A lesson learned that doesn't compel you to action when faced with opposition to it, either wasn't learned well or wasn't worth learning.
I'm dead tired, been working late, should be sleeping and so a slight rant is coming, over a couple recent comments, conversations and emails which have been repeatedly popping up the idea that those who think successfully restoring America depends upon Education... now!, are somehow opposed to those who think it depends upon taking Action... now!, and both believe the other is putting everything at risk.
That’s like being asked to choose between ghosts and zombies. Flawed as they may be, personally, I’ll stick with people, thanks.
However.
America exists solely through its ideas and their understanding - philosophically, religiously, legally and in the Arts - if the understanding of those ideas are lost, whatever it is you'd like to call this geographical expanse which will remain behind, it wouldn't be America, no matter whether it leans to the left or in imitation of the right. Sorry. Fact.
But the ideas which made America possible are not simply bullet points that can be memorized; they won't be learned or relearned simply by reading or even memorizing the Constitution and the Declaration - don't get me wrong, they're a good place to start, but facts and points alone are of no more use than the tests you crammed for in school. They have to all tie together into every aspect of your life, it's an extended proposition, philosophically, religiously, legally as well as in the Arts, and that takes time to internalize. Learning it all begins with bullet points and documents and books, but that is just a starting point, it's got to be integrated and understood as a vital part of your life. Education that isn’t also lived, isn't yet an education, even the best lessons take time to sink in.
So in the meantime... what, you sit around and do nothing? No, obviously, you can't. Less obvious is the fact that taking action, even flawed action, is a part of the educational process - what you actually do, is part of of coming to understand what you should do - it's called life.
As big a proponent of Education (not schooling mind you, Education) as I am, it can’t all be learned before we can take action... and effective action cannot be taken without at least some education. And while it's true we don't have the luxury of time on our side, guess what? When starting from a point of ignorance and inexperience, as we are, no matter how determined we may be, that means we are going to be dealing with some healthy doses of imperfection – get used to it already!
There are no quick fixes, no fast solutions! This is going to be a long, long, haul – best get that through your head.
We've lost serious ground in at least three of those four areas (philosophically, religiously, legally and the Arts), and it took over 150 years to erase as much of America from the public's mind as has been lost. That's not something that'll be replaced in an election. In my most dizzyingly optimistic moments, I estimate that if everything went impossibly in our favor, it would take at least 50 years to restore us to the point where the spirit of America and the Constitution would be able to be understood and fiercely defended, once again.
And there would still be miles to go before we could sleep.
Education is extremely important... but if anyone is thinking that we're going to put some classes on and win it all back, they need to look a bit closer at the problem.
Action is needed, now, action that is based upon as much of an emotional appeal as we can possibly generate - and clearly link to - our core principles.
That's tough to do when those core principles aren't understood by large percentages of the electorate. A lot of the actions we take, and the people we elect to take them, are going to fall far, far short of the ideal. But we can't sit paralyzed waiting for it all to come together - we can't sit shivering before the fireplace and tell it "First give me some heat, then I'll put some wood in you and light it."
We do need to act, now! And we do need to understand why, now! And we have to do so knowing that we will fall far short in bother areas for a long time to come. It's a painful process and it can't be avoided.
Every election and candidate and bill and measure is important, but they will not be solutions - not now, or in the next year, two or four years to come, or more - we delude ourselves if we think a single candidate, policy or even groups of them, are going to fix things. They will not and they cannot be solutions, not when what they are intended to accomplish, is not understood by those voting for them or implementing them!
But what they are, are vital beach heads, and we must take them, as many as we possibly can. If we don't, we're dead - right here and right now. And if we don't spread the lessons that need to be learned, then we'll be dead in the long run too. If we make the mistake of viewing these two approaches as opposing strategies, then neither has a shred of a chance of succeeding anywhere or anywhen. We can't simply focus on creating scholars of the Federalist Papers before trying to win the Presidency, School Board member, or any of the offices in between, and likewise, we can't consider trying to win those offices first, before bothering with spreading the education needed to have them be effective. Each has got to drive the other without opposing them at the same time.
Each call to action should promote as much of a key idea or principle as is possible, in each election, and push the idea that it is important to learn more about those ideas and principles – but without demanding that they all be learned immediately. That's a daunting task, what has been lost cannot be regained in a year or two, it just can't. Hopefully we can do better than "Jefferson was great, look both ways before crossing the street", but it's gonna feel that way to a lot of us for quite a while to come.
The same goes for candidates. We need good ones, sure, but seeking a perfectly principled candidate where one isn't possible (they've got to come from somewhere, right? Where? And if found, who would understand that what they understand, is important to take a stand upon?) - is just as nuts as thinking that simply stirring up emotions and fervor, without some ideas and principles to back them up, would somehow be effective or worthwhile - either one is a prescription for failure now and forever. We've got to go to political war with the people we've got, not the ones we'd like to have.
As you can see, it's going to be a long and painful process.
The left has it easy; with all the understanding that has largely been successfully lost, they really only need to appeal to the thinnest and basest of natural emotions... which is especially convenient, as that's all they have.
We can't. Our ideas need to be understood across the expanse of philosophical, religious, legal and artistic concerns, in order to be properly understood as being valuable. But seriously, it took a couple thousand years to develop the ideas that made America possible; do you really think that can be regained in either an election cycle or a single lesson? But we also can't avoid starting with what they've left us (and ourselves) to work with. We just need to start, and not complain so much about what we have to start working with.
But on the bright side, we've come farther in the last two years than I would have imagined possible. And you know what? It didn't happen due to some grand Educational plan or campaign strategy. The threat from the left to America was perceived across the land - it wasn't clearly understood by many in the beginning, but it was perceived (there's a very big clue there to the nature of knowledge), and people have been seeking answers to that threat ever since, and they've been seeking after those actions and candidates as seem to them best able to block that threat, and they haven't needed a single organized program to tell them how to do that either.
Both are driven by people who saw a need in that area which most concerned them.
The principles of the free market do work, and not just in economics.
Those promoting Education and those promoting action, and all points between... are doing what they do best - that's what they should be and need to be doing, and they shouldn't be trying to get the other to do what they themselves are doing - watching both sides natter at each other is like watching tire mfg's and engine mfg's trying to tell each other how to do their jobs. You aren't the same, but you do complement each other, or at least you can, if you'll just do what you do best, and leave the other to do the same.
You don't need to go over to their side, and they don't need to come over to yours. What we do need to do is cross promote each other as much as is possible, take a moment here and there to point out how much we are tied together, doing what can be done for 'their' cause, without slighting our own efforts too much.
Come on people. Cross promotion, not cross fire.
That being said... does anyone really think anything is going to be accomplished without some serious arguments amongst friends?
ROFLOL!!!
;-)
P.S. And that's why we don't write rants at midnight. For those who read this post prior to 7:45 a.m.{er... 9:00a.m.} CST - Sorry. For those reading it after then, it was even worse than it is now. I think I'll leave it up as a painful reminder to click 'Save as Draft' not 'Publish Post', and then sleep on it!
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Liberty - It all hangs together, or we all hang separately
Liberty - What are you talking about?
There are a whole lot of terms flying around fast and furious right now: Rights, human rights, goldfish rights, workers’ rights, direct democracy, pure democracy, citizens initiatives, citizen rejection initiatives, republic, representative republic, socialism, communism, Marxism, capitalism... with that many terms, and even more definitions (real or implied) flying around, it's worth taking a moment to refocus on the fundamentals that do matter. Do that, and maybe it can help you to clear away the ones that don't matter and see more clearly what does - if you don't, your liberty may be just one vote away from fading away.
Republic
When trying to figure out the details of what you're talking about, it helps to first figure out why you're talking about them. We could go back to the original, original argument, such as where James Madison gave an excellent description of the structure of the republic he was hoping that We The People would choose to become (and we did), in Federalist #39, and also in #51, but they deal too much with the details and machinery of a Republic, at least as regards what I'm after here.
We'd do well to refocus on the fundamentals of what the purpose of a Republic is, before we bother with how to arrange it.
Along those lines, John Adams nailed the purpose of a Republic: The protection of Property Rights:
Law
What protects our property rights is the Law... but what do we mean by that? IMHO Cicero nailed it well:
Turns out, there's plenty he has to say to us, and nearly all of it extremely relevant to your life, right now. Do we flatter ourselves to think we are the first to have to deal with amoral politicians and talking heads? Are we the first to have to suffer fools who think that making something lawful makes it right? Are we the first to have to battle with proponents of a 'living constitution'? Hardly. Have a look at what Cicero described,:
Cicero's ideas, which were very much on the minds of our Founding Fathers when they wrote, debated and ratified the constitution, are central to our form of government. If we remove them or ignore them, which amount to the same thing, we risk... well... the chaos we have today, and which is but a taste of what we may face tomorrow, if we don't check our pro-regress.
Cicero's ideas were further developed through Thomas Aquinas and by many others down through the centuries, such as by the likes of John Locke, into those ideas which were expressed by Thomas Jefferson when he said that,
Hence our Independence Day which we celebrate upon the 4th of July, the 'unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'... but what do we mean by Rights?
Rights
Whenever you hear people speaking of 'human rights', what you should set your spidey sense a tingling and direct your focus upon, is that they seem to presume that there can be such a thing as other sorts of rights, or even collective group rights - there cannot be. There are only Individual Rights, and they are not goodies bestowed upon men by kings, legislators or any other outside force; Rights are derived from the nature of man, not from groups of men. Our Rights rise from that nature and reasoning ability which makes us individuals capable of behaving reasonably and in accordance with agreed upon rules with our fellow man - the attempt to ascribe Rights to groups is only a back door method for denying their proper rights to individuals.
Anyway, here’s a whirlwind dash through it all (see Cicero’s Republic & Laws for a good development of this as Natural Reason) which I’ve found useful before, and which I think you'll find useful now.
Our Rights are all, and only, derived from our nature as human beings, from the observable requirements of living a human life; our Rights begin with thinking. As with a cow in a snow filled pasture which (it’s said) will starve to death, being unable to think of looking under the snow – the basic fact for us is
Respectful awareness of your surroundings is vital for creating any wealth - wealth being food, shelter, relationships, gizmos to perform tasks efficiently and productively - aka Property, and our individual lives as well as society, are based upon that property which we create, Property Rights.
To be able to reason, and to be reasonably productive, you have to not only be able to act on your conclusions, but to do so without being forced to act against your own reasoning. You have to be able to say what you think needs to be said, do what you think needs to be done, make the choices which you see and believe need to be made, without being forced to act against your own better judgment – the Right to Speech, the Right to not be unlawfully detained, accosted or restrained from religion and the free exercise thereof, all follow from this.
Being free to think and act to produce property is of course tied together with your need to confidently retain what you've spent your time and effort in producing, confident that your efforts won't be stolen from you, and in realizing the necessity of that to your life, you must extend the same consideration to others.
All of your productive actions are based upon, and directed towards getting, keeping or consuming the wealth of property which you have created, and none of that could be created if you denied the realities required to do so, and that same adherence to reality, to truth, is required of your actions and interactions with your fellows. Honesty and integrity contributes to all in society, while thievery steals from all in society in ways the thief never could begin to imagine.
Thievery, legal or otherwise, destroys not only your wealth, but the purpose of all of your actions and thoughts, which are requirements of your nature and ability to live as a human being.
To prevent or deprive you of your ability to think and act as you see fit, and not let you retain what you produce, is no different than plucking the wings off a bumble bee or removing the fangs & claws of a lion - neither would then be able to do what they need to do in order to live as their nature requires. In the same sense it is right, by our very nature, that we be secure in these Rights – they follow from our nature as human beings, they are unalienable from us.
So that's a rapid fire summary of our Rights and Liberties and the criminality of violating them. Our Rights are nothing but the recognition of what is required by "nature and natures God" in order for us to live as Men, from that fact we get our rights of property, free speech, self-defense, sanctity of contract - and most important of all is the fact that all of our Rights come not from words on paper, but because of the nature of being human – our Natural Rights as disclosed to us by exercising Right Reason, through Natural Law.
Collective Rights Are Wrong
The nature of Rights means that there is no such thing as "States Rights" either, states have powers, not rights (note the wording of the 9th Amendment and the 10th Amendment), and just as the attempt to ascribe rights to groups of men undercuts the rights of individual men, so too with states - recall that the first group clamoring for 'States Rights' were doing so in order to preserve slavery, rather than Individual Rights. And it was the realization of the concept of proper Individual Rights arising from the nature of Man, which made it impossible to consider one man as the possession of another.
John Locke put that idea this way,
Some examples of Reason being used as a weapon to win arguments, and in opposition to discovering what is true? When talk turns to group rights, we're sure to see the crazies piping up, getting crazier and crazier the more they apply their idiocies, resulting in things like cow rights and so forth... but keep in mind that this is a distraction too, one which the ideas of regulatory gurus like Cass Sunstein make clear in this one,
While Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" became popular, and for good reason, IMHO a much more dangerous book, because it and its author isn't seen as radical by many, is Cass Sunstein's "FDR's Second Bill of Rights", this book, in its fundamentals, in what it seeks to destroy, property rights, and the smooth skill with which he twists seemingly reasonable sentiments to that purpose, his radicalism makes Alinsky's rabble rousing seem quaint (Note: I touched upon one key passage in it midway through this post, and am working up to fisking the entire book).
A more fundamentally anti-American book you won't find. Not surprisingly he, Sunstein, is one of Obama's top advisors and our 'Regulatory Czar'.
Capitalism vs Free Market?
