The Wizarding World's Tools of Economic Magic: 'LTV'/'Value', 'Consolidation'/'Growth', and 'Rules'/'Law'

The Wizarding World's Tools of Economic Magic: 'LTV'/'Value', 'Consolidation'/'Growth', and 'Rules'/'Law'

Part 18 of 22, from Exiting the Wizard's Circle of Economics

So as we turn to what it is that enables such behavior, and what it is that they feel gives them the authority to behave as their hearts desire, we see that it requires detaching you from reality and subduing you to its economic orders, through the manipulation of three key fixtures:

1. LTV (Labor Theory of Value),
2. (refuting) Say's Law,
3. Law.

#1 - LTV involves making use of an early and partial error in defining observations, which has subsequently been reinforced across time into an evasive lie, which is what it is. It's not a thing of value, it's a scheme for enslaving the values of others. As you might imagine, my xTwitterers disagree with me on this, and think those who're 'liberty minded', need to do better. Indeed.

xTwitter'rs tell me:
"Ambrosius Macrobius @weremight
Arguing against LTV is a mug's game. Jes' Sayin'. Liberty minded individuals need to do better."

We can look to LTV's origin as coming from a selective reading of John Locke, which was furthered in some ways by Adam Smith's pioneering effort to identify what Value is in the context of political economy, and from that end of history it was an understandable, if crude effort, but from this end of history, it doesn't stand up to thinking past two or three questions deep. Not that proponents of LTV can't make its calculations 'add up' by throwing one new epicycle after another upon it (notice the magicians wand waving of Inflation! Interest Rates!) - that hasn't changed much from Ptolemy's day to ours - but what it cannot stand up to, is a series of non-economic questions, which is why they aren't raised or acknowledged.

The real value that LTV has for the field of 'economics' today, is that it enables the dismissal and even disparagement of the individual's right to put thought and effort into producing value, through its claim that Value is ultimately reduceable to a collective muscular effort of "socially necessary labour time", as Karl Marx termed it. Whether or not most supporters of LTV realize it, Marx clearly saw what value LTV would have for his deliberate assaults upon every aspect of the West, and ever since his efforts it has played an essential role in utilizing all of the dazzling machinery of economic indexes & measurements that 'economic thinkers', from the 'Classical Liberal's on down to today, have used in diverting attention away from the void that LTV injects into popular thinking.

This is something that shouldn't be passed over lightly: Marx & Engles's purpose for advancing communism was always that communists should, in their words:

'... openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions....'

The same destructive purpose that drove Marx in writing the Communist Manifesto, was the same malevolent sentiment that drove his poetry, plays, and other writings, and is embodied in his favorite quotation from his favorite play, "Dr. Faust", which everyone who knew Marx brought up when recalling him, where the demon 'Mephistopholes' says:

"Everything that exists deserves to perish"

That's not the hallmark of a person who entered into anything for productive purposes. Marx didn't turn from writing the Communist Manifesto, to injecting 'Das Kapital' into 'Economics', in order to explain a theory of value best suited to improving the economy of any nation, but because he saw 'Economics' as the most effective means of bringing utter destruction to the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian West.

Thinking that Marx settled upon LTV (Labor Theory of Value) because it was 'true', and would be beneficial in improving people's understanding of markets... is less foolishly naive, than dangerously negligent.

The calculative machinations that fill this paper:

"...The alleged refutation of the labour theory of value was an integral part of the marginalist attack against Classical and Marxist analysis. However, statistical analysis of price-value relationships made possible by the data available since the later 20 th century suggest considerable empirical strength of the labour theory of value..."

, are dazzling, but they are just that. Machinations. And like Ptolemy, though without his innocence, they're able to make their numbers match with what we see from our position on the surface of the economy, while at the same time concealing those aspects of reality that threaten their views.

But just as no matter how well Ptolemy's epicycles got his numbers to add up, I'm not going to be buying that either Mars or the Sun are revolving around the Earth, I'm also not going to go along with the pretense that LTV is a legitimate 'economic tool' for monitoring, evaluating, and ultimately justifying the forceful governing of society through.

I'm not opposed to LTV because I'm concerned that its numbers don't add up - though I'd be surprised if their various epicycles didn't have them adding up impressively well - even if their fellow economists of nominally opposing camps (see here and here) routinely counter them - I dismiss it out of hand as an invalid concept, because of the more important reality which it participates in evading.

See if you can catch a glimpse of what I'm referring to here, in this explanation from a socialist supporter of LTV (which, BTW, gives a more accurate summary of Marx's positions than most of his economic opponents or supporters do):

"...Moreover, it is unquestionably the case that Marx’s approach to the subject has made an impact even on mainstream economics itself. For example, his notion of the real price of labour power being the time it takes for an average worker to obtain the money to purchase a given basket of goods is widely seen to be a particularly useful measure of comparative living standards between countries. Similarly, his argument that the real price of commodities (as measured by their labour content) will tend to fall as a result of mechanisation. Progressively replacing living labour does seem to have been borne out by the facts. Technological innovation has indeed brought about a remarkable reduction in the real price of many commodities...."[emphasis mine]

What I'm drawing your attention to here is less an issue of converting dollars to pesos, than to how the wording reveals a glimpse of what's being concealed.

The contextual differences in 'comparative living standards' experienced with, "...a given basket of goods is widely seen to be a particularly useful measure of comparative living standards between countries...", are squeezed out consideration. What's not compared - what is left unseen - are such conditions as how a worker is able to work (by choice or forced, freely hired, or unionized), was that 'given basket of goods' filled by the worker's selections at a market that had some say over what they were offering, or were those the only goods supplied to them and so him, which excludes the most important factor of comparing markets out of the equation?

What that reduces the 'comparison' to, is a purely material measurement of quantities of things 'between countries', which are then calculated for as if they represented only a mere matter of converting dollars to pesos.

That is the wizardry of economics in action.

It's up to us to poke at what we can glimpse is being left out of these claims, to question how it is that one country has more valuable "socially necessary labour time", than the other? Why are there any differences in standards? Does the musculature of the people of one country, differ so much from the muscles of those of the country they're being compared to? What guides those muscles, or is it muscle alone that powers 'a result of mechanization', or of 'Technological innovation'? Where do those 'powers' come from?

I'm not asking those questions to get their answers, but to indicate what they won't acknowledge, or ask, but only explain their way around. Take for instance the LTV practice of FDR's 'workers' programs that paid one set of ditch diggers to dig a trench, and another to then fill it back in, which, after all, was rewarding them for performing a "socially necessary labour time" - the fact that nothing of VALUE was created by that, is ignored, and argued away by various statistically impressive calculations for those ends justifying their means.

