Evil: yes or no?

Lately I've been thinking about corporations and evil.

A person with whom I've been having sporadic corporations wants to write about, if I understand correctly, a business ethic, perhaps modeled on Quaker beliefs. Fair enough (or not, this is far enough outside my area of interest that I'm not sure if anything worthwhile has been written, and if not, why not). She has been running into the problem that most of the people that she's talked to so far balk at the idea: corporations are evil! (I'm not sure if people are actually saying this or simply implying it, but the message seems to be clear regardless.)

Are corporations evil? Maybe not. I'm not an utilitarian, and scoff at consequentialist ethics in general. (My scoffing was once laughed at by Eva Dadlez, after which we argued about the proper interpretation of Homer Simpson hiding a gun in the vegetable crisper.) This is relevant because, on utilitarian grounds, many corporation are evil right on their face: do they create, on the whole, more pain or more pleasure? (I can appreciate the practical aspect of this kind of thinking on Buddhist grounds, but there the question is about individual conduct.)

In my applied ethics classes, I like to go through various approaches one at a time; having sort of dealt with utilitarianism, what might Aristotle say? Funny thing with that (and I'm sure some people would argue with this statement, but that would lead to a more technical argument than I want to present here) is that Aristotle doesn't really have a concept of "evil" per se. Also, insofar as his ethics aims at eudaimonia, it doesn't apply to entities such as corporations at all.

The same is true using Kant's approach: corporations aren't people, therefore can't be evil. The people who run or manage them might be evil, but that is (if I understand my interlocutors concern correctly) a different question. Just to be clear: Kant understands "evil" as knowing the right actions - knowing the appropriate maxim that one could apply as a universal law - and then ignoring it. (I'll come back to Kant though, since that doesn't exhaust the possibilities.)

I would usually proceed to a feminist ethic of care, but there are two problems. First, I don't know how someone, working in the care tradition, would define evil in a way that didn't simply sound Kantian (knowing the right action, doing something else). Second, I wouldn't at all be surprised if someone had made a fairly explicitly anti-corporate argument using the ethics of care. (Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe I should go look that up, but I'm not going to tonight.)

The important thing to note here is that, looking at the question using three of the four dominant approaches in western ethics, corporations aren't evil for the simple reason that they aren't persons, and therefore can't be evil. It's a category error, but not an exoneration of corporations; there are other ways of looking at the problem.

How do corporations look at people? Primarily as employees and customers. There are too many secondary ways to develop a comprehensive list, but in general I'm interested in people affected by corporations in ways that aren't primarily economic (even if they have economic impact). This would include people harmed by the pollution, or, positively, beneficiaries of corporately funded public works, such as parks. Setting the secondary relations aside (even though these are really important!) and noting that a single person can fall into many categories at once (as employee, customer, and community member), I start with Milton Friedman's assertion that purpose of business - it's sole purpose - is to make a profit.

Where does the profit come from? Two sources: employees and customers, specifically, the difference between the value of the labor and how much the worker gets paid, or the difference between the cost of something and what the customers pays. (The particular analysis is irrelevant to my larger point: part of the money changing hands stays in someone's hand: that's the profit. I can provide more explicit examples of what I'm talking about later if anyone wants them, but I'm purposefully keeping the analysis generic and abstract here.) Either way - and here I'm returning to Kantian analysis - people are mere objects, interchangeable, expendable, because the only point is to make a profit.

Just to connect the dots, it is fundamental to Kant's ethics that we treat people as having dignity, not merely as objects; using this formulation, corporations can only be evil. I would still argue that, since they're not people, they can't form intentions. If that absolves them of the possibility of being individually evil (i.e., evil in the way that persons are evil), I would say that corporations are structurally evil. They cannot be good without operating as something other than corporations: they become mutual aid societies, or churches, or something else (there are a lot of organizations like that, and they don't always fall into clear categories).

A different (and possibly more direct) approach to this question might be to note that capitalism as a system operates because of coveting: you want something that someone else has (not necessarily the very thing, but one like it, bigger, better). The point of advertising is to create desires we didn't have before: e.g., when my dad first told me about "cell phones" in the eighties, I wondered why anyone would possibly want one. (Perhaps I'm underestimating the desire that existed at the time for such a thing.)

