"Wells, Hitler, and the World State" (excerpt), George Orwell (1941)

What has Wells to set against the ‘screaming little defective in Berlin’? The usual rigmarole about a World State, plus the Sankey Declaration, which is an attempted definition of fundamental human rights, of anti-totalitarian tendency. Except that he is now especially concerned with federal world control of air power, it is the same gospel as he has been preaching almost without interruption for the past forty years, always with an air of angry surprise at the human beings who can fail to grasp anything so obvious...
...What is the use of pointing out that a World State is desirable? What matters is that not one of the five great military powers would think of submitting to such a thing. All sensible men for decades past have been substantially in agreement with what Mr. Wells says; but the sensible men have no power and, in too many cases, no disposition to sacrifice themselves...
What has kept England on its feet during the past year? In part, no doubt, some vague idea about a better future, but chiefly the atavistic emotion of patriotism, the ingrained feeling of the English-speaking peoples that they are superior to foreigners. For the last twenty years the main object of English left-wing intellectuals has been to break this feeling down, and if they had succeeded, we might be watching the S.S. men patrolling the London streets at this moment...
The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions — racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war — which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action.

Jane Austen on nice people

I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.

letter to her sister Cassandra (1798-12-24)

Severn Darden - Oedipus (Oedipus Rex) - transcript

Professor: Good evening, students.

I see there are a great many of you here this evening, which most probably means that you are missing Dr. Bettelheim's lecture, which is entitled "Some Positive Aspects of Anti-Semitism". And it's a good thing that you're missing it, too.

Now, this evening, if you will remember, we are to discuss eleftheros [ἐλεύθερος eleutheros] and ananke [ἀνάγκη anangke]: free will and necessity.

Now necessity is when you want to do something very, very, much, and the way is open so you can do it and nothing stands in your way, you couldn't do it. Whereas free will is where you want to do something, and everything in the entire universe makes it impossible for you to do it, you do it anyhow.

Now this evening we are going to examine free will and necessity in the light of the play that you were to have read, which is entitled "Oedipus Rex", which means "Oedipus the King". Now for those of you who may not have read it, the plot is a very simple one (in a confused way).

Oedipus is an orphan who doesn't know who his parents are. And one day for some or other reason, God knows why, he sets out on a journey. And in the road, on the journey, he meets a king. And the king says, "Move over, Oedipus, so I can get by!" (it was obviously a very narrow road or something). And Oedipus says "No!" (for some reason of his own). And the king says, "Move!" And Oedipus kills him in a fit of pique. And the king, being killed, dies.

And Oedipus goes on down the road, and he meets up there with a Sphinx. Now a Sphinx is an animal which is part lion, part woman, and very, very neurotic, heh! And who wouldn't be in such a situation! And so she proceeds to ask him the riddle of the Sphinx, which is, "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?" And Oedipus answers, quite simply, Man. Because as a child you walk on all fours, and as a man you walk on two legs, and as an old man, you walk with a cane. So the Sphinx, hearing this, leaps over the cliff and destroys herself (for some neurotic reason of her own).

And then he goes into the town of Thebes where the townspeople meet him. And they say, "Oedipus, you have killed the Sphinx, therefore you must marry the queen." Cause and effect. [unintelligible] Anyhow, he marries the queen and he has four lovely little children.

And suddenly a pestilence falls on the land and people are getting sick and then there is a drought and the crops are failing. And out from the crowd steps a blind seer—another anomaly—whose name is Tiresias. And he says, Oedipus, that man that you killed, that king, that was your father, that woman that you married, that was your mother, and these four lovely children, God knows what relation they are to you.

And at this point from offstage is heard a scream. And he learns that Jocasta, the queen, has hanged herself in her own garments. And Oedipus, knowing this, rushes and he takes the pins from the garments and plucks out his own eyes and lives happily ever after in the garden.

Now, keeping in mind free will and necessity, we are going to see what would have happened to Oedipus if he had read the book before going on the journey. Free will and necessity, ja? Watch.

King: Make way for the king!

