Everything's amazing; but no one's happy

Some historical perspective from Jefferey Tucker



H/T: Instituto Juan de Mariana

"We", the people

Razing the Servile State V

Are we going to take the hands of the federal government completely off any effort to adjust the growing of national crops, and go right straight back to the old principle that every farmer is the lord of his own farm, and can do anything he wants, raise anything any old time, in any quantity, and sell any time he wants? ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Well, of course not. Don't be ridiculous! And we're not going to take the hands of the (un)federal government off any effort to adjust the education of national children, or to adjust the building of national houses, or national automobiles! I mean, God forbid! ~ James Frank Solís

We are one in the State

Another of the dogmas of our servile state is that there is a thing called "society", which is superior to individuals and even has a collective mind of its own. "We", as a society, are more important than "I". Moreover, "we" and "I" are related such that, in some significant ways, something "I" have is something "we" have. The servile state needs us to think in terms of "we" because it needs us to believe that all of the significant things in life are accomplished, by this "society", seeking its collective good through the state, not by individuals seeking personal satisfaction or self-interest. (That would be almost immoral!) The servile state needs us to think like this, otherwise the justification for much that it does evaporates. For example, "I" have a duty to the poor; so do you. Clearly, "we" have a duty to the poor, unless you want to argue that no one has a duty to the poor. (The State -- the march of God upon earth -- never exactly informs us how we come to have these duties. Its prophets tell us we have these duties and that shirking these duties would put us, heaven forbid, on the wrong side of history. But I digress).

That "we" have a duty to the poor is to say "society" has a duty to the poor -- "its" poor. The poor are "ours" to do something about. "We", the argument generally goes, can really only fulfill our obligation to "our" poor by government action. To take care of "our" poor most efficiently, the state must be "our" agent. Only by mean of the state can "society" do its duty to its poor. Otherwise, provision for our poor will be chaotic, anarchic -- you doing one thing for some of the poor, me doing another thing for others of the poor. (And, worse, some of us doing nothing.) There are those whom we as individuals cannot reach; or those who cannot avail themselves of the provisions you and I make. What is to happen to them? The only way "we" can fulfill "our" obligation to the poor is by government programs: government, with it's virtually unlimited resources, can reach into places we, as individuals, cannot and provide a safety net.

Of course, if you and I ("we") have this duty, then, arguably, so does everyone else, even if they don't recognize such a duty. This points to another superiority in having "our" duty to the poor fulfilled by government: some people are obviously not (unlike you and I) employing their (personal) means to fulfill their duties to the poor. Since government exists to make sure we all perform our all of our obligations (right?) it makes perfect sense that government should employ tax law to ensure that these people also perform their duties. If the State is not doing it, then "we" are not doing it. This sad state of affairs cannot be permitted to exist. By means of state power, then, even those who recognize no duty to the poor can be made to do their duty. (Never mind that they don't think they have this duty. "We" know better. "We" know which is the right side of history.)

Yours, mine, and ours

All of this sort of thinking is true for any other problems "we", as a "society", may have: homelessness, drop-out rates, the high costs of university education, health care, even obesity. "We" have a duty in these matters; and government is rightly employed as "our" agent in doing "our" duty. "We" must do something about "our" obesity problem, like appoint an Obesity Task Force. It's for "our" children, after all. Now, you might think it's not "our" obesity problem. The only people who have an obesity problem are the obese, those specific individuals who happen to be obese; and it's their problem. Their obesity can be a problem for "us" only if "we" have a property interest in their persons. Formerly, the assertion by one person of property rights in another person was called slavery. And that used to be bad. Now, it's not called slavery, so long as the ownership of each of us is by all of us, instead of by any one of us. I cannot own another person, but "we" can. (Note, however, that this mutual ownership does not extend to the womb: "we" still cannot prohibit a woman killing her unborn child. It also does not extend to our sexual organs: "we" cannot prohibit pre- or extra-marital sexual relations, certainly not homosexual relations. Unless, perhaps, the state, which soon may be paying our health care bills, decides that it's in "our" best, collective, interest to prohibit certain sexual acts between certain sorts of people. I don't say which sorts of people, but don't worry, it's for our collective good. But I have digressed.)

You would, of course, be wrong to think that obesity is a problem only for the obese. Why? Because "we" know better. And "we" can't let you get away with thinking like that: it's selfish. Besides, if this notion, that what I have and what you have is something that "we" have, were rejected, much that government presently does would also have to be rejected. If "we" do not have a duty such that government is "our" agent in fulfilling "our" duty, then government acts improperly -- immorally -- in taking resources from us (individually) without our (individual) consent. (Our collective consent matters only if our property is collective.) Government simply becomes the means whereby those who control it do as it pleases them to do, with other peoples' resources, calling those resources "our resources".

All this talk of "we" reminds me of the answer my parents used to give when I asked, "How much money do we have?"

"We," they always told me, "have no money. Your mother and I have some money. You have whatever you've saved of your allowance. But we have no money."

No "I" in Team

We have the same problem when it comes to the decisions that "we" make. These decisions always assume that the resources involved are "ours". "We" have enough money. There is no reason why "we" cannot provide for universal health care coverage. There is no reason why "we" cannot educate "our" children the way other nations educate "their" children, no reason, in fact, why "we" cannot give all of "our" children the same education. "We" must work together. What very few of us seem to understand is that we have no money; we have no children to educate. (If you and I have children then you must be my wife -- or a previous girlfriend.)

Furthermore, on the subject of the decisions that "we" make, this notion that "we" (for all practical purposes) have all things in common means that public is superior to private. We get a hint of this notion from the rejection of the claim that the market can and will police and regulate itself, as well as that there is no problem with a public option health care plan making end-of-life decisions because, as His Beatitude Himself has said, "Those decisions are being made now" (i.e., privately, which is bad). "We" can only dispose of "our" resources publicly. That which is public is for selfless purposes, and is for people, while that which is private is for self-interest, and is for profit. So long as the notion that public is superior to private persists, the servile state is here to stay. And this notion rests in turn on the notion that "we" are more important than "I"; the individual doesn't matter. You can really only believe that public is superior to private if you don't think very highly of the individual. As Political Officer Putin said in "The Hunt for Red October", "Privacy...is often contrary to the public collective good." The public sector serves the collective good, all that is good for all people in the community, not just some of the people. That sounds reasonable, until you realize that, in fact, what is good for all people in a given community is really decided by just some of the people, a handful of individuals, in a given community. On a national scale it's even worse: You simply cannot have a 300 million member community. You can say you have it; but you don't. And, of course, as long as the people you're controlling think a 300 million member community is possible you'll continue to be able to control them. (You'll need to make sure no one is able -- allowed -- to change their minds. But how could you possibly do that?)

In pursuit of "our" common destiny, we are often told that "we" are in "this" together. Being in this together, whatever "this" is, justifies collective action. Because "we" are all in "this" together we can't permit an individual to say, "I'm not in 'this' with you." And we must each pay our fair share. This justifies not only the income taxes we pay, but the government's possession of so much knowledge of our sources of income (and our expenditures) as to be able to ascertain whether we each are paying our fair share. Of course, in the same way that only a fraction of us decide what "our" collective good is, a fraction of us also decide what this "fair" share is. Apparently, "we" think one's "fair" share increases as one's income does. But what is the "this" in which "we" all are in? We should really know, because whatever "this" is, it means we're all living the same shared life, pursuing the same shared goal in accordance with the same shared plan, or that we should be. We must be mobilized like an army; anything we do, we must all do, even if some of us don't want to do. And anyone who objects is a traitor.

Strange Bed-fellows

This vision of unity has had some interesting supporters over the years. And they haven't been fans of liberty. "Unity" -- as used by this type, is the motto of empire-builders. This is especially true of empire-builders who like democracy; it provides a patina of legitimacy: the people ("we") have spoken, so we have the consent of the governed. Unity is more important than liberty, which is, in fact a threat to our unity.

France once consisted of a multitude of provinces; and most Frenchmen thought of themselves as citizens of their respective provinces, not as citizens of a nation-state called France, a republic, "one and indivisible" (sound familiar?). France, to these people, was little more than a region of Europe, a relatively loose band of independent provinces. It was not a single entity. The declaration of the existence of this artificial man known as The French Nation, or The Republic of France, meant the demolition of all those smaller units, the provinces. (And this, whether the people in those provinces wanted this demolition or not.) Even during the monarchy, France was still a highly decentralized region. In 1789 there were 80 provinces, each with its own laws, its own customs, its own political traditions, its own history of resistance. The frenchman's sense of nationality, to the extent that he had one, was tied to the specific province in which he lived. As late as 1871 a study revealed that two-thirds of French public school children did not identify France as their nation, but instead named Alsace, Aquitaine, or Normandy as their nation! Few of them spoke the language which the government had designated as French. To create what we now know as France, those who wanted to create it had to flatten out all these regions, all their unique laws, all their unique customs, all their unique political traditions, all their languages. In short, for the sake of this France, the liberties of these people to think had to be flattened -- the liberty to think of themselves as Alsacian, or Aquitainian, or Norman had to be stamped out. They were going to be Frenchmen, and think of themselves as such, whether they wanted to or not.

The present state of affairs -- "unity" -- did not merely happen, and not just in France. It was through a concerted effort, from the top, down, by people who always know better than the ignorant masses. They know what the ideal sort of nation is. They also know that everyone should want this ideal nation to be realized. On 7 September 1789, Emmanuel Sieyes said, in the Constituent Assembly, "France must not be an assemblage of small nations, each with its own democratic government. She is not a collection of states. She is a single whole, made up of integral parts. These parts must not have each a complete existence of its own. For they are not wholes, joined in a mere federation, but parts forming a single whole.... Everything is lost once we consent to regard the established municipalities, the districts, or the provinces as so many republics joined together only for the purposes of defense and common protection." (Quoted by Donald Livingston, here.) The only adequate response to people like Sieyes is, "Oh, yeah? Says who?" Really, who says France must not be an assemblage of small nations? And on what authority? We are not told.

The same thing happened in Germany. What we now know as Germany was an agglomeration of independent smaller kingdoms, principalities and city-states. Even during the period of the so-called Holy Roman Empire, this was true. The Emperor's power was severely restricted and the territories of the empire were ruled by the kings, princes, dukes and even bishops or abbots of the member-territories of the Empire. The Emperor at no time could simply issue decrees or govern autonomously. In the empire's final years, his few powers were restricted by the Peace of Westphalia, which required him to submit to all decisions of the Reichstag. From 1648 until the Napoleonic wars, Germany consisted of some 234 countries, 51 free cities, and about 1,500 independent knightly manors. Of this multitude of independent political units, only Austria counted as a great power, and only Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Hannover could be considered major political players. This remained the case until the process of unification began, in the 19th century, by Napoleon, who created the Confederation of the Rhine, and was completed under Bismark, who also created the Prussian welfare state, noting how, in Napoleon III's France, people who looked forward to government pensions were much more amenable to increasing government regulation of their daily affairs, having been bound to the state through "chains of gratitude", as one of Bismark's advisors reportedly put it.

The names associated with this idea of unification should alert us: Sieyes, Napoleon, Bismark, Hitler (well, it's true), and Marx; and let's add Hamilton, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, Herbert Hoover and, certainly, FDR. These are not friends of liberty.

What these all have in common when you think about it is a denial of the notion, expressed in The Declaration of Independence, of the consent of the governed. Sieyes and his ilk gave no attention to the question whether the people living in those small nations with their own democratic governments and traditions wanted to live in integral parts of his "single whole". They did not matter. Consent of the governed? Pish-posh. Sieyes knew what France should be. Bismark and his ilk knew what Germany should be. Hamilton and his ilk knew what the United States should be. As I said, those who love this vision of unity are not lovers of liberty. They do not permit you to think of yourself in terms that satisfy you. Here, in the United Servile States of America, one should not, indeed one dare not, think of himself first as a Texan (or a Californian, or Alabamian) and then an American. (Of course, this is not as objectionable as thinking of oneself as a Christian, or a Muslim, first and then an American.) One must always think of himself as an American first. And, as an American first, one cannot really even think of himself as an individual. An American is, first of all, a subject of the government seated in Washington.

"But James," someone will say, "what about co-operation? We need to co-operate with each other. This go-it-alone, pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps mentality is what got us into our current economic mess." But the fact is, there is little point in encouraging co-operation. We are co-operating -- whether we want to or not. There is as much need in extolling to us the virtues of co-operation as there is in remonstrating with a team of horses on their need to co-operate with each other. A team of horses co-operate because they have no choice but to do so: they've been hitched up and their efforts are co-ordinated (dictated) by The Driver. All of "us" are co-operating in saving the planet, even if some of "us" don't think it really needs saving (or, at least, not in the way "we" are going to do it). All of "us" are co-operating in saving companies deemed "too big to fail", even if some of "us" think they should fail. All of "us" are paying for the public education of "our" children, even though some of us are also paying (or have already paid) for the private education of our own children. Oh, we're co-operating. Some of "us" just don't realize how much -- and how little choice "we" have in the matter.

The New Patriotism

(Razing the Servile State IV)

[T]here is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But...I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose.... ~ Thomas Jefferson.

