To Make a Fool Fall, Just Get Him a Hall

By a hall of a libertarian Don Meinshausen

There’s been a long lasting controversy and much current noise about whether to try   accused terrorists, in courts. People from all over agree that these terrorists have operated all over the world and especially in Iran, for too long with outrageous impunity. Some say it makes perfect sense to try violent villains in a court of law where outraged victims were allowed to present their case against them. It would have been great theater just to watch these creeps squirm in a witness stand where they had no power to hurt others. For once they would be where the whole world would watch them so they can feel the scorn and hatred of outraged people. Don’t forget that these evildoers were getting funds from those who have much oil money. And they have yet to explain themselves.  Such types have actually succeeded in imposing and maintaining tyrannies that have ruined societies and economies in many countries.

However those who want such trials should keep in mind the guidelines of the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals. These famous trials were held in that city because it was close to where the victims lived. So why not continue this tradition with other war crimes tribunals? This way the victims who have survived this terror can easily go and watch or testify at this trial. The victims and their families have the option of not taking part or ignoring the proceedings.

At Nuremberg it was established as a principle of justice that the defendants have rights to be respected even if they were involved in crimes against humanity. This is so that these procedures will not be seen as just vengeance by the victors. Those who sit in judgment must set high standards. This means that fundamental rights must be upheld in the trial such as; choice of counsel, the ability to summon witnesses and cross-examine and the defendants not to be subjected to torture. Even if the accused did not observe these rules one must honor them. If the tribunal seeks the respect of intelligent world opinion then standards of justice must be maintained EVEN IF THE ACCUSED DOES NOT DESERVE IT.

But why bring up these arguments about a war crimes tribunal that never happened after 30 years? Because this is what should have happened during the Iranian hostage crisis when the radical students arrested CIA and US embassy personnel in Teheran.  The students at that time could have organized a very interesting trial that would have attracted judicial and ethical leaders from all over the world. There would have been worldwide media attention and their revolution would have benefited not only in opinion from outside opinion but as a moderating influence on the newly minted state.

However, the students had no idea what was going on. The new Iranian government of religious fundamentalists was making a deal with the new American government of religious fundamentalists about holding the hostages until the Ayatollah Reagan got in power He would then sell Iran arms to fight Iraq.

In other words if the students had tried the embassy personnel they would have educated the world as well as themselves about the horrible regime of the Shah of Iran. He and his trained secret police, the Savak, were both put in and trained by the CIA. The CIA or the embassy personnel on trial would have had to fess up to what they were doing in imposing and supporting police states to help oil companies, arms sales and such. This would have been a tremendous benefit to the American people as they learned where their tax money had been spent. The hostages would be safe as it is far better to embarrass the US government and the oil companies than to punish the few pawns caught in the embassy. Like the historical outcome the hostages would have been released in a magnanimous gesture of forgiveness by the new regime after the secret arm sales went through after the inauguration of Reagan. But as Ron’s campaign slogan went: “It is Mourning in America.”

And what about the current controversy of the trials of the terrorists that were interned in Guantanamo who may soon be tried in American courts? Their notoriety deserves judicious notice. Whenever anyone hears about any crazy violent killing of any type most everyone has the same question: “Why did these people do such a thing?”  Even concerning the grimmest, most rabid of raving serial killers, outside of governments or religions, everyone wants to know what these psychotics have to say for themselves and why they did it so that further insanity can be avoided.

This is especially true for politically motivated crimes and trials. The defendants must have their say in court no matter how embarrassing for anyone. They must be allowed to present their case publicly. And if it exposes shameful behavior of the American government and its allies then so be it. This will not excuse their behavior just as their behavior is not an excuse for the violation of rights done by the US government.

. Many US citizens concerned about the implementation of policy to protect our rights want to see the Islamic terrorist way of thinking explain itself in a court of law. The more public and fair the trial the less sympathy these madmen will have here and in their home countries. Remember when a large entity defends itself from an attack by a smaller one it is important not to appear as a bully or even as a Goliath vs. David match.  It is part of the nature of humans to identify with and even root for the smaller player and to see them as brave.

It is therefore especially important to define these shocking events in the history and the cultures of the time in a fair and public way so our ideals are seen as justice.  These misguided souls live in their own myth that needs a thorough public discussion and dissection of their warped thinking with media coverage from around the world. This is so as to not make themselves into a martyr within any culture.

And this is the best way to defend a moral system under attack. For those who attack a standard of moral order are obliged to raise and uphold another as well as withstand critique. There is no mistake they wanted attention to some real grievances. In that corner of the world there is a smothering neo-colonialism, corruption, tyranny and hopelessness as in the much of the Third World. What makes this area a breeding ground for religious violence is that Islamic fanaticism is seen there as the only space where a poor man can find acceptance, justice, brotherhood and expression within a respected tradition. And while reforms are badly needed this does not excuse terrorism.

Therefore to try these supposed terrorists it is incumbent on those who create the theater of justice (and it is a theater) must take into account civil libertarian and conservative Islamic legal traditions as well to determine justice. From what I hear about Islam this is not difficult. Even under Sharia terrorist acts are considered horrible deeds.

The idea is that if you judge then by the same standards shall you be judged. You build a hall of justice and share a standard with others. At the same time you’ll be liable to stand in the defense dock if you break the rules of the hall. If not, all hall will break loose.

The Nurture and Care for the Radical Soul

The nurture and care of the radical soul

By an entertainer of ideas – Donald Meinshausen

I have been involved in radical politics for over 40 years. I have studied movements that were left, right and libertarian and green. Single issue, ideological, local as well as international have been areas of involvement for me. My involvement also includes cultural, theological and technological focuses to try to cure social problems. There are many problems in handling any of these approaches. One of the worst is burnout.

Anger or concern will only get you so far. These problems don’t go away because of an election victory as we are finding out now. One way of burning yourself out forever is working hard for something, getting it and it isn’t what you wanted. The system is good at putting their bad solutions wrapped in nice rhetoric packages that end up as traps. So how do you avoid this mistake and not get fooled again? (Listen to the song from the Who: We won’t get fooled again) Or is it worse never seeing a glimpse of what you want to accomplish?

Radicalism to me means having a positive vision and plan that is so clear in your mind that you cannot be suckered out of it. This positive vision is also a way of balancing all the negativity that we deal with. This is the bad news; the inevitable critiques of everything that inundate us that can turn us into cynics and pessimists. Some would call it a balance of yin and yang. This negativity can be balanced in a number of ways. Politics is power based upon a community that shares a vision. Real change is based on communities that are based on this commonality and the nurturance of it.

Culture is a way of doing this. In the 60’s we developed a counter-culture. Out of this vision came new ideas, designs and innovations. This happened in music, literature, all types of entertainment, food, relationships, fashion, design and technology etc. This also happened in spirituality and psychology as well. When people ask me to evaluate an idea, whether political or theological, I ask them to show me an example of its culture as novel, play or film. It need not be high culture. I need not entirely agree with it. But it should be interesting in evoking new approaches, solutions and archetypes.

I remember the Stalinoids that used to try and feed off of our energy and recruit us. They ridiculed the counterculture, which, was a source of our well-being.  They had little, if any, culture and what they had was rigidly politically correct and quite boring. This is one of the reasons that they are now an endangered species. This is why that I have no long-term fear of Islamic extremism or fundamentalism in general. Those without creative vision stagnate or grab someone else’s.

But how can you put together a personal worldview that integrates what you like culturally and see it solve problems? How can you see it work its way in the world and play in it as well? The best literature of ideas is science fiction. Many of the technical, political and cultural aspects of the present day were first described in science fiction. Here people learned in technology and social trends explain these factors affecting our future in a new mythology with new archetypes.

I once had an opportunity to talk to someone who did his PhD thesis on utopian literature who was also involved in the Citizen’s Party. While he had to wade through a lot of crap, weirdness and boring rants he found that fictional portrayals of ideas are more widely read than heavy tomes on politics and economics by a factor of 10-1. Therefore these fictional depictions were very influential among average citizen and opinion maker alike as well as those in between.

The two examples that he gave were Looking Backwards by Edward Bellamy based on Karl Marx and Ayn Rand and various works on libertarianism. He said that utopian literature today is almost exclusively green, feminist, pagan, libertarian or anarchist and much of that is a combination of those ideas. Anti-utopian literature was also a part of his thesis. The ratio of anti-utopian novels to utopian ones increased dramatically after the Communists took over Russia.

People also express some of the best critiques of a system through humor. This is more healthy and effective on average than either utopianizing or academic explanations. From Swift to Mark Twain, Lenny Bruce to Jon Stewart, Steve Colbert and PJ O’Rourke have exploded hypocrisies and evil through laughter. Beware of any ideologian or theocrat that cannot laugh, especially at themselves. Humor is tragedy turned inside out. You, as a social critic, can get away with more as a humorist. It also feels good to laugh and is good for you. Humor is a way of deflating egotism with less hurting of people’s feelings.

Of course you can still remain politically active and not read fiction or like humor and not burn out. Then you can run the risk of burning out or boring your friends and acquaintances by talking about nothing but politics. Grimness is a turnoff. That is why the Puritans died out. Even if you read and listen to only political books, music, films exclusively you become too narrow and boring. Is enough of your life enjoyable that has no political context at all? If not, then how can you relate to the many who do not have politics as their focus? How can you study technology and other politically neutral parts of life unless you can enjoy non-political knowledge and the simple pleasures of life for what they are?

There is one answer available for all activists and theoreticians no matter what their talents or inclination. Whenever you get a chance to visit an alternative world, do so. For example live or visit foreign countries. Some parts of the US are like foreign countries to us and travel to them is an adventure. Do this within reasonable precautions for health and safety and observe and ask questions, politely. An activist is an ambassador and an explorer as well as instigator.

Imagination and on line worlds such as Second Life can be interesting laboratories of social experiment. I’m looking for any feedback on what people have learned from organizing in these worlds. Communes are what we did in the 60’s and there are still many of these experimental communities if you want to join or investigate them.

But also consider the world of Temporary Autonomous Zones. This theory by left anarchist theoretician and Sufi poet Peter Lamborn Wilson can put practice in your theory. The idea here is if you put together a temporary and large enough event that you outnumber the Man so that your energy has room to bloom. I have seen several and you can do and see some cutting edge entertainment, art and people.

The most interesting one that I have discovered is Burning Man. There is a good book about it by Brian Doherty called “This is Burning Man”. Here you have radical self-reliance, complete artistic freedom and environmental respect for an invulnerable flat desert environment. This attracts some of the weirdest, creative people in the country and has done so for decades. This is a community of over 30,000 people that assembles a town for about 10 days and becomes the 5^th largest city in Nevada. It even has a Department of Mutant Vehicles to handle the safety of the art cars, sailing ships, whales and dragons that operate as its transportation system. You meet some every interesting people here as Silicon Valley closes for this extravaganza.

Also check out Rainbow Gatherings to see a real 60’s be-in with over 10,000 hippies in a national forest. Like Burning Man it has security without a police state and health emergency services without expense. Both events appreciate participants rather than tourists. So when you go be self-sufficient, share and help out where you can. Be an entertainer or a facilitator. After all, these events are a way to build a new community. Yes, these events are an ordeal, to weed out gawkers and others who do not participate. They are quite cheap as vacations and there is car-pooling.

If you want something more comfortable and artsy-craftsy try Oregon Country Fair, which is held around Eugene and is like a Renaissance Fair with a 60’s motif. Unlike the other events mentioned food, arts and crafts are sold here and there are many cool craftsman as well as avant garde entertainment. So it is more of fair although you could go there to sell things.

The state does try to hassle, control or stop these events, which should give you an idea of how important they are in learning new ideas. But don’t let that stop you very few are ever really bothered. At all of these events there are children who are enjoying themselves and are escorted by their parents.

Pagan events are also a TAZ. Some radicals have a strong spiritual life that nurtures them along with other things. Paganism is spirituality with roots in the 60’s as well as ancient ones as well. Here we there are more group ceremonies, more workshops, and more of a spiritual focus. I like the positive and creative aspects to balance and inspire me. There are so many traditions within this world that most pagans consider themselves eclectic and some combine Buddhism and Christianity with their Paganism. Some Pagan events attract 60’s counter cultural figures and people as entertainment as well as attendees.

So holidays and holy days are alike as vacations and vocations are similar. This vacation allows you to vacate the problems and see another world where politics is not so important. Being with fellow visionaries in a relaxed, celebratory mode can allow discussion and experimentation of ideas on a short-term basis. It allows a nurturing, spiritual energy that we politicos need to recharge our batteries. They are also fun. And living well is the best revenge.

Crime Must Have A Consequence

Crime Must Have a Consequence

By Donald Meinshausen

One of the reasons that crime is punished and the criminal so dramatically humiliated is so that others who might consider such acts are warned by the consequences of criminality. This is accepted as the basis of any society that holds to a theory of justice. For if it becomes relatively easy for a person to do crime and enjoy the fruits then what happens to the general mores of society? How do we uphold the standards of non-coercion, honesty, thrift and work? How do we instill a sense of guilt to the perpetrator? If we don’t then soon it will be regarded as foolish to work honestly. The country then can become a war of all vs. all where more and more assets are based on stealing and protection against rather than being engaged in productive behavior. A poor, frightened society ripe for tyranny emerges after such times.

This goes in spades when we are considering the greatest theft in the history of civilization. The current international regime of Bush/Obama has orchestrated bailouts, nationalizations and inflationary debt that have run into trillions of dollars. What’s worse it shows no sign of stopping. The protests against this are laudable and loud. But the politicians involved ignore this and are only stand-ins for those who really rake it in. The rate of return of political donations to the banks and other financial institutions is obscenely high. Donations of a few hundreds of thousands have resulted in returns of billions in bailouts to the same firms that have given them, as one example.

We all know this or should by now. The question is: What can we do about it? Is there anything that can be done by a small group of people that works and would not be seen as a stupid, dangerous act?  Can anything be done effectively in a short period of time? The answer is yes. Here’s how we can do it.

First we have to identify the chief culprits. It is not enough to just go after politicians that are in the pay of those who rule us. There seems to be an unending line of blow-dried political and media characters of every race, color and creed that are mesmerized by the chump change and perks of doing the bidding of the banksters. They also have no idea of how economics works or even politics. It is like going after the hit men and goons and not going after the ones who hired and profited by their heinous actions.  We need to identify those who profit most by the predatory actions of the state. For they are the ones who organize and run such crime syndicates.

Much of this has been done already. A list could be easily made. So what’s next? What do we do with this knowledge? With the help of researchers on the internet we can discover everything about these criminals and those that work for them. We need to know where they work, their health and country clubs, their vacation spots and hiding places. We need to know who they party with, sleep with, worship with and other affiliations. We need to know everyone they care about; such as their families, friends, neighbors, associates, teachers, therapists, counselors, employees, civic associations, doctors and lawyers and other experts that they consult. We also need to know what they really believe in. As Sun Tzu has said: To win you must really know your enemy.

Every person that they communicate with on a meaningful basis must be interviewed about the criminal(s) that they interact with and questioned about them. This could be done under a journalistic cover or idol curiosity. Former employees and others who have had bad interactions with them are especially interesting as a source of knowledge and funding. College acquaintances are also a good source for youthful indiscretions. A good book, story or film may be a consequence of this project.

This must be done on a non-threatening basis. It shouldn’t even be done as an act of harassment. This is why. What is being done is to identify this group of people in their wealthy and powerful community of this criminal band’s behavior. Perhaps all those people are part of this conspiracy or don’t wish to acknowledge this. We want all these people to know of these crimes. Perhaps they know of something about these behaviors that will give us valuable information. Maybe they just need to be educated. We do not want to do anything here that we would be afraid of appearing in a courtroom or in the headlines. And most of all we do not want to help create sympathy for the criminals. One effect of this should be to help isolate the criminals from those who have helped him out of good intentions. After people know that this criminal is a target go after these sources again letting them know that this criminal syndicate is under investigation. Explain also that you are always ready to negotiate with him. He will most likely ignore you.

But the most important effect is to make criminal lifestyles unbearable. These thugs spend fortunes on public relations, advertising, charitable contributions (with our money). They do this not just to improve their image but also to convince themselves that they are good and important players. They spend much effort to isolate themselves from critics and surround themselves with yes men so that they forget that they are criminals. We need to break through this barrier in a non-violent way so to remind them of their crimes. They should not be able to enjoy the fruits of their crimes in peace.

Here is an example. Every father, no matter how humble in position or his values, regards as one of the proudest moments of his life the day one of his children gets married. These occasions are in every culture are marked by celebration and the renewing of ties of friendship, business and family. These are powerful yet vulnerable events.

Imagine if you will, a powerful banking crime magnate is having such an affair and our people disguised as guests or employees of the catering hall or the church were to pass out in the event informative fliers to those attending that all the food and drink at reception were bought with stolen money. Imagine how quickly guests would blanch, stare at the host be shocked and feel very uncomfortable. If you knew other guests by name and their criminal associations and informed the audience about it that would be a plus. If there were attempts by the host or his security to use unwarranted force an array of cell phone cameras would appear to the chant of You Tube, You Tube! At this point because you have done your research you my reveal any scandal involving the parents, the bridal couple or of the important guests. This could include such items as marijuana use. As soon as everyone got the point, and hopefully before the police arrive, you can leave. Many of the guests will have left by then. You have just ruined a lifetime event for him that cost tens of thousands of dollars that involved months of planning and embarrassed him in front of everyone he really cares about. This will be on news shows and the topic of gossip among the people he cares the most about for months. He and his cohorts will be so rattled that they won’t be able to get much done for a long time.

The important consequence is that in the subsequent You Tube discussions and news coverage you want to appear as informative, non-threatening protesters. You want them to lose their temper first, not you. You want therefore to have the whole event videotaped with an explanation of your reasons for it as a prologue. You need supporters there in order not to look like a kook. After the few infiltrators have distributed some fliers and attracted the attention of security and his friends away from the entrance. Then a whole smart mob appears of at least 10 people and hopefully more come in and pass out more fliers dispersing through out the audience while the host is trying to eject the initial troublemakers. You could even disguise our smart mob as guests or staff that has come in and cause total confusion. One of he smart mob, disguised as head of security would ask what the problem is about. He could at some point in the inquiry identify the host as the cause of the problem by identifying him as the head of an organized crime family. This will start an impromptu debate in front of his closest circle, which is one of your goals. This discussion will then be argued and transmitted to the world as it happens on camera before he understands what is going on.

If the criminal has been involved in war profiteering or supporting dictatorships bring that in with another theatrical production. If that is the major reason for your protest this could be explained to viewers by appropriate costumes of war dead, shackles and with garb from the oppressed area’s culture. Those so attired might then lie down so as to demonstrate their commitment to non-violence as well as to show the obscene, deadly consequences of the criminal’s actions. Think of it as guerilla dinner theater where the object is to close down the same night.

Of course one does not want to appear to be a violent uncouth mob at such a formal occasion.  One can do great radical actions by working within etiquette and theater. One might ask “At such a banquet, which pitchfork do I use?” Pitchforks are props not weapons and are to be used outside only. As Shakespeare has taught us in Julius Caesar: Knives are reserved for the senate only. It is they who carve up and only rare do they serve anyone and who they serve up is rare. We don’t want to be seen as one of them

Remember that in all of this is that they are the ones who raise their voices first and decide to raise or lower it to each level of sound and anger.  The same holds true for in the initiation of the use of force and each level of force. It is highly recommended to be non-violent even if they are not. If you do such an action and it is not expected the chances for violence is higher. At the same time your action will have a greater emotional effect among all because it is not expected. The greatest success will be if you get support or sympathy from some of the guests. Although that may come later and anonymously it is to be valued. As soon as you’ve made your point, leave. This should be considered in case you want to turn this into a sit-in and risk being arrested.

The flier should contain a list and description of the crimes in simple terms.  This should be no more than one page. Your intent is to expose the host’s crimes to those that know him so that they will see him differently and as a risk. You should ask that you want their help in negotiating with him. Explain that you have no hostility to the family and guests but that your grievance is with the host (and his firm or the state) specifically. If you want to cite a case or other lengthy material put in the website and a discussion group. Expect angry emails. Send this info to the media as well as an explanation of why you are doing this.

At the very least the consequences of intruding on such personal events will require them to have massive security wherever they go and therefore less fun and profit for them. Knowing that we will have been in touch with everyone who knows them will also cause them to more circumspect, suspicious and defensive. Eventually they might even want to search us out and bargain with us. More likely they will in some way strike out at us in a way that we can’t strike at them. So be careful out there and be prepared for legal consequences. Above all no threatening behavior, use humor to diffuse tensions if appropriate. It is possible to be obtrusive and not be obnoxious as well.

Signs, props as chains and costume and be part of the repertoire. Have a rehearsal in which you have a response to every question or potential threat. Have lots of cameras, literature and consider bringing outside media. And offer right then and other times the possibility of negotiation.

Also in your communications offer the possibility of forgiveness. Allow for trusted others not involved in your protest to act as intermediaries. Clergy can work here but try to find those who have experience with criminal psychology and negotiating to handle your side. This will be an opportunity to learn about the psychological makeup of the criminal and to get more information on other criminals. At such meetings pay careful attention to body language as well as threats and explanations. Accept arbitration if unbiased and knowledgeable.  Be open to compromises offered on just a reduction of bad behavior, as a victory that will feed the need of your friends to see an accomplishment. One thing that they might offer is evidence of evil done by others that they know. This could be a way of sidetracking you or a gold mine of information. Remember that by getting them to negotiate is a victory of sorts. And you can always pull another action to get results. He will interpret your action as assign of how vulnerable and hated he is. His paranoid interpretations of your intents will get you much attention.

The results of such action if done correctly will result in isolation rather than sympathy for the criminal concerned. This should result in conversations in their community about the validity of the charges. Then the conversations will lead to if the criminal had alternative options than continuing down the statist path. Your behavior, though shocking should not be the main topic in the media. If you did your homework and have been interviewing the criminal’s associates you should get some interesting feedback. At this time you may see changes in behavior and offers from his associates first so as not to become targets of humiliation themselves.  This is psychological warfare and one result of this is that this spectacle will rattle the host and his associates so that they can accomplish little work. They should think that they have no personal space to celebrate or enjoy the fruits of their oppression.

Do not expect to accomplish this sort of action with a Rockefeller or head of state. The level of security is too high. There is already security at these events to defend against paparazzi and the curious. Try the next level down. A chief executive or financial officer, a cabinet official, senator or other key player who is not known to the general public. You can then go on to another criminal and enforce a standard of behavior on the rest of them. By sending them videos of your actions and news of your accomplishments to the media should do it. When you see other radical groups copying your tactics you’ll know that you are on your way to success. So be sure to follow the rules given here. Please keep us informed and good luck.

The Primary Base of an LP Campaign

The Primary Base of an LP Campaign

By Donald Meinshausen

An important lesson that we have learned in decades of elections is most of the public, as well as most of the media don’t pay attention to third parties. They only pay attention to Republican and Democratic, not Libertarian Party campaigns. The reasons for this have little do with libertarian theory or the competence of the LP. However the LP’s fortune can change with the emergence of the new media and the coming collapse of the economy, the schools, the wars overseas and the rise of other problems.

But for now we all can learn something from the Ron Paul’s great GOP race for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008. In terms of libertarian political efforts this race stands out as the most successful in libertarian ideas presented as an election campaign of a presidential candidate. Much of the public and even skeptical media reacted well and in record volume. One reason for this is because he was admitted to the GOP debates and a very large audience. There he got acceptance and publicity with his principles, practicality and presentation. This resulted in more vetting which meant more votes and volunteers and volume of money than all previous LP presidential efforts combined. This also includes Ron Paul’s 1988 bid as the LP presidential candidate.

This is not to detract from other heroic efforts. We have done better in LP races in terms of percentages in state and local campaigns. We have even elected good candidates for local office and should continue to do so. We as libertarians should engage in LP runs for president with a Ron Paul gold standard of purity.

Far from discounting LP results, Ron Paul built up a lot of support from liberty-minded individuals who were recruited in previous LP campaigns for his primary effort. Many are now also involved in the Campaign for Liberty, the newly emergent the tax revolt and other causes. All of this activism has reinforced our role in the drug legalization movement, the anti-war movement, gun rights groups, the truther movement and other outreach opportunities. What I’m talking about here is repeating Ron Paul’s success all over again, state-by-state, in 2010 and further elections, to help the LP. This is what I call our Primary Strategy.

There are now several campaigns all over the country to nominate and elect Ron Paul type Republicans all over the country. The most known is Rand Paul, who is a son of Ron Paul, and is running for US Senate in Kentucky in the primaries as a Republican. He is a doctor like his father, a visionary physician and an ophthalmologist. He is head of a state taxpayer group where he has made several media appearances attacking government waste before running for office.

This is his first run for office. Rand already has raised over a million dollars tying his primary opponent’ money raising efforts. He has done this through a tactic from his father’s campaign of having on-line money-bombs, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in one day. He is publicly shaming his opponent by calling on him to refuse money from senators who supported the bailouts. In on-line polls he is now beating his GOP opponents handily. He is doing especially well among conservative activists.

He is now leading in the official opinion polls.  He has just broken into the lead by 3% over his main rival, Trey Grayson, a former Clinton delegate, who is now the GOP Secretary of State. They are competing for a soon to be vacated seat that will be left by the retirement of Jim Bunning. Senator Bunning is by most accounts a decent conservative who opposed the Bush bailouts. He is unlike and not liked by senior senator, Mitch McConnell, who supported the Bush bailouts and controls the state GOP. This establishment supports Grayson over Paul.

The LP is wisely publicly not endorsing Rand. But many astute LPers are encouraging their friends to register Republican so as to vote for him in the primary. Several are also going to campaign stops, county fairs and GOP events and such to pass out material and do outreach for him. This way we learn how a large grass roots campaign is run. Since Rand has a real chance of winning we don’t have to deal with the “wasted vote” argument. Now we can present our libertarian ideas to a new audience from a position of strength. This makes his campaign a great opportunity to spread our ideas and experiment with our newly acquired strength. This is a first in our history.

There are also similar possibilities here with investment guru Peter Schiff who is running for the GOP nod in the Senate race against Senator Dodd in Connecticut.  Debra Medina’s run as a Ron Paul Republican against Governor Perry for the nod in the Texas GOP primary for governor is another example. And there are other races such as Adam Kokesh in a House race in New Mexico and the AJ Harris race for Congress. More of these may surface soon as the races heat up and the economy tanks. I’m not saying that all those listing themselves as Ron Paul type Republicans will be worthy of support. But getting involved now, especially with our own candidates, promises to be an exciting opportunity to popularize or elect people who speak our language of liberty.

At the very least it’s a way to educate the public about how to diagnose and cure the statist ills brought about by the Democrats and Republicans. Here we can say this in a debate among equals to their face with the public watching. Many libertarians and even Republican conservatives would pay good money to see a big spending Republican or a Democrat get a good tongue-lashing and their comeuppance in such a campaign.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that previous electoral experience; name recognition and party support are no longer so necessary to get a GOP or a Dem nomination. Against a candidate old and tired, cold and mired in scandal and sold and wired to horrible voting records there is much voter resentment. This anger can be a motor to change things. A primary battle where we just get 20%-40% looks a lot better than an election where an LP candidate gets less than 2%. And we can get much more than 40% and even win in many primaries

This process of a one-two punch against powerful incumbents can invoke some real political power. For a hard primary campaign can greatly weaken an incumbent. The attacks on our enemies can hurt their image in their potential base. These attacks will be seen as coming from within his party rather from outside marginalized forces and therefore be seen as much more damaging. It also drains money, respect and other resources that could be spent on the election itself.

A club to aid in batting against Bush league sellouts is the Club for Growth. This free market group is admired for its fund raising ability. It is also known for contributing to campaigns of challengers against big spenders in the GOP. There are other groups that have organized to unseat those Republican congress critters that voted for Cap and Trade and other defective defectors. We should pick interesting winnable races.

We can expect and hope to be “blamed” or credited if these bad Republican candidates loses because of our efforts. There is a need to compile a list of these RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) who were defeated by us in elections where the LP candidate was the margin of difference. These should be displayed as scalps or trophies to be waved in front of those who try to suppress us.  The list should contain a sum of all the monies spent by the RINOs in their losing elections. This is then given to strategists, the large donors and fundraisers for the GOP and to the media as well so that they will no longer ignore us. I know of several US senate seats that were lost because of Libertarian Party efforts that drained GOP votes. This alone means the totals are in the tens of millions of dollars. Some LP candidates put a deliberatively conservative tone to their campaign to attract conservatives and to defeat Republicans.

In areas that are socially liberal such as the northeastern and northwestern US we can recruit this voting bloc that still votes GOP. In Maine we can unite with social conservatives to defeat RINOs such as Republican Senator Olympia Snowe who is bad on economics as well as civil liberties. A libertarian Republican could defeat her. The conservatives will thank and help us for doing so. These remaining liberal Rockefeller Republicans need to be defeated in order for us to assert our power.

This process will help define the complementary roles of the Campaign for Liberty, which raises issues in the public; Liberty Caucus of the Republican Party, which runs candidates and raises issues in the GOP and the Libertarian Party and the Constitution Party which run campaigns as a third party. All these groups work with a lot of single issue and other educational or other sympathetic groups.  Many will belong to some or all of these groups and can explain these roles so as to reduce confusion and possible friction. We do not need to publicly acknowledge these roles but we should understand them. Rather than competition there can be a co-operation in punishing bad incumbents or candidates as well as gathering support in helping good candidates and causes.

There are good people who will now not vote Republican because of the Bushes and other RINOs and there are good people who will only vote Republican because they can see no one winning without GOP support. These primary processes can help these types to work together and helps to resolve that argument. The arguments here may or may not be openly acknowledged.

Another tool that we can refer to is the referendum. Placing an initiative on the ballot allows us to define the issues of the campaign. This will require and also mobilize an activist base that will force our positions into the media discussions whether the politicians like it or not. Therefore our issues can become the campaign itself.

What we want is well written ballot questions that will hold up in court challenges and yet be easily understood by voters. They should be on issues that are hot topic, winnable and pro-liberty, as we understand it. There are groups that write and fund these and help put them on the ballot that are not part of the GOP or LP process and work with libertarians, conservatives and others. Recall is a similar effective strategy that also can be employed in states that allow it.

These strategies will also strengthen the libertarian role in gaining Democratic and independent support in elections. We all know of people who are independents or on the anti-war left and drug law reformers who have had kind words for us in the media. Some even supported Ron Paul or even LP candidates. The media in covering the Ron Paul campaign of 2008 has noted this. Many of these people could be recruited to support Rand Paul’s campaign in Kentucky, as well as in other races as a way to show dissatisfaction with the Dems support for the war, continued civil liberties violations and the bankster bailouts. This has happened before in history as the Democrats have routinely sold out their most ideological supporters. Getting Rand Paul nominated or elected would also be seen as a slap in the face of the Republicans who would amBUSH our liberty as well as to the Democrats.

Since we as libertarians are much better in reaching these voters and media that gives us a source of power in the GOP that others involved in primary battles cannot touch.  This new option for the Left would at the same time strengthen their hand within the Democratic Party as well. For this option would give them another reason to support us, in primaries especially and even in elections. The Left would then see other alternatives than being captive handmaidens of the Democratic Party or empowering socially intolerant war making Republicans through Naderite campaigns. This new option exercised by the left Democrats could end up wiping out the right /left spectrum once and for all.

And there is yet another reason for this strategy. Let’s say our candidate loses in the primary and that victor is seen as much worse than the Democrat challenger. We can then hit our target once more with an LP or independent campaign. Sometimes the RINO will negotiate with us for support. This could be a good deal or a moral dilemma. But at this point I’m not counting on any concessions. There is the possibility of getting our defeated candidate in the primary to endorse our LP or independent candidate in the general election. But even if that person demurs we could still get our primary candidate’s lists of good media contacts, volunteers and donors. If the target or incumbent has waged a dirty, false or insulting campaign many of the primary voters will support us so as to punish that person. This makes the LP candidate look more attractive to voters even if our contender in the primary does not endorse us. .

Don’t expect many people to come over the first time we try this. It took the GOP thirty years to change voting patterns in the South. We have less resources and powerful enemies. This, like all successful changes, is a grassroots process. But it needs to started now and measured for effectiveness

Moderate Republicanism or moderate Democratism has been greatly discredited and has so for a long time. These are not grass roots or principled movement. But there are still many congresscritters and state legislators who identify themselves by these labels. Since they are despised by both left and right as well as by us these moderates could also be targets.

Avoiding any label and any philosophy elects many more disgusting candidates. Some get elected on just charisma, family, money and the luck of being less hated. The worst are re-elected by something called “experience” which is based on the bidding of bureaucratic beltway banditry and those who benefit by it.

What we are trying to do is to make as many elections as possible issue oriented on our issues. What is more is that these issues and the solutions we agree on are the ones to be the deciding factor in decision making. Now in this current wave of nationalizations we must frame the label of “No” attached to the GOP by the Dems to mean less government and toward more liberty and therefore a positive. We can’t expect the current GOP to carry this message. So we have to go inside and outside the Republican Party and the conservative movement to get our message out.

We can do this also in the Democratic Party as well. I have worked in successful Democratic campaigns such as the city of Hoboken, NJ mayoral campaign in 1985. I ran the opposition research and coordinated volunteers where we won on the issues of fighting corruption and high taxes. This can happen again even in overwhelmingly Democratic urban areas where voters are repulsed by the economy, the war, violation of civil liberties and corrupt incumbents.

Both parties are losing their moorings and therefore losing identification and support among their traditional supporters.  Respect toward politicians is declining overall as the new media allow people learn more. People are now voting more and paying more attention to politics, war and the economy.

The amount of voters calling themselves and listening to independents is growing into a chorus. They are looking for good conduct and a conductor who knows how to co-ordinate talented players who know the score. Those who participate in such a concerted effort must know and play with all styles as well as the new technology. By making the theme of an election an anti-authoritarian one we can make contending candidates dance to our tune. We can now write this music but need to know how to make it popular. To weed out bad, incompetent productions and performers we need to get our record out. In the new media we expose the bad and promote the good. For we must make hits of our own or suffer the hits of others. If we don’t compose ourselves to play together we will not be heard. If you have any recommendations, let’s hear them.

.  .

A Modest Libertarian Proposal: For Secessionists, Separatists, Radical Anarchists, Anti-Government Absolutists, Conservative Neo-Republicans, Randian Objectivists, Tea-Baggers, “Me, First & Last” Social Darwinists, and Conspiracy Theorists

I did a LOT of driving this last week-end, a LOT. This gave me a great deal of time to think and process recent experiences. One conclusion that I did arrive at is that if a group of people gather together for a common cause (other than masturbation) and then spend their day in a mutual masturbation circle jerk, they will have accomplished nothing.

On Saturday, I went to a libertarian gathering which seemed to be more about libertarians telling themselves how successful they have been at furthering their cause even if they haven’t been able to actually get anyone elected to a significant office. There were no strategies or concrete ideas for getting anyone elected or for spreading the libertarian idea to a wider audience. While I met some good people, I found that the main value for me to have made the trip was in observing and listening to the others there. What I did not hear were any words which spoke of libertarianism as being about anything except “me”. One speaker even lived up to the cliché view of what current libertarians are when she spoke about reading Ayn Rand and realizing that caring about others or helping to make the world a better place has no value.

On Sunday, I drove to my old home town to help some friends do some work on a house. This house has been a special place for a long time. In 1972, a group of college friends found a place to live in off-campus. During the 70s, it was pretty much a commune for the local science fiction group. For probably 15 years it was home to a rotating group but the house was always there for us. For most of the last 20 years, it has been the permanent home to a few of the gang but the house has remained a constant in the lives of many. I moved away and moved on with my life but 17 years later I came back and the group still gathered at the house on regular annual times. I have never lived there or even spent a night there but, when the message went out that there would be a work day on the house, I was there. I gained nothing, at least in objectivist terms, by helping out but it was a small gesture of thanks for what the house and the people who have lived there have meant to me.

The stark contrast between how the two days were spent was startling. A second conclusion I arrived at is that I think that there is more to be gained by working together to build a better world around us than there is from seeing the world as a place where it is ok for the strong to prey on the weak. The week-end reinforced what libertarianism meant to me when I was first attracted to the movement.

Thirty years ago, I had the profound honor of hearing a man named Ed Clark speak at Texas A&M University, courtesy of the Memorial Student Center’s Political Forum committee. Rudder Theater was full that night. There were many there who were, like me at age 20, preparing to vote in our first Presidential election (and for me, my first government election as I briefly lived in the United Kingdom in 1978 – 79). This man was the candidate for a new political party, and was that Party’s first candidate to be on the ballot in all 50 states. The Libertarian movement and idea was getting some national attention because of how “radical” and fresh it was. They had a vision of a limited government which would combine the best facets of conservative fiscal policies with progressive social policies. In a radio interview, Clark described libertarianism as “low-tax liberalism”. Hearing him speak in person was a remarkable experience for me. Not only were his ideas progressive and forward-thinking, they were inclusive and logical.

To this day, I still call myself an Ed Clark libertarian. Unfortunately, the Party pushed Ed Clark and his liberal / moderate wing out during their 1984 convention. If you ask people today what a libertarian is, most of what you will hear are descriptions of a radical, conservative, neo-Republican lunatic fringe group. In 1980, it looked like the Libertarian Party might, one day, have a legitimate influence on American government. Coming up on 2010, it looks like we have crawled beyond the fringe to create our own unique brand of American political lunacy, on a par with the Anti-Masonic “Know Nothing” Party of the 1800s. With this in mind, I want to make a modest proposal to all of those who hate government, despise paying any taxes, want to “be off of the grid” and want to be left completely alone by every government.

We will GIVE you a 5,000 square-mile plot of land in Alaska. Not enough? How about 10,000 square miles? We will set aside that land and will legally declare it to be independent of the United States of America or of any other nation of the world. It will be free land on which you can settle and create your own society with a complete absence of government. You will not be subject to any law or be a part of America in any way… no taxes, no military service, and no government interference of any kind. We will also shoulder the costs to relocate anyone who wants to leave the United States to participate in this experiment. This will be a one-way, one-time ticket. We will take all of you to the border of your new homeland and let you enter it freely and of you own volition. Further, we will assume all of your debts, (up to, say, $25,000). If your debts are greater than that, so what? You will be moving to a place where you will be free from debt collectors. What will your credit score matter up there? We will arrange for the sale of your American property, both to free you from the burden and to help pay for the costs which The United States will incur on your behalf so that you will not be beholden to any other person or nation. In short, we will do everything necessary to help you sever all ties between you and the United States. We will give you what you are asking for in its entirety. You can be completely free from any and all government control or responsibility. By doing this for you, however, there would be a lot of changes that you would need to be aware of.

Remember, infrastructure is created by governments. There will no roads, electricity, water, sanitation, waste removal, hospitals, medical care, medicines, schools, postal service, police or fire departments, judiciary, defense, phones, internet or any other public “improvements” other than what you will be able to create for yourselves. In your new haven, there will be no government, no law, no order, and no society which you do not create for yourself.

We understand that you don’t like anything that is “tainted” by being provided to the general public, and / or bought or created through the use of “Federal Reserve Notes” (and yes, this week-end I heard someone talking about their new business and saying that they would not accept “Federal Reserve Notes”). So you will not be allowed to take any United States currency with you because you will not, of course, need it. You will not be allowed to incur any additional debt through credit so, in preparation for your move, you will be limited to dealing on a cash only basis. If you want to convert it all to gold or silver or gumdrops, you can, but remember, you will have to carry everything you will take in with you. I assume your economy would be based on the barter system. I will be curious, though, about what you will be able to barter with to get AT&T to provide you with communications capabilities, as one example.

Your American citizenship will be permanently revoked, as will those of any of your families, dependents, and friends who join you. As such, you can never again vote in any American election. You can never again enter the United States without proper documentation and / or visas. If you try, you will be subject to being arrested and deported back to your homeland, the same as any other illegal alien, you know, like Mexicans. You will never again receive any government payments, benefits, healthcare (federal or military) or assistance which would “force” you to possess any documentation, utilize our immoral currency or rely in any way on the government which you hate so much. This means that you will never receive any social security payments, Medicare, retirement funds, insurance payments, not even the annual payout made to citizens of Alaska because, of course, you will be citizens of your own non-nation. Oh, and about that land, you will each be able to possess as much of it as you can take and hold onto. You will have the absolute freedom to make your land your own BUT you will not, of course, be given any actual legal title to the land because to give you such title would require a legal and judicial system… and you wouldn’t want that either, would you, because they are also creations of government.

While I suppose that we could allow you to take in a suitcase of your own clothes (whatever you can carry), to fully honor your John Galt desires, we would not allow you to take any tools or other products created by our industrial mass production system. You see, we would want to respect your wishes to not allowing you to be burdened with anything so ignoble as having been purchased with “Federal Reserve Notes”. Maybe we could provide some of you with forges but how you would carry them into your new nation without tools or carts made by tools that you have made for yourself, I don’t know. Even if I had the answer to that, though, you wouldn’t want to know it because you want be pure, untainted and left entirely to your own devices. Each of you, after all, is John Galt.

Of course, you would be completely landlocked by the United States but that, again, would only be out of respect for your demands for complete independence and your wishes to have no “foreign entanglements”. We would thus ensure that you would be free of the temptation and taint of dealing with other nations or, even worse, with the United Nations. No, you will be completely and entirely free. You will be given your own country and cut off from any influence, hindrance, or assistance from anyone outside of your own borders. Imagine if “Escape from New York” was about turning Manhattan into a self-contained country instead of a prison… but without all of the inconvenient reminders of civilization and development like buildings and roads.

We will give you all of it. All you would have to do is give up everything else… oh, and allow those of us who do not believe as you do, those of us who do not share your vision of an anarchist “Heaven on Earth”, free to carry on our ridiculous desire to actually improve the society that we are part of. You will all agree to leave us alone in this immoral world which we believe can be improved. We leave you alone and you leave us alone… for ever (or until you all die off). Do we have a deal?

Now, for those of us who are left when the dust of the mass migration settles, let’s work together to figure out how to make the government we do have better. Let us create a fair and equitable tax system. Let us work on the problem of creating a society which benefits all of the people. Remember, political and philosophical extremes create unworkable absolutes. Some of us believe that the only way to make the system better is by working within it. We can have less government, lower taxes, and a beneficial society. All we have to do is be willing to work for it.

I, for one, will not abandon my fellow Man. My desire for a limited government does not mean that I reject the idea and value of government altogether. I believe in government and I believe that it can be improved, that it can be designed to function effectively. Remember, we get the government that we deserve. In a free society government is the creation and responsibility of a free people. If our government does not work properly, it is our fault for not caring enough to figure out how to make it better. It is also our responsibility to make government work for the people it serves, not be served by the people who work under its system. I am willing to stay here and do what I am capable of doing to make it better for EVERYONE… even those who don’t believe as I do. How many of you out there will help me? Can we work together to create a practical, rational and realistic idea of libertarianism and, from there, a practical, rational and realistic idea of libertarian anarchy which can be “sold” to those outside of our movements? I think that we can and I, for one, am ready to start trying.

Rhys M. Blavier

Romayor, Texas

“Truth, Justice and Honor… but, above all, Honor” 

© Copyright 2009 by Rhys M. Blavier

Loving Our Veterans

Loving our Veterans

By Don Meinshausen

freedonnow@yahoo.com

 

Despite the holidays of Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day there is little appreciation for veterans. Oh there may be a few generals and politicians pontificating and maybe a parade and a concert but that’s usually seen as patriotic blather for the media and for the declining numbers that remember the conflict or care.  Very few show up. Most go to the beach or stay home.

 

Of course there is not much for the guys who really paid a big price in a war that are still with us.  The amputee, the horribly disfigured, with scarred psyches to match and those who will be in and out of hospitals for the rest of their lives.  And then there are those who were so heavily traumatized that they cannot handle the crowds, the rhetoric and the fireworks will not be brought out or would come out for these events.  It would be too upsetting for all concerned.

 

Now I am not a veteran and I am fortunate enough not to have anyone close to me who was so damaged.  Regardless of what you think of war or a particular conflict you can’t help but sympathize with their situation.  I have thought it would be an interesting experiment to survey those who really suffered in Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq.  I’m not talking about the desk jockeys, short timers or those who saw little action even though they might have been willing to be in harm’s way.  Just to go to the ones who have really suffered and spent some time there and ask  “Was it worth it?”  Maybe they are just as divided as all Americans are years after the conflict. It stands to reason that they would have more wisdom on such conflicts than the pundits, armchair generals and chicken hawks that decide where the next war should be. I think that our wounded vets would be happy to give advice after all that time lying in beds in VA hospitals thinking about their decisions. I think that all of us reading this, hawk and dove alike, would agree that the counsel of such men would be valuable about the worth of war.

 

Most of us men decided not go to war. Only a few avoided due to conscience. Some used the system of deferments to avoid something unpleasant. Others avoided because of fear. Some still agonize over that decision not to serve.  While such a survey would be fascinating, I would not force these veterans through another painful reappraisal.  But many of them who are psychologically fit though scarred, are just waiting to be asked.  Maybe even men in the same unit who fought side by side and suffered the same wounds might have radically different ideas about their service.

 

There was a book called “The Warriors” that showed studies of veterans of different nations and conflicts who were interviewed about why they fought.  The reasons for their participation were not bravery, patriotism, and hatred of the enemy, ideology or religious values.  The primary reason was the bonding of the men who fought side by side and the honor shared between them.

 

This holds especially true for the terribly scarred, whether physically and emotionally, returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.  Let us not make the same mistake we did with the Vietnam veterans who were ignored. They had such high addiction and homeless problems that laws were passed banning discrimination based on service in Vietnam.  The trauma veterans suffer is obvious even after decades have lapsed. It is so widespread that the military is considering asking the government to change the law to allow the use of psychedelics, like MDMA, to treat their veterans PTSD or post traumatic stress disorder.

 

In my middle class hometown of Nutley, New Jersey there was a man named Eddie who was a veteran of the First World War.  He would walk the streets and sometimes started screaming.  He was brought home from the war for being shell-shocked or PTSD.  He still heard the shells explode almost fifty years after the war ended.

 

 

Do you remember the movie “Born on the Fourth of July”?  A young marine shot and crippled in Vietnam returns home and travels with a friend to a town outside the US.  The town is known among veterans for its brothels and bars.  The women there are very sympathetic and very poor and not bad looking.  The movie shows the town as a continuous party with too much drinking. But remember what they have been through. It seems to help but its not officially noted by the veteran’s groups or the VA.

 

This makes sense.  The great sex destinations of the Pacific to this day are Bangkok and Pattaya in Thailand and Angeles in the Philippines.  These sex tourist towns got their start courtesy of the US military during the 60’s and were regulated by them.  During the Vietnam War R&R (Rest and Recreation) was called I&I (Intercourse and Intoxication) to the soldiers who went to Bangkok and Pattaya.  Angeles served the Clark Air Force Base and a nearby naval base.  In fact Angeles American Legion Post has a high membership because retirees can find a wife or young girlfriend there who actually wants a relationship. Veterans are very respected here.

 

Back to our disabled veterans who in their minds and remaining body parts are still manly studs and needing affection.  Even with the sexual revolution of carefree contraception these guys find it next to impossible to get laid.  No medal is going to make up for the loss of appearance and self-esteem of missing eyes, hearing, limbs, bodily functions, looks and peace of mind.  Even if they can wheelchair out of a VA hospital, how can these guys go out to a local bar where they will be stared at?

 

There is also the movie “Coming Home” about a disabled Vietnam vet that does get an American woman to fall in love with him with no financial motive.  The American woman happens to be Jane Fonda, and for the life of me I can’t understand why a woman who would go to bat (so to speak) for disabled Vietnam vets is so scorned by veteran groups.

 

There is no movie from a conservative point of view that shows a disabled Vietnam or Iraq war vet who finds love.  Sexual or romantic fantasies via Hollywood would help a lot.  These men still need sex.  These men still need to be held and loved.  The women who provide it whether out of money, personal need or financial support can show love and care as well as any nurse or wife. Some hookers even marry these guys.

 

Many women do this to support parents and their children.  No woman should be forced to be a prostitute, but it can be an ennobling profession.  To be able to combine passion and compassion and give it to guys who may be so traumatized that they cannot respond emotionally is practically sainthood in my opinion. This is the reason that there was in ancient society a tradition of sacred prostitution. Such acts of love and the teaching of love were considered homage to the Goddess.

 

I think of women who respond to soldier’s needs as Valkyrie. They were the Rhine Maidens of German Wagnerian folklore who picked up the dead heroes off the battlefield and carried them to Valhalla or paradise.  Amazon Grace, how sweet the sound, to save a wretch like me.

 

The juxtaposition of sex and death is a powerful one and can be misused. The Valkyrie image was used to motivate women in Nazi Germany to drop Victorian mores and marriage requirements to help repopulate the Reich’s battle casualties in state sanctioned sexual celebration. This release from the strict sexual mores of Germany also was used to motivate potential soldiers as well. The progeny were to be raised by the state or state approved families

This was actually a way to destroy family structure as well as a way to enforce racism.

 

There is a different archetype of women in war that is emerging. There are now women soldiers dressed in khaki to help search and interrogate civilian women and some see actual combat. In Israel they do practically all the jobs that male soldiers do. The more safer, saner and more feminist version of the woman/warrior image is the fantasy/science fiction vixen in Heavy Metal or biker chick attired in studded black leather bikinis and a sword.  Totally hot.  Totally cool.  Sexy, but not my cup of tea and not the model of compassion that might be appropriate here for those traumatized by war.  Besides women are outnumbered by men in the military. Many of these guys can’t get this kind of action, so to poor countries they go.

 

 

In third world countries, twenty bucks for a sex act is more pay than a week’s work in a sweatshop of twelve-hour days.  And you can’t work on your back in a factory or pulling a plow.  Of course the guys are not always so bad and the girls are not always so good.  But with a legal system of brothels men are protected against disease and theft.  Women also have protection against violent and drunken men and predators.

 

According to a prostitution rights activist, based on the Green River killings and other reports there are several unknown serial killers who prey on prostitutes and hitchhikers in every American metropolitan area.  When their activities are illegal and scorned by society, prostitutes are so afraid of the system that many don’t even report rapes, robberies or missing co-workers. The police would rather ignore, exploit or arrest them. In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico many mutilated bodies have been found and hundreds of women are missing.

 

In sex tourist areas even with a quasi-legal format, the hookers are more relaxed and friendly because they are safe from prisons, police rapes and psychotic customers.  Word gets out about who is crazy, alcoholic, dishonest, etc., and these people don’t get hired or serviced as the case might be.  Nicer people become popular and relationships sometimes form and the traditional heart of gold hooker becomes a reality. Extortionist pimping is rare.

 

Here even the most wretched have a chance for passion or even a relationship.  The US military and the State Department is now under pressure by the so-called Christian Right to close this venue even in foreign countries for civilians, soldiers and veterans alike.  We’ve heard it all before for decades.  Prostitution denigrates marriage.  It exploits women.  It gives foreigners a bad image of America.  Sleazy shock journalists, control freaks and moralizers ignore the underlying racism and fascism of attacking poor foreign women who want jobs and relationships with American men.  Nobody asks the servicemen or veterans, who like the ladies’ attention, the ladies themselves or even their neighbors who value the tourist money it brings.

 

Do we care about our servicemen and veterans enough to listen to what they want?  Let me put it this way.  Why don’t all those nice church groups volunteer to give these poor disabled heroes charity sex or porn?  It would be part of the great tradition of pubic support for American servicemen that goes back to World War 2.

 

There were women in America back then called Victory Girls or V Girls like the Valkyrie.  They worked or hung out at USO canteens, dance halls and bars and offered something more sought for than a doughnut. They flouted the strict moral standards of the day by having sex without marriage with soldiers on their way to the front.  In those days any woman who did not hold onto her virginity until marriage was considered a whore. No respectable man would marry her and could have the marriage annulled if she did not bleed on her wedding night. Why should our heroes have to die a virgin or rush into marriage?  These men were risking their lives and honor and the women thought they had an obligation to do the same.  (Venereal disease was such a risk that sometimes they were called VD girls.) . Considering that many soldiers dying young in combat would never have a chance at passion and that many women would not have a chance at marriage due to so many soldiers dying the answer would seem obvious today. But then was a different morality.

 

Still they helped the men the best way they knew to help their morale.  Considering their reduced opportunities to find men during and after the war it was the logical marriage strategy since if the guy came back the relationship could re-ignite.

 

There are many statues of generals and rulers who start and run wars in our parks and military cemeteries. These types rarely see the blood and gore of war and they do profit by it. There are few statues of soldiers who suffer greatly and are poorly compensated for their pain. There are still fewer statues of nurses who had their hands full of traumatized, wounded and needy men.

 

Someday there will be a statue of those whose contribution has been ignored or covered in shame. They took care of our soldiers most deep, personal wants that no one in command would even acknowledge. There should be a statue or some recognition of the V-Girls and prostitutes. They have taken care of wounded, traumatized and lonely soldiers and veterans for ages uncounted.

 

 

But to get that statue a statute need to be repealed. Let’s legalize prostitution to help our soldiers and veterans.  At least send some porn to your local VA hospital.  You do care about veterans, don’t you?

 

Don Meinshausen is a founder of the libertarian movement in that he organized the draft card burning at the 1969 YAF convention, which is regarded in “Radicals for Capitalism” as the “founding of the modern libertarian movement.”  He is also known for his connections with Robert Anton Wilson, Karl Hess and Timothy Leary and being a former political prisoner. He is looking for work in any part of the country.

 

HOW SERIOUS IS THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY ABOUT BEING TAKEN SERIOUSLY?

When I was 20 years old and preparing to vote in my first Presidential election, a man came to speak on the campus of Texas A&M University about his new party and his campaign for the Presidency. That man was Ed Clark, the first Libertarian candidate on the ballots of all 50 states. He spoke of a vision of government which combined fiscal responsibility with social humanism. Ed Clark made such an impact on my personal view of politics that now, 30 years later, I still call myself an Ed Clark Libertarian. Unfortunately, since then I have watched the Libertarian Party move to the far-right with no coherent message to the point where, instead of creating a viable third party in American politics, it has become seen a ‘lunatic fringe’ of the extreme far-right, religious conservative wing of the Republican Party, a neo-Republican Party, if you will. After 30 years, it has still never made a serious impact on American politics at either the national or even the state level. The fault is our own but, I personally believe that could be realistically changed… starting with the 2010 elections.

Right now, politics in America might be more volatile than it has been at any point in its history since 1860. The Republican Party faces the real possibility of splintering into two or more parties; divided by their extreme far-right Christian conservatives who view politics as a religious struggle with them battling for the glory of heaven by exerting “his will’ on Earth. Because this faction is fighting what they see as a battle for the next world, they see those who “oppose” them as inherently evil. They cannot compromise in what they see as a very real battle between “good” and “evil”. As such, they can be counted on to focus their efforts on stopping the “advance” of “ungodly” issues in America. They will even turn on their own, on other Republicans, who they see as weak in the face of their enemy… and make no mistake, they see those who do not agree with them as true enemies.

This internal conflict within the Republican Party, however, offers the Libertarian Party a very real chance to become a viable alternative party for the American voters. To do that, however, requires us to change ourselves into a viable party. Over the course of the last 30 years, the Libertarian party has moved backwards instead of forward. What was once seen as party with an interesting view of what government could be has become a perceived lunatic fringe of right-wing tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorists. We, ourselves, have marginalized our Party in American politics. We have no one to blame for our lack of achievement other than ourselves. As such, only we can change the perceptions of us by the American voters. To do that, we need to develop a strategic plan for 2010 and the following decade. We cannot possible devise winning tactics if we do not have an overall strategy for ourselves. We also need to give the American voters confidence that if they do elect any of us that we can participate and function in a real world government.

So, what are some things that the Libertarians need to do or change to become a viable third party in America? One is that we need to move beyond having a general philosophy about what government should be and become a political movement with an actual vision of what government can be AND an actual plan for how that can be accomplished. The question isn’t why SHOULD voters support us, it is what keeps them FROM supporting us. Remember, no voter owes a candidate or a party their vote; it is up to a candidate or party to earn their votes.

Another is that we need to stop running candidates for Executive offices until we can support those candidates by holding enough Legislative seats to help them. Politics, like life, is a gamble. Not only should you never make a bet you are unable or unwilling to lose, you should never make a bet you are unwilling or unable to win. Realistically, if ANY third party or independent candidate were to win the Presidency or a Governorship without having any Legislative support, their administration would be a complete failure. In addition, that failure would become generalized as an argument against ever again voting for candidates who are not party of one of the governing parties. It would actually damage us rather than help us.

Yet another is that we have to stop spreading our very limited resources so thin that we accomplish nothing. Imagine that we are farmers trying to grow a crop, like roses. Roses require a LOT of water in order to grow and become something that can be sold. What we have is a very limited amount of water. It would be better to focus on a few plants instead of trying to raise all of the plants by spreading our water so thinly that NO plants have enough to grow. Now, let’s ask ourselves “What is the quality of the roses that we raise?” In order to increase the resources we can use to raise more roses in future years, we need to be able to sell a few today. We need to develop a “long game” strategy for the future.

On the national level, we need to be focusing on a realistic few races for Legislative office, and we need to start doing so immediately. It would also be better to win seats in state legislatures this year than it would be to win Congressional seats in 2012. Why? In one word, the answer is ‘redistricting’. Most states with more than one member of the US House of Representatives seem to have mostly gerrymandered safe districts, which makes it almost impossible for candidates who are not from the two main parties to win. We need to have legislators at the state level that can fight for non-partisan maps with NO safe districts. This is a very real way to tell the voters that their legislators work for THEM. I advocate a map which starts in each corner of a state and only looks at numbers of voters to create compact, regularly shaped districts without regard to race, creed, color or party. This would create districts that cannot be seen or used to promote ANY specific person or party. The reasons for this should be obvious. Not only will it help us in the future by giving third-party candidates a fair chance to win, it will also allow us to demonstrate that our primary interest is in giving power back to the voters.

