Agnostic Manifesto

First we had the New Atheism. Now Ron Rosenbaum at Slate is calling for a New Agnosticism. There are a couple or three things to say about his interesting essay.

First, Rosenbaum is at pains to define agnosticism in a way that, I think, distorts the word.

Second, his piece is largely given to criticizing the New Atheists, people like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens (who, parenthetically, is reported to be suffering from esophageal cancer), an enterprise of which I heartily approve, but when he mentions theism, he mostly fires at a straw man.

Let me explain my objection to Rosenbaum's definition of agnosticism. He starts his manifesto with this:

Let's get one thing straight: Agnosticism is not some kind of weak-tea atheism. Agnosticism is not atheism or theism. It is radical skepticism, doubt in the possibility of certainty, opposition to the unwarranted certainties that atheism and theism offer.

Agnostics have mostly been depicted as doubters of religious belief, but recently, with the rise of the "New Atheism"-the high-profile denunciations of religion in best-sellers from scientists such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, and polemicists, such as my colleague Christopher Hitchens-I believe it's important to define a distinct identity for agnosticism, to hold it apart from the certitudes of both theism and atheism.

I don't think this is correct. An atheist is one who lacks a belief in a God or gods. Since agnostics lack a belief in God or gods they are atheists, ab defino. To be sure, there are two kinds of atheists - what we might call strong and weak.

The strong atheist, like Dawkins, et al, claim, often dogmatically, that there is no God. The weak atheist allows that God may exist but that even if he does there's not enough evidence to justify belief that he does. This is precisely the agnostic's position and there's really not much practical difference between it and the stronger form of atheism.

Although his critique of the strong atheists is quite good (despite placing a little too much weight on the atheist's inability, or failure, to come to grips with the question why there is something rather than nothing, a criticism which a lot of atheists will probably dismiss with a shrug of indifference) his problem with Christian theism seems to stem from a profound misunderstanding of Christianity.

For instance he says:

Having recently spent two weeks in Cambridge (the one in the United Kingdom) on a Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship, being lectured to by believers and nonbelievers, I found myself feeling more than anything unconvinced by certainties on either side. And feeling the need for solidarity and identity with other doubters. Thus my call for a revivified agnosticism. Our T-shirt will read: I just don't know.

I don't know which theists he was talking to or what they said, but when I hear intelligent people talk about their Christianity I rarely hear them speak in certainties. I hear them mention their "faith commitment," or a "leap of faith," or "wrestlings with doubts," or "seeing through a glass darkly," or the fact that God's existence is the "best explanation for a host of facts about the world," but I don't hear them talking, as the New Atheists often do, as if they just couldn't be wrong about God's existence. If Rosenbaum thinks Christianity is about certainty he hasn't read Kierkegaard.

He seems to think that Christian commitment is something one makes once they arrive at some proof of the truth of the Gospel, but I don't think that's the case at all. Christians place their trust in God because they're convinced he's there, they have good reasons for believing he's there, and they hope they're right. But what they don't have is certainty. No one is vouchsafed that luxury this side of the Jordan. That's why Scripture says that believers "live by faith."

I did enjoy Rosenbaum's essay, however, and I recommend it for the many good things he says about the New Atheists. Here's one example:

You know about the pons asinorum, right? The so-called "bridge of asses" described by medieval scholars? Initially it referred to Euclid's Fifth Theorem, the one in which geometry really gets difficult and the sheep are separated from the asses among students, and the asses can't get across the bridge at all. Since then the phrase has been applied to any difficult theorem that the asses can't comprehend. And when it comes to the question of why is there something rather than nothing, the "New Atheists" still can't get their asses over the bridge, although many of them are too ignorant to realize that. This sort of ignorance, a condition called "anosognosia," which my friend Errol Morris is exploring in depth on his New York Times blog, means you don't know what you don't know. Or you don't know how stupid you are.

Pons asinorum. I like that.

RLC

Free Will and Murder

Victor Reppert, author of C.S. Lewis' Dangerous Idea and keeper of a blog called The paper is relatively short and does a good job of covering the main issues.

It opens with the horrifying account of a murder that took place in England in 1993:

On February 12th 1993, British toddler Jamie Bulger was enticed away from his mother at a local shopping center and led away by his abductors on a short journey that would end in his tragic and horrific death on the railroad tracks three hours later. Evidence at the trial of the two perpetrators indicated that there were points along the way that they could have changed their course of action. Instead, they brutalized, sexually molested, and battered the child to death with bricks and an iron bar before laying his body across the tracks in hopes of hiding evidence of their involvement in his death. The two murderers, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, were ten years old (Scott).