To summarize: corporations are evil, but not in the way that people are evil. They are evil because they are an essential part of a fundamentally flawed system. A description of an alternative system can be found in that radical book, the Bible: Acts 4:34-35:

"There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need."

But you already knew I was a dirty hippy.

Clarification

In my previous post, I think the basic point I wanted to make may have gotten lost. Simply put, Appiah seems to be assuming that people with whom he might disagree in the particular interpretation of American History are acting in good faith. I contend that they are not, and use Beliles and McDowells book as an example. The student involvement underscores that it isn't merely a difference in interpretation: I was accused of rewriting history.

Over breakfast this morning I had a conversation about splinter churches and the problems of purity, which was the inspiration for this cartoon. That, I think, is relevant partly because (I will say with no citation) that liberals are largely unaware of the fragmentation on the right, combined with a need to have the facts line up with their story. I've written about this before in reference to Jefferson - Thomas, not George. I am aware that everyone perceives the world in such a way as to confirm our own understanding of it, but I continue to be amazed that the extent to which there are what I will gently call "diverging realities" rather than a shared one with differences interpretation.

Photo Credit: Icelandic and Faroese Photographs of Frederick W.W. Howell, Cornell University Library, Bessastaðir Church.--Interior, ca. 1900. Collodion print. Bessastaðir (Iceland) Fiske Icelandic Collection, Rare & Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library

Thinking

In my last post, I mentioned that Appiah "underestimates the willful ignorance of homeschoolers!" Let me clarify.
First, the book in question is The Ethics of Identity. The author is Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy at Princeton and, among many other things, one of my former professors.
The quote in question is from the chapter called "Soul Making," and part of the question is the significance of public education (that is, preparing children to be good future citizens). He writes:

In recent year, some critics have objected to a history curriculum that has too much of Harriet Tubman and not enough of Thomas Jefferson; and they have also objected to a curriculum whose discussion of Thomas Jefferson focuses too much on his betrayal of liberty - in his persistent failure to emancipate his slaves - and no enough on his place as the author of the Declaration of Independence, as liberty's champion. No doubt a focus too lopsided shades off into simply untruth: the real debates here, though, are not about what happened but about what narratives we will embed them in; they are about which of the many true stories we will tell.

That seems reasonable, but that's the problem: some people aren't reasonable. And by that I don't simply mean that they want to emphasize a different set of facts, but that they want to fabricate a new set of facts to support their beliefs. (Hopefully it is clear that I'm not condemning all homeschoolers: if that's not clear, I'm about to get very specific.)
Additional background: several years ago I taught a course, "Religion in American Culture" (the course as since been renamed) at a distant campus of a large public university. The primary text I used was The Old Religion in a New World, by Mark Noll.
Some time after the course was over, a student sent me a number of email forwards, including one that challenged President Obama's statement, "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values." The student was offended by this statement, but I pointed out that, even in the preambles to the state constitutions she had sent along, the phrasing was not explicitly Christian but open to other faiths (with phrases such as Almight God, Divine Providence, etc) - and that the US constitution did not have any such phrases. (We had spent a bit of time in class talking about Rhodes Island and Pennsylvania, as well as New York and Maryland, all of which had some religious liberties from the beginning).
Now, Mark Noll is an evangelical, and in the book we used is telling the story much as Appiah would expect, emphasizing some facts over others, bringing pieces together to present a coherent narrative that emphasizes Christianity. Therefore I was surprised to get this response from her (which I'm posting in its entirety):

Perhaps you should read America's Providential History by Mark A. Beliles and Stephen K. McDowell before you start spouting off mistaken information about our country's origins. Consider this my final email to a narrow-minded liberal professor who embraces the rewriting of our history. No need to reply, and may God have mercy on your soul.

