After that last mammoth essay, I feel like I need a drink. And, thanks to the wonders of technology, there seems to be a new way to have a drink without taking a drink. (I said "seems to be" because I haven't tried it, and I'm not convinced that it isn't a lot of hoopla.)

The new technology is called AWOL (Alcohol WithOut Liquid), and it's sold in a delivery system the Philadelphia Inquirer calls "a gizmo that looks like a medical device but is used to inhale vaporized liquor." Needless to say, bureaucrats and activists are jumping all over each other in a bid to make these things illegal everywhere:

The contraption - marketed as a way to imbibe without calories, carbs, hangovers or telltale breath - has lawmakers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey scrambling to prohibit it from bars and restaurants.

Several states, including Kansas, Michigan and Colorado, already have bans on the machines. At least a dozen more have measures pending.

Citing health concerns, Congress is considering a bill to require Food and Drug Administration approval of the machines. Groups as diverse as Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the National Beer Wholesalers Association have condemned AWOL, which they fear could fool users into ingesting more alcohol than they realize.

"It promotes irresponsible drinking," said Heather Griffie, a spokeswoman for the beer-sellers' Pennsylvania chapter.

But if the crackpot MADD organization is against it, I might as well say something in its favor. (As Churchill famously said, "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.")

So, without further ado, here's where to buy them.

And here's an inside peek:

No, I'm not springing for $199 right now. I'm hoping maybe a reader can tell me whether the whole thing is a waste of time and money.

MORE: Similar items called "atomizers" can apparently do the same thing, and can be purchased on ebay (and probably elsewhere).

AND MORE: Please note that it was not my intention to seriously compare myself to Churchill, MADD to Hitler, or AWOL to Hell. (I think it's obvious I was quoting in the satirical sense, but the last time I cited Churchill I was accused of putting his own words back in his mouth. Or something like that....)

"Jimmy" the hippopotamus and my father both came to Philadelphia in the mid-1930s (I'm pretty sure it was 1935, but I couldn't locate Jimmy on the Net). My father had traveled from Minnesota to his new position in Philadelphia, and as he had to work long, long hours, the only time he could find off was Sunday afternoons. As a new person without many friends, he'd go to the Philadelphia Zoo, which had recently added Jimmy. The hippo struck him as lonely (a new transplant like himself), so he befriended him by coming every Sunday with apples and similar treats. My dad had grown up on a farm, so he was used to animals, but he was surprised to discover that a huge wild beast could be so friendly and intelligent. They developed a real friendship, which lasted for the rest of Jimmy's life. I know this will sound hard to believe, but that hippo knew my father's voice, and would come running on command, no matter where he was in the yard, whether indoors, or outdoors. I was born in 1954, and I saw this many, many times. By the time I started going to the zoo, my father and Jimmy were into their third decade of friendship.

No matter how many visitors were crowding around the enclosure yelling "Jimmy!" when my father called him, Jimmy would run or swim over, and he'd stick his head up as high as he could -- often resting it on the rails, where he'd snort and stare dreamily at my father. It was like a dog wanting his ears scratched. Visitors and keepers who saw this thought it was remarkable. (One keeper told my father that he couldn't get Jimmy's attention like that.)

Jimmy was mated with "Submarie" and they had babies. The family is pictured with Jimmy's name in the caption in one of the books currently on sale in the Zoo souvenir store.

The memories of Jimmy will be with me for the rest of my life, and the reason they're especially poignant right now is that I believe the activist philosophy currently focusing on Philadelphia's elephants does not intend to stop there.

"My name is meaningless," said activist "Rowan Morrison," (real name Marianne Bessey) -- who has repeatedly debated the fate of Philadelphia's elephants. While I think her name is important to the story (and I think journalists who knowingly misrepresented her identity committed a breach of journalistic ethics), Ms. Bessey is right in one sense. In the context of a larger movement, her name and even her identity can indeed be seen as meaningless. She is only part of a movement, a cause much bigger than herself.

While I can only speculate whether "Rowan Morrison" would openly admit to agreement with it (and, in light of her meaninglessness, it really doesn't matter whether she does), there is a much larger agenda -- itself part of an even larger philosophy -- which would abolish zoos.

The following (by Dale Jamieson) is from a chapter in Peter Singer's "In Defense of Animals":

Zoos teach us a false sense of our place in the natural order. The means of confinement mark a difference between humans and animals. They are there at our pleasure, to be used for our purposes. Morality and perhaps our very survival require that we learn to live as one species among many rather than as one species over many. To do this, we must forget what we learn at zoos. Because what zoos teach us is false and dangerous, both humans and animals will be better off when they are abolished.

Activists excel at finding issues with which most people can agree as foot-in-the-door starting points. Just as the Communist Party USA focused on racial integration in the 1950s and 1960s (a laudable goal), animal rights activists will focus on sympathetic issues like saving the elephant (which I've posted about twice), and eliminating cruel and unnecessary animal research. (When they tackle issues on which most people can agree, it's a "win-win" situation for the activists, because if they win they win, and if they lose, they still win, because those who oppose them are made to appear reactionary, bigoted, and cruel.)

Activist tactics can range from the mildest forms of perfectly legitimate and legal protest to advocacy of murder. If a tactic is effective, people who believe they answer to a higher authority will advocate, or use it, or perhaps merely give aid and comfort to those who do.

Here's an example of a position most non-activists (and many higher-profile activists themselves) would call "extreme":

'I don't think you'd have to kill too many [researchers]. I think for five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, 10 million non-human lives.

The Wikipedia entry about the group makes note of a rather grim warning delivered to anyone connected with Huntingdon:

"A new era has dawned for those who fund the abusers and raise funds for them to murder animals with. You too are on the hit list: you have been warned. If you support or raise funds for any company connected with Huntingdon Life Sciences we will track you down, come for you and destroy your property with fire."

Elsewhere, Vlasak calls murder a "morally justifiable solution."

As the Inquirer confirms, for the most part, the activists' tactics don't include murder; they're just behaving as plain old activists:

The activists say they have driven 300 companies away from Huntingdon and persuaded the New York Stock Exchange to pull back from listing Huntingdon at the last minute.

"That's probably not exaggerated," Hanley said. "These are huge, multinational companies they've brought to their knees."

In 2004, the activists targeted Focal Communications, a Philadelphia company that provided phone and Internet service to Huntingdon.

They followed one executive to her West Chester home, passed out flyers to her neighbors, and held a noisy "home demonstration" in the street.

At the company's Center City offices, Focal got bomb threats, the fax machine spit out nothing but black pages, and the e-mail system was jammed with 15,000 messages, each hundreds of pages.

The protests and harassment stopped only after Focal agreed to sever ties with Huntingdon - and provided the activists with written proof.

For example, even though I'm unwilling to compare these things to the Holocaust, I don't like abortion, and I don't like experimentation on animals. I don't like cruelty to elephants, either. But when I'm talking about activists' tactics, what I think about the merits not only isn't the point, it isn't even relevant.

But they will make it relevant, because their issues advance their underlying philosophy -- which is all that matters to them. These issues are more important than the debate over them, because debate is only seen as a tactic. Ordinary people fail to understand this, and they get caught up in figuring out ways to meet their demands, to make them go away -- anything to quiet them down. It's appeasement, and in the short term, it always seems to work. That is, until demands escalate, and new targets are chosen.

Last year, when I posted about the local campaign to force the Philadelphia Zoo to get rid of its elephants, I did so in order to contrast the winning strategy of the activists with the losing "strategy" (if it can be called that) of the people who might oppose them. It wasn't my goal to focus on the elephant issue itself, because that's no more "my" issue than abortion. I have my thoughts, and like any other non-activist they might change from time to time, but I don't really claim to have all the answers. That's because I don't subscribe to any overarching moral philosophy about these things -- especially the idea that zoos should be abolished, that we should all be vegans, etc.

