"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
by Smitty (h/t Tatler)
If the early returns on Althouse’s poll hold steady, people are ready to vote against The WhiOne. The contrast couldn’t be much more stark between BHO and T-Paw. Are we ready for somebody with competence, experience and human warmth, without so much egomania? I’m willing to say yes.
(This time, I’m cereal)
Update: linked at The Camp of the Saints, with more T-Paw goodness.
“Christian Socialism, as it has taken root in the last few decades among countless followers of all Christian churches, is merely a variety of State Socialism. … Agriculture and handicraft, with perhaps small shopkeeping, are the only admissible occupations. Trade and speculation are superfluous, injurious, and evil. … It is the duty of legislation to suppress these excesses of the business spirit. …
“In the economic system which they have in mind there is no entrepreneur, no speculation, and no ‘inordinate’ profit. The prices and wages demanded and given are ‘just.’ …
“[Christian socialists] have anxiously avoided drawing the logical conclusions of their premises. They give one to understand that they are combating only the excrescences and abuses of the capitalist order; they protest that they have not the slightest desire to abolish private property; and they constantly emphasize their opposition to Marxian Socialism. …
“It can be seen at once how the Christian Socialism of today corresponds to the economic ideal of the medieval Scholastics. The starting point, the demand for ‘just’ wages and prices, that is, for a definite historically attained distribution of income, is common to both.”
— Ludwig von Mises, Socialism (1922)
This is something I had been meaning to cite since Friday, when the subject of Althouse-hating Madison radical Jim Shankman’s “distributivism” came up in Dan Riehl’s interview. Shankman’s particular species of opposition to market capitalism is nothing new under the sun. Indeed, as Mises shows, it is a fundamentally medieval concept.
Yet reading Mises is a challenging task: Socialism is more than 500 pages long, and not written in a glib or entertaining style. So it is hardly surprising that, among the many who have read The Road to Serfdom by Mises’s disciple F.A. Hayek, only a comparative handful have gone on to tackle Socialism (my copy of which includes a foreword by Hayek, written in 1978).
In 21st-century America, of course, the language of politics is much different than it was in early 20th-century Europe. When Socialism was first published, the Bolshevik takeover in Russia was only four years old, and various socialist parties were popular and influential. Whereas here and now, any attempt to analyze the American Left’s agenda must avoid the term “socialist,” which is always rejected and condemned as an outrageous accusation by the Left, no matter how socialistic their agenda may actually be.
Nevertheless, the rhetoric of “just” wages and “fair” prices, along with the condemnation of “excess” profit and so forth, has a clear political pedigree and Jim Shankman’s Facebook references to Dorothy Day and Rerum Novarum connect Shankman’s ideology to the “Christian Socialism” that Mises analyzed so astutely nearly 90 years ago.
PREVIOUSLY:
This is a very significant message from Wisconsin pro-union cyberstalker James L. Shankman:
With regards to distributivism, it is very mainstream catholic theology. You could ask James O’Keefe, who says he is personally inspired by G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton is the main political philosopher of distributivism. The last couple pages of What’s Wrong With the World are instructive here. Someone equated distributivism with liberation theology, which is not the case. Distributivism is the stance that the church endorses AGAINST liberation theology, and you can see this in the theology of pope benedict during his disputes with the liberation theologians.
You see from this paragraph that Shankman is not casually or superficially acquainted with the doctrines by which he justifies his radical politics. No, indeed: He appears well-versed in the literature of “distributivism,” cites the works of Chesterton, alludes to Ratzinger. (Although I detect nothing like “distributivism” in Ratzinger’s 1984 “Instruction” against liberation theology, perhaps I’m overlooking something.)
Now, go back and read my Friday post about Shankman’s religious/economic views, including his citing of Rerum Novarum. Also read the commenters disputing Shankman’s interpretation (or my interpretation) of Catholic “social teaching” on economics. The point is that these doctrines are subject to interpretation, and Shankman’s angry radicalism is an interpretation that many Catholics do indeed adopt. (Richard Trumka, for example.)
“Yeah, but Shankman’s just a kook,” many people will say. Indeed, but the specific content of his madness cannot be dismissed as irrelevant. Kook though he may be, Shankman says that his beliefs are “very mainstream Catholic theology.” If he believes that this justifies his threats — “WE WILL F*** YOU UP” — then I suggest we take his beliefs seriously. Before somebody gets hurt.
UPDATE: Mises on ‘Christian Socialism’
Hey, did I call this one or what?
