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.

"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.
“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.”"

I can't top that, and so without further ado, Coolidge's

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.

-------------------------------------------------OOO------------------------------------------------

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. 

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

' 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.
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. ”

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.

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.

The Importance Of Being In Earnest, Or Of Weaponizing Reason

When Experts, the Chairmen of the Fed, Pundits and others, are surprised by 'unexpectedly low numbers' in jobs, production and economic growth... nearly every month... for over two years... are we really to imagine that when they make their predictions, they are being earnest? Here's a thought: Can they be in earnest, and dishonest, at the same time?

Does it matter? Well... only in every way that matters. That's all.

I ask because an old question has surfaced again, this time in the New York Times of all places (I'll get to that in a couple of inches), asking what Reason is for. I did nine posts on my take on what Reason is, so I'll spare you that, and anyway there is a more relevant question for us today , which is: What difference does it make whether you use reason to discover the truth, or as a weapon to win arguments and get your way? If you don't think that's such an important question, then you haven't been paying very close attention to the world around you - the state of the world today is a real time demonstration of one these positions getting more use than the other, which it has been steadily replacing for well over a century.

For instance, in addition to the NY Times, which I'll get to in a moment, we've also got TIME Magazine demonstrating their take on the matter, employing Reason to declare that

"If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn't say so."

I'll leave tearing into this particular article for another day because for right now I'm more concerned with how it's possible to make such a statement, publicly, with a straight face and a modicum of concern for your reputation? The answer is, that the only way someone could say such a thing, assuming that they'd actually read the Constitution beforehand, would be if they had read nothing else whatsoever, other than the Constitution, and only narrowly at that.

But... that's not quite true, or rather it is true, but only if you are reasoning in a traditionally Western fashion, as a tool in order to discover what is true. But as the NY Times points out, that isn't the only way to employ your faculty of Reason. You can also use it as nothing more than a rhetorical weapon to win an argument; and since the only way someone who considered Reason to be a tool for discovering the Truth could say such a thing, would be if they were ignorant of every other pertinent bit of information, thought. and history concerning the Constitution - and not even TIME is that ignorant - then we should really wake up to the fact that the most dangerous weapon known to man, the reasoning human mind, weaponized, has us in its cross-hairs.

So we'd do well to look at this question as being one that's worth our consideration today. It's not a new question of course; 2,500 years ago Plato marked the coming of age of proper Western philosophy with his dialogs of Socrates' adventures against the Sophists of his day. Socrates tried his best to show that reason could serve a worthier purpose than simply controlling their fellow man, and of course he gave his life - willingly - but in the process, having, in his opinion, won the more worthwhile argument and prize - a well examined and virtuous life, he felt no loss in the face of their silly claims of victory. Such is the value of Truth... and the poverty of the alternative.

And the fact is that from that day to this, the answers, and the stakes, have remained the same, the evidence is still the same and the results are still the same.

2,500 years after Plato, after the halls of power have moved on from Athens, to Rome, to Constantinople, to Renaissance Italy, to Paris, to London, to Washington D. C. to... well, we'll see... through all of that time, through all of those millenia of examples, here we are still, standing gape mouthed at the bizarre rhetorical antics of the sophists as they flash their glittering rhetorical jewels and absurd sophism's, scaring you this way, enticing you that way and flattering you all the way down, having turned with common sense on its head while brazenly still calling it 'common sense'; devouring the wealth of reality and laying all to waste as sacrifice to their ready wits.

And still the question remains the same: Is Reason a tool to discover the Truth, or simply an evolutionary weapon to win argument s and get your way?

And still the answer remains the same: Yes.

The 'New' Sophists
The new-sophistry-paper of record, the New York Times, recently ran an article "Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth", and in a paragraph more pregnant than the Octomom, stated:

"Now some researchers are suggesting that reason evolved for a completely different purpose: to win arguments. Rationality, by this yardstick (and irrationality too, but we’ll get to that) is nothing more or less than a servant of the hard-wired compulsion to triumph in the debating arena. According to this view, bias, lack of logic and other supposed flaws that pollute the stream of reason are instead social adaptations that enable one group to persuade (and defeat) another. Certitude works, however sharply it may depart from the truth."

