Propaganda v. Reasoning

Continuing the yammering on propaganda.

The word propaganda really just refers to whatever a person or group does to propagate their ideas. People generally assign a negative connotation to the term; however, it is impossible to objectively distinguish "propaganda" from "objective" reasoning. People's definition of good and bad propaganda generally follows partisan lines.

Scott McClellan's accusation that that Bush administration engaged in propaganda is a non-event. Scott McClellan's job as press secretary is propagandistic in nature. His job is to present the world view of the administration. President Clinton had a press secretary whose job was propagandistic in nature as well; President Obama will have one as well.

The whole conflict between the Islamic and Western world is one of propaganda as the powers vie to convey their world vision.

The important questions involve the reasoning of the Bush administration. Did the Bush administration engage in a sound reasoning process. If they didn't engage in sound reasoning, then the next question should be why they engaged in unsound reasoning.

The Bush administration engaged in the reasoning processes that are taught in the modern education system. Our left leaning education system yanked logic from the curriculum decades before Bush was born. Our modern education system does an astoundingly poor job teaching math and other reasoning skills.

In 2003, there were all sorts of things that indicated that an invasion of Iraq would be a shortcut to progress.

Our progressive education system tells us that, when our sentiments indicate a short cut to progress seems promising, we should follow our feelings and take the short cut to progress.

Our Constitution was written at a time when the education system had a high esteem for logic. The founders believed that there should be a more deliberative process before doing something like invading another country. The Constitution demanded a Declaration of War.

Here is the problem. The founders assumed that the leaders would have reasoning skills that are simply not taught in our schools these days. In a world where progressive schools fail to teach logic, a declaration of war would be as non-deliberative as our recent bumbling into Baghdad.

The progressive idea of Democracy is one where a political class has a nexus of justifications for their desires. The sporadic actions of the government are a happenstance of partisan infighting as the polticians reach out to grab their desires.

The sad truth is that, in this modern political climate, the reasons behind government actions are weak.

For example, a primary reason for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq was that March was the ideal month for the invasion. A more deliberative approach to the war would have missed the ideal timeframe for the war. Putting off the invasion until 2004 would have put the decision in an election year. The tight timeframe for the invasion meant we gave Hussein a short three day ultimatinum to abdicate to avoid the invasion. It is highly likely that Hussein would have left on his own if the ultimatum were a bit longer.

It is possible that the reason for shortcutting the deliberative process and for the war itself might be the tight timeframe dictated by natural and political cycles.

The above observation makes me livid. It means that we rushed to war because Bush felt rushed.

Left leaning politics can be even more bizarre:

For example, people are livid with the out-of-control spending of the Bush administration. The result of this anger is we are likely to hand a super majority to a group that intends to socialize medicine.

So, the reason that we will have socialized medicine is because we think government spending is out of control.

Americans are justified to be livid with a government that systematically produces bad decision based on defective reason. Unfortunately, we aren't going to be able to fix the problem simply by accusing people of propaganda as our problems lay with the foundations of the modern system of reasoning and not with the method for communicating our reasons.

Battles Over Labels

I've been working on the publishing platform on the y-intercept.com domain. The theme article I just finished is called "labeling".

Yes, I am wasting time on negative terms.

My hope is to quarantine the discussions on negative terms in the themes folder. That way, I can reduce the appearance of negative themes in my other writings.

The basic idea I want to convey about labeling is that, while examining the effects of words is a good thing, the preoccupation with redefining labels for political or social gains has proven a net negative. A primary reason our discourse is so shrill is because people keep redefining terms for political ends.

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BTW: While reading up on Deviant Behavior Theory, I thought it would be fun to see how the theory would pan out.

So, to finish this post, I traveled into the future and snipped the following section from the 2014 California Thought Officers Manual:

How to Handle Accusations of Rape

In the failed regressive conservative societies of the past, people would use the accusation of rape to stigmatize certain acts (and the people engaged in such acts) as "deviant." These regressive labels were used by the regressive-conservative-world-order to maintain an oppressive hegemony.

Our enlightened progressive society recognizes that deviant behavior is not the result of acts of individuals. Deviant behavior is the result of social norms. If there are no social norms; there is no deviant behavior.

