Here, thanks to Scott at Scottish Nous 2005-09-07, we have the latest contribution of the Religious Right to a vibrant Christian culture in America:

No, I’m not kidding. This is for real. You can buy your own Bush Fish car magnet for $3.25, with discounts if you buy in bulk. (Of course, those who follow the comings and goings of creepy Freepers may note that this is not the first time that G.W.’s boosters have been aiming to save the right-hand seat for him.)

Meanwhile, Mike Tennant at Strike the Root 2005-11-09 brings us the following conversation, overheard on a Christian talk radio show out of Pittsburgh:

Caller: “[George W. Bush] led the country through 9/11 and Katrina in the most moral and righteous way possible.”

Host [Jerry Bowyer]: “I don’t think it would have been possible for him to do it in an immoral way. It’s his moral core.”

Apropos of nothing, here’s an item that was featured a while back in some obscure little left-wing rag that nobody pays attention to anymore:

9 What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made de the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. 10 As it is written:

“There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”
13 “Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit.”
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 ruin and misery mark their ways,
17 and the way of peace they do not know.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.

But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, …

Also, while we’re at it:

8 But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.

9 And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.

10 Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.

11 But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.

12 And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

And:

6 But when they said, Give us a king to lead us, this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. 7 And the LORD told him: Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. 8 As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. 9 Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do.

10 Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day.

The weirdest thing about the culture of the God-and-Country set these days isn’t even how chillingly statist it is. It’s how belligerently anti-Christian it is. Perhaps they need a new name for the civic religion they are creating; I’d like to suggest Caesarism, or perhaps simply blasphemy.

Further reading

• WikiPedia: ICHTHYS
• WikiPedia: Christian Anarchism
• Austro-Athenian Empire 2004-11-13: God and the State
• GT 2005-02-25: Old Time Religion
• GT 2004-10-28: Jesus
• GT 2004-10-18: Civic religion
• GT 2004-10-12: Humor for Hawks
• GT 2004-06-17: A Cheap Shot

The posts have been coming a bit slowly lately because of a couple of different projects that I’ve been fiddling with for the past few days (more on that in the very near future). Recent discoveries in the public arts, though–thanks to No Treason 2005/08/12–demand notice.

You may have already known about the Baltimore city government’s post-2001 revival of Socialist Realist agitprop:

What you may not have known about yet is that the British government has decided to make everyone feel much safer with the following poster:

I’d make a joke, but the problem is that reality is outpacing any parody I could try to draw up.

Jesus. Don’t these people read?

Two things that you ought to know if you ever want to teach for CTY are: (1) it’s a thrilling, challenging, wonderful experience that changes the lives of nearly everyone involved in it for the better; and (2) you will have almost no time whatsoever to yourself for six weeks, and certainly no time to follow the news. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing for you is a question I leave to you and your god.

But though I may be in no position to offer any timely analysis, I do at least have time to offer some analysis. So, hot off the presses from October 1903, I’m glad to announce that the completed transcription of Chapter V of G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica is now available online from the Fair Use Repository. This chapter is Moore’s treatment of Ethics in Relation to Conduct, and it highlights one of the odder parts of Moore’s ethical system. Moore was, as I’ve mentioned before (in GT 2005-06-01 and GT 2005-06-28) a sharp critic of utilitarianism, and has given the philosophical tradition what I think is one of the loveliest arguments ever given against it. But he wasn’t a critic of consequentialism; in fact, he seems to have regarded consequentialism as more or less obviously true, and a direct consequence of properly distinguishing things good as ends from things good only as means. Although he alludes to this early on, it’s Chapter V that does the real heavy lifting for the argument. If Moore’s arguments go through, then it will turn out that no human action is good as an end in itself, but rather that actions are good only insofar as they are the causes of good effects. But unlike most consequentialists, Moore does not think there is any reason, other than prejudice, to start out assuming that the kinds of effects that are relevant for moral questions are effects on human consciousness at all, let alone the specific effects of promoting happiness (or pleasure, or satisfaction) and minimizing misery (or pain, or frustration). In fact, he takes himself to have shown already (with the Open Question Argument) that there’s no reason, other than prejudice, to start out assuming that you can characterize the quality that all good effects have in common in any terms except the bare fact that they are indeed good. (N.B.: That doesn’t mean that it can’t be the case; Moore thinks that the OQA proves only that if there is some non-ethical property that all good effects in fact have in common, that’s a substantive, synthetic finding about ethics, which will have to be justified by an appeal to ethical intuitions, rather than logical analysis of ethical terms. His discussion in Chapter III is intended to give some ethical reasons why even if there is such a property, it can’t be pleasantness; his positive reasons for thinking that there isn’t any such common quality will have to wait until the forthcoming transcription of Chapter VI.)