"A lack of logic and other supposed flaws"?! Supposedly these people are defenders of evolution... they sure are fighting hard for a primitive, devolution of ideas and concepts, aren't they? They even manage to flatter themselves into thinking the argument is original to themselves. I suppose ignorance has some reward... if you keep it to yourself anyway. Do they realize the parody they have become? Ah... but that question, and its answer, shows our bias - you see we assume that it is being asked of a person who reasons in order to examine their life and the world around them in pursuit of Truth, whereas if you intend reason only as a weapon to win arguments and get control over other people, then ours really is a meaningless question if asked without the predetermined 'correct' answer and supporting materials to follow up with and make some further point along the same predetermined line.

How is this relevant to today? Lets look at some recent news, shall we? Again, you must have wondered how it is that every month we hear something like "Experts are surprised by unexpected downturn in economic figures"? For instance, this illustrates the point:

""A drumbeat of disappointing data about consumer behavior, factory sales and weak hiring in recent weeks has prompted economists to ratchet down their 2011 economic forecasts to as little as half what they expected at the beginning of the year.
Two months ago, Goldman Sachs projected that the economy would grow at a 4 percent annual rate in the quarter ending in June. The company now expects the government to report no more than 2 percent growth when data for the second quarter is released in a few weeks.
Macroeconomic Advisers, a research firm, projected 3.5 percent growth back in April and is now down to just 2.1 percent for this quarter.
Both these firms, well respected in their analysis, have cut their forecasts for the second half of the year as well. Then this week, the Federal Reserve downgraded its projections for the full year, to under 3 percent growth. It started the year with guidance as high as 3.9 percent. ""

Now, no one with any basic economic knowledge of Frederic Bastiat, or Jean Baptist Say... or Von Mises or Hayek, or even anyone who paid fairly close attention to how two plus two manages to equal four, can look at what the government is doing to 'fix' the economy these days, and say, with a straight face, that they are surprised by anything... except maybe for how slowly the economy is collapsing around our ears.

Or turn and look how our President, who awarded a medal of honor to a soldier, posthumously, and privately met with and consoled the family of that soldier, could then just a year or so later go to the home of the army's 10th Mountain Division where that soldier came from, and blathers on about how clearly he remembers, how happy he was,

"...that SFC Jared Monti was “the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously.”

This doesn't even manage to qualify as wrong or false... it never even makes it on to the court. But does this show some monstrous inhuman callousness? Does it show him to be a cocaine addled dead head, incapable of remembering or caring about anything or anyone? No, it doesn't - it doesn't rule that out of course, but I contend that it doesn't show that at all. What it does show, as well as explain, is why it's not being followed up in the media, because for the president, and his fellow travellers, things are not done because they are thought to be good, they are not done because they are thought to be just and they are not done because they are thought to be true (they might be, but those would be mere incidentals); their actions are not taken and words are not said because they feel that in some fundamentally principled way that they must be done or must be said because they are the right thing to do; instead they are said and done as means to an end and that end justifies, and dictates, the means taken to achieve it - as well as ignoring adverse issues that might tamper with achieving their mutual ends.

What, to a person concerned with Truth, would be a meaningful, even wrenching event - such as meeting with the parents of someone who died carrying out your orders - to someone concerned only with winning and achieving their ends, these situations are simply things which must be done to move your argument forward, rhetorical stepping stones, glitteringly jeweled photo-ops, statements, actions, useful only for getting from here to there, useful steps for 'getting things done'. Get what done? In Obama's case, those things he wants to get done. Not because they are right, but... because he wants to get them done.

Why?

Why even ask that (you'd do well to wonder about that, btw, but more on that another day)?To get them done of course. Experts predictions about the economy are made not because they are considered to be true, but because it is believed that by making them, they can influence your actions and help shape events in such a way as to produce their desired ends. Remember, Truth isn't the goal, the nature of reality and whether one economic theory is correct and true isn't the issue - for those armed with a weaponized form of reason, that isn't even a consideration! - what is at issue is winning the argument and convincing people to do things their way.

Why?

Why does you child's school want to know your beliefs concerning their beliefs about political policies, the climate, sex, etc? In order to help them change your beliefs, and those of your child's, into their beliefs, so as to achieve their ends, of course.

Why? Why do you persist in asking why (I hope you are thinking about that - why ask why?)? Why to win, of course.

Why?