We also need to understand that it is not necessary to win a majority, or even a plurality of seats to make a difference. Let’s look at Texas, as an example. Texas is in political turmoil right now. It functions on inertia… there is a government because there has been a government and it operates because it has operated. It is too big of a juggernaut to stop and it is simply rolling over everything in its path. The Texas Republican Party is eating itself right now. Our sitting Governor, Rick Perry, will have to fight against one of our two Senators, Kay Bailey Hutchison, just to win his own party’s nomination. This is not only internally destructive, when you understand how Texas operates; it is absurd because, constitutionally, Texas has a weak Governor system. The two most powerful offices in Texas government are the Lt. Governor, who presides over the Texas Senate, and the Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. So, Texas has a strong legislature to really run the state, but that legislature only meets every other year and for a very limited number of days. In addition, the 2009 legislature threw out the sitting Speaker and chose a new one in a tough internal battle. At the state Senate level, our Lt. Governor is likely to try to get Kay Bailey Hutchison’s seat in the US Senate. Texas is in political crises and, as the White House Chief of Staff so famously said, never let a crisis go to waste.

Right now, the 150-member House is almost evenly divided between the Republicans and the Democrats. The Texas Democratic Party right now is going to make a serious effort in the 2010 elections. They are actively recruiting candidates and have already held week-end long ‘mini-camps’ to educate potential candidates AND campaign staffs on how to campaign, how to fundraise, what the legal requirements are, fill out the forms, etc. These camps also allow potential candidates and the state party staff to get to know each other. They only need a few seats to wrest back control of the state House and they are determined to accomplish that. In a situation like what is facing Texas in the 2010 elections, if we could elect just 5 members of the state House, neither party would be likely have a majority. If we could elect just 2 members to the state Senate out of the 31 seats (half of which are up for election in 2010), we would have almost 7% in that body. If we could accomplish those two challenges, we would have a say in what happens in Texas AND the chance to work for a politically neutral district map.

The LP needs to be PRO-active about the 2010 election. If we wait until the state conventions in July 2010 we shouldn’t even bother. We need to get out AHEAD of the political season and start the discussions ourselves so that they will take place on our terms. We need to lead the discussions rather than respond to them. We need to have state and national party leader who are actively speaking around the state and promoting what our party offers that is different than what the other parties offer. All of our focus needs to be on the state legislatures this election. To make a difference, we have to be able to say WHAT we will do, and then DO what we say. It isn’t enough to be against what the other parties do, we have to offer a vision of what we CAN do. We need to find 5 – 10 House candidates and 1 – 5 state Senate candidates in 3 – 5 states to put our national efforts behind. It isn’t enough for these people to become known in their own districts… all of them must become known statewide. The people need to have speaking engagements across the state now, and they need to be speaking to full houses, not nearly empty rooms. They need to be where people are. This will not only help recruit new members and other potential candidates, it will get these people in the news where they can be seen by the voters in their districts as BEING recognized throughout the state.

We need to formulate strong, serious and realistic plans and timelines for what will be done between now and the election. We cannot keep operating on the serendipitous hope that voters will choose us because, gosh, we aren’t the other guys. We need to find a few key issues that the state candidates will uniformly speak to. Beyond that, we need to find candidates who cover different interest areas, different experiences and bring different skill sets to the table. We need to offer our disparate candidates as a real slate, working together. Even if we do this, however, we still must operate with the recognition that we can NOT win more than a handful of seats, at best. That is ok, though, because it GIVES us a message and a strategy.

Our candidates must offer very real differences between our party and the status quo. Remember, we are fighting inertia here. Without an extreme effort to shift that inertia, voters will continue to do as they always have. We need to also remember, we that cannot beat the Republicans by being Republicans. Right now, we have more in common with the Democratic Party than we do with the Republicans. We need to find common areas upon which to build cooperation. We have to make the voters see benefits to bringing us to the table. I think that in districts that are represented by good men and women of the Democratic Party, we should consider not running candidates against them and, instead, do what we can to help them. For the bulk of the legislatures, we just want to be allowed in… which will NOT happen with Republican wins and/or majorities. WE need to be seen as a unified and MAINSTREAM team that is working to make a better government than what we currently have. We need to also be seen as the team that can bring the other loose members of the political community (greens, independents, etc.) to the table where, through us, they can be part of the process. If we do that, for example, then we can garner statewide support (particularly financial support), and possibly nation support for simple district elections.

Libertarianism must end its stunted childhood. To become meaningful, we must move it beyond a simply philosophy into a practical vision for realistic government. As we move forward, we must ask AND ANSWER some difficult questions, including:

• There WILL be government, so how can we improve it?
• There WILL be taxes, so how can we make them beneficial rather than draconian?
• A movement can NOT succeed simply by being against things, so what are we FOR?
• What IS the role of government?
• What IS the purpose of laws?
• FOR whom do we speak?
• TO whom do we speak?
• How do we become perceived as BEING inclusive and NOT exclusive?

Ronald Reagan famously stated that “Government is not the solution to our problems; it IS the problem.” When he said that, he identified government as something that CANNOT be seen in any kind of a positive way. The idea that we need to promote is: “Government is not the solution to our problems; it is the problem, WHICH WE MUST LEARN TO SOLVE.” That change turns it from being a negative declarative statement into a positive challenge which we can all be unified behind as we work to build something better for the future. Our challenge, as a party, is to figure out how to make the government change so that we will have one that serves the people rather than one which terrifies them.

Sincerely,

Rhys M. Blavier

Romayor, Texas

P.S. – I asked my step-father, a center-right Republican, to look over my first draft of this. He gave me this comment from his perspective:

As an outsider to the Libertarian party, I would be more likely to vote Libertarian if the candidates did not look like mass murderers. The male candidates that I remember had long necks with Adam’s apples that looked like basketballs. The women were over 300 pounds with greasy, stringy hair. They had jobs like gooseberry farmers or manger of a gecko rescue center. What I’m trying to say is that they looked like some kind of fringe people and had no background for the positions for which they were running. Granted, there are some in Congress that makes me wonder what the people who elected them look like.

P.P.S. — Since I originally wrote this, on a recent Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert demonstrated his mastery of satire as a way to point out how ridiculous things in this world or or my seem to be. In one of his stories this week, he was talking about candidates and the third one he named (the spot of shame in comedy) was “… and the Libertarian Party’s last Presidential nominee… Drinky Bird“ while behind him flashed a picture of a classic Drinky Bird in a top hat toy and the caption “Drinky Bird ‘08″

Where Was The Libertarian Party?

Election Day 2009 has come and gone. Relatively speaking, this election was as insignificant as any off-year election is, as opposed to a mid-term election, but it still could have been an important year for the Libertarian Party, if we had simply bothered to show up. There were six elections / ballot initiatives which could have possibly been affected by the Libertarian Party… if we actually had a long-term strategic plan. As it is, some things happened for which it is notable that the LP had no role in. In no particular order, let’s look at where we could have had real impacts this year.

Governor’s Race – New Jersey: New Jersey voters tossed out their incumbent Democratic Governor, Corizine, in favor of Republican Chris Christie. It may have happened because Corizine is very unpopular with the citizens of his government-corruption prone state .While Christie’s election is not necessarily a bad thing, what made this election notable was that it swung on independent voters. Christie won 49% of the vote, Corizine won 44% and independent candidate Chris Dagget walked away with 5% of the vote.

Governor’s Race – Virginia: Republican candidate, Bob McConnell, with 60% of the vote, easily won election over his Democratic opponent, Creigh Deeds. For over 35 years, Virginians have consistently voted into office Governors of the opposition party to that of a sitting President, so this win might have seemed inevitable. What made this race notable for the LP is that it was again the independent voters who made the difference. In 2008, Virginia bucked its own tradition of voting for Republican presidential candidates and, instead, voted for Democratic candidate Obama. In that case, Obama won because Virginia’s independent voters were pretty evenly split between Obama and McCain. This year, however, independent voters were 2 – 1 in favor of McConnell and we can see the results from that quite easily.

Mayor’s Race – New York: In this race, Independent candidate Michael Bloomberg won a very narrow victory against his Democratic opponent, the essentially unknown City Comptroller. The name of the Democratic candidate is not important. What is important is that even with spending approximately $100,000,000 (yes, 100 million) dollars of his own money, Bloomberg only won 51% of the total vote, only 5 points ahead of his Democratic opponent. This will be Bloomberg’s third term, which was only possible because he supported changes to New York City’s term limit law, which had limited mayors to only being able to be elected for two terms. A strong Libertarian presence could have raised the term-limit issue by speaking strongly for them.

House of Representatives Race – New York’s 23rd District: What can be said here that hasn’t already been said? In what was probably the most noteworthy race of 2009? For the first time in over 150 years, this district will not be represented by a Republican. The story is remarkable. The Republican Party chose Dede Scozzafava, an NRA-approved candidate who also was pro-choice and in favor of same-sex marriage. The Democratic Party chose an un-noteworthy sacrificial lamb, Bill Owens, because the New York state House has a one person majority and they didn’t want to risk losing that majority by running their state Representative in an “unwinnable” race. So what happened? The far-right stepped in and ran their own Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman, against Scozzafava. Why? Because she wasn’t conservative enough to satisfy far-right extremists, like Sarah Palin and Dick Armey. I think that this race was probably the most important this year because for what it signifies. The extreme far-right conservatives are not interested in Republican Party loyalty, they put political ideology above all else. Hoffman had no knowledge of or concern for “his” district’s local issues, he didn’t even live in that district In a move reminiscent of the worst examples of the “rotten boroughs” in British politics before the 20th century, the national leaders in the far-right conservative movement found someone whose only “qualification” was the purity of his ideology. Don’t worry though, if Hoffman HAD won, he promised that he would move into the District he would then be representing. Scozzafava eventually pulled out of the race and put her support behind the Democratic candidate. The extreme conservatives didn’t simply put their own candidate in a roll to beat the Republican candidate; they chased a loyal Republican out of the Republican Party, itself. In the end, enough loyal Republicans still voted for her that Conservative Hoffman lost. The final tally? 49% to 45% to 6%. I told you, folks… they’re eating their own.

This race, more than any other, demonstrates the collectivist desires of the extreme far-right conservatives… Local issues are not important to them; they want nothing less than to fill Congress with extreme conservative political ideologues who will put the desires of the conservative movement above every other consideration. Ideological purity is their litmus test, and having elected officials who will do the bidding of political masters instead of serving the needs of their constituents is a model for a one-party state with a collectivist government. We have seen such systems before and, trust me; their loyalty is NOT to their constituents… it is to their party. The far-right conservative extremist movement is trying to lead America down a very dangerous road.

In addition to these for elections, there were two ballot initiates that need to also be included in our summary. The first of these was the vote to overturn the law which passed the Maine legislature that made same-sex marriage legal in Maine. Drawing an immense amount of support from OUTSIDE the state, the conservatives managed to overturn that law by garnering 53% of the public vote to repeal it. The other ballot initiative we need to make note of was the approval in Breckenridge, Colorado of a law which decriminalizes all personal possession of one-ounce or less of marijuana. State and federal laws are still in place but for the first time, a city has stood up and said “it isn’t worth the government fighting to enforce those laws”. And who was responsible for this victory? If you said the Libertarian Party, you would be completely wrong. The organization that was responsible for getting 71% of the voters to approve that law was the modestly named ‘Sensible Colorado’… 71 freaking percent of the voters approved this and the LP had no hand in (and, thus, get no credit for) this win. Both of these initiatives were about personal freedom, personal MORAL freedom. If we, as Libertarians, are not the ones who can stand up for the side of freedom, then who the hell needs us?

So, what lessons should the LP learn from these elections? A couple of things. One is that being an extreme far-right, conservative neo-Republican party will not win for us. Those people are not disaffected, they are simply scared. They have their own machine and we would simply get swallowed entirely by them… and good-bye to the Libertarian Party. Another lesson is that independents really do matter. They might not be enough to win an election on their own, but that can certainly swing an election. In these elections we can all see the importance of a liberal movement. If we can mobilize it, we can win. The moderates, independents and liberals who turned out in numbers sufficient to elect Obama last year are the unmotivated and disaffected pool of voters we can turn to. There is power there, strength that is simply waiting to be utilized.

The Republicans are feeling elated about winning the two governor’s races this year. They are patting themselves on the back by seeing importance on the wrong victories. While governors might be the Chief Executives in their state, they have no role in formulating national legislation. The two House elections this year, both of which were won by the Democratic candidates, are much more significant in the larger picture of current American politics. What this says about the 2010 election possibilities is fascinating.

Candidates in reliable Republican districts will now be facing primary challenges from the far-right if they are not seen as being ideologically pure enough. Why is that important? Remember center-left Republican Senator Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island? He had to spend most of what he had in his campaign war chest to beat a far-right Republican opponent for the Party’s nomination. After the primary fight, he didn’t have enough money left to effectively campaign for the Senate seat, itself, and he lost to the Democratic nominee. We can look for more of this in 2010 as big money from national figures fighting for their far-right agenda will flood into the coffers of Republican candidates who aren’t seen as being conservatively pure. Any primaries in which the far-right challenger looses will leave the winner with little or no money to campaign for the actual seat or office in question.

Since Obama’s election a year ago, he has turned this country’s very active liberal base into an unmotivated “lost generation” looking for someone to give them hope. THAT is where our future lies. WE need to be the ones who can break the American liberals out of their ennui, to rally and mobilized the untapped political power they represent. THEY are the people who can make or break elections. Those people are looking for leadership and hope. Now is the time to bring back Ed Clark’s Libertarian movement. Now is when we need his “low-tax liberals” to rise up again and take the Libertarian Party back from the neo-Republicans. In every one of the elections I have mentioned here, WE could have made a difference, we could have made ourselves known again to the general public, we could have been leaders… and, to be politically viable, our future rest with being able to harness the unfocused liberalism which Obama has let wither away. The conservative extremists are destroying the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is showing itself to be incapable of leadership. There are holes being torn in American politics and, as nature abhors a vacuum, those holes WILL be filled. What we have to ask ourselves is, can we the party that fills those holes?

Since 1984, the LP has driven itself to an extreme end of the American political spectrum, an end that is mostly allied with the extreme far-right. That is not what first attracted the general public to the idea of libertarianism. It was the combination of the ideas of fiscal responsibility AND liberal social policies that first put the LP on the lips of the American people. Both the Republicans and the Democrats parties are moving farther and deeper into their own ideological extremes. I believe that any two-party system is going to naturally gravitate between polar opposites. The reason that it is important for America to also have a centrist party is because there needs to be a party that can comfortably welcome people from the right, left and middle. What makes the Libertarian party important is not conservative or liberal politics; it is our view of the role and function of government. What we oppose is authoritarianism. Personally, I am pretty far to the left while the political figure I know and admire the most is pretty far to the right; I believe that some government is necessary and she is an anarchist. Where we find commonality is our shared belief that neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party are serving the American people. THAT is why we both share a belief in libertarian philosophy, and the day that we can get both my moderate right Republican father and my independent green (liberal AND vegetarian) sister to vote for our candidates is the day that we will know that we have arrived.

Rhys M. Blavier
Romayor, Texas

“Truth, Justice and Honor… but, above all, Honor”

© Copyright 2009 by Rhys M. Blavier

“Mommy, why is Daddy so angry… and insane?” (The Internal Breakdown of the Republican Party in 2009)

There are many archetypes for the father figure. The most disturbing one is probably the domineering task master whose “love” comes at a cost that can never be paid. That cost is absolute deference, obedience, compliance and respect and, to him, deference, obedience and compliance are the proof of proper respect. He finds humor in ‘jokes’ which categorize and belittle others because they support his own view of his natural superiority over “lesser” (i.e. – different) people. This archetype believes that his children also begin their life owing him a debt that can never be paid back, life itself. As such, his children are his property, chattel that he has paid for. He sees himself as all-knowing, all-powerful and always right. He is focused on rules and control. He will not tolerate backtalk or even being questioned. He not only wants to instill fear in his children, he wants them to fear that, even if they somehow do something that he sees as wrong without his knowing about it, they will still face retribution and punishment for eternity from a vengeful God; the same God who gives the father-figure his authority by giving him children. This father-figure believes that his right to have power over others is given to him directly by God; that his power and authority cannot be questioned or limited by anyone, and that few in the world are his equals. His God has also given him the ultimate power, the power to banish to the wilderness those who violate his given order. What he gives, he can (and will) take.

This archetype is what the Republican Party has become.

_________________________________________________________________

Like most political observers, I have watched with fascination the Republican Party’s rapid descent into madness throughout the course of the year. In fact, that breakdown has been so spectacular that even people who DON’T widely follow politics or news are aware of it, whether they recognize it or not. While I have heard much discussion of what they are doing, I have not, however, heard anyone pinpoint a single core cause of that breakdown. We have plenty of “what” being talked about but little to none of “why”. As I have spoken of before, people are focused on the “symptoms” of a disease without identifying the “disease” itself. Two recent incidences with my own brother gave me a clue about what that “disease” actually is. The core of the Republican Party is simply an authoritarian “father” who is mad that their “dependents” (the American People) aren’t respecting or listening to them anymore. They are angry because they have no control over their “children” and authoritarians THRIVE on being in control.

The Authoritarian Personality was a 1950 book written by UC-Berkeley psychologists Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswick, Daniel Levinson,, and Nevitt Sanford. In their book, they first described the “authoritarian personality” theory of personality. Their research lead them to the conclusion that this personality is developed by psychodynamic, childhood experiences which make them predisposed to follow the dictates of a strong leader and traditional, conventional values. They identified nine traits, which they hypothesized were clustered together as a result of those experiences, which identified this personality type:

     • Anti-intraception;
     • Authoritarian Aggression;
     • Authoritarian Submission;
     • Conventionalism;
     • Destructiveness and Cynicism;
     • Exaggerated Concerns over Sexuality;
     • Power and “Toughness”;
     • Projectivity; and
     • Stereotyping and Superstition.

In 1981, Canadian psychologist, Bob Altemeyer, gave us a refinement of the authoritarian personality theory, which he introduced as the concept of “right-wing authoritarianism”. Altemeyer found that only three of those nine traits correlated together:

     • Authoritarian Aggression (a general aggressiveness directed against “deviants”, outgroups, and other people that are perceived to be targets according to established authorities.)

     • Authoritarian Submission (a high degree of submissiveness to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.); and
     • Conventionalism (a high degree of adherence to the traditions and social norms that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities, and a belief that others in one’s society should also be required to adhere to these norms.)

The “right-wing” in right-wing authoritarianism does not necessarily refer to someone’s politics, but rather to their psychological preferences and personality. It means that the person tends to follow the established conventions and authorities in society. In theory, the authoritarian personality could have either conservative or liberal political views.

In his 1996 paper, The Authoritarian Specter, Altemeyer reported that his research indicated that right-wing authoritarians tend to exhibit cognitive errors and symptoms of faulty reasoning. Specifically, they are more likely to make incorrect inferences from evidence and to hold contradictory ideas that are the result of compartmentalized thinking. They are also more likely to uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs, and they are less likely to acknowledge their own limitations. The RWA-scale reliably correlates with political party affiliation, reactions to Watergate, pro-capitalist beliefs, religious orthodoxy, and acceptance of covert governmental activities such as illegal wiretaps. Altemeyer found that those who scored highly on the RWA-scale are likely to exhibit several common traits. These personalities tend to:

     • Be Highly Nationalistic;
     • Have Conservative Economic Philosophies;
     • Not value Social Equality;
     • Oppose Abortion;
     • Oppose Gun Control; and
     • Support Capital Punishment.

In role-playing situations, Altemeyer found that authoritarians tend to seek dominance over others by being competitive and destructive instead of cooperative. In his study, sixty-eight authoritarians played a three-hour simulation of the Earth’s future entitled the “Global Change Game”. While a comparison game played by individuals with low RWA scores resulted in world peace and widespread international cooperation, the simulation by authoritarians became highly militarized and eventually entered the stage of nuclear war. By the end of the high RWA game, the entire population of the earth was declared dead.

Research by D. J. Narby, B. L. Cutler & G. Moran (1993) found that authoritarians are generally more favorable to punishment and control than personal freedom and diversity. For example, they are more willing to support the suspension or abolishment of constitutional guarantees of liberty such as the Bill of Rights… at least where those guarantees protect others who they, themselves, have judged to be inferior. They are also more likely to advocate strict, punitive sentences for criminals. Researches by J. Duckitt & B. Farre (1994) and by M.B. Goodman & B. Moradi (2008) found that people with high RWA scores report that they obtain personal satisfaction from punishing those who they perceive as criminals, and that they tend to be ethnocentric and prejudiced against racial and ethnic minorities, and homosexuals.

The modern Republican Party has been dominated by individuals who are not just authoritarian personalities; they are right-wing authoritarian personalities. Since the period following the War Between the States, they have moved steadily away from being a populist party to being a party focused on being able to exert their will on others, even while in the minority. Money, power and political manipulations made them a corrupt party of “elites” who viewed themselves as being superior to those they “governed”. They used demogoguery as a strategy to gain political power by appealing to the public’s prejudices, emotions, fears, and expectations. They mastered the use of impassioned rhetoric, propaganda and abductive reasoning, often through the use of nationalistic, populist, moralist and / or religious themes.

The current schizophrenic behavior of the Republican Party began, in my opinion, with the almost worshipful attitude of the conservative and Christian far-right to their mythology of Ronald Reagan. They see him as their Moses, who was leading them to their conservative “Promised Land”. In 1994, this Promised Land seemed to be within sight with their takeover of both Houses of Congress. Suddenly, the Republican Party was filled with average, everyday people who not only viewed themselves as being elite, but also as being responsible for “fixing” what they saw as the broken soul of America. The big problem is that, by definition, average, everyday people cannot BE elite. This was the political equivalent of the common people of France deposing their nobility and establishing their “committees of the people” to rule instead. As happened in France, once they were in power, they also eventually turned on those among themselves who they did not see as supporting the orthodoxy or dogma of their revolution. Their equivalence was creating the label “Republican In Name Only”, or RINO. With that label they would work to purge their own ranks of those who were not “pure enough” in their belief in the “correct” orthodoxy, essentually removing the very real existence and accomplishments of the historical moderate and liberal wings of their party from their mythology.

Regardless of what the Republicans “promised” in their infamous Contract With America, once they gained the power and positions they believed were ordained for them, they moved to solidify their control over our government by making the Party (rather than the individual elected members) the dominant feature of American Government. They changed rules for determining committee chairs from being based on seniority to being based on how well members followed the dictates of the party. They collectivised their party to minimize the power of individual members and maximize the power of the party itself. Again, the similarities (in action, if not degree) to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror are remarkable. At this point, they became “Daddy”, saying to America “Do what I tell you to do or I will punish you.”

Following in the footsteps of their mythology’s greatest human hero, Ronald Reagan (under whose administration, for example, federal funds and tax dollars were withheld from states which would not comply with federal demands for conformance on issues like drinking, drugs, speed limits, etc. – essentially blackmailing the states), the Republican controlled Congress with a view to its own dominance, power, and control over the “misguided” states and the people who did not want to do what “Daddy” told or expected them to do. They also envisioned an America under their rule in perpetuity (Karl Roves infamous “permanent majority”). Regardless of their often espoused support of states’ rights (an idea which is not found in The Constitution, contrary to the beliefs of many), they only want the states to be independent of their federal government when the states are ruling as the Party wants them to. In all other cases, they believe that their obligation as the “rulers” of our federal government is to impose THEIR will upon the states when the states aren’t “competent enough” to agree with them.

Even with the 1995 Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress, their first since 1955, they were still “impeded” in their movement towards creating the America they envisioned by having a moderate Democrat, Bill Clinton, as President. Thus, much of their effort was to limit, if not remove altogether, political resistance against their power, including their impeachment of Clinton. In 2000, however, all of their wet dreams o be on the verge of coming true with elevation of George W. Bush to the Presidency. Not only did they get a majority in the House, once seated, on January 20, 2001, Dick Cheney, as President of the Senate, turned an evenly split Senate into one with a majority controlled by the Republican members. During this period, there was, of course, no talk or consideration of working with the members from the Democratic Party and their ideal of bipartisanship was the Democratic members doing what their Republican masters wanted them to do. This, of course, went so well that Republican Senator Jeffords (Vermont), holding the Senate seat that had been continuously held by Republicans for the longest period in American history (144 years), quit the party and became an Independent who caucused with the Democrats. This was the first time we, as a nation, got to see how the modern Republican Party would react to being challenged in its holding political dominance and absolute power. How many of us remember THAT little brouhaha?

Starting in 2003, the Republican Party did have complete control of the Presidency and both Houses of Congress… and they had their eye on having the opportunity to also stack the Supreme Court with those who shared their vision of America. I won’t rehash what those of us who opposed Bush and the far-right conservatives believe about how he governed and what was done to damage The Constitution under their period of dominance. Suffice it to say that we welcomed the slight shift in power which gave the Democrats narrow control of both Houses of Congress a mere four years later. It was at this time that “Daddy” really started to go seriously insane. What happened in 2008, of course, drove “Daddy” completely over the edge of reason.

What I see now in the Republican Party is the equivalent of Cole Oyl, Olive Oyl’s father in the Popeye cartoons and movie, running around telling everyone “You owe me an apology!” The Republican Party has become politically impotent and its impotence has caused rage among the far-right wing of the Party. They are trying to find something, ANYTHING to latch onto to demonstrate to others that they aren’t impotent. Their quest, however, keeps getting more and more trivial, pedantic and ridiculous with each passing week. They are so blinded by their impotent rage that they are once again attacking those among their own ranks who question the power that they believe is their divine right by not ascribing to the “proper” orthodoxy, dogma and “tenets of faith” as the “true believers”. Like any angry, old authoritarian confronted with their impotence, they are searching for a political orgasm.

Yes, that is what I believe it comes down to… they can’t get themselves off politically. That is, in my opinion, the only explanation for their increasingly erratic and dangerous actions… impotent rage. They have a collective need to not only feel that they are vibrant and virile but also that they can reproduce. I believe that all sociological creations of Man (governments, clubs, businesses, etc.) can be viewed and understood by seeing them as living organisms. They all have the same needs and desires of a living organism and, as a living organism, the far-right Republicans see themselves being replaced by other organisms that do not come from their own seed; they suddenly see themselves as mortal and approaching an ignoble end. Unfortunately, there is no little blue pill that they can take to compensate for their electile dysfunction.

Like a once vibrant and dominant man reduced to wearing diapers and drooling; like an alpha-male pack animal who has lost his teeth, those members of the Republican party who are making ever greater fools of themselves are filled with rage against those who robbed them of what they see as their rightful place in American life. In their rage to reclaim their “rightful” place in society they will use any and every means at their disposal to destroy what they can’t have for themselves. If they can’t be in control of our country then they will reduce it to ashes so that there won’t be a country for anyone else to be in control off. It is an attitude that the world has seen before. That is the final lesson that “Daddy” has to teach his errant and ungrateful children… that it is easier to destroy a nation than it is to build one.

Vive’ la Revolution.

Rhys M. Blavier
Romayor, Texas

“Truth, Justice and Honor… but, above all, Honor”

© Copyright 2009 by Rhys M. Blavier
_________________________________________________________________

Thank you for reading this article. Please read my other articles and let me know what you think. I am writing them not to preach or to hear myself think but to try to create dialogs, debates and discussions on the nature of our government and how we can build upon and improve it based on what we have seen and learned over the course of the 225 years of The American Experiment.

This is a link to Bob Altemeyer’s book ‘The Authoritarians’ which you can read on-line:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

How War Does Speed

War is not the health of the state. At least not in the long run. I respect Randolph Bourne and his cogent observation that  “War is the health of the state”. But he is far too lenient in diagnosing war and that psychopathic institution of monopolistic coercion, which is the state. Rather war is the amphetamine of the state and speeds it along to its destruction along with the attending population.

War is a collective addiction of those who are vetted for violence and recklessness. They charge into areas laden with known lethal dangers. Amphetamine (or Amvet-a-mine?) is a capsule description of this addictive drug. It comes in many forms, as does war. It has been described to me by an addict as giving initially a rush of power, a feeling of purpose that drives eventually to conflict. One goes into the most difficult of projects with gusto only to be distracted later into another one. As its use continues headlong into constant use it brings on paranoia, exhaustion, anger and lack of judgment. One forgets simply how to take care of oneself and family as nourishment, health and hygiene fall by the wayside. Initial goals are forgotten for while the drive becomes for more and more of the experience itself. It ends up in despair, delusions, discord, disease and death.

It has been prescribed and proscribed by people who are doctors. It is designed in laboratories and manufactured in factories. This was seen as a way to get more work out of a nation. They have also said it was a way to get out of a depression. It was also seen as a way to stop other drug use or just to generally wake people up.

These authorities also saw it as a way for people to become more aggressive and talkative. Every thought became concentration and power. It was hailed as a way to increase initiative, confidence and alertness. Some also used it to get in trim and decrease consumption. While it was given to adults to stimulate them it was also administered to children to keep them quiet. Many use it to keep an edge on themselves. They also want others under them to use it to validate their use.

The drug operates the same way as war. It is uniform in effects, which may be why so many of its users wear uniforms or think uniformly. So they are in an outfit, which is also a gang. The drug was widely used by many of those involved in fighting in World War II, whether they were up in the air while acting as pilots or in the tank shooting off. They became crack troops. Even those who were behind the lines with their nose close to their desk and just working the lines given them in factories were inhaling this rush to destruction. It seemed that you could get a lot more done while doing it. So nations became addicted and could not see imagine existence without it. Hitler was known to get a lot of shooting done and stealing to feed his all-consuming frenzy. It was injected through his works and became his daily life. So it became part of others as well. So there was a method of amphetamine in his madness.

Even now that methamphetamine is banned, there is a band of brothers involved in it. Motorcycle gangs, which are uniformly military in organization, appearance and predereliction for violence are the primary purveyors of speed. Some speed around the country in formations and formulate speed as well. The origin of the Hell’s Angels name comes from names of military units. These bikers wore black leather Air Force bomber jackets adorned with unit patches as well as old German military helmets when riding . . .

One of the ingredients of meth is ammonia. Ammonia is a fertilizer as well as a poison. It is released as a dead body decays and has an evil smell. It is available everywhere for everyone to use. It is also a harsh cleanser of the fabric of society.

A saying during war is “Keep your powder dry”. This is so as that this substance will not lose its explosiveness. This also applies to speed, which is powder as well as a shot. It can come in any color or packaging. It is often used as a source of amusement or display of patriotism and visual effects. However fireworks are just an amusing aspect of explosive powder. The explosive powder of power must be kept pure and packed into a tight shell and then is placed in the head that is prepared for launching. It is dangerous in its denseness and kept dry so it will ignite. It could be shot up or hurled into an opening.  There it breaks up into the energy of destruction, which ends in nothingness. The process usually repeats endlessly. It is an expensive habit to maintain. Keep alert, more than alert and the over-stimulation becomes a danger to the user. For this dry powder can kill friend and foe alike.

It is dangerous to make as well. One becomes connected to one’s product even without use. Stories abound of how manufacturers of this poison hurt and poison themselves or lose their lives and fortunes in explosions and fires. It’s been called by the godly an involvement in a satanic process. This dangerous edge may be a perverse incentive to some, like a shot of adrenalin.

It is said of dealers and manufacturers on the highest levels of this trade that they never get involved in this for personal use. It distorts good judgment and interferes with making a profit. And they do accumulate a lot of wealth and toys, more than they can ever use, in this trade of theirs.  This may be the mainline reason that they got involved in all of this dealing with death.

It is also used to obtain sex and other favors. There are issues of identity, status as well as social climbing. There is also the feeling of control as addicts put more money into your pockets. There is adventure, and the joy of conspiracy with other like-minded wealthy, people. Dealing meth, like diplomacy, which is dealing with politics, can be war with another name.

It is used by the actors who play our lives on stage and in film as well as the suites of power. It also runs as a suite of those who give a music to our souls. For the music of this experience reaches to all whether you are of the country or the urban or urbane cultures or styles. Some who use it use this to rise to the top and maintain their positions there. This helps them attract huge audiences. For all this drive does is make the heart beat faster but then irregular. This raises the blood pressure as well. So they speed the march to the attack!

But it does create culture even with its destruction.  As theater needs conflict war is a theater and conflict as well. While those in this field need initiative as well as discipline and power, inevitably through use there will arise unprovoked acts of violence. These are the first signs of misuse causing canceling of performances, productions as well as the conflict of the actor with civilized society.

Conflict is sometimes the result of irritability, which is also common with users. The tremors may arise from not being on firm ground. The effects might at first seem to give   a unity of purpose but later it gives schizophrenia as an end result of its paranoia. This is a result of over-indulgence and leads to even larger doses with even greater symptoms resulting. A constant state of tenseness leads to brittleness. It also leads to a dramatic increase in spousal and child abuse. Alcoholism and other addictions can create some of the same effects.

War is the cancer of the state and it affects those who live within its power even if they are not users. Overgrowth of the defensive cells of any organism is cancer. The body goes haywire in determining what is hostile and what is essential to it. Cancer leads to the takeover and the death of its host. So war can bring about good things as well like ending a state. But will it bring the end of the addiction in others it has infected? A different way to alter consciousness is needed.

Because after long use depression will return worse than ever. The body politic will wonder what is wrong. So paranoia and fear will ensue and then it closes up. The shit that inevitably accumulates within it will not be let out. It is more than a constipation that the body suffers, for the toxins will leach into the blood. And with that comes pain, lack of appetite and blurred vision. Communications that are very demanding will also become increasingly unclear and rambling at the same time. The old remedy for this was blood letting. This is what is happening now as the head in its fever turns to the solutions of what is considered general use of Mc CHRYSTAL METHods. We Af Ghan too far into the glass pipe-line of war.

There are scores of similar symptoms shared by both amphetamines and war in this article. In fact, every symptom of speed has a war analogy. When the similarities become so often between two different fields and so obvious that puns and wordplay abound between them then there is more than a smile of a simile at work. This phenomena I call meta-forensics.

So let us proceed in this what I describe as a meta-forensics to understand how to deal with these problems. Yes, war and amphetamines are addictive and dangerous in many ways. While I would not recommend or use either one neither would I want either one banned, as the consequence of banning would only increase the problem. We have all seen how the War on Poverty increased the poverty problem. A War on War would be just as insane like the War on Drugs.

A misunderstanding of terms, or the inability of the terms to describe, terminates understanding. A psychosis that cannot be understood in its terms becomes a metaphorosis, which is another term I have invented.  When much more of that happens it can cause such a dissonance that a metamorphosis can happen. .

We must acknowledge that the widespread use of amphetamines, especially meth, has been disastrous for poorer, rural America, like war always is.  In prison I met many of these people who used or sold “meth” (speed), which is so similar to crack or cocaine it is sometimes called “country crack”. And like crack it is defining the culture of the country people as well in music and story as well as those who write and perform it.

It also addicts the brilliant, creative and disciplined.  I’ve met in prison stockbrokers and fashion designers from New York City who used “meth” as well. I’ve never done it, sold it and always warned people against it and still do. Yet how can I completely condemn a drug that helped the great novelist and paragon of rationality, Ayn Rand, finish “The Fountainhead”? Or how can I condemn something used by Jack Kerouac, the novelist of the Beat generation, in writing On the Road”? Or how about all those college students who have used it for decades for the same reasons as Ayn or Jack, to cram knowledge and finish writings on a deadline?

The same goes for a fight. Fighting is natural for every tribe, even among boys. There is such a thing as just war. However if it becomes a continual policy among large amounts of combatants as it so often does it becomes just a war. This is one reason why we focus on individual stories in war fiction rather than the tramping of armies. Those involved in war or speed must be small in number and very aware of the dangers of what they do.  If the state gets involved in pushing it or even if it becomes a mindless fad (something that often comes together) there is incredible danger. For something banned that thing becomes an allure and quest all of its own (The Fight Club). So war in its righteous wrath must be separate from the state as the church is separate from the state.

I preach and practice non-violence. When I have a violent fantasy (which is fairly often) I try to imagine and think through what are the goal and the aftermath and then try to imagine other strategies. I also ask the same in what I am going to get out of any drug experience, in imagining creative alternatives. Only psychedelics allow those types of questions and quests. There is so much shortsightedness in this world. Especially with those who act either inside or outside the box, whether the box contains cartridges or capsules. Still there are so few who will go out of the box that I encourage people to do so.  But at the same time have an understanding or vision of what can come next.

War can have a horrible beauty and quest that has inspired much art at terrible cost. We can no longer afford it except as metaphor or as a final option. If we end up hurting others and ourselves, rather than helping then we must stop. When the process fails to work for someone the drug and war experience must end and not returned to.  It seems so true and obvious in a normal state to do so but in the intoxicated state that these bring it seems unreal and even frightening. Those involved in war and speed tend to associate and trust only those who have close ties to it. So it is imperative that those involved maintain a connection with those who are judiciously honest and understanding of the problems involved and who are outside of that experience.

I suppose that some will also make the analogy of some ideas such as religion and politics are also addictions. For the purposes of this discussion a practice that becomes such an obsession in that it becomes uniformly dangerous to practitioners that they become violent to others qualifies that as an addiction. One of the reasons that a person wants to spread a practice so that they become an intense advocate is to validate the experience for themselves and to learn more about it. It is possible that among the advocates of an idea you will have addicts and non-addicts in this definition.

There is also the possibility of a genetic predisposition and that we orient ourselves to those drives such as has been theorized as for religion. Or we may have receptor sites for speed (or is it adrenaline) or war because it increases adrenalin. These may be related to our need for war. If this is how we are wired then we should allow expression of these instincts in as safe a way as possible and even give them a sense of meaning. And when it gets out of hand and causes the user to be damaging then the fullest moral authority with the least use of violence must be used.

So let’s continue with the addiction analogy. Those involved in wars of aggression and hurting those who are not involved should be treated as an addict who commits violence and theft. Let us leave aside criminal penalties that are levied on these acts. How can you motivate the addict to stop the anti-social behavior and instill an awareness or guilt of what they are doing so that they will decide to stop?

The best accepted treatment of those in addictive behavior is a staged confrontation. Those who are friends, family and others who have been hurt and know the actor have a planned surprise meeting with the accused. They all give their individual testimony of the terrible things that the person has done. Afterward they give their verdict to the miscreant.  The sentence is: “Deal with their problem!” This is usually done through a program. The program is designed to understand their behavior and build support means so that they never indulge in the drug or behavior again. The twelve-step success begins with an admission of guilt and that they are addicts. It is as an act of recovery, which may result in a real change. The addict will use any rationale as an excuse to use the drug again. Yet long experience has concluded that a drug once abused can never be used again or the same destructive pattern re-emerges. So if they do go back to old habits they should suffer an exile, a shunning or boycott. This cycle can continue endlessly until the addict dies. Most never recover. The ones that do keep clean see themselves in a constant state of recovery, not as cured people.

The behavior of the state and its military is to ensnarl itself in everything that could be in opposition to it so as to engender self-censorship of possible critics. It also co-opts, censors, minimalizes, avoids, arrests or chases away any opposition to its self-perception as heroes. Still wars, attempts at empires and other horrid behavior have on occasion been shamed out of existence. This is how colonialism, Communism and the Vietnam War ended.

Police state functions can be dealt with the same way. In spite of propaganda from the official culture, high pay and other inducements police are often socially isolated. Who wants to party with someone who is obligated to bust you for breaking a stupid law? Partly because of this disconnect and the official requirements of violence, police and military people have high alcoholism and other drug problems, suicide rates and other abuse issues. Police and the military are war drug cultures.

Peace people are a small group of disguised therapists in a huge asylum that is run by the inmates. Some of us are in recovery ourselves. Even among the therapists we are in the minority. It is commonly accepted among the violent addicts that if something goes wrong it is OK and even a duty to relapse into the drug called war. This imprint has gone on for ages. So we must build through culture, tradition and moral code and imprint a loathing of war. The extreme efforts and accomplishments that made possible the imprint through this drug of war must be made through other means. This could be done through other drugs such as psychedelics, which help in reprinting. Other quests such as spiritual and cultural imprints help as well.

So we define the mass use of violence and amphetamines as the sign of massive evil and psychosis. We see this as the state or state of mind that accepts horror as normal or even ideal. We create communities of peace amid this structured chaos of war. We persevere and create this peace even if just to maintain our own sanity.

It is through our analysis, ideals and vision that we have a way of treatment. We must prove to our patients that they have a problem and that there are other more peaceful ways of dealing with their problems than what they are doing now. Whether they are consciously pursuing terror as a way of life or thinking that this is the only or best way out we must provide better options without the drug-like frenzy of violence. It has been described as one of the most difficult and rewarding of accomplishments for genius and commoner alike to give up an addictive drug. Giving up war will be a similar struggle. So let’s start looking at the problem this way.

Libertarianism, Vulgar Libertarianism, and Vulgar Socialism

On September 28th, 2009, Francois Tremblay, a former propertarian anarchist, wrote a blog piece to showcase what he currently sees to be the inexorable problems resulting from a defence of property rights.  In doing so, he quotes extensively from a piece written over thirty-four years ago by capitalism-advocate Walter Block.

In reading Mr. Tremblay’s post, I could not help but to think of how vulgar libertarianism facilitates vulgar socialism and vice versa.  (For those unfamiliar with the terms vulgar libertarianism and vulgar socialism, definitions will be provided below, coupled with examples and analyses.)

The Block piece from which Mr. Tremblay quotes was originally published in 1975 in The Libertarian Forum VIII, no. 9.  Dr. Block’s article, dealing specifically with certain ideological problems he found in the Women’s Liberation movement, does a fine job of inadvertently exemplifying the stigmergic problems of vulgar libertarianism, so I shall start there.  It’s not the simple fact that Block challenges currents within the Women’s Liberation movement that makes his comments of a vulgar stripe, of course, since such challenges need not challenge the validity of the movement as a whole.  Indeed, otherwise good movements should be challenged by radicals who wish to improve said movements by radicalising them.  Instead, the problem is the result of a misunderstanding of the nature and proper constraints of property.

Writes Dr. Block,

It [the pinching that takes place between a secretary and her or his boss] is not a coercive action like the pinching that takes place in the public sphere because it is part of a package deal: the secretary agrees to all aspects of the job when she agrees to accept the job and especially when she agrees to keep the job (p. 6).

My gut reaction here is to say that Dr. Block is wrong.¹

And he was wrong, that is, unless he was describing a scenario in which the employment contract specifically allocates to the boss the luxury of pinching or a scenario in which the boss and her employee have mutually agreed to have the sort of relationship where pinching is permissible.²

If this is not what Block was implying, if instead Block was implying that all workers—by sheer virtue of being employees—have de facto agreed to being pinched by their employers, then Block was wrong, and his position was actually in defiance of true property rights.  After all, the woman owns her own body, and does not cease being a self-owner simply because she chooses to seek employment from another human being (i.e., to trade on a voluntary basis the fruits of her labour for something for which she has greater subjective value, e.g., a generally-accepted medium of exchange).  If the employer pinches the employee without the employee having explicitly consented to being pinched, then the employer has usurped from the employee control over the employee’s private property, specifically her physical body, and the employee has every right to sue her employer for such usurpation.

To prevent the employee from issuing such a suit would be just as liberticidal and anti-propertarian as to prevent the employer from firing her employee at any time.

Dr. Block’s insistence here that employers have a de facto “right” to pinch their employees appears to be an illustrative example of what we call vulgar libertarianism.  Vulgar libertarianism is the tendency to see any business-related relationship or institution as de facto just or good.³  Here, Block assumed that if the pinching takes place on private property, it is necessarily consensual by virtue of that fact alone.  While Block was correct to note the differences between private pinching and public pinching, and to point out that the private sector has systemic incentives to eliminate social ills in a way that the government sector does not, he made the irrational jump to concluding that private pinching is somehow not a violation of self-ownership.

It is important that we note the differences between libertarianism and vulgar libertarianism.  While the former is the consistent application of the non-aggression axiom and, by extension, a defence of all justly-acquired, scarce property, the latter is an inadvertent confusion within the libertarian movement between the true free market and the semi-, pseudo-, and un-free markets prevalent under statism.  While it certainly appears true that society has tended to prosper more greatly under state capitalism than under state socialism, nevertheless the libertarian rejects both systems, and confidently predicts that the greatest prosperity the masses can achieve would be achieved under what Rothbard called free-market capitalism or what Spangler calls free-market socialism.

Continued Dr. Block,

There is a serious problem with considering pinching or sexual molestation in a privately owned office or store to be coercive. If an action is really and truly coercive, it ought to be outlawed. But if pinching and sexual molestation are outlawed in private places, this violates the rights of those who voluntarily wish to engage in such practices.

What tortured logic!  This is like saying, “If rape is wrong, then we should outlaw sex.  But if sex is outlawed, this violates the rights of those who voluntarily wish to engage in such practices.”

Of course, the reality is that voluntary sex, unlike rape, should be completely legal precisely because it is voluntary, unlike rape.

Or, “If injecting unsuspecting victims with a drug is wrong, then drugs should be outlawed.  But if drugs are outlawed, this violates the rights of those who voluntarily wish to use them.”

Of course, the reality is that voluntary drug use, unlike forcibly injecting people with heroin against their will, should be completely legal precisely because it is voluntary, unlike forcible injection.

In other words, one does not have to prohibit voluntary pinching (or even voluntary sex) within the workplace to prohibit unconsensual pinching.  It is beyond me how Block ever came to such a silly conclusion.  (At least he realised the virtue in retracting this insanity.)

“The proof,” Block continues,

of the voluntary nature of an act in a private place is that the person endangered (the woman, in the cases we have been considering) has no claim whatsoever to the private place in question, the office or the store. If she continues to patronize or work at a place where she is molested, it can only be voluntary.

This is the same irrationality that leads some people to believe that the state is somehow “really voluntary.”  They say, “You choose not to move somewhere else, therefore you have consented to abiding by the laws of the area.”

Dr. Block would probably reply by correctly pointing out that there is a massive difference between the state and a private, voluntary institution like the free-market firm.  But a violation of property rights does not cease to be a violation of property rights simply because it takes place on another person’s property!

Let us imagine a scenario where radical libertarians have made sweeping victories, and the roads are, finally, all privately owned.  In some cases, the roads may be owned by private firms.  In some cases, they may be co-owned by the residents of the local community in the form of shares.  Whatever the case may be, there is no state ownership, control, or subsidisation of the streets.

Let’s imagine that Smith, who has permission from the owners of Baker Street, goes walking one night down the street and gets murdered by Robinson.  Let’s also say that Robinson is not caught, and thus is not forced to pay restitution for his crime to the family of his victim.

Would this mean that anyone else who traverses Baker Street has agreed to allow others to kill her or him merely by virtue of the fact that she or he has chosen to walk a street where another (Robinson) has been murdered?  Of course not!

Nor would we say that a woman who has been raped on Baker Street has agreed to all further sexual encounters she may have on the street simply by virtue of the fact that she continues to use that street in order to get home.

The only possible exception to this is in the scenario in which the owners of Baker Street have made it perfectly clear to all of their patrons that the street is to be a domain in which people may live out the Hobbesian war of all against all.  Only then could it be said that Smith has agreed to being raped, murdered, or otherwise victimised while traversing Baker Street.  But in any situation where this condition has not been clearly made in advance, it can be nothing but irrational to assume that the victim has “consented” to being victimised!

Let us consider the issue of murder within the home.  If Smith is a guest of Robinson and is standing in Robinson’s home, does Robinson have a right to pull out a gun and simply shoot Smith at will?  Absolutely not.

Robinson does have the right to expel Smith from her (Robinson’s) property, and to brandish her gun if necessary to perform the expulsion.  But Robinson has only the right to use as much force as is necessary to perform the expulsion; she does not have any right to use excessive force, i.e., force above and beyond that which is necessary to encourage Smith to leave.  Since shooting Smith in the head is almost always unnecessary, she therefore only has the right to do this if she feels that she (or her family, or other guests) are actually endangered by Smith.  (This use of force does not, in my opinion, violate the non-aggression axiom because it is a defensive use of force.)

Robinson may also shoot Smith if Smith explicitly consents.  Perhaps Smith wishes to commit suicide, but cannot bring himself to shooting himself.  Thus, he has come to his friend Robinson requesting that she assist him in his suicide.  She is no criminal, in accordance with natural law, for providing such assistance.⁴

Yet these appear to be the only instances in which one may use this sort of force.  One does not have a right to simply shoot one’s guests, at least not in accordance with natural law.  In a true anarchy where the common legal institutions recognise the supremacy of natural law, one has the right to do whatever one wants except for those actions that would violate the equal rights of others, and since one’s guest remains a self-owner even when she or her invites said guest onto her or his property, the property owner’s property rights clearly cannot extend to a “right” to alienate the property rights of her or his guests.

This bring us back to Tremblay, whose position appears to exemplify a certain vulgar socialism.  Where a vulgar libertarian may assume that property ownership gives one a perverse and totalitarian control over all persons who tread upon one’s property, Mr. Tremblay appears to make the opposite mistake, assuming property itself is perverse and totalitarian.  In fact, we can see that Tremblay makes this mistake by assuming the same property conditions that are assumed by the vulgar libertarians.

Mr. Tremblay writes,

NOTE to all the ancaps who are itching to reply that “sexual harassment is a form of aggression and is simply wrong”: that’s exactly our point. Capitalist property theory allows any form of injustice as long as it’s done “on one’s property.”

I do not know in what sense Mr. Tremblay is using the term “capitalist” here.  If capitalism is to be defined as that mercantilist system of corporate privilege which can only exist as a product of the visible fist of the state, then all libertarians, including anarcho-“capitalists,” are opposed to capitalism.  Contrariwise, if one defines “capitalism” as being synonymous with the free market, then all libertarians, even free-market anarcho-syndicalists and “anti-capitalist” mutualists, are “capitalists.”  But perhaps Mr. Tremblay is using the term in its most basic and value-free sense: a system where one or more person own and may trade ownership of the means of production.

If Mr. Tremblay is using this value-free definition, then he is incorrect to assume that there is any such thing as a “capitalist property theory.”  And if he is using one of the two value-laden definitions I describe here, then he would be well-advised to define which definition he is using, for one’s conclusions may very well be contingent upon which definition is employed.

I’ll simply assume that Tremblay intends to refer to the Rothbardian property theory, which is of course founded on the vitally-important homesteading principle, first developed by John Locke.  Rothbard holds that one cannot own a plot of land merely by claiming ownership over it.  Nor can one own a fenced-off plot of land merely by placing a fence around it.  One can only come to own a plot of land through “mixing one’s labour with the soil,” and as such, when one erects a fence without doing anything to the land that has been fenced off, one can only justly claim ownership of the land directly beneath the fence itself.  This is the Rothbardian property theory.

Rothbard demonstrates quite effectively just how egalitarian his theory of property is in volume one of his Conceived in Liberty (1975).⁵  Rothbard describes the situation of the evil Virginia Company, which was granted exclusive and authoriarian power by the Crown, granting large tracks of land to privileged elites, elites who in turn would never have been able to maintain dominion over the large tracks if they had been confined by the homesteading principle.  Instead of acquiring and accumulating land through the just means of homesteading and voluntary trade, these elites used labour from slaves and indentured servants to maintain illegitimate control over lands to which they had no right whatsoever.

Assuming Mr. Tremblay indeed did mean to reference the Rothbardian theory of property, let us analyse whether his claim is accurate.  Does such a theory of property allow “any form of injustice as long as it’s done ‘on one’s property’”?  As I have already explained above, it does not.  What I do not believe I have yet sufficiently explained is precisely why it does not.

The short answer is this: the law of non-contradiction.  If I have a right to justly-acquired scarce property that I have either homesteaded myself or that I have acquired through voluntary trade from someone else who has justly-acquired it, it can only be the case that I have this right if and because I justly own my own body and the fruits of my labour.  I cannot justly own any external property if I do not own my own body and the fruits of my labour for, without these prerequisites, how could I ever come to own other things?

Yet, if we live in a universe where the law of non-contradiction is active and real, in a universe in which two contradictory facts cannot both be true, then for a human like me to have a natural right to self-ownership, it must also be the case that other humans also have the same, equal right to self-ownership.  The reason my property ownership cannot justify my murder of you is that our mutual self-ownership is a natural prerequisite to either of us owning any external property in the first place.  To murder you, even if the murder takes place on my property, I must believe that self-ownership is some sort of fiction, and if I do believe it is some sort of fiction, it stands to reason that I cannot accurately be described as someone who believes in any property rights whatsoever.

It is because Mr. Tremblay has recently adopted a vulgar libertarian view of property that he has recently, and unfortunately, declined into a vulgar socialism.⁶  And this precisely illustrates my point, that vulgar libertarianism and vulgar socialism fuel each other.  The vulgar libertarian sees the vulgar socialist saying “property is theft” and, unthinkingly and uncritically, counters that all property is good.  The vulgar socialist sees the vulgar libertarian saying that big business can do no wrong and, unthinkingly and uncritically, attacks all market activity and division of labour.  Both sides talk past one another, with neither side making any useful progress.

Above, Block assumed that in order to allow voluntary, consensual pinching to take place, we would need to allow all pinching, including involuntary pinching.  Similarly, Tremblay assumes that to oppose involuntary pinching that takes place on private property, we would need to oppose all private property.  In both of these cases, I cannot help but to see the conclusions presented as total absurdities.  If it is true that all pinching is de facto okay, Block certainly has not proved it, and if it is true that abolition of all property rights to external resources is necessary to protect self-ownership, Tremblay has certainly not failed to prove it, either.

Further, in both cases, reason appears to indicate that both are wrong.  It appears to me that reason indicates that a business owner cannot justly claim ownership over her firm if she does not respect the property rights of the self-owners with whom she interacts.  But likewise, it appears to me that reason indicates that if a person has a right to not be pinched, she must naturally have a property right in the scarce matter that constitutes her physical body.⁷  If this is the case, then it would stand to reason that she also owns the product of her labour, for one’s labour is naturally and indubitably an extension of one’s self.  Thus, in the same way that the vulgar libertarian defies her own belief in property rights when using property claims to “validate” violations of the rights of other self-owners, the vulgar socialist likewise defies her own belief in the invalidity of external property claims when she uses notions of individual autonomy in order to argue against any individual control over those things appropriated from the state of nature through one’s labour.

Therefore, both Block (circa 1975) and Tremblay (currently) appear flawed in their analyses.
  But, perhaps I am wrong.  Perhaps I have misread Dr. Block or Mr. Tremblay—or both!
⁸  And I’ll be more than willing to consider arguments to the contrary.  In the meantime, all I can say is that I recommend that all libertarians, left and “right,” beware of the lure of vulgar libertarianism and of vulgar socialism alike, for each of them can do nothing good for those who desire liberty, equality, or peace, but instead can only lead to the promulgation of the other.  Let all libertarians, left and “right,” unite, rather than allowing our vulgar variants divide us.

—Alexander S. Peak

______________

¹ I feel obligated to point out that, according to Mr. Stephen Kinsella, Dr. Block has (I’m happy to say) completely retracted his view on pinching.  On Brad Spangler’s blog, Kinsella quotes Block as saying,

“That passage about secretary pinching appeared in the very first edition (1976) of Defending the Undefendable. When this error of mine was pointed out to me, I immediately insisted that a new edition be published, and those words were deleted from it and all subsequent editions. Those erroneous words of mine were incompatible with the libertarian non aggression principle, and with everything else I have ever written about that subject.”

² Of course, even if this is the case, the employee is free under natural law to, at any time, no longer consent to being party to such a relationship—just as married couples under natural law are free to divorce at any time.

Let’s say I make an agreement with my boss that she may pinch me at any time, and a year later I decide I no longer enjoy being pinched by her.  I inform her that I no longer consent to being pinched.  She may then threaten to take me off her Christmas list, she may threaten to fire me, she may threaten to call all of her friends and tell them I have a small penis—but what she may not do is initiate physical force against me.  Thus, if she pinches me again even after I inform her that she may not, then she has aggressed against me, and it is my absolute and undeniable right to sue her for this crime.

Unfortunately, Dr. Block would disagree with us on this matter.  He unfortunately believes that voluntary slavery contracts would be enforceable in a free society, despite the fact that Murray Rothbard had repeatedly pointed out that it is impossible for someone to surrender ownership of her or his own body as long as it is attached to the will.  If I make a contract with your recording company to record three albums, and I only record two, the Rothbardian position is that I may not be forced to perform the writing of a third album, and that your recording company is only obliged to fulfill its end of the bargain once I have fulfilled mine.  Block, it would appear, believes that I may be justly compelled with force to write and perform songs for a third album.  It appears like the consensus is against Dr. Block here—most anarchists and libertarians I have encountered reject the “voluntary slavery contract” thesis.

For some interesting thoughts on contract theory as it relates to the current matter of pinching, see Kinsella’s reply to Spangler’s post.

³ Such tendencies often lead otherwise good libertarians into inadvertently defending conditions resulting from statism or aggression as if those conditions were instead the product of market.  The term vulgar libertarian was coined by Kevin Carson.  While I do not agree with Carson on everything, I believe his contribution to libertarian thought in critiquing vulgar libertarianism tends to be rather useful.

