And on the 29th day, GingerMan rested

Yeah, no leap year this time around! So, this post (my 29th of the month) is just gravy.

But, pretty cute still...

Secular Right vs. Jim Kalb

The blog Secular Right has the following mission statement:

We believe that conservative principles and policies need not be grounded in a specific set of supernatural claims. Rather, conservatism serves the ends of “Human Flourishing,” what the Greeks termed Eudaimonia. Secular conservatism takes the empirical world for what it is, and accepts that the making of it the best that it can be is only possible through our faculties of reason.

In a serve-and-volley mildly reminiscent of two recent GingerMan posts here and here, Jim Kalb takes his sword to the air-quotes of Human Flourishing in the above:

My own view, which my book goes into at length, is that by itself rational empiricism gives you desire and technique as (radically anti-conservative) guides to life. Satisfaction of desire doesn’t seem to constitute human flourishing. To get beyond it though you need a moral tradition that’s understood to connect to something that transcends desire and thus the empirical.

So far as I can tell, an adequate theory of such a thing is going to have to explain why life objectively has a purpose, and that’s going to involve attribution of purpose and intention to the world at large. In other words, the theory is going to be religious. And it’s going to say something definite, otherwise it will be useless. So it’s going to make specific religious and non-empirical (”supernatural”) claims. [em: original]

Razib Khan, a.k.a. "David Hume," responds here:

As for the idea that a transcendent reality is necessary, I will venture to offer that I have always found the models and theories posited by religious people about their gods less than awe inspiring. There certainly beauty and glory in this universe which is simply outside the purview of human animal comprehension; anyone who has grappled with the formalisms of Quantum Mechanics can claim that they seen the face of the incomprehensible & awesome abyss.

But I believe that its relation to a human political and social order are tenuous at best. Rather, the primary entity which transcends is the community and society, because I do believe a strong case can be made that individualistic hedonism which is the final form of classical liberalism offers diminishing returns precisely because of the nature of the human beast. We are a social animal, and individual happiness is contingent upon communal amity.

Note: These sorts of philosophical discussions are of course only relevant for a very small, if influential, minority. Most human animals operate in a world of custom and innate reflex, not analytic reflection.

The final note resonates, I think, with my prior post re: Scandinavia. Which is to say that even lacking a seamless philosophical consistency, so long as a society is providing an ethical framework within which human flourishing remains possible, to the extent we can measure it (i.e. life expectancy, child welfare, literacy, schooling, economic equality, standard of living and competitiveness), then I think we have to conclude that the society is *working* successfully at some fundamental level.

People do not consult their philosophy texts in the course of their daily existence, and even if they do, we seem to be able to live quite comfortably in states of severe cognitive dissonance on many such topics through effective rationalization of our own behavior such that it aligns with our "beliefs."

In a surprising turn of events, the blog response by Khan has failed to change Jim Kalb's entire metaphysical view of the universe:

The authors at Secular Right apparently believe that their choice of godless conservatism is justified, and that they're avoiding errors made by John Rawls, radical Islamists, and Sarah Palin. For them to say their beliefs reflect their natural human desire to survive and stay on good terms with their fellows may be true, but it doesn't explain their grounds for saying they're right and others are wrong. The beliefs of those other people reflect such things as well. Also, it seems that whichever groups, arguments and goals actually win best represent the natural tendencies of man and the world. Is actual success then the standard for rationality, justification, the summum bonum and all the rest of it?

In fact, of course, the Secular Right slogan is "Reality & Reason" and not "Hail Victory." It doesn't do though for them to claim their views are better because in addition to following natural human tendencies they are in accord with reality and reason. Is the claim of truth and rational superiority just an expression of inborn drives and social conditioning, or does it have to do with reality and reason in a sense that transcends naturalistic behavioral explanations and makes their views truly the more worthy choice?

Whole lotta smiting going on

Rod Dreher, in a post that responds to Andrew Sullivan, makes a statement that I am still having trouble getting my mind around:

Andrew brings up an important point, one that serves to highlight a critical difference between the two basic strains of American conservatism -- libertarian, and traditionalist.

