Let’s examine the ethical basis of our civilization. All of our politics and ethics are based upon a unitary ethic that is best formulated in the Golden Rule:
Treat others as you would be treated.
The basis of this rule is the recognition that at one level, we are all the same. We are not all equal. Any game of sports will show that we do not have equal abilities. But everyone wants to be treated as a human being. In particular, we all want to be equal under the law and be treated as social equals. On the basis of the Golden Rule — the equality of human beings — we have created democracy, ended slavery and treat women and men as political equals. So the Golden Rule is a unitary ethic. All people are to be treated the same. All religions have some version of the Golden Rule except Islam.
FP: So how is Islam different in this context?
Warner: The term “human being” has no meaning inside of Islam. There is no such thing as humanity, only the duality of the believer and unbeliever. Look at the ethical statements found in the Hadith. A Muslim should not lie, cheat, kill or steal from other Muslims. But a Muslim may lie, deceive or kill an unbeliever if it advances Islam.
There is no such thing as a universal statement of ethics in Islam. Muslims are to be treated one way and unbelievers another way. The closest Islam comes to a universal statement of ethics is that the entire world must submit to Islam. After Mohammed became a prophet, he never treated an unbeliever the same as a Muslim. Islam denies the truth of the Golden Rule.
By the way, this dualistic ethic is the basis for jihad. The ethical system sets up the unbeliever as less than human and therefore, it is easy to kill, harm or deceive the unbeliever.
Now mind you, unbelievers have frequently failed at applying the Golden Rule, but we can be judged and condemned on its basis. We do fall short, but it is our ideal.
There have been other dualistic cultures. The KKK comes to mind. But the KKK is a simplistic dualism. The KKK member hates all black people at all times; there is only one choice. This is very straightforward and easy to see.
The dualism of Islam is more deceitful and offers two choices on how to treat the unbeliever. The unbeliever can be treated nicely, in the same way a farmer treats his cattle well. So Islam can be “nice”, but in no case is the unbeliever a “brother” or a friend. In fact, there are some 14 verses of the Koran that are emphatic — a Muslim is never a friend to the unbeliever. A Muslim may be “friendly,” but he is never an actual friend. And the degree to which a Muslim is actually a true friend is the degree to which he is not a Muslim, but a hypocrite.
Bill Warner, interviewed by Jamie Glazov in “The Study of Political Islam”, FrontPage Magazine, 2007-02-05.
May 2, 2018
QotD: Islam and the “golden rule”
May 1, 2018
QotD: The work of Epicurus
According to Diogenes Laertius, Epicurus himself was the most prolific of all the main ancient philosophers. His total original writings filled 300 papyrus rolls. If we take one papyrus roll as containing the equivalent of 30 printed octavo pages, his collected works would fill 30 modern volumes. His longest single work, On Nature, filled 37 papyrus rolls, which makes it about as long as Das Kapital.
To these original writings, we must add the various writings of his followers, both during his life and during the following six centuries or so. These also were substantial. Taken together, they must easily have filled a library.
Moreover, unlike its main rivals, Epicureanism was a proselytising philosophy. There were no hidden teachings — no mysteries too complex for the written word. There was no need for long preparatory studies in logic and mathematics and rhetoric before the meaning of the Master could become plain. No one was too old or too young to embrace the truths taught by Epicurus. He accepted slaves and even women to the courses he ran in the Garden. He wrote in the plainest Greek consistent with precise expression of his doctrines. He discouraged his followers from poetry and rhetoric.
For those able or inclined to study his doctrines in full, there were the many volumes of On Nature. For those not so able or inclined, there was a still substantial abridgement, and then a shorter summary. For the less attentive or the uneducated, there were collections of very brief sayings — whole arguments compressed into statements that could be memorised and repeated.
Nearly all of these works have vanished. Of what Epicurus himself wrote, we have three complete letters and a list of brief sayings known as the Principal Doctrines. Of other Epicurean writings, we have the Vatican Sayings, which is another collection of brief statements, some by Epicurus. We have a biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius, which summarises his main doctrines and also contains the only extant whole works already mentioned. We have more of the brief statements and a partial summary of the whole system inscribed at the expense of another Diogenes on a wall in Oenanda, a city in what is now northern Turkey.