I’d expect online research maestro Dan Riehl is going to have much, much more to tell us about Mr. Shankman.
As soon as Shankman was ID’d as author of the anti-Althouse rant, Dan’s name crossed my mind and within a couple hours he was on the phone with Shankman:
Shankman is currently unemployed, claims to not be a member of a union and says he most often works as a dishwasher when employed. He insists that he does not advocate for violence and in some ways sought to distance himself from his “manifesto,” while also acknowledging authorship. He says he’s done with the issue and was simply giving voice to thoughts and rhetoric he “regularly hears in the street.”
“I’m done with it,” said Shankman . . .
Damn right you’re “done with it,” Jim — just like a cockroach is done feeding on crumbs when somebody turns on the kitchen light.
Go read the rest of Dan Riehl’s interview, and I’ll be back in a few minutes to tell you what’s been going on behind the refrigerator where this roach has been hiding.
UPDATE: On Althouse’s original post, commenter “Mike” wrote:
Kim’s the dean over at Benedictine college, we could always let her know what her son is up to.
That was one little tidbit I checked out last night, but it seemed like a long run for a short slide, so I dropped it and moved on to other things.
However, public records show that Jim Shankman has an address in Atchison, Kansas, and Kimberly Shankman, Ph.D. is dean of Benedictine College, 1020, N. 2nd St., Atchison, Kansas. A conservative, Dr. Shankman has written for the Claremont Institute, and was recently awarded a St. Thomas Aquinas Fellowship from a Catholic educational foundation.
Those who saw Shankman’s now-defunct Facebook page (see commenters at The Underground Conservative) say it indicated that Dr. Shankman was, indeed, his mother. If so, one wonders what went so horribly wrong in Jim Shankman’s life that the son of an eminent conservative Catholic academic became a ranting moonbat — and itinerant dishwasher — in Madison, Wisconsin.
More to the story? You betcha!
UPDATE II: Longtime readers know that, as a student of Mises and Hayek (and Calvinistic Protestant), I have from time to time criticized the Catholic “social justice” teachings of Rerum Novarum, Centesimus Annus, etc.
Grant that the Christian in business should think in terms of the Golden Rule, striving to deal righteously with his fellow man; nevertheless this obligation does not create “worker’s rights” in the sense that secular liberals conceive that term. And if the AFL-CIO is an agent of divine Providence, it is so only in the sense that Jehovah employed the Babylonians to smite ancient Israel. A wrathful God sometimes uses the heathen to chastise His straying children. But I digress . . .
It is interesting, in light of Catholic “social justice” theory, to find this in Dan Riehl’s interview with Jim Shankman:
While denying he is a socialist, or Marxist, Shankman labeled his economic ideology “distributionist.” He believes we should divide the wealth of America across the population “so that everyone can buy a house,” feed and support themselves, starting over from there based upon some concept modeled somewhat after Catholic charity.
Well, that was a quick Google search away:
Distributism (also known as distributionism, distributivism) is a third-way economic philosophy formulated by such Catholic thinkers as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc to apply the principles of Catholic social teaching articulated by the Catholic Church, especially in Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum and more expansively explained by Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Quadragesimo Anno.
So you see that Shankman’s adoption of this dangerous (and I dare say heretical) Catholic doctrine was what inspired his obscenity-filled rant against Ann Althouse: “God told me to f*** you up!”
(Aside: How did Chesterton get mixed up in this daft scheme? And what would G.K. say to find Shankman his self-proclaimed disciple?)
From Mises we learn that, ultimately, “Christian socialism” is . . . socialism. So it is just a different sort of good intentions that pave the proverbial road to a familiar and unfortunate destination. (“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man . . .”)
His mind darkened by this “distributionist” folly, Shankman ranted that advocates of economic liberty are “unkind, unChristian and anti-American.” As though those grim Calvinists who sought to make this land a “shining city on a hill” were un-American, you see.
But come back in a bit. I’m not finished yet.
UPDATE III: Invariably, my many Catholic readers (who so often praise my writings on family issues) are offended when my aim is directed at their church’s “social justice” teaching. It would be a sin of omission on my part, however, if I did not speak out against this dangerous doctrine that seems to have filled Jim Shankman with so much self-righteous rage against Ann Althouse.
It would be wrong to bite my tongue merely to flatter those who, with “itching ears,” will not “endure sound doctrine.”
Now, I’m not blaming Leo XIII or JPII for the Madison dishwasher’s anti-Althouse rant, nor saying that any other Catholics is complicit in Shankman’s spectacular application of the New Motherf–ing Tone. I do say, however, that Shankman’s left-wing “distributionist” mentality is a plausible interpretation of Rerum Novarum, and that therefore we ought to take seriously his demented beliefs.
