Los Presidentes Washington y Lincoln

Buenas noches Sra.,

On one of my homework sheets you asked por que no me gustan los presidentes Washington y Lincoln. The biggest reason is that I see these men as symbols of the trend to concentrate more and more power in the hands of a select few.

Washington was very influential in dumping the Articles of Confederation, which provided for no executive branch or office of Commander in Chief, and switching to the present Constitution, which does both. He knew the government provided for in the Articles was not powerful enough to protect the interests of the landed elite. Also, during the Revolution, Washington introduced a class system to the Continental Army, where officers were no longer elected by their peers but now appointed, and where officers enjoyed better pay than their subordinates.

Besides killing off a large portion of the American population, Lincoln did all sorts of other abuses of power. He suspended habeus corpus, he shut down newspapers, and he tried to arrest a Chief Justice for disagreeing with him. Just about every dubious expansion of executive power (and especially wartime power) has its precedent in Lincoln's reign.

Unfortunately, it's only "natural" that patriotic holidays tend to be celebrations of bloodshed, and it's only "natural" that national "heroes" tend to be wartime Presidents and military officials. Government is by definition institutionalized violence, and it is inevitable that almost all the liturgy of the civil religion will be war-themed celebrations that unite and define the nation through the sacralazation of organized violence. I dislike Washington and Lincoln and their holiday because they are patron saints of power, and to worship them is to worship power.

Here's an article saying a little more on Washington. http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard171.html

Here's an article on Washington's orders to execute mutineers who were agitating for better pay. http://www.executedtoday.com/2009/01/27/1781-new-jersey-pennsylvania-line-mutiny/

Here's a lecture by Howard Zinn on America's three "Holy Wars". He says a few things about Washington and Lincoln, and some other figures in American history. http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2010/1/8/howard_zinn_three_holy_wars

Here's a url for a whole archive on "King Lincoln". http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/lincoln-arch.html

Even if these ideas are too uncomfortably radical for you, I do hope and am confident that you will at least find them interesting.

Sinceramente,
Isaiah

Floor Fees

The new word on the street is that the Libertarian Party - yes, the LIBERTARIAN PARTY - might decide to charge fees for seats at its 2010 national convention. If you want a more substantial reaction to this than I'm going to give, Gary Chartier gives a good summary of the "thick" response.

Now, I could totally understand someone steeped in free market economics giving a supply-demand defense of floor fees. Seats on the floor are a scarce resource for which there is much demand, and it is right and equitable that these seats be offered at a price that reflects the demand for and scarcity of these seats, so as to avoid the effects of distributing goods at a price lower than their demand and scarcity, which in this case would be overcrowding. The fee might also help pay for the hall.

My knee-jerk reaction is that charging money for access to a political decision-making process smears the distinction that Classical Liberalism has traditionally made between the public and private sphere. I imagine that the LP is still officially minarchist, and as such they at least nominally hold to the public-private distinction. Only the most hardcore anarcho-capitalists want everything privatized and allocated through market exchange. I'm an anarchist, but even I recognize some distinction between public and private spheres. Part of "the democratic ideal" is everyone's entitlement to a say in the decisions that affect them. Charging money for that say is essentially charging people for something that they should already have by reason of their rightful autonomy.

I'm not really someone to talk, though, because - well - I'm an anarchist, and even though I do vote I've more or less given up hope on party politics.

I have to say, though - what's next, renting pews in church? Oh wait, we've already had that. Some people have even been sued for not paying their pew rent.

The Reforming Baptist

William Dudding wrote a response to my very first blog entry, and posted it at his own blog. My response is definitely not going to be any shorter than his. Go ahead and trek over to his blog and read his response, cause you might be lost reading my response to his if you don't, and it's a lot of reading.

Go ahead and click around and read some other entries in his blog, because they'll give an idea of where he comes from and of the "zeitgeist" that I'm writing about (I promise I'm not going to use that word in my response). Some of what he writes is actually fun and interesting, too. Or at least I find it fun and interesting.

I can't say when my response is going to be finished, but I can say that a response is due, so keep an eye out for it. It's going to be entitled "From Biblical Fundamentalism to Fundamentalist Individualism and Here to Stay". I just finished the intro (the intro!) and I'm at 1,400 words.

