It is fair to say that “Darwin’s dangerous idea,” as Daniel Dennett has described it, has caused more trouble to the ordinary conscience than just about any other scientific hypothesis. We cannot easily reject the theory of evolution, which explains so much that we observe in the lives of plants and animals; and we cannot easily accept it either, when it comes to understanding human beings. It is not only the religious world-view that seems so precarious in the light of it. All kinds of moral aspirations, set against what we can know or surmise about our hunter-gatherer ancestors, seem to be so much wishful thinking. How can we entertain the liberal hope for equality between the sexes, for universal human rights, for a global community without wars, when we reflect on the harsh conditions in which our species is said to have evolved, and for the need, in those conditions, for belligerence, relations of domination, and an innate division of labor between woman and man? For a long time in the wake of Darwin’s Descent of Man , social scientists and anthropologists argued that human beings are not simply biological organisms, whose behavior is to be explained by their inherited constitution, but also social beings, whose most important traits are “socially constructed.” On this view culture is an independent influence, which works on the raw material of human biology and changes it into something finer, more malleable, and more responsive to moral and spiritual ideals. In this way, thinkers like Durkheim and Weber hoped to rescue human nature from Darwin by describing another input into our behavior than our biological inheritance. Not only did this give a new purchase to religion; it liberated morality from the constraints of evolutionary thinking. Morality was returned to its throne as a guide to life, by which wisdom and reason override the demands of instinct and desire. But the respite from Darwin was only short-lived. Evolutionary psychologists have since turned their attention to culture itself, arguing that culture is not, after all, an independent input into human behavior. Culture too, they argue, is part of our biological inheritance. It is not simply that there are extraordinary constants among the many cultures that we observe: gender roles, incest taboos, rites of passage, festivals, warfare, mourning, religious beliefs, moral scruples, aesthetic interests. Culture is also a part of human nature: it is our way of being . We do not live in herds or packs; our hierarchies are not based on strength or sexual dominance. We relate to one another through language, morality, and law; we sing together, dance together, worship together, and spend as much time in festivals and story telling as in seeking our food. Our hierarchies involve offices, responsibilities, gift-giving, and ceremonial recognition. Our meals are shared, and food for us is not merely nourishment but the occasion for hospitality, affection, and dressing up. All these things are comprehended in the idea of culture and culture, so understood, is uniquely human. Why is this? The social scientists respond that culture is uniquely human because we created it. But the Darwinians reject that answer as a fudge: if we created culture, what explains our capacity to create it? The answer is that this capacity evolved. Culture is therefore an adaptation, which exists because it conferred a reproductive advantage on our hunter-gatherer ancestors. According to this view, many of our cultural traits are local variations of attributes acquired during the Pleistocene age and now “hard-wired in the brain.” But if this is so, cultural characteristics may not be as plastic as the social scientists suggest. There are features of the human condition, such as gender roles, that people have believed to be cultural and therefore changeable. But if culture is an aspect of nature, “cultural” does not mean “changeable.” Maybe these controversial features of human culture are part of the genetic endowment of mankind. This new way of thinking gains credibility from the evolutionary theory of morality. Many social scientists suppose morality to be an acquired characteristic, passed on by customs, laws and punishments in which a society asserts its rights over its members. However, with the development of genetics, a new perspective opens. “Altruism” begins to look like a genetic “strategy,” which confers a reproductive advantage on the genes that produce it. In the competition for scarce resources, the genetically altruistic are able to call others to their aid, through networks of cooperation that are withheld from the genetically selfish, who are thereby eliminated from the game. If this is so, it is argued, then morality is not an acquired but an inherited characteristic. Any competitor species that failed to develop innate moral feelings would by