The Catholic/Marxists who propagated heretical “liberation theology” also thought themselves divinely sanctioned to support the Sandinistas. They were taken seriously, and not dismissed as mere “kooks.” Yet how many American Catholics today support the Obama agenda on similar “social justice” grounds as Shankman? Tens of millions, I’d estimate.
“Jeez, what a pathetic loser,” Professor Reynolds says of Shankman, and Jim Hoft says, “The dude is nuts.”
As with Jared Loughner’s Zeitgeist obsession, it’s too easy to dismiss as insignificant or irrelevant the particular content of a crackpot’s madness, especially when so many seemingly “sane” people believe the same crazy things. Not every “social justice” fanatic posts hate-filled rants on the Internet, and not every 9/11 Truther turns into Jared Loughner (or Charlie Sheen). But if ideas have consequences, as Richard Weaver taught us, then bad ideas have bad consequences — Judge Maryann Sumi’s restraining order, to cite an obvious example.
The Religious Left collects millions of dollars to propagate its heretical heaven-on-earth political gospel, poisoning the minds of gullible young people like Jim Shankman.
And yet not one of them ever hit my tip jar. Talk about “social injustice” — I’m a father of six. It’s for the children!
UPDATE IV: From the cache of Shankman’s Facebook page:
The source is quoted accurately, if out of context: Leo XIII’s so-called “just wage” doctrine from Rerum Novarum:
45. Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.
To explain what’s wrong with that, as basic economics, would require a long argument. But it is wrong: There is no “just wage,” nor is there a “fair price.”
Most of you are reading this blog for free — a relative handful of readers ever hit the tip jar — but this does not make me “the victim of force and injustice.” I’m just a clueless chump who hasn’t figured out a better scheme to monetize the full value of his blog traffic. If I ever find a way to de-chump myself, I’ll let you know in my final post before jetting off to my private island in the Caribbean.
But in the meantime, hit the tip jar, Ye Tight-Fisted Overlords of the Internet. I’m sure Mises or Hayek addressed themselves to this “just wage” fallacy somewhere. Maybe one of the oppressed peasants in the comments will link to a relevant treatise, just as one commenter already tipped me to this Facebook item.
by Smitty
Concerning the punkish online behavior of a couple of people she’s encountered in the last three weeks:
Even if you have no human kindness at all and care only about yourself, how can a moment of passion be worth all the damage you do to your reputation? Do you think a potential employer who reads something like what we discussed here and here would consider hiring you? You may think you are really just a harmless guy with “good politics,” having some fun, and you may not care at all whether you scare me or not, but you are hurting yourself.
The cultural divide could not be more stark. The young lack all capacity to step back and view their lives from a distance. They tend toward the momentary: morally, mentally, sexually, professionally. The scope of their vision doesn’t really extend past the next SMS message on the phone.
This is the fruit of Progress. The opposite of liberty is dependency. These young idiots are secure in their faith that an exception will be found for any transgression. The Government God will never actually punish; an exception will always be found, or the violated rule ignored. The Government God is all mushy sentimentality, and always gives another subsidy. Justice is a capitalistic notion, carried out by the Satanic market. This is why the idolatrous, Satanic markets must be stripped of their capitalistic priests and made subservient to the Government God. Government God will re-distribute the seized goods of the capitalistic priests in accordance with notions of Real Lawful Justice.
Past all that sad farce, these kids need de-programming, if that is possible. They’ve been enslaved by Progressives and are totally confused. They badly need to be held accountable for their actions, allowed to fail, and permitted to let hunger and want teach them the value of things in the real world.
Update: As a case in point, via Drudge, we have a brawl over rule-breaking on the subway in New York:
In the video, which contains profanity, starts with some arguing. Then one woman says, “What kind of animals eat on the train?”
The woman eating the spaghetti responds, “What kind of fat ****** looks like you?”
The back-and forth continues until both women stand up and get in each other’s faces. Then the spaghetti went flying and the two passengers start a physical confrontation. Other people on the broke up the fight but the back and forth continues until the video ends.
The notion of there being any enforceable rules eludes the spaghetti eater. Had a suitable authority figure been the one to call her out, it would have been raaaaacism, and Al Sharpton would have been conjured to plead the unfairness of the situation to a slobbering media.
