“You're right Ray. As you know, we are not all motivated by achieving in the business world and making a great deal of money. Some of us are motivated by love and some by the drive to find meaning in our lives. It's these people that make the best teachers. I might also say that, opposed to your country where administrators make more money than teachers, in our society you are paid by how well you have produced, so an effective teacher might make a good deal more money than an average administrator. So while in your country in order to make more money during your working life and enjoy a higher pension afterwards many people want to move up the administrative ladder, but our people can get both while working in the area that they enjoy.”
- “I was impressed with the work of Orrin Hudson in Atlanta. It sounds like you are using some of the ideas that he had in terms of preparing young people for the challenges of an effective life. Mr Hudson is a former state trooper and business owner who decided that working with young people was the only way to reduce crime and to get the young people started on a path to success. He was working with disadvantaged young people through the game of chess. His thinking was that in chess every move you make can be positive or negative and sometimes a negative move made early in the game can affect the outcome. When you apply that to life, you can realize that doing some dumb things in your early years can haunt you forever. He called his program KASH. K for knowledge, A for attitude, S for skills, H for habit.” (10)
“Great idea! I think I will suggest it to our education people. There is no one way to get to every child. Some learn by hearing. Some learn through art. Some learn better through gross body movements, some through refined body movements. Not all learn through a logical sequence of facts and ideas. We continually test students’ interests to let the teachers know the best directions for a student to go to increase his or her knowledge, interests and aptitudes.”
- “It seems that you have a very aggressive and effective approach to education. A problem that we have in the US is that while many of our legislators, at least those with educations, think that education is important-- when it comes down to cutting the budget, education is one of the first things to go.”
"It seems that in your country you don’t recognize that by improving education at the primary and secondary levels you will eventually reap great rewards in your sciences and businesses. I wonder if it is your pragmatism--where you seem to think that unless it is practical today it is not worth it. On the other hand, when ignorance is common, political techniques such as fear, anger and hate are more able to direct elections so it is easier to manipulate the electorate."
-"You may remember that President Bush developed his No Child Left Behind program. But president Obama said ‘In the 21st Century it’s not enough to leave no child behind. We need to help every child get ahead.’ We are so blind so often. Just look at how we handle foreign language. 10% of our high schools offer Latin, 30% offer French but only 4% offer Chinese. Did you know that there are over 40 million foreigners studying Chinese, and only one in 800 of them is an American. At the same time the Chinese are learning English almost universally.
“Tell me Tyler how does your university system work?”
"Okay, but let me fill you in a little bit more about our lower-level education. At the primary school, as I mentioned, there are some things that need to be learned by rote. We use computers and video games to do much of this. To interest the students we take them into the community at various times to see what is happening and to make them curious about that part of our world. If we take them to a zoo we can elicit interest in the geography that gave birth to these different animals. We can look at biology and zoology and see how evolution has taken the development of life in so many different directions. We can take them to the harbor and talk about where all the ships have been. Then go back to school and show films and use other media to make it clearer how the different societies have developed socially and economically. We can take them to our City Hall and discuss how laws are made and how society functions philosophically, economically and socially. We can take them to research institutes and show them how physics and chemistry work in the real world. There is no end to the wonders of our world.
“At the secondary level we do more of the same but go into greater depth in many areas. We may spend six months learning a language, such as Chinese. Six months isn't enough to really learn the language but it may be enough to stimulate some students to study it further. While we are studying Chinese, and speaking only Chinese, we look at Chinese history, culture and economics. We might use another few months in studying religions or chemistry or the environment or any number of other areas that may be of social or vocational concerns.
"During secondary school students must work ten hours a week at some prescribed job. They might work in some of the jobs in a hotel or restaurant. They might work in a preschool. They might work in a recreational area. But every semester they must change jobs. By the time they have graduated from high school they will have worked at 8 different jobs. The money they earn goes half to support their education and half to themselves. We think it is very important to teach children the value of money.”
-"That's why I borrow from my son!"
“Of course thinking, writing, and speaking are extremely important in today's world. We emphasize utilization of both inductive and deductive logic in developing our communication skills. This is an essential area for our teachers. We use computer programs and video games in many areas to transfer information. It is a shame that so many people think that merely transferring information is real education. Our concept of education is that we must be able to take the information that is available, treat it logically and express it clearly on paper and in public. It is certainly not enough to just know some facts, they must be put together creatively then the community can deal with them. If you are a politician, you must be clear and logical if you are to convince the community to go with you. If you are a business leader or a scientist you must be able to work in the community of your peers or advisors. In today's world we can't go it alone. I would guess that today even a da Vinci or Solon would not be able to go it alone. There is just too much knowledge, too many problems and too much potential for any one mind to answer all the questions and accomplish all the tasks required in our modern world.
“When students go to the university they continue their work program but at a higher level. Our university system is a minimum of eight years. The first four years are like your liberal arts colleges where students learn to be thinking people and effective citizens. Here they go more deeply into philosophy, history, the social and natural sciences and economics. We think that with the world becoming far more complicated, four years is not enough. I have been impressed that Abu Dhabi has also emphasized liberal arts with its cooperation with New York University. (10a)
"And some of your schools in the US and Europe are reducing their university experience to only three years. I have also seen, particularly in Europe, that higher-level education has become more of a vocational training ground.
“For us the vocational training comes the second four years of the university. With the world being as complicated as it is, every economic pursuit needs a thorough grounding in theory and extensive practice in making that theory a reality.
“Graduate school begins after those eight years of education so the student is about 26 years old when he or she goes for a Masters degree. This takes another two years. It can also be done while the person is working in gainful employment. Much of this is mastering advanced subject matter so it can be done largely at home. Those who are planning on entering teaching will study pedagogics in the varying disciplines for the level of education to which they aspire.
“Doctoral work begins after the Masters and takes another 4 to 6 years. We have several tracks for doctoral level work. There is the health track which can include medical studies. This is one of the professional paths toward mastery. Others choose to go into advanced work in one of t
he liberal arts, in business or in the sciences. Here again a student can choose to perform more effectively in such fields as: in entrepreneurship education; in research in the natural or social sciences; or into university teaching.
“In all other countries when a person obtains a PhD degree it is a research degree, but most of the jobs are in teaching in universities. They have no training or skill in teaching but it is their main vocational possibility. Being a researcher and being a teacher are quite different occupations and require quite different preparations. So in our country if you want to be a researcher you can get your PhD but you will not be qualified to teach. If you want to teach, you prepare for that but your research skills will be questionable. So if you want to teach at the university level you will need your doctorate in education and a second doctorate. If you want to teach English you would get a doctor of literature degree, a D.Litt. If you want to teach in a science area you would get your doctor of science degree, a D.Sc., and so it is for special degrees in music, the arts, history and so forth.
“With people living so long, there is no reason to get them into the marketplace by age 18 or 20. Today's citizens must have more knowledge than citizens at any time in our history. To work in our modern world you must have more theory and background than at any time in the past. It is silly to rush people into the workforce before they are prepared for today's realities and tomorrow's eventualities. If we don't get people into the workforce before they are 25 or 30 it really doesn't matter. They are going to have a work-life of 50 or more years. Hopefully they will enjoy their lives so much that they never retire. I've seen so many of my friends in your country who are forced into retirement and hate it. We want to prepare our people to enjoy life both in and out of work. In fact if you have chosen your field of endeavor wisely, your work will be the most important part of your life.
-"As college education has become more common in our country the level of the entering student and the graduating student has lessened. With teachers and professors more poorly paid than most professions and trades you can understand that either the professors are not drawn from the most qualified people or that they must work at other jobs to make ends meet. My father taught at Pierce College in Los Angeles where the highest paid person on the campus was the carpenter, who received union wages. The college president, deans and professors all were more poorly paid—often earning less than half of the wages of the carpenter.
"A college degree can carry with it high prestige and a high level of learning or it can be worthless. In California, for example, a few years ago anyone could start their own university by merely putting up a $10,000 bond. Since the university was recognized by the state, students could get federal loans to attend the 'university.' The university’s courses were recognized by the state so a graduate in psychology was qualified to apply for a license as a family therapist or clinical psychologist. Thankfully for the future patients, the state increased the testing and interview processes so that people who once were considered ‘qualified’ by the state now seldom pass the tests.
"I knew a person who wrote a three page paper on how she once taught roller skating. That, with several hundred dollars, gave her three college units at one of these phony, but legal, colleges. She wanted me to be her advisor for a PhD. I had never heard of the school so I went by the house that served as its campus. I looked through a number of doctoral dissertations and didn’t find a single footnote. I was amazed at the fact that the state would back such a farce. While legitimate high schools, colleges and universities are evaluated and accredited by legitimate bodies, these phony schools have set up their own equally phony accrediting agency—that has no credence among legitimate schools of higher education. I had heard that the state was toughening up on these supposed universities. I hope it’s true.”
-"Studies show that in the U.S. only half of the college students and a quarter of the community college students have the basic skills to handle their required daily living needs—such as, understanding credit card obligations, analyzing news stories, even handling a check book. I wonder if they are alumni of these phony colleges!
"I don't think there's any question that today’s graduates must be able to think, write, speak and work in multicultural environments throughout the world. I have seen in other countries, particularly India, that because many colleges were not doing their job a number of corporations have started their own universities for the vocational side of higher education because the traditional universities were not really up to date in what was needed vocationally.
"In our higher education we try to imitate the best we can find in the world. China has leaped to the forefront of science in particular. In 1996 it had only a 12th as many respected scientific papers as had the US, by 2008 it had leapt to 60% of the US total. And now they have left the US in the dust. The US is still considerably ahead in medicine though. So we try to imitate China in many of our scientific studies and imitate the US in many of the health areas, particularly in the medical fields. I don't think there's any better model of good liberal arts programs than there are in many of your smaller high level colleges, like Amherst or Pomona.
"As in the more advanced countries, we decided that we need to increase the number of universities we have. China has doubled theirs in 10 years. They now have well over 2000. Since they are one of our chief competitors we must compete also.”
-"I agree with you on the need for a broad education, particularly in the liberal arts, but we must recognize that neither formal education nor age is necessarily a factor, but a practical education is. Stanford graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin were 23 when they founded Google. Mark Zuckerberg was 19 when he developed Facebook.”
-"There is no question that we have had some young geniuses but it seems as though we are not getting enough from our women. The last survey I saw showed that only a third of American college educated women described themselves as being very ambitious, but in China that number was double. The communist ideology has always said that women can do the same things as men and should have equal opportunity. This has been true in Chinese education for many years. China has more than a fifth of its national parliament as women. Far more than the US--at 16%.