You need not doubt that they do have 'answers' of their own - lots of them - but their answers to such questions typically involve or depend upon the massaging of issues of Supply & Demand, Class warfare and considerations of Oppressor/Oppressed dynamics into their calculations. The sheer quantity of such 'answers' enables them to turn a blind eye to any honest (what is necessary for 'honesty'?) consideration of LTV's nature, until what they'll admit is 'seen', has been transformed into an inert 2D material thing that can be safely manipulated into the economic machinery of 'differences in standards'.

If you can avoid being diverted into the usual issues of Supply & Demand and class consciousness, and instead poke around a bit deeper into the philosophic nature of the 'economic' front, you'll soon find one or more equivocations such as those involved in LTV.

A ready example of there being far more than "socially necessary labour time" involved in determining values, is readily at hand in any movie you might choose to watch, decide what you think of it, and then watch the credits roll.

Those several minutes' worth of credits that we now see scrolling by at the end of any big budget movie, comprise those who were determined to be of value by a decision maker (individual or corporate), to provide products & services that were deemed necessary to get the movie made. What is seen in the credits, are what reflect the producers view of what they'd judged to be worth paying for.

• What is unseen, though assumed, in the credits, is how each of those credited for their services, had negotiated with the producers for the value of what they would or would not include in their services that were listed in the credits, and clearly an agreement over their value to the production was successfully made.
• What goes unseen, are those choices and services that were passed over, either by those potential providers who decided that their services were worth more than the producers were offering, or because the movie's producers decided that their services were not valuable enough to the production to be secured.

All of those factors and values that were negotiated, went into determining the cost (actual, opportunity cost, etc.,) of making that movie you're watching the credits of. But although each of those services gave value to the producer and (presumably) earned a profit for themselves, neither their nor the producer's efforts determine even the monetary value of that movie.

How the monetary value of a movie is ultimately determined, is by what is or isn't successfully negotiated between movie goers such as yourself - customers - and what the theater box-offices asked for the privilege of viewing it. The results of all of those negotiations added together, go into determining whether that big budget movie is shown to have the monetary value of a blockbuster success, or of a box-office bomb. And of course there are many movies that bombed at the box-office, that many people have spent uncounted hours watching over and over again because, in their judgement, it adds value to their lives - 'It's a wonderful life!' comes to mind, considered a box office failure when released, has steadily grown in value since then to a great number of people worldwide.

All of that involves 'value' being determined and used in several different contexts - as it should be - and none of those values add up to 'socially necessary labor time'.

What the 'error'/judo-flip lies in, and relies upon, is you not engaging your judgement, so that LTV can maintain the pretense that 'socially necessary labor time' is the 'heart and soul' of Value.

Bastiat clarified the issues involved in this, in these two essays from 150 years ago, from 'of Value':

"...Hitherto the principle of Value has been sought for in one of those circumstances which augment or which diminish it, materiality, durableness, utility, scarcity, labour, difficulty of acquisition, judgment, etc., and hence a false direction has been given to the science from the beginning; for the accident which modifies the phenomenon is not the phenomenon itself. Moreover, each author has constituted himself the sponsor, so to speak, of some special circumstance which he thinks preponderates,—the constant result of generalizing; for all is in all, and there is nothing which we cannot comprehend under a term by means of extending its sense. Thus the principle of value, according to Adam Smith, resides in materiality and durability; according to Jean Baptiste Say, in utility; according to Ricardo, in labour; according to Senior, in rarity; according to Storch, in the judgment we form, etc.

The consequence has been what might have been expected. These authors have unwittingly injured the authority and dignity of the science by appearing to contradict each other; while in reality each is right, as from his own point of view. Besides, they have involved the first principles of Political Economy in a labyrinth of inextricable difficulties; for the same words, as used by these authors, no longer represent the same ideas; and, moreover, although a circumstance may be proclaimed fundamental, other circumstances stand out too prominently to be neglected, and definitions are thus constantly enlarged..."

, and 'Exchange':

"...From this I conclude that value (as we shall afterwards more fully explain) does not reside in these substances themselves, but in the effort which intervenes in order to modify them, and which exchange brings into comparison with other analogous efforts. This is the reason why value is simply the appreciation of services exchanged, whether a material commodity does or does not intervene. As regards the notion of value, it is a matter of perfect indifference whether I render to another a direct service, as, for example, in performing for him a surgical operation, or an indirect service, in preparing for him a curative substance. In this last case the utility is in the substance, but the value is in the service, in the effort, intellectual and muscular, made by one man for the benefit of another. It is by a pure metonymy that we attribute value to the material substance itself, and here, as on many other occasions, metaphor leads science astray..."

, and as Bastiat concludes later in the same essay:

"I say, then, Value is the relation of two services exchanged."

And if I might venture just a step beyond Bastiat's argument, I'll point out that the root of what is exchanged, grows from a person's thoughts being put into action, first in the formation of Property, and then as a value that is created from the mutually agreed upon actions from all parties to their exchange.

It is thought put into action, that is the determiner of what property you have in the goods or services you produce. What is produced, is produced for the purposes of exchanging it for other goods & services, because in the context of that exchange, you place more value upon what you are exchanging your for - and vice versa for the other party - in order that each might gain what is of greater value to them, and so in the context of that exchange, an objective value is created.

Pay especial attention to what the defenders of 'Economics' mean by rejecting the 'subjective theory of value' - they mean that your judgment of what is objectively prudent to you, is of no 'objective' (by which they mean an object, a thing, a factoid of empirical data) value, it isn't *real*, and so it needn't be considered or respected in the policies they advocate. That same underlying POV and justification is what's behind their enthusiasm for their curves of 'income distribution' and 'human capital', in that your judgement is dialectically rendered as being of no concern, as only material operations matter to them.

Fundamentally they are rejecting the value of your judgement, to your life, in their economy.

'Economic Factors' ranging from minimum wage, to cost of living, interest rates, etc., are used, and revised as needed, to elevate the needs of society as a whole, over the 'anecdotal needs' of any one member of it, and if the smooth running of the 'Greater Good' magic show requires ejecting some members of the audience, well, sorry, but 'Rentier' that you are, that's for the best too.

As you see that for what it is, you'll soon notice that contrary to the ideological pretentions of the Marxist LTV, value is not some material thing that is being taken from one person, and given to another, through some 'systemic' transferring of materials or money from the oppressed to the oppressor, but is instead, by the very nature of what is actually being engaged in by those engaging in it, value is the benefit that is created by each party voluntarily exchanging something that is of more value to the other party than it is to them, in exchange for what they've judged will be of greater benefit to them and their interests, so that each is better off because of that exchange - that's the growth by which an 'economy' grows! That same growth is what a top-down command economy eliminates the possibility of, and so ensures the failure of socialist/communist systems.

