This post is part of my stated goals mentioned here.

Years ago, I could read, write, listen to, and speak Mandarin Chinese rather well. Well, by “rather well,” I mean at a level which would allow me to survive if I were dropped off in the middle of Beijing at any given moment.

Sadly, those skills have atrophied. It’s common knowledge (at least, conventional wisdom dictates) that language skills are highly perishable, in that they decrease significantly the less you use them. Fortunately, in my case anyway, it seems that once the initial difficult work of learning the basics of the language have been mastered, the process of reacquiring those skills are not incredibly arduous. I gleaned this fact when I traveled to China last August. Though I was extremely rusty and more than a little embarrassed, I found that within a few days in country, I could walk up to a ticket window, make inquiries and purchase rail tickets with little difficulty. I pride myself on this because it’s a well known inside joke among those who know Chinese culture how convoluted and backwards rail travel can be.

Anyway, I’ve been informed that if I wish to advance professionally within my work role, I must increase my Chinese proficiency; which means I need to take the Defense Language Proficiency Test within the next year. I’m not willing to take any classes outside of work to reach this goal, as my free time is severely limited. That leaves me with somewhat limited options.

One of those options is ChinesePod, which is an extensive Chinese podcast offering hundreds of lessons in tiered difficulties. If you are just starting out, you’d be at the basic level. Next is Elementary, then Intermediate, Upper Intermediate, and then Advanced. Also offered are supplementary PDF files which go over all the vocabulary and grammar necessary to understand each lesson.

When I first dove back into this, about two weeks ago, I went immediately for the Intermediate level, which deals more with everyday conversations one might have (or overhear) while visiting or working in China. Unfortunately, I quickly found that what was being said (and how fast it was being said) was above my comprehension skills. The vocabulary was off just enough where I was only catching about 50% of the conversation. To complicate matters, the explanation about what is going on in the conversations is also done in Chinese.

I have a way of approaching the learning of new materials (whatever it may be) which is cognitively dissonant. This is a very common theme throughout my life, and I’ve never been able to figure out how to defeat it. When I approach a new subject (or try to learn something new or more difficult in a subject I know), I always assume that the material will come to me intuitively. That is, I just wade into it and expect to just “pick up” what I need easily. When that doesn’t happen (and it only does about 25% of the time), I get frustrated, embarrassed, and mad at myself for not just “knowing” the material.

This, of course, is crazy. I should know that I won’t just “pick up” the knowledge I want to gain intuitively, and I should further know that getting frustrated about it is just…silly.

But, that’s how I work. It’s always been that way.

I think there are several factors at play, here. I’m certain there’s a bit of the Dunning Kruger effect going on. I go into a subject assuming I’m more knowledgeable than I really am and expect my brain to act accordingly. Again, this is silly. It’s only when you’re quite good at something that you recognize how much you suck at it. It makes no sense to approach a subject you know you’re sub-par at and make the assumption that you’re actually quite good.

Impatience is probably also a factor. I’ve gotten much better at this over the years. I’m able to focus longer and with more clarity than in the past. Some of that has to do with just living life. Most of it has to do with working at it, consciously.

Anyway, all of that is a rather long way of saying that I pretty much suck at Chinese. I’ve been forced by the limits of my comprehension to drop from Intermediate down to Elementary lessons. So, now I’m in the realm of facial features, shopping for shoes, catching a bus, getting directions, etc…

And, that’s fine. It was embarrassing at first, but I’m relearning the fundamentals of the language. There are nuances I’ve forgotten about, sentence patterns I’ve neglected, and vocabulary words I’ve never heard before.

I’ll be back up to Intermediate level in no time.

This post is part of my stated goals mentioned here.

Back about 12 or 13 years ago, I picked up The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner because I decided it was about time I gave him a whirl. Having never read Faulkner before, I had no idea what I was in for, other than the assorted murmurs I picked up from time to time about how difficult of an author he was to read. Those murmurs proved to be completely founded, as I got about 10 pages in and set it down in frustration, not to be picked up again for nearly a decade.

It was a friend at work who convinced me to give Faulkner another try (after we had a very in-depth discussion about Thomas Pynchon), but he advised that I start with something a little less daunting. I held off until I went down to Jazz Fest in New Orleans in 2010, where I bought Collected Stories from the William Faulkner House located in Pirate Alley (right behind the Saint Louis Cathedral). It may sound hackneyed, but I took the book around the corner, sat in an open-air bar, ordered a Scotch and began reading. I’ve never looked back.

The Reivers is the 8th Faulkner novel I’ve read (not to include Collected Stories or other short stories). The Sound and the Fury is well behind me, as is Light in August, As I Lay Dying, and Intruder in the Dust. I may write about those novels later (The Sound and the Fury is probably the second best book I’ve ever read, behind Lolita).

I mention those novels because The Reivers stands apart from them, not in substance, but in style. Published in 1962, it was Faulkner’s last novel, and probably one of his most accessible. There is little to no stream of consciousness flowing through the narrative. Gone, too, are the long, but breath-taking descriptive paragraphs found in his earlier works.

What’s left is a pretty straight-forward book of dialoge between three main characters, and about a dozen ancillary players. There’s little left to the imagination about plot or motivation, and the reader can take it pretty easy reading through the pages.

I don’t stand with other critics who call this one of Faulkner’s “lesser works,” however. Even stripped down, it’s a better piece of work than most contemporary authors produce; for one, simple, yet universally true reason: Faulkner understands the human condition better than anyone I’ve ever read.

I’m no good at writing a synopsis of anything, really. The Wikipedia article will probably do a better job at giving you an idea of what the book is about than anything I write. In the end, it’s a comedy. There’s nothing “soul-crushing” about it. I found myself surprised and chuckling continuously throughout, and was grateful for a “light” read. But, it has all the elements of something much more “heavy” and engaging. The ever-present racial and social undertones are there: The hard, dirt life of Mississippi dirt farmers; The stupidity, meanness, and pettiness of power-mad authority figures; Women who have no choice in life but to sell their bodies to those who will buy them for a night…it’s all there.

The big takeaway, in my view, is the biblical story (I’m thinking Eve, here) of the loss of innocence of an eleven year old boy, how he mourns at that loss, and how he finally learns to accept it. It sounds shlocky, but it turns out to be rather touching in the end.

If you haven’t guessed by now, one of my goals is to read every book by Faulkner. I figure I’m about half way there. The two other Faulkner books I have in the queue for this year are Soldier’s Pay and Pylon.

Next up, however, is Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae. At nearly 600 pages, I hope to blog about it as I work through it so I don’t have to save up all my thoughts until the end.

I have too much stuff.

In particular, I have too much stuff going on in my head.

Well, maybe that’s not right. Perhaps I have just the right amount of stuff going on up there and I’ve been thus far unable to organize it. Perhaps upon a well thought out organization, I will discover that I have far too little going on up there.*

But, for now (pre-reorganization), the stuff I do have going on up there is often contrary and mutually exclusive. I find I’m unable to turn most thoughts into actions when those actions would interfere with other actions.

In short, I’m saying I’m really, really bad at things like prioritization and following through.

It has always been thus.

I’m hoping to work on that now as I have a list of goals I would like to accomplish before year’s end.

To that end, I’m experimenting with self-motivational techniques. I think one way to prod myself into accomplishing my stated goals is to blog about them as I work through them. Combined with other techniques (to include heavy list making and note taking), I’m hoping this will give me the traction I need to cross the finish line.

So, I expect there will be a great deal more posting by myself on these pages.

Here are some of my goals for this year. I’m keeping one or two of my goals to myself, as even writing them down would provide way too much pressure to succeed. They may be overly ambitious, but only time will tell. If I get them accomplished, I’ll write about it.

• Complete my 2012 Reading list (which will feed into larger goals).
• Run a half marathon.
• Increase my skills in Chinese.
• Write 4 posts for The Lesson Applied.
• Start another blog I’ve been thinking about related to parental advice for my daughters.
• Self publish a photo book.
• Practice the guitar at least 2 hours per week.
• Take two college level math courses.
• Finish on massive blog post for Shrubbloggers (which has been languishing for nearly two years).
• Make a walking stick.
• Get the 3×3 Rubik’s Cube solved in less than a minute.