From a determinist point of view, Jon Venables's and Robert Thompson's fate was set even before their birth. Born to ill-educated, working class parents, the details of the boys' lives constitute a veritable catalogue of social ills. Venables's parents were unstable and depressed and the father eventually abandoned the family. The boy's older and younger siblings were both developmentally challenged and he suffered the brunt of his suicidal mother's physical and verbal abuse. When arrested for the murder of Jamie Bulger, Venables was described as "nearly illiterate" (Slaughter). Thompson's environment was even worse. The second to the youngest of seven violent and aggressive boys, he was, early on, exposed to the criminal habits of his brothers, one of whom was an arsonist and another who was a master thief. Both parents were alcoholics and the father beat the mother regularly. Given the effects on the boys of the atrocious environments and their family histories of alcoholism and abuse, could Venables and Thompson be said to be morally responsible for the actions which led to the tragic death of Jamie Bulger?

The difficulties in trying to navigate between free will and determinism seem intractable. The determinist challenges the libertarian (one who believes in free will) to explicate the nature of a genuinely free choice. Is a free choice one that is completely uncaused? That can't be because our choices, especially our moral choices, arise out of, and are in some sense caused by, our values and beliefs. If our choices are uncaused then they would seem to be spontaneous, unrelated to anything, and, if so, how can we be responsible for them? So, the challenge for the libertarian is to explain how a choice can be influenced by our character, and how our character can be influenced by our environment and genetics, without being determined by these influences.

On the other hand, determinism, if true, has several very unpleasant implications. If it's true then reward and punishment are never deserved since if our choices and behavior are determined by environment and genetics and not freely chosen, an individual is not responsible for anything he does. He's just a passive piece of flotsam swept along by forces outside of his control. Moreover, if determinism is true there can be no moral obligation for one cannot be obligated to do what one cannot do. Finally, determinism is dehumanizing because it tells us that that which makes us unique as humans, the ability to choose our behavior, is just an illusion. On determinism we are essentially robots which means that the idea that humans have dignity and worth is also an illusion.

There's one more problem with determinism. The determinist holds that we always act upon our strongest motives, but the only way we can assess which motives are strongest is to see what it is that we choose. For example, if I choose to have cereal for breakfast the determinist would tell me that my strongest motive was to eat cereal, but if I chose instead to have pancakes he would say that my strongest motive must have been to eat pancakes. In other words, we can only discern our strongest motive by looking at the choice we made. If this is true, however, it means that determinism reduces to a tautology. Since our strongest motive equals whichever motive we act upon the above italicized claim says nothing more than that we always act upon the motive that we act upon. This is true but not very edifying.

So what's the upshot? Philosophical reasoning seems unable to settle the question. There's no compelling reason, if one is a libertarian, to give up one's belief that one is free. One must decide on other than philosophical grounds where one will stand on the matter. If, for example, one believes that we are all accountable for our actions, that people are not just robots, that there are genuine moral obligations, and that at many moments in our lives there really is more than one possible future, then there's no compelling reason the determinist can give to persuade us otherwise. Nor, for that matter, is there reason, if one is a determinist, if one believes that at every moment in our life there's only one possible future, to give up that belief as long as one is willing to accept the existential consequences.

Anyway, read the article at the link. It's quite good.

RLC

Five Books

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is being touted as a potential GOP presidential candidate. In this piece we get a pretty good glimpse of Daniels' intellectual interests and economic philosophy.

The article is an interview with Daniels about five books that have shaped his thinking about economics. He talks about each at length. The five are:

• Road to Serfdom - Friedrich Hayek
• Free to Choose - Milton Friedman
• What it Means to be a Libertarian - Charles Murray
• The Rise and Decline of Nations - Mancur Olson
• The Future and Its Enemies - Virginia Postrel

What Daniels says about these books is fascinating. It's obvious that he's actually read and digested them.

It'd be nice to have someone in the White House familiar with thinkers of this caliber rather than with the works of Marx, Marcuse, Chomsky, and Alinsky.

RLC

Never Too Late

Timothy Egan at Opinionator.com reminds us that it's never too late in life for a burst of creativity. From Clint Eastwood to Joan Didion and Norman MacLean so much of their best work was done after they turned sixty. Even Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Jamie Moyer, who, at 47 years-old, is making a bid for the National League All-Star team, recently became the oldest pitcher ever to beat the New York Yankees.

Even so, I wonder how many writers wrote their first successful book after the age of sixty; how many scientists who made great advances in our understanding of the world did so after they passed their sixtieth year; how many composers and other artists produced a work of enduring beauty in their later years. I suspect not many.

Yet Egan's essay affords hope that just because one finds him or herself well past one's physical and mental prime, that's not a reason to think there's nothing left to accomplish. After all, as George Carlin once noted, 70 is only 21 on the Celsius scale.

RLC

Superposition and Eternity

The world of the quantum is a very weird place. In that world it's possible for particles to move in opposite directions at the same time, it's possible for them to exist in more than one place, and more than one state, at the same time. In fact, in some interpretations, particles don't even exist at all until they've been somehow observed. It's all very bizarre.

