Curt Doolittle

Theme: Religion

  • Is Islam A Political Ideology? (And Are Progressivism, Scientism, Democratic Secular Humanism Religions?)

    From The Global Secular Humanism Group: “Should ‘Islam’ be considered as a political ideology and a religion at the same time?” The question should be restated in this fashion in order to illustrate Islam’s political content: A) Should Islam be considered a Religion? (Yes/No) YES: Religions consist of Myths and rituals. It does appear that religions require some form of magian reasoning. However, scientism, secular humanism, progressivism, all require ‘faith’ (in methodology, reason, or technology) that is expressly counter to the historical evidence. So, it is quite possible to create a personal philosophy that is the premise for a religion (scientism, secular humanism, progressivism) on faith. Scientism has myths, rituals and institutions. Progressivism has them too. Secular humanism is getting close, but I tend to treat secular humanists as simply anti-christian atheists and progressives as Democratic Secular Humanists. That means Secular Humanism is a minor ideology, and Democratic Secular Humanism as a major ideology. Both of which rely upon faith. But Democratic (Socialist) Secular Humanism, like islam, has both laws (human rights), institutions (academia, the press, the party structure, and it’s developed expressly for use in majority rule under parliamentarianism). So it appears to be both an ideology, a religion and a political system. B) Should Islam be considered a political Ideology? (Yes/No) YES: The purpose of an ideology is to obtain political power through excitation of the masses. Islam was invented to obtain political power. Islam was used as a means of conquest, and succeeded in obtaining political power. Islam is used to obtain, justify and use political power. Political power is the power to enforce the primacy of a set of laws. Islam contains a code of laws with explicit commandment to their primacy. Therefore islam is a political ideology. C) Should Islam be considered a political system? (Yes/No) YES: While a primitive political system only requires the ability to resolve disputes, A political system capable of coordinating investments (taxes and expenditures on infrastructure) requires at a minimum, laws, and an organization that mandates the exclusivity of those laws above all other laws, rules and norms. Islam has both a set of laws (Sharia) and a system of producing judges for those laws (Mullahs) and a system of intergenerational teaching for the purpose of propagating those laws (Religious Schools). In effect islam is a legal system with magian origins (instead of natural rights). That islam does not include other formal institutions (a parliament) is simply a function of it’s antiquity and tribal authoritarianism. Islam conquered a roman state (Byzantium) and assimilated it’s administrative structure. But did not include it on it’s own. In fact, much of islamic administration relied upon slaves and eunuchs because the byzantine administration could not adapt to Arab tribalism. (See Fukuyama’s recent book.) Islam is a religion, a political ideology, and a political system. If one argues that it is not, then one must define the terms religion, political ideology, and political system. And that exercise would lead to either confirmation of that it is a religion, ideology and political system, or one would define those terms using selection bias by sampling normative rather than structural rules.

  • Where Did The Idea That Libertarianism Includes Social Liberties Come From?

    There are two libertarian traditions; The christian aristocratic classical liberal (epitomized by Hayek) and the jewish merchant anarchic (epitomized by Rothbard)  Christians were a land holding majority and so needed formal institutions.  Jews were a diasporic religiously governed minority  and favor anarchism.  With the heavy jewish immigration into the USA, jewish authors advocated their means of avoiding the oppression of the state just like christian classical liberals advocated their means of avoiding oppression by the state.  These two traditions became allies.  Then Rothbard and Friedman became the primary intellectual advocates for libertarian policies.  There has not been an evolution in christian classical liberalism.  This is partly because institutional programs are nearly impossible to put into place, and ideological programs that require only ‘belief’ or ‘support’ are much easier to put into place. It is also a failure in part, because classical liberalism is an institutional model that can resolve conflicts in priority among people with similar interests, but it cannot provide (majority rule cannot) a means of resolving conflicts among people with dissimilar interests. (As they warned us in Federalist Papers 10.)  The recent dominance of Rothbardianism on the internet, can be largely attributed to Lew Rockwell’s insight that it was possible to adopt the ideological tactics of the communist movement, and the organizing tactics of Alinsky to promote libertarianism as an ideology through education and community building. His impact through the mises institute cannot be overstated.  So, in essence, we have not created the next evolutionary step in classical liberalism in order to solve  the problem of running an empire in a modern economy where the institution of marriage has become unbound and where women and men have different reproductive strategies and therefore different political sentiments.   THe libertarians (Hans Hoppe in particular) have devised some solutions for small states. But no one has yet determined a solution for large scale states that desire to federate.  As such, because of this failure, the debate for freedom takes place largely in the context of anarchism.  Because the jewish anarchists have supplied the only ideological program that can compete with social parliamentary democracy (ie: it’s communism by other means.)

    You could look at the problem this way: jews have always been a minority and christian classical liberals are becoming a minority — and beginning to act like one.  Only majorities look to provide institutional solutions.  Small groups stick with informal institutions: religions and norms.  Because they lack the power to create formal institutions.