In a Free Market, Value is ultimately neither a thing nor an effort expended in generating it, but is what results from thought being put into mutually consensual action, and whether that thought in action originates from your own volition, as with the owner of a business that offers a product or service, or as the employee who carries out those thoughts and actions which were initiated by their employer, or as the potential customer's decision to act by purchasing what has been produced, the reality of Value in that exchange, is revealed through their all having agreed in the exchanging of it.

There are very few things in society that are more magical than the plain reality of this.

"But Van, what if they didn't get what they bargained for?!" That proves, rather than disproves, the nature of Value - if they misjudged the benefit to them of what they exchanged, the overall value of their property will have been diminished by that error, without a single additional item or effort having been engaged in. But if they truly didn't get what they'd agreed to in that exchange - if they were conned or otherwise defrauded - then a crime has been committed, and, assuming the exchange did occur within a Free Market, they'll have some recourse for that through their judicial system.

'But Van! Don't you realize that government must step in and save us from market distortions, and stagnation, and inefficiencies...' Oh yes, do tell about the long and glorious history of government interventions that have eliminated market distortions, stagnations, and have generally made our lives more productive and efficient (see the UCLA Economics study of how FDR's 'recovery' extended the Great Depression by 7yrs)!

xTwitter'rs tell me:

'...Rentiers distort resource allocation by directing resources towards rent extraction rather than productive uses. This can lead to inefficiencies, stagnation, and increased economoc polarization as resources are misallocated and economic rents accrue to a few rather than being reinvested into the economy...."

If you look into such claims of 'economics', you'll find impressively lengthy theories and calculations 'proving' their assertions & dire warnings, which we are supposed to accept as justifying their dismissing what we can see in our own lives is real and true. Just ignore the reality that we agree to pay rent for a property, because we agree that the landlord is providing a value to us in that property he's maintained, that we are renting from him, just ignore that we invest in a company because when our judgement of their competence is correct, we receive some monetary value from their having brought more value to their customers.

'But Van! Don't you realize that rent-seeking behavior leads to underconsumption!', which the economically minded assert justifies overriding our puny individual interests and assessments - and the right to make them - in service to the common/greater good. I have some questions, such as according to who, and by what means, were they able to examine not only the needs, judgment, and interests, of the those individuals involved in renting, and those renting to them, but also those of the entire market? And how will they determine 'the best' decision that should be been made by government for all parties concerned?

xTwitter'rs tell me:
"...Ultimately, rent-seeking behavior leads to underconsumption, where insufficient aggregate demand.
Imo rentiers have to be eliminated through policy so that productive investment, circulation and stability is promoted...." [emphasis mine - note it]

How do they determine the unforeseen consequences that eliminating rentiers' through policies' will have, upon the rest of those involved in 'the economy'? They only want you to consider that which is seen, and to ignore that which is not seen. They want you to dismiss the reality you can clearly see (metaphysics), they want you to ignore what you understand will follow from that (causality & logic), and to disregard what you understand should be done about that (ethics), and to top it all off, they want you to forget Henry Hazlitt's One Lesson and the importance of considering not only the immediate results of the actions they propose, but what will result in the long run. That concern of Hazlitt's was perhaps most honestly addressed by the economic Wizard John Maynard Keynes, in his "The Quantity Theory of Money", as:

"In the long run we are all dead"

, and what they want most of all, is for you to dismiss what IS Good, over any period of time, for the 'Common/Greater Good'... which... truthfully amounts to the same thing.

By what means does anyone attain to such asspoundingly colossal levels of arrogance? Oh yeah... through 'economic thinking'. Never forget that Communism slaughtered 100 million people across the 20th Century for 'The Common/Greater Good', and did so by simply lying - the pen is horrifically mightier than the sword.

Given the nature of such theories, how are we to assess their actual value (and to who)?

What is the value of any theory? Is it the impressive mathematical abilities demonstrated in the calculations and scope of projections that are made by it? Is a theory justified by how well it recognizes & describes reality while identifying and conforming to its limitations, so as to observe, understand, and employ valid principles in making factually verifiable and accurate predictions which follow from that theory?

It's often useful to turn such questions around a bit, and ask ourselves: Why do we abandon a theory? Because it ceases to intrigue us or fails to flatter our current opinions? Or because we come to notice that reality isn't what is guiding, clarifying, or being revealed, by it?

If you find yourself struggling with that, you should take to heart the example of a decent physicist, who, absent the introduction of a consequential new theory, wouldn't bother with spending another moment of his time on deciphering the elaborate calculations and predictions presented to him in a paper, once he realizes that the plans were for a perpetual motion machine. Once a physicist realizes that those calculations, however impressively elaborate they may be, are made in futile service to what in principle cannot be supported or achieved, then he'll dismiss it out of hand, just like that, tossing it away as utterly meaningless and worth less than the paper it was unfortunately printed upon.

Once you can avoid focusing on the distracting numbers and dire oppressor/oppressed warnings of doom being waved before you, you begin to see what value LTV has to them, 'economically' speaking. LTV is the wand that the magician's waving before you in grand gestures, which, when combined with his pretty and efficient assistant, and his numerical sleight of hand that makes the rabbit (you) disappear from the hat (economy), you'll see how it enables them to portray Profit, Landlords, Rent, Business Owners, etc., as 'non values', and mere parasitical leaches and thieves - no Labor, no Value = the oppressors of the oppressed! - in a dialectic that has served for nearly two centuries now, as the fertile entry point for envy and evil to spread out into the various ideologies of popular public opinion.

But there's a side effect from accepting LTV, that's even worse than the theory itself, which was and is an essential component of what Marx most sought to accomplish.

Most people today are familiar with the relativistic claims that any claim to objective truth is nothing but your subjective preference. But the dialectics of 'Your truth isn't my truth', pale in comparison to the wrongs that are successfully smuggled into popular opinion, by claiming that what truly is a subjective process (all thought originates within a subject - AKA: you - whether or not, and how consistently a person seeks to objectively conform their thoughts to reality, is another matter), is nothing more than a deterministically 'objective' material process, i.e. 'You don't think, you don't choose, your consciousness is but a side effect of genes & chemistry'. Do you hear Hume & Kant in that?

...This is what the 'New Economic Thinking' is opposed to.

What's accomplished there, is that first their philosophical views deny our ability to know reality as it is - deterministic or otherwise - then the materialistic ideas LTV drives forward, effectively eliminate your individual thoughts and concerns from their collective consideration, which becomes the primary means of laundering their most fantastic illusions, into a presentable approximation of reality ("...Janet Yellen said today that the latest GNP & Jobs Creation numbers indicate to the FED that the economy is continuing to improve..."), which ensures that the only 'real' decisions made, will be those that are made under its auspices, top down, from the T.U.R.D.'s of 'Economics', on downhill to you.