Most of those of us who hold absolute positions and views on these subjects are not activists, though. It is one thing to believe that abortion is wrong and morally evil; it is quite another to spend every spare moment doing things like chaining yourself to a door, publishing web sites with names and home addresses of physicians, or advocating murder. (Or, by pointedly reminding ordinary people that while you don't agree with the tactic of murder, you "understand the rage.")

This may come as a shock to readers, but I think the 1998 murder of Barnett Slepian by an abortion activist was an effective tactic. I no more agree with the extremist philosophy of murderous anti-abortion activists than I agree with the extremist philosophy of Dr. Vlasak, but the fact is, assassination works. Vlasak is right; a few murders can prevent many animal deaths. And a few murdered doctors can act as a powerful deterrent.

Here's activist Michael Bray:

The termination of the murderer was a deed quite consistent with Mr. Kopp’s life of service for the innocent, brutalized womb children of America. It was a good deed that brought peace for many innocents through the death of a wicked serial killer.

While the Slepian assassination was officially condemned by mainstream anti-abortion organizations, there's movement which has been called an "underground railroad" which aided assisted him along the way.

As in the case of animal experimenters, activists run web sites which publish the names of doctors who perform abortions.

Back to today's Inquirer. Here's Pamelyn Ferdin, wife of Dr. Vlasak:

"They're innocent, above-ground activists who have been targeted because the government can't find the people throwing bricks," said Pamelyn Ferdin, an activist and former child actress who did the bossy voice of Lucy in some of the Peanuts specials. She took over the activist group after its president was indicted.

"A Web site is just a source of information," she said. "You can't blame a Web site if someone takes that information and goes out and commits illegal acts."

The activists regularly posted personal information about Huntingdon employees, including home addresses, home phone numbers, the names of their children - even where their children went to school.

Although a disclaimer says the group does not condone illegal tactics, the site also posted anonymous messages that bragged about vandalism and encouraged others to "go get them."

The activists had argued the posters were protected under the First Amendment because they were merely a list of doctors and clinics — not a threat. They maintained they collected data on doctors in hopes of one day putting them on trial, just as Nazi war criminals were at Nuremberg.

"I think it's a great relief that our posters are just as protected by the First Amendment as the posters of any other movement," said Christopher A. Ferrara, the attorney who represented the activists.

"We were all accused of creating an umbrella of fear in the minds of abortionists that it wasn't safe for them to go to work," said Don Treshman, 57, of Baltimore, one of the activists.

During the trial, U.S. District Judge Robert Jones instructed the jury to consider the history of violence in the anti-abortion movement, including three doctors killed after their names appeared on the lists.

One was Dr. Barnett Slepian, who was killed by a sniper in 1998 at his home near Buffalo, N.Y. Slepian's name was crossed out on the Nuremberg Files Web site later that same day.

Doctors who were on the list testified that they lived in constant fear, used disguises, bodyguards and bulletproof vests, and instructed their children to crouch in the bathtub if they heard gunfire.

Many targets testified that the harassment made them look over their shoulders when walking or driving, move or change their phone numbers, keep their kids from playing outdoors, and prompted several to buy guns.

Sally Dillenback said her young son would often crouch by the door brandishing a 5-inch kitchen knife when the doorbell rang, promising to protect his mommy.

"He told me not to worry," she testified last week. "He said he was going to get the animal people. Once I found him at the garage door with a knife. That was his state of mind. He was a 7-year-old boy."

Dillenback broke into tears as she recounted an anonymous e-mail that threatened her son.

"The person asked how I would feel if they cut open my son, Brad, and filled him with poison the way Huntingdon does with the animals," she said, breaking into tears. "That was devastating for me to see something like that."

Blogging about this is not fun. That's because fanaticism (which is what activism is) is never fun. Philosophies which subordinate means to an end are never fun.

But I guess I should console myself. Some activists take even cartoons as seriously as abortion and animal research. It's now old news, but here's last week's fatwa:

An Islamic court in India has issued a fatwa, or religious decree, condemning to death the 12 artists who drew the controversial images of the prophet Mohammed according to News.com. "The decree was issued on behalf of the Idar-e-Sharia Darul Kaza Islamic court in northern Uttar Pradesh state by its religious head in the state capital, Lucknow.

"Death is the only penalty for the cartoonists who had drawn sacrilegious cartoons of the prophet," Maulana Mufti Abul Irfan, the religious head of the court, said."

"The court's ruling is binding on Muslims, but can be challenged under Indian law.

Mr Irfan said it was clearly written in the Muslim holy book, the Koran, that anyone who insulted the prophet deserved to be punished.

He said the fatwa was applicable wherever Muslims live.

My point is, fatwas are effective. So are threats of endless protests:

"We won't stop the protests until the world obeys Islamic law."

This is true wherever activists live.

When I served on the Berkeley Police Review Commission, I was threatened by activists who wanted me to vote their way on issues relating to "People's Park" -- a place they considered to be "sacred ground." They handed out leaflets on which were printed my name and home address which told the crowd to take "whatever action" their conscience deemed necessary -- the usual activist lingo. I've had a rather dim view of activists ever since.

The problem is, I was once an activist myself, so I have mixed feelings about condemning people for doing what I once did.

All I can do for now is remind ordinary people that when they are dealing with activists that they are not dealing with people like themselves.

MORE: Writing about intimidation in Holland, Glenn Reynolds has some thoughts I consider applicable here:

When other groups decide that the way to get favorable press is to use violence, those who have wimped out now will have no one to blame but themselves. As a reader emailed me a while back, what use is a free press if it doesn't believe in free speech?

People talk about Eurabia, but what's really happened is that Europe has become Weimarized, with governments and institutions too morally and intellectually weak to stand up for the principles they pretend to embody. And we know what that led to last time . . . .

MORE: Lest anyone think I am proposing "counter-activism," I am not. I'm talking about little things. Like occasionally saying "no" to a shrill and unreasonable demand.

A little thing like that seems simple enough. In fact, if you're part of a majority of ordinary people who'd like to do things like take the kids to the Zoo, it seems so simple as to be a no-brainer.

(Until, that is, you say no to an activist. . .)

UPDATE (03/03/06): The animal rights activists in New Jersey were convicted:

TRENTON - An animal-rights group and six members were convicted yesterday of using their Web site to incite threats, harassment and vandalism against a company that tests drugs and household products on animals.

The group, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, maintained its actions were protected under the First Amendment.

The government charged that the group waged a five-year campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences, posting on its Web site information about the lab's employees and those who do business with Huntingdon, including their home phone numbers, addresses, and where their children attended school.

Many of those people saw their homes vandalized, and they and their families received threatening e-mails, faxes and phone calls. Many were also besieged by protesters parading with photos of mutilated animals and screaming "Puppy killer!" through megaphones at all hours outside their homes.

One woman said she received an e-mail threatening to cut her 7-year-old son open and stuff him with poison. A man said he was showered with glass as people smashed all the windows of his home and overturned his wife's car.

The defendants were not accused of directly making threats or carrying out vandalism. Instead, they were charged with inciting the harassment with their Internet postings.

Their group, based in Philadelphia, and six of its members were charged with animal enterprise terrorism, stalking and other offenses. The charges carry two to five years in prison and fines up to $250,000.

Also testifying was one of the defendants, Joshua Harper, who said that he opposes injuring any life form, including humans.

But he also said it was all right to throw rocks through someone's window as long as the person wasn't home.

