Author: dean

Atlas Shrugged Movie, Part I (With some plot spoilers)

I think that I read that Ayn Rand simply wanted to use an “Atlas Shrugged” movie as a vehicle to advertise the novel. In other words, I think that her standard for a successful Atlas Shrugged movie was whether it would encourage people to read the novel –people who otherwise might not be aware of Atlas. I am probably not the best person to ask about whether the movie version has achieved that purpose, as I am so blatantly “partisan” when it comes to Ayn Rand and her philosophy. I am so devotedly in the “Ayn Rand camp”, that I cannot easily tell whether someone who is not already a fan will see the movie and get anything out of it -other than some of the more superficial political themes of “capitalism good, government regulations bad”- much less, go out and read the novel. I hope that someone is tracking sales of Ayn Rand’s novel, and that they will publish some sort of report or paper showing whether sales of the novel increased after the movie came out today. This would seem to be the best indicator of whether the movie is successful, by the definition described above.

With that said, I have to say, as a fan, I enjoyed the movie. I deliberately kept my expectations low. I knew it had a low budget, and that the actors and directors were relatively new to movies. I am no expert when it comes to directing or acting, I mostly look for good plot, theme and characters in a movie, but I thought that the actors and director were quite successful in making me forget that I was watching a movie, and at mentally “putting me in the moment”. I actually think that using unknown actors was better than using “big name” actors could have eclipsed the movie itself in viewer’s minds.

As a fan, I enjoyed seeing how the creators of the film chose to portray the movie, how close its plotline was to the novel, and what the actors looked like for each of the characters. As far as the look of the actors went, I thought they did a pretty good job. (Keep in mind as I write all of this, that I haven’t read Atlas Shrugged in a number of years, so I may be remembering things in the novel wrong.) I liked how the actress, Taylor Schilling, played Dagny Taggart. I think that she seemed to “get” Dagny’s character pretty well. (Or, at least, the way she saw Dagny was close to how I saw Dagny.) She mostly portrayed Dagny as a woman successfully working in a “man’s world”, but the movie character doesn’t try to pretend like she is a man, and maintains a lady-like poise. I think this is close to the novel version. I also liked how actor Graham Beckel, who played Ellis Wyatt, portrayed that character. As I recall Ellis did not “suffer fools gladly”, and the actor definitely gave you the feeling he wasn’t to be trifled with. But, that said, I always thought Ellis Wyatt was younger, thinner, and better looking –I know that’s somewhat superficial of me, and that’s why I can’t complain too much on that count. (I also would think that Ellis Wyatt would have more of a sort of quiet, “simmering rage” towards the collectivists, and wouldn’t resort to actually yelling, which occurred in the movie at one point.) Just so that it’s clear that I’m not totally superficial, I was glad that they didn’t portray all of the “bad guys” in the movie as physically unattractive. James Taggart was played by an actor who is physically good looking. The actress who played Lillian Reardon is also an attractive person. I think that it is a common mistake, even amongst fans of Ayn Rand, to think that good people are all physically beautiful, and bad people are all physically ugly. Since genetics, not choice, plays a large roll in your body type, especially when you are under about age 40, I regard this as a mistake.