This article in New Scientist gives us a hint of the weirdness:

Take the simple process of measuring the spin of a photon [a particle of light energy]. Thanks to the strange nature of the quantum world, it can actually be spinning in two directions at once, a phenomenon known as superposition. When we use a detector to measure the spin, however, the superposition disappears and we register a spin occurring in one direction or the other.

Quantum theory does not explain why this happens. "We don't really understand the measurement process," admits Stephen Adler at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

If you want to know how little we know, ask a roomful of physicists what goes on when we measure a particle's properties. All will be able to calculate the result of the measurement, but the explanation they give will differ wildly. Some will tell you that new parallel universes necessarily sprang into being. Others will say that, before a measurement is performed, talk of particles having real properties is meaningless. Still others will say that hidden properties come into play.

Researchers fire a single quantum particle, such as a photon, towards two apertures in a screen. Common sense says the photon has to go through one aperture or the other. However, as long as you don't measure which aperture it went through, something remarkable happens.

At a screen on the far side of the twin slits, an interference pattern [an interference pattern is a series of light and dark bands that are formed by the interaction of two waves] forms. This can only occur if the photon goes through both slits at the same time and interferes with itself. In other words, as long as nobody is watching, the photon exists in two different places at once.

A measurement changes everything, however. If you set up the experiment so you can see which slit the photon goes through, the interference pattern disappears; the photon will have gone through one slit or the other, but not both.

This all has, I think, interesting metaphysical implications. Suppose it is true that we have immortal souls. Suppose further that our existence beyond our physical death occurs outside the temporal world, i.e. we exist in a timeless realm in which the past, present and future of this world are all in our present.

If that's a possible state of affairs then it follows that our deaths, which are for us still future events, have already happened for those, like our ancestors, who have already died. Indeed, for them all events which are still in our future are in their eternal present. This means that for them we have already died and could be experiencing union with them now even as we are living out our temporal existence on this earth.

In other words, like quantum particles in a state of superposition, we could exist in two different states (or "places") at once.

Not only does this suggest that we could already be experiencing eternity with those who went before us - as well as those who will die after us - it also gives us an answer to the question that has perplexed theists throughout history: If there's going to be an "end of the world" (in Christianity, a second coming of Christ) when will it happen? If what we have been suggesting here is correct then the answer is, it will happen at the moment that we die. At that moment, for us, the entire future collapses into the present and all of history lies before us like a page in a book.

Sound too bizarre to be true? Perhaps, but it's really no more bizarre than the reality that physicists are discovering at the sub-atomic level of scale.

RLC

Wallis on Afghanistan

Over at The Washington Post's blog, On Faith, Jim Wallis argues that the war in Afghanistan is immoral and that we should get out. His conclusion may be correct, but the reasons he gives for it are, in my opinion, weak and irrelevant.

Wallis opens his essay with this puzzling remark:

But to begin a war and then an occupation of Afghanistan was the wrong policy, quickly killing more Afghan innocents than the American innocents who died on September 11.

I don't know how he knows how many innocent Afghan civilians were killed by American troops, but grant that the number exceeds the three thousand killed on 9/11. Of what importance is that? Does Wallis think that we went to war in Afghanistan in order to kill as many of their civilians as the al Qaeda terrorists killed of ours? By Wallis' reasoning we should have stopped fighting WWII as soon as we killed as many Japanese civilians as were killed at Pearl Harbor.

Here's the metric: Has our primarily military policy in Afghanistan and Iraq killed more terrorists than it has recruited? I think we know the answer to that.

Well, if we do I don't know how we do, and I doubt that Wallis does either. The implication is that going to war has generated and inspired more terrorists than would have been arrayed against us had we not gone to war. How could Wallis, or anyone, know this to be the case? Could it not be just as plausibly argued that had we not gone to war, Islamic youth by the millions would have smelled weakness and joined up with Osama bin Laden to be in on the destruction of the Great Satan?

A new strategy in Afghanistan that focuses on humanitarian assistance and sustainable economic development, along with international policing, was also never tried. It could have been led by NGOs, both faith-based and secular, who have been in the region for years, have become quite indigenous, and are much more trusted by the people of these countries than are the U.S. military. But such assistance would have to be provided, as much as possible, by independent civilian and non-governmental organizations -- both international and local -- rather than using aid as a government adjunct to military operations.

Here again Wallis makes a claim for which he fails to offer any support. How does he know that the Afghan people trust these NGOs more than they trust the military? If the Taliban are kidnapping their leaders or stealing their property who do the people turn to, do you think, to get it stopped? NGOs or the American military? Moreover, if Wallis thinks that we have not already spent a fortune on aid to the people of Afghanistan then he just hasn't been reading the same stuff everyone else has.