UPDATE (03/05/06): I wasn't following the trial closely, so I can only speculate about why the jury wasn't intimidated as people in positions of authority so often are. But Glenn Reynolds links to Timothy Garton Ash's piece in the Guardian, which identifies the same mentality I've been complaining about:

the main threats to freedom of thought, freedom of speech and freedom of association no longer come from the totalitarian ideological superstate that inspired George Orwell to write his 1984. (First line, for the few readers who may not have caught the opening allusion: "It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.") That totalitarian horror still exists in places like Burma, but the distinctive feature of this new danger is the creeping tyranny of the group veto.

Here the animal rights campaign has something in common with the extremist reaction to the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, as seen in the attacks on Danish embassies. In both cases, a particular group says: "We feel so strongly about this that we are going to do everything we can to stop it. We recognise no moral limits. The end justifies the means. Continue on this path and you must fear for your life." I don't claim that the two cases are strictly comparable. Human lives are saved by medicines developed as a result of tests on animals; no comparable good is achieved by the republication of cartoons of the prophet. But the mechanism of intimidation is very similar, including the fact that it works across frontiers and is therefore hard to tackle by national laws or law enforcement agencies.

If the intimidators succeed, then the lesson for any group that strongly believes in anything is: shout more loudly, be more extreme, threaten violence, and you will get your way. Frightened firms, newspapers or universities will cave in, as will softbellied democratic states, where politicians scrabble to keep the votes of diverse constituencies. But in our increasingly mixed-up, multicultural world, there are so many groups that care so strongly about so many different things, from fruitarians to anti-abortionists and from Jehovah's Witnesses to Kurdish nationalists. Aggregate all their taboos and you have a vast herd of sacred cows. Let the frightened nanny state enshrine all those taboos in new laws or bureaucratic prohibitions, and you have a drastic loss of freedom. That, I think, is what is happening to us, issue by issue.

Facing down intimidation, backed by the threat of violence, is the key to resisting the creeping tyranny of the group veto. Here there can be no compromise.

Australian researchers have knowingly violated the laws of Man and God. Their doom is sealed, their fate horrific.

Just kidding.

In a major step towards understanding prostate disease, Melbourne scientists have grown a human prostate from embryonic stem cells. ...human embryonic stem cells were developed into human prostate tissue equivalent to that found in a young man, in just 12 weeks.

Although prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, the impact of benign prostate disease (BPH) is equally significant - up to 90 percent of men will have BPH by the time they're 80. BPH is not usually life-threatening, but has a dramatic impact on quality of life.

"The tissue we've grown behaves as a normal human prostate, so it's the perfect model for testing the different hormones and environmental factors we believe play a role in the onset of prostate disease,"...

"We grew the prostate tissue by 'telling' the embryonic stem cells how to become a human prostate gland. We then implanted the cells into mice, where they developed into a human prostate, secreting hormones and PSA; the substance in the blood used to diagnose prostate disease,"...

Director of the Monash Immunology and Stem Cell Laboratories, Professor Alan Trounson said stem cells and cancer were an important new area of medical research and the production of prostate tissue from embryonic stem cells provided a new tool for examining the origins of cancer and role of primitive stem cells.

Research collaborators in the study were the Monash Immunology and Stem Cell Laboratories; Monash Institute of Medical Research; University of California, San Francisco; the Australian Stem Cell Centre and TissuPath Laboratories, Melbourne.

Several weeks ago, Chicago's foremost old woman in trousers had this to say...

Leaving aside the embryo question, I think the claims for so-called "therapeutic cloning" are vastly overrated. I don't think we need this research to do what the scientists want to do, and I don't think it holds out the promise of this rejection-proof tissue transplantation.

I don't believe that for a minute. I think there are alternate ways of getting exactly the same kind of genetically controlled stem cells. None of the major biotech companies in this country—none of them—are putting their money behind therapeutic cloning.

Interesting perspective, isn't it? But is it accurate? More later.

I mentioned back in November that Vernor Vinge's latest novel, Rainbows End, would be available on May 16th. Unless of course you're the Instapundit, in which case you've already got a copy. Sure wish he'd hurry up and finish it...

At any rate, they've moved the date up by a couple of weeks. The new release date is May second. Which means it's a fair bet that Professor Vinge has already started working on the sequel to A Deepness in the Sky. My hope is that he'll take his time and do it right.

While we wait, here's an early review of Rainbows End. Excerpts follow...

Rainbows End (no, there's no apostrophe) is not a Singularitarian novel. In some ways, it reads as a riposte to some of the technotopian visions imagined by the more ardent followers of the transhumanist and extropian movements that eagerly embraced Vinge's concepts. It also quite handily reframes many ideas bandied about by the 80's cyberpunks...Wearing computers is perfectly quotidian here, their owners permanently logged into their VPN's, firing silent instant messages back and forth to friends and family...Where walking around with your brain jacked into some "net" made you an edgy rebel in the cyberpunk lexicon, in Rainbows End you're just another consumer...

Vinge also challenges the transhumanist dream of radical life extension, not dismissing it so much as pointing out that it too would entail challenges and consequences to be overcome. The novel's protagonist is Robert Gu, formerly a poet laureate and great man of letters, felled by Alzheimer's. A successful series of revolutionary treatments not only cures Robert of the disease, but restores much of his body to a youthful vigor. He has what everyone dreams of, a second chance. But immediately there are problems...

In an amazing tale of a world gone mad, I see (via Sean Kinsell and Jeff at Beautiful Atrocities) that San Francisco's City Lights bookstore has banned author Oriana Fallaci.

Reason? She's a "fascist":

although my friend is no fan of Ward Churchill, the faux Indian and discredited professor who notoriously called 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns," he didn't really mind seeing piles of Churchill's books prominently displayed on a table as he walked in.

However, it did occur to him that perhaps the long-delayed English translation of Oriana Fallaci's new book, "The Force of Reason," might finally be available, and that because Fallaci's militant stance against Islamic militants offends so many people, a store committed to selling banned books would be the perfect place to buy it. So he asked a clerk if the new Fallaci book was in yet.

"No," snapped the clerk. "We don't carry books by fascists."

Despite the 'beatnik' stereotype, Kerouac was a political conservative, especially when under the influence of his Catholic mother. As the beatniks of the 1950's began to yield their spotlight to the hippies of the 1960's, Jack took pleasure in standing against everything the hippies stood for. He supported the Vietnam War and became friendly with William F. Buckley.

I wonder what's going on.

I hope fascism isn't being redefined as opposition to identity politics. Or believing in individual freedom.

Hmmm....

Not coincidentally, City Lights Bookstore is located on a street proudly renamed "Jack Kerouac Alley" in his honor:

At the risk of engaging in counterculture revisionismism, I must ask: was it a good idea for San Francisco to rename a street in honor of a fascist?

I agree with Eugene Volokh and Glenn Reynolds that this Virginia bill (forbidding doctors from asking patients whether they have firearms in the house) is an unconstitutional infringement on the doctors' free speech. I also think it interferes unduly with the practice of medicine, although I worry that a "guide on safety counseling for pediatricians" might also do that, especially if this were to become a canon of medical ethics.

I notice the NRA supports this legislation. (As I've said before, I'm a Life Member of the NRA, but I think this is a good time to disclose that again.) I haven't read the text of the law, but I'm wondering (just wondering, mind you) whether or not the prohibition on talking about guns would also prevent doctors from recommending in favor of firearms ownership. Patients in high crime neighborhoods would be well advised to protect their families, and a doctor might point that out in the interest of the patients' health.

Professor Volokh touches on this very subject:

...it's certainly quite possible that some doctors' political prejudices lead them to give unsound advice, for instance exaggerating the risks to health of keeping firearms in the home, or ignoring the possible benefits (including to the owners' health) of keeping firearms in the home.

I mean, isn't protecting your life a health issue too?