(You see now why I want to emphasize Noll here: whatever you may think of me, it seems unlikely that Noll could be called a narrow-minded liberal who is rewriting history.)
And this, at long last, brings me to America's Provedential History. (Please note that I refuse to link this book, although this lengthy review - from a Quaker! - will give you an idea of what I'm concerned about.) At least some people are not interested in questions of emphasis: for them, Jefferson really was against slavery, Ben Franklin really did support Christianity (presumably in the form endorsed by Belile and McDowell), and omits vast amounts of basic history (mostly focusing on the colonial and revolutionary period, and apparently not getting much of that right). I have said many times - possibly on this blog - but one of the characteristics of the conservative moment is the increasing projection of their shadow on progressives (maybe I'll unpack that in a later blog post). This seems to be an instance of that: where is the rewriting happening?

To summarize: I think Appiah misunderestimates (yes, that's what I wrote - I'm surprised spellcheck still flags it) the mendacity of certain segments in the population. This is problematic precisely for the reasons he's concerned about in the book: how do we, as a nation, navigate between the requirements of particular communities and the larger polity? That question becomes fraught when some communities insist on teaching their children lies.

Happy New Year... oh wait

So, it's been a while since I posted, and I have lots to say. Unfortunately, I spent all my time monkeying around with the scanner (after spending about two minutes drawing a cartoon, the first in months). And now I have run myself out of time: I'm hungry, there is dinner to be made.

For now, just enjoy the cartoon. If you're going to be in Richmond on the 17th of February, I will be playing at the West Richmond Coffee House.

Next time: Appiah underestimates the willful ignorance of homeschoolers!

Hi. What have you been up to?

I wish I could say I've been away occupying Wall Street - or Clinton Square - but mostly I've been teaching (world religions), painting (houses, pictures) and doing other odd jobs as I prepare to move again.

I've also been writing more (which I think is good) but drawing less (which I think is bad). So, fewer blog posts.

October already?

I hadn't realized quite how long it had been since I posted... and also, haven't drawn anything in about that long. So here's an old cartoon I drew last winter, as we approach winter once again.

(It's funny how, when I'm walking or driving somewhere, I can think of fairly complex topics on which I want to post, but once I'm in front of a computer... oh well.)

Saturday Cartoon

Just one.

Radio, Radio

Okay, so I've used this title before, and neither this post nor the last has anything to do with Elvis Costello (whom I've been listening to on YouTube lately).

I may have mentioned that the CD player in my car died about a year ago, just as I was starting my hour-plus commute twice a week; thus, I've been listening to the radio a lot here in CNY. What have I found? A lot of stations that are surprisingly like the one I listened to as a teenager (KGON - note that they're advertising Def Leppard) and the station I listened to in Roanoke when I was painting houses (WROV). Classic rock, and today's best rock! Well, not so much.

But it's not just one station here: I've been driving all over CNY, so I listen to stations from Kingston, Ontario and Watertown (NY), through Syracuse, the Finger Lakes, and into Rochester
(and I'm not going to list the stations, there's seven I listen to regularly and I really don't remember all their call letters). Collectively, they play more Neil Young, Rush, Guess Who, BTO, Red Rider, Neil Young (yes, they play a lot of Neil Young) - that is, Canadian bands - than I'm used to, but that's okay. However, it's somewhat dismaying to hear so much Lynyrd Skynyrd and Allman Brothers: I thought I left the south!

The cartoon is related to this post - credit to Julie for the link.

Plum blossoms, again

This time with a better picture - varnished and in the frame correctly.

Boris Badenov for President!

Sad having missed vote-buying in Ames, IA, Boris now wants to enter the race for president.

He will slash your taxes - and your tires!

He will slash government spending - and the government's tires!

Painting for Wednesday

Sometimes I like the ambiguity of the title, "painter"... and other times, not so much. In any case, this is all the painting I've done this week.

From Ogata Korin (1658-1716)'s Red and White Plum Blossoms. It's not varnished, and therefore not in the frame correctly, but this gives a good sense of the mostly-finished product.

Soon to be hanging in a conference room near you (if you happen to live in Syracuse, NY)!

"Liberty"?

This actually isn't the post I promised a while back, but related: what do we mean when we talk about "liberty"?

Michele Bachmann: "Whether it’s economic liberty, religious liberty, liberty in our finances, liberty in being able to choose the profession we have." (Link) Religion, yes; but please note that the other three things are all about money. (And what is love of money the root of?)

