My largest complaint is that the book is not intellectually rigorous; it contains a series of assertions, but they don’t necessarily follow from each other. To be fair, politics wouldn’t exist if it were possible to prove or disprove every assertion through logic. Still, it galls me to see Levin put together a chapter which masquerades as a logical argument but in fact is nothing of the sort.

Take his chapter on faith, for example. As an aside, in just three pages, Levin proves the existence of God! His argument works like this:
1. Premise: The Founding Fathers declared in the Declaration of Independence that all men were endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
2. Premise: The Founding Fathers were paragons of humanity and their legacy is comprised of perfect documents whose every implication, no matter how far from the purpose of the text, was understood and intended by them.
3. Premise: Unalienable rights only exist in the context of an absolute moral code.
4. Premise: An absolute moral code can only exist supernaturally; a human moral code cannot be absolute.
5. Premise: It would be terrible if an absolute moral code did not exist; people would then have to think about the ramifications of their behavior. In fact, people are incapable of behaving morally or ethically without strict guidance from a supernatural power.
6. Deduction: Given 1 and 2, you should believe in God because they did.
7. Deduction: Given 3, 4, and 5, you should believe in God because failing to do so means that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not actually technically unalienable. This contradicts 1 and 2. Therefore, God must exist!

There are any number of problems with this train of logic, but the biggest ones come from premise 2. Here’s a funny thing: he never explicitly states premise 2; he just assumes it’s a fundamental part of his readers’ worldview. Even so, I disagree with it. These people were smart, innovative, and dedicated to the nation they were helping define, but they were still human. It makes no sense to take their works as holy writ, perfect and infallible, then prove that God himself only exists because they said so.

If you don’t implicitly accept 2, both deductions fail to stand. As it happens, I also have major problems with 5. I don’t want to get into those here, though; it would only distract from my point, which is this: Levin rolls on and on like a juggernaut through this book, laying out argument after argument without stopping for breath. The vast majority of them are flawed. Refuting them all would require me to write a book of my own, and I don’t feel like doing that. Instead, I want to write a more general counter, explaining where I stand.

Fundamentally, I start politically with libertarianism: people should be free as much as possible to do whatever they want, and government should be constrained to the minimum necessary. However, I only need one example to point out why we do want some government instead of none at all: Somalia. That place is an anarchist’s dream; it hasn’t had a real government for over 15 years now. It is a terrible place to live.

So if we do need some government, what should its functions be? Let’s start with the most important one: establish the rule of law. That right there fixes Somalia’s biggest problem. However, it introduces another one.

Nobody’s conquered Somalia because it’s a violent shithole with few natural resources. A bunch of nations have the military capacity to just kill every Somali and take the land, but they don’t because that’s evil. Taking over without just killing everyone there means establishing the rule of law, and to say that’s hard is an understatement. Establishing the rule of law where it doesn’t exist is very difficult; particularly when the particular laws you want to impose aren’t the same ones the majority of the people want. This is the problem the US faces in Iraq and Afghanistan right now, and in Somalia in 1993. If, however, the people have a central government that they respect, conquering the nation becomes a lot easier. You just have to get the government to surrender, instead of forcing every person to on their own. The second priority of a government then needs to be this: defend itself and its people from external threats.

It might be interesting to live in a nation whose government restricted itself to those two principles. If nothing else, it’d be a test of how the free market actually holds up in comparison to a government for ensuring the quality of life for the people. Still, to the best of my knowledge, that hasn’t been tried since the middle ages. (Those sucked for the simple reason that 99% of people were serfs who had no rights and whose lives were nasty, brutish, and short.) Since then, every government on earth has had a third priority: the construction and maintenance of necessary infrastructure. Roads, bridges, ports, power lines and facilities; all these are traditionally government projects which fall under the infrastructure category.

Here’s where it gets political: infrastructure segues somewhere, in a messy and ill-defined way, into social services. The Founding Fathers were convinced, for example, that an efficient Postal Service was critical to the success of any democracy. Is that infrastructure, or social service? Is it more important to have the capability to cheaply transport pieces of paper, or bits of information? Finland recently established that broadband access to the internet is a legal right of every citizen. Is that the way to go?

I’m of the opinion that there are certain social services that the government should make available to every citizen. A stable national currency. Fire departments. Education, through at least a high school level. Health care, to at least a minimal standard, in the fields of emergency medicine, pharmacology, ob/gyn clinics, pediatricians, preventive medicine, and geriatric care. I’m not saying that the government should claim a monopoly on these services or that individuals should be required to avail themselves of the government’s offerings; I see no reason to deny the market the ability to compete to provide premium services. However, baseline offerings should be free to every citizen.