Some of these things don’t make much sense, but I have a reason for all of them, which I also hope to express in upcoming posts.

*I find it strange that I wrote “going on up there” when referring to the thoughts in my head. It’s as if I’m disambiguating myself somehow. It would be much more correct to say “going on in here,” I think.

Or would it?

First, allow me to clarify a few points about the video below before I start into the meat of the matter.

The video is obviously edited — for what purpose, I do not know. It could have been to cut down its length or to stitch together a narrative that puts the person being interviewed in the worst possible light. Though, admittedly, given his statements, I don’t know how that’s possible.

I understand that people who are put on the spot with a camera in front of their face are going to stammer and search for words. After seeing thousands of these kinds of videos, I’m convinced that people generally do not do well when confronted with on-the-spot interviews. . . . Read more!

Over on Reddit, I stumbled upon this post in the Atheist subreddit:

Idolize Bill Gates, Not Steve Jobs: At the end of his life, Steve Jobs obsessed over his legacy: Apple. Bill Gates stepped away from Microsoft in 2006 and has devoted his genius to solving the world’s biggest problems, despite the fact that solving those problems doesn’t create profit or fame.

I quickly pointed out that it was laughably ironic that this was posted in an atheist forum as it oozes religiosity.

Well, no, actually. This has everything to do with being in the Atheism subreddit because it is religious nonsense. Let me rewrite that for you:

Idolize Bill Gates, Not Steve Jobs: At the end of his life he did not repent his sins and he obsessed over his legacy: Apple. Bill Gates stepped away from sin and is living a life of good works, despite his prior sin.

There are no economic or philosophical arguments here. We are just told whom to admire (idolize) and whom not to admire (idolize) based on a moral judgment, when none is warranted. How many people benefited from the success of Steve Jobs? How many people’s lives are better off because of that success? How many more people have access to free or near free limitless information because of the competitive nature between Apple and Microsoft?

These questions aren’t asked. Don’t admire Steve Jobs because he didn’t rebuke sin on his deathbed. Admire Bill Gates because he has rebuked sin and is now doing good works.

Religiosity is a very hard thing to let go of, apparently.

Edit: It’s not only astounding that this was posted in an Atheist forum without comment on its religious nature, it’s fantastic that my comment is getting down-voted for pointed it out.

I made a few more running comments, but most were down-voted rather quickly.

This is something that has been on my mind for quite a long time, now. That ardent ‘atheists’ recycle this kind of religiosity is amazing to me. The modern atheist movement has developed some of the most effectively devastating rhetorical tools arguing against the case for God that it’s sometimes embarrassing to watch people try to defend against them.

Yet, many are blind to this kind of religious thinking. More ironically, the same arguments are just as effective against it. And still they do not see.

Religiosity and biases are indeed powerful forces in our nature.

I’ve been thinking that I should probably start posting around these parts again on a semi-regular basis. The problem is, I always have a ton of things to write about, but it all seems so laborious when I get down to it.

So, I figured I’d start writing about what I’m reading. Maybe that will get the creative juices flowing. So, for a while, anyway, I’ll be posting about the books that’s I’m reading, as I read them. Fun, huh?

Currently in my hands is, Watching Baseball Smarter. A professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks.

Those who know me, know that I’m not much of a sports fan. I have no love for football or hockey. I’ve never been interested in soccer or basketball. But, I do have a history with Baseball, of a sort. Like most kids, I spent a few summers playing the sport in loosely affiliated city leagues. I don’t remember liking it that much. I never have been much of a “team player”, so that’s not too surprising.

I do remember owning a baseball glove well enough. I liked the ritual of oiling it up, shaping it with a baseball and sleeping with it under my pillow. I always liked playing catch with the neighborhood kids, and older family members, if I was lucky. But, for all that, I never followed the sport, apart from watching a few games when the Cardinals are in the World Series.

Which, to be honest, is partly why I picked up this book. If you’ve ever been in an office environment during a home team’s post season play-offs, you know you can look forward to hearing about it, ad nauseum, until the end of the season. Which is what happened. But, I would find myself drawn to these conversations, in spite of my lack of knowledge about the overall game.

The conversations I would get sucked into were all about statistics and strategy based on all sorts of known and unknown variables. How pitching worked. What the probability of hitting a fast ball or a curve ball were based on how many strikes or outs there were, etc…

I find this kind of stuff fascinating. I’ve come to realize that baseball is a game played for and by individuals as much as it is played for or by a team. Individual strategy counts every bit as other factors. When I read the quote by Red Barber that said, “Baseball is dull only to dull minds”, I knew I found a sport I could follow.

So, in anticipation for the beginning of next year’s season, I’m reading as much about the sport as I’m able. And, since I live in St. Louis, I may as well align my tribal allegiances with the Cardinal Nation.

Go Cards!

The rich on Wall Street are demanding more bailouts:

The Demands Working Group of Occupy Wall Street unanimously endorsed and is circulating for discussion the following demand, which will be submitted to the General Assembly of OWS:

Jobs for ALL – A Massive Public Works and Public Service Program

We demand a massive public works and public service program with direct government employment at prevailing (union) wages, paid for by taxing the rich and corporations, by immediately ending all of America’s wars, and by ending all aid to authoritarian regimes to create 25 million new jobs to:

-Expand education: cut class sizes and provide free university for all;
-Expand healthcare and provide free healthcare for all (single payer system);
-Build housing, guarantee decent housing for all;
-Expand mass transit, provided for free;
the infrastructure—bridges, flood control, roads;
-Research and implement clean energy alternatives; and
-Clean up the environment.

Wait, you didn’t think I was talking about corporate bailouts, did you?

No, I’m talking about the rich people who make up the Working Group of Occupy Wall Street.

There is a very inconvenient and awkward question that is not being answered by the OWS crowd, as it pertains to wealth. Even making the assumption that the majority of those protesting are lower-middle class (a very liberal assumption, by anecdotal evidence), that would still mean that they are richer than 80 to 90 percent of the world’s population.

In fact, the poorest 5 percent of the United States is still richer than 68 percent of the world’s population. When compared to the poorest in India, China, or Afghanistan, the inequality is breathtakingly staggering. That college kid who is 60 grand in debt may as well be Bill Gates to a girl born in parts of rural China or Afghanistan.

Whenever this is brought up, you will inevitably hear this as a riposte:

“The problem is that attitude can be very easily used as an excuse for dismissing the complaints of literally anyone who is not the most oppressed, marginalised, and miserable people in the world.”

In other words, you cannot ignore what is bad here because things are worse elsewhere.

Well, that statement may well have merit, were it argued in another context. In this context, it is meaningless. Here’s why.

The above “demands” have everything to do with trying to bring the classes to a parity rather than fixing the economy. We are constantly barraged with the 99 percent vs. the 1 percent rhetoric. This, in itself is a lie. At worst, the people protesting on Wall Street are the 32 percent. More likely, they are the 20 percent and up.

If there were one shred of intellectual honesty in this movement, the above demands would be much, much different. They would be calling for taxing everyone in America at a much higher rate and redistributing that money to the poor in China and India. As the holders of 20 percent of the world’s wealth, they surely can afford it. After all, there are millions upon millions of people living in soul-crushing, abject poverty at this very moment. A vast number of them can never hope to make more than $1 per day, if that.

Instead, we get demands for free education and free housing for all (well, for all the rich people living in the United States, anyway — everyone else can go get stuffed). This is nothing more than the rich seeking taxpayer money for bailouts through the use of force.

Sound familiar?

I’m not being flippant, here. When it comes to entitlements, tariffs, trade barriers, immigration or where I purchase my goods, I’ve not yet heard a convincing argument for why I should regard a middle-class or working poor American in any higher regard than the absolute poor of other countries.

When I’m told that I should buy American in order to save American jobs, I wonder why a South Korean’s job is of any less importance. When I’m told that I must pay my fair share to help the deserving and undeserving (relatively) poor of this country, I wonder why the absolute poor from other countries shouldn’t get that money first.