There were a couple of scenes in the movie that I was disappointed with, however. Both of these scenes had to do with Reardon’s relationship with Dagny. Once again, keep in mind that I haven’t read the book in some time, and this is just how I recall the novel. As I recall it, Reardon’s feelings towards Dagny were somewhat in conflict initially –or, at least, he didn’t want to acknowledge how he felt about her. He admits at some point in the novel that he fell in love with her from the moment he saw her, and learned that she was the head of Taggart Transcontinental Railroad. (As I recall it, before he knew who she was, he liked how she looked, but then when he learned she was the business woman he had heard about, he wanted to have sex with her on the rails.) However, since Reardon was married, he couldn’t act on his feelings for Dagny. He regarded his marriage as a contract, and Reardon regarded a contract as a promise that he would never willingly break. This leads to the first scene from the movie that was written weakly, and, I think, quite differently from the novel. In the novel, at a party being thrown by Reardon’s wife Lillian, Dagny loudly confronts Lillian after she publicly makes a joke of the bracelet of Reardon metal that Hank gave her as a gift. As I recall it, Dagny loudly calls Lillian a coward, and all eyes at the party turn to watch the two of them. At that point Dagny trades her diamond necklace for the Reardon metal bracelet. Hank then approaches the two of them, criticizes Dagny for her behavior, kisses his wife’s hand, and proceeds to act as a doting husband for the rest of the night. In other words, Reardon takes his wife’s side in the conflict, even though he is secretly in love with Dagny. He does this because he thinks that he has a moral obligation to his wife as her husband, despite the fact that she does nothing but bring misery and unhappiness to his life. In the movie, when this confrontation occurs, everybody keeps dancing, hardly paying the scene any mind, Dagny doesn’t call Lillian a coward, and Hank doesn’t offer any criticism of Dagny. I think part of the reason for this is that they had written the script in such a way that Dagny and Hank were already developing a clear friendship, with some sexual chemistry. So, it wouldn’t make sense, given how they had written the script, to suddenly have Reardon act that cold towards Dagny. In the novel, I think that up to the point of this party scene, Reardon maintained an outward appearance of cool, formal indifference towards Dagny in order to hide his feelings from her. Taking his wife’s side at the party in the novel therefore makes more sense, because he is still trying to maintain the masquerade that he doesn’t love Dagny.

The second scene that I found to be pretty weak was the sex scene between Dagny and Hank. It was way too gentle. As I recall that scene, Hank is pretty rough with Dagny –after securing her verbal permission for sex. I seem to recall that either that scene or a subsequent post-coitus scene in the novel involved Dagny having bruises or blood on her body after a night of manhandling by Reardon. I viewed the nature of their sexual relationship in the novel in this way: Given the fact that Reardon has given in to his desire for Dagny, he feels a certain amount of resentment towards her and himself because he has broken his marriage contract. He therefore feels a certain desire to treat her like she is “cheap” or “sluttish”, and the rough sex is how he attempts to accomplish this. As I recall, after the first time they have sex, he declares that they are both depraved. (Also as I recall, she retorts that she is even more depraved than him because she doesn’t think she’s depraved.) Regardless of whether my interpretation of his motives are correct, Reardon is pretty rough with Dagny, and the movie didn’t follow the novel at all on that point.

With that said, there was another semi-sexual scene in the movie that I liked very much, and I cannot, for the life of me, remember if that was how it happened in the novel. At one point, Dagny goes to her ex-lover, Francisco d’Anconia, who she now despises, and asks him to loan her money to start the John Galt train line. After she sees he isn’t going to loan her the money for “conventional business reasons”, nor out of charity, she tries to use “feminine wiles”, and implies that she will let him sleep with her if he will give her the money. I don’t remember this scene from the novel, but it seemed very “Ayn Rand-esque” to me. (See Rand’s novel “We The Living” for an example of women sleeping with men they consider to be their enemies to save someone they love.) Obviously, I don’t endorse prostitution as a normal career choice for a woman, but its one-time use by a businesswoman in a movie as a way to save her life’s work from destruction by the government is very compelling fiction to me.

Does the Oil Spill Matter?

Imagine a hypothetical scenario: a valuable substance is discovered on the moon. This substance is so valuable that corporations are willing to spend billions of dollars traveling to the moon to extract it and bring it back to Earth. These corporations institute procedures and guidelines for the safe extraction of this substance from the moon, because it will affect their profits if any of it were accidentally spilled on the lunar surface. However, since human beings are neither omniscient, nor infallible, it is possible that accidents will occasionally happen despite everyone’s best effort to avoid them. When this happens, some of this valuable hypothetical substance would be lost. Since we are talking about the moon, and there is nobody living on the moon, there is no property damage, and there is no danger to human life. Would there be reason to complain when such a “lunar spill” occurs? If human life is your standard of what is important, then the answer is no. Human life and human property is not endangered. The only tragedy when such a hypothetical lunar spill occurs is the loss of this valuable hypothetical substance.

Now imagine a second hypothetical scenario, back here on Earth: If your neighbor negligently released a flammable, black viscous substance onto your property, and it substantially interfered with your use or enjoyment of your land, what would you do? Under the property laws of most American states you could likely file suit against your neighbor in court. The specific cause of action might vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but it would typically be called something like “private nuisance” or “trespass”. The right to private property includes the right to the reasonable use and enjoyment of that property, and the law can and should protect it.