Habit is the most shameful disease because it makes us accept any misfortune, any pain, any death. Through habit we live with odious people, we learn to bear chains, to submit to injustices, to suffer; we resign ourselves to sorrow, to solitude, to everything. Habit is the most merciless poison because it enters us slowly, silently, grows little by little, nourished on our unawareness, and when we discover we have it in us, our every fiber has adjusted to it, our every action is conditioned by it, there is no medicine in existence then that can cure us. ~ Orianna Fallaci, A Man

In this posting I mentioned a certain paradox involved in one of the dogmas underlying our own United Servile States of America, the dogma that the state is owed virtually unquestioned obedience, and to some extent, even a modicum of adoration, by its subjects. (And, if not the State, then, at least to some, the Head of State.) It's a paradox because this union of free and independent states owes its existence to the fact that the founders dared first to question and then to deny obedience to the British Crown. What I mean by "virtually unquestioned obedience" is that one may question, one may challenge, but in the end, after the questions and the challenges, one should obey. This mentality, if accepted by the Founders (excuse me, the so-called Founders), would have had the Boston Tea Party and similar acts, but never, ever, The Declaration of Independence. And certainly there would have been no war to pursue the ends set forth in the Declaration. The colonists questioned and challenged. But eventually, they also refused to obey. Big time. And what they refused to obey was an increasingly extra-constitutional government. A king who did not have to obey the laws was not worthy to receive obedience from his subjects.

Why did the Revolution come? (Actually, it was a secession, but never mind that just now.) Was it just a matter of high taxes? Did they just wake up and say, "We don't need this King business anymore"? The Revolution can be difficult to understand, because we just really don't understand the legal grounds set forth in the Declaration. The Declaration was much more than a bitch list; it was a list of charges and specifications. It was an indictment. The Declaration of Independence accused King George of violating the law of the land; he, the one whose office it was to enforce the laws had violated the most basic and important of those laws: the British constitution. The King of England may very well have desired to execute the revolutionaries as rebels, but that would have been an instance of the pot calling the kettle black. It was his own violation of the law, the argument in the Declaration goes, which effectively severed the ties between him and his subjects in the colonies. Having broken that law himself -- repeatedly -- he had no business insisting upon obedience. Furthermore, his own unlawful acts were acts of war against the colonies, making him the enemy of the colonies. (They may have been unduly influenced by Rutherford's Lex Rex.)

The Old Patriotism

The old patriots were a vastly different breed of men. Among other things, they would occasionally tar and feather tax collectors and customs officers. They objected to most of the laws they lived under because they objected to the idea of "virtual" representation, preferring direct representation, by which they meant that the British parliament should be composed of members of each of the geographical areas in which the British subjects lived. The Government, however, accepted the notion that Parliament conducted business for the entire empire. This difference of opinion is what raised the matter of taxation without representation, as well as that of the consent of the governed, both of which notions go back to Magna Charta.

The Old Patriotism was a patriotism of resistance to authority exercised extra-constitutionally. That's an important point: the Founders didn't have a problem with authority per se, but with authority exercised extra-constitutionally, especially when it came to taxes. This is the import of the clause in the Declaration that King George III had "combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation." In referring to our constitution they were not speaking of the Constitution of the United States (it didn't exist); they were speaking of the British constitution, even referring to "our British brethren." The Old Patriotism didn't die right away after the Revolution. Thomas Jefferson actually received death threats -- in writing -- while in office. One anonymous writer wrote: "Thomas Jefferson. You are the damdest fool that God put life into. God **** you." (Try that today!) I don't think President Jefferson sent anyone after these people. Death threats and cursing with eternal damnation -- try that today. Heck, let a man exercise his constitutional right to bear arms, even at a venue attended by the President and the pusillanimous patriots on the left will be all up in arms over it, so to speak. (My own dear mother fears for me referring to President Obama as "His Beatitude" or "His Humptiness", wondering how long I'll get away with it. Get away with it -- my how times have changed. At least I haven't called him the "damdest fool that God put life into" -- not that I would.)

The New Patriotism

By contrast, we should say that the New Patriotism (a patriotism which comes in Left and Right varieties) is a patriotism of acquiescence, even in the face of "a long train of [extra-constitutional] abuses" beginning, arguably, with the causes of the War for Southern Independence. (Some would have it that alone demonstrates a lack of patriotism on my part.) King George III should have been so lucky as to rule over a people as acquiescent as we have become. Let some officeholder engage in an extra-constitutional act (wage and price freezes, gold seizures, discarding of states' rights, telling us which light bulbs we may install in our own homes, which cars we may buy, how fuel-efficient they must be, whether property-owners may decide whether to permit smoking on their property, etc) and we'll whine, moan, groan, gripe and complain. But, in the end, while it does not go on unnoticed, it does go on unchallenged. The Old Patriotism meant loving your country and your countrymen enough to hold rulers accountable to the laws. A ruler who would not himself obey the laws was the very definition of a tyrant, regardless the level of his benevolence. The New Patriotism (should we call it "Yankee Patriotism"?) means loving your country so much as to accept any number of violations of the law of the land, rather than invoke "consent of the governed" and dissolve the political bands which would bind people to such government. And that (i.e., this "new" patriotism) put an end to any effective challenge to law-breaking officeholders.

For the left, the new patriotism means subordinating oneself to the state when the state is pursuing leftist goals. So, if this be the case then true patriotism is to pay one's taxes. To be a tax resistor, like, say, one of the founders, is to be unpatriotic. Paying ones taxes, even to a government which acts as extra-constitutionally as good old King George, is a most holy, patriotic service. To criticize a President for receiving the Nobel Peace Prize amounts to siding with the nation's enemies. For the left, despite their "Founders" talk, the Founders were actually as nutty as those anti-government American Patriot Movement types. For the left, who secretly love strong arm leadership tactics (except when it serves what they mistakenly call free market capitalism, but is really state capitalism, or Crony Capitalism), King George must really be a secret hero of theirs. Sort of the antithesis of the homophobe who is really a latent homosexual, the left, for all their talk of loving liberty, really love tyranny. And patriotism is service to their tyrannical (but benevolent) aspirations.

For the right, the new patriotism means subordinating oneself to the state when the state is pursuing rightist goals, what they (also mistakenly) call free market capitalism. So if the state declares war, and cannot fill the ranks of the military with volunteers (unpatriotic bastards!) and there is a draft, patriotism means submitting to this forced labor arrangement, doing your patriotic duty. Accept the fact that your country has eminent domain over your very body, as well as your land.

The New Patriotism is Statism. How else to explain the fondness for Abraham Lincoln one finds among both Rightists and Leftists. One can find the likes of Christopher Hitchens to defend Lincoln's extra-constitutional abuses on the grounds that the Constitution was for the Union, and during the Civil War there was no Union. (You see, the states which did not secede counted for nothing, except during presidential elections, and for tax purposes, but not for civil rights. Sorry.) Even the freedom loving Rush Limbaugh can be counted on, virtually every Presidents Day, to sing Lincoln's praises: "Golly gee, folks, he saved the Union. If it weren't for Abraham Lincoln, the United States would be two separate countries." It is almost as if the life of anyone in any of those states remaining in the Union could possibly have been adversely affected by those states which departed the union. Somehow or another, each of us has some sort of property stake in each of the states and we're being robbed, or worse, if a state, or twenty, leaves the union. A union one can never leave isn't a union: it's a collective, you know, like the former Union of Soviet Swallowed Republics. Of course, Limbaugh, along with Whigs such as Lincoln, is enamored of our super-power status. I guess that's his real problem: two "American" countries means no super-power status for one "American" country. (I know: my lack of patriotism is showing. But I prefer freedom to super-power status.) Can you imagine if the American Revolution had failed? Brits the world over would be saying of King George III things like, "By Jove, if not for that eminent and blessed monarch -- a statesman and a scholar if ever there was one -- the British Empire would be fifty or more separate countries scattered hicklty picklty about the globe like toys in a nursery! In short, we'd have a ghastly mess!"

Implications of The New Patriotism

The New Patriotism, requiring a certain subordination of oneself to the interests of one's country ("Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.") presents a problem. It also hints at a solution to the problem. In a sense, if one's country is something more significant than the geographical location in which one resides, however it may be governed, then one's country is an abstraction. It is difficult to serve or revere an abstraction. An abstraction really cannot command loyalty very well. But persons can do. This is why it never fails that the notion of subordination to the state leads to acceptance of a single person as autocratic dictator, that one who, somehow, is the very embodiment of the nation ("Hitler is Germany and Germany is Hitler").

It's easy if the leader has acquired a claim on that loyalty. We have to a certain extent come to that state of affairs. As Anne Davies recently expressed it, "Most Americans revere the presidency even if they take issue with the office holder." It's debatable when this began, maybe with Lincoln, maybe before. I don't know; and I don't really care. Certainly, FDR achieved some personal reverence, what with people having little icon corners in their homes devoted to him, or to his memory. As far as my grandmother was concerned FDR had personally saved my great-grandfather's life. (And this was odd because that man is one of those who tried, ultimately successfully, to teach me to distrust government and its motives. I always got the idea that (1) he denied the idea that FDR saved his life and (2) even if FDR had saved his life the price was too high. He always told me to get all the education and training I could because those are the only things "they" can't take from you. He never said so, but I always had the impression that "they" meant "the government".) We have seen some of this on the part of both Right and Left in this country. On the Right there was the notion that opposition to President Bush (especially as regards the war in Iraq) evinced a certain lack of patriotism. Recently the Left have equated Rush Limbaugh's desire that His Beatitude fail with a desire that the country itself fail. In both cases the President is treated as a sort of elected Fisher King, opposition to him is opposition to the country itself. To wish ill upon him is to wish ill upon the country.

It is this sort of reverence for either one's country (as an abstraction), or for the head of the government (or of the state) that makes the state servile. Servility requires reverence: there is no servility without reverence; and if there is no reverence, servility is impossible. Hence, the paradox of life in the land of the free: our obedience to an ever-increasingly extra-constitutional, authoritarian state is -- ready yourself for it -- entirely voluntary. Our political ancestors tarred and feathered that law-breaking King George's bureaucrats, and we mouth off about respecting the office if not the man. We are, now, law abiding people, even if our leaders aren't. Extra-constitutional acts still bother us, but not as much as it bothered our ancestors. Barbarians -- the sort of people who today would probably tar and feather anyone attempting to enforce anti-smoking regulations in private establishments. This is the result of a slow-growing habit, a habit of deference and reverence -- if not for the office-holder then for the office. The servile state relies upon this for much of its power; it relies upon public opinion, specifically, among other things, that the reverence and deference -- the respect -- accorded these individuals is a necessity. But is it? If we started talking to, and about, these people as if they really were servants, as if they really did work for us, and not the other way around, what would happen? It would be a form of tyrannicide. Razing the servile state doesn't require any bloodshed, certainly no assassinations (those are usually counter-productive in the extreme). Razing the servile state requires a shift in opinion of what constitutes patriotism. If one want's to sing of one's country as the land of the free and the home of the brave, then one should act like he loves liberty, for himself and his countrymen. Rather, we are told, that love of country is best expressed by paying ever-higher taxes to provide for the needs of one's countrymen: housing, education, healthcare, whatever they need. The Old Patriotism is the patriotism of the Founders, lovers of both the First and the Second Amendment. It was the Old Patriotism that threw off the chains of that law-breaking monarch. The New Patriotism is a patriotism fit for serfs, a patriotism that works only for the ruling class, whether they are the Crony-Capitalists of the Right or the Crypto-Socialists of the Left. They need your (new) patriotism; they need your love and your obedience. But they'll settle for your obedience.

Oh, question and challenge as much as you want, so long as you obey. That's the New Patriotism. And the alternative, they say, is anarchy and chaos. Oh, the phantom menace of it all!

Part V

Agree with us about how to reform healthcare -- or no healthcare for you

That's how Garrison Keillor feels about those of us who think the present healthcare reform schemes are not the best course of action:

[O]ne starts to wonder if the country wouldn’t be better off without them and if Republicans should be cut out of the health-care system entirely and simply provided with aspirin and hand sanitizer. Thirty-two percent of the population identifies with the Republicans, and if we cut off health care to them, we could probably pay off the deficit in short order.

Garrison Keillor: healthcare nazi.

A tax by any other name still smells like skubalon

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said..., "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all." -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass (Ch. 6)

I didn't know this (neither would I ever have guessed), but, apparently, use of a dictionary is evidence of impropriety. Well, that's what His Beatitude thinks, anyway – at least when one is using a dictionary in opposition to Him. During his Sunday morning talk show tour, Our Leader appeared with George Stephanopoulos, who asked,

STEPHANOPOULOS: Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money [by requiring them to purchase health insurance] and fining you if you don't. How is that not a tax increase?

OBAMA: No, that's not true, George. The -- For us to say that you've gotta take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you any more than the fact that right now everybody in America just about has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase. People say to themselves that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I'm not covering all the costs.

Actually, that isn't how auto insurance works at all. But its very instructive, and not surprising, that he thinks it works that way, though -- very, very instructive. (In case you don't know: Auto insurance is not required so you can pay your bills if the other guy hits you. The requirement is that you be able to cover your liabilities if you hit the other guy. I don't know whether consulting a dictionary would have helped the president on this.)

But I digress.

[...]

OBAMA: ...George, you can't just make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I don't think I'm making it up. Merriam-Webster's dictionary, tax: a charge, usually of money imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.

OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now, otherwise you wouldn't have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition.

There you have it. Using a dictionary to check on the definition of a key term (something most of us were taught to do in school) indicates that one is stretching. Trying to resolve a difficulty which relies upon the correct meaning of a term must, in His Beatitude's incredible opinion, be done without consulting a dictionary. That's incredible. What's even more incredible is that His Beatitude went to law school, which means he was required to know definitions of key terms, the definitions of these key terms being found in many cases in legal dictionaries.

Since His Humptiness specifically singled out Stephanopoulos's use of Webster's as improper, here is a discussion from a source other than Webster's:

John Bouvier defined a tax as:

A pecuniary burden imposed for the support of the government. The enforced proportional contribution of persons and property levied by the authority of the state for the support of the government and for all public needs.

In Lower Mainland, the Privy Council, Justice Thankerton for the Court, wrote that taxes:

... are compulsorily imposed by a statutory (authority)....They are enforceable by law...(and) compulsion is an essential feature of taxation.

In Australia, Justice Dwyer wrote, in Leake:

A compulsory contribution, or an impost, may be nonetheless a tax, though not so called.