But this is what it’s come to, now.

Rich college-age kids asking for taxpayer funded bailouts in order to relieve them of a debt (paid by the taxpayers) that they voluntarily took on with full knowledge that they would have to pay it back. Not only that, the vast majority of them have the means to pay off said debt through hard word and dedication.

Now, tell me again why I should care that a rich kid got a liberal arts degree that didn’t pan out, when tens of millions are living in absolute poverty around the world. Tell me again why rich kids with liberal arts degrees aren’t sacrificing their income, well-being, and happiness to redistribute their wealth to those more in need.

It’s time that we stopped focusing on this murderous idea of “inequality” when we should be thinking instead of relative standards of living over time.

Maybe then we can focus on what’s wrong with our economy rather than just fight about which rich group of people get which bailouts.

[Cross-posted at The Lesson Applied.]

With my previous post, I waded full-on into our ongoing gender war, though that really wasn’t my intention.

After a good bit of discussion with friends and loved ones about the issue, I feel that I should ‘walk back’ some of my comments, clarify others, and expound on the issue as a whole.

My concerns are not with the original incident (man in the elevator) or Ms. Watson’s initial reaction. It’s with her reaction to people questioning her over the incident and then the piling on from P.Z. Myers and Phil Pliat. This I’ve well documented in my previous post.

As I’ve said before, her concerns were with her feeling sexually objectified (which I’ll address downstream), rather than feeling like she was in any danger of being assaulted. The whole specter of rape only came up after P.Z. Myers jumped into the debate; and as far as I can tell, Watson has done nothing to correct that misconception.

Now, allow me to ‘walk back’ or clarify a few points.

Starting from the beginning: That Watson felt uncomfortable is not in question, nor is it really part of the debate. I believe her when she said the incident made her feel uncomfortable. I have no earthly reason not to. However, we are dealing with so many layers of conjecture and speculation here that it’s nearly impossible not to project your own feelings, prejudices, and biases into the discussion. Because of this, I am doing the best I can to look at this without any preconceptions.

Regardless of what Phil Pliat says, the problem was not because a man was in an elevator with a woman late at night. The problem people have is with the solicitation. Had the man never said a word to her, or looked at her during the ride, not a word would have been spoken about this.

Which is interesting to me. A rational person would recognize that a man and a woman alone in an elevator together does not heighten the risk of sexual assault by any degree of certainty. In fact, if we are to extrapolate out for population, it can be assumed that this very scenario occurs hundreds of thousands (if not millions of times) per day around the world and we don’t see internet blogs blowing up about it.

So, at what point does it turn into a “potential sexual assault” in people’s minds?

Where is the line? Is it when he speaks to her? Is it because it’s at 4:00 a.m. instead of 4:00 p.m.? Is it when he says he “finds her interesting?” Or is it only after he utters the words, “would you like to come back to my room for coffee?”

This is a serious question. From where I stand, it seems to me that if the guy had sexual assault on his mind, then the act of solicitation posed no more of a threat than him just being there.

This is where I take extreme issue with people like P.Z. Myers and especially Phil Pliat. That they are blind to the above is a cognitive failure. Do sexual assaults happen on elevators? Yup, of course. But, how statistically prevalent are they? Under what conditions do they occur? How often are the two parties known to each other? What other factors come into play? That these questions are not being asked or addressed by skeptics is distressing to me.

Cannot men and women alike agree that when Phil Pliat jumps right to “potential sexual assault” just because a man and a woman are alone in an elevator demeans the whole conversation? Do people not understand that this goes right to the heart of irrational bigotry? I don’t care what Pliat’s motivations are, here. I care about what he said. If you are going to spend most of your professional career debunking things like astrology, religion, psuedo-science, and general quackery under the umbrella of skepticism, don’t be surprised when people call you on it when you fall for the very same cognitive biases that you attack on a regular basis.

This is why, under the conditions that Watson herself described, I see no reason to fall into the “Oh my God, she could have been raped!” line of thinking.

I also see no reason why one cannot state, in a perfectly civilized tone of voice, that though the fear of being raped on an elevator may be valid for some (given their past histories, experiences, etc.), it is an irrational fear for most people to hold onto.

Given that, I also see no reason why men (or anyone else for that matter) should feel obligated to change their behavior to accommodate those with irrational fears, regardless of the subject matter.

Of course, more empathy is needed from everyone. Never intentionally make someone else uncomfortable, if you can avoid it. To do otherwise is impolite and boorish. But there is no need to kowtow to irrationality as you go about your everyday business.

Onto the matter of the solicitation. This is a bit trickier to tackle, as there are several issues wrapped into one, here. I can easily understand why such a solicitation would creep many women out. However, I can just as easily understand why it would not. I’ve heard excellent arguments from women taking both sides.

To me, that means it’s all situational. Would I proposition a woman on an elevator at 4:00 a.m.? I honestly don’t know. Certainly not if all the right signals were not there. Certainly not out of the blue, like this gentleman apparently did. But what if she were looking at me suggestively? What if our chit-chat was sexually charged in some way? What if we just got done talking for three hours in a group and I felt there was a strong mutual attraction between us? What if, what if, what if.

So, all this talk of “never solicit a woman in an elevator at 4:00 a.m.” may be too ridged. I make this point because there have been dozens of follow-on posts instructing men on “how not to pick up women”, etc. This may very well be good advice to follow, but how do we allow for outliers?

The questions that aren’t being answered or addressed are:

• How many times has this tactic worked on women?
• Would we even hear about them if it did?
• If there is a significant population of women who do not mind being propositioned in such a way under the right circumstances, why should men not attempt such a proposition when they feel they have a chance?
• How many women proposition men in this fashion?
• How many men have said it’s creepy when women do this?

These nuances are exactly what inflames the “gender war” and sends people swirling into orbit with righteous indignation. You have people of both sexes claiming everything from “misogyny” to “potential sexual assault” to “creepy behavior.” Then again, you have people of both sexes insisting that absolutely nothing bad happened in that elevator. That this is a non-issue, to be forgotten and derided.

So, what are we as skeptics to do in this situation?

We need to ask difficult questions and rely on the facts. If something is irrational, we need to point it out. We ask people to show their work. We do not accept emotional overreaction or unfounded conjecture to cloud our judgment. This is an important point as the “skeptic movement” has taken great pains to be a “big tent” organization, inviting people in from differing political ideologies, social strata, genders, race, etc. That there will be conflict when such diversity is present is a given. Feminists and men’s rights activists cannot expect to be immune to people questioning their beliefs any less than skeptics question religiosity, psuedo-science, or quackery. In a skeptical organization, everything is up for debate. Feelings and beliefs do not matter as much as reason and facts.

As stated above, I do not hold any truck with the “potential sexual assault” line of thinking, but I do have sympathies for Watson’s feelings of being objectified, to a point. From what I can tell, this is what Watson’s main complaint is. If so, it’s rather more difficult to pin down any solution.

We can take Watson’s word for it that she gets a great deal of wanted and unwanted attention from men. Obviously, her gender and her looks have a great deal to do with this. But so does the field of interest she’s in and the way she comports herself therein.

If I may clarify, Watson can’t help being a woman anymore than I can help being a man. She can’t help being an attractive woman, anymore than I can help being an average looking man. That people are attracted or disinterested in us for those reasons and those reasons alone are beyond our control. Just because she is a woman means she will attract a good deal of men. Just because she is blessed with good looks means that she will attract even more men (and women). This is basic biology and to deny it would deny the very precepts of biological and social sciences.

So, that’s not the issue, here. The issue is how men (and women) approach her, under what circumstances, under what motivations, etc. I can very well accept the fact that because of her gender and looks, she receives more unwanted attention from men (and women) than an average-looking man would. If this is bothersome, I honestly do not know how to fix it. It depends on the circumstances.

For example, after I wrote my first blog post, my girlfriend and several very close female friends stated to me that I just didn’t understand what it was like to be leered at, ogled over, and approached in an unwanted sexual manner on a near-daily basis for no other reason than being a woman.

