The LockeSmith Blog

Dr. Benjamin Spock is the child-rearing expert, Mr. Spock is the Vulcan science officer from Star Trek. Regardless of how you feel about the good doctor, it appears that Vulcans make lousy sources for child-rearing principles.

I have in mind a story a student relayed to me this past spring. I must admit that I was not present during these events, so what I tell you is hearsay. A second student confirmed what the first said, and I know both to be honest, so I have no reason to doubt the story. What happened is this: in a biology class, discussion led the professor to comment on the advisability—I’d go so far as to say necessity—of regulating research involving human subjects.

I’m not sure what studies the professor discussed to demonstrate the importance of research ethics and regulatory oversight, but I imagine they had something to do with pharmaceuticals, given the response I am about to relate. It seems that a couple of students in the class challenged not the oversight of ethics in research with human subjects, but the ethic which that oversight seeks to maintain: that all participants should take part voluntarily and knowing the risks they will entertain along the way.

The students argued that researchers should be able to use homeless and incarcerated subjects without their knowledge or consent.

Continue reading "Mr. Spock and Child-Rearing" »

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 08:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One last entry on social justice (and lessons from international relations), and then I think I will have it out of my system. Honest. I suppose at long last it is time to get to the heart of the matter, with apologies to Don Henley.

In The Twenty Years’ Crisis, E.H. Carr quotes Reinhold Niebuhr from a 1927 Atlantic Monthly article: “There is an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups.”

My mind immediately flashed to a quote from a co-worker here at Belmont. The quote appeared in an article when he was hired, and I have tried in vain to find that article to be sure I correctly quoted him. Instead, I must repeat it to the best of my recollection: We spend too much time focusing on individual sin rather than the great systematic evils in the world.

Now, as a methodologist, my first reaction is to point out that this is nonsense.

Continue reading "A Niebuhr In the Saddle" »

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have been submitted for re-education! An alert reader of my last-but-one post (on the social disease in justice) brought it to the attention of a member of Senior Leadership. That person felt compelled to email me to correct my flawed understanding of social justice.

Obviously, the most shocking revelation here is that someone read my blog. That I remain unabashedly heterodox and skeptical comes as less of a surprise. But does this mean that I've made my dissident "bones"? Certainly the day was nothing like Ivan Denisovitch's. Neither does it rise to the level of Vaclav Havel's imprisonment and harassment. Fortunately, I have not yet been baptized in those fires. So a mere crank, grateful to liberty, I remain.

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 09:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The social justice crowd seem to enjoy expressing themselves on their bumpers slightly more than the rest of us. I’m not sure to which stereotype this plays—poor, bohemian hippie who doesn’t have to worry about resale value (because the car had none originally), or rich, progressive snob who doesn’t have to worry about resale value (either because the BMW dealership takes them off when you trade it in, or because it saves the next owner the trouble of applying the stickers themselves). But I do know that it shows an appalling naivety. Let me explain.

Two bumper stickers I have seen read “No justice, no peace (know justice, know peace)” and “If you want peace, work for justice.” Of course, by justice, they mean social justice—personal justice (getting what we deserve) being something that creates more discontent than peace (because we all think we deserve better than we get). That is, if you want domestic harmony, redistribute resources to groups who have less (and want more).

One does not have to be a very good student of international relations to realize the futility of that tactic.

Continue reading "Justifying Peace" »

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Social justice, like most buzzwords, is so heavily used that we have ceased to think about what it means (if we ever did). It seems to have simply become a stamp of approval (much like “green” or “reduced calorie”)—if it’s social justice, it must be good. I, on the other hand, maintain that “social” adds the same gloss to “justice” as it does to “disease.” Please allow me to explain.

Some part of my brain gets very frightened when people use words without their meaning. Perhaps this is because it is a symptom of groupthink, or perhaps it is simply the offensiveness of ignorance proudly displayed. At bottom, though, I think the problem is that words, once detached from the ideas or things they represent, become very dangerous. They allow people to fool themselves and others into doing things they would never condone if they stopped to think about it.

Worse, I think some people do this intentionally, as a sort of marketing strategy for their ideas. If I know people won’t buy what I’m selling if I tell them what it is, I’ll borrow the reputation of some other word and add a modifier in front of it. So prunes become “dried plums” (which at least has the benefit of being technically correct), and toothfish becomes “sea bass.”

Continue reading "Alexander Hamilton and the Social Disease" »

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 02:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

John McCain will attend the debate at Ole Miss tonight.

No, he hasn’t made an announcement. But I’m fairly confident he will, and I have been since yesterday morning. How am I so confident? Game theory. Now, game theory doesn’t give you answers. But it does help you discipline your intuition, requiring you to first be explicit about your assumptions and then helping you see their interaction without allowing extraneous considerations to cloud the picture. So think of game theory (or any formal modeling) as Photoshop: it can remove the red-eye and clear up the resolution, but you still take the picture.