There's that old saying, "an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure."

What? Firearms weigh more than an ounce, you say?

That's true. The average pistol weighs three pounds.

But consider that the alternative might be a burial casket! Even a cursory cost benefit analysis reveals that in contrast to guns, coffins weigh -- and cost -- far more.

Such grave and weighty decisions should be matters of choice.

I have a few more questions about journalistic ethics.

In the case of pseudonyms (discussed infra), I see two issues, which are not at all the same:

I would defend to the death the right to anonymity, which includes the right to use a pseudonym. This free speech principle stretches far back in this country's history -- to The Federalist Papers, which are considered by many to rank among this country's founding documents.

However, when someone is the subject of a story as well as a news source, and that person is identified, quoted by that name, called a "spokesperson" under that name, and makes charges against persons whose identities and whereabouts are public facts, I think that the name of the source becomes a vital part of the story. If the name is not the source's real name, that should be disclosed as part of the story.

Don't we have a right to know whether someone is being anonymous?

This is not a legal question, but an ethical one, and for journalists it is not a new one. According to a comment in Dan Gillmor's blog the rules in this area are so strict that many newspapers insist on "a 'real' name for any published comments" before they'll even run a letter to the editor. That might be a bit harsh, as there are good reasons why a letter writer might wish to remain either anonymous or pseudonymous. But the fact of such anonymity or pseudonymity is highly relevant. Otherwise, anyone could claim to be a citizen of any country, or an official spokesman for anything, and readers would simply be left with the impression that they were.

The following is from the Society of Professional Journalists's Code of Ethics:

Identify sources whenever feasible. The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources' reliability.

Always question sources’ motives before promising anonymity.

That's why ABC News issued an apology for running a story about a Palestinian using the pseudonym of "Abu Shahar" without bothering to tell the viewers this was a pseudonym.

I'm wondering whether in spite of an apparently settled ethical policy, there's a sort of unofficial (but very flexible) code along the lines of "Don't ask, don't tell" (wink-wink).

I said flexible, because it might be left up to the discretion of the individual reporter.

Hmmmm.....

I don't like the look of the word "discretion."

It seems pretty close to a blank check -- a free invitation for individual bias. Not that bias should be made illegal or anything like that. I just don't like seeing it hidden behind meaningless, um, "standards."

Now that I've devoted several posts to deconstructing the flawed concept of "Cultural Marxism," I think it's fair that I shift my attention to real Marxism (aka Communism).

When I started this blog and named it "Classical Values" with a stated goal of ending the Culture War, the idea was to disagree with both sides of this damnable excuse for a war, by reminding people (hopefully in a gentle and constructive manner) that our precious Western heritage is far richer, culturally much deeper, and far antecedes any of the "Culture War" memes which distract so many people by causing them to hate each other. The blog theme was intended to remind everyone that Western Civilization is good. To the right wing, the reminder is that personal matters like human sexuality are not alien forces threatening the fabric of Western Civilization to its core. On the other hand, things like identity politics and post modernist deconstructionism do threaten long-cherished Western cultural values like logic, reason, skepticism, scientific inquiry, and even the arts. I had a classical education and I consider myself a classical liberal (rebadged these days as a "small-l "libertarian"), so I thought I should speak up on behalf of our classical past against those forces which are in a great hurry to disregard or even destroy it.

Unfortunately, the damned "Culture War" is a nexus of this destruction, where both sides seem to conspire, as if in an unholy alliance.

And I do mean alliance. What most annoyed me about traditional (that word!) Marxists is that they are hung up to the point of being obsessed with this thing called "Class War":

[T]he antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is a struggle of class against class, a struggle carried to its highest expression in a total revolution. Indeed, is it at all surprising that a society founded on the opposition of classes should culminate in a brutal "contradiction," the shock of body against body, as its final denouement?

What in hell is the means of production? I produce this blog on a computer that cost me as much as a pair of shoes. Anyone can sell anything on ebay.

I don't think further examples are needed to show how outmoded Marxist thinking is. But this "class struggle" deal -- something about it has thoroughly penetrated Western thinking. On both sides.

Class war rhetoric underlies much of what we call the Culture War. In political disagreements, points are scored and countless arguments punctuated by derisive remarks about the class background of the person on the wrong side ("grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth," "a member of the ruling class," "rich," "elite," and other similar remarks about the quality of the person's parentage). This is invariably contrasted with the salt of the earth, working class or poverty stricken background of the person on the other side. Both sides -- left and right -- blatantly engage in class war attacks on each other; the latest manifestation of this is in the "Red State" "Blue State" conflict in which the Red Staters play the role of proletarian masses who seek to be free from their elitist Blue State bourgeoisie oppressors. Rough hewn rednecks versus preppie Ivy League elitists. (Ironically, Marxism has been so perverted that it is the elites Marx hated who most champion it.)

I am sick of this Class War stuff, and I think it lies at the core of a lot of what's going on with the Culture War.

Unstated and unacknowledged Class War issues are a major reason I'm so intrigued (and amused) by the uproar surrounding President Bush. Not that I'm enamored of him or his politics. (As regular readers know, I'm in the I-held-my-nose-and-voted-for-Bush camp.)

But here's what I most like about Bush, and I think it's the very thing he's most hated for: Bush is, simply, a walking, talking Class War!

Why, I'd go so far as to say that he's as shocking and outrageous in his own way as "Brokeback Mountain" in its.

I know that will come as a shock to some of my readers, so I'll try to explain. It's my theory that the Class War has been largely folded into the Culture War, but that this has happened so slowly, and with so much cooperation by both "sides" (often because of political necessities) that people haven't had time to realize it, much less understand it.

Bush is at once the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. He's the rich, unaccountable, spoiled Ivy League brat every "Red Stater" loves to hate, and the Texas, church-going, oil-rig-working redneck every "Blue Stater" fears and regards with contempt. To an inflexible Marxist steeped in Class War and Culture War thinking, a rich preppie is one thing, and a redneck is quite another (and there are different techniques for indoctrinating or neutralizing each). But a hybrid of the two? That's a monstrous atrocity -- a cruel affront to the sensibilities of every true-believer leftist in the United States, whether they admit it or not. Most of them hate Bush with a passion bordering on the insane, but few of them understand why the hatred is so intensely and so bitterly personal. (There are other prominent examples of people who stir similar feelings of cultural outrage, but there's no need to name names.)

I think it's because the Class War is the Culture War, and the nexus is founded on division. The proponents of division hate and fear its opposite -- mongrelization and mixing of any kind. A preppie redneck president is almost as horrifying and disgusting a thought as the idea of gun-toting gays going out and voting for him. (How do you remind people like that how dreadfully misguided they are? By making a movie?)

Fortunately, America is a land of mongrelization and cultural hybrids. Of people who don't like being told what to do, how to live.

And fortunately, inflexibility of thinking is what has made Marxism (and the Class and Culture Wars it spawned) such a miserable failure.

Notwithstanding the occasional success, I think it will keep failing.

Unfortunately though, Marxist thinking has insinuated itself into both "sides."

(Mongrelization isn't always a perfect process....)

Even if there isn't such a thing as "Cultural Marxism" in the pure sense, might there as well be? And if there might as well be, isn't it as if there is? And if it's as if there is, then, well, isn't it a form of reality?

Of, like, truth?

A comment left by Nick Packwood (who believes there is such a thing as "Cultural Marxism") forced me into a fit of neo quasi cultural Marxist revisionism.

