John Holbo

Yglesias has a post about the rhetoric of The Social Security Trust Fund, in response to a Planet Money podcast on the subject. The puzzle of the podcast is: how can there even be an argument about whether a giant Trust Fund exists or not? Shouldn’t that be sort of obvious? Yglesias is in the ‘it exists’ camp. And I think that’s right.

Here’s the way to think about the Trust Fund, to make it seem it doesn’t exist. The Social Security Trust Fund takes in money that it socks away, for an elderly day, in the form of government bonds. But, since it’s all just the government, that’s your right hand loaning your left hand money. If I am poor, I can’t get rich selling myself a lot of ‘Holbo bonds’. I can’t have my cake and eat it, too, earning money with the left hand, then loaning that money to the right hand, to spend on a piece of cake to be eaten now, while also writing on a piece of paper, ‘the right hand owes the left hand a piece of cake’. That seems like double-counting in the worst way.

Here’s the way to think about it, so it seems like the Trust Fund exists. The parents (government) agree that the child (Social Security) should have an allowance. The child wants to save the money. So the parents keep a running account. Every week, the parents write the child an IOU, which the child dutifully puts in a little box. Over time the box comes to contain a lot of IOU’s from the parents. Meanwhile, the parents are not separately putting funds that would correspond to those IOU’s into yet another box. They are just running the household. But the IOU’s exist, and are backed by the parents. [click to continue…]

This NPR Concerts presentation of Tom Waits, live, on his Glitter and Doom tour, may be the best damn concert recording I’ve ever heard. You can also get it through iTunes. Search NPR concerts.

Somehow I ended up reading about Tolkien’s anarcho-monarchism in this First Things piece, by David B. Hart. (Yes, yes.)

There should be a rhetorical term for the sort of stock, boilerplate, conservative antinomian complex irony with which the piece concludes. (‘Antinomian’ from an + tinom, proto-Germanic for ‘on tin’. The earliest occurrence is in Wodehouse: “The drowsy stillness of the afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like G. K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin.” By metaphoric extension, ‘antinomianism’ was retroactively picked up by the likes of Martin Luther – who would have found Chesterton a trying personality – and applied, generally, to anyone who, like Chesterton, considers that, for some obscure reason, the law doesn’t apply to him. Antinomians can mint paradoxes, while indignantly fulminating against paradox. They can speak up for plain, English commonsense in terms that would make a Frenchman blush at the extravagance of the gesture. That sort of business.)

I suppose we could do worse than just calling it a Chestertonian antinomy. Hart’s goes like this:

We all have to make our way as best we can across the burning desert floor of history, and those who do so with the aid of “political philosophies” come in two varieties.

There are those whose political visions hover tantalizingly near on the horizon, like inviting mirages, and who are as likely as not to get the whole caravan killed by trying to lead it off to one or another of those nonexistent oases. And then there are those whose political dreams are only cooling clouds, easing the journey with the meager shade of a gently ironic critique, but always hanging high up in the air, forever out of reach.

I like to think my own political philosophy—derived entirely from my exactingly close readings of The Compleat Angler and The Wind in the Willows—is of the latter kind. Certainly Tolkien’s was. Whatever the case, the only purpose of such a philosophy is to avert disappointment and prevent idolatry.

Now how does Hart hope to evade the awkward consideration that trying to cross a desert with only a dog-eared copy of The Wind in the Willows as your guide is as likely to get the whole caravan killed as any other method that might be tried? Well, obviously he doesn’t mean it. But that’s the trick. Because this is the point in the discussion at which Hart is most obliged to mean something by something. Because this is the point at which the circular peg of anarcho-monarchism fits into the round hole of solid English conservatism – of plain common sense, disdaining all conceptual extravagance and idle concept-mongery! Well, how does it?

Imagine a world in which progressives penned pieces that ended like so: ‘I like to think there are two sorts of political philosophies. Utopian dreams, and down-to-earth, pragmatic proposals for things that just might work. My own ideas about politics – derived wholly from a bongwater-stained edition of the 1970 Whole Earth Catalogue and a close reading of the liner notes to Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma – are decidedly of the latter sort.’ Rhetorical life – if not mental life – would be greatly eased if this sort of gesture – superficially silly – seemed to promise a sort of slow, serious, mature attunement to First Things. Ah, that would be The Life.

In other news, my copy of Barry Deutsch’s Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword [amazon] just arrived. Oh, joy! I think I’ll read it. You can read just the first 15 pages here.

Matthew Yglesias often writes about the conservative penchant for anti-anti-racist stances. Today, for example:

What we’re seeing is episode one million in the American conservative movement’s passionate attachment to the cause of anti-anti-racism. Relatively few conservatives are interested in expressing racist views, but virtually all conservatives are united in the conviction that anti-racism run amok is ruining the country and almost no conservatives are interested in combating racism.