Professor: Certainly, your majesty! Go right past. Aha!

King: Not so fast.

Professor: What?

King: Why are you trying to curry favor with me, hah?

Professor: I wouldn't curry you.

King: Oh yeah? Why are you trying to butter me up?

Professor: I wouldn't butter you. What am I, a cook? What is this?

King: Why did you get out of the way so fast, then?

Professor: Well, I'll move back. I was [unintelligible]

King: Ah, just a minute now. I'm surrounded by two types of people, plotters and people who are trying to get in tight with me and get some—

Professor: [unintelligible] I happen to be a teacher.

King: I have a bad heart and I'm a very old man and if you excite me, I'm liable to go at any mo—oh—

Professor: Take an aspirin!

King: oh dear—oh, my heart—

Professor: Oh no! Please! He died of a heart attack! It wasn't my fault! I didn't do it! You see that!

Sphinx: Oedipus, you've come!

Professor: Good grief, a Sphinx!

Sphinx: All hail, great Oedipus!

Professor: Hello, schatzie, what can I do for you? What's happening?

Sphinx: Answer my riddle and you will marry the queen and become king of all Thebes!

Professor: Ah, I don't want to answer the riddle!

Sphinx: Oh, Oedipus, please? What walks on four legs in the morning—

Professor: four legs in the morning—

Sphinx: two in the afternoon—

Professor: two in the afternoon—

Sphinx: And three in the evening?

Professor: Three in the evening. Some sort of hideous monster, ha ha ha ha!

Sphinx: Oh, Oedipus—

Professor: What?

Sphinx: think of the power—of the glory—

Professor: I don't need power and glory, I'm a full professor. What do I need power and glory for? Ridiculous. What is it?

Sphinx: Yes, you are, yes, and you're a smart—man. MAN.

Professor: Oh, I'm a full professor but I'm not a real smart man.

Sphinx: MAN! You've guessed the magic word! [exits shrieking]

Professor: No, I said it by accident! I didn't mean to say that! Good grief, what a mess that Sphinx made of herself down there!

Chorus leader: Hail Oedipus!

Chorus: Hail Oedipus!

Professor: Hello there. What can I do for you?

Chorus leader: You've killed the Sphinx!

Chorus: the Sphinx!

Professor: the Sphinx.

Chorus leader: You must marry the queen!

Chorus: The queen!

Professor: The queen, ja, cause and effect, I know. I wouldn't do it, ha ha ha!

Chorus leader: You must marry the queen!

Chorus: the queen!

Professor: I won't marry the queen.

Chorus leader: If you don't marry the queen, we'll kill you!

Chorus: kill you!

Professor: [subdued] I'll marry the queen.

Chorus leader: Jocasta! The queen!

Jocasta: You have a lovely smile, Oedipus.

Professor: You know, by all rights, this should be my mother, but my mother's at home in Barbaria. Besides, she's a dwarf.

Crowd: [moaning] Oh! Oh! Oedipus!

Professor: Ja? What is it?

Chorus leader: the drought is on the land!

Chorus: the land!

Professor: It didn't rain. Cause and effect.

Chorus leader: The people are dying of the plague!

Chorus: the plague!

Professor: You didn't inoculate them.

Chorus leader: The crops have failed!

Chorus: have failed!

Professor: You didn't rotate them.

Tiresias: Oedipus!

Professor: Heavens, a seer!

Chorus leader: Tiresias!

Tiresias: Oedipus, I have a message for you. Come here.

Professor: What is it you want to say?

Tiresias: [whispers to Oedipus]

Professor: I'm a what?? What did you call me?? I'll hit you, that's what I'll do!

[Jocasta screams offstage]

Professor: What was that scream?

Chorus leader: The queen has hanged herself! Here are her pins. Put out your eyes.

Chorus: Your eyes.

Professor: My eyes. [increasingly dramatic music] Wait a minute. [music stops] I told you I was going down the road, the old man died of a heart attack, you knew he had heart trouble, only likely. That Sphinx was a twisty character, she tricked me into saying it. And then you forced me to marry the queen.