Yes, after taking over the country, we do have a responsibility not to simply walk away. There are ethical and moral issues that need to be considered: legitimately protecting Americans from further terrorism; protecting the lives of U.S. servicemen and women; protecting the Afghan people from the collateral damage of war; defending women from the Taliban; genuinely supporting democracy; and of course, saving innocent lives from the collateral damage of war, to name a few.

And if all these missions require 100,000 troops, numerous operations and lots of dead Taliban should we declare that the price is just too high? Wallis says, on the one hand, that we should get out of Afghanistan for moral reasons and on the other that we need to stay there for moral reasons. Well, which is it?

Non-military strategies should have led the way, rather than the other way around, as counter-insurgency doctrine requires. We should not have made aid and development weapons of war by tying them so closely to the military; rather, we should have only provided the security support needed for the development work to succeed -- led by respected, well-established international organizations with strong local connections.

This is pie-in-the-sky nonsense. The fact is that we went in to Afghanistan to get the people who launched 9/11, not to deliver hot lunches to Afghan shepherds. Once we drove al Qaeda and the Taliban out we had an obligation to keep them from flooding back into the country as soon as we left, so we have tried to create a secure environment for the people of Afghanistan. We undertook to strengthen both the government and the nation's infrastructure. Humanitarian efforts only work in areas which are free of the fear of the Taliban, which means our first mission has to be to pacify the countryside. No international organization is going to be keen on sending their workers into areas where they're likely to lose their heads as soon as they show up.

The article told story after story about families being separated by repeated deployments in an endless war. Soldiers who are fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters are dying for a wrong-headed, ineffective, failed, doomed, arrogant, theologically unjust, and yes, immoral war policy. And of course, the ones dying are not the young people headed for our best universities and successful professional careers, but rather they are the ones who have fewer options, or who see the military as their only option. Those with the least opportunities, and their families, are again the ones to sacrifice and suffer. It's not right and it's not fair.

Set aside the fact that despite what he might think of himself, Wallis is not a prophet. He doesn't know that this effort is "wrong-headed, ineffective, failed, doomed, arrogant." We should remember that this is exactly what the progressive opponents of George Bush were saying about Iraq, which Joe Biden is now claiming as an Obama administration success. We should also bear in mind that we have a volunteer military which means that the people fighting this war chose to make the sacrifices that Wallis enumerates. Moreover, his claim that the ones who are making these sacrifices are young men and women who see the military as their only option is utter nonsense. They joined the military because they saw it as a good option, not their only option. Wallis, like Senator Kerry in 2004, would have us believe that our troops are really life's losers. It says more about Wallis' view of those who go into the military than it does about the young men and women themselves.

Neither has Wallis made even a glimmer of an argument that the Afghanistan war is "theologically unjust, and immoral." He simply asserts it and expects us to nod our heads in agreement. But, never mind. As I said at the outset, almost the entire thrust of his essay is irrelevant. I say that because Wallis is a pacifist and would oppose any use of force in Afghanistan no matter how it was carried out. In other words, his argument is disingenuous. He's not opposed to the way our troops have been used, he's opposed, in principle, to any use of troops. It would be nice if he had the forthrightness to tell us that up front, rather than try to convince us that the reason he thinks we should leave Afghanistan is that the war is being managed badly, that it can't be won, and that the military is not being employed to maximum effect.

RLC

When the Bush Tax Cuts Expire

The Heritage Foundation has sent out a mailing in which they make the following claims about the consequences for you and me when the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire in January. I have no link for this, but according to what they say:

When the cuts expire it will be the equivalent of a $2.4 trillion tax increase on families, seniors and businesses.

One hundred million families will face an average tax increase of $1716 per year.

Seventeen million seniors will see their taxes rise an average of $2034.

Small business owners will be socked with an average increase of $3637.

Set aside Mr. Obama's promise that he would not raise taxes on those with incomes less than $250,000 a year. Few believed he was telling us the truth when he made that promise anyway. The question now is, what effect will this additional financial burden have on poverty levels and the average standard of living in this country? The former will necessarily rise and the latter will perforce decline.

Where does this money go? Well, in 2009 $19.6 billion went for frivolous "pork" projects that rewarded special interest groups. Much of it also goes to pay for the administration's stimulus programs that have been such a colossal failure in creating jobs, and, of course, a bloated federal bureaucracy takes their cut.

If you complain that you're being bled dry by our congressional phlebotomists, that you won't be able to manage on what you have left over, then you're told that you're not being patriotic, or that you're just callous, mean-spirited and unwilling to help the less fortunate. Besides, the country voted for hope and change, and, by golly, the Obama administration is going to give it to us. So shut up, stop complaining, fork it over, and have a nice day.