While I hate to put words in anyone's mouth, Nick and I both seemed to agree that used as a political grab-bag, the term "Cultural Marxist" is nonsensical. Nick's comment:

Eric: I recently used the term "cultural Marxism" in a specific, technical sense to refer to a way of thinking that now predominates in American and Canadian arts and social science departments. While I disagree with most of the complaints made by The Conservative Voice he is entirely correct to attribute "cultural Marxism" to the Frankfurt School and its subsequent influence on what is now known as cultural studies. Though this is a revision of Marxist thought which I believe is in direct contradiction of Marx's own writings it is now taken for granted in the thinking of most academics (who for the most part have not read Marx). It is a school of thought independent of whatever "memes" are now circulating by the same label or indeed of its relationship to Marx, let alone facts. That many people teaching cultural cultural studies (as I did for two years) or influenced by cultural studies in traditional arts and social science departments support a variety of "progressive" policies and causes (as indeed I do) is perhaps not purely coincidental.

Thanks Nick. The thing is, I considered myself a Marxist in the 1960s when Marxism still meant understanding and agreeing with the economic theories of Marx. At the core of what's now being called "Cultural Marxism" may be the implementation of an anti-bourgeoisie strategy, which took whatever form was most convenient to the Marxists of the Frankfurt school decades ago. That it is "in direct contradiction of Marx's own writings" and has never characterized life in Communist countries seems to matter not one bit to anyone.

And while it's certainly true that many people teaching cultural cultural studies support "progressive" policies and causes, they also support extreme decadence as a fad, to be in style. I'd go so far as saying that these attitudes have become thoroughly bourgeois. Blue State, even. But isn't calling them "Marxist" a perversion of the word? Couldn't it be said that the class struggle Marx wrote about still persists in the Red State versus Blue State phenomenon? For example, traditional Marxists saw homosexuality as "bourgeois decadence," and they called it precisely that. Today's working class Red State "proletariat" aren't the ones lining up to see "Brokeback Mountain" are they?

There are a lot of ironies, and I think if Marx was alive today he'd feel as if something went very, very wrong.

I think "Cultural Marxism" is a poor descriptor, and was primarily coined as an insult. (What fascinates me is that it is more likely to resonate among today's proletariat class....)

Mind you, I wanted an answer along the lines of "What Would Marx Do?" Not to dwell excessively on the revisionist Paul Weyrich clique, but I'm sorry: gay American cowboys just isn't credible as a Marxist meme, even for the wildest revisionists. I wanted to find someone -- anyone -- who really deserved to be called a "Cultural Marxist"

And I wasn't disappointed. I found a man who is in fact a leading Cultural Marxist! A man in a better position than anyone alive to know the answer to the question "What would Marx do?"

I refer to the proudly unapologetic Marxist historian Howard Zinn. For the rest of us proletarian illiterates, he has brought Karl Marx back to life in a play called Marx in Soho.

Here's the poster with the actor (a man who might as well be Marx):

Right here in Philadelphia. How did I manage to miss such a touching thing?

And from the Philadelphia Inquirer, the above site reprints Douglas Keating's review:

Though Marx has been demonized by some as the father of communism, Robert Weick portrays him as a personable man devoted to his wife and family as he writes Das Kapital and struggles to make ends meet in London, where he lived most of his life.

This show's Marx is also aware of all that has transpired since his death, which enables him to urge those in the audience toward political and social change. An impassioned Weick rises to this occasion, and though it's obvious he is speaking as Marx, the sentiments are clearly Zinn's.

Douglas Keating

Philadelphia Inquirer

Still, I'm not sure about portraying Marx's dedication to "wife and family." I think the memes may need, um, reworking. Can't this Howard Zinn character do a better job of coordinating his alternate reality scheme with Paul Weyrich? Maybe he could add a few lines to have Marx specifically address the additional memes to satisfy Weyrich and his meme-mongers. I know it's revisionism, but hey -- if you can't revise revisionist writing, then what the hell can you revise?

As it is now, the Blue State bourgoisie [really now! wouldn't Marx prefer them to be Red?] loves the play! A few comments:

If you're opposed to the Bush administration's domestic and international policies, you may be surprised how many ideologies you share with the title character in the Iron Age Theatre's production of Marx in Soho. But if you're worried this somehow makes you a Marxist, fear not—it turns out Karl Marx didn't even consider himself one.

So it's just as if Marx is still alive, right? I can't argue with my logic. Marx's stunning admission means that we are all Cultural Marxists. Cultural Marxism is probably a family value!

And even if you're religious, that's cool with Marx too:

Growing Up, Marx was presented as a villian, but now I understand so much more.
Member of the Elizabeth Catholic Worker

According to a history teacher in attendance, Zinn's resurrection of an alternate Marx is historically accurate:

....Your presentation of Marx and his life experiences has provided an opportunity for our students to see history brought to “life.” The students in attendance had wide eyes and were at the edge of their seats for the entire performance. Your energy and intensity engaged the audience and we were hanging on to every word. Your ability to change emotional level as well as mood was astonishing and made Karl Marx real and not just a character from our textbook. I wish our schedule had allowed for more time so our students could have made their comments to you rather than relay them through me. First they wished to thank you and then said things like, “that was awesome,” and “he was amazing.” You really left an impression on them. Once again I thank you for what you do and for doing it so well.

Vincent Spina

European History - Easton High School

If you can't bring the culture to Marx, then bring Marx to the culture!

(I'll try to keep a close eye peeled for Brokeback Marxist cultural values, but I'm not promising anything....)

Oh what the hell. I won't put words (or, for that matter, anything else...) in Zinn's mouth. But I think the dead white Karlito can bend over and take this one:

After all, what's revising revisionism mean without a little revisionary deviationism?

(Regrettably, I must admit to certain bourgeois tendencies which I have not fully uprooted, as I confess to feelings of nostalgia for the good old days of standard deviationism. But we must move on. No really.)

AFTERTHOUGHT: Satire aside, there is a serious, um, bottom line here. If a play resurrecting Marx and written by a Marxist is not Cultural Marxism, then what is?

In a grotesque example of anti-military bigotry, the University of Washington's Student Senate voted against honoring World War II war hero, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Colonel Greg "Pappy" Boyington. Reason? According to the minutes of the Student Senate meeting, concerns were expressed about honoring "rich white men," "whether it was appropriate to honor a person who killed other people," and whether "a member of the Marine Corps was an example of the sort of person UW wanted to produce."

While I'd heard of Colonel Boyington before, when I read about the man's life, I became even more outraged by the sleazy and cowardly remarks:

It all started after a UW senior sponsored a resolution to create a memorial for Boyington, a Marine Corps colonel and Medal of Honor recipient who wrote about his wartime exploits as a fighter pilot in the South Pacific in his best-selling book, “Baa Baa Black Sheep.”

Boyington and his “Black Sheep” squadron later were the inspiration for a television show starring Robert Conrad.

On Feb. 7, during a student senate debate on the resolution, critics questioned why the university should pay tribute to a Marine, someone who killed others. One student leader suggested the school had honored enough rich, white men.

Forty-five students supported the resolution, but it failed by one vote.

The next day, Kirby Wilbur, the morning radio talk-show host on Seattle station KVI, broadcast the news based on an e-mail from a member of the UW College Republicans.

“Our phones were slammed for a full hour with our audience,” producer Matt Haver told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for a story in Thursday editions. “They were literally incensed with it.”

Boyington shot down 22 planes with the Black Sheep Squadron, making him one of the war’s highest-ranking aces. Earlier, he flew with the Flying Tigers in China.

He was shot down on Jan. 3, 1944. Presumed dead, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

He had been taken prisoner, however, and was freed with the end of the war. He died in 1988 in Fresno, Calif., and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Far from being wealthy, Boyington, a Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, native and 1934 engineering graduate of the University of Washington, struggled with money and alcohol for much of his life.

Why am I not expecting Ward Churchill to leap to this Indian's defense?

