Dress Standards on Public Transportation, and other things

You're sitting on a public bus, and your stop is about half an hour away. The bus is gradually getting more crowded, and newcomers are standing in the aisle holding on to hand rails. A man gets on and stands right in front of you. He acts completely normally - he says "Excuse me" and "Thank you", he awkwardly smiles the way you're supposed to on a crowded city bus, etc. - but there's one thing that makes him look more than a little unusual, and which makes other people feel very uncomfortable. He's completely naked.

This is a city bus - it's supposed to be for everybody who either can't or doesn't want to ride in a car or ride a bike. And we know that, in freer societies like ours, we're supposed to be free to do with ourselves as we please. Is it okay to kick him off the bus, or to not allow him on the bus in the first place? In some cases, yes. But wouldn't that violate his sovereignty over himself? I don't think so.

You should be free to walk around your own bedroom and bathroom naked. If your curtains are drawn, you should be free to walk around your entire house completely naked. If your neighbors permit, you should be free to walk around their house completely naked. If the owner of a restaurant permits, you should be perfectly free to sit at a table and enjoy a meal completely naked. You do not, however, have the right to present yourself unclothed on the property of anyone who doesn't consent to your nudity. You have sovereignty over yourself and what is yours; you do not have sovereignty over other people and their property.

We see the signs in restaurants that say "No shoes, no shirt, no service", and we never think twice about whether excluding someone who isn't properly clothed according to that sign violates those people's rights. Restaurant owners want to maintain a certain atmosphere that caters to a particular segment of the population (those who don't want to be offended by the presence of shirtless people), and to run their business the way they want to run it (which they have a right to) they have to make clear certain rules about how they want their property used. When a shirtless man walks in, no one violates his rights by refusing to take his order. If he really wants to have a shirtless restaurant experience, he could go to a restaurant that caters to people who don't mind the presence of shirtless patrons.

So, if a naked man gets on a bus where nudity is forbidden by the owner, the driver has every right to keep him from getting on. The only problem with applying this line of reasoning to city buses is that city buses belong to "the city" and not anyone in particular. But that isn't a problem with this line of reasoning. That's a problem with the oxymoronic idea of "public" ownership. Things that are publicly owned are supposedly owned and run by everybody for everybody. But we know that "public" services are funded by one segment of society (not everybody), distributed by another segment of society (again, not everybody) for the benefit of a very select segment of society (again, not everybody).

But I think I can address the problem of dress standards on public transportation without opining that tax subsidies for public transportation violate individuals' property rights, or that the most efficient mass transit is private mass transit.

As I wrote above, the restaurant managers want to cater to a certain crowd, and to do that they have to have certain rules that express the dining preferences of that crowd. "No shoes, no shirt, no service" is a condition of use that expresses these preferences. If you want to be served, you have to be wearing shoes and a shirt.

In order to cater to a target ridership, the owners of public transportation services (whether they be public officials or private entrepreneurs) should be free to lay down conditions of use that express the riding preferences of that crowd. If a significant portion of the target ridership happen to be very socially conservative (as many working-class people are), then they might want to and should be free to take that social conservatism into account.

When I was taking summer classes at Cal, I drove to Fremont and took BART to downtown Berkeley. One day (I forgot whether it was the morning or afternoon) a woman and her 2-year-old daughter got on and sat right across from me. The girl was making a lot of noise, the mom was speaking to her in some Central or Eastern European language, and suddenly the girl was quiet. I looked up from my book, and saw that this woman was nursing her daughter (who was old enough to talk) on this train. They didn't hide it with a towel or anything.

Now, I didn't mind at all. If you want to nurse your kid right in front of me, you have my blessing. But you might not have the blessing of the other people on the bus or train. Luckily for her no one reacted with horror, and I doubt anyone would in the Bay Area. Even if people did dislike it, it would have to be a chronic "problem" and the number of people offended by it would have to be sufficiently large for any drop in business to be noticed.

If there are enough people who are offended by it, and if there are enough women who insist on nursing or pumping in transit, then the train or bus company can solve the problem by designating nursing cars or walled-off nursing sections in cars. Likewise, if there are enough people who are offended by nudity, and if there are enough people who insist on traveling nude, then the train or bus company can solve the problem by designating clothing-optional cars and buses. So long as people get on the proper car or bus, no one would be made a captive audience to the offending exposure.

Many urban areas in the U.S. are seeing a sharp increase in the number of conservative Muslim immigrants. Some of these women find it more appropriate to not be in any situation where their bodies are pressed against the bodies of men they aren't married to, and they would be very reluctant to get on a crowded car or bus. As of now, there aren't enough of them to make an impact, and women who prefer to not be touched by strange men just somehow make do. If transportation services in the U.S. want to cater to these women in the future, when the number of them might be drastically higher than it is now, they might want to consider designating women-and-children-only cars and buses, or women-and-children-only sections of cars and buses.

Before you spout off screaming "Segregation!", let me point out that we already have restrooms segregated by sex. Most women prefer to have a restroom experience that is free of men, and in response to this overall preference shopping malls, restaurants, train stations, and office buildings provide restrooms reserved only for women. No normal person would say that the women are discriminated against for having restrooms reserved specifically for them, or that men are discriminated against for not being allowed to use restrooms that women use.

And don't worry about this being some kind of special priviledge. It's just that in the near future there's going to be a large number of people who want a particular kind of service, just as there are large numbers of people today who want particular kinds of service, and if you can make a buck providing that kind of service then why not? So long as no one's assaulted, defrauded, burgled, or in some other way deprived of their sovereignty over themselves, the provision of special services is completely legitimate.

Another possible objection to women-only cars and buses can come from people who are bothered by social heterogeneity. If a society is to be stable, they say, then it must run on values that are shared by everyone, and allowing separate cars for women out of consideration for conservative muslim immigrants allows pockets of recent immigrants to exist as third-world peoples in an otherwise modern America. Now, whatever America's values are, social homogeneity shouldn't be one of them. We should be a people who tolerate experimentation - not just in technology, but also in ways of relating to each other. The fact that some people wear more clothes than you do, or separate themselves from the opposite gender more than you do, should be no political concern of yours. We pride ourselves in our freedom to live by the values we choose, and we even like to pretend that our nation was founded on that freedom. If other people value the segregation of sexes, then let them live according to that value. They don't violate your liberty by getting on their own train cars.