RLC

Black Haters

Imagine that our Department of Justice decided not to prosecute a couple of white klansmen who were intimidating blacks at the polling booths. Imagine that the klansmen had already forfeited, amounting to a guilty plea, and all that the white Attorney General needed to do was sentence them, but he inexplicably dropped the case. Imagine the outrage that would be fulminating across the airwaves until the administration relented.

Of course, something very much like this did happen in the Obama/Holder administration and the only place there's any outrage is on Fox News. Everywhere else, all one hears is the sound of crickets. Nothing from MSNBC, the New York Times, Jim Wallis. Just silence.

Who was the racist whacko that Holder let go? Watch him in action and marvel at the racial double standard in this country. What white racist would be allowed to do or say what this creep is saying?

If a white guy was doing this he'd be hauled off the street and thrown in jail for incitement to violence, as he should be. Not only that, but he would be justly pilloried for 24/7 on the nation's cable news shows his savage and moronic beliefs. In Obama's America, however, black haters get a pass from the liberal left. Why? Are liberals so racist themselves that they think that this is somehow just blacks being blacks? Or are they so otiose that they think we can improve race relations by holding blacks to a lower standard than we hold others?

J. Christian Adams was an attorney in the Department of Justice who resigned because he refused to be complicit in the corruption of the DOJ's Voting Rights Division. He writes:

Based on my firsthand experiences, I believe the dismissal of the Black Panther case was motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law. Others still within the department share my assessment. The department abetted wrongdoers and abandoned law-abiding citizens victimized by the New Black Panthers. The dismissal raises serious questions about the department's enforcement neutrality in upcoming midterm elections and the subsequent 2012 presidential election.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has opened an investigation into the dismissal and the DOJ's skewed enforcement priorities. Attorneys who brought the case are under subpoena to testify, but the department ordered us to ignore the subpoena, lawlessly placing us in an unacceptable legal limbo.

Most disturbing, the dismissal is part of a creeping lawlessness infusing our government institutions. Citizens would be shocked to learn about the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against nonwhite defendants on behalf of white victims. Equal enforcement of justice is not a priority of this administration. Open contempt is voiced for these types of cases.

Some of my co-workers argued that the law should not be used against black wrongdoers because of the long history of slavery and segregation. Less charitable individuals called it "payback time." Incredibly, after the case was dismissed, instructions were given that no more cases against racial minorities like the Black Panther case would be brought by the Voting Section.

Refusing to enforce the law equally means some citizens are protected by the law while others are left to be victimized, depending on their race.

What Adams reports here is contemptible and frightening. Under President Obama and Attorney General Holder the chief law enforcement institution in the nation is subordinating equal justice to racial preference. I can think of no better way to stoke the fires of racial hatred and violence in this country than to abandon the principle of equality under the law and to turn a blind eye to black crime.

Congress needs to be looking at ways to remove Mr. Holder from his position and the American people need to be looking at ways to remove Holder's party from Congress in November and from the White House in 2012.

RLC

Religion of Peace

I'm sure there are moderate Muslims who just want to live in a country where their children can grow up without having clerics making their lives miserable. Unfortunately, there are also too many like this Australian fellow:

How many Muslims just like this guy are we hosting in this country - here illegally, living off the taxpayers, and plotting to kill as many of us as possible? But don't let it worry you, lots of Muslims are moderates.

RLC

Religion of Compassion

We have on several occasions talked about the film The Stoning of Soraya M. a true account of the judicial murder of an Iranian woman in the 1980s falsely accused of adultery. Now history is about to repeat itself as another Iranian woman, Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani, having already been lashed 99 times and imprisoned for five years for alleged adultery has now been sentenced to die by stoning:

Keep in mind two things: The barbaric laws that enjoin such punishments are precisely what millions of Muslims, even in this country, wish to foist on the rest of the world, and the people who do this sort of thing to women will soon have nuclear weapons unless the world does something to stop them.

Check out Hot Air for more on this horrific case.

RLC

Life at the Lighthouse - Day 11 (Conclusion)

I do apologize for being so off topic lately. I know full well you don't come to Viewpoint to read such mundane drivel. Unfortunately, circumstances necessitated that I give some of the parties involved an Internet presence in an effort to "persuade" them to be more reasonable. The good news is that it appears there is a satisfactory solution in the works.

Further, I hasten to add that no such coaching was needed for All My Sons Moving & Storage of Raleigh, NC to step up to the table to make things right.

I contacted Kenon Furlong, Manager of All My Sons Moving & Storage of Raleigh, NC and to my surprise, not only did he agree to a 3-way split but also raised the bar by offering to assume 50% of my share of the responsibility! He went on to encourage me to ask Mid-American Apartment Communities to do likewise, which would relieve me of the entire obligation!