The distinguishing feature of a tax ... is that it is a compulsory contribution imposed by a sovereign authority on, and required from, the general body of subjects or citizens, as distinguished from isolated levies on individuals.

In Canada, an oft-cited definition is that of Justice Duff of the Supreme Court in Lawson:

[Taxes]are enforceable by law .... Then they are imposed under the authority of the legislature. They are imposed by a public body.... The levy is also made for a public purpose.

In Ontario Private Campground, Justice Howden wrote:

A tax is defined as an impost or levy by the legislature or other public body for a public purpose, enforced by law.

At common law, the terms fee and charge do not exclude a tax and have been used interchangeably; therefore it was held in British Columbia that a fee imposed by provincial statute on operators of mobile home parks ... was considered to be a tax on land. Similar fees or taxes on mobile home parks have been upheld as land taxes.

But in Westbank, at ¶4, Justice Gonthier of the Canadian Supreme Court distinguished a tax from a user fee:

[User fees] bear all of the traditional hallmarks of a tax. They are enforceable by law, imposed pursuant to the authority of Parliament, levied by a public body, and are imposed for a public purpose. There is no nexus between the revenues raised and the cost of any services provided. As such, they do not resemble a user fee, nor any other form of a regulatory charge.

Granted, that discussion is in terms of Canadian law, but we belong to the same legal tradition. Here's how my Black's, 5th Abridged Edition, in relevant part, defines tax:

A pecuniary burden laid upon individuals, business entities, or property to support and carry on the legitimate functions of the government. Essential characteristics of a tax are that it is not a voluntary payment or donation, but an enforced contribution, exacted pursuant to legislative authority.

His opponents assert that this insurance requirement, including perhaps especially the fines, constitutes a tax because it accords with the definition -- even the legal definition -- of a tax. His Humptiness, a trained lawyer, rather than offering even an attempt at distinguishing meanings, summarily declares it improper to employ a dictionary in fixing the meaning of a key term. It's not a tax because when His Humptiness uses a word it means only what His Humptiness wants it to mean, and nothing else.

It's not a tax, you see, because His Humptiness says it is not a tax. So, if it's a question of which is master, then His Humptiness is master – that’s all.

It's a simple question, Jimmy

Did the President of the United States knowingly utter a falsehood when he said that his healthcare plans would not cover those in the country illegally? Joe Wilson thought so, and said so. (If it was not so, then...uh...why did the loophole have to be removed? And why is Luis Gutierrez, of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, only now angry with the president? He wasn't angry before the president's disavowal. Why is he now?)

It could be that His Beatitude was simply mistaken. That is always a possibility. It's also a possibility that Bush was mistaken about the presence of WMD in Iraq. But when no such weapons were found, we did not hear a hue and cry over the fact that Bush was mistaken (which would have been bad enough); we heard he lied. No wonder, then, that if the current president makes a statement of fact which is false, someone might just get the idea that he knowingly did so.

Former president, James Carter, must think such fine distinctions are a waste of his dwindling time. He knows something more important. He knows that the truth of the matter is not that Joe Wilson, and others, thought the president made a statement of fact which was untrue -- and did so knowingly -- but that inherent opposition to a black president is the real issue.

Poppycock! It could very well be true that every single opponent to the president's silly insurance scheme is a card-carrying member of the KKK. It could also -- at the same time, I mean -- be true that the President of the United States, in an address to Congress, knowingly made a statement of fact which was not true. Someone's race issues -- or putative race issues -- have no bearing on whether someone has lied, or whether adding yet another insurer to the insurer pool counts as healthcare system reform.

If saying, "You lie!" to a man one thinks is lying to you makes one a racist, then how are we ever to call liars on the carpet?

In other news, the New York Times informs us that it isn't all bad, that very little hiring is being done. Only during a Democratic regime.

What if we paid for soda the way we pay for healthcare?

As I've mentioned before, I vividly recall the day I took my first step toward embracing capitalism (well, capitalism lite, anyway, not laissez-faire):

I was in Germany on a military exercise. During the course of this exercise, my tank platoon were just outside a small German village. As frequently happened, some of the local boys (in the 12-14 year range) came out to check out my tank. While we were all standing on our tank talking, I pulled a soda out and started drinking. One of the boys offered me some money for one of my sodas (actually, the crew’s sodas; this is an important fact). Wanting to live up to the reputation of Americans as generous people, I let the kid have the soda for free. Suddenly, the demand for soda went from one-fifth of the German population present on that tank to one hundred percent of that population. What was I to do? Give one away for free and then start charging money? So I gave away five of our remaining sodas, leaving us with three.

[...]

Note the effect of price on both the supply of, and demand for, the sodas. When there was actually a price for the soda the...demand for soda amounted to...one.... This changed—drastically—when there was no price for the soda. This then led to a sharp drop in the supply of soda. If I were to have charged that single German child more than he was willing to pay, there would have been a change in the demand for soda, but no change in the supply. If I had simply accepted his price, the supply of soda would have gone down only by one soda; plus, we’d have a contribution to the next soda purchase. (It staggers the imagination: that German child knew more about free enterprise than I did.)

What if the kids who couldn't afford a can of Coke at my price had another option. What if they had soft drink insurance, allowing them to purchase a soft drink at 25% of the price I was charging (say, a dollar), with their soft drink insurance paying the rest? Sounds good, doesn't it? In actuality it's one of the worst possible things which can happen. Since these consumers can now -- sort of -- afford a good they could not afford before, and (at 25% of the price) a lot of it, their demand for the product will necessarily increase.

This is a law of nature, an economic law. To them, the price of a soda is no longer $1.00; it is $.25. Recall, before they could not afford a soda because it cost $1.00; now they can because it costs only $.25. They may not ever have had a spare dollar for a soda, but they did occasionally have a spare quarter. That spare quarter can now be used for a good like soda. But there were always others, who could occasionally afford, say, one soda per week at $1.00. Now, thanks to their soda insurance, they can afford four per week.

Still others, who could afford eight sodas per week, now can afford thirty-two. This artificially lower price has increased demand, which will soon begin to have a negative effect on supply. The (artificially) lower price to the consumer (but not to the insurer!) will lead to a spike in demand. The normal response to increased demand is to ensure against stock depletion by increasing the price of the good. But in our scheme the increased price is born not by the consumer of the good but by the insurer. If the soda-lover's co-pay does not increase, remains at 25% percent of the original price (i.e., $1.00) but the actual price goes up to, say, $2.00, in an effort to decrease demand (protecting supply), then the insurer is no longer paying 75% of the cost of soda; he's paying 87.5% (i.e., $1.75), while the consumer is now paying only 12.5%.

The price increase, intended to protect supply by decreasing demand, actually has no such effect, because the price paid by the consumer (the one actually wanting the soda) has not changed, while the price paid by the insurer has done. The soda producer, still trying to curb demand in order to ensure supply, raises the price yet again, to $2.50, a point at which the insurer pays $2.25, 90% of the price of a soda and the consumer still pays $.25, a mere 10%. Clearly, this can't go on, so the insurance company now raises the co-pay. And on and on it will go until the consumers, who clearly know next to nothing about how insurance works, begin to think they are the ones being abused.

I know what you're thinking. There is an important difference between soda and healthcare; one is an important need and the other is an unimportant want. Perhaps, but it is immaterial to economics whether a good (and healthcare and soda are both goods) is a "need" or a "want". To tell someone that some good he wants is not a need and then to legislate on the basis of that assertion is dictatorial. A good is a good and someone who wants it ought to decide for himself the reasons he wants it; it isn't for anyone to divide objects of his desire into needs and wants -- even if we are tempted to do so. Healthcare and soda are both goods; it is, therefore, legitimate to compare them in terms of each other simply as goods.

After all if we are really going to limit ourselves to needs, we could argue that no one really needs healthcare; they simply want it. They want it because they want to live, either for just another day (but they may not need, or deserve, to live another day) or at a certain standard of living (but they may not need, or deserve, that standard of living).

The woman, Florence Owens Thompson, and her children, below, probably have everything they need: clothing, just enough food, just enough water, and a roof (such as it is) over their heads:


You may be thinking that, no, they don't have everything they need. But that is only because you are thinking not in terms of life, but in terms of quality of life. You are thinking that they do not have everything they need to have a certain quality of life, a quality of life like mine, for example:


Dry wall in my garage -- I bet Florence Owens Thompson and her family would have loved to call my dry-walled garage home. Heck, I bet she'd have loved my garage even before the dry wall, possibly even before I insulated it.

So healthcare, like soda, is not something we need for life. It is something we want for a certain quality of life.

But the point really is that insurance is a silly way to pay for soda, especially since, like healthcare, it is uninsurable. And if it is a silly way to pay for soda, it is an even sillier way to pay our medical bills. This is especially the case since, like my present comparison, we still have not asked the most important question: Why did the cost get so high as to give someone the idea that insurance would be the best way to pay those bills? It is true that insurance itself is to blame for some of the rising costs by artificially increasing demand, which always results in price increase. But this is not the only thing that causes price increases.

It is no reform of the healthcare system simply to continue the practice of using "insurance" to pay the bills. One more insurance company -- even a public one -- isn't a solution. It's a variation on a theme.

Frankly, if anyone were really serious -- and I do mean really serious, not about "reforming" the "system", but in reducing costs, they should follow Hans Hoppe's advice, advice going all the way back to 1993, and summarized as follows:

1. Eliminate all licensing requirements for medical schools, hospitals, pharmacies, and medical doctors and other health care personnel. Their supply would almost instantly increase, prices would fall, and a greater variety of health care services would appear on the market.

[...]

2. Eliminate all government restrictions on the production and sale of pharmaceutical products and medical devices. This means no more Food and Drug Administration, which presently hinders innovation and increases costs.

[...]

3. Deregulate the health insurance industry. Private enterprise can offer insurance against events over whose outcome the insured possesses no control. One cannot insure oneself against suicide or bankruptcy, for example, because it is in one's own hands to bring these events about.

[...]

4. Eliminate all subsidies to the sick or unhealthy. Subsidies create more of whatever is being subsidized. Subsidies for the ill and diseased breed illness and disease, and promote carelessness, indigence, and dependency. If we eliminate them, we would strengthen the will to live healthy lives and to work for a living. In the first instance, that means abolishing Medicare and Medicaid....

There's a simple answer to the question why they don't follow this advice: Doing so means not being able to take credit (and assign blame) for our quality of life; it means surrendering control of something they enjoy controlling. I mean, the next thing they want is our food system.

Parenthetically, Glenn Beck doesn't think we should really be talking about healthcare reform when the real issue is corruption, at all levels and in both major parties, such as that captured by James O'Keefe. Frankly, I think we can multitask. Well, I know I can.

P.S.

The reason I posted nothing about 9/11, is that my state of mind is much like that once expressed by Abraham Lincoln regarding some other casualties of war, which I paraphrase thusly:

I can not dedicate, nor consecrate, nor hallow this day. I cannot adequately commemorate this day. The victims of the attacks have done so, and far above my own powers of expression, and none more so than those aboard United Flight 93, who gave the last full measure of devotion to their country. No one can care what I think or feel; no one can care where I was when I first heard the news -- but everyone should care and long remember what happened to them.

One of the few things our first constitutional dictator ever said with which I whole-heartedly agree. Mark it.

Of course, my favorite Lincoln quote of all time might just be this one, from a 4 July 1848 speech: "Any people whatsoever have the right to abolish the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right."

Edited 15 September 2009 to correct local grammatical errors. -- JFS

With a Democrat in the White House every cloud really does have a silver lining

A man said to the universe,
"Sir, I exist."
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
"A sense of obligation." -- Stephen Crane

A perennial complaint during the Republican Captivity II was that myriads of college graduates were having to take low-paying, even minimum wage jobs. College graduates were "flipping burgers". Oh, the Charles Dickens of it all. That was bad news, because college graduates should just walk right into mid-management jobs. And that's in a bad economy; in a good economy, those graduates should have a seat on the board, no doubt. College graduates flipping burgers and waiting tables was also one of many signs that Republicans don't know how to manage an economy. (Note: an un-managed economy is a good thing to some of us.)

We deserve more, and some power, somewhere, is obligated to make sure we get it.

But now, believe it or not, that low-paying job could actually -- get this -- be a good thing. Paul Facella (ironically, a former burger-flipper), lists six good things, (six career enhancers, even) about starting out on the bottom rung.

That reminds me: remember when the best G.D.P. was a J-O-B?

Apparently, that applies only when a Republican is in the Presidential Palace. When a Democrat resides in the Palace as our Fisher-President, and the jobless hovers just below 10% or is it really closer to 20%?), why it's a great day in His Beatitude's coming paradise. These days, being J-O-B-less (and, therefore, G.D.P.-less) is, or can be, a good thing. If you just alter your perspective, these bad economic times are actually good. Think of it as "funemployment".

Incredible.

I do just happen to agree with Facella, though. Among the many benefits of starting at the bottom is the lesson in humility that some of us need, and some of us more than others. In 1992, while I was still an undergraduate, preparing -- I was certain -- law school, my wife and I suffered a financial set-back to the tune of, well, a lot of money. So long law school. I did well to get that B.A. in 1993.

I well recall the day one of my friends called, just a few days before graduation, to congratulate me. We spent just a few moments half-jokingly speculating on which think tank I'd be working for inside of a decade.

My first job after graduating was in a furniture repair shop; then I tried my hand at telemarketing, followed, rather ironically, by fast-food restaurant management. That fact -- the ugly truth of the matter -- is that life is like this (no, much, much worse) for most of the world's population. And it always has been. I'm not special because I went to university; and neither are you.

Life is difficult. Most people get out of life what they can scrape out of it. Deal with it.

