Reactionary Contemplations

One note about the Enlightenment itself (as opposed to the "Enlightenment Civilization" I've postulated in this blog), is that the "rights" involved in the Enlightenment philosophy are procedural rights, not social rights. There seems to be a new tide of thought that purports to build upon Enlightenment thinking, and it's a dangerous tide.

What I mean is this: the Enlightenment generally addressed the relationship between governments and citizens. This new movement, often termed "political correctness" by its detractors, addresses the relationship between citizens and citizens.

In Enlightenment thinking, "rights" have to do with objective standards of legal treatment: one ought not to be jailed for opinions, divine right does not exist, governments should be democratic, etc.

In the newer "PC" thinking, measures are being taken to affect some of the very fundamental rights that the Enlightenment sought to protect, in the name of equality or health. For example: business owners are being forced not to allow smoking in the business owner's private property -- even if the business owner wants to allow smoking in the establishment.

I'd like to add to this topic at some point .....

USA military to recruit foreigners?

Here is a startling news item:

Boston.com - USA military to recruit non-citizens?

This would be a big step toward following the Roman Republic's slide into Empire! A lot of our freedoms depend upon the idea that the military would "rebel" internally if used against US citizens in a repressive manner. That internal cultural restraint in the military goes out the window if the troops themselves are not Americans. Wow. A matter of grave concern, here.

Open Comments: Israel

If anyone from Knights & Knaves Alehouse wants to carry on a discussion about Israel, feel free to do so here. Similarly, discussions about India's status as an enlightenment-influenced country, etc. Any topic is okay: open season.

Major Points About Civilization

Enlightenment Civilization vs. Local Culture

To my mind, the basic elements of enlightenment civilization include some structural aspects (democracy, some form of guarantee of individual rights) and some cultural elements (respect for legitimately enacted laws, respect for literacy).

There's a difference between local culture and enlightenment civilization, and a country can share Enlightenment civilization without being a western country. I think that trend is going to increase, and that the USA is going to have to face declining power in a world of expanding democracy, but NOT democracies that share Western culture. India is a good example of an Enlightenment civilized country that doesn't necessarily share a common culture with the Western democracies.

Developing Trend Toward Democracy vs. Enlightenment Civilization

The world is in a trend toward democracy, even in many countries that are quite repressive such as China or the Muslim countries of the Middle East. It is common for the evolution of a country toward democracy to include tremendous turmoil and violence, including foreign wars.

However, as countries in the Middle East (especially) undergo this turmoil, they represent a considerable threat both to Western local culture and to Enlightenment civilization as a whole. Islam in particular has a very strong reactionary culture that opposes the democratic trend in those countries, and that is successfully putting a theocratic, non-enlightenment twist into these democratic institutions. To the extent that this trend toward a theocratic democracy succeeds, eliminating the concept of human rights from the concept of democracy, this represents a real threat to what I consider civilization.

Thus, during the time that Islamic countries and other cultures in Africa, central Asia and East Asia are going through the tumultuous transition to democracy, we are in many ways in active conflict with their reactionary elements.......

Anti-Semitism in Sugar Land

Here's a disturbing little piece of news from my home town:
Menorah vandalized in Sugar Land

A large menorah next to a nativity scene was vandalized - destroyed, actually, in the Lakewind subdivision of Sugar Land, Texas some time during the night of December 23, 2006. That's absolutely pathetic, because Sugar Land is a pretty diverse and peaceful place. This is a good example of what I'm talking about when I say that there are barbarian influences crowding and festering within our own home culture; an influence that must be overcome if the USA is to remain stable as the rest of the world continues to move toward democracy.

Hopefully, the police in Sugar Land will get some information about the crime. Heres a link to the Sugar Land Police Department.

Joining Technorati

Technorati Profile

This post just sets me up in the Technorati blog network. I'm still getting all the blog-infrastructure in place...

Positive Steps in the Middle East Today

Some positive developments in the Middle East:

Iran takes a step back from hard-line Anti-West stance with elections:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061221/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_elections

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 41 minutes ago



TEHRAN, Iran - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's opponents won local council elections in Iran, final results showed Thursday, in an embarrassing blow to the hard-line leader that could force him to change his staunch anti-Western stance and focus more on domestic issues.

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Last week's elections for local councils in towns and cities across Iran were widely seen as a referendum on Ahmadinejad's 18 months in office.

Since taking power, Ahmadinejad has escalated Iran's confrontation with the United States and the West, drawing the threat of U.N. sanctions for pushing ahead with uranium enrichment in Iran's nuclear program. He has also provoked international outrage for his comments against Israel and casting doubt on the Nazi Holocaust.