“Since women now outnumber men at every level of the university, I would assume that many more will move their careers up higher on their ‘to do list’ and put marriage and family a few notches down.”
- “ In the Scandinavian countries there are 40 or more percent women in the parliaments. They also have more women in universities and they’re doing better than the men. A number of countries have initiated quotas for women, usually in the 30% range for parliament. But the champion country is Rwanda where 55% of the parliament are women. There is no question that we have to equalize education for both boys and girls, men and women, if we are to optimize our economies and our democratic systems.”
-" This brings us back to the importance of education. What is the goal of education? Is it to have a happy and short school day and school year or is it to prepare for adulthood--and success in adulthood. And what is success in adulthood? Is it to be successful in business, in golf, in rooting for a successful sports franchise? Is success to be judged by what you have done or who you have watched?"
"I think you understand that in our society it is what you do that counts. We think that in your country you believe that school days should be fun and the school year short. Other things being equal, how can you learn more in a five-hour day than in a seven hour day? How can you learn more in eight months of classes and you can in 11 months of classes? So the question is should school days be fun and adulthood filled with the sadness of unemployment or unfulfilling jobs? Or should the childhood days prepare for an adulthood where there is more joy than sorrow? It is clear that China is moving rapidly ahead in both primary and college education. It is equally clear that their economic system is moving at warp speed. It is also clear that America’s education is losing ground at the sa
me time that their unemployment rates are rising and their lifestyle is decreasing. Smaller homes, older cars, fewer vacations and less foreign travel or indications of the downward trend in American affluence and the rapid evolution of the American dream into an American nightmare."
-"You are right Tyler, our school days and school years were set up when we were an agricultural society. We needed the summers off to harvest the fields. We needed the Christmas and Easter vacations to give us time to venerate our God. And in those days it was usually enough to learn to read, write and count. But times have changed and we don't need time off in the summer to harvest our computers.”
-" And most of those religious holidays are consumed with nonreligious activities. Rather than contemplating the Resurrection, children hunt Easter eggs and college kids head for California, Florida or the ski slopes. And in the winter Santa Claus, not the baby Jesus, is the star of the show. While I would hate to see any vacations lopped off of our school or working weeks, there is no question that they cut into our learning and working time."
-"So do we follow the American and European models of shorter school days and longer vacations or should we copy our neighbors in the Far East--in China, South Korea and Japan?
“It's like Wanda Wang outlined, self-centered values versus society values and self-centered values which concern only the present time or those that are based on our future.
"If learning is important to prepare ourselves for life we had better do a much more effective job of education. We have talked about how poorly our American students do internationally but they don't believe they have done poorly. They think they are best. (10b) They are very self-confident because they have been loved and told how good they are. But the reality is that they are not very good academically. It's strange but the French have just the opposite approach. They do pretty well academically but they don't think they have done well. So we have our American superiority complex and the French have their academic inferiority complexes."
"Your President Obama recognized problems and developed a program that he called ‘race to the top’. A $4 billion fund was set up to be used for states that adopted national standards which were to raise student performance. Almost immediately two-thirds of the states adopted the program.
"It will probably help somewhat, but your American conservative values hurt you so much because you are afraid to change the amount of time you give to learning and you don't seem to want to give up your local control of schools. It keeps coming back to you people thinking that your opinion is true even if it is counter to the scientific evidence. Look at your reticence to accept the facts of global warming. It didn't matter that it was causing stronger tornadoes and hurricanes, your flooding and snowstorms were much worse, and many parts of your country were parched. Then if the facts don't support your opinions, you merely deny them.
“This is a major difference between your conservativism and our libertarianism. We are free to follow the findings of science. I think that the difference between our countries is that we are much better educated so we have more ability to sort out the facts. Because of your poor educational system for the masses, you haven’t been prepared for the future. Naturally I’m not talking about your better schools and colleges. There are none better. I’m talking about your schools where the teachers are ill-prepared and where the parents are undereducated. We have tried to aim all of our education in the same direction that your best education allows. And our well-educated parents expect their children to be better educated than they are.
LIBRARIES AND MUSEUMS
"An important part of our lifelong education system is our libraries and museums. Museum curators and librarians act as teachers when they work to develop creative interests in many of the areas that have excited humankind. I think that creativity is best fostered by reading, and seeing and experiencing the words and the thoughts of others. With so many exciting areas in our world it is essential that our young people can experience the thoughts and imaginations that they can get through reading, the vivid sights of the world that they can see in video presentations, and the real achievements of human ingenuity that we find throughout history. These are the things that we add to our educational experiences.
"The curators and librarians help to bring experiences to the masses. It may be a printed book or a piece of art. It may be a video game or film that is not available through the Internet. It may even be evaluation tools that a person may want to use to get a better picture of who or what he or she is."
THE ARTS
-“ it seems that your concern is primarily for making money, that your freedom is largely directed towards economics. Is that true?
“Not at all. But whatever you do you must be able to take care of yourself economically. If you’re good enough as a concert artist to make enough money to support yourself, we applaud you. While so far we haven’t produced the great voices of Placido Domingo, Renée Fleming, Thomas Hampson or Cecilia Bartoli, we have had some of our artists in major roles in a number of famous opera houses. And while we haven’t produced any Dalis or Rembrandts, we do have some artists who are making their marks on the national and world scenes. We have had two of our actors play on the London stage and one on Broadway. But of course we have a number of singing, painting, and acting ‘wannabes.’ But they must support themselves in other jobs while they search for the right pitons to climb the edifice of artistic success.”
SCHOOL SPORTS
-“What about after school activities in high school, such as sports, and extracurricular activities in college, again-- such as sports?”
"As a matter-of-fact we do have them but they are not as important or as time-consuming as the sports in your country. In your country you may practice three or more hours a day in your sport or in your other areas of interest. We limit our afterschool experiences to two hours. When I see the huge amount of time commitment to a sport in your high schools, I really believe it is overdone. There is so much emphasis on winning but not much emphasis on learning. Your 'will to win' is an essential element of freedom but to be responsible requires that you are winning in an important area. When the whole town thinks that the Friday night football game is more important than reducing your national debt, I question your values.
"On the other hand when I compare it with the club sport system in Europe I like your system a little better. Actually I think both systems should be in all countries. The fact that most of your coaches are credentialed teachers is a big plus in your high school sport system. Too many youth coaches have no understanding of child psychology, sport fundamentals or a commitment to fair play. Our requirement for responsibility makes it imperative that we honor the letter and the spirit of the rules of fair play.
“I suppose too that because we don't have college scholarships for sports and we don't have any professional sports teams, there isn't the incentive for the student athletes or their parents to make such a big thing out of a game.”
-"Boy that sure is a lot different from what we experienced in school. I would have to say that I really enjoyed my high school playing days and my college playing was unforgettable. If you’ve never been to a football game at Notre Dame you can't imagine the sense of responsibility to win and the 80,000 fans who are as concerned as you in winning. They love you 'win or tie.'”
-"As much as I enjoyed my college sports, I think that things have gone too far today. It seems to me that a combination of things has changed college sports from being primarily fun, especially if you win, to a legally mandated program where revenue from a few sports must pay for all the rest. I think that Title IX was a mixed blessing.”
-"Title IX, Tyler, was a national law that required gender equality in colleges and high schools that were receiving federal money. That idea was good because women did not have equal rights in college sports. Consequently a group went to trial to obtain equal rights for women in college sports. This was then interpreted to give women as many college scholarships as men
and it increased the salaries of coaches. In order to accomplish the goals laid out in the court decisions, the number of men's sports had to be reduced and revenue had to be increased in other areas.
"Since there were 105 football scholarships and 15 basketball scholarships in the two sports that had a chance to raise any revenue, women scholarships had to equal that 120. But scholarships had also been given to baseball players and track athletes. Over the years swimmers and water polo players were also given scholarships as were tennis players and golfers. So women needed an equal share of the total scholarships available. These were all non-revenue sports. To equalize scholarships many men's sports had to be eliminated."
-"At UCLA a new wrestling facility was built but the team was canceled before its first practice. The men's water polo team had won a number of national championships but was dropped to make way for a women's water polo team. But a number of the former water polo players chipped in to keep the sport going as a club sport, with no university support, it kept winning national championships so it was reinstated as a university sport. The 1984 Olympics men’s gymnastics win was done primarily with men from the UCLA team. But the men's gymnastic team was dropped a few years later. However the women's team still exists.
"When I was a student, in the spring I rowed on the crew. Our coach was a volunteer and we raised the money to run in sport. There were no scholarships. Now there is no men's team but there is a woman's team. Women's crew is one way of trying to equalize the scholarships that men have in football. Men have 85 scholarships for football now, women have about 25 for crew. Men have 13 for basketball, women have 14. At UCLA men have 10 sports, the women have 12.”
- “Another factor is that while women are the majority of students in most colleges, the number of female athletes often totals only about 25 to 30% of the total number of athletes. But this may be because football has so many players. I know we have talked about this before and we pretty well agreed that we would like to see either no scholarships or only scholarships for revenue-producing sports. And for the huge majority of colleges no sports produce revenue so those colleges sports must be funded from the general university budget. It makes no sense to have athletic scholarships when there is no revenue. It's a different thing to have an academic scholarship for a person who happens to also be an athlete.”
-"There is certainly a huge difference between the major revenue producing sports universities, like Texas and Ohio State, where their total income exceeds $120 million a year from sports, and the small colleges. Even my alma mater, Notre Dame, brought in over $80 million in total revenue last year. And Lee, your alma mater, Stanford, brought in more than $75 million and Con and Wreck, your poor Bruin program even brought in over $65 million. So it still made the top 25 of revenue producing university athletic programs. But then there are other major athletic schools, those in the top 120, that have budgets of under $10 million. You also have schools that get no real revenue at all so must rely on the general university budget for survival. It makes no sense to have athletic scholarships when there is no money.
"I know that we all want to see college athletics continue, but the financial requirements of scholarships, the multimillion dollar contracts of some football coaches. the generous full-time contracts of other coaches, and the extensive travel required all seem to point to the fact that if we are going to continue sports and offer them to as many people as possible, we must reduce the expense of the sports.
"Recruiting is such a full-time job and is essential for winning. Even small cottages with no income from sports do a great deal of athletic recruiting. Coaches all want to win so recruiting is an essential for top-level teams.