    That’s a lot to cover in one note.  But it’s the answer you’re looking for.

    https://www.quora.com/Where-did-the-idea-that-libertarianism-includes-social-liberties-come-from

  • Why Are Many Muslim Countries Run By Dictators?

    The Muslim countries were part of the Ottoman empire.  The Ottomans could not modernize for complex reasons, and could not compete with western expansion.

    When the empire fell, the westerners attempted to establish order in the conquered territories, by creating small states. And they promoted leaders in those states.

    Oil has been a strategic necessity in the 20th century and Muslim countries are sitting on it.

    The west was concerned about the expansion of world communism into the Muslim countries and thereby an alliance between those oil producers and Russia and china.  This would have dramatically endangered the west.

    The west attempted successfully to suppress the world communist movement in the Muslim countries by supporting leaders who could hold the popular communist movements at bay, while permitting oil to trade on the market.

    Dictatorship is a natural and common form of government and the idea that it is not is a modern contrivance.  Democracy as we understand it is a luxury that is the product of our technological development. Not the other way around  It is an intellectual mistake to think of it otherwise.  The rest of the world has decided that western democracy is for westerners. THe reason the west is different, and less corrupt, is that we managed to break family bonds of loyalty that are the very reason for existence in the rest of the world. The rest of the world may not achieve our form of democracy because corruption is endemic because they retain the primacy of tribal and familial bonds over that of the collective.

    The USA’s strategy since the second world war has been to prevent the rise of communist and socialist governments until the middle classes in each country can become developed enough to desire capitalism and democratic government, at which point they believe that most countries will become peaceful and predictable members of the world system of trade. 

    The USA pays for and administers the world system of trade.  In exchange we are able to print money and sell it, while deflating it. The rest of the world then uses these dollars to buy oil. I this way we tax the rest of the world for paying for our military program that defends the system of trade.  This is coming to an end.  The USA is seeking to prolong the need for the  dollar for the average American will experience a dramatic decline in his standard of living if the dollar is no longer in demand for oil purchases.

    Iran and Russia are attempting to create alternative oil exchanges not using dollars in order to undermine the ability of the USA to economically finance it’s military and therefore control oil prices.

    Muslim people understand this and it is what is driving their desire to oust dictators and restore their ’empire’ to its former prominence.  They are stifled by corruption, ignorance and poverty.

    The USA does not care who emerges as the leader of that civilization but it would prefer that it was Turkey and not Iran. Iran sees it as its destiny. And if successful iran will unite syria, iraq, iran and pakistan into a political and military block that will control world oil prices.  Russia believes that it will have control over this region, and so are allies. But they are likely mistaken that they will have anything other than a militant neighbor on their southern borders.

    If you can understand this you will understand the world we live in.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-are-many-Muslim-countries-run-by-dictators

  • GOD LOVES ME TODAY I have been stressing because I haven’t been able to find the

    GOD LOVES ME TODAY

    I have been stressing because I haven’t been able to find the title for the Car. But I went to the storage shed, opened the first box, and the paperwork was sitting right there on top. So I can sell the car now. One thing off my plate.

    Now the bad thing: one of my pistols is missing from the storage place. That makes me very, very nervous. I hope I’m wrong. But I don’t think so. I have a pretty good memory.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-05-09 21:49:00 UTC

  • @Karl Smith RE: “Yet, [people] seem unwilling to give up on tribal beliefs. What

    http://modeledbehavior.com/2012/05/07/the-ideas-of-economists-and-philosophers/http://modeledbehavior.com/2012/05/07/the-ideas-of-economists-and-philosophers

    @Karl Smith

    RE: “Yet, [people] seem unwilling to give up on tribal beliefs. What accounts for this?”

    And, speaking of facts, what evidence do you have that people ever, under any conditions, cease to act according to their tribal sentiments?

    I know you can’t either grasp or accept this, but you’re argument is unscientific.

    Your approach redistributes status, power and identity along with money.

    The people who care most about losing that status, power and identity are those who are invested in status, power, and identity rather than money.

    You are stifled because your VIEW OF MAN IS SUBECT TO THE REDUCTIO ERROR.

    So the question is not how you and your SUBSET OF FACTS prevail in order to support your reductio ideology, but given the TOTALITY of facts, how we can implement a coordinated set of policy provisions.

    The reason you argue against this is that you, like Krugman and DeLong, are not as interested in prosperity as you are in creating a class of political managers that are the sole possessors of status, power and identity, and the citizens are subjects. That might work in a small state. But it will not work in the american empire.

    In other words, you’re proof of the theory. 🙂

    But at least you’re honest about the subset of facts, even if you’re dishonest because you ignore the more salient facts: that money is a route to status, power and identity, and that humans desire to consume those three things above all others.