And finally, what do seemingly all of our educational and political 'leaders' say they are against? Capitalism, right? From the halls of wackademia to shores of 'Frisco bay, they will fight against capitalists and make them pay. But what is it? They tell us today that China is doing booming business under capitalism, really? That capitalism, which has produced the wealth and technology which they use to attack it, is more evil than good. Or that our corporations, who by the way have so many board members and advisers who are in or freshly out of govt as to seem more like an NGO than a public corporation (Goldman-Sachs, GE, etc), as they greedily seek out favored govt contracts; we're told that these are representatives of capitalism? That capitalism hates the working man, minorities and likes nothing better than to keep people down and deprive them of their rights.
Really? What is it? Which is it? Is it even any of those?
The confusion comes in through the front door with the term 'Capitalism'. It might be helpful to remember that the term was first popularized (not coined by, but brought into common usage) by none other than Karl Marx, as a useful term for dispensing with the then current, and proper, term, the Free Market. But where the term Free Market tells you something descriptive about the system, the term 'Capitalism' doesn't, and it is so easily tossed around without any glaring conflict due to its name, and being so easily associated with every dark connotation of 'Money' (root of all evil, etc.), it serves nicely as a tool to lump in systems that are at odds, are total opposites, as well as all points in between, into a single stew of slurs (remember the NY Times article I mentioned above "Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth"? This is an example of that).
What the usage of the term really winds up being in most people’s minds, is an all purpose reference to any system where financial transactions are allowed.
To put that in contrast, could you really, with a straight face, refer to the Communist Peoples Republic of China... as a Free Market? True, it does allow financial transactions to occur on a large scale, but are the owners of those businesses operating within that system free to make their own choices about what to manufacture? Sell? Hire? At what wages? Hours? Are they free from having to pay protection to political and crime (difference? There? Not much) figures? Massive regulation? Are they free to say what they think is true? Are they free to question their govt? How many of these businesses have govt as partners in their business? And so on.
A Free Market? China? Hardly.
Even Japan, though several orders of magnitude better than China, also cannot properly be called an actual Free Market, either legally, or culturally. Aside from the huge govt intervention present in their economy, business is done largely under palpable restrictions of who you know, who you are, who feels they can or should 'properly' let it be known that they know you and do business with you.
China may be riding high now, but I wouldn't bank on their remaining so high for so long, for many of the same reasons that Japan's economy (once thought to be buying up and economically enslaving America... anyone remember the 1980's? Remember the movie 'Red Sun'? Lol) crashed and has stagnated for more than a decade, and for many, many more reasons than what ended Japan's surge. My prediction is that China is going to crash, and crash hard... whether their military will be established enough to temporarily compensate for that is the real question, and one that should be keeping us up at night. BTW, my odd views on this got a nice boost a few weeks ago when I was reading the book "The Next 100 Years" by George Friedman of STRATFOR,
But anyway, back to the issue at hand, it was because of the philosophy of Natural Law, which slowly grew from the time of Homer, through Cicero, that forms the early foundations for the Free Market - but even at their height, the Greco-Roman worldview could not achieve a real Free Market, and so never rose above the horse & buggy age... not without the addition of Christianity and it's revolutionary insight that the individual, every individual, is worthwhile and that all souls are equal in value and importance. That idea, watered and tended so well, down through the ages to Aquinas and up through Locke, etc., developed into the realization that each person, by their nature as human beings, had Rights, and that none of those rights could be secured unless Property Rights were held sacrosanct.
That system has only been developed in the West. Hong Kong was one of the last hold outs of the view, which has been fading rapidly since the departure of British Rule.
So while other cultures may abound with markets where widespread financial transactions are permitted, they are not examples of Free Markets or of what is referred to as Capitalism. They may be more free than they were before, sure (China, btw, in centuries past, came the closest of any non-western society to developing a Free Market... but without that key ingredient, the value of the Individual, it quickly faltered and petered out), and a society which manages to attain more freedoms will produce more than it could with less freedom, but they cannot properly be called Free Markets or Capitalist.
They are called Capitalist by the tenured, and will be till the cows come home... being moonbats, whadya expect?
If you notice, all of this ties together:
It all hangs together, doesn't it? And we all shall surely hang separately if we allow them to be severed. Which brings me to the last point:
Marxism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Progressivism...
What do they have in common? One thing, care to guess?
According to Marx,
Do I really need to say anything more?
There are a whole lot of terms flying around fast and furious right now: Rights, human rights, goldfish rights, workers’ rights, direct democracy, pure democracy, citizens initiatives, citizen rejection initiatives, republic, representative republic, socialism, communism, Marxism, capitalism... with that many terms, and even more definitions (real or implied) flying around, it's worth taking a moment to refocus on the fundamentals that do matter. Do that, and maybe it can help you to clear away the ones that don't matter and see more clearly what does - if you don't, your liberty may be just one vote away from fading away.
Republic
When trying to figure out the details of what you're talking about, it helps to first figure out why you're talking about them. We could go back to the original, original argument, such as where James Madison gave an excellent description of the structure of the republic he was hoping that We The People would choose to become (and we did), in Federalist #39, and also in #51, but they deal too much with the details and machinery of a Republic, at least as regards what I'm after here.
We'd do well to refocus on the fundamentals of what the purpose of a Republic is, before we bother with how to arrange it.
Along those lines, John Adams nailed the purpose of a Republic: The protection of Property Rights:
"...the original meaning of the word republic could be no other than a government in which the property of the people predominated and governed; and it had more relation to property than liberty. It signified a government, in which the property of the public, or people, and of every one of them, was secured and protected by law. This idea, indeed, implies liberty; because property cannot be secure unless the man be at liberty to acquire, use, or part with it, at his discretion, and unless he have his personal liberty of life and limb, motion and rest, for that purpose. It implies, moreover, that the property and liberty of all men, not merely of a majority, should be safe; for the people, or public, comprehends more than a majority, it comprehends all and every individual; and the property of every citizen is a part of the public property, as each citizen is a part of the public, people, or community. The property, therefore, of every man has a share in government, and is more powerful than any citizen or party of citizens; it is governed only by the law...."What Adams and many others of the time realized, was that without solid support for property rights, no other rights are even possible. From his 'Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States'
"The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal," were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free."If property rights go, you no longer have rights of any kind, only favors... if you keep those with the power to bestow, or withdraw, those favors, sufficiently flattered, that is. The purpose of a Republic, is to structure a government which will preserve the property of the people, and through that their innumerable unalienable rights, through few and defined laws.
Law
What protects our property rights is the Law... but what do we mean by that? IMHO Cicero nailed it well:
“True law is right reason in agreement with nature", but what did he mean by that? Does it apply to us today? I mean after all, following the New York Times usage of Reason as a tool for the effective use of logical fallacies, should I even care if Cicero was right, if he doesn't tell me what I want to hear? And besides, Cicero wore a toga & I wear dockers... what could he possibly have to say to me, right?
Turns out, there's plenty he has to say to us, and nearly all of it extremely relevant to your life, right now. Do we flatter ourselves to think we are the first to have to deal with amoral politicians and talking heads? Are we the first to have to suffer fools who think that making something lawful makes it right? Are we the first to have to battle with proponents of a 'living constitution'? Hardly. Have a look at what Cicero described,:
"It is therefore an absurd extravagance in some philosophers to assert that all things are necessarily just, which are established by the civil laws and the institutions of the people. Are then the laws of tyrants just, simply because they are laws? If the thirty tyrants of Athens imposed certain laws on the Athenians, and if these Athenians were delighted with these tyrannical laws, are we therefore bound to consider these laws as just? For my own part, I do not think such laws deserve any greater estimation than that past during our own interregnum, which ordained, that the dictator should be empowered to put to death with impunity, whatever citizens he pleased, without hearing them in their own defense...."Despite the prating of our elected fools in Washington D.C., laws are valid only when they are just, not simply because they've been written down and voted on 'all legal-like'. Cicero explains what makes law just:
"...There can be but one essential justice, which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.Law, if not rooted in the nature of reality and of Right & Wrong, is but one loophole woven through another - a barrier to you, but an open door to the powerful, or those who have their ear. Without laws rooted in natural law, in right and wrong, the only defense you have against the government coming into your home and telling you what to eat, or taking your iPod, iPhone and iPad from you in order to spread your wealth around, is if those laws are based in what we can see for ourselves to be real and true, and so use our minds to conform to that, aka, Right Reason. And that has importance beyond the laws itself, for when the people see that law is something to be feared as a weapon against them, rather than revered as a defense of their property and rights, that it instead serves one group over another, then society itself unravels. Cicero explains:
But if justice consists in submission to written laws and national customs, and if, as the Epicureans [the utilitarian’s in our day] persist in affirming, everything must be measured by utility alone, he who wishes to find an occasion of breaking such laws and customs will be sure to discover it. So that real justice remains powerless if not supported by nature, and this pretended justice is overturned by that very utility which they call its foundation..."
"... But this is not all. If nature does not ratify law, all the virtues lose their sway. What becomes of generosity, patriotism, or friendship? Where should we find the desire of benefitting our neighbors, or the gratitude that acknowledges kindness? For all these virtues proceed from our natural inclination to love and cherish our associates. This is the true basis of justice, and without this, not only the mutual charities of men, but the religious services of the gods, would become obsolete; for these are preserved, as I imagine, rather by the natural sympathy which subsists between divine and human beings, than by mere fear and timidity.
If the will of the people, the decrees of the senate, the adjudications of magistrates, were sufficient to establish justice, the only question would be how to gain suffrages, and to win over the votes of the majority, in order that corruption and spoliation, and the falsification of wills, should become lawful. But if the opinions and suffrages of foolish men had sufficient weight to outbalance the nature of things, might they not determine among them, that what is essentially bad and pernicious should henceforth pass for good and beneficial? Or why should not a law able to enforce injustice, take the place of equity? Would not this same law be able to change evil into good, and good into evil?"Sadly leftists today (and not a few little 'r' republicans) wouldn't consider this a rhetorical question, but a challenge to one up each other... for the children no doubt. But if that's the case, if passing laws makes a thing right, or if money is what the treasury department prints, then why borrow money from China? Why not just print all we need? The fact is that there is a reality, and just as there is an up and a down, there is a right and a wrong, and your journey will be smoother if you take the time to figure out which is which.
Cicero's ideas, which were very much on the minds of our Founding Fathers when they wrote, debated and ratified the constitution, are central to our form of government. If we remove them or ignore them, which amount to the same thing, we risk... well... the chaos we have today, and which is but a taste of what we may face tomorrow, if we don't check our pro-regress.
Cicero's ideas were further developed through Thomas Aquinas and by many others down through the centuries, such as by the likes of John Locke, into those ideas which were expressed by Thomas Jefferson when he said that,
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed", which as Cicero noted,
"Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked", and their laws are no laws at all.
Hence our Independence Day which we celebrate upon the 4th of July, the 'unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'... but what do we mean by Rights?
Rights
Whenever you hear people speaking of 'human rights', what you should set your spidey sense a tingling and direct your focus upon, is that they seem to presume that there can be such a thing as other sorts of rights, or even collective group rights - there cannot be. There are only Individual Rights, and they are not goodies bestowed upon men by kings, legislators or any other outside force; Rights are derived from the nature of man, not from groups of men. Our Rights rise from that nature and reasoning ability which makes us individuals capable of behaving reasonably and in accordance with agreed upon rules with our fellow man - the attempt to ascribe Rights to groups is only a back door method for denying their proper rights to individuals.
Anyway, here’s a whirlwind dash through it all (see Cicero’s Republic & Laws for a good development of this as Natural Reason) which I’ve found useful before, and which I think you'll find useful now.
Our Rights are all, and only, derived from our nature as human beings, from the observable requirements of living a human life; our Rights begin with thinking. As with a cow in a snow filled pasture which (it’s said) will starve to death, being unable to think of looking under the snow – the basic fact for us is
But thinking in and of itself won't do it, it's got to be productive thought, - you may not get much for your efforts if your thinking tells you that digging & refilling a ditch over and over will spontaneously produce food and shelter (don't laugh, FDR, inspired by Keynesian economics, based an entire WPA program on just that - now that's shovel ready!) your thinking has to respect reality, it must be purposeful and to be effective it should follow orderly methods of self-checking (Logic) to make sure it's worthwhile from start to finish - in short Reasoning. Reason and the requirements for Reasoning, are the philosophical source for Natural Law (Cicero had a lot to say on that).
- no thinking, no eating
Respectful awareness of your surroundings is vital for creating any wealth - wealth being food, shelter, relationships, gizmos to perform tasks efficiently and productively - aka Property, and our individual lives as well as society, are based upon that property which we create, Property Rights.
To be able to reason, and to be reasonably productive, you have to not only be able to act on your conclusions, but to do so without being forced to act against your own reasoning. You have to be able to say what you think needs to be said, do what you think needs to be done, make the choices which you see and believe need to be made, without being forced to act against your own better judgment – the Right to Speech, the Right to not be unlawfully detained, accosted or restrained from religion and the free exercise thereof, all follow from this.
Being free to think and act to produce property is of course tied together with your need to confidently retain what you've spent your time and effort in producing, confident that your efforts won't be stolen from you, and in realizing the necessity of that to your life, you must extend the same consideration to others.
All of your productive actions are based upon, and directed towards getting, keeping or consuming the wealth of property which you have created, and none of that could be created if you denied the realities required to do so, and that same adherence to reality, to truth, is required of your actions and interactions with your fellows. Honesty and integrity contributes to all in society, while thievery steals from all in society in ways the thief never could begin to imagine.