Did you ever wonder why there are a million different kinds of churches in America? It's because here we're relatively free to live according to the values we choose, so long as we allow others the same freedom. One of the main rules in "doing church" in America has been: If you don't like our rules, start your own church. And so for the past couple hundred years people have associated according to their shared ideas of what's right. We don't have an established church. No one's forced to go to any particular kind of church. We don't force everyone to adhere to the same church polity, listen to the same religious music, or keep the same dress code. If that's the freedom we're allowed in religion, why shouldn't we be allowed it in mass transit?

My radical proposal is this: allow people to choose their own rules. If they don't want naked guys on their buses, let them keep naked guys from getting on. If they want to be naked on the bus, let them have buses where they can be naked. If women want to go topless, they can get on the naked buses too. If women don't want to be touched by men they don't know, let them have women-only buses. This isn't an issue of what's appropriate in public. It's an issue of what preferences people have. And if this is to be a free country, entrepreneurs should be allowed to cater to different people's preferences.

Individualism

In matters of politics and social morality, I consider myself a "purified individualist". Now, by individualist, I don't mean long bangs and skinny jeans and music with unpredictable tempo changes and disorienting time signatures. I don't mean intentionally acting in ways that other people find distasteful. I don't mean crossdressing for the sake of insulting someone's sense of gender-appropriateness. Though some of you might think of me when you hear of things like that, that's not what I mean when I say my political ideology is Individualism.

By "Individualism", I mean that radical idea that you don't own other people, that you have no right to do anything to them that they don't want done, take anything from them that they don't want to give, or threaten to do any of those things, so long as they're not intruding into someone else's matters. Think of it this way: Every man is his own king, with absolute sovereignty over his own life (and every woman is her own queen, etc.). Sure, it means that if a guy wants to wear a dress just so he could insult other peoples' sense of gender-appropriateness, then you have to let him do it (unless of course, he's violating someone's property rights while he's at it). But that's all that it means. It doesn't mean that you have to act so different that other people say "omg, you're such an individual."

In his essay on Henry David Thoreau, Randall Conrad wrote "Despite his deep-rooted individualism, Thoreau was readily moved to activism against injustice." Randall's use of the word "individualism" doesn't match the way I use it. Randall uses it as if it means isolationism. Now there is a type of foreign policy called "isolationism", which people like me are accused of advocating, but isolationism isn't what's implied by individualism. Isolationism means you have to keep to yourself, and have minimal interaction with others (or stay in your own country, and have minimal interaction with foreigners); Individualism means you have no right to initiate force against another. According to Individualism, you have every right to intervene to stop injustice. You just don't have the right to force other people to help you do it. You could encourage others to help you, but threatening force against nonparticipants isn't the correct way to do it.

Sure, fight your wars of liberation. But

1. Don't kill civilians (that's murder);
2. Don't force other people to pay for it (that's robbery); and
3. Don't force other people to fight your wars for you (that's slavery).

So when you tell me that so-n-so's an individualist like me, you better not be talking about his predisposition to disagree with people, or about some weird diet he's trying (unless it's out of consideration for human or animal rights).

On a less serious note, my second nephew "arrived" yesterday. It wasn't as if he wasn't already here, though. When my sister visited last month it was kinda hard to ignore the fact that there was a baby inside her. And since it was inside her, where else could it have been but right here? Oh well. Since little Jordan was born yesterday, people will celebrate the beginning of his life on August 25th. I, however, will celebrate the beginning of my life in the month that it really began - November.

When I say I espouse "purified individualism", I mean that I believe individual rights don't depend on how drastically you can affect the world around you. They don't depend on what you've contributed, how strong you are, how smart you are, how many people you know, or any of that. They don't depend on your physical or mental capacities or state of development. If you have rights as an individual, then your rights don't depend on how others value you. They don't depend on your race, mother tongue, species, or age. You have them whether you're an adult human, a fetus, or an animal... I constantly strive to purge from my ethical framework all forms of anti-individualism, from utilitarianism to is-ought-ism. That's why I say "purified individualism".

ONE OF MY -ISM PRISMS

The conventional spectrum for political viewpoints doesn't make much sense.

Conservatives hate big government, supposedly. But they love taxes, subsidies, centralization, and regulation when it comes to the military and "national security". They don't want the government telling us what medicine to take, but they do want the government to tell us what drugs are too dangerous to take, and they think the government isn't throwing enough people in prison for taking or selling the dangerous drugs.

Liberals supposedly think we should be free to put whatever we want into our bodies. But they too want to protect us from the dangerous drugs, and so they want all sorts of regulation in place - God forbid we be allowed to take the wrong medicine. They oppose the wasteful military-industrial complex, but they just love the medical-industrial complex, and they want to expand it even more.

Sticking "Conservatives" on the Right and "Liberals" on the Left really doesn't help us map things out. Probably the most important question to ask when mapping out political beliefs is this: Who owns your body? How people answer this question should determine where they fit on the spectrum.

If they answer "your parents" or "your family", then they go on the right end of this spectrum under "Family-ism". According to this view, the people you inherently owe duties to are the ones in your family. Your parents can assign you chores whether you like them or not, and how much your allowance will be or even whether or not you'll get one; they can decide when you'll work in the family store and whether you'll be paid; they can demand that you accomodate them in your house when they get old and that you wipe them up after they make a mess in their bed; etc. They can decide what type of medical treatment you get, and no one else, not you, not the neighbors, and definitely not the government, can decide that for you; they can decide what kind of education, if any, you'll get, and again, no one else, not you, not the neighbors, and definitely not the government, can decide that; they can decide whether and how severely and by what methods you'll be disciplined; etc.

Just to the left of this kind of Family-ism is Extended Family-ism. Think of the Samoan girls who can't go out without getting permission not just from their parents but also from their siblings and uncles and aunts and grandparents. And you can think of my dad spanking my cousin for kicking my grandpa and yelling "Get out Fatso!"