⁴ Nevertheless, it cannot be merely assumed that Smith consents to assisted suicide merely by accepting Robinson’s invitation to enter Robinson’s home.  Nor, I would argue, can it even be assumed that Smith has consented to assisted suicide at the hands of Robinson by breaking into Robinson’s home.  Again, only if Robinson actually feels as though an inhabitant of her home is endangered by Smith—or Smith has explicitly and contractually consented to assisted suicide—may Robinson justly take Smith’s life.  For further thoughts on assisted suicide, see my The Intelligent Yet Flawed Jonah Goldberg, 8 July 2008.

⁵ It must be admitted that Rothbard would never describe himself as an egalitarian, but this seems to be because he defines egalitarianism to mean the sort of insane, forced “equality” one finds in Kurt Vonnegut’s great short story, “Harrison Bergeron.”

Dr. Roderick Long makes the excellent point that libertarianism is actually founded on a fundamental belief in equality.  Writes Long,

“[W]e must turn from Jefferson to Jefferson’s source, John Locke, who tells us exactly what ‘equality’ in the libertarian sense is: namely, a condition ‘wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another, there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another, without subordination or subjection….’

“In short, the equality that Locke and Jefferson speak of is equality in authority: the prohibition of any ‘subordination or subjection’ of one person to another. Since any interference by A with B’s liberty constitutes a subordination or subjection of B to A, the right to liberty follows straightforwardly from the equality of ‘power and jurisdiction’” (Equality: The Unknown Ideal, 29 September 2001).

⁶ This is not to imply that Mr. Tremblay (or any other vulgar socialist or vulgar libertarian) is a hopeless case, or even that nothing he contributes to libertarian thought is valuable.  Rather, I am of the hope that this deviation will be short-lived.  For clarity, I do not encourage that anyone treat Mr. Tremblay too hostilely, for such reactionary tendencies are just as likely to lead a libertarian to vulgar libertarianism as they have lead Mr. Tremblay toward vulgar socialism.

⁷ This point is one that I do not anticipate Mr. Tremblay rejecting.  Even if he rejects the rhetoric I use, and claims not to believe in “self-ownership,” it appears clear he does believe in self-ownership as I understand the term, lest he would not have a problem with the unwanted pinching of secretaries in the first place.  I’ll therefore assume that his anti-propertarianism simply rejects that property which is external to the physical self.  What is important here is the following sentence, in which I discuss the implications of self-ownership.

The reason I do not wish to assume that Tremblay rejects self-ownership is that I do not want to run the risk of employing a straw-man argument.  If Tremblay actually does reject self-ownership, not just in rhetoric but also in fact, then it would be easy to tear down his argument and show how he cannot possibly defend a prohibition of or opposition to pinching without it.  Moreover, if this is actually the case, then Mr. Tremblay would be unable to muster any arguments whatsoever against rape, murder, or even that institutionalisation of aggression we call the state.  But people make straw-man arguments all too often, and I am more than willing to give Mr. Tremblay the benefit of the doubt here.

⁸ I’ll certainly admit that I have not read everything written by either Block or Tremblay, so it is quite possible that they have written other things that, were I aware of these works, I would have written this entire piece in a very different manner.

The Two Lefts

I have some running thoughts that I’d like to share on the nature of the left-wing.  This post shan’t be well-formulated, I must warn the reader.  It will not constitute good writing.  It won’t even be well-argued, since my intention is not to prove that I am right, but rather merely to quickly and effortlessly convey the thoughts swimming through my head at the moment.  Let us begin.

We learn from Rothbard in 1965 that libertarians and classical liberals are members of the true, radical left.  Richman, in 2007, makes the point that “[o]ne could say that the Left itself had left and right wings, with the laissez-fairists on the left-left and the state socialists on the right-left.”

McElroy, in 1982, points out that libertarianism has grown thanks to the introduction of Austrian economic thought, particularly the introduction of the subjective theory of value.  It’s essentially the same libertarianism that existed in the nineteenth century, and it’s just as individualistic today as it’s ever been, but it now has a better foundation in understanding the nature of value.

I often make the point, particularly when I’m speaking to conservatives, that there are two rights and two lefts, an anti-establishment right exemplified by the likes of Ron Paul and a pro-establishment right exemplified by the likes of G. W. Bush.  On the left, I would say there is an anti-establishment left exemplified by the likes of Mike Gravel and a pro-establishment left exemplified by the likes of Barack Obama.

But really I’m being disingenuous.  Ron Paul and Mike Gravel both occupy the same place on the spectrum: the left.  Neither are on the absolute left, where I am and where Rothbard, McElroy, and Richman more or less are, but they are both certainly on the left.  Likewise, both Bush and Obama occupy the same place on the spectrum: the right.  Neither are as far right as Mussolini or Mao, but both are certainly on the right.

So we find ourselves with two lefts, an anti-establishment left (the libertarians) and a pro-establishment “left” (the pseudo-“liberals”).

Enter John Markley, who recently wrote on his blog: “I expected most of the American Left to lose interest in the war issue once Obama was in office, and especially once Obama started to escalate American military efforts in Afghanistan.  Similarly, I expected them to start finding torture, attacks on civil liberties, and unrestrained executive power much less bothersome once they were wielding those weapons themselves.  Perhaps above all else, I expected their whole ‘dissent is patriotic’ shtick to fade away as well.  However, I really didn’t expect the change to be quite so abrupt.  It’s a demonstration of an important lesson libertarians need to keep in mind—neither liberals nor conservatives are actually very good on the issues they’re supposedly on the right side of.”

Liberals, with whom do you want to associate?  The establishment “left” that tells us we must “respect the office of the presidency”?  The pro-war “liberals”?  The so-called “left” that want you to believe it is unpatriotic to question the government or to yell at politicians (whether at townhall meetings or elsewhere)?  The so-called “liberals” who are only outraged at oppressive government when the red team is at the helm, not also when it is the blue team at the helm?

Or would you rather associate with us radicals, we who fail to see the difference between Obama’s statism and Bush’s statism, we who still believe that dissent is patriotic, we who mourn the deaths in Afghanistan, we who demand that Guantánamo be shut down this week instead of a year from now, we who refuse to support a man who voted in favour of illegal wiretapping and renewing the USA PATRIOT Act, we who believe that this administration doesn’t care about homosexuals?  Sure, by siding with us, you will be siding with people who reject Obamacare, but at least we don’t reject it for the same reasons as the right.  We don’t reject it out of some irrational fear of immigrants being treated as equals in our society, we oppose it because we reject the underlying tenets of imperialism and statism.  We reject it because we are consistent.

Liberals, you have every reason to join us libertarians on the radical left.  After all, unlike the establishment “left,” we’ll never ask you to pledge your loyalty and servitude to the president, regardless of to which party she belonged.  All we ask is that you never initiate force or fraud against your fellow human, that you never hire some gang to initiate force or fraud against your fellow human, and that you never ask a government to initiate force or fraud against your fellow human.

Hopefully you will join us because—that other “left”?—they are looking more and more like the right every day.

—Alexander S. Peak

Comments on Mr. Beck’s 9/12 Project

I do not watch much television, and thus the few clips I’ve seen of Mr. Glenn Beck have been YouTube clips that people have posted on Facebook.  Those that have been following Mr. Beck, however, are aware that he has a project called the 9/12 Project, which is “designed to bring us all back to the place we were on September 12, 2001.”  I have liked the few Beck clips I have seen, but knowing nothing about his 9/12 Project, I decided to look into it.

I see from its website that the 9/12 Project has nine core principles.  In this blog post, I shall analyse each of the nine principles from a libertarian perspective.

1. America Is Good.

This principle is vague and unexplained.  The first question that pops into my head is, What is America?

The Americas are a set of two continents that were brought into “continuing economic or social relation with the Western world” in the early sixteenth century (Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty vol 1, p. 15).  They got their name from a Florentine map-maker named Amerigo Vespucci (p. 26).

If we are to assume that “America” refers to the land comprising North and South America, then I would have to wonder what it means to say the land is good.  Does that mean it is fertile?  Does it mean the land is useful for humans in some other way?  Does it mean the land is somehow “intrinsically” good?

It is just as possible that the statement refers to that land solely monopolised by the federal government that goes by the style of “United States of America,” since it is often referred to as “America” for short.  But, then, the same questions regarding the land remain.  What about the land is good?

Perhaps we are completely off base insofar as we assume that this principle refers to land.  Perhaps by “America” the principle is supposed to refer to the people who inhabit the land, rather than the land itself.  But if this is the case, why not simply say “Americans are good”?

Finally, perhaps the principle refers to neither the land nor the people, but rather to the gang calling itself the federal government of the United States.  But if this is the case, then the principle is quite wrong.  The federal state is, like all other states throughout the world, too powerful, too big, too inefficient, too costly, and in severe need of being limited as much as possible.

2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.

Libertarians can take either side on this matter.  Personally, I am not wise enough to know whether or not there is a God or gods.  I hope there is a God, that this God is good, and that this God will deem my actions in life to merit receiving whatever rewards one may receive in whatever afterlife may exist, but I am not wise enough to know either way whether this is actually the case.

Libertarians run the full gamut on this one.  There are atheist libertarians (especially those who call themselves Objectivists), there are Christian libertarians, there are libertarian Buddhists, there are pagan libertarians…the list goes on.

3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.

This is certainly not an invalid goal.  Methinks libertarians and non-libertarians alike can appreciate this.

4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.

On this one, a libertarian is likely going to pause.  The libertarian certainly agrees that the government is not the “ultimate authority,” but she or he may disagree as to exactly what is the “ultimate authority.”

Those libertarians are are very religious may say that God is the ultimate authority.

There are many who, like myself, will say that the individual or natural law is the ultimate authority.  Personally, I see natural law as the law governing ethical human interaction which arises in each individual innately as a product of human nature.  Thus, I see no conflict in concurring with both the claim that it is the individual and that it is natural law, for they cannot exist independently of one another.

Natural law can be a secular or a religious concept.  Thus, a religious libertarian could also believe in natural law, and can also say that the individual is the ultimate authority in human society.

But what of the family?  Is the family sacred, and if so, what does that even mean?  In Atlas Shrugged, a mother tries to destroy her son.  Does the son owe any allegience to the mother?  Is the relationship somehow binding upon the son?  I have to think it is not, and that family, insofar as it is unchosen, holds no intrinsic value.

The husband and wife (or husband and husband, or wife and wife, or two husbands and a wife, or whatever other combination is deemed desirable by those entering into the union), for example, come together voluntarily.  Or, at least, they do so whenever the state or tribe or commune do not impose patriarchal or matriarchal regulations upon the couple (trio, et cætera).  But even these bonds are not necessarily “sacred,” and even if or where they are sacred, they are not eternally binding.  If the wife at some point wishes to no longer be wed to her husband, there is no legitimate reason to force her to remain within the union.  Secession is a natural right that must remain respected.

Finally, it seems problematic that this principle would say that “[m]y spouse and I are the ultimate authority,” for I am not married.  Do I only possess the ultimate authority when I have a spouse with which to share it, or do unmarried persons have just as much a right to the claim of “ultimate authority” as those who are wed?

5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.

Insofar as “the law” refers to natural law and not to statutory law, I can agree with this statement.  Granted, not all libertarians claim to be proponents of natural law, but as all libertarians adhere to the non-aggression axiom (whether on utilitarian or on natural law grounds), we can, in effect, say that all libertarians believe that aggression (i.e. the initiation of force) is or should be prohibited.  Thus, even those libertarians who do not claim to believe in natural law, who instead claim to arrive at libertarianism through utilitarian or consequentialist rationales, still advocate a legal system based upon the prohibition of aggression.

Libertarians can be divided into many subcategories, but all libertarians fall into either one of these two groupings: minarchists, who advocate a very small state, and anarchists, who advocate no state at all.  (Not all who advocate the complete abolition of the state refer to themselves as anarchists; some call themselves autarchists, some sovereign individuals, et cætera, but for the purpose of this post, I shall simply refer to them as anarchists for simplicity.  Likewise, not all non-anarchist libertarians refer to themselves as minarchists, but I shall refer to them as such again for simplicity.)

Minarchists comprise the largest group of libertarians.  Around only one in ten of us call for the complete abolition of the state.  Thus, while all libertarians advocate the existence of law, minarchists (unlike anarchists) advocate the existence of statutory law.  Nevertheless, anarchists and minarchists typically advocate the same narrow set of laws, specifically those laws that adhere to the non-aggression axiom.  Some minarchists deviate here and there from the ideal of non-aggression, but all libertarians wish to see aggression limited as much as possible, and thus those libertarians who do advocate statutory law wish to see those statutory laws conform to the law of non-aggression.

As such, libertarians do not see laws against such things as drug use, prostitution, tax evasion, or gambling as necessarily binding.  (This is not to say that libertarians advocate these activities, only that they see those statutory laws that enforce these prohibitions as illegitimate, and the governments that enforce these prohibitions as criminal.)

When some random guy on the street places a gun against a person’s head, and tells the person that he will take violent action against the person should the person place Advil into her own body, the gun-man is clearly a criminal because he has violated the non-aggression axiom.  Whether a given libertarian arrives at libertarianism through natural law, utilitarian, or consequentialist reasoning, all libertarians agree that the actions of this gun-man are wholly illegitimate.  The libertarian continue to see such aggression as illegitimate and criminal even if it is a representative of the state holding the gun, and even if, instead of Advil, the gun-man is prohibiting the individual from placing marijuana in her body.  To the libertarian, there is no difference between these two acts of aggression.  In both scenarios, the aggressive act is criminal, and the gun-man should pay the penalty for breaking the law.  The libertarian, thus, more than anyone else, agrees that justice is blind and that nobody, not even the politicians, bureaucrats, and law enforcement, is above it.

Contrariwise, if this principle is meant to imply that one should accept whatever edicts the state issues simply because the state has issued it, then libertarians do not agree with this principle, for there is definitely such a thing as an unjust statutory law.  In fact, even most non-libertarians agree that such things as unjust laws exist.  Few people today, whether libertarian or not, would agree with the Socratic view of law.

6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.

Libertarians have no problem with this view, so long as it is properly understood that the right to life (et cætera) is a negative right and not a positive right.  In other words, I have the right to not be murdered, to not have my life wrested from me through aggression; but I have no right to enslave or aggress against others in order to sustain my own life.

7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.

This principle, likewise, is consistent with libertarianism.  Although the state certainly is capable of forcing people to surrender the fruits of their labour, it ought not do so, and for the same reason that I ought not force my neighbour to surrender the fruits of her or his labour.

In an article titled Why You Are a Libertarian, Harry Browne wrote that,

When a neighbor isn’t willing to contribute as much to a social project as you are, you’d never think of:

Using a gun to force him to contribute;

Hiring an armed gang to threaten to kidnap him or confiscate his money if he didn’t contribute;

Using the government in place of the armed gang if he didn’t contribute—because every government program, in the final analysis, involves violence against those who don’t comply.

8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.

Libertarians absolutely agree with this.

But, here is where this entire 9/12 Project thing seems confusing to me.  Mr. Beck wants Americans to return to the way they felt on 12 September 2001, but on that date, it had become almost impossible to disagree with or question authority.

On 10 September 2001, questioning authority was happily accepted by many Americans.  But by the twelfth, questioning the government was considered by many, and especially by members of Republican Party, to be sacrilege.  If I recall correctly, Bill Maher even lost his ABC show because people were outraged when he pointed out that the terrorists were not cowards.  Mr. Bush, a man just as bad as Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama, was virtually worshipped.

So why doesn’t Mr. Beck instead start a 9/10 Project?  Why 9/12, a day on which nationalism clouded out reason, a day when people wanted to nuke an entire region of the globe simply because a minority of persons, who were uninterested in adherence to the non-aggression axiom, came from said region?

9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

It is certainly a libertarian sentiment that the government, if it is to exist at all, should be the servant, rather than master, of the people.

But let’s be realistic: no state truly serves the people.  And this is why statism must be limited as much as possible.  Those in the cozy seat of power serve themselves, and even those politicians and bureaucrats who truly do believe that they can help and serve the people can only ultimately fail because coercion never achieves the desired goals.  The government is constantly promising us things.  It’s going to protect us from criminals and terrorists, it’s going to help us in our medical needs, it’s going to deliver our mail on time—yet it consistently fails to deliver on its promises because any system that runs on coercion will necessarily lack the signals necessary to indicate the best course of action.  Private firms use profit and loss signals to indicate whether to invest more in this or that, whether to increase or slow production; but the state has no profit or loss signals because it acquires virtually all of its revenues through confiscation.  Government cannot keep its promises even if all of the bureaucrats want it to.  It cannot keep our streets safe, it cannot properly teach our children, it cannot provide us with better healthcare—it cannot serve the people.

Conclusion

I really do not know what to make of Mr. Beck’s 9/12 Project.  It seems to have a mix of good ideals and confused positions.

I don’t know what “America Is Good” is even supposed to mean.

The question of belief in God, as addressed by the second principle, seems almost out-of-place.  My understanding is that the 9/12 Project wants to march on D.C., but what precisely is the objective of the march?  Is it to promote the nine principles listed above, and if so, in what way could the march in any way promote the second principle?  Politicians are free to believe in whatever God or gods they like, or to believe in none at all, as I’m sure Mr. Beck himself would agree.  What could possibly, then, be the rallying cry for this principle?  “We believe in God, but it’s okay if you believe in a different one, or even none at all”?  Surely, there would be no point in chanting such a sentence.

All in all, even the best principles listed above are vague, and do not constitute an actual objective for the project or the march.  Rather, it’s simply a list of general views, and most politicians are crafty enough (most are lawyers, after all) to spin these statements in a manner that allows them to pretend they adhere thereto.  Moreover, since no specific policies are promoted (e.g., tax cuts, separation of healthcare and state, devolution of power, gun rights), I still do not have a clue as to what the march actually explicitely wishes to achieve.

I obviously have my reservations, but I do wish to end on a positive note, for I feel I have been almost unfairly negative in this piece.  Insofar as Mr. Beck aims to get people to forget about the petty fighting that takes place between the red team and the blue team, he and his project are to be celebrated.  Far too often we let our parties speak for us, conforming our views to the expectations of one or the other side.  Yet we are individuals, and it is simply silly to think that anyone must agree with her or his party on every issue.  We all too often let the party shape our views and thus also our responses to those on the “other“ side, to the point where we actually convince ourselves of absolutely idiotic conclusions, such as “all Democrats want to see bin Laden win“ or “all Republicans hate the poor.”  Neither is true, and in fact both are untrue in the vast majority of cases.  But as long as we convince ourselves that such nonsense is true, we cut ourselves off from reality and cease having the ability to work to improve things.  It appears that Mr. Beck recognises this in a way that the likes of Ann Coulter and Janeane Garofalo do not.  And insofar as this is the case, Glenn Beck ought to be applauded.

—Alexander S. Peak

The American Vice Presidency… Graveyard of the Constitution

America’s first Vice President, John Adams, described the office as “the most insignificant office that ever the Invention of Man contrived or his Imagination conceived”. When Daniel Webster was offered the nomination of Vice President, he said “I do not intend to be buried until I am dead”. Perhaps the most succinct assessment of the office was given by Texan John Nance Garner, a former and powerful Speaker of The House of Representatives and Vice President under FDR for two full terms, who claimed that the office wasn’t “worth a bucket of piss”.

In many ways, the office of Vice President of The United States can be seen as the most singular indication of the noble goals and yet practical failure of The United States Constitution, and its fate was sealed before the 19th Century even began. While there might have once been a chance for the Vice Presidency to have been an office of viable contribution to the functioning of The United States’ government, there are five key moments in early American history which, I believe, combined to relegate the office itself to impotence and insignificance only moderated by either the good will of any particular President or by the vacation of the office of President and subsequent elevation of a Vice President to that office. The first of these moments was the creation of the office itself (1787).  The idea was that it would be held by a major statesman, the candidate for President who came in second and who would, for the greater good of his nation, join the administration of the victor.  Yet within this idea was still recognition of the reality of opposition and the understanding that you would not want to give the primary challenger of the President any real power with which to work against the Chief Executive.  Thus was an office created in which the primary requirement was, apparently, to have a pulse. 

While, primarily because of their revolutionary credentials, Washington’s Vice President, John Adams succeeded him as President, and then Adams’ Vice President, Thomas Jefferson succeeded him, the office of Vice President has not been seen as a natural stepping stone to the Presidency.  After Jefferson, and after the adoption of the 12th Amendment to The Constitution (which provided for the direct election of the Vice President) the only Vice Presidents who have been elected to be President WITHOUT FIRST having already assumed the office through the death or resignation of the previous holder of that office have been Martin Van Buren (1836), Richard Nixon (1968), and George H. W. Bush (1988).  Furthermore, of those three men, Richard Nixon was not the current Vice President when he was elected, having lost to John Kennedy in 1960.  Thus, the two men after Jefferson who were elected to the office of President while holders of the office of Vice President served only two terms between them for a total of eight years, and the three men combined for 4 terms and less than 14 years out of the whole of the history of The United States.  By contrast, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams and James Buchanan (the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 15th Presidents) all served as Secretary of State and served as President for eight terms and a total of 32 years, while several others served as Ambassadors or envoys to other sovereign nations.  So, we can see that diplomatic credentials have been seen as better qualifying a candidate to be President than serving as Vice President has been.

The second moment in history’s conspiracy to insure the insignificance of the office of Vice President was George Washington’s view that the office was a part of the Legislative branch of the government rather than part of the Executive branch (1789). As a result, Washington not only did not include Adams in his cabinet meetings or consult him very frequently on matters within the Executive Branch. He believed, in fact, that he was not ALLOWED to do so as part of The Constitution’s requirements for separation of powers. It is impossible to minimize the influence Washington had on establishing the precedents and operational functions of The United States government as established by The Constitution. If any man in history had it in his power to make from nothing a relevant constitutional office of the Vice Presidency, it was Washington; but he did not do so. As aware as the Revolutionary generation was that they were making history, they seemed to have had no awareness of the importance of the precedents which they were establishing every day as part of a continuity of history which would last for centuries.

In many ways, they were making it up as they went along and the openness of the Experiment they had initiated would have permitted them to follow almost any vision that they could have put into practice.

The third moment in this sorry tale was the decision of The Senate to forbid the Vice President from being part of the debates and deliberations of their body (1789). We can never know how much of this decision was inspired by the personal rancor and dislike felt by many members of The Senate for the person of John Adams and how much was an inevitable course which would have been followed no matter who had been The Senate’s first presiding officer.

In the end, it makes little difference. While Washington did not consider the Vice President a member of the Executive Branch, The Senate did not consider the officeholder a contributing part of their august body or, therefore, of the Legislative branch of government. While a man with more people skills and a more stable temperament might have been able to make the Senators accept the Vice President as a full member of The Senate, John Adams was not that man. As Adams wrote to his wife Abigail, “It is to be sure a punishment to hear other men talk five hours every day and not be at liberty to talk at all myself, especially as more than half I hear appears to me very young, inconsiderate and inexperienced.” If Washington had made the Vice President insignificant as a member of the Executive branch, The Senate itself made him insignificant as a member of the Legislative branch. All of this, of course, reaches new heights of irony in the person of our former Vice President, Dick Cheney, who has used this ‘confusion’ to declare himself the beneficiary of the rights and privileges of both branches while, at the same time, free of the obligations or restraints upon either branch. The burden of the fourth moment in our tragic history of the establishment of the role of the Vice Presidency falls squarely on the shoulders of the second holder of that office, Thomas Jefferson (1797).

Adams, for all of his faults of personality, truly cared for what was best for the nation he served. He did not plan to treat Jefferson, as Vice President, as he had been treated himself (or, as Tom Lehrer put so humorously in his satirical song about Hubert Humphrey and the treatment of Humphrey as Vice President by Lyndon Johnson as President, “I’ll do unto you as they did unto me.”).  As Joseph Ellis tells so well in his Pulitzer Prize winning book ‘Founding Brothers’, Adams fully desired to work with Jefferson to create a bipartisan administration which utilized both of their talents and skills (Chapter Five: The Collaborators). 

He wanted Jefferson to be a functioning member of his cabinet and an active participant in foreign policy efforts. Jefferson, influenced greatly by the advice of James Madison, chose to be a party man and watch the Adams administration fail without him. Jefferson, at this time, chose the good of his party over the good of his nation. After Adams’ desire to give the office a ‘place at the table’, it wasn’t until Warren G. Harding took office in 1921 that a President again made the choice to include his Vice President in his cabinet meetings, and it wasn’t until Richard Nixon’s service under Dwight Eisenhower that a Vice President was given a substantial and public role by the President but, in all cases, up to and including the present, the role and power of a particular Vice President has been dependent upon their President to give it to them.

If the damage done to the office of Vice President was not already irreversible by the election of 1800, that election itself ensured that it was permanent, and the blame for it can be placed on the personage of Aaron Burr. If one wants to make the case that the Adams’ Vice Presidency was not a standard to judge by because of the newness of the office, or that the Jefferson Vice Presidency cannot be used because he was of an opposition political position to his President, then there is no excuse for the damage done to the office by Burr before he was even inaugurated, damage so great, in fact, that the first substantive change to The US Constitution was made to prevent the circumstances from ever again even being possible through the adoption of the 12th Amendment. For the election of 1800, the supporters of Jefferson and his Republican / Anti-Federalist movement conspired to maneuver the election so that their candidates would end up holding the offices of both the Presidency and the Vice Presidency. While they succeeded in the goal of having all of their electors vote for both Jefferson and Burr, they apparently never considered the ramifications of this actually happening. They believed that somehow, without any need to orchestrate it as well, some random elector would cast his vote for Jefferson but not cast their second vote for Burr. The conspiracy, however, was too well planned and the soldiers followed their marching orders without deviation…and Jefferson and Burr ended up exactly tied in the electoral vote totals.

At this point, a good party man would have fallen into line and worked to finish what had been started, but Burr was an opportunist whose personal desires completely overshadowed any belief he may have had in the greater good. When the election went to The House of Representatives, Burr fought to win the Presidency for himself. He almost managed to pull the feat off as it took 36 ballots in The House before Hamilton intervened and one member chose to abstain. Well, after that, what President would trust the man he was stuck with as Vice President? And so, Burr alienated himself from any role in Jefferson’s first administration and The Constitution was changed…and changed VERY quickly.

The new nation went through only four elections, three administrations and 12 years before the first substantial flaw in the design of the governmental structure of The United States had to be addressed. 46 men have been dumped into the graveyard of The Constitution, including 2 men who each served under two different Presidents (George Clinton under Jefferson and Madison, and John C. Calhoun under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson). Except for the ones who eventually became President themselves or who have served in a person’s own lifetime, how many people can name even one of them? The Vice Presidency is a unique office with a unique role in government. If we want evidence of the lack of experience which burdened the men who created The Constitution, all we need do is look at the Office of The Vice President of The United States. However, if we do look at it, we will have done more than most people ever do.

P.S.– It might also be of interest, for anyone who wants to consideration how truly UNimportant the office of Vice President has been to our nation over the entire course of its history, for me to point out that, while we have never had any real period without a President since Washington first took the oath of office in 1889, between the years 1812 (when the office was vacated upon the death of Vice President George Clinton) and 1974 (when the office was vacated by the elevation of Vice President Gerald Ford to the Office of President) (a period of 162 years), there were 18 different times when we were without a Vice President totaling more than 426 months (35.5 years, an average of 23.666 months per vacancy). This includes two periods when the office was vacant for 47 months (out of a 48 month term of office), but does NOT include any periods when the holder of the office just left Washington and ignored his role in government (as, for example, Richard Mentor Johnson did during Van Buren’s administration).

As an indication of how little impact the absence of a Vice President has meant to the functions of our government, I would simply ask how many of you reading this have ever even wondered just how often the office has even been vacant because there WAS no holder of the office?

As a point of useless trivia from an infomaniac, did you know that the first Vice President to die in office (George Clinton) died about a year before the end of his second term (Clinton had served one term as President Jefferson’s second Vice President and his second term as Vice President was consecutive to his first when he was elected to be Vice President under Jefferson’s successor, President James Madison, for Madison’s first term.  For Madison’s second term of office, he ran and served with Vice President Elbridge Gerry, who THEN proceeded to die in office after about a year and a half into his term.  As a result, President James Madison served with a different Vice President for each of his two terms in office and neither of them lived to complete their own terms.

Rhys M. Blavier
Romayor, Texas  

“Truth, Justice and Honor… but, above all Honor”

© copyright 2008 by Rhys M. Blavier

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Thank you for reading this article. Please read my other articles and let me know what you think. I am writing them not to preach or to hear myself think but to try to create dialogs, debates and discussions on the nature of our government and how we can build upon and improve it based on what we have seen and learned over the course of the 225 years of The American Experiment.

Yesterday’s Townhall Meeting With Ben Cardin: Part III

The event having ended, the crowd stands up and many file to exit.  Some stand around to talk with one another.  One gentleman comes to me to inquire about the meetings of the College Libertarians of Towson while many others, at least twenty, comment to me that I asked a great question.

As I exit the building, I see night has arrived.  I also see what I had not expected: hundreds of people outside with signs and flags.

One woman is holding a Gadsden flag, and I enquire as to where she got it, hoping to perhaps be able to purchase one of my own.  She informs me that she had gotten it at a Tea Party protest.

Although posters and signs had been banned inside the building, they were on full display outside.  There were also persons handing out flyers with information regarding a petition they wished for attendees to sign, a petition declaring their objection to the government’s new plan.

Walking from the building to the road, virtually every protestor there was against the government’s plan, many holding signs declaring government involvement in healthcare to be socialist.  I saw virtually no counter-protestors in favour of the statist plan until I reached the road itself, where the pro-statism counter-protestors stood on one side of the road and the anti-statism protestors on the other.  A quick glance at the two sides confirmed what one might suspect: the anti-statism side, which was chanting “No Obama care, no Obama care!” was larger than the pro-statism side.

One protestor, on the anti-statism side, yelled to me as I was crossing the street, “Did he answer your question?”  I wasn’t exactly sure how to respond.  After all, Cardin indeed had responded to my question, but not in any satisfactory way.

Still receiving compliments for my question, I made my way to my truck.  Traffic was slow, but I eventually escaped, driving past both groups of protestors.

All in all, it was a rather good event.  It was an absolute pleasure to see the masses verbally tearing down a member of the political class, instead of treating the politician like some holy cow not to be touched or demeaned.  There is nothing magical about politicians, after all—they are humans, just like us; they are flawed, just like us; and, in the state of nature, they are our equals, not our glorious, unquestionable superiors.

This is not to say that all of the sentiments of those who attended should be applauded.  Rather, it’s to say, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1787 to Abigail Adams, that the “spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive.  It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.  I like a little rebellion now and then.  It is like a storm in the Atmosphere.”

Those wishing to contact their representatives to encourage them to adopt a separation of healthcare and state are encouraged to visit DownsizeDC.org.

—Alexander S. Peak

Yesterday’s Townhall Meeting With Ben Cardin: Part II

The first four questions were selected from among the blue cards submitted earlier in the night, and were read by the administrator in the green tie.

The first question, read at 7:34, asked whether “illegal” immigrants would be included in the healthcare system, to which Mr. Cardin responded that they would not.

The second question, read at 7:35, concerned small business.  Cardin responded by claiming deep concern for small business, and noted that he was on a committee dealing with small business for this exact reason.

At 7:36, the question read asked how these new proposals did not constitute socialised healthcare.  Not surprisingly, Mr. Cardin tried to assure us that it was not; the audience, however, was not buying it.

Finally, at 7:37, the question read asked how these new proposals could possibly save us money.  More on money, later.

At 7:38, the floor was finally opened to direct questions from the audience, unfiltered by the man in the green tie.  A few minutes were taken up in setting up the microphones, which the administrators wanted to set up no closer to the stage than aisle eight.  Thus, the lines that had quickly formed had to keep stepping back.  I shan’t list all of the questions asked, nor Cardin’s response to each—I will, however, list the more interesting or popular ones.

At 7:43, a gentleman asked about tort reform, and why it has not been included in any of the proposals.  This question received huge applause from the audience.  When the applause dwindled, he added, “Is it because most members of Congress are lawyers?”

A gentleman at 7:45 asked whether Congress would be included in any plans that are adopted, to which Cardin said they would.

At 7:47, an audience member asked Mr. Cardin to cite the specific clause, section, and article of the Constitution that grants to the federal state the authority to get itself involved in matters of health.  This question, to the best of my memory, received a standing ovation.  A woman behind me yelled to Cardin, “I have a copy [of the U.S. Constitution] here if you want to see it!” but I am sure she was heard only by those in her general vicinity, given the loud nature of the applause.

Around 7:53, I had the opportunity to ask my question.  I had been working on it all day.  My original draft was three-and-a-half note-card pages long, and included discussion of anarchism.  And had the majority in the audience appeared in favour of the statist policy suggestions, I probably would have risked reading the whole thing.  But because 90% of the audience was already opposed to the “healthcare” schemes Congress is brewing, I figured it would be more reasonable to present a truncated question.

And thus I began by stating my affiliation with the College Libertarians of Towson, which I’m happy to say received some moderate applause.

Following my affiliation statement, I began:  “Harry Browne often said, ‘Government is good at one thing:  It knows how to break your legs, hand you crutches, and say, “See, if it weren’t for the government, you wouldn’t be able to walk!”’”  This comment received both laughter and applause, so I waited until the applause ended before continuing.  “According to Dr. Mary Ruwart, best-selling author of Healing Our World in An Age of Aggression, we can cut the cost of healthcare by 80% by getting government out of healthcare.  Why is it—”  I had to stop speaking, for at this point I again received applause. I continued, “Why is it, then, that we are moving in the direction of bigger government rather than smaller government?”

After I finished my question, I headed to my seat and listened to Mr. Cardin’s reply.  He essentially said that he didn’t see the 80% figure as realistic.

Had I instead asked him my longer question, it would have listed ways in which healthcare really would become cheaper without government.  For one thing, if we have complete free trade with Canada (and all other countries), then we can freely purchase drugs from these other countries, and thus we can shop around for better deals than we might otherwise be able to get.  For another, without the government-created patent system which gives an unnatural monopoly to big business, then drug companies would have to compete on a truly free market, and they would not be able to charge customers exorbitant costs.  Without the evil FDA, which costs tens of thousand (if not hundreds of thousands) of lives every year, drug companies would not have to go through years and years of bureaucratic red tape, and could instead submit their drugs to private companies similiar to Underwriters Laboratories for testing.  But because drugs cannot be sold in the U.S. without FDA approval, and because it costs so much to get this government monopoly to approve any drug, the costs are passed along to the consumers who thus suffer.  We can also cut costs by alleviating doctors of their onerous government paperwork if we were to turn Medicare and Medicaid into private charities.  And if we were to eliminate government mandates on insurance companies, then insurance companies could tailor their plans to fit what customers want, instead of forcing us to conform to whatever it is that the politicians and bureaucrats think is best for us.

The elimination of government involvement in healthcare would have very liberating effects for consumers of healthcare.  But Cardin doesn’t see the savings as realistic.

At 7:59, I noticed that Mr. Cardin once again looked tiffed.  At no point did he cuss at his audience or stamp his foot, but he made it perfectly clear that he was in stark disagreement with the majority of his audience.

Someone, pointing out that Congress rarely reads the bills it signs, asked if Mr. Cardin would promise to read the bill prior to voting for it.  He promised he would, although I have to wonder how fully he aimed to keep this promise.  Would he read it verbatim himself, or would he get his aids to read it and then summarise it for him?

A person at 8:09 asked about interstate commerce in health insurance, asking why Congress hasn’t made it legal for consumers to shop around.

Another person, at 8:11, pointed out that there were ultimately not very many slides employed by Mr. Cardin, and then asked why it is therefore necessary to have 1,000-page bills.  This question definitely received applause, but the person was not done with questions.  “Can you name even one thing that the private sector was doing that the government took over and made more efficient?” this person asked, and received a standing ovation.  Mr. Cardin ignored the first half of the question and focused on the second half for his response.  I do not at this time recall his responses, but I do recall that he received laughs.

The gentleman who spoke at 8:26 said that if the Founders were there, they would be horrified, and would be looking for ways to get government out of healthcare, to which he received a standing ovation.  He continued by asking, “So why is it that instead, we’re handing over healthcare to a monopoly?: the government!”

The last person to speak pointed out that government rationing of healthcare seemed more similar to some sort of Hitlerian scheme than something we ought to champion as American.  Finally, the event ended at 8:30.

—Alexander S. Peak

Yesterday’s Townhall Meeting With Ben Cardin: Part I

Yesterday, I attended Ben Cardin’s Townhall meeting at Towson University.  The purpose of the meeting was to discuss healthcare in America.  Ben Cardin currently serves as one of Maryland’s U.S. senators.

I arrived at 4:11, even though the event was not sceduled to begin until 7:00 PM.  Nevertheless, there was already a line.

This line grew quickly, and by 5:30, the Towson University administration began turning people away.

When they finally let us into the auditorium, they inspected bags and purses to ensure an absence of weapons and food.  Walking through the auditorium door, we were each handed blue cards on which we would write down a question for Mr. Cardin along with our contact information.  Inside the auditorium, classical music played.

I sat toward the front.  At 6:57, a gentleman in the corner of the room holding a small camera was asked to be seated.  It was difficult to hear their conversation, but the man appeared to ask the administrator if it was okay for him to stand where he was for the simple purpose of recording the event and the audience, to which the administrator clearly told him it was not.  The man submitted to the administrator.

I commented to the woman sitting to the right of me, “That guy wasn’t harming anyone,” to which she responded, “Yeah, none of us [audience members] had a problem with him.”

About a minute later, Cardin and a few others walk out.  I had not been paying attention to the stage as I was reading my book, but the audience reaction told me all I needed to know, and so I closed the book.  An administrator in a green tie makes some brief opening remarks.  All three persons and on the stage in front of the audience, and two projection screens stand on either side of the three persons.  Behind the podium are three nice-looking chairs, and above the chairs is a banner—probably paid for with your tax dollars—that said, “Every American Deserves Healthcare.”

The administrator lists a bunch of people who were there that night, most of the names being unfamiliar to me.  I presume a number were state delegates.  Although our other senator, Ms. Barbara Mikulski, was not present, her name was mentioned for some reason—perhaps her aids were in the audience.  Although most of the names mentioned received applause, her name received boos from the audience.

I became immediately aware of how lively this audience was going to be.  Clapping and booing were both highly-valued means of communication throughout the night.

Following the administrator, a woman spoke. She explained the troubles her family is facing, and how difficult it’s been caring for her children, the youngest of whom has some serious ailments.  Needless to say, the entire audience—regardless of what its individual members thought about the healthcare crisis—felt sympathy for this woman, the husband of whom currently works two jobs to make ends meet in our turbulent economy.  She ended her brief presentation by saying that she did not know what the best solution to our nation’s problems is, but that she hoped that events such as this townhall meeting would help to flesh out some of the problems and their solutions.

I could not help, when listening to her presentation, but to think that many of the problems she faced were the fault of statist intervention into the healthcare system and into the economy as a whole.

The audience was, for the most part, respectful to this woman.  This audience did not hold the same respect for the man who spoke next—the politician.

Cardin began speaking at 7:09, and he faced many hecklers.  It was really a beautiful sight: people, refusing to place politicians on some godlike pedistal, but instead speaking their mind, challenging the establishmen man, and, in so doing, challenging the entire elitist system!

This isn’t to say I loved every utterance that this audience made.  I was extremely annoyed to hear some audience members whining, “What about the illegals!?”  Such narrow-minded rhetoric was, in my opinion, a detriment to the otherwise-glorious anti-government arguments and sentiments of the crowd.  I half-wanted to pull these anti-immigrationists off to the side and chastise them for their wrongheaded focus, but decided against it.

Cardin had various slides he wanted to show the audience, but the audience was getting wrestless.  “We want to ask you questions!”  “Let us ask questions!”  Still, Cardin continued.

One of his slides, unvailed at 7:18, showed the increasing cost of health insurance over the past ten years.  Looking at the slide, I couldn’t help but to suspect that it was not adjusted for inflation.  Rising costs of health insurance is certainly not a positive thing, of course, but no evidence was presented to indicate that the cause was anything other than the declining value of the dollar.  What is inflation?  Inflation is any increase in the money supply, and it causes the value of each unit of the money supply to drop.  Thus, when the government inflates the dollar by creating new money and credit out of thin air, the purchasing power of the average user of that currency falls.  The solution, therefore, to this problem is not new government mandates and higher taxes; the solution is to abolish the fraudulent institution responsible for inflation the money supply—in the case of America, that institution is the Federal Reserve.

Still facing heckles, Cardin becomes visibly became tiffed a couple minutes later.  He says to his audience at this time something to the effect of, “I know you don’t care about the facts, but…”  The audience responded, unsurprisingly, with further heckles.  Listening to the audience and our guest speaker, I couldn’t help but to feel like I was sitting in the British parliament.

At 7:22, cops walk from the back of the audience down to the front, and stand in the corners of the room.  I didn’t make precise count, but I estimate that about ten cops made this trek, presumably to intimidate speakers by showcasing the might of the state apparatus.  I do not believe anyone actually allowed themselves to be intimidated, but it was an interesting sight nevertheless.  Where has America gone?

At 7:25, in response to calls from the audience to begin the Q&A session, he pleads with the audience to just let him get through the last few slides.  The administrator in the green tie also kept insisting that the audience stay quiet while Cardin finishes his presentation—repeatedly, and to no avail.

Finally, Mr. Cardin finished his presentation at 3:33, and announces that he will now answer questions.  To this, the audience applauded.

—Alexander S. Peak

Israel’s Biggest Theft of all Time.

I would like to start this by pointing out that when I refer to “Israel” in this piece. I am not referring directly to the people of Israel. I am referring to their government which acts in their name. Just like the American government spreads war around the world with the tax money they coerce out of me, Israel spreads war, death, poverty, inhumanity, and famine within throwing distance of it’s own inhabitants. Even though you might be an Israeli who does not care about the Palestinians or anything about them, please understand that this very second your government is actively killing, harassing, provoking, and starving these people who have a 60%+ unemployment rate in the territory they live in. They cannot rebuild from the last war with Israel because they cannot ship in basic building materials. They cannot seek good health care because Israel has damaged the biggest hospitals in Gaza. Palestinians have no certainty that they will still own the land they live on for any long period of time because of Israel’s illegal settlements that continue to spring up. The worst part of this situation is the theft of time. Palestinians must endure dozens of checkpoints which slow travel time and create hassles for these people on a daily basis.

I don’t think that I have to explain that ‘time’ is the most valuable resource. You can never get it back. It’s one of the most personal things you have. When man invests time into something then part of it becomes his. Time and effort have created all of the buildings and machines that make modern life possible. However, time is an extremely limited and valuable resource. Some spend it carelessly and achieve little in their lives. Some have it stolen through untimely death or imprisonment. Some try to maximize their time and create things to increase the efficiency and speed of the task they are trying to accomplish so that they will not have to spend excess time. Most people have a job or a trade that they do everyday. Your job is a trade-off of your time for money. When time is spent well then you can use it to enhance the life of yourself and your family. When your time is stolen then your death has come a few steps closer, but you take no steps toward your goals. Ultimately the theft of one’s time degrades their legacy.

This is the travesty that is performed by Israel and other governments everyday millions of times over.

I believe that the senseless death and destruction that Israel perpetrates daily can be broken down in to the amount of time and effort they destroy everyday. Every building they destroy in Gaza is the destruction of many people’s efforts. Every time they make a Palestinian wait hours at a checkpoint to go a few miles then they steal some of that Palestinian’s time. The theft is even more deplorable when kill and torture people at these checkpoints. Sometimes people are detained and strip-searched without reason. Young men are beaten without reason. After one is beaten or tortured then more time is stolen from that individual because they have to recuperate. Time is stolen when Palestinians are denied medical care in better Israeli hospitals. Some people die an untimely death because they did not have adequate medical care. Why would this situation be Israel’s fault? Because they destroy the hospitals that would enable the Palestinians to give themselves proper medical treatment.

However this is a double bladed sword. They also waste the time of the Israeli people by keeping the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories going. The men who enlist for the Israeli military waste their time occupying lands and harassing people who pose no threat to them. Israeli generals and bureaucrats pass down the orders that ensure conflict with the Palestinians. Israeli people die as a result of their government’s negligence. Israeli people who live in the settlements stay armed because they stay on land stolen from Palestinians. It’s land that they did not cultivate or plow. It’s land that their family did not grow up farming. Olive groves that could have provided food have been destroyed for illegal settlements. This situation  creates a blackhole that consumes the time of all the parties involved. This blackhole is controlled by Israeli officials who have never seen the bullets and carnage that they create. However they too are trying to make efficient use of their time and efforts. As long as they have radical neighbors then America stays motivated to keep money and weapons flowing to them. Israeli generals and bureaucrats keep fat pockets at the expense of their military personnel, the Israeli people, and the Palestinians.

Apparently the Israeli officials who makes these policies believe that their time is more important than their people’s and the Palestinian people’s time (and lives)…

Peace…

My take on the ‘Independence Day’ Lesson.

On July 4th we celebrate “Independence Day” in the US. This is the day that American’s celebrate the end of British oppression and unjust taxes on the American colonies. At the time Britain was the strongest Empire in the world. There are many nations who have Independence days which celebrate the day they ripped themselves from the clutches of British colonial rule. I believe the lesson from that day is that all Empires fall. Even if they seem strong and invincible, the people in their conquered territory will eventually find the means to push the invader out of their land. America is an example, India is an example, Barbados is an example, and Sri Lanka is an example. Though people have to give their occupier ‘HELL’ they will eventually gain their freedom from them. The best example of this is the Pashtuuns in Afghanistan/Pakistan. There has never been a power who’s been able to subdue these people and hold on the their land for any long period of time.

Even though America seeks to celebrate this holiday with vigor we have not learned the lesson. In fact, we are the modern day empire that future countries will (one day) declare their independence from. Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan,  all of these countries (and more) will have their day to reflect back and say, “This was the date when the last American soldier/diplomat/puppet dictator/military contractor left our soil for good.”. The only question is how we will leave these foreign lands. Will it cost us the lives of young men and women who wanted to build a future for their families? Will our fraudulent monetary system have to crash for us to leave these places? Will it take a 100 year rebellion? Will it take a larger empire to push us out? Could the American people elect someone smart enough to pull the troops out of these countries? Regardless of how it happens, the only certainty is that it will happen. When it does then we’ll give some other country a reason to wave their flag, shoot their firecrackers, and have a big barbecue.

Happy 4th of July.

Peace…

Why Exactly is Madoff Going to Prison?

On June 29, 2009, Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison.  According to The New York Times, Madoff was guilty of running “the largest, longest and most widespread Ponzi scheme in history.”

It is true that Madoff ran a Ponzi scheme, but it is categorically false to call his the largest, the longest-running, or the most widespread.  But I digress.

The point is, I do not believe jail-time is the appropriate punishment for Mr. Madoff.

(1) If Madoff told his customers that he would be investing their money in a way he did not, then he committed fraud, and his punishment should be to pay back his customers in full plus extra for time preference.  If he has less money in his name than he owes to his victims, then he should (A) first pay what he has and (B) then have his future wages garnished to pay those to whom he still has debt.  (He should also pay back his poorest victims first, working his way up the ladder until he either pays off his entire debt in full or dies, whichever comes first.)

(2) If he did not lie to his customers about what he was doing with their money, then he committed no real crime, and should not be punished at all.

Either way, he should not go to jail.

As Mr. Jeffrey Tucker writes,

What, then, precisely, is the point of jailing him?  He is no direct threat to anyone.  Society would not be safer because he is in the slammer.  He is not going to rob people or beat people up.  He might write a book and donate the funds to charity or make some restitution to his victims.  I, for one, would like to read that book.

Instead, taxpayers will be forced to pick up the tab for his living expenses.  Victims get nothing.  That’s not justice.  That’s inhumane for both sides of the transaction: Bernie and us.

—Alexander S. Peak

Wal-Mart Embraces Fascism

Wal-Mart embraces fascism.

Is this claim too extreme?  Am I guilty of hyperbole?  In this case, I think not.

According to the 1 July 2009 edition of The Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart, the largest “private” employer in the United States, is backing a federal initiative that would require employers to provide health insurance to workers.¹

There are many reasons to oppose such a requirement—especially if you are a member of the working class.  As John Stossel writes,

Why on earth would we want mandated insurance from employers?!  Do our employers pay for our food, clothing or shelter?  If they did, why would that be good?  Having my health care tied to my boss invites him to snoop into my private health issues, and if I change jobs I lose coverage.  Employer paid health insurance isn’t free.  It just means we get insurance instead of higher salaries.²

According to Ms. Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, “four in ten Americans change their job every year. ”³  This makes employment-based healthcare all the more problematic for workers.  Moreover, Mr. Neil Trautwein with the National Retail Federation has described the employer mandate as “the single most destructive thing you could do to the health-care system shy of a single-payer system.”⁴

But the undesirability of employment-based health coverage does not alone make Wal-Mart’s Tuesday announcement a support for fascism.  To understand more clearly why the move is in a fascistic direction, we must first know what fascism is.

Fascism is an ideology that holds the state to be the supreme organisation in and engine or society, outside of which all else and everyone else is unimportant.  Mr. Sheldon Richman defines its economic system as “socialism with a capitalist veneer,” one that seeks to control the means of production “indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners.  …[F]ascism [nationalized property] implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the ‘national interest’—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it.  (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.)”⁵

Perhaps the best description of the fascist economic model comes from John T. Flynn, who described the system in detail in chapter ten of his 1944 classic As We Go Marching.  The first explicitly fascist state, Italy under Mussolini, established corporatives to direct economic activity and production.  Flynn defines fascist system as “(1) a capitalist type of economic organization, (2) in which the government accepts responsibility to make the economic system work at full energy, (3) using the device of state-created purchasing power effected by means of government borrowing and spending, and (4) which organizes the economic life of the people into industrial and professional groups to subject the system to control under the supervision of the state.”⁶

Does the federal state’s most recent initiative take us fully into fascism?  Probably not, but it is certainly a step in that direction.

So why, then, would a business want to see the central state usurp greater degrees of power?  The state offers to Big Business what it cannot achieve on the free market: the means to keep out competition.  As historian Gabriel Kolko wrote,

The dominant fact of American political life at the beginning of this century was that big business led the struggle for the federal regulation of the economy.

If economic rationalization could not be attained by mergers and voluntary economic methods, a growing number of important businessmen reasoned, perhaps political means might succeed.⁷

Kolko’s main thesis is that it was big business that spearheaded governmental regulation of business during the Progressive Era.  The same happens today, and can be exemplified in Wal-Mart’s recent decision.

The Wall Street Journal explains Wal-Mart’s motivation in benign-sounding terms:  “Wal-Mart—which provides insurance to employees”—“wants to level the playing field with companies that don’t.”⁸  This is a sugary way of saying that Wal-Mart wishes to use the aggressive controls of the state to force firms smaller than it to provide what they may or may not have the resources to provide.  Those firms that are unable to continue operating under the state’s new regulations will, of course, be forced to go out of business (unless they’re able to procure bailouts—this is also problematic), thus leaving less firms with whom Wal-Mart will need to compete.  This is bad not only for workers but also for consumers.

We shouldn’t really be surprised by Wal-Mart’s recent move.  As Mr. Lew Rockwell reported in 2005, Wal-Mart called for an increase to the minimum wage so as to impose a higher cost on smaller competitors.  As Rockwell wrote, “if Wal-Mart can successfully lobby the government to abolish lower-wage firms, it has taken a huge step toward running out its competition.”⁹

That Wal-Mart would again advocate statist interventions that it knows it can overcome but that its competitors will have more difficulty overcoming goes to show what little Wal-Mart has in way of business ethics.

Notes

¹ Janet Adamy and Ann Zimmerman, “Wal-Mart Backs Drive to Make Companies Pay for Health Coverage,” The Wall Street Journal CCLIII, no. 152 (Wednesday, July 1, 2009): A1, A4.

² John Stossel, “Health Insurance Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be: Mandating Medical Coverage May Sound Good, but You’ve Got to Read the Fine Print,” ABC News, October 16, 2006, http://abcnews.go.com/Health/PrescriptionForChange/story?id=2574980&page=1 (accessed July 1, 2009).

³ John Stossel, “Whose Body is it, Anyway?: Sick in America,” 20/20, September 14, 2007.

⁴ Adamy and Zimmerman, op. cit., A4.

⁵ Sheldon Richman, “Fascism,” The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html (accessed July 1, 2009).

⁶ John T. Flynn, “What is Fascism?” in As We Go Marching (orig. 1944; New York, N.Y.: Free Life Editions, Inc., 1973), pp. 54–55.

⁷ Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900–1916, (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1963), pp. 57–58.  Butler Shaffer picks up where Kolko leaves off with Butler Shaffer, In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918–1938, (orig. 1997; Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1999).

⁸ Adamy and Zimmerman, op. cit., A1.

⁹ Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., “Wal-Mart Warms to the State,” Mises Daily, December 28, 2005, http://mises.org/story/1950 (accessed July 1, 2009).

—Alexander S. Peak

Groupthink as a Political Mental Illness (Part II)

From the studied literature on groupthink, there are a few points which merit mention here.  Smith and White say that:

“Fantasies about invulnerability, and about the persecutory intent of external enemies and collective rationalizations of group actions could be understood as a system to help allay the unconscious anxieties of the group-as-a-whole.

A phenomenological approach to what Janis describes as groupthink indicates that a group overwhelmed by internal conflict may gain a great deal of relief if it can locate or create [emphasis added] a strong external enemy (Coser, 1986).  Internal dissension can be seen as trivial in contrast, thereby enabling the displacement of within-group tensions into the relations among groups (Smith, 1982b). In this regard, such internal properties of the group as illusions of unanimity and invulnerability, which may be views as pathological from one perspective, may in fact serve a valuable social function by providing a particular cognitive set to enable a group to “create” an enemy.”

(Smith & White, 1983, p. 71)

Anne Gero tells us that:

“In a consensus [emphasis in original] decision process, subjects expect [emphasis added] more cooperation and friendliness and less disagreement that they would anticipate in [a] majority decision process.”

(Gero, 1985, p. 487)

And that:

“I would again emphasize the importance of disagreement to the outcome of group decisions… members may approach a consensus process with anti-disagreement norms.  Preventative or remedial measures should be taken to encourage members to disagree in the consensual process.  If disagreement is suppressed, the conditions of groupthink may develop and threaten the quality of the group’s decisions.”

(Ibid., p. 498)

Finally, Callaway, Marriott & Esser mention that:

“Highly cohesive groups provide support to their members that reduces conflict and disagreement and hence the stress inherent in decision-making.  However, this stress reduction is achieved at the price of suppressing critical inquiry.”

(Callaway, Marriott & Esser, 1987, p. 949)

And that:

“In groups of low-dominance individuals, perhaps the assignment of the roles of critical evaluator and devil’s advocate) prescribed by Janis, 1972, to counteract groupthink) must involve personal responsibility in order to overcome the natural reticence of such individuals.”

(Ibid., p. 952)

There is one other study which should be mentioned here, although, by title, it does not actually deal with the groupthink phenomenon, and that is a paper by Thomas J. Scheff called “Shame and Conformity: The Deference-Emotion System”.  In the introduction to his paper, Scheff informs us that:

“… exterior constraint has become a basic premise for modern sociologists.  Yet, an adequate model has never been conceptualized, much less proposed in an operationally definable way.  Conformity poses a central problem for social science not only in its normal, but also in its pathological form.  What gives rise to excessive and rigid conformity?  This is the question posed by many modern analyses of bureaucracy and authoritarian forms of social organizations.

There is wide consensus that conformity is encouraged by a system of sanctions: we usually conform because we expect to be rewarded when we do and punished when we do not.  However, conformity usually occurs even in the absence of obvious sanctions.  Durkheim’s formulation [the idea that the force of social influence is experienced by individuals as exterior and constraining [emphasis in original] (Durkheim [1987] 1951)] refers to the ubiquity of conformity.  The reward of public acclaim and the punishment of public disgrace rarely occur, yet the social system marches on.  Formal sanctions are slow, unwieldy, and expensive.  In addition to the formal system, there must be a complex and highly effective system of informal sanctions that encourage conformity’

A clue to this puzzle can be found in Goffman’s treatment of interaction ritual (Goffman, 1967).  He notes that the emotion of embarrassment or anticipation of embarrassment plays a prominent role in every social encounter [emphasis in original.  In presenting ourselves to others, we risk rejection.  The form the rejection takes may be flagrant, but it is more frequently quite subtle, perhaps only a missed beat in the rhythm of conversation.  Depending on its intensity and obviousness, rejection leads inevitably to the painful emotions of embarrassment, shame, or humiliation… when we are accepted, as we present ourselves, we usually feel rewarded by… pride…”

(Scheff, 1988, pp. 395 – 396)

Scheff also says that he feels that we should be aware of Helen Lewis’s theory of shame since it is a direct opposite of Goffman’s.  Whereas Goffman viewed shame as an external influencing factor, Lewis dealt only with the internal process of shame.  Scheff used an analogy to a metaphor about a contagion between people and pointed to what Lewis called a “feeling trap”, or an inner contagion.  In Goffman’s analysis, one becomes ashamed that the other one is being shamed, w, who, in turn becomes shamed, which increases the first person’s shame, and so on – an inter-personal feeling trap.  In Lewis’s analysis, one becomes ashamed that the one is ashamed, an inner loop which feeds on itself – an intra-personal feeling trap.  However, unlike Goffman, Lewis does not separate her analysis of shame from her analysis of anger.  Instead, she postulates, an affinity between the two emotions, with shame usually being followed by anger.

