Glenn Beck Argues with Idiots

[James Brody]

“…like Oprah, government only knows how to get bigger.” (p. 24) Beck, Glenn (2009) Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government. NY: Simon & Schuster. Less than $30.

About Me (Isn’t it always?!!!)

I’m an agnostic but probably for reasons of genetics rather than rearing. I’m also an evolutionist who finds awe and value in religion. Thus, neither the faithful nor the faithless care much for me and between the mobs that would hug me and those that would refer me to a government agency, I have very few friends and I read a lot of books!

What Mr. Beck Did:

He’s written a script wherein one player – the “idiot” - speaks to us in short words in big red type while Mr. Beck uses normal fonts and paragraphs. This sort of thing was done by Plato. And more lately and with greater skill than Beck by a networks physicist, Peter Csermely, who managed three characters in what otherwise could have been a tremendous bore. Still, Beck’s format parallels his recent talk shows and may, for many, help his story.

Beck, as is often true of Rush Limbaugh, argues in a way that strongly resembles that of many evolutionists: 1) Living creatures choose, change, or create their environments and 2) bottom-up processes are more efficient than top-down. Rebellion is part of our nature as Adam learned when Eve ate the apple. Beck, therefore, has not only Chuck Darwin but also Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, and the distinguished economist, Thomas Sowell, for his close but here silent companions.

Arguing with Idiots first defends capitalism by contrasting it with government failures such as Amtrak, Fannie Mae, Citigroup, and the postal service. It also, one chapter at a time, addresses the Second Amendment, education, energy, unions, illegal immigration, the nanny state, home ownership, government size, health care, and a quick review of our Constitution. He does not, however, talk about our growing problems with Jihadist Islam. Was it fear? Or another book?

Arguing with Idiots adds to Mark Levin’s Liberty & Tyranny and Beck’s earlier Commonsense. It also will be a greater influence on individualists than on most collectivists.

Fundamentals:

“Arguing”

Nobel prize winner, and neuropsychologist, Roger Sperry once described our civilization as a war between the left and right sides of our brains. For example, it is possible to separate our two halves to control seizures but then give information to one side or the other. Surprise! Our unspeaking side can follow directions but our speaking side makes up and strongly defends a peculiar explanation for what the opposite side does. It even angers and denies the true explanation! Steven Pinker has called this effect our “spin doctor.” Furthermore, scanners now tell us that the lower sections of our brain make decisions about one-third of a second before our top end knows about them.

Further, there is a strong biological foundation for such things as individualism and collectivism, a preference that makes one-third of us “conservatives,” one-third of us “liberals,” and a final third that does whatever is popular in the neighborhood. Arguments and elections are fundamentally about swinging that middle third. And someone who lectures you in an attempt to change your thinking wastes their time.

“Idiots”

One of nature’s tricks is to “tune” children for the kinds of environments that exist.

On one level, chemical conditions in mom’s bloodstream can induce familiarity to what’s outside of her during pregnancy. Inject anise, a foul stuff that babies normally avoid, into mom and her infant at birth actually prefers the stuff! Babies immediately recognize parental voices and – scary fact – I know of one new daughter who smiled when her father yelled as he had always done.

At a second level, some genes – “imprinted” ones – have opposite effects, depending on the parent who donated them. If mom’s contribution wins over dad’s, placentas will be smaller and she retains better control of her insulin levels and blood pressure. And in mice – about ninety-five percent identical to humans – the offspring will have a larger neocortex but less muscle mass. If dad “wins,” the fetus and placenta are larger, there is more muscle mass, more brown fat, more dental enamel, and a smaller neocortex but larger subcortical systems. And the really sneaky trick: dad contributes genes that make mature daughters more apt to make nests, nurse, and retrieve pups!
The unproven possibility is that collectivism is correlated with both a more settled environment and a higher verbal IQ. Thus, liberals lie but to themselves, in more clever ways, and without knowing what they are doing.

Cheating the Commons

There were some fantasies about the good that appears whenever groups of people had to share assets. Truth, according to Matt Ridley, is that small groups of people manage water rights, fishing grounds, and hunting territories in ways that conserve water and game for generations. As soon as, however, a “government” takes control, massive cheating occurs and assets are exhausted. Such has been observed on several continents and now occurs in insurance, taxes, sales, welfare, health care, and particularly “mental health” where the market will always demand more than is available.