Thievery, legal or otherwise, destroys not only your wealth, but the purpose of all of your actions and thoughts, which are requirements of your nature and ability to live as a human being.
To prevent or deprive you of your ability to think and act as you see fit, and not let you retain what you produce, is no different than plucking the wings off a bumble bee or removing the fangs & claws of a lion - neither would then be able to do what they need to do in order to live as their nature requires. In the same sense it is right, by our very nature, that we be secure in these Rights – they follow from our nature as human beings, they are unalienable from us.
So that's a rapid fire summary of our Rights and Liberties and the criminality of violating them. Our Rights are nothing but the recognition of what is required by "nature and natures God" in order for us to live as Men, from that fact we get our rights of property, free speech, self-defense, sanctity of contract - and most important of all is the fact that all of our Rights come not from words on paper, but because of the nature of being human – our Natural Rights as disclosed to us by exercising Right Reason, through Natural Law.
Collective Rights Are Wrong
The nature of Rights means that there is no such thing as "States Rights" either, states have powers, not rights (note the wording of the 9th Amendment and the 10th Amendment), and just as the attempt to ascribe rights to groups of men undercuts the rights of individual men, so too with states - recall that the first group clamoring for 'States Rights' were doing so in order to preserve slavery, rather than Individual Rights. And it was the realization of the concept of proper Individual Rights arising from the nature of Man, which made it impossible to consider one man as the possession of another.
John Locke put that idea this way,
" for law, in its true notion, is not so much the limitation as the direction of a free and intelligent agent to his proper interest, and prescribes no farther than is for the general good of those under that law: could they be happier without it, the law, as an useless thing, would of itself vanish; and that ill deserves the name of confinement which hedges us in only from bogs and precipices. So that, however it may be mistaken, the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom: for in all the states of created beings capable of laws, where there is no law, there is no freedom: for liberty is, to be free from restraint and violence from others; which cannot be, where there is no law: but freedom is not, as we are told, a liberty for every man to do what he lists: (for who could be free, when every other man’s humour might domineer over him?) but a liberty to dispose, and order as he lists, his person, actions, possessions, and his whole property, within the allowance of those laws under which he is, and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own."It comes down again and again to Property Rights, Law and Right Reason... and despite the New York Times recent 'breakthrough', that means using reason to pursue truth, and only secondarily as a weapon to win arguments - reverse that order, and literal dis-aster (loss of your guiding star) results.
Some examples of Reason being used as a weapon to win arguments, and in opposition to discovering what is true? When talk turns to group rights, we're sure to see the crazies piping up, getting crazier and crazier the more they apply their idiocies, resulting in things like cow rights and so forth... but keep in mind that this is a distraction too, one which the ideas of regulatory gurus like Cass Sunstein make clear in this one,
"Its astonishing conclusions could become law in due course.(H/T Caroline Mueller). When people like Sunstein are speaking up for insane anti-concepts such as 'animal lawyers', that's simply one of their nudges, what they are nudging us all towards is what Sunstein has always been entirely focused on: obliterating property rights.
Among them is that "decapitation of wild flowers at the roadside without rational reason" is essentially a crime. "
While Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" became popular, and for good reason, IMHO a much more dangerous book, because it and its author isn't seen as radical by many, is Cass Sunstein's "FDR's Second Bill of Rights", this book, in its fundamentals, in what it seeks to destroy, property rights, and the smooth skill with which he twists seemingly reasonable sentiments to that purpose, his radicalism makes Alinsky's rabble rousing seem quaint (Note: I touched upon one key passage in it midway through this post, and am working up to fisking the entire book).
A more fundamentally anti-American book you won't find. Not surprisingly he, Sunstein, is one of Obama's top advisors and our 'Regulatory Czar'.
Capitalism vs Free Market?
And finally, what do seemingly all of our educational and political 'leaders' say they are against? Capitalism, right? From the halls of wackademia to shores of 'Frisco bay, they will fight against capitalists and make them pay. But what is it? They tell us today that China is doing booming business under capitalism, really? That capitalism, which has produced the wealth and technology which they use to attack it, is more evil than good. Or that our corporations, who by the way have so many board members and advisers who are in or freshly out of govt as to seem more like an NGO than a public corporation (Goldman-Sachs, GE, etc), as they greedily seek out favored govt contracts; we're told that these are representatives of capitalism? That capitalism hates the working man, minorities and likes nothing better than to keep people down and deprive them of their rights.
Really? What is it? Which is it? Is it even any of those?
The confusion comes in through the front door with the term 'Capitalism'. It might be helpful to remember that the term was first popularized (not coined by, but brought into common usage) by none other than Karl Marx, as a useful term for dispensing with the then current, and proper, term, the Free Market. But where the term Free Market tells you something descriptive about the system, the term 'Capitalism' doesn't, and it is so easily tossed around without any glaring conflict due to its name, and being so easily associated with every dark connotation of 'Money' (root of all evil, etc.), it serves nicely as a tool to lump in systems that are at odds, are total opposites, as well as all points in between, into a single stew of slurs (remember the NY Times article I mentioned above "Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth"? This is an example of that).
What the usage of the term really winds up being in most people’s minds, is an all purpose reference to any system where financial transactions are allowed.
To put that in contrast, could you really, with a straight face, refer to the Communist Peoples Republic of China... as a Free Market? True, it does allow financial transactions to occur on a large scale, but are the owners of those businesses operating within that system free to make their own choices about what to manufacture? Sell? Hire? At what wages? Hours? Are they free from having to pay protection to political and crime (difference? There? Not much) figures? Massive regulation? Are they free to say what they think is true? Are they free to question their govt? How many of these businesses have govt as partners in their business? And so on.
A Free Market? China? Hardly.
Even Japan, though several orders of magnitude better than China, also cannot properly be called an actual Free Market, either legally, or culturally. Aside from the huge govt intervention present in their economy, business is done largely under palpable restrictions of who you know, who you are, who feels they can or should 'properly' let it be known that they know you and do business with you.
China may be riding high now, but I wouldn't bank on their remaining so high for so long, for many of the same reasons that Japan's economy (once thought to be buying up and economically enslaving America... anyone remember the 1980's? Remember the movie 'Red Sun'? Lol) crashed and has stagnated for more than a decade, and for many, many more reasons than what ended Japan's surge. My prediction is that China is going to crash, and crash hard... whether their military will be established enough to temporarily compensate for that is the real question, and one that should be keeping us up at night. BTW, my odd views on this got a nice boost a few weeks ago when I was reading the book "The Next 100 Years" by George Friedman of STRATFOR,
"The problem for China is political. China is held together by money, not ideology. When there is an economic downturn and the money stops rolling in, not only will the banking system spasm, but the entire fabric of Chinese society will shudder. Loyalty in China is either bought or coerced. Without available money, only coercion remains. Business slowdown can generally lead to instability because they lead to business failure and unemployment. In a country where poverty is endemic and unemployment widespread, the added pressure of an economic downturn will result in political instability." [pg 96]An unfree market, may, seem to prosper, for a while... but it's only building with the bricks its taking from its own foundation, like a Ponzi scheme, it'll eventually crash and crash hard.
But anyway, back to the issue at hand, it was because of the philosophy of Natural Law, which slowly grew from the time of Homer, through Cicero, that forms the early foundations for the Free Market - but even at their height, the Greco-Roman worldview could not achieve a real Free Market, and so never rose above the horse & buggy age... not without the addition of Christianity and it's revolutionary insight that the individual, every individual, is worthwhile and that all souls are equal in value and importance. That idea, watered and tended so well, down through the ages to Aquinas and up through Locke, etc., developed into the realization that each person, by their nature as human beings, had Rights, and that none of those rights could be secured unless Property Rights were held sacrosanct.
That system has only been developed in the West. Hong Kong was one of the last hold outs of the view, which has been fading rapidly since the departure of British Rule.
So while other cultures may abound with markets where widespread financial transactions are permitted, they are not examples of Free Markets or of what is referred to as Capitalism. They may be more free than they were before, sure (China, btw, in centuries past, came the closest of any non-western society to developing a Free Market... but without that key ingredient, the value of the Individual, it quickly faltered and petered out), and a society which manages to attain more freedoms will produce more than it could with less freedom, but they cannot properly be called Free Markets or Capitalist.
They are called Capitalist by the tenured, and will be till the cows come home... being moonbats, whadya expect?
If you notice, all of this ties together:
- a respect for reality,
- honestly identifying what is and is not true,
- revering the truth, recognizing that the nature of man is where he derives his rights from,
- that those rights are defended in society through property rights,
- that a Republic is designed to protect Property Rights (and through them all Rights) through its written laws and in accordance with Right Reason.
It all hangs together, doesn't it? And we all shall surely hang separately if we allow them to be severed. Which brings me to the last point:
Marxism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Progressivism...
What do they have in common? One thing, care to guess?
According to Marx,
" In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. ", which is a fundamental tenet of every and all leftist ideologies, Marxism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Progressivism, and to the extent they succeed in tampering or destroying property rights, that is the extent which doom will follow close after them.
Do I really need to say anything more?
Casey Anthony: Where's the Justice in that?
Ok, a quick point on a case I never thought I'd ever post on, a case I didn't follow, a case which either caused me to flip the channel or pause the news for a few minutes so I could then zoom past it - which I suppose I do with nearly all 'Media Courtroom Cases'. But with that being said... there's something to be said about the matter which is currently going under the name of the 'Casey Anthony Murder Trial'.
I heard the Mom's story; do I think she's guilty? Yes. Does that matter? It had better not! It doesn't matter what you or I or any of the public think, and it shouldn't matter. Was she guilty? That's not the issue - she was found not guilty in a court of law, that's the issue.
Justice, in a Just society, is not about the judgment of one person, a dozen people or the entire population, Justice is about the system of justice, which should require an orderly presentation of information, information which has to pass objective rules of evidence and order, and be argued according to reasonable rules of conduct in an adversarial arrangement. The only 'Trial' news worth hearing, IMHO, is whether or not the procedures of the judicial system were followed. If they were, then as far as society is concerned, justice was done.
Why? Because only the guilty person and God know what really happened - and they aren't talking.
That means we need to have a system which all of us can trust... a system where we can believe we'd have the fairest possible chance ourselves if we were ever caught up in it, where the accused, and the accuser, are both allowed to make their best case, so that a jury of their peers can evaluate it - in accordance with those same rules - in order to render their best, most justifiable, conclusion, the verdict of having been found to be Guilty, or Not Guilty, based upon the rules of evidence presented in a court of law.
That is the best that can be hoped for in society, and as far as society is concerned, that IS Justice. Could the jury have been wrong about whether she truly killed her daughter or not? Sure, no jury is perfect. You know what? Neither are you. Or me. With that fact in mind, the best we can do is set up a system that is Just, and follow it, even and especially when we feel a particular judgment is wrong.
The alternative? See any third world country for evidence of blood lust and vendettas waged by those who are deeply convinced they are pursuing and seeing that 'justice' will be done. Or read Aeschylus’s ’The Orestia’ to see why and how the West tamed the Furies and left that nightmare of savagery behind.
Do you sort of agree with all of that but want to argue whether the people of the jury, the attorneys or the judge were up to the task of carrying out and implementing our system of Justice?
That's a matter you should take up with what you and your society considers, or neglects to consider, to be the purpose of Education. Once you've settled upon what Education is for, then and only then, take a look at whether or not your educational system is up to putting that purpose into practice upon your children and society... including juries ability to follow arguments in your judicial system. Hint: Your societies impression of what the purpose of Education is - sucks. Consequently, the educational system really sucks. And because of that, we get attorneys, judges and juries who are perhaps prone to, or even incapable of anything but, gross miscarriages of justice.
But that's beside the point, isn't it?
Do I think she's guilty? Yep, guilty as hell.
Does that matter? Nope, thank God.
Our society, however diminished, is still one governed by the Rule of Law and not one driven by the impassioned feelings of men, and that right there, is true justice in action.
I heard the Mom's story; do I think she's guilty? Yes. Does that matter? It had better not! It doesn't matter what you or I or any of the public think, and it shouldn't matter. Was she guilty? That's not the issue - she was found not guilty in a court of law, that's the issue.
Justice, in a Just society, is not about the judgment of one person, a dozen people or the entire population, Justice is about the system of justice, which should require an orderly presentation of information, information which has to pass objective rules of evidence and order, and be argued according to reasonable rules of conduct in an adversarial arrangement. The only 'Trial' news worth hearing, IMHO, is whether or not the procedures of the judicial system were followed. If they were, then as far as society is concerned, justice was done.
Why? Because only the guilty person and God know what really happened - and they aren't talking.
That means we need to have a system which all of us can trust... a system where we can believe we'd have the fairest possible chance ourselves if we were ever caught up in it, where the accused, and the accuser, are both allowed to make their best case, so that a jury of their peers can evaluate it - in accordance with those same rules - in order to render their best, most justifiable, conclusion, the verdict of having been found to be Guilty, or Not Guilty, based upon the rules of evidence presented in a court of law.
That is the best that can be hoped for in society, and as far as society is concerned, that IS Justice. Could the jury have been wrong about whether she truly killed her daughter or not? Sure, no jury is perfect. You know what? Neither are you. Or me. With that fact in mind, the best we can do is set up a system that is Just, and follow it, even and especially when we feel a particular judgment is wrong.
The alternative? See any third world country for evidence of blood lust and vendettas waged by those who are deeply convinced they are pursuing and seeing that 'justice' will be done. Or read Aeschylus’s ’The Orestia’ to see why and how the West tamed the Furies and left that nightmare of savagery behind.
Do you sort of agree with all of that but want to argue whether the people of the jury, the attorneys or the judge were up to the task of carrying out and implementing our system of Justice?