Scheff explains to us that the reason he has introduced us to these two different concepts of shames and its relationship to anger is the he believes that if we combine Goffman’s ‘social’ analysis with Lewis’ ‘psychological’ one, it is possible to convey the extraordinary of what he calls “the deference-emotion system”.  He believes that this system occurs both between and within interactants, and that it functions so efficiently and invisibly it guarantees the alignment of individuals with mutual conformity and respect leading to pride and fellow feeling, which, in turn, leads to further conformity, which then leads to further positive feeling in a system which seems virtually automatic. (Ibid., pp. 396 – 397)

Scheff next delves into the biological and social sources of shames, with a great deal of emphasis on the work of Charles H. Cooley.  Some of what Cooley goes into is almost frightening in its implications of how deeply Man, himself, and society, as a whole, is built upon a foundation of shame of and a need for pride.  He includes the following to illustrate the power of what he calls “social fear”:

“Social fear, of a sort perhaps somewhat more morbid, is vividly depicted by Rousseau in the passage of his Confessions where he describes the feelings that lead him to falsely accuse a maid-servant of a theft which he himself had committed. ‘When she appeared my heart was agonized but the presence of so many people was more powerful than my compunction.  I did not fear punishment, but I dreaded shame: I dreaded it more than death, more than the crime, more than the world.  I would have buried myself in the center of the earth: invincible shame bore down every other sentiment: shame alone caused all of my impudence, and in proportion, as I became the criminal, the fear of discovery rendered me intrepid.  I felt no dread but that of being detected, and of being publically and to my face declared a thief, liar and calumniator.’”

(Ibid., pp 399 – 400 [emphases added by Scheff])

Scheff uses this episode to make a point he wants us to understand before telling us that:

“In modern societies, adults seem to be uncomfortable manifesting either pride or shame.  The emotions of pride and shame often seem themselves to arouse shame [emphasis in original].”

(Ibid., p. 400)

Scheff also emphasizes the 1956 conformity studies of Solomon Asch, who testes the hypothesis that;

“Given the kind of task demanded, a majority of the subjects will find group standards compelling, even though they are exterior and contradictory to their own individual standards.”

(Ibid., p. 403)

Asch’s conformity studies give a considerable insight into the outer workings of conformity and found that only one-quarter of the test subjects remained completely individual throughout their involvement in the study.

Even though Asch did not design his tests to examine the effects of emotions upon his subjects (he was focused on the ‘what will happen’ of the tests rather than on the ‘why it happens’) and, while he did not ask his subjects about their emotions, he found that many of the responses to his post-study interviews suggested that emotions played an important, if not critical part in how his subjects reacted to situations during the study.  Among the subjects who had yielded to the majority views at least once, he found that many of them found the experience of being in the minority extremely painful.  They felt a negative view of themselves from the point of view of the others.  They were dominated by their exclusion from the group, which they took as a reflection of themselves, and were unable to face a conflict which threatened, in some undefined way, to expose a deficiency in themselves.  Asch also found that the responses of the yielding subjects suggested a denial of conflict, and of the feelings resulting from that denial.  Some of the responses were of complete denial, some were slight, and some were evasive about it.  Some of those subjects also granted to the majority the power to see things correctly, which they came to believe they could not do, and had allowed themselves to become confused so that at the critical point in the study, they adopted the majority judgments without permitting themselves to know of their activity or shift [emphasis added]. (Ibid., pp. 403 – 404)

As for the subjects who had remained completely independent throughout the course of the studies, Asch found that they, too, felt that they were suffering from a defect, as well as their also being troubled by disagreeing with the majority.  They, like the yielding subjects, had felt deep internal conflict and overt shame; however, they persevered through those feelings of conflict and shame and responded according to their own personal perceptions, despite their strong emotional reactions and feelings of personal discomfort. (Ibid., p. 493) What’s more, during their post-study interviews, the independent subjects were apt to be open, frank and forthright about the feelings and doubts which they had experiences over the course of the studies.  One of Asch’s own summaries of these interview responses included the following passage:

“… independence requires the capacity to accept the fact of opposition without a lowered sense of personal worth.  The independent person has to organize his overt actions on the basis of experience for which he finds no support; this he can do only if he respects his experiences and is capable of claiming respect for them.  The compliant person cannot face this ordeal because he equates social opposition into a reflection of his personal worth.  Because he does so, the social conflict plunges him into pervasive and incapacitating doubt.”

(Ibid., p. 404)

To bring Asch’s work into its place within his own theory about the role of shame in conforming behaviors, Scheff says that:

“The subjects who remained independent, although they experiences shame, had sufficiently high self-esteem to act on their judgments despite [emphasis added] their feelings of shame.  Thos who yielded had low self-esteem and sought to avoid further feelings of shame by acting contrary to their own judgment.”

(Ibid., pp. 404 – 405)

Since the yielding subjects had found it easier to deny and go against their own internal judgments that to go against the contrary judgments of the group, it would also seem logical to draw a conclusion that those subjects who had remained completely independent could later face up and admit to their previous feelings of shame and doubt because those feelings had not overwhelmed and conquered them and, thus, they had no further reason to hide from the or from openly admitting to them, while the yielding subjects later had difficulty owning up to their previous feelings of shame and doubt which caused them to conform to the judgments of the group because those feelings had overwhelmed and conquered them and for them to openly admit to having had those feelings would cause them to lose to those feelings all over again.

As a final note, which he makes on his own reactions to Asch’s findings, Scheff tells us that he found one particular remark, which had been made by one of the yielding subjects, to be “troublesome” and “baffling”.  That remark was about how the subject said that he had voted for Dewey in the 1948 Presidential election, even though he preferred Truman, because he thought that Dewey would win and was, thus, preferred by most Americans.  Scheff sums up his own personal reaction to this remark by saying that:

“Apparently unacknowledged shame is not only invisible, but insidious.”

(Ibid., p. 405)

Scheff closes his paper by postulating that:

“If the deference-emotion system is universal, the theory would provide a unitary explanation of conforming behavior, the central problem of social science.”

(Ibid., p. 405)

If Scheff’s theory were to be applied towards some of the on-going groupthink research, it could possibly help work out some of the variables which the various researchers have, as yet, been unable to confront or utilize.  It could be especially helpful in such studies conducted within the field of political science because the emotional needs and inherent fears and insecurities of people about their government seem to make them particularly susceptible to groupthink tendencies.

An awareness of what groupthink is, by political scientist, political analysts and commentators, and by ethical political leaders might help them to, if not prevent, then to make the public aware of occurrences of groupthink within political parties and ideologies, as well as in our various branches and levels of government.  Those who actively work to prevent or publicize groupthink and groupthink tendencies within their spheres of influence, interest or study might also find our political world becoming more responsive to the average citizens, as a result.  Those in all fields relating to politics need to make themselves more aware of the potential negative aspects of group dynamics within our political systems for; only by being objective and honest about our political systems and being open to criticism of their negative aspects can they effectively prepare for and combat those aspects.  Conducting groupthink research specifically within the political sciences field might provide the edge we so desperately need to keep our government vibrant and effective and, thus, able to properly serve our citizens better in the future than it has in the past.

Rhys M. Blavier

Romayor, Texas

“Truth, Justice and Honor… but, above all, Honor”

© Copyright 1989 by Rhys M.  Blavier

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Thank you for reading this article.  Please read my other articles and let me know what you think.  I am writing them not to preach or to hear myself think but to try to create dialogs, debates and discussions on the nature of our government and how we can build upon and improve it based on what we have seen and learned over the course of the 225 years of The American Experiment.

Why Taxes Enslave… Period.

I often find myself in discussions with people. People who insist that the state is their best friend. People who believe that waging mass murder on the rest of the world is keeping us safe. People who believe that being a serviceman/woman does still serve the good of the world. People who believe that our support for the state is necessary for our well being and that of the world at large. Some people cannot be broken out of this infinitely flawed view. Some of these are the same people who can’t see that capitalism is not the culprit of the current economic crisis or that the same issues that caused alcohol prohibition to fail will be the same causes that make the “War on Drugs” fail.

Oddly, these same people are the ones who’ve never heard of the torture that we carry out at Guantanamo and other “black sights” around the world. They’ve never heard of the illegal detention and kidnapping of people around the world who were tortured, in some cases, and never had the chance to file for grievances with their captors. The daily killings of civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan somehow escape their world view. What do these things have in common? The killing, detentions, torture, economic crises, and their continuation are made possible by you and I. Our tax money has not only turned life into a living HELL for other foreign people but it has also enabled the state to use our money to crack down on us. Taser’s, tanks, pistols, missiles, jets, and aircraft carriers are all bought and built with our money.

The money coerced out of me and you not only has resounding macro effects but it also has micro effects like the police state here in the US. Woman, children, and the disabled are being assaulted by cops who are paid by the very people they violate. How else can this occur other than in a state run system. Imagine a company who routinely violates it’s customers. This could not occur in a purely Free Market society because the victimized customers would quickly switch to the competitor and the aforementioned company would suffer great loses and possibly go out of business. Instead we are stuck with a system where the state has a monopoly on security which means that they can treat us any way they want without the risk of losing income. Other municipal systems operate this way too. Instead of water systems finding ways to maximize their water output or conserve they simply cut off water to their customers because they can. Of course in a free market one would be able to switch water companies or other technologies would be created to acquire water in other ways to keep water providers afloat.

So, as I’ve shown above taxes not only fuel wars, torture, monopoly’s, police states, and the war machine, but there are also many indirect consequences. For example the unlawful detention and torture of civilians in other countries creates resentment and hatred for the occupying power. When people are killed then you have others who want revenge against the occupying power (or invader) who committed the atrocity. As a result more enemies are created against the state (who took it’s people’s money (taxes) and used it to create war and mass murder in the foreign land). Some foreigners will want to take revenge on the people who enabled the occupying or invading state to carry out the attacks that killed their loved ones. The attacks that these people carry out in the homeland of the occupying/invading force will in turn be used by that occupying/invading force to justify it’s interventions in foreign countries and might be used to expand these operations. As a result more and more people are hostile toward the occupying/invading country. As a result the occupying/invading state is forced to crackdown more and more on it’s people to stem any attacks that might be carried out by it’s foreign enemies. Thus, the people who enabled their state to take their money for “security” are eventually the ones who the state has to keep itself safe from.

However, this is just one facet of the enslavement that taxes enable. The other facet is one that undermines private property. Certain things like your labor or property (that is acquired from another party) have nothing to do with the state yet they find it appropriate to come in and tax these things. The state has never owned or contributed to 100% of the property in it’s borders so how can it claim to be owed a taxes for 100% it’s use? Likewise, how can the state claim to have a stake in the income you receive from your job? Your labor never belonged to the state so how can they tax you when you trade it for private income (at your job)? The fact that you are taxed in these two ways means that the state feels that it owns us. You can never truly own private property because you must always pay taxes on it or the state will take it. Likewise, if you do not pay income taxes, even though they never owned the money or your labor, they will either take some of your money (a fine) or your time and labor (prison time). Does this sound like an entity “that’s for and by the people”? NO!

In-other-words the state makes freedom impossible for others and it’s own people. The state claims the right to wage mass murder in it’s people’s name while simultaneously taking it’s people’s rights. It creates monopoly’s in certain markets and undermines capitalism. It claims to provide security while being the biggest threat to it. It takes people’s money and converts it into death and destruction on foreign countries. It claims to own everything. It claims to be accountable to nobody.

Peace…

A reply to Rabbi Dr. Pomerantz

Greetings, Last Free Voice community:

Recently Newsmax.com distributed this essay from Rabbi Dr. Morton H. Pomerantz, which accused President Obama of “‘creating a climate of hate” with his “‘code” creating a “danger as great as that posed by the Nazis to the Jewish people”. The Rabbi even insinuated a connection between Obama’s Mid-east trip and Cairo speech with the murder at the Holocaust Museum. While I find many of the President’s actions immoral and unwise, these accusations (and the distortion of the relative threat posed by Israel and Iran to each other) prompted the following reply:

The Rabbi’s conspiracy theory regarding Obama, the Holocaust Museum murder, Israel and Iran is so twisted, off the mark and devoid of reality that it calls his good judgment, and yours, into question. One should be critical of Pres. Obama on many scores, but any suggestion that he is in some way culpable for yesterday’s (06/10/09) unprovoked assault by the loathsome criminal is insulting and absurd. The Statue of Liberty deserves better than to be attached to such an unconscionable screed.

How ironic that as the Likudniks continue their efforts to manipulate America for the benefit of another country and to our detriment, becoming vengeful and petulant at the first hint of the possibility of our country waking up you publish this vile disinformation, meant to gin up hatred and war fever against Iran. Unlike Israel Iran is a signatory of the Non Proliferation Treaty, has not invaded or occupied it’s neighbors and has allowed complete and open inspections of nuclear facilities by the IAEA which has declared it to be in full compliance.

How many WMD are they hiding in Israel? How many innocent Iranian – as well as Israeli – civilians and American service personnel would die as a result of an unprovoked Israeli and / or American attack on Iran?

America’s foundation is the recognition that all human beings are born with unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, as granted by our creator.   Theocratic states of all religious affiliations violate these rights and are, contrary to American values. Since “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion..”, according to the First Amendment, it is illegal for Congress or the US Government to support any theocracy anywhere of any faith – Jewish, Muslim or Christian. Private, non-governmental, voluntary support of a foreign cause that does not put the rest of the nation at risk is everyone’s right to pursue to the satisfaction of their own conscience.

Our Founders, including George Washington, urged us to not become entangled in permanent foreign alliances and to not go abroad ‘in search of monsters to destroy’. Considering the harm done to our nation by intervening in quarrels that did not impact our security until after official US Government. involvement, and in light of the outrageous hijacking of American military personnel, safety and tax dollars by advocates for various foreign countries (including, but obviously not limited to, Israel) we can see the wisdom of their admonitions. The American peoples’ blood, treasure and safety are not anyone’s to give on behalf of a foreign country or cause.

Suggesting that is anti-Semitic or hateful to recognize the need for a change in policy that would benefit America is ridiculous, though history suggests we have a long way to go before such a providential change actually takes place. If Rabbi Pomerantz is concerned about dangerous hate activities, he may want to cease slandering Muslims as a group and to challenge these practitioners:

1. Chabad rabbi: Jews should kill Arab men, women and children during war.
2. Prosecution drops indictment against settler filmed shooting Palestinians.
3. Netanyahu Promises Lieberman Pivotal Ministership.
4. Gaza war rabbinical edict draws protest in Israel.

I was part of a group that visited the Holocaust Museum on Memorial Day Weekend. Naturally, it was a very moving experience. All those innocent victims of Man’s Inhumanity to Man! We should never forget what has been done to so many (Turkish Genocide of the Armenians, communist destruction of the Kulaks, Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the holocaust of European Jews, all the victims of the Nazis, Soviets, Mao, etc..etc ) by statist and/or racist collectivists.

We should also never let the terrible crime committed yesterday (6/10//09) against the helpful and courteous Stephen Johns be used to smear innocent people or to promote collectivist political agendae. There are good and bad people of all religious faiths and also, those of no faith. Each human being must be judged on their own personal merits and not as part of a racial, ethnic or religious group.

This response is not an endorsement of the Obama regime, which is continuing which is continuing the bad policies of its predecessors overseas (including terrorist attacks AGAINST Iran by Sunni extremists allied with Al-Qaeda) and is intensifying the socialist, fascistic policies which are creating so many problems at home. God Bless America – and all His other children, too.

Hadji

Groupthink as a Political Mental Illness (Part I)

[When I was researching information for my Master's Paper in 1989, I was looking into the subject of how Greek students being involved in student activities impacted the ability of independent students to be equally involved. What I quickly discovered was that, apparently, NO ONE had ever written anything about this. I was teaching myself how to use a computer while I was doing this and on-line research was rather limited back then. Never-the-less, in trying to find information which would even relate to my topic I discovered studies on groupthink, conformity and shame theory... three areas of psychology that I could also not find any evidence of having been studied together. I was creating my own database on the subject.

I had no knowledge about these things before I started doing my research but, one day that Fall, it all came together in my mind. When it did I was literally stunned and shaking in fright. I called a friend of mine in California and it took me around four hours of talking (pretty much me talking and rambling for four hours and him listening) for me to even calm down. These things haunt me to this very day. While I was doing my research with regard to application within the field of Student Activities and College Unions, I also immediately saw its implications within politics. My entire research paper was close to 90 pages long, but a year later I took a portion of it to create a smaller article to try to get published. Unfortunately, I never heard any response from any of the researchers or student activities / college union journals I sent it to. And so it was all put away in a box and carried around with me for 20 years.

Not too long ago, I found the box the papers were in (hard copies only, of course) and have been wanting to transcribe them so that I could have them computerized. I am starting with the shorter article and, because I reference it or base portions of other articles on what I learned for it, I have decided that I would post it on here... in two parts because it is still too long for a single article on here, and with references to student activities changed to ones about politics... to see if it can help others understand aspects of social psychology within politics that they might not be consciously aware of.  I sincerely hope that this disturbs you, the reader, as much as it has disturbed me.

P.S. -- I also developed a method that I thought could successfully combat hazing in schools, especially in Greek systems but, when I would try to get ANY school to let me try them, once it was learned that I, myself, had been an independent student... mostly by administrators who, themselves had been Greeks, I was always told that since I hadn't been a Greek then I didn't have basis upon which to make claims to understand them. They would tell me that only other Greeks could understand their 'culture' or fix what was broken in it... a classic example of groupthink in action. I eventually let it go, as I did my career in student activities.

P.P.S. -- After reading this, can anyone NOT understand why I hold the entire Bush Presidency and administration in contempt? I would like to see someone write a book about the Bush Presidency SPECIFICALLY as a study of groupthink and how it illustrates every indication of the phenomenon.]

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In 1972, Irving Janis, in his book Victims of Groupthink, added a new dimension to the study of group behavior and group dynamics when he described “groupthink” as:

“… a quick and easy way to refer to a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are involved in a cohesive in-group; when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative course of action… Groupthink refers to a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment that results from in-group pressures.”

(Janis, 1972, p. 9)

That single work seems to have had an immediate and almost historic impact on the study of group behavior.  Since the first publication of Victims of Groupthink, many researchers have been moved to study, to support, or to refute both Janis’s theories and the implications of groupthink.  Whatever has motivated any of these people, one thing is clear; that single work has been the starting point for many, if not all of these studies, and research on this phenomenon uniformly refers to Janis as the originator of the concept of groupthink, as well as its definer.

Early in his book, Janis gives the following story as an example of groupthink:

“Twelve middle-class American men and women wanted to stop smoking, and attended weekly meetings at a clinic to discuss the problem.  Early in the sessions, two people stood up and declared that cigarette smoking was an almost incurable addiction.  The group agreed.  The, one man stood up and said “I have stopped smoking and, with a little willpower, so can the rest of you.”  Immediately, the other group members began to abuse him verbally, and the meeting ended in chaos.  The following week, the dissident stood up again and said that he could not both attend all of the required meetings and stop smoking; so he had returned to smoking two packs of cigarettes as day.  The other members welcomed him back into the fold with enthusiasm but no one mentioned that the original purpose of the group was to help each other stop [emphasis in original] smoking.  Their new aim was maintaining the status quo at any cost.”

(Ibid, p. 9)

Janis illustrated his theories by using seven recent major historical events; five of which he labeled as fiascoes and the other two which he termed successes relating to the resultant outcomes of those events, based on the decisions that were made.  He argued that the decision making processes in the five fiascoes were faulty, regardless of the outcomes, and, likewise, the decision-making processes used in the successes were effective, even if the events would have not turned out positively.  He stresses that it is the processes used in a group’s decision-making that determines whether or not that group is a victim of groupthink and not the outcomes because bad-decision-making processes can result in good or successful results or outcomes, just as good decision-making processes can result in bad or unsuccessful results or outcomes. (Janis, fig. 10-1)

In his original work (Janis, 1972), Janis identified six major defects in the decision-making process which result I groupthink and which, in turn, result in poor quality decisions.  In the 1982 edition (Janis, 1982), he added a seventh defect to his list.  These seven defects are:

1.)    Discussions are limited to only a few alternatives without surveying all possible alternatives;

2.)   The originally preferred solution is not re-evaluated for non-obvious drawbacks or risks after its initial evaluation;

3.)    Alternatives which are initially discarded are never re-evaluated for non-obvious gains;

4.)   There is little or no attempt made to obtain information or advice from experts on alternative courses of action;

5.)    Where advice IS presented, selective bias on the part of the members is used to evaluate that advice and, thus, they use information which supports the group’s preferences and ignore evidence which is counter to the group’s preference;

6.)   Members fail to consider how groups external to the focal group might react and, therefore, fail to develop contingency plans for possible setbacks or failures; and

7.)    There is a failure to consult all members regarding the objectives to be fulfilled and the values implicated by their choice.

(Janis, 1972, p. 10; Janis, 1982, pp. 9 – 10)

Janis then went on to identify several antecedent condition which are necessary for groupthink to exist, and which relate to structural faults of the organization and the decision-making context.  The primary antecedent condition necessary for groupthink is a highly cohesive group.  The secondary conditions (which relate to the organization’s structural faults) are:

1.)    Insulation of the group;

2.)   Lack of a tradition of impartial leadership;

3.)    Lack of norms requiring methodical procedures; and

4.)   Homogeneity of members’ social background and ideology.

The tertiary conditions (which relate to the decision-making context) are:

1.)    High stress due to isolation of the group (usually for security reasons instituted because of perceived external threats);

2.)   Low hope of a better solution than the leader’s; and

3.)    Low self-esteem temporarily induced by the group members’ perceptions of:

A.)   Recent Failures;

B.)   Moral dilemmas; and

C.)   Excessive difficulty in current decision-making.

Finally, Janis postulates that the existence of these conditions generates eight symptoms of groupthink, which were evident in the fiascoes studies and which serve as the primary means of identifying the occurrences of groupthink.  These eight symptoms are:

1.)    An illusion of invulnerability that is shared by most members, which creates excessive optimism and encourages the group to take extreme risks;

2.)   Collective efforts to rationalize in order to discount warnings which might lead members to reconsider their assumptions before they recommit themselves to past policy decisions;

3.)    An unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, which makes the members inclined to ignore the ethical and moral consequences of their decisions;

4.)   Stereotyped views of enemy leaders, usually considering them as too evil to warrant genuine attempts to negotiate, or as too stupid and / or too weak to counter whatever attempts are made to defeat their purposes;

5.)    Directed pressure on any member who does not conform to the group’s norms, who express strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes, illusions, decisions, or commitments, thereby making it clear to all that this type of dissent is contrary to what is expected of all loyal members;

6.)   Self-censorship of individual deviations from the apparent group consensus, reflecting each member’s inclination to minimize to him or herself the importance of his / her doubts and counter arguments;

7.)    A shared illusion of unanimity concerning the judgments conforming to the majority view (partly resulting from self-censorship of deviations, and augmented by the false assumption that silence means consent); and

8.)   The emergence of self-appointed mindguards – members who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter the group’s shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.

(Janis, 1972, pp. 197 – 198)

While Janis’ theories are not perfect, nor even necessarily complete, he has still provided a very strong starting point from which to begin exploring this issue.  Regarding the studies on groupthink which have been reviewed, there are some weaknesses which have been noticed in them, at least as far as their being of any potential benefit to the study of larger groups or political parties. Among these weaknesses are:

1.)    The studied laboratory groups are very small, usually three to five people (six reports studied).  These sized groups do not allow for the effects of internal cliques or sub-groups within a main group to be incorporated within the studies, or to arise independently over the course of the studies.  Thus, while there may be dissension (and / or other such factors) which is created / controlled by the researchers, or which arises independently, these studies groups are still small enough to leave individual subjects as each being a significant percentage of the entire group (33.3% — 20%) and, thus, more individually significant to the group.  Theories and research on ‘diffused responsibility’ indicate that when individuals are such a significant portion of the group, they are more likely to feel that they are more individually important to the group and are, even alone, able to have an impact on the group.  This generally means that they are more likely to retain their personal feelings of responsibility for the decisions and / or actions of their group, as a whole.  If there is dissent, etc., within the group, it can still be dealt with on a person-to-person basis.  In these small groups, if the ‘group’ puts pressure on dissenters, it cannot do so and ‘disguise’ the fact that it is made up of distinct individuals by their being a ‘force’, ‘it, or ‘them’ instead of ‘Mark, Jody, Bill, and Mary’, or ‘those four’. The group dynamic in groups within such a size range is dramatically different from the group dynamics within groups the size political parties, or even local communities.

2.)   There is little, if any, attention placed on what the members of the laboratory groups have to lose if they should feel inclined to dissent from the group’s decisions or actions.  In politics, we deal with the day-to-day lives of average citizens and, while citizens might be able to hide their personal discomfort levels when they are simply, for example, at work by leaving that ‘life’ behind them when they leave work for the day and enter back into their ‘outside-of-work social-life’, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for them to retreat from pressures and discomforts in their social lives in any way other than by withdrawing into themselves and isolating themselves away from inter-personal contact which causes them discomfort.  Therefore, if all that individuals risk losing in a study is closeness with others in that laboratory setting, are they more or less likely to risk that closeness and acceptance by retaining their individuality and dissenting from group pressure than they would be to risk being socially or professionally ostracized from, or losing prestige among their peers (prestige here can mean status but does not necessarily; it is more related to levels of confidence, respect and / or acceptance which an individual feels from their peers) if they should attempt to retain their individuality and dissent from the majority views in a social or political environment?

3.)    There is little mention mad of the emotional or intellectual comfort levels of the subjects when they are within the confines of their group situations.   It would seem to be obvious that these are important factors which need to be considered in such studies.  The more uncomfortable a person feels, or feels they will become if they take a particular dissenting decision or action, shame theory, as well as common sense tells us the more likely they are to do, say or go along with whatever they have to do in order to remain or to once again become comfortable.

4.)   Those studies which use dominant leadership as a factor or variable do not also use group leadership or dominance which comes about through the backing of, or support from, a clique or sub-group within the main group or even, as far as can be told by reading their studies, recognize it as being different from charismatic or personality-based leadership or dominance.  However, in real-life, such group leadership or dominance is a common occurrence, such as the promotion of those who are incompetent to lead or manage, or a ‘puppet’ leader put in place so that those with real power can stay behind the scenes.

5.)    While some of the studies try to create artificial cohesive in-groups in some of their laboratory groups, there is no mention made of the effects which real social relationships between group members has on their responses within a group setting.  For example, if group members do not know each other from outside of their group environment prior to their joining it and, thus build any in-group cohesion, friendships or inter-personal relationships with other group members, are they more or less likely to be a strong group member, concerned with the greater good of the group, than are group members who know each other from outside of the group, or who were friends with or colleagues of other group members prior to their becoming a member of the group?  Are group members who know other group members or are friends with them before becoming a member of the group, especially those who join the group BECAUSE they already know, or were friends  with other members (in fact, who might have been specifically recruited into the group by friends, etc. who are already group members), more or less likely to be conscientious group members who are willing to dissent from or even question the group’s decisions or actions (since their outside acquaintances with other members can be affected positively or negatively by their own personal words or actions within the group) than are group members who became acquainted with other group members only through membership in the group?  What about those who know other group members outside of the group and have pre-existing animosity of them, or who become a member IN SPITE OF members they already who they dislike or who try to keep them out of the group?  What about those who join for social acceptance by people that they know outside of the group?  These possible variables are numerous and are important considerations within our political groups or organizations because a common way for new members to be brought into a group or organization is for them to be recruited by friends and / or acquaintances.  We need to know what effects such membership recruitment has on the very real functioning of those groups and organizations.

6.)   When a study makes ‘getting input from group members about possible decisions to be made or actions to be taken’ a factor or variable of the study, is there any assessment about whether or not there is any difference between input which is sought and / or received under a ‘glaring spotlight’ or in a situation of possible derision or resistance, and input that is sought and received in confidence and / or in a situation of respect and / or openness?  If not, have any of the researchers given any consideration within their studies to the effects that the manner in which input is sought has on the input that is received?

7.)    While Janis gives us examples of, and specifications about groupthink, it would be helpful if, to demonstrate the point that the presence of groupthink is determined by the decision-making PROCESS, itself, and not of the outcomes of that process (good processes can still result in bad outcomes and bad processes can still result in good outcomes), it would be helpful if examples were included of such good / non-groupthink processes which resulted in negative outcomes AND of bad / groupthink processes which resulted in positive outcomes. The theory is stated regarding this, but the case is never made.

(This Article will be concluded in Part II, which will include information on conformity studies and on shame theory)Rhys M. Blavier

Romayor, Texas

“Truth, Justice and Honor… but, above all, Honor”

© Copyright 1989 by Rhys M.  Blavier

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Thank you for reading this article.  Please read my other articles and let me know what you think.  I am writing them not to preach or to hear myself think but to try to create dialogs, debates and discussions on the nature of our government and how we can build upon and improve it based on what we have seen and learned over the course of the 225 years of The American Experiment.

How I Think The Constitution Can Be Fixed (Part III [c]: Article I – The Legislative Branch)

Section 6, paragraph one deals with Congressional compensation for their services.  Many years ago, Congress enacted standing legislation to provide them with regular pay raises UNLESS Congress, at the time of EACH particular raise, actively raises the issue and votes against it.  This is one of the examples I was referring to when I talked about how Congress makes what will be their path of least resistance be what benefits them, rather than the people.  Thus, if Congress does NOTHING, is silent and doesn’t even raise the issue, they get their raise each year.  In ADDITION, they get unbelievable pensions based on how long they served as well as life time healthcare.

To me, this is another simple issue to deal with.  Tie the salaries of ALL federally elected officials to the median incomes of the American people, not counting bonuses or other backdoor ways of hitching things a little higher for them. Based on the real and reported income of all citizens who file income tax reports, divided by ALL citizens, let’s say that (as a starting point for discussion), members of the House would receive an annual salary based on what 60% of the median incomes of all Americans equals to, with Officers of The House getting 62.5%.  Members of The Senate would get a salary based on 65% of the median income, with Senate officers getting 67.5%.  Members of the Supreme Court would get 70% of the median, with The Chief Justice and The Vice President getting 72.5%.  Finally, the highest salary allowed would go to The President, with the salary of that office being based on the 75% of the median incomes of all Americans.

Now, I want everyone to notice something.  I did NOT say that these salaries should be based on mean, or AVERAGE incomes (the total of all incomes divided by the total number of people), I said that they would b based on the MEAN incomes.  The mean is a statistical average based on the individual numbers which are ranked from highest to lowest.  Thus, Bill Gates is only one statistical number, while a disabled elderly person who has an annual income of $5,000 is another individual number equal to Bill Gates.  A median average would give a much more accurate picture of how much average Americans earn and tie the salaries of Constitutional and elected Federal officials to that average.

So, what would THIS accomplish?  Several things; for one, it would make elected Federal officials more caring about how much money the American people have because their own welfare would be improved by having more people earning (and reporting) higher incomes.  In fact, the more income earned by those at the bottom quarter, half and three-quarter marks of the social ladder, the higher the income they would make themselves.  For another, it would increase their focus on eliminating loopholes which allow people to underreport their own incomes. The fiscal conservatives tend to support theories which state that there is a finite amount of REAL income (as opposed to, say, capital income) which is available.  Thus, to raise the income levels of those at the lower ends of the social ladder would mean that the additional monies would have to come at the expense of the earnings of those at the top of the social ladder.  For yet another thing, the more money earned by AND KEPT by corporations and businesses is money that is NOT increasing the income levels of the bottom three-quarters of the income bracket.  This would make Congress more likely to support higher individual wages and eliminate more corporate loopholes.  Again, the more money earned by the most people would benefit them personally… and if the incomes of average Americans goes down, so does theirs.  We would all swim or sink together.  Their pay rates would be worked out and modified every two calendar years to coincide with election cycles.

As for pensions and permanent healthcare, I do not believe that people should make holding elective or political offices their primary livelihoods.  I am against, as I have said before, a professional political class.  I believe in the founders’ idea of people who would make sacrifices in their own lives of short periods of time to serve their nation with their public service and would then go back to their public lives.  Thus, ANY elected official, or any official who is subject to Senate approval would not earn ANY pension or retirement benefits for their time in service.  Regarding members of The Supreme Court, I will deal with them in the part(s) of this article which deal with Article III of The Constitution.

Section 6, paragraph two is the one that says that no Senator or Representative can hold another civil office in The United States during their tenure in their respective House, and that no officer or official of The United States can serve as a Senator or Representative while they hold their other office or position.  This, among other things, is what prevents us from having a Parliamentary system of government and ensures that the membership of each branch of government will be totally and completely distinct and separate from the others.  It also says that:

“No Senator or Representative shall… be appointed to any civil office under the authority of The United States which shall have been CREATED, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been Increased during such time [as they served as a Senator or Representative]…”

THIS portion of The Constitution does need to be addressed to clarify, one way or the other, what authority the Executive branch does or doesn’t  have to appoint sitting or recently sitting members of Congress to other civil positions … especially with automatic pay raises being provided for all such civil offices.  Either our Constitution very specifically prohibits this and it is accepted by all members of our government or we change it.  I personally would rather leave it as it is and expect our government to abide by such limitations.

Well, I think this is a good place to end this part of this article.  When we come back, I will address the rest of Article III, including legislation to raise revenue, the budget, and the enumerated powers and authorities of Congress.

(This article will be continued in Part III [d], which will continue discussing Article I of The Constitution.)

Rhys M. Blavier

Romayor, Texas

“Truth, Justice and Honor… but, above all, Honor”

© Copyright 2009 by Rhys M.  Blavier

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Thank you for reading this article.  Please read my other articles and let me know what you think.  I am writing them not to preach or to hear myself think but to try to create dialogs, debates and discussions on the nature of our government and how we can build upon and improve it based on what we have seen and learned over the course of the 225 years of The American Experiment.

The Problem With The Economist

On page thirteen of the May 30th–June 5th edition of The Economist, an editorial aimed at describing the threat posed to our economy through excesses of central planning, the author writes the following paragraph:

Moreover, even the most stalwart defenders of the free market, including this newspaper, admit it has shortcomings that only the government can address.  The financial system requires close oversight, or crises will destabilise it (see page 75).  In recent years, such oversight has often been absent or fragmented.  Only government can enforce competition rules, insist that business and consumers limit carbon-dioxide emissions, or intervene to make health care available to those too sick or poor to afford it.  And the current crisis calls for aggressive and temporary fiscal and monetary intervention that is not justified in ordinary times.

The first sentence of this paragraph alone contains three grave problems.  Firstly, since when has the government been able to fix things?  Even liberals and conservatives readily admit that the government is at best inefficient and at worse downright detrimental.  Ask the average person if government is good at solving problems.  The person doesn’t have to be a libertarian to laugh at such a question.

Secondly, the most “stalwart defenders of the free market” do not make the sort of concessions that this magazine wishes to make.  I should know, being a stalwart defender of the free market myself.

Finally, The Economist calls itself a “stalwart defenders of the free market.”  But how can it be one, when it itself believes that government can “intervene to make health care available to those too sick or poor to afford it.”  The government does not possess some magic button that can make healthcare cheaper, and in fact every intervention the government makes into the healthcare field ultimately raises the costs (or decreases the quality) of healthcare.  And this hurts the poor more than anyone else!  No, The Economist is not a “stalwart defenders of the free market.”  If you want an example of a magazine that stalwartly defends the free market, I would recommend The Freeman.

I estimate that a point of confusion for some people arise when they hear a libertarian say, “The free market is not perfect.”  Even “stalwart defenders of the free market” admit that the free market is not perfect.  But what precisely does that mean?  Does it mean that the government is better, more effective, or more efficient than the market in some area(s)?  To jump to that conclusion is to misunderstand the libertarian who correctly says that the free market is imperfect.

When I say the free market is not perfect, what I mean by this is that the free market will not solve all of the world’s problems.  The free market does have an anti-discriminatory effect on businesses (i.e. businesses operating on a totally free market tend to ignore race, finding it more profitable to hire whatever employee is best for the job), but it will not likely have much of an impact on men’s hearts, for example.  This does not, however, mean that we should initiate some litany of statutory laws aimed at eliminating prejudice within men’s hearts, nor that the government would be more effective at eliminating prejudices than the market.

The market will also not fully eliminate addiction to alcohol, the making of bad investments, the promulgation of “improper” religious beliefs, et cætera.  Thus, the free market is not “perfect.”  But it’s still better than the government—at everything!  (Even archists like John Stossel have admitted to this last point.)  And this is because the state is a political institution, and thus lacks the same incentives that one would find in an economic institution.  (I am indebted to Franz Oppenheimer for the distinction between the political means and the economic means.)  Political institutions always inevitably allow politics to affect decision-making.  Whenever a politician grants something to, say, a corporation, you can be sure that the decision was affected by, if not based on, politics.  Beyond this, politicians lack any meaningful mechanism for evaluating the utility of their actions.  The market, on the contrary, has a pricing system that reflects consumer demand relative to supply, and it is this pricing system that allows market actors to make rational choices.

The market is not perfect because it is not, in short, a god.  Thus, there is no need to worship it, or to pretend it is anything other than it is.  But the fact that the market is not a god does not therefore imply that the state is a god, or that the state can even make up for the market’s imperfections.  The market, at least the truly free market, has no “market failures,” it just has natural limitations based on its nature.  It is, after all, merely a mechanism for most efficiently allocating resources in a world of scarcity; it is not a magic cure-all that can save humanity from, say, bad thoughts or addiction.  But then, neither is the state.  The same natural limitations we find in the market are found in politics, except that in politics they are ultimately far more detrimental to social harmony and human rights.  The market may not be a god, but that doesn’t mean the government is better than it—at anything.

—Alexander S. Peak

A House Majority for Federal Reserve Audit

In a March 10th speech on the House floor, Ron Paul said, “I have introduced a bill, it’s called H.R. 1207, and this would remove the restriction on us to find out what the Federal Reserve is doing.  Today, the Federal Reserve under the law is not required to tell us anything.”

Earlier today, Paul’s Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 (H.R. 1207) received its 218 cosponsors in the House of Representatives.  The significance of this number is that it represents a majority of House representatives.  The 218th co-sponsor, according to a press release released today by Dr. Paul’s congressional office says that the 218th co-sponsor was none other than Paul’s friend Dennis Kuchinich.

“The tremendous grass-roots and bipartisan support in Congress for H.R. 1207 is an indicator of how mainstream America is fed up with Fed secrecy,” said Congressman Paul.  “I look forward to this issue receiving greater public exposure.”

As do we all.  The Federal Reserve board was created in 1913 by an act of Congress to help big bankers do what they could not do on a free market: cartelise the banking industry.  The Fed today sets the interest rates instead of allowing the market to set the interest rates.  It also lowers the reserve ratio required for banks to 10%.  This means that banks are given the statist luxury of lending out up to 90% of the money you put into it.  The Fed uses these controls to encourage or discourage lending at its own discretion—a discretion that is always inevitably tainted by politics.  The Austrian school of economics holds that this manipulation of the money supply is the prime, if not the sole, cause of the business cycle.

Anti-Fed sentiments have been on the rise ever since the Fed-created housing bubble burst in 2008.  For more on this, see Dr. Thomas E. Woods’s excellent book Meltdown.  For a basic overview of the Fed itself, see the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s fantastic documentary 42-minute Money, Banking, and the Federal Reserve. (Don’t be scared by the title, the documentary really is fascinating!)

Right now, the number of co-sponsors on Paul’s bill is up to 222.  Hearings on Federal Reserve transparency are expected within the next month, “as part of the Financial Services Committee’s series of hearings on regulatory reform.”  This is the same committee chaired by the notorious Barney Frank.  Despite some clear flaws on his part regarding Fanny and Freddie, he has been a critic of the Federal Reserve system.

An identical bill, titled the Federal Reserve Sunshine Act of 2009 (S. 604), was introduced on March 16th in the Senate by the independent from Vermont, Bernard Sanders.  Thus far, the Senate version has no co-sponsors.

—Alexander S. Peak

How I Think The Constitution Can Be Fixed (Part III [b]: Article I – The Legislative Branch)

From Article I, Section 3, paragraphs six and seven, the portions of the provisions for either House regarding impeachment require no changes other than possibly the provision that the threat of and right to impeach is a constitutional DUTY of Congress and it cannot surrender its willingness to implement that duty when it is called for.  To do so is malfeasance in the performance of their constitutional duties and should subject any members of Congress who are willing to agree to surrender their willingness to fulfill ANY of their obligations and duties under The Constitution.

Section 4 of Article I deals with the times and places of elections of Representatives and Senators, and with the requirement for Congress to meet at least once every year.

I think that the provisions for periods of adjournments and recesses by Congress are not appropriate to our modern day government.  For those who argue that they do not want Congress in session any longer than it has to be, while I don’t entirely disagree with them, I think the larger and more important issue is how just adjournments and recesses empower the Executive branch as the expense of the Legislative branch.  While I will deal more with such things as ‘recess appointments’ in the part(s) of this article which deal Article II of The Constitution (The Executive Branch), I am against ANYTHING which serves to make the Legislative branch less than equal to the Executive branch, much less subservient to it.  Thus, I think that Congress should never be considered in recess and only be adjourned by standing legislation which provides for pre-defined periods of adjournment, focused around legal federal holidays (not religious holidays) and, say, a single one week-long adjournment each  quarter of the year… each one, preferably centered around an appropriate federal holiday each quarter.  At ALL other times it would be required to be in session (and remember, I would not allow for any member of Congress to hold office for more than a single term, so there would be no NEED for Congress to be in adjournment during election cycles).

Section 5 deals with various procedural matters (such as judging their own elections, the power to compel attendance by absent members, and the prohibition against adjourning for more than three days while in session).  Paragraph two deals with allowing each House to punish and/or expel its own members.  It also states that each House shall determine its own rules for proceedings.  Paragraph three covers the requirements of each House to keep a journal of its proceedings ad periodically publish those journals, as well as the requirement of each House to record the ‘Yeas and Nays’ (i.e. – the votes) of each House and to publish those totals for either House upon the request of one-fifth of the membership of that House.

While The Constitution should not get into the minutia of establishing all of the rules for either House, there are some which I think it would be appropriate to enact, enshrine and enforce within The Constitution.  Among these are:

1.)   No office created by either House of Congress can be specific to any particular political party.  While any party can choose to elect its own leadership by whatever methods it wants, it does not mean that those elected to such offices are deserving of extra pay by the nation or extra privileges and powers within Congress for holding an office restricted to the members of that Party.

2.)  All officers elected by either House should be selected by secret nomination and secret ballot.  I would also recommend the use of Approval Voting for the actual elections.  Again, this would be to try to help break the stranglehold on power which any party holds simply by having more members that any other party.  This provision would probably result in most offices being held by less extremist party loyalists.  If our nation can succeed in establishing a viable third-party, it will throw the current methods of selecting Congressional offices in the toilet anyway.  Let’s do what we can to speed that process up a bit.

3.)   All ballots casts by members of either House should be cast in secret and the individual results of any vote kept but only revealed (published) 25 years later for historical purposes.  Now, I know that this one is going to be met with shock by most people.  After all, how else are we supposed to keep tabs of what these people actually do?  Well, stop and think about this one for awhile.  Let me explain my reasoning for this idea.  Why do WE cast OUR ballots in secret?  So that no one WILL know exactly how we voted which, among other things, limits to ability of anyone else to threaten or intimidate us.  Open balloting in Congress does not help ‘we the people’, it helps the parties, lobbyists and special interest groups keep members of Congress in line with what benefits THEM the most, not what benefits us the most.  Open balloting in Congress allows the political parties, the lobbyists, the special interests groups, the media and, yes, even the people to threaten and intimidate individual Congress who might otherwise have the will to vote their according to their conscious as they believe is right rather than how others want to compel them to vote.   This is also one of the major ways that the two parties effectively prevent other viable parties from having a voice in our system of government (the other major way that they accomplish this is by the maintenance of our current Majoritarian / Plurality election system). (Please see my earlier article on ‘The Laboratory of Democracy — Alternative Voting Methods (Approval Voting) [Re-edit]’ for a more detailed explanation of this idea.)  It is also what allows small groups of extremists to move the politics in Congress in extremist directions and which makes moderate or centrist positions untenable to maintain.

With a provision that, in an investigation, a select independent committee can review specific votes and make them public IF they show evidence or a pattern of corruption, malfeasance or negligence, but also with a protection provision that baseless accusation for no purpose other than to discover what a personal voting record is will be a felony, this provision could provide safety and protection for those legislators who do want to go along with their party’s line on any particular issue.  So, how is a member of Congress judged if their individual votes are not known?  They would be judged in two ways. First, they would be judged by what they say on the record and, second, they would be judged by what their House accomplishes or FAILS to accomplish.  Under this method, ALL members of a House are collectively responsible for what that House does or doesn’t do… they rise or fall together.   This means that their motivation which change to being how can they work together to make them all look good.  Just think about it for awhile, ok?

4.)  Right now, most legislation includes meaningless introductions which tell us how wonderful it is and how it will single-handedly make the world a better place to live (and they are capped off with some kind of sensationalist title which will make those who vote against it sound like they are bad Americans for voting against it… especially those who don’t actually read the proposed legislation that they are voting on.  I believe that ALL legislation proposed and voted on in either House of Congress should include measurable and quantifiable goals, and specific objectives to indicate what will be considered a successful result of the legislation.  Goals and objectives, strategies and tactics.  I also believe all legislative objectives should include a time frame by which the legislation must accomplish its goals or it will automatically cease to have legal standing.  This is not a meaningless point.  The example I like to use has to do with Civil Rights legislation.  Under the legislation as written, neither side of the debate has an actual motivation to see the objectives of the legislation accomplished.  Each side uses it as a weapon with which to attack the other, and leaders on both sides have built their power bases upon the on-going conflict it engenders.  There is more political power to be gained by keeping the conflict going than there is in accomplishing its purposes.  Now, imagine if that legislation had included measurable, definable and quantifiable goals AND it had an objective of accomplishing those goals in, say, 25 years.  One way or the other the legislation would end; the only question would be “when” it would end.  Those who are fighting for the achievement of those civil rights would have been motivated to make sure that the goals were achieved before the end of the 25-year deadline so as to get them in place, and the side which was not in favor of the penalties and restrictions imposed by the legislation would be motivated to accomplish those goals as quickly as possible so that the legislation would go away as quickly as possible.  In either case, if the goals were either not achieved or led to the consideration of additional goals, new legislation could be crafted and proposed at that time which would better meet the needs of that time and that generation.  The purpose of this proposal is to give ALL sides reasons to work together to accomplish things rather than give them reasons to fight against each other endlessly.

To justify why this should be import, keep in mind all of the calls by the people and politicians for, and interpretations by the courts based on what the ‘intention of the founders’ was.  Intention is difficult to know, and impossible to speculate on to determine law when those intentions are never officially, and reliably set forth and documented.  The fact that the founders destroyed all OFFICIAL minutes and notes from The Constitutional Convention can only leave us with one of two ways to make such judgments; either the founders did not WANT us to base our interpretations and decisions based on what THEY intended (which means that we do, in fact, have a LIVING Constitution), OR, they did not understand how important it would be to us to be able to discern their intentions when we try to interpret what they intended.  We need to not only insure that the present generation fully understands what we are trying to do and what we want to accomplish, we need future generations to understand why we felt each specific law was necessary… our intentions, in other words.  Goals and objectives would make legislation easier to interpret and less likely to be twisted and MISinterpreted by other.  It would also allow those who read a law thoroughly to see if the actual content and execution of the law is true to its goals and objectives.

5.)  That idea leads us to Thomas Jefferson’s theories of generational laws.  He said “[B]etween society and society, or generation and generation, there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. . . . [B]y the law of nature, one generation is [therefore] to another as one independent nation to another.”  He also said “Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.” (http://www.conlaw.org/Intergenerational-II-2-9.htm) I believe in the idea of generational laws (with all laws having a natural expiration deadline of either 25 or 50 years (generations being longer now that they were when Jefferson wrote that, and some laws being more important than others), depending on the law, with 25 being the norm and 50 being the exception, for several reasons.  First, laws seem to work conversely to the adage that it is easier to destroy than it is to build.  With law, it is easier to pass one than it is to get rid of one.  When politicians or officials come along later and try to have a law removed from the books, the tendency is to wonder what ulterior motives they ‘really have (no matter how bad or irrelevant the law might be) and political inertia tends to win.

As a result, our legal systems end up cluttered with an unbelievable number of laws which are either (a) no longer of any value, (b) no longer in sync with the progress of our culture or, (c) just plain stupid.  A generational law standard would mean, first of all, that no one would have to actively campaign or fight to have laws actively removed piecemeal.  By doing nothing the laws will just go away.  If they still have value or there is still a need for them, they can be re-written and passed again. Secondly, the future will not be bound by considerations or standards of the past which no longer apply to them.  Thirdly, politicians are, by nature, egomaniacs who want to be immortal, and the way a politician becomes immortal is by sticking us with their own ideas of how we should live (i.e. – with laws).  When all of the basic laws are already in place, they have to go farther and farther to find their own immortality.  I would rather have them continually working on and improving basic legislation than to have them spending their time finding cruel and unusual ways to torment, punish and control ‘we the people’.

6.)  I think that all of us, all of us who are not in Congress, at least, would agree that the Legislative Amendment process is out of control and all too easily abused by politicians who cannot get their own moronic ideas passed into law on their own merits; or who want to ‘game the system’ by attaching bad legislation to other legislation that, itself, cannot be voted down.  Riders and amendments are a bane to good legislation which can be (a) understood, (b) respected, and (c) followed by everyone.  This would be simple to deal with.  Any amendment or rider which has nothing to do with the primary legislation AND / OR which does not have the support of the primary author of the legislation (not sponsors or co-sponsors, the primary author) can only be attached to the proposed legislation by a super-majority vote of two-thirds of the House in which it has been proposed in.  Any rider or amendment which does relate to the primary legislation AND has the support of the primary author can be attached if it gets a majority vote in the House in which it has been proposed.  Note: these votes would NOT be to approve the amendments or riders, only to allow them to be attached to the primary legislation before IT was voted on.  For those who want the President to have a line item veto authority, all that would have to be done here would be to say that he has the power and authority to approve or veto the results of such votes before they can be attached to the primary legislation (as provided for in Article I, Section 7, paragraph four of The Constitution).

7.)   Congress has made themselves exempt from abiding by the laws that they force on the rest of us.  This is one of the (many) reasons why it is so easy for Congress to hypocritically impose legislation on ‘we the people’ that is harsh or intolerable… because THEY don’t have to also live with the consequences of their decisions.  This blanket exemption needs to be removed and, any individual exemptions that they want to pass for themselves should be stated publicly, be required to undergo a full and open debate, require a two-thirds super-majority of BOTH Houses AND be subject to Presidential  vetoes for which it would take a three-fourths super majority of both Houses to override.

8.)  As in all things, politicians will take the paths of least resistance.  If their path of least resistance in legislation is to maintain the status quo by not voting for something, they will do that.  Conversely, if they have to actively vote for the status quo to maintain it, they will let it change.  As an example of what I mean by this, consider automatic Congressional pay raises.  Those raises will automatically take place unless Congress actively votes to stop them.  Thus, the path of least resistance is to maintain the status quo by doing nothing and, as a result, allow the raises to happen.  If the legislative process required on-going legislation to require active votes to keep it going, and the path of least resistance is to not vote for something (like the pay raises), they will not vote for them and they won’t happen.  The direction of how Congress votes for on-going legislation needs to be changed so that the path of least resistance is what benefits ‘we the people’ and not what benefits Congress or the government.

(This article will be continued in Part III [c], which will continue discussing Article I of The Constitution.)

Rhys M. Blavier

Romayor, Texas

“Truth, Justice and Honor… but, above all, Honor”

© Copyright 2009 by Rhys M.  Blavier

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Thank you for reading this article.  Please read my other articles and let me know what you think.  I am writing them not to preach or to hear myself think but to try to create dialogs, debates and discussions on the nature of our government and how we can build upon and improve it based on what we have seen and learned over the course of the 225 years of The American Experiment.

Voluntary Action: Going Green Without State Coercion

Chances are, you have heard of the boycott.  But have you ever heard of the carrotmob?

The carrotmob is the reverse of the boycott.  A short yet fascinating article in the most recent issue of Time explains how it was invented by Brent Schulkin to “reward businesses with mass purchases if they promise to use some of the money to become greener” (8 June 2009, p. 54).

A carrotmob in San Fransisco

In traditional boycotts, people avoid businesses that employ policies with which they disagree.  This new activist tactic is just the reverse.  When a business agrees to alter its policies, by e.g. choosing to use more energy-efficient lighting, activists swarm the business in question to make purchases.

The tactic is completely voluntary.  And it’s been a success.

It was first used last Spring in San Fransisco and is now starting to get outsourced to 14 other U.S. cities—and three other countries, as well!

One example Time gives is of a San Fransisco store called K&D Market, where carrotmobbers spent $9,200.  Profits create incentives, as these activists clearly realise.

From the libertarian view, this news is thrilling.  It confirms what we’ve been saying all along: voluntary action works.  And perhaps best of all, although the carrotmob has been used mostly for environmental purposes, it could just as easily be used for any other progressive social policy.

To learn more about the carrotmob, visit carrotmob.org.

—Alexander S. Peak

How I Think The Constitution Can Be Fixed (Part III [a]: Article I – The Legislative Branch)

Congress, The Legislative Branch of The United States of America was, as ‘the people’s house‘, intended to be the most powerful of the three branches of government created by The Constitution… a ‘first among equals‘, as it were.  Of the 4,543 words of The Constitution, the 2,312 words of Article I constitute just over half of the total (50.89%).  Unlike Article II (The Executive Branch) and Article III (The Judicial Brach), Article I deals very much with the actual workings, duties, powers and authorities of Congress.  A primary reason for this, I assume, is that the founders had a long history of experience with operating a working, functioning Congress or Legislature.  They also had more trust of a strong legislative branch than they did of a strong executive branch.

The first representative legislative body established in the American Colonies, in fact, in ANY of the British Colonies, was Virginia’s House of Burgesses, which was created in 1619… 170 years before the creation of Congress under The Constitution.  Before and during the Revolutionary Period, ALL of the American Colonies had functioning state legislatures and, at the national-level, the first Continental Congress had been called in 1765.  Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress ran the nation with a VERY weak Executive, who was appointed by Congress itself to preside over ‘A Committee of The States‘.  The delegates to the Constitutional Convention well understood what a legislative branch could do, although, prior to The Constitution, members of Congress for any state were appointed by the legislatures of that state.  As such, apportionment by census and direct elections of the members of The House of Representatives was their great experiment with a representative legislature.  Members of The Senate, of course, continued to be appointed by each state’s own legislature until the passage of Amendment XVII, which was ratified in 1913 (although some states had been providing for the direct election of their Senators by the people of those states as early as 1907).

It was never the intention of the founders to create a permanently ruling political class.  They envisioned men, who would, for a short period of time, leave their private lives, take up the burden of public service for the good of the nation and then go back to their private lives.  This idea was only one of many visions of theirs that did not survive our national transition from our ‘first generation‘ to our ‘second generation‘ [see 'Part I' of this article for an explanation of my theory of the first and second generational effects].  Many Americans have the mistaken belief that the founders created a two-party system.  This is patently false, but still many of our children are taught it.  The founders tried to create a NO-party system, with the idea that individual members of Congress would band together is short-lived coalitions for each separate issue that came before them.  This is another idea which not only did not survive our nation’s first generation; it did not survive the Washington administration.  This is probably the biggest reason that party politics dominates our government, because The Constitution did not provide any guidelines for or controls / limitations upon them.

Several of my suggested changes will be attempts show how I think that we can restore the founders’ original concept of public service to our government, and show a way to end or, at least, make it more difficult for the continuation of our professional and permanently ruling political class.  These suggestions will be made to try to minimize the amount of time elected officials have to spend in their continuous cycle of staying elected, to maximize their learning curve and effectiveness in office, and to reduce their susceptibility to the corrupting effects of long-term office holding.  They will also have a goal of wanting to breaking the stranglehold which the two major parties have on our government, at all levels, as well as minimizing the power and effect which those at the extreme ends of any political spectrum have on our government.  This is crucial if we are to return our government to a rational level of moderation.

As a general change for ALL elected offices, no one would be allowed to campaign for one office while they are holding another.  If people think that such an allowance is necessary, they could be allowed to run for as MANY offices at one time as they want, but they have to be campaigning on their own time (they, of course, could only accept election to one office if they should win more than one election at the same time… if they do win more than one, though, maybe they should have to pay for any special elections which they necessitate by winning an office they have intention of serving in).  Since all elected officials are elected to serve their constituents by doing a specific job, and not to spend their time on that job trying to keep their current job or trying to get a new one at our expense, once a public office holder is officially a candidate for any national office (the point at which they start raising funds or operating a campaign), they will be REQUIRED to immediately resign any elected office, at ANY level, that they might hold at that time.  This would also help keep the lengths of campaigns down to more reasonable amounts of time as elected officials would be less likely to give up an office in their hand too long before they run for the office in the bush that they want to seek.

Section 2 of Article I lays the groundwork for the composition of The House of Representatives.  Paragraph 1 of Section 2 sets the term of office for members of the House of Representatives at 2 years.  I would change this to 6 year terms, with one third of The House being elected every three years and a one term limit.  This would allow an on-going House with regular turnover and without the turmoil of having to elect ever member of The House and recreating itself every election cycle.  Former Representatives could be elected to additional terms by the people of any particular state that they have served when they have been out of The House for the length of a full term between each term.

Paragraph 2 sets the minimum age for eligibility for election as a Representative at 25.  I would lower this to 20, although with the requirement that being a Representative is a full time job (i.e.  – if someone is a student and is elected, they would have to leave their studies for the duration of their term of office).  We allow citizens to vote at age 18, we let them serve in our military, we require them to pay taxes (which they have to do at ANY age when they earn any money), etc., there is no reason that citizens of that age should not be allowed to elect Representatives of their own age range if they are able to.