That also ensures that what the Political Economy of Smith, Say, and Bastiat, had exposed as being fallacies, pretenses, and abuses, will be easily ignored by them, and so the confused and chaotic errors which those fallacious actions will continue to flood into the market, diluting, confusing, and worsening all available information, leaving people helpless before the sluggishness of its 'supply chain issues', inflation, and the market's increasing inability to respond to individual interests and needs, in a vicious cycle that can and will only ever make matters worse, while causing people to demand 'action!' to stop the bogeyman from tormenting them - AKA: a totalitarian's wet dream.

The TURD's Pro-Regressive retreat from the West A.D. to the B.C. past through the Wizard's Circle

The TURD's Pro-Regressive retreat from the West A.D. to the B.C. past through the Wizard's Circle

Part 17 of 22, from Exiting the Wizard's Circle of Economics

There's something revealing in what the supreme wizard of the 'New Economics', John Maynard Keynes, said in the last paragraph of his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), part of which is an often repeated quote:

"...Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist...."

, which he continued on from there with:

"...Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas..."

You should keep your eye on that 'of a few years back', as it is revealing of the modernist game. Keynes concludes that last paragraph of his book with:

"... it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.”

, so that in Keyne's mind, and most others - including who's often taken as the leader of the opposition, Libertarian F.E. Hayek - it wasn't the wisdom that had stood the test of time, or even the selfish desires of those with wealth & power that they expected would determine the course of societal events, but instead, those ideas 'of a few years back' which had been learnt by men of "...twenty-five or thirty years of age...", are what would rule their minds when they came to power. They didn't expect wisdom, practical wisdom, or even their own interests to direct the course of society, they expected that direction to come from those ideas of the new 'Social Sciences', like 'economics'.

Despite the 1,936 years A.D. of expectations that the wisdom to lead society would and should be found in those men of experience who'd lived & learned more than others, Keynes thought that, in 1936, when no 'economist' had been long dead or defunct for more than a few decades, that those 'economists' were who were determining how society is, 'should', and would be, organized and run.

That's a telling reveal of how swiftly and thoroughly the new academic regime, which the Idealists had given birth to shortly after the opening of the 1800s (our colleges today bear almost no resemblance in either form or content, to those our Founding Fathers attended), had been able to utilize its new field of 'Epistemology' to divert society's attention away from the classical Western considerations of "What is" & "What follows", and "What should be done". Instead, those 'ideas of a few years back' were informing the new TURDS that since we kant know reality as it really is, 'they' should rely instead upon 'experts' to tell them what 'works best'.

Naturally, those deemed and certified to have that expertise, came from the new Social Sciences of 'Education', Social Studies', and 'Economics', which expertly traded away that broad understanding which had traditionally marked a person as being educated, for training in a very specific set of skills. These Idealists - subjectivists and empiricists - having traded away History for Social Studies, Philosophy for Economics, as well as transforming the high regard that people had for Logic, into its being perceived as either a tedious verbal parlor trick or the apparently meaningless hieroglyphics of symbolic logic - had implicitly and explicitly discarded the very basis of the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian culture's form of knowledge and understanding. And as an encore, having made the foundations of Western society dissappear before our eyes, they planted their Utopian (no place) flag in its place, and have successfully convinced and compelled We The People, year after year, decade after decade, to send our children to absorb their 'New Ideas!' of nothingness.

The Misosopher King's position atop wAcademia's lofty new heights, was well suited for further convincing people that old fashioned ideas like 'individual rights', 'property', and GOLD fer gawdsakes, were little more than 'barbarous relics' of pre-modern ethnic preferences, which shouldn't be allowed to stand in the way of the modern scientific understanding of 'The Economy'. Naturally, control of such matters should be left in the hands of experts, and for those experts who followed in the footsteps of the latter 'Classical Liberals', and Fabians, all such 'economic' matters, as a matter of course, have been analytically reduced to measures of utility and profit & loss, so as to scientistically calculate (with not a little bit of wand waving) the Greater Good. And of course as they were sure that such modern ideas would need to be managed like sophisticated clockwork, through central banks and specialized departments of experts in the field, for the 'common good' of all who are a part of that economy, the individual could not be permitted to stand in the way of their progress, and so while they assured us that they'd of course 'respect' our 'human rights', in any conflict between individual interests and the Common Good, it was only right that the latter 'should' prevail.

The fundamental values which underlie the systems and macro perspectives of 'Economic Thinking', are what mark it out as being truly Pro-Regressive, as it is those collective sensibilities that are found on the far side of The West's dividing line between the years B.C. and A.D., that modernity most embraces. Now matter how otherwise admirable, it is true that however foundational the ideas and institutions of the West B.C. were, and are, the Greco/Roman without the Judeo/Christian - as expressed by the Greek dramatists, and Plato, and even with Aristotle and Cicero - presumed the individual to be utterly inconsequential in the face of the interests of society. It was only after the Greco/Roman had merged with the Judeo/Christian, that the individual came to be recognized in the West A.D., as a uniquely valuable person, each created in the image of God and recognized as not only having value as an individual, but as being on an equal footing in the eyes of justice with all other persons, no matter their social & political standing.

We forget today how truly revolutionary that view was, and still is, and how completely it is that our *modern* 'economic thinking' rejects and rebels against it.

Those moderns yearning for the B.C. worldview, needed a means of pivoting away from the A.D. understanding of the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian West, in order to pro-regress back to the B.C. view where the individual served the collective. And the needed to do so without anyone noticing that they were being turned away from the foundations of the West, which required progressive efforts across centuries of time:

• Machiavelli tried to go against the A.D. tide, but his efforts were too obviously and easily called out.
• Bacon & Hobbes made a less direct assault upon the culture as well, but their notions tended to be thought of as additions - as 'reality adjacent' - rather than challenges to it.
• Descartes & Rousseau began to move the needle,
• it wasn't until the evolution of 'Economics' as a 'Social Science', that the TURDS were able to sidestep outward concern for individual rights and virtue, by promising to manage what had recently been considered an actual evil (the violation of individual rights & property under the law), in such a way as to promote the 'greater good' (rather than a mere singular Good).

It would be difficult if not impossible to imagine the strategic deflections from reality that a person would have to become consciously accustomed to making, if classical philosophy hadn't been either ejected from or sterilized within wAcademic circles. The truth of that was essentially 'proved' by the experience of SCSR (Scottish Common Sense Realism)'s founder, Thomas Reid, who had effectively beaten Hume's skepticism back and arguably enabled America to be born, and at the last possible moment that was conceivable. Modernity's post-partum response to our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, was swift and brutal. Attacks were piled upon every aspect of SCSR, as it was verbally derided from every quarter of wAcademic circles by 'Classical Liberals' from Kant to J.S. Mill, and by the latter 19th century, they'd succeeded in reversing popular opinion about the common sense of Common Sense.