A bill, in lieu of flowers

Admirers of the late Edward Kennedy (R.I.P.), aware that a healthcare plan itself isn't very popular, now think we should, despite objections to a given plan, go ahead and support it now. Brian Williams has seen an email circulating, suggesting a heathcare reform bill, rather than flowers. The symbolism of a dead man, substituted for the substance of the lousy bill under discussion.

Sure, it stinks. Sure, it represents the most significant loss of freedom since the Raw Deal. But let's do it anyway. Let's put ourselves, and future generations, into chains -- chains of gratitude, no doubt. And let's do it for Teddy.

They desire to make a reposed hero -- a man who did much to benefit the less fortunate, with very little of his own money (no mean fete, I'm sure) -- their best argument for supporting healthcare take-over (I mean, reform -- healthcare reform), something fewer and fewer people want. To me, that makes it doubly unmerited.

If the plan (or some plan) is as full of merit as it supporters and proponents clearly seem to believe, then why take this (irrational!) tack? If we should have this over-kill version of healthcare reform, then sell it on its merits. This latest move is as close to an admission as we're likely to get, that reform, as they envision it, has no merits whatsoever.

UPDATE: Melissa Lafsky wonders what Mary Jo Kopechne, a dedicated liberal, would have thought about "arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history," and concludes, "Who knows -- maybe she'd feel it was worth it."

P.S.

Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that Lafsky wants minorities and other beneficiaries to know that we owe Senator Kennedy a great debt of gratitude: "Disabled? Poor? A member of any minority group? Then chances are your life is at least somewhat better because of Ted Kennedy." Yes. Well, I, for one didn't ask for his pinche help.

My mother was, briefly, a single mother. She taught me not to look to government for help. Don't get me wrong: She tried it once, applied for some help. She was very seriously -- and I mean very seriously injured in an auto accident and out of work for months. But because she was a homeowner, she could get no help; if she wanted help she needed to sell her home. The working poor -- yes, they love us so much; that's why we must divest ourselves of the few assets we have in order to be worthy of their largesse. And have I mentioned that their largesse doesn't cost them anything?

These people -- they can can never do good without making sure we know the good they have arguably done for us, and without always demanding the appropriate demonstration of gratitude. Typical, guilt-ridden, self-loathing caucasian. If only they could find a way to do their good in a way that leaves their left hands ignorant of what their rights hands are up to. (But to do that, they'd have to use their own resources, divest themselves of their own assets.) And they never understand when some of us beneficiaries of their benevolent provision are, to say the least, ungrateful. They remind me of the liberal attorney, Lucy Kelson, in the movie Two Weeks Notice, when she dumps some money in a guy's coffee because she is just sure that's what the cup is for. Observe (start at about 7:30 into the clip):



There is, of course, a salient difference: In this clip, Lucy Kelson, uses her own money in expressing her concern for those less fortunate than herself. But that still doesn't prevent her being flabbergasted at her beneficiary's lack of gratitude.

It's the polylogism, stupid (2)

One of the ironies in this (aforementioned) article is the complaint that protesters against government-option healthcare coverage are hindering the so-called discussion about health care. It's ironic because there is already a bill. Actually, I'm using the word 'ironic' to be kind. It's actually dishonest. But I digress.

Quite clearly, with the President's demand for a ready-to-sign bill, the debate (or discussion, to use to word of the day) is over -- as are all debates or discussions, once the left have made up their minds. Besides, the article mentions Democratic congressmen who are at these supposedly disrupted town hall meetings to explain the plan. There isn't much to discuss, in a certain sense. I've been to meetings where an insurance plan was to be explained; and it was a plan that had already been decided upon, by an employer. The only discussion involved what the plan covers and how. There was no discussion of whether the plan should be adopted, no discussion of whether employees wanted the plan.

Clearly, in true statist fashion (believing that we work for the state), whether some sort of government option should even be implemented is not for discussion -- in this land of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Our employer, the state, has already made its decision, and it remains only to explain to us their benevolence. (But sadly, that is what the protesters want to discuss.) The people may show up; that's their right. But they are their to listen and ask questions about the plan; and that's all. That's the problem with the protesters: they (employees) still want to discuss whether; the Congressmen (employers) only care to discuss how.

So the complaint that discussion is being hindered is a bit disingenuous. The key determination has already been made; and it doesn't matter who, or how many, object to it. The only acceptable questions are those related to how the plan will work. Objecting to the plan itself is out of line.

How, we might ask, do the left come to have the notion that they can be so dismissive of opponents? I really wasn't engaging in rhetorical flourish when I said (here) that opponents of the left do not matter to the left. The left are polylogists. (They are also, for that reason, irrational.)

Polylogism asserts that the logical structure of the mind is different with members of various groups of humans. And the two most common forms of polylogism, at least here in the U.S., are racial and marxist. Racial polylogism, which I discussed to an extent here, differs from Marxist polylogism only in so far as it ascribes to each race a peculiar logical structure of mind and maintains that all members of a definite race, no matter what their class affiliation may be, are endowed with this peculiar logical structure. (That's why someone like Jesse Jackson is black, but Clarence Thomas is not.) Marxist polylogism asserts, in contrast, that each class has its own logical structure and only members of a given class are endowed with this logical structural. In both cases, however, polylogism is a debunking tool: it exists only to provide grounds for dismissing an opponent without engaging in logical rejoinder. In other words, the racial or marxist polylogist can respond to an argument by telling you that you hold the position you do only because of your race or your social class. The logical structure of your race's mind (or your social class's mind) simply prevents you seeing the wisdom of his position, and, thus, also prevents your agreeing with him. Given these differences in logical structure, why should the left bother?

In a sense, this is at least one way in which the left are logically consistent. If you take seriously the polylogists' claim, then there simply is no way for members of different races or classes to persuade each other of anything. How could there be? In order for two people to persuade each other of anything they must share the same structure of mind. Two leftists could, therefore, be persuasive to each other, and so could two rightists. But leftists and rightists, having differing mental structures, simply cannot reach each other. One is on AM and the other is on FM. Consistent with their position, the left do not feel obligated to reason with those who, on their view cannot be reasoned with. (The right feel the same way about the left, but for a slightly different reason: polylogists are, by definition, irrational.)

But the left also believe that they are correct. And this is not because they can, or have, proved anything. Rather it is because, in true Hegelian fashion, they believe that what arises later in history is superior to that which arose earlier. Leftism (socialism, new liberalism, whatever) is later than rightism (capitalism, the Judeo-Christian ethic, whatever); therefore, leftism is superior to rightism. Rightism (like laissez-faire capitalism) is yesterday's news; we must look not to the past, but to the future. Rightists are wrong, not demonstrably so, but because they are on the wrong side of history. They are looking backward, rather than moving forward, as His Beatitude likes to say. They are, to societal evolution, what someone would be to human evolution who wanted us to devolve back into, say, Neanderthals. In fact, Rightists are neanderthals, and Leftists are homo sapiens sapiens -- on their humble view, of course.

Some things just change a man

Like suffering -- suffering can change a man. Or, the right woman.

On the other hand, so can the right food. Like Volcano Nachos. I'm not a big fan of Taco Bell: I grew up eating as "food" what most of you people call Mexican food. But I do really like this commercial:



Volcano Nachos...changes a man. Not since the days of the little chihuahuah, have I enjoyed a Taco Bell commercial.

Pero, no quiero taco bell.

Again: if Obama were not a black man, we'd just love this healthcare reform plan.

That, this time, according to Mike Lupica.

Not a word in actual support of the plan. Not one word explaining wherein any complaints about the contents of the are false. More words about the moral turpitude of the protesters, as if it could not be true that (1) the protesters really are as immoral as Lupica and others say and (2) the plan is exactly what the protesters say it is.

For present purposes, let us stipulate that the protesters are racists. Fine. The plan still sucks; and calling protesters racists will not alter that.

But the protesters aren't racists -- not all of them, anyway.

P.S.

The Instapundit on when the Nazi meme was chic.

"Nazis" for the goose but not for the gander

If I just had had enough time, this is what I would have written on the subject. Beautiful.

There is a trajectory of socialism, regardless of the good intentions of many socialists.... [Y]ou take things such as health care, things that are traditionally understood as within the ambit of individual liberty and free choice; you move such things into the ambit of state responsibility as the welfare state emerges and grows, on the theory that it is government’s responsibility to provide for everyone’s needs (by redistributing resources); as more things are moved from private to public control, the state by definition becomes totalitarian; and, inexorably, the totalitarian state gets bad leaders and the society comes to reflect the policy choices of those leaders.

Now, we can argue until the end of time about whether that trajectory really exists and whether it is inevitable. But however you come out, it is an argument very much worth having. It goes to what kind of society we are going to be, to what the proper relationship between the citizen and the state is.

Nazi Germany is a useful historical example of socialism run amok. The genocide and terrorism ultimately practiced by the Nazis were horrible — that goes without saying. But National Socialism went on for a dozen years, it was the last stage in a progressive nationalization of German society, and there was a lot more to it than genocide and terrorism. It cannot be that because there was genocide and terrorism, the socialist aspects of National Socialism are outside the lines of acceptable political discourse. Given the immense popularity of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, one of the most important political books of the last quarter-century, it doesn’t look like Americans are as convinced as Mort Kondracke seems to be that these comparisons are verboten.

[...]

National Socialism is banned from the Right’s case against socialism, but is somehow acceptable when leftists use it as a smear or when the Left’s nuanced geniuses, after their very thoughtful consideration, decide its invocation is suitable for mature audiences? I don’t think so.

Darn right it's not verboten.

You might be a Nazi, but only if you're a socialist

That's right. You'd have to be a socialist in order to be a Nazi. The word comes from the German name for the National Socialist German Workers' Party, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. We cannot expect that fact to hinder people like Nancy Pelosi from making assertions about her opponents like this, because she saw some swastikas:



The question was about the legitimacy of the protests. She sort of answered the question, which, I guess, was no. There is no legitimate grassroots opposition to Democrat healthcare reform notions. The opposition are "astroturf", not real grass. Worse than that, however, they must be nazis, what with the swastikas and all.

Right. Like nazis -- socialists -- would object to government-run health coverage. In fact, Democrats have a lot in common with nazis, the Nazis being: opposed to big banks and capitalism in general, opposed to pollution, in favor of two years mandatory voluntary service to the country, in favor of make-work projects (such as the autobahn), opposed to vivisection and cruelty and to animals, opposed to smoking and all tobacco products, in favor of abortion and euthanasia of the infirm and undesirable, in favor of big, unlimited, centralized government, opposed to small, limited, decentralized government – and, of course, in favor of cradle-to-grave nationalized healthcare. If the protesters really are nazis then they must be upset by the fact the present reform plan allows too much capitalism, or something.

This is the result of an education system (and they want to run healthcare too!) that has managed not to include the fact that the nazis were not just some white people who killed Jews, but were socialists who killed Jews.

I too have heard about the swastikas, but so far the stories I've heard, on the radio, have the swastikas with a black stripe through them, as if to say, No, to national socialism for the U.S. In that case, the protesters are not claiming to be nazis; they are tacitly claiming that Democrats are the nazis.

Frankly I think that's a poor way to object to what's going on. As a Chinese proverb says: The one who lands the first blow is the one who ran out of arguments. Calling people socialists, especially if they are, is quite sufficient. Calling them nazis is over the top. And I'll tell you why. What separates nazis from other socialists was the joining of race to class; that was the true significance of their use of the word, national. Originally, the word national meant what we generally now mean by words like racial or ethnic. If we were to translate the best sense of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei into contemporary English, it might better be translated, Ethnic German Socialist Workers' Party, or the Aryan Socialist Workers' Party. In other words, it was not enough to be of the working class. One needed also to be a true German (i.e., Aryan) worker.

To my knowledge, Democrats, though I do think they are socialists, have not joined class and race. One may have to be a socialist in order justly to be called a nazi, but being a socialist is not a sufficient reason to be called a nazi. In order justly to be called a nazi, one must be a supporter of ethnic socialism.

Presently, Rush Limbaugh makes the claim that it is Democrats who are truly nazis, but that is because he has an incorrect understanding of the true sense of the word national. He thinks Democrats can justly be called nazis because of the similarity of platforms. It is a serious error. And one cannot expect to be taken seriously who makes that kind of mistake.

Always be polite, even if you think your liberty is threatened

Let's have something clear. There is no need to be polite when the proposition to be debated is whether you will accept loss of freedom. No one denies the left's vision of healthcare reform results in losses of freedoms. We will debate a great many things, but not that.

If Kondrake and Krauthammer had been in Sparta when the Persian emissaries arrived, they'd have urged Leonidas to discuss the offer, to think about it, to (how did Krauthammer put it?) ask questions before categorically refusing it. Don't oppose it, just to be oppositionist -- while the left continue to be counter-oppositional just to be counter-oppositional.

When "Submit to more and more government dictation over more and more of your life" is the so-called proposition, there is nothing to debate, except how our would-be masters will be resisted. This is especially true when you know that control of everything is the ultimate goal. To oppose this for the sake of being oppositionist is no vice.

Note: Yes, I am reading the bill. So far, I can honestly say, I'd rather be one of Leonidas's 300 Spartans than a beneficiary of the benevolence wrapped up in this bill. John David Lewis, of Duke University, is much further along than I (finished, in fact). Here's his assessment. I'm guessing he's not a fan. (H/T: Limbaugh.)

If Obama were a white man, there would be no objections to the healthcare plan

At least, according to Chris Matthews and Cynthia Tucker. (H/T: Newsbusters.)

These people clearly have no arguments in support of the plan itself. So they demonize opponents. There is, apparently, only a problem when some people yell; others may do so freely, so long as they can feign righteous indignation. But if being thought a racist or bigot by the likes of Chris Matthews (or un-American by Pelosi and her ilk) is the price of freedom, then so be it. It's a very, very small price to pay. Note, you can object to having a black man as president and still have reasonable grounds for objecting to a government-run healthcare system. You can also object to having a black man as president and still support a government-run healthcare system, despite its being proffered by a black man.

