DISQUS

Personally I would prefer that my daughters have children very very early than not at all, though I also hope that they will do what THEY want and not try to please me in the matter.

Think about a very rich couple with children. Should they buy their children whatever they want, shower them with gifts, secure jobs in their firms for them, etc.? Surely this will make their children happy, rich, high-status, and well-educated. Alternatively, they could give their children a strict allowance based on merit and hard work, help them with college payments but not pay the whole thing, encourage them to find summer work, etc. The children may end up less happy, less rich, less high-status, and even less well-educated, but they will have fantastic growth experiences that will more than make up for these defecits, growth experiences that will make them masters of their own destiny.

In my experience, having a child is a growth experience unmatched by just about any other. It's not about wanting my daughters to be happy (though of course I want that very, very much). It's about wanting my children to experience the same amazing growth that I have had as a father. I'd hate for them to miss out on it, despite the cost to them in terms of happiness, wealth, status, and formal education.

In the Hindu tradition, marriage and children are "yogas" -- disciplines. It's a good way to think about them.

Fascinating! I have four children myself, and I spend a lot of time stressed out and torn between work and family and all the rest of it. Certainly life was happier and more carefree in graduate school. But I would say that asking whether I'm happy today is completely beside the point. I am engaged in a huge personal growth project, primarily for my children but also for myself. Day-to-day happiness is not high on my list of priorities.

Where are the cross-demographic studies that ask people, "how much have you matured and grown as a human being in the last five years"?? Many people value that more highly than happiness. And children certainly can help out there.

Will, you are so lovably evil.

Great stuff, as usual, Will. But there is another empirical question: to what extent will these newsletters from twenty years ago actually taint the image of Ron Paul, and by association, libertarians? The assumption you make here is that the taint will be serious and ineradicable; therefore we all should distance ourselves from Paul as much as possible. I've been following the Paul message boards and forums, and I haven't seen anyone dropping out, or even much of a discussion about it, aside from people posting pointers to the reams of evidence that Paul is not racist or homophobic at all (e.g. the head of the Austin NAACP vouching for him). (Paul's supporters are much more interested in the issue of a recount in New Hampshire.) The major news programs have been mostly silent on Paul for the past week or so; they seem to regard this whole thing as a non-story. Paul's poll numbers in Michigan and Nevada and SC do not seem to have been hurt by the issue. Now, all this could certainly change in a week or a month; but so far I don't see any evidence that Paul has tainted the public's perception of libertarians, and I don't see any reason for us to distance ourselves from him.

The 'Fever Swamp' Will links to above is very instructive, and as Will says, it's stomach-churning, too. At the same time, I found a couple of places where people from the Mises Institute responded to the attacks (http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/014604.php). The essential defense is that you can't condemn an entire organization because of the beliefs of some of its members.

It seemed to me that the Mises people certainly associated themselves with folks who had abhorrent ideas, without endorsing those ideas. Of course, as the Mises people pointed out, Cato associates itself with the likes of Donald Rumsfeld -- again, without endorsing his agenda.

The overwhelming impression I got from the whole mess was that there was a lot of bad blood between Cato and Mises, and they were mostly talking past each other. It's a terrible shame, because the cause of liberty is so important; I'd have hoped that folks could look past differences and work together.

Isn't this always the problem for the enemies of the State? They end up hating each other as much or more than they hate the State, and cannot put up a unified front.

Ron Paul isn't running on homophobia, he isn't running on racism; in fact, he's spoken eloquently against these things. He's running on a sane foreign policy and a drastic reduction of government. Why not look for common ground with him, and support the things you support, and try to help him spread the parts of his message you agree with?

I'm neopagan, not Christian. I don't agree with some of Paul's stated positions on immigration, abortion, and religion. But I agree with SO MUCH of the rest of his platform, as opposed to anyone else who's run for president since... since... since whenever -- that it would be ludicrous for me not to support him.

Fin Fang Foom,

There are certainly places where Paul disagrees with the Constitution, and he's quite forthright about that. His libertarian beliefs do, however, match the Constitution about 95% of the time, which is about 90% more than the other candidates do. In such a situation, calling himself the "champion of the Constitution" is correct.

Where Paul disagrees with the Constitution, he advocates amending the Constitution, since he firmly stands behind the rule of law. These days, most folks who disagree with the Constitution just ignore it. Again, Paul's stance is much more 'constitutional'.

I don't understand why Will is saying that Paul is nationalist or populist. Maybe he's using these words to mean something different than I've commonly understood them. I thought 'nationalist' meant 'devotion to the nation'; and while Paul certainly is that, his nationalism pales in comparison to the jingoistic attitude of the other candidates. As for 'populist', most populists advocate government spending on social programs for the common people, not dramatic reduction in government size.

As for Will's allegations of racism or homophobia, I've been looking at Paul's writings, and the writings of Rockwell and the Mises Institute, for several months now, and haven't run across anything of the sort. It may be buried in there somewhere, I don't know; but it's certainly not something they're broadcasting or pushing widely, and so I don't see how it could tarnish the libertarian movement in general.

So I look forward to Will's defense his remarks.

Will, I agree that specialization is cool. So does Arnold Zwicky. Check out this note on Language Log:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/arch...

Let me see if I understand you. Are you arguing against the idea of inborn talent? Or are you saying that inborn talents are coarse-grained, and get refined to fine-grain talents via the environment?

And another thing!

You quote Rorty as claiming that the grammaticality of a sentence is rarely a matter of doubt, while moral dilemmas leave us uncertain. But he may not be comparing equivalent sets.

There are huge numbers of sentences whose grammaticality is in doubt. A frequently-studied instance is the so-called "parasitic gap", such as "Which paper did you read before you filed?" "What kind of person do you like whenever you meet?" and similar. Some people hate them, some people see nothing wrong with them, others are left in some kind of post-koan Zen state. These grammaticality judgements may be analogous to difficult moral quandaries.

On the other hand, depending on how you define "moral dilemma", there may be huge numbers of them that are easy to decide and hence are not usually counted as dilemmas. For example, should I smack my mother for no reason? The answer is obvious to anyone, as obvious as the grammaticality of "The dog is happy". These easy moral issues, which we solve quickly and unconsciously every day, may be analogous to standard grammatical sentences, which we produce quickly and unconsciously every day.

Note, too, that these easy moral questions are frequently mastered by the age of five to seven years, the same age that marks the mastery of the basics of one's native tongue. My seven-year-old knows that one never says "dog the happy is", and that stealing is morally wrong, regardless of whether you get caught. These laws of grammaticality and morality are unknown to most of the animal kingdom, regardless of how long they live. So Rorty's assertion that moral codes are not assimilated especially quickly is also on shaky ground.

Frank,

Aren't you implicitly assuming that the State will be the one figuring out what's REALLY good for you and restricting your access to what's bad?

Is it unreasonable to allow the State a smaller role -- (1) funding research into what's REALLY good for you, (2) funding education programs so that people can find out what's REALLY good for them, and help them have enough self control to choose it?

For example, we know that eating too much is bad for you. Madison Avenue would prefer that people consume more than they really need to. Should the State restrict people's access to food? Of course not. But some institution somewhere -- maybe the state -- should be funding research into how people can take control of their eating habits, and educating the public about that. Ideally, once the public is educated, they can make the "right" choices and consume an amount that will maximize their happiness.

How literal-minded these philosophers are!
The real question is: how do you get the fly out without breaking the bottle?

Will, it sounds like you have unexpectedly met the Buddha on your road. You know what to do now, right?