now have died out. And what is true of morality might be true of many other human characteristics that have previously been attributed to nurture: language, art, music, religion, warfare, the local variants of which are far less significant than their common structure. If we accept the argument of the evolutionary biologists, therefore, we may find ourselves pushed toward accepting that traits often attributed to culture may be part of our genetic inheritance, and therefore not as changeable as many might have hoped: gender differences, intelligence, belligerence, and so on through all the human characteristics that people have wished, for whatever reason, to rescue from destiny and refashion as choice. But to speculate freely about such matters is dangerous. The once respectable subject of eugenics was so discredited by Nazism that “don’t enter” is now written across its door. The distinguished biologist James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA, was recently run out of the academy for having publicly suggested that sub-Saharan Africans are genetically disposed to have lower IQs than the Westerners who strive to help them, while the economist Larry Summers suffered a similar fate for claiming that the brains of women are at the top end less suited than those of men to the study of the hard sciences. In America it is widely assumed that socially significant differences between ethnic groups and sexes are the result of social factors, and in particular of “discrimination” directed against the group that does badly. This assumption is not the conclusion of a reasoned social science but the foundation of an optimistic world-view, to disturb which is to threaten the whole community that has been built on it. On the other hand, as Galileo in comparable circumstances didn’t quite say, it ain’t necessarily so. SOME CONSERVATIVES take comfort from this, arguing that liberal egalitarian values are, after all, no more than wishful thinking, and that the attempt to impose them through the school and university curriculum goes against human nature and is therefore doomed to failure. To take this line, however, is to announce the defeat of liberalism by conceding the defeat of conservatism too. Conservatism is founded, like liberalism, on the assumption that human beings are free, that they can to a certain measure shift the boundaries that constrain them, and that there is a right and wrong in human affairs which are not simply dictated by biology. It is imperative, therefore, to find another response to the evolutionary picture. The real question raised by evolutionary biology and neuroscience is not whether those sciences can be refuted, but whether we can accept what they have to say while still holding on to the beliefs and attitudes that morality demands of us. From Kant and Hegel to Wittgenstein and Husserl, there have been attempts to give a philosophy of the human condition that stands apart from biological science without opposing it. Those great thinkers told us in their several ways that we are both human beings and persons. Human beings form a biological kind, and it is for science to describe that kind. Probably it will do so in the way that the evolutionary psychologists propose. But persons do not form a biological kind, or any other sort of natural kind. The concept of the person is shaped in another way, not by our attempt to explain things but by our attempt to understand, to interact, to hold to account, to relate. The “why?” of personal understanding is not the “why?” of scientific inference. And it is answered by conceptualizing the world under the aspect of freedom and choice. Our world is a palimpsest, and over the book of nature, written in the language of cause and effect, there is another and incommensurable text, written in the language of freedom. We cannot rewrite the book of nature so that it accords with our hopes and ideals, for these have no place in that book. But we can rewrite the book of freedom, and that is where the contests lie. Consider, then, the dispute over gender and gender equality. Liberals do not deny that there are two biologically fixed kinds of human being—the male and the female; but they deny that there are two culturally fixed kinds of person—the masculine and the feminine. For the liberal, the division of roles, rights, and duties that conservatives defend is neither decreed by nature nor endorsed by the moral law. The response of conservatives should be to defend this division of roles, rights, and duties for what it is—the foundation of the most important personal relation that we have, which is the relation that binds a man and a woman in marriage. I don’t think I have ever written a sentence more politically incorrect than that one. Nevertheless, as Galileo was wise enough not to say, if you don’t like it, that’s your problem.