Calling these services rights seems a little silly to me. I wouldn’t mind, for example, if the government refused to treat the lung cancer of someone who’d smoked for 40 years, or obesity at all. You can’t deny someone their rights, but you can allow them to forfeit access to social services through personal choice. I’d argue that each of these services is productive for the government to provide because each of them improves the nation as a whole. The benefits of fire departments and a national currency should be self-evident. Public education, since its institution a century ago, has been a sore spot for most of that time, but I haven’t heard anyone arguing that children should not have the option to be educated regardless of their parents’ circumstances. Mostly, people agree that it is a good thing to have. 100 years forward, I expect people to treat health care the way we do public education now: a national service that, while often outperformed by the private sector, is so manifestly useful that essentially nobody is seriously arguing that it should be done away with.

Here’s the thing: there are services that government provides which aren’t rights, but which are nice. Streetlights are a good example. It costs a fair bit to erect a streetlight, and even more to keep it supplied with electricity and replacement lightbulbs. You could argue that streetlights reduce crime, or that they enhance driving safety, but I’ve seen no statistics about that and would actually tend to be skeptical even if they were produced because studies like the ones which would produce those results often have some sketchy methodology. Even Levin doesn’t complain about streetlights, though you’d expect him to: a government boondoggle with unproven results siphoning money out of the taxpayer? Call Rupert Murdoch! Have a Tea Party!

Here’s the thing: in the grand scheme of things, streetlights are cheap, and they’re nice to have. Through general affluence, technology, or rarity of necessity, other services sometimes become cheap and nice also. How much would it cost to maintain soup kitchens sufficient to entirely eliminate starvation in America? How much does it cost to maintain a single wing of F-22s (to say nothing of the purchase price!)? Which better serves the needs of the nation: preventing our citizens from dying directly, or maintaining an air superiority fighter without an opponent?

As it happens, starvation isn’t as weighty a problem as obesity; don’t misunderstand me as crusading here for the anti-starvation cause. The point is that if the cost is small enough, it can be worth providing a service which is unnecessary but nice.

Levin’s boojum, the demon he fears above all others, is the Statist: a terrible creature devoted purely to the consolidation of power in the government and the elimination of individual freedoms. There’s a wonderful description on page 15 of how utterly terrible this monster is. It’s a fierce and entertaining straw man, and a rhetorical trick that he may be physically addicted to. They’re everywhere! The media is full of them; the courts are comprised of them; the entire Democratic party is a thin front for them. Been to college? Beware, all those academics are Statists! Believe in separation of church and state? You’re a Statist! Think human activity is causing global warming? You’ve been taken in by a Statist conspiracy! Want the government to provide communal services? You’re on your way to being voted Statist of the Year! Also, actors are pretty much all Statists: “It is the rare actor who challenges the fraternity.”

Alas, though Levin goes on at length about the media’s tendency to invent a Terror of the Month, there’s no satisfying pull quote about inventing straw men to serve a political purpose. It seems he’s a bit too introspective for that.

Levin closes his book with a Conservative Manifesto: a list of goals and assertions which summarize his political position in a traditional, elephant-shaped package. At best, he comes off as someone who’s honestly trying to work for the best future of the nation, even if his methods and goals diverge from mine. At worst, it’s hard to believe he inhabits the same universe that I do. We have this in common at least: we both believe that people should seek to understand the world around them and work to improve it for the future. We both are glad to live in a society in which we can disagree vehemently and in writing about the way the nation should be run. We both think that individual liberty is the premise, and the Constitution is the basis, of the US system of government.

We just disagree about everything else.

Seven young aviators in dress green uniforms drove in a minivan to the airport. There was laughter and talk inside the van, because nobody here is morbid. Upon arrival, we spent a few minutes coordinating with the funeral director, the police escort for the hearse, the traffic controller in charge of positioning the aircraft, and the guy who drives the conveyor belt used to offload the coffin. We waited in the arrivals lounge for a while, but then family members started to arrive, so we moved outside.

When the plane finally arrived, the pilot’s shutdown checklists took longer than the ceremony itself. As we unloaded the coffin and carried it the few feet to the hearse, a young child cried in the distance. The family was present, but they weren’t allowed on the flight line itself; TSA regulations.

None of us know whose coffin we carried. We know that it was a Specialist who died in Afghanistan, and that at the funeral on Saturday a General will be presenting the flag to the family. Name, gender, circumstances of death; these remain mysteries.

For the family, our presence and that of a comerade of the deceased who accompanied them on the flight back were symbols that the military really does care, that it honors their sacrifice and that of their loved one. Personally, the message seemed a bit more bleak: that in the event I die in the course of duty, it will only be noticed by a few family members and some people I never met who are assigned to ensure I shuffle this mortal coil with all due pomp and circumstance.

Even so. As the hearse departed, and we all raised our white gloves in salute, I could not help but feel that perhaps some ceremony is a good and necessary thing. Even if the presence of my detail accomplished nothing in quantifiable terms, I can trust that the family derived some comfort from my presence, and hope that however this nameless soldier died, they would be satisfied with the life they had.

On the one hand, I am forced to agree with this guy on some points: not all worldviews have equal merit, and some are simply better than others. On the other hand, I believe that one trait which increases a culture’s merit is exactly the xenophilia that this guy decries.