So let’s look at McCain’s situation. There are two players, McCain and Obama. They have two choices: attend the Mississippi debate or not. So there are four potential outcomes:

Continue reading "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Ole Miss Debate" »

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 08:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Please forgive the Enquirer-esque subject line. Of course, I actually know nothing of the religious beliefs of Dr. Hayek, but I strongly doubt that he was a Baptist of any sort, let alone a Southern Baptist. Not, however, because his philosophy made it impossible. As I’ve hinted before, I know of no religious beliefs as compatible with classical liberalism as Baptist (at least, properly understood).

In recently discussing The Road to Serfdom with Ben, he pointed out a passage I had not previously noticed which illustrates a part of this.

What our generation is in danger of forgetting is not only that morals are of necessity a phenomenon of individual conduct but also that they can exist only in the sphere in which the individual is free to decide for himself and is called upon voluntarily to sacrifice personal advantage to the observance of a moral rule. …Only where we ourselves are responsible for our own interests and are free to sacrifice them has our decision moral value. We are neither entitled to be unselfish at someone else’s expense nor is there any merit in being unselfish if we have no choice.

I suppose that, in order to make clear how this relates to Baptist belief, I’d better explain a little bit about Baptist belief.

Continue reading "Hayek Secretly a Baptist!" »

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In this holiday season, it seems only too necessary to share a thought which occurred to me recently. I can only hope you, dear reader, will not consider me too much of a Scrooge for harshing the holiday mellow. But the fact of the matter is—and this is a fact that should have us all rushing to take up ballots against our oppressors—that Congress, according to the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the commerce clause, can legislate that you give Christmas presents.

Continue reading "Of Wickard and Wassails" »

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

First, let me apologize for my extended absence. The last few weeks have been particularly busy in my professional calendar, and I fear it left no time for the joy of blogging. If it’s any consolation, I’ve missed the opportunity to think and write on a regular basis. I guess you could call it a “blogger’s high,” and I’ve certainly been in withdrawal. It should be no surprise—the love of thinking systematically and communicating thoughts to others is what drew me to this line of work in the first place. And I brought you these flowers…

In the stolen moments in my recent schedule, I have had a few ideas I’d like to share. I’d like to propose at least two reforms to our government. Of course, I’d really like to repeal the 16th and 17th Amendments (Ben Bryan has come up with a particularly apropos sobriquet for them, but I’ll let him introduce it). But short of that, here are two ideas.

First, let’s make Congress subject to a limited form of tort law. A tort, of course, is a legal wrong, something done to another for which one owes them compensation to make them whole. (Torte, on the other hand, is a delightful afternoon treat with tea or coffee.) Obviously, it can’t be regular, run-of-the-mill tort law. The entire purpose of forming a government is for it to be able to harm some of us (or our rights) when necessary. The problem comes with government doing it when it isn’t necessary. So I propose that we define a new type of tort, one which only legislatures may commit (and which legislatures would have to define by statute, so I’m obviously tilting at windmills).

Continue reading "If Wishes Were Windmills, We’d All be Don Quixote" »

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 01:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those who have not yet heard the news via Belmont's main website, the Commission on Presidential Debates has chosen Belmont University to host the Town Hall Presidential Debate on October 7, 2008.

Nope, I didn't stutter, and that is what you think it is. We're hosting a presidential debate! I suppose the advantage of a blog in this context is to provide the immediate reaction, rather than calm and reasoned reflection. And I have to tell you, this news has sent a tremor through campus. I'm not sure how we compare to previous sites in terms of campus population, etc., but I have to imagine this represents quite a coup for our administration. I know it represents one heck of an opportunity for fostering political debate on campus--among students, not just among candidates. Actually, probably more the former than the latter; when's the last time a debate actually featured debating?

At any rate, we are all extremely excited, and we can't wait to find out how we will be allowed to participate! Expect to hear more here!

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 03:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Transitional wry observation: how ironic that an insurance company, a business which we pay to assume risk on our behalf, should call itself Progressive...

Most Halloween costumes are not scary precisely because they are obviously that: costumes. This is so not because the costumes are poorly executed, but because they disguise us as things which, for the most part, we cannot be. They scare children because children (and postmoderns) still exist in the magical marches between imagination and reality, where imagined things become real simply in the imagining.

Progressives are frightening because they actually exist. Not only exist, but like Canadians, they walk among us undetected. Or maybe I should say that we walk among them.