In the Bill of Rights, the best you can do to support this view is the Ninth Amendment; since I am relatively sure that most of my readers have no idea what it says, here's the complete text: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

So what else is contained in the Bill of Rights? Free speech, freedom of the press; freedom to assemble peaceably, the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances, in the first amendment alone. Note that these are positive freedoms, things we can do, rather than negative freedoms. Negative freedoms include not having to quarter soldiers, not being subjected to unreasonable search and seizure, not being compelled to serve as witness against oneself, deprived of due process, or have private property take for public use without just compensation. Positively, we should be allowed a speedy and public trial, by jury if we so choose. Negatively, we shouldn't be subject to cruel or unusual punishment. I have left off the second and tenth amendment - I'll come back to those shortly. It's important to notice that all of these have to do with overreach by government, the sorts of overreach that the colonists were subject to and wanted to prevent in this new country. It doesn't say anything about economics, a field that was just barely getting started at the time this was written; that cuts both ways, in that the founders weren't thinking about it one way or another, at least in concrete ways they were willing to enshrine in the bill of rights. I can also certainly point to instances where these seem to have been violated; the city in which I live still bears the scars of private property taken for public use - the interstate freeway - that wasn't compensated justly, to name one example off the top of my head.

I'm surprised that Michele Bachmann didn't mention the second amendment, but of course it wouldn't have fit with the narrative of either economic freedom or why her ancestors came to this country. Also, the tenth amendment has been getting more press recently, in terms of states' rights. Just one quick note, since I don't think this can be said often enough these days: the secession of the Confederacy wasn't about "rights" in the plural, only about one "right": the "right" of a person to own another as property.

What do we not see in the bill of rights? "Economic liberty... liberty in our finances, liberty in being able to choose the profession we have." Not that I want the government telling me what job I can do (although the government telling me what job I can't do - for instance, I don't think you would want me to do tattoo removal - is a good thing!) But there is there is a lot more to "liberty" than being able to buy cheap stuff at WalMart and pollute the earth with your SUV.

Just cartoons

As promised...

Trudy in a paper bag

I don't normally work with chalk - that is, draw with chalk... at least outside of class. Anyway, I should have put this up last night, because this morning it appears that one of the kitties (I'm guessing Trudy) walked all over it last night, and little kitty pawprints do not improve the overall effect.

Tomorrow: cartooons!

Just pictures today

No real commentary today, except to note that for those of us who are looking for jobs, everything happening in Washington lately is very depressing. What was that Kent Conrad was saying about improving confidence?

Bah.

Link, and reed pens

I like this story... and I think it goes along with what I've posted recently. Not that everyone who reads Ayn Rand is a murderous psychopath, but it certainly reinforces any tendencies that you might have in that direction in a way that reading, let's say, Paul Krugman, doesn't.

In other news, I've recently purchased a reed pen - how did I live without it! I will now be the eccentric fellow who takes his bottle of ink and sketchpad everywhere!

Two things about Ayn Rand

I would probably get tired of bashing Ayn Rand if I didn't think that an increasing number of people take her writings seriously; but neither of these things are new.

First, I mentioned before that she set out to create a "political philosophy that was the opposite of Communism as she understood it... in doing so she came up with a dogmatic position unconnected to reality." But there's one piece that wasn't the opposite of the Communism that she fled: she was an atheist. That's not remarkable in itself, but insofar as the Tea Party harbors elements of the Religious Right - and insofar as Rand Paul identifies as a Presbyterian - there's a fundamental problem. That is, she isn't incidentally an atheist: it's an essential part of her position, in the same way that it's an essential part of Richard Dawkins' or Daniel Dennett's approach to the world.

Second, she was a bit of sociopath. Or rather, she admired a brutal killer for his casual disregard for other people, his flouting of societal conventions (like, "Thou shalt not kill."). Hickman was clearly a sociopath, and Ayn Rand saw this as a heroic quality that set him apart from the herd (and speaking of herds, let me just mention that there's a deep tension in Nietzsche's writings in his rejection of herd morality, the positive things he sees that herd morality has contributed to modern humanity, and the ineluctable interconnection of all things - and Ayn Rand criticized him for it).