"I think that we should just have interested people who want to coach, pay them a minimally acceptable amount, reduce travel to under 500 miles, increase the number of sports for men and women, and eliminate scholarships. We all know this would be an ideal but the hunger of Americans to sit on their sofas and root for a winning team while criticizing the losers has become for many the weekend way of life. It is a simple way to handle their power drives. It is better to sit on the sofa and know everything than actually go out and compete.”
-" I certainly agree with you, Ray, but there is another reality. You know the history of our sport, football. In the early days students would hire whoever was a strong guy in the community to play for their student team. So from the earliest days fairness has not been a hallmark of college sport.”
"I think you Americans could learn a little bit about responsibility from the Brits. Traditionally they have been much more guided by the principles of fair play in their sports. We would see that as responsible behavior which would be necessary to winning. But you Americans have always looked for a way to bend the rules because winning was all-important. When I hear you describe your college sports programs I can relate to your emphasis on winning. But I can't relate to your lack of a guiding philosophy. Is winning the only thing that's important or is education in any way a function of the university?”
-" I remember the saying of one of our best coaches, Red Sanders, that 'winning isn't everything, it’s the only thing.'"
-" I thought it was Vince Lombardi who said that.”
-" No, it was Red. What Lombardi said was that 'winning isn't everything, but preparing to win is.' But it seems like whenever there is a quotable quote in football people think that Lombardi said it.”
" I hate to bring you back from nostalgia-ville but where does all this money come from that your sports programs in college are earning?”
-" Where have you been Tyler? Don't you have TV here in The Colonies? What do you do five nights a week in the fall and all day Saturday if you don't watch college football? I assume you're watching debate programs or world news, but that is so depressing. As an advanced country you should be watching pro football from August to February, college football from August to January, basketball from October to May, baseball from March through October, then you would have an occasional major competition in swimming, track, soccer, horse racing, boxing, along with the Olympics and a number of other sports programs. But back to your question, college football and basketball sometimes bring in quite a bit of money. The other sports all lose money.
“My firm did some work for a Pac-10 school in trouble with the NCAA So I got a bit of an insight into the money side of today's college sports. Look at how much money was made from ticket sales for football. Texas brought in almost $45 million, Nebraska was fifth in ticket sales earnings with $30 million. Then there is TV income. Ohio State made $16 million on TV, Kansas was fifth at $7 million. Then you can get guarantees for playing games away from home. Michigan State got $4 million. Army got $3 million. But from this income there are expenses. Alabama's athletic budget was $124 million. When we look at coaches pay, Texas paid $18 million dollars, Michigan. $14 million. Scholarships cost athletic departments money for the tuition of the athletes. Stanford paid $16 million, Notre Dame almost $15 million.
"Then is there the cost of recruiting. Notre Dame spent $2.3 million, Duke $1.6. Team travel can also be expensive Kansas spent over $8 million in team travel, Connecticut was fifth at $7 million. Only 25 of the 119 universities in the college bowl subdivision reported a surplus. Their average surplus was under $4 million. The other 95 schools averaged a loss of almost $10 million.
"Here are some other interesting statistics. For the BCS schools. Tyler, the BCS schools means the Bowl Championship Series. There are 119 universities that are allowed to compete to play in the postseason intersectional games. These are called 'Bowl' games. They usually add $1to $3 million to the school's athletic income. They also give the football team additional prestige. So when we talk about BCS teams we're talking about the major athletic programs in universities. But there are several levels of university athletic competition below the BCS level. In those schools the university must nearly always fund the athletic program.
“Looking at the BCS teams, football averaged mak
ing $11 million profit, men's basketball averaged a $3.7 million profit, but women's basketball averaged a $1.2 million loss. Of the 119 schools in the BCS division only 45 made profits on football and 46 made profits on basketball. Only three universities made money on women's basketball. For the smaller colleges, at least those who are not in the BCS program, the average loss for football was $730,000, the loss for men's basketball was $97,000, and average loss for women's basketball was $417,000. At this level 20 colleges made money on their football programs, 30 on the men's basketball programs and 12 women's basketball teams made money. Of course no other programs made money. Rowing, baseball, softball, soccer, track and field, swimming, water polo, gymnastics, golf, tennis, skiing, rugby, wrestling, volleyball, and any other sport offered. "Why should there be scholarships, high coaching pay, unneeded assistant coaches, travel out of the area, extra conditioning coaches and trainers, recruiting coordinators, and all the other expenses for a non- revenue-producing sports program. We can offer so many more sports to both men and women for a whole lot less cost. I am certainly for college sports but it has gone way past what is required for a good educational experience.”
-" I was thinking, the pro football teams have 45 players but the college teams have 85 scholarships. It's possible that that is more than they need. I'm glad they had them when I was in school, but I would've played anyway.”
“This is very interesting, I'm almost surprised that we don't have such high profile programs here. We are for winning at least as much as you are. But it looks like your sports programs are really locally or nationally important. They are certainly not important internationally. But how did we get into college sports? I think I had better get back to how we run our society. And I think I may have neglected looking at our basic principles. So let me get back to those because those principles find their way into about everything we do. Freedom and responsibility are those principles.
ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS FACTORS IN A SOCIETY
"As you can all guess, societal problems are not limited to equality versus liberty. It seems that every society has problems even with its own ethnic base. But when you bring in non-Christians into a Christian country, blacks and Asians into a Caucasian country, or unskilled workers into an advanced economic system––there will usually be problems. It isn't just that there are usually different social classes, but it tends to create a caste system. Muslims on one side of the line and Christians on the other. Atheists on one side and believers on the other. Asians on one side of the line and Caucasians on the other. Christians on one side, Jews on the other. Doctors on one side of the line and plumbers on the other. The divisions are there in our minds, if not our laws.”
-"Of course things can change. In California in the 1850s the Chinese were the lowest of the low castes. They endured terrible, and often murderous, prejudices. But because they took advantage of California's schooling and they worked hard, they became the most successful ethnic group in California. They far surpassed the Caucasians in education and in achievement. Jews, too, were historically a sub-caste, but again through education and hard work they surpassed most of the Christians in their society.”
-"We sure saw that ethnic prejudice with the American Tea Party movement that started back around 2008. We saw it in Europe with anti-immigrant, particularly anti-Muslim, feelings. Part of it can be understood because of the violence of some Muslims against the West. But we all know that it was a very small part of the total number of peace seeking Muslims. Still we saw the percentage of Muslims admitted to European countries severely reduced. We saw the Swiss outlaw minarets next to mosques in their country. Equality sure took a hit when Muslim terrorists were found in nearly every Western country. It also took a hit when the recession of 2008 reduced the jobs available to the citizens and the immigrants. Right wing parties gained strength from the UK and France up into Finland, Sweden and Norway."
-"I agree with many in the Tea Party who see a sacredness in our Constitution. America has certainly been a blessed land. And with many I believe that Irving Berlin's song 'God Bless America' should be our national anthem. If not 'God Bless America' then 'America the Beautiful.' It seems to me that the reason so many of us are religious is that we thank God for such a blessing as our country is.
"Tyler, I would have to disagree with you that equality is not an essential element of a good government. Jesus certainly emphasized the need for us to help others. The good Samaritan, the Sermon on the Mount, His miracle with the loaves and fishes and so many of His other miracles and sayings indicate that God wants us to be concerned with others. Every religion says in one way or another 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you.'”
-"Well Ray, we are finding ourselves on the same side of this intellectual battle. Once you put your collar on backwards I never thought we'd find another thing to agree on. Of course I don't believe that God had anything to do with it. I think it's more about having happy citizens living harmoniously in our country.
"You know that the Constitution never mentions God or Jesus and the Founding Fathers were scared to death that any religion, particularly the Catholics, would take over our country. That's why it strikes me so strange that some of your Republican Tea Partiers, like Sarah Palin, think that our constitutional rights come from God. I don't know if it is wishful thinking, a lack of historical knowledge, not having read the Constitution, or just a political technique to get other non-thinkers to pay you to speak to them or to vote for you.”
"We are not trying to tell you what to do. We just think that emphasizing freedom is the only way to go. It seems that in your country you have allowed a great deal of freedom in the economic area, given the unbelievable tax breaks you have given to corporations and rich people, but you have also given money to the poor people to keep them from revolting. In order to do that you have to borrow to pay for what you were giving to people to convince them that they were equal. Of course that borrowing actually created huge troubles for you. Here in The Colonies we want to give everybody an equal opportunity to achieve financially or in what other areas they choose--as long as they can pay their way financially. We are just not going to bail out those who don't make it. And we would never borrow to support those who have not shown they are worth supporting.
"I laughed at your Tea Party movement. Women running for Congress stating emphatically that the Constitution as it was originally written should be followed to the letter. But under the original Constitution they wouldn't have even been allowed to vote, let alone run for public office. The Constitution is clear that when both sexes are meant it uses the word 'person' but mostly it uses the male personal pronoun 'he.' Of course slavery was allowed under the Constitution. Are these people still for slavery?"
-"Since the earliest days of our republic, we have, like the Tea Partiers, spoken of the Constitution in religious terms. James Madison wrote that 'common reverence…should guarantee, with a holy zeal, these political scriptures from every attempt to add to or diminish from them.' And George Washington’s Farewell Address asked that the Constitution 'be sacredly maintained.' In his Lyceum speech of 1838, Abraham Lincoln cited the document as the source of 'the political religion of the nation' and demanded that its laws be 'religiously observed.' More recently Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black called the Constitution his 'legal bible.' I am with the Tea Partiers in their reverence for our Constitution.
"But I would have to say that by and large they don't understand the meanings of the doctrine that was meant to be both fundamental and flexible. And as much as I hate to say it, the document does separate church and state and does not constitute a Christian doctrine as I would like and as the Tea Partiers hold."
-"I agree with you again Ray. Are you converting me or am I converting you?
“We actually have a number of constitutions. Every time we pass an amendment it becomes a new document. I remember that Thomas Jefferson wrote that 'men who look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like th
e arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched . . . ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose that what they did to be beyond amendment.' They need to realize that one generation is as capable as another in taking care of itself and handling its affairs. He saw the Constitution not as a Rosetta Stone imprinted for all time but rather as a serial experiment pragmatically encountering the novel problems that every society must face as it evolves.
"But back to the Tea Party and it's ridiculous inconsistencies. They are for states rights but they hold Abe Lincoln as a model. As I remember he started the Civil War to end states rights, particularly in the slavery area. His actions started the movement of equality for the slaves. So it seems that people are often citing as heroes people who were diametrically opposed to what they want—0+nd think they believe.”