Sean Gabb, “Epicurus: Father of the Enlightenment”, speaking to the 6/20 Club in London, 2007-09-06.
April 30, 2018
QotD: Gandhi versus Gandhi
I had the singular honor of attending an early private screening of Gandhi with an audience of invited guests from the National Council of Churches. At the end of the three-hour movie there was hardly, as they say, a dry eye in the house. When the lights came up I fell into conversation with a young woman who observed, reverently, that Gandhi’s last words were “Oh, God,” causing me to remark regretfully that the real Gandhi had not spoken in English, but had cried, Hai Rama! (“Oh, Rama”). Well, Rama was just Indian for God, she replied, at which I felt compelled to explain that, alas, Rama, collectively with his three half-brothers, represented the seventh reincarnation of Vishnu. The young woman, who seemed to have been under the impression that Hinduism was Christianity under another name, sensed somehow that she had fallen on an uncongenial spirit, and the conversation ended.
At a dinner party shortly afterward, a friend of mine, who had visited India many times and even gone to the trouble of learning Hindi, objected strenuously that the picture of Gandhi that emerges in the movie is grossly inaccurate, omitting, as one of many examples, that when Gandhi’s wife lay dying of pneumonia and British doctors insisted that a shot of penicillin would save her, Gandhi refused to have this alien medicine injected in her body and simply let her die. (It must be noted that when Gandhi contracted malaria shortly afterward he accepted for himself the alien medicine quinine, and that when he had appendicitis he allowed British doctors to perform on him the alien outrage of an appendectomy.) All of this produced a wistful mooing from an editor of a major newspaper and a recalcitrant, “But still …” I would prefer to explicate things more substantial than a wistful mooing, but there is little doubt it meant the editor in question felt that even if the real Mohandas K. Gandhi had been different from the Gandhi of the movie it would have been nice if he had been like the movie-Gandhi, and that presenting him in this admittedly false manner was beautiful, stirring, and perhaps socially beneficial.
Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows”, Commentary, 1983-03-01.
April 29, 2018
QotD: Impostor Syndrome
… the list of people who sometimes worry about being uncovered as an impostor is as impressive as it is long. Having to live with a nagging fear of being “found out” as not being as smart or talented or deserving or experienced or (fill-in-the-blank) as people think is a common phenomenon. So common, in fact, that the term “Impostor Syndrome” was coined to describe it back in the 1980’s. Indeed, researchers believe that up to 70% of people have suffered from it at some point. Myself included.
Apart from serial narcissists, super low achievers and outright crazies, no one is immune to the self-doubt that feeds Impostor Syndrome. But what matters most is not whether we occasionally (or regularly) fear failing, looking foolish or not being ‘whatever enough’; it’s whether we give those fears the power to keep us from taking the actions needed to achieve our goals and highest aspirations. Unfortunately, too often people do just that.
Impostor Syndrome is the domain of the high achiever. Those who set the bar low are rarely its victim. So if you are relating to what I’m sharing, then pat yourself on the back because it’s a sure sign that you aren’t ready to settled into the ranks of mediocrity. Rather, you’re likely to be a person who aims high and is committed to giving your very best to whatever endeavour you set your sights upon. A noble aim to be sure.
But giving your best is not the same as being the best. Likewise, there’s a distinct difference between trying to better yourself and being better than every one else. Overcoming the Imposter Syndrome requires self-acceptance: you don’t have to attain perfection or mastery to be worthy of the success you’ve achieved and any accolades you earn along the way. It’s not about lowering the bar, it’s about resetting it to a realistic level that doesn’t leave you forever striving and feeling inadequate. You don’t have to be Einstein to be a valuable asset to your organization and to those around you. Nor do you have to attain perfection to share something with the world that enriches people’s lives in some way.
Margie Warrell, “Afraid Of Being ‘Found Out?’ How To Overcome Impostor Syndrome”, Forbes, 2014-04-03.
