The Academic Left and Holocaust Denial

A story I’ve been trying to
follow very closely over the past few weeks is the ongoing libel trial
in Great Britain centering on the issue of Holocaust denial. David Irving,
a racist who denies the Holocaust happened, is suing Deborah Lipstadt,
a historian and author of the intriguing but spotty “Denying the Holocaust,” for libel.

In her book, Lipstadt argues
that Holocaust denial is not so much about any legitimate attempt at historical
revisionism, but rather just another rhetorical tool for racists and extreme
right wingers to push their anti-Semitic views. She devotes an entire
chapter to Irving’s antics, in which she writes that Irving intentionally
deceives readers about the historical facts surrounding the Holocaust.
Irving, in turn, sued her in a British court for libel, arguing that he
might be mistaken about the Holocaust but he was not intentionally deceptive.

Before getting to the role
of certain elements of the academic left in promulgating and justifying
pseudo-history, it is (unfortunately) necessary to say in the strongest
terms that Lipstadt is exactly right about the Holocaust deniers. Even
labeling what they do as pseudo-history is often too much of a concession.
Like some of the more extreme members of hard-core Maoist groups, the
goal of Holocaust deniers is to paint fascism with a friendlier face,
not to seriously delve into the various genuine historical controversies
that surround the Holocaust (which address why and how the Holocaust happened,
not whether it did).

The problem with Lipstadt’s
book, though, is that she seems to be largely clueless about the role
that epistemological relativism (postmodernism and deconstructionism)
are playing in making pseudo-histories such as Holocaust denial or some
of the more extreme claims of Afrocentric historians gain relatively large
audiences (considering just how devoid they are of any link to reality).
Lipstadt does give these theories passing mention, but concedes far too
much to postmodernists and underestimates the effect they are having on
notions of truth.

Postmodernism/deconstructionism
start off with observations that are accurate enough — since all knowledge
is acquired from observation, there is always the possibility that any
given observation is a product not of reality but of the observer’s bias
or viewpoint. In a trivial example, I happen to be color blind and have
difficulty seeing certain spectra of light which other people have no
problem seeing (or so they tell me). I frequently refer to something as
green only to have my wife, Lisa, correct me that in actuality the object
is red or blue.

From that observation, however,
postmodernism and deconstructionism tend to descend into genuine epistemological
relativism — since all facts depend on biased observers, all facts are
biased and nothing is objectively true.

This bizarre conclusion has
become widely accepted by a significant number of Leftish academics (though
it has also met with vehement opposition by other Leftist academics for
the reasons I’ll get to in a moment), because it is viewed as empowering
to women, minorities and other historically oppressed groups.

Postmodernism made a lot of
inroads in feminist circles, for example, because it provides an easy
way for feminist to debunk the notion that there are biological differences
between men and women. Whereas feminists in the 1960s or 1970s might have
presented arguments showing that most justifications of sexism based on
biology were factually incorrect, the postmodernist feminist academic
of the 1990s argued that nothing written about men or women can be objectively
true, so there can be no objective biological differences between men
and women.

My wife, Lisa, for example,
took a graduate seminar on women and history in which one of the textbooks
argued that there were no such things as “women.” The classification of
human beings into “men” and “women” is completely fallacious and rests
on nothing but political ideas aimed at oppressing women (ironically,
one of the implications of this view, which a surprising number of postmodernist
feminist have embraced, is that it puts them in a pseudo-creationist position
of denying Darwinian evolution, which is transformed into just another
politically oppressive theory disguised as science).

Postmodernism has also been
popular with some Left-oriented individuals, because it provides an easy,
quick method to tear down traditional institutions of liberal society.
The very first class I ever took in college opened with a Leftist English
professor discussing the book he was writing. His book was a deconstruction
of the Constitution of the United States of America. The professor explained
that he believed in a sort of vulgar postmodernism that held that every
book that claimed to argue for a certain point of view could also be proven
to argue for exactly the opposite point of view it claimed. So, for his
book on the U.S. Constitution, the professor was arguing that although
the Constitution appeared to be a forward-looking, if imperfect and flawed,
document advancing the cause of human freedom, in fact it was a reactionary
document whose only purpose was to prevent real freedom from ever taking
hold. And, mind you, this had nothing to do specifically with the US Constitution
but was true of any text.