That's a matter you should take up with what you and your society considers, or neglects to consider, to be the purpose of Education. Once you've settled upon what Education is for, then and only then, take a look at whether or not your educational system is up to putting that purpose into practice upon your children and society... including juries ability to follow arguments in your judicial system. Hint: Your societies impression of what the purpose of Education is - sucks. Consequently, the educational system really sucks. And because of that, we get attorneys, judges and juries who are perhaps prone to, or even incapable of anything but, gross miscarriages of justice.
But that's beside the point, isn't it?
Do I think she's guilty? Yep, guilty as hell.
Does that matter? Nope, thank God.
Our society, however diminished, is still one governed by the Rule of Law and not one driven by the impassioned feelings of men, and that right there, is true justice in action.
Monday, July 04, 2011
The Inspiration of the Declaration of Independence
For the 4th of July, a re-post of Calvin Coolidge's "The Inspiration of the Declaration of Independence" speech, which I think is needed today moreso than perhaps at any other time since he first gave it, as he was cleaning up after the proregressive nightmare of Woodrow Willson.
I had some thoughts which I was going to introduce it with, but after seeing a comment which Bill Hennessy overheard and placed in his post yesterday, I think I'll save what I had to say for another post and use that as a very fitting introduction to Coolidges speech.
The Inspiration of the Declaration of Independence
July 5, 1926
We meet to celebrate the birthday of America. The coming of a new life always excites our interest. Although we know in the case of the individual that it has been an infinite repetition reaching back beyond our vision, that only makes it the more wonderful. But how our interest and wonder increase when we behold the miracle of the birth of a new nation. It is to pay our tribute of reverence and respect to those who participated in such a mighty event that we annually observe the fourth day of July. Whatever may have been the impression created by the news which went out from this city on that summer day in 1776, there can be no doubt as to the estimate which is now placed upon it. At the end of 150 years the four corners of the earth unite in coming to Philadelphia as to a holy shrine in grateful acknowledgment of a service so great, which a few inspired men here rendered to humanity, that it is still the preeminent support of free government throughout the world.
Although a century and a half measured in comparison with the length of human
experience is but a short time, yet measured in the life of governments and nations it ranks as a very respectable period. Certainly enough time has elapsed to demonstrate with a great deal of thoroughness the value of our institutions and their dependability as rules for the regulation of human conduct and the advancement of civilization. They have been in existence long enough to become very well seasoned. They have met, and met successfully, the test of experience.
It is not so much then for the purpose of undertaking to proclaim new theories and principles that this annual celebration is maintained, but rather to reaffirm and reestablish those old theories and principles which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be sound. Amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter of partisan politics, every American can turn for solace and consolation to the Declaration of independence and the Constitution of the United States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken. Whatever perils appear, whatever dangers threaten, the Nation remains secure in the knowledge that the ultimate application of the law of the land will provide an adequate defense and protection.
It is little wonder that people at home and abroad consider Independence Hall as hallowed ground and revere the Liberty Bell as a sacred relic. That pile of bricks and mortar, that mass of metal, might appear to the uninstructed as only the outgrown meeting place and the shattered bell of a former time, useless now because of more modern conveniences, but to those who know they have become consecrated by the use which men have made of them. They have long been identified with a great cause. They are the framework of a spiritual event. The world looks upon them, because of their associations of one hundred and fifty years ago, as it looks upon the Holy Land because of what took place there nineteen hundred years ago. Through use for a righteous purpose they have become sanctified.
It is not here necessary to examine in detail the causes which led to the American Revolution. In their immediate occasion they were largely economic. The colonists objected to the navigation laws which interfered with their trade, they denied the power of Parliament to impose taxes which they were obliged to pay, and they therefore resisted the royal governors and the royal forces which were sent to secure obedience to these laws. But the conviction is inescapable that a new civilization had come, a new spirit had arisen on this side of the Atlantic more advanced and more developed in its regard for the rights of the individual than that which characterized the Old World. Life in a new and open country had aspirations which could not be realized in any subordinate position. A separate establishment was ultimately inevitable. It had been decreed by the very laws of human nature. Man everywhere has an unconquerable desire to be the master of his own destiny.
We are obliged to conclude that the Declaration of Independence represented the movement of a people. It was not, of course, a movement from the top. Revolutions do not come from that direction. It was not without the support of many of the most respectable people in the Colonies, who were entitled to all the consideration that is given to breeding, education, and possessions. It had the support of another element of great significance and importance to which I shall later refer. But the preponderance of all those who occupied a position which took on the aspect of aristocracy did not approve of the Revolution and held toward it an attitude either of neutrality or open hostility. It was in no sense a rising of the oppressed and downtrodden. It brought no scum to the surface, for the reason that colonial society had developed no scum. The great body of the people were accustomed to privations, but they were free from depravity. If they had poverty, it was not of the hopeless kind that afflicts great cities, but the inspiring kind that marks the spirit of the pioneer. The American Revolution represented the informed and mature convictions of a great mass of independent, liberty-loving, God-fearing people who knew their rights, and possessed the courage to dare to maintain them. The Continental Congress was not only composed of great men, but it represented a great people. While its members did not fail to exercise a remarkable leadership, they were equally observant of their representative capacity. They were industrious in encouraging their constituents to instruct them to support independence. But until such instructions were given they were inclined to withhold action.
While North Carolina has the honor of first authorizing its delegates to concur with other Colonies in declaring independence, it was quickly followed by South Carolina and Georgia, which also gave general instructions broad enough to include such action. But the first instructions which unconditionally directed its delegates to declare for independence came from the great Commonwealth of Virginia. These were immediately followed by Rhode Island and Massachusetts, while the other Colonies, with the exception of New York, soon adopted a like course.
This obedience of the delegates to the wishes of their constituents, which in some cases caused them to modify their previous positions, is a matter of great significance. It reveals an orderly process of government in the first place; but more than that, it demonstrates that the Declaration of Independence was the result of the seasoned and deliberate thought of the dominant portion of the people of the Colonies. Adopted after long discussion and as the result of the duly authorized expression of the preponderance of public opinion, it did not partake of dark intrigue or hidden conspiracy. It was well advised. It had about it nothing of the lawless and disordered nature of a riotous insurrection. It was maintained on a plane which rises above the ordinary conception of rebellion. It was in no sense a radical movement but took on the dignity of a resistance to illegal usurpations. It was conservative and represented the action of the colonists to maintain their constitutional rights which from time immemorial had been guaranteed to them under the law of the land.
When we come to examine the action of the Continental Congress in adopting the Declaration of Independence in the light of what was set out in that great document and in the light of succeeding events, we can not escape the conclusion that it had a much broader and deeper significance than a mere secession of territory and the establishment of a new nation. Events of that nature have been taking place since the dawn of history. One empire after another has arisen, only to crumble away as its constituent parts separated from each other and set up independent governments of their own. Such actions long ago became commonplace. They have occurred too often to hold the attention of the world and command the admiration and reverence of humanity. There is something beyond the establishment of a new nation, great as that event would be, in the Declaration of Independence which has ever since caused it to be regarded as one of the great charters that not only was to liberate America but was everywhere to ennoble humanity.
It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history. Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.
If no one is to be accounted as born into a superior station, if there is to be no ruling class, and if all possess rights which can neither be bartered away nor taken from them by any earthly power, it follows as a matter of course that the practical authority of the Government has to rest on the consent of the governed. While these principles were not altogether new in political action, and were very far from new in political speculation, they had never been assembled before and declared in such a combination. But remarkable as this may be, it is not the chief distinction of the Declaration of Independence. The importance of political speculation is not to be under-estimated, as I shall presently disclose. Until the idea is developed and the plan made there can be no action.
It was the fact that our Declaration of Independence containing these immortal truths was the political action of a duly authorized and constituted representative public body in its sovereign capacity, supported by the force of general opinion and by the armies of Washington already in the field, which makes it the most important civil document in the world. It was not only the principles declared, but the fact that therewith a new nation was born which was to be founded upon those principles and which from that time forth in its development has actually maintained those principles, that makes this pronouncement an incomparable event in the history of government. It was an assertion that a people had arisen determined to make every necessary sacrifice for the support of these truths and by their practical application bring the War of Independence to a successful conclusion and adopt the Constitution of the United States with all that it has meant to civilization.
The idea that the people have a right to choose their own rulers was not new in political history. It was the foundation of every popular attempt to depose an undesirable king. This right was set out with a good deal of detail by the Dutch when as early as July 26, 1581, they declared their independence of Philip of Spain. In their long struggle with the Stuarts the British people asserted the same principles, which finally culminated in the Bill of Rights deposing the last of that house and placing William and Mary on the throne. In each of these cases sovereignty through divine right was displaced by sovereignty through the consent of the people. Running through the same documents, though expressed in different terms, is the clear inference of inalienable rights. But we should search these charters in vain for an assertion of the doctrine of equality. This principle had not before appeared as an official political declaration of any nation. It was profoundly revolutionary. It is one of the corner stones of American institutions.
But if these truths to which the declaration refers have not before been adopted in their combined entirety by national authority, it is a fact that they had been long pondered and often expressed in political speculation. It is generally assumed that French thought had some effect upon our public mind during Revolutionary days. This may have been true. But the principles of our declaration had been under discussion in the Colonies for nearly two generations before the advent of the French political philosophy that characterized the middle of the eighteenth century. In fact, they come from an earlier date. A very positive echo of what the Dutch had done in 1581, and what the English were preparing to do, appears in the assertion of the Rev. Thomas Hooker of Connecticut as early as 1638, when he said in a sermon before the General Court that:
The foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people
The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God's own allowance.
This doctrine found wide acceptance among the nonconformist clergy who later made up the Congregational Church. The great apostle of this movement was the Rev. John Wise, of Massachusetts. He was one of the leaders of the revolt against the royal governor Andros in 1687, for which he suffered imprisonment. He was a liberal in ecclesiastical controversies. He appears to have been familiar with the writings of the political scientist, Samuel Pufendorf, who was born in Saxony in 1632. Wise published a treatise, entitled "The Church's Quarrel Espoused," in 1710 which was amplified in another publication in 1717. In it he dealt with the principles of civil government. His works were reprinted in 1772 and have been declared to have been nothing less than a textbook of liberty for our Revolutionary fathers.
While the written word was the foundation, it is apparent that the spoken word was the vehicle for convincing the people. This came with great force and wide range from the successors of Hooker and Wise, It was carried on with a missionary spirit which did not fail to reach the Scotch Irish of North Carolina, showing its influence by significantly making that Colony the first to give instructions to its delegates looking to independence. This preaching reached the neighborhood of Thomas Jefferson, who acknowledged that his "best ideas of democracy" had been secured at church meetings.
That these ideas were prevalent in Virginia is further revealed by the Declaration of Rights, which was prepared by George Mason and presented to the general assembly on May 27, 1776. This document asserted popular sovereignty and inherent natural rights, but confined the doctrine of equality to the assertion that "All men are created equally free and independent". It can scarcely be imagined that Jefferson was unacquainted with what had been done in his own Commonwealth of Virginia when he took up the task of drafting the Declaration of Independence. But these thoughts can very largely be traced back to what John Wise was writing in 1710. He said, "Every man must be acknowledged equal to every man". Again, "The end of all good government is to cultivate humanity and promote the happiness of all and the good of every man in all his rights, his life, liberty, estate, honor, and so forth . . . ." And again, "For as they have a power every man in his natural state, so upon combination they can and do bequeath this power to others and settle it according as their united discretion shall determine". And still again, "Democracy is Christ's government in church and state". Here was the doctrine of equality, popular sovereignty, and the substance of the theory of inalienable rights clearly asserted by Wise at the opening of the eighteenth century, just as we have the principle of the consent of the governed stated by Hooker as early as 1638.
When we take all these circumstances into consideration, it is but natural that the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence should open with a reference to Nature's God and should close in the final paragraphs with an appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world and an assertion of a firm reliance on Divine Providence. Coming from these sources, having as it did this background, it is no wonder that Samuel Adams could say "The people seem to recognize this resolution as though it were a decree promulgated from heaven."
No one can examine this record and escape the conclusion that in the great outline of its principles the Declaration was the result of the religious teachings of the preceding period. The profound philosophy which Jonathan Edwards applied to theology, the popular preaching of George Whitefield, had aroused the thought and stirred the people of the Colonies in preparation for this great event. No doubt the speculations which had been going on in England, and especially on the Continent, lent their influence to the general sentiment of the times. Of course, the world is always influenced by all the experience and all the thought of the past. But when we come to a contemplation of the immediate conception of the principles of human relationship which went into the Declaration of Independence we are not required to extend our search beyond our own shores. They are found in the texts, the sermons, and the writings of the early colonial clergy who were earnestly undertaking to instruct their congregations in the great mystery of how to live. They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the divine image, all partakers of the divine spirit.
Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government. This was their theory of democracy. In those days such doctrines would scarcely have been permitted to flourish and spread in any other country. This was the purpose which the fathers cherished. In order that they might have freedom to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, whole congregations with their pastors had migrated to the colonies. These great truths were in the air that our people breathed. Whatever else we may say of it, the Declaration of Independence was profoundly American.
If this apprehension of the facts be correct, and the documentary evidence would appear to verify it, then certain conclusions are bound to follow. A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if its roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.