April 28, 2018
QotD: Nixon’s final days in the White House
The sudden, hellish reality of a nuclear war with either Russia or China or both was probably the only thing that could have salvaged Nixon’s presidency after the Supreme Court ruled that he had to yield up the incriminating tapes that he knew would finish him off. Would the action-starved generals at the Strategic Air Command Headquarters have ignored an emergency order from their commander-in-chief? And how long would it have taken Pat Buchanan or General Haig to realize that “The Boss” had finally flipped? Nixon spent so much time alone that nobody else in the White House would have given his absence a second thought until he failed to show up for dinner, and by that time he could have made enough phone calls to start wars all over the world.
A four-star general commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps with three wars and 35 years of fanatical devotion to duty, honor and country in his system would hack off his own feet and eat them rather than refuse to obey a direct order from the president of the United States – even if he thought the president was crazy.
The key to all military thinking is a concept that nobody who ever wore a uniform with even one stripe on it will ever forget: “You don’t salute the man, you salute the uniform.” Once you’ve learned that, you’re a soldier – and soldiers don’t disobey orders from people they have to salute. If Nixon’s tortured mind had bent far enough to let him think he could save himself by ordering a full-bore Marine/Airborne invasion of Cuba, he would not have given the Boom-Boom order to some closet-pacifist general who might be inclined to delay the invasion long enough to call Henry Kissinger for official reassurance that the president was not insane.
No West Pointer with four stars on his hat would take that kind of risk anyway. By the time word got back to the White House, or to Kissinger, that Nixon had given the order to invade Cuba, the whole Caribbean would be a sea of fire; Fidel Castro would be in a submarine on his way to Russia, and the sky above the Atlantic would be streaked from one horizon to the other with the vapor trails of a hundred panic-launched missiles.
***
Right. But it was mainly a matter of luck that Nixon’s mental disintegration was so obvious and so crippling that by the time he came face to face with his final option, he was no longer able to even recognize it. When the going got tough, the politician who worshiped toughness above all else turned into a whimpering, gin-soaked vegetable……. But it is still worth wondering how long it would have taken Haig and Kissinger to convince all those SAC generals out in Omaha to disregard a Doomsday phone call from the president of the United States because a handful of civilians in the White House said he was crazy.
Hunter S. Thompson, “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’76: Third-rate romance, low-rent rendezvous — hanging with Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and a bottle of Wild Turkey”, Rolling Stone, 1976-06-03.
April 27, 2018
QotD: Understanding apparent contradictions in Islam
The Center for the Study of Political Islam is a group of scholars who are devoted to the scientific study of the foundational texts of Islam — Koran, Sira (life of Mohammed) and Hadith (traditions of Mohammed). There are two areas to study in Islam, its doctrine and history, or as CSPI sees it — the theory and its results. We study the history to see the practical or experimental results of the doctrine.
CSPI seems to be the first group to use statistics to study the doctrine. Previous scientific studies of the Koran are primarily devoted to Arabic language studies.
Our first principle is that Koran, Sira and Hadith must be taken as a whole. We call them the Islamic Trilogy to emphasize the unity of the texts.
Our major intellectual breakthrough is to see that dualism is the foundation and key to understanding Islam. Everything about Islam comes in twos starting with its foundational declaration: (1) there is no god but Allah and (2) Mohammed is His prophet. Therefore, Islam is Allah (Koran) and the Sunna (words and deeds of Mohammed found in the Sira and Hadith).
Endless ink has been wasted on trying to answer the question of what is Islam? Is Islam the religion of peace? Or is the true Islam a radical ideology? Is a moderate Muslim the real Muslim?
This reminds a scientist of the old arguments about light. Is light a particle or is light a wave? The arguments went back and forth. Quantum mechanics gave us the answer. Light is dualistic; it is both a particle and a wave. It depends upon the circumstances as to which quality manifests. Islam functions in the same manner.
Our first clue about the dualism is in the Koran, which is actually two books, the Koran of Mecca (early) and the Koran of Medina (later). The insight into the logic of the Koran comes from the large numbers of contradictions in it. On the surface, Islam resolves these contradictions by resorting to “abrogation”. This means that the verse written later supersedes the earlier verse. But in fact, since the Koran is considered by Muslims to be the perfect word of Allah, both verses are sacred and true. The later verse is “better,” but the earlier verse cannot be wrong since Allah is perfect. This is the foundation of dualism. Both verses are “right.” Both sides of the contradiction are true in dualistic logic. The circumstances govern which verse is used.
