The comments on my Three Axes to Explain Terrorism post inspired what I am going to say here.
1. I believe that human population includes both B’s and C’s. B’s are inclined temperamentally or ideologically to use violence to control others. C’s are not so inclined, and they seek ways for people to interact peacefully.
2. If there were no B’s in the world, C’s could adopt a simple rule of never engaging in violence. However, such a rule when followed by C’s produces a very bad equilibrium if there are B’s in the world, because it leaves the B’s unchecked.
3. To check B’s, C’s must be willing to commit violence against B’s. This makes C’s a bit like B’s, but I do not believe that this implies total moral equivalence. As one commenter put it,
The distinguishing factor is intention. The civilized nation should be motivated towards living peacefully so long as that is a live option. It does not intend harm to non-combatants and does as much as it can to avoid civilian casualties – the barbarian groups murder non-combatants in gruesome ways for shock value.
4. One of the mechanisms that C’s will use is a state and its government. When C’s organize a state and its government, they create institutions that seek to constrain the government’s ability to use violence, so that it is only used to protect against B’s. These institutions are necessarily imperfect, but this does produce a more civilized (and libertarian) outcome than (2).
5. The apparatus of a state can be taken over by B’s. See the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. That is a major risk of (4).
6. In his comment, Handle writes,
progressive politicians and the leaders of majority Islamic countries are trying to convince [both Islamophobes and radical Islamists] that there is no link between Islam and political violence, and, at least tacitly, if we can all just get people on all sides to shut up and quit insisting there is such a link, then it will quickly cease to exist and we can reify the claim and bootstrap a decoupling into existence.
In other words, if you deny that Islam is connected to B’s, then that will be self-fulfilling. Conversely, if you insist that Islam is connected to B’s, then that will be self-fulfilling.
Unfortunately, I do not think it’s that simple. In the story about the Belgian prison, the WaPo reporter wrote
Proselytizing prisoners used exercise hours and small windows in their cells to swap news, copies of the Koran and small favors such as illicit cellphones. Gradually, they won over impressionable youths
[my emphasis]. If the prisoners had become C’s as a result, that would be fine. But instead they turned into worse B’s.
7. I do not believe that we can rely solely on the Koran to turn Muslims into C’s. I do not believe that we can rely solely on the Bible to turn Jews or Christians into C’s.
8. I think that C inclinations must be reinforced by a web of institutions, including families, the state, and civic associations of all kinds. My concern with Islam is that it privileges religion ahead of everything else, which reduces the ability of other institutions to play their civilizing role.
9. I have a similar concern about progressivism, in that it privileges the state ahead of everything else. As Yuval Levin points out in his forthcoming book, The Fractured Republic, progressives seem to extol the individual and the state, while opposing churches, corporations, and every other intermediate institution.
(9) reminds me of Mussolini: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”. It seems to me that opposition to those intermediate institutions is mostly driven by a desire to eliminate things that might oppose the state.
6. One problem with 6 is that it elevates Islam to the keystone issue. That polarizes both supporters and detractors alike. Don’t force me to decide whether Islam is pro or anti-terrorism (I suspect even muslims don’t know), especially when you (Obama) are going to oversell your side precisely to increase polarization. I could have otherwise sat back and believed Islam is disappointingly ambivalent on terrorism and that other factors were more important. People are too quick to give people like Obama credit if his primary concern is actually trolling Republicans. Making your first pronouncement the charade that Islam had absolutely nothing to do with it may achieve the opposite of your self-fulfilling strategy, unless that is actually your real meta-strategy.
#8. Life within the realm of Islam is not a dichotomy or quasi-dichotomy between religion and civil institutions (such as family, state, associations.)
Islam is religion AND the web of other institutions that enforce the law of Sharia on the population in accordance with each imam’s understanding of the Qu’ran.
The religion and the “civil” institutions are one and the same, inseparable. In the Islamic world, the “civil” institutions play no “civilizing” role other than to reinforce the religion-dictated patterns of life.
That is why Islam is incompatible with the developed West. One or the other must compromise if they are to tolerate each other, but for the West to relinquish its adherence to liberty principles and especially the pre-eminence of individual freedom is to light the match of its destruction.
Trigger warning: putting on my civilisation vs. barbarism hat:
Presumably the B and C dispositions are heritable, probably similar to cognitive ability, i.e. influenced by very many genes with small additive effects.
It would be remarkable, even evidence of divine intervention, if every ancestral group of humans had inherited B- and C-relevant genes such that each population had exactly the same propensity to engender B- and C-like behaviours from its members.