Now consider a current, and very real, event: An oil well in the Gulf of Mexico recently suffered a catastrophic explosion, and is releasing oil into the water. The primary tragedy here is the loss of human life from the explosion. This obviously was not an intentional act on the part of the owners or management of the oil company, but it did happen, either because people were negligent, or just because of a bad set of random circumstances beyond anybody’s control. This is not the first time an industrial accident has occurred, and it will not be the last. As long as human beings continue to be human beings, such events will occur –although I contend that such events are rare in a free society, made up of mostly reasonable people. To the extent that there is a causal connection between the negligent acts of any person or persons, and the loss of human life resulting from this industrial accident, and to the extent that that causal connection can be proven in a court of law, then there is, and there should be, legal liability for the person or persons responsible. In other words, to the extent that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is like the second hypothetical scenario that I set forth above, then the law can and should be brought into play.

However, the oil being spilled into the water, as opposed to the preceding explosion that resulted in a direct loss of human life, seems to have a lesser impact on the lives or property of human beings. The only two industries that are obviously affected by the spill are the fishing and recreational tourism industries in the Gulf region. “Recreational tourism” would primarily mean the beaches in the states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. The legal solution to this problem is easy. Since the beaches are presumably owned by someone, they should have a legal right to go to court, and file suit against any person(s) who were negligent in causing the oil spill. This is exactly like the second hypothetical scenario I outlined above. With regard to the fishing industry, the legal solution seems a little bit more complicated for the simple reason that nobody owns the ocean. While fishermen should have a right to extract whatever aquatic life they want from the ocean, they have no property rights to the ocean itself. Perhaps it is time for property rights in the ocean to be defined and protected by government, but they appear not to be at present. Nobody can currently claim a right to an oil-free ocean, anymore than people could claim a right to the surface of the moon in my first hypothetical example.

Excepting the recreational tourism and the fishing industries, no other persons are damaged by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, because no other person’s property rights have been infringed. The oil spill matters no more than if someone were to spill a hypothetical substance on the surface of the moon.

There is a common sentiment that would take exception with me when I claim that, aside from the recreational tourism and fishing industries, nobody should care about oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. In fact this is more than just a “sentiment”, it is an ideology. That ideology is typically referred to as “environmentalism”. This ideology asserts that the oceans, non-human organisms, rivers, the land, and the air have a value apart from their service to human life and needs: “It is a belief in biocentrism, that life of the Earth comes first…” Earth First!. Web. 6-7-2010. http://www.earthfirst.org/about.htm This ideology asserts that human beings should, at the very least, return to pre-industrial technology levels. The fact that current human population levels could not be sustained by living at this level of technology means that this ideology, put into practice, would cause large numbers of human beings to die of starvation and disease. Indeed, wiping out humanity is the true goal of this ideology. Environmentalists with more of a conscience talk about government-forced birth control: “…cut the birth rate to one child per couple, for a few generations at least. The population would dwindle by about 5 billion people over the next century…” Engber, Daniel. Global Swarming Is it time for Americans to start cutting our baby emissions?. Slate.com. 9-10-2007. Web. 6-7-2010. http://www.slate.com/id/2173458 The more consistent adherents of this ideology talk about human extinction. The goal of human extinction is consistent with environmentalism because it holds that the Earth comes first. This ideology is far more dangerous than any industrial accident because it attacks the very root of human survival –technological progress, and the fact that humans should come first.

It doesn’t matter if most people who call themselves “environmentalists” don’t know that this ideology is opposed to human life. The majority of people who called themselves socialists during the cold war didn’t know that the logic of their ideology led to the gulags of Soviet Russia, and still probably don’t know it today, but that was the logical result of an ideology that holds that individuals must sacrifice their lives to the collective. Legitimate pollution problems can be solved with technological progress and the application of the laws of private property, such as the common law cause of action for private nuisance. Such problems cannot be solved by means of an ideology that opposes human happiness and progress.