For example:
(Koran of Mecca) 73:10: Listen to what they [unbelievers] say with patience, and leave them with dignity.
From tolerance we move to the ultimate intolerance, not even the Lord of the Universe can stand the unbelievers:
(Koran of Medina) 8:12: Then your Lord spoke to His angels and said, “I will be with you. Give strength to the believers. I will send terror into the unbelievers’ hearts, cut off their heads and even the tips of their fingers!”
All of Western logic is based upon the law of contradiction—if two things contradict, then at least one of them is false. But Islamic logic is dualistic; two things can contradict each other and both are true.
No dualistic system may be measured by one answer. This is the reason that the arguments about what constitutes the “real” Islam go on and on and are never resolved. A single right answer does not exist.
Dualistic systems can only be measured by statistics. It is futile to argue one side of the dualism is true. As an analogy, quantum mechanics always gives a statistical answer to all questions.
For an example of using statistics, look at the question: what is the real jihad, the jihad of inner, spiritual struggle or the jihad of war? Let’s turn to Bukhari (the Hadith) for the answer, as he repeatedly speaks of jihad. In Bukhari 97% of the jihad references are about war and 3% are about the inner struggle. So the statistical answer is that jihad is 97% war and 3% inner struggle. Is jihad war? Yes — 97%. Is jihad inner struggle? Yes — 3%. So if you are writing an article, you can make a case for either. But in truth, almost every argument about Islam can be answered by: all of the above. Both sides of the duality are right.
Bill Warner, interviewed by Jamie Glazov in “The Study of Political Islam”, FrontPage Magazine, 2007-02-05.
April 26, 2018
QotD: Drama critics
Nobody loves them, and rightly, for they are creatures of the night. Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? I doubt it. They come out after dark, and we know how we feel about things that come out after dark. Up to no good, we say to ourselves.
P.G. Wodehouse, Over Seventy: An Autobiography with Digressions, 1956.
April 25, 2018
QotD: The “white magic” of the market process
Leonard Read explained what he called the “white magic” of the market process in his justly praised article “I, Pencil.” No one knows how to make an ordinary pencil; no one can ever know how to make a pencil. And yet pencils are produced in such huge quantities that they are virtually free for the taking. We have pencils not because some one person planned from the beginning the cutting of cedar trees, the mining of graphite, alumina, and bauxite, the extraction of petroleum and clay, or the organization of transportation to get supplies to pencil factories and pencils to retailers. When you contemplate the enormousness of all the tasks that are required to make a single pencil, you understand that no one can know how to do more than a tiny fraction of these tasks.
We have pencils (along with indoor plumbing, electric lighting, microprocessors, disposable diapers, camcorders, concert halls, …) only because for each of the countless tasks required for the production and distribution of each good there are a few people who specialize in knowing how to perform these tasks. But no one knows — or can know — how to perform all of the tasks required to produce even the most commonplace of goods. The free market works as well as it does because, when property rights are respected and fully transferrable, the resulting prices tell each of the producers at the innumerable different production “sites” just what (and how much) to produce and with what particular combination of resources.
For example, if the supply of crude oil falls, the resulting higher price will prompt manufacturers of paint to produce less petroleum-based paints and more linseed-oil or water-based paint. The resulting higher price of petroleum-based paints will prompt pencil manufacturers to paint fewer of their pencils with petroleum-based paints and more of their pencils with paints made of substances other than petroleum. As F. A. Hayek taught, the pencil manufacturer need never know why the price of petroleum-based paint rose; all that is required for this manufacturer to act appropriately is for him to conserve on his use of petroleum-based paint. The higher price of such paint achieves this goal.
Don Boudreaux, “A Pitch for Humility”, Café Hayek, 2016-08-05.