To the left of that is Tribalism. According to this view, your most weighty inherent duties are not to your family or extended family, but to a larger class of people that you're somehow related to. There's one other trait that most other -isms have, but which I'll bring up here - the collective person. I could have brought it up under Family-ism. When the stolen gold and clothes were found in Achan's tent, he and his whole family were stoned to death. They all collectively shared the responsibility for his wrongdoing. But we usually think of tribalist feuds when we think of random people being punished for the sins of other members of their group.

When the tribe is defined in terms of a monopoly of violence, it's called a "nation". According to Nationalism, you owe your most valuable inherent duties not to your family, church, or ethnicity, but to that enterprise that holds the monopoly of violence over the geographic area you happen to be in. You ultimately belong to the State. It is the State (or, in American English, "the government") that dictates how long you'll work and what job you're permitted to work, how much money you'll be paid, how much money you'll give where, by what procedure you can become a member of the State, and whether you'll go to war. All members of the State are members of one collective person, all belonging mutually to each other, as if they all were married in one gigantic polygamous wedding when they were born (or when they were naturalized).

I wrote earlier that war is just a really big drive-by shooting. It's also a really big tribal feud. Since the members of the Nation are just body parts of the same collective person, individuals can be knocked off for their government's wrongdoing. Civilian deaths really aren't murder, according to Nationalism, because the civilians share their nation's guilt. Terrorism is wrong, not because innocent civilians are killed, but because they're killed by people who aren't owned by a Nation State.

"Conservatism" and "Liberalism" are really just different types of Nationalism. The stereotypical liberal thinks we should have unions and licensing to block out competition and protect the wages of American workers. The stereotypical conservative thinks we should have fences and cameras and armed guards along the border to make sure nobody "steals our jobs". They both want to use government intervention to dole out favors that wouldn't and couldn't be gotten through voluntary interaction. They both want a monopoly of violence to limit individual freedom for the benefit of the collective. They're both Socialist, because they're both Statist.

Up until the current recession, Nationalism was being outmoded by a more chic kind of collectivism - Internationalism. Why did we invade Iraq? Not just to protect America from the terrorists who weren't there yet, but also to liberate the Iraqi people from their tyrant. And why do we keep our troops out there in two unwinnable wars? Because our obligations to the Iraqi and Afghani people dictate that we continue spending American blood and American tax dollars in foreign lands. Nevermind the bridges, we got some liberating to do!

Not only do we have enforceable obligations to fund the Iraqi and Afghani war efforts, we also have the enforceable obligation to fund the Israeli war effort. Because, after all, we belong not just to our own people and our own government, but also to the governments that our government has especially good relations with. So long as money is taken from us by force to build F-16s and tanks and missiles, some of those F-16s and tanks and missiles will go to the State of Israel for their seasonal games.

Foaming-at-the-mouth Neocon "patriots" aren't the only ones who want U.S. troops and tax dollars spent abroad. You can probably think of some genocide somewhere that some "progressive" wants the U.S. military to stop. But the military isn't the only tool in their box. They also want us to send more food, more investment in their underdeveloped markets, more subsidies for their infrastructure, more oversight of their elections, more AIDS medicine, and many more types of foreign aide that'll be lost in bureaucracy - basically, more hand-outs to corrupt governments - all wrung from our noses by threats of imprisonment and deprivation.

Internationalism is just a more leftist kind of Nationalism. And in some cases, it leads to an international State. Think of the European Union. The Brit doesn't owe large sums of his money only to his compatriots for their healthcare and education; now, he owes something to just about everybody in an EU-member country. He doesn't just have to obey the regulations dictated by Parliament; now he has to worry about the dictates of Brussels.

The central idea of Internationalism is that we are a collective person with people who are not part of our Nation, that we owe foreigners the same supposed duties we owe our compatriots, that whatever it takes to give foreigners a decent life can rightfully be taken from us by force, that we have the authority to take control of foreign countries - basically, that we belong to foreigners and that foreigners belong to us. The logical consequence of this is Globalism - the rank leftist idea that everybody in the whole world belongs to everybody in the whole world. Whatever it takes to give everybody in the whole world a decent life can be taken from everybody in the whole world by threat of force. Naturally, the solution to all the problems in the whole world is one world government.

So there you have it. The better political spectrum shows family-ism on the right, where individuals are owned by their families, Nationalism in the middle, where individuals are owned by the Nation State, and Globalism on the far left, where everybody is owned by everybody.

You'll notice that the further left you go on the spectrum, the less voluntary (or rather, the more involuntary) the ownership relation. If you hate your parents, you could theoretically disown them. If you don't like your country, you could expatriate. It would be really hard to, but it's possible if you're rich enough. If you don't like the world, though, well that's gonna be hard to run away from.

Also, the further left the ownership relation, the less control you have over the decision-making process. Just think of it this way - the bigger the body of people, the more diluted your voice is. Democracy can "work" in a city-state or a commune; it can't work in a nation-state or a world government, since people have virtually no say in what goes on.

And, the bigger the body of people, the bigger their administrative body will have to be, meaning that more resources would be soaked upward through that pyramid scheme called "government".

Secessionists, devolutionists, and others who believe in decentralization lean towards the right of this spectrum. Some of them want more powers to be transferred from the Federal government to the States. Some of them want the states in their region to secede completely and be their own country. Some of them go further. When they say "small government", they really mean small government - small like The Free and Sovereign City of Santa Clara type small. Then there's me.

I really don't fit anywhere on this spectrum. If you were to try to place me, you'd have to put me off to the right of it. I don't think the individual is owned by anybody. No one is entitled to any inherent duties from the individual, not even the parents. Whatever rights the parents have over their kids are very, very limited. And government has absolutely no rights over children. No one has inherent authority over another. Not family, not government, not international peace-keeping organizations.

I admit it, this spectrum is still a spectrum, and so it only works on an issue-by-issue basis. Typical conservatives are Familyist in most private matters, Nationalist when it comes to abortion, Internationalist when it comes to military defense, and Familyist when it comes to economic matters besides immigration, in which they are Nationalist. Typical liberals are Nationalist when it comes to the family, except for abortion, in which most of them are Familyist (the unborn fetus is property to be disposed of by the mother) (though some of them are Nationalist or even Internationalist in that they think government programs to encourage aborting unwanted fetuses would work towards the common good), Nationalist when it comes to health insurance, Nationalist or Internationalist when it comes to the economy and finance, and Internationalist when it comes to military defense and the environment.