They were absolutely correct. I do not know. I have no idea what it’s like, nor do I have any frame of reference on how that would make me feel.

I will not, however, concede the point that this is due to “male privilege.” Just as I would not claim “female privilege” for women who do not understand or have any frame of reference for how men feel in certain situations. This is a conversation-stopper and serves no purpose other than to position yourself as morally superior.

I can only think of one conceivable solution to the problem, and I am open to suggestions.

Anyone at the receiving end of or a witness to such obviously bad social behavior (man or woman), should not hesitate to shame the person/people engaging in such behavior. Do not stand by and allow yourself or other people to be bullied. People (men and women) get away with vile social behavior because people around them allow them to get away with it. I fully understand that a woman might be too intimidated to say something, but this isn’t because of gender. Plenty of men are also afraid to speak up as well. What this says about humanity, I’m not sure. I do recognize that these are social pressures, however. That we turn a blind eye to vile social behavior says more about us as people or a culture than it does about us as men or women.

Watson’s field of interest and how she comports herself are much more under her sphere of control, however. Though many women are beginning to join such organizations, it is still recognizably male dominated. That many more women are joining, however, speaks volumes for the adaptability of such organizations.

How she comports herself is something completely under her control, and it’s a point that is most likely to be misunderstood and attacked. It is not unreasonable to state that if you play the “sexy skeptic” role to your advantage by way of pin-up calendars, sexual innuendo, sexually charged conversations, sexually charged blog posts, semi-naked pictures, whatever, you cannot expect some men (or women) not to approach you as a sexual object. As I stated before, it is not liberating for a woman to talk about sex, but objectifying for a man to talk to a woman about sex. That’s an obvious double standard.

It’s also not unreasonable to point out that double standard when you make the claim of objectification, whether right or wrong.

This is where I’ll be attacked for saying “she was asking for it.” Of course, this is not the case. I’ve been very clear. Every man and woman has the right to express their sexuality without fear of harm or the need to apologize for it. What every man and woman does not have the right of, however, is to not accept the consequences for their actions. If that means that more people view you as a sexual object, then that’s what that means. It does not give a pass to anyone to engage in bad social behavior (leering, ogling, foul language, a repeated unwanted sexual advance) without censure. It does not give anyone the right to initiate force against you (physical contact, herding, etc.) without the the law becoming involved.

A single, unwanted sexual advance does not necessarily equate to “objectification.” I think an argument can be made in this case, taking the entire evening into context, that it could be, but I’m still not sure why anyone should feel overly offended by it. Certainly not to the point of Watson’s actions after the event.

I’m going to deviate a bit from the skeptic point of view, here, and wade into some gender issues that I’ve been thinking about.

A good friend of mine brought this point up when commenting on my original blog post:

Phil Pliat = pre-crime? Your reworking is brilliant by the way, because it underscores the essential challenge of equalization of society. We all approve of setting a disenfranchised group apart in order to provide some uplift and legislation to assure them that the dice cast of all lives are not twisted and turned unfairly by the powers that be. However, who really is willing to draw the line and say – ok, we’re done here. Even steven. I have yet to see that happen. No one who achieves a victory just goes home. I don’t believe it is a slippery slope – I believe it is more like gambling. When you are winning, you don’t leave the table.

First, let me say, I am not a men’s rights advocate anymore than I am a women’s rights advocate. As I have clearly laid out on this blog, I stand up for human rights. Nobody should get special treatment under the law, regardless of their gender, race or, creed.

Women certainly have been cruelly oppressed throughout history. It is my belief that the strides in equality that have been made have much more to do with democratization, industrialization, free trade, and our over-all shunning of religious dogma rather than the feminist movement. Indeed, it is only because of the liberalization of our society that feminism even exists. I believe this is empirically demonstrated by comparing western, First World societies to Third World dictatorships and fiefdoms (which was Dawkins’s whole point when he spoke up).

As we come ever closer to a parity between the sexes, the differences become more stark, and more trivial.

It is not unreasonable to point out that there have been some severe societal over-reactions in our attempt to achieve parity.

It is also not unreasonable to point out that men have serious negative issues relating to their gender, just as women do.

Men are overwhelmingly the victim of more assaults and murders than women, for example. Men are more likely to commit suicide than women. They are more likely to be diagnosed with depression or schizophrenia. Though there are more men on top of the IQ spectrum, there are more on the bottom end, as well.

Diseases like colon or prostate cancer are just as deadly and more prevalent than breast cancer, but they do not receive anywhere near the amount of attention.

Men are more likely to die on the job than women.

Men have shorter life-spans.

Men are more likely to suffer from PTSD.

If a man does not sign up for the draft when turns 18, for whatever reason, he is automatically shut out of all opportunities that would include federal or state funds (college) or any government job. Can women say the same? If this were really an issue for women (as I’ve been told it is) it would have certainly been fixed by now, as women make up at least 50% of the voting block.

Men will overwhelmingly lose custody of their children in a divorce case. Divorce laws around the country are so unfairly biased towards women that it borders on a civil rights issue.

I accept that you are leered at, ogled over, and sexually propositioned more than you care to be. Will women accept that I am also stared at, pointed at, or angrily talked about in a passive-aggressive way by women who see me holding my daughter’s hand out in public?

As a woman, can you imagine any scenario where you would be under immediate suspicion were you walking by yourself in a park where children were present? What if you were out taking pictures?

Do women understand that because of our socialization, men are expected to approach women when they are interested in them, thereby putting themselves in a position to accept all the rejection? Do women face the same social pressures? Must they face the same amount of rejection throughout their lives?

This is a very serious question, because I believe it goes right to the very core of this whole issue. Rebecca Watson is just a much a victim of how women act in the dating world as of how men treat her. If you can imagine a society where both genders take an equal amount of risk when it comes to rejection, I think you would find the incidences of men approaching you would drop somewhat.

Men and women each have their own problems because of their gender. This is where so many people fail when entering this discussion. Some men are every bit as dismissive of those problems as women are. However, feminists cannot expect to be taken seriously by many men until they are willing to at least concede that these problems exist.

Feminists also cannot expect to be taken seriously until they concede that many of the problems listed above (on both sides) are, for the most part, First World problems.

Finally, a point about Richard Dawkins’s statement in all of this. I’ve read hundreds of comments lambasting him for being an “asshole” and “insensitive” for making those comments.

First, not very many people in the atheist movement were very concerned when Dawkins was being an “asshole” or “insensitive” about religion. I don’t know how you can deride him when he attacks something else that he finds equally as irrational in the same manner.

Second, Dawkins repeatedly asked people to explain to him why what he said was wrong. He asked for clarification and intimated that if he were wrong, he would change his statement. Can the same be said about Phil Pliat, P.Z. Myers, or Rebecca Watson?

I wouldn’t think so, certainly not from her “rich, white, male, heterosexual” statements. How does this add to the discussion? How can Watson expect to be taken seriously from this point forward?

Lastly, I’ve run up against the “privileged white male” statement a number of times over the past few days. Please understand that when confronted with such inanity, I will be more than happy to repay you in the same coin by referring to you as a “spoiled brat.”

And, until further discussion arises, I guess that’s all I have to say about that.

As much as I can get sucked into them myself, I rarely find debates that are played out in Facebook comment threads to be truly productive. The brevity of the format and the pressure to respond quickly too often devolves into a retaliatory one-upsmanship that focuses on narrow points of disagreement at the expense of fuller nuanced context.

On Monday, a post by Sarah Skwire responded to the just-announced verdict in the horrifying Steubenville rape trial, along with some baffling CNN coverage that focuses on the tragedy of the perpetrators’ ruined lives rather than the victim’s. Skwire’s post was widely reposted by many of my libertarian Facebook friends, including economist Steve Horwitz — and it’s in his comment threads (and elsewhere) that my best pal since high school and sporadic co-Shrubblogger Justin M. Stoddard spent much of the day debating with other commenters (not really with the professors themselves, I should add, at least not much) whether or not we live in a “rape culture.”

