WMD's In Syria?

United States military assets are moving to Cyprus as I write this.  President Obama seems determined to strike.  Apparently there is no reasonable doubt in his mind that chemical weapons have been used by the Syrian government in its fight against rebels there.

So for me the question is "WMD's" you say?  That's what those chemical weapons are, WMD's.  So how did they get there?

Well thanks to the UN's griping about the United States failing to keep Saddam Hussein's WMD's from leaving Iraq, we all know where they came from.  Even some of the stuff in the Wikileaks dump revealed information suggesting the WMD's left Iraq and were moved to Syria before the coalition forces could secure them.  So we pretty much know where the WMD's came from and how they got to Syria.  It just wasn't anything the current elites in the media and academia wanted to talk about because they insisted that the idea of WMD's being in Iraq was a big lie. 

I think George Bush and Tony Blair are due a really big apology.  Ah but that's been over-due since around 2007.

But what's that the current elites in power want us to be thinking?  Assad's a monster and needs dealt with harshly?  We shouldn't allow the petty squabbles over facts from the past distract us from this very important objective?  You know, bringing Assad to justice?

The current political elites came to power supporting the notion that their predecessors lied about WMD's being in Iraq.  If so many of the current political elites were so wrong about Iraq that the same WMD's they claimed didn't exist are now the justification for their proposed and likely military strike, why are we allowing them to lead us into such drastic actions?  At the very moment that their twisted web of lies is revealed to us through their own admission are we supposed to trust them?

One point that they made about Iraq that I agree with is that WMD's are a distraction from much sounder reasons for foreign military interventions, but unfortunately for them in the case of Syria none of those sounder reasons are currently present.  Unlike Hussein's Iraq the government of Syria is not oppressing people based on religion or ethnicity.  As a matter of fact dominant elements of the rebels are the ones practicing such oppression and persecution.  Oh sure, Assad's a ruthless dictator but he's not anti-Christian.  Many of the rebels are.

There isn't a right side in Syria and we don't belong there.  Our current leaders should do two things about Syria, apologize to Bush and Blair, and then just let things work themselves out.  Whoever wins, wins.  As for Obama's "red line"?  Like the claim that Bush lied about WMD's in Iraq, the rest of Obama's word has been exposed.  What point is there in trying to make it mean something now?  Especially if it will take military actions to do it.

I dread these next few days.  I'm not sure which I dread more.  The unwise use of military force or the unbearable distortions of the truth that the elites in media and academia are going to expose us to in their attempts to convince us that current political elites that they like are something more than grossly incompetent.

One kind thing I can say about their favored pols.  Gross incompetence, even when it costs people their lives, isn't treason.  At least they have that. 

Advice To My Fellow Denizens Of Fiction And Reality

(Yes, that "novelist conscience" part of my description does in fact mean something.  I wont always expound on political, social, and religious issues here.  Some times I'll be so kind as to share with you what I do for my clients.  Benefit from it if you will.  Here's your first chance.)

Fantasy fiction is a great place to discuss real issues, in fact that's why many of my clients write it. The typical reader's real life is just way too full of immediate every day concerns to be easily coaxed into thinking about other things, but if you make one of those other things part of the background of a fun fantasy story, you've got them. Thanks to the Harry Potter sequence, as an example (not one of my clients, I should clarify), millions of people have now thought a lot about the consequences of being an orphan raised by an aunt and uncle. While not all orphans raised by aunts and uncles are integral parts of major power struggles, they all still have potential issues that no doubt matter a great deal to them, and J. K. Rowling has likely already made a positive difference in at least a few lives just because of that choice of character background.

An example from one of my clients is a story idea he has temporarily shelved, where a fourteen year old boy is being treated chemically for mood swings related to his parents' divorce. That's the background. The fantasy story is that these drugs he's on have a side effect that causes him to wander into magically powerful peoples' minds when he sleeps, where he is the helpless observer of what they do and think. Like the Harry Potter sequence, this novel would draw readers with the fantasy elements and the issue of chemically treating children for various things would be that added bonus that might not otherwise have received as much thought. If he ever does pick this one up again, and if he follows the rest of my advice below, he'll have a good chance to positively impact the lives of children around the world and across the ages.

No Ax-grinding

Here's what Rowling didn't do and my client must not do as well, with any of his works. No ax-grinding.

