The Separation of Church and State – Explained in 1 Minute

There are two very different kinds of government: civil government and church government. I put together a little video to show the job description for each:

Aristotle’s *Politics* – Still Relevant Today

I just finished Aristotle’s Politics, and, considering that it’s more than 2,300 years old, the book is still amazingly relevant. Sure, the modern reader will wince at Aristotle’s defense of slavery, and I’m not exactly thrilled that Aristotle is a critic of private education and a staunch defender of public schooling. Nor will he seem liberal enough to most people today when it comes to censorship in art and music.

But even so, the Politics anticipates many topics that some falsely consider exclusively modern: freedom and democracy, communism and ownership, justice and equality, family structure and over-population, the dangers of an economy built on credit, the relation between urban and rural life, etc etc.

I’ve also found a neat graphic on Wikipedia about the Politics. It really only captures a few sections of the book, but it’s a useful visual nonetheless. Just realize that there’s more to Aristotle’s Politics than this (click to enlarge):

Important Issues in My Lifetime: The Next 50 Years

I’m thirty now. Supposing I shall be so graced as to witness my eightieth birthday, I wonder about the next half a century. What are going to be some of the most important worldwide issues between now and 2060?

Well, here are some of them:

1. The Environment

We cannot keep acting like Saruman and think we’re safe in our self-constructed tower. Our twisted minions will not keep us from the green revenge of Treebeard & His Many-Leafed Company.

Seriously, though: The environment is simply the name for EVERYTHING on this planet, and EVERYTHING is pretty darn important. We humans are not self-sufficient beings; we are a hundred percent dependent on everything around us. In the next fifty years, we just absolutely have to get a grip on ourselves, send our orks into the fires of doom, and re-plant some trees in Isengard. Otherwise the whole place will come down.

2. Over-Population

Like C. S. Lewis already noted in 1959: “We shall fairly soon hopelessly overpopulate this planet and that population will be as defective in quality as excessive in quantity.”

We cannot keep multiplying indefinitely. We will reach a limit. The only question is how that limit will be reached. Through huge disasters? Or through rational, peaceful population control? I opt for the latter.

3. The Economy

Most thinkers of the past would have been horrified at the foundation of our economic system today, which is usury – money begetting money. It’s a system out of line with reality. Will it be able to last?

Aristotle would have probably said no. As he wrote in the third century BC:

“The most hated sort [of wealth-getting], and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.”

4. Religion

Maybe I put too much emphasis on this, since I’m particularly interested in religion, but it will be very interesting to see how religion is going to develop in the next fifty years. Will Fundamentalism – meaning a narrow worldview that leaves little room for discussion – win the upper hand? Or will Atheism spread and marginalize religion completely? Or will a more mature, balanced, open-minded form of religious practice win the majority?

We’ll see, but I propose it will have a big effect – including on the first three points.

“Who is John Galt?” – The Tea Party in Washington

Over the weekend, I watched a CNN report on the Tea Party demonstration in Washington. Behind the reporter stood someone who carried a sign that read “Who is John Galt?” – a reference to Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged. Rand, who was born in Russia but chose to become an American, wrote her book in the 1950s largely in response to Marxism. And she does an incredible job showing why Marxism ultimately does not work.

However, I’m less convinced by what she puts in Marxim’s place, namely laissez-faire capitalism, meaning capitalism (almost?) completely free of government intervention. Here are two questions I have for proponents of laissez-faire capitalism:

1. How will unrestrained capitalism be able to protect our environment (and thus, in the long run, us)? Without restraint, capitalism will self-destruct and take the planet with it.

2. How will unrestrained capitalism prevent the cancer of virtual money from spreading? By “virtual money” I mean the fact that money is nowadays primarily a virtual entity that does not necessarily stand in proper relation to the material word. Money can beget money to the point where it utterly exceeds the actual value of work and property. Theoretically, someone could  multiply his virtual money to such a degree that they owned more than the real value of all human property in the entire world. Needless to say, this destroys the balance and stability in the world. How will laissez-faire capitalism reign this in?

Somone carrying a sign with a reference to Atlas Shrugged seems to suggest that laissez-faire capitalism is the answer to the problems we are currently facing. To me, this is naive. I can forgive Ayn Rand for ignoring the destruction of the environment and the existence of virtual money in the 1950s. But now? Now that it has become glaringly obvious how very serious these issues are?

Let John Galt stay in the world of literature. In the real world, there are other solutions required.

