What Causes am I For?
My Positions
Saying what you’re against isn’t a substitute for a positive vision of what you’re for. And since nature abhors a vacuum, in the absence of a positive vision from those who believe in a free society, demagogues fill the void and political extremes—whether from the right or the left—rise up. I saw it in Russia under Vladimir Putin. And I’m now seeing it in America too.
All right, so here is what I am for:
Honesty-Humility
From Wikipedia:
Honesty-Humility has four subscales:
Sincerity – this subscale measures a person's (un)willingness to be manipulative or dishonest in their dealings with other people in order to achieve a desired outcome. High scorers are unwilling to be dishonest or manipulative towards others.
Fairness – this subscale measures (un)willingness to cheat or steal in order to get ahead, as well as people's tendency to use fraud, be corrupt, or take advantage of others. High scorers have integrity and behave in a manner that treats all parties fairly and equitably.
Greed Avoidance – this scale measures the value a person places on things like wealth, status, and expensive "toys". Low scorers wish to display their money and luxury, whereas high scorers are less concerned with obtaining wealth and status.
Modesty – this scale measures a person's beliefs about him/herself in relation to others—high scorers see themselves as "no better" than anyone else, whereas low scorers feel they deserve special treatment and more respect than others
Everyone I feel close to is high in this trait. My sense is that every President in this century has been low in this trait.
Actually, talking about it as a “trait” makes it sound hard-wired. Maybe we should call it a virtue instead. I think that honesty-humility and other virtues can be cultivated as people encounter different role models and experiences. I would like to see us work on ways to increase honesty-humility and be less deferential toward people who are low in this trait.
Religious Rituals
I am in favor of religious rituals that honor birth, puberty, marriage, and death. I believe that such rituals provide people with a sense of community and continuity.
Thick, Multi-generational Families
I am in favor of families with many close cousins and grandchildren. People should be sharing pictures of their families, not dating profiles.
Also, my reading of anthropology is that we are better off if people marry outside of their close family. And we are better off if people are monogamous.
Family gatherings are not necessarily easy. They can be stressful. Deal with it.
Profit-seeking businesses
Profits are a symptom of sustainable patterns of specialization and trade. They indicate good use of resources. Profit-seeking organizations depend on customers, and they are accountable to them. In contrast, non-profits sponge off of donors, and governments extract resources from taxpayers.
People who regard profit-seeking as immoral and working for non-profits or government as morally superior have it exactly backwards.
Cultural Evolution
Society gets better by a process of evolution. We need to attempt experiments, evaluate results carefully, keep what works, and discard failed experiments and outmoded practices.
Our world is complex, so that evaluating the results of social experiments is increasingly difficult. I think that some of our experiments with sexual behavior, gambling, and recreational drug use are not working well. Repressive alternatives could be worse, but I think we ought to take stock of how these experiments are working, accounting for how they affect different people. Not everyone is skilled at managing short-term risks.
A Constitutional Order
Government power is readily abused. The abuse can take place in the context of a dictatorship. It can also take place in the context of a society with free elections. The American founders’ idea of using checks and balances is on the right track. The specific institutions may need to be updated, given the way that our economy and our media have evolved. As you know, I have proposed a COO/CA model as a possible update.
A Constitutional order should have limiting principles that constrain government. Unfortunately, many of the clauses in the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights have long since been forgotten or emasculated. What remains of the Commerce Clause, or Powers Reserved to the States, or Powers Reserved to the People? We may not want to return to strict originalism, but it might help to have a conscious debate about what should be in our Constitutional order.
No Constitutional order is self-sustaining. We have to understand it and work to maintain it.
An Intellectual Prestige Hierarchy
An organization or group can have a hierarchy based on prestige or one based on dominance. In a prestige hierarchy, those lower down look up to those higher up with admiration and respect. In a dominance hierarchy, those lower down look at those higher up with fear and resentment.
Our intellectual institutions, notably universities, ought to be prestige hierarchies. Instead, the social justice movement, using DEI and its related dogmas, has transformed these institutions into dominance hierarchies. This is dysfunctional in many ways. It reduces the respect for truth. It reduces the respect for elites. We need to try to restore the role of merit and truth-seeking in our intellectual institutions.
I suspect that Mr. Kasparov was not looking for such an elaborate response. But our society is stumbling, possibly falling, and there are no easy answers to recover our balance. The quality of our republic depends on the wisdom and character of our people, especially those who have power and influence. There is a lot to work on.
substacks referenced above: @
Regarding constitutional order, one thing that bothers me is that our checks and balances don't work as well anymore. They are designed around competition between different branches or houses of government and between state and federal government, but loyalties these days are more to political party than to those things. Maybe we need more formal checks and balances between the parties. We already have some of that, with many government commissions and legislative committees having members assigned by party. Maybe we need more of that. The thing I *don't * like about that is that it would lock in the two main parties even more. Just throwing out ideas, I have no solutions.
I listen to a lot of Russian-related content, and Kasparov's proposal is part of a broader response to, or backlash against, the reelection of DJT by the expat Russian 'intelligentsia,' of which Kasparov is a prominent member. This backlash is motivated partly, if not mostly, by the expat Russian intelligentsia's response to the Trump administration's shift in policy towards Russia, in particular, the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Russia in an effort (so far mainly fruitless) to clean up the mess of the Ukraine conflict left by the Biden administration. I will address my comments to this response, and to the anti-Putin Russian diaspora more generally, rather than to AK's list of the causes he is for. It is noteworthy that Kasparov, in common with other expat Russians who have been speaking out in recent weeks (WSJ's Trofimov, Kara-Murza), is of partly Jewish ancestry. I am not going to go into the significance of that, except to say it is probably more common than one might think and probably not a coincidence.
I lived in Russia during the early transition period, and that experience permanently cured me of any illusions I may have had about remaking Russia in America's image. To those Russian expats who dream of Russia becoming a democracy, 'free society,' or whatever they want to call it, I say good luck with that, but leave my country out of it. Don't expect America to be either the world's policeman or the world's savior, and to expend blood and treasure rescuing Ukraine or Russia from Putin. We've been trying to do that for more than 3 years now, and it has been a spectacular failure. More importantly, having failed in your efforts to turn Russia into a 'free society,' please spare us and don't redirect your energies into saving freedom and democracy in the United States. Thanks, but no thanks. I see from the first comment that Kasparov apparently has drawn some comparisons between the Putin and Trump 'mob families,' and Russian and American 'oligarchy.' I call BS on that. Russia is not like the United States, but conversely, the United States is not, nor will it ever be, like Russia, Trump notwithstanding.
The only specific objection Kasparov raises in his piece concerns the detainment and effort to deport foreign students like Khalil. Kasparov is careful to say he is against the radical beliefs of students like Khalil, but like Patrick Henry, he wants to defend free speech and objects to Trump's 'authoritarian methods.' Others have commented on this topic in an eloquent and more nuanced way than I could (try Hanania), so I'll just say stuff it, Garry. American Jews already have people like Peter Beinart speaking out in defense of Hamas, so we don't need any additional help from the likes of Garry Vainshtein (see Wiki -- fyi, it was not uncommon for Russians to take their mother's last name when the father's last name was obviously Jewish).