I think a better way to put it is this: contemporary conservatives are determined to rewrite history as to who was/is on the side of the angels in major civil rights struggles. Conservatives accept that equality for blacks and women is a good thing and that real social and legal progress has been made on these fronts. Conservatives freely admit those on the losing side of these civil rights struggles were in the wrong. What they resist is the admission that theirs was the losing side. Glenn Beck, wrapped in the mantle of the civil rights. Sarah Palin, feminist icon. Conservatives are fine with civil right victories, on the condition that these are victories for conservatism, and reproaches to liberalism and progressivism. Feminism is great, so long as it puts the feminists in their place. (Seriously, conservatives now like what feminists were saying all that time, pretty much. It only bugs them who the messenger was.) [click to continue…]

While busying myself with this and that, I began listening to the new Belle and Sebastian album, Write About Love. The first track, “I Didn’t See It Coming”. But! I didn’t realize iTunes was on shuffle, so the next track up was, naturally, Iron Maiden, “Prodigal Son”, off their second album, Killers. I wasn’t focusing, didn’t instantly recognize the track. But it gradually impinged on my sphere of phenomenological awareness that I could not possibly be listening to the new Belle and Sebastian album, however cheeky these twee English (Scottish?) monkeys might be trying to be. So I ask you: at what point in “Prodigal Son” does it become metaphysically impossible that this is a Belle and Sebastian song? (Now, of course, given it actually is an Iron Maiden song, in a sense it’s a trick question. But never mind that.)

A) 0.01. From the very first second it just couldn’t be Belle and Sebastian.
B) 0.10. These arpeggios.
C) 0.16. Those drums.
D) 0.27. When it rocks.
E) 1.16 The vocals.

Or is there in actual, possible fact some Borgesian/Lewisian counterpart to our world in which Iron Maiden never recorded this song, in which Belle and Sebastian write and perform an identical song on their new album, Write About Love, with the help of some guy’s guest vocals. And how’s that working out for them?

UPDATE: I guess this is somehow related to the general issue of British austerity measures, but I couldn’t say how.

It’s nice to see Lynd Ward getting full Library of America treatment [amazon]. Steven Heller’s piece in the Times brings it to my attention. [click to continue…]

Greg Mankiw’s recent, much derided NY Times column reminded me of a passage from Simon Schama’s Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution [amazon]: [click to continue…]

Must be something in the water. Just as Henry draws our attention to short books, I see AbeBooks is highlighting books with single-letter titles. I could take this as an occasion to mock-deplore the twitterifictation (twitterfaction?) of literature. But life’s too short.

Following up my Trolley post: I didn’t realize until just now that Philippa Foot died on October 3. So let’s have a separate, more serious thread for anyone with thoughts about that.

My 9-year old daughter was rather curious about my Trolley cartoons, so we made a podcast. Her art criticism is spot-on, no question, and she makes some pretty strong moral claims. What do you think? (Don’t worry. I have her permission to post this. I interviewed my 6-year old, as well, but she declined to give consent to publish her philosophical work at this time.)

Here’s how you grade a hundred and twenty five papers. Grade five. Take a break. Grade another five. Take a longer break. Repeat.

Really I should be doing yoga or swimming, not looking at any sort of screen at all – but things are a bit slow around here, so …

I like this train. Click link for larger – it’s part of the Field Museum collection.

In other graphical science news, I just finished Atomic Robo Volume 4: Other Strangeness [amazon]. It’s fun! [click to continue…]

If she is going to be complaining about lack of erudition under headlines like this:

On Basic Religion Test, Many Doth Not Pass

Hat tip: Belle (she was just standing right next to me, so I can’t link to it). “Did they learn about religion from a bunch of old Thor comics?” Belle wants to know.

Speaking of which, our daughters actually use ‘doth‘ in this wrong way quite a bit, because I bought them Mini Marvels [amazon], which is pretty good.

I cut off the final joke: namely, Loki actually is wearing baggy pants. But I think it’s funnier if the joke is just about systematic abuse of language.

UPDATE: Yon Gray Lady Hath Fixethed It.

Evergreen philosophy topic! Sure to inspire much friendly discussion!

I don’t usually lecture about the stuff myself, but this semester I decided to, so I cartooned up some images for the PPT slides. So the first thing I have to say is that if anyone has a use for ’em, I’ve released ’em under a CC license. [click to continue…]

Of course we should fight for social justice. Justice is good. And it’s social. Broadly speaking. So I’m asking about the term, not the thing. I ask because I see that Senator Gregg has come out against justice. Near as I can figure.

Normally I would say it is a bad idea to drop a term just because someone like Glenn Beck gets everyone wound up about it. But I tend to think ‘social justice’ just means justice. Of course people have different ideas about what justice is, but ‘social justice’ doesn’t really express those differences. It’s vaguely associated with 1960’s-style stuff and socialism, but not in a way that sheds any light. Not in a way that really says anything.

Example. I’ve finally gotten around to reading Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias, on Harry’s recommendation. I’m not that far yet, but near the start there’s a section on ‘social justice’ then a section on ‘political justice’. Honestly, I can’t tell the difference. [click to continue…]