Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 6 of transcript and video)

Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present.  This is a seven part series.

Created Equal [6/7]. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980)

(Laughter)

PIVEN: If you look at the leadership of the black __

(Applause)

FRIEDMAN: But I want to go back to the __

MCKENZIE: Yeah.

FRIEDMAN: __ I want to carry it back to an earlier point. Number one, there’s no question but what equality of results, if it comes about through a framework of freedom, is a desirable result. Number two, I argue in the film I’ve argued here that in point of fact you get greater equality of actual results by a system under which people are free to achieve unequal results. That for the poor people of the world that Frances Fox Piven was talking about, the most effective mechanism for enabling them to improve their status is not a governmental program which seeks to ascribe to them certain positions which seeks to provide them with certain goods and services, but a governmental program which tries to eliminate arbitrary barriers to advancement. I would say that in this world the greatest source of inequality has been special privileges granted by government. That government, you may talk a great deal, there may be a lot of talk about how we’re going to eliminate inequality. But if you look at __ go back to your case of Britain. Is there any doubt that one of the effects of governmental intervention in Britain has been to create new opportunities for special classes. That the way to get wealthy in a society that supposedly is aiming at equality, that the way to get wealthy is to get a special government permit to import __ to get foreign exchange or to import goods or to __ in this country to set up a television station. Those are the ways in which you get inequality.

JAY: Well I think, Milton, you grossly misrepresent the British experience and here perhaps I might make the point. First of all, the burden of taxation in Britain is lower then it has been for many years than in any other of the countries of the European community, the overall burden of taxation. Secondly, you will immediately come back and say, “Aaah, but the marginal rates of personal taxation have been extremely high.” Perfectly true, but not as high as they were in the United States until the early 1960s. It’s interesting to note in passing that when the United States reduced its ninety percent maximum personal rate to fifty percent, the rate of economic growth in the United States, and I’m not suggesting cause and effect, fell from the previously very low rate of 2 percent a year to about naught-point-four percent in the period since. So that any notion that there is an absolutely one-to-one relationship between the degree of personal taxation and efficiency is wholly mythical. Thirdly it__ thirdly__

FRIEDMAN: Well I’ll tell you what you can do with statistics.

(Laughter)

JAY: __ now let me, __ well, you ought to read. You ought to look at the facts. It’s easy to make glib remarks about statistics, but look at the facts.

FRIEDMAN: I know, but __

JAY: Look at the fact that in Britain over the last thirty years, during which period according to you Britain has been crushed by egalitarianism, whereas the United States has been soaring away in the glorious state of liberty. The rate of economic growth in Britain has been faster than that of the United States. How do you explain that?

FRIEDMAN: First of all, I have to look at what the figures mean in Britain. I have to look at the way __

JAY: First you ought to look at them.

FRIEDMAN: I have looked at them and you realize that in judging output in the government that’s judged in terms of cost not in terms of product. And what I really ought to look at is not the rate of growth of GNP as the statisticians measure it, but the consumption available to people in forms, as people value it, ultimate consumption, if I look at that I get a very different picture. Statistics are very, very, as you know very well, are very easy to use. They can be __ they can be used to throw light or they can be used to cast confusion.

JAY: Why don’t you look at facts.

FRIEDMAN: I agree with you. And facts __

JAY: The facts are that the amount of goods and services consumed by the government as a proportion of the national output are no higher in Britain than they are in the United States and haven’t been any time since the war.

FRIEDMAN: They have risen very sharply __

JAY: Which may be the explanation of the low rate of growth in the United States.

FRIEDMAN: They have risen very sharply. It has risen very sharply in the war, both __ since the war, in both countries. It is higher in Britain than it is in the Untied States, properly measured.

JAY: Both twenty-five percent in both cases.

FRIEDMAN: The proportion __ excuse me.

MCKENZIE: Well of goods and service.

FRIEDMAN: That again is a statistician’s nightmare. We have to look at total government spending.

JAY: You were the one who was talking about whether or not people have freedom to choose how their money is spent.

MCKENZIE: Yeah.

JAY: The transfers, which is pensions and other payments from government, leave the freedom as to how the money is spent in the hands of private individuals. It’s only the direct consumption of goods and services where the bureaucrats are making the decisions.

FRIEDMAN: It leaves the decision for freedom in the hands of the recipient, but not in the hand

MCKENZIE: Can we __ gentlemen, gentlemen__ I’m back in my Chairman’s role. Can we leave this statistical debate, fascinating I’m sure it is

(Laughter)

MCKENZIE: I want to make the point, Milton, it seems to me and I am not British, I’m Canadian, having lived a great deal in the U.K., it seems to me that you really have most unfairly used the U.K. as a whipping boy in the last third of your film, last third of your film. Because you say for much of the century the British are trying to use the law to impose equality. Now the Conservatives have been in office for sixty-five percent__

FRIEDMAN: I am not a partisan, I am not a partisan.

MCKENZIE: No, no, I now you’re not. But let me finish it. There have been three majority left governments in Britain. And it is not the case at all that unlike other parts of Europe, there has been consistent policies aimed at equality. Taxation is lower. There’s no wealth tax. There’s a wealth tax in eight other western European countries. Capital gains tax came in only, ten, fifteen years ago.

FRIEDMAN: But let me take your case. First of all, Conservative Labor, that’s not the issue. I have argued again and again, I do again __

MCKENZIE: Well, the Conservatives have not pursued equality.

FRIEDMAN: I do in a book which is associated with this series. I make the point that the policy of Britain in the past sixty or seventy years owes more to the philosophical idea of the Torres of the 19th century than it does to the ideas of Karl Marx. In the United States in the 1930s the Socialist Party never garnered more than a few percent of the vote, but it was the most influential political party in America because its policies were adopted by both the Republicans and the Democrats. In the same way, what you have to look at is not whether the Conservatives or the Labor Party is in power, but what were the basic philosophy and ideas? The ideas of Fabian Socialism, of Tory paternalism were being affected by both the Torres __

MCKENZIE: The Torres fought __ Milton, really.

FRIEDMAN: __ and the Labor.

JAY: There will be some very surprised Tory politicians an some very surprised voters to hear what you say. But let me give you another example of the way you’re playing fast and loose with the facts.

MCKENZIE: Yeah.

JAY: You talk about crime in Britain. I mean crime in Britain is a tiny fraction of what it is in the United States and has been throughout that period __

FRIEDMAN: That’s true.

JAY: __ when you say that we’re so egalitarian and you’re so free. You talk about able people being driven out of the country. More qualified people are living and working in Britain than at any time in the last 150 years of our history. Now this is largely because of the granting of independence to the colonies, the loss of empire, as you like, but in fact for example doctors which are endlessly talked about, more British-trained doctors are now working in Britain than at any time in our history.

MCKENZIE: And the final example, Milton __

FRIEDMAN: And it’s also true __ it’s also true that the physicians leaving Britain, emigrating from Britain __

JAY: Tiny, tiny minority.