Mr. Robert Donnelley from Mid-American Apartment Communities Customer Relations contacted me and, for the first time, I felt I was speaking to someone from that company who had a soul. He asked what I thought would be a fair arrangement. While it went against my sensibilities, I suggested a 3-way split of the expense by the moving company, the Lighthouse apartment complex, and myself. I mentioned Mr. Furlong's suggestion and he responded that it was a reasonable proposal! Mr. Donnelley even went so far as to suggest that my electric bill be adjusted for the cost of running three industrial-strength fans and a dehumidifier for several days to dry the place out. Finally, this issue is behind me.

There's so much more I'd like to mention about the good people and the bad that we encountered in this nightmare story but rather than dwell on that, I'll post an article or two from brother Dick who forwarded them to me before going out of town.

Thanks for reading,

Life at the Lighthouse - Day 9

This is an open letter to the Board of Directors, the Management Team, and Investor Relations at Mid-America Apartment Communities.

Mid-America Apartment Communities
6584 Poplar Avenue
Memphis, Tennessee 38138
Mid-America Apartment Communities

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Yesterday I received my first threat of eviction by the Hatchet Lady, Laura Hulsey - Community Manager laura.hulsey@maac.net (904) 278-6006. She informed me that if the $750 bill for water damage cleanup is not paid, she cannot accept my rent check. Since she cannot accept the rent check, we will be evicted for not paying the rent. Showing that her heart (if she has one) is in the right place, she quickly offered to structure the cost into four "easy" payments. What a sweetheart!

The plumbing broke while the clothes washer hose was being connected to it. Note that it has not been determined precisely how or why the pipe broke. It was initially determined and claimed by the emergency service man - Guy, that the moving company that was installing the washer tightened the hose to the plumbing excessively. Were that the case, I wouldn't have much to write about, however, the next day I met with Guy and asked him if any tools were required to remove the broken plumbing from the washer hose to which he replied "No". So, in fact, the washer hose was "finger tight" and not tightened excessively. Several other stories have been crafted in attempts to explain what happened, each one contradicting the other. The latest version being that the man installing the washer "must have been standing between the washer and the wall and after hooking up the hose to the plumbing, either tripped on the hose while trying to climb out from behind the washer or tipped the washer over while climbing over it putting excessive stress on the plumbing". Well which is it? Neither, because the instant the leak began, my wife and I could see the man reaching over the washer trying to turn the water off.

All of the attempts to explain the cause of the problem are engineered to place the blame on the moving company (and me) and away from the apartment company.

All that is truly known at this point is that it could have been abuse of some nature but the fact that the hose was finger tight suggests no reason to suspect abuse. That leaves the possibility of faulty plumbing given the age and stress from people having moved in and out connecting and disconnecting their washers for the last ten years.

But Hatchet Lady, Laura Hulsey will not be reasoned with. Her position is that she will not be confused by the facts. Nor, sadly will Mr. Glenn Evers - Regional Manager glenn.evers@maac.net (904) 363-2300.

You can read the background of events here...Day 6 here...Day 8 and here...Day 9

And so now I appeal my case to you ladies and gentlemen. I want to know if there is someone at Mid-Atlantic Apartment Communities that still has a sense of ethics and a grasp of the meaning of integrity.

Thank you,

Update 2

Well, today marks the one-week anniversary of our moving debacle but I have to say I had a delightful conversation with Mr. Kenon Furlong, Manager - All My Sons Moving & Storage, Raleigh, NC yesterday and he has offered assurances that "they will not let us hang out to dry" regarding the expense of water damages that occurred when we moved into our apartment. As a matter of fact, perhaps 25% of the conversation was "business" related and the rest ended up being about unrelated topics of interest that we discovered were common to both of us. (See Viewpoint for the background of this thread. This is very encouraging as it gives us reason to believe there are still some business people of integrity. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same thing for the folks at The Lighthouse at Fleming Island in Florida.

On the morning after the flood, I visited Laura Hulsey - Community Manager laura.hulsey@maac.net (904) 278-6006 and instead of expressing any concern or interest for our situation, any inquiry as to our well-being, she matter-of-factly made it clear in no uncertain terms that I would be receiving an invoice for the costs of the water damage cleanup. My lightening-quick instincts (LQI) told me this was an evil, otherworldly creature that relishes every opportunity to abuse and oppress tenants. One look into that cold, stupid, lifeless stare of hers makes it intuitively obvious to even the casual observer that this is so.

Years ago I learned what I call the customer's algorithm. Here's the pseudo code...

while (level of service not = acceptable) do {

escalate efforts by contacting someone higher up the corporate food chain

if ((unethical mentality flows from top down = true or

entire corporate culture = polluted or

evidence of integrity = false) or

(satisfied))

then {

quit

}

Update

We recently moved to Florida and thought it good to rent an apartment for a bit while we get familiar with the area after which we will buy or build a home. The chaos mentioned in my earlier post was because while the movers were installing our clothes washer, the fitting and pipe broke causing the apartment to flood. It was about 6:00 pm and the main office was closed so we called the complex's emergency service and twenty minutes later a service man managed to turn the water off. On his way here he called the carpet service they deal with who eventually arrived to begin the clean up by tearing up the carpet and padding in several rooms and setting up industrial strength fans and a dehumidifier which ran for 48 hours.