If we measure the success of good fiction entirely by its current readership we could find many examples of successful ax-grinders. Many science fiction writers do it all the time, going out of their way for example to say religion is a thing of the past in their stories. They're grinding their ax against organized religion and seem to be getting away with it. That is if the standard is only current readership.

What they're actually doing is betting their legacies on their predictions of the future. If 2413 rolls along and most of the people in the world still believe in some god, any god, the works of these 20th century authors will be almost assuredly irrelevant and long forgotten. And, while that is generally true of most centuries old works of fiction, it's not true of the great ones, and that's what good fiction writers should be aiming for, long legacies that span multiple centuries. As far as I'm concerned, if you're target audience is only the current living population, you don't need me. You can freely write whatever junk will sell, and more power to you for that's an impressive talent in itself, but money can't buy you self-respect. It also can't buy you a legacy that truly has a part of you in it, a name on a building perhaps, but not a piece of you.

The more obvious problem with ax-grinding is it turns off potential readers right now. A successful writer will come to know fairly specifically who their readers are, and it's tempting to take chances offending what they assume to be their non-readers. Many science fiction authors for example can't imagine many religious people liking science fiction, so making fun of people who believe in a deity seems safe to them. Many of these writers might be surprised if they knew just how many science fiction fans go to church or attend attend synagogue. Many such fans tell me they simply forgive such a writer if his story is good enough, but that forgiveness still comes with a price. Their standard for that writer keeping their interest is raised, and even worse for the author's cause, the reader's a lot less likely to recommend the book to someone else, even if the story was pretty good. Word of mouth is huge in this business. Ax-grinding, no matter what your favorite ax may be, is a drag both on your book's market success and on your legacy.

Avoid direct politics : Keep time in perspective :

This final bit of advice should probably been placed up front. If I'd done that everyone who even glanced at this post would have come away with the crowned jewel of legacy building in fiction writing. Of course I couldn't place that up front, since I don't want mere glancers to get this. Here it is, and I wont even highlight in any way like has become my style to do everywhere else. Just for the actual readers, this jewel is. A good piece of fiction has a longer life span than politicians and their political causes, so don't tie your fiction to either. To do so is like chaining yourself to an anchor. It will go down eventually and when it does, so will the relevance of your work. God didn't create story tellers so they could get co-opted by mere politicians.

An artist's snobbish bluster you might say? Well consider this. I'll name two people from history and you tell me which one has effected the most people across the years, Alexander the Great or Homer? Let me name another pair, Elizabeth I or Shakespeare? There is no arguing that Alexander and Elizabeth didn't have huge impacts on human history, but the influence of Homer and Shakespeare continues very directly even to this day and transcends them. These authors of fiction influence us even when we don't fully realize it. Thanks to Homer, people around the world have a greater appreciation for balance in their lives than they would have without his works. Thanks to Shakespeare millions of people today, not counting all those who've lived before us, know of the internal torment that comes from “having blood on your hands”. I could go on and will, a tad anyways.

I would be amiss if I didn't add the example of Robert the Bruce and Robert Burns.  One liberated Scotland from English tyranny, the other reminded us of the mess we make of our lives when we “practice to deceive”, and Burns even put the inspiring words in Bruce's mouth at the battle of Bannockburn in his poem by the same name. Here are some of my favorites,

“By Oppression's woes and pains! 

By your sons in servile chains!

We will drain our dearest veins,

But they shall be free!”

Not all writer's works live on to shape future thoughts, but by comparison no world leader's legacy does at all. When we set out to tell stories we should realize the gravity of our art. It is nothing small and we should never lower it to the level of nations and their leaders. Our stories speak to them, and they only speak to our stories when they themselves tell stories.

Humanity's Only Way Forward

A good friend of mine was one of the pioneers of modern computing. Not one anyone would likely recognize since his role was to computer age pioneering as that of a typical homesteader to pioneering in the old west. While Bill Gates was chasing down the details of dos and Steve Jobs was toiling with his friends in a garage, my friend was literally playing with IBM's prototype personal computer. That was the late 70's. In the early 80's he was very possibly the first psychology major at his college to secure official access to the college's computer lab. There he loved to challenge programmers to write more and more complex programs while hacking into a few himself to see what chimera he could create by cutting out some pieces, modifying others, and combining multiple programs together. Other than a few good careers, nothing huge came of all of that. That is other than one thing I find quite interesting, an insight.