Paragraph 3 of Section 2 deals with apportionment of Representatives among the various states.  As we have seen all too frequently, the abilities of modern computing to pinpoint every voter has given the supposedly forbidden practice of gerrymandering an even more frightening and insidious power than it has had in a long time.  That same computing power can allow us to create congressional districts that are of the most compact size and even shape as possible without ANY regard to the politics, or any other discriminating factor, of the citizens of any particular district.  Every state has corners and edges.  All that would have to be done is to program the same computers to start at each corner and create evenly shaped and compact districts as they work in towards the middle of each state.  Alternatively, the first district could start in the middle of a state and work outward.  This would still allow for differing proposals, depending on starting points and merging points, but the test would still be which proposal presents the most precise and evenly shaped districts possible.  Basically, if districts can be created within a smaller or more compact area of a state, you go for the most compact districts possible.  This would not only prevent the parties from manipulating districts in the way that is most advantageous to them, it will prevent them from creating both ‘safe‘ districts (which protect members of either party), and ‘reservation‘ districts (which isolate and limit ethnic voting power overall to specific limited areas).

Paragraph 3 also provides for the total number of Representatives the House.  Its original provision of “The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative;” has been modified by legislation passed in 1911, which capped the total number of Representatives in The House at 435.  ‘One man, one vote‘ was NEVER an intention of the founders (as seen by their plan of equal apportionment of Senators, the guarantee of at least one Representative from each state, and the fact that Congressional districts must be fully contained within their home state) because it was never their desire to allow high population areas to dominate the government at the expense of the rural areas by the simple fact of having more people.  However, it was also not their intention to let rural areas have excessive power by limiting the numbers of Representatives to be divided among the more populous states.  As was seen when Alaska and Hawaii entered the union (the total number of members in Congress was temporarily increased by one for each state UNTIL the next apportionment, at which time it was returned to the 435 Representatives level), the current total is seen as a hard and fast one which is not increased by the admission of additional states.  As a result, with each shift in population and a theoretical continuous expansion of the numbers of states in the Union, the single Representative for the states with the smallest population increase in their own proportional power within Congress.  To counter this, I would propose that the total number of Representatives be equal to ten times the total number of states.  This would mean that every time a new state is admitted, ten Representatives will be added to the total number of Representatives in The House.  Right now, that would result in a total of 500 Representatives, with 50 being taken by guaranteed representation for each state and the other 450 apportioned according to state population sizes.

Paragraph 4 deals with vacancies within The House while Paragraph 5 creates the office of Speaker and allows for The House to create and choose its other officers.  The only change I would make here is that ANY officer of The House (or The Senate) has a responsibility to the nation, as a whole, as well as to their own district’s constituency.  As such, ALL officers of The House or The Senate, from any party, must equally accept feedback, requests, petitions, etc.  from anyone within the nation as they do from anyone within their district.

Section 3 of Article I deals with The Senate.  Paragraph 1 sets the length of term for a Senator at six years.  As with the House, I would increase the lengths of their terms of office to twelve years, with a limit of one term and the passage of a length of time equal to one full term before they can be eligible to run again within their state.  For those of my readers who have caught some of my specific wordings, by the way, these limits would only apply to a candidate in a single particular state if they want to run again in that state.  If someone thinks that they can just pack up and move to another state to get elected again, they would be welcome to try it.  I would love to see the spectacle of hordes of former Congressmen moving constantly between states while trying to convince the voters of their ‘new‘ home states that they are not carpetbaggers who are only looking out for themselves rather than for the citizens that they purport to serve.

Paragraph I also sets the numbers of Senators from each state at two.  I would increase this to three for each state so that every state will have an election turnover of one Senator for every equal third of a term (i.e.  – every four years), which is what is dealt with in Paragraph 2.  Paragraph 3 sets the minimum age of a Senator at 35.  As with The House, I would lower this age by five years to 25 in order to increase the chances for better representation of the younger population of the nation.

Paragraph 4 of Section 3 deals with the role of The Vice President as the President of The Senate.  While I will deal with the larger issue of the office of Vice President when I discuss The Executive Branch, the primary constitutional duty of a Vice President is to be President of The Senate.  This office needs to be a functional part of our government.  [Please see my article on 'The American Vice Presidency...  Graveyard of the Constitution'.]  While I would still give The Vice President no vote in The Senate except in cases of ties, I would give the office political power in The Senate equal to that of The Speaker in The House.  I would also give The Vice President the freedom to address The Senate under the same rules as any Senator, but with the provision that they must temporarily give up the Presidency of The Senate while speaking on the floor, and maybe with the additional restriction that they must ask the permission of The Senate to be allowed to speak to it from the floor.

Paragraph 5 of Section 3 provides for the creation and selection of other officers for The Senate, including The President pro tempore.  My biggest issue with how Section 5 is fulfilled is that The President pro tempore, the third person in line to the office of President of The United States, has become a meaningless ego job which is simply given to the oldest, most senile member of the majority party.  This Constitutional office needs to be held by the person elected by the whole Senate to be its Floor Leader.  Tell me, honestly, would you have wanted to see a 99 year-old Strom Thurmond succeeding to The Presidency?  What about an 84 year-old Ted Stevens?  Or a 92 year-old Robert Byrd?  The President pro tempore should be the Senator who is leading the legislative agenda on the floor of The Senate, not the one singing ‘I’m a Little Teapot‘ with the Spectre of Death.

 

(This article will be continued in Part III (b), which will continue discussing Article I of The Constitution.)

Rhys M.  Blavier
Romayor, Texas

 

“Truth, Justice and Honor… but, above all, Honor“

 

© copyright 2009 by Rhys M.  Blavier
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Thank you for reading this article.  Please read my other articles and let me know what you think.  I am writing them not to preach or to hear myself think but to try to create dialogs, debates and discussions on the nature of our government and how we can build upon and improve it based on what we have seen and learned over the course of the 225 years of The American Experiment.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PIRACY: PART SIX

PART SIX: PIRACY’S END AND BEGINNING

With the round-up of the major British pirates in the 1720s, piracy was relegated to the status of minor nuisance. European governments made efforts to keep privateers in line by limiting letters of marque and demanding bonds for assurance of good behavior. Quite likely the major restraint on piracy was the increased presence of European navies in remote areas, a side-effect of the constant European wars.

As ever the rise and fall of empire spurred sea-raiding. From 1775 to 1822 the Americas and Europe were convulsed by revolution. American, French, and Latin American revolutionaries found themselves desperately short of sea-power. Their answer was privateering. Predictably, the lure of loot undermined adherence to strictly patriotic motives.

The French Revolutionary Wars generated one of the United States’ first international crises. French and English privateers had hunted each other’s sea-trade to near extinction. Consequently merchant sailors from the United States stepped in to fill the gap. In due course the rivals began seizing vessels suspected of carrying a belligerent power’s merchandise. By 1798 attacks by French privateers on American vessels sparked a brief war at sea. In 1800 the new dictator of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, decided one global enemy was enough and adopted a conciliatory line towards Washington ending the Quasi-War.

No sooner than the Quasi-War had ended than a new crisis arose in Africa. The Barbary corsairs were taking an interest in American sipping. While Morocco took a decidedly friendly approach to the U.S., the bashaw of Libya tried to squeeze more money by declaring war in 1801. The U.S. Navy began by bungling badly and losing a frigate and its crew. But U.S. forces re-grouped and were soon shelling the bashaw’s palace.

Meanwhile a group of U.S. Marines, Greek mercenaries, and a rebel Libyan prince were making their way across the desert to enact a bit of regime change. This, perhaps more than the rather lumbering U.S.N. vessels, alarmed the bashaw sufficiently to cause to make peace in 1805 with a minor discount in blackmail. The prince was unceremoniously abandoned in the desert to make his way home.

Back in the West Indies the erstwhile French privateers found new employment as corsairs for the Latin American republics. The revolutionary juntas were suitably lax in their oversight to make privateering profitable. In time honored tradition, the raiders preferred to loot more profitable American or British vessels rather than the relatively low-profit Spanish shipping.

Although slavery was still legal throughout the Americas, there was an increased international opposition to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. While slavery remained in force, importing slaves from Africa was illegal. Though perhaps it was the best that could be done at the time, the effect was to shoot prices for slaves sky-high and make slave smuggling highly profitable.

The focus of both privateering and slave smuggling was the thriving port of New Orleans. A pair of brothers, Jean and Pierre Lafitte, managed to unite the smugglers and the corsairs in an enormously profitable alliance from 1810 to 1817. Jean also dabbled in covert operations, alternately fomenting conspiracies against Spanish rule and reporting on them to Spanish authorities.

The end of the Napoleonic Wars saw the U.S. and Britain, lately enemies, deliver a one-two punch to the Barbary corsairs (Morocco excepted). In the 1820s they tackled the growing menace of West Indian piracy. Pirates, devoid of even the fig-leaf of rebel privateer commissions, had proliferated. Many found Cuba a friendly haven. The colonial authorities had a push-pull effect of compensation from pirate loot and the pleasure of seeing their American and British rivals discomfited. By 1825 most of the pirates had been swept up. The Lafittes were out of business, but slave smuggling remained highly lucrative until abolition in the 1860s.

The Pax Britannica of the 19th century was the death-knell for piracy. In the 1850s sea-raiders swarmed in Eastern waters from the Red Sea to China. They were diverse in their origins and motivation. They included the Arab corsairs of the Red Sea, the Angrians of India, the Ilaununs of Sulu Sea and other Malay raiders, and outlaws from China. These groups ranged in type from Vikings to privateers to out-and-out pirates. By the 1840s few were left. The Royal Navy, along with the expansionist Spanish and Dutch empires, swept the seas. The Age of Empire imposed a lockdown.

Privateering had its last flings in the Texas War of Independence (1835-36) and the American Civil War (1861-65). The new era called for centralization and control. Advanced military technology was no longer marketed to privately owned warships. Privateers had a long history of excess, unsuited for the new era of enlightenment and progress. Pillaging was retrograde, torpedoes and bombs embodies the modern way of war at sea.

And so matters stood. But the Pax Britannica is gone, vanished as thoroughly as the Cold War verities of the American Century. While Somali pirates are defying the world and collecting ransoms that would make Caesar wince, crime syndicates in the Far East are running hijacking rings engaged in systematically looting the busy shipping lanes of South East Asia.

The international community seems unable to mount any truly effective response. Pompey’s preferred method, crucifixion, is off the table (at least until Dick Cheney gets back to the Whitehouse). The Woodes Rogers program, generous pardons and certain hanging, is limited by the uncertainty of any kind of punishment being imposed on pirates, let alone hanging. The classic standby, recruiting them all as mercenaries, perhaps offers some hope, if only one can organize a joint Blackwater-Somali pirate venture. But if history teaches us one thing it is that each case is unique and fraught with its own perils and pitfalls.

Somewhere the Cilicians are laughing.

END

America… Spearheading the New Dark Age.

I guess all of us should be happy to be alive during such interesting times as these. We have the internet, books, videos, and rapid dissemination of knowledge everywhere in the world almost instantly. We are alive when books like “1984″ have been written where slavery is outlined, yet we still seem to be enslaved. In America and many other countries in the world our governments coerce our money (that we earned with our own personal time) out of us to commit atrocities around the world. Waterboarding, electric torture, torture of children, mass murder, torture with insects, torture with razors, kidnapping of innocent people without warrant, spying on military personnel on the phone with their wives overseas, and systematic beatings of detainees for no reason are just a few things that our “civilized” society engages in on a daily basis. It reminds me of historical accounts where people were tortured in medieval times for their crimes. It also reminds me of the witch trials where woman were tortured until they said that they were witches.

It seems that it only took one terrorist attack to plunge most of the Western World 300 years into the past.

I just wanted to outline a few recent atrocities that came to light in a recent article on AntiWar.com. The article is located here and it talks about a few instances of torture that have occurred in Guantanamo some of which have even occurred after Obama took office. The article outlines such outrages as smearing another inmate’s feces on an inmate’s face, shooting a high pressure water hose up a detainee’s nose, slamming detainee’s faces on concrete, the intentional breaking of noses and other appendages, shoving people’s faces into toilets and flushing them repeatedly, sexual assault, and deliberate cover-ups.

Here are a few excerpts below:

…When an IRF team is called in, its members are dressed in full riot gear, which some prisoners and their attorneys have compared to “Darth Vader” suits. Each officer is assigned a body part of the prisoner to restrain: head, right arm, left arm, left leg, right leg…

…IRF teams in effect operate at Guantánamo as an extrajudicial terror squad that has regularly brutalized prisoners outside of the interrogation room, gang beating them, forcing their heads into toilets, breaking bones, gouging their eyes, squeezing their testicles, urinating on a prisoner’s head, banging their heads on concrete floors and hog-tying them – sometimes leaving prisoners tied in excruciating positions for hours on end…

…Up to 15 people attempted to commit suicide at Camp Delta due to the abuses of the IRF officials…

…After 9/11, Deghayes was detained in Lahore, Pakistan, for a month, where he allegedly was subjected to “systematic beatings” and “electric shocks done with a tool that looked like a small gun…One day they took me to a room that had very large snakes in glass boxes. The room was all painted black-and-white, with dim lights. They threatened to leave me there and let the snakes out with me in the room. This really got to me, as there were such sick people that they must have had this room specially made…

…Deghayes was eventually moved to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where he was beaten and “kept nude, as part of the process of humiliation due to his religion.” U.S. personnel placed Deghayes “inside a closed box with a lock and limited air.” He also described seeing U.S. guards sodomize an African prisoner and alleged guards “forced petrol and benzene up the anuses of the prisoners.”…

…The IRF team sprayed Mr. Deghayes with mace; they threw him in the air and let him fall on his face … ” according to the Spanish investigation. Deghayes says he also endured a “sexual attack.” In March 2004, after being “sprayed in the eyes with mace,” Deghayes says authorities refused to provide him with medical attention, causing him to permanently lose sight in his right eye…

…On one of the ERF-ing incidents where Omar was abused, the officer in charge himself came into the cell with the feces of another prisoners [sic] and smeared it onto Omar’s face. While some prisoners had thrown feces at the abusive guards, Omar had always emphatically refused to sink to this level. The experience was one of the most disgusting in Omar’s life…

…The ERF team came into the cell with a water hose under very high pressure. He was totally shackled, and they would hold his head fixed still. They would force water up his nose until he was suffocating and would scream for them to stop. This was done with medical staff present, and they would join in. Omar is particularly affected by the fact that there was one nurse who “had been very beautiful and kind” to him to [sic] took part in the process. This happened three times…

…David Hicks, an Australian citizen held at Guantánamo, said in a sworn affidavit, “I have witnessed the activities of the [IRF], which consists of a squad of soldiers that enter a detainee’s cell and brutalize him with the aid of an attack dog … I have seen detainees suffer serious injuries as a result of being IRF’ed. I have seen detainees IRF’ed while they were praying, or for refusing medication…

…The officer Smith was the MP sergeant who was punching him. He grabbed his head with one hand and with the other hand punched him repeatedly in the face. His nose was broken. He pushed his face, and he smashed it into the concrete floor. All of this should be on video. There was blood everywhere. When they took him out, they hosed the cell down and the water ran red with blood. We all saw it…

…According to attorney Julia Tarver, one of her clients, Yousef al-Shehri, had a tube inserted with “one [IRF member] holding his chin while the other held him back by his hair, and a medical staff member forcibly inserted the tube in his nose and down his throat” and into his stomach. “No anesthesia or sedative was provided to alleviate the obvious trauma of the procedure.” Tarver said this method caused al-Shehri and others to vomit “substantial amounts of blood…

…According to Tarver, “Nasal gastric (NG) tubes [were removed] by placing a foot on one end of the tube and yanking the detainee’s head back by his hair, causing the tube to be painfully ejected from the detainee’s nose. Then, in front of the Guantanamo physicians … the guards took NG tubes from one detainee, and with no sanitization whatsoever, reinserted it into the nose of a different detainee. When these tubes were reinserted, the detainees could see the blood and stomach bile from the other detainees remaining on the tubes.” Medical staff, according to Tarver, made no effort to intervene…

…In January 2003, Sgt. Sean Baker was ordered to participate in an IRF training drill at Guantánamo where he would play the role of an uncooperative prisoner. Sgt. Baker says he was ordered by his superior to take off his military uniform and put on an orange jumpsuit like those worn by prisoners. He was told to yell out the code word “red” if the situation became unbearable, or he wanted his fellow soldiers to stop… They grabbed my arms, my legs, twisted me up and, unfortunately, one of the individuals got up on my back from behind and put pressure down on me while I was face down. Then he – the same individual – reached around and began to choke me and press my head down against the steel floor. After several seconds, 20 to 30 seconds, it seemed like an eternity because I couldn’t breathe. When I couldn’t breathe, I began to panic and I gave the code word I was supposed to give to stop the exercise, which was ‘red.’ … That individual slammed my head against the floor and continued to choke me. Somehow I got enough air. I muttered out: ‘I’m a U.S. Soldier. I’m a U.S. Soldier.’…

…While the dominant media coverage of the U.S. torture apparatus has portrayed these tactics as part of a “Bush era” system that Obama has now ended, when it comes to the IRF teams, that is simply not true. “[D]etainees live in constant fear of physical violence. Frequent attacks by IRF teams heighten this anxiety and reinforce that violence can be inflicted by the guards at any moment for any perceived infraction, or sometimes without provocation or explanation,” according to CCR…

…In another incident after Obama’s inauguration, prisoner Khan Tumani began smearing excrement on the walls of his cell to protest his treatment. According to his lawyer, when he “did not clean up the excrement, a large IRF team of 10 guards was ordered to his cell and beat him severely. The guards sprayed so much tear gas or other noxious substance after the beating that it made at least one of the guards vomit. Mr. Khan Tumani’s skin was still red and burning from the gas days later…

http://original.antiwar.com/scahill/2009/05/16/obama-thug-squad-brutalizing-prisoners-at-gitmo/

Do these sound like the acts of a “Shining City on a Hill”? Do these sound like the acts of “The Leader of the Free World”? No, they don’t. They sound like the acts of a barbarous empire drunk on it’s own power. It sounds like people who have no respect for human life. Imagine the hopelessness that these people in Guantanamo and other black locations feel. They are stuck  torture dungeons unable to die or live. Merely a piece of meat kept alive for reason’s unbeknown to anybody. Your captors will never let you go and you will never have a chance to defend yourself in a court. You can be tortured at any time for no reason. You may never see your family or your wife again, and the worst part is that most of these men have never done anything wrong.

Is this the way you want you’re tax money to be spent? You want the money stolen from you to pay torturer’s and killers? Then stand up and let someone else know how their money is being spent. Don’t be apathetic. Don’t be complicit is the destruction of life at CIA black sites.

Peace…

John Hospers and the Libertarian Temperament

I recently came across an article by former Libertarian Party candidate for president Mr. John Hospers in which he discusses the interaction of both anarchists and minarchists within the libertarian movement.  There are, as one might expect, some good things and some bad things to say of Mr. Hospers’s analysis.  I will first discuss and provide insights on what I like about the article—specifically his call for alliance between the two aforementioned libertarian factions.  I shall then explain what I see to be the failings of Mr. Hospers’s analysis.

Let me begin by saying I agree with Mr. Hospers when he says,

Anarchism, as I see it, is an issue for the far future as far as practical application is concerned.  If we get to the point where 9/10 of the present government functions are government functions no longer, then we can consider the question whether what remains is best performed by government or by private individuals and organizations.  But it is virtually certain that we shall never reach that point if we do not present a united front to the world.

This is a point Mr. Harry Browne made often, and it is a point with which I agree.

As an anarchist, and one who is optimistic for the long-run but pessimistic in the short-run, I do not believe we will achieve even minarchy (i.e. limited, constitutional government) within my lifetime, let alone anarchy (i.e. the replacement of the entire state with private, voluntary institutions).  Therefore, my own anarchism is explored for predominately philosophic reasons.

That’s not to say that I do not also embrace it for practical reasons.  As far as I’m concerned, I’m not only an anarchist in theory but also an anarchist in practice.  That is to say, I “live anarchy” every day.  In my every interaction with people, I always eschew aggression.  I do not steal, I do not rape, I do not accept welfare, and, if I were to get elected to some legislative body tomorrow, I would refuse to accept even a cent of tax-payer money for the job.  I engage in voluntary action at all times.¹

But I recognise that America is not going to accept anarchism yet.  The people are, unfortunately, not yet independently-minded enough to come to a total and complete rejection of all aggression entirely, nor even is a 50% majority yet going to make such a commitment.  Far too many people believe in continuing the war on drugs (as just one of many examples) to as of yet come to a total rejection of aggression.

But this is no reason for me to turn my back on anarchism.  Ultimately, reason compels me to embrace anarchy as the only ethical and practical system of government.  And I see no harm in promoting this view, in explaining politely and hopefully-convincingly to people how the alternative institutions we radical libertarians advocate would function in the real world.

I believe there is no inconsistency in being an anarchist—in promoting anarchism—and in allying myself with minarchists.  As Mr. Hospers implies, should we ever get to the point where the vast majority of the government has been eliminated, at that point we’ll have to get down to the nitty-gritty of what divides anarchist libertarians from minarchist libertarians.  At that point, we’ll have to end our alliance.  In the meantime, Mr. Hospers is right: we should work together toward our common goals.

At the same time, I also hold that there is nothing wrong in trying to convince minarchist libertarians that libertarian anarchism is superior to libertarian minarchism.  And I will attempt to do so because to achieves my own aims.  Thus far, I’m proud to say, I have helped to turn no less than four limited-state libertarians into no-state libertarians.

It should become immediately clear that I therefore have two goals when it comes to the promotion of my political views: (1) to convert non-libertarians into libertarians and (2) to convert minarchists into anarchists.  Since I’ve had far more success with my second objective than my first, I can only conclude that the second objective is easier to accomplish than the former.  But the former is just as important, and if I were somehow able to convert the statists of the world into minarchists en mass, I would consider this a triumphant victory for Liberty.

Because I recognise that both of these tasks are difficult, I try to be respectful when engaging someone in political discourse.  I want to win people over, and I realise that name-calling and temper-tantrums is not the way to achieve this.  So you can imagine just how embarrassed I was by many of my fellow Ron Paul Revolutionaries when I was reading blogs and whatnot two years ago!  I wanted Ron Paul to win, and unfortunately many of his followers were acting like fourth-graders in their discourse with random Internet-users.

Political discourse has been a prime concern of mine for quite some time now.  It’s been such a concern because I truly want us to achieve Liberty, and I know that this will not happen as long as we push people away through rudeness.

This brings me to the unfortunate flaw in Mr. Hospers’s analysis. He readily recognises a problem exists involving discourse. However, he seems to assume that the problem is entirely on the anarchists’ end.  Although he does not say so, he implies that minarchists are always respectful and rational in their outlook while anarchists are chaotic, rude, childish, and emotionally-driven.  I do not believe this stereotype holds.

The reality is much more nuanced.  There are some anarchists, naturally, who are quite rude with people—even with fellow libertarians, much to my chagrin.  There are also plenty of anarchists who are extremely respectful individuals.  Could you imagine the mild-mannered Jeffrey Tucker throwing profanities at a political opponent, or stamping his foot?  I certainly cannot.

Yet this is precisely how Mr. Hospers paints all of us anarchists.  Writes Hospers,

There is either an unwillingness [no the part of anarchists] to enter into calm sustained argument about it [the virtues of statism], or a childish frenzy in which they conduct argument, which makes it difficult for anyone to enter into it with them without being at the receiving end of name-calling and numerous personal slurs.  I have seen this tendency reach the point of petulant screaming and stamping of feet.

Hospers does not say that this is simply a problem with specific anarchists he’s encountered, but rather that this is a “psychological aspect[] of anarchism.”  The implication is clear: if you are an anarchist, you are likely immature.  Even if you’re not immature, it’s not because anarchism does not entail this personality defect, but because you’ve somehow suppressed your natural anarchist tendency to embrace immaturity.

But this is simply not so.  For one thing, I would estimate that most libertarian anarchists are those who were at one time libertarian minarchists.  I know that I was a minarchist up until July of 2007, and that I only came to embrace anarchy after years of reflection.  Slowly but surely I came around to conclusion after conclusion that this or that aspect of the state was not necessary, that this or that regulation actually caused more harm than good.  For me, straw that broke the camel’s back was the environment.  I had held that free-market environmentalism was a good and necessary thing, but kept telling myself that we needed the state so that we could have appropriate regulations where needed.  The only problem was, I couldn’t think of a single regulation that only the state and nothing else could provide.  At that point, I had no alternative but to consider the matter of anarchism once more, to consider it objectively and intelligently.  I did not embrace anarchism whimsically, but only after a great deal of reflection and thought.  Even after embracing it, I still gave the matter a great deal of thought and reflection, as I believe was appropriate.  I still question it every once in a while to this day, but every time I do, I come back to the same conclusion: it is the only system that conforms to the way humans really work, the only system that conforms to human nature rather than trying to mould humans in some other image.  It is, in short, the only system that can work.  (After all, as we all know, government doesn’t work.)

Thus, since most libertarian anarchists were at one time libertarian minarchists, either Mr. Hospers would have to hold that their personalities changed upon converting to anarchism or that they were just as immature when they were minarchists as they are now. I do not believe Mr. Hospers wishes to concede either of these points.

For another thing, it is simply incorrect to say that all communication breakdowns between minarchists and anarchists are on the anarchists’ end. Just as there are some anarchists who are clearly immature, there is a great deal of minarchists who are just as immature. Believe me, I have engaged in my fair share of discussions with immature minarchists, people who embarrass me as a libertarian just as much as the immature anarchists do. I do not pretend, however, that there is any uniform minarchist psychological mindset, or that all minarchists are appropriately represented by the immature ones I’ve encountered. In short, some anarchists and minarchists alike engage in unproductive discourse, while plenty in both camps understand that mindless name-calling gets us nowhere.

Mr. Hospers writes, “I have certainly noticed, as doubtless many of you have, a recurring personality pattern among those who label themselves anarchists.” But, alas, if I were to paint minarchists under the same broad brush that Mr. Hospers uses to paint anarchists, would this be anything other than stereotyping?

Where, pray tell, is the respectable discourse in that?

_______

¹Among other things, Mr. Hospers claims in his article that anarchists engage in “a strong, usually…neurotic, rebellion against all forms of discipline, especially self-discipline.”  If this point about “living anarchy” proves anything, it is that this Hosperian statement is (in addition to being extremely insulting) fundamentally wrong.

HOW I THINK THE CONSTITUTION CAN BE FIXED (Part II: The Preamble)

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

At 53 words (1.15% of the total words in The Constitution), The Preamble to The Constitution of The United States is, not counting any of the Amendments, the shortest section of The Constitution after Article VII (Ratification). It has never, to my knowledge, ever been used as a basis for any constitutional court case, or for any decision (majority, dissenting, or separate) made by The Supreme Court. The Preamble is essentially considered to be the ‘pretty words’ before the ‘actual’ Constitution. That is kind of like seeing it as a short, light poetry reading for entertainment purposes before the start of the ‘real business’ part of the program. I think that such a view is a tragic mistake.

First of all, The Preamble is fully a part of The Constitution, written with it and subjected to the same ratification process as every other part of The Constitution was. It is a shame, at best, and short-sighted, at worst to not give it the same respect and standing as every other part of The Constitution. For example, for the hawks and for those in the Bush administration, it provides the best justification in the entirety of The Constitution for their aggressive military views and focus on defense issues (“We the People of the United States, in Order to…, provide for the common defence). In my view, the ‘Commander-in-Chief” clause (which I will talk about in my part of this article which will deal with Article II – The Executive Branch) does NOT give the Executive Branch the power or authority that it wants to claim under that clause. Their best arguments can be made using the relevant words in The Preamble.

Unfortunately, for those same hawks and those conservatives who are against progressive social policies, if they want to use the ‘common defence’ wording of The Preamble upon which to build a case, they must also concede equal standing to all of the other provisions of The Preamble. To me, The Preamble is an active part of The Constitution which establishes objectives which our government under The Constitution is obligated to strive to try to achieve. I will discuss this idea in more detail in the part of the article which will deal with Article I (The Legislative Branch) but, briefly goals and objectives are the same as strategies and tactics. Objectives / tactics are the broad, general, rather nebulous overarching purpose of something which cannot be quantifiably measured or ever be truly achieved… we will make the world a better place, we will create a more perfect union, we will explore space, we will end sickness and disease, etc.… these are all objectives. You cannot measure them, you cannot quantify them, you can ONLY work towards them. What helps you work towards achieving your objectives / tactics are your goals / strategies. Goals / strategies are the specific, quantifiable and measurable and specifically achievable progress points which are established as as ways to help us achieve our objectives / strategies … we will reach the moon by the end of the decade, we will give the vote to eighteen year-olds, we will defeat Hitler, we will wipe out smallpox, etc…. these are all goals.

For my section on the Legislature, I will advocate, and give my rationale for making goals and objectives a specific part of the legislative process. For this section on The Preamble, I will simply say that it is where I see the founders listing the objectives which they wanted us to work towards. To me, this makes The Preamble one of the, if not the, single most important parts of the entire Constitution. All that WE need to do is pay attention to it and give it the same respect and standing that we give to any and every other part of The Constitution.

The lack of consideration given to The Preamble is yet another shining example of what I see as the base hypocrisy of those who cry and scream that The Constitution needs to be read literally and without interpretation (the second part of which is, of course, impossible) but do not practice what they demand. The Preamble is just as much a part of The Constitution as any other part is. It was subjected to the same ratification procedure and cannot be changed without such changes going through the same amendment procedure as any other changes to The Constitution would have to go through.

The only change that I would make with regards to The Preamble would not be to change any of its words, it would be to change what respect and legal standing we give those words among our other laws and constitutional provisions.

Rhys M. Blavier

Romayor, Texas

“Truth, Justice and Honor… but, above all, Honor”

© copyright 2009 by Rhys M. Blavier
________________________________________________________________________________________

Thank you for reading this article. Please read my other articles and let me know what you think. I am writing them not to preach or to hear myself think but to try to create dialogs, debates and discussions on the nature of our government and how we can build upon and improve it based on what we have seen and learned over the course of the 225 years of The American Experiment.

War and memorial

I’ve been in sick in my bed the last couple days. I’m unsure whether or not it’s self-inflicted because I’d made a trip into Dallas with a girlfriend to eat and drink Saturday night and it came on afterward. When we arrived back in Longview on Sunday, she reminded me to have a happy Memorial Day. I’d forgotten that it was a holiday weekend but as I drifted between sleep and groaning pain, it occurred to me that Memorial Day shouldn’t be a happy occasion but a day of quiet reflection. That thought morphed into something a bit more developed as I heard the background noise of the television and news anchors talk about the biggest sacrifice that man can make for his country- death on the fields of battle. Even through my illness I thought that the biggest load of horseshit that I ever heard.

I am certainly not new to the idea that every imaginary lined state- ours included- has its own propaganda outlets but what a slap in the face it is to tell people that the best thing one can do for his fellow man is die in arms? That these ideas are followed by huge parades, 50% off sales, patriotic movies and fireworks displays should be an indicator of how ridiculous a notion that it is at all and I think it time to re-examine what it is that we’ve been taught to celebrate.

War by its very nature, is destruction; it’s the destruction of lives, resources and ideas and it’s usually done for the basest of reasons- money and fear. Major General Smedley Butler wrote not so long ago in War Is A Racket:

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

This, dear readers, is what we are celebrating when we are grilling and swimming today. I wouldn’t dare tell you how to spend this postal and banking holiday but I would like to remind you that the men and women who’ve died in America’s wars may have had very noble ideas about why they were there but, in truth, they died to line pockets and instill fear. Remember that as you pull another hotdog off the grill for your 7 year old because he is the newest generation of brainwashed who will be saddled with the debt before he was old enough to contract it. He is but one of the next generation of people who may indeed be celebrating his own slavery. I will also be spending time with family but they will understand why this day is free of work and why the government sells the celebration and I will be talking about these ideas tonight on channel 16 (8 eastern) during my show at Bold Voices TV.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PIRACY: PART FIVE

PART FIVE: THE GOLDEN AGE

The Golden Age was inaugurated in 1692 by a Rhode Islander named Thomas Tew. Tew had a letter of marque allowing him to attack French shipping in the African slave-trade. Instead Tew took his vessel into the Indian Ocean began attacking vessels from the Mughal Empire (at that time the dominant power of India). Spurred by Tew’s enormous windfall, other pirates soon followed. Henry Avery, a mate on a privateer named Charles II, disdained the fig-leaf of latters of marque (not that they were valid against Indian vessels). He led a mutiny and  seized the Charles II (renamed the Fancy) and sailed for Johanna Island off Madagascar, which was rapidly becoming a pirate rendezvous. From there Avery sailed with Tew until the Rhode Island captain was killed in battle. In quick succession Avery seized the Ganj-i-Sawai and the Fateh Muhammed worth perhaps £500,000 together.

Avery also ignited an international crisis. The ships Avery seized carried relatives of the Great Mughal himself and the Mughal threatened war if something was not done. The East India Company, run by England’s corporate elite were horrified. At the time they were pursuing “quiet trade,” avoiding expensive military outlays. Ironically, the Company’s brief war against the Mughal in 1690 may have been what gave Tew his ideas. In any case the Company could so little beyond offering sporadic convoy services. The pirate bases were difficult (and no doubt expensive) to attack. Effective law enforcement at the pirates’ point of origin, the American colonies, was stymied by colonial governors who looked the other way for a share of the loot.

In 1698 a consortium of wealthy nobles, investors, and politicians formed a company to do a bit of freelance pirate hunting. The plan was to bring the pirates to justice and to bring in a haul of pirate gold. The consortium’s chosen man was a New Yorker by the name of William Kidd.

Kidd found arresting pirates to be impossible. His crew were depleted by naval press-gangs and desertion. The pirates proved easy to find, but clearly too risky to collar. Kidd was reduced to recruiting men off the beach at Johanna. Far from being the scourge of pirates, Kidd was signing them on as sailors. This did little for discipline and Kidd killed a mutinous gunner in a violent altercation.

Kidd’s other remit, amassing treasure, proved doable. Unfortunately in his eagerness to please his masters, Kidd resorted to methods that greatly resembled those of the pirates. On his return to New York Kidd found a warrant for his arrest waiting for him. Stung by the scandal Kidd’s backers turned on him. Critical documents that supported Kid’s version of events disappeared. Convicted of piracy and the murder of the gunner, Kidd went to the gallows.

By then the authorities realized that a solution to piracy had to be found, but the bought governors and thinly stretched Royal Navy were not up to the task. Instead the king issued wholesale pardons. The outbreak of the War of Spanish Succession offered ample scope for legal looting during the next thirteen years.

The end of war in 1714 released a flood of desperadoes, mostly British, on the seas. They revived their old rendezvous off Madagascar. Nor did the new breed confine their attentions to Indian vessels. Pirate gangs operated openly from Nassau in the Bahamas.

Outlaws such as Calico Jack Rakham, Stede Bonnet, Bartholomew Roberts, Anne Read, Mary Bonney, and Edward “Blackbeard” Teach became criminal celebrities. Their great chronicler was Captain Johnson, perhaps a pseudonym for Daniel Defoe, whose General History of the Pirates became a true-crime classic.

Once again law enforcement proved difficult in the face of highly mobile outlaws and corrupt local authorities. The crown resorted to a two-pronged approach. The Royal Navy began visiting Madagascar the better to keep watch on pirate activities. In 1718 a new governor descended on Nassau. He was Woodes Rogers, a well-know privateer. Rogers did not rely on force alone. He was authorized to issue free pardons to any pirate who foreswore raiding. Backsliders were hunted down, often by their former comrades who were expected to show their loyalty to the new order by acting as bounty hunters.

The program had results. Bonnet went to the gallows in 1718, Calico Jack in 1720. While Read and Bonney were spared hanging, they received prison sentences. Blackbeard accepted a pardon and relocated to Okracoke Island on the North Carolina coast. A naval force from neighboring Virginia liquidated Blackbeard in a savage battle in 1718. There has been speculation that Blackbeard’s demise was linked to an attempted coup against the governor of North Carolina shortly thereafter.

Bartholomew Roberts was among the last of the Golden Age pirates. He had been a mate on slave ships on the Guinea run. Pirates of this era followed the Royal Navy’s custom of “pressing” or kidnapping any seaman whose skills they could use. When pirates captured his vessel in 1719, Roberts was pressed into service aboard the pirate. Roberts’ leadership skills proved a bonus and after the death of the previous commander Roberts was elected captain. Pirates of the era generally elected their leaders. Leading heavily armed desperadoes with no compunctions about mutiny required a certain mix of delicacy and wolf-pack violence. Mostly it required a steady provision of looted wealth, which Roberts was quite adept at. He led a small armada of three vessels in pillaging forays from the Cape Verde Islands to Newfoundland. But the days of freebooting were numbered. Roberts was run down and killed off the African coast in 1722. Roberts death took the heart out of his men and they surrendered. The black men among the pirates were sold into slavery. Fifty-two others were hanged at the English trading post of Cape Coast Castle.

The mass execution and enslavement of Roberts’ men was a decisive blow to piracy. A few pirate vessels remained at large until 1725, but large-scale piracy by alliances of British outlaws was a thing of the past. The Golden Age was over.

-Dave Hardy

Anarchy is Coming to America

With massive government debasing of the fiat U.S. Dollar, with mounting decades of hypermilitarism, with the destabilising effects of ever more central planning, could the statist American Empire collapse within the next four years?  And if it does, how will citizens cope?

These are the questions aimed to be addressed by a daring new web series, Anarchy in America.

Written and produced by Sky Conway, President of Renegade Studios, Anarchy in America takes place in 2013, in a bankrupt America where “food riots erupt and mobs loot stores.”  While preachers on street corners claim this is “Armageddon,” the president addresses the nation on live TV.  He declares Martial Law.

I first learned of this project from Laissez-Faire!, a new magazine/catalogue being released by Laissez-Faire Books (which was recently acquired by the International Society for Individual Liberty).  In this magazine, Ms. Joyce Brand writes,

In a small coastal community in California, a band of colorful residents rally together to solve social problems from looting to feeding the elderly.  This is not utopia but flawed characters struggling to make their community work, battling each other and the remnants of government while building voluntary institutions for currency, charity, protection, and more.  But even as freedom takes root, the government returns.  State agents with guns demand taxes and obedience.  And, then, a tank rolls down the center of Main Street; the federal government has reconstituted (p. 9).

Professor Randy Barnett, author of The Structure of Liberty, is one of the consultants on Anarchy in America.

This show will be released as a series of webisodes at anarchy.tv, each approximating seven minutes in length.  Each set of twelve episodes will be “structured like a three-act feature film.  …  This allows us to consolidate each set of webisodes into movie-length DVDs,” writes the producer, “with extras, to market to a wide audience.”

Production will not begin until enough money has been raised to fund the first three episodes, but once things are under way, “Laissez Faire Books will publish the novelization of the series, and we expect to have graphic books as well.  We will have merchandise to sell, such as tee shirts, posters, baseball caps, mugs, etc.  There will be 15 second commercial spots available in front of each episode.  The DVD sales will bring in more revenue as the series continues, and there is the potential for a cable TV deal.”

All in all, I’m quite excited about the prospect of watching this show.

—Alexander S. Peak

Live-blogging: Hamilton’s Curse: Chapter 2: Public Blessing or National Curse?

It’s unfortunate that economics is such an esoteric subject, for it certainly impacts all of us.  It’s perhaps all the more unfortunate because of the ease with which the political class can confuse and dupe the public, thereby exploiting the masses.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo begins the second chapter of his Hamilton’s Curse noting that “[g]overnment debt is every politician’s dream” because it allows him or her to “buy votes by spending on government programs…that will make him popular now, while putting the lion’s share of the cost on future taxpayers, who must pay off the debt” (p. 38).

The result of this is obvious enough: we, the taxpayers, never truly grasp how expensive are the programmes with which we’re presented, and so the debt keeps mounting.  The national debt, at the time DiLorenzo was writing his book, had exceeded $9 trillion, with unfunded liabilities mounting around $70 trillion (p. 39).

Then there’s “the biggest government program of all—war” (Ibid.).  The American taxpayer would be much more likely to demand peaceful relations if they were presented with “an explicit tax bill for it” (Ibid.).  Thus DiLorenzo writes, “Taxpayers feeling the sting of gigantic wartime increases would be much more inclined to pressure their governmental respresentatives to limit their military adventures to national defense purposes, as opposed to imperialistic ventures based on more dubious motives” (Ibid.).  And this is why Jefferson held that “the perpetuation of debt, has drenched the earth with blood” (p. 40).

What has any of this to do with Alexander Hamilton? It was precisely Hamilton who “championed,” in pursuit of his goal of bigger, more centralised government and imperial glory, “the creation of a large national debt” (Ibid.).  He did this in two ways:  He (1) encouraged the federal state to assume all of the debt from the old government and (2) encouraged the central government to assume the war debts of the various states (pp. 41, 46).

His first proposal was very popular, as it allowed the political class to become much more wealthy.  Federal politicians and other New Yorkers learned of the federal government’s plans to pay off old war debts at full face value long before the information could filtrate to the rest of the country and the many holders of old war bonds.  These members of the political class, with their inside information, quickly entered the game of speculation, buying up these government bonds around the country from “haplass and unsuspecting war veterans at prices as low as 10 percent of full value” (pp. 41–42).  Republicans and Federalists alike profited from the graft.

This did not sit well with James Madison, however, who proposed that the original bondholders also be paid at full value.  Madison was denounced “as a dreamer” (p. 44).

Hamilton’s second proposal was not as popular as his first.  For one thing, this entire generation saw the various states as free and independent countries, with the federal government being merely a meeting of the states to better secure their basic and collective needs, such as defence or the coining of a uniform currency (p. 46).  For another, the states that had already paid off their debt, such as Virginia, did not want to have to socialise the debt of the other states that had not been in their opinions as dilligent (p. 47).  As such, Hamilton’s assumption plan was defeated in Congress no less than five times (p. 48).  It did not eventually pass until Hamilton struck a deal with Jefferson to allow the U.S. capital to move from New York to Virginia, something Jefferson had desired but the Hamiltonians had, until that point, been blocking (Ibid.).

The reason Hamilton wanted the newly centralised government to assume vast quantities of debt was that “he wanted to tie the wealthy to the state as a permanent, big-government lobbying class” (p. 45).  The primary government bondholders, after all, would be the more affuent citizens, and they would have an “interest in continued borrowing and continued tax increases to assure that they would be paid their principal and interest” (Ibid.).  Therefore Hamilton, not surprisingly, also rallied for higher taxes, “including the notorious tax on whiskey, a carriage tax, and a national property tax (which spawned a tax revolt in massachusetts—the Fries Rebellion)” (p. 43).

Hamilton defended the “[p]lundering of the working class with onerous taxes” because he saw Americans as too “indolent” and held that these harsh taxes would encourage the people to work harder (Ibid.).  Of course, the opposite is true.  The more people have to surrender in taxes, the less motivated they are to work hard.  What’s the point, they ask, when Uncle Sam is taking it all anyway?  Perhaps one of the worst aspect of these changes was the opportunity for a standing army of tax-collectors to be created, precisely what Hamilton had used to squash the Whiskey Rebellion (p. 44, cf. 33–36).  DiLorenzo cites this as “one of the chief reasons why the Anti-Federalists never trusted Hamilton.  A standing army of tax collectors could (and eventually would) destroy states’ rights altogether” (p. 44, cf. 48).

As I expressed in my previous entry, I’m not personally fond with DiLorenzo’s use of the term “states’ rights.”  Governments, after all, cannot possess rights.  Only individuals—and the voluntary associations they create—can possess rights.  The founders understood clearly that states did not and could not possess “rights,” and thus, when they drafted the tenth amendment, they clearly referenced powers rather than “right.”  What this Hamiltonian centralisation of power threatens, therefore, are the powers that were reserved to the states under the U.S. Constitution.

In any event, there were those who opposed Hamilton’s nationalist schemes.  Albert Gallatin of Pennsylvania called Hamilton’s assumption plan “subversive of the rights, liberty and peace of the people,” a view “endorsed by the Pennsylvania legislature” (p. 47).  (Luckily for Gallatin, Hamilton was unsuccessful in his drive to “have Gallatin arrested and put on trial” (Ibid.).)  John Taylor of Virginia pointed out that the Hamiltonian schemes “would result in ‘the accumulation of great wealth in a few hands,’ accumulted through ‘a political moneyed engine.’  It would create British mercantilism in America, in other words” (p. 48).

DiLorenzo also addresses the despicable Sedition Act, which the federal government used to silence Jeffersonians and other Republican opponents of the Federalists’ nationalist agenda.  Many innocent men were arrested under this law, including at least twenty-one newspaper editors, “all of whom supported Jefferson….  No Federalists were harassed by the Sedition Act” (p. 50).  This act, along with the Alien Acts (collectively called the Alien and Sedition Acts by historians), was what lead Jefferson and Madison to author the Virginia and Kentucky Resolves of 1798, thereby nullifying these laws within their state borders.

DiLorenzo attributes the reactionary policies of the Federalists to the 1800 Republican victory.  On pages 51–53, he details the history of national debt in the United States from the time of Jefferson to the present, showing how, over time, the amount of debt the government has opted to take on at any given time has ratcheted upward.  He concludes on page 53 that perpetual government debt “essentially relies on forced labor,” turning today’s citizens into tax serfs, and points out that governments have historically relied in the “hidden tax” of inflation to pay off debt, knowing that citizens do not notice this form of taxation in the same way they notice direct taxes.  Finally he spells out the destructive effects of this approach on pages 54 and 55, and draws the connection between Hamilton’s bad policy ideas and the destructive policies of modern Keynesians on pages 56 and 57.

Overall, I found the chapter stimulating.  Authors do not often comment, especially in any great detail, on the problems with large national debts.  This is probably because historians and political theorists often do not have much background in economics—DiLorenzo does, and is able to incorporate his understanding of this otherwise esoteric subject into his historical analysis.

—Alexander S. Peak

HOW I THINK THE CONSTITUTION CAN BE FIXED (Part I: The Problem)

I have said many times over many years that I think that The Constitution of The United States is broken.  I have recently been asked to give specific examples of what I mean when I say that.  This is, of course, a very fair question to ask.  To answer it, however, I will both give some background information to help explain WHY I feel the way I do on this subject (which is the topic of this first part of this article) and, as I don’t think that it is helpful when people say what they think is wrong with something without actually offering any possible solutions to the problems that they see, I will also provide specific examples of WHAT I would specifically suggest to fix these perceived problems (which will be the topic of the second part of this article). I will do this by primarily suggesting how I think specific aspects or parts of The Constitution can be improved to better accomplish the goals of the founders.  Now, with my suggested changes, I will not be offering specific wordings for those changes.  I believe it would be pre-mature and a poor process to do so within the scope of this article.  I think that that there needs to be some agreement first about what changes should be made, then establish specific goals and objectives for those changes, as well as agreement on why a specific change should be made and what its purpose would be, and THEN, work on the actual wording to be forever enshrined in The Constitution.  For me, then, to actually propose specific wording changes at this stage in the process would be pre-mature.  In addition, I am rather… verbose… and I personally think that such wording needs to be as concise as possible.

Let me start by telling my readers why this topic interests me and why I feel I am qualified to write an article on this subject.  When I was a 16-year old kid in high school, I was able to get involved in several college student organizations at Texas A&M University.  This was a very unique period at A&M in the mid-1970s, which is what made this possible.  As a high school kid, I was still an outsider in those groups.  This allowed me to be an observer of the organizational group dynamics.  In one of the organizations, after I had been in it for a couple of years, there was a huge internal crisis which literally tore the organization apart.  This was the first time I ever got to experience what I came to call the ‘second generation effect’.

It was for this group that I wrote my first constitution, a 25-page thing that no one ever got to see because when I had completed it, it was stolen before I could present it.  In retrospect, it probably wasn’t very a very good constitution, although I do not have a copy I can read to verify that.  What writing it began for me, however, was hobby of designing fictional organizations and writing constitutions for them that lasted well over a decade.  I would do this in the same way that some people do crosswords or jigsaw puzzles and, to me, the process was, and is, very much a logic puzzle.   Along the way I have written five to seven actual constitutions for real organizations and, because of what I watched happen in those groups I was part of while I was in high school discovered a desire to help other people create better organizations themselves. I eventually earned a Master’s degree that would allow me to work as a student activities / college union professional, which also provided me with the means to collect constitutions from all kinds of organizations from many different locations to study.  This has allowed me to see many commonalities, both good and bad, among those documents and helped me to formulate a guiding philosophy for designing and writing constitutions for ANY organization.  That philosophy is:

“You can NOT, by definition, plan for the unexpected… but you are a damn fool if you do not prepare for the predictable.”

In case anyone is interested, by the way, I think that my next project along this line will be to try to incorporate a city in the unincorporated area in which I live and try to create an actual ‘laboratory of democracy’.

The second generation effect is when an organization which has been created by people with a common understanding of why they created the organization themselves begins to have people who were NOT part of the organizational creation process reach a level where they begin to have a greater controlling influence on the organization than those who did create it.

When an organization is created, those who created it usually have a common understanding of the principles and processes they expect the organization to operate by.  Because of this mutual understanding, they are generally very minimalist about what they put into the organization’s founding document(s) or constitution because they think that more is unnecessary for the very fact that all of the original members have a consensus about those principles and procedures.  As a result, they leave those principles and procedures unspecified in the organization’s founding document(s).  Even where these people have differences with each other, they are actually bound together by their mutual understandings about the organization.  They simply don’t see how others who will come along later will not share those bonds and will not view the organization in the same way that they do.  This is what results in constitutions and founding documents which are what I classify as the ‘we create this group, and we will do things and we will be friends’ category of constitutions and founding documents.  This is also what I call the ‘first generation effect’.

So, why are the ‘first generation’ and ‘second generation’ effects important concepts when talking about our Constitution?  It is very simple.  I think that the founding fathers operated under the first generation effect when they wrote The Constitution.  Their common experiences with the separation from Britain, The Revolutionary War, and The Articles of Confederation created a common bond which unified them on a subconscious level.  Even with their many disagreements and differences, they were still bound to each other by what they had experienced in common with each other.

This period saw one of the most remarkable collections of great men and great minds in one place and one period of time in all of human history.  I still can’t figure out if history gave us this moment and gathering of mental giants, or if the moment and gathering of mental giants gave us history.  Which one is responsible for the other, I frequently wonder?  The result of their gathering in Philadelphia in 1787, The Constitution of The United States, is an amazing and awe-inspiring document.  In fact, I think that it has single-handedly shaped where the world has moved since it was created more than any other single document, philosophy, event, or person since then.  The downside of what they did in Philadelphia is that they had no other real historical examples which they could study, other than their experiences under The Articles, to see what would work and what wouldn’t.  They pretty much only had theories and ideas to use.  They also came up with a minimalist document that left much more unwritten and which would rely on their common understandings with which to fill in the gaps than it actually specified about the operation of the new government which they were creating.

In 1991, I was hired for my first job as a Director of Student Activities at a small, private liberal arts college in Illinois.  At this time, the Student Activities Board was an unconstituted committee of the school’s Student Forum.  I decided that the SAB needed to be a separate organization with its own constitution and I created a committee of students, faculty and staff to help design the organization and help write it’s constitution.  The Forum’s advisor was also the school’s government teacher and ‘expert’ on the U.S. Constitution.  One day, in passing, she stopped me and asked why the document I was trying to create needed to be as long as it was.  After all, she pointed out, the U. S. Constitution was only 4,543 words long (honestly, I remember it with her saying it was only 1,458 words long, which is the length of The Declaration of Independence and not of The Constitution but I will give her the benefit of the doubt by assuming she said the correct total).  I responded by telling her “Yes, and it isn’t a very well written document.”  She got very angry and, without allowing me to explain to her what I meant, she stormed off.  She never again spoke to me civilly and I was terminated at the end of the school year WITHOUT getting my SAB constitution ever publically discussed or voted on, much less passed.

When I said that The Constitution was not a very well written document, I meant no insult to it or to the great men who wrote it.  I meant simply that they didn’t have the advantages of history which we have upon which to base their document.  NOTHING is ever as good as it can be on a first attempt (look at how much better The Constitution was than The Articles were), and distance is needed to see how things work (or don’t work) as desired, and what can be done to improve it.  I think that this is a necessary evolutionary process in any long standing organization.  I also never got to explain to her my theory of the second generation effect or how I think it illustrated the fundamental flaws in the document.

I think that there are many reasons that more things were not spelled out better in The Constitution.  One of them was the first generation effect of common understanding and fellowship.  Another was that the Federalists, under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton, did not WANT things to be spelled out better so that they could use the ambiguities of the document to argue that it said and meant things that it clearly didn’t.  As is common in history, those of a more liberal ideology will concede things to their political opponents in order to create a consensus while those of a more extreme conservative ideology will simply take those concessions as wins for their side and an indication of weakness for the other side, and will then proceed to try to use that point as a baseline from which to further advance their cause at the expense of those they oppose.  A defining characteristic of a liberal personally is individualism and efforts to strive for common agreement and consensus, while a conservative personality is more commonly seen as wanting unification among those who agree with them for the advancement of their agendas, suppression of individual internal disagreement and accumulation of power for their group.  (Please look for a future article to be written by me on the subject of groupthink, conformity and shame theory to further explain this claim.)

By the 1820s, the first generation of those who created our American constitutional government was mostly gone from the scene and the second generation was in control.  As I have personally seen in all too many smaller organizations, the second generation, not having had a hand in giving ‘birth’ to an organization does not feel limited by the voluntary constraints by which the members of the first generation operated.  A key aspect of the second generation effect is the rise of members who are more interested in their personal power than in the greater good of the organization.  These power-seeking second generation members will also look for weaknesses, flaws, loopholes, omissions and ambiguities within the governing procedures and document(s) of an organization to see how they can be utilized to advance their personal power or parochial interests at the expense of the greater good of the entire organization.  I also do not know how to test it, but I theorize that it is the very weakness and flaws in an organization’s founding documents which ALLOW the second generation effect to occur.  The better that things are clarified, and potential problems identified and provided for, the longer an organization can go on with unity and consensus.  I believe that it is the failures of the first generation to study more closely when they create their organization and better provide for potential problems in the future within their founding documents that is the cause of the second generation effect, and not the fault of those in the second generation.

In American constitutional government, this was seen in the rise of a professional political class; party politics holding dominance in the elected branches of government; party and regional (state) concerns being held as being more important by those elected officials than the greater good of the entire nation; and a desire for gaining and using personal power bases in order to control the functions of government at the expense of those who do not help the person wielding that power.

One last aspect of the generation effects is a blurring of the lines between and the convergence of common misunderstandings of the differences between and meanings of both ‘power’ and ‘authority’.  Contrary to common belief, the two ideas do not have the same meanings and, in fact, are completely separate concepts from each other. This is why they are both used together… power AND authority, like assault AND battery.  Authority is the RIGHT to do something.  Power is the ABILITY to do something.  While power and authority might reside together in some cases, it is much more common to have an exercise of POWER by a person or group who do not have the AUTHORITY to do what has been done, or a group or person who has the AUTHORITY to do something but does not have the POWER to accomplish the desired action (much like when the Supreme Court ruled against Andrew Jackson regarding the Cherokee Indian treaties with The United States and Jackson, supposedly, commenting in response that “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”)  Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay and John Calhoun are all classic examples of second generation personalities.

Part II of this article will deal with the actual flaws, weaknesses and omissions which I see in our Constitution and my personal suggestions for correcting them.

 

Rhys M. Blavier

Romayor, Texas

“Truth, Justice and Honor… but, above all, Honor”

© copyright 2009 by Rhys M.  Blavier
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Thank you for reading this article.  Please read my other articles and let me know what you think.  I am writing them not to preach or to hear myself think but to try to create dialogs, debates and discussions on the nature of our government and how we can build upon and improve it based on what we have seen and learned over the course of the 225 years of The American Experiment.

Torture by any other name….

The April 19th edition of the New York Times Scott Shane summarizes the now infamous 2005 CIA memo on torture. Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed were between the two of them waterboarded 266 times. Am I the only one who’s outraged by this? The same article conceeds:

A former C.I.A. officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and other news media organizations in 2007 that Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew.

So why the need to waterboard him after he confessed in the first 35 seconds? Why should he have been tortured in the first place? For a possible answer, three points:  first, a brief history of this form of torture; second, the effects of  torture on the human body; third, a look at how other countries have used and finally, some thoughts on why this issue doesn’t bother Americans.