-"That is no surprise, Lee. Look at the illustrations that Dr. Wang gave us in Kino, that Chuck Chan did in Singaling, and that Dr. Singh gave us in Indus. There are huge numbers of people who have not thought their way into their philosophies of life or their political philosophies."
SOCIAL CLASS AND ETHNICITY IN OUR COUNTRY
"Social stratification is a major factor in our country just as in every country. As those of you who have studied sociology know, people stratify themselves and others. (10c) How we are stratified may depend on who is doing the stratifying. Professors might stratify people by their intellectual capacities or achievements. Politicians would stratify people by the amount of power they wield. Neighbors may stratify each other based on the kind of house they own or the kind of car they drive. Evaluating the elements of our world brings us some sort of order. (11)
“Historically people have been divided. It might be men and women, freemen and slaves, lords and vassals, Brahmins and Untouchables and other such categories where it is difficult or impossible to change status. This would be what we call the caste system. I think in your country the moneyed and the impoverished are often seen as being in a caste. But when you have a class system it is easier to move up or down the scale. In modern democracies this is usually true. In our country we think it is even more true because of the equality of opportunity we give to our citizens.
“You might think that we judge and stratify entirely with financial criteria, but that is not true. Achievement in any area is respected and socially rewarded. So if we have the best violinist in the world, the richest person in the world and a Nobel Prize winner, they would be treated and judged approximately equally.
“In your country, where you have so many impoverished undereducated people in the lower social classes, you have more violence. 100 years ago it was the Irish and Italians who fought their way up, in the boxing ring or in politics. Then it was the Polish and Russian Jews fighting and working their way upwards. More recently it has been the African-Americans and Hispanics that have entered the athletic and political rings as they pull themselves upward. One of the problems that you have had is your legal and illegal immigrations that keep feeding your lower classes with Hispanics from Mexico and Latin America and your blacks from the Caribbean and from Africa. So as some Hispanics and blacks move up the social scale, often to a very high status, their places in the lower classes are quickly taken by other similar ethnics. This didn't happen with the Irish and Italians or with the northern European Jews. So you have tended to have a permanent underclass, even while many in the class have escaped upward.
"Our strong legislation relative to immigration has eliminated the people who would have been in the lower social classes. Consequently our society is really made up of middle class and higher class individuals. We still stratify, as all people do, but we are stratifying, from a much higher base.
“I would assume that some of you would object to our stratification starting at such a high level.
"As you know, one of the hottest topics for many taxpayers in your state is the cost of illegal immigrants. The question of whether taxpayers should provide services to illegal residents became a major political issue in California's last deep recession. And I also remember the ballot fight over Proposition 187 in 1994.
"Some of your American activists who were opposed to illegal immigration launched a campaign for an initiative that would, among other things, cut off welfare payments to the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants. But those children are eligible for welfare benefits because they are U.S. citizens. But California has almost 3,000,000 illegal residents. So about 7% of California's residents are illegal. With the Supreme Court decisions requiring states to give children of illegal immigrants the same rights as those of their citizens, what could the voters do? If they were able to somehow eliminate all the illegal aliens they could save about $640 million annually in welfare payments, and between $4 and $6 billion annually for the costs of prisons, schools and emergency rooms. Additionally there are other governmental costs that they do not pay for such as for police and fire protection, parks and recreation facilities, et cetera. Most of the illegals do not pay income taxes and pay little of the sales taxes because in California there is no sales tax on food. If they had a value-added tax on everything, as many European countries do, they could pick up at least some of their expenses through taxes. But of course the tradition in America of not taxing food goes against this possibility.
"In our country we would not have this problem because people must pay their own way. Parents pay for the schooling of their children or go to jail. If you are in jail you must pay your own prison expenses. We don't have welfare so if you can't support yourself you die.”
WHAT IS SOCIAL JUSTICE?
-" It seems to me that the question here is 'what is social justice'. I understand what you are saying Tyler, but it goes against the principles of Jesus that the poor are very important to God. Additionally, If God made us all in His image we are certainly all equal.”
“I can only tell you what we are doing, philosophical ideas that you might want to debate can be better discussed with Kelsi Connor whom you will meet tomorrow. She is a professor of political theory at our university.”
-" It seems that every place we go we run into professors, particularly professors of philosophy.”
- “Well who better than a philosopher to help us to understand people's thinking? Heck, Con, it seems that you enjoyed our philosophy classes with Abraham Kaplan and Nelson Pike at UCLA as much as I did."
-"Right, Wreck. As I remember I even thought about majoring in philosophy. But the call of money won out over being intelligent! But back to Ray's question. What about social justice? You do have a democracy of sorts don't you?
MEANING OF DEMOCRACY
”We have more democracy than you do. You have a republic where your representatives make over 99% of the laws. I know that some states, like California, have an initiative process where the voters can make a law."
-"But sometimes the majority vote for a law and a single judge overturns it as being unconstitutional. Actually it doesn't happen that often! But throughout the history of California hundreds of initiatives have been proposed. Many don't get enough signatures to go on the ballot. Once on the ballot many of them lose. When you do win it is sometimes a negative for the state. Like Proposition 13 in 1977, it severely lowered property tax income. This initiative limited the amount of tax that owners of property could be assessed. It was a time when California land values were increasing rapidly so property taxes could have gone up significantly and forced many poor people out of their houses. That law was good for them. But local governments and schools suffered severely from the initiative. Alternate taxes should have been a part of the initiative, like sales-tax increases. But we Americans don't like taxes of any sort!"
"That initiative process is true democracy. We have that too, but even in our day-to-day legislation we have more direct input into our laws than you do. We vote like they do in Singaling-- from our TVs or computers. Our representatives can make laws, but we can overrule them immediately. And we d
on't allow judges to get in the way of our democracy. After all, democracy really means that those who are affected by the laws get to vote for them.
"The problem with using the term 'democracy' is that so many conflicting ideas have been incorporated under the umbrella term of 'democracy.' For some it means low taxes. For some it means a welfare state. For some it means freedom. For some it means equality. For some it means affirmative action. For some it means 'a republic.' For some it means that God must direct it. For some it means that there should be no God-based influence on the state. For some it means free education. For some it means 'tax the rich.' For some it means that everyone should have a job. For some it means laissez-faire capitalism. There are just so many meanings attached to the term that it has lost its original meaning of one person--one vote. In fact if we look at Athens as a model for the development of the idea of democracy, only certain free men got to vote. It seems that the first thing we should do is to find out what we mean by 'democracy,' 'social justice,' 'equality' or 'liberty.' We should also separate the political definitions from the economic definitions."
-"And it is obvious that we need a fairly high standard of education before we can attempt such semantic clarifications. And in our country, with such a high level of illiteracy, I don't hold much hope for having a real democracy in the near future. The big-money guys can buy off the media, like Fox News, and influence the elected representatives through lobbying. So I guess that the rich people have more real voting power than do the poor people because their money can buy so much propaganda and lobbying.
“The gap between the rich and the poor is constantly widening. I think that the greed of the rich, like in your country, may be too powerful to counteract. Look at the Russian Revolution fighting for equality, the Chinese revolution fighting for equality, the American Revolution fighting for equality, the French Revolution fighting for equality-- all of them just knocked down the people on top and replaced them with the intelligentsia that was just a notch or two below the royalty. I can certainly see how a few people in The Colonies have come up with your idea of a government based on inequality. But I don't like it. I don't like the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor. I don't like the greed of capitalism that seems to put the accumulation of money ahead of the survival of our species and the happiness of our citizens."
“Why do you say that our way threatens the survival of our species?”
-“You may not have noticed but our world is getting warmer, our natural resources are being depleted, our fresh water is becoming more scarce, our air is more polluted as are our rivers and oceans-- and you flaming capitalists don't seem to care. Filling your wallets with cash is more important to you than anybody else's happiness. You don't seem to care that rising waters are enveloping our low-lying islands, are flooding coastal plains and diminishing great agricultural areas and stopping their production. But why worry, you rich guys will still have lobster and steak on your plates and wine in your glasses while southern Africans will have no flour for their bread and the Bangladeshis will have no rice in their bowls. Don't you care about that? Maybe it won't strike home until the rising seas inundate your beachfront houses in Malibu and Maui!"
“Most people are concerned with their own lives today. Even the future is not much of a concern. And I would guess that even you, Lee, are more concerned by the pain of a pebble in your shoe than by a dozen starving babies in Zimbabwe or the dying revolutionaries in a North African country. I admit that there are a number of people really concerned with the problems of the world, of: famine, disease, climate change, overpopulation, crime and all of the other nastinesses we find in our nations. But these people are really relatively few. There are some people who give money, rather than their time, to help those less fortunate. I do that myself. But I can't see me running off to a village in India or a favela in Rio to help people, who seldom have worked, to help themselves. Having children you can't afford, and not availing yourself of whatever opportunities there are for education, not working as hard as you possibly can to improve your standard of living-- are the actions or inactions that cause most of the suffering in the world.
“When I see people fleeing their own countries in order to better their lives, I applaud them. I will have to admit that I have occasionally bought a purse or trinket from an African in Spain and a wooden sculpture from an Indian on the beach at Baja. This is the kind of charity that I believe in-- helping people who were trying to help themselves. But I don't have any pity for those who were able to escape from Africa to the welfare states then sit down and let another country's citizens feed, house and clothe them. I applaud those who aspire to better themselves by working hard or by getting an education. It is a shame that we can't do more for those aspiring people in our country. The problem of course is that no country is big enough or rich enough to take care of all of the people of the world who deserve some help. It may be unfortunate that we have an apartheid on our planet that separates the rich from the poor, the educated from the uneducated, the lucky from the unlucky. I would have to agree with the commander that if we are going to allow for people to achieve we must reduce the babies born to the poor or the incompetent. It's not fair to those children. But how many times have we heard that 'life is not fair.'
"The realities are that the rich will be provided for. Just look at South Africa where half of the water goes to the richest 12% of the population, while 25% of people have no electricity. Naturally there are those do-gooders who want to give free water and electricity to the poor. Why? Have they done anything to deserve it? The only thing I can think of is that they have the second highest murder rate in the world so they are doing something to control their population. I have no pity for people who cannot think a day or two ahead or a generation or two ahead. Our finite world cannot give riches to every inhabitant or handle all of the Earth's populations' needs for sustenance or handle all of our wastes. I think I heard it first from the famous historian Anthony Giddens that 'unlimited growth is not possible.' But I have heard it from just about every intelligent thinker for many years."
