Philosphy Archives

Funny Games

Filed under: Philosphy

I haven't seen the movie Funny Games, don't know as I ever will, but I know that the New York Times doesn't like it, so odds are it's pretty good.

Their review states:

When asked by George -- his leg smashed, his hands tied, his eyes wide with terror -- "Why are you doing this?," Mr. Pitt's character responds with answers that parody the kind of facile back story usually applied in cases like this: unhappy childhood; sexual instability; class resentment; bad education. All of it is facetious, and none of it explains anything.

Its conclusion? "What a fraud." For a much different take on the film, check out Pajamas Media.

It's not surprising that a reviewer from the New York Times would be confused by a description of evil, for two reasons. First of all the paper itself, in many (but not all) aspects is evil, and it's hard to smell your own stink. Second, the paper's basic editorial attitude is that "misunderstanding" is the root of crime, not evil, in which it basically doesn't believe (except maybe in the case of Republicans generally, and George W. Bush specifically). So the idea of evil which can't be "explained" and "solved" but only fought is anathema to the liberal blockheads who operate and populate the paper.

The movie is apparently about two clean-cut, well-dressed, well-spoken, polite and well-educated young men who brutally terrorize an innocent, happy family of three. Evil is the only explanation for that, and if you don't believe evil exists, then such a movie really would boggle your poor little mind, frustrate the heck out of you, make it hard to sleep at night.

Might be well worth seeing. Substitute Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev for these two young men, the West for the family, and you might have a parable worthy of study.

Kim Zigfeld · March 14, 2008 6:26 AM · Comments (3) · TrackBacks (0)

Assassination as Politics: Worse than the Disease?

Filed under: Philosphy

How should Western governments view assassination as a political tool?
	Off the table
	Only in extreme emergency
	Standard option
pollcode.com free polls

We welcome submissions from readers and are happy to grant anonymity upon request. An anonymous contributor who would like to be known as Diplomacy Dan submits the following commentary to Publius Pundit:

In August 2006 Publius Pundit posted about world crazies or "leaders" who should be eliminated because they are so dangerous. It quoted the late Jean Francois Revel's How Democracies Perish on two observations: First, that "democracy is zealous is devising arguments to prove the justice of its adversary's case and to lengthen the already overwhelming list of its own inadequacies" and, second, that "it is a mistake to ascribe democratic logic to a totalitarian system." The West often does exactly what Revel describes: it proves the justice of the adversary's case (think, for example, Guantanamo) and ascribe democratic logic to totalitarian systems (Iran, Russia, Cuba, as a start).

Unfortunately none of the people nominated has been removed, several are even worse than before and only one "resigned." But now we have the contribution of two young economists to suggest that assassination of tyrants does help. Benjamin Jones and Benjamin Olken studied the effects of assassinations and, in a May 2007 paper, found:

Assassinations of autocrats produce substantial changes in the country's institutions, while assassinations of democrats do not. In particular, transitions to democracy, as measured using the Polity IV dataset (Marshall and Jaggers 2004), are 13 percentage points more likely following the assassination of an autocrat than following a failed attempt on an autocrat. Similarly, using data on leadership transitions from the Archigos dataset (Goemans et al., 2006), we find that the probability that subsequent leadership transitions occur through institutional means is 19 percentage points higher following the assassination of an autocrat than following the failed assassination of an autocrat. The effects on institutions extend over significant periods, with evidence that the impacts are sustained at least 10 years later.

Read the paper to get the details, including that, unfortunately, seventy-five percent of assassination attempts fail!

Kim Zigfeld · March 12, 2008 12:32 PM · Comments (5) · TrackBacks (0)

Should we pay politicians democratically?

Filed under: Philosphy

Kim Zigfeld · January 22, 2008 1:54 AM · Comments (1) · TrackBacks (0)

Think You Know Who's "Human"? Think Again.

Filed under: Philosphy

A chimpanzee named Ayumu performs the second stage of a memory test in which he must recall the location on a touch sensitive monitor of numerals that have changed to squares, Dec. 13, 2006, at the Institute in Kyoto, Japan.

Here's a philosophical poser that should give pause to anyone concerned about natural rights and democracy.

The Associated Press reports that a young chimpanzee has defeated human adults in a short-term memory test:

One chimp, Ayumu, did the best. Researchers included him and nine college students in a second test. This time, five numbers flashed on the screen only briefly before they were replaced by white squares. The challenge, again, was to touch these squares in the proper sequence. When the numbers were displayed for about seven-tenths of a second, Ayumu and the college students were both able to do this correctly about 80 percent of the time. But when the numbers were displayed for just four-tenths or two-tenths of a second, the chimp was the champ. The briefer of those times is too short to allow a look around the screen, and in those tests Ayumu still scored about 80 percent, while humans plunged to 40 percent. That indicates Ayumu was better at taking in the whole pattern of numbers at a glance, the researchers wrote.