Chorus leader: That's true.

Professor: It's not my fault!

[crowd mutters]

Crowd: [shouting] It's not his fault!

Professor: [shouting] It's not my fault!

Crowd: It's not his fault!

Professor: It's not my fault!

Professor: So you see, my dear students, the lesson that we learn from this is that Man has free will, but tragic poets do not, and Art is not Nature.

Severn Darden - Metaphysics lecture - transcript

Intro [Eugene Troobnick]: And now, ladies and gentlemen, Professor Walter von der Vogelweide will present "A Short Talk On The Universe."

Darden: Now, why, you will ask me, have I chosen to speak on the Universe rather than some other topic. Well, it's very simple, heh. There isn't anything else!

Now, the Universe we examine through what Spinoza has called "the lens of philosophy". He called it this because he was a lens grinder. Heaven knows what he would have called it had he been, for example, a pudding manufacturer.

Now, into three branches is philosophy divided: ethics, esthetics, and metaphysics. Now, ethics is that branch of philosophy which is neither esthetics nor metaphysics. Esthe—well, I think you follow.

This evening I have decided to take the jump. Heh heh. Metaphysics.

Now, metaphysics is—what IS everything—ANYHOW? And what's more—is more than what's less—generally. Now, in the universe we have time, space, motion, and thought.

Now, you will ask me, what is this thing called time? [7 seconds of silence] THAT is time.

Now, you will ask me, what is space? Now this over here—this is some space. However, this is not all space. However, when I said that was time, that was all the time there was anywhere in the universe—at that time. Now, if you were to take all of the space that there is in the universe and CRAM it into this little tiny place, this would be ALL the space there was! Unless of course, some leaked out. Which it could—and did! Heh. Hence the universe!

Now, the early Egyptian astronomers (there were no late Egyptian astronomers) looked up at the stars and with these they measured time. But the Greeks, who were very exact—sometimes to the point of tediousness—came along with this question: is time the measure of motion, or conversely, is motion the measure of time?

Viz. I have in my hand a stopwatch—imaginary—and coming through the room is a railroad train—also imaginary, heh heh. If it was a real railroad train it would kill us (and besides, it would be very expensive). Now—I'm timing the train now. Is time the measure of motion—click—[makes train noise and runs across stage]—click—or is, conversely, motion—now I'm going to be for you a grandfather's clock [swings arm]—tick—tock—tick—tock—the measure of time? Now, with the arrival in the 20th century of Planck's constant and the theory of quantum mechanics and with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle—I think—we still don't know.

However, we might very easily turn to the pre-Socratic philosophers (who were always good for a laugh) for assistance.

Now, take Heraclitus. Dr. Jose Benardete, by the way, has said in his book "Coming and Becoming", he has quoted Heraclitus incorrectly as saying that "time was a river which flowed endlessly through the universe." He didn't say this at all. He said, "time was LIKE a river which flowed endlessly through the universe." Aha, there you are, Benardete!

Nonetheless, he discovered this one day, and he went home to his wife, Helen. That was her name, Helen Heraclitus. That's two H's, like Hugo Haas—Herman Hesse—Harry Haller—Herbert Hoover—Heinrich Himmler—oh, that whole crowd, ja.

Anyhow, he went home to his wife, Helen, and he said "Time is like a river which is flowing endlessly through the universe, and you couldn't step into the same river twice. Helen."

And she says, "What do you mean by that, Heraclitus? Explain yourself." That means you could go down to the Mississippi River, for example, and you could step in, and you could step out, and then you could step in again. But that river that you stepped in has moved downstream, you see, it's here. And you would only be stepping in the Mississippi River because that's what it's called, you see? Not only all that water, but if something were on top of the water—for example, a water bug—if it was there, it would be downstream. Unless, of course, it was swimming upstream, in which case it would be older and it would be a different bug.

So, anyhow, Heraclitus went home to his wife with this news, and he said "Time is like a river which flows endlessly through the universe, and you couldn't step into the same river twice."

She said, "Don't be an ass, Heraclitus. You could step into the same river twice—if you walk downstream at the same rate as the river."

