The New Clarion

Myrhaf

I’m reading The Collected Short Stories of Maxim Gorky and The Lower Depths and Other Plays by Maxim Gorky. Gorky was a communist in Russia and an avid supporter of the revolution. He was also a great writer—quite fascinating, though a naturalist who focused on “the lower depths” of society.

Gorky wrote, “For me, I have no other than ‘Man.’ Man and Man alone, I believe, is the creator of all things and all ideas; it is he who accomplishes miracles, and in in the future, will become master of all the forces of nature. That which is most beautiful in nature has been created by the labor of Man, and his intelligent hand. The history of art, of the sciences, of technology teaches us that all out thoughts, our ideas emanate from the process of Labor. I bow down to Man.”

Other than the Marxism in the “process of Labor” line, I admire this statement. It would be reviled today by both the environmentalist left and the religious right; that’s good enough for me!

Gorky was poisoned by Stalin’s secret police in 1936.

I’m also reading Elizabeth and Essex by Lytton Strachey, an entertaining history of two drama queens. There was no internet or TV then, so Elizabeth and her court entertained themselves by creating drama in their lives. Elizabeth’s father, King Henry VIII, cut off her mother Anne Boleyn’s head when Elizabeth was three years old. “Daddy, where’s mommy?” That might explain why she never married—she knew what kings were capable of doing to a wife.

I read history always looking for play ideas. Elizabeth and Essex have been dramatized before, but the period might serve as a backdrop to a romantic drama.

Mike N

I just got 3 non-fiction books as gifts and am currently reading It’s the Sun, Not Your SUV By John Zyrkowski with subtitle “CO2 Won’t Destroy the Earth” with a forward by Peter Dietze who was an IPCC Reviewer. I’m finishing chapter one right now which looks at the so-called alternative, green energy sources, solar, wind, etc. The 2nd chapter asks “Why Buy This Book?” and intends to answer three questions:

1. What will I learn?
2. How will I learn it?
3. What does it mean?

I’m intrigued because these questions are both metaphysical and epistemological in nature, contexts that need to be addressed. I look forward to the rest of this short, essentialized book—98 pages of text followed by references and two appendixes.

Bill Brown

State of Fear by Michael Crichton: people have recommended this book to me for years but I just couldn’t imagine a decent plot around debunking global warming theory. It’s been much better (read much more compelling) than I expected and the graphs and refutations aren’t distracting. I can’t imagine anyone reading it and being convinced about the global warming hype machine, but it’s nice to think that a major author got this published.

The Art of Non-Fiction by Ayn Rand and On Writing Well by William Zinsser: these seemed due for a re-read now that I’m doing more serious (and rigorous) blogging.

The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto: I just got back from Ethiopia two weeks ago—I was adopting a baby boy from there—and I couldn’t understand why the country was so poor. Everywhere I looked people were working hard, small businesses seemed to be flourishing, and my agency contacts there assured me that government wasn’t oppressive. I’ve mulled all of this over ever since and I think de Soto’s book (subtitled “Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else”) might hold the key to unraveling the mystery. We shall see.

Authentic Happiness by Martin E.P. Seligman: I’m re-reading this after seeing it cited by Jean Moroney in a newsletter. I’m just looking for other practical tips to bolster my level of happiness.

Economics for Real People by Gene Callahan: this is available free online and I’m looking for a good primer on Austrian economics before I take the plunge and read Ludwig von Mises’ seminal works. I’ve tried to read Human Action several times before but always failed for lack of motivation. Perhaps after reading Callahan’s breezy introduction, I will feel like I want to read the deeper tomes.

Bill Brown sent me an email proposing we do a group blog. I thought about it a few days, then agreed. After that we spent a somewhat agonizing week trying to think up a name for this blog.

I noted that blogs can have quirky names. Little Green Footballs, for instance; the name has nothing to do with the content. But we were not comfortable with a meaningless concrete. We wanted a concrete that has an abstract meaning.

A lot of names were rejected. Western Twilight, for instance, though a beautiful image, did not work because it evokes defeat. It’s too much old school conservative, like Whittaker Chambers, who thought he was on the losing side in the west, or James Burnham, who wrote Suicide of the West. In the long run I think it looks good for the west — although I do have my moments of darkness…

We finally agreed on The New Clarion. Clarion is defined in dictionary.com as:

–adjective

1. clear and shrill: the clarion call of a battle trumpet.

–noun

2. an ancient trumpet with a curved shape.

3. the sound of this instrument.

4. any similar sound.

