Michael writes in a recent post:

There are many angry people in the middle east, and I agree with Dr. Paul that our occupation of their lands makes the US a focal point of their anger, a lightning rod for their wrath.

I really need to address this exceedingly lame argument.

Prior to 2003, the US did not occupy land in the Middle East. This is problematic to your position given what happened on 9/11.

To be more charitable to your argument, I think you are echoing a common sentiment, typically referred to as isolationism, which goes something like this:

Meddling with other countries affairs is bound to breed discontentment. This discontent can boil over causing the formation of organizations intent on harming our country. Therefore, it’s best to not meddle in other country’s affairs.

Much like Humanism, isolationism is a hopelessly naïve view of the world. Let’s look at it some different reasons why.

First, we have meddled with many countries and yet only a small portion has seen organizations form set on causing direct harm to our country. There are the more obvious examples of our meddling like occupying Japan and Germany after WW2 or more subtle examples like placing high tariffs on certain Chinese imports. If the argument is that meddling in other countries affairs is the controlling variable for violent retaliation you have some explaining to do.

A second problem with isolationism and, it’s the basis for my charge of naivety, is that it’s completely unrealistic in a global economy. The very nature of international trade requires that countries meddle with each other. Often times that meddlesome comes in the form of treaties and agreements in international groups. Its worth noting that the more engaged a country is in global trade, that is the more amenable its to being meddle with, the less likely organizations from that country will form to harm the US. Unless you advocate the US pulls out of international trade it is simply impossible to strictly adhere to a isolationism policy and I don’t know about you but I like my iPods cheap.

The third problem is that isolationism restricts intervention in instances in which a state is committing atrocious acts against another state or it’s own people. Would Ron Paul have intervened in the Second World War? He certainly could not have done so on the basis of stopping the holocaust. How about Kuwait, Sudan, Darfur or Rwanda? Isolationism restricts intervention in any of these instances. Some might like to have the option open to intervene on moral grounds. I would like the option open.

There are more reasons why such a policy is foolish but I don’t want to list all of them.

If you ask me, a much more meaningful explanation for why some organizations do harm is because they live under an oppressive regime that often scapegoats US policy as to why they are oppressed. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Osama argue that his antipathy towards the US was based on his belief that Saudi Arabian oppressive government was able to retain power thanks to the US?

It’s not meddling that causes the problem but oppressive regimes blaming the US for the oppression that is the problem. If you ask me, this is one of the reasons why invading Iraq was prudent. While it’s the case that terrorism was not coming out of that country, the conditions were absolutely ripe for it to occur. By invading and setting up a democracy you nip in the bud the development of fractious organizations that could have been inimical to the US.

In this explanation, the best way to deal with US hatred is to regime change nations that oppress their people. Clearly this is unlikely to work from a political perspective but what you might try and do is set up some free market democracy in some key regions until you run out of political will. Hopefully, over time liberal ideology will spread to the more oppressive regimes leading to bloodless democratic revolution. This seems to be in part the current administration plan in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under this policy, I think it would wise to add Iran to the list. This would allow the three nascent Democracies to form a strong contiguous allied front for liberal values in the Middle East.

With any luck, Iran will continue its efforts to build nuclear weapons giving the next administration the political capital needed to invade and establish democracy in that country. We can only hope for such luck.

Recenly Bettina emailed me to say:

I have been rereading and rereading your latest dialogue with your roomate, and at the end of all this, I came to the conclusion that one label was missing, the anti-humanist label.

Basically Bettina thinks I’m an anti-humanist. Given what I know of humanism I think this is fair to say. Intrigued by the notion of humanism I clicked to wikipedia to get a more solid foundation of Humanism. Turns out there are lots of different flavors so I’m not sure which kind of Humanist Bettina thinks I’m opposed to. One that I found of interest was the so-called new-Humanism which have a set of core beliefs only a naïve child could believe is true.

Solidarity – defined as treating other people the way one would like to be treated

It’s probably obvious to say so, but a painfully ill defined proposition. There are many ways to attack this silly proposition, but perhaps the most effective is to say that on some fundamental level it’s simply not possible to accomplish. Imagine a triad in which treating one person a certain way ends up violating the way in which someone else wishes to be treated. How does humanism suggest we resolve this problem.

I must also state that I absolutely hate defaulting to the other person determining how they should be treated. There are obvious examples, like the tyrant that would not wish to be stopped, but there are more prosaic examples. Imagine a prospective student wishing to get into graduate school. He has nothing to offer why should he be the one to determine how the scientist should treat him? Since the scientist has something to offer he should be the one to determine he treats the student. If those demands become to onerous for the student then they should drop out of that lab.

If someone is doing you a favor they determine how they treat you. If that treatment negates the gain of the favor then simply reject the favor. How is this hard? It doesn’t require this quasi-Christian silly proposition that everyone should be actively modeling how others are to be treated and constrain their behavior accordingly. How silly.

Coherence – defined as thinking, feeling and acting in the same way.

Apparently those that crafted the main tenets of Humanism were unaware of the fact that people and circumstances change. This only reflects their jejune worldview.

Placing the human being as the central value and concern, in such a way that nothing is above the human being and no human being is above another.

Again, more childish thinking. It depends on what you mean by no human being is above another, but I can think of many people that are more important than me. Many writers, artists, architect, priests, and scientists are much more important than me. Hell some concepts are more important than human beings. I would gladly sacrifice myself in instance where I felt my freedom was truly being compromised. In this way I would argue the value of freedom is more important than humans. Come to think of it, some people are worthy of sacrifice just to protect objects like rare artifacts. We call them soldiers and they defend our culture.

Affirming the equality of all human beings.

Such a foolish canard that is demonstrably false.

Recognizing personal and cultural diversity, affirming the characteristics proper to each human group and condemning discrimination, whether motivated by economic, racial, ethnic, or cultural differences.

Again the problem here is that its just painfully naïve. Sure there are instances where respecting other cultures is warranted particularly in cases that don’t matter. But when cultures do things that do matter to your culture you must be willing to draw distinctions and classify according to good and bad. Cultures that are into oppressing woman and killing homosexual are bad. Cultures that are into “Recognizing personal and cultural diversity, affirming the characteristics proper to each human group and condemning discrimination, whether motivated by economic, racial, ethnic, or cultural differences are good.” Well at least according to some of you it is.

Developing knowledge beyond the limitations imposed by prejudices accepted as absolute and immutable truths.

This is pretty solid. Of course one must ask is there any reason not to treat these principles of Humanism as ‘absolute and immutable truths’? They sure are written that way. Of course that would mean this principle violates itself which in turn is a violation of the previous proposition ‘Coherence – defined as thinking, feeling and acting in the same way’. Seriously, only a child could genuinely believe this crap.

Affirming the freedom of ideas and beliefs.

Okay, I will stop caging that which has no corporeal form. Sounds good.

Repudiating violence in all its forms.

I will never repudiate violence committed against those I judge to be bad. Those that do, condemn themselves to a life of oppression and death. Again this proposition speaks to the utter juvenile nature of Humanism.

If humanism is to be defined this way, then I gladly, almost ecstatically, embrace anti-humanism. But then again most people become an anti-humanist by age 12.

If you ask me the problem with Humanism is that it took the argumentation for how the state should treat the citizens and applied it to a much larger scope. If you properly seat these propositions in the context of how the state should treat the citizenry I would agree with most of them. When we examine this more closely we see why humanism principles must be bound to the state. The state has a monopoly on coercion and these principles aim to insure that this force is not used in terrible ways by restraining that force.