- “Your tough approach to the realities of our world saddens me, but I understand where you're coming from. It's just that we have been raised in America to think of democracy as allowing both freedom and equality. So often we have made laws to equalize opportunities. Some years ago we had the affirmative action laws that gave women and racial minorities advantages over the male Anglos. It wasn't fair because often there were less qualified people who moved ahead of the more qualified people. If a person was either a black or Hispanic woman she was able to count as two minorities hired. This worked out well for many people. It allowed qualified minorities, who had not been given a fair opportunity, to achieve. But it also often put incompetent minorities in areas where they replaced competent Anglo men. Of course there were lots of incompetent Anglo men already in the hierarchy. Whether we talk about Anglo men or minorities, whenever you have an incompetent person in a position it is a doubly unequal situation. At least that is what Aristotle thought. It is doubly unequal because you have an incompetent person taking the place of a competent person. Both are in the wrong place.
"But your approach leaves me somewhat philosophically perplexed. I wonder if you are serving the psychological needs of your people. You may well be serving their economic needs––especially those of your population who are economically productive. It seems to me that you are advocating what Erich Fromm called 'having' rather than ' being.' (11) Is it possible that you are bypassing the essence of humanity, or at least the most desirable essence, and substituting the acquisition of things as your definition of freedom? Should we be free to 'be' what we might be or are we to be stuck with 'our being' being equated with possessions?
"You miss the point, my friend, we believe in taking freedom in many guises. For many people it is the accumulation of goods. You may think this is wrong but how do you judge people in your own country? My experience with Americans is that
you are judged more highly if you drive a new Lexus, BMW or a Maserati than if you drive an old Ford. It also strikes me that people in your country judge a person more highly if she lives in a six bedroom four bathroom home in a gated community in the suburbs than if she lives in a trailer park. We allow the freedom to achieve just as you do. We also have philosophers, artists, outstanding professors, classical musicians and others who have chosen their professions freely. Of course if that profession does not pay they may die. We certainly require a level of economic success that must be satisfied to a minimal degree if one is to live. If you are a philosopher you will either need to have income from your writing, your lectures or your teaching. You can't just sit in a cave and think--if you want to eat! So you are free to do what you will, but you had better make provisions for earning a living at the standard which you choose.
"And Lee, you were talking so fast before that I didn't have a chance to mention our concern for the environment. Remember that responsibility is a major pillar of our political philosophy. We feel responsible for minimizing our damage to the environment. What we don't feel responsible for is the people who are not pulling their weight. We have regulations that bind us to a responsibility for the environment. Our electrical power comes from tidal energy and solar power. These are both renewable resources. In fact much of our export business is in providing the expertise and the products for these energy sources to other countries. And one of our major competitors is Kino. I know you have seen what they are doing. And while we don't license parents to have babies like they do in Kino, since we require them to pay most of the expenses of child raising, our people don't have many children. I'll get into that later, but our parents are responsible for most of the education expenses along with the normal expenses of having children. As I remember in your country a middle-class child costs about $250,000 to raise to college age. But it's much more expensive here because of the education expenses. So our fertility rate is under one child per woman-- well below the replacement rate.”
-" I consider myself to be a conservative, but you guys go way beyond my style conservatism.”
"I understand, Con. There are actually several roads that conservatives might take. Ours is the libertarian approach. We want low taxes and minimal government. It is enough that the government takes care of some of the police and fire expenses and handles our national security. Naturally they have to provide an infrastructure including roads and so forth.
“I should probably mention that I see several major approaches to conservatism.
"The first one is libertarian conservatism, reflected in leaders from Barry Goldwater to Ron Paul. Libertarian conservatives believe that government should be small and weak and kept that way through low taxes. From their point of view, the primary role of government is to police the streets, protect private property, and protect the country from external threats.
"The second approach, with which libertarianism is entirely incompatible, is social conservatism. This can include conserving the Caucasian race as superior, the middle class and above as superior to the lower classes, or one's religion as being necessary to conserve. In America that means preserving the Christian religion, in Muslim countries it means conserving Islam. In America Christian fundamentalism, both Catholic and Protestant, has been a real force to reckon with. Fundamentalists of any sort believe that they have a privileged knowledge of God's will so they have the right to use whatever methods available, including executive orders and laws, to impose their will on others. It is one thing to believe, as many evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics do, that life begins at conception. It is another to believe that because you hold certain unprovable beliefs that everyone must follow your shallow thinking. But there is so much money in your religions that people like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson or the Catholic bishops can influence large numbers of people. If they can just convince you that God is on your side, you have a high pulpit to preach from. This social conservatism might also harbor prejudices that have been evident in the past--such as ethnic or religious prejudices.
"A third aspect of conservatism is fiscal--keeping your books in balance while you reduce spending. But generally these conservatives want to keep some equality in the program to take care of those who are negatively affected by the economic forces of the world through no fault of their own. This would be counter to the way we see it here in The Colonies.
"There is another aspect of conservatism that deals with protecting and conserving our values through military might if necessary. Any of the conservative groups might advocate such military force if they are threatened. But it seems that the economic and religious conservatives are the most likely to be ready to pick up a gun. It is strange that Jesus wanted to separate church and state and wanted to live in peace, while his followers would go to any degree to enforce the religion that they say he started.
"So your brand of conservatism depends on what you are trying to conserve-- liberty, your national military system, your social caste, your religion, or your pocketbook. Here in The Colonies we are trying to conserve liberty and our finances. Those other areas of conservativism are not in our sights, in fact we would generally oppose them. We are generally not religious, we're against any caste system and we certainly hope we don't have to fight to save our society."
SOCIAL CONSCIENCE
-"Tyler, you might guess that I have been very much influenced by the work of Erich Fromm and Ashley Montagu and also Alfred Adler. I can see how your successful people who accumulate wealth can overcome some of their inferiority feelings, that Adler discussed. I can see too, how important it is for people to work. Freud, Montagu and Fromm all agreed on this. But isn't there a need for socialization, for loving, for caring for others like Montagu and Fromm believed?"
"Okay, let's talk about Fromm. In his later life he advocated a type of socialistic humanism. This we reject. He saw what he called 'production' as a positive personality factor. His ideas of production are far more expansive than ours. We want to produce in economic and other areas but, unlike Fromm, we are not concerned with loving all mankind. Admittedly we are selfish. But that is the basic nature of humankind. I don't say that at some point our society might not move towards loving everybody, like the welfare states of Europe-- but with the enormity of the population and the problems it develops and magnifies, such a loving and unselfish philosophy of life is not realistically possible today. Philosophers may dream of it, but politicians and the people they lead are not psychologically or economically capable of delivering such a dream.
"I might say that, with Freud and Montagu, that to be mentally healthy you must have the ability to love and to work. We emphasize work. But in our families love becomes very important. We just don't extend it to all of humanity as Erich Fromm did when he said that the ultimate extension of love is loving all humanity. I'm not sure you will find any country that has that as a goal. Certainly there are countries, and I'm thinking primarily of Norway, that have a large welfare state for its population, take in a number of refugees, and give a great deal of money in foreign aid. Still the primary concern is its own citizens. In fact over 15 years ago, before 2010, Norway began reducing its immigrant quota and sending many illegal immigrants out of the country.
“As individuals and as nations we think first of the people closest to us. I would agree that the Scandinavian countries are more geared to looking at most people as equals, but we are not at the other end of the continuum. We are to the right of center. They are pretty far to the left. But we are not at the extreme right. But back to Fromm. I think you will see that we agree with him in some cases.
"You remember Fromm's four negative personality orientations. One was the 'receptive' type. He said that it was a negative to expect that others should take care of you. We agree with him there. In fact this is the personality type that wants the welfare state. So our society does fight, in our own way, what he saw as a major negative. It reminds me of a news story I sa
w when I last visited Norway. A Somalian woman had received over $150,000 from the state saying that she needed money for her many children and that there was no husband in her house. There was in fact a husband. Over 100 other Somalian women in Norway were found to be using the state to support them illegally. Each would get a divorce from her husband in Norway then collect very generous payments from the government for being a nonworking mother and for each of the children—an the former husband was with his family all the while. A Norwegian friend told me that it was quite common for the Somalians to have a number of children, each supported legally by the country. (11a) The average Somalian woman in Norway has four children. We would not permit that at all."
-"I remember meeting a Scandinavian taxi driver in the Canary Islands. He was receiving a full state disability benefit for being unable to work. So he left the snow and ice of the North can settled in the sun with his second job. I remember too meeting a Norwegian living on a disability pension in Phuket, Thailand. He was running a bar there. A Dutch friend of mine complained that the Dutch government was also sending disability checks to people in Spain who said they were unable to work in Holland."
"Totally unfair and illegal yet quite common in those welfare states. They seem to believe that everyone is good and truthful--and equal! But the reality is that many people are very selfish and are willing to let others pay for them to lead the 'good life.' There is no way that would happen here in The Colonies!
"But back to Fromm. He said, being exploitative was a negative. Here I would both agree and disagree with him. Freedom economically requires some exploitation. If I'm going to produce goods I want the best price I can get for them and the possibility to be able to produce them as cheaply as possible. At the same time I don't want to be exploited as a citizen. So depending on which area of society we are talking about we can approve or disapprove of this Frommian negative.
"He talked about hoarding as a psychological negative. While his idea was much broader than I want to examine, we believe that if a person wants to see his world in terms of things and accumulates things that he values, there is no problem there. Again, the welfare state people would want to take what the rich have hoarded and give it to the receptive people. We think freedom allows us to do what we will with what we earn. But as people always say 'you can't take it with you.' And in our case, as I have explained, whatever the hoarder had kept will go back to the government on his death.
"Then he talked about 'marketing' as being a personality trait that is negative. Here he was criticizing those who continually mold themselves into what they think society wants. They are in effect, marketing themselves. They are the guys with the trophy wives, expensive cars and the designer clothes. I think I would go along with Fromm here because freedom is not following. I think freedom should allow us to lead."
-"Fromm also postulated eight basic needs-- basic psychological needs. He said that we needed a sense of identity-- being a unique person as part of a social group.”
“I could accept that but I don't think it's universal. It's nice to see yourself as part of a group. Some of our people do, and are happy. Some of our people don't, and are happy.”
-"Another of the humanistic needs that he saw as important was the need for 'relatedness'. He thought it was essential to have relationships with others and to care for and respect them.”
"Again I can both agree and disagree. With freedom you can associate with others and care for them and respect them. But I don't think it's a universal need. Some people are quite happy pursuing their our own interests. You remember that he also listed 'rootedness' as a need. He said we also need a feeling of belonging. I have the same answer to that one.