New York Times Article on Kagan

“In another case, she recommended that the federal government intervene in a case to support religious freedom. The California Supreme Court ruled that a landlord violated a state law prohibiting housing discrimination by refusing to rent an apartment to an unwed couple because she considered sex outside marriage to be a sin.”http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/us/politics/12kagan.html?pagewanted=2&src=me

Kagan’s position here was incorrect. If the case is as the NY Times article describes it, then this was a law of general application (prohibiting housing discrimination against unmarried couples). Providing exemptions from statutes of general application on “freedom of religion” grounds would lead to the absurdity that people can abuse children or engage in human sacrifice because of their need for “religious freedom”. Warren Jeffs would claim that he has a right to sexually abuse children because of his “religious freedom”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Jeffs

The Kite Runner

Thematically, I think this movie was about guilt and atonement. The setting was interesting to me because it portrayed one of the few nations in world history that has been under both collectivism and theocracy -Afghanistan. It shows how the country was utterly destroyed by those two political ideologies. Pay attention to the Afghanistan prior to the Soviet invasion in 1979 and the Afghanistan in 2000, prior to September 11. Although the pre-1979 Afghanistan had its flaws, namely, tribalism and cast-discrimination, it was like a utopia compared to the brutal theocracy of 2000.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0419887/

Judge John E. Jones III for US Supreme Court

In between stories about the latest celebrity sex scandal, the news is occasionally noting that Justice John Paul Stevens of the US Supreme Court is going to retire, allowing President Obama to make another appointment. I would like to propose that Judge John E. Jones III, of the Middle District of Pennsylvania be considered for the job. Judge Jones was appointed by President George W. Bush for his present position, and is a Republican. But, Judge Jones was the presiding judge in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District Judge Jones ruled that the School Board’s policy on “Intelligent Design”, which is another word for creationism, violated the Establishment Clause. In an interview about his decision, Judge Jones responded this way: “A significant number of Americans, if you poll, believe that creationism ought to be taught, either supplanting evolution or alongside of evolution. And, again, you ask how the judiciary works. We protect against the tyranny of the majority.” Amen.

What is tribalism?

Sometimes when I speak in casual conversation (whether in person or over the Internet), I will use terms that I don’t even realize other people may not understand –or may not understand in the same sense that I use them. I’m typically fairly careful about this, but it does occasionally occur. This recently occurred when I was commenting on an article by Christopher Hitchens called: “Fool’s Gold: How the Olympics and other international competitions breed conflict and bring out the worst in human nature”, which was found in the magazine “Newsweek”, dated Feb 15, 2010. I essentially said that I thought that the article was important because it discusses the ugliness that is often associated with sports, but I stated that I didn’t think this was an inherent feature of sports, but rather a reflection of the “tribal mentality” that sports tends to attract (or, perhaps, that it brings out of otherwise rational people). Someone asked me what I meant by “tribal mentality”, and I told them I’d have to get back to them on it. This is my attempt to explain what I meant.

I knew that I probably picked up the term from an essay by Ayn Rand called: “The Missing Link”. (All references to this essay are from “The Missing Link” in Philosophy: Who Needs It, Ayn Rand (Signet Paperback Ed. ISBN 0-451-13893-7).) “Tribalism” is the term used to describe certain mentalities that choose group-conformity over their commitment to abstract ideals like “justice” and “individual rights”. “Tribalism (which is the best name to give to all the group manifestations of the anti-conceptual mentality)…” (Pg. 42, “The Missing Link”, Rand) My explanation here is meant to provide my (hopefully accurate) understanding of what Rand meant. Proving that she was right is not my primary goal here. I leave it up to the reader to think about what I am saying, and what she said, and decide whether the ideas expressed there are in accordance with reality, which is the ultimate criterion of what ideas are true and which are false.

I first read “The Missing Link” back in college. Since then, I have come to understand Rand’s views on concept formation – the mental steps associated with how we acquire knowledge- much better. (Her views on concept formation are found in _Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology_, for those wanting to study them in depth.) An essential feature to grasp about concept formation is the fact that some concepts are more abstract than others –by which I mean they require greater mental effort to grasp, and they depend on first grasping subsidiary concepts. For instance, the concept “organism” is more abstract than the concepts “dog”, “tree”, “human”, and “bird” –which are all concepts that the concept of “organism” subsumes and includes. The concept “furniture” is more abstract than the concepts “table”, “chair”, “desk”, and “stool” –which the concept of “furniture” subsumes and includes. A concept like “justice” is far more abstract than concepts that represent “perceptual concretes”, such as “human”, “dog”, “tree”, “table” and “chair”. A “perceptual concrete” is something that one can perceive with one’s unaided senses. You can perceive a table, you cannot perceive the atoms that make it up –although the use of scientific experiments and reasoning demonstrate that atoms are real. (I think scientific experiments typically work because the results of the experiment, which you can perceive, allow you to infer that those results must be caused by something you cannot perceive with your senses, and to know something about what that imperceptible thing is.) You can perceive individual men, but you cannot perceive “justice” –although a process of reasoning can relate that highly abstract concept back to things you do perceive in reality. The important thing to keep in mind here is that there are different “levels of abstraction” according to Ayn Rand. Concepts that denote things like “table”, “dog”, and “car” are generally regarded as “first level abstractions”. (As opposed to “higher-level abstractions”, like “justice” and “rights”.)