April 24, 2018
QotD: Bisexuality
The word ‘bi-curious’ makes me feel even more like heaving. Just because I was in love with a girl for six months two decades ago, a swath of unappealing ‘straight’ females for quite a while saw fit to try it on with me after a few Babychams. ‘But I want to experiment with my sexuality!’ they would wail as I ejected them into the night. ‘Then buy a Bunsen burner and a Petri dish, and stick ‘em where the sun don’t shine!’ I would squeal indignantly. And the current Special Snowflake simper of ‘sexual fluidity’ makes me feel like burning a rainbow flag – it sounds like something you’d ask the pharmacist for a cure for in a hushed voice, all the while itching madly.
But the act of being bisexual – I prefer to call it ‘sexually flexible’ or even better ‘spontaneous’ – is truly to have drawn the golden ticket in the tombola of dirty joy. Yes, some bisexuals are miseries – my ex-girlfriend once sniggered to me that at every Freshers’ Week at the universities she attended, there was inevitably a Bisexual Stall bearing the legend ‘Twice the fun’ and manned by a creature whose misery was so tangible that he made Morrissey look like Little Mary Sunshine. With certain women, you get the feeling that having had mutually dismaying relationships with as many men as they could physically manage, they decided to bat for both sides sheerly in order to double the number of potential partners they can make as miserable as they are.
Julie Burchill, “In praise of bisexuality”, The Spectator, 2016-08-20.
April 23, 2018
QotD: The knife
A simple edged tool is likely to be the human ur-tool, especially as tool-using hominids moved farther away from sources of flint or obsidian. IMO, any adult human — and most children past a certain degree of maturity — ought to carry a knife. Otherwise you’re just a chimp with a haircut.
Roberta X. “My Kershaw! My Kershaw!”, The Adventures of Roberta X, 2016-08-17.
April 22, 2018
April 21, 2018
QotD: “Pitiless” globalism
Kathleen Parker rightly criticizes Republicans for becoming a party of angry, fear-lathered excluders (“The GOP is becoming the party of exclusion,” July 31). But when she laments “the pitiless evolutionary march of globalization” not only does she reveal her own misunderstanding of the economy, she gives aid and comfort both to GOP excluders and to Sandersnistas who suffer many of the same misunderstandings.
In what way is globalization “pitiless”? Is it because it creates an ever-growing abundance of new goods and services that consumers choose to buy? Is it in the fact that it lowers the prices of food, clothing, furniture, electronics, communications, and (for example, by expanding the sizes of pharmaceutical-companies’ markets) medicines?
Is globalization “pitiless” because it allows many desperately poor workers in the developing world to earn incomes that enable them and their families to live above subsistence? Or perhaps globalization is “pitiless” because it obliges entrepreneurs and workers in the developed world – nearly all of whom are multiple times richer (thanks to globalization!) than are the foreigners about whom they complain they must compete – to adjust their actions to the choices of the consumers whom they serve?
Globalization is no more or less pitiless than is economic competition generally and what Deirdre McCloskey calls “market-tested innovation” – the same competition and innovation that over the past few centuries crafted our current high standard of living. So unless Ms. Parker believes that it is gentle and just for rich first-world workers to prevent poor third-world workers from improving their lives – unless Ms. Parker thinks it humane for consumers to be forced to accept whatever products are offered, and at whatever prices are demanded, by existing producers rather than motivate producers to work hard and creatively to please consumers – she should not describe globalization as “pitiless.”
Donald J. Boudreaux, letter to the Washington Post, 2016-07-31.
April 20, 2018
QotD: Nationalism
The nationalist religion is strong. Many are ready to die for it, fervently believing that it is morally good, and factually true. But they are mistaken; just as mistaken as their communist bedfellows. Few creeds have created more hatred, cruelty, and senseless suffering than the belief in the righteousness of the nationality principle; and yet it is still widely believed that this principle will help to alleviate the misery of national oppression. My optimism is a little shaken, I admit, when I look at the near-unanimity with which this principle is still accepted, even today, without any hesitation, without any doubt – even by those whose political interests are clearly opposed to it. But I refuse to abandon the hope that the absurdity and cruelty of this alleged moral principle will one day be recognized by all thinking men.
Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, 1963.