One description of the INTP personality type points out that “An INTP arguing a point may very well be trying to convince himself as much as his opposition.” Whatever problems personality typing may have, I have no doubt that this statement accurately describes me, and I suspect the same is true for Justin. I know him well enough to know that he’s absolutely sincere in his desire to seek truth through conversation, ready to be convinced by others even as he tries to convince both them and himself. Debate is a proving ground for ideas, not a place to make a final, unalterable declaration then leave.

Skwire and Horwitz are both on the short list of people whose work I most admire in the libertarian movement, and I’ve long been on the record as applauding the value of their Bleeding Heart Libertarians project, although not of every idea falling under its umbrella. I also know that Justin has long been a fan of Horwitz’s work, at least, so it seems odd to see such a contentious debate play out — especially regarding a point that seems entirely unobjectionable to me. I can understand Justin’s desire to achieve clarity on the details of an argument by challenging others, but at the same time I can sympathize with the frustration that the original posters may feel as their calls to attention for an important problem mostly only inspire an interminable discussion about what we should, or shouldn’t, call that problem.

The Steubenville rape case is cut-and-dried — football players repeatedly raped and violated a drunk and incapacitated girl at a series of parties, taking photos and videos and bragging about the conquest to friends. Evidence of guilt abounds. And so, as it happens, does at least localized evidence of a bona fide rape culture. From Yahoo! Sports:

Had nothing been said, shot or sent, this would’ve been just another night, like sadly so many anywhere in America with a confused girl wondering what really happened.

Instead, this group of teens, so full of an overabundance of self worth, filmed and documented the crime, perhaps never assuming anyone would see it for what it was.

They basically told the victim about it. Their friends essentially took real-time crime-scene photos for the cops. Of course, this was only possible because Mays and Richmond were more than comfortable committing the crime right in front of witnesses in the first place.

Mays, in particular, essentially confessed to the crime via hundreds of text messages over the next few days – ranging from profound bravado in the immediate aftermath, to matter-of-fact statements the next day, to a panicked attempted cover-up and witness control as reality began to set in.

Their coercive conquest was widely accepted as normal within their peer group — that the girl deserved to be assaulted because she was drunk and unable to resist. Nobody came to the aid of the victim at the time of the repeated assaults, and nobody reported the incidents to authorities until she and her parents realized what had happened days after the fact. There’s also no shortage of online public opinion placing blame squarely on the victim.

Why the aversion, then, to calling this a rape culture — so much so that outrage over violent sexual assault gets sidetracked into an endless debate about semantics? I really don’t get it. Is it because the term originated with the left, and may therefore be freighted with Marxist connotations? I can see debating the connotations, especially if the notion of collective guilt for individual crimes rears its ugly head, but the term itself seems accurately descriptive to me. People in our culture often tend to overlook, rationalize, and justify rape and other forms of sexual assault. Not everybody does this, and not all the time, but often enough that it can be considered a pervasive aspect of our culture.

Justin and most of the other commenters agreed on what seemed to me to be the important points: rape is a terrible crime; other crimes that violate individual rights are also terrible; rape happens to both men and women; prison is a literal rape culture in and of itself; libertarians should be on board with efforts to prevent rape; there’s nothing wrong with working to prevent rape with multiple simultaneous strategies, approaching the problem from different angles. So, again, as far as I can tell, the debate isn’t whether this set of violent problems exists, but rather, whether we should call it a “rape culture.”

Justin protests in one comment that the term is meaningless because “If we live in a rape culture, then we live in a murder culture, a war culture, a theft culture, a gun culture, a tax culture, a robbery culture, a jay walking culture, ad infinitum.” Yeah, we do. I also object to none of those terms. Cultures carry many attributes, and there’s nothing wrong with focusing on one of them even as the others remain existent.

I’ve never seen anything in real life as horrifying as the Steubenville case, but I have seen these cultural attitudes at play firsthand, manifesting in surprising places. So, in the spirit of Skwire’s call for libertarians to “Take responsibility for calling out, and calling attention to, the kind of rape culture that strikes at the heart of … libertarian principles,” I’ll share something that I witnessed a few weeks ago.

At a party this past New Year’s Eve, I had the chance to see several good friends I hadn’t seen in more than a year, and, as is my wont at such gatherings, I spent most of the night playing Rock Band guitar with them. One of these friends, having imbibed to excess, eventually passed out on the living room floor not far from the game. After a while, in the middle of a song, I heard some commotion happening just out of view, and momentarily turned to see what was happening. A naked man was straddling my unconscious friend’s face, inserting his scrotum into my unconscious friend’s open mouth, his erect penis bobbing above my unconscious friend’s nose. A couple of dozen other people were in the room, laughing, smiling, and taking photos. “I’m really sorry, whoever you are,” the perpetrator said, “but I have to do this.”

My initial instinct was to stop playing, stand up, and kick the perpetrator in the face. I did none of these things. I’d like to think that shock is the reason I didn’t intervene, but, truth be told, cowardice in the face of group dynamics certainly played a role. I told one of our mutual friends that if I were the victim, I’d press sexual assault charges. “Really?” Yeah, I really would, I reiterated. My friend responded, “He was passed out drunk at a party — them’s the rules.” Them’s the rules. Who wrote that rulebook?

“So, wait, do you think he should go to jail for doing that?” Yeah, probably. “Huh.” My friend made a few inquiries and told me that yet another mutual friend had given permission for the assault, so didn’t that make it OK? But that’s not how consent works. You can’t give permission for somebody else to sexually assault your unconscious friend. Even the strongest power of attorney wouldn’t cover that.

The relevant statute for this particular offense classifies it as a class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine: “A person commits the crime of sexual misconduct in the first degree if such person purposely subjects another person to sexual contact without that person’s consent.” For the record, I think the perpetrator would deserve every bit of that sentence, anybody aiding or abetting should be regarded as a criminal accessory, anybody cheering it on should be regarded as a reprehensible human being, and anybody else who observed this happening but did nothing to stop it should be regarded as a coward at best. Of course, I include myself here. I’ll regret for the rest of my life that I did nothing to intervene when I had a chance.

I’d heard about this kind of hazing, the stereotypical juvenile frat-boy mentality that any gay (or faux-gay, as the case may be) sexual contact is simultaneously icky and hilarious, especially if perpetrated on a passed-out partygoer. And it’s fun for the whole group! After all, them’s the rules. I never thought I’d see anything like it myself, though, outside of the movies. Maybe that’s because I come from an at least somewhat sheltered sample population — I’ve never been drunk, and have spent only occasional, intermittent time around drunk people. I’ll never be in the same position as this particular victim. I won’t ever be passed out at a party unless I somehow spontaneously develop narcolepsy. But if any of my friends do pass out, that’s when I should be most vigilant about protecting them, if I’m any kind of actual friend at all.

The victim was roused later in the evening and gleefully informed, “Dude, you got teabagged by a gay guy!” He kind of half-smiled and shrugged it off, then everybody went home. Not all of the many people in the room that night were libertarians, but many of them were — even hardcore libertarians, for whom individual rights and self-ownership are sacrosanct principles. I’d like to think they would have recognized the assault for what it was if it had been a straight guy sticking his genitals into an unconscious girl’s mouth. And yet, this first-degree sexual assault was laughed off as a hilarious prank because the victim was drunk and unconscious, and his perpetrator was also a guy.

This wasn’t anywhere near as horrifying as the Steubenville case, and I don’t mean to marginalize one by talking about the other. The dehumanizing attitude toward completely defenseless victims, though, strikes me as similar in each case: Somebody who indulges to excess, to the point of incapacitation, deserves to be violated. Them’s the rules.

If I ever needed any firsthand evidence that “rape culture” is a useful term that actually has widespread, if not universal, applicability to the society we live in, I got it that night. If this kind of victimization happens among those who profess to care most about individual liberty, it can happen anywhere.

If you’d like a quick guide to to the ballot measures you may face at the polls on Tuesday (if you didn’t vote early, that is), here’s a piece that I put together for the national Libertarian Party website a few days ago.

In most cases, the opinions and vote recommendations are my own, but in a few instances — Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, and Ohio — the official recommendations of each state branch of the LP trumped some of my own calls.