FRIEDMAN: __ amount to one-third as many as the number of people graduating each year from your medical schools.

PIVEN: I think it’s a mistake to be arguing this.

MCKENZIE: Milton, I ought to take one __

JAY: Ones coming back.

PIVEN: It’s a distortion of the evidence to rest the argument for the free enterprise system by selectively using the example of England when you want to, the United States when you want to. The test of your argument about the free enterprise system and its capacity to produce both freedom and greater equality to relieve poverty, the test of that argument has to be made everywhere that the free enterprise system has been extended, has penetrated. The test of your argument is not only in what happens in England and the ostensible decline or not the decline of the English economy or what happened in the United States. The test of that argument has to look at what the free enterprise system has meant for the majority of people who do not live in England and who do not live in the United States, who do not live in the mother countries, but rather live in that part of the world where most people live and when __ where most people have had their lives disrupted. Peasants have lost their land, traumatic destruction occurs __

FRIEDMAN: Excuse me, excuse me. You’ve got to compare __

November 4, 2011 – 12:31 am Categories: Milton Friedman | Post a comment

Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 1 of transcript and video)

Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 1 of 6.

 
Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools
Transcript:
Friedman: These youngsters are beginning another day at one of America’s public schools, Hyde Park High School in Boston. What happens when they pass through those doors is a vivid illustration of some of the problems facing America’s schools.
They have to pass through metal detectors. They are faced by security guards looking for hidden weapons. They are watched over by armed police. Isn’t that awful. What a way for kids to have to go to school, through metal detectors and to be searched. What can they conceivably learn under such circumstances. Nobody is happy with this kind of education. The taxpayers surely aren’t. This isn’t cheap education. After all, those uniformed policemen, those metal detectors have to be paid for.
What about the broken windows, the torn school books, and the smashed school equipment. The teachers who teach here don’t like this kind of situation. The students don’t like to come here to go to school, and most of all, the parents __ they are the ones who get the worst deal __ they pay taxes like the rest of us and they are just as concerned about the kind of education that their kids get as the rest of us are. They know their kids are getting a bad education but they feel trapped. Many of them can see no alternative but to continue sending their kids to schools like this.
To go back to the beginning, it all started with the fine idea that every child should have a chance to learn his three R’s. Sometimes in June when it gets hot, the kids come out in the yard to do their lessons, all 15 of them, ages 5 to 13, along with their teacher. This is the last one-room schoolhouse still operating in the state of Vermont. That is the way it used to be. Parental control, parents choosing the teacher, parents monitoring the schooling, parents even getting together and chipping in to paint the schoolhouse as they did here just a few weeks ago. Parental concern is still here as much in the slums of the big cities as in Bucolic, Vermont. But control by parents over the schooling of their children is today the exception, not the rule.
Increasingly, schools have come under the control of centralized administration, professional educators deciding what shall be taught, who shall do the teaching, and even what children shall go to what school. The people who lose most from this system are the poor and the disadvantaged in the large cities. They are simply stuck. They have no alternative.
Of course, if you are well off you do have a choice. You can send your child to a private school or you can move to an area where the public schools are excellent, as the parents of many of these students have done. These students are graduating from Weston High School in one of Boston’s wealthier suburbs. Their parents pay taxes instead of tuition and they certainly get better value for their money than do the parents in Hyde Park. That is partly because they have kept a good deal of control over the local schools, and in the process, they have managed to retain many of the virtues of the one-room schoolhouse.
Students here, like Barbara King, get the equivalent of a private education. They have excellent recreational facilities. They have a teaching staff that is dedicated and responsive to parents and students. There is an atmosphere which encourages learning, yet the cost per pupil here is no higher than in many of our inner city schools. The difference is that at Weston, it all goes for education that the parents still retain a good deal of control.
Unfortunately, most parents have lost control over how their tax money in spent. Avabelle goes to Hyde Park High. Her parents too want her to have a good education, but many of the students here are not interested in schooling, and the teachers, however dedicated, soon lose heart in an atmosphere like this. Avabelle’s parents are certainly not getting value for their tax money.
Caroline Bell, Parent: I think it is a shame, really, that parents are being ripped off like we are. I am talking about parents like me that work every day, scuffle to try to make ends meet. We send our kids to school hoping that they will receive something that will benefit them in the future for when they go out here and compete in the job market. Unfortunately, none of that is taking place at Hyde Park.
Friedman: Children like Ava are being shortchanged by a system that was designed to help. But there are ways to help give parents more say over their children’s schooling.
This is a fundraising evening for a school supported by a voluntary organization, New York’s Inner City Scholarship Fund. The prints that have brought people here have been loaned by wealthy Japanese industrialist. Events like this have helped raise two million dollars to finance Catholic parochial schools in New York. The people here are part of a long American tradition. The results of their private voluntary activities have been remarkable.
This is one of the poorest neighborhoods in New York City: the Bronx. Yet this parochial school, supported by the fund, is a joy to visit. The youngsters here from poor families are at Saint John Christians because their parents have picked this school and their parents are paying some of the costs from their own pockets. The children are well behaved, eager to learn, the teachers are dedicated. The cost per pupil here is far less than in the public schools, yet on the average the children are two grades ahead. That is because teachers and parents are free to choose how the children shall be taught. Private money has replaced the tax money and so control has been taken away from the bureaucrats and put back where it belongs.
This doesn’t work just for younger children. In the 60’s, Harlem was devastated by riots. It was a hot bed of trouble. Many teenagers dropped out of school.
November 4, 2011 – 12:01 am Categories: Milton Friedman, Vouchers | Post a comment

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Arkansas v. South Carolina: A top 10 game but no one cares it seems

South Carolina is at Arkansas and both teams are in the top ten but it seems like no one in the nation cares. I am hoping that Arkansas can win and LSU will beat Alabama and that will keep Arkansas in the hunt for a SEC title (of course, that is the same as national title in the last 5 years). Here are Harry King’s thoughts:

Window to impress is small

Posted on 03 November 2011

By Harry King

LITTLE ROCK — Usually, announcement of the Arkansas kickoff is noted only for establishing departure times. This week, 6:15 p.m. is maddening.

A Sunday ago, USA Today reported that CBS and ESPN had swapped time slots so that the “eye” network could move LSU-Alabama to primetime. The news was shared with the trip coordinator and we eagerly began speculating about the start time for South Carolina at Arkansas.

An 11:21 a.m. kick would be optimum — cover the Arkansas game and be back in central Arkansas for the start of No. 1 vs. No. 2 in the BCS for only the fifth time in the regular season. Second choice for the Razorbacks and Gamecocks was 2:30 p.m., and a return trip from Fayetteville glued to the broadcast of Alabama-LSU.

Watching or listening, live is better. The DVR can be employed, but it’s not as riveting when you know the outcome.

Selfishly, 6:15 was the worst option.

For those in the pressbox, it means cajoling those in charge to dedicate one TV to the CBS telecast. Not that we would camp out there, but there are legitimate reasons to get up from the workspace now and then.