The upshot of all this is that although I think Moore goes seriously astray in his argument in Chapter V, he can’t be engaged on the same terms that most criticisms of consequentialism work from–because most criticisms of consequentialism are criticisms of utilitarianism and Moore is no utilitarian. Since he defends, at some length, the intrinsic value of many things (beauty, knowledge, friendship, some character traits, etc.) against utilitarian attempts to treat them as mere means, he can easily stand with anti-consequentialists during most of the common criticisms of utilitarianism–that it requires you to be willing to approve of injustice or lies in principle if there is enough of a pay-off in pleasure, for example; since Moore defends the intrinsic value of many things besides pleasure he is not at all committed to that; since Moore, in Chapter V, so sharply distinguishes the question of what ought to exist from what we ought to do, he may have an easier time than most ethicists would agreeing with Bernard Williams’ criticism that utilitarianism seems to obliterate me and my projects in favor of rigidly impersonal rule-following. If there’s something that Moore’s doing wrong here–and I think that there certainly is–it probably won’t be successfully picked out by most of the arguments that pick out something wrong with more familiar forms of consequentialism.

From here, the transcription will continue with the final chapter, Chapter VI: The Ideal, in which Moore attempts to give his full positive discussion of the sorts of things which are good in themselves. I hope to keep up my pace of 1-2 sections per day (although I probably won’t be able to begin until tomorrow). If you want to keep up with the progress of the transcription, you can subscribe to the Atom feed of Chapter VI, which will be updated as each section is completed. Onward to the ultimate end!

Previously…

• GT 2004/12/19: One Moore for the free world: Chapter I of Principia Ethica is now online
• GT 2005/02/18: Philosophy Break
• [GT 2005/06/01: Other things][GT 2005/06/01]
• [GT 2005/06/28: Chapter IV and much, much Moore…][GT 2005/06/28]

Other news

For those of you who just can’t get enough fin-de-siècle English philosophy, you’re in luck. Not only is the transcription of Principia Ethica nearing completion, but you may also be interested to know that:

1. I’ve also found and transcribed G. E. Moore’s review of Franz Brentano’s The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong, which appeared in the International Journal of Ethics in the same month that Principia Ethica was published; Moore refers to Brenatno’s book and his review of it in the Preface to Principia Ethica, where he says that he discovered the book after completing PE but found [in it] opinions far more closely resembling my own, than those of any other ethical writer with whom I am acquainted. The review singles out Brentano for praise mainly because of Brentano’s parallel emphasis on the irreducibility of good (The great merit of this view over all except Sidgwick’s is its recognition that all truths of the form This is good in itself are logically independent of any truth about what exists), but offers some criticism of Brentano’s attempt to define good in terms of other ethical predicates (as that which it is right to love). Also, apparently, the translation sucked, but that was Cecil Hague’s fault, not Brentano’s.

2. I’ve transcribed several articles from the April 1895 issue of Mind, and will probably finish transcribing the rest of the contents within the next several days. I picked that issue out in particular because it had Lewis Carroll’s fantastic three-page essay, What the Tortoise said to Achilles; the issue also features some rather mediocre material from Bradley, an apology for the Common Sense school of Scottish philosophy by Henry Sidgwick, an early book review by Bertrand Russell (not yet online), and an interesting introductory essay on Hindu Logic by S. N. Gupta.

3. I hear tell that the court scribes of the Austro-Athenian Empire have also been hard at work, with three new transcriptions of essays from Herbert Spencer’s 1902 book Facts and Comments. In addition to his essay Patriotism, which Roderick made available online a while ago, you can now also find his (sadly topical) denunciations of war, empire, and its corrosive effects on civilization in Imperialism and Slavery, Re-barbarization, and Regimentation.