Besides being a psychology major and strong history minor, he is also a masters level biblical scholar, a man after my own heart, which gave him what I'd call a trans-historical perspective on our age. He saw the things that were happening in perspective of the full span of human history much more so than others. So when he saw the internet develop from a Department of Defense data sharing system into a private sector revolution he wondered about something others didn't, though perhaps should. Was the Tower of Babel “curse” about to be lifted?

The Story Of The Tower

For those less familiar with the Biblical story, it basically says that Noah's early descendents came under the leadership of a man named Nimrod, who directed them to build a tower into the heavens. The exact purpose of the tower is debated but it seemed to my friend to be Nimrod's attempt to reach God on his own terms, possibly even to make his own demands of him. In other words, hubris to the nth degree. Nimrod was the ultimate example of a powerful central government without limitations.

He notes that the authors of the story came from a culture and time that didn't use the words we translate as “heaven” to mean something as general as we use “heaven” for. For them it meant specifically the space between earth's sky and the stars. Yes, interestingly enough the ancients conceived of space, and this tower then was very possibly intended to grant access into space.  In other ancient ancient writings it was called the sea beyond the sky and they spoke of travelling across it to the stars.

I know some may be thinking this is crazy talk and/or a set up for some New Age nonsense, but don't panic. I'm not going there and nor does my friend ever intend to go there. The fact that the ancients conceived of a sea between our atmosphere and the stars may seem to shake up the typical chronocentric perspective of ancient peoples, but it most certainly does not mean the ancients were space travelers or had contact with such. It's just a testament to the power of human deduction, that even without telescopes, rockets, and satellites there are enough facts to be observed with the human eye to figure out there's an altitude beyond which the atmosphere ends and something else begins, and that these stars and planets we observe are in fact both very distant and very large.  "How?" you might ask.  If only we had some of the scholars from around that time to talk to, and of course if only our current scholars were inclined to respect them. 

Now back to the internet and the Tower of Babel.

In the Biblical story God sees what Nimrod's followers are doing as bad. He seems to use the 'absolute power corrupts absolutely' argument and very matter of factly at that. Of course, God is the one sentience in existence that can always safely speak matter of factly. So, citing this argument, He “confuses” their language so they can't understand each other, and they scatter across the Earth.

Now Enter The Internet

Believing this story to be true, my friend watched the development of the internet with great interest. The internet was about to make it possible for human beings all around the world to communicate pretty much whenever they wanted. Translation programs make spanning the gap between languages almost trivial. Was this the undoing of what God did to the builders of the Tower? If so, what was going to happen when this undoing was done?

The answer he says, “we had it wrong”. Once again chronocentrism, our natural predisposition to assume the simplest of meanings in ancient records, led us to an incorrect conclusion. Language is not the only communication barrier between humans. “Come let us go down and confuse their language so they don't understand each other”, is what the most authoritative English translation says. Note the languages are not just made different, but they are “confused”. And, indeed that is what the internet's coming to apparently unite the world in communication has demonstrated. Even when we speak the same language our communications are still confused.

Anyone who uses the internet for research should know by now that many are the people who offer answers to questions, authoritative sources on subjects ranging from science, technical matters, literature, and religion, and many of these people are offering severely biased or just completely inaccurate or even false information. There's no way to control the information offered without giving some group of people undue power to control information, and that would pretty much undo the whole point of it.

Most contributors sincerely believe their offerings are sound, but somewhere along their path of learning they may have been misinformed or mislead. Many of these misinformed or mislead contributors are even highly respected members of the the academic community, so simply checking their credentials doesn't cut it either. It seems the more we gather information, the more we see we don't necessarily even know what we thought we knew. More information and more communication seems to mean just more confusion. The internet has come to shine the proverbial light on our confusion and ignorance and revealed to us that we confuse ourselves.

So where do we go from here? Do we abandon the internet as Nimrod's followers abandoned their Tower? Is human progress impossible? Of course not. Human progress is clearly possible as we can look at history and see examples of it, such as technology and the formal recognition of individual liberty across the ages. The confusion we see on the internet is just a revisiting of an ancient lesson, one that points us to a way forward.