Sigh... foolish truth seeker, because that is what they are after, that's why. If you're not careful, you'll end up like Winston Smith asking 'Why?' of Mr. O'Brien. Tut-tut. It suffices to simply say, that because those are the ends which they are pursuing, those ends require such means in order to accomplish them. Nothing more, we shouldn't take it personally, it's just business.

You want more (again, why? Annoying, I know, but... really... ask yourself)? How about this: "Obama Administration Launches Anti-Physician Informant Network"

"Alarmed by a shortage of primary care doctors, officials in President Barack Obama's administration are recruiting a team of "mystery shoppers" to pose as patients, call doctors' offices and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it.
The administration says the survey will address a "critical public policy problem" — the increasing shortage of primary care doctors, including specialists in internal medicine and family practice. It will also try to discover whether doctors are accepting patients with private insurance while turning away those in government health programs that pay lower reimbursement rates."

This from a president who is pursuing policies which mandate, control, and force physicians to treat their patients as prescribed by an army of federal bureaucrats and to seek their payment through incomprehensibly labyrinthine rules of insurance applications. Anyone even mildly familiar with the the effects of giving orders to highly accomplished and notoriously egotistical professionals, and on top of that, telling them how to do their own job, to say nothing of the workings of a free market, could have told you what would have followed from such policies; anyone concerned with using reason in pursuit of truth, could, and did, over and over, tell you that these actions which the government is taking to interfere in the workings of the market - the elimination of free and honest choices - would lead to. The person using reason in pursuit of truth, could tell you that under those circumstances, the best of doctors would be getting out of the business, leaving behind a few of the most dedicated, as well as the worst of doctors, remaining to serve the ever growing needs of those who increasingly need to have every ache and pain cataloged, for free.

Or as economic truth seekers from Bastiat to Hayek would have put it, simply and much briefer: Shortages.

There's should be no surprise in this. None. Not even the 'anti-physician informant network' should be a surprise, nor is there any point in asking so provincial a question as 'Why'... come on now... you keep asking that as if you think that the 'truth' was the purpose of their actions? It is not. Didn't you read the NY Times article? Aren't you paying attention? The new 'Dock a Doc' network only exists in order to 'discover' that more rules and bureaucracies are needed, further 'proving' the argument which President Obama and all of his like minded modern buddies had long ago pre-determined to arrive at all along: More Government.

That is their answer.

More control.

Why?

Because with more control, you can control how you want things to be.

Why?

Did you really just ask that again? Oh... I know, you say you want the truth... but ... you can't handle the Truth. Can you? It's always been there, right out in the open... why have you not seen it before? Maybe because you weren't looking for it? Maybe... because you were too busy trying to win your own arguments, rather than seeking to know thyself and to examine your place in life?

Here, let O'Brien tell you the answer, as he told Winston Smith in '1984', it is harsh, true, but just as true of our sophists today, as when Orwell wrote it in 1948, or when Plato told us how Thracymacus summed the same position up to Socrates more than 2,500 years ago:

""The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. ... We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. ... How does one man assert his power over another ... By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is inflicting pain and humiliation. ... A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. ... If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever."

Most people like to sweeten that up a bit with one pretext or another, but they're just avoiding the truth - which is kind of the point too - and then again since the truth is besides the point... why not? You still get to get your way, and that after all is the ultimate point and purpose of all they do - getting control, using reason as a weapon (see Orwell's essay on "Politics and the English Language", or even better, Josef Pieper's "Abuse of Language Abuse of Power ", well worth your time and money) for getting their way.

Why? Again with the questions... as if an answer is going to solve the question? The fact is that there is no squaring things between the purposes of Truth, and those of power... there reasons are in complete opposition - you can grasp the answer, but not explain the one to the other. What you need is to look at this from the other point of view, that of those who don't care about the truth... unless it helps them to win their argument - lets do just that, look at it from the other perspective: Tomorrow. Tomorrow, we'll have a look at this through the point of view of a graduate of Screwtape University.

Where there's 'No!' smoke, there's fire.