We are too prone to overlook another conclusion. Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
In the development of its institutions America can fairly claim that it has remained true to the principles which were declared 150 years ago. In all the essentials we have achieved an equality which was never possessed by any other people. Even in the less important matter of material possessions we have secured a wider and wider distribution of wealth. The rights of the individual are held sacred and protected by constitutional guaranties, which even the Government itself is bound not to violate. If there is any one thing among us that is established beyond question, it is self government; the right of the people to rule. If there is any failure in respect to any of these principles, it is because there is a failure on the part of individuals to observe them. We hold that the duly authorized expression of the will of the people has a divine sanction. But even in that we come back to the theory of John Wise that "Democracy is Christ's government". The ultimate sanction of law rests on the righteous authority of the Almighty.
On an occasion like this a great temptation exists to present evidence of the practical success of our form of democratic republic at home and the ever broadening acceptance it is securing abroad. Although these things are well known, their frequent consideration is an encouragement and an inspiration. But it is not results and effects so much as sources and causes that I believe it is even more necessary constantly to contemplate. Ours is a government of the people. It represents their will. Its officers may sometimes go astray, but that is not a reason for criticizing the principles of our institutions. The real heart of the American Government depends upon the heart of the people. It is from that source that we must look for all genuine reform. It is to that cause that we must ascribe all our results.
It was in the contemplation of these truths that the fathers made their declaration and adopted their Constitution. It was to establish a free government, which must not be permitted to degenerate into the unrestrained authority of a mere majority or the unbridled weight of a mere influential few. They undertook the balance these interests against each other and provide the three separate independent branches, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial departments of the Government, with checks against each other in order that neither one might encroach upon the other. These are our guaranties of liberty. As a result of these methods enterprise has been duly protected from confiscation, the people have been free from oppression, and there has been an ever broadening and deepening of the humanities of life.
Under a system of popular government there will always be those who will seek for political preferment by clamoring for reform. While there is very little of this which is not sincere, there is a large portion that is not well informed. In my opinion very little of just criticism can attach to the theories and principles of our institutions. There is far more danger of harm than there is hope of good in any radical changes. We do need a better understanding and comprehension of them and a better knowledge of the foundations of government in general. Our forefathers came to certain conclusions and decided upon certain courses of action which have been a great blessing to the world. Before we can understand their conclusions we must go back and review the course which they followed. We must think the thoughts which they thought. Their intellectual life centered around the meeting-house. They were intent upon religious worship. While there were always among them men of deep learning, and later those who had comparatively large possessions, the mind of the people was not so much engrossed in how much they knew, or how much they had, as in how they were going to live. While scantily provided with other literature, there was a wide acquaintance with the Scriptures. Over a period as great as that which measures the existence of our independence they were subject to this discipline not only in their religious life and educational training, but also in their political thought. They were a people who came under the influence of a great spiritual development and acquired a great moral power.
No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people. We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshiped.
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Happy Independence Day to you all, and as you're lighting your fireworks, please don't shy away from causing some of your own.
I had some thoughts which I was going to introduce it with, but after seeing a comment which Bill Hennessy overheard and placed in his post yesterday, I think I'll save what I had to say for another post and use that as a very fitting introduction to Coolidges speech.
"At this hot, sticky, stupid parade, a father a few feet away explains the Declaration of Independence float to a boy perched on the man’s shoulders.I can't top that, and so without further ado, Coolidge's
“England believed that God gave us kings or queens who ruled over everyone else. Americans believe that God created people equally and that all of us rule only over ourselves. The Declaration of Independence explained to the king of England and to the American people that we would no longer tolerate being ruled by a dictator. We’re each going to make our own decisions about how to live.”"
The Inspiration of the Declaration of Independence
July 5, 1926
Although a century and a half measured in comparison with the length of human
experience is but a short time, yet measured in the life of governments and nations it ranks as a very respectable period. Certainly enough time has elapsed to demonstrate with a great deal of thoroughness the value of our institutions and their dependability as rules for the regulation of human conduct and the advancement of civilization. They have been in existence long enough to become very well seasoned. They have met, and met successfully, the test of experience.
It is not so much then for the purpose of undertaking to proclaim new theories and principles that this annual celebration is maintained, but rather to reaffirm and reestablish those old theories and principles which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be sound. Amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter of partisan politics, every American can turn for solace and consolation to the Declaration of independence and the Constitution of the United States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken. Whatever perils appear, whatever dangers threaten, the Nation remains secure in the knowledge that the ultimate application of the law of the land will provide an adequate defense and protection.
It is little wonder that people at home and abroad consider Independence Hall as hallowed ground and revere the Liberty Bell as a sacred relic. That pile of bricks and mortar, that mass of metal, might appear to the uninstructed as only the outgrown meeting place and the shattered bell of a former time, useless now because of more modern conveniences, but to those who know they have become consecrated by the use which men have made of them. They have long been identified with a great cause. They are the framework of a spiritual event. The world looks upon them, because of their associations of one hundred and fifty years ago, as it looks upon the Holy Land because of what took place there nineteen hundred years ago. Through use for a righteous purpose they have become sanctified.
It is not here necessary to examine in detail the causes which led to the American Revolution. In their immediate occasion they were largely economic. The colonists objected to the navigation laws which interfered with their trade, they denied the power of Parliament to impose taxes which they were obliged to pay, and they therefore resisted the royal governors and the royal forces which were sent to secure obedience to these laws. But the conviction is inescapable that a new civilization had come, a new spirit had arisen on this side of the Atlantic more advanced and more developed in its regard for the rights of the individual than that which characterized the Old World. Life in a new and open country had aspirations which could not be realized in any subordinate position. A separate establishment was ultimately inevitable. It had been decreed by the very laws of human nature. Man everywhere has an unconquerable desire to be the master of his own destiny.
We are obliged to conclude that the Declaration of Independence represented the movement of a people. It was not, of course, a movement from the top. Revolutions do not come from that direction. It was not without the support of many of the most respectable people in the Colonies, who were entitled to all the consideration that is given to breeding, education, and possessions. It had the support of another element of great significance and importance to which I shall later refer. But the preponderance of all those who occupied a position which took on the aspect of aristocracy did not approve of the Revolution and held toward it an attitude either of neutrality or open hostility. It was in no sense a rising of the oppressed and downtrodden. It brought no scum to the surface, for the reason that colonial society had developed no scum. The great body of the people were accustomed to privations, but they were free from depravity. If they had poverty, it was not of the hopeless kind that afflicts great cities, but the inspiring kind that marks the spirit of the pioneer. The American Revolution represented the informed and mature convictions of a great mass of independent, liberty-loving, God-fearing people who knew their rights, and possessed the courage to dare to maintain them. The Continental Congress was not only composed of great men, but it represented a great people. While its members did not fail to exercise a remarkable leadership, they were equally observant of their representative capacity. They were industrious in encouraging their constituents to instruct them to support independence. But until such instructions were given they were inclined to withhold action.
While North Carolina has the honor of first authorizing its delegates to concur with other Colonies in declaring independence, it was quickly followed by South Carolina and Georgia, which also gave general instructions broad enough to include such action. But the first instructions which unconditionally directed its delegates to declare for independence came from the great Commonwealth of Virginia. These were immediately followed by Rhode Island and Massachusetts, while the other Colonies, with the exception of New York, soon adopted a like course.
This obedience of the delegates to the wishes of their constituents, which in some cases caused them to modify their previous positions, is a matter of great significance. It reveals an orderly process of government in the first place; but more than that, it demonstrates that the Declaration of Independence was the result of the seasoned and deliberate thought of the dominant portion of the people of the Colonies. Adopted after long discussion and as the result of the duly authorized expression of the preponderance of public opinion, it did not partake of dark intrigue or hidden conspiracy. It was well advised. It had about it nothing of the lawless and disordered nature of a riotous insurrection. It was maintained on a plane which rises above the ordinary conception of rebellion. It was in no sense a radical movement but took on the dignity of a resistance to illegal usurpations. It was conservative and represented the action of the colonists to maintain their constitutional rights which from time immemorial had been guaranteed to them under the law of the land.
When we come to examine the action of the Continental Congress in adopting the Declaration of Independence in the light of what was set out in that great document and in the light of succeeding events, we can not escape the conclusion that it had a much broader and deeper significance than a mere secession of territory and the establishment of a new nation. Events of that nature have been taking place since the dawn of history. One empire after another has arisen, only to crumble away as its constituent parts separated from each other and set up independent governments of their own. Such actions long ago became commonplace. They have occurred too often to hold the attention of the world and command the admiration and reverence of humanity. There is something beyond the establishment of a new nation, great as that event would be, in the Declaration of Independence which has ever since caused it to be regarded as one of the great charters that not only was to liberate America but was everywhere to ennoble humanity.
It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history. Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.
If no one is to be accounted as born into a superior station, if there is to be no ruling class, and if all possess rights which can neither be bartered away nor taken from them by any earthly power, it follows as a matter of course that the practical authority of the Government has to rest on the consent of the governed. While these principles were not altogether new in political action, and were very far from new in political speculation, they had never been assembled before and declared in such a combination. But remarkable as this may be, it is not the chief distinction of the Declaration of Independence. The importance of political speculation is not to be under-estimated, as I shall presently disclose. Until the idea is developed and the plan made there can be no action.
It was the fact that our Declaration of Independence containing these immortal truths was the political action of a duly authorized and constituted representative public body in its sovereign capacity, supported by the force of general opinion and by the armies of Washington already in the field, which makes it the most important civil document in the world. It was not only the principles declared, but the fact that therewith a new nation was born which was to be founded upon those principles and which from that time forth in its development has actually maintained those principles, that makes this pronouncement an incomparable event in the history of government. It was an assertion that a people had arisen determined to make every necessary sacrifice for the support of these truths and by their practical application bring the War of Independence to a successful conclusion and adopt the Constitution of the United States with all that it has meant to civilization.
The idea that the people have a right to choose their own rulers was not new in political history. It was the foundation of every popular attempt to depose an undesirable king. This right was set out with a good deal of detail by the Dutch when as early as July 26, 1581, they declared their independence of Philip of Spain. In their long struggle with the Stuarts the British people asserted the same principles, which finally culminated in the Bill of Rights deposing the last of that house and placing William and Mary on the throne. In each of these cases sovereignty through divine right was displaced by sovereignty through the consent of the people. Running through the same documents, though expressed in different terms, is the clear inference of inalienable rights. But we should search these charters in vain for an assertion of the doctrine of equality. This principle had not before appeared as an official political declaration of any nation. It was profoundly revolutionary. It is one of the corner stones of American institutions.
But if these truths to which the declaration refers have not before been adopted in their combined entirety by national authority, it is a fact that they had been long pondered and often expressed in political speculation. It is generally assumed that French thought had some effect upon our public mind during Revolutionary days. This may have been true. But the principles of our declaration had been under discussion in the Colonies for nearly two generations before the advent of the French political philosophy that characterized the middle of the eighteenth century. In fact, they come from an earlier date. A very positive echo of what the Dutch had done in 1581, and what the English were preparing to do, appears in the assertion of the Rev. Thomas Hooker of Connecticut as early as 1638, when he said in a sermon before the General Court that:
The foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people
The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God's own allowance.
This doctrine found wide acceptance among the nonconformist clergy who later made up the Congregational Church. The great apostle of this movement was the Rev. John Wise, of Massachusetts. He was one of the leaders of the revolt against the royal governor Andros in 1687, for which he suffered imprisonment. He was a liberal in ecclesiastical controversies. He appears to have been familiar with the writings of the political scientist, Samuel Pufendorf, who was born in Saxony in 1632. Wise published a treatise, entitled "The Church's Quarrel Espoused," in 1710 which was amplified in another publication in 1717. In it he dealt with the principles of civil government. His works were reprinted in 1772 and have been declared to have been nothing less than a textbook of liberty for our Revolutionary fathers.
While the written word was the foundation, it is apparent that the spoken word was the vehicle for convincing the people. This came with great force and wide range from the successors of Hooker and Wise, It was carried on with a missionary spirit which did not fail to reach the Scotch Irish of North Carolina, showing its influence by significantly making that Colony the first to give instructions to its delegates looking to independence. This preaching reached the neighborhood of Thomas Jefferson, who acknowledged that his "best ideas of democracy" had been secured at church meetings.
That these ideas were prevalent in Virginia is further revealed by the Declaration of Rights, which was prepared by George Mason and presented to the general assembly on May 27, 1776. This document asserted popular sovereignty and inherent natural rights, but confined the doctrine of equality to the assertion that "All men are created equally free and independent". It can scarcely be imagined that Jefferson was unacquainted with what had been done in his own Commonwealth of Virginia when he took up the task of drafting the Declaration of Independence. But these thoughts can very largely be traced back to what John Wise was writing in 1710. He said, "Every man must be acknowledged equal to every man". Again, "The end of all good government is to cultivate humanity and promote the happiness of all and the good of every man in all his rights, his life, liberty, estate, honor, and so forth . . . ." And again, "For as they have a power every man in his natural state, so upon combination they can and do bequeath this power to others and settle it according as their united discretion shall determine". And still again, "Democracy is Christ's government in church and state". Here was the doctrine of equality, popular sovereignty, and the substance of the theory of inalienable rights clearly asserted by Wise at the opening of the eighteenth century, just as we have the principle of the consent of the governed stated by Hooker as early as 1638.
When we take all these circumstances into consideration, it is but natural that the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence should open with a reference to Nature's God and should close in the final paragraphs with an appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world and an assertion of a firm reliance on Divine Providence. Coming from these sources, having as it did this background, it is no wonder that Samuel Adams could say "The people seem to recognize this resolution as though it were a decree promulgated from heaven."