The philosophical reverses which The West has suffered since then, couldn't have occurred, certainly not in less than a century, if the populace hadn't been simultaneously 'educated' into the cultural and institutional amnesia, which 'Economics' has proven itself so well suited to inducing in us.

It's difficult to overstate the willfully unseen presumptions involved in how that pivot is still being carried out in headlines such as:

"... The Wall Street Journal reports that GDP was up last quarter, and though the Chairman of the FED noted that the inflation rate has only slowed .03%, jobs numbers are expected to increase..."

, as it smoothly evades and conveys what our society has explicitly come to accept as being 'reality', and by our wearing those shaded lenses, we enable 'Economics' to assume the authority that it has assumed in our lives, with the confidence we once would have looked to religion and philosophy - or at the very least to law or politics - for advice on the *wisest* course of action to follow in our day-to-day lives.

The expectations of, and nearly invisible utilization of power that is conferred through the materialistic leviathan of 'Economic Thinking', eager to take whatever actions may be deemed necessary to 'help the common good', has necessarily entailed abandoning our earlier understanding of what was finally coming to be recognized as uncommonly good. Shorn of the foundations of The West, thanks to the 'epistemology' that modernity's misosophers such as Bacon, Descartes, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, etc., established to suppress our regard for reality, 'Economics' has had little or nothing to fear from the wisdom of those classical philosophers who've been safely memory-holed away from popular opinion.

No matter how at odds their various economic ideologies ('Capitalism, 'Marxism', 'Socialism', 'Libertarianism', etc.,) might appear to be with each other on the surface today, they only really have to contend with the 'long dead economists' opinions of 'a few years back', as they all share in the opinion that their views are a more than sufficient replacement for the traditional western understanding of metaphysics, causality, ethics, literature, law, and political reasoning.

With Economics freed by its votaries in and out of Government & wAcademia, it's been free to engage in Social Science experiments (what do you think 'public education' is?) that utilize We The People as an efficient means of generating the data ('privacy?! Ha!) it needs for forming and reforming its ever new & improved theories on how 'best' to drive policies which usurp whatever power (governmental, financial, and social) it claims to need for the benefit of the 'common good'.

You should *should all over yourself*

Do not forget that the goal of 'economics' (and its fraternal twin in 'Education') is to mold you, your life, and that of your community, into the vision that the TURD's 'who know best' have concluded is best for you. The common thread running through plans like Agenda 21, 'The Great Reset', 'Agenda 2030', is that your life should [Should...?!] serve the 'common good' for the 'greater good', where 'you will own nothing and be happy'. The words roll right off their teleprompters without the interference of pesky traditional concerns over what is or isn't wise and good, which frees 'Economics' to serve those ends the TURDS claim will serve the 'greater good', for which they cheerfully *should all over themselves*, and upon you, without even a second thought.

That is the awesome social and political power that we've gone along with conferring upon 'economic thinking', so that where Political Economy once observed reality in order to understand what would be most just, and therefore most effective and good for all, 'economic thinkers' now read their indexes and curves as technological tea leaves to tell them how they should correct our course into the future, free from the 'wrong' actions of 'old fashioned' thinking. It's almost as if the positions of 'Priest & King' in society, which modernity loves to pat itself on the back for progressing past, were alive and well under the modern guise of 'defunct economists'.

Next time you hear the Economic news that cannot be avoided today, you should think of the magician up there doing his magic act on stage, and remember that he performs no magic there - none! - he only stylishly and theatrically uses his costume, top hat, and wand, and of course his attractive assistant, to distract the audience (of which you are seen as but a small part of) into being convinced that they magically did what you know they didn't do... to thunderous applause.

If you do pay attention, you'll notice there are three components of the economic stagecraft that its magicians use to keep the audience's attention filled with 'Ooh!'s and 'Ah!'s:

1. Economics is not about reality, it's about spinning up a semblance of one (jobs#'s, unemployment %'s, average income), which you are expected to treat as if it were real. It isn't... and by stepping into its circle, you risk being lost to it.
2. The Economically minded use terms such as 'Rights!' and 'Fair' not because they're meaningful to them - their every use is self-contradictory and without being rooted in metaphysics & ethics, Economics is fully blind to those concepts that even 'fair' is derived from - but for the effect the narrative produces in the audience, which furthers their aspirations of gaining power over 'this, that, and the other thing'.
3. Economics operates through a dialectical simulacrum of language fused with abstruse mathematics - Economics Speak - not to communicate, but to both cow and corral the populace with, as they tweak their miniature models of reality.

But by far the most important point of the magic tricks performed by the 'economics' of 'defunct economists', is that they aren't intended to make a rabbit disappear, they're intended to make an aspect of you disappear, into the collective audience.

If you keep your eyes on the magicians other hand, you might notice that 'economics' incessantly evades metaphysics & ethics, through its wand waving of diversionary references to aggregate market conditions, income brackets, fields of management, labor disputes, information management, so that it can use your income, cost of living, and the rising prices that you experience, to reduce you into references to percentages and anecdotal concerns that are 'too miniscule' to warrant the concern of TURD's who're focused on the 'big picture'. Be careful as the pretty assistant dressed in the tight skirt of NEWS & current events, winks and curtsies at you, or you might miss how your concerns are being efficiently handled as issues of 'micro-economics', whose mountains of carefully gathered data of GDP, CPI, etc., makes your cost of living yield to the societal concerns of the collective, which only they are prepared to manage, and which the individual must yield to, for the 'common good'.

Just keep in mind that there is no magic. Keep in mind that neither reality nor our Common Sense A.D. ability to understand it, have been made to vanish. Keep in mind that their magic consists of nothing more than distractions, and that all such magic tricks require tangible tools to distract you with, which is what we'll turn to next.

What 'Economics' buys you is Tyranny on a budget

What 'Economics' buys you is Tyranny on a budget

Part 16 of 22, from Exiting the Wizard's Circle of Economics

With the awareness that metaphysics, causality, ethics should be the backdrop to your normal frame of mind, and aware that that understanding remains actively involved even when left unseen in discussions concerning an economy, you're now in a position to begin noticing the numerous issues that 'economics' routinely leaves unseen (and excluded), such as what I've been referring to over and again, which repeatedly goes unseen, and left unasked, and is actively evaded in economic schemes, which is the meaning of: 'Should'.

They use the sound of the word 'should', but not its meaning, and as you listen to them sounding hte word out it is important to notice that 'Should' is not an 'economic' term. Is 'Should' something that can be calculated from mathematical equations? [spoiler alert: No]. 'Should' is a term of ethics - what is or could be ethical about distant persons and powers deciding that person X 'should' be deprived of some of their property and rights, and that person Y should receive some of that property? When considering Ethics in a societal context of taking actions that affect the lives of entire populations, its scope is more directly referencing that other subset of Ethics, which is the field of Justice, which 'Economics' is but the ethical stepchild of.