In regressive conservative societies, people stigmatized by the label "rapist" would behave in an antisocial manner. The secondary partner in the encounter would feel violated for having had an encounter with a "deviant."

In an enlightened progressive society, there would be no stigmas. The primary party of the encounter would retain self-esteem. The secondary party would not feel violated, because there would be no words for expressing feelings of violation.

Our enlightened progressive society uses a new "judgment-free" speak. We refer instances where the first party initiates a physical encounter with the secondary party as a "consent-free-physical-encounter." We believe that people with a compulsion to consent-free-physical-encounters (formerly called serial rapists) should not be stigmatized for acting upon natural instincts. Great care should be taken to avoid lifestyle judgments, and to preserve their self-esteem. The primary actor in the encounter should not be detained. You might praise initiator of the encounter for using contraception.

The concern of a thought officer during an accusation of rape should be the re-education of the accuser. The thought officer should present the accuser with the correct gender neutral/judgment free language of the new enlightened progressive leadership.

If the secondary party persists with accusations of rape; the thought officer should detain the accuser to be sent to a re-education camp for enlightenment.

PS: To help save the Bureau of Socialized Healthcare the cost of a "fetal-contraception-procedure," the thought officer should, in gender neutral terms, confront the secondary party and give him or her an "embryonic contraception pill" so that he or she does not get pregnant.

Oddly, it appears that action leads to reaction. Apparently, there was another transfer of power sometime between 2014 and 2032. I clipped the following from the 2032 California Police Manual.

The victim of rape is a valued member of our society who deserves comfort, counseling and support. The rapist is a perverted bastard, and if you accidentally slammed his face into the doorjamb of the squad car during the arrest … well, we can overlook a few bruises.

Changing the language didn't change things after all.

The Weather Report

Myanmar is one of the most progressive nations on earth. They have progressed to the point where the ruling junta with absolute control over the country. One of the most notable features of a progressive society is that the media is owned by the peoples.

According to First Lady Laura Bush, the state run media failed to tell the people that a cyclone was on the way. The cyclone is reported to have killed some 20,000 people in the impoverished country.

Anyway the failure of the state run media to warn people about a cyclone got me thinking about the nature of the free press. There is a market for quality weather information. The free market does a very good job of delivering that information. An added benefit of this the market for weather information is that the press has developed extremely sophisticated mechanism for collecting, analyzing and predicting weather. The free press led to a system that can provide enough warning of impending natural distaster to reduce casualties.

A state run press, however, answers to the needs of the political ruling class. Its primary concern is in dosing out information such that the junta stays in power.

I wish this was understood, but when people are the market for a service, the service does a better job serving the people.

When the desires of a political class is the primary market, then the people go underserved. In Myanmar, people died because state run media failed to provide the information that a privately owned media would have provided.

Progressive Lending

I've been listening to some of the speeches for aggressive new regulations for the mortgage industry. The speakers find it easy to throw blame at the evil capitalists in the lending industry.

The speeches fail to recognize that many of the people engaged in creating the mortgage mess thought they were being progressive.

There is a large number of not-for-profit organizations that push home ownership on people who don't have the financial ability to own a home. There is a whole subindustry in the legal community dedicated to erasing bad credit histories. Several of these firms are located in Salt Lake.

As I am intensely interested in the non-profit sector and local community, I've spoken with a number of people in these industries. The people who were creating the mess really thought they were progressing society by extending home ownership to a new class of people.

Many of the players in the mortgage mess weren't driven by simple capitalist greed. They were driven by the buzz of putting a person, who would not otherwise afford a home, into a home.

The mortgage mess didn't happen by people plotting to defraud banks. It was driven by the ecstasy of doing good.

The people who trained home owners to think of the appreciation in their home's value as a bank account were actually following a rather standard pathway of progressive ideology where you claim to have a new way of thinking that will lead to a brighter future ... but that leads to ruin.

In many cases, the greedy conservative bankers weren't the perpetrators of the mortgage mess. They were witless victims who thought that the toxic mortgage portfolios they had purchased would behave like mortgage portfolios of the past.

Yes, there are crooks leaching off of all aspects of business and government. The really dramatic problems almost always happen when a group stomps forth and claims to have a progressive new way of thinking about an industry.