His hard-line stances are believed to have divided the conservatives who voted him into power last year, with some feeling Ahmadinejad has spent too much time confronting the West and has failed to deal with Iran's struggling economy.

Moderate conservatives opposed to Ahmadinejad won a majority of the seats in Friday's elections followed by reformists who were suppressed by hard-liners in 2004, according to final results announced by the Interior Ministry.

The final results also represented a partial comeback for reformists, who were crushed over the past five years by hard-liners who drove them out of the local councils, parliament and the presidency. The reformists favor closer ties with the West and further loosening of social and political restrictions under the Islamic government.

In Tehran, the capital, candidates supporting Mayor Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, a moderate conservative, won seven of the 15 council seats. Reformists won four, while Ahmadinejad's allies won three. The last seat went to wrestling champion Ali Reza Dabir, who won a gold medal in the 2000 Sydney Olympics and is considered an independent.

Final results for the rest of the country also showed a heavy defeat for Ahmadinejad supporters, and analysts said his allies won less than 20 percent of local council seats nationwide. None of his candidates won seats on the councils in the cities of Shiraz, Bandar Abbas, Sari, Zanjan, Rasht, Ilam, Sanandaj and Kerman. Many councils in other cities were divided along similar proportions as Tehran's.

Last week's election for local councils, which handle community matters in cities and towns, does not directly effect Ahmadinejad's administration and is not expected to bring immediate policy changes.

But it was the first time the public has weighed in on Ahmadinejad's stormy presidency since he took office in June 2005. The results are expected to pressure him to change his populist anti-Western tone and focus more on Iran's high unemployment and economic problems at home.

Leading reformist Saeed Shariati said the results of the election was a "big no" to Ahmadinejad and his allies.

"People's vote means they don't support Ahmadinejad's policies and want change," Shariati, a leader of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, Iran's largest reformist party told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Shariati accused Ahmadinejad of harming Iran's interests with his hard line.

"We consider this government's policy to be against Iran's national interests and security. It is simply acting against Iran's interests," he said. His party seeks democratic changes within Iran's ruling Islamic establishment and supports relations with the United States.

Similar anti-Ahmadinejad sentiment was visible in the final results of a parallel election held to select members of the Assembly of Experts, a conservative body of 86 senior clerics that monitors Iran's supreme leader and chooses his successor.

A big boost for moderates within the ruling Islamic establishment was visible in the big number of votes for former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who lost to Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential election runoff.

Rafsanjani, who supports dialogue with the United States, received the most votes of any Tehran candidate to win re-election to the assembly. Also re-elected was Hasan Rowhani, Iran's former top nuclear negotiator whom Ahmadinejad has repeatedly accused of making too many concessions to the Europeans.

Iran started having council elections after a reform introduced in 1999 by then President Mohammed Khatami.

More than 233,000 candidates ran for more than 113,000 council seats in cities, towns and villages across the vast nation on Friday. All municipal council candidates, including some 5,000 women, were vetted by parliamentary committees dominated by hard-liners. The committees disqualified about 10,000 nominees, reports said.

A step toward forming a national coalition within Iraq to stop sectarian violence:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061221/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_politics

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 8 minutes ago



BAGHDAD, Iraq - Delegates representing Shiite groups forming the largest bloc in Iraq's parliament gathered Thursday at the home of the country's top Shiite cleric to seek his blessing for a new coalition that would promote national reconciliation.

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Many of the delegates traveled late Wednesday to the holy city of Najaf, where they were meeting Thursday morning with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, an official in the cleric's office said. The others were traveling to Najaf on Thursday.

The delegates were also expected to meet with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr about joining the political process and reining in his fighters, Shiite officials said. Al-Sadr heads a militia feared by Iraq's Sunnis, and his supporters pulled out of the political process three weeks ago.

Joint army-police checkpoints were erected at all entrances to Najaf on Thursday morning, a top police official and a representative from al-Sistani's office said.

Until the walkout, al-Sadr's faction had been an integral part of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's governing coalition. Cabinet ministers and legislators who belong to al-Sadr's movement called the boycott after al-Maliki met with President Bush in Jordan three weeks ago. Al-Sadr's militia and its offshoots have been increasingly blamed for sectarian attacks.

As violence rages across Baghdad and much of Iraq, a new coalition taking shape among Shiites, Kurds and one Sunni party is seen as an ultimate effort to form a government across sectarian divisions that have split the country. While al-Sadr's movement would not be part of this coalition, such an alliance — which reportedly is supported by the Bush administration — might pressure the radical cleric to soften his stance.