The Long-Needed Check

"It will be asked, what could be accomplished by a military organization, if every subordinate were allowed to judge of the propriety of an order before he obeyed it? I answer that nothing could be accomplished that did not commend itself to men educated to understand, and trained to respect the rights of persons and property as set forth in the "Declaration of Independence;" and that here, and here only, will be found the long-needed check to the barbarian wantonness that lays towns in ashes and desolates homes and hearts for brutal revenge, or to get office or a little vulgar newspaper notoriety."

- Josiah Warren, "True Civilization an Immediate Necessity"

Bail and Pre-Conviction Confinement

Bail is a deposit that a criminal defendant can pay to buy some time out of jail before and during her court case. It's supposed to be an incentive to encourage defendants outside of jail to make it to court. If a defendant makes it to all of her court dates, then she gets her money back after the trial.

When my brother called me to ask what I think of bail, I said after a few hems and haws that I think the primary purpose of justice is restitution, or "making right", or "making whole again", that the most feasible restitution is a payment in money, and that the idea of buying your freedom back doesn't rub me the wrong way.

That was back then - probably a week or two ago. My opinion of bail has changed. I still do believe in restitutionary justice and in criminal torts, but I think payment for criminal wrongdoing isn't clearly enforceable until after conviction of the crime.

Bail isn't payment for wrongdoing, anyway. It's payment to not be stuck in jail pending a criminal case. It is a negative incentive that relies on the threat of confinement. The offer you can't refuse is this: pay us such'n'such lump sum of money, or stay in jail.

We like to think that our system presumes the defendant innocent until proven guilty. But if the defendant is presumed innocent, then how can it be just to confine her? If we are to presume her innocence, then we are to presume her complete liberty.

If someone is caught red-handed, then they should probably be tried on the spot. If that's not feasible, then charging them bail or keeping them confined until their trial might be just, since they were caught in the act. Otherwise, confining someone before conviction is an encroachment on someone's liberty without proof of wrongdoing, and that's no different from kidnapping.

The incentives for people to make their court dates should be actually positive incentives, or at least more positive than threatening to jail people who might be innocent. We do lots of things that we aren't required to do. Instead of all-out compulsion, we are "pulled" by the perceived benefit of those actions. The social benefit of good standing in the community can be the positive incentive for people to perform their procedural legal duties like showing up to court and paying their fines.

If someone doesn't show up to court, their PDA or DRO could simply stop covering them. They could get blacklisted, and other PDAs and DROs can refrain from covering the awol defendant too. Sure, this is still an offer you can't refuse; but it doesn't depend on threatening to jail people who aren't proven guilty.

The Tea Party's Crashing Us Now

Two different blog entries at LRC, here and here, complain about the Tea Party movement. Ostrowsky says more or less that Palin's an embicile with no real program, and Rockwell says the movement looks like it still really really really likes the government's little wars.

I myself didn't watch very much of the Tea Party convention on C-SPAN. I became immediately uninterested when they started by pledging allegiance to the flag. They pick a name for themselves that harks back to a time when "patriotism" meant rebellion against political authority, and here they are saying "One Nation...Indivisible". If these guys were in the original Tea Party then we'd have pictures of the Queen on our money today.

I really can't say I know every single reason I dislike them. That would require examining them closely, and I can't stomach that. Judging off the general impression they give, though, I can say that they don't impress me. Here's something from some Facebook comments I made earlier.

"My criticisms of the Tea Partygoers are out of principle and out of practicality. I think a non-interventionist foreign policy is more important than conservative economic policy (mass theft is less horrendous than mass murder). The Tea Partygoers are all the rage about the words "fiscal conservatism", but as a movement they don't seem to be particularly against reductions in US military commitments abroad. After all, fiscal conservatism doesn't make much sense without reductions in military adventurism. And, if they had a mass conversion to belief in individual rights against the security state, I haven't noticed it. There's nothing wrong with fiscal conservatism, but it has to be consistent, and it is not the end-all-be-all of right reform.

"The movement won't be able to make any dents unless they offer something that would appeal to left-of-center voters and which isn't offered by the Obama regime. That can (and should) include calls to reduce military action and spending, and calls to repeal the "Patriot" Act. The Tea Party movement isn't perceived as doing either of these, and so it's thought of as just a bunch of right-wing extremists. Fiscal conservatism is fine and good; but voters won't buy it if it doesn't look digestible.

"I'm also a little resentful because there already is a political party called Boston Tea.

"But maybe some good will result from this, and through the efforts of libertarian conservatives more and more Tea Partygoers would be drawn to a more pro-peace and pro-freedom platform.
"True, there's no such thing as a perfect movement. But the Tea Party movement isn't even adequate - yet. As it is, their platform is something I can't put my name behind in good conscience, and their platform and image are not going to get their candidates the primaries *and* get swing voters *and* keep party loyalty in the districts where we need them. Maybe they'll get better, but I don't think they're even good enough yet."

Breaking News: Conservative Turns Out to be Pro-Government Racist

I watched the video of Glenn Beck ranting about Indian health care, because a lot of my Indian friends are pissed off about it. It was embarrassing. He tried to defend the high costs of American healthcare by explaining that the money's going to skilled doctors who are "offsetting" the 20 yrs of education and burdensome debt they were - unbeknownst to him - forced by government intervention to go through. WHEN YOU DEFEND AMERICAN HEALTHCARE, YOU DEFEND THE GOVERNMENT INTRUSIONS THAT MAKE HEALTHCARE UNAVAILABLE TO 15% OF AMERICANS. YOU CANNOT BE PRO-MARKET AND PRO-STATUS QUO AT THE SAME TIME.

He then goes on to say that he doesn't want to live in India, because he doesn't want discounted wages and he actually finds beneficial some things in America like labor "protections", which amount to government violence to keep the price of labor artificially high and exclude a major segment of the population from the work force. This must explain why he thinks government should keep "illegals" from stealing our jobs. And since he thinks it's okay for government intrusion to prop up wages, he apparently thinks it's okay for government intrusion to prop up the price of living, because that's what happens when you keep one side of the market artificially expensive. So he openly admits it - no longer is he a statist running around in free marketeer skin, now he's just a naked statist.

Not to mention his cheap Indian "jokes" about fictional universities with unpronounceable names, India's derth of flush toilets, and a sacred river whose name he thinks sounds like the name of a disease.

I read that someone's mom yelled at the TV. Yelling isn't good enough. Sometimes the TV needs to be shot.

I cringe every time I remember that Glenn Beck is considered a voice of the small government crowd. He contributes to and propagates popular misconceptions of the market, and thereby alienates people from free market ideas. He talks with an arrogance that would disgust any newcomer who has one drop of social propriety. And he seems to enjoy intentionally pissing off minority folk who the political right would do well to reach out to.

Pulpits

No matter how much I love the look and "feel" of pulpits, I can't help but acknowledge that I only like the pulpits that are filled by me - which right now is none. And if I only like them if they're filled by me, then there really isn't any good reason for me to like them.

Pulpits are symbols of authority. They are armored. They are bulwarks, or towers. They are impregnable. They are raised above the common folk. The words from the pulpit come down to the people from above, as if from God.

The preacher's location during the sermon can say a good bit about what kind of relations are idealized. If the preacher is set apart, or above, then along with the content of his sermon he's communicating the idea that his sermon must be true (or is more likely to be true) by virtue of his office.

If his location is to present his words as they are, which is as the words of just another man, then it has to be on the same level as and not too far away from the congregation, and it can't be marked by a wall or reading desk that looks like a battlement or any other thing that looks like it's supposed to protect him from riff raff.

It shouldn't even be a chair on a platform, because that looks like a throne in a court.

The best location for a preacher is at the end of a table. Yes, a table. I think pews or rows of seats in an auditorium or "sanctuary" should be replaced by a dining table. Religious observances should celebrate those things that give life value. And so, the ritual that is most pleasurable and most accessible, and thus most able to bind a number of people in an enriching relationship and to express the goodness of that interaction, and which is thereby the most sacred kind of ritual possible, is a meal. In the Esaian church this meal is to be vegan (veganic if possible). If it is the tradition to have meals while sitting on the floor, as is common in the eating halls of gurdwaras even today, then the preacher is to sit on the floor with everybody else.

Of course, the preacher's role is minimal. Outside the communion hall he should start by giving thanks to no one in particular for the sunshine, and for the rain, and should make a wish for rain, as appropriate. Once inside the dining hall he sits down with the others and after a beat (that is, a very short pause) he gives his sermon, which should be like an oral blog entry on what's on his mind. After a few volunteers help him set the table and serve the food, he blesses the meal, or asks someone to bless it. The blessing should be short and sweet, like "We give thanks for the food before us, and for the hands that made it. May our next few moments together be a warm time of fellowship. Amen." And that's it. Preacher's role fini. After that they get down to the real business of the service, which is eating and chatting.

God not Supernatural, says Father

It must have been a year or two ago when my dad and I were talking about the difficulty with using the words "natural" and "supernatural". I myself prefered at the time to use a word I learned in my sociology of religion class - supra-empirical. A supra-empirical postulate is an assumption you can't test. These days I don't use the word supra-empirical to describe "supernatural" stuff because the supra-empirical also includes moral premises, and I don't think belief in gods and ghosts is the same kind of belief as belief in the right to live.

Anyway, back to the discussion. At that time I didn't like "supernatural" because I didn't believe there was such a thing as nature. No ecosystem that includes animals is a pristine, untouched wildland. A lot of the forces that shape "nature" are the actions of beings who are appropriating resources to meet their own needs. A gang of beavers making their dam doesn't seem that categorically different to me from human beings making a house. And so, the "natural" and "artificial" distinction didn't make much sense to me.

This went beyond my doubt about the difference between "Nature's deeds" and "Man's deeds", and brought in doubt about the difference between "Nature's and Man's deeds" and "God's and angels' and demons' deeds". What are supernatural phenomena supposed to be, but the actions of unseen beings who are appropriating resources to meet their needs and desires? And how is that categorically different from animals' appropriation of their natural environment?

The supposed difference is that the actions of some beings are determined by "natural" processes while the actions of other beings aren't. But I don't know any compelling reason to suppose that human actions and states of mind aren't determined by physical processes. And if God and angels and demons are motivated to want things and do things, and to react in the world to things that occur in the world, then I don't see why they aren't affected by "natural" processes, either. And if they are affected by "natural" processes, then that pretty much means that an aspect of their being is determined by "natural" processes. (I must say that I probably didn't go into this much detail about it in my conversation with my dad.)

My dad, too, was uncomfortable with the word "supernatural", especially when used to describe God. If God is eternal, then He had no beginning, and no one could have made Him. And if He is unchanging, then no one could alter Him. In the sense of "pristine untouched wildland", God as traditionally conceived is the very definition of natural.

Now, my dad isn't exactly a Calvinist in theology. He does believe that God can be motivated to act, and that God as a "person" isn't an unmovable rock or a "pristine untouched wildland". My dad thinks of sovereignty as the ability to change, and if God isn't moved by prayer, then God is not soveriegn. (Calvinists believe that prayer's value is not its efficacy in moving God, that prayer probably doesn't change God's mind anyway, and that God's answers to prayer occur because of predestination, or because of foreknowlege, or something like that.)

I'm going to have to end here, because if I don't I'll ramble on forever. I'll just conclude with one thing. The word "natural" has several different meanings, two of which look like complete opposites of each other. On the one hand, "natural" can mean pristine, untouched, not tampered with, unaffected. On the other, "natural" means affected, altered, and determined by surounding factors.

Laurence Vance, Ron Paul, Abortion

In response to recent criticisms of the Doctors Paul, Laurence Vance wrote this article that was published yesterday at LRC. Every pro-life conservative should read it. He says a lot of good things in it. He emphasizes that real change is social change, not political change, and that programs asserted from the top down end up like Prohibition. He mentions that there are all sorts of non-political routes that the pro-life movement could take besides the political route, which has progressed unremarkably at best. And, he suggests between the lines that a program for the rights of the preborn is pretty much meaningless outside of a program for total freedom.

I do have some criticisms of the article, though, and it just wouldn't be right for me to suggest his article without also offering my criticisms of it.

For one thing, Vance keeps talking about the Constitution. The Constitution has no inherent authority. It is just another piece of positive "law", and at best is just a useful legal tool to keep a positive law system relatively "libertarian".

Also, Vance rebukes American Right to Life for attacking national sovereignty. But frankly, there is no such thing as national sovereignty. If the people of another country start genociding Christians or Jews, we would have a right to violently intervene. That's half of what we mean when we say "right to live". To say that individuals don't have the right to intervene to stop a genocide abroad is to say that the rights of individuals depend on the dictates of the government they live under - and that smacks of anti-individual and pro-government sentiment. Our opposition to U.S. intervention abroad should be based not on some myth called "national sovereignty", but on the principle of individual sovereignty - that is, on the moral opposition to killing noncombatants and to forcing taxpayers to fund something they don't want to fund. If the proposal was for the U.S. military to intervene, sure I would oppose that. But if private individuals and groups wanted to intervene, and were subject to a procedure by which they are held accountable for any nondiscriminate or disproportionate violence, I'd have to say let them.