“The Man Who Thinks Backwards” – G.K. Chesterton

A few days ago, I came across this essay by G.K. Chesterton and thought it worthwhile to share:

The man who thinks backwards is a very powerful person to-day: indeed, if
he is not omnipotent, he is at least omnipresent. It is he who writes
nearly all the learned books and articles, especially of the scientific or
skeptical sort; all the articles on Eugenics and Social Evolution and
Prison Reform and the Higher Criticism and all the rest of it. But
especially it is this strange and tortuous being who does most of the
writing about female emancipation and the reconsidering of marriage. For
the man who thinks backwards is very frequently a woman.

Thinking backwards is not quite easy to define abstractedly; and, perhaps,
the simplest method is to take some object, as plain as possible, and from
it illustrate the two modes of thought: the right mode in which all real
results have been rooted; the wrong mode, which is confusing all our
current discussions, especially our discussions about the relations of the
sexes. Casting my eye round the room, I notice an object which is often
mentioned in the higher and subtler of these debates about the sexes: I
mean a poker. I will take a poker and think about it; first forwards and
then backwards; and so, perhaps, show what I mean.

The sage desiring to think well and wisely about a poker will begin
somewhat as follows: Among the live creatures that crawl about this star
the queerest is the thing called Man. This plucked and plumeless bird,
comic and forlorn, is the butt of all the philosophies. He is the only
naked animal; and this quality, once, it is said, his glory, is now his
shame. He has to go outside himself for everything that he wants. He
might almost be considered as an absent-minded person who had gone bathing
and left his clothes everywhere, so that he has hung his hat upon the
beaver and his coat upon the sheep. The rabbit has white warmth for a
waistcoat, and the glow-worm has a lantern for a head. But man has no
heat in his hide, and the light in his body is darkness; and he must look
for light and warmth in the wild, cold universe in which he is cast.
This is equally true of his soul and of his body; he is the one creature
that has lost his heart as much as he has lost his hide. In a spiritual
sense he has taken leave of his senses; and even in a literal sense he has
been unable to keep his hair on. And just as this external need of his
has lit in his dark brain the dreadful star called religion, so it has lit
in his hand the only adequate symbol of it: I mean the red flower called
Fire. Fire, the most magic and startling of all material things, is a
thing known only to man and the expression of his sublime externalism. It
embodies all that is human in his hearths and all that is divine on his
altars. It is the most human thing in the world; seen across wastes of
marsh or medleys of forest, it is veritably the purple and golden flag of
the sons of Eve. But there is about this generous and rejoicing thing an
alien and awful quality: the quality of torture. Its presence is life;
its touch is death. Therefore, it is always necessary to have an
intermediary between ourselves and this dreadful deity; to have a priest
to intercede for us with the god of life and death; to send an ambassador
to the fire. That priest is the poker. Made of a material more merciless
and warlike than the other instruments of domesticity, hammered on the
anvil and born itself in the flame, the poker is strong enough to enter
the burning fiery furnace, and, like the holy children, not be consumed.
In this heroic service it is often battered and twisted, but is the more
honourable for it, like any other soldier who has been under fire.

Now all this may sound very fanciful and mystical, but it is the right
view of pokers, and no one who takes it will ever go in for any wrong view
of pokers, such as using them to beat one’s wife or torture one’s children,
or even (though that is more excusable) to make a policeman jump, as the
clown does in the pantomime. He who has thus gone back to the beginning,
and seen everything as quaint and new, will always see things in their
right order, the one depending on the other in degree of purpose and
importance: the poker for the fire and the fire for the man and the man
for the glory of God.

This is thinking forwards. Now our modern discussions about everything,
Imperialism, Socialism, or Votes for Women, are all entangled in an
opposite train of thought, which runs as follows:–A modern intellectual
comes in and sees a poker. He is a positivist; he will not begin with any
dogmas about the nature of man, or any day-dreams about the mystery of
fire. He will begin with what he can see, the poker; and the first thing
he sees about the poker is that it is crooked. He says, “Poor poker; it’s
crooked.” Then he asks how it came to be crooked; and is told that there
is a thing in the world (with which his temperament has hitherto left him
unacquainted)–a thing called fire. He points out, very kindly and
clearly, how silly it is of people, if they want a straight poker, to put
it into a chemical combustion which will very probably heat and warp it.
“Let us abolish fire,” he says, “and then we shall have perfectly straight
pokers. Why should you want a fire at all?” They explain to him that a
creature called Man wants a fire, because he has no fur or feathers. He
gazes dreamily at the embers for a few seconds, and then shakes his head.
“I doubt if such an animal is worth preserving,” he says. “He must
eventually go under in the cosmic struggle when pitted against
well-armoured and warmly protected species, who have wings and trunks and
spires and scales and horns and shaggy hair. If Man cannot live without
these luxuries, you had better abolish Man.” At this point, as a rule, the
crowd is convinced; it heaves up all its clubs and axes, and abolishes him.
At least, one of him.

