Guest Post: Lies, damn lies and post-truth

Lee McIntyre, Boston University

Most politicians lie.

Or do they?

Even if we could find some isolated example of a politician who was scrupulously honest – former President Jimmy Carter, perhaps – the question is how to think about the rest of them.

And if most politicians lie, then why are some Americans so hard on President Donald Trump?

According to The Washington Post, Trump has told 6,420 lies so far in his presidency. In the seven weeks leading up to the midterms, his rate increased to 30 per day.

That’s a lot, but isn’t this a difference in degree and not a difference in kind with other politicians?

From my perspective as a philosopher who studies truth and belief, it doesn’t seem so. And even if most politicians lie, that doesn’t make all lying equal.

Yet the difference in Trump’s prevarication seems to be found not in the quantity or enormity of his lies, but in the way that Trump uses his lies in service to a proto-authoritarian political ideology.

I recently wrote a book, titled “"Post-Truth,” about what happens when “alternative facts” replace actual facts, and feelings have more weight than evidence. Looked at from this perspective, calling Trump a liar fails to capture his key strategic purpose.

Any amateur politician can engage in lying. Trump is engaging in “post-truth.”

Beyond word of the year

The Oxford English Dictionaries named “post-truth” its word of the year in November 2016, right before the U.S. election.

Citing a 2,000 percent spike in usage – due to Brexit and the American presidential campaign – they defined post-truth as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

Ideology, in other words, takes precedence over reality.

When an individual believes their thoughts can influence reality, we call it “magical thinking” and might worry about their mental health. When a government official uses ideology to trump reality, it’s more like propaganda, and it puts us on the road to fascism.

As Yale philosopher Jason Stanley argues, “The key thing is that fascist politics is about identifying enemies, appealing to the in-group (usually the majority group), and smashing truth and replacing it with power.”

Consider the example of Trump’s recent decision not to cancel two political rallies on the same day as the Pittsburgh massacre. He said that this was based on the fact that the New York Stock Exchange was open the day after 9/11.

This isn’t true. The stock exchange stayed closed for six days after 9/11.

So was this a mistake? A lie? Trump didn’t seem to treat it so. In fact, he repeated the falsehood later in the same day.

When a politician gets caught in a lie, there’s usually a bit of sweat, perhaps some shame and the expectation of consequences.

Not for Trump. After many commentators pointed out to him that the stock exchange was in fact closed for several days after 9/11, he merely shrugged it off, never bothering to acknowledge – let alone correct – his error.

Why would he do this?

Ideology, post-truth and power

The point of a lie is to convince someone that a falsehood is true. But the point of post-truth is domination. In my analysis, post-truth is an assertion of power.

As journalist Masha Gessen and others have argued, when Trump lies he does so not to get someone to accept what he’s saying as true, but to show that he is powerful enough to say it.

He has asserted, “I’m the President and you’re not,” as if such high political office comes with the prerogative of creating his own reality. This would explain why Trump doesn’t seem to care much if there is videotape or other evidence that contradicts him. When you’re the boss, what does that matter?

Should we be worried about this flight from mere lying to post-truth?

Even if all politicians lie, I believe that post-truth foreshadows something more sinister. In his powerful book “On Tyranny,” historian Timothy Snyder writes that “post-truth is pre-fascism.” It is a tactic seen in “electoral dictatorships” – where a society retains the facade of voting without the institutions or trust to ensure that it is an actual democracy, like those in Putin’s Russia or Erdogan’s Turkey.

In this, Trump is following the authoritarian playbook, characterized by leaders lying, the erosion of public institutions and the consolidation of power. You do not need to convince someone that you are telling the truth when you can simply assert your will over them and dominate their reality.

Lee McIntyre, Research Fellow Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Guest Post: Celebrating Cicero's Birthday

by Gary M. Galles

John Adams said of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE) that “All ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher combined.” Anthony Everitt called him an “architect of constitutions that still govern our lives.” Thomas Jefferson said the Declaration of Independence was based on “the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.”