But mostly, when you have no arguments, you can call your opponents names.

I know the healthcare system is messed up. But if the present, proposed reform is the only alternative; if not doing this means (and it doesn't) doing nothing -- then I'll take my chances.

It's the polylogism, stupid (1)

Truth does not matter to the left. It never has. The left enjoy to pretend otherwise; but they are just pretending. This is why the left end up turning policy arguments into discussions of the moral failures of their opponents. That is to say, for the left, there is something immoral about disagreeing with the left. And this is odd, considering that the left also do not believe in morality.

Take, for example, this article by Jonathan Allen for CQ Politics at MSNBC.Com. The article purports to ask, in the same, tired way we've come to expect from partisan journalists who, apparently, still haven't noticed -- or are in denial -- that Toto has pulled the curtain back and we know they are partisan, if the protests about the plan are good for our democracy.

Snore.

Of course, one can easily see, I think, that the purpose of asking the question is to lay some of the groundwork for dismissing the protesters. Observe:

All across the country, conservative opponents are clamoring to disrupt town-hall meetings about the proposed overhaul of the nation’s healthcare system, using GOP-generated talking points to shout down Democratic congressmen who attempt to explain the plan.

The Constitution protects their right to speak freely, but Democrats say that they are limiting rather than promoting an open exchange of ideas.

These opponents (conservatives, of course; for no liberal would oppose this plan,not willingly anyway) are "clamoring", not simply showing up, like supporters do. (Liberals never clamor, they congregate peacefully. We all know that.) Also, these protesters clamor, not to make their voices heard, not to share their views, or even, yes, to declare their opposition. No, they are there to "disrupt". Moreover, their opposition is not something in which they have a personal stake: they are simply, and blindly, unwittingly even, employing GOP-generated talking points. (And they probably don't even understand these talking points, the poor, dumb bastards). And, le pièce de résistance, they are not there to argue against the plan, but to shout down those poor Democratic talking-point spouting -- I mean those poor, concerned Democratic congressmen who are only trying to explain the plan. We know that those GOP-talking point spewing protesters don't understand the plan. Why, if they did they wouldn't be shouting down those whose only crime is to explain this new benevolence.

An especially nice touch is the obligatory nod to the Constitution. The Constitution, we are reminded, protects these protesters' right to speak freely, but, they are limiting speech. Thus we run rough-shod over the fact that the Constitution binds government against limiting speech. Nice touch, wasn't it? And note also that the person whose speech is supposedly being limited is a Congressman -- the government. Let us not dare limit the government's right to free speech.

This is one of the excuses to be used when they pass the bill over and above the opposition to it. They will say, Yes there was vehement opposition. But that opposition wasn't legitimate, but rather the activity of an irrational mob. Oh, yes, and don't forget the part about that irrational mob being funded by those evil private insurance companies. We know, of course, that honest dislike of the plan is not what's behind all. And the media will tell us what's really behind it, because they care about us poor saps who just don't know what's good for us.

You see how easy that is? You put forth a caricature of your opposition on the basis of which you can dismiss his opposition. For what is missing from the article is any curiosity about whether the supposedly GOP-generated talking points assert anything about the plan which is false. That question never comes up in the article. All we really need to know, one supposes, is that the assertions in the talking points are GOP-generated.

They may very well be. But are they false?

You'd think a journalist might think to inquire in that direction. Isn't that something we really need to know?

Of course not. We really need to know how awful the protesters are. We need to know that their opposition (like the Tea Parties) is not legitimate because it's backed by private health insurers and amounts to nothing but the spouting of GOP-generated talking points.

The fact is, because the left believe in ideology rather than truth, the only people whose opinions matter are those who agree with the left. Those who disagree are legitimately dismissed.

I think I'll write about more on this, and explain why. Just for kicks and giggles, which, really, is why I blog in the first place.

Part 2

Seven Guys I'm Not Intimidated By

One "Married Jake" has a list of seven guys men are intimidated by. My personal sentiments are in italics.


1. Anyone who plays the guitar
I can't play the guitar. I can't do anything except for type and make guacamole. Ergo: I have always kept my women away from dudes with "axes."

Well, I also can type and make guacamole; and I don't play the guitar either. I started to learn in my youth, but was pre-occupied with saxophones and percussion -- which, I discovered, were as popular with the ladies as guitars. So, there you have it.

2. Dudes who can, like, change your valves
It's even worse if he's a guy who knows about cars and is all humble about it.

Well, I can do lots of stuff on cars, except things like change your valves. But I can do other things with my hands, things of a non-intellectual nature. (No, I'm not referring to sex. Get your mind out of the gutter.)

3. Your older brother

Please. I am the older brother.

4. Your friend's boyfriend
You know, the guy you always mention when we're being idiots. "John never does that to Jenny," you say. Man, when John comes around we're really on our best behavior.

I am the friend's boyfriend, or, in this case, husband. My wife's friends and co-workers don't believe half the stuff my wife tells them about the things I do for her. Ask her if she remembers (aside from the week before this past July 4 weekend) the last time she scrubbed the bathroom, or the kitchen floor, or did the carpets. Want her email address?

5. The kid you went to high school with and was your best friend for a while but you never dated because he was kind of nerdy but now he's gained some weight and is super successful and you realize you really missed out with that one ...
Am I the only one who has encountered one of these with every girlfriend?

Me again. Okay, not super successful, depending upon your definition of successful. But I was that nerdy kid. Thanks to some good coaching, and the Army, I gained some weight. Now, I'm still a bit nerdy. But I don't recommend doing as instructed should you ever see a "Kick me" sign on my back.

6. Marines
Man, a Marine started talking to my wife at a bar not that long ago. And I thought: that guy could kick my butt, tell a heart-rending story that would make her cry, and ask to be called "Captain" all at once ... I don't like him.

I wasn't a Marine, but I have it on good authority that my decision to join the Army was the Marines' loss. So, not very intimidated here, either. I, too, could kick "Jake's" butt and tell his wife a heart-rending story that would make her cry, but I'd have to ask to be called "Sergeant" instead. I would, however, be intimidated by a Green Beret or Navy Seal. Besides, I would never knowingly do or say anything to intimidate another man regarding his wife or girlfriend. For one thing, I'm married, so there'd be no point. (I don't know, however, that I could not unknowingly do so.) For another thing, to try to come between a man and his woman, in any way, is not demonstrative of love for one's neighbor.

7. Your father
Especially if he was a Marine, a firefighter and a mechanic who also plays the guitar.

He wasn't a Marine, a firefighter or a mechanic who plays the guitar. On the other hand, he wasn't that nerdy kid in his high school, where, as a matter of fact, he played on the football team, which I did not. (I was a runner.) Beyond that, I have no further comment.

There is, at least theoretically, one guy I could be intimidated by: a man who might treat my wife better than I do. That's the guy we all should be intimidated by. That's the guy who keeps me on my toes.

Why so serious?

Fans of His Beatitude are upset over this:



The poor dears.

One fan wants us to know it is Batman, not the Joker who is the socialist. After all, the Joker is really some sort of anarchist, while Batman, according to this O-fan, is the one "who champions the cause of the people and believes in a society where everyone works together for the common good. I mean he’s basically Leon Trotsky in a cape and cow." Funny, I thought of Batman as a libertarian, trying to free Gotham from those who wish to keep it in subjection. In both of the most recent Batman movies, Batman's nemeses are not capitalists, but thieves -- kind of like, well, socialists.

Too bad all these people are offended. His recent predecessor had to endure it too:



And endure it



and endure it,



and endure it,



etc, etc, etc. Blah, blah, blah.

But note: Those who applauded when it was Bush being unfavorably caricatured have no business complaining now that it's their man. And those who cried foul when it was Bush have no business cheering now.

H/T: Anchoress , Michelle Malkin

Remember when the left were concerned that President Bush wanted us to spy on our neighbors?

Apparently, reporting your neighbor to the government is wrong only when a right-winger wants you to do it. The offense? Saying things about the healthcare reform plan that seem "fishy".

Criminals before the fact

Limbaugh has made a lot of (legitimate) hay out of the rather tame verbal beating one Robert Broadus of Clinton, Maryland, gave to Senator Ben Cardin on the subject of healthcare.



It is interesting to note, that in responding to Broadus, Cardin can only accuse him -- before the fact -- of being part of the cause of the healthcare problem. If you don't have healthcare insurance then, res ipsa loquitur, someone other than yourself is going to pay for you. Cardin has no way of knowing what Broadus is going to do if the circumstances he hypothesized come to fruition. For all Cardin really knows, Broadus is going to make a payment schedule with the hospital whose emergency services he employs. (That's what I have done, so it is a possibility.) But no, let's accuse Broadus of a crime. You don't have healthcare insurance so, obviously, you're going to fail to pay your hospital bill when the time comes.

And, with that simple move, we demonstrate just how reasonable that IRS fine really is. You deserve to be fined, because to be without healthcare is to be in default, even before there is a bill to pay, thus putting that burden on others. You miserable rat.

Always with these people, disagreeing with them means you're guilty of moral turpitude, or even a crime.

Ah, but that's The Prevention State for you: punishing you with fines and imprisonment before you actually cause any harm. That's why The Prevention State is justly characterized as a servile state.

P.S.

Don't be fooled by the technical difficulties in the video: Robert Broadus is not a black man. Well, not a real one, anyway.

Pelosi Drives America, or the other way around?

I know it's been going around a while, but it is funny. And I'm still just goofing off.




As a bonus, here's an announcement from His Beatitude's teleprompter:

Texas ain't for everyone

Got this via email:

Dear Diary

Just moved to Texas ! Now this is a state that knows how to live!!

Beautiful sunny days and warm balmy evenings. What a place! It is beautiful. I've finally found my home. I love it here.

June 14th:
Really heating up. Got to 100 today. Not a problem. Live in an air-conditioned home and drive an air-conditioned car. What a pleasure to see the sun everyday like this. I'm turning into a sun worshipper.

June 30th:
Had the backyard landscaped with western plants today. Lots of cactus and rocks. What a breeze to maintain. No more mowing the lawn for me. Another scorcher today, but I love it here.

July 10th:
The temperature hasn't been below 100 all week. How do people get used to this kind of heat? At least, it's kind of windy though. But getting used to the heat is taking longer than I expected.

July 15th:
Fell asleep by the community pool. (Got 3rd degree burns over 60% of my body). Missed 3 days of work. What a dumb thing to do. I learned my lesson though. Got to respect the ol' sun in a climate like this.

July 20th:
I missed Lomita (my cat) sneaking into the car when I left this morning. By the time I got to the hot car at noon, Lomita had died and swollen up to the size of a shopping bag, then popped like a water balloon. The car now smells like Kibbles and Shits. I learned my lesson though. No more pets in this heat. Good ol' Mr. Sun strikes again.

July 25th:
The wind sucks. It feels like a giant freaking blow dryer!! And it's hot as hell. The home air-conditioner is on the fritz and the AC repairman charged $200 just to drive by and tell me he needed to order parts.

July 30th:
Been sleeping outside on the patio for 3 nights now, $225,000 house and I can't even go inside. Lomita is the lucky one. Why did I ever come here?

Aug. 4th:
It's 115 degrees. Finally got the air-conditioner fixed today. It cost $500 and gets the temperature down to 85. I hate this stupid state.

Aug. 8th:
If another wise ass cracks, 'Hot enough for you today?' I'm going to strangle him. Damn heat. By the time I get to work, the radiator is boiling over, my clothes are soaking wet, and I smell like baked cat!!

Aug. 9th:
Tried to run some errands after work. Wore shorts, and when I sat on the seats in the car, I thought my ass was on fire. My skin melted to the seat. I lost 2 layers of flesh and all the hair on the back of my legs and ass. Now my car smells like burnt hair, fried ass, and baked cat.


Aug 10th:
The weather report might as well be a damn recording. Hot and sunny. Hot and sunny. Hot and sunny. It's been too hot to do Shit for 2 damn months and the weatherman says it might really warm up next week.

Doesn't it ever rain in this damn state? Water rationing will be next, so my $1700 worth of cactus will just dry up and blow over. Even the cactus can't live in this damn heat.

Aug. 14th:
Welcome to HELL! Temperature got to 115 today. Cactus are dead. Forgot to crack the window and blew the damn windshield out of the car. The installer came to fix it and guess what he asked me???

"Hot enough for you today?"

My sister had to spend $1,500 to bail me out of jail. Freaking Texas.

What kind of a sick demented idiot would want to live here??

Will write later to let you know how the trial goes.

I don't know what all the whining's about. When I was growing up we didn't have an air conditioner.

I'm homesick again.

On earth as it is in heaven

(Razing the Servile State III)

The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. ~ Genesis 49.10

In my previous posting on this subject, in which I sought to explain how a Christian's resistance to the state could be consistent with Romans 13, I made much of the notion of the consent of the governed. In other words, in contrast with the Roman Empire, in which not every subject of Rome's rule was a citizen, the Christian in the United Servile States of America has rights. In resisting the state, on the basis of the consent of the governed, the Christian acts in no way differently than Paul did when he objected to being whipped because as a citizen of Rome he had rights, one of which was the right not to be whipped or in any way punished without benefit of trial (see Acts 22.22-29). At the very end of that same posting I said I disagree with Christian Reconstructionist/Dominion theology. More specifically, what I said, in full context, was:

While I affirm the right of rebellion under Anglo-Saxon law tradition, as well as another tradition going back to Juan de Mariana, of regicide, I think we (i.e., Christians) should prefer another route. Bearing in mind, as I said above, that while Paul enjoined obedience to usurpatious, Roman governing authorities, he proclaimed a message which undermined the very state those authorities served. The best approach, it seems to me, is to agitate -- not call, not request, not even beg -- for surrender of illegitimately exercised powers.