Before we begin discussing our various new plans for the people’s welfare,
let us make a kind of agreement that we will argue in a straightforward
way, and not in a tail-foremost way. The typical modern movements may be
right; but let them be defended because they are right, not because they
are typical modern movements. Let us begin with the actual woman or man
in the street, who is cold; like mankind before the finding of fire. Do
not let us begin with the end of the last red-hot discussion–like the end
of a red hot poker. Imperialism may be right. But if it is right, it is
right because England has some divine authority like Israel, or some human
authority like Rome; not because we have saddled ourselves with South
Africa, and don’t know how to get rid of it. Socialism may be true. But
if it is true, it is true because the tribe or the city can really declare
all land to be common land, not because Harrod’s Stores exist and the
commonwealth must copy them. Female suffrage may be just. But if it is
just, it is just because women are women, not because women are sweated
workers and white slaves and all sorts of things that they ought never to
have been. Let not the Imperialist accept a colony because it is there,
nor the Suffragist seize a vote because it is lying about, nor the
Socialist buy up an industry merely because it is for sale.

Let us ask ourselves first what we really do want, not what recent legal
decisions have told us to want, or recent logical philosophies proved
that we must want, or recent social prophecies predicted that we shall
some day want. If there must be a British Empire, let it be British, and
not, in mere panic, American or Prussian. If there ought to be female
suffrage, let it be female, and not a mere imitation as coarse as the male
blackguard or as dull as the male clerk. If there is to be Socialism, let
it be social; that is, as different as possible from all the big
commercial departments of to-day. The really good journeyman tailor does
not cut his coat according to his cloth; he asks for more cloth. The
really practical statesman does not fit himself to existing conditions, he
denounces the conditions as unfit. History is like some deeply planted
tree which, though gigantic in girth, tapers away at last into tiny twigs;
and we are in the topmost branches. Each of us is trying to bend the tree
by a twig: to alter England through a distant colony, or to capture the
State through a small State department, or to destroy all voting through a
vote. In all such bewilderment he is wise who resists this temptation of
trivial triumph or surrender, and happy (in an echo of the Roman poet) who
remembers the roots of things.

Machiavelli’s Funny Anecdotes, Part II

As I said in Part I of these two posts, another book I read last week was Machiavelli’s (in)famous The Prince, as well as The Life of Castruccio Castracani of Lucca as an appendix. I never knew that Machiavelli – a Renaissance politician with unflinching pragmatism in regard to power – could be this funny! 

Here’s his take on the duke Castruccio Castracani:

Someone bragged that he could drink much without becoming intoxicated. Castruccio replied: “An ox does the same.”

Castruccio was acquainted with a girl with whom he had intimate relations, and being blamed by a friend who told him that it was undignified for him to be taken in by a woman, he said: “She has not taken me in, I have taken her.”

Being also blamed for eating very dainty foods, he answered: “Thou dost not spend as much as I do?” and being told that it was true, he continued: “Then thou art more avaricious than I am gluttonous.”

Being invited by Taddeo Bernardi, a very rich and splendid citizen of Luca, to supper, he went to the house and was shown by Taddeo into a chamber hung with silk and paved with fine stones representing flowers and foliage of the most beautiful colouring. Castruccio gathered some saliva in his mouth and spat it out upon Taddeo, and seeing him much disturbed by this, said to him: “I knew not where to spit in order to offend thee less.”

Being asked how Caesar died he said: “God willing I will die as he did.”

Being one night in the house of one of his gentlemen where many ladies were assembled, he was reproved by one of his friends for dancing and amusing himself with them more than was usual in one of his station, so he said: “He who is considered wise by day will not be considered a fool at night.”

A person came to demand a favour of Castruccio, and thinking he was not listening to his plea threw himself on his knees to the ground, and being sharply reproved by Castruccio, said: “Thou art the reason of my acting thus for thou hast thy ears in thy feet,” whereupon he obtained double the favour he had asked.

Castruccio used to say that the way to hell was an easy one, seeing that it was in a downward direction and you travelled blindfolded.

Being asked a favour by one who used many superfluous words, he said to him: “When you have another request to make, send someone else to make it.”