April 19, 2018
QotD: The Epicurean view of the soul
The purpose of the 37 volumes of his On Nature is to free us from the fear of death and therefore from the control of priests and from the internal fears of the religion that Plato and his followers had in mind. Epicurus says:
…[W]e must recognise generally that the soul is a corporeal thing, composed of fine particles, dispersed all over the frame….
…[T]he rest of the frame, whether the whole of it survives or only a part, no longer has sensation, when once those atoms have departed…. Moreover, once the whole frame is broken up, the soul is scattered and has no longer the same powers as before, nor the same notions; hence it does not possess sentience either.
The atoms that comprise the soul are immortal. They are passed on from being to being like the torch in one of the Athenian races. But the larger structure of atoms that is the soul of any one individual is itself mortal. Once we are dead, our atoms are recycled. Since there is nothing but atoms moving in the void, we as individuals are annihilated. After death, there is nothing; and because of that, death is nothing. Epicurus says:
Death is nothing to us; for that which has been dissolved into its elements experiences no sensations, and that which has no sensations is nothing to us.
After two thousand years of Christian spiritual hegemony, this may seem to many of us a gloomy doctrine. For Epicurus and his followers, however, it was a removal of the greatest barrier to happiness as they conceived it. That barrier was fear of endless punishment for the alleged sin of seeking their own happiness in life.
It may be, Lucretius says, that beating down religion is impious and the entry to a life of crime. Much rather, it is religion which has brought forth criminal and impious deeds. He lived before the most notable acts of religious mania. But he was poet enough to know the psychology of enthusiasm. In Book One of his poem, he produces one of the most striking of all denunciations of religion. He describes how, at the beginning of the Trojan War, the priests tell Agamemnon that a good passage across the Aegean required the sacrifice of his daughter. So a young girl was dragged to the altar for her throat to be cut by her own father.
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum he concludes — “Such are the evils to which religion leads”
He says later, in Book Three:
Some wear out their lives for the sake of a statue or a name. Religion and its resulting fear of death can induce one man to violate honour, another to break the bonds of friendship, and to overthrow all natural feeling. It has induced men to betray their country or their parents for the sake of avoiding hellfire. For just as children tremble and fear all in the darkness, so we in the light of day often fear what is no more real. This terror must be dispersed, not by rays of sunshine nor by the bright shafts of daylight, but by the sight and understanding of nature.
It is Epicurus, he says, who brought us into this light of understanding. Do not fear the priests. Do not fear death. Pay no attention to dreams or omens. These latter have a natural explanation. The former have neither a divine nature nor a prophetic power, but they are the result of images that impact on us.
Follow the ethical teachings of Epicurus, and be happy.
None of this means, by the way, that Epicurus and his followers were atheists. They did accept the existence of gods, and were willing outwardly to conform to whatever cults were established. They only denied that the gods were immaterial, and that the gods had any interest in human affairs. Confronted with evidence for any supernatural event, they were content with insisting on a natural cause, whether or not they were able to think of one that convinced.
Sean Gabb, “Epicurus: Father of the Enlightenment”, speaking to the 6/20 Club in London, 2007-09-06.
April 18, 2018
QotD: The United Nations
It’s a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice-cream and a quart of dog faeces and mix ’em together the result will taste more like the latter than the former. That’s the problem with the UN. If you make the free nations and the thug states members of the same club, the danger isn’t that they’ll meet each other half-way but that the free world winds up going three-quarters, seven-eighths of the way. Thus the Oil-for-Fraud scandal: in the end, Saddam Hussein had a much shrewder understanding of the way the UN works than Bush and Blair did.
And, of course, corrupt organisations rarely stop at just one kind. If you don’t want to bulk up your pension by skimming the Oil-for-Food programme, don’t worry, whatever your bag, the UN can find somewhere that suits — in West Africa, it’s Sex-for-Food, with aid workers demanding sexual services from locals as young as four; in Cambodia, it’s drug dealing; in Kenya, it’s the refugee extortion racket; in the Balkans, sex slaves.
Mark Steyn, “UN forces — just a bunch of thugs?”, Telegraph Online 2005-02-15