Two further thoughts on this second point: first, as with her atheism, this isn't very different from her understanding of the Communist regime she fled. Second, it seems to me that her atheism and her admiration of this sociopath aren't disconnected; in contrast, both Dawkins and Dennett promote a humanistic vision that rejects such brutality.

As I said, neither of these points are revelations, I would just like to see some recognition that her views are antithetical to Christian principles.

The Tea Party can go one way or the other, but there's no splitting the difference on this.

Prints, and a painting

I was going to - and may yet - write a bit about what "liberty" might mean, and what security we might have... and why this guy is an idiot. But today I've just been job searching, reading the news, and working on prints and pictures. So, a bit about what's posted here.

The Plum Blossom painting is on a wooden panel, 24 inches square (you may recognize the dimension and material from here, here and here, among other paintings: my favorite!).



You may also recognize the coffee cup - another favorite, working its way through various incarnations (eventually, a linocut!) - but I did this a year or so ago, one of my first successful DIY screenprints.


"Orbits" was an experiment that didn't work out quite as I had intended, but came out adequately well. This is actually printed on nice paper (Johannot), whereas the other things are printed either on cardstock or copy paper.







The first bicycle print is on copy paper, but as I type this prints on the Johannot paper, in turquoise, are drying; I'll post those later in the week. The black was just to get a sense of the block, to see if it was finished (almost, but not quite). But I think it came out fairly well.
Finally, the bicycle print with rider (and you should recognize the rider from my previous post). The rider should stand out a bit better on the turquoise ink than he does on the black, but the idea comes across.

As usual, I think the weak link is the photography, but that's getting better, too. What I really need is a tripod of some sort.

What shall I do?

I'm once again looking for a job, but it's not entirely clear what I ought to even apply for.
When I was in high school, we were given a large standardized test relating to future employment, determining both strengths and interests. I scored as having strengths in everything they tested (which I believe demonstrates the limitations of such tests - I'm a good test taker, but probably wouldn't have done well in many of the occupations!) - but when it came to interests, the test results indicated that I was only interested in things they couldn't test (I believe it was art and writing, but it may have been music and writing).
In college, I took a psychology class on personality, and read (related to, but not for, the class) Carl Jung's book Psychological Types. This led me to the Myers-Briggs personality types (I have probably mentioned this before, but I am an INFP).
There is a book which relates the Myers-Briggs to careers: Do What You Are, and I have the second edition. So, what does it say?
For the INFP, the first category is "Creative/Arts"; the second is "Education/Counseling"; the third is "Religion." (For each of the sixteen types, there is a different list of categories; e.g., the ESTJ's top three categories are "Sales and Service," "Technical/Physical" and "Managerial") If you know me (and other INFPs), these categories make sense. I don't find them helpful at the moment, though. Moving to careers under the categories isn't helpful either: for Creative/Arts, the first two careers are "Artist" and "Writer," for Education/Counselor, "College professor: humanities/arts," and for Religion, "Minister/priest."
As an unprogrammed Quaker, I'm not particularly interested in becoming a minister (despite having an MDiv); I would certainly like to be a professor in the humanities, but so would lots of other people with similar credentials. And then we're back to the results of my high school aptitude test.
I've also been making prints.

Friday afternoon

I said I would return to previous themes, and I've been painting (house) this week, which has given me time to ruminate. (There's a relevant Nietzsche quote that belongs there, but I'm too lazy to look it up at the moment, and far enough out from my book to be able to pull it up from memory.)
Last time I wrote, "I neither expect nor really want my students to ponder epistemological questions, but there's something important about flexing those muscles." There are two pieces there that probably need clarification.
First, I do want my students to ponder epistemological questions. However, I usually tell them that the great skeptic Hume liked to drink beer and shoot pool (more or less true) and didn't spend his life paralyzed by questions of causation. Being aware that there are various ways of approaching questions, different ways of gathering and analyzing evidence, is very important; and to a certain extent, understanding the difference between foundationalism (Stanford and IEP) and coherentism (IEP and Stanford) is also useful - but practical matters take precedence, and getting bogged down isn't useful, and even serious philosophers don't wrestle with Descartes' dream argument in their everyday lives.
I say this partly because I received an essay (9 pages long, when the assignment was 3-5 pages - a bad start) that included the following:

Let A=K*E1 with K being the fundamental constant that converts the experience, E, to knowledge.