Cicero was a Roman Senator whose writings, as Historian Edward Gibbon put it, “breathed the spirit of freedom.” Particularly influential was his idea of natural law, echoed by John Locke and other enlightenment thinkers: Human nature included reason, which could discover justice, which was the basis of law. Voltaire said “He taught us how to think.”

Cicero stayed loyal to the Roman Republic against Julius Caesar. Antony had him murdered for his principles, and his head and hands were nailed to the Senate speaker’s podium as a warning to others, making him a model of resistance against tyranny to America’s revolutionary leaders.

Cicero’s ideas, particularly on justice, law and liberty still merit remembering, two millennia later, on his January 3 birthday.

Justice

Justice is the crowning glory of the virtues.
Justice consists in doing no injury to men.
Justice is the set and constant purpose which gives every man his due.
The foundations of justice are that no one should suffer wrong; then, that the public good be promoted.
Justice must be observed even to the lowest.
Justice does not descend from its pinnacle.
Justice extorts no reward, no kind of price; she is sought...for her own sake.

Law

True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application.
The welfare of the people is the ultimate law.
The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give everyone else his due.
According to the law of nature it is only fair that no one should become richer through damages and injuries suffered by another.
The strictest law often causes the most serious wrong.
The more laws, the less justice.
The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled.
The administration of government, like a guardianship, ought to be directed to the good of those who confer, not of those who receive the trust.
When a government becomes powerful...it is an usurper which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance for votes with which to perpetuate itself.

Liberty

We are in bondage to the law so that we might be free.
The essence of liberty is to live as you choose.
Freedom is a man’s natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.
Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.
What is so beneficial to the people as liberty...to be preferred to all things.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Only in states in which the power of the people is supreme has liberty any abode.
Peace is liberty in tranquility. Servitude is the worst of all evils, to be resisted not only by war, but even by death.

Cicero was an important influence behind the American Revolution. He symbolized opposition to tyranny and his ideas on justice, law, and liberty inform our founding documents, which is why Jim Powell’s The Triumph of Liberty begins with Cicero’s story. Though he wrote two millennia ago, his understanding of why defending liberty requires tightly constraining government was thoroughly modern: “Never was a government that was not composed of liars, malefactors and thieves.”

If Americans are serious about their liberty, which is defended by treating our founding documents as more than mere words on paper, Cicero merits renewed attention today.



Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University. His recent books include Faulty Premises, Faulty Policies (2014) and Apostle of Peace (2013). He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Guest Post: 'The Last Jedi' Resonates with the Lessons of Lord Acton

Power corrupts, regardless of whether you're Jedi or Sith.

by Mateusz Machaj

[The following article contains a few elements of the plot of The Last Jedi, which some may consider spoilers.]

Putting aside the creative and entertaining value of the new Star Wars movie, one major element remains strong with the saga: its warnings about the dangers of power. They actually go even further than they did in the previous installments.

The title itself may be mind-boggling to some of the fans, much as the line we heard in the trailer from the Jedi hero, Luke Skywalker, who wants the “Jedi to end.” Some were wondering what big secret may be hidden in those words, but not the people who paid attention to the messages already present in the previous episodes, especially the prequel trilogy (however imperfect it was). The main protagonist and idealist wants the Jedi to end because the school has become a legacy of failure, hypocrisy, and hubris.

The Role of the Jedi
They were a part of the Old Republic system and served as a special service having superior privileges granted by the government. Besides the legal commands, they had their own education system which raised new generations of followers. Eventually, they failed miserably in training the pupils. One of them even became the leading man responsible for building terror in the evil Empire. Careful observation would lead the viewer to such conclusions – now the main hero states so openly and with merits (it is also a good artistic tool for the character on screen to repeat fans’ views as it happens in the movie).

What Luke offers in his reinterpretation of events (as compared to his personal predecessors) is the more thoughtful understanding of the way world functions. He notices that knowledge and the workings of everything in the universe (the “force”) are not things that belong to one group of people called the Jedi. To argue so is vanity as those things cannot, and should not, be monopolized by one agency — perhaps a reflection that previous Jedi teachers did not see in full picture.