For example, the dotcom boom was driven by a progressive new think where grabbing marketshare was more important than having a business model that made profit on sales. Market values ballooned as companies undermined the market. Then the progressive new think collapsed.

In many cases, financial collapse follows a progressive new way of thinking about a financial instrument. The market fails to understand the implications of the new way of thinking and collapses when the forces of the new way of thinking undermines the market.

The mortgage mess happened because a new way of thinking about mortgages dramatically decreased the value of mortgage portfolios. Banks that bought the portfolios were undermined.

It is critical that we understand this pattern. Slapping new regulations on an industry might temporarily stabalize an industry, but the new regulations cannot change the way people think in the future.

Often the regulations simply burden an industry or create a false sense of stability. In so many cases we find the regulators setting up the next generation for a future financial collapse.

The regulations we put in place today cannot and will not prevent people a half century from now from changing their thinking about mortgages.

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PS: This post slams progressivism because the central tenet of progressivism is that progressives have a new way of thinking that leads to prosperity. Progressivism is typified by the unspecific, but eloquent, call for change. More often than not, it is a call for a change in thinking.

The mortgage mess happened because there was a widespread change in thinking about mortgages.

The mortgage mess happened because their was a change in the way brokers felt about mortgages. These brokers felt the new think was progressive. Banks failed because the new think created mortgage portfolios with a high fail rate.

IMHO, this mortgage mess is a better example of the way that "new think" undermines a society than it is an example of greedy capitalists undermining society.

Think of it! Which makes more sense: "The high default rate on mortgages is the result of conservative lending practices." or "The high default rate on mortgages is the result of liberal lending practices"?

The End of The Slave Trade

The problem with listening to podcasts and network statistics for one's primary news source is that I end up missing out on the events themselves.

March 25, 2007 marked the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. It was not that long ago that Britain and America held large number of people in chains. It took another half century and a brutal civil war to end the practice of slavery in the United States and another century for the government to really start protecting the civil rights of the descendants of the slaves.

The slave trade was one of the most disgusting businesses in human history.

Commemorating events like this is important because it helps us remember that we humans are capable of doing wicked and horrible things to each-other. While it all but impossible for people to detach themselves from the wicked and cruel things that we are doing today, I think there is some hope that seeing events of the past might help people she what is right and wrong in our society.

The fact that so many businesses were eager to engage in slave trade emphasizes that business is not the natural ally of freedom. Businesses are more than willing to enslave people, pay bribes, form monopolies and undermine markets in the grub for profit and power. In the regulated economy, one finds that businesses support or oppose particular regulations simply on the effect that the regulations have on their business.

It is people, not businesses that benefit from freedom. I think too many Libertarians get got up in the idea that businesses are somehow the central point of freedom, when the ideal is about the individual and not the corporation.

Apparently, the British Slave Trade really got going in 1672 when the British Crown granted a monopoly on slave trade to The Royal Africa Company. The slave trade was not simply business run amok. It involved government approval (with governments deciding who could and who could not be a slave). The trade even involved government incentives in the form of a chartered monopoly.

The slave traders were among the most villainous people in history. It is very easy to discount them. The very fact that we recognize slave traders as villains makes it possible to discuss how the interplay of political ideas lead to bad conclusions.

I suspect that the first slave traders saw themselves as progressive. Ancient Greece and Rome both condoned slavery. Re-instituting slavery would allow the west to relive the glories of ancient Rome. Having a large dedicated slave work force would allow the development of a highly educated intellectual elite who would wow the world with their wonderfulness. People were willing to engage in slave trade because they saw it as the path to progress.

As slavery became institutionalized and people started seeing the horrible results of their short cut to progress, ideas began to shift. So, toward the end of the slavery debacle, Conservatives wanting to preserve social order argued for slavery. Eventually we arrived at the point where forcing the end of slavery became a progressive cause.

People wonder why "progressive ideology" drives me up the wall. It does so because it has no meaning. Progressives want to force social change on us without a real notion of where that social change will lead. Stuck in the mud Conservatives are also a challenge. They want to preserve social order at all cost. Using these definitions we see:

Conservatives opposed the start of slavery (although not loudly enough). They opposed the end of slavery.