Where there's 'No!' smoke, there's fire.
Smoking laws. This is one issue that seems to cut equally across all segments of society, whether they be Republicans, Democrats, Conservatives, even some Libertarians and Tea Party members; it is such a tangible issue, everyone confronts it, everyone has an opinion on it. Just this last week the next town out succumbed to a total 'public; smoking ban with no exemptions, and my town just dodged the bullet for the moment, because the county executive thought there were too many exemptions:

"If the purpose of the smoking ban is to protect the health of employees, there is no rational reason to exclude casino floor workers," Ehlmann said in his veto message. "If tobacco smoke is harmful, there is no reason to exempt cigar bars, while regulating bars that allow cigarette smoking."

This is a very unusual situation for regulatory law, exemptions are the bread and butter of power dealers - no, this is something people actually feel they are in the right on. Maybe because it's such a physically tangible issue, very few people seem to bother with thinking it through down to its conceptual roots, their 'gut' response to real physical discomforts, or pleasures, forms their response, and the "No__!" smoke billows up over the legal landscape and everyone's Rights are choking in it.

I missed out on a good argument with my extended family over this, this past graduation weekend, and work has kept me from following up on it, so I'll take my frustration out on you.

What is the real issue here, where is the fire at the root of the 'no smoking' smoke screen? In principle there's little difference between smoking bans and bans on Trans-Fats, Salt, etc, but the true issue is easier to see, and to miss, with the smoking bans so I'll stay with that - and it is an issue worth following down to its roots because it goes to the very heart of the Rule of Law and of America itself.

The Smoke
Those arguing for banning smoking have many legitimate concerns and have made some phrases common for justifying their enthusiasm for banning the lowly smoker from smoking anywhere around them. Some of the most common are:

• "Second hand smoke!",
• "Kids stunted growth!",
• "Health care costs!
• "Physical assault on nose, breathing, food, clothing...!"
• "You have no right to subject me or my kids to your smoke!"
  

Whether or not there is something to their arguments scientifically, economically or otherwise, for the most part, these concerns are irrelevant because they are only justifications or pretexts for doing what the real issue is about, pitting the rights of some against the rights of others. Here's a tip: One persons Rights (not desires, mind you, but Rights) do not conflict with anothers - if they seem to, you've got an error lurking somewhere in your premises.

The issue after all, at least amongst those who honestly think these bans are justified (as opposed to those who just want to extend statist power), is not about whether or not it's proper to forbid smokers from smoking when they enter into someone else's home or property - most people still think of 'a man's home as his castle' and no smoker questions a homeowner’s right to prevent a guest from smoking in that host's home; instead the argument is about whether or not one group (non-smokers) can legally prevent another group (smokers), from smoking in their own homes and property - a regulatory storming of the castle as it were. After all, if you remove the references to smoking in that last phrase, as the statist does and will, I think you'll begin to see the threat it holds to all of your rights.

The real problem, as the last bullet point above makes clear, involves confusion over where the very real rights and concerns of one person overlap with those of another, and what fosters that confusion is a lack of clarity in what rights are, how the law is to uphold them, and how private and public spheres interact. That confusion raises up the most sincere and effective complaints, a fear for your and your child's health and property, but in doing so inappropriately, it raises up a smoke screen which hides and fans a long smoldering fire within our Rights, because taken by itself, the concern is absolutely valid, but in the context it's commonly tossed around in, it is dead wrong.


The Fire
You do of course have an indisputable right, one might even say an unalienable right, to forbid anyone from smoking in your car or your home, and arguably from walking up to you and blowing their smoke into your lungs or those of your kids. This brings up a couple important questions:

1 - Why? Why do you have the right to forbid such actions? What is it that gives you that right?

Do you know the answer? It's an important one. Here's another:

2 - Do your personal Rights have the ability to transform the area around you, no matter where, into a 'public' place? Or put another way, does being in public eliminate your private individual rights?

And following on the heels of that there's at least one more question to be asked,

3 - Do your individual rights give you the right to deny others the ability to exercise their individual rights? Sometimes? Always? Never? Why?

The answers to these questions go to the very root of our Western conception of Law, Natural Law and the very the meaning and foundation of America itself. When the misguided and flat out wrong answers to these questions prevail... you can practically smell the the acrid smoke of your Rights roasting on a red hot open fire.

Laying Down The Natural Law


For instance, from John Locke's The Two Treatises of Civil Government, Chapter VI:

"... 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."