Whether one believes the story of the Tower actually happened or not, it's existence tells us the ancients knew something many of us only recently re-discovered. Collectives, whatever they may be, unlimited democracies, religious organizations, political factions, corporations, or Nimrod and his followers after their language was confused, eventually and inevitably fail due to an inefficiency that grows as their numbers grow. The only ultimate solution to any problem can be achieved through individuals. Thus the way forward is through maximizing individual liberty within the framework of the absolute minimal amount of government as to facilitate it.

Individuals free to make their own decisions drive progress, not governments or any other collective. So as you see, once again, it all comes back to that, the individual.

We're not the big individualists – Really?

We're not the big individualists – Really?

While doing my due diligence in preparation for the post, Enemies Of The American Revolution, I came across an article from the Boston Globe that in turn drew from a piece written by Claude S. Fischer, author of the book Made In America and a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He in turn drew heavily from a study done by the International Social Survey Programme. The gist of both Fischer's piece and its legacy piece in the Boston Globe is that Americans aren't more individualistic than any other culture in the western world.

My studies in Political Geography beg to differ with this conclusion, but it's not the conclusion that inspired my response here. It's how the conclusion was drawn. The conclusion depended heavily on two things, an impractical definition of individualism and questions in a survey based largely on that impracticality.

[If the collective of the moment is the group that happens to occupy a sinking ship's life boat, you join them, but apparently not Fischer's understanding of Ralph Waldo Emerson.]

I'll share the questions later, but for now it's important to explain what I mean by an impractical definition of individualism. Fischer defines individualism by quoting Emerson's Self-Reliance (1841) where he wrote, “No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.” “I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. . . . I will do strongly . . . whatever only rejoices me, and the heart appoints.” He then concludes, “Emerson rejected any suggestion that the individual submit him- or herself to the control or even the influence of any group or its traditions.” This definition however has huge problems if we are to take individualism seriously.

Mark Elliot, one of the nation's leading scholars in the area of Soviet Studies, while Professor of History at Asbury University, once explained a similar problem he saw with Nazism. It can't be a true ism if it's defined primarily by what it's against, communism and influences of foreign and extra-cultural origins. For if an ism is defined by what it's against and not by what it's for, it is then essentially controlled by its enemies. This Emersonian definition leaves individualism in just such a state. It makes it reactionary and hardly an ism at all.

Besides making it reactionary, it also makes it impractical, more like a prejudice than an actual functional approach to life and social policy. No rational person would responsibly be an individualist if that's its definition. If the collective of the moment is the group that happens to occupy a sinking ship's life boat, you join them, but apparently not Fischer's understanding of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Fischer's Ralph would go down with the ship as a matter of his individualistic principal, or maybe he would never have gotten on the ship in the first place, for the same irrational principal.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting Fischer has Emerson wrong. It really doesn't matter if he does or not. What matters is he's using a definition of individualism that is irrelevant unless one assumes individualism to be less than rational.

Allow me to provide a definition that respects the intellect and reasoning of those who are individualists.

Individualism*

• a belief that the individual (third person) is more important than any collective, individual (first or second person), ideal, cause, or human (inevitably flawed) understanding of the divine.
• a belief that manifests itself in a high respect for individual liberty and dignity.

Now let's look at some of the questions from the International Social Survey Programme.

Question – “In general, would you say that people should obey the law without exception, or are there exceptional occasions on which people should follow their consciences even if it means breaking the law?”

Result – Americans were the most likely to believe they should obey the law even if the law was wrong, something Fischer believed was antithetical to individualism.

A sound conclusion using the Emersonian definition but not when allowing individualism to be be a true rational ism. Having "a nation of laws, not of men", as is attributed to John Adams, protects the individual from its two greatest threats, unlimited political power in the hands of collectives and other individuals. For laws, once established, are impartial and their restrictive effects can almost always be avoided**, but empowered collectives and individuals can respond to every effort to evade their tyranny. Thus a well thought individualist appreciates the value of laws and how even bad ones can often be better tolerated than people acting solely on their own consciences. In the United States we change or eliminate bad laws, and defying them is an act of absolute last resort. This is precisely for the sake of the individual.