He was amazed!

So he went down to the agora, or marketplace, where there were a lot of unemployed philosophers (which means philosophers who weren't thinking at that time). And they had a few drinks first and they went down to the river, and into the river they threw a piece of wood just to test how fast the river was going. And so Heraclitus saw how fast the wood was going. So he stepped into the river, and ran and stepped and ran and stepped and ran, and finally he ran out into the Aegean Sea and was drowned.

So much for time.

Now we come to another pre-Socratic, Zeno, for time and motion, and Zeno's Paradox. Now, a paradox is something which when it isn't, it is, paradoxically. And Zeno's Paradox is that if Achilles, the great Greek hero and athlete, were to get into a race with a tortoise, that he couldn't win. Silly, isn't it.

Well, if, for example, the tortoise was here and he would give the tortoise, say, a 10-foot head start, just to be fair to the beast, and there would be—it would take, say, Achilles, 1 second to go 1 foot. So at the end of 9 seconds, he would have one foot to go in one second, ja? And in a half of a second, he would still have a half of a foot to go, you see? And in a hundredth of a second he would have a hundredth of a foot to go. And in a millionth of a second, he would have a millionth of a foot to go. And since time and space are both infinitely divisible, he would never pass the turtle! Heh heh.

But this is ridiculous! Anyone in this room could win a race with a turtle, you know, and we're not great heroes and athletes. Even for example, some old, very dignified person, like Bertrand Russell, HE could win a race with a tortoise. And if he couldn't win it, he could outsmart it, ja?

Nonetheless, I have discovered possibly the meaning for this paradox. I was reading recently a book called "Greek Pots In Polish Museums" by John Davidson Beazley. 8vo, $9.75 and worth every penny of it. Big wide margins—er, I'm getting off my point. Anyhow, in there is a picture of a pot that has on it a picture of a ripe archaic tortoise of the kind that Zeno would have known about. Now, it isn't a little, flat American tortoise. IT'S A LITTLE BULLET-SHAPED TORTOISE WITH LONG, SINEWY LEGS, ABOUT 4 FEET LONG, AND IT COULD RUN LIKE CRAZY!

Now this would seem to explain it, ja? But it doesn't! Because Homer, who never lied about anything, said that Achilles could, if he wanted to, beat any man or beast in a foot race. Now what does this mean, "if he wanted to"? You know how some people can't step on the line in the sidewalk? Achilles couldn't pass a tortoise! He was a very sick hero!

Now, thought.

For centuries philosophers have told us that thought cannot be seen, it cannot be heard, cannot be felt, smelled, cannot be tasted. It is not in the key of G—or F. And it is not blue—nor is it mauve. It is not a pot of geraniums. It is not a white donkey against a blue sky. Or a blue donkey against a white sky. Nor does it have aspirations to become archbishop. It is not a little girl singing an old song. Thought is not a saffron-robed monk pissing in the snow. IN OTHER WORDS, PHILOSOPHERS CAN TELL YOU MILLIONS OF THINGS THAT THOUGHT ISN'T, AND THEY CAN'T TELL YOU WHAT IT IS! AND THIS BUGS THEM!

But you are out there and you're thinking and I'm up here and I think that you're thinking, and we think, and we think that the Sun comes up in the morning, pouring forth its beautiful bounty of light, and as Shakespeare said, "What a piece of work is man!"

Are there any questions?

[Applause]

Thank you.

I would really like to answer any questions that you might have. Now, I don't have anyone planted in the audience. Occasionally friends of mine who are in the audience throw up some hideous thing. They know the areas in which I am weak! Only in this sense do I have someone planted. So if you could ask me anything that you might not know about the universe.

Q: What is the relation between space and time?

What is the relation between space and time? Well, let's see, I thought I had covered that. Now the relation—well, space, for example, it is a thing which is occupied by matter. Ja? Whereas time occupies space, as we all know. Have you ever, for example, had any time pass when there was no space? I mean, have you ever been no place for a long time? It couldn't happen! It could, theoretically, of course. But I mean, even with a lot of equipment it would be difficult.