    Selective chose of FACTS is not scientific. It’s ideological.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-05-07 09:43:00 UTC

  • LOOKING AT DENIAL As long as you believe in human equality, it’s pretty hard to

    LOOKING AT DENIAL

    As long as you believe in human equality, it’s pretty hard to complain about people who believe in the omniscience and omnipotence of divinities. Denials are rampant on either side of the political spectrum. If you can get a population where everyone’s IQ is over about 106, and you’ll have neither problems of material inequality or pervasive mysticism. But we don’t have a population over 106, we have one distributed either side of 100 — and its declining. Its declining largely because of the denial of inequality, leading to policies that allow the expansion of the lower classes. … Subsiding the breeding of the lower classes at the expense of the middle classes is not a good idea for anyone. And denying these facts is the source of our conflict. Denial is not a monopoly of the left or right. Denial is an ideologically pervasive problem.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-05-05 12:25:00 UTC

  • An Argument In Support Of Faith As A Limit On The State

    An Argument In Support Of Faith As A Limit On The State http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/04/16/an-argument-in-support-of-faith-as-a-limit-on-the-state/

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-17 17:16:57 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/192300628926664704

  • AS A RESISTANCE MOVEMENT Political Pundits Are Most Often Beggars In Fine Robes

    http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/04/16/an-argument-in-support-of-faith-as-a-limit-on-the-state/FAITH AS A RESISTANCE MOVEMENT

    Political Pundits Are Most Often Beggars In Fine Robes Of Reason.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-17 13:15:00 UTC

  • VERSUS PROTESTANT ETHICS “The “Catholic” approach has extremely high moral stand

    http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/04/catholic_versus.html#.T40iIE_Z7Ak.facebookCATHOLIC VERSUS PROTESTANT ETHICS

    “The “Catholic” approach has extremely high moral standards but enforces them loosely.

    The “Protestant” approach has moderate moral standards, but enforces them strictly.”

    IMHO: Protestant ethics are concerned with the actions and results needed to produce good works, catholic ethics are concerned with symbols and beliefs in order to create internal purity. Thats why all the entrepreneurs are protestant, and so many philosophers are catholic.

    Small things in large numbers have vast consequences.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-17 04:01:00 UTC

  • An Argument In Support Of Faith As A Limit On The State

    My question is whether the criticism of faith are purely political: whether faith is a means of limiting political influence – coercion. As much as it WAS an instrument of coercion in the past. It’s content has changed since the darwinian revolution. Other than one remaining dogmatic super-cult, most are a personal religion now that defines a natural law that limits the state, by defining a communal preference over the demands of the state. If economic secularism is wrong. Faith is ‘right’. In other words, reason is insufficient to test the the content of faith or secular statism. The only scientific answer is which religion: the democratic secular economic religion of the state, or the christian/buddhist/hindu religion of the community is ‘true’, rather than a tautology. Reason is the language of the state, of commerce and of science. All of which dissolve community, family, and tribe. From which we gain our comfort. Our ‘gravity’. A force of nature which is present in our genes. To the broader question that separates religion from ‘faith’. To the argument as to whether faith is rational, the only reason to have this discussion is to persuade someone for some material reason. Otherwise we are arguing taste. And taste is not material. It is purely subjective. So the only reason to argue about faith is either political or commercial gain. Faith is an insulation against the political trevails of the overactive, and self interested. Political claims via reason, are claims on the actions and property of others. They must be. That is all it is possible for them to be. Reason by definition cannot a ‘subjective taste’. An honest discourse would not be conducted over a person’s faith, but over the property of individuals, and what must be exchanged for it. Rather, than over how individuals believe something, so that they will transfer their time, effort, or property at no cost, or lower cost. Political pundits are most often beggars in fine robes of reason. Faith then, is a means of saying “I’m not interested”. I am not sure that given the durability of the religions and the temporal nature of states, and the current understanding that we have of the limits of collective decision making, that ‘faith’ isn’t demonstrably ‘right’ and much of our political and economic theory ‘wrong’. Even if secularism is constructed of rational argument, and faith is constructed of myth and analogy, those constructs are not material — only the result of their application is. This has been said simply two millennia: the state is responsible for temporal affairs (commerce and war) and the church (faith) is responsible for limiting the state from expanding beyond commerce and war into the preferred state of man. And the preferred state of man is demonstrably that state of community that is found in the commonality of values, and the rituals that insulate us from the alienation of commerce and violence, and connect us to the security of our family and tribe. Faith has no place in State, commerce and science and vice versa. I mean, I don’t know really, why gravity works either. I don’t have to. But I would be uncomfortable in a world without gravity — genetic evolution has guaranteed I depend upon it. Likewise, I don’t know really why the different faiths ‘work’. I just know that I do not want to live in a world where there is no equivalent. I might prefer the Germans had succeeded in abandoning christianity in favor of return to their pagan roots. I might prefer my bible was of history, and gods, our heroes. But that is a question of taste. Whether the outcome of a more mystical christianity, or a more heroic history is superior, I am not sure I can forecast.