Others, of course, would assert another approach. Christians, they would argue, should seek to hold public office, and hold those offices as ministers of God, as Paul calls governing authorities. In those offices, then, they should devolve these illegitimately exercised powers back to the states where they belong. Chief among these are, I think, Christian Reconstructionists or Dominionists, with whom I disagree.

For my purposes here, the Theonomist position will be described as follows. Simply put, despite the claims of dispensationalists and others, God's law has not been set aside; with the exception of the ceremonial laws, it still applies today. It must, because the Law is not arbitrary; it is a reflection of God's own character and cannot any more be set aside than God can deny Himself. Not only that, since the law was the standard applied by the Old Testament prophets against the nations, that law applies to believer and non-believer alike. God does not have one standard for believers and another for non-believers. Neither a Christian nor a non-Christian nation is ethically free to institute whatsoever laws may please it. Finally, despite popular understanding, theonomists do not propose to impose a theocratic dictatorship. Rather they intend changing the political order not by means of revolution (unlike some people we know), but by dependence upon regeneration, education and legal reform. (In my estimation, one of the best explanations of the position is Greg Bahnsen's "The Theonomic Reformed View", in Greg L. Bahnsen, et al, Five Views on Law and Gospel, Zondervan, 1996.)

I describe myself as a qualified theonomist. I agree with everything I just wrote as a description of the theonomic view that the law still applies today. But I take note of the fact that while the prophets do appraise the nations in terms of God's law, the nation of Israel (i.e., believers) are never tasked with applying that law against the nations themselves. Even if change should come by the above-mentioned means, there will still be those who dissent. The system theonomists propose, even if acceptable to a majority, must involve a certain amount of aggression against the property rights of the dissenters, specifically the right of self-ownership. The consent of the governed might be construed as the consent of self-owners to have their self-ownership aggressed against. (Technically, of course, if they consent, then there is no aggression involved. But let's not be technical just yet.) If, on the other hand, one does not consent to government, then government aggresses against self-ownership.

Self-ownership strikes the ear as a secular humanistic conception, and we (especially if we are Reformed) might therefore be inclined to dismiss it. But to my mind self-ownership (albeit a libertarian conception) is at the very least consistent with the fact that humans are responsible to God for their actions. In other words, humans must own their actions. If my actions are mine then so is the self which performs the actions. The non-believer is responsible for -- owns -- his unbelief and all the actions he performs in his unbelief. He owns the ends he selects as well as the means he selects for attaining those ends. Theonomists propose commanding the unbeliever to employ his property in a certain way, even, I'll grant, the right way. They propose aggressing against our neighbors' self-ownership, and this, despite theonomists, as a general rule, being very much free market oriented.

What theonomists, then, have in mind is a notion similar to what both the left and the right have of consent of the governed, which is really, the consent of the majority of the governed. This puts the minority in the position of having their self-ownership aggressed against, which, to them, amounts to government without the consent of the governed. And their property rights in themselves would be aggressed against under a right-leaning theonomic regime no more or less than their other property rights would be, or are, under a left-leaning anthroponomic regime. Why should anyone trade a left-leaning aggressor for a right-leaning aggressor? The only difference is the nature of the property rights being aggressed against. And that is why I believe it can truly be said that the difference between right wing theocrats like Theonomists and left wing theocrats (like those people at Theocracy Watch) is the nature of the regime to be imposed, as Mises explained:

In our time the most powerful theocratic parties are opposed to Christianity and to all other religions which evolved from Jewish monotheism. What characterizes them as theocratic is their craving to organize the earthly affairs of mankind according to the contents of a complex of ideas whose validity cannot be demonstrated by reasoning. They pretend that their leaders are blessed by a knowledge inaccessible to the rest of mankind and contrary to the ideas maintained by those to whom the charisma is denied. The charismatic leaders have been entrusted by a mystical higher power with the office of managing the affairs of erring mankind. They alone are enlightened; all other people are either blind and deaf or malefactors. ~ Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (4th Ed.), p. 156.

Anti-theonomist statists of non-theistic stripe will object to being described as theocrats on the grounds that they don't have a god. But their position is preposterous. It amounts to affirming that we should approve their dictatorship on the ridiculous grounds that their opponents' system posits, as given by a god, a complex of ideas whose validity cannot be demonstrated by reasoning while theirs posits, as given by some other source, a complex of ideas whose validity cannot be demonstrated by reasoning. Big deal. The choice they offer is still between two dictatorships. And to both of them, I say, "No me jodan."

So, in brief, in critiquing the dogmas of the servile state, I include a theonomist state because I don't think it can properly honor the concept of the consent of the governed, a concept which I think is consistent with the notion that, since God holds people responsible for (makes them own) their actions, people have to an extent some ownership of themselves. To govern a man without his consent, even for a theonomist, is to aggress against his property rights in himself. I object to the present non-theonomic, servile state without, at the same time, preferring a theonomic one. And that simply had to be explained because those who love our servile state will have it that all who oppose it (that is, the right wing) wish to impose upon us a theocracy. Thus do they hope to frighten us into their ever loving, protecting fold.

Part IV

"Hide-and-Seek" versus "Seek-and-Destroy"

This ain’t John McCain’s logrolling senatorial club any more. This is a deadly serious attempt to realize the vision of the 1960s and to fundamentally transform the United [Servile] States of America. This is the fusion of Communist dogma, high ideals, gangster tactics, and a stunning amount of self-loathing. For the first time in history, the patrician class is deliberately selling its own country down the river just to prove a point: that, yes, we can! This country stinks and we won’t be happy until we’ve forced you to admit it. ~ David Kahane

During the campaign season, I was continually mystified by how ignorant McCain was about what precisely was going on. Given virtually any opportunity to hit back -- HARD!!! -- he refused, especially during the debates (see some of my reactions here, here and here). I don't know how many times McCain reassured us of his ability to reach across the aisle and blah, blah, blah. But it wasn't too long before I realized what was wrong with McCain: He was thinking in terms of politics, which is about governing a society, rather than revolution, which is about transforming it. There is a difference: In governing, that which is governed is left substantially unchanged by the act of governing; but in transforming, the whole idea is to alter society. Obama, no one seemed to notice (despite what he said, repeatedly), was not campaigning to govern; he was campaigning to transform, by which I mean not fix, repair, or correct, but rather, alter or even abolish. Destroy.

In governing, it makes total sense to reach across aisles, make friends, roast marshmallows and sing camp-fire songs and, when seeking office, to boast of one's abilities to do so as an important qualification. But one cannot resist revolution (i.e., transformation) in that way. It may be distasteful to say so, especially if one's hope is to govern, but the fact is transformation, and resistance to it, must be played by different rules than apply in politics. McCain either never figured that out, or he wanted transformation as well, but only to a lesser extent, or more slowly. McCain should have been resisting a revolutionary, but he never realized it. How else to explain his saying, “My friends, you have nothing to fear from an Obama presidency.” Pardon me while I spew chunks. He would have been right, if Obama's presidency were going to be about governing. But why should McCain have thought so? Because he never understood what was going on. Through inattention he never understood his opponent's motives, or his goals. He really thought the campaign was about politics, how to govern. When one wants to govern (and is campaigning for office against one who wants to revolutionize) the campaign, though it preserve the outward appearance of government office-seeking, is really combat.

One cannot have failed to notice that the left have never cared to govern what they find. They seek to transform, and then only, to govern -- forever -- what remains after they have transformed -- altered or abolished. This, explains David Kahane, is why the left have never recognized a duty to -- how to put this -- play fair. There is no fair in a revolution. There is win or lose. Playing fair is how the other side loses. Thus saith the fourth rule for radicals: "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules." We should stop living up to the rule book:

If [we] had any sense, [we] would start using [their] tactics against [them]. After all, [we] have a few lawyers on [our] side. Sue [them]. File frivolous ethics complaints against all [their] elected officials until, like Sarah [Palin], they go broke from defending themselves. (David Paterson would be a good place to start.) Challenge the constitutionality of BO²’s legion of fill-in-the-blank czars — none of whom have to be confirmed, or even pass a security check. (Come to think of it, neither did Barry.) Let slip [our] own journalistic dogs of war, assuming [we] have any, to find Barry’s birth certificate, his college transcripts, whether he applied to Occidental as a foreign student, and on which passport he traveled in 1981 to Pakistan with his friend Wahid Hamid, for starters.

[...]

What [we]...need...is a Rules for Radical Conservatives to explain what [we’re] up against and teach [us] how to compete before it’s too late.

Some people probably still think Republicans/Conservatives should be above all that type of activity, should play fair. Of course we should live up to our own book of rules, otherwise we become the enemy. But such rubbish overlooks what the "rule book" is for. If the rule book outlines how the game of campaigning for office is played and your opponent really isn't campaigning for office, but rather engaging in revolution (no matter how civil the appearance), then the game for which the rule book exists is no longer being played. The game has been changed from hide-and-seek to seek-and-destroy. You can keep playing hide-and-seek if you like, but your opponent is still going to be playing seek-and-destroy. Your chances, I think, are not so good, unless your opponent never finds you. Good luck with that.

Look at it this way, if you step into the boxing ring expecting a boxing match and your opponent discards his gloves and pulls a knife, or even a gun, you need a different rule book. If you insist on boxing, you're a dumb ass who deserves exactly what's about to happen to you, if only because you won't mount the appropriate type of defense. Moreover, you shouldn't even be playing defense in that situation anyway, moron.

Yes, people should play fair -- if we were still talking politics, if we were talking simply of governance. But we are not; that ship sailed long ago.

Skepticism, thy name is Treason

Think of any question regarding a matter of fact. Will it rain tomorrow? Does light really travel at 186,282.39705122 miles per second (in a vacuum)? Does caffeine stunt your growth?

Normally, even in vehement disagreements over these matters, vitriol is minimal. But for some types of people, there are orthodox answers to certain questions. Deny the orthodox answers and boy are you in trouble. The least bit of skepticism (and I do mean even the least bit) regarding the theory of evolution -- a single theory -- is never treated like simple skepticism, never treated as simple difference of opinion. No, this skepticism regarding a single theory (never mind the reason for the skepticism) is sufficient to earn the skeptic the accusation of being anti-science. One is an opponent of all science (I am ussually subjected to harsher treatment because I deny the possibility of a properly scientific theory of origins at all, on the grounds that theories of origins are necessarily highly speculative and strictly untestable. It's so much fun being me sometimes.)

When it comes to scientific orthodoxy, there is no such thing as free speech, no such thing as free inquiry, no such thing as honest, heart-felt objection. Disagreement with scientific orthodoxy is a crime. Take for example the crime of Holocaust Denying. The Holocaust is a simple fact condition: it happened; or, it did not happen -- like the questions, "What happened to the colonists at Roanoke?" or "What caused the fall of the Roman Empire?" Several theories abound regarding both those questions. (As of 2003 there were no less than 210 theories about the latter.) Rejecting any of those explanations is not a crime. You could, more relevantly, deny that there were any colonists at Roanoke in the first place or even that there was a fall of the Empire, without being guilty of a crime for doing so. But deny the Holocaust (which, by the way, I do not) -- have an honest, but contrary, opinion about a matter of historical fact -- and you are guilty of a crime.

Guilty of a crime for refusing to assent to a proposition about an event in history -- it hardly seems possible; but it's true. You say, if you dare, the Holocaust did not happen; and it's off to jail with you. Heretic.

When I was young, it was fashionable for us god-deniers to point to the Roman Catholic Church's treatment of heretics, those who disagreed with orthodoxy as defined by the Church. This treatment of heretics was one of many reasons for denying the truth of the Christian faith. Heretics, as we know, were subjected by the Church to unspeakable tortures and modes of execution, such as burning at the stake. We could not understand this mistreatment. The only thing these people did was to have an opinion on certain matters which were at variance with orthodoxy as defined by the Church. We, naturally, are much better. We do not have orthodox beliefs. We believe in freedom of inquiry and debate. No more persecutions of Galileo and his like.

It wasn't until after I, myself, (and sort of to my own surprise) became a Christian that I realized just how much orthodoxy there really is outside of "religious" orthodoxy. And, as P. K. Feyerabend, argued, there are ways short of the rack and the stake, of persecuting heretics.

For example, you could call them traitors. That's what Paul Krugman does, accusing of treason -- against the planet, no less -- anyone who doesn't agree with his position on global warming. Do you suppose that, in their quest to save the planet, people like Herr Krugman will argue for the (summary?) execution of us traitors? We are, after all, talking about saving the planet...from traitors to the planet. And treason, as William Anderson points out, has traditionally been a crime punishable by death. Though I doubt they'll kill us. That would mean giving us an escape from their plantation -- I mean, planet.

These fundamentalists are just like the fundamentalists (of faiths other than their own) they despise. They never have to prove anything in order to compel belief. They want to control everything; and every crisis -- real, perceived or manufactured -- is an argument for their expanding purview. And when their prophets say it and they believe it, that settles it. The debate is over when they become convinced; and their opponents, not free to remain unconvinced, are transformed immediately from simple interlocutors into dangerous criminals.

H/T: William Anderson

Social Change: Necessary Conditions

A passage relevant to our times from Murray Rothbard, which I offer with a brief commentary:

Marxists have correctly perceived that two sets of conditions are necessary for the victory of any program of radical social change; what they call the “objective” and the subjective” conditions. The subjective conditions are the existence of a self-conscious movement dedicated to the triumph of the particular social ideal—conditions which we have been discussing above. The objective conditions are the objective fact of a “crisis situation” in the existing system, a crisis stark enough to be generally perceived, and to be perceived as the fault of the system itself. For people are so constituted that they are not interested in exploring the defects of an existing system so long as it seems to be working tolerably well. And even if a few become interested, they will tend to regard the entire problem as an abstract one irrelevant to their daily lives and therefore not an imperative for action—until the perceived crisis breakdown. It is such a breakdown that stimulates a sudden search for new social alternatives—and it is then that the cadres of the alternative movement (the “subjective conditions”) must be available to supply that alternative, to relate the crisis to the inherent defects of the system itself, and to point out how the alternative system would solve the existing crisis and prevent similar breakdowns in the future. Hopefully, the alternative cadre would have provided a track record of predicting and warning against the existing crisis.