Although I’ve attended Mark Skousen’s annual FreedomFest convention in Las Vegas several times as a participant, in summer 2011 I had the honor of presenting a session for the first time, alongside a roster of notable libertarian names — a great many of which I’ve admired and, in some cases, known for years. Titled “Libertarian Book Clubs: How To Promote The Literature of Liberty,” my 40 minutes or so of remarks and Q&A no longer appear to be available for purchase online, so I’ve uploaded the audio of my presentation. I’ve also included at the bottom of this post the text that I prepared to form the basis of the first several minutes of my presentation, although it likely differs in detail from what I actually said.

This is a topic that’s particularly close to my heart. During the four years I spent as editor for the Show-Me Institute in Missouri, I ran a free-market book club primarily targeted toward college-age youth in the St. Louis area. Although attendance had its highs and lows over the years, at its heights I believe it was easily the institute’s single best program.

I’ve tried to help spread the concept, through conversations, interviews, and an article in SPN News — but, as far as I know, similar clubs haven’t taken off elsewhere. That’s a shame, because if we want to spread the ideas of liberty in a way that brings lasting political and cultural change, it’s important to get as many people as possible to grapple with those ideas in all their richness and complexity.

Before getting to my prepared FreedomFest remarks below, here’s the blurb that I wrote to preface the book club’s web page:

The Show-Me Institute sponsors a biweekly book club primarily directed to Saint Louis–area college students (and college-age non-students) who are interested in exploring a broad spectrum of the ideas of liberty. The institute and its scholars do not necessarily agree with or advocate the ideas contained in the books selected for use in the club; rather, the institute hopes to encourage critical analysis, debate, and discussion of a wide range of thought about freedom and free-market economic perspectives.

And here’s the full list of books that we covered, most of which were deleted from the Show-Me Institute website during the months after I left. Everything from early 2006 up through the Leon Kass book in 2007 was chosen by the Show-Me Institute’s first editor, Timothy Lee, and everything from the Johan Norberg book in 2007 through the James Tooley book in 2011 was selected by me.

2006:

• John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
• Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom
• David Friedman, Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do With Law and Why It Matters
• P.J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government
• Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
• Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
• Frederic Bastiat, That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen: The Unintended Consequences of Government Spending
• F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty
• David Schoenbrod, Saving Our Environment From Washington: How Congress Grabs Power, Shirks Responsibility, and Shortchanges the People
• Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia

2007:

• Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness
• Larry Lessig, Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity
• Richard Epstein, How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution
• W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, Myths of Rich and Poor: Why We're Better Off Than We Think
• Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress
• David Boaz, Libertarianism: A Primer
• Ronald Bailey, Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution
• Leon Kass, Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics
• Johan Norberg, In Defense of Global Capitalism
• F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

2008:

• Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine
• Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy
• Bertrand de Jouvenel, The Ethics of Redistribution
• Randy Barnett, Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty
• Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative
• James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy
• Carl Watner, ed., I Must Speak Out: The Best of The Voluntaryist, 1982–1999
• Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government
• Tibor R. Machan, ed., Individual Rights Reconsidered: Are the Truths of the U.S. Declaration of Independence Lasting?
• Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, The State: A Study of Social Power vs. State Power and of The State in Colonial America
• Thomas Sowell, Economic Facts and Fallacies
• Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority
• David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism
• Leonard E. Read, Anything That's Peaceful
• Lysander Spooner, The Lysander Spooner Reader

2009:

• Milton Friedman, Money Mischief: Episodes in Monetary History
• Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition
• Mark Skousen, Vienna & Chicago, Friends or Foes? A Tale of Two Schools of Free-Market Economics
• David T. Beito, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890–1967
• Frederic Bastiat, Selected Essays on Political Economy
• Thomas J. DiLorenzo, How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, From the Pilgrims to the Present
• Burton W. Folsom, The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America
• Jerome Tuccille, It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand
• Brian Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement
• Tom G. Palmer, Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice
• Auberon Herbert, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, and Other Essays
• Robert A. Levy and William Mellor, The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom
• Jeff Benedict, Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage
• Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson
• Roy A. Childs, Jr., Liberty Against Power

2010:

• Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement
• Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
• Peter McWilliams, Ain’t Nobody’s Business if You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Society
• Randal O’Toole, The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future
• Robert Nisbet, Twilight of Authority
• Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2
• David Friedman, Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life
• Gordon Tullock, Arthur Seldon, and Gordon L. Brady, Government Failure: A Primer in Public Choice
• Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
• Thomas E. Woods Jr., Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse
• Arnold Kling, Unchecked and Unbalanced: How the Discrepancy Between Knowledge and Power Caused the Financial Crisis and Threatens Democracy
• Johan Norberg, Financial Fiasco: How America’s Infatuation with Home Ownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis
• F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism

2011:

• Marc Guttman, ed., Why Liberty: Personal Journeys Toward Peace and Freedom
• Ludwig von Mises, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality
• Jim Peron, ed., The Liberal Tide: From Tyranny to Liberty
• Timothy Sandefur, The Right to Earn a Living: Economic Freedom and the Law
• Mark Skousen, The Making of Modern Economics: The Lives and Ideas of the Great Thinkers
• James Tooley, The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World’s Poorest People Are Educating Themselves

With no further ado, here are my prepared remarks for the 2011 FreedomFest — and here, again, is the audio, if you care to follow along:

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Libertarian Book Clubs Foster Lasting Change
By Eric D. Dixon

The free-market movement is filled today with organizations analyzing public policy and developing prescriptions for positive change. This is an important job. Public choice theory convincingly shows that politicians face a strong set of perverse incentives that will lead them to spend more, tax more, cater to special interests, and shore up their own power base, all to the detriment of private citizens, civil society, and the rule of law. Somebody has to keep an eye on these guys, so it’s important to apply the principles of freedom and sound economics to the public policy sphere. Political power is always in flux, however, and today’s policy success can be easily rescinded or undermined tomorrow. One of the ways to foster lasting change is to spread knowledge about the fundamental arguments for freedom — complex ideas that aren’t easily captured in op-eds or studies.

Other Groups
I should point out that some national groups already make the literature of liberty at least one of their focuses. For instance, the Foundation for Economic Education and the Institute for Humane Studies hold summer seminars, and the Cato Institute sponsors Cato University every year — formerly multiple times per year — all including substantial reading lists of libertarian philosophy, history, and free-market economics. Students for Liberty, the Mises Institute, and Liberty Fund sponsor similar seminars. I certainly encourage people to participate in such programs when you can. But there’s no reason we can’t take this model to local communities on a widespread basis.

St. Louis
In 2007, I started leading a free-market book club in the St. Louis area, which turned out to be one of the most fulfilling experiences of my career to date. The club had been started the previous year by my predecessor Timothy Lee, who had worked at the Cato Institute as staff writer, and has since returned to work with them as an adjunct scholar. He once shared with me his motivation for starting the club, saying: “State-based think tanks spend the bulk of their time talking about the nuts and bolts of public policy as it relates to current legislative debates. That’s important, but I also saw a need for a program that would help young people understand the ideas of liberty from a more philosophical perspective.”

Authors
He was right. There’s a vast, rich library of freedom-oriented works that most people don’t even begin to experience: from Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises to Milton and David Friedman; from modern experts like Robert Higgs and Thomas Sowell to classic intellects like John Stuart Mill and Frédéric Bastiat; from groundbreaking theory by James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock to practical history by David Beito and Jane Jacobs; from careful contemporary analysis and essays by David Boaz and Tom Palmer to books that helped launch a movement by Isabel Paterson and Rose Wilder Lane. During its five years of existence, the club I led in St. Louis covered 69 different books, and the list of books I wanted to cover in the future only grew over time. Such clubs could include a dozen different books every year for decades without running out of worthy material.