Continue reading "Of Calgon and Candidates (or, Peter Pan, Part II)" »

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 04:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ve decided what I’m going to be for Halloween: a Progressive! I’ll scare…well, I probably won’t scare anyone. In fact, it would probably help me blend in a great deal more than I usually do. For Halloween purposes, I’d do better going as myself, at least if your average college student will be there. Oh, no! It’s a professor who expects me to think for myself! To earn grades! RUN!

I’ll have to save the ruminations on these kids today, and on how inflation does the same thing for self-esteem and grades that it does for currency (and the difference between inflation and appreciation) for another day. Makes me feel like I ought to be wearing my pants up around my armpits, and I just don’t feel up to the concomitant wedgie right now.

The point is, Progressives ought to scare us a great deal more than they do.

Continue reading "Of Peter Pan and Progressives" »

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 02:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We’ve all heard about “the market” doing this to people, doing that to people, getting pulled over for DUI…oh, wait, that was Paris Hilton. But I labor under the impression that most folk don’t have a good conception of the fact that “the market” is shorthand for a much more complicated idea. For example, most people think the market rewards those with money. In fact, the market defines what a good decision is, and then rewards those who make good decisions.

Let’s look at baseball for an example. The eight cities whose teams are in the playoffs this year, five are ranked in the top six in population: New York (1), Los Angeles (2), Chicago (3), Philadelphia (5), and Phoenix (6). The other three, however are much lower in the rankings (close to or even below our beloved Nashville at 28): Boston (24), Denver (25), and Cleveland (39).

Continue reading "Market Misperceptions" »

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When last we saw our intrepid heroes, the approaching wave of baby-boomers was threatening to overwhelm OASDI, and hard-working Polish farmers had the CAP at the point of several rusty pitchforks (oh, the tetanus!). What strikes me in the comparison of the two is the response to the crisis in each. Certainly, the fatal flaws in these programs have existed from their inception (since they lie in that very inception). Both, however, have recently faced the need for reform from an impending, irresistible, and disastrous increase in cost. But reform has occurred in only one of these cases.

Continue reading "Rational Elitism (or, Of Democratic Deficits, Part III)" »

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 04:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I know you were all anticipating the exciting conclusion to our CAP/OASDI debate. Both of you. Until you took your medication. And that (sadly, the post, not the medicaiton) is still in the works for Wednesday (please, hold your death threats).

In the meantime, I wanted to post an urgent bulletin. All right, so urgent is a little strong. It happened Saturday night, and this is Monday, so obviously it’s not that pressing. But this weekend I went to visit my in-laws. This news becomes slightly less mundane when I tell you that my in-laws live in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. Yes, Saturday night I went to Fred Thompson’s homecoming rally in the hometown he shares with my wife and her family.

Continue reading "We Interrupt This Program..." »

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 07:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The question left before us: is a democratic deficit a deficiency? In answering this, I am drawn (against my will) to the comparison of two policies. In the EU corner, weighing 41.6 billion euro, the Mussels from Brussels, the Gourd from the Fjord, I give you…the Common Agricultural Policy!

For many years, the CAP was the most prominent facet of integration in Europe. Certainly, EU folk promoted it that way. It was the most direct contact that the average citizen of EU countries had with the supranational institutions their governments had created. The short course is a sadly familiar story: price floors stimulate overproduction.

Continue reading "The Tale of the Tape (Of Democratic Deficits, Part II)" »

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 02:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You hear a lot in European Union circles about “democratic deficit.” The argument—or perhaps more accurately, assumption—is that EU institutions are not sufficiently accountable to voters. I have to admit, the term has always disturbed me, though not for the usual reasons. I’m not disturbed that there is a deficit, though many EU folks get highly exercised on that point. Instead, I’m disturbed that we worry about there being enough democracy. (Or, as you’re probably thinking now, I’m just plain disturbed.)

Let me explain. The claim of a democratic deficit implies that there is something inherently just, right, or desirable about democracy. It smuggles in a moral claim, and while I have nothing against moral claims, I’d like for them to be justified. (And that’s a participle, not passive voice.)

Continue reading "Of Democratic Deficits and Deficient Democracy" »

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Hello.

I’m glad you stopped by.

Welcome to the LockeSmith blog, brought to you by the friendly folks at the LockeSmith Institute. I could take this opportunity to tell you about the Institute—our hopes, our dreams, that we like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain. But I’ll trust you to navigate to the Institute’s site to read all about that.

What I should tell you is that this is part of a re-launching of the LockeSmith Institute. We still have all of our original aims, encouraging undergraduate research in the classical liberal tradition and boldly casting the light of knowledge into the encroaching darkness. (If I don’t have at least one overblown and pretentious sentence, the union (Amalgamated Bricklayers and Dental Assistants Local 153) will yank my card.)

Continue reading "As the champagne bottle crashes against the prow..." »

Posted by Nathan Griffith at 02:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)