This was the spirit of Law from which our nation was founded upon; that law is not an unnatural creation, a scold and brute to keep us in check, as Hobbes would have it, but a supremely natural method for liberating the nature of reasoning men and securing their lives and livelihood. This is especially true and visible in the Declaration of Independence, where Jefferson phrased the Declaration in such a way so as to make it accessible and acceptable to all, religious, secular and philosopher alike. He said that for Americans:

"...to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation..."

, making it clear that capital "L" Law was not created by men nor defined by one particular religion or another, but that our rights are derived from our nature as human beings, a fact that is true and accessible to all, across place and time for all human beings. As in the phrase that Obama so likes to hack,

"...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.",

Our legislators did not *create* our Rights or Liberties, they identified them through the use of right reason and informed by that they designed a government rooted in those principles of Natural Law; and knowing the problematic aspects of man's nature, his tendency to rationalize passions over reasoned principle - whether to do good or evil is irrelevant - they then bound that government down with not only a written constitution but with an additional ten amendments to restrain what government can and cannot do, giving men protection from their protectors.

We don't only recognize our rights in order to get things and distribute them fairly, we recognize our rights because it isn't possible to fully develop our potential as human beings, absent them.
It isn't enough to just recognize your right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, if everything needed to engage in that pursuit, as well as the fruit of your pursuits, can be seized at the whim of someone sneaky or strong enough to do so. As I said in my previous post,

"For your life, to be lived, you must be free to think, for your thoughts to benefit your life you must see to it that they respect reality - cherish truth - for your freedom of thought to be anything other than a mockery, you must be free to put them into action, and again, for your thoughts and your actions to be a benefit to you, rather than a mockery, you must be free to retain and use that which your thoughts and actions have produced, and what they produce is called Property."

Private Property
To be clear: you absolutely do have a right to forbid smoking in your home, in your car and your person when in public, and the reason why is rooted in the meaning of natural law, individual rights and the property rights which support them and which this nation was founded upon. The failure to take into account the proper context of person, place and time while wielding the force of law, is what has formed the central assault upon the American way of life for well over the last century.

Property has formed the basis of the Western conception of Rights since the very beginning, and you can chart the rise and fall of periods of prosperity and order in the West by the clarity with which this has been understood, or not. From the time of ancient Athens, where it was first dimly grasped, to our day, it might be best summed up in a phrase popularized by Sir Edward Coke regarding a 1604 case from English Common Law, “Every man’s home is his castle.”

"So it is holden in 21 Hen. 7. 39. every one may assemble his friends or neighbours to defend his house against violence: But he cannot assemble them to goe with him to the Market or elsewhere to keep him from violence: And the reason of all the same is, because domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium - everyone’s house is his safest refuge (“Every man’s home is his castle.”)]

The implication is not only that what is yours is yours, but that you must respect the rights of others to what is theirs. To claim a Right to what is yours, you must at the same time acknowledge the Right of others to exercise their Rights over their Property. Your Rights literally rest upon your upholding the Rights of your neighbors, and that is how the health of a society may be defined - it is not enough to say

'This is mine

', such a claim is just as easily asserted by misers and tyrants alike, you must also be able to respect and defend

'That is theirs'

, without that mutual understanding and respect, life truly shall become 'nasty, brutish and short'. But with that understanding and commitment, a peaceful and civilized society becomes possible, where prior to it all was only red in tooth and claw. To say both 'this is mine' and 'that is theirs' requires that you rule your actions by reason, not passion, it requires a respect for an objective reality as it is, not as you might wish it were - Truth, not Spin. Without that you cannot say 'this is mine' and 'that is theirs'.

Without this understanding there is no Western Civilization; as John Adams noted, without it, if it is not accepted, held and defended with as much zeal as if it were a Commandment from God, then all of civilization becomes a facade that falls away with the changing whims of custom and the passions of the mob. Not for nothing did the Founders of this nation consider Property Rights to be the very fundamental basis for all of our Individual Rights, the basis of Law and of our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Not for nothing did Jean-Jacque Rousseau and Karl Marx consider the abolition of Property Rights the fundamental basis of their respective systems of thought - which is why they are anti-Western in general and anti-American in particular, and thoroughly rotten to their common core.

As Aristotle noted, Descartes' idiocies notwithstanding, the most fundamental thought, upon which all else rests, is that A thing cannot be, and at the same time and context, be something else, at the same time and in the same context - that's the law of non-contradiction, and it is absolute. Dispense with that and you dispense with any and all claim to legitimate thought. It also shouldn't be surprising that modern philosophy in general, and the ideas of modern education in particular, seek to dispense with just that.