Clarion evokes a call to arms. It is forward-looking and optimistic. We’re fighting for the future of freedom here. We believe it is important to fight for our values and we believe it is practical. This blog is not an ivory tower exercise, playing games with ideas detached from real life. We understand that ideas have consequences and that by speaking out we can help change the world. This blog is meant to be both idealistic and effective in reality. So clarion evokes the opposite of the defeatism in Western Twilight.

The word new is also important. Objectivism rejects traditional morality. It opposes the altruism of both the socialist left and the religious right and upholds a new morality, rational self-interest. Really, Ayn Rand’s entire philosophy is new and revolutionary, from her theory of concepts to her theory of art.

Capitalism, as Ayn Rand put it in the title of her book on politics, is the unknown ideal. If we ever achieve undiluted laissez-faire capitalism, then it will bring about a new society. An unfettered free market will produce dynamic change at a pace and scale as yet unseen. Everything will be new, in ways we can’t imagine. To be a radical for capitalism is most definitely not to be a conservative or traditionalist.

It is ironic that the socialists have appropriated forward-looking terms such as progressive and liberal. Nothing could be more regressive than state control of the economy. Both socialism and conservatism originated in the 19th century as reactions to the most liberating and revolutionary force in history: capitalism. Even in the partial, fettered forms in which it has been known, capitalism has changed civilization and greatly improved the standard of living throughout the world. Those who long to hamper, regulate or destroy capitalism are the true reactionaries.

The New Clarion, then, is a revolutionary call to arms, a place to fight for the unknown ideal of capitalism. But don’t get me wrong — not every post will be a full-throated cry atop the barricades. There is room for posting funny videos from YouTube. (Like Afro Ninja. About the funniest damn thing I’ve seen.) In general the emphasis will be on politics and culture. This blog is not the place for either personal diary stuff unrelated to a philosophic principle or pure philosophy such as an essay on measurement omission in concept formation. It should be a place for examining events of the world around us in the light of philosophic principle.

According to Paul Boutin we just made a mistake starting this blog:

Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.

Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.

I have no idea what Flickr or Twitter are. I’m so 2007! I don’t like being told, just after we got this blog going, that we made a mistake.

Boutin makes another point:

Scroll down Technorati’s list of the top 100 blogs and you’ll find personal sites have been shoved aside by professional ones. Most are essentially online magazines: The Huffington Post. Engadget. TreeHugger. A stand-alone commentator can’t keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day.

Although this blog will never have pro writers cranking out 30 posts a day, it is a group blog. Maybe we would get Boutin’s seal of approval for that. So far we have Bill Brown, Dismuke and me; we intend to get many more bloggers. The idea is to create lots of content that will increase traffic more than an individual blogger could do. We’d like to get enough participants so that no one blogger feels pressure to produce content. Over at Myrhaf I  was getting over 200 hits a day; this blog should blow past that number pretty fast. I hope.

Boutin seems to think that blogging puts one in competition with huge blogs like Huffington Post. I don’t think of this blog as being in competition with anyone. It’s a place for a group of Objectivists to sound off on politics and culture. As Dr. Peikoff said about his radio show, it’s nice to have to platform from which to speak out on current events. No one has to read this blog, but if people do, then great.

I’m old enough to be still astonished by the internet. My greatest traffic day over at Myrhaf was when I was linked to by Michelle Malkin and I drew around 1,000 visits. Before the internet I had not expressed my ideas to 1,000 people in my life. You had to be a professional to communicate to that many people. The internet has opened up possibilities for the non-professional.

I was surprised to hear Yaron Brook in “Cultural Movements: Creating Change” be less than enthusiastic about the internet. He notes that people are not reading Atlas Shrugged on the internet. While this is true, I would blame short attention spans on modern education more than anything.

Objectivists have criticized online forums as a bad place to learn Objectivism. This is true, and the same can be said for blogs. The only way to learn any philosophy is to read the philosopher’s works, and that will certainly be more demanding than posts fired off on a blog. The internet in its forms must be kept in its place. Sturgeon’s Law says that 90% of everything is crap, and as blogs have no professional editors weeding out the awful, that number is probably higher for them.

I must also point out that as we live more and more of our lives before a computer screen, we should remember to get away from the computer. Go outside and take a walk. Breathe some fresh air.

Boutin ends his not-entirely-serious piece with an example of the prose people use at Twitter, whatever that is:

@WiredReader: Kill yr blog. 2004 over. Google won’t find you. Too much cruft from HuffPo, NYT. Commenters are tards. C u on Facebook?

If that is the future, count me out. I promise you, we will write the old-fashioned way here at The New Clarion. We might make mistakes, but we will strive to write prose that would make Strunk and White happy.