Also, the result it gives depends on how you define the individual. By my definition, the pro-choice libertarian isn't an Individualist, but a Familyist. But by the pro-choice libertarian's definition, she would be an Individualist and I would be the Familyist/Tribalist/Nationalist/some other kind of anti-individualist.

Another political spectrum would be useful. Rather than ask "Who owns you?" it could ask "What is sovereign?" That would have to be the topic of another post.

Sex and Right, Part 3

There are two opposing and equally insufficient ways to get morality: one is egoism, the other altruism. Moral egoism is the view that what is right to do is whatever one thinks is best for oneself. The well-being of others is relevant only so long as it secures one's own well-being. I have a few things to say about this view, but you'll have to wait for my next Sex and Right post to read them. For now, let's look at moral altruism.

Moral altruism is the view that every individual has the inherrent (that is, you have it whether you want it or not), moral obligation to live for others. This isn't the negative obligation to refrain from hurting other people and damaging their property. It's the positive obligation to actively help people to live comfortably. Now, if you think you do have that obligation, I have no problem with you living completely for others. You even have my respect. But most altruists go further than living entirely for others.

To the most egalitarian altruists, the obligation to live for others is an enforceable obligation. Not only do you have to pay for the education of kids you've never seen before - if you don't, the amount of money you owe "society" gets taken away from you. And if you try to resist, you get treated as if you were the one stealing. This is the chic ideology preached from all our pulpits, from White House youtube ads to "Town Hall Meentings" and press conferences on C-SPAN to really bad t-shirts in the mall.

Let's look deeper at this kind of altruism, and see what its logical consequences are.

When they say we have to work for the benefit of others, what do they mean when they say "benefit"? Well, no one can ever talk about a benefit without talking about something that increases someone's happiness. When we talk about the benefits of contemporary life, we're really talking about the level of comfort we have - the amount of free time we have, the quantity, intensity, and accessibility of leisure, the spaciousness of our homes (and whether we have homes), cleanliness, the abundance and variety of food, and the absence of unpleasantries such as physical abuse, extreme social tension, and disease. So altruism is really the view that we all have the inherent, enforceable positive obligation to make other people happy. Since this obligation is enforceable, other people are entitled to force us to make them happy.

(Now, if the purpose of my life is the other guy's happiness, then I don't see what's so wrong with just working for my own happiness. But I digress...)

We're forced to provide housing for those who cannot afford it on their own. We're forced to buy food - through food stamps - for people who cannot feed their whole family. If a man can't afford to send his kid to school, we pay for the education for him. And when his kid is done with school, we send him to college. And we're forced to do it. (And we're forced to fund the rich man's war.) We're compelled to meet such a variety of physical and mental needs, I'm surprised sex isn't one of those needs.

Who's to say sex isn't one of those needs? Very few people live their entire lives celibate. Just look at how many people around you have sex or used to regularly have sex. It's something we're wired to want. And people live much more comfortably when they have a fulfilling sexual outlet. An imam in Iran was griping about women's clothing, and said that once he soiled himself in the car when he passed a woman on the street who wasn't properly covered. That's what happens when men neglect their physical needs.

Since sex is a need just like housing and food, why not mandate the provision of sex? Men have to register for compulsory military service - why not have women register for compulsory sexual service? It'll be all for the greater good. People who don't have access to basic services like food and housing go and steal to meet their needs. Men who don't have access to the baser services are going to rape or do some other ridiculous thing to meet that need.

Think compulsory sexual service is too extreme? Well then, instead of having a draft, we can change our sex reform to merely prohibit discrimination in sexual matters. No longer should people be free to discriminate by body type, facial structure, personality, or odor. You unjustly deny people's right to a full and happy life when you deny access according to physical traits.

This all sounds absurd, and rightly so. A woman's body is her temple, and trespassing on it is sacrilege. Her body is hers and only hers. No one else is entitled to it without her permission. (My views on abortion and a few other things can be found here.)

Now, if no one is entitled to a woman's body without her permission, why are other people entitled to the fruit of a woman's labor without her permission? By what authority can an agency (the government) dictate that such and such proportion of a woman's income is due to other people? Doesn't that sound like slavery?

The altruism that leftists preach amounts to institutionalized rape. It demands that we be forced to do things to make other people happy, as if other people are entitled to our bodies. If any one word can describe this, it's RAPE.

Here's an especially American kind of sex "reform". Instead of having a cumbersome sex draft, just have an adult entertainment licensing program that requires each adult film actress who wants a license to do a film every other year to be broadcast on a public tv channel, maybe C-SPAN X. And you can legalize prostitution and regulate it with a licensing program that has a pro bono quota. And the anti-discrimination law I mentioned above is an essential part of any American "reform"...

Church Report!

A book report is a "short" summary of a book you're supposed to have read. You might remember doing a few of those in elementary school. Today I'm going to do a church report. I'm going to give an overview of churches I've visited since I stopped attending my parents' church, and I'm going to say a few things I think of them.

I've already posted a video on what things I'm looking for in churches, but that wasn't really a report. I didn't say whether these churches actually have those things I'm looking for. That's what I'm going to do here.

The first church I visited was the Friends' Meeting in San Jose. I feel sorry that the one thing I've ever written about them was a little negative. So before I say what I'm going to, I must point out that the Quaker Church in San Jose is a charming little place that everyone should visit at least once. I should also say that the Quakers are generous enough to allow Santa Clara County Activists for Animals to use their building for free. I can't be grateful enough for that. They also have a potluck almost every Sunday.

Now, to say what I think of them as a church. I mentioned in my video that the first church to officially endorse universal healthcare is the first one I'll stop going to. The Quaker Church did just that when they passed a minute in their "Business Worship" calling for mandatory, federally-funded health coverage and expressing preference for a single-payer system.

Someone had contended in the previous business meeting that forcing people to get health coverage can be a violation of their conscience, so they postponed the decision for a month (business meetings are once a month). That person wasn't at this meeting, everyone knew she wouldn't be at the meeting, and they passed the minute without her. I could have raised my voice in opposition, but there were a few reasons I didn't. For one thing, I am not a "convinced" Quaker. Even though I am welcome to participate in the business meeting, and even though they wouldn't pass a measure if I oppose it, I feel very uncomfortable keeping them from saying something that 99% of them agree with. I also felt uncomfortable saying anything against it because just the previous business meeting I sternly told all of them that I oppose the use of lethal force against any sentient being on my behalf, and that they're going to have to figure out a way to deal with their gopher problem without killing any gophers. I hate to sound like the contrarian.

