher office, would embrace the tough work of real governance and take on his own allies—i.e., the public sector unions—who are the key obstacle to reviving...
| perm | comment(0) | | 01/30/12 9:02 am ET
Are Incontinent Fools Wise?
YOU MIGHT WONDER why Aristotle is so interested in incontinence that he devotes the whole of Book VII of his Nichomachean Ethics to it. Is that really a problem for philosophers to worry about? Well, it is, at least the kind of incontinence that Aristotle worries about. The continent man is one "ready to abide by the result of his calculations" while the incontinent man is "ready to abandon...
| perm | comment(0) | | 01/27/12 9:04 am ET
The Anguish of the Reactionary President
BACK IN THE old days, rulers ruled. They ruled over everything, from church, to military, to trade. But then came the modern mechanical era. God no longer kept the planets in their orbits, and an "invisible hand" seemed to guide merchants and consumers without the constant intervention of a wise ruler. What is a ruler to do? He worries about "inequality." Not because he's caring and...
| perm | comment(1) | | 01/26/12 9:45 am ET
Duck and Cover, Mr. President |
| 01/25/12 10:18 am ETObama is not a Friend of Catholics(1) |
| 01/24/12 10:50 am ETEducrats Chase Teenaged Sailor Round World |
| 01/23/12 1:48 pm ET What About That Mean?
EVERY VIRTUE, says Aristotle, brings things into good condition. Therefore virtue is also "the state of character which makes a man good and which makes him do his own work well." Does that mean that the harder you work at virtue, the better? Not exactly, for virtue is not found in extremes, writes Aristotle, but at the mean between two extremes. It is "an intermediate between excess and...
| perm | comment(0) | | 01/20/12 12:34 pm ET
The Green "Fight Against Big Oil" |
| 01/19/12 12:48 pm ET How Many Divisions Has the Soul?
STALIN FAMOUSLY inquired in 1944 how many divisions the pope had. Reportedly, Pope Pius XII replied that “You can tell my son Joseph that he will meet my divisions in heaven”. Almost as confusing is Aristotle's explanation of the elements of the soul in Nicomachean Ethics I 13. OK, chaps, he says, there are, first of all, the rational and the irrational, although they are not quite as obviously...
| perm | comment(0) | | 01/18/12 1:33 pm ET
Who Gets to Judge?
IF WE SAY, as we did yesterday, that we in western society are dealing with the Two Great Crimes of Modernity, then what do we do about it? The two great crimes are really quite simple. Capitalism's great crime is plantation slavery, when business owners got to own the people that worked their sugar plantations, first in Cyprus, then in the West Indian sugar islands and Brazil. And then there...
| perm | comment(0) | | 01/17/12 12:31 pm ET
Two Great Crimes of Modernity |
| 01/16/12 12:23 pm ETHappiness: Is Virtue Sufficient |
| 01/13/12 12:58 pm ETBarack Obama, "Vulture Capitalist" |
| 01/12/12 1:16 pm ETAristotle's Waffle on the Function Argument |
| 01/11/12 1:47 pm ETMake Some Lemonade, Mitt(1) |
| 01/10/12 1:08 pm ETWhat's the Story? |
| 01/09/12 1:58 pm ET| February blogs | January blogs |
2012: It's Bain Capital vs. Obama Capital
I HAVE BEEN worrying for months about Romney and the Bain Capital problem. How was Romney, if nominated for President of the United States, going to deal with Democrats trying to hang Bain Capital layoffs round his neck? Paul Kengor goes into great detail on this.
This week Mitt Romey, in an “informal” campaign plane interview, showed us how it is going to be done. Said ...
The Bad News on Unemployment
Conservatives are anxious to see bad news in the drop in the headline unemployment rate to 8. ...
Steven Pinker and the Decline of Violence
RMC Contents
Chapter 1: After the Welfare State
Chapter 2: Down in South Carolina and Out in Brooklyn
Chapter 3: Awakenings of Monotheism
Chapter 4: The Nineteenth Century From the Top Down
Chapter 5: The Nineteenth Century From the Bottom Up
TO THE UPPER CRUST, the nineteenth century was a never-ending worry. The old order was coming to an end, the cyclical world of agriculture and its wealth in land.... more
Chapter 6: Popular Religion in the Nineteenth Century
RMC Book of the Day
Stoll, David, Is Latin America Turning Protestant?