Progressive supported the start of slavery, the supported the end of slavery.

Progressives lead us into traps and Conservatives get us stuck there.

The great shrill "progressive/conservative" dichotomy that dominates politics simply moves us from trap to trap.

After the emancipation of slavery, the establishment of Jim Crow laws was seen as a new path that would allow blacks to progress on a separate but equal path in the South. The idiotic Jim Crow laws were finally recognized as an evil, and truly progressive civil rights movement emerged to get us out of that trap.

The civil rights movement shows that there are cases of real progress.

I applaud true progress.

The interesting thing about true progress is that after society makes true progress, people need to change from a progressive mode to a conservative mode to preserve that progress.

In the cases of slavery and racial prejudice, we see that the evils we need to fight are slavery and racial prejudice. The enemy is not the progressives or the conservatives, the enemy was slavery. "Progressive" and "conservative" are these fluffy terms that get redefined with each mix of issues on the table.

In the 1980s, Conservatism in America was a strange mix of people who wanted to preserve the social order, and those who are trying to preserve the classical liberal progress at the foundation of the American system. In the Bush era, the classical liberals have pretty much been driven from the Republican Party. The definitions of the terms change.

David Horowitz's experience with the Black Panthers is quite interesting. Horowitz was an avowed Communist working for social progress in Berkeley. His group wanted to develop the Black Panthers into a band of brown shirts for the next stage of the people's revolution. Horowitz seems to have realized that the supposedly progressive step to socialism was actually regressive.

Real progressives should listen to Horowitz. The far left wants to take the progressive movement into some deep dark places.

Real progress occurs when a society makes an advance then preserves that advance. It is a combination of forward movements and stabilization. It is not a process of continual revolution (as Marxists would assume) nor is it the establishment of a perfect social order.

The fact that there is a good idea that was progressive when it was stated doesn't necessarily mean that you should declare yourself a progressive. What you want to do is preserve the good idea, which kind of makes you conservative. The words "progressive" and "conservative" only have meaning in relation to the time in which an idea was spoken.

Speaking of ideas changing. Religious Tolerance has an interesting time line on religious views about slavery. Of course it is extremely difficult to say which ideas are progressive or conservative. Often what you do in the world of politics is make a statement that nudges the world in a direction that you would like to see it go.

Cowboys Riding the Margin

According to the site CollegeRodeo.com, Colorado State University is having their annual rodeo this weekend (March 31 and April 1).

CSU was founded as an agricultural University in Fort Collins. The university has expanded through the years, but is still the states primary source for agricultural based education. One would expect the rodeo at a agricultural university in a traditionally agricultural based state to be a big thing.

The CSU Rodeo Club, does have a page that says that the 54th Skyline Stampede will take place on April 1st. The page does not give the year. Club web sites are often out of date; So, I decided to check the University Calendar.

The official CSU Calendar does not list a rodeo. So, I figured that this year's rodeo must have been cancelled. The CSU calendar seems to be quite complete. March 31 is, of course, Cesar Chavez Day. Cesar Chavez is a revolutionary hero who led masses of the oppressed in protests against the small farmers of yesteryear. April 1st is some sort of Green Gala Day. There is no mention of the rodeo. Anyway, I figured I would do more research to see when and why the annual Skyline Stampede was cancelled.

The Equine Science Page lists a rodeo. But that might be out of date like the Rodeo Club. After all, if the main recreation calendar of an argricultural university does not list the rodeo, then you can assume that the rodeo has been cancelled. All of the other team sports are listed on the calendar.

CSU publishes an extremely detailed quarterly magazine on Campus Activities. If there was a rodeo as the College of Equine Sciences and other Rodeo sites suggest, I suspect I would find it is the Spring Issue of the CSU Campus Recreation Magazine. This 52 page magazine only has one word about the rodeo (See PDF). The CSU Recreation brochure has full page layouts for everything from Yoga to Cycling.

I've found a large number of pages on the net that seem to indicate that CSU was a big thing for many, many years. The rodeo club claims to be a popular club. Rodeo athletes from the University seem to be in good standing, yet this activity only gets one word.

As for why I am writing this post. One more search of the CSU web site brought up the CSU Giving Page. This page which is pleaing for donations plays up CSU's proud tradition as a center for the sport of Rodeo.