Witness that media stunned at the lack of looting in Japan after the recent tragedy. Just to be perfectly clear, I have plenty of heathen relatives in my own extended family who have, in their own way, been the spaghetti-eater in the subway equation. There is not shred #1 of racial specificity in the cultural problem at hand.
What to do? I was walking back from a workout the other day, and my T-shirt had come un-tucked from my gym shorts. A very junior petty officer, walking the other way, said “Check your shirt.”
I replied “You’re right. Thanks,” tucked the T-shirt into my gym shorts. Completely minor point of uniformity, but the junior sailor was correct and my place was to shut up and stand corrected.
UPDATE 10:55 p.m.: The terroristic screed against University of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse was posted on a Web account of Madison resident Jim Shankman. In a Facebook status update about 9 p.m. this evening, Shankman wrote:
Because of a right-blogosphere campaign to silence me, I have been forced to commit Identity Suicide. I have never supported or advocated violence for any purpose other than self-defense against terror attacks by the armed wing of the American Right….
A “campaign to silence” you, Jim? And what was your obscenity-filled rant against Professor Althouse?
What’s that? You’ll have to speak up, Jim. We can’t hear you for all those crickets chirping. (Hat-tip: Sarah W.)
UPDATE 12:15 a.m ET Friday: The Underground Conservative has info on the Madison “housing cooperative” associated with Shankman.
Linked by Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit and Bryan Preston at PJ Tatler — thanks! One of the lessons here, by the way, goes back to the outing of anti-Palin blogger Jesse Griffin: You can blog anything you want, under any name you want, but if you think you can do attack-blogging anonymously, you’d better think twice. All it took was one e-mail tip that “Gryphen” was Griffin — a kindergarten teaching assistant — and as fast as you could say, “screen-cap those archives,” it was over.
Speaking of which: Just got off the phone with Dan Riehl, who just got off the phone with Shankman.
PREVIOUSLY (6:39 p.m. ET):
The quoted phrase in the headline is from Professor Glenn Reynolds, reacting to the terroristic screed that someone in Madison, Wisconsin, unleashed against Professor Ann Althouse.
By all means, please go read the whole thing and then tell me that the rhetoric of “workers’ rights” is not a discourse of hateful envy that poisons the souls of young people who succumb to its siren song.
We have seen this before in American history. The lesson is a bit too close to home — and a bit too fresh in memory — for me to let it pass unmentioned. The privileged never surrender privilege willingly. They employ demagogic appeals to rally others to their self-interested “cause” by demonizing those who dare challenge them. And if someone gets hurt in the process, if some of those duped by the demagoguery decide to turn wrathful words into violent deeds . . .
Madison has become the Neshoba County, Mississippi, of this season. “Workers’ rights” is the Jim Crow of 2011 and government-employee unions are the new Klan.
Yeah. I wrote that. And put it on the Internet.
The New Tone: Because It’s Not ‘Hate’ When Liberals Do It!
UPDATE: Bryan Preston explains why it’s difficult for Althouse to bring this case to the police:
All it will take is one officer involved in the case who is a bit more of a union man than an police officer, and you have a potential problem.
Hmmm. Another parallel to Neshoba County, you see: Because the sheriff’s department there in 1964 included Klan members, the law protected the lawless and no one would protect the innocent. Maybe someone should bring in the U.S. Department of Justice and . . .
Oh, wait. Never mind. Bobby Kennedy, he ain’t.
UPDATE II: The Underground Conservative asserts that the author of the anti-Althouse manifesto is Jim Shankman. And I’d expect online research maestro Dan Riehl is going to have much, much more to tell us about Mr. Shankman.
UPDATE III: Linked by Dad29 — thanks! By the way, Dad29’s reference to Mississippi Burning reminds me of how much I hated that movie, which oversimplified the actual story to turn it into a moralistic melodrama. A native Atlantan of Alabama ancestry, I’ve spent my whole life under the stereotypical shadow of movies like Mississippi Burning and Deliverance. But if you complain about such media distortions, you’ll next be accused of being pro-lynching and here’s never an end to it.
UPDATE IV: Underground Conservative has a photo of Shankman and his friend, Anna Louise Ogden-Nussbaum. While I have not independently verified the ID of Shankman as the author of that screed, there is certainly evidence that Shankman and Odgen-Nussbaum are lefties. On March 11, Ogden-Nussbaum posted a thank-you on a Facebook link about calls for a “general strike” in Wisconsin.
UPDATE V: Death threats against a Republican state senator in Wisconsin.