On what basis, then, would anyone argue that a chimpanzee does not deserve the same protection under the law afforded to a human being? Indeed, if they are smarter, perhaps they should be protected more?

Kim Zigfeld · December 7, 2007 2:00 AM · Comments (4) · TrackBacks (0)

Don't Blame Democracy!

Filed under: Philosphy

It's still the solution, not the problem.

Kim Zigfeld · November 15, 2007 2:51 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBacks (0)

Sharansky, Democracy's Don Quixote?

Filed under: Philosphy

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal published an interview with Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky, who spent nine years in a Soviet prison camp. In it, the interviewer (editorial page editor of WSJ Europe) states that "democracy is a dirty word these days" and notes that Sharansky is unbowed: "Mr. Sharansky says of his adversaries among the Western intellectual elite: 'Those people who are always wrong--they were wrong about the Soviet Union, they were wrong about Oslo [the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian peace deal], they were wrong about appeasing Yasser Arafat--they are the intellectual leaders of these battles. So what can I tell you?'" The article continues:

With benefit of hindsight, Mr. Sharansky says that, "Democracy is a rather problematic word, because democracy is about technique. I would prefer freedom. I would say people don't want to live under constant fear." It's as much as he'll concede. His bigger concern is the West's own weak stomach. This is a familiar theme for Mr. Sharansky and others who waged the Cold War battle on the other side of the Wall. Prosperous, stable societies can lack, by these lights, moral clarity and courage and are prone to cynical compromises or gullibility. Under totalitarianism the challenge is to fight evil (he paraphrases the British writer Melanie Phillips), and in free societies it is to see evil. In his view, the West's so-called Russia experts misjudged Mr. Putin's aspirations and political talents, particularly his ability "to use the right language in Russia." Once, when the Russian president went on an anti-Western tirade, Mr. Sharansky recalls that Secretary Rice, one of those experts, noted that Mr. Putin was ruining his image abroad. "I told her, 'He looks stupid to you but the most important thing is how he looks in Moscow, and in Moscow he looks like a hero!' "

Sharansky claims that the level of fear in Russia today isn't nearly as great as it was in Soviet times, and takes comfort in this (he's "cautiously optimistic"). But he still actively sides actively with Garry Kasparov, dedicating a book to him, and says the only reason the fear level is low is because the price of oil is high. Reduce it, and things could become radically different in a hurry.

Yet, Sharansky seems to miss the forest for the sight of the trees: If the fear level is low in Russia today, then there is no reason whatsoever that the people of Russia should so blithely allow Putin to establish a neo-Soviet, one-party regime. If they are not afraid, and relatively free to make economic progress (as Sharansky claims), then they should be dynamically building diverse political organizations and media outlets promoting the free flow of information -- and doing so no matter what the Kremlin wants. Yet, that's not happening. A recent article in The Economist understands something that Sharansky may not (and that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin may realize only too well): So many long years of terror may not merely have broken the spirit of the living, it may have created a genetic culture of fear that needs no grandiose mass killing to support. Sharansky is a man of great personal courage but he is long removed from Russia and may not realize how much more affected by the Soviet horror his countrymen were, and remain, than he himself. His remarks are woefully barren of challenges to the people of Russia to make better use of the relative freedom he claims they have. Under his analysis, it's pretty clear that they are complicit in the outrageous crimes being perpetrated in their name by the Kremlin.

Now, Sharansky lives in Israel, and much of the interview deals with democracy issues in the Middle East (click through to read his analysis). One must wonder how long he would last if the returned to Russia and resumed his refusenik ways,and whether he would get the same amount of respect he received in Soviet times. But it seems he's not willing to be the canary in the neo-Soviet mineshaft.

Maybe he understands more than it appears, after all.