Could I have another question?

Q [Bill Mathieu]: Do fish think?

Well, that's a very good question, but it's not in the realm of metaphysics. Now I had a fish once—name was Louise, as a matter of fact. Small, fat fish. And every day at the same time I would go to the edge of the pond—a little iron tank in my house—and throw it a bunch of grapes. You know? Every day at the same time the fish would be there. After a few days she knew at 1:45, grapes, bam! Fish! However, I began making it 15 minutes later every day, you see. And then when I was there at 2 o'clock, she'd be there at 1:45. She was 15 minutes behind. After a while she was hours and days behind! And she starved to death. Yes, fish think—but not fast enough!

Could I have another question, please?

Q: [German accent, much thicker than Darden's] Professor, what is truth?

What is...?

Q: Truth.

Truth?

Q: Truth.

Oh, ja. Mm-hm. An accent.

Well, truth is very difficult to explain. It is not merely the opposite of falsehood. When I say I am here, that is true temporarily, but it is not always true. And certain truths are immutable. Like for example, I am not elsewhere, which is just as true here [walks across stage] as it is over here. You see? I am still not elsewhere. No matter where I go I can't get away from me! Sort of frightening—that that should be called truth!

Could I have another question?

Q: Will the Sun rise tomorrow?

Yes. Next question?

Thank you.

Severn Darden

Wikipedia entry

Below are links to recordings of his classic routines at Second City from 1961.

Metaphysics Lecture

Oedipus (Oedipus Rex)

Transcripts on Google Groups. Also in succeeding posts.

Metaphysics Lecture transcript on Google Groups

Oedipus (Oedipus Rex) transcript on Google Groups

miscellaneous quotes

History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells "Can't you remember *anything* I told you?" and lets fly with a club. --John W. Campbell

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There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, chapter 17

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A man who is not a republican at 20 has no heart; a man who is a republican at 30 has no brain. (Ne pas être un républicain à vingt est preuve de veulent du coeur; être un à trente est preuve de veulent de la tête.)

François Guizot (French statesman, 1787-1874)

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Be not over just: and be not more wise than is necessary, lest thou become stupid.

Ecclesiastes 7:16 (Douay-Rheims translation)

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"Feminism, Socialism, and Communism are one in the same, and Socialist/Communist government is the goal of feminism." - Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (First Harvard University Press, 1989), p.10 (not found in Google Books version)

"A world where men and women would be equal is easy to visualize, for that precisely is what the Soviet Revolution promised." - Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York, Random House, 1952), p.806

"The Women's Caucus [endorses] Marxist-Leninist thought." -- Robin Morgan, Sisterhood is Powerful, p. 597 (not found in Google Books version)
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I've often heard my liberal colleagues, after an election that the Democrats have lost, say "I don't understand. I don't know a single person that voted Republican".

Michael Munger, Professor, and Chair, Departments of Political Science, Economics, and Public Policy, Duke University in the documentary "Indoctrinate U." at about 0:52

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To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.

Gustav Flaubert, letter to Louise Colet, August 3, 1846

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Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, "What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot-box, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going into a work-shop, just let him alone--your interference is doing him a positive injury.

Frederick Douglass, At the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Boston, April, 1865

Bertrand Russell on mathematics

Pure mathematics consists entirely of such asseverations as that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then such and such another proposition is true of that thing. It is essential not to discuss whether the proposition is really true, and not to mention what the anything is of which it is supposed to be true. Both these points would belong to applied mathematics. We start, in pure mathematics, from certain rules of inference, by which we can infer that if one proposition is true, then so is some other proposition. These rules constitute the major part of the principles of formal logic. We then take any hypothesis that seems amusing, and deduce its consequences. If our hypothesis is about anything and not about some one or more particular things, then our deductions constitute mathematics.

Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. People who have been puzzled by the beginnings of mathematics will, I hope, find comfort in this definition, and will probably agree that it is accurate.

"Mathematics and the Metaphysicians", collected in Mysticism and Logic.