No one can examine this record and escape the conclusion that in the great outline of its principles the Declaration was the result of the religious teachings of the preceding period. The profound philosophy which Jonathan Edwards applied to theology, the popular preaching of George Whitefield, had aroused the thought and stirred the people of the Colonies in preparation for this great event. No doubt the speculations which had been going on in England, and especially on the Continent, lent their influence to the general sentiment of the times. Of course, the world is always influenced by all the experience and all the thought of the past. But when we come to a contemplation of the immediate conception of the principles of human relationship which went into the Declaration of Independence we are not required to extend our search beyond our own shores. They are found in the texts, the sermons, and the writings of the early colonial clergy who were earnestly undertaking to instruct their congregations in the great mystery of how to live. They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the divine image, all partakers of the divine spirit.
Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government. This was their theory of democracy. In those days such doctrines would scarcely have been permitted to flourish and spread in any other country. This was the purpose which the fathers cherished. In order that they might have freedom to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, whole congregations with their pastors had migrated to the colonies. These great truths were in the air that our people breathed. Whatever else we may say of it, the Declaration of Independence was profoundly American.
If this apprehension of the facts be correct, and the documentary evidence would appear to verify it, then certain conclusions are bound to follow. A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if its roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.
We are too prone to overlook another conclusion. Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
In the development of its institutions America can fairly claim that it has remained true to the principles which were declared 150 years ago. In all the essentials we have achieved an equality which was never possessed by any other people. Even in the less important matter of material possessions we have secured a wider and wider distribution of wealth. The rights of the individual are held sacred and protected by constitutional guaranties, which even the Government itself is bound not to violate. If there is any one thing among us that is established beyond question, it is self government; the right of the people to rule. If there is any failure in respect to any of these principles, it is because there is a failure on the part of individuals to observe them. We hold that the duly authorized expression of the will of the people has a divine sanction. But even in that we come back to the theory of John Wise that "Democracy is Christ's government". The ultimate sanction of law rests on the righteous authority of the Almighty.
On an occasion like this a great temptation exists to present evidence of the practical success of our form of democratic republic at home and the ever broadening acceptance it is securing abroad. Although these things are well known, their frequent consideration is an encouragement and an inspiration. But it is not results and effects so much as sources and causes that I believe it is even more necessary constantly to contemplate. Ours is a government of the people. It represents their will. Its officers may sometimes go astray, but that is not a reason for criticizing the principles of our institutions. The real heart of the American Government depends upon the heart of the people. It is from that source that we must look for all genuine reform. It is to that cause that we must ascribe all our results.
It was in the contemplation of these truths that the fathers made their declaration and adopted their Constitution. It was to establish a free government, which must not be permitted to degenerate into the unrestrained authority of a mere majority or the unbridled weight of a mere influential few. They undertook the balance these interests against each other and provide the three separate independent branches, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial departments of the Government, with checks against each other in order that neither one might encroach upon the other. These are our guaranties of liberty. As a result of these methods enterprise has been duly protected from confiscation, the people have been free from oppression, and there has been an ever broadening and deepening of the humanities of life.
Under a system of popular government there will always be those who will seek for political preferment by clamoring for reform. While there is very little of this which is not sincere, there is a large portion that is not well informed. In my opinion very little of just criticism can attach to the theories and principles of our institutions. There is far more danger of harm than there is hope of good in any radical changes. We do need a better understanding and comprehension of them and a better knowledge of the foundations of government in general. Our forefathers came to certain conclusions and decided upon certain courses of action which have been a great blessing to the world. Before we can understand their conclusions we must go back and review the course which they followed. We must think the thoughts which they thought. Their intellectual life centered around the meeting-house. They were intent upon religious worship. While there were always among them men of deep learning, and later those who had comparatively large possessions, the mind of the people was not so much engrossed in how much they knew, or how much they had, as in how they were going to live. While scantily provided with other literature, there was a wide acquaintance with the Scriptures. Over a period as great as that which measures the existence of our independence they were subject to this discipline not only in their religious life and educational training, but also in their political thought. They were a people who came under the influence of a great spiritual development and acquired a great moral power.
No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people. We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshiped.
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Happy Independence Day to you all, and as you're lighting your fireworks, please don't shy away from causing some of your own.
If someone ridicules or talks down the Declaration, the Constitution, America or Property Rights & Individual Rights in general, remember that people are listening to what is said, and to what goes unsaid. Speak up, even and especially amongst family and friends, you never know who’s listening, even with the ones nodding their heads for 'the other side', you've no idea how your words might take root later on.
You don't need to win, and you don't need to be rude, just state what's true and what's false, you never know what might serve as inspiration for another. Have faith that reality will take it from there.
Sunday, July 03, 2011
Through the looking glass: Weaponizing Reason with a graduate of Screwtape University
Yesterday I took a look at the popular notion that subdivides Reason into one camp which foolishly uses it as a path to reason, and the other which cleverly uses it as a weapon for winning arguments. Today we’ll hear from a real graduate of Screwtape U, someone who’s taken the ‘Reason as a weapon’ argument to heart.
Now, before you get all out of whack on this, keep in mind that I’m not saying that this is what everyone on the left does think, I’m talking about the line of thought, not the people thinking with those thoughts. I know plenty of friends and family who place themselves on the left, as well as plenty of conservatives who I place on the left, and few if any of them would endorse any of this.
If they ever were to bring the roots of their positions out into the light, that is.
Were they to actually pursue the basis of their positions though, yes, they’d have to confront the fact that these are the essentials behind the lines of thought they've been thinking, but that’s one of the beauties of leftism – you don’t have to understand the ideas behind your positions, you only have to wish they were true, so you could help others.
Which is why it’s usually useless questioning people who hold these ideas – they’ll dismiss you at the first opportunity to patronize you into one or another category of ‘no one believes that anymore’, and it’s also why I’m bypassing interviewing any particular person here, but going straight to the living dead within their thoughts which think themselves - and with just a touch of tongue in cheek. Just.
Blogodidact: So here we're privileged to have a graduate of Screwtape U, someone equipped with real weaponized reasoning skills, to tell us how they are able to look at the world as they do. I'd like to pick up where we left off yesterday, where we noted that
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: 'Why?'?! Again with the why's. Oh, you are incorrigible aren't you. Look, you're just going to have to accept that your outmoded form of 'reason' just doesn't apply anymore. We don't need to bother with inter-related and integrated... that's out. See, we had a culture once, it was called 'Western Civilization' and, like you, it sought to pursue 'Truth', it had this mindset that it should use our tool of reason to discover the nature of things, to rise above mere facts and discover the truth of how things 'really' were and why... and what did it get them?
Blogodidact: Nothing but a nation that was founded upon the idea that each person had unalienable rights, among which were the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Right, and how useless is that?
Blogodidact: Excuse me?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Look, what it got us was a system that was just out of control, with individual people doing whatever they pleased, no one following a plan, no one even paying attention to a plan... for what?! You can't establish control and make plans if individuals are allowed to think and make their own decisions, you have to get them into groups to do that.
Blogodidact: Now wait a...
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: No, you wait, in fact, how about you just shut it and let me clue you in on a few things, ok? Look, if you actually bothered to read the New Yoursophist Times article "Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth" you made such a big deal of noting yesterday, through to the end, you'd have seen how easily that can be accomplished, if we simply embrace Reason as a benign weapon (in the proper hands of course) for doing away with the problem of individuals. Here, look at this part,
Blogodidact: American exceptionalism is hardly d...
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Hey! You're shutting up, remember? You've seen the TIME article?
Blogodidact: Well... yeah, but...
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: But nothing! As I was saying, once we herd people into thinking as the group thinks, rather than as reason might lead them to discover the truth, we'll be able to get our way.
And seriously, what are these people arguing for anyway, did discovering what was 'True' enable them to win any arguments when the real answer you were after was what YOU wanted it to be, because you wanted it to be?!
Heck no!
Blogodidact: But what's the point of pretending to know something if it isn't True?!
(blink)
Sorry. Shutting up now.
Screwtape Univ. Thinker: Thank you. So. As I was saying... what use was that freedom and liberty crud if it didn't get you anything useful?! Oh sure, if you learned to understand and follow along, you could do that and maybe even become wealthy and get those things you wanted - but you couldn't get them simply because you wanted them, no, you had to actually produce them, you had to do what was 'right'... where's the fun in that? You had to actually develop Virtue! Live a Good Life! Can you imagine?! What would be the use of getting everything you wanted, whenever you wanted it, if you were so full of 'virtue' that you felt such things were worthless when stacked up against what cost you nothing (you know the type of stuff I mean, family, friends, love, liberty, etc)?! That's the sort of fool who'd willingly set his treasures aside for 'peace of mind', 'happiness' or worse yet, your 'soul'!.
Are you kidding me?! What use is a sound soul if you don't have the basic necessary comforts, a full belly and sufficient riches to amuse yourself with at every moment of the day and night?
Blogodidact: But... sorry, go on.
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Sheesh. Look, those things need to be provided for you in order to have an adequate level of living, and there's only one way to provide you all of those things, the state.
Blogodidact: But where does the state get... it.... Sorry. Shutting up now. Again.
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Uh-huh. On the other hand... if you just tweak things a bit, you can have anything you want... as that old revolutionary said "Ye ssshall be as gods...", now we're talking, eh? Now we're getting somewhere, right?
Blogodidact: (blink)
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: You can say something. Answer...
Blogodidact: I don't have any-thing to say.
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Whatever. Look, if you'll just forget about worrying over what is good and evil, and get the hang of spinning whatever is most useful to be thought of as being good, or evil - as needed - then you get to say what is good and evil for you and your purposes, then you can win your arguments simply because you want to! Can anything be withheld from you if you develop the skills to do that?
Not a chance!
Now seriously, listen to what I'm telling you, I am, after all, a man of wealth and taste...that whole business of truth and earnestness, it just isn't worth it! If you want to pursue truth, do you know what you'd have to do?
Blogodidact: Yes.
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Again, whatever. If you want to become 'Good', rather than simply accumulate goods... well, then you'll have to go back and read... not just skim the facts to pass a test or get some useful trivia mind you, but read... to understand, and I'm talking about the oldest of the old dead white guys, you know, Homer, Socrates and Aristotle, Virgil, Cicero and Plutarch, Moses & Jesus, Aquinas, Shakespeare, Locke the founding fathers...! But seriously, all they're going to tell you is that reality exists, it is what it is, and you are capable of knowing and abiding by it, and pursuing happiness through your best choices... but then you'll have to follow the rules of what IS right and what IS wrong. Where's the freedom in
that?!
Where's the fun in that?! Now, if you're a smart guy, a real NewYorkT'imesian like myself, then you don't need any of those guys and they're dead civilization, nah, just pick up a few tid bits here and there, get someone else of wealth & taste to certify that you've picked up the right tid-bits, you know, a diploma, and you'll have a ticket to ride as far in the world today as you'd like!
Blogodidact: So... you do need to know some things, just not true things?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Shut. It. But, yeah, yeah, I'm afraid that there's still a few things you'll need to pick up, but it's no big deal, just pieces here and there will be fine (it's not like anyone expects them to add up!), stuff like Descartes's two tips, seriously, we never could have succeeded in weaponizing reason without him, that old fool is the one that made it all possible. His first tip was "I think therefore I am" - how cool is that?!
Think about that, take that to heart and you no longer need to bother either with what is real, or with the bother of discovering what is real, all you have to do is, as he put it,
Blogodidact: That's it?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: That's it. You've got to be careful though, you've got to be sure to use Doubt - not a Question! That's a newbie error, but it's an easy one to make and a big one at that, you risk undoing everything you've propped up if you do.
See, you don't want an honest answer, or even to propose that there could be an answer - make that mistake and you're back to having to respect reality, truth, and the whole shebang (shiver), no, no, no no! But don't worry, it's easy to get around, just look all thoughtful and say "I doubt that" - you don't even need to give any particular reasons for why you doubt it, just emotively say that you feel it's not true...
Blogodidact: Won't using 'true' risk everything you've propped up?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Nope, not any more wise guy, not if you used doubt, instead of a question, you see you don't need to worry about truth anymore, not even asking questions at this point, that's the beauty of the arbitrary, once you introduce it as a legitimate issue, nothing means anything anymore - works like sulphuric acid on anyone's beliefs and principles, there's almost no defence against it, and almost no rules for applying it, the more arbitrary you can be, the better. Such a deal.
There are a few more you've got to pick up and get the hang of, but they're just as easy and they follow easy enough from those first two.
The next is from another ol' french fellow, Rousseau, one of the biggest arms merchants of all time in the weaponizing of reason, he'll load you up with some heavy duty ammo, I tell you what. The way he put things, he practically had people begging to be poisoned by him! I mean this was a guy who could sound all concerned and pro-liberty like with things like
By using Descartes's weapons grade reasoning skills, Rousseau even managed to take out the two other key foundations of Western Civilization, the Family and Private Property, by, get this, by saying that mankind used to have real freedom, back when he was in a noble 'state of nature'
Rousseau will also teach you that you don't need no learn and practices no habits of 'virtue', nah, just 'be yourself', be 'authentic', naturally. Really, the more grubby and raw, the more degraded the better, and you'll be thought highly of - seriously, how do you think people began to get away with throwing paint at a canvass and calling it 'art'?! And be respected for it! Rousseau is as highly thought of amongst the elites, even the truth seekers, as anyone, and he used to run around dropping his drawers in front of ladies windows at night... and bragged about it! Fun, right! Just look how revered he is! And because of him, you can do it too and there's no need to bother with real ability or virtue anymore, seriously, we owe this guy big time.
Blogodidact: what about the pesky people who persist in asking 'Why?'
