The folly of reclaiming slurs

I was a member of the Gay-Straight Alliance for the two years I attended my first college and at one meeting we had a very frank conversation about the word "fag."

It turns out there is a segment of the gay population that uses the word in the same manner a segment of the American black population uses the word "nigger."

A young man who in my memory looks exactly like Larry B. Scot's character in Revenge of the Nerds spoke up and said that means he could use either of them if he wanted to, but he found them both offensive and vile and refuses to do so.

I think of that young man every time I hear some overly-confident white progressive claim that the issue is settled and black people are free to use the racial slurs like the term "nigger" without criticism. It's usually summed up as being a word that black people took from racists and we're told it's "empowering" for black people to say it. It may even be a term of endearment.

That position reveals several things. The first is that the speaker is unable to distinguish their own personal value judgement from metaphysical truth. How someone could take such an obvious personal opinion and  confuse it with a provable fact is beyond me.

The second is that they believe some people are able to speak for entire groups, including groups that people do not choose to join and members of that group who haven't even been born yet. This is complete hogwash. Only individuals can reveal their own personal preferences.

Readers have no doubt noticed my decision not to write "The N-word" in place of the word "nigger." That's because I wish to have a straightforward adult conversation about a real topic.

Reginald Vaughn Finley, who's known online as the Infidel Guy, is one individual who doesn't approve of the word. In a 2007 video he said he'd like to use the real word to make his case against it, but was concerned he would be blocked from YouTube. He criticized the idea that it was really a term of endearment.

"Why is it the case that when you get mad at somebody who's black the N-word flies out of your mouth like it's an attack... that kind of proves that you know it's negative."

Here's the situation. We have an ugly, ugly word that has no place in normal conversation, but at the same time well-educated progressives want to give black people permission to use it, even though they know full well some black people find it deeply offensive when anyone says it.

When I hear them make this case I picture that young man, forever frozen in 2001, being lectured at by a white liberal that he his opinion doesn't count and he needs to endure racial slurs because some other black people think it's fun to say.
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Some local food is really good

Last year I wrote a post that defended the buy-local movement on purely aesthetic grounds, saying if someone enjoys knowing precisely where their food comes from, it's great they can pursue that as a hobby.

A few days ago I wrote about Tyler Cowen's new book on food. In an NPR interview about the book, Cowen was asked how his criticism of the "virtue" of local food jives with his love of eating regional food when traveling. He responded:

A lot of local food is very tasty. I'm very happy to eat it. I just don't think it's the same thing as saving the world.

I want to make sure my position on this is crystal clear. There's a lot of dishes served in local restaurants that are made in small batches of a high quality. There are cheeses, jams and breads made by hand that come out better than some of the mass-produced versions.

My qualm with this is that it's an extremely expensive way to eat. Some of the local food is only marginally better - and some is no better at all. There's a spectrum here.

I was at a recent gardening event and they had a tasting booth to compare local and supermarket foods. It was billed as a way to prove to people that local produce tastes better, but the game was rigged. Everyone knew which was which before they tasted it. They compared local apple cider to apple juice, which is unfair. I grabbed a pair of carrot sticks and switched them around on myself and couldn't tell the difference.

Some local food certainly is a high quality product. However, it's rather silly to suggest that the way to save the environment and improve the economy is to ask everyone, including poor people, to buy high-end furniture, clothing and automobiles. The same logic holds true for food.

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Why I tolerate homophobes

Nick, the Narrator in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, opened the book with this unforgettable remark:

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had."

Just as Nick couldn't let go of that advice, I too have kept it in mind over the years, especially when I encounter people who are intolerant of gays.

I grew up in the 1990's when it was still acceptable to say "fag" in casual conversation. It wasn't out of malice; it's something we said without a second though. There wasn't something evil or sinister about my generation, or those that came before us. It's just how things were when we grew up.

Until middle school I was opposed to gays in purely hypothetical terms, since I hadn't met anyone who was openly gay. It was a combination of watching The Kids in the Hall episodes over and over and realizing I was on the same side of an issue as the Ku Klux Klan that caused me to abandon my position and accept gays.