We can assume that the relative proportion of B and C members in a group will have a significant influence on the type of norms and institutions that will evolve, though once those norms and institutions ossify they may become somewhat resistant to further changes in these proportions, or shift people people close to the margin toward more C-like behaviours.
The ruling class, cultural leaders, and the progressive establishment are increasingly weakening Western Civilization’s ability, among members of their own ancestral populations, to constrain Bs or shift them to more C-like behaviours. Meanwhile, they’re complicit in bringing large numbers of outsiders who are likely from populations with a slightly higher propensity for inheriting B-like behaviours.
While this last supposition may be offensive given contemporary mores, it enjoys a much prima facie evidence and compares favorably for its simplicity.
(It is normally assumed that in the absence of evidence of such heritable group differences, we should assume their are no differences. Therefore, great collective effort is spent trying to deny, bury, or otherwise taboo any such evidence. However, given what we know about human evolution and genetic population structure, its extremely unlikely that no differences exist. In the absence of such evidence, we should assume such differences exist anyway and perhaps conjecture about particular differences based on whatever weak evidence is at hand.)
In other words, the proportion of Bs are increasing because (a) C norms and institutions are being weakened and (b) immigrant groups with a higher genetic propensity toward B-like behaviours. The question is how much more can Western civilisation stand, or how robust is it against shocks, where the Bs can overwhelm the Cs, resulting in either civilizational collapse or at least, and more likely, stagnation.
Perhaps one relevant comparison would be to world class athletics. It’s basically like a science experiment. Everyone is training about as hard as everyone else, mostly using the same techniques and knowledge. If one ethnic group appears to dominate the highest tiers of a sport, its probably because that group has a slight tendency to inherit a genome favorable to that sport.
While the average difference between groups might be very small, the tail ends of the distribution will likely show very big “gaps”, i.e. almost completely dominated by people of a small subset of ethnic backgrounds.
Supposing that B and C dispositions are heritable, and that ethnic groups vary slightly, partly for genetic reasons, in their proportions of Bs and Cs, the extremes of the distribution for Bs and Cs are likely to be dominated by particular ethnic groups. Indeed, given what we know about human evolution and population structure, it would be surprising if this were not the case.
Now put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Intermediate institutions aren’t liked by most any popular ideologies today. They are not universalist and usually not “diverse” enough. They rely on freedom of association but that got trounced by the civil rights act and disparate impact. They espouse values that are often anti-capitalist and anti-individualist (and this is a good thing).
In a lot of ways these intermediate institutions are ways for a group of people to pre-commit to patterns of behavior that are favorable but easy for individuals to defect from. You need a series of carrots and sticks, rituals and myths, social relationships and organic bonds, etc to keep everyone on track. This offers a middle path between hard state enforcement and individualist anarchy.
Progressive issues with institutions are well know, but with libertarians they often can’t understand these institutions and what makes them flourish. As someone put in his opening criticism of libertarianism:
“The error at the heart of all libertarian thought is that the individual is the smallest and primary unit of society. The libertarian consistently frames social and moral imperatives in terms of individual needs and desires and freedoms. He posits that society is the sum total of individuals pursuing self-interest.
This is not true. The smallest unit of society is the relationship between two individuals. One, two, or a thousand individuals do not comprise a society until there are relationships connecting them to each other–agreements, customs, laws, values. The connecting relationship, not the individual, is the atom of human society. It is impossible to have a society of one man. “
I have a comment that I doubt anyone will like:
Let’s say Bs have a 5% likelihood of being violent while Cs have a 1% likelihood. If have a country with both Bs and Cs and they have children together the children will have a 5% or higher likelihood of being violent because dominant genes are dominant and mixing genes does not go the way you think it will. By mixing them together you are turning the whole world into Bs and making the whole world worse off. You should be encouraging Cs to have more children and discouraging Bs from having children, and then letting Cs expand their world through emigration and exporting their culture and norms instead of letting Bs expand their world by immigrating to the Cs’ countries.
“If have a country with both Bs and Cs and they have children together the children will have a 5% or higher likelihood of being violent because dominant genes are dominant and mixing genes does not go the way you think it will.”
That isn’t a thing.
The Fractured Republic, progressives seem to extol the individual and the state, while opposing churches, corporations, and every other intermediate institution.