Indeed, if we examine the revolutions in the modern world, we will find that every single one of them (a) was utilized by an existing cadre of seemingly prophetic ideologists of the alternative system, and (b) was precipitated by a breakdown of the system itself. ~ The Ethics of Liberty (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1998), p. 267.

Or, with particular regard to that last clause, the supposed breakdown of the system, together with the assumption that only one alternative to the supposedly broken system exists. You know, the sort of alternative whose proponents claim for it that the only other course of action is to do nothing, which is, so they tell us, not an option. This is the sort of alternative whose proponents rest their case upon the strength of a false dilemma: "Not doing it our way" = "Doing nothing".

And that is why they believe themselves brilliant. In a way, they are brilliant: they can dress up a false dilemma with all the respectability of Einstein's Special Theory.

NOTE: The Ethics of Liberty is made available online by The Ludwig von Mises Institute, here (in pdf) and here.

FURTHER NOTE: If you don't have time to read the entire book, at least online, you should at least read Chapter 30.

More politicians should pull a Mark Sanford

And how I wish they would.


My wife and I had a slight, and friendly, disagreement over breakfast this morning about the revelations of Mark Sanford's mysterious disappearance over the weekend. Her position generally agreed with what seems to be the majority report on the issue: that the governor's absence would have been a grave liability in the event of some crisis, blah, blah, blah. I mean even the State Law Enforcement Division (responsible for his security) and his own staff couldn't reach him via mobile phone and text messages between Thursday and Tuesday. Why, one caller to the Limbaugh Show claimed that Sanford's absence left his state "in the lurch."

Heard somewhere in the state of South Carolina: Oh, my goodness. The governor's gone! What if there's a hurricane? What if the sky falls? What if the earth's temperature keeps rising?

Whatever.

My position is that no one (certainly no POLITICIAN!!!) can, or even should be so important that his mysterious absence would mean total disaster. An entire state in the lurch? Just because the governor is out of state, and out of touch with his staff? What are we saying here? That when the governor is away it's like a parent leaving the house for the weekend and the children unattended? Help! Social Services! (They're never around when you need them.)

Please. No one, certainly no politician, should be that important. And the fact that some are so should be a sign of something bad. An AWOL governor should be as frightening as missing a hole in one's head. Without condoning adultery, anyone should be able to just disappear for a bit if he wants to. Especially a politician. I wish more of them would.

Hey, whiners, listen up: If you don't need your parents anymore then you don't need your governor, either. And if you do need your governor, then you probably still need your parents, too. Grow up and start finding things more important to worry about than a missing politician.

My wife, incidentally, now agrees with me on this. Which she should. Because I'm right.

Now if I can just get her to surrender her position on the War on Drugs.

A Necessary Submission

(Razing the Servile State II)

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. ~ Declaration of Independence, emphasis added.

[I]t has always happened that tyrants, in order to strengthen their power, have made every effort to train their people not only in obedience and servility toward themselves, but also in adoration. ~ LaBoetie, The Politics of Obedience, Part II.

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.... Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities.... ~ Romans 13.1, 5


Paradoxically, one of the dogmas underlying our own United Servile States of America, is that the state is owed virtually unquestioned obedience, and to some extent, even a modicum of adoration, by its subjects. I say paradoxically for two reasons. First, because these states owe their existence to the fact that the founders dared to question and then reject the obedience they owed the British Crown. Second, because some of the most state-adoring people in this country are conservative Christians, who rely upon texts like Romans 13 to urge this virtually unquestioning obedience, in contrast with some of their forebears who, in fact, urged rebellion on the grounds that government must obey the laws and when it does not it is no longer owed obedience. (During the period during which revolution was simmering, a "patriot" was one who favored liberty in the form of secession -- yes, secession -- from Great Britiain, as opposed to loyalists.) In the circles in which I move, I daresay most Christians, who look upon the Revolution favorably, would look upon a rebellion against the government in Washington, even an unarmed one, as a sin. I could be wrong. (But I'm not.)

Because I am a Christian, I must deal with this underlying dogma first because in expressing some antipathy for (servile!) statism I may seem to run afoul of specific Biblical passages such as the above-quoted from Romans 13. Especially is this the case when one considers the phenomenon of "Christian Patriotism", which, like men, women, teenagers, soldiers, college students, environmentalists, etc, etc, etc, even has it's very own niche Bible. How can I desire the razing of the (servile) state in the face of such passages? Moreoever, how could I possibly favor razing a state which my own faith played some part in founding. It comes to two things. First, nothing about a requirement to obey a governing authority implies that the governing authority is not in certain respects usurpatious. Second, this is no longer the state which Christianity played a role in founding. I'm not going to spend any time, here, arguing the second point. I shall devote attention to the first.

In questioning the authority of the state (by arguing that it should not have much of the authority it exercises) I am violating Paul's command. I am, in fact, going against God because Paul says that the state, as an authority, has been established by God. What the state, established by God, commands, I must obey. The voice of the state must be held to be the voice of God. In fact, however, unlike Rothbardian libertarians, I do not rebel against the state per se. I rebel against the state's usurpations. It is the state, not I, that is wrong.

Let's look first at what Paul says about the role of the state, or the "governing authorities". These authorities hold no terror for those who do right. One could argue that my antipathy to the state must indicate that I am one of those who do wrong. If I were keen to do right, I would not be bothered by the state. But I am bothered by the state; and I think I am justifed in being bothered. Paul does not say that the state first decides what is right and then punishes those who act contrary. He says the state simply punishes wrong-doers. The state is not the final word on what is right. The state, properly, is the enforcer of a law it has not created of itself, a law which pre-exists the state.

The situation in which we find ourselves is one in which the state acknowledges no law not posited by itself. The state shall first decide what is right and then punish those who do wrong. We live under the domination of a state which is the final word on what is "right" -- a divine state. We live under the domination of a state which forces us to live not by laws but by opinions. One can know this is true, by considering the fact that during the recent campaign season, the President asserted that, while government cannot and should not do everything for you, it should do for you what you cannot do for yourself. (He has not been alone in making that claim, of course. I mention it because it is recent history.) Perhaps it is a true proposition that government ought to do for people what they cannot do for themselves. Frankly, I see no way to justify belief in its truth. That is an opinion. It is his opinion. And if one listens closely, one notes that we are never told why government must do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We are told this, hear this and obey this. (Well, some of us anyway. Others of us question.) So we are to be ruled by opinion, dogma really. Wrong-doers are those whose opinions are at variance with those of the state and act accordingly, in other words, heretics.

With respect, then, to the matter of usurpations, the question is not whether (and by whom) the state is empowered to do for some what they cannot do for themselves, but rather, from a Christian perspective, whether God empowers and authorizes, for a pertinent example, the governing authorities (Party A) to seize and employ the resources of one (Party B), not, as St. Paul says, to punish wrong-doers, but in order to do for another (Party C) what Party C cannot do for himself. If the state is not thus empowered, then it usurps this power and is, therefore, illegitimate.

So, I agree with Paul that the governing authorities have been established by God. That is not the question. The question is whether the governing authorities are authorized by their Establisher to do as they will, or to do as they were established to do. The question is whether the governing authorities still recognize themselves as having been established to punish wrong-doers, or whether they prefer to substitute their own notions of wrong-doing and punish in accordance with those notions, whether they prefer not so much to punish wrong-doers but to do for others what those others cannot do for themselves, and confiscating whatever properties needed, not to support their work of punishing wrong-doers but to do those things they prefer to do. And all this without the consent of those whose property is confiscated for these purposes.

Of course, those to whom Paul wrote also lived under the dominion of such a state. The governing authorities to which St. Paul enjoins obedience were also usurping powers not legitimately theirs. And yet, he says, "Obey them." Uncritical reading and recitation of this passage and others might lead us to continue a habit of submission to illegitimate authority. (Not very unlike some Christians who accepted the Nazi state on the grounds that "governing authorities" are established by God.) This is why it is important to take careful note of two very, very important facts. First, at the very moment in time at which Paul was urging obedience to the "governing authorities" he was proclaiming a message which would eventually turn that state on its very head. Second, on occasion St. Paul insisted on the prerogatives of his Roman citizenship. Roman citizenship was not something just everyone had back then. When the governing authority violated his rights as a Roman citizen, he asserted those rights, insisted upon them, in fact.

Like Paul, we have a citizenship which gives us rights against our own governing authorities. Not only that, ours is a citizenship in a country whose legal background (Anglo-Saxon law) includes the right of the governed not only to consent to being governed, but also the little known right of rebellion. So, in the same way St. Paul could appeal to Ceasar, which many of his readers could not, we can, even as Christians, legitimately insist upon our rights, including, should the need arise, the right of rebellion (as a consequence of the right of the governed to consent to their governments).

Speaking of Rome, it is interesting to pause and note that Rome, the capital city of an empire, was a republic before it degenerated into an empire. As a republic, it also was established in an act of rebellion against the Etruscan kings. So we have the ironical fact of a republic birthed in act of rebellion degenerating into an empire with a government rebellion against which was considered an act of treason. The Romans who founded the republic, claimed a right for themselves which they turned round and denied to others by expanding Rome's imperium through warfare. To be sure, beginning with Juilus Caesar, there was a pattern of granting Roman citizenship to provincials (i.e., wiping out the distinction between conquerors and conquered), but this was only to make the conquered easier to rule. Becoming a citizen of Rome did not come with a right to consent to the rule of Rome. In truth, granting citizenship to the conquered was nothing more than making their subjugation complete. But I digress.

While I affirm the right of rebellion under Anglo-Saxon law tradition, as well as another tradition going back to Juan de Mariana, of regicide, I think we (i.e., Christians) should prefer another route. Bearing in mind, as I said, above, that while Paul enjoined obedience to usurpatious, Roman governing authorities, he proclaimed a message which undermined the very state those authorities served. The best approach, it seems to me, is to agitate -- not call, not request, not even beg -- for surrender of illegitimately exercised powers.

Others, of course, would assert another approach. Christians, they would argue, should seek to hold public office, and hold those offices as ministers of God, as Paul calls governing authorities. In those offices, then, they should devolve these illegitimately exercised powers back to the states where they belong. Chief among these are, I think, Christian Reconstructionists or Dominionists, with whom I disagree.

I suppose, since the topic has come up, I should explain why. I'll have to do so another time.

To sum up my position, nothing about the requirement to give obedience to the governing authorities, means we are therefore prevented in insisting upon our rights under the laws of the nation in which we live. We can raze the servile state and at the same time acknowledge the excerise of legitimate powers. Razing the servile state is best done by attacking the dogmas upon which it rests, not the people in its employ. In other words, razing the servile state by attacking its underlying dogmas requires use of our first amendment rights, not our second amendment rights.

Part III

Razing The Servile State

[T]rends of evolution can change, and hitherto they almost always have changed. But they changed only because they met firm opposition. The prevailing trend toward...the servile state will certainly not be reversed if nobody has the courage to attack its underlying dogmas. ~ Ludwig von Mises

Mises was correct to identify courage as a necessary component in beating back the "servile state". (He'd be gratified, I'm sure, to know I agree with him!) Fortunately, I don't think lack of courage is our problem at present, here in the United Servile States of America. As I listen to critiques of His Beatitude and his policies, it strikes me that the courage is there. What is missing is much greater precision in identifying the "underlying dogmas" which Mises writes of. So far, the criticism is limited to explaining that, and how, the policies are socialist and in the long term unaffordable. Call the policies socialist, then show how they are socialist. (As, for example, here, where Karl Rove argues that we will become a European style welfare state. That is not a problem if you accept, as many now clearly do, the dogmas which underlay the welfare state.) Follow up with demonstration that the policies won't work somehow. Also, with respect to the in-fighting in the Republican Party, one must show that the so-called moderates lack the fortitude necessary to confront the left.

What is really missing, among conservatives, is awareness that the problem with moderates is not lack of courage, as Rush Limbaugh, for example, is wont to assert. Rather, moderates share belief with the President in some, if not all, of those underlying dogmas. Perhaps, as General Powell suggests, "the people" want higher taxes and more government, but the question is, Should they want these things? or, more importantly, Should they have them? You don't always get what you want. And sometimes you simply don't have a right to what you want.

Now, the General may be right about the trend, but that tells us nothing about the desirability of the trend. That's the problem with following a trend: the trend itself cannot tell you whether you should be following it. This is an important point. I'll come back to it in a moment, however.

There is another failure among conservatives. They keep talking as if we do not already live in, what Ludwig von Mises (following Hilaire Belloc) called The Servile State. To hear them talk, if we don't stop His Beatitude, we shall wake up one day in a police state. The sad fact is, we are already there. And the fact that conservatives do not see this may be testimony to just how many of our servile state's underlying dogmas they themselves have already accepted.

I can only put forth the briefest argument that we live in a servile state. Let me begin with the premise that socialist and communist states are servile states. Now consider some of the goals expressed by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital. and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries: gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools.

Granted, not all of those goals have been reached here. But anyone paying attention, I think, clearly understands that these are not vastly different from Leftist goals today, at least not in spirit.

We live in a servile state. The task, then, is not to prevent a servile state from arising in our midst. The task is to raze the one we have (and have had for quite some time) straight to the ground, and then grind it to dust.