McQ at QandO has more on the disgraceful interplay of political correctness and woeful ignorance of history:

Thankfully the rest of us understand the incredible achievement of Pappy Boyington and honor his service and valor. As for the student government of the Univeristy of Washington? They need a history refresher badly. And this time, the political correctness which has apparently so infected the version they last studied needs to be left aside. They need to do some homework on men like Greg Boyington and the honor with which he was bestowed before being so disrespectful of his achievement.

Disgraceful.

God help us if we're ever in a real war like World War II.

(I'm almost tempted to call these young slimebags "Cultural Marxists." But I think it would be a mistake to credit them with having read or understood Marx.)

Young urban black males may live longer in prison, that does not reduce their natural lifespan, murder is unnatural (in my opinion - maybe not yours). Ditto with poaching of elephants.

-- Classical Values Commenter "Rowan Morrison"

As the subject of "truth" has been on my mind lately, I'm pondering a question of what I suppose might be called "ethics," although I'm not entirely sure. It involves the phenomenon of people who either will not identify themselves, or else hide behind undisclosed fictitious identities, but who nonetheless have no problem engaging people who do not hide their identity in debates.

While I like to know who it is I am arguing with, it isn't really necessary to know, but I do think it helps to at least know whether or not someone advancing an argument is anonymous or not. There's a sort of "level playing field" issue, especially where (as in my case) one side's real identity is disclosed. There's nothing dishonest about anonymity (or even a fictitious identity) but if the fact of anonymity -- the fact of the fiction? -- itself is kept hidden, I think that's a different matter.

In the case of commenter "Rowan Morrison," while it did occur to me that in theory someone might be impersonating Rowan Morrison, that there was such a local animal rights activist seemed beyond dispute. She has been officially quoted so many times that it never occurred to me that there might not be such a person.

When (in a post titled "Why activists win") I discussed the campaign by "Rowan Morrison's" group to remove Philadelphia Zoo's elephants, my point was not so much to dispute the elephant issue as it was to explain the mechanics of why the single-minded dedication of activists tends to defeat people who just want to be left alone (or simply stay in business):

What's always lost in the debate over the merits of each "cause" is that true activists never lose sight of the big picture. Individual "causes" are means to an end, but the people who are confronted by activists are only interested in making the immediate problem go away. In so doing, they end up strengthening and emboldening the movement behind the particular cause.

In military terms, this strategy would be called "appeasement," and it's generally not considered to be a winning one. Not for the appeasers. For the activists, it's playing right into their hands.

At the risk of sounding like an appeaser, I'll go so far here and now as to actually declare that I think the force feeding of geese is cruel. But if I ran a restaurant and complied with the demands of activists, would it end there? The prohibition on foie gras is merely one step for them towards an ultimate goal of enforced veganism. The restaurant owners who take the foie gras off the menu will next be asked to eliminate veal, then chickens raised in factory farms, and so on. Similarly, activists who demand the removal of confederate flags have no intention of stopping there. Next will be statues of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, as well as streets named after them. From there it's a short step to Lee's relative, slaveholder George Washington. Should there be a slaveholder on the dollar bill????

I think that the appeasement of forces which are ultimately dedicated to the wholesale destruction of the appeasers is shortsighted at best. But business and idealism mix about as well as politics and idealism. The bottom line is staying open for business, or staying in office.

That's why the activists win.

Considering her local fame, it never occurred to me that there was no such person as Rowan Morrison.

Until this morning when I read this article in today's Philadelphia Inquirer:

An animal rights activist said today that she hopes to mount some sort of legal challenge after being banned from the Philadelphia Zoo for comments she made about the facility's chief executive.

Marianne Bessey, leader of Friends of Philly Zoo Elephants, incurred the zoo's wrath after making strongly worded remarks last week about zoo director Alexander L. "Pete" Hoskins in an Internet chatroom called The Elephant Connection.

In a posting dated Feb. 16 and addressed to Hoskins, Bessey discussed the zoo's treatment of Dulary, an injured, 42-year-old elephant that has been kept in a concrete barn since August. She talked about the elephant's life expectancy - and the director's.

"I sincerely pray you [Hoskins] have nightmares about Dulary every night until you die, which should be very soon since you are past your own life expectancy," she wrote, also suggesting that Hoskins, who is in his early 60s, might be "kept in a concrete closet for six months to hasten your demise."

Later that day, she added: "Pete Hoskins thinks he is going to have a peaceful, uneventful retirement... he has another thing coming."

The police report did not mention Bessey by name.

Bessey, a lawyer who has frequently gone to the zoo to pass out literature about the elephants, said yesterday that her words were not meant as a threat and that the zoo focused on them to distract from any discussion of the animals ' future.

"I think this is definitely illegal," said Bessey, while acknowledging that the zoo is private property and not a government facility. "I have the freedom of speech to express my opinion, and they're just trying to prevent me from getting information out to the public."

Toner noted that other members of the Friends of Philly Zoo Elephants were not being banned, only Bessey. In additon, Toner said that the zoo, a public charity, was exercising its "fiduciary responsibility to look out for the assets of the zoo and the zoo's best interests."

What surprised me about the article was that in the past, every time I read about the elephant issue, I'd become quite accustomed to seeing Rowan Morrison quoted. After all, she's the official "spokesperson." It turns out that she's Marianne Bessey:

This afternoon, Bessey, who uses the name Rowan Morrison in her animal work, was in the concourse of Suburban Station, passing out buttons and collecting signatures.

There have been numerous articles like this in the Philadelphia Inquirer -- with not a hint about the identity of the "spokeswoman":

A local animal-rights group, which stages regular demonstrations outside the zoo demanding that the elephants be sent to a sanctuary, reacted cautiously to the decision.

"It's halfway good news, as long as they retire the elephants to a sanctuary," said Rowan Morrison of Friends of the Philly Zoo Elephants. "The small, quarter-acre exhibit and 1,800-square-foot barn are just not a healthy environment for the elephants."

The next Friends demonstration is set for 10:30 a.m. tomorrow.

"We've always been asking the zoo to do the right thing and transfer the elephants, and we'll continue to do that," Morrison said.

Bessey has also passed herself off as Rowan Morrison to the prestigious Washington Post:

A protest group, Friends of the Philly Zoo Elephants, has claimed this as a victory. The group maintains that elephants are roaming and foraging animals and need more space than zoos can give them. It and other animal rights activists say that penned-in elephants tend to get diseases and injuries they would not get in the wild. The Philadelphia group is pressing the zoo to donate its elephants to a sanctuary in Tennessee.

"I know it's the right thing to do. Whether the zoo does it is a different thing," said Rowan Morrison, the spokeswoman for the group.

OK, I'm just a lowly blogger. I don't have the time or resources to verify the identity of anyone. Nor do I think it's particularly relevant in the case of a commenter to the blog. So I accepted her identity at its face value.

That was a mistake, and I apologize, but there's really no way I could have known, and her true identity wasn't relevant.

It still isn't. The point is not Marianne Bessey, Esq. Despite the fact that she's been identified in countless articles as "Rowan Morrison" she's not the real issue here, so much as the ethical process.

Is there one?

While I have no problem with fictitious identities, what I want to know is this: if an identity is fictitious, is there a duty to disclose that fact?

I don't think there's any right to know someone's identity, and I'm not talking about invading anyone's privacy. But if you are fictitious, shouldn't that fact be disclosed?

I wonder how many other spokespeople we see routinely "quoted" in what we assume is "official" news are actually not the people they appear to be.

If journalists know about a fictitious identity and don't disclose that fact, is there an ethical issue?

MORE: When I said Ms. Bessey "passed herself off" as Rowan Morrison, I was engaging in speculation under an assumption that might turn out to be unwarranted. It is entirely possible that she has disclosed her true identity all along, but that somehow it's been kept hidden.