If this rodeo actually exists. Then it appears that the two faced politically correct bastards at CSU are intentionally marginalizing their rodeo and their rodeo. To add insult to injury, they then hold up this group that they are intentionally marginalizing to solicit donations.

PS: My final conclusion is that the CSU Skyline Stamped must have been cancelled. I could find no reliable source indicating that it would take place this year. If you are looking for Rodeo action this weekend, you might voyage south to Denver and join in the fun at the Gay Rodeo which starts April 1st. The promotional literature for Brokeback Mountain may be true. 2006 just may be the year that the paradigms of "cowboy" and "rodeo" shift from describing western agrian lifestyle to a modern, urban sexual life style.

Progressive Liberal

You know what this country needs. It needs progressive liberals who actually want to liberate people and see society to progress.

Sadly, both the terms "progressive" and "liberate" are brands owned and defined by the far left.

Judging from conversations with people pushing the "progressive liberal" brand in the Democratic Party. Progressive means any idea that progresses society on the path to socialism. Liberal means anything that liberates us from the onus burden of freedom.

I kind of wish the world "progressive" was an adjective indicating if a policy favored the common (the poor over the rich). I also wish liberal was an adjective that indicated policies that liberated people.

Unfortunately, we live is an age when words really don't have meanings. Words are brands that get redefined by the great paradigm shifters who spin definitions to suit their agendas.

I really want to use the adjectives "progressive" and "liberal" as words. The problem is that in doing so, simply creates market confusion with the brands. Unfortunately without the words, it is harder to discuss why certain policies widen the gap between rich and poor while others bridge the gap. Without a word "liberal" it is difficult to discuss how some policies increase the intrusion of the state while others lead to greater freedom.

Ideologies v. Paradigms

I got the glimpse of a TV history show. The little section I saw began with a very interesting comment. It mentioned that the primary reason Hitler thought that Germany would beat the US in war was because the US had a mixed race army. A superior Aryan army would beat a bastardized army. Hitler, of course, was a Hegelian, who believed that the world spirit was in a transition from Judeo/Christian paradigm to a new Aryan/Scientific paradigm.

Hitler's dismissing the US Army is a great example of ways that prejudices lead people astray.

Sadly, this insightful historical observation was followed by a remark that claimed that Hitler was an example of why foreign policies should not be based on ideals (ideology).

The idea that foreign policy should be driven by a nation's interests and not ideals is one of the mantras of modern academia. Leo Strauss would say, there is a multiplicity of ideals; therefore, foreigh policy should be driven by the nation's self interests. Strauss failed to realize that the multiplicity of interests is even more problematic than the multiplicity of ideals.

I didn't see the talking head's name, but this arrogant attitude in the academia that all ideals are inherently flawed is one of the worst follies of modern thinkers. Hitler's problem was that his mushed up mind was full with flawed ideals...not that he had ideals.

Anyway, one thing that I noticed of late is that writers often refer to beliefs of people on the right as "ideologies" and those on the left as "paradigms." This is a subtle trick. For example, you would refer to the beliefs of "right wing kooks" like Milton Friedman as an ideology, and the beliefs of "left wing intellectuals" like Noam Chomsky as paradigms.

This is an interesting trend. So I thought I would take a second and look at the difference between ideologies and paradigms. An ideology is a set system of beliefs. Idividuals can adhere to an ideology. Distinct ideologies are often definable. We can easily see a world with different people holding different ideologies.

Paradigms are shiftier. Paradigms are essentially the entire underlying thought system of a culture. Paradigms include the paradoxes and conflicts that drive the culture.

When right wing nut cases like Milton Friedman speak, they are ideologists. When deep thinkers like much lauded, acclaimed (yet humble) Noam Chomsky utters sentences, he is shifting paradigms.

de Tracy's term "ideology" gives a feeling of raving lunacy, while Kuhn's "paradigm" seems to give a feeling of inclusiveness. It is interesting to see how, when and where the different terms get used.

PS: Hitler's decision to declare war on the US after Pearl Harbor had nothing to do with ideals. Germany was already in a state of total war. The US declaring war against Germany was pretty much given.