Bottoms Up!

Thomas Sowell described a “conflict of visions” wherein collectivists want rules for everyone, believing in the perfectibility of man through lectures and mutual spying. Individualists see no chance of perfectibility except when they get to heaven. Meanwhile, each of them negotiates with suppliers and customers to manage very personal environments. Sowell observes different outcomes for these two visions in the law and education and how responsibility is assigned. An individualist will argue that lawyers are the one entity in nature that never erases what they create. A collectivist will see the need for more lawyers!

This conflict troubled Darwin: the architecture of a cathedral required a “designer” but it also required many centuries of prior experience with mud and straw huts. Victorian England didn’t recognize the compound interest that accrues with cultural inventions. They also didn’t admit their bloomers and boots used to be thongs and bare feet. And likewise, a modern collectivist while believe his or her personal rant and, thanks to the way we are made, discover people who agree and make useful friends.

As it happens, the big changes in a culture are often predictive of its ending. Meteors, floods, droughts, earthquakes, volcanoes, and disease accomplish the same thing: a pile of bones that no longer do the things that were once useful. The biologist and instigator, J.B. S. Haldane, noted the fossil record: teeth and claws and plates of bone become too expensive to maintain when times got tough.

The contemporary neuropsychologist, Elkhonon (Nick) Goldberg describes a similar process within a lifetime. That is, on average, the right frontal cortex – most conspicuous in, gag!, males – is most active for our first decades but fades. The left cortex and our posterior areas retain and apply the things – musical, numerical, or verbal – that were learned early but that we no longer learn. (For example, I once whizzed through Russian but, at age 67, find Polish and Ukrainian nearly impossible!)

Close:

Individualist, rebellious me desperately wants Beck’s gambit to be productive.

Thus, I will happily march and wave signs or write letters in the middle of his and similar swarms. I also hope that I am wrong about the longer term course of civilizations that eventually collapse - destroyed because of too many rules that continued to act while the oldsters, teachers, and priests lost their ability to invent. Time and experience constipate a culture in a way that prevents finding new solutions to new problems. The historian, Arnold Toynbee described this as clinging to solutions that no longer work. He also found patterns wherein a new “religion” emerged within an old civilization and took control of its direction. And he found cases of outsiders who did that same job with axes, arrows, and spears or with disease and a new religion.

Some of the physics people – notably Peter Csermely – tell the same story but in language from networks research. That is, scattered loners collect friends who are similar and build organizations. The competitive make larger networks and eventually develop winner-take-all patterns. A few country and western singers dominate the top-ten spots, many more occupy the bottom thirty positions and I can hear the interesting stuff first as the countdown moves from number forty to number one. Likewise, most pushers work at Wal-Mart and live with their mother: very few become number one.

Scary fact: network organizations have stages that match the equations for a Bose-Einstein condensate. That is, particles – living or not – are still particles and, when clumped, follow the rules for groups of particles.

Thus, Beck’s writing really is not only about ME but also about each one of you…individually and collectively.

References:
Brody, James (2008) Rebellion: Physics to Personal Will. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse. Http://rebellionphysicstopersonalwill.blogspot.com/

Csermely, P (2006) Weak Links: Stabilizers of Complex Systems from Proteins to Social Networks. NY: Springer. For the four percent of you who will find it provocative…fun...coherent…convincing. And, therefore, it must be correct!

Goldberg, E (2001) The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind. NY: Oxford University Press. Also: Goldberg, E (2006) The Wisdom Paradox: How Your Brain Can Grow Stronger As You Grow Older. NY: Gotham.

Goldberg J (2007) Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. NY: Doubleday.

Levitt, S & Dubner S. (2005) Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. NY: Morrow. See also Gladwell, M. (2000) The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference. NY: Little Brown.

Pinker, S. (2002) The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. NY: Viking.

Ridley M (1996) The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation. NY: Penguin.

Sowell, T (2002) A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. NY: Basic Books.

Toynbee A (1958) Civilization on Trial and The World and the West. NY: Meridian. Also: Montagu A (Ed.), 1956, Toynbee and History: Critical Essays and Reviews Boston, MA: Porter Sergent.