For the Razorbacks, the start time means one quarter to impress the national pundits and pollsters against the once-beaten Gamecocks. If Arkansas continues its notoriously slow starts, South Carolina will be in front when the remote is employed.

Everybody has an opinion about LSU-Alabama and mine is shaped by an excerpt from Tennessee-Alabama and from watching the Alabama secondary against Arkansas’ receivers in Tuscaloosa.

Crimson Tide quarterback A.J. McCarron was inaccurate in the first half against the Vols and the teams were tied at 6.

Alabama opened the second half with four straight passes, all McCarron completions, for 72 yards. The fifth play was also a called pass, but McCarron scrambled and scored.

Tennessee didn’t make anything on fourth-and-1 from its 39 and Kenny Bell ran under McCarron’s deep throw for a 20-6 lead. Game over.

McCarron has a better chance to make a big play in the passing game than either LSU quarterback and, as good as the two defenses are, a couple of key completions are likely to determine the outcome. The starter by default, Jarrett Lee, has been 70 percent or better in each of LSU’s last three games, but he only attempted 10, 17, and 20. The winning team will have to throw at least 20 times.

Lee is not as proficient as Tyler Wilson and the Arkansas quarterback had only the smallest of windows on pass attempts against Alabama. Even when an Arkansas receiver had a step or two and Wilson delivered, Dre Kirkpatrick or some other defender would close the gap in one step and make the tackle.

Always a suspect passer, Jordan Jefferson is more likely to run than throw when he replaces Lee. Asking him to pass against the Alabama secondary is dicey.

McCarron has thrown at least 20 times in every game and is 67 percent on his 200 attempts, a reason to have more confidence in the redshirt sophomore than either of LSU’s senior quarterbacks.

Thinking ahead to Nov. 25 in Baton Rouge, Arkansas fans will be in LSU’s corner. The guess is that McCarron will break their hearts if the Gamecocks don’t do it first.

The wild card is Les Miles’ penchant for seemingly hair-brained, but often successful play calling.

November 3, 2011 – 3:00 pm Categories: Current Events | Post a comment

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You never know when your time is up

My cousin just called me and told me about some dear Christian friends of his that lost their son in a car wreck. Two other young men died with him in a car crash last Sunday morning. They were on their way back to Oxford, Mississippi to attend church like they always did.

VAIDEN, Miss. — The funeral is Wednesday in Madison for three Ole Miss students killed in a car crash.Samuel Clayton Kelly, 18; Charles Walker Kelly, 19; and Bryant Mason Wilbanks, 19, all of Madison, died Sunday while on their way back to school after a weekend trip home, the Mississippi Highway Patrol said. “They were on their way back to go to church with us,” said Kappa Alpha Order pledge brother William Boyle. “We had to be at church at 10:30 a.m. They just didn’t make it there.”Troopers said the crash was reported about 8:30 a.m. Sunday on Interstate 55 near the Vaiden exit. There were no witnesses to the crash, MHP said. A 2009 Infiniti was traveling north on I-55 when it veered into the median at state Highway 35. The car left the median, flipped over the overpass and landed upside down on Highway 35, Trooper Tony Dunn said. 

 
Walker Kelly, Sam Kelly and Mason Wilbanks, all three freshmen at Ole Miss, died in a crash on Interstate 55 early Sunday. More

Paramedics said all of the teenagers were pronounced dead at the scene. They were each graduates of Madison Central High School and freshmen at the University of Mississippi.”It’s just hard to put in words to describe what it’s like to work an accident like that,” Dunn said. 

Visitation for all three families will be from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday and 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Wednesday at Brooadmoor Baptist Church in Madison. The funeral for the three friends is set for 10 a.m. Wednesday at the church. The families have requested that those attending the funeral wear red and blue. “I really don’t know how I’m going to make it without him being here, getting me through life,” said Wilbanks’ friend Anna Claire Giles. “He encouraged me. He was everything.”

 The families received the news of the crash just hours after saying goodbye to the three teenagers, who were headed back to Ole Miss after a surprise weekend at home.

 “(The visit home) was just the best surprise, and you know, it’s a surprise that I’ll always remember,” said Mason Wilbanks’ mother, Lynn Wilbanks. “I know why it was orchestrated the way that it was, because it was our last time with him.”

 

The families are members of Broadmoor Baptist Church. Many members of the church gathered there Sunday afternoon.”It’s tough. Hundreds and hundreds of kids are affected because they had siblings,” said Broadmoor student pastor Michael Kelly. “A lot of people are mourning and grieving and it’s just going to be a tough couple of days.”

 The Highway Patrol said the crash will be reconstructed to help investigators determine what went wrong.

 Dunn said this is not the first wreck to happen along that stretch of interstate.

 “In the last five or six years, we have had a couple similar wrecks,” Dunn said.

 MHP said there was no evidence of alcohol or drugs at the scene.

 Copyright 2011 by WAPT.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

_________________

These gentlemen were Christians and I am sure they would want me to share the gospel. So here it is:

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November 3, 2011 – 2:29 pm Categories: Current Events | Post a comment

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Dr. Bergman: “Evolution teaches that the living world has no plan or purpose except survival”(Section B of Part 2 of series on Evolution)

Dr. Bergman: “Evolution teaches that the living world has no plan or purpose except survival”(Section B of Part 2 of series on Evolution)

The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 3 of 6

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Is there any purpose in life? Evolution is clear on this point. I have included the last portion of the article by Dr. Jerry Bergman who I have corresponded with in the past.

Darwinism: Survival without Purpose

by Jerry Bergman, Ph.D. *

Humans have always wondered about the meaning of life…life has no higher purpose than to perpetuate the survival of DNA…life has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.1 –Richard Dawkins

Purpose and Christianity

Christianity teaches that God made the universe as a home for humans. If the universe evolved purely by natural means, then it just exists and any “purpose” for its existence can only be that which humans themselves attribute to it. But our own experience and intellectual attainments argue against this. The similarity of human-constructed machines and the orderly functioning of the universe is the basis of the design argument. Just as a machine requires a designer and a builder, so too the universe that we see requires a designer and a builder.

Determining the purpose of something depends on the observer’s worldview. To a nontheist the question “What is the purpose of a living organism’s structure?” means only “How does this structure aid survival?” Eyesight and legs would therefore have nothing to do with enjoyment of life; they are merely an unintended byproduct of evolution. Biologists consistently explain everything from coloration to sexual habits solely on the basis of survival. Orthodox neo-Darwinism views everything as either an unfortunate or a fortuitous event resulting from the outworking of natural law and random, naturally-selected mutations. Conversely, creationists interpret all reality according to beliefs about God’s purpose for humans. Evolutionists can usually explain even contradictory behavior, but creationists look beyond this and try to determine what role it plays in God’s plan.

Conclusions

Orthodox evolution teaches that the living world has no plan or purpose except survival, is random, undirected, and heartless. Humans live in a world that cares nothing for us, our minds are simply masses of meat, and no divine plan exists to guide us. These teachings are hardly neutral, but rather openly teach religion–the religion of atheism and nihilism. The courts have consistently approved teaching this anti-Christian religion in public schools and have blocked all attempts to neutralize these clearly religious ideas.