Libertarianism is anti-statist liberalism. It is also the dominant school of American conservatism.

[snip]


For the libertarian, human happiness is the highest goal, and that happiness is something that the individual is free, within broad limits, to decide for himself.

Traditionalism is a harder sell, obviously, as any philosophy that imposes limits on human choice and liberty will be in America. Its telos is not happiness, but virtue. In fact, the traditionalist does not recognize human happiness apart from virtue. A bad man who is content with himself cannot truly be said to be happy, in this view.

If it's a matter of agreeing with Andrew that the Sixties (which is to say, the social revolution that broke open in the Sixties, but which has been ongoing since then) made possible a greater increase in personal satisfaction, and even legitimate happiness, then I do agree with him.

Certainly there can be no greater example of the gains made in virtue via the repudiation of immoral and unjust legal barriers to full black citizenship. Similarly, women are treated more fairly now, and though some of you will doubt me, I agree that the world is a better place for gay folks than it once was. It would be foolish to view the Sixties as nothing but darkness, in the same way that it's hard to deny that many good things came out of the Enlightenment.

The question, though, is not whether the Sixties (or the Enlightenment) were good or bad, but whether on balance the Sixties (or the Enlightenment) were good or bad.

I answer in the negative. [em: mine]

In the above, Dreher recognizes broadly (and embraces) the benefit of the Sixties for blacks, women and gays (i.e. that is to say approx. 60+% of the US population), but concludes that on balance the total impact was negative.

Now, it would be unfair to Rod (having read him regularly) to say that this indicates that he would willingly trade those gains to restore the benefits he sees as lost. It would more likely be that he would have preferred to find a manner to achieve most of the same benefits without the associated costs that he finds objectionable. But still, even when taken at that charitable level, this is an absolutely fantastical statement from my point of view. The losses have outweighed the gains?!?!

He doesn't elucidate what exactly he judges these losses to be, but from my reading of him over time, I would conclude that they typically fall into 3 categories:

1) Decline in religiosity - resulting in unspecified, but extremely perilous, moral decay with a nihilistic emphasis on personal fulfillment
2) Family breakdown / divorce - resulting in more single-parent homes and social problems emanating from same
3) Sexual freedom / abortion - related to item #2 and the decline in traditional marriage

Now, if I were Rod, and I saw the total volume of abortions performed since Roe vs. Wade as effectively a national holocaust, then maybe this would make some sense. After all, one cannot compare the increase in freedom for many individuals to the actual loss of innocent lives for others and judge the tradeoff as worthwhile.

But, I don't get any sense that the abortion question is the singular fulcrum upon which this determination pivots. In other words, I doubt he would answer the question alternately even if Roe v. Wade had never come to pass, but all other societal changes remained the same.

So, what to make of this? When I read traditionalists such as Dreher, there is an almost unremitting sense of impending doom in their writing (he actually has a blog post category tag called "decline and fall"). But, it is never entirely clear from whence the final cataclysm is going to erupt. However, what we do absolutely know, for sure and with certainty, is that there is a Judgement Day on the very near horizon where the world gets its collective comeuppance for having strayed from the path.

Then there's this from the New York Times:

Phil Zuckerman spent 14 months in Scandinavia, talking to hundreds of Danes and Swedes about religion. It wasn’t easy.

Anyone who has paid attention knows that Denmark and Sweden are among the least religious nations in the world. Polls asking about belief in God, the importance of religion in people’s lives, belief in life after death or church attendance consistently bear this out.

It is also well known that in various rankings of nations by life expectancy, child welfare, literacy, schooling, economic equality, standard of living and competitiveness, Denmark and Sweden stand in the first tier.

Well documented though they may be, these two sets of facts run up against the assumption of many Americans that a society where religion is minimal would be, in Mr. Zuckerman’s words, “rampant with immorality, full of evil and teeming with depravity.”