Which brings us back to David
Irving and Deborah Lipstadt. If, in fact, the US Constitution has no fixed
meaning then neither does Mein Kampf. Irving and his fellow anti-Semites
have done for Mein Kampf what postmodernists have already done for documents
like the Constitution or categories like women — they argue it doesn’t
really mean what it says. Irving and others go on at length, much as my
deconstructionist-minded professor, parsing and analyzing sentences from
Mein Kampf as well as Nazi documents which clearly involve hatred for
Jews and the planning and implementation of the Holocaust, arguing they
really don’t mean what they appear to mean.

No, Irving doesn’t quite go
so far as the postmodernists and argue that Mein Kampf or Nazi documents
are without meaning entirely, but he is helped by the postmodernists claim
that no particular viewpoint is privileged. If they are correct, Irving’s
view of the Holocaust is just as correct as Deborah Lipstadt’s.

Although few people outside
of academia read postmodernist or deconstructionist works (even ordinary
people wanted to, much of it is incoherent), such views do filter down
to the larger society. One place this is seen is the spread of fringe
Afrocentric histories that often make downright bizarre claims (such as
attributing Egyptians with mastery of psychic powers). It is not difficult
to debunk many of the more bizarre Afrocentric claims, but like Holocaust
Denial, such pseudo-histories are usually immune to debunking because
it has a largely political purpose. Teachers and others who advocate teaching
Afrocentric history usually dismiss the historical problems as being secondary
to the more important purpose of raising the self-esteem of African American
children. (And certainly Holocaust Denial and Afrocentrism will not be
the last pseudo-history to try to gain respectability).

To its credit, one of the sources
of opposition to the postmodernist Left has been The Nation which
has published several pieces excoriating both the feminist postmodernist
critique of the biological sciences and the more extreme deconstructionists
such as Stanley Fish. After all, the postmodernist project threatens to
undermine both conservatives and liberal, right wingers and left wingers.
The only way to solve social or political problems is first to understand
what causes them; while folks of different political stripes might disagree
both on what the problem is and what the best way to solve it is, both
conservatives and liberals and libertarians and others work in the same
framework — marshaling evidence for or against some policy. Postmodernism
sweeps away that possibility, by sweeping away the ability to know anything
objectively about the world, and reduces everything to power. It no longer
matters if a voucher system will better educate children or be used as
a right wing assault on common values — neither can be decided objectively,
so all that really matters in the end is the brute political force that
each side can muster.

And that’s probably one of
the more reactionary ideologies in a century filled with reactionary ideologies.

The Steve Jackson Games Raid 10 Years Later

The recent denial of service
attacks that temporarily shut down prominent web site such as Yahoo! have
unleashed the inevitable call for yet more government regulation of cyberspace
as well as a crackdown on cyber criminals. Prosecuting criminals, regardless
of whether they commit their crimes in cyber space or the real world,
is important, but before running off half-cocked, it might help to revisit
an incident where overzealous federal agents almost ruined a completely
innocent private business in their efforts to crack down on cyber crime.

Ten years ago today, Secret
Service agents raided Steve Jackson games, an Austin-based company. Steve
Jackson Games produces a variety of board and role-playing games, including
the Generic Universal Role Playing System, which has a modular approach
to role playing games. They produce a core system which can then be adapted
to just about any role-playing genre imaginable.

As part of developing additional
settings for the game, Steve Jackson Games contracted with writer Loyd
Blankenship to produce a supplement called GURPS Cyberpunk, which gave
rules for role playing games set in the sort of dystopian futurist worlds
created in novels by authors such as William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

In the process of fact-checking
his book to make the scenarios, rules and background information as realistic
and up-to-date as possible, Blankenship talked to everybody from computer
security professionals to people online claiming to be hackers and crackers.
In addition, Blankenship ran a Bulletin Board System from his home that
discussed the issues surrounding the computer underground.