[If this is your essay and you want me to identify you as the author, let me know. But I'm pointing out your idiocy here, and still wondering if you were stoned when you wrote it.]

For those of you who are unfamiliar with epistemology - a group which includes the author of this quote - the "fundamental constant, K" is basically what philosophers have been arguing about for millennia. To think that it can be captured in a constant and dropped into an essay is merely to demonstrate that you haven't been to class or read the text. So, I really do want my students to think about problems in epistemology, but do so seriously when they do, and not to become paralyzed or go to graduate school to study epistemology further.

The second part is about flexing mental muscles. I may have mentioned that my students at an unnamed Syracuse-area college (which was not Syracuse University) seemed unfamiliar with the idea of thinking. That is, I would point to a sentence in the text, and asked what the author might have meant, and they would repeat the sentence back almost verbatim. I would read their essay drafts, and say, "this needs further clarification," and they would be unable to add anything at all. (This was multiple students, over the course of the semester.) I don't particularly care if they understand the ins and outs of Kant's epistemology or Nietzsche's critique of it - it would be nice, and probably helpful for them, but they're not philosophers - but I wonder how they process the news, or if they can even tell the difference between content and advertisement, information and opinion, or informed opinion and dogma. Epistemology matters; but as I said last time, it's not precisely Kant that I want you to learn.

Two for Tuesday

Two (rambling) thoughts, which I may expand on later.

First, thinking about the purpose of teaching philosophy to undergraduates. I was readings a dialogue by another philosophy adjunct, and I was reminded of the Karate Kid. Not a great movie, and I haven't seen it since it first came out, but one scene has stayed with me: Mr. Miyagi telling the boy to wax his car. The boy is dismayed, but there is a purpose unrelated to the waxing of cars. Similarly, I neither expect nor really want my students to ponder epistemological questions, but there's something important about flexing those muscles. What does it mean to understand someone else's position? Can we be simultaneously critical and charitable when hearing ideas different from our own? (I will probably elaborate on this at length in a future post.)

Second, prodded both by my friend Terry (who doesn't seem to have posted lately) and by Fareed Zakaria, a bit of Ayn Rand bashing. Ayn Rand was a refugee from Communist Russia, and one of her goals was to develop a political philosophy that was the opposite of Communism as she understood it. Fair enough; but in doing so she came up with a dogmatic (as opposed to properly philosophical* position unconnected to reality - which would be fine if members of Congress weren't quoting her in public. (I should have a link for that, but it eludes me at the moment).

*Something I rarely include in my "go read Nozick instead" is that he eventually renounced libertarianism. That's what I mean by "truly philosophical" = willing to follow your premised to their conclusion, and being willing to revise those conclusions.

Saturday Afternoon

Yet another post that mostly features pictures rather than text, although there is a bit of text in the story. And a cheery story it is!

More cartoons

..because you probably don't just want to hear me bash Ayn Rand. (Although if you do, please leave a comment and I will oblige.)

Cartoons!

So, today is the day that I post some cartoons.

I may have mentioned that I'm not drawing as many these days, mostly because I'm not barraged by the constant stream of nonsense as when I started this blog.

Also, I've been reading Paul Krugman, whom I find edifying but not particularly amusing.

Informal fallacies

In a recent post on a blog I don’t usually read, a libertarian accused people who invoke Somalia against libertarians of making a false dichotomy. Well, no.

If I were to say, "if you don’t support President Obama, you hate poor people" – that’s a false dichotomy; perhaps you voted for Kucinich and don't think the President has gone nearly far enough. If someone were to say, "if you don’t support this bill that gives the government far-reaching power to encroach on our freedoms, then you hate freedom" – that’s also a false dichotomy. The Patriot Act has never seemed particularly patriotic to me.

On the other hand, if I say, "if you want to see where libertarian philosophy will get you, just look at Somalia," I’m doing something else entirely. It’s called a Slippery Slope. And the funny thing about slippery slopes is that they’re not always fallacies.