Which is why he insists at some length that what he and his wife and children experienced was quite the opposite: “a society — a markedly irreligious society — that was, above all, moral, stable, humane and deeply good.”

[snip]


At one point, he queries Jens, a 68-year-old nonbeliever, about the sources of Denmark’s very ethical culture. Jens replies: “We are Lutherans in our souls — I’m an atheist, but still have the Lutheran perceptions of many: to help your neighbor. Yeah. It’s an old, good, moral thought.”

To be clear, I myself am not anti-religious. For the most part, I was raised outside of a religious context, and so I don't really feel particularly strongly one way or the other about it. When pressed about the nature of the Almighty on one occassion, I replied, "What can I tell you? I don't have well-formed opinions on the matter."

Religious belief and community obviously has great meaning for an enormous number of people and for that I am thankful on their behalf. However, what I can never fully appreciate is the absolute certainty with which some (especially conservative religionists) claim that an unreligious environment leads, without possible exception, to complete and utter societal breakdown and chaos.

Which is just to say that it seems that there is demonstrable evidence that there are still ethics even without specific doctrinal religious belief. Even people who are full blown atheists do not intentionally raise their children to be sociopaths.

In other words, what exactly is the problem with Scandinavia? And, why isn't there more smiting in progress there anyway?

Quote of the Day: "Hey Howard, there's your Chinaman."

On a related note, NPR's All Things Considered reviews the cultural legacy of The Donger:

"Every single Asian dude who went to high school or junior high during the era of John Hughes movies was called 'Donger,'" says Martin Wong.

Wong and Eric Nakamura co-founded the magazine Giant Robot, which covers Asian and Asian-American pop culture.

"If you're being called Long Duk Dong," Wong explains, "you're comic relief amongst a sea of people unlike you."

Worse, says Nakamura: "You're being portrayed as a guy who just came off a boat and who's out of control. It's like every bad stereotype possible, loaded into one character."

Nakamura and Wong say that before "The Donger" came along, they got called "Bruce Lee" at school. That wasn't so bad: At least Lee, the martial-arts star, could kick ass. Sixteen Candles stole even that limited pleasure — and Asian-American guys focused their frustration on the actor who played Long Duk Dong. After all, he was one of them: born in the U.S.A.

Can I speak to Little Miss Muffet in Accounts Receivable?

Alice posted this link previously to her FB page, but to any who missed it at the time, this one had me ROFL as they say: Man tries to pay bill with spider drawing.

The part where he asks her if she is sure this is the same drawing just slays me.

[Blogger meta-note: Maybe this post seems a bit like filler (since it was previously linked to as I note above), but I am on a 1 -post-a-day pace for February, and so on the final kick down the homestretch, if I can't think of anything smart to say, you will just have to live with rehashed arachnid comedy.]

They don't call it the dismal science for nothing

Robert Shiller, Yale economist, who predicted the housing bubble attempts to look into his crystal ball in this interview with analyst Henry Blodget.

Shiller: It's the biggest [housing bubble] in world history. We are entering a new era.

[snip]

Blodget: Just to clarify that, because I think that's probably shocking to a lot of people, you're saying that we're [only] halfway back down to effectively fair level.

Here's Shiller's quantitative analysis of long-term housing values (inflation-adjusted) from which he bases the above estimate.




What many people don't often realize is that housing per se isn't actually historically a great investment in terms of value appreciation. People tend to underestimate the cost of the home improvements that they make along the way and of course inflation boosts the nominal perceived value upon resale.

But, home ownership mostly creates a backdoor savings plan via the payments made on the mortgage principle, and thus has served as an important vehicle for middle class wealth accumulation as a side effect of the slow increase in equity over time. That was, of course, when people were actively looking forward to paying off their mortgages (i.e. neighbors used to hold "mortgage burning parties" once they had paid in full) instead of pulling out the increased paper equity value via home equity loans and lines of credit.

Now, obviously, housing is a highly locale-specific product. So, even if Shiller is correct in aggregate, there will be some areas that are not as bad, but that also means there will be others that will be even worse.