Why is it important to celebrate diversity? Because people have a hard time with subtlety, and so any culture which does not intentionally take joy in difference will inevitably find itself drifting toward prejudice, and toward injustice. If people believe subconsciously that the barbarians elsewhere aren’t really human, they’ll never be able to treat them consciously as equals.

The questionable premise is that traditions, beliefs, and practices in all their ethnic and historical profusion self-authenticate their claims to truth, beauty, and goodness. Not only must all the ‘voices’ be heard, whatever they come up with must be treated with respect … Open-ended diversity is thrust upon us as a positive object of obligatory good feeling.

Here is the problem: accepting, and even taking joy in learning about foreign cultures and lifestyles does not imply that one approves of them or would want to include every feature in one’s own daily life. Look at the atrocities against women that the Taliban committed in Afghanistan: it is important to learn about what went on there, even if only as a cautionary example of the problems associated with a fundamentalist government. Respecting that culture boils down to taking individuals from that culture on their own merits and refraining from intervention*.

It is important to remember that the case of the Taliban approaches the worst case possible. For most other cultures and civilizations, there are plenty of lessons to be learned. Look at Europe to discover the benefits and penalties associated with a more socialistic stance. Look at Japan to see what happens in a liberal democracy when society still places huge pressure on people to value their duty to others above themselves. Look at most places in the world, and one can see both benefits and penalties associated with the choices that society made in contrast with our own. However, one can only objectively look at those cultures if one first accepts that they have an inherent right to exist, and that acceptance can only come if one’s own culture celebrates diversity.

Should an ethnic attachment to astrology be included as a legitimate discipline in college curricula because politicians and bureaucrats in India submit decisions bearing on public issues to readings of the stars? Should tribal shamans be licensed to practice “alternative” medicine? In postmodern jargon, is not one scientific or medical “narrative” as good as another?

There is absolutely no reason why An Introduction to Indian Astrology could not be a perfectly legitimate college course. For a student of Indian culture and folklore, such a course might be essential. Accepting other cultures does not at all imply that we must attempt to import every feature of every culture that we come in contact with; such an approach would obviously be both chaotic and futile. However, it is perfectly feasible to take other cultures seriously on their own merits.

As for alternative medicine, one must first realize what a license to practice medicine is: it is official certification that the doctor in question uses techniques and tools which have been proven, statistically and rigorously, to work. Any “alternative” technique which can offer proof–the double-blind, statistical kind–that it works, is inherently an acceptable tool for a licensed doctor. Alternative medicine is comprised of remedies which cannot offer that proof; as such, there is no reason to license its practitioners. Neither is there any reason to prevent them from setting up alternative clinics, so long as they do not masquerade as a licensed doctor. Either one believes in the practitioner as well as the remedy, or one does not.

An uninformed, unsuspecting student body, awash in diversity rhetoric and pedagogy, maneuvered by solemn, earnest action plans shaped by diversity ideologues, might be led to think that ethnic violence and hatred, alive and readily visible around the world, has nothing to do with ethnicity and its inherent premise of exclusiveness.

The author of the article in question has taken great pains to utterly demolish a straw man. There is no great pressure to accept other cultures in a completely valueless, utterly morally relativistic setting. That would be nearly impossible, if it is possible at all. Every person has some deeply ingrained set of criteria for judging other cultures, in whole or in part. Mine is simple: cultures are ranked in order of their ability to maximize liberty per capita. Other people might value personal safety as more important, or conformity to some religious text. Regardless of which criteria one uses, they can only be applied objectively if one first accepts that other cultures have an intrinsic right to exist. This is the celebration of diversity that needs to be, and generally is, applied in the educational system of our culture.

Why is it that people from Afghanistan are Afghani, while people from Pakistan are Pakistani? Shouldn’t there be some sort of reliable policy with regards to -stan?

Does this sound like junk to you, too?

If Mr. Lindh was not working for Al Qaeda, he has yet to come up with any other explanation for his activities in Afghanistan. If he was a tourist, he should have said so. If he had any legitimate business there, he should have said so by now.

By Occam’s Razor, then, he was working for Al Qaeda.

This argument won’t hold in court, true. But the taxpayers are paying a few million dollars to the prosecution; they should be able to turn this into a case that can prove he was working for them.

Now, that in and of itself is not a war crime. It is, however, treason for conspiracy against the Untied States of America. Treason happens to carry the penalty of death, last time I checked.

His defenders have accused the prosecution of misrepresenting him because they neglected to relay the fact that he ‘expressed concern’ for the victims in the World Trade Center. Perhaps this is true; they can get a cookie. Mr. Lindh should get as much concern as the average nazi who expressed concern for the jews.

The basic fact of the matter is that he chose to ally himself with an organization which has as one of its absic goals, the downfall of the USA. Now, having been captured and tried for that fact, he is trying to weasel out on techicalities of the US legal system.

I find that despicable.