You cannot lay claim to the right to make your choices regarding your property and with your person, while denying the same Right, supported and upheld by force of law, to your neighbor. To do so is to throw away the concept of law in its entirety, and replace it with the prevailing whims of either the majority of the mob or that of those thugs who are able to cow them through their use of, or threat of, force - as it suits their fancy.

Many people, though sadly not all, see that this applies within the confines of someone's own home... but then they lose the thread as they venture out into the context of the wider world; with the very real right which they have when in their homes, they attempt to use it to transform the private property of others into something owned by them in name only, something which the public somehow 'has a right' to decree the terms upon which they will be allowed to retain it - in name only.

There's an ism which fits pretty well with that.

It's called Fascism. The policy of fascist Italy and Germany, was to allow people and corporations to keep their names affixed to (some) property, as long as they made it available for use and/or at fees and conditions which the government said was 'right' and 'fair' - while their 'property' stayed in their name, it was the government which said what it was that they could or couldn't do with it.

Such a system is one which doesn't end well for anyone's rights, property or lives.

Context Is King
As Coke's quote indicates, the context of where a person is and what they are doing, is critical to determining where Rights and Property begin and end and co-mingle. A person's property does not become public property simply because members of the public are allowed to enter into it, no matter how frequently or in what numbers. Whether it be a shopping mall or a restaurant, a place which the public is allowed to enter in to, on the owners terms, remains private property.

No, I'm not a libertarian, yes, I do support the right of those living in a local community to set particular standards and codes for appearances, uses and constructions upon property - based upon property rights.

Yes, I do understand that the Supreme Court has often ruled the opposite on public/private property, going back to the early 1800's. That same Supreme Court also said that Dred Scott was not a man, but a possession, and able to be thought of as being the 'property' of another, a claim made for many of the same reasons of 'the greater good' which smoking ban'rs justify their actions with.. is that really what you wish to rest your case upon? The 'right' to enslave and rob another? Such a position has little or nothing to do with the ideas of Property Rights which our nation was founded upon and negates not only the idea of Property, but Humanity, Individuals and Rights all together; it is the old line of Thrasymachus,

'Might makes Right'

, but far from making 'right', it simply replaces the concept of Rights with the demands of the Fist, and those demands are made passionately - not reasonably.
Again, such a thing doesn't end well. At that point where 'Might makes Right!', America ceases to be.


Smoking Bans: Where there's Smoke, there's Fire
A Restaurant does not become any less the property of the owner, because he allows another member of society, a mystical number of whom spontaneously become the 'public', to enter into it. Potential customers are allowed to freely enter for the purposes of purchasing his services, and just as the owner would be justified in throwing them out if they began dancing on the tables and stepping in the food of other patrons, if they enter in with the intent of stepping on the owners right to dictate how his property will be used and under what terms, he is fully within his rights to have them ejected.

If you don't smoke, you do not have a right to forbid others from smoking in their own property, no matter how many people they allow to gather there, or how much you would like to gather there with them. I don't smoke. When I played in a band, I ticked off my band mates by forbidding them from smoking in my Van - it was my property and my right to set my own rules. By the same token, when we got to the club to play, the club owner allowed smoking, and if I wanted to play there, or go there in my off time, I had to respect their right to set their own rules.

One person can have no right to violate the rights of another, because in doing so they do away with the concept of rights all together. You cannot say that 'this is mine' without also saying 'that is theirs', and still claim to be speaking of Rights.The Rights of free speech, association and property are valid only in their proper context, and that context determines the extent of their reach. While you have the right to free speech, you don't have the right to freely and disruptively speak or shout out in a crowded theater, for the simple fact that the other persons in the theater purchased a ticket, as did you, to an undisturbed property in that show during the period it runs, and such speaking or shouting would infringe on the rights of others to enjoy the show in peace, all of which was purchased from the owner of the theater, and who would be well within his rights to eject you.

By the same token, if someone wants to allow smoking in their restaurant, because it is their property, they have that right. If they wish to divide their property into a smoking and non-smoking section, they have that right to do or not do that. If they wish to make their property an entirely non-smoking area, they have that right as well. But you, and I, do not have the Right to tell them to do with their property, what we would have them do with it, if it were ours.