The “anti-conceptual mentality” “…stops on this level of development –on the first levels of abstractions, which identify perceptual material consisting predominately of physical objects –and does not choose to take the next, crucial, fully volitional step: the higher levels of abstraction from abstractions, which cannot be learned by imitation. (See my book _Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology_.)…In the brain of an anti-conceptual person, the process of integration is largely replaced by a process of association. What his subconscious stores and automatizes is not ideas, but an indiscriminate accumulation of sundry concretes, random facts, and unidentified feelings, piled into unlabeled mental file folders. This works up to a point –i.e., so long as such a person deals with other persons whose folders are stuffed similarly, and thus no search through the entire filing system is ever required.” (Pg. 39, “The Missing Link”, Rand)

In other words, an “anti-conceptual mentality” operates at the level of the first levels of abstractions, but operation at this level of concept formation will not allow him to live and function, so one possible way to deal with this is to adopt the rules, traditions, and ways of other people around him. In other words, an anti-conceptual mentality can deal with his inability to live successfully on the first level of abstractions by simply adopting the customs of his “tribe”. His success at living is then tied to the extent to which his tribe’s rules and customs conform to reality. If his tribal rules conform to reality, then he will be able to use those rules to live. However, since most principles of action tend to operate within certain contexts, the tribal mentality will tend to use rules outside of their proper context. For instance, some tribal groups have certain dietary rules that their members are supposed to obey. Keeping “kosher” might make sense if you don’t understand the germ-theory of disease, but if you use reason and science to understand the underlying causes of food poisoning, the underlying principles of action, then keeping kosher, as a rule, is unnecessary, and is being applied in a modern context where it makes no sense.

Such a tribal mentality will also likely face a certain amount of “mental distress”, “anxiety”, or “emotional uneasiness” when he encounters someone from another “tribe”, who acts in accordance with different customs and rules. To understand why, you must understand that in dealing with the world around us in a manner that allows us to live successfully, there is a certain amount of variation that is possible. For instance, it is necessary to dispose of corpses because they can be a source of disease, and the smell of rotting flesh is one of the worst things you can smell -we’ve probably evolved that way to prevent us from consuming something that could make us very ill. Even though it makes sense to dispose of a corpse, the method of disposal can vary, based on such random factors as geography. So, for instance, members of “Culture A” may dispose of their dead by burying them because there is very little burnable wood around for cremation, while members of “Culture B” may cremate their dead because their soil is very rocky, which makes digging holes very labor-intensive. What happens when a tribal mentality from Culture A encounters members of Culture B, and sees them cremating their dead? A rational person would simply regard this as one possible way to achieve the ultimate goal –corpse disposal. An anti-conceptual tribalist will likely feel a sense of anxiety or unease because he is not very good at mentally abstracting out what is essential and what is not essential. All that is essential in this scenario is that corpses are removed from where people could encounter them, so that they won’t get sick from them –it is not essential that it be achieved in any particular way. But, since the tribal mentality cannot, at least to the extent he is a tribal mentality, determine what is essential, he will respond with “…fear to resentment to stubborn evasion to hostility to panic to malice to hatred.” (Pg. 40, “The Missing Link”, Rand) “If his professed beliefs –i.e., the rules and slogans of his group –are challenged, he feels his consciousness dissolving in fog. Hence, his fear of outsiders…The threat is not existential, but psycho-epistemological: to deal with them [outsiders] requires that he rise above his ‘rules’ to the level of abstract principles. He would die rather than attempt it.” (Pg. 40-41, “The Missing Link”, Rand)