The Secret Service logic went
something like this: Blankenship is talking to hackers, and writing about
hackers, therefore he most likely is a hacker. Because Blankenship was
contracted to write a book by Steve Jackson Games and also used Steve
Jackson Games’ Bulletin Board System, Steve Jackson Games is probably
engaged in hacking as well.

When the Secret Service raided
both Blankenship’s home and Steve Jackson Games, they seized the working
copy of GURPS Cyberpunk and then claimed that was actually the target
of the raid all along. Unable to distinguish between genuine hacking material
and a role playing game supplement, the Secret Service apparently believed
GURPS Cyberpunk was a hacking manual of sorts. An attorney for Steve Jackson
games said that during the raid an agent told Jackson that the game supplement
was “a handbook for computer crime.”

The raid was entirely baseless,
but it almost ruined Steve Jackson Games. The raid occurred in March,
yet all of the material confiscated was not returned until June (and in
fact, some of the confiscated materials, such as printed copies of the
GURPS Cyberpunk book, were never returned) — a significant lapse of time
for a small business. The company in fact almost went under, and 8 employees
were laid off as the company tried to stay afloat.

A judge later awarded Steve
Jackson Games $53 thousand in damages — a piddling amount given the court’s
conclusion about the raid:

[P]rior to March 1, 1990, and at all other times, __there has
never been any basis for suspicion__ that [Steve Jackson Games, Steve
Jackson, or any of the other individuals who subsequently sued the Secret
Service as a result of the raid] have engaged in any criminal activity,
violated any law, or attempted to communicate, publish, or store any illegally
obtained information or otherwise provide access to any illegally obtained
information or to solicit any information which was to be used illegally.

As someone who operates a number
of web site, the people who bring down servers with denial of service
attacks worry me, but they don’t worry me a tenth as much as a government
willing to possess a man’s entire business simply because its agents can
tell a role playing game from a hacker manual.

Another Step Closer to Cheap, Abundant Energy

Vol. 4, No. 5

       For decades alarmists have
argued that the world’s current consumption levels of energy are unsustainable,
and that we should abandon the current energy-intensive economic activity
for one less dependent on energy. Those people who argued that cheaper,
abundant supplies of energy would someday become available when current
energy sources, such as fossil fuels, began to run out were dismissed
as technological optimists with their heads in the sand.

       The recent announcement of
a key discovery indicates the technological optimists should have been
described as having their heads in the algae, which potentially could
become an important source of energy sometime in the next 20 or 30 years.

       The new discovery harnesses
a survival mechanism displayed by algae. Like most plants, algae relies
on photosynthesis to convert sunlight into energy and as a byproduct gives
off carbon dioxide. Algae normally use sulphur to perform photosynthesis,
but when sulphur is unavailable they will consume oxygen directly from
water, which ultimately causes ponds and other water to become stagnant,
killing most plant species.

       But not the algae. The algae
have a defense mechanism whereby they can, for a few days, utilize an
alternative metabolic pathway that produces not carbon dioxide, but rather
hydrogen as a byproduct. After a few days the algae must switch back to
normal photosynthesis or die, but they can be switched back and forth
from regular photosynthesis to the hydrogen-producing process repeatedly.

       This could be a cheap, environmentally
friendly way of producing large amounts of hydrogen which can power fuel
cells to run everything from automobiles to small generators for houses.
Hydrogen doesn’t produce any pollutants and since it all of the energy
comes from the sun, it is remarkably efficient (some estimates put its
sunlight to energy efficiency at 10 percent or more).

       Currently the yields of hydrogen
from this process are rather small, but researchers are confident they
should be able to boost yields by a factor of 10 in the near future. At
that point a small pond could produce enough hydrogen to power 12 cars
a week (and that figure is assuming current efficiency levels of fuel
cells, although fuel cells available by the time this procedure becomes
commercially viable are likely to be far more efficient.)

       With recent advancements in
fuel cell technology, discoveries in finding cheaper, better ways to produce
hydrogen, and improvements in making more fuel efficient engines and appliances,
the key to expanding the available amount of energy while simultaneously
making it cheaper and more environmentally friendly is starting to come
into clear focus.