Origin
Tim Lee modeled our particular club on the seminars he was familiar during his time at the Cato Institute, and I continued to use my own experience as a Cato intern as an inspiration for the type of material we covered and for how I led our biweekly discussions. Getting a club like this off the ground can be slow going. Tim spoke to a few St. Louis–area campus groups in 2006 to attract the initial group of students that participated, and for the first couple of years, we were lucky to get five or six participants at each meeting. Although it started out small, it began to snowball through our biggest source of growth — an open-invitation policy. The book club tended to grow as a social network, as I encouraged existing members bring their friends to join in the engaging conversation. Before long I was regularly hosting groups of 12 or 13. By mid-2010, the groups usually numbered in the 20s with a record attendance of 28 at a single meeting. Attendees often find themselves caught up in issues that they have previously never considered, or reading books about topics that they have never before found interesting or relevant. In this way, the book club provides a place for active, ongoing inquiry and discussion, targeting an age group that’s hungry for new ideas. Participants ultimately not only absorb the ideas of freedom, they also pass them on to friends who aren’t club members — and these young activists will likely retain a lifelong passion for liberty.

Institutional Sponsorship
One primary reason for our club’s success has been its institutional sponsorship. Working for a state-based think tank that was willing to provide free books and food for participants allowed the club to attract students who may, on balance, have otherwise decided not to come. These costs were relatively easy to manage at first, when only five or six people attended. But after a couple of years, I found we were spending hundreds of dollars each month on books and food. There are ways to mitigate such expenses. Although I used to order custom Chipotle burritos for each participant, I eventually moved toward much less expensive pizza, which turned out to be just as crowd-pleasing.

Getting Books
I also found ways to economize when obtaining books. I’ve had great success getting good deals when ordering a couple of dozen books at a time, working with Bob Garber at the Cato Institute, Willard Sitz at the Mises Institute, and Jim Peron, formerly of Laissez Faire Books and now with Fr33Minds, a new libertarian bookseller. The Foundation for Economic Education has excellent deals on many of its books, like Bastiat’s Selected Essays on Political Economy, and sometimes Amazon turns out to be least expensive source. We’ve cobbled together supplies of out-of-print books like The Lysander Spooner Reader and the Roy Childs collection Liberty Against Power through Amazon’s used bookseller network. We’ve occasionally arranged to purchase books directly from authors. The organizer of FreedomFest, Mark Skousen, was kind enough to provide inexpensive copies of two of his books, The Making of Modern Economics and Vienna & Chicago, Friends or Foes? A Tale of Two Schools of Free-Market Economics. Brian Doherty arranged to have Reason send us a box full of copies of his fantastic history of modern libertarianism, Radicals for Capitalism. Students for Liberty has been doing fantastic work in making free copies of libertarian books available to student groups. SFL provided us with 20 copies of Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson, and they’re getting ready to distribute thousands of free copies this fall of a new essay collection titled The Morality of Capitalism — which features essays by many leading libertarian scholars and economists, including four participants in this year’s FreedomFest conference: Tom Palmer, David Boaz, John Mackey, and David Kelley.

Difficulty Level
Getting a group of people to read and discuss entire books can be a balancing act. Sometimes people don’t do all of the reading — or any of it. I tried to include both basic primers of free-market thought and more advanced treatises, and each category can alienate some participants. Students who have been in the movement for a few years may be disinclined to revisit basic works, and newcomers can find more thorough scholarly texts to be intimidating. For this reason, although I consistently encouraged everybody to do the reading, I didn’t bar anybody from participating in the conversation. Old hands at libertarian thought will usually have interesting insights to share whether or not they’ve done the current reading, and even newcomers can grasp advanced ideas if they have access to people who are willing to explain and discuss them patiently. Our discussions have tended to be wide-ranging sometimes straying into lines of conversation that are only tangentially related to the reading, but thereby harnessing the natural curiosity of participants — and always with a focus on the importance of freedom.

Visioncon
Although the book club was developed as a way of reaching out into the community, the club’s members came up with the idea of doing outreach of their own. We were fortunate to attract a wide range of bright, energetic young students who helped demonstrate one of the advantages of youth: the ability to think of innovative new ways to spread the ideas of liberty. In early 2010 and again early this year, a dozen or so members of the book club sponsored and manned a table at Visioncon, a science fiction and fantasy convention in southern Missouri. Several club members, being fans of science fiction and other related genres, hit upon the idea of having the book club sponsor a table at Visioncon, an annual convention held in Springfield. Club participants organized the logistics and paid for the table fee themselves. They also asked for donations of books about liberty that book club members and others were no longer likely to use, and ended up with a large selection. They wanted to share the ideas these books contain, so that instead of simply taking up space on somebody’s shelf, they would now have the chance to enlighten somebody else.

From Tom Palmer’s Realizing Freedom and Randy Barnett’s Restoring the Lost Constitution to Rose Wilder Lane’s The Discovery of Freedom and Robert Levy’s The Dirty Dozen, the table was stacked with books we’d previously read. Book club members took turns manning the table for the convention’s duration, engaging curious attendees in many conversations about the principles of freedom. About 90 percent of the books found new homes that weekend, spreading the ideas of liberty to people who might not have encountered them otherwise.

Replication
So, if I’ve persuaded you that book clubs are a valuable method for spreading the ideas of liberty, how can you get started in your home town? Students for Liberty and Young Americans for Liberty doing fantastic work in starting up campus groups, but each group is different, and reaching out to a local chapter may help them try a method for spreading liberty that they hadn’t previously considered — particularly if you’re able to provide them with a modicum of financial or logistical support.

SPN
There’s another route that’s worth trying. The State Policy Network is an organization devoted to fostering state-based free-market think tanks, helping them share policy ideas and best practices. Being employed as the editor for an SPN member organization for the past four years is what allowed me to work within a sponsored setting, appealing to both the brain and the stomach of intellectually curious youth without having to worry about the costs myself. SPN currently has 58 member think tanks, at least one in every state. Visit spn.org to find out whether you live near one of them, and if you do, get to know them. Become a donor. Attend their events. If they see that you take their work seriously, they may be receptive to the idea of spreading the ideas of freedom by sponsoring a book club. Whether they are able to front all the logistical costs or subsidize them only partially, I think most free-market think tanks would be anxious to try this method of reaching out to the youth in their community if only presented with a blueprint for how to make it work. It may be worth mentioning that this is also a great way for state-based think tanks to find promising young talent. During the past four years, we hired four people as research assistants from out of the ranks of our book club, based on my recommendation.

Conclusion
Libertarian book clubs are a good way to spread great ideas that aren’t explicitly tied to any particular ongoing policy debate, but that help shape people’s fundamental notions about whether and why freedom is valuable in the first place. Ultimately, those cultural assumptions determine whether practical policy success will last over time. Spreading the ideas of liberty in a thorough way is a crucial step in promoting a free society.

Thanks to Whedonesque, I now know that The Hulk shares my esteem for The Avengers director Joss Whedon’s signature televisual creation: “THE HIGHS ONE EXPERIENCES OVER SEVEN SEASONS OF THAT SHOW ARE ESSENTIALLY UNPARALLELED. SO MUCH SO THAT HULK HAS TO SAY THAT BUFFY IS QUITE POSSIBLY, NAY, QUITE PROBABLY ONE OF THE BEST TELEVISION SHOWS OF ALL TIME.”

Even better, The Hulk directs readers to a piece by David Simon discussing the Trayvon Martin case, the news media, the war on drugs, and more. But the important takeaway? The creator of “The Wire” also thinks that “Buffy” is the best TV show:

To be clear: I don’t think the Wire has all the right answers. It may not even ask the right questions. It is certainly not some flawless piece of narrative, and as many good arguments about real stuff can be made criticizing the drama as praising it. But yes, the people who made the Wire did so to stir actual shit. We thought some prolonged arguments about what kind of country we’ve built might be a good thing, and if such arguments and discussions ever happen, we will feel more vindicated in purpose than if someone makes an argument for why The Wire is the best show in years. (“Buffy,” by the way, was the correct answer to that particular bracketfest.)

Clearly what the world needs now is a David Simon ensemble drama further analyzing the effects of addictive magic–pushing warlocks like Rack on the broader Wiccan community.