Another thing I should say about Quaker business meetings: the size of the church more than doubles - maybe quadruples - on business meeting days. Lots and lots of people show up only on the Sunday that they have the business meetings. There are other people who show up a little more often, but maybe every other Sunday. I didn't say this in my video, but that's not the type of attendance I want to see in a church. I really can't "do church" with people who I can't count on being there every week.

There is one other reason I will likely decide against making the Friends' Meeting my "home church". I don't have a Quaker temperament. I can't deal with keeping my eyes closed and sitting still in complete silence for a whole hour. I wasn't raised a Quaker. I was raised a Baptist. I need someone standing above me looking down at me telling me what I should and shouldn't do. And I need lots and lots of music.

Lots and lots of music (and someone telling me what to do) can be heard at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Santa Clara. If you like hymns and organs, St. Mark's is a place you should visit. Also, there's an impressive diversity in the congregation - you can find just about any kind of person there, so long as they're white (or a black autistic kid adopted by a lesbian couple). But seriously, there are both conservatives and liberals in the church, and that would make a quasi-conservative like me quite happy.

As is common in Episcopal churches, the preacher is a white woman who talks as if she's everybody's mother. And her sermon dripped with the 3-letter G-word. If you could wring it out, it would still drip with that word.

Like the services of other noticeably Catholic denominations, the Episcopal service revolves around the Eucharist. And as in other noticeably Catholic denominations, the Eucharist is performed after everyone recites the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed. Both these creeds declare belief in "God, the Father Almighty" who made the earth and everything on it. I already wrote a Facebook note entitled "Went to Church Today" where I explain my discomfort with this, but I'll write it here. If I take Communion after professing belief in the "Maker of all things visible and invisible", wouldn't I then be endorsing the food chain, and thus the subjugation of innumerable sentient beings? If God is not the creator of evil, then he cannot be the creator of the natural order.

The Episcopal church has Open Communion, meaning everybody is allowed to take it. So in Episcopal services everyone takes communion, except me. And that's kindof weird.

First Unitarian Church of San Jose is much less specific with its God concepts. They use amorphous, pantheistic words like "Spirit". Now, pantheism really doesn't get around the problem, because if God is the natural order then God is evil. And if God is that spontaneous force inside each of us that moves us towards collective action, then the Rodney King riots were godly acts.

I can put up with pantheism, though. I can also put up with all the women preachers who talk like they're everybody's mother. And I can put up with all the male preachers who talk like they're everybody's mother. What I can't put up with is all the unfamiliarity that comes with a UU service. Last summer I stopped going to the UU church in San Diego because they all did the Hokey Pokey before sending the kids off to Sunday school. I haven't seen them do the Hokey Pokey in the San Jose church, but I have seen a screening of a video on all the different "paths" in Latin America. It mentioned the evil Spaniards who "robbed" the Indians of their culture and imposed Roman Catholocism, and it also mentioned that charming little tribe that wanders the mountains of Central America completely naked, with only the simplest tools, and worshiping only the nature around them. It also mentioned the phrase "Two is less than One", which I'm still trying to mull over in my head. After mentioning Santeria and other syncretist paths, the narrator suggested that the Unitarian Universalist Church can offer a syncretist path that weaves together the religious symbols and meanings of all these paths and thereby helps each Latino and Latina to find spiritual meaning in a search of different and related paths.

If that is what I'm going to see after two services in a UU church, what else am I going to see? The video was bad sociology. It does what sociologists call an "eroticization of the other". "Oh look at the cute little Indians wandering naked in the mountains, they must be so much more content than we are!" This video was a symptom of a disorder that I have yet to find a name for. These people like blowing their minds with ideas that are flat-out incomprehensible. You don't have to smoke weed and watch Zeitgeist - just go to the local UU church!

A via media between St. Mark's and First Unitarian can be found at First Congregational Church of San Jose. They have an openness about their God concepts that somehow still fits into a Christian framework. Their Communion prayers were about as theologically non-descript as is humanly possible. That's really nice, cause I would be able to fully participate without worrying about worshipping the wrong kind of God. They have that wonderfully traditional set-up: altar front and center, with a lectern on the right and a raised pulpit on the left, and a HUGE cross hanging from the ceiling. There are plenty of hymns in the service, all accompanied by an organ. Today there was a lot of special music by the handbell choir, and it was very pretty. After the service there was an adult class on border issues. They have another one next week, but I won't be able to attend that class cause I'll be with my family at a memorial lunch for my Aunt Pat. But I do plan on attending that church a little more. I also hear that on Mardi Gras they put on a Talent/No Talent Show. Yeah I know, that's the totally wrong reason to decide on a church. But it shows I might be able to actively participate in this church.

The minister who did the adult education class suggested I look into an American Baptist church, since I was raised a Baptist. Sounds like a good idea, but I might think of that church in the same way I think of the Episcopalian church. At any rate, it's worth looking into.

In short, I haven't finished church shopping. I might have to add more "candidates" to my list. But for now I'll keep going to First Congregational, just to see what I could see.

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Update: The United Church of Christ, which First Congregational is a member of, officially supports H.R. 676 and/or any other health care reform intended to meet certain goals. Of course, the only option that meets the goals of universal access, affordability, comprehensive benefits, choice in physicians and other health care providers, and the elimination of racial and ethnic disparities in coverage is a fully private system, but I don't blame the UCC for not knowing that. You'll notice a completely misinformed, misleading, and delusional cartoon at the bottom of the page.

Seems I have to accept that there isn't such a thing as a liberal church that isn't socialist. I might have to change my criteria: instead of making an official socialist stance a grounds for disconsidering, I'll have to look at whether (a) socialist positions are preached from the pulpit, and (b) whether I look like I share that position by attending as a visitor and listening. First Congregational can be forgiven, I guess, since health "reform" was supported at the denominational level, and not advocated by a vote of unison by the congregation. I wouldn't be advocating health "reform" by visiting and listening to their hymns and sermons. The Quaker church, on the other hand, relies on what they call consensus, which means they don't approve of anything unless there isn't a single objection raised. Since I didn't raise any objection to their health minute - even though I'm not a member of the church - I supposedly supported health care "reform".