Having been wearied by a similar man with a long oration who wound up by saying: “Perhaps I have fatigued you by speaking so long,” Castruccio said: “You have not, because I have not listened to a word you said.”

He used to say of one who had been a beautiful child and who afterwards became a fine man, that he was dangerous, because he first took the husbands from the wives and now he took the wives from their husbands.

To an envious man who laughed, he said: “Do you laugh because you are successful or because another is unfortunate?”

Whilst he was still in the charge of Messer Francesco Guinigi, one of his companions said to him: “What shall I give you if you will let me give you a blow on the nose?” Castruccio answered: “A helmet.”

Having put to death a citizen of Lucca who had been instrumental in raising him to power, and being told that he had done wrong to kill one of his old friends, he answered that people deceived themselves; he had only killed a new enemy.

Castruccio praised greatly those men who intended to take a wife and then did not do so, saying that they were like men who said they would go to sea, and then refused when the time came.

He said that it always struck him with surprise that whilst men in buying an earthen or glass vase would sound it first to learn if it were good, yet in choosing a wife they were content with only looking at her.

He was once asked in what manner he would wish to be buried when he died, and answered: “With the face turned downwards, for I know when I am gone this country will be turned upside down.”

On being asked if it had ever occurred to him to become a friar in order to save his soul, he answered that it had not, because it appeared strange to him that Fra Lazerone should go to Paradise and Uguccione della Faggiuola to the Inferno.

He was once asked when should a man eat to preserve his health, and replied: “If the man be rich let him eat when he is hungry; if he be poor, then when he can.”

Seeing on of his gentlemen make a member of his family lace him up, he said to him: “I pray God that you will let him feed you also.”

Seeing that someone had written upon his house in Latin the words: “May God preserve this house from the wicked,” he said, “The owner must never go in.”

Passing through one of the streets he saw a small house with a very large door, and remarked: “That house will fly through the door.”

He was having a discussion with the ambassador of the King of Naples concerning the property of some banished nobles, when a dispute arose between them, and the ambassador asked him if he had no fear of the king. “Is this king of yours a bad man or a good one?” asked Castruccio, and was told that he was a good one, whereupon he said, “Why should you suggest that I should be afraid of a good man?”

Machiavelli’s Funny Anecdotes, Part I

Another book I read last week was Machiavelli’s (in)famous The Prince, as well as The Life of Castruccio Castracani of Lucca as an appendix. I never knew that Machiavelli – a Renaissance politician with unflinching pragmatism in regard to power – could be this funny! 

Here’s his take on the duke Castruccio Castracani:

He was also wonderfully sharp or biting though courteous in his answers; and as he did not look for any indulgence in this way of speaking from others, so he was not angered with others did not show it to him. It has often happened that he has listened quietly when others have spoken sharply to him, as on the following occasions.

He had caused a ducat to be given for a partridge, and was taken to task for doing so by a friend, to whom Castruccio had said: “You would not have given more than a penny.”

“That is true,” answered the friend.

Then said Castruccio to him: “A ducat is much less to me.”

Having about him a flatterer on whom he had spat to show that he scorned him, the flatterer said to him: “Fisherman are willing to let the waters of the sea saturate them in order that they make take a few little fishes, and I allow myself to be wetted by spittle that I may catch a whale”; and this was not only heard by Castruccio with patience but rewarded.

When told by a priest that it was wicked for him to live so sumptuously, Castruccio said: “If that be a vice than you should not fare so splendidly at the feasts of our saints.”

Passing through a street he saw a young man as he came out of a house of ill fame blush at being seen by Castruccio, and said to him: “Thou shouldst not be ashamed when thou comest out, but when thou goest into such places.”

A friend gave him a very curiously tied knot to undo and was told: “Fool, do you think that I wish to untie a thing which gave so much trouble to fasten.”

Castruccio said to one who professed to be a philosopher: “You are like the dogs who always run after those who will give them the best to eat,” and was answered: “We are rather like the doctors who go to the houses of those who have the greatest need of them.”

Going by water from Pisa to Leghorn, Castruccio was much disturbed by a dangerous storm that sprang up, and was reproached for cowardice by one of those with him, who said that he did not fear anything. Castruccio answered that he did not wonder at that, since every man valued his soul for what is was worth.

Being asked by one what he ought to do to gain estimation, he said: “When thou goest to a banquet take care that thou dost not seat one piece of wood upon another.”

To a person who was boasting that he had read many things, Castruccio said: “He knows better than to boast of remembering many things.”