Reference:

Stagnant
ponds become fuel pumps
. Damien Carrington, BBC News Online, February
22, 2000.


Genetically engineered insulin distribution in mice

Whether or not it ever leads
to any specific application in human beings, the recent announcement in
Science of a new technique for delivering insulin highlights the sort
of medical technologies that widespread genetic engineering is going to
unleash.

       Researchers at Ariad Pharmaceuticals
in Cambridge, Massachusetts genetically engineered cells to produce insulin
along side a protein that causes the insulin to clump up together within
the cell. The insulin is thus trapped in the cell as it is too large to
pass through the cell wall.

       The cells were then injected
into the muscles of diabetic mice and then fed a drug that causes the
clumping protein to split apart which releases the insulin and thereby
lowered the glucose level of the mice. Tim Clackson, the senior author
of the study published in Science, told the Associated Press, “The insulin
stays in the compartments of the cell and has no toxicity or adverse effects.
It just sits there. Only when the animal receives the drug do the aggregates
break apart and then flow into the circulation.”

       The result — a potentially
needle free treatment for diabetes, and possibly a whole host of other
illnesses. Dr. Harvey Berger,Ariad Pharmaceuticals’ CEO, suggested the
technology could have broader application such as managing chronic pain,
with the cells engineered to produce and release endorphins on cue rather
than insulin. Another possibility would be for using the technique to
treat conditions which required regular, periodic release of some protein,
such as growth hormone.

       Ariad Pharmaceuticals hopes
to begin human trials of this fascinating technology by 2003.

References:

Researchers
find new way to deliver insulin in lab studies
. Associated Press,
February 4, 2000.

Gene therapy
may replace insulin shots in diabetics
. Reuters, February 4, 2000.

Cloning pioneers consider creating sheep with cystic fibrosis

The team that created a firestorm
of controversy after successfully cloning Dolly the sheep is considering
helping a group of researchers at Edinburgh create a genetically engineered
sheep that has human cystic fibrosis.

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic
disease caused when a child receives a specific faulty gene from both
parents. Cystic fibrosis causes a variety of health problems, which tend
to vary from individual to individual, but is marked by severe respiratory
problems. People with cystic fibrosis have mucus secretions that are much
thicker and stickier than normal human mucus secretions, and the thick
secretions can cause severe respiratory problems from difficulty breathing
to higher risk of infection. A lot of advances have been made in extending
the life span of people with cystic fibrosis, but even today only 50%
of those with the disease will survive into their 30s (many of those patients
have to take up to 40 pills a day to prolong their lives).

Scientists have already managed
to create smaller animals, such as mice and rats, with cystic fibrosis,
but nobody has attempted to do so with larger animals. Sheep are a particularly
good candidate for cystic fibrosis research because they have lungs similar
to human lungs, and they tend to suffer from similar respiratory ailments.
The research under consideration would create at least two sheep with
the defective gene and then require breeding those sheep to produce a
sheep with a copy of the defective gene from each parent.

The Edinburgh researchers already
have a gene therapy treatment for cystic fibrosis that has received approval
in Great Britain for testing in normal sheep, and if those experiments
are successful an experiment in sheep that have the human disease would
be the next logical step.

References:

Dolly
team to create sheep with cystic fibrosis
. The Times (UK), February
8, 2000.

What is cystic
fibrosis?
. Michigan State University fact sheet.

Al Gore, the Libertarian Party and the Death Penalty

 

Today’s Headlines from Libertarian Sites

EPA
Funds Anti-Sprawl Politics with Tax Dollars

by Randal O’Toole (CATO Institute)

Medical
Privacy Under Attack–Still
by Twila Brase (Heartland Institute)

Troubles
with Prisons Show Merits of Privatization
by Adrian Moore
(Heartland Institute)

Lessons
from School Choice
by Matthew Berry (Heartland Institute)

The
Link between Regulation and Power Blackouts
by Murray Weidenbaum
(Heartland Institute)

Property
Tax Collections Reach New Heights
by Bill Ahern (Heartland
Institute)