Victory In Iraq

Einstein and Communism

Einstein, a professed believer in political liberty, virtually refuses to criticize the Soviet government and justifies the murders and creation of slave labor camps. The closest Einstein comes to criticism of the Soviet government is contained in the first sentence of the following quote. However, the next sentence speaks for itself. According to Einstein in 1948, “I am not blind to the serious weaknesses of the Russian system of government and I would not like to live under such government. But it has, on the other side, great merits and it is difficult to decide whether it would have been possible for the Russians to survive by following softer methods” (Einstein quoted in Hook 1987, p. 471).

The Myth of Consistent Skepticism, Skeptical Inquirer magazine, May/Jun 2007

Tom Elia:

The Democratic Party is not so much a political party anymore as much as it is a public relations firm whose primary target audience is a remedial civics class.

Reason

“You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason—if you pick the proper postulates. We have ours and Cutie has his.”

“Then let’s get at those postulates in a hurry. The storm’s due tomorrow.”

Powell sighed wearily. “That’s where everything falls down. Postulates are based on assumptions and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them. I’m going to bed.”

–Isaac Asimov, Reason (1941)

France: "one of the least popular countries…vanity…arrogance"

Reflecting on the reasons for the drubbing Paris received when she submitted her candidacy to host the 2008 Olympics, Jacques Julliard wrote with perceptiveness and candor:

In Moscow we have been abandoned by our European partners, by our Arab 'friends' and by our African supporters. The plain, unvarnished truth—which the whole political community does everything it can to hide—is that France has become one of the least popular countries on the planet. I have already mentioned its arrogance and vanity. To these should be added the way our rulers presume to lecture the entire world.

Jacques Julliard, "Sur une déculotée," Le Nouvel Observateur, July 19, 2001. The meeting of the International Olympic Committee before choosing the host city for the 2008 Olympics took place in Moscow.

Jean-François Revel, "Anti-Globalism and Anti-Americanism", Anti-Americanism, Encounter Books 2003.

More Jefferson quotes

Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington (January 16, 1787) Lipscomb & Bergh ed. 6:57

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Letter to John Norvell (June 11, 1807) (various errors uncorrected)

To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, “by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.” Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers.

It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.

I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.

Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this. Divide his paper into 4. chapters, heading the 1st. Truths, 2d. Probabilities, 3d. Possibilities, 4th. Lies. The 1st. chapter would be very short, as it would contain little more than authentic papers, and information from such sources as the editor would be willing to risk his own reputation for their truth. The 2d. would contain what, from a mature consideration of all circumstances, his judgment should conclude to be probably true. This however should rather contain too little than too much. The 3d. & 4th. should be professedly for those readers who would rather have lies for their money than the blank paper they would occupy.

Such an editor too would have to set his face against the demoralising practice of feeding the public mind habitually on slander, & the depravity of taste which this nauseous aliment induces. Defamation is becoming a necessary of life: insomuch that a dish of tea, in the morning or evening, cannot be digested without this stimulant. Even those who do not believe these abominations, still read them with complacence to their auditors, and, instead of the abhorrence & indignation which should fill a virtuous mind, betray a secret pleasure in the possibility that some may believe them, tho they do not themselves. It seems to escape them that it is not he who prints, but he who pays for printing a slander, who is its real author.

Letter to Thomas Pinckney (May 29, 1797)

Political dissension is doubtless a less evil than the lethargy of despotism: but still it is a great evil, and it would be as worthy the efforts of the patriot as of the philosopher, to exclude it's [sic] influence if possible, from social life. The good are rare enough at best. There is no reason to subdivide them by artificial lines. But whether we shall ever be able so far to perfect the principles of society as that political opinions shall, in it's intercourse, be as inoffensive as those of philosophy, mechanics, or any other, may well be doubted.

Letter to John Adams (January 11, 1817) (sometimes referred to as "Jefferson's Axiom")

What all agree upon is probably right; what no two agree in most probably is wrong.