"You remember that he also listed several needs that I think we meet much better than the welfare states are designed to do. He listed 'excitation and stimulation' which meant that we should be actively striving for a goal, not merely responding to outside influences. He mentioned 'unity' meaning a feeling of oneness between the individual and the outside world. We recognize that and we want to achieve within that world. He listed 'transcendence' meaning being creative and living an interesting life. We do that. Of course he also listed under 'transcendence' that we need to be in a loving life. While personally I would like that, I don't think that this is necessary for all. Was John the Baptist happy in his solitary life? What about the yogis in their caves in India pursuing what they think is the greatest of all pursuits-- attaining moksha. What about the philosopher Immanuel Kant, actress Sarah Bernhardt, Joan of Arc or Queen Elizabeth I? They all were incredibly successful without a committed love in their lives. Fromm mentioned 'effectiveness', the need to feel accomplished. I don't know of any country that allows for the possibility of this better than we do in The Colonies. The point is that your humanistic goals do not necessarily need to be met in a socialized welfare state. Allowing freedom, as we do, opens the opportunity much wider in some areas of our human potential, while admittedly reducing them in others.”
-"OK, but what if your democracy wanted to change and to help all of its citizens?”
”I can't imagine people here voting to eliminate our freedom and replacing it with equality. It would be possible but highly improbable. Our life is too good here to change.”
-"I wonder if we could say that a belief in democracy is a basic assumption?"
-”Is it an assumption if it has worked? I think once an idea is a reality it has passed the assumption level.”
”It worked in early America and in early France. It does keep people happy because they think that they have chosen their rulers. The problem is that as we become more globalized there are many more issues for a voter to deal with. This is true also of the legislators and the administrators. Today to have a functioning democracy you would have to have highly educated voters and elected officials who are even more educated and experienced. Few, if any, can understand all of the ramifications of every religious belief, every economic theory, every political theory and have a great knowledge of history. Because no one has all of these attributes many of the so-called advanced countries are shrinking their mental boundaries and becoming more nationalistic. Not only that, but they are shrinking their expansive and expensive welfare states.
“You might say that when people are afraid they tend to come back to their families. When the European Union wished to allow free movement within the states, as is true in the US, the poorer East Europeans, Middle Easterners and Africans wandered west and north and tapped into the lucrative welfare states that the Western citizens had provided for themselves. When their eastern and southern cousins had tapped too deeply into the till, the welcoming hosts decided to close their doors. The self-centered, often criminal, attitudes of the immigrants had soured the welcoming hands of the West and North. Parties of the right gained strength as the more prosperous people decided to keep what was theirs. This was done through democratic means. But the actions ran counter to what many democratic idealists held dear-- that all people are equal.
“Asylum-seekers became more numerous while the asylums were erecting higher fences. There comes a point when people's generosity has tapped too deeply into their purses. As I remember, in around 2010 and 2011 several European countries began moves to tighten the reins on the illegals in their countries. You may recall that in the 1980s the Schengen Agreement was signed which eliminated passport controls in Europe once you were within the countries of the signees. In the 90s more countries joined. But when it was found that people could get into one country legally or illegally then travel to any other country without a passport, more welfare frauds and crime entered the relatively peaceful European countries.”
-"I can understand their thinking,"
"Here is another point. People nearly always base their political expectations on hope rather than on reality. Sometimes it is realizable, sometimes not. The American and French revolutions eventually allowed for what the Founding Fathers called a 'natural aristocracy of men' t
o emerge through some type of equality of opportunity. But the Marxist hope of a truly equalitarian society never proved possible. The truth is that people are not equal. They may like to call for equality in some political pleas, such as when the non-royal elite, as the American and French founding fathers, wanted to be freer to think, to lead and to earn. The French called for 'liberty, equality, fraternity' while the American declared that 'All men are created equal.' But once they had their freedom from the monarchy their call was for equal political and legal rights--not for actual equality. As Article 2 of the French Rights of Man clearly states: 'The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
-"But Tyler, isn't it possible that the right to property and to security can be expanded to include equalitarian treatment throughout life?"
"Why should such rights be extended? Equality of opportunity is the major right that we espouse. In the French 'Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen' it called for equal rights before the law, which was meant to give the citizens an equal starting point, but so often this has evolved into the right to equal treatment from cradle to grave. In our Colonies we have kept the original intent of the revolutionaries and we fight the Marxist ideal for unearned equality.
"Let me quote from a few of the French 'Rights of Man' and as they saw it in 1789. They proposed both rights and duties of citizens of the new Republic. The document said in Article 1 that 'men are born free and equal in rights.' In Article 2 they listed those rights as liberty, property, security and the resistance to oppression. In Article 4 it said, and I quote, 'Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.' Then in the next article it said that law can only prohibit actions that are harmful to society.
"Naturally there were rights related to people being charged with crimes and that they were innocent until proven guilty. But as you move down the list we see that in number 10 it said that everyone is entitled to his own opinions, including his religious views, providing that their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law. In Article 11 freedom of speech was allowed but had to be responsible as allowed by the law. It was not seen, as your Supreme Court has ruled, that all speech is legal. There were more rights, of course, but you get the picture. You have rights and you have responsibilities. Our country's Constitution was based more on the French 'Rights of Man' than on your American Constitution. You talk about your checks and balances in your Republic. We don't want nine people on the Supreme Court to direct our democratic ideas. Of course because our country was founded in this century we had much more experience than did your Founding Fathers in seeing what would work and what would not. We certainly would not allow a small colony, like your Rhode Island, to have as much representation has a large colony, such as California. The way we see it your Senate and your courts are set up in a nondemocratic way.
"As I keep repeating, we are all about liberty and responsibility. We are admittedly individually selfish and that is the kind of country we want to guide us.
"You must remember a few things about modern governments. One is that democracy is not the only way to run a country. Two, is that there are no governments that are actually democratic. Many call themselves democracies and are really republics. Others call themselves democracies and are really monarchies, run by dictators. And the third thing is that if we are to be pragmatic we should look at what works. China's one-party system, an oligarchy, has been the most efficient system for a large country in recent years. At the local levels the Chinese do have something close to a true democracy, but at the national level it is run by the Communist Party. In the Mideast there are some small sheikdoms that are run very efficiently by the leader. Undoubtedly the people are better off than if they were in a democracy. But admittedly telling people that they have democracy is a way of keeping them happy because they have to blame themselves for the messes in which they find themselves.
"We were amused by the revolutions in North Africa 15 years ago. We were delighted that they were overthrowing tyrants who were robbing them blind. But there was no way that any leader could emerge immediately within their populations and give them all university educations and jobs. Democracy is not magic, but it is certainly an effective call for revolutionaries. But once you have revolted you will probably find that your situation is still revolting!
"But there is more to developing a nation today. We have touched upon the political system and how democracy may or may not work. We have touched upon the economic system and how liberty and equality may or may not work. But there is also often a national attitude which can goad or rein in the populace. I see in you Americans an unrealistic Pollyana attitude. You seem to believe that nothing will go wrong. The levees in New Orleans were known to be weak. But all was positive. Then Katrina came and smashed the dreams of many. On the other hand that Pollyanna attitude seems to help you when you go to war, which for you seems to be a perpetual pastime. You always think that you will win and that things will come out as you believe they will. In Iraq you toppled Hussein and were thanked by suicide bombers terrorizing both you and the Iraqis. Your idea of a democracy for Iraq was a secular state. But lo and behold, a Muslim democracy emerged in a Muslim country. How could that happen?
“As opposed to your positive attitude, I see the Brits and the Scandinavians as often quite pessimistic. Maybe you Americans have been too much influenced by Walt Disney, where everything always turns out happy in the end!”
- “I see some truth in what you are saying, Tyler. But where do you get your societal values?”
“Well like I said before, freedom and responsibility are our core values. If responsibility is of value, then certainly honesty must be held very high. Our values are societal but with strong self-centered values as essential in our mores-- and enlightened self-interest, as you say, must be considered in our thinking. But those self-centered values cannot be taken to the point of anarchy. Society must hold us responsible if we don't hold ourselves responsible. Maybe you're thinking of some other questions, like: abortion, euthanasia, suicide, and capital punishment. We don't have religious values that have flooded our government like you have had. Consequently our freedom allows us to have abortions and to die when we want. If you want to end your life you merely take the pills that you can get at any pharmacy. You don't need three doctors and a minister to try to talk you out of it or to say that you're not ill enough to die. Relative to capital punishment, it is allowed for some traitors, murderers, human traffickers and rapists-- they have gone much too far in being irresponsible."
-" Tyler, it seems that the development of your country is along the lines of what the American Tea Partiers have been demonstrating for since the early part of this century. Are you familiar with them?”
"Naturally, in fact some of them have come over to see what we are doing. But from what I understand their ideas are self conflicting. They also don't seem to have a firm grasp of what they are after and what history should be showing them. For example, most of them seem to be Christian and they want freedom within a Christian sense. First, if you are going to let religion into your country as a major principle for its values, you really must let all religions in. This is what freedom is about. And if you are going to let in one ethnic group, such as the Anglos, all ethnic groups should be allowed in. Of course these ideas are qualified by the concept of freedom and responsibility. For example, if you are going to have a Protestant Christian ethic, it would seem that the message of Jesus was to exalt the poor. So the pursuit of riches seems to be contradictory to His message. However if you use as a model the actions of the Catholic Church or many of the Protestant mega-churches, then you have a model for acquirin
g riches. But the model is based theoretically on getting riches for God, rather than yourself-- even though it is the people at the top, the popes and cardinals and the mega-ministers who are actually profiting. The God model is contradictory to individual freedom. It allows those who say they are 'holy' to amass fortunes under the guise of freedom. But it is not responsible. It is robbing the vulnerable, telling them that they are buying hope, telling them that they are good and wise. But I think if the people were wise they would grab their purses and run.”
FOUNDING FATHERS
-"As you know Tyler, they want an America that never was. They talk about the Founding Fathers as if they were freedom loving Christians. But in fact, as we have seen before (12), the major five or six were primarily deists, who believed in a creating God that is not involved in the world. It was certainly not a personal God that so many in America believe in today. Most were deathly afraid of organized religion, particularly Catholicism. And even those who believed in a more theistic God, like John Adams, did not believe in the divinity of Jesus. Among the 50 or so signers of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution most were Protestants, at least nominal Protestants, three were Catholic. But in fact, as we have seen before, there were five to seven men who were not necessarily Christian. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. Even Abe Lincoln was said to be a non-believer. Certainly he was not a church member."