As the Word of God states, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

References

  1. Scheff, Liam. 2007. The Dawkins Delusion. Salvo, 2:94.
  2. Humes, Edward. 2007. Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul. New York: Ecco, 119.
  3. Ibid, 119.
  4. Turner, J. Scott. 2007. The Tinkerer’s Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 206.
  5. Humes, Monkey Girl, 119.
  6. Ibid, 172.
  7. Bloom, Paul and Deena Skolnick Weisberg. 2007. Childhood Origins to Adult Resistance to Science. Science, 316:996.
  8. Panek, Richard. 2007. Out There. New York Times Magazine, 56.
  9. Miller, Kenneth R. and Joseph S. Levine. Biology. 1998. Fourth Edition, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 658, emphasis in original.
  10. Levine, Joseph S. and Kenneth R. Miller 1994. Biology: Discovering Life. Second Edition, Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 161, emphasis in original.
  11. Raven, Peter H. and George B. Johnson. 2002. Biology. Sixth Edition, Boston, MA: McGraw Hill, 16, 443.
  12. Purves, William K., David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, and H. Craig Keller. 2001. Life: The Science of Biology. Sixth Edition, Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates; W.H. Freeman, 3.
  13. Interview with Richard Dawkins in Campbell, Neil A., Jane B. Reece, and Lawrence G. Mitchell. 1999. Biology. Fifth Edition, Menlo Park, CA: Addison Wesley Longman, 412-413.
  14. Futuyma, Douglas J. 1998. Evolutionary Biology. Third Edition, Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 5.
  15. Ibid, 5.
  16. Curtis, Helena and N. Sue Barnes. 1981. Invitation to Biology. Third Edition, New York, NY: Worth, 475.
  17. Strickberger, Monroe. 2000. Evolution. Third Edition, Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett, 70-71.
  18. Darwin, Francis (editor). 1888. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. London: John Murray, 210.
  19. Alcock, John. 1998. Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 16, 609.
  20. Browne, Janet. 1995. Charles Darwin: Voyaging, A Biography. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 542.
  21. Ibid, 542.
  22. Dawkins, Richard. 1995. River Out of Eden. New York: Basic Books, 133.
  23. Graffin, Gregory W. 2004. Evolution, Monism, Atheism, and the Naturalist World-View. Ithaca, NY: Polypterus Press, 42.
  24. Sommers, Tamler and Alex Rosenberg. 2003. Darwin’s Nihilistic Idea: Evolution and the Meaningless of Life. Biology and Philosophy, 18:653.

* Dr. Bergman is Professor of Biology at Northwest State College in Ohio.

Cite this article: Bergman, J. 2007. Darwinism: Survival without Purpose. Acts & Facts. 36 (11): 10.

November 3, 2011 – 12:54 am Categories: Current Events | Post a comment

Dear Senator Pryor, why not pass the Balanced Budget Amendment? (Part 14 Thirsty Thursday, Open letter to Senator Pryor)

Dear Senator Pryor, why not pass the Balanced Budget Amendment? (Part 14 Thirsty Thursday, Open letter to Senator Pryor)

Dear Senator Pryor,

Why not pass the Balanced  Budget Amendment? As you know that federal deficit is at all time high (1.6 trillion deficit with revenues of 2.2 trillion and spending at 3.8 trillion).

On my blog www.HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com I took you at your word and sent you over 100 emails with specific spending cut ideas. However, I did not see any of them in the recent debt deal that Congress adopted. Now I am trying another approach. Every week from now on I will send you an email explaining different reasons why we need the Balanced Budget Amendment. It will appear on my blog on “Thirsty Thursday” because the government is always thirsty for more money to spend.

Congressman Walsh Introduces Balanced Budget Amendment

04/07/11

 Washington, D.C. –  As part of his ongoing effort to restore fiscal responsibility in Washington, Congressman Joe Walsh (R-IL) today introduced H.J.Res.54, a Balanced Budget Amendment to the United States Constitution that provides a framework for putting our country on a path economic stability. This amendment is the House-companion to the Senate amendment that all 47 Republicans unanimously introduced last week, which would require the President to submit a balanced budget to Congress prior to each fiscal year.

“The federal government cannot continue to burden our children with this crushing deficit,” said Congressman Walsh. “American families have been working through a recession for the past three years by spending less and saving more, yet the federal government continues to spend money it simply does not have. Congress has neglected the real root cause and continues to be part of the problem, not part of the solution.”

“This amendment is the solution. If the average American family has to find a way to balance their checkbook each year and live within their means, there is no reason that the federal government can’t do the same.”    

“It was important to me that my first piece of legislation as a United States Congressman serves the American people by easing the burden of the government in their daily lives.A key provision to this amendment is to ensure that the budget is not balanced on the backs of hard working Americans, and thus H.J.Res.54 would require a 2/3 super-majority in both Houses for any tax increase.”

“Most importantly, this amendment shows families and businesses across America that Congress is serious about stabilizing our economy long-term. It’s time to bring our country out of the red.”

The Balanced Budget Amendment resolution features the following key provisions:

  • Presidential requirement to submit a balanced budget and Congressional requirement to pass a balanced budget;
  • Federal spending cap that Congress must limit outlays to no more than 18 percent of GDP, in line with the historical average of revenues over the last 40 years (this year, the federal government is projected to spend close to 25% of GDP);
  • Prohibits the courts from ordering revenue increases.
November 3, 2011 – 12:47 am Categories: spending out of control | Post a comment

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99th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth (Part 20) (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 6of 7)

Milton Friedman was born on July 31, 1912 and he died November 16, 2006. I started posting tributes of him on July 31 and I hope to continue them until his 100th birthday. Here is another tribute below:

worked pretty well for a whole generation. Now anything that works well for a whole generation isn’t entirely bad. From the fact __ from that fact, and the undeniable fact that things are working poorly now, are we to conclude that the Keynesian sort of mixed regulation was wrong __
FRIEDMAN: Yes.
LEKACHMAN: __ or alternatively that we need still more regulation. That’s my conclusion, I might say.
FRIEDMAN: You want the right people manipulating the leaders. But go back. Memory smooths things out. If you really look at that 25_year period you’re talking about, it was not a period of stability; it was a period that was punctuated by the very sharp inflation of the Korean War. It was a period that was punctuated by three recessions in the course of about eight years in the fifties and early sixties. It was a period in which you had a __ inflation really starting to go from creeping to running, in the latter sixties. It was a period which laid the ground work for the kind of situation in which we are now, where you have both higher unemployment and higher inflation. It was __
TEMIN: I don’t think that followed. I mean there were these movements, as we say, but they weren’t the movements like the 1930s. There was a recession in ’58, yes.
FRIEDMAN: I agree.
TEMIN: We all called it a recession. We all worried about it and so on, but it was a small thing, little potatoes.
FRIEDMAN: The same thing was true in earlier periods between The Great Depression. If you take the area between the great depression in the United States of the 1870s and the 1890s, again you had a period like that. If you take it between The Great Depression of the 1890s and World War I, with a minor __ with one minor exception, it was similar to that. So that what you have, and this is a historical fact, is that except for the great depressions, all of which are linked to monetary collapses and to governmental involvement, in the interim period, the society has been reasonably stable.
MCKENZIE: Haven’t we reached the stage, incidentally, where we need not again see anything like the great depression. You say recessions, yes; but it bears no relationship to what we knew __
FRIEDMAN: No.
MCKENZIE: __ in the thirties. Have we solved that problem now? People are deeply __
JAY: No, we haven’t. Because I think the seeds of it remain there. I don’t agree with Professor Lekachman that everything was __ I don’t want to misparaphrase him __ but did pretty well until 1973 and then it suddenly all went wrong. It seems to me that the seeds of the subsequent instability, stagflation, were there before. That each time round the economic cycle inflation went a little faster. Each time around the economic cycle unemployment tended to be a bit higher. But this brings me to what is my disagreement with Professor Friedman. I agree with him that government has failed to correct, and is bound to fail to correct that instability. I do not agree with him that it is the root cause of that instability or simply removing or containing the government will remove that instability. Because his constitution, and I agree with all the things he wants to put into it, but I want to put more into it, leaves big capital entirely free to operate. Now he doesn’t mind that. In response to big capital, you are bound to get __ as a simple, natural reaction __ big labor. He doesn’t mind that. He’s quite happy with that. But my contention is that once you have big labor, you have a way of setting rewards in society, not only by trade unions, but through all sorts of other processes whereby groups get together in order to exploit the political process and legal rights, and to protect themselves from competition, in which, inevitably, people set rewards above what economists call the “market clearing price” for labor. They set levels of rewards which make it impossible that everybody should be employed and you therefore have a built-in tendency to high unemployment. If governments react to that on the Keynesian pattern by trying to inject spending which will enable these people to be employed, then I agree with Professor Friedman that all you get is faster and faster inflation, and that if you like, is caused by the government. But the government is a proximate cause of an original instability that is already there. And there’s nothing in Professor Friedman’s constitution which would correct that inherent, if you like, contradiction or flaw in classical western political economy.
FRIEDMAN: Do you deny, Peter __
MCKENZIE: Let me get the reaction to that __
FRIEDMAN: __no, I want to ask just one question of Peter. Do you deny that big government plays a large part in the rise of big capital and big labor?
JAY: I think they’re interactive. I once said big capital causes big labor, causes big government, causes big failure. That is the tragic story, in my opinion, of the 20th century.
FRIEDMAN: And what about if you start that __
JAY: We have to unravel that.
FRIEDMAN: __ if you start that route with big government. Will it be wrong? Big government causes big capital, causes big labor, causes big failure?
JAY: I don’t think historically that’s what happened. But you and I are agreed, we don’t want big government.
FRIEDMAN: That’s right.
JAY: What we’re disagreed about is what else we need.
LEKACHMAN: I think something is seriously wrong with a beautiful system which develops this big, clumsy, aggressive government, huge corporations, with more influence over their markets than is desirable from the standpoint of free competitive theory, trade unions, which at least according to some opinions, have a similarly malignant influence on their markets. There must be something radically flawed with the capitalist system which allows these institutional developments. This doesn’t alarm me because I’m a socialist, but I would __ I would readily __
FRIEDMAN: There must be something radically wrong with socialist philosophy which allows the __ extraordinary __ the much worse developments that have occurred, wherever there has been any real significant attempt to put a thoroughgoing socialism into practice.
LEKACHMAN: Socialism is a word of many meanings.
MCKENZIE: Now I think we might easily get into a quite serious debate on that point.
VOICE OFF SCREEN: Right.
JAY: I think it’s possible to note in passing that they may both be right.
MCKENZIE: Yes.
JAY: That conventional capitalism, conventional socialism, as conceived in the 20th century, are both wrong and that the polarization of the debate between those simple two alternatives greatly impoverishes the real range of political-economic choices which modern societies have.
FRIEDMAN: But what has happened? Over and over again one claim after another for the kind of socialism __ this kind of socialism or that kind of socialism __ has turned to ashes. And each time the answer has come, “Oh well, it was a wrong brand of socialism that was adopted, or the wrong people were running it.”
VOICE OFF SCREEN: But you’re saying __
JAY: You’re arguing with yourself when you’re saying __
FRIEDMAN: No I’m not.
JAY: The Federal Reserve in 1929 failed to do the right thing. It was the wrong brand of government.
FRIEDMAN: It was the wrong brand, absolutely, but what I’m saying is something different. I can at least point to examples in history of systems of capitalist systems in which the government had a fairly limited role, not my ideal government. Many things, doing many things I would not want it to do. But I’m going to point to such examples over long stretches of history in __ which have been relatively successful. Where the major achievements of humankind, not merely in economics, but in all other areas, have largely arisen. It is very difficult to point to any similar examples __
TEMIN: But then you are pointing back __
FRIEDMAN: __ of where big government has achieved such success.
TEMIN: But you said before you didn’t like to go back. You’re now talking about going back.
FRIEDMAN: No, no. I didn’t say I didn’t like to go back.
TEMIN: They took place in different times.
FRIEDMAN: What I said is going back or forward is irrelevant. What we want to do is __
TEMIN: But it’s not irrelevant to this discussion __
FRIEDMAN: __ the right thing wherever it comes from.
TEMIN: __ because as Bob Lekachman said earlier, things have increased in scale, and the scale of business and increased, and you were saying just before, big government, big labor, big industry, big firms go together, and you didn’t accept it before, when Bob said you’ll accept it now from here.
FRIEDMAN: No, no. I don’t accept it. What I accept is that big government is a major factor promoting big labor and big capital. I did not accept that in the absence of big government you would have the big capital and big labor that worries him.
November 3, 2011 – 12:07 am Categories: Milton Friedman | Post a comment

Cook: Republicans in trouble in Arkansas?

Jason Tolbert and Michael Cook comment on politics in Arkansas

If you read Michael Cook today then you would think that the Republicans are in big trouble in Arkansas. It is true that some are thinking about throwing their hat in the ring against Rick Crawford, but I think he will defeat all comers. (Max Brantley has also pointed out that the Democrats have chosen to target this seat by running advertisements against Crawford.)

In 2010 the Republicans barely had over 50 candidates running for the 100 state house seats and they won 87% of those races were they had candidates. This year it is very easy for Republicans to get candidates.

The key to predicting the outcome of the 2012 elections is looking at the polls that show that people in Arkansas would rather be associated with Republicans than Democrats. This is the first time in the history of Arkansas that has been true.

Last week on Arkansas Week in Review on PBS, the three pundits said that it is true that Arkansas Democrats have to dig themselves out of a hole because Obama will be on the same ticket in 2012. However, they pointed to the fact that the Republican House in Washington is very unpopular too and the Republicans have to dig themselves out of a hole too.