Waterboarding has had many names over the many centuries that it has been used. A variation of it was used in the Spanish Inquisition under the name “toca“:

“The toca, also called tortura del agua, consisted of introducing a cloth into the mouth of the victim, and forcing them to ingest water spilled from a jar so that they had the impression of drowning”.William Schweiker claims that the use of water as a form of torture also had profound religious significance to the Inquisitors.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding

The Dutch East India company used a variation of it as well. Pay special attention to the physical affects it had on the victim:

…Agents of the Dutch East India Company used a precursor to waterboarding during the Amboyna massacre, which took place on the island of Amboyna in the Molucca Islands in 1623. At that time, it consisted of wrapping cloth around the victim’s head, after which the torturers “poured the water softly upon his head until the cloth was full, up to the mouth and nostrils, and somewhat higher, so that he could not draw breath but he must suck in all the water”. In one case, the torturer applied water three or four times successively until the victim’s “body was swollen twice or thrice as big as before, his cheeks like great bladders, and his eyes staring and strutting out beyond his forehead”…

This next instance occured in more recent times in 1852 at Sing Sing prison:

…’hydropathic torture.’ The stream of water is about one inch in diameter, and falls from a hight [sic] of seven or eight feet. The head of the patient is retained in its place by means of a board clasping the neck; the effect of which is, that the water, striking upon the board, rebounds into the mouth and nostrils of the victim, almost producing strangulation. Congestion, sometimes of the heart or lungs, sometimes of the brain, not unfrequently [sic] ensues; and death, in due season, has released some sufferers from the further ordeal of the water cure…

And again in WWII by the “Evil Axis Powers”:

…During World War II both Japanese troops, especially the Kempeitai, and the officers of the Gestapo,^[66] the German secret police, used waterboarding as a method of torture. During the Japanese occupation of Singapore the Double Tenth Incident occurred. This included waterboarding, by the method of binding or holding down the victim on his back, placing a cloth over his mouth and nose, and pouring water onto the cloth. In this version, interrogation continued during the torture, with the interrogators beating the victim if he did not reply and the victim swallowing water if he opened his mouth to answer or breathe. When the victim could ingest no more water, the interrogators would beat or jump on his distended stomach…

It sounds very barbaric but it’s still something that we “had to do” to get “intelligence” out of “high value detainees”. I will concede that we might not have stomped on the stomach’s of detainees when they could not swallow more water but we have done things just as bad or worse.

…In the memos, released Thursday, the Bush Administration White House Office of Legal Counsel offered its endorsement of CIA torture methods that involved placing an insect in a cramped, confined box with detainees. Jay S. Bybee, then-director of the OLC, wrote that insects could be used to capitalize on detainees’ fears…

…The memo was dated Aug. 1, 2002. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s children were captured and held in Pakistan the following month, according to a report by Human Rights Watch…At a military tribunal in 2007, the father of a Guantanamo detainee alleged that Pakistani guards had confessed that American interrogators used ants to coerce the children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed into revealing their father’s whereabouts…

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/04/17/bush-torture-memos-align-with-account-that-911-suspects-children-were-tortured/

A few of the effects of drowning on the the human body:

…A conscious victim will hold his or her breath (see Apnea) and will try to access air, often resulting in panic, including rapid body movement. This uses up more oxygen in the blood stream and reduces the time to unconsciousness. The victim can voluntarily hold his or her breath for some time, but the breathing reflex will increase until the victim will try to breathe, even when submerged.

The breathing reflex in the human body is weakly related to the amount of oxygen in the blood but strongly related to the amount of carbon dioxide. During apnea, the oxygen in the body is used by the cells, and excreted as carbon dioxide. Thus, the level of oxygen in the blood decreases, and the level of carbon dioxide increases. Increasing carbon dioxide levels lead to a stronger and stronger breathing reflex, up to the breath-hold breakpoint, at which the victim can no longer voluntarily hold his or her breath. This typically occurs at an arterial partial pressure of carbon dioxide of 55 mm Hg, but may differ significantly from individual to individual and can be increased through training…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drowning

When water enters the lungs

…If water enters the airways of a conscious victim the victim will try to cough up the water or swallow it thus inhaling more water involuntarily. Upon water entering the airways, both conscious and unconscious victims experience laryngospasm, that is the larynx or the vocal cords in the throat constrict and seal the air tube. This prevents water from entering the lungs. Because of this laryngospasm, water enters the stomach in the initial phase of drowning and very little water enters the lungs. Unfortunately, this can interfere with air entering the lungs, too. In most victims, the laryngospasm relaxes some time after unconsciousness and water can enter the lungs causing a “wet drowning”. However, about 10-15% of victims maintain this seal until cardiac arrest, this is called “dry drowning” as no water enters the lungs. In forensic pathology, water in the lungs indicates that the victim was still alive at the point of submersion. Absence of water in the lungs may be either a dry drowning or indicates a death before submersion…

…The brain cannot survive long without oxygen and the continued lack of oxygen in the blood combined with the cardiac arrest will lead to the deterioration of brain cells causing first brain damage and eventually brain death from which recovery is generally considered impossible. A lack of oxygen or chemical changes in the lungs may cause the heart to stop beating; this cardiac arrest stops the flow of blood and thus stops the transport of oxygen to the brain. Cardiac arrest used to be the traditional point of death but at this point there is still a chance of recovery. The brain will die after approximately six minutes without oxygen but special conditions may prolong this (see ‘cold water drowning’ below). Freshwater contains less salt than blood and will therefore be absorbed into the blood stream by osmosis. In animal experiments this was shown to change the blood chemistry and led to cardiac arrest in 2 to 3 minutes. Sea water is much saltier than blood. Through osmosis water will leave the blood stream and enter the lungs thickening the blood. In animal experiments the thicker blood requires more work from the heart leading to cardiac arrest in 8 to 10 minutes. However, autopsies on human drowning victims show no indications of these effects and there appears to be little difference between drownings in salt water and fresh water. After death, rigor mortis will set in and remains for about two days, depending on many factors including water temperature…

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed experienced this 183 times. You think he felt that we were a proverbial “Shinning City on a Hill”? No, instead a bet he felt like he’d been captured by savages. I’m personally ashamed and appalled that my taxes paid the CIA torture this man.  They used our tax money to kill, torture, and humiliate people who we don’t even know. They coerce the complicity from each one of us living in America and Britain.

Historically speaking, there have been many other people persecuted for war crimes. America has even persecuted other people for waterboarding.

…McCain is referencing the Tokyo Trials, officially known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. After World War II, an international coalition convened to prosecute Japanese soldiers charged with torture. At the top of the list of techniques was water-based interrogation, known variously then as ‘water cure,’ ‘water torture’ and ‘waterboarding,’ according to the charging documents. It simulates drowning.” Politifact went on to report, “A number of the Japanese soldiers convicted by American judges were hanged, while others received lengthy prison sentences or time in labor camps…

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2007/dec/18/john-mccain/history-supports-mccains-stance-on-waterboarding/

Remember that they killed Saddam’s sons and one of their “justifications” was that they tortured Iraqis. This is ironic because we’re the ones torturing Iraqis now and nobody has been executed for it yet. This page outlines Saddam’s “Crimes Against Humanity”. It’s funny how we use these slogans against everyone except Americans even when our government commits the same crimes. Carl Clauberg experimented on over 300 woman and sterilized many of them. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison. Doihara Kenji was sentenced to death for his part in the Pearl Harbor incident. There are many other war criminals that can be found here.  Why no American presidents are on this list?

We want to believe that the American government is incapable of torturing people even though it’s exactly what we’re doing. Does the government have that much of a hold on the media?  They play word games  to cloud our view. They say that we’re in a “credit crunch” when we’re in a “recession“.  When they admit to  “recession,” we’re really  in a “depression“. They played the same game in Iraq. According to the news we were dealing with a few “foreign fighters” when it was an “insurgency”.  Called it “insurgency” when it was really a “civil war“.   Now that Baghdad has been separated among sectarian lines we’ve declared victory. Likewise they now call “harsh interrogation” what is “torture”.

I want  to remind people of the horrors of torture. When McCain was caught and tortured then sang like a bird but torture is only successful at getting the captor to say what he thinks the torturer wants him to say. Torture inevitably gives the torturer incorrect intelligence because the tortured just wants the pain to stop. It is also a double-sided sword  because the enemy becomes emboldened by the barbarism of the side that uses this disgraceful tactic. It reminds them of the immoral and merciless nature of their enemy and only makes them fight harder. In the case of religious fanatics they are emboldened even more when they see that their brethren are being tortured by people of a different faith.

So I think we just need to endorse Peace and do away with states who carry out atrocities in the name of all the people that live within its borders.

Peace…

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PIRACY: PART FOUR

PART FOUR: THE BUCCANEERS

The 1600s witnessed the birth of a new phenomenon, the buccaneers. These men were a frontier subculture, akin to the Gauchos, Trekboers, or Cossacks. The buccaneers were West Indian frontiersmen, drawn from runaway servants (white slaves, after a fashion), outlaws, deserting sailors, adventurers, and assorted drifters. They lived by hunting, logging, and smuggling. Their favorite dish was barbecue, called in the local patois boucan, thus boucaniers or buccaneers.

The principal base of these “Brethren of the Coast” was the island of Tortuga off Haiti. The lumberjack groups called the “Baymen” favored the mainland around the Gulf of Honduras and others associated with a short-lived Puritan colony on Providence Island.

French and English colonial governors found these well-armed hoodlums to be just the thing to confront Spanish might. The barbecue-men became privateering mercenaries and looted ships and cities across the Spanish Main. With their canoes and hunting muskets the Brethren of the Coast were a formidable, if rag-tag, force. Armed with actual warships and generously supplied with cannon, they were a major threat capable of seizing Spanish cities. In 1678 A Dutchman named Alexander Exquemelin penned a memoir of life among the buccaneers. He immortalized buccaneer leaders such as L’Olonnais, Rock the Brazilian, Bartholomew the Portuguese, and Henry Morgan. Exquemelin paid tribute to their cunning and courage without understating their treachery and cruelty.

The wild and woolly frontier days waned as English and French colonies became more established. The Baymen in the Gulf of Honduras began settling down as planters and formed the basis for the English colony of Belize. The buccaneer hang-out of Port Royal in Jamaica suffered a devastating earthquake in 1692 which sunk it to the bottom of the harbor. Successful raiders such as Henry Morgan, Laurens de Graaf, and Jean Ducasse found comfortable berths in the planter elite.

By the 1690s what was left of the buccaneers were almost entirely associated with the French colonial establishment. When Tortuga was incorporated into France’s empire, the buccaneers went with it. In 1697 buccaneers spearheaded a French naval task force that seized the colonial city of Cartagena. It was the last great buccaneer raid. Dynastic politics made France and Spain allies in the 1700s. But by then Spain was no longer the dominant colonial power. The buccaneers had worked themselves out of a job.

-Dave Hardy

PART I: An Introduction to American Involvement with War Crimes Trials

“If certain acts and violations of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. We are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”

 

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of The United States
Robert H. Jackson

 

Justice Jackson was asked by President Truman to represent The United States in establishing the process for trying German war criminals after Germany’s surrender in World War II. The above quote was made by him in 1945 during the negotiations of The London Charter of The International Military Tribunal (IMT) which established the legal justifications and basis for the trials. He later acted as the Chief Prosecutor for the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (IMT) of the major war criminals.

 

I was probably only 12 years old when I first saw the movie ‘Judgment at Nuremburg‘ (based on the Judges’ Trial of the twelve subsequent Nuremberg Trials held after the one for the major war criminals). Even at that age, several things about the trials didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t have much more of an understanding of law or philosophy than that of any other child of my age, but I have always had a very natural understanding of logic… especially in my ability to recognize what ISN’T logical. The main question I have always had about the Nuremberg Trials is: “Why didn’t the losers get to file any charges against the winners?” That, to my mind, would be the primary aspect of a war crimes trial which would keep it from being simply ‘victors’ justice’

 

As I got older, more questions came to my mind about the Nuremberg Trials. The two most prominent of these questions are:

 

(1) We judged that those who were indicted and tried should have resisted or refused to obey laws and/or orders which they thought were immoral. However, what about those who did not have personal moral objections to those laws and/or orders? If they agreed with them but had no hand in giving or enacting them, weren’t they operating both within the law AND within their own moral codes and, if that was the case, then why weren’t they protected from prosecutions such as those at Nuremberg?; and

 

(2) If we wanted to establish that “I was just following orders” is NOT a valid defense, why doesn’t The United States put procedures and practices into place for our own soldiers and citizens who hold such objections to laws and/or orders which they are expected to follow and for which they would face court-martial and/or civil prosecution if they did refuse to obey.

 

In World War II, while there were several localized instances of American War Crimes which could be truthfully judged to be individual aberrations which could be properly, adequately and legally dealt with internally through courts-martial (the Biscari massacres, the Chenonge massacre, and the Dachau massacre, to name just three), there were no attempts to try larger scale incidents against any of the Allies for potential war crimes which originated at a command level or higher. Examples of these would include: the Dresden fire bombings of a non-strategic civilian city for the psychological effect it would have throughout Germany; the re-designation by the Allies of some German POWs (who were protected by The Geneva Conventions) to ‘disarmed enemy forces‘ (who, allegedly, were NOT protected he Geneva Convention) and their subsequent use as forced (i.e. – slave) labor by the French to clear minefields in France and The Low Countries (while this was provided for by the Armistice, the French government conceded that the practice was ‘perhaps‘ not in accordance with The Geneva Conventions. By December of 1945, the French government estimated that 2,000 German prisoners were being killed or maimed each month in accidents); and American food policy in post-war Germany which directly and indirectly caused the unnecessary suffering and deaths, from starvation, of large numbers of civilians and POWs in occupied Germany in violation of Article 43 of the 1907 Hague Rules of Land Warfare.

 

As we look at the debates our nation faces today about war crimes, it is ironic that, at the end of World War II and during the post-war period, it was The United States which took the lead in demanding legal actions and prosecutions to establish both guilt of those who would be punished AND legal precedence for the future. As early as December 1941, British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, was a vocal advocate for summary executions of war criminals, even to the point of being willing to use Acts of Attainder to circumvent any legal obstacles. It was leaders in The United States who eventually dissuaded him from this stance.

 

In 1943, at the Tehran Conference, Stalin proposed summarily executing 50,000 – 100,000 German Staff Officers. President Franklin Roosevelt tried to lighten this attitude with the suggestion that maybe only ‘49,000′ would need to be executed. Churchill followed this up by denouncing the “cold-blooded executions of soldiers who fought for their country”. In 1945, America’s Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, and his staff at The War Department drafted a plan for the ‘Trial of European War Criminals‘, which was strongly approved by President Truman. This plan formed the basis for negotiations of The London Charter.

 

While there may have been legitimate criticisms of the Allied war crimes trials, including by at least three other members of The United States Supreme Court… Chief Justice Harlan Stone (who called the Nuremberg trials “a fraud” and a “high-grade lynching”), Associate Justice William O. Douglas (who said that the Allies were guilty of “substituting power for principle” and that “law was created ex post facto to suit the passion and clamor of the time”), and Associate Justice Frank Murphy (who said, in protest of the war crime trial of Japanese General Masaharu Homma, “Either we conduct such a trial as this in the noble spirit and atmosphere of our Constitution or we abandon all pretense to justice, let the ages slip away and descend to the level of revengeful blood purges.”), it was The United States of America which led the path to the establishment of norms of public international trials for war crimes. Now we face showing ourselves as a nation of hypocrites who are quick to judge others but unwilling to have judgment turned on our own.

 

The war crimes trials of World War II may have utilized ex post facto laws and rules to judge and condemn Axis war criminals but, thanks in large part to The United States, they establish the precedent for holding accountable those at any and all levels of military, political, civilian AND economic structures for both actions AND decisions which lead to the systematic rule of brutality, terror and violence of both the German and Japanese regimes.

 

The United States considered such trials so important that after growing differences between the four major Allied Powers made additional international trials under the International Military Tribunal impossible, that they held 12 subsequent trials on their own at Nuremberg. Under Control Council Law #10, which empowered any of the occupying authorities to try suspected war criminals in their respective occupation zones, The United States alone, between December 1946 and October 1948, conducted:

 

01.) The Doctors’ Trial (Medical doctors and Nazi officials)

 

War Crimes: Performing medical experiments, without the subjects’ consent, on prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries, in the course of which experiments the defendants committed murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts. Also planning and performing the mass murder of prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries, stigmatizated as aged, insane, incurably ill, deformed, and so on, by gas, lethal injections, and diverse other means in nursing homes, hospitals, and asylums during the Euthanasia Program and participating in the mass murder o concentration camp inmates.

 

Crimes Against Humanity: For performing those same acts on German nationals.

 

02.) The Milch Trial (Field Marshall of the Luftwaffe, Erhard Milch)

 

War Crimes: Knowingly committed war crimes as principal and accessory in enterprises involving slave labor and having also willingly and knowingly participated in enterprises involving the use of prisoners of war in war operations contrary to international convention and the laws and customs of war. Also, knowingly and willfully participated in enterprises involving fatal medical experiments upon subjects without their consent.

 

Crimes Against Humanity: For slave labor and fatal medical experiments, in the same manner as indicated in the first two counts, except that here the alleged victims are declared to be German nationals and nationals of other countries.

 

03.) The Judges’ Trial (German jurists and lawyers)

(Held responsible for implementing and furthering the Nazi “racial purity” program through the German eugenic and racial laws)

 

War Crimes: Abuse of the judicial and penal process, resulting in mass murder, torture, plunder of private property.

Crimes Against Humanity: The same grounds, including slave labor charges.

 

04.) The Pohl Trial (Employees of the SS Economics and Administrative Department)

(Held for active involvement in and administration of the “Final Solution”; they also handled the procurement for the Waffen SS and the administration of the SS ‘Totenkopf’Divisions)

War Crimes: Administration of concentration camps and of extermination camps, and the mass murders and atrocities committed those camps.

 

Crimes Against Humanity: The same grounds, including slave labor charges.

 

05.) The Flick Trial (high-ranking directors of Flick’s group of companies)

(Charges centered on slave labor and plundering, but Flick and the Otto Steinbrinck, were also charged for their membership in the “Circle of Friends of Himmler”, a group of influential German industrialists and bankers for the purpose of giving financial support to the Nazis. Its members “donated” annually about 1 million Reichsmark to a “Special Account S” in favor of Himmler.)

War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: Participating in the deportation and enslavement of the civilian populations of countries and territories under the belligerent occupation of or otherwise controlled by Germany, and of concentration camp inmates, for use as slave labor in Flick mines and factories.

 

War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: Plundering and spoliation of occupied territories, and the seizure of plants both in the west (France) and the east (Poland, Russia). Crimes Against Humanity: participation in the persecution of Jews and the ‘aryanization’ of their properties.

 

06.) The Hostages’ Trial

(Regarding the taking of civilian hostages; wanton shootings of hostages and ‘partisans’)

War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: Mass murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Greece, Albania, and Yugoslavia by having ordered hostage taking and reprisal killings.

 

War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: Plundering and wanton destruction of villages and towns in Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia, and Norway.

 

War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: Murder and ill-treatment of prisoners of war, and arbitrarily designating combatants as “partisans”, denying them the status of prisoners of war, as well as killing them after such a designation.

 

War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: Murder, torture, deportation of, and sending Greek, Albanian, and Yugoslav civilians to concentration camps.

 

07.) The IG Farben Trial (directors of IG Farben)

(IG Farben was a large German civilian industrial conglomerate of chemical firms)

War crimes and crimes against humanity: Through the plundering and spoliation of occupied territories, and the seizure of plants in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, France, and Russia.

 

War crimes and crimes against humanity: Through participation in the enslavement and deportation to slave labor on a gigantic scale of concentration camp inmates and civilians in occupied countries, and of prisoners of war, and the mistreatment, terrorization, torture, and murder of enslaved persons.

 

08.) The Einsatzgruppen Trial (Officers of SS mobile Death Squads)

 

Crimes Against Humanity: Through persecutions on political, racial, and religious grounds, murder, extermination, imprisonment, and other inhumane acts committed against civilian populations, including German nationals and nationals of other countries, as part of an organized scheme of genocide.

 

War Crimes: For the same reasons, and for wanton destruction and devastation not justified by military necessity.

 

09.) The RuSHA Trial (Various SS officials of various political and administrative

                  departments)

(For implementation of the ‘pure race’ program [RuSHA])

Crimes Against Humanity: Implementing “racial purity” programs; kidnapping children; forcing ‘non-Aryan’ pregnant women to undergo abortions; plundering; deportation of populations from their native lands in occupied countries and resettling of so-called Volksdeutsche (‘ethnic Germans’) on such lands; sending people who had had ‘interracial’ sexual relationships to concentration camps; and general participation in the persecution of the Jews.

 

War Crimes: For the same reasons.

 

10.) The Krupp Trial (Directors of the Krupp Group)

                  (The Krupp Group was a collection of large German civilian industrial companies)

Crimes Against Humanity: Participating in the plundering, devastation, and exploitation of occupied countries; participating in the murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, and use for slave labor of civilians, German nationals, and prisoners of war who came under German control.

 

11.) The Ministries’ Trial (officials of various Reich ministries)

(Charged for their participation in or responsibility for atrocities committed both in Germany and in occupied countries during the war)

Crimes Against Peace: Planning and waging aggressive war against other nations and violating international treaties.

War Crimes: Being responsible for murder, ill-treatment and other crimes against prisoners of war and enemy belligerents.

Crimes Against Humanity: Committing atrocities and crimes against German nationals on the grounds of political, racial, or religious discrimination.

War crimes and crimes against humanity: Participating in or being responsible for atrocities and crimes committed against civilians in occupied countries; plundering and spoliation of occupied territories; participation in the enslavement, deportation for slave labor, and ill-treatment of civilians in both Germany and occupied countries, and of prisoners of war.

 

12.) The High Command Trial (Senior Flag Officers of the German High Command)

(Charged with having participated in or planned or facilitated the execution of the numerous atrocities committed in countries occupied by the German forces during the war)

Crimes Against Peace: Waging aggressive war against other nations and violating international treaties.

(The tribunal considered all of these accused to be not guilty of this charge, stating that they were not the policy-makers and that preparing for war and fighting a war on orders was not a criminal offense under the applicable international law of the time.)

War Crimes: Being responsible for murder, ill-treatment and other crimes against prisoners of war and enemy belligerents. Crimes Against Humanity: participating in or ordering the murder, torture, deportation, hostage-taking, etc. of civilians in occupied countries.

 

All of the judges for all twelve of these trials were American, as were all of the prosecutors. As a result of these trials, 142 out of 185 total defendants were found guilty of at least one charge. Out of the 142 guilty verdicts, those convicted received 24 death sentences, 20 life sentences, and 98 other prison sentences of varying lengths. In addition to the 35 of the accused who were acquitted, 4 were removed from the trials due to illnesses and 4 others committed suicide during the trials. All of these trials also included charges of conspiracy to commit the various crimes and to initiate and engage in wars of aggression but those charges were mostly dropped either because of poor wording in the orders which provided the legal justification the tribunals or because of beliefs among many of the judges that consideration of those charges was outside of their scope of authorization, or various other concerns. Any future war crimes trials would have to be aware of these difficulties so that they could adequately justify including conspiracy charges in those trials.

 

The United States has prosecuted our vanquished opponents in war for war crimes at least since the trial of Henry Wirz, Commandant of Camp Sumter, the Confederate prisoner of war camp at Andersonville. We also had a history going back just as long of denying full justice and fair trials to those we have accused while, at the same time, have not held our own accountable to the same standards of justice we have condemned others for. A large part of the problems at the Andersonville Prison, for example, occurred because the Union ended the policy it had with the Confederacy of exchanging prisoners in an effort to cause hardship for the Confederacy, which resulted in the massive overcrowding and food shortages at Camp Sumter (which, at its maximum occupation, held enough Union prisoners to make it the 5th largest city in The Confederacy).

 

In 1902, the Lodge Committee in the United States Senate was supposed to investigate allegations of American war crimes committed in The Philippines, which had been building until they eventually ignited when Brigadier General Jacob Smith remarked to a reporter from The Manila News that he “intended to set the entire island of Samar ablaze” and would probably wipe out most of the population of the island. At Nuremberg, Karl Dönitz Commander In Chief of the Kriegsmarine, was charged, tried and found guilty of violating the Second London Naval Treaty (1936) which prohibited unrestricted submarine warfare even though Admiral Chester A. Nimitz stated that The United States also conducted unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific Theatre from the first day we entered the war (Great Britain had also violated the treaty itself).

 

During the Vietnam War, The United States used Agent Orange and other defoliants in Operation Ranch Hand, even though the use of poison agents as weapons in war has been banned since World War I, and initiated The CIA’s Phoenix Program, which was designed to identify and ‘neutralize’ (via infiltration, capture, terrorism, or assassination) the civilian infrastructure supporting the National Liberation Front (NLF) of South Vietnam (or Viet Cong) insurgency. In addition, the files of The Vietnam War Crimes Working Group, a Pentagon task force created to detail endemic war crimes, compiled documentary evidence which confirmed 320 incidents committed by U.S. forces (NOT counting the massacre at My Lai), including seven massacres from 1967 through 1971 in which at least 137 civilians died; 78 other attacks on noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted; and 141 instances in which U.S. soldiers tortured prisoners of war or civilian detainees.

 

These examples show how The United States has not been consistent in its pursuit of international justice regarding war crimes investigations or trials, especially when such investigations or trials should focus ON Americans. However, WE established the precedents at Nuremberg that any and everyone within a nation is accountable to the world for their belligerent actions and intentions against other nations and that, once a nation has acted ON those intentions and engaged in such actions, they are also accountable to the world for their actions regarding how they treat their own nationals, citizens and those within their own borders during such international actions. The United States has also set its own precedents for the legality of removing persons who it considers to be criminals in violation of its own laws, most notably with our invasion of Panama and the forcible removal of Manuel Noriega from his own country to The United States to stand trial under our laws and then be imprisoned in our jail system. This case also demonstrates very nicely our own view that being a head of state is not a protection against international justice.

 

It seems to me that war itself is a crime not ONLY because of what one nation does to another nation and its people in the course of war but also because of what it inevitably causes any warring nation to do to its own people while it is in preparation for and engagement of such wars. This would seem to make the investigation and prosecution of war crimes to be a domestic civil necessity as well as an international criminal one. In 1945, in his opening statement before the IMF during the Nuremberg Trial of the major war criminals, Justice Robert Jackson, in his role as Chief Prosecutor said:

 

“Any resort to war – to any kind of war – is a resort to means that are inherently criminal. War inevitably is a course of killings, assaults, deprivations of liberty, and destruction of property. An honest defensive war is, of course, legal and saves those lawfully conducting it from criminality. But, inherently criminal acts cannot be defended by showing that those who committed them were engaged in a war, when war itself is illegal. The very minimum legal consequences of the treaties making aggressive war illegal is to strip those who incite or wage them of every defense the law ever gave, and to leave war-makers subject to judgment by the usually accepted principles of the law of crimes.”

 

The United States of America has not demonstrated itself to be deserving of the trust of its own citizens or of the world in examining our own for potential war crimes. Nor would it seem that we could be trusted conducting trials for such crimes internally. Since World War II, the prosecution of war crimes has become, of necessity, an increasingly international matter. The United States needs to cooperate with the international community to investigate and try such crimes. Part II of this article topic will cover the rise of and legal justification for international courts for conducting war crimes trials.

 

Rhys M. Blavier
Romayor, Texas

 

“Truth, Justice and Honor… but, above all Honor”

 

© copyright 2009 by Rhys M. Blavier

 

 

The accused and trial results of the Nuremberg Trial (IMT) of the major war criminals were:

 

Martin Bormann: Nazi Party Secretary

(Bureaucrat)

            Sentence: Death

 

Karl Dönitz: Commander-in-Chief of the Kreigsmarine / Hitler’s successor as President of Germany

            Sentence: 10 years

 

Hans Frick: German Law Leader and Governor-General of Poland.

            Sentence: Death

 

Wilhelm Frick: Minister of the Interior and Reich Protector of Bohemia-Moravia

(Authored the Nuremberg Race Laws)

            Sentence: Death

 

Hans Fritzsche: Radio Commentator and Head of Nazi Propaganda Ministry’s news divisions. (Tried in place of Joseph Goebbels who had committed suicide)

            Sentence: Acquitted

 

Walther Funk: Minister of Economics and head of the German Reichsbank.

            Sentence: Life

 

Hermann Goring: Reichsmarshall

(Second highest Nazi official after Hitler)

            Sentence: Death

 

Rudolf Hess: Hitler’s Deputy until 1941

(Flew to Scotland in 1941 to try to broker peace)

            Sentence: Life

 

Alfred Jodl: Wehrmacht Generaloberst

(Military leader)

            Sentence: Death

 

Ernst Kaltenbrunner: Chief of the central Nazi intelligence agency.

(Highest surviving SS official)

            Sentence: Death

 

Wilhelm Keitel: Head of the Wehrmacht command structure

(Military leader)

             Sentence: Death

 

Baron Konstantin von Neurath: Foreign Minister and Protector of Bohemia and Moravia (Resigned in 1943)

            Sentence: 15 years

 

Franz von Papen: German Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor under Hitler, Ambassador to Austria, and Ambassador to Turkey

(Politician and Diplomat)

            Sentence: Acquitted

 

Erich Raeder: Commander-in-Chief of the Kreigsmarine (before Karl Dönitz)

(Resigned in 1943)

            Sentence: Life

 

Joachim von Ribbentrop: Ambassador-Plenipotentiary and Minister of Foreign Affairs

(Politician and Diplomat)

            Sentence: Death

 

Alfred Rosenberg: Party Ideologist, later Minister of Eastern Occupied Territories

            Sentence: Death

 

Fritz Sauckel: Plenipotentiary of slave labor program

            Sentence: Death

 

Hjalmar Schacht: Banker and economist

(Admitted violating the Treaty of Versailles)

            Sentence: Acquitted

 

Baldur von Schirach: Head of the Hitler Youth and Gauleiter of Vienna

(Retired in 1943)

            Sentence: 20 years

 

Arthur Seyss-Inquart: Various political positions and instrumental in the Anschluss

(Political functionary and Diplomat)

            Sentence: Death

 

Albert Speer: Architect and friend of Hitler, later Minister of Armaments

            Sentence: 20 years

 

Julius Streicher: Gauleiter of Franconia, and the publisher of a weekly pro-Nazi newspaper

            Sentence: Death

 

 

Thank you for reading this article. Please read my other articles and let me know what you think. I am writing them not to preach or to hear myself think but to try to create dialogs, debates and discussions on the nature of our government and how we can build upon and improve it based on what we have seen and learned over the course of the 225 years of The American Experiment.

The Corporate ‘Person’

Nowhere are corporations mentioned in The Constitution of the United States of America.  The Constitution was 32 years old before the Supreme Court even dealt with its first case regarding a private, for-profit corporation (Dartmouth College vs. Woodward, 1819) under the contracts clause of Article I, Section 10 (“No State shall…  pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts.”).  It was the conservatively activist court of the period following the War Between the States which changed the landscape of corporate law in the United States with a dictum by Chief Justice Morrison Waite in his opinion on Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886) stating that corporations were ‘persons’ as meant by the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment (…  nor shall any State deprive any ‘person’ of life liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any ‘person’ within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.)

 

Between 1890 and 1937, VERY activist courts that were VERY conservative and pro-business weakened the ability of employees, customers, state legislatures and labor unions to challenge the power of corporations in the United States.  Even under more liberal courts, corporations have been given additional rights of ‘persons’, such as with 1978’s National Bank vs. Bellotti decision which protected corporate ‘political speech’ under the 1st Amendment.  In all ways, corporations in the United States are legal ‘persons’ under The Constitution which means that, in The United States, certain stacks of signed documents are the same as, and have the same rights under the law as any living, breathing flesh and blood ‘person’ does.  Isn’t it time to challenge the legal and logical fallacies of this position?

 

A human ‘person’ is born.  You can say that a corporation is born, also, but a corporation does not go through a childhood or minority in which it is raised and educated before it is given rights and powers of equal standing with an adult.  There is no consideration of childhood for a corporation and yet for a human person, the importance of childhood cannot be minimized.  Children can be required to attend school and be subjected to curfews that do not apply to adults.  Children are restricted in purchasing or using things with which they might harm themselves or others through restrictions which do not apply to adults (alcohol, tobacco, guns, etc.).  Children cannot legally gamble or enter into contracts.  Children can be restricted from accessing information which other adults can freely access (pornography and restricted movies are two examples of this).  Children cannot vote and their rights of assembly can be limited.  Children cannot work or earn their own money except as specifically provided for by law.  Childhood places very real restrictions and limitations on human ‘persons’ before they are given all of the rights and privileges of an adult.  In addition, under The Constitution, there are even further restrictions on age…  no ‘person’ can be elected to a Constitutional office until they have the achieved the age of 25, 30 or 35 (depending on the particular office).  Corporations have no equal burdens placed upon them; rather they enter the world as full adults, like Venus rising out of the sea in a shell or Athena springing from the head of Zeus.

 

A human ‘person’ is responsible for their own actions.  A human ‘person’ who breaks a law and is brought before a court to answer to justice will be the one who pays a fine or goes to jail.  Felons also have restrictions placed upon them for the rest of their lives.  A corporate ‘person’ cannot be jailed.  A corporate ‘person’ can also just make changes in their management or their Board of Directors and make a claim for leniency or exception which a human ‘person’ who is sane cannot make…  “It wasn’t us, it was others, and they aren’t here now”.  Such a claim made by a human ‘person’ would be considered proof of very real and very serious mental illnesses.  While individuals who work for a corporation can be held accountable for some of their actions (keep in mind, the purpose of incorporation is to shield individuals from personal liability or accountability to the public), a corporation itself cannot be imprisoned.  Further, while a corporation might be fined or otherwise punished by a court, the people who made decisions can go elsewhere and continue as they have.  Like a coach of a team which is sanctioned by the NCAA, if the coach can just get a job elsewhere, the sanctions don’t follow him.  Corporations can further shield themselves by creating other corporations which they own and control but which protect the greater corporation from financial or legal liability.

 

A human ‘person’ has duties to perform in their society.  A human ‘person’ can be called to serve on a jury as provided for in The Constitution.  A human ‘person’ can enlist in, or even be conscripted into a military service and sent to die for their country.  A human ‘person’ can run for political office to help fulfill the needs of leadership of their governments at all levels.  No corporate ‘person’ is capable of fulfilling the obligations or duty of service to their country of an individual.

 

A human ‘person’ dies.  How long can a human ‘person’ be part of the workforce?  How long can they provide for themselves and make their own decisions?  How long can a human ‘person’ keep death at bay?  While a corporation might go belly up, or be bought or just end by a decision of those at the top, a corporation, a corporate ‘person’, has no natural lifespan and can, in principle, go on living forever…  maybe a restructuring here and there or a name change but, none-the-less, the same legal ‘person’.

 

The logical case against considering corporations to be ‘persons’ could fill a book, however, there is also a legal flaw which should be addressed within the Constitutional framework of accepting corporations as ‘persons’…  a ‘person’ can’t be owned in the United States.

 

The idea of corporations as ‘persons’ was ‘found’ by the Court in the 14^th Amendment.  If the 14^th Amendment makes them ‘persons’ under The Constitution, doesn’t the 13^th Amendment also apply to them?  (“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”)  Now, go to any dictionary you can find and look up, in order, slavery and slave.  I’ll wait.

 

No ‘person’ can own another ‘person’ in the United States.  Therefore, if a corporation IS a legal ‘person’ under the protection and jurisdiction of The Constitution, doesn’t that mean that they can’t be owned, and that they cannot own other ‘persons’ (i.e.  – other corporations).  If The Constitution applies to the Corporate ‘person’, doesn’t that mean that the WHOLE Constitution applies to them?

 

Rhys M.  Blavier

Romayor, Texas

“Truth, Justice and Honor…  but, above all Honor”

 

© copyright 2008 by Rhys M.  Blavier
_________________________________________________________________

 

Thank you for reading this article.  Please read my other articles and let me know what you think.  I am writing them not to preach or to hear myself think but to try to create dialogs, debates and discussions on the nature of our government and how we can build upon and improve it based on what we have seen and learned over the course of the 225 years of The American Experiment.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PIRACY: PART THREE

PART THREE: THE SPANISH MAIN

The 1500s saw Europe plunge into an increasingly violent cycle of wars at home and abroad that stretched from the Habsburg-Valois Wars beginning in 1520 to the bombing of Nagasaki in 1945. The 1500s were dominated by attempts by the rulers of France and England to undermine the power of the Habsburg family that ruled The Holy Roman Empire and Spain. In the early days monarchs sought to maximize their sea-power by recruiting privateers, ostensibly seeking reprisal from wrongs to king and country. Privateers proved to be quite forthcoming, lured by Spain’s American gold.

Spain’s colonies were run as closed shops. Foreign trade in the colonies, however profitable for the colonials, was regarded as detrimental to the king’s pocketbook and banned. In 1568 the Spanish shot up some slave-smuggling vessels commanded by Englishmen John Hawkins and his cousin Francis Drake. Queen Elizabeth granted Drake permission to take reprisals and the Anglo-Spanish war at sea was on in earnest.

Soon English, French and Dutch ships were scouring the seas in search of Spanish and Portuguese prey. As the sea-dogs grew in might they were able to seize and pillage lightly defended Spanish colonial cities. Havana had fallen to the French raider De Sores as early as 1555. Drake accounted for Panama, Santo Domingo, Valparaiso, St. Augustine, and Cadiz on the Spanish mainland.

The Reformation gave the new sea-marauding an ideological angle, pitting Protestant against Catholic. England and the Netherlands adopted Protestantism as the state religion. While France never formally rejected Catholicism, the growth of the Huguenot movement fueled forty years of inter-religious civil war. Protestant raiders could see themselves not simply as loot-greedy pirates, but as crusaders for the Reformation.

The growth of national identities was boosted by the sea-wars. Drake, the erstwhile privateer, became a national hero in the Armada Campaign in 1588. The Sea-Beggars, as the Dutch raiders were called, were part of modern Europe’s first national liberation struggle. The Netherlands, infuriated by heavy-handed Spanish rule, revolted in 1567. They took to the sea in “fly-boats,” an early type of schooner. The Dutch terms for flyboater were corrupted into filibuster and free-booter.

The old war between Christian and Muslim still raged in the Mediterranean. North Africa was fragmented into the semi-independent Barabary States of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and the sultanate of Morocco. The new wealth from Asia and the Americas gave the European economy a decisive boost over the barren shores of North Africa. Slavery was a major motivation for corsair raiding. While the Spanish might carry off some Moors to slavery in the colonies, the teeming population on the Christian side of the Mediterranean was a ready source of wealth for the Barbary Corsairs. That is not to suggest that the Christian realms were morally superior, rather they found easier pickings further south.

A substantial number of European pirates “turned Turk” and joined the corsairs, bringing valuable expertise in shipbuilding and gunnery. The corsairs were willing to work on installment, accepting payment to leave a particular ruler’s ships alone. These arrangements tended to suit the dominant sea-powers as they could bear the burden better than second-tier commercial rivals.

Privateers formed a sea-going militia for their countries. But a desire for loot as for love of country of religion motivated these sea-rovers. This disjunction of interest often put the privateers at odds with the authorities they ostensibly served. Privateers operated under letters of marque (for service to a ruler in war) and letters of reprisal (for wrongs done at any time) with specific limitations and expiration dates. In practice these were often ignored, frequently with connivance of officials who got a share of the loot. Privateers that attacked neutral ships or made raids in peacetime could involve their sovereigns in awkward diplomatic incidents. The end of the Anglo-Spanish War in 1605 saw King James I of England struggling to suppress the pirates who had lately been heroic defenders of the realm. King James’s efforts proved to be a rather minor interlude.

-Dave Hardy

The Laboratory of Democracy — Alternative Voting Methods

“It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”

Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Dissenting Opinion: New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann (1932)

The above quote from Justice Brandeis’ famous dissent is the origin of the idea of ‘the laboratory of democracy’. This is an idea with much merit but which we have, unfortunately, not seen utilized within The United States to any kind of a significant degree. Whether through fear of losing power, fear of interference from the federal government, lack of imagination, lack of interest or fear of the unknown, ‘experiments’ with democracy in this country take the shape of trying to impose different sets of laws and rules upon the citizens rather than on the process by which those laws and rules are determined. The idea in this nation is that differences in democracy are measured solely by the end result of the legislative process rather than the process itself.

A large problem with mankind, in general, and Americans, in particular, is our hubris. We think that, because we are as far along as mankind has ever been, we are the end of the road and have to have everything right. What we should keep in mind is that we are just another middle age. As we express shock, disgust, and amusement at the attitudes, beliefs and lack of knowledge of the world of a thousand years ago, so will mankind view us a thousand years hence. We will not fail the future if we don’t have everything right; we will fail them if we don’t try new things to give those who come after us additional data which they can use to get closer to being right than we ever can.

I try to occasionally write articles under the Laboratory of Democracy umbrella to look at different ideas which might be worth experimenting with (if not at a federal level then perhaps at a state or local level) to see how our idea of constitutional government can be improved based on lessons learned from our own 225 years of history conducting the American Experiment. Today’s topic is about how we can change how we conduct voting to better represent the views, needs and desires of ‘we the people.’

The reasons to change the way we vote are numerous. A fundamental reason to change it is that Americans tend to vote AGAINST candidates rather than FOR them. We have shaped the idea of democracy into an expression of our personal fears. We seem to feel stronger about candidate’s who we DON’T want in an office than we do about those we support. Usually this is perfectly understandable, as the candidates we have to choose from are often not that good, so it is often easier to identify candidates who are LEAST in line with what we want than it is to identity ones whom we can wholeheartedly support.

One obvious problem with this method is that when people are primarily voting AGAINST a candidate, they are afraid to ‘waste’ their vote by casting it for someone who they might approve of but who has no actual chance of winning. This fear of ‘wasting my vote’ was intensified after the 1992 Presidential election saw a significant number of votes cast for Ross Perot (who supporters of losing candidate George H. W. Bush blamed for costing him his bid for re-election) and after Al Gore’s narrow loss (or win, whichever you consider it to have been) to George W. Bush in 2000, which was partially blamed on those in Florida who had voted for Ralph Nader. Aside from the fact that no candidate is ever OWED any citizen’s vote (a candidate bears the burden of needing to EARN someone’s vote), those who support a candidate (or, more accurately, who OPPOSE a particular candidate) are afraid to ‘waste’ their vote by casting it for third party candidates who have no chance of winning.

Bill Clinton’s first nominee for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Lani Guinier, supported a change in how we cast votes for political candidates in this country. Termed ‘Cumulative Voting’, the method which she supported was that each voter would get one vote for each candidate for a particular office and that they could spread those votes among the candidates and give any candidates as many of their available votes as they wanted. For example, if there were four candidates running for President, then each voter would get four votes to cast for President, any one of those candidates getting any or all of those votes, and multiple candidates being able to be given votes by each voter. While she was on the right road, I believe, she was headed in the wrong direction.

Academic studies and theories on Alternative Voting Methods go back at least several hundred years. In 1770, Jean-Charles de Borda proposed the Borda Count as a method for selecting members of the French Academy of Science. The last 30 years has seen an increase in such studies and research, in large part through the various researches which have been done in Game Theory. There are also MANY historical examples of the effectiveness of quite a few different methods of conducting and totaling votes. The Republic of Venice, for example, thrived for over 1,000 and developed a VERY complex but very effective form of Approval Voting for selecting the Doge which survived almost unchanged for over 500 years, until the Republic was conquered by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797. Many articles with additional information about Alternative Voting Methods, including Approval Voting, are available on-line. Some of these include:

http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvote/altvote.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-winner_voting_system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_systems#Multiple-winner_methods

As with most of the alternative voting systems I have heard of (equal & even; weighted ballots; fractional ballots; instant run-off; etc.) none of them truly address the idea that most people, at least in America, seem to cast their votes, at least for higher offices, against candidates rather than for them. This means that they see ANY method of spreading their voting strength around as weakening their opposition to a candidate they oppose. For example, under cumulative voting, say you have four votes you can use to vote for a particular office and you do NOT want Candidate A to win. You know that everyone else who is voting for that office will also have four votes to allocate and you fear that those who support Candidate A (or who oppose Candidate B) will each cast ALL of their four votes for Candidate A. Will you then be willing to risk the election of Candidate B by only giving him three of your votes while you ‘waste’ your fourth vote on Candidate D?

So, when we explore the idea of alternative voting methods, we MUST consider realistic human nature (and human fears) when we think about the problem. To do otherwise, to pretend that man will make his choices based on the greater good rather than base self-interest, or that he will willingly and comfortably accept the idea of his candidate losing because it is ‘the will of the majority’ and put aside his personal animosities after an election is unrealistic, at best. Therefore, the question is, how can we change voting into a positive process where people vote FOR candidates because there is NO NEED to vote AGAINST any candidates.

One possible solution is simply to allow a voter to vote equally for EVERY candidate that they think would be worthwhile to support. This method of voting is termed ‘Approval Voting’. To use the Approval Voting method, as an example, say that there are five candidates (A, B, C, D, and E). You personally support candidate C; candidate A is a major party candidate who you do NOT want to see in office; candidate B is a major party candidate who you have no real objections to and see as a better alternative to candidate A; candidate D is an independent candidate who you think could be interesting but who has no realistic chance to win; and candidate E is the local homeless wino transvestite who somehow manages to get on the ballot for EVERY election.

Under this scenario, you can not only cast your vote for candidate B (to help oppose the candidate you don’t want to win) you can ALSO cast an equal vote for candidates C (your preferred candidate) and for candidate D (the one you think is interesting and have no objections to). In such a case, you have accomplished all of your positive voting goals, you have shown your opposition to the candidates you do NOT want to see in office (A and E) by not voting for them, you supported your preferred candidate (C) and you gave support to the other candidates that you had no objections to. In this scenario, none of the votes you cast weakened your personal voting power in any way while, at the same time, made it more likely that candidates other than those from the major parties could win because EVERYONE else who liked candidates C and D could also vote for them but, maybe instead of voting also for candidate B, they voted for candidate A. In a very real way, the candidate who had the most REAL support, who was APPROVED by the most voters, would win the election because all votes cast for any and all candidates would count equally to their totals. In this system you can vote for any one of the candidates, any possible combinations of the candidates, or all of the candidates for that office… you can vote FOR candidates rather than AGAINST them.

Now, are there potential problems with a system such as this? Of course there are. A primary one, obviously, is how to prevent ballots being stuffed because the total votes cast for an office can (and would) be greater than the voting population as a whole and not by a predictable percentage (as if every voter HAD to vote for three candidates, no more or less, which would result in a vote total that was three times the number of voters). Another obvious one is to ask if the winning candidate would have to get a majority of ALL votes cast, or just a higher total number of votes than any other candidate. The first of these two possibilities could lead to either a need for a run-off election or a ‘None of the Above’ result. THAT, however, is where the Laboratory of Democracy comes into play. Let’s encourage some cities and/or counties to experiment with it (or, in fact, with ANY of the other alternative voting methods) before any states try it, and then let some states experiment with it. The is the beauty of the Laboratory of Democracy idea, not every location has to use the same processes and, by allowing and encouraging them to experiment with different process, we can gather data about which process variations work well, work partially but need more tinkering with, and don’t work at all.

Too many people in this nation think that trying different ideas of government means having different laws (like using the Ten Commandments as the basis of their laws, for example). They miss the point that democracy is not the RESULTS of the democratic process but the PROCESS itself.

Thank you for reading this article. Please read my other articles and let me know what you think. I am writing them not to preach or to hear myself think but to try to create dialogs, debates and discussions on the nature of our constitutional government and how we can improve it by building upon what we have seen and learned over the course of the 225 years of The American Experiment.

Rhys M. Blavier
Romayor, Texas

“Truth, Justice and Honor… but, above all Honor”

© copyright 2008 by Rhys M. Blavier

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PIRACY: PART TWO

PART TWO: THE MEDIEVAL ERA

The fall of Rome reset affairs at sea to more Homeric conditions. Barbarian tribes such as the Angles, Saxons, Wends, Heruli, and Slavs wreaked havoc at sea. Irish pirates, known in low Latin as Scotti, launched the career of St. Patrick by kidnapping him into a life of slavery. The Scotti eventually acquired a kingdom and settled down (relatively speaking) to become the Scots. The Vikings were the exemplars of the Dark Ages sea-marauders.  They exploited the weakness of neighboring kingdoms, notably the seemingly invincible Frankish Empire founded by Charlemagne, and in the process made themselves part of the ruling class in Ireland, Scotland, England, France, and Russia.

The Medieval era introduced an ideological element into pillage at sea. The new religions of Christianity and Islam preached a brotherhood of man and frowned on robbing one’s co-religionists. Infidels on the other hand were fair game. With the Muslim conquest of North Africa in the 8th century Moorish raiders began harrying the European coasts. The Muslim corsairs were called Sea-ghazis, a ghazi being a fighter for the faith or jihadi. The Sea-ghazis and their Christian rivals turned the Mediterranean into a free-fire zone.

Piracy was a routine hazard of medieval maritime affairs. The growth of trade attracted pirates, but conditions tended to find equilibrium. Occasionally a colorful outlaw such as Eustace the Monk, who dabbled in black magic, highway robbery, mercenary service, and piracy, achieved a level of fame. But outlaws like Eustace had no lasting effect such as the Scots or Vikings had.

The rise of the Hanseatic League in the Baltic motivated pirate gangs known as the Victual Brothers and the Like-dealers. The Hanse was a trade consortium formed in the 1300s, part Wal-mart, part Mafia racket. The Victual Brothers began, typically enough, as hired swords for the Hanse in a war against Denmark. It is not too surprising that groups like the Victualers tried to carve themselves a piece of the rich Baltic pie with their swords.  One of the best known of the Victualers was Klaus Stortebeker, renowned for stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Stortebeker may have found it expedient to give a bit to the poor, robbing them could hardly have been profitable.

Invasions of piratical barabarians could change history. But most Medieval pirates were background noise in the clamor or European affairs.  The collapse of Rome, the rise of the Muslim Caliphate, and the faltering of Charlemagne’s empire all created conditions ripe for massive piracy. The rise of the Hanseatic League created a bonanza for pirates. But in general, the stagnation of trade and the deadlock of feudal warfare meant that piracy remained a constant, but low-level threat. That was to change forever with the discovery of the golden treasures of the Americas.

-Dave Hardy

Why I Am Pro-Choice… A Constitutional Literalism Opinion

Amendment 9:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

My sister got pregnant when she was only 17 (and unmarried). She got married before the baby was born, but she always carried a chip on her shoulder about that. She is also a far-right, Ayn Rand style objectivist-conservative (but without the actual philosophy to understand what that means). I used to be content to merely say that I supported a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body, including a decision about whether or not to have an abortion. That, however, wasn’t good enough for my sister. She is strongly against a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion and, one day, forced the issue and made me think about what my true, bottom line, no holds bar reason for my pro-choice belief is. It comes down to this. I don’t care when a life starts. When a fetus is inside a woman’s womb it has no more rights than any other parasite does.

Now, I am sure that what I just said has REALLY upset at least half of the people reading this but I am willing to admit what most people won’t on this issue. It isn’t a matter of a fetus being capable of living on its own outside of a womb, or a fetus’ soul or anything else. It is, purely and simply, that a fetus meets the biological definition of a parasite and a parasite has no rights. All rights belong to the parasite’s host.

par•a•site (p r -s t )
n.
1. Biology— An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host.

parasite (p r -s t )
An organism that lives on or in a different kind of organism (the host) from which it gets some or all of its nourishment. Parasites are generally harmful to their hosts, although the damage they do ranges widely from minor inconvenience to debilitating or fatal disease.
A parasite that lives or feeds on the outer surface of the host’s body, such as a louse, tick, or leech, is called an ectoparasite. Ectoparasites do not usually cause disease themselves although they are frequently a vector of disease, as in the case of ticks, which can transmit the organisms that cause such diseases as Rocky Mountain spotted fever and Lyme disease.
A parasite that lives inside the body of its host is called an endoparasite. Endoparasites include organisms such as tapeworms, hookworms, and trypanosomes that live within the host’s organs or tissues, as well as organisms such as sporozoans that invade the host’s cells. See more at host.

Now, I like babies as much as anyone, however, I was not allowed by my sister to have a belief that was not utterly devoid of emotion. As a result, I came to an emotionless conclusion on this issue. It simply doesn’t matter to me how far along a fetus is. Nor does any other factor external to a woman matter to me. As long as a fetus is inside its mother, as long as it draws its nourishment and life directly from her, it is not, in my opinion, a person. It might be a ‘life’ but many things are alive which are not granted the status of a person. Once a child is born, by whatever means, it is IMMEDIATELY a person will all individual rights, privileges and protections thereof, but until it is outside of its mother it has no rights.

Ok, I have heard some pro-lifers argue that if a fetus is NOT a person, then someone who injures or kills a mother has not committed murder by killing the fetus. This argument is also nonsense because only the mother has the right to determine if her fetus will be born or not. Anyone who might take that choice away from her has committed murder because of the simple fact that they, and not the mother, took away the mother’s right to have that baby, to give it life.

Now, I have seen people who want those of us who believe in a woman’s right to have complete control over her body try to get us to look at pictures of aborted fetuses in order to try to evoke an emotional reaction. Sorry, this isn’t about emotion, it is about The Constitution. So, you might ask, how does that apply to anything else a person, male or female, might want to do to their own body. I say that it isn’t my right or the government’s right to tell them what they can and cannot do to themselves. This does not apply to those who are not of a sufficient age or intelligence to make an informed consensual decision about themselves but, other than that, if a person wants to have sex with people(s) of their own gender or with prostitutes; if they want to take drugs; if they want to ride a motorcycle with a helmet; or they want to shoot themselves in the head or otherwise end their own lives; if they want to marry someone that they love, serve in the military or raise children, I believe that The Constitution says that they have the rights to do so.

“The only valid purpose of law is to protect people from other people; not from themselves or to tell them how to live their lives.”

I am a Constitutional literalist, an absolutist. I do not believe that rights are given by The Constitution, nor are they hidden and waiting to be discovered in The Constitution. I believe that The Constitution guarantees that we have ALL rights except those specifically denied to us… and the line is where we take away those rights from someone else. I believe in freedom, and I believe that we can only truly be free when we are willing to allow everyone else to be as free as we ourselves want to be. The only question I have for my readers is this… do you have enough faith in our nation and our Constitution to trust that, with equal freedom, everyone else is capable of determining the courses of their own lives? Do you have enough faith to let everyone else be free?

Rhys M. Blavier
Romayor, Texas

“Truth, Justice and Honor… but, above all Honor”

© copyright 2009 by Rhys M. Blavier

Thank you for reading this article. Please read my other articles and let me know what you think. I am writing them not to preach or to hear myself think but to try to create dialogs, debates and discussions on the nature of our government and how we can build upon and improve it based on what we have seen and learned over the course of the 225 years of The American Experiment.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PIRACY

Being a very brief account of pirates, corsairs, privateers, Vikings and other sea-wolves their fame, occupation, and close relation to the rise and fall of empires from antiquity to post-modern times.

PART ONE: PIRACY IN ANTIQUITY

Scholars assure us that the condition of post-modernity is that of the old becoming suddenly new, life lived as a fever dream where the repressed returns with such regularity that it seems never to have been repressed at all, and a globalization of the imagery of fear. If so, then piracy is the poster-child of post-modern crime.

Plunder at sea is perhaps as old as man’s discovery that things float, with the corresponding realization that valuable things float, and that some other chap’s floating valuables might be had for the taking. Piracy on the other hand, awaited a framework of law that condemned the taking of others’ waterborne wealth. In that absence of law, sea-raiding appears as no more than the routine intercourse between the strong and the weak.

Such were the ways of Homer’s heroes who toppled Troy and bore off its women to slavery in Greece. Bronze Age Vikings were not merely legend. The raiders known as the Sea Peoples smashed the Hittite Empire, brought fire and sword to the Levantine coast, and were finally halted in a massive naval battle on the coast of Egypt in 1180 BC. The Sea Peoples left their tribal names such as Sherden, Seklesh, and Peleset in the familiar names of Sardinia, Sicily, and the Philistines.

When Mediterranean civilization recovered from the collapse of the Bronze Age empires, the principal maritime powers were the Greeks and the Phoenicians. These two cultures existed in a perpetual war at sea. Both Greek and Phoenician city-states sought to expand by plating colonies on any stretch of coastline that could be taken from poorly-armed barbarians. Neither Greek nor Punic mariners were about to give an inch of contested sea-space to the other.

Other groups such as the Tyrhennian raiders of Etruria and the barbaric Illyrian warriors contributed to the chaos. But to the Greeks, “Punic” was a synonym for pirate. A lack of Punic records has no doubt been beneficial to Greek reputations.

One Illyrian tribe, the Liburnians, invented a type of vessel that became the basic pirate craft of the ancient world. A liburnian had fifty oars arranged in one bank and a ram on the prow. It was fast, maneuverable, capable of shallow water operations, yet with enough space to pack a horde of blood-mad Illyrian vikings. With due allowance for advances in weapons and sailing technology, these were the basic parameters of a pirate vessel throughout the ages.

As in many other aspects of Western culture the Greeks were the leaders. They originated the concept of privateering. Surprisingly, privateering predates piracy. It has its roots in the concept of reprisal. Greek cities offered recourse to law only to their own citizens. If for example a Corinthian robbed an Argive, the Argive had no standing in a Corinthian court. Therefore Argive law allowed the injured party to recover his damages from the next Corinthian he met. Thus the Argive had a legal (in Argive eyes), private, and limited sort of war on Corinth. Gradually Greek cities limited this legalized brigandage by offering reciprocity (asylia in Greek, hence asylum) under the law.

While Greeks faced criminal sea-robbers and barbarian raiders from early times, the concept of a pirate emerged in the era of Alexander the Great around 300 BC. The word “peirates”-pirate-comes from the Greek verb meaning “to attempt” as in “to make a violent attempt.” The early pirates were not so much outlaws as combined-arms military contractors, or mercenaries. The transformation of words meaning “mercenary” to “robber” is a common lexical progress. Thus “brigand” derives from a term for a Medieval armored soldier-of-fortune, while the Spanish word “ladrone” comes from Latin “latro”, which originally meant a hired soldier. All of which indicates what ancient mercenaries did when they weren’t employed on authorized pillage and slaughter.

The pirates quickly became an independent power in the Mediterranean. They established independent bases in Cilicia on the southeastern coast of Asia Minor. The Cilician pirates reached their peak of power in the later Roman Republic. They specialized in kidnapping Roman citizens for ransom, most famously a young Julius Caesar. When they took Caesar he asked what his ransom was to be. The pirates replied ten talents of gold. Caesar sneered at that. Ten was for riff-raff, Caesar was worth sixteen!