Via Bloomberg:

It has taken Susan Erb just three years to see the value of her Merced, California, home plunge by more than half to $350,000. Next month, her mortgage payment jumps 20 percent to $3,321 and she knows she can’t afford it. Her bank won’t rework the loan unless she stops paying altogether.

[snip]

Merced, the epicenter of the U.S. foreclosure crisis, demonstrates the steep challenges President Barack Obama will face in trying to stem defaults. One in 59 housing units in the Merced metropolitan area received a foreclosure filing in January, the highest rate in the U.S., according to RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, California-based seller of default data. For- sale signs are everywhere and a building boom fueled by subprime mortgages has been brought to a standstill. Just 16 construction permits were issued last year. In 2005, there were 1,427.

“We’re ground zero,” said Merced Mayor Ellie Wooten, 75. The city, population 81,000, had an unemployment rate of 15.5 percent in December, “and it’s going to get worse,” she said.

One of the key metrics that is always useful to look at is rent comparison. At a basic microeconomic level the "value" of the house has to be correlated to the monetary stream of payments that someone is willing to pay to live in it (or similar accomodations). So, if house rents in the area are far below the average mortgage payments, there is an economic incentive to rent rather than buy. And, this economic reality will continue to place downward pressure on prices until they come into balance.

Rents (and therefore housing prices) get bid up either when a) the area population increases or b) the average wealth of the citizens increase, since both place upward pressure on prices.

By contrast, in a separate article I have read that there are welfare recipients living in some of the above-noted Merced McMansions because the rental market there has fallen so fast with so much foreclosed housing on the market. And, anybody that owns a home there, even if they weren't personally irresponsible, is going to get hurt badly by all this.

Hey brother, can you spare a balance transfer?

Megan McArdle on how the financial crisis is changing the state-of-play in the credit card industry:

It used to be that credit-card companies lured customers with cash rewards. Now American Express Co. is paying to get rid of them. The card issuer is offering selected customers a $300 AmEx prepaid gift card if they pay off their balances and close their accounts.

The unusual move underscores how quickly conditions have deteriorated in the credit-card market. The current economic morass was provoked by spiking mortgage defaults. But as the economic crisis widens and unemployment climbs, there is growing concern that credit-card defaults will soar into the stratosphere as well.

"This is a huge paradigm shift," says Curtis Arnold, founder of CardRatings.com, a credit-card review Web site. He says he expects other large companies to follow suit with offers to entice consumers to pay off their balances, as card issuers cope with increasing defaults.

[snip]

I'm hearing a lot of discussion among friends and on finance shows about a new dilemma cash-strapped consumers are facing: pay down credit card debt, or save cash? The answer used to be a slam dunk: with interest rates at 20%, you pay off the cards, and run them up again if you hit some desperate emergency.

But with credit lines being slashed, that's no longer a safe bet; you could pay off your cards, get laid off, and find yourself with no safety net. Then again, if you don't pay off the cards, you're more likely to get your credit line cut.

No one I've talked to has a clear answer other than: cut your spending to the bone and put half what you save thereby into a bank account, the other half into paying down your cards. Which is why all the restaurants in DC seem unusually spacious these days--when I walk by them. Even with no crushing credit card debt, we, too, are eating at home.

The volume of credit card offers filling my mail box has declined markedly and we have been having similar family budget conversations in my home, which is to say that we have never really known any severe financial adversity in our lives in large part due to the easy availability of cheap credit. When Alice & I were both in school, we could simply charge things we needed but didn't have the money to pay for right then. Further, we could get much of it at 0% interest through utilizing revolving balance transfer offers, so there wasn't even a financial penalty for making such a choice.

Thus, we have no charming stories, like my own parents, of eating popcorn for an entire week while awaiting your first paycheck from a new job. However, I'm pretty sure that kind of experience only tends to be considered *charming* when viewed through the long lens of past memory. At the time, I doubt charming was the first word that came to mind.