Question – “ Right or wrong should be a matter of personal conscience,”

Result – Only Norwegians were more likely to say this statement is wrong than were Americans. Once again this fit Fischer's conclusion if going by, what I consider to be an impractical and irrelevant definition of individualism. The question of how we determine what is right and what is wrong is an intellectual can of worms, but you can't revere the individual above all human things unless you believe there are in fact things bigger than us all. It is logically consistent with individualism to believe there is a sense of oughtness, yes even perhaps a source, that transcends all of us. What is it otherwise that tells us the individual is important to any degree? Individualism, whether it be Emersonian or Fontaignian depends on a universal sense of oughtness for its very existence. It should be a matter of course that individualists would believe right and wrong is definitely not a matter of personal conscience. We should be free to live by our own understanding of right and wrong, but if that understanding is wrong, we are still wrong.

Question – “People should support their country even if the country is in the wrong,”

Result – Once again Americans were most likely to answer this in a way that supports Fischer's conclusion based on his Emersonian definition of individualism. Another example of Fischer's Ralph going down with a sinking ship in order to avoid joining a collective on a lifeboat, that is individualism as a powerful ruling prejudice but not a true ism.

At the core of any practical individualism, according to our nation's founders, are the rights to life, liberty, and private property, and these rights usually do poorly in the absence of civil order. Look at almost any riot and you will see that not only do protections for core individual rights such as life, liberty, and property go away but they are attacked. Property gets stolen, damaged, and destroyed. And individual liberty only exists at the mercy of the mob or at the very least their lack of notice that you have it.

Individualism is incompatible with civil disorder and thus it must make a calculated deal with governance where government is given just enough power to keep relative order and no more if at all possible. The three basic rights of life, liberty, and property are interdependent and inseparable***, and the protection of private property rights is the most common role of government as an effective support of individualism. From this it follows that a government must establish and maintain a jurisdiction over the areas where private property is owned and may come to be owned. That, on the largest scale, is a nation. If a nation loses or has its jurisdiction compromised, it's ability to protect property is also diminished.

It logically follows that even when one's country is in the wrong, it is often preferable to support it than to risk its sovereignty. This isn't just a selfish preference, as much as it may sound that way to some. If forces external to any nation are allowed as a matter of some international policy to compromise its sovereignty, that policy then logically supersedes private property rights. Thus “my country right or wrong” is more than just a nationalist slogan, but a rational individualist one as well.

Question – “Even when there are no children, a married couple should stay together even if they don’t get along”

Result – Emersonian individualism is once again defied by a greater proportion of the Americans polled than those in most other western nations. How can Americans being more loyal to marriage be in any way consistent with them being more individualistic? No need for a long discussion here. It was answered above.Marriage is a legal contract and we are a nation of laws to the benefit of the individual. Also individualism is not selfishism. There are things bigger than all of us and the individual (third person) is one of them.

Question – “a married person having sexual relations with someone other than his or her husband or wife” is “always wrong, almost always wrong, wrong only sometimes, or not wrong at all.”

Result – This is the point when if this were a lecture I'd be noting the yawns from my students and feeling for them. What does the marriage contract say? How do we feel about laws and a sense of oughtness? I think we've got it now.

Conclusion

From a rational point of view individualism is not about ignoring or defying all sources of information, but about considering as many as is reasonable and practical, and then arriving at one's own reasoned conclusions without automatic deference to recognized experts. As much as many in academia may accredit what I call the Emersonian definition as valid, it functions to do little more than try to make individualism rationally and responsibly irrelevant, by circular logic. Of course if you define something in a way that makes it irrelevant it will be irrelevant. It is convenient for its critics that one recognized as a proponent of individualism, one Ralph Waldo Emerson, should offer up such a definition, but well recognized or not, if his definition destroys his own cause, what use is it to a fair discussion with those who don't accept that definition?

Now I have used Karl Marx's own statements to demonstrate what I believe to be communism's fatal flaws, but if any communist insists as I do about Emerson, that Marx was wrong, I wont pretend his reasoning must live or die by Marx's words.No one is a prisoner to someone else's words, as much as academia tries to make it so.  We all must answer to reality, no matter what words are said or unsaid.

So are Americans typically more individualistic than Europeans? I can't answer that for sure. Perhaps we Americans take what the Bill of Rights have served to guarantee us for granted, perhaps we don't, but there is nothing in this survey to suggest anything other than that many in academic realms don't really understand what individualism is. Students beware!