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Facing Up to Darwin
A Muslim judge recently dismissed a case against a Muslim who attacked an athiest wearing a costume of Mohammed (specifically a “Zombie Mohammed” costume) in a Halloween parade. The Muslim judge berated the athiest, called him a “doofus” for not learning about Mohammed, and told him that the First Amendment does not allow him to “piss off” people from other cultures. Here is a local news report: Andrew McCarthy sums up the case as follows : The victim, Ernest Perce, wore a “Zombie Mohammed” costume and pretended to walk among the dead (in the company of an associate who was the “Zombie Pope” — and who, you’ll be shocked to learn, was not assaulted). The assailant, Talag Elbayomy, a Muslim immigrant, physically attacked Perce, attempted to pull his sign off, and, according to police, admitted what he had done right after the incident. The defense argued that Elbayomy believed it was a crime to insult the prophet Mohammed (it is, under sharia law), and that because he was in the company of his children, he had to act to end this provocation and set an example about defending Islam. The actual audio from court is online here: McCarthy has made a transcript of the judge’s comments. Here are some of the highlights. Play the audio and start listening at 28:32: Well, having had the benefit of having spent over two-and-a-half years in a predominantly Muslim country, I think I know a little bit about the faith of Islam. In fact, I have a copy of the Koran here, and I would challenge you, sir, to show me where it says in the Koran that Mohammed arose and walked among the dead. [Unintelligible.] You misinterpreted things. Before you start mocking someone else’s religion you may want to find out a little bit more about it. Kinda makes you look like a doofus. And Mr. Thomas [Elbayomi's defense lawyer] is correct. In many other Muslim speaking countries – excuse me, in many Arabic speaking countries – call it “Muslim” – something like this is definitely against the law there. In their society, in fact, it could be punished by death, and it frequently is, in their society. Here in our society, we have a constitution that gives us many rights, specifically, First Amendment rights. It’s unfortunate that some people use the First Amendment to deliberately provoke others. I don’t think that’s what our forefathers really intended. I think our forefathers intended that we use the First Amendment so that we can speak with our mind, not to piss off other people and other cultures, which is what you did. I don’t think you’re aware, sir, there’s a big difference between how Americans practice Christianity – uh, I understand you’re an atheist. But, see, Islam is not just a religion, it’s their culture, their culture. It’s their very essence, their very being. They pray five times a day towards Mecca. To be a good Muslim, before you die, you have to make a pilgrimage to Mecca unless you are otherwise told you cannot because you are too ill, too elderly, whatever. But you must make the attempt. Their greetings, “Salaam alaikum,” “Alaikum wa-salaam,” “May God be with you.” Whenever – it is very common – their language, when they’re speaking to each other, it’s very common for them to say, uh, “Allah willing, this will happen.” It is – they are so immersed in it. Then what you have done is you’ve completely trashed their essence, their being. They find it very, very, very offensive. I’m a Muslim, I find it offensive. I find what’s on the other side of this very offensive. But you have that right, but you’re way outside your bounds on First Amendment rights. Having established his bias in favor of sharia law, the judge then goes on to ignore the evidence available to him and conclude that the evidence is insufficient — which is what factfinders tend to do when they don’t want to find a guilty person guilty. This is highly disturbing on several levels: the ignorant comments about the First Amendment; the elevation of sharia principles above American law; the judge’s pride in his own bias . . . the list goes on and on. I think this has the potential to be a big story — but then again, I am sometimes very wrong in my judgment of what people find significant . Thanks to Simon Jester and Milhouse.
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Sharia Comes to Pennsylvania
“ In post Tea Party Washington, D.C., National Journal is signaling it wants to be an un-evolved troglodyte when it comes to the ideological prisms of Washington power. ” I think National Journal must hand over its rating of the most conservative and liberal members of congress to an outsourced shop in Mumbai filled with mental midgets. There can really be no other explanation for this year’s embarrassing list of the most conservative members of Congress. What is so stunning about it is that if you go to outside actual conservative organizations like the Club For Growth or the Heritage Foundation, etc. and see how conservatives define conservatives, the list won’t line up the way the mainstream left-of-center oriented biases of National Journal have lined up the list. One of the issues is how National Journal cherry picks its legislation . Even more embarrassing, National Journal appears more interested in using “conservative” for “Republican” and “liberal” for “Democrat.” In other words, these rankings tend to draw out partisans more than ideologies, while bastardizing the language of ideology to conform the rankings to partisanship. I assume the liberal list is as stupid as the conservative list. The National Journal list, for example, would have you believe that Orrin Hatch is more conservative than Mike Lee in Utah. According to National Journal , James Inhofe is more conservative than Jim DeMint by 2.3 points, but Jim DeMint is only 0.5 points more conservative than Mitch McConnell who is 11.4 points more conservative than Senator Rand Paul and also 2.4 points more conservative than Marco Rubio. In other words, National Journal is full of it in a way that I think it should be hard for such a respectable organization to be. I cannot believe some editor did not have the good sense to sit down, look at the rankings, and think, “My God, we will turn into a joke if we put this out.” Because guess what? They are a joke today in my inbox. I cannot believe any conservative or liberal will take the rankings seriously. The humorous emails I’m getting from Hill staffers and even a few reporters confirm just how laughable it all is. And every single email expresses the same sense of disappointment that National Journal , of all organizations, would get it so badly wrong. What is so troubling though, and what explains just how dumbed down and mentally deficient so much political coverage in Washington has become, is that National Journal is an extremely respected organization. Even I rely on their reporting as close to fair. I have a stack of stuff from National Journal just for today’s radio show. So when a respected organization like National Journal produces a ratings chart of conservatism that so misses the mark and deviates so far from what conservatives themselves would produce, it not only will lead reporters in Washington astray who will see the National Journal imprimatur and not realize just how off the mark the ratings are, but it will also shape coverage of candidates in a way that fails the capture the nuance of what is actually happening within both the conservative and liberal wings of the parties in Washington today. Republican does not mean conservative. Democrat does not mean liberal. But you’d be hard pressed to get this in these rankings. In post Tea Party Washington, D.C., National Journal is signaling it wants to be an un-evolved troglodyte when it comes to the ideological prisms of Washington power. Because I respect the organization so much, I am so much more disappointed it can’t evolve past the nineties in how it covers ideology and party.