Bertrand Russell on Communism and Religion

The City of God contains little that is fundamentally original. The eschatology is Jewish in origin, and came into Christianity mainly through the Book of Revelation. The doctrine of predestination and election is Pauline, though Saint Augustine gave it a much fuller and more logical development than is to be found in the Epistles. The distinction between sacred and profane history is quite clearly set forth in the Old Testament. What Saint Augustine did was to bring these elements together, and to relate them to the history of his own time, in such a way that the fall of the Western Empire, and the subsequent period of confusion, could be assimilated by Christians without any unduly severe trial of their faith.

The Jewish pattern of history, past and future, is such as to make a powerful appeal to the oppressed and unfortunate at all times. Saint Augustine adapted this pattern to Christianity, Marx to Socialism. To understand Marx psychologically, one should use the following dictionary:

Yahweh = Dialectical Materialism
The Messiah = Marx
The Elect = The Proletariat
The Church = The Communist Party
The Second Coming = The Revolution
Hell = Punishment of the Capitalists
The Millennium =The Communist Commonwealth

The terms on the left give the emotional content of the terms on the right, and it is this emotional content, familiar to those who have had a Christian or a Jewish upbringing, that makes Marx's eschatology credible. A similar dictionary could be made for the Nazis, but their conceptions are more purely Old Testament and less Christian than those of Marx, and their Messiah is more analogous to the Maccabees than to Christ.

History of Western Philosophy, Book 2: Catholic Philosophy, Part I: The Fathers, Chapter IV: Saint Augustine's Philosophy and Theology

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Martin Gardner on Einstein and Stalin

I have been criticized for calling Einstein "blind" to the realities of Stalinism. Much as I revere Einstein, it must be said that he, like so many other intellectuals of the thirties, made only the feeblest effort to learn the truth about Stalin. Here is a quotation from a letter he wrote to Max Born, and which you will find on page 130 in The Born-Einstein Letters (1971), edited by Born:

By the way, there are increasing signs that the Russian trials are not faked, but that there is a plot among those who look upon Stalin as a stupid reactionary who has betrayed the ideas of the revolution. Though we find it difficult to imagine this kind of internal thing, those who know Russia best are all more or less of the same opinion. I was firmly convinced to begin with that it was a case of a dictator's despotic acts, based on lies and deception, but this was a delusion.

Born's comments are in my opinion just:

The Russian trials were Stalin's purges, with which he attempted to consolidate his power. Like most people in the West, I believed these show trials to be the arbitrary acts of a cruel dictator. Einstein was apparently of a different opinion: he believed that when threatened by Hitler the Russians had no choice but to destroy as many of their enemies within their own camp as possible. I find it hard to reconcile this point of view with Einstein's gentle, humanitarian disposition.

Postscript to "'Bourgeois Idealism' in Soviet Nuclear Physics", in Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus, Prometheus Books, New York, 1981

How much carbon was released for this?

How much carbon was released for this?

How much of an effect will this have on global warming? None. In fact, by totally unnecessary travel, it increased global warming.

This is just an executive's junket disguised as some noble gesture.

Publicity? Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth has gotten more.

Really, this is worthless, like all similar actions.

Fascism in America

Jean-François Revel:

Strangely, it is always America that is described as degenerate and 'fascist,' while it is solely in Europe that actual dictatorships and totalitarian regimes spring up.

Jean-François Revel, Anti-Americanism, Encounter Books, 2003, p. 156:

The strange thing is that it's always in Europe that dictatorships and totalitarian regimes spring up, yet it's always America that is 'fascist'.