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Well, yes, they did use to be a problem, a big one, but we haven't really needed to bother answering them in two centuries, yeah really. See, you can cut the floor out from under them with a just a few more tricks of another one of our founders, fellow named Hume, eh? Oh, it doesn't matter who he was, an old dead English white guy, and he didn't really develop anything new, he just applied Descartes' ideas to the one area that was really stumping us, Science. See, he convinced people in his "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding", that, get this, that you can't really know anything at all, and he did it with just a few slick thought experiments. He'd say things like 'how trustworthy are your senses, if they can be fooled? After all, an orange could just as well be an orange colored billiard ball, for all you know,
Blogodidact: How can experimental science affect anything else?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: You trying to play me? You've heard of Karl Popper?
Blogodidact: Some.
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Yeah, well some others have heard of him too, George Soros for instance, his whole "Open Society" concept that's about to make your treasured 'Constitution' obsolete, that was all deeply influenced by Popper, and guess who Popper got the bulk of his ideas from?
Blogodidact: Hume?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Bingo! See, Hume took these supposedly remote 'scientific' ideas, and brought them home to where they could do some use for us, he applied them to you 'truth seekers' treasures, and vaporized them,
Blogodidact: OMG.
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Ha! Yeah, you wish. So, anyway, moving on, there is one more supremely useful idiot, but you'll only need to know about him if you're getting into the big leagues, in fact he... isn't usually necessary anymore (and by that I mean useful in getting your way), but it wouldn't hurt to familiarize yourself with him because he's the guy that did away with the Individual, he's the reason why things like 'Individual Rights' are so easily laughed off today in favor of the group, the collective, and his name was Immanuel Kant. He actually bought the bull Hume was slinging, and decided to go him one further, but he didn't want to destroy all knowledge, which he though Hume did, he wanted to leave some room to be able to say what he though people should believe, and to do that, he said,
The joke was on Kant though, he ended up taking things further than Hume ever could have without him. One wag of the time, Moses Mendelssohn, called Kant the "all-destroyer"... and that describes what he accomplished, all right.
Kant's the guy who took the raw stuff of Descartes, Rousseau and Hume, and distilled it into the corrosive chemical we've used to strip the finish off of Western Civilization with.
He took their materials and crafted them into being able to say that 'the only truth that can be known is what most people believe is true', yeah, it's dead useful, and people love to repeat it, I mean go to any corporate marketing meeting and you'll hear people repeating it with things like "Perception is reality!", you can't buy gold like that and it's the stuff if you've got to get a good grip on it if you want real big power, but it's dead tricky to use, and you've got to memorize some stuff that's so seriously convoluted that even we don't like to get too close to it, it's like intellectual uranium... you've just got to be careful how you handle it, but its results are impressive.
How impressive? How powerful? Well, you know the United States of America, right? Remember how powerful they were after WWI & WWII? Well it was Kant's work, 'Perpetual Peace', that was key to slicking most of the Western world into the 'League of Nations', and though it took awhile, it was his ideas that got the most powerful nation in the world to through away their sovereignty and join the United Nations.
Now that's power!
He's also the guy who managed to take (ugh) morality, the result of good and virtuous choices, and transformed it into a set of rules which you had no choice in following, that you couldn't even attempt to use Reason (the truth seeking variety mind you) in applying and following, and to top it off, he managed to convince people that if you received any benefit from your actions, then... it wasn't virtuous!
Can you believe that?! The very thing that makes their world possible, virtue, which America's Founding Fathers took such pleasure in practicing and going on about, he managed to destroy it by transforming it from a pleasure giving skill, into a hated burden that you nevertheless strived for (or at least claimed you did). He took the idea of the individual, that morality was not the result of what you chose to do but instead doing what you had a duty to do, and that real 'virtue' consisted in doing things you could derive no pleasure or benefit from.
Can't tell you how much we owe that guy, but like I said, it's tricky stuff to work with, and huge... not only massive in the sense of the impossibly long volumes of his thoughts, but they're filled with impossibly long sentences that go on forever. Yeah it's a pain, but how else could you manage to convince people that reality was not only not knowable, but actually beyond your ability to even experience? Yeah! No, seriously, he managed to pull it off, and because he did, we've had the last couple centuries to get away with anything we've wanted to do.
But like I said, that's for specialists to deal with, and because Kant, and one who developed his ideas into even murkier depths, Hegel, did their work so well, made the prospect of seeking wisdom so daunting, no one bothers with it anymore. In fact, because of their good works, some Americans got together, Pierce and latter John Dewey and William James, and said essentially that Kant & Hegel were probably not wrong, but were just too dense to be useful, and since the 'truth' was beyond knowing, lets just try stuff to see what seems to work' and that's Pragmatism in a nutshell, the first 'philosophy' to break with the meaning of philosophy ' the love of wisdom', and it enables us to do just about anything we want to do today, we simply say 'we're going to be pragmatic and try this', and pretty much anything goes.
Luckily, that's as far as most of us need to venture anymore. If you need some more established 'intellectuals' to back you up, like I said, for the most part all we need handy for dealing with those pesky Truth-addicts like you, can be found easily enough with Descartes's doubt, Rousseau's noble savagery and Hume's free pass on reality. And... if those are too 'old-dead white guyish' for you, you can just pick up a few quotes from Marx, he puts them all to use in his stuff... and its trendier too.
So, there you go, now you too can go about winning any argument you want to without having to bother with worrying whether anything is 'true' or not. Just say it is, call the other person mean names for believing something else, tell them everyone knows that they're wrong... and you've got it made.
What a relief, eh?!
Blogodidact: Can I say something now?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Not that it'll do you any good, but sure.
Blogodidact: One of your big guns there, Rousseau...
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Yeah, what about him?
Blogodidact: Were you aware that his first claim to fame was in music?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: No... really?
Blogodidact: Yep... yeah, your big gun was a guy, who during the era that would produce the likes of Mozart, Bach & Beethoven, that cretin proposed a musical system that would reduce, if not entirely do away with, musical harmonies... what more do you think anyone will need to know about him?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker: Whatever.
Blogodidact: That's what I thought you'd say. But have you not noticed that in your system, your art, your music, everything of the sort... is ugly? The fact is that your system, your 'weaponized reason', is a flat, ugly, toneless system that reflects much of Rousseau's musical ideas...you've can manage a simple, flat melody, but that's it. No depth. No harmony. And you lack the sense or regard for truth and beauty and virtue, to even question it.... and because you don't question yourselves, you assume that no questions should be asked of you at all.
Pure hubris is just what you’ve been saying... and teaching, this system of thought that tells you that your whims are the justification for everything you want, that reality isn’t really real, and that whatever we say, should be real.
What else could possibly follow from that but envy, ugliness and a passion for disharmony?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Yeah?Why is it so popular then?
Blogodidact: I suppose above all else, because it is easy to master, rewards you for not discovering your errors and it enables you to feel like a wronged god, even to the point of being able to pronounce your errors as being new facts, in your own minds you actually think "Ye shall be as gods..."- I wonder if that Sssounds familiar to you?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Nope, can't say it does.
Blogodidact: But... you mentioned it yourself earlier... well...Not surprising I guess. Thanks for coming by.
Now, before you get all out of whack on this, keep in mind that I’m not saying that this is what everyone on the left does think, I’m talking about the line of thought, not the people thinking with those thoughts. I know plenty of friends and family who place themselves on the left, as well as plenty of conservatives who I place on the left, and few if any of them would endorse any of this.
If they ever were to bring the roots of their positions out into the light, that is.
Were they to actually pursue the basis of their positions though, yes, they’d have to confront the fact that these are the essentials behind the lines of thought they've been thinking, but that’s one of the beauties of leftism – you don’t have to understand the ideas behind your positions, you only have to wish they were true, so you could help others.
Which is why it’s usually useless questioning people who hold these ideas – they’ll dismiss you at the first opportunity to patronize you into one or another category of ‘no one believes that anymore’, and it’s also why I’m bypassing interviewing any particular person here, but going straight to the living dead within their thoughts which think themselves - and with just a touch of tongue in cheek. Just.
Blogodidact: So here we're privileged to have a graduate of Screwtape U, someone equipped with real weaponized reasoning skills, to tell us how they are able to look at the world as they do. I'd like to pick up where we left off yesterday, where we noted that
' The fact is that there is no squaring things between the purposes of Truth, and those of power... their reasons are in complete opposition - you can grasp the answer, but not explain the one to the other.', this seems to deal with ideas as if they're... well, not objective things, but objects, discrete ones, rather than interrelated, integrated forms of understanding the truth of the matter, why is...
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: 'Why?'?! Again with the why's. Oh, you are incorrigible aren't you. Look, you're just going to have to accept that your outmoded form of 'reason' just doesn't apply anymore. We don't need to bother with inter-related and integrated... that's out. See, we had a culture once, it was called 'Western Civilization' and, like you, it sought to pursue 'Truth', it had this mindset that it should use our tool of reason to discover the nature of things, to rise above mere facts and discover the truth of how things 'really' were and why... and what did it get them?
Blogodidact: Nothing but a nation that was founded upon the idea that each person had unalienable rights, among which were the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Right, and how useless is that?
Blogodidact: Excuse me?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Look, what it got us was a system that was just out of control, with individual people doing whatever they pleased, no one following a plan, no one even paying attention to a plan... for what?! You can't establish control and make plans if individuals are allowed to think and make their own decisions, you have to get them into groups to do that.
Blogodidact: Now wait a...
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: No, you wait, in fact, how about you just shut it and let me clue you in on a few things, ok? Look, if you actually bothered to read the New Yoursophist Times article "Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth" you made such a big deal of noting yesterday, through to the end, you'd have seen how easily that can be accomplished, if we simply embrace Reason as a benign weapon (in the proper hands of course) for doing away with the problem of individuals. Here, look at this part,
"Mr. Mercier is enthusiastic about the theory’s potential applications. He suggests, for example, that children may have an easier time learning abstract topics in mathematics or physics if they are put into a group and allowed to reason through a problem together. "See! A more anti-individualist position you'd be hard pressed to find even in John Dewey, and stated here so kindly and subtly, as if its actually meant to help individuals... a veritable knife in the back of individualism. Love it. And it has further applications, look,
"He has also recently been at work applying the theory to politics. In a new paper, he and Hélène Landemore, an assistant professor of political science at Yale, propose that the arguing and assessment skills employed by groups make democratic debate the best form of government for evolutionary reasons, regardless of philosophical or moral rationales.We're nearly there of course, representative government is nearly been done in, the bulwark of it has become treated as near comic relief in academia and the media, we'll finish it off soon enough.
How, then, do the academics explain the endless stalemates in Congress? “It doesn’t seem to work in the U.S.,” Mr. Mercier conceded.
He and Ms. Landemore suggest that reasoned discussion works best in smaller, cooperative environments rather than in America’s high-decibel adversarial system, in which partisans seek to score political advantage rather than arrive at consensus.
Because “individual reasoning mechanisms work best when used to produce and evaluate arguments during a public deliberation,” Mr. Mercier and Ms. LandemoreRawls and Jürgen Habermas, this sort of collaborative forum can overcome the tendency of groups to polarize at the extremes and deadlock, Ms. Landemore and Mr. Mercier said. ”
Blogodidact: American exceptionalism is hardly d...
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Hey! You're shutting up, remember? You've seen the TIME article?
Blogodidact: Well... yeah, but...
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: But nothing! As I was saying, once we herd people into thinking as the group thinks, rather than as reason might lead them to discover the truth, we'll be able to get our way.
And seriously, what are these people arguing for anyway, did discovering what was 'True' enable them to win any arguments when the real answer you were after was what YOU wanted it to be, because you wanted it to be?!
Heck no!
Blogodidact: But what's the point of pretending to know something if it isn't True?!
(blink)
Sorry. Shutting up now.
Screwtape Univ. Thinker: Thank you. So. As I was saying... what use was that freedom and liberty crud if it didn't get you anything useful?! Oh sure, if you learned to understand and follow along, you could do that and maybe even become wealthy and get those things you wanted - but you couldn't get them simply because you wanted them, no, you had to actually produce them, you had to do what was 'right'... where's the fun in that? You had to actually develop Virtue! Live a Good Life! Can you imagine?! What would be the use of getting everything you wanted, whenever you wanted it, if you were so full of 'virtue' that you felt such things were worthless when stacked up against what cost you nothing (you know the type of stuff I mean, family, friends, love, liberty, etc)?! That's the sort of fool who'd willingly set his treasures aside for 'peace of mind', 'happiness' or worse yet, your 'soul'!.
Are you kidding me?! What use is a sound soul if you don't have the basic necessary comforts, a full belly and sufficient riches to amuse yourself with at every moment of the day and night?
Blogodidact: But... sorry, go on.
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Sheesh. Look, those things need to be provided for you in order to have an adequate level of living, and there's only one way to provide you all of those things, the state.
Blogodidact: But where does the state get... it.... Sorry. Shutting up now. Again.
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Uh-huh. On the other hand... if you just tweak things a bit, you can have anything you want... as that old revolutionary said "Ye ssshall be as gods...", now we're talking, eh? Now we're getting somewhere, right?
Blogodidact: (blink)
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: You can say something. Answer...
Blogodidact: I don't have any-thing to say.
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Whatever. Look, if you'll just forget about worrying over what is good and evil, and get the hang of spinning whatever is most useful to be thought of as being good, or evil - as needed - then you get to say what is good and evil for you and your purposes, then you can win your arguments simply because you want to! Can anything be withheld from you if you develop the skills to do that?
Not a chance!