I have only response to that silly statement. Look at what Arkansas voters did in 2010. They must identify with those “crazy Republicans” in Washington who want to cut spending because they voted to put more of them in office than ever before, electing 75% Republicans in our house delegation to Washington for the first time ever.

Below is from Red Arkansas Blog:

It Was One Year Ago Today…

November 2, 2011

By

…and Arkansas Republicans taught the band to play a whole new type of music.

You say you want a revolution?

November 2, 2011 – 8:09 am Categories: Current Events, Jason Tolbert | Post a comment

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Dr. Bergman: “Evolution teaches that the living world has no plan or purpose except survival”(Section A of Part 2 of series on Evolution)

Dr. Bergman: “Evolution teaches that the living world has no plan or purpose except survival”(Section A of Part 2 of series on Evolution)

The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 2 of 6

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Is there any purpose in life? Evolution is clear on this point. I have included the first portion of the article by Dr. Jerry Bergman who I have corresponded with in the past.

Darwinism: Survival without Purpose

by Jerry Bergman, Ph.D. *

Humans have always wondered about the meaning of life…life has no higher purpose than to perpetuate the survival of DNA…life has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.1 –Richard Dawkins

Evolution is “deceptively simple yet utterly profound in its implications,”2 the first of which is that living creatures “differ from one another, and those variations arise at random, without a plan or purpose.”3 Evolution must be without plan or purpose because its core tenet is the natural selection of the fittest, produced by random copying errors called mutations. Darwin “was keenly aware that admitting any purposefulness whatsoever to the question of the origin of species would put his theory of natural selection on a very slippery slope.”4 Pulitzer Prize author Edward Humes wrote that the fact of evolution was obvious but “few could see it, so trapped were they by the human…desire to find design and purpose in the world.” He concluded:

Darwin’s brilliance was in seeing beyond the appearance of design, and understanding the purposeless, merciless process of natural selection, of life and death in the wild, and how it culled all but the most successful organisms from the tree of life, thereby creating the illusion that a master intellect had designed the world. But close inspection of the watchlike “perfection” of honeybees’ combs or ant trails…reveals that they are a product of random, repetitive, unconscious behaviors, not conscious design.5

The fact that evolution teaches that life has no purpose beyond perpetuating its own survival is not lost on teachers. One testified that teaching evolution “impacted their consciences” because it moved teachers away from the “idea that they were born for a purpose… something completely counter to their mindset and beliefs.”6

In a study on why children resist accepting evolution, Yale psychologists Bloom and Weisberg concluded that the evolutionary way of viewing the world, which the authors call “promiscuous teleology,” makes it difficult for them to accept evolution. Children “naturally see the world in terms of design and purpose.”7 The ultimate purposelessness of evolution, and thus of the life that it produces, was eloquently expressed by Professor Lawrence Krauss as follows: “We’re just a bit of pollution…. If you got rid of us…the universe would be largely the same. We’re completely irrelevant.”8

The Textbooks

To determine what schools are teaching about religious questions such as the purpose of life, I surveyed current science textbooks and found that they tend to teach the view that evolution is both nihilistic and atheistic. One of today’s most widely-used textbooks stated that “evolution works without either plan or purpose…. Evolution is random and undirected.”9 Another text by the same authors added that Darwin knew his theory “required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its byproducts.” The authors continued:

Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless–a process in which…nature ruthlessly eliminates the unfit. Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us.10

Another text taught that humans are just “a tiny, largely fortuitous, and late-arising twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life” and the belief that a “progressive, guiding force, consistently pushing evolution to move in a single direction” is now known to be “misguided.”11 Many texts teach that evolution is purposeless and has no goal except to achieve brute survival: the “idea that evolution is not directed towards a final goal or state has been more difficult for many people to accept than the process of evolution itself.”12 One major text openly teaches that humans were created by a blind, deaf, and dumb watchmaker–namely natural selection, which is “totally blind to the future.”

Humans…came from the same evolutionary source as every other species. It is natural selection of selfish genes that has given us our bodies and our brains…. Natural selection…explains…the whole of life, the diversity of life, the complexity of life, |and| the apparent design in life.”13

The Implications

Many texts are very open about the implications of Darwinism for theism. One teaches that Darwin’s immeasurably important contribution to science was to show that, despite life’s apparent evidence of design and purpose, mechanistic causes explain all biological phenomena. The text adds that by coupling “undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”14 The author concludes by noting that “it was Darwin’s theory of Evolution that provided a crucial plank to the platform of mechanisms and materialism…that has been the stage of most western thought.”15 Another text even stated directly that humans were created by a random process, not a loving, purposeful God, and:

The real difficulty in accepting Darwin’s theory has always been that it seems to diminish our significance…. |Evolution| asked us to accept the proposition that, like all other organisms, we too are the products of a random process that, as far as science can show, we are not created for any special purpose or as part of any universal design.16

These texts are all clearly teaching religious ideas, not science. An excellent example is a text that openly ruled out not only theistic evolution, but any role for God in nature, and demonstrated that Darwinism threatened theism by showing that humans and all life “could be explained by natural selection without the intervention of a god.” Evolutionary “randomness and uncertainty had replaced a deity having conscious, purposeful, human characteristics.”

The Darwinian view that… present-type organisms were not created spontaneously but formed in a succession of selective events that occurred in the past, contradicted the common religious view that there could be no design, biological or otherwise, without an intelligent designer…. In this scheme a god of design and purpose is not necessary…. Religion has been bolstered by… the comforting idea that humanity was created in the image of a god to rule over the world and its creatures. Religion provided emotional solace, a set of ethical and moral values…. Nevertheless, faith in religious dogma has been eroded by natural explanations of its mysteries…. The positions of the creationists and the scientific world appear irreconcilable.”17

Darwin himself taught a totally atheistic, naturalistic view of origins. He even once said, “I would give nothing for the theory of natural selection if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent.”18 John Alcock, an evolutionary biologist, therefore concluded that “we exist solely to propagate the genes within us.”19

Leading Darwin scholar Janet Browne makes it very clear that Darwin’s goal was the “arduous task of reorienting the way Victorians looked at nature.” To do this Darwin had to convince the world that “ideas about a benevolent, nearly perfect natural world” and those that believe “beauty was given to things for a purpose, were wrong–that the idea of a loving God who created all living things and brought men and women into existence was…a fable.”