Just because you enjoy eating at a restaurant, that does not give you the right to deny the owner of that restaurant his right to say whether or not he will allow people to smoke in his restaurant! If you fear that your children's health is endangered by second hand smoke, don't take them into property where smoking is allowed.

We do not have the Right to dispense with another's Rights, as if they were our own. And it is for that very reason, that we can be secure in our Right to do with our property and person what we will, so long as we are not treading upon another's right to do otherwise. If you seek to use the the force of law to say 'this is mine' and 'what is theirs is theirs if I don't mind them having it', there's one thing you can be sure of - what you think is 'mine' will be yours only as long as someone else doesn't want it - up to and including your children. How good for their health is that going to be?

Private Property In Public
There is of course such a thing as being out in public and you do have the Right to be free from having someone walking up to you in public while trailing or blowing smoke into your clothing or lungs, don't you? Yes, you do, and again the reason why rests upon the right to Private Property. What is it we mean by being out in Public? Does being in 'public' mean something other than being amongst people you don't know? If a Realtor brings people into your bedroom while showing your house, does that make your bedroom no longer your private property?

In the sense we're using it here, being out in public, being on Public property simply means being in an area which is not privately owned. Even when out in Public, you still have a right of control over your property and person, but you do not have a right to damage another's person or property. If someone deliberately walks up and blows their smoke into your car window, or while walking past you they deliberately blow smoke onto your clothing or even into your face, they have violated your property rights and might even arguably have committed assault. Why? Because they are imposing, by force of action, their choices over your own, they are taking control of what is yours, where they have no right to do so - because of their property you have in your rights.

The key here is in recognizing the difference between what is public, and what is private.
Now while it's fairly clear cut that if someone is strolling along a public street and blows smoke into your property or person, it's obvious they are imposing upon what is yours. But that clarity begins to fade as distance is increased, doesn't it? If they are walking down the sidewalk, aware or unaware of your presence, passing withing five feet of you, can they still reasonably be said to be imposing upon your rights to your property?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Ten feet? Twenty? It's in the ambiguous areas of public interaction, where reasonable people must come to reasonable agreements upon what, and where, it is possible to say 'this is mine' and 'that is theirs', and it is just such situations where local laws and regulations can and must, quite properly, be made. Local representative government is given the task of coming to reasonable decisions, agreed to (implicitly or explicitly) by a majority of the voting public, in order to define just what will be declared and recognized as proper boundaries and behavior between private persons when out in public spaces.

And they are enabled to do so because of the concept of Property Rights.

Can some public places be declared smoke free zones? Sure, there's a basis for that, in certain delimited areas, a small park or concert area, I don't see a problem with smoking being declared illegal because the act of smoking might conceivably be impossible to be seen as not invading on the property and peace of another, just as blaring loud music might be declared unlawful in others. In those public spaces, smoking or no-smoking, or quiet zones can properly be declared. But again, not in spite of, but because of Property Rights.

But no member of the public has a right to declare any part or extent of the property of another as being no longer theirs. It is because of Property Rights, and the Individual Rights they make possible, and which are reliant upon them, that we are able to have a civilized society. If you can't say 'That is theirs!' with just as much gusto as you declare 'This is mine!', then you are the barbarian at the gates!

When any member of the public attempts to wipe out the rightful claim which one person has to their property, attempts to deny their right to what is theirs in order to force them to use it in such a way as pleases those who have no right to it, then the Rights of every member of that society are diminished, if not outright gutted. Such a thing asserts the power of the mob over the Rights of individuals, and believe you me, those in power take notice.

For those of you old enough to remember... do you remember when 'Big Tobacco' warned us that if you let them tell us what to do with our property, tell us we have to put labels on our packages, then they'll be after you next? They'll begin regulating and controlling every part of your lives next? Remember how we all laughed at that?

"Ehlmann said in his veto message. "If t___ is harmful, there is no reason to exempt ___, while regulating ___that allow ___."

Doesn't it suck when a joke turns out to be the truth? Might as well fill in the blanks there, you can bet that those who want the power to do so, are working diligently right now to protect you from yourself, right now.

And when they do, everyone's Individual Rights are bound and determined to go up in smoke.