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National Journal’s Self-Beclowning: Their Ideological Rankings of Congress Are Embarrassing.
Can you say Tony Ulasewicz? OK. Let’s get down to cases. The case of Media Matters and all those deeply interesting stories over at Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller . Let’s add some history. Context. Let’s focus on one solitary, very bright thread in this series of stories about Media Matters, specifically the relationship between Media Matters and the Obama White House. There is one very disturbing, very serious precedent that provides a direct link between the Obama White House and its Media Matters buddies — and the famous Watergate scandal that brought down the Nixon presidency. Let’s start with Anthony Ulasewicz. Or, “Tony” as the late New York City cop turned private investigator turned Watergate figure was known. And Tony’s friend in the NYPD’s “Bureau of Special Services,” Jack Caulfield. In the 1968 presidential campaign, Nixon aide John Ehrlichman had hired Jack Caulfield as a campaign “tour director.” Caulfield at the time was a detective second grade in the NYPD, whose first contact with the Nixon staff came when he was assigned to candidate Nixon’s Park Avenue campaign headquarters. Remember that this was 1968. Presidential candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated in June, Martin Luther King two months before that. In this atmosphere police protection became a big thing, and shortly Nixon, like all out-of-office presidential candidates ever since (if they meet certain requirements — as Rick Santorum has just done) had Secret Service protection. In the mix of this, inevitably Caulfield became friendly with the Nixon staff — John Ehrlichman specifically. Victory in hand, Ehrlichman became White House Counsel and Assistant to the President. Combining with his longtime friend H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, soon the new White House Chief of Staff, the duo formed the top staff tier of the Nixon White House. Getting off on the wrong track almost immediately, Ehrlichman asked Caulfield to form a private security agency to provide “investigative support” for the White House. Caulfield, rejected for the government post of Chief Marshal of the United States (boss of all those U.S. Marshals), said he wanted to work in the White House instead. Done. He was duly installed in the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House. His job? Yes indeed. Setting up a private intelligence system for Ehrlichman — and the new President. But one guy doing this? Not good. So Caulfield arranged for White House Counsel and Assistant to the President John Ehrlichman to fly to New York — secretly. There, in a secret meeting in a VIP lounge at LaGuardia Airport, Ehrlichman met with Tony Ulasewicz. The resulting arrangement? Tony Ulasewicz would be paid $22,000 a year — later raised to $24,000 — plus $1,000 a month in expense money, all in private funds coming from Nixon political supporters and dispensed by the President’s personal lawyer Herbert Kalmbach. Kalmbach, notably, was not the White House lawyer. He didn’t work in the government. He was Nixon’s private attorney, the man who ladled out the cash to Tony. But he took his instructions directly from White House aides, one of them being: pay Tony Ulasewicz. For what? What was Tony’s job? To be specific, Mr. Ulasewicz was…. well, let’s let the late Theodore H. White describe Tony’s job. Mr. White won a Pulitzer Prize for his The Making of the President 1960 , kicking off a series that covered presidential campaigns through the Reagan-Carter showdown in 1980. But Teddy White also wrote another book during that 20-year period. That would be Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon . As it were, a blow-by-blow account of the un-making of a president. Mr. White discusses Tony’s role precisely: His assignments, as he recalls — and he might get thirty or thirty-five assignments a year — concerned the sex, drinking and family problems of political opponents of the President, or contributors to the President’s rivals. All reports were verbal — to Caufield. Where they went, up from there, he did not know.