Moreover, that has led to arrogance and blindness to the obvious dangers of political systems, of which they were part. We got to see them training many of the younglings, but mostly in a physical and spiritual way. Nobody was teaching them about social sciences, human relations, and how politics functions — at least nowhere we could see. The downplaying of political economy is what eventually killed them and destroyed the Republic, finally to be substituted by the evil Hobbesian rule of the Emperor.

The Lesson of Lord Acton
Luke learned the hard way what Lord Acton taught us: power is corruptive. Control over other people can easily make one focused only on a particular goal at the expense of the free will of others. Part of the reflection made by Luke can be inferred by historically studying what happened to the Jedi in the past episodes. Luke further learns this in his personal experience: how even a mature teacher can be easily tempted to make wrong and authoritarian judgments about people, leading them to disastrous consequences.

No human agency or real person should have the ultimate power over everyone else’s fate. Such themes were always the main messages of the Star Wars movies that started right at the beginning in 1977. The newest movie makes a shining and almost Tolkienian conclusion reached by simply following the logical inferences. The rule of power applies not only to the people we consider “bad,” “evil,” or “corrupted" because not a single human being is either forever lost or always free from misplaced temptations or free from being prone to failure. Both redemption and temptation are not far away from anybody. Anyone can make a mistake. We should distrust any rules giving too much power to any person or group of people, not just the ones recognized as the “bad guys.”

The original trilogy showed that bad people are also human beings who still can be converted from bad to good. The prequel trilogy showed that good people can do bad things, too, willingly or not. As we further learn from The Last Jedi, corruptive potency hidden in the meanders of power is actually nothing personal.

That is why solutions for efficiently curtailing expansionary power have to be universal and impersonal.



Mateusz Machaj is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Wroclaw (Poland). He is the author of Money, Interest, and the Structure of Production. Resolving Some Puzzles in the Theory of Capital.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Guest Post: Why David Hume Defended the Rights of 'Seditious Bigots'

by Dan Sanchez

Some can’t imagine a downside to punching Nazis, or otherwise obstructing their spewing of hate. How could the world not be a happier and sunnier place after the forcible removal of such a spiritual pollutant? In the face of such an obvious potential pragmatic benefit to society, isn’t concern for the rights of Nazis so much fussy, abstract philosophizing?

David Hume shed some light on this problem, explaining way back in 1738 the pragmatic utility and public interest in granting even “a seditious bigot” his rights.

The Case of the Robbed Nazi
In his Treatise on Human Nature Hume wrote:

“A single act of justice is frequently contrary to public interest; and were it to stand alone, without being followed by other acts, may, in itself, be very prejudicial to society. When a man of merit, of a beneficent disposition, restores a great fortune to a miser, or a seditious bigot, he has acted justly and laudably; but the public is the real sufferer.”

Many would consider “seditious bigot” a perfectly apt term for the Nazis and white supremacists now seizing public attention. Let’s say, following Hume’s hypothetical, a Nazi, who had grown rich through honest business, had been robbed of a “great fortune”: let’s say a collection of antique German coins. Then, a person “of a beneficent disposition” who believes in the human rights of all (in other words, someone who is quite the opposite of a Nazi) somehow came into possession of the pilfered coins, and returned the fortune to the seditious Nazi bigot.

This, according to a strict application of property rights, would, as Hume put it, be a “single act of justice.” The Nazi’s fortune was his property by right, so restoring that property was indeed a single act of justice.

But what will the Nazi do with his restored fortune? What if he uses it to finance web sites and Twitter bots broadcasting hate throughout the Internet? Clearly, in that case, “the public is the real sufferer” as Hume put it.

The human rights champion who returned the fortune might even personally suffer. Maybe he individually, or a group in which he is a member, will be one of the targets of the Nazi’s campaign of hate. By striving to act with strict integrity, he may have hurt his own interests. As Hume wrote:

“Nor is every single act of justice, considered apart, more conducive to private interest than to public; and it is easily conceived how a man may impoverish himself by a single instance of integrity, and have reason to wish that, with regard to that single act, the laws of justice were for a moment suspended in the universe.”

Now, take the above thought experiment, but replace one matter of rights with another. Instead of the Nazi’s ownership right over external property, consider his right of self-ownership, which includes his right of free speech.