RMC Books on Education
Andrew Coulson, Market Education
How universal literacy was achieved before government education
Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic
How we got our education system
James Tooley, The Miseducation of Women
How the feminists wrecked education for boys and for girls
James Tooley, Reclaiming Education
How only a market in education will provide opportunity for the poor
E.G. West, Education and the State
How education was doing fine before the government muscled in
RMC Books on Law
Hernando De Soto, The Mystery of Capital
How ordinary people in the United States wrote the law during the 19th century
F. A. Hayek, Law Legislation and Liberty, Vol 1
How to build a society based upon law
Henry Maine, Ancient Law
How the movement of progressive peoples is from status to contract
John Zane, The Story of Law
How law developed from early times down to the present
RMC Books on Mutual Aid
James Bartholomew, The Welfare State We're In
How the welfare state makes crime, education, families, and health care worse.
David Beito, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State
How ordinary people built a sturdy social safety net in the 19th century
David Green, Before Beveridge: Welfare Before the Welfare State
How ordinary people built themselves a sturdy safety net before the welfare state
Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy
How the US used to thrive under membership associations and could do again
David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry
How modern freemasonry got started in Scotland
RMC Books on Religion
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing
How Christianity is booming in China
Finke & Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990
How the United States grew into a religious nation
Robert William Fogel, The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism
How progressives must act fast if they want to save the welfare state
David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish
How Pentecostalism is spreading across the world
Senators Question Obama's Plan to Tie Federal Aid to Tuition
imagine what happens when the Feds start to inquire into state cost-cutting efforts.
Andrew Jackson and the "Pet" Banks
after Andrew Jackson closed the Second Bank of the United States he started a bubble with federal deposits in "pet" state banks. Boom and bust followed.
The Second Crisis of the American Dream
Walter Russell Mead reminds us that the end of the Blue Social Model is the second time that an American Dream has failed.
Romney campaign bares its teeth
NY Times discovers that the Romney campaign is loaded for bear.
The Coming Tech-led Boom
"big data" in the cloud, smart manufacturing, wireless communications. And the US leads in all.
> archive
cruel . corrupt . wasteful unjust . deluded
Work to restore the Road to the Middle Class. Here’s how. Ground it in faith. Grade it with education. Protect it with mutual aid. Defend it with the law. more>>
The Road to the Middle Class is a journey from a world of power to a world of trust and love. In religion, it is a journey from power gods that respond to sacrifice and augury to the God who makes a covenant with mankind. In education, it is a journey from the world of the spoken word to the world of the written word. In community, it is the journey from dependence on blood kin and upon clientage under a great lord to the mutual aid and the rules of the self-governing fraternal association. In law it is the journey from the violence of force and feud to the kingŽs peace, the law of contract, and private property.
Civil Society
“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust
What Liberals Think About Conservatives
[W]hen I asked a liberal longtime editor I know with a mainstream [publishing] house for a candid, shorthand version of the assumptions she and her colleagues make about conservatives, she didn't hesitate. “Racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-choice fascists,” she offered, smiling but meaning it.
Harry Stein, I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next to a Republican
Liberal Coercion
[T]he Liberal, and still more the subspecies Radical... more than any other in these latter days seems under the impression that so long as he has a good end in view he is warranted in exercising over men all the coercion he is able[.]
Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus the State
Moral Imperatives of Modern Culture
These emerge out of long-standing moral notions of freedom, benevolence, and the affirmation of ordinary life... I have been sketching a schematic map... [of] the moral sources [of these notions]... the original theistic grounding for these standards... a naturalism of disengaged reason, which in our day takes scientistic forms, and a third family of views which finds its sources in Romantic expressivism, or in one of the modernist successor visions.
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self
US Life in 1842
Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism
Society and State
For [the left] there is only the state and the individual, nothing in between. No family to rely on, no friend to depend on, no community to call on. No neighbourhood to grow in, no faith to share in, no charities to work in. No-one but the Minister, nowhere but Whitehall, no such thing as society - just them, and their laws, and their rules, and their arrogance.
David Cameron, Conference Speech 2008
Faith and Politics
As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable...
[1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006