The Cilicians managed to become pop-culture icons of the ancient world. The adventure stories and dramas of the Hellenistic era regularly featured pirates, either of the Greek or Punic variety, who spent their days separating star-crossed lovers. Given the prevalence of piracy, it’s a wonder anyone hooked up.

The Cilician pirates had a surprisingly long run as a thorn in Rome’s side. The rugged terrain where they hid and the Roman preference for land warfare gave the pirates an advantage. Another reason might be found in what the pirates did with people who couldn’t afford a ransom. They were sold as slaves. The voracious market for human chattel ensured the pirates could consider any coastal village a profit center. The Homeric rape of the Trojan women had become a routine commercial venture.

The pirates could also pose a serious threat to Rome. Cities such as Rome and Athens had growing populations with limited cropland. They relied on overseas grain to feed their populace. A massive pirate coalition like the Cilicians could choke off the food supplies and impose a famine. The Roman Senate finally dealt with this threat in 60 BC by giving Pompey the Great dictatorial powers over the entire Mediterranean and coastal areas. Seaside crucifixions surged and piracy abated. A lucky few were enslaved, though in reality they were incorporated onto Pompey’s staff as naval consultants.

The Roman Civil Wars from 48 BC to 32 BC, in part fueled by audacious power-grabs such as Pompey’s, nearly undid Pompey’s work. The Civil Wars ended with Augustus’s defeat of Pompey’s son, Sextus and Marc Antony in a pair of sea battles in 35 BC and 32 BC. In the new order piracy was no longer to be tolerated. Along with elite imperial bodyguards (the Praetorian Guard) and military police (the Urban Cohorts and Vigiles), Augustus gave Rome a navy.

-Dave Hardy

Obama Represents “Real” Change… In America’s Perception…

There might have been a short time when I considered myself democrat or republican. That was a long time ago. Just like people don’t allow themselves to be duped to many times by the same trick; I decided not to be suckered in by the false rhetoric of these (allegedly) different parties. Bush supporters dug their grave so deep the last 8 years that they had to stick with his false allegations of Iraq’s WMDs to the very end. They suffered through the surprise of Bush when he tried to clean his hands by saying “I never said Saddam was responsible for 9/11“. He managed to assert and insinuate his way at his goal (gaining popular support to attack Iraq by associating it with 9/11).

There’s a new guy in town now. One who’s suppose to “change” everything. This is old news, however there have been some new developments worth noting that point out the solidarity of the Bush regime with that of Obama’s. Firstly, there the fact that Obama is not pulling out of Iraq at all. Secondly, he’s expanding the war in Afghanistan even though it has no clear goals. Thirdly, he is not seeking legal action against the those who sanctioned torture in the previous regime. Fourthly, he’s allowing torture under his own watch.

When Obama first started running for office he promised the voters that he would start pulling out troops from Iraq within 6 months. He later extended this time frame. Then extended it again. Some people believe that the reason he extended the time frame was because he became privy to some “secret presidential” information that made him change his mind, but I argue that this “secret” information is nothing special. We’ve just gotten through with 8 years of lies (oops), secret information and see where it got our foreign policy? What makes the above different from what any other politicians do? Am I to believe that even though he lied to the American people that deep down inside he wants to do different than Bush’s agenda????

When we first went into Afghanistan (on the heels of 9/11) we were suppose to be capturing Osama Bin Laden. Instead we just ended up staying there to die like all other great empires have done. Obama isn’t going to “Change” this situation either. Instead we will put more people there. Since when was an occupation necessary to capture one man in a country? Assuming that you think we went there without intentions of staying forever (which I don’t), then you have to wonder why we’re still there. We’ve overthrown their government, installed a new government, defeated the Taliban, and trained their new Army and Police. Why didn’t we leave after this was accomplished? Osama was already known to be in Pakistan by this time. Why didn’t we send in small strike teams to capture him and bring him back? Instead the policy shifted to occupying Afghanistan indefinitely while using RC planes to piss off the Pashtuuns on the other side of the border. Obama must have realized the futility of this military occupation by now. What does he expect to take place of the Taliban even if he kills them all? Another Taliban? Because that’s all he’s going to get.

One of the reasons that so many voters voted for Obama was because he said that he was going to restore America’s global image. This hinted that the human rights abuses of the previous regime were over.  It also hinted that there would be some justice. Instead he has actively shielded them from prosecution. His narrative on this has been “We must look forward not backwards”. According this slogan anybody should be forgiven, even Iran and the Palestinians, because we are looking ahead not backwards to what they’ve done in the past. However, this slogan has proven to be selective. You see we can’t forgive Iran for seeking Nuclear power because they had a weapons program in the past. Likewise, we cannot forgive the Palestinians because they’ve used terrorist tactics to try to push Israel out of Palestinian territory. Instead we should forgive the Bush regime and it’s accomplices for torture and the murder of 1 million plus civilians. Likewise, we will have to forgive Obama for the mass killing he has already commited according to this slogan. However, there can be no forgiveness for the drug user who’ll be locks in prison on felony charges. No, these crimes are too bad…..

Recently a detainee from Guantanamo was able to call out to Al Jazeera while making his 1 allowed phonecall. He was able to confirm that he was still being tortured even after the Obama regime had taken power. If fact he said that the treatment had intensified under the Obama presidency.

Is this really change?

No. It’s not.

What this presidency has done is change the American perception. Obama seems to have campaigned so effectively in the run up to the election that most people think that he’s incapable of doing anything wrong. I would like to remind people not to bury themselves too deeply with Obama. Remember that all people are just that “people”. Nobody is perfect or more than human. The moment that you put 100% of your faith in a president is the same moment you’ll be disappointed. As for myself… the government is illegitimate anyway so nobody will get my vote except for someone willing to stay out of Washington.

Peace….

Gregg County, TX Tea Party

I’m so far from neo-con or leftist culture that I must admit that I sort of laughed when I saw that FOX News and certain members of the lame-stream (see this for explanation), right/left media attempted to hijack a tea party first reintroduced on December 16, 2007 by the R3VOLUTION. But, I was pleased by what I saw in my city’s participation in an advertised non-partisan event. Here are some pics from Gregg County, Texas.

Libertarian Lady blames both sides of the aisle

new take on old slogan

The hubby of my tennis buddy knows a good message! Sent his employees out to spread the message and free car washes!

one of LL's fav signs

Yep, they tried to co-opt a freedom message and ended up supporting people JUST LIKE US!

GoshDarnitt, Freedom Is Popular!

The Powers to Raise and to Spend Taxes (Liberal Libertarians Discussion Topic #01)

The single greatest factor behind the rise and development of the English Parliament was taxation. What very quickly developed, and what lasted until the British Monarchy lost its functional power as a part of government and became a marginalized figurehead position (which happened over the course of the 1800s) was that the power to SPEND tax money was separated from the power to RAISE tax money. Under that system, only Parliament could RAISE tax money but only the Monarch could SPEND tax money. If the Monarch wanted to spend anything (for wars, his houses and mistresses, public building projects, anything) they had to convince Parliament to raise the necessary tax monies and give those money to him 9or her). Likewise, if Parliament wanted money spent on anything in particular, they had to convince the Monarch to agree to spend raised money in such ways. The inherent conflict within the system required negotiation and compromise from both sides. Sometimes one side would be more powerful than the other and would dictate to the other. Likewise, Kings would often not actually spend money as they agreed to. THOSE situations would lead to further conflicts in the future. Sometimes the Monarchs would simply get sick of their Parliaments and would dismiss them and not call another to replace it, but then the King could not raise any money. In those situations, the losers would usually be the common people who were hurt by both sides.

One of the main sources of conflicts between Monarchs and Parliaments (as in ALL nations) was the exorbitant costs of the wars which the Monarchs would want to fight. Because of the unique circumstances of both WWII and the Viet Nam war, Americans now think that wars create profit. They do not. Wars are and always have been burdensome drains on the public coffers. Monarchs want wars for various reasons, but those wars HAVE to be paid for… even in a dictatorship… and, historically, most wars bankrupt their nations as well as the other nations involved. Look at the current situation with our undeclared wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let’s not even get into the cost to human life or to property, let us just look at the actual fiscal cost to fight them, clean them up, care for our veterans afterwards, intelligence… all of it. The problem is, in America, because of the way the power to raise and spend tax monies is allocated, the dialogue is usually focused on questioning the patriotism of those who disagree with one side; on attempts to gain power by individuals, parties, factions, ideologies or branches of government; or is hurting our ability to deal with OTHER national priorities by saying we can’t question the money we spend on our wars so we cut the pennies in order to be able to keep throwing away the dollars.

So… in all of the discussion we hear these days about taxes, we are still simply talking about the ’symptom’ of actual taxation rather than trying to explore the root causes of the actual problems. To ME, the issue is not whether or not taxes are too high, or if they are properly spent, it is that there is no incentive or system in place to DISCOURAGE spending OR raising tax money. If you give the people who have the power to SPEND your money the additional power of determining how MUCH of your money they can take you have the fox guarding the hen house. To me, before we talk about the very real issues of tax codes and policies in America, we need to talk about the basic powers involved in the fundamental issue of taxation.

Here is my personal idea, to start the ball rolling:

01.) ONLY The House of Representatives should have the power to RAISE tax monies. The functions of government which deal with raising and accounting for the expenditures of those monies should be placed under the authority of The House… the people’s house of government. I think that the IRS is the wrong organization for our nation but before it can be dismantled, we need to figure out something to take its place because its ROLE is, and will be necessary. We can NOT destroy something which has such a key role in the operation of our government (whether it SHOULD or should NOT HAVE that role is irrelevant… it does and it must be dealt with as a reality). The House should be completely in charge of our nation’s checking and savings account. This would result in Representatives keeping THEIR jobs in large part based on how they keep taxes low.

02.) ONLY the Senate should have the power to SPEND tax monies. The functions of government which deal with purchasing, contracting, supervising, etc. the expenditures of those monies should be placed under the authority of The Senate. The Senate should be completely in charge of our nation’s checkbooks, passbooks, and ATM cards. This would result in Senators keeping THEIR jobs in large part based on how much swag they can send back home.

03.) The President should be the mediator that coordinates the efforts of the two house of Congress and makes the deals. The President would also be the one who would make sure that all agreements between the two houses on both the raising AND the spending of tax monies would be followed to the letter. The President would be the one who makes sure that every side is honest with the other. The President would also be the one who signs off on all agreements (budgets) and certifies them as satisfying all sides and being in the best interest of the American people.

04.) All three parties involved (The House, The Senate and The Executive Branch) would have complete and unrestricted access to all records, notes, documents, EVERYTHING made or kept by any of the other parties regarding ANY issue regarding or relating to taxes. Further, all finalized, ratified and signed budgets and expenditure agreements shall have full force as LAWS for their durations and any violations of any parts if those agreements and budgets can be prosecuted as such, with the individuals responsible for those violations… ALL individuals at ALL levels up and down the ‘food chain’… being PERSONALLY accountable and liable for those violations (whether it is a Senator, the members of a specific committee, or a clerk who signs a check… EVERYONE is accountable and THUS has the motivation to be honest and above board about all actions and decisions regarding taxes).

05.) All three parties involved (The House, The Senate and The Executive Branch) would create a non-partisan, non-governmental committee or board, to which they will all appoint an equal number of members, which has the power and authority to review and mediate all agreements and violations and to make final and binding non-partisan decisions regarding the same when there are ANY questions about or challenges to finalized agreements or budgets which deal with tax monies and their expenditures. Each state would also get to choose one or two members of this board. Obviously all of the exact details would need to be carefully studied and worked out.

06.) SOMEHOW, The Federal Reserve and The National Bank (and any other such relevant entities) would be brought back under full federal control and incorporated into this who system… somehow.

No matter what our own personal and unrealistic idealistic vision of our government is, taxes are real, they are not going to go away and they ARE necessary. What WE need to do is to try to figure out how to make the system work better and fairer so that it can be a positive factor in our society rather than one which puts us at each others. throats.

Ok, those are my initial thoughts. What can anyone else contribute? How can anyone else make these ideas better or give us different ideas which are better? What can we do with this?

Recommended Readings for people interested in this topic are:

1.)For Good and Evil (Second Edition): The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization
By: Charles Adams (Tax Scholar and Historian, Cato Institute Fellow) http://www.amazon.com/Good-Evil-Second-Impact-Civilization/dp/1568332351/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224912619&sr=1-1

2.)Those Dirty Rotten taxes: The Tax Revolts that Built America
By: Charles Adams (Tax Scholar and Historian, Cato Institute Fellow) http://www.amazon.com/Those-Dirty-Rotten-taxes-Revolts/dp/0684871149/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238470625&sr=1-1

Rhys M. Blavier
Romayor, Texas

© 2009 by Rhys M. Blavier

Thank you for reading this article. Please read my other articles and let me know what you think. I am writing them not to preach or to hear myself think but to try to create dialogs, debates and discussions on the nature of our government and how we can build upon and improve it based on what we have seen and learned over the course of the 225 years of The American Experiment.

To discuss this topic, the discussion thread is going on here: http://blavier.newsvine.com/_news/2009/04/15/2688338-the-powers-to-raise-and-to-spend-taxes-liberal-libertarian-discussion-topic-01

57% of American’s want to attack N. Korea?

I have to wonder what has a hold of the American people. According to a recent poll 57% of Americans favor a military strike in response to N. Korea’s recent missile test. Most people don’t even know where N. Korea is on the map. The same group of people wouldn’t know why South Korea is our ally instead of North Korea. Most American’s don’t know that the end of the Korean war has not yet been declared. Furthermore, most American’s don’t know that South Korea has called to normalize ties with N. Korea in the past which the US president down played.

With these things in mind it’s a weird phenomenon that 57% of the American’s that participated in the poll would vote to murder Koreans to respond to a situation that they vastly don’t understand. Normally when people make an important decision like choosing a college, house , or car they will do weeks of research to make the right choice. Yet people are willing to sanction murder and willingly convert their tax dollars to murder without understanding the situation. Maybe I’m a weird guy but I think that human life is far more important than a car, house, college, oil, diamonds, or gold. With this in mind I think that people should do more research before they lend their support to mass murder of people they don’t even know.

Propaganda is not something that died in the days of the Soviet Union. I’m sure that you have have heard of the term “human relations”. This term was created by Sigman Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays. He understood that the term “propaganda” had a stigma associated with it. He created the term “human relations” to be a more acceptable term for propaganda. Subsequently we’ve seen numerous corporate human relations departments spring up to control the public image of corporations. Do any of the items below look familiar? They are all methods of propaganda.

• Ad nauseam

This argument approach uses tireless repetition of an idea. An idea, especially a simple slogan, that is repeated enough times, may begin to be taken as the truth. This approach works best when media sources are limited and controlled by the propagator.

• Appeal to authority

Appeals to authority cite prominent figures to support a position, idea, argument, or course of action.

• Appeal to fear

Appeals to fear seek to build support by instilling anxieties and panic in the general population, for example, Joseph Goebbels exploited Theodore Kaufman’s Germany Must Perish! to claim that the Allies sought the extermination of the German people.

• Appeal to prejudice

Using loaded or emotive terms to attach value or moral goodness to believing the proposition.

• Bandwagon

Bandwagon and “inevitable-victory” appeals attempt to persuade the target audience to join in and take the course of action that “everyone else is taking.”

• Inevitable victory: invites those not already on the bandwagon to join those already on the road to certain victory. Those already or at least partially on the bandwagon are reassured that staying aboard is their best course of action.
• Join the crowd: This technique reinforces people’s natural desire to be on the winning side. This technique is used to convince the audience that a program is an expression of an irresistible mass movement and that it is in their best interest to join.

• Beautiful people

The type of propaganda that deals with famous people or depicts attractive, happy people. This makes other people think that if they buy a product or follow a certain ideology, they too will be happy or successful. (This is more used in advertising for products, instead of political reasons)

• Big Lie

The repeated articulation of a complex of events that justify subsequent action. The descriptions of these events have elements of truth, and the “big lie” generalizations merge and eventually supplant the public’s accurate perception of the underlying events. After World War I the German Stab in the back explanation of the cause of their defeat became a justification for Nazi re-militarization and revanchist aggression.

Retrieved from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

What does this have to do with N. Korea? I wanted to remind you that there are active systems in place in America that skew the mass’s reality. People don’t just miraculously think that Iran is bad, Iraq had WMD’s, Saddam helped Bin Laden, Amerika is a free country, or Hugo Chavez is an enemy of America. Indeed, there are mechanisms in place to instill and reinforce these idea’s in a person’s mind. The result of such mechanisms are people who feel confident when they say “we should go and kill other people in a foreign country for testing their missile launching capabilities”.

The way to uncover who the people are who’ve been manipulated is to scratch a little deeper in their logic. When you hear people say that “we should go kill some group of people in the world for whatever reason”, ask them “Why?”. If they recite what they heard on television then scratch a little deeper. I was talking to a coworker recently. She told me that if N. Korea gets 1 nuclear bomb then it might end up killing us. I asked her “How can one crude nuke compare to the few 100,000 nukes that America and Russia and Isreal have?”. We could shot down N. Korea’s nuke and still have enough ammo left to destroy the world a few 100 times over.

So you’re probably wondering what’s my point? The point is to remind you to be a critical thinker. When you look at the news be sure to engage your “B.S.” filter. Look for imperical data not the opinions of the reporter. When you see news shows that are full of opinions and not facts then that should set off a red flag in your mind. Sadly most modern news networks try to tell you what to think instead of presenting stories and leaving the judgement to you. As far as N. Korea and it’s missile tests go you might want to research N. Korea and the term “nuclear deterrence”.

Don’t be a puppet.

Peace…

WE MUST AMEND THE CONSTITUTION IMMEDIATELY OR AMERICA IS DOOMED… DOOMED, I TELL YOU, DOOMED!

We need to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage because people getting married to show their love of each other is an abomination… and because the idea of two guys or two ugly chicks making out with each other is just gross… and we can’t stop thinking about what it would be like to try it! We need to amend the Constitution to ban the burning of the American flag except by the Boy Scouts… and anyone who wants to dispose of a flag the way it is supposed to be disposed of, never mind that you can’t make people respect a symbol by passing laws which order them to We need to amend the Constitution to ban abortion because the wealthy can ALWAYS find doctors to take care of THEIR wives, mistresses and daughters! We need to amend the Constitution to allow school prayer and the reading of the Bible in school even though Jesus said “Do not practice your piety in public.”! We need to amend the Constitution to permit the use of the word ‘God‘ in the Pledge of Allegiance and the national motto because if WE are going to suck up to him, we damn sure want everyone else to be required to, also! We need to amend the Constitution and we have to amend it NOW, because the sky is falling on our heads… AAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!

For all of the ideologues who think that amending the Constitution is the appropriate way to enshrine their particular prejudices and passions, I want to ask you a question. Very simply, “Have you ever actually read The Constitution?“

The Constitution is a relatively simply document. Its length is only 4543 words, which isn’t all that much longer than this article. One key thing that is important about the Constitution is not what it says, but what it does NOT say. The Constitution does NOT say anything about social rules or the moral conduct of ‘we the people’ of The United States. The Constitution is an owner’s manual of how to operate our government. It does not tell its citizens how to live their lives. In fact, with the exception of our disastrous foray into social policy with the 18^th Amendment, which gave us both prohibition AND well financed organized crime, there is nothing in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights or any subsequent amendment which deals with dictating social or moral behaviors or beliefs to the American people.

Nowhere in the Constitution is a single word which even speaks to specific imposed restrictions on the rights of the citizens, unless you count treason, insurrection, piracy, counterfeiting, malfeasance in office or other such defined crimes as rights which are denied to ‘we the people’. It doesn’t even speak to obligations of ‘we the people’ TO the government, though it does speak of obligations which the government has to ‘we the people’. In fact, other than talking about issues such as voting, or rights before the courts, the Constitution itself barely even deals with individual citizens.

The Constitution itself does not say anything about WHEN, WHY, or FOR WHAT REASONS it should be amended. THOSE questions are left up to the citizens and the legislators of The United States to answer. Article V of The Constitution, in its entirety, says:

“The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.”

Thus, whenever someone raises the issue of amending the Constitution, the first question that should be asked is: “Is the issue itself appropriate for inclusion?“

Amending The Constitution is, and was intended by the framers of The Constitution to be, a VERY difficult and VERY time consuming process. It is not supposed to be something that happens very often or for trivial reasons. To see how meaningless a constitution becomes when it can be easily and frequently amended one need only look at the state constitutions of either Texas (amended at least 632 times in 136 years [although Texas voters subsequently rejected at least 176 of them after our legislature passed them]) or Alabama (at 357,157 words it is about 40 times longer than the US Constitution and even three times longer than the longest national constitution of any sovereign nation in the world India, whose constitution has 444 articles, 12 schedules and 94 amendments, with a total of 117,369 words and is, unbelievably, an even worse document than the state constitution of Texas, which has been amended at least 798 times the last amendment was #799, but even the Alabama legislature couldn’t even keep track of how many there were and Amendment #693 doesn’t even exist in 108 years most of those amendments affecting only single individual counties or even cities, or regulate such minutiae at the salary as the Greene County Probate Judge).

Amendments to state constitutions, such as the one now being called for in Iowa by those scared to death by the idea of two people of the same sex even holding hands, often also seem to ignore the fact that the US Constitution takes precedence over them and has this little thing known as Article IV which includes such provisions as the Full Faith and Credit Clause (Section 1: “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.”) and the Privileges and Immunities Clause (Section 2: “The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.”).

As difficult as it is to amend the US Constitution, it is therefore necessary and proper for both the Legislative and the Judicial branches to interpret and even expand on the meanings of both The Constitution AND of its 27 amendments. Please note, however, that while the very names of those two branches tells us of THEIR roles in that process (to ‘legislate’ and to ‘adjudicate’), no such power is given to the Executive branch, whose task is to ‘execute’ the laws and provisions of The Constitution and the other two branches. This was yet another aspect of our Constitutional government which was not understood by King George (Bush) II or his cronies in crime. Many people who want to use legislation (either federal or state) to counter or go around provisions of The Constitution, however, also show their ignorance of the document as Article VI specifically states that “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

The Constitution of the United States was not conceived or written to tell ‘we the people’ how to live their personal lives or even to place burdens on them towards their Society or their government. It does, however, tell the government how to operate and imposes obligations on it towards ‘we the people’. The Constitution is not a downward directed document, written on the mountain and handed down to ‘we the people’ by a supreme being who must be obeyed. The Constitution was not written by the government to ‘we the people’. The Constitution was, instead, written by ‘we the people’ to tell their government what limits and restrictions are placed upon IT, and what powers and authority are granted to it by the citizens who agreed to be governed by it. I wish people would realize that when they think about using The Constitution for shaping American society according to their own preferences or to try to tell people how to live or what morals they should adopt based on their own prejudices, bigotries and beliefs.

So, if The Constitution focuses on the operation of our government rather than on the behaviors of its citizens, where does the whole debate about our rights originate? The framers of The Constitution believed in ‘natural rights’, the idea that people, by their very nature, HAVE (not ‘are given’, but by birth ‘have’) certain rights which precede the establishment of any government. When The Constitution was written, there was a huge debate about even listing the rights of the citizens of The United States because some feared that the very fact that some rights were enumerated within The Constitution would mean that there would be those who would later argue that rights which were NOT enumerated in The Constitution were not ones which the citizens would have. In Federalist #84, Alexander Hamilton asks “Why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?” and writes that a “bill of rights is not only unnecessary but even dangerous” for that very reason. James Madison told Thomas Jefferson that “I conceive that in a certain degree … the rights in question are reserved by the manner in which the federal powers are granted.” The fear of many was the very idea that enumerating ANY rights within The Constitution be interpreted by any moron as meaning that citizens only had rights BECAUSE of The Constitution. The very intention of the framers was to emphasis that the entire purpose of creating The United States was to protect the rights of the citizens and that the very idea that rights had to be ‘given’ TO ‘we the people’ was monarchical and anathema to everything they believed in and stood for. Connecticut’s Roger Sherman, in his own proposed draft of a Bill of Rights says that “The people have certain natural rights which are retained by them when they enter into Society.”

Much of the concept of natural rights which the framers believed in came from John Locke, the great philosopher and theorist of natural rights. He believed that the primary justification for even founding any government was specifically to make those rights more secure than they would be in a state of nature (a Society with NO government). Thus, the very reason to join together IN a governed Society is to provide ‘we the people’ protection of those rights by being part of a collective, governed Society which is not present in a lawless Society, in which the strong are able to prey on the weak and take those rights away from ‘we the people’. This is where the framers showed their true genius and foresight by giving us the 9^th and 10^th Amendments to The Constitution, the “if we forgot something, it’s covered, also” amendments.

The 9^th Amendment, in its entirety, states that:

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

The 10^th Amendment, in its entirety, says that:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

These are both very interesting Amendments. The 10^th is usually used to support arguments which advocate State’s Right’s against federal power by people without an awareness that States do not have rights, only powers (as specified in the literal wording of the Amendment), and that those powers are granted by the citizens. It is usually ignored that the 10^th tells us that, in addition to having rights, as provided for in the 9^th, ‘we the people’ ALSO have power. By the very wording of The Constitution, our government only has certain powers and authorities (specifically spelled out within The Constitution), while ‘we the people’ have rights IN ADDITION to powers and authorities. While there has been a lot of talk about the 10^th Amendment, especially since the end of Reconstruction in The South, and since the movement towards recognizing the civil rights of ALL citizens in the 40s and 50s, the 9^th may very well be the most ignored part of the entire Constitution. There even seems to be more case law that is based on the 11^th Amendment (“The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.”), which was passed in response to one single Supreme Court case in 1793 (Chisholm v. Georgia), than there has been based on the 9^th. Most of the court cases which would seem to be obvious ones about the retained rights and powers of the citizens under the 9^th and 10^th Amendments, such as Roe v. Wade, typically hinge on arguments which use the provisions of the Section 1 clauses of the 14^th Amendments regarding Due Process and/or Privileges and Immunities (“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”) as their foundations.

Why IS the 9^th Amendment so rarely raised, utilized or argued in American Courts? I think it is, very simply and fundamentally, because both the courts and our government are afraid of it. If we followed the literal provisions of the 9^th Amendment, both the courts and our entire government would have MUCH less power over the citizens than they would like. If we observed the provisions of the 9^th Amendment, the citizens would never have the burden to prove that they have certain or specific rights, the government and the courts would have the burden to prove that they DON’T. The party on whom the burden of proof rests has an MUCH more difficult case to make than the one which has the presumption of being correct or innocent. No government in history has ever wanted to bear that burden when they are challenging their own citizens, and courts are a function of government. Into this fray go those who advocate that The Constitution favors the government over the governed. One of the most prominent advocates of reading The Constitution as only protecting enumerated rights was Judge Robert Bork and his famous ‘inkblot’ interpretation of the 9^th Amendment. About the beliefs held by Judge Bork and those who interpret The Constitution using the same flawed concept of ‘originalism’ which he uses, that the only rights belonging to the citizens are those which are specifically spelled out in The Constitution and that any other ‘discovered’ rights are illegitimately ‘created’ by the courts, The Oxford Companion to The Supreme Court of the United States says:

Yet this skeptical view of unenumerated rights would have the practical effect of converting the original scheme of limited [and] defined powers [of the government] in a sea of individual rights into a scheme of limited enumerated rights in a sea of [unlimited] government powers.”

I would also ask those who advocate such positions as Judge Bork’s for his ‘original intent’ interpretation of The Constitution, “Why do you think that the framers of The Constitution destroyed all of their notes and minutes from the entire Constitutional Convention if not to keep those who followed them from relying on their intent and, thus, giving us the freedom to make this country what we want it to be and to be able to adapt it to the changing needs of Society?” While I have my own beliefs about requiring legislators to specify the goals and objectives for any legislation that they create (in order to make it easier for us to get rid of that legislation later), I can find no fault with the wisdom of the founders to deny us the knowledge of their ‘original’ intentions.

Anthony de Jasay, a Hungarian-born libertarian anarchist philosopher and economist who is best known for his writings against ‘the state’, talks about using a ‘Presumption of Liberty’ concept of natural rights. De Jasay argues that “liberty should be presumed, not because we have a “right” to it, or because it is the most important value or goal, but because it follows from the requirements of epistemology and logic.” In other words, instead of appealing to a person’s preference for liberty, logic dictates that liberty should be presumed. The critical rationalist and philosopher of science, Gerard Radnitzky, was so impressed with de Jasay’s case for the presumption of liberty that he stated that “for the first time the political philosophy of libertarianism and of classical liberalism has gotten a solid base in logic and epistemology.”

There is much to be considered by anyone who would advocate amending The Constitution with a goal of enshrining bigotry or prejudice within it, or of using it to take away rights from our citizens. To do so would be against every idea upon which The United States was created. I personally think that there should be (at least) four levels of rights and powers which should be considered by anyone who thinks they should have the right to tell everyone else what freedoms they do and do not have. They are, in order from highest to lowest:

1.) Rights that are retained by the people;

2.) Rights that are voluntarily surrendered by the people to the government;

3.) Rights that are suppressed by the people in our ‘voluntary’ association in a governed Society; and

4.) Rights that are repudiated by the people through the granting of certain powers and authority to the government.

Governments may have power, but only people have rights, and it is simply wrong for anyone to try to use our Constitutions to try to take away ANY of those rights. That is a ‘right’ which I do not believe anyone of ‘we the people’ ever gave away to anyone else.

As always, I want to acknowledge books and the Internet for giving me invaluable assistance in being able to use my mind and to write articles such as this. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Special thanks must be given, as is common for my constitutional articles, to The Oxford Companion to The Supreme Court of The United States (second edition), edited by Kermit L. Hall.

Rhys M. Blavier

Romayor, Texas

Truth, Justice and Honor… But Above All, Honor

© copyright 2008 by Rhys M. Blavier

The Establishment

We’re
Living in the Future and We’re
Living in the Past.
These are the dark Ages where
Man is trapped behind Cages of
Political Caste.

The
System rages on while
She remains steadfast.
A Rebellion She does wage at
Every Crook on the World Stage; their
Crimes are oh! so vast.

And She whispers in your Ear,
“The Revolution is inside of You.”

—Alexander S. Peak

The American Experiment

The history of the American Experiment in self government has always been viewed as a battle between dichotomous ideas struggling for supremacy over the other… federalist vs. anti-federalist; conservative vs. liberal; republican vs. democrat; urban vs. agrarian; north vs. south; east vs. west; central government vs. states rights; freedom vs. security; black vs. white; rich vs. poor; business vs. labor; educated vs. uneducated; interventionist vs. isolationist; inheritor vs. usurper; patriot vs. traitor; traditionalist vs revisionist; living constitution vs. original intent; hawk vs. dove; defender vs. apologist; secrecy vs. transparency; communist vs capitalist; church vs. state; chaos vs. order; good vs. evil; us vs. them; you vs. me. It is a mindset that can be expressed in the idea that ‘those who are not with us are against us and those who are against us are our enemies’. The history of the American Experiment has been seen as a polarized conflict between opposing forces but, what America has never been good at is recognizing nuance, shades of grey, middle ground or balance. Every side wants to lay claim to the high ground and the moral upper hand in the struggle against their opposites but what none of them seem to be able to recognize is that none of them are opposites and all of them need the other ’side’. What no side acknowledges is that their side is not a side at all and is just as fragmented and torn by conflict as the larger struggle they see themselves engaged in. The reason the American Experiment is doomed to end in failure is because any lesson learned is seen as justification for a polar opposite rather than proof of the necessity for moderation… all sides are right, all sides are wrong… it is up to the center to hold.

The immediate aftermath of the ratification of the American Constitution and the institution of American Constitutional Government was a conflict over which side was the inheritor and defender of the Revolution and which was side was the traitor to its ideals. This conflict was given physical embodiment in the personages of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Consider, however, that both of these men in opposition, each fighting to define and advance their vision of the cause they had fought together for, each the personification of their side in opposition to the other, had the same enemy in Alexander Hamiliton. Consider that Alexander Hamilton was a Federalist as was Adams and that Hamilton saw the Republicans and the Virginian planter class as enemies to be destroyed, literally destroyed by armed force, and yet Hamilton was ultimately responsible for Jefferson’s election as President in recognition that Jefferson was a more honorable man than Aaron Burr was. The failure of the American Experiment, from its very beginning, was the failure to recognize that the the differing sides were not their enemies, they were their opposition, they were each necessary to provide balance. Like a gyroscope spinning, the opposing sides are part of the same circle and they are each needed to orbit and balance the other around the center to keep the whole thing from tearing itself apart. The extreme example of this can be seen in Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler and the Communist Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. One the embodiment of the extreme right and the other of the extreme left. Implacable enemies who truly hated each other and yet rather than being opposites at two end of a line, they were each on a circle and had gone so far around that circle that they were at the same place.

There is a zen lesson which balances the paradoxical idea of “if you love something, let it go…” and that is that if you want to overcome something you oppose you must embrace it, for only by accepting it can you understand it and only by understanding it can you control it. Keep in mind that our ‘my side vs. their side’ mentality ignores the reality that the the struggle between black and white also includes Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans, as well as ignores that if someone was truly ‘racist’ they would automatically like everyone else of their race and automatically hate everyone else not of their race… oh yes, and what about those of mixed race… are they both or neither, us or them? The conflicts are illusory and blind us to our need for the ideas and strengths of our opposites. Consider the idea that there are no paradoxes, only things which we don’t understand enough to see the logic with makes seemingly disparate forces things that are unified. There are those who view history as being without order or a coherent order and that any effort to impose upon history as grand scheme is a lie. At the same time, there are those who see in history a purposful march from one great moment to the next. Adams and Jefferson discussed this in their voluminous correspondence between 1812 and 1826. But why can both ’sides’ not be correct. If we apply the idea of chaos theory and fractal geometry to the discussion we can see an order WITHIN the disorder. This is an idea we must incorporate if we are to salvage anything from the American Experiment… the ordering of the chaotic.

Adams and Jefferson were both right. Jefferson was right that we need change, regular ‘revolution’, freedom and the supremacy of the individual over the tyranny of government. The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many; the tyranny of the majority; permanent revolution; each generation is supreme. Adams was right that we need order and structure, stability, control and the advancement of the greater good. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; majority rules; what holds today can be depended upon tomorrow. Jefferson and Adams were not enemies, they were partners in opposition… and if they had ever realized that and come together in common cause within the Constitution how different our nation might be today. Adams and Jefferson failed to recognize and tackle the greatest challenge history gave them… to join their disparate ideas into a unified whole. Our job now is to evaluate the successes and failures of the American Experiment and build a stronger institution for the benefit of those who will come after us. Jefferson and Adams should inspire us in their failure and give us the raw materials we need to build our foundation for the future.

Rhys M. Blavier
Romayor, Texas

Truth, Justice and Honor… But Above All, Honor

Too Dangerous for Canada!

It appears that the UK’s maverick anti-war MP George Galloway is too dangerous for Canada. Now if the ban were on the basis of Galloway’s appearance on Big Brother, I’d back the Canucks. The right to defend oneself against crappy reality TV is inalienable. But the stated reason is that Galloway is accused of giving money to the Palestinian radical group Hamas, which is banned in Canada and bombed in Gaza.

I can’t help but think that this ban is perhaps more motivated by Galloway’s outspoken views on the US invasion of Iraq, sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Whatever you think of Galloway, he seems to be in, well… company when it comes to being banned, censored, and punished for unorthodox views. Geert Wilders, the Dutch MP who has built a career on baiting radical Muslims, was banned from the UK where he was scheduled to show his film Fitna to the House of Lords. The UK Home Office said, “The government opposes extremism in all forms.” This may have been in reference to Wilders’ call to ban the Koran. The Lords had to make do with a double-bill of Django the Bastard and A Fistful of Dynamite.

Wilders and Galloway are just Euro-MPs, that’s practically banana-republic territory compared to the lofty eminence of the Imperial Presidency. But even here there is censorship. While President Obama will hardly be turned away from Beijing, the same can’t be said for his inauguration speech. China cut the part where Obama boasted of how the USA whupped Commie butt.

If you are a lowly professor like David Irving, countries that don’t like your speech might just decide they WANT you to stay. In Austria it is illegal to show such gross insensitivity to Jewish feelings as to deny or downplay the Holocaust. Not that there are many Jews left in Austria since they all got murdered without much of any Austrians lifting a finger back when it counted.  In 2006 David Irving got sentenced to three years in the Austrian calaboose for the crime of Holocaust Denial. For similar, but perhaps more effective activities, Kurt Waldheim got six years in the grim Hofburg Palace.

Well, I’m not even going to start on cartoons or magical-realist writers. Down at this level, you don’t ask no questions, you just run for your life!

Now some may argue that Galloway, Wilders, Obama, and Irving are all to one degree or another, opponents of free speech in others, supporters of state violence, or reality TV contestants. In short, they are united in being jerks. I won’t even argue the point. Rather I take my stand with Voltaire, I disagree with the jerk stuff you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it!

–Dave Hardy

Live-blogging: Hamilton’s Curse: Chapter 1: The Rousseau of the Right

Although no other founder has had “a bigger impact on American society” than Alexander Hamilton, his impact has nevertheless been “almost universally negative from the perspective of those who would like to think of America as the land of the free,” people like you and me (p. 9).

Thomas J. DiLorenzo continues with this theme as he embarks on chapter two of Hamilton’s Curse, the title of which comes from an article by political scientist Cecelia Kenyon in the scholarly journal Political Science Quarterly (pp. 22–23).

The defining characteristics of the British Empire, the same British Empire American revolutionaries found so liberticidal that secession was their only option, were “dictatorial monarchy, centralized power, imperialism, and economic mercantilism”—the very same set of conditions Hamilton fervently hoped America would adopt (p. 9).  Thus, if Hamilton was to convince the public to adopt these conditions, he would have to use rhetoric with striking simularity to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s conception of “general will.”  Thus, Hamilton discussed his policies in terms of “the public interest” literally “hundreds of times in [his] speeches, letters, and writings” (Ibid.).  This is, of course, an ancient tactic of statist oppressors, but one that often proves successful nonetheless.

Thus DiLorenzo writes, “Hamilton was an American mercantilist, and he and his party (and its political heirs, the Whigs and Republicans) advocated special-interest policies that would primarily benefit politically connected merchants, manufacturers, speculators, and bankers at the expense of the rest of the public.  The ‘public interest’ rhetoric was (and is) an indispensable political smoke screen if they were to achieve political success.  The wool must be pulled over the public’s eyes with ‘public interest’ rhetoric if mercantilism were to succeed.  Jefferson and his political compatriots, such as John Taylor, saw through it” (pp. 23–24).

We learn a bit more about Hamilton in this chapter, for example we learn that he was a slave-owner (pp. 10–11) who became a founder of the New York Post with the purpose of smearing his rival Thomas Jefferson.  We learn that Hamilton was an advocate of outright nationalism (p. 13) who wanted America to “a kind of ‘king’ [a permanent president] who would yield supreme power over all people, who in turn would have essentially no say in how their government was run.  The states would be mere provinces whose governors would be appointed by and loyal to the ‘king.’  Under such a regime, all political power in the nation would be exercised by the chief executive and his circle of advisors” (pp. 16–17).  And we learn that Hamilton had no qualms with lying in order to achieve his goals.

Hamilton, for example, prior to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, assured Jeffersonian localists that the various states would still be sovereign under the Constitution, even though he clearly had no personal opposition to the seizure of power by the central state.  Moreover, he promised that the newly-proposed U.S. Congress would never contemplate “marching the troops of one state into the bosom of another” for any reason (p. 20).  This, it turns out, was a bald-faced lie.

Hamilton, who wished to have a huge national debt and ever-higher levels of taxation, “was instrumental in getting Congress to enact numberous excise taxes, a national property tax, and other taxes, including a special tax on whiskey” (p. 34).  Unfortunately for western Pennsylvanian farmers, who used whiskey as their means of exchange (i.e. money), this made basic commerce too difficult and thus destroyed trade.  Needless to say, the farmers rebelled by refusing to pay the insane tax.

This act of independence and rebellion infuriated Hamilton, who wanted to fight the rebellion with “overwhelming force” (Ibid.).  “So at Hamilton’s urging, President Washington personally led an army of more than 13,000 conscripts to Pennsylvania, accompanied by Hamilton the chief tax collector,” the very thing he had promised the New York ratifying convention less than a decade earlier would never happen (Ibid.).

We really shouldn’t be surprised by this corruption.  Hamilton had no love for restrained government, and instead aimed to “build the foundations of a new empire” (p. 14).  Both Jefferson and Hamilton, DiLorenzo tells us, “fully understood what was at stake:  Would the American government mimic the British and pursue ‘national greatness,’ ‘imperial glory,’ and empire, as Hamilton preferred?  Or would the primary purpose of government be the modest Jeffersonian one of protecting the lives, liberties, and property of its citizens?  Both men understood that empire would mean that government would become the master, rather than the servant, of the people, as it had been for generations in the Old World” (p. 12).  The difference between the two men is that Hamilton wanted the involuntary servitude associated with statism to be foisted upon the haplas masses; the Jeffersonians did not.

Hamilton was no doubt disappointed by the Philadelphia Convention, therefore, which rejected his goals.  As Robert Yates’s Secret Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention and Senator John Taylor’s New Views of the Constitution of the United States (1823) point out, the Founders understood themselves to be creating a system wherein each of the states retain their sovereignty.  Although Hamilton proposed his “permanent president,” the Convention whole-heartedly rejected the proposal and the philosophy of “executive dictatorship and monopoly government” (p. 17), instead viewing the Constitution as “a compact among the free and independent states and not as the creation of a ‘national’ government” (Ibid.).  It was never their intention to create a “central government whose laws would always trump the laws of the states” (p. 18), so it should come as no surprise that Hamilton, following the convention, called the Constitution “a frail and worthless fabric” (p. 14)—it didn’t achieve his hypernationalist goals.

Unfortunately today, the central state is treated as a Leviathan whose legitimacy trumps all below it, from the various state governments down to the individual.  Thus, although Hamilton initially saw his objective as having failed, in the end Hamiltonianism has unfortunately succeeded in transforming the American republic into the American Empire.  Hamilton the nationalist, Hamilton the mercantilist, Hamilton the militarist (pp. 28–29, 32), would be gleeful at the position of the modern American state.

I cannot say that this chapter comes without a personal objection.  On page 27, DiLorenzo states that the doctrine of implied powers, as advocated by Hamilton and his Federalist Party, bore “liberal judicial activism.”

I must ask, why do people still insist on implying that judicial activism necessarily expands the state?  It seems to me that it is judicial restraint that allows the Congress and the president to expand state power—in other words, the judiciary restrains itself from overriding the unconstitutional actions of the other two branches.

Liberal judicial activism was used back in the day to limit the power of the state, used to say that the unconstitutional big government policies of the other two branches were just that—unconstitutional—and were thus null and void.  Liberal judicial activism was used in the early years of Roosevelt to fight his unconstitutional New Deal.

Judicial restraint, conversely, was used—more often then not—to pretend that various big government programmes of Congress and the president were in fact perfectly fine vis-à-vis the Constitution.  Thus, the judicially restrained court effectively restrained itself from nullifying these laws.

It therefore seems to me that the Federalist Party brought us the birth of conservative judicial restraint.

DiLorenzo also fails to point out, when speaking of state sovereignty, that states do not actually possess “rights,” that rights can only be possessed by individuals and the voluntary associations they form.  (Surely, not even Mussolini would be so cavalier as to claim that the state is a voluntary association.)  The Founders clearly understood this, as the tenth amendment, which DiLorenzo himself addressed on pages 17–18, refer to the reserved powers of the states, not their “rights.”

DiLorenzo’s failure to mention that states do not actually possess rights and his willingness to associate judicial activism with either the Federalists or Hamilton’s doctrine of implied powers appear to be the only drawbacks to this chapter.  DiLorenzo’s attack on Hamilton remains well-deserved, and my view of Hamilton has, especially in light of his vicious and vile attack on the admirable Whiskey Rebellion, sunk to all new levels.

—Alexander S. Peak

With Liberty and Justice for Us… Not Them…

Here in America it seems that most people have a very hypocritical understanding of ‘freedom’. Most people believe in the premise of “liberty and justice for all”, but it seems deep down we don’t believe this. On a micro level people don’t believe in the abolition of drugs because others can’t be trusted with ‘legal’ drugs. On a macro level America believes in controlling other people’s countries regardless of whether they pose a legitimate threat or not. I will elaborate on these below.

There’s a stigma associated with people who use certain “drugs” that are not sanctioned by the state. Most people have no idea that the drug war is completely illegitimate. Think about “Alcohol Prohibition”. It didn’t work because the demand never went away. Thus, black markets were started for liquor and violence ensued to handle disputes that courts would normally handle. I bring up the drug war as an analogy to freedom because the argument that people use in defense of it is that “…we can’t have a bunch of junkies on the street dragging down society…”. People assume that their neighbor, brother, aunt, or friend would just sit down and use drugs until they die. The fact is that historical lessons from prohibition can be applied to most, if not, all other drugs. Alcohol is addictive as well but you don’t see alcoholics everywhere. Instead you see social drinkers etc… and people who drink on special occasions. There are some alcoholics but these are fringe elements. The irresponsibility of a few does not warrant the projection of that fault on the rest of the population.

Likewise, people feel that certain other countries cannot be free because “… we don’t know what they would do”. They might attack our state or invade a friendly state. The fact of the matter is that it’s none of our business what they do. Most, if not all, of the enemies of America are a result of the thinking that they cannot be trusted with their own freedom. For example the Middle East cannot be trusted to give us their oil so we have to make them give us their oil. Afghanistan cannot be trusted to let us build a pipeline through their territory so we must occupy them forever. We cannot trust the Palestinians to elect the “right” government for them we we will choose to acknowledge the correct one for them. We cannot trust Iran to make it’s own power from it’s own resources so we will stop them from doing so.

So what I’m saying is that when people say the “Pledge of Allegiance” that most people don’t believe it.  It’s a nice idea but it does not seem to fit in with the Imperial global policy that America is following. The nature of an Empire is to conquer other peoples who don’t submit. This logic automatically makes the needs of others secondary to the Empire’s ambitions.

Peace…

Constitutional Oaths and A Plea to President Obama

Weekend’s guest column by Rhys M.Blavier. His work can be found here.

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

This simple thirty-five word Oath of Office is specified by The Constitution of The United States as the one, single oath which much be taken by every person who is going to serve this nation as our President. After this oath is taken every four years, however, no one seems to ever pay much attention to it, but it is important enough that it is the ONLY oath spelled out word for word in The Constitution. And, yet, I can find no evidence of ANY case laws from our Supreme Court which has ever addressed this oath, even in passing or in dissent. NONE! This oath has only two specific obligations which it places on a President; to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States”, and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” to the best of their ability.

While no other oath is specified in The Constitution, it DOES state in Article VI, clause 3 that:

“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

For other federal officials, including members of Congress, it specifies that they “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation to support this constitution.” By federal statute, the oath which must be taken by all members of The House of Representatives and The Senate, as well as by The Vice President, members of the Cabinet, and all other civil and military officers and all federal employees other than the President is:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

The taking of oaths by all other federal officials in addition to the President dates back to the fourteen word oath created by the first United States Congress in 1789 (“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support The Constitution of the United States.”), but the current wording is based more on the oaths written during The War Between the States which were intended to allow treason charges to be leveled against those who supported the south or didn’t support the union.

The first Congress also specified, in The Judiciary Act of 1789, the oath which would be required of all federal judges in the United States:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm), that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent on me, according to the best of my abilities and understanding, agreeably to the Constitution, and laws of the United States. So help me God.”

In fact, federal judges are currently required to take not just one, but TWO different oaths:

“I, _________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as ______ under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.”

And:

“I, _________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Federal statute specifically states that this second oath “does not affect other oaths required by law.”

Within the military forces of The United States, the oaths required of both officers and enlisted men are statutory and are prescribed in Section 3331, Title 5 of the United States Code. The oath which officers are required to take is:

“I, _________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

While enlisted men are required to take this oath:

“I, _________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

An important distinction between the oaths required of officers when compared with that required of the enlisted ranks is that the oath taken by officers does not include ANY provision to obey orders. While enlisted personnel are bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice to obey LAWFUL orders, officers in the service of the United States are bound by their oath to disobey ANY order that violates The Constitution of the United States.

As far as I can tell, these are all of the oaths required by our federal government for any person who is in any way obligated to serve The United States of America (I am obviously not aware of any secret oaths which might exist within the shadowy corridors of secrecy which our country tries to keep hidden from its citizens). I am not including the oaths taken by members of the National Guard or by any officials of the various states as doing so could fill a small book, needless to say, all of those oaths meet the same Constitutional requirements which these federal oaths do.

At this point you are probably wondering why I have spent almost a thousand words just to tell you what the different United States federal oaths are. It is very simple. OATHS MATTER! Whether we pay attention to them or not, our Constitution requires them and many people take them, which means MANY people are BOUND by them. Now, as you read through them, you might have noticed that there is only one thing which they ALL have in common (aside from all being very short and all starting with the word ‘I’). I’ll give you a minute to look back through them in case you haven’t noticed it yet.

Every single oath required by or contained within The United States’ Constitution and/or federal statue, EVERY one, obligates the taker to preserve, protect, defend, uphold, support and/or administer justice agreeably to The Constitution of The United States; not the nation, not the people of, not the business interests of, not any person, concept, idea or entity other than THE CONSTITUTION itself. Furthermore, where any of the oaths mention enemies, it specifies enemies foreign AND domestic, ALL enemies of The Constitution, not enemies of the nation or of the people but of THE CONSTITUTION. Thus, by my personal interpretation (and, I assume, that of everyone who demands a strict, literal interpretation of The Constitution), while the economy, national security, foreign policy, healthcare, etc. are important concerns of our federal government, as provided for WITHIN The Constitution, the SINGLE most important duty of the President and of every member of our federal government is to ensure the health of and obedience TO that Constitution. ALL other considerations come after that one and NO duty or obligation is higher than it.

Every time I hear our President say that he “wants to look forward”, I want to cry. He cannot look forward or move forward by ignoring the past. What he is trying to do is build a wonderful new house upon a foundation that is very badly and structurally damaged. In such a case, it doesn’t matter how well you construct the house, it will not last because it MUST have a solid foundation. In fact, the bigger the house, the more important the integrity of the foundation must be. Oaths matter, but so do the principles demonstrated by those who take those oaths. No matter what words we might choose, words are not actions and principles are demonstrated by our actions. A principle is only a principle if it is something you do even when it is difficult, inconvenient or when it could cause you personal damage. If principles only required us to do things when they are easy or convenient, when there is no real cost associated with following them, then EVERYONE would be principled. Principles DO matter and what is shown to us by a person’s very real actions is what tells us what their principles truly are, not the words they say to us.

Therefore, I call upon Mr. Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, to uphold his Constitutional oath of office, and to preserve, protect and defend The Constitution of The United States. I call upon him to repair the damage done to our constitutional government by past administrations and officials, elected and appointed. I call upon him to define what his powers as President are under The Constitution and to specifically repudiate those which are not consistent with the provisions of The Constitution, including the power to single handedly declare that he will not obey, uphold or be bound by laws or treaties enacted by Congress simply because he doesn’t like them, or to claim dictatorial powers to dispense with constitutional provisions (like habeas corpus, cruel and unusual punishment, the right to speedy trials, legal advice and hearing all evidence presented against the accused) upon his own whim and, especially, the power to declare war, which is reserved solely for Congress. I call upon him to publicly repudiate the entire concept of the Unitary Executive and to acknowledge the Constitutional invalidity of all such excesses by ALL Presidents going back at least to the administration of Harry Truman. I call upon him to investigate and prosecute ALL officials and officers of The United States, in every branch and department of our government who have ever done grievous harm or serious damage to The Constitution, including by refusal to abide by our legal and treaty obligations, up to and including war crimes committed within The United States and/or in the name of The United States by anyone in or working on behalf of The United States, up to and including former Presidents and Vice Presidents of The United States.

To Mr. Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States, I would like to personally say this:

“Mr. Obama, I know that you were elected to be President of The United States for many reasons… our economy is bad and people thought you could fix it; our national reputation is tarnished and people thought you could improve it; we needed hope for the future rather than fear of it and people thought you could give that to us; and for so many other reasons both important and trivial. However, there were many people in this country, including me, who voted for you because our Constitution and our constitutional government have been threatened and even horribly damaged over the course of the last eight years, if not over the last quarter of a century, and we believed that you could and would work quickly and aggressively to undo and/or repair that damage, as well as to prosecute and punish those guilty of violating their own oaths to it and of doing such harm to it.

“Please remember that no damage has EVER been done to our Constitution by any EXTERNAL enemies of our nation. Those who attacked us on September 11, 2001 might have hurt our nation and killed our citizens, but they did not hurt our Constitution. The same is true of Timothy McVeigh and the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. He attacked the people of the United States but he did not threaten or harm our Constitution. No external enemies of our nation ever did any damage to our Constitution in the 50s, 60s, 70s or 80s. All of the damage which was done to it was done by domestic enemies who were attacking The Constitution from within… McCarthy, the House Un-American Activities Committee, J. Edgar Hoover, the Nixon administration, the Reagan administration, and by many, so many others. No damage was ever done to our Constitution by the Soviet Union or by ‘international communism’ but rather by those Americans who thought that communism was such a dangerous threat that they had the right to violate our own laws as well as our Constitution in order to fight it. But, out of fear of communism, many threats to our Constitution resulted from the actions of our own Congress and from administrations from Truman to Reagan. No foreign enemy has EVER harmed or even threatened our Constitution over the entire course of our history as a nation, but many domestic enemies have, and they have done so while wrapped tightly in the flag of and holding the symbols of The United States of America, going back to at least 1798 with The Alien and Seditions Acts. AMERICA may have been threatened many times in its history by enemies foreign and domestic, real and imagined, but no threats to our Constitution have ever come from external forces attacking us, those threats have ALWAYS been the result of our own internal rot.

“I know that this will be difficult to do. I know that it will cause political problems and turmoil, for you, for Congress and for the Judiciary. I know that it could precipitate a political civil war within this country. I know it would detract from other areas which you need to address, such as our economy. None of that matters, however. The oath which you took upon assuming the office and responsibilities of President of The United States obligates you to do this. It isn’t a choice, it is your duty, and no one should get to pick which duties they will fulfill based on which ones are more difficult or unpleasant than others, or upon which ones they like or don’t like. Remember, please, that you are the person who is charged by the Constitution to execute the provisions of and laws according to it, no one else, just you. In the end, your most important and lasting legacy will not be our economy, our wars, or our energy policies, or our healthcare system; those things are all transitory. In the end, your most important and lasting legacy will be what you demonstrate to the American people about what our Constitution and our constitutional government really are and what they really mean. There is no one else, Mr. President, except you upon whose shoulders this duty falls on. Please, do not let our nation… no, not our nation… Please, Mr. President, do not let our CONSTITUTION down. I don’t think we can survive if you do.”

Rhys M. Blavier
Romayor, Texas

A Short on the Sundwall Campaign

Yesterday a friend sent me a link from the LP site about the challenge brought against Sundwall’s campaign.  She, like me, missed this news in the flood of news that seems to come through everyday.  Also, it was on the LP site, does anyone even go there anymore?  My immediate thoughts were, “I wonder who brought that challenge forward?  I wonder if any past candidates there have been removed for technicalities before?  I wonder if any of the past elected candidates were elected with technical problems?“

When I’m in Dutchess County, NY sometimes I’ll I listen to WHUD. I hear them mentioning the names of the candidates to fill Gillibrand’s seat I get excited hearing them mention Eric’s.  It makes me smile.  I knew he was probably going to fight this, but I didn’t really see it being successful.  Talking Points Memo asks, “Qui Bono?” and they fill us in on details of who brought the complaint:

The complaint was brought by two voters who were registered with New York’s Republican and Conservative parties.* As such, some Democrats believe this was really engineered by the GOP side. As one Dem source told us: “The only reason the Republicans fought to keep Eric Sundwall off the ballot is because they knew he was stealing from their flawed candidate’s fading support.”

Thinking on it some more, the Eric Sundwall election brings up for me the same problems that the Ron Paul election did.  Perhaps even more.  Leaving aside issues of justice and ethics for the most part (as libertarians will argue over the problems of non-aggression and politics), I’m thinking about it in terms of economics.  Frequently, it would be asked by libertarian supporters of Ron Paul when they spoke among themselves, “just what could Paul do in office?”  We knew when thinking in context that he’d have to fight against political reality even if he became POTUS, a reality that had been shaped by powerful forces with mutual interest in maintaining their power.  From the state governments to the federal government, from the house to the senate, from big business to big education, from wealthy individuals to the labor unions, interlocking power had reasons to fight a Paul presidency and support one another while they individually had a go against the White House.  Still, Paul had the veto pen, the power of pardon, the power to appoint justices to the SCOTUS, nearly unilateral control over executive branch policy.  The hopeful assumed that those abilities might be enough to permanently change the US from an empire to a “normal” country if not a republic as imagined by 18th century liberals.

On the other hand Eric in NY would be a lot like Paul in the house, a lone voice crying into a near void, a Cassandra among rubes.  He would be running for congress, and not president.  Knowing this, would it have been worth it to support the Sundwall campaign?  It might give me a kick to know that someone I pretty much totally agree with was in office somewhere near me, but unless we had something like virtual cantons I don’t see it doing me much good.  The economic problem brought up by anti-political libertarians with regards to electoral politics is this.  Economics is about the use of scarce resources which have alternative uses.  We use the word “trade-off” to describe the choice of one use of scarce resources over others.  One of our scarce resources is time.  Our ultimate goal, as we all ostensibly agree, is a free society.  Is it a better use of our scarce resources to support and get elected candidates who will participate in the political process of majoritarianism and logrolling, or are there other alternatives that will help us achieve our goals?  Perhaps the time, money, energy, and will, used in supporting candidates can be put toward actually making a free society rather than hoping that our one candidates will prevail.  Agorists, at least, propose exactly this.

