Runester

Note: My weekly body weight chart is now online. It’s a great way to track my ongoing weight loss!

“Love will save the world” … and other such tripe.

I went to church this morning, and heard a sermon by a guest speaker about “bringing down the walls between us” and about the “power of love to change the world.” It seemed appropriate for the venue in which it was presented, and my fellow listeners seemed to really appreciate the up-beat message. They were nodding their heads, mumbling along in agreement, and laughing at the appropriately cute anecdotes. Relatively speaking, it was a good Sunday morning sermon.

It drove me nuts!

Why? Because it was vacuous. There was nothing practical or meaningful anywhere in there. The sermon was along the lines of many liberal diatribes I’ve heard recently, especially anti-war sentiments. To be honest, I’m not too happy with the war in Iraq, but I don’t know what would or could have been done better. Unlike me, though, these liberal thinkers use the strange tactic of complaining about what is happening, without even suggesting an alternate solution. Instead, they tell us how to think (”peace starts in the human heart,” and “we should never forget that our enemies are fellow human beings - like us!”) and (when pressed) they tell us what we should have done decades ago (”well, we should never have allowed the situation to develop to this point. We should have corrected the economic imbalances that make terrorism so appealing to extremists”).

First, let me start with the second point and work backwards. Barring the invention of a practical time machine - how is telling someone what they should have done help them now? Is this really practical advice? For example (and to make the political situation more personal and immediate) imagine that you awake in the night and find an armed burglar in your home carting away your television set. What do you do? “I know!” says the liberal thinker, “I would have (two decades ago) made sure that this person had the means of buying his own TV, thus eliminating the need for him to steal mine!” Wow, great advice if you have a time machine! Unfortunately, I don’t.

Further, isn’t this blaming the victim for the crime? So, the homeowner deserves to be robbed because he had the audacity to buy his family a TV without first ensuring that all of his neighbors have one. Is this reasonable? Yet, we heard the same reasoning used after 9/11/01. Apparently America deserved to be attacked because of decades of foreign policy regarding the Middle East. The fact that those 3,000+ who died had nothing to do with American foreign policy; or that the US is the single greatest source of foreign aid, humanitarian aid, and world defense, doesn’t seem to mitigate our (so called) sins.

To add hypocrisy to the mix, many of the same liberal thinkers who bitterly oppose our military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, complain bitterly about the money being spent on infrastructure (roads and bridges), education, and local police. “Why aren’t these tax dollars being spent on US soil for the same purposes?” they ask. So the very same people saying “I would have” alleviated the poverty and oppression that acts as fertile soil for terrorists, are now upset that money is being spent on providing basic services to the very same people. Apparently they are comfortable with “I would have” (past tense) but never “I am” (present tense). It’s the actually doing, now in the present, that has liberal thinkers flummoxed - they seem to specialize in “woulda/coulda/shoulda.”

Finally, let’s look at the ‘how we should think’ part, namely “war is not the path to peace,” “peace starts in each human heart,” “love can change the world,” etc. Not one of these platitudes explains how one should behave when threatened. Returning to the hypothetical homeowner surprised by a burglar stealing his TV, how should he ‘do’ love and peace? Should he hug the burglar and profess his brotherly love? Should he apologize for spending his own earnings on his own family, and not giving them away to the burglar’s? I know, A stirring rendition of Kumbayah will solve the problem!

At this point, you’re probably thinking, “just let him have it! You can always buy another.” Fair enough, but let’s say that the burglar is surprised to see you watching him and has decided that leaving no witnesses is important. He has now resolved to killing everyone in the house, just to be sure. For the sake of argument, we’ll say he is definitely set on his course and makes this abundantly plain to you - no misunderstanding here! Now, what do you do? How do you ‘do love’ and / or ‘do peace’ in this situation?

Let me give you a possible answer, something you’d probably hear from a conservative instead of a liberal. You should defend your family (if you have the means) and run away (if you don’t), notifying the police in either case. Interesting, the conservative has actually, applicable, practical advice for a real-world situation. Because it is real-world, it’s not perfect. Fighting back could get you killed. Running away could get you killed. Calling the police could get one or more police shot, and possibly the burglar shot. Even if “things go well,” the court trial and the imprisonment will take months and cost the state many thousands of dollars. This response is far from simple, or safe, or perfect. The only thing it has going for it: it is effective and doable.

So, the main difference between liberal thinking and conservative thinking? Liberal thinking sounds great (in theory) but can’t actually be put into practice. Conservative thinking is complicated, messy, and riddled with problems - but it’s effective and applicable for the here-and-now.