The world…steeped in moral meaning which helped mankind seek out higher goals in life, was not Darwin’s. Darwin’s view of nature was dark–black…. Where most men and women generally believed in some kind of design in nature–some kind of plan and order–and felt a deep-seated, mostly inexpressible belief that their existence had meaning, Darwin wanted them to see all life as empty of any divine purpose.20

Darwin knew how difficult it was to abandon such a view, but realized that for evolution to work, nature must ultimately be “governed entirely by chance.” Browne concludes:

The pleasant outward face of nature was precisely that–only an outward face. Underneath was perpetual struggle, species against species, individual against individual. Life was ruled by death…destruction was the key to reproductive success. All the theological meaning was thus stripped out by Darwin and replaced by the concept of competition. All the telos, the purpose, on which natural theologians based their ideas of perfect adaptation was redirected into Malthusian–Darwinian–struggle. What most people saw as God-given design he saw as mere adaptations to circumstance, adaptations that were meaningless except for the way in which they helped an animal or plant to survive.21

Neo-Darwinist Richard Dawkins recognized the purposelessness of such a system:

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.22

How widely is this view held by scientists? One study of 149 leading biologists found that 89.9 percent believed that evolution has no ultimate purpose or goal except survival, and we are just a cosmic accident existing at the whim of time and chance. A mere six percent believed that evolution has a purpose.23 Almost all of those who believed that evolution had no purpose were atheists. This is only one example that Sommers and Rosenberg call the “destructive power of Darwinian theory.”24

References

  1. Scheff, Liam. 2007. The Dawkins Delusion. Salvo, 2:94.
  2. Humes, Edward. 2007. Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul. New York: Ecco, 119.
  3. Ibid, 119.
  4. Turner, J. Scott. 2007. The Tinkerer’s Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 206.
  5. Humes, Monkey Girl, 119.
  6. Ibid, 172.
  7. Bloom, Paul and Deena Skolnick Weisberg. 2007. Childhood Origins to Adult Resistance to Science. Science, 316:996.
  8. Panek, Richard. 2007. Out There. New York Times Magazine, 56.
  9. Miller, Kenneth R. and Joseph S. Levine. Biology. 1998. Fourth Edition, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 658, emphasis in original.
  10. Levine, Joseph S. and Kenneth R. Miller 1994. Biology: Discovering Life. Second Edition, Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 161, emphasis in original.
  11. Raven, Peter H. and George B. Johnson. 2002. Biology. Sixth Edition, Boston, MA: McGraw Hill, 16, 443.
  12. Purves, William K., David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, and H. Craig Keller. 2001. Life: The Science of Biology. Sixth Edition, Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates; W.H. Freeman, 3.
  13. Interview with Richard Dawkins in Campbell, Neil A., Jane B. Reece, and Lawrence G. Mitchell. 1999. Biology. Fifth Edition, Menlo Park, CA: Addison Wesley Longman, 412-413.
  14. Futuyma, Douglas J. 1998. Evolutionary Biology. Third Edition, Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 5.
  15. Ibid, 5.
  16. Curtis, Helena and N. Sue Barnes. 1981. Invitation to Biology. Third Edition, New York, NY: Worth, 475.
  17. Strickberger, Monroe. 2000. Evolution. Third Edition, Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett, 70-71.
  18. Darwin, Francis (editor). 1888. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. London: John Murray, 210.
  19. Alcock, John. 1998. Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 16, 609.
  20. Browne, Janet. 1995. Charles Darwin: Voyaging, A Biography. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 542.
  21. Ibid, 542.
  22. Dawkins, Richard. 1995. River Out of Eden. New York: Basic Books, 133.
  23. Graffin, Gregory W. 2004. Evolution, Monism, Atheism, and the Naturalist World-View. Ithaca, NY: Polypterus Press, 42.
  24. Sommers, Tamler and Alex Rosenberg. 2003. Darwin’s Nihilistic Idea: Evolution and the Meaningless of Life. Biology and Philosophy, 18:653.

* Dr. Bergman is Professor of Biology at Northwest State College in Ohio.

Cite this article: Bergman, J. 2007. Darwinism: Survival without Purpose. Acts & Facts. 36 (11): 10.

November 2, 2011 – 12:50 am Categories: Current Events | Post a comment

“Woody Wednesday” Allen on the meaning of life (part 2)jh65

September 3, 2011 · 5:16 PM

Woody Allen on the Emptiness of Life

In the final scene of Manhattan, Woody Allen’s character, Isaac, is lying on the sofa with a microphone and a tape-recorder, dictating to himself an idea for a short story. It will be about “people in Manhattan,” he says, “who are constantly creating these real unnecessary, neurotic problems for themselves” because they cannot bear to confront the “more unsolvable, terrible problems about the universe.” In an attempt to keep it optimistic, he begins by asking himself the question, “Why is life worth living?” He gives it some thought. “That’s a very good question,” he says, “There are certain things, I guess, that make it worthwhile.” And then the list begins: Groucho Marx, Willie Mays, the second movement of Mozart’s ‘Jupiter Symphony,’ Louis Armstrong’s recording of Potato Head Blues, “Swedish movies, naturally,” Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, “those incredible apples and pears by Cézanne, the crabs at Sam Wo’s . . . Tracy’s face.”

This list acts as an important hinge in the film’s narrative, the point at which Isaac suddenly becomes aware of his feelings for Tracy and resolves to go after her. But within this list there is also something greater being communicated, something which, I believe, can be described as the central subject of nearly every Woody Allen film, or, perhaps, what compels him to make films in the first place. Isaac is conveying here a belief in the sheer power of art, its ability to provide a sense of worth to an otherwise empty existence. Art, Woody Allen seems to be saying, is the only valuable response – or the only conceivable response – to the dreadful human predicament as he sees it.

~ ~ ~

“My relationship with death remains the same: I’m strongly against it.”

~ ~ ~

Recently, at the Cannes Film Festival, Woody Allen was asked about what motivates him. He simply laughed and said, “Fear is what drives me.” Work, for Allen, is a wonderful distraction from the “terrible truth” – the ostensible meaninglessness of life, the apparent futility of all human endeavour, the inevitability of sickness, the unescapable prognosis of death. Film-making, like the “unnecessay, neurotic problems” dreamt up by the characters in Isaac’s short story, diverts Allen’s attention away from this reality, from the fear that presents itself when he stops to think about the fact that eventually everybody dies, “the sun burns out, and the earth is gone, and . . . all the stars, all the planets, the entire universe, goes, disappears.” So this fear is the reason for his prolificity, the impulse behind all of his artistic achievements. Manhattan, Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, Sleeper all came about, first of all, as distractions, projects that prevented him from having to “sit in a chair and think about what a terrible situation all human beings are in.”

I believe that there is a lot of truth in Woody Allen’s perspective. We distract ourselves constantly, we refuse to think about the meaning of our existence, we skirt around the inevitable. Certainly – and he acknowledges this – Allen is not the first person to have hit upon this truth. It has been recognised by such thinkers as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, the Buddha and the writer of Ecclesiastes. And Allen knows, too, that one cannot live in perpetual awareness of this fact. Such a life would be crippling torment. Indeed, it is this very torment that Tolstoy found himself in after having realised that there was “nothing ahead other than deception of life and of happiness, and the reality of suffering and death: of complete annihilation.” After realising, in other words, the sheer absurdness of human existence, the meaninglessness of life without God. In his Confession he writes:

My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep and I could not help breathing, eating, drinking and sleeping; but there was no life in me because I had no desires whose gratification I would have deemed it reasonable to fulfil. If I wanted something I knew in advance that whether or not I satisfied my desire nothing would come of it.