The Volokh Conspiracy:

I wanted to get the source for the "dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe," so I tracked it down to Tom Wolfe's "The Intelligent Coed's Guide to America," republished in Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine (1976). In the process, I found a more extended discussion that struck me as worth repeating. Here's the relevant excerpt, from pp. 115-17 of the hardcover edition; it reports on a panel discussion at Princeton in 1965, in which the participants included Paul Krassner, editor of The Realist magazine, Günter Grass, and Wolfe:

The next thing I knew, the discussion was onto the subject of fascism in America. Everybody was talking about police repression and the anxiety and paranoia as good folks waited for the knock on the door and the descent of the knout on the nape of the neck. I couldn't make any sense out of it. . . . This was the mid-1960's. . . . [T]he folks were running wilder and freer than any people in history. For that matter, Krassner himself, in one of the strokes of exuberance for which he was well known, was soon to publish a slight hoax: an account of how Lyndon Johnson was so overjoyed about becoming President that he had buggered a wound in the neck of John F. Kennedy on Air Force One as Kennedy's body was being flown back from Dallas. Krassner presented this as a suppressed chapter from William Manchester's book Death of a President. Johnson, of course, was still President when it came out. Yet the merciless gestapo dragnet missed Krassner, who cleverly hid out onstage at Princeton on Saturday nights. . . .

Support [for Wolfe's view that fascism wasn't coming to America] came from a quarter I hadn't counted on. It was Grass, speaking in English.

"For the past hour, I have my eyes fixed on the doors here," he said. "You talk about fascism and police repression. In Germany when I was a student, they come through those doors long ago. Here they must be very slow."

Grass was enjoying himself for the first time all evening. He was not simply saying, "You really don't have so much to worry about." He was indulging his sense of the absurd. He was saying: "You American intellectuals — you want so desperately to feel besieged and persecuted!"

He sounded like Jean-François Revel, a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.

Not very nice, Günter! Not very nice, Jean-François! A bit supercilious, wouldn't you say! . . .

Bertrand Russell on Hegel (2)

But this purposeless see-saw, which is all that science has to offer, has not satisfied the philosophers. They have professed to discover a formula of progress, showing that the world was becoming gradually more and more to their liking. The recipe for a philosophy of this type is simple. The philosopher first decides which are the features of the existing world that give him pleasure, and which are the features that give him pain. He then, by a careful selection among facts, persuades himself that the universe is subject to a general law leading to an increase of what he finds pleasant and a decrease of that he finds unpleasant. Next, having formulated his law of progress, he turns on the public and says: 'It is fated that the world must develop as I say; therefore those who wish to be on the winning side, and do not care to wage a fruitless war against the inevitable, will join my party.' Those who oppose him are condemned as unphilosophic, unscientific, and out of date, while those who agree with him feel assured of victory, since the universe is on their side. At the same time the winning side, for reasons which remain somewhat obscure, is represented as the side of virtue.

The man who first developed this point of view was Hegel. Hegel's philosophy is so odd that one would not have expected him to be able to get sane men to accept it, but he did. He set it out with so much obscurity that people thought it must be profound. It can quite easily be expounded lucidly in words of one syllable, but then its absurdity becomes obvious. What follows is not a caricature, though of course Hegelians will maintain that it is.

Hegel's philosophy, in outline, is as follows. Real reality is timeless, as in Parmenides and Plato, but there is also an apparent reality, consisting of the every-day world in space and time. The character of real reality can be determined by logic alone, since there is only one source of possible reality that is not self-contradictory. This is called the 'Absolute Idea'. Of this he gives the following definition: 'The Absolute Idea. The idea, as unity of the subjective and objective Idea, is the notion of the Idea—a notion whose object is the Ideas as such, and for which the objective is Idea—an Object which embraces all characteristics in its unity.' I hate to spoil the luminous clarity of this sentence by any commentary, but in fact the same thing would be expressed by saying 'The Absolute Idea is pure thought thinking about pure thought.' Hegel has already proved to his satisfaction that all Reality is thought, from which it follows that thought cannot think about anything but thought, since there is nothing else to think about.

from "Philosophy and Politics" in Unpopular Essays

Big Bang

From THE ALCHEMY OF THE HEAVENS by Ken Croswell
(page 113):

Popular books claim Hoyle intended "big bang" to be pejorative, but Hoyle disputed that. "The BBC was all radio in those days," he said, "and on radio, you have no visual aids, so it's essential to arrest the attention of the listener and to hold his comprehension by choosing striking words. There was no way in which I coined the phrase to be derogatory; I coined it to be striking, so that people would know the difference between the steady state model and the big bang model."