I did a search at American Baptist Churches' website and found that I already have visited the local ABC church. In fact, one of their members (and maybe their church pianist) was my piano teacher for a time. I also once visited that church with my brother and parents, back when we were church shopping as a family. That was the first time I heard a sermon given by a woman. She was sporting a sharp suit dress and heels. And she was using Power Point. The music was done by a worship band, which basically is what you would hear if you tune in to FM 91.9 K-LOVE. And the church is way too theologically conventional. Overall, the praxy isn't anywhere near ortho enough, but the doxy is WAY too ortho.

Bisectuality

An article that the Sword of the Lord borrowed from the Institute on Religion and Democracy caught my eye: "The apparent rejection of a controversial candidate for bishop in the Episcopal Church could be a historic move...Kevin Thew Forrester has not received the necessary consent of the majority of the diocesan standing committees...

"...Forrester first drew attention for his Zen Buddhist 'lay' ordination, earning him the moniker of the 'Buddhist Bishop.' Further investigation of his practices revealed unilateral editing of the Book of Common Prayer's baptismal rite and the inserting of a verse from the Koran into a church service as the Word of God."

What's the Qur'an verse that Forrester stuck in? According to these folks, the verse was: "Those who fulfill Allah's pact, and break not the covenant, and those who join what Allah has commanded to be joined, and fear their Lord, and dread the evil reckoning". Since "Allah" is just the literal Arabic word (al ilah) for "The God", you could stick "God" or "The Lord" wherever the passage says "Allah" and you'll get something that sounds like it came straight out of the Bible.

We can infer that Forrerster has a non-fundamentalist view of the "Word of God". He finds religious inspiration in all sorts of places, and judges a passage not by what book it came from but by what it says. Forrester is one of those people who treats non-Christian religious texts the same way they treat the Bible - pick this passage and that passage, interpret this one way and that another, and pretend the rest isn't there until someone presses you to acknowledge that it actually is, and then brush it off as being for another people in another time. Of course, fundamentalists treat the Bible the same exact way, but I've already written about that.

These Episcopalians concede that Buddhist meditation doesn't necessarily conflict with Christianity, but they question whether a bi-sect-ual Bishop can "guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church". I don't know the answer to that question, and I'm not the one to give it. That answer should be given by the diocesan standing committees, and apparently they gave it.

"...The last candidate rejected on purely theological grounds was James de Koven, denied consent as bishop of Illinois in 1875."

Like Forrester, James deKoven was elected bishop, but not given consent by the committees. He was a leader of the "Anglo-Catholic" movement, and his ritualist stance was too controversial. He had it easy, though - being denied an episcopate wasn't the worst penalty some men received for not being Protestant enough.

"Smells and Bells" were pretty much banned in the Anglican Episcopal Church by Parliament's passage of the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874. Five priests did time in prison after being prosecuted under this law. They weren't imprisoned for breaking this law, though. They were imprisoned for "contempt of court". Since they rejected the authority of the new law, they rejected the authority of the new court it formed, and so they didn't show up to their court dates.

Prayer in Public Schools

There are three other things I should be doing tonight, and I already made my post for this half of the week, but I just had to write this. Someone I know from my parents' church did a Facebook poll that asks whether prayer should be allowed back in public schools. Of course, she answered yes. And who wouldn't want prayer allowed in school? This is America, not France or Turkey. Shouldn't students and teachers be free to exercise their religion?

Thing is, prayer already is allowed in America's public schools. Sure, Engel v. Vitale and Abington School District v. Schempp prohibit public school-sponsored prayer and Bible reading. But that's school-sponsored prayer. Students and teachers are perfectly free to pray at school on their own time. When I was at Wilcox High School in Santa Clara, I regularly organized and attended lunch-time meetings where Christians sang, prayed, discussed their relationships with God, and even heard preaching. It was perfectly legal. And it'll stay legal until China invades to collect its due.

What isn't legal is when someone gets somebody else's religion shoved down their throat. You aren't allowed to teach from the Bible or lead prayer during class time. If a public school teacher were to teach life lessons from the Bible or lead prayer in class, she would be making an "establishment of religion" - basically, forcing someone to practice a religion that he or she doesn't subscribe to. The government's role (if it has one) is to protect your body and your property, not promote your religion.

An early school prayer case was the Edgerton Bible Case. Catholic parents didn't want their kids being led in devotions from a King James Version Bible, because the KJV is a Protestant translation.

What would happen if prayer were "allowed" back in public schools? Might children be taught passages from the Qur'an? Would children be led in Hail Marys? Would lecturers be invited to teach Hinduism from the Bhagvad Gita? Given the religious make-up of the Silicon Valley today, I wouldn't be surprised if that were to happen.

Remember, no one goes to public school becase they want to. They go because they have to. If they don't, their parents get in trouble. Public school students are a captive audience in the most literal sense. So when students are led to do something in class, they're really forced to do it. If you don't want to be forced to pray the Muslim way, then it only makes sense that other people not be forced to pray your way.

As it is, the law on school prayer might be the best way (short of repealing all truancy laws) to respect all public school students' and teachers' liberties. I hate to defend the government, but on this issue you have to be content.

What I think about the Constitution

The other day a friend of mine asked me what issues I disagree with Ron Paul on (since I love him so much), and I decided that if I wanted to give an answer that my friend deserves I'd better write a blog entry for it. There's a good number of issues where I disagree with the Good Doctor. For one thing, he's no anarchist, and he's explicitly spoken against anarchism. I don't blame him for that one, though. After all, I still voted for him in the primaries. And I shouldn't judge people for engaging in Statist activities like seeking public office when I'm engaging in the Statist activity of voting for them.

One thing where I disagree with Ron Paul has more to do with strategy than with policy. Ron Paul obviously would oppose federal subsidies for agriculture. Every animal rights activist agrees that subsidies for the animal industry are to blame for the existence of factory farms and the abuse that occurs there. Ron Paul could have exploited that by calling for an end to agricultural subsidies. He could have advocated other green libertarian policies like the privatization of water and energy, and used those as examples for why the free market is the only sustainable option. I don't know, maybe it wouldn't have worked to attract more leftists to free market ideas. But at any rate, it would have shown some people that free marketeers have an idea of how a free market can address issues that environmentalists and animal rights activists care about.