Let’s say that this right too is defended by a champion of universal rights, namely a libertarian: someone whose credo is the furthest conceivable thing from that of a Nazi.

Again, such a defense may seem contrary to the public good, since the Nazi’s message accomplishes nothing but evil. It may even seem contrary to the libertarian’s personal interests, since collectivist, particularist Nazis often rightly recognize individualist, universalist libertarians as their antithesis and as their most dangerous ideological nemeses.

The Pragmatism of Principle
But such regrettable results are not the only consequences of affording the Nazi his rights. We must consider Frederic Bastiat’s “unseen” as well the “seen”: namely the wider ramifications of maintaining a universal principle: a general rule. As Hume continued (emphasis added):

“But however single acts of justice may be contrary either to public or private interest, it is certain that the whole plan or scheme is highly conductive, or indeed absolutely requisite, both to the support of society, and the well-being of every individual. It is impossible to separate the good from the ill. Property must be stable, and must be fixed by general rules. Though in one instance the public be a sufferer, this momentary ill is amply compensated by the steady prosecution of the rule, and by the peace and order which it establishes in society. And even every individual person must find himself a gainer on balancing the account; since, without justice, society must immediately dissolve, and every one must fall into that savage and solitary condition which is infinitely worse than the worst situation that can possibly be supposed in society.”[1][2]

Once you start making exceptions to a universal principle/general rule, you begin to undermine it; it becomes easier to make further exceptions. If the hate speech of Nazis are to be restricted, why not the hate speech of traditionalist conservatives? If the violent, seditious rhetoric of Nazis are too dangerous to allow, why should the violent, seditious rhetoric of communists be tolerated, or any fundamental criticism of the government?

As Jeffrey Tucker recently wrote:

“Once you pick and choose the way you want rights exercised, you threaten the very idea of rights and make them all contingent on political expediency.”

And Ludwig von Mises, in Human Action, granted that, in the single case of ads for quack remedies, it might do no public harm…

“…if the authorities were to prevent such advertising, the truth of which cannot be evidenced by the methods of the experimental natural sciences. But whoever is ready to grant to the government this power would be inconsistent if he objected to the demand to submit the statements of churches and sects to the same examination. Freedom is indivisible. As soon as one starts to restrict it, one enters upon a decline on which it is difficult to stop. If one assigns to the government the task of making truth prevail in the advertising of perfumes and tooth paste, one cannot contest it the right to look after truth in the more important matters of religion, philosophy, and social ideology.”

As Hume said, the more you erode the universality of rights, the more society devolves toward the “anything goes” law of the jungle. And it is precisely Nazi-like brutes who thrive under such conditions, at the expense of the civility-minded.

It's about More than the Nazis
When libertarians and other sincere defenders of the freedom of speech, like a great many in the ACLU, defend the free speech rights of Nazis, their greatest concern is not the defense of Nazis as such, but the defense of a vitally important principle and general rule.

Such a defense is especially vital in a world in which it is quite possible for the reins of government to be seized by violent bigots themselves. This idea has been vividly expressed in the 1960 film Man for All Seasons, in an exchange between Sir Thomas More and another character:

Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

Now read the above again with “Nazi” substituted for “Devil.”

This is the pragmatic rationale behind taking the stance of the early champion of free speech and tolerance Voltaire, which was encapsulated by Evelyn Beatrice Hall as follows:

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

******
[1] Hume traces the rise of property and justice themselves to this individual recognition of the personal benefit of rigorously applied general rules:

“When, therefore, men have had experience enough to observe that whatever may be the consequence of any single act of justice, performed by a single person, yet the whole system of actions concurred in by the whole society is infinitely advantageous to the whole, and to every part, it is not long before justice and property take place. Every member of society is sensible of this interest: every one expresses this sense to his fellows, along with the resolution he has taken of squaring his actions by it, on condition that others will do the same. No more is requisite to induce any one of them to perform an act of justice, who has the first opportunity. This becomes an example to others; and thus justice establishes itself by a kind of convention or agreement, that is, by a sense of interest, supposed to be common to all, and where every single act is performed in expectation that others are to perform the like. Without such a convention, no one would ever have dreamed that there was such a virtue as justice, or have been induced to conform his actions to it. Taking any single act, my justice may be pernicious in every respect; and it is only upon the supposition that others are to imitate my example, that I can be induced to embrace that virtue; since nothing but this combination can render justice advantageous, or afford me any motives to conform myself to its rules.”