Kim Zigfeld · November 6, 2007 5:54 AM · Comments (8) · TrackBacks (0)

The Democracy Agenda

Filed under: Philosphy

Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson has an interesting piece in today's edition entitled: "Why Fight for Anyone's Freedom?" It contains a neat discussion of the issues that animate this blog and might provide a good jumping-off point for discussion in the comments section (dozens of readers have commented on the analysis already). Gerson points out that a democracy agenda easily blurs the lines between traditional notions of what is "conservative" or "liberal" or "Republican" or "Democratic" and argues:

A conservatism that warns against utopianism and calls for cultural sensitivity is useful. When it begins to question the importance or existence of moral ideals in politics and foreign policy, it is far less attractive. At the most basic level, the democracy agenda is not abstract at all. It is a determination to defend dissidents rotting in airless prisons, and people awaiting execution for adultery or homosexuality, and religious prisoners kept in shipping containers in the desert, and men and women abused and tortured in reeducation camps. It demands activism against sexual slavery, against honor killings, against genital mutilation and against the execution of children, out of the admittedly philosophic conviction that human beings are created in God's image and should not be oppressed or mutilated.

So-called liberals, who might argue for inaction based on "respect" for another nation's sovereignty, might agree with so-called conservatives, who might argue for inaction based on preserving the status quo or isolationism. What do you think? Who is more "conservative" on democracy: Pat Buchanan or John McCain?

James Joyner over at Outside the Beltway has a lengthy thought-provoking analysis of the piece. A good focal point for discussions might be the pending vote in Congress over whether to condemn Turkey for "genocide" in Armenia. President Bush opposes the measure, while many Democrats support it. Should the U.S. take a stand on the killings? What should it be? We'd like to hear your views. A divided House Foreign Affairs Committee has now approved the measure.

Kim Zigfeld · October 10, 2007 5:40 AM · Comments (4) · TrackBacks (0)

What do you think about torture?

Filed under: Philosphy

The Economist has begun running a series of articles on the erosion of civil liberties in the developed world, and begins with an article on the subject of torture. Its graphic, above, shows the views of various countries on this topic. What do our readers think? We'd like to know. Check out the article then cast your vote:

Use of Torture
When is the use of torture by governments justified?	Always - Whenever it serves the national interest Sometimes - Whenever it will save lives Rarely - Only when there are no other options Never - Torture should be totally banned
	Current Results

Kim Zigfeld · September 25, 2007 2:05 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBacks (0)

Gore vs Democracy in the Developing World

Filed under: Africa ~ Philosphy

You might find this hard to believe (then again, you might not find it surprising in in the least): Al Gore is a horrendous polluter.

Yep, that's right, Mr. Green is Unclean. As Charles Krauthammer wrote in a recent column in Time magazine, Gore's "Tennessee mansion consumes 20 times the electricity used by the average American home. Last August alone it consumed twice as much power as the average home consumes in a year." That's to say nothing of the fact that he spurns public transportation for limosines and airplanes.

Al thinks this pollution he spews out is OK, however, because he bribes others not to pollute by purchasing "carbon credits" -- so it's a wash. Krauthammer explains that even if you think this is morally acceptable in the context of pollution (shouldn't role model Al reduce pollution rather than just trying to break even? is bribery really OK?), and even if it actually works (Krauthammer says it won't, and may in fact make pollution worse), the net result is to destroy democracy in the developing world. How? Krauthammer writes:

For example, GreenSeat, a Dutch carbon-trading outfit, buys offsets from a foundation that plants trees in Uganda's Mount Elgon National Park to soak up the carbon emissions of its rich Western patrons. Small problem: expanding the park encroaches on land traditionally used by local farmers. As a result, reports the New York Times, "villagers living along the boundary of the park have been beaten and shot at, and their livestock has been confiscated by armed park rangers." All this so that swimming pools can be heated and Maseratis driven with a clear conscience in the fattest parts of the world.

Now, let's leave aside the obvious fact that trees in Uganda won't do a blessed thing to "soak up" toxic runoff from an American power station or other industrial facility like what was discovered at the famous Love Canal (is it only warming Mr. Green cares about, and not pollution in general?). Let's forget about whether the smoke from Al's chimneys is really going to fly all the way to Uganda rather that being inhaled first by some poor little kid in Nashville. The point is this: people don't want to give up carbon. Carbon is delicious. From Al's own egregious actions, that's plain to see. Ergo, you have to force them to, by undemocratic means. Naturally, forcing Al himself to do so is out of the question. So Al chooses to force some helpless Ugandan farmers instead. He's inviting (no, causing) dictatorship for profit.

Looks like Al is realizing what Kermit knew all along: It's not easy being green!

Kim Zigfeld · April 9, 2007 1:45 AM · Comments (20) · TrackBacks (0)

Happy Easter!

Filed under: Philosphy

Happy Easter everyone! Enjoy your holiday weekend. I know we will. Publius will be back on Monday,

Robert Mayer · April 7, 2007 8:27 AM · Comments (2) · TrackBacks (0)