After the place was dry the carpet service put down new carpet padding and reinstalled the carpet. Five minutes after they left an envelope was slid under the front door by the apartment management containing a bill for the work that had been done. As of this writing, the apartment management believes we are responsible for the expense of the cleanup.

Note that no tools were used to tighten the washer hose to the plumbing nor (as per the emergency service man) were any required to remove the broken piece from the hose. It was "finger tight".

I have contacted the moving company as well as the regional manager of the apartment complex and communicated what happened while trying to avoid the issue of liability and pointing fingers. If all of this can be resolved in a reasonable and fair manner, I will post an article to that effect giving credit where it is due.

If not, I will be posting weekly articles (with graphics) that will give all parties involved an Internet presence they would probably rather not have. I envision a section to the left of Viewpoint's web page either above or below the Hall of Fame titled Hall of Shame with a link to a page that displays a running compilation of all of the posted articles. I will provide the names of the businesses and individuals involved (and email addresses should you chose to express your outrage) so as to be sure they receive the credit they are due. And of course I will email a permalink to the BBB, apartment guides, organizations that review apartment living, and certainly the "We're On Your Side" television news programs, etc.

Stay tuned,

Hello

We're back!

I apologize for the delay getting the server back on line...this last week has been rather chaotic. I'll follow up with more info shortly.

Hiatus

Today marks the last day Viewpoint will be available until July 10th. Please check back with us then.

RLC

Incredible Shrinking Presidency

In previous posts we wondered why the administration has been so slow to respond to the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, especially after the criticism this president heaped on President Bush for his dilatory response to Hurricane Katrina.

Well, it has turned out that there were two big reasons for refusing offers of help from the Dutch and both of them are disgraceful. The first is that the Dutch skimmers remove a tiny fraction less oil from the water than EPA regulations permit and the second is that the use of Dutch skimmers would have meant that unionized American crews would be excluded from the work, which circumstance offends the labor unions in whose pocket our president is ensconced.

Tens of thousands of Gulf coast residents are losing their livelihoods but, hey, the unions are happy.

There's much more in the article at the link to cause you to despair of the competence and intelligence of the people in the White House who seek to assure us that they've been on top of this disaster from day one.

Democratic pollster Pat Caddell said recently that the administration has shown so much incompetence in their handling of the oil clean-up that it'll be a long time before anyone has any confidence in the government's ability to manage a crisis.

Indeed, with every passing day both the confidence Americans have in government's ability to solve problems and the stature of President Obama diminish apace. Mr. Obama has become the political embodiment of the Incredible Shrinking Man, and nothing he says about the spill means anything to anyone any more. Maybe it's time for him to retreat to the links for another round of golf and just let the governors of the affected states handle the clean-up.

RLC

Who Did We Gain Our Independence From?

Jay Leno asks some people (including a college instructor!) some basic questions about American history, and the results are as depressing as they are funny. I know you can't draw sweeping conclusions from a small data set, but still ....

It's scary to think that these people probably vote. Gosh, come to think of it, I wonder who they voted for in the last presidential election.

Exit question: Is there some sociological significance in the fact that the only one on the film who knew the answers was the grandpa?

Thanks to Hot Air for calling our attention to the video.

RLC

Fourth of July Meditation

Most Americans know that Thomas Jefferson, at the age of only 33, was tasked with composing the Declaration of Independence, but we probably don't know much about how his selection came about. The following is a letter John Adams wrote to his secretary of State Thomas Pickering summarizing the selection process (and also giving a few hints as to Adam's personality, a personality captured very well, by the way, by Paul Giamatti in the excellent HBO miniseries titled John Adams).

Adams writes:

"You inquire why so young a man as Mr. Jefferson was placed at the head of the committee for preparing a Declaration of Independence? I answer: It was the Frankfort advice, to place Virginia at the head of everything. Mr. Richard Henry Lee might be gone to Virginia, to his sick family, for aught I know, but that was not the reason of Mr. Jefferson's appointment. There were three committees appointed at the same time, one for the Declaration of Independence, another for preparing articles of confederation, and another for preparing a treaty to be proposed to France.

Mr. Lee was chosen for the Committee of Confederation, and it was not thought convenient that the same person should be upon both. Mr. Jefferson came into Congress in June, 1775, and brought with him a reputation for literature, science, and a happy talent of composition. Writings of his were handed about, remarkable for the peculiar felicity of expression. Though a silent member in Congress, he was so prompt, frank, explicit, and decisive upon committees and in conversation - not even Samuel Adams was more so - that he soon seized upon my heart; and upon this occasion I gave him my vote, and did all in my power to procure the votes of others. I think he had one more vote than any other, and that placed him at the head of the committee. I had the next highest number, and that placed me the second. The committee met, discussed the subject, and then appointed Mr. Jefferson and me to make the draft, I suppose because we were the two first on the list.