[2] Henry Hazlitt, in his book The Foundation of Morality, characterized Hume as the originator of the ethical tradition of “rule utilitarianism” as distinct from the “act utilitarianism” often associated with Jeremy Bentham.

Dan Sanchez is Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writings are collected at DanSanchez.me.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

From the Archives: A Look Back at 1989's 'The End of History?'

There were, perhaps, only two scholarly articles published in limited-circulation journals of opinion in the twentieth century that stimulated debate and discussion far outsizing the usual readership their authors and editors might have expected.

One was George Kennan's "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," based on his "long telegram" from Moscow and published pseudonymously in Foreign Affairs in 1947. The other was Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History?," which appeared in The National Interest in 1989.  (You readers might be able to suggest other articles with similar reach and controversy; feel free to name them in the comments section, below.)

The phenomenon that was "The End of History?" was described by James Atlas in the New York Times Magazine in October 1989:

Within weeks, "The End of History?" had become the hottest topic around, this year's answer to Paul Kennedy's phenomenal best seller, "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers." George F. Will was among the first to weigh in, with a Newsweek column in August; two weeks later, Fukuyama's photograph appeared in Time. The French quarterly Commentaire announced that it was devoting a special issue to "The End of History?" The BBC sent a television crew. Translations of the piece were scheduled to appear in Dutch, Japanese, Italian and Icelandic. Ten Downing Street requested a copy. In Washington, a newsdealer on Connecticut Avenue reported, the summer issue of The National Interest was "outselling everything, even the pornography."

"Controversial" didn't begin to cover the case. Unlike that other recent philosophical cause celebre, Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind," Fukuyama's essay was the work of a representative from what is often referred to in academic circles as the real world. This was no professor, according to the contributor's note that ran in the magazine, but the "deputy director of the State Department's policy planning staff."

Fukuyama later expanded his article into a book, The End of History and the Last Man, but before that was released, he participated in a lively conversation about the changing conditions that resulted in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the return of liberal democracy to Central Europe, and the economic liberalization of the People's Republic of China.  That era also saw the end of non-communist, authoritarian regimes in South Korea and other East Asian countries, Chile and elsewhere in Latin America, and South Africa and its neighbors, with varying degrees of successful transition.

Some of that conversation appeared in print but some of it was conducted face-to-face with scholars, policy analysts, and politicians.  One such occasion was a conference at the U.S. Institute of Peace on July 24, 1989 (mentioned in passing in Atlas' article, cited above), coincident with the publication of Fukuyama's article in The National Interest's summer number.

I happened to attend that event and apparently took comprehensive notes, which I transformed into an article that was published just after Labor Day in the New York City Tribune.  It's hard to believe that "The End of History?" controversy is almost a quarter-century old.  Many of the doubts expressed by participants in that USIP conference, you will see, proved to be prescient given all that has happened since then -- the first Gulf War, the Global War on Terror, the Arab Spring, the decline of liberal democracy in Russia under Vladimir Putin, and so forth.

Here, for the first time on the Internet, is "Historians Debate End of History," as it appeared in the New York City Tribune on September 5, 1989.

- - -

An amazing debate is taking place in Washington and other world capitals. The subject is more cerebral than the typical debates about policy and performance that we read about in the papers. Participants in this debate include historians, philosophers, journalists, literary gurus, and politicians. And the time-frame of the events discussed in this debate is “plus or minus 200 years”!

The object of this intense speculation and discussion as an article in the current issue of The National Interest, a quarterly journal devoted to defense and foreign policy issues. In the article entitled, “The End of History?”, author Francis Fukuyama argues that our era will see the end of ideological struggle because liberal democracy has triumphed and all contenders against it – including fascism and communism – are in quick retreat.