One cannot live like this, says Woody Allen. One must provide oneself with necessary delusions in order to carry oneself through life. He remarks that it is in fact only those people whom he calls “self-deluded” that seem to find any kind of real satisfaction in living, any peace or enjoyment. These people can say, “Well, my priest, or my rabbi tells me everthing’s going to be all right,” and they find their answers in what he calls “magical solutions.” This recourse to the “magical” he dismisses as nonsense.

It is worth comparing Woody Allen’s pessimistic agnosticism with the utopian atheism of someone like Richard Dawkins. Evidently, the former worldview is entirely consistent with non-belief in God, whereas the latter is not. In fact, it is unfounded, false. Dawkins removes God from the picture entirely, yet clings persistently to a belief in life’s meaning, grounding this meaning, it appears, in natural selection. There is a contradiction in Dawkins’ thought: on the one hand, he claims that science “can tell us why we are here, tell us the purpose of human existence,” yet, on the other, he insists on characterising natural selection itself as a blind mechanism, containing “no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference.”

Whilst I do not share Woody Allen’s agnostic belief, I can respect his consistency, his willingness to acknowledge an existence without God for what it really is: “a grim, painful, nightmarish, meaningless experience.” His worldview follows naturally from what Heidegger termed the state of human “abandonment,” the absence of God in all human affairs. Dawkins’ worldview, on the other hand, does not . . . It is an embarrassing mishmash of strict empricist and naturalistic belief with what really amounts to a kind of foggy mysticism, a belief system according to which human beings can create for themselves an objective purpose. What he fails to realise is that this purpose is nothing more than a delusion, a mere appearance of purpose. It might get us up in the morning, but, once again, it is no more real than the manufactured neurotic problems of Isaac’s characters.

~ ~ ~

“It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.”

~ ~ ~

Let us return to Woody Allen’s seemingly affirmative opinion of art, as exemplified in the final scene of Manhattan. Given his lifelong insistence on the belief that human existence is “a big, meaningless thing,” how are we to make sense of Isaac’s list? Is it really possible to reconcile Woody Allen’s adament nihilism with his invocation of the power of art, its ability to stand firm in the face of such a terrible truth? The point to be made, I believe, is a very subtle one. In that same interview at Cannes, Woody Allen talks about the role of the artist as he sees it. The artist, essentially, must respond to the question that Isaac poses, “Why is life worth living?” Faced with the emptiness of life, she must try to “figure out – knowing that it’s true . . . knowing the worst – why it’s still worthwhile.” Allen is not, I believe, claiming that art can provide objective meaning to life. Such an assertion would conflict with his unswerving pessimism. Instead, he is saying that the essence of art, what animates it, what inspires it to flourish, is a courageous struggle against this “terrible truth.” The artist, he says, must confront the futility of life, look at it in the face, embrace it in all of its hopelessness and despair, and provide humanity with an honest reply. The question, then, is not, ‘Can Woody Allen justify his belief in an objective meaning as embodied in art?’ I do not think that he believes in an objective meaning, a necessary purpose for human existence. Rather, the question becomes, ‘Is it possible for the artist to look squarely at the human predicament and supply humanity with a worthwhile answer?’

This, I want to say, is still not possible. As we have seen with the example of Tolstoy, one cannot live one’s life in a full awareness of its futility, of the imminence of death, of the falsity of one’s happiness, and yet carry on as normal. One would end up utterly debilitated. And if this is indeed how artists have been living for centuries, confronting the inevitable, facing the dismal truth, then art itself becomes an inexplicable phenomenon.

~ ~ ~

“On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.”

~ ~ ~

The answer is not to appeal to art as something that can provide human existence with objective meaning. Such a ‘faith in art’ would merely beg the question, ‘But why is art so special?’ How can art, if viewed as just another custom, an event within the world, give purpose and value to human life? It remains to be explained how that which is within the world can provide meaning for that which is within the world. Meaning, I believe, can only come from without, from that which transcends the world, and yet instills human existence with significance and worth. It is the purpose of art to direct us to this very transcendence, the ground of being itself. The same higher power, in fact, that Woody Allen – perhaps rightly! – dismisses as “nonsense” in its rigid, institutional form.

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The Bible and Archaeology (1/5) The Bible maintains several characteristics that prove it is from God. One of those is the fact that the Bible is accurate in every one of its details. The field of archaeology brings to light this amazing accuracy. _________________________- I want to make two points today. 1. There is no […]

“Woody Wednesday” How Allen’s film “Crimes and Misdemeanors makes the point that hell is necessary (jh 14)

Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1 Adrian Rogers – Crossing God’s Deadline Part 2 Jason Tolbert provided this recent video from Mike Huckabee: John Brummett in his article “Huckabee speaks for bad guy below,” Arkansas News Bureau, May 5, 2011 had to say: Are we supposed to understand and accept that Mike Huckabee is […]

Agnostic Allen notes, “The people who successfully delude themselves seem happier than the people who can’t” (Woody Wednesday Part 5)

Woody Allen interviews Billy Graham on Religion This article below makes we think of the lady tied to the Railroad in the Schaeffer video. Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism (Modern man sees no hope for the future and has deluded himself by appealing to nonreason to stay sane. Look at the example […]

A review of Woody Allen’s latest movie “Midnight in Paris” (Woody Wednesday Part 4)

Midnight in Paris Not Dove Family Approved Theatrical Release: 6/10/2011 Reviewer: Edwin L. Carpenter Source: Theater Writer: Woody Allen Producer: Letty Aronson Director: Woody Allen Genre: Comedy Runtime: 100 min. MPAA Rating: PG-13 Starring: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Kurt Fuller, Kathy Bates Synopsis: Midnight in Paris is a romantic comedy that follows a family travelling […]

Woody Allen films and the issue of guilt (Woody Wednesday Part 3)

Woody Allen and the Abandonment of Guilt Dr. Marc T. Newman : AgapePress Print In considering filmmaking as a pure visual art form, Woody Allen would have to be considered a master of the medium. From his humble beginnings as a comedy writer and filmmaker, he has emerged as a major influential force in Hollywood. […]

According to Woody Allen Life is meaningless (Woody Wednesday Part 2)

Woody Allen, the film writer, director, and actor, has consistently populated his scripts with characters who exchange dialogue concerning meaning and purpose. In Hannah and Her Sisters a character named Mickey says, “Do you realize what a thread were all hanging by? Can you understand how meaningless everything is? Everything. I gotta get some answers.”{7} […]

“Woody Wednesday” Part 1 starts today, Complete listing of all posts on the historical people mentioned in “Midnight in Paris”

I have gone to see Woody Allen’s latest movie “Midnight in Paris” three times and taken lots of notes during the films. I have attempted since June 12th when I first started posting to give a historical rundown on every person mentioned in the film. Below are the results of my study. I welcome any […]

November 2, 2011 – 12:35 am Categories: Current Events | Post a comment

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