-"Then why would Jefferson write about us being 'created equal' or Lincoln write in a letter to the Loyal Colored People of Baltimore, after they gave him a Bible, that 'All the good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man's welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.' It seems that there was a belief in God by those people.”
-"You remember, Ray, when we met with Dr. Singh about how when people use politics that they use whatever techniques are necessary to get their message across. There is no question that Jefferson was at best, a deist. And some people close to Lincoln said that he was a nonbeliever. Some thought he was also a deist, but I would agree that he was probably a Christian but never belonged to a Christian church. It is surprising that so many American presidents did not seem to become openly religious until they ran for public office. In our country it is political suicide to not be in the Judeo-Christian tradition. This seems to be particularly true today. It was not nearly as true in the days of Adams and Jefferson. Could you believe that someone who did not believe in the resurrection, as John Adams held, or did not believe in a personal God, as Jefferson, could be elected today? So if you want to be elected you at least have to 'talk the talk' and you occasionally must 'walk the walk' in the National Cathedral. But let's get back to the Tea Party and their ideas about improving government.”
"You have so many people in your country who don't have a clue about history. They seem to believe that your country was founded on Christian principles. If that were true then revolution would be a Christian necessity, but Jesus said to 'render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's.' Revolution would not be part of the teachings of Jesus. The Founding Fathers wanted a separation of church and state. That might be very well within the teachings of Jesus. As you said the major founding fathers were deists-- people who believed that there was a creator but that creator was not involved in the world. (12a) They were not privy to the science we have today that certainly eliminates the possibility of any truth in the creation story of Genesis.
"Your Constitution never mentions God or Jesus. The Declaration of Independence says we were created but does not say whether we were created by God or by our parents. The main thrust of the Declaration was that the government gets its power from the people not from the king who supposedly rules by the grace of God."
-”The 1796 treaty with Tripoli states that the United States was 'in no sense founded on the Christian religion'. This was not an idle statement, meant to satisfy Muslims. This treaty was written under the presidency of George Washington and signed under the presidency of John Adams."
-"We discussed this with Dr. Wang in Kino. (13) The major founders of the United States were deists--neither atheists nor Christians. There may have been a creator billions of years ago, but that creator was not involved in the lives of people. This is so different from what American evangelists believe. They believe in a personal God-- a God who judges, who can be prayed to, who knows everything we do. Had Darwin lived in the 17th or 18th century, rather than the 19th, it is highly likely that the founding fathers would have been atheists. They were certainly thinkers."
-"You may be right about the six or seven major founders, but a huge number of those in the Continental Congress and those who signed the Declaration of Independence were religious. I know that three were Catholic. A number of others were Protestants. And these people changed Jefferson's words in the Declaration of Independence. He originally wrote that 'all men are created equal and independent. From that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable.' Congress changed that phrase to increase the religious idea of many of them. So it was finally written 'all men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.'"
-"But Ray, you know that the Declaration of Independence is not a law. It is a call to revolution against the king.
"We had already mentioned that George Washington's pastor said he thought that George was an atheist. Then there was the Episcopal minister Bird Wilson of New York, who protested in 1831 that: 'Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism.' The remarks of the minister were reported in the newspapers of the day.
"In fact, if the founding fathers had been followers of the Judeo-Christian tradition there probably would never have been a revolution. As I remember, the Old Testament said that 'For rebellion as is the sin of witchcraft.' (14) Then in the next verse Saul tells Samuel that he had made a mistake because he followed the will of the people rather than the will of the Lord. In the New Testament we come back to the words of Jesus and 'rendering unto Caesar.' It seems that true Christians would have suffered in silence and waited for their rewards in heaven. This would have been more in accordance with Peter (15) 'For the Lord's sake accept the authority of every human institution, whether of the emperor as supreme, or of governors, as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right.' And Paul wrote to the Romans 'Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resist authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.' (16) Do you think that God fearing Christians would have thought of rebellion, revolution?
"But the colonists would not suffer in silence. Let me read you this part of the Declaration. I always keep a copy in my wallet. 'That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.' Does that sound like it is in accord with the New Testament verses
I just cited?
"But back to their beliefs in smaller government and lower taxes. If I were to talk to Tea Party members- would want to know what they would give up in the government: defense, healthcare, Social Security, inter-state highway construction and maintenance, national parks, commerce incentives to help American businesses, international relations, farm subsidies, then I would like to know what kinds of taxes they would impose to cover what they wanted government to do: value added taxes, flat income taxes, a graduated income tax, corporate taxes, use taxes for-- gasoline, education, etc. and would they plan to pay off the national debt fairly or would they merely print more money to pay it off?
"I would also want to know where they stand on giving tax subsidies and tax deductions to churches. Even the Supreme Court has now affirmed that states can allow tax subsidies and tax deductions to religious schools. In the Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v Winn opinion that was decided in 2011, five of the six Catholic judges on the court voted for overturning the lower court's decision. So in the 5 to 4 decision it ruled that states can give tax credits for tuition paid to religious schools. It also decided that taxpayers cannot challenge the tax credit worth millions of dollars to support religious schools. They can challenge a direct appropriation from the government to a religious school but not a tax credit given to those supporting religious schools. I don't really see the difference. In either case the taxpayers are subsidizing the religious school. Somebody has to make up the difference in the taxes needed when some people are getting tax credits. The facts in this case were that $50 million was donated annually to tuition scholarship funds. That $50 million was then deducted from tax bills as direct credits. So the state lost $50 million in taxes which have gone to support religious schools. Since the Catholic schools were the major beneficiaries, by far, I can see why those five Catholic judges ruled for their church-- and against the democratic principles of the country and the separation of church and state. I think this is exactly what Jefferson was afraid of. Arizona had a budget deficit of $1 billion. So it certainly didn't make fiscal sense for the state."
-"But Lee, if those people were not going to religious schools the government would have to provide for them in public education. It's much cheaper for the state to have private schools do some of their work."
-"That may be true, but like Justice Kagan said in her dissent, it devastates the ability of taxpayers to challenge government actions that favor religion. And like I just said, she said there was no difference between a tax credit and a direct appropriation."
-"However dominant in terms of numbers, Christianity is only a thread in the American tapestry—it is not the whole tapestry. Our God who is spoken of and called on and prayed to in the public sphere is an essential character in the American drama.”
-"But He is not specifically God the Father or the God of Abraham. The right's contention that we are a "Christian nation" that has fallen from pure origins and can achieve redemption by some kind of return to Christian values is based on wishful thinking, not convincing historical argument. Writing to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790, George Washington assured his Jewish countrymen that the American government 'to bigotry no sanction.' The Founders also knew the nation would grow ever more diverse; in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson's bill for religious freedom was 'meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.' And thank God—or, if you choose, thank the Founders—that it did indeed.
"Understanding the past may help us move forward. When the subject is faith in the public arena, secularists generally point to Jefferson's 'wall of separation between church and state" and think the argument should end there; still many conservative Christians defend their positions by calling the Founders Christian, as though Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin were Calvinist missionaries."
-"But Lee, to claim that religion has only recently become a political force in the United States is uninformed and unhistorical; in practice, the 'wall' of separation is not a very tall one."
-"It's certainly not as tall as it once was. Religious judges on the Supreme Court along with the Bible Belt legislators have whittled away log after log until we have a nation where religion controls much of the public treasury and stipulates many of the national and local laws. This is a situation that would make our founders turn over in their graves."
WHICH OF YOUR 'RIGHTS' AID REAL FREEDOM?
-"That's a major part of America's problems. If you didn't give all those tax breaks to religions you could save a bundle. But your religions so often are anti-science that it severely restricts your education, even in many universities. I look at the bills presented in some of your southern legislatures where they are trying to get creationism on an equal footing with evolution, or where they want to fight science instead of teaching it. The students in those anti-science areas are left way behind those of us who are competent scientists and are using science to change the world while we make money. I think of your students who get inferior educations as being in the same boat as those in third world countries or in countries where they only learn the Bible or the Koran. Your holy scriptures don't tell you how to use the Internet, make a microchip, develop a pollution free engine or tell you how to eliminate global warming. The inferiority of so many of your schools shows clearly in the international tests on math and science. Just like the Third World countries' students, your students are hobbled in their educational handicaps, in their lack of knowledge or in their dubious knowledge of things that are not true.
"Compare yourself with other nations relative to the effects of climate change. Only 66% of Americans want the government to help in wind and solar energy use. Compare that with South Korea where 96% of the people want it. Even Kenya has an 87% favorable rating for this. China, the UK, and France are all above the US in this necessary concern. Or look at the number of people who are active in environmental groups in the US it’s 6.1% at. Compare that with Mali at 26%.”
-” I wonder if we are getting so many often meaningless inputs into our brains from twitter, blogs and the media that we can’t make intelligent decisions. a number of researchers have found that with so much information entering our brains that we can’t make the best decisions. Often recent information is more important to the brain than quality information."(17)
“It is a shame that all people who are intelligent hard workers do not get an equal break, an equal starting line. The children of citizens in our country get a pretty good shot at it. But so many in the world don't have such rights. I really feel bad about this. I don't feel bad about people who don't want to achieve, but I would love to help those who do want to better themselves. It's a shame that we don't have real universal human rights. But there is not enough money in the world to allow a universal equality of opportunity.
"So much time is spent on all kinds of other 'rights' in the US and in Europe. For example in your country a mentally ill person may be taken to court to determine if he needs treatment. His rights are defended by a government paid lawyer. But no one has a lawyer for the people that he might damage. Then you have the people from the far right who are defending gun rights while fighting taxes and government spending. Where did they expect to cut expenses, education?, police and fire protection?, mental health?, Medicare?, Social Security?, defense?, roads?
"It seems that the world is not nearly globalized enough. Globalized commerce is one thing, globalized individual freedom is quite another."
-"I have some other thoughts about unfairness in our world. People are citizens of their country by luck. Should we rank all the people in the world according to intelligence and their work ethics then let them choose the country they prefer? This of course would never work. So we have a basic unfairness in life. Some people are born to the good life in Norway, some are born as slaves in Mali. Some want to leave the country and work to achieve. I appl
aud this. But others want to leave the country and be taken care of by others. I don't like this at all.”
LIBERTARIANISM
"This brings us back to libertarianism. For years in America you have had people who want total liberty. And as you know, liberty and equality are quite opposite. You really can't have both. For example if you tax the rich more than the poor but they get the same services, it's not equal. You tax incomes to bring down the rich then you give the money to the poor. In your American Social Security all the workers contribute the same percentage, but after they retire the wealthier receive a lower percentage of their contributions than do the poor. In your Medicare also you are treated equally even though some contributed much more money from their salaries. In your Medicaid programs, the richer people pay so that poor people can have medical attention. You punish those who have succeeded and reward those who have not. We don't think that's fair."