How
to Rehabilitate Probation and Parole
by Morgan Reynolds
(Heartland Institute)

Save
the Internet from Death by Taxes
by John R. La Plante (Heartland
Institute)

Access
to the Internet: Regulation or Markets?
by David B. Kopel
(Heartland Institute)

The
Progress Explosion
by Jonathan H. Adler (Heartland Institute)

You
Say “Tomato,” They Say “Poison”
by Martin Zelder (Heartland
Institute)

Suburban
Parents: Choice Is the Only Solution
by George Clowes (Heartland
Institute)

Welfare
State Continues to Grow
by Robert Rector & David Muhlhausen
(Heartland Institute)

Dolly
Parton, John D. Rockefeller, and Bill Gates
by Jim Johnston
(Heartland Institute)

Canada’s
‘Model T’ Health-care System
by Peter Hadekel (Intellectual
Capital)

Read
My Scripts
by Nadine Strossen (Intellectual Capital)

 

   

Al Gore gave an extraordinary
interview
to the San Francisco Bay Guardian recently in which he asserted
that it was okay for the state to murder its own citizens provided its
intentions were good.

The topic at hand was capital
punishment. The Guardian reporter pointed out that the Republican governor
of Illinois recently placed a moratorium on all executions in that state
after a string of innocent people had been released from death row (in
fact, Illinois has had to set free one innocent person on death row for
every person it actually executed in recent years).

       Rather than take the bait and
come down against capital punishment altogether or at least recent reforms
that make it harder to file appeals, Gore took the opposite route — it
doesn’t matter that capital punishment inevitably kills innocent people.

“. . . I support the death
penalty,” Gore told the Guardian. “. . . I think that any honest and candid
supporter of the death penalty has to acknowledge that that support comes
in spite of the fact that there will inevitably be some mistakes. And
that’s a harsh concession to make, but I think it’s the only honest concession
to make, and it should spur us to have appreciation for habeas corpus,
for the procedural safeguards for the accused, and for the fairness that’s
a part of the American judicial system and to resist efforts to take away
the procedural safeguards.”

Gore then turns around and
agrees with rulings and laws limiting the appeals of death row (and other)
prisoners, saying, “I think that the pendulum swung so far in the direction
of a flood of habeas petitions that the decisions of some courts to weed
out the procedural abuse is justified.”

So as long as you give an innocent
man or woman a few appeals, it’s okay to commit murder afterward.

Normally, this would be the
part of the article where I’d get all high minded about how libertarians
oppose such arbitrary state power and would never go along with such nonsense
as Gore does, but in fact the most prominent libertarian political organization
in America — the Libertarian Party — has a stand which makes even less
sense than Gore’s. The Libertarian Party’s position is that it officially
does not take a stand on the death penalty.

The same folks who think the
U.S. government is violating the constitution when it asks any census
question besides “How many people live in your home?” think the death
penalty is just too controversial an issue to take a stand on.

The same group that regularly
chronicles the massive inefficiencies in government, doesn’t even comment
on the state’s inability to ensure that the people it executes are actually
guilty.

Give me a break. The issue
is not that complex. A state that engages in extrajudicial
murder
itself can hardly be trusted to ensure that the people it executes
for crimes are truly guilty.

As with Gore’s answer, the
Libertarian Party’s position on the death penalty is a clear example of
putting politics ahead of principle. The Libertarian Party’s only hope
for any real electoral victories is to bring economic conservatives who
currently vote Republican into the fold. Unfortunately, a lot of those
conservatives tend to be pro-death penalty and would be turned off by
a party plank against capital punishment.

The Party admits as much on
its web site when it mentions a
survey
showing that about 25% of its members supported the death penalty
in an unscientific survey it conducted. Presumably if 25% of its members
decided the drug war was a great idea, the organization would change its
stance on that issue too.

This sort of shameless behavior
is why many libertarians either don’t vote or vote for Republican candidates.
If I want to vote for an unprincipled candidate who will change his views
according to the prevailing political winds, George W. Bush will probably
be there on the ballot already. Why do I need the Libertarian Party’s
second hand version of a Republican waffler?