Just a reminder: just because something’s old doesn’t mean it’s not topical; and just because something’s not topical doesn’t mean it’s not good. So, enjoy!

Like the Great Americans at Riding Sun (2005-04-05), The Jawa Report (2005-04-04), Michelle Malkin (2005-04-05), et al., I am outraged at the obvious, slavish political bias of the mainstream news photography elite. The 2005 Pulitzer Awards in Breaking News Photography are only the latest example of their anti-military agenda and their love for anti-government insurgents. I mean, check out the World Press Photo Award Winner for 1989:

Charlie Cole, USA, Newsweek

Besides being very possibly staged by a reporter who was working with insurgents, this photograph also shows the People’s Liberation Army troops in a negative light. This photo portays the Chinese government as tyrannical and likely caused untold anti-Chinese inflammation. Equally telling is what the photo doesn’t show. No photos show Chinese troops rebuilding their homeland. No photos show People’s Liberation Army troops playing with kids in the street. No photos show the results of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. No photos show the thousands of freed prisoners from Imperial Japan’s tyrannical rule.

Where is the balance? Why didn’t the so-called World Press Photo Award give equal recognition to visually stunning works like these?

Is that the best the World Press Photo committee could find? Did they even bother to discuss the issues raised by The People’s Daily before bestowing the prize upon Charlie Cole? Were they ignorant of the controversy? Or did they simply decide in the end that it didn’t matter?

Update: More insurgent-loving sedition from the hate-China-first crowd can be found from Enemies of the People like feministe (2005-04-06) and Rox Populi (2005-04-06).

…, or at least in the April 2005 issue of Reason. This is from the leading page of Homeschooling Alone by Greg Beato. Here we have three young children under Mother’s watchful eyes in Tempe, Arizona:

This is a family of home-schoolers starting their day–by uttering the Pledge of Allegiance. When they don’t even have to.

You want an argument for thick libertarianism over thin libertarianism? There it is.

N.B.: this is not a diatribe against home-schooling, or even against the article. The article is mostly intended as an article about why private foundations and corporate donors seem resolutely determined to keep throwing their education reform money down the hole of proven failures–like mostly-useless charter schools and technology-in-schools fads–rather than, say, offering scholarship funds to homeschooling families or co-operative organizations of home-schoolers. It’s decent as far as it goes, but here as elsewhere the cadences of the hard Right–who are withdrawing their kids from school, by and large, so that they will be unconstrained in their ability to teach their children a bunch of lies in a resolutely authoritarian atmosphere–are lurking behind the voice of almost everyone who’s allowed to speak on behalf of homeschoolers.

That doesn’t mean that everyone who homeschools is like that of course, and it sure doesn’t mean that that’s what homeschooling as such means. It isn’t; that’s just what the most obnoxiously vocal part of the movement is about. A lot of people are doing amazing things with their kids. And, hell, it doesn’t even mean that the kids being homeschooled by hard Right fundamentalists ought to go back into government schools (let alone be pushed back into it by the heavy arm of the State). Everyone has the right to flee the institutionalized education system, and it’s hard to say how they’d be better off (on balance) if they were stuck back into one of those desks. Homeschooling means a step, even if it’s a small one, towards learning in freedom The less bullying that anyone gets from the government about getting out of the institutionalized school, the better–and that means that no bullying is best of all.

But what kind of a standard is Well, at least it’s not as bad as the government schools for an anarchist to uphold? Freedom is better than coercion, sure–being left alone is better than being stomped on, and leaving other people alone is better than stomping on them. But that’s not the end of the story; while I’ll go to the mat supporting the right of parents to keep their kids out of government schools, and the wisdom of doing so even if their views about education, history, science, politics, etc. strike me as abhorrent, it’s worth pointing out that those things are abhorrent. Besides being bad in their own right, some of those views are directly opposed to maintaining a free culture. Like taking your kids out of government schools to ensure that you can hold on to an obsessive theo-nationalism and chant out UNDER GOD! every morning, for instance. The hard Right wing of the homeschooling movement may be tactical coalition partners; they may be people that I’m obligated, by principle, to support against government aggression. But they are not my friends.

Nor should they be.