Ideological Monism

January 20, 2013

The Anti-Intellectual “Settled Science.”

By Don Kirk in Ethics, Ideo/theologies, Ideological Monism

Every time an ideologue wants to shut down honest debate over honest differences in opinion about science, the call of “settled science” is used as a form of intellectual blackmail. A more scientific truth would point out that science is never ‘settled,’ and it is bad science to say that it is.

Case in point is the photo above from the website Space.com of the newly discovered massive cluster of suns which is more than four billion light years across. Nothing in current science theory explains how such a massive congregation of suns and super-giant black holes can even exist. Nothing discovered before now is even close to four billion light years in size, so this discovery shatters much of existing cosmological theory about the size of the universe.

The argument of “settled science” is the arrogance of the intellectually rigid, and the intellectually rigid are forever ideologues, whether they are scientists or not.

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December 12, 2012

Thoma’s Doubting Thomas

By Don Kirk in Economics, Ethics, Free Markets Myth, Ideological Monism, Keynesian Myth-Math

In the Fiscal Times, eminent economist Mark Thoma argued that supply side economic theory (to have fiscal stimulus by cutting taxes) failed in the Great Recession, bolstering his opposing Keynesian theory of fiscal stimulus by raising demand (increase government spending). Mr. Thoma’s argument has a fatal flaw: he had to leave out a critical fact for his argument to succeed. My reply to Dr. Thoma:

“We appear to have the too common fact-filtering by an ideologue in this post. Supply-side economics is a two-handed policy mix, while Mr. Thoma only mentions one policy, fiscal stimulus by cutting taxes. He never even mentions the complementary policy in supply side economics of monetary restraint, so how does he conclude that supply side economics failed so long as Fed policy since 9/11 has been massively expansionary?

My criticism is not an argument for supply side economics, but rather, the criticism is directed at the fact-filtering analysis. Why would an economist deliberately leave out known policy prescriptions in his debunking of an economic theory unless the total facts worked to vitiate his argument? By fact-filtering, this economist is either engaged in ‘confirmation bias’ or he has discredited his discrediting.”

[Email comments welcome: duoism(at)sbcglobal.net]

September 11, 2012

Anti-Transparency is Anti-Freedom

By Don Kirk in Ideological Monism, Philosophy of Freedom, Socialism's "intellectual suicide"

Dr. Barry Eichengreen, a prominent and respected economist at UC Berkeley–the sheltering, cloistered home to so many Keynes/Fabian socialist economists–today in Project Syndicate argues against audits of the Federal Reserve Board. Dr. Eichengreen lists several pitfalls to implementing public audits of the Fed, including the potential harmful effect such audits would have on open markets.

Excuse me? The absolute bottom-line requirement for fair and efficient open markets is unhampered access to information. Stand on the floor of any exchange. Above your head are an array of monitors showing the latest news about anything you want to know about everything in the world at any moment of time. The decisions into whether to buy something you believe will increase in value or sell because you believe it will fall in value are made based upon the instantaneous transmission of accurate information.

Audits are information. They objectively record what has transpired, ignoring the subjective evaluations of politicians, priests, and ideological true-believers putting their ‘spin’ on what actually happened to instead reflect what they believe should have happened. Dr. Eichengreen’s view that secrecy at the Fed benefits either the American taxpayer or the open markets is eye-blinkingly anti-democratic.

At the minimum, such a view is elitist. At the worst, such a view reveals someone who uses a monistic ideology, not the philosophy of freedom, to guide his life.

[Email comments welcome: duoism(at)sbcglobal.net]

July 8, 2012

Not So Subtle Racism

By Don Kirk in Conservatism, Ideo/theologies, Ideological Monism, Left-Liberalism

Just as one should not judge a book by its cover, neither should one judge a film by its trailer. The trailer for next week’s opening of the film 2016 is so lopsided in telling the tale of good versus evil in racial images that it is hard not to worry this film is not so subtly racist.

The film is an anti-Obama polemic created by two famous conservative intellectuals, one a Catholic and the other a Jew. The Catholic conservative intellectual is notable as the best-selling author of a book claiming that racism is largely behind us. The Jewish conservative intellectual is famous for creating the anti-racist, anti-Nazi award-winning film, Schindler’s List. With such impressive anti-racism credentials by the two creators, how does this new film give the appearance of being racist?

The movie trailer shows black poverty starkly juxtaposed to white prosperity, black family dysfunction juxtaposed to white family joy, a black actor standing for Mr. Obama grieving at the cemetery plot of his socialist father, and the only written name in the piece is the gossamer “Hussein,” Mr. Obama’s Muslim middle name and why is that even shown unless it is to evoke the ‘us versus them’ in the ideological monism of racism?

Hopefully, the movie 2016, if it is as racist as the trailer implies, will be seen by everyone who loves the philosophy of freedom. Then the movie will as thoroughly discredit the monism of conservative racism as the movie Bowling for Columbine discredited the monism of Left-liberal socialism.

[Email comments welcome: duoism(at)sbcglobal.net]

June 11, 2012

Libertarian Monism

By Don Kirk in Ideo/theologies, Ideological Monism, Philosophy of Freedom

Sheldon Richman in June 8th’s Freeman argues that freedom is indivisible. He believes that making distinctions in freedom is self-defeating, that is, we eventually lose our freedom by asserting that there are different kinds of freedom. Specifically, he argues against ‘economic freedom,’ strongly suggesting that the effort to achieve economic freedom will result in the loss of all freedom, since freedom is indivisible.

This is the same argument that the Hebrews made long ago, when Abraham turned humanity on its head and said that there was only one god, indivisible.

The world-view that there is only one of something–one answer to a math problem, one solution to a science experiment, one perfect race, one best way of thinking than all the others–is monism, and the Libertarian Party of Mr. Richman has freedom as an ideological monism, not as a philosophy. If Libertarians had freedom as a philosophy, they would instantly notice that freedom is pluralism, not monism, because of the natural bifurcation of the human mind. It takes quite an intellectual effort to close the mind’s doors and shut its windows in order to become a monist, since pluralism so obviously dominates the natural world and human childhood.

That intellectual effort at seeing only The One, or believing in the One to the exclusion of others, is grounded in the deepest human fears. It is our fears that propel the ideological monisms of nationalism, racism, and socialism–fear of the unknown, fear of an uncertain future, fear of no external meaning. Full of fear, we band together as One, the defensive position of herd-thinking against the unseen enemy around us.

Mr. Richman is entitled to his opinions about freedom, and to express them. However, the monistic world-view is forever unsatisfactory in explaining, ignoring, or wishing away the wide diversity and variety of human existence. Ultimately his argument fails because it is grounded in psychic fears, and so it is not robust or life-flourishing. To the pluralist, economic freedom is simply one of many ways to measure freedom, and if you choose to emphasize economic freedom in human affairs all of the other freedoms are not ultimately destroyed.

Did you ever notice that all apocalyptics–those with the frenzied eschatological world-view– both religious and secular, are monists?

[Email comments are welcome: duoism(at)sbcglobal.net]

Ideological Monism

The Anti-Intellectual “Settled Science.”

Thoma’s Doubting Thomas

Anti-Transparency is Anti-Freedom

Not So Subtle Racism

Libertarian Monism

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