UPDATE VI: Ogden-Nussaum’s leftist leanings can be seen in a December 2002 story in the Madison Capital Times about more than 500 local residents who signed a “Not in Our Name” ad against the Iraq war. Here is a January 2003 press release from “Not in Our Name” Madison. In case you didn’t know, “Not in Our Name” is an anti-war front group established by Clark Kissinger, ex-SDS national leader and member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a Maoist sect.
UPDATE VII: More info: Shankman and Ogden-Nussbaum are evidently co-proprietors of a Web site called “Free University of the General Strike.” The concept of the “general strike” (and the allied concept of “direct action”) are associated with anarcho-syndicalism, the chief U.S. proponents of which were the IWW.
So it seems that what we’ve got here is a couple of 21st-century Wobblies.
The mind reels . . .
UPDATE VIII: If this terroristic screed results in criminal charges against Ogden-Nussbaum, she could beat the rap with an insanity plea. Madison Capital Times, Aug. 30, 2004:
Anna Ogden-Nussbaum took part in one of the protests that produced many arrests. She rode her bicycle in a “Critical Mass ride” opposing the Republican National Convention and was detained with more than 200 others, her mother, Jenie Ogden, said in Madison this morning.
Ogden said that her daughter, who turned 21 when while being held in a lockup in lower Manhattan, was charged with disorderly conduct and parading without a permit.
“Your honor, my client cannot be held responsible for her actions. She was clearly experiencing an acute episode of Post-Traumatic Bush Derangement Syndrome . . .”
UPDATE IX: Ogden-Nussbaum’s mother is also a kook lefty. Anna’s lawyer can use this as evidence of hereditary moonbatitis.
Linked by The Lonely Conservative and at Piece of Work in Progress — thanks! Memeorandum has more, including the Volokh Conspiracy.
. . . to get her fair share of abuse, but even Ann Althouse can’t always get what she wants.
She found a woman holding a sign that said, “Please don’t teabag our children.” (Question: Did that woman have any children of her own? Or was the phrase “our children” employed in the progressive, collectivist sense?)
She also interviewed the shockingly scruffy doctor providing notes for excused absences. (Wanna bet he’d also be happy to write you a prescription for medical marijuana?)
And she got some good video of the crowd with soundtrack by Andrew Breitbart. (Andrew’s speeches can be a mind-blowing experience.)
Via Instapundit.
UPDATE: Troglopundit has got some photos, including one with a protester’s sign: “Elections matter: Now get back to work!”
Ann Althouse: “After all those efforts to paint Tea Partiers as using violent images and rhetoric, these pictures from Madison have got to hurt.” It’s also going to hurt that Democrats are issuing “demands” like … uh, hostage-takers. But as Ace of Spades says, there are times when liberals find a “Climate of Hate” useful.
Here’s an Associated Press video report:
Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard points out the irony of the union-orchestrated protests:
According to the state of Wisconsin, the average teacher salary in Wisconsin is $49,093 annually. (With benefits, the average total compensation is $77,857.) With 190 school days per year, Wisconsin public education employees make about $258 per day. So in an effort to avoid contributing to their own pensions and funding 6 percent more of their own health care premiums, teachers have taken unpaid leave to protest and have given up nearly $500 – so far. . . . . What’s more, Wisconsin teachers pay as much as $1100 each year in compulsory union dues. If the legislation passes, they will no longer be required to pay those dues – returning that money to their own pockets.
Maybe the teachers need a refresher course in math. And if Democrats and their union-goon allies think they’re going to win the P.R. battle in Wisconsin, perhaps they ought to heed Neil at Eternity Matters:
Unemployment is stuck at 10% — which means non-union unemployment is much higher — and they think this will improve their reputations?
Poorly performing teachers close at least 15 school districts to go fight for their entitlements? Yeah, that’ll garner a lot of sympathy.
Obama’s campaign arm is in the middle of this? Shocking.
The unemployed, the under-employed and regular folks trying to pay their bills aren’t likely to have a lot of love for people who (a) have jobs, (b) work at taxapayer expense, (c) get paid more money than the average taxpayer, and (d) go on strike because they don’t want to pay a dime toward their own generous benefits.
UPDATE: MSNBC’s obnoxious Ed Schultz broadcast live from the mob scene in Madison last night. Michelle Malkin has compiled important economic facts about the Wisconsin strike. As I explain over at The American Spectator:
It is obvious that if voters and taxpayers pay attention to the facts, Walker wins and the srikers lose . . .
Gov. Walker is being compared to Calvin Coolidge, and that’s an enormous compliment. President Obama and Democrats have placed themselves squarely on the wrong side of the issue.