If you look at Ronald Reagan’s attack on Medicare, you can see a slippery slope as a fallacy. But big changes rarely happen overnight: there’s usually an incremental process involved. To identify a small change which opens the way for future (implied, bad) change is to point to a slippery slope, but sometimes it’s true. Martin Luther wasn’t really interested in having everyone reading the Bible for themselves, and I think his concerns about what that would lead to have been borne out: a massively fragmented Christendom.

I will continue to refer to Somalia, with two caveats. First, I don’t tend to listen too much to, say, Ron Paul or other contemporary American politicians who identify as libertarian; but I have read some of what they read, including but not limited to Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, and Tara Smith. As an political theory, it’s not so much about the size or proper role of government so much as it is about dismantling the social contract. (If you disagree with this, you should say that I'm committing a Straw Man fallacy, and I will counter that you need to go back and reread Anarchy State and Utopia)

The second caveat is that the Somalis aren't really living out the consequences of libertarian political philosophy: things have fallen apart there for many reasons, and none of them can be blamed on Ayn Rand.

On the other hand, the quality of life in the US depends on a number of factors, some of which do have a direct link to libertarians. Freedom is important, but in what kind of society do you want to live?

The Mercatus Institute’s freedom score was significantly linked to (by state)- lower educational attainment (measured by percent of Bachelor degrees or higher), lower population density, lower per capita GDP, increased infant mortality, increased accident mortality, increased incidence of suicide, increased firearm mortality, decreased industrial R&D, and increased income inequality.

I'm sure there are a host of factors, and these statistics can't be reduced to a larger vision of society and the role of government. And yet.... it’s a slippery slope, do you really want to go down it?

So, these aren't exactly cartoons, either...

but I have some, somewhere. I promise. And I'll post them at some point.

These do feature Mr. Miro; they're studies for part of a much larger series that I've been thinking about since I spent four months in Vancouver several years ago.

I've been thinking about Sarah Palin, and an episode of the Simpsons (3F04) where the giant advertisements came alive and terrorized the town

"Are you suffering from the heartbreak of...Monster-itis? Then take a tip from Mr. Paul Anka!
To stop those monsters, one-two-three, Here's a fresh new way that's trouble-free.
It's got Paul Anka's guarantee; guarantee void in Tennessee
Just don't look, just don't look..."

I know, it's like a car wreck (involving Paul Revere and gotcha questions by the lame-stream media!), but as the man from the advertising agency said, "if you stop paying attention to the monsters, they'll lose their powers."

I've also been thinking about unemployment, mine in particular but the national figures in general - as I have been since I first drove out to Vancouver, as a matter of fact - and continue to be horrified by the lack of any coherent response from any politicians that I've seen. Where was the Socialist-in-Chief that we were threatened with promised?

Along those lines, during my recent trips to various bookstores I've noticed an uptick in books on Marx and Marxism... perhaps I'm not the only one that's been thinking about this lately. Or maybe it's just an example of confirmation bias - I see what I want to see. Of course, I also see books by Ayn Rand; my recent thoughts (linking Annie Dillard, Martin Buber, and Immanuel Kant - also Hegel and Marx, Simone de Beauvoir and Elizabeth Spelman) are fairly explicitly anti-Rand (as well as, perhaps predictably, anti-Nozick). I'm still chewing on a straightforward way to present a long and complex line of thinking on the subject, but to summarize: we are human only through our connection to others. (I.e., John Galt can suck it.)

Sketchy

So, I promise a more substantive analysis of... something or other... at some point in the relatively near future. And I also promise more cartoons. But today I wanted to follow up on a recent post regarding figure drawing, and show you what I've been up to (when I'm not drawing cartoons and reading various non-required matter): actual people (and a couple animals) rather than a still life!

Not finished drawings, of course, but a way of gathering ideas.

Squares!

I promised squares a while back, fiddled with these and then forgot about them.

Various other things bouncing through my head lately - connecting Annie Dillard to Martin Buber, connecting Martin Buber to Immanuel Kant... there will be more on this at some point, perhaps with illustrations. For today, you just get squares.