What are some examples of the manifestation of the tribal mentality? “Racism is an obvious manifestation of the anti-conceptual mentality. So is xenophobia –the fear or hatred of foreigners…So is any caste system…So is any kind of ancestor worship or of family ‘solidarity’…So is any criminal gang.” (Pg. 40-41, “The Missing Link”, Rand) This last example would include various ethnic street gangs such as the “Crips” and the “Bloods”. In that case, the anti-conceptual mentalities associated with those criminal groups don’t even use race as a criterion of who is part of their group, since they are made up of members of the same racial group. Instead, their leaders have adopted certain arbitrary manners of dress, especially in certain colors, to differentiate their “tribes”, and then they manifest their hostility towards those that are not part of their tribe by engaging in assault and murder. (Remember the “drive by shooting” phenomena of the 1980’s?) This phenomena isn’t limited to any particular racial group either. The Mafia, associated with a white ethnic group, has “…a rigid set of rules rigidly, efficiently and bloodily enforced, a ‘government’ that undertakes to protect you from ‘outsiders’…” (Pg. 44, “The Missing Link”, Rand)

How do rational people associate according to Rand? On the basis of ideas: “There is a crucial difference between an association and a tribe. Just as a proper society is ruled by laws, not by men, so a proper association is united by ideas, not by men, and its members are loyal to the ideas, not to the group. It is eminently reasonable that men should seek to associate with those who share their convictions and values…All proper associations are formed or joined by individual choice and on conscious, intellectual grounds (philosophical, political, professional, etc.) –not by the physiological or geographical accident of birth, and not on the ground of tradition.” (Pg. 44, “The Missing Link”, Rand)

Now, bringing it back to where I initially started. Why do I think that sports attract a tribal mentality? I believe that sports, specifically team sports, like football, soccer, and basketball attract a tribal mentality because they are typically organized along group lines. One roots for the team of one’s city, one’s school, or one’s nation. To a tribal mentality, who views members of other cities, schools, or nations as “outsiders”, and who is incapable of recognizing his essential similarities and differences from members of other groups, a form of physical confrontation or contest –which sports embody- with members of that other group, is one step from what all tribal mentalities truly want to manifest –physical violence. This is why you get soccer riots in some countries, and this is why you will sometimes see students engage in brawls with members of another school over a football game. All such violence is a physical manifestation of the tribal mentality.

Why I Don’t Recite Any Pledge of Allegiance

I have recently started attending the meetings of a local, Dallas-area political club affiliated with one of the two major parties in the United States. At the beginning of all meetings, this group starts with a recitation of the “U.S. Pledge of Allegiance”. During this period, I stand in order to be polite to the other people there, but I markedly put my hands behind my back, and I do not state the Pledge. Since this would be seen by many as a “subversive” or “unpatriotic” action on my part, and in order to mentally “crystallize” my own thinking on the subject, I thought I would take a moment to explain why I do this.

The first reason I refuse to recite the pledge is because of the use of religious language (“under god”) in its text. Historically speaking, America is not “one nation under god”, which I take to mean a nation founded on Christianity or religion. America is a product of the Enlightenment. In order to understand this, some historical context is necessary. The Dark Ages represented a period of religious domination, and therefore social, economic, scientific, and political stagnation (and human misery). During that period, religious authorities controlled the moral and intellectual realm. The socio-political ream was controlled by the feudal aristocracy, supposedly ordained to rule by god, but in practice, sanctioned to practice tyranny over the minds and bodies of other men by the Church. The Dark Ages ended with the re-discovery of Classical Greek and Roman thought and philosophies, which had emphasized the value of human life in the here-and-now, reality over the supernatural, and the efficacy of the human mind to know reality.

The Enlightenment period of history, which started some time in the 1600’s, represents a naturalistic explanation for the origins of life, via the works of Charles Darwin, a rational explanation for the physical motions of the universe, via the works of Newton, and the beginnings of a secular basis for the political and social order, via the works of John Locke, and others. The founding Fathers of the United States took the ideas of Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers and used them as the intellectual basis for the 13 Republics formed soon after the American Revolution, and for the Federal Republic which today is known as the United States of America. Of paramount importance to the Founding Fathers was the right of individuals to “the pursuit of happiness”, as embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

In order for individuals to pursue their own happiness in society, some implicit understanding of the concept of individual rights is necessary. Individual rights is based in a morality of rational self-interest (or an implicit understanding of such a morality). Each individual must be free to pursue his own rational self-interest (his own happiness) in a social context. (It must be also be kept in mind that “society” is nothing more than a number of individuals, and that the individual lives in society because it maximizes his own self-interest.) Individual rights should be seen as moral principles defining and sanctioning a person’s freedom to pursue his own rational self-interest in a social context. Historically, America is the nation of the Enlightenment, and the nation founded on individual rights. It is not a society founded in a belief in the supernatural, which was the distinguishing feature of the Dark Ages. I therefore oppose the inclusion of the words “under God” in the Pledge because it is not an accurate description of America.