Is Justice something that is found in, contained by, or that somehow should take its cues from, economic indicators, indexes, and curves? Spoiler alert: No.

Despite their heavy use of the word that they spelled as 'should', and 'Justice', 'Economics' operates by dialectically substituting what is 'useful' for what you should do, and the 'greater good' for what is good, in their descriptions of 'what is...'s, and 'need to...'s - they don't refer to what actually is Good, but only to what's most useful to them and to their economy.

The truth is that questions of what 'Should' is and should be, are determined by philosophy, not by 'Economics', which points out the fundamental problem with treating Economics as an authority over the operations of society, and it's worth pointing out again, that Economics doesn't begin with Economics.
'Economics' is not a primary standalone field.
'Economics' is not a secondary field.
'Economics' is not even a third level field.

'Economics' claim to the authority to order & reorder society, as an idealized means of social control which the likes of J.S. Mill & Karl Marx both envisioned, is only possible when the traditional branches and roots of philosophy (and reality) are at best ignored... on the way to their being reversed.

Simply recognizing metaphysics (covering the 'which is...?'), leads to an epistemology of causality (what 'follows') and logic (validating the hows') within ethics (covering the 'shoulds'), and emphasizes the fact that 'Economics' is much less than simply a subset of Ethics, as it is necessarily defined by, beholden to, derived from, and subordinate to, those traditional fields of thought. Happily for 'Economics', the moderns' new 'fourth branch of philosophy' which they labeled 'epistemology', enables and requires that traditional respect for reality to be ignored.

"... The popularity of the Cartesian method is not the consequence of a desire to remove metaphysical doubt, and find certainty, but precisely the opposite: to cast doubt on everything, and thereby increase the scope of personal license, by destroying in advance any philosophical basis for the limitation of our own appetites. The radical skeptic, nowadays at least, is in search not so much of truth, as of liberty - that is to say, of liberty conceived of the largest field imaginable for the satisfaction of his whims...."
pg. 6, "In Praise Of Prejudice - The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas" - Theodore Dalrymple

And what you begin to see the importance of that ignorance of traditional philosophy (as Mao assaulted 'the four olds'), when you take note of the low place in the regard of ideas that economics held in traditional philosophy, which, as Say noted, 'Economics', 'oikonomy',

"...From οικος a house, and νομος a law; economy, the law which regulates the household. Household, according to the Greeks, comprehending all the goods in possession of the family..."

, it originally was limited to the management of household decisions, and was so because 'economic thinking' is truly suited only to first-hand experience, and can and should extend no further than that. As such, 'Economics' is in reality situated as a lower level (the lowest) subset of the field of Politics... which is itself a philosophical subset that's contained by the second level subset of the field of Law, which is in turn contained under and within Justice, which is in turn a subset of Ethics.

IOW, 'Economics', is a third-level subset of the third branch of philosophy, and from that backwater position, its managers have dared to claim the power to determine, dictate, and manage our lives. They've gotten away with evading the ground floors of philosophy by insisting that people perform feats of philosophical parkour to 'engage' with them, because we have allowed it to usurp the authority of those fundamental fields that are the proper avenues for even considering such issues.

Because we've allowed 'those who know best' and the TURDS to tell us that 'Economics', for all intents and purposes, replaces Philosophy (and even Religion) in our day-to-day lives, and to do so openly, it presumes to make decisions upon such matters for us, even as it proposes its various policies and distribution curves which blatantly ignores and even violates the very principles that are fundamental to those fields it's rightly subordinated to.

Because the 'Economic good' cannot recognize what is 'good', it cannot determine what 'should' be done, and accepting that and acting on that, means that you become de-moralized - not in the sense of feeling glum, but in the sense of no longer being able to recognize what is good, right, true. That's not just a problem, that's a description of the 'Ouroboros' (the snake eating its own tail), and it is the means by which 'Economics' buys us a tyrannical reality, on a political and philosophical budget.

Do you begin to see why 'economic thinkers' don't want you thinking about metaphysics, causality, and ethics?

It's as if a newly hired retail store manager suddenly began assuming the power to issue orders setting worldwide policy and practices for the company, based upon his local concerns - and then the entire company management began abiding by it. If you were a stockholder of that company, wouldn't you be asking what's going on here? Shouldn't every stockholder be doing so?!

If this is true (and it is), if 'Economics' is as out of place, empty even, as I'm saying, then how has it been made to become such a real factor in our lives?

My reply to that comes from a phrase that, even keeping in mind the philosophical overview above, will likely be seen as an outrageous claim, and though to the best of my knowledge neither James Lindsay nor Stephen Coughlin have said it in this context, it fits the phrase they've utilized in connection with gnosticism and dialectics, and seems to me to fit exceedingly well here, which is 'stepping into the Wizards Circle'.

It is important for us to notice that 'Economics' begins by excluding metaphysics, causality, ethics. With that accomplished, it swaps out the quality of Good, for those quantities of utilitarian pleasures which then seem especially alluring to those who've accepted its invitation to take the economical and very consequential step into an alternate reality, a 'copy world' of 'transcendental' ideas, that have little to do with what is or can be real and true, but which is so clearly empty and meaningless to those who haven't.

...Ouroboros image from The Palmer Worm

The portentous step that 'Economics' invites us all to unwittingly take, is one of praxis - that of putting into action without conscious thought, your implicit consent to violate the principles that America was founded upon because they were understood to be truly good, and it leads us into doing so in service to the 'greater good' which is a further denial of them. Once that step is taken, that immersive ideal is what will then seem to be real to you, while what actually is real and true, will appear from this new perspective to be as crooked as an arrow does when refracted through water.

That misleading nature is something that I think is more than hinted at, which Niall Ferguson, an historian & economist, partly exposed in his quip on economists' in thrall to, on John Maynard Keynes veiled quip:

"...even the most practical man of affairs is usually in the thrall of the ideas of some long-dead economist"

More on that, next.

Summing up by returning to the Questions that should precede Hazlitt's 'Economics in One Lesson'

Summing up by returning to the Questions that should precede Hazlitt's 'Economics in One Lesson'

Part 15 of 22, from Exiting the Wizard's Circle of Economics

The reason for this *diversion* into abstractions of metaphysics, causality, and ethics, was to highlight the importance of keeping the reality in mind which we've been 'educated' to ignore, which we can do by simply making a routine of asking questions like:

• Is this rooted in what I know to be real and true? - metaphysics
• What consequences are most likely to follow from this? - causality/logic
• Are those consequences justifiable? - ethics

, and by doing so we keep what is real and true in mind, and the pretense that reality is irrelevant, is itself made to disappear.