That is a strange argument as corporation are extremely post-religious and have single-handedly stopped the state RFRA acts in Indiana, Arkansas and Georgia. At the center of the Reagan coalition was the importance of churches and corporations but their goals are long term extremely divergent. (I think this explains the 2016 Primary better than anything.) Churches work to improve the righteous in all the community while corporation only care about profits. And as corporations go global the local churches are collapsing across the US and their impact on young lives is VASTLY diminishing.
Yes, there is a lot concern with Islam being the center of religion ahead of everything else, as it entirely against the rest of the world that is more focused on economics. (It should be noted the most potentially disfunctional Middle East nation is Saudia who is rich. And they are reacting very poorly to Obama signing the Iran nuclear deal.)
The NYTimes has an article about this today, noting that once upon a time corporations tried to stay out of radical politics because it risked alienating consumers. Now that consumers tastes are fractured and competition on pure product functionality is high, corporations need branding to differentiate their products they are getting involved in radical political activism as a way to differentiate themselves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/opinion/sunday/the-power-of-ceo-activism.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region
As you noted, entities like churches and civic organizations sought to enable man and build health relationships within his communities. By contrast corporations pursue only profit, and if radicalizing politics is good for business so be it.
This comment covers “managerial” activism for libertarian social values, whether by public servants or private corporation management:
“It’s a moot question, because every government or corporation of any significance on Earth is in the hands of managerialists, who do not have a libertarian bone in their body. While it is generally preferred by managerialists that socially liberal policies prevail (this is a useful way of controlling people and an all-purpose screen for whatever extra-constitutional things they want to do–as well as a sign of their own severe decadence)–but to characterize them as libertarian is to mistake what libertarianism is. Among other things, managerialists do not favor a diminished role for the state, and have no intention of reducing their control over their economies. If they decide to let you smoke pot or stick your dick somewhere, it won’t mean they’re libertarian, it will mean they consider pot and sex to be an excellent forms of soma. They’ll still be eager to disarm and disenfranchise you in countless ways.”
It is murkier than this. C’s can come into conflict on their own so need an adjudicating power to determine who is in the right. Most conflict is of this variety and the issues complex.
Considering the religious wars of the west, we can probably say it wasn’t civilized until after the reformation and enlightenment. Perhaps we still can’t say so. It is more of a work in progress. The west has a place for religious tolerance, but religion has to conform to the space allowed for it. Religions can adapt to it or reject it. Or it can try to take it over. There is even a place for that, a colony or commune, so long as conforms to the space allowed for it. Religion is as diverse as the people that make it up, so some will be willing and others will not. It does take a wide set of associations and institutions to accomplish all that we want. It also takes an authority to adjudicate and resolve those conflicts.
Can you name any examples where people wondered whether Jews or Christians had to blow neighbors up in order to be Jews or Christians in good standing?
As with communism, my problem starts and ends when they believe they have to violently conquer the entire planet and violently subjugate everyone.
I’m already living under semi-violent occupation. So I can tolerate anytime short of the above.
Some of the crusades settled on pograms, and sectarian strife was rampant with witch and heresy burning and Huguenots forced to flee, They were not doing this to be malicious but to save themselves and their souls of course.
Freedom of religion means people can’t be forced to join religions or prevented from leaving them which prevents them from executing torture and capital penalties or from internecine strife. It preserves conscience from religion.
Property itself is a creation of the state which defines and defends it. Before it, there were only personal belongings and commons.
I largely feel the same way.
I would quibble about the comments on certain evil regimes of the past. We should distinguish the personality type of a leader from the policies they are supporting.
The leaders of the named countries were not themselves B’s to my knowledge. They were not people who went around killing and torturing people personally; if they were, they would never have gotten ahead in their societies! Rather, they supported and encouraged policies that resulting in killing and (to a lesser and debatable extent) torture of millions of people.
On a related note, the U.S. is almost certainly torturing its prisoners right now, and it’s definitely killing civillians and children as collatorable damage with its non-court-reviewed bombings. However, it’s not because the U.S. has had B’s for president.
Re #3, the part that you are missing is that many B’s will justify their actions by cloaking themselves as C’s, insisting that they really want peace and their hand was forced by the evil actions of Those Other Guys. This makes the real C’s less likely to oppose them and may even dupe some into throwing in their lot with the B’s.
You can find plenty of examples of this on both left and right; during the Cold War the Soviet Union was notorious for rationalizing its actions this way and branding itself as a defender of international peace.
The bottom line is that it is reasonable and necessary to be extremely skeptical of claims of civilized intentions on the part of users of mass force.