Stay tuned, I guess.

MORE: Lest anyone misunderstand, Inquirer reporter Larry Eichel should be given credit for revealing the true identity of "Rowan Morrison." Apparently, the previous reporters are no longer interested in covering the story, and they either didn't verify who the "spokesperson" was, or knew and looked the other way.

I wrote to longtime journalist (and current blogger) Mark Tapscott, because of his expertise in these matters, and he emails as follows:

she [Bessey] had an obligation to tell the reporters who quoted her her real name and the reporters then had an obligation to tell readers the published name is not her real name and explain why the newspaper published the fake name rather than the real name.

Be sure to check out Mark Tapscott's blog, as he has some excellent pictures from today's pro-Denmark demonstration.

UPDATE: "Rowan Morrison" (in repeated comments below) states that she was misquoted in the newspapers, and cites the full text of her remarks, which were as follows:

You must live with Dulary's blood on your hands. You yourself are retiring in May - yet you have refused to allow Dulary to retire, instead claiming that she is reaching her "life expectancy" and preparing the public who pay your obscenely high salary for her death. You have outlived your life expectancy by some ten years, since the life expectancy of a human is 51 years (in sub-Saharan Africa, that is - I'm using the same logic you use to get a life expectancy of elephants of early 40's, isn't it fun to play around with statistics like that?)

Pete, I sincerely pray you have nightmares about Dulary every night until you die, which should be very soon since you are so far past your own "life expectancy." Maybe you should be kept in a concrete closet for six months to hasten your demise. After all, what is suitable for the animals you've been paid $329,000 a year to care for should be more than sufficient for you.

To the zoo spies on this list - please forward to Pete with my sincere blessings. You forwarded the letter from James Kenney and Blondell Reynolds Brown - now you can forward this.

"Rowan Morrison" also maintains that it's "okay" to use an undisclosed pseudonym. Whether that's "okay" is a matter of philosophy. Obviously, some people think it is okay. Which is why, (as I argue in this post) reporters need to ask a few basic questions. It's more and more apparent that they didn't.

MORE: "Rowan Morrison" also states that she did tell "some reporters, but not all" reporters her real name. What that means is that to if these reporters referred to her as "Rowan Morrison" without pointing out the pseudonymous nature of that name, they engaged in a serious breach of journalistic ethics.

In real life, saying someone is somebody else (when you know this is untrue) is called "lying."

There are no facts, only interpretations.

-- Nietzsche

I disagree with Nietzsche, because I think there are facts. But if I agreed with Nietzsche, that would not make me a "Cultural Marxist."

And I hope that even Nietzsche would agree that a lot of people have a hard time distinguishing facts from opinions.

Facts (such as whether it is raining outside right now) are by definition truth. (I don't see how it is possible to have intelligent discussions about what is true unless we agree that truth -- at minimum -- consists of knowable facts.) Opinions sometimes involve questions of fact, but often they involve larger issues over which people disagree. An opinion does not become "the truth" simply because a large number of people share it.

The discussion in the comments below -- over objective and subjective truths -- brings this to mind, as facts are almost always objective truths, while opinions tend to be subjective.

I think the confusion of fact with opinion is what causes much of the trouble in cultural debates. People who believe very strongly in certain opinions tend to regard these opinions as facts, as truths, and are unable to admit that they are actually opinions. There's a certain gray area we call "belief" but I'm of the opinion (and therefore believe) that beliefs are opinions. Widely shared and strongly held opinions, but opinions nonetheless. And no matter how strongly held a belief, the fact that it is strongly held does not make it true.

Opinions and beliefs can of course be true. Most of what we call disagreements over truth consist of disagreements not over facts, but over whether certain beliefs are true. This is compounded by the fact that some beliefs are based on perceptions (feelings, if you will), which seem very true to an individual, but which are not provable to others. For example, if someone believes that he has felt the presence of God, that is true for him, but it cannot be called an objective truth -- even though it might be true.

If enough people agree that certain opinions and beliefs are true, and they become shared cultural beliefs, while that agreement does not tranform subjective truths into objective truths, it forms the basis of what can be called objective morality. This can be further divided into religious truths such as "keep holy the Sabbath" (said to emanate from God) and ethical truths such as "do no murder" (not dependent on God).

But not all morality is dependent on God -- either for belief or for enforcement. Much of what we call "morality" consists of these systems of ethical truths agreed upon over the millenia, and even most atheists would agree that it is wrong to lie, steal, murder, rape, etc. Such social agreements have long formed the basis of Western culture (both from Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman perspectives), and as they are also formalized into law, it matters very little whether an individual agrees with the philosophical underpinnings, which are derived from religion, philosophy, self interest, and common sense. One does not need to be a Christian to agree with Jesus's central ethical premise of "Love your neighbor as yourself."

I realize that I have not begun to articulate a comprehensive system of epistemology, and I'm sure people will disagree with some or all of what I have said. But I don't think that makes me a "Cultural Marxist."

UPDATE (03/02/06): I agree with Jeff Goldstein on what I think is an important point:

...it matters not whether you believe classical liberalism to be the manifestation of some metaphysical truth or simply the best possible manifestation of human social contracts.

... they have but simply to adopt as part of their own philosophical position regarding social contracts the primacy of certain individual rights that are beyond the bounds of any government to remove.

Huh?

What's the above title mean?

I really don't know, because I don't understand Japanese. But hey, I guess I'll just write a post about it anyway.

Sean Kinsell (who wrote the above title) reminded me of something I know all too well -- but which it's damnably easy to forget:

There's so much information lacking about the port-rental-connected-to-UAE-holding-company thing that I figure I'll let everyone else rupture a few arteries and decide what I think when we actually know what we're talking about.

I don't like writing about stuff I know little or nothing about, and it makes me feel like an ignorant asshole whenever I do. (Might as well try to expound on the meaning of the characters in Sean's title.)

What I can't figure out is why I keep doing it. Because others do? That's no reason to do anything.

I guess I can console myself with the knowledge that I'm not alone in my idiocy.

(Small comfort that is.)

What do you do if you're supposed to be a daily blogger but you're just burned out on opinions? I don't know whether I'm more sick to death of my own opinions or the opinions of other people, but I'm sure as hell sick of opinions, and it isn't easy saying so. Why? Because it sounds negative. And we're not supposed to be negative, are we?

So what am I supposed to do? Maybe read another idiotic pronouncement (by some horse's ass who knows God personally) about some stupid movie I didn't like in the first place and then write another post trying to politely point out the illogic in that opinion? Get into an argument with someone who advances opinions as tactics? (There's no winning an argument with someone whose mind is made up and who argues tactically, nor is there any possibility of the rational sharing of ideas...) Maybe I should find an opinion I agree with, and say so! That'd be a thrill. Or maybe I should take pictures of my dog!

Nah, done that too many times. Plus, Coco isn't quite up to her usual energy levels yet, as she's still sulking from being in the kennel last weekend.

How about uploading some cool pictures?

Here's one which made my spirits soar:

It's all about survival, right?

Here's an even funnier picture (via Deroy Murdock):

Yuck yuck. No name-calling, though! (Allah forbid that we might offend...)

Hmmmm... Now I'm curious about something. Would uploading that picture be a crime in Austria, or is it only Holocaust denial that's a crime? I mean, have they left a loophole in the law allowing "Holocaust Approval" as long as you don't engage in "Holocaust Denial"?