Even if the “under God” language were removed from the Pledge of Allegiance, I would still not want to recite it. I have several objections to its recitation. First, I question the usefulness of any ritualistic recitals such as the Pledge. If the average person reciting the Pledge of Allegiance were asked what some of the key concepts in the pledge, such as “justice” and “liberty” meant, I doubt that he could give you a coherent explanation. There was an episode of the original TV series “Star Trek”, in which the main characters visited an “alternate Earth”, where stone-age men would recite a string of incoherent sounds that sounded strangely familiar, but you couldn’t quite figure out why. At the end of the episode, it is revealed that it is the US Pledge of Allegiance. Not only have the concepts been forgotten, but even the original words have been lost by the primitives reciting them. Every time I hear people reciting the pledge, I think of this episode of “Star Trek”. A “ritual” to me is nothing more than a formulaic endeavor that has no meaning and is meant to discourage thought and individualism, and to engender a tribalistic mindset. I find this utterly incompatible with the meaning and historical significance of America.

Additionally, an analysis of the words of the pledge reveals that it is a useless exercise. America is supposed to be a Republic (or, if you prefer, a “representative democracy”). The express words of the pledge say that you are pledging allegiance to “the flag”, but a flag is just a piece of cloth, and is merely another ritualistic display, so I don’t see any point in engaging in a ritualistic chant (the pledge), to a ritualistic display (the flag). The pledge goes on to say that the flag stands for the Republic, but the purpose of government is to serve as the agent, or servant, of “the people”, in the protection of their rights to life, liberty, and property. Therefore, I, as a citizen, do not owe the government allegiance, the employees of government –our elected officials- owe allegiance to the people that they represent (which would include me). I suppose you could say that you are pledging allegiance to “the people”, but “the people” are nothing more than a number of individuals, each with a right to pursue his or her own happiness, and all individuals are “equal under the law”, so there is no person or group of persons that one should rightly “pledge allegiance” to.

You could say that one is “pledging allegiance” to the concepts of liberty and justice, which are concepts that I fully support. But, I know that I support those concepts, and I actually take action to support them by thinking and writing about them -and by doing whatever small things I can to support liberty and justice in my professional and personal life. So long as I know that I support these concepts, and I take whatever action I am able to take to advance them, why do I need to engage in a ritualistic chant to convince others that I support them? Stating that you support the concepts of liberty and justice, but taking no action to advance them is to elevate form over substance, which is contrary to the spirit of our Nation, as best exemplified by the American expression: “Talk is cheap”.

Movies To See

“The Devil’s Disciple” – This is actually a play by George Bernard Shaw. I saw the version with Patrick Stewart. Set at the beginning of the American Revolution. My impression of it’s theme is something like: What a rational man will do for love. I base this on the assumption that the reason Dick Dudgeon did what he did was because he loved Judith Anderson, as well as Reverend Anderson. (Otherwise, his action would be totally erratic.) But, you can watch it and decide for yourself.

”Compulsion” – Based on a notorious murder in the 1920’s. In real life, Clarence Darrow represented the two well-born, intelligent teenagers that committed the crime. An interesting look at how certain relationships can become so bizarre and out of touch with reality that they end in murder. FYI- I completely disagree with the express message given by the Clarence Darrow character in his closing arguments and after the trial. He claims that if the two young men hadn’t been from wealthy families, they would have merely been given life in prison, like any other person under 21 in the state, but this, coupled with their obvious intelligence, is precisely why they should have been given the death penalty. The pair almost outwitted the authorities, and their intelligence and wealth would mean there was a high probability that they might escape from prison and kill again. Executing them would be the only effective restraint under the circumstances.

”Advise and Consent” – An interesting look at the political process. Involves themes of prejudice and hypocrisy.