I have nothing against Eric Sundwall, in fact I wish him all the best.  If he had won I would’ve been glad.  This goes for all other libertarians that are going the political route.  It looks like Eric got too close to becoming a swing vote and had to be knocked out.  If he cannot receive the majority of the votes that would’ve gone to him then it seems like a wasted effort.  I ask other libertarians out there, about the larger point: Is the very idea of state politics a folly?  Should we continue these indirect efforts for liberation, or should we engage in direct action?  I have my answer, but I’m willing to listen to an argument for other points of view.

Update: Eric has released a statement of his intent to end his candidacy.  He fingers the Tedisco campaign for playing dirty politics.  I’m inclined to agree.  This merely highlights one of the main problems of putting hopes into electoral solutions for liberty. The powers that be want to remain the powers, and playing their games or following their rules simply seems like a fool’s game to me.

The judge knocks another one out the park

I just completed my reading of an advance copy of Judge Napolitano’s upcoming book,
Dred Scott’s Revenge, A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America. As an individual who very much loves the study of history and considers natural law the gold standard in personal and political ideals, I found myself appreciative that the judge took a bit of time to explain the concepts of natural and positivism in law. As a libertarian, I found Dred Scott’s Revenge, a heartbreaking affirmation of what I already knew to be true: government involvement in the area of race relations- as in most areas- has been a colossal failure.

Chapter after chapter break down the obvious contradictions in our beloved constitution, Lincoln’s opportunism in politics, the Civil War and Reconstruction and the court cases and legislation that embedded racism into the fabric of the American mind. For experienced readers of history, the beginning chapters read like an interesting first year, American History college textbook. For readers inexperienced with the sometimes ugly truth of American unrevised history, Chapter 6, Abraham Lincoln and Human Freedom is bound to make them a little uncomfortable. Here though, Napolitano takes on the myth of Lincoln by allowing him to be heard in his own words. From a debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, for example, Napolitano quoted Lincoln:

I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races- that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, not to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. [emphasis added in manuscript]

Napolitano skewers government intervention as a leading perpetuator of racism and provides example upon example of legislative and judicial actions which cleaved the minds of American whites and blacks for so long. Again, much of this will not be new material for readers of classically liberal (or for the sake of argument, mid-twentieth century conservative) thought, but a new generation of readers- a generation that knows going to school, church or playing sports with friends of all ethnicities- will gain an clear understanding of the very real heroes, white and black, who made real progress in race relations. Indeed, for this new generation, one that has grown up learning that the government “fixed” discriminatory practices, this book will serve as an eye opener for the judge plainly discusses the politicization of race in the halls of government.

All in all, Andrew Napolitano’s fourth book fails to disappoint and at 281 pages (manuscript format including extensive bibliography), is an easy introduction to the legal history of race and discrimination in our country. Oh, and did I mention that there’s also some baseball in there? Many thanks to Jennifer Womble at Thomas Nelson for trusting this blogger enough to put it in my hands.

Also by Judge Andrew Napolitano: Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Violates Its Own Laws, The Constitution in Exile: How the Federal Government Has Seized Power by Rewriting the Supreme Law of the Land, and A Nation of Sheep.

Anthony Gregory on Peaceful Dissent and Government Crackdowns

Over at Campaign for Liberty yesterday, Anthony Gregory released an article detailing various historical examples of the U.S. federal government targeting peaceful dissenters.

This article comes after a recent release of a memo to the state of Missouri, a memo conflating belligerent, right-wing extremist groups—some of whom are racist or anti-Semitic, some of whom are violently opposed to open immigration, some of whom want to impose upon the American people a system of national socialism—with others who, like many of us, simply want to get big government off of our backs.

Thus, tax protesters, second amendment advocates, anti-war activists, goldbugs, Ron Paul enthusiasts, and “sovereign citizens” (who sound like agorists and other natural-law libertarians from the description given)—all my kind of people—are lumped together with the sort of terrorist scum that would burn crosses on other people’s property, blow up abortion clinics, harass undocumented migrant workers, or—like Timothy McVeigh—blow up buildings with innocent people, including children, inside.

On the surface, one might assume Gregory’s article is nothing more than an explanation to people interested that these are two very different camps, and that the sort of people who frequent Campaign for Liberty have no connection to the violent, aggressive goals of various right-wing extremist groups in operation.  But Mr. Gregory’s article goes much further than that.

Gregory’s article takes an in-depth look at the tendency of the government, over the course of U.S. history, to overreact to criticism and suppress dissent, even those most peaceful of dissenters, the Quakers.  Starting from the horrendous Alien and Sedition Acts of Adams and his Federalist Party, the U.S. government has cracked down on free speech and peaceful dissent of Americans from all angles of the political spectrum—left, right, and centre.

There is a lot of history here, and although Gregory handles the material with breathtaking clarity, I’m left wanting to read more.  No doubt, a book could be written on the subject, detailing these various episodes, the various uses of counter-intelligence and infiltration by U.S. officials.  If Gregory were to tackle such a subject in book form, I would surely order a copy.

In any event, this article is worth the read.

—Alexander S. Peak

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

I know, I know. St. Patrick’s Day is technically over here on the U.S. East Coast. But, since it’s still St. Patrick’s Day over on the West Coast, I figured I’d slip this post in before it is too late.

According to Wikipedia, “In 1780, General George Washington, who commanded soldiers of Irish descent in the Continental Army, allowed his troops a holiday on 17 March ‘as an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence.’ This event became known as The St. Patrick’s Day Encampment of 1780″ (cited 18 March 2009, 1:27 AM).

To our Irish brothers and sisters, here’s to hoping that you someday achieve total independence from the United Kingdom.

(Ireland is an interesting case study for libertarian historians. For example, see Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty, pp. 64, 231–33, and 240.)

John Stossel Takes On the Bailouts

This past Friday, 20/20 had a special report titled “Bailouts and Bull,” explaining why stimuli and bailouts will do nothing to jump-start the economy.

More than 300 economists earlier this year signed a petition declaring their view that “more government spending is [not] a way to improve economic performance” and that “[t]o improve the economy, policymakers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, savings, investment and production.  Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.”

Eighteen of these economists were interviewed for Stossel’s special report.  Among those interviewed are two of my own professors, Dr. Howard Baetjer (back row, second from the viewers’ left) and Dr. Joe Pomykala (front row, on the viewers’ right), both of whom were lucky enough to get face-time.

I spoke to Prof. Baetjer this past Wednesday.  He explained that Stossel interviewed the eighteen economists both as a group and on a one-on-one basis.  Baetjer said he enjoyed the experience, and would love to do further televised interviews in the future.  In my own experience, I find Baetjer to be a very upbeat guy who is quite gifted at explaining economic concepts.

In watching the special, one can see that not everyone was lucky enough to have her or his interview used.  Baetjer, for example, said that when Walter Williams was interviewed, Williams allegedly said, “I don’t even know why we’re discussing the economics.  These bills are unconstitutional!”

For those that missed the 20/20 special, the Mises Economics Blog has made the entire episode available.

In addition to explaining that bailouts and “stimuli” are not the solution, the special report also (A) explains why privatising roads is an effective means of alleviating road congestion, (B) details how the federal government is oppressing medical marijuana retailers even in states that have legalised the medicine, (C) shows that universal pre-K is not a desirable government programme, (D) explains why building a fence between México and these United States is a huge waste of money, and (E) posits how a destitute person with no college degree can gain wealth in America.

—Alexander S. Peak

It’s the Economy, Stupid!

The Mercantus Center at George Mason University released yesterday an overview of the Bush spending policies.  And as any libertarian can tell you, those eight years were not pretty.

According to the data (Table 1), spending under Bush increased each and every year.  The smallest budget increase, from ’06–’07, was one of $75,000,000,000, while the largest budget increase, from ’08–’09, was $955,000,000,000.  Overall, the budget increased from 2002 to 2009 from $2,011 billion to $3,938 billion.  That’s a total increase of $1.93 trillion.

Entitlement spending and discretionary spending both also increased each and every year Mr. Bush was president.  Net interest and deficit spending fluctuated over this same period, but deficit spending took place each of Bush’s eight years, between $158 billion in 2002 and $1.75 trillion in 2009.

The data also tell us that government spending increased under the Bush regime more than under any of the previous six presidents, including the Johnson regime (Table 2).  It is estimated that in Bush’s second term, real total outlays increased by 48.6%, exceeding that of Johnson’s 35.8%. Bush’s first term saw an increase of 18.9%, the biggest increase since Johnson, beating Carter’s 17.2%.

I recognise that not everybody is going to be familiar with the term outlays; it’s not a term used often.  The website of the U.S. Senate describes outlays as follows: “Outlays are payments made (generally through the issuance of checks or disbursement of cash) to liquidate obligations. Outlays during a fiscal year may be for payment of obligations incurred in prior years or in the same year.”  Wikipedia probably gives a better definition for layman use. According to Wikipedia, the term “outlays” is usually synonymous with “expenditure” or “spending” (cited 17 March 2009, 4:36 PM).

Total outlays can be divided into two general camps: (1) entitlements and net interest payments and (2) discretionary spending.

Entitlement spending is any spending the government thinks it has to make, and includes such things as Social Security, Medicare, and the like.  The idea is that the government has already established these programmes and informed citizens that they are supposedly entitled to this money; thus, the government says, it must spend its money on these things in accordance with the already-established policies of the programmes.  To eliminate or alter this spending, the government would not merely need to alter the budget, but would also have to alter the programmes themselves, say for example by raising the age necessary to receive the Retirement Insurance Benefits of Social Security from 62 to 64.

Discretionary spending is all other spending, from military expenditures to earmarks for wood utilisation research.  (And, yes, Bush did approve spending for wood utilisation research.)  Thus, discretionary spending is itself divided usually into two camps: (1) defence spending and (2) non-defence discretionary spending.

The data are not in yet for these two types of discretionary spending under Bush’s second term, but it is estimated that his total second term discretionary spending entailed an increase of 29%, the highest since Johnson’s 33.4% increase (Table 2).  And in these past ten terms, who had the third highest increase in discretionary spending, following Johnson’s one term and Bush’s second term?  Why, once again it is Mr. G. W. Bush, with his first term (2001–2005), with his increase of 27.7% over Clinton’s second term.

Some may find this surprising, but of the past ten terms, it appears the most responsible President (at least as far as spending is concerned) was Bill Clinton, at least in his first term where total outlays only increased by 4.2% and discretionary spending actually decreased by 8%! This isn’t to say that Clinton was an ideal president, but if I had to choose between Bush and Clinton in the realm of spending, I’d choose Clinton in a heart-beat.  (Figure 1 makes a direct comparison between Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush, showing the actual spending in millions of dollars between the two men.  According to the source, “Adjusted for inflation, in eight years, President Clinton increased the federal budget by 11 percent.  In eight years, President Bush increased it by a whopping 104 percent.”)

Although the specific numbers are not yet available for Bush’s second term, we can still analyse his first term discretionary spending.  In doing so, we find that his defence spending increase at the dramatic rate of 36.0%, more than any president in the pat ten terms, even beating out Johnson’s 33.1% and Reagan’s 26.1% (Table 2).  We can also see that his first term non-defence discretionary spending increased by 20.7%, the highest increase since Nixon’s 25.5% increase, beating Clinton’s second-term 14.4% and his own father’s 13.9%.

Figure 3 compares the cumulative real discretionary spending of Bush, Clinton, and Reagan over each of their eight years.  What I find most remarkable about this is the paragraph that follows:

President Bush outspent both Reagan and Clinton.  President Reagan boosted defense outlays by 41 percent during his terms, but he also cut real nondefense outlays by 10 percent.  Overall, total discretionary spending increased by 15.8 percent during Reagan’s terms.  During Clinton’s first term, real discretionary spending actually decreased by 8 percent.  During his second term, with the Republicans in control of Congress, it increased by 8.8 percent.  Over Clinton’s eight years then, real discretionary spending increased by 0.1 percent.  During his two terms in office, however, President Bush increased real discretionary spending by 44 percent.

Figure 9 is also quite interesting.  It depicts Congressional pork from 1994 to 2009.  1994 is the last year that the Democrats held control of Congress before the Republican Revolution of ’94.  After that point, we see the number and cost of earmarks skyrocket, especially in the years Bush was president, culminating in $29 billion dollars worth of pork in 2006, the last year Republicans held control over Congress.  Following the Democratic Revolution of ’06, the Democrats seem to have briefly attempted to abide by their libertarian mandate (remember, it was libertarian-leaning Republicans voting for Democratic candidates to protest the high spending and unnecessary wars of the GOP that enabled Democrats to win all those new seats) by reducing pork to $13.2 billion, the lowest it had been since 1999.  But the Democratic reforms did not last, and Democrats have since fallen into the same nasty habit as their Republican allies, increasing pork expenditures back up to $17.2 billion the following year.

The publication concludes with the following remarks:

Republicans often claim to be the party of smaller government.  Many Republicans would express support for Ronald Reagan’s observation:  “Growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down.”  Unfortunately, once Republicans are elected to political office, they tend to fall into the Washington trap of assuming that more federal spending will solve the nation’s problems.  Certainly, President Bush appears to have fallen into this trap.  So did the Republicans in Congress.

Harvard economist Jeffrey Frankel argues that we should not be surprised by the discrepancy between the rhetoric and the actual policies of Republicans.  Frankel even argues that “the Republicans have become the party of fiscal irresponsibility, trade restriction, big government, and bad microeconomics.”  Frankel is incorrect about the microeconomics—Republicans generally pursue sounder tax policies than Democrats, for example—but when it comes to big government spending, the Bush Administration seems to have gone out of its way to confirm Frankel’s point.

Perhaps there’s an easy way to summarise the approaches to government of the two major parties:  Democrats want big government, while Republicans want to supersize government.  This isn’t true across the board, of course; the GOP does have a few noble, small-government friends, such as Dr. Ron Paul and Mr. Walter Jones, but they seem unfortunately few in number.

This is not to be taken, of course, as a ringing endorsement of the Democratic Party or the current president.  I have maintained in the past, and continue to maintain, that Mr. Obama is just as bad as Mr. Bush.  Ultimately, time will tell.

Nor is this to be taken as a justification for the Clinton years.  Clinton’s willingness to starve innocent Iraqis through embargo, and his administration’s authoritarian mishandling of the Waco Massacre, go to show that Mr. Clinton was by no means a man of honour.

Rather, I believe this serves another purpose: it serves as a warning about trusting Republican politicians and their talking-head partisans.  Republicans talk a good game regarding smaller government, but they never seem to deliver (with the rare exceptions mentioned above).  Thus, I recommend always taking what politicians say with a grain of salt.

—Alexander S. Peak

Coming soon

I just received an advance copy of Judge Napolitano’s upcoming book, “Dred Scott’s Revenge” to review. It’s obviously very interesting subject matter and I can’t wait to share it with you.

Dred Scott's Revenge manuscript

Rape trees and idiots, useful and otherwise

While perusing the news links at reddit, I came across term new to me: Rape Tree. The headline which read, “‘Rape Trees’ Found Along Southern US Border” brought immediately to mind Michael Vick and I assumed that there was going to be some sort of dog fighting news on the border. I then remembered that the term in Vick’s case was rape stand and quickly learned that there’s a whole other brouhaha brewing up on the border. In the aforementioned article, Mariela Rosario writes:

Recently, a new method of marking territory has crossed over into the United States. “Rape trees” are popping up in Southern Arizona and their significance is horrific and disgusting. These “rape trees” are places where cartel members and coyotes rape female border crossers and hang their clothes, specifically undergarments, to mark their conquest and territory.

As a feminist living in Texas- a state in which our guard is on high alert due to “escalating border violence”- and frequent traveler to Mexico, I was especially interested in knowing more about what is being reported as a systematic abuse of illegally immigrating women. What I found may shock you because I found nothing of substance.

Because I’m not an avid follower of ultra conservative border blogs, I didn’t realize what a trigger this rape tree idea is for what I assume are anti-immigration and border wall types. From Minute Man blogs to far right leaning blogs (which, incidentally, link to each other) much of nothing has been said about the subject. One of the things that struck me in this search was the far too frequently repeated accounts such as the one found in a piece written by Clark A. Kirby, TX State Director and published in Canada Free Press which reads:

On Tuesday, April 17th, a routine event took place on the border. The victim, statistics show, was young, female, and of Latin American descent. We do not know her name and never will. She suffered, most likely, in silence. If she is still alive, she will suffer for the rest of her life. Evidence of her humiliation and subjugation was left at the scene for all to see – her underclothes hanging from the branch of the tree under which the detestable crime was committed. “Rape Trees” are a visible reminder of the dangers of our unsecured borders.

I’d say that’s a whole lot of conjecture on the part of Mr. Kirby but he’s not the only Texas politician running with this unfounded idea. Representative Ted Poe [R-TX] has submitted into the Congressional Record:

Ripped from the bodies of unwilling women, undergarments cling to branches of a tree just a few feet from the lawless U.S.-Mexico border, dozens of pairs of underwear thrown there by rapists.

These are called rape trees. Each pair is a trophy from a woman that was smuggled into the United States, victims that are heard screaming in the desert. They are raped, even gang raped by illegal human smugglers, then forced into silence.

These trees are a warning. Illegal immigrants evade our borders but crime doesn’t evade them. Some become criminals. Some become victims. They are raped, robbed and murdered by other illegals, human smugglers and brutal criminals who then claim other victims.

More than 70 percent of their rapes, murders and child sex crimes are against Americans. One expert who studies sex crimes says about a hundred illegal sex offenders cross the border every day, leaving thousands of victims every year.

Rape trees are a warning to illegals not to talk. They should be a warning to Americans as well, to shout out against illegal entry and human smuggling.

And that’s just the way it is.

Link after link provided the same blog stories all linking back to one or another similar post about ladies’ undergarments hanging in the trees near the border but not a one provided any sort of proof of rape. It would seem that in normal police work, underwear in trees without a victim or witness would not lead to a rape investigation. (This was verified by the dispatch operator of my local police department.) I did find though a blog that documented pictures of what is being termed “rape tree” as well as acres of strewn about clothing and garbage. To his credit, Gary Armstrong, the writer of that blog post had the integrity to use the word allegedly when describing a red panty in a tree as a trophy left by a rapist coyote.

While I’m certain that many of the bloggers writing about “rape trees” are genuine in their intent and concern, I can’t help but notice that the well meaning yet unfounded posts have led to a plethora of somewhat ignorant documentaries about the subject. Here’s a You Tube clip of one:

I’m assuming that the commentator has never been on a ski lift or visited a Dick’s Last Resort; ladies’ undergarments are frequently found on display at both. (Perhaps I should dial 911 and report a rape next time I’m skiing and see women’s underwear in the treetops under the lift.) “Border,” an award winning documentary directed by Chris Burgard has been reviewed as:

Fort Worth, TX (WiredPRNews.com)—The shocking documentary ‘Border’ shows how a porous border and limited enforcement enables human smugglers and drug traffickers to extort, rape, murder and humiliate those seeking a better life in the United States.

I’ve not seen “Border” but it is interesting to note that the filmmaker was influenced by Kuki Gallmann, a writer and conservationist living in Kenya who was sued in 2001 by 915 Kenyans after their eviction by her allegedly resulted in the rapes of many women.

I certainly don’t mean to discount the very real occurrences of violence against any woman but all this reading of non-proven incidents of rape brings to mind the term “useful idiot.” It’s a term I heard used in a 1984 news program featuring Soviet KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov. In that interview, Mr. Bezmenov described how our country would be demoralised and ripped at the seams by useful idiots who parrot in news articles tripe fomented by those with larger agendas. That idea that some women are raped while attempting to cross the border should never be discounted; I don’t doubt there is rape and other violence in some situations. The idea of panties in trees being proof of widespread rape is what is laughable. The conjectures without victims, witnesses or other proof make a mockery of the very real subject of abuse and the people who copy and paste such nonsense in blog posts are either well meaning idiots or idiots with an agenda, but idiots nonetheless.

—Shinghal

Cops Gone Wild: Brutal attack on teen girl not uncommon police behavior

By now, unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve seen the video of the 15-year-old girl who was violently attacked by a Seattle (Kings County) cop while being booked, because she kicked her shoe off at him and called him a name.

For said cave dwellers, here’s the video in question from a news report.

The teen had been arrested when she and some friends were seen driving erratically; the car belonged to a friend’s mother, and had been taken without permission.  The girls were arrested and charged with stealing the car.

Bear in mind, I do not condone that behavior by any stretch of the imagination.  No one ever has the right to take someone else’s property without permission, and they were also a serious danger to everyone else on the road since their erratic driving along with their age suggests they had no training or experience driving a motor vehicle.  I therefore have absolutely no problem with the girls being arrested.

I do, however, have a very, very serious problem with cops violently attacking suspects in this manner.

In a nutshell, the 15-year-old girl (Malika Calhoun, who has since given media interviews so her name is in the public record) angered officer Paul Schene, age 31, by calling him a “fat pig” and kicking her shoe off at him (though the shoe was not kicked hard, so it could not have harmed anyone), and Schene reacted with a shocking level of violence.  As you can see in the video, Schene ran into the room in full attack mode, slammed her head against the wall, threw her to the floor, punched her in the head several times, then picked her up by her hair (don’t get me started on what the hair-pulling says about this cop’s psychological problems).  She complained of having trouble breathing after the attack, which I do not doubt.  If nothing else, she may have had a panic attack following the shockingly violent attack against her.

Should she have called him a “fat pig” and kicked her shoe off at him?  Obviously not, and it’s pretty clear that she is a troubled teen based on her being involved in auto theft.  At the same time, that kind of behavior in teens is not unusual, as many parents find out the hard way, and many teens engage in that kind of behavior but grow up to be perfectly respectable, law-abiding adults; in fact, that’s why the criminal records of minors are sealed, since they lack the maturity of adults and do many times make extremely poor choices.  Either way, her disrespectful actions toward Schene do not explain Schene’s reaction, and in fact his reaction says far more about him than her behavior says about her, given her age.  I therefore can’t say her portrayal of him as a “fat pig” was necessarily incorrect.  Why should anyone respect the authority of a cop like Schene, who acts like a violent criminal himself?

Even in light of the video evidence against him, Schene has only been placed on paid leave pending the investigation.  Yet it is very clear that he engaged in brutality, since even his defense – that she called him names and kicked her shoe off at him – does not in any way explain, much less excuse, his violent actions.  So why are taxpayers being forced to fund what amounts to a paid vacation for him?  Clearly he is a danger to the public, and thus should have been fired as soon as his actions came to light.  Steps must be taken to protect the public from Schene.  Pure and simple, this is a man who should never have been given a badge.  Paul Schene didn’t just snap and attack a suspect this one time, that much I can guarantee.  He merely got away with it until now, because he’s a cop.

While the various television talking heads are quick to point out that this is an unusual situation, they’re both completely right and horribly, terribly wrong.  This kind of violence toward suspects actually happens all the time, but is almost impossible to prove since the average person tends to believe cops over the people they arrested, so the public doesn’t hear about it.   The only thing truly unusual about this situation – not unlike the infamous Rodney King beating by the LAPD - is that the attack was caught on videotape.  In this case, the prosecutor who was assigned to examine the criminal complaint (filed by the cop against the girl, not vice versa) pulled the surveillance tape to see what happened.  Had Schene not charged the girl for kicking her shoe at him, the public would never have even known about this shocking instance of police brutality.  The truth is, few if any people would believe a 15-year-old girl over a cop, even if she went public with the allegation.  Schene was counting on that, too.  The fact that he knew there was a surveillance camera there, but still filed the assault charges against her, suggests that he was counting on the prosecutor looking the other way as well.

The other cop in the room, a trainee, never reported the incident even though he had an absolute duty to do so since a violent crime was committed in his presence.  Is this trainee really so stupid that he doesn’t recognize assault when it’s right in front of him?  Does that trainee believe that cops are allowed to brutalize suspects?  Was he afraid of getting into trouble for being there?  Or did the trainee not report it because he feared for his career, and possibly even his life since in the field he has to depend upon other cops to cover his back?

The trainee cop has not been disciplined, and has not been charged.  However, he should have been fired immediately for failing to report the assault.  It’s easy to fire a trainee, since they can be relieved of duty for any reason, or no reason at all.  Chances are he was not fired because he cooperated with the investigation into Schene’s actions, but that still does not excuse his actions (or lack thereof) insofar as his employment is concerned.  At most he should be granted immunity from prosecution, since he does not appear to have assaulted the girl himself (but could still be charged with conspiracy); however, he still should lose his job for not reporting Schene’s assault.

Schene, on the other hand, would be harder to fire because he almost certainly has the Fraternal Order of Police backing him up.  While the FOP is extremely powerful when it comes to defending cops who have been fired, it would also be extremely hard for them to successfully argue that Schene should not be fired in light of the video and his pathetic excuses for his actions.  Yes, it would cost the department quite a bit of money to defend against a union challenge, but that’s their mistake and they now need to correct it.  They obviously didn’t screen either cop very well, or else they would not be in this predicament at all.  They need to fire the trainee, fire Schene, fight any FOP challenge to the decision, and learn from it by more carefully screening their officers.  Either way, take the badge and gun away from this uniformed thug before he kills someone else.

Yes, you read that right.  Schene has been a cop for only eight years, but has already been investigated for two police-related shootings, one of which resulted in death.  He was cleared both times, which is also not at all surprising.  Cops are rarely found at fault in shootings, even when they acted improperly, because the cop’s claimed perceptions are given greater weight than the actual reality of the situation.  Schene’s shootings should be reinvestigated by an independent panel outside the law enforcement community and outside the area, given his actions in this case which clearly show that he has extremely serious impulse control problems which render him dangerous to others, as well as the failure of everyone within the department to report his assault upon the girl – though obviously numerous people knew, including the trainee and the medics – which suggests there may have been a coverup in the investigation of the shootings as well. 

This brings me to another issue, with regard to the complaint made against this girl which resulted in the discovery of this surveillance video.  Simply stated, charges of obstruction of justice and assault on a police officer are rarely legitimate charges.  More likely than not, they are used to pad other charges.  Sometimes, as in this case, a charge of assault upon a police officer is filed only to cover up violent behavior by the cops.  Those kinds of charges are also used as a trump card by the prosecution, to make defendants think they’re getting a deal by having some charges dropped in exchange for a guilty plea on other charges, when in reality there is rarely any evidence to back up the dropped charges beyond than the cop’s word.  That the girl would be charged with assault upon a police officer at all, given what is shown in that video, is disturbing at best.

What I find most disturbing of all, however, is the number of people who are defending Schene for committing a violent crime against a minor.  The internet is overrun by those making excuses for him, from “maybe he had a bad day” to “the girl had it coming because she stole a car”.   I hate to tell them this, but “having a bad day” is not an excuse for attacking anyone, or else it would be an affirmative defense for everyone accused of assault, murder, and other violent crimes; and there is no law in this country which states that the punishment for being accused of car theft is a violent beating by someone much larger than you, and trained to attack others. 

Those who claim to be law-and-order types are strangely the first ones to suggest that violent crime is acceptable, as long as it’s committed by a cop.  Those with the same mindset defended the animals-with-badges on the LAPD who nearly beat Rodney King to death (they claimed he was resisting arrest, though the video shows otherwise), and the NYPD cops who shot Amadou Diallo a shocking 41 times (they claimed they thought his wallet, taken out to show ID as he did not speak English well, was a gun), so making excuses for completely out-of-control cops is not a new phenomenon, but it never fails to be an extremely disturbing reflection upon our society.

At any rate, the US Department of Justice is now investigating Schene’s actions in brutalizing the teenager.  While normally I don’t approve of the feds intervening in local affairs, it is the best thing which could happen in this case since local authorities (and local juries) rarely take appropriate action in cases of police brutality, even when there is clear and convincing evidence and high public/media interest.  Even in this case, in which Schene was criminally charged, he was only charged with misdemeanor fourth-degree assault.  Chances are he will get probation at most if convicted of that charge, and based upon the long history of cops being acquitted for even more heinous acts against the citizenry, it is not even sure that he will be convicted despite the video evidence.  However, if convicted in federal court, he will likely be sentenced to federal prison, and caged like the animal he has proven himself to be.

Live-blogging: Hamilton’s Curse: Introduction: The Real Hamilton

Today I begin my live-blogging journey through Thomas James DiLorenzo’s most recent book, Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution—and What It Means for Americans Today.

The book, 209 pages in length and dedicated to Dr. Murray N. Rothbard, “a brilliant scholar and tireless defender of the free society,” is about exactly what you would expect given the title.  Alexander Hamilton, revered today by both nationalists on the right and social engineers on the “left,” was in actual fact a manipulative engineer for the undermining of the Constitution and Liberty.

On the one side, we had Thomas Jefferson—a defender of limited, decentralised government; of “strict constructionism” with regards to the Constitution; of free trade and minimal taxation.  On the other, we had Hamilton.

Hamilton wanted for America a strong, centralised state—the more centralised, the better.  He took this so far that, at the Philadelphia Convention, “he proposed a permanent chief executive who could veto all state legislation—in other words, an American king” (p. 2).  The contrast between Jefferson and Hamilton could not be more stark.

DiLorenzo explains that Hamilton “wanted to use this centralized power to subsidize business in particular, and the more affluent in general, so as to make them supportive of an ever-growing state.  As treasury secretary, he was a frenetic tax-increaser and advocated government planning of the economy.  He championed the accumulation of public debt, protectionist tariffs, and politically controlled banks; belittled politicians like Jefferson who spoke too much of liberty; and believed that the new American government should pursue the course of national and imperial glory, just like the British, French, and Spanish empires” (Ibid.).  Given that the United States have adopted all of these evils, it should come as no surprise that DiLorenzo quotes George F. Will as saying we now live, despite our honouring of Jefferson, “in Hamilton’s country” (pp. 3–4).  The American Revolution has been betrayed, and in large part thanks to the surviving influence of Hamiltonianism (p. 4).

It seems DiLorenzo was moved to write this book as a means of dispelling various myths that have arisen surrounding Hamilton’s legacy.  For example, Ron Chernow has called Hamilton “the prophet of the capitalist revolution in America,” and neoconservative commentator David Brooks has claimed that Hamilton somehow single-handedly “created capitalism.”  Correcting this error, DiLorenzo points out that Hamilton’s “hyperinterventionist approach to the economy was anything but capitalism” (p. 5).

Thus far, it appears my only main contention with DiLorenzo is going to be with his use of vocabulary.  On page six, Professor DiLorenzo associates liberalism with its big-government, modern-day imposture by referring to the Brookings Institute as a liberal think tank.  This would be more reasonable if the author were to place “liberalism” in quotes, thereby distinguishing it from the real liberalism of Jefferson, Thoreau, and Mises.

Professor DiLorenzo also describes traditional conservatism as an ideology opposed to big government.  It seems to me, on the contrary, that traditional conservatism arose as an ideology aimed at defending and restoring the ancien régime.  What better or more succinct way to describe Hamilton’s objective?  I can think of no man who better exemplifies in my mind “traditional conservatism” than Hamilton, save for possibly Thomas Hobbes.

Perhaps the author understands this, but chose to describe conservatism as an ideology favouring smaller government because, after all, self-described conservatives often do use small-government rhetoric, even if their policies do not reflect said rhetoric.  Reagan, for example, called government “the problem,” and it’s not hard to overlook the fact that his big-government policies never lived up to his limited-government talk.  In any event, Crown Publishing Group—the publisher of this book—appears to be a conservative-oriented publisher.

This, it currently appears, is my only notable problem with DiLorenzo’s book.  His main thesis, that Hamilton and his Federalist Party betrayed the revolution, is certainly credible and deserves to be promoted.

—Alexander S. Peak

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Markets Re-released

The Ludwig von Mises Institute has just yesterday re-released the Scholar’s Edition of the classic Austrian School text Man, Economy, and State with Power and Markets.  The new release has better binding than the previous release, and comes with a snazzy new cover.

Writes the Institute, this book, authored by the late radical libertarian and economist Murray N. Rothbard and consisting of 1440 pages, “provides a sweeping presentation of Austrian economic theory, a reconstruction of many aspects of that theory, a rigorous criticism of alternative schools, and an inspiring look at a science of liberty that concerns nearly everything and should concern everyone.”

In addition to purchasing the book here (or the study guide by Robert Murphy here), you can also read the entire book online for free.  This is, of course, in keeping with the Institute’s view that intellectual property (e.g. copyrights) are illegitimate.

Here’s the same book in .asp format and .pdf format.

–Alexander S. Peak

Songs of Freedom: Tales from the Revolution

Artist-activist Darryl W. Perry describes his latest project.  Submission are accepted at the Songs of Freedom blog. –S.G.

I got the idea for this book about 6 weeks after the Presidential election of 2008. I began to reflect on the previous 18 months with all of the rallies and events that I (and thousands others) had attended in support of a smaller government and more personal freedom. I was reminded that Dr. Paul had become the unofficial spokesman for liberty for this generation. I, and others, see the “rEVOLution” as an extension of the American Revolution started by our ancestors over 230 years ago. While we aren’t fighting the British crown for independence, we are fighting an oppressive government for our freedom. We’re fighting to protect our Constitutional rights, which have slowly eroded away over the last century.

While this book is inspired by Dr. Paul and partially dedicated to him; it is also about more than one man. To borrow a quote from Adam Kokesh, “The freedom movement is bigger than any one party, and any one leader. The revolution of which I speak is a revolution of values, of political culture, and of the understanding of the responsibility of being a good citizen. When that happens, it will be reflected in our political system one way or another, be it through the Republicans, Democrats, Green Party, Constitution Party, or an independent candidate…More than the party or any one candidate, I am committed to this movement, my country, and my principles.

This is a book written by and for everyone in the freedom movement.  I’m hoping to have the book ready for release by April 15th. I’ve set a deadline of March 30 for submissions of pro-freedom artwork, poems, short stories and essays. Currently there have been submissions of work from Gary Franchi & Adam Kokesh. I have also found some good works in the public domain from Emma Goldman, Henry David Thoreau, Richard Henry Lee & Patrick Henry that seem fitting. After all, the fight for freedom spans centuries and “requires eternal vigilance”.

An Energetic Anger

I’m looking at CSPAN this morning and they have T. Boone Pickens speaking on American Journal. The topic was about “energy independence”. He made it  seem as if the only hope for American energy independence was natural gas and solar power. I didn’t hear any mention about the original diesel fuel (hemp oil). Why do I bring this up? Because it can be grown almost anywhere in the U.S. and you wouldn’t have to use food crops for fuel which depletes the food supply.

A few of the positive points about using the fuel mentioned above is that it burns cleaner than most other liquid fuels and that it can be grown quickly. Hemp is nothing more than a tall grass so it can be grown in a lot of different environments. It can also be harvested multiple times a year. Not to mention the other uses for the rest of the plant parts such as cloth production and it’s ability to make a very durable and efficient paper. It is also edible. The list of uses grows but yet there was no mention of using this crop for alternative fuel.

Mr. Pickens in his interview made the claim that only diesel or liquified natural gas has the energy to run a big rig. He said that since this is the case that until America taps it’s natural gas reserves that we will always be dependent on other nations for our energy needs. But this logic is a fraud because , as I stated above, we already know of a good fuel source that can run a car. The very first “Model T” Ford ran off of hemp oil. It also had hemp plastic panels on it as well; which have an impact strength stronger than steel.

In other words I just hate for people to be duped into believing that our only salvation for energy independence is petroleum. We have plenty of other resources that I haven’t even mentioned like magnet motors and also don’t forgot the other inventors of alternative energy that were all bought out and who’s technology has been suppressed by major car and oil industries to consolidate  their oligopoly over their customers. There’s a documentary called “Who killed the Electric Car” that details what some people have went through and how technology has been out for a while but that car industries kept them from getting out.

Clinton makes a token critique of Israel

The article that I’m referring to can be found here. In the AP article Clinton is quoted as making the comment that Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes is ‘unhelpful’. Though, I admit that it’s good that she acknowledged this travesty, I wish that she would have also reminded people that the construction of any settlements on Palestinian land is illegal under international law. Not to mention the fact that the theft and demolition of Palestinian property contributes to the radicalization of Palestinians.

When I talk to people on this topic they are quick to bring up this illusion that the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has been going on for millennia. I fundamentally disagree with this logic because if this were true; How would there have been a definite beginning or end to the first and second intifada? If they never stopped fighting then the entire Palestinian history should be one long uprising against the Israelis. We must also remember that the biblical Israel and the modern day Israel (state) are two different things. The biblical Israel referred to a people. Today’s Israel refers to the state not the people contained in it. Also there is the fact that Palestinians and Israelis have lived in peace in modern history. So they can live in peace but the repressive and brutal practices of the Israeli regime constantly undermines any peace process that’s underway.

In the AP article it is also mentioned that the ‘Palestinian Authority’ is the only legitimate government of the Palestinians. This also leads to another conflict because the only entity who can determine the voice of the collective Palestinian people is the people themselves. They voted Hamas into office. It’s nobodies place to say that any elected government is not fit to represent it’s people except for the people living under it.  Imagine another government stepping into the American political process and saying that republicans or democrats are not legitimate and that they will only recognize one group. It sounds crazy right? So how can we expect for this model to work for another country?

In conclusion, I would just like to reiterate the fact that the entire Palestinian-Israeli conflict is undermind by Israel’s policies and America’s blind backing of Israel. It’s only when all parties are taken out of their comfort-zone that meaningful changes can be made. I’m sure that the Palestinians have not been comfortable for a long time. It’s time for the Israelis to feel some fire under their heels to make a meaningful change. This means that blind American support should be stopped and maybe Israel might have a bit of motivation to stop displacing and killing their neighbors.

Peace….

Cashless society?

Before I quit watching TV, I used to cringe when I would see those debit card commercials. You know the ones- everybody is bumping along at lunch until the record scratches, movement stops and somebody has backed everything up because he had the audacity to pay with cash. Even in the public schools the children are being taught to pay with a number (or fingerprint) instead of the old fashioned way. (And people wonder why many young adults can’t make change at a shop.)

Talk of a cashless society and the privacy concerns that come with it has generally been regarded as conspiracy theory chatter. Not any more. BBC News has been openly and actively discussing the possibility and I’ve seen Asian reports of cell phone wallets. Here’s a quick video:

The bankers have been using government to put the screws to people for generations but can you imagine what a cashless society will do? It will require that merchants disclose all financial information to the bank to be permitted to do business. It will raise costs as merchants have to pay a fee- discount rate variable depending on credit score- on all transactions. For the person who has need to eat (and which of us doesn’t?), it will track everything from your greasy cheeseburger to your tofu salad. It will bring every transaction to scrutiny by a taxing authority. After all, if you can’t buy food and other necessities with cash there’s no sense in working for it. You will have to ask permission to live.

I don’t mean to sound a doom and gloomer, after all the banks are saying that there are no plans to end cash right now and that the current system is voluntary. I certainly don’t live “off the grid” – I have my own credit cards (paid in full every month) that I use for convenience but there are some things for which cash must be paid. (Hint: One of those things is a different kind of green and I’m almost certain that fighting the War on Drugs will be cited as a clarion call to help usher in this idea.) When I hear many world “leaders” calling right now for some sort of global correction to the world economy, it makes me worry that something like this will be attempted very soon. I think that there’s just enough blind nationalism (who’d have ever thunk I’d be happy for blind nationalism?) left in the world to stop it but who knows? We may very soon see our system of currency change into a very beastly thing.

Citigroup then and now

I find it odd that today’s headlines include information on the nationalization of Citigroup. Here’s an excerpt from the linked article:

If the government took a large common equity stake, even if it lacked voting control, the move could be the equivalent of a nationalization. Citigroup shares fell below $2 on Friday as investors feared that soaring losses would result in nationalization, wiping out shareholder equity.

Taxpayers could end up owning as much as 40 percent of New York-based Citigroup’s common stock, though executives at the third-largest U.S. bank by assets hope to limit the stake to about 25 percent, The Wall Street Journal said on Monday, citing people familiar with the situation.

You might ask why I think it odd; after all, this nationalization thing must be sounding pretty ‘normal’ by now. I find it odd because Citigroup knows this won’t work.

I blogged in November about an internal Citigroup message that said:

The bank said the damage caused by the financial excesses of the last quarter century was forcing the world’s authorities to take steps that had never been tried before.
This gamble was likely to end in one of two extreme ways: with either a resurgence of inflation; or a downward spiral into depression, civil disorder, and possibly wars. Both outcomes will cause a rush for gold.
“They are throwing the kitchen sink at this,” said Tom Fitzpatrick, the bank’s chief technical strategist.
“The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done. When the dust settles this will either work, and the money they have pushed into the system will feed though into an inflation shock.

I guess that with trillions of dollars being spread around Citigroup couldn’t resist getting in on the deal. While Citigroup is certainly wrong for taking this money while knowing the outcome will be failure, I’d like to know when the public is going to wake up to the realization that the government is spending like a drunken, daddy’s credit card bankrolled frat boy in a topless bar.

Sometimes we’re all effed up

So, I’ve been enjoying Soulsuck, TX lately.  It worries me that I’ve sort of bought into part of the dichotomy that has played out in my life.  I’m poor white, Louisiana trash but I married decently enough and don’t quite know how to reconcile the balance sheet of my soul.

I went for happy hour with some new GFs from the (golf) club and somebody talked about a “pole dancer;” I didn’t feel put off though- the comments were of a general sort and I don’t think she knew that she was being offensive.  Funny that the offensive nature of the comment was the ignorance attached to it.

I wondered if any of them knew how “perilously” close they are to swinging ’round a brass pole.

I wondered if any of these strong women knew exactly what they’d do without their husbands and country club memberships.

And, for the first time in my life, I recognized that they were humans JUST LIKE ME.

But, I have now the very thing that made me, in my childhood, envy them- the thing that made them think themselves better than me-CASH and ABILITY to BUY SHIT.  And, I realized that they might actually know how close they are to that shiny phallic thing sticking out of a main-stage.  Luckily for them, they’re all very attractive and could make a good living.  Luckily for me, they’re nice people who- while spoon-fed nightly news BS- actually have some grey matter working upstairs.  I think I might have met some nice chicas and pray that I’m not lost on a road to Hell. 

And, believe me, I’m terrified to trust.  Of course, I learned at the table tonight that I’m not uniquely playing that arena.  We’re all women walking a road that we were put on sans plan.  I actually paid attention to some of what I said before about caring for one another and I shut my head and mouth long enough to listen to what may have been said without words. 

I’ve never been more fearful in my life.

Adding a vid that I’ve been jamming to lately because it underscores where we all may be right now- and I think that right now I might rather follow the unwise pamper wearers because I’m worried that I may start losing myself and what I know to be right. Take from that comment what you will…

 

Is marijuana all that bad?

There was a recent article found here that talks about a milk man in England who was recently arrested for giving older customers marijuana along with their milk. He was arrested and sentenced to 3 years in prison. My only wonder is why do people hate marijuana so much. It seems that the state has brainwashed people so badly that they don’t understand that other drugs like prescription  sleep aids and painkillers also affect a person’s mind state. Also think about other malign drugs like alcohol and tobacco that are deemed “acceptable” by the state . Drinking can cause alcohol poisoning and death and so can tobacco. In fact the very first Marlboro man died of lung cancer at the age of 51. So then why is marijuana demonized so vigorously?

When you put the war on marijuana and other drugs into context with the broader interests at work in governments then you realize that they really don’t have the people’s best interest in mind, but whether, their pockets. Think about the fact that government can give us drugs far worse than any heroine, or crystal meth, without our consent, but people are not free to give themselves any perceived “harmful drugs” without penalty of law. Instead we are forced to adhere to an illegitimate state’s rules stating that any “drugs” they deem hazardous to us cannot be used by us even though it affects nobody else. If I get high it affects nobody but me. Why then should the government (or anybody else) have the right to stop me from doing anything with my own body. Likewise, what right does the state have to bar someone from helping me fulfill the wants that I have?

This brings me back to the point that government has no real right to tell anybody what they can and cannot do for they do not care about their constituents (as shown above). They only care about our money (of ability to create their revenue thereof). So why the hell does it matter if a guy is supplying old people with marijuana. Is he killing them anymore than giant pharmaceutical companies vaccinating people with tainted vaccines? No, in fact they are worse because they shroud their medication with false advertisements and lies to lull people into a false sense of safety. Meanwhile they demonize other people and fill prisons with people who’ve done nothing else than what they do, participate in our capitalistic economy and fulfilling the needs where there is a demand.

Thoughts on laissez-faire and self-government

There’s been a whole lot of talk since October about the necessity of the government to step in to correct the failures of the free market.  Many very intelligent people have argued both sides of the many proposed stimulus packages but very few (obvious exceptions being Congressman Ron Paul and his ilk) discuss the real crux of the problem- it was never a free market to begin with.  Especially over the last 130 years, the government- at the urging of those who represented many of the isms- has tinkered with and ruined any semblance of laissez-faire.  As we are now witnessing, the results have been terrible.

As a proponent of limited or self-government, I naturally have some ideas on how this all came to be but I’d like to start by offering this very non-scientific, only vetted by me observation: There can be no free market without very limited or self-government; the model we’re watching implode would be more aptly described as a perverted combination of all the isms- capitalism, fascism, communism and socialism- a combination of market ideas which relies on twisted truths and clever marketing done by those who lust for power.

The notion of limited or self-government has taken quite a beating over the last couple hundred years and there are a great many who are fearful of the idea of life without the government behemoth.  In my own life there are many who tell me that life as we know it would stop if we no longer had the government taking care of things.  I could only hope!  Alas, cocky answers do nothing to comfort my friends and I had to sit and think about the reasons behind their fear.  I’ve come up with a few possible reasons and will attempt to explain them here.

Lack of true self-esteem.  It may seem folly to suggest a lack of self-esteem when, for several generations, all children were awarded participation ribbons and trophies in schools and competitive sports leagues.  After all, everybody was trying to build self-esteem by making certain the little rug-rats who came in last didn’t get their feelings hurt.  Society has been molded- either with intent or as a by-product of more noble goals- to believe that it’s sufficient to show up and participate.  True self-esteem requires one to overcome obstacles and perceived limitations and competition is the best teacher.

Lack of good personal character.  A person of good character either innately knows or has learned to exercise good judgment and, upon the occasional failure, is honest with himself and others.   This may also tie into self-esteem; after all, it’s difficult to be self-critical if one never fails.  If a man, when looking in the mirror, doesn’t have any reason to trust his value, he will find no ability to trust in the value of others.

Legitimate fear of evil in the world. There are of course people who have no desire to live peacefully with others but examples of such are, thankfully, very rare.  While it’s certainly not my intent to oversimplify the matter, I do think it interesting to juxtapose the numbers of U.S. homicides with the numbers of U.S. deaths from the common flu.  According to FBI data from 1976-2005, the murder rate per 100,000 was 7.8. Comparing that number to a WaPo article (interestingly enough, the article is cautioning against flu panic by breaking down numbers) about flu virus death rates, one easily starts to understand that our fears can be quickly alleviated.

People will always lust for power. Sure enough, that’s the case but you must remember that the ability to seize power only flourishes in the fertilizer made from fragile human hearts and psyches. The aforementioned issues with esteem, character and fear make a fabulous growing agent and are thus tended with care. The power hungry of each ISM dogma, whether or not by design, use the brute force of government in their quest to incite division. The surest way to wreck self-esteem is to make disappear the common aspects of humanity by inciting division based on class, gender, ethnicity or religion.

What makes you think you’re so smart? I’ve actually heard this question and the answer is always the same: What makes the rest of them smarter than us? Seriously, this isn’t about advanced education. This really is as simple as a baby knowing to take the breast. Humanity hasn’t changed, our societal construct has. The answer really is as simple as allowing ourselves to respond humanly to our fellow man and anybody who tells you otherwise is damn sure pulling a bait and switch on you.

It boils down to common courtesy. I have been lucky enough in life to know people all over the world. They’ve been from every ethnic, political, economic and religious background and, believe it or not, they’ve all, whether they knew it or not, had the ability to navigate life without an outside governor. I just respect them enough to let them figure that out on their own. I wish that, even in their fear, they’d extend me the same damn courtesy. Since it’ll take making normal of this type of conversation, I hope you’ll join me while I discuss this topic on Tuesday (8:00 CST) at Break The Matrix TV.

Heard on Bubba The Love Sponge’s show

The doc listens non-stop to Howard Stern on Sirius-XM radio. I was writing an email to a potential show guest (if he accepts, y’all will be in for a real treat!) and Bubba The Love Sponge’s show was playing in the background. I don’t know the show enough to know definitely who was speaking but the discussion was on virtual porn. What jumped out at me though was the guest’s comment about fake porn being just like our monetary system- tangible only with your acquiescence.

You’ve gotta love it when the fiat currency joke on the world goes mainstream and that many of the disapproving comments come from legitimate purveyors of smut.

(Disclosure: My Tucker Carlson appearance last year was plugged on Bubba’s show.)

Contributor Applications

We are looking for writers on domestic policy and civil liberties from a libertarian perspective.

Please apply to Steve or Miche at lastfreevoice@rocketmail.com.

On vacay

It’s time to leave SoulSuck, TX and head to warmer climates so I’ll be in B.A. for the next week. I will be doing my BTM show from there so be sure to tune in for what will likely be drunken infotainment.

Later gators!

Cato Institute advertisement

Thank you to all the Nay voters in Washington- particularly my representative, Louie Gohmert of TX CD 1.

Ad via Bureau Crash.

Our new Vietnam?

Over at AntiWar, Justin Raimondo has a very interesting piece on America’s new Vietnam. Here’s an excerpt:

The appointment of George Mitchell, whose success at helping settle the Irish imbroglio suggests some skill at managing impossible situations, has evoked hope in those who pine for a more open-mined – and evenhanded – approach to the problem of Palestine. It is a hope I share.

Yet I’m not optimistic, for two very good reasons: Dennis Ross, whose appointment as plenipotentiary for Middle Eastern affairs seems to undercut what is likely to be the Mitchell approach, and Richard Holbrooke, whose dual domain of Afghanistan and Pakistan will be the focus of U.S. military action in the coming years. Specifically, more than 14 years – at least, that’s what Holbrooke told us in a pre-election piece in Foreign Affairs magazine:

“The situation in Afghanistan is far from hopeless. But as the war enters its eighth year, Americans should be told the truth: it will last a long time – longer than the United States’ longest war to date, the 14-year conflict (1961-75) in Vietnam.”

Which raises the question: why weren’t we told the truth in the first place? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall Obama ever “promising” to keep fighting in Afghanistan for over 14 years – do you?

As usual, Mr. Raimondo has penned an excellent article and I encourage you to stop over there and read it. While you’re at it, consider making a donation to Anti War; the goal of peace is truly worth every penny you can spare.

Unintended consequences

I’d been planning my first show for BTM TV when an errand called me past this church sign.

When I first noticed the sign yesterday, I thought that it was a call for prayer for our troops. I immediately thought of Mark Twain’s War Prayer and the idea of unintended outcomes. I 86′d what I had and planned something new around the theme. After I pulled some stories, I went to dinner with some new buddies where a point that seemed to bring it all together was made: While America is arguing over abortion, class, gender and ethnicity, those who are supposed to be representing us in government are robbing us blind of our wealth and liberty.

I went back today for a picture of the sign and saw that crosses were set up to represent aborted fetuses. I intend to present the show as planned because in my mind, this picture underscores it all. Please join me at 8:00 tonight over BTM TV (Channel 1) where I’ll be presenting example after example of good intentions in public policy going horribly wrong.

Interesting video about how our money’s to be spent

via BTM

Under New Management

Last Free Voice is undergoing a small face lift. Please pardon the dust as we revamp and bring in new writers.

Many thanks to EFM who picked up where Stuart left off in picking up HoT’s baggage. She’s obviously a fabulous writer and while we wish her well in her newest endeavor, we hope she finds enough downtime (and the financial ability that makes downtime happy) to spend a little here.

In the meantime you’ll see a “soft opening” of sorts. LFV will be changing content and moving toward focus on the very real assaults on personal freedoms from every quadrant of the Nolan Chart.

Israel admits Hamas rockets non-issue during cease fire

As a quick follow up to my last post and many ongoing conversations (both public and private), I present the following video to support my claims that Israel’s offensive in Gaza is at best a disproportionate response to a small infraction and at worst, a massacre.

I Want My Bailout Money

Hat tip/disinter

The LP is no longer very libertarian at all

In a poll offered at LP.org, 52% of respondents answered that the current Israeli military operation in Gaza is justified. 15% answered maybe with 34% voting no.

In a struggle that can be documented as recently as the early 1900s with the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration (which incidentally, occurred before the Holocaust) or as ancient as the Hebrew Bible, who can say that they know enough to judge either side of the dispute?

What I do know is that it’s not libertarian AT ALL to justify a war action that may be unjust.

I have many friends who may blanch at my position here; my friends with homes in Israel certainly have a different interest in these unceasing skirmishes. My online buddy, Eric has written that he sees the Palestinians animal-like. I think if Eric would perhaps set aside his obvious bias- he is of the Jewish faith- and look at this even from the vantage point of conservative politics starting with United Nations Resolution 181, he would have to admit that the matter was meant to be convoluted.

To the people of faith who seem to desire war to facilitate a return to the Holy Land of each of your religions I’d ask, “Don’t you trust your God enough to do it? Can’t you realize that the most recent conflicts in that area were brought about, at least somewhat, by the desires of men and their efforts at imperialism?”

I’m not an expert with regard to religion or Mid-East history but I’m smart enough to know that I don’t have definitive answers. I am smart enough to know that for a libertarian, the only correct answers to the question posed by the LP is maybe or no. Maybe would show that you have really thought about the crisis and have found the humility to recognize that you don’t have all the answers; no would indicate that in the absence of all the answers, you would err on the side of caution and life. The yes answers show the hubris of the current crop of LPers and I guess I should thank my lucky stars that national can only attract 311 voters to its online poll.

Originally posted @ LibertarianLady.

Barr on DOMA 12 years later

From the Los Angeles Times, 1-5-09:

No defending the Defense of Marriage Act

The author of the federal Defense of Marriage Act now thinks it’s time for his law to get the boot — but for political reasons, not in support of gays.

By Bob Barr
January 5, 2009

» Discuss Article

In 1996, as a freshman member of the House of Representatives, I wrote the Defense of Marriage Act, better known by its shorthand acronym, DOMA, than its legal title. The law has been a flash-point for those arguing for or against same-sex marriage ever since President Clinton signed it into law. Even President-elect Barack Obama has grappled with its language, meaning and impact.I can sympathize with the incoming commander in chief. And, after long and careful consideration, I have come to agree with him that the law should be repealed.

The left now decries DOMA as the barrier to federal recognition and benefits for married gay couples. At the other end of the political spectrum, however, DOMA has been lambasted for subverting the political momentum for a U.S. constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. In truth, the language of the legislation — like that of most federal laws — was a compromise.

DOMA was indeed designed to thwart the then-nascent move in a few state courts and legislatures to afford partial or full recognition to same-sex couples. The Hawaii court case Baehr vs. Lewin, still active while DOMA was being considered by Congress in mid-1996, provided the immediate impetus.

The Hawaii court was clearly leaning toward legalizing same-sex marriages. So the first part of DOMA was crafted to prevent the U.S. Constitution’s “full faith and credit” clause — which normally would require State B to recognize any lawful marriage performed in State A — from being used to extend one state’s recognition of same-sex marriage to other states whose citizens chose not to recognize such a union.

Contrary to the wishes of a number of my Republican colleagues, I crafted the legislation so it wasn’t a hammer the federal government could use to force states to recognize only unions between a man and a woman. Congress deliberately chose not to establish a single, nationwide definition of marriage.

However, we did incorporate into DOMA’s second part a definition of marriage that comported with the historic — and, at the time, widely accepted — view of the institution as being between a man and a woman only. But this definition was to be used solely to interpret provisions of federal law related to spouses.

The first part of DOMA, then, is a partial bow to principles of federalism, protecting the power of each state to determine its definition of marriage. The second part sets a legal definition of marriage only for purposes of federal law, but not for the states. That was the theory.

I’ve wrestled with this issue for the last several years and come to the conclusion that DOMA is not working out as planned. In testifying before Congress against a federal marriage amendment, and more recently while making my case to skeptical Libertarians as to why I was worthy of their support as their party’s presidential nominee, I have concluded that DOMA is neither meeting the principles of federalism it was supposed to, nor is its impact limited to federal law.

In effect, DOMA’s language reflects one-way federalism: It protects only those states that don’t want to accept a same-sex marriage granted by another state. Moreover, the heterosexual definition of marriage for purposes of federal laws — including, immigration, Social Security survivor rights and veteran’s benefits — has become a de facto club used to limit, if not thwart, the ability of a state to choose to recognize same-sex unions.

Even more so now than in 1996, I believe we need to reduce federal power over the lives of the citizenry and over the prerogatives of the states. It truly is time to get the federal government out of the marriage business. In law and policy, such decisions should be left to the people themselves.

In 2006, when then-Sen. Obama voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment, he said, “Decisions about marriage should be left to the states.” He was right then; and as I have come to realize, he is right now in concluding that DOMA has to go. If one truly believes in federalism and the primacy of state government over the federal, DOMA is simply incompatible with those notions.

Bob Barr represented the 7th District of Georgia in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and was the Libertarian Party’s 2008 nominee for president.