There's another issue - gold. Ron Paul keeps saying that our Constitution only allows gold and silver to be legal tender. But the problem isn't that we don't have a gold standard; the problem is that we have legal tender. If we want anything vaguely resembling a free market, we have to have a free market in currency - and that means no one should be forced to accept any particular currency as repayment. By forcing people to accept repayment in a particular currency, you lay out the banana peel for inflation. I've heard Ron Paul, Tom Woods, and Peter Schiff say something like that maybe one or two times and no more, and it's a real tragedy, because now people who regard these guys as authorities on free market economics and who don't have the free time to read Austrian banking theory think that to have a free market we need legal tender with a gold standard.

There are several other issues, but I'll concentrate on this one - the Constitution. Ron Paul seems to think that we can keep a free and prosperous country ruled by a strictly-limited government if we read the U.S. Constitution the same way Hasidic Jews read the Tanakh, Mishnah, and Talmud. There are a few problems with Constitutionalism.

As with any text-based religion, you get the problem of interpretation. Just look at Christian fundamentalists. You get people who think you can loose your salvation, people who think once you're saved you're saved even if you go on a rape and murder spree, people who think God decides who gets saved and who doesn't and your prayers have absolutely nothing to do with it, people who think you're not saved unless you start splashing around speaking a language so foreign not even you can understand, people who think we should enforce Mosaic law in the U.S., Westboro Baptist Church, etc. Sure, you can settle a few things by picking a particular text as your ultimate authority. But the Devil's in the details, and how you interpret that text is going to make a whole world of difference. In the past 200 years our nation's legal theorists developed something called "Constitutional Law", which basically is the practice of ambitiously inferring things from the Constitution that aren't mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. The practice would most suredly have developed even if our forefathers stuck to the Articles. Needless to say, the bounds laid out in the Constitution didn't restrain government. This isn't just because there are power-hungry judges and lawyers and bureaucrats out there. It's because the Constitution is incomplete. Frankly, no piece of paper expresses every implication of the principle of liberty. The U.S. Constitution is a good example of this fact. Try this thought experiment: Do you have a Constitutional right to live?

"Well obviously we must," you might think, "because the Constitution is framed according to principles of individual liberty, and individual liberty would be meaningless without the individual's right to live." But if you do that, wouldn't you be introducing as "Constitutional" something that isn't mentioned anywhere in the Constitution? And wouldn't you be as guilty of misconstruing the Constitution and increasing government's role as the black-robed unelected magistrates who write up pages upon pages of opinions that cite pages upon pages of other opinions, and memos, and briefs?

This brings us to another problem with text-based religions like Constitutionalism - from where does the piece of paper get its authority? "From its adherence to principles of individual liberty," you might insist. Well then, fine and good. I believe in individual liberty. But then, the Constitution would have authority only so far as it falls in line with principles of freedom. Parts that don't adhere to these principles, like Article I Section 8 clauses 1, 2, 3, and 5, and the second half of Article I Section 9 clause 2, have no authority, since they contradict individual liberty.

And another thing about authority. If what we're concerned about is the principle of individual liberty, then why even look at the Constitution? Why not just govern ourselves according to principle?

The UK has no written Constitution, and they're doing just as "fine" as we are. Sure, they have all sorts of intrusions like the NHS and gun control, but our individual states have the same thing, and the Constitution says nothing against them doing that. And our federal government has all sorts of intrusive and money-draining things that aren't provided for in the Constitution, which the Court justifies under the "Necessary and Proper" clause.

So no, the Constitution doesn't work and we don't need it. But let's go further: if what we're concerned about is individual liberty, then the Constitution is - how shall I put this - unconsitutional? The form of government that the Constitution provides for is supposedly "self government", a type of government that, to quote Jefferson, derives "its just powers by consent of the governed". How many of the governed? A majority? And does that mean that government should be free to do whatever the majority wants? Well no, we're drawn to an indirect, limited form of government with checks and balances and a Bill of Rights because we know that whatever the majority wants isn't necessarily right. We have to respect the rights of individuals, not the whims of kings and crowds.

Since we want to protect individual rights, we have to regard "the people" and "the governed" not as a faceless unit (which would be collectivism), but as a sea of individuals. If governments derive their just powers by consent of the governed, then no government has authority over a person who doesn't freely give that authority. It doesn't matter that most everybody else wants the form of government laid out in the Constitution. If they want that government, let them have it. But don't force it onto the minority who don't want it. Just because the Constitution was ratified through democratic means doesn't give its government the right to force everyone in this country to submit to it. Democracy is irrelevant. It's two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.

(And besides, the Constitution was not ratified democratically. Only men were allowed to vote, and land-owning men at that.)

The basic premise of individual liberty is this: that every one is fully sovereign over him or herself, and should be free from invasion of person and property. Since each of us is fully sovereign, none of us should be forced to do things that we don't want to do, or forced to abstain from things that we don't want to abstain from (so long as we're not violating other peoples' rights). That is the rule that governments should follow. If we want to bicker, let's bicker about how to interpret this principle - not how to interpret some piece of paper.

If we want our governments to respect this principle, then we can't have government as we know it. Governments are coercive monopolies - they don't ask the individual for consent. And since they're monopolies, they're bound to grow no matter how limited they are. When there's no competition, there's no incentive to keep costs down, and so the size, inefficiency, and price of government (that is, taxes) increase indefinitely.

Either the form of government laid out in the Constitution can respect individual liberty, or it can't. If it can't, then the U.S. government has no authority and its Constitution is irrelevant. If it can, then we wouldn't recognize it as a government, since it wouldn't assume power over any of us. In other words, if Constitutional government respected our rights, we would all have been able to secede by now, and whether the U.S. Constitution permits a central bank or a public health option would be no concern of ours. This is what I mean when I say "I don't give a shit about the Constitution."