Obama on Religion and the State

What Every Politician Should Read …

The Basic Writings of John Stuart Mill: On Liberty, the Subjection of Women and Utilitarianism (Modern Library Classics)

These three (fairly long) essays on the liberty of the individual, practical ethics, and the role of women are absolutely fundamental. Though written in the mid-19th-century, Mill is still applicable for today, and that for three reasons:

1. He was ahead of his time and his thoughts helped shape our society. By reading him, we are looking and appreciating our foundation.
2. His clearly expressed thoughts are a good reminder not to lose our values when we (and especially our governments) are in danger of doing so by unnecessarily infringing on the liberty of the individual.
3. Some of his critiques are even more applicable today than back then.

To give an example for No. 3, Mill shows that technological progress, too, can be an infringement on individuality. He bemoaned the fact that 19th-century England made much “progress” but had little blossoming of individuals. Said he,

“The circumstances which surround different classes and individuals, and shape their characters, are daily becoming more assimilated. Formerly, different ranks, different neighbourhoods, different trades and professions, lived in what might be called different worlds; at present, to a great degree in the same. Comparatively speaking, they now read the same things, listen to the same things, see the same things, go to the same places, have their hopes and fears directed to the same objects, have the same rights and liberties, and the same means of asserting them. Great as are the differences of position which remain, they are nothing to those which have ceased. And the assimilation is still proceeding. All the political changes of the age promote it, since they all tend to raise the low and to lower the high. Every extension of education promotes it, because education brings people under common influences, and gives them access to the general stock of facts and sentiments. Improvements in the means of communication promote it, by bringing the inhabitants of distant places into personal contact, and keeping up a rapid flow of changes of residence between one place and another.”

Reading the same things, listening to the same things, seeing and doing and thinking the same things – that is even more true today than in the 19th century. I think it’s safe to say that Mill would have been horrified at much of today’s pop culture, pop thinking, and pop politics. Horrified not as some kind of self-righteous purist, but as someone who believed in the value of individuality and who saw individuality destroyed by pop-sameness.

One area in which he applied this danger of sameness was education. For me, this is especially interesting, since I live in Germany. For various reasons, my wife and I want to homeschool our children, which is illegal here. Germany does not just have mandatory education, but mandatory *schooling* (a holdover from Hitler, by the way).

Now this is what Mill said about sameness vs. individuality in education:

“If the government would make up its mind to require for every child a good education, it might save itself the trouble of providing one. It might leave to parents to obtain the education where and how they pleased, and content itself with helping to pay the school fees of the poorer classes of children, and defraying the entire school expenses of those who have no one else to pay for them. The objections which are urged with reason against State education, do not apply to the enforcement of education by the State, but to the State’s taking upon itself to direct that education: which is a totally different thing.

“That the whole or any large part of the education of the people should be in State hands, I go as far as any one in deprecating. All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.

“An education established and controlled by the State should only exist, if it exist at all, as one among many competing experiments, carried on for the purpose of example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain standard of excellence. Unless, indeed, when society in general is in so backward a state that it could not or would not provide for itself any proper institutions of education, unless the government undertook the task: then, indeed, the government may, as the less of two great evils, take upon itself the business of schools and universities, as it may that of joint stock companies, when private enterprise, in a shape fitted for undertaking great works of industry, does not exist in the country.

“But in general, if the country contains a sufficient number of persons qualified to provide education under government auspices, the same persons would be able and willing to give an equally good education on the voluntary principle, under the assurance of remuneration afforded by a law rendering education compulsory, combined with State aid to those unable to defray the expense.”

Before I end up quoting the whole essay on Liberty, let me draw rein here.

As for the other two essays, in “The Subjection of Women,” Mill mainly says (I paraphrase), “Why should we deny women certain rights and positions on the ground that they are supposedly unfit for them? If they are unfit, they will prove their unfitness by trying. If they succeed, they succeed. This means that forbidding them rights is completely superfluous if they are not equal to the task and completely unjust if they are equal.”

And the point of the essay “Utilitarianism” is not, as I had previously thought, a justification of the means by the end. It is not a kind of morality that, because it teaches the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, inevitably leads to the tyranny of the majority over the minority. In fact, like the essay on Liberty, it is a plea for the opposite: for a society that respects and protects the individual as much as possible.

Needless to say, it was a great read. I wish every politician in the world made this their bed-time literature. Come to think of it, it wouldn’t hurt to lose a little individuality by *everyone* reading this book.