Drawing on the philosophy of history developed by the 19th-century German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (who also inspired Karl Marx) and Hegel's 20th-century disciple Alexandre Kojeve, Fukuyama asserts that the fundamental changes we see occurring in the Soviet Union and what we used to call Red China signify something far greater than anyone has yet thought.

“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history,” says Fukuyama, “but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

Heavy stuff! To consider the implications of Fukuyama's thesis, the United States Institute of Peace gathered an impressive array of scholars at its headquarters in Washington recently. The panel included Gertrude Himmelfarb, a professor of history emeritus from New York University; syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer; Ambassador Owen Harries, co-editor of The National Interest; historian Richard Pipes; and Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic. Fukuyama was there to defend his thesis.

Needless to say, the three-hour workshop was intellectually stimulating. Wieseltier launched the first salvo. “I don't believe we are witnessing the end of history,” he said. “We are witnessing the end of the 20th century, and good riddance,” explaining: “The defeat of communism is not quite the same thing as the triumph of liberalism.”

Others found shortcomings in Fukuyama's work without condemning it. Pipes, for instance, said that history is not a good tool to predict the future. “History does not teach clairvoyance,” he noted, “it teaches patience.” Pipes was seconded by Himmelfarb, who said that “history doesn't tell us what will happen, only that something will happen.”

For his part, Krauthammer – who in an essay in Time magazine last year may have been the first American intellectual to proclaim an end to the Cold War – said that Fukuyama has it “half-right.” There may be an end to ideology, he argued, but it is an unwarranted leap to call that an end to history. Simply because the world lacks competing ideologies does not mean evil will be eliminated. “Evil will always be inherent in human nature and will always be able to find an organizing principle.”

Krauthammer was echoed by Harries, who said that “one shouldn't underestimate the inventiveness and imagination of evil.” He said that “it's more certain that Marxism-Leninism has failed than that liberal democracy has triumphed,” adding the perspective that Fukuyama's article “could have been written in 1928.” At that time, he said, “the prospects for liberal democracy looked good … but then the Great Depression came and all bets were off.” The Depression made possible the rise of the Third Reich and, eventually, the Soviet-Nazi alliance that started World War II.

Himmelfarb warned that we should not be too complacent. Using a phrase familiar to anyone who has studied Soviet propaganda, Prof. Himmelfarb said: “It is no accident, comrades, that liberal democracy exists in so few countries.” Although both communist and Third World regimes seem attracted to liberal democracy because of its economic success, the finality of the triumph of liberal democracy depends on more than continued economic prosperity.

“Liberal democracy is a very difficult regime to sustain,” she said. It is fragile – it requires compromise, accommodation, civility, consensus on large questions.

There is little evidence that these nuances of democracy are understood by current communists seeking reform. Pipes pointed out that “the liberalization of the Soviet Union is an extremely superficial phenomenon.” He said that his conversations with reformers in Moscow showed him that they don't understand what liberalism really involves.

For example, they don't understand the idea of protecting the rights of accused criminals even if that person is obviously guilty of a crime. Concepts like habeas corpus are totally alien to them. A basic problem of perestroika is convincing Soviet citizens, steeped since birth in the teaching of Marx and Lenin, that it's okay to make a profit. These are all things we take for granted in the United States.

Fukuyama agreed that there is no certainty in the changes taking place in the world. “It looks increasingly dicey,” he said, that Gorbachev “can keep all the balls that he's juggling in the air.” He warned of a real threat of fascism in the Soviet Union, Slavophile fascists and militarists who make no secret of their anti-Semitism and disdain for non-Russian ethnic groups.

Still, he said, what you see in many countries is “liberalism corroding the moral basis” of political ideologies like communism. He used China as an example. Despite the June 4 massacre, he asserted, “Tiananmen Square vindicates my position.” The remarkable thing about the Chinese experience is that Deng Xiaoping's economic liberalization was supposed to take place without accompanying political reform. The people would not stand for that. The Chinese people, Fukuyama said, “wanted political liberalization not because it brings economic rewards but for itself.” The basic human urge for liberty is hard to stifle.