Those who aren't in the habit of conforming their thinking to what is real and true, will have no foundation for opposing the 'economic thinking' which views our judicial system as nothing more than a 'complex' Rule of Rules, and who believe that so long as TURDs (The Umpires of Reasonable Discourse) have the skills to manage its technicalities, there's no 'reason' why they shouldn't manipulate it (us) to do whatever it is they want to get done.

Those who do have that foundation, OTOH, are going to have a visceral response to those 'economic actions' that are proposed to manipulate 'the economy' (society), which are incompatible with the judicial standards and principles that our system was founded upon, and each proposal will, and should be, met with a response:

• A Proposal: "...Imo rentiers have to be eliminated through policy so that productive investment, circulation and stability is promoted..."
  A Response: Does targeting someone based upon their status, rather than their actions, solve an actual problem, or is it fabricating an Ideal to disrupt an existing standard?
• A Proposal: "... Just laws" depend upon consideration of the public welfare and not simply of individual rights in discerning ..."
  A Response: That is reframing the law by reversing its relation to the individual rights of the citizenry, to target the rights of those of them who are 'rentiers', which is assaulting the rights which they all hold in common, and so will degrade the welfare of all.
• A Proposal: "...competing rights claims require Law that has the Common Good as an end..."
  A Response: Reducing 'law' and 'rights' to meaningless labels so as to mask positions that excuse taking actions for the 'common good!', puts an end to a 'common good' and solidifies the power of those already in power, and it's all downhill for the rest of us from there.

It is only by keeping questions of metaphysics, causality/logic, ethics, present in our mind, that we are able to be exceedingly aware of the consequential nature of the Rule of Law, and so have the presence of mind to insist that its principles that were derived from Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Coke, will be considered as being of primary, rather than of secondary importance, in all such matters.

If and only if the proposed 'economic action' can be shown to neither directly nor indirectly violate the rights and property of the citizenry, should consideration of the proposal be allowed to move on to considering whether government - the force of law which exists to uphold and defend the individual rights and property of its people - can be entrusted to use its (We The People's) power to take the proposed actions, without violating its reason for existing.

Those are the questions and concerns that must be satisfied before moving on to considering the longterm results and primary and secondary consequences of any proposed 'economic action', which was what the focus of Henry Hazlitt's 'Economics in One Lesson' was, and if we fail to keep that order, we will have already surrendered to utility, and the fall into 'economic thinking' that must follow.

If the proposed action survives those tests, then it's a question of whether government - the force of law - should be engaged in that action - because it can, doesn't mean that it should.

Setting weights & measures, yes, that's both necessary and appropriate.

Assigning values to those monetary weights & measures? Ooh... the wisdom of that was questionable, and led to much unnecessary confusion & corruption (see silver & gold exchange rates). Printing currency? Establishing a 'bank' to... No. Stop! Too few questions were either asked or answered, or they use their questions to arrive at answers which are irrelevant to the issue at hand.

We need a lot less thought about what 'good' government can do for us all, and a lot more consideration of what mayhem government can wreak in our lives in the name of the 'common good'. A Thomas Jefferson said:

"...in questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution..."

It is up to us to keep that We The People's power, bound down by the fewest possible laws, and to see to it that they are written with the greatest possible clarity, and that too requires an attention to metaphysics, causality/logic, and ethics.

These are not questions that should be considered lightly, and the fact that they are rarely considered at all, is a direct result of how extensively 'economic thinking' has permeated our society, and why it must be expunged.

"But Van! Are you seriously rejecting all of the modern science of Economics?! Why not clamp down on what's 'bad' and keep what's 'good'?"

I'll answer that with an illustration - picture this if you will:

You find yourself confined within a casino, and you've come to realize that every game is being rigged by the house.
You discover that some players have figured out how to manipulate the House's manipulations to their own benefit, even though it adds additional burdens to the other customers who're either unaware that they're being conned by the House, or unable to do anything about it.
Would you:

• align yourself with the corrupt House (say hello to The Fed)?
• align yourself with those scheming to take advantage of the House's corruption (say hello to George Soros)?

Did you pick A or B?

Did you notice that the appearance of there being only two options, pushes the reality that there are other choices and questions, out of mind? That's called an Affordance Trap, and it's best not to fall for it.

While I do think that the casino example is representative of our situation, the lack of options is not - we have multiple options, not least of which is to refrain as best you can from participating in, or legitimizing either of the options provided. Also, don't allow the options being offered to distract you from the most important aspect of the scenario, in that the true value being won or lost in that casino's games isn't money, it's your ability to live your own life, which the house is taking from you by limiting what decisions and actions you're allowed to make in your own life. Don't play along with that.

Affordance Traps

I'm not encouraging or suggesting that we should go all 'mah principles!' and refuse to involve ourselves in the economy, and IMHO I think you should question any 'knowledge' that leads you into taking ignorant actions. Economics has a large number of observations and 'laws' which are undeniably valid and important to be recognized, and there are a large number of good economists who both understand them, and value liberty - Thomas Sowell & Henry Hazlitt come to mind - and who also warn of how economic issues threaten the very basis for a productive economy. Don't delude yourself with those 'principles!' that are principles-in-name-only. Recognize that trade-offs are often the best we can hope for, and that insisting upon an unattainable 'perfect solution' can easily cause us to lose out on an attainable least bad option, which is sure to be quickly filled by one that's much worse.

Nevertheless, the social science known as 'Economics', is a field that was established in order to evade and undermine those philosophic concepts and principles which make our Founders' era understanding of liberty possible, and it does so by focusing attention upon those aspects of our lives and activities which it improperly quantifies, so as to justify the unprincipled use of 'better policies' for imposing power over an entire society.

Beware of the Affordance Trap of 'these are our only choices!', especially as the habit of thinking that's been drilled into us in our schooling, politics, and of course economic thinking, is especially susceptible to that.

Be aware that most of the magician's tricks, count on your unwittingly cooperating with their tricks - following along with the magician's waving wand, watching the pretty assistant, and later repeating their performance of 'GDP is down!' or 'Inflation is up!' - that's not 'economic analysis', that's Praxis, repeating what is ultimately meaningless as if it mattered. The secret to the magician's trick, is that it's not necessary for their theories to be consciously learned and understood, so long as the audience repeats the patterns of action performed for them, people will absorb it through their own routine actions, without ever having consciously noted or accepted the details of whichever theory that particular magic act was performing.

And they're able to count on audience participation in their praxis, because we've all learned in our schooling to scan & cram truly meaningless facts to 'get good grades and get a good job', we've learned by practice the habit of seeking out and accepting the answers of authorities, regardless of whether we've understood their lessons or not. And the dirty little secret behind those grades, is that both the 'good students' who did their work and passed their tests, and those students who didn't do their work and failed most of their tests, both thoroughly learned the praxis of the lessons being taught (someone else has the answer and you don't know it), and both become useful game pieces in the necessary patterns of 'economic theory'.