I tabled above the topic of historical trends. Let me now return to it ever so briefly. One of His Beatitude's most cherished dogmas seems to be that the direction of societal evolution will continue into the future, and that it must do so. Attempts to reverse these obvious trends are doomed to failure. We must submit to the path of history; we don't want to be on "the wrong side of history," a phrase used by His Beatitude during his inauguration speech:

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

No assertion that "those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent" are unethical, or immoral in doing so. They are simply on the wrong side of history. There was a time when these tactics were on the right side of history, but not any longer. I suppose one could argue that it is unethical or immoral to be on the wrong side of history. But let us note the larger claim: His Beatitude, the god-like one (if Evan Thomas is anyone to listen to), knows where history (like Hegel and then Marx before him) is going, and is therefore fit to lecture leaders around the world on where history is going and how they will best be on its right side. They, apparently, must simply take his word for it.

The Blessed One re-iterated this idea during his speech at Langley, when he told attendees that new interrogation policies will put us on the better side of history. Well, thank goodness. I have been fearful that our so-called torture tactics were wrong, in the sense of being unethical or immoral. Now we can take solace in the fact that they are not wrong. They just fly in the face of what His Lordship tells us is the right side of history. Torture? That is so bell-bottoms and tie-dyed t-shirts.

The notion of historical inevitability shows up in El Jefe's approach to economics. In short, there will be no "going back" to whatever conception of capitalism He thinks has existed here. Even in this he affirms the inevitability of historical trends, Mises summarizes it:

In the last decades there [has] prevailed a trend toward more and more government interference with business. The sphere of the private citizen's initiative [has been] narrowed down. Laws and administrative decrees [have] restricted the field in which entrepreneurs and capitalists [are] free to conduct their activities in compliance with the wishes of the consumers as manifested in the structure of the market. From year to year an ever-increasing portion of profits and interest on capital invested [has been] confiscated by taxation of corporation earnings and individual incomes and estates.

Bush's mistake -- deregulation -- was the attempt to reverse an obvious trend. That is to say, Bush's policies were simply on the wrong side of history. History is going in the direction of more, not less, regulation -- more, not less, government intervention in the free (HA!) market. His Lordship is clearly on the right side of history: less, not more, private activity; more, not less, government activity. There is, of course, a problem with calling it a mistake: nothing tells us, even assuming historical inevitability (as unscientific a doctrine as ever there was), that we should be on the so-called right side of history.

Mises rather nicely disposes of the idea of the inevitability of historical trends in the article to which I've linked. But that is only one of the dogmas acceptance of which underlay servile states, especially ours. And, like Mises says, they need to be critiqued.

Part II

Can Sotomayor be borked? -- a follow-up

Sotomayor, the story goes, should be called to account for this quote, making her, Rush Limbaugh's words, a reverse racist:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life....

That, apparently, is what passes as an attempt at borking. The quote is much less offensive (though no less objectionable, on different grounds) when left in its larger context:

In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. ~ See here (emphasis added).

Frankly, the immediate context makes the comment less offensive because it follows an assertion about the lack of a universal definition of "wise". It's less offensive only because it's a bit nonsensical: having recognized the absence of a universal definition of "wise", it's a bit silly to go on and say anything at all about a "wise" latina. Judge Sotomayor could not even hope to distinguish between a "wise" latina and one who is not "wise". We must go on to ask how, in the absence of a universal definition of "wise", we can possilbly know that a "better" decision was reached, much less how we can know that this somehow-better decision was reached by a "wise" as opposed to an "unwise" latina.

On the subject of context there was this posting at Daily Kos, which attempts to show that Justice Alito said something similar to Sotomayor's sentiments:

And that's why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position...

When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.

See? That proves it. Republicans are hypocrites.

The context, Alito's confirmation hearings, raises some doubts, however:

[SENATOR] COBURN: You know, I think at times during these hearings you have been unfairly criticized or characterized as that you don't care about the less fortunate, you don't care about the little guy, you don't care about the weak or the innocent.

Can you comment just about Sam Alito, and what he cares about, and let us see a little bit of your heart and what's important to you in life?

ALITO: Senator, I tried to in my opening statement, I tried to provide a little picture of who I am as a human being and how my background and my experiences have shaped me and brought me to this point. I don't come from an affluent background or a privileged background. My parents were both quite poor when they were growing up.

And I know about their experiences and I didn't experience those things. I don't take credit for anything that they did or anything that they overcame.

But I think that children learn a lot from their parents and they learn from what the parents say. But I think they learn a lot more from what the parents do and from what they take from the stories of their parents lives.

And that's why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position.

And so it's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result.

But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, "You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country."

When I have cases involving children, I can't help but think of my own children and think about my children being treated in the way that children may be treated in the case that's before me.

And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account. When I have a case involving someone who's been subjected to discrimination because of disability, I have to think of people who I've known and admire very greatly who've had disabilities, and I've watched them struggle to overcome the barriers that society puts up often just because it doesn't think of what it's doing -- the barriers that it puts up to them.

So those are some of the experiences that have shaped me as a person.

To be accurate, Alito was not asked about jurisprudence. He was asked about what type of man he is. He was responding to assertion that he doesn't care about people.

There were several elucidating comments such as that Alito lied when he gave this testimony of his background, his feelings about it and the fact that he thinks about it when he attempts to apply the law (here, here, here), examples of making up facts needed to support a pre-determined conclusion. There is another, though not strictly related, example of that in this comment, in which we learn that if there is any racism in Puerto Rico it was brought there by tourists.

Bear in mind that Alito didn't say his background influenced his decisions, that wasn't the question. He certainly doesn't say anything such as that a "wise" italiano can reach a better decision than some white guy who didn't have the italiano experience. In fact he stipulated that "[I]t's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result." Keep that in mind when reading this comment. Then there's the one who claims Alito is so assimilated that he isn't really Italian anymore, here. Strawman comment in which Alito is criticized for saying that because of his ethnicity he could understand things better other who did not share his ethnicity, something he didn't say.

This is why I said leftists are so much better at borking than rightists. To successfully bork someone your audience must buy your pathetic, logical-fallacy ridden arguments. And the most potent logical tools leftists have are the persuasive definition, equivocation, strawman and the ad hominem. To regain the upper hand, Republicans, win, lose or draw, must reject borking as an appropriate strategy precisely because the tactics involved are at odds with the sort of appointees they claim to want, as well as with the sort of jurisprudence they claim to want these appointees to exercise. As Michael Polanyi says in his book, Personal Knowledge, often, in order to persuade one must teach one's interlocutor how to think. That is a very time-consuming process, and it means a few defeats before any successes. And if Republicans object to having to take the time for this, they might consider they have only themselves -- not Democrats -- to blame for the necessity.

H/T: Ethel C. Fenig, at American Thinker, here.

P.S.

As a bonus consider this pathetic refutation-by-mocking of originalism:

Judges like Antonin Scalia can throw out two centuries of precedent because they don't agree with it. Why? Because they've held private seances with the ghosts of the Founding Fathers, who revealed what they really meant when they wrote the Constitution.

How's that for a legal philosophy?

Originalists, whether their jurisprudence is right or wrong, possible or impossible, have not claimed private seances with the ghosts of the founding fathers. So what we've got here is a strawman, an argument against a proposition which hasn't been put forth. (And, as the highest court in the land, the SCOTUS is not bound by stare decisis. For, if it were, the Supreme Court could not possibly have reached the holding in Brown v. Board of Education (347 U.S. 483 [1954]) which overturned a half century of precedent going back at least to Plessy v. Ferguson (163 U.S. 537 [1896]). Besides, I don't know if we have two centuries of precedent on any legal matter, except perhaps for the notion of judicial review.)

He pretends to defeat, by simple mocking, the idea of being able to determine the meaning of a text through analysis of the text itself. Shall we apply this same skepticism to his comment at Daily Kos? Is it possible, after all these days, to determine what this silly individual really meant when he wrote that comment? If he would agree that it is still possible, these many days later, to discern the meaning of his posted comment, then what is the expiration period? For how long a time must a document be extant before only a seance with the writers of the document can reveal the meaning of the text? It is people like this who make borking successful. Is this the kind of sad, intellectual cripple Republicans want to persuade by such tactics?

Can Sotomayor be borked?

As the in-fighting among Republicans continues, the moderates think conservatives should capitulate and permit the confirmation of Judge Sotomayor without a fight. This, because it will harm the party to be seen objecting to the appointment of a hispanic woman to the Supreme Court.

Conservatives seem to think she should be borked for these offending remarks (among others):



H/T: Althouse

Much more informative, however, is the fuller clip:



A lot has been made of the fact that she says courts of appeals are where policy is made. There is really a much, much more important, much more revelatory comment here. It is the part (about 1:25 minutes in) where she outlines the role of the court of appeals in determining the next step in the development of the law. In other words, we are talking legal trendline analysis, probably not too different, as a conception, of Justice Holmes' notion that law is simply a prediction of what courts will decide. I'm going to post on the subject of historical trends, in the near future. (In fact, I've been working on that post for over a week now.) But for now let us note that the whole business of Obama's desire for justices with empathy and the importance -- to some -- that she is both hispanic and female is not quite as important as this statement of the nature of jurisprudence. At the court of appeals, the law is not being applied; it's "percolating". At that level of adjudication, the law has no being (if you will); the law is becoming. Indeed, it is always becoming. The question is, as Sotomayor says, what is the law becoming.

It is important to understand this, because, as Ann Alhouse says, conservatives should use this time to teach conservative interpretive principles, which means setting forth clearly what liberal interpretive principles are:

Here's what I think conservatives should do: Accept that she will be confirmed, but use the occasion to sharpen the definition of conservative judicial values and to argue to the American people that these are the better values. ~ Here, emphasis mine.

In a subsequent posting, responding to something Rush Limbaugh said on his show, she says:

If confirmation is about agreeing with the ideology, then Republicans might want to vote against Sotomayor. But confirmation should not be about ideology, and conservatives ought to want to prove that principle by their votes. Use the confirmation hearings to delineate what liberal judicial ideology is and why people ought to reject it. Then get a good presidential candidate for 2012 and make Supreme Court nominations an issue. Is that too hard? Does that take too long? Too bad! You say you want a Justice who will tell the truth about what the Constitution means. But here's something about what the Constitution means: The President has the appointment power.

It will be difficult for conservatives to follow Althouse's advice (which they should do) without understanding the crucial conception of historical trends. It might also help if conservatives better understood the difference in conceptions of rights (and therefore of justice) between left and right. They both use the words "rights" and "justice"; but they really do not mean the same thing by these words. And that's why I really can't fully agree with Althouse that confirmation should not be about ideology. (She'd be so disappointed to know that, I'm sure.)

Speaking of Limbaugh, and, more importantly, of conceptions of "rights", he has a transcript of 2001 radio interview in which Obama, discussing redistribution of wealth and how the Supreme Court's never gotten into it, complains of the Constitution's "negative" liberties.

OBAMA: If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I'd be okay. But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

[...]

As radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution at least as its been interpreted and the Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf, and that hasn't shifted, and one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.

Most conservatives, Limbaugh among them, will likely focus on His Beatitude's talk of "redistributive change". But that is really not the most important thing; it's not the element needing attention. What needs attention is the notion of "positive" rights, because there is little point in arguing for "redistributive change" unless one first presupposes that there are "positive" rights.

Also important is Obama's clear indication, in 2001, that he had no interest in presiding over the government created by the Constitution -- the government created by the States. Note his assertion that "the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, [which] says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but...doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf." That's true, because the Constitution didn't create a government which had duties to do anything, or at least much of anything, on our behalf. He wanted, and wants, a government other than the one created by the Constitution he affirmed to protect and defend. The nomination of Sotomayor is less about her being a woman, even less about her being hispanic, than it is about His Beatitude's desire to preside over a government with a constitution which protects "positive" rights.

But her being a woman, and her being hispanic, is useful. It is useful because in objecting to her appointment on ideological grounds it will still also be true that Republicans, though not technically, object to the appointment of a hispanic woman to the Supreme Court. It just won't be true that they object to her appointment because she's a hispanic woman. Despite the Democrats' borking, on ideological grounds, of Miguel Estrada.

Dems bork. Republicans capitulate. What a joke.

Can she be successfully borked? No. Republicans, especially the conservative kind, just are not as good at it as Democrats; and they shouldn't try to be, either. They should press her -- hard -- on those ideological matters. She should be grilled on the task of the appellate judge, anticipating the next step in the development of the (judge-made) law. She should be asked questions the answers to which will elucidate the nature of "positive" rights, especially that fact that "positive" rights mean involuntary servitude. She should be asked a lot of questions, questions about the law and its application, jurisprudential questions. But I hope we don't have any of that "In-Sonia-Sotomayor's-America" crap that Ted "Splash" Kennedy dumped on Judge Bork. Please, ye gods and goddesses, not that. (Well, not on the floor of the Senate anyway.)

Don't applaud California just yet

Well, you can applaud the voters, but in the end they will be ignored.

So, California voters have said "No" to new taxes. (According to the LA Times, this vote was an improper exercise of voter power.) On hearing the news yesterday morning, I was tempted to celebrate. I was listening to two bankers who have a brief (ten minutes) radio show talk about the California vote. One of the two is from California and called it a fiscally conservative, though socially liberal, state.

Is it a fiscally conservative state? I don't know. Whether it is, it is definitely a bankrupt state. And the vote may have more to do with that, than with any fiscal conservatism. One supposes that even a liberal knows when he's run out of money -- even other people's money.

The idea of bankruptcy should give us a clue. While they may be out of money, I doubt a sufficient number of Californians want to give up all those government programs supported by those taxes. Heck they've just about asked for them. And what do we now do when it comes to bankruptcy? Ask someone for a bailout, of course.

California will no doubt be bailed out by states that are not bankrupt. Actually, it will be a bail-out of California unions, like the auto company bail-outs were. That's how His Beatitude will become, in addition to Government Motors, Governor of California.