Ironically, Fukuyama's article about the end of history is just the beginning of what will be a long and fruitful debate about human nature and politics. Already some of the sharpest minds in the United States are participating in this subject.

Richard Sincere is a Washington-based issues analyst and writer.

News Flash: College Students Like Sex

Who knew? It turns out that courses with words like "sex" or "sexuality" in their titles are among the most popular classes offered on college campuses today.

Writing in the Marquette Tribune, a student newspaper at Marquette University in Milwaukee, correspondent Sarah Milnar reports:

Lisa Heineman, academic coordinator of the University of Iowa's Sexuality Studies program and professor of history, said sex and sexuality courses are increasing in popularity.

"For a long time sexuality was one of those taboo topics," she said.

But now Heineman said it's a growing field. The University of Iowa offers 35 classes with "sex" in the title this term.

"We all need to know something about sexuality," she said. "Professors offer courses on it because we think it's a really important area of life that deserves study."

Heineman said most sexuality teaching comes through the history department, although professors offer such courses in several other departments, from English, to religious studies to nursing.

The sex and sexuality classes at the University of Iowa fill up quickly, Heineman said. She added that she often receives e-mails from students asking for permission to enter the classes. Professors are frustrated that they cannot offer more sexuality classes, she said.

And to think it all started with one Indiana University professor studying wasps.

The 35 courses on sex or sexuality taught at Iowa are only a small portion of the more than 2,000 courses taught at that university. The University of Wisconsin at Madison offers a few more than that, Milnar notes:

This semester, the University of Wisconsin-Madison offers 80 sections of various "sex"—titled courses, such as History of Sexuality and Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies, according to their Web site.

As to her own college -- a Catholic and Jesuit institution that descends from the same one-room academy as my alma mater, Marquette University High School -- Milnar writes:

Marquette offered Sociology of Sex and Gender, SOCI 162, and Human Sexuality, PSYC 165 last term. The only sex-titled course available this term is Human Sexuality, according to CheckMarq.

But Marquette offers other courses that are broader than sex but still connect to sexuality issues, said Michael Wierzbicki, associate professor and chair of Marquette's Psychology department. These classes include Psychology of Marriage and Family, Psychology of Gender Roles and Psychology of Prejudice, he said.

Human Sexuality is offered at least once per academic year, he said.

Although sex may be considered taboo, Wierzbicki said his department does not offer more sexuality courses because of a small number of faculty, who are barely able to cover required psychology classes.

"There's no issue that the content leads us to avoid it," he said.

Human Sexuality is an elective class, and the department must offer required and core classes first, he said.

But Wierzbicki said the Human Sexuality course tends to fill to capacity.

"Sex sells," Wierzbicki said. "It's a popular topic and certainly a topic that is meaningful for everybody's life."

According to the Marquette Tribune article, Nancy Snow, an associate professor of philosophy at MU, has at least a partial explanation for the popularity of these courses on college campuses:
"Students have an intrinsic interest in the subject matter."

So Totally Ich-du

For those who think that popular culture lacks depth, Elisa Albert posts these thoughts about the parallels between Legally Blonde's Elle Woods and Jewish philosopher Martin Buber.

If ever there was an odd impetus to see a new Broadway musical, this is it.

Be sure to scroll through the comments to see the answer to Albert's challenge to her readers to produce a similar comparison between Baruch Spinoza and Canadian chanteuse Avril Lavigne. It's priceless.

Nietzsche Meets Keane

In his Richmond Times-Dispatch blog this morning, Bart Hinkle has a link to "The Nietzsche Family Circus," which "pairs a randomized Family Circus cartoon with a randomized Friedrich Nietzsche quote."

My favorite (so far) is this one. (The randomization makes for a near-bottomless well of possible combinations.) Try to find your own favorites; feel free to share your discoveries.

It's quite funny, in a nihilistic sort of way.

King of Nothing

As I am doing some research for an article I'm writing, this question occurs to me:

How much of a blow to one's self-esteem must it be to Google your own name and come up with no hits, or practically none?

As Socrates might say, the unGoogled life is not worth living.

(I feel certain that I am not the first person to ask this question.)