I just stumbled across a cache of old email, from the heady days of POP boxes and MBX files, and found this old rant about antitrust and technology that I have no memory of writing. It looks like I actually sent it to Orrin Hatch, though.

Dated June 29, 1998:

An Open Letter to Orrin Hatch

Dear Sen. Hatch,
Although I am no longer a constituent, I lived in Utah for several years while attending school at BYU, so I hope this letter reaches you.

I have a few comments regarding the position you’ve taken in the Justice Department’s suit against Microsoft. According to a press report, you recently said of Microsoft:

“I find it rather surprising that any one company would, rather than seeking to prevail on the merits, instead have the hubris to try and use the appropriations process to ‘go on the offensive’ and seek to restrain a federal law enforcement agency that has an obligation to enforce the laws, as was recently reported.”

In fact, it’s companies like Netscape and Novell who decided to use the blunt force of government to get for them what they could not get for themselves. Upon finding they were not successful competitors to Microsoft’s valuable and popular products, they cried foul.

For years, Microsoft and other software firms had gone about the business of making quality products and letting consumers decide which ones they wanted to buy. But now that Microsoft is proving to be a better competitor than they anticipated, Netscape and Novell have decided to go on the offensive — instead of attempting to “prevail on the merits.” It is odd that you should seem so surprised that Microsoft is attempting to fight back by using techniques resembling the ones that Netscape and Novell pioneered. It is you and the companies you’re trying to “protect” that drove Microsoft to have to concern itself with the political climate. Before then, it was able to focus on what it does best: creating and selling software that people want to use.

I applaud the court’s recent decision that recognizes the value in integrated products. What’s disturbing is that Microsoft should have been required to demonstrate this at all. Are the Justice Dept. and the Judiciary so unfamiliar with basic economics that you don’t realize that when consumers receive more products at a higher quality for a lower price, this is beneficial?

At the crux of this public debate is whether Microsoft should be allowed to include Internet Explorer in its Windows operating system. Of course they should! Windows was created by Microsoft and Windows is owned by Microsoft — not the public, not the government, not Netscape. As property of Microsoft, Windows can and should contain whatever Microsoft wants to integrate with it. And we shouldn’t forget, without Microsoft’s successful Windows operating system, Netscape wouldn’t be in millions of homes today; it would still be just a toy used by computer science majors. Netscape owes much of its success to Microsoft, and it returns the favor by asking its Big Brother to beat it up.

Antitrust law is a vague, broad umbrella under which a company can be charged for almost anything. If prices are too high, you’re gouging. If prices are too low, you’re dumping. If prices are the same, you must be in collusion. Antitrust laws can be wielded as a weapon against anyone who’s successful, for whatever reason the government dreams up, and envy of the success of others is a prime motivator in antitrust cases. Those who can’t win in civil competition instead turn to government force to take the bounty for them. And you should be ashamed for helping them. There may be government laws against vague antritrust considerations, but there’s a higher law against coveting your neighbor’s wealth.

I don’t work for Microsoft, and I’m not affiliated with them in any way. My only reason for writing this is my concern that justice be served. Sen. Hatch, if you’re truly interested in justice you should lead an effort to stop the attack of Microsoft. Your current position has no merit, and harms the consumers you purport to help.

Doing freelance work for a living presents the opportunity to tackle a wide range of problems. Although I’m no programmer, one recent gig called for me to figure out a way to protect website content for a limited period of time, each article becoming accessible to the general public at exactly 6:00 a.m. after it’s posted. That way, paying subscribers have a limited window in which to use content themselves while its timeliness still holds premium value, but the site overall contains a wealth of content to attract everyone else.

It’s easy enough to protect content in WordPress, in any number of ways, so it’s only available to users of your choosing. It only took minutes to figure out how to set an expiration duration for that protection — a piece designated as being in the “Subscribers” category becomes openly accessible, say, 24 hours after being posted. But the details of this challenge initially had me stumped. How to set the exact same expiration time for protection on all new “Subscribers” content, regardless of when during the prior 24 hours it was posted? As far as I could tell, no existing plugin performs this function.

My eventual solution was to call the current time into a variable, then set up an obscene array of variations on it, truncating and adding to some, and transforming some of those modifications back and forth between date strings and Unix timestamps, until I could create the right set of conditional statements using mathematically comparable timestamps.

Here’s the result as applied to the site theme’s single.php template: . . . Read more!

Public choice article of the day, from The Atlantic:

Roughly 70 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States are given to healthy farm animals to foster rapid growth and make up for unhygienic living conditions. Many bacteria that live on animals adapt and transfer to humans, spreading superbugs that are often resistant to treatment.

For more than 35 years, the FDA has recognized that giving antibiotics to farm animals poses a risk to human health, yet the agency has done almost nothing to stop it. Indeed, it has mastered the art of making inaction look like action. Last May, NRDC and our partners sued the FDA to prompt it to take action. Instead, the agency retrenched.

It started by claiming the livestock industry could police itself. In our lawsuit, we asked the FDA to finally rule on two citizen petitions — one filed 12 years ago, the other six years ago — urging the agency to stop the use of antibiotics in healthy animals. In November, the FDA announced that although it shares concerns that the use of antibiotics to make animals grow faster is dangerous for humans, it would deny the petition because it was pursuing an alternative strategy.

This “alternative strategy” turns out to be just another name for the status quo. Instead of banning the use of antibiotics in healthy animals, the FDA is allowing the livestock industry to follow a voluntary approach. But we already know voluntary doesn’t work. The FDA has been operating under that model since 1977, yet the practice has expanded exponentially over the years. Talk about the fox guarding the hen house.

In December, the FDA tried to further justify its inaction by erasing the historic record. Back in 1977, the agency proposed to withdraw approval for the use of several antibiotics in animal feed based on findings published in two notices posted in the Federal Register. The notices containing the findings have been listed in the Federal Register for more than three decades. But just before Christmas a few weeks ago, the FDA pulled the notices. Soon after it buried its 35-year-old proposal, the agency tried to have it both ways. On January 5, it proposed banning off-label uses of a class of antibiotics known as cephalosporins on healthy livestock.

To be clear, although I’d like to avoid the consumption of antibiotic-treated livestock as much as possible, I don’t think the FDA should ban it — a clear overreach of government power.

The lesson here, though, is that when a government agency is tasked with protecting the public interest, public-sector incentives make it a near certainty that the agency will eventually instead collude with special interests in working against the public interest. Instead of serving the one function that is clearly useful for industry oversight — education and advice to consumers who can then make a more informed choice — the FDA has become a legal arbiter of illusory safety.

If the FDA allows a product or practice, the public at large regards it as safe. If the FDA disallows something, society assumes danger. But instituting a top-down decision-making process to centralize the level of risk that consumers should be allowed to take leads to a system that serves nobody well. Life-saving drugs are barred from being used by people who are more than willing to accept their potential hazards. The sale of healthy food is criminalized because of the mere possibility that it could make somebody sick, despite the fact that people can and do get sick from the FDA-approved alternative. And, as shown in The Atlantic, because people trust that D.C. paternalists are looking out for them, they carelessly consume anything that the FDA has let slip through its otherwise iron grip.

A bureaucratic overlord is incapable of choosing the correct balance between risk and reward even for the people in his neighborhood, let alone for more than 300 million strangers scattered throughout the country. There is, however, an alternative, as Larry Van Heerden noted in The Freemam:

The first step to correct these problems is to abolish the FDA, stripping the government of the power to approve drugs (and medical devices) for the market or to remove them from the market. Any rule-making for disclosure and lawsuits for fraud should be devolved to the states.

Even if the FDA were omniscient, objective, and impervious to outside influence, it would be wrong to give it the power to withhold drugs from the market. The proper function of government is to protect individual rights and guard against fraud, not to restrict freedom of choice to protect people from their own ignorance. In fact, the FDA has shown itself to be imperious, subject to prevailing political winds, and indifferent to the thousands of deaths and injuries it has caused.

[...] Forcing all consumers to live by rules that cater to the least responsible individuals imposes huge costs on everyone else and ultimately fails to protect even the willfully ignorant.

[Cross-posted at The Lesson Applied.]