The 'Economic' choice is a dialectical action that involves you in not thinking of what is real and true, in favor of a fabricated idea of what is seemingly 'useful', which substitutes a narrow 'how' for the 'what'. All 'Economic' ideologies ignore and implicitly deny those more important considerations, in order to advance a narrative that rationalizes the substitution of a 'Greater Good', for 'the pursuit of happiness', and when you fall into the affordance trap of 'Capitalism vs Socialism', what you are thinking of are 'economic issues', 'economic liberty', 'economic justice', etc., and what you are not thinking of, are those metaphysical, ethical, and moral issues, that would interfere with the carefully laid trap of 'economic thinking'.

The nature of what the 'Economic' choice of 'Capitalism vs Socialism' involves you in putting into practice (praxis) - which both sides of the same economic coin are urging you to make - is that by getting you to think of your society as an Economy, you are no longer thinking of it as a society!

'Capitalism', it must be remembered, was not a term that Adam Smith referred to or used in his writings - that was a little discussed technique of finance which Karl Marx seized upon as a label that'd be useful for disparaging Adam Smith's understanding that Natural Liberty was the real 'The Wealth of Nations'. By tarring Liberty with 'Capital'/'Money'/'the root of all evil', Marx succeeded in using 'Economic Thinking' to lure popular opinion away from the Political Economy of our Founders' era, and their understanding that individual rights and liberty were inextricably intertwined with a sound understanding of Property, and that an objective rule of law is and must be dedicated to upholding and defending them.

That understanding, and liberty, made clear that it was vital for a person to have the liberty to act on their own judgement, as that was the key to not only their own wealth and prosperity, and that of the entire nation as well. Modern misosophy, ideology, and that which Marxism concerns itself with, redirected popular understanding towards reframing the narrative's focus upon money and techniques of finance, control, and 'individualism'.

The fact that we don't have an immediate solution to the problems we face, is no reason to not recognize what the problem is, and in fact, simply recognizing the issue for what it is, being aware of the magicians' tricks, is a huge part of the solution, and is the means of breaking out of the praxis of 'economic thinking'.

Recognize that. Become aware of the reality they so desperately need you to not see, and alert others to it as well.

Realizing that, breaks it. There is another way, and it only requires your attention and willingness to consider and pursue questions to objective answers. Help others to see it too.

The truth has consequences. Recognizing that what is true, matters. Those who'd prefer to view you as Human Capital, know that too, and they fear it.

So now, with those cautions and points in mind, we can continue on and return to the post already in progress....

The 233rd Birthday of what we today are most dived over today: The Bill of Rights

233 years ago today, December 15th, 1791, our states united in ratifying the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America! How weird is it that many of the individual rights protected by these amendments as being essential to living in liberty - freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freeing religion from government interference - are what We The People are most divided over, and by, today? 

We should all pay especially close attention to the preamble that I've put in bold below - IOW: if our Founders didn't trust govt led by the Founding Fathers themselves... why should we trust the bunch we've got in our government(s) today?!

It's a convenient turn of providence that the first two amendments originally proposed, weren't ratified at the time (one of those two was ratified in the 1990's), because the keeping of government out of religion and its practice, and barring it from tampering with the freedom of speech, the press (which, BTW, doesn't exclude you), the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances should be the first set of individual rights protected from abuse by governmental powers (even and especially if the We The People are urging it to 'do something!' about something), followed immediately, as it now is, by the right to keep and bear arms in their defense, as the 1st & 2nd Amendments do. 

If you too would like to see our Bill of Rights enjoy many more birthdays, I strongly suggest that you click the links below, and read some of what was in our Founder's minds, when they proposed, debated, and ratified them.

Proposed Amendments and Ratification
1789 Elliot 1:338--40

Congress of the United States;

Begun and held at the City of New York, on Wednesday, the 4th of March, 1789.

The conventions of a number of the states having, at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added; and as extending the ground of public confidence in the government will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution;--

Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both houses concurring, that the following articles be proposed to the legislatures of the several states, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all or any of which articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said legislatures, to be valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution, namely,--

Articles in Addition to, and Amendment of, the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the Fifth Article of the original Constitution.

Art. I. [Not Ratified] After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than one hundred representatives, nor less than one representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of representatives shall amount to two hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred representatives, nor more than one representative for every fifty thousand.

Art. II. [Not ratified... for two centuries, now the 27th amendment] No law varying the compensation for services of the senators and representatives shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened.

Art. III.[1st] Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Art. IV [2nd]. A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Art. V [3rd]. No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner prescribed by law.

Art. VI [4th]. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no warrants shall issue, but upon principal cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Art. VII [5th]. No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia when in actual service, in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject, for the same offence, to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled, in any criminal case, to be a witness against himself; nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.

Art. VIII [6th]. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right of a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law; and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence.

Art. IX [7th]. In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reëxamined, in any court of the United States, than according to the rules in common law.

Art. X [8th]. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Art. XI [9th]. The enumeration, in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Art. XII [10th]. 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.

FREDERICK AUGUSTUS MUHLENBERG,

Speaker of the House of Representatives.

JOHN ADAMS, Vice-President of the United States,

and President of the Senate. 

Attest. John Beckley
Clerk of the House of Representatives.
Samuel A. Otis, Secretary of the Senate.
Which, being transmitted to the several state legislatures, were decided upon by them, according to the following returns:--

By the State of New Hampshire.--Agreed to the whole of the said amendments, except the 2d article.
By the State of New York.--Agreed to the whole of the said amendments, except the 2d article.
By the State of Pennsylvania.--Agreed to the 3d, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th articles of the said amendments.
By the State of Delaware.--Agreed to the whole of the said amendments, except the 1st article.
By the State of Maryland.--Agreed to the whole of the said twelve amendments.
By the State of South Carolina.--Agreed to the whole said twelve amendments.
By the State of North Carolina.--Agreed to the whole of the said twelve amendments.
By the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.--Agreed to the whole of the said twelve articles.
By the State of New Jersey.--Agreed to the whole of the said amendments, except the second article.
By the State of Virginia.--Agreed to the whole of the said twelve articles.
No returns were made by the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Georgia, and Kentucky.

The amendments thus proposed became a part of the Constitution, the first and second of them excepted, which were not ratified by a sufficient number of the state legislatures.


The Founders' Constitution
Volume 5, Bill of Rights, Document 12
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/bill_of_rightss12.html
The University of Chicago Press
Elliot, Jonathan, ed. The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution as Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. . . . 5 vols. 2d ed. 1888. Reprint. New York: Burt Franklin, n.d.