Those who receive Glenn’s daily email recapping his radio show may have noticed an especially interesting item. A Left-leaning caller named “Bobby” from San Antonio, TX called the show and proceeded to angrily denounce hosts Stu Burguiere and Pat Gray, before concluding with a bizarre threat. “Once you step outside your comfort zone, it’s over, buddy,” Bobby snarled. You can watch the clip from the show below: As it turns out, Bobby’s outburst isn’t a one-time thing. The young-sounding, tenor liberal firebrand has been calling conservative talk radio to yell at hosts for almost two years. Back in November of 2010, “Bobby from San Antonio, Texas” called the Rush Limbaugh show. The results may cause schadenfreude: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCjMTtER7oQ Some of “Bobby’s” greatest hits from that call: You pick on Jesse Jackson. That’s a man who stood with Martin Luther King. He’s practically a prophet, and I’m sure if Martin were alive today, you would have parodies of him, too, because we know exactly what you’re about, Mr. Limbaugh! For a person like yourself who’s taken so much while taking nothing back — while giving nothing back — when is it your turn to give something back this country that you claim to love so, SIR? When will it be time for you to care about someone else other than your own…? All you care about is profit! All you care about is lies! The call apparently sparked a huge outpouring of interest from Rush fans, many of whom thought the call was a prank. So many, in fact, that Rush himself had to publicly go on the air and tell them : It was from San Antonio, and he was legit. I got two kinds a e-mail response. One line of response was just livid at you, Snerdley [Rush's call screener], for even putting the guy on the air, and the other line of response was, “Come on, Rush, you made all that up. Nobody really talks or sounds that way,” and it was legit. You heard it, Mr. New Castrati. It was typical, the greatest example of it we coulda found. But the saga of Bobby wasn’t finished. Three months later, on February 8, 2011, another caller from San Antonio calling himself “Buck” called into the show, following an interview Rush had done with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The tone of his initial remarks – delivered almost in the style of a makeshift gangsta rap – may sound familiar: CALLER: Yeah, Limbaugh getting chummy with Rummy. You know, those who want to rewrite history can’t escape reality. And the world is united on that. So let me tell you something, Mr. Nostradumus, here’s a prediction for you, Rummy’s book bombs. Here’s something else for you. Okay? Suicide is a solution. Do something for the country instead of doing something for yourself. Any doubt as to who “Buck” really was was immediately erased, though, when Rush asked, “Buck, is this really you?” The response: Hey, this is your castrati, remember me? I know you don’t like to take real questions, but today you do. The “castrati” only got a few more repetitions of his line “Suicide is a solution” before Limbaugh took him off the air. Though Limbaugh joked that “Buck”/Bobby was threatening to kill himself, he clearly was telling Rush to kill himself because it would make America better. Put in this context, Bobby’s call to Glenn’s show today might strike some as slightly more ominous than amusing. Especially this part: Do you know what, you people live in a bubble. You live in a bubble. Once you get outside that bubble, you’ll… you don’t stand a chance. Once you step outside of your safe zone, it’s over, buddy… Stu and Pat tried to clarify whether Bobby was threatening violence, only to be hung up on. The real irony is that Bobby had started his call by attacking Stu and Pat for “offensiveness” in their language. In any case, those with any idea as to the identity of this death threat-spouting opponent of “offensiveness” are urged to get in touch with The Blaze, or perhaps a mental-health facility. Bobby’s laughter-inducing reign of terror must be brought to an end. Go here to see the original: Liberal Caller Who Threatened Stu and Pat Has a History of Trolling Conservative Radio Hosts
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Liberal Caller Who Threatened Stu and Pat Has a History of Trolling Conservative Radio Hosts