In Thursday's meeting, the group wants to assure al-Sistani that the new coalition would not break apart the Shiite bloc, said officials from several Shiite parties. Potential members of the coalition said they have been negotiating for two weeks, and now want the blessing of al-Sistani, whose word many Shiites consider binding.

Both of these developments are actually quite promising. Particularly the development in Iran, which demonstrates that Iranian democracy, while still highly religious in nature, is still functioning. The political right wing of the government (which is still ultimately ruled by an Ayatollah) did not stamp out the integrity of the electoral process. As long as there's no actual coup, every peaceful changeover of power in a country adds to a country's stability as a democracy.

Using the Net to build civilization

I mentioned in a prior post the Distributed Proofreaders Site, which allows anyone to help with the project of turning scans of public-domain books into e-books that can be read and (more importantly) searched.

One of the ways to improve civilization is to improve communication, not only among regular users of the internet but also among scientists, researchers, and scholars.

In addition to projects like Distributed Proofreaders, which allow users to contribute brainpower to a project, there are several projects that allow users to contribute unused processor time to add computing power to a research project. These "grid" projects are mainly oriented toward scientific applications.

One example is the Compute against cancer project, which supports cancer research with shared computing power. I haven't been able to find many projects that are currently in operation. If anyone knows of any, please comment and give details!

The benefit to projects like these are obvious; using the shared power of many people, massive contributions can be made toward scientific goals.

Domestic Spying

Here's another important issue, and for the time being I'm just going to make one point about domestic spying.

Yahoo Article

The problem here isn't wiretapping. Wiretapping as a law-enforcement tool, used appropriately, is fine: no problem. The problem is that what the Bush administration is asking is that wiretapping be made permissible without a warrant. Look, judges are happy to issue warrants. They issue warrants all the time. If someone looks like a terrorist, with even a smidgen of evidence (as a practical matter, not a legal standard), the judge is going to issue a warrant for wiretapping.

There is no reason for the Bush administration to be fighting so hard about this, and certainly the claim that it's necessary for national security is utterly bogus. The inclusion of a judge in the process is hardly going to reduce the effectiveness of the counterterrorism tactic. The Bush administration is trying to cast this issue as if what's threatened is wiretapping itself, and that's just not the issue. The issue is whether the administration has a check/balance by the absolutely minimal oversight that can be provided by including a judge in the process. What the administration is really trying to get here is an "out" from our traditional system of checks and balances, a huge increase in the power of the executive branch vis-a-vis the other branches of government. No way. I'm for the constitution, not for the unfettered monarchy, thank you very much.

USA Trade Deficit

Well, the latest numbers for the trade deficit are out, and they paint an increasingly gloomy picture of what's happening in the world and in the country in general:
Yahoo Article re: Trade Deficit

It is simply impossible for the USA to continue borrowing money indefinitely to finance the trade deficit. At some point, the free money is going to quit flowing, and it will be time to begin paying it back. When this happens, the reckoning is going to be terrible. It's absolutely imperative that the trade deficit be reversed to at least zero on an average.

How can this be done?

Well, for starters, the savings rate in the United States needs to increase. Part of the reason for the massive trade deficit is simply that we Americans keep spending all of our income instead of saving some of it.

So, the tip for today about how to improve (in this case, to guard) Enlightenment Civilization might seem a bit strange. It is to put a bit of money aside in savings. Pick something that you absolutely, positively would have spent money on, and skip it this time around. Put the savings, no matter how small, into whatever bank or investment account you have available. It's absolutely going to be a drop in the bucket, there's no question. In fact, it will just be a drop in the ocean. But every little bit counts. Every journey begins with the first step.

It's a matter of world stability that the USA must reduce its trade deficit. There are two ways to do it: reduce spending on foreign goods and save more. Heck, just gather up your spare change that's lying around and put it in the bank.

Getting a little more specific about the trade deficit, here's one viewpoint that minimizes the importance of the deficit:
Progressive Policy Institute Article on Trade Deficit

There's good reason to think that the trade deficit is less of a concern than many people believe. To a large degree, deficits across currencies have a self-correcting mechanism because the value of the currencies change. As long as we're borrowing in dollar-denominated loans, changing currency values will adjust the situation to a certain degree. As foreigners hold more dollars, the value of the dollar lowers. As the value of the dollar lowers, we sell more goods abroad and the deficit shrinks. For this reason, the trade deficit can't be compared exactly to a person who keeps going to the bank and borrowing against his income.

Moreover, the solution to the deficit is definitely not a dramatic increase in trade tarriffs (although there may be other reasons to implement trade barriers of some kind). But increasing our savings rate is a win-win proposition all around. Put some money aside today.