Now seriously, listen to what I'm telling you, I am, after all, a man of wealth and taste...that whole business of truth and earnestness, it just isn't worth it! If you want to pursue truth, do you know what you'd have to do?
Blogodidact: Yes.
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Again, whatever. If you want to become 'Good', rather than simply accumulate goods... well, then you'll have to go back and read... not just skim the facts to pass a test or get some useful trivia mind you, but read... to understand, and I'm talking about the oldest of the old dead white guys, you know, Homer, Socrates and Aristotle, Virgil, Cicero and Plutarch, Moses & Jesus, Aquinas, Shakespeare, Locke the founding fathers...! But seriously, all they're going to tell you is that reality exists, it is what it is, and you are capable of knowing and abiding by it, and pursuing happiness through your best choices... but then you'll have to follow the rules of what IS right and what IS wrong. Where's the freedom in
that?!
Where's the fun in that?! Now, if you're a smart guy, a real NewYorkT'imesian like myself, then you don't need any of those guys and they're dead civilization, nah, just pick up a few tid bits here and there, get someone else of wealth & taste to certify that you've picked up the right tid-bits, you know, a diploma, and you'll have a ticket to ride as far in the world today as you'd like!
Blogodidact: So... you do need to know some things, just not true things?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Shut. It. But, yeah, yeah, I'm afraid that there's still a few things you'll need to pick up, but it's no big deal, just pieces here and there will be fine (it's not like anyone expects them to add up!), stuff like Descartes's two tips, seriously, we never could have succeeded in weaponizing reason without him, that old fool is the one that made it all possible. His first tip was "I think therefore I am" - how cool is that?!
Think about that, take that to heart and you no longer need to bother either with what is real, or with the bother of discovering what is real, all you have to do is, as he put it,
"I concluded that I might take, as a general rule, the principle, that all the things which we very clearly and distinctly conceive are true..."and it must be (if you word it right, that is)! How's that for hocus pocus?! And if anyone challenges you with 'facts', you can use his other tip, and it's serious weapons grade reasoning stuff too, just employ the Method of Doubt against it - that's it.
Blogodidact: That's it?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: That's it. You've got to be careful though, you've got to be sure to use Doubt - not a Question! That's a newbie error, but it's an easy one to make and a big one at that, you risk undoing everything you've propped up if you do.
See, you don't want an honest answer, or even to propose that there could be an answer - make that mistake and you're back to having to respect reality, truth, and the whole shebang (shiver), no, no, no no! But don't worry, it's easy to get around, just look all thoughtful and say "I doubt that" - you don't even need to give any particular reasons for why you doubt it, just emotively say that you feel it's not true...
Blogodidact: Won't using 'true' risk everything you've propped up?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Nope, not any more wise guy, not if you used doubt, instead of a question, you see you don't need to worry about truth anymore, not even asking questions at this point, that's the beauty of the arbitrary, once you introduce it as a legitimate issue, nothing means anything anymore - works like sulphuric acid on anyone's beliefs and principles, there's almost no defence against it, and almost no rules for applying it, the more arbitrary you can be, the better. Such a deal.
There are a few more you've got to pick up and get the hang of, but they're just as easy and they follow easy enough from those first two.
The next is from another ol' french fellow, Rousseau, one of the biggest arms merchants of all time in the weaponizing of reason, he'll load you up with some heavy duty ammo, I tell you what. The way he put things, he practically had people begging to be poisoned by him! I mean this was a guy who could sound all concerned and pro-liberty like with things like
"“How can man, who is born free, rightly come to be everywhere in chains?”", and then turn right around and say that for men to be free
" that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free..."Yeah! Seriously, and people bought it!
By using Descartes's weapons grade reasoning skills, Rousseau even managed to take out the two other key foundations of Western Civilization, the Family and Private Property, by, get this, by saying that mankind used to have real freedom, back when he was in a noble 'state of nature'
"in this primitive state, men had neither houses, nor huts, nor any kind of property whatever; every one lived where he could, seldom for more than a single night; the sexes united without design, as accident, opportunity or inclination brought them together, nor had they any great need of words to communicate their designs to each other; and they parted with the same indifference"(seriously, can you believe it?!), He goes on to say that man was tricked into having to care for a wife and kids, and having to burden himself with 'private property', and with these twin evils, 'tools of the oppressors', Civilization was born! Not only that, but he managed to say this stuff and convince people that these two things are what are being used to keep what's really good, you, from coming out!
Rousseau will also teach you that you don't need no learn and practices no habits of 'virtue', nah, just 'be yourself', be 'authentic', naturally. Really, the more grubby and raw, the more degraded the better, and you'll be thought highly of - seriously, how do you think people began to get away with throwing paint at a canvass and calling it 'art'?! And be respected for it! Rousseau is as highly thought of amongst the elites, even the truth seekers, as anyone, and he used to run around dropping his drawers in front of ladies windows at night... and bragged about it! Fun, right! Just look how revered he is! And because of him, you can do it too and there's no need to bother with real ability or virtue anymore, seriously, we owe this guy big time.
Blogodidact: what about the pesky people who persist in asking 'Why?'
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Well, yes, they did use to be a problem, a big one, but we haven't really needed to bother answering them in two centuries, yeah really. See, you can cut the floor out from under them with a just a few more tricks of another one of our founders, fellow named Hume, eh? Oh, it doesn't matter who he was, an old dead English white guy, and he didn't really develop anything new, he just applied Descartes' ideas to the one area that was really stumping us, Science. See, he convinced people in his "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding", that, get this, that you can't really know anything at all, and he did it with just a few slick thought experiments. He'd say things like 'how trustworthy are your senses, if they can be fooled? After all, an orange could just as well be an orange colored billiard ball, for all you know,
"The mind has never anything present to it but the perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connexion with objects. The supposition of such a connexion is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning.", that's because your senses don't experience anything directly, and so can't be trusted, and since you can't really trust your senses, then reality isn't really knowable, see? And since we can't really know reality, we can't really know anything about causality - why things happen - only that they do, but never why they do,
"The falling of a pebble may, for aught we know, extinguish the sun; or the wish of a man control the planets in their orbits. It is only experience, which teaches us the nature and bounds of cause and effect, and enables us to infer the existence of one object from that of another"Oh yeah, it's an awesome gimmick. He even took it to the point of seriously saying 'Will the sun rise tomorrow? We have no way of really knowing, all we can say is that it seems to have always done so before, so it seems likely, but I won't really be able to tell you until tomorrow, if it has'... seriously, he convinced the most scientific people going, the British, within a century of Issac Newton no less, who enabled man to know the causes and effects of bodies millions of miles away, his skepticism wiped that all clean and convinced them that all you can do is just follow along with appearances and bet on what appears might happen, and so with just those few tricks of weaponized reason, we're now able to say that reality isn't knowable, and of course if reality isn't knowable, then no one can prove you are wrong! Bingo!
Blogodidact: How can experimental science affect anything else?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: You trying to play me? You've heard of Karl Popper?
Blogodidact: Some.
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Yeah, well some others have heard of him too, George Soros for instance, his whole "Open Society" concept that's about to make your treasured 'Constitution' obsolete, that was all deeply influenced by Popper, and guess who Popper got the bulk of his ideas from?
Blogodidact: Hume?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Bingo! See, Hume took these supposedly remote 'scientific' ideas, and brought them home to where they could do some use for us, he applied them to you 'truth seekers' treasures, and vaporized them,
"When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles[meaning skepticism], what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.""Truth? Goodness? Beauty? Poof!
Blogodidact: OMG.
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Ha! Yeah, you wish. So, anyway, moving on, there is one more supremely useful idiot, but you'll only need to know about him if you're getting into the big leagues, in fact he... isn't usually necessary anymore (and by that I mean useful in getting your way), but it wouldn't hurt to familiarize yourself with him because he's the guy that did away with the Individual, he's the reason why things like 'Individual Rights' are so easily laughed off today in favor of the group, the collective, and his name was Immanuel Kant. He actually bought the bull Hume was slinging, and decided to go him one further, but he didn't want to destroy all knowledge, which he though Hume did, he wanted to leave some room to be able to say what he though people should believe, and to do that, he said,
"“I have found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith”, and he did it by removing reality, real reality, forever beyond the reach of Man, by dividing the cosmos up into a phenomenal world' simple appearances, and the 'noumenal world', real reality, which man could never even hope to know himself.
The joke was on Kant though, he ended up taking things further than Hume ever could have without him. One wag of the time, Moses Mendelssohn, called Kant the "all-destroyer"... and that describes what he accomplished, all right.
Kant's the guy who took the raw stuff of Descartes, Rousseau and Hume, and distilled it into the corrosive chemical we've used to strip the finish off of Western Civilization with.
He took their materials and crafted them into being able to say that 'the only truth that can be known is what most people believe is true', yeah, it's dead useful, and people love to repeat it, I mean go to any corporate marketing meeting and you'll hear people repeating it with things like "Perception is reality!", you can't buy gold like that and it's the stuff if you've got to get a good grip on it if you want real big power, but it's dead tricky to use, and you've got to memorize some stuff that's so seriously convoluted that even we don't like to get too close to it, it's like intellectual uranium... you've just got to be careful how you handle it, but its results are impressive.
How impressive? How powerful? Well, you know the United States of America, right? Remember how powerful they were after WWI & WWII? Well it was Kant's work, 'Perpetual Peace', that was key to slicking most of the Western world into the 'League of Nations', and though it took awhile, it was his ideas that got the most powerful nation in the world to through away their sovereignty and join the United Nations.
Now that's power!
He's also the guy who managed to take (ugh) morality, the result of good and virtuous choices, and transformed it into a set of rules which you had no choice in following, that you couldn't even attempt to use Reason (the truth seeking variety mind you) in applying and following, and to top it off, he managed to convince people that if you received any benefit from your actions, then... it wasn't virtuous!
Can you believe that?! The very thing that makes their world possible, virtue, which America's Founding Fathers took such pleasure in practicing and going on about, he managed to destroy it by transforming it from a pleasure giving skill, into a hated burden that you nevertheless strived for (or at least claimed you did). He took the idea of the individual, that morality was not the result of what you chose to do but instead doing what you had a duty to do, and that real 'virtue' consisted in doing things you could derive no pleasure or benefit from.
Can't tell you how much we owe that guy, but like I said, it's tricky stuff to work with, and huge... not only massive in the sense of the impossibly long volumes of his thoughts, but they're filled with impossibly long sentences that go on forever. Yeah it's a pain, but how else could you manage to convince people that reality was not only not knowable, but actually beyond your ability to even experience? Yeah! No, seriously, he managed to pull it off, and because he did, we've had the last couple centuries to get away with anything we've wanted to do.
But like I said, that's for specialists to deal with, and because Kant, and one who developed his ideas into even murkier depths, Hegel, did their work so well, made the prospect of seeking wisdom so daunting, no one bothers with it anymore. In fact, because of their good works, some Americans got together, Pierce and latter John Dewey and William James, and said essentially that Kant & Hegel were probably not wrong, but were just too dense to be useful, and since the 'truth' was beyond knowing, lets just try stuff to see what seems to work' and that's Pragmatism in a nutshell, the first 'philosophy' to break with the meaning of philosophy ' the love of wisdom', and it enables us to do just about anything we want to do today, we simply say 'we're going to be pragmatic and try this', and pretty much anything goes.
Luckily, that's as far as most of us need to venture anymore. If you need some more established 'intellectuals' to back you up, like I said, for the most part all we need handy for dealing with those pesky Truth-addicts like you, can be found easily enough with Descartes's doubt, Rousseau's noble savagery and Hume's free pass on reality. And... if those are too 'old-dead white guyish' for you, you can just pick up a few quotes from Marx, he puts them all to use in his stuff... and its trendier too.
So, there you go, now you too can go about winning any argument you want to without having to bother with worrying whether anything is 'true' or not. Just say it is, call the other person mean names for believing something else, tell them everyone knows that they're wrong... and you've got it made.
What a relief, eh?!
Blogodidact: Can I say something now?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Not that it'll do you any good, but sure.
Blogodidact: One of your big guns there, Rousseau...
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Yeah, what about him?
Blogodidact: Were you aware that his first claim to fame was in music?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: No... really?
Blogodidact: Yep... yeah, your big gun was a guy, who during the era that would produce the likes of Mozart, Bach & Beethoven, that cretin proposed a musical system that would reduce, if not entirely do away with, musical harmonies... what more do you think anyone will need to know about him?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker: Whatever.
Blogodidact: That's what I thought you'd say. But have you not noticed that in your system, your art, your music, everything of the sort... is ugly? The fact is that your system, your 'weaponized reason', is a flat, ugly, toneless system that reflects much of Rousseau's musical ideas...you've can manage a simple, flat melody, but that's it. No depth. No harmony. And you lack the sense or regard for truth and beauty and virtue, to even question it.... and because you don't question yourselves, you assume that no questions should be asked of you at all.
Pure hubris is just what you’ve been saying... and teaching, this system of thought that tells you that your whims are the justification for everything you want, that reality isn’t really real, and that whatever we say, should be real.
What else could possibly follow from that but envy, ugliness and a passion for disharmony?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Yeah?Why is it so popular then?
Blogodidact: I suppose above all else, because it is easy to master, rewards you for not discovering your errors and it enables you to feel like a wronged god, even to the point of being able to pronounce your errors as being new facts, in your own minds you actually think "Ye shall be as gods..."- I wonder if that Sssounds familiar to you?
Screwtape Univ. Thinker:: Nope, can't say it does.
Blogodidact: But... you mentioned it yourself earlier... well...Not surprising I guess. Thanks for coming by.
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