Don't worry about some slippery slope to "progressivism". I'm not loosely interpretting the Constitution to expand government's power. The Constitution already gives government power that it shouldn't have, and if you want to stick to the Constitution, then you want government to keep that unjust power. I'm quite the opposite of a "progressive". I don't want to increase the power of the State. I want to abolish it completely. So please, don't confuse me with Lincoln, T.R., Wilson, F.D.R., L.B.J., Nixon, or any other tyrant that used the founding documents as toilet paper.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, none of these differences kept me from voting for Ron Paul in the Republican primary. If he were to run again in 2012, he'd still have my vote. I might even write him in if he doesn't run. Given the typical choices, every vote for a candidate is thrown away no matter what, so I may as well throw my vote away spectacularly.

Japanese Fire Balloons

On Saturday, May 5, 1945, Joan Patzky and four other junior highers were out on a Sunday School picnic in southern Oregon with their pastor and his 5-months-pregnant wife. They had been hiking that morning, and while the pastor was getting their lunch from the car, Joan saw what looked like a balloon stuck in the trees. She reached for it and yanked. It exploded, killing all but the pastor.

The balloon was one of more than 9,000 fire balloons launched by Japan, and one of the 300 that were found or observed in North America. The six who died that day (seven, really, if you include the pastor's wife's unborn child) were some of the few civilians who died from an Axis attack on North America.

Usually, civilian deaths during war are considered unfortunate side effects of an armed conflict. They're very rarely treated like murders. Intentionally performing actions that are intended to kill civilians and which the agents know may likely kill civilians is called "murder" when the agents are in street clothes and "duty" when the agents wear a uniform.

War is just a really big drive-by shooting. Some people who died deserved it, some people who died didn't, and there's no real way to make sure the only ones who die deserve it. Every government that shells or bombs cities inhabited by civilians intentionally performs acts that obviously will result in civilian deaths, and is nothing better than a criminal gang with big guns and fancy outfits. Killing bystanders in a drive-by shooting is still gang-related murder; killing civilians in war is no different.

The Japanese military was clearly one of the murderers of the seven Oregonians. It launched the balloons, knowing that they may kill civilians, and with the apparent intent to kill civilians. But the Japanese military may not be the only party responsible for the wrongful deaths.

The first launch was in November of 1944. On January 1, 1945, Newsweek ran an article on the "Balloon Mystery". The next day a newspaper ran a similar article. In response, the Office of Censorship instructed newspapers and radio stations to make no mention of balloons and balloon bomb incidents. Reporting on the bombs would "embolden" Japan.

The media complied, and the result was postive, in a way. The Japanese military gave up on the balloon offensive in April. But compliance had its cost. The American public didn't know their country was littered with unexploded ordnance. Had the press reported on the fire balloons, Joan Patzky may have known not to reach for the one she saw, and she and her brother and her friends may have lived fuller lives.

An uninformed public is a vulnerable public. Act to keep them in the dark, and you act against their lives.

The press was guilty of obeying, so maybe they weren't as liable as the government agency that taped their mouths. And since the Office of Censorship didn't intend to kill the Oregonians, it isn't guilty of murdering them. But it is liable for manslaughter. Of course, you don't have to look that hard to find murders that the U.S. Government actually intended.

The U.S. lifted the press blackout after the Oregon deaths. Since the War's end, the remains of 14 fire balloons have been found. The last-known discovery of a functional fire balloon was in 1955 - its payload still lethal after 10 years of rust.

Sex and Right, Part 2

By their own standards, the Islamist governments are quite merciful. People aren't hanged for every sexual offence. They are only hanged for very serious crimes like prostitution, incest, homosexuality, and adultery. Other kinds of extra-marital sex are punished with some kind of judicial corporal punishment, which usually consists in beating a clothed woman or semi-nude man with a rod as big as a yardstick. "In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful..."

In the first post of this series I mentioned a 3-shelf hierarchy of prohibitions which (I failed to say) just about everybody uses. At the top, in shelf A, are the things that are so wrong that they should be punishable by law. In the middle, in shelf B, are things that shouldn't be punished by law, but which people have a right to disapprove of. At the bottom, in shelf C, are those things that are so benign that individuals should be free to choose them without fear of either public or private censure. The purpose of this series is to examine the ways people put different sexual acts in different shelves.

Last week I looked at one kind of religious argument, the teleological argument. This week I'll look at something much broader - religious argument in general.

Most of us stick religion in shelf B. Government shouldn't be in the business of telling us which religious beliefs and practices are correct and which ones aren't. Religion is a matter of God, not a matter of government, and so long as we're not hurting others we should be allowed to believe and practice as we see fit.

If government shouldn't be in the business of telling us which religious beliefs are correct and which ones aren't, then it shouldn't be basing its laws on religious belief. To do so would be to pick one religious belief as more valid than another.

Let's take idolatry as an example. If government started enforcing Biblical rules against worshipping idols, we would all think of that as too radical, for a couple reasons. For one thing, every Catholic church and Hindu temple would be burnt to the ground and all their priests would be stoned to death. For another, government would have picked one religious belief (that no physical thing should be an object of religious devotion) over another religious belief (that physical things may be used as objects of religious devotion if they are understood as only symbols of God), and in so doing would have made a "law regarding the establishment of religion".

Now what would happen if U.S. laws about sex were based on religious belief? I really don't know. Clinton and Lewinsky might have been executed for adultery. But if the law against adultery were based on the Bible, Clinton might have been congratulated and offered Lewinsky's hand in marriage. The bottom line is that more than a million different people have more than a million different ideas about what God says about this sexual act and that sexual act. If government were to pick the "sex between a married man and unmarried woman is not adultery since the Bible defines adultery only as sex between a married woman and a man who isn't her husband" view, then it would be establishing that religious view as more valid than the "any sex between a married man or woman and a woman or man not married to him or her is adultery" view.

If government shouldn't be assigning religious belief, then it shouldn't be citing religious belief, either. Blasphemy and idolatry fit into shelf B and not A; so should illicit sex, if the reason to condemn it is God's will. If you want to put a sexual act in shelf A and not B or C, then you have to find a better reason than "it's an abomination before God."

Before you spout off that I want rape legalized, let me assure you that I do believe some sexual acts should be punishable under the law. There are standards we already use to find which religious acts should go into shelf A and which religious acts should go into shelf B. We could use similar standards for sex. Jefferson hints at these standards when he says: "it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."