Opposing gays was the default position when I was growing up. That's not the case any more and the younger generations have done a great job of being open and accepting. However, if they had been born in the 1970's or 1980's, a lot of those individuals would have been on the other side.

Some young people today still grow up in communities that treat gays cruelly. However, I feel the proper way to deal with these unfortunate people is with understanding, not hate. The way some social conservatives talks about gays is truly awful and I would never defend their statements.

But at the same time, I am not as willing to condemn the person along with the statements. A lot of those people didn't have the same advantages when they grew up, and their contempt for gays is a product of their upbringing and lack of exposure to critical thinking.

For example, the working title for the Beastie Boy's amazing album License to Ill was "Don't Be A Faggot." That was 1986, and the group has rewritten a lot of their own lyrics since then as they started to "get it."

Just like the Beastie Boys, I was born at a time where I got to be on both sides of the gay rights cause. I had an unthinking aversion to gays as a child and was the token straight guy at my first college's gay-straight alliance. We are all products of our environments.

Earlier tonight I was listening to a pop-rock YouTube play list and came across this song high school student Jarrod Matthew sang to what appears to be a far-away romance. He changed some of the lyrics to be about Sunny, his beloved. It is absolutely sweet, endearing and heartwarming.



When I realized that Sunny was a boy, it didn't change a thing about how this video made me feel. It was no less tender or romantic.

Yet, I know there are people* out there who would have shut it off the second they realized what was happening. I don't want to sound condescending, but how can you feel anything but pity for people who can't take joy in witnessing beautiful acts like this because they were brought up intolerant?

As Nick's father said, whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.

*Granted, few of them would want to listen to a Hellogoodbye cover song.
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Harris vs. Hayek

I'm used to seeing Friedrich Hayek as a foil to John Maynard Keynes these days, but after turning some thoughts in my head lately about science and value judgments, I think he belongs in the arena with Sam Harris.

I have heard Harris argue that science can help us choose what we ought to value, a position dangerously close to saying science can rank any and all values - and Steven Novella has recently stated that Harris indeed holds that view.

I've added emphasis to what Hayek wrote on page 99 of The Road to Serfdom on why specialist intellectuals are making a mistake when they support central planning:

In our predilections and interests we are all in some measure specialists. And we all think that our personal order of values is not merely personal but that in a free discussion among rational people we would convince the others that ours is the right one. The lover of the countryside who wants above all that its traditional appearance should be preserved and that the blots already made by industry on its fair face should be removed, no less than the health enthusiast who wants all the picturesque but unsanitary old cottages cleared away, or the motorist who wishes the country cut up by big motor roads, the efficiency fanatic who desires the maximum of specialization and mechanization no less than the idealist who for development of personality wants to preserve as many independent craftsmen as possible, all know that their aim can be fully achieved only by planning – and they all want planning for that reason. But, of course, the adoption of the social planning for which they clamor can only bring out the concealed conflict between their aims.

Hayek's case against the objective truth of values leads me to two conclusions:

First, assuming Novella's summary of Harris's perspective is accurate and he believes that science can determine what values are universally superior, than Harris is committing scientism - using the trappings of science to make claims which are not scientific in nature.

As Hayek said in The Pretense of Knowledge:

There is as much reason to be apprehensive about the long run dangers created in a much wider field by the uncritical acceptance of assertions which have the appearance of being scientific as there is with regard to the problems I have just discussed. What I mainly wanted to bring out by the topical illustration is that certainly in my field, but I believe also generally in the sciences of man, what looks superficially like the most scientific procedure is often the most unscientific, and, beyond this, that in these fields there are definite limits to what we can expect science to achieve. This means that to entrust to science - or to deliberate control according to scientific principles - more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.

So not only is Harris wrong, but he is playing with fire.

Second, the illusion that values can be objectively quantified and ranked is mandatory for anyone who believes in central planning. An individual who wants to march under a red banner with modern day Marxists must take Harris's side in the issue, for how could a central planner decide which elements of society to prioritize without a concrete, indisputable list of values?
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