Liberal Thinking Denies Free Will

What I like to think of as the “root of the problem” with liberal thinking, is it’s denial of free will. You wouldn’t know this from actually speaking with or reading from liberal thinkers - they are careful to not express this sentiment clearly. Instead, it has to be inferred from the statements and arguments pandemic to liberal thinking.

For example, take the statement quoted above, “peace starts in the human heart.” Sounds good, right? But, it implies that it is possible to get every human heart to be at peace. How is this going to happen? In fact, has it ever happened? Has there ever, anywhere in time, been a moment when all human hearts were full of peace? I don’t think so. Further, the more humans there are, the less likely that all humans everywhere will find themselves with “peace in their hearts.” Am I just being pessimistic? I don’t think so. Instead I’m trying to imagine a world in which no one, anywhere is angry over anything. No one, anywhere, is hurt or sad or afraid or hateful or just malicious. How could such an event even be possible?

That “peaceful world” has never existed, does not exist now, and (probably) never will.

In fact, the only way I could imagine such a world is to imagine some external force imposing this state on humanity. Something like divine will “making” every heart peaceful, or perhaps some sci-fi scenario where some super-prozac is provided to alleviate all negative emotions … and then is made mandatory for all humans everywhere. In other words, the only way to achieve a universal mental state (even something positive like peace) is to strip humans of their free will and force them to feel the way you want. If you leave free will in tact, then some people (perhaps a very small minority) will always choose to feel differently then you hoped (hateful, for example).

Would this still be true if the goal was made smaller and more immediate? Unfortunately, yes. For example, the stated claim of many charitable organizations (and their liberal leaders) is the elimination of homelessness. [see: PCEH, HomelessnessSA, CEEH (all open in a new window).] Let’s think carefully about this for a moment.

They are not working towards “general improvement for as many people as want to” but to the total elimination of a particular economic / social / mental state - namely, homelessness. For these organizations to really be successful, they would have to ensure that NO ONE (at least within their stated jurisdiction) is homeless. How would this be possible?

I have had in-depth conversations with people actually working on this problem, “on the front line” so to speak. I spoke, at length, with a manager of a Salvation Army facility in Austin, TX. He explained that, to anyone who wanted it, they could walk in and get a free meal, clean clothes, job placement and low-cost housing. He didn’t exaggerate these, he freely admitted that the clothes were used (but still clean and wearable), that the jobs were low paying and menial (but still available, and paying) and that the housing was typically a small apartment (which is still off the streets). In other words, no one walks in and gets thousands in clothing, and a free beach house for life … instead, they get the minimum needed to get them off the street and (if they want to work for it) onto bigger and better things. I asked him if the system worked, he reported that (for some) it worked great. Many people passed through the system, stayed sober and worked hard - and ended up at much better jobs and better housing. On the other hand, the single biggest problem, responsible for him seeing the same faces month-after-month, was substance abuse. These are people who get sober, get jobs, get paid, then blow their first paycheck on drugs or booze, miss their rent, and get kicked back out onto the street, only to show up at the Salvation Army again.

Armed with this knowledge, I can confidently say that even if we had some miracle means of building and providing endless supplies of housing, clothing, and food (which, by the way, we do not) that we would still have homelessness. Some people would not follow even the most basic rules necessary to stay in the free housing, and they would have to either be evicted or jailed. Further, there would always be some number (perhaps very small) that _choose_ to be homeless rather then live in free housing under a set of minimum rules. For these people, to get them off the street, we’d have to outlaw homelessness and arrest them. So, again, the only way to achieve ZERO homelessness is to take away free will and impose our will over theirs.

There is a practical alternative, instead of the complete elimination of homelessness, how about providing an improvement to as many people as are willing to take advantage of it? Help those that ask for help, and let them choose. This would mean admitting that we will never, ever solve this problem completely; because free will assures us that some people will freely choose not to cooperate with our effort and either directly or indirectly choose to be homeless. Kind of a let down, huh?

In summary, as long as you believe in human free will then you must admit the limits of your ability to influence others. Any program or theory that starts with, “if all people worked together” or “if everyone did their fair share” or “when humanity turns towards peace and away from violence” are automatically doomed to fail. Some people, somewhere, will always choose to disagree which means they may behave violently, or hatefully, or lazily, or selfishly, or even self-destructively. Since no system (religious, political, social) is ever going to be fully supported by everyone everywhere, then every system must realistically have some means to deal with dissent from within and attack from without.

On the other hand, if you do not believe humans have free will … then it may become possible, one day, to eliminate the genetic potential for violence (and hate and selfishness and laziness) and control the human environment to squelch all such behaviors. In a “brave new world” sort of way, humanities problems really could be solved. No one would be permitted any choice, and every action would either be mandatory or forbidden … but, hay! You don’t believe in free will anyway.