-"But you have the problem of allowing liberty without letting it degenerate into anarchy."
"You may remember that a number years ago Ayn Rand published her massive works, 'The Fountainhead' and 'Atlas Shrugged.' She emphasized libertarianism without it leading to anarchy.”
-"I never read those books.”
-" Let me try to synopsize them. In 'The Fountainhead' the author portrayed a young architect, Howard Roark, as a person who preferred to go his own way into obscurity rather than compromise his ideals and work with a major architectural firm. He followed his calling to design according to his ideas of modern architecture, rather than copying the Greeks and the Romans as most architects had been doing. After a number of projects that he had designed, often anonymously, were accepted as brilliant he eventually becomes known for his genius. Not only was his architectural genius acclaimed, but the object of his love, which he had lost, eventually returns and they are married. So his lifelong struggles, repeatedly hurdling failure, are rewarded in the end by all the rewards that anyone could dream. Liberty raised its head through the muck of the stagnating society and Roark and his principles triumphed.
"In 'Atlas Shrugged' Rand developed her philosophy of 'objectivism' even further. She saw the United States as what we might call 'dystopian,' that is, the opposite of a utopia. The government takes more and more power and thwarts the efforts of the people. It makes the society run for the benefit of the industrialists and capitalists--the moneymakers. To work effectively a society needs the great minds of the movers. If a person is not free to create, it kills the spirit of that person and puts another brake on the society. The best society is not one where people are enslaved and held down, it is one that is powered by the great minds and the profit motive.
"She said that her book described 'the role of man's mind in existence.' If the human race is to achieve its highest, the brightest people must be encouraged and allowed to achieve. You can see here the influence of Nietzsche on her thinking and of the morality of his 'supermen' being shared among themselves, without considering the rest of us in the 'herd' that includes the great majority of us. We in the herd are no better than animals. But some of us may have some potential. According to Rand the government is our enemy, the blanket of oppression that attempts to keep us all equal must be slit so that truly remarkable and motivated minds can slide through and achieve. The blanket must be lifted if humanity is to breathe.
"While we need thinkers and movers, most social systems keep them bottled up."
-" Isn't that what your church did with Galileo?"
-" I see your point Lee. The Church has made mistakes but not as many as Kings, revolutionaries and governments. How many intelligent minds did Lenin and Stalin take? How many did Henry VIII take? How many had bin Laden taken? In fact look at how Jesus and Paul were taken."
- “But I think that the message of Jesus was more about equality, or even the superiority of the poor. His message seemed to be quite the opposite of that of Ayn Rand. Her ethical system was the self-centered morality that Wanda Wang talked about. (18) But I would see it even more in the philosophy of Nietzsche. She abhorred socialism while championing laissez-faire capitalism.
“But guys, did you know that while she abhorred government welfare programs in theory, in actuality she availed herself of both Social Security and Medicare. Since she had paid into Social Security all her life she felt she was entitled to it. Then because of her two pack a day smoking habit she needed Medicare's help to try to treat her lung cancer. It was comical that she called the scientific evidence against smoking a hoax, but in the end she was humbled and humiliated by that ‘hoax.’”
-"Some would say that she was two-faced in that she preached small government and self responsibility but in the end she took Social Security and Medicare benefits. Actually she was true to her philosophy. Self interest was her basic thesis and she stayed with it even if it meant tapping into what the government allowed.”
-“Even though I’m an atheist, I think I am more on the side of Jesus than of Rand. But Con, I would guess that you would agree with her.”
-"I think she makes a very strong case for the survival of the fittest in the workplace and of the essential nature of laissez-faire capitalism. In 'Atlas Shrugged,' her character Dagny Taggert was a strong woman who worked to keep alive the railroad company that her grandfather had started. She was so far superior to her brother James, who was afraid to take responsibility while the company he headed was drowning. She unites economically, philosophically and romantically with Hank Reardon, a self made steel magnate. The fight for freedom, for economic freedom, requires fighting the socialistic government.
"We have been so indoctrinated by religion and society that we believe that we must help the poor and pull down the rich. Rand, through her characters, makes the case for the survival of the fittest and for the essential nature of the 'dog eat dog' mentality necessary for society to succeed. Money is not evil. It is merely the evidence that the person has succeeded in the workplace. When the government tries to take away that product of one's labors, it is going against nature. Naturally the majority of people will want economic equality but we can see from the Soviet experiment that it doesn't work-- particularly with a large society."
- “But what happened after the communist regime was toppled? The riches were taken by the cronies of the old rulers or by the gigantic mafia that grew in the new Russia."
"Self centered interests move nearly all of us. Soviet communism certainly thwarted this natural impulse.
The Tea Partiers you had in your country a few years ago sounded like what Ayn Rand was talking about-- smaller government, less equality, fewer taxes and no socialism. The big difference was that when I heard many of them interviewed on TV they didn't seem to know what capitalism or socialism actually was. They didn't have suggestions for which parts of government spending they wanted to cut. The older ones didn't want to cut Social Security or Medicare and most didn't want to cut the military. And they certainly wanted no gun control. It seemed that they didn’t have any real theory, they just wanted lower taxes and smaller government but they didn’t have a well thought-out program. Maybe their financial benefactors, the Koch brothers and a few other billionaires, want more freedom to drill for oil anywhere and to pay fewer taxes. But the Tea Partiers had no concrete and comprehensive theory like Karl Marx, Adam Smith or Ayn Rand had.
"Our social philosophy is well thought out, like Ayn Rand's, but we emphasize that responsibility must go hand-in-hand with freedom. As I keep reminding you it is our responsibility to not interfere with another person's freedom."
-"Relative to Ayn Rand's approach to freedom I would add that these movers and shakers often show their potentials early. Some drop out of high school, some drop out of college before they graduate, some stop the pursuit of their graduate degrees. But it depends on what you want to do. If you want to get into the internet technology game, college sure helps but experience and practice also help. Bill Gates had a near perfect score on his college aptitude tes
ts, started at Harvard, but dropped out when he had all the knowledge he needed to do what he wanted. And like we mentioned, Mark Zuckerberg got his idea for Facebook while studying at Harvard, but dropped out when he got it going and his project became more important than acquiring more knowledge and a sheepskin diploma.
"While I don't think that one's yearly income is the only criterion for success, Ayn Rand seems to think it is quite important. I think that the passion to achieve is essential. When Robert de Niro dropped out of high school, he knew where his passion was pointing. It seems that the star-struck hoards occasionally squeeze some of their members to the top and a high school diploma is not a necessarily the golden key. Catherine Zeta-Jones, Peter Jackson, Billy Joel and rapper Jay Z are all multi-multi-millionaires yet never heard their high school principals charge them at their graduation that 'the world is their oyster' and there is nothing they can't accomplish. Hotel owning billionaire Kirk Kirkorian dropped out of school in the 8th grade."
-"Probably the most successful of the high school dropouts is Richard Branson who dropped out of high school to start a magazine, then continued his entrepreneurial passions into records, airlines and a number of other pursuits."
-"Wasn't it Thomas Edison who said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration?"
"Whatever it is, we want that freedom to be able to nurture the doers. Graduating from a university is necessary for most of us to have the knowledge to do what we want to do. But like you have said, you only need enough education to give your engines the fuel they need to get you where you want to go. While I don't want to get into it now, education has two essential prongs. There is the vocational education that you have alluded to, but there is also the education needed to make you a thinking and reasoning person and a competent and worthwhile citizen. But I don't want get into that just now.
"With all the push for equality the Western millionaires are not being reduced to paupers. The rich are definitely getting richer. Naturally those who want equality complain that the rich are just greedy selfish people. But the fact is they are the ones who run the world and make things happen. Where would the world be without the Microsoft of Bill Gates, the computers and iPhones of Apple's Steve Jobs, and the brains behind the airlines, the oil and energy companies, and the men and money behind the manufacturing and businesses of the world?
"In most of the world today people make their money themselves. So we see a meritocracy. There aren't nearly as many people who get rich just by inheriting. The older money of the Vanderbilts, or the more recent money of the Kennedys doesn't place people on the Forbes list of billionaires. Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, Warren Buffett made their money themselves—as did about 80% of billionaires. So the realities of the world today fall in with our philosophy of freedom. There is still some old money like in the royal family of England and the inherited oil riches of Saudi Arabia and Brunei, but in the main, today's billionaires have made it themselves. They have made it in Mexico, the US, France, England, Russia, China and India. They have made it in spite of a pervading religious or social view that people are equal. They are not. Or should I say 'WE are not.'
"You probably know that the top five percent of US households hold 63 percent of the entire country's wealth. The bottom 80 percent holds about 15%. So your equalitarian country does not seem to be all that equal. Do you think that Thomas Jefferson would be upset? He was a pretty rich guy but he didn't share his wealth, heck, he didn't even set his own slaves free!”
-"When we have so many rich people paying so little taxes I don't see why we have to borrow from China to support them and give them tax breaks. I really don't like to see us borrow to pay for our deficits but public borrowing has probably been going on as long as governments have operated.
THE HISTORY OF PUBLIC BORROWING
-"When kings needed money to fund wars, to build monuments, or to enrich themselves they usually raised the taxes if that was possible, if not they borrowed from somebody. In fifth century BC in Greece taxes were not sufficient to fund the Peloponnesian wars so the rulers of the states borrowed, often from the religious institutions that had hoarded gold and gifts from the faithful. It is common nearly everywhere that we find a government that we find borrowing to cover the wishes of the rulers. From the 1200s to the 1400s in Italy-- Venice and Florence along with other states borrowed copiously. The American Revolution was funded by borrowing. But when the debt becomes too large the country must repudiate the debts and declare bankruptcy, as France has done several times. It happened, too, with Venice and Genoa in the 15th and 16th centuries, and Spain and Amsterdam in the 17th and 18th centuries.
"When borrowing has reached unlivable levels, like in Greece and Ireland as well as the UK and the US 15 years ago, severe measures must be taken. Cutting spending, often by reducing government pay and government services, raising taxes, devaluing the currency which leads to inflation, and bankruptcy are the most likely negatives. If a country is industrious and can grow its economy sufficiently, it may be able to pay off its debts. But of course it needs foreign buyers to absorb its wares and use its services.
RELIGION AND SUBSIDIES
-"What about religion in your country?