The subcommittee met. Jefferson proposed to me to make the draft. I said, 'I will not,' 'You should do it.' 'Oh! no.' 'Why will you not? You ought to do it.' 'I will not.' 'Why?' 'Reasons enough.' 'What can be your reasons?' 'Reason first, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second, I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third, you can write ten times better than I can.' 'Well,' said Jefferson, 'if you are decided, I will do as well as I can.' 'Very well. When you have drawn it up, we will have a meeting.'

A meeting we accordingly had, and conned the paper over. I was delighted with its high tone and the flights of oratory with which it abounded, especially that concerning Negro slavery, which, though I knew his Southern brethren would never suffer to pass in Congress, I certainly never would oppose. There were other expressions which I would not have inserted if I had drawn it up, particularly that which called the King tyrant. I thought this too personal, for I never believed George to be a tyrant in disposition and in nature; I always believed him to be deceived by his courtiers on both sides of the Atlantic, and in his official capacity, only, cruel. I thought the expression too passionate, and too much like scolding, for so grave and solemn a document; but as Franklin and Sherman were to inspect it afterwards, I thought it would not become me to strike it out. I consented to report it, and do not now remember that I made or suggested a single alteration.

We reported it to the committee of five. It was read, and I do not remember that Franklin or Sherman criticized anything. We were all in haste. Congress was impatient, and the instrument was reported, as I believe, in Jefferson's handwriting, as he first drew it. Congress cut off about a quarter of it, as I expected they would; but they obliterated some of the best of it, and left all that was exceptionable, if anything in it was. I have long wondered that the original draft had not been published. I suppose the reason is the vehement philippic against Negro slavery.

As you justly observe, there is not an idea in it but what had been hackneyed in Congress for two years before. The substance of it is contained in the declaration of rights and the violation of those rights in the Journals of Congress in 1774. Indeed, the essence of it is contained in a pamphlet, voted and printed by the town of Boston, before the first Congress met, composed by James Otis, as I suppose, in one of his lucid intervals, and pruned and polished by Samuel Adams."

Rich Lowery has a brief but informative piece on the Declaration at NRO in which he says this:

Jefferson's words were more than rhetorical theatrics; they laid the philosophical bedrock of the American republic. In the space of three magnificent sentences in its preamble, the Declaration packs enough content to fill volumes of treatises on political theory.

In declaring that "all men are created equal," it insists that there's no such thing as a natural ruling class. Put another way, it tells us, as Jefferson wrote near the end of his life, "that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God."

Lowery also discusses several other of Jefferson's phrases and notes that they were borrowed from the writings of John Locke, particularly his Second Treatise on Government, in whose thought the Founding Fathers had been steeped. Lowery omits mention, though, of what may be Locke's most important idea: the notion that our rights are rooted in, and given to us, by God. This is important because if the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (Jefferson replaced Locke's "property" with "pursuit of happiness") are grounded in anything else then they are not "unalienable." We can only have enduring, unalienable rights if they are endowed by our Creator. Nature certainly confers no rights upon us, and the rights bestowed by men are ephemeral and arbitrary.

Philosopher Todd May, in a rather peculiar essay on the Declaration at the NYT's Opinionator, declares that:

Most philosophers now agree that the rights we have are not rooted in nature or in a divine being but in our social practices, our ways of living together.

May might be correct that this is the view of most philosophers today, but if so we should be deeply troubled. Rights that are grounded in nothing more than our social practices are mere words on paper that can change with the social conventions of the time. Philosophers, and Supreme Court Justices, who think that the rights we have in the Constitution are rooted in 18th century social practices are not going to be zealous in defending and perpetuating those rights. Indeed, this is what Elena Kagan seems to believe, and it's one of the deepest concerns with her nomination. Such a view of the nature of rights, a view that grounds them in the shifting mores of social custom and fashion, is a path that leads straight to the might-makes-right philosophy of tyrants.

In any event, I urge you to take a few minutes this Fourth of July weekend to reflect upon the meaning, the grounds, and the contemporary threats to those freedoms and rights bequeathed to us by the founders of our nation.

RLC

How to Achieve Full Employment

In the course of explaining the benefits of unemployment compensation Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi teaches us something I'll bet few really knew or appreciated: Unemployment benefits are a job creator:

Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? All we need do to achieve full employment is to lay everyone off and send them an unemployment check. What could be easier? When next the Nobel Prizes are awarded for economics I hope the committee gives Ms Pelosi due consideration.

RLC