Apparently not. At least, not according to Skeptic Magazine's Michael Shermer. Here's his reading of the laws:

In Austria it is a crime if a person "denies, grossly trivializes, approves or seeks to justify the national socialist genocide or other national socialist crimes against humanity." In France it is illegal to challenge the existence of the "crimes against humanity" as they were defined by the Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. In Germany, where the legal precedence began, the Auschwitzl¸ge, or "Auschwitz-Lie" Law, makes it a crime to "defame the memory of the dead." (Emphasis added.)

But I should refrain from insulting her, shouldn't I?

I really should try to be more cheerful. It's tough sometimes. But this is all just a form of exercise.... To quote Drayton Sawyer,

There's just some things you gotta do. Don't mean you have to like it.

UPDATE: Where it comes to insults, the Germans don't mess around:

DUESSELDORF, Germany (Reuters) - A German court on Thursday convicted a businessman of insulting Islam by printing the word "Koran" on toilet paper and offering it to mosques.

The 61-year-old man, identified only as Manfred van H., was given a one-year jail sentence, suspended for five years, and ordered to complete 300 hours of community service, a district court in the western German town of Luedinghausen ruled.

Should it be illegal in a free country to spout nonsensical lies grounded in bigotry?

A brief word on the Holocaust denial laws in Austria and other European countries. While I don't think Holocaust denial and editorial cartoons posing questions about Muhammad are moral equivalents (I explained why in detail here), I think these laws are outdated and should be repealed as soon as possible.

The criminal conviction of faux historian (and now martyr) David Irving, whose opinions are condemned by anyone with a brain, could not have come at a worse time. No one could be less friendly to Irving than Deborah Lipstadt, who was sued by him, but who admits the laws are no longer needed:

In 2000 [Irving] lost a highly publicized libel lawsuit in London against Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, after Lipstadt called him a Holocaust denier in her 1994 book, "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory."

That victory, perhaps, helps support her conviction that books, and not laws, are what should fuel the fight against denying the Holocaust.

"We don't need laws to fight Holocaust deniers. We've got history on our side," she said.

Mickey Kaus has more, and so does Glenn Reynolds, who adds that "this further exacerbates the 'censorship envy' of the radical Muslims," which it does.

I also think it helps whatever Nazis there are out there, helps the Islamofascists, while seriously damaging the moral authority of Western countries to condemn censorship.

While it would be tempting to argue that an American equivalent would be a law forbidding the denial that slavery ever existed, it isn't quite so simple as that. According to Meryl Yourish, the laws were originally passed in the immediate post-Nazi period to prevent a Nazi resurgence. That may have been a pragmatic approach at a time when tens of millions of people were dead, and half of Europe occupied. But after the passage of more than sixty years, aren't these countries mature enough and stable enough to handle crackpots unable to recognize reality? If the answer is no, then I don't think any laws will help them.

Actually, I think a good case can be made that laws like this help spread the very views they're intended to combat. Nazis and their supporters are today a tiny minority. I think it's fair to call them deluded psychos. Because they know they're outside the mainstream and will always remain that way, such people take delight in any opportunity to prove that they're being persecuted by the evil Jewish conspiracy. Laws making it a crime to deny the Holocaust make it far too easy for them to do this, all the while screaming bloody murder about how they're "victims."

I can't think of a better way to transform an alliance between European Nazis and Islamofascists into a growth industry.

More on the logically muddled "Cultural Marxist" meme (which in an outburst of hysteria I earlier called "penile correctness").

There is a serious logical error being made by the people using and promulgating the "Cultural Marxist" label. In their haste to create a grab bag "ism" for all the various things they oppose, they've confused tactics with ideological philosophy, and called things "Marxist" which are not Marxism. In addition to promoting ideas thought to be destabilizing to their enemies from time to time, Marxists also availed themselves of things like "Molotov cocktails," the AK-47, and even the atomic bomb. Yet no one would call such weapons "Marxist." Why, then, are they saying it is "Marxist" to promulgate ideas like sex education in conservative societies? Or the nihilistic idea (shared by Hitler) that there are no objective standards, and even no truth? These are no more Communist ideas than is fluoridation of drinking water.

Anyone remember this guy?

In the satirical Dr. Strangelove, General Ripper asserted that fluoridation of water was "the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face."

Let's assume for the sake of argument that fluoridation of water was in fact a communistic plot to systematically undermine our youth, by sapping them of their precious bodily fluids. I'd be willing to bet that as a military man, even the fictional General Ripper would be the first to recognize that pollution of our fluids was not Marxism per se, but a tactic meant to soften us up for the kill, in much the same manner that we might be softened up by the deliberate introduction of smuggled heroin.

The "Cultural Marxism" phrase creates another "ism" based on two fundamental errors:

According to this logic, if Marxists decided to oppose segregation and support integration based on the tactical belief that integration would destabilize the South in the 1950s, then integration, too, is "Cultural Marxism." And, of course, an evil cultural threat.

This whole thing is almost too ridiculous for extended comment, but some people will fall for anything. I feel forced to address it twice because I don't think this "Cultural Marxist" stuff (which seems to be taken quite seriously) should be allowed to in any way tarnish Eric S. Raymond's excellent essays or Jeff Goldstein's monumental work. Clearly, incalculable damage has been done by certain cultural memes originally promulgated by Marxists as tactics. But they are all individual ideas independent of Karl Marx and some of them (like sex education, tolerance of homosexuality, and racial integration) -- are arguably not evil, nor even necessarily wrong. Defeating ideas that are wrong is hard work. Ideas are not defeated by misidentifying them with a new label, or lumping them in with unrelated ideas and further mischaracterizing them, but by demonstrating that they are wrong, and why they are wrong.

Fits of demagoguery, hyperbole, and name calling can have the opposite effect of what's intended.

Sheesh.

Joe McCarthy may have been the best friend the Communist Party USA ever had, but that's another essay.

My advice to the anti-Western PoMo types has long been not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

(I still think this is good advice even if we disagree on whether the bathwater, or the baby, or neither, are, um, "polluted.")

PRACTICAL ASIDE: I don't know whether people realize it or not, but telling people that their purely personal lifestyle decisions constitute "Cultural Marxism" is not a good way to make friends, influence people, or win arguments. (It didn't seem to play well in Canada.)

Moreover when people are called Marxists who aren't Marxists, they're likely to feel quite insulted.

Might as well call people "Cultural pedophiles". . .

I'll say this, though. It's a good way to advance identity politics in the name of combating it.

(Interesting that Lind addressed a Holocaust denial group.)

UPDATE: My thanks to Jeff Goldstein for linking this post in his marvelous exposé of the Boston Globe's dishonest and cowardly attempt to mischaracterize the "the ultimate Enlightenment value" as "tolerance":

This process, it should be clear, is simply a domestic variant of Said’s multiculturalism—evident in the press’ thinking behind its refusal to run the Mohammed cartoons—with the “Otherness” Said made off limits to our critical faculties no longer relegated to the exotic; instead, it is now being extended to those deemed “inauthentic” or “hostile” to a particular self-defined and self-regulating identity group here at home.

Today, citing “tolerance” as the ultimate Enlightenment value, our press is able to justify what amounts to (self) censorship. Fear of offending the Other is paramount, because the western press has no “right” to inflame those to whom they must defer on matters of their own culture.

Which, sadly—but predictably—plays right into the hands of our enemies as they learn to use the same memetic tools the Soviets used against us to great affect.

Jeff asked a question which concerned tormented me for entirely different reasons:

Is Edward Said the new Alexander Hamilton?

MORE: Think I'm kidding?

Betcha ten I'm not!

UPDATE (02/25/06): Nick Packwood's comment below caused me to bend over backwards in search of "Cultural Marxism," and I actually found that in certain circles, it is alive and well! Marxist cultural revisionism has been revised accordingly in this post.

Ahem.

UPDATE (03/